"Christopher Columbus' Defense" is a translation a letter written by the famous Italian navigator in 1500, while he was sailing home to Spain from the New World. The letter was written to a woman named Juana de la Torres, the nurse of Prince Don John (Juan), son of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.

Columbus, who was born in Genoa in 1451, has become immortalized in history because of his "discovery" of America in 1492. Since the early 15th century, Europeans had sought to find an oceanic route to the East Indies (India and Southeast Asia). These regions produced a goods that were highly sought after in Europe.

In the early 1400s, Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) began to finance annual oceanic expeditions down the coast of Africa. The goal was to circumnavigate Africa and reach Asia.

Every year the Portuguese fleets sailed further and further south along the African coast. Finally, in 1498, Vasco da Gama (1498-1524) became the first Portuguese captain to sail around Africa and reach India by sea.

While the Portuguese were trying to reach India by sailing around Africa, Columbus imagined an alternative route to the East. Since the world was round, Columbus believed that he would be able to reach Asia by sailing westward across the Atlantic.

Of course, Columbus' belief that the world was round was correct. But Columbus miscalculated the size of the world. He believed that the earth was much smaller than it actually is, and assumed that the voyage around the world, to Asia, would take a much shorter time than it actually would have. Even today, long-distance commercial flights (from, say New York City to Japan) take several hours. The small sailing vessels used by Europeans at the time moved at a much slower speed than modern airplanes, meaning a similar journey on those ships would have taken several months, if not years.

Needing funding to carry out his voyage, Columbus tried to pitch his idea to various European rulers. But Portugal and other nations rejected his plan. It was the Spanish rulers, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, who agreed to fund Columbus' mission. Setting out in 1492, Columbus never reached Asia, but he did "discover" the landmass that lay in between Europe and Asia- the Americas.

Columbus returned to the New World in 1493, with a mandate from Spain to establish a colony on the island of Hispaniola (present-day home of Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Ferdinand and Isabella appointed Columbus governor of the New World Spanish colonies.

As Governor, Columbus quickly encountered hostility from the colonists. The colonists rebelled against him, and complained about his alleged tyranny to the Spanish monarchy. Spain responded by recalling Columbus to Spain. It was during the voyage back to Spain, in 1500, that Columbus composed this letter, trying to defend his record as governor of the colony. The letter provides some insight to life in the early Spanish colony, including a notorious description of the sale of young indigenous girls to settlers. Columbus died in 1506, having been stripped of his position as governor.

This letter was translated from the original Spanish by Richard Henry Major (1818-91), a British librarian and geographer. Notes on the text were made by Brooklyn-born American novelist and biographer Paul Leicester Ford (1865-1902).

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