CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS:
UNWEAVING THE WEB |
Christopher Columbus, or Christobal Colon as he was known to the Spanish, was a man who, around 500 years after his death, is still the source of considerable controversy. In the past he was considered the noble adventurer and explorer who, despite the wide-spread belief that the Earth was flat, knew it was round and set out to prove it, eventually discovering America! He was thought of as an intrepid hero. More recently, he has become a subject of derision and revulsion by multiculturalists and revisionists. It is now claimed he was an ignorant dolt who, unlike most people since the ancient Greeks, did not know the circumference of the Earth and was a malicious, even evil-spirited man who brought slavery back to the world when it had almost been wiped out. George Catlin called him the "immortal Columbus" - others have called him quite different things!
Three major issues, then, need to be reviewed - (1) was Columbus an ill-educated dolt or a knowledgeable explorer, (2) in his actions toward the Amerinds, was he evil incarnate or merely a man of his time, and (3) did he simply come across a continent that was already known by the Portugeuse, English and others, or was he the discoverer of America, as far as Europe was concerned.
In considering how knowledgeable Columbus was regarding the size of the globe, we know that Oviedo and de las Casas considered him to be a learned man and a great cosmographer. We know that many, including JM Cohen, the translator of Columbus: the Four Voyages, held Columbus to be far less well educated. According to Cohen, a translator rather than a historian, people disagreed on the exact size of the world, but Columbus had an especially erroneous view on the subject, thinking it far smaller than anyone else. Further, he had relied on the romantic tales of Sir John Mandeville, holding them to be an actual account of its author's travel experience.
The historical facts concerning the size of the world, as far as we known them, are as follows: the ancient Greek geographer and mathematician, Eratosthenes determined that the Earth was approximately 24,000 miles in circumference. We know that, despite the fact that much of the knowledge of Greece and Rome had long been forgotten, by 1100 AD such knowledge was again becoming widely available. Thus, this information would certainly have been available by 1492. Does this mean Columbus was indeed an ill-educated dolt? Sir John Mandeville states that Ptolemy and others found the earth's circumference to be 20,425 miles, over 3500 miles smaller than Eratosthenes and 3425 miles larger than Columbus, according to ancient scholars [Mandeville, himself, however, reasoned that the Earth was 31,005 miles in circumference and that the distance between India and the old world was about 7,750 miles (following his reasoning that the distance between the two was 1/4th the circumference)].
On this subject, in Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, Morris Kline, emeritus professor of Mathematics, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (New York),writes the following:
Strabo, a Greek geographer who lived in the first century B.C., tells us that after Eratosthenes obtained this result he realized that one might sail from Greece past Spain across the Atlantic Ocean to India. This is, of course, what Columbus attempted. Fortunately or unfortunately, the geographers who lived after Eratosthenes, notably Poseidonius (first century B.C.) and Ptolemy (second century A.D.), gave other results which were interpreted by Columbus (because of some uncertainty about the units of distance used by these early scientists) to mean that the circumference of the earth is 17,000 miles. Had he known the correct value, he might never have undertaken to sail to India because the greater distance might have daunted him).
Thus, while Eratosthenes discovered the general circumference of the earth, his findings were not those held by the majority of learned persons in the late 15th Century, most of whom assiduously ascribed to the Ptolemaic System which held the earth to be notably smaller.
Columbus also relied on Mandeville for his knowledge of various cultures on islands around India, various descriptions of which were remarkably similar to the cultures Columbus discovered during his four voyages. Mandeville, who, according to the research of W. R. D. Moseley (editor of Mandeville's travel accounts), was widely believed until late in the 16th century, was given credence by Leonardo de Vinci and the journal was the only person's travel journal that thinker kept among his books. Further, Moseley informs us that Mandeville's Travels were used in the Catalan Atlas of 1375, in Andrea Bianco's 1434 map, in the 1492 Nuremberg "Behaim" globe and in the 1577 Historie of Travaile. It was also used as a source by Haklyut, in earlier editions, and by Mercator. Columbus came across various islands with people who were either nude or only cinctures. They had a brown complexion and some were cannibals - all descriptions of the Asian islands Mandeville claimed to have visited. It would thus appear that Columbus was well within reason in assuming he was near India.
Interestingly, even after Columbus, various persons thought that Asia was quite close. The Spanish explorer, Alvarez de Pineda was sent to find the Strait of Anian which was supposed to lead to China and India, thought to be nearby. Persons such as Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, Gaspar Castano de Sosa and Juan de Onate thought they were near China and greater India. Frobisher thought Baffin Bay separated America from Asia and Queen Elizabeth clearly expected it to be a short distance from the Bay to Cathay. Further, Nicolette and La Salle expected to meet the Japanese and Chinese on their expeditions. Even the French Minister Ponchartrain was taken in by a story told by Sagean regarding the nearness of the Chinese. Columbus, therefore, clearly was not alone in his assumptions even 200 years after his discovery.
