No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Columbian Legacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
Extract
The quincentenary of Columbus' arrival in the New World is now safely past. The spate of timely studies, instant media wisdom, abysmal films, ecological outrage, mediocre drama and politically correct comment is subsiding. Yet ironically enough, despite such outpourings we know little more about the man himself than was known a century ago. His legacy is another matter. The successful crossing of the Atlantic, followed by European conquest and settlement of part of the Americas were eventually to affect most of mankind, though not always in such a manner as publicists in early-modern Castile predicted or as has been alleged by Columbus' modern detractors. But before we turn to this vast and emotive subject it should be emphasized that the Admiral's achievements in a brief, enigmatic and turbulent public career were of an astounding and probably unparallelled order. A man of foreign and obscure birth, he managed to secure employment in race and caste-ridden Spain, and from such unpropitious beginnings went on to prove himself a superlative seaman. He inspired and accomplished four voyages which revealed to Europeans a huge continent of which they were unaware. He discovered more unknown territory than any other navigator. He achieved some understanding of the true size of the Atlantic – and just how much of the globe was covered by water came as a horrible shock to his contemporaries – and, uniquely, he set in motion a staggering sequence of exploration and conquest.
Information
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1993
References
Notes
1 de Landa, Fray Diego, Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, Tozzer, Alfred M. ed., (Cambridge, Mass. 1941) chapter xvGoogle Scholar.
2 Scammell, G.V., The First Imperial Age; European Overseas Expansion c. 1400–1715 (London 1989) 182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Quoted in Kearney, Hugh, The British Isles (Cambridge 1989) 134.Google Scholar
4 Weckman, G.L., ‘The Middle Ages in the conquest of America’, Speculum 26 (1951) 130–139CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Penrose, B., Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass. 1955) 166–167Google Scholar; Bataillon, M., Etudes sur Bartolomé de Las Casas (Paris 1965) 180 ff.Google Scholar
5 Hakluyt, Richard, Principal Navigations (12 vols., Glasgow 1903–05) IX, 422.Google Scholar
6 Scammell, G.V., The World Encompassed: The First European Maritime Empires, c. 800–1650 (London 1981) 357.Google Scholar
7 Encomienda was the system whereby Spaniards were granted, or simply arrogated to themselves, the right to services and dues provided by a given number of subjugated peoples.
8 Scammell, First Imperial Age, 117–118; Bethell, Leslie, ‘The Decline and Fall of Slavery in Nineteenth Century Brazil’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, I (1991) 71–88, at 73–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Scammell, First Imperial Age, 185 ff.
10 Richard Konetzke, Die Indianerkulturen Altamerikas und die Spanisch-Portugiesische Kolonialherrschaft (Frankfurt am Main 1965) 110.
11 Julian Gwyn, ed., The Royal Navy and North America: The Warren Papers, 1736–1752 (1973) 226; Boxer, C.R., ‘The English and the Portuguese Brazil Trade, 1660–1780: Some problems and personalities’, La Trobe University, Institute of Latin American Studies, Occasional Papers, no. 4 (1981) 4–5Google Scholar.
12 Diego de Landa, Yucatán, chapter lii.
13 Scammell, World Encompassed, 249; Scammell, First Imperial Age, 33, 36, 184, 334; Stannard, David E., American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (Oxford 1992) xiiiGoogle Scholar.
14 Mulatto-of European and Africa parentage. Mestizo–of European and Indian parentage.
15 Purchas His Pilgrimes (20 vols.; Glasgow, 1905–7), XVI, 358 ffGoogle Scholar; Dampier, William, A New. Voyage Round the World, SirGray, Albert ed., (London 1937) 15–17Google Scholar; McLachlan, Jean O., Trade and Peace with Old Spain, 1667–1750 (Cambridge 1940) 88–89Google Scholar; Scammell, First Imperial Age 149.
