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In the Wake of In the Wake of Columbus: Why the Polemic Over Columbus' First Landfall is of Interest to Africanist Historians
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Extract
It must be premised that the journal contains statements that appear to be absolutely irreconcilable with the present topography of the Bahamas.
Despite its disappointingly meager immediate results, its role as catalyst for the great age of worldwide culture contact inevitably resulted in a lively interest in every detail of Columbus' first voyage to the New World. Continuing unabated for nearly five centuries, the interest has assumed many forms, ranging from the putative effects of contact on the Amerindians to the identity of Columbus' first landfall--just where did the Old World first view the New World? Though it might seem to be both straightforward and of minor interest, the latter issue has in fact aroused great controversy for more than two centuries and remains far from settled today, as it appears that the most recent bid for consensus has been rudely shattered in its turn.
The controversy arises not at all from the fact that there exist several and contradictory independent testimonies bearing on the issue. Quite the contrary, as there is only a single surviving source, the so-called Diario de a bordo, which purports to be, at least in part, a record of Columbus' voyage on a day-by-day basis. The history of this text as we have it is complicated and this goes some way towards explaining why so many issues based on it remain moot. The only known extant copy was discovered as recently as 1790 and is in the handwriting of Bartolomé de las Casas, the noted missionary and historian of the early Indies, who was also a friend of several members of Columbus' family.
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1987
References
Notes
1. Murdock, J.B., “The Cruise of Columbus in the Bahamas, 1492,” Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, 10 (1894), 450.Google Scholar
2. It must be said that Las Casas' work does not always bear up well under scrutiny. But it must also be said that it has seldom been subjected to much scrutiny since most modern students of the Diario (and his other works) seem reluctant to risk the results of this, preferring to accept his work as accurate. For an exception see Henige, David, “On the Contact Population of Hispaniola: History as Higher Mathematics,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 53 (1978), 222–25Google Scholar; and Colón, Germán, “Dos momentos de un relato del Padre Las Casas” in De los romances-villancíco a la poesía de Claudio Rodríguez, ed. de Abiada, José Manuel Lopez and Bernasocchi, Augusta Lopez (Madrid, 1984), 81–100.Google Scholar
3. Morison, Samuel Eliot, Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), 10.Google Scholar In the context of the present discussion it is interesting that in this sentence “recourse” would make as much sense, perhaps more, than “resource.”
4. In the Wake of Columbus: Islands and Controversy, ed. De Vorsey, Louis jr. and Parker, John (Detroit, 1985).Google Scholar This also appeared as volume 15 of Terrae Incognitae.
5. One thinks of the several thousand articles and papers that have been expended on interpreting the Sherlock Holmes corpus. While in their own way these are fun and games, they are by no means un instructive fun and games. If nothing else, taken as a body they indicate the fact that words must often appear rather like chameleons.
6. See note 12 below for more on this point.
7. Already an extended defense of Samana Cay (already suggested as the landfall more than a century ago) has appeared since In the Wake of Columbus. See Judge, Joseph and Stanfield, James L., “Where Columbus Found the New World,” National Geographic, 170/5 (November 1986), 566–99.Google Scholar Relying on computer programs to supply the deficiencies of the Diario, this study is a marvelous paradigm of the problems Fuson identifies, beginning with the fact that the authors have chosen studiously to ignore the contributions in In the Wake of Columbus, though it is hard to imagine that they were unfamiliar with them. In vacuo scholarship in classic guise.
8. Humpty-Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass.
9. Morison, Samuel Eliot, “Texts and Translations of the Journal of Columbus's First Voyage,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 19 (1939), 235–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. The implications of the capricious definition of these terms are a prominent feature in the discussion in another of the papers in In the Wake of Columbus: Molander, Arne B., “A New Approach to the Columbus Landfall,” 113–49.Google Scholar
11. Anderson, Poul in New Scientist, 1969.Google Scholar
12. Of course the habit of editors of the Diario (and other students of it) to emend its errors and apparent errors without comment only fosters and perpetuates the notion of Las Casas' accuracy, in this case, in transcription. To take but one example, Las Casas wrote (or exceedingly blindly followed his source in writing) “31 de noviébre” when he meant “31 de otubre,” rather a strange slip, one would think. In his diplomatic transcription Dunn shows this error (for surely this is not just an apparent error), but no previous transcription has done so. Even the edition which included a copy of the autograph manuscript clearly shows the error there, yet corrected it a few pages later in the transcription without the slightest hint that it was a correction! Errors are important diagnostics in any text, expecially in a text of historical interest and it is unconscionable that these should be glossed out of existence in any transcription. Until Dunn's work is completed then we really have no idea whatever of the magnitude of Las Casas' transcription errors, although the case in point is not a transcription error in the normal sense of the word, but rather a kind of special instance of unintentionally anticipating that which the transcriber knows is textually imminent, suggesting that the error is indeed Las Casas', made in the process of transcribing long sections of his text at a sitting.