(ca. 1454-1514) cartographer, navigator Bartholomew Columbus was a mapmaker and navigator who worked in support of his famous brother, Christopher Columbus, both in Europe and in the Western Hemisphere.
Columbus grew up in Genoa, where he worked as a wool carder. Like his brother, he moved to Lisbon as an adult, although it is unclear which of the brothers moved there first. He supported his brother’s efforts to gain support for an Atlantic voyage. At one point he may have traveled to England in an unsuccessful effort to gain support for a voyage from King Henry VII. He also visited France, where he met the king’s sister, Anne de Beaujeu. While Bartholomew was traveling, Christopher obtained the support of Ferdinand and Isabella for his first voyage. By the time Bartholomew returned to Spain in 1493, Christopher had already returned from the Caribbean and had set sail on his second voyage.
The Spanish monarchs gave Bartholomew command of three caravels. He sailed to Hispaniola, landing while his brother was exploring Cuba. Upon his arrival he found the colony in turmoil. The colonists abused the Indians and complained that Christopher Columbus had misled them about the nature of the New World, taking them to a place of sickness and death rather than a fertile land where they would grow rich. Bartholomew served as captain-general of Hispaniola from 1494 to 1496, where he founded a new settlement, Santo Domingo.
By 1494 complaints about Christopher Columbus’s administration of the colony had reached Ferdinand and Isabella, and they sent an investigator, Juan Aguado, to look into the complaints. In response to the complaints, Christopher returned to Spain, appointing Bartholomew ADELANTADO (military governor) and leaving him as governor, a position he would hold until 1498, but Bartholomew proved unable to halt the disorder on the island. His brother had instituted a policy by which Indians were required to pay a tribute in gold, cotton, or spices. As Bartholomew tried to build his new settlement of Santo Domingo, he stripped the earlier settlement of Isabella of supplies. The move angered the settlers and made it more difficult to collect the tribute. In 1497 Francisco Roldan led a rebellion against the Columbus brothers. He even gained Indian allies by promising an end to the tribute system. Bartholomew could not halt the rebellion, although he captured two important caciques and sent other Indians to Europe as slaves.
When Christopher Columbus returned from Europe on his third voyage he found the rebellion on Hispaniola continuing. With great difficulty Columbus pacified Roldan and his supporters by allowing them to form their own communities and granting them the right to use Indian labor, a system that would develop into the encomienda. This solution was contrary to the orders of the queen, who wanted settlers to build houses and farm the land. Although Christopher Columbus managed to end the rebellion, complaints against him and his brothers continued. In 1500 Ferdinand and Isabella sent a royal agent, Francisco de Bobadilla, to investigate. When Bobadilla arrived at the harbor of Santo Domingo, Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus were out in the countryside putting down other rebellions, leaving their brother Diego (Diego Colon) in charge at Santo Domingo. Before stepping onto the land, Bobadilla saw the corpses of seven rebels hanging from the gallows and soon learned that five more were to be hanged. Bobadilla considered the continuing rebellions as evidence of the Columbus brothers’ incompetence. He took control of the town, confiscated Christopher Columbus’s goods, and sent all three brothers back to Spain in chains.
Ferdinand and Isabella freed the brothers, and Bartholomew accompanied Christopher on his fourth voyage to the West. He explored Veragua (modern-day Panama), where the explorers found some gold but were driven away by Indians. After taking part in this voyage, Bartholomew returned to Spain. In 1509 he and his nephew Diego sailed to Hispaniola, where he remained until his death in 1514.
Further reading: Miles H. Davidson, Columbus Then and Now: A Life Reexamined (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); William D. Phillips, Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); William L. Sherman, “Columbus, Bartholomew,” in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 2, ed. Barbara A. Tenenbaum (New York: Scribner’s, 1996).
—Martha K. Robinson
Columbus, Christopher (Colon, Cristobal) (14511506) Genoese sailor and navigator Christopher Columbus’s landfall in the Caribbean in October 1492, possibly on the island now known as San Salvador, marked the beginning of large-scale contact between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
Columbus was born in the Italian republic of Genoa. His father was a wool weaver and merchant, although not a wealthy one. Columbus’s formal education was limited, but he probably studied religion, geography, and arithmetic at the wool merchants’ guild school. As an adult Columbus read widely and placed great faith in what he found in books.
