Christopher Columbus : "The courage to lose sight of the shore"

HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY...MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, IS OFFICIALLY COLUMBUS DAY IN THE UNITED STATES. We used to celebrate it on the day he made landfall in the Americas, October 12, but the federal bureaucracy has got to have its 3-day weekends. • • • CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, ITALIAN NAGIVATOR AND DISCOVERER. Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was an Italian explorer, colonizer, and navigator. He is remembered as the principal European discoverer of the Americas and he helped bring the Americas to the forefront of the western consciousness. His discoveries and travels laid the framework for the later European colonization of Latin and North America. • Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today northwestern Italy. His father was a middle-class wool merchant. Columbus learned to sail from an early age, as did all Genoans since their city ws the leading seaport in the Italian peninsula during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1470, when French privateers attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast. The boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a wood plank and made his way to Lisbon, where he studied mathematics, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He also began to hatch the plan that would change the world forever. He later worked as a business agent, travelling around Europe to England, Ireland and later along the west coast of Africa. He was not a scholar, but was an enthusiastic self-educated man, who read extensively about astronomy, science and navigation. He also became fluent in Latin, Portuguese and Spanish. • During the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders of several European nations sponsored expeditions abroad in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in this “Age of Discovery.” Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along the African coast, carrying spices, gold, slaves and other goods from Asia and Africa to Europe. At the end of the 15th century, it was nearly impossible to reach Asia from Europe by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking to the sea : they sailed south along the west African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope. • But Columbus had a different idea -- why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but his math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that the journey by boat from Europe to Asia should be not only possible but comparatively easy. • Columbus was not the first person to propose that a person could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. In fact, scholars argue that he idea is almost as old as the idea that the Earth is round, which dates back to early Rome. Columbus believed in the spherical nature of the world when many still held the view that the world was flat. And, in the 15th century, European nations, particularly Spain, were eager to share in the seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista” -- the expulsion of Jews and Moslems out of the kingdom after centuries of war -- was complete, and Spain turned its attention to exploration and conquest in other areas of the world. • An ambitious man, Columbus hoped to find a western trade route to the lucrative spice markets in Asia. Rather than sailing east, he hoped that sailing west would lead to countries like Japan and China. He presented his plan to officials in Portugal and England, but it was not until 1491 that he found a sympathetic audience in the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. He finally approached the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. As part of his offer, he said he hoped to be able to spread Christianity to ‘heathen lands’ in the east. The Spanish monarchs agreed to fund Columbus, partly on the missionary efforts, but also hoping to gain an upper hand in the lucrative trade markets. Columbus wanted fame and fortune. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along with the opportunity to export Catholicism to lands across the globe. Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility. Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could keep 10% of whatever riches he found, along with a noble title and the governorship of any lands he should encounter. • On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set sail from Spain in three ships: the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. On October 12, the ships made landfall -- not in Asia, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands. For months, Columbus sailed from island to island in what we now know as the Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that he had promised to his Spanish patrons, but he did not find much. In March 1493, leaving 40 men behind in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he returned to Spain. • Columbus made a total of four journeys, where he sailed extensively around the Caribbean islands of Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas and also to the mainland, to places such as Panama. In September 1493, Columbus returned to the Americas. He found the Hispaniola settlement destroyed (to this day, no one knows what happened there) and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego behind to rebuild, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved natives. Then he headed west, with his own complement of native slaves, to continue his mostly fruitless search for gold and other goods. In place of the material riches he had promised the Spanish monarchs, he sent some 500 slaves to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified -- she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved -- and she promptly and sternly returned the explorer’s gift. In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where the colonists had staged a bloody revolt against the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over. Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned to Spain in chains. • In 1502, cleared of the most serious charges but stripped of his noble titles, the aging Columbus persuaded the Spanish king to pay for one last trip across the Atlantic. This time, Columbus made it all the way to Panama -- just miles from the Pacific Ocean -- where he had to abandon two of his four ships in the face of an attack from hostile natives. Empty-handed, the elderly explorer returned to Spain, where he died in 1506. Towards the end of his life, Columbus became increasingly religious. In particular, he became fascinated with biblical prophecies and wrote his own ‘Book of Prophecies’ in 1505. • Columbus' death in 1506, at age 54, was caused by a heart attack related to reactive arthritis. Undoubtedly, the rigors of travelling across the seas weighed upon Columbus’ health. Toward the end of his life, he was frequently in pain from his journeys. • Columbus is venerated by many European Americans as the man who helped put America on the map. Columbus Day is observed on October 12 in Spain and across the Americas. His journeys led to centuries of exploration and exploitation on the American continents. The consequences of his explorations were severe for the native populations of the areas he and the conquistadores conquered. Disease and environmental changes resulted in the destruction of the majority of the native population over time, while Europeans continued to extract natural resources from these territories. Today, Columbus is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow explorers encountered. • But, we can also remember Christopher Comumbus for his courage, his daring sea journeys, and his discovery of the New World, as well as for this truism of a statement : “You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” __Christopher Columbus.