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Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

theguardian.com

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Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#91

Post by juunpp »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #89
juunpp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill-named because it wasn't a reconquest of anything; Spain did not exist as a nation anytime prior to that. It was a bunch of tribes originally, followed by the Greeks settling in, then the Romans, then the Visigoths, and then the Arabs. A mesh of many cultures until the main kingdoms united and wiped the land of "non-Christian blood". And thereafter the Spanish government has gone back and forth trying to wipe the…

Surely the intent of the name was a "re-conquest of Iberia from muslims by christians".

Named by whom? The term did not even show up until the 20th century, so it wasn't the christians who named it like that. Pure Spanish myth. Oh, and the battle that started it all? Never even existed. Pure historical revisionism for nationalistic purposes with no more reality that horned vikings.

There are many things wrong with the term. A "reconquest" also makes it sound like the area was under siege by the Arabs or something. But the fact of the matter is that the peninsula, except for perhaps the Basque country, has been a melting pot of cultures under the succession of rules by larger empires. It's not like those christians, or the "Spanish", held control at some point, lost it, and then got it back; they never had it in the first place or even existed as a nation. So it's just a ridiculous term altogether.

https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/20191208/47205574...

https://blogs.elpais.com/historias/2015/04/la-batalla-de-cov...

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#92

Post by WorkerBee28474 »

juunpp wrote: post #82
shsbdksn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill named?

Ill-named because it wasn't a reconquest of anything; Spain did not exist as a nation anytime prior to that. It was a bunch of tribes originally, followed by the Greeks settling in, then the Romans, then the Visigoths, and then the Arabs. A mesh of many cultures until the main kingdoms united and wiped the land of "non-Christian blood". And thereafter the Spanish government has gone back and forth trying to wipe the…

You pretend like it was a bunch of villages living in happy harmony until the Catholics arrived. You're lying. It was part of the post-Roman empire, then it got conquered by Muslims, then it got re-conquered by Catholics. Hence, reconquista.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#93

Post by shsbdksn »

juunpp wrote: post #82
shsbdksn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill named?

Ill-named because it wasn't a reconquest of anything; Spain did not exist as a nation anytime prior to that. It was a bunch of tribes originally, followed by the Greeks settling in, then the Romans, then the Visigoths, and then the Arabs. A mesh of many cultures until the main kingdoms united and wiped the land of "non-Christian blood". And thereafter the Spanish government has gone back and forth trying to wipe the…

That's a very strange way to present Spanish history.

Spain was unified province of Rome, and then its own country under the Visigoths for a total of 800 years. That's 800 years of unified governance. Spain had a common language (vulgate) and religion (various sects of christianity).

We have the pre-Islamic negotiations on issues of Faith. The Visigoths were Arians but slowly became Catholics. We have the history of countless councils.

Spain wasn't, but for some savages, empty land for the muslim armies to take. And it's ridiculous to think it could have been - where did the people to fight the most powerful army of the day come from? Asturias is just not that big.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#94

Post by toyg »

juunpp wrote: post #73
chipdart wrote: post #35

From the article: > “Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we can’t really evaluate what was in the documentary because they offered no data from the analysis whatsoever,” Antonio Alonso, a geneticist and former director of Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences told El País. So, baseless speculation used by the Spanish regime to claim Christopher Columbus as Spanish during the Spani…

How does a Jew discovering the Americas benefit the Spanish regime when the Spanish Catholic monarchy precisely kicked all Jews and Muslims from the peninsula with their ill-named "reconquista"? If this turns out to be true, then it'd be rather embarrassing. Presumably this Lorente has more evidence he hasn't put on display, so it isn't completely baseless either. It's certainly sketchy and not very scientific, thoug…

> since the Greeks that people knew the world was not flat

Actually, most Greek knowledge had fundamentally disappeared from Western Europe for centuries, even before the official dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. Some of it had just reappeared in the XV century, largely through translations of Arabic books; this is why the Renaissance produced so much stuff inspired by classic material - because it was all new and exciting to the people of the period, like they'd rediscovered an ancient civilization!

Also by "people" here we are literally talking about the 0.1% - educated people who could read and had access to books, which at the time were very rare and super expensive.

What the vikings did was not common knowledge, because basically they didn't come back regularly and so there was no real knowledge of their actions anywhere in Europe.

The consensus at the time, among the learned (i.e. Catholic Church and a few scientists with royal patronage here and there) was that the Earth was probably round, and probably small enough that you could maybe sail all the way to China and India from the edge of Europe - but they had no idea that there was land in between.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#95

Post by toyg »

amirhirsch wrote: post #88

Another indication that Columbus was part of the Jewish community is that the Jewish financiers Luis de Santángel and Gabriel Sánchez advanced interest-free loans to finance the journey.

