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Christopher Columbus (Renaissance and Reformation)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. Christopher Columbus and his voyages captured the imagination of contemporaries and have continued to fascinate admirers through the centuries as well as a growing number of detractors. The extensive sources and studies give a privileged view into his life and times, especially his post-1492 experiences. The publication dates indicate the high points of activity as editors and authors tended to concentrate their efforts. There was a peak around 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage. In 1942 Samuel Eliot Morison published Admiral of the Ocean Sea (see Classic Studies), a biography that constructed an image of Columbus that became standard in the United States for a half century. Most of the recent contributions of scholarship and edited sources appeared in the years immediately before and after the quincentenary of 1992 with an additional flurry around 2006, the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s death. The United States, Spain, and Italy have been the countries where most of the publications have appeared; each of them had major initiatives to support Columbian scholarship in the period around 1992.
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  5. General Overviews
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  7. Numerous books on Columbus are available, varying from the scholarly to the poorly informed and the polemical. His life and times have been studied for several centuries now. This section lists some of the most scholarly and well documented works. Complete coverage of Columbus and his times can be found in Taviani 1991, stressing the Italian background, Fernández-Armesto 1991, emphasizing the intellectual background and navigation, and Phillips and Phillips 1992, placing Columbus and his actions in the context of world history. The personal life of the admiral is fully treated in Varela 1992. Henige 1991 provides analyses of the sources for the first voyage, whereas Davidson 1997 examines the available sources and offers biting critiques of previous scholars. Varela 2006 is a recent collection of articles by some of the most noted scholars of the Columbian period.
  8.  
  9. Davidson, Miles H. Columbus Then and Now: A Life Reexamined. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
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  11. Davidson hews to the documents in this account of Columbus, in the course of which he excoriates earlier writers who deviated from the sources and who tried to place the Columbian story in seamless narratives.
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  13. Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Columbus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
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  15. An erudite narrative of Columbus and his actions.
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  17. Henige, David P. In Search of Columbus: The Sources for the First Voyage. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991.
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  19. Henige was influential in showing how previous writers on Columbus had misused the original sources to fit into often preconceived notions. He was especially concerned about demonstrating that the logbook of the first voyage, because the sailing directions and distances in it were paraphrased by the nonmariner Bartolomé de Las Casas, could not be used to establish a definite place of first landfall in the Americas.
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  21. Phillips, William D., Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips. The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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  23. A book placing Columbus in his documented contemporary contexts and in the contexts of world history.
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  25. Taviani, Paolo Emilio. Christopher Columbus: The Grand Design. Novara, Italy: Istituto Geografico de Agostini, 1985.
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  27. Taviani was Italy’s premier expert on Columbus. Examines the genesis of Columbus’s proposal to reach Asia by an Atlantic trajectory.
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  29. Taviani, Paolo Emilio. Columbus, the Great Adventure: His Life, His Times, and His Voyages. New York: Orion, 1991.
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  31. Provides a well-informed overview of Columbus and his four voyages. Stresses the incompletely documented Genoese background. Taviani was heavily involved in the Nuova Raccolta Colombiana (cited under Recent Source Collections).
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  33. Varela, Consuelo. Cristóbal Colón: Retrato de un hombre. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1992.
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  35. Varela and her husband Juan Gil are the leading Spanish experts on Columbus. Here she examines Columbus the man, investigating his life, his loves, his family, and his ailments.
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  37. Varela, Consuelo, ed. Cristóbal Colón, 1506–2006: Historia y Leyenda. Palos de la Frontera, Spain: Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, Sede Iberoamericana Santa María de La Rábida, 2006.
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  39. A collection of articles delivered at a conference in 2006 commemorating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s death.
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  41. Classic Studies
  42.  
  43. Irving 1981 was a blockbuster best-seller during the 19th century. It depicts Columbus as a hero worthy of emulation by Americans and popularized the totally fictional idea that Europeans before Columbus believed the world to be flat, an error that still resides in the popular imagination. Winsor 1892 provides analysis of the sources available in his day and prints selections from those sources. Morison 1942 projects an image of Columbus as a technologically competent, scientifically attuned, heroic figure and played down his religious motivations and speculations, his incompetence as a colonial administrator, and his enslavement of islanders. Morison’s image remained highly influential in the United States for half a century. Ballesteros Beretta 1945 is comprehensive and especially useful for the Spanish and Portuguese contexts.
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  45. Ballesteros Beretta, Antonio. Cristóbal Colón y el Descubrimiento de América. 2 vols. Barcelona, Spain, and Buenos Aires, Argentina: Salvat, 1945.
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  47. Ballesteros Beretta was a prominent Spanish historian whose biography of Columbus deserves to be better known. He covered most of the usual points of Columbus’s life and career and provided especially important information about the admiral’s life in Portugal. He also listed several pages of references to failed efforts to locate Columbus’s birthplace anywhere other than Genoa (vols. 4–5 of Historia de América y de los pueblos americanos [Barcelona: Salvat Editores, 1945]).
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  49. Irving, Washington. The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Edited by John Harmon McElroy. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
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  51. The definitive scholarly version. Irving was the US minister to Spain as the Navarrete volumes of Columbian documents were appearing and relied heavily on them for his biography. Much of Irving’s information about Columbus and his times was accurate; but parts of it were pure invention or mistaken interpretation.
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  53. Morison, Samuel Eliot. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1942.
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  55. Morison’s writings contain an assessment of the sources available up to his time and pronouncements, often negative, on previous biographers. He also published an abridged single-volume edition, without notes, in the same year. A further abridged, unfootnoted version was published in 1955 as Christopher Columbus, Mariner, which has remained in print ever since.
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  57. Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492–1616. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
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  59. Places Columbus in the context of other Atlantic explorers and contains an assessment of the studies of Columbus that appeared between 1942 and 1974.
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  61. Winsor, Justin. Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892.
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  63. Despite the upbeat title, Winsor showed Columbus to be an inept colonial administrator who disobeyed royal orders, warred with the native peoples, and enslaved some of them. One of the first volumes to debunk the heroic image of Columbus.
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  65. Reference Works
  66.  
  67. The works listed here all appeared in the early 1990s and cover the material available up to that time. None of them has been updated, and no new reference works have appeared to reflect the more recently published editions of sources (especially the Nuova Raccolta Colombiana and the Repertorium Columbianum [Symcox, et al. 1993–1997 and Symcox, et al. 1998–2004, all cited under Recent Source Collections) and interpretive biographies and other studies. A useful starting point is Bedini and Buisseret 1992, an encyclopedia. Another valuable reference tool is Provost 1991, which provides short and scholarly definitions and explanations of many terms, people, and places. Among the atlases, Baldacci 1997 is most useful for its comprehensive coverage of the maps of the period and for Baldacci’s learned commentary. Nebenzahl 1990 is noteworthy for the high quality of its reproductions. For careful scholarship and expert contextualization of the maps, Harley 1990 is a good place to begin.
