January 2, not October 12, is the important date of 1492. It was the day the combined armies from Aragon and Castile defeated the last of the Muslim forces in Spain at Granada and for the first time, in seven centuries, freed Iberia from Muslim influence and presence. It allowed the Spanish Crown to breathe and focus-in on other matters, including the money that had been borrowed for exploration, redirected to the Granada battlefield, and the investors who were seeking action, let alone return on their investment.
Enter Cristobal de Colon to the royal court with a new introduction and new proposal. We hear so often how timing is everything and for Columbus his timing was finally, after numerous attempt at more than one court, on-point. He was in an unique situation this time, Ferdinand and Isabella needed him. The Crown had investors to satisfy and through the ages we have seen how unhappy shareholder and investors can change the corporate (in this case, political) landscape. As a result, Christopher Columbus' Great Enterprise was sanctioned and funded.
By now, Cristobal de Colon was a smart man; wise in the ways of Sovereign politics and his need to secure the appropriate paperwork. During April of 1492, he secured 7 documents: the Capitulations or what is more commonly known today as Articles of Agreement dated April 17; and five documents dated April 30th, the Title (Titulo) also called the Commission, the Letter of Credence to be given to foreign rulers and three Orders of the Sovereigns which outlined the acquiring and provisioning of the fleet. Columbus' Passport was also one of these seven documents, although it was undated.
The Capitulations is defined by five articles. A surviving preamble from the 1495 copy describes the document as "the things supplicated and which your highnesses give and grant to Don Cristobal de Colon ..." As you can imagine, this document became extremely important when riches beyond the dreams of Europe were found and "confiscated" in the following decades and centuries. But, written prior to the first voyage departure, these articles and the seven documents as a whole formed the basis for a legal claim by Spain both for territory and the "unjustly oppressed people" under the domain of the Carib, Aztec, Inca and all other ethnic and political leaders/rulers found in the West Indies land.
Follow up documents secured by the Spanish Sovereigns were just as important to the legal possession of the Western Hemisphere territory and completed the premise that Spain's actions in the New World were legal, justified and ethical as understood by European law of the day (and days to come). The first set of these, issued by the Holy See Alexander VI (the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia), as four edicts dated May 3 and 4, 1493, and referred to as the bull Inter Caetera 1493, confirmed that every island and country discovered and not previously in the possession of any Christian prince be of the Sovereigns of Castile and their successors. This was further supplemented by a fifth papal proclamation, the Dudem Siquidem of September 26, 1493. Although still debated by legal scholars today, the Treaty of Tordesillas, dated June 7, 1494, for the most part, settled the issue with Portugal eventually receiving due territory on the eastern "bump-out" of South America, known today as Brasil.
It would be easy to think that the Spanish Crown, that is the Sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, had great foresight in providing documents to Columbus in case he found something when in actuality they were laying the foundation for the biggest "cover your a**" in world history. They were responding to papal bulls issued between 1452 (Dum Diversas) through 1484, especially the bull Aeterni Regis of 1481.
(I find great irony in the naming of His Holiness' edicts as papal bulls.)
Therefore as the Spanish Sovereigns acted according to known and recognized law both before the 1492-1493 voyage and immediately after, there is legal justification for their claim of territory and hence, riches, from the New World. The domain of Espana in the Western Hemisphere would continue until July 3, 1898, when off the coast of Cuba, Admiral Cervera cruiser, Cristobal Colon (again the irony is rich), would surrender to the upstart United States of America
Slavery, as we in the United States know it, ended with the Emancipation Proclaimation of 1863 and the subsequent cease of hostilities in 1865 of the Great Rebellion, the War between the States or the War of Northern Aggression, depending on your family roots. Yet, today, some 28 million people around the global are held in economic slavery. I enter this into the topic only as an example of the US perspective - slavery ended 150 years ago when in reality, it is stronger and more encompassing than ever before.
My question, Did Cristobal de Colon carry a Passport, is intended to stir our understanding of anthropology and archaeology, especially as to how it relates to Peru and the heritage of those lands on the western coast of South America. So the fundamental question here is: Are the Old World claims on the New World legitimate?
The short, simple answer to this is, YES, in the Old World! I am confident that most educated, informed individuals today would not bulk at the perspective of so many indigenous people who would out and out dismiss the legitimacy of the Espana claim. Yet, many of these same people would question the reaction of Native People who wish to curtail the archaeological exploitation of their heritage. Plunder is plunder, whether it is gold dust and nuggets OR gold masks and disks, natural resources OR cultural resources. So as you read my subsequent blogs you will need to recognize this duality in my own writings. I both admire the work that has been, is and will be done in the name of scientific research for the advancement of the understanding of human culture and human achievement as well as deplore the plunder completed in the name of archaeological exploration. And plunder not just in the sense of bad archaeology as some of the most devasting excavations were and are those with tight, thorough vertical and horizontal control. They got it all and that is the problem.
A few years ago I read an article discussing the Sun and how it is a dying star with a remaining life span of approximately 6 billion years. The author pointed out that we are arrogant enough as a species to believe that we will be around in 6 billion years to suffer this event. AND we are arrogant enough as a discipline to believe our excavations are better than they were in the past. I have to wonder just how much we miss.
So, Christophorus Colonus, as Peter Martyr referred to this ethnic Genoese, I think you did one hell of a job!
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