The Rest Is History - 306: Columbus: The Adventure Begins

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

A controversial figure both now and in his time, Tom and Dominic discuss Columbus and his drive for discovery, power and status. They look at Columbus’ early life in Genoa, his journey to becoming an accomplished sailor, his obsession with crossing the Atlantic to reach what he thought was Asia, and how he convinced the Catholic Monarchs of Spain to fund his voyage. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. I thought Columbus was the hero of America. No, see, it's these Indians and the commies. They want to paint Columbus as a slave trader instead of an explorer. You've got to admit, they did get massacred, the Indians. Hey, it's not like we didn't give them stuff to make up for it. That Dominic Sandbrook was dialogue from The Sopranos, the everyday tale of New Jersey

mobsters. And I imagine any new American listeners joining us will be astonished to discover that actually I'm not from New Jersey. I'm British. They will be astonished, Tom. So that wasn't actually the authentic, genuine dialogue from The Sopranos. That was you doing that. That was me. You astound me. The accent was uncannily accurate. And I genuinely thought there were different people in the room then. It was unbelievable. Although, of course, so three of them were American. Ralphie, Christopher, and Silvio, people familiar with the Sopranos will recognize them opening guy furio he is actually from naples and he goes on to complain that he doesn't actually like columbus because columbus came from

genoa he did indeed people in the north of italy he complains they're always doing down people from naples so a good way in i think to today's subject which is christopher columbus because it reminds us that columbus is a very controversial figure these days. I mean, he's arguably one of the most controversial characters in all history right now, because of course, statues of Columbus have been taken down across America. Columbus Day, which is an American federal holiday, remains enormously controversial. Some cities and some states don't even mark it.

We'll be talking about that towards the end of this discussion, won't we? When we've dealt with Columbus, the historical figure, we'll talk about his legacy. But you're right, because Columbus, the historical figure, has now become completely bound up, hasn't he, with discussions about colonialism, empire, Eurocentrism, Western imperialism, all this sort of stuff. And Columbus has become this sort of avatar for all these things. And actually, to some degree, I would say the real sort of historical character of Christopher Columbus has been lost, don't you think? Firstly, he never actually made fall on what is today the United States. So that's very odd, for starters. And also, of course course to what extent should he be held responsible

for everything that happened in the wake of his discovery of the new world and even of course saying to what extent did he discover the new world so these are all very live issues but if we go back to that sentiment expressed by furo in the passage from sopranos i say brilliantly recreated kicking things off i mean he's italian but more specifically he is from Sopranos that I say brilliantly recreated. Taking things off, I mean, he's Italian, but more specifically, he is from Genoa. Yes. Is that not right? It is right. So there's no Italy at the point when Columbus was born.

I mean, Italy exists as a geographical expression, but there's obviously no united Italy. Actually, funnily enough with Columbus, there have been all kinds of theories about where he came from, because of course, his explorations were done in the name of another kind of country that didn't really quite exist at the time, Spain. So they were really done in the name of Castile. Because he wasn't Spanish, there's always been a slight hint of mystery about his origins because he wasn't Castilian, I should say. So there have been some people, for example, who've argued that actually he was a Sephardic Jew. So Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, had this very complicated theory that Columbus's origins were actually Jewish, and he was trying to cover it up. And there'd been all kinds of sort of strange theories that he might be Catalan or Mallorcan.

But most historians agree with you that he's from Genoa in the north of Italy. Glad to hear that. Well, there is a theory. When I went to Calvi in Corsica, there's a monument there to Columbus claiming that it's his birthplace. There's a little ship coming out of a wall. The Corsicans are not content with Napoleon. They want Columbus as well. And the fact that there is absolutely no evidence for this. That's often the most damning evidence of all, Tom. Well, the Corsicans say that this is because the Genoese came over and destroyed all the evidence. Oh, Tom. Well, the courts can say that this is because the Genoese came over and destroyed all the evidence. Oh, right. So, a classic conspiracy theory. But it's interesting, actually, you mentioned Napoleon. I mean, there's a kind of, perhaps a slight comparison there, because both of them come from kind of poverty-stricken backgrounds,

and they end up becoming perhaps some of the most famous people in the whole of history. Yes. Both of them have an Italian background, and both of them come to be associated with more powerful countries. That's right, actually. I hadn't thought of that, but they're exactly... Both end up founding dynasties. I mean, kind of an amazing... And they found dynasties, and also they become absolute templates for kind of great man history.

The idea that an individual character who feels himself blessed by destiny can change the course of human affairs. And as we'll see with Columbus, that's actually not really quite right. Isn't one of the reasons why there is potentially this kind of mystery around Columbus's origins is that actually he was embarrassed about them. Yes, exactly. That the desire to elevate himself, to gain nobility, to bury the kind of the shame as he

saw it of his humble origins was kind of what drove him i mean it's what made him the obsessive man he was columbus is driven throughout his entire career by this obsessive desire for status and for sort of social advancement and it's such a long and rich and complicated story the story of christopher columbus but absolutely at the heart of it is columbus's desire it's not actually so much for gold or for wealth it's for titles for status for rank but yeah for social respectability so he probably does come from from genoa his father was called domenico his mother susanna they were probably weavers from the hills above genoa so genoa for those people who don't know port in the in the north of Italy, the people there, Columbus probably spoke Ligurian, which is a Genoese dialect. So not

