White over black: American attitudes toward the Moores, 1550-1812

 

“As suggested by Sandys’s remark, an equation had developed between African Negroes and slavery. Primarily, the associations were with the Portuguese and Spanish, with captivity, with buying and selling in Guinea and in America. While the Negro’s exact status in America was not entirely clear, neither was it conceived as an off-brand of apprenticeship or servitude: Hawkins assumed as his crest a “demi-Moor” (plainly Negroid) “captive and bound.”

“Nor was Portuguese or Spanish slavery regarded as being of a mild, protective sort:

The Portuguese doe marke them as we doe Sheepe with a hot Iron, which the Moores call Crimbo, the poore slaves stand all in a row … and sing Mundele que sumbela he Carey ha belelelle, and thus the poore rogues are beguiled, for the PortugaIs make them beleeve that they that have not the marke is not accounted a man of any account in Brasil or in Portugall, and thos they bring the poore Moores to be in a most damnable bondage under the colour of love. “

“Slavery, therefore, frequently appeared to rest upon the “perpetual enmity” which existed between Christians on the one hand and “infidels” and “pagans” on the other. sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Englishmen at home could read Scores of accounts concerning the miserable fate of Englishmen and other Christians taken into “captivity” by Turks and Moors and oppressed by the “verie worst manner of bondmanship and slaverie.”

 

 

“An Entire Commentary upon the Whole Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians • . . (London, 16[41-]43), 694-95 (italics mine). Too late for incorporation in the text. I came across a discussion published in 1627 which described five varieties of “servants.” The author, a minister, used that term except for one category, the “semi belli, as these that are taken slaves in the wars.” In this context he explained that “this curse to be a servant was laid. first upon a disobedient sonne Cham, and wee see to this day, that the Moores, Chams posteritie. are sold like slaves yet.” This passage suggests how dearly defined a condition slavery was for Englishmen and that they associated it with Negroes, but of course it fails to disclose who is selling Negroes as slaves “yet.” John Weemse [Le., Weemes]. The Portraiture of the Image of God in Man . . • (London. 1627) , 279.

“The Body of Liberties made equally clear that captivity in a just war constituted legitimate grounds for slavery.The practice had begun during the first major conflict with the Indians,the Pequot War of 1637. Some of the Pequot captives had been shipped aboard the Desire, to Providence Island; accordingly,the first in England arrived in exchange for men taken captive in a just That this provenance played an important role in shaping Jews about Negroes is suggested by the first recorded plea by an Englishman on the North American continent for the establishment of an African slave trade. Emanuel Downing, in a letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop in 1645, described the advantages: “If upon a Just warre [with the Narragansett Indians] the Lord should deliver them into our hands, wee might easily have men women and children enough to exchange for Moores, which will be more gaynefull pillage for us then wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee get into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our business, for our children’s children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedom to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall mayneteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant.” 

“These two facets of justifiable enslavement-punishment for crime and captivity in war-were closely related. Slavery as punishment probably derived from analogy with captivity, since presumably a king or magistrates could mercifully spare and enslave a man whose crime had forfeited his right to life. The analogy had not been worked out by commentators in England, but a fairly clear linkage between crime and captivity seems to have existed in the minds of New Englanders concerning Indian slavery. “

“A contemporary account of Bacon’s Rebellion caustically described one of the ringleaders, Richard Lawrence, as a per­ l son who had eclipsed his learning and abilities “in the dark embraces of a Blackamoore, his slave: And that in so fond a Maner, … to the noe mean Scandle and alfrunt of all the Vottrisses in or 82 about towne.”

“From the first, then, vis-a.-vis the Negro the concept embedded in the term Christian seems to have conveyed much of the idea and feeling of we as against they: to be Christian was to be civilized, rather than barbarous, English rather than African, white rather than black. The term Christian itself proved to have remarkable, elasticity, for by the end of the seventeenth century it was being used to define a species of slavery which had altogether lost any connection with explicit religious difference.”

“In the Virginia code of 1705, for example, the term sounded much more like a definition of race than of religion: “And for a further christian care and usage of all christian servants, Be it also enacted, by the authority aforesaid, and it is hereby enacted, That no Negroes, mulatto, or Indians, although Christians, or Jews, Moors, Mahometans, or other infidels, shall, at any time, purchase any christian servant, nor any other, except of their own complexion, or such as are declared slaves by this act.” By this time “Christianity” had somehow become intimately and explicitly linked with complexion.”

