Christopher Columbus (/kəˈlʌmbəs/; between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Admiral of the Ocean Sea Christopher Columbus | |
|---|---|
 Posthumous portrait of a man, said to be Christopher Columbus, by Sebastiano del Piombo, 1519 | |
| 1st Governor of the Indies | |
| In office 1492–1499 | |
| Appointed by | Isabella I of Castile |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Francisco de Bobadilla |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Between 25 August and 31 October 1451 Genoa, Republic of Genoa |
| Died | 20 May 1506 (aged 54) Valladolid, Castile |
| Resting place | Seville Cathedral, Seville, Spain |
| Spouse | Filipa Moniz Perestrelo (m. 1479; died 1484) |
| Domestic partner | Beatriz Enríquez de Arana |
| Children |
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| Parents |
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| Relatives | Bartholomew Columbus (brother) |
| Profession | Maritime explorer |
| Signature |  |
The name Christopher Columbus is the anglicization of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. Growing up on the coast of Liguria, he went to sea at a young age and traveled widely, as far north as the British Isles and as far south as what is now Ghana. He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, who bore a son, Diego, and was based in Lisbon for several years. He later took a Castilian mistress, Beatriz Enríquez de Arana, who bore a son, Ferdinand.
Largely self-educated, Columbus was knowledgeable in geography, astronomy, and history. He developed a plan to seek a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade. After the Granada War, and Columbus's persistent lobbying in multiple kingdoms, the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, agreed to sponsor a journey west. Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas on 12 October, ending the period of human habitation in the Americas now referred to as the pre-Columbian era. His landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by its native inhabitants as Guanahani. He then visited the islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola, establishing a colony in what is now Haiti. Columbus returned to Castile in early 1493, with captured natives. Word of his voyage soon spread throughout Europe.
Columbus made three further voyages to the Americas, exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493, Trinidad and the northern coast of South America in 1498, and the east coast of Central America in 1502. Many of the names given to geographical features by Columbus, particularly the names of islands, are still in use. He gave the name indios ('Indians') to the indigenous peoples he encountered. The extent to which he was aware that the Americas were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain; he never clearly renounced his belief he had reached the Far East. As a colonial governor, Columbus was accused by some of his contemporaries of significant brutality and removed from the post. Columbus's strained relationship with the Crown of Castile and its colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola in 1500, and later to protracted litigation over the privileges he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the Crown.
Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries, thus bringing the Americas into the European sphere of influence. The transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the Old World and New World that followed his first voyage are known as the Columbian exchange, named after him. These events and the effects which persist to the present are often cited as the beginning of the modern era. Diseases introduced from the Old World contributed to the depopulation of Hispaniola's indigenous Taíno people, who were also subject to enslavement and other mistreatments by Columbus's government. Increased public awareness of these interactions has led to Columbus being less celebrated in Western culture, which has historically idealized him as a heroic discoverer. Numerous places have been named for him, as has Columbia, a personification commonly used to represent the United States.
Early life
Columbus's early life is obscure, but scholars believe he was born in the Republic of Genoa between 25 August and 31 October 1451. His father was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked in Genoa and Savona, and owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. He had three brothers—Bartholomew, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo (also called Diego)—as well as a sister, Bianchinetta. Bartholomew ran a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood.
His native language is presumed to have been a Genoese dialect (Ligurian) as his first language, though Columbus probably never wrote in it. His name in 15th-century Genoese was Cristoffa Corombo, in Italian, Cristoforo Colombo, and in Spanish Cristóbal Colón.
In one of his writings, Columbus says he went to sea at 14. In 1470, the family moved to Savona, where Domenico took over a tavern. Some modern authors have argued that he was not from Genoa, but from the Aragon region of Spain or from Portugal. These competing hypotheses have been discounted by most scholars.
In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the wealthy Spinola, Centurione, and Di Negro families of Genoa. Later, he made a trip to the Greek island Chios in the Aegean Sea, then ruled by Genoa. In May 1476, he took part in an armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe. He probably visited Bristol, England, and Galway, Ireland, where he may have visited St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church. It has been speculated he went to Iceland in 1477, though many scholars doubt this. It is known that in the autumn of 1477, he sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, where he found his brother Bartholomew, and they continued trading for the Centurione family. Columbus based himself in Lisbon from 1477 to 1485. In 1478, the Centuriones sent Columbus on a sugar-buying trip to Madeira. He married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrello, a Portuguese nobleman of Lombard origin, who had been the donatary captain of Porto Santo.
In 1479 or 1480, Columbus's son Diego was born. Between 1482 and 1485, Columbus traded along the coasts of West Africa, reaching the Portuguese trading post of Elmina at the Guinea coast in present-day Ghana. Before 1484, Columbus returned to Porto Santo to find that his wife had died. He returned to Portugal to settle her estate and take Diego with him. He left Portugal for Castile in 1485, where he took a mistress in 1487, a 20-year-old orphan named Beatriz Enríquez de Arana. It is likely that Beatriz met Columbus when he was in Córdoba, a gathering place for Genoese merchants and where the court of the Catholic Monarchs was located at intervals. Beatriz, unmarried at the time, gave birth to Columbus's second son, Fernando Columbus, in July 1488, named for the monarch of Aragon. Columbus recognized the boy as his offspring. Columbus entrusted his older, legitimate son Diego to take care of Beatriz and pay the pension set aside for her following his death, but Diego was negligent in his duties.
Columbus learned Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian. He read widely about astronomy, geography, and history, including the works of Ptolemy, Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, the travels of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History, and Pope Pius II's Historia rerum ubique gestarum. According to historian Edmund Morgan,
Columbus was not a scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the world that were characteristically simple and strong and sometimes wrong ...
Quest for Asia
Background
Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Asia and the Pax Mongolica, Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land passage on the Silk Road to India, parts of East Asia, including China and Maritime Southeast Asia, which were sources of valuable goods. With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the Silk Road was closed to Christian traders.
In 1474, the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V of Portugal that sailing west across the Atlantic would be a quicker way to reach Asia than the route around Africa, but Afonso rejected his proposal. In the 1480s, Columbus and his brother proposed a plan to reach the East Indies by sailing west. Columbus supposedly wrote to Toscanelli in 1481 and received encouragement, along with a copy of a map the astronomer had sent Afonso implying that a westward route to Asia was possible. Columbus's plans were complicated by Bartolomeu Dias's rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, which suggested the Cape Route around Africa to Asia.
Columbus had to wait until 1492 for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to support his voyage across the Atlantic to find gold, spices, a safer route to the East, and converts to Christianity.
Carol Delaney and other commentators have argued that Columbus was a Christian millennialist and apocalypticist and that these beliefs motivated his quest for Asia in a variety of ways. Columbus often wrote about seeking gold in the log books of his voyages and writes about acquiring it "in such quantity that the sovereigns... will undertake and prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher" in a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Columbus often wrote about converting all races to Christianity. Abbas Hamandi argues that Columbus was motivated by the hope of "[delivering] Jerusalem from Muslim hands" by "using the resources of newly discovered lands".
Geographical considerations
Despite a popular misconception to the contrary, nearly all educated Westerners of Columbus's time knew that the Earth is spherical, a concept that had been understood since antiquity. The techniques of celestial navigation, which uses the position of the Sun and the stars in the sky, had long been in use by astronomers and were beginning to be implemented by mariners.
However Columbus made several errors in calculating the size of the Earth, the distance the continent extended to the east, and therefore the distance to the west to reach his goal.
First, as far back as the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes had correctly computed the circumference of the Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows cast by objects at two remote locations. In the 1st century BC, Posidonius confirmed Eratosthenes's results by comparing stellar observations at two separate locations. These measurements were widely known among scholars, but Ptolemy's use of the smaller, old-fashioned units of distance led Columbus to underestimate the size of the Earth by about a third.
Second, three cosmographical parameters determined the bounds of Columbus's enterprise: the distance across the ocean between Europe and Asia, which depended on the extent of the oikumene, i.e., the Eurasian land-mass stretching east–west between Spain and China; the circumference of the Earth; and the number of miles or leagues in a degree of longitude, which was possible to deduce from the theory of the relationship between the size of the surfaces of water and the land as held by the followers of Aristotle in medieval times.
From Pierre d'Ailly's (1410), Columbus learned of Alfraganus's estimate that a degree of latitude (equal to approximately a degree of longitude along the equator) spanned 56.67 Arabic miles (equivalent to 66.2 nautical miles, 122.6 kilometers or 76.2 mi), but he did not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile (about 1,830 meters or 1.14 mi) rather than the shorter Roman mile (about 1,480 m) with which he was familiar. Columbus therefore estimated the size of the Earth to be about 75% of Eratosthenes's calculation.
Third, most scholars of the time accepted Ptolemy's estimate that Eurasia spanned 180° longitude, rather than the actual 130° (to the Chinese mainland) or 150° (to Japan at the latitude of Spain). Columbus believed an even higher estimate, leaving a smaller percentage for water. In d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, Columbus read Marinus of Tyre's estimate that the longitudinal span of Eurasia was 225° at the latitude of Rhodes. Some historians, such as Samuel Eliot Morison, have suggested that he followed the statement in the apocryphal book 2 Esdras (6:42) that "six parts [of the globe] are habitable and the seventh is covered with water." He was also aware of Marco Polo's claim that Japan (which he called "Cipangu") was some 2,414 km (1,500 mi) to the east of China ("Cathay"), and closer to the equator than it is. He was influenced by Toscanelli's idea that there were inhabited islands even farther to the east than Japan, including the mythical Antillia, which he thought might lie not much farther to the west than the Azores, and the distance westward from the Canary Islands to the Indies as only 68 degrees, equivalent to 3,080 nmi (5,700 km; 3,540 mi) (a 58% error).
Based on his sources, Columbus estimated a distance of 2,400 nmi (4,400 km; 2,800 mi) from the Canary Islands west to Japan; the actual distance is 10,600 nmi (19,600 km; 12,200 mi). No ship in the 15th century could have carried enough food and fresh water for such a long voyage, and the dangers involved in navigating through the uncharted ocean would have been formidable. Most European navigators reasonably concluded that a westward voyage from Europe to Asia was unfeasible. The Catholic Monarchs, however, having completed the Reconquista, an expensive war against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula, were eager to obtain a competitive edge over other European countries in the quest for trade with the Indies. Columbus's project, though far-fetched, held the promise of such an advantage.
Nautical considerations
Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees of longitude that separated Europe from the Far East and about the distance that each degree represented, he did take advantage of the trade winds, which would prove to be the key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean. He planned to first sail to the Canary Islands before continuing west with the northeast trade wind. Part of the return to Spain would require traveling against the wind using an arduous sailing technique called beating, during which progress is made very slowly. To effectively make the return voyage, Columbus would need to follow the curving trade winds northeastward to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where he would be able to catch the westerlies that blow eastward to the coast of Western Europe.
The navigational technique for travel in the Atlantic appears to have been exploited first by the Portuguese, who referred to it as the volta do mar ('turn of the sea'). Through his marriage to his first wife, Felipa Perestrello, Columbus had access to the nautical charts and logs that had belonged to her deceased father, Bartolomeu Perestrello, who had served as a captain in the Portuguese navy under Prince Henry the Navigator. In the mapmaking shop where he worked with his brother Bartholomew, Columbus also had ample opportunity to hear the stories of old seamen about their voyages to the western seas, but his knowledge of the Atlantic wind patterns was still imperfect at the time of his first voyage. By sailing due west from the Canary Islands during hurricane season, skirting the so-called horse latitudes of the mid-Atlantic, he risked being becalmed and running into a tropical cyclone, both of which he avoided by chance.
Quest for financial support for a voyage
By about 1484, Columbus proposed his planned voyage to King John II of Portugal. The king submitted Columbus's proposal to his advisors, who rejected it, correctly, on the grounds that Columbus's estimate for a voyage of 2,400 nmi was only a quarter of what it should have been. In 1488, Columbus again appealed to the court of Portugal, and John II again granted him an audience. That meeting also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with news of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa (near the Cape of Good Hope).
Columbus sought an audience with the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who had united several kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula by marrying and now ruled together. On 1 May 1486, permission having been granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who in turn referred it to a committee. The learned men of Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. They pronounced the idea impractical and advised the Catholic Monarchs to pass on the proposed venture. To keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options open, the sovereigns gave him an allowance, totaling about 14,000 maravedis for the year, or about the annual salary of a sailor. In May 1489, the queen sent him another 10,000 maravedis, and the same year the monarchs furnished him with a letter ordering all cities and towns under their dominion to provide him food and lodging at no cost.
Columbus also dispatched his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England to inquire whether the English Crown might sponsor his expedition, but he was captured by pirates en route, and only arrived in early 1491. By that time, Columbus had retreated to La Rábida Friary, where the Spanish Crown sent him 20,000 maravedis to buy new clothes and instructions to return to the Spanish court for renewed discussions.
Agreement with the Spanish Crown
Columbus waited at King Ferdinand's camp until Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, in January 1492. A council led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando de Talavera, found Columbus's proposal to reach the Indies implausible. Columbus had left for France when Ferdinand intervened, first sending Talavera and Bishop Diego Deza to appeal to the queen. Isabella was finally convinced by the king's clerk Luis de Santángel, who argued that Columbus would take his ideas elsewhere, and offered to help arrange the funding. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch Columbus, who had traveled 2 leagues (over 10 km) toward Córdoba.
In the April 1492 "Capitulations of Santa Fe", King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised Columbus that if he succeeded he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new lands he might claim for Spain. He had the right to nominate three persons, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the new lands. He would be entitled to one-tenth (diezmo) of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity. He also would have the option of buying one-eighth interest in any commercial venture in the new lands, and receive one-eighth (ochavo) of the profits.
In 1500, during his third voyage to the Americas, Columbus was arrested and dismissed from his posts. He and his sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a lengthy series of court cases against the Castilian Crown, known as the pleitos colombinos, alleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs. The Columbus family had some success in their first litigation, as a judgment of 1511 confirmed Diego's position as viceroy but reduced his powers. Diego resumed litigation in 1512, which lasted until 1536, and further disputes initiated by heirs continued until 1790.
Voyages
Between 1492 and 1504, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas, each voyage being sponsored by the Crown of Castile. On his first voyage he reached the Americas, initiating the European exploration and colonization of the continent, as well as the Columbian exchange. His role in history is thus important to the Age of Discovery, Western history, and human history writ large.
In Columbus's letter on the first voyage, published following his first return to Spain, he claimed that he had reached Asia, as previously described by Marco Polo and other Europeans. Over his subsequent voyages, Columbus refused to acknowledge that the lands he visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. This might explain, in part, why the American continent was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci—who received credit for recognizing it as a "New World"—and not after Columbus.
First voyage (1492–1493)
On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships. The largest was a carrack, the Santa María, owned and captained by Juan de la Cosa, and under Columbus's direct command. The other two were smaller caravels, the Pinta and the Niña, piloted by the Pinzón brothers. Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands. There he restocked provisions and made repairs then departed from San Sebastián de La Gomera on 6 September, for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean.
On 7 October, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds". On 11 October, Columbus changed the fleet's course to due west, and sailed through the night, believing land was soon to be found. At around 02:00 the following morning, a lookout on the Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana, spotted land. The captain of the Pinta, Martín Alonso Pinzón, verified the sight of land and alerted Columbus. Columbus later maintained that he had already seen a light on the land a few hours earlier, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension promised by Ferdinand and Isabella to the first person to sight land. Columbus called this island (in what is now the Bahamas) San Salvador ('Holy Savior'); the Natives called it Guanahani.Christopher Columbus's journal entry of 12 October 1492 states:
I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them asking what they were; and they showed me how people from other islands nearby came there and tried to take them, and how they defended themselves; and I believed and believe that they come here from tierra firme to take them captive. They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak.
Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited Los Indios ('Indians'). He initially encountered the Lucayan, Taíno, and Arawak peoples. Noting their gold ear ornaments, Columbus took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold. Columbus did not believe he needed to create a fortified outpost, writing, "the people here are simple in war-like matters ... I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased." The Taínos told Columbus that another indigenous tribe, the Caribs, were fierce warriors and cannibals, who made frequent raids on the Taínos, often capturing their women, although this may have been a belief perpetuated by the Spaniards to justify enslaving them.
Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28 October. On the night of 26 November, Martín Alonso Pinzón took the Pinta on an unauthorized expedition in search of an island called "Babeque" or "Baneque", which the natives had told him was rich in gold. Columbus, for his part, continued to the northern coast of Hispaniola, where he landed on 6 December. There, the Santa María ran aground on 25 December 1492 and had to be abandoned. The wreck was used as a target for cannon fire to impress the native peoples. Columbus was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus left 39 men, including the interpreter Luis de Torres, and founded the settlement of La Navidad, in present-day Haiti. Columbus took more natives prisoner and continued his exploration. He kept sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a single ship until he encountered Pinzón and the Pinta on 6 January.
On 13 January 1493, Columbus made his last stop of this voyage in the Americas, in the Bay of Rincón in northeast Hispaniola. There he encountered the Ciguayos, the only natives who offered violent resistance during this voyage. The Ciguayos refused to trade the amount of bows and arrows that Columbus desired; in the ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks and another wounded with an arrow in his chest. Because of these events, Columbus called the inlet the Golfo de Las Flechas ('Bay of Arrows').
Columbus headed for Spain on the Niña, but a storm separated him from the Pinta, and forced the Niña to stop at the island of Santa Maria in the Azores. Half of his crew went ashore to say prayers of thanksgiving in a chapel for having survived the storm. But while praying, they were imprisoned by the governor of the island, ostensibly on suspicion of being pirates. After a two-day stand-off, the prisoners were released, and Columbus again set sail for Spain.
Another storm forced Columbus into the port at Lisbon. From there he went to Vale do Paraíso north of Lisbon to meet King John II of Portugal, who told Columbus that he believed the voyage to be in violation of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas. After spending more than a week in Portugal, Columbus set sail for Spain. Returning to Palos on 15 March 1493, he was given a hero's welcome and soon afterward received by Isabella and Ferdinand in Barcelona. To them he presented kidnapped Taínos and various plants and items he had collected.: 54
One of the ten Natives taken on the return trip was a Lucayan Taíno from Guanahani thought to be 13–15 years of age, who Columbus adopted as his son upon their arrival in Spain; the boy, whose Lucayan name is unknown, received the name Diego at baptism. Initially, Diego had been recognized for his intelligence and rapid acquisition of Spanish customs, and would serve as a guide and interpreter on each of Columbus's subsequent voyages. By the second voyage's departure later in 1493, Diego was the only Native out of the ten taken to Europe who had not died or become seriously ill as the result of disease; while on this voyage, he played a vital role in the discovery of La Navidad. He subsequently married and had a son, also named Diego, who died of illness in 1506. Following Columbus's death, Diego spent the rest of his life confined to Santo Domingo, and does not reappear in the historical record following a smallpox epidemic that swept Hispaniola in 1519.
Columbus's letter on the first voyage, probably dispatched to the Spanish court upon arrival in Lisbon, was instrumental in spreading the news throughout Europe about his voyage. Almost immediately after his arrival in Spain, printed versions began to appear, and word of his voyage spread rapidly. Most people initially believed that he had reached Asia. The Bulls of Donation, three papal bulls of Pope Alexander VI delivered in 1493, purported to grant overseas territories to Portugal and the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. They were replaced by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494.
The two earliest published copies of Columbus's letter on the first voyage aboard the Niña were donated in 2017 by the Jay I. Kislak Foundation to the University of Miami library in Coral Gables, Florida, where they are housed.
Second voyage (1493–1496)
On 24 September 1493, Columbus sailed from Cádiz with 17 ships, and supplies to establish permanent colonies in the Americas. He sailed with nearly 1,500 men, including sailors, soldiers, priests, carpenters, stonemasons, metalworkers, and farmers. Among the expedition members were Alvarez Chanca, a physician who wrote a detailed account of the second voyage; Juan Ponce de León, the first governor of Puerto Rico and Florida; the father of Bartolomé de las Casas; Juan de la Cosa, a cartographer who is credited with making the first world map depicting the New World; and Columbus's youngest brother Diego. The fleet stopped at the Canary Islands to take on more supplies, and set sail again on 7 October, deliberately taking a more southerly course than on the first voyage.
