From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Cristobal Colon
Keywords: AIM, 1492, Lost at Sea
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 17:20:00 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.151740.2350@samba.oit.unc.edu> Jack.Smoke@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Jack Smoke) writes:

>	"Colombus was not a spaniard.  So why was he sailing for spain?
>Because no one else would have him.  The Norweegans knew you couldn't 
>get to China this way - they had been trading with my ancestors for
>generations already!  Irish fishermen knew that this land was 
>here - they had been setting up summer camps for many years.

	"The Norse colony in the North America had failed four
centuries earlier, and the records were essentially unknown.  Even the
Greenland colony was gone, a casualty of the Little Ice Age and
an inappropriate culture and technology for the climate.  (Whereas the
Inuit had both, and thus managed to settle Greenland successfully.)
The Vinland sagas were not given serious attention until the 19th
century, and were unavailable outside of Scandinavia in any case.
I'm also curious what the evidence is for the fishing camps you speak
of.  Certainly it's not impossible-- within a few decades of Columbus'
voyages, the Newfoundland fishery was being fished by many nations'
ships.  And it's not unlikely that the Irish fishermen would choose to
keep camps in North America a trade secret.  But have records or
remains been found?  (This isn't a rhetorical question-- I'm honestly
curious about this.)

	"In any case, though, we give credit to discoverors as much
for disseminating information as for learning it.  Before Columbus,
the European mainstream was unaware of the American continents.
Afterwards, it was.  It was an accidental discovery, but so were
penicillin and vulcanized rubber-- we give credit to accidental
discovery as well.  Similarly, it is virtually certain that the
Americas would have come to European attention within a couple of
decades of Columbus.  But many discoveries came about "at railroadin'
time"-- calculus was independently formulated by two people at the
same time, as was the theory of natural selection.  Being the one who
actually does it remains of some significance.  If Columbus had not
been the European to discover the Americas, history would have
differed, especially if that person had not been sailing for Spain."

>Te Portugeese had a famous school of navigation - they laughed
>colombus out of the country.

	"And, as a result, did not recieve the prize which he
discovered.  After all, Portugal did not lose out on claiming most of
the Western Hemisphere because they were unwilling to engage in rapine
or exploitation.  So Portugal was not morally superior in this
decision.  And, as it happened, the decision was also against their
interests.  As a result of it, its Spanish rival became, for a
century, the preeminent power in Europe.  (Ultimately the gold influx
resulted in inflation and the decline of Spain, but again, this is all
based on economic theories unknown to the parties involved.)  The
Portuguese decision was defensible, certainly, but hardly proof of
their foresight or willingness to take calculated risks.  It was,
after all, a fairly cheap thing to try-- at worst, you lose a crazy
captain and a scum-of-the-earth crew."

>	But spain was desperate.  They needed to compete with 
>the Portugeese, who already had an established route to China.
>So, they  emptied the prisons into three converted fishing ships, and sent
>Colombus on his way.
>	Colombus thought the world was round.  By 1492, no one seriously
>thought the world was flat any more.  Colombus estimated the circumference
>of the earth at aproximatly HALF what it actuallly was, in spite of the
>fact that Copunicus had measured the earth to within ten miles of our 
>current figure, and that information was available to Colombus.

	"And Eratosthenes had made the same measurement in classical
Greek times.  But Ptolemy, who was after all a respected authority,
had made the error which Columbus defended.  It wasn't completely
unreasonable.  And, again, what did they have to lose?  They were
excluded from the Eastern trade routes already.  Portugal was growing
rich.  Maybe they'd win big, maybe they'd lose a few small ships."

>	He knew he had not reached China, but he could not afford to 
>be seen a failure.  The Spanish sent ships and men seeking Gold, 
>God, and Glory - usually on the end of a sword.  Colombus 
>eventually died in poverty and shame, the laughing stock of 
>Europe."

	"And yet, he wasn't a failure in any meaningful terms.  He had
gone out to find riches, and had found them beyond what might have
been imagined.  He wasn't a moral paragon and he wasn't a great
geographer-- but he showed courage, perseverance, and, yes, fairly
impressive navigational ability.  Deep water sailing, out of sight of
land, was a fairly new art among Europeans.  To head out into unknown,
uncharted waters, in the days before longitude could be established by
anything but dead reckoning and when latitude could be lost in cloudy
weather, and to be able to reach land and make it back to where he
started from was quite an achievement.  No, he shouldn't be celebrated
for his treatment of the people he met there, but we don't celebrate
Thomas Jefferson for being an adulterous slave-owner-- people are
celebrated for their positive accomplishments.  And Columbus was no
worse, if no better, than most of his contemporaries.  Do we have to
make certain that explorers and scientists are good or nice people
before recognizing the importance of their discoveries and the
qualities which they possess which allowed those discoveries to be
made?

	"European settlement of the Americas resulted in plagues and
persecution.  It also resulted in the planting of the seed of
democracy and freedom in soil where it had a chance to grow, and even
today a higher percentage of the Americas have democratic or partially
democratic governments than any continent save Australia.  Columbus
stands at the beginning of both the good and the bad, and has little
direct responsibility for either-- certainly he never dreamed of what
the Americas are today, but neither did he know that he was bringing
new diseases to a biologically isolated area.  Certainly the current
government of Mexico is preferable to that of 1492, though the
intervening history is filled with tragedy.

	"And so, I'll raise my own toast: to Christopher Columbus, the
explorer.  To the man who went out into the unknown, and came back to
tell his people what he found.  For that, I think, he deserves honor."


Michael
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Virginia (1784)
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