classical kind of Italian by any means. It's true that Genoa today, we would think of it as quite peripheral. But Genoa is part of this. I mean, it's hugely important in this story. So there is a kind of a Spanish dimension to the story, a Portuguese dimension, and a Genoese dimension. Genoa is at the center of this huge network of trade and production and entrepreneurship. There are about 50 or so big families that trade all over, not just the Mediterranean, actually. They go all the way up to the black sea to crimea it's a body catapulted into the genoese outpost in crimea that is said to have initiated the black death isn't it that's right yes yeah exactly so so that it's along those those networks that the bubonic play travels a century or two before before columbus is is born so the Genoese had initially a lot of their interest

had been in the East. So in Constantinople, in Crimea, as we were just talking about, but with the sort of Ottoman Turkish advances throughout the 15th century, the Genoese are now looking much more to the West. So they establish, I mean, to think of the Genoese, they're almost more of a sort of, they're not so much a nation as they are a sort of giant collection of different entrepreneurs and companies. Dominic, you mentioned this idea that he was Jewish. There's a way in which the role played by the Genoese in all these kind of various kingdoms and great cities is a bit like the Jews. Or the Armenians. Or the Armenians. Or the Armenians. Yes.

They're very accomplished at settling in other people's kingdoms. Yes. And kind of getting protection. But they kind of retain their Genoese identity. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So by the second half of the 15th century, the Genoese were brilliant sailors, great entrepreneurs, great merchants and traders and all of these things. They've become established in the courts of Castile and Portugal, the two preeminent powers

in the Iberian Peninsula. So they have their own court in Seville, for example. The Centurioni family, the Centurion in Spanish, they become very important to Columbus. They're established in Malaga. There's another family very important to Columbus, the Pinelli family. They have become established. They're working in the Canary Islands, which we will be talking about quite a lot. Actually, the Canary Islands are part of the sort of Genoese expansion story. So the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, these are all in the Atlantic.

And the idea that Columbus comes out of nowhere and, in inverted commas, discovers America, and this is the first time Europeans have ever known there's anything to the west, is just not right. Because the Europeans in the 15th century are expanding all the time into the Atlantic. So those islands that I've mentioned, some of them hundreds of miles from the coast of Spain and Portugal. Spain and Portugal have taken those islands, and actually the Genoese have been in the forefront of that. So it's the Genoese who discovered the Canary Islands, or rediscovered them, I should say, in 1330. It's another Genoese, a guy called Uzu Damari,

who's the first sailing for the Portuguese. He's the first European to sail up the rivers Senegal and Gambia. Another Genoese, Antonio Nolli, is the first to establish, for the Portuguese, a settlement in the Cape Verde Islands. And the Genoese in all of this, one of the things they are doing and that Columbus definitely does not invent is they are trading slaves. The Mediterranean is this great slave trading network and the Genoese are at the forefront of that. And Dominic, is that because while they were in the East, they could trade in all the

riches of the East, the spices and so on. Once that starts to get closed off to them, what else is there for them to trade except for slaves? The West is much less advanced. There's much less natural resources than you would get, say, from the Indies. Well, they're trading olive oil. They're trading some sugar. So they are trading, I think, some commodities, but slaves are very lucrative. There are an awful lot of slaves in Portugal and in Spain. But they're domestic slaves, aren't they? So they're not yet establishing plantations or anything like that. Right. So they're not working on plantations in Spain and Portugal. I mean, we'll perhaps touch on this again a little bit later, but if you were a sort of Spanish bigwig,

or indeed a Spanish, you know, part of the sort of professional or middle classes, entrepreneurial classes, let's say, a merchant or something or a clerk or whatever, it's quite likely that you would have one or two slaves. And a lot of those slaves are Berbers from North Africa. Some of them are black slaves brought by the Portuguese from the west coast of Africa, but probably the majority are Eastern European. Well, so hence their Slavs. Yes, Slavs.

So they, and that's a practice that obviously has been carried to its kind of peak in the Ottoman Empire. So in the Ottoman Empire, they have loads and loads of slaves and lots of Eastern European slaves. And the Genoese have been part of that business, you know, across the sort of Black Sea and their Mediterranean slave trading. So that's the world that Columbus is born into. Yes. So as someone who is poor, but ambitious, he's not educated.

I mean, he will, you know, he's an autodidact. He will come to have read a lot. But to begin with, you know, he doesn't have a career in the church, doesn't beckon. No. So he could become a soldier. Yeah. But it's more obvious if you are Genoese to become a sailor. Absolutely. And so he goes to sea very young and he kind of absorbs that familiarity with

winds and rope and all that stuff that I know absolutely nothing about, but which if you're a young Genoese sailor, you know all about it. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's some talk later on that he might've studied at the University of Pavia, but I think a lot of biographers don't think he did. His son claims that he did, but probably that's part of that sort of burnishing of his legend. As you said, he's an autodidact, and we'll touch on that a little bit in a second. He probably goes to sea when he's in his mid-teens, maybe 14, possibly later. Where does he go? We know he goes to Tunis. We know he goes to the Genoese have colony on the Greek island of Chios, which is off the coast of modern day Turkey. But he ends up in Portugal.

