Columbus, Christopher(ca. 1451–1506)

Christopher Columbus (or Colón in Spanish) is widely held to be the first European to “discover” the New World of the Americas, which was a major turning point in world history. In 1484, while still in Portugal, Columbus's challenge was not about the shape of the Earth but about the distance needed to travel to the Indies and the Spice Islands. Columbus's miscalculations came from his reading of Ptolemy, who declared each degree of the Earth to be 50 mi. (miles) and the total circumference to be 18,000 mi. In addition to classical sources, Columbus read and annotated The Travels of Marco Polo (1298), The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1371), Pius II's Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum (1477), Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi (1480–1483), and the Bible, among many other books preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina by Ferdinand Columbus. These texts confirmed the existence of the Antipodes, suggested the possibility of arriving in the East by traveling west, and provided him with myths and fables as he explored unknown geographies.

Genoa, with its flourishing maritime environment, is considered Columbus's birthplace and the port city where he spent his first 21 years. In this context, it is easy to understand his profound interest in cartography and navigation. Genoa was at the time a maritime commercial center where some of the best mapmakers of portolano charts of the Mediterranean resided. Columbus arrived at the Portuguese coast in 1576 and joined his younger brother Bartholomew in Lisbon. There they made and sold navigation charts and met and [Page 521]interviewed mariners who had new information to update old maps and charts. These were the circumstances that supported the story of the piloto desconocido, the unknown pilot who arrived from an unknown hemisphere and returned sick to Lisbon, dying at Columbus's home. This story was later used as evidence in the important legal battles between Columbus's heirs and the Spanish Crown and undermined Columbus's own claims of conquest and promises contracted under the Capitulaciones de Santa Fe (April 17, 1492).

As with many of Columbus's actions, his intellectual contributions to physical and human geography are the subject of many ethical, legal, and historical debates that were initiated after Europe recognized the significance of his journeys and explorations. The same questions still permeate the historiography on Columbus: Was he erudite enough? Were his actions the product of his own genius, or did he simply use the knowledge and resources provided by others? And for those who opposed the Spanish treatment of the Amerindian populations, what role did he play in the expansion of slavery and colonialism? A whole series of early colonial chroniclers writing about Columbus came to the rescue of his historical legacy; among them were his own son, Ferdinand Columbus; the Dominican advocate of Amerindian rights, Bartolomé de las Casas; and other well-known historians such as Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, and Hernán Pérez de Oliva. Their accounts reveal their own ideological positions on Spanish geopolitical aims of domination and provided evidence of Columbus's life and writings that still help readers understand the political, religious, and cultural milieu of the Columbian experience and the first years of European colonization.

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