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OCR editor preface

The names of Columbus, Magellan and, a little less, Vasco da Gama, many know by hearsay. This popular science book sheds light on the details of their travels, life, and the general character and customs of that historical era (late 14th century).

The book is relatively easy to read, moreover, it is written with a certain amount of humor. The publishing house, however, should have given more detailed geographical maps.

The smallness of the binding caused some scanning difficulties - this had almost no effect on typos (FineReader8.0. copes with this). By the way, there are not so many typos, in my opinion; Some of them, of course, I eliminated. The page format is A5, and yet I abandoned the "page-to-page" principle. Instead, I kept the original numbers as jump links (these links are available in the View->Document Outline of MS Word mode). Links to geographic maps are also included.
October 12, 2008

Matigor
university Russian Academy education

Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

V.A. Subbotin

^ GREAT DISCOVERIES

COLUMBUS

VASCO DA GAMA

MAGELLAN
Moscow

Publishing house URAO

1998
UDC 910.4

C 89
Subbotin V.A. Great discoveries. Columbus. Vasco da Gama. Magellan. - M.: Publishing house of URAO, 1998. - 272 p.
ISBN 5-204-00140-9
Geographical discoveries of the XV-XVI centuries. changed the idea of Europeans about the globe. Contacts were established with unknown or little-known civilizations, an impetus was given to the development of science, shipbuilding and trade, colonial empires began to take shape. The life of Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magellan is a part of world history, the interest in which never fades.

editorial and publishing

council URAO
Artist L.L. Mikhalevsky
ISBN 5-204-00140-9
© Subbotin V.A., 1998

Geographical discoveries of the XV-XVI centuries. were completed within a short period of time. Only three decades lie between the first voyage of Columbus and the end of the circumnavigation begun by Magellan. Such a short period of time was marked for Europeans by a revolution in their geographical representations, which since then have included many newly discovered countries of the Old and New Worlds. But for the rapid expansion of knowledge, a long preparation was required. Europe sent travelers by land and sea to the countries of the East and America from ancient times. There is evidence of such travel dating back to remote antiquity. In the Middle Ages, new knowledge came thanks to sailors who went to the Arctic Circle, pilgrims heading to Palestine, merchants who mastered the "Silk Road" to China.

Judging by the data of geology, archeology, ethnography, intercontinental contacts of different times differed from each other in duration and intensity. Sometimes it was about mass migrations, about significant mutual enrichment, for example, due to the spread of cultivated plants and domestic animals. The proximity of Europe and Asia has always facilitated their ties. They are reliably confirmed by many archaeological sites, evidence of ancient authors, data of a linguistic nature. In particular, most of the languages of Europe and many of the languages of Asia date back to a common Indo-European basis, others to Finno-Ugric and Turkic.

America was settled by immigrants from Asia for many millennia BC. Archaeological research pushes the first waves of settlers farther and farther into the depths of centuries, and geologists believe that Alaska may have once been connected by an isthmus to Chukotka.

Coy, from where the people of the Mongoloid race went to the east. On the west coast of South and North America, archaeologists have found objects of presumably Japanese and Chinese origin. Even if their Asian origin were indisputable, they could only testify to episodic contacts of East Asia with America, already inhabited by Indians. Sailors - Japanese or Chinese - could be carried east by typhoons. Regardless of whether they returned to their homeland or not, their influence on the culture of the Indians could not be traced. At the same time, a connection was established between the cultures of Polynesia and South America. In Polynesia, the sweet potato grew and continues to grow, whose homeland is the South American Andes. In the Pacific Ocean, as well as in Peru and Bolivia, sweet potato has one name - kumar. The ability of the Indonesians as navigators is evidenced by the fact that they settled in the distant past (at least in the 1st millennium AD) Madagascar. Malagasy speak one of the Indonesian languages. The physical appearance of the inhabitants of the central part of the island, their material culture indicate that they came from the islands South-East Asia across the Indian Ocean.

About the voyage of the Phoenicians around Africa around 600 BC. Herodotus reported. According to the Greek historian, the sailors, fulfilling the task of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II, “left the Red Sea and then sailed along the South. In the autumn they landed on the shore ... Two years later, on the third, the Phoenicians rounded the Pillars of Hercules and arrived in Egypt. According to their stories (I don’t believe this, let anyone who wants to believe it) while sailing around Libya, the sun turned out to be on their right side "1. Herodotus' disbelief in the circumstances of the voyage around Libya, i.e. Africa, to the point. Indeed, if the Phoenicians were south of the equator, sailing west, the sun must have been to their right.

The ancient world knew a number of regions of Asia, perhaps no worse than medieval travelers. During the time of Alexander the Great, Greek phalanxes passed through Persia and Central Asia, Egypt and North India. The Carthaginians, immigrants from the Middle East, invaded Europe from Africa. Rome extended its power to North Africa, Asia Minor and Syria. In the Middle Ages, Asian states invaded Europe more than once, and Europeans invaded Asia. The Arabs captured almost the entire Iberian Peninsula, and European crusader knights fought in Palestine.

In the XIII century. under the rule of the Mongol conquerors were territories stretching from China to Asia Minor. The Pope of Rome was looking for contacts with the Mongols, hoping to baptize them, more than once sent embassies into the depths of Asia. By land, European merchants went to the East, including Marco Polo, who spent a number of years in China and returned to Europe through the Indian Ocean. The sea route was long, and therefore European merchants preferred to get to China through the Crimea and the Golden Horde or through Persia. These were two branches of the "silk road", along which Chinese goods were transported even before our era. reached Central Asia and the Middle East. Both branches were relatively safe, but still, merchants traveling through the Horde were advised to travel in caravans, which would number at least 60 people. "First of all, - advised the Florentine F. B. Pegolotti, - you should let go of your beard and not shave" 2 . It must be assumed that the beard gave the merchants an appearance valued in Asian countries.

Ancient authors wrote about connections with a number of countries of the East, but did not say anything, except for the legend about Atlantis, about the travels of Europeans to the West beyond the meridian of the Canary Islands. Meanwhile, there were such trips. In the middle of the XVIII century. on the island of Corvo (Azores) a treasure trove of Carthaginian coins was found, the authenticity of which was certified by famous numismatists. In the XX century. Roman minted coins found on the Atlantic coast of Venezuela. In several regions of Mexico, during excavations, antique figurines were found, including one statue of Venus. When studying the frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum, images of plants of purely American origin were found, including pineapple.

True, it was not without literary fantasies, honest delusions, and sometimes even deceit. Plato's story about Atlantis inspired the philosopher F. Bacon (the story "New Atlantis"), such writers as G. Hauptmann and A. Conan Doyle. Many times, somewhere in the USA or Brazil, stones were found with "authentic Phoenician" inscriptions, pieces of rusty metal, which were mistaken for the remains of antique items, etc.

AT medieval Europe, as in the whole world, where there was no authentic data, legends appeared. In the X century. An adventure story about the sea wanderings of St. Brendan, who lived four hundred years before. The Irish saint went to the Atlantic Ocean in search of the promised land. He found it somewhere in the west near the equator. True, it turned out that there were devils there, and, as you know, it is not easy to fight the enemy of the human race.

The Vikings, immigrants from Norway, sailed to Iceland around 870, where only Irish hermits lived before them. The history of the Icelandic colony of the Normans has come down to us largely thanks to the sagas, oral semi-literary narratives, written down mainly in the 13th century. and published by the Danish philologist K.H. Rafn in the middle of the 19th century. The sagas told of the feud between the powerful Viking families who settled in Iceland, about how one of their leaders, Eric the Red, was expelled from the island for murder. With a group of his adherents, he went further west in 982, where even earlier the Normans had discovered another large island, Greenland.

Eric's son, Leif Erikson, according to the same sagas, baptized the Greenlandic colony around 1000, built churches there and tried to spread his influence to the west and southwest. Where exactly Leif went is not known exactly. The sagas, the only source, speak of various discoveries made by Eric's son. Either it was Stone-tiled Land, then Wooded, then Grape (a rather controversial translation; Vinland - possibly Meadow Land, from the Scandinavian "wine" - "meadow"). It is possible that the Stone-Tile Land was Labrador, and the Wooded Land was Newfoundland or the Nova Scotia Peninsula. As for Vinland, absolutely nothing can be said about its location. Of course, there were authors who were ready to place it anywhere, from the Canadian border to the Potomac River, on which Washington stands.

Norman discoveries in the New World were soon abandoned. Colonists from Greenland went to Vinland more than once, but only for hunting and for timber. Around 1015, two parties of fishers went there; in one of them was Freydis, Leif's sister. She was probably born into a father who was expelled from Iceland for murder. Freydis persuaded her people to seize the neighbors' ship and kill them all. She herself hacked to death with an ax five women who accompanied the fishermen. Trips to Vinland soon ceased as the Normans did not get along with the locals, apparently Indians.

European settlements in Greenland proved to be more viable, although they withered over time. In the XIII-XIV centuries. they still held on, selling seal skins and walrus tusks to Europe. Then the trade fizzled out. The Eskimos attacked the colonists several times. In the 15th century, when the cooling began in Greenland, the European population died out. Few fishermen who approached the island during the period of great geographical discoveries saw feral livestock on coastal meadows, but did not meet people.

Geographical discoveries of the XV-XVI centuries. were the result of the successful development of Western Europe. Changes in the economy and society, the achievements of science, colonial conquests and geographical discoveries were links in one chain. Maritime discoveries, it would seem, can be explained by only two conditions: success in shipbuilding and weapons. But these successes did not come by themselves, and they would not have had an effect without the development of science. Mathematics, astronomy, cartography provided navigation out of sight of the coast. And for weapons, progress was required in the extraction and processing of metals, in the study of explosives and ballistics.

The superiority of Europe over the countries of the New World was obvious; the cultural gap was too great to be doubted. Most likely for this reason, the Spaniards, having discovered the Cyclopean buildings of the Maya and Aztecs in America, were ready to believe that they had found structures of other peoples, perhaps newcomers from the Middle East. Otherwise, there was a question about the superiority of the West over the Asian countries with their centuries-old civilization. Moreover, the voyages themselves were prepared by experience that belonged not only to Europe. This experience, in particular, was formed from knowledge - in astronomy, navigation by compass, etc. - received from Asia. The military superiority of the West over the Eastern countries also did not always look undeniable. The time of sea discoveries was marked, on the one hand, by the completion of the reconquista, the capture of the Spaniards and the Portuguese in the Old and New Worlds. On the other hand, during the same period, the Ottoman Empire subjugated the Balkans, including the eastern coast of the Adriatic. At the end of the XV century. the Turks devastated the approaches to Venice, and at the beginning of the 16th century. approached Vienna.

Nevertheless, the conquests of Europeans in the Old and New Worlds turned out to be more extensive and deeper in consequences than the successes of the Turks in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. The West discovered the countries of the East, but they did not discover the West. The backlog of the East was expressed in the fact that he could not pull the scales in his favor either in the economy, or in the social system, or in military affairs.

This lag was given various explanations of a geographical and historical nature. It was noted that in the East the developed regions were far from each other, their connections were limited, which prevented the enrichment of local cultures. In Asia, according to some researchers, the state played an increased role, fettering the initiative of its subjects. Perhaps those who were not looking for an unambiguous answer to the question about the lagging behind of the East were right.

ka, tried to find a set of reasons that led to the predominance of the West.

Europe juts out like a wedge into the oceans. The base of the wedge runs along the Urals and the Caspian, its tip is the Iberian Peninsula. The closer to the Urals, the farther from the warm seas. Unlike the coastal parts of Europe, the interior regions have less choice in means of transportation. In the past, their inhabitants could communicate with each other and with the outside world only by land and river routes. And areas with a large length of ice-free sea coast could successfully develop external relations. These were, in particular, peninsular and island countries: Greece, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, England.

The semi-deserts, steppes, dense forests of Asia and parts of Eastern Europe were not inferior, if not superior, in size to the fertile and densely populated territories of China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. In vast areas, including Mongolia, Arabia, etc., there were favorable opportunities for nomadic life and hunting, and much less favorable for agriculture, for economic diversity, providing best conditions production and social progress. With the growth of the population, especially when the pastures had an abundant herbage for a long time, the expansion of the nomads acquired a wide scope. The raids of nomads on settled neighbors meant for those not only the arrival of conquerors who established their own dynasties and then assimilated. Nomads expanded their territories for their pastures, reproduced their usual way of life in new places. And this led to the desolation of the conquered countries, the decline of irrigation systems, and the impoverishment of crops. Those who could hid behind Chinese wall(Huanghe basin), used the insular position (Japan), isolating their countries from both destructive contacts and desirable ties with the outside world.

Economic difficulties in the development of the East corresponded to the backwardness of social conditions and ideology. In India, it was difficult for people from the lower strata to improve their social position, to change their occupation. Class division was supplemented by caste, fixed for centuries, consecrated by religion. AT Muslim countries the political and spiritual leader was usually one and the same person, which strengthened the arbitrariness of the nobility, consolidated the dependence of the bulk of the population. The dominance of the Muslim clergy in the East reduced the opportunities for secular education, led to the supremacy of religious norms in the field of law, and

The women's status even more than in the West reduced the intellectual potential of society.

There were no less differences between the tops and the bottoms in Europe than in the East. Slaves sometimes worked on plantations near the Mediterranean, wealthy families kept slaves and slaves as domestic servants. But the bulk of the peasants were personally free, they were associated with the lords, most often, lease relations. Cities and individual districts received the rights of self-government, their taxes in favor of the state, the secular nobility and the church were fixed. In a number of states, the search for runaway slaves was prohibited. Peasants who had the right to leave the seigneurs, urban people who independently chose a profession - craft or trade - such was the majority of Western European society.

As already mentioned, geographical discoveries were inseparable from the economic, scientific, military-technical superiority of the Western countries. At the same time, none of the travels of Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magellan aimed at abstract scientific discoveries. The tasks of the discoverers acquired a scientific coloring only to the extent that it corresponded to the expansionist policy of Spain and Portugal, long-range exploration in future colonies. It was necessary to put under European control those countries where the prices of gold and jewelry were low, while in the West there was a shortage of means of payment for expensive oriental goods. After the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire held in its hands the most convenient routes from the Mediterranean to the depths of Asia. High duties in the ports that fell under the rule of the Turks forced them to look for new lines of communication that could provide access to the countries of South and Southeast Asia, the Far East.