The Genoese were known for their sailing ability, and Columbus went to sea at a young age. He sailed the Mediterranean for several years and settled in Portugal in the mid-1470s, where he lived for about a decade. While in Portugal he married Felipa Moniz in 1478 or 1479. They had one child, a son born in 1480 whom they named Diego. The extent of Columbus’s sea voyages in these years is unknown. He probably traveled to England and Ireland and perhaps to Iceland. He traveled as far south as the Portuguese fortress of Sao Jorge da Mina, on the Gold CoAST of Africa, and was also familiar with Madeira and the Canary Islands. Columbus probably first tried to secure backing for a voyage into the unknown reaches of the Atlantic in 1485, when he approached King Joa5 II of Portugal. Little is known about this episode, but later traditions held that a committee appointed to look into the matter recommended against him.
Columbus lived in a world of explorers and discoveries. For centuries Europeans had known of and traded for the riches of the East. The overland routes to Asia were long and difficult, but the gold, gems, and spices (see SPiCE Islands) that merchants brought back were so valuable that Europeans continued to travel eastward, always looking for quicker and less expensive routes to the lucrative markets. Columbus proposed to reach the riches of the Indies by sailing west and going around the world. He was not the first to argue that the world was round; this fact was well known and commonly accepted by educated Europeans of his day. But although Europeans knew the world was round, they were not sure how large it was. The best estimate, originally made by Eratosthenes of Alexandria in the third century B. C., was accurate to within at least 5 percent, but no one in the 16th century knew if it was the right appraisal. Others calculated that the world was smaller, and Columbus’s estimate was among the smallest. Not only did Columbus think the world was modest in size, he also believed that Asia extended farther to the east than it did. Furthermore, he accepted Marco Polo’s claim that the rich island of Cipangu (Japan) was 1,500 miles off the coast of China (see Cathay). If these claims were true, then the Atlantic was narrow, and a ship that crossed it would find a quick route to the riches of the East. Columbus believed that the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was a mere 2,400 nautical miles rather than the correct 10,600 miles. Europeans did not know what, if anything, could be found in the uncharted regions of the Atlantic. Maps from the time included both known places, like the Canary
Islands and the Azores, and unknown or even imaginary locales such as Antillia and the isle of Saint Brendan the Navigator. Most scholars believed that, aside from islands, the vast ocean was empty. Some theorized that an unknown land, the Antipodes, might exist on the other side of the world. The idea of the Antipodes, although appealing to the medieval and Renaissance taste for order and symmetry, was controversial. If the Antipodes were inhabited, their peoples might not be descended from Adam and Eve, a horrifying idea. Furthermore, Europeans believed that the apostles had preached “throughout the world,” which seemed to rule out the existence of an unknown continent.
In 1485 Columbus left Portugal for Spain. In 1486 he met with King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile to try to interest them in his plans. Ferdinand and Isabella appointed a commission to investigate his proposal, which rejected it on the grounds that Columbus had underestimated the size of the world. The monarchs refused, at this point, to support a voyage, but they paid Columbus subsidies and indicated that they might support a later voyage, once they had conquered the Muslim kingdom of Granada. Columbus had to wait a few years for permission from the monarchs. While he waited in Spain, his brother Bartholomew Columbus (Bartolome Colon) traveled across the continent seeking sponsors for the venture. During these years in Spain, Christopher Columbus met a woman named Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, and in 1488 she gave birth to their son Hernando. Columbus never married her, probably because she was the daughter of peasants, but he provided for her throughout his life. He also legitimized their son, who would later write a biography of his father. In 1492, during the final siege of Granada, the monarchs agreed to sponsor a voyage. They granted Columbus noble status and promised to make him admiral, viceroy, and governor general over any lands that he claimed for Castile, as well as giving him one-tenth of the profits from his venture. The offices and Columbus’s noble status were to be hereditary.
Columbus hoped to find a route to Asia when he began his first journey across the Atlantic, but he may also have been influenced by apocalyptic and millenarian religious ideas. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, prophecies about the end of the world circulated widely. Believers in prophecy expected that the end of the world would come at some point after Christians reconquered Jerusalem and converted unbelievers in other parts of the world. Events like the Reconquista seemed to promise that Christianity would overcome other religions. After Spain conquered Granada in 1492 and expelled Muslims (see Islam) and Jews, some Christians argued that Christian armies should next conquer Jerusalem.
