Review by New York Times Review
IN 5,000 years of recorded history, scarcely another figure has ignited as much controversy. Each second Monday in October, the familiar arguments flare up. Christopher Columbus, rediscoverer of America, was a visionary explorer. He was a harbinger of genocide. He was a Christianizing messiah. He was a pitiless slave master. He was a lionhearted seaman, a rapacious plunderer, a masterly navigator, a Janus-faced schemer, a liberator of oppressed tribes, a delusional megalomaniac. In "Columbus," Laurence Bergreen, the author of several biographies, allows scope for all these judgments. But Christopher Columbus was in the first place a terribly interesting man - brilliant, audacious, volatile, paranoid, narcissistic, ruthless and (in the end) deeply unhappy. Born in Genoa, bred to the sea, Columbus won Spanish royal support for an exploratory voyage in hopes of finding a western passage to Asia. On Oct. 12, 1492, he landed on the Bahamian island of San Salvador, and then took his three ships south to trace the northern coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola. Persuaded that he had found outlying territories of East Asia, Columbus returned in triumph to Spain, where the sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella named him "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" and granted him sweeping powers over the territories he had claimed. Columbus led three more voyages across the Atlantic, in 1493-96, 1498-1500 and 1502-4. Along the way, he alternately befriended and did battle with the native peoples he called "Indians," was twice shipwrecked and contended with a rogue's gallery of Spanish rebels and mutineers. Columbus emerges in these pages as an immensely courageous but less than heroic figure. In his dealings with the Spanish throne, he was an inveterate exaggerator and prevaricator. In his attitude toward the Indians, no coherent pattern emerges. At first Columbus found them sweet-tempered, curious, generous and tractable. But treachery was a recurring theme, among both the Europeans and the Indians - even when relations seemed amicable, outbursts of savage violence were a chronic risk. The most feared people in the Antilles were the "Caribs," by Bergreen's account sadistic cannibals who traveled in dugout canoes from island to island in search of fresh meat. "They eat human flesh and children and castrated men whom they keep and fatten like capons," one European wrote. "They are called cannibals." Let it never be said that pre-Columbian Americans were strangers to oppression and insensate cruelty. The Europeans were motivated by their lust for glory, for conquest, for women and above all for gold. When the Indians had gold they were compelled to part with it; when they had none they were compelled to hunt for it. Among the Taino people of Hispaniola, Columbus decreed a system of tribute, requiring each adult to submit a specified quantity of gold, on pain of death. But he was also fervently determined to spread the Christian faith. Christianize or exploit? Convert or enslave? The two goals were plainly antithetical. Fora time, Columbus hoped to resolve the quandary by enslaving the diabolical Caribs and converting the more benign peoples. But what did conversion even mean? A priest wrote that "force and craft" were required to impose Christianity on the Indians, but there was little hope that they would observe the rites after their overlords had left. In 1499, troubled by reports they had received from the faraway colonies, the Spanish monarchs empowered a judicial investigator to bring Columbus to account The inquiry produced testimony that Columbus had forbidden the Christian baptism of Indians except by his express permission, in order to ensure an adequate supply of slaves. The admiral was said to have imposed a reign of terror on the Spanish colonists of Hispaniola, who were flogged, disfigured or executed without trial for minor infractions. Some of the allegations may have been trumped up or exaggerated by Columbus's enemies - but after being arrested and transported back to Spain in chains, Columbus tearfully admitted to Ferdinand and Isabella that many of the charges were true. He won their forgiveness, but was never again appointed governor of the lands he had discovered. Historical relativists would urge us to keep these offenses in perspective. It was another era, they remind us, when men were governed by different moral and ethical codes. That's a bit too facile. In 1493, Ferdinand and Isabella had directed Columbus to "endeavor to win over the inhabitants" and to "treat the Indians very well and lovingly and abstain from doing them any injury." His conduct would make a mockery of those instructions. Columbus was roundly condemned by his own contemporaries, most damningly by Bartolomé de Las Casas, a priest who arrived in the Antilles in 1502 and later wrote a hard-hitting jeremiad entitled "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies." Las Casas denounced the false promises and unbridled greed of Columbus and his colonialist followers, and recounted the near-total annihilation of the native population of Hispaniola within 50 years of the Europeans' arrival. In his fourth and final voyage, an adventure as Homeric as any found in the pages of history, Columbus explored the coasts of Central America, discovered the Mayan civilization, battled mutineers within his own ranks, piloted his ships through powerful gales, was marooned on a Jamaican beach for an entire year and cowed a group of menacing Indians by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse. Returning to Spain in 1504, he declined quickly. He was gloomy, frustrated and resentful. He struck a pose as a martyr and haggled unsuccessfully with King Ferdinand for the wealth and titles he believed he had been unjustly denied. Weakened by gout, rheumatoid arthritis and possibly malaria, he died in 1506, at the age of 54. If Christopher Columbus had never lived, the Old and New Worlds were still destined to collide sooner or later - and if we accept the thesis of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," that collision was always going to be cataclysmic for the native peoples of the Americas. But it was Columbus who first established a permanent link between the two worlds, and for that reason alone he was a figure of immense historical importance. "Before him," Bergreen writes, "the Old World and the New remained separate and distinct continents, ecosystems and societies; ever since, their fates have been bound together, for better or worse." What emerges in this biography, a worthy addition to the literature on Columbus, is a surprising and revealing portrait of a man who might have been the title character in a Shakespearean tragedy. He was a brilliant and courageous seafarer who put everything on the line in pursuit of a fantastic vision - "but as the voyages grew in complexity," Bergreen persuasively concludes, "he became progressively less rational and more extreme, until it seemed as if he lived more in his glorious illusions than in the grueling reality his voyages laid bare." Columbus was not the enlightened rationalist of legend; he was a self-appointed messiah who called himself "Columbus, the Christ-bearer," and believed with utter conviction that he was an instrument of divine will. But if Columbus was a Christian, he might have paused to consider the rhetorical question posed in Mark 8:36 (slightly altered to fit the circumstance): "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain a New World, and lose his own soul?" Laurence Bergreen's Columbus was brilliant, audacious, volatile, paranoid and ruthless. Ian W. Toll is the author of the forthcoming "Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 11, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