It was, in particular, about access to the areas of production of spices, which were especially valued in the Middle Ages as a seasoning for perishable products. In addition, Europe imported from the East incense, pearls, gems, for which she paid with metals, metal products, bread, timber and slaves (they were bought or captured in Africa, the countries of the Black Sea). The demand for slaves increased when cotton was grown on the plantations of Southern Europe and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, and sugar cane was grown on the islands of the Atlantic Ocean (Madeira, Canary Islands). Slaves were increasingly looked for in Tropical Africa, as Middle Eastern trade declined, and the Turks turned the Black Sea into their lake, where shipping became extremely limited.

important role. Trade on the Black Sea fell into such decline that, after Russia reopened it, there were no maps or pilots. At first, I had to swim only from mid-May to mid-August, when bad weather was unlikely 4 .

Europe owed its success to itself and to itself. external borrowing. One led to the other, and without its own progress, Europe would not have been receptive to the achievements of other continents.

Among the achievements in agriculture is the improvement of horse harness, which made it possible to expand the use of tax. An antique neck band tightened the windpipe of a horse, and a collar, which apparently came from China and spread from the 10th century. AD, did not interfere with breathing, leaning on the base of the shoulder blades. Significant changes have taken place in field crops and animal husbandry. The Dutch mastered polders - drained areas protected from flooding by dams. Their thoroughbred dairy cattle is depicted on the canvases of masters landscape painting. In Spain, the number of merinos, fine-fleeced sheep brought by the Moors, grew. Rice was among the food crops. The production of citrus fruits increased, which came to Europe through the Middle East in the 1st millennium AD. (orange - only in the 15th century) and began to serve as an antiscorbutic during sea voyages. Importance acquired the rotation of agricultural crops, especially vegetables.

Crafts and trade were transformed. In mining began to use a horse drive and water wheel for lifting ore; drainage devices appeared, which made it possible to increase the depth of the mines. In the XIV century. began two-phase production of iron and steel - blast-furnace and converting - basically the same as that existed in the 20th century. The specialization of artisans made it possible to noticeably increase the production of woolen fabrics. The energy of water and wind began to be widely used. Water mills, known since the time of Rome, were previously poorly distributed, since the muscles of slaves were cheaper. But now the main figure in agriculture has become the peasant with his allotment and tools. Watermills were becoming more common, as were windmills, borrowed from the Middle East around the twelfth century. Mills were used in blacksmithing, felted cloth, ground flour, sawed logs. The marine industry (fishing and hunting for sea animals) expanded, trade grew, and shipbuilding developed. Northern Europe supplied the South with furs, timber and hemp, and received woolen products and wine in return.

The Renaissance was marked by the achievements of science and culture. I. Gutenberg, Leonardo da Vinci, N. Copernicus were contemporaries of the great geographical discoveries. Long-distance travel was helped by the development of cartography, mathematics and astronomy, i.e. sciences related to navigation.

Sailors in European waters were well aware of the configuration of the shores near which they sailed, they were well oriented by the stars. Usually this was enough to do without maps and navigational tools. But over time, sailing in the Atlantic Ocean, sometimes out of sight of the coast, required improved navigation methods. At the turn of the XII-XIII centuries. they began to use compasses, a little later - navigational charts with detailed instructions about ports (portolans), details of the coastline.

Much has been done to improve navigation in the countries of the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Castilian king Alphonse X (XIII century), texts were translated from Hebrew and Arabic that accompanied the tables of the movement of heavenly bodies. Later these tables were lost, but new ones appeared. Columbus used those compiled by Regiomontanus (I. Müller), a German mathematician and astronomer of the 15th century. A famous cartographer in the same century was Abraham Crescas, a Majorcan Jew who served at the Spanish court. Abraham's son, Yaguda Crescas, collaborated with Portuguese sailors led by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), son of Joao I 5 .

Prince Henry settled in the south of Portugal in Sagris, near Lagos, famous for its shipyards. Sagrish has become a kind of center for organizing overseas travel. By order of the prince, the captains, returning from distant wanderings, handed over their charts and logbooks here for general information. Based on these materials, new expeditions were being prepared. Navigational documentation was kept secret. But how could such a secret be preserved for a long time? Goods brought from overseas had to be sold, and not only in Lisbon, but also in London and Antwerp. They were ready to pay for goods, and for useful information, and for cards hidden somewhere in their bosoms.

Geographical discoveries of the XV-XVI centuries. changed the idea of Europeans about the globe. Contacts were established with unknown or little-known civilizations, an impetus was given to the development of science, shipbuilding and trade, colonial empires began to take shape. The life of Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magellan is a part of world history, the interest in which never fades.

University of the Russian Academy of Education Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

V.A. Subbotin

Great discoveries

Vasco da Gama

Magellan

University of the Russian Academy of Education

Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Introduction

Judging by the data of geology, archeology, ethnography, intercontinental contacts of different times differed from each other in duration and intensity. Sometimes it was about mass migrations, about significant mutual enrichment, for example, due to the spread of cultivated plants and domestic animals. The proximity of Europe and Asia has always facilitated their ties. They are reliably confirmed by many archaeological sites, evidence of ancient authors, and linguistic data. In particular, most of the languages of Europe and many of the languages of Asia date back to a common Indo-European basis, others to Finno-Ugric and Turkic.

America was settled by people from Asia for many millennia BC. e. Archaeological research pushes the first waves of settlers farther back in time, and geologists believe that Alaska may have once been connected by an isthmus to Chukotka, from where people of the Mongoloid race went east. On the west coast of South and North America, archaeologists have found objects of presumably Japanese and Chinese origin. Even if their Asian origin were indisputable, they could only testify to episodic contacts of East Asia with America, already inhabited by Indians. Sailors - Japanese or Chinese - could be carried east by typhoons. Regardless of whether they returned to their homeland or not, their influence on the culture of the Indians could not be traced. At the same time, a connection was established between the cultures of Polynesia and South America. In Polynesia, the sweet potato grew and continues to grow, whose homeland is the South American Andes. In the Pacific Ocean, as well as in Peru and Bolivia, sweet potato has one name - kumar. The possibilities of the Indonesians as navigators are evidenced by the fact that they settled in the distant past (at least in the 1st millennium AD) Madagascar. Malagasy speak one of the Indonesian languages. The physical appearance of the inhabitants of the central part of the island, their material culture indicate that they arrived from the islands of Southeast Asia through the Indian Ocean.

About the voyage of the Phoenicians around Africa around 600 BC. e. Herodotus reported. According to the Greek historian, the sailors, carrying out the task of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II, “came out of the Red Sea and then sailed along the South. In autumn, they landed on the shore ... Two years later, on the third, the Phoenicians rounded the Pillars of Hercules and arrived in Egypt. According to their stories (I don’t believe this, let whoever wants to believe it), while sailing around Libya, the sun turned out to be on their right side. Herodotus' disbelief in the circumstances of the voyage around Libya, that is, Africa, concerns the essence of the matter. Indeed, if the Phoenicians were south of the equator, sailing west, the sun must have been to their right.

In the XIII century. under the rule of the Mongol conquerors were territories stretching from China to Asia Minor. The Pope of Rome was looking for contacts with the Mongols, hoping to baptize them, more than once sent embassies into the depths of Asia. By land, European merchants went to the East, including Marco Polo, who spent a number of years in China and returned to Europe through the Indian Ocean. The sea route was long, and therefore European merchants preferred to get to China through the Crimea and the Golden Horde or through Persia. These were two branches of the “silk road”, along which Chinese goods were transported even before our era. e. reached Central Asia and the Middle East. Both branches were relatively safe, but still, merchants traveling through the Horde were advised to travel in caravans, which would number at least 60 people. “First of all,” the Florentine F.B. Pegolotti advised, “you should let go of your beard and not shave.” It must be assumed that the beard gave the merchants an appearance valued in Asian countries.

True, it was not without literary fantasies, honest delusions, and sometimes even deceit. Plato's story about Atlantis inspired the philosopher F. Bacon (the story "New Atlantis"), such writers as G. Hauptmann and A. Conan Doyle. Many times, somewhere in the USA or Brazil, stones were found with “genuine Phoenician” inscriptions, pieces of rusty metal that were mistaken for the remains of antique items, etc.

In medieval Europe, as well as throughout the world, where there was no authentic data, legends appeared. In the X century. An adventure story about the sea wanderings of St. Brendan, who lived four hundred years before. The Irish saint went to the Atlantic Ocean in search of the promised land. He found it somewhere in the west near the equator. True, it turned out that there were devils there, and, as you know, it is not easy to fight the enemy of the human race.

This lag was given various explanations of a geographical and historical nature. It was noted that in the East the developed regions were far from each other, their connections were limited, which prevented the enrichment of local cultures. In Asia, according to some researchers, the state played an increased role, fettering the initiative of its subjects. Perhaps those who were not looking for an unequivocal answer to the question of the lag of the East were right, they were trying to find a set of reasons that led to the predominance of the West.

The semi-deserts, steppes, dense forests of Asia and parts of Eastern Europe were not inferior, if not superior, in size to the fertile and densely populated territories of China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. In vast areas, including Mongolia, Arabia, etc., there were favorable opportunities for nomadic life and hunting, and much less favorable for agriculture, for economic diversity, providing the best conditions for production and social progress. With the growth of the population, especially when the pastures had an abundant herbage for a long time, the expansion of the nomads acquired a wide scope. The raids of nomads on settled neighbors meant for those not only the arrival of conquerors who established their own dynasties and then assimilated. Nomads expanded their territories for their pastures, reproduced their usual way of life in new places. And this led to the desolation of the conquered countries, the decline of irrigation systems, and the impoverishment of crops. Those who could, took refuge behind the Chinese wall (Huanghe basin), used the island position (Japan), isolating their countries from both destructive contacts and desirable ties with the outside world.

Economic difficulties in the development of the East corresponded to the backwardness of social conditions and ideology. In India, it was difficult for people from the lower strata to improve their social position, to change their occupation. Class division was supplemented by caste, fixed for centuries, consecrated by religion. In Muslim countries, the political and spiritual leader was usually one and the same person, which increased the arbitrariness of the nobility, consolidated the dependence of the bulk of the population. The dominance of the Muslim clergy in the East reduced the opportunities for secular education, led to the supremacy of religious norms in the field of law, and the downgraded position of women, even more than in the West, reduced the intellectual potential of society.

It was, in particular, about access to the areas of production of spices, which were especially valued in the Middle Ages as a seasoning for perishable products. In addition, Europe imported incense, pearls, precious stones from the East, for which it paid with metals, metal products, bread, timber and slaves (they were bought or captured in Africa, the countries of the Black Sea). The demand for slaves increased when cotton was grown on the plantations of Southern Europe and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, and sugar cane was grown on the islands of the Atlantic Ocean (Madeira, Canary Islands). Slaves were increasingly looked for in Sub-Saharan Africa, as Middle Eastern trade declined and the Turks turned the Black Sea into their lake, where shipping began to play an extremely limited role. Trade on the Black Sea fell into such decline that, after Russia reopened it, there were no maps or pilots. At first, we had to swim only from mid-May to mid-August, when bad weather was unlikely.

Europe owed its success to itself and to itself. external borrowing. One led to the other, and without its own progress, Europe would not have been receptive to the achievements of other continents.

Among the achievements in agriculture is the improvement of horse harness, which made it possible to expand the use of tax. An antique neck band tightened the windpipe of a horse, and a collar, which apparently came from China and spread from the 10th century. n. e., did not interfere with breathing, leaning on the base of the shoulder blades. Significant changes have taken place in field crops and animal husbandry. The Dutch mastered polders - drained areas protected from flooding by dams. Their thoroughbred dairy cattle is depicted on the canvases of masters of landscape painting. In Spain, the number of merinos, fine-fleeced sheep brought by the Moors, grew. Rice was among the food crops. The production of citrus fruits increased, which came to Europe through the Middle East in the 1st millennium AD. e. (orange - only in the 15th century) and began to serve as an antiscorbutic during sea voyages. The rotation of agricultural crops, especially vegetable crops, has become important.

Crafts and trade were transformed. In mining, they began to use a horse drive and a water wheel to lift ore; drainage devices appeared, which made it possible to increase the depth of the mines. In the XIV century. began two-phase production of iron and steel - blast-furnace and converting - basically the same as that existed in the 20th century. The specialization of artisans made it possible to noticeably increase the production of woolen fabrics. The energy of water and wind began to be widely used. Water mills, known since the time of Rome, were previously poorly distributed, since the muscles of slaves were cheaper. But now the main figure in agriculture has become the peasant with his allotment and tools. Watermills were becoming more common, as were windmills, borrowed from the Middle East around the twelfth century. Mills were used in blacksmithing, felted cloth, ground flour, sawed logs. The marine industry (fishing and hunting for sea animals) expanded, trade grew, and shipbuilding developed. Northern Europe supplied the South with furs, timber and hemp, and received woolen products and wine in return.

Noticeable changes took place in shipbuilding; there were new steering devices, new equipment. Archaeologists rarely find the remains of ships of those times on the seabed. But these ships can be seen on ancient drawings, coats of arms and seals, sometimes quite clearly. By 1180, the image of one ship with a modern-type rudder, i.e., hung on a sternpost - the stern of the keel, is attributed. In more early periods, apparently, only steering oars were used, one or two, placed at the stern. There are suggestions that the Normans excelled in the installation of new steering devices that improved control. Vessels with two or more masts began to spread. For the effective use of the wind, in order to go steeply towards it, to maneuver, they began to use bulini - cables that regulate the tension of the sail, changing its geometry.

Since antiquity, maneuverable ships with an elongated hull were used for military operations, which made it possible to place a large number of rowers along the sides. Merchant ships with voluminous holds for cargo had rounded shapes. In the Middle Ages, both types of ships persisted, but the importance of long warships declined. Previously, their rowers, when entering the battle, took up arms, turned into soldiers. Now so many soldiers were not required, the combat effectiveness of the fleet grew due to weapons, primarily artillery. In the XV century. common types of ships had a ratio between length and width of 3:1. These were quite large ships for those times, with a hundred or more tons of displacement, rounded, with high sides and a small draft. The Italians called them simply nave (ships), the Spaniards - nao, the Portuguese - nau. Smaller ships were called caravels.

