October 2003

Missouri Western State College

EED 340/308

 

Columbus

Tradition vs. Revisionism

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS:
MAN AND MYTH

 

What did Columbus Look Like?   Possibilities

What did Columbus Look Like?  Morphing Image    Morphed... composite figure of Columbus with the merging of multiple documents.

Who was the "real Columbus"?  How were the 400th and 500th anniversary of Columbus celebrated in different ways?

On Columbus Day, Celebrate Western Civilization, Not Multiculturalism  Traditional views of Columbus and his journeys.

What Came to be Called America  "America" before Columbus

Christopher Columbus shipwrecks, voyages, and ships

  

 

“After five centuries, Columbus remains a mysterious and controversial figure who has been variously described as one of the greatest mariners in history, a visionary genius, a mystic, a national hero, a failed administrator, a naive entrepreneur, and a ruthless and greedy imperialist.”

For better or worse,  Mr. Columbus has become part of the “secular mythology for school children in the US.

 [Others examples of “secular mythology” will be the story of George Washington and the cherry tree story.  Or, the story of Abe Lincoln who walked through a blizzard to return two pennies that he had charged a customer.] 

Should Columbus be taught along with other American heroes as Washington, Daniel Boon, Kit Carson, Davy Crockett, Buffalo Bill, etc.?

Some contend that Columbus is an "American hero."  What is a hero?  Does Columbus really fit that definition?

 

 

Hero:

        Does Columbus fit the above description of what a hero is?  Some will say "yes" and others a "definite no."

With the coming of the 500th anniversary of his "New World" voyage, people in the Americas began to argue about the significance of Columbus.  And now in the Western Hemisphere each 12 October there is a protest somewhere about the arrival of Columbus and the changes that this brought.

 

Two Views:

 

 

 

 

 

What do you see in the above cartoon?

What is the cartoonist above saying?

How is the cartoonist trying to convey his idea to the reader?

Any truth in the message of the cartoonist?

The Voyages

Columbus measured distance at sea by Italian nautical mile and thus wrote that the  earth circumference as 20,400 miles [Italian nautical mile was 4856 feet... how many feet are in the measurement that us commonly used in North America?]  When converted to modern units, Columbus's measurement of the circumference of the earth was 18,756 miles or about 25% less than the actual 24,861 miles.  [Moorish Arabs had correctly determined the distance around the earth... Columbus made a mistake.]

Columbus based estimate that at equator one degree of longitude was 56 2/3 miles  but in fact the actual distance is 69 statute miles

After reading Marco Polo and Toscanelli letter and map, Columbus convinced that Asia extended much farther to the east than other people thought.  Columbus estimated that China was about the same distance as where the West Indies are.... so he correctly indicated where he would find land.... but it was the wrong land.

Reflection on the journey of Columbus:  "Things that all student should know."

 Columbus did not discover a new world and thus initiate American history.  Neither did the Vikings nor the seafaring Africans, Chinese, Pacific Islanders, etc. "find" America.  the land was not a new land;  it was a world of peoples with a rich and complex history that dated back at least 15,000 years.  Columbus did not find a new land; rather he put two old worlds into permanent contact

 

The real America that Columbus encountered in 1492 was a different place from the "pre-contact" American often portrayed in folklore, textbooks and the mass media; it was not a wilderness inhabited by primitive peoples; both hemispheres had a highly developed agricultural system, centers of dense populations, complex civilizations, large-scale empires, extensive networks of long distance trade, sophisticated systems of religious beliefs and extensive linguistic diversity

 

Africa was very much a part of the social, economic and political system of the Eastern Hemisphere in 1492.  Atlantic slave trade initially linked Africa to Mediterranean Europe and eventually extended to the Americas;  until the end of the 1700s, the number of Africans who crossed the Atlantic exceeded the number of Europeans who came to the newly discovered lands.

 

Encounters of Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans are not stories of vigorous white actors confronting passive red and black spectators and victims.  These were not internally homogeneous gorups that represented a diversity of peoples with varied cultural traditions, economic structures and political systems.   Each group borrowed from and influenced the others.  Internal diversity of the Native Americans, the Africans and the Europeans contributed to development of modern American pluralistic culture and contemporary world civilizations.

 

As a result of the forces emanating from 1492, Native Americans suffered catastrophic mortality rates.

 

Columbus's voyages were not just a European phenomenon but were a facet of Europe's history of interaction with Asia and Africa.  "The discovery" of America was an unintended outcome of Iberian Europe's search for an all-sea route to the Indies;  a search that was stimulated in large part by the disruption of European-Asian trade routes occasioned by the collapse of the Mongol Empire.  Technology crucial to the voyages of Columbus:  compass, sternpost, gunpowder, paper, all of which originated in China.  The lateen said and much of the geographical knowledge on which Columbus relied originated with or was transmitted by the Arabs.

Columbus is not as important as his legacy which is the most dramatic biotic and cultural event in world history;  consequences of this event have reverberated through every continent and every century since 1492   [Minor example:  while we normally think of India as a land where many people eat rice or wheat, there are areas where the staple is the potato.  When boiling the potato a "starch" will be left in the water.  The ladies in the high elevations of India will use this "starch water" before ironing clothing.]

 

The story of Columbus landing as meeting of an old sophisticated advanced world and a new primitive and underdeveloped world should be changed to viewing the encounter of two old and fundamentally different worlds... both the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere could learn from each other.

