Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (Spanish: Cristóbal Colón, Italian: Cristoforo Colombo, 1451-1506) was a Genoese explorer and trader who crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached the Americas in 1492 under the flag of Spain, while searching for spices, gold, converts to Christianity and some say, slaves. He had been searching for a new route to the Asian Indies and was convinced to have found it. Columbus then made several journeys of exploration and trade across the Atlantic, amassing a fortune from profits on gold and kidnapped natives whom he sold into slavery. However, Columbus died in poverty.
Early Life
Note: There are various alternative versions of Columbus's origins and life before 1476 (see ' Columbus's National Origin' further down). What is shown here, is the 'official' account which is supported by most historians.
Columbus was born on October 30, 1451 in the Italian port city of Genoa. His father was Domenico Colombo, a woolens merchant, and his mother was Suzanna Fontanarossa, the daughter of a woolens merchant. Christopher had 3 younger brothers, Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo, and a sister, Bianchinetta.
In 1470, the family moved to Savano, where Christopher worked for his father in wool processing. During this period he studied cartography with his brother Bartolomeo.
In 1474, Christopher joined a ship of the Spenola Financiers, who were Genoese patrons of his father. He spent a year on a ship bound towards Khios (an island in the Aegean Sea) and, after a brief visit home, spent a year in Khios. During this period the islands of the Aegean were under the control of the Turks, who had conquered Constantinople in 1454.
A 1476 commercial expedition gave Colombus his first opportunity to sail into the Atlantic Ocean. The fleet came under attack by French privateers off the Cape of St. Vincent. Colombus's ship was burned and he swam six miles to shore.
By 1477, Colombus was living in Lisbon. Portugal had become a center for maritime activity with ships sailing for England, Ireland, Iceland, Madeira, the Azores, and Africa. Columbus? brother Bartolomeo worked as a mapmaker in Lisbon. At times, the brothers worked together as draftsmen and book collectors.
In 1478, Colombo sailed to Madeira to purchase sugar. A lawsuit stemming from this voyage forced him to return to Genoa in 1479, to testify. He then returned to Lisbon.
Discovery of America
In 1492, Columbus landed in what is now called the West Indies, believing to have reached Asia.
Columbus was not the first person to reach the Americas, which were, as he reported, already populated by Native Americans. He was also not the first European to reach the continent, as Vikings from Northern Europe had visited North America in the 11th century, calling it Vinland. The remains of a short-lived Viking colony have been unearthed in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada.
Nevertheless, Columbus is often credited as the discoverer of the Americas, because 15th century Europe was unaware of their existence, and it is his discovery that created the still-existing bonds between the continents. This event is celebrated and protested annually in the United States on Columbus Day.
The idea
Columbus went to the court of Portugal in 1485, then the main exploring nation, with an idea to sail to the Indies (then roughly meaning all of south and east Asia by sailing west and crossing the Atlantic rather than by going around Africa. However, he was refused: The king's experts believed that the route would be longer than Columbus thought (the actual distance is even longer than the Portuguese believed).
It is sometimes claimed that the reason Columbus had a hard time getting the financial backing he needed for his voyage was the belief in a flat earth. However, the fact that the Earth is spherical was evident to educated people of his time, including other sailors and navigators. The problem was that the experts did not agree with Columbus's estimates as to the distance he would have to cover to reach the Indies travelling westward. Most Europeans accepted Ptolomy's claim that the terrestrial landmass (for Europeans of the time, Eurasia and Africa) occupied 180 degrees of the terrestrial sphere leaving 180 degrees of water (in fact, it occupies about 120 degrees, leaving 240 degrees unaccounted for at that time). Columbus accepted the calculations of d'Ailly, that the land-mass occupied 225 degrees, leaving only 135 degrees of water. Moreover, Columbus believed that one degree actually covered less space on the earth's surface than commonly believed. Finally, Columbus read maps as if the distances were calculated in Roman miles (5,000 feet) rather than nautical miles (6,082.66 feet at the equator). Columbus concluded that the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was 2,700 miles. In fact, the distance is about 13,000 miles), and most European sailors and navigators concluded that the Indies were too far away to make his plan worth considering. They were right and Columbus was wrong -- but extremely fortunate.
