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AP World History: Christopher Columbus
Period 4
I Who was Christopher Columbus? (1451 – 1506)
A) Born 1451 in Genoa (an Italian city-state). He was a sea captain, explorer, and colonizer.
His name in Italian is Christophero Colombo.
Who was Christopher Columbus? Continued…B) Educated, Columbus knew the world was round. He
wanted to find an alternate (and faster) route to East Asia, as the Ottoman Turks had blocked access to the Silk Road.
C) Columbus proposed his plan to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean to England, Portugal, and Spain. Finally in 1492, Queen
Isabella of Spain agreed to fund his voyage. D) Columbus demanded 10% of any new wealth, to be
knighted, made viceroy (governor) of any new lands, and to be made “Admiral of the Ocean Sea”.
Columbus’s mistake was believing the Earth’s circumference to be
smaller than it is. He also did not know that the Americas existed.
Who was Christopher Columbus? Continued…
Queen Isabella of Castile had married King Ferdinand of Aragon. Their marriage united these two Spanish kingdoms. In 1492 they conquered Granada (in southern Spain),
and began the Inquisition; they drove all non-Catholics out of Spain. Columbus’s voyage was another way to increase the power of a newly unified Spain.
II His JourneyA) Aug 3, 1492, Columbus led an expedition of 3 ships: Nina,
Pinta and the Santa Maria (captained by Columbus)B) Oct 11, 1492 he spotted islands in the Caribbean. He
landed on an island in the Bahamas. Columbus named it San Salvador.
D) Columbus was met by the native Taino.
Some historians dispute which island he landed on. We do know
he stayed there for 5 days, and then sailed on to Cuba.
Columbus Map of the Known World, 1490
His Journey Continued…"Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies… I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, 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."
1. How did Columbus describe the natives?2. Do you think that his description of the natives is
historically accurate? Why or why not?
His Journey Continued…E) Explored Cuba & Hispaniola before sailing back to Europe. He
had to leave 39 men behind on the island of Hispaniola when the Santa Maria ran into a reef and sank on Christmas Eve.
F) Columbus arrived back in Spain in the Nina on March 15, 1493.
G) Columbus returned to the New World 3 more times. It wasn’t until his 3rd voyage that he reached South America (modern Venezuela). He died, convinced he had reached East Asia.
In 1502, after his 3rd voyage, Columbus was charged with maladministration, including the use of torture against
the natives. He was taken to Spain in chains, but was never convicted.
However, he was stripped of his title of governor of New Spain.
VI Consequences of ColumbusPOSITIVES
New food crops such as potatoes and corn led to a vast global exchange of goods. (Columbian Exchange)
Thousands of Europeans settled in New World colonies, escaping religious persecution or seeking a better life.
NEGATIVES Due to the spread of
European diseases, millions of natives died. This led to the importation of millions of African slaves.
Mercantilism became the new economic policy of European monarchs; where colonies exist for the benefit of the mother country.
Who Came Before Columbus?Christopher Columbus gets the lion’s share of the credit for discovering America in 1492, but the evidence
weighs heavily against him being the first on e to find the New World. If Columbus had actually discovered America, he'd have found an unpopulated terrain, and of course, he didn’t. Anthropologists and archaeologists estimate that between 40 and 100 million Native Americans lived in the Americas when Columbus arrived, accounting for as much as one-fifth of the global population at the time [source: Mann]. Besides, some believe the Chinese beat Columbus by 80 years.
While Columbus may have been the first European to reach Central America, it is Giovanni Caboto who is the first to have arrived in North America, landing in Labrador, off the east coast of Canada, in 1497. So now we know, then: It was Caboto who was the first European to land in North America, right? Wrong again.
Caboto was beaten to North America by 500 years by the Vikings. Definitive proof of Norse habitation of Newfoundland, near Labrador, can be found at L’Anse aux Meadows, a Viking settlement dating to around 1000 C.E. The Vikings are the earliest group to leave behind tangible evidence of their presence. So were the Vikings the first? Not quite. Another group may have been the first Europeans to arrive in the New World: the Irish.
In the sixth century, St. Brendan, an Irish monk who was widely reputed as a skilled seafarer, is said to have undertaken an ambitious voyage. Brendan, along with a crew of fellow monks, sailed looking for Paradise, the Land of Promise of the Saints. After seven years exploring mysterious lands, he came upon what he believed to be the fabled paradise. It was an island so vast that he and his crew failed to reach the far shore after 40 days of walking. It contained a river that was too wide to be crossed. It was a wooded land, filled with lush fruits. He and his men filled their boats with gems they found there and returned home to tell of the news.
