Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer. Born in the Republic of Genoa, under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. Those voyages and his efforts to establish settlements on the island of Hispaniola, initiated the permanent European colonization of the New World. 

At a time when European kingdoms were beginning to establish new trade routes and colonies, motivated by imperialism and economic competition, Columbus proposed to reach the East Indies (South and Southeast Asia) by sailing westward. This eventually received the support of the Spanish Crown, which saw a chance to enter the spice trade with Asia through this new route. During his first voyage in 1492, he reached the New World instead of arriving in Japan as he had intended, landing on an island in the Bahamas archipelago that he named San Salvador. Over the course of three more voyages, he visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America, claiming all of it for the Crown of Castile. 

Though preceded by short-lived Norse colonization of North America led by Leif Erikson in the 11th century, Columbus is the European explorer credited with establishing and documenting routes to the Americas, securing lasting European ties to the Americas, and inaugurating a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries. His exertions thereby strongly contributed to the development of the modern Western world. He also founded the transatlantic slave trade and has been accused by several historians of initiating the genocide of the Hispaniola natives. Columbus himself saw his accomplishments primarily in the light of spreading the Catholic religion. 

Columbus had set course in hopes of finding a western route to the Indies (Asia). He called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited Indios (Spanish for "Indians"). His strained relationship with the Spanish crown and its appointed colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and dismissal as governor of the settlements on the island of Hispaniola in 1500, and later to protracted litigation over the benefits that he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the crown. 

Quest for Asia 

Background

Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Asia, Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land passage, the Silk Road, to the Indies (then construed roughly as all of south and east Asia) and China, which were sources of valuable goods such as spices and silk. With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the land route to Asia became much more difficult and dangerous. Portuguese navigators tried to find a sea way to Asia. 

In 1470, the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V of Portugal that sailing west would be a quicker way to reach the Spice Islands, Cathay, and Cipangu than the route around Africa. Afonso rejected his proposal. Portuguese explorers, under the leadership of King John II, then developed the Cape Route to Asia around Africa. Major progress in this quest was achieved in 1488, when Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope, in what is now South Africa. Meanwhile, in the 1480s, the Columbus brothers had picked up Toscanelli's suggestion and proposed a plan to reach the Indies by sailing west across the "Ocean Sea", i.e., the Atlantic. However, Dias's discovery had shifted the interests of Portuguese seafaring to the southeast passage, which complicated Columbus's proposals significantly. 

Nautical considerations 

Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees of longitude that separated Europe from the Far East and about the distance that each degree represented, he did possess valuable knowledge about the trade winds, which would prove to be the key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean. During his first voyage in 1492, the brisk trade winds from the east, commonly called "easterlies", propelled Columbus's fleet for five weeks, from the Canary Islands to The Bahamas. The precise first land sighting and landing point was was San Salvador Island. To return to Spain against this prevailing wind would have required several months of an arduous sailing technique, called beating, during which food and drinkable water would probably have been exhausted. 

Instead, Columbus returned home by following the curving trade winds northeastward to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where he was able to catch the "westerlies" that blow eastward to the coast of Western Europe. There, in turn, the winds curve southward towards the Iberian Peninsula. 

It is unclear whether Columbus learned about the winds from his own sailing experience or if he had heard about them from others. The corresponding technique for efficient travel in the Atlantic appears to have been exploited first by the Portuguese, who referred to it as the Volta do mar ("turn of the sea"). Columbus's knowledge of the Atlantic wind patterns was, however, imperfect at the time of his first voyage. By sailing directly due west from the Canary Islands during hurricane season, skirting the so-called horse latitudes of the mid-Atlantic, Columbus risked either being becalmed or running into a tropical cyclone, both of which, by chance, he avoided. 

Quest for financial support for a voyage

In 1485, Columbus presented his plans to King John II Portugal. He proposed that the king equip three sturdy ships and grant Columbus one year's time to sail out into the Atlantic, search for a western route to the Orient, and return. Columbus also requested he be made "Great Admiral of the Ocean", appointed governor of any and all lands he discovered, and given one-tenth of all revenue from those lands. The king submitted Columbus's proposal to his experts, who rejected it. It was their considered opinion that Columbus's estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 miles (3,860 km) was, in fact, far too low. 

In 1488, Columbus appealed to the court of Portugal once again and, once again, John II invited him to an audience. That meeting also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with news of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa (near the Cape of Good Hope). With an eastern sea route to Asia apparently at hand, King John was no longer interested in Columbus's far-fetched project. 