  68.  
  69. Baldacci, Osvaldo, ed. Columbian Atlas of the Great Discovery. Translated by Lucio Bertolazzi and Luciano F. Farina. Vol. 9 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1997.
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  71. An atlas of cartographic material available to Columbus and its expansion as a result of his voyages. Part of the Italian initiative for publication of Columbian sources and studies.
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  73. Bedini, Silvio A., and David Buisseret, eds. The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia. 2 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
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  75. A useful introductory work treating many aspects of the explorer’s life and times. Although criticized when published on the grounds that its entries were uneven in quality, it still provides an easy entry to the scholarship.
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  77. Harley, J. B. Maps and the Columbian Encounter: An Interpretive Guide to the Traveling Exhibition. Milwaukee: Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1990.
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  79. An excellent guide accompanying a quincentennial exhibition of maps of the period that goes beyond European sources to include Aztec maps. Especially useful for the essays by Harley, a premier expert on cartography.
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  81. Nebenzahl, Kenneth. Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1990.
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  83. Contains beautiful reproductions of some fifty contemporary European maps.
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  85. Provost, Foster. Columbus Dictionary. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 1991.
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  87. Provides short entries as introductory material for the study of Columbus, with references to additional sources.
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  89. Bibliographies
  90.  
  91. As is the case with many aspects of recent Columbian reference tools, most bibliographies appeared around the time of the quincentenary and have not been updated. Conti 1986 is an unannotated listing of much of the scholarship of the 19th and 20th centuries, with emphasis on the European works. Provost 1991 provides a more limited number of citations but annotates each of them. Landis 1991 concentrates on early American imprints available in the John Carter Brown Library.
  92.  
  93. Conti, Simonetta. Un secolo di bibliografia colombiana, 1880–1985. Genoa, Italy: Cassa di Risparmio de Genova e Imperia, 1986.
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  95. This bibliography contains some eight thousand unannotated entries for the period indicated in the title, as well as a thematic index and index of authors.
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  97. Landis, Denis Channing. The Literature of the Encounter: A Selection of Books from European Americana. Providence, RI: John Carter Brown Library, 1991.
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  99. Early books on Columbus and other explorers of the age of encounter.
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  101. Provost, Foster. Columbus: An Annotated Guide to the Scholarship on His Life and Writings, 1750–1988. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 1991.
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  103. This bibliography contains 780 annotated entries for the period indicated in the title, with useful indexes.
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  105. Primary Sources
  106.  
  107. The voyages of Columbus and his actions on the islands and the mainland were famous in their time and gave rise to a number of sources. First were Columbus’s own writings, including the logbooks of the voyages (that of the first voyage no longer available) and his letters to the Catholic Monarchs and other prominent figures. He also collected materials on science, religion, and law to support his scientific views and his legal position. Others wrote to him and about him, and a large number testified in the many lawsuits initiated by members of his family. All these sources were carefully preserved and many of them still remain in archives in Spain and elsewhere. Collections of important sources and individual documents have been published from the 19th century up to the present day.
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  109. Nineteenth-Century Source Collections
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  111. The first important collection of documentary materials related to Columbus was the product of Martín Fernández de Navarrete (b. 1765–d. 1844), a Spanish naval officer and historian charged with collecting and publishing documents related to Spain’s maritime history. His major Columbian undertaking was Fernández de Navarrete 1825–1837. Washington Irving was in Madrid and other places in Spain as the volumes were appearing and made extensive use of them for his best-selling biography of Columbus (see Irving 1981, cited under Classic Studies). At the time of the fourth centenary of Columbus’s first voyage, the Italian government chose Cesare de Lollis to edit and comment on the Columbian sources available at the time; the result was De Lollis 1892–1896. Though scholarly interpretations have changed and improved editions have appeared, the fact remains that the bulk of the sources for the study of Columbus and his context have been available since Fernández de Navarrete 1825–1837 and De Lollis 1892–1896.
  112.  
  113. De Lollis, Cesare. Raccolta di documenti e studi pubblicati della R. Commissione Columbiana pel Quarto Centenario della Scoperta dell’America. 14 vols. Rome: Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, 1892–1896.
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  115. A collection commissioned by the Italian government on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage. Contains virtually all the sources known at that time. The fourteen-volume series is commonly known as the Raccolta Colombiana.
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  117. Fernández de Navarrete, Martín, ed. Colección de los viajes y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV. 4 vols. Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1825–1837.
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  119. An early collection of sources related to the Columbian period and later. The first two volumes relate to Columbus and his actions; the other two volumes cover the actions of his successors. The volumes have been reprinted several times. A complete edition appeared in Argentina in 1945 and 1946, and the first volume was republished as Viajes de Colón in 1986 (Mexico City: Porrua).
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  121. Recent Source Collections
  122.  
  123. Two of the most important of the quincentennial editorial projects, one in Italy and one in the United States, produced significant accomplishments in the 1990s and afterward. The Nuova Raccolta Colombiana, published in Italy and spearheaded by Paolo Emilo Taviani, included new editions of many of the materials originally printed at the time of the fourth centenary in 1892 and added new material and new studies. These were published in the original languages, with translations into Italian (as needed), and with some English translations. In the United States, the Repertorium Columbianum (Symcox, et al. 1993–1997 and Symcox, et al. 1998–2004) is already a lasting contribution. The late Fredi Chiapelli provided the original inspiration and got the Repertorium Columbianum under way. After Chiapelli’s death, Geoffrey Symcox and Blair Sullivan continued the project to produce a series of admirable, multilingual volumes at a high professional standard that will continue to be where serious scholars start their research on the crucial period that saw the beginnings of a unified globe. These two series combine the sources in their original languages with English translations in all the volumes of the Repertorium Columbianium and the English-language series of the Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. The volumes on both series offer informed editorial commentary by many of the world’s leading Columbian scholars. Gil and Varela 1984 and Columbus 2003 provide a comprehensive set of documents in Spanish. The facsimile collections Varela and Gil 2006 and Lázaro de la Escosura and Simó Rodríguez 2006 allow their readers to see reproductions of the actual documents. The Libro copiador (Rumeu de Armas 1989) is the most significant discovery of Columbian documents in the last century, though the scholarly world was slow to accept them. The massive collection of documents on Latin American history (Parry and Keith 1984) devotes the first volume to English translations of documents from the Columbian period.
  124.  
  125. Columbus, Christopher. Cristóbal Colón: Textos y documentos completos. Edited by Consuelo Varela and Juan Gil. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2003.
