Lands of Hope and Promise

The following is the opening chapter of CTP's new book, Lands of Hope and Promise: A History of North America.

Chapter 1                     

Explorers and Conquistadors

The Genovese Mariner

               

T

he year 1492 was a turning point for Spain. In January of that year, Isabel and Fernando, los Reyes Católicos (the “Catholic Monarchs”) of Castile and Aragon, concluded a 700-year war by conquering the Moorish kingdom of Granada, the last stronghold of the Muslims in Spain. This 700-year war, or rather series of wars, had been a crusade for Spain, a holy war to retake lands lost to the Muslims in the eighth century. Yet, with the close of this war, the Spanish monarchs found themselves faced with a new and perhaps more arduous task -- the conquest of a hitherto unknown world.

                Even the strange sea captain, who for seven long years had been belaboring the Spanish monarchs to allow him to pursue this quest, did not understand the nature of it. This tall, long-faced mariner with the gray, dreaming eyes – this Cristóbal Colón from the Italian seafaring city of Genoa – had labored, until his red hair had turned white, to convince the monarchs that by sailing west one could reach the East – the fabled lands of China, Cipangu (Japan), and India.

                Colón, better known to us as Christopher Columbus, was the son of a wool weaver. Born in 1451 in the seafaring city Genoa, he went to sea in his youth. In his early twenties, he joined an expedition against the Barbary corsairs and another to the Greek island of Chios (then under Genoese control) to defend Genoa’s interests there against the Turks. In 1476, he sailed with a fleet of Genoese trading ships that was bound for Lisbon, England, and Flanders. Off the southern coast of Portugal, enemy ships attacked the fleet, and Columbus was wounded. When his ship went down, he jumped into the sea, and grabbing hold of a sweep, swam the six or so miles to shore. In the Portuguese city of Lagos he found help for his wounds. When he recovered, he made his way to Lisbon, a port city and the capital of Portugal.

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