Columbus: His Enterprise

Columbus: His Enterprise, Hans Koning, Monthly Review Press, 1976

Christopher Columbus is thought of as a bold, visionary adventurer who, while looking for another route to India, discovered America. This book gives a very different view.

In the fifteenth century, the Moslem capture of Istanbul (then Constantinople) and the eastern Mediterranean seaboard closed off the usual land routes to India and China for European traders. Portugal put its money behind the sea route around Africa, Italy was happily profiting from those same Moslem traders, and France and England weren't ready to bankroll an expedition to the West. Spain was the only choice for Columbus.

On the first voyage, when land was reached and the westerners met the Indians for the first time, one of Columbus' first thoughts was that they would make good servants, and could easily be made into Christians. "With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." Many Indians were taken prisoner, with the intention of bringing them back to Spain; almost all died on the return trip.

The second voyage set the pattern for the next several centuries. The wonder of discovery had faded. The Indians were now considered savages. The talk was of gold and slavery. A colony was left behind from the first voyage. The inhabitants roamed the island in gangs, obsessed with gold, taking whomever, or whatever, they wanted along the way. The Indians finally killed the colonists in a pitched battle.

Hundreds of Indians were rounded up and sent back to Spain as slaves. In a certain province, every Indian had to bring a certain amount of gold to one of the Spanish forts. For those who fulfilled the demand, a copper token was made to be hung around the neck, keeping them safe for another three months. Anyone caught without a token was killed by having their hands cut off. Those who tried to escape into the mountains were hunted down with dogs. When all the gold was gone, the Indians became property to work on what became Spanish estates, or they became part of labor gangs to work anywhere on the island.

This is a very short bok, only 128 pages, but it says a lot. It's very interesting, more than a little sickening, and gives a very different view of a famous person in early Western history. It's very much worth reading.