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The Columbus Conspiracy: An Investigation into the Secret History of Christopher Columbus
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
- GenresHistory
253 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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December 19, 2024
Perhaps it is a fool’s game to subject a book so gleefully stupid to any kind of scrutiny. Bradley’s sources are all silly, and when he runs out of sources from his conspiracy shelf and tries to engage with “conventional” history, he gets even more confused. I was puzzled by his insistence that “Europe itself was more than half occupied by Arab invaders in 1300 A.D.” (p. 22; italics his) until I realized he had (consistently) confused Arabs with Turks, confused 1300 with 1500, and failed to estimate how much half of Europe would be. Bradley starts singing the praises of Hungary’s outsized contribution to world culture (p. 57), and while you’re wondering if Hungarian excellence was really such a mystery that needs a solution, he slips in the spurious explanation that it’s in part because of an invasion by Tamerlane—an invasion that never happened and that, as far as I can tell, not even the most extreme of historical revisionists had ever hallucinated!
This volume expands on theories in Bradley’s previous books, as well as the contemporarily popular Holy Blood, Holy Grail; in fact, it adds to these a generous mashup of Charles Hapgood, the crazier parts of Thor Heyderhahl, and countless others. It’s all in here. Not only is Columbus two different people, not only was he only pretending to seek Asia (the true location of which he knew well) as part of a con game, he is also a direct descendent of Jesus Christ sailing as part of a secret experiment conducted by Templars, who are also Cathars and want to hide the Holy Grail in a New World discovered long ago by a secret civilization centered in Mali, using maps created using aerial reconnaissance during the last ice age.
The potpourri effect makes sense in a way—Bradley’s bonkers assertions keep leading him into dead ends, and the only way out is to bring in another bonkers assertion; repeat. Just add another epicycle, as Tycho Brahe used to say. Every rumored voyage to the New World turns out to be a true record, while something like Columbus’s diaries are a master class in dissembling, misdirection, and straight-up fiction. I once heard someone describe a Kennedy conspiracist as subjecting one narrative to the most thorough scrutiny, insisting on a complete absence of coincidence, obscurity, or “dither,” and subjecting all other narratives to absolutely no scrutiny whatsoever. This is par for the paranoid’s course, and Bradley isn’t the man to deviate—although more than most he is able to dance back and forth between certainty and possibility. “It is at least possible that the religious and political freedom that North Americans value so highly today were made possible by an act between King Alfonso IV of Portugal and Templars, and that these freedoms derive essentially from the Holy Grail” (p. 168)—this is as mellow as he gets, and usually he is almost sure but withholding absolute certainty. He tries to gain plausibility points by stressing that the whole “bloodline of Christ” angle does not need to be true—it only needs to be believed in…by innumerable historical personages who concealed it. Of course, it is this concealment through the ages that is less plausible than an actual ancient bloodline.
Where Bradley’s book disappoints, though, is that in fitting together a host of crazy predecessors it fails (as compared to Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln, Hapgood, etc.) in formulating a punctum, a so-crazy-you-want-to believe-it slice of madness he can hang everything on. Columbus as Jesus Jr. comes close, I guess. Just looking for more.
This volume expands on theories in Bradley’s previous books, as well as the contemporarily popular Holy Blood, Holy Grail; in fact, it adds to these a generous mashup of Charles Hapgood, the crazier parts of Thor Heyderhahl, and countless others. It’s all in here. Not only is Columbus two different people, not only was he only pretending to seek Asia (the true location of which he knew well) as part of a con game, he is also a direct descendent of Jesus Christ sailing as part of a secret experiment conducted by Templars, who are also Cathars and want to hide the Holy Grail in a New World discovered long ago by a secret civilization centered in Mali, using maps created using aerial reconnaissance during the last ice age.
The potpourri effect makes sense in a way—Bradley’s bonkers assertions keep leading him into dead ends, and the only way out is to bring in another bonkers assertion; repeat. Just add another epicycle, as Tycho Brahe used to say. Every rumored voyage to the New World turns out to be a true record, while something like Columbus’s diaries are a master class in dissembling, misdirection, and straight-up fiction. I once heard someone describe a Kennedy conspiracist as subjecting one narrative to the most thorough scrutiny, insisting on a complete absence of coincidence, obscurity, or “dither,” and subjecting all other narratives to absolutely no scrutiny whatsoever. This is par for the paranoid’s course, and Bradley isn’t the man to deviate—although more than most he is able to dance back and forth between certainty and possibility. “It is at least possible that the religious and political freedom that North Americans value so highly today were made possible by an act between King Alfonso IV of Portugal and Templars, and that these freedoms derive essentially from the Holy Grail” (p. 168)—this is as mellow as he gets, and usually he is almost sure but withholding absolute certainty. He tries to gain plausibility points by stressing that the whole “bloodline of Christ” angle does not need to be true—it only needs to be believed in…by innumerable historical personages who concealed it. Of course, it is this concealment through the ages that is less plausible than an actual ancient bloodline.
Where Bradley’s book disappoints, though, is that in fitting together a host of crazy predecessors it fails (as compared to Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln, Hapgood, etc.) in formulating a punctum, a so-crazy-you-want-to believe-it slice of madness he can hang everything on. Columbus as Jesus Jr. comes close, I guess. Just looking for more.
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