Santa Fe capitulations
The Santa Fe Capitulations are a document written by the Catholic Monarchs on April 17, 1492 in the town of Santa Fe, on the outskirts of Granada, which includes the agreements reached with Christopher Columbus relating to his planned expedition by sea to the west.
The document grants Christopher Columbus the titles of admiral, viceroy, and governor-general of all the territories he discovered or won during his lifetime. He was also granted a tithe of all the merchandise that he found, won and had in the conquered places. The text was written by the secretary Juan de Coloma and the original, today lost, was signed by the two monarchs. The Capitulations of Santa Fe meant an anticipated distribution between Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs of the benefits that the conquest of what would later be called America would bring. With these benefits, Columbus achieved a rapid rise in society, becoming part of the courtly nobility.
There is controversy over various aspects of the Capitulations. During the Colombian lawsuits, its legal nature was discussed: while the heirs of Columbus affirmed that it represented a binding contract, the Crown defended that it had been a mere revocable grant; the question is still debated today. On the other hand, the heading of the document affirms that Columbus "has discovered" certain lands, which has given arguments to supporters of a pre-discovery of America prior to 1492. Other aspects of the text that have given rise to conflicting interpretations are the treatment of "Don" granted to Columbus and the granting of the titles immediately, which contrast with a later grant, the Royal Provision of April 30, 1492, which conditions the titles to the effective discovery of new lands and does not use the Gift when mentioning Columbus. This has given rise to the theory that the document could have been modified in 1493 after the return of Columbus from his first voyage to the Indies.
Background
Capitulations for the conquest of the Canary Islands
In those years the word "capitulations" it designated various types of legal or diplomatic documents, both between states and between individuals and states. For the conquest of new territories, in the Middle Ages the Crown of Castile did not resort to its own permanent armies but contracted the mission to powerful individuals, to change of titles and economic benefits that were collected in a capitulation.
This occurred in particular during the conquest of the Canary Islands, whose capitulations are the immediate antecedent of the Santa Fe capitulations. The capitulations signed by the kings of Castile at the beginning of the century XV for the conquest of the Canary Islands were typically feudal: the nobles who undertook the conquest set themselves up as lords of the islands, vassals of Castile but with wide autonomy. The submission of more people to Christianity was raised as a kind of inherited internal excuse, since the war between Christians and Muslims was the area where these men were formed. On the contrary, those agreed at the end of the century by the Catholic Monarchs are limited to granting economic benefits but not lordships, which is a reflection of the authoritarian monarchy that they imposed on the aristocracy throughout their reign. The documents continued to mention a religious motive, but more and more as a mere pretext. However, in the capitulations with Christopher Columbus, he will be granted a hereditary lordship over the conquered lands and no mention of religious objective will be made.
The search for patronage for the Colón project
Around 1480 Christopher Columbus lived in Portugal, on the Madeira Islands, and through marriage had become part of the Portuguese nobility. It must have been around this time that he conceived the idea of sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean until he reached Cipango or the Indies. Between 1483 and 1485 he presented his project to King John II of Portugal but he was skeptical and, after consulting with three of his cosmographic advisors, dismissed the proposal. the west of the archipelagos of the Canary Islands, Madeira and Azores. On March 3, 1486, shortly after Columbus's refusal, John II did authorize an expedition led by Ferdinand van Olmen (known in Portugal as Fernam Dulmo) to discover and conquer the island of the Seven Cities. In the capitulation with van Olmen, the king granted him a hereditary lordship over all the lands he conquered in exchange for him financing and organizing the trip in full. The fact that Columbus probably did not have the money to set up his expedition could be one of the reasons why Juan II rejected his project in favor of van Olmen's.
After his failure before the king, perhaps added to the death of his wife or perhaps also to the campaign launched by Juan II against the House of Braganza, Columbus emigrated from Portugal to the neighboring kingdom of Castile.
Columbus proposed his project to the kings of Castile and Aragon, Isabel and Ferdinand, who did not accept it for various reasons. At that time the kings devoted all their resources to the conquest of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula. Hernando de Talavera feared that the trip proposed by Columbus would violate the Alcáçovas treaty signed with Portugal and would lead to the opening of another war conflict. On the other hand, a commission of experts ruled that it was impossible for what Columbus said to be true.
