February 5, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, for generations, students in American elementary schools were taught Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” to discover America in 1492. Today, that lesson is changing in schools across the suburbs and country. Here to tell the story of Christopher Columbus is Laurence Bergreen, who wrote the definitive biography Columbus: The Four Voyages.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories for generations. Students
in American elementary schools were taught that Christopher Columbus fell
the ocean blue to discover America in fourteen ninety two.
Today that lesson is changing in schools across the country.
Here to tell the real story of Christopher Columbus is
(00:30):
Lawrence Berggreen, who wrote the definitive biography Columbus, The Four Voyages.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello, my name is Lawrence Burgreen, and I've written a
book about Christopher Columbus Columbus The Four Voyages. Of all
the books I've written, I think this has been the
most challenging and the most controversial, because Columbus's reputation has
been changing by the month. He's a figure that we
(01:03):
all know about, and he's been devalued almost beyond recognition,
torn down from statues, discredited over and over as if
it were the first time. But as I discovered the
criticism of Columbus, intense criticism was there almost at the beginning.
It seems to get rediscovered with each generation. He's been hated,
(01:28):
considered a genocidal monster. I would like to discuss Columbus
in three dimensions if you will, to give a sense
of what he was really like as a person with
his flaws at all. The flaws were huge, but also
so were his accomplishments. There's a reason why we remember Columbus.
(01:51):
He tied together with his four voyages, the Old World
and the New first of all, who was Columbus Christopher
of Columbus. Colombo was born in Genoa in fourteen fifty one.
He was the son of a weaver. He went to
(02:12):
see at fourteen, which was common, and he had a
very rough beginning. He sank in a bottle off the
coast of Portugal. He managed to paddle safely to shore
on a piece of wreckage, and as a Genoese he
enjoined a colony of Expatriogenolye sailors in Portugal. Later on
he was exploring the coast of West Africa and actually
(02:35):
a board another ship made it all the way to Iceland.
So even as a young person, Columbus had been around
mostly as what we would call a merchant marine, and
he worked carefully with his brothers, especially his brother Bartholomew,
who was a map maker. This was kind of interesting
(02:56):
because conceptions of the world at that time were by
our standards, faulty and misleading to an almost comical extent.
Both Alomu's maps and other maps of that era reinforced
the belief that China and all the riches that Columbus
eventually went to seep from China lay just to the
west of the Americas, that the Pacific Ocean was not
(03:19):
the largest body of water on the planet, but could
be traversed in maybe a few days. So the idea
was that if you could only get to the beginning
of the Pacific to its western edge, that you would
be able to get to China very quickly. This was,
of course, a huge mistake. Columbus, if he had known
(03:42):
the reality of it and how difficult it was to
get to China, probably would never have undertaken the voyage.
There were a couple of other sailors and navigators who did.
They were all lost. So the fact that he was
boldened to undertake it was based on a series of
faulty misconceptions. It's just one of the many ironies. He
(04:05):
spent a lot of time getting backing for the voyage.
He was in Portugal wouldn't back him. He finally went
to Spain and by that time, he was no longer
a young man. He was forty. Forty in those days
was late middle age, so he was, in a way
what seemed like the back nine of his career. On
(04:27):
the other hand, Columbus had some gifts, and his main
gift as a mariner. As a navigator was what we
call dead reckoning, sailing by the seat of his pants.
If he wanted to estimate time and distances, he used
very simple devices, such as a rope or a boy
or a landmark, timing the distance it took to move
(04:48):
from one end of his ship to another. If it
sounds primitive, it was, but it also worked, so he
wasn't dependent on technology or intellectual constructs were beyond his ken.
He also paid close attention to tides and to wind,
to the color of the sea, the composition of the clouds.
(05:09):
These mattered a lot more to him than the mathematical
calculations of the era's leading cosmographers. They generally had never
gone to sea, but Columbus had, and in his long
apprenticeship he had acquired a great deal of experience, which
turned out to be very helpful, especially in an era
(05:31):
of all these faulty maps, and he also had this
conviction that he could sail from the western coast of
Spain to the eastern coast of China without much of
a problem. He was not familiar with the astrolabe. He
did not steer by the stars. If he had done
that again, he probably would have never set out on
(05:52):
this voyage because he would have realized how faulty his
assumptions were. But he did have a sense that God
wanted him to do this. At times he even thought
that God was speaking to him. That wasn't that uncommon
in those days. Many people felt that God was directly
speaking to them about what they should be doing in life.
(06:14):
When I say speaking, I don't mean a mild, prompting
an intuitive one. I mean actually hearing a voice. And
we know that Columbus have this experience of God speaking
to him because he wrote down what he thought God
actually told him at critical times. What was so remarkable
about all this was that when he set out on
(06:36):
this voyage the very first time, the one that we
all study about in school, in fourteen ninety two, he
went across the Atlantic with three ships, and it's the
first time we know that Europeans had done this with
no loss of life. This is really remarkable considering the
dangers that he faced and his lack of specific knowledge.
