Talk:Christopher Columbus

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[edit] Article completely glosses over horrors suffered by Indians

I've never posted on Wikipedia before and I rarely post anywhere on the Internet, but after reading this piss-poor article I was compelled to write something. This is the worst major article I've ever read on this site. I came here because I read an article linked to on Yahoo about the eclipse incident, wherein Columbus tricked Jamaica's "increasingly hostile local inhabitants," as the Yahoo/AFP article describes them, into providing his crew with food and provisions by threatening to steal the moon from the sky. When I read that, I immediately wondered if the reason for their "increasing hostility" might have had something to do with being enslaved, brutalized, and massacred by Columbus and the Spaniards for the preceding twelve years.

I came here for an account of those atrocities, perhaps some different estimates as to the overall scope of the genocide, but I found none of that. We do, however, get to read a firsthand account of a really bad storm that poor Columbus had to suffer through. I could only find a handful of critical passages, and they were all mentioned casually and given no larger context. The most egregious example is the graphic account of a rape that's told without any context whatsoever and seems completely out of place. So bizarre. Is this supposed to be the "balance?" Then there's this part: "Before returning to Spain, Columbus also kidnapped some ten to twenty-five Indians and took them back with him. Only seven or eight of the Indians arrived in Spain alive, but they made quite an impression on Seville." Well, at least they had that going for them. I have no idea what "quite an impression" is supposed to mean but it sounds like they were put on public display or suffered some other humiliation (which probably paled in comparison to what their friends and family were going through back home, where according to Zinn the Spaniards who'd been left behind at Fort Navidad "roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor"). Perhaps the most telling passage in the article is the one that refers to Columbus as a "fierce supporter of slavery." I guess that's one way of putting it. The man enslaved untold thousands of people! JUST CALL HIM A SLAVER! "Fierce supporter of slavery" makes it sound like it was some deep personal conviction that he was fighting for. What a bullshit phrasing. Then, in the very next sentence, we learn that "Columbus repeatedly had to deal with rebellious settlers and natives." Damn those rebellious natives, making things so hard on poor Columbus. And "deal with"? Seriously? Like how the mafia "deals with" people? Why is the real story here totally obscured by this innocuous language?

From other discussions here it looks like people have tried to fix the article and their edits were removed every time. Someone below quotes a very lucid passage from the introduction of Encyclopedia Brittanica's Columbus article that accurately summarizes the modern, de-mythologized view of Columbus. The Wikipedia article includes a couple paragraphs at the end to that effect, but its anti-Columbus representatives are a Burning Spear song and a Hugo Chavez speech. Couldn't there be a section with criticism from some more reputable sources? Or even Columbus's own accounts of the conquest (which I understand have been deleted from the article in the past)?

Finally, if you go read the BBC story on Chavez, linked in the final footnote, you'll find another example of Western bias posing as "objectivity" on this matter: they call Columbus a "much-lauded adventururer" and use quotation marks around the words "genocide" and even "invasion." Chavez is quoted as saying that the conquistadors massacred Indians at an average rate of "one every ten minutes." There's no time frame given, and the author doesn't bother to tell us if Chavez's claims are, you know, true. But let's take the years 1494-1508. Eyewitness Bartolome de las Casas, a priest who initially participated in the conquest of Cuba before becoming a dissenter, puts the number of dead Indians at 3 million for that 15 year period. Zinn says modern estimates range from under a million to eight million. Chavez's math works out to 788,400. So he actually appears to be at the low end, which I didn't expect.

The bottom line is that when Hugo Chavez is talking more sense on a subject than its Wikipedia article, then that article is in serious need of revision.