Columbus then traveled to Portugal again, in 1488, for unknown reasons. There he was able to attend the return of Bartolomeu Dias from the voyage in which he had discovered the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa after which it opened to the Portuguese the sea route to India through the Indian Ocean. From then on, Juan II focused on the exploitation of that route and dismissed exploration to the west through the Atlantic. Columbus returned to Andalusia and presented his project to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who rejected it, and later to Luis de la Cerda, Duke of Medinaceli, who was interested and welcomed Columbus for two years. However, when consulted, the queen sent for Columbus and promised to deal with his plan as soon as the conquest of Granada was finished.
Final negotiation
On November 25, 1491, Granada surrendered to the Christians. The representatives of the Nasrid kingdom and those of Castile and Aragon signed capitulations (called "Granada capitulations", not to be confused with the "Santa Fe capitulations") detailing the conditions under which would carry out the transfer of sovereignty. Columbus left the monastery of La Rábida, where he had been since October, and joined the court in Santa Fe around December 31. Santa Fe was the camp that the Castilian-Aragonese kings had established in Vega de Granada as their headquarters. general during the siege.
Negotiations were established between Columbus and the Crown through two representatives: Juan Pérez, friar de la Rábida, for Columbus and the secretary Juan de Coloma for the Crown. According to the accounts of Hernando Colón and Bartolomé de las Casas, it was not possible to reach an agreement because Columbus claimed the titles of admiral and viceroy, for which he was dismissed from court. Then Luis de Santángel, a high official, interceded for Columbus before the queen and promised to advance the money that the Crown would have to invest in the expedition. Always according to the version of Hernando Colón and Las Casas, the queen then changed her mind, sent a courier to bring back the Genoese, who she would catch up with in Pinos Puente, and ordered Coloma to accept her requests. On April 17, 1492, an agreement was finally reached and some capitulations were drawn up that have subsequently been called the Capitulations of Santa Fe.
Content
Full text of the capitulations of Santa Fe
Header
The document, of which several copies are preserved, begins by mentioning the two reasons why the kings granted Christopher Columbus "the things requested": firstly because of "what he has discovered" in the Atlantic and secondly because of the trip that he is going to undertake soon. The text calls the kings "your highnesses", which suggests that it was written by Columbus and that the Crown merely approved it. According to the version preserved in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon:
The supplicated things and that your Highnesses give and grant Christoual donation of colon in some satisfaction of what he has discovered in the oçean seas and the viage that exhausts with the help of God has to fazer for them in the serum of your Highnesses are those that follow
Chapters
The following are listed in five points, called "chapters" at the time, the titles and privileges granted to Columbus. At the end of each one of them reads «Plaze to the highnesses of him. Juan de Coloma.»
- The vital and hereditary title of Admiral of all the "islands and firm lands" that Columbus discovered or conquered "by his hand or industry" in "the Ocean Seas". To specify the terms of reference of this title, it is specified that they would be the same as Alonso Enríquez de Quiñones, the elder admiral of Castile who died in 1485. The Enríquez family had achieved great importance in the Castilian society of the time and the responsibilities of the admiral’s office were, at least in theory, very broad: he was the head of all the war fleets and the shipyards as well as the administrator of justice at sea and at the ports. In practice neither Columbus nor the Crown knew exactly in 1492 what the powers and privileges of the Admirals of Castile were.
First of all, your atezas as Sennores who are of the said sea oceans fazen dende exhaust the said Don Christobal Colon his admiral in all those islands and firm lands that by their hand or industry will be discovered or won in those ocean seas for their life and after the dead to their heirs and successors of one in another perpetually with all those preheminences and such offsprings
- The titles of virrey and governor of these lands, which included the right to present to the Crown a tender of candidates for each office of government. The document does not specify the powers of these charges or whether they will be hereditary or not. This ambiguity would be clarified in letters of later privileges.