On 3 November, they arrived in the Windward Islands; the first island they encountered was named Dominica by Columbus, but not finding a good harbor there, they anchored off a nearby smaller island, which he named Mariagalante, now a part of Guadeloupe and called Marie-Galante. Other islands named by Columbus on this voyage were Montserrat, Antigua, Saint Martin, the Virgin Islands, as well as many others.
On 17 November, Columbus first sighted the eastern coast of the island of Puerto Rico, known to its native Taino people as Borikén. His fleet sailed along the island's southern coast for a whole day, before making landfall on its northwestern coast at the Bay of Añasco, early on 19 November. Upon landing, Columbus christened the island San Juan Bautista after John the Baptist, and remained anchored there for two days from 20 to 21 November, filling the water casks of the ships in his fleet.
On 22 November, Columbus returned to Hispaniola to visit La Navidad in modern-day Haiti, where 39 Spaniards had been left during the first voyage. Columbus found the fort in ruins. He learned from Guacanagaríx, the local tribe leader, that his men had quarreled over gold and taken women from the tribe, and that after some left for the territory of Caonabo, Caonabo came and burned the fort and killed the rest of the men there.
Columbus then established a poorly located and short-lived settlement to the east, La Isabela, in the present-day Dominican Republic. By the end of 1494, disease and famine had killed two-thirds of the Spanish settlers there.
From April to August 1494, Columbus explored Cuba and Jamaica, then returned to Hispaniola. Before leaving on this exploration to Cuba, Columbus had ordered a large amount of men, under Pedro Margarit, to "journey the length and breadth of the island, enforcing Spanish control and bringing all the people under the Spanish yoke." These men, in his absence, raped women, took men captive to be servants, and stole from the indigenous people. A number of Spanish were killed in retaliation. By the time Columbus returned from exploring Cuba, the four primary leaders of the Arawak people in Hispaniola were gathering for war to try to drive the Spanish from the Island. Columbus assembled a large number of troops, and joined with his one native ally, chief [Guacanagarix], met for battle. The Spanish, even though they were largely outnumbered, won this battle, and over the next 9 months Columbus continued to wage war on the native Taíno on Hispaniola until they surrendered and agreed to pay tribute.
Columbus implemented encomienda, a Spanish labor system that rewarded conquerors with the labor of conquered non-Christian people. It is also recorded that punishments to both Spaniards and natives included whippings and mutilation (cutting noses and ears).
Columbus and the colonists enslaved many of the indigenous people, including children. Natives were beaten, raped, and tortured for the location of imagined gold. Thousands committed suicide rather than face the oppression.
In February 1495, Columbus rounded up about 1,500 Arawaks, some of whom had rebelled, in a great slave raid. About 500 of the strongest were shipped to Spain as slaves, with about two hundred of those dying en route.
In June 1495, the Spanish Crown sent ships and supplies to Hispaniola. In October, Florentine merchant Gianotto Berardi, who had won the contract to provision the fleet of Columbus's second voyage and to supply the colony on Hispaniola, received almost 40,000 maravedís worth of enslaved Indians. He renewed his effort to get supplies to Columbus, and was working to organize a fleet when he suddenly died in December. On 10 March 1496, having been away about 30 months, the fleet departed La Isabela. On 8 June the crew sighted land somewhere between Lisbon and Cape St. Vincent, and disembarked in Cádiz on 11 June.
Third voyage (1498–1500)
On 30 May 1498, Columbus left with six ships from Sanlúcar, Spain. The fleet called at Madeira and the Canary Islands, where it divided in two, with three ships heading for Hispaniola and the other three vessels, commanded by Columbus, sailing south to the Cape Verde Islands and then westward across the Atlantic. It is probable that this expedition was intended at least partly to confirm rumors of a large continent south of the Caribbean Sea, that is, South America.
On 31 July they sighted Trinidad, the most southerly of the Caribbean islands. On 5 August, Columbus sent several small boats ashore on the southern side of the Paria Peninsula in what is now Venezuela, near the mouth of the Orinoco river. This was the first recorded landing of Europeans on the mainland of South America, which Columbus realized must be a continent. The fleet then sailed to the islands of Chacachacare and Margarita, reaching the latter on 14 August, and sighted Tobago and Grenada from afar, according to some scholars.
On 19 August, Columbus returned to Hispaniola. There he found settlers in rebellion against his rule, and his unfulfilled promises of riches. Columbus had some of the Europeans tried for their disobedience; at least one rebel leader was hanged.
In October 1499, Columbus sent two ships to Spain, asking the Court of Spain to appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern. By this time, accusations of tyranny and incompetence on the part of Columbus had also reached the Court. The sovereigns sent Francisco de Bobadilla, a relative of Marquesa Beatriz de Bobadilla, a patron of Columbus and a close friend of Queen Isabella, to investigate the accusations of brutality made against the Admiral. Arriving in Santo Domingo while Columbus was away, Bobadilla was immediately met with complaints about all three Columbus brothers. He moved into Columbus's house and seized his property, took depositions from the Admiral's enemies, and declared himself governor.
Bobadilla reported to Spain that Columbus once punished a man found guilty of stealing corn by having his ears and nose cut off and then selling him into slavery. He claimed that Columbus regularly used torture and mutilation to govern Hispaniola. Testimony recorded in the report stated that Columbus congratulated his brother Bartholomew on "defending the family" when the latter ordered for a woman to be paraded naked through the streets and then had her tongue cut because she had "spoken ill of the admiral and his brothers". The document also describes how Columbus put down native unrest and revolt: he first ordered a brutal suppression of the uprising in which many natives were killed, and then paraded their dismembered bodies through the streets in an attempt to discourage further rebellion. Columbus vehemently denied the charges. The neutrality and accuracy of the accusations and investigations of Bobadilla toward Columbus and his brothers have been disputed by historians, given the anti-Italian sentiment of the Spaniards and Bobadilla's desire to take over Columbus's position.
In early October 1500, Columbus and Diego presented themselves to Bobadilla, and were put in chains aboard La Gorda, the caravel on which Bobadilla had arrived at Santo Domingo. They were returned to Spain, and languished in jail for six weeks before King Ferdinand ordered their release. Not long after, the king and queen summoned the Columbus brothers to the Alhambra palace in Granada. The sovereigns expressed indignation at the actions of Bobadilla, who was then recalled and ordered to make restitutions of the property he had confiscated from Columbus. The royal couple heard the brothers' pleas; restored their freedom and wealth; and, after much persuasion, agreed to fund Columbus's fourth voyage. However, Nicolás de Ovando was to replace Bobadilla and be the new governor of the West Indies.
New light was shed on the seizure of Columbus and his brother Bartholomew, the Adelantado, with the discovery by archivist Isabel Aguirre of an incomplete copy of the testimonies against them gathered by Francisco de Bobadilla at Santo Domingo in 1500. She found a manuscript copy of this pesquisa (inquiry) in the Archive of Simancas, Spain, uncatalogued until she and Consuelo Varela published their book, La caída de Cristóbal Colón: el juicio de Bobadilla (The fall of Christopher Colón: the judgement of Bobadilla) in 2006.
Fourth voyage (1502–1504)
On 9 May 1502, Columbus left Cádiz with his flagship Santa María and three other vessels. The ships were crewed by 140 men, including his brother Bartholomew as second in command and his son Fernando. He sailed to Asilah on the Moroccan coast to rescue Portuguese soldiers said to be besieged by the Moors. The siege had been lifted by the time they arrived, so the Spaniards stayed only a day and continued on to the Canary Islands.
On 15 June, the fleet arrived at Martinique, where it lingered for several days. A hurricane was forming, so Columbus continued westward, hoping to find shelter on Hispaniola. He arrived at Santo Domingo on 29 June, but was denied port, and the new governor Francisco de Bobadilla refused to listen to his warning that a hurricane was approaching. Instead, while Columbus's ships sheltered at the mouth of the Rio Jaina, the first Spanish treasure fleet sailed into the hurricane. Columbus's ships survived with only minor damage, while 20 of the 30 ships in the governor's fleet were lost along with 500 lives (including that of Francisco de Bobadilla). Although a few surviving ships managed to straggle back to Santo Domingo, Aguja, the fragile ship carrying Columbus's personal belongings and his 4,000 pesos in gold was the sole vessel to reach Spain. The gold was his tenth (décimo) of the profits from Hispaniola, equal to 240,000 maravedis, guaranteed by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492.
After a brief stop at Jamaica, Columbus sailed to Central America, arriving at the coast of Honduras on 30 July. Here Bartholomew found native merchants and a large canoe. On 14 August, Columbus landed on the continental mainland at Punta Caxinas, now Puerto Castilla, Honduras. He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, seeking a strait in the western Caribbean through which he could sail to the Indian Ocean. Sailing south along the Nicaraguan coast, he found a channel that led into Almirante Bay in Panama on 5 October.
As soon as his ships anchored in Almirante Bay, Columbus encountered Ngäbe people in canoes who were wearing gold ornaments. In January 1503, he established a garrison at the mouth of the Belén River. Columbus left for Hispaniola on 16 April. On 10 May he sighted the Cayman Islands, naming them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there. His ships sustained damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba. Unable to travel farther, on 25 June 1503 they were beached in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica.
For six months Columbus and 230 of his men remained stranded on Jamaica. Diego Méndez de Segura, who had shipped out as a personal secretary to Columbus, and a Spanish shipmate called Bartolomé Flisco, along with six natives, paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola. The governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men. In the meantime Columbus, in a desperate effort to induce the natives to continue provisioning him and his hungry men, won their favor by predicting a lunar eclipse for 29 February 1504, using Abraham Zacuto's astronomical charts. Despite the governor's obstruction, Christopher Columbus and his men were rescued on 28 June 1504, and arrived in Sanlúcar, Spain, on 7 November.
Later life, illness, and death
Columbus had always claimed that the conversion of non-believers was one reason for his explorations, and he grew increasingly religious in his later years. Probably with the assistance of his son Diego and his friend the Carthusian monk Gaspar Gorricio, Columbus produced two books during his later years: a Book of Privileges (1502), detailing and documenting the rewards from the Spanish Crown to which he believed he and his heirs were entitled, and a Book of Prophecies (1505), in which passages from the Bible were used to place his achievements as an explorer in the context of Christian eschatology.
In his later years, Columbus demanded that the Crown of Castile give him his tenth of all the riches and trade goods yielded by the new lands, as stipulated in the Capitulations of Santa Fe. Because he had been relieved of his duties as governor, the Crown did not feel bound by that contract and his demands were rejected. After his death, his heirs sued the Crown for a part of the profits from trade with America, as well as other rewards. This led to a protracted series of legal disputes known as the pleitos colombinos ('Columbian lawsuits').
During a violent storm on his first return voyage, Columbus, then 41, had suffered an attack of what was believed at the time to be gout. In subsequent years, he was plagued with what was thought to be influenza and other fevers, bleeding from the eyes, temporary blindness and prolonged attacks of gout. The attacks increased in duration and severity, sometimes leaving Columbus bedridden for months at a time, and culminated in his death 14 years later.
Based on Columbus's lifestyle and the described symptoms, some modern commentators suspect that he suffered from reactive arthritis, rather than gout. Reactive arthritis is a joint inflammation caused by intestinal bacterial infections or after acquiring certain sexually transmitted diseases (primarily chlamydia or gonorrhea). In 2006, Frank C. Arnett, a medical doctor, and historian Charles Merrill, published their paper in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences proposing that Columbus had a form of reactive arthritis; Merrill made the case in that same paper that Columbus was the son of Catalans and his mother possibly a member of a prominent converso (converted Jew) family. "It seems likely that [Columbus] acquired reactive arthritis from food poisoning on one of his ocean voyages because of poor sanitation and improper food preparation", says Arnett, a rheumatologist and professor of internal medicine, pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.
Some historians such as H. Micheal Tarver and Emily Slape, as well as medical doctors such as Arnett and Antonio Rodríguez Cuartero, believe that Columbus had such a form of reactive arthritis, but according to other authorities, this is "speculative", or "very speculative".
After his arrival to Sanlúcar from his fourth voyage (and Queen Isabella's death), an ill Columbus settled in Seville in April 1505. He stubbornly continued to make pleas to the Crown to defend his own personal privileges and his family's. He moved to Segovia (where the court was at the time) on a mule by early 1506, and, on the occasion of the wedding of King Ferdinand with Germaine of Foix in Valladolid, Spain, in March 1506, Columbus moved to that city to persist with his demands. On 20 May 1506, aged 54, Columbus died in Valladolid.
Location of remains
Columbus's remains were first buried at the Chapel of Wonders at the Convent of St. Francis, Valladolid, but were then moved to the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville (southern Spain) by the will of his son Diego. They may have been exhumed in 1513 and interred at the Seville Cathedral. In about 1536, the remains of both Columbus and his son Diego were moved to a cathedral in Colonial Santo Domingo, in the present-day Dominican Republic; Columbus had requested to be buried on the island. By some accounts, in 1793, when France took over the entire island of Hispaniola, Columbus's remains were moved to Havana, Cuba. After Cuba became independent following the Spanish–American War in 1898, at least some of these remains were moved back to the Seville Cathedral, where they were placed on an elaborate catafalque.
In June 2003, DNA samples were taken from the remains in Seville, as well as those of Columbus's brother Diego and younger son Fernando. Initial observations suggested that the bones did not appear to match Columbus's physique or age at death. DNA extraction proved difficult; only short fragments of mitochondrial DNA could be isolated. These matched corresponding DNA from Columbus's brother, supporting that the two men had the same mother. Such evidence, together with anthropologic and historic analyses, led the researchers to conclude that the remains belonged to Christopher Columbus.
In 1877, a priest discovered a lead box at Santo Domingo inscribed: "Discoverer of America, First Admiral". Inscriptions found the next year read "Last of the remains of the first admiral, Sire Christopher Columbus, discoverer." The box contained bones of an arm and a leg, as well as a bullet. These remains were considered legitimate by physician and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Eugene Osborne, who suggested in 1913 that they travel through the Panama Canal as a part of its opening ceremony. These remains were kept at the Basilica Cathedral of Santa María la Menor (in the Colonial City of Santo Domingo) before being moved to the Columbus Lighthouse (Santo Domingo Este, inaugurated in 1992). The authorities in Santo Domingo have never allowed these remains to be DNA-tested, so it is unconfirmed whether they are from Columbus's body as well.
Commemoration
The figure of Columbus was not ignored in the British colonies during the colonial era: Columbus became a unifying symbol early in the history of the colonies that became the United States when Puritan preachers began to use his life story as a model for a "developing American spirit". In the spring of 1692, Puritan preacher Cotton Mather described Columbus's voyage as one of three shaping events of the modern age, connecting Columbus's voyage and the Puritans' migration to North America, seeing them together as the key to a grand design.
The use of Columbus as a founding figure of New World nations spread rapidly after the American Revolution. This was out of a desire to develop a national history and founding myth with fewer ties to Britain. His name was the basis for the female national personification of the United States, Columbia, in use since the 1730s with reference to the original Thirteen Colonies, and also a historical name applied to the Americas and to the New World. Columbia, South Carolina and Columbia Rediviva, the ship for which the Columbia River was named, are named for Columbus.
Columbus's name was given to the newly born Republic of Colombia in the early 19th century, inspired by the political project of "Colombeia" developed by revolutionary Francisco de Miranda, which was put at the service of the emancipation of continental Hispanic America.
To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the landing of Columbus, the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago was named the World's Columbian Exposition. The U.S. Postal Service issued the first U.S. commemorative stamps, the Columbian Issue, depicting Columbus, Queen Isabella and others in various stages of his several voyages. A commemorative silver half dollar was also struck, which remains the only U.S. currency issued having a foreigner as its subject. The policies related to the celebration of the Spanish colonial empire as the vehicle of a nationalist project undertaken in Spain during the Restoration in the late 19th century took form with the commemoration of the 4th centenary on 12 October 1892 (in which the figure of Columbus was extolled by the Conservative government), eventually becoming the very same national day. Several monuments commemorating the "discovery" were erected in cities such as Palos, Barcelona, Granada, Madrid, Salamanca, Valladolid and Seville in the years around the 400th anniversary.
For the Columbus Quincentenary in 1992, a second Columbian issue was released jointly with Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Columbus was celebrated at Seville Expo '92, and Genoa Expo '92.
The Boal Mansion Museum, founded in 1951, contains a collection of materials concerning later descendants of Columbus and collateral branches of the family. It features a 16th-century chapel from a Spanish castle reputedly owned by Diego Colón which became the residence of Columbus's descendants. The chapel interior was dismantled and moved from Spain in 1909 and re-erected on the Boal estate at Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. Inside it are numerous religious paintings and other objects including a reliquary with fragments of wood supposedly from the True Cross. The museum also holds a collection of documents mostly relating to Columbus descendants of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
In many countries of the Americas, as well as Spain and Italy, Columbus Day celebrates the anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas on 12 October 1492.
Legacy
The voyages of Columbus are considered a turning point in human history, marking the beginning of globalization and accompanying demographic, commercial, economic, social, and political changes.
His explorations resulted in permanent contact between the two hemispheres, and the term "pre-Columbian" is used to refer to the cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors. The ensuing Columbian exchange saw the massive exchange of animals, plants, fungi, diseases, technologies, mineral wealth and ideas.
In the first century after his endeavors, Columbus's figure largely languished in the backwaters of history, and his reputation was beset by his failures as a colonial administrator. His legacy was somewhat rescued from oblivion when he began to appear as a character in Italian and Spanish plays and poems from the late 16th century onward.
Columbus was subsumed into the Western narrative of colonization and empire building, which invoked notions of translatio imperii and translatio studii to underline who was considered "civilized" and who was not.
The Americanization of the figure of Columbus began in the latter decades of the 18th century, after the revolutionary period of the United States, elevating the status of his reputation to a national myth, homo americanus. His landing became a powerful icon as an "image of American genesis".The Discovery of America sculpture, depicting Columbus and a cowering Native maiden, was commissioned on 3 April 1837, when U.S. President Martin Van Buren sanctioned the engineering of Luigi Persico's design. This representation of Columbus's triumph and the Native's recoil is a demonstration of supposed white superiority over savage, naive Natives. As recorded during its unveiling in 1844, the sculpture extends to "represent the meeting of the two races", as Persico captures their first interaction, highlighting the "moral and intellectual inferiority" of Natives. Placed outside the U.S. Capitol building where it remained until its removal in the mid-20th century, the sculpture reflected the contemporary view of whites in the U.S. toward the Natives; they are labeled "merciless Indian savages" in the United States Declaration of Independence. In 1836, Pennsylvania senator and future U.S. President James Buchanan, who proposed the sculpture, described it as representing "the great discoverer when he first bounded with ecstasy upon the shore, ail his toils past, presenting a hemisphere to the astonished world, with the name America inscribed upon it. Whilst he is thus standing upon the shore, a female savage, with awe and wonder depicted in her countenance, is gazing upon him."
The American Columbus myth was reconfigured later in the century when he was enlisted as an ethnic hero by immigrants to the United States who were not of Anglo-Saxon stock, such as Jewish, Italian, and Irish people, who claimed Columbus as a sort of ethnic founding father. Catholics unsuccessfully tried to promote him for canonization in the 19th century.
From the 1990s onward, a narrative of Columbus being responsible for the genocide of indigenous peoples and environmental destruction began to compete with the then predominant discourse of Columbus as Christ-bearer, scientist, or father of America. This narrative features the negative effects of Columbus' conquests on native populations. Exposed to Old World diseases, the indigenous populations of the New World collapsed, and were largely replaced by Europeans and Africans, who brought with them new methods of farming, business, governance, and religious worship.
Originality of discovery of America
Though Christopher Columbus came to be considered the European discoverer of America in Western popular culture, his historical legacy is more nuanced. After settling Iceland, the Norse settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century. Norsemen are believed to have then set sail from Greenland and Iceland to become the first known Europeans to reach the North American mainland, nearly 500 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean. The 1960s discovery of a Norse settlement dating c. 1000 at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, partially corroborates accounts within the Icelandic sagas of Erik the Red's colonization of Greenland and his son Leif Erikson's subsequent exploration of a place he called Vinland.
In the 19th century, amid a revival of interest in Norse culture, Carl Christian Rafn and Benjamin Franklin DeCosta wrote works establishing that the Norse had preceded Columbus in colonizing the Americas. Following this, in 1874 Rasmus Bjørn Anderson argued that Columbus must have known of the North American continent before he started his voyage of discovery. Most modern scholars doubt Columbus had knowledge of the Norse settlements in America, with his arrival to the continent being most likely an independent discovery.