That's a very well-worn route for Genoese mariners. So he's working for one of these big Genoese firms, the one I mentioned earlier, the Centurioni family. I mean, actually, your Soprano is opening. You know, the idea of these families that are really important. A family is a commercial enterprise, and Columbus knows some of the most important families. So the Portuguese have established plantations in Madeira, and they are already employing black African slaves in Madeira. So again, the idea that Columbus is the guy, as people sometimes say, he's the guy who institutes the practice of bringing black

African slaves across the Atlantic to work in plantations. The Portuguese are actually already doing it. And he probably would have seen that when he went to Madeira. And so Dominic, presumably to begin with, his sailing has been done within the Mediterranean. So inside the Straits of Gibraltar. But now Portugal is an Atlantic facing power. So he is starting to become familiar with the winds, the currents, all that malarkey of the Atlantic. Am I right that he sails both very far south and very far north? So he sails all the way to the kind of the Gold Coast of Guinea and all that kind of stuff in the south. And then he does this extraordinary voyage. He visits Bristol. He goes to Galway in Ireland. And he goes all the way to Iceland. That's absolutely right, Tom. So he definitely

went to West Africa. The Portuguese are very busy in West Africa. The Portuguese have a business model that the Spanish do not follow. So this is why it actually really matters that Columbus ends up sailing for Spain rather than for Portugal. So this is why it actually really matters that Columbus ends up sailing for Spain rather than for Portugal. So the Portuguese business model is they will establish trading posts, fortresses, but they don't tend to settle. So the Portuguese have this very famous sort of slaving fortress called Elmina on the Gold Coast, Guinea. And they are basically buying slaves there and shipping them to Madeira. Columbus almost certainly visited that. And he would have traveled on these Portuguese,

these very innovative Portuguese ships called caravels. We know all about them, don't we? Of course, famously, Tom, have triangular sails, triangular rigging. Perhaps you'd like to explain to the listeners what the advantage of a triangular sail is. You're so predictable that you think you can, you would, I thought to myself, Tom will ask me some smug question, snide question about triangular sails to try and expose my ignorance.

Have you mastered it? Well, it's all a question of Latin rigging, Tom, as I'm sure you know. So they've picked up the practice of Latin rigging from the Arabs. Latin rigging means you do have triangular rigging around the square. It means you're quicker.

It means you're more maneuverable. So yeah, so you didn't think i would be prepared for this no i feel like the ramens blundering into yeah an ambush set by hannibal a german forest that's what it is yes that's the battle of the teutoburg forest that's what this episode will be remembered for i'm glad you thought and the winds are very important and we'll come to them they're terribly important but just you mentioned about going north. He does go north. He goes to Iceland and he goes to Ireland and probably to Bristol. And at this point in the 15th century, there's a lot of sort of gossip about whether there

could be something to the west. So people talk about an imaginary island, which they call Antia. Hence, that's where we get the word Antilles from. And that, very importantly, is supposedly to have been settled by Portuguese refugees from the Arab invasions of Spain. Yeah, exactly. So this idea that there is a Portuguese settlement somewhere out there. I mean, these may be, who knows whether some of these things may be kind of folk memories of the Viking expeditions. Contact with Greenland was probably lost only a generation or two before Columbus was born.

So it's possible. But the other island that people think is out there is an island called Brazil. Yes. So people have a sort of fantasy of Brazil before Brazil itself exists. The derivation is different, I think. So Brazil today, as in Pele and everything, derives from the name of a tree that apparently gives a red dye. Some people think the tree is named after the legendary island so actually it became self-fulfilling but the brazil that people

in the um before the discovery of the new world are talking about is set in the north atlantic it is indeed and it reflects these contradictions that people in bristol perhaps you know there's the idea that sailors from bristol perhaps are going to Newfoundland or even before Columbus discovers America to go fishing there. Might Columbus have picked up reports of Greenland and maybe even Vinland in Iceland? I mean, if he's gone as far as Iceland, why wouldn't he have picked up rumors of something out there to the west? And then there's this extraordinary detail that he reports having seen flat faced castaways in Galway that he thinks might have come from Cathay. And he cites as well a note of Indian merchants who supposedly had come ashore in Germany in the 12th century. So he's obviously starting to kind of pick up these maybe folk tales

of people coming across the Atlantic from, as he sees it, Asia. Because that's the key, isn't it? What does he think might be out there? Well, that's the key, isn't it? What does he think might be out there? Well, that's the thing. I think there's a lot of speculation at the time. And I think we don't have much of a sense of Columbus the man at this point. You know, he's, what is he, late teens, early twenties. We know he's a Genoese mariner. That's all we know. But we do start to get a sense of him. He's the sort of 15th century equivalent of somebody who spent an enormous amount of time in his bedroom reading strange forums on the internet, don't you think? Yes.

You know, he's picking up everything he can from kind of in presumably sailors' taverns and on ships. And he's fascinated by this idea of Asia, which we'll come to in a second. We wouldn't have Christopher Columbus, we wouldn't be doing this podcast, I think, had he not been involved with Portugal, because it's his involvement with the kind of Portuguese merchant marine that means that he's exposed to all this stuff. We always think of this as a Spanish story, or indeed a peculiarly individual story for two reasons. One, because obviously he ends up doing it in the name of Spain. And secondly, because it's very important to Columbus as part of his insecurity, that he's this kind of lonely man of destiny, operating in the face of a world that doesn't understand him and doesn't agree with him and doubts his theories. That really is sort of tosh. One of the great historians who writes about this,

a chap called Matthew Restle, who I think is at Ohio State University, he actually really downplays Columbus. He says, Columbus's discoveries were an accidental geographical byproduct of Portuguese expansion two centuries old, of Portuguese-Castilian competition for Atlantic control a century old, and of Portuguese-Castilian competition for a sea route to India older than Columbus himself. So in other words, Columbus is the product of a milieu in which people are competing to get into the Atlanticlantic and they are swapping all kinds of ideas and theories so we mentioned antia and brazil there's also an idea about the antipodes so i think the greeks had speculated about whether there might be something called the antipodes strabo because the idea that the globe everything must be balanced so there must

