The Rest Is History - 307: Columbus: A New World?

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Having convinced the Catholic Monarchs to fund his journey across the Atlantic, Columbus sets sail with three ships, a crew with dubious loyalties, and a mission to find China or Japan by heading west.  A voyage spanning the Canary Islands, Cuba and Hispaniola, he will encounter and enslave indigenous peoples, mislead and fall out with his crew, then eventually be arrested in Portugal on his return to Europe. If freed by the Portuguese, how will he be received by the Catholic Monarchs? *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. On the second day of the month of January, I saw the royal banner of your highnesses raised by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra, which is the fortress of Granada, and saw the Moorish king come to the gates of the said city and kiss the royal hands of your highnesses and of my lord the prince. And thereafter, in that same month, your highnesses, as Catholic Christians, and as princes who love the holy Christian faith, and as augmenters thereof and foes of the sect of Muhammad, and of all idolatries and heresies, thought of sending me, Christopher Columbus, to the regions of India. And your highness has

ordered that I should not travel overland to the east as is customary, but rather by way of the west, whether to this day, as far as we can know for certain, no man has ever gone before. But Dominic was, of course, Christopher Columbus, he named himself in that letter, writing to Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of what was soon to become Spain, the United Kingdom of Spain. And in the first episode, we described that great scene where he goes to Granada, which has just fallen to the Spanish forces. Columbus thinks that his project to sail to the New World has been dismissed by Ferdinand and Isabella, sets off sadly on his mule, and then gets called back and told that actually Ferdinand and Isabella are willing to sponsor this seemingly madcap scheme to head to China and India, heading not east, as he said in that letter, but westwards across the Atlantic. So what is the process by which he, following that meeting, following that commission, he is able to set sail on this historic voyage?

Well, hello, everybody. It's a great letter, actually, Tom. It's a great way to kick off because it establishes us very firmly in the world of late medieval Spain, of the Reconquista, of the obsession with Islam. And it captures the vagueness to some extent of Columbus's project, doesn't it? He talks about the Indies, but is he going to the Indies or to Cathay or to Japangu, Japan? But Indies is not the same as India, is it? I mean, Indies is a kind of- He's very vague. He's deliberately very vague because the truth is he doesn't really know. So as you say, they've given him the commission at long last. He's been touting around his idea like a tech entrepreneur trying to get venture capital. And now they've

given him permission. He takes about three months to get ready. He goes down to the port of Palos de la Frontera, which is on the coast of Huelva in the southwest of Spain. He has money from a consortium of Genoese and Florentine bankers who are largely based in Seville. So they've given him more than a million maravedis, which is the Spanish currency. So he's in this port called Palos, and he basically is recruiting from that area. Because he gets told, doesn't he, by Ferdinand and Isabella that he can take convicts. That's right. But in the end, he doesn't need to because he signs up lots of people from Huelva.

Well, what he does is he gets in with a group of brothers from the area. So they're called the Pindon brothers. So there's Martin, there's Vicente, and there is Francisco. They are well known in the area. They are experienced mariners. They bring people on board. And this is not a big expedition by any means. So there are three fairly small, about 100 tons at maximum, caravels as they're called. By comparison, the ships that Columbus would have sailed on as a very young man, the big Genoese trading ships, are 10 times heavier.

So these are small, light. They're kind of round, basically, aren't they? Yeah, very maneuverable ships. Famously, Tom, as you will know, with a mixture of square and triangular rigging. We discussed that in the previous episode. We did indeed. So the Pindons bring on about 90 people with them. And they've got three ships.

So famously, lots of our American listeners will know this by heart because they'll have studied this in elementary school, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The Niña is called the Girl, but it actually has its nickname because its owner is a guy called Juan Niño. The Pinta, probably named after the Pindindon brothers who are the big cheeses uh and the santa maria obviously the um it's kind of the holy mary i suppose that that would be what's mary the crew are most of them are locals there's a couple that may be jewish there are a couple of basques a couple of portuguese the thing about criminals is a bit like sort of vladimir putin's

recruitment drive isn't it for the wagner group or whatever yeah they are there's probably about four or five of them who've been given permission and brilliantly isn't there there's um there's a guy who can speak um arabic and hebrew yes because they louis torre yeah so they think this is going to be useful when they arrive in china they have this this funny fantasy don't they? There's always been this idea of a man called Presto John, who is out there, who's a Christian king. Is he in Africa? Is he in Arabia? Ethiopia is a very popular place. Right. And they don't know whether maybe the great Khan of Cathay, as they call him, the Chinese emperor, will have some kind of links to Presto John. And they'll be able to do some

