Enemy Aliens: Italian-American Internment During WWII
Like a modern entrepreneur, fifteenth-century explorer, Christopher Columbus, raised capital for an expedition to discover a western passage to Asia. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 placed control of the land routes to the lucrative Asian spice trade in Ottoman-Turk hands. Columbus first proposed the Atlantic Ocean route to Joao II of Portugal in 1485. Joao had committed to sail around Africa, and when Bartolomeu Diaz, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, Portugal had their alternative access to the Indies.
The Treaty of Alcacovas (1479) blocked Spain from following Portugal’s African path to Asia. Columbus’s proposal represented Spain’s chance to gain direct access to the spice trade and eliminate Portugal’s advantage. The monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, appointed a commission under Bishop Hernando de Talavera to study Columbus’s proposal. Talavera argued against the feasibility of the scheme based on mistaken theological and cosmological theories of the world. The commission’s primary references, St. Augustine and Paul of Burgos, believed that Europe, Africa and Asia were a narrow horizontal corridor flanked by an inhospitable northern cold and the torrid zone where the sun’s heat rendered the equatorial waters unassailable. Paul of Burgos (ca. 1351-1435) had argued that dry land was only twenty-five percent of the Earth, the other parts covered by water. According to Genesis I: 9: “God said: ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered in one place: and let dry ground appear.’” Thus, dry land was a divinely sanctioned exception to shelter humans and land creatures, and the continental masses formed a lonely island surrounded by the abyss of an otherwise watery globe. Saint Augustine explicitly rejected the existence of humans outside the known world because separate inhabited landmasses denied humankind had a unique origin in Adam and Eve.
Columbus’s theories were also critically flawed. The explorer was likely self-taught and based his assumptions about the size and shape of the world on classical sources (e.g. Aristotle and Eratosthenes of Alexandria), supplemented by the travels of Marco Polo. Columbus possessed a letter and map by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, a Florentine cosmographer, which showed Cipango (Japan) about 80 degrees west of Lisbon. Constructed in 1492, Martin Behaim’s “Nuremberg globe” also showed Cipango only 80 degrees west of the Canaries. In 1492/93, Behaim unsuccessfully approached the German emperor, Maximilian, with virtually the identical proposal of Columbus.
Based on Marco Polo and Marinus of Tyre calculations, Columbus estimated the eastern land route from Spain to Japan to cover approximately 300 degrees of a spherical Earth, leaving only a 60-degree sail across the Atlantic to reach Japan. He employed a ninth-century degree-distance measurement by Caliph al-Mamun but mistakenly used a Roman rather than an Arabic mile, computing the voyage to be only 4,400 km.
Little documentation exists on Columbus’s debate with the commission. The promise of gaining direct access to spice sources controlled by Arab intermediaries was a powerful argument that Columbus used during his negotiations with Ferdinand and Isabella. The luxury trade with Asia was a drain on the precious metals in Europe, thus sources of gold were another major objective of Columbus’s voyages
Columbus revealed information sparingly; possibly fearing his idea would be stolen. He knew of Diaz’s voyage and may have used this information in the debate. Columbus had sailed near the equator and knew that the torrid zone was navigable. Alessandro Geraldini, a papal legate for Leo X, reported that many Spanish bishops alleged that Columbus was guilty of heresy.
During the years Columbus was appealing to Spain, he sent his brother Bartholomew to France and England trying to win financial backing and even made a second approach to Portugal. Columbus was himself on the way to France when a friar, Juan Perez, persuaded him to try another approach to Queen Isabella and arranged an audience. Perhaps the Spanish became concerned that Columbus would finally fund his voyage elsewhere and they’d lose an opportunity.
The delay to 1492 in the monarchs’ decision to back Columbus’s proposal may have been their preoccupation with the costly reconquest of Spain from the Muslims. In January 1492, Granada, the last Muslim stronghold, was taken, and the Catholic sovereigns decided to accept his proposal. Ironically, the war machine that reconquered Spain would be employed to conquer the Americas after Columbus’s discovery.
Although Talavera deemed the exploder’s demands for compensation as excessive, the terms of Columbus’s arrangement with the Spanish monarchs included that he was appointed admiral for life, and governor on all lands he might discover. He was to have one-tenth of pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices and other merchandise he obtained. Furthermore, he had the right to nominate three candidates from whom the governor of each province would be selected by the crown. He would be the judge of all disputes. If he contributed one-eighth of the cost of the voyage, he would be granted an additional one-eighth of all profit. Legend reported that Isabella pledged her jewels for the royal’s share of the voyage, but more likely monies were advanced from ecclesiastical sources to be repaid from the spoils of the expedition. The city of Palos was ordered to furnish two manned caravels as punishment for civil wrongs. The cost of the voyage is estimated at two million marevedis based on Columbus’s statement that he contributed five-hundred thousand marevedis, double his one-eighth share. The Pinzons, wealthy ship owners who went on the voyage, and the Spanish branch of the Medici bank under Juanoto Berardi probably advanced Columbus the funds
The classical concept that the Earth was stationery also led to the view that there was a point on the earth closest to heaven, and speculation ensued about the location and nature of man’s lost state of bliss, the Garden of Eden, earthly Paradise. For example, in Dante’s Inferno, Virgil explains that the fall of Lucifer created the Inferno and pushed up Mount Purgatory in the southern hemisphere, opposite of Jerusalem, at the top of which was earthly Paradise. According to Christian tradition, earthly Paradise must be located on a high place with plentiful water.
Columbus believed that the Earth’s high point was in the western hemisphere, close to the equator, and he reported finding two straits in a temperate climate where, the water ran continuously and fiercely. Columbus related this phenomenon to the font of earthly Paradise from which “flowed four main rivers.”
Columbus’s theories about both the shape of the earth and the existence of earthly Paradise may have been motivated by his desire to add justification for his voyages, especially as he didn’t find Asia, but his views were reasonable for his time.
Modern Note:
At the end of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, Italian organizations erected statues of famous Italians, like Columbus, at a time when the huge Italian immigration into the United States was being challenged as harmful to America’s way of life. Italians wished to remind people not only of their historic contributions to world culture and history, but to also point out that Italians were here first.
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