Jeffrey Magee
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195090222
- eISBN:
- 9780199871469
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195090222.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
Far from securing his position and income, Henderson's work for Benny Goodman initiated an unstable sequence of ups and downs that continued until his death in 1952. Goodman's success, and the ...
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Far from securing his position and income, Henderson's work for Benny Goodman initiated an unstable sequence of ups and downs that continued until his death in 1952. Goodman's success, and the unprecedented popularity of swing, spurred Henderson to form a new band, including trumpeter Roy Eldridge and saxophonist Chu Berry, which had mixed fortunes. The band enjoyed an extended residence at the Grand Terrace Café in Chicago, where Henderson had a hit with a piece titled “Christopher Columbus”. This chapter explores that tune's conflicting attributions and musical features. It continues with a survey of Henderson's posthumous legacy, noting how Henderson's style become the common tongue of big-band swing, how his music continues to appear on film and radio, and how the vicissitudes of Henderson's career speak to larger unresolved issues in American history and culture.Less
Far from securing his position and income, Henderson's work for Benny Goodman initiated an unstable sequence of ups and downs that continued until his death in 1952. Goodman's success, and the unprecedented popularity of swing, spurred Henderson to form a new band, including trumpeter Roy Eldridge and saxophonist Chu Berry, which had mixed fortunes. The band enjoyed an extended residence at the Grand Terrace Café in Chicago, where Henderson had a hit with a piece titled “Christopher Columbus”. This chapter explores that tune's conflicting attributions and musical features. It continues with a survey of Henderson's posthumous legacy, noting how Henderson's style become the common tongue of big-band swing, how his music continues to appear on film and radio, and how the vicissitudes of Henderson's career speak to larger unresolved issues in American history and culture.
Frank Graziano
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195124323
- eISBN:
- 9780199784561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195124324.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter treats eschatological and apocalyptic themes through a range of cases from Latin America and early modern Spain. Of particular focus are the imminent end of the world, the messianic ...
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This chapter treats eschatological and apocalyptic themes through a range of cases from Latin America and early modern Spain. Of particular focus are the imminent end of the world, the messianic imperialism of Spanish colonization and its impact on indigenous peoples, the Last World Emperor, cyclical and periodized time, prophesy, and the collective death of adherents to millennial movements. It also discusses the influence of Joachim of Fiore on Spanish missions and syncretic myths.Less
This chapter treats eschatological and apocalyptic themes through a range of cases from Latin America and early modern Spain. Of particular focus are the imminent end of the world, the messianic imperialism of Spanish colonization and its impact on indigenous peoples, the Last World Emperor, cyclical and periodized time, prophesy, and the collective death of adherents to millennial movements. It also discusses the influence of Joachim of Fiore on Spanish missions and syncretic myths.
Frank Graziano
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195124323
- eISBN:
- 9780199784561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195124324.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter surveys utopian ideas in Latin America, from the European myths projected onto the New World during exploration to more recent endeavors to discover or build paradise on earth. Themes ...
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This chapter surveys utopian ideas in Latin America, from the European myths projected onto the New World during exploration to more recent endeavors to discover or build paradise on earth. Themes include pursuit of allusive utopian islands and enclaves, the relation of utopia and subversion, the projection of utopia into the future, and reunification of a fragmented world. The case studies focus on the Tupí-Guaraní Land-without-Evil, El Dorado, Christopher Columbus’s belief that he discovered terrestrial paradise, and the utopian missions founded by priests and friars, including the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay and the missions of Bartolomé de Las Casas.Less
This chapter surveys utopian ideas in Latin America, from the European myths projected onto the New World during exploration to more recent endeavors to discover or build paradise on earth. Themes include pursuit of allusive utopian islands and enclaves, the relation of utopia and subversion, the projection of utopia into the future, and reunification of a fragmented world. The case studies focus on the Tupí-Guaraní Land-without-Evil, El Dorado, Christopher Columbus’s belief that he discovered terrestrial paradise, and the utopian missions founded by priests and friars, including the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay and the missions of Bartolomé de Las Casas.
Zvi Ben‐Dor Benite
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195307337
- eISBN:
- 9780199867868
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195307337.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter discusses the search for the ten tribes in the Americas. It shows how the possibility to find the tribes in the Americas was “there” even before the discovery of the Americas ” through ...