Columbus traveled from Portugal to both Genoa and Venice, but he received encouragement from neither. He had also dispatched his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England to inquire whether the English crown might sponsor his expedition, but also without success. 

Columbus had sought an audience from the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who had united several kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula by marrying and were ruling together. On 1 May 1486, permission having been granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who, in turn, referred it to a committee. After the passing of much time, the savants of Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. They pronounced the idea impractical and advised their Royal Highnesses to pass on the proposed venture. 

However, to keep Columbus fro taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options open, the Catholic Monarchs gave him an annual allowance of 12,000 maravedis^[각주:1] and, in 1489, furnished him with^[각주:2] a letter ordering all cities and towns under their domain to provide him food and lodging at no cost. 

Agreement with the Spanish crown 

After continually lobbying at the Spanish court and two years of negotiations, he finally had success in January 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella had just conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, and they received Columbus in Cordoba, in the Alcazar castle. Isabella turned him down on the advice of her confessor. Columbus was leaving town by mule in despair when Ferdinand intervened. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch him^[각주:3], and Ferdinand later claimed credit for being^[각주:4] "the principal cause why those islands were discovered". 

In the April 1492 "Capitulations of Santa Fe", King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised Columbus that if he succeeded he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Queen Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new lands he could claim for Spain. He had the right to nominate three persons, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the new lands. He would be entitled to 10 percent of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity. Additionally, he would also have the option of buying one-eight interest in any commercial venture with the new lands and receive one-eight of the profits. 

Columbus was later arrested in 1500 and dismissed from his posts. He and his sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a lengthy series of court cases against the Castilian crown, known as the pleitos colombinos, alleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs. The Columbus family had some success in their first litigation, as a judgement of 1511 confirmed Diego's position as Viceroy, but reduced his powers. Diego resumed litigation in 1512, which lasted until 1536, and further continued until 1790. 

Voyages

Between 1492 and 1503, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas, each voyage being sponsored by the Crown of Castile. These voyages marked the beginning of the European exploration and colonization of the American continents, and are thus of enormous significance in Western history. 

Columbus always insisted, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that the lands that he visited during those voyages were part of the Asian continents, as previously described by Marco Polo and other European travelers. Columbus's refusal to accept that the lands he he had visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia might explain, in part, why the American continent was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci and not after Columbus. 

First voyage

On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships: a larger carrack, the Santa Maria ex-Gallega ("Galician"), and two smaller caravels, the Pinta ("The Pint", "The Look", or "The Spotted One") and the Santa Clara, nicknamed the Nina ("Girl") after her owner Juan Nino of Moguer. The monarchs forced the citizens of Palos to contribute to the expedition. The Santa Maria was owned by Juan de la Cosa and captained by Columbus. The Pinta and the Nina were piloted by the Pinzon brothers (Martin Alonso and Vincente Yanez). 

Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands, which belonged to Castile. He restocked provisions and made repairs in Gran Canaria, then departed from San Sebastian de La Gomera on 6 September, for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean. At about 2:00 in the morning of 12 October (21 October, Gregorian Calendar New Style), a lookout on the Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodriguez Bermeo), spotted land, and immediately alerted the rest of the crew with a shout. Thereupon^[각주:5], the captain of the Pinta, Martin Alonso Pinzon, verified the discovery and alerted Columbus by firing a lombard. Columbus later maintained that he himself had already seen a light on the land a few hours earlier, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension promised by Ferdinand and Isabella to the first person to sight land. 

Columbus called the island (in what is now the Bahamas) San Salvador (meaning "Holy Savior"); the natives called it Guanhani. Exactly which island in the Bahamas this corresponds to is unresolved. Based on primary accounts and on what one would expect from the geographic positions of the islands given Columbus's course, the prime candidates are San Salvador Island (so named in 1925 on the theory that it was Columbus's San Salavor), Samana Cay, and Plana Cays. 

The indigenous people he encountered, the Lucayan, Taino, or Arawak, were peaceful and friendly. Noting their gold ear ornaments, Columbus took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold. From the entry in his journal of 12 October 1492, in which he wrote of them: "Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn our language." Columbus noted that their primitive weapons and military tactics made them susceptible to easy conquest, writing, " ... these people are very simple in war-like matters ... I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased." 

Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28 November. On 22 November, Martin Alonso Pinzon took the Pinta on an unauthorized expedition in search of an island called "Babeque" or "Baneque", which the natives had told him was rich in gold. Columbus, for his part, continued to the northern coast of Hispaniola, where he landed on 5 December. There, the Santa Maria ran aground on^[각주:6] Christmas Day 1492 and had to be abandoned. The wreck was used as a target for cannon fire to impress the native peoples. Columbus was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus left 39 men, including Luis de Torres, the Converso interpreter, who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, and founded the settlement of La Navidad at the site of present-day Bord de Mer de Limonade, Haiti. Columbus took more natives prisoner and continued his exploration. He kept sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a single ship, until he encountered Pinzon and the Pinta on 6 January. 

On 13 January 1493, Columbus made is last stop of this voyage in the New World, in the Bay of Rincon at the eastern end of the Samana Peninsula in northeast Hispaniola. There he encountered the warlike Ciguayos, the only natives who offered violent resistance during his first voyage to the Americas. The Ciguayos was stabbed in the buttocks and another wounded with an arrow in his chest. Because of this and because of the Ciguayos' use of arrows, he called the inlet where he met them the Bay of Arrows (or Gulf of Arrows). Columbus kidnapped about 10 to 25 natives and took them back with him (only seven or eight of the natives arrived in Spain alive).

Columbus headed for Spain on the Nina, but a storm separated him from the Pinta, and forced the Nina to stop at the island of Santa Maria in the Azores. Half of his crew went ashore to say prayers in a chapel to give thanks for having survived the storm. But while praying, they were imprisoned by the governor of the island, ostensibly on suspicion of being pirates. After a two-day standoff, the prisoners were released, and Columbus again set sail for Spain. 

Another storm forced him into the port at Lisbon. He anchored next to the King's harbor patrol ship on 4 March 1493 in Portugal. There, he was interviewed by Bartolomew Dias, who had rounded the Cape of Good Hope a few years earlier, in 1488-1489. Dias's success had complicated Columbus's attempts to secure funding from the Portuguese court because the sure route to the Indies that Dias pioneered made a risky, conjectural western route unnecessary. Not finding John II of Portugal in Lisbon, Columbus wrote a letter to him and waited for John's reply. John asked Columbus to go to Vale do Paraiso north of Lisbon to meet him. Relations between Portugal and Castile were poor at the time. Columbus went to meet with John at Vale do Paraiso. Hearing of Columbus's discoveries, John told him that he believed the voyage to be in violation of the 1479 Treaty of Alcacovas. 

After spending more than a week in Portugal, and paying his respects to Eleanor of Viseu, Columbus again set sail for Spain. Ferdinand Magellan was a young boy and a ward of Eleanor's court; it is likely he saw Columbus during this visit. After departing, and after reportedly being saved from assassins by King John, Columbus crossed the bar of Saltes and entered the harbor of Palos de la Frontera on 15 March 1493. Word of his finding new lands rapidly spread throughout Europe. 

Second voyage

Columbus left the port of Cadiz on 24 September 1493, with a fleet of 17 ships carrying 1,200 men and the supplies to establish permanent colonies in the New World. The passengers included priests, farmers, and soldiers, who would be the new colonists. This reflected the new policy of creating not just "colonies of exploitation", but also "colonies of settlement" from which to launch missions dedicated to converting the natives to Christianity. Modern studies suggest that, as reported by the Washington Post, "crew members may have included free black Africans who arrived in the New World about a decade before the slave trade began. 

As in the first voyage, the fleet stopped at the Canary Islands, from which it departed on 13 October, following a more southerly course than on the previous expedition. On 3 November, Columbus sighted a rugged island that he named Dominica (Latin for Sunday); later that day, he landed at Marie-Galante, which he named Santa Maria la Galante. After sailing past Les Saintes (Los Santos, "The Saints"), he arrived at the island of Guadeloupe, which he named Santa Maria de Guadalupe de Extremadura, after the image of the Virgin Mary venerated at the Spanish monastery of Villuercas, in Guadalupe, Caceres, Spain. He explored that island from 4 to 10 November. 

Michele da Cuneo, Columbus's childhood friend from Savona, sailed with Columbus during the second voyage and wrote: "In my opinion, since Genoa was Genoa, there was never born a man so well equipped and expert in the art of navigation as the said lord Admiral." Columbus named the small island of "Saona ... to honor Michele de Cuneo, his friend from Savona." 

The same childhood friend reported in a letter that Columbus had provided one of the captured indigenous women to him. He wrote, "While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked - as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But - to cut a long story - I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores."

