Columbus Day I

Ignorant of the historical narrative beyond the report which had landed on his or her desk, the Reuters hack responsible for this topical piece for 'Columbus Day' appears to have concluded that the evidence now points to the Admiral having been Spanish rather than Italian, which was almost certainly not the case. 

Anyway, the basic finding of the study, that Columbus was a more or less closeted Sephardi Jew, has always been an open secret (though not of the Keir Starmer sort.)

Cue all the 'stealing other people's countries' comments from the would-be wags.

Yet, if there is an historical parallel that is worthy of consideration it would be the context in 1492 of a mass expulsion and persecution of Jews, leading to the extremely urgent need for a safe haven.

The Colón family had in all likelihood moved to Genoa a century earlier after the pogroms of 1391, the beginning of a wave of massacres and forced conversions in Spain and Portugal which targeted the Sephardi population.

 

As he sought investment for his project to go east by heading west, Columbus's key ally at the court of Queen Isabella was Luis de Santangel, the royal treasurer, himself a secret Jew, who at one stage offered to fund the voyage out of his own pocket. 

 

On April 17 1492 Columbus signed up to the Capitulations of Santa Fe which would limit his rule over any territories accumulated to his own lifetime, thus also limiting his ability to limit state interference, but with Santangel, he continually pressured King Ferdinand, and in the end sailed with the right to hereditary enjoyment of his 'discoveries', the key to his hidden agenda.

A group of Jewish youngsters came along for the ride, children of wealthy conversos in Spain who had helped provide much of the funding. They looked upon the Admiral as their Moses, which fitted nicely with his own self-image.

This group would be instrumental in the settlement of Jamaica, eventually achieved by Columbus's son Diego along with a chap called Juan d'Esquivel — also a converso — who had captured Melilla on the North African coast in 1497 and helped establish it as another part of the empire which would be exempted from the expulsion order.

Jamaica’s role as a Sephardi outpost and sanctuary would persist, even after the island was taken by Oliver Cromwell.

The sudden urge to push out into the wider world, from a relatively ‘backward, part of western Europe, which would lead to this (ultimately inevitable) contact between 'Old' and 'New' has typically been explained as a blend of 'Gold, Spices and Christians' e.g. one off personal enrichment, steady commerce and a chance to come up upon Islam from behind by locating hitherto isolated Christian communities long rumoured to exist in Asia.

But the repressive policies of the Catholic monarchs targeting both Muslims and Jews, seemingly led the latter to reach the conclusion that they rather urgently needed a new homeland abroad where no one would expect the Spanish Inquisition. 

 

And it turns out that this fourth spur to conquest would be almost as significant as the other three.