Essay Help! European Colonization

**Marshal Murat** · 02-22-2007, 23:28

Junks are very good a weathering the sea.
Considering a Ming (?) trading fleet managed to sail from China to Africa. With boats about 100 ft long and up.

**Incongruous** · 02-23-2007, 08:05

Originally Posted by Marshal Murat

Junks are very good a weathering the sea.
Considering a Ming (?) trading fleet managed to sail from China to Africa. With boats about 100 ft long and up.

Most Historians consider the greater legnths of some junks to be overestimations, and impractical.

**lars573** · 02-24-2007, 16:34

Originally Posted by Bopa the Magyar

Most Historians consider the greater legnths of some junks to be overestimations, and impractical.

Actually they have un-earthed ship fittings, including a rudder that would fit on a 300-400 foot long junk.

Originally Posted by KrooK

And Columbus wasn't from Spain. He was from Italy.

He was Spainish. Catalan specifically. He faked being Genoese most probably because he had been one of the Catalan cosairs that had rebelled against King Ferdinand in the 1480's.

**Marshal Murat** · 02-24-2007, 20:23

Quick edit wikipedia!

**Avicenna** · 02-24-2007, 20:45

I'm sorry, am I imagining things, or did you just imply that the muslims could have conquered China with an expeditionary force?

**Sarmatian** · 02-25-2007, 04:56

Originally Posted by lars573

He was Spainish. Catalan specifically. He faked being Genoese most probably because he had been one of the Catalan cosairs that had rebelled against King Ferdinand in the 1480's.

Debatable. Still, most historians and geographers agree that he was Italian.

**lars573** · 02-26-2007, 06:24

Originally Posted by Sarmatian

Debatable. Still, most historians and geographers agree that he was Italian.

If that's true then Columbus was illiterate and everything he ever wrote was acutally written by a Catalan.

**Randarkmaan** · 02-26-2007, 13:57

It's not uncommon to be able to speak more than one language, and besides Italian and Spanish are pretty similar so it shouldn't be too hard for an Italian to learn Spanish and vice versa. Myself I've heard that he was Italian.

**Sarmatian** · 02-26-2007, 14:36

Well, Catalan and Spanish are not the same, but that doesn't really matter.
As far as I remember from college, Columbus was Italian who was living in Spain.

**Adrian II** · 03-01-2007, 13:41

Originally Posted by lars573

He was Spainish. Catalan specifically. He faked being Genoese most probably because he had been one of the Catalan cosairs that had rebelled against King Ferdinand in the 1480's.

There is a lot of mythology about Columbus. He was a Genoese corsair, not Catalan. He nearly died in a naval battle against the Portuguese in 1476 and was ship-wrecked near Cabo São Vicente in Portugal. After that, he worked in Portugese service and sailed the African coast for them - nationality not yet being an issue in those days.

He did not write Catalan, he wrote a mixture of Spanish and Portugese. When in doubt he used the Portugese form. Many fake logs of Columbus have circulated. In the nineteenth century an English copy (written in English!) was 'discovered' and taken seriously for some time...

There have also been many fake claims about Columbus origins. He has been claimed as a Spaniard, Frenchman, Armenian, Catalan, Georgain and Galician.

In a little-known book entitled Sails of Hope: The Secret Mission of Christopher Columbus (1972) nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal claimed that Columbus was actually a Jew, a converso intent on discovering new lands where the Jews could settle in order to escape persecution.

Let us stick to the facts, the truth is fascinating enough.