The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies (review)

Christopher Columbus, the principal figure of the Age of Reconnaissance, has received ample biographical attention. Indeed, a library could be filled with materials relating to his role as pioneer of a westward route across the Atlantic to reach Asia, and in the process “discovering” new lands between Europe and the riches of the East. The first question confronting a reviewer of a hefty tome such as this is, do we have a new approach or new evidence that merits our investment? After completing the acknowledgments, eight pages of thanks to the staffs of dozens of depositories of Columbian materials, hundreds of names of colleagues that helped in the author’s decade-and-a-half journey that started with his dissertation, as well as recognition of close and extended family, I knew I faced a challenge.

Wey Gómez argues that Columbus, based on his readings of available cosmographers of the ancient and medieval world, and discussions with specialists, came to believe that the nature of lands and peoples was dependent upon latitude. Contrary to the belief of many of his contemporaries who held the earth to be inhospitable in the frigid Artic and Torrid Zones, Columbus argued that the land to be found to the south was not only filled with people, but was also blessed with riches. The nature of the people was different from that of the Europeans, his compatriots, who were for him superior. Columbus’s intimate knowledge of the Portuguese experience along Africa’s coast as its voyagers sailed south of Cape Bojador, as well as what he believed about the location and wealth of India and the Spice Islands, reinforced his conviction. By close reading of the texts accessible to Columbus, and his letters, reports, the Diario, and extensive marginalia, Wey Gómez teases out the core of the geographical and cosmological opinions of the discoverer. None of the sources he exploits are unknown to other specialists. It is the thesis that Columbus was aiming towards the “south,” both geographically and in terms of his vision of what he would find there, that provides a valuable contribution.

In the first chapter, “Machina Mundi, the Moral Authority of Place in the Early Transatlantic Encounter,” Wey Gómez stresses the known impact of Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson, from whom Columbus took ideas about how space and the impact of place influenced the nature of people. His intent is to trace the evolution of the idea, from antiquity, and owing much to Aristotle’s Politics, as well as the influence of early Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers, who classified peoples inhabiting the south as naturally subject, incapable of ruling themselves, and potential slaves. Albertus Magnus likely influenced Columbus’s thought too. Near the chapter’s end, he concentrates on Bartolomé de las Casas, who had access to the Columbus family library and writings, and explains how the friar, although recognizing the admiral’s importance, came to reject his vision of how the natives would fit into European expansion.

The structure of the six subsequent chapters is similar: centering on a discrete theme, the foundations of Columbus’s geographical and cosmological knowledge are probed and their relationship to exploration is analyzed. In “Columbus and the Open Geography of the Ancients,” the explorer’s failures in 1486 and 1492 to convince members of royal committees to support his proposals are examined. Critiques centered on the questions that some zones might be uninhabitable, and that the nature of the sea, open or closed, could prevent successful navigation. In Chapter Three the concept of “India” and its compelling importance as a goal for the Europeans, from the Hellenistic thinkers through the scholastics, is studied. The fourth and longest chapter traces the way that “place” was seen as influencing “nature,” concepts that later permeated colonialism. Here contributors glossed by Wey Gómez ranged from Geminos of Rhodes, Parmenides, Strabo, Eratosthenes, Ptolemy...