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This chapter discusses the search for the ten tribes in the Americas. It shows how the possibility to find the tribes in the Americas was “there” even before the discovery of the Americas ” through telling the story of Canary Island’s discovery several decades before. It also shows how the Ten Tribes were “removed” by European cartographers from their “original” locations in Ethiopia and Central Asia and placed in northeastern Siberia. From there they crossed the water barriers to the Americas. The chapter also discusses how the reformation affected Christian thinking about the ten tribes and heightened the debates about them among Christian thinkers, such as Sebastian Munster, John Calvin, and others. The chapter also discusses how the ten tribes became central in Spanish thinking after the conquest of America. Finally, the chapter shows how the story of the ten tribes became briefly fused with the myth of Atlantis and the history of the Scythians.Less
This chapter discusses the search for the ten tribes in the Americas. It shows how the possibility to find the tribes in the Americas was “there” even before the discovery of the Americas ” through telling the story of Canary Island’s discovery several decades before. It also shows how the Ten Tribes were “removed” by European cartographers from their “original” locations in Ethiopia and Central Asia and placed in northeastern Siberia. From there they crossed the water barriers to the Americas. The chapter also discusses how the reformation affected Christian thinking about the ten tribes and heightened the debates about them among Christian thinkers, such as Sebastian Munster, John Calvin, and others. The chapter also discusses how the ten tribes became central in Spanish thinking after the conquest of America. Finally, the chapter shows how the story of the ten tribes became briefly fused with the myth of Atlantis and the history of the Scythians.
Wes Williams
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159407
- eISBN:
- 9780191673610
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159407.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines the characters and occupations of pilgrims during the Renaissance period. It discusses the experience of Christopher Columbus as pilgrim and explorer and Batholomew Georgiewitz ...
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This chapter examines the characters and occupations of pilgrims during the Renaissance period. It discusses the experience of Christopher Columbus as pilgrim and explorer and Batholomew Georgiewitz as pilgrim as slave. It also highlights Henri de Castela's fear of dismemberment during his pilgrimage, Francois Rabelais' fantasies about resurrection, and various accounts by Jean Calvin. This chapter evaluates the similarities and differences in the narrative style and accounts of these well-known pilgrims.Less
This chapter examines the characters and occupations of pilgrims during the Renaissance period. It discusses the experience of Christopher Columbus as pilgrim and explorer and Batholomew Georgiewitz as pilgrim as slave. It also highlights Henri de Castela's fear of dismemberment during his pilgrimage, Francois Rabelais' fantasies about resurrection, and various accounts by Jean Calvin. This chapter evaluates the similarities and differences in the narrative style and accounts of these well-known pilgrims.
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226856186
- eISBN:
- 9780226856193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226856193.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This chapter focuses on the difficulties encountered by Christopher Columbus in providing the reliable sources of gold that he had promised to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, his royal sponsors. ...
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This chapter focuses on the difficulties encountered by Christopher Columbus in providing the reliable sources of gold that he had promised to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, his royal sponsors. Columbus describes only projected earnings and uses symbols to represent wealth and monetary value, viewing the Indies as a golden land given by God to the Spanish monarchs and using grace as a guarantee of value and a form of credit. The theme of the providential donation, which recurs in early New World historiography and was at the core of the imperial imagination, raises questions about how to represent the value of what is given and establishes a symbolic function in which the worth of gold is created through New World exotica. The practice of gift exchange, an essential relational mode used in both medieval and early modern Europe, is linked to Columbus's writings via generosity, grace, and obligation. Once they acquired a vast empire in America, Castilians began to regard themselves as a chosen people divinely favored with wealth and a global empire.Less
This chapter focuses on the difficulties encountered by Christopher Columbus in providing the reliable sources of gold that he had promised to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, his royal sponsors. Columbus describes only projected earnings and uses symbols to represent wealth and monetary value, viewing the Indies as a golden land given by God to the Spanish monarchs and using grace as a guarantee of value and a form of credit. The theme of the providential donation, which recurs in early New World historiography and was at the core of the imperial imagination, raises questions about how to represent the value of what is given and establishes a symbolic function in which the worth of gold is created through New World exotica. The practice of gift exchange, an essential relational mode used in both medieval and early modern Europe, is linked to Columbus's writings via generosity, grace, and obligation. Once they acquired a vast empire in America, Castilians began to regard themselves as a chosen people divinely favored with wealth and a global empire.
