Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise closely traces Columbus’s life, objectives, and actions as governor of “Española” from September 1498 to his removal in October 1500, a period when he didn’t go to sea and which is often abbreviated or ignored in biographies of him.
Columbus is forty-six at the book’s outset, and he’d fallen from the acclaim at Queen Isabel’s court that followed his first voyage, principally because his promises to find gold and a shortcut to Cathay had failed and many Spaniards at court and on Española distrusted or despised him. He also hadn’t yet enriched himself, as there hadn’t been profits from the Indies for him to share in. He departed on his third voyage on May 30, 1498, desperate to produce gold for Isabel and King Fernando—as well as himself and his heirs—via the system of Indian gold tribute payments he’d established with Isabel’s approval on Española in 1495 and 1496.
When he arrived on Española, Columbus struggled to settle the initial Spaniards’ rebellion against him. The 1498 Taíno Indian slave awards and shipment depicted on the book cover were intended to compensate and induce the rebels to return to Spain, but the rebels chose not to depart. In 1499, Columbus succeeded in settling the rebellion by awarding Indian land and the resident Indians to the rebels, and he gave the Spaniards loyal to him comparable awards. When he saw that the system of tribute failed to produce gold in quantity, he authorized the use of forced Indian labor in gold mining.
Additional rebellions against him recurred in 1500. Embittered by opposition, Columbus experienced a mental decline and brief collapse, increasingly retreating into religious devotion and ultimately a perception that he was Christ’s messenger to evangelize the Indies. When Francisco de Bobadilla arrived to replace him, he outright resisted, ordering Spaniards and Indians to disobey Bobadilla, and Bobadilla sent him home in chains. Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise relates the testimony taken against Columbus in Bobadilla’s investigation—first published in 2006, and hence not discussed in most biographies of him.
The Kirkus Reviews advance review of the book expressly focuses on the portrayal of Columbus, calling it “…a fresh, scholarly perspective on Christopher Columbus…”
The following engraving (included in the book) depicts Bobadilla arresting Columbus (taken from Theodore de Bry, 1594, courtesy of The John Carter Brown Library, portion of rec. no. 09887-12).
Find the full book description, other advance reviews, and purchase links on my website, www.andrewrowen.com