Europeans devised explanations for the origins of the Native Americans and their geographical distribution with narratives that often served to reinforce their own preconceptions built on ancient intellectual foundations. In modern Latin America, the non-Native populations of some countries often demonstrate an ambiguous attitude toward the perspectives of indigenous peoples regarding the so-called "discovery" by Columbus and the era of colonialism that followed. In his 1960 monograph, Mexican philosopher and historian Edmundo O'Gorman explicitly rejects the Columbus discovery myth, arguing that the idea that Columbus discovered America was a misleading legend fixed in the public mind through the works of American author Washington Irving during the 19th century. O'Gorman argues that to assert Columbus "discovered America" is to shape the facts concerning the events of 1492 to make them conform to an interpretation that arose many years later. For him, the Eurocentric view of the discovery of America sustains systems of domination in ways that favor Europeans. In a 1992 article for The UNESCO Courier, Félix Fernández-Shaw argues that the word "discovery" prioritizes European explorers as the "heroes" of the contact between the Old and New World. He suggests that the word "encounter" is more appropriate, being a more universal term which includes Native Americans in the narrative.
America as a distinct land
Historians have traditionally argued that Columbus remained convinced until his death that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia as he originally intended (excluding arguments such as Anderson's). On his third voyage he briefly referred to South America as a "hitherto unknown" continent, while also rationalizing that it was the Earthly Paradise (Eden) located "at the end of the Orient". Columbus continued to claim in his later writings that he had reached Asia; in a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI, he asserts that Cuba is the east coast of Asia. On the other hand, in a document in the Book of Privileges (1502), Columbus refers to the New World as the Indias Occidentales ('West Indies'), which he says "were unknown to all the world".
Shape of the Earth
Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus popularized the idea that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because many Catholic theologians insisted that the Earth was flat, but this is a popular misconception which can be traced back to 17th-century Protestants campaigning against Catholicism. In fact, the spherical shape of the Earth had been known to scholars since antiquity, and was common knowledge among sailors, including Columbus. Coincidentally, the oldest surviving globe of the Earth, the Erdapfel, was made in 1492, just before Columbus's return to Europe from his first voyage. As such it contains no sign of the Americas and yet demonstrates the common belief in a spherical Earth.
In 1492, Columbus correctly measured Polaris's diurnal motion around true north as having a diameter of almost 7°. In 1498, while sailing west through the doldrums 8° north in July and again in August sailing the trade winds 13° north, Columbus reported seeing Polaris with a diurnal motion of 10° in diameter. He accounted for the shift by concluding that Earth's figure is pear-shaped, with the 'stalk' portion (comparing this to a woman's breast) being nearest Heaven and upon which was centered the Earthly Paradise. Although Columbus's later readings were incorrect, 20th-century satellite data happens to indicate that the Earth has a slight pear shape.
Criticism and defense
Columbus has been criticized both for his brutality and for initiating the depopulation of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, whether by imported diseases or intentional violence. According to scholars of Native American history, George Tinker and Mark Freedman, Columbus was responsible for creating a cycle of "murder, violence, and slavery" to maximize exploitation of the Caribbean islands' resources, and that Native deaths on the scale at which they occurred would not have been caused by new diseases alone. Further, they describe the proposition that disease and not genocide caused these deaths as "American holocaust denial". Historian Kris Lane disputes whether it is appropriate to use the term "genocide" when the atrocities were not Columbus's intent, but resulted from his decrees, family business goals, and negligence. Other scholars defend Columbus's actions or allege that the worst accusations against him are not based in fact while others claim that "he has been blamed for events far beyond his own reach or knowledge".
As a result of the protests and riots that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many public monuments of Christopher Columbus have been removed.
Brutality
Some historians have criticized Columbus for initiating the widespread colonization of the Americas and for abusing its native population. On St. Croix, Columbus's friend Michele da Cuneo—according to his own account—kept an indigenous woman he captured, whom Columbus "gave to [him]", then brutally raped her.
According to some historians, the punishment for an indigenous person, aged 14 and older, failing to pay a hawk's bell, or cascabela, worth of gold dust every six months (based on Bartolomé de las Casas's account) was cutting off the hands of those without tokens, often leaving them to bleed to death. Other historians dispute such accounts. For example, a study of Spanish archival sources showed that the cascabela quotas were imposed by Guarionex, not Columbus, and that there is no mention, in the primary sources, of punishment by cutting off hands for failing to pay. Columbus had an economic interest in the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives and for that reason was not eager to baptize them, which attracted criticism from some churchmen. Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian, stated that "Columbus's government was characterized by a form of tyranny. Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place." Other historians have argued that some of the accounts of the brutality of Columbus and his brothers have been exaggerated as part of the Black Legend, a historical tendency towards anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiment in historical sources dating as far back as the 16th century, which they speculate may continue to taint scholarship into the present day.
According to historian Emily Berquist Soule, the immense Portuguese profits from the maritime trade in African slaves along the West African coast served as an inspiration for Columbus to create a counterpart of this apparatus in the New World using indigenous American slaves. Historian William J. Connell has argued that while Columbus "brought the entrepreneurial form of slavery to the New World", this "was a phenomenon of the times", further arguing that "we have to be very careful about applying 20th-century understandings of morality to the morality of the 15th century." In a less popular defense of colonization, Spanish ambassador has argued, "Normally we melded with the cultures in America, we stayed there, we spread our language and culture and religion."
British historian Basil Davidson has dubbed Columbus the "father of the slave trade", citing the fact that the first license to ship enslaved Africans to the Caribbean was issued by the Catholic Monarchs in 1501 to the first royal governor of Hispaniola, Nicolás de Ovando.
Depopulation
Around the turn of the 21st century, estimates for the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola ranged between 250,000 and two million, but genetic analysis published in late 2020 suggests that smaller figures are more likely, perhaps as low as 10,000–50,000 for Hispaniola and Puerto Rico combined. Based on the previous figures of a few hundred thousand, some have estimated that a third or more of the natives in Haiti were dead within the first two years of Columbus's governorship. Contributors to depopulation included disease, warfare, and harsh enslavement. Indirect evidence suggests that some serious illness may have arrived with the 1,500 colonists who accompanied Columbus' second expedition in 1493.Charles C. Mann writes that "It was as if the suffering these diseases had caused in Eurasia over the past millennia were concentrated into the span of decades." A third of the natives forced to work in gold and silver mines died every six months. Within three to six decades, the surviving Arawak population numbered only in the hundreds. The indigenous population of the Americas overall is thought to have been reduced by about 90% in the century after Columbus's arrival. Among indigenous peoples, Columbus is often viewed as a key agent of genocide.Samuel Eliot Morison, a Harvard University historian and author of a multivolume biography on Columbus, writes, "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide."
According to Noble David Cook, "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact." He instead estimates that the death toll was caused by smallpox, which may have caused a pandemic only after the arrival of Hernán Cortés in 1519. According to some estimates, smallpox had an 80–90% fatality rate in Native American populations. The natives had no acquired immunity to these new diseases and suffered high fatalities. There is also evidence that they had poor diets and were overworked. Historian Andrés Reséndez of University of California, Davis, says the available evidence suggests "slavery has emerged as major killer" of the indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550 more so than diseases such as smallpox, influenza and malaria. He says that indigenous populations did not experience a rebound like European populations did following the Black Death because unlike the latter, a large portion of the former were subjected to deadly forced labor in the mines.
The diseases that devastated the Native Americans came in multiple waves at different times, sometimes as much as centuries apart, which would mean that survivors of one disease may have been killed by others, preventing the population from recovering. Historian David Stannard describes the depopulation of the indigenous Americans as "neither inadvertent nor inevitable", saying it was the result of both disease and intentional genocide.
Navigational expertise
Biographers and historians have a wide range of opinions about Columbus's expertise and experience navigating and captaining ships. One scholar lists some European works ranging from the 1890s to 1980s that support Columbus's experience and skill as among the best in Genoa, while listing some American works over a similar timeframe that portray the explorer as an untrained entrepreneur, having only minor crew or passenger experience prior to his noted journeys. According to Morison, Columbus's success in utilizing the trade winds might owe significantly to luck.
Physical appearance
Contemporary descriptions of Columbus, including those by his son Fernando and Bartolomé de las Casas, describe him as taller than average, with light skin (often sunburnt), blue or hazel eyes, high cheekbones and freckled face, an aquiline nose, and blond to reddish hair and beard (until about the age of 30, when it began to whiten). One Spanish commentator described his eyes using the word garzos, now usually translated as "light blue", but it seems to have indicated light grey-green or hazel eyes to Columbus's contemporaries. The word rubios can mean "blond", "fair", or "ruddy". Although an abundance of artwork depicts Columbus, no authentic contemporary portrait is known.
A well-known image of Columbus is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo, which has been reproduced in many textbooks. It agrees with descriptions of Columbus in that it shows a large man with auburn hair, but the painting dates from 1519 so cannot have been painted from life. Furthermore, the inscription identifying the subject as Columbus was probably added later, and the face shown differs from that of other images.
Sometime between 1531 and 1536, Alejo Fernández painted an altarpiece, The Virgin of the Navigators, that includes a depiction of Columbus. The painting was commissioned for a chapel in Seville's Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) in the Alcázar of Seville and remains there.
At the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, 71 alleged portraits of Columbus were displayed; most of them did not match contemporary descriptions.
See also
- Christopher Columbus in fiction
- Columbus Day
- Egg of Columbus
- Christopher Columbus House
- History of the Americas
- Peopling of the Americas
- Lugares colombinos
Notes
- There are no known authentic portraits of Columbus.
- In other relevant languages:
- Italian: Cristoforo Colombo [kriˈstɔːforo koˈlombo]
- Ligurian: Cristoffa C(or)ombo [kɾiˈʃtɔffa kuˈɾuŋbu, – ˈkuŋbu]
- Spanish: Cristóbal Colón [kɾisˈtoβal koˈlon]
- Portuguese: Cristóvão Colombo [kɾiʃˈtɔvɐ̃w kuˈlõbu]
- Catalan: Cristòfor (or Cristòfol) Colom [kɾisˈtɔfuɾ kuˈlom, -ful k-]
- Latin: Christophorus Columbus.
- Though the modern state of Italy had yet to be established, the Latin equivalent of the term Italian had been in use for natives of the region since antiquity; most scholars believe Columbus was born in Genoa.
- In an account of his fourth voyage, Columbus wrote that "Jerusalem and Mount Sion must be rebuilt by Christian hands".
- Ferdinand later claimed credit for being "the principal cause why those islands were discovered."
- Felipe Fernández-Armesto points out that Columbus briefly described South America as an unknown continent after seeing the mainland for the first time. Vespucci seems to have modeled his naming of the "new world" after Columbus's description of this discovery. Further, mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller eventually retracted his naming of the continent after Vespucci, seemingly after it came to light that a claim that Vespucci visited the mainland before Columbus had been falsified. In his new map, Waldseemüller labelled the continent as Terra Incognita ('unknown land'), noting that it had been discovered by Columbus.
- This map is based on the premise that Columbus first landed at Plana Cays.The island considered by Samuel Eliot Morison to be the most likely location of first contact is the easternmost land touching the top edge of this image.
- According to Samuel Eliot Morison, San Salvador Island, renamed from Watling's Island in 1925 in the belief that it was Columbus's San Salvador, is the only island fitting the position indicated by Columbus's journal. Other candidates are the Grand Turk, Cat Island, Rum Cay, Samana Cay, or Mayaguana.
- Torres spoke Hebrew and some Arabic; the latter was then believed to be the mother tongue of all languages.
- Omitted from this image, Columbus returned to Guadeloupe at the end of his second voyage before sailing back to Spain.
- The tribute system had all but collapsed by 1497.
- Bobadilla's 48-page report, derived from the testimonies of 23 people who had seen or heard about the treatment meted out by Columbus and his brothers—had originally been lost for centuries, but was rediscovered in 2005 in the Spanish archives in Valladolid. It contained an account of Columbus's seven-year reign as the first governor of the Indies. Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian, states: "Even those who loved him [Columbus] had to admit the atrocities that had taken place."
- DNA from Columbus's presumed remains in Seville were to be used to conduct further ancestral studies, with results initially expected in 2021.
- This same year, dust collected from these remains was placed in a locket, which was placed inside the stern of a silver model caravel. Two tiny portions of dust from the same source were placed in separate vials.
- Osborne erroneously cited the bullet as evidence that the remains belonged to Columbus. (England's Francis Drake, a subsequent infamous explorer, took the ball of an arquebus in the Indies.)
- In his 2008 book, author Tony Horwitz recounts his attempt to see these remains, which are apparently briefly displayed in their crypt (behind a sheet of glass) once a year on Columbus Day.
- See: Columbus Monument, Barcelona (1888), Monument to the Discoverers (1892), Monument to Columbus (Madrid) (1892), Monument to Isabella the Catholic (Granada) (1892), Monument to Columbus (Salamanca) (1893), Monument to Columbus (Valladolid) (inaugurated in 1905, but whose inception dates to an earlier date and a tentative location in Spanish Havana).
- Cuneo wrote,
While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.
- Author Tony Horwitz notes that this is the first recorded instance of sexuality between a European and Native American.
- Bartolomé de las Casas estimated that there were three to four million Taínos in Hispaniola, and said 500,000 Lucayans were killed in the Bahamas. Most modern historians reject his figures.
References
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- "Columbus". Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d.
- Delaney, Carol (2011). Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem. Free Press/Simon and Schuster. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-4391-0237-4.
- Flint, Valerie I. J. (16 May 2021). "Christopher Columbus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
- Fernández-Armesto, Felipe (2010). Columbus on Himself. Hackett. p. 270. ISBN 978-1-60384-317-1.
The date of Fernando's birth, November 1488, gives a terminus ante quem early in that year for the start of Columbus's liaison with Beatriz Enríquez. She was of peasant parentage, but, when Columbus met her, was the ward of a well-to-do relative in Cordoba. A meat business gave her income of her own, mentioned in the only other record of Columbus's solicitude for her: a letter to Diego, written in 1502, just before departure on the fourth Atlantic crossing, in which the explorer enjoins his son to 'take Beatriz Enriquez in your care for love of me, as you your own mother'. Varela, Cristóbal Colón, p. 309.
- Taviani, Paolo Emilio (2016). "Beatriz de Arana". In Bedini, Silvio A. (ed.). The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia. Springer. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-1-349-12573-9.
Columbus never married Beatriz. When he returned from the first voyage, he was given the greatest of honors and elevated to the highest position in Spain. Because of his discovery, he became one of the most illustrious persons at the Spanish court and had to submit, like all the great persons of the time, to customary legal restrictions on matters of marriage and extramarital relations. The Alphonsine laws forbade extramarital relations of concubinage for "illustrious people" (king, princes, dukes, counts, marquis) with plebeian women, if they themselves were or their forefathers had been of inferior social condition.
- Phillips & Phillips 1992, p. 126.
- Dowlah, Caf (2020). Cross-Border Labor Mobility: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-36506-6.
Most researchers however trace the beginning of the early modern era to Christopher Columbus's discovery of the Americas in the 1490s
- Mills, Keneth and Taylor, William B., Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History, p. 36, SR Books, 1998, ISBN 0-8420-2573-1
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![image]()
Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Columbus, Diego (brother)". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. – the names Giacomo and Diego are cognates, along with James, all sharing a common origin. See Behind the Name, Mike Campbell, pages Giacomo, Diego, and James. All retrieved 3 February 2017. - Bergreen 2011, p. 56.
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It is most probable that Columbus visited Bristol, where he was introduced to English commerce with Iceland.
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Some writers have suggested that it was during this visit to Iceland that Columbus heard of land in the west. Keeping the source of his information secret, they say, he concocted a plan to sail westward. Certainly the knowledge was generally available without attending any saga-telling parties. That this knowledge reached Columbus seems unlikely, however, for later, when trying to get backing for his project, he went to great lengths to unearth even the slightest scraps of information that would add to the plausibility of his scheme. Knowledge of the Norse explorations could have helped.
- Paolucci, Anne; Paolucci, Henry (1992). Columbus, America, and the World. Council on National Literatures. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-918680-33-4.
Many Columbists ... have doubted that Columbus could ever have gone to Iceland.
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Constructed on a framework of latitude and longitude, the Ptolemy-revival map projections revealed the extent of the known world in relation to the whole. Typically, they displayed a Eurasian landmass extending through 180° of longitude from a prime meridian in the west (variously the Canary Islands or Cape Verde) to a location in the "Far East."
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It is also known that wind patterns and water currents in the Atlantic were crucial factors for launching an outward passage from the Canaries: Columbus understood that his chance of crossing the ocean was significantly greater just beyond the Canary calms, where he expected to catch the northeastern trade winds—although, as some authors have pointed out, "westing" from the Canaries, instead of dipping farther south, was hardly an optimal sailing choice, since Columbus's fleet was bound to lose, as soon it did, the northeasterlies in the mid-Atlantic.
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in 1488 Columbus returned to Portugal and once again put his project to João II. Again it was rejected. In historical hindsight this looks like a fatally missed opportunity for the Portuguese crown, but the king had good reason not to accept Columbus's project. His panel of experts cast grave doubts on the assumptions behind it, noting that Columbus had underestimated the distance to China. And then in December 1488 Bartolomeu Dias returned from his voyage around the Cape of Good Hope. Certain now that they had found the sea route to India and the east, João II and his advisers had no further interest in what probably seemed to them a hare-brained and risky plan.
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The Capitulaciones de Santa Fe appointed Columbus as the official viceroy of the Crown, which entitled him, by virtue of royal concession, to all the honors and jurisdictions accorded the conquerors of the Canaries. Usage of the terms "to discover" (descubrir) and "to acquire" (ganar) were legal cues indicating the goals of Spanish possession through occupancy and conquest.
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Bobadilla was prejudiced in advance by what he heard, or what the monarchs relayed, from Columbus detractors. HIs brief was to conduct a judicial inquiry into Columbus' conduct, an unjust proceeding, in the Admiral's submission, since Bobadilla had a vested interest in an outcome that would keep him in power. [...] Motivated by self-interest or excessive zeal, Bobadilla clapped Columbus in irons with his brothers, gathered depositions against them, and shipped them back to Spain.
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- Some scholars, including Sauer, say the fleet sailed 11 May; Cook says 9 May.
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- Colindres, Enrique Ortez (1975). Integración Política de Centroamérica (in Spanish). Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana. p. 20.
El 14 de agosto de 1502 Cristóbal Colón descubrió Punta Caxinas, hoy Punta Castilla o Cabo de Honduras.
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- Vigneras, Louis André (1 November 1978). "Diego Méndez, Secretary of Christopher Columbus and Alguacil Mayor of Santo Domingo: A Biographical Sketch". Hispanic American Historical Review. 58 (4): 680. doi:10.1215/00182168-58.4.676. ISSN 0018-2168. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
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- Captain George Farquar of Lord Stanley brought the news to Liverpool in 1796 that while he had been at Havana, the Spanish ship of the line had arrived there carrying the "coffin, bones and fetters of Christopher Columbus" from San Domingo to be re-interred at Havana with "the highest military honours."
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Christopher Columbus did not discover a new world, nor did he ever set foot on the North American continent. Rather, he established continuous contact between two continents, each with major populations. But he became a national hero for the United States, and, as such, he has frequently been placed on the same level with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln by Americans who prefer mythology to facts. Early in our history, he became a unifying symbol to the struggling English colonies when Puritan preachers began to use his life as an exemplum of the developing American spirit. On the eve of the American Revolution, poems, songs, sermons, and polemic essays in which Columbus was idealized as the discoverer of a new land for a new people flowed from New England. Such veneration culminated in a movement to name the nation "Columbia."
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Thinking back in spring 1692 to "the antiquities of New England," Cotton Mather came upon a crucial connection, as he saw it, between the voyage of Columbus two centuries before and the Puritans' Great Migration. Considered together, the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the landing at San Salvador held the key to a great design. To begin with, Columbus's voyage was one of three shaping events of the modern age, all of which occurred in rapid succession at the turn of the sixteenth century: (1) "the Resurrection of Literature",... (2) the discovery of America, ... and (3) the Protestant Reformation.
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- "Columbian Exposition Souvenir Sheets", Arago: people, postage & the post, National Postal Museum online, viewed 18 April 2014.
