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Marc’s Annotated Bibliography

  1. STOLLEY, KAREN. “The Legacy of Christopher Columbus in the Americas: New Nations and a Transatlantic Discourse of Empire.” Early American Literature, vol. 51, no. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 741-746.
    Columbus was not on a colonial journey but rather a prophetic journey

  2. Bartosik-Vélez, Elise. “The Three Rhetorical Strategies of Christopher Columbus.” Colonial Latin American Review, vol. 11, no. 1, June 2002, pp. 33-46.
    Better understand Columbus if we understand his prophetic and apocalyptic traditions pg 33
    Ideology of reconquest of Jerusalem pg 34
    1st voyage was not of religious purpose pg 37

  3. Tinker, Tink and Mark Freeland. “Thief, Slave Trader, Murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean Population Decline.” Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 23, no. 1, Spring2008, pp. 25-50.
    Genocide of the people of Hispanola
    Was going to make slaves out of the natives
    “All though they die now, they will not always die. The negroes and Canary Islanders died at first”


      4. “Extracts from the journal of Columbus.” Extracts from the journal of Columbus < Before 1600 < Documents < American                  History From Revolution To Reconstruction and beyond, www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/before-1600/extracts-from-the-              journal-of-columbus.php. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
            • Columbus first encounter and description of natives
            • Looking for gold, native’s king had gold
            • Met native cannibals and was deciding whether to stay or leave
            • Saw beautiful trees and new beasts and decided to explore more

Adam’s Annotated Bibliography

  1.     Tinker, Tink, and Mark Freeland. “Thief, slave trader, murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean population decline.” University of Minnesota Press, vol. 23, no. 1, 2008, p. 25+. Academic OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=colu44332&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA177943037&asid=6231234790f5548231873f5cdd4cb983. Accessed 29 Sept. 2017.

Note: “The 1496 census counted 1.13 million people inhabiting that half of the island controlled by Colon and his Spanish army with their horses and vicious attack dogs.

By 1500 a Spanish bishop, named Fonseca, estimated that some 500,000 native people were surviving on the island. (26) And as we have already noted, a Spanish census in 1514 reported only 22,000 surviving Indians. The estimates for the earlier period are considerably higher, indicating a significant killing of native peoples at a dramatic and precipitous rate. The Dominicans, who arrived in 1510, estimated the original population to have been around two million, but their estimate seems to have been predicated explicitly on the 1496 census, having presumed it to be the aboriginal number. Thus, we need to turn to that figure.” Shows a shocking decrease of indigenous people that most of whom were killed by Columbus’ men.

Abstract: Has lots of factual information without much opinion throughout. The piece talks about data concerning the possible population before and after the arrival of Columbus, how many died from germs versus swords, and whether Colon was responsible for the genocide of the native people.  

  1.     Bigelow, Bill. “Two myths are not better than one.” Monthly Review Foundation, Inc, July-Aug. 1992, p. 28+. Academic OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=colu44332&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA12478791&asid=177649c59e21ad7cecdd693788e9cc77. Accessed 29 Sept. 2017.

Note: “The traditional “discovery” myth is the one with which we are most familiar: Christopher Columbus–handsome, determined, resourceful, brave, skillful, and reverent–leads a mission of discovery to the uncharted West. While en route to the Indies, he makes a much more important find: America. He claims the land for Spain and Christianity, renames it, brings back a few natives to show off, and plans future trips to the “New World.” An explicit tribute to imperialism, the discovery myth prepares children to accept a world of vast inequities of power and wealth, indeed the myth urges them to root for the beneficiaries of those inequities.” This article sheds some harsh truths on why Columbus should be seen as a villain not a hero historically.

Abstract: Talks about the perceptions of Christopher Columbus historically. Speaks on how we educate our youth about Columbus and why it isn’t practical because of the immoralities and violence.

  1.     Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. https://www.barrington220.org/cms/lib2/IL01001296/Centricity/ModuleInstance/10133/American%20Holocaust%20-%20Columbus.PDF

Note: “in order to exploit most fully the land and its populace, and to satisfy the increasingly dangerous and rebellion organizing ambitions of his well armed Spanish troops, Columbus instituted a program called the repartimiento or “Indian grants”,  later referred to, And a revised version, as the system of encomiendas.  This was a dividing up, not of the land, but of the entire peoples and communities in the bestowal of them upon a would be Spanish master the master was free to do what he wished with “his people”-  have them plant, have them work in the mines, Have them do anything, as Carl Sauer  puts it “ without limit or benefit of tenure” Shows what Columbus was willing to do to stay in power and fulfill his need for power over his army and the native people.

Abstract: This PDF file has lots of trustworthy information by a scholar from Oxford on some of the brutalities Columbus showed. The piece moves chronologically making it easier to understand and follow a timeline of events.

  1.     Bartosik-Vélez, Elise. “The Three Rhetorical Strategies of Christopher Columbus.” Colonial Latin American Review, vol. 11, no. 1, June 2002, pp. 33-46. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/10609160220133664.