(07:00):
And he made this voyage three more times, each time
improving based on hard won experience, until on the last
voyage he was able to cross the Atlantic in only
sixteen days. It was incredible. Of course, the shorter the voyage,
the less dangers you faced. There was less danger of storms,
(07:25):
less danger of dehydration, less danger of u needs at sea,
so this worked in his favor. His crew on these
voyages was very problematic because he sailed on the first
voyage just that day after the Spanish Inquisition became the
(07:45):
law of the land that was intended to drive Muslims
out of Spain, but it also had ripple effects across
Europe and all the way to Portugal, and was really
an important watershed and history. It was the rainchild, if
you could call it that, of the Catholic monarchs of Spain,
(08:08):
Ferdinand and Isabella. Because Columbus was not able to get
backing in Portugal. He was able to get sort of
backing from them, but let I say it was tentative.
His first fleet was three cramped, leaking, fragile vessels. They
were old and falling apart. We would call them rustbuckets,
(08:28):
except they were made out of wood, and they were small.
The Santa Maria, which was the largest, could hold only
forty sailors.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And you've been listening to historian Lawrence Bergreen tell the
story of Christopher Columbus in a way you've probably never
heard it before. It's complicated and it's nuanced, and like
any human being, this man had his flaws, but my goodness,
his virtues, his talents, you're hearing about some of them.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
By the way, if he.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Had not known how difficult it was we learned to
get to check. Of course they were looking for a
shorter route, he probably would have never embarked on the
voyage in the first place.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
The irony of ironies.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And he's forty years old when he tries to get
the backing to do this, and forty, as Lawrence pointed out,
is the back nine of your career back in the
late fifteenth century. And of course, how he knew what
he was supposed to do, well, he knew it because
he'd heard from God. And I mean he thought he
(09:30):
literally heard from God. And that's what he wrote in
his own journals and memoirs. A really spectacular part of
Lawrence's book is hearing about those messages from God, from
Columbus himself, and of course that first voyage and those.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Three sort of rickety ships.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
You're going to hear more of the story of Christopher
Columbus with Lawrence Bergreen as our American stories continue, and
we continue with our American stories and the story of
(10:12):
Christopher Columbus as told by historian Lawrence Bergreen.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Let's pick up where we last left off. Now.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Another one of Columbuses, it seems almost comical of misconceptions,
was that he was going to sail to China in
these ships. Therefore he brought translators with him, ready to
interpret Chinese once they reached Asia. Where did he get
these ideas from, Well, like everybody in Europe at that time,
(10:42):
he got them from Marco Polo's popular travels. Marco Polo
went over land rather than sea for the most part,
and dictated a very popular account of his adventures. Some
of it was embellished, some of it were drawn from
other accounts that he'd heard that he included in his own.
(11:05):
In general, it painted a picture of this mythical China
or Asia that Columbus thought he was reaching as a
place of great luxury of gold and sensual gratification. The
idea was he would go there and bring back spices,
which were very important and easy to transport. Gold a
(11:29):
little more difficult because it had to be mined or stolen,
and much much more ominously slaves. Slavery at that point
was very common throughout Europe. He also had another mission,
which partly contradicted this one, was that he wanted to
bring and he was quite serious about this, Christianity to
(11:51):
what he called the idle worshipers of the yeast. He
felt that his name Christopher Columbus meant Christ Bearer, and
he had a messianic sense of this. Now this didn't
square with the idea of slavery, because if you had
slaves and he wanted to convert people, they couldn't be Christians.
(12:13):
But nobody really bothered at that time to think it
through until he actually went out on the voyage. He
also planned to meet Kubla Khan. He had official letters
from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The only problem was
that Kubla Khan had died decades ago. The Mongol Empire,
(12:34):
which he led was fading into oblivion. So it could
be said that I think with some fairness that Marco
Polo's travels, which in many ways were accurate, misled rather
than inspired Columbus, and he spent his entire career four
voyages in a feudal effort to discover this maritime route
(12:56):
to China, Okay. In the process, he stumbled across what
we know and now and now called the New World.
And that was the beginning of what we also call globalization.
Now we can debate endlessly whether this was a good
thing or a band thing. But once Columbus had started
(13:18):
this process of going back and forth between what we
now call the Americas and Spain and Europe, there was
no stopping it. And it wasn't just trade, and it
wasn't just geopolitics. It was also what we call the
Columbus exchange. But the Columbian exchange involved livestock, and scenes
(13:42):
and germs and other things that could not be undone
because what you left behind stayed and transformed the landscapes
of both the old world and the New. On the
first voyage, his initial contacts, this was the fourteen ninety
two voyage, were tentative and respectful, he wrote, and he
(14:06):
was a big letter writer. I hope to win them
to the love and service of their highnesses, by which
he meant for men of Isabella and the whole Spanish nation.
