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Five hundred years after Columbus set off on his remarkable journey, debates about his legacy still rage. Once revered, he’s now frequently held to have been destructive, reckless, and responsible for everything that went wrong in the New World. But scholar Carol Delaney offers a profoundly new evaluation of Columbus and the motivation for his famous voyages.
Putting the man back into the context of his times, Delaney shows that it was his abiding religious passion that drove him to petition the Spanish monarchy to support his journey. He and much of society believed that the end of the world was imminent and believed that Jerusalem needed to be back under Christian control before the end of days. Delaney asserts that—contrary to the belief that he sought personal wealth and advancement—Columbus’s mission was to obtain enough gold for the Spanish crown to finance a new crusade to Jerusalem that could regain control of the holy city from the Muslims. Delaney recounts the drama of the four voyages, bringing the challenges vividly to life. She depicts Columbus as a thoughtful interpreter of the native cultures that he and his men encountered, explaining the tragic story of how his initial attempts to establish good relations turned badly sour.
Filled with illuminating research (informed by a fascinating stint Delaney spent as a sailor on a tall ship), Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem offers not an apologist’s take, but a clear-eyed, thought-provoking, and timely reappraisal of the man and his mission.
Cultural anthropologist Delaney offers an interpretation of Christopher Columbus's career based on the apocalyptical millenarianism she identifies in his thinking.
The author argues that the reconquest of Jerusalem was the passion of Columbus's life and also the purpose of his voyages. Her substantiation is found in works like theBook of Prophesies, produced near the end of his life, his letters to the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI and the comparison of the flow of the Orinoco with the book of Genesis and the hinterland of the Terrestrial Paradise. Delaney believes these kinds of views have been downplayed in consideration of the explorer's life and work. Focusing on this less-iconic side of Columbus, author casts new light on the policies of the monarchs under whom he worked, first in Portugal and then Spain. His 1492 voyage began on August 2, the day set for Spain's Jews to convert or face execution. The "reconquista" of Al-Andalus from the Moors was considered by Spain's monarchs to be just a step on the road to Jerusalem. As Delaney and others have shown, Columbus was neither open nor truthful about his motives or ultimate plans, so his writings cannot necessarily be taken at face value. His "sail west to go east" strategy failed to find the Indies and their riches and was associated with heterodox cosmological views. As his stories were discredited, he probably had good reason to fear his own monarch's inquisitors.
A welcome reappraisal of Columbus and his legacy.
Prologue vii
Introduction The passions of Columbus ix
Chapter 1 Omens of the Apocalypse 1
Chapter 2 Learning the "Secrets of the World" 19
Chapter 3 The Plan Begins to Take Shape 43
Chapter 4 Vision Becomes Reality 68
Chapter 5 Days of Wonder 91
Chapter 6 Triumph and Disaster 117
Chapter 7 Unruly Passions: The Colonies 144
Chapter 8 Paradise Found and Lost 166
Chapter 9 Privileges and Prophecies: Columbus's Stake in the Future 186
Chapter 10 Marooned 202
Chapter 11 The Final Passion: Disillusion and Death 224
Afterwards Columbus, Apocalyptic, and Jerusalem 236
Acknowledgements 245
Appendix What Happened to that Major Players 247
notes 253
Bibliography 292
Index 305
JamesMJohn
Posted January 10, 2012
In school we mostly heard that Columbus was a doltz, but this review shook that entire foundation. Here I see a visionary willing to risk 6 years of his life (and lives were typically shorter back then) to try and look for an alternative path to the East. Though he's typically portrayed as selfish and to blame for all issues relating to the treatment of Native Americans, here we see that he actually had a great love and great curiosity for them. He didn't want to take advantage of them in deals and made legitimate friends with them. Though stubborn til his deathbed about believing he had found Asia, this was not a detriment to how intelligent this man was, which was shown by how able he was to navigate through a course that no one had ever chartered.
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Posted April 5, 2013
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Overview
An extraordinary new examination of Christopher Columbus that shows him to have been a man of deep passion, patience, and religious conviction—a man determined to save Jerusalem from Islam.
Five hundred years after Columbus set off on his remarkable journey, debates about his legacy still rage. Once revered, he’s now frequently held to have been destructive, reckless, and responsible for everything that went wrong in the New World. But scholar Carol Delaney offers a profoundly ...