Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus

by Samuel Eliot Morison

Brand New.NO BETTER BOOK BEING MADE TODAY, HIGHEST DEGREE OF QUALITY Easton Press. LUXURIOUS LEATHER-BOUND HARDCOVER COLLECTOR'S ”The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written” Easton Press EDITION--"JOURNALS AND OTHER DOCUMENTS ON THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS", introduction by Lydia M. Garner, illustrated by Lima De Freitas.FIRST EDITION 1993, Never-opened, brand new copy in absolute mint condition.Book size is 9.9 x 7.8 x 1.9 inches & there are 417 pages. No dust jacket, as issued. Cover is in featuring GORGEOUS premium hand-cut full leather boards adorned with ornate embossing on the front & back covers & further accented by 22-kt pure gold stamping on the spine. The spine is dubbed with raised horizontal bands formed in the leather. GENUINE leather binding is tight & square, 22 karat gold lettering and art on the front and back covers as well as guilt pages, thread SMYTH SEWN PAGES--not merely glue, raised bands on the spine that add a visual interest and an antique look, and a silk page-marker sewn into the binding for durability which is concealed by muslin joints.Flawless gold gilded page ends on all 3 sides to protect against dust & moisture. Lovely deep peach silk moiré fabric end papers & a sewn-in satin ribbon page marker. The book is printed on acid-neutral archival paper, for permanence & durability to last generations without discoloring.The paper quality--texture and thickness. These books aren't going to fall apart, unless you try to take them apart, so this book will accommodate a lifetime of being read over & over again without showing signs of wear or deterioration.Perfectly crisp corners.Pages are clean and unmarked, unused/unread , excellent condition overall.

Genres: History

Leather Bound

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Samuel Eliot Morison, son of John H. and Emily Marshall (Eliot) Morison, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 9 July 1887. He attended Noble’s School at Boston, and St. Paul’s at Concord, New Hampshire, before entering Harvard University, from which he was graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1908. He studied at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, Paris, France, in 1908-1909, and returned to Harvard for postgraduate work, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1912. Thereafter he became Instructor, first at the University of California in Berkeley, and in 1915 at Harvard. Except for three years (1922-1925) when he was Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford, England, and his periods of active duty during both World Wars, he remained continuously at Harvard University as lecturer and professor until his retirement in 1955.

He had World War I service as a private in the US Army, but not overseas. As he had done some preliminary studies on Finland for Colonel House’s Inquiry, he was detailed from the Army in January 1919 and attached to the Russian Division of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, at Paris, his specialty being Finland and the Baltic States. He served as the American Delegate on the Baltic Commission of the Peace Conference until 17 June 1919, and shortly after returned to the United States. He became a full Professor at Harvard in 1925, and was appointed to the Jonathan Trumbull Chair in 1940. He also taught American History at Johns Hopkins University in 1941-1942.

Living up to his sea-going background – he has sailed in small boats and coastal craft all his life. In 1939-1940, he organized and commanded the Harvard Columbus Expedition which retraced the voyages of Columbus in sailing ships, barkentine Capitana and ketch Mary Otis. After crossing the Atlantic under sail to Spain and back, and examining all the shores visited by Columbus in the Caribbean, he wrote Admiral of the Ocean Sea, an outstanding biography of Columbus, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1943. He also wrote a shorter biography, Christopher Columbus, Mariner. With Maurico Obregon of Bogota, he surveyed and photographed the shores of the Caribbean by air and published an illustrated book The Caribbean as Columbus Saw It (1964).

Shortly after the United States entered World War II, Dr. Morison proposed to his friend President Roosevelt, to write the operational history of the US Navy from the inside, by taking part in operations and writing them up afterwards. The idea appealed to the President and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, and on 5 May 1942, Dr. Morison was commissioned Lieutenant Commander, US Naval Reserve, and was called at once to active duty. He subsequently advanced to the rank of Captain on 15 December 1945. His transfer to the Honorary Retired List of the Naval Reserve became effective on 1 August 1951, when he was promoted to Rear Admiral on the basis of combat awards.