They have no religion, but they are not idolators. They
believe that power and goodness dwell in the sky, and
are firmly convinced that I have come from the sky
(14:26):
with these ships and people. This is because they are
not stupid. Far from it.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
They are men of great intelligence, for they give a
marvelously good account of everything. But they have never before
seen men clothed or ships like these.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Columbus was probably talking about one of two tribes in
the Caribbean. The Tayano was probably the most likely, and
they were fairly sophisticated, as he realized, and they were
not particularly hostile to Columbus or rival. Some of them
were very curious and welcomed him. However, some of the
(15:05):
behavior of Columbus's followers or those who came in after him,
was so outrageous that what we think of the as
the atrocities that we attribute to Columbus were actually perpetrated
by those who came afterwards, sometimes in his name. And
sometimes independently some of the worst of them. For example,
(15:28):
one of his lieutenants, Michelle de Cuneo, wrote about capturing
and raping a beautiful indigenous woman, whom he claims the
Lord Admiral that was Columbus and gave to him. And
then he writes about how she was unwilling and scraped
her with his fingernails so that he wished he had
never laid eyes on her. Finally, he got a piece
(15:50):
of rope and punished her with it. These kinds of
lenners were circulated around Europe and sensationalized this voice, so
the impression of it went from being one of trade
and a religious mission to one of complete exploitation. Columbus
(16:10):
also decided that one of the other tribes, the Caribs,
as opposed to the Taiano, were Cannibals, and he wrote
after the second voyage that the Caribs eat the male
children that they have been adopted by their women, and
only bring up the children of their own women. In
(16:31):
other words, they eat the children of a rival indigenous people.
And then, to top it off, he reported that they
say that human flesh is so good that there is
nothing like it in the world. Well again, these kinds
of accounts electrified Europe Spain, and not in a good
way and set off a big reaction that changed the
(16:56):
color of everything. At the same time, while this was
going on, unknown to Columbus and his sailors in Europe,
something maybe more important was going on, and one that
continues to this day. That's the Columbian Exchange, which I
mentioned earlier. This was first identified by Alfred Crosby at
(17:19):
the University of Texas at Austin, and it indicates the
change in commingling of bacteria and plants and animals between
the old world and the New beginning in fourteen ninety two,
and then the subsequent Four Voyages when there was a
cross fertilizing of these separate land masses brought about by
(17:42):
Columbus and his followers.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
And you've been listening to historian Lawrence berg Green tell
the story, the rich and complicated story, the nuanced story
of Christopher Columbus, one of the great storytellers in this country.
Lawrence is.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
His book is Columbus the Four Voyages. I urge you
to get it. You will not put it down. Get
two copies, give it to a friend. We learn so
much about the context and the times in which he lived.
Lawrence isn't one of those historians who judge people out
of context. But yet he's honest as honest can be.
The full picture, the good, the bad, and the ugly,
(18:18):
and my goodness, the international trade lanes that Columbus started,
he started for better or worse global trade. He started globalization,
and it changed not only the New world, it changed
the old world too. Also a great discussion, a great
piece of storytelling on how Columbus viewed the Native tribes
(18:39):
and more importantly, how people used his name to do
just well tragic and ugly things, and of course some
of Columbus's own writings and the impact they had on
the Native tribes that lived here before his arrival. When
we return more of this remarkable story, this rich and
complicated story story of Christopher Columbus. Here on our American stories,
(19:38):
and we continue with our American stories and with the
story of Christopher Columbus as told by Lawrence Bergreen.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Columbus brought white potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and maniac, which
is a rather starchy root from the New World to
the back old to Europe, and he brought wheat, turnips, barley, apples,
and rice from Europe to the Americas. They made a
big difference because they enabled the people in the Americas
(20:12):
who started growing them to rapidly increase the population there.
But there was more, got more complicated. Columbus and his
men brought horses, cattle, sheep, and goats to the New World.
We have to imagine what it was like without horses,
without cattle before them. They also brought back to Europe
(20:35):
pathogens that were unknown. People didn't really know about germ
theory in those days. These pathogens had a devastating effect. Smallpox, malaria, chickenpox, influenza,
and yellow fever all came thanks to Columbus and his men,
not intentionally. He never decided, okay, we're going to intentionally
(20:58):
infect defenseless people in another land. They didn't realize they
were doing it. Some other effects of this Columbian exchange
alcohol and alcoholism. They weren't alcoholics in the New World
or alcohol before Columbus. Alcohol and alcoholism devastated local populations. So,
(21:19):
as you can see, this Columbian Exchange was complicated and
multi layered. Once that was started, it could not be undone.
Columbus's first voyage was relatively quick. As I mentioned, it
seemed to be successful. The second voyage was meant as
a follow up. He wanted to capitalize on it. Finally,
(21:40):
when he got to the third voyage, which was fourteen
ninety eight and fifteen hundred. In a way, this was
the most complicated of all, and we see a lot
of the contradictions in the Columbus voyages. Coming to the
four he had a very difficult time maintaining order among
the crew, and he had also had a difficult time
(22:04):
maintaining the pretense that he was going to China or Asia.
He was also undermined by his brother Martholomew, who was
much more interested in plunder and conquest and did not
share Columbus's messianic visions or ideals. At the meantime, on
(22:25):
this voyage he seemed to be losing his mind, or
at least temporarily losing his reason. On this third voyage,
once he discovered Venezuela, another major accomplishment, but again not China,
he decided that he was sailing uphill as he wrote
about which of course one can't do, and that he
(22:46):
had discovered the entrance to Paradise, And in case you
were wondering, it was a little bit north of Venezuelas.
