Columbus Day, our federal holiday where banks and government close (can anyone say government shutdown?), was just "celebrated" this week. Thus, was waiting with bated breath for this second in your series and was not disappointed. That other guy, Magellan, was also a persistent, stubborn fellow spending years seeking sponsorship and finally getting it.
Thank you for providing me with a new image of the man, Columbus (devout, dogged, ambitious), and of his social and political milieu. A really interesting read.
Well… the piece is titled “Origins”, but in the very first paragraph the author completely disregards any alternative theories of Colon´s origin. But the topic is far from settled, no matter what orthodox Anglo historians tell us.
Colon was a VERY sketchy type, who actively obfuscated the matter of his origins. And there are truckloads of circumstantial (but very substantial) evidence that contradicts the Genoese origin, for example (but by far not limited to) DNA analysis or the thorough linguistic analysis of his writings, including syntax, vocabulary, etc, that definitely are not what would be expected of an Italian that had spent a long time in Portugal. The whole mystery surrounding Colon´s origins is actually THE fascinating story to be told, but instead the author starts to ramble about two topics that are utterly unrelated to Colon´s travels: slavery and a supposed late 15thC Christian milleniarism. The maritime goals of the Iberian kingdoms of the era where: 1) to secure the southern frontier to avoid future North African invasions, 2) TRADE with spices and with the richest regions of the time (India and China), 3) evangelize heathens. Slavery had precisely zero connections to the main topic. Re. the supposed late 15thC Christian milleniarism: i don´t know if this was true in some other parts of Europe, but in Portugal and Spain there was NOTHING of this sort. On the contrary, this was a dynamic time of commercial and physical expansion.
It's hard to know quite what I'm arguing against because apart from being rather dismissive of what I've written, you haven't actually said which of the alternative theories you take most seriously. I could be wrong, but because you use his Spanish name, Colon, and mention the DNA evidence, I suspect you might be somewhat sympathetic to the view that he was either a Spaniard, or perhaps of Jewish-Spanish stock but raised in Italy?
First, let's consider the DNA evidence. I assume you're speaking of the claims of José Antonio Lorente, the forensic scientist who exhumed Columbus' Seville tomb in 2003. I actually have a separate post planned for discussing this later in the series when I come to Columbus' death, but in short: Lorente has not published a single paper in over 20 years on the topic, instead releasing a very unscientific documentary on the subject last year, in which he claimed that the remains "are compatible with a Jewish origin." This is next to useless, because having a haplogroup associated with Jewish or Sephardic ancestry does not necessarily mean he was Jewish; these markers also show up in plenty of non-Jewish populations too. Not that we can actually assess the claim on its merits, because Lorente has released no data to the scientific community at all; we must rely entirely on his claims in a documentary he himself commissioned. I suspect he hasn't published anything because he knows it wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. And that's without even getting into the fact that the remains in that tomb might not even be Columbus' at all! The fact the remains that were thought to belong to his brother turned out to be only a first cousin to the remains found in the alleged tomb of Columbus only throws more doubt on the whole business.
Regarding the linguistics, I wager you might be pointing to the theories of Salvador de Madariaga, who makes the case that Columbus' mistakes when writing Latin seem eerily like those a Spaniard would make. I confess I can't speak Spanish so I can't assess those claims myself, but if true I think it can be explained rather simply by the fact that Columbus first learned to write in Spanish, not his native Ligurian. It's highly unlikely he received any education before he went to sea; it's no stretch to imagine that he only had Spanish books available to him when he first began reading. This explains why we only have his writings in Spanish or Latin; he probably never learnt to read or write in his native dialect, which he probably rarely spoke after he'd moved to Iberia.
As to why I "rambled on" about slavery and Christian millenarianism, I am trying to provide context for Columbus actions in the Caribbean later in this story. Despite claims often made today, Columbus did not invent the practice of forcibly converting indigenous peoples nor drafting them into forced labour. The playbook was already established before he ever sailed west.
Now, I would never make the claim that the case is 100% settled on Columbus' origins - I made sure to couch my language: "It's most likely he was Genoese". However, given the available evidence, it seems by far and away the most plausible; all the other theories require quite a lot of mental gymnastics - though, again, they're not impossible. But if you're going to make the case for one of the other theories then you need to explain away the fact that his son, Ferdinand, said he was Genoese (you'd think he'd know), as did Bartolomé de las Casas, who knew him personally, and Oviedo. I'm yet to come across a convincing argument as to why all these contemporaries got it wrong. After all, it would have been easier for Columbus in his later legal wranglings if he was indeed Spanish!