It wasn’t until the ninth century that an account of Brendan's voyage surfaced, the Navigatio Sancti Brendani (“Travels of St. Brendan” in Latin). It was an instant hit, translated into several languages. The account talks of Brendan’s experiences, including his being pelted with rock from an island of fire, seeing a pillar of crystal and encountering a moving island before finally coming upon the Promised Land, which came to be referred to as the Fortunate Islands.
But as time wore on, the Navigatio -- along with St. Brendan himself -- passed into the realm of legend. If Brendan had lived -- as most scholars assume -- surely he couldn’t have traveled across the treacherous North Atlantic with the technology available at the time. Certainly, he couldn’t have beaten the Vikings to North America…
Who Came Before Columbus?One of the biggest problems with the idea that St. Brendan and his crew were the first Europeans to arrive in North America is
the dearth of physical evidence to support this claim. Unlike the Vikings, there is no settlement that proves the Irish were here prior to other Europeans. At one time, however, tantalizing physical evidence did emerge.
Barry Fell, a Harvard marine biologist, discovered some petroglyphs -- writings carved into rock -- in West Virginia in 1983. Fell concluded that the writing was Ogam script, an Irish alphabet used between the sixth and eighth centuries. Even more startlingly, Fell found that the message in the rock described the Christian nativity. But shortly after Fell released his findings, many in the academic community attacked his interpretation of the petroglyphs. Many scholars question his methods and refuse to accept his findings as fact. Although the petroglyphs could be Ogam script, their true origins and meaning remain unproven [source: Oppenheimer and Wirtz].
All that's left, then, is the written accounts of Brendan's voyages. The Navigatio reads like a fantastic account, laden with Biblical references -- one passage recounts how Brendan held Communion on the back of a whale. In the mind of most historians, this story puts the document in the realm of folklore. Even for those researchers who put stock into the Navigatio's underlying historical accuracy, many of the directions don't point to North America as the destination where Brendan ultimately landed. But there are documents that suggest an Irish presence in North America prior to the Vikings', including the accounts of the Vikings themselves.
The Irish were known to the Norse (Vikings) as a seafaring group that had traveled far further than the Vikings had. In their sagas -- accounts of their people's exploits -- the Vikings speak of finding Irish missions when they arrived in Iceland in the 10th century. Another saga tells of meeting Native Americans who were already familiar with white men. These indigenous peoples had already encountered explorers who dressed in white and came from a land "across from their own" [source: Lathe]. A third saga relates that the Norse encountered a tribe of indigenous Americans who spoke a language that sounded like Irish, with which the Norse were familiar.
St. Brendan was reputed as a skilled voyager, establishing missions wherever he landed. Historians generally accept that he was able to sail to Europe and islands near Ireland. But, say the skeptics, this is a far cry from crossing the North Atlantic in a curragh. This small, open vessel, made of a wooden frame covered by ox hide and waterproofed with tar, was the only seafaring technology available to the Irish during Brendan's lifetime. It was long doubted that such a boat could make the trip from Ireland to America.
But this was proven incorrect in 1976 by author and adventurer Tim Severin, who built a curragh and set out from Ireland -- just as Brendan would have. He retraced the route that Brendan is thought to have taken, from Ireland to Iceland, Greenland and eventually Newfoundland. After a year-long voyage, Severin made it, proving that the trip was at least possible in such a craft.
Severin himself admits that his experiment is a long way from definitive proof that Brendan actually made the trip. As he wrote in "The Brendan Voyage" -- his account of the experiment -- "the only conclusive proof that it had been done would be if an authentic relic from an early Irish is found one day on North American soil. -By Josh Clark
Left-wing lesson plan puts Columbus, western civilization on trial for ‘slaughter’ of natives
MILWAUKEE – On October 14, Americans will commemorate Columbus Day, the federal holiday designed to honor Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the “New World,” which ultimately led to the creation of the United States of America. “Commemorate” might be overstating things a bit. The privileged few among us – primarily state and federal employees – will mark the fateful 1492 voyage with a three-day weekend. Most Americans, however, won’t even think about the Italian explorer until they find their mailbox is empty when they get home from work. As one writer has noted, Columbus Day has always been a “lackluster” holiday since its creation in 1937. The nation’s indifference toward Columbus and his accomplishments should please progressives and left-wingers who blame him for – in the words of one critic – “discrimination, diseases and the death of thousands of Native American people.” But indifference isn’t strong enough of an emotion for the radical teachers and malcontents who comprise Rethinking Schools, a Milwaukee-based company that provides activist teachers with lesson plans. These extremist educators want American school children to despise Columbus – and the “diseased” private property-based economic system he imported from Europe – as much as they do. That’s where Rethinking Schools’ role-play lesson, “The People vs. Columbus, et al.,” comes in. The lesson was written by longtime high school teacher and Rethinking Schools Curriculum Editor Bill Bigelow. As the title suggests, Bigelow’s lesson emphasizes how the indigenous peoples of the “New World” were negatively affected by Columbus’ discovery. Specifically, the role play connects Columbus’ first colony on Hispaniola (present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) to the demise of the Taíno natives who populated the island. The obvious goal of “The People vs. Columbus, et al.” is to portray Columbus as a genocidal conqueror and to condemn the entire economic and political system he represented.