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  127. The most complete single-volume Spanish-language collection of Columbus’s own writings. The 2003 edition also contains Juan Gil’s transcription of the Libro copiador.
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  129. Gil, Juan, and Consuelo Varela, eds. Cartas de particulares a Colón y relaciones coetáneas. Madrid: Alianza, 1984.
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  131. The most complete single-volume collection of Spanish-language documents written by others to and about Columbus.
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  133. Lázaro de la Escosura, Pilar, and María Isabel Simó Rodríguez, eds. Cartas autógrafas de Cristóbal Colón: Archivo General de Indias. Madrid: Taberna Libraria, 2006.
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  135. A lavishly produced facsimile edition of letters written by Columbus and preserved in Seville’s Archivo General de Indias, the principal repository of Spain’s early modern American empire.
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  137. Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. 10 vols. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dellos Stato. 1992–2001.
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  139. The Italian government-sponsored updating of the late 19th-century Raccolta Colombiana. Contains both primary sources and modern studies relating to Columbus’s times and activities. Stresses the Italian connections. Italian edition: 19 vols (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1992–).
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  141. Parry, John H., and Robert G. Keith, eds. The New Iberian World: A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early 17th Century. Vol. 1, The Conquerors and the Conquered. New York: Times Books, 1984.
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  143. This is a comprehensive English-language edition of the relevant documents of the period, including translations of the texts of the Treaty of Alcáçovas, the papal bulls Inter Caetera and Dudum Siguidem, and the Treaty of Tordesillas. All of these determined the boundaries between Portuguese and Spanish claims in the non-European world.
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  145. Rumeu de Armas, Antonio, ed. Libro Copiador. 2 vols. Madrid: Testimonio Compañía Editorial, 1989.
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  147. The recently found collection of Columbian documents, accepted as genuine by most experts. The book contains nine documents, all of them 16th-century copies of Columbian documents: a letter recounting the first voyage, four letters about the second voyage, two brief personal letters c. 1500, and two letters relating to the third and fourth voyages. Gil has criticized the transcription as hasty and mistaken in places; Gil’s transcription appears in Columbus 2003.
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  149. Symcox, Geoffrey, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan, eds. Repertorium Columbianum. Vols. 1–3. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993–1997.
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  151. A series from UCLA’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies containing transcription and translations of the most important sources written by Columbus and others. The first three of thirteen volumes; the subsequent volumes published in Turnhout, Belgium, by Brepols (1998–2004).
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  153. Symcox, Geoffrey, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan, eds. Repertorium Columbianum. Vols. 4–13; Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1998–2004.
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  155. The continuation of the series (first three volumes published by University of California Press, 1993–1997). Transcription and translations of the most important sources written by Columbus and others.
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  157. Varela, Consuelo, and Juan Gil, eds. Documentos colombinos en el Archivo General de Simancas. Madrid: Taberna Libraria, 2006.
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  159. A lavishly produced facsimile edition of the Columbian documents in the Archivo General de Simancas, a principal early modern archive.
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  161. First Voyage
  162.  
  163. The first voyage of Columbus in 1492–1493 is the most familiar and the most studied. It has so completely captured the popular imagination that many people assume it was the only one. The original ship-board diary that Columbus kept on the first voyage is now lost. All that remains is a partial transcription made by Bartolomé de Las Casas (b. 1484–d. 1566). Las Casas borrowed a version of the original, copied some phrases, paraphrased others, and added his own comments. In many cases, but not all, it is possible to tell when he was quoting Columbus and when he was not. The Las Casas redaction is available in a facsimile edition (Alvar and Padrón 1984). It has been edited and translated frequently, occasionally with little indication that it is not all Columbus’s own work. The translations (Dunn and Kelley 1989, Columbus 1992, and Lardicci 1999) all provide editorial commentary and transcriptions of the original Spanish with differing English translations, the latter useful for comparing differing readings of difficult passages. Columbus also wrote several letters to the Spanish monarchs announcing his actions on the island. These were altered in the royal court, published, and circulated widely in several languages. Dati 1989 and Cosco 1966 are good examples.
  164.  
  165. Alvar, Manuel, and Francisco Morales Padrón, eds. and trans. Cristóbal Colón, Libro de la primera navegación. Madrid: Testimonio, 1984.
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  167. This is a facsimile of Las Casas’s redaction of the original log that Columbus kept on the first voyage. The original is lost.
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  169. Columbus, Christopher. The Journal: Account of the First Voyage and Discovery of the Indies. Edited by Paolo Emilio Taviani and Consuelo Varela; translated by Marc A. Beckwith and Luciano F. Farina. Vol. 1, in 2 books, of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libraria dello Stato, 1992.
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  171. This edition also places Las Casas’s transcription on facing pages with the original Spanish and an English translation opposite.
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  173. Cosco, Liandro di. Epistola de Insulis Nuper Inventis. Translated by Frank E. Robbins Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1966.
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  175. Another of the letters announcing Columbus’s first voyage. This edition contains a facsimile of the original Latin translation and a translation of it into English.
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  177. Dati, Giuliano. The History of the Discovery of the New Indian Islands of the Canaries, 1493. Edited and translated by Theodore J. Chachey Jr. Chicago: Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, 1989.
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  179. This is an English translation of a Latin version of one of several letters announcing the completion of Columbus’s first voyage.
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  181. Dunn, Oliver, and James E. Kelley, eds. The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America, 1492–1493. Abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas; translated by Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley Jr. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
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  183. The original Spanish and an English translation appear on facing pages. It also contains Dunn and Kelley’s extensive and erudite notes.
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  185. Lardicci, Francesca, ed. A Synoptic Edition of the Log of Columbus’s First Voyage. Vol. 6 of Repertorium Columbianum. Translated by Cynthia L. Chamberlin and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1999.
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  187. This work begins with Las Casas’s redaction and fills in with additional episodes and information contained in Historia de las Indias (Las Casas 1989 (cited under Bartolomé de Las Casas) and in the Columbus biography written by his son Fernando (see Fernando Colón).
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  189. Second, Third, and Fourth Voyages
  190.  
  191. These editions contain the material on Columbus’s later voyages. The three voyages he made after the first have not received as much scholarly interest or popular attention. Taviani, et al. 1997 contains accounts of those voyages in the original languages with English translations. Pagden 1999 covers the material written by Bartolomé de Las Casas related to the second and fourth voyages. Symcox 2001 provides the same for the fourth voyage.
  192.  
  193. Pagden, Anthony, ed. Las Casas on Columbus: The Second and Fourth Voyages. Translated by Nigel Griffin. Vol. 7 of Repertorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1999.