Others that your elders make the saying don Christobal his viceroy and general governor in all the said firm lands and yslas that as said is the discoverer or win in the said seas; and that for the regiment of each huna and qualquiere dellas, make the election of three people for each trade, and that your elders take and scour one that will be better and
- 10% of all economic gains generated in the territories of your Admiralty (the other 90% remained for the Crown). This clause was very different from the usual practice, which was that the capitulante financed his expedition himself and with the goods obtained first covered his expenses and then handed him a 20% tax on the benefits to the Crown (the "real quint"). It is believed that the exception in the capitulations of Santa Fe is due to the fact that it was the Crown that financed the journey of Columbus.
Item that of all and qualesquiere mercadurias siquiere be pearls gems gold silver specieria and other qualesquiere things and mercadurias of qualquiere specie name and way that they are bought trocaren fail to win and hovieren within the limits of the saying almirantadgo, that you will deplete your altezas fazen merced to the saying Christoue
- The authority for Columbus, or for a lieutenant appointed by him, to judge the commercial lawsuits originating in the company. In this case the «Plaze to his Highnesses» was added a phrase that conditioned this right to have also been had by Admiral Enríquez: "if it belongs to the so-called Admiral's officio according to what the so-called Admiral wealthy, quondam, and the other his predecessors had in their districts and being just". In practice Columbus never exercised this right.
Others that if because of the mercadurias that it swallows of the yslas and lands that assi as said is to be won or discovered or of those that in barter of those will be taken aqua of other marketers there will be any pleyto in the logar where the said trade and tract becomes tender and fara that if by the preheminence of its officio of Admiral it will belong to another
- Finally, the option, but not the obligation, to contribute to the eighth part of the expenses of any future expedition, in exchange for receiving a similar part of the benefits obtained. Historians disagree about whether Columbus ever made this choice.
Item that in all the nauios that arm themselves paral said tract and negotiation each and every and every quant and quantas times they will arm that can the said don Christoual colon if you want to contribute and pay the ochena part of everything that will be spent on the armazon and that so well there is and lieue of the prouecho the ochena part of what will result from the armed.
Date and signatures
The text concludes by giving the place and date on which the document was dispatched:
They are granted and dispatched with the answers of your hosts in the end of each hun Capitulo in the villa of Santa faith from the pomegranate vega to the 17th of April of the annal of the birth of our Sennor Mil CCCCCCLXXXXII [1492].
The surviving copies include the phrases "I the King" and "I the Queen" to indicate that the original had been signed by both monarchs, as well as the name of the editor, Juan de Coloma, who was the king's secretary. Finally, some copies indicate that the document was registered by "Calçena& #34;, that is, the registrar of the Chancellery of Aragon Juan Ruiz de Calcena.
Preserved specimens
The oldest copy of the Capitulations of Santa Fe is preserved in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, within the unit Royal Archive (Royal Chancery). The text of the Capitulations was recorded on folios 135v-136v of volume 9 (registration 3569) of the series Diversorum sigilli secreti, in which documents issued with the secret seal of the king were transcribed. the volume index the document appears titled with the name of the party to which it refers: Christofori Colon. In the same record 3569 there are two other documents directly related to the first voyage of Columbus: a safe-conduct and a letter of introduction to any foreign sovereign the expedition encountered (the monarch's name was left blank). Both texts were written in Latin by Juan de Coloma and dated in Granada on April 17 and 30 respectively.
Christopher Columbus must have been given the original, now lost, which upon his death was deposited in the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville. Two later copies of it are preserved in the General Archive of the Indies: a transfer made by a notary in Hispaniola in December 1495 and an entry in a cedular registry. Bartolomé de las Casas transcribed some of these copies in his General history of the Indies, introducing a modification in the first paragraph: instead of "has discovered" he wrote down "has to discover". There is also a printed copy with the text of the confirmation privilege granted in Burgos in 1497, which was probably privately edited by the Columbus family during the Columbian Lawsuits.
The first modern printed publication of the text of the Capitulations was due to Martín Fernández de Navarrete in 1825, who was based on the notarial transfer of 1495 and followed the same criteria as Las Casas in terms of "has to discover". The first to draw attention to the record kept in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón was the researcher Gustav Bergenroth, who published an English translation in 1862. Bergenroth's work revealed the exact content of the Capitulations for the first time., including the "has discovered", which came to reinforce the theses of the supporters of a pre-discovery of America.
Confirmation and development
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The Capitulations of Santa Fe were copied, developed and expanded in a series of official documents issued between 1492 and 1497.