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- Axtell, James (1992). "Moral Reflections on the Columbian Legacy". The History Teacher. 25 (4): 407–425. ISSN 0018-2745. JSTOR 494350.
... Alfred Crosby, a scholar with the mind of a scientist and the heart of a humanist. He writes that "the major initial effect of the Columbian voyages was the transformation of America into a charnel house." The cataclysmic loss of native life, largely to imported diseases, "was surely the greatest tragedy in the history of the human species.
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When we speak today of the "legacy" of Christopher Columbus, we usually refer to the broadly historic consequences of his famous voyages, meaning the subsequent European conquest and colonization of the Americas.
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When referring to the conquest, Venezuelans tend to side with the original "Indians" inhabiting the territory, even though "we" are generally careful to distinguish ourselves from them, and above all from their contemporary descendants. This tactical identification suggests that the force of this rejoinder comes not just from the hold of the familiar—Columbus already discovered America, so what's new—but from the appeal of a more exclusive familiarity evoked by a shift of location — he only "discovered" it for Europe, not for "us". It is as if we viewed Columbus's arrival from two perspectives, his own, and that of the natives. When we want to privilege "our" special viewpoint, we claim as ours the standpoint of the original Americans, the view not from the foreign ship but from our "native" land.
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The encounter between two worlds is a fact that cannot be denied... The word discovery gives prominence to the heroes of the enterprise; the word encounter gives more emphasis to the peoples who actually "encountered" each other and gave substance to a New World. Whereas discovery marks a happening, an event, encounter conveys better the idea of the political journey that has brought us to the reality of today, spanning the five hundred years since 1492... These historical and political milestones are valuable because they relate the present to both the past and the future. It was inevitable that history written from a Eurocentric standpoint should speak in terms of discovery and it is equally inevitable that, as history has now come to be seen in universal terms, we should have adopted so evocative a term as encounter.
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Christopher Columbus k e ˈ l ʌ m b e s between 25 August and 31 October 1451 20 May 1506 was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four Spanish based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America Admiral of the Ocean SeaChristopher ColumbusPosthumous portrait of a man said to be Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del Piombo 15191st Governor of the IndiesIn office 1492 1499Appointed byIsabella I of CastilePreceded byOffice establishedSucceeded byFrancisco de BobadillaPersonal detailsBornBetween 25 August and 31 October 1451 Genoa Republic of GenoaDied 1506 05 20 20 May 1506 aged 54 Valladolid CastileResting placeSeville Cathedral Seville SpainSpouseFilipa Moniz Perestrelo m 1479 died 1484 wbr Domestic partnerBeatriz Enriquez de AranaChildrenDiegoFerdinandDiego adopted Lucayan ParentsDomenico Colombo father Susanna Fontanarossa mother RelativesBartholomew Columbus brother ProfessionMaritime explorerSignature The name Christopher Columbus is the anglicization of the Latin Christophorus Columbus Growing up on the coast of Liguria he went to sea at a young age and traveled widely as far north as the British Isles and as far south as what is now Ghana He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo who bore a son Diego and was based in Lisbon for several years He later took a Castilian mistress Beatriz Enriquez de Arana who bore a son Ferdinand Largely self educated Columbus was knowledgeable in geography astronomy and history He developed a plan to seek a western sea passage to the East Indies hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade After the Granada War and Columbus s persistent lobbying in multiple kingdoms the Catholic Monarchs Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II agreed to sponsor a journey west Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas on 12 October ending the period of human habitation in the Americas now referred to as the pre Columbian era His landing place was an island in the Bahamas known by its native inhabitants as Guanahani He then visited the islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola establishing a colony in what is now Haiti Columbus returned to Castile in early 1493 with captured natives Word of his voyage soon spread throughout Europe Columbus made three further voyages to the Americas exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493 Trinidad and the northern coast of South America in 1498 and the east coast of Central America in 1502 Many of the names given to geographical features by Columbus particularly the names of islands are still in use He gave the name indios Indians to the indigenous peoples he encountered The extent to which he was aware that the Americas were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain he never clearly renounced his belief he had reached the Far East As a colonial governor Columbus was accused by some of his contemporaries of significant brutality and removed from the post Columbus s strained relationship with the Crown of Castile and its colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola in 1500 and later to protracted litigation over the privileges he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the Crown Columbus s expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration conquest and colonization that lasted for centuries thus bringing the Americas into the European sphere of influence The transfer of plants animals precious metals culture human populations technology diseases and ideas between the Old World and New World that followed his first voyage are known as the Columbian exchange named after him These events and the effects which persist to the present are often cited as the beginning of the modern era Diseases introduced from the Old World contributed to the depopulation of Hispaniola s indigenous Taino people who were also subject to enslavement and other mistreatments by Columbus s government Increased public awareness of these interactions has led to Columbus being less celebrated in Western culture which has historically idealized him as a heroic discoverer Numerous places have been named for him as has Columbia a personification commonly used to represent the United States Early lifeChristopher Columbus House in Genoa Italy an 18th century reconstruction of the house in which Columbus grew up The original was likely destroyed during the 1684 bombardment of Genoa Columbus s early life is obscure but scholars believe he was born in the Republic of Genoa between 25 August and 31 October 1451 His father was Domenico Colombo a wool weaver who worked in Genoa and Savona and owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa He had three brothers Bartholomew Giovanni Pellegrino and Giacomo also called Diego as well as a sister Bianchinetta Bartholomew ran a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood His native language is presumed to have been a Genoese dialect Ligurian as his first language though Columbus probably never wrote in it His name in 15th century Genoese was Cristoffa Corombo in Italian Cristoforo Colombo and in Spanish Cristobal Colon In one of his writings Columbus says he went to sea at 14 In 1470 the family moved to Savona where Domenico took over a tavern Some modern authors have argued that he was not from Genoa but from the Aragon region of Spain or from Portugal These competing hypotheses have been discounted by most scholars Colombo giovinetto sculpture of young Columbus by Giulio Monteverde Genoa In 1473 Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the wealthy Spinola Centurione and Di Negro families of Genoa Later he made a trip to the Greek island Chios in the Aegean Sea then ruled by Genoa In May 1476 he took part in an armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe He probably visited Bristol England and Galway Ireland where he may have visited St Nicholas Collegiate Church It has been speculated he went to Iceland in 1477 though many scholars doubt this It is known that in the autumn of 1477 he sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon where he found his brother Bartholomew and they continued trading for the Centurione family Columbus based himself in Lisbon from 1477 to 1485 In 1478 the Centuriones sent Columbus on a sugar buying trip to Madeira He married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrello a Portuguese nobleman of Lombard origin who had been the donatary captain of Porto Santo Portrait of Columbus by Aliprando Caprioli In 1479 or 1480 Columbus s son Diego was born Between 1482 and 1485 Columbus traded along the coasts of West Africa reaching the Portuguese trading post of Elmina at the Guinea coast in present day Ghana Before 1484 Columbus returned to Porto Santo to find that his wife had died He returned to Portugal to settle her estate and take Diego with him He left Portugal for Castile in 1485 where he took a mistress in 1487 a 20 year old orphan named Beatriz Enriquez de Arana It is likely that Beatriz met Columbus when he was in Cordoba a gathering place for Genoese merchants and where the court of the Catholic Monarchs was located at intervals Beatriz unmarried at the time gave birth to Columbus s second son Fernando Columbus in July 1488 named for the monarch of Aragon Columbus recognized the boy as his offspring Columbus entrusted his older legitimate son Diego to take care of Beatriz and pay the pension set aside for her following his death but Diego was negligent in his duties Columbus s copy of The Travels of Marco Polo with his handwritten notes in Latin in the margins Columbus learned Latin Portuguese and Castilian He read widely about astronomy geography and history including the works of Ptolemy Pierre d Ailly s Imago Mundi the travels of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville Pliny s Natural History and Pope Pius II s Historia rerum ubique gestarum According to historian Edmund Morgan Columbus was not a scholarly man Yet he studied these books made hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the world that were characteristically simple and strong and sometimes wrong Quest for AsiaBackground Toscanelli s notions of the geography of the Atlantic Ocean shown superimposed on a modern map which directly influenced Columbus s plans Under the Mongol Empire s hegemony over Asia and the Pax Mongolica Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land passage on the Silk Road to India parts of East Asia including China and Maritime Southeast Asia which were sources of valuable goods With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 the Silk Road was closed to Christian traders In 1474 the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V of Portugal that sailing west across the Atlantic would be a quicker way to reach Asia than the route around Africa but Afonso rejected his proposal In the 1480s Columbus and his brother proposed a plan to reach the East Indies by sailing west Columbus supposedly wrote to Toscanelli in 1481 and received encouragement along with a copy of a map the astronomer had sent Afonso implying that a westward route to Asia was possible Columbus s plans were complicated by Bartolomeu Dias s rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 which suggested the Cape Route around Africa to Asia Columbus had to wait until 1492 for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to support his voyage across the Atlantic to find gold spices a safer route to the East and converts to Christianity Carol Delaney and other commentators have argued that Columbus was a Christian millennialist and apocalypticist and that these beliefs motivated his quest for Asia in a variety of ways Columbus often wrote about seeking gold in the log books of his voyages and writes about acquiring it in such quantity that the sovereigns will undertake and prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher in a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy Columbus often wrote about converting all races to Christianity Abbas Hamandi argues that Columbus was motivated by the hope of delivering Jerusalem from Muslim hands by using the resources of newly discovered lands Geographical considerations Despite a popular misconception to the contrary nearly all educated Westerners of Columbus s time knew that the Earth is spherical a concept that had been understood since antiquity The techniques of celestial navigation which uses the position of the Sun and the stars in the sky had long been in use by astronomers and were beginning to be implemented by mariners However Columbus made several errors in calculating the size of the Earth the distance the continent extended to the east and therefore the distance to the west to reach his goal First as far back as the 3rd century BC Eratosthenes had correctly computed the circumference of the Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows cast by objects at two remote locations In the 1st century BC Posidonius confirmed Eratosthenes s results by comparing stellar observations at two separate locations These measurements were widely known among scholars but Ptolemy s use of the smaller old fashioned units of distance led Columbus to underestimate the size of the Earth by about a third Columbus map drawn c 1490 in the Lisbon mapmaking workshop of Bartholomew and Christopher Columbus Second three cosmographical parameters determined the bounds of Columbus s enterprise the distance across the ocean between Europe and Asia which depended on the extent of the oikumene i e the Eurasian land mass stretching east west between Spain and China the circumference of the Earth and the number of miles or leagues in a degree of longitude which was possible to deduce from the theory of the relationship between the size of the surfaces of water and the land as held by the followers of Aristotle in medieval times From Pierre d Ailly s 1410 Columbus learned of Alfraganus s estimate that a degree of latitude equal to approximately a degree of longitude along the equator spanned 56 67 Arabic miles equivalent to 66 2 nautical miles 122 6 kilometers or 76 2 mi but he did not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile about 1 830 meters or 1 14 mi rather than the shorter Roman mile about 1 480 m with which he was familiar Columbus therefore estimated the size of the Earth to be about 75 of Eratosthenes s calculation Third most scholars of the time accepted Ptolemy s estimate that Eurasia spanned 180 longitude rather than the actual 130 to the Chinese mainland or 150 to Japan at the latitude of Spain Columbus believed an even higher estimate leaving a smaller percentage for water In d Ailly s Imago Mundi Columbus read Marinus of Tyre s estimate that the longitudinal span of Eurasia was 225 at the latitude of Rhodes Some historians such as Samuel Eliot Morison have suggested that he followed the statement in the apocryphal book 2 Esdras 6 42 that six parts of the globe are habitable and the seventh is covered with water He was also aware of Marco Polo s claim that Japan which he called Cipangu was some 2 414 km 1 500 mi to the east of China Cathay and closer to the equator than it is He was influenced by Toscanelli s idea that there were inhabited islands even farther to the east than Japan including the mythical Antillia which he thought might lie not much farther to the west than the Azores and the distance westward from the Canary Islands to the Indies as only 68 degrees equivalent to 3 080 nmi 5 700 km 3 540 mi a 58 error Based on his sources Columbus estimated a distance of 2 400 nmi 4 400 km 2 800 mi from the Canary Islands west to Japan the actual distance is 10 600 nmi 19 600 km 12 200 mi No ship in the 15th century could have carried enough food and fresh water for such a long voyage and the dangers involved in navigating through the uncharted ocean would have been formidable Most European navigators reasonably concluded that a westward voyage from Europe to Asia was unfeasible The Catholic Monarchs however having completed the Reconquista an expensive war against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula were eager to obtain a competitive edge over other European countries in the quest for trade with the Indies Columbus s project though far fetched held the promise of such an advantage Christopher Columbus at the gates of the monastery of Santa Maria de la Rabida with his son Diego by Benet MercadeNautical considerations Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees of longitude that separated Europe from the Far East and about the distance that each degree represented he did take advantage of the trade winds which would prove to be the key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean He planned to first sail to the Canary Islands before continuing west with the northeast trade wind Part of the return to Spain would require traveling against the wind using an arduous sailing technique called beating during which progress is made very slowly To effectively make the return voyage Columbus would need to follow the curving trade winds northeastward to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic where he would be able to catch the westerlies that blow eastward to the coast of Western Europe The navigational technique for travel in the Atlantic appears to have been exploited first by the Portuguese who referred to it as the volta do mar turn of the sea Through his marriage to his first wife Felipa Perestrello Columbus had access to the nautical charts and logs that had belonged to her deceased father Bartolomeu Perestrello who had served as a captain in the Portuguese navy under Prince Henry the Navigator In the mapmaking shop where he worked with his brother Bartholomew Columbus also had ample opportunity to hear the stories of old seamen about their voyages to the western seas but his knowledge of the Atlantic wind patterns was still imperfect at the time of his first voyage By sailing due west from the Canary Islands during hurricane season skirting the so called horse latitudes of the mid Atlantic he risked being becalmed and running into a tropical cyclone both of which he avoided by chance Quest for financial support for a voyage Columbus offers his services to the King of Portugal Chodowiecki 17th century By about 1484 Columbus proposed his planned voyage to King John II of Portugal The king submitted Columbus s proposal to his advisors who rejected it correctly on the grounds that Columbus s estimate for a voyage of 2 400 nmi was only a quarter of what it should have been In 1488 Columbus again appealed to the court of Portugal and John II again granted him an audience That meeting also proved unsuccessful in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with news of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa near the Cape of Good Hope Monastery of La Rabida in which Columbus stayed in the years before his first expedition Columbus sought an audience with the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile who had united several kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula by marrying and now ruled together On 1 May 1486 permission having been granted Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella who in turn referred it to a committee The learned men of Spain like their counterparts in Portugal replied that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to Asia They pronounced the idea impractical and advised the Catholic Monarchs to pass on the proposed venture To keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere and perhaps to keep their options open the sovereigns gave him an allowance totaling about 14 000 maravedis for the year or about the annual salary of a sailor In May 1489 the queen sent him another 10 000 maravedis and the same year the monarchs furnished him with a letter ordering all cities and towns under their dominion to provide him food and lodging at no cost Columbus also dispatched his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England to inquire whether the English Crown might sponsor his expedition but he was captured by pirates en route and only arrived in early 1491 By that time Columbus had retreated to La Rabida Friary where the Spanish Crown sent him 20 000 maravedis to buy new clothes and instructions to return to the Spanish court for renewed discussions Agreement with the Spanish Crown The Alhambra where Columbus received permission from the Catholic Monarchs for his first voyage Columbus waited at King Ferdinand s camp until Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula in January 1492 A council led by Isabella s confessor Hernando de Talavera found Columbus s proposal to reach the Indies implausible Columbus had left for France when Ferdinand intervened first sending Talavera and Bishop Diego Deza to appeal to the queen Isabella was finally convinced by the king s clerk Luis de Santangel who argued that Columbus would take his ideas elsewhere and offered to help arrange the funding Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch Columbus who had traveled 2 leagues over 10 km toward Cordoba In the April 1492 Capitulations of Santa Fe King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised Columbus that if he succeeded he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new lands he might claim for Spain He had the right to nominate three persons from whom the sovereigns would choose one for any office in the new lands He would be entitled to one tenth diezmo of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity He also would have the option of buying one eighth interest in any commercial venture in the new lands and receive one eighth ochavo of the profits In 1500 during his third voyage to the Americas Columbus was arrested and dismissed from his posts He and his sons Diego and Fernando then conducted a lengthy series of court cases against the Castilian Crown known as the pleitos colombinos alleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs The Columbus family had some success in their first litigation as a judgment of 1511 confirmed Diego s position as viceroy but reduced his powers Diego resumed litigation in 1512 which lasted until 1536 and further disputes initiated by heirs continued until 1790 VoyagesCaptain s ensign of Columbus s shipsThe voyages of Christopher Columbus conjectural Between 1492 and 1504 Columbus completed four round trip voyages between Spain and the Americas each voyage being sponsored by the Crown of Castile On his first voyage he reached the Americas initiating the European exploration and colonization of the continent as well as the Columbian exchange His role in history is thus important to the Age of Discovery Western history and human history writ large In Columbus s letter on the first voyage published following his first return to Spain he claimed that he had reached Asia as previously described by Marco Polo and other Europeans Over his subsequent voyages Columbus refused to acknowledge that the lands he visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary This might explain in part why the American continent was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci who received credit for recognizing it as a New World and not after Columbus First voyage 1492 1493 First voyage conjectural Modern place names in black Columbus s place names in blue On the evening of 3 August 1492 Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships The largest was a carrack the Santa Maria owned and captained by Juan de la Cosa and under Columbus s direct command The other two were smaller caravels the Pinta and the Nina piloted