Christopher Columbus,
The Great
Governor |
|
Many detractors of Columbus
include the criticism he was a terrible
governor. The article following factually proves
otherwise. Louis Gallo |
COLUMBUS, THE GREAT GOVERNOR
Let's begin with the fact that Columbus was no
politician.
Let's view what is to come through that
lens.
A sailor, a cartographer, a scientist, a
dreamer...but not a politician...and yet he:
established peaceful first contact with
the islanders (both the friendly and otherwise);
created the first permanent European settlements
in the Americas; forged lifelong friendships
with Taino chieftains; protected the islanders
from enslavement by the hidalgos (low, landed
nobles) who wanted to enforce Spain’s feudal
encomienda system on them; defeated multiple
rebellions by the hidalgos using arbitration
rather than armaments; brought a Pax Columbiana
to the West Indies in which “things were calm,
the land was rich and everyone lived in peace;”
unseated the villainous Viceroy Bobadilla who
unleashed a reign of terror on the West Indies;
and successfully lobbied for the first civil
rights legislation of the Americas ensuring that
“all the Indians of Hispaniola were to be left
free, not subject to servitude, unmolested and
unharmed and allowed to live like free vassals
under law just like any other vassal in the
Kingdom of Castile.”
Are these the marks of a poor governor?
Let's take a look at where his remarkable
ability to govern -- despite no experience in
politics -- might have come from.
We'll begin with his God-given
attributes.
The Cardinal of Spain, who would come to know
Columbus through his landlord, expressed that he
was impressed by the Genoan's “fair speech and
learning” and “good intelligence and great
knowledge.”Bartolomé de las Casas, the author of
many of the primary historical sources and
first-hand accounts of the settlement of the
West Indies -- and a biographer of sorts of
Columbus -- described the Admiral as having an
“unusual insight into human and divine affairs”
and “good judgment” (Historia de las Indias,
Book I).
Already, Columbus had the makings of a
fine leader.
Columbus was an experienced sea captain, and his
crews were commonly made up of "low men."In this
still-savage age, unless a captain intended to
press men into service against their wills,
assembling a crew usually involved setting up at
a table in a tavern and taking the names of
anyone willing to lay down their life for a long
and dangerous ocean voyage. Those that took the
job were usually covertly running from
something: if not religious persecution, then a
death sentence or trial for murder, rape, or
some other crime; a debtor seeking significant
recompense; or an unhappy family life with a
difficult spouse or parent. That meant that most
crewmen were secretly troubled, difficult men at
best, and hardened criminals at worst.
As a seasoned sailor, Admiral Columbus
knew how to deal with an unruly crew of “low
men.”
This certainly built his leadership
skills in a crucible.
No politician, surely, had to deal
directly, daily and face-to-face with desperate,
starving men.
Columbus did, and this lifetime of
experience honed his leadership skills.
Columbus's proposal to sail westward to China
was mocked as a preposterous joke.
His proposal was rejected by his own
Genoans (they feared that if he were successful,
they would lose their trade monopoly over the
Mediterranean, the only route to the Silk Road)
and the Portuguese (King John actually stole
Columbus's maps and charts and delivered them to
his own fleet to set sail without Columbus
until, by Divine Providence, a storm crippled
the fleet and sent them listing back to shore).
These failures early in his endeavor
taught him much about dealing not only with "low
men" but with nobles.
He learned how to apply his remarkable
people skills to all strata of the Age of
Empires.
The Spanish crown refused him as well.
The court counsellors and treasurers
exhorted the King and Queen to reject this
pauper and send him away.
But Columbus was canny and had a sharp
political mind.
He won over the Queen with a clever
suggestion:
an alliance between Spain and the “Great
Khan” of China.
Columbus suggested that the legendary
military might of the Great Khan might help
launch a two-front attack against the Jihadists
who had, for 700 years, occupied Europe until
Spain's recent unification.
He suggested that with the help of the
Great Khan, the Spaniards could drive the
Jihadists out of Europe altogether and, perhaps
even liberate Jerusalem from them for all of
Christendom.