- Royal privilege of 30 April 1492
- Full text
Like the Capitulations of Santa Fe, this document was drawn up by Juan de Coloma and signed by the kings. While the Capitulations of April 17 are disputed as to whether they were a royal concession or if they had legal value as a contract, this document of April 30 is unanimously considered a favor granted by the kings. Its official record is preserved in the General Archive of Simancas.
In contrast to the Santa Fe Capitulations, this document does not deal with Columbus de "Don" and conditions the granting of the title of admiral to the fact that Columbus actually discovers and wins new lands. On the other hand, it unequivocally establishes the hereditary nature of the three positions granted, not only that of admiral but also those of viceroy and governor. Rumeu de Armas has pointed out that this last provision was illegal and void for contravening a decision of the Cortes of Castilla of 1480 that had prohibited the hereditary transmission of public office.
- Letter of confirmation of 28 May 1493
After Columbus returned from his first voyage, the kings confirmed the privilege of April 30, 1492 by means of a document dated in Barcelona and drawn up by the secretary Fernando Álvarez de Toledo. In it they also established a clear geographical demarcation of the position from Admiral of the Ocean Sea: to the west of the meridian that "passes from the islands of the Azores to the island of Cape Verde", which is the same limit that the first of the Alexandrian Bulls set for the same dates Castilla's domains in the Atlantic. They also granted him the right to use the royal seal and issue documents on behalf of the monarchs. The original is kept in the General Archive of the Indies. Hernando Colón published the full text in his Historia del Admiral, printed in Venice in 1571.
- Letter of privilege of 23 April 1497
When Columbus returned from his second voyage to the Indies, he asked the kings for confirmation of the Santa Fe Capitulations, elevating them to the rank of leaded charter of privilege. The kings agreed, for which the Higher Chancellery of the Higher Seal drafted and sealed the document, dated April 23, 1497, which includes word for word the text of the Capitulations. Today the original of this letter of privilege is preserved in the General Archive of the Indies and its registration in the General Archive of Simancas.
On the same date, April 23, 1497, Columbus received another leaded privilege letter confirming his titles of admiral, viceroy, and governor, as well as a series of authorized copies of all the privileges of the Admirals of Castile, to whom it had been equaled in category thanks to the Capitulations of Santa Fe. With copies of all these documents Columbus constituted in 1498 the so-called Libro de los privilegios, the original of which is also preserved in the Archivo de Indias., in 1502, Columbus ordered four handwritten copies of the Book to be made, two of which he sent to the Genoese ambassador Nicolò Oderigo. One of them is still kept in the Genoa archive while the other is in Paris because it was stolen by Napoleon's army. A third copy was deposited in the Cartuja monastery, was used by the heirs of Columbus and later disappeared. The fourth copy, on paper and not on parchment like the others, was sent by Columbus to his representative in Santo Domingo, Alonso Sánchez de Carvajal; it was also lost. The Columbus family also made a small printed edition of the charter of privilege in the late 1520s, during the Columbian Lawsuits.
Anomalies and controversies
Legal nature
There is controversy about the legal nature of the Capitulations and their effective value. In particular, it is discussed whether it was a binding contract or a grant. For the heirs of Columbus, the Santa Fe Capitulations were a private contract that bound the two parties. This opinion is reflected today by historians such as Luis Arranz. On the contrary, the Crown defended that it was a graceful concession and therefore revocable, an interpretation with which Francisco Morales Padrón agrees. Between both extremes, some historians think that it dealt with a pact of a feudal nature, in which the two parties assumed obligations but not as equals.
"...has discovered"
The use of the present perfect tense «has descubrado» in the heading of the capitulations suggests that Columbus claimed land discoveries prior to 1492, which for historians such as Henry Vignaud, Juan Manzano, Luis Arranz or Gustavo Vargas supports the theory of the pre-discovery of America. On the contrary, Antonio Ballesteros Beretta opined that the "has discovered" reflects a mere hypothesis that Columbus would have raised about a route to the east from the west. This is the interpretation given by the Spanish government in the description of the Capitulations sent to UNESCO in 2007. The historian Antonio Rumeu de Armas held a third interpretation according to which the record kept in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon would correspond to a version of the capitulations modified in 1493, after the return of Columbus from the first voyage. The officials of the Crown would have introduced interpolations that modified the original wording. This would explain both the "has discovered" and two other anomalies in the text: calling Columbus "Don", a treatment he did not have until March 1493; and affirming that the kings are "lords (...) of the seas oceans", a title that they did not use until May 1493. Always according to Rumeu, "the voyage that now has to do" mentioned in the heading of the Capitulations would be Columbus's second voyage and not the first.