After 500 years, laymen and even historians find it difficult to remain neutral while describing the personality, achievements, and legacy of Columbus. He was a visionary and a confused bumbler. He fostered the meeting of two worlds, and he promoted slavery and genocide. He was willing to challenge accepted orthodoxies, and he was a narrow-minded religious fanatic. In this scrupulously fair and often thrilling account of of his four voyages to th. New World. Bergreen reveals Columbus as brilliant, brave, adventurous, and deeply flawed. This is more than a personality study, and Bergreen illustrates the character of Columbus through his actions, avoiding facile attempts to analyze deep psychological motivations. The voyages, especially the last two, are the stuff of great adventure, and Bergreen effectively conveys the sense of wonder, danger, and exhilaration that accompanies voyages of discovery. He also portrays the slow personal deterioration of Columbus as he became increasingly rigid, frustrated, and prone to delusion. A superb reexamination of the character and career of a still controversial historical giant.--Freeman, Ja. Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Columbus's first voyage to the New World was one of the formative events of human history. But who was Christopher Columbus? Renowned historian and biographer Bergreen (Marco Polo) seeks to illuminate the complex motivations and historical circumstances that shaped the explorer's life, and the inquisitive, stubborn, and supremely self-assured nature that led him to sail to the end of the world and beyond. Focusing on the lesser-known events of Columbus's three later voyages and his disastrous, near-genocidal rule in Hispaniola, Bergreen's captivating narrative reveals a man obsessed to the point of delusion with acquiring gold and sending it back to Spain, perpetually unsure whether he should convert, enslave, or annihilate the natives he encountered, and dismissive of the continent he discovered, forever hoping to escape America and find a quick passage to the riches of China and India just beyond the next wave. His last voyage ended in a shipwreck, and Columbus died in 1503 disgraced, exhausted, and demoralized, although the toll of his voyages was surely felt more keenly by the oppressed Caribs and Tainos than by the admiral himself. While sensationalist and lacking in scholarly rigor, Bergreen's biography makes good use of the firsthand accounts of Columbus's contemporaries, rendering a dramatic story that will appeal to general readership. 7 maps. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The story of Columbus's first voyage to the New World is an oft-told tale that ends triumphantly for Columbus and with utter devastation for the natives he encountered. Bergreen (Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu) tells the exciting story of all four voyages, a narrative with castaways, mutineers, shipwrecks, and warfare, that shows Columbus to be vain and naive. Columbus believed that titles gave him legitimacy and authority, only to discover that what power he had quickly evaporated with each successive voyage. Even Isabella I, who had been Columbus's primary patron in the Spanish court, on her deathbed rejected his efforts to secure funding for a fifth voyage. VERDICT This is a well-written, even gripping book, but it has limited research value since it lacks a detailed scholarly apparatus. However, lay readers will find it entertaining and enlightening. Those interested in a work that contextualizes Columbus's voyages should instead consider Hugh Thomas's Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/11.]-John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Christopher Columbusheroic explorer or genocidal plunderer? Bergreen (Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu,2008, etc.) says he was both, and more.While best known for his breakthrough voyage to the Caribbean in 1492, Columbus returned to the New World three times, discovering hundreds of islands, establishing settlements in Hispaniola and exploring the coasts of modern Venezuela and Central America. Like Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey, he was a master at sea, a disaster on land. Ill-qualified for colonial administration, his attempts to turn a profit by accumulating gold and slaves, assisted by an unruly band of Spanish mariners and criminals, resulted in political back-biting that sent him back to Spain in chains at the end of his third voyage. The story of Columbus' exploits includes storms and shipwrecks, military clashes, political skullduggery, mutiny, cannibalism and promiscuous sex, but Bergreen fails to assemble the dramatic facts at his disposal into a compelling narrative. Nor does he deliver the measured evaluation of the man and his career that a controversial figure of his importance merits. Bergreen clearly doesn't like his subject much, and he interjects his own criticisms of the explorer throughout the text without specifying the standards by which he is judging his subject or the facts supporting his judgments. He even frequently reminds readers that, as every schoolchild knows, poor deluded Columbus was never anywhere near China or India. The author thereby becomes an intrusive figure in the narrative, while Columbus never emerges as the powerful, complex and charismatic personality he must have been. Furthermore, the text exhibits a confusing lack of discipline and order. For example, more than once Bergreen relates the same incidents or circumstances twice with varying details and no recognition that this ground has already been covered. As a result, readers will have difficulty trusting the sequence of events as presented.A well-researched but disappointingly delivered biography of a monumental figure.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
