The Journal of Christopher Columbus

Extract From Journal By Christopher Columbus

    Columbus is very kind in his description of the native peoples of the West Indies, he is very taken aback by their completion and their mannerism. This doesn't keep Columbus from talking down to the native peoples and regarding them as less than him. He writes with a certain level of entitlement, almost as if he had a divine right. "I might call myself Don, and be High Admiral of the Sea, and perpetual Viceroy and Governor in all the islands and continents which I might discover and acquire"(Intro), Columbus outlines his own entitlement in aksing to be named governor and leader of all the lands he finds, Columbus also writes and acts like someone who is paranoid of the environment he is in. Any new land has an element of mystery to it, but he constantly lives in fear and distrust of the people around him. His intentions seem clear, he doesn't appear to be a true explorer and seems to be only driven by monetary rewards. 

  Despite his pitfalls Columbus was an excellent captain and leader, being able to successfully navigate the Atlantic at the time that he did was a huge feat. Columbus’s ability to hold 3 ships together for most of the voyage was amazing and being able to continue on having lost one was unprecedented. Columbus was not a good person, and recent history has brought that to light, but Columbus’s achievements are still worth recognition. Very few people could have gotten funding and sailed across the Atlantic and back as successfully as Columbus did. He has a certain element of command about him that is almost admirable. I don't respect him as a person but I respect his ability to lead and unite people towards a common goal. "perceiving that our course this way must be very circuitous, I determined to return to the westward.", Columbus proves himself as an expert navigator time and time again knowing when he is too close to land and how to avoid running aground. Colombus had a very good grip on every situation and always knew exactly how to navigate rough waters and difficult terrain. 

    Columbus made contact with people and observed many landforms but still was under the impression he was in the orient the whole time. "Afterwards I shall set sail for another very large island which I believe to be Cipango", Columbus was entirely disillusioned by the Caribbean thinking he was within throwing distance of India and China. Without much foreknowledge, it would be easy to confuse foreign lands with other foreign lands but Columbus should have realized something was off much sooner. I think he was so taken aback by finding land that he thought he must have found the orient.

Comments

  1. Sara PelletierAugust 24, 2020 at 12:42 PM

    I would agree with you that the striking difference between Columbus' favorable description of the natives and his fear of them is interesting. I wonder if it stemmed from the fact that they were kind and welcoming, while also bearing scars from previous attempts to colonize them. This makes me wonder if Columbus was viewing their scars as a threat, while also belittling them to reassure himself of his mission and goals in the process. He did in fact believe that he had a divine right to colonize these native people, as he claimed that he was attempting to spread Christianity all over the world. He claims that they did not have any religion- but how can that be true? Most societies develop some form of religion or worship at some point, strictly from a historical sense. Is it that they didn't have religion, or they didn't have Christianity? I believe that you are right in saying Columbus felt he had this divine right to the islands, while also being afraid of the occupants. It's definitely an interesting paradox occuring in his mind, as we see in the journal.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Disturbances of the Garden by Jamaica Kincaid

 The Disturbances of the Garden  "But where is the garden and where am I in it?"(P6), this line metaphorically lays out a question that everyone has, what is life and where do I fit into everything? I think the garden can be viewed as an extended metaphor for life itself and the struggles that people face sometimes to figure out how they fit into the world around them. Especially in the Caribbean sometimes being spilt between two cultures or an islands with stark economic and racial contrasts people were forced to ask themselves where exactly they were supposed to be in this world.  "On August 3, 1492—the day that Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain, later having a fatal encounter with the indigenous people he met in the “West Indies”—the world of the garden changed."(P8), this line shows where all this change and cultural confusion began. At the end of the day when we ask ourselves who caused the Caribbean to be the way it is today, the answer is all of the Eu...
Read more

Post Colonial Theory

 An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory Peter Childs and R.J. Patrick Williams      The world still lives largely in the wake of the colonial period that existed over all continents for 100s of years. "Beginning in earnest in the 1950s and reaching it's highest point in the 1960s". (1) Signs of the colonial era ending emerge in the 1950s, governments begin to move out of holding proxy states and imperialist theory begins to exit the first world. It is difficult to say that we are out of the post-colonial era even today and we see the after-effects of it in many nations today. The term post-colonial by itself takes an extended amount of explaining because large implications arise from it. You could even lobby that we have yet to exit the colonial era, as nations like China continue to annex land and entire countries.     "A much more plausible explanation is the search for low-cost labor forces"(5) This line underlines an ever-present problem that may not h...
Read more

Some People Are Meant to Live Alone Frank Collymore

  Some People Are Meant to Live Alone Frank Collymore      Frank Collymore's story follows an odd man in isolation named Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur himself may not be that odd of a man but it's the isolation and mystery that follows him that makes people fear him. This goes along with the notion that people fear the unknown and things that they don't understand. Along with that living in social isolation is considered to be out of the norm. Naturally, there are introverts and extroverts in this world but extreme recluses are often regarded as strange or even crazy. Some people prefer being alone and are content in that but humans being the social beings that we are tend to have a hard time understanding this concept. Some people can handle loneliness better than others and indeed as the text implies I do believe some people are meant to be alone. But these people that seem so along to us on the outside may truly be less lonely than the masses. While it can seem like ...
Read more