Heritage History Month Day Twenty: Christopher Columbus

Happy Christopher Columbus Day!

It’s not actually Columbus Day, we already have one of those. But as I dedicated February to considering key figures in the development of the American heritage, it would be ridiculous to not include Christopher Columbus.

Columbus of course is a key object of the Left’s deconstruction campaign, the effort to reconstruct our heroes into villains and therefore challenge the moral legitimacy of those that laid the foundation of our modern self-identity. But impulses like this are precisely why I am engaging in a Heritage History Month in the first place— to reassert the heroic character of our forebears and pay homage to those who prepared the way.

Hailing from the Republic of Genoa in northern Italy, Columbus proved himself to be a tireless explorer with unceasing ambition. Raised in the humble home of a shop owner, Columbus would take up apprenticeships and work related to the activities of merchants and trading. Keen on the political economy of trades routes and import/exports, Columbus’ background made him aware of the value of economic expansion.

Thus, the context of the mid fifteenth century crisis of the Silk Road closure (due to the fall of Constantinople) was fundamental in making of Columbus’ motivations and political strategies. He understood the value of trade and new ways to the East that could earn for him a royal sponsorship/investment.

Columbus demonstrated a particular relentlessness in his determination to reach his destination of the East, via the Atlantic. A leader that was able to push his men to the brink, he had a sense of destiny that inspired his journey into the unknown as he faced numerous catastrophes from natural disasters, to unpredictable savages, to shipwrecks, to the frustrations of political dealings.

Columbus of course had material objectives in play— both personal and political. But he also had a keen sense of the civilizational stakes; he operated on behalf of the integrity and strength of Christendom; to permeate worlds yet to be reached by the Christian religion, Columbus understood, was to take part in a divine drama. The Christian religion was tied up closely, for Columbus, in the destiny of European expansion.

We operate now in a century of civilizational unraveling. The mythos of Columbus, so vital for our self-understanding, is under sustained assault. We can push back against this by asserting his heroism, and refusing to take part in the ritual apologies expected of us as inheritors of his great deeds.