by the Pinzon brothers Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands There he restocked provisions and made repairs then departed from San Sebastian de La Gomera on 6 September for what turned out to be a five week voyage across the ocean On 7 October the crew spotted i mmense flocks of birds On 11 October Columbus changed the fleet s course to due west and sailed through the night believing land was soon to be found At around 02 00 the following morning a lookout on the Pinta Rodrigo de Triana spotted land The captain of the Pinta Martin Alonso Pinzon verified the sight of land and alerted Columbus Columbus later maintained that he had already seen a light on the land a few hours earlier thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension promised by Ferdinand and Isabella to the first person to sight land Columbus called this island in what is now the Bahamas San Salvador Holy Savior the Natives called it Guanahani Christopher Columbus s journal entry of 12 October 1492 states I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them asking what they were and they showed me how people from other islands nearby came there and tried to take them and how they defended themselves and I believed and believe that they come here from tierra firme to take them captive They should be good and intelligent servants for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them and I believe they would become Christians very easily for it seemed to me that they had no religion Our Lord pleasing at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited Los Indios Indians He initially encountered the Lucayan Taino and Arawak peoples Noting their gold ear ornaments Columbus took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold Columbus did not believe he needed to create a fortified outpost writing the people here are simple in war like matters I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased The Tainos told Columbus that another indigenous tribe the Caribs were fierce warriors and cannibals who made frequent raids on the Tainos often capturing their women although this may have been a belief perpetuated by the Spaniards to justify enslaving them Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba where he landed on 28 October On the night of 26 November Martin Alonso Pinzon took the Pinta on an unauthorized expedition in search of an island called Babeque or Baneque which the natives had told him was rich in gold Columbus for his part continued to the northern coast of Hispaniola where he landed on 6 December There the Santa Maria ran aground on 25 December 1492 and had to be abandoned The wreck was used as a target for cannon fire to impress the native peoples Columbus was received by the native cacique Guacanagari who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind Columbus left 39 men including the interpreter Luis de Torres and founded the settlement of La Navidad in present day Haiti Columbus took more natives prisoner and continued his exploration He kept sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a single ship until he encountered Pinzon and the Pinta on 6 January On 13 January 1493 Columbus made his last stop of this voyage in the Americas in the Bay of Rincon in northeast Hispaniola There he encountered the Ciguayos the only natives who offered violent resistance during this voyage The Ciguayos refused to trade the amount of bows and arrows that Columbus desired in the ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks and another wounded with an arrow in his chest Because of these events Columbus called the inlet the Golfo de Las Flechas Bay of Arrows Columbus headed for Spain on the Nina but a storm separated him from the Pinta and forced the Nina to stop at the island of Santa Maria in the Azores Half of his crew went ashore to say prayers of thanksgiving in a chapel for having survived the storm But while praying they were imprisoned by the governor of the island ostensibly on suspicion of being pirates After a two day stand off the prisoners were released and Columbus again set sail for Spain Another storm forced Columbus into the port at Lisbon From there he went to Vale do Paraiso north of Lisbon to meet King John II of Portugal who told Columbus that he believed the voyage to be in violation of the 1479 Treaty of Alcacovas After spending more than a week in Portugal Columbus set sail for Spain Returning to Palos on 15 March 1493 he was given a hero s welcome and soon afterward received by Isabella and Ferdinand in Barcelona To them he presented kidnapped Tainos and various plants and items he had collected 54 One of the ten Natives taken on the return trip was a Lucayan Taino from Guanahani thought to be 13 15 years of age who Columbus adopted as his son upon their arrival in Spain the boy whose Lucayan name is unknown received the name Diego at baptism Initially Diego had been recognized for his intelligence and rapid acquisition of Spanish customs and would serve as a guide and interpreter on each of Columbus s subsequent voyages By the second voyage s departure later in 1493 Diego was the only Native out of the ten taken to Europe who had not died or become seriously ill as the result of disease while on this voyage he played a vital role in the discovery of La Navidad He subsequently married and had a son also named Diego who died of illness in 1506 Following Columbus s death Diego spent the rest of his life confined to Santo Domingo and does not reappear in the historical record following a smallpox epidemic that swept Hispaniola in 1519 Columbus s letter on the first voyage probably dispatched to the Spanish court upon arrival in Lisbon was instrumental in spreading the news throughout Europe about his voyage Almost immediately after his arrival in Spain printed versions began to appear and word of his voyage spread rapidly Most people initially believed that he had reached Asia The Bulls of Donation three papal bulls of Pope Alexander VI delivered in 1493 purported to grant overseas territories to Portugal and the Catholic Monarchs of Spain They were replaced by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 The two earliest published copies of Columbus s letter on the first voyage aboard the Nina were donated in 2017 by the Jay I Kislak Foundation to the University of Miami library in Coral Gables Florida where they are housed Second voyage 1493 1496 Columbus s second voyage On 24 September 1493 Columbus sailed from Cadiz with 17 ships and supplies to establish permanent colonies in the Americas He sailed with nearly 1 500 men including sailors soldiers priests carpenters stonemasons metalworkers and farmers Among the expedition members were Alvarez Chanca a physician who wrote a detailed account of the second voyage Juan Ponce de Leon the first governor of Puerto Rico and Florida the father of Bartolome de las Casas Juan de la Cosa a cartographer who is credited with making the first world map depicting the New World and Columbus s youngest brother Diego The fleet stopped at the Canary Islands to take on more supplies and set sail again on 7 October deliberately taking a more southerly course than on the first voyage On 3 November they arrived in the Windward Islands the first island they encountered was named Dominica by Columbus but not finding a good harbor there they anchored off a nearby smaller island which he named Mariagalante now a part of Guadeloupe and called Marie Galante Other islands named by Columbus on this voyage were Montserrat Antigua Saint Martin the Virgin Islands as well as many others On 17 November Columbus first sighted the eastern coast of the island of Puerto Rico known to its native Taino people as Boriken His fleet sailed along the island s southern coast for a whole day before making landfall on its northwestern coast at the Bay of Anasco early on 19 November Upon landing Columbus christened the island San Juan Bautista after John the Baptist and remained anchored there for two days from 20 to 21 November filling the water casks of the ships in his fleet The Inspiration of Christopher Columbus by Jose Maria Obregon 1856 On 22 November Columbus returned to Hispaniola to visit La Navidad in modern day Haiti where 39 Spaniards had been left during the first voyage Columbus found the fort in ruins He learned from Guacanagarix the local tribe leader that his men had quarreled over gold and taken women from the tribe and that after some left for the territory of Caonabo Caonabo came and burned the fort and killed the rest of the men there Columbus then established a poorly located and short lived settlement to the east La Isabela in the present day Dominican Republic By the end of 1494 disease and famine had killed two thirds of the Spanish settlers there From April to August 1494 Columbus explored Cuba and Jamaica then returned to Hispaniola Before leaving on this exploration to Cuba Columbus had ordered a large amount of men under Pedro Margarit to journey the length and breadth of the island enforcing Spanish control and bringing all the people under the Spanish yoke These men in his absence raped women took men captive to be servants and stole from the indigenous people A number of Spanish were killed in retaliation By the time Columbus returned from exploring Cuba the four primary leaders of the Arawak people in Hispaniola were gathering for war to try to drive the Spanish from the Island Columbus assembled a large number of troops and joined with his one native ally chief Guacanagarix met for battle The Spanish even though they were largely outnumbered won this battle and over the next 9 months Columbus continued to wage war on the native Taino on Hispaniola until they surrendered and agreed to pay tribute Columbus implemented encomienda a Spanish labor system that rewarded conquerors with the labor of conquered non Christian people It is also recorded that punishments to both Spaniards and natives included whippings and mutilation cutting noses and ears Columbus and the colonists enslaved many of the indigenous people including children Natives were beaten raped and tortured for the location of imagined gold Thousands committed suicide rather than face the oppression In February 1495 Columbus rounded up about 1 500 Arawaks some of whom had rebelled in a great slave raid About 500 of the strongest were shipped to Spain as slaves with about two hundred of those dying en route In June 1495 the Spanish Crown sent ships and supplies to Hispaniola In October Florentine merchant Gianotto Berardi who had won the contract to provision the fleet of Columbus s second voyage and to supply the colony on Hispaniola received almost 40 000 maravedis worth of enslaved Indians He renewed his effort to get supplies to Columbus and was working to organize a fleet when he suddenly died in December On 10 March 1496 having been away about 30 months the fleet departed La Isabela On 8 June the crew sighted land somewhere between Lisbon and Cape St Vincent and disembarked in Cadiz on 11 June Third voyage 1498 1500 Third voyage On 30 May 1498 Columbus left with six ships from Sanlucar Spain The fleet called at Madeira and the Canary Islands where it divided in two with three ships heading for Hispaniola and the other three vessels commanded by Columbus sailing south to the Cape Verde Islands and then westward across the Atlantic It is probable that this expedition was intended at least partly to confirm rumors of a large continent south of the Caribbean Sea that is South America On 31 July they sighted Trinidad the most southerly of the Caribbean islands On 5 August Columbus sent several small boats ashore on the southern side of the Paria Peninsula in what is now Venezuela near the mouth of the Orinoco river This was the first recorded landing of Europeans on the mainland of South America which Columbus realized must be a continent The fleet then sailed to the islands of Chacachacare and Margarita reaching the latter on 14 August and sighted Tobago and Grenada from afar according to some scholars On 19 August Columbus returned to Hispaniola There he found settlers in rebellion against his rule and his unfulfilled promises of riches Columbus had some of the Europeans tried for their disobedience at least one rebel leader was hanged In October 1499 Columbus sent two ships to Spain asking the Court of Spain to appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern By this time accusations of tyranny and incompetence on the part of Columbus had also reached the Court The sovereigns sent Francisco de Bobadilla a relative of Marquesa Beatriz de Bobadilla a patron of Columbus and a close friend of Queen Isabella to investigate the accusations of brutality made against the Admiral Arriving in Santo Domingo while Columbus was away Bobadilla was immediately met with complaints about all three Columbus brothers He moved into Columbus s house and seized his property took depositions from the Admiral s enemies and declared himself governor Bobadilla reported to Spain that Columbus once punished a man found guilty of stealing corn by having his ears and nose cut off and then selling him into slavery He claimed that Columbus regularly used torture and mutilation to govern Hispaniola Testimony recorded in the report stated that Columbus congratulated his brother Bartholomew on defending the family when the latter ordered for a woman to be paraded naked through the streets and then had her tongue cut because she had spoken ill of the admiral and his brothers The document also describes how Columbus put down native unrest and revolt he first ordered a brutal suppression of the uprising in which many natives were killed and then paraded their dismembered bodies through the streets in an attempt to discourage further rebellion Columbus vehemently denied the charges The neutrality and accuracy of the accusations and investigations of Bobadilla toward Columbus and his brothers have been disputed by historians given the anti Italian sentiment of the Spaniards and Bobadilla s desire to take over Columbus s position In early October 1500 Columbus and Diego presented themselves to Bobadilla and were put in chains aboard La Gorda the caravel on which Bobadilla had arrived at Santo Domingo They were returned to Spain and languished in jail for six weeks before King Ferdinand ordered their release Not long after the king and queen summoned the Columbus brothers to the Alhambra palace in Granada The sovereigns expressed indignation at the actions of Bobadilla who was then recalled and ordered to make restitutions of the property he had confiscated from Columbus The royal couple heard the brothers pleas restored their freedom and wealth and after much persuasion agreed to fund Columbus s fourth voyage However Nicolas de Ovando was to replace Bobadilla and be the new governor of the West Indies New light was shed on the seizure of Columbus and his brother Bartholomew the Adelantado with the discovery by archivist Isabel Aguirre of an incomplete copy of the testimonies against them gathered by Francisco de Bobadilla at Santo Domingo in 1500 She found a manuscript copy of this pesquisa inquiry in the Archive of Simancas Spain uncatalogued until she and Consuelo Varela published their book La caida de Cristobal Colon el juicio de Bobadilla The fall of Christopher Colon the judgement of Bobadilla in 2006 Fourth voyage 1502 1504 Columbus s fourth voyageCoat of arms granted to Christopher Columbus and the es by Pope Alexander VI motu proprio in 1502 On 9 May 1502 Columbus left Cadiz with his flagship Santa Maria and three other vessels The ships were crewed by 140 men including his brother Bartholomew as second in command and his son Fernando He sailed to Asilah on the Moroccan coast to rescue Portuguese soldiers said to be besieged by the Moors The siege had been lifted by the time they arrived so the Spaniards stayed only a day and continued on to the Canary Islands On 15 June the fleet arrived at Martinique where it lingered for several days A hurricane was forming so Columbus continued westward hoping to find shelter on Hispaniola He arrived at Santo Domingo on 29 June but was denied port and the new governor Francisco de Bobadilla refused to listen to his warning that a hurricane was approaching Instead while Columbus s ships sheltered at the mouth of the Rio Jaina the first Spanish treasure fleet sailed into the hurricane Columbus s ships survived with only minor damage while 20 of the 30 ships in the governor s fleet were lost along with 500 lives including that of Francisco de Bobadilla Although a few surviving ships managed to straggle back to Santo Domingo Aguja the fragile ship carrying Columbus s personal belongings and his 4 000 pesos in gold was the sole vessel to reach Spain The gold was his tenth decimo of the profits from Hispaniola equal to 240 000 maravedis guaranteed by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 After a brief stop at Jamaica Columbus sailed to Central America arriving at the coast of Honduras on 30 July Here Bartholomew found native merchants and a large canoe On 14 August Columbus landed on the continental mainland at Punta Caxinas now Puerto Castilla Honduras He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras Nicaragua and Costa Rica seeking a strait in the western Caribbean through which he could sail to the Indian Ocean Sailing south along the Nicaraguan coast he found a channel that led into Almirante Bay in Panama on 5 October As soon as his ships anchored in Almirante Bay Columbus encountered Ngabe people in canoes who were wearing gold ornaments In January 1503 he established a garrison at the mouth of the Belen River Columbus left for Hispaniola on 16 April On 10 May he sighted the Cayman Islands naming them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there His ships sustained damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba Unable to travel farther on 25 June 1503 they were beached in Saint Ann Parish Jamaica For six months Columbus and 230 of his men remained stranded on Jamaica Diego Mendez de Segura who had shipped out as a personal secretary to Columbus and a Spanish shipmate called Bartolome Flisco along with six natives paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola The governor Nicolas de Ovando y Caceres detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men In the meantime Columbus in a desperate effort to induce the natives to continue provisioning him and his hungry men won their favor by predicting a lunar eclipse for 29 February 1504 using Abraham Zacuto s astronomical charts Despite the governor s obstruction Christopher Columbus and his men were rescued on 28 June 1504 and arrived in Sanlucar Spain on 7 November Later life illness and deathThe death of Columbus lithograph by L Prang amp Co 1893 Columbus had always claimed that the conversion of non believers was one reason for his explorations and he grew increasingly religious in his later years Probably with the assistance of his son Diego and his friend the Carthusian monk Gaspar Gorricio Columbus produced two books during his later years a Book of Privileges 1502 detailing and documenting the rewards from the Spanish Crown to which he believed he and his heirs were entitled and a Book of Prophecies 1505 in which passages from the Bible were used to place his achievements as an explorer in the context of Christian eschatology In his later years Columbus demanded that the Crown of Castile give him his tenth of all the riches and trade goods yielded by the new lands as stipulated in the Capitulations of Santa Fe Because he had been relieved of his duties as governor the Crown did not feel bound by that contract and his demands were rejected After his death his heirs sued the Crown for a part of the profits from trade with America as well as other rewards This led to a protracted series of legal disputes known as the pleitos colombinos Columbian lawsuits The remains of Christopher Columbus preserved in the University Library of Pavia During a violent storm on his first return voyage Columbus then 41 had suffered an attack of what was believed at the time to be gout In subsequent years he was plagued with what was thought to be influenza and other fevers bleeding from the eyes temporary blindness and prolonged attacks of gout The attacks increased in duration and severity sometimes leaving Columbus bedridden for months at a time and culminated in his death 14 years later Based on Columbus s lifestyle and the described symptoms some modern commentators suspect that he suffered from reactive arthritis rather than gout Reactive arthritis is a joint inflammation caused by intestinal bacterial infections or after acquiring certain sexually transmitted diseases primarily chlamydia or gonorrhea In 2006 Frank C Arnett a medical doctor and historian Charles Merrill published their paper in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences proposing that Columbus had a form of reactive arthritis Merrill made the case in that same paper that Columbus was the son of Catalans and his mother possibly a member of a prominent converso converted Jew family It seems likely that Columbus acquired reactive arthritis from food poisoning on one of his ocean voyages because of poor sanitation and improper food preparation says Arnett a rheumatologist and professor of internal medicine pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston Some historians such as H Micheal Tarver and Emily Slape as well as medical doctors such as Arnett and Antonio Rodriguez Cuartero believe that Columbus had such a form of reactive arthritis but according to other authorities this is speculative or very speculative After his arrival to Sanlucar from his fourth voyage and Queen Isabella s death an ill Columbus settled in Seville in April 1505 He stubbornly continued to make pleas to the Crown to defend his own personal privileges and his family s He moved to Segovia where the court was at the time on a mule by early 1506 and on the occasion of the wedding of King Ferdinand with Germaine of Foix in Valladolid Spain in March 1506 Columbus moved to that city to persist with his demands On 20 May 1506 aged 54 Columbus died in Valladolid Location of remainsTomb in Seville Cathedral The remains in the casket are borne by kings of Castile Leon Aragon and Navarre Tomb in Columbus Lighthouse Santo Domingo Este Dominican Republic Columbus s remains were first buried at the Chapel of Wonders at the Convent of St Francis Valladolid but were then moved to the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville southern Spain by the will of his son Diego They may have been exhumed in 1513 and interred at the Seville Cathedral In about 1536 the remains of both Columbus and his son Diego were moved to a cathedral in Colonial Santo Domingo in the present day Dominican Republic Columbus had requested to be buried on the island By some accounts in 1793 when France took over the entire island of Hispaniola Columbus s remains were moved to Havana Cuba After Cuba became independent following the Spanish American War in 1898 at least some of these remains were moved back to the Seville Cathedral where they were placed on an elaborate catafalque In June 2003 DNA samples were taken from the remains in Seville as well as those of Columbus s brother Diego and younger son Fernando Initial observations suggested that the bones did not appear to match Columbus s physique or age at death DNA extraction proved difficult only short fragments of mitochondrial DNA could be isolated These matched corresponding DNA from Columbus s brother supporting that the two men had the same mother Such evidence together with anthropologic and historic analyses led the researchers to conclude that the remains belonged to Christopher Columbus In 1877 a priest discovered a lead box at Santo Domingo inscribed Discoverer of America First Admiral Inscriptions found the next year read Last of the remains of the first admiral Sire Christopher Columbus discoverer The box contained bones of an arm and a leg as well as a bullet These remains were considered legitimate by physician and U S Assistant Secretary of State John Eugene Osborne who suggested in 1913 that they travel through