Pedro de las Casas, father of te priest Bartolome de las Casas, also accompanied Columbus on this voyage. 

The exact course of Columbus's voyage through the Lesser Antilles is debated, but it seems likely that he turned north, sighting and naming several islands.

Columbus also sighted the cabin of the Virgin Islands, which he named "Islands of Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins" (shortened, both on maps of the time and in common parlance, to Islas Virgenes). He also named the islands of Virgin Gorda ("Fat VIrgin"), Tortola, and Peter Island (San Pedro).

He continued to the Greater Antilles, and landed in Puerto Rico, which he named San Juan Bautista in honor if Saint John the Baptist (a name that was later retained only for the capital city of San Juan). One of the first skirmishes between Native Americans and Europeans since the time of the Vikings occurred when Columbus's men rescued two native boys who had just been castrated by their captors in another tribe. 

On 22 November, Columbus returned to Hispaniola, where he intended to visit the fort of La Navidad, built during his first voyage and located on the northern coast of Haiti. Columbus found the fort in ruins, destroyed by the native Taino people. Among the ruins were the corpses of 11 of the 39 Spaniards who had stayed behind as the first colonists in the New World. 

Columbus then sailed more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) eastwards along the northern coast of Hispaniola, establishing a new settlement, which he called La Isabela, in the present-day Dominican Republic. However, La Isabela proved to be poorly located and the settlement was short-lived. 

Third voyage

According to the abstract of Columbus's journal made by Bartolome de Las Casas, the objective of the third voyage was to verify the existence of a continent that King John II of Portugal suggested was located to the southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. King John reportedly knew of the existence of such a mainland because "canoes had been found which set out from the coast of Guinea [West Africa] and sailed to the west wit merchandise."

On 30 May 1498, Columbus left with six ships from Sanlucar, Spain, for his third trip to the New World. Three of the ships headed directly for Hispaniola with much-needed supplies, while Columbus took the other three in an exploration of what might lie to the south of the Caribbean is islands he had already visited, including a hoped-for passage to continental Asia.

Columbus led his fleet to the Portuguese island of Porto Santo, his wife's native land. He then sailed to Madeira and spent some time there with the Portuguese captain Joao Goncalves da Camara, before sailing to the Canary Islands and Cape Verda. As he crossed the Atlantic, Columbus discovered that the angle between North as indicated by a magnetic compass and North as measured by the position of the pole star changed with his position (a phenomenon now known as "compass variation"). He would later use his previous measurements of the compass variation to adjust his reckoning.

After being becalmed for several days in the doldrums of the mid-Atlantic, Columbus's fleet regained its wind and, dangerously low on water^[각주:7], turned north in the direction of Dominica, which Columbus had visited in his previous voyage. The ships arrived at King John's hypothesized continent, which is South America, when they sighted the land of Trinidad on 31 July approaching from the southeast. The fleet sailed along the southern coast and entered Dragon's Mouth, anchoring near Soldado Rock where they made contact with^[각주:8] a group of native Amerindians in canoes. Columbus then landed on Trinidad at lcacos Point (which he named Punta de Arenal) on 2 August. After resupplying with food and water, from 4 to 12 August Columbus explored the Gulf of Paria, which separates Trinidad from what is now Venezuela, near the delta of the Orinoco River. He then touched the mainland of South America at the Paria Peninsula. 

Exploring the new continent, Columbus correctly interpreted the enormous quantity of fresh water that the Orinoco delivered into the Atlantic Ocean as evidence that he had reached a large landmass rather than another island. As he sailed the Gulf of Paria, he observed the diurnal rotation of^[각주:9] the pole start in the sky. which he erroneously^[각주:10] interpreted as evidence that the Earth was not perfectly spherical, but rather bulged out like a pear around the new-found continent. He also speculated that the new continent might be the location of the biblical Garden of Eden. He then sailed to the islands of Chacachacare and Margarita. He sighted Tobago (which he named "Bella Forma") and Grenada (which he named "Concepcion"). 

In poor health, Columbus returned to Hispaniola on 19 August, only to find that many of the Spanish settlers of the new colony were in rebellion against his rule, claiming that Columbus had misled them about the supposedly bountiful riches^[각주:11] of the New World. A number of returning settlers and sailors lobbied against Columbus at^[각주:12] the Spanish court, accusing him and his brothers of gross mismanagement^[각주:13]. Columbus had some of his crew hanged for disobedience. He had an economic interest in the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives and for that reason was not eager to baptize them, which attracted criticism from some churchmen. An entry in his journal from September 1498 reads: "From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold ... " 

Columbus was eventually forced to make peace with the rebellious colonists on humiliating terms. In 1500, the Crown had him removed as governor, arrested, and transported in chains to Spain (see "Accusations of tyranny during governorship" section below). He was eventually freed and allowed to return to the New World, but not as governor. 

