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Historical Context
In order to fully understand the historical context of Christopher Columbus's "Enterprise of the Indies" and its impact on African peoples in Africa and in the Western Hemisphere, some background information is needed. The material included here is merely an overview and does not reflect the complexity of the sociopolitical world from which Columbus and his contemporaries emerged.
A familiar children's rhyme tells us that in the year "fourteen-hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue." It goes on to intone the names of his famous caravels and tells of all the glorious "discoveries" made in the names of the King and Queen of Spain. This voyage was indeed a pivotal event that changed the course of human history and signaled the beginning of what is known as the Modern Era. The rhyme, however, fails to address the other heroic individuals and history-making -- and even tragic -- circumstances that occurred that same year. These events affected millions of people on several continents, radically changed fundamental religious beliefs for many of them, and essentially altered the map of the entire world. As Professor Sylvia Wynter of Stanford University reminds us, the Columbus myth of courage and adventure does not "confront the fact that a non-European and indigenous collective historical memory also exists" and that "this memory is scarred by the schoolbook stereotype that 'Columbus discovered America'." [1]
It is likely that African merchants and explorers sailed across the Atlantic Ocean as early as 800 B.C. These ancient travelers interacted with the indigenous peoples of the ancient Americas and left monuments and other traces of their presence for future generations to discover and interpret. Recent scholarship documents the presence of African peoples in the Western Hemisphere long before Columbus and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Evidence of this presence includes writing and counting systems, botanical and skeletal remains, calendars, architectural structures, symbols, artifacts, linguistic networks, and a mythopoetic legacy. All of this evidence bears a striking resemblance to the practices and institutions of sub-Sahara African tradition as well as to the traditions of the great empires of pre-Columbian America. The dramatic colossal heads at La Venta and other sites in Mexico, which were created by the Olmec Empire, are an excellent example of this phenomenon. There is also evidence that suggests Malian traders traveled on an expedition to the Americas with Emperor Bubakar II in the fourteenth century.[2] In addition, during the period of colonial expansion, numerous Africans who were not enslaved came to the Americas. Africans accompanied many European explorers and conquistadores, intermarried with Native Americans, and settled throughout the hemisphere.
In Columbus's time the European concept of the physical world functioned not only to chart and visualize the geographical environment, but also to map the hierarchy of the human experience. Under the feudal system controlled by the Church in Europe at that time, it was believed that only the lands and seas within the known boundaries of the world were inhabited by civilized peoples and protected by a supernatural or Divine Grace. All else was considered as lying within the realm of the unkown, as being "beyond the waters," and therefore dangerous, evil, and uninhabitable. The society was also stratified, that is to say, it was divided into levels, with the clergy and nobility on the top and the peasants and serfs on the bottom. Medieval Europe had suffered the devastation of famine, war, and the plague, which killed nearly a third of the entire population and wreaked havoc on the economy. This period in history, known as the Dark Ages, was just ending in the fifteenth century. The political, economic, and cultural realities of Medieval Iberia (Spain and Portugal) were formed by these factors as well as by the interaction among Christian, Jewish, and Islamic peoples and their cultures. This is the era from which Columbus emerged.
At the same time that Europe was suffering through the Middle Ages, the great trading kingdoms of West Africa flourished. The rulers of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai traded in gold, ivory, and salt and expanded their trade routes north and east across the Sahara. Africans engaged in diplomatic relations for trade and cultural exchange and adopted the Muslim religion in great numbers during this period. Islam spread throughout West Africa, greatly influencing the culture and encouraging new agricultural systems and scholarship. Mass migrations occurred partly as a result of trade, as did the Muslim custom of making the hajj (a pilgrimage) to Mecca, Islam's holy city. The Great Mansa Musa of Mali made his legendary journey to Mecca in 1324 and literally put Mali on the map with his display of wealth, power, and learning. It was during these dynasties that distinguished centers of learning, such as the University of Sankore at Timbuktu, thrived. Scholars came to the Sudan region from around the world to study ancient manuscripts, philosophy, religion, medicine, law, and literature.
Islam had also spred to the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, the expansion of Islam fostered the first large dispersion of Africans abroad. Voluntary and involuntary migrations sent Africans into Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim Islands. In the year 711 A.D., the Moors, who were African-Arab Muslims, invaded and conquered Southern Spain and Portugal, placing them under Muslim rule. During the Moorish reign of the region, they engendered a culture that consisted of their advanced agricultural systems, religious architecture, artistic skill, mathematics, medicine, scholarship, astronomical and maritime knowledge. Spain was largely, as a result of their presnece, ushered out of the Dark Ages into a period of rapid growth, grandeur and power. This period of intensified learning, coupled with the decline of feudalism, greatly influenced the development of the European cultural Renaissance and ensuing colonial expansion. For example, European mapmakers of the time were exposed to Moorish maritime knowledge and began to construct more accurate maps. After a reign of nearly 800 years, the Moorish Empire came to an end in Europe in 1492 when their empire was finally defeated at Grenada, and the Moors were subsequently expelled. Unfortunately, the Spanish burned thousands of priceless Moorish manuscripts after their victory so that a great deal of the written legacy was lost.
