Rewriting Our History

Abstract

When, in 1976, I wrote my short biography Columbus: His Enterprise for Monthly Review Press, neither I nor my editor Harry Braverman used the term "revisionist history." I was not going to unearth unknown data; I was simply going to try to write history not just from the viewpoint of the winners but also from that of the losers. The facts were assuredly known. They had been on record since 1552 when Bartolome de las Casas' Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies was published. Contrary to what editors and letter writers in our major papers and magazines announce, there is no veil of doubt over the events of the early Spanish Conquest; the Library of the Indies in Spain has thousands of manuscripts and they are well-nigh unanimous on the basic events.

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