GVSU Honors Blog!

Hi Jackson, thanks for your thoughts! I definitely agree that the Europeans made no effort whatsoever to really understand the natives. Had they done so, history likely would have played out in a much different (and better!) way. On non-moral issues, I completely agree with you - there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing something in a different way than someone else does it. Here, different is not bad - in fact, it is good! On another level, though, I do think there has to be some universal standard for morality. In effect, I believe there can be a part of different that is bad. What if someone killed another person for no obvious reason, and then justified his or her actions by saying, "I believe it is okay to kill someone else for no reason. It is part of my set of moral rules. You don't have the right to call my belief wrong just because you don't think it's okay." I hope we would not agree! Obviously this is an extreme example, but hopefully it proves the ...

I've said it before, I'll say it again - my perspective on history was not as accurate as I thought it was! It just hit me today that I had never even heard of Malintzin a month ago. We talk about unsung heroes, but Malintzin runs the risk of being a hero completely lost to history, thanks to Cortes and his arrogance. For someone that, according to Bernal Diaz, was invaluable in the Spanish conquest, she is not given nearly the limelight she deserves. Take as another example the Spanish defeats. We like to think that they showed up in Mexico and marched to an easy victory. Unfortunately for them, it was not that simple! And there are so many such like examples! Granted, Cortes probably deserves some credit. While his leadership skills (not to mention his morality) left much to be desired, he still headed an army that defeated the most powerful nation in the area. On the other hand, like we have discussed in class, many, many other factors played into the Spanish victory, which ...

I agree with you Lexie! There are a lot of significant details about Columbus and what he did that are completely left out of history. While the natives were savage in their own way, so was Columbus! And when we decry the brutality of the natives, we almost always leave Columbus and his complete disregard for indigenous people out of the discussion. The fact that almost all of us caught the blatant inaccuracy of the film, like you say, shows that we have already learned to put history in a different light. I hope that in the future, we all can interpret history through the perspective of both the victors AND the victims.

 I thought it was interesting how we pointed out that even the firsthand accounts of the conquest of America were likely not completely accurate. I always assumed that what Columbus wrote about the New World would be accurate - after all, he was there and would have known what happened! But as we talked about it on Monday, I began to realize how wrong I was. Columbus had far too many reasons to portray history from his own slanted perspective. He was trying to convince people to come over to America - why not make it out to be better than it actually was? He was also trying to show the king and queen that the expedition was worth it, so he had to sound convincing. If that meant omitting some details, no matter. And every other firsthand account of the New World, whether written by Europeans or natives, will also have bias, whether or not the author included it on purpose. We need to keep this in mind while studying history, and recognize which details were embellished, so we can ke...

I have enjoyed many different discussions so far this year! The last class period, though, especially made me think. We were trying to decipher the meaning and context of different artifacts, and despite our knowledge of history, the majority of our guesses were completely wrong. The difference between our answer and the truth often completely changed the story behind the artifact, and consequently, it also changed our perception of the culture from which the artifact was taken. This exercise made me wonder how many other historical objects we inadvertently do the same thing to. Before taking historical objects out of context and distorting their meaning to fit our preconceived notions about different cultures, we should take the time, do the research, and find the truth about both the object and the culture it represents. Doing this will help us have a much more well-rounded knowledge of history. I hope this class will help me do that!