According to historian Edmund Morgan, Columbus was not a
scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made hundreds of marginal notations
in them and came out with ideas about the world that were characteristically
simple and strong and sometimes wrong, the kind of ideas that the self-educated
person gains from independent reading and clings to in defiance of what anyone
else tries to tell him. [Morgan, Edmund S. (2009). "Columbus's
Confusion About the New World". Smithsonian Magazine.]
Today
is Columbus Day – an occasion fraught with as much controversy as the historical
icon himself. Columbus may have been a gifted navigator but he was a troubled
and troublesome soul. His ambition knew no bounds and he was determined to wipe
clean from humanity’s collective memories the fact that the Vikings led by Lief
Ericson came three centuries before him.
In his search for wealth and recognition, Columbus’
avarice fueled the birth of torture, tyranny and genocide in all of the
Americas - killing off most of the New World before it could even gain a
foothold in history. Trade routes were key to success for European kingdoms and
their emerging imperialism and expanding economies. Columbus preyed on this need
to propel his own ambitions.
On inception Columbus was already soundly beaten by his
fellow countryman, Bartholomew Diaz,
the Portuguese nobleman and explorer who had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. After
begging from court to court across Europe, his failed mission brought him to
Portugal’s primary nemesis - Spain and the royal court of Ferdinand of Aragon
and Isabella of Castille.
In the end Columbus never got what the Spanish crown promised. Columbus the unrelenting social climber and self-promoter
stopped at nothing - not even exploitation, slavery, or twisting Biblical
scripture to advance his ambitions - in denial until his death that what he had
discovered was not Asia but the Americas.
Rightly or not history has chosen to remember and revere the man.