In July-August 1942 he sailed with Commander Destroyer Squadron Thirteen (Captain John B. Heffernan, USN), on USS Buck, flagship, on convoy duty in the Atlantic. In October of that year, on USS Brooklyn with Captain Francis D. Denebrink, he participated in Operation TORCH (Allied landings in North and Northwestern Africa - 8 November 1942). In March 1943, while attached to Pacific Fleet Forces, he visited Noumea, Guadalcanal, Australia, and on Washington made a cruise with Vice Admiral W. A. Lee, Jr., USN. He also patrolled around Papua in motor torpedo boats, made three trips up “the Slot” on Honolulu, flagship of Commander Cruisers, Pacific Fleet (Rear Admiral W.W. Ainsworth, USN), and took part in the Battle of Kolombangara before returning to the mainland. Again in the Pacific War Area in September 1943, he participated in the Gilbert Islands operation on board USS Baltimore, under command of Captain Walter C. Calhoun, USN. For the remainder of the Winter he worked at Pearl Harbor, and in the Spring

Reviews

[David Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, prepared in 1963, is a collection of documents and document extracts related to the voyages of Christopher Columbus. It is not, as some have suggested, a "hagiography." It is a gathering in one volume of the most important documents about these events written at the time of Columbus's life. These documents show that much nonsense is written about Columbus on all sides of the matter. All too often, people pick the "Columbus" that fits their political perspective, cherry-picking details, and with little regard for what the actual documents of the time reveal. In this book, often, we get the same incidents narrated in three different accounts, not always favorable to Columbus. The documents themselves are mostly in new translations. Morison, a rear admiral and decorated professional historian, provides introductions to the documents, placing them in context, and numerous footnotes, often with nautical details. Morison definitely admires Columbus as a skilled navigator, and as very brave in difficult circumstances. He also, however, criticizes many of Columbus's misguided notions (such as his belief that the world was pear shaped), and includes extracts from some of Columbus's critics at the time, including Las Casas, the priest who fought hard against the mistreatment of the Caribbean natives. Morison, in his footnotes, expresses his dismay at least three times that because of Columbus's voyages, the native populations of these islands almost entirely disappeared within 50 years. He also notes in multiple places that in their orders to Columbus, the Spanish sovereigns on several occasions expressly forbade Columbus and the Spanish explorers from enslaving or abusing the natives, an order that he notes that both Columbus and more commonly the Spanish explorers and governors immediately after him repeatedly violated. We still have the historical fact, that for ill and good Columbus's contact with the Americas transformed the world in ways that few other single events have done. And for that reason alone, it is worth attention, worth knowing about, and worth getting the facts right about.

As far as the reading goes, none of these documents were meant as works of literature. These are personal journals, correspondences, legal documents, and so on. They contain many technical details, especially of navigation, that can get tedious after a bit. Nevertheless, they contain the earliest accounts we have on record of the appearances and habits of the native populations in that region (although not entirely accurate for a number of reasons), accounts we otherwise would never have as those people had no writing and made very little that was durable.

[Charles Albert · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book, released by the Heritage Club in 1963, was perportedly a picture of Columbus' four voyages to the New World, based on eye-witness accounts. With bold wood-cut illustrations, it is part of a major white-washing effort by American historians on the figure of Columbus, and is remarkably silent on any of the accounts of murder, mutilation, rape, enslavement, and other atrocities committed upon the Caribbean peoples in the course of Columbus' four voyages to the New World.

Morison can't even admit to us the fact--widely understood in 1963 and recently proven by DNA testing--that Columbus, in his raping of the ten- to fourteen-year old native girls that he once remarked were "in favor", acquired a case of syphilus and brought it back to the Old World before dying of it. Instead, according to Morison, Columbus died of "arthritis."

Morison clearly spent much effort reading the original documents, including those of a certain "Las Casas" whom he mysteriously veils from us, not even giving us the witness' first name. As well he must, if he is to hide from us certain infamous works by Bartolome de las Casas such as "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies" and other works in which, according to American Magazine, de las Casas witnessed scenes of diabolical cruelty, which he later chronicled with exacting detail. He described how the armored Spaniards would pacify a village by initiating massacres; how they would enslave their captives and punish any who rebelled by cutting off their hands; how they would consign them to die before their time through overwork in the mines and plantations. His reports, based, as he frequently noted, on “what I have seen,” included accounts of soldiers suddenly drawing their swords “to rip open the bellies” of men, women, children and old folk, “all of whom were seated, off guard and frightened,” so that “within two credos, not a man of all of them there remained alive.”

Morison apparently doesn't want us to know any of this, for no mention of it appears anywhere in this insultingly hagiographic propoganda. One assumes that the writings by de las Casas and the other eye-witnesses who recounted the other murders, dismemberments, genocides, and blatant inhumanities wrought by the Spanish in the Caribbean would be inconvenient for an academic who had invested a significant portion of his career in the glorification of Columbus, and could not bear to see his life's work tarnished by the truth.