Transcript Aim: How should Columbus be remembered?

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.
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
His name in Italian is
Christophero Colombo.
the Earth’s circumference to be
smaller than it is. He also did not
know that the Americas existed.
Who was Christopher Columbus? Continued…
E) 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 Journey
A) 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 Arawaks. He described them as
peaceful, but wrote to Isabella about the Caribs on a nearby island
(Dominica) who were dangerous cannibals. *Note that his “evidence”
was second hand sources.
Some historians dispute
which island he landed on.
We do know he stayed there
for 5 days, and then sailed on
to Cuba.
A European depiction of the Caribs
Columbus Map of the Known World, 1490
His Journey Continued…
"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many
other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells.
They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built,
with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and
do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge
and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears
are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men
we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
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.” – Columbus on the Arawak natives
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 Columbus
POSITIVES
 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.
Columbus Day in NYC
Who Came Before Columbus? By Josh Clark
“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 one 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.
Who Came Before Columbus?
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, 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… 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). 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… 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.
Who Came Before Columbus?
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
Did the Chinese Come Before Columbus?
“A copy of a 600-year-old map found in a second-hand book shop is the key to
proving that the Chinese, not Christopher Columbus, were the first to discover
the New World, a controversial British historian claims. The document is
purportedly an 18th century copy of a 1418 map charted by Chinese Admiral
Zheng He, which appears to show the New World in some detail. This
purported evidence that a Chinese sailor mapped the Western Hemisphere
more than seven decades before Columbus is just one of Earth-shattering
claims that author Gavin Menzies makes in his new book Who Discovered
America? Among Menzies other claims are that the first inhabitants of the
Western hemisphere didn’t come over land from the Bering Strait, but instead
were Chinese sailors who first crossed the Pacific Ocean 40,000 years ago. He
also writes that DNA markers prove American Indians and other natives are the
descendants of several waves of Asian settlers. Furthermore, he says a
majestic fleet of Chinese ships, commanded by Zheng He, sailed around the
continent of South America - 100 years before Ferdinand Megellan supposedly
became the first the undertake the task. Mr Menzies believes that Columbus
actually had a map of the world that was plotted by the Chinese Admiral Zheng
He, who created the map when he sailed to the New World in 1421, more than
seven decades before Columbus. By Michael Zennie Published: 8
October 20 www.dailymail.co.uk
HW Questions
1. Where did Columbus want to go and why? Why did Isabella
and Ferdinand fund his trip?
2. How did Columbus describe the natives? Is his description
reliable? Explain.
3. What were the most important consequences of
Columbus’s travels (both positive and negative)
4. What is the evidence for other people “discovering” the
Americas prior to Columbus? Do you think the evidence is
conclusive?
5. How should Columbus be remembered?
Key Vocabulary
Arawaks
St. Brendan
Caribs
Columbian Exchange
Christopher Columbus
Ferdinand
Zheng He
Hispaniola
Isabella
Mercantalism
San Salvador
Viceroy