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  195. The description and commentary of Bartolomé de Las Casas on Columbus’s second and fourth voyages.
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  197. Symcox, Geoffrey, ed. Las Casas on Columbus: The Third Voyage. Translated by Michael Hammer and Blair Sullivan. Vol. 11 of Reportorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001.
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  199. The description and commentary of Las Casas on Columbus’s third voyage.
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  201. Taviani, Paolo Emilio, et al., eds. Accounts and Letters of the Second, Third, and Fourth Voyages. Translated by Luciano F. Farino and Marc A. Beckwith. Vol. 6 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1997.
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  203. Translations of the accounts by Columbus and others of his later voyages.
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  205. Fernando Colón
  206.  
  207. Fernando Colón was Columbus’s illegitimate son, born in Spain. Columbus provided well for him, in the form of wealth and social position. Fernando accompanied his father on the fourth voyage and later accumulated what may have been the largest private library in Spain, the Biblioteca Columbina, the main contents of which were the books owned by Columbus. Though diminished by time, the library still exists in Seville. Fernando’s biography of his father, of which the original is lost, only exists in an Italian translation published in 1571 in Venice. The first chapters contain exaggerated claims about the early life and education of Columbus; most scholars reject the idea that Fernando wrote that part but accept the later part as substantially accurate, particularly Fernando’s firsthand account of the fourth voyage. It is important for students and scholars to compare the differing translations and the editorial commentary in the three translations listed here. The Italian version is available in Le historie della vita (Columbus 1990). English translations include Historie concerning the Life and Deeds (Columbus 1998), The History of the Life and Deeds (Luzzana 2004), and Columbus 1959, the latter still useful and widely available. Unlike the previous two, Columbus 1959 does not include the Italian version.
  208.  
  209. Columbus, Ferdinand. The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus by His Son Ferdinand. Edited and translated by Benjamin Keen. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1959.
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  211. An earlier English-language version by a leading scholar of Latin American history. Reprinted in 1992.
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  213. Columbus, Ferdinand. Le historie della vita e dei fatti dell’ammiraglio Don Cristoforo Colombo. Edited by Paolo Emilio Taviani and Ilaria Luzzana Caraci. Vol. 8, in 2 books, of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1990.
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  215. An Italian edition of the biography, which was originally published in Italian from Fernando Colón’s original, presumably written in Spanish.
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  217. Columbus, Ferdinand. Historie concerning the Life and Deeds of the Admiral don Christopher Columbus. Edited by Paolo Emilio Taviani, Ilaria Luzzana Caracci, and Luciano F. Farina; translated by Luciano F. Farina. Vol. 4 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiano. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1998.
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  219. An English-language version of Columbus 1990, with commentary by leading Italian scholars.
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  221. Luzzana, Ilaria Caraci, ed. The History of the Life and Deeds of the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus Attributed to His Son Fernando Colón. Translated by Geoffrey Symcox and Blair Sullivan. Vol. 13 of Repertorium Columbianum. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004.
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  223. Another English translation with different editorial commentary.
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  225. Religious Outlook and Speculations
  226.  
  227. It has become increasingly obvious in recent decades that religious speculation played an important role in Columbus’s life and actions. He was arrested at the end of his third voyage and returned to Spain in irons. As he appealed to the Catholic Monarchs to allow him permission and funding for another voyage, he collected biblical passages and quotations from medieval writers which he intended to use to place his actions and intentions in a millennial, apocalyptic context that included making the Christian gospel known to the entire world and to use profits from his enterprise to launch a latter-day crusade to wrest Jerusalem from the Muslims as preparation for the second coming of Jesus and the subsequent end of the world. His collection is known as the Book of Prophecies. Columbus 2004 and Columbus 1991 are both useful English translations for students and scholars to compare the editorial commentaries and the differing translations of controversial passages.
  228.  
  229. Columbus, Christopher. The Libro de las Profecías of Christopher Columbus. Edited by Delno C. West and August Kling. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991.
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  231. Another edition of the collection of religious commentary that seemed to predict the place of Columbus’s own actions. The original languages (mainly Latin) and an English translation appear on facing pages.
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  233. Columbus, Christopher. The Book of Prophecies Edited by Christopher Columbus. Edited by Roberto Rusconi; translated by Blair Sullivan. Vol. 3 of Repertorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004.
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  235. Columbus’s own collection of biblical and medieval theological writings that appeared to him to predict his actions as part of a divine plan for world history. Originally published by the University of California Press in 1997.
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  237. Personal and Legal Affairs
  238.  
  239. Before the first voyage, the Catholic Monarchs promised Columbus status, titles, offices, and a share of the enterprise that might develop. By the third voyage, it was clear that he found not the riches of Asia but lands that would require a colonial effort to be profitable. They therefore rescinded many of his grants and privileges. Columbus and his family challenged the royal actions in petitions and lawsuits, many of them documented in the works in this section. Varela and Aguirre 2006 records and comments on the recently found legal brief drawn up against Columbus that led to his arrest and forced return to Spain. Columbus himself assembled two collections of copies of the laws, letters, and other material relating to his royal grants; they can be found in The Book of Privileges (Nader and Formisano 2004) and Rights of Discovery (Nader 1992). His family’s lengthy lawsuits against the Spanish crown over their claims in the Americas are assembled in Muro Orejón 1964–1989 in Spanish. The testimonies of key witnesses in those lawsuits are translated in Phillips 2000.
  240.  
  241. Nader, Helen, ed. and trans. Rights of Discovery: Christopher Columbus’s Final Appeal to King Fernando; Facsimile, Transcription, Translation, and Critical Edition of the John Carter Brown Library’s Spanish Codex I. Cali, Colombia: Caraval, 1992.
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  243. This is the documentation assembled by Columbus for an appeal to King Fernando after the death of Queen Isabel. It contains letters, laws, legal opinions, and other related documents. This publication includes a facsimile of the originals, and transcriptions and translations of them.
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  245. Nader, Helen, and Luciano Formisano, eds. The Book of Privileges Issued to Christopher Columbus by King Fernando and Queen Isabel. Translated by Helen Nader. Vol. 2 of Repertorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004.
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  247. When it became clear that his royal grants were in jeopardy, Columbus assembled some seventy-three documents bearing on the promises, privileges, and titles he had received, using notaries in Seville and La Española. This edition places them in chronological order and provides the original languages and an English translation. Originally published by the University of California Press in 1996.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Muro Orejón, Antonio, ed. Pleitos colombinos. 5 vols. Seville, Spain: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1964–1989.
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  251. These volumes contain transcriptions of the lawsuits between the Columbus family and the Spanish crown. The family contended that the initial grants to Columbus had given him and his heirs rights in all the lands discovered in the Americas. The crown countered that such rights were limited and should only apply to the lands he actually visited. Among the many witnesses were firsthand participants and those who had talked to the participants.