Is this masterstroke of diplomacy -- in
the face continued discouragement from the
Crown's trusted court advisors -- the mark of a
poor governor?
No.
Columbus had the makings of political
greatness.
And he would go on to realize them.
The first glimpse of his capability for foreign
diplomacy came on his First Voyage.
Columbus made peaceful and propitious
first contact with the islanders of San
Salvador.
In the two months that followed, he
visited at least a dozen more islands,
repeatedly and without exception making friends
and allies with every single tribe and village
he met on every inhabited island he visited (Bartolomé
de las Casas, Digest of Columbus’s Log Book).
Upon his departure from the West Indies to
return to Spain, his flotilla was attacked by
cannibalistic Carib marauders, armed with
poisoned arrows. Rather than return hostilities,
Columbus welcomed the man-eating chieftain,
painted head-to-toe in black war-paint, aboard
the Niña, where, facing down the Admiral, he
“made a speech as fierce as his appearance”
(Id., Chapter 36). Admiral Columbus served him a
meal (not of human flesh); bestowed gifts upon
him; and, through his new Taino translators,
worked a diplomatic miracle, completely
diffusing the confrontation. Admiral Columbus
sent the warrior back to shore, accompanied by a
small cadre of sailors, who then bartered with
the rest of the war party.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Few instances of first contact in history
have proceeded without bloodshed or loss of
life. Admiral Columbus -- he was not yet
governor -- managed to negotiate first contact
with at least a dozen tribes of the West Indies
-- including hostile, cannibalistic canoemen who
twice attacked him and his crew -- without a
single fatality, sowing good will and friendship
in every village port.
Are those remarkable foreign diplomacy
skills the mark of a poor governor?
Hardly.
And he thought ahead, politically speaking.
He worried about vassals of the Great
Khan or subsequent European settlers from other
nations (the Portuguese for example) arriving in
his wake only to enslave the tribal peoples.
He encouraged all the islanders he met to
receive Baptism, rendering them immune from
enslavement by any who would seek to apply the
repartamiento to the tribal people of the West
Indies, that part of the feudal “encomienda”
system that entitled medieval Spanish nobles to
subject conquered enemies to servitude.
Politically, he was far ahead of his
time, already thinking outside the medieval
paradigm.
I cannot emphasize enough the milieu in which
Columbus achieved all of this.
This unique, self-educated genius managed
to defy not only the primitive ideologies of his
time, but also the sizable, war-mongering,
political forces that opposed him, and
accomplished all his unparalleled deeds in the
face of them.
And he hadn't even been appointed
governor yet.
On his Second Voyage, he arrived as Don
Cristoforo, now governor of the West Indies and
all lands he should discover.
He was no engineer, civil or mechanical,
yet his first official act was to begin building
a new settlement. He and the crews of his
seventeen ships constructed irrigation canals,
mills, water wheels and farms with “many
vegetables.”
This was not his expertise, though there
were undoubtably builders sent with him on the
seventeen ships that comprised his second fleet.
Think about that for a moment:
seventeen ships.
That's an enormous amount of people under
his command, at sea in close quarters for weeks
and weeks.
He had to manage the logistics of a
seventeen-ship fleet, attend to all problems and
concerns, while still navigating -- only for the
second time -- uncharted trans-Atlantic waters
that few could survive.
These skills translated well into the
establishment and management of a land-bound
settlement.
Even as he oversaw the construction of the
settlement, he managed both domestic and foreign
relations with great aplomb.
Taino caciques of many tribes and their
womenfolk frequented the settlement bringing
yams, “nourishing [and] greatly restor[ing]” the
Spaniards, who were grateful for the succor (
(Hernando Colón, The Life of the Admiral,
Chapters 63-64; Letter of Dr. Diego Chanca).
Could a poor governor manage all this
while still excelling at human relations with
those who did not even speak the same language?
That's preposterous.
The video said that Columbus was an
overly-permissive governor.
