Parla Lei genovese?
Yesterday was Columbus Day in the US, when most people get the day off. Columbus Day sometimes riles up Native Americans, but usually it's a non-event. I was going to write about Columbus anyway before I realized it was Columbus Day. Namely what I was going to ask is why doesn't everyone in the New World speak Genovese (or Ligurian), the Italian dialect from Genoa (Genova) in northwestern Italy?
As everyone knows, Columbus sailed for the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. Hence, Spain was able to lay claim eventually to the largest part of the New World. Columbus had spent almost 10 years in Portugal trying to convince the Portuguese king that he should sail for them, but Portugal wasn't interested. Despite this, Portugal still managed to get the Pope a few years later to give them Brazil.
But Columbus, or Cristoforo Colombo, was from Genoa, an independent city-state (Italy wouldn't be created for another 400 years). Genoa was the richest city in the western Mediterranean at the time, so I wonder why Columbus never sailed for them. In fact, Ferdinand and Isabella were poor in 1492 and couldn't fund the whole trip so Columbus lined up private backers from the Italian states, but they were only interested in any profits he made, rather than land claims.
But now I read in the New York Times that there's an air of mystery around Columbus's origins. Different theories abound that he was either the result of an illicit dalliance of a Portuguese prince, a Catalan from northeast Iberia, from one of the Balearic Islands like Majorca, or a Jew from anywhere in Iberia. Here's the New York Times article and another article concerning his origins. Anyway, I'm still going with the assumption that he was Genoese.
But the reason I was going to write about Columbus anyway is because of John Cabot, born as Giovanni Caboto in ... Genoa. John Cabot seems to be a forgotten man in the history of exploration but had a major impact. Cabot, like Columbus, went to both the Portuguese and Spanish monarchs to convince them that he could get to Asia by sailing west. The Portuguese were still focused with getting to Asia by sailing around Africa. The Spanish backed Columbus instead of Cabot. So Cabot took his idea to England and convinced the king there to back him. He sailed from Bristol in 1497 and "discovered" Canada (most likely landing in Newfoundland). Of course the Vikings had been there centuries before, but like Columbus in the tropics, Cabot was the first of the new wave of European explorers that opened up the New World permanently to Europeans. So, having been rejected by the Portuguese and Spanish, Cabot helped to lay the English claims to North America. A successful claim, given the ethnic and linguistic heritage of Canada and the United States today. And, for full disclosure, there is some evidence that the Basque people from northern Spain were fishing off of North America for decades before the 1490s, but there has been no evidence of Basque settlements in North America.
Both Cabot (who was jealous of Columbus having beaten him with his discoveries) and Columbus went to their graves (Cabot in 1499, Columbus in 1506) 100% convinced that the lands they sailed to were part of Asia and still had no clue when they died that they had discovered the Americas.
So, the whole point of this post is that I found it massively interesting that besides the megapopulation of Brazil speaking Portuguese and a few scattered French and Dutch (yes, Dutch) speaking enclaves in the New World, the Western Hemisphere is almost exclusively either Spanish or English speaking. Yet, if you think about it, this part of the world could have all been speaking the same language from the start over 500 years ago, and that language could have been Genovese/Ligurian.
As everyone knows, Columbus sailed for the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. Hence, Spain was able to lay claim eventually to the largest part of the New World. Columbus had spent almost 10 years in Portugal trying to convince the Portuguese king that he should sail for them, but Portugal wasn't interested. Despite this, Portugal still managed to get the Pope a few years later to give them Brazil.
But Columbus, or Cristoforo Colombo, was from Genoa, an independent city-state (Italy wouldn't be created for another 400 years). Genoa was the richest city in the western Mediterranean at the time, so I wonder why Columbus never sailed for them. In fact, Ferdinand and Isabella were poor in 1492 and couldn't fund the whole trip so Columbus lined up private backers from the Italian states, but they were only interested in any profits he made, rather than land claims.
But now I read in the New York Times that there's an air of mystery around Columbus's origins. Different theories abound that he was either the result of an illicit dalliance of a Portuguese prince, a Catalan from northeast Iberia, from one of the Balearic Islands like Majorca, or a Jew from anywhere in Iberia. Here's the New York Times article and another article concerning his origins. Anyway, I'm still going with the assumption that he was Genoese.
But the reason I was going to write about Columbus anyway is because of John Cabot, born as Giovanni Caboto in ... Genoa. John Cabot seems to be a forgotten man in the history of exploration but had a major impact. Cabot, like Columbus, went to both the Portuguese and Spanish monarchs to convince them that he could get to Asia by sailing west. The Portuguese were still focused with getting to Asia by sailing around Africa. The Spanish backed Columbus instead of Cabot. So Cabot took his idea to England and convinced the king there to back him. He sailed from Bristol in 1497 and "discovered" Canada (most likely landing in Newfoundland). Of course the Vikings had been there centuries before, but like Columbus in the tropics, Cabot was the first of the new wave of European explorers that opened up the New World permanently to Europeans. So, having been rejected by the Portuguese and Spanish, Cabot helped to lay the English claims to North America. A successful claim, given the ethnic and linguistic heritage of Canada and the United States today. And, for full disclosure, there is some evidence that the Basque people from northern Spain were fishing off of North America for decades before the 1490s, but there has been no evidence of Basque settlements in North America.
Both Cabot (who was jealous of Columbus having beaten him with his discoveries) and Columbus went to their graves (Cabot in 1499, Columbus in 1506) 100% convinced that the lands they sailed to were part of Asia and still had no clue when they died that they had discovered the Americas.
So, the whole point of this post is that I found it massively interesting that besides the megapopulation of Brazil speaking Portuguese and a few scattered French and Dutch (yes, Dutch) speaking enclaves in the New World, the Western Hemisphere is almost exclusively either Spanish or English speaking. Yet, if you think about it, this part of the world could have all been speaking the same language from the start over 500 years ago, and that language could have been Genovese/Ligurian.
posted by Kevin at 10/09/2007 12:26:00 PM
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