Zachary McLeod Hutchins
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- August 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190221928
- eISBN:
- 9780190221959
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190221928.003.0017
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature, Church History
Readers of The Book of Mormon have long identified Christopher Columbus as the “man among the Gentiles” whose divinely prompted journey to the Americas is foretold therein; Columbus thus became a ...
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Readers of The Book of Mormon have long identified Christopher Columbus as the “man among the Gentiles” whose divinely prompted journey to the Americas is foretold therein; Columbus thus became a model for the prophetic leadership of Joseph Smith. But if Columbus was inspired to discover the New World, that inspiration was imprecise, as the admiral sailed for China, suggesting that revelation is necessarily an ambiguous, messy process whose conclusions are uncertain and provisional, subject to correction or revision. Because his arrival in the Americas precipitated the genocide of Native peoples, identifying Columbus as a prophetic figure has forced faithful readers of The Book of Mormon to grapple with the question of theodicy. Some, like the novelist Orson Scott Card, have suggested that the Amerindian genocide is compatible with the justice of a loving God, while others have argued that The Book of Mormon celebrates prophetic weakness and promotes hermeneutic humility.Less
Readers of The Book of Mormon have long identified Christopher Columbus as the “man among the Gentiles” whose divinely prompted journey to the Americas is foretold therein; Columbus thus became a model for the prophetic leadership of Joseph Smith. But if Columbus was inspired to discover the New World, that inspiration was imprecise, as the admiral sailed for China, suggesting that revelation is necessarily an ambiguous, messy process whose conclusions are uncertain and provisional, subject to correction or revision. Because his arrival in the Americas precipitated the genocide of Native peoples, identifying Columbus as a prophetic figure has forced faithful readers of The Book of Mormon to grapple with the question of theodicy. Some, like the novelist Orson Scott Card, have suggested that the Amerindian genocide is compatible with the justice of a loving God, while others have argued that The Book of Mormon celebrates prophetic weakness and promotes hermeneutic humility.
Ian Whittington
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474413596
- eISBN:
- 9781474444897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413596.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Collectively, Louis MacNeice’s output of radio dramas and features represents one of the greatest achievements of wartime radio broadcasting in Britain. For MacNeice, already interested in poetic ...
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Collectively, Louis MacNeice’s output of radio dramas and features represents one of the greatest achievements of wartime radio broadcasting in Britain. For MacNeice, already interested in poetic form, radio provided a new medium with its own technical limitations, generic possibilities, and productive constraints. From the early features in the Stones Cry Out series (1941), through his first verse epic, Alexander Nevsky (1941), to the spectacular triumph Christopher Columbus (1942), MacNeice built ever more complex soundscapes in which a listening audience might immerse themselves, if only to rediscover a sense of collective purpose. Within MacNeice’s radio dramas, human examples of effective auditory navigation—in the form of blind characters and other attentive listeners—populate sonic environments structured by distinctions of proximity and distance, the present and the past, and safety and danger. MacNeice’s broadcasts therefore achieve propagandistic goals via modernist means, creating critical listeners as a means of forging good citizens; in the process, the broadcasts demonstrate that Priestley’s demotic approach was not the only means of uniting the radio public around a common goal.Less
Collectively, Louis MacNeice’s output of radio dramas and features represents one of the greatest achievements of wartime radio broadcasting in Britain. For MacNeice, already interested in poetic form, radio provided a new medium with its own technical limitations, generic possibilities, and productive constraints. From the early features in the Stones Cry Out series (1941), through his first verse epic, Alexander Nevsky (1941), to the spectacular triumph Christopher Columbus (1942), MacNeice built ever more complex soundscapes in which a listening audience might immerse themselves, if only to rediscover a sense of collective purpose. Within MacNeice’s radio dramas, human examples of effective auditory navigation—in the form of blind characters and other attentive listeners—populate sonic environments structured by distinctions of proximity and distance, the present and the past, and safety and danger. MacNeice’s broadcasts therefore achieve propagandistic goals via modernist means, creating critical listeners as a means of forging good citizens; in the process, the broadcasts demonstrate that Priestley’s demotic approach was not the only means of uniting the radio public around a common goal.