be a continent to balance the continent of eurasia and africa on the other side of the globe, everything must be balanced. So there must be a continent to balance the continent of Eurasia and Africa on the other side of the globe. Which would be Australia, I suppose. One thing that probably some listeners will be saying was, well, didn't everybody think that the world was flat? And that is probably the single biggest misconception about the 15th century that exists because no educated person, no even remotely educated person in the 15th century thinks the world is flat. I think for about 700, 800 years, it has been recognized, including by the Catholic Church, that the world is round. And actually, the idea that Columbus thought the world was round and everybody else thought it was flat is a 19th century invention

by the American writer, Washington Irving. Everything is invented in the 19th century, isn't it? Well, Washington Irving, isn't he the Night Before Christmas? Is he the Night Before Christmas? Yes, he is. Yes. And he writes about the Alhambra. Yes, he did write about the Alhambra. Yes. So no, people think the world is round and they think there might be something out there. And the idea is sort of changing hands more quickly than ever, because of course, printing has been invented. So in 1450, Gutenberg has invented the printing press. You got the first printed books in the Iberian Peninsula by about the 1470s. So Columbus is living in a world of books where he can read up on ideas and rumours and all of these things. So in the 14 1480s he actually becomes a book dealer right yes

he kind of stops doing his navigating and things and that's in lisbon in lisbon yeah and it's a sign of how settled he is but he's also he's married by this point he's married a portuguese woman philip philippa is that yeah yeah philippa yeah so in 1478 and she is technically a noblewoman because her father, I gather, had been awarded this kind of barren remote island out in the Atlantic. And this seems also kind of very, very important insight into Columbus's character, but also the mood of the time, because there is something chivalric about these explorations going out into the sea. And Columbus as a bookseller presumably would have been very fired by that because there are all these romances being written and being published in which kind of the equivalents of Knights Errant are going out into the sea and having spectacular adventures and winning island kingdoms.

And again, you can see that this is part of the swirl of the cultural context that must be influencing columbus this idea you know his own father-in-law has made himself the lord of a barren island so why shouldn't columbus definitely tom i couldn't agree with you more so the most famous of all those chivalric romances which is tyron leblanc um which is in valencian and that appeared i think 1490 so two years before Columbus sales. And he's absolutely part of that milieu. So there are stories about people. Knights venture out and they fight giants and they meet people with no heads,

with their heads in their chests or whatever. And Amazons, they're obsessed with Amazons. Yeah, Columbus is obsessed by Amazons, isn't he? Well, he's told at various points. People are always being told. And Cortez, when he went to Mexico, was specifically told, find out where the Amazons are. I mean, people don't think the Amazons are made up.

They really think they're out there. And we can sort of laugh about this because we know better, as it were. But there's a tremendous sense of excitement. And I mean, enlightenment is the wrong word, but there's a sort of questing sense to it, isn't there? You know, there's something out there. It's an intellectual as much as a physical challenge to work out what is there. So Columbus, he is a deeply religious man. I mean, he is intensely pious. And if you miss that side of him, you really miss what makes him tick. So he's very serious. I'm not going to miss that, Dominic.

No, well, you're not going to miss it it i'm worried about the listeners tom i'm not worried about you could i could i just mention about his name yeah i i think i'm not the only one i've of course others think this as well and i'm merely following in their footsteps no no this is based on your own close research right but it did strike me even before i i had this this assumption confirmed by reading up on it, that his name must have had an influence on how he saw his destiny. Because Christopher, it's Christopher carrying Christ, the giant who carries Christ on his shoulders.

The idea that across water, the idea that you are taking Christ across water. So that's implicit in one name. And Columbus, Latin for dove, and the dove is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is incredibly important to Columbus because he comes to identify with the Franciscans, the order of friars who are founded by obviously St. Francis. And they are very, very enthused by the idea that there have been three ages, the age of the father, the age of the son, and now that the age of the father the age of the son and now that the age of the spirit is dawning and i think columbus sees himself as as the embodiment of that idea the idea that perhaps a new age is dawning and that he is destined by his name to play a role in it i mean do you think

i think that's that kind of mystical sense of his destiny oh he's definitely got a mystical sense so later on actually you know what what bears out your theory is that later on he he starts signing after he's gone a bit mad he's gone a little bit mad later on he does sign his letters the christ bearer or the christ carrier that sort of so that thing about his his name christopher also the holy spirit isn't that holy spirit that moves upon the waters yes something like that so yes it does yes like like columbus so anyway he's reading his bible he's reading religious stuff he's also reading his he's reading lots of different things so he probably reads marco polo marco polo of course claims that he has been to cafe to china and

marco polo says i guess has all sorts of stories about people with the heads of dogs and amazons again he says what he calls chipupangu, Japan, is about 1,500 miles. Because Marco Polo is the first European who is aware of the existence of Japan. Exactly. And he says Chupangu is about 1,500 miles east of China. And so people at that point start thinking, well, if it really is as far away from China as that, we could use it as a way station. We could sail west, we'd get to Chupangu, and then we'd go on to Cathay. So he's reading that. He reads a really, really important book by a guy who had previously been the confessor to the King of France,

who was a guy called Pierre Dailly, called Imago Mundi. And this French bloke says, I think you can cross the Atlantic. I think it is possible. I've worked out a way to do it. Is he the guy who argues that the world is smaller than people thought and therefore it's possible? Well, he's one of a whole number of people who are making that kind of argument. The one who is most famous, the most influential on Columbus

is a guy from Florence who is called Toscanelli. And Toscanelli gives him or Columbus gets a load called Toscanelli. And Toscanelli gives him, or Columbus gets, a load of Toscanelli's letters. Toscanelli has worked out that you can sail west to China because exactly that. He says the Atlantic is not anything like as broad as has been thought. That actually, these people saying,