This aspect of the Capitulations was unknown for several centuries because both Bartolomé de las Casas and Alonso de Santa Cruz decided to modify the original phrase by changing the "has discovered" to "has to discover" or "had to discover". The modified form "ha de descubrir" is the one that Martín Fernández de Navarrete also adopted in the XIX century, and as its transcript was widely copied and translated into other languages, the error spread.
Objectives of the expedition
The text of the Santa Fe Capitulations never mentions Asia or the Indies as the objective of the trip, while it seems to presuppose the existence of land in the Atlantic Ocean. The objective of the expedition is purely imperialist (&# 34;discover' and 'win' lands) and economical, since it mentions pearls, precious stones, gold, silver and spices. At no time is any religious or evangelical objective mentioned.
However, in the safe-conduct in Latin delivered by the Crown to Columbus together with the Capitulations of Santa Fe and addressed to any foreign authority he encountered, it reads that Columbus has been sent “per maria oçeana ad partes Indie ” ("through the ocean seas to the parts of India") for, among other purposes, "fidei ortodoxe augmentum" ("the rise of the orthodox faith").
Atypical bureaucratic procedure
The text of the capitulations was registered by the sigillator of the Chancellery of Aragon, Juan Ruiz de Calcena, and was kept in an archive of that Crown. No equivalent record is preserved among the documents of the Crown of Castile in the General Archive of Simancas. The normal thing for a Castilian document would have been for the royal advisor Rodrigo Maldonado de Talavera to agree on it, Sebastián de Olano to register it and the chancellor Francisco de Madrid to put the seal of pority on it, but the Capitulations were processed by three Aragonese bureaucrats: Juan de Coloma, Juan Ruiz de Calcena and Miguel Pérez de Almazán. The circumstance occurs that the order for the expulsion of the Jews from Castile (the so-called Edict of Granada), almost simultaneous to the Capitulations of Santa Fe, was also processed by the three Aragonese, it was also copied in registry 3569 of the Diversorum sigilli secreti from Aragonese and its original is not preserved in any Castilian archive either. The expulsion order was a secret document, dated March 31, 1492, but sent with instructions not to be read until May 1. This similarity has led the historian Antonio Rumeu de Armas to postulate that the Capitulations of Santa Fe must also have been a secret document and therefore processed abnormally to hide them from foreign spies.
On the other hand, in the transcripts of the capitulations of Santa Fe, the phrase «Plaze to their highnesses. John de Coloma». There are other capitulations from the same period in which the Crown responds point by point, but those of Santa Fe are the only ones in which the kings also sign. On the other hand, the unusual formula "plaze to their highnesses" could be influenced by the practice of the Catalan courts, whose proposals were approved by the monarch writing "plau al senyor rei" (i.e., "it pleases the lord king").
It is also abnormal that the document does not mark any counterpart or limitation to the prerogatives of Columbus. For example, it would have been logical to regulate how the Crown would receive 90% of the benefits that did not correspond to Columbus or in which port the merchandise should be unloaded. The Crown seems to have limited itself to passively accepting the text proposed by Columbus.
Title of Viceroy
In the Capitulations Columbus was granted the title of viceroy of the territories he discovered. During the XV century, this title was used officially in the Crown of Aragon, mainly for the kingdom of Sicily, whose viceroy in 1492 It was the Castilian Fernando de Acuña. In the Crown of Castile the position did not officially exist, but the two governors-general appointed by the kings during the Granada war to govern the Castilian territories to the north of the Central System were called that: the Constable Pedro Fernández de Velasco and Admiral Alonso Enríquez de Quiñones. On the other hand, it is anomalous that the Capitulations grant first the title of admiral and then that of viceroy, since the position of viceroy was normally more important. According to Rumeu de Armas, this could be due to the fact that the original drafter of the document was Columbus and in his eyes the title of admiral was more prestigious.