Note: “Thus there is no evidence that Columbus’s nationalist rhetoric of the recon- quest was related at this time to his later apocalyptic thinking. The 17 April 1492 Articles of Agreement contain no references to the desire nor to the intention either of the sovereigns or of Columbus to evangelize the foreign peoples he might encounter on his voyage. No religious representative was sent to the New World until Columbus’s second voyage in 1493. Therefore, not only is it improbable that the original purpose of the first voyage was religious in nature, but it is even less probable that it was motivated by apocalyptic beliefs belonging to Columbus or anyone else.10 The rhetoric of the re-conquest used by Columbus should be understood as part of a strategic response to a specific nationalist political context—one without any apocalyptic meaning, either overt or intended.” Serves as insight to why the conquests began and how they evolved into quests with completely different objectives than the original goal of the voyages.

Abstract: eBook has useful excerpts of Christopher Columbus actual diary with historical analysis after each quoted part of the diary. Also has three rhetorical strategies of how people view and analyze the diary.

Mike’s Annotated Bibliography

  1.  Payne, Frank Owen and Virginia University of. The Personal Appearance of Christopher Columbus. Generic NL Freebook Publisher, 1996. 

Note: “Of all the great men who have played a momentous part in the history of the modern world, there is probably none of whom so much has been written and said, but of whom so little is positively known, as the discoverer of America. We have a considerable collection of the letters and the writings of Christopher Columbus.  He was known to many of the statesmen and historians of his day, who put on record some interesting incidents of his life.  A whole library of books has been produced by later investigators.  And yet we do not know where or when he was born; there is uncertainty…”

Abstract: The name, Christopher Columbus, has so much significance, but how much do people really know about Columbus? There is actually quite a lot of uncertainty to his name. We even do not know where he was born, there are multiple reports of him being born in different places.

  1. Brooks, Elbridge S. and Virginia University of. The True Story of Christopher Columbus, Called the Great Admiral. Generic NL Freebook Publisher, 1998. 

Note: “The days grew into months, the months to years, and still the war against the Moors kept on; and still Columbus waited for the chance that did not come. People grew to know him as “the crazy explorer” as they met him in the streets or on the church steps of Seville or Cordova, and even ragged little boys of the town, sharp-eyed and shrill voiced as all such ragged little urchins are, would run after this big man with the streaming white hair and the tattered cloak, calling him names or tapping their brown little foreheads with their dirty fingers to show that even they knew that he was ‘as crazy as a loon’.”

Abstract: People on the streets started to call him the crazy explorer and some even identified him as crazy as a loon. As he would walk the streets, the children would run from his streaming white hair.

  1. Handwerk, Brian. “Why Christopher Columbus Was The Perfect Icon For A New Nation Looking For A Hero.” Smithsonian, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-christopher-columbus-was-perfect-icon-new-nation-looking-hero-180956887/?no-ist.

Note: “Native Americans called these shores home for perhaps 15,000 years before Columbus arrived. Norsemen reached North America centuries before Columbus, and even his contemporaries may have reached the new world first according to this intriguing map. In any event, Columbus never even set foot on the North American mainland, as John Cabot did in 1497.”

Abstract: John Cabot was the one to actually reach the mainland in 1947. The Native Americans were there for at least 15,000 years before Columbus arrived on the shores. So, does Christopher Columbus deserve the title of discoverer of the Americas?

  1. “Columbus Reports On His First Voyage, 1493 | The Gilder Lehrman Institute Of American History.” Gilderlehrman.Org, 2017, https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/exploration/resources/columbus-reports-his-first-voyage-1493.

Note: “For nearly five months, Columbus explored the Caribbean, particularly the islands of Juana (Cuba) and Hispaniola (Santo Domingo), before returning to Spain. He left thirty-nine men to build a settlement called La Navidad in present-day Haiti. He also kidnapped several Native Americans (between ten and twenty-five) to take back to Spain—only eight survived. Columbus brought back small amounts of gold as well as native birds and plants to show the richness of the continent he believed to be Asia.”

Abstract: Columbus kidnapped several Native Americans and tried to bring them back to Europe. Only eight of them survived out of the group. He also took some of their natural resources.

  1. “Columbus Controversy – Exploration – HISTORY.Com.” HISTORY.Com, 2017, http://www.history.com/topics/exploration/columbus-controversy.

Note: “In an era in which the international slave trade was starting to grow, Columbus and his men enslaved many native inhabitants of the West Indies and subjected them to extreme violence and brutality. On his famous first voyage in 1492, Columbus landed on an unknown Caribbean island after an arduous three-month journey. On his first day in the New World, he ordered six of the natives to be seized, writing in his journal that he believed they would be good servants. Throughout his years in the New World, Columbus enacted policies of forced labor in which natives were put to work for the sake of profits. Later, Columbus sent thousands of peaceful Taino “Indians” from the island of Hispaniola to Spain to be sold. Many died en route. Those left behind were forced to search for gold in mines and on plantations. Within 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island.”

Abstract: Columbus took in many slaves and seized the land. His men enslaved many natives and subjected them to extreme violence and brutality. Columbus actually ended up taking them back to Spain to be sold but many ended up dying.