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  253. Phillips, William D., Jr., ed. Testimonies from the Columbian Lawsuits. Translated by William D. Phillips Jr. and Anne-Marie Wolf. Philological introduction by Mark Johnston. Vol. 8 of Repertorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000.
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  255. This volume contains a translation and transcriptions of the testimonies of many witnesses in the lawsuits that appear in volumes 3, 4, and 8 of Muro Orejón 1964–1989.
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  257. Varela, Consuelo, and Isabel Aguirre. La caída de Cristóbal Colón: El juicio de Bobadilla. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2006.
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  259. Columbus was arrested by Francisco de Bobadilla, a royal official, at the end of the third voyage and sent to Spain. The charges were cruelty both to Spaniards and native islanders as well as incompetence. This book analyzes the recently discovered evidence that Bobadilla collected and presented to the crown, evidence that clearly shows that Columbus was cruel and high-handed, even by the standards of his time.
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  261. Bartolomé de Las Casas
  262.  
  263. In addition to his transcription and commentary on the logbook of Christopher Columbus discussed under First Voyage, Las Casas (b. 1484 or 1485–d. 1566) also produced the Historia de las Indias (Las Casas 1951 and Las Casas 1994), which contained extensive accounts of Columbus’s actions. This work remained unpublished until the 19th century and has never appeared in a complete English translation. He included much information on Columbus, relying on his own observations (as a child he had seen Columbus in Seville after the first voyage, his family knew members of the Columbus family, and he had access to a number of Columbian documents, notably a copy of the logbook of the first voyages). The portions of Las Casas 1951 and Las Casas 1994 relating to Columbus are available in several editions, complete and incomplete.
  264.  
  265. Las Casas, Bartolomé de. Historia de las Indias. 3 vols. Edited by Agustín Millares Carlo. Mexico City and Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1951.
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  267. The complete Spanish-language edition that is widely available in libraries. Contains long sections dealing with Columbus.
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  269. Las Casas, Bartolomé de. Historia de las Indias. Edited by Miguel Angel Medina, Jesús Angel Barreda, and Isacio Pérez Fernández. Madrid: Alianza, 1994.
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  271. A recently published Spanish-language edition with the advantage of recent scholarship but the disadvantage of limited availability outside of Spain.
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  273. Contemporary Commentators
  274.  
  275. The news of Columbus’s first voyage created great interest in Europe, particularly the Iberian and Italian states. Numerous writers commented on the Columbian events in published works and in widely circulated manuscripts, and several participants in later voyages wrote and circulated their accounts. Anghiera 1992 and Eatough 1998 contain unique information recorded as a result of the author’s privileged position in the Spanish court and his access to the participants in the discoveries. Unali 1992 provides firsthand writings of Chanca, who participated in the second voyage, and Bernáldez, who met and talked with Columbus and other participants. Carrillo 2000 contains a royal official’s writings based on his acquaintance with Columbus and his own travels to the Americas.
  276.  
  277. Anghiera, Pietro Martire d’. The Discovery of the New World in the Writings of Peter Martyr of Anghiera. Edited by Ernesto Lunardi, Elisa Magioncalda, and Rosanna Mazzacane; translated by Felix Azzola and Luciano F. Farina. Vol. 2 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1992.
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  279. Peter Martyr d’Anghiera (Pietro Martire d’Anghiera) (b. 1457–d. 1526) was educated in Italy and went to Spain in 1487. By 1492 he was serving in the royal court and was a witness to the events and personalities of the unfolding Atlantic expansion. Based on his firsthand observations, his conversations with the participants, and the documents to which he had access, he produced a number of writings dealing with Columbus and other Atlantic seafarers.
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  281. Carrillo, Jesús, ed. Oviedo on Columbus. Translated by Diane de Avalle-Arce. Vol. 9 of Repertorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000.
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  283. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (b. 1478–d. 1557) was a royal official who was present in Granada when Columbus made his successful proposal for funding for the first voyage. Oviedo made several trips to the Indies and wrote extensively on the discoveries, conquests, lands, and peoples of the Americas.
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  285. Eatough, Geoffrey, ed. and trans. Selections from Peter Martyr. Vol. 5 of Repertorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1998.
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  287. This edition contains a transcription and English translation of Martyr’s writings on Columbus.
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  289. Formisano, Luciano, and Geoffrey Symcox, eds. Italian Reports on America, 1493–1522: Accounts by Contemporary Observers. Translated by Theodore J. Cachey Jr. and John C. McLucas. Vol. 12 of Repertorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2002.
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  291. Contains accounts by contemporary Italian observers and participants, including eyewitnesses: Michele de Cuneo, who sailed on the second voyage, and Alessandro Geraldini, who was present in 1492 when Columbus sought royal funding and who later became the first bishop of Santo Domingo. Others included those in Italy who received information about Columbus’s origins and accomplishments and recorded it in otherwise unrelated writings.
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  293. Symcox, Geoffrey, ed. Italian Reports on America, 1493–1522: Letters, Dispatches, and Papal Bulls. Translated by Peter Diehl. Vol. 10 of Repertorium Columbianum. Edited by Geoffrey Symcox, Luciano Formisano, and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001.
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  295. Contains the letters and official documents produced about Columbus in various Italian centers.
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  297. Unali, Anna, ed. Christopher Columbus’s Discoveries in the Testimonials of Diego Alvarez Chanca and Andrés Bernáldez. Translated by Gioacchino Triolo. Vol. 5 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1992.
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  299. Diego Alvarez Chanca was a physician employed by the Catholic Monarchs. Chanca went on the second Columbian voyage and wrote about the nature of the newly discovered land and its people. Andrés Bernáldez was royal chronicler at the time of the Catholic Monarchs. He was the curate of the church of Los Palacios, near Seville, and at least once hosted Columbus.
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  301. Origins And Early Life To 1492
  302.  
  303. Columbus, it is generally accepted, was born in Genoa or nearby on the Ligurian coast to a father who combined a wool-weaving business with politics. From there he may have traveled to the island of Chios and may have become a corsair. His life becomes better known when he moves to Portugal in the mid- to late-1470s and to Spain in the mid-1480s. Nonetheless, his life before 1492 is still not as completely documented as is his life thereafter. Varela 2005 provides an informed account of Columbus’s early years. Agosto and Dotson 1998 is an edition of the documents relating to the Genoese context and Columbus’s family. Ferro and Barozzi 1992 and Pistarino 1995 offer studies of Genoa and Genoese possessions in the eastern Mediterranean. Treen 1989, Marques 1992, and Catz 1993 analyze significant portions of Columbus’s life and connections during the period he spent in Portugal. Manzano Manzano 1989 is a detailed study of the period Columbus spent in Spain from c. 1485 to 1492, though the author’s assertions and readings of the sources are not always fully convincing.