Fourth voyage

Before leaving for his fourth voyage, Columbus wrote a letter to the Governors of the Bank of Saint George, Genoa, dated at Seville, 2 April 1502. He wrote "Although my body is here my heart is always near you." 

Columbus made a fourth voyage nominally in search of the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean. Accompanied by his brother Bartolomeo and his 13-year-old son Fernando, he left Cadiz on 11 May 1502, with his flagship Santa Maria and the vessels Gallega, Vizcaina, and Santiago de Palos. He sailed to Arzila on the Moroccan coast to rescue Portuguese soldiers whom he had heard were under siege by the Moors. 

On 15 June, they landed at Carbet on the island of Martinique (Martinica). A hurricane was brewing^[각주:14], so he continued on, hoping to find shelter on Hispaniola. He arrived at Santo Domingo on 29 June, but was denied port, and the new governor refused to listen to his storm prediction. Instead, while Columbus's ships sheltered at the mouth of the Rio Jaina, the first Spanish treasure fleet sailed into the hurricane. Columbus's ships survived with only minor damage, while 29 of the 30 ships in the governor's fleet were lost to a storm on 1 July. In addition to the ships, 500 lives (including that of the governor, Francisco de Bobadilla) and an immense cargo of gold were surrendered to the sea. 

After a brief stop at Jamaica, Columbus sailed to Central America, arriving at Guanaja (Isla de Pinos) in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras on 30 July. Here Bartolomeo found native merchants and a large canoe, which was described as being "long as a galley" and filled with cargo. On 14 August, he landed on the continental mainland at Puerto Castilla, near Trujillo, Honduras. He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, before arriving in Almirante Bay in Panama on 16 October. 

On 5 December 1502, Columbus and his crew found themselves in a storm unlike any they had ever experienced. In his journal Columbus writes, 

For nine days I was as one lost, without hope of life. Eyes never beheld the sea so angry^[각주:15], so high, so covered with foam. The wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire^[각주:16]. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it blazed like furnace, and the lighting broke with such violence that each time I wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought that the ship would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to fall from the sky; I do not say it rained, for it was like another deluge. The men were so worn out that they longed for death to end their dreadful suffering. 

In Panama, Columbus learned from the Ngobe of gold and a strait to another ocean, but was told by local leader Quibian not to go past a certain point down the river^[각주:17]. After much exploration, in January 1503, he established a garrison at the mouth of the Belen River. On 6 April, one of the ships became stranded in the river. At the same time, the garrison was attacked by Quibian and the other ships were damaged. Shipworms also damaged the ships in tropical waters. 

Columbus left for Hispaniola on 16 April heading north. On 10 May he sighted the Cayman Islands, naming them "Las Tortugas" after the numerous sea turtles there. His ships next sustained more damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba. Unable to travel farther, on 25 June 1503 they were beached in^[각주:18] St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. 

For one year Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica. A Spaniard, Diego Mendez, and some natives paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola. The governor, Nicolas de Ovando y Caceres. detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men. in the meantime Columbus, in a desperate effort to induce the natives to continue provisioning him^[각주:19] and his hungry men, won their favor by predicting a lunar eclipse for 29 February 1504, using Abraham Zacuto's astronomical charts. Help finally arrived, no thanks to the governor, on 29 June 1504, and Columbus and his men arrived in Sanlucar, Spain, on 7 November. 

Accusations of tyranny 

Following his first voyage, Columbus was appointed Viceroy and Governor of the Indies under the terms of the Capitulations of Santa Fe. In practice, this primarily entailed the administration of the colonies in the island of Hispaniola, whose capital was established in Santo Domingo. By the end of his third voyage, Columbus was physically and mentally exhausted, his body wracked by arthritis^[각주:20] and his eyes by ophthalmia^[각주:21]. In October 1499, he sent two ships to Spain, asking the Court of Spain to appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern. 