“The 1705 statute S declared “That all servants imported and brought into this country, by sea or land, who were not Christians in their native country, (except Turks and Moors in amity with her majesty, and others that can make due proof of their being free in England, or any other christian country. before they were shipped, in order to transportation hither) shall be accounted and be slaves, and as such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity after wards.” 

As late as 1753 the Virginia slave code anachronistically defined slavery in terms of religion when everyone knew that slavery had for generations been based on the racial and not the religious difference. In significant contrast, the colonists referred to Negroes and by the eighteenth century to blacks and to Africans, but almost never to Negro heathens or pagans or savages. Most suggestive of all, there l’1 L.t  I’ seems to have been something of a shift during the seventeenth century in the terminology which Englishmen in the colonies ap­ tt1 plied to themselves. From the initially most common term Christian, at mid-century there was a marked drift toward English and \-..V free. After abou¡, taking the colonies as a whole, a new term appeared-white. 

By 1676 it was possi. ble in Virginia to assail a man for “eclipsing” himself in the “darke imbraces of a Blackamoore” as if “Duty consisted all together in the Antiphety of Complexions.” In Maryland ‘l–revised law miscegenation (1692) retained white and English but dropped the term Christian-a symptomatic modification. As early as 1664 a Bermuda statute (aimed, ironically, at protecting Negroes from  brutal abandonment) required that the “last Master” of senile Negroes “provide for them such accommodations as shall be convenient for Creatures of that hue and color until their death.” By the end of the ­tenth century dark had become an independent rationale’ for enslavement: in 1709 Samuel Sewall noted in his diary that a “Spaniard” had petitioned the Massachusetts Council for freedom but that “Capt. Teat alleged that all of that Color were Slaves.” 123 Here was a barrier between “we” and which was visible and permanent: the Negro could not become a white man. Not, at least, as yet.

It is worth making still closer scrutiny of the terminology which Englishmen employed when referring both to themselves and to the two peoples they enslaved, for this terminology affords the best single means of probing the content of their sense of difference. The terms Indian and Negro were both borrowed from the Hispanic languages, the one originally deriving from (mistaken) geographical locality and the other from human complexion. When referring to the Indians the English colonists either used that proper name or called them savages, a term which reflected primarily their view of Indians as uncivilized, or occasionally (in Maryland especially) pagans, which gave more explicit expression to the missionary urge. When they to the colonists occasionally spoke of themselves as Christians but after the early years almost always as English.

          Source: White over black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 by Winthrop D. Jordan

 

Islam in Britain, 1558-1685

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The “Turks ad Moors” of North Africa and the rest of the Ottoman dominions were spreading alarm in England, Wales and elsewhere in the British Isles, especially among fisherman, sailors, traders ad the Levant Company’s representatives in Parliament. From Minehead to Dartmouth, from Bristol to Portsmouth, and from Thames where a Turkish ship was captured in 1517 to Severn into which the Turks penetrated in September 1624 and to the Isle of Lundy, their impact was felt. The news about the Turks incursions, wrote Sir Nicholas Slaning to Sir Francis Vane in September 1635, “terrifies the country.”

 

There was so much concern about the Turkish attacks and about the fate of English captives that in December 1640, a Committee for Algiers was appointed by Parliament whose main takes was to oversee the ransoming of English captives. Members of the Committee included a cross-section of English military, ecclesiastical and parliamentary authority: there was the Lord Admiral of the Fleet, the Bishops of London, Winchester and Rochester, and Members of Parliament chiefly (but not exclusively) from coastal arrest both in the west as well as the east of the realm.

 

In 1641, “An Act of reliefe of the Captives take by Turkish Moorish and other Pirates” was passed (16 Car I. c. 24), and in the next few years, further measures were take by Parliament: “Ordinance for Collection to be made for relief of Captives in Algiers” (April 25, 1643): “An Ordinance for the raising of Moneys for the Redemption of distressed Captives” (January 28, 1645): and on November 12, 1646, “An Ordinance for the Continuing of the Argier Duty, for the Releasing of distressed Captives, taken by Turkish, Moorish, and other Pirates, was this Day read the First and Second time.

 

Throughout the 1640s, the House of Commons had to address the problem of captives and their ransoms. Even foreign refugees were given permission to collect money in England for the redemption of their kin from Muslim slavery. To many Britons, the Muslims posed a danger to all of Christendom, from Greece to England and from “Muscovy” to Ireland. During the Commonwealth and the Restoration periods, the English navy became powerful enough to force peace treaties on the Barbary Corsairs.

