Explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) is known for his 1492 ‘discovery’ of the New World of the Americas on board his ship Santa Maria.
In actual fact, Columbus did not discover North America. He was the first European to sight the Bahamas archipelago and then the island later named Hispaniola, now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On his subsequent voyages he went farther south, to Central and South America. He never got close to what is now called the United States.
Where was Christopher Columbus born?
Columbus was born in the Italian seaport of Genoa in 1451, to a family of wool weavers. As a young lad he went to sea and became an experienced sailor. He then moved to Lisbon, Portugal, to gain support for a journey he was planning to find new trade routes to the Far East. Ferdinand and Isabella, the King and Queen of Spain, agreed to finance him.
What did Columbus aim to do?
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans wanted to find sea routes to the Far East. Columbus wanted to find a new route to India, China, Japan and the Spice Islands. If he could reach these lands, he would be able to bring back rich cargoes of silks and spices. Columbus knew that the world was round and realised that by sailing west - instead of east around the coast of Africa, as other explorers at the time were doing - he would still reach his destination.
What ships did he use?
In 1492 Columbus set sail from Palos in Spain with three ships. Two, the Nina and the Pinta were caravels – small ships with triangular sails. The third, the Santa Maria, was a nao – a larger square-rigged ship. The ships were small, between 15 and 36 metres long. Between them they carried about 90 men.
What did he 'discover'?
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for 10 weeks, land was sighted by a sailor called Rodrigo Bernajo (although Columbus himself took the credit for this). He landed on a small island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador. He claimed the island for the King and Queen of Spain, although it was already populated.
Columbus called all the people he met in the islands ‘Indians’, because he was sure that he had reached the Indies. This initial encounter opened up the 'New World' to European colonisation, which would come to have a devastating impact on indigenous populations.
What was the return journey like?
On Christmas Day 1492, the Santa Maria hit a rock and was wrecked. Columbus transferred to the Nina and left behind the 39 crewmembers of the Santa Maria on the island of Hispaniola. He wanted them to start a new settlement. Columbus reached Spain in March 1493, and claimed his reward in riches. He was also given new titles. He was made Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Governor of the Indies.
What other journeys did Columbus make?
Columbus made three more journeys across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. He was sure that he had found Cipangu (Japan), but it was actually Cuba. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where the ‘Indian’ inhabitants had staged a bloody revolt against the Europeans.
Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over. Columbus was arrested, returned to Spain and stripped of his titles. He did make one last voyage to the Americas, however, this time to Panama – just miles from the Pacific Ocean.
What is Columbus’s legacy?
Columbus died in 1506, still believing that he had found a new route to the East Indies. Today his historic legacy as a daring explorer who 'discovered' the New World has been challenged. His voyages launched centuries of European exploration and colonisation of the American continents. His encounters also triggered centuries of exploitation of native American populations.
Schoolchildren in Britain learn the rhyme, “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” and it was in fact on August 3rd, 1492, that Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera in Spain with his three ships, the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa Maria. Supported by Isabella of Spain, his total crew numbered 90 sailors. He knew the world was round, so that by sailing West he could reach the Eastern lands of India and China, and capitalize by trading in their valuable goods, notably spices. The world was bigger than he thought, though, with two giant continents between him and his goal.
He thus discovered the New World and changed history forever. He thought he’d reached India when he made landfall in the Bahamas, and called the natives there “Indians.” The contact of the Old World with the New World, which began that day 527 years ago was to change both profoundly. From the New World came commodities, including gold and silver, tobacco and cheap food. From the Old World came people, crossing the ocean to live a new life on a faraway continent.
That day marked the beginning of a process that would lead to the establishment of many countries on the continents newly-discovered by the Europeans. The United States, Canada and the Latin-American countries have contributed much to the economies and cultures of the world since then, though the impact on the native populations and their cultures was to a large extent catastrophic. New diseases were among the less fortunate trades between the two worlds.
Neither Columbus, his crew or his backers could possibly have imagined that the New World they had landed on would one day be the home of a continental super-power with worldwide influence. The US adopted Britain’s Industrial Revolution and applied American know-how to it to develop new technologies that would impact on the lives of every person on the planet.
It developed the military prowess that would save Europe from tyranny in two world wars and the Cold War. Significantly, though, it also developed a new form of constitutional government that would restrain any excessive ambitions among its own rulers. The nations of Latin America, mostly ruled by a series of military dictators, have lacked the political stability of their Northern neighbours, and have had a more chequered history.
Now the US is following in the footsteps of Christopher Columbus by embarking on the exploration of yet another new domain, not that of another continent, but that of the wider universe. It has already put people on another world, and is about to do so again. Some commentators have suggested that, while the 20th Century was that of America, the 21st Century will be that of China. This seems unlikely, given the creativity and resourcefulness of free peoples. Unless the US is seized by some collective madness and ruins itself with socialism, as others have sadly done, the odds suggest that in the 21st Century the most influential, the most creative, and the most prosperous power will be the United States.
Those ships that sailed with Columbus certainly started something. There is a life-size copy of the Santa Maria in Madeira, one that makes tourist voyages around the islands. Seeing how tiny it looks, one appreciates how brave those intrepid explorers were to set out in such ships upon vast and unknown oceans.