Marco Polo had massively overestimated how far away China was from Europe. So he'd put hundreds and hundreds of miles onto the distance. Now, if that is the case, if Eurasia is much bigger, then almost by definition, because people have a vague sense of how big the world is, that means the Atlantic must be smaller. So maybe it would just be if you know it's fewer days sail than you would expect to go to japan and columbus it to use that and i'll go back to that analogy of the sort of the teenager in his bedroom reading on the dark web you know reading wacky theories about covid or russia or whatever columbus is reading all this stuff about the Atlantic and he becomes completely convinced that as it were, the mainstream media are misrepresenting the size of the Atlantic

and that you can cross it. But Dominic, isn't there also the fact that he kind of needs to believe that because if he wants to go on this voyage across the Atlantic, he needs a sponsor. To get a sponsor, he needs to convince the sponsor that it's going to be worth their while. And if it's Antipodes, who knows what might be there? You can't be sure. If it's just a bunch of islands, like the Canary Islands or whatever, well, so what? But if you can get to Asia with all its spices, get to India with all its wealth, silk, spices, and so on, then that's great. Absolutely right, Tom.

Absolutely right. So he kind of, I mean, I can see that he believes it. He comes to believe it. But basically, it needs to be Asia because otherwise he's not going to get the sponsorship. Yeah. Is that right? Right. So you probably could, might be able to get sponsorship if you said there's something

like the Canary Islands where he can grow sugar, as long as it's not too far away. But you're absolutely right. If it's another continent, well, who knows what's there? Who cares? It's a lot of money. But if it's Japan and China and the Indies with all their spices, which people absolutely know are there, and they know that this stuff is very valuable, then of course, it's much more attractive. He absolutely needs state sponsorship. He's like a man dreaming of a tech startup or something who needs state sponsorship, not just because he needs the sort of, as it were,

the venture capital, but there's no point getting to somewhere and then not being backed up by a state because somebody will take it from you straight away. You need a state to defend it, to say, this is our concession. This is our trading port, whatever it might be. And so the question then becomes, which state?

And I think we should take a break at this point. And when we come back, let's look at how it is that Columbus comes to get the sponsors that he ends up with. We'll be back in a few minutes. I'm Marina Hyde. And i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of entertainmentisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are telling the story of Christopher Columbus. And Dominic, when we left, he is in Lisbon. He is married. He's had a son who will be called by the Spanish Diego. He is a book dealer. He has a background in sailing, both in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. And he's starting to get this idea that perhaps it's possible to cross the Atlantic and get to Asia. But he needs a state sponsor. So he's in Portugal.

So presumably he turns to the king of Portugal, does he? He does indeed. Before I say that, I will just say one thing, which is that turns to the king of Portugal, does he? He does indeed. Before I say that, I will just say one thing, which is that I'm very relieved, Tom, that you didn't bring us back in with your soprano's voice, which I thought was possible. And we've dodged a bit of a bullet there, I think we can all say. Yeah, Portugal's the obvious place to go.

The Portuguese are the big expansionists. He's in Portugal. He has Portuguese connections. So he goes to King Zhao II friend of the show very much a friend of the rest is history we did a whole series

about Portugal and the age of discovery last year so if you haven't heard that do check it out now the Portuguese I mean the funny thing is

they turn him down so it's a bit like sort of Decker turning down the Beatles or something but the thing is the Portuguese are absolutely right

so right away they identify the flaw in the plan. They say, we don't believe. So the king commissions a commission of inquiry to look into this. And they say, you know, Japan is much further away than you think it is. Your calculations are all wrong. You will not get to Asia. No expedition can be kitted out with enough food and water. No crew will stay

kind of quiescent for so long. And in all that, the Portuguese are completely and utterly right. And Columbus, ironically, is completely and utterly wrong. But also the Portuguese have understood that the best way to get to India, which is really where people want to get to, is going down the coast of Africa around the Cape of Good Hope. And that's the focus of all their energies and efforts, right? The Portuguese are too successful for Columbus because their eastward voyages, their voyages around Africa are incredibly lucrative. They're going great guns down there, sort of Bartholomew Diaz, Diego Cao, all these people going around the Cape of Good Hope.

This is all an absolute triumph for them. Why are they going to throw away a load of money on an expedition that, as their own experts say, is completely sort of, is crackers? They see Columbus as a crank. I suppose he is a crank. Well, he is. Yes. I mean, this is the irony that he's both. A visionary and a crank.

Yes, that's what I was going to say. He's a visionary and a crank. Exactly right. Exactly. Exactly. Kind of Elon Musk- crank. Exactly right. Exactly, exactly. Kind of Elon Musk-esque, only not as rich, obviously. Yeah, so much less rich and more Italian, Elon Musk, I think, if you can imagine that. So where does he turn next?

