COLUMBUS, CHRISTOPHER

born between Aug. 26 and Oct. 31?, 1451, Genoa died May 21, 1506, Valladolid, Spain Italian Cristoforo Colombo, Spanish Cristbal Coln Master Mariner and Navigator, the first historically important European discoverer of the New World. His four voyages (149293, 149396, 14981500, and 150204) opened the way for European exploration, exploitation, and colonization. Columbus was the eldest son of Domenico Colombo, a Genoese wool worker and small-time merchant, and Susanna Fontanarossa, his wife. He is widely thought to have been the first European to sail across the Atlantic Ocean and make landfall on the American continent. He made his voyages across the Atlantic under the sponsorship of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs of Aragon, Castile, and Leon in Spain. On the first and second voyages (Aug. 3, 1492March 15, 1493, and Sept. 25, 1493June 11, 1496) Columbus sighted the majority of the islands of the Caribbean and established a base in Hispaniola (now divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic). On the third voyage (May 30, 1498October 1500) he reached Trinidad and Venezuela and the Orinoco River delta. On the fourth (May 9, 1502Nov. 7, 1504) he returned to South America and sailed from Cape Honduras to the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Veragua, and Panama. Although at first full of hope and ambition, an ambition partly gratified by his title Admiral of the Ocean Sea, awarded to him in April 1492, and by the grants enrolled in the Book of Privileges (a record of his titles and claims), Columbus died a disappointed man. He was removed from the governorship of Hispaniola in 1499, his chief patron, Queen Isabella, died in 1504, and his efforts to recover his governorship of the Indies from King Ferdinand were, in the end, unavailing. In 1542, however, the bones of Columbus were taken from Spain to the Cathedral of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic), where they may still lie. The period between the quatercentenary celebrations of Columbus' achievements in 189293 and the quincentenary ones of 1992 saw great advances in Columbus scholarship. A huge number of books about Columbus have appeared in the 1990s, and the insights of archaeologists and anthropologists now complement those of sailors and historians. This effort has given rise, as might be expected, to considerable debate. The past few years have also seen a major shift in approach and interpretation; the older pro-European and imperialist understanding has given way to one shaped from the perspective of the inhabitants of the Americas themselves. According to the older understanding, the discovery of the Americas was a great triumph, one in which Columbus played the part of hero in accomplishing the four voyages, in being the means of bringing great material profit to Spain and to other European countries, and in opening up the Americas to European settlement. The second perspective, however, has concentrated on the destructive side of the European intrusions, emphasizing, for example, the disastrous impact of the slave trade and the ravages of imported disease on the native peoples of the Caribbean and the American continents. The sense of triumph has diminished accordingly, and the view of Columbus as hero has now been replaced, for many, by one of a man deeply flawed. While Columbus' abilities as a navigator are rarely doubted in this second perception, and his sincerity as a man sometimes allowed, he is emphatically removed by it from his position of honour. The further interventions of political activists of all kinds have hardly fostered the reconciliation of these so disparate views. In an attempt at a balanced account attention will therefore first of all be restored to the nature and quantity of the surviving written and material sources about Columbus. All informed scholarly comment must depend primarily upon these. Then the admiral's achievements and failures will be examined in light of recent research. Finally, the focus will briefly return to the debate, in the full recognition that it is far from ended. born , between Aug. 26 and Oct. 31?, 1451, Genoa died May 21, 1506, Valladolid, Spain Italian Cristoforo Colombo, Spanish Cristbal Coln first historically important European discoverer of the New World. His four voyages (149293, 149396, 14981500, and 150204) opened the way for European exploration, exploitation, and colonization. Columbus was the son of a weaver, Domenico Colombo, and his wife, Suzanna Fontanarossa, probably a Spanish-Jewish couple living in the Italian port city of Genoa. Little is known of Columbus' early life, but he undoubtedly went to sea at a young age. Believing he could reach the East by sailing west, Columbus searched for a patron to finance his voyages; King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain met his requests in 1492. His three shipsthe Santa Mara, the Nia, and the Pintasailed from Palos on August 3; they sighted land on October 12. He explored several of the Caribbean islands before returning to Spain. During the second voyage (149396), which was filled with misadventures, Columbus founded Isabella, the first European