kind of deal to team up and attack Islam from all sides. So maybe having an Arabic and Hebrew interpreter isn't quite as demented as it might seem. I don't imagine he got a lot of interpreting. He got a lot of translating in. No, I don't think he did. But it's interesting, no priest goes, which from the point of view of whether this is about making money or spreading the word suggests that it's probably about making money you'd think they would be able to rustle up a friar or something but they don't i'll tell you the most amazing fact i couldn't believe this when i read it in i can't

remember whether where i read it hugh thomas or um fernando cervantes or one of these writers who've written about the spanish conquests that none of these men were paid until 1513. I mean, that's late, isn't it? That's 21 years, Tom. That's worse than the New Statesman. I mean, that's bad. Yeah, that is bad. But they find ways, don't they? I mean, they're hoping to make their own money.

Yes, I think they are. I think they're hoping to bring back loads of booty and stuff, aren't they? But also, I mean, the key thing to bear in mind is that the reason why the Portuguese and now the Castilians are doing this is because relative to the great empires of the East, the Indians, the Chinese, maybe even who knows the people of Japango, the Japanese, Europeans are poor. They don't actually have stuff that the people in asia want yeah um and so they they kind of take trinkets as gifts but i'm kind of remembered of um fasco tagama in in the episode we did in portugal that he turns up in in india with his trinkets yes that's right and the local king laughs in his face exactly why do we want this junk he's like

a man who's got loads of stuff from poundland it's only up to trade or something yes no exactly exactly uh they have all these trinkets which they're hoping to exchange for gold and spices that's really what they want they have an obsession with gold and an obsession with spices because that's what you know that that means money in the in the courts of western europe what else are they taking they? We did an episode about drink, didn't we? A wonderful episode about the history of drink with Henry Jeffreys before Christmas. And we were talking about what wine people are drinking these days. So they take a lot of wine with them,

but the wine they're taking is probably sherry, manzanilla from nearby Sanlúcar. So they've got loads of sherry. They have olive oil oil they have water and all this kind of stuff right from the start i think there is a bit of tension because the problem is that columbus is a foreigner he is genoese he does speak spanish castilian with a kind of unplaceable accent right with yes no one in spain can quite tell where he's come from and he yeah and he downplays his origins he's miss He is consciously mysterious because he doesn't want to be pigeonholed,

I think, as a Genoese. But Martin Pinzon, who is the most experienced of the brothers, he really, in some ways, is the guy who has the loyalty. He's probably brought on a lot of the sailors himself. So there is a tension there, and that will become apparent in the rest of the voyage. Anyway, the 3rd of August, 1492, half an hour before sunrise, off they go. And Columbus is a very good mariner. He knows, he's experienced, he's got a plan. The first part is dead easy.

The first part is to the Canary Islands. So that to you know tenerife lanzarote these islands off the coast of africa um very big holiday destinations these days for british and german irish tourists off they go that takes about a week or so it's dead easy you're going kind of with the current with the wind could i could i talk about winds please talk away tom people who've been listening to the show will know that um well both dominic and I are renowned for our knowledge of nautical... Practised mariners. And Dominic, in the previous episode, you devastated me with your knowledge of... Latine rigging.

Of Latine rigging. But I was looking up on the winds. Yeah. And what I hadn't properly understood, and I should have done because we did a whole episode on Portuguese exploration. Apparently, it's incredibly important to this. The reason why people had not managed to go out into the Atlantic is because people are terrified about sailing with the wind. So they always want to sail against the wind because then they have the assurance that they can get blown back. Right.

Yeah. And what Columbus is doing is he is saying saying we're going to sail with the wind we're going to have you know we're going to let the wind blow us on the assumption that they will then be able to get back that's the act of of either courage or lunacy yeah depending on your perspective oh it's a very frightening thing for some of these sailors you see because they are heading out into the unknown they've signed up for this voyage but the reason that he starts to have problems quite soon after they've set off is because some of them are thinking this guy's a lunatic and we're never going to get back but at first i mean his idea is so they go they go south to the canary islands there they can they can restock they can do any repairs they need

after the ships have been at sea for a bit they've you know they've sussed out how the ships are kind of operating and stuff. They're learning the personality of the three ships. Interesting that we mentioned in the first episode just how important the Canary Islands are as a laboratory for everything that's going to follow in the Americas. So the Canary Islands, it had taken a long time. It had taken decades for the Spanish to subdue the indigenous people.

They had done it by a mixture of state enterprise and private enterprise. They had then set up sugar plantations and sugar mills, and they had brought in a labor force from Africa of black slaves. So all of these things anticipate what is to follow in the Americas. But Dominic, the fact that it had taken so long because the indigenous peoples didn't want to be annexed and conquered, that's an important aspect, isn't it, for Columbus? Because he knows that Ferdinand and Isabella back in Spain will not want to get sucked into campaigns like that. No. So there's an absolute premium on Columbus, should he discover indigenous peoples in these lands, to emphasize that these are very tractable, peaceable people. Yes. So if Columbus had gone to Ferdinand and Isabella and he had said, listen, I've got this great plan. We're going to go off to this completely unknown continent where there are people living already.