Now let us turn to the issue of whether Columbus was indeed a man of his time or a nefarious opportunist who brought slavery back to a world which had decided slavery was evil. Harold J. Berman in Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition gives an excellent overview of the history of the world, especially slavery, feudalism, serdom, and the end of feudal system. He explains how slavery was undermined by the Roman Church and provided peasants with the improved status of modified serfdom, how those serfs, with the help of that church improved their own lot, eventually managing to emancipate themselves directly on the manor to which they were tied or by escape to the church properties (and other manors with liberalized policies based on competition with the church). Thus, in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, peasant slavery had become virtually extinguished and replaced by a form of serfdom that provided certain limited rights to the serfs. The reforms of the rights of serfs combined with mass emancipations resulted in serfdom being abolished in western Europe by 1450!
This would indeed indicate that 42 years after serfdom had ended in western Europe, Columbus brought the darkest form of bondage back to the world. However, such a scenario ignores a few important facts as provided by Jackson J. Spielvogel, associate Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University, in Western Civilization. First, slavery returned to Europe during the war between the Moors and European Spain. Both sides grabbed slaves and the practice spread. In fact, according to Francis Parkman, in France in the New World,such became more common-place as slaves were need for the galleys. Indeed Dominque de Georgeous, a Christian Frenchman, was said to have an implacable hatred for the Spanish due to the difficult existence as a galley-slave. Further, probably due to the end of serfdom and the devastation wrecked by the Black Plague, Renaissance Italy began to return to a system which included a high-level of slavery, primarily from the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions. In Venice alone 10,000 slaves were sold from 1414 to 1423. By the end of the 15th century (i.e., to 1499)slavery had begun to decrease dramatically due to the Turkish conquest of the Byzantine Empire and the resultant increase in prices, but continued until the 16th century. It is of some interest to note that Columbus appears to have been of Italian descent and sailed for Spain, the vanguard nations of this slavery movement.
Some, of course, would claim that the very fact that Columbus was brought back in chains shows that he was despised by his fellow Spaniards. This view, of course, ignores the fact that Cortes was supposed to be arrested by Narvaez but, having escaped the attempt was given great rewards for his subjection of Mexico. Similarly, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, an admirable Conquistador and a humanitarian for even our times, was similarly arrested because he refused to allow the Spaniards under his government to enslave, rape and rob the natives put under his charge!. Castano de Sosa was also falsely charged with various offenses and subsequently exiled to China. By the time his name was cleared, he was dead! Yet, he went out of his way to avoid confrontations with the aboriginal people. Thus, it would appear that such imprisonment was more a sign of politics than of contemptible behavior on the part of Columbus.
Another question of import is whether or not Columbus actually discovered America. We know, for instance, that of the Europeans,the Scandanavians learned of America 500 years before Columbus. Of course, since they did not make it well known to the European world that a new world existed, the question is whether Columbus (whether or not he did so inadvertantly) discovered America as far as Europe was concerned. Various arguments have been made (usually by nations wanting to claim the right to the Americas by way of discovery) on who really discovered the New World. Oviedo claims that Columbus merely rediscovered the New World which had been found, long ago, by the Spanish. Others claimed the Portuguese had really discovered it and had been fishing off its coast for some time. There is a theory that a mysterious group of Europeans called the Albans settled in America. Some even claimed that Prince Madoc of Wales, disgusted by wars in that nation, having sailed West and founded a colony, was the real European discoverer of the Americas. There does not appear to be much evidence that any of these parties discovered the New World and, certainly, there is no evidence that such discoveries were made known to greater Europe.
The fact was that Columbus was a Man. He accomplished a daring feat by sailing so far from his home in the face of uncertain knowledge concerning the extent of the world, risking mutiny and possible starvation. He was at least as well educated as most people of his time, and many expected to find China and greater India nearby, over 100 years after his first voyage. Born and raised in nations in which slavery existed and discovering nations where it also existed, his actions were not unusual, rather they were the actions of a man of his time. He and his family opposed many of the more violent attempts and desires of the Spanish colonists and this caused them to revolt, much as Castano de Sosa's men nearly did when they planned to kill him for not allowing them to rape, conquer and steal. According to Las Casas, DEVASTATION OF THE INDIES: A BRIEF ACCOUNT, the Spaniards only engaged in a few unjust wars against the Natives until 1502, when Queen Isabel, the supposed benefactor of both the Natives and Columbus, died, shortly after which Columbus was returned to Spain, in chains, for the final time! Las Casas, in his History, also stated that had Columbus known what the Spaniards would later do, he would not have done what he did! Although, he may not have been as admirable in character as Cabeza de Vaca or Castano de Sosa, he appeared to have been notably more humane than the norm! Further, whatever his personal faults, he was clearly the discoverer of the New World as far as most of Europe was concerned. His influence in this regard seems beyond question to this author, and deserves a day named in his honor.