  304.  
  305. Agosto, Aldo, and John Dotson, eds. Christopher Columbus and His Family: The Genoese and Ligurian Documents. Vol. 4 of Reportorium Colombianum. Translated by John Dotson. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1998.
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  307. Provides transcriptions and English translations of the Italian documents related to the family of Columbus in Genoa and nearby. The scholarly consensus is that Columbus was Genoese, though other scholars and enthusiasts have posited any number of other origins for him.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Catz, Rebecca. Christopher Columbus and the Portuguese, 1476–1498. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993.
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  311. Examines what can be known of Columbus’s life and actions in Portugal.
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  313. Ferro, Gaetano, and Pietro Barozzi. Liguria and Genoa at the Time of Columbus. Translated by Anne Goodrich Heck and Luciano F. Farina. Vol. 3, in 2 books, of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1992.
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  315. An account of the place where most scholars believe Columbus was born.
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  317. Manzano Manzano, Juan. Cristóbal Colón: Siete años decisivos de su vida, 1485–1492. 2d ed. Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, 1989.
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  319. This book clarifies much about the crucial seven years that Columbus spent in Spain after leaving Portugal and before 1492, but the author’s assertions must always be checked against other sources.
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  321. Marques, Alfredo Pinheiro. Portugal and the European Discovery of America: Christopher Columbus and the Portuguese. Lisbon: Portuguese State Mint, 1992.
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  323. A Portuguese government-sponsored publication reviewing the Portuguese discoveries in the late 15th century and Columbus’s knowledge of and participation in them.
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  325. Pistarino, Geo. Chio dei genovesi nel tempo di Cristoforo Colombo. Vol. 12 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1995.
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  327. A young Columbus visited the island of Chios, then held by Genoa, which was likely the source of his assertion that he had visited the Orient.
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  329. Treen, María de Freitas. The Admiral and His Lady: Columbus and Filipa of Portugal. New York: R. Speller and Sons, 1989.
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  331. An account of Columbus and his wife, Filipa Perestrello e Moniz, who was connected with the Portuguese court and, through her late father, with Portuguese exploration and colonization in the Atlantic.
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  333. Varela, Consuelo. Cristóbal Colón: De corsario a almirante. Barcelona, Spain: Lunwerg Editores, 2005.
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  335. The early life of Columbus, documented to the fullest extent possible.
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  337. Columbus And His Circle
  338.  
  339. Numerous other figures in the milieu of Columbus made significant contributions to the exploration of the Atlantic and the early years of the colonization of the Americas. Members of his own family included his brother Bartolomé, who joined him on Española during the second voyage and helped administer the colony (Albònico 1993), his legitimate son Diego, who succeeded him as admiral and conducted a series of lawsuits against the Spanish crown (Arranz Márquez 1982), and his illegitimate son Fernando, who accompanied him on the fourth voyage and later wrote a biography of his father (Rumeu de Armas 1973). Varela 1988 studies Columbus’s connections with merchants of Florence. Manzano Manzano and Manzano Fernández-Heredia 1988 is a massive study of the Pinzón family who provided captains and crew members for Columbus’s voyages and for other voyages of their own. Some of their exploits as well as the adventures of others can be followed in Vigneras 1976.
  340.  
  341. Albònico, Aldo. Bartolomeo Colombo. Vol. 19 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1993.
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  343. A biography of Columbus’s brother, who administered La Española and moved the capital from La Isabela to Santo Domingo. Bartolomé also accompanied Columbus on the fourth and last voyage and was present at the failed attempt to start a colony in Central America.
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  345. Arranz Márquez, Luis. Don Diego Colón, almirante, virrey y gobernador de las Indias. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto “Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo,” 1982.
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  347. This is a biography of Columbus’s legitimate son Diego, born in Portugal. He became a page in the Spanish royal court and succeeded his father in many of his titles and offices. Initiated a series of lawsuits against the Spanish crown.
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  349. Ballesteros Beretta, Antonio. El cantabro Juan de la Cosa y el descubrimiento de América. Santander, Spain: Diputación Regional de Cantabria, 1987.
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  351. This work contains a biography of Juan de la Cosa, who accompanied Columbus on the first voyage and may have been the author of the first map showing the newly discovered lands across the Atlantic.
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  353. Manzano Manzano, Juan, and Ana María Manzano Fernández-Heredia. Los Pinzones y el descubrimiento de América. 3 vols. Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, 1988.
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  355. The first volume of this work relates the story of the first voyage from the perspective of the Spanish captains who played crucial roles in it. Martín Alonso Pinzón and his brother and cousins were vital participants in the events of the first voyage. Martín Alonso died after returning from the first voyage, but other Pinzones continued to be involved in transatlantic voyages both with Columbus and on their own.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Rumeu de Armas, Antonio. Hernando Colón, Historiador del descubrimiento de América. Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1973.
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  359. Hernando Colón, Columbus’s illegitimate son, was legitimized by his father. He was also a page in the Spanish court, accompanied his father on the fourth voyage, and accumulated one of Europe’s largest private libraries. His biography of his father, though not accepted by scholars as written entirely by Colón, is a crucial source in Columbian studies.
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  361. Varela, Consuelo. Colón y los florentinos. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988.
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  363. Examines Columbus’s connections with Florentine merchants residing in Florence and in Seville and Lisbon.
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  365. Vigneras, Louis-André. The Discovery of South America and the Andalusian Voyages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.
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  367. This is a study of the voyages made with Spanish licenses by others during Columbus’s lifetime. A number of the commanders had previously sailed with Columbus.
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  369. Geographical Knowledge And Speculations
  370.  
  371. Columbus was a self-educated intellectual who read many of the works available in his time on geography, cosmology, and related subjects. Some dated back as far as biblical and Hellenistic times, and others were as recent as the 15th century. From these he created an inaccurate view of the earth that was smaller in circumference, in which Asia was stretched farther to the east, and in which the land surface was greater in area than the oceans. All that allowed him to believe the distance west from Europe and Africa to Asia across the ocean was much shorter than the actual figure. His own writings reflected his voracious reading. The influence of medieval travel writing is emphasized in Campbell 1988 and Zamora 1993. Gil 1989 and Flint 1992 provide analyses of proven and possible sources of Columbus’s ideas about the world. Kadir 1992 shows that Columbus and others in the 16th century viewed his accomplishments in an apocalyptic context. Wey Gómez 2008 exhaustively reviews the sources Columbus used to show the significance of his views of the tropical world. Russell 1991 examines the origins of the myth that people before Columbus supposedly believed the earth to be flat.
