Christopher Columbus’s letter on the discovery of America is up for sale for the first time

In 1493, Christopher Columbus wrote a letter that changed the landscape of the modern world. “I sailed to India with the fleet that the illustrious king and queen, our sovereigns, gave me, where I discovered a great many islands inhabited by countless people,” he wrote after his return to Europe to the royal treasurer Luis de Santangel. “And over all this I took possession for their Highnesses.”

The events recounted in the letter were “the first account of a voyage that truly changed the world,” says Columbus biographer Professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.

According to The Observer, a rare Latin translation of this 1493 letter, printed on an early printing press to quickly convey news of Columbus’s “discoveries” to elite Europeans, is expected to fetch up to £1.2 million ($1.5 million) at auction Christie’s.

“In modern times, Columbus has lost his former status as an honorary All-American hero and quasi-Founding Father, but notoriety rarely harms a person’s market value, especially in the United States. Look at Donald Trump,” says Fernandez-Armesto.

Columbus at the time had no idea that he was the first European since the Vikings to meet North America – he thought he had visited the islands near Japan. But his voyage created a “viable, commercially viable route” across the Atlantic for the first time and opened up communications between long-separated cultures on both sides of the ocean, Fernandez-Armesto notes.

The letter praises the rich natural resources of the islands that Columbus encountered, and he describes the “extraordinarily timid” natives he met there as “so gullible and generous” that they “looked like fools.” Historians now view it as part of the propaganda heralding the beginning of European colonization of the New World.

Using the resources of this seemingly “new” hemisphere, European countries would finally begin to overtake China, Islamic countries and India in power and wealth, while simultaneously enslaving and exploiting people across the globe. “Whether you like him or not, you can’t deny the importance of Columbus,” says Fernandez-Armesto.

The document has been in a private Swiss collection for nearly a century and is described by Christie’s as “the earliest available edition of Columbus’s letter,” whose international publication sparked one of the first “media frenzies” for the written word.

“The significance of writing lies in its widespread use by the printing press,” says Professor Jeffrey Simcox of the University of California, Los Angeles. Using what was then cutting-edge technology, the Spanish crown sent copies to European courts to support Spain’s claims, Simcox says. “The news quickly spread not only through diplomatic channels, but also through commercial ones.”

The influence of the text demonstrates how good Columbus was at public relations, according to Cuban-American medieval historian Professor Theo Ruiz: “He made sure everyone knew what he had done: that he had reached the islands of the Indies [собирательный термин для Индии и Дальнего Востока] sailing to the west. Which, of course, was not true.”

Earlier explorers were reluctant to sail west because they did not dare risk not being able to return home. But Columbus, who was the son of a weaver and a self-taught explorer, made a series of crazy calculations without standardizing measurements and came to the conclusion that the world is 25% smaller than it really is, writes The Observer. He then convinced the Spanish monarchs, King Ferdinand II and Isabella I, to provide him with a flotilla of ships so that he could sail west and find a new sea route to Asia that would prevent Portugal from gaining a monopoly on the spice trade.

In a classic case of confirmation bias, as soon as he reached land he claimed to be in the Far East. He actually arrived in the West Indies. He then visited Cuba, Haiti and Saint-Domingue. – He just stumbled upon these islands. He didn’t know or even imagine that they were there,” Ruiz says.

A fearless navigator, Columbus was able to take advantage of the prevailing winds on Earth by charting a southwesterly course to the American continent through the Canary Islands. In doing so, he unwittingly demonstrated how following the winds opened up new possibilities for long-distance navigation and trade, initiating what became known as the “Columbus Exchange”: the irreversible movement of people, flora, fauna, diseases, ideas and goods across the Atlantic.

“He didn’t realize what he had achieved,” says Professor William Phillips, a Columbus expert at the University of Minnesota. As for Columbus’s letter, “it was self-promotion and propaganda” – an example of fake news from the 15th century.

It also marks one of the earliest manifestations of the “noble savage” archetype. Simcox says Columbus’s letter portrays the naked indigenous people he encounters as “simple-minded innocents living simple lives in the forest—and thus ripe for the civilizing mission that Europeans took upon themselves in their dealings with the peoples of the Americas.” and Africa.”

Later, as a brutal colonial governor and viceroy, Columbus systematically exploited the native Taino people of the Caribbean, forcing them to mine gold and issue quotas under pain of severe punishment. Hundreds of people were enslaved by Columbus and sent to Spain to be sold, while others were killed or subjected to extreme violence and cruelty.

Some also contracted deadly diseases such as smallpox and measles introduced by the Spanish. It is estimated that within a few decades of Columbus’s arrival, most Taínos died from enslavement, massacres, or disease.

The dark side of the European invasion of the Americas is now better known, Phillips said, and historians have come to view Columbus as “the first of the exploiters rather than the first of the explorers.”

In the US, statues and monuments to Columbus have been torn down and vandalized, and many states no longer recognize Columbus Day as a federal holiday, choosing instead to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day.