Luis Martínez-Fernández
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781683400325
- eISBN:
- 9781683400981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9781683400325.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter covers the subject of the discovery of America, including the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. It looks at the theological, scientific, and philosophical debates ...
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This chapter covers the subject of the discovery of America, including the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. It looks at the theological, scientific, and philosophical debates surrounding the early encounters between Europeans and the indigenous inhabitants, as well as the evolving cartography of the New World. The chapter also examines two useful perspectives: Edmundo O’Gorman’s “Invention of America,” and Alfred W. Crosby’s “Columbian Exchange.”Less
This chapter covers the subject of the discovery of America, including the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. It looks at the theological, scientific, and philosophical debates surrounding the early encounters between Europeans and the indigenous inhabitants, as well as the evolving cartography of the New World. The chapter also examines two useful perspectives: Edmundo O’Gorman’s “Invention of America,” and Alfred W. Crosby’s “Columbian Exchange.”
Kelly L. Watson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814763476
- eISBN:
- 9780814760499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814763476.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter discusses the connection between sexuality and conquest, particularly on the ideas envisioned in Samuel Eliot Morison's book, The Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher ...
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This chapter discusses the connection between sexuality and conquest, particularly on the ideas envisioned in Samuel Eliot Morison's book, The Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. Morison describes the American continents as a virginal woman and Spanish exploration as sexual conquest. He states that the colonizers showed up in Americas without their permission and laid claim to lands and people who could not object because they were not even aware that a claim was being made. Thus, rape would be an appropriate metaphor if one would describe their first meeting in sexual terms. In relation to this claim, the chapter explores the discourse of Carib cannibalism as gendered in a variety of complex ways. European writings about the New World demonstrated preconceived notions about proper displays of gender and sexuality, and these assumptions led them to construct Indians as inferior Others.Less
This chapter discusses the connection between sexuality and conquest, particularly on the ideas envisioned in Samuel Eliot Morison's book, The Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. Morison describes the American continents as a virginal woman and Spanish exploration as sexual conquest. He states that the colonizers showed up in Americas without their permission and laid claim to lands and people who could not object because they were not even aware that a claim was being made. Thus, rape would be an appropriate metaphor if one would describe their first meeting in sexual terms. In relation to this claim, the chapter explores the discourse of Carib cannibalism as gendered in a variety of complex ways. European writings about the New World demonstrated preconceived notions about proper displays of gender and sexuality, and these assumptions led them to construct Indians as inferior Others.
Kathleen Deagan and Jose Maria Cruxent
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300090406
- eISBN:
- 9780300133899
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300090406.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
In 1493, Christopher Columbus led a fleet of 17 ships and more than 1200 men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement, which he named La Isabela after ...
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In 1493, Christopher Columbus led a fleet of 17 ships and more than 1200 men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement, which he named La Isabela after the queen of Spain, but just five years later it was in ruins. It remains important, however, as the first site of European settlement in America and the first place of sustained interaction between Europeans and the indigenous Tainos. This book tells the story of this historic enterprise. Drawing on a ten-year archaeological investigation of the site of La Isabela, along with research into Columbus-era documents, the book contrasts Spanish expectations of America with the actual events and living conditions at America's first European town. It argues that La Isabela failed not because Columbus was a poor planner but because his vision of America was grounded in European experience and could not be sustained in the face of the realities of American life. Explaining that the original Spanish economic and social frameworks for colonization had to be altered in America in response to the American landscape and the non-elite Spanish and Taino people who occupied it, the book sheds light on larger questions of American colonialism and the development of Euro-American cultural identity.Less
In 1493, Christopher Columbus led a fleet of 17 ships and more than 1200 men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement, which he named La Isabela after the queen of Spain, but just five years later it was in ruins. It remains important, however, as the first site of European settlement in America and the first place of sustained interaction between Europeans and the indigenous Tainos. This book tells the story of this historic enterprise. Drawing on a ten-year archaeological investigation of the site of La Isabela, along with research into Columbus-era documents, the book contrasts Spanish expectations of America with the actual events and living conditions at America's first European town. It argues that La Isabela failed not because Columbus was a poor planner but because his vision of America was grounded in European experience and could not be sustained in the face of the realities of American life. Explaining that the original Spanish economic and social frameworks for colonization had to be altered in America in response to the American landscape and the non-elite Spanish and Taino people who occupied it, the book sheds light on larger questions of American colonialism and the development of Euro-American cultural identity.
Dixa Ramírez
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479850457
- eISBN:
- 9781479812721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479850457.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter examines how European colonialism, U.S. empire, and Dominican patriarchal nationalism intersected over a century to create the Columbus Lighthouse Memorial in Santo Domingo. These ...
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This chapter examines how European colonialism, U.S. empire, and Dominican patriarchal nationalism intersected over a century to create the Columbus Lighthouse Memorial in Santo Domingo. These entities, however, cannot account for subaltern subjects’ relationships to monuments such as the Lighthouse and the history that they celebrate. To get at this “history from below,” the chapter analyzes Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the Dominican-American film La Soga, and the controversy surrounding the 1985 murder of pop merengue icon Tony Seval in police custody. Juxtaposing these narratives, I contend that working-class island and diasporic Dominican men, most of them nonwhite, resist the persistent nationalist and imperialist violence that the Lighthouse celebrates through the performance of a distinctly Dominican hyper-masculine performance known locally as tigueraje. While resistant to Eurocentric patriarchal history, these performances remain masculinist and prioritize the enactment of violence on non-compliant subjects, including women and queer subjects.Less
This chapter examines how European colonialism, U.S. empire, and Dominican patriarchal nationalism intersected over a century to create the Columbus Lighthouse Memorial in Santo Domingo. These entities, however, cannot account for subaltern subjects’ relationships to monuments such as the Lighthouse and the history that they celebrate. To get at this “history from below,” the chapter analyzes Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the Dominican-American film La Soga, and the controversy surrounding the 1985 murder of pop merengue icon Tony Seval in police custody. Juxtaposing these narratives, I contend that working-class island and diasporic Dominican men, most of them nonwhite, resist the persistent nationalist and imperialist violence that the Lighthouse celebrates through the performance of a distinctly Dominican hyper-masculine performance known locally as tigueraje. While resistant to Eurocentric patriarchal history, these performances remain masculinist and prioritize the enactment of violence on non-compliant subjects, including women and queer subjects.
Nicole D. Legnani
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781683401490
- eISBN:
- 9781683402169
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9781683401490.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter traces a narrative archipelago from Madeira to Hispaniola through the metonymy of wood and the trajectory of Christopher Columbus, as allegorized by an anecdote about the reproductive ...
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This chapter traces a narrative archipelago from Madeira to Hispaniola through the metonymy of wood and the trajectory of Christopher Columbus, as allegorized by an anecdote about the reproductive destruction of an invasive species on a deserted island off the coast of West Africa in the Historia de las Indias by Bartolomé de Las Casas. It reflects on the connections afforded by the polysemy of naturaleza in sixteenth-century Spanish and made by Las Casas in his anecdotes about colonial capitalism on Hispaniola and Madeira in both Historia de las Indias and his edition of Christopher Columbus’s Diario a Bordo.As islands have always served as schematic shorthand for categories and indigeneity, an anecdote about a plague of rabbits on the Madeira islands in the early fifteenth century blurs the limits between state and enterprise, animal and human, native and nature (naturaland naturaleza), and the natural and unnatural (naturaand contra natura). What seems like a digression into the Madeira rabbits from Las Casas’s larger narrative about the conquest of America serves instead as a self-reflexive allegory for the paradoxical project of narrating origins in historical processes, especially destructive ones that nonetheless reproduce on a global scale.Less
This chapter traces a narrative archipelago from Madeira to Hispaniola through the metonymy of wood and the trajectory of Christopher Columbus, as allegorized by an anecdote about the reproductive destruction of an invasive species on a deserted island off the coast of West Africa in the Historia de las Indias by Bartolomé de Las Casas. It reflects on the connections afforded by the polysemy of naturaleza in sixteenth-century Spanish and made by Las Casas in his anecdotes about colonial capitalism on Hispaniola and Madeira in both Historia de las Indias and his edition of Christopher Columbus’s Diario a Bordo.As islands have always served as schematic shorthand for categories and indigeneity, an anecdote about a plague of rabbits on the Madeira islands in the early fifteenth century blurs the limits between state and enterprise, animal and human, native and nature (naturaland naturaleza), and the natural and unnatural (naturaand contra natura). What seems like a digression into the Madeira rabbits from Las Casas’s larger narrative about the conquest of America serves instead as a self-reflexive allegory for the paradoxical project of narrating origins in historical processes, especially destructive ones that nonetheless reproduce on a global scale.