We'll probably have to fight our way in. We'll try to convert some of the people, but lots of them will actually end up enslaving and treating them as forced labor. We will set up towns. We will have colonies. We will all squabble among ourselves and fall out about who is running them.

Then obviously Ferdinand and Isabella would never have given him a penny for their voyage or any permission at all. Because one of the things that was really on their minds was that in the Reconquista, so in their great drive to reconquer Granada and the Muslim areas of Spain, there had always been this slight tension then, actually, between the knights and the crown. So they were all about, Ferdinand in particular it was all about asserting the power of the crown, making the crown more powerful, strengthening its bureaucracy, not allowing these basically armed entrepreneurs to kind of completely go off and carve out their own little realms. So if they'd had any suspicion that Columbus was going to do that, or if they'd

had any sense that this was going to be a really expensive military commitment, they would never have done it in a million years. I mean, what interests them are the spices and the trade with the East. Canary Islands Mark II is not really what they want at all. Anyway, we've sort of gone a bit off piste. Listen, they're at the Canary Islands. They're there for a couple of weeks. They're kind of faffing around with their sails. They repair their rigging. They take on new supplies and stuff. Then they have to wait for the winds. You know, I know you love the winds, Tom.

They have to wait for the winds to be right, to catch the full wind. And on the morning of the 6th of September, they go to church. Columbus raises sail. And out they go from La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands. So off they go, off into the unknown. This is not a barrel of laughs by any means. So they are living on wine, water, ship's biscuits, which is kind of very hard sort of bread. They've got a little bit of fish. They've got a little bit of salted pork. When they're not working on the ship, they're spending their time gambling. They might be reading. So some of them might have books with them.

Columbus is probably looking at all his charts. And doesn't he have kind of various instruments that he doesn't actually know how to use? He's kind of showing off about that. He does. He's got hourglasses. The hourglasses don't last very long. They last about 15 minutes or some of them a half an hour. He's got hourglasses. The hourglasses don't last very long. They last about 15 minutes or some of them a half an hour. He's got a compass.

It's kind of like he's got an iPhone, but he doesn't know how to use any of the apps. A little bit. A little bit. He's got a compass. He's got an astrolabe. So the astrolabes, the Portuguese have got them from the Arabs. Explain how the astrolabe works, Dominic. So an astrolabe has degrees on it, Tom, and you can calculate the stars, your position.

You can triangulate your position from the stars by using your astrolabe. Does that explain to you? Brilliant. So the astrolabe is on the Portuguese flag. Yeah. So astrolabes are absolutely central to the Age of Discovery. He also probably has a map.

No one is quite sure what map he has. Maybe it was one given to him by this guy Toscanelli, who we mentioned in the previous episode, one of the Florentine thinker who was one of the people who had inspired his idea of crossing the Atlantic. There's a globe, isn't there, that's made in 1492, I think in Nuremberg. Yes. And it's the oldest surviving globe and it shows the coast of Europe and Africa. Yeah. And then it's just a huge, great blank expanse where America is. This is what his sailors are thinking.

They're sailing into the void. Of course. And they're sailing in. I mean, to be a sailor on these ships is pretty grim. You know, you're sleeping outside, probably on sacks. The toilet is set up on a grating overlooking the sea. When your clothes get dirty, you can't wash and change your clothes, so you're in your dirty clothes the whole time.

If you're in a storm, it's just utterly miserable. You're just bailing out water. Terrible toilet facilities. Terrible toilets. Everything is awful. So Columbus pulls his trick, doesn't he, where he keeps an actual log in which he talks up how many days they've been and another one for public consumption where he cuts down on the days.

This is the most incredible thing. So in the first episode, we presented this image of him as this sort of eccentric visionary. The extraordinary thing is, even though he's very good at sailing and navigating and so on, pretty much from the beginning, from about the 10th of September onwards, he is lying to his crew about where they are. Because he is obsessed with this idea. The Atlantic is much smaller than it is. And he has two logs, one in which one of the others see where he's deliberately underestimating how far they've gone. So in other words, that'll make it easy for them to get back. And then the other, which is the sort of true one, he's also kind of lying to himself because he is making observations all the time with his compasses and all this stuff about where the pole star is and where they are.

And it's not working. It doesn't fit his chart. But there is one positive, which is that on the 22nd of September, they get an adverse wind. So they could be blown back. And so that means they can be blown back. So that's a cause for kind of cheering them up. But against that, there's no land. No, exactly.

