Columbus was controversial but he changed the course of history, historian says
Rioters tear down a Christopher Columbus statue and throw it into Baltimore's Inner Harbor; historian and author Laurence Bergreen reacts on 'Fox & Friends.'
Author and historian Laurence Bergreen told “Fox & Friends” on Monday that history's most famous explorer Christopher Columbus is “a very complicated" figure and difficult for people to understand today.
Bergreen, who wrote the book, “Columbus: The Four Voyages,” made the comment two days after rioters in Baltimore pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus that former President Ronald Reagan helped unveil in 1984 – and then tossed the statue into the city’s Inner Harbor, according to reports.
The statue had stood at the entrance to the city’s Little Italy neighborhood for 36 years, FOX 45 of Baltimore reported.
Video posted to social media showed people pulling chains that had been tied around the statue, with one black-clad rioter giving the statue a final push as a crowd cheered.
The attack came hours after rioters in Connecticut beheaded a Columbus statue there.
Host Brian Kilmeade asked Bergreen how he feels when he sees “Columbus' statue go into the ocean.”
“Actually, it’s astounding to me that he arouses such strong feelings because this was 500 years ago,” Bergreen said in response. “It was a different time and place.”
He went on to say, “I'm not sure it fixes anything to knock down the statues, but I understand why people get very, very incensed by his example.”
Bergreen explained that “Columbus was controversial throughout his lifetime” and “if there had been Columbus statues in his lifetime they would have knocked them down, too, because he had a way of rubbing people the wrong way.”
“At the same time, he changed the course of history because of his exploration,” he continued. “His discovery of the New World, the things that he brought back and forth between the old world and the new one, his four voyages.”
Bergreen also pointed out on Monday that Columbus “was an extraordinary navigator,” perhaps “the best ever.”
“So he was a mixture of things that are good and bad,” he said. “It's kind of hard to separate one from the other.”
Protesters in cities around the United States have been tearing down, defacing and otherwise vandalizing statues of Christopher Columbus as an offshoot of the protests over George Floyd’s death in May.
Rioters hacked off his head in Boston, threw him in a lake in Richmond, Va., drenched him in red paint in Miami and dragged him down from his pedestal in St. Paul, Minn.
Bergreen said on Monday that Columbus “transformed the world,” explaining that the world would have been “very different” if not for Columbus.
“He also didn't actually intend to inflict this cruelty,” he continued. “You would think he set out with a goal to commit genocide or kill as many people as possible, but that actually wasn't his goal. He thought he was on a trade mission with China, which he didn't know where it was and he spent four voyages trying to find it and never did.”
Bergreen noted that Columbus “was in some ways hopelessly misguided despite the fact that he was an excellent navigator,” adding that “his sense of geography was really, really skewed.”
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Fox News’ Dom Calicchio and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
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