the Panama Canal as a part of its opening ceremony These remains were kept at the Basilica Cathedral of Santa Maria la Menor in the Colonial City of Santo Domingo before being moved to the Columbus Lighthouse Santo Domingo Este inaugurated in 1992 The authorities in Santo Domingo have never allowed these remains to be DNA tested so it is unconfirmed whether they are from Columbus s body as well CommemorationU S Columbian Issue of 1893 Replicas of the Nina Pinta and Santa Maria sailed from Spain to the Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893Columbus Day parade in New York City 2009 The figure of Columbus was not ignored in the British colonies during the colonial era Columbus became a unifying symbol early in the history of the colonies that became the United States when Puritan preachers began to use his life story as a model for a developing American spirit In the spring of 1692 Puritan preacher Cotton Mather described Columbus s voyage as one of three shaping events of the modern age connecting Columbus s voyage and the Puritans migration to North America seeing them together as the key to a grand design The use of Columbus as a founding figure of New World nations spread rapidly after the American Revolution This was out of a desire to develop a national history and founding myth with fewer ties to Britain His name was the basis for the female national personification of the United States Columbia in use since the 1730s with reference to the original Thirteen Colonies and also a historical name applied to the Americas and to the New World Columbia South Carolina and Columbia Rediviva the ship for which the Columbia River was named are named for Columbus Columbus s name was given to the newly born Republic of Colombia in the early 19th century inspired by the political project of Colombeia developed by revolutionary Francisco de Miranda which was put at the service of the emancipation of continental Hispanic America To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the landing of Columbus the 1893 World s Fair in Chicago was named the World s Columbian Exposition The U S Postal Service issued the first U S commemorative stamps the Columbian Issue depicting Columbus Queen Isabella and others in various stages of his several voyages A commemorative silver half dollar was also struck which remains the only U S currency issued having a foreigner as its subject The policies related to the celebration of the Spanish colonial empire as the vehicle of a nationalist project undertaken in Spain during the Restoration in the late 19th century took form with the commemoration of the 4th centenary on 12 October 1892 in which the figure of Columbus was extolled by the Conservative government eventually becoming the very same national day Several monuments commemorating the discovery were erected in cities such as Palos Barcelona Granada Madrid Salamanca Valladolid and Seville in the years around the 400th anniversary For the Columbus Quincentenary in 1992 a second Columbian issue was released jointly with Italy Portugal and Spain Columbus was celebrated at Seville Expo 92 and Genoa Expo 92 The Boal Mansion Museum founded in 1951 contains a collection of materials concerning later descendants of Columbus and collateral branches of the family It features a 16th century chapel from a Spanish castle reputedly owned by Diego Colon which became the residence of Columbus s descendants The chapel interior was dismantled and moved from Spain in 1909 and re erected on the Boal estate at Boalsburg Pennsylvania Inside it are numerous religious paintings and other objects including a reliquary with fragments of wood supposedly from the True Cross The museum also holds a collection of documents mostly relating to Columbus descendants of the late 18th and early 19th centuries In many countries of the Americas as well as Spain and Italy Columbus Day celebrates the anniversary of Columbus s arrival in the Americas on 12 October 1492 LegacyThe voyages of Columbus are considered a turning point in human history marking the beginning of globalization and accompanying demographic commercial economic social and political changes Landing of Columbus at the Island of Guanahani West Indies 1846 by John Vanderlyn The landing of Columbus became a powerful icon of American genesis in the 19th century His explorations resulted in permanent contact between the two hemispheres and the term pre Columbian is used to refer to the cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors The ensuing Columbian exchange saw the massive exchange of animals plants fungi diseases technologies mineral wealth and ideas In the first century after his endeavors Columbus s figure largely languished in the backwaters of history and his reputation was beset by his failures as a colonial administrator His legacy was somewhat rescued from oblivion when he began to appear as a character in Italian and Spanish plays and poems from the late 16th century onward Columbus was subsumed into the Western narrative of colonization and empire building which invoked notions of translatio imperii and translatio studii to underline who was considered civilized and who was not The Discovery of America sculpture depicting Columbus and a cowering Indian maiden stood outside the U S Capitol from 1844 to 1958 The Americanization of the figure of Columbus began in the latter decades of the 18th century after the revolutionary period of the United States elevating the status of his reputation to a national myth homo americanus His landing became a powerful icon as an image of American genesis The Discovery of America sculpture depicting Columbus and a cowering Native maiden was commissioned on 3 April 1837 when U S President Martin Van Buren sanctioned the engineering of Luigi Persico s design This representation of Columbus s triumph and the Native s recoil is a demonstration of supposed white superiority over savage naive Natives As recorded during its unveiling in 1844 the sculpture extends to represent the meeting of the two races as Persico captures their first interaction highlighting the moral and intellectual inferiority of Natives Placed outside the U S Capitol building where it remained until its removal in the mid 20th century the sculpture reflected the contemporary view of whites in the U S toward the Natives they are labeled merciless Indian savages in the United States Declaration of Independence In 1836 Pennsylvania senator and future U S President James Buchanan who proposed the sculpture described it as representing the great discoverer when he first bounded with ecstasy upon the shore ail his toils past presenting a hemisphere to the astonished world with the name America inscribed upon it Whilst he is thus standing upon the shore a female savage with awe and wonder depicted in her countenance is gazing upon him The American Columbus myth was reconfigured later in the century when he was enlisted as an ethnic hero by immigrants to the United States who were not of Anglo Saxon stock such as Jewish Italian and Irish people who claimed Columbus as a sort of ethnic founding father Catholics unsuccessfully tried to promote him for canonization in the 19th century From the 1990s onward a narrative of Columbus being responsible for the genocide of indigenous peoples and environmental destruction began to compete with the then predominant discourse of Columbus as Christ bearer scientist or father of America This narrative features the negative effects of Columbus conquests on native populations Exposed to Old World diseases the indigenous populations of the New World collapsed and were largely replaced by Europeans and Africans who brought with them new methods of farming business governance and religious worship Originality of discovery of America Discovery of America a postage stamp from the Faroe Islands commemorates the voyages of discovery of Leif Erikson c 1000 and Christopher Columbus 1492 Though Christopher Columbus came to be considered the European discoverer of America in Western popular culture his historical legacy is more nuanced After settling Iceland the Norse settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century Norsemen are believed to have then set sail from Greenland and Iceland to become the first known Europeans to reach the North American mainland nearly 500 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean The 1960s discovery of a Norse settlement dating c 1000 at L Anse aux Meadows Newfoundland partially corroborates accounts within the Icelandic sagas of Erik the Red s colonization of Greenland and his son Leif Erikson s subsequent exploration of a place he called Vinland In the 19th century amid a revival of interest in Norse culture Carl Christian Rafn and Benjamin Franklin DeCosta wrote works establishing that the Norse had preceded Columbus in colonizing the Americas Following this in 1874 Rasmus Bjorn Anderson argued that Columbus must have known of the North American continent before he started his voyage of discovery Most modern scholars doubt Columbus had knowledge of the Norse settlements in America with his arrival to the continent being most likely an independent discovery Europeans devised explanations for the origins of the Native Americans and their geographical distribution with narratives that often served to reinforce their own preconceptions built on ancient intellectual foundations In modern Latin America the non Native populations of some countries often demonstrate an ambiguous attitude toward the perspectives of indigenous peoples regarding the so called discovery by Columbus and the era of colonialism that followed In his 1960 monograph Mexican philosopher and historian Edmundo O Gorman explicitly rejects the Columbus discovery myth arguing that the idea that Columbus discovered America was a misleading legend fixed in the public mind through the works of American author Washington Irving during the 19th century O Gorman argues that to assert Columbus discovered America is to shape the facts concerning the events of 1492 to make them conform to an interpretation that arose many years later For him the Eurocentric view of the discovery of America sustains systems of domination in ways that favor Europeans In a 1992 article for The UNESCO Courier Felix Fernandez Shaw argues that the word discovery prioritizes European explorers as the heroes of the contact between the Old and New World He suggests that the word encounter is more appropriate being a more universal term which includes Native Americans in the narrative America as a distinct land The Columbus Monument in Columbus Circle New York City Historians have traditionally argued that Columbus remained convinced until his death that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia as he originally intended excluding arguments such as Anderson s On his third voyage he briefly referred to South America as a hitherto unknown continent while also rationalizing that it was the Earthly Paradise Eden located at the end of the Orient Columbus continued to claim in his later writings that he had reached Asia in a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI he asserts that Cuba is the east coast of Asia On the other hand in a document in the Book of Privileges 1502 Columbus refers to the New World as the Indias Occidentales West Indies which he says were unknown to all the world Shape of the Earth Columbus Lighthouse a Museum and Mausoleum in homage to Christopher Columbus in Santo Domingo Washington Irving s 1828 biography of Columbus popularized the idea that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because many Catholic theologians insisted that the Earth was flat but this is a popular misconception which can be traced back to 17th century Protestants campaigning against Catholicism In fact the spherical shape of the Earth had been known to scholars since antiquity and was common knowledge among sailors including Columbus Coincidentally the oldest surviving globe of the Earth the Erdapfel was made in 1492 just before Columbus s return to Europe from his first voyage As such it contains no sign of the Americas and yet demonstrates the common belief in a spherical Earth In 1492 Columbus correctly measured Polaris s diurnal motion around true north as having a diameter of almost 7 In 1498 while sailing west through the doldrums 8 north in July and again in August sailing the trade winds 13 north Columbus reported seeing Polaris with a diurnal motion of 10 in diameter He accounted for the shift by concluding that Earth s figure is pear shaped with the stalk portion comparing this to a woman s breast being nearest Heaven and upon which was centered the Earthly Paradise Although Columbus s later readings were incorrect 20th century satellite data happens to indicate that the Earth has a slight pear shape Criticism and defense Columbus has been criticized both for his brutality and for initiating the depopulation of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean whether by imported diseases or intentional violence According to scholars of Native American history George Tinker and Mark Freedman Columbus was responsible for creating a cycle of murder violence and slavery to maximize exploitation of the Caribbean islands resources and that Native deaths on the scale at which they occurred would not have been caused by new diseases alone Further they describe the proposition that disease and not genocide caused these deaths as American holocaust denial Historian Kris Lane disputes whether it is appropriate to use the term genocide when the atrocities were not Columbus s intent but resulted from his decrees family business goals and negligence Other scholars defend Columbus s actions or allege that the worst accusations against him are not based in fact while others claim that he has been blamed for events far beyond his own reach or knowledge As a result of the protests and riots that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 many public monuments of Christopher Columbus have been removed Brutality The remains of the pedestal base of the Columbus statue in the Baltimore inner harbor area The statue was thrown into the harbor on 4 July 2020 as part of the George Floyd protests Some historians have criticized Columbus for initiating the widespread colonization of the Americas and for abusing its native population On St Croix Columbus s friend Michele da Cuneo according to his own account kept an indigenous woman he captured whom Columbus gave to him then brutally raped her According to some historians the punishment for an indigenous person aged 14 and older failing to pay a hawk s bell or cascabela worth of gold dust every six months based on Bartolome de las Casas s account was cutting off the hands of those without tokens often leaving them to bleed to death Other historians dispute such accounts For example a study of Spanish archival sources showed that the cascabela quotas were imposed by Guarionex not Columbus and that there is no mention in the primary sources of punishment by cutting off hands for failing to pay Columbus had an economic interest in the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives and for that reason was not eager to baptize them which attracted criticism from some churchmen Consuelo Varela a Spanish historian stated that Columbus s government was characterized by a form of tyranny Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place Other historians have argued that some of the accounts of the brutality of Columbus and his brothers have been exaggerated as part of the Black Legend a historical tendency towards anti Spanish and anti Catholic sentiment in historical sources dating as far back as the 16th century which they speculate may continue to taint scholarship into the present day According to historian Emily Berquist Soule the immense Portuguese profits from the maritime trade in African slaves along the West African coast served as an inspiration for Columbus to create a counterpart of this apparatus in the New World using indigenous American slaves Historian William J Connell has argued that while Columbus brought the entrepreneurial form of slavery to the New World this was a phenomenon of the times further arguing that we have to be very careful about applying 20th century understandings of morality to the morality of the 15th century In a less popular defense of colonization Spanish ambassador es has argued Normally we melded with the cultures in America we stayed there we spread our language and culture and religion British historian Basil Davidson has dubbed Columbus the father of the slave trade citing the fact that the first license to ship enslaved Africans to the Caribbean was issued by the Catholic Monarchs in 1501 to the first royal governor of Hispaniola Nicolas de Ovando Depopulation Around the turn of the 21st century estimates for the pre Columbian population of Hispaniola ranged between 250 000 and two million but genetic analysis published in late 2020 suggests that smaller figures are more likely perhaps as low as 10 000 50 000 for Hispaniola and Puerto Rico combined Based on the previous figures of a few hundred thousand some have estimated that a third or more of the natives in Haiti were dead within the first two years of Columbus s governorship Contributors to depopulation included disease warfare and harsh enslavement Indirect evidence suggests that some serious illness may have arrived with the 1 500 colonists who accompanied Columbus second expedition in 1493 Charles C Mann writes that It was as if the suffering these diseases had caused in Eurasia over the past millennia were concentrated into the span of decades A third of the natives forced to work in gold and silver mines died every six months Within three to six decades the surviving Arawak population numbered only in the hundreds The indigenous population of the Americas overall is thought to have been reduced by about 90 in the century after Columbus s arrival Among indigenous peoples Columbus is often viewed as a key agent of genocide Samuel Eliot Morison a Harvard University historian and author of a multivolume biography on Columbus writes The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide According to Noble David Cook There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact He instead estimates that the death toll was caused by smallpox which may have caused a pandemic only after the arrival of Hernan Cortes in 1519 According to some estimates smallpox had an 80 90 fatality rate in Native American populations The natives had no acquired immunity to these new diseases and suffered high fatalities There is also evidence that they had poor diets and were overworked Historian Andres Resendez of University of California Davis says the available evidence suggests slavery has emerged as major killer of the indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550 more so than diseases such as smallpox influenza and malaria He says that indigenous populations did not experience a rebound like European populations did following the Black Death because unlike the latter a large portion of the former were subjected to deadly forced labor in the mines The diseases that devastated the Native Americans came in multiple waves at different times sometimes as much as centuries apart which would mean that survivors of one disease may have been killed by others preventing the population from recovering Historian David Stannard describes the depopulation of the indigenous Americans as neither inadvertent nor inevitable saying it was the result of both disease and intentional genocide Navigational expertise Biographers and historians have a wide range of opinions about Columbus s expertise and experience navigating and captaining ships One scholar lists some European works ranging from the 1890s to 1980s that support Columbus s experience and skill as among the best in Genoa while listing some American works over a similar timeframe that portray the explorer as an untrained entrepreneur having only minor crew or passenger experience prior to his noted journeys According to Morison Columbus s success in utilizing the trade winds might owe significantly to luck Physical appearanceThe Virgin of the Navigators by Alejo Fernandez 1531 1536 Close up for Fernandez s depiction of Columbus Contemporary descriptions of Columbus including those by his son Fernando and Bartolome de las Casas describe him as taller than average with light skin often sunburnt blue or hazel eyes high cheekbones and freckled face an aquiline nose and blond to reddish hair and beard until about the age of 30 when it began to whiten One Spanish commentator described his eyes using the word garzos now usually translated as light blue but it seems to have indicated light grey green or hazel eyes to Columbus s contemporaries The word rubios can mean blond fair or ruddy Although an abundance of artwork depicts Columbus no authentic contemporary portrait is known A well known image of Columbus is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo which has been reproduced in many textbooks It agrees with descriptions of Columbus in that it shows a large man with auburn hair but the painting dates from 1519 so cannot have been painted from life Furthermore the inscription identifying the subject as Columbus was probably added later and the face shown differs from that of other images Sometime between 1531 and 1536 Alejo Fernandez painted an altarpiece The Virgin of the Navigators that includes a depiction of Columbus The painting was commissioned for a chapel in Seville s Casa de Contratacion House of Trade in the Alcazar of Seville and remains there At the World s Columbian Exposition in 1893 71 alleged portraits of Columbus were displayed most of them did not match contemporary descriptions See alsoChristopher Columbus in fiction Columbus Day Egg of Columbus Christopher Columbus House History of the Americas Peopling of the Americas Lugares colombinosNotesThere are no known authentic portraits of Columbus In other relevant languages Italian Cristoforo Colombo kriˈstɔːforo koˈlombo Ligurian Cristoffa C or ombo kɾiˈʃtɔffa kuˈɾuŋbu ˈkuŋbu Spanish Cristobal Colon kɾisˈtobal koˈlon Portuguese Cristovao Colombo kɾiʃˈtɔvɐ w kuˈlobu Catalan Cristofor or Cristofol Colom kɾisˈtɔfuɾ kuˈlom ful k Latin Christophorus Columbus Though the modern state of Italy had yet to be established the Latin equivalent of the term Italian had been in use for natives of the region since antiquity most scholars believe Columbus was born in Genoa In an account of his fourth voyage Columbus wrote that Jerusalem and Mount Sion must be rebuilt by Christian hands Ferdinand later claimed credit for being the principal cause why those islands were discovered Felipe Fernandez Armesto points out that Columbus briefly described South America as an unknown continent after seeing the mainland for the first time Vespucci seems to have modeled his naming of the new world after Columbus s description of this discovery Further mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller eventually retracted his naming of the continent after Vespucci seemingly after it came to light that a claim that Vespucci visited the mainland before Columbus had been falsified In his new map Waldseemuller labelled the continent as Terra Incognita unknown land noting that it had been discovered by Columbus This map is based on the premise that Columbus first landed at Plana Cays The island considered by Samuel Eliot Morison to be the most likely location of first contact is the easternmost land touching the top edge of this image According to Samuel Eliot Morison San Salvador Island renamed from Watling s Island in 1925 in the belief that it was Columbus s San Salvador is the only island fitting the position indicated by Columbus s journal Other candidates are the Grand Turk Cat Island Rum Cay Samana Cay or Mayaguana Torres spoke Hebrew and some Arabic the latter was then believed to be the mother tongue of all languages Omitted from this image Columbus returned to Guadeloupe at the end of his second voyage before sailing back to Spain The tribute system had all but collapsed by 1497 Bobadilla s 