The development of Columbus’s religious ideas is unclear, but his interest in religion and prophecy increased as he aged. As early as the 1480s he was interested in the possible date of the millennium and may have known of prophecies that promised that the Spanish monarchs would play a significant role in its coming. The historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has argued that Columbus’s religious ideas changed and intensified after his first voyage. According to Fernandez-Armesto, Columbus’s “notion of reality and grasp of the limits of the possible [were] deeply shaken by his contact with the New World.” While lost on the way home from his first New World voyage, he believed that he heard a celestial voice reassure him, and he had similar experiences at least twice more in his life. By 1498 he suggested that he had found the earthly Paradise. Around 1500 he began to suggest that his discoveries had been ordained by God to help bring about the millennium.
The First Voyage (1492-1493)
Columbus set sail with three ships on August 3, 1492. He reached the Canaries, claimed by Castile, and from there set sail due west. The voyage was relatively uneventful, and the ships benefited from a calm sea and favorable winds. The winds were so favorable that after about a month the sailors began to worry that there would be no winds to take them back to Spain. In the early morning of October 12, 1492, a lookout spotted a light on the shore. In the morning the ships reached an island that Columbus named San Salvador but which its Native inhabitants called Guanahani. His landing place may have been the island now known as San Salvador but may also have been almost any of the islands of the Bahamas.
Columbus believed that he had landed in Asia and began exploring. He reported that the land was fertile and the Native peoples were agreeable, but he found little trace of wealth. Columbus’s initial relations with the islands’ inhabitants were peaceful, and he described them as naturally good and inoffensive. He did not believe that they had legitimate political institutions of their own and therefore claimed their land for Castile. Even at the beginning, his attitude toward the Native people was paradoxical. In an early letter he wrote that he gave the Indians gifts to “win good friendship, because I knew that they were a people who could better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force” and described them as handsome and intelligent. Yet in the same letter he observed that the Native people “ought to be good servants and of good skill” and announced his intention to kidnap six of them and bring them to Castile.
For three months Columbus traveled to various islands of the Caribbean hoping to find a way to China or Japan. His greatest discovery on the first voyage was the island of HiSPANlOLA, whose inhabitants possessed gold. He founded a settlement on the north coast of the island, which he named Villa de la Navidad. Because his largest
Christopher Columbus in a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo, 1485-1547 (Hulton/Archive) ship, the Santa Maria, had run aground, he left 39 men in the settlement when he returned to Spain. Upon his return to Europe, Columbus claimed that he had found a westward route to Asia. Others were skeptical, thinking that he had found new Canary Islands, the Antipodes, or the mythical land of Antillia. In general, scholars still believed that the world was too large for Columbus to have traveled to Asia. Whatever Columbus had found, the gold of Hispaniola seemed to promise wealth.
The Second Voyage (1493-1496)
Isabella and Ferdinand agreed to sponsor a second, larger voyage. On this voyage Columbus commanded more than 17 ships and 1,300 men, including his youngest brother, Diego. This expedition included several friars, whose instructions ordered them to Christianize the Arawak of Hispaniola. Columbus apparently planned to start a trading colony that would rely on exports of gold, cotton, and slaves (see SLAVERY and SLAVE trade). On this voyage he mapped several new islands, including Puerto Rico, which he named San Juan Bautista. When Columbus returned to Hispaniola, he found that the 39 men he had left behind were all dead, mostly killed by the islanders. The Natives said that the Spanish had quarrelled among themselves, kidnapped Native women, and stolen gold. Columbus was becoming disillusioned both with the climate of the island and with its Native inhabitants. Because the Native peoples had fought the Spanish, he took their resistance as an excuse to enslave them. He and his men marched through the island trying to trade for gold and taking Indian captives.
Columbus built a new settlement, which he called Isabella, but chose a poor site for it. He had promised riches to the colonists who came with him, and when these riches did not appear, the colonists began to complain. They also mistreated the Indians. Columbus began exporting Indians to Spain as slaves. Although he claimed that the Indians, by fighting the colonists, had made themselves subject to slavery, his action angered Ferdinand and Isabella. The mon-archs wanted the Indians to be Christianized and to be direct subjects of the Crown. If the Indians were harshly treated, Ferdinand and Isabella reasoned, they would not become Christians. Furthermore, if they were enslaved, they would be under the authority of their masters rather than subject to the Crown. In any case, the slave trade seemed pointless because the Indians frequently died on the voyage or soon after arriving in Europe.