city in the New World. On the third voyage (14981500) he reached the mainland of South America, but he was replaced as viceroy of the Indies because of his poor administration. His final voyage (150204) was in deliberate opposition to royal orders. Columbus was ill upon his return to Europe and never really regained his health. After his death he was buried at Seville, Spain, but was exhumed in 1542 and interred in the cathedral of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola. Contemporary records cited his death on Ascension Day 1506. A miscalculation later translated that day as May 20, when the true date was May 21. Additional reading Editions of Columbus' writings include Cecil Jane (trans. and ed.), Select Documents Illustrating the Four Voyages of Columbus, 2 vol. (193033, reprinted 1967); Samuel Eliot Morison (trans. and ed.), Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1963); J.M. Cohen (ed. and trans.), The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1969, reissued 1988), comprising his logbook, letters, dispatches, and other material; Antonio Rumeu de Armas, Libro Copiador de Cristbal Coln, 2 vol. (1989), which includes a transcription of a 16th-century copybook containing several letters from Columbus; Delno C. West and August Kling (trans. and ed.), The Libro de las Profecas of Christopher Columbus (1991), with a concise biographical introduction; and Consuelo Varela (ed.), Textos y documentos completos, 2nd ed. (1992). David Henige, In Search of Columbus: The Sources for the First Voyage (1991), is a scholarly textual criticism of what is known as Columbus' logbook; the author concludes that it cannot be used with any certainty to identify Columbus' first landfall. Margarita Zamora, Reading Columbus (1993), comprises translations of crucial texts with comments on them.Silvio A. Bedini (ed.), The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, 2 vol. (1992), is a useful reference work. Fernando Coln, The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus, trans. by Benjamin Keen, 2nd ed. (1992), by Columbus' son, has been used as source material for later biographies. Among modern English-language biographies are the classic work by Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, 2 vol. (1942, reissued 1962), chatty and discursive but unrivaled in close detail and navigational expertise, also available in a 1-vol. condensed ed. with the same title but lacking the scholarly apparatus (1942, reprinted 1991); Felipe Fernndez-Armesto, Columbus (1991), arguably one of the best-written and most historically sensitive biographies; and Paolo Emilio Taviani, Columbus: The Great Adventure: His Life, His Times, and His Voyages, trans. from Italian (1991), a popularized but well-informed panegyric.Studies of various aspects of Columbus' voyages and their impact include Valerie I.J. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (1992), concentrating on the late-medieval past in which the admiral's conceptions of geography and morality were rooted; James R. McGovern (ed.), The World of Columbus (1992), essays on art, science, music, and navigation; Roger C. Smith, Vanguard of Empire: Ships of Exploration in the Age of Columbus (1993), an excellent account of the types of ships and riggings involved; William F. Keegan, The People Who Discovered Columbus (1992), on the fate of Lucayan life on the Bahamas; Irving Rouse, The Tainos: Rise & Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus (1992), a temperate and balanced description; Samuel M. Wilson, Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus (1990), on the character and destruction of Taino culture; James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America (1992), which pays particular attention to the effect of the first encounters on the native populations; Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Milbrath (eds.), First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 14921570 (1989), an excellent introduction to the archaeological evidence; J. Daniel Rogers and Samuel M. Wilson (eds.), Ethnohistory and Archaeology: Approaches to Postcontact Change in the Americas (1993), conference papers by anthropologists and archaeologists; John W. Verano and Douglas H. Ubelaker (eds.), Disease and Demography in the Americas (1992), invaluable studies in archaeology, paleopathology, and paleodemography; Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (1993), exploring European reactions to the expansion; and Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery (1995).The debate over Columbus' achievements is taken up in Noble David Cook and W. George Lovell (eds.), Secret Judgments of God: Old World Disease in Colonial Spanish America (1991), on the disastrous effects on the native peoples; Robert Royal, 1492 and All That: Political Manipulations of History (1992), an attempt to redress the balance, but very much a present-day approach; Ray Gonzlez (ed.), Without Discovery: A Native Response to Columbus (1992), an anti-European treatment; and John Yewell, Chris Dodge, and Jan Desirey (eds.), Confronting Columbus: An Anthology (1992), from the perspective of Native Americans. Valerie I.J. Flint