 

The importance of Columbus is not knowing his exact route and the name of his ships.  Rather, it is knowing that Columbus was responsible for introducing horses into the Americas and corn into Europe;  the joining of the two hemispheres after thousands of years of isolation from each other

Creation if a global economy of Latin America to Europe to Asia with $$$  Africa to the Americas with slaves... North America to Western Europe and Russia with furs

 

Columbus and the Curriculum:

traditional= migration of people from Asia and across the Bering Land Bridge.

 

traditional=  "First Americans, Crusades, decline of feudalism, European-Asia trade patterns and technological breakthroughs made navigation away from sight of land.  Prince Henry the Navigator wanted to find Asia,.  Columbus, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and names of three ships, etc....  Traditional story leaves out the significance of the history behind the voyages.

 

Texts consider the housing and hunting styles of Native Americans but students learn very little about the farming, community development and medical practices of the Native Americans.

 

after 1492 what was the importance of Native Americans... not the hunting styles and housing but the Indian food products, farming methods and medical knowledge; 

 

Conventional encounter story focuses on Columbus as a brilliant navigator and explorer but says little about the plants and animals the brought to the Americans from Europe and what he took home.

 

The "exchanges" led to massive environmental, agricultural and ultimately cultural changes  in both hemispheres.

Cortez and Pizarro defeated empires with fewer soldiers but the real and long lasting defeat of the peoples of the Western Hemisphere was caused by the infectious diseases

 

we learn that European nations brought slaves to the Caribbean and the Americas but not told why or how early slavery was to affect the Caribbean and the US in coming years.

Seeds of Change:  Five Plants that Transformed Mankind.  Henry Hobhouse. 1987.  Harper and Rowe. The Columbian Exchange:  Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Alfred Crosby 1972   Seeds of Change:  A Quincentennial Commemoration.  Washington:  Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.

Seeds of Change:   What "things" that were traded between the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere prompted major changes in the two hemispheres?

Disease:  western hemisphere peoples not exposed to many infectious diseases that were in Europe;  within 100 years after 1492 thousands of peoples had died because of measles, mumps, typhus, diphtheria, smallpox.  Europeans say that it was "divine intervention".  today AIDS/HIV similar to the problems that Native Americans faced as they tried to cope with and eradicate the disease... but they did not have the benefit of modern medicine

Corn:  first cultivated on the Mayan peninsula [Mexico].  staple crop throughout the Americas by 1492.  Columbus carried samples of grain back to Spain.  grew well in Spain;  used for livestock feed;  became subsistence food for Africans on slave ships;  today corn is one of the three most important food grains along with wheat and rice.  products made from corn put into hundreds of non-food uses as gasoline additive, ethanol, packing materials and biodegradable paper

Potato:  first cultivated in Peru, or along the west coast of South America.  became a mainstay of the European diet;  stead supply of a basic food helped population increase and contributed significantly to industrialization of Europe;  potato blight caused immigrants to the Americans from both Germany and Ireland.

Horse  horses had lived on the North American continent 10,000 years ago but became extinct during the Ice Age;  Columbus reintroduced the horse about 1493.  also brought cattle, sheep, pigs, goats; horse caused radical changes in Indian cultures throughout Americans;  cattle ranching introduced by Spanish with the horse as being the primary supplier of animal energy

Sugar:  Columbus brought sugarcane to Caribbean Islands on the 2nd voyage;  grew well but required large work force.  Europeans expected to enslave Indians but by mid-1500;s most of the Indians had died from disease, overworked or ran off into the hills.  At the same time Europe was demanding more sugar.  African peoples were looked to as a source of steady labor for the ecological and cultural transformation of the Caribbean.  [Europeans merely took advantage of what had been going on for hundreds of years in Africa-- Africans enslaving other Africans].  300 years of slavery for an estimated 10 million Africans.

TO the Eastern Hemisphere: 

corn, sweet potato, tomato, pepper, cacao, vanilla, beans, squash, pumpkin, cassava root, avocado, peanut, pecan, cashew, guava, pineapple, sunflower, petunia, black-eyed susan, dahlia, poinsettia, turkey, potato, tobacco, quinine, tobacco

TO Western Hemisphere:

        horse, cow, sheep, chicken, honeybee, coffee, wheat, rice, barley, cabbage, turnip, lettuce, orange, banana, olive, gladiolus, lilac, carnation, daffodil, tulip, daisy, crab grass, dandelion, sugar cane, pig, diseases

 

Columbus Day Teaching Lesson Plans

Some of these may be good... some of them may be bad.  Look, review, evaluate and modify it you think one or all needs to be adapted to your grade level or students in your geographic area.

 

Below will be webpages that present the “traditional Columbus” and the “revisionist Columbus.”  Which story will you teach?  Or will you try to combine both into one presentation?

Columbian Exchanges

Seeds of Change Garden

The Effects of Removal on American Indian Tribes, Native Americans and the Land, Nature

 Transformed, TeacherServe, National Humanities Center

The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/Taino/docs/columbus.html

Look at the Middle Column

            http://www.educationplanet.com/articles/columbusday.html

The State News - Rally criticizes Columbus Day:Students remember ..

 [IMC-Boston] American indian protest: Denver Columbus day