Posted on 03/20/2007 5:28:36 PM PDT by blam
When Columbus returned from his first voyage, his first port of call was Lisbon. The Portuguese didn't seem surprised by what he had to report, maybe because they knew he knew less than they did. Notice that they got the pope to shift the demarcation line between their claims and those of the Spanish far enough west to include Brazil AND Newfoundland. Regardibng claims, the Portuguese always realized that they were literally out gunned and in general out-resourced by the bigger powers. Just because you get there first is less important than keeping others from making a grab for it. Look at the way that Cabot DID take Newfoundland for England.
The Portuguese discovered the Azores in 1421 and began settlements on some of the islands within a few years of their discovery. It is also thought the Portuguese were fishing the Grand Banks (off Newfoundland) around the same time, perhaps earlier. Much has been made of Columbus braving the possibility (as thought then) that by sailing westward across the sea he would eventually sail off the end of the world. I don't think Columbus ever had any fear of that possibility, only how long provisions and the moral of his crew would allow him to continue westward.
That might be. Ophir is one of those mysterious placenames from supposedly deep mythology that might well be a place we are very familiar with now. There are probably tourist beach houses and people do birdwatching there now.
That's right.
Every educated European knew that the world was round in 1492, and had known it for a lot longer. What they DIDN'T know, was that there was a whole continent between Europe and Asia.
Thanks to Ptolemy's maps, people had a good idea how big the world was - around 20,000 miles around the middle. Columbus' calculations were way, way off, and he asserted that it was less than half that. Based on his crackpot mathematics, he managed to get funding from the Spanish. The French rejected him, because they did the math and said that it's about 10,000 miles from Brest to China, and at the rate of sailing ships and duration of provisions, Columbus and his crew would have all starved to death about the moment they reached Kansas (if Kansas weren't there). Columbus and Co. were very near the point of no-return.
Suppose there had been no new continent there, and that the ocean simply went from Land's End (Finisterre) to China, thousands and thousands of miles of it. It was impossible to survive a crossing that far in a sailing ship of that era. You had to touch land and reprovision before that. The French court knew that, and they were right too.
Columbus was stubborn, and Isabella was taken in and funded the mission, but Columbus was lucky that there was a whole continent in the way of China. He never realized that his calculations were off by a factor of two, and always believed he had reached the Orient. If not for the fortuitious existence of the America's, Columbus would have either turned around and sailed back in disgrace, or never been heard from again.
"Oh my goodness. You said the N word!!!!
He said the N word! He said the N word!!!"
Behave yourself or I'll call your momma, too. ;) (did that to one of my students who loudly announced to the classroom teacher and everyone else that I'd just called her stupid, when what I said was that she was distracting everyone around her... She was smiling at me when she said it, and not smiling when I made the phone call...Gee, I wonder why?)
That's the school story. Controversy surrounded every step of the way and everything we were told in school is untrue. The British had continuous occupation in North America from at least 1300 and they claim since 500.
IMHO, the Portuguese and the Spanish were constrained from certain innovations because of their ultimate subordination to the Vatican.
That is the heart of the situation, in Europe at least.
The British, since 1300? Where?
It's kind of interesting the way the Brits simply occupied New Amsterdam. They claimed right of occupation by continuous occupation since 1300. All the way from Virginia to Newfoundland. Virginia was named for Queen Elizabeth, the foxy redhead. On or about 1300 they had a visit in England from some descendants of Arthur's colonists who had been living in America for 800 years. They brought turkeys and corn, and that was long before Columbus.
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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