Five hundred and twenty-five years ago, Christopher Columbus, under the patronage of the Spanish Crown, embarked on a journey to find a western route to Asia. On December 5, 1492, Columbus and his crew landed on an island that he named La Isla Española, “The Spanish Island,” which was eventually anglicized to Hispaniola. Haiti now occupies the western third of the island, and the remaining eastern two-thirds of the island make up the Dominican Republic.
In Hispaniola, Columbus established Spain’s first colony in the New World. As a result, he is the European explorer who is generally credited with originating and chronicling sea routes to the Western Hemisphere. During the early colonial period, Hispaniola’s key location on the northern edge of the Caribbean Sea made the colony the logistical base for Spain’s conquest of most of the Western Hemisphere. Columbus thereby initiated an era of exploration, subjugation, and colonization that lasted for centuries. The explorer has been accused by many historians of initiating the genocide of Hispaniola’s indigenous Arawak population, and he is also considered by some to be the originator of the transatlantic slave trade.
On December 5, 2017, exactly 525 years after Columbus’s arrival to Haiti, the Embassy of Haiti in Washington, DC hosted a panel discussion to explore how Columbus’s actions significantly impacted the Atlantic world and contributed to the current configuration of the Western world. The panel featured the following distinguished scholars and authors: Mr. Hervé Fanini-Lemoine, Writer & Editor of Kiskeya Publishing Company; Dr. Jessica Krug, Assistant Professor of History at The George Washington University; Dr. Kay Wright Lewis, Assistant Professor of History at Howard University; Dr. Adam Rothman, Professor of History at Georgetown University; and Dr. Julia Young, Associate Professor of History at The Catholic University of America.
Mr. Hervé Fanini-Lemoine was the first panelist to speak, and he provided a general overview of Columbus’s impact on the Atlantic World in terms of exploration, colonization, slavery, and revolution. According to Fanini-Lemoine, “Although 1492 was a bloodshed circa in human history, Western Europe largely profited for the next three centuries. It projected its trade, power, and influence across much of the globe. The endless wars of Europe were then fought in the Atlantic which became both a highway and a battlefield as western powers contested the space between the Old and New Worlds.”
Afterwards, Dr. Young presented on the migration of Columbus and the Europeans that followed him to the Americas, and how it had enormous and devastating consequences that still shape our world today. In her presentation, Dr. Young examined the matter through two themes: environment and religion. In focusing on these two topics, Dr. Young highlighted the fact that not only did the arrival of Columbus cause significant changes to the New World, but also that the New World changed Europe/Europeans as well. With regard to the environment, Dr. Young shared that Columbus’s arrival set off what is commonly known as the “Columbian Exchange”: the exchange of plants, animals, and pathogens that occurred when mass migration from the Eastern to Western hemisphere began immediately after 1492. According to Dr. Young, “All of the Columbian exchange had devastating consequences for the New World; none more than disease. It is estimated that 75-95% of native populations died of disease.” With regard to religion, Dr. Young explicated how Columbus and subsequent Spaniards imposed their religious beliefs on native peoples, as well as on enslaved Africans. She concluded her presentation by reflecting on how the so-called “Spiritual Conquest” ultimately created a Catholic population in the Americas, with a Latin American pope and 425 million Catholics in the region (approximately 40 percent of the total global Catholic population).
Dr. Lewis’s presentation followed thereafter, and it dealt with violence in the Atlantic World, particularly in regard to the genocide of indigenous populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and the Haitian Revolution. In her presentation, Dr. Lewis provided a historical overview of the legacy and use of violence in the colonization of the Atlantic World. According to Dr. Lewis, “violence was an essential part of the history of those people perceived to be different, perceived to be enslaveable, or just in the way. Violence facilitated the colonization of the Atlantic World, not just in Columbus’s time, but rather throughout the process of Empire building.”
Afterwards, Dr. Jessica Krug delivered her presentation, which dealt with fugitive and maroon politics in the Atlantic World. She took the public on journey spanning five decades of transatlantic history, from the 16th century to the 21st century. Dr. Krug explored the relationship between seminal fugitive/resistance leaders and the gendered politics of authority and state in West Africa, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti from 1492 to the present.
Dr. Adam Rothman was the last panelist to speak, and he explored Columbus’s pervasiveness in the landscape of memory. As a first example of this point, Dr. Rothman pointed out that “we are all gathered here in the District of Columbia, which is, after all, named after Christopher Columbus.” He explained that “during the Age of Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, many newly independent countries took Columbus as a symbol of America and their new nations, which were represented by the figure of ‘Columbia’.” Dr. Rothman went on to share that he received his PhD in History from Columbia University, and that he lives in the Columbia Heights area of D.C. He also mentioned a painting by Constantino Brumidi from the 1870s called “Columbus and the Indian Maiden,” which hangs in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol. To conclude, Dr. Rothman revealed the fact that the fountain that stands outside Washington, DC’s Union Station is actually named the Christopher Columbus Memorial Fountain, much to the surprise of the guests.
Following these informative and edifying presentations, a Q&A session followed during which the public had the opportunity to ask the panelists several questions. One of the questions pertained to whether or not the multitude of monuments erected in honor of Columbus would eventually be subjected to removal. The guests proved to be keenly interested in the subject matter, and continued to debate among themselves regarding this question and others long after the panel’s conclusion.
You may click here to view additional photos from the evening.
Acknowledgements:
Samira Rashid, Photography
Nellie Goen, Floral arrangements
Marie Michel Bakery, Catering