So I don't think anybody else's ever found it since then.
Joking anyway, he wrote.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
That each time I sailed from Spain to the Indies,
I found that when I reached a point one hundred
leagues west of the Azores, the heavens, the stars, and
the temperatures of the air and the water of the
sea abruptly changed. It was as if the seas sloped upward.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
He was surprised because he felt that the Earth was spherical.
He believed it, and he knew it to be true.
He decided then that the Earth must be not round, but,
as he put it, quote the shape of a pair,
which is round everywhere except at the stalk, where it
juts out a long way. At this point, you know,
(23:39):
he seemed to be more and more detached for reality.
And he then talked about this watery summit that he
found that he didn't believe anyone could actually quote ascend
to the top. More complications ensued to the point where
Spain for then at Isabella decided to appoint an inspector
(24:01):
to see what was happening with Columbus. Because they were
alarmed by reports of cruelty and by Columbus's delusions, they
appointed Francisco to Bobadia, and his idea was to try
and clean up this messon Columbus. So he arrived in
August of fifteen hundred and wanted to see what was
(24:26):
actually going on. He was actually there in Santo Domingo,
and what he saw was worse than anyone back in
Spain had imagined. He was confronted by gallows, rotting corpses,
and who was overlooking this was Columbus's other brother, not Bartholomew,
but Diego. And he felt that he was doing the
(24:48):
right thing, and he boasted to Bobadia that five additional
Spaniards were to be hanged the next day. The reason
was because he believed that they were going to to
stage a mutiny or a rebellion against Columbus and his
two brothers. So he felt that he was carrying out
the wishes of Spain by doing this. Of course, it
(25:12):
was exactly the opposite. Executing Spaniards was of course an
extremely grave offense. So he found himself jailed and the
search went out for Columbus himself, who now found himself
in big trouble and spent most of his life under
suspicion for these atrocities. One of the things we're lucky
(25:37):
about with Columbus is that we have so many different
impressions of what he was really like. However, there is
one important part, crucial part of the story that we
don't know about. We don't know what the Tiato or
other indigenous people's actually thought. We can guess they're sometimes
quoted that we can judge or infer from their actions. Still,
(26:02):
it's largely based on speculation, and you know, we can
speculate in favor of one side or another. But there
is some sense they did regard Columbus as a messiah too,
but not in the sense a Columbus thought of himself
as bearing a divine message, but as a harbinger of
(26:23):
the end of time, because apparently in some people have
suggested that there was a myth that was prevalent, or
a belief among the Taiano and other peoples that when
ships like this appeared, that was the end of the world. Therefore,
they responded in a drastic way. Many of them committed suicide.
(26:46):
They jumped off of cliffs, they poisoned one another. Columbus
saw some of this and was absolutely mystified about that,
and he had no way of knowing why this was happening,
without realizing that he had actually unintentionally triggered it. So
this is a particularly tragic instance of unintended consequences. You
(27:12):
could see that the Columbus, throughout these voyages and throughout
his life, ricocheted around from one misconception to another, from
misplaced idealism to unintentional or overlooked cruelty. That makes him
an extraordinarily complex figure and also a very important figure
because the results of his voyage are with us this
(27:34):
day and won't be undone. They are really permanent. So
that makes one of the most important figures in the
history of exploration, if not history, both for better and
for worse. And I think he speaks a lot to
the human condition about our own susceptibility or fallibility, about
(27:54):
both inspiring and deleterious effects of belief. That's why he
still grips our imagination as well as our intellect.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler and a special thanks to
Lawrence berg Green his book Columbus the Four Voyages. When
you get it, you will not put it down, go
to Amazon or the usual suspects. Again, it's Columbus the
Four Voyages. And what a story he told, so complicated,
(28:28):
almost a dual nature to almost everything that happens.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Here's the good, here's the bad.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Much of it an undintended consequence of this very new partnership,
this new globalization. Columbus brings white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and
maize from the New World to the old. And he
brings wheat, turnips, apples, and rice from Europe to the Americas,
mutual benefits there. He also, my goodness, brings so many
(28:56):
more things, horses, cattle, sheep, and goats from Europe to
the New World. Can you imagine the country without these things.
It's unimaginable. And of course smallpox too, and other pathogens.
And again he didn't do it knowing that he was
doing what he was doing. These are undetended consequences of
(29:16):
this new globalization, of this new Columbian exchange. And let's
not forget alcohol and alcoholism too. Again not done on purpose,
but these were the undertended consequences of Columbus's journey. Contradictions,
my goodness, they're everywhere, and by the way, we live
with them in our own lives too, as human beings.
(29:36):
But they all come to the fore, including that last trip.
His own brothers turn out to be a real problem
in his life, and by all accounts, by the end
of that third voyage, Columbus well, he's lost his mind.
The story in the end shows the nature of Columbus
ricocheng for on one misperception and misconception to another, filled
(29:58):
with both and inspired nature, but also in the end.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
All those flaws and fallibility.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
The story of Christopher Columbus in the end, the story
of humanity, human nature, and the story of early America.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Here on our American stories.