By this time, accusations of tyranny and incompetence on the part of Columbus had also reached the Court. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand responded by removing Columbus from power and replacing him with Francisco de Bobadilla, a member of the Order of Calatrava. Bobadilla, who rule as govern from 1500 until his death in a storm in 1502, had also been tasked by the Court with investigating the accusations of brutality made against Columbus^[각주:22].  Arriving in Santo Domingo while Columbus was away in the explorations of his third voyage, Bobadilla was immediately met with complaints about all three Columbus brothers: Christopher, Bartolomeo, and Diego. Bobadilla reported to Spain that Columbus regularly used torture and mutilation to govern Hispaniola. The 48-page report, found in 2006 in the national archive in the Spanish city of Simancas, contains testimonies from 23 people, including both enemies and supporters of Columbus, about the treatment of colonial subjects by Columbus and his brothers during his seven-year rule. 

According to the report, Columbus once punished a man found guilty of stealing corn by having his ears and nose cut off and then selling him into slavery. Testimony recorded in the report stated that Columbus congratulated his brother Bartolomeo on "defending the family" when the latter ordered a woman paraded naked through the streets and then had her tongue cut out for suggesting that Columbus was of lowly birth. The document also describes how Columbus put down native unrest and revolt; he first ordered a brutal crackdown in which many natives were killed and then paraded their dismembered bodies through the streets in an attempt to discourage further rebellion. "Columbus's government was characterized by a form of tyranny," Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian who has seen the document, told journalists. "Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place."

Because of their gross misgovernance, Columbus and his brothers were arrested and imprisoned upon their return to Spain from the third voyage. They lingered in jail for six weeks before King Ferdinand ordered their release. Not long after, the king and queen summoned the Columbus brothers to the Alhambra palace in Granada. There, the royal couple heard the brothers' pleas; restored their freedom and wealth; and, after much persuasion, agreed to fund Columbus's fourth voyage. But the door was firmly shut on Columbus's role as governor. Henceforth Nicolas de Ovandoy Caceres was to be the new governor of the West Indies. 

Legacy

Discoverer 

Though Christopher Columbus came to be considered the "discoverer of America" in US and European popular culture, his true historical legacy is more nuanced. America was first discovered by its indigenous population, and Columbus was not even the first European to reach its shores, as he was preceded by the Vikings at L'Anse aux Meadows. But the lasting significance of Columbus's voyages outshone that of his Viking predecessors, because he managed to bring word of the continent back to Europe. By bringing the continent to the forefront of Western attention, Columbus initiated the enduring relationship between the Earth's two major landmasses and their inhabitants. "Columbus's claim to fame isn't that he got there first," explains historian Martin Dugard, "it's that he stayed."

Historians have traditionally argued that Columbus remained convinced to the very end that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia, but writer Kirkpatrick Sale argues that a document in the Book of Privileges indicates Columbus knew he found a new continent. Furthermore, his journals from the third voyage call the "land of Paria" a "hitherto unknown" continent. On the other hand, his other writings continued to claim that he had reached Asia, such as a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI where he asserted that Cuba was the east coast of Asia. He also rationalized that the new continent of South America was the "Earthly Paradise" that was located "at the end of the Orient". Thus, it remains unclear what his true beliefs were. 

The term "pre-Columbian" is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors. 

Flat Earth mythology

Columbus is often credited with^[각주:23] refuting^[각주:24] a prevalent belief in a flat Earth. However, this legacy is a popular misconception. To the contrary, the spherical shape of the Earth had been known to scholars since antiquity, and was common knowledge among sailors. Coincidentally, the oldest surviving globe of the Earth, the Erdapfel, was made in 1492 just before Columbus's return to Europe. As such it contains no sign of the Americas and yet demonstrates the common belief in a spherical Earth. 

America as a distinct land 

The scholar Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed to America in the years following Columbus's first voyage, was the first to speculate that the land was not part of Asia but in fact constituted some wholly new continent previously unknown to Eurasians. His travel journals, published 1502-04, convinced German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller to reach the same conclusion, and in 1507 - a year after Columbus's death - Waldseemuller published a world map calling the new continent America from Vespucci's Latinized name "Americus". According to Paul Lunde, "The preoccupation of European courts with the rise of the Ottoman Turks in the East partly explains their relative lack of interest in Columbus's discoveries in the West."

