On June 28

On this day in ...
... 1635 (375 years ago today), the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique established a French colony at Guadeloupe (right), a Caribbean archipelago about 10 times the size of Washington, D.C., where the explorer Christopher Columbus had landed in 1493. "By 1674, Guadeloupe was annexed to the Kingdom of France and a slave-based plantation was established." Britain and other countries wrestled for control of the territory, but French colonization was confirmed in the 1815 Treaty of Vienna, and slavery was abolished in 1848. Guadeloupe remains a French colony and so is a member of the European Union.

(Prior June 28 posts are here, here, and here.)

On April 17

On this day in ...
... 1991, in Ottawa, External Relations Minister Monique Landry (left) pledged that Canada would aid Kurdish refugees by giving Iran $6.5 million (Canadian dollars) to be used for that purpose. The pledge brought total Canadian relief to $16.6 million.
... 1492, the Genoan Christopher Columbus signed a contract with Spain's monarchs, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I, in which Columbus (right) was to receive titles of nobility plus a tenth of the revenues generated by his exploration of the world beyond the Atlantic Ocean.

(Prior April 17 posts are here and here.)

Celebrating Columbus

I've got Christopher Columbus on the brain. Today is officially Columbus Day in the United States, and for the first time in my adult life, I have not made a concerted effort to forget that. For the last six months, I have been immersed in all things Columbus. I am researching the life and times of this man who has had such a profound impact on my life in preparation for writing a book. It has been an emotionally-charged experience.

I remember as a kid sitting in my sixth grade social studies class listening to Mr. Branch teach us about Columbus. Here are some things I learned back then:

• Columbus was a great navigator
• Columbus discovered the world was round
  
• Columbus discovered America
  

It turns out, Mr. Branch was wrong on all counts. But, at the time, I absorbed and regurgitated the information without a thought. In fact, Columbus was a popular figure in my elementary school. We used to sing songs about him on the playground. I'm serious! ("In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue . . .")

In my college years, Columbus suddenly shifted from a benign and heroic figure to a rapist, colonizing madman. He killed the Indians (of course, he erroneously named them "Indians"). He massacred their culture and replaced it with Spanish imperialism. He paved the way for slavery in the New World.

In the third phase of my reintroduction to Columbus, I find myself falling somewhere in between the naivetee of my childhood and the militancy of my early adult years. It turn out everything I ever learned about Columbus was only a half truth. Columbus was not a great navigator. In fact, he was wrong in his calculations most of the time. He was a visionary, but the careful, meticulous work of navigation often proved too tedious for him. Columbus certainly did not discover that the world was round. Early Greek philosophers and scientists had already theorized the world was round--and they even had the mathematical equations to prove it. By the time Columbus was traipsing through Europe in search of a benefactor for his expedition, every self-respecting, educated person knew the world was not flat. And Columbus did not discover America. Credible evidence exists to show the Vikings found and left America long before Columbus. Even more spectacular, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima made the case for a pre-Columbian African presence in America in his ground breaking work They Came Before Columbus.

But none of those facts can change the transformational nature of Columbus' voyages. He changed the course of human history in a way no one else before him had ever done. For a trade scholar like me, it is indisputable that modern trade history began with Columbus. In his search for a western route to India and China, he reconstructed the modern trading system in a way that continues to resonate to this day. It's impact can still be felt all over Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. As a Haitian-born "West Indian" woman, I certainly continue to feel the impact of Columbus' voyages in my own life (I have written a series of essays on the point, which can be found here.)

In the face of all that, I find it impossible to not at least acknowledge this day. Happy (?) Columbus Day.

On August 31

On this day in ...
... 1962, Trinidad and Tobago gained full independence from Britain. It then joined the Commonwealth of Nations, and though independent, it "acknowledged the British monarch as the figurehead chief of state from 1962 until 1976." Since then it's been a parliamentary republic. In 1498 Christopher Columbus had landed on Trinidad, the larger of the 2 islands that comprise the Caribbean country. Today Trinidad and Tobago, which is about the size of Delaware, has a population of 1.3 million.
... 1979, Sally Rand died of congestive heart failure at a hospital in Glendora, California. She'd been born Harriet Helen Gould Beck 75 years earlier in Hickory County, Missouri; Cecil B. DeMille gave her her stage name in the 1920s. Rand gained global renown in 1933 and 1934 at the "Streets of Paris" concession (right) at Chicago's Century of Progress World's Fair. (photo credit) There throngs watched her dance to classical music, waving giant ostrich-befeathered fans that appeared the only cover of her seemingly nude (but actually bodysuited) self. Her famous fan dance is captured in the video below. Rand's political side extended to more than sexual politics, according to her New York Times obituary:

During the 1930's, when her notoriety was at its height, she made repeated appearances before small-town civic groups and spoke out in favor of the republican forces in the Spanish Civil War.