And just two days later. So you said that was on the 22nd, which it was. On the 24th, there's already trouble on the ship. Some of the sailors are saying, this is mad. So they've been gone now for a month and a half. And they are saying, one of them says, it was great madness and self-inflicted homicide to risk their lives in order to follow the folly of a foreigner who was ready to die to make himself a grand seigneur. So they know why Columbus is doing this, because it's making himself a grand seigneur. And they don't like the thought that they are

just collateral damage. But against that, I mean, it reminds you, I mean, because we're so accustomed to the idea that America exists and that Columbus discovers it, that you have to think yourself back into his shoes and the shoes of all his crewmen to appreciate the incredible courage it must have taken. Yeah. I mean, no matter what else you say about Columbus. Oh yeah. He's incredibly brave.

He had balls. Yes, he did. He has enormous physical, whatever. I mean, he doesn't always behave well and we will undoubtedly be spending a lot of time talking about that in future episodes. But he does have enormous physical and kind of mental courage, psychological courage. And he enters into a kind of battle of wills with Martin Pinzon, doesn't he? Yes. Who is not happy.

Who says to him, the sailors don't like this. I don't like it. They go on for another two weeks. They see nothing. Columbus says to them at one point, I'm like Moses leading you through the wilderness. Yeah, that's not reassuring, is it? They don't find that reassuring at all. On the 5th of October, Martin Pynthon says, I think you should change course. I think you should head southwest to try and find Japan. We're heading nowhere. Now, they have a big quarrel, and Columbus eventually agrees to do this.

The fascinating thing, I think it's Hugh Thomas who mentions this in Rivers of Gold. If Columbus had not agreed and they'd kept going, they would have landed on Florida. Yeah, imagine that. The world might look different in all kinds of ways. Might have been eaten by an alligator. By an alligator. Maybe. Maybe.

They'd have discovered Disney World. Yeah. Anyway, they- So they turn left, as I believe sailors describe it. They turn left, exactly. That's your nautical terminology, Tom. They do turn left. Continued discontent from the sailors.

So on the 6th of October, the Pinzon brothers basically say to Columbus, you've got three days. If we don't discover land in three days, we are turning back and going home. And then they see birds, don't they? Yes. The next day, Columbus sees birds on the 7th. And then on the 10th, still discontent among the men. And Columbus says, I will give a coat of silk to the man who first sees land.

And apparently when he says this, it's just a dead silence on the ship. It's just not what I want. Because none of them have any need. I mean, they sort of think, well, if I'm going to drown, a silk coat will avail me nothing. Well, also, their clothes are actually filthy, as you said, because they've been wearing them for about three months. Exactly.

Yes. filthy as you said because they've been yeah wearing them for about three months exactly yes but at that same day the 10th uh both columbus and martin they they see birds and martin pinthorn says birds do not fly like that with no reason meaning if there's birds yeah then there must be land and um columbus, he says, I think I might see land. He describes it as, where is it? Like the light of a wax candle moving up and down. And some of the sailors clearly think, well, he's just, he's bonkers. You know, he's just saying this. Or is there an alternative explanation? Because the big reveal, 2 a.m. Friday, the 12th of October, land is spotted.

And the guy who's up in the crow's nest, he's the guy who can claim the silk coat. But isn't there a case for saying that actually it's Columbus rewriting it? Because he wants to be the first to see it. Yeah, of course. Of course. I don't think he saw it. I think the man in the crow's nest, as you say, it's a full moon that night as well.

So he's a man from Seville called Juan Rodriguez Bermejo, and he says he sees a white stretch of land, and they fire a little gun, a little cannon called a lombard, and everybody is kind of shouting and cheering and praising God. And it is an incredible moment. Amazing. I mean, they have gone all that way on Columbus's mad whim. They, I mean, we said they don't know that America is out there.

I mean, there's no mention of America. They think they are going to Japan. Yes. And then, or possibly they've missed Japan and they're now going to China. This is all part of the, I mean, you know, the difficulty of deciding what it is that they found is that they have this weird Asian map in their head. Yeah. But I do think it's so indicative of Columbus's character that he has to try and appropriate

the moment for himself. Yes. It's frustrating with Columbus, isn't it? Because so little is written about the first 40 years. There's so little documentary evidence of the first 40 years of his life. And then he behaves in such a sort of disputatious and prickly way that everything that is subsequently written about him paints him in the worst possible light. But you do get these glimpses of this guy. But very human. I mean, he's a very human figure. He's insecure, isn't he? You know, he's quite Nixonian, Tom. Yes, I suppose.