Historically, the English had downplayed Columbus ad emphasized the role of the Venetian John Cabot as a pioneer explorer, but for the emerging United States, Cabot made for a poor national hero. Veneration of Columbus in America dates back to colonial times. The name Columbia for "America" first appeared in a 1738 weekly publication of the debates of the British Parliament. The use of Columbus as a founding figure of New World nations and the use of the word "Columbia", or simply the name "Columbus", spread rapidly after the American Revolution. Columbus's name was given to the federal capital of the United States (District of Columbia), the capital cities of two U.S. states (Ohio and South Carolina), and the Columbia River. Outside the United States the name was used in 1819 for the Gran Colombia, a precursor of the modern Republic of Colombia. Numerous cities, towns, counties, streets, and plazas (called Plaza Colon or Plaza de Colon throughout Latin America and Spain) have been named after him. A candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church in 1866, celebration of Columbus's legacy perhaps reached a zenith in^[각주:25] 1892 with the 400th anniversary of his first arrival in the Americas. Monuments to Columbus like the Columbian Exposition in Chicago and Columbus Circle in New York City were erected throughout the United States and Latin America extolling him^[각주:26]. In 1909, descendants of Columbus undertook to dismantle Columbus family chapel in Spain and move it to Boalsburg near State College, Pennsylvania, where it may now be visited by the public. At the museum associated with the chapel, there are a number of Columbus relics worthy of note, including the armchair that the "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" used at his chart table. 

Criticism in modern scholarship

More recent views of Columbus have been critical of his colonization and treatment of natives. Among reasons for this criticism is the treatment and disappearance of the native Taino people of Hispaniola, where Columbus began a rudimentary tribute system of gold and cotton. The people disappeared rapidly after contact with the Spanish because of overwork and the first pandemic of European diseases, which struck Hispaniola after 1519. Las Casas records that when he first came to Hispaniola in 1508, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...." Modern estimates for the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola are around 250,000-300,000. According to the historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes by 1548, 56 years after Columbus landed, fewer than five hundred Tainos were left on the island. 

The native Taino people of the island were systematically enslaved via the encomienda system implemented by Columbus, which resembled a feudal system in Medieval Europe. Disease played a significant role in the destruction of the natives. Indirect evidence suggests that some serious illness may have arrived with the 1500 colonists who accompanied Columbus's second expedition in 1493. By the end of 1494, disease and famine had claimed tow-thirds of the Spanish settlers. When the pandemic finally struck in 1519 it wiped out much of the remaining native population. 

Columbus's soldiers killed and enslaved with impunity at every landing. When Columbus fell ill in 1495, "what little restraint he had maintained over his men disappeared as he went through a lengthy period of recuperation^[각주:27]. The troops went wild, stealing, killing, raping, and torturing natives, trying to force them to divulge the whereabouts of the imagined treasure-houses of gold." According to Las Casas, 50,000 natives perished during this period. Upon his recovery, Columbus  organized his troops' efforts, forming a squadron of several hundred heavily armed men and more than twenty attack dogs. The men tore across^[각주:28] the land, killing thousands of sick and unarmed natives. Soldiers would use their captives for sword practice, attempting to decapitate them or cut them in half with a single blow. 

The historian Howard Zinn writes that Columbus spearheaded a massive slave trade; in 1495 his men captured in a single raid 1500 Arawak men, women, and children. When he shipped five hundred of the slaves of Spain, 40 percent died en route. Historian James W. Loewen asserts that "Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably sent more slaves - about five thousand - than any other individual... other nations rushed to emulate Columbus." 

Las Casas writes that when slaves held in captivity began to die at high rates, Columbus switched to a different system of forced labor: he ordered all natives over the age of thirteen to collect a specified amount (one hawk's bell full) of gold powder every three months. Natives who brought the amount were given a copper token to hang around their necks, and those found without tokens had their hands amputated and were left to bleed to death. 

The Arawaks attempted to fight back against Columbus's men but lacked their armor, guns, swords, and horses. When taken prisoner, they were hanged or burned to death. Desperation led to mass suicides and infanticide among the natives. In just two years under Columbus's governorship more than half of the 250,000 Arawaks in Haiti were dead. The main cause for the depopulation was disease followed by other causes such as warfare and harsh enslavement. 

Samuel Eliot Morison, a Harvard historian and author of a multivolume biography on Columbus writes, "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide." Loewen laments that while "Haiti under the Spanish is one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history", only one major history text he reviewed mentions Columbus's role in it. 

However some of these accounts may be part of Black Legend. Noble David Cook, writing about the Black Legend and the conquest of the Americas wrote, "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact". He instead estimates that the death toll was caused by diseases like smallpox, which according to some estimates had an 80-90% fatality rate in Native American populations. 

