The second Monday of October is observed in the United States as Columbus Day, a federal holiday to commemorate the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Americas on October 12, 1492.
For many, Columbus’ arrival to the Americas marked the coming of civilisation to the continent. In recent decades, however, the once-universal triumphalism surrounding Columbus’ landing has become muted by critical accounts focussing on the brutal conquest and colonisation that followed.
The rise of the Ottomans in West and Central Asia during the last decades of the 15th century led to centuries-old trade routes between Europe and Asia being severed. This lead to a scramble to find alternative pathways to Asia.
In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to cross the Cape of Good Hope, at the tip of Africa. Vasco da Gama took Dias’ route around Africa to sail all the way to India, arriving in Calicut (present-day Kozhikode) in 1498.
Genoese sailor-navigator Christopher Columbus too wanted to pioneer a new route to India. Instead of sailing around Africa, however, he suggested sailing westward in the Atlantic. After several delays in securing patronage for an expedition — in no small part to Dias’ discovery of the Cape of Good Hope route — Columbus finally setoff from Andalusia, Spain on August 3, 1492, funded by the Spanish Crown.
After a brief halt in the Canary Islands, at the time among the westernmost documented places known to Europeans, his three ships — Santa María, Pinta and Niña — sailed across the Atlantic to reach what is today known as the Bahamas on October 12. Over the next few months, Columbus would sail to Cuba, Hispaniola, and other islands in the Caribbean, interacting with and imprisoning natives (who he called “Los Indios”), and collecting exotic items to take back to Spain. He returned to a hero’s welcome in March 1493. He would undertake three more voyages to the Americas, which were crucial in laying the foundations of Spanish colonisation of the continent.
Columbus, however, did not realise he had “discovered” a “New World” and continued to refer to the Americas as being located “at the end of the Orient”.
Myth of Columbus
Till the late 18th century, Columbus remained a marginal figure in history. It was the American Revolution (1775-83) that created the modern-day myth of Columbus. Amidst the need for finding a national history with no discernible connection to Britain, Columbus became the figure onto whom the nascent United States could project its values and virtues.
William Robertson’s 1777 biography of Columbus was influential in this regard. He painted Columbus as an explorer with the noble intent of bringing civilisation to savages. Crucially, Columbus was also cast as a man stifled by the rigid ways of the Old World, yearning to chart his own course — a not-so-subtle metaphor for the ideals of revolutionary America.
By the final decades of the 18th century, the US was gripped by “Columbusmania”. “Towns and streets beyond counting, including state capitals in South Carolina (1786) and Ohio (1812), were named for him. In 1784, King’s College in New York City restyled itself as Columbia University. Many publications appropriated his name… In 1791, the Territory (later District) of Columbia was established as the national capital… in 1798, Joseph Hopkinson wrote the original national anthem, “Hail Columbia”,” an article in The Nation magazine said.
Crucial to weaving Columbus into the fabric of American identity was the publication of Washington Irving’s The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828. This “stunningly inaccurate book” became the basis of the popular history of Columbus taught to generations of American children in schools. “Throughout the book, Columbus is valiant, intrepid, and eager to shed Old Europe — not coincidentally, exactly the qualities the United States saw in itself,” the aforementioned article stated.
For the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage in 1892, then US President Benjamin Harrison declared October 12 as a one-time national celebration. This came as a wider effort to placate Italian Americans on the back of a mob lynching that ended up killing 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans. For Italian migrants who set sail across the Atlantic to make a better life in the US, Columbus was an icon. For many Italian Americans, Columbus Day remains a celebration of their heritage, rather than of Columbus himself.
In 1971, Columbus Day became an officially recognised federal holiday in the US, to be observed each year on the second Monday of October.
Legacy of brutality
The myth of Columbus, however, was slowly chipped away over the 20th and 21st century, with increasing recognition of the atrocities that Columbus inflicted upon the population of the Americas, and what the Columbian voyages meant for millions of natives who already lived there.
With regards to his interactions with Americas’ indigenous people, there are three main controversial aspects: the use of violence and slavery, the forced conversion of native peoples to Christianity, and the introduction of diseases that would kill millions of native Americans.
On his very first day in the Americas, Columbus imprisoned six natives. His journal entry from October 12, 1492 stated: “They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak.” (according to the translation by Oliver Dunn and James E Kelley Jr in 1989).
Subsequent voyages would see thousands of natives enslaved, killed, raped, and sent to work in gold mines and plantations in the newly established Spanish colonies in America. According to some estimates, within 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino people — the most populous indigenous tribe in the Caribbean — were left on their islands. Columbus ruled with such brutality that even the Spanish Crown thought he was going overboard, and stripped him of his governorship of the Americas in 1500.
Natives also perished due to the Old World diseases that Columbus and his men (and subsequent European colonists) brought with them — to which the natives had little to no resistance. Thriving civilisations collapsed almost overnight due to diseases such as smallpox. As historian Noble David Cook wrote in his book Born to Die: Diseases and New World Conquest 1492-1650 (1998): “There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact”.
In recent years, many have rejected ‘Columbus Day’ celebrations, choosing instead to commemorate the day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. However, this remains a politically divisive issue, often split on race and party lines in the US.
Christopher Columbus planting the Spanish flag in San Salvador (Bahamas). This painting from 19th century can be found in the Library of Congress, US. (Wikimedia Commons) 
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