Kozhikode: The atrocities committed by Vasco Da Gama and Christopher Columbus against the colony people should be designated as crimes against human race, opined noted French historian Jean-Baptiste Prashant More. He was delivering the keynote address at the fourth edition of the International Kerala History Conference on Calicut University campus on Friday. “Spanish and Portuguese invaders ruthlessly killed and tortured thousands of native population in their colonies,” he said.
“The violence unleashed by the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the other Europeans who followed them had no parallel in the eastern and western oceans and coasts. Vasco da Gama and Columbus had personally indulged in some of the most heinous violence and atrocities against the indigenous people in Asia and the Americas,” he said. “These were clearly cases of crimes against humanity due to the number of people they massacred, subjugated and eliminated. The Portuguese and Spanish royal establishments especially and the Roman Catholic Church need to bear responsibility for these crimes, for it was they who had sponsored Vasco da Gama, Columbus and their men,” he added.
Apart from tending to monopolise trade in the region, the Portuguese and the Spaniards had also been vested by the Pope with the mission to propagate Christianity and they did it by all means, including persuasion and violence and mass killings, he said. Calicut University Vice-Chancellor Dr K. Mohammed Basheer inaugurated the conference. Under the series, ‘Doyens of Krala Historiography,’ Prof. M.G.S. Narayanan, former chairman, ICHR, New Delhi, presented a paper on ‘The failure of K.P. Padmanabha Menon, ’ and Prof. M.R. Raghava Varier, visiting professor, Malayalam University, Tirur, on ‘Paliyath Anujan Achan: His Contributions’. The three-day conference will end on Sunday.