He turns to Castile. So Castile is Portugal's kind of rival on the Iberian Peninsula, really. Castile has been united with Aragon, another Spanish kingdom, through marriage, the union of the crowns of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1479. The Castilians have already expanded a little bit, not as much as the Portuguese. They've taken the Canary Islands, and they are fighting a war to conquer Granada. Now, I mentioned the Canary Islands. That is, again, this idea that Columbus comes out of this kind of clear blue sky is not right, because the Canary Islands are kind

of like an experiment. They're like a laboratory in which the Spanish colonization of the Americas is already, in a weird way, underway. So they're using private finance. There are arguments on the Canary Islands, should we convert the indigenous people to Christianity or should we enslave them? And they've imported an alien crop, sugar, and started plantations right there in the Canary Islands. So there in embryo, you can actually see so many of the patterns that will change life in what's now Latin America forever. But also, you can see patterns that will change, that will be introduced

to America within Iberia itself. Because you mentioned the war against Granada. This is part of an ongoing process that's been lasting for centuries, the Reconquista, the attempt to reconquer vast swathes of Spain that have been conquered by the Arabs way back. And it's been a very, very successful, if protracted process. And now there is this one kingdom left, the kingdom of Granada, which actually has been very, very, you know, keeping Granada in one way makes kind of better financial sense for the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, because the king of Granada has access to all the gold that is coming up from the Muslim south. And so he can pay this as tribute. But Ferdinand and Isabella want to annex Granada partly because

they feel that it's a Trojan horse. It's a danger with the great Muslim power of the Ottomans spreading westwards. But also I think because they feel a sense of destiny. They feel that they've been called upon by God to redeem the whole of Iberia for Christendom. And it's that mixture of hard-headed commercial sense and apocalyptic feeling of self-appointment that will infuse the spirit of the Spanish conquistadors in the new world. Yeah, that's absolutely right. They have a profound sense of mission, don't they? They see themselves as appointed by God. They're very in with the Pope. They want to wipe Granada off the map. And that sort of crusading zeal, I mean, crusading is absolutely the word because

Ferdinand of Aragon, his great obsession is to go on crusade, is to recapture Jerusalem. And actually, one of the reasons he ends up investing in columbus's scheme is because he thinks this will give me money for what i really want to do which is to launch a crusade so that because the spanish have this idea that the last emperor of all who will capture jerusalem and then the second coming will begin yeah is is lurking somewhere el encubierto the the the hidden one and ferdinand dare i think starts to you know just to nurture the possibility that perhaps that's who he is so so that kind of columbus has a kind of crankish element ferdinand is not entirely hostile to that no i think you're right tom and then some friars actually have told ferdinand you probably are that last emperor which is it must be a nice thing to to hear i mean it's quite

a responsibility i suppose it is a big responsibility but you know if you've got a bit of self-confidence which columbus actually doesn't um that ferdinand clearly does he thinks well you know if the cat yeah yeah so columbus's first port of call is a monastery called la rabida which is in the south of Spain. Franciscan. The Franciscan monastery. These guys are full of all this kind of talk in this monastery. But they're also, they're very learned. So one of the people who is there is one of the, it turns out, is actually one of the leading astronomers of the period.

He's a guy called Antonio de Marchena. And he gives Columbus loads of books. They also have chats. They talk about the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy. They talk about Marco Polo, they're full of all this stuff. They've also got an in with Queen Isabella, because the guy who's running the monastery, a man called Pereth, had previously been her confessor. So they say, get yourself to the Ferdinand and Isabella, they'll probably be very keen on this scheme. So off he goes. And what then happens is this sort of endless series of meetings. It's in some ways quite a sort of tiresome story, because it's constant back and forth. But it's also important because it's testimony to Columbus's persistence, his doggedness. Anybody else would give up. You compared it to a tech startup yeah i mean

it's kind of like trying to source money for a genius idea but you have to endless meetings endless board meetings with investors and all that kind of stuff and the humiliation of it yeah and columbus is is absolutely happy to put himself through this so the spanish court at the time is peripatetic it moves around and a lot of the time they're in the saddle because they're sort of prosecuting their war against granada so they're in he has to sort of trudge across what is now spain castile he catches up with them finally in the autumn of 1485 so this is just after the battle of bosworth as a to give it a sort of english reference point.

He catches up in a place called Alcalá, which is actually where Catherine of Aragon, their daughter. Yeah, another friend of the show. Very much a friend of the show, where she was born. There he catches up with Queen Isabella. Isabella is a very, very formidable, serious, and pious woman. Devout, very devout. And she is, you know, they're interested. Columbus,

it seems like he probably shows them maps. Well, so Columbus is unbelievably persuasive, isn't he? Except it doesn't quite pay off at first. No, of course not, because it's a mad idea. But he's got an in. He has got an in, but also he's pushy because he says right at the beginning, he says to them, I've got this brilliant idea to go over to Asia. I think it can be done. I need a little bit of money, take some ships. What I would like is for you to name me Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor, and to make that hereditary. So that thing we were talking about in the first half about Columbus's tremendous chip on his shoulder and his obsession with status, he just comes straight out with it.

And they're kind of, well, you know, that's quite a big concession for something that might not. Anyway, they're quite distracted by the war against Granada, obviously. So once again, a bit like the Portuguese king, they say, well, we'll have an inquiry. We'll have a big discussion. And while that's happening, I king, they say, well, we'll have an inquiry. We'll have a big discussion. And while that's happening, I mean, they're quite generous to him.

They say, you can stay at court and we will pay you a pension. So we'll pay your living expenses, basically. That's not a bad deal from Columbus's perspective. So they have this inquiry, which meets in 1486, 1487. The chairman is the Queen's confessor, who's a guy called Talavera, the future Archbishop of Granada. They sit around, they look through all the details, and they say, once again, by the Portuguese, China is much further away than you think it is, and Japan is much further away.