The granting of titles of such authority as those of viceroy and admiral marked a break with the trend imposed by the kings Ferdinand and Isabella in the capitulations prior to that of Santa Fe —those of the conquest of the Canary Islands— in which they had eliminated the granting of lordships in order to preserve the power of the authoritarian monarchy. Nor are stately or life positions found in the subsequent capitulations agreed for the conquest of America; at most, some conqueror would be appointed by the Crown as governor of some territory.
Why the Crown accepted in the case of Columbus to grant him such exceptional titles and positions is the subject of debate among historians. King Ferdinand, twenty years later, gave his version of the reason: "everything that can now be discovered is very easy to discover and not looking while all those who speak of discovering want to put an end to the Capitulation that was made with Admiral Columbus and they do not think, like then, any hope of what was discovered and it was thought that this could be the favor that I do him"; that is to say, Fernando justifies the concessions to Columbus due to the low expectations with which his project was viewed.
Consequences
Discovery of America and establishment of the Columbian monopoly
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The signing of the capitulations of Santa Fe and the royal orders issued afterward made it possible for Columbus to organize his first voyage to the Indies, which is considered the starting point of the discovery of America. Three caravels participated: the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa María, under the command of Martín Alonso Pinzón, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Juan de la Cosa, respectively. According to the version of Bartolomé de las Casas, which is accepted by the majority by historians, the ships left Palos on August 3, 1492 and headed for the Canary Islands. On October 12 they reached the island of Guanahani. Columbus continued his journey through the Caribbean, arriving in Cuba on October 28 and Hispaniola on December 6. On December 24, the Santa María ran aground on the coast of Hispaniola and Fort Navidad was built with its remains. The expedition started back on January 16, 1493 and a few days later a storm separated the two surviving ships. The Pinta, under the command of Pinzón, arrived in Bayona (Galicia) at the end of February and announced the discovery to the Catholic Monarchs. Upon receiving the news, the Monarchs decreed an immediate ban on going "to the Yndias" without authorization and they commissioned their ambassadors in Rome to obtain some bulls, called "Bulas Alejandrinas", with which Pope Alexander VI would grant Castilla y León the monopoly of the lands discovered to the west of a certain meridian. Meanwhile, the Niña, in which Columbus was traveling, stopped on February 17 at the Portuguese island of Santa María, in the Azores, and on March 4 stopped in Lisbon. Portuguese ambassadors immediately went to the court of the Catholic Monarchs, located at that time in Barcelona, to reclaim the lands discovered by the Castilian navigators, in an atmosphere of diplomatic and pre-war tension. Columbus returned to Castile through the port of Palos and from there he went to Seville and then to Barcelona, where he was received by the kings, who recognized his discovery and confirmed his titles of admiral, viceroy and governor. At the same time they urged him to complete the preparations for a second expedition to the Indies, much larger in ships and men, under the supervision of Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca.
Second and third voyages of Columbus
The Second Voyage finally left Cádiz on September 25, 1493 with seventeen ships. Its official objective was to explore, colonize and preach the Catholic faith through the territories that had been discovered on the first voyage, while diplomatic negotiations between Castile and Portugal continued on the peninsula, which culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. Columbus He landed on the island of Puerto Rico on November 19 and founded the city of La Isabela in Hispaniola on January 6, 1494. Shortly after, twelve ships of the fleet returned to Spain while voyages of discovery to different territories continued in the Caribbean.. Fonseca sent several flotillas with supplies in 1495 and 1496 while Columbus' long absence from Hispaniola led to the belief that he had died. For this reason, in 1495 the Crown reorganized the government of the Indies and liberalized private discovery and trade expeditions. Upon hearing this news, Columbus returned to Europe in alarm in June 1496 and immediately claimed his rights. He was successful since in 1497 he received lead letters confirming his titles and privileges. Furthermore, he managed to get the Crown to annul the liberalizing decree of 1495 and therefore tacitly retain Columbus the monopoly over the entire New World, including over the territories that he did not discover himself. This last privilege meant, however, going beyond what was agreed in Santa Fe in 1492.
