Ignored History: Columbus Sought to End Islamic Tyranny by Dr. Andrew G. Bostom
As we celebrate Columbus Day -- for those of us still inoculated enough against cultural relativist depravity to do so -- it is also worth recapturing concretely the specific late 15th century religious motivations for Columbus' voyage. Simply put, Columbus sought "eastern (even far eastern) alliances" to end a millennium of Islam's jihad-imposed tyranny against Christendom. Louis Bertrand's scholarly 1934 tome, The History of Spain, elegantly -- and unapologetically -- characterized the now well-nigh forgotten, or ignored, historical context.
When the Spanish Christian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella recaptured Granada on January 2, 1492, they ended almost eight centuries of jihad ravages - massacres, pillage, mass enslavement, and deportation -- and the grinding imposition of Sharia by Spain's various pious Muslim conquerors, and rulers. Bertrand's unsparing narrative describes the bitter, chronic fate of Spain's Christians under Islam, both those fully subjugated and the populations never entirely subdued in the semi-autonomous northern regions.