Thanks for the thoughtful reply & apologies if i sounded harsh, i guess i’ve been lately subjected to too much blacklegendarian thrash posing as real history.
Now i see why you included the references about slavery and milleniarism in your piece, my issue here is that this sounded like these were important factors leading to Colon’s voyages.
I don’t have a pet theory about CC’s origin. What i have is a lot open questions that generally go against the Geonese theory. Let’s quickly review some of them:
First red flag is that AFAIK, and besides the Castilian and Genoese documents, there is NO other contemporary documentation of CC before 1485 AT ALL. Nothing has been found in Portugal of his (supposedly long) stay there, neither of his supposed petitions in France and England.
Regarding the linguistics analysis, there are MANY of them, one of the most known is Menendez Pidal’s (who is a Spanish literary heavyweight) “La lengua de CC”, most of them pointing out that there where Portuguese and Catalan idioms but no Italian /Ligurian ones.
Another issue here is that he wrote in Castilian Spanish ALWAYS, even to his own brothers and to supposedly fellow Italians (he even wrote a letter in Spanish to the Genoese Banco di San Giorgio!).
Regarding contemporary Spanish accounts of CC, you rightly mention De Las Casas and Oviedo. IIRC, Oviedo met briefly with CC in Barcelona, while De Las Casas did not met him personally but had a long relationship with his son. But to be fair there are also other Spanish chroniclers of the time that pointed out that he spoke Castilian Spanish with a slight foreign accent, but they positively didn’t identify the accent as Italian or Portuguese (something that is pretty easy to do for Spanish speakers, BTW).
Speaking about contemporary historians / chroniclers, for me the reddest of red flags is that, AFAIK, the are NONE ZERO NADA mentions of CC written down by any 16thC Italian historians. Something very weird if you ask me...
Italian research into CC began only in the late 19thC with the Raccolta Colombina (there was a second Raccolta under Mussolini). Which was very convenient because a Genoese CC provided the newly created Kingdom of Italy with a charismatic historical figure at the time of the 400th anniversary of the Discovery and also “justified” somehow the massive Italian immigration to the Americas of that time. It is remarkable that most if not all of these documents are just notarial notes and not properly signed notary documentation. There is also the very conveniently found Assereto document (found by an Italian army General in 1904) that is the lynchpin connecting “some folks with the name Colombo in Genoa” with a certain Genoese pilot who sailed regularly to Portugal.
Regarding the name Colombo: it happens that this is (and was) a very common surname in Italy that was often used to name children who were abandoned at birth and raised in religious charities. It was both common, extended across the whole Northern Italy and there were lots of people with that name that shared no common familiar ties…
Also regarding the name: in Castilian Spanish it makes no sense to try to “Castillianize” the name Colombo, because it already sounds Spanish and is not problematic at all to pronounce. No need to translate it to Colón. Happened very often with Italians who were in service of the Spanish kings of the time.
And regarding the main (and really only) contemporary document that asserts the Genoese origin of Colón – the “Historia del Almirante” of CC’s son Hernando:
1) it is eyebrow raising that the book was supposedly written in 1537 in Spanish but only published first in 1571 in Venice and in Italian.
2) the very passage where the Genoese origin is asserted has a really weird language. (in the vibe of "some people say he was from some hamlet near Genoa, others say that he came from Savona, while others say...")
3) it must be seen also in the context of the decades long lawsuits that CC’s heirs waged vs Spanish crown for the American inheritance of CC.
Regarding José Antonio Lorente’s DNA analysis: i agree the way that his work is presented is not proper, but he is not a charlatan either – he’s a well respected university researcher and is an authority in cases of lost persons, he has even worked with the FBI.
And there are many other smaller clues that clash with the Genoese theory and that rather point out to the converso Jew of Aragonese / Valencian theory. But we can leave it here for now.
And there are also some details that border on the occult-bizarre like his own signature or the surreal book that he co-authored (EL Libro de las Profecías).
All in all, if i had to place a bet, i would go with the theory that he was a Valencian converso jew whose family moved to Portugal (and maybe also for some time to Italy), but i would only assign a probability of maybe 30-40%.
What is definitely sure is that:
1) he was a very sketchy guy (with probably many skeletons in the closet) who did everything in his power to conceal his true origins.
2) the Genoese theory is not bulletproof at all (and there are even some contradictions in the Genoese documentation re. when did he leave Genoa)
3) it was very convenient for several actors in the international political context of the late 19thC to push for the Italian origin.
Great reading, loving this series! And good to see my home island of Chios mentioned .
χαῖρε
I wonder how this complicated man might take being called an “American” knowing that label was derived from that of Amerigo Vespucci?
