Unforeseen Americas: the Making of New World Societies in Anthropological Perspective ERIC R

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 93, pp. 2603-2607, March 1996 Anthropology This article is part of the special series of Inaugural Articles by members of the National Academy of Sciences elected on April 25, 1995. Unforeseen Americas: The making of New World societies in anthropological perspective ERIC R. WOLF Department of Anthropology, Herbert Lehman College and Graduate School, City University of New York, 33 West 42nd Street, New York. NY 10036-8099 Contributed by Eric R. Wolf, December 15, 1995 ABSTRACT The European discovery and settlement of Cristoforo, the Christ-bearer, as he signed himself, was, by the Americas revealed unforeseen dimensions and gave rise to all accounts, a good sailor; but it was also his good luck to arrive unpremeditated ways of coping with the resulting problems. in the Iberian peninsula from his Italian home city of Genoa This paper traces out the enduring social and cultural impli- just when the oar-propelled Mediterranean galley was being cations of this foundational encounter. replaced by the sailing ship, and when Portuguese seamen had learned much about the winds and currents of the Atlantic I work, as an anthropologist, to examine the ways in which ocean. Both Spaniards and Portuguese began to explore the social and cultural processes generate forces that shape par- offshore islands of the Atlantic in the 14th and 15th centuries, ticular scenarios in time and space. One such scenario, preg- and by the mid-15th century the Portuguese had sailed down nant with enduring effects, occurred on October 12, 1492, the African coast to what is today modern Ghana. Contrary to when a sailor on the Pinta, Cristobal Colon's fastest ship out what is now often said in history books, it was by then widely of Palos in Portugal, first cried "land" upon sighting the understood that the world was round and not flat, although Bahamas.* Colon, who came to be known as Columbus, and his Columbus thought that the distance across the western ocean two fellow captains thereupon went ashore in an armed boat was only 2400 miles instead of 10,000. It is also likely that and took possession of the new lands in the name of the queen sailors from Bristol in England had by then begun to explore of Castile and the king of Aragon. Sixteen days later Columbus the North Atlantic to fish in the banks off Newfoundland. reached Cuba, and 12 days after that Hispaniola, the later This expansion into Atlantic waters was also grounded in the Santo Domingo, thinking all the time that he had sailed 900 800-year-long conflict between Western Christendom and westward from Palos instead of 70. He also called the Arawak- Islam. The European challenge to Muslim power reached a speaking natives "Indians," because he believed that he was flash point in the same year of 1492, when the kingdoms of dealing with the inhabitants of treasure-laden India. At first, Castile and Aragon in Spain conquered the last Muslim strong- he thought that he had landed in Japan, and later he thought hold in Iberia: the kingdom of Granada. With this victory, in Spanish military technology-the use of infantry conjoined that he was China. And when he reached the mouth of the with cannon-put an end to Islamic rule on Spanish soil. This Orinoco River on his third voyage in 1498, he still thought that great success, however, merely intensified the confrontation he might have found one of the biblical rivers supposed to flow between the Christian kingdoms and the rising Islamic power from paradise. Thus, the European discovery of the Americas of the Ottoman Turks in the East. The Turks had seized began with major misunderstandings. They were to be the first, Constantinople in 1453 and converted it into Istanbul. They but not the last. Still, in 1638, the French fur trader Jean blocked European access to the Eastern Mediterranean, and, Nicolet disembarked on the western shores of Lake Michigan, with important consequences, as we shall see, throttled the decked himself out in a Chinese robe, and expected to meet the supplies of slaves previously seized or bought from the regions Great Khan of China, only to hold converse with some local around the Black Sea. The Spanish seizure of Granada in 1492 Chippewa and Winnebago. also coincided with the expulsion of the Jews, seen as enemies How can we make sense of these events? Some have focused of Christianity, as well as a fifth-column acting for the Turks, on Columbus, the man, and visualized him either as a hero or and initiated the forcible conversions to Christianity of His- as a villain, a Christ-intoxicated mystic or an avaricious fool. panic Muslims, whose remnants were finally driven from the His discovery has been interpreted variously as God's work land in 1619. War and religious zeal