Artillery appeared in Europe in the 12th century, when the Arabs used it in battles with the Spaniards. The British are known to have used artillery at the start of the Hundred Years' War at Crécy. True, they had only a few guns, and it was primarily their excellent archers who won the battle.

According to some historians, the appearance of artillery did away with chivalry, which could not oppose cannon fire. And along with chivalry, the Middle Ages went into the past, a new time has come. But is it? Can it be argued that medieval castles collapsed only under the cannonballs of siege weapons, burying the feudal system under their rubble? Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that these walls fell into disrepair without the help of artillery, simply because there was no one to repair them. And their owners turned out to be bankrupt, who were not able to support servants, pay debts to merchants and usurers. Of course, the monarchs were not averse to getting rid of restless barons and other noble persons, now and then clutching their swords. But the easiest way was to send them all somewhere on crusades, to conquer distant lands, and there the Saracens had to make sure that the knights did not return home.

Cannons appeared on European ships in the 14th century, first among the Genoese and Venetians, then among the Spaniards, etc. As early as the end of the 14th century. the guns fired stone cannonballs, and it was enough to put a tilted cover on the side of the ship so that the cannonballs fell into the sea. And in the middle of the XV century. artillery hit the target with heavy metal cannonballs a hundred meters away.

By the end of the XV century. European ships were ready to sail much further than before. Their driving performance and armament gave an advantage over future opponents. Information was collected on the conditions of navigation in the equatorial waters of the Atlantic, opening up prospects for penetration into the countries of South Asia. And yet, long-distance wanderings were fraught with many dangers. The Indian Ocean was not explored, the Europeans did not suspect the existence of the Pacific. It took the courage, will and experience of sailors such as Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magellan to turn the possibilities of Europe into reality.

The book offered to the reader has various goals. Perhaps it will not be without interest for those who want to use self-education as a means to see the world from different points of view. But, first of all, the book is intended for students studying history, and - to a lesser extent - for students of the history of culture, the interaction of different cultures.

Of course, geographical discoveries were contradictory in their consequences, since they were followed by colonization, the subjugation of some peoples by others. For backward peoples, geographical discoveries led, on the one hand, to cultural borrowings, and on the other, to the rejection of their own civilization. These peoples were both enriched by the experience brought in from outside, and impoverished (if not destroyed) due to the wars that accompanied colonization. The history of geographical discoveries, connected with the origins of colonization, helps to better understand the historical process in general, helps to answer the question why the developed West today, like 500 years ago, is still ahead of most countries of the East.

The reader will not find in this book the history of travelers, immigrants from the East - Arabs, Chinese, etc. - the predecessors and contemporaries of Columbus. These travelers included Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Battuta, Zheng He. The bibliography (to the section on literature) placed at the end of the book will help the reader who wants to replenish his knowledge. There you can find information about the authors, including Russian speakers, who dedicated their works to both Western and Eastern travelers.

According to the archives, the year of Columbus's birth is 1451. He was born at or near Genoa not earlier than 25 August I and not later than 31 October. Notarial deeds certifying property transactions and handicraft activities of Columbus's father and his mother in Genoa have been preserved. Christopher Columbus himself is mentioned there as a woolman ("lanerio"); this term denoted wool combers, a profession common in Genoa. There are personal letters from the admiral. True, the authenticity of some of the documents is disputed: for example, the authenticity of Columbus's notes on the margins of books. These books, according to the family traditions of the descendants of Columbus, belonged to the admiral.

The admiral's early life is known mainly from the book of his illegitimate son, Fernando Columbus. But the text of this essay does not look plausible in everything. It was published in Italy as a translation from Spanish 32 years after the death of the author. There is reason to believe that the translation was inaccurate, that additions were made to the original, most of all for the purpose of embellishment. So, at the end of the book, after the word "amen", which obviously belongs to the author who wants to end the story there, there are two paragraphs with several factual errors, including an incorrect indication of the burial place of Columbus. The writing of Fernando Columbus contains information that is still controversial: the circumstances of Columbus's service on ships in the Mediterranean, his arrival in Portugal, travel to the Arctic Circle, which will be discussed below Bishop B. de Las Casas, historian of the 16th century, used the Spanish version of the manuscript of Fernando Columbus (or its prototype), and the bishop does not have some errors in the Italian translation.

In Madrid and other cities, lifetime portraits of the admiral have been preserved. On them, he looks different, although some portraits are similar to each other. Posthumous images, regardless of their artistic merit, were most often the fruit of the imagination of sculptors and painters. Columbus was portrayed as a humble Christian, an unquestioned leader, a thoughtful scientist. There were many allegorical, mannered images. It is probably more reasonable to judge the appearance of the admiral according to the stories of contemporaries who knew him at the age of 40-45 years. He was taller than average, well built, strong. Cheekbones protruded slightly on an elongated face with an aquiline nose. In his youth, Columbus's hair was reddish, but he turned gray early. The admiral dressed simply. Since his second voyage, he has been repeatedly accused of ambition and greed, and it is possible that the admiral wanted to object to his accusers by dressing emphatically modestly. From that time on, he was seen invariably in a brown Franciscan cassock, with a rope instead of a belt, in simple sandals.

By nature, Columbus was a rather sharp person. He had to do things that he later regretted. But contemporaries saw in him not a controversial figure with a split consciousness, but a holistic and purposeful person.

Columbus rarely talked about his youth. Perhaps he was just not up to it. It is also possible that he, a former Genoese poor man, did not want to be different from the Spanish nobility around him. But in his will, he remembered Genoa and the Genoese, those with whom he had been associated since childhood.

To talk about the Genoa of those times is to talk about the Italian Renaissance, that Columbus was surrounded from childhood by the achievements of his era in the sciences, arts and crafts. He was equally surrounded by contrasts: the flourishing of humanism and bloody wars, democracy and tyranny, luxury and poverty, the freedom of some and the slavery of others. He was a contemporary of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. His travels had not yet ended when Copernicus gave a lecture on astronomy in Rome. Columbus did not know many great contemporaries, but the spirit of the Renaissance did not pass him by. This spirit was in the books he read, in the people he interacted with, in the tasks he set for himself.

The Republic of Genoa was the land of business people and sailors. She kept on trade, crafts and shipping. The Republic did not become the birthplace of great artists and architects, its palaces were built by people from other Italian cities. But the handicrafts of Genoa - including the woolen ones that the Columbus family was engaged in - were of good quality, and Genoese shawls were a hot commodity abroad, in particular in England. Textile production has survived here to this day, as well as shipbuilding and navigation. The city that raised Columbus remained the sea gate of Italy. In the XV century. the enemies of the republic at sea were most afraid of the fast-moving and well-armed Genoese ships. In the XX century. ships continue to be built here, including at the largest Italian shipyards Ansaldo.

Genoa stretched out in a strip along the Ligurian Sea, pressed against it by the Apennines. Beyond the mountains lay the countryside, a land of peasant gardeners, muleteers, and coal miners. Like the city of Genoa in the 15th century. was unique in Italy and even in Europe in the almost complete absence of greenery, overcrowding. Most of its houses in the center and on the outskirts were high-rise, the streets were especially narrow, the intersections had no squares. All this made it possible to place about 100 thousand inhabitants on the seashore. There were still few palaces; they mostly appeared later, in the 16th-17th centuries, when many streets were demolished for them.

Wealthy families formed clans (Adorno, Fiesco, Spinola), which often fought among themselves, called for help from foreigners, and then expelled them, accusing them of tyranny, etc. The story of one of these clans is in Schiller's drama "The Fiesco Conspiracy in Genoa ". The same clans ruled the city and its environs. The peasants lived there as tenants of the noble clans, the owners of the surrounding castles. On the lands of the lords, in addition to the peasants, there were serfs, and in the city the nobles were served by slaves, most often taken out from the countries of the Black Sea - Bulgarians, Russian Polonyans, Georgians. Dependent people lived in the same houses as the gentlemen, only on the upper floors.

Since the time of the Crusades, Genoa has been conducting extensive trade with the East. Part of the Peloponnese, the islands of the Aegean Sea, obeyed her. The Golden Horde gave her Kafa (Feodosia), for which, by the way, they had to help the Tatars, fighting against the Russians on the Kulikovo field. But two years after the birth of Columbus, Byzantium, the main ally of Genoa, was crushed, and trade with the East began to wither. The Turks took possession of the fortresses in the Aegean and Black Seas, leaving behind Genoa for a hundred years only Fr. Chios, where young Columbus soon went (as a sailor or merchant). Genoa, like other Italian cities, has become less likely to send its ships to the East. The republic was increasingly focused on trade with England, Germany, Flanders. Its sailors were hired by the Christian states of the Iberian Peninsula, which were looking for new ways to exotic countries.

In the Genoese suburb of St. Stephen there was a monastery of the same name. The monks rented a plot of land for a house to a wool comber, Domenico Colombo. Like many other artisans, in order to make ends meet and pay off eternal debts, Domenico was engaged not only in his profession. He sold cheese and wine, served as a porter at the city gates, and brokered real estate. On the monastery land, in a house that has not been around for a long time, apparently, the eldest of the four children of Domenico and his wife Susanna, the daughter of a weaver, was born. The child was baptized in the church of St. Stephen and named Christopher.

According to legend, a carrier lived in the world, who happened to carry the baby Christ across the river, and therefore he received the name Christopher - in Greek "carrying Christ." St. Christopher, whose feast day the Western Church celebrates on July 25, has become the patron saint of all wanderers. It is unlikely that Domenico Colombo thought when he baptized his son that he would be an eternal wanderer. And he could not have imagined that his son would become known to the whole world under the names of Colon (Spain, France), Columbus (Russia), Columbus (Germany, England, etc.). The traveler himself, apparently, saw a mystical meaning in his name. He signed "Christo ferens", using the Greek alphabet in the first word and the Latin alphabet in the second, Latinized.

The family of Domenico Colombo soon after the birth of Christopher moved to a new house, which has survived to this day in the old part of Genoa. It is two-story, built of roughly hewn large stones. Its high windows are narrow, and the ivy rises almost to the sloping roof. Below, under one arch, there are two doors of different heights. Next to the house are the city gates. Along the edges of the gate there are two towers rising 25–30 m, crowned with battlements with loopholes like those near the Moscow Kremlin.

According to Fernando Columbus, as a child, Christopher studied in Pavia, subject to the Milanese dukes, as well as at one time Genoa. But this information is not confirmed, and, most likely, the future admiral could study at one of the schools in the suburb of St. Stephen or was simply self-taught. Among the recordings made by him, there is almost nothing written in Italian. He wrote in Castilian, which later became known as Spanish. He spoke for many years in maritime jargon, which arose in the ports of the Mediterranean Sea from a mixture of Catalan, Castilian, Italian and other languages. Since Columbus did not write mother tongue, even when he sent letters to his compatriots, there are grounds for different hypotheses. It is natural to assume that those who did not write in their native language could be illiterate in their youth. And the fact that he wrote in another language in the Iberian Peninsula has nothing to do with his youth. Perhaps he learned to write (and, perhaps, read) in Spanish only at a mature age, when he came to the Iberian Peninsula.

Referring to his father's papers, Fernando Columbus notes that the future admiral went to sea at the age of 14. In those years, Christopher Columbus was hardly just a sailor; his father could send him as a trading assistant to neighboring cities, by sea and by land. The admiral himself, speaking of his youth, did not specify where and how he studied. Here is an excerpt from his letter to the King and Queen of Spain, written in 1501: “From a young age I went to sea and continue to swim to this day. The art of navigation pushes those who practice it to the knowledge and secrets of this world. 40 years have passed, and I have been everywhere where you can swim ... It turned out that our Lord is supportive of my desires ... He gave me knowledge of navigation, armed me with the sciences - astronomy, geometry, arithmetic. He taught me to understand and draw the earth, and on it are cities, mountains, rivers, islands and ports, each in its place.

So, in 1501, Columbus had already been swimming for 40 years, which means that for him, marine life began in 1461, that is, when he was 10 years old. It is possible that Columbus rounded the numbers, but, generally speaking, it happened that children at this age served as cabin boys.

There are several other accounts of Columbus' occupations when he was in his early 20s. Notarial deeds found in Italy say that at that time he was a companion of his father. There was a written testimony of one of the friends of Domenico Colombo; judging by it, the children of Domenico - Christopher and Bartolomeo - "lived in trade." It has been established that the future admiral visited about. Chios (apparently, in the mid-70s), where the Genoese trading houses Centurione and Negro were doing business. Columbus himself later more than once commemorated the Chios mastic - the resin of mastic trees and shrubs, one of the main articles of trade in Chios. Mastic was used in medicine as an antiseptic, thrown into jugs to sweeten water, used as chewing gum (it is still used for this purpose).

Judging by the materials of Fernando Columbus, his father visited the Maghreb coast. This, in particular, is evidenced by the letter of the admiral quoted by Fernando Columbus, sent in 1495 to the king and queen of Spain: “It happened that King Reinel, whom the Lord took away (Rene, Count of Provence and King of Naples, who died in 1480 - B.C.) , sent me to Tunisia to capture the galley Fernandina. I stood at Fr. San Pietro, near Sardinia, and I was informed that along with this galley there were two more ships and a carrack (heavy vessel. - B.C.). My people were alarmed, they decided to stop the campaign, return to Marseilles, take another ship and people with them. I saw that I could not break their will in any way and pretended to agree with them. Moving the compass needle, I raised the sails in the evening. At dawn the next day, we were at metro Cartagena ... ".

There is an obvious absurdity in the letter. It is impossible to sail 160 nautical miles overnight from San Pietro to Cape Cartagena in the depths of the Gulf of Tunis. In addition, it is necessary to go around a dangerous section of the coast with underwater rocks near Cape Farina. Thus, from the very beginning, this letter can be attributed to embellishments, of which there are many in the books of Fernando Columbus and Las Casas, who repeated it. But there are researchers who view the text of the letter differently. They say that, setting out in a letter the events of the 70s, that is, 20 years ago, Columbus could make a mistake. Let's say his ship left San Pietro not at night, but during the day. Otherwise, the story of the Fernandina galley could be true; it could have happened in 1473 or 1475, as, for example, R. Caddeo, the Italian commentator on the book of Fernando Columbus, believes.