Not well, I'd expect
This is great. So different than the typical stuff I see on Substack…looking forward to the rest of the series
Columbus Day, our federal holiday where banks and government close (can anyone say government shutdown?), was just "celebrated" this week. Thus, was waiting with bated breath for this second in your series and was not disappointed. That other guy, Magellan, was also a persistent, stubborn fellow spending years seeking sponsorship and finally getting it.
Thank you for providing me with a new image of the man, Columbus (devout, dogged, ambitious), and of his social and political milieu. A really interesting read.
The dude was a lot more complicated than animated cartoons depicting him show: "The world, she's a round, lika tha apple..."
There are so many wrong points in this essay that I don’t know where to start…
Please enlighten us.
With the first point i presume?
Well… the piece is titled “Origins”, but in the very first paragraph the author completely disregards any alternative theories of Colon´s origin. But the topic is far from settled, no matter what orthodox Anglo historians tell us.
Colon was a VERY sketchy type, who actively obfuscated the matter of his origins. And there are truckloads of circumstantial (but very substantial) evidence that contradicts the Genoese origin, for example (but by far not limited to) DNA analysis or the thorough linguistic analysis of his writings, including syntax, vocabulary, etc, that definitely are not what would be expected of an Italian that had spent a long time in Portugal. The whole mystery surrounding Colon´s origins is actually THE fascinating story to be told, but instead the author starts to ramble about two topics that are utterly unrelated to Colon´s travels: slavery and a supposed late 15thC Christian milleniarism. The maritime goals of the Iberian kingdoms of the era where: 1) to secure the southern frontier to avoid future North African invasions, 2) TRADE with spices and with the richest regions of the time (India and China), 3) evangelize heathens. Slavery had precisely zero connections to the main topic. Re. the supposed late 15thC Christian milleniarism: i don´t know if this was true in some other parts of Europe, but in Portugal and Spain there was NOTHING of this sort. On the contrary, this was a dynamic time of commercial and physical expansion.
It's hard to know quite what I'm arguing against because apart from being rather dismissive of what I've written, you haven't actually said which of the alternative theories you take most seriously. I could be wrong, but because you use his Spanish name, Colon, and mention the DNA evidence, I suspect you might be somewhat sympathetic to the view that he was either a Spaniard, or perhaps of Jewish-Spanish stock but raised in Italy?
First, let's consider the DNA evidence. I assume you're speaking of the claims of José Antonio Lorente, the forensic scientist who exhumed Columbus' Seville tomb in 2003. I actually have a separate post planned for discussing this later in the series when I come to Columbus' death, but in short: Lorente has not published a single paper in over 20 years on the topic, instead releasing a very unscientific documentary on the subject last year, in which he claimed that the remains "are compatible with a Jewish origin." This is next to useless, because having a haplogroup associated with Jewish or Sephardic ancestry does not necessarily mean he was Jewish; these markers also show up in plenty of non-Jewish populations too. Not that we can actually assess the claim on its merits, because Lorente has released no data to the scientific community at all; we must rely entirely on his claims in a documentary he himself commissioned. I suspect he hasn't published anything because he knows it wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. And that's without even getting into the fact that the remains in that tomb might not even be Columbus' at all! The fact the remains that were thought to belong to his brother turned out to be only a first cousin to the remains found in the alleged tomb of Columbus only throws more doubt on the whole business.
Regarding the linguistics, I wager you might be pointing to the theories of Salvador de Madariaga, who makes the case that Columbus' mistakes when writing Latin seem eerily like those a Spaniard would make. I confess I can't speak Spanish so I can't assess those claims myself, but if true I think it can be explained rather simply by the fact that Columbus first learned to write in Spanish, not his native Ligurian. It's highly unlikely he received any education before he went to sea; it's no stretch to imagine that he only had Spanish books available to him when he first began reading. This explains why we only have his writings in Spanish or Latin; he probably never learnt to read or write in his native dialect, which he probably rarely spoke after he'd moved to Iberia.
As to why I "rambled on" about slavery and Christian millenarianism, I am trying to provide context for Columbus actions in the Caribbean later in this story. Despite claims often made today, Columbus did not invent the practice of forcibly converting indigenous peoples nor drafting them into forced labour. The playbook was already established before he ever sailed west.
Now, I would never make the claim that the case is 100% settled on Columbus' origins - I made sure to couch my language: "It's most likely he was Genoese". However, given the available evidence, it seems by far and away the most plausible; all the other theories require quite a lot of mental gymnastics - though, again, they're not impossible. But if you're going to make the case for one of the other theories then you need to explain away the fact that his son, Ferdinand, said he was Genoese (you'd think he'd know), as did Bartolomé de las Casas, who knew him personally, and Oviedo. I'm yet to come across a convincing argument as to why all these contemporaries got it wrong. After all, it would have been easier for Columbus in his later legal wranglings if he was indeed Spanish!
