LogFAQs > #950119261

Bio1590 posted...

The spice trade literally drove the world economy for centuries and Genoa was one of the main trade centres when Columbus was born and grew up there. This has nothing to do with the Spanish potentially not knowing what Indians look like, it's all on Columbus.

Columbus being an idiot has nothing to do with North and South America actually existing. It's solely:

1) He massively overestimated how wide Eurasia was in terms of longitude.
2) He massively underestimated how far west India/China/Japan were, partly because of 1 and partly because he used the wrong fucking units in his calculations

There's also no evidence he ever actually believed he hadn't reached the Far East, despite the fact all evidence would point to the contrary the longer he stayed there and the more he explored.

And don't forget that just 5 years after Columbus landed in The Bahamas, Vasco da Gama sailed south around Africa and up its east coast and made it to India for the Portuguese, which eventually led to Portugal having complete control of the spice trade in the early 1500s.

Portugal mainly got control of Africa and the Eastern part due to the Treaty of Tordesillas, but Spain also grabbed the Philippines too. Portugal was already in Africa(vaguely North Africa at the time well before Columbus set voyage). There's a reason they risked everything to sail west to possibly find an alternative route.

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdR2Iktffaw
The day Capitalism was humiliated :)