The evidence flatly contradicts that.
The hidalgos, made up of entitled nobles
who refused to toil, or pardoned criminals who
were too indolent to toil, insisted on enslaving
the islanders to build the settlement.
Columbus refused, demonstrating himself
not only to be a keen governor, but a moral one.
So, many of the hidalgos plotted “to raise a
revolt [and] load themselves with gold” as they
were “exasperated” and “discontented” from “the
labor of building the town” (Hernando Colón,
Life of the Admiral, Chapter 51). And so began
the discontent that would forever drive a wedge
between the entitled, Spanish hidalgos and their
low-born, foreigner governor.
Again, I exhort you to keep this in mind
as you read of all his subsequent
accomplishments; he achieved them all not in an
atmosphere of cooperation from his subjects, but
in the face of their constant defiance and
enmity, born of their own arrogance and
high-born entitlement (or low-born
shiftlessness).
Columbus not only oversaw the building of an
entire settlement for the occupants of a
seventeen-ship fleet, but simultaneously oversaw
the construction of a distant fort to protect
the settlement.
When he returned to the settlement, and
in his absence from the fort, a tribe of
islanders robbed the fort captain and his men.
The capatain captured the robbers and cut off
their ears in retaliation. He then brought them
to the settlement, before Governor Columbus, for
further punishment, but Columbus was horrified
by the captain's maiming of the islanders.
Again, exhibiting the “good judgment” and
“unusual insight into human and divine affairs”
that de las Casas described of him (Historia de
las Indias, Book I, Chapter 3), Governor
Columbus used the same clever intrigue on the
islanders’ chieftain as he often used on the
King and Queen of Spain. He told the chieftain
that the punishment for the robbers’ crime was
death, though Governor Columbus had no intention
of ever carrying out that threat. When the
chieftain heard the pronouncement, he offered a
tearful apology for his villagers’ misdeeds.
Columbus immediately set the robbers free into
the custody of their chieftain, and announced to
the fort captain that the matter was settled
(id., Chapter 93).
Again, Columbus's clever diplomacy won
the day, without a further drop of blood shed.
But that story doesn't end there.
No sooner had Governor Columbus adeptly
resolved this matter did horsemen arrive from
the fort, informing that islanders had
surrounded it and attempted to kill its
occupants. In Columbus’s absence from the fort
and without his pacifying presence, the
relationship of the settlers there and the
nearby islanders soured terribly. De las Casas
makes a point to note, “I would not dare blame
the admiral’s intentions” for the discord, “for
I knew him well, and I know his intentions were
good” (id.).
Once again, Governor Columbus shed no
blood over the incident. He sent cavaliers to
make only a show of their “arms and horses” as
to “instill fear” in the tribal warriors
responsible for the siege (id.). The tactic
successfully scared the warriors off with no
fatalities, liberating the besieged Spaniards
(Hernando Colón, Life of the Admiral, Chapter
53).
Not only did Columbus demonstrate a keen
political mind and superb diplomacy skills, he
knew how to engage in subtle-yet-peaceful
intrigue to keep his men and those who would be
hostile to them in line.
No "poor governor" is capable of such
feats.
Later, a band of tribal marauders descended upon
the protective fort, murdered ten settlers in
cold blood and set fire to a hospital containing
forty patients.
Columbus's son, Hernando Colón, notes
that the tribal warriors “would have killed many
more if the Admiral had not arrived in time to
prevent them” (id., Chapter 61). His men-at-arms
caught some of Guatigana’s murderous warriors,
but again, Governor Columbus exhibited
temperance; he did not presume to try, much less
punish, the attackers, but rather delivered the
prisoners to the Crown to have their day in
court.
Add to the list of feats of this
so-called "failure of a governor" the ability to
swiftly de-escalate an already hostile and
deadly situation, while still exhibiting a sense
of modern, not medieval, justice.
Again, he was ahead of his time in
affairs of governance.
