Author and historian Laurence Bergreen told “Fox & Friends” on Monday that the most famous explorer in history, Christopher Columbus, is “a very complicated figure” and difficult to understand for people today.
Bergreen, who wrote the book, “Columbus: The Four Voyages,” made the comment two days after protesters in Baltimore downed a statue of Christopher Columbus that former President Ronald Reagan helped unveil in 1984, and then dumped the statue. inside the city. Harbor, reportedly.
The statue had been at the entrance to the city’s Little Italy neighborhood for 36 years, FOX 45 reported in Baltimore.
The video posted on social media showed people pulling chains that had been tied around the statue, with a rioter dressed in black giving the statue a final push as a crowd cheered.
The attack came hours after protesters in Connecticut decapitated a statue of Columbus there.
Host Brian Kilmeade asked Bergreen how he feels when he sees “the statue of Columbus go to the ocean”.
“Actually, I’m surprised that it sparks 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 he arranged something to tear down the statues, but I understand why people are so enraged by his example.”
Bergreen explained that “Columbus was controversial throughout his life” and “if there had been statues of Columbus in his life they would also have been knocked down, because he had a way of grazing people the wrong way.”
“At the same time, he changed the course of history due to his exploration,” he continued. “His discovery of the New World, the things he brought back and forth between the old world and the new, his four journeys.”
Bergreen also noted Monday that Columbus “was an extraordinary navigator,” perhaps “the best of all.”
“So he was a mix of good and bad,” he said. “It is a little difficult to separate one from the other.”
Protesters in cities across the United States have been tearing down, defacing, and smashing the statues of Christopher Columbus in the wake of protests over the death of George Floyd in May.
TRUMP SAYS VIOLENCE IN CHICAGO, BALTIMORE, OTHER UNITED STATES CITIES LIKE “LIVING IN HELL”, IN THE CITY COUNCIL OF “HANNITY”
Rioters chopped off his head in Boston, threw him into a lake in Richmond, Virginia, drenched him in red paint in Miami, and dragged him down from his pedestal in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Bergreen said Monday that Columbus “transformed the world,” explaining that the world would have been “very different” had it not been for him.
“Nor did I intend to inflict this cruelty,” he continued. “You would think that he set out with the goal of committing genocide or killing as many people as possible, but in reality that was not his goal. He thought he was on a trade mission with China, that he did not know where he was and he spent four traveling trying to find him and never did. “
Bergreen noted that Columbus “was somehow hopelessly wrong despite the fact that he was an excellent navigator,” adding that “his sense of geography was very, very biased.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Dom Calicchio and Michael Ruiz of Fox News contributed to this report.