16 See, for example, Carlos Fuentes in The Guardian, 12 October, 1992.
17 The Economist, 11th January, 1992, 64; and 28th November, 1992, 75.
18 Scammell, First Imperial Age, 179, 229 ff.
19 Lubbock, Basil ed., Barlow's Journal of his Life at Sea in the King's Ships, East and West Indiamen and Other Merchantmen from 1659 to 1703 (2 vols.; London 1934) I, 73Google Scholar.
20 Scammell, First Imperial Age, 117, 220.
21 Hakluyt, Navigations X, 313, 323.
22 Kaufman, P., Libraries and their Users (London 1969) 29, 31Google Scholar.
23 Hakluyt, Navigations VI, 353.
24 Rowse, A.L., The Elizabethans and America (London 1959) 193, 203Google Scholar.
25 Scammell, First Imperial Age, 62; Woolf, Stuart, ‘The Construction of a European Worldview in the Revolutionary-Napoleonic Years’, Past and Present 137 (1992) 72 ff, 76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Scammell, First Imperial Age, 71, and Robinson, David ed., Migration in Colonial Spanish America (Cambridge 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Cf. Canny, Nicholas, Kingdsom and Colony: Ireland in the Atlantic World, 1560–1800 (The John Hopkins University Press 1988) 96Google Scholar.
28 Hugh Kearney, The British Isles, 182.
29 Silvio Zavala, ‘Thomas More au Mexique’, Annales E.S.C. (1948) 1–8; Zavala, Silvio, ‘Sir Thomas More in New Spain’, Diamante 3 (1955)Google Scholar.
30 Bromley, J.S., ‘Outlaws at Sea, 1660–1720: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity among the Caribbean Freebooters’, in: J.S. Bromley, Corsairs and Navies, 1660–1720 (London 1987) 8–10Google Scholar.
31 Scammell, First Imperial Age, 41, 66, 172.
32 Scammell, G.V., ‘On the Discovery of the Americas and the Spread of Intolerance, Absolutism and Racism in Early Modern Europe’, The International History Review 13 no. 3 (1991) 502–521CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 Lubbock, Barlow's Journal, passim.
34 Scammell, First Imperial Age, 245.
35 Parry, J.H., Trade and Dominion: The European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century (London 1971) 263–264Google Scholar; Scammell, G.V., ‘European Exiles, Renegades and Outlaws and the Maritime Economy of Asia c. 1500–1750’, Modern Asian Studies 26, 4 (1992) 641–661CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and see also Quiason, Serafim D., English ‘Country Trade’ with the Philippines, 1664–1765 (Quezon City 1966)Google Scholar; and Marshall, P.J., East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford 1976)Google Scholar.
36 Raleigh, Walter, The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana, Harlow, V.T. ed., (London 1928) 4 ffGoogle Scholar.
37 Davis, Ralph, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London 1962) 226, 256, 298–299Google Scholar; Price, Jacob M., ‘Colonial Trade and British Economic Development, 1600–1775’, in: Fohlen, Claude and Godechot, Jacques eds., La Révolution Américaine et L'Europe (Paris 1978) 225Google Scholar; Scammell, First Imperial Age, 231.
38 Fisher, H.E.S., The Portugal Trade: A Study of Anglo-Portuguese Commerce, 1700–1770 (London 1971) 6Google Scholar.
39 Fisher, Portugal Trade, 133.
40 McLachlan, Trade and Peace with Old Spain, 6; Fisher, Portugal Trade, 126–127; Arruda, José Jobson de Andrade, ‘Colonies as Mercantile Investments: The Luso-Brazilian Empire, 1500–1808’, in: Tracy, James D. ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350–1750 (Cambridge 1991) 393Google Scholar; Crossley, David and Saville, Richard eds., The Fuller Letters, 1728–1755: Guns, Slaves and Finance (Sussex Record Society 1991)Google Scholar; Mathias, Peter, The First Industrial Nation. An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1914 (2nd ed., London 1983) 382Google Scholar.