The
explorer is widely thought of as an exploiter today, and didn’t know
east from west. But a version of his boastful missive is expected to
fetch up to £1.2m at auction
In 1493,
Christopher Columbus wrote a letter that would change the landscape of
the modern world. “I sailed to the Indies with the fleet that the
illustrious King and Queen, our sovereigns, gave me, where I discovered a
great many islands, inhabited by numberless people,” he wrote after his
return to Europe to royal treasurer Luis de Santángel. “Of all, I have
taken possession for their Highnesses.”
The
events relayed in the letter were “the first report of a voyage that
really did change the world”, says Columbus biographer Professor Felipe
Fernández-Armesto.
Now a rare 1493 Latin
translation of this letter, printed on an early printing press to
swiftly convey news of Columbus’s “discoveries” to elite Europeans, is
expected to fetch up to £1.2m ($1.5m) at a Christie’s auction this
month.
“[In current times] Columbus has lost
his former status as an honorary all-American hero and quasi-founding
father, but notoriety rarely hurts one’s market value, especially in the
US. ” says Fernández-Armesto.
Columbus had no
idea that, at the time, he was the first European since the Vikings to
encounter North America – he thought he had travelled to islands near
Japan. But his voyage created, for the first time, “a viable,
commercially exploitable route” across the Atlantic and opened up
communications between long-sundered cultures on either side of the
ocean, Fernández-Armesto says.
The letter
praises the rich natural assets of the islands Columbus encountered, and
he portrays the “extraordinarily timid” native people he met there as
“so unsuspicious and so generous” they are “like fools”. It is now seen
by historians as a piece of propaganda that heralds the start of the
European colonisation of the New World.
By
exploiting the resources of this apparently “new” hemisphere, European
countries would finally start to catch up with China, Islamic nations
and India in power and wealth – while also enslaving and exploiting
people all over the globe. “Like him or not, you can’t deny Columbus’s
importance,” Fernández-Armesto says.
The
document has been in a private Swiss collection for nearly a century and
is described by Christie’s as “the earliest obtainable edition of
Columbus’s letter”, whose international publication triggered one of the
first “media frenzies” for the printed word.
The
significance of the letter is its wide diffusion, thanks to the
printing press,” says Professor Geoffrey Symcox from the University of
California, Los Angeles. Using what was then cutting-edge technology,
the Spanish crown sent copies to the courts of Europe to stake Spain’s
claim,says Symcox. “The news circulated rapidly, not just through
diplomatic channels but mercantile channels as well.”
The
impact of the text demonstrates just how good Columbus was at public
relations, according to the Cuban-American medieval historian Professor
Teo Ruiz: “He made sure everybody knew what he had done: that he had
reached the islands of the Indies [a collective term for India and the
Far East] by sailing westwards. Which, of course, was not true.”
Earlier
explorers had been unwilling to sail west because they didn’t dare risk
being unable to return home. But Columbus, who was the son of a weaver
and self-taught as an explorer, had made a series of wild calculations
without standardising measurements, and concluded the world was 25%
smaller than it is. He then convinced the Spanish monarchs, King
Ferdinand II and Isabella I, to provide him with a fleet of ships so he
could sail west and find a new sea route to Asia, which would prevent
Portugal from having a monopoly on the spice trade.
In
a classic case of confirmation bias, as soon as he reached land, he
claimed to be in the far east. In fact, he had arrived in the West
Indies. Then he visited Cuba, Haiti and San Domingo. “He just bumped
into these islands. He did not know and could not even imagine they were
there,” says Ruiz.
An intrepid sailor,
Columbus had managed to capitalise on the Earth’s prevailing winds by
charting a south-western course to the American continent via the Canary
Islands. In doing so, he unwittingly demonstrated how following winds
offered new opportunities for long-range navigation and trade,
initiating what became known as “the Columbian Exchange”: the
irreversible transfer of people, flora, fauna, diseases, ideas and
commodities across the Atlantic.
“What he did
achieve, he didn’t recognise he’d done,” says Professor William
Phillips, a Columbus expert at the University of Minnesota. As for
Columbus’s letter, “it was self-promotion and propaganda” – a
15th-century example of fake news.
It also
marks one of the earliest appearances of the “noble savage” archetype.
Columbus’s letter, Symcox says, portrays the naked Indigenous people he
meets as “guileless innocents living a simple life in the forest – and
thus ripe for the civilising mission that Europeans took upon themselves
in their dealings with peoples in the Americas and Africa”.
Later,
as a brutal colonial governor and viceroy, Columbus would
systematically exploit the Taíno people of the Caribbean, forcing them
to mine gold and deliver quotas on pain of harsh punishment. Hundreds
were enslaved by Columbus and shipped to Spain to be sold, and others
were massacred or subjected to extreme violence and cruelty.
Some
also caught deadly diseases such as smallpox and measles, brought by
the Spaniards. It is estimated that, within a few decades of Columbus’
arrival, most of the Taíno had died from enslavement, massacre or
disease.
Now the darker side of the European
intrusion into the Americas is better known, Phillips says, Columbus has
come to be seen by historians as “the first of the exploiters rather
than the first of the explorers”.
In the US,
Columbus statues and monuments have been torn down and vandalised, and
many states no longer recognise Columbus Day, a federal holiday,
choosing instead to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

No comments:
Post a Comment