And we continue with our American stories for generations. Students
in American elementary schools were taught that Christopher Columbus fell
the ocean blue to discover America in fourteen ninety two.
Today that lesson is changing in schools across the country.
Here to tell the real story of Christopher Columbus is
(00:30):
Lawrence Berggreen, who wrote the definitive biography Columbus, The Four Voyages.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello, my name is Lawrence Burgreen, and I've written a
book about Christopher Columbus Columbus The Four Voyages. Of all
the books I've written, I think this has been the
most challenging and the most controversial, because Columbus's reputation has
been changing by the month. He's a figure that we
(01:03):
all know about, and he's been devalued almost beyond recognition,
torn down from statues, discredited over and over as if
it were the first time. But as I discovered the
criticism of Columbus, intense criticism was there almost at the beginning.
It seems to get rediscovered with each generation. He's been hated,
(01:28):
considered a genocidal monster. I would like to discuss Columbus
in three dimensions if you will, to give a sense
of what he was really like as a person with
his flaws at all. The flaws were huge, but also
so were his accomplishments. There's a reason why we remember Columbus.
(01:51):
He tied together with his four voyages, the Old World
and the New first of all, who was Columbus Christopher
of Columbus. Colombo was born in Genoa in fourteen fifty one.
He was the son of a weaver. He went to
(02:12):
see at fourteen, which was common, and he had a
very rough beginning. He sank in a bottle off the
coast of Portugal. He managed to paddle safely to shore
on a piece of wreckage, and as a Genoese he
enjoined a colony of Expatriogenolye sailors in Portugal. Later on
he was exploring the coast of West Africa and actually
(02:35):
a board another ship made it all the way to Iceland.
So even as a young person, Columbus had been around
mostly as what we would call a merchant marine, and
he worked carefully with his brothers, especially his brother Bartholomew,
who was a map maker. This was kind of interesting
(02:56):
because conceptions of the world at that time were by
our standards, faulty and misleading to an almost comical extent.
Both Alomu's maps and other maps of that era reinforced
the belief that China and all the riches that Columbus
eventually went to seep from China lay just to the
west of the Americas, that the Pacific Ocean was not
(03:19):
the largest body of water on the planet, but could
be traversed in maybe a few days. So the idea
was that if you could only get to the beginning
of the Pacific to its western edge, that you would
be able to get to China very quickly. This was,
of course, a huge mistake. Columbus, if he had known
(03:42):
the reality of it and how difficult it was to
get to China, probably would never have undertaken the voyage.
There were a couple of other sailors and navigators who did.
They were all lost. So the fact that he was
boldened to undertake it was based on a series of
faulty misconceptions. It's just one of the many ironies. He
(04:05):
spent a lot of time getting backing for the voyage.
He was in Portugal wouldn't back him. He finally went
to Spain and by that time, he was no longer
a young man. He was forty. Forty in those days
was late middle age, so he was, in a way
what seemed like the back nine of his career. On
(04:27):
the other hand, Columbus had some gifts, and his main
gift as a mariner. As a navigator was what we
call dead reckoning, sailing by the seat of his pants.
If he wanted to estimate time and distances, he used
very simple devices, such as a rope or a boy
or a landmark, timing the distance it took to move
(04:48):
from one end of his ship to another. If it
sounds primitive, it was, but it also worked, so he
wasn't dependent on technology or intellectual constructs were beyond his ken.
He also paid close attention to tides and to wind,
to the color of the sea, the composition of the clouds.
(05:09):
These mattered a lot more to him than the mathematical
calculations of the era's leading cosmographers. They generally had never
gone to sea, but Columbus had, and in his long
apprenticeship he had acquired a great deal of experience, which
turned out to be very helpful, especially in an era
(05:31):
of all these faulty maps, and he also had this
conviction that he could sail from the western coast of
Spain to the eastern coast of China without much of
a problem. He was not familiar with the astrolabe. He
did not steer by the stars. If he had done
that again, he probably would have never set out on
(05:52):
this voyage because he would have realized how faulty his
assumptions were. But he did have a sense that God
wanted him to do this. At times he even thought
that God was speaking to him. That wasn't that uncommon
in those days. Many people felt that God was directly
speaking to them about what they should be doing in life.
(06:14):
When I say speaking, I don't mean a mild, prompting
an intuitive one. I mean actually hearing a voice. And
we know that Columbus have this experience of God speaking
to him because he wrote down what he thought God
actually told him at critical times. What was so remarkable
about all this was that when he set out on
(06:36):
this voyage the very first time, the one that we
all study about in school, in fourteen ninety two, he
went across the Atlantic with three ships, and it's the
first time we know that Europeans had done this with
no loss of life. This is really remarkable considering the
dangers that he faced and his lack of specific knowledge.
