Knighting Columbus

I didn’t quite get into Columbus himself yesterday, so much as into the Columbian Expedition(s). It’s time we discussed modern (white and Catholic) Columbus apologetic.

When modern apologists discuss Columbus, they implicitly depend on Carol Delaney especially Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem (2012). Catholic World Report has the most-detailed and least-silly review I could yet find – mostly favourable.

This informs us that Delaney had built upon Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s biography of Columbus (1991). The WSJ, meanwhile, picked Fernandez to review Delaney. Fernandez was… not a fan of Delaney’s book. The review is paywalled but Josef Kuhn did a summary for Religion News Service.

Fernandez rejects the “clash of civilisations” as pertinent to Christianity and Islam - “a figment of contemporary imaginations”. Fine then; let us ask, in a 1492 AD context, if Columbus and the queen of Castile believed that “Christendom” and “Islam” – and Asia, and the Caribbean – amounted to different civilisations. The answer seems so obvious I have to ask what drugs Fernandez was taking when he wrote that.

Fernandez does point out that early 1500s Spanish literature tends to be self-serving, which Restall explains in detail concerning Columbus’ greatest successor as conquistador and governor, Hernan Cortés. Delaney will hopefully get a Restall of her own. Although, to be blunt, Fernandez isn’t him. Until Delaney gets a less-biased critic, her book must stand.

Where Delaney stands is on Bartolome de Las Casas, whose work is a better foundation than most. In it – so I gather – we learn that Columbus did engage in acts of rapine and slavery. Some of it was excused that he’d enslaved mostly cannibals and criminals, but then… his invasion, by exploding the old Carib economy, had rather created a few of these.

Columbus was appointed to the post of “Governor of the West Indies”, mostly in absentia as his main mission was exploration. The Third Voyage is the main event, here, starting 1498, which saw the man’s brothers doing the actual governing in Hispaniola. Columbus’ administration is best rated "chaotic". He intermittently permitted his Spanish underlings to do their worst, and then he punished them for the inevitable and bloody results. His (mis)rule culminated in an execution of two of the worst Spaniards there. That ensured that he had no friends on the island at all – dramatically illustrated in testimony rediscovered only in 2006.

So the Spanish Crown unseated the goofus within two years.

If you want a holiday for this man, be my guest, but don’t count on me to be joining in.

UPDATE 11/8: JewAmongYou agrees. I'm glad he's back! UPDATE 8/30/2020: Colavito on Italian Americana.