Columbus then tried to get backing from Spain or some other country, and finally in 1492, when they had conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian peninsula, the king and queen, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, agreed to have an expedition sent out.
First voyage
In that same year, Columbus left from Palos with three ships, the Santa Maria, Niña and Pinta. He crossed the Atlantic from the Canary Islands, and landed on an island on the other side after a five week voyage. There is still much discussion about which island this was (see http://www1.minn.net/~keithp/cclandfl.htm), but at least it is quite certain that it was one of the Bahamas. On this first voyage, Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola, on which he left some colonists. The Native Americans he encountered, the Taino or Arawak, were peaceful and friendly.
After a stormy voyage back to Europe in early 1493, word of his discovery of new lands rapidly spread.
Later voyages
At one stroke Columbus became famous. The Crown appointed Admiral and governor of any new colonies he might start, and he left for his second voyage (1493-1496), which consisted of 17 ships carrying supplies and colonists (but only men).
He laid his course more southerly than on his first voyage, first sighting Dominica which is quite rugged so turned north discovering and naming Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, and Nevis in the Lesser Antilles, landing on them and claiming them for Spain as he did the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. He then went to Hispaniola, where he found his colonists had fallen into dispute with Indians in the interior and had been killed. He established a new settlement at Isabella, a poor location, on the north coast of Hispaniola where gold had first been discovered, but it was short lived. He spent some time exploring the interior of the island for gold and did find some, establishing a small fort in the interior. He explored the south coast of Cuba but did not round the western end, thus convincing himself that it was a peninsula rather than an island, and discovered Jamaica.
Before he left on his second voyage he had been directed by Ferdinand and Isabella to maintain friendly, even loving relations with the natives. However during his second voyage he sent a letter to the Monarchs proposing to enslave some of the native peoples, specifically the Caribs, on the grounds of their aggressiveness (see Indian slavery)). Although his petition was refused by the Crown, in February, 1495 Columbus took 1600 Arawak as slaves. 550 slaves were shipped back to Spain; two hundred died en route, probably of disease, and of the remainder half were ill when they arrived. Some of the 1600 were kept as slaves for Columbus' men. The remaining 400, who Columbus had no use for, were let go and fled into the hills, making, according to Columbus, prospects for their future capture dim. Rounding up the slaves resulted in the first major battle between the Spanish and the Indians in the new world.
More importantly, Columbus established the encomienda (trusteeship) system, by which Spaniards were granted exclusive use of Indian labor in return for converting them to Christianity, effectively, enslavement of the local population. In some cases, Indians were worked to death; in other cases they died due to newly introduced diseases and malnutrition. Sherburn Cook and Woodrow Borah, in Essays in Population History Volume I (University of California Press, 1971) estimated the native population (Taino) of Hispanola at the time of Columbus's conquest in 1493 at 8,000,000. In 1496 Bartolome de las Casas conducted a census and estimated that only 3,000,000 Taino had surveved the conquest and initial impostion of the encomienda system. A Spanish census in 1514 records only 22,000 Taino, and a census in 1542 recorded only 200. Although Columbus established his brothers as commanders of the settlements and left for Europe in March, 1496, they and other Spanish conquerors employed the encomienda system developed by Columbus with similar results elsewhere in the Americas.
In 1498, Columbus left for the New World a third time, accompanied by the young Bartolome de Las Casas, who would later provide partial transcripts of Columbus' logs. This time he discovered the island of Trinidad and the mainland of South America, including the Orinoco River, before turning to Hispaniola. In 1500, after rumours of mismanagement-- and having hung some of his Spanish crew for disobeying him-- Columbus was arrested and taken back to Spain in chains.
Although he regained his freedom, he did not regain his prestige.
Nevertheless he made a fourth voyage, in 1502-1504. On this voyage, he explored the coast of Central America from Belize to Panama. In 1502 off the coast of what is now Honduras a trading ship as "long as a galley" was encountered, filled with cargo. This was the first recorded encounter by the Spanish with the Native American civilization of Mesoamerica. Later Columbus was marooned on Jamaica but managed to get to Hispaniola to get help.