(07:00):
And he made this voyage three more times, each time
improving based on hard won experience, until on the last
voyage he was able to cross the Atlantic in only
sixteen days. It was incredible. Of course, the shorter the voyage,
the less dangers you faced. There was less danger of storms,
(07:25):
less danger of dehydration, less danger of u needs at sea,
so this worked in his favor. His crew on these
voyages was very problematic because he sailed on the first
voyage just that day after the Spanish Inquisition became the
(07:45):
law of the land that was intended to drive Muslims
out of Spain, but it also had ripple effects across
Europe and all the way to Portugal, and was really
an important watershed and history. It was the rainchild, if
you could call it that, of the Catholic monarchs of Spain,
(08:08):
Ferdinand and Isabella. Because Columbus was not able to get
backing in Portugal. He was able to get sort of
backing from them, but let I say it was tentative.
His first fleet was three cramped, leaking, fragile vessels. They
were old and falling apart. We would call them rustbuckets,
(08:28):
except they were made out of wood, and they were small.
The Santa Maria, which was the largest, could hold only
forty sailors.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And you've been listening to historian Lawrence Bergreen tell the
story of Christopher Columbus in a way you've probably never
heard it before. It's complicated and it's nuanced, and like
any human being, this man had his flaws, but my goodness,
his virtues, his talents, you're hearing about some of them.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
By the way, if he.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Had not known how difficult it was we learned to
get to check. Of course they were looking for a
shorter route, he probably would have never embarked on the
voyage in the first place.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
The irony of ironies.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And he's forty years old when he tries to get
the backing to do this, and forty, as Lawrence pointed out,
is the back nine of your career back in the
late fifteenth century. And of course, how he knew what
he was supposed to do, well, he knew it because
he'd heard from God. And I mean he thought he
(09:30):
literally heard from God. And that's what he wrote in
his own journals and memoirs. A really spectacular part of
Lawrence's book is hearing about those messages from God, from
Columbus himself, and of course that first voyage and those.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Three sort of rickety ships.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
You're going to hear more of the story of Christopher
Columbus with Lawrence Bergreen as our American stories continue, and
we continue with our American stories and the story of
(10:12):
Christopher Columbus as told by historian Lawrence Bergreen.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Let's pick up where we last left off. Now.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Another one of Columbuses, it seems almost comical of misconceptions,
was that he was going to sail to China in
these ships. Therefore he brought translators with him, ready to
interpret Chinese once they reached Asia. Where did he get
these ideas from, Well, like everybody in Europe at that time,
(10:42):
he got them from Marco Polo's popular travels. Marco Polo
went over land rather than sea for the most part,
and dictated a very popular account of his adventures. Some
of it was embellished, some of it were drawn from
other accounts that he'd heard that he included in his own.
(11:05):
In general, it painted a picture of this mythical China
or Asia that Columbus thought he was reaching as a
place of great luxury of gold and sensual gratification. The
idea was he would go there and bring back spices,
which were very important and easy to transport. Gold a
(11:29):
little more difficult because it had to be mined or stolen,
and much much more ominously slaves. Slavery at that point
was very common throughout Europe. He also had another mission,
which partly contradicted this one, was that he wanted to
bring and he was quite serious about this, Christianity to
(11:51):
what he called the idle worshipers of the yeast. He
felt that his name Christopher Columbus meant Christ Bearer, and
he had a messianic sense of this. Now this didn't
square with the idea of slavery, because if you had
slaves and he wanted to convert people, they couldn't be Christians.
(12:13):
But nobody really bothered at that time to think it
through until he actually went out on the voyage. He
also planned to meet Kubla Khan. He had official letters
from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The only problem was
that Kubla Khan had died decades ago. The Mongol Empire,
(12:34):
which he led was fading into oblivion. So it could
be said that I think with some fairness that Marco
Polo's travels, which in many ways were accurate, misled rather
than inspired Columbus, and he spent his entire career four
voyages in a feudal effort to discover this maritime route
(12:56):
to China, Okay. In the process, he stumbled across what
we know and now and now called the New World.
And that was the beginning of what we also call globalization.
Now we can debate endlessly whether this was a good
thing or a band thing. But once Columbus had started
(13:18):
this process of going back and forth between what we
now call the Americas and Spain and Europe, there was
no stopping it. And it wasn't just trade, and it
wasn't just geopolitics. It was also what we call the
Columbus exchange. But the Columbian exchange involved livestock, and scenes
(13:42):
and germs and other things that could not be undone
because what you left behind stayed and transformed the landscapes
of both the old world and the New. On the
first voyage, his initial contacts, this was the fourteen ninety
two voyage, were tentative and respectful, he wrote, and he
(14:06):
was a big letter writer. I hope to win them
to the love and service of their highnesses, by which
he meant for men of Isabella and the whole Spanish nation.
