About Christopher Columbus is Great Hero or Arch Villain?

Though Christopher Columbus’s famed voyages are taught in most Western country classrooms and his impact on modern civilization is undeniable, it is often difficult to separate what we actually know about the man from what we think we know.

For example, it is widely stated that Columbus was born in 1451 to a wool merchant family in the Republic of Genoa – which is now part of northern Italy. But Christopher Columbus left 536 pages of letters and documents in which he never once identified himself as being Genoan. Additionally, the letters he wrote to his brothers and to others were all written in Spanish or Latin, rather than in the native language of Genoa, Genoese.

Some claim that Christopher Columbus was hiding his true heritage and identity. There have been recent studies that determined Columbus was actually Catalan and that he was concerned that the Spanish crown would seek revenge against him after he fought in the Catalan civil war which lasted from 1462 to 1472. Others point to frequent indications in his writing that show a deep familiarity with Judaism. They speculate that he was actually Jewish and hid this from the authorities to avoid persecution during a time when the Christian leaders of Europe were actively oppressing the Muslims and the Jews.

The widely accepted version of Columbus’s life is that he worked for the Portuguese merchant marine in his teenage years. This does not adequately explain how he learned ocean navigation and had enough experience to captain a crew of sailors on a dangerous voyage that had never been tried before.

It is known that Columbus spent many years in Portugal where he married a woman from an noble Portuguese family and had one son. His wife died in 1485 and he took a mistress with whom he had a second son.

It was in 1484 that Columbus first looked to get the king of Portugal to fund a trip west across the Atlantic in hopes of discovering a new trade route to India. He was rejected and so in 1486 he began seeking aid from the king and queen of Spain. He was turned down at least two times before succeeding in gaining their support in 1492. With the support of the Spanish crown, he was able to obtain three boats and crew and make the voyage across the ocean.

From his writings, it appears that Columbus believed he had successfully sailed west and arrived in India on that trip and on three successive voyages. In actuality, he was the first European to discover the Caribbean islands. He set up a settlement and headed back to Spain flush with perceived success.

On his return trip, he found the settlement had been destroyed by the natives and all the settlers killed. He responded by making slaves of the natives, forcing them to rebuild the settlement and placing his brothers in charge while he returned to Spain.

On his third trip, he found the settlers ready to revolt against his brothers for their brutal leadership style and because of misleading statements Columbus had made to the settlers. Columbus was returned to Spain in chains, stripped of the titles he had earned from his first voyage and brought before the king and queen to answer the accusations against him.

He must have made a good impression because he was freed and allowed to undertake a fourth voyage. This trip saw him shipwrecked and stranded for months before making his way, emptyhanded, back to Spain.

           

In the end he left us with a complicated legacy of abuse, oppression, bravery, and resourcefulness. He began an era of exploration and discovery that greatly enriched Europe but also an era of domination and oppression that wiped out most of the natives that were already living in the New World.