3cardmonty (talk) 17:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)Austin


I came here because I read an article linked to on Yahoo about the eclipse incident, wherein Columbus tricked Jamaica's "increasingly hostile local inhabitants," as the Yahoo/AFP article describes them, into providing his crew with food and provisions by threatening to steal the moon from the sky. When I read that, I immediately wondered if the reason for their "increasing hostility" might have had something to do with being enslaved, brutalized, and massacred by Columbus and the Spaniards for the preceding twelve years.
It was because Columbus, having been shipwrecked (and awaiting rescue) on a beach in Jamaica for nearly a year, was running out of food supplies for his crews and the local population was becoming increasingly unable and unwilling to provide it. There was no massacre; indeed, for self-preservation, took great pains to ensure amicable relations throughout the stay. The food which he obtained was bartered, not stolen. --Xiaphias (talk) 06:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for the clarification. It appears I was too hasty in my assumption that Columbus had already initiated the conquest of Jamaica by 1504. The Jamaican Arawaks were not exterminated until after Columbus's death.
3cardmonty (talk) 11:45, 27 February 2008 (UTC)austin

Well, they may not have been exterminated, but his practical enslavement of this Indian nation certainly ultimately ensured it - if not with disease brought by the Europeans than by malnutrition they suffered due to his obsession with their mining for gold rather than tending to their crops, or the mass suicides or infanticide by those who did not want to live themselves or have their children live under such brutal oppression. Waleeta (talk) 14:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

From user Jeroen Karas: "Some words to Columbus the slaver: he made at least one commercial trip to El Mina, the first slaving port the Portuguese set up on the West African coast, likely to procure workers for the young sugar industry on the Canary islands. His business relationship with Genuese merchant families indicates strongly that he was decidedly more than a supporter of slavery - one of his friends, Marchionni, obtained 1490 exclusive licenses from the Portuguese crown for the trade with the then-called slave-coast. We should also not forget that it was Columbus himself who, on his second voyage in 1496, sent home a cargo of some 400 Indians to be sold as slaves in Spain (of which only half survived the trip). He did that against the express orders of the Queen. If nothing else that makes him the first slaver operating in America." 3cardmonty (talk) 00:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)Austin

I've got no objection to something in the article about Columbus and slaves so long as it is accurate and NPOV. It isn't as simple though as 'against the express orders of the Queen', see The Relationship Between The Tainos And Columbus From 1492 To 1524 in Spanish Documents of the Time although that paper couldn't be used as a reference. I've read that the slaves were freed and returned to the New World but I don't know if that is the case.--Doug Weller (talk) 17:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Guns, Germs and Steel

It seems to this reader that several of those who have a problem with Columbus being lauded for the courage to set out on his voyage of exploration are tainted with a far left political bent. I suspect that much of the pooh poohing of this mans accomplishments is eminating from a deep rooted hatred of anything that furthered the advancement of man undertaken by white Europeans.

One need only look to the celebrated scholar Jared Diamond and his excellent work "Guns, Germs and Steel" to see that there existed certain "have's" and "have not's" throughout history. The Arawaks, through no fault of their own were "have not's" and the white Europeans, through their own industry and the resources they had at their disposal, were "have's".

I would also look askew at anyone who puts any great deal of stock in that which spews forth from Mr. Chavez. If an advocate of capitalist self-determination were to tell him that 2+2=4, he wou'ld go to great lengths to prove it doesn't.

nebulamoonbeam 02/21/2008

This post makes no specific rebuttals to any of the points raised by me or the other people who have tried to make this article less biased. The author throws out some lazy accusations of capitalism-hating left-wing bias. My view on Columbus may be seen as leftist in the U.S., but I assure you it's a very mainstream view internationally, especially among Latin Americans, Native Americans, and other "have-nots" who have been on the wrong end of European guns, germs, and steel. Diamond specifically says that he doesn't see Europeans as smarter than the peoples they conquered, their civilization just developed faster for reasons mainly associated with geography. Moreover, what is so wrong with including the have-nots' side of the story? Obviously they're going to have a different view of colonialism, is it less valid than the haves' simply because the haves succeeded in subjugating the have-nots? And I hope you weren't referring to my post directly above yours when you talk about people "putting a great deal of stock" in Hugo Chavez's comments. I specifically said it was unfair to use Chavez in the article as one of the only representatives of the critical view and that more reputable sources should be included.

