Liberal Arts professor explores ‘nine lives’ of Christopher Columbus

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In all his years as an expert in Latin American history, Matthew Restall never had much interest in Christopher Columbus as a subject.

“It just never seemed a current or compelling enough topic to write an entire book about — it seemed a bit old-fashioned,” said Restall, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History, Anthropology, and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies and director of Latin American Studies in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts.

But a trip to Spain changed his mind and ultimately yielded his new book, “The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus.” Published by W.W. Norton & Company, the book traces Columbus’ life and his many afterlives in terms of public perception. Along the way, Restall separates fact from fiction and seeks to understand why Columbus continues to mean different things to different people.

Columbus had always been a part of Restall’s teaching and scholarship through the years, but it wasn’t until he visited some friends in Galicia, Spain, a few years ago that he decided a full-fledged project was in order.

While there, Restall met some neighbors of his friends who, after learning what he did for a living, asked, “Are you here because Columbus was a Gallego?” Puzzled, he inquired further, and they told him that, contrary to the historical record of Columbus being born in Genoa, Italy, he was actually a Galician nobleman who faked his own death in 1492 and changed his name.

“This was not something I took seriously,” Restall said. “But I was kind of curious, and thought, ‘How widespread is this?’ Turns out, it was a very widespread belief. This is something woven into the fabric of how the people of this region think about their history in relation to Columbus. So, I knew I had to investigate it.”

The “nine lives” concept came to Restall quickly, and he made it a mission to find the “many Columbuses” who permeate the public consciousness.

The first part of the book is what Restall describes as a straightforward biography charting Columbus’ early life as a “complete nobody” from Genoa to his social ascent following his Spanish Crown-financed voyages across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and Central and South America, which opened the way for European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

Through his research in Genoa and other places, Restall said he was able to gain a better sense of Columbus the man than he previously thought possible.

“He was extraordinarily self-centered and narcissistic — although he was not a monster compared to somebody like Cortés, who I came to the conclusion was absolutely a monster,” he said, referring to the 16th-century Spanish conquistador whose exploits Restall covered in books including “When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History,” published by Ecco in 2018. “And Columbus had a lot of tenacity, which in the American telling of Columbus was seen as an admirable trait. He didn’t give up because his ego was so wrapped up in the idea of achieving social mobility. And he achieved it.”

The rest of the book is devoted to exploring Columbus the myth, which Restall said went into high gear in the years following American independence, when he was lionized as a patriotic symbol of excellence nearly on the same level as George Washington.

“He and Washington became almost equal figures,” Restall said. “What’s the U.S. capital? Washington, in the District of Columbia.”

Columbus’ adulation in the United States had reached its zenith by around 1892, when the country celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s maiden voyage and the Pledge of Allegiance became a popular means of getting children “socialized to be good Americans,” Restall said.

It was also around this time that the first huge wave of Italian immigrants came to the U.S. Subjected to fervent prejudice at first, they went looking for ways to show they were enthusiastically assimilating into the American melting pot.

Enter Columbus, Restall said.

“What Italian Americans discovered is that the United States had elevated Columbus as this extraordinarily heroic patriotic figure,” Restall said. “They totally identified with him and incorporated him and essentially created another Columbus.”

As Italian Americans made their own significant contributions to American culture throughout the 20th century, Columbus became a point of pride through groups like the Knights of Columbus, the designation of Columbus Day as a federal holiday on the second Monday of October and the erecting of numerous Columbus statues in cities across the country.

However, another Columbus iteration began to take shape around the 500th anniversary — this one a more menacing version who was responsible for the subjugation and deaths of countless Indigenous people. Many places, including Penn State, now observe the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day.

“There’s a whole other generation from 1992 onward that sees Columbus through the prism of those who are more sympathetic toward Indigenous people,” Restall said. “For them, Columbus is bad and the holiday needed to be changed. But for Italian Americans, that had nothing to do with their own experience in America.”

Given the passions and historical contexts of both sides of the argument, Restall said it was critical that the book take a more nuanced stance on the issue. And when it comes to whether the national holiday should be Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day, he comes down on the side of, “Why can’t there be both?”

“It should be up to individual people, places and organizations to determine that for themselves,” Restall said. “I can’t see a better solution. Everyone’s not going to be happy, but I think there’s a place for common ground. It’s important to explain why it’s important to both sides because these groups are talking about a different person — and ‘The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus’ is really an argument that there are different Columbuses.”