 

Still, captives continued to be taken by the Muslims: in February 1662, 300 slaves in Algiers petitioned the King for help, and three years later, the wives and families of eighty catives there petitioned him, in 1668, a patent authorized a “collection to be made in all churches and chapels for two years, for redemption of English subjects, captives in miserable slavery in Algiers, Sally, and other parts of the Turkish dominions……..

 

Indeed, Edward Kellet insisted in 1628 that many Englishmen converted to Islam after yielding to Muslim “allurements, rather than to their violence,” to the “baites and allurements of immunitie present, and prosperity promised,” to “their alluring Promises.” Christians, agreed Paul Rycaut, turned to Islam because of its attractions: “the imaginary honour ad privilege of a Turk” directed an “abundance of Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and all Nations” to Islam. Others converted to Islam because the preferred it to their own religion. Many a Christian, wrote the author of The Policy, “is by his own choice and voluntaire motion….circumcised” and this, he noted, happened “often”. A century later, Joseph Pitts confirmed that such conversion was still taking place” “Many there are that do so turn [to Islam] out of Choice, without any Terror or Severity shewn them. Both Pitts and other writers used “voluntary” to described Christian conversion to Islam: Blount referred to the “voluntary Renegadoes” and so to did John Rawlins and Barhtolomeus Georgievits. 

 

In the treaty between England and Tripoli in 1676, Sir John Narborough, who negotiated on behalf of King Charles II, included the following article:  That no Subject of the King of Great Britain, & c. shall be permitted to turn Turk or Moor in the City and Kingdom of Tripoli, being inducted thereunto by any surprizal whatsoever, unless he voluntarily appear before the Dey or Governor with the English Consuls Druggerman three times in twenty four hours space, and every time declare his resolution to turn Turk or Moor. Conversion to Islam had been so easy that it was necessary for Narborough to make it hard on his compatriots. 

Source: Islam in Britain, 1558-1685 Nabil Matar Cambridge University Press, Jan 7, 2008 – Religion 

From the Moors of The Soudan Have Descended Most African Americans

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From the Negroes proper of the Sudan have descended most American Negroes See U.S. Immigration Commission Dictionary of races or peoples. The name Sudan is probably a confusing term, especially to modern learners of history as it is a recent name given to the current Republic of Sudan governed by its capital city Khartoum. Geographically, it is the area bordered by Ethiopia and Eritrea from the East, Egypt and Libya from the North, Chad and Central Africa from the West and Zaire, Uganda and Kenya from the South. With reference to ancient facts of history, to give any piece of information about ancient history of Western Sudan, it is necessary to point out to two important historical facts. First, the origin of the term Sudan and the source from which it is derived. Second, what part of Africa is said to be known as Sudan in ancient history.

Source: Ancient Sudan Kush

“1099 Cristen soudan. Although modern, secular readers will not see anything amiss here, the original audience would perceive this as a contradiction. Today, we read “sultan” as a social and political title and “Christian” as a religious and spiritual one. Drawing on a number of works, especially romances, MED defines “soudan” primarily as a Moslem or Saracen leader; with such a strong connotation, a Christian sultan would appear to be an oxymoron.”

Source: The King of Tars edited by John H Chandler 

Map of Soudan

“The American Negro is a new biological and cultural product, his ancestors from Africa represented tribes as divergent as the several peoples of Europe. They were captured from provinces covering large parts of Central and West Africa, Guinea, the Ivory, Slave, and Gold Coasts, a great part of what is now French West Africa, the vast stretches of the Niger Valley, the Cameroons, the Congo, the Benguela. Among them [their ancestors] were Arabs and Moors from the northerly coast, the small yellow Hottentots from the South, the Bantu tribes from the equatorial regions. Members of these diverse tribes captured of an area as large as the Continent of Europe were completely mixed in the process of transport to African slave ports to the West Indies to American marts and in their distribution to the New World. “

Source: The Encyclopedia Britannica 1943 (175th Print Edition)” Page’s 193 to 200

AFRICA MAP EARLY ENGLISH GEOGRAPHY ABYSSINIA ZANGUEBAR ANTIQUE HAND COLORED MAP ORIGINAL HISTORICAL EPHEMERA EARLY ENGLISH GEOGRAPHY AFRICA THE GREAT SAHARA DESSERT LARGE SOUDAN REAGION, ABYSSINIA, NUBIA, ZANGUEBAR, HOTENTOES, THE CAPE COLONY & MORE ANTIQUE HAND COLORED GRAPHIC ENGRAVING ILLUSTRATED MAP PRINT 1870s

