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October 9, 2008 14:01
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The 1492 "voyage of discovery" is, however, hardly all that is | |
at issue. In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of | |
seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to | |
install himself as "viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands] | |
and the mainland" of America, a position he held until | |
1500. Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa–ola (today | |
Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of | |
slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native | |
Taino population. Columbus's programs reduced Taino numbers from as | |
many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three | |
million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the | |
governor's departure. His policies, however, remained, with the | |
result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely | |
22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were | |
recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians | |
throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled | |
more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the | |
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known. | |
http://web.mit.edu/thistle/www/v9/9.11/1columbus.html |
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