They have no religion, but they are not idolators. They
believe that power and goodness dwell in the sky, and
are firmly convinced that I have come from the sky
(14:26):
with these ships and people. This is because they are
not stupid. Far from it.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
They are men of great intelligence, for they give a
marvelously good account of everything. But they have never before
seen men clothed or ships like these.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Columbus was probably talking about one of two tribes in
the Caribbean. The Tayano was probably the most likely, and
they were fairly sophisticated, as he realized, and they were
not particularly hostile to Columbus or rival. Some of them
were very curious and welcomed him. However, some of the
(15:05):
behavior of Columbus's followers or those who came in after him,
was so outrageous that what we think of the as
the atrocities that we attribute to Columbus were actually perpetrated
by those who came afterwards, sometimes in his name. And
sometimes independently some of the worst of them. For example,
(15:28):
one of his lieutenants, Michelle de Cuneo, wrote about capturing
and raping a beautiful indigenous woman, whom he claims the
Lord Admiral that was Columbus and gave to him. And
then he writes about how she was unwilling and scraped
her with his fingernails so that he wished he had
never laid eyes on her. Finally, he got a piece
(15:50):
of rope and punished her with it. These kinds of
lenners were circulated around Europe and sensationalized this voice, so
the impression of it went from being one of trade
and a religious mission to one of complete exploitation. Columbus
(16:10):
also decided that one of the other tribes, the Caribs,
as opposed to the Taiano, were Cannibals, and he wrote
after the second voyage that the Caribs eat the male
children that they have been adopted by their women, and
only bring up the children of their own women. In
(16:31):
other words, they eat the children of a rival indigenous people.
And then, to top it off, he reported that they
say that human flesh is so good that there is
nothing like it in the world. Well again, these kinds
of accounts electrified Europe Spain, and not in a good
way and set off a big reaction that changed the
(16:56):
color of everything. At the same time, while this was
going on, unknown to Columbus and his sailors in Europe,
something maybe more important was going on, and one that
continues to this day. That's the Columbian Exchange, which I
mentioned earlier. This was first identified by Alfred Crosby at
(17:19):
the University of Texas at Austin, and it indicates the
change in commingling of bacteria and plants and animals between
the old world and the New beginning in fourteen ninety two,
and then the subsequent Four Voyages when there was a
cross fertilizing of these separate land masses brought about by
(17:42):
Columbus and his followers.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
And you've been listening to historian Lawrence berg Green tell
the story, the rich and complicated story, the nuanced story
of Christopher Columbus, one of the great storytellers in this country.
Lawrence is.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
His book is Columbus the Four Voyages. I urge you
to get it. You will not put it down. Get
two copies, give it to a friend. We learn so
much about the context and the times in which he lived.
Lawrence isn't one of those historians who judge people out
of context. But yet he's honest as honest can be.
The full picture, the good, the bad, and the ugly,
(18:18):
and my goodness, the international trade lanes that Columbus started,
he started for better or worse global trade. He started globalization,
and it changed not only the New world, it changed
the old world too. Also a great discussion, a great
piece of storytelling on how Columbus viewed the Native tribes
(18:39):
and more importantly, how people used his name to do
just well tragic and ugly things, and of course some
of Columbus's own writings and the impact they had on
the Native tribes that lived here before his arrival. When
we return more of this remarkable story, this rich and
complicated story story of Christopher Columbus. Here on our American stories,
(19:38):
and we continue with our American stories and with the
story of Christopher Columbus as told by Lawrence Bergreen.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Columbus brought white potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and maniac, which
is a rather starchy root from the New World to
the back old to Europe, and he brought wheat, turnips, barley, apples,
and rice from Europe to the Americas. They made a
big difference because they enabled the people in the Americas
(20:12):
who started growing them to rapidly increase the population there.
But there was more, got more complicated. Columbus and his
men brought horses, cattle, sheep, and goats to the New World.
We have to imagine what it was like without horses,
without cattle before them. They also brought back to Europe
(20:35):
pathogens that were unknown. People didn't really know about germ
theory in those days. These pathogens had a devastating effect. Smallpox, malaria, chickenpox, influenza,
and yellow fever all came thanks to Columbus and his men,
not intentionally. He never decided, okay, we're going to intentionally
(20:58):
infect defenseless people in another land. They didn't realize they
were doing it. Some other effects of this Columbian exchange
alcohol and alcoholism. They weren't alcoholics in the New World
or alcohol before Columbus. Alcohol and alcoholism devastated local populations. So,
(21:19):
as you can see, this Columbian Exchange was complicated and
multi layered. Once that was started, it could not be undone.
Columbus's first voyage was relatively quick. As I mentioned, it
seemed to be successful. The second voyage was meant as
a follow up. He wanted to capitalize on it. Finally,
(21:40):
when he got to the third voyage, which was fourteen
ninety eight and fifteen hundred. In a way, this was
the most complicated of all, and we see a lot
of the contradictions in the Columbus voyages. Coming to the
four he had a very difficult time maintaining order among
the crew, and he had also had a difficult time
(22:04):
maintaining the pretense that he was going to China or Asia.
He was also undermined by his brother Martholomew, who was
much more interested in plunder and conquest and did not
share Columbus's messianic visions or ideals. At the meantime, on
(22:25):
this voyage he seemed to be losing his mind, or
at least temporarily losing his reason. On this third voyage,
once he discovered Venezuela, another major accomplishment, but again not China,
he decided that he was sailing uphill as he wrote
about which of course one can't do, and that he
(22:46):
had discovered the entrance to Paradise, And in case you
were wondering, it was a little bit north of Venezuelas.