I mean, he's a man of clearly titanic achievement and gifts, but who in a way is also his own worst enemy. Anyway, we shouldn't dwell on this. This is a moment of great triumph. Yeah. I mean, an astonishing moment, a pivotal moment in Columbus's life and in the history of Europe and indeed of the entire world so let's take a break and when we come back we will we'll see what what it is that Columbus has run into is it Japan is it China or is it something completely else I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman 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 the entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com at two o'clock in the morning the land was discovered at two leagues distance they took in sail and remained under the square sail lying to till day which was friday when they found themselves near a small island one of the lukeos called it in the indian language guanahani so that's col's Columbus's journal describing the historic, historic day, the discovery of, well, what, Dominic, what does he think he's found? Well, that phrase that you used there, actually, that he used, called in the Indian language,

Guanahani. So right from the beginning, Columbus is describing the people as Indians and using the phrase, the Indian language. It's a testament to the vagueness of his project in some ways. Is it China? Is it Japan? Is it India? He doesn't know at this stage. People still disagree about exactly where it was Columbus landed. It's probably a place called Watling Island in the Bahamas. Columbus calls it San Salvador, the Holy Savior. Local people that he meets who will come to in a second, they tell him it's somewhere that sounds a bit like Guanahani. Does he know where it is? I'm not sure he does. I think he thinks it's an island off the coast of Japan or China. He knows it's not the mainland. But he'd immediately have found out that the Hebrew and Arabic interpreter- Useless.

No good. Yeah. They don't speak Hebrew. I mean, the interesting thing is that straight away, Columbus raises the, he takes possession of it in the name of Spain, and he raises the flag of Ferdinand and Isabella, which is this green cross with an F for Ferdinand, a Y for Isabella on a white background. And as historians have said, this again again, is a strange thing to do because if he thinks this belongs to the emperor of Japan or the emperor of China...

Yeah, a provocation. Yeah, it's reckless. It is reckless. But perhaps he thinks, yes, it's a sort of desert island off the coast of Asia somewhere. He sees locals pretty much straight away, and he calls them Indians from the very beginning. And these locals are naked, right?

Yes. And there's immediately a question there, I guess, which again will hang over decades, centuries of European engagement with indigenous peoples. Is this nakedness a symbol of innocence? So like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, or is it a symbol of savagery and backwardness? And that kind of innocent or savage, it's the polarity that will shadow all Columbus's voyages. And I think Columbus changes his mind based on the circumstances. So I don't think he has any consistency. So when they are think he has any consistency. So when they are nice to him and when he's feeling good and things are going well,

he says, oh, they're lovely, lovely people. But he needs them to be lovely, doesn't he? Because otherwise it'll screw up all his pitch that he's made to Ferdinand and Isabella. Exactly, exactly. And at first, actually, they are very, I mean, by and large, pretty friendly, pretty welcoming. So they are amazed by the Europeans. They, as you said, they have no clothes. Some of them have painted their bodies. They have wooden spears.

They have canoes. He's very interested from the beginning. Some of them have golden ornaments. So golden piercings. Yeah. And gold is what they've come for. And they say to him, or they communicate by sign language, not through the Arabic and Hebrew speaking interpreter,

to say there are kings maybe to the south who have lots of gold. And of course at that, his ears prick up. And this is a trick that people will do throughout the story of Spanish colonization. It is to say, oh, there's people just over the hill just over the hill loads of gold you should you should go and see them now straight away columbus does something that some listeners will have been waiting for from the very beginning of this story which is he captures and enslaves people so he takes them as interpreters or such is his claim.

So in the next couple of weeks, he starts to seize indigenous people. He has one who actually remains with him who he calls Diego Columbus, who stays with him for the next two years. That duality that you talked about, are they innocent? Are they children in the Garden of Eden? Or are they kind of bestial, primitive people whom we can treat as we like? I think that is there. That tension is there from the beginning. So he says to, at first he says to Ferdinand and Isabella, they're very timid, they are artless, they will make good subjects. So he's already

thinking that way. But the question of slavery is hanging there from the very beginning, because Spain is a society that already has 100,000 slaves in Spain. So slavery is not a novelty. It is already part of the mental furniture of these islands, they're immediately thinking, well, will they make good slaves? Can we send them back home? Is this where we're going to make our money, basically? But this island that he's found is small. Yeah, tiny, tiny. And he stops at others as well. And so it's clearly not Japan. It's clearly not China.

So he sails on. Yes. And he bumps into a land that, according to the locals, is Colba. They call it Colba, which becomes Cuba. And Columbus presumably is very keen that Cuba actually be China. He changes his mind about whether it could be Japan or China. But I think at first, he thinks it's going to be Japan. And then he gets there and he says, actually, it's probably China. And he sends off, in fact, he's got letters for the great Khan of China. So you can imagine what people, he says, you know, let's team up and go and attack.