Fifteenth-century Portugal became a center of the nautical sciences. Portuguese explorers, traders, pilgrims, and adventurers sought new routes of travel to the East, where, it was rumored, there was an abundance of gold, silk, and spices. It should be noted that spices were to the Middle Ages what oil is to the twentieth-century world economy. Until the late fifteenth century, Arabs monopolized the world spice market. Spices such as salt, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, peppercorn, and ginger were considered vital in Europe and were used for medicinal purposes, as perfumes and holy oils, and for rituals, food preservation, and seasoning. Because of the value placed on them, spices were also used as a medium of monetary exchange.
Europeans of Columbus's time were eager to find a route to the source of this trade, in order to avoid the Arab middlemen who drove the prices up and controlled the routes to India that passed through the Mediterranean. Therefore, they needed to find another way to reach the Far East and abundant riches there. After 1488, when Bartholomeu Diaz found that it was possible to sail around the southern tip of Africa to reach Asia, every European nation began to compete for a corner of the spice market. Columbus, who had studied mapmaking and had travelled to the Gold Coast of Africa with Portuguese merchants involved in vigorous trade with the nations there, decided to attempt to sail west to reach east, and, in that way, establish a new trade route and a name for himself.
Columbus's "Grand Enterprise" was considered a radical idea because it challenged the contemporary beliefs of the feudal system under which he lived. He wrote that "between the edge of Spain and the beginning of India, the sea is short and can be crossed in a matter of days." He had read of Marco Polo's travels to China and, so motivated, declared that all seas were navigable. After being turned down several times, Columbus finally persuaded the monarchy of Spain to finance his voyage to "India." After months at sea, his fleet happened upon the island called Guanahani. He promptly renamed it San Salvador and claimed it in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Because he thought he had reached India, Columbus named the people he encountered there "Indians". Within one generation the European conquistadors and the diseases they brought with them to the Caribbean had virtually destroyed the indigenous peoples they encountered on that fateful October day in 1492.
With the arrival of Europeans in the so-called New World, the door was opened for colonization, exploitation, and the development of plantation colonies in the islands of the Caribbean and in the tropical mainland Americas. Slavery, disease, and genocide had been introduced into the Western Hemisphere with tragic consequences for the native populations of the sovereign indigenous nations there. In addition, the forcible capture and enslavement of African peoples led to the most massive exile of human beings in modern history in what is now known as the Middle Passage.
Bartolome de Las Casas, a Roman Catholic priest, is another significant figure in this saga. Unfortunately, his name is not as familiar as that of Christopher Columbus, but his role in the settlement of the so-called New World, the conversion of the indigenous people to Christianity, and the enslavement of Africans, is paramount. A prolific writer, Las Casas eventually became a social activist. Known as the "defender of the Indians," he wrote about the atrocities the indigenous people sufferd at the hands of Spanish settlers in a small book known as the "Black Legends." He also authored The History of the Indies and was an editor of Columbus's journals.
It was Las Casas who suggested to the Spanish sovereignty that Africans be used as slaves, rather than "Indians." He advised that incentives or ascientas be given to the settlers to stimulate the economy in the "Indies." One such incentive: any setler who built a sugar mill should be allowed to import twenty slaves directly from Africa to be used as laborers to work in the mills. He thought this would also aid in liberating the "Indians" from slavery. In 1518, as a direct result of his recommendations, the Spanish Crown granted a license giving permission to import 4,000 enslaved Africans into the "Indies." Defenders of Las Casas claim that he had no idea of the cruel and unjust methods the Poruguese would use to obtain slaves and that he was extremely distrubed when he discovered what they were. But by then it was too late -- the increasing European demand for sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton, and the lucrative slave trade had taken on a life of their own. The Atlantic Slave Trade became a fixed institution for the next 350 years.
Statistics show that betwen 1492 and 1776, approximately 6.5 million people crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. One million of those people were Europeans. The remaining 5.5 million were Africans. Africans, therefore, became an integral part of the history of the New World. Bringing many skills with them, they became the major New World colonial labor force. They maintained many of their traditions, fought for their human rights, and labored to build economic and cultural foundations throughout the Western Hemisphere. Theirs is a story that must be told. To quote Dr. Carter G. Woodson, "We say, hold on to the real facts of history as they are, but complete such knowledge by studying also the history of races and nations which have been purposely ignored."[3] The African presence in the Americas is one that must be recognized if this history is to be complete.
Nashormeh N.R. Lindo
Education Programs Manager
Notes:
1. Sylvia Wynter, "1492: A New World View,"
from a paper presented at the Schomburg Center Summer Teacher Institute,
July, 1991.
2. Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (New York: Random House, 1976).
3. Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-education of the Negro (Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, 1933).