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Date:         Sat, 15 Aug 1992 12:59:00 -0400
From:         "MARIO S. DE PILLIS" <AHAB000@UCSVAX.UCS.UMASS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Columbus Jewish?
Comments: To: HISTORY%RUTVM1.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU

>An expulsion of Jews took place immediately before The Admiral set sail.
>In face, the last ship of Jews sailed down the river with him, having
>waited for the same tide which launched the expedition.  On reaching the
>sea, the Jews' ship turned to port, heading for Africa.  The Admiral
>sailed straight, heading for destiny.>>
>
>If I were a painter, I would like to paint that scene, because it captures
>No flames will be accepted on this message, because you all know what I
>am saying, and we need not fight for a week to agree on our positions.

>Lenny

No flames here, Lenny,  though this list exasperates me at times.

 Thanks for raising the level of the discussion of Columbus as a supposedly
Spanish Jew
(his red hair has been used as evidence).  I was about to sneer that he was
actually an Iroquois with a European wig. And then sign off the list.

Your vivid image brought home to me how preternaturally close
was the timing of the effects of expulsion of the Jews and the
beginning of the Columbian revolution  Although in my
day Americanists were supposed to know some non-US history,  I never
knew quite so precisely that the timing of the expulsion
 and the beginning of the Columbian revolution were so closely timed and
certainly not the fact that the ships of the Jews and of Columbus passed
 one another on the same day and on the same tides, sailing toward different
destinies.
  Irony and tragedy mixed.

The image helps us get away from the discussion of Columbus as a
 Spanish (sic) Jew with red hair.

    While I recognize the usefulness of multicultural awareness of race and
gender in history,  it seems to me that the larger Columbian issue for
todayUs
debate,  especially in academia,  is symbolized by the practice of
enclosing "discovery" in quotation marks.  What does this mean?  Does it mean

anything more than the attempt of white New Agers (who "wannabee" Native
Americans) to provoke old white male professors?  Even serious
publications allow the quotation-marks dodge.  This shows that we have lost
 the terminological discipline of Silvio Zavala's old essay in the
AHR on the meaning of discovery.  I feel that the really important historical
issue,  namely the Columbian Revolution,  has been neglected in the rush to
use this 500th anniversary for a welter of private political agenda.
 Also disturbing is the implied unhistorical sense of moral superiority
to the Spaniards,  who were living in the 16th century,  and
did not conduct an ethnographic survey before exploring
the western hemisphere with the express purpose  of wiping the Indians.

The interest of some historians in the expulsion of the Jews is related to
the concurrent interest in the near extermination of the Native Americans
by Europeans.  But we ought to remember that,  after all, >ethnic cleansing<
through bloodshed and expulsion,  is not unknown to the denizens
of the twentieth likke the Muslims and Jews.  Or anti-Coptic pogroms
in Egypt.
  I hope this  message got through my End of Buffer problems.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU