History of Christopher Columbus: Hero or Heel?
HISTORY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
The man who sailed from Spain to discover America was neither Spanish nor did he actually discover America, at least not the mainland. But it was true that:
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Where was he from, where did he go, who paid for it, why is he famous, why was a holiday named after him, and what’s the current mood about this European explorer?
Origin of Christopher Columbus
Tradition holds that he was Italian, born in 1451 to a wool merchant in Genoa, and first went to sea in his youth. He sailed to Iceland and Guinea for business and later spent time as a privateer. It was in 1484, the year after Martin Luther was born in Germany, that Christopher Columbus presented to King John of Portugal the idea of an “Enterprise of the Indies” (no relation to Star Trek‘s starship), where he would sail west to the East Indies, thinking it shorter than the eastern spice trade route.
After unsuccessful appeals to the kings of Portugal, England, and France, he eventually moved to Spain, whereupon, in his fourth request, he secured the patronage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. You know them as the parents of Queen Katherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII of England, and grandparents of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor who presided over the trial of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms.
But What About The DNA?
You may have read that forensic research using the DNA of his son and one of his brothers against that of a sample from one of his suspected burial sites in Seville, Spain. From this, it was concluded that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew, with researchers positing he was born in the Spanish city of Valencia.
Your friendly neighborhood historian loves DNA research, as he’s also a high-tech guy. However, if Columbus was a Sephardic Jew, this tells you his ethnicity; it does not tell you his nationality. Instead, it indicates where his ancestors migrated to, typically Spain or Portugal. However, the Sephardic Jews also settled in North Africa, as far north as the Netherlands and Amsterdam, as far west as England, and as far east as France, Italy, and the Balkans, including Thessaloniki in Macedonia.
And even non-historians know that DNA from a supposed burial site might suggest where someone has died, but it cannot indicate where they were born.
Historical Trivia:
Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain in 1506. But he had indicated that he desired burial on Hispaniola, modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. His remains were moved there in 1542, subsequently moved to Cuba in 1795, and finally to Seville in 1898.
Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain, with three ships on August 3 and arrived not in the East Indies, but in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, where he named the locals “Indians.” He sailed on to the islands of Cuba and Haiti, thinking he’d reached the islands of the East Indies.
Contrary to popular belief, Columbus was not alone among 15th-century Europeans in thinking that the world was round; however, he vastly underestimated the Earth’s circumference.
Fame of Christopher Columbus
He returned with captives and gold to a hero’s welcome in Spain, which subsequently enjoyed its Golden Age of exploration. Columbus made three more voyages to the New World, including the Caribbean and South America, but never saw the North American continent.
So, did he discover America? Perhaps, if you neglect the indigenous people already living there, or the Viking Leif Erikson, who had visited pre-Columbian America 500 years earlier. (There’s even a Leif Erikson Day on October 9.) New dating methods show that Vikings occupied Newfoundland in 1021 AD. However, Columbus’ journeys ultimately led to the establishment of the first European colonies in the New World of a permanent nature.
In the United States of America, Columbus Day is one of only four federal holidays that honor individuals, including:
- Jesus (Christmas)
- President Washington (and all presidents for Presidents Day),
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day)
It is also celebrated across Latin America under various names, including Día de la Raza, Día de la Hispanidad, Día de las Américas, and Día del Respeto a la Diversidad Cultural.
Columbian Exchange
What is known today as the “Columbian Exchange” refers to the extensive transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the New World (the Americas) in the Western Hemisphere and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) in the Eastern Hemisphere, which commenced in the late 15th century. This phenomenon is aptly named after the explorer Christopher Columbus and is closely associated with the European colonization and global trade that followed his 1492 voyage. While some of the exchanges were deliberate, others were unintended.
Indeed, one deliberate exchange that didn’t immediately “take” was Columbus bringing cocoa beans from the New World back to his financial sponsors, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. However, they didn’t realize it was food, as I describe in my article on the history of chocolate.
Columbia, Columbus, and America
Other European explorers, within decades following Columbus, landed in North America, including:
- Juan Ponce de Leon (Florida)
- Alonso Alvarez de Pineda (Texas)
- Giovanni da Verrazanno (New York)
But it was Columbus, who never got closer than Bermuda, whose name was used for the newly independent United States in the late 1700s. Examples include the Columbia River, Columbia University, and the District of Columbia, i.e., Washington, D.C.
The Christopher Columbus Holiday
How did Columbus Day become a holiday? While he was not widely known in America until the mid-18th century, this began to change after the US gained its independence from Britain. Italian immigrants began to arrive in America in the 1820s, but the large wave of immigration occurred between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. As with the Irish who had settled in the US before them, they experienced religious and ethnic discrimination, including mass lynchings in 1891.
The following year, President Benjamin Harrison became the first president to call for a national observance of Columbus Day, on the 400th anniversary of the Italian’s arrival. The first state to observe Columbus Day was Colorado in 1906. Angelo Noce, an Italian immigrant and the founder of Colorado’s first Italian newspaper, La Stella (The Star), played a pivotal role in establishing the holiday. Fourteen other states followed suit within the next five years.
It was the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization, that played a pivotal role in securing its designation as a federal holiday during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934. It was originally set on October 12, but it is now fixed to the second Monday in October to create a three-day weekend. By coincidence, this is the same day as Canadian Thanksgiving since 1957.
Redaction of the Holiday
Although it remains a federal holiday and, in some cases, not all, a state holiday, over the last 25 years, several dozen cities have voted to observe the day locally as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Some cities declare it an official city holiday; others do not. In California, Native American Day is observed on the fourth Friday in September. California’s Burbank narrowly voted for this new name in 2017, joining Berkeley (the first in 1994), San Fernando, and Los Angeles among the cities in the state that have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Some of the allegations supporting this change assert that the romantic biography of Columbus was based on a best-selling book that popularized his story, although it was supposedly inaccurate. In 1828, Washington Irving published A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which has since served as a glorification of the voyager. Nevertheless, it was the most popular book about Columbus for over a century.
Admittedly, Irving’s book has a confusing objective, as it attempts to provide a historical biography while simultaneously promoting nationalistic patriotism. In the book, Irving portrays Columbus as a benevolent adventurer, renowned for his generosity towards the indigenous Native Americans.
This book also promoted the belief that most Europeans thought the Earth was flat at the time and that Columbus’ journeys dispelled the misconception. The concept of a spherical world was widely understood at that time, and in some places, centuries before.
So, do you think Columbus was a hero or a heel?
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com