Let's attack the Turks and take Jerusalem. Yeah, take out Mecca. The reaction of these people hearing this is they're dumbfounded i think it's fair to say so he calls the island juana after um joanna uh of castile and then he eventually ends up calling it fernandina after ferdinand he's really struck by how beautiful cuba is uh he interacts with the people um he sends an embassy out so as you said he does end up thinking this is probably cafe it's probably china he sends um an embassy with i want i mean one of the accounts says with a with a interpreter who speaks chaldean um which i imagine is unlikely yeah

improbable yeah but it's also very improbable the people on cuba speak chaldean anyway so they go out and they actually find a little town, a sort of massive big village of wooden huts. And these people are the Tainos. So these are the indigenous people of the Caribbean. And they are, I suppose, if it's not a sort of cancelable term, more advanced, more sophisticated culture than the people on Watling Island. They're smoking, right?

Yeah, they have tobacco. They're all kind of hanging out in that village, puffing away. Having a smoke. Having a smoke. They're sitting on chairs. They have wooden chairs. They have furniture. They're sitting having a smoke.

So Columbus sort of thinks to himself, well, these people are very promising. He's very sort of excited by this. But clearly, some of the people that he is with that have come with him are already thinking, this is not what we signed up for. This is not China and Japan. So Martin Pinton, who we mentioned in the first half, on the 20th of November, he's had enough and he sails off in the Pinta with some of the crew to have a look for himself because he clearly thinks at this stage this is this is not what we've bargained for and columbus has led us on a wild goose chase columbus then says well okay let's all set off and see if we can find some more china or whatever and they end up on hispaniola so that's the island that's current that's now divided between haiti and the dominican republic um the second biggest island in the caribbean he calls it la espanola because it looks a little bit the vegetation and the the trees and stuff the flora and fauna are a little bit more like europe he thinks this is japan so he thought cuba was china and he thinks this is japan

he's very interested because the people on Hispaniola are more sophisticated. Their civilization is more sophisticated still than their neighbors on Cuba. So they have things that they've probably got from the Maya in Yucatan. They have things like more complicated stonework. They have ball courts for playing the kind of Maya ball game. They have more big villages like little towns. They have hammocks and canoes and tobacco and all of these things.

Pineapple. Pineapples, exactly. And they also have, there are traces, what appear to be traces of gold. And this is going to become a real obsession for Columbus. So Columbus is very interested by the gold and he thinks that their native people are great. So he writes to interested by the gold and he thinks that the native people are great. So he writes to Ferdinand and Isabella, he says, they are such an affectionate and

generous people, so tractable. I assure your highnesses, there are no better people or land in all the world. This is classic Columbus, the hyperbole, the overselling of everything. And he's claiming to have seen Chinese ships, isn't he? And he's prone to exaggeration when he needs to. Definitely. Which means that everything we know about these voyages has to be taken with a slight pinch of salt. So for example, he says, they have given me really nice golden ornaments and masks and things. He also says, they have told me about some terrible neighbours of theirs called the Caribs, who are cannibals well the word

cannibal comes from carib right it does indeed it does indeed so right away in these first encounters you have that duality that runs right through european encounters with indigenous peoples not just in the americas actually but across the world which is on the one hand the noble savage the innocent naked friendly you know sort of characters that people meet. And on the other, the idea of, as it were, the savage savage. They'll eat you. We don't even really know whether the Caribs would have, you know, I mean, they might have done. I mean, the puzzle over that, I mean, it's very tempting to say that he's just made this up and that it's a projection of European dark fantasies and things like that.

But he has no interest in saying that to his sponsors, does he? Probably not. Although it's possible that Columbus tries to make sense of what is happening to him by projecting his emotions onto the indigenous people that he encounters. Perhaps. but equally, you might say that the people who are telling him about this, his hosts, maybe they have an interest in making their neighbors seem as bad as possible. Of course. One of the things that doesn't often get captured, I think, in the accounts of European encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Americas is how much the Europeans are being used. So that's definitely the case in the autumn when we do the conquest of Mexico. That is definitely

the case with Cortes and the conquistadors, that they are being used to some extent by the people they meet. Because he's firing off guns and all kinds of things. And this is obviously of interest to native princes who could immediately see that this might be quite useful. Absolutely. But Columbus is also very conscious. His voyage was not done as a sort of intellectual exercise. It was done to make money. Yeah.

