What is the real legacy of Christopher Columbus? (part 7)

                         (humanities-interactive.org)

Continued from part 6...

Conclusion

In much of the documents and literature concerning Christopher Columbus, there are many myths blended with facts. Even the holidays belonging to Columbus are conflicting. In the United States, Columbus is hailed as a hero on Columbus Day with almost all schoolchildren taking part in some sort of celebration. The opposite of a celebration occurs in Venezuela (an area Columbus actually discovered) as Venezuelans observe the Día de la Resistencia Indígena, or Day of Indigenous Resistance. The day commemorates the native population’s resistance to the Spanish settlement, and during the 2004 commemoration, a statue of Columbus was destroyed and defaced.

Just as Columbus was an enigmatic combination of saint and sinner, so were his travels and accomplishments recorded. In his mind, he was on a sacred mission to the New World and along the way he experienced many tragedies in the pursuit of triumph. While Columbus did not die in poverty as is sometimes assumed, he saw so many riches and prizes fall into the hands of everyone but himself. As Samuel Eliot Morison classically wrote about Columbus, “[h]e was Man alone with God against human stupidity and depravity, against greedy conquistadors, cowardly seamen, even against nature and the sea.” Michael Anthony counters Morison in writing that Columbus “heralded the beginning of a long, bitter age of conflict, colonialism, and slavery, of blood, sweat and tears; an age typified by greed and graft, by unspeakable cruelty, by the lust for gold, as well as by falsehood, hypocrisy, and the destruction of innocence.” Perhaps the Columbian Paradox may never be solved.

 
Bibliography

Primary Sources

Columbus, Christopher. The Book of Privileges. Edited and translated by Helen Nader. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Columbus, Christopher. The Book of Prophecies. Edited by Robert Rusconi. Translated by Blair Sullivan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Columbus, Christopher. The Four Voyages. Edited and translated by Cecil Jane. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1988.

Columbus, Christopher. The Journal of Christopher Columbus. Translated by Cecil Jane. New York: Bonanza Books, 1989. (cited as “Diario” in footnotes)

Columbus, Ferdinand. The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus. Translated by Benjamin Keen. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

De Las Casas, Bartolome. An Account, Much Abbreviated on the Destruction of the Indies. Edited by Franklin W. Knight. Translated by Andrew Hurley. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003.

Mandeville, John. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Edited and translated by C. W. R. D. Moseley. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.

Polo, Marco. The Travels of Marco Polo. Edited and translated by R. E. Latham. New York: Penguin Classics, 1958.

Secondary Sources

(Articles)

Belfiglio, Valentine J. “The personality development of Christopher Columbus.” Texas Woman’s University. < http://www.ucm.es/BUCM/revistas/ghi/02116111/articulos/QUCE8989110063A.PDF>.

Vilches, Elvira. “Columbus’s Gift: Representations of Grace and Wealth and the Enterprise of the Indies.” Project Muse: Modern Language Notes. Johns Hopkins University.

Watts, Pauline Moffitt. “Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus’s ‘Enterprise of the Indies.’” The American Historical Review Vol. 90, No. 1 (February 1985) : 73-102.

West, Delno. “Christopher Columbus and His Enterprise to the Indies: Scholarship of the Last Quarter Century.” The William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Series, Vol.49, No. 2 (April 1992) : 254-77.

(Books)

Anthony, Michael. The Golden Quest: The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus. New York: The MacMillan Press, Ltd., 1992.

Curl, John. Columbus in the Bay of Pigs. Berkeley: Homeward Press, 1991.

Dugard, Martin. The Last Voyage of Columbus. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005.

Ellis, Joseph P. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. (Used as a comparative character analysis)

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. Columbus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Grafton, Anthony. New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1995.

Madaras, Larry and James M. SoRelle, eds. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in American History, Volume I, The Colonial Period to Reconstruction. Guilford, Connecticut: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

Magasich-Airola, Jorge and Jean-Marc de Beer. America Magica: When Renaissance Europe Thought It Had Conquered Paradise. New York: Anthem Press, 2007.

Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Vintage Press, 2006.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. Christopher Columbus, Mariner. New York: Meridian, 1983.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492-1616. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Paiewonsky, Michael. Conquest of Eden: 1493-1515. Tortola: MAPes MONDe Editoire, 1991.

Phelan, John Leddy. The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.

Phillips, Jr., William D. and Carla Rahn Phillips. The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Symcox, Geoffrey and Blair Sullivan. Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America. New York: Harper Perennial, 1984.

Zamora, Margarita. Reading Columbus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.