Columbus and the Price of Modernity

I teach a History 220 class in the BYU Salt Lake Center. Only one of the students is actually a history major. When I was introducing the class to the glorious truth that is Thomas Paine, I was met with awkward, painful, stares.

"Everyone knows who Thomas Paine is, right?" More awkwardness.

"Was he the archbishop of Canterbury?" The people I work with.

Yet, I realized something beautiful about this scenario. My class is woefully illiterate in matters of history. Henry VIII is simply another in a long line of who-knows, who-cares royalty. The Revolution was important if only because it allows us to have our IPods and Big Macs today.

But during one lecture, I caught a glimpse of what might be in a moment of true transparency. I asked my students to reconcile for me the verses in 1 Nephi 13 (typically interpreted as referring to Columbus et al.) with the reality that the Columbian Exchange decimated millions of Arawak natives in the Caribbean. The class almost universally justified the conquest based on the Europeans' superior "civilization," as eggs that make modernity's omelette, or as simply what people do. In any case, why are we fretting over it?

In the midst of this hayday of imperial hagiography, one student looked thoughtfully at the numbers of deaths in front of him. Hardly the historian, he was simply taking the class to get a GE out of the way. He cocked back his head, pursed his lips, and mused thoughtfully: "8 million...that's a lot of people." Connection. All of this from simply putting a number on a well-designed PowerPoint slide.

He may not remember the name of Cortes, Vespucci, or Henry the Navigator. But if he knows the difference between 8 million people and "the price of modernity," my work there will have been a success.