There is evidence that the men of the first voyage also brought syphilis^[각주:29] from the New World to Europe. Many of the crew members who served on this voyage later joined the army of King Charles VIII in his invasion of Italy in 1495. After the victory, Charles's largely mercenary army returned to their respective homes, thereby spreading "the Great Pox" across Europe and triggering the deaths of more than five million people. 

1. maravedi ; [명사] (역사) 스페인의 옛 금화[동화] ((11-12세기)) ;; 미국∙영국 [mæ̀rəvéidi] [본문으로]
2. furnish ; 2. ~ sb/sth with sth | ~ sth (격식) 제공[공급]하다 [본문으로]
3. fetch ; (fetch·es[-iz]; fetched[-t]) 1. …을 (가서) 가지고 오다; 데리고 오다[from, for]. ;; 동의어 ; BRING [본문으로]
4. claim (the) credit for ; …에 대한 공적을 주장하다 [본문으로]
5. thereupon ; (격식) 1. 그러자 곧[바로]; 그 직접적인 결과로 ;; 2. (앞에 언급된) 그 위에 [본문으로]
6. run aground ; [동사] 좌초하다. ;; (배가) 좌초하다; (계획이) 좌절되다 ;; 동의어 ; strand, run ashore. [본문으로]
7. be low on ; 1. …이 부족하다, 얼마 안 남다 ;; 2. [과목 따위]에 약하다 [본문으로]
8. make[lose] contact with ; …와 연락이 되다[끊기다], 접촉하다[접촉이 끊기다]; …와 친해지다[멀어지다] [본문으로]
9. diurnal ; 2. (천문) 하루 동안의 ;; 미국식 [daɪ|ɜ:rnl] 영국식 [daɪ|ɜ:nl] [본문으로]
10. erroneously ; [부사] 잘못되게, 틀리게; 정도에서 벗어나게. ;; erroneous ; [형용사] (격식) 잘못된 (정보에 의한) ;; 미국식 [ɪ|roʊniəs] 영국식 [ɪ|rəʊniəs] [본문으로]
11. bountiful ; (격식 또는 문예체) 1. 많은, 풍부한 ;; 2. 너그러운 [본문으로]
12. lobby against ; …에 반대하는 운동을 하다. [본문으로]
13. gross mismanagement ; 크게 잘못된 일 처리. [본문으로]
14. brew ; 4. [자동사][V] [보통 진행형으로 쓰여] ~ (up) (불쾌한 일이 일어날 움직임이) 태동하다 ;; 3. (음모 따위를) 획책하다(plot), (파란을) 일으키다 [본문으로]
15. behold ; [타동사][VN] (be・held / bI'held / , be・held) (옛글투 또는 문예체) (바라)보다 ;; 참고 ; lo [본문으로]
16. seethe ; [v] 1. ~ (with sth) | ~ (at sth) (마음속으로 분노 등이) 부글거리다, 속을 끓이다 [본문으로]
17. past ; [전치사] 2. (위치상으로 …을) 지나서 [본문으로]
18. beach ; [타동사] 바닷가[해변]로 오다[가져오다] ;; (해사) 〔배〕를 해변으로 끌어올리다. [본문으로]
19. provision ; [타동사][VN] [흔히 수동태로] ~ sb/sth (with sth) (격식) (특히 특정 기간 동안 필요한 식량을) 공급하다 [본문으로]
20. arthritis ; [U] 관절염 ;; 참고 ; osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis ;; 미국식 [ɑ:r|θraɪtɪs] 영국식 [ɑ:|θraɪtɪs] [본문으로]
21. ophthalmia ; [U] (병리) 안염(眼炎) ;; 미국식 [ɑfθǽlmiə,ɑp-] 영국식 [ɔf-,ɔp-] [본문으로]
22. make against ; …에게 불리하게 작용하다 [본문으로]
23. credit ; 2. WITH ACHIEVEMENT | [타동사][VN] [주로 수동태로] ~ A with B | ~ B to A B를 A의 공으로 믿다[공이라고 말하다] [본문으로]
24. refute ; [vn], (격식) 1. 논박[반박]하다 ;; 2. 부인하다 [본문으로]
25. reach a zenith[peak] ; 절정에 이르다 [본문으로]
26. extol ; [타동사][VN] (-ll-) ~ sb/sth (as sth) (격식) 극찬[격찬]하다 [본문으로]
27. recuperation ; [U]회복, 복구, 만회 [본문으로]
28. tear across ; …을 둘로 찢다 [본문으로]
29. syphilis ; [명사] 매독 ;; 미국·영국 [|sɪfɪlɪs] [본문으로]