Young America's Foundation
In Defense of Columbus - Forward by Robert Royal
The Young America’s Foundation (YAF) is not hiding from history. In a recent conversation with a representative of a major city’s council, I was told that no matter how many facts are presented, it doesn’t matter to a small, powerful, vocal, and influential group. The fact that Columbus brought Christianity and Western civilization to the Americas is enough that no other facts matter. Some far-left leaning Italians are willing to sacrifice facts, history, and heritage to appease members of their political party. YAF published a booklet called In Defense of Columbus which puts Columbus into historical and today’s context.
At a moment when even George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson are under attack in America, it was inevitable that the unrest and radical criticism would also engulf Christopher Columbus. His case is unique because unlike the others, few people – least of all those who have vilified him and even pulled down his statues – know much about him. They assume that he brought slavery and genocide to the New World. Europeans did commit many sins. But they did not introduce new evils; all of them – including slavery and genocide – already existed among Indigenous peoples, as they did throughout the world. Click here for a link to the entire booklet. (Updated 5/2/2021)
Christopher Columbus: Civil Rights Activist
Introduction (Part 1) by Robert Petrone
Christopher Columbus became the first civil rights activist of the Americas and the founder of Western Culture in the New World, making him, beyond cavil, the greatest hero of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Click here to continue reading this article. (Updated 2/13/2021)
Columbus the Man (Part 2) by Robert Petrone
While some scholars mark the end of the Middle Ages at the year 1300 and others at the year 1500, a third school of thought ends the Middle Ages firmly with the date of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage: 1492. Like the birth of Christ — the event that reset the calendar for the Western World — Christopher Columbus was the worldwide singularity that ended the Middle Ages and ushered in the next era of human existence. Click here to continue reading this article. (Updated 2/20/2021)
The Scientific Hypothesis (Part 3) by Robert Petrone
When the grief of the loss of his beloved wife finally passed, Columbus could tolerate a sedentary life no more. With his five-year-old son in tow, he pounded the proverbial pavements of Europe in search of a royal benefactor willing to fund his “enterprise” of a possible nautical expedition westward to find an all-water route to China. Such an endeavor, should it succeed, would revolutionize trade by creating an alternative to the lengthy and burdensome overland journey of the Silk Road. Click here to continue reading this article. (Updated 2/28/2021)
The Discovery (Part 4) by Robert Petrone
This nautical genius, whom Bartolomé de las Casas characterized as "the most outstanding sailor in the world, versed like no other in the art of navigation… laid down compass courses and estimated direction and distance on timeworn charts using nothing more than his own ‘dead reckoning;’ sheer force of will; and, by his own accounts, Divine Providence." Click here to continue reading this article. (Updated 3/6/2021)
The Second Voyage (Part 5) By Robert Petrone
My ‘1492 Project’ posits that Columbus’s peaceful and amicable first contact with over a dozen tribes in the West Indies on his First Voyage, and his freeing of scores of Taino slaves from Carib captors on his Second Voyage (a civil rights activism that continued, as future articles will demonstrate, on both his remaining voyages) established the Americas as a bastion of goodness from which has sprung the United States, the freest, most-tolerant, most-successful and wealthiest heterogeneous society in the history of the earth. Click here to continue reading this article. (Updated 3/13/2021)
The Arch-Nemeses Bobadilla (Part 6) By Robert Petrone
The Crown answered Columbus’s request, unaware that, since receiving the letter, he had actually single-handedly succeeded in suppressing the hidalgo rebellions with sheer diplomacy and without arms. As historian Bartolomé de las Casas, who lived through and personally witnessed these events, wrote in his Historia de las Indias (History of the Indies), ‘by now things were calm, the land was rich and everyone lived in peace’ (Book I, Chapter 181), Columbus’s hard-earned Pax Columbiana. Click here to continue reading this article. (Updated 3/20/2021)
The First Civil Rights Legislation of the Americas (Part 7) By Robert Petrone
Columbus carefully drafted a petition to the Crown that he hoped would protect the tribal peoples from any further depredations by Spanish governors: a petition for the first civil rights legislation of the Americas. Click here to continue reading this article. (Updated 3/27/2021)
The Final Voyage to Freedom (Part 8) By Robert Petrone
Despite the ‘Big Lie’ of the cultural majoritarians, the primary historical sources show that by his deeds, his motives and his efforts – realized and unrealized – Christopher Columbus was unmistakably, far and away, and by any standards, the single greatest hero of human rights of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Click here to continue reading this article. (Updated 4/3/2021)