In 1492, on this day, the Italian explorer Cristopher Columbus, in charge of a Spanish expedition, landed in the Americas. The event is commemorated in Spain (Fiesta Nacional de España), Italy (Giornata Nazionale di Colombo), the United States (Columbus Day), and Latin America (various names).

by RomanItalianEuropean

11 comments

  1. They landed in an island of the Bahamas that Columbus named “San Salvador”. In four expeditions, Columbus visted the Antilles and the South American mainland.

    This day is a nation-wide holiday and festivity in Spain. Columbus Day has become controversial in the United States (with Native Americans and Italian-Americans bittering wth each other) and also in Latin America. In Italy people still work, there’s not vacation, it’s only a national commemorative day. In Latin American countries it used to be called the “day of race” but variously renamed it to “day of encounter”, “day of diversity” and so.

  2. In Argentina it used to be called “día de la raza” (day of the races) but now it’s called “día de la diversidad cultural” (cultural diversity day”)

  4. In the United States, we now commemorate this holiday by getting lost, and visiting some random grocery store where we steal spices from the baking aisle.

  5. Columbus is one of the most commerated but also controversial figures in history, let’s say something about him and why that is.

    **Who was Columbus?**

    Cristopher Columbus (1451-1506) was born in the Republic of Genoa (Liguran coast of Italy) into a family of weavers and sailors. In his teens he took the sea for the first time and eventually became a navigator in the Genoese maritime traditions. Initially he bought wine for his father, then he worked for the large commercial firms of Genoa; we know that in 1474 he went to Chios (a Genoese colony in the Aegean Sea) to buy mastic and resins. Like so many sailors of his place and time, he went to Portugal, since the court of Lisbon often used Italian navigators to carry out their explorations. In the Portuguese period (1476-1484) he traveled widely, possibly as north as Iceland and as south as the Gulf of Guinea. When he was over thirty he was already an expert and skilled navigator.

    **The project of Columbus**

    To the passion for the sea, Columbus added that for history and geography books, typical of the Italian renaissance humanism of the time. He owned copies of the ancient Classics, of the “Historia Rerum” (of Pope Pius II), of the “Imago Mundi” (of Cardinal d’Ailly), and of the “Million” (of Marco Polo) which he filled with marginal notes. Columbus’s goal was to sail in the open Atlantic past the pillars of Hercules and reach the lands of the East via the Western Ocean. He wanted to arrive in the lands of the “Indies”, of Cipango (Japan) and Catai (China), where Marco Polo had arrived by land. He was also inspired by many previous Genoese navigators who did open Atlantic voyages since the Middle Ages, some of which died in the process. This was also the goal of many merchants of the time, who needed to import Indian spices from the Middle Eastern (now Ottoman) territories. Following the work of some geographers and the globe of Pedro of Portugal (and other popular globes of the time), which tended to reduce the size of the Atlantic between Europe and Asia, Columbus was convinced of the feasibility of the trip and proposed his project to the court of Lisbon. King John II of Portugal refused, having decided to focus his resources on the circumnavigation of Africa.

    Then, in 1485, Columbus went to the Kingdom of Spain ruled by Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. The Genoese spent years trying to convince the Salamanca junta of financing his trip. In the end, it was the Spanish monarchs, warned of the imminent departure of Columbus for France, who gave the consent to the project with the capitulations of Santa Fe (from the name of the field of Granada where Columbus arrived to meet the royals, just during the last military campaign of the Reconquista). Columbus obtained the title of admiral; and was recognized as governor of the lands he would claim for the sovereigns, in this sense he was also the first of the “conquistadors” and the founder of the Spanish empire. Columbus also understood his action as an evangelical and missionary expedition, with the aim of spreading Chrstianity throughout the world.

    **Columbus and the Americas**

    Columbus, with three caravels (Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria), left Palos on 3 August 1492. Following a stopover in the Canaries, the voyage resumed on 8 September. After more than a month of (apparently) useless sailing, the sailors planned to throw the admiral overboard. But, at two in the morning of October 12, 1492, Columbus distinguished a distant light from the stern of the Santa Maria. The sailor Rodrigo de Triana, climbed on the front castle of the “Pinta”, spotted a white strip of sand and shouted: “Tierra!”. It was a coral island in the Bahamas, renamed by Columbus with the name of S. Salvador. Columbus also touched Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Cuba. He communicated with the Arawak Tainos, the indigenous people of the place,with which he exchanged mirrors and rattles in exchange for balls of cotton.

    He thought that he had arrived in the “West Indies” (today called the Antilles), territories at the outskirts of Asia. For this the Native Americans were called “Indios”. When the Santa Maria collapsed, he established a small colony on Hispaniola (“la Navidad”) and returned to Europe with two caravels, making a stopover in the Portuguese Azores and arriving in Lisbon in 1493, where King John II of Portugal welcomed him at court . The sovereign made claims on the islands in exchange for titles and honors, but this time it was Columbus who denied the Portuguese king’s proposal (who frowned upon seeing some Native Americans brought from Columbus, thinking they were truly skin-colored Indians).

    Columbus made three other American trips for Spain (1493-6, 1498-1500, 1502-1504), touching not only the large and small Antilles, but also the American continent. In these years he established further colonies (Santo Domingo in primis) and opened gold mines. He clashed in the great Antiles with the Arawak Tainos, whom he sent back as slaves in large numbers, and in the small Antilles with the Caribs, indigenous cannibals and practicers of human sacrifice according to Columbus who found human remains on the islands. The small antilles were never really subdued until the Anglo-French settlement of the late 16th century. He was also briefly arrested in 1500, being accused of a brutal regime. Bobadilla, who led the inquiry into him, managed to be appointed viceroy in his place. Columbus was freed by the Spanish monarchs and re-appointed Admiral (altough not governor)

    It’s unclear wheter Columbus ever understood that he had arrived in a new continent or not. In 1497/8 he called his discoveries “a land hitherto unkown” and “another world”, but he seemed to have considered them new territories at the outskirts of Asia rather than a separate landmass. It was another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who argued that they were a fourth continent, a completely New World, other than Europe, Africa and Asia. And thus the name America was applied to it. The name Columbus surives in Colombia and in Washington District of Columbia (D.C.).

    **Sources**

    “Marianne Mahn-Lot – Biographical Dictionary of Italians – Volume 27” and “Alberto MAGNAGHI – Eugenio MELE – – Italian Encyclopedia” both published by Treccani.

  8. If you know spanish I recommend the videos of “Pero eso es otra historia” on this topic

  9. I’m italian and it’s not really commemorated here, I didn’t even know it was today.

  10. These sailors stabk, had diarrhea, and no clue where they were. Ships were nearly sunk.

  11. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Leave a Reply