Let us now turn to the story of Fernando Columbus about how the future admiral arrived in Portugal. According to the son of the admiral, his father took part in the expedition of a certain young Columbus, namesake, corsair in the French service, who attacked the Venetian galleys near Cape San Vicente (the southwestern tip of Portugal). In a heavy battle, the ship on which Christopher Columbus was located was set on fire, the crew was forced to leave it, and the future admiral, a good swimmer, reached the shore, grabbing the oar.

Many refuse to believe this story. W. Irving, an American writer, author of the biography of Columbus, cautiously called the story "not entirely reliable", and G. Harris, author of studies on Columbus, who wrote in late XIX c., claimed that it was all just a "fable". In any case, it has been established that there were two major naval battles near Cape San Vicente - in 1476 and 1485. The battle that Fernando Columbus describes took place in 1485, that is, when Christopher Columbus was on the Iberian Peninsula for a long time. But it is possible that he participated in the first battle, in 1476, protecting the Genoese galleys from French pirates (rather than fighting in their ranks).

Is it worth accepting the stories of Fernando Columbus for the truth, or at least consider that, being mistaken in particulars, he generally correctly described the sea adventures of his father in his youth? The stories of Fernando Columbus do not fit with the data about the admiral collected in the archives of the Genoese notaries, before whom he acted as a witness in property cases. If we assume that Columbus was piracy, commanding the corsairs of King Rene, then it can hardly be argued that he was still young in the first half of the 70s, that his date of birth was 1451. It is doubtful that experienced Marseille sailors had a young Genoese captain . But then it is not necessary to believe Fernando Columbus when he writes that his father turned gray at the age of 30. Suppose that the future admiral was much older than he said. Then it turns out that the archival information generally refers to some other Columbus, especially since he had enough namesakes.

In particular, V. Blasco Ibanez (1867–1928), a Spanish writer who dedicated one of his novels to Columbus, tried to substantiate this version.

According to Ibáñez, Columbus was a "mysterious figure", and it is possible that this man, who appeared in the court circles of Spain and Portugal in the 70s and 80s, was not who he claimed to be. A sailor who called himself a Genoese could be anyone in the past - a pirate, a slave trader. “And at this time, which was the time of the reorganization of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, people who hid their true origin and those who changed their name were a great multitude. According to archival records of Genoese notaries, he was just a petty agent of local merchants. However, in Castilian he wrote "excellently, with the expressiveness and freshness characteristic of born poets" (Columbus had verses of religious content). “And if,” Ibanez continued, “Cristoforo Colombo, who lived in Genoa, could be called in 1473, having a birth of over 20 years, only an innkeeper and woolen (only the last,“ lanerio ”- B.C.), if he never did not go on board the ship and did not learn anything of what later Cristobal Colon proved to be quite knowledgeable, then how the hell did he manage to turn into an experienced sailor and become an educated person for that ultimate short term, which separates him from a call to the Genoese notaries until the appearance at the Portuguese court of the experienced navigator Colon?

In fact, the writer raised several questions related to the origin of Columbus and his activities. First, Ibáñez doubted the Genoese origin of the admiral. Secondly, he saw a contradiction between the age attributed to Columbus and his education, in particular knowledge of navigation. And, finally, Ibanez was ready to consider Columbus a pirate, based on the situation with which his appearance in the Iberian Peninsula was associated.

Let us assume that Columbus was not a Genoese. At the same time, many of the testimonies of contemporaries, including those who knew the admiral in his youth, will have to be discarded. We must ignore the fact that his relatives are known, including his mother, father, brother Bartolomeo, who helped the admiral in the West Indies. We must discard the testament of Columbus, where he speaks of the Genoese homeland, of Genoese merchants. Perhaps there will be too many documents that will have to be discarded in order to turn Columbus into a "mysterious figure" without a clan or tribe.

His education, his knowledge of navigation, of course, was not acquired in a short time. At the same time, the breadth of his knowledge was not so great as to explain it, say, by university training. Columbus could have learned sailing in his youth, on coastal voyages off the Ligurian coast. He could continue his studies, and not only seafaring, by marrying Philip Moniz (Moniz in Portuguese) in Portugal, getting into a family associated with life by the sea. It is not known when Columbus proposed his plans to Lisbon, although he himself claimed before his death that he had been getting his way in Portugal for 14 years. There is no confirmation of this information, and we can only say that, having arrived in Portugal, a sailor, even an experienced one, was unlikely to immediately enter circles close to the royal court. In a word, there is no reason to commemorate the "extremely short period" between the departure of Columbus from Genoa and his problematic "appearance at the royal court."

As for the excellent Castilian language of Columbus, during his lifetime no one considered his language as evidence of a Castilian or Iberian origin in general. It is known that oral speech Columba betrayed him as a foreigner. Ibanez did not judge by reviews of Columbus's speech, but by his poems, by records, moreover, later, made after many years of being in Portuguese and Spanish society. By this time, Columbus could well master the Castilian written language. There are many writers and poets who have an excellent command of non-native languages and write in them, from Latin to modern ones.

Finally, the likelihood that Christopher Columbus was a pirate can only be judged from the materials provided by Fernando Columbus and Las Casas, the latter simply repeating the former without referring to it. There was and is no other data of this kind, and therefore there is no point in making a final decision. The same can be said about the likelihood of participation of Christopher Columbus - as Ibanez writes - in the trade in black or white slaves. The future admiral sailed to the shores of West Africa, where there was a slave trade, but it is not known what he did there. However, he treated the slave trade, like his contemporaries - the Spaniards and Italians - as an ordinary phenomenon, and later, having discovered the New World, he suggested that the Spanish kings see their slaves in the Indians.

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Based on information that can be verified from archival materials, Columbus appeared in Portugal no earlier than 1473. In August of this year, he was still a witness to the property transaction of his parents in Savona, which was subordinate to the Genoese. He lived in Lisbon and on the Madeira Islands, owned by the Portuguese, until 1485 or 1486. From Portugal and the Madeira Islands, he sailed more than once, including to West Africa, to the countries of the North Atlantic and to his home in Genoa.

The appearance of the future admiral in Portugal was, of course, connected with the decline of Western European trade in the East due to Turkish conquests. Genoese sailors were looking for a new field for their activities. Italy XIV-XVI centuries. gave rise to numerous emigrants. Its artisans created silk-weaving production in France, its architects built palaces and temples in the Russian state. In Portugal, the bulk of emigrants were sailors, small merchants and artisans, hired soldiers who left Italy, as defeated or impoverished clans stopped paying them. Many of the commercial operations of the Genoese abroad were managed by the Banco di San Giorgio. It was a big bank without big bankers, a lending institution with middle-class depositors. 10 thousand depositors, who usually received 3% per annum, saw the bank as a help in ordinary trade and handicraft activities. But there were also wealthy Italians in the Iberian Peninsula, businessmen and bankers, in particular in Seville and Cadiz. They participated in the financing of the overseas enterprises of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, traded with Morocco, etc.

Portugal with its plains, low hills south of the river. Tajo, the estuary of the river where Lisbon stands - all this had a different appearance than the mountainous Liguria, the birthplace of Columbus. But Portugal, like Genoa, was a country of Latin culture. An Italian in a relatively short time could learn to understand the language of the locals. Like their Spaniard neighbors, they were poorer than the Italians, worse dressed, more dependent on their rulers, especially in the North, where there were no such traditions of fighting the conquering Moors (Arabs and Berbers) as in the South. In Portugal, as in Spain, there were no large cities. Lisbon was half the size of Genoa in terms of population. On the other hand, a young sailor, versed in trade, could, apparently, find a job sooner.

By the time Columbus arrived in Lisbon, more than 200 years had passed since Portugal had freed itself from the Moors. The reconquista, the "reconquest" of lost lands, gave rise to a large layer of knights. Having rid the country of the Moors, they were determined to continue profitable conquests, however, already outside the kingdom - in Africa, on the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, wherever possible. This had to be done with an eye on the neighbors in the Iberian Peninsula - Castile and Leon. These kingdoms, which together with Aragon formed Spain, reluctantly recognized the independence of little Portugal. In 1479, that is, already during the stay of Columbus in the Iberian Peninsula, another war with Castile ended.

Portugal lost in comparison with other Western European countries in terms of the development of industry and crafts. She exported cork and wine to London and Hamburg, imported cloth and metal products. For overseas colonization, the Lisbon court willingly recruited nobles from other European countries. Among them were the Italians Perestrello, relatives of Columbus's wife.

Las Casas wrote that the future admiral, a good cartographer and calligrapher, earned his living from time to time in Portugal by making geographical maps. Trading was his other occupation. The only document relating to the activities of Columbus in Portugal is the testimony of the future admiral before a notary in Genoa that in 1478 he bought sugar in Madeira on behalf of one of the Genoese merchants. In his will of 1506, apparently wishing to pay off old debts, Columbus named the persons to whom his heirs were to transfer various sums of money. Among these persons there were no sailors or scientists capable of being interested in geographical maps. It was about the families of several Genoese (who lived in Lisbon for some time) - businessmen and one official - as well as an unknown "Jew who lived at the gates of the Lisbon ghetto."

According to the story of Fernando Columbus, the future admiral, always zealously fulfilling his religious duty, went to Lisbon to listen to the service in the chapel of the monastery of All Saints. The monastery belonged to the knightly order of Santiago. At one time, only knights lived there, then it became a refuge for noble wives and widows, and at the same time - a boarding house for noble maidens. Apparently, not only Christian duties pushed the young Columbus to visit the chapel at the monastery, since he soon offered his hand and heart to one of the pupils of the boarding house, Filipe Moniz, who agreed with him.

Little is known about Columbus' wife. She, and that she died during his lifetime, is mentioned in the admiral's early will (1505). There he asks to serve masses for the repose of the soul for himself, for his father, mother and wife. Her name appears only in 1523 in another will, Diego Columbus, the eldest and legitimate son of the admiral. Diego Columbus writes about his father and mother, Philippe Moniz, his "lawful wife, whose remains lie in the Carmelite monastery in Lisbon."

It is impossible to look for documents or tombstones in the Carmelite monastery: the earthquake of 1755 completely destroyed this monastery and its cemetery. There is, however, a detail about Philip from Fernando Columbus, who claims that her father was Pietro Perestrelo (the surname was written differently, more often - Perestrello), the captain, that is, the governor, of the island of Porto Santo in the Madeira archipelago. In fact, the captain of the island was Bartolomeu Perestrello; several of his children are known, and Filipe is not among them. Thus, the statement of Fernando Columbus makes us once again wonder how true his information is in general. But family relations between Filipe and Perestrello still existed. The fact is that the middle name of Filipe - Moniz - was worn by another noble family, from which Bartolomeu Perestrello's wife came out. Therefore, one can believe Fernando Columbus when he writes that his father lived for some time with his relatives in Madeira and Porto Santo.

The Perestrello family, which became related to Moniz, had little income from Porto Santo. The once uninhabited island of 40 sq. km was colonized under Prince Henry the Navigator - the organizer of the overseas expansion of Portugal in the early and middle of the 15th century. It turned out that farming on the island is not easy. Under his first captain, rabbits were brought in, which bred and began to devour everything they could, ruining the colonists.

Columbus, apparently, married a dowry. By origin, he was not equal to his wife, but their marriage was acceptable to others, since both were poor. In public, Columbus had no reason to remember his origin, and marriage allowed him, the son of an unknown artisan, to establish contact with the Portuguese Nobility, enter previously inaccessible circles, and, on occasion, get to the Lisbon court. For some time, perhaps, they managed to live quietly on the Madeira Islands, doing trade, reading books, listening to the stories of the Portuguese colonists about the Atlantic Ocean.

They had something to tell the young Italian. For example, that winds and currents from the unknown West bring from time to time to Madeira pieces of wood, processed by a human hand. In the Azores, which also belonged to the Portuguese, pine trunks of outlandish species washed up on the shores. Once on about. Flores, the most distant of the Azores, the most distant to the West, the ocean carried the bodies of two people, whose features resembled Asians and the whole appearance was "non-Christian". Portuguese sailors used geographical maps, on which a mass of large and small islands was drawn in an unknown ocean. Among them was the wealthy Antilia mentioned by Aristotle. The inhabitants of the Azores may have heard of the traditions of their Atlantic neighbors, the Irish. Traditions said that in the West lies the island of happiness O "Brazil. From the shores of Ireland, mirages could be observed that painted pictures of distant lands.

The sun, having worked hard during the day, left people every evening and hid in the West. One must think that the countries that lay there were worthy of a beautiful luminary. Here was the explanation that, according to the beliefs of many peoples, the souls of the dead flew just to the West. It was difficult for a mere mortal to get there due to the fact that it was necessary to overcome the expanses of the seas and oceans. Away from people, souls tasted eternal bliss. Depending on the traditions and inclinations of the storytellers, bliss could be feasts, the love of written beauties, both taken together.

It is unlikely that Columbus remained near his young wife for a long time. One voyage followed another. From the logbook of the first trip to the New World, it follows that Columbus "saw the entire Levant and the West, what is called the northern road, that is, England ...". Once, writes Fernando Columbus, my father led an expedition of two ships sailing from Madeira to Lisbon.

Fernando Columbus quoted an excerpt from a later lost manuscript of his father: “In February 1477, I sailed 100 leagues beyond the island of Tiele, the southern part of which lies 73 ° from the equator, and not 63 °, as some say ... This island is no smaller than England , and the English go there with goods, especially from Bristol. When I was there, the sea did not freeze, and the tides were so great that in some places they reached 26 cubits ... ". The message taken literally looks implausible, but the textual research of R. Caddeo, a commentator on the book of Fernando Columbus, shows that the situation is not so simple. Considering the handwriting of Christopher Columbus, when writing from the original, his son could make a mistake, replace one word with another. The original could have the following beginning: "In February 1477, I sailed to another island of Thiele, which has 100 leagues in circumference ...".

At 71 ° north latitude lies the island of Jan Mayen (380 sq. Km), discovered in the 17th century, and 63 ° passes fifty kilometers south of Iceland, which in those days was called both Tiele and Thule. It suggests that Columbus could have visited both islands. The tides off the coast of Iceland are high, although less than what Columbus says. It happens that ships approach Jan Mayen on ice-free water.

Norwegian researcher Thor Heyerdahl in 1995 in an interview with the newspaper Aftenposten (Oslo) said that, according to Danish archives, in 1477 a Portuguese-Danish expedition was looking for a way across the Atlantic to North India. The expedition, where Columbus was a cartographer, visited Greenland and Baffin Island, that is, relatively close to the American mainland.