Vincent LoBrutto
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813177083
- eISBN:
- 9780813177090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813177083.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In 1992, on the five hundredth anniversary of the world-changing voyage of Christopher Columbus, Ridley Scott created a movie that showed the personal side of the explorer. Extensive research was ...
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In 1992, on the five hundredth anniversary of the world-changing voyage of Christopher Columbus, Ridley Scott created a movie that showed the personal side of the explorer. Extensive research was poured into the project as well as insights from Columbus’s diary, which was inherited by his son. The production was lavish and exotic. The culture of the people who lived where Columbus landed is portrayed with realism and authenticity. The performances, especially that of Gérard Depardieu, are engaging. Ridley Scott captures history with meticulous location shooting and intricate lighting and composition that define the period. The film did not get great reviews and box office was unimpressive. Controversy over who Christopher Columbus really was and what he actually accomplished continues to swirl, but 1492: Conquest of Paradise brings layers of insight into his life and larger-than-life personality.Less
In 1992, on the five hundredth anniversary of the world-changing voyage of Christopher Columbus, Ridley Scott created a movie that showed the personal side of the explorer. Extensive research was poured into the project as well as insights from Columbus’s diary, which was inherited by his son. The production was lavish and exotic. The culture of the people who lived where Columbus landed is portrayed with realism and authenticity. The performances, especially that of Gérard Depardieu, are engaging. Ridley Scott captures history with meticulous location shooting and intricate lighting and composition that define the period. The film did not get great reviews and box office was unimpressive. Controversy over who Christopher Columbus really was and what he actually accomplished continues to swirl, but 1492: Conquest of Paradise brings layers of insight into his life and larger-than-life personality.
Gretchen J. Woertendyke
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190212278
- eISBN:
- 9780190212292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190212278.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
It is the discourse of manifest destiny that conjoins the popular romance and the Spanish Atlantic world; and Cuba provides a key site for staging the conflict between the Old World and the New. This ...
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It is the discourse of manifest destiny that conjoins the popular romance and the Spanish Atlantic world; and Cuba provides a key site for staging the conflict between the Old World and the New. This chapter explores the rich source materials negotiating the disjunctive relations between regions and the expansive American hemisphere. Washington Irving’s biography of the legendary explorer Christopher Columbus and Alexandre Exquemelin’s Buccaneers helped to create the conditions out of which popular romance emerged. Popular romance, then, becomes a vehicle through which the Spanish Atlantic world, and Cuba especially, is translated for a broad reading public. In both texts, the danger and possibility of discovery are visible on the surface: the violence of slavery, domination, and pillaging are essential features of each narrative. But these ruptures produced by the violence and friction of hemispheric relations are sutured over by the rhetoric of manifest destiny, which provides the architecture for popular romance.Less
It is the discourse of manifest destiny that conjoins the popular romance and the Spanish Atlantic world; and Cuba provides a key site for staging the conflict between the Old World and the New. This chapter explores the rich source materials negotiating the disjunctive relations between regions and the expansive American hemisphere. Washington Irving’s biography of the legendary explorer Christopher Columbus and Alexandre Exquemelin’s Buccaneers helped to create the conditions out of which popular romance emerged. Popular romance, then, becomes a vehicle through which the Spanish Atlantic world, and Cuba especially, is translated for a broad reading public. In both texts, the danger and possibility of discovery are visible on the surface: the violence of slavery, domination, and pillaging are essential features of each narrative. But these ruptures produced by the violence and friction of hemispheric relations are sutured over by the rhetoric of manifest destiny, which provides the architecture for popular romance.