Thanks for the thoughtful reply & apologies if i sounded harsh, i guess i’ve been lately subjected to too much blacklegendarian thrash posing as real history.
Now i see why you included the references about slavery and milleniarism in your piece, my issue here is that this sounded like these were important factors leading to Colon’s voyages.
I don’t have a pet theory about CC’s origin. What i have is a lot open questions that generally go against the Geonese theory. Let’s quickly review some of them:
First red flag is that AFAIK, and besides the Castilian and Genoese documents, there is NO other contemporary documentation of CC before 1485 AT ALL. Nothing has been found in Portugal of his (supposedly long) stay there, neither of his supposed petitions in France and England.
Regarding the linguistics analysis, there are MANY of them, one of the most known is Menendez Pidal’s (who is a Spanish literary heavyweight) “La lengua de CC”, most of them pointing out that there where Portuguese and Catalan idioms but no Italian /Ligurian ones.
Another issue here is that he wrote in Castilian Spanish ALWAYS, even to his own brothers and to supposedly fellow Italians (he even wrote a letter in Spanish to the Genoese Banco di San Giorgio!).
Regarding contemporary Spanish accounts of CC, you rightly mention De Las Casas and Oviedo. IIRC, Oviedo met briefly with CC in Barcelona, while De Las Casas did not met him personally but had a long relationship with his son. But to be fair there are also other Spanish chroniclers of the time that pointed out that he spoke Castilian Spanish with a slight foreign accent, but they positively didn’t identify the accent as Italian or Portuguese (something that is pretty easy to do for Spanish speakers, BTW).
Speaking about contemporary historians / chroniclers, for me the reddest of red flags is that, AFAIK, the are NONE ZERO NADA mentions of CC written down by any 16thC Italian historians. Something very weird if you ask me...
Italian research into CC began only in the late 19thC with the Raccolta Colombina (there was a second Raccolta under Mussolini). Which was very convenient because a Genoese CC provided the newly created Kingdom of Italy with a charismatic historical figure at the time of the 400th anniversary of the Discovery and also “justified” somehow the massive Italian immigration to the Americas of that time. It is remarkable that most if not all of these documents are just notarial notes and not properly signed notary documentation. There is also the very conveniently found Assereto document (found by an Italian army General in 1904) that is the lynchpin connecting “some folks with the name Colombo in Genoa” with a certain Genoese pilot who sailed regularly to Portugal.
Regarding the name Colombo: it happens that this is (and was) a very common surname in Italy that was often used to name children who were abandoned at birth and raised in religious charities. It was both common, extended across the whole Northern Italy and there were lots of people with that name that shared no common familiar ties…
Also regarding the name: in Castilian Spanish it makes no sense to try to “Castillianize” the name Colombo, because it already sounds Spanish and is not problematic at all to pronounce. No need to translate it to Colón. Happened very often with Italians who were in service of the Spanish kings of the time.
And regarding the main (and really only) contemporary document that asserts the Genoese origin of Colón – the “Historia del Almirante” of CC’s son Hernando:
1) it is eyebrow raising that the book was supposedly written in 1537 in Spanish but only published first in 1571 in Venice and in Italian.
2) the very passage where the Genoese origin is asserted has a really weird language. (in the vibe of "some people say he was from some hamlet near Genoa, others say that he came from Savona, while others say...")
3) it must be seen also in the context of the decades long lawsuits that CC’s heirs waged vs Spanish crown for the American inheritance of CC.
Regarding José Antonio Lorente’s DNA analysis: i agree the way that his work is presented is not proper, but he is not a charlatan either – he’s a well respected university researcher and is an authority in cases of lost persons, he has even worked with the FBI.
And there are many other smaller clues that clash with the Genoese theory and that rather point out to the converso Jew of Aragonese / Valencian theory. But we can leave it here for now.
And there are also some details that border on the occult-bizarre like his own signature or the surreal book that he co-authored (EL Libro de las Profecías).
All in all, if i had to place a bet, i would go with the theory that he was a Valencian converso jew whose family moved to Portugal (and maybe also for some time to Italy), but i would only assign a probability of maybe 30-40%.
What is definitely sure is that:
1) he was a very sketchy guy (with probably many skeletons in the closet) who did everything in his power to conceal his true origins.
2) the Genoese theory is not bulletproof at all (and there are even some contradictions in the Genoese documentation re. when did he leave Genoa)
3) it was very convenient for several actors in the international political context of the late 19thC to push for the Italian origin.