In the journal of the first trip, Columbus says that he sailed in the southern latitudes, saw the Pepper Coast (modern Liberia). He notes that in Guinea, due to linguistic differences, people do not understand each other, which cannot be said about the New World, where languages are part of a single family. The future admiral, according to him, visited Santo Georges da Mina (modern Elmina). The local fort was one of the first built by the Portuguese on the shores of West Africa. It was built around 1481-1482, when nine ships arrived from Lisbon with stone and lime. Most likely, Columbus was there just in those years.

The fort received its name - El Mina, that is, mine, mine - for the same reason as the entire Gold Coast, modern Ghana. Gold is still mined in the southern regions of the country. What did Columbus do in Elmina? Served on a ship, exchanged gold, slaves, ivory for European goods? Little has been preserved there from Portuguese times: only the central part of the fort, a citadel, covered with rows of later fortifications built by the Dutch and the British. Previously, tropical forests approached the shore. They were brought together, and logs for export are now being transported to the coast from the hinterland. Africa gives Europe the remains of the forests that Columbus could once admire.

Apparently, while in Portugal and its possessions, the future admiral read a lot, which helped him to be convinced of the possibility of opening a western route to India.

In letters of 1498 and 1503 sent to the king and queen of Spain, the admiral set out in detail his geographical ideas that had developed 15–20 years before. Referring to Ptolemy, as well as to the medieval theologian and geographer P. d "Alya, he wrote that the earth as a whole is spherical. This kind of statement at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries did not look heretical, although at the beginning of the 14th century they were sent for him to fire. The earth is small, Columbus continued. One of the books of the prophet Ezra, not recognized as canonical, proceeds from the fact that six-sevenths of the earth's surface is firmament, and only one-seventh is water. Therefore, the ocean washing the shores of Europe cannot be wide, what Aristotle wrote about. The same Aristotle, together with the Arab philosopher Averroes (XII century), believed that south of the celestial equator is an elevated part of the Earth. Being elevated, it aspires to heaven, and therefore noble. Bacon) concluded that an earthly paradise is located in these parts.

There is good reason to believe that Columbus conceived the journey to the West while in Portugal and its dominions. First of all, he himself said so later in letters to the king and queen of Spain, saying that for many years he had sought support for his plans from the Lisbon court. Fernando Columbus and Las Casas added that the future admiral, while in Portugal, entered into correspondence with the elderly Florentine cosmographer and astronomer P. Toscanelli. He approved his plans and sent him a copy of the world map made for the King of Portugal.

Correspondence with Toscanelli and sending them maps to Portugal are called into question by historians. It is claimed that Toscanelli was not at all a supporter of the expedition across the Atlantic Ocean. There is only a copy (copied by Columbus) of his letter, which says that from Lisbon "to the great and magnificent city of Kinsai" (Chinese Hangzhou) - 26 times 250 miles, i.e. 6.5 thousand miles. Let's take the old Roman mile of 1481 m and get the indicated distance in kilometers - 9.6 thousand. In reality, from Lisbon to Hangzhou, west in a straight line, not 9.6, but over 20 thousand km, i.e. more than once more.

The author of the letter attributed to Toscanelli had no true idea of the size of the globe, and the sailor Columbus would have been mistaken in believing him. The English writer R. Sabatini (1875–1950) was ready to make a mistake, or rather pretended to be wrong. In the novel Columbus, he tells, captivating the reader with intrigue, how the Venetians, the eternal enemies of Genoa, stole Toscanelli's map from the future admiral. With the help of L. Santangel, treasurer of Spain and friend of Columbus, a group of Spaniards attacked the Venetians, and the map was returned to its owner. Sabatini did not write that the gang of kidnappers would have done Columbus a favor if they had kept the map with all its errors. It is difficult to say whether Columbus referred to the "map of Toscanelli" when negotiating with the Portuguese. Of course, the Florentine had authority, and it was desirable to use it in order to be heard at the Portuguese or Spanish court. "Map of Toscanelli" Columbus, who knew a lot about cartography, could attach to his collection of similar documents, which he probably had no less than the Florentine. And what did these cards mean in comparison with other information? As Las Casas reported, there were rumors in Madeira that one navigator there, before his death, gave the future admiral the most valuable information about navigation in the waters of the Central and South Atlantic. Columbus also had other sources, since his brother Bartolomeo was, like him, a cartographer.

Little is known about Columbus' contacts with the Portuguese court. The admiral himself mentioned them briefly in his letters, arguing that the Lord closed the eyes of the Portuguese king and did not allow him to evaluate the project of travel to the West. Fernando Columbus and Las Casas reported a number of details, partly confirmed by a Portuguese chronicler of the 16th century. The essence of the matter is that a meeting was held at the court with the participation of the Bishop of Ceuta, which rejected the project of Columbus. Most likely, Fernando Columbus and the Portuguese chronicler retold the various opinions that went around in court circles. Some at the Lisbon court felt that long-distance expeditions were too onerous and that expansion should be limited to nearby African territories. But the majority believed that it was best to continue the expeditions in the chosen direction, that is, along the West African coast. Apparently, it was taken into account that these expeditions had already justified the costs, and the income from the projected trip to the West was problematic.

Map of the voyages of Columbus

In 1485 or 1486 Columbus left Portugal. Of course, he was willing to try his luck with his project elsewhere. Spain was nearby, and her choice was clear. In addition, there is reason to believe that the financial situation of Columbus in the mid-80s became difficult. It has already been said that he owed money to the Genoese who settled in Lisbon. The debts were not paid (as can be seen from the admiral's will), and prosecution could not be ruled out.

Since Columbus arrived in Spain without a wife, accompanied, as Fernando Columbus claimed, by his young son Diego, it would seem that by this time Filipe Moniz was not alive. But a draft of the admiral's letter was found, where he, speaking about his relationship with the king and queen of Spain, wrote that "he came from afar to serve these sovereigns, leaving his wife and children, whom he never saw because of this." As already mentioned, Filipe Moniz died during the life of the admiral, before 1505. Apparently, the same can be said about her children (except Diego), since there is no mention of them in the wills of Columbus, although other relatives are mentioned.

The northern and eastern regions of Spain were liberated from the Moors before the 12th century, and in the time of Columbus it was no longer possible to say, as before, that Africa begins beyond the Pyrenees. The Arabs lost the Guadalquivir Valley in the south, in Andalusia, where Columbus moved. But they still held the Emirate of Granada - the Andalusian mountains and the Mediterranean coast adjacent to them. The war with Granada dragged on from 1481.

The Reconquista contributed to the unification of Spain. Castile and Aragon drew closer, the positions of the Catholic Church, which raised the Spaniards to war against the Muslims, strengthened. The punitive functions of the Inquisition, which ensured common faith, were expanded. The creation of a single state was outlined in 1469, when Isabella, the future queen of Castile and Leon, and Ferdinand, who became king of Aragon ten years later, owned, in addition, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands, were married. Like the Portuguese kings, Ferdinand and Isabella willingly attracted foreigners to their country. Spain was assisted in the war with the Moors by the knights of other European countries, foreign artisans and merchants, including the Genoese, settled in the cities.

The highest nobility rules Spain along with the king and queen. But gradually the court took over the hands of many noble lords. Isabella gave them new titles, introduced them to the royal retinue. Having turned into courtiers, they rarely visited their castles and, thereby, somehow lost power over them. The court dressed up, arranged holidays, but was afraid of the queen. This tall and portly blonde was known for her moral virtues, unlike the king, who was faithful to her only when he was literally in her field of vision.

Not all the grandees - the highest nobility - followed the lead of Ferdinand and Isabella. In some places, the grandees kept their court, hidalgos, the lowest stratum of the nobility, united around them. There were many such hidalgos, who had "nothing but honor", as well as wealthy nobles in the cities. The nobles fought for the king and queen, were their vassals. But their relationship with royalty was determined by the law, and deviation from it could be the subject of legal proceedings. In 1513, after the death of Columbus, his son Diego considered that the rights granted to his father had been violated. A judicial investigation was launched against the Spanish treasury. Diego Columbus lost the process, although some of his privileges were later confirmed.

The future admiral saw that the fate of his project depended on the royal court, which, due to the war with the Moors, most often stayed in Andalusia. Columbus also settled there, earning a living by selling printed books. Free time, one must think, he devoted to his project, and already in the winter of 1486-1487. in Salamanca, a university city, a meeting of dignitaries dedicated to him was held. Columbus's proposals were rejected, but from May 1487 he began to receive financial assistance from the Spanish treasury, which was rather irregular.

One way or another, a year and a half after arriving in Spain, the future admiral managed to somehow arrange his life, and most importantly, he managed to get to the court, get closer to those on whom the overseas expedition depended. True, a lot of water flowed under the bridge before this expedition took place.

How the Genoese sailor got to the royal court can only be judged speculatively. Having become a bookseller, Columbus encountered enlightened people, including the clergy. He himself later wrote that in Spain for seven years his plans were considered unrealizable, and only one person believed in him and helped him - the monk A. de Marchena. The name Marchena was also mentioned by Fernando Columbus, confusing him, however, with another monk. Marchena, according to Fernando Columbus, soon after the arrival of the future admiral in Spain, informed influential people about him. It is difficult to say with whom Marchena was associated, a literate man, who is known to have understood astronomy. In any case, the assumption looks convincing that it was he who helped Columbus pave the way to Salamanca.

The meeting dedicated to Columbus was held in Salamanca not because there was a university, one of the first in Europe. He spent the winter of 1486-1487 in this city. the royal court, which agreed to consultations about the plans of the future admiral. The composition of the meeting participants is partially known. These were representatives of the court and clergy, including Cardinal P.G. de Mendoza. They unanimously rejected the plan of Columbus, but, apparently, their confidence in their rightness was not great. A few years later, former participants in the Salamanca meeting, including Mendoza, bowed to the side of Columbus, helped (or did not interfere) with his expedition.

Some details about the discussion in Salamanca were given by Fernando Columbus. According to him, supporters of ossified church canons gathered there. For them, the Earth was flat, and the main argument put forward against the future admiral was: if the Earth were a ball, people would walk upside down. The testimony of Fernando Columbus is hardly worth rejecting entirely. Of course, the desire to maintain a good memory of his father led him far, but there is other evidence that indirectly confirms his correctness. A few years later, at a similar meeting near Granada, one of the participants, a priest, had, as he wrote, to advise Mendoza not to look for arguments against Columbus in theology. Mendoza, apparently, heeded the advice, and thus the church in his person tacitly recognized the idea of the sphericity of the Earth, of the possibility, having gone west from the European shores, to reach India, China and other eastern countries.

The arguments of the opponents of the expedition, or those who proposed to postpone it for some time, apparently, were not limited to talking about walking upside down. The participants in the meeting in Salamanca knew that long-distance travel required money and a favorable political climate, which could only develop after the war with the Moors. Spain, giving strength to the fight against Islam, could not understand the organization of an expedition to conquer unknown lands. In turn, Columbus could put forward arguments about the profitability of an overseas expedition, as he did, in particular, in letters to the treasurers of Spain, L. de Santangel and G. Sanchez, sent after returning from the New World (distant countries will give gold, spices and slaves). The arguments in these letters hardly differed markedly from what Columbus was able to say in Salamanca.

After Salamanca, Columbus had to wait for the end of the war with the Moors, while maintaining contacts with the Spanish court. There, apparently, they were ready to look graciously at the navigator who offered a tempting project.

Judging by the testimony of contemporaries, Isabella treated the plans of the future admiral with more favor than her husband. Ferdinand's restraint can be explained by the sobriety of his mind, and the queen's disposition can be explained by her personal sympathy. But above all, that was not the point. On the Spanish throne, Ferdinand remained king of Aragon, Isabella - queen of Castile. Owning Catalonia - a neighbor of France - Sicily, the Balearic Islands, Aragon focused on communications with the Mediterranean basin. For Castile, these connections played a lesser role. The Castilian nobility, more than the Aragonese, was involved in the wars with the Moors, and in the future they would need a new field for expansion, an expedition across the ocean. In addition to the nobles, sailors, shipowners, merchants could be involved in them. The end of the war with Granada was not far off, and Isabella had to think about the future.

To maintain contact with the Spanish court, Columbus followed him. The court did not have a permanent residence, and therefore Spain did not have a capital. Madrid was a third-rate city, the courtyard was the headquarters of the army, most often close to the theater of operations in Andalusia. True, the court could not be permanently located in the South, since the same cities could not bear the costs of the stay of the crowned persons with their retinues for a long time. For this and other reasons - for example, to escape epidemics - the court traveled from time to time to the provinces.

In May 1487, Columbus ended up in Cordoba, in August - in Malaga, then - again in Cordoba. Traveling through towns and villages gave, perhaps, no less food for thought than acquaintance with the royal court.

Andalusia, which Columbus knew best, was a fertile land. To the north, behind olive groves and vineyards, mountains rose where snow lay for months. In the south, in the warmest region of Europe, there were wild palm trees. But not for everyone this region was a paradise. On the estates in the fields, as in Portugal, worked slaves brought from Africa, captured in wars with the Moors. Peasants huddled in miserable huts. Pilgrims and beggars moved from city to city, preferring to move in groups, since the roads were not safe. Faith supported those who walked, knocking down their legs, both in the heat and in the cold, in order to find shelter in the next monastery rooming house. There were many monasteries and churches. Their income was enough to help the pilgrims and the poor, and at the same time pay off the local lords, half-patrons, half-robbers.

The authorities tried to clear the roads from gangs of robbers, to take control of irrepressible seniors. Ferdinand and Isabella turned to the experience of the Germandad (“brotherhoods”), as the unions of cities and peasant communities, created for self-defense, were called. Saint Germandada was formed, where the peasants had to send one cavalryman from one hundred households. St. Hermandad, the bulwark of royal power, was feared by both the right and the guilty. She helped destroy some of the castles that were not needed to protect against external enemies. And on the roads, seeing her detachments in white camisoles and blue berets, travelers hurried to take refuge somewhere.