In his later years Columbus wrote demanding that the Spanish Crown give him 10% of all profits made in the new lands, and that he and his discoveries were part of God's plan which would soon result in the Last Judgement and the end of the world. In 1506, Columbus died in Spain, still convinced that his discoveries were along the East Coast of Asia.
See also exploration, explorers, 15th century, flat earth, Spanish colonization of the Americas
Columbus's National Origin: Subject of Debate
There has been doubt about Columbus's true origin. Although he is generally assumed to be Genoese, his actual background is clouded in mystery. Very little is really known about Columbus before the mid 1470s. It has been suggested that this might have been because he was hiding something - an event in his origin or history that he kept a secret deliberately. It has also been noted that he not only wrote flawless Castilian, but that he used the language even when writing with Italians.
Some historians have claimed that he was a Basque. Others have said that he was a converso (Spanish Jew converted to Christianity). Because many conversos were still practicing Judaism in secrecy, they were much mistrusted. Another theory is that he was from the island of Corsica, which at the time was part of the Genoan empire. Because the often subversive elements of the island conferred its inhabitants a negative reputation, he would have masked his exact heritage. Others proclaim that Columbus was actually Catalan, or Greek, or Portugese.
Nobody has proven any of these claims, and most historians keep to the theory that Columbus actually came from Genoa. There is no indication of anyone doubting this claim in Columbus's own times.
The issue of Columbus's origins is important because during the 19th century, Columbus became a hero to some Italian-Americans, and his being Italian allowed them to argue that Italians arrived in the New World before the English, thereby negating the claim by some Americans of English descent to superiority on the grounds of having arrived in the New World earlier.
Perceptions of Columbus
Christopher Columbus has had a cultural significance beyond his actual achievements and actions as an individual; he also became a symbol, a figure of legend. The mythology of Columbus has cast him as an archetype for both good and for evil.
The casting of Columbus as a figure of "good" or of "evil" often depends on people's perspectives as to whether the arrival of Europeans to the New World and the introduction of Christianity or the Roman Catholic Faith is seen as positive or negative.
Columbus as The Great Hero
Hero worship of Columbus perhaps reached its zenith around 1892, the 400th anniversary of his first arrival in the Americas. Monuments to Columbus were erected throughout the USA and Latin America, extoling him as a hero.
The myth that Columbus thought the world round while his contemporaries believed it flat was often repeated. This tale was used to show that Columbus was enlightened and forward looking. Columbus' defiance of convention in sailing west to get to the far east was hailed as a model of "American" style can-do inventiveness.
In the United States the glorification of Columbus was particularly embraced by some memebers of the Italian-American, Hispanic, and Catholic communities. These groups had been historically marginalized by the USA's dominant culture, so they proudly pointed to Columbus as one of their own to prove that Mediterranean Catholics can and did make great contributions to the USA.
Columbus as The Great Villain
Using Columbus as a symbol for the evils produced by unprincipled Europeans arriving in the New World is not a 20th century innovation. Friar Bartolome de Las Casas wrote of his cruelties and suggested that the humiliations Columbus suffered in his later life were part of a just payback for his crimes.
Columbus has been used increasingly from the 1960s on as a symbol of all that was wrong with European Imperialism --slavery, genocide, the wholesale destruction of indigenous cultures. Official celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage in 1992 were muted and demonstrators protested marking the anniversary in the first place.
How responsible was Columbus?
Some argue that blaming Columbus for all the misdeeds of Europeans in the Americas is pointless. It can be argued that Europeans would have reached the Americas sooner or later. With the development of the caravel, improved charting, and the development of improved navigational instruments such as the quadrant, compass, and astrolabe, European sailors were able to sail in the Atlantic. John Cabot, another Genoese in the service of England, landed in Newfoundland in 1498, and Portugese explorer Gasper Corte Real were known to voyage off Newfoundland in 1501.
External links
Biographies
Samuel Elliot Morrison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, is an biography favorable to Columbus.
Brian Fagan, essay, "Clash of the Cultures", presents a less-favorable view.