48 page report derived from the testimonies of 23 people who had seen or heard about the treatment meted out by Columbus and his brothers had originally been lost for centuries but was rediscovered in 2005 in the Spanish archives in Valladolid It contained an account of Columbus s seven year reign as the first governor of the Indies Consuelo Varela a Spanish historian states Even those who loved him Columbus had to admit the atrocities that had taken place DNA from Columbus s presumed remains in Seville were to be used to conduct further ancestral studies with results initially expected in 2021 This same year dust collected from these remains was placed in a locket which was placed inside the stern of a silver model caravel Two tiny portions of dust from the same source were placed in separate vials Osborne erroneously cited the bullet as evidence that the remains belonged to Columbus England s Francis Drake a subsequent infamous explorer took the ball of an arquebus in the Indies In his 2008 book author Tony Horwitz recounts his attempt to see these remains which are apparently briefly displayed in their crypt behind a sheet of glass once a year on Columbus Day See Columbus Monument Barcelona 1888 Monument to the Discoverers 1892 Monument to Columbus Madrid 1892 Monument to Isabella the Catholic Granada 1892 Monument to Columbus Salamanca 1893 Monument to Columbus Valladolid inaugurated in 1905 but whose inception dates to an earlier date and a tentative location in Spanish Havana Cuneo wrote While I was in the boat I captured a very beautiful Carib woman whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked as was their custom I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire She was unwilling and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun But to cut a long story short I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears Eventually we came to such terms I assure you that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores Author Tony Horwitz notes that this is the first recorded instance of sexuality between a European and Native American Bartolome de las Casas estimated that there were three to four million Tainos in Hispaniola and said 500 000 Lucayans were killed in the Bahamas Most modern historians reject his figures ReferencesLester Paul M January 1993 Looks are deceiving The portraits of Christopher Columbus Visual Anthropology 5 3 4 211 227 doi 10 1080 08949468 1993 9966590 ISSN 0894 9468 Columbus Dictionary com Unabridged Online n d Delaney Carol 2011 Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem Free Press Simon and Schuster p 74 ISBN 978 1 4391 0237 4 Flint Valerie I J 16 May 2021 Christopher Columbus Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 2 January 2022 Fernandez Armesto Felipe 2010 Columbus on Himself Hackett p 270 ISBN 978 1 60384 317 1 The date of Fernando s birth November 1488 gives a terminus ante quem early in that year for the start of Columbus s liaison with Beatriz Enriquez She was of peasant parentage but when Columbus met her was the ward of a well to do relative in Cordoba A meat business gave her income of her own mentioned in the only other record of Columbus s solicitude for her a letter to Diego written in 1502 just before departure on the fourth Atlantic crossing in which the explorer enjoins his son to take Beatriz Enriquez in your care for love of me as you your own mother Varela Cristobal Colon p 309 Taviani Paolo Emilio 2016 Beatriz de Arana In Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer pp 24 25 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Columbus never married Beatriz When he returned from the first voyage he was given the greatest of honors and elevated to the highest position in Spain Because of his discovery he became one of the most illustrious persons at the Spanish court and had to submit like all the great persons of the time to customary legal restrictions on matters of marriage and extramarital relations The Alphonsine laws forbade extramarital relations of concubinage for illustrious people king princes dukes counts marquis with plebeian women if they themselves were or their forefathers had been of inferior social condition Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 126 Dowlah Caf 2020 Cross Border Labor Mobility Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 3 030 36506 6 Most researchers however trace the beginning of the early modern era to Christopher Columbus s discovery of the Americas in the 1490s Mills Keneth and Taylor William B Colonial Spanish America A Documentary History p 36 SR Books 1998 ISBN 0 8420 2573 1 Praga Corinna Monac Laura 1992 Una Giornata nella Citta A Day in the City in Italian Genoa Sagep Editrice p 14 Preste Alfredo Alessandro Torti Remo Viazzi 1997 Casa di Colombo Sei itinerari in Portoria Six itineraries in Portoria PDF in Italian Genova Grafiche Frassicomo Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Edwards J 2014 Ferdinand and Isabella Routledge p 118 ISBN 978 1 317 89345 5 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 91 Gilman D C Peck H T Colby F M eds 1905 Columbus Diego brother New International Encyclopedia 1st ed New York Dodd Mead the names Giacomo and Diego are cognates along with James all sharing a common origin See Behind the Name Mike Campbell pages Giacomo Diego and James All retrieved 3 February 2017 Bergreen 2011 p 56 King Ross 2021 The Bookseller of Florence The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance Atlantic Monthly Press p 264 ISBN 978 0 8021 5853 6 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 96 Galante John Starosta 2022 On the Other Shore The Atlantic Worlds of Italians in South America During the Great War Univ of Nebraska Press p 13 ISBN 978 1 4962 2958 8 Ligurian pronunciation kriˈʃtɔffa kuˈɹuŋbu Consulta Ligure 1982 Vocabolario delle parlate liguri Vocabulary of Ligurian Speech Specialized Vocabulary in Italian Sage ISBN 978 8 8705 8044 0 Sanchez Joseph P Gurule Jerry L Broughton William H 1990 Bibliografia Colombina 1492 1990 Books Articles and Other Publications on the Life and Times of Christopher Columbus National Park Service Spanish Colonial Research Center p ix Bedini Silvio A 2016 Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer p viii ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Wilgus Alva Curtis 1973 Latin America 1492 1942 A Guide to Historical and Cultural Development Before World War II Scarecrow p 71 ISBN 978 0 8108 0595 8 in Portuguese Armas e Trofeus Revista de Historia Heraldica Genealogia e Arte 1994 VI serie Tomo VI pp 5 52 Retrieved 21 November 2011 verification needed Davidson 1997 p 3 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 85 Lyon Eugene 1992 Navigation and Ships in the Age of Columbus In McGovern James R ed The World of Columbus Mercer University Press pp 90 91 ISBN 978 0 86554 414 7 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 93 Vigneras L A 2016 Columbus in Portugal In Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer p 175 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 It is most probable that Columbus visited Bristol where he was introduced to English commerce with Iceland Ureland P Sture 2011 Introduction In Ureland P Sture Clarkson Iain eds Language Contact across the North Atlantic Proceedings of the Working Groups held at the University College Galway Ireland 1992 and the University of Goteborg Sweden 1993 Walter de Gruyter p 14 ISBN 978 3 11 092965 2 Graves Charles 1949 Ireland Revisited Hutchinson p 151 Enterline James Robert 2003 Erikson Eskimos amp Columbus Medieval European Knowledge of America Johns Hopkins University Press p 247 ISBN 978 0 8018 7547 2 Some writers have suggested that it was during this visit to Iceland that Columbus heard of land in the west Keeping the source of his information secret they say he concocted a plan to sail westward Certainly the knowledge was generally available without attending any saga telling parties That this knowledge reached Columbus seems unlikely however for later when trying to get backing for his project he went to great lengths to unearth even the slightest scraps of information that would add to the plausibility of his scheme Knowledge of the Norse explorations could have helped Paolucci Anne Paolucci Henry 1992 Columbus America and the World Council on National Literatures p 140 ISBN 978 0 918680 33 4 Many Columbists have doubted that Columbus could ever have gone to Iceland Kolodny Annette 2012 In Search of First Contact The Vikings of Vinland the Peoples of the Dawnland and the Anglo American Anxiety of Discovery Duke University Press pp 226 227 ISBN 978 0 8223 5286 0 Quinn David B 1992 Columbus and the North England Iceland and Ireland The William and Mary Quarterly 49 2 278 297 ISSN 0043 5597 JSTOR 2947273 Fernandez Armesto Felipe 1991 Columbus Oxford University Press p xvii ISBN 978 0 19 215898 7 Freitas Antonio Maria de Maney Regina 1893 The Wife of Columbus With Genealogical Tree of the Perestrello and Moniz Families New York Stettinger Lambert amp Co p 32 Alessandrini Nunziatella 1 January 2012 Os Perestrello uma familia de Piacenza no Imperio Portugues seculo XVI The Perestrellos A Piacenza family in the Portuguese Empire 16th century in Portuguese Lisbon Universidade NOVA de Lisboa p 90 Finally the most famous son of Filippone Bartolomeu Perestrello I who participated in the rediscovery of the island of Madeira in 1418 and was captain and feitor administrator of Porto Santo until by a letter of 1 November 1446 from Infante Henrique he became the first donatary captain of the island a privilege that continued until the 19th century with the last donatary captain Manuel da Camara Bettencourt Perestrello in 1814 Suranyi Anna 2015 The Atlantic Connection A History of the Atlantic World 1450 1900 Routledge p 17 ISBN 978 1 317 50066 7 Dyson 1991 p 63 Taviani Paolo Emilio 2016 Beatriz Arana In Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer p 24 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Taviani Beatriz Arana in The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia vol 1 pp 24 25 Morgan Edmund S October 2009 Columbus Confusion About the New World Smithsonian Magazine Davidann Jon Gilbert Marc Jason 2019 Cross Cultural Encounters in Modern World History 1453 Present Routledge p 39 ISBN 978 0 429 75924 6 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 108 Boxer Charles Ralph 1967 The Christian Century in Japan 1549 1650 University of California Press Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 227 Murphy amp Coye 2013 Muzio Tim Di 2017 The Tragedy of Human Development A Genealogy of Capital as Power Rowman amp Littlefield p 58 ISBN 978 1 78348 715 8 Echevarria Roberto Gonzalez Pupo Walker Enrique 1996 The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature Cambridge University Press p 63 ISBN 978 0 521 34069 4 Johanyak D Lim W 2010 The English Renaissance Orientalism and the Idea of Asia Springer p 136 ISBN 978 0 230 10622 2 King William Casey 2013 Ambition A History From Vice to Virtue Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 18984 1 Sheehan Kevin Joseph 2008 Iberian Asia the strategies of Spanish and Portuguese empire building 1540 1700 Thesis OCLC 892835540 ProQuest 304693901 page needed Delaney Carol 8 March 2006 Columbus s Ultimate Goal Jerusalem PDF Comparative Studies in Society and History 48 2 Cambridge University Press 260 92 doi 10 1017 S0010417506000119 JSTOR 3879352 S2CID 144148903 Archived from the original PDF on 26 February 2020 Hamdani Abbas 1979 Columbus and the Recovery of Jerusalem Journal of the American Oriental Society 99 1 Ann Arbor Michigan American Oriental Society 39 48 JSTOR 598947 Murphy amp Coye 2013 p 244 Willoz Egnor Jeanne 2013 Mariner s Astrolabe Institute of Navigation Archived from the original on 29 October 2013 Retrieved 5 July 2021 Smith Ben 1 January 2002 An astrolabe from Passa Pau Cape Verde Islands International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 31 1 99 107 Bibcode 2002IJNAr 31 99S doi 10 1006 ijna 2002 1021 Ridpath Ian 2001 The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Universe New York Watson Guptill p 31 ISBN 978 0 8230 2512 1 Sagan Carl 1980 Cosmos New York Random House pp 34 35 ISBN 978 0 394 50294 6 Retrieved 20 February 2022 Freely John 2013 Before Galileo The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe New York Abrams Books p 36 ISBN 978 1 4683 0850 1 Marco Polo et le Livre des Merveilles p 37 ISBN 978 2 35404 007 9 Randles W G L January 1990 The Evaluation of Columbus India Project by Portuguese and Spanish Cosmographers in the Light of the Geographical Science of the Period PDF Imago Mundi 42 1 50 doi 10 1080 03085699008592691 ISSN 0308 5694 S2CID 129588714 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Khairunnahar Mahmud Khandakar Hasan Islam Md Ariful 2017 Error calculation of the selected maps used in the Great Voyage of Christopher Columbus The Jahangirnagar Review Part II XLI Jahangirnagar University 67 ISSN 1682 7422 Retrieved 9 January 2022 McCormick Douglas 9 October 2012 Columbus s Geographical Miscalculations IEEE Spectrum Retrieved 9 January 2022 Gunn Geoffrey C 2018 Overcoming Ptolemy The Revelation of an Asian World Region Rowman amp Littlefield pp 77 78 ISBN 978 1 4985 9014 3 Constructed on a framework of latitude and longitude the Ptolemy revival map projections revealed the extent of the known world in relation to the whole Typically they displayed a Eurasian landmass extending through 180 of longitude from a prime meridian in the west variously the Canary Islands or Cape Verde to a location in the Far East Zacher Christian K 2016 Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer pp 676 677 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Dilke O A W 2016 Marinus of Tyre In Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer p 452 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Morison Samuel Eliot 1974 The European Discovery of America The Southern Voyages A D 1492 1616 Oxford University Press p 31 ISBN 978 0 19 501377 1 Butel Paul 2002 The Atlantic Routledge p 47 ISBN 978 1 134 84305 3 Morison 1991 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 110 Edson Evelyn 2007 The World Map 1300 1492 The Persistence of Tradition and Transformation JHU Press p 205 ISBN 978 0 8018 8589 1 Taylor Alan 2002 American Colonies The Settling of North America The Penguin History of the United States Volume 1 Penguin p 34 ISBN 978 0 14 200210 0 Jensen De Lamar 1992 Renaissance Europe 2nd ed Lexington Massachusetts D C Heath and Company p 341 ISBN 978 0 669 20007 2 Gomez Nicolas Wey 2008 The Tropics of Empire Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies MIT Press p 37 ISBN 978 0 262 23264 7 It is also known that wind patterns and water currents in the Atlantic were crucial factors for launching an outward passage from the Canaries Columbus understood that his chance of crossing the ocean was significantly greater just beyond the Canary calms where he expected to catch the northeastern trade winds although as some authors have pointed out westing from the Canaries instead of dipping farther south was hardly an optimal sailing choice since Columbus s fleet was bound to lose as soon it did the northeasterlies in the mid Atlantic Morison 1991 p 132 Morison 1991 p 314 Rickey V Frederick 1992 How Columbus Encountered America Mathematics Magazine 65 4 219 225 ISSN 0025 570X JSTOR 2691445 Morison 1991 pp 198 199 Rickey V Frederick 1992 How Columbus Encountered America Mathematics Magazine 65 4 224 ISSN 0025 570X JSTOR 2691445 Morison 1991 pp 68 70 Pinheiro Marques Alfredo 2016 Diogo Cao In Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer p 97 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Symcox Geoffrey Sullivan Blair 2016 Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies A Brief History with Documents Springer pp 11 12 ISBN 978 1 137 08059 2 in 1488 Columbus returned to Portugal and once again put his project to Joao II Again it was rejected In historical hindsight this looks like a fatally missed opportunity for the Portuguese crown but the king had good reason not to accept Columbus s project His panel of experts cast grave doubts on the assumptions behind it noting that Columbus had underestimated the distance to China And then in December 1488 Bartolomeu Dias returned from his voyage around the Cape of Good Hope Certain now that they had found the sea route to India and the east Joao II and his advisers had no further interest in what probably seemed to them a hare brained and risky plan Dyson 1991 p 84 Durant Will The Story of Civilization vol vi The Reformation Chapter XIII p 260 Dyson 1991 pp 86 92 Dyson 1991 p 92 Morrison Geoffrey 15 October 2015 Exploring The Alhambra Palace And Fortress In Granada Spain Forbes Archived from the original on 16 October 2015 Retrieved 24 May 2021 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 pp 131 132 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 pp 131 32 Lantigua David M 2020 Infidels and Empires in a New World Order Early Modern Spanish Contributions to International Legal Thought Cambridge University Press p 53 ISBN 978 1 108 49826 5 The Capitulaciones de Santa Fe appointed Columbus as the official viceroy of the Crown which entitled him by virtue of royal concession to all the honors and jurisdictions accorded the conquerors of the Canaries Usage of the terms to discover descubrir and to acquire ganar were legal cues indicating the goals of Spanish possession through occupancy and conquest Morison 1991 p 662 Gonzalez Sanchez Carlos Alberto 2006 Capitulations of Santa Fe In Kaufman Will Francis John Michael eds Iberia and the Americas Culture Politics and History a Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia ABC CLIO pp 175 176 ISBN 978 1 85109 421 9 Sanchez Barba Mario Hernandez 2006 Cristobal Colon en presencia de la muerte 1505 1506 PDF Cuadernos Monograficos del Instituto de Historia y Cultural Naval 50 Madrid 51 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Marquez Luis Arranz 1982 Don Diego Colon almirante virrey y gobernador de las Indias in Spanish Editorial CSIC CSIC Press p 175 note 4 ISBN 978 84 00 05156 3 McDonald Mark P 2005 Ferdinand Columbus Renaissance Collector 1488 1539 British Museum Press p 41 ISBN 978 0 7141 2644 9 Specht Joshua Stockland Etienne 2017 The Columbian Exchange CRC Press p 23 ISBN 978 1 351 35121 8 Morison 1991 p 381 Horodowich Elizabeth 2017 Italy and the New World In Horodowich Elizabeth Markey Lia eds The New World in Early Modern Italy 1492 1750 Cambridge University Press p 23 ISBN 978 1 108 50923 7 Cohen Jonathan The Naming of America Umc sunysb edu Archived from the original on 29 October 2013 Retrieved 10 April 2011 Fernandez Armesto Felipe 2007 Amerigo The Man Who Gave His Name to America 1st ed New York Random House pp 143 144 186 187 ISBN 978 1 4000 6281 2 OCLC 608082366 Pickering Keith A August 1994 Columbus s Plana landfall Evidence for the Plana Cays as Columbus s San Salvador PDF DIO the International Journal of Scientific History 4 1 13 32 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Retrieved 16 March 2009 Morison 1991 p 228 Dyson 1991 p 102 The Original Nina The Nina amp Pinta British Virgin Islands The Columbus Foundation Archived from the original on 26 May 2015 Retrieved 12 October 2013 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 pp 146 147 Nicholls Steve 2009 Paradise Found Nature in America at the Time of Discovery University of Chicago Press pp 103 104 ISBN 978 0 226 58340 2 Morison 1991 p 226 Lopez 1990 p 14 Columbus amp Toscanelli 2010 p 35 Lopez 1990 p 15 Bergreen 2011 p 99 William D Phillips Jr Columbus Christopher in David Buisseret ed The Oxford Companion to World Exploration Oxford University Press online edition 2012 Dunn Oliver Kelley James E Jr 1989 The Diario of Christopher Columbus s First Voyage to America 1492 1493 University of Oklahoma Press pp 67 69 ISBN 978 0 8061 2384 4 Hoxie Frederick 1996 Encyclopedia of North American Indians Boston Houghton Mifflin p 568 ISBN 978 0 395 66921 1 Keegan William F 2015 Mobility and Disdain Columbus and Cannibals in the Land of Cotton Ethnohistory 62 1 1 15 doi 10 1215 00141801 2821644 Zinn 2003 pp 1 22 Columbus 1991 p 87 Or these people are very simple as regards the use of arms for with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them Columbus amp Toscanelli 2010 p 41 Figueredo D H 2008 A Brief History of the Caribbean Infobase p 9 ISBN 978 1 4381 0831 5 Deagan Kathleen A 2008 Columbus s Outpost Among the Tainos Spain and America at La Isabela 1493 1498 Yale University Press p 32 ISBN 978 0 300 13389 9 Hunter Douglas 2012 The Race to the New World Christopher Columbus John Cabot and a Lost History of Discovery Macmillan p 62 ISBN 978 0 230 34165 4 Magasich Airola Jorge Beer Jean Marc de 2007 America Magica When Renaissance Europe Thought It Had Conquered Paradise 2nd ed Anthem p 61 ISBN 978 1 84331 292 5 Anderson Cordova Karen F 2017 Surviving Spanish Conquest Indian Fight Flight and Cultural Transformation in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico University of Alabama Press p 55 ISBN 978 0 8173 1946 5 Murphy amp Coye 2013 pp 31 32 Morison 1991 p 145 Deagan Kathleen Cruxent Jose Maria 1993 From Contact to Criollos The Archaeology of Spanish Colonization in Hispaniola PDF Proceedings of the British Academy 81 73 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Maclean Frances January 2008 The Lost Fort of Columbus Smithsonian Magazine Retrieved 24 January 2008 Guzauskyte Evelina 2014 Christopher Columbus s Naming in the diarios of the Four Voyages 1492 1504 A Discourse of Negotiation University of Toronto Press p 96 ISBN 978 1 4426 6825 6 Fuson Robert The Log of Christopher Columbus Camden International Marine 1987 173 Yewell John Dodge Chris 1992 Confronting Columbus An Anthology Jefferson NC McFarland amp Co p 33 ISBN 978 0 89950 696 8 Retrieved 28 February 2016 Markham Clements R 1893 The Journal of Christopher Columbus London Hakluyt Society pp 159 160 Retrieved 28 February 2016 Dunn Oliver Kelley James E Jr 1989 The Diario of Christopher Columbus s First Voyage to America 1492 1493 University of Oklahoma Press p 341 ISBN 978 0 8061 2384 4 Catz Rebecca 1990 Columbus in the Azores Portuguese Studies 6 19 21 JSTOR 41104900 Kamen Henry 2014 Spain 1469 1714 A Society of Conflict Routledge p 51 ISBN 978 1 317 75500 5 Fernandez Armesto Felipe 2007 Amerigo The Man Who Gave His Name to America New York Random House ISBN 978 1 4000 6281 2 Caballos 2004 Ostapkowicz 2023 pp 314 316 Ife Barry 1992 Early Modern Spain Introduction to the Letters from America King s College London Archived from the original on 24 April 2021 Retrieved 15 January 2022 Diffie Bailey Wallys 1977 Foundations of the Portuguese Empire 1415 1580 Winius George D Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press p 173 ISBN 0 8166 0782 6 OCLC 3488742 Veciana Suarez Ana 22 January 2017 This college donation is truly historic And it s not just the artifacts involved Miami Herald Archived from the original on 23 February 2017 Retrieved 22 February 2017 Morison 1991 pp 498 501 Deagan Kathleen A Cruxent Jose Maria 2008 Archaeology at La Isabela America s First European Town Yale University Press p xxxix 5 ISBN 978 0 300 13391 2 Bedini Silvio A 2016 Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer p 705 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Morison Samuel Eliot 1986 The Great Explorers The European Discovery of America Oxford University Press pp 440 448 449 ISBN 978 0 19 504222 1 Morison 1991 pp 423 427 Antonio de la Cova The Spanish Conquest of the Tainos Latin American Studies Antonio Rafael de la Cova Retrieved 10 July 2011 Las Casas Bartolome Las Casas on Columbus Background and the 2nd and 4th Voyages consisting of a section of History of the Indies by Las Casas and commentary Translated and Edited by Nigel Griffen Brepols Publishers Turnhout Belgium 1999 original work 1535 pp 96 97 Teeth Of Columbus s Crew Flesh Out Tale Of New World Discovery ScienceDaily 20 March 2009 Austin Alchon Suzanne 2003 A Pest in the Land New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective University of New Mexico Press p 62 ISBN 978 0 8263 