The cities of Andalusia, where Columbus lived, resembled Genoa in their customs. In his homeland, as already mentioned, the noble clans staged bloody clashes. Their cause was most often the struggle for power, and not the romantic misadventures of the Montagues and the Capulets. In the Andalusian cities, for the same reasons, the clans of Guzman, Ponce de Leon, Aguilar, and others were at enmity. The clans drew vassals, retired soldiers, simply robbers from the main road into their gangs (they were called in Spanish - bandas). The blood of townspeople and villagers flowed, churches burned, entire regions were ruined.

Observing life in Spain, Columbus had to think. If the court agreed with his plans, he was to go on a long voyage with a crew of Castilians. The nobles were supposed to stand at the head of future overseas possessions, bring the orders of their homeland there. The difference could only be in the level of civilization and in the fact that in foreign countries the hands of the nobles would be untied, there would be no control over them - neither the church, nor the king, nor St. Germanada. Columbus encountered a similar situation in Elmina, Portugal, where uprising after uprising was going on. Perhaps he had more than his own safety and career in mind when he later sought broad military and civil powers, the title of Viceroy in the lands to be discovered.

About the life of Columbus for four or five years after the Salamanca meeting, the same meager information has been preserved as about previous years. It is known, however, that important events for him took place at this time. Among archival documents, a copy of the charter sent to Columbus by João II, King of Portugal, in March 1488 was found. According to the charter, the king, in response to a request from Columbus, allowed him to return to Portugal and promised not to prosecute him. The letter did not contain any information about the purpose of the stay in Portugal. This goal could be related to the personal life of Columbus or his plans for an overseas trip, or maybe both. It is possible that the permission was issued on the occasion of the death of his wife. Perhaps it was about negotiations with the Lisbon court, about which there are deaf mentions in Columbus's letters to Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as about the contacts of the future admiral with England and France.

At the end of 1487, in Cordoba, Columbus became close to Beatrice Henriques de Arana, a girl from a local poor family. In August of the following year, Beatrice gave birth to a son, Fernando. Perhaps at the same time Columbus visited Portugal and took his legitimate son Diego to Spain. As a father, he always took care of both children and apparently maintained good relations with Beatrice's relatives, judging by the fact that her brother later commanded a ship in the admiral's squadron. Maybe the difficult material conditions in which Columbus lived before leaving for the New World prevented the marriage with Beatrice, or maybe his wife was still alive? But, most likely, the reason was different. Beatrice was not a noblewoman, and marriage to her could prevent Columbus from becoming on an equal footing with the Spanish courtiers. This could have dealt a blow to the plans that the future admiral had championed at court. As for extramarital affairs, among the Spanish nobles in those days it could have an almost legal connotation. No one condemned Columbus, except for himself. In his will, he asked Diego, as heir, to provide Beatrice with a "decent life" and thereby "remove a great burden" from his soul.

A stay in Portugal did not help Columbus' plans. In addition, the project of a western route to India became of little promise for Lisbon from December 1488, when B. Dias returned to Europe from a trip along the African coast. He had just rounded southern Africa and walked 60 miles across the bay. Algoa, where Port Elizabeth now stands. The coast went to the northeast, and the Portuguese returned only because of the discontent of the crew. Negotiations on the western path lost their meaning when the eastern one promised quick benefits.

In Spain, the prospects for Columbus's voyage were still uncertain. Ferdinand and Isabella were preparing for the siege of the fortress of Baza, which covered the approaches to Granada from the east. In the autumn of 1489, floods began, famine came. This did not prevent the royal troops from proceeding to destroy the crops around Granada in order to deprive the Moors of food supplies. The base was captured, and the victory was celebrated for a long time. Then they prepared the wedding of the eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella with the Portuguese prince. The wedding was celebrated in April 1490 with balls, tournaments and torchlight processions.

No one thought about Columbus, and after May 1489 (the date of the call to court, mentioned in the archives), he apparently lost the material support of Ferdinand and Isabella. A letter was found from L. de la Cerda, Duke of Medina-Celi, who informed Cardinal Mendoza that he had delayed the departure of Columbus to France and gave him shelter in his possessions for two years, apparently from the end of 1489. According to the Duke, he was ready to put under the command of Columbus, three or four ships, but believed that it would be better if the trip was organized by Ferdinand and Isabella. Most likely, the duke was afraid of royal disfavor. He could be convinced more than once that the monarchs wanted to limit the independence of the giants, who were able to organize large expeditions, whether on land or at sea.

Two years spent with the duke in the castle of San Marcos, near Cadiz, could not be wasted. These were, presumably, years of study and preparation for the expedition. From de la Cerda's letter addressed to Mendoza, it followed that the ships for the expedition had in fact already been prepared. It is difficult to admit that Columbus did not take an active part in their equipment. In addition, as Las Casas reported, along with Columbus in the castle of San Marcos was X. de la Cosa, the future cartographer of the New World. It is not surprising that at a meeting with Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of 1491, Columbus appeared, according to the chronicler A. Bernaldes (who personally knew the admiral), with a world map in his hands, which made a favorable impression on the monarchs.

From April 1491, Ferdinand and Isabella were under the walls of the besieged Granada, and from August they were engaged in the construction of the Santa Fe castle near the capital of the Moors. Its construction had an important military and psychological significance: the Moors should have seen in the castle evidence that the Spaniards would not move away from Granada. AT recent months 1491 in the Santa Fe camp, Columbus once again tried to achieve a positive solution to his affairs, and again unsuccessfully. Leaving Santa Fe, he went to Huelva, a seaside Andalusian city, taking his son Diego with him to leave him there with a relative of his wife (her sister's husband).

A dozen kilometers from Huelva, at the confluence of the rivers Tinto and Odiel, the Franciscan monastery of St. Mary Rabida stands to this day; next to it is the port town of Palos. Franciscan monasteries have always been a haven for the poor. So it was in the autumn of 1491, when a man of about forty approached the gates of Rabida and asked the monks for bread and water for the child accompanying him. With the wanderer, who, judging by his speech, was a foreigner, the old monk Juan Perez started talking. The conversation so fascinated the monk that he soon sent for a Palos literate doctor. He could not have imagined that in more than twenty years the story of his meeting with Columbus would have to be recounted to judicial scribes in the course of a lawsuit between the treasury and Diego Columbus, whom he had once met as a child in the monastery courtyard. And the essence of the matter was that then, in Rabida, the doctor and the monk supported Columbus in everything. The monk definitely stated that Columbus was on the right path and offered him his help.

The meeting with Perez brought success to Columbus. The monk, shrewd and determined, was a former confessor to Queen Isabella. He immediately volunteered to send a messenger to Santa Fe to intercede for the future admiral. Two weeks later, the messenger returned with a letter in which Isabella asked Columbus to return to Santa Fe without delay.

St. Mary Rabida helped discover Columbus. Rumor has it that the plaster statue of the Virgin and Child standing there on a silver altar was made in the workshop of St. Evangelist Luke. The monks say otherwise. According to them, the Virgin was sculpted around 1400, Huelva and Palos competed for the statue. The dispute was resolved peacefully: they put the statue in the boat and began to wait where it would be nailed. The boat was washed up on the monastery shore. Since the time of Columbus, St. Maria Rabida has been the patroness of Latin America. Every anniversary of the discovery of the New World, on October 12, bells ring in Latin American capitals. They also commemorate St. Mary Rabid. America keeps the memory of Columbus and the monastery, which became a milestone on his journey across the ocean.

Negotiations with Columbus, begun in Santa Fe, were continued in Granada, captured on January 2, 1492. In the ship's log of the first trip, the admiral wrote that he saw how the royal troops entered Granada, how the flags of Ferdinand and Isabella were raised on the towers of the Alhambra - inner fortresses and palaces of emirs. The last of the emirs, who kissed the hands of the king and queen at the city gates, had been conducting secret negotiations with them since October, urging them to enter the city as soon as possible. Capitulation freed the emir from fear of the mob, who demanded to continue resistance. The common people knew what Spanish rule would be for them. In Baza, Cadiz and Almeria, previously captured by the Spaniards, it was already announced that the population, if they did not want to be accused of conspiracies unknown to anyone, was allowed to go to all four sides.

The clouds were not gathering over the Arabs alone. The Jewish communities of Castile and Aragon still recognized the right to exist. But already the Inquisition burned at the stake the Marranos - newly converted Christians - having found out those who secretly read the Torah or performed the rite of circumcision on newborn boys. In March 1492, the order finally appeared for all Jews to be baptized or to leave Spain. The deadline was named: before the beginning of August of the same year.

During the negotiations, Columbus found that he now had many allies. At a meeting similar to the Salamanca one held in Granada, most of the courtiers and ministers of the church expressed their support for the expedition. The time has come for Columbus to claim what he personally claimed. He asked to be given the nobility, the titles of admiral, governor and viceroy in those countries that he would discover. Of the future income from trade, he would like to receive one-tenth, and he would also like to participate in trading expeditions as a shareholder who bears one-eighth of the costs and receives a corresponding profit. Fernando Columbus claimed that negotiations broke off in February 1492 because the court found his father's demands excessive. The future admiral left the city, but they overtook him on the bridge over the gorge, two leagues from Granada, and returned him to the palace.

In the end, a practical question arose: who would pay for the expedition? The treasury was empty. The contribution received from Granada immediately went to pay off debts. According to Fernando Columbus and Las Casas, Isabella, having believed in the Genoese navigator, declared that she was ready to pawn her jewels. Maybe so, only she had no jewelry. Three years have passed since they were mortgaged to the moneylenders of Valencia and Barcelona. If anyone could now help Columbus, it was not the kings, not the courtiers and not the monks, but those who had capital. That is why a year later, upon his return from the New World, the first recipients of the admiral's letters were the Spanish treasurers, among whom the most significant figure (at least for Columbus) was L. de Santangel.

Santangel, who came from a family of baptized Jews, was a businessman and financier, was the treasurer of St. Hermandada and "escrivano de racion" - secretary of economic affairs in Aragon. His personal wealth was sufficient to lend Columbus over a million maravedis, as can be seen from St. Hermandada's account books. In fact, he seems to have lent much more: 4–4.5 million maravedis, or 17,000 gold florins, each weighing about 3.5 grams. A document about 17 thousand florins was found in the archives of Aragon by a historian of the 17th century. B.L. Archensola.

There is no information about the motives that guided Santangel, lending Columbus personal funds. True, it is known that such people as Santangel in those days received a lot from the Jewish community. Many Jews did not want to be baptized or leave Spain. They knew that they would perish at the hands of the Inquisition, and preferred to renounce their property to the Marranos rather than wait for it to be confiscated. Maybe Santangel hoped to help former fellow believers by transferring money to Columbus? Maybe he hoped that in the distant countries that the Genoese would discover, the Jews would be able to escape from their persecutors?

If you believe only the documents collected by the archivist M.F. de Navarrete, Columbus received 1 million 140 thousand maravedis from Santangel. This amount was later returned to Santangel to a single maravedi by the crown through the treasury of St. Germandada. On April 17, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella signed a capitulation (a letter of commendation), according to which Columbus received all the requested titles and privileges, and two weeks later a “certificate of title award” was signed. At the same time, the city authorities of Palos received an order to hire two ships. Palos became the base for the preparation of the expedition, apparently for the reason that Rabida was nearby, from where the initiative to support Columbus came from. The city was immediately reminded that six years ago he had shown his willfulness by refusing to give ships to the Neapolitan king, an ally of Isabella. Now, as punishment, Palos had to hire two ships for two months and pay their crews for four months. Sailors who wished to take part in the expedition were equated with the crews of warships with the corresponding earnings. The maritime councils of Andalusia were instructed to supply provisions and ammunition to the ships for a moderate fee.

Columbus was allowed to attach a third to two ships, equipped at his own expense. He personally spent half a million maravedis on the expedition, received, in part or in whole, from fellow Italians. This money amounted, according to Las Casas, to one-eighth of the total costs, and, therefore, the whole amount still equaled, in round numbers, 4 million maravedis.

The sailors of Palos, experienced people, were in no hurry to be recruited to sail to the ends of the world, from where no one had ever returned. The authorities foresaw this, and therefore it was decided to use the usual means, which was used not only in Spain, to provide the fleet with working hands. It was announced that the criminals in prisons would be released by going across the ocean. One of them, sentenced to death in Palos for murder, did not have to be persuaded for long. But the rest, apparently, were not enough to complete the ships of Columbus.

The situation changed in June 1492, when M.A. returned to Paloi from a voyage. Pinson, an experienced sailor and local shipowner. He took the side of Columbus and volunteered to go with him to the ocean. Pinson was trusted in Palos and the surrounding areas; with his help, 90 people needed for the expedition were recruited. At the end of July, all three ships - "St. Maria", "Pinta" and "Nina" - were ready. From Palos they were rowed to the Saltes Shoal at the mouth of the Tingo.

At dawn on August 3, 1492, the ships weighed anchor. Ahead, the clear waves of the ocean rolled behind the muddy Tinto River. The day before, on August 2, the term for the stay of Jews in Spain had expired. Perhaps, having gone out to the open sea, Columbus saw the last ships taking away the exiles. The expedition of Columbus was supposed to enrich Spain, but before his eyes the country was impoverished, losing artisans, merchants, and literate citizens.

* * *

There are no instructions concerning the expedition in the Spanish archives. But they most likely existed, given the attention that Columbus was surrounded by, in particular the written orders given to the authorities of Palos and those responsible for the weapons and provisions depots that supplied the admiral. You can also try to restore in general terms the royal commands from other documents. In the introductory part of the ship's journal, which has been preserved in an abridged form, the admiral wrote that after the fall of Granada, he talked with Ferdinand and Isabella "about the lands of India", about the "great khan", that is, about the Mongol ruler of China. As a result of the conversation (or conversations), the admiral was instructed "to see these rulers, peoples and lands, their location and everything in general, and also to study the method of their conversion to our holy faith."

Before the expedition, thus, intelligence and missionary goals were set, understandable for the Spaniards, who fought against Islam in the name of strengthening Christianity. But it was not only that. On April 17, 1492, by letter of commendation, Columbus was appointed viceroy on all the islands and continents (“tierras-firmes”) that he “opens or acquires”. In distant countries, "pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices" were to be found. This list was enough to explain the purpose of the expedition. The word "gold" was present here from the very beginning, moreover; Giving Columbus a letter, Ferdinand and Isabella dispensed with the seemingly appropriate mention of the Christianization of distant lands.

On the way to these lands, the Spaniards could stop at the Canary Islands - their only possession in the Atlantic Ocean.