He has backers, First Antoinette and Isabella, the Genoese. That's why I think it's unlikely that he's just made up the stuff about the cannibals, don't you think but it also means tom that he is behaving as in inverted commas badly from the beginning so his men are seizing things he's interested in taking slaves he's interested in the gold he is desperate actually and and this will be a theme right through this the story of his four voyages he is absolutely desperate to to show a return for the investment um so hence taking captives hence looking for gold he has a very bad blow on christmas eve so he's still there and hispaniola and the largest of his ships the santa maria is wrecked on a reef it was he'd left a ship's boy, he says, in charge, and it all went wrong. Of course, it's the ship's boy.

Somebody else's fault. It's very Captain Pugwash behavior. I mean, that will mean nothing to our overseas listeners, but Captain Pugwash blaming everybody but himself. Anyway, the ship is wrecked. And now Columbus does something that was absolutely never part of the plan he doesn't have enough ships to take everybody home so he says i will found a town here and some of the people will stay and say it's the plot of many a science fiction film isn't it yeah i suppose it is actually yes crashed on a distant planet yeah we can't all get back some of us will have to establish a base. Yeah. And this is what they do.

It's La Navidad, the nativity. So it's Christmas Day. They decide to set it up. So he has 39 men. And he says, this is the first European town ever established in the Americas. I mean, how do they choose? Well, the guy who speaks Arabic and Hebrew is one of the people he leaves. Well, of course.

I mean, they might run into some Arabs. And a doctor. There's a guy who's a doctor. That makes sense. I wouldn't volunteer for that, though. No. I'd be straight back on that ship. You would, wouldn't you?

But maybe you think, well, but will we be able to get back? Maybe it's better to stay on dry land. I don't know. Every option seems bad. I wouldn't have gone on a voyage, Tom. No. I'll put my cards on the table right now. But with your mastery of rigging and sa that would be a great loss i'd be one of those monks giving advice from one of

those backseat driver friars you know go on go on exactly that's what i would be it's gonna be great so he leaves the 39 and he says the rest of us let's go back and his luck would have it actually on the 6th of january just after they've set off, they bump into Martin Pinzon and the Pinta, the people who had gone off, who have been sailing around Hispaniola. And Pinzon says, I've got some gold and he's also- Got some spices. Yeah. He's got some chili and he's got some cinnamon. So they actually have something. And Pinzon says, we've spoken to natives, God knows how, who tell us that there are pearl fisheries nearby. So this is all great news. The gold and the spices are kind of essential, aren't they? Because if they didn't have gold,

if they didn't have spices to take back to Spain, probably the whole thing would be written off. People wouldn't be interested in it. I think that's right. I mean, obviously Europeans would probably have crossed the Atlantic at some future date, but the Spanish would not have sent back more voyages straight away. They'd have said this was a complete dead loss. It's an awful long way to go. So they're sort of stopping and starting. They're stopping for supplies and things.

And just before they really set off across the Atlantic, they end up having their first fight, proper fight, with indigenous people. Why? We don't really know. It's the 13th of January. It's quite possible that columbus and co are looking for more slaves to take back with them um and that the the locals the tainos are defending themselves they have bows and arrows and things and this is this thing about what columbus projecting because at that point he says well these people must have been cannibals

this is where all the kind of gruesome stuff about how these are people who capture, you know, they capture a village, they'll kill all the men, they'll take the women, eat them. No, sorry, they'll take the women. Yes. Breed them, raise the children, castrate the boys and kind of grow them up like farm animals and then devour them. Yes. And I think most historians now think this is not the case.

They think Columbus is inventing this. Yes. I mean... The cannibals capture children whom they castrate just as we neuter chickens and pigs, which we wish to fatten for the table. Yeah. But again, this is...

So as one historian says, this creates the idea that any native who resists the Spaniards is a cannibal. And this is how the Spaniards will behave in the next few decades. So anyway, back they go. The weather is okay for a while. But then on the 5th of February, they run into a storm, not terribly surprisingly, and they are split up, the Pinta and the Niña.

So Columbus and Co, they end up in the Azores. And the Azores are owned by the Portuguese. And they are Co, they end up in the Azores, and the Azores are owned by the Portuguese. And they are arrested when they go ashore. So funny enough, 10 of Columbus's men go ashore because they want to give thanks to the Virgin for their salvation. They're immediately arrested by the Portuguese, and the Portuguese effectively send them back to Lisbon, which is the nearest port. This is, again, very bad from Columbus's point of view, because first of all, it means he's in the hands of Spain's big competitor. But also, for Spanish people who distrust Columbus anyway, because he's a foreigner,

