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Christopher Columbus: Excerpts from his Journal (1492) This document is the from the journal of Columbus in his voyage of 1492. The meaning of this voyage is highly contested. On the one hand, it is witness to the tremendous vitality and verve of late medieval and early modern Europe – which was on the verge of acquiring a world hegemony.
In order to understand the problems Columbus faced in writing his Journal, it is important to understand his objectives. What was he trying to do, and to what extent did that first landfall confirm or confound his expectations?
When Columbus arrived back in Spain on March 15, 1493, he immediately wrote a letter announcing his discoveries to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had helped finance his trip. The letter was written in Spanish and sent to Rome, where it was printed in Latin by Stephan Plannck.
Written by people who wish to remain anonymous. Columbus commences his journal on the third of August, 1492. He writes every single day, so many of his entries are bland and uneventful. By September the ship has made it to the Sargasso Sea. Before long he's floating in unknown waters.
- Overview
- Early career and preparation for the first voyage
•Columbus's journeys to the Americas opened the way for European countries to colonize and exploit those lands and their peoples.
•Trade was soon established between Europe and the Americas. Plants native to the Americas (such as potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco) were imported to Europe.
•This trade route also paved the way for the slave trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
•Explorers and settlers brought with them diseases that had a devastating effect on Native American populations. Many native peoples perished or were driven from their homes by colonizers.
18 Food Crops Developed in the Americas
Read more about the Columbian exchange and food crops that were transported from the Americas to Europe.
Little is known of Columbus’s early life. The vast majority of scholars, citing Columbus’s testament of 1498 and archival documents from Genoa and Savona, believe that he was born in Genoa to a Christian household; however, it has been claimed that he was a converted Jew or that he was born in Spain, Portugal, or elsewhere. Columbus was the eldest son of Domenico Colombo, a Genoese wool worker and merchant, and Susanna Fontanarossa, his wife. His career as a seaman began effectively in the Portuguese merchant marine. After surviving a shipwreck off Cape Saint Vincent at the southwestern point of Portugal in 1476, he based himself in Lisbon, together with his brother Bartholomew. Both were employed as chart makers, but Columbus was principally a seagoing entrepreneur. In 1477 he sailed to Iceland and Ireland with the merchant marine, and in 1478 he was buying sugar in Madeira as an agent for the Genoese firm of Centurioni. In 1479 he met and married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, a member of an impoverished noble Portuguese family. Their son, Diego, was born in 1480. Between 1482 and 1485 Columbus traded along the Guinea and Gold coasts of tropical West Africa and made at least one voyage to the Portuguese fortress of São Jorge da Mina (now Elmina, Ghana) there, gaining knowledge of Portuguese navigation and the Atlantic wind systems along the way. Felipa died in 1485, and Columbus took as his mistress Beatriz Enríquez de Harana of Córdoba, by whom he had his second son, Ferdinand (born c. 1488).
In 1484 Columbus began seeking support for an Atlantic crossing from King John II of Portugal but was denied aid. (Some conspiracy theorists have alleged that Columbus made a secret pact with the monarch, but there is no evidence of this.) By 1486 Columbus was firmly in Spain, asking for patronage from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. After at least two rejections, he at last obtained royal support in January 1492. This was achieved chiefly through the interventions of the Spanish treasurer, Luis de Santángel, and of the Franciscan friars of La Rábida, near Huelva, with whom Columbus had stayed in the summer of 1491. Juan Pérez of La Rábida had been one of the queen’s confessors and perhaps procured him the crucial audience.
Britannica Quiz
Exploration and Discovery
Christian missionary and anti-Islamic fervour, the power of Castile and Aragon, the fear of Portugal, the lust for gold, the desire for adventure, the hope of conquests, and Europe’s genuine need for a reliable supply of herbs and spices for cooking, preserving, and medicine all combined to produce an explosion of energy that launched the first voyage. Columbus had been present at the siege of Granada, which was the last Moorish stronghold to fall to Spain (January 2, 1492), and he was in fact riding back from Granada to La Rábida when he was recalled to the Spanish court and the vital royal audience. Granada’s fall had produced euphoria among Spanish Christians and encouraged designs of ultimate triumph over the Islamic world, albeit chiefly, perhaps, by the back way round the globe. A direct assault eastward could prove difficult, because the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic states in the region had been gaining strength at a pace that was threatening the Christian monarchies themselves. The Islamic powers had effectively closed the land routes to the East and made the sea route south from the Red Sea extremely hard to access.
In the letter that prefaces his journal of the first voyage, the admiral vividly evokes his own hopes and binds them all together with the conquest of the infidel, the victory of Christianity, and the westward route to discovery and Christian alliance:
First encounters between Europeans and Native Americans were dramatic events. In this account we see the assumptions and intentions of Christopher Columbus, as he immediately began assessing the potential of these people to serve European economic interests. He also predicted easy success for missionaries seeking to convert these people to ...
T he Council of the Hakluyt Society has decided upon issuing a translation of the Journal of the First Voyage of Columbus on the four hundredth anniversary of that momentous expedition. It has also been arranged that translations of the documents relating to the voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real shall be included in the same volume.