The fate of the Canary Islands, scattered off the coast of modern Morocco and Western Sahara, in many ways anticipated the fate of the countries that Columbus was to discover in the New World. The indigenous inhabitants of the Canaries, the Guanches - fair-skinned, sometimes blue-eyed - spoke languages close to the Berber dialects of neighboring North Africa. The primitive inhabitants of the caves, they were dressed in the skins of goats and dogs. The last gave the name of the islands: "canarye" - in Latin "dog". In the 80s of the XV century. the Castilians subjugated almost the entire island group, overcoming the desperate resistance of the Guanches. Their last leaders rushed to the rocks from one of the peaks of the island of Gran Canaria, so as not to surrender to the victors. The Guanches as a people disappeared. The survivors were taken to Castile as slaves or assimilated by the Spanish colonists. The subsequent history of the Canaries acquired European features. The conquerors, the Castilian nobles, did not get along with each other. Shortly before Columbus travels, two leaders of the conquistadors were arrested on false denunciations and sent to Europe in shackles. Their example could make the admiral think about what awaited him.

The Canaries served as the last base for Columbus to replenish water and provisions on the way across the ocean. Further south extended the sphere of influence of Portugal, which, according to the Portuguese-Castilian agreement in Alcasovas (1479), confirmed by a papal bull (1481), owned everything "beyond the Canary Islands." Lisbon was inclined to interpret the agreement at Alcasovas broadly, in order to appropriate all the territories south of the line running latitudinally through the Canaries. Consequently, the overseas lands where Columbus went were considered by Lisbon as their own sphere of influence if these lands lay south of 27 ° 30 ′ - the latitude of the southernmost of the Canary Islands. Hierro (from him, in the Iberian Peninsula, the meridians were counted).

Columbus should have known all this, although he reported in Lisbon, returning from the New World, that he did not know about the past agreements between Castile and Portugal. In letters intended for publication, immediately after his return, the admiral wrote that he had been going west all the time at the latitude of Hierro and had made his discoveries approximately at this latitude. The admiral's statements were diplomatic and did not compromise Spain, although in reality open Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti), as well as the central part of the Bahamas, lay south of the latitude of Hierro.

One must think that the admiral was preparing in advance to report coordinates convenient for disputes with Portugal in Europe, and therefore he entered twice the data on the latitude of a number of points in the West Indies into the ship's logbook. Navarrete, to whom historians owe numerous documents about Columbus, noted that on the quadrant with which the admiral determined the latitude, the divisions were also indicated by double digits, that is, when the admiral wrote that he had been at 42 °, it followed that he was at 20 n.l., etc.

One way or another, the incorrect information of the ship's log served as the basis for some historians to accuse Columbus of illiteracy, to say that he simply did not know how to use navigational tools. Considering everything that has been said, these accusations seem unfounded. In addition, it is known that after the first trip, when Spain and Portugal agreed on spheres of influence and when there was nothing to hide, Columbus gave correct information about his measurements of latitude. In the papers of the admiral, for example, there is a record that in February 1504 in Santa Gloria in Jamaica, he determined the latitude according to Ursa Minor at 18 °. The error was only 10 , which is acceptable for the imperfect instruments he used.

Another thing is the difficulties that the admiral faced when determining longitude. There were no chronometers to determine the time difference between Europe and the New World. Mechanical clocks with a spring appeared only in the 16th century. Longitude could be found either by linear measurements or by calculations according to the tables of eclipses of celestial bodies (European eclipse times were calculated many years in advance). Since the eclipse occurs simultaneously in all geographical points from which it is observed, the difference between local and European time gives a gap in hours and minutes equal to the desired longitude. In September 1494, on an island off the southern coast of Hispaniola, Columbus tried to use a lunar eclipse for his calculations. Apparently, the stormy weather prevented us from accurately determining the sunrise and thereby giving the exact local time. The error of Columbus, who was at 71° W, was 16° (approximately 1.6 thousand km).

And yet, judging by other calculations, Columbus knew how far from Europe he was. For these calculations, he used an estimate of the winds, currents and speed of his ships. In November 1492, in Cuba, he recorded that he had passed 1142 leagues from Hierro. Having calculated his path on the map, Navarrete noted that in reality 1,105 leagues (more than 6,000 kilometers) had been covered. The error was only 37 leagues, that is, half an equatorial degree.

Columbus's expedition consisted of three ships and had less than a hundred sailors. At the disposal of the admiral was one relatively large ship for those times - nao, as the Spaniards called ships with increased tonnage. To deserve such a name, "St. Maria" was supposed to have a displacement of at least a hundred toneladas (singular - toneladas) - old Spanish measures of volume. In different areas of the Iberian Peninsula, the tonelade ranged from 1 to 1.8 metric tons. The other two ships that were part of the flotilla, caravels (that is, medium-tonnage ships, by the standards of that time), were smaller, especially the Nina, which apparently had about 60 toneladas. No drawings or drawings of "St. Mary" and both caravels, "Pinta" and "Nina", have not been preserved. But it is known that they were all three-masted deck ships.

The size of Columbus' ships has been studied by historians more than once. American S.E. Morison, who organized a sailing expedition along the routes of Columbus before the Second World War, believed that “St. Maria "had about a hundred metric tons of displacement. At the same time, he referred to the fact that Las Casas once, mentioning “St. Maria, put her on a par with another ship in a hundred toneladas. According to Morison, each tonelad was equal to about forty cubic feet, i.e. 1.1 metric tons. Other experts, speaking of "St. Mary", gave different figures, sometimes much more significant. According to one estimate, this ship had 400, "Pinta" - 300, "Nina" - 200 tons of displacement. More modest figures, which, apparently, are closer to the truth, were proposed at the end of the 19th century. Spanish captain S.F. Duro, who supervised the construction of a copy of St. Mary" for the anniversary of the discovery of the New World. Duro found evidence of the capacity of "St. Mary "and, based on it, calculated the displacement, which turned out to be equal to 237 metric tons. At the same time, "St. Mary" was 23 m long ("between perpendiculars", as the sailors say). As for the Pinta, its length was estimated at 20 m, and the length of the Nina at 17.5 m.

As you know, "St. Maria" was wrecked in December 1492. The ship, or rather what could be left of it, rests under the sands off the northern coast of Haiti. "Pinta" survived, returned at the beginning of 1493 to her homeland, after which her traces were lost. And "Ninya" was destined for a different fate. Rugged and agile, this admiral's favorite not only made her way back from the New World to Spain. Twice more she went across the ocean, survived the terrible storm of 1495, when the entire West Indian fleet went to the bottom. Nina sailed 25 thousand miles under the admiral's flag during her sea life, which became a kind of world record for ships of this size.

Improvements in the 12th–15th centuries gave the ships of Columbus a large windage, a compass, a steering wheel based on a sternpost. Pilots kept with them spare compass arrows, stones for their magnetization. In navigation, as already mentioned, a quadrant was used. It was a wooden quarter circle with graduations, a plumb line and a spotting scope for aiming at the heavenly bodies. Columbus wrote that he had an astrolabe, but he could not use it because of the pitching (like other sailors in his time). There were no lots. The speed was estimated either by moving on the crest of a wave raised by the ship, or by a piece of wood thrown at the bow and floating towards the stern. The time was counted not by striking the bell, but by turning over the glass hourglass (hence the word “bottles” in the Russian fleet).

"St. Maria "had a draft of no more than 3.3 m; for caravels, it was even less - up to 2 m. The shallow draft made it possible not to be afraid of shallow water, to enter the mouths of the rivers. In the Mediterranean, ships often sailed with slanting sails, which increased maneuverability, but Columbus preferred straight sails, which provided higher speed. With good fair wind his ships gave 8-9 knots per hour, that is, as much as modern cruising yachts, in fact, crossing the Atlantic, Columbus went at a slower speed - 4-5 knots. The trade winds blew in a southwesterly direction, and at the same time the ships were somewhat carried to the northeast by the sea current. It was not at all favorable at the latitude of Hierro in September-October 1492 (contrary, in particular, to the assertion of such an authority as E. Reclus).

The flotilla team consisted of 90 people, although some authors write that there were 120 of them. Most likely, the figure was overestimated due to the fact that after the trip there were many who wanted to take part in the discovery of the New World. Half of those taken by Columbus would have been enough to serve the flotilla, counting the captains, their helmsmen (pilotos), boatswains (maestres). But one had to take into account that in the distant seas the admiral could suffer losses, that weakened and sick people would appear. All sailors knew they were risking their heads by sailing with Columbus. Therefore, it was not difficult to foresee the conflicts generated by fear for the outcome of the trip, the desire to return to Spain as soon as possible, without tempting fate.

On "St. Maria, the captain was its owner X. de la Cosa, the namesake of a famous geographer. The captain survived, although many of his crew, after the loss of the ship, landed on Hispaniola and died at the hands of the Indians. The Pinta was commanded by M.A. Pinson. An experienced sailor went through sea storms, but did not escape from the storms of life. He broke up with Columbus, in particular because of the desire to search for gold in the New World on his own and uncontrollably, and at the same time - to have fun with Indian women away from the eyes of the admiral. The captain of the Pinta died shortly after returning to Spain, apparently from syphilis. His younger brother V.Ya. Pinzón, the captain of the Niña, supported his older relative, although he did not play a very active role. A decade and a half after the discovery of the New World, V.Ya. Pinson successfully explored the eastern coast of South America, possibly reaching La Plata.

Living conditions on ships were not easy even for the unpretentious companions of Columbus. Only on "St. Mary "was, apparently, a small cockpit on the forecastle. Sailors on caravels good weather they slept on mattresses on the deck, in bad weather - under it, on top of the sandy ballast that smelled of waste and sewage. At first, there were enough food supplies, but by the end of the trip, the provisions were running out, the sailors were starving. It was necessary, overcoming fatigue, to stand watch, to fight storms. The second part of the journey lay in temperate latitudes, where sailors often froze. Protection from the weather was the almosela, a cloak with a hood that covered a peasant shirt and short trousers.

The sailors of Columbus knew not only the maritime business. Among them were carpenters, caulkers, coopers, a notary. There were doctors who treated with salts and potions. But not a single priest, not a single monk was taken to the New World. Artistic canvases, on which Columbus, entering the unknown shore, receives the blessing of the messengers of the church, is a pure fiction. This does not mean that the sailors were not God-fearing. Least of all, Columbus could be suspected of this, who carefully observed the rituals, often looking in the Bible for answers to the questions that his travels posed to him.

The admiral's logbook mentions the flags that were on the ships, but does not specify which of them were raised on the masts. It is unlikely that the Aragonese flag was raised, since the expedition consisted mainly of Castilians. Their standard, most likely, fluttered on the main mast of the St. Mary": two white and two red fields with towers and lions in a checkerboard pattern. “Por Castile and por Leon nuevo mundo allo Colon” (“Columbus discovered the New World for Castile and Leon”) - such a motto appeared on the admiral's family coat of arms after his death. It is possible that the motto was added by the admiral's son, Diego. And when the admiral first went ashore in the New World, he carried with him, according to his ship's log, "the royal flag" (Columbus diplomatically did not write which one). The two captains accompanying the admiral were equipped with flags with green crosses, with the letters F and I (Ferdinand and Isabella), topped with crowns. Judging by the materials of the Madrid maritime museum, these were rectangular flags with pigtails; in the campaign, such flags were raised not on the mainsail, but on the foremast.

A custom was established on the ships: every half an hour, turning the hourglass, the cabin boy recited spiritual verses, and in the morning and evening at a certain time he sang hymns and recited prayers to which the crew was to join. Jung, apparently, honestly performed his duties, but it is hardly worth vouching for all the Spanish sailors and claiming that they always willingly pulled up when they heard hymns and prayers. Moreover, their song repertoire has been preserved, usually harmless folklore, which had little to do with charitable topics. Most likely, on the way to the New World, wondering where Columbus would lead them, the sailors were ready to sing along to any hymn. In the Bahamas and Antilles, everything seemed prosperous, and the cabin boy happened to sing alone. And when returning to Europe, having fallen into a multi-day storm that tore the sails and brought down the masts, the sailors could again change their attitude to the ritual. Here, hymns were sung with unprecedented zeal, and prayers were read without interruption, all together and one by one.

Columbus, when he could, facilitated the hard work of sailors. The best help for them was, of course, his ability to navigate ships and spare the forces of the team. A participant in the second journey of Admiral M. de Cuneo, an Italian in the Spanish service, was clearly proud of his compatriot Columbus. According to Cuneo, “there was no person so generous and so knowledgeable in the practice of navigation as the admiral. In the sea, a cloud was enough for him, and at night - the stars, to know what would happen and whether there would be bad weather. He ruled himself and stood at the helm, and after a storm he set sails when others were asleep.

The admiral and his helmsmen knew that, having left the Spanish shores, they would go south with a favorable trade wind, that beyond the Canary Islands the winds would turn to the west and again help the travelers. They knew that the same winds would prevent them from returning to Spain the old way, that on their return it would probably be better to sail northeast, say, to the Azores region, where the winds and currents are changeable, and further north the western ones prevail. air currents. A general knowledge of the navigation situation in the eastern part of the Atlantic, of course, made the task easier, but nothing more. No one went further than the Azores, and the risk of sailing in the Western Atlantic was obvious. This risk, in fact, caused particular difficulties for Columbus in relations with the crew. Not all of the admiral's companions were people capable of meekly risking their lives. It quickly became clear that Columbus would have to spend a lot of effort to calm the crew, to constantly convince him that the expedition would succeed.

To encourage his people, Columbus downplayed the difficulties of travel, in particular by deliberately underestimating the distance traveled. Thus, the admiral gave the sailors the impression that they were not so far from familiar shores, that the risk of getting lost in the ocean was not so great. In a similar way, Columbus could mislead ordinary sailors, but not helmsmen and not captains, who are on the St. Mary” and on the caravels they themselves probably counted the miles traveled. It is possible that the admiral carried out the relevant instructions of Ferdinand and Isabella, who subsequently lowered a kind of iron curtain over their colonies in the New World, preventing foreigners from entering there. The Spanish rulers hardly wanted to disclose the details of the trip overseas, since this facilitated the penetration of competitors into distant countries, primarily the Portuguese. Finally, it is possible that Columbus, without any instructions, followed the example of many Sailors who wanted to have a monopoly on the knowledge of sea routes.