So I don't think anybody else's ever found it since then.
Joking anyway, he wrote.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
That each time I sailed from Spain to the Indies,
I found that when I reached a point one hundred
leagues west of the Azores, the heavens, the stars, and
the temperatures of the air and the water of the
sea abruptly changed. It was as if the seas sloped upward.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
He was surprised because he felt that the Earth was spherical.
He believed it, and he knew it to be true.
He decided then that the Earth must be not round, but,
as he put it, quote the shape of a pair,
which is round everywhere except at the stalk, where it
juts out a long way. At this point, you know,
(23:39):
he seemed to be more and more detached for reality.
And he then talked about this watery summit that he
found that he didn't believe anyone could actually quote ascend
to the top. More complications ensued to the point where
Spain for then at Isabella decided to appoint an inspector
(24:01):
to see what was happening with Columbus. Because they were
alarmed by reports of cruelty and by Columbus's delusions, they
appointed Francisco to Bobadia, and his idea was to try
and clean up this messon Columbus. So he arrived in
August of fifteen hundred and wanted to see what was
(24:26):
actually going on. He was actually there in Santo Domingo,
and what he saw was worse than anyone back in
Spain had imagined. He was confronted by gallows, rotting corpses,
and who was overlooking this was Columbus's other brother, not Bartholomew,
but Diego. And he felt that he was doing the
(24:48):
right thing, and he boasted to Bobadia that five additional
Spaniards were to be hanged the next day. The reason
was because he believed that they were going to to
stage a mutiny or a rebellion against Columbus and his
two brothers. So he felt that he was carrying out
the wishes of Spain by doing this. Of course, it
(25:12):
was exactly the opposite. Executing Spaniards was of course an
extremely grave offense. So he found himself jailed and the
search went out for Columbus himself, who now found himself
in big trouble and spent most of his life under
suspicion for these atrocities. One of the things we're lucky
(25:37):
about with Columbus is that we have so many different
impressions of what he was really like. However, there is
one important part, crucial part of the story that we
don't know about. We don't know what the Tiato or
other indigenous people's actually thought. We can guess they're sometimes
quoted that we can judge or infer from their actions. Still,
(26:02):
it's largely based on speculation, and you know, we can
speculate in favor of one side or another. But there
is some sense they did regard Columbus as a messiah too,
but not in the sense a Columbus thought of himself
as bearing a divine message, but as a harbinger of
(26:23):
the end of time, because apparently in some people have
suggested that there was a myth that was prevalent, or
a belief among the Taiano and other peoples that when
ships like this appeared, that was the end of the world. Therefore,
they responded in a drastic way. Many of them committed suicide.
(26:46):
They jumped off of cliffs, they poisoned one another. Columbus
saw some of this and was absolutely mystified about that,
and he had no way of knowing why this was happening,
without realizing that he had actually unintentionally triggered it. So
this is a particularly tragic instance of unintended consequences. You
(27:12):
could see that the Columbus, throughout these voyages and throughout
his life, ricocheted around from one misconception to another, from
misplaced idealism to unintentional or overlooked cruelty. That makes him
an extraordinarily complex figure and also a very important figure
because the results of his voyage are with us this
(27:34):
day and won't be undone. They are really permanent. So
that makes one of the most important figures in the
history of exploration, if not history, both for better and
for worse. And I think he speaks a lot to
the human condition about our own susceptibility or fallibility, about
(27:54):
both inspiring and deleterious effects of belief. That's why he
still grips our imagination as well as our intellect.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler and a special thanks to
Lawrence berg Green his book Columbus the Four Voyages. When
you get it, you will not put it down, go
to Amazon or the usual suspects. Again, it's Columbus the
Four Voyages. And what a story he told, so complicated,
(28:28):
almost a dual nature to almost everything that happens.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Here's the good, here's the bad.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Much of it an undintended consequence of this very new partnership,
this new globalization. Columbus brings white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and
maize from the New World to the old. And he
brings wheat, turnips, apples, and rice from Europe to the Americas,
mutual benefits there. He also, my goodness, brings so many
(28:56):
more things, horses, cattle, sheep, and goats from Europe to
the New World. Can you imagine the country without these things.
It's unimaginable. And of course smallpox too, and other pathogens.
And again he didn't do it knowing that he was
doing what he was doing. These are undetended consequences of
(29:16):
this new globalization, of this new Columbian exchange. And let's
not forget alcohol and alcoholism too. Again not done on purpose,
but these were the undertended consequences of Columbus's journey. Contradictions,
my goodness, they're everywhere, and by the way, we live
with them in our own lives too, as human beings.
(29:36):
But they all come to the fore, including that last trip.
His own brothers turn out to be a real problem
in his life, and by all accounts, by the end
of that third voyage, Columbus well, he's lost his mind.
The story in the end shows the nature of Columbus
ricocheng for on one misperception and misconception to another, filled
(29:58):
with both and inspired nature, but also in the end.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
All those flaws and fallibility.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
The story of Christopher Columbus in the end, the story
of humanity, human nature, and the story of early America.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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