Word: columbus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Columbus' sense of his humble origins was crucial. He was determined to transcend them; his means would be navigation. At first he wanted to succeed through trade. Sea trade was the lifeblood of Genova la superba, proud Genoa. As a merchant navigator, Columbus sailed all over the Mediterranean, to the Guinea coast of Africa and as far north as Ireland. He may have gone as far as Iceland too. Sometime between 1478 and 1484, the full plan of self- aggrandizement and discovery took shape in his mind. He would win glory, riches and a title of nobility by opening...
This drive is one of the few attributes of Columbus that all the surviving sources agree on. It was clear to the crew of the Santa Maria as the little fleet was pitching and rolling west in 1492, with no land yet in sight and mutiny brewing. According to Las Casas' account, some of the men argued that "it was great madness and self-inflicted manslaughter to risk their lives to further the mad schemes of a foreigner who was ready to die in the hope of making a great lord of himself." They planned to pitch him overboard...
...authentic portrait of Columbus done from life exists, but there are verbal descriptions: tall, a long face, ruddy skin, reddish hair that turned white in middle age. Adopting Spain as his homeland in 1484, Columbus was never to use Italian in his writings. But he soon became bookworm enough to be seen as an amateur geographer as well as a mariner, and to accumulate a large library. Alas, only four of these volumes survive with his annotations...
...Though Columbus was already a first-rate practical sailor, his idea of the unexplored Atlantic was formed as much by books as by navigation: writings of the ancients (Pliny, Strabo and especially Ptolemy), medieval cosmographers, collections of "marvels." These gave him a framework in which to sell his plans to patrons: his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain, begging their patronage for the "Enterprise of the Indies," are full of appeals to the authority of older writers...
...what? On the belief that one could reach China and "Cipangu" (Japan) by sailing west. No European ship had reached the Orient by sailing east around the bottom of Africa yet, either. But Columbus was convinced that the westward passage would be shorter and easier. The enterprise of the Indies had nothing to do with discovering America, or even with any suspicion that America existed. Columbus was looking for China and Japan, and long after reaching the Caribbean he remained convinced, against any and all evidence, that he had done...