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Christopher Columbus The Four Voyages

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The legacy of Christopher Columbus has been a divisive topic for many years. Indeed, according to Laurence Bergreen, the Columbian legacy has been divisive since the time of his voyages. In an excerpt from his book Columbus: The Four Voyages, Laurence Bergreen juxtaposes his extensive historical knowledge with a deep understanding of modern American culture to demonstrate that, for all his successes and failures, Columbus is significant as a reminder that we are all deeply complex and contradictory beings. The dominant portion of the excerpt is Bergreen's exposition of various historical arguments against Columbus, his foremost example being the works of Bartolomé de Las Casas. He integrates much of de Las Casas' work through the use of direct quotations, which helps to maintain a rigorous and analytical tone. This serves to improve Bergreen's credibility and reinforce the reader's initial impression of him as a rigorous and learned historian—an appeal to ethos. Through the use of direct quotations such as "Las Casas championed the nearly extinct victims of this outrage—'the simplest people of the world,'" (Par. 3) he is able to provide the reader with historical knowledge without directly taking a stance on the underlying divisive issue of the moral qualities and actions of Columbus. This extremely objective tone pervades the rest of the essay, and ultimately makes any moral judgement difficult to discern which would detract from the focus of the Bergreen's ultimate

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