Recently I read two books by Felipe Fern=E1ndez-Armesto: =93Columbus,=94
Oxford Univ. Press (1991) and =93Amerigo: The man who gave his name to
America,=94 Random House (2007). These books are quite refre****ng in
view of all the flimflam that continues to be promoted in order to
discredit Columbus and his origins.
In Chapter I of =93Columbus,=94 Fern=E1ndez-Armesto discusses the
extensive
Genoese settlements and business operations in Andalusia, starting in
the 13th century, and states: =93By the sixteenth century, three-
quarters of the nobility of Seville had Genoese surnames.=94 [p. 14]
On page 19, he mentions the searches before Columbus=92s voyages for
=93the mythical islands commonly assigned positions in fourteenth
century maps=97those of St Brendan, St Ursula, and Brasil=97a Venetian
chart of 1424 added large and alluring islands, including
=91Antillia=92 ... Columbus sailed with them in mind. His island-
discoveries were named =91Antillies=92 collectively, and one archipelago
he named for St Ursula=92s =91Virgins=92."
On page 20, he writes: =93In 1480 and 1487, certainly, and perhaps
regularly in the 1490s, expeditions sailed from Bristol in search of
new islands: a big increase in the im****tation of North Atlantic
products to Bristol in the 1480s shows the increased trade with
Iceland that such journeys produced or reflected, but these were
consciously exploratory voyages intended to =91search and fynde=92. The
Bristolians called their objective =91Brasil=92. For the ****tuguese and
Flemings of the Azores, =91Antillia=92 ... At least eight ****tuguese
commissions for the discovery of new Atlantic islands survive for the
years 1462-87. Some specifically refer to the evidence of sea charts.
The most general terms are those of Fern=E3o Teles=92s grant (1474) of
=91the Seven Cities or whatever islands he shall find=92.=94
At the end of =93Amerigo=94 (pp. 200-202) Fern=E1ndez-Armesto writes:
=93To me, Vespucci is of interest, even of historical im****tance,
because he was a representative of a strange, world-shaping breed:
Mediterranean men who took to the Atlantic, denizens of a calm inner
sea who crossed an immense ocean. For generations they were at the
frontier of Atlantic voyaging, as if Atlantic side Europeans could not
explore their own ocean without these outsiders=92 help. I find it hard
to believe that without the initiative of Mediterranean participants,
the Atlantic we now inhabit=97the home of Western civilization, across
which we traffic in goods and ideas and around which we still tend to
huddle for defense=97ever would have come to be.=94
Fern=E1ndez-Armesto points out that the people from his own =93ancestral
homeland in Galicia ... stared at the ocean for hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of years, without ever daring to venture far from it. They
exploited it for fi****ng and for coastal cabotage. Their lack of
initiative seems stunning compared with their counterparts in the
Indian and Pacific Oceans. ... Meanwhile the only exceptions to
Atlantic-rim inertia were those of Norse and Irish navigators, who
taking advantage of the westbound currents that lap the Arctic, and
the westerly winds that predominate the North Atlantic for the return
journey, colonized Iceland from the eighth century, and the Norse who
continued the effort as far as Greenland and Newfoundland at the turn
of the millennium.=94
=93When the last communities elsewhere on the Atlantic rim=97chiefly in
Spain and ****tugal=97began to launch ambitious ventures in the
fourteenth century, they relied on leader****p, investment, and savoir
faire from deep inside the Mediterranean. The men who helped came from
Majorca and, increasingly, as the Majorcan contribution dwindled in
the second half of the fourteenth century, Italy. These lands supplied
navigators, ****pwrights, cartographers, financiers, who helped to
explore the Azores and the Madeira and Canary archipelagoes in the
fourteenth century and to colonize them in the fifteenth. Until the
second half of the fifteenth century, they were instrumental in
****tuguese navigations in the African Atlantic, which continued to
rely on Italian financial backers in the 1490s, when the ****tuguese
reached out across the South Atlantic, toward Brazil and the westerly
winds that carried them to the Indian Ocean.=94
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