Columbus returned to the Caribbean on May 30, 1498 from Sanlúcar de Barrameda in command of six ships. He arrived on the island of Trinidad on July 31 and from August 4 to 12 he explored the Gulf of Paria, which separates Trinidad from Venezuela. On August 19, he marched to Hispaniola to find that most of the Spanish settled there were discontented, feeling cheated by Columbus about the riches they would find. Columbus repeatedly tried to agree with the rebels, the Taínos and the Caribs. Some of the returned Spaniards denounced Columbus in court for bad government. In 1499 the kings named Francisco de Bobadilla the new governor for Hispaniola, stripping Columbus of the position. Upon his arrival on the island, on August 23, 1500, Bobadilla arrested Columbus and his brothers and shipped them off as prisoners to Spain.
Breakdown of the discoverer monopoly
In 1499, even before the return of Columbus in chains, the Crown began granting other explorers permission to go and discover new lands in the Indies. To do this, they took advantage of a point that had remained ambiguous in the capitulations of Santa Fe: whether or not Columbus's monopoly would extend to all land that was discovered in the future. Each candidate for discoverer was in charge of financing and arming his expedition after negotiating specific capitulations with the Crown, represented by Bishop Fonseca. Among the first voyages launched in this way are that of Alonso de Ojeda, who reached present-day Venezuela in 1499, and in the same year that of Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who became the first European to reach the Amazon River and the coasts of present-day Brazil.. The capitulations for these trips, contrary to those of Santa Fe, were limited to granting economic benefits and, at most, governorships but not hereditary lordships. On the other hand, the Crown left the financing of most of the new expeditions in the hands of commercial companies, formed by the captain of each expedition, capitalists who did not embark and other minor partners who contributed mostly their work.
Columbus was released upon his return to Spain by order of the Crown and undertook the task of compiling all the documents that had granted him titles and rights in a Book of Privileges. Later, in 1502, he undertook his fourth trip to the Indies, for which he had to sign a specific capitulation with the Crown like the other private discoverers. Shortly before leaving, the kings informed Columbus of the appointment of a new governor for Hispaniola, Nicolás de Ovando, with which Columbus was stripped of that title. On this voyage Columbus lost all his ships and did not achieve his goal of finding a step towards Asia. He returned unsuccessfully to Spain in 1504 and died two years later. He succeeded him as Admiral of the Ocean Sea by his eldest son, Diego Colón.
Columbian lawsuits
Since Ovando's appointment as governor of Hispaniola in 1500, first Christopher Columbus and then his eldest son Diego presented various memorials and petitions to the Crown claiming the rights they felt had been trampled on. In 1511 Diego began the legal claim of the privileges and titles granted by the kings to his father, mainly based on the privilege of April 30, 1492, to the capitulations of Santa Fe (which was called " the Capitulation of the five chapters") and its subsequent confirmations. Diego Colón argued that all these documents were contracts and not grants, and in particular he defended it for the April 30, 1492 because he was the one who affirmed without a doubt that all the titles were hereditary, contrary to the capitulations of Santa Fe, that they were more ambiguous on this point.
Thus began a long lawsuit that historians have called "the Columbian lawsuits". Crown prosecutors initially focused their defense on denying contractual value to the documents granted to Columbus. In 1535, however, the new prosecutor in charge of the case changed his strategy and conceded that the capitulations of Santa Fe had indeed been a contract (not so the other privileges). The prosecutor focused on demonstrating that Columbus had breached said contract because the true discoverers of the Indies had actually been Martín Alonso Pinzón and his brothers.
After several provisional rulings that were later revoked, the main part of the lawsuit ended in 1536 with arbitration: the title of admiral (not viceroy and governor) was recognized for Columbus' heirs, as well as the duchy of Veragua (in the Darién region) and the governorate of Jamaica. Legal disputes still persisted between different branches of the Columbus family that would only be resolved at the end of the century XVIII.
Inscription in the Memory of the World register
In 2007 the government of Spain asked UNESCO to register the Capitulations of Santa Fe in the "Memory of the World" program; Specifically, he requested it for the record kept in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon. The registration was accepted in 2009, becoming part of the memory of the world program in Spain.
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