The Western Experience | Guide To Documents

Mortimer Chambers, University of California - Los Angeles
Barbara Hanawalt, Ohio State University
Theodore Rabb, Princeton University
Isser Woloch, Columbia University
Raymond Grew, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Guide To Documents

Two Views of Columbus
The following two passages suggest the enormous differences that have arisen in interpretations of the career of Christopher Columbus. The first, by Samuel Eliot Morison, a historian and a noted sailor, represents the traditional view of the explorer's achievements that held sway until recent years. The second, by Kirkpatrick Sale, a writer and environmentalist, indicates the radical change that has occurred in the understanding of the effects of exploration.

1. "Columbus had a Hellenic sense of wonder at the new and strange, combined with an artist's appreciation of natural beauty. Moreover, Columbus had a deep conviction of the sovereignty and the infinite wisdom of God, which enhanced all his triumphs. One only wishes that the Admiral might have been afforded the sense of fulfillment that would have come from foreseeing all that flowed from his discoveries. The whole history of the Americas stems from the Four Voyages of Columbus, and as the Greek city-states looked back to the deathless gods as their founders, so today a score of independent nations unite in homage to Christopher the stout-hearted son of Genoa, who carried Christian civilization across the Ocean Sea."
From S. E. Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, Little, Brown, 1942, pp. 670 — 671.

2. "For all his navigational skill, about which the salty types make such a fuss, and all his fortuitous headings, Admiral Colón [Christopher Columbus] could be a wretched mariner. The four voyages, properly seen, quite apart from bravery, are replete with lubberly mistakes, misconceived sailing plans, foolish disregard of elementary maintenance and stubborn neglect of basic safety – all characterized by the assertion of human superiority over the natural realm. Almost every time Colón went wrong it was because he had refused to bend to the inevitabilities of tide and wind and reef or, more arrogantly still, had not bothered to learn about them.
"Many of those who know well the cultures that once existed in the New World have reason to be less than enthusiastic about [the 1992 celebrations of] the event that led to the destruction of much of that heritage and the greater part of the people who produced it; others are planning to protest the entire goings-on as a wrongful commemoration of an act steeped in bloodshed, slavery and genocide."
From Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1990, pp. 209 — 210 and 362.
Henry VIII Claims Independence from the Pope