In April 1494 Columbus left his brother Diego (Diego Colon) in charge of Hispaniola and went to explore CuBA, which he believed to be a part of the mainland. While Columbus was in Cuba, his brother Bartholomew arrived in Hispaniola and found the colony in disarray. Colonists returning to Spain from Hispaniola in 1494 were already reporting that Columbus and his brothers were incompetent. The major complaint against Columbus was that he had misled the settlers about the nature of Hispaniola and thereby caused colonists to die. In response to the complaints, Ferdinand and Isabella sent an investigator, Juan Aguado, to report on the state of the colony. Aguado reported high rates of DISEASE among both Spaniards and Indians and added that many colonists had deserted. Columbus left his brother Bartholomew in charge and left for Spain to defend his administration of the colony.
The Third Voyage (1498-1500)
Despite suspicions about the abilities of the “Admiral of the Ocean Seas,” Ferdinand and Isabella allowed Columbus to make a third voyage in 1498. The monarchs’ declining trust in Columbus is indicated by the smaller size of this expedition. Columbus sent five ships directly to Hispaniola while he explored farther south. On this voyage he reached the mainland of South America, finding the Orinoco River, which flows from modern-day Venezuela. The size of the Orinoco convinced him that he had found a large land-mass, and he wrote in his journal “I believe this is a very large continent which until now has remained unknown.” When he finally reached Hispaniola, he found the colony in rebellion. A rival camp had emerged in the south of the island led by Francisco Roldan. They complained that the new site of the colony, Santo Domingo, was poorly chosen, that there was not enough food to feed the Spanish, and that Columbus and his brothers had too much power. In response to these complaints, Ferdinand and Isabella again sent an investigator, Francisco de Bobadilla, who arrived in August 1500 and found the colony in chaos. He deemed the charges against Columbus and his brothers serious enough that he had them put in chains and sent to Spain to face trial. Ferdinand and Isabella freed Columbus and allowed him to keep some of his titles, but they found the charges against him sufficiently disturbing to restrict his real authority.
The Fourth Voyage (1502-1504)
Columbus’s final voyage was a disaster. His fleet consisted of only four CARAVELs, and the monarchs forbade him to set foot in Hispaniola. As Columbus drew near to Hispaniola, he recognized the signs of a coming hurricane. Fearing for the safety of his ships, he disobeyed the monarchs’ order and landed there. He tried to warn the colony’s governor, Nicolas de Ovando, about the storm, but Ovando ignored his advice and sent a fleet bound for Spain into the hurricane. Twenty-five of the ships sank, leaving only three or four to make it back to Europe. Columbus weathered the hurricane and spent much of the rest of his voyage exploring the coast of Central America. He landed in Panama, searching for a strait through the continent. Failing to find one, he established a settlement he called Rio Belen, but the local Indians did not welcome the Spanish and succeeded in driving them away. At this point Columbus decided to return to Hispaniola. He had already lost two ships, and the remaining two were so worm-eaten that they nearly sank. The ships were so damaged that Columbus found it impossible to reach Hispaniola and put in at Jamaica. There the survivors beached their ships and used them for shelter. They were marooned for nearly a year before being rescued.
After this misadventure Columbus returned to Spain. His voyages had made him rich, but he was unhappy. He spent his remaining years struggling with the Crown to try to retain his titles and claims to the islands. Unable to accept his own failures as an administrator, he felt betrayed by Ferdinand and Isabella, who had limited his privileges and removed him as governor of Hispaniola.
Columbus died in 1506, but not before his exploits had changed the world. During 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of his first crossing, scholars and the general public in many countries celebrated his achievements. A century later, during the 1992 quincentennial, another Columbus took center stage. Unlike the hero of 1892, the Columbus of 1992 was more often reviled than feted. Many individuals, including descendants of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, believed that he bore direct responsibility for the horrors that beset Native Americans in the generations after 1492. While most individuals who lived during the early modern age have faded into obscurity, it seems certain that Columbus will remain a figure of world-historic significance.
Further reading: Ida Altman and Reginald D. Butler, “The Contact of Cultures: Perspectives on the Quincentenary,” American Historical Review 99 (April 1994), 478-503; Silvio A. Bedini, ed., The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1992); Miles H. Davidson, Columbus Then and Now: A Life Reexamined (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Columbus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Benjamin Keen, trans., The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by His son Ferdinand (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1959); William D. Phillips and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
—Martha K. Robinson
World History
