How exceptional were the atrocities that Columbus committed toward the Natives of the Caribbean within the context of his time and location (Europe)?

I saw your question, and I thought I would try to give an answer even though it's a little outside my area of expertise. Columbus is such a challenging historical figure who can be viewed in many ways, each of which is as much an accurate interpretation of the man and his actions as the next. So in some ways, perhaps this question is one of those that is actually impossible to reach a perfect answer and will likely be debated forever.

Columbus did bad things. It's that simple. He is responsible for the murder, torture, and enslavement of many people, and many of his contemporaries were appalled by the cruelty. As far as I know, all of the evidence you mention is true unfortunately. I am not trying to defend him by writing this, but to really "get" Columbus (if that is even possible), it's better in my opinion to try to grasp at a holistic, though complex, portrait of the man and his times than a one-sided presentation like Zinn gives.

To nuance Zinn's argument, it's useful to point out a number of key amendments that add important depth and complexity to our understanding of Columbus. First, Columbus's writing served specific purposes: his primary goal with his journal was to show the Crown that the lands he discovered (which were mostly devoid of gold as you point out) were worthy of significant investment by the monarchy to turn it into an agricultural island like the Canary and Madeira Islands. Mary Campbell writes in her book The Witness and the Other World, “Columbus has to convey the meaning and significance of his islands to the royal couple upon whose whim their further exploration wholly depended. Naturally he will want to convey the deepest significance consonant with the facts.” (175). For example, Columbus describes the docility of the people to demonstrate the ease with which Spain might take possession and to justify investing in bringing the “lambs” or “innocents” to the faith. He also describes diverse examples of wealth (including gold and slaves) as an investment opportunity for the Crown. Therefore, his work includes both fact and propaganda geared for a very specific audience who maintain certain sociocultural understandings of what to do when one encounters a new land. Those understandings are completely different from our modern perspectives on human rights, equality, and the morality of slavery.

It’s hard, if not impossible, for us today to fathom the violent and brutal society that the people of that time experienced. Bloody wars (the Thirty Years’ War for example is estimated to have several million casualties alone), massive slave raids (The Turkish invasion of Malta resulted in 5,000 people sent into slavery in one day in 1551 and a Barbary corsair raid of the Madeira Islands in 1617 carried off 1,200, just to name a couple of examples), public torture, and mass executions were a part of everyday life. Columbus mostly followed existing precedent set in Europe and Africa during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in his encounters with indigenous people in the New World, but he did not really have one cohesive policy of dealing with indigenous people. His first encounters were friendly, and there are examples of kind treatment scattered in his journal even as his relationships with indigenous groups became increasingly harsh.

The principal motivation for his expedition (and most others of the day in the Mediterranean, Africa, and later the New World) was money. In his lust for profit, he instituted brutal expectations on both indigenous and Spaniards alike and consequently faced frequent rebellions. In these circumstances, the use of force was the legal and accepted way to resolve these unlawful dissensions. He was after all royally sanctioned and eventually named Viceroy of the new lands. War, violence, torture, and general tyranny were all in the toolbox of government officials trying to establish order when faced with illegal action by enemies of the faith or the king. On those same lines, it also does not seem fair to me to condemn Columbus for taking slaves. During the period, slavery was both morally acceptable and an established institution in international law. Slaves were completely legal and officially sanctioned to be taken if they were acquired in a “just war,” which the Pope defined as aggression to proselytizing expeditions. So it is not fair to hold Columbus to a modern standard of morality about slavery, when that standard would not develop fully for another five hundred years.

Yet few historians would describe Columbus as a paragon of leadership; his actions did seem to cross the line. He faced rebellions from Spaniards who rejected the strict work regime, which he put down brutally (and of course that says nothing of the cruelty inflicted on indigenous populations). Later, he and his brothers were brought back to Spain in chains for overstepping the law (although this was also partially politically motivated). Some Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic objected to the cruelty that he exhibited as governor, and this initial encounter with indigenous people sparked an ongoing debate between intellectuals, theologians, and royal officials over the legal standing of indigenous land ownership, the validity of forced conversion, and the definition of “just war.” It took decades for these debates to be worked out, and in the mean time, Columbus was allowed to go on another expedition before passing away. He was only on the scene for a few years before being replaced, but the processes that he initiated would take centuries to play out.

Finally, we must consider a few smaller points as well. For one, much of the cruelty often attributed to Columbus was perpetrated by other, lesser-known Spaniards. For example, he left a contingent of his crew in Hispaniola and returned to Spain. Those individuals were wiped out by the indigenous of the island because of their cruelty and their frequent tendency to rape women. Thus, Columbus was not the only Spaniard doing bad things in the New World. Secondly, even if the leyes de los indios, which offered protection to the indigenous populations had been decreed much sooner, the reality was that the Crown had very little authority in the day-to-day operations of their far away territories and did not have the infrastructure to enforce their laws effectively or consistently for decades. This led to a lot of autonomy among early settlers who simply ignored royal and papal degrees that called for kindness towards the indigenous people. Again, modern folk tend to attribute these cruelties with Columbus simply because they do not know enough about colonial administration and governance in the early Spanish Empire. Finally, as you probably know, the vast majority of deaths in the New World were caused by disease. Yes, Columbus and his cronies did a lot of bad things, but the principal cause of the population’s decline was epidemics on a truly unimaginable scale. And honestly, it would be be nearly impossible for the Old World and the New World to come together at any point without the transfer of these diseases. People attribute all of these circumstances to Columbus which I find to be a bit of a blind leap.

So just how exceptional was Columbus? He murdered, enslaved, pillaged, and tortured on a grand scale. He certainly toed the line and set off a furious debate among his peers about the limits of violence in pursuit of personal profit. However, it is difficult to say that he was more extreme than his contemporaries. He was a man of his times, and although that does not absolve him of murder and torture, I think it does add another dimension to Columbus that helps explain why he (and many others) did what they did during the Age of Exploration and Conquest. From a historian’s perspective, avoiding presentism and seeking complexity actually adds to our understanding of Columbus rather than distracts from it.