We examine the enigmatic and elusive figure of Columbus, from his likely Jewish background, to his bizarre and hairbrained scheme of sailing to Asia, his brutal and chaotic invasion of the West Indies, his struggle to defend his honors and titles, and finally his apocalyptic vision of his own role in the End Times. We consider how Columbus, a fairly obscure and rejected figure after his death, came to be held up as a symbol of both the best and the worst of the American psyche.
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Also see:
- The other installments in Violent Metamorphosis: The Americas before, during, and after European Colonization
- Land of Vital Blood: Pre-Columbian America
- Becoming Modern: Making The Modern State – Spain, Portugal, and the Inquisition
- Becoming Modern: Spanish and Portuguese Expansion and the Conquest of the Americas
- Fortresses on Sand: The History of Florida – pt. 2
- The Middle Ages: The Jews of Europe, from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution
- On Judaism and Jewish History – 8 Episodes
- And more from the entire Becoming Modern Playlist
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Things You Don’t Know
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Can a single coin prove that Vikings made it beyond Newfoundland, settling for a time as far west as what is now today the state of Maine in the United States, over 800 years ago?
How – and why – did universities begin in the Middle Ages, long before the scientific revolution and the “Enlightenment”?
How did Tisquantum (popularly known as Squanto) already know how to speak English before the Pilgrims had even arrived in Plymouth Bay?
Why is the dramatic 2019 fire at Paris’ Notre Dame actually a common occurrence for cathedrals around Europe, when looking across the centuries?
How is the growing field of genetics being used to sometimes tear down – and to sometimes reinforce – the very problematic myth of people belonging to different ‘races’?
When pressed why can no one seem to agree on what “capitalism” actually is? And why does a lack of clear definition call into question so many other myths of the modern world around us?
What did Netflix’s 2021 movie “The Dig”, with Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan, leave out from the story of the great Sutton Hoo discovery? What can the highly-revealing Anglo-Saxon era treasure tell us about the significantly-obscured period of England during the “Dark Ages”?
How did so much of the Epic of Gilgamesh remain hidden and forgotten – but perfectly preserved – for over 2,000 years until being rediscovered in modern times?
Why were cathedrals in southern Europe becoming more and more highly decorated and elaborately embellished in the 1500 and 1600’s, while at the same time so many cathedrals in Northern Europe were being stripped of all of their ornamentation and symbolism?
How can one mid-sized U.S. city – Tulsa, Oklahoma – serve as a microcosm of so much of the triumphs and tragedies of American history?
How might a series of volcanic eruptions in the Americas have spurred the earliest Viking raids and the creation of the Ragnarok myth in Scandinavia, halfway around the world?
How could seeing mountains on the Moon for the first time over 400 years ago have helped accelerate the collapse of the Earth-centric view of the universe?
What does the English Civil War of the 1640s tell us about the American Civil War, and about the political structures in place across much of the English-speaking world today?
Who were the Freemasons of the 1700s? How did they grow from a local Scottish fraternity to a global network?
Ever heard that Florida has no history? It actually has far more then you ever could have known…
Could all of British history have turned out differently if the winds on the English channel had shifted direction on just one particular day in 1066?
How did changes in the climate in the 1600s lead people to believe they were living in the Apocalypse? How did this help spur the creation of institutions and forces that are still shaping the modern world of today?
Why did nearly every Renaissance-era ruler in Europe feel compelled to have a court astrologer, usually as one of their most pivotal advisors?
On average, are people really becoming less religious than they used to be hundreds of years ago?
How were the lines between who was a cowboy and who was an American Indian far more blurred then the surviving myth of the Old West would have us believe?
How did accusing people of witchcraft further several political agendas of the time, both in Europe and in the Americas?
Why did Japan go through one of the most extraordinary transformations of any nation ever has, from an isolated ‘hermit’ kingdom to a dynamic modern power in just the later half of the 1800’s?