Christopher Columbus Discovery of San Salvador
Andrew Marr’s History of the World - Age of Plunder
Half an hour before sunrise, August 3rd, 1492. An expedition sets sail from southern Spain. The three ships had a Spanish crew of 90, led by an Italian captain… Christopher Columbus. They were heading for the Orient, the land of silk and money. The only way for Europeans to get to the East had been a 5,000 mile trek overland. Muslim traders controlled that route. Any European who could find a direct sea route would cut out the middlemen and make a fortune.
Columbus’s plan was risky. He would sail west, off the map of the known world.
So, when Christopher Columbus said that he could get to Japan within four weeks of sailing from the Canary Islands - he reckoned that the distance was 2,400 miles - this sounded like a wonderful gamble. Of course, even Columbus knew, when he set sail, that his calculations were wildly optimistic.
They sailed for the four weeks he’d reckoned on, but no land was seen. The crew didn’t share their captain’s optimism. None of them had been this far out into the dark Atlantic before.
There was one thing that kept them going. The King and Queen of Spain had offered a vast reward to whichever sailor first caught sight of land - 10,000 silver coins a year for the rest of his life.
And yet, as the weeks passed, there were endless false sightings of land and the sailors became more and more despondent, and Columbus had to beg and cajole them to keep going. More than five weeks into the voyage, still nothing but endless sea. But then, at 2AM on 12 October, 1492, the sailor called Rodrigo de Triana finally spotted something.
“Tierra! Tierra! Tierra a la Vista!”
That fabulous Royal reward was his - he’d won the ultimate lottery! Or had he? No, said Columbus. As it happened, he himself had seen the light four hours earlier. It must have been on the island. So the King’s reward was his. De Triano would never get over the betrayal. It’s said that, years later, he died in obscurity, hanging himself from a yardarm.
He was convinced he’d arrived in the Far East. This might be China or Japan or possibly India. In fact, he’d landed somewhere in the Bahamas. He planted the Spanish flag and declared the name of the island to be… San Salvador - Christ the Saviour. Its real name was Guanahani - that’s what the natives called it. The natives… there still deeply confused Columbus called them Indians. And the name stuck.
Christopher Columbus wrote… “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. Weapons, they have none. For I show them swords, which they grasp by the blade… And cut themselves through ignorance. I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men and govern them as I pleased.”
Columbus seems to have identified the three things that would define Europe’s relationship with… Well, wherever he thought he was. Religion, conquest and slavery.
The Spanish sailors had spotted what they wanted… gold, in little rings hanging from the noses of the natives. They traded glass beads from Venice for as much of it as they could find. So, what did the islanders think of the Spanish? We will never know. Within 18 years, 98% of the island’s population… Would be dead.
After 13,000 years of being cut off from the rest of humanity, the people here had no immunity to typhus or smallpox or the common cold or many other diseases, and they dropped like flies. The Spanish didn’t understand this. They’d just come here looking for gold and silver.
There is also evidence that the Native Americans would give the Spanish something to bring home - a new strain of syphilis.
But the most important thing that Christopher Columbus brought back was headline news. There is a world out there that we Europeans can take. And take it, they did. Over the next four decades, Spain’s conquistadores ripped into Central America, asset-stripping the Aztecs and everybody else they found.
Columbus’s tomb in Seville Cathedral is a monument to the man who started all of this, the man still said to have “discovered America”. In fact, he went to his grave thinking that he’d gone to the Far East. His maths were hopeless. He had absolutely no idea where he got to, and he was out by only… one continent and the entire Pacific ocean. Christopher Columbus had made the most important mistake in human history.
The chance of getting rich drove European ships in every direction over the next century.
Additional Reading
[amazon template=template&title=-&artist=-&asin=B0084AA5LC] Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery - Complete
[amazon template=template&title=-&artist=-&asin=0746063288] Christopher Columbus (Famous Lives)