As Bigelow writes in the introduction: “This role play begins with the premise that a monstrous crime was committed in the years after 1492, when perhaps as many as three million or more Taínos on the island of Hispaniola lost their lives. … Who – and/or what – was responsible for this slaughter? This is the question students confront here.” The Europeans’ ‘rotten and insane’ economic system Activist teachers of lesser ability would use a simple lecture to demonize Columbus and his European values. But Bigelow is a skilled propagandist who knows it’s far more effective to have students reach that (pre-determined) conclusion on their own. That’s why Bigelow’s lesson is a role play that presents students with five potential culprits for the Taínos’ demise: Columbus, Columbus’ men, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Taínos themselves, and the “system of empire.” (Taínos are included as defendants because their decision not to kill Columbus and his men could be seen as a dereliction of duty.)
According to the guidelines of Bigelow’s activity, students are placed in one of five groups and instructed to portray their assigned “defendant.” Students are then given “indictment” sheets – Bigelow’s term – that contains background information to help them build their defense. After a vigorous “half hour” of preparation, the “trial” is held. One by one, the teacher-prosecutor makes a case for each “defendant’s” guilt while students offer their defense to a student-led jury. Bigelow advises the teacher-prosecutor to save “the system of empire” defendant for last. He recommends this because, as one of Bigelow’s “indictment” sheets makes clear, “the system of empire” is the truly guilty party in the Taínos’ demise.
Left-wing lesson plan puts Columbus, western civilization on trial for ‘slaughter’ of nativesBigelow writes:“True, Columbus’ men did the killing, Columbus gave the orders and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella paid the bills – and took the profits. But what made them behave the way they did? Were they born evil and greedy? The real blame lies with a system that values people over property. “European society was organized so that an individual had to own property to feel secure. The more property one owned, the more security, the more control over one’s destiny. There was no security without private ownership of property. If you were poor, you could starve. “The Taínos were not perfect, but they had no ‘poor’ and no one starved. Indians commented that Europeans’ love of gold was like a disease. In fact, this attitude was a product of a diseased system. “In order to get more wealth, Columbus and his men took Taínos as slaves, terrorized them into searching out gold and forced them to work on their farms and in their mines. … “It was a rotten and insane system that led Columbus and the others to behave the way they did. … “Any European conqueror would have been every bit as bad as Columbus. Why? Because the system of empire was to blame, not any particular individual.”
It’s tough to gauge whether Bigelow’s Columbus-hating, anti-American lesson is widely used or not. We do know it was featured in a recent “back to school” email sent to teachers all across the country by Rethinking Schools and their partner organization, the Zinn Education Project. And we also know that Bigelow’s low view of Columbus is shared by many left-wing professors who are busy training the next generation of teachers. Thankfully, there are a few academically honest historians and educators are pushing back against this oversimplified view of Columbus. In 2000, Seton Hall University professor William Connell told the New York Times that scholars “have to be very careful about applying 20th-century understandings of morality of the 15th century.” “Columbus didn’t start slavery,” Connell said. “He brought the entrepreneurial form of slavery to the New World. It was a phenomenon of the times. With all great figures of the past, we need more understanding, critical understanding that sees the person’s flaws and inaccuracies and myths that have arisen around him, but we shouldn’t forget the tremendous changes they created.” And in 2011, educator and writer Charlotte Cushman offered this defense of the explorer: “Christopher Columbus is under attack because he symbolizes the beginning of America, which is a shining product of Western civilization. … When Columbus is viciously condemned, it is the dominant ideas of our culture that are threatened. Reason, science, individualism, and progress are morally superior to collectivism and stagnation. The ideas of Western civilization have led to our survival, well-being and happiness. … “It’s time to stand up and defend Christopher Columbus.”
Focus Questions
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