“The Sudan is the name given to a geographic region to the south of the Sahara, stretching from Western to eastern Central Africa. The states of the Sudan The early kingdoms and empires of the western Sudan In the 10th century the kings of Ghana extended their sway over the Ṣanhājah, the congeries of Amazigh nomadic tribes living around Audaghost, just north of their kingdom, who supplied them with salt and North African goods (see map). This move must have upset the economic balance between agricultural Ghana and the pastoral Ṣanhājah, and ultimately it provoked a reaction. Like the North African Imazighen, the Ṣanhājah tribes were already to some extent Islamized, and they shortly found in a militant, puritanical version of Islam the means to eliminate their tribal differences and to unite in the movement known to history as the Almoravids. In the middle of the 11th century they began to expand into the productive lands on either side of the western Sahara, and it would seem that later in the century Ghana became dominated by them.”

Source: Western Africa The States of Sudan

“The medieval empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai that controlled the western Sudan had no fixed geopolitical boundaries or singular ethnic or national identities. Although each empire possessed important political and economic centers, such as Ghana’s Kumbi Saleh and Songhai’s Gao, it is not certain that these were permanent capitals. Instead, the empires may have had “floating” capitals that shifted between a number of urbanized centers or traveled with their ruling monarchs. Above all, the empires of the western Sudan were unified by strong leadership, kin-based societies, and the trade routes they sought to dominate. Trans-Saharan Trade The importance that contact with the Islamic world held for these empires cannot be understated. While extensive trading networks undoubtedly predated Arabic involvement, the development of trans-Saharan commerce in the seventh century by Arabs and Berbers intensified and expanded the trading networks that made the empires of the western Sudan possible.” 

Source: The Empires of the Western Sudan

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“West Sudanian savanna (green) inWest Africa The Western Sudan is a historic region in the northern part of West Africa. Traditionally, the Western Sudan extends from the Atlantic Ocean across to the basin of Lake Chad (which is sometimes associated with a region called “Central Sudan” or other times with the Western Sudan) and includes the savanna and Sahel lands north of the West African tropical rainforest belt. It includes the rivers of the Senegal, Gambia and Niger systems, as well as the highlands of Fouta Djallon from which these rivers flow. West Sudanian savanna (green) in West Africa Historians have considered the Western Sudan as a land of great empires, since at least the seventh century, when the Empire of Ghana flourished, there have been a succession of empires: Ghana (seventh to eleventh century), Mali (thirteenth to fifteenth century), Songhai(1464–1591) are the three best known, but smaller large scale polities have also been important, the Empire of Great Foula (late sixteenth to early eighteenth century), the Bamana Empire (late seventeenth to early nineteenth century), and the nineteenth century empires of El Hajj Umar Tal and Samori Toure. In fact, since the fourteenth century at least, local historians of the region have seen its history in terms of a succession of empires. This cycle is discernible in the historical accounts of shaykh Uthman, whose history was told to the historian ibn Khaldun while on the Muslim Pilgrimage in 1397. It can also be found in the great Sudanese chronicle, Tarikh al-Fettash. Modern historians have followed suit, and the imperial tradition can be found in textbooks today.” 

Source: Western Sudan (Wiki)

East Sudanian savanna (green) in Central and East Africa

Images for Western Sudan images

“The Sudan extends in some 5,000 km in a band several hundred km wide across Africa. It stretches from the border of Senegal, through southern Mali (formerly known as French Sudan when it was a French colony), Burkina Faso, southern Niger and northern Nigeria, southern Chad, the western Darfur region of present-day Sudan, and South Sudan.

“To the north of the region lies the Sahel, a more arid Acacia savanna region which in turn borders the Sahara desert further north, and to the east the Ethiopian Highlands (called al-Ḥabašah in Arabic).”

“In the south-west lies the West Sudanian savanna, a wetter, tropical savanna region bordering the tropical forests of West Africa. In the center is Lake Chad, and the more fertile region around the lake, while to the south of there are the highlands of Cameroon. To the south-east is the East Sudanian savanna, another tropical savanna region, bordering the forest of Central Africa. This gives way further east to the Sudd, an area of tropical wetland fed by the water of the White Nile.”