Kathleen Deagan and José María Cruxent
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300090413
- eISBN:
- 9780300133912
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300090413.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
This chapter describes the establishment of La Isabela by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to America. La Isabela has captured the imagination of archaeologists and historians for ...
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This chapter describes the establishment of La Isabela by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to America. La Isabela has captured the imagination of archaeologists and historians for centuries, as the first European attempt at colonization in the unknown Americas. This first European colony was outfitted and organized without any substantial information about the social or environmental circumstances of life in America other than the brief shipboard sojourn during Columbus's first voyage. La Isabela represents a medieval Iberian concept of colonization, and so provides us with an extremely important archaeological reference point from which to study the development of the diverse and distinctive cultural mosaic of the post-1500 Americas. The life conditions and social processes of fifteenth-century La Isabela were deeply influential in shaping subsequent Spanish colonial experiences in the Americas.Less
This chapter describes the establishment of La Isabela by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to America. La Isabela has captured the imagination of archaeologists and historians for centuries, as the first European attempt at colonization in the unknown Americas. This first European colony was outfitted and organized without any substantial information about the social or environmental circumstances of life in America other than the brief shipboard sojourn during Columbus's first voyage. La Isabela represents a medieval Iberian concept of colonization, and so provides us with an extremely important archaeological reference point from which to study the development of the diverse and distinctive cultural mosaic of the post-1500 Americas. The life conditions and social processes of fifteenth-century La Isabela were deeply influential in shaping subsequent Spanish colonial experiences in the Americas.
Alexander B. Haskell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469618029
- eISBN:
- 9781469618043
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469618029.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter introduces the late Renaissance preoccupation with the interplay between God's will and earthly power by focusing on three issues. Envisioning the law as pathways of rightful conduct ...
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This chapter introduces the late Renaissance preoccupation with the interplay between God's will and earthly power by focusing on three issues. Envisioning the law as pathways of rightful conduct where Providence and human initiative intersected, colonizers viewed Christopher Columbus's discovery as as a divine sign that Christians were free to cross the ocean. Because distinguishing lawful pathways from erroneous ones was a matter of conscience, the literature that emerged to justify the Virginia venture took the familiar form of casuistry. Centered on the callings or divinely appointed offices by which humans contribute to bringing about the eschatological promise of the world's redemption, casuistry underlay, for instance, the magus and humanist John Dee's claim, in 1577, that Elizabeth I had a duty as a grace-filled empress to issue her first letters patent authorizing Sir Humphrey Gilbert's colonizing voyages. And colonization was inevitably defined as a project in forging commonwealths that brought everyone to his or her duties, for only in such a morally complete polity would Virginia satisfy God and contribute to coaxing sinners away from the primitive individualism left by the Fall.Less
This chapter introduces the late Renaissance preoccupation with the interplay between God's will and earthly power by focusing on three issues. Envisioning the law as pathways of rightful conduct where Providence and human initiative intersected, colonizers viewed Christopher Columbus's discovery as as a divine sign that Christians were free to cross the ocean. Because distinguishing lawful pathways from erroneous ones was a matter of conscience, the literature that emerged to justify the Virginia venture took the familiar form of casuistry. Centered on the callings or divinely appointed offices by which humans contribute to bringing about the eschatological promise of the world's redemption, casuistry underlay, for instance, the magus and humanist John Dee's claim, in 1577, that Elizabeth I had a duty as a grace-filled empress to issue her first letters patent authorizing Sir Humphrey Gilbert's colonizing voyages. And colonization was inevitably defined as a project in forging commonwealths that brought everyone to his or her duties, for only in such a morally complete polity would Virginia satisfy God and contribute to coaxing sinners away from the primitive individualism left by the Fall.
NICOLÁS SÁNCHEZ-ALBORNOZ
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198204190
- eISBN:
- 9780191676147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198204190.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
While sailing back to Spain in December 1492, the flagship Santa Maria ran into the white coral reefs facing the coast of Hispaniola. Lacking space in the two remaining caravels of his fleet, ...