We don't think you can go there. Talavera later says, all agreed that what the admiral argued could not possibly be true. And again, they are completely right. This is the thing that tradition says is they refused it because the world was flat. The world was flat, which is rubbish. Yeah, they don't think that. They understand cartography and geography better than Columbus does, ironically.

The weird comparison perhaps is with Galileo, where again, everyone laughs at the people who scoffed at Galileo's ideas, but actually Galileo didn't have the proof. All the side of evidence was on the people who doubted him. But Galileo was right though, Tom, wasn't he? Yes, I suppose that is a difference. Fair enough.

I mean, Columbus, funnily enough, I mean, we're sort of anticipating what we'll be talking about later, butumbus never ever accepts that he's wrong i mean even when he's been kind of does doesn't he i mean he kind of well he never explicitly admits he never explicitly says it yeah so later on he's trying to get we'll come to this we'll refer to this i'm sure in the next episode he's making his his sailors swear that they've actually seen China and they're actually on Cuba. You know, this sort of thing.

And he'll chop their tongues out if they don't. Right. He's completely obsessed by this. Anyway, they say no. The Spanish say no. Back he goes. And Dominic, just before he goes back to Lisbon. Yeah.

One important thing that does happen in his personal life is that he has a fling with a woman from Cordova. Oh, yes. Beatriz Enriquez and um they have a illegitimate son a fernando who will his wife has died tom to do him justice yeah yeah but but he's illegitimate they're not married yeah that's right that doesn't worry columbus at all oh he's as devoted to fernando as he is to diego and due course will legitimize him yes fernando turns out to be a tremendous man it's a lovely story tom yeah so i just wanted voted Fernando as he is to Diego, and due course will legitimize him. Fernando turns out to be a tremendous man. It's a lovely story, Tom.

Yeah. So I just wanted that because Fernando's reports about his father are kind of very important in creating the myth of Columbus. Have you heard the bells, Fernando? Or do you hear the bells, Fernando? How does it go? Do you hear the bells, Fernando? There was something in the air that night. There was something in the air that night.

Well, that's probably what Beatri said when Columbus showed up. So he goes back to Portugal. Portuguese are definitely not interested because now Bartholomew Diaz has come back from rounding the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. So at that point, the Portuguese are just like, why would we spend any money at all on your mad scheme? Back Columbus trudges therefore to the monastery La Rabida it's about this point that we start to get a sense of him we're getting more documentary reports of him now so he's almost 40 I mean he's I was about to say he's in the prime of life but some of the prime of life at least has passed him by at this point you know time

probably is of the essence for him, because going on explorations and things is a little bit of a young man's game. He's anxious, but he's also, he is spending the time profitably, because all the time he's going back and forth, and all the time he's hanging around the Castilian court, he's meeting powerful people, particularly Genoese people. And he's sort of getting in with them, obviously, because they're his fellow countrymen. And they are sort of saying, well, if you ever do get backing for this idea, we'll put in some money. We'll give you some, you know. So he's exploiting those networks. He meets one person who's very important, who's a treasury official from the crown of Aragon.

That's Ferdinand's kingdom, called Luis de Sant'Angelo. And he says, well, if you ever get the permission of the monarchs, I'll put in lots of money to this. This sounds like a great scheme. And he actually works out Columbus's kind of – he does the pitch for him. He does the finances. The spreadsheets. The spreadsheets, exactly. The PowerPoint presentation.

Columbus, by about late 1491, he's kind of close to giving up, and he thinks this is you know they're never going to give me the go-ahead and meanwhile his brother has been in france and england hasn't he that's right yeah get support from so it's quite an interesting i don't think england are ever going to do it it's an interesting question about whether france could have done it because france is the great power in europe that perhaps the alternatives to spain doing it the most plausible alternative to Spain doing it, I suppose, is Portugal.

But the Portuguese are never going to do it because their eastern ventures are so successful. So I suppose France is a plausible alternative. What makes Spain and Portugal obvious kind of investors is that they can use their Atlantic Islands, the Canary Islands, the Azores, Madeira, as kind of transit points. England, you know, you're just sailing out from Bristol into this kind of very grey, stormy season, and there's nowhere to stop. Well, there's Greenland, and then if they have reached Newfoundland, then, you know, maybe the whole course of history would have been different. It would have been focused on North America rather than the Caribbean and the South. Anyway, we're not in the business of counterfactual here.

Well, we kind of sometimes are. But anyway, listen, you're right. What does happen is the monks of La Rabida say, listen, have one last go at Queen Isabella. They've almost conquered Granada now. So back he goes. In the autumn of 1491, he gets to a place called Santa Fe in Andalusia, which is outside Granada.

And the Spanish have built this extraordinary kind of barracks town for their army. They built it in 80 days. It's in the shape of a cross, the kind of intense religiosity. Yet again, he has to make his case to a committee. You know, you can imagine him. I think it's Hugh Thomas in one of his books, Rivers of Gold, I think, says, you know, you can basically imagine the scene of Columbus getting out these tattered documents that he's been exhibiting around Europe. Yet again, they say, well, we'll have a committee.