Habitation

The people of the Sudan region share similar lifestyles, dictated by the geography of the region. The economy is largely pastoral, whilesorghum and rice are cultivated in the southern parts of the region. The region was governed in colonial times by the French, as part of their African colonial empire, but the countries of the region achieved independence in the latter half of the 20th century.

Soudan

Soudan may refer to:

  • The French name (and former English name) for Sudan
  • The French name for French Sudan(present day Mali)

“Present-day Mali was once part of three West African empires that controlled trans-Saharan trade: the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire (for which Mali is named), and the Songhai Empire.“

“During its golden age, there was a flourishing of mathematics, astronomy, literature, and art. At its peak in 1300, the Mali Empire covered an area about twice the size of modern-day France and stretched to the west coast of Africa. In the late 19th century, during the Scramble for Africa, France seized control of Mali, making it a part of French Sudan. French Sudan (then known as the Sudanese Republic) joined with Senegal in 1959, achieving independence in 1960 as the Mali Federation. Shortly thereafter, following Senegal’s withdrawal from the federation, the Sudanese Republic declared itself the independent Republic of Mali. After a long period of one-party rule, a 1991 coup led to the writing of a new constitution and the establishment of Mali as a democratic, multi-party state. Significant portions of its legislation is derived from sharia law.”

timbuktu-manuscripts-astronomy-mathematics

“The pages above are from Timbuktu Manuscripts written in Sudani script (a form of Arabic) from the Mali Empire showing established knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. Today there are close to a million of these manuscripts found in Timbuktu alone. Sudanese tourists by the Meroë pyramids in various types of clothing.At the height of their glory, the Kushites conquered an empire that stretched from what is now known as South Kordofan all the way to the Sinai. King Piye attempted to expand the empire into the Near East, but was thwarted by the Assyrian kingSargon II.  The name derives from the Arabic bilād as-sūdān (بلاد السودان), or “the lands of the Blacks“, an expression denoting West Africa and northern-Central Africa.”

“International Association for the History of Religions (1959), Numen, Leiden: EJ Brill, p. 131, West Africa may be taken as the country stretching from Senegal in the west, to the Cameroons in the east; sometimes it has been called the central and western Sudan, the Bilad as-Sūdan, ‘Land of the Blacks’, [or]of the Arabs. By the 6th century, fifty states had emerged as the political and cultural heirs of the Meroitic Kingdom. Nobatia in the north, also known as Ballanah, had its capital at Faras; the central kingdom, Muqurra (Makuria), was centred at Tungul (Old Dongola), about 13 kilometres (8 miles) south of modern Dunqulah; and Alawa (Alodia), in the heartland of old Meroë, which had its capital at Sawba (Soba) (now a suburb of modern-day Khartoum). In all three kingdoms, warrior aristocracies ruled Meroitic populations from royal courts where functionaries bore Greek titles in emulation of the Byzantine court. A missionary sent by Byzantine empress Theodora arrived in Nobatia and started preaching Christianity about 540 AD. The Nubian kings became Monophysite Christians. However, Makuria was of the Melkite Christian faith, unlike Nobatia and Alodia.”

“After many attempts at military conquest failed, the Arab commander in Egypt concluded the first in a series of regularly renewed treaties known as al-baqṭ (pactum) with the Nubians that governed relations between the two peoples for more than 678 years. Islam progressed in the area over a long period of time through intermarriage and contacts with Arab merchants and settlers. Additionally, exemption from taxation in regions under Muslim rule were also a powerful incentive for conversion.[22] In 1093, a Muslim prince of Nubian royal blood ascended the throne of Dunqulah as king. The two most important Arab tribes to emerge in Nubia were the Jaali and the Juhayna. Today’s northern Sudanese culture often combines Nubian and Arabic elements. During the 16th century, a people called the Funj, under a leader named Amara Dunqus, appeared in southern Nubia and supplanted the remnants of the old Christian kingdom of Alwa, establishing As-Saltana az-Zarqa (the Blue Sultanate), also called the Sultanate of Sennar. The Blue Sultanate eventually became the keystone of the Funj Empire. By the mid-16th century, Sennar controlled Al Jazirah and commanded the allegiance of vassal states and tribal districts north to the Third Cataract and south to the rainforests. The government was substantially weakened by a series of succession arguments and coups within the royal family. In 1820, Muhammad Ali of Egypt sent 4,000 troops to invade Sudan. His forces accepted Sennar’s surrender from the last Funj sultan, Badi VII.”

Columbus Plan: Sail West to Set up Trading Post to Finance Crusade Against Moors !

