Columbus and His First Voyage: A History in Documents

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What happened on Columbuss first voyage across the Atlantic Who was responsible for the success of that voyage How do we know These questions were debated in the courts of Spain for decades after 1492. Some of those who sailed with Columbus left very different accounts, as recorded in those trial records. Their competing voices have long been silenced by the deafening crescendo of Columbuss own narrativea narrative riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies that beg to be explained. This documentary history allows the reader to encounter the founding documents of the Columbus story as well as the voices that dared to challenge iteven in his own day. What these documents reveal forces us to re-imagine Columbus and his voyage in surprising ways. Columbus and His First Voyage brings together for the first time the two contemporary versions of what happened on the first voyage the Columbian narrative and the Pinzn narrative and embeds them in a thorough introduction to Columbus, his first voyage, and the myths that surround this pivotal event in the history of the modern world.

Reviews

Few events in human history are as widely known yet as poorly understood as Columbuss Atlantic crossing of 1492. This book-length focus on that voyage is thus an important and welcome gift to instructors, students, and curious readers. Through his careful selection and expert packaging of revealing documents, James Wadsworth gently guides us into seeing 1492 from multiple perspectivesas provocative as they are fascinating. * Matthew Restall, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History, Pennsylvania State University, USA *
Columbus and His First Voyage serves both as a useful teaching tool by introducing a wide range of scholarly opinion and primary sources and by making easily available the sources that challenge the traditional story told by Columbus and his family. * William D. Phillips, Jr., Professor Emeritus of History, University of Minnesota, USA *

Author Bio

James E. Wadsworth is Professor of History at Stonehill College, USA. He is the author of Agents of Orthodoxy: Honor, Status, and the Inquisition in Colonial Pernambuco, Brazil (2007) and In Defence of the Faith: Joaquim Marques de Araujo, A Brazilian Comissario in the Age of Inquisitional Decline (2013).