Thereafter, although the settlers still
struggled with food scarcity and disease, “the
Christians’ fortunes became extremely
prosperous” and peace reigned supreme under
Columbus's gubernatorial administration.
And he was loved for it, by the tribal
people if not by the chagrined hidalgos.
“Indeed, the Indians would carry
[Columbus] on their shoulders in the way they
carry [men of] letters.”
In gratitude and brotherhood, the Tainos
led the settlers to their own copper mines and
revealed to the settlers the locations of
precious gemstones such as sapphires, ebony and
amber; spices such as incense, cinnamon, ginger
and red pepper; and gums and woods such as
cedar, brazil-wood and evergreen mulberry (id.,
Chapter 62).
Above all these masterstrokes of
governance, Columbus enhanced trade and peaceful
commerce between the Spanish and tribal
settlements.
And yet, Governor and High Admiral Columbus
maintained a humility through it all.
The “Admiral attributed this peace to
God’s providence” (id.), not his own doing.
He was only part-way through his administration
as governor of the West Indies, and he had
already had freed the Taino slaves from
captivity by the cannibalistic Caribs; overseen
the building of multiple settlements in
harmonious coexistence with their tribal
neighbors; and defeated the Carib marauders,
bringing peace and slowly restoring prosperity
to the land.
He brought to the West Indies what I call
the Pax Columbiana, as his very name suggests: “Columbo,”
Italian for “dove,” the symbol of peace.
Still the hidalgos wanted slaves of the
islanders.
The more they received, the more they
wanted.
These are the people -- greedy, immoral
opportunists -- with whom this weary sea captain
had to contend.
Let's not forget that.
He did all this while never desiring to
be a governor and wanting only to "escape from
governing these dissolute people…full of vice
and malice” (Letter of Christopher Columbus to
Doña Juana de Torres, dated October 1500).
Governor Columbus quelled no less than three
rebellions by the hidalgos — Alonzo de Hojeda,
Fray Bernardo Buil and his conspirator Captain
Pedro Margarite, and Juan Aguado — and finally
restored peace and prosperity to the West
Indies.
But while still in the throes of these
many rebellions, Governor Columbus had written
to the Crown, beseeching them to send him
someone the hidalgos would respect. On a dark
day in history, the Crown sent Francisco de
Bobadilla, the true villain of the West Indies.
The Crown told Bobadilla to see what all the
conflicting letters were about:
Columbus was sending missive after
missive complaining about the recalcitrant
hidalgos, and the hidalgos were sending letters
complaining about this low-born foreigner given
authority over true "people of quality."
The monarchs told Bobadilla to sort it
all out, and if he did find that Columbus was a
miserable governor, to unseat him, and take the
~~perpetually-hereditary title~~ for himself.
That was all Bobadilla needed to hear.
The first thing he did upon landfall was to ally
with his fellow nobles and imprison Columbus and
his brothers in the bowels of a prison ship --
with no investigation, no evidence but the
calumny of the hidalgos, and no due process.
He then sent Columbus back to Spain --
where Columbus soundly defeated all the false
charges Bobadilla levied against him AND secured
the unseating of Bobadilla to boot.
But that took time.
Consider what Bobadilla did during that
time, and, more importantly in Columbus's
absence.
If you're still not convinced that
Columbus constantly engaged in Herculean -- and
successful! -- efforts in maintaining the
delicate balance of governing the West Indies,
let what happened in his absence be the final
nail in the coffin of the argument that he was a
poor governor:
In Christopher Columbus’s absence, Bobadilla and
his hidalgos enslaved, raped and murdered tribal
people, sometimes simply on a whim and as cruel
jokes. Bobadilla’s men, who considered the
Tainos no better than “dogs,” plundered their
villages with impunity.
Young Bartolomé de las Casas, who witnessed
these atrocities first-hand, would later note
that without Governor Columbus to keep the
hidalgos in check, “they grew more conceited
every day and fell into greater arrogance,
presumption and contempt toward these humble
[islanders].”
Without Christopher Columbus’s humane
governance and the strict discipline that he had
imposed on the hidalgos, they became “[s]oulless,
blind and godless.”