combined to strengthen among the heathen, as a phase in the onward march of human Spanish Catholic mysticism, and the Crown supported this progress, as an enormous and dismal tragedy, or as a set of rising tide of religious zeal in the hope that it would fuel the promises left unfulfilled. I shall take the position that one can enthusiasm to build a new world order. That paroxysm of write about history as a moral enterprise, but that little is religion also affected Columbus, a mystic as much as a sailor gained thereby if your purpose is to explain. I want to focus on or entrepreneur. the forces that caught up and held men and women, and leave There were also much more mundane consequences of the their hearts and souls to be assayed by others. I shall engage, reorientation of Mediterranean traffic away from the Turkish first, the purposes and visions that engaged the Europeans to roadblock. This involved especially the merchants of Genoa, set sail for the New World; then, say something about how they whose economic opportunities in the Eastern Mediterranean hoped to reshape that world in terms of these intentions; and, had been curtailed since the 13th century, first by the Vene- finally, address the unforeseen, unexpected consequences that tians and then by the Turks. Capital in hand, the Genoese flowed from these projects. I have therefore called this pre- sentation "Unforeseen Americas." Columbus's encounter *An earlier version of this paper was presented as the Opening with the Indians of the Caribbean was merely the first of these Address of Encounter of Two Worlds, Columbus Quincentenary unexpected events. Let us put it into perspective. Commemoration, Herbert Lehman College, CUNY, March 23, 1992. 2603 Downloaded by guest on October 6, 2021 2604 Anthropology: Wolf Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93 (1996) families of the Spinola, Pinelli, Cattaneo, Grimaldo, and perhaps, suggested Paracelsus in 1520, "from another Adam." Centurione turned westward to Portugal and Spain in search Conceivably and even more heretically, argued Isaac de La of profits. It was these family networks that supported Colum- Peyrere in 1655, they were pre-Adamites and Adam was the bus in his maritime aspirations (1). He had sailed for the product of a second creation and father only to the Jews (ref. Centurione to the Greek island of Chios in 1474-1475; worked 5, p. 13). Were native Americans beats or humans? Was Dr. for them in Lisbon in 1477; and bought sugar for them on his Chanca, who sailed on Columbus's second voyage, right when honeymoon in the Madeiras in 1478, where he had married the he said that "their bestiality is greater than that of any beast daughter of the former captain-general, also of Italian origins. in the world" (ref. 2, p. 42)? Was it true that their skulls were Francesco Pinelli, hispanicized into Francisco Pinelo, together particularly thick, as argued by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, with the secretary to the king of Aragon financed Columbus' and their brains less intelligent, an argument used by the jurist first and second voyages. Not surprisingly, Columbus in his last Gines de Sepulveda in 1550-1551, to show that they were will and testament entreated his son Diego to set up a fund in destined to be natural-born slaves? Or was it the case instead, the Bank of San Giorgio in Genoa "which gives interest of six as Bartolome de las Casas argued, that all humans "necessarily per cent and is secure money" (ref. 1, p. 66). possess the faculty of reason and are capable of all things Finally, reasons of state were at play in the decision to pertaining to man, and thus of being taught and improved" support the Columbian quest. The Castilian state needed to (ref. 3, p. 59)? These arguments hit at the foundation of what replenish its coffers, emptied by the campaign against social and political order was to be built in the Indies. They Granada. Supporting Columbus could steal a march on the also, in most dangerous fashion, called into question the Portuguese and open up untapped sources of wealth. Further- orthodoxy of biblically founded beliefs. more, if Columbus was right and could reach Asia by sailing The union of Castile and Aragon in one Spanish state and west, it might prove possible to take the Turks from the rear the fusion of that state with the multiple other domains of the and to open up a new front against Islam (ref. 2, p. 59). Hapsburg dynasty, first in Europe, and then in the New Spains, Religion, economics, and political motives thus all played a New Granadas, New Vizacayas of the New World, produced part in the enterprise of the Indies, and Columbus-mystic, the grandiose Spanish vision of one great universal empire entrepreneur, and inveterate seeker after glory-was their in which "the sun never set." That empire was to be all- willing instrument.

Load more