“weapons of mass destruction” to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea and keep them
out of the hands of terrorists like al-Qaeda. Since money is to be made in the
arms trade, however, and since all nations need military allies, the arms trade
with non-Western nations persists. The Western advantage in military
technology is still a burning issue. Nonetheless, not a single textbook mentions
arms as a cause of European world domination.
In the years before Columbus’s voyages, Europe also expanded the use of
new forms of social technology—bureaucracy, double-entry bookkeeping, and
mechanical printing. Bureaucracy, which today has negative connotations, was
actually a practical innovation that allowed rulers and merchants to manage
far-flung enterprises efficiently. So did double-entry bookkeeping, based on the
decimal system, which Europeans first picked up from Arab traders. The
printing press and increased literacy allowed news of Columbus’s findings to
travel across Europe much farther and faster than news of the Vikings’
expeditions.
A third important development was ideological or even theological:
amassing wealth and dominating other people came to be positively valued as
the key means of winning esteem on earth and salvation in the hereafter. As
Columbus put it, “Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he who
has it does all he wants in the world, and can even lift souls up to Paradise.”^10
In 1005 the Vikings intended only to settle Vineland, their name for New
England and the maritime provinces of Canada. By 1493 Columbus planned to
plunder Haiti.^11 The sources are perfectly clear about Columbus’s motivation:
in 1495, for instance, Michele de Cuneo wrote about accompanying Columbus
on his 1494 expedition into the interior of Haiti: “After we had rested for
several days in our settlement, it seemed to the Lord Admiral that it was time
to put into execution his desire to search for gold, which was the main reason
he had started on so great a voyage full of so many dangers.”^12 Columbus was
no greedier than the Spanish, or later the English and French. But most
textbooks downplay the pursuit of wealth as a motive for coming to the
Americas when they describe Columbus and later explorers and colonists.
Even the Pilgrims left Europe partly to make money, but you would never know
it from our textbooks. Their authors apparently believe that to have America
explored and colonized for economic gain is somehow undignified.
A fourth factor affecting Europe’s readiness to embrace a “new” continent
was the particular nature of European Christianity. Europeans believed in a