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Less well known was a voyage by Columbus to the Gold Coast in West Africa in 1481, sponsored by King John II of Portugal. In contrast to the Eurocentric myth of disorder and barbarism prevalent in Africa, during this voyage Columbus encountered civilized communities and well-established states with very complex social, political, and economic structures. At the time of Columbus’s visit, the most impressive medieval Moorish (West African) empire, Songhay, was still in existence. Its noted center of scholarship, Timbuktu, the home of the world-renowned higher educational institution, the Sankoré University, still possessed a great deal of its splendor. Columbus who visited the Portuguese fortress of Elmina on the Gold Coast, was impressed by the riches of the land, especially its gold. But as an explorer, Columbus learned valuable lessens in geography and oceanography.

This undoubtedly sparked his interest in a voyage westward across the Atlantic, which he erroneously believed would take him to India and establish direct access to the coveted riches of the Orient. More importantly, Columbus’s voyage to West Africa may have laid the groundwork for the first contact between that part of Africa and the Americas. A few West Africans were said to have returned with him to Europe and eventually accompanied him on his voyages to the New World between 1492 and 1504. Some scholars, however, have suggested the possibility of an African presence in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus.

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The argument is that some West African people, probably from the Senegambia area, were known to Native Americans prior to arrival of Columbus. The most forceful argument along these lines has been provided by Rutgers linguist and anthropologist Ivan Van Sertima, who marshalled an array of archaeological, historical, and botanical evidence to argue his case. The United States and West Africa: Interactions and Relations pg. 18 Because Columbus has been such an important figure in the collective imagination of Americans, what we make of him affects both how we view our history and imagine our future. In what follows, I wish, first to detangle Columbus’s motivations from the accusations that have been brought against him and then to trace briefly the apocalyptic scenario and the place of Jerusalem that figured so centrally to his quest. To distance ourselves from his religious views obscures how deeply influential they have been, and continue to be in our national and political consciousness. Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem: How Religion Drove the Voyages that Led to America pg. 236

The principal factor which governed Columbus’s life and motivated his activities was—as he put it in a letter to the Spanish monarchs—to spread the light of the Gospel throughout the world and enlist the newly converted peoples in the life-and-death war with the empire of Muhammad. His ultimate goals included the “recovery” of the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem, in preparation for the Kingdom of God. In fact, it was his deep religious convictions in prophecy which, according to The New Millennial Manual, enabled him to convince Ferdinand and Isabella to finance his “Enterprise of the Indies.” And the “Enterprise” was to be the first stage in a new Crusade which would enable the Spanish monarchs to “recapture” the Holy Land and restore the Christian faith there. Throughout his life, Columbus insisted that Providence was always guiding his steps and directing his efforts.

In fact, at the end of his first voyage, and in a letter to the Spanish court dated February 15, 1492, Columbus said that the Bible was his lifetime roadmap for the fulfillment of divine prophecies and the rebuilding of Zion. This letter was subsequently printed and translated into many European languages. In it, Columbus summed up his global program “to conquer the world, spread the Christian faith, and regain the Holy Land and the Temple Mount.” During the last voyage (1502-04), Columbus recorded in his journals that he heard voices and saw visions of God urging him on to carry out His mission. This belief in a Providential mission is what motivated Columbus to so relentlessly pursue his project of the “Enterprise of the Indies.” He wrote:

Who would doubt that this light, which urged me on with a great haste continuously, without a moment’s pause, came to you in a most deep manner, as it did to me? In this my voyage to the Indies, Our Lord wished to perform [a] very evident miracle in order to console me and others in the matter of this other voyage to the Holy Sepulcher [Jerusalem]. To realize the originality as well as the significance of Columbus’s missionary efforts and zeal to fulfill the “prophecies,” one should remember that his campaign preceded the Protestant Reformation and the resulting emphasis on Old Testament prophecies and missionary drive.

This zeal and literal interpretation of sacred prophecies led Delno West to describe Columbus as “the first American hero with all the rights and privileges, myths and legends, and criticisms the title carries.” In his obsession with the rebuilding of Zion and the preparation for the Coming Kingdom, Columbus anticipated the early Puritan settlers of the New World, the nineteenth-century end-times churches and missionary establishment, and the present-day American grand plans for the world. In essence, Columbus’s program is a roadmap for the modern campaign of the Christian Right in America today.

See PAUL BOYER’s  Did Christopher Columbus see himself on an apocalyptic mission?..