3cardmonty (talk) 12:11, 22 February 2008 (UTC)Austin

I agree -- except is it right to actually blame Columbus for being a child of his time? By all means, make the injustices clear and don't paint him as a saint. But you can't paint him as a devil either (and plenty of Native Americans had similar attitudes to 'others').

There are quite a few flaws in Jared Diamond's book, don't take it as gospel (I'm talking about detail, not the business about 'haves' and 'havenots'). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 16:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

A devil would be far too kind a word to describe him —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.126.115.119 (talk) 02:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image Removal

The picture of Columbus heretofore included in this article is, in fact, nothing of the sort. Check this:

A 1519 portrait by the renowned Venetian painter Sebastiani del Piombo [...] which industrialistist J. P. Morgan donated to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1900, shows a surly, fat, middle-age man with thick lips and a flat nose. Columbus looked nothing like that. Piombo [...] had never been to Spain, let alone set eyes on the Admiral. And Columbus never had his portrait painted or likeness sketched during his lifetime. [...] Art Historians would later discover that the inscription was not part of the original painting byt was added years later by an unknown hand. They would also surmise that the painting was not created in 1519, but as many as fifteen years afterward. Most damning, the subject was definitively identified as an Italian cleric.

This text comes from Martin Dugard's 2005 book, The Last Voyage of Columbus, pages 265-66. --Xiaphias (talk) 06:29, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Birthplace

I'm going to remove most of the mentions of 'controversy' surrounding Columbus' place of birth.

Even with less than a complete record, however, scholars can state with assurance that Columbus was born in the republic of Genoa in northern Italy, although perhaps not in the city itself, and that his family made a living in the wool business as weavers and merchants. [...] The two main early biographies of Columbus have been taken as literal truth by hundreds of writers, in large part because they were written by individual closely connected to Columbus or his writings. [...] Both biographies have serious shortcomings as evidence.

Quoted from William D. Phillips, Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips in the The Worlds of Christopher Columbus, page 9. --Xiaphias (talk) 04:41, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Historical consensus exists. See Cristofor Colombo : Documenti e prove della sua appartenenza a Genova published in 1931 for example. All serious (and real !) historians claim the Genoese origin. DocteurCosmos (talk) 10:59, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
"I agree. Historical consensus exists." Consensus does not make truth. Truth makes truth. NO ONE during Columbus Lifetime nor after ever shown proof that the peasant Colombo in Italy 1479 was the same nobleman in Portugal in 1479. Consensus in this case only serves to cover up a shortcoming of historians' inability to find the true discoverer. 71.111.247.223 (talk) 03:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
We're not here to determine truth. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an academic journal. --Xiaphias (talk) 07:49, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
"A lot of new evidence has accumulated that points to Christopher Columbus being Portuguese - please change the main text, since it is most unlikely that he is actually from Genoa. Everyone knows that his alledged will (the only source pointing him as Genoese) was fake because some Italian guy wanted his money" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.224.252.10 (talk) 15:16, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
I believe it should at leaste be mentioned the existence of the Portuguese theory, as well as the Spanish one, eventhough the Genoese has been long entrenched in western culture. Contrary to what was said earlier, there are some interesting proofs such as the fact that he only ever wrote in Portuñol, a language spoken by portuguese people when adressing castillian/spanish speakers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaliOGrande (talk • contribs) 18:50, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
An article (mentionned in the intro) is devoted to these questions. DocteurCosmos (talk) 06:45, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Real name

I report a part of the introduction: "Also well known are his name's rendering in modern Italian as Cristoforo Colombo".

Cristoforo Colombo is the real name of Christopher Columbus, born in Italy from an Italian family. Then, Christopher Columbus is only the name's rendering in modern english.

