Thursday 2 on newsstands with the newspaper the new issue of the series on the great enterprises of history. The audacity and contradictions of the Genoese navigator linked to Spain
Even just talking about the discovery of America today means venturing into a minefield. Not because there are particular controversies about what happened in the last part of the fifteenth century, but because the reflections of today’s conflicts and events of another kind are projected on the transatlantic voyage of Christopher Columbus, and on the figure of the Genoese navigator himself.
the current profound malaise of native populations in the whole of the American continent, not so much the crimes committed over five hundred years ago by Columbus, to cause controversy and protests. In particular, we have witnessed the damage and soiling, if not demolition, of statues of the explorer, also usually erected with a political purpose linked to another era, as a symbol of integration into the New World. of the Italian-American communities: an integration which, not surprisingly at all, at that time was contested, together with the monuments dedicated to Columbus, by the anti-Catholic racists of the Ku Klux Klan.
It is clear that we are faced with an overload of ideology. Columbus, a man immersed in his harsh times, practiced slavery and inflicted very severe penalties, not only on the natives, but also on the Spanish colonists, often for sins that we do not consider as such. But making it the author of the genocide of the Indians, due to a very large extent to the spread of diseases against which those populations had no immunity, appears to be an obvious exaggeration, given that it, with a reduction of the inhabitants calculated around 85 percent , consumed itself over the course of about a century.
On the other hand, condemn colonization en bloc as such it means to de-legitimize at the root, without proposing any alternative, the whole history of the present American states, of the north, center and south. Really a little too much on the historical level, but still too little for the legitimate demands of justice raised by the natives, which require much more than symbolic revenge.
It is another thing to remember the tragic aspects of that epochal event, not by destroying the monuments in Colombo, but by erecting others that recall without sweetening the sufferings suffered by the indigenous peoples in five centuries and more.
From this point of view one can only approve the approach that the historian Franco Cardini gave to the volume The discovery of America, second issue of the Great Businesses of History series on Thursday 2 September on newsstands with Corriere della Sera and La Gazzetta dello Sport.
The author far from any hagiographic intent. Describes Columbus in his profound contradictions, points out that he was both a dreamer and a schemer, a mystic and an unscrupulous social climber. He remembers that his activity as vicer and governor had not been happy, so much so that at one point he was brought back to Spain in chains, even if the intervention of Queen Isabella of Castile led to his release with the relative apologies. In short, Cardini tells us about man, with his illusions and his impulses, but also his serious limitations, out of the myth.
The location of Colombo’s enterprise is even more important in its context, with the advance of the Ottoman Empire which had curbed trade with the East and created the need to find other outlets towards the Indies. Until his death in 1506, at the age of 54, the Genoese navigator, after four trips, still believed he had arrived in Asia. And only later did the explorations of other daring ones, in particular the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, certify that a hitherto unknown continent had been reached. Since then, for somewhat random reasons well explained by Cardini, it has been called America.
Another topic of great importance concerns the contrast among the religious, who wished to convert the local populations to Christianity, and the civil authorities (including Columbus), who feared that the eventual baptism of the Indians would protect them from the slave condition to which they were reduced. Laws were then enacted to protect the natives, but their application was often very lacking.
The book also focuses on the gold rush (and silver), which Europeans were very greedy of, which was a central aspect of colonization. Over one hundred thousand kilos of gold arrived in Seville from America in less than a century, a fabulous wealth. But even more important was the import of vegetables from the New World for food. If today we taste the chocolate produced with cocoa, we season the pasta with tomato, we use fried potatoes as a side dish, we make polenta with corn, also because Colombo had a dream and was able to make it come true.
The passion for adventure, with three ships into the unknown
The book is out on Thursday 2 on newsstands with Corriere della Sera and La Gazzetta dello Sport The discovery of America by Franco Cardini, second issue of the Great Businesses of History series, edited by Barbara Biscotti, professor of Roman law at the University of Milan Bicocca. on sale, like all subsequent issues of this series, at a price of € 6.90 plus the cost of one of the two newspapers. The series includes a total of 25 volumes that will be released every Thursday until February 10, 2022. And dedicated to the re-enactment of archaeological missions, geographical explorations, mountaineering climbs. Situations in which courageous individuals have taken serious risks or overcome general skepticism to increase the knowledge of mankind. Obviously, this review could not miss the voyage of Christopher Columbus, who with three ships departed from Spain in the Atlantic Ocean sailing westwards and came to touch, on 12 October 1492, lands that the Europeans until then (except perhaps an expedition Viking) had never reached: a New World whose relationship with the old one would open a different era in the history of humanity, albeit amidst many tragedies and strident contradictions. The third volume of the series, on newsstands starting from 9 September, will be Amundsen and the conquest of the South Pole by Emanuele Melilli. Followed by: Alessandro Bongioanni, Exploration of the Valley of the Kings (September 16); Luca Mori, Darwin and the journey to the origin of the species (September 23); Marina Montesano, Marco Polo in the East (September 30).
September 1, 2021 (change September 1, 2021 | 12:23)
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