  372.  
  373. Campbell, Mary. The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
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  375. This work places Columbus and his accounts in the context of medieval European travel writing.
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  377. Flint, Valerie I. J. The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
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  379. This is a work examining the sources, proven and speculative, of Columbus’s geographical ideas.
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  381. Gil, Juan. Mitos y utopias del descubrimiento. Madrid: Alianza, 1989.
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  383. This work, by one of Spain’s leading scholars of the Columbian period, examines the European views of the rest of the world—actual, exaggerated, mistaken, and mythical—upon which Columbus drew or may have drawn.
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  385. Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. New York: Praeger, 1991.
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  387. This work traces the 19th-century US origins of the myth that Europeans believed in a flat earth before Columbus and why it was convenient for Americans to believe the myth.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Kadir, Djelal. Columbus and the Ends of the Earth. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
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  391. This work shows that Columbus and some of his contemporaries believed his voyages and the subsequent subjection and conversion of the Native Americans fulfilled prophecies of the apocalypse. It also details 16th-century speculations about the origins of the peoples of the Americas.
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  393. Wey Gómez, Nicolás. The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
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  395. A recent work showing that Columbus viewed the tropics as a habitable zone—as the Portuguese were demonstrating in his time—and as a zone ripe for European colonization.
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  397. Zamora, Margarita. Reading Columbus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
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  399. An interesting analysis of why Columbus wrote as he did and how his writings revealed his preconceptions.
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  401. Navigation And Seamanship
  402.  
  403. Whether Columbus was a great navigator or a mediocre one has been a theme of a number of scholarly accounts over the last fifty years or so. Some recent scholars have questioned that assertion by pointing out the lack of evidence about his experience and ability at navigation and command before 1492 and his lapses in navigation and leadership during his four voyages. Ferro 1997 analyzes what Columbus could have learned from the cartographical tools available in Genoa in his day. Comellas 1992 describes contemporary navigational tools and techniques and examines how Columbus used them. Gould 1984 is a careful accounting of almost all of the crew members who accompanied Columbus on his first voyage. There are no detailed plans and few accounts of the vessels he used, so maritime historians must speculate and extrapolate from the contemporary context (Gay and Ciano 1997 and Phillips 1987).
  404.  
  405. Comellas, José Luis. El cielo de Colón: Técnicas navales y astronómicas en el viaje del descubrimiento. Madrid: Tabapress, 1992.
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  407. Describes the practical navigation of Columbus and his contemporaries.
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  409. Ferro, Gaetano. The Genoese Cartographic Tradition and Christopher Columbus. Translated by Hann Heck and Luciano F. Farina. Vol. 12 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1997.
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  411. Focuses on maps and other geographical material available in Genoa in Columbus’s time.
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  413. Gay, Franco, and Cesare Ciano. The Ships of Christopher Columbus. Translated by Luco Bertolazzi and Luciano F. Farina. Vol. 7 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1997.
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  415. A full account of what is known about Columbus’s ships.
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  417. Gould, Alicia [Alice] Bache. Nueva lista documentada de los tripulantes de Colón en 1492. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1984.
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  419. Gould published a series of articles between 1924 and 1944 in which she identified most of the crew members on Columbus’s first voyage. Scholars regarded her scholarship so highly that Spain’s Royal Academy of History reedited the articles and published them in this volume, long after her death in 1953.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Phillips, Carla Rahn. “Sizes and Configurations of Spanish Ships in the Age of Discovery.” In Proceedings of the First San Salvador Conference, Columbus and His World. Edited by Donald T. Gerace, 69–98. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: CCFL Bahamian Field Station, 1987.
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  423. Based on dimensions of other Spanish ships of the early modern period, concludes that Columbus’s ships were likely smaller than others had speculated.
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  425. Religion
  426.  
  427. The 1980s saw a renewed interest in analyses of Columbus’s religious outlook. Several of the books and articles listed here contributed to that renewal. His millenarianism is the subject of Watts 1985, Sweet 1986, Milhou 1983, and Milhou 2007. Delaney 2006 focuses on Columbus’s proposal to use his profits to support a new crusade to conquer Jerusalem and how that project fit within his apocalyptic speculations.
  428.  
  429. Delaney, Carol Lowery. “Columbus’s Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48.2 (2006): 260–292.
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  431. Describes how Columbus wanted to finance and personally lead a new crusade to return Jerusalem to Christian control, thus fulfilling another precondition for the second coming and the consequent end of the world.
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  433. Milhou, Alain. Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica: en el ambiente franciscanista español. Valladolid, Spain: Casa-Museo Colón, 1983.
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  435. Milhou was one of the pioneers of the field in the 1980s. He showed that Columbus’s apocalyptic ideas fit neatly into the Franciscan tradition in Spain and elsewhere.
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  437. Milhou, Alain. Colomb et le messianisme hispanique. Montpellier, France: Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier III, 2007.
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  439. Contains Milhou’s further examination of Columbus and messianism.
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  441. Sweet, Leonard. “Christopher Columbus and the Millennial Vision of the New World.” Catholic Historical Review 62.3 (1986): 369–382 and 715–716.
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  443. Argues that Columbus believed his discovery fulfilled one of the preconditions for the second coming of Jesus.
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  445. Watts, Pauline Moffitt. “Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus’s ‘Enterprise of the Indies.’” American Historical Review 90.1 (1985): 73–102.
  446. DOI: 10.2307/1860749Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. The article that alerted many American scholars to the importance of Columbus’s ideas on millenarianism, which helped shape his plans and actions.
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  449. Contact, Conquest, And Consequences
  450.  
  451. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was becoming clear that the contact and conquest had meant disastrous consequences, intended and unintended, for the peoples of the Americas. In part this new awareness was stimulated by the popularity of Crosby 1972, but earlier scholars had laid the foundations with works such as Ashburn 1947. A key element was the population decline, carefully studied by the scholars included in Denevan 1976; by Henige 1998, which criticizes approaches that relied on estimations of numbers; and by Cook 1998, which reexamines the debate about the role of disease. Sauer 1992 provides critical assessments of Columbus’s actions and failings. Those failings appear afresh in Sale 1990, Stannard 1992, and Reston 2005.
  452.  
  453. Ashburn, Percy Moreau, and Frank Davis Ashburn, eds. The Ranks of Death: A Medical History of the Conquest of America. New York: Coward-McCann, 1947.
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  455. An early book on the impact of inadvertently introduced Old World diseases on the previously unexposed population of the Americas.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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  459. This book emphasizes once again that whereas war, unaccustomed patterns of work, and general colonial cruelty accounted for many deaths, it was still the new diseases that claimed the bulk of the victims. Contains a thorough review of previous scholarship.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972.