That's actually a point against: Jewish financiers would have expected interest, surely. It's Catholic ones who had to loan without interest.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#96

Post by toyg »

tdeck wrote: post #50

Just wanted to drop the fact that there seems to be a historical consensus that isn't represented in these comments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_theories_of_Christopher...

> The evidence of Columbus's origins in Genoa is overwhelming: almost no other figure of his class or designation has left so clear a paper trail in the archives.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#97

Post by juunpp »

shsbdksn wrote: post #93
juunpp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill-named because it wasn't a reconquest of anything; Spain did not exist as a nation anytime prior to that. It was a bunch of tribes originally, followed by the Greeks settling in, then the Romans, then the Visigoths, and then the Arabs. A mesh of many cultures until the main kingdoms united and wiped the land of "non-Christian blood". And thereafter the Spanish government has gone back and forth trying to wipe the…

That's a very strange way to present Spanish history. Spain was unified province of Rome, and then its own country under the Visigoths for a total of 800 years. That's 800 years of unified governance. Spain had a common language (vulgate) and religion (various sects of christianity). We have the pre-Islamic negotiations on issues of Faith. The Visigoths were Arians but slowly became Catholics. We have the history of…

Hispania constituted several Roman provinces. I'm not sure what you mean by "unified". Unified legally under the Roman empire, sure, but not as a nation or even culturally. (By that token, we could say "Spain" was unified under the Arabs, too.) It is not until the marriage of the Catholic monarchs that historians put the start of Spain as a unified nation. So "reconquista" doesn't add up to reality; "unification" or "birth" would be a better term.

I think your other points are fine, thanks for adding.

> Spain wasn't, but for some savages, empty land for the muslim armies to take.

It was fairly a walk in the park for them; took only a decade to get the peninsula under control and venture into France, until they lost their first battle there. That, and the Basque country; nobody can conquer the Basque country, which is why they speak a non-romance language to this day, among other things.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#98

Post by toyg »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34

Oops. There go the big Columbus Day celebrations, sponsored by Italian-American societies.

The fact that he was Italian and Catholic is beyond dispute.

The possibility that he might have had some Jewish blood, doesn't really change anything except for the most tribal-inclined people (who typically make for terrible historians anyway). Hell, the Mediterranean had been a big melting pot for almost 2000 years at that point, practically anyone would have had some Jewish blood, some Greek blood, some Italian blood, some Spanish blood, some North-African blood...

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#99

Post by Tainnor »

juunpp wrote: post #73
chipdart wrote: post #35

From the article: > “Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we can’t really evaluate what was in the documentary because they offered no data from the analysis whatsoever,” Antonio Alonso, a geneticist and former director of Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences told El País. So, baseless speculation used by the Spanish regime to claim Christopher Columbus as Spanish during the Spani…

How does a Jew discovering the Americas benefit the Spanish regime when the Spanish Catholic monarchy precisely kicked all Jews and Muslims from the peninsula with their ill-named "reconquista"? If this turns out to be true, then it'd be rather embarrassing. Presumably this Lorente has more evidence he hasn't put on display, so it isn't completely baseless either. It's certainly sketchy and not very scientific, thoug…

> I also don't understand why people get a boner with Columbus. It is since the Greeks that people knew the world was not flat, and the vikings (presumably Leif Erikson) landed in Canada much earlier after a quick hop from Greeland. The only questions left at that point were: how big is that land over there, and can you get to India traveling West? It's all good and stuff, but not mind-blowing to me.

Columbus was also famously a big idiot that just got lucky. He believed for some reason that the earth was much smaller than it actually was (contrary to established belief at the time) and that he could easily find a way to India by travelling over the Atlantic. If the Americas didn't exist, he and his crew would have died at sea. He remained convinced that the territory he discovered was part of India until his death.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#100

Post by lamp_book »

toyg wrote: post #94
juunpp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a Jew discovering the Americas benefit the Spanish regime when the Spanish Catholic monarchy precisely kicked all Jews and Muslims from the peninsula with their ill-named "reconquista"? If this turns out to be true, then it'd be rather embarrassing. Presumably this Lorente has more evidence he hasn't put on display, so it isn't completely baseless either. It's certainly sketchy and not very scientific, thoug…

> since the Greeks that people knew the world was not flat Actually, most Greek knowledge had fundamentally disappeared from Western Europe for centuries, even before the official dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. Some of it had just reappeared in the XV century, largely through translations of Arabic books; this is why the Renaissance produced so much stuff inspired by classic material - because it was all ne…

IIRC what Columbus didn't know was Eratosthones calculation of the circumference of the Earth that was <1% off, but believed Ptolemy's ~30% short estimation and figured there was no land in between Europe and the East Indies.
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