Well, there's this very kind of eerie or perhaps ambiguous response on the part of the monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, because Columbus later in his life, he writes to Isabella and says that, you know, I made my pitch to you. And I said that what you could do with the money that you will get from making contact with India is that you can then spend it on reconquering Jerusalem. Which, of course, is what the last emperor is predestined to do. And he says that your highnesses smiled at this. And there's ever since people have debated, why were they smiling? Were they smiling with mockery at the kind of lunatic nature of this ambition? Or were they smiling because this is a possibility? And I think definitely the latter. You think so? Although the funny thing is, so the committee meets and they don't come to a decision. In the meantime, one of the great landmarks in European history that is then completely overshadowed by what else happens in 1492, Granada surrenders. 2nd of January.

And Columbus is there. So Columbus says later on in one of his letters, he says, I saw your majesties ride into the city. I saw the flags of Castile and Aragon raised above the towers of the Alhambra. This incredibly resonant scene, the Reconquista is finished. Islam has been driven. Well, I mean, the power of Islam, not because there are obviously a lot of Muslims, but the power of Islam has been driven out of the Iberian Peninsula. This extraordinary moment, and then the committee makes their decision. And they say, yet again, you brought out the same

tired old maps. The answer is still no. And Columbus rides off and he's probably going to France. On a mule, is that right? On a mule, that's right. And he gets five miles out of the city to a place called Pinos. It's this very Hollywood moment. A messenger catches up with him and says, the queen has changed her mind. Back you come. Now, what has happened is that that guy I mentioned, Louis de Saint-Ankel, the guy from Aragon, the treasurer, he has spoken to the monarchs and he has said, do you know what? It's not a very big investment. And the worst thing is, what if the Portuguese do do the war in granada they are short of money and santangar actually says i'll find the money don't worry we've got a whole load of investors ready to go columbus meets up with the monarchs why do they do it why have they you know they need the cash because they've spent so much money on the war in granada but also also this is the paradox that they've conquered granada but they're poorer because of

it because now they get the tribute that's coming from Muslim Africa. Exactly right. They've got that crusading thing that you mentioned. There's one other element which is so interesting. Another reason they need money is they have decided to kick out the Jews. So they've already decided at this point that this is what they're going to do. They haven't published the decree, but they have decided. They decide in the first couple of months of 1492 that they will force the Jewish population of Spain to convert to Christianity or leave. And the Jewish population of Spain, there are lots of merchants, there are traders,

there are artisans, financiers, doctors, and so on, well-off people who are important to the financial success of their kingdom. So with them gone, because a lot of them obviously will go, the need for Ferdinand and Isabella to get their hands on some cash is more important than ever. And if by some miracle Columbus is right and he can get to Asia, so much the better. So 17th of April, they reconvene in Santa Fe outside the walls of Granada. And they say, fine, you can be the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, it will be hereditary. You can be Viceroy and Governor General. You can be the admiral of the ocean sea it will be hereditary you can be vice governor general you can be don you can have a right to a tenth of everything you discover

and when you get there you can be in charge of justice and you can hear all the suits and all this sort of thing these things columbus takes enormously seriously i mean to some extent that's what he's after and the investment actually is not that massive an investment. Because it's only three ships, right? It's three ships. It's going to be 2 million madrevedis, which is the currency. A lovely comparison is that the cost of the wedding of the young Catherine of Aragon to Prince Arthur Tudor in England is 60 million.

So this is nothing compared with how much. Which is the better investment there? Yeah. From Catherine of Aragon's point of view, I think. Yes, that's a very good point. So interestingly, there is always a sort of tension in this because it's not entirely clear what no one sets down exactly what Columbus isus is going to do is he going to settle is he going to establish trading posts like the portuguese do they don't say in the sort of deal find japan find china it's very vague yeah deep down a lot of their advisors think it's completely unrealistic and for columbus as it's clear because he writes it again and again, what actually matters is all there preeminently, even more than his desire to find gold for Ferdinand to conquer Jerusalem or any of that kind of stuff.

He's going there because he wants titles. He wants to cut a dash on the stage of the world. He wants to be established. He doesn't want people staring at him anymore. Yeah, he wants to return and people to say, there is an immensely rich and important man, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, the Viceroy, Don Cristóbal Colombo, or whatever they would call him, Cristóbal Colombo. Exactly.

He wants to be the big man, and that's what he's going for. He is a prickly, pious, intense, serious man. But finally, after all of this faffing around, he has the permission he needs. And he can now get on with planning this extraordinary voyage. Okay. Let's end with a letter that Columbus in late years wrote to Isabella and Ferdinand. Your Highness has commanded me that with a sufficient fleet, I should go to the said parts of India. And for this accorded me great rewards and ennobled

me so that from that time henceforth, I might style myself Don, so sir, and be high admiral of the ocean sea and viceroy and perpetual governor of the islands and continent which I should discover, and that my elder son should succeed to the same position and so on from generation to generation forever and the tension there between going there to India which they already know and then talking about islands and continents which he should discover I mean that is a tension that will shadow him over the course of the four voyages that are to follow and the whole of his life. Yeah. Now, if you are interested in those voyages, in all three of these episodes to come, because Tom, this is a pretty mighty series, isn't it? It's a bit like Columbus's own voyages. Those three episodes are available now for members of

the Rest Is History Club. If you're not a member of the Rest Is History Club and you would like to become a member, you can subscribe very easily on Apple Podcasts. So you just go to the Rest Is History feed and you click try free. And that entitles you to a month long free trial of the Rest Is History Club. Now you can also sign up at restishistorypod.com, but if you prefer to do the trial, just do the trial. And if for some peculiar and sinister reason you are not enticed to become a member of our fantastic crew, well, God have mercy on your soul. Yeah. Stay in Spain. All right. On that bombs that bomb show adios bye-bye

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