Colombus the real story

 Christopher Columbus has been so reviled and lauded over the years—what’s the truth?  He was controversial in his own time and with America’s founding fathers, but for entirely different reasons that are being forwarded today.  Modern critiques are that he brought racism, colonialism, disease and capitalism to the Americas.  The ‘colonial charge’ is correct, but that was practiced by virtually every developed society from China to Europe.  The disease charge is correct but who would allege that Eurasians and Americans would have never met.  They were bound to meet and Eurasian diseases would spread at some time. Some say he brought capitalism. Ironically, neither he nor Spain was capitalist but quite statist.

            One cannot understand Columbus without understanding the world in his  era.  The Black Death struck Europe in 1347 and returned every generation thereafter.  1/3 the population died.  People had a sense of doom and predicted the end of the world was near.  Europe was locked in a death struggle with Islam’s states and it looked like Islam would obliterate Europe when Constantinople fell in 1453.  Trade with China and India came to a halt, and desperation led to innovation. But had it not been for a newly invented Muslim ship that could turn and tack easier, the caravel, a voyage across the Atlantic would have been nearly impossible.  The later innovation of  stronger stiffer hulls of galleons allowed larger ships.  The Portugese, a small country, envious of rich Italian merchants and Spanish warriors, began to explore for islands offshore of Africa to literally move population if the Islam came. Indeed they found Madeira and Azores, causing Spain to try the same thing and they discovered Canary Islands. Columbus, born in 1451 was of middle class Genoa where he became a master seaman and influenced by Travels of Marco Polo and Travels of John Mandeville (Christian author who wanted the Faith to expand geographically). He was ambitious and wanted a title, the only way to become wealthy in those days. When he heard of Portugal’s exploits, he proposed a daring trip to secure a route to China by sailing west.  Everyone knew the world wasn’t flat (contrary to Washington Irving’s fiction) but two estimates of its size were argued.  Columbus chose the smaller. Sly dog, King Joao II of Portugal, turned him down and used Colombus’ plan to commission his own fleet under Fernao de Ulma.  Columbus would be a footnote in history had not bad weather turned de Ulma back in 1490.  In 1492, Spanish states defeated Muslim Grenada and suddenly after 7 bloody centuries, Christianity controlled the Iberian Peninsula. Ferdinand of Leon married Isabella of Castile and the exultant Spanish then had one country which could turn its interests elsewhere.  Columbus saw his chance to request a voyage.  But Ferdinand rejected him.  Columbus was ready to leave and pitch his plan elsewhere, England or France, but a friend bolstered his case with Isabella and he won upon appeal. Much has been made about how pitiful his ships were; Santa Maria was only 60 feet long and it ran aground in his first voyage.  Yet they were state-of-the-art vessels.  The crew was Spanish and this caused dissention since Columbus was Italian.  Soon they questioned his judgment about going too far west to return safely. Just in time to escape mutiny, Oct. 12, 1492, land was sighted although a reef, probably Watling Island of Bahamas. They continued on guessing at currents and birds until they found San Salvador naming it after our Savior, planted the flag and left a small colony. A second trip brought a flotilla and he planted colonies on several islands. The original settlers had been massacred by natives.

            In his salesmanship, he suggested they would find gold.  They found beans instead. (How would you like to the be the first Spaniard to discover beans?”Oh, Jose, I got all this gas!”) Columbus was a tremendous sailor who used ‘dead reckoning’ of a compass, currents, clouds, and birds to find the new world.  He did not “sail by the stars” as Polynesians did.  Yet his nerve, planning, and ability to sail 4000 miles and return to the same place 4 times make him a premier captain.  He was as bad as governor as he was good at sailing. The Spanish soldiers of fortune he left behind enslaved Indians that Columbus sought to make free subjects of Spain (according to his letters) Today’s secular scholars also misunderstand the strong role religion played.  He was criticized in his day by those who thought the natives should have converted faster.  One of his underlings, Bartolome Las Casas, wanted to claim the credit and wrote at length of his boss’s failure. Moderns like leftist Howard Zinn have used Las Casas to claim Columbus was cruel and evil.  Ironic because Columbus was far less cruel than the cannibal Carib Indians he met, less than the proud Spaniards who conquered the Moors.  Spain lorded it over the Tianos natives for material gain instead of conversion. Columbus tried to reign in the opportunists, but the Spanish encomienda system was a feudal plantation. Then the Tianos began to die of diseases.  Meanwhile, in Spain, Columbus, the outsider didn’t get much of a title or credit in the Spanish court. He always insisted he discovered India and died in 1506 after 4 voyages to the Caribbean, Central and South America. Unwittingly, he postulated that Africans might work well in the islands.

             He is significant, however. His was a dauntless, risky step to connect two worlds.  The Spanish transported a large number of people to America.  The seeds of the West were planted.  And soon everybody in Europe wanted to explore—England, France, Netherlands, Sweden. Many of the statues in this country were emplaced to honor previously discriminated Italians in the 20s and 30s. But there is a larger push to delegitimize Western civilization in academia.