More trash. The discoverer does NOT have a real name yet. The name used was Colon and NEVER Colombo, Columbus or Columbo. Again the shortcomings of historians who never investigated in search of the truth brings us a name that is NOT TRUE for the name Christoferens Colon was an alias and invented to hide the true name. Read your history. This article is as much fantasy as the story that Colon always believed to be in India. Fantasy history and myths nothing more and still misleading the public with these fantasies. 71.111.247.223 (talk) 03:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Source? --Xiaphias (talk) 05:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ridley Scott

"As in many of Scott's movies, the character is presented as having some ideas that weren't current at his time."

How many movies should that be? - I count two. What's the relevance in an article about Columbus? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.189.38.22 (talk) 15:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC) Gina gao (talk) 22:41, 8 June 2008 (UTC) I don't think names matter as long as we get the infornmation.

[edit] Physical Description - Eye Color

In the "Physical Description" section for Columbus it does seem pretty accurate except it omits a description of "his clear blue eyes" by Bartolome de las Casas who actually knew him quite well after his voyages. It appears in the most well known portraits his eyes are brown in color. http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/admiral.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Synchaser (talk • contribs) 21:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

All known portraits are posthumous work... DocteurCosmos (talk) 18:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I realize the portraits of Columbus are posthumous. But a line under the "Physical appearance" says artists who have reconstructed his appearance have done so from written descriptions. Most of the well known portraits show him with hazel colored eyes or what appears to me to be dark brown eyes. This doesn't match the historical consensus of Columbus' eyes being light blue as his hair being red.

Bartolomé de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, ed. Agustín Millares Carlo, 3 vols. (Mexico City, 1951), book 1, chapter 2, 1:29. The Spanish word garzos is now usually translated as "light blue," but it seems to have connoted light grey-green or hazel eyes to Columbus's contemporaries. The word rubio can mean "blonde," "fair," or "ruddy."

The above text taken from pg. 282, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus by William D. & Carla Rahn Phillips Synchaser (talk) 11:09, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re-worked Physical appearance section

Removed line under Physical appearance - de Bry etching is a copy of Piombo portrait. Curiously, Theodore de Bry, the famed printer and engraver at Frankfurt, claimed that a metal engraving made by his son Jean used in his book Collectiones Peregrinationum in Indiam Occidentalem was copied from a painting of Columbus commissioned by the King and Queen of Spain after the Admiral's first voyage. If so, the work would be the inspiration for all of the Jovian portraits. The engraving, however, is a copy of the Piombo canvas. Andre de Hevesy The Discoverer: A New Narrative of the Life and Hazardous Adventures of the Genoese, Christopher Columbus. 1929, pg. 278.


Removed line about artists reconstructing Columbus' appearance from written descriptions. Some may have but it appears most haven't. I added a line corresponding to the following: No less than 71 alleged original portraits of Columbus or copies were exhibited at the Chicago Exposition of 1893. They showed lean-faced, long-jowled Columbuses and fatfaced, pudgy Columbuses; blond Columbuses and swarthy, olive-tinted Columbuses; smooth-visaged Columbuses and Columbuses variously mustached, bearded and whiskered; Columbuses garbed in all manner of costume, lay and ecclesiastical, noble and vulgar, from the Franciscan robe to the courtier's dress, and in styles ranging over three centuries. Most of them tallied in no way with the contemporary descriptions, and the jury who examined them could find no satisfactory evidence that any one was authentic. See Samuel Eliot Morison Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, pg. 47-48, Boston 1942.


Added description "light colored eyes". I don't think it can definitively be said what color his eyes were, but if I had to pick a color I'd say blue because that's how the Spanish word "garzos" is usually translated. I would like to see Carlo's evidence for this word being connoted light grey-green or hazel eyes in Columbus' time. If somebody has more info about that please post it here. For the time being I think "light colored eyes" is pretty descriptive and neutral. See Physical Description - Eye Color topic above for reference. Synchaser (talk) 17:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Include in Governor info

Governor of the New Indies needs to be included under the Governor info so when one skims down to this area, they know the location of his governorship. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Valerie J. Lee (talk • contribs) 18:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I think Columbus is a liar and a fraud Gina gao (talk) 22:39, 8 June 2008 (UTC)