The expedition had to linger in the Canary Islands. The fact is that on the way to these islands, the steering wheel on the Pinta cracked and came out of the grooves.

M.A. Pinson believed that it was K. Quintero, the owner of the Pinta, who could incite one of the sailors to sabotage so as not to go on a dangerous voyage. Now the rudder had to be repaired, and the Pinta stopped at Gran Canaria. None of the sailors there escaped from the ship, and therefore Pinson's assumption of sabotage in order to stop the voyage, apparently, was not justified. The ocean on the way from Gibraltar to the Canary Islands is seething, a rudder failure here could have occurred without the fault of the team.

During a stay in Gran Canaria, Columbus changed the Nina's oblique sails to straight ones in order to increase its speed, and then, when the repairs were completed on the Pinta, he went to Homera Island, where he stopped for several days to replenish supplies water and food. The island was ruled by the widow of one of the conquistadors, Doña Beatriz de Peras. She was not thirty, and at one time she married not of her own free will. This lady-in-waiting of Isabella was offered marriage so that she could leave the court, where King Ferdinand did not leave her charms unattended. The sailors of Columbus, apparently, were sympathetic to the visits of the admiral to the tower in which the widow lived. A well-built and well-behaved Genoese must have made a favorable impression on Doña Beatrice. In any case, visits to her did not delay the admiral, and as soon as the ships took on board everything that was needed, they left Homera. Returning from his second trip through Homera, Columbus was greeted with a cannon salute and fireworks. The admiral, perhaps, did not know that Dona Beatrice had ordered the hanging of one of her subjects, who somehow, at a bad hour, expressed doubt that the widow had chastely preserved the memory of her late husband.

On September 10, the last of the islands disappeared over the horizon, an oceanic transition began, which lasted 33 days, almost in a straight line, near the Tropic of Cancer. Fate decreed that Columbus crossed the widest part of the North Atlantic, passed the Sargasso Sea and the Bermuda Triangle, which did not play any cruel jokes with him. But there were enough bad omens that caused a gloomy mood among the admiral's companions. From the very beginning, they did not like the volcanic eruption in the Canaries (on the island of Tenerife). The spectacle was unprecedented for the Spaniards, and Columbus had to tell that in his homeland the smoke over Etna and Vesuvius is a frequent occurrence. After a week of travel, the magnetic needles began to deviate west from the North Star, which caused an attack of fear. This time, the admiral was unable to explain anything and referred only to the fact that the deviation was observed by some sailors who had previously gone relatively far to the west.

At the beginning of the journey, when crossing the Atlantic, the weather generally favored Columbus, the ocean was rather calm. This ocean was amazing; not a single ship had yet plowed it. Columbus saw something that his descendants would not see in a few centuries: clear waters as nature created them, uncluttered shores, a much more diverse life on the sea surface. In the logbook, the admiral mentioned a number of species of birds - stray, from the continents, and purely marine. He met whales and dolphins, many tunas - commercial fish well known to the Spaniards, reaching almost a ton in weight. One tuna was once caught on the Nina; Dorado was caught on all ships. The admiral noticed that the Sargasso Sea is inhabited not only by fish, but also by crustaceans. The admiral made a record of catching sea bream on the day when the wind dropped noticeably. In calm weather, sailors could swim in the ocean, cast their rods, counting on a good catch. All of them constantly tasted sea water, hoping that a decrease in salinity would be a sign of the proximity of the earth and its fresh rivers. In fact, the concentration of salts in water depended not only on the flow of rivers, but also on the solubility of water, the state of the atmosphere, bottom sediments, and plankton.

The algae of the Sargasso Sea were greeted with relief as a sign of the proximity of the shores. But the admiral most of all followed the birds. The appearance of those species that fly in coastal waters could speak for itself. The direction of the flight was also important, which could help the search for land where the birds were supposed to nest. Until the beginning of October, the observations were not reassuring, and the tension on the ships grew.

Columbus twice deviated to the southwest, when almost the entire team claimed that they saw land somewhere there, and then admitted that everyone confused the outlines of the clouds. If not for the deviations, Columbus most likely would have gone not to the Bahamas, but to Florida, and even to the north of it. Those territories that were later colonized by the British would have been opened, and who knows which way American history would have gone if all these lands were under the Spanish flag. Or maybe nothing would have changed. After all, in the XVI century. the Spaniards captured Florida, then Texas and California. Everything had to be given to the Anglo-Americans, just as the Russians had to leave Alaska.

Sometime in early October, all three captains demanded that the ships be turned back, and the recalcitrant admiral, according to some reports, was threatened with a weapon. The conflict ended with the captains agreeing to wait a few more days. Their pliability, however, was not to the liking of the team, which was becoming less and less accommodating. It didn’t come to a riot, but, as one of the sailors later recalled, the team said that it would be nice to send the admiral overboard when he once again began to look at the stars at night.

On the night of October 10, over the ships, which had been sailing for the third day with a deviation to the southwest, a continuous noise was heard from many wings of migratory birds, which also rushed somewhere to the southwest for several days in a row. For Columbus, this was a sure sign of the proximity of the earth, but the command of St. Maria didn't want to know anything. On October 10, the team announced that there was no point in continuing the expedition. Columbus had a ready answer: they had gone too far and there was no way back. The admiral, thus, was going to prove that he would have to return against the wind, that there would not be enough supplies for the return trip, that they had to be stocked up on those lands that would be open.

On October 11, there seemed to be a change in mood. In the water they saw floating reeds, a branch of a bush, a board, a stick with traces of processing. A strong east wind blew, which had never happened before; ships increased in speed up to 7 knots. On the night of the twelfth it began to storm, the speed increased to 9 knots. The admiral changed course: now - only to the west! On the ships, sailing under full sail, the growing rumble of wind and waves was heard. At ten o'clock in the evening, Columbus told his maestres that he saw a fire in the direction of the movement, resembling a burning candle. At two o'clock in the morning from the "Pinta", which was going ahead, the cry of the watchman Rodrigo de Trian was heard: "Land!"

* * *

The land discovered by Columbus was one of the islands of the Bahamas group, stretching from South Florida to Haiti. The admiral called the island he discovered San Salvador (St. Savior); he also mentioned its local name, Guanahani, derived from a now extinct species of lizard. Perhaps it was an island, later called on English maps about. Watling; the opinion was also expressed that it was about the neighboring about. Samana-Key (Samana-Key in the West Indian pronunciation). Columbus called the inhabitants of the New World, who soon appeared on the coast, the Indians, because he had no doubt that he had arrived in the eastern countries, and the word India suggested itself. The island was proclaimed a Spanish possession, its population - subjects of Ferdinand and Isabella. Accordingly, written acts were drawn up, the same as later on other islands. In the ship's log, the admiral wrote that the natives could be turned into "captives" on their islands, as well as into slaves needed for the royal navy.

The Bahamas archipelago received the name Lucayan from Columbus; this word of local origin was preserved in the 20th century. on some maps as an additional name for the Bahamas. More common were other names given by Columbus. Some of them were taken from local languages (Cuba, Jamaica), some from Spanish (Puerto Rico, Dominica). The second largest island from the Greater Antilles group became Columbus' Hispaniola. He retained this name to this day on English and American maps. On English maps, the Spanish name of the pirate nest off the northern coast of Haiti is also preserved - about. Tortuga (Turtle). Russian and German maps followed the Frenchized name - Fr. Tortyu. Before sailing on his third voyage in 1502, Columbus wrote that forest species valued by Europeans grow across the ocean, including brasil (from bras - red-hot coal) - a tree that gives a red dye. The following year, he named one of Cuba's anchorages Puerto del Brasil. The Portuguese shortly after the discovery of P.A. Cabral "Land of the Holy Cross" (1500) began to call their new possession of Brazil under the influence of the growing export of dye from the colonies of the New World.

San Salvador, lying just north of the Tropic of Cancer, has the shape of an irregular quadrilateral, stretching from north to south for 11 miles. The inland lake, separated from the ocean by a shoal, does not exceed 2 miles in width. Columbus wrote that the island is large, low, covered with forest, has water sources, and is densely populated. The lagoon at its center, according to the admiral, was able to accommodate the ships of all countries of the Christian world. At the time of Columbus, this world was not so big and, perhaps, having made room, Christian ships could accommodate there. But it would be difficult for them to get there, as well as to get out of there later, and not only because of the shallows. There are many reefs off the coast, and Columbus himself had to choose a parking lot for a long time.

The neighboring islands of the Bahamas group (now an independent state) are in many ways similar to San Salvador, and therefore travel researchers have repeatedly asked themselves whether they take the island as the first land discovered in the New World. Moreover, today there is no water there, and the English colonists who cultivated cotton in the Bahamas have long removed the forests. As for the Indians, who hospitably welcomed Columbus as a messenger from heaven, they were either destroyed before the British or taken out, enslaved, by the Spanish conquistadors. The island, which belonged to the British, after the Second World War was transferred to the Americans under the base for tracking satellites; it is part of a single complex with Cape Canaveral, which lies 500 miles to the northwest. San Salvador Airport does not stop day or night. Jet planes roar in the sky above the once serene island.

Having landed on San Salvador, Columbus had to remember the royal instructions. And they set a goal to reach India and China, bring Christianity there, acquire gold and other valuables. The Bahamians - secretly, a branch of the vast Arawak language family - usually went naked, occasionally wearing loincloths. They bore little resemblance to the Indians and Chinese, judging by the descriptions of Marco Polo. But perhaps, the admiral suggested, they had heard of the Bogdykhan. Here it was necessary to figure it out, and at the same time think about plans for converting these “very simple and kind people” to the true faith, as Columbus wrote about them at the beginning.

As for the gold, it was here. True, there was no need to talk about his abundance. Arawaks often wore jewelry in the form of pieces of gold, which were attached to the nose. They willingly exchanged these ornaments for beads. Judging by their signs, the gold was coming from somewhere in the south, where vast lands lay.

The journey through the Bahamas and Antilles lasted three months, the admiral visited Cuba and Hispaniola. The last of these names has now been replaced on all maps, excluding the Anglo-American ones, with Haiti, that is, a mountainous country. This was the name given to the island by the Caribs or Canibs (“brave men” in their own language, from which the Europeans formed both the Caribbean Sea and the cannibals). The Caribs came here from the south as conquerors. Secretly, showing Columbus where to sail for gold, they made it clear that in Cuba he would find a major leader. Maybe a bogdykhan or his governor? And in Haiti, the Arawaks warned the admiral about the militancy of the Caribs, about the danger of falling into the hands of those who ate captives.

Judging by the data of geology, archeology, ethnography, intercontinental contacts of different times differed from each other in duration and intensity. Sometimes it was about mass migrations, about significant mutual enrichment, for example, due to the spread of cultivated plants and domestic animals. The proximity of Europe and Asia has always facilitated their ties. They are reliably confirmed by many archaeological sites, evidence of ancient authors, and linguistic data. In particular, most of the languages of Europe and many of the languages of Asia date back to a common Indo-European basis, others to Finno-Ugric and Turkic.

In the XIII century. under the rule of the Mongol conquerors were territories stretching from China to Asia Minor. The Pope of Rome was looking for contacts with the Mongols, hoping to baptize them, more than once sent embassies into the depths of Asia. By land, European merchants went to the East, including Marco Polo, who spent a number of years in China and returned to Europe through the Indian Ocean. The sea route was long, and therefore European merchants preferred to get to China through the Crimea and the Golden Horde or through Persia. These were two branches of the “silk road”, along which Chinese goods were transported even before our era. e. reached Central Asia and the Middle East. Both branches were relatively safe, but still, merchants traveling through the Horde were advised to travel in caravans, which would number at least 60 people. “First of all,” the Florentine F.B. Pegolotti advised, “you should let go of your beard and not shave.” It must be assumed that the beard gave the merchants an appearance valued in Asian countries.

True, it was not without literary fantasies, honest delusions, and sometimes even deceit. Plato's story about Atlantis inspired the philosopher F. Bacon (the story "New Atlantis"), such writers as G. Hauptmann and A. Conan Doyle. Many times, somewhere in the USA or Brazil, stones were found with “genuine Phoenician” inscriptions, pieces of rusty metal that were mistaken for the remains of antique items, etc.

Abstract

V.A. Subbotin

Introduction

Vasco da Gama

Magellan

Literature

V.A. Subbotin

Great discoveries

Columbus

Vasco da Gama

Magellan

University of the Russian Academy of Education

Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Introduction

Judging by the data of geology, archeology, ethnography, intercontinental contacts of different times differed from each other in duration and intensity. Sometimes it was about mass migrations, about significant mutual enrichment, for example, due to the spread of cultivated plants and domestic animals. The proximity of Europe and Asia has always facilitated their ties. They are reliably confirmed by many archaeological sites, evidence of ancient authors, and linguistic data. In particular, most of the languages of Europe and many of the languages of Asia date back to a common Indo-European basis, others to Finno-Ugric and Turkic.

In the XIII century. under the rule of the Mongol conquerors were territories stretching from China to Asia Minor. The Pope of Rome was looking for contacts with the Mongols, hoping to baptize them, more than once sent embassies into the depths of Asia. By land, European merchants went to the East, including Marco Polo, who spent a number of years in China and returned to Europe through the Indian Ocean. The sea route was long, and therefore European merchants preferred to get to China through the Crimea and the Golden Horde or through Persia. These were two branches of the “silk road”, along which Chinese goods were transported even before our era. e. reached Central Asia and the Middle East. Both branches were relatively safe, but still, merchants traveling through the Horde were advised to travel in caravans, which would number at least 60 people. “First of all,” the Florentine F.B. Pegolotti advised, “you should let go of your beard and not shave.” It must be assumed that the beard gave the merchants an appearance valued in Asian countries.

True, it was not without literary fantasies, honest delusions, and sometimes even deceit. Plato's story about Atlantis inspired the philosopher F. Bacon (the story "New Atlantis"), such writers as G. Hauptmann and A. Conan Doyle. Many times, somewhere in the USA or Brazil, stones were found with “genuine Phoenician” inscriptions, pieces of rusty metal that were mistaken for the remains of antique items, etc.

Eric's son, Leif Erikson, according to the same sagas, baptized the Greenland colony around 1000, built churches there and tried to spread his influence to the west and south...

Great discoveries. Columbus. Vasco da Gama. Magellan. Subbotin Valery Alexandrovich