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While sailing back to Spain in December 1492, the flagship Santa Maria ran into the white coral reefs facing the coast of Hispaniola. Lacking space in the two remaining caravels of his fleet, Christopher Columbus left behind the crew of the wrecked ship. A few months later, when he returned with 1,500 men, the fort he had built had been razed, and its occupants killed. Ever since, Spaniards have moved unrelentingly across the Atlantic. These abandoned seamen were definitively the forerunners of the first large-scale transoceanic migration. Following their path, millions of Europeans, Africans, and Asians subsequently entered the Western Hemisphere. After a few decades of intense exploration and conquest, the Spanish empire attained the dimensions that it was to keep for the next three centuries. This empire covered Meso-America, the Andean region, and the Caribbean, and included what was then the largest, the richest, and the most populated area of the New World.Less
While sailing back to Spain in December 1492, the flagship Santa Maria ran into the white coral reefs facing the coast of Hispaniola. Lacking space in the two remaining caravels of his fleet, Christopher Columbus left behind the crew of the wrecked ship. A few months later, when he returned with 1,500 men, the fort he had built had been razed, and its occupants killed. Ever since, Spaniards have moved unrelentingly across the Atlantic. These abandoned seamen were definitively the forerunners of the first large-scale transoceanic migration. Following their path, millions of Europeans, Africans, and Asians subsequently entered the Western Hemisphere. After a few decades of intense exploration and conquest, the Spanish empire attained the dimensions that it was to keep for the next three centuries. This empire covered Meso-America, the Andean region, and the Caribbean, and included what was then the largest, the richest, and the most populated area of the New World.
Laurent Dubois and Richard Lee Turits
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653600
- eISBN:
- 9781469653624
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653600.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter confronts the challenge of telling a long-term history of the indigenous Caribbean. It emphasizes that this history is ongoing, with indigenous peoples still very much shaping the ...
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This chapter confronts the challenge of telling a long-term history of the indigenous Caribbean. It emphasizes that this history is ongoing, with indigenous peoples still very much shaping the present and future of the region. We explore the deep history of indigenous presence in the region, Columbus’ journey, the history of indigenous peoples in the Eastern Caribbean who became known as “Caribs.” We also tell story of the Garifuna, a community that emerged in St. Vincent from the encounter between Africans who had escaped enslavement and indigenous communities on the island.Less
This chapter confronts the challenge of telling a long-term history of the indigenous Caribbean. It emphasizes that this history is ongoing, with indigenous peoples still very much shaping the present and future of the region. We explore the deep history of indigenous presence in the region, Columbus’ journey, the history of indigenous peoples in the Eastern Caribbean who became known as “Caribs.” We also tell story of the Garifuna, a community that emerged in St. Vincent from the encounter between Africans who had escaped enslavement and indigenous communities on the island.
Kathleen Deagan and José María Cruxent
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300090406
- eISBN:
- 9780300133899
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300090406.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This chapter tells the story of Christopher Columbus's departure from Cadiz in 1493 on his second voyage to America. A jubilant affair, it stood in stark contrast to the sailing of his first ...
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This chapter tells the story of Christopher Columbus's departure from Cadiz in 1493 on his second voyage to America. A jubilant affair, it stood in stark contrast to the sailing of his first expedition a year earlier. Instead of the three small, meagerly outfitted vessels that left in 1492 under a cloud of public skepticism, in the second fleet he commanded 17 ships and more than 1200 eager men, infused with what Spanish historian Antonio Ballesteros Beretta has called the ilusion indiana, dreams of “the wild lands, the exuberant vegetation, the sweet climate, the fragrant flora, the landscape of marvels, the new animals...the tobacco and the thousand plants unknown to the Europeans...and the hopes they inspired of finding many more marvels.”Less
This chapter tells the story of Christopher Columbus's departure from Cadiz in 1493 on his second voyage to America. A jubilant affair, it stood in stark contrast to the sailing of his first expedition a year earlier. Instead of the three small, meagerly outfitted vessels that left in 1492 under a cloud of public skepticism, in the second fleet he commanded 17 ships and more than 1200 eager men, infused with what Spanish historian Antonio Ballesteros Beretta has called the ilusion indiana, dreams of “the wild lands, the exuberant vegetation, the sweet climate, the fragrant flora, the landscape of marvels, the new animals...the tobacco and the thousand plants unknown to the Europeans...and the hopes they inspired of finding many more marvels.”