Christopher Columbus’s Letter to Raphael Sanxis on the Discovery of America (1493)
Impact
The impact of Columbus's letter cannot be disentangled from the impact of the voyage itself. Europeans learned for the first time of the existence of an entirely new world, one that held the potential for the acquisition of great wealth and the spread of Christianity. Columbus described this new world as a land of immense beauty and richness, and within a hundred years of his death the route he had charted had been followed by many adventurers, traders, colonists, planters, fortune seekers, missionaries, and others willing to abandon their life in the Old World for the possibilities opened by the New World.
Historians and others continue to debate a fundamental question: Was Columbus a hero or a villain? That he was an accomplished mariner is clear, though he went to his death continuing to believe that he had found Asia. That Columbus had the vision to believe that the world was round and that the earth could be circumnavigated makes him an important figure of the...
