Heritage Studies Book 3

In my thirst for knowledge of self, to study my heritage and to learn more about who I am, where my family comes from, and to why my skin is brown, I have made a commitment to read about the history and events surrounding the voyages of Columbus and the Spanish Empire’s quest to rule the Americas.

The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy is the third book on my list that paints a dark portrait on the events that took place in the Antilles. Kirkpatrick Sale does a fantastic job at explaining in detail what happened in the Caribbean when Christopher Columbus sailed on his Four Voyages.

A lot of what is taught in elementary and high schools about this event is scant, inadequate and full of falsehoods. Even today, there is still misinformation about Columbus and the events surrounding the voyages. Many people still believe he landed in North America, for example, which he did not. Sale also tries to debunk many of the other misconceptions that are still alive today in Columbus history.

Sale did extensive studies on this subject, and it shows. I learned so much about Columbus, not only as a navigator but as a person. These details come from the journal he kept while on the high seas and also from the second-hand accounts from his son Ferdinand Columbus and a friar named Bartolomeo De Las Casas, whose written accounts have survived. Other sources come from other conquistadors that traveled on the Voyages and wrote their own accounts about what they experienced. Sale is quick, however, to warn the reader that because of the possibility that the accounts are exaggerated and full of aggrandizement, we must be careful to take these descriptions and reports with some criticism and skepticism.

In between chapters Sale also injects knowledge about the history Spain and the rest of Europe’s mind state at about the time the Trans-Atlantic crossings took place. This serves as a background to the European state-of-mind that Columbus had, and gives us a glimpse into the decisions he made. Slavery was normal in Portugal at the time. Violence also surrounded him; the gallows were a common sight in European town squares, as were guillotines. No doubt a young Christopher witnessed these common spectacles. This may shed some light onto why Colon was pro-slavery and didn’t seem to really bat an eye at the violence perpetrated onto the native Taino and Carib Indians.

Sale also teaches us a bit about the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, one of the first “successful” colonies of England (I put “successful” in quotation because really, the colony was marred with bouts of starvation, mutiny and the colonists barely survived). He makes comparisons between Jamestown and La Isabela, the first “successful” colony for the Spanish on Hispaniola. We see how the Columbian Legacy had slowly reached the rest of the European continent many years after Columbus’ discoveries. The English, Dutch and French couldn’t wait to join in and plunder those “mountains” of gold and riches that the Caribbean islands had to offer.

After finishing the book, I was left with a hunger for more information (as a good book should do!). It certainly shed a bright light on the darkness that was my understanding and comprehension of the great voyages, and of Columbus himself. I had no idea he sailed the coast of South America for example, or the fact that he sailed the coast of Central America, off the coast of present day Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama.

I still have many books to read about Columbus himself. His Journal has been translated into English, as well as his letters to the Spanish Crown. He also wrote Libro de las Profecias and the Santangel Letters, as well as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies written by Bartolome de las Casas, which speaks about the atrocities committed by the Spanish and written to the Spanish Crown in his attempt to abolish the "encomienda", or slave system.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about Christopher Columbus and the infamous voyages that took place, forever changing the face of the world. ( )

Really hard to rate this one. It is fairly well-written and seems well-researched based on the notes (although not literally footnoted with numbers) and there is much interesting information. But I am not sure this guy should be called a 'historian'. Without looking up a thing about him, he seems to be a man on a mission. Hence the word Legacy in the title? This is more of a polemic against everything (and nearly everyone) European. In his view, repeatedly stated, the European civilization and people alone on earth were capable of and in fact compelled by a posioned ideology to commit the destruction of the New World along with genocide. This is pretty strong stuff but it suffuses the work. Page 91 gives an example of his view--"a civilization still dispirited and adrift, turmoiled and beset, sickened by gloom and suffering", etc. A civilization of death (nearly an entire chapter devoted to the Europeans propensity for dying and hence killing, he surmises). It goes on and on in this vein. Had the Persians, Carthiginians, Arabs, Mongols or Ottomans (to name several non-European empires) just a few more boats and a little more intrepidity they would surely have halted their invasionish ways at the first site of the beautiful natives and paradise of the New World!. Surely THEY would have left the Tainos alone upon seeing how reverential they were to the land. The Europeans lived in a tough neighborhood, nowhere is this mentioned. Spain spent 700 years of fighting to reclaim their land from the Muslim invasions. Does not even rate a mention in the index. The Mongols swept to their eastern border and crushed Russia and the Muslim empires. This is too inconvienient to mention. You will recoil of course upon reading of what did happen to the New World (mainly death by disease which neither the Europeans or anyone had literally a clue in the medicinal sense), anyone with today's knowledge and sensibilities would. The wanton slaughter is nauseating and ecological damage dismaying. But the author wants to judge and condemn an entire continent and people by standards of today that simply did not exist. Slavery was rampant around the 'civilized' world and before, and certainly existed in the Muslim realms where slaves were routinely taken in conquest and slaughter, rape and destruction of enemies par for the course. This book has to be read to absorb the totality of this man's condemnation of Europe, Columbus is just a vessel of that hatred. Written in the early 1990s, I imagine it has become (or already is) the 'playbook' for the dismantling of the legend and renaming of everything Columbus. And sadly probably embraced in leftist history departments in every major University. When discussing the apparently perfect Indian culture of the entire New World, almost totally pacific, eco-friendly, and so happy he fairly gushes with enthusiasm and calls any historian who dares question that view 'mean-spirited'. I have read quite a bit on the Indians and there is much to admire and to disdain. The torture methods for captives among many tribes were second to none (read 'Comanches' by T.R Feherenbach). He writes this after writing one of the most mean-spirited accounts 'history' that I have read. He actually provides a very interesting summary on the legacy of Columbus as it developed over the ensuing centuries: first ignored and then barely known, grudgingly acknowledged, finally celebrated (only by about 400-yr mark, 1892) and thence on to today's rather mixed reception. But the kicker comes in the Epilogue on p. 369 of my edition when he states that 'there is only one way to live in America, and there can ONLY (my emphasis) be one way, and that is as Americans--the original Americans--for that is what the earth of America demands'. I wonder what this writer has renounced to actually go back and live as the 'original' Americans. I'll have to look it up. ( )

Although Sale may have been correct in his assessment of Columbus as perpetrator of outrages and introducer of evil into the western hemisphere, his delivery and method of presentation are flawed by his polemical and seemingly unobjective stance. ( )