They “killed without restraint and
perversely abused” the tribal peoples of the
West Indies (Book II, Chapter 1).
With Bobadilla’s usurpation from
Christopher Columbus of the governance of the
West Indies, the encomienda, as well as
Bobadilla’s own personal brand of murderous
tyranny, reigned supreme.
If you still think Columbus vacillated between
being overly permissive and overly severe,
consider this:
“The Spaniards loved and adored
[Bobadilla] in exchange for such favors, help
and advice, because they knew how much freer
they were now than under Columbus” (Id.).
But at the cost of nearly wiping out the
tribal people.
That was a calamity that Columbus's
gubernatorial prowess had successfully avoided.
Yet, Christopher Columbus bore no hubris and
afterward wrote with humility about his ability
to govern, despite that he had proven himself to
be the greatest governor the West Indies had
ever seen under Ferdinand and Isabella’s rule,
if not the greatest governor the West Indies has
ever seen. Despite having freed the Taino
slaves, built multiple settlements and defeated
the Carib marauders, bringing prosperity and a
Pax Columbiana to the land, he lamented about
the naïve trust he had placed in the hidalgos to
respect his authority.
Though he governed better than most politicians
who had the luxury of ruling a civilized people,
he admonished future critics that he should not
be “judge[d] as if I were a governor in Sicily
or of a well-regulated town or city” – where the
social fabric is intact and the laws “observed
in their entirety.” Rather, “I should be judged
as a captain who left Spain for the Indies” and
found himself unwittingly in “a warlike nation
[with] no towns or governments,” all the while
opposed by villainous hidalgos and conquistadors
who imposed upon him “the ingratitude of
injuries” ( Book I, Chapter 181).
These are fair and wise words that modern
critics are quick to forget.
And his political prowess did not end with the
end of his gubernatorial administration.
Though he was not trained as a lawyer or
legislator, once back in civilian life, Columbus
carefully drafted a petition to the Crown that
he hoped would protect the tribal peoples from
any further depredations by Spanish governors: a
petition for the first civil rights legislation
of the Americas.
This act by Christopher Columbus marked a
milestone not only in the life of this Genoan
mariner and not only in the history of the
Americas, but in the history of worldwide civil
rights.
Historian and translator Andrée M. Collard noted
that Christopher Columbus ignited what was to be
the undoing of the feudal encomienda system.
Could a poor political mind do that?
Collard suggests that Columbus's
championing of the civil right of the tribal
people sparked the spread of “the enlightened
Spanish legal tradition” first set forth in “the
Siete Partidas” (Historia de las Indias,
editor’s “Introduction”), a seven-part (as the
name implies) Castilian statutory code first
compiled in the thirteenth century during the
reign of Alfonso X, establishing a uniform body
of normative rules for the kingdom akin to the
Magna Carta or the American Bill of Rights.
Christopher Columbus sought to extend these
civil rights protections to the tribal people of
the West Indies.
In other words, Columbus not only changed
the world, he changed the law, and for the
better.
No poor governor could single-handedly do
that -- in fact, few capable lawyers even could.
The monarchs read Columbus’s petition for the
civil rights legislation, and agreed with him.
They granted his petition and promulgated the
first civil rights legislation of the Americas.
This royal decree from King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella included “a very specific clause” at
Christopher Columbus’s behest: “all the Indians
of Hispaniola were to be left free, not subject
to servitude, unmolested and unharmed and
allowed to live like free vassals under law just
like any other vassal in the Kingdom of Castile”
(Book II, 83). Whatever treachery the hidalgos
might plan this time under Ovando’s
governorship, Christopher Columbus saw to it
that the tribal peoples of the West Indies would
now have the protection of law as mandated by
two kings, the worldly and the heavenly.
Columbus had not only the capability to captain "low men" and govern blue-bloods, he had the political prowess to change the minds of monarchs. NOW tell me he was a poor governor. |
Robert Petrone Esq. |