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  463. Crosby’s book has become a classic, and its title is now used to define the complex, worldwide exchanges of plants, animals, and diseases that followed in the wake of the voyages of Columbus. Reprinted in 2003 (Westport, CT: Praeger).
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Denevan, William M., ed. The Native Population of the Americas in 1492. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.
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  467. A scholarly collection of articles on the difficult task of estimating population numbers for societies that kept no demographic records. Second edition released in 1992.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Henige, David P. Numbers from Nowhere: The American Indian Contact Population Debate. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
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  471. Henige shows both the difficulties involved in estimating American populations and the assumptions that often influence attempts to do so.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Reston, James. The Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors. New York: Doubleday, 2005.
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  475. A work stressing the horrors of the period and summarizing well-known and fully studied events around the time of Columbus. Reston’s chosen topics formed components of the Black Legend of supposedly unique Spanish colonial cruelty that circulated from the 16th century onward in mainly Protestant countries whose leaders were political enemies of Spain
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
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  479. A polemical work in which Sale suggests that the Europeans had ecologically exhausted their own continent and were bent on doing the same to the Americas; both assertions are off the mark.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Sauer, Carl Ortwin. The Early Spanish Main. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
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  483. A number of works have stressed the negative impact of the early colonial period. Sauer was a pioneer and a careful scholar who emphasized Columbus’s harsh actions. His work fit in an established scholarly context; this and numerous other works were available long before the polemicists of the quincentennial began to write.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
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  487. Surveys the population losses in an indictment of the Europeans.
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  489. Bahamas and the Caribbean
  490.  
  491. The Bahamas and Caribbean and the indigenous peoples there before 1492 as well as the first Spanish settlements on the island of Hispaniola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic) have attracted the attention of anthropologists and archeologists in recent decades. They have been able to show the distribution of the pre-Columbian population and their works, as well as the initial interactions of Europeans and islanders. For the pre-Columbian anthropology of the region, we have the traditional accounts of Keegan 1992 and Rouse 1992. Wilson 1997 provides an updated perspective. Wilson 2007, Deagan and Cruxent 2002a, and Deagan and Cruxent 2002b provide the archeological perspective.
  492.  
  493. Deagan, Kathleen A., and José María Cruxent. Archaeology at La Isabela: America’s First European Town. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002a.
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  495. Deagan and her archeological team have investigated the first European settlement in the Caribbean, Columbus’s failed colony at La Isabela in the north of modern Haiti, a site soon abandoned when Bartholomew Columbus moved the main settlement to the south of La Española and established the town of Santo Domingo. This work focuses on the archeological findings.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Deagan, Kathleen A., and José María Cruxent. Columbus’s Outpost among the Taínos: Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493–1498. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002b.
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  499. Examines the cultural and social implications of the archeological work on the first Spanish settlement in the Caribbean.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Rouse, Irving. The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
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  503. A traditionalist account by a longtime scholar in the field.
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Keegan, William F. The People Who Discovered Columbus: The Prehistory of the Bahamas. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992.
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  507. A scholarly study of the indigenous population of the Bahamas.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Wilson, Samuel M. The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997.
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  511. An anthropological account showing recent developments in the study of the peoples of the Caribbean.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Wilson, Samuel M. The Archaeology of the Caribbean. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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  515. A recent account of the latest archeological interpretations of the peoples of the area and their material remains.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Legacies
  518.  
  519. The legacies of the Columbian moment continue to reverberate in the 21st-century world. The major continents were connected and the beginnings of an interconnected and interdependent world were established (Viola and Margolis 1991). Those were the major legacies, and, on a far less lofty plane, the Columbus family showed great concern with the immediate legacy that Columbus left to them, engaging in lawsuits against the Spanish crown and one another (Schoenrich 1949–1950). Today and since the quincentenary of 1992, the harsher legacies of colonial exploitation have come to the fore in scholarship and teaching (Summerhill and Williams 2000), often to the exclusion of other concerns and often supplanting the traditional heroic view described by Bushman 1992.
  520.  
  521. Bushman, Claudia L. America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Explorer Became an American Hero. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992.
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  523. Discusses the 19th-century origins and development of Columbus’s place in the American pantheon of cultural heroes, a phenomenon that lasted until the late 20th century.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Schoenrich, Otto. The Legacy of Christopher Columbus: The Historic Litigations Involving His Discoveries, His Will, and His Descendants. 2 vols. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1949–1950.
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  527. This book remains essential reading for the lawsuits that pitted members of the Columbus family against the Spanish crown for some fifty years and against one another for several centuries. Reprinted in 2004 (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange).
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Summerhill, Stephen J., and John Alexander Williams. Sinking Columbus: Contested History, Cultural Politics, and Mythmaking during the Quincentenary. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.
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  531. The title tells it all. Summerhill and Williams, two insiders during the quincentennial period, show how the celebratory commemoration collapsed due to administrative failings and attacks from anti-Columbus forces.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Viola, Herman J., and Carolyn Margolis, eds. Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
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  535. This derives from an exhibition of the same name at the Smithsonian highlighting the consequences of the Columbian legacy: new crops, the spread of diseases, human exchange, and impact on Native Americans.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Iconography
  538.  
  539. Many portraits of Columbus exist, almost all of them not done from life or even based on contemporary descriptions of him (Viola 1996). The two possible exceptions are one by Alejo Fernández, “The Virgin of the Seafarers,” in Seville (described in Phillips 2005) and another by Pedro Berruguete, in private hands in the United States (described and illustrated in Phillips 1992). Both artists likely saw Columbus in Spain.
  540.  
  541. Phillips, Carla Rahn. “The Portraits of Columbus: Heavy Traffic at the Intersection of Art and Life.” Terrae Incognitae: The Journal for the History of Discoveries 24 (1992): 1–28.
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  543. Examines the portraits traditionally held to depict Columbus and one by Pedro Berruguete that may be based on direct observation.
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Phillips, Carla Rahn. “Visualizing Imperium: ‘The Virgin of the Seafarers’ and Spain’s Self-Image in the Early Sixteenth Century.” Renaissance Quarterly 58.3 (Fall 2005): 815–856.
  546. DOI: 10.1353/ren.2008.0864Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. Examines Alejo Fernández’s painting The Virgin of the Seafarers and speculates on one of its figures, who may be Columbus.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Viola, Gianni Eugenio, Gaetano Ferro, Luisa Faldini, Marica Milanesi, eds. Columbian Iconography. Translated by Luciano F. Farina and Carla Onorato Wysonkinski. Vol. 13 of Nuova Raccolta Colombiana. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1996.
  550. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. Reproduces many images of Columbus and people and places of his time.
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