Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This episode is a remastered and slightly revised version of the first of five on Christopher Columbus, the “Admiral of the Ocean Sea.” The episode discusses why Columbus should figure in to The History of the Americans in the first place, the state of Europe in 1491, how it changed after Columbus’s discovery, why it was a European who connected the hemisphere rather than an Asian, American Indian, African, or Muslim, and how it came that Columbus got the idea and built his proposal – a medieval venture “pitch deck” – to raise the money for his venture.
The Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 (referred to in the episode):
Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People
Jill LePore, These Truths: A History of the United States
Paul Johnson, A History of the American People
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Muslims didn’t need trade routes to east because they already had them; they sat right in the middle of it and that’s why Columbus had to head west. The Portuguese were skimming the coast of Africa from Cape Verde Islands around the Horn; as for Africans themselves who knows if anyone came to the Americas… or Phoenicians…or Polynesians.
Agree!