{"id":79,"date":"2010-10-12T15:31:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T19:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/2010\/10\/12\/christopher-columbus-a-globally-transforming-figure\/"},"modified":"2010-10-12T15:31:21","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T19:31:21","slug":"christopher-columbus-a-globally-transforming-figure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/2010\/10\/12\/christopher-columbus-a-globally-transforming-figure\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Columbus: A Globally Transforming Figure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest from\u00a0<\/strong>Legendary Heroes<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals, authors of Heroes: What They Do and Why We Need Them
\n<\/em><\/a>
\n<\/strong>With Columbus Day fast approaching, we've been encouraged to write about Christopher Columbus and his unsurpassed impact on the world we live in today.\u00a0 Recently, we proposed a distinction<\/a> between a hero or villain whose influence on the world is very short-lived (an ephemeral<\/em> or transitory<\/em> figure) and a hero or villain who forever changes an entire society (a transforming<\/em> figure).\u00a0 Whether you believe his impact to be positive or negative, Christopher Columbus and his 1492 voyage to the Americas left an indelible mark on nearly every corner of the globe.<\/p>\n

\"Christopher<\/a>Transforming events do not take place in an historical vacuum.\u00a0 To understand Columbus's motivation to establish a shipping route to Asia, we must look to the city of Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey.\u00a0 For centuries, as the capital of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire, Constantinople had been an important center for trade between Europe and Asia.\u00a0 But in 1453, the Muslim Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, forcing Europeans to search for a sea route to Asia that would bypass the Muslims.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Columbus may never have attempted his initial voyage had he not held several misconceptions about global geography.\u00a0 \"Christopher<\/a>He underestimated the circumference of the earth; he overestimated the size of the Asian landmass; and he believed that Japan lay much farther east of China than in reality.\u00a0 He did, however, have an accurate understanding of the prevailing easterly trade winds that would propel his ships from the Canary Islands to lands far to the west.\u00a0 With about 90 men and sailing under the flag of Spain, Columbus's three ships were fortunate to avoid both tropical storms and the "doldrums" \u20ac\u201d pockets of sea where there is neither current nor wind.<\/p>\n

Most of us know the rest of the story.\u00a0 On October 12, 1492, Columbus and his men landed on the island of Guanahani, and called it San Salvador. \u00a0Although he failed to reach Asia, Columbus made the western hemisphere known to Europeans, forever altering human history on a global scale.\u00a0 Until very recently, generations of Americans grew up learning that Columbus "discovered" America – a Eurocentric notion that ignored the presence of 50 million indigenous people inhabiting the Americas in 1492.\u00a0 Moreover, other Europeans, such as the Norsemen, had ventured to America 500 years earlier.\u00a0 "Columbus's claim to fame isn't that he got there first," explains historian Martin Dugard, "it's that he stayed."<\/p>\n

The heroic interpretation of Columbus is that his daring voyage into unknown waters required courage and conviction.\u00a0 In 1989 U.S. President George H. W. Bush said that Columbus "set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith."\u00a0 \"Christopher<\/a> Extraordinary changes resulted from Columbus's voyages.\u00a0 The Columbian Exchange<\/em> was established, referring to the two-way transfer of culture, foods, plants, and animals between the continents of Europe and the Americas. \u00a0The Americas were introduced to crops such as wheat, rice, coffee, bananas, and olives, and animals such as horses, cows, pigs, and chickens.\u00a0Europeans also received from America many important crops, such as corn, potatoes, tomatoes, lima beans, squash, peanuts, cassava, cacao, and pineapple.<\/p>\n

The past few decades have also seen Columbus cast into the role of villain. \u00a0Deadly European diseases were introduced into the Americas, including diphtheria, measles, smallpox, and malaria.\u00a0 The Americas, in turn, contributed a virulent form of syphilis to Europe.\u00a0 All told, Native American populations suffered to a much greater degree than did Europeans.\u00a0 Epidemics wiped out 80 to 90% of the native populations in Hispaniola, and European settlers enslaved many Native Americans.\u00a0 In fairness to Columbus, the worst of these problems occurred after he died, under the watch of later European governors and colonists.<\/p>\n

In preparing this blog post, we googled "Christopher Columbus hero villain<\/em>" and obtained over 100 websites debating Columbus's status as hero or villain.\u00a0 It's clearly a muddied picture.\u00a0 All we can say with certainty is that Columbus's voyages had a permanently transforming effect on the world.\u00a0 "Every hero is somebody else's villain," said Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, a scholar and author of several books related to Columbus, including 1492: The Year the World Beg<\/em>an.\u00a0 "Heroism and villainy are just two sides of the same coin."<\/p>\n

One of our readers suggested that we profile Christopher Columbus.\u00a0 We welcome your suggestions as well.\u00a0 Please send your ideas to Scott T. Allison (sallison@richmond.edu) or to George R. Goethals (ggoethal@richmond.edu<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest from\u00a0Legendary Heroes\u00a0By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals, authors of Heroes: What They Do and Why We Need Them With Columbus Day fast approaching, we've been encouraged to write about Christopher Columbus and his unsurpassed impact on the world we live in today.\u00a0 Recently, we proposed a distinction between a hero or … Continue reading Christopher Columbus: A Globally Transforming Figure<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[751,763,765],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-practice","category-reflections"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}