2871 7 Retrieved 28 February 2016 Las Casas Las Casas on Columbus Background and the 2nd and 4th Voyages pp 118 130 Las Casas Las Casas on Columbus Background and the 2nd and 4th Voyages pp 117 118 Las Casas Las Casas on Columbus Background and the 2nd and 4th Voyages pp 130 134 137 138 147 149 Yeager Timothy J 3 March 2009 Encomienda or Slavery The Spanish Crown s Choice of Labor Organization in Sixteenth Century Spanish America The Journal of Economic History 55 4 842 859 doi 10 1017 S0022050700042182 JSTOR 2123819 S2CID 155030781 Lyle N McAlister 1984 Spain and Portugal in the New World 1492 1700 University of Minnesota Press p 164 ISBN 0 8166 1218 8 De Cuneo Michele Michel de Cuneo s Letter on the Second Voyage 28 October 1495 Journal and other Documents in the Life of Christopher Columbus Edited and Translated by Samuel Eliot Morison New York The Heritage Press 1963 p 215 Colon Ferdinand The Life of The Admiral Christopher Columbus by His Son Ferdinand Edited and translated by Benjamin Keen New Jersey Rutgers University Press 1959 Originally published 1571 p 129 Morison 1991 pp 482 85 Olson Julius E and Edward G Bourne editors The Northmen Columbus and Cabot 985 1503 in The Voyages of the Northmen The Voyages of Columbus and of John Cabot New York Charles Scribner s Sons 1906 pp 369 383 Stannard David E 1993 American Holocaust The Conquest of the New World Oxford University Press p 69 ISBN 978 0 19 983898 1 Koning Hans Columbus His Enterprise Exploding the Myth New York Monthly Review Press 1976 83 83 Deagan Kathleen A Cruxent Jose Maria 2008 Columbus s Outpost Among the Tainos Spain and America at La Isabela 1493 1498 New Haven CT Yale University Press p 62 ISBN 978 0 300 13389 9 Dyson 1991 pp 183 190 Cohen Rhaina Penman Maggie Boyle Tara Vedantam Shankar 20 November 2017 An American Secret The Untold Story Of Native American Enslavement NPR Archived from the original on 21 November 2017 Retrieved 25 May 2021 Fernandez Armesto Felipe 2007 Amerigo The Man Who Gave His Name to America New York Random House pp 54 55 ISBN 978 1 4000 6281 2 Morison 1991 p 497 Cook Noble David 1998 Born to Die Disease and New World Conquest 1492 1650 Cambridge University Press p 36 ISBN 978 0 521 62730 6 Saunders Nicholas J 2005 The Peoples of the Caribbean An Encyclopedia of Archaeology and Traditional Culture ABC CLIO pp 75 76 ISBN 978 1 57607 701 6 Flint Valerie Irene Jane 2017 The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus Princeton University Press p 158 ISBN 978 1 4008 8717 0 Fuson Robert H 1997 The Columbian Voyages In Allen John Logan ed North American Exploration University of Nebraska Press pp 180 181 ISBN 978 0 8032 1015 8 Bergreen 2011 p 249 Zerubavel Eviatar 2003 Terra Cognita The Mental Discovery of America Transaction Publishers pp 90 91 ISBN 978 0 7658 0987 2 Cervantes Fernando 2021 Conquistadores A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest Penguin p 41 ISBN 978 1 101 98128 3 Bergreen 2011 p 258 Morison Samuel Eliot Obregon Mauricio 1964 The Caribbean as Columbus Saw it Little Brown p 11 Bergreen 2011 pp 284 285 Brink Christopher 2019 Christopher Columbus Controversial Explorer of the Americas Cavendish Square p 78 Hofmann Heinz 1994 Columbus in Neo Latin Epic Poetry In Haase Wolfgang Meyer Reinhold eds The Classical Tradition and the Americas European Images of the Americas and the Classical Tradition 2 pts Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 011572 7 Phillips amp Phillips 1992 p 125 Bergreen 2011 pp 276 277 Tremlett Giles 7 August 2006 Lost document reveals Columbus as tyrant of the Caribbean The Guardian Retrieved 16 May 2013 Bergreen 2011 pp 283 Columbus Controversy A amp E Television Networks Retrieved 12 August 2013 Hale Edward Everett 2021 The Life of Christopher Columbus Prabhat Prakashan Columbus Christopher 2010 Select Letters of Christopher Columbus With Other Original Documents Relating to his Four Voyages to the New World Richard Henry Major Diego Alvarez Chanca Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 511 70808 4 Felipe Fernandez Armesto 2010 Columbus on himself Christopher Columbus Indianapolis Hackett Pub Co p 186 ISBN 978 1 60384 317 1 OCLC 794493189 Bobadilla was prejudiced in advance by what he heard or what the monarchs relayed from Columbus detractors HIs brief was to conduct a judicial inquiry into Columbus conduct an unjust proceeding in the Admiral s submission since Bobadilla had a vested interest in an outcome that would keep him in power Motivated by self interest or excessive zeal Bobadilla clapped Columbus in irons with his brothers gathered depositions against them and shipped them back to Spain National Association of Scholars Remembering Columbus Blinded by Politics by Robert Carle www nas org Retrieved 18 June 2020 Cervantes Fernando 2021 Conquistadores A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest New York Penguin pp 46 47 ISBN 978 1 101 98128 3 Bergreen 2011 p 276 Guzauskyte Evelina 2014 Christopher Columbus s Naming in the diarios of the Four Voyages 1492 1504 A Discourse of Negotiation University of Toronto Press p 179 ISBN 978 1 4426 6825 6 Cervantes Fernando 2021 Conquistadores a new history of Spanish discovery and conquest New York Penguin ISBN 978 1 101 98126 9 Noble David Cook Nicolas de Ovando in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture vol 4 p 254 New York Charles Scribner s Sons 1996 Leon Istvan Szaszdi 1 January 2012 Castilian Justice and Columbian Injustice The end of the Columbian Government in Hispaniola Journal on European History of Law 3 2 9 Varela Consuelo Aguirre Isabel 2006 La caida de Cristobal Colon el juicio de Bobadilla in Spanish Marcial Pons Historia p 175 ISBN 978 84 96467 28 6 Some scholars including Sauer say the fleet sailed 11 May Cook says 9 May Sauer Carl Ortwin 2008 The Early Spanish Main Cambridge University Press pp 121 122 ISBN 978 0 521 08848 0 Cook Noble David 1998 Born to Die Disease and New World Conquest 1492 1650 Cambridge University Press p 46 ISBN 978 0 521 62730 6 Bergreen 2011 pp 288 289 302 303 Guzauskyte Evelina 2014 Christopher Columbus s Naming in the diarios of the Four Voyages 1492 1504 A Discourse of Negotiation University of Toronto Press p 185 ISBN 978 1 4426 6825 6 Bedini Silvio A 2016 Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer p 200 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Armas Antonio Rumeu de 1985 Nueva luz sobre las capitulaciones de Santa Fe de 1492 concertadas entre los Reyes Catolicos y Cristobal Colon estudio institucional y diplomatico in Spanish Editorial CSIC CSIC Press p 201 ISBN 978 84 00 05961 3 Colindres Enrique Ortez 1975 Integracion Politica de Centroamerica in Spanish Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana p 20 El 14 de agosto de 1502 Cristobal Colon descubrio Punta Caxinas hoy Punta Castilla o Cabo de Honduras Calvo Alfredo Castillero 2004 Historia general de Panama Tomo 1 Las sociedades originarias El orden colonial Tomo 2 El orden colonial in Spanish Comite Nacional del Centenario de la Republica p 86 ISBN 978 9962 02 581 8 Bedini Silvio A 2016 Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer pp 720 724 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Stirling Matthew Williams Stirling Marion 1964 Archeological Notes on Almirante Bay Bocas Del Toro Panama U S Government Printing Office Bergreen 2011 p 330 Bergreen 2011 p 330 332 Mendez Diego 2020 VIII Shipwrecked by Worms Saved by Canoe The Last Voyage of Columbus In Roorda Paul ed The Ocean Reader History Culture Politics Duke University Press p 300 doi 10 1515 9781478007456 065 ISBN 978 1 4780 0745 6 S2CID 241132438 Vigneras Louis Andre 1 November 1978 Diego Mendez Secretary of Christopher Columbus and Alguacil Mayor of Santo Domingo A Biographical Sketch Hispanic American Historical Review 58 4 680 doi 10 1215 00182168 58 4 676 ISSN 0018 2168 Retrieved 26 January 2022 Hakim Joy 2002 The First Americans Oxford University Press p 85 ISBN 978 0 19 515319 4 Clayton J Drees The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal 1300 1500 a Biographical Dictionary 2001 p 511 Kadir Djelal 1992 IV Charting the Conquest Columbus and the Ends of the Earth Europe s Prophetic Rhetoric as Conquering Ideology Berkeley University of California Press p 67 Rivera Luis N Pagan Luis Rivera 1992 A Violent Evangelism The Political and Religious Conquest of the Americas Westminster John Knox Press p 5 ISBN 978 0 664 25367 7 Watts Pauline Moffitt 1985 Prophecy and Discovery On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus s Enterprise of the Indies The American Historical Review 90 1 92 ISSN 0002 8762 JSTOR 1860749 Christopher Columbus Suffered From a Fatal Form of Arthritis Press release University of Maryland School of Medicine 6 May 2005 Archived from the original on 23 January 2018 Hoenig Leonard J 1 February 1992 The Arthritis of Christopher Columbus Archives of Internal Medicine 152 2 274 277 doi 10 1001 archinte 1992 00400140028008 PMID 1472175 Arnett F Merrill C Albardaner Francesc Mackowiak P September 2006 A Mariner with Crippling Arthritis and Bleeding Eyes The American Journal of the Medical Sciences 332 3 125 doi 10 1097 00000441 200609000 00005 PMID 16969141 S2CID 6358022 Tarver H Micheal Slape Emily 2016 Tarver H Micheal Slape Emily eds The Spanish Empire A Historical Encyclopedia 2 volumes A Historical Encyclopedia ABC CLIO p 143 ISBN 978 1 61069 422 3 Esclarecen causas de muerte de Cristobal Colon El Universal in Spanish 25 February 2007 Retrieved 2 February 2022 Scott Ian C Galloway James B Scott David L 2015 Inflammatory Arthritis in Clinical Practice Springer p 4 ISBN 978 1 4471 6648 1 Ritchlin Christopher T FitzGerald Oliver 2007 Psoriatic and Reactive Arthritis A Companion to Rheumatology Elsevier Health Sciences p 132 ISBN 978 0 323 03622 1 Cuartero y Huerta 1988 p 74 Kadir Djelal 1992 Chapter VII Making Ends Meet The Dire Unction of Prophecy Columbus and the Ends of the Earth Europe s Prophetic Rhetoric as Conquering Ideology Berkeley California University of California Press pp 193 194 Cuartero y Huerta Baltasar 1988 Los Colon en la Cartuja PDF Boletin de la Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras Minervae Baeticae 16 74 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Dyson 1991 p 194 Dyson 1991 p 196 Nash Elizabeth 2005 Seville Cordoba and Granada A Cultural History Oxford University Press p 73 ISBN 978 0 19 518204 0 Columbus bones for DNA tests The Guardian 3 June 2003 Archived from the original on 27 August 2013 Retrieved 20 March 2022 Olaya Vicente G 24 May 2021 Study of Christopher Columbus DNA set to reveal his true origins El Pais Retrieved 3 February 2022 Captain George Farquar of Lord Stanley brought the news to Liverpool in 1796 that while he had been at Havana the Spanish ship of the line had arrived there carrying the coffin bones and fetters of Christopher Columbus from San Domingo to be re interred at Havana with the highest military honours DNA verifies Columbus remains in Spain MSNBC Associated Press 20 May 2006 Archived from the original on 31 October 2013 Retrieved 15 August 2020 Tremlett Giles 11 August 2004 Young bones lay Columbus myth to rest The Guardian Retrieved 26 October 2014 Alvarez Cubero M J Martinez Gonzalez L J Saiz M Alvarez J C Lorente J A June 2010 Nuevas aplicaciones en identificacion genetica New applications in genetic identification Cuadernos de Medicina Forense in Spanish 16 1 2 doi 10 4321 S1135 76062010000100002 Countdown begins to discover where Columbus came from AP News 19 May 2021 Archived from the original on 19 May 2021 Retrieved 21 May 2021 Bergreen 2011 pp 363 364 Thacher John Boyd 1904 Christopher Columbus his life his works his remains as revealed by original printed and manuscript records together with an essay on Peter Martyr of Anghera and Bartolome de las Casas the first historians of America New York G P Putnam s Sons pp 570 73 Columbus Buried In San Domingo Evening Star 17 July 1913 p 11 Archived from the original on 2 January 2020 Retrieved 15 August 2020 via Newspapers com Bergreen Laurence 2021 In Search of a Kingdom Boston Mariner Books p 188 ISBN 978 0 06 287535 8 Horwitz 2008 pp 89 90 92 West Delno April 1992 Christopher Columbus and His Enterprise to the Indies Scholarship of the Last Quarter Century The William and Mary Quarterly 49 2 254 277 ISSN 0043 5597 JSTOR 2947272 Christopher Columbus did not discover a new world nor did he ever set foot on the North American continent Rather he established continuous contact between two continents each with major populations But he became a national hero for the United States and as such he has frequently been placed on the same level with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln by Americans who prefer mythology to facts Early in our history he became a unifying symbol to the struggling English colonies when Puritan preachers began to use his life as an exemplum of the developing American spirit On the eve of the American Revolution poems songs sermons and polemic essays in which Columbus was idealized as the discoverer of a new land for a new people flowed from New England Such veneration culminated in a movement to name the nation Columbia Bercovitch Sacvan 2014 The Rites of Assent Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America Routledge p 68 ISBN 978 1 317 79619 0 Thinking back in spring 1692 to the antiquities of New England Cotton Mather came upon a crucial connection as he saw it between the voyage of Columbus two centuries before and the Puritans Great Migration Considered together the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the landing at San Salvador held the key to a great design To begin with Columbus s voyage was one of three shaping events of the modern age all of which occurred in rapid succession at the turn of the sixteenth century 1 the Resurrection of Literature 2 the discovery of America and 3 the Protestant Reformation Bushman Claudia L 1992 America Discovers Columbus How an Italian Explorer Became an American Hero University Press of New England p 41 ISBN 978 0 87451 576 3 Bartosik Velez Elise 2014 The Incorporation of Columbus into the Story of Western Empire The Legacy of Christopher Columbus in the Americas New Nations and a Transatlantic Discourse of Empire PDF Nashville Vanderbilt University Press p 2 ISBN 978 0 8265 1953 5 Burmila Edward 9 October 2017 The Invention of Christopher Columbus American Hero The Nation Dewey Donald 2007 The Art of Ill Will The Story of American Political Cartoons NYU Press pp 12 13 ISBN 978 0 8147 1985 5 Stanford Jack A Hauer F Richard Gregory Stanley V Snyder Eric B 2011 Columbia River Basin In Benke Arthur C Cushing Colbert E eds Rivers of North America Elsevier p 501 ISBN 978 0 08 045418 4 Zeuske Michael Otalvaro Andres 2017 La construccion de Colombeia Francisco de Miranda y su paso por el Sacro Imperio Romano Germanico 1785 1789 Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura 44 177 doi 10 15446 achsc v44n1 61224 ISSN 0120 2456 Bird s Eye View of the World s Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893 World Digital Library 1893 Retrieved 17 July 2013 Bolotin Norm Laing Christine 2002 The World s Columbian Exposition The Chicago World s Fair of 1893 University of Illinois Press p 7 ISBN 978 0 252 07081 5 Handler Richard June 2016 Mining the time space matrix Commemorative postage stamps and US world s fairs 1893 1915 HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 1 296 300 doi 10 14318 hau6 1 017 S2CID 159668550 West Chris 2014 A History of America in Thirty six Postage Stamps Macmillan p 89 ISBN 978 1 250 04368 9 Marcilhacy 2011 pp 135 138 Marcilhacy David 2011 Las fiestas del 12 de octubre y las conmemoraciones americanistas bajo la restauracion borbonica Espana frente a su pasado colonial PDF Jeronimo Zurita in Spanish 86 135 138 ISSN 0044 5517 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Columbian Exposition Souvenir Sheets Arago people postage amp the post National Postal Museum online viewed 18 April 2014 Bedini Silvio A 2016 Bedini Silvio A ed The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia Springer p 489 ISBN 978 1 349 12573 9 Columbus Day Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 5 July 2022 Bello Manuel Shaver Annis N 2011 Representation of Columbus in History Textbooks In Provenzo Eugene F Jr Shaver Annis N Bello Manuel eds The Textbook as Discourse Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks Routledge p 152 ISBN 978 1 136 86063 8 Boivin Nicole Fuller Dorian Q Crowther Alison September 2012 Old World globalization and the Columbian exchange comparison and contrast World Archaeology 44 3 452 469 doi 10 1080 00438243 2012 729404 JSTOR 42003541 S2CID 3285807 McFarlane Anthony 2004 Pre Columbian and colonial Latin America In King John ed The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture Cambridge University Press p 9 ISBN 978 0 521 63651 3 Nunn Nathan Qian Nancy Spring 2010 The Columbian Exchange A History of Disease Food and Ideas PDF Journal of Economic Perspectives 24 2 163 188 doi 10 1257 jep 24 2 163 Wilford John Noble 1991 Columbus and the Labyrinth of History PDF The Wilson Quarterly 15 4 79 80 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Bartosik Velez Elise 2014 The Incorporation of Columbus into the Story of Western Empire The Legacy of Christopher Columbus in the Americas New Nations and a Transatlantic Discourse of Empire PDF Nashville Vanderbilt University Press p 45 ISBN 978 0 8265 1953 5 Paul Heike 2014 Christopher Columbus and the Myth of Discovery The Myths That Made America PDF transcript Verlag pp 53 59 ISBN 978 3 8394 1485 9 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Paul 2014 pp 58 60 Fryd Vivienne 2001 Art and Empire The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol 1815 1860 Athens OH Ohio University Press pp 37 89 91 94 99 100 105 Persico s Columbus The United States Magazine and Democratic Review 15 95 97 November 1844 via Google Books Out West University of Nebraska Press 2000 p 96 Congressional Globe 28 April 1836 p 1316 Paul 2014 pp 63 64 Dennis Matthew 2018 Red White and Blue Letter Days An American Calendar Cornell University Press pp 119 120 ISBN 978 1 5017 2370 4 Wilford 1991 p 80 Connell William J 2013 Who s Afraid of Columbus Italian Americana 31 2 136 147 JSTOR 41933001 Armitage David 1992 Christopher Columbus PDF History Today 42 5 55 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Axtell James 1992 Moral Reflections on the Columbian Legacy The History Teacher 25 4 407 425 ISSN 0018 2745 JSTOR 494350 Alfred Crosby a scholar with the mind of a scientist and the heart of a humanist He writes that the major initial effect of the Columbian voyages was the transformation of America into a charnel house The cataclysmic loss of native life largely to imported diseases was surely the greatest tragedy in the history of the human species Houbert Jean 2003 Creolisation and Decolonisation In Jayasuriya Shihan de S Pankhurst Richard eds The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean Africa World Press p 176 ISBN 978 0 86543 980 1 Phillips William D 2000 Testimonies from the Columbian Lawsuits Brepols p 25 ISBN 978 2 503 51028 6 When we speak today of the legacy of Christopher Columbus we usually refer to the broadly historic consequences of his famous voyages meaning the subsequent European conquest and colonization of the Americas Nedkvitne Arnved 2018 Norse Greenland Viking Peasants in the Arctic Routledge p 13 ISBN 978 1 351 25958 3 Little Becky 11 October 2015 Why Do We Celebrate Columbus Day and Not Leif Erikson Day National Geographic Archived from the original on 7 August 2019 Retrieved 12 October 2015 History Leif Erikson 11th century BBC Retrieved 12 October 2015 Rafn Carl Christian 1795 1864 Wisconsin Historical Society Archived from the original on 26 February 2014 Retrieved 22 March 2022 Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 De Costa Benjamin Franklin Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 7 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 915 Restall Matthew 2021 Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest Updated Edition Oxford University Press p 4 ISBN 978 0 19 753729 9 Berkhofer Robert F 1979 The White Man s Indian Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present Vintage Books p 34 ISBN 978 0 394 72794 3 Coronil Fernando 1989 Discovering America Again The Politics of Selfhood in the Age of Post Colonial Empires Dispositio 14 36 38 Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor 315 331 ISSN 0734 0591 JSTOR 41491365 When referring to the conquest Venezuelans tend to side with the original Indians inhabiting the territory even though we are generally careful to distinguish ourselves from them and above all from their contemporary descendants This tactical identification suggests that the force of this rejoinder comes not just from the hold of the familiar Columbus already discovered America so what s new but from the appeal of a more exclusive familiarity evoked by a shift of location he only discovered it for Europe not for us It is as if we viewed Columbus s arrival from two perspectives his own and that of the natives When we want to privilege our special viewpoint we claim as ours the standpoint of the original Americans the view not from the foreign ship but from our native land Nuccetelli Susana 31 October 2020 Setting the Scene The Iberian Conquest An Introduction to Latin American Philosophy pp 16 17 doi 10 1017 9781107705562 002 ISBN 978 1 107 70556 2 S2CID 234937836 Lazo Rodrigo 1 December 2013 The Invention of America Again On the Impossibility of an Archive American Literary History 25 4 755 doi 10 1093 alh ajt049 Fernandez Shaw Felix May 1992 Five hundred years from now From Discovery to Encounter The UNESCO Courier 45 5 Rediscovering 1492 UNESCO Digital Library 45 Retrieved 8 February 2022 The encounter between two worlds is a fact that cannot be denied The word discovery gives prominence to the heroes of the enterprise the word encounter gives more emphasis to the peoples who actually encountered each other and gave substance to a New World Whereas discovery marks a happening an event encounter conveys better the idea of the political journey that has brought us to the reality of today spanning the five hundred years since 1492 These historical and political milestones are valuable because they relate the present to both the past and the future It was inevitable that history written from a Eurocentric standpoint should speak in terms of discovery and it is equally inevitable that as history has now come to be seen in universal terms we should have adopted so evocative a term as encounter McIlwraith Thomas F Muller Edward K 2001 North America The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent Rowman amp Littlefield p 35 ISBN 978 0 7425 0019 8 Sale Kirkpatrick 1991 1990 The Conquest of Paradise Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy New York Plume pp 204 209 ISBN 0 452 26669 6 Boller Paul F 1995 Not So Popular Myths about America from Columbus to Clinton New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 509186 1 Hannam James 18 May 2010 Science Versus Christianity Patheos com Retrieved 5 September 2020 Bergreen 2011 p 244 Russell Jeffrey Burton 1991 Inventing the Flat Earth Columbus and modern historians New York Praeger ISBN 978 0 275 95904 3 Morison 1942a pp 241 242 270 271 Randles W G L 2011 Classical Geography and Discovery of America In Haase Wolfgang Meyer Reinhold eds European Images of the Americas and the Classical Tradition Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 087024 4 Morison 1942b pp 513 515 517 544 546 Willingham Elizabeth Moore 2015 Mythical Indies and Columbus s Apocalyptic Letter Imagining the Americas in the Late Middle Ages Liverpool University Press p 293 ISBN 978 1 78284 037 4 Tyson Neil deGrasse 2014 2007 Death By Black Hole And Other Cosmic Quandaries 1st ed New York W W Norton p 52 ISBN 978 0 393 06224 3 OCLC 70265574 O Keefe J A Eckeis A and Squires R K 1959 Vanguard Measurements Give Pear Shaped Component of Earth s Figure Science 129 3348 565 566 doi 10 1126 science 129 3348 565 Defense Mapping Agency 1983 Geodesy for the Layman Report 4th ed United States Air Force