this gives them ammunition because they say, oh, he's always secretly been working for the Portuguese. He can't be trusted. Look, he went back to Lisbon before he came back to us. I mean, there are some Portuguese chroniclers who say that actually the Portuguese courtiers told their king to kill Columbus. Don't let him tell the Spaniards and let's go and claim it for ourselves. I'm not sure about that because I think the Portuguese are never really interested in the Americas because they're making so much money from there. Also, it would be such a provocation, wouldn't it? It would. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, he gets back finally to palos de la frontera on the 15th of march by a bizarre coincidence martin pindon's ship gets back on the same day pinzon has has died probably of syphilis

on the on the voyage so the fact that he's got syphilis, I mean, that's not terribly... But also, I mean, crucial also for Columbus's ability to shape the narrative, to control the narrative. Yes, because otherwise they would probably have bickered about which one of them was really responsible and actually found the best things and all this. But nobody can contradict him. So Columbus, news of his return spreads very quickly. There are letters being written about it in the middle of March. This is a guy who's writing to his brother in Milan. He says he sailed across the ocean.

In 33 days, he arrived at Great Island where there were inhabitants whose skin was the color of olives going about naked with no disposition to fight. And so this is spreading. This is a literate age. Lots of people can read and write, printing. So the news is spreading quickly. Right. But what do they think Columbus has found? I mean, there is confusion on this, isn't there? Or disagreement? Well, actually, do you know what? There is disagreement, but the disagreement is between Columbus and everybody else. It's not the people among themselves. So most people think he's found the Antipodes.

Yes. Most people say, clearly, the Greek idea that there was an Antipodean continent is correct, that he has found something that actually we will obviously later call America, because this patently cannot be China or Japan, let alone India. Columbus is absolutely adamant that he has found the Indies, but of course the formula, the Indies, is vague. It's suggestive, isn't it? Yeah, it suggests that at some point, I mean, in some part of his mind, even though he doesn't admit it to himself, I think he must know that this is not what he was expecting.

Anyway, he ends up in Barcelona. The streets are crowded. People are delighted. People love a festival and stuff. The king and queen receive him. He gives them feathered headdresses, doesn't he? He presents them with chilies, with sweet potatoes, with gold. But the crucial thing, he he presents with his people.

So of the seven people that I think he's brought back on his ship, one is dead and there are six remaining Tainos. They are baptized. The royal couple act as their godparents. One of them ends up becoming a page, but they probably all die very quickly of disease. And you would imagine of a kind of not just disease culture shock culture shock i was just gonna say exactly the same thing just a we know so little about them it's impossible really for us to get any

sense of what they must have thought um because they've left obviously no no records um and if you're predisposed as many listeners know that will be to see columbus as a great villain of history the effect on these people must have been absolutely devastating to be wrenched out of their island life and brought back across the ocean although columbus presumably feels that he's doing them a great favor because he's bringing them to the light of christ he undoubtedly thinks that and everybody in spain thinks that at that point i would imagine that these people This is a tremendous moment for these people. They should be terribly grateful. They're being brought into the bosom of

the savior, all this sort of stuff. So Columbus, his interest is in overselling it. He says the place is full of cinnamon, full of spices. He bring, I will be able to bring your highnesses all the gold you could want. Shall we end with what he wrote about that? Do. You clearly want to read it, Tom. I do. Because I think it beautifully illustrates the kind of, the mixture of religiosity and avarice that will characterize not just the rest of Columbus's career, but people might argue centuries of European expansion to come. So he's writing about everything that he's brought back, rhubarb, cinnamon, all this kind of stuff. And he says that all Christendom will be delighted

that our Redeemer has given triumph to our most illustrious king and queen and their renowned kingdoms in this great matter. They should hold celebrations and render solemn thanks to the Holy Trinity with many solemn prayers for the great feat which they will have by the conversion of so many peoples to our faith and for the temporal benefits which will follow. For not only Spain, but all Christendom will receive encouragement and profit. And Dominic, talking of encouragement and profit, do you have a parting message for our listeners? Well, Tom, you will receive encouragement and profit if you, I'm talking to the listeners, Tom, not to you, if the listeners sign up to the Rest Is History Club subscription on Apple Podcasts, they can do their free trial.

Or, of course, they can go to restishistorypod.com. I know people are never tired of hearing the hard sell at the end of the episodes. You will receive cinnamon, chilies, sweet potatoes, all kinds of benefits if you sign up to the Rest Is History Club. But crucially, you'll hear the next two episodes before everybody else. Because, Tom. Ad-free. Ad-free. This is, yes, except for our own self-promotion, of course, from which there is no escape. Because this is just the beginning of Columbus's story in the new world. There are three voyages to come.

And in those voyages, they lay the foundations of so much of the controversial story of European engagement in the Americas and indeed with the rest of the world. And Dominic, we still have the discussion about how Columbus is seen today, the polarised opinions of him. Yes. So lots more still to come. So do please join us. Thanks very much for listening.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. 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 therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.