Why do North American think Christopher Columbus was Italian?

Question

Cristobal Colon, in the USA known as Christopher Columbus, was a spanish Jew from Barcelona.

In Spain all educational books state he is from spain. I know that in the USA the school books state he is Italian but that is false.

Cristobal Colon's JOURNAL, written in Castilian, is considered by far the best account left by a navigator of that time. Why didn't he write it in Italian??

Hi married a spaniard, he lived and died in Spain. He is buried in a Seville cathedral. The only reason why Spain kept a secret his identity was because they where expelling the Jews from Spain at the time, so his identity was always left a mystery. But everyone knows he was a Spanish Jew. He came from an important family of Jews. Why would the Queen and king of Spain invest so much money and power on a poor Italian from a poor family? Think about it.

There are no records of him in Italy, only theories that some guys made up, mostly American Italians?

Why do Americans still believe he is Italy?

Answer 1

There is a long history of the USA’s local school boards choosing text book series that omit, warp or completely pervert actual history. At first it was to reduce the blood, gore and general dirty laundry that really happened in the creation of our nation. Now it’s a more intense and evil religio-political agenda, instituting a common level of idiocy in the North American mind. The Columbus myths are a good example of the garbage and hype that are now so dominant here. Many children grow up not questioning it at all, as everyone know it’s a very short road to discipline for a child, if the text or instructor is called out for their peddling of propaganda.. No one likes to be called a liar, even if it is their job to whitewash and smear whomever and whatever the school board says they have to. With the current national campaign of lies, white washing and twisting of everything taught in schools, and the media towing the lines, it may be difficult to avoid America causing wars and horror for decades to come. All because we’ve allowed the degradation and almost elimination of democracy from our once upon a time, more perfect union.

Answer 2

The identity of Columbus is still not certain. It is most widely accepted that he was of Italian ancestry. More specifically he is believed to have been from the Republic of Genoa, in Italy, although it has been surmised he could have been from Catalonia, Spain, and Portugal where the greatest navigators of his time lived. Certainly there were ties between Spain and the Italian nation-states; King Ferdinand II of Aragon was also the King of Sicily. Some theories suggest that he was actually Basque; the Basques are one of the most ancient mariner communities of Middle Ages Europe. Clues to Columbus' origin such as learned languages and DNA samples have been studied, but no definitive answer has yet been revealed.
According to generally recognized theory, Columbus was born between August and October 1451 in Genoa. His father was Domenico Colombo, a middle-class wool weaver working between Genoa and Savona. Susanna Fontanarossa was his mother and Bartolomeo was his brother.

Answer 3

Good question!
The thing is that there are not evidence of WHERE and when he was born. Some information suggests that he was an Italian immigrant grown up in Spain, probably in 1451.
He, himself doesn't say in his journal when and where he was born (probably because as you said, he was Jew).
The reason why the Spanish Queen accepted to pay for his expedition and gave him the 3 ships and crew was, all the gold and goods found by him were going to belong to the Spanish Crown (they thought they were sending him to find a route to India), but he will keep the honor of having made the discovery.
It is not an American belief. I was grown in South America, Spanish speaker country (mostly populated by Spanish) and they teach you in school that C.C. was an Italian.

Answer 4

Italy didn't exist until 1860, I am Italian because I was born in Italy after that year. My ancestors living in the northeastern regions of Italy before 1860 didn't considered themselves Italian, they considered themselves Venetians and Emiliani. They spoke two romance language and not Italian, not because they were uneducated, because they were their mothertongues. What are now considered dialects of Italian are languages of Latin origins and do not have Italic roots. If, say, Venetian is an Italic language, then Spanish is Italic as well. Cristofer Columbus spoke Genovese which is a dialect of the Ligurian language that isn't a dialect of Italian. Nowadays Italians from Genoa consider themselves Italians and Ligurians, by the time Italians as a people didn't exist. My ancestors from Veneto didn't meet central or southern Italians, their country was Veneto, they only knew people living in the neighbouring ''regions'', who spoke different languages and it wasn't easy to understand each other. You are talking nonsense about northerners that raped and murdered the southerners. I don't know in what weird website you have read it.

Answer 5

The Spaniard known to history as Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon) was likely a member of the lower aristocracy who assumed the identity of a Genoese sailor.

Answer 6

It the history that we have come to know and love- of course it's incorrect. Try telling that to the Italian American community and see the uproar it would create. Columbus may also have been a mercenary who fought against Isabelle and Ferdinand before settling down to be a sailor- this may also explain his cruelty at sea

Answer 7

Because his son wrote that his father came from Genoa.
We're also talking about something that happened 500 years ago, and it's hard to keep records around for that long. Maybe when the Hapsburgs came to power, some of that information was lost.
I saw something on the Discovery channel about this, where they did genetic testing on the son and brother of Christopher Columbus

Answer 8

There's no reason to doubt he was from Genoa. Most of the problems he had on his later voyages came from Spanish unwillingness to take orders from an Italian. If he hadn't achieved anything, would there be any argument? What's more, DNA testing established he ISN'T buried in Seville but in Santo Domingo.

Answer 9

I think the generalization of your question is kind of assumptive. I'm American and I do NOT believe that Christopher Columbus was Italian. I really don't see why it matters what anybody 'thinks' his nationality/heritage was...what's important is what he did in life!

Answer 10

rome conquered spain before the punic wars with carthage and hannibal and hamlicar!!the knights of the reconquista wear the same "norman" armor as the knights who invaded england with william the conqueror!!the wine boat of oporto are of the same construction as viking ships!!what makes you think that any personage of spain from any time was hispanic???gades of the phoenicians later became cadiz!!that would make every person of that area,especially the sea-faring trades more semitic than iberian!!and it is a wise child who knows who his father truly is!!!the kingdom of the two sicilies was founded by visigothic and norman knights who having conquered north africa crossed over to sicily and from there to compania!!that would make sicilians greek.turkish/norman.visigothic/latin/african/etruscan/romans!!!!nationality is a funny thing especially if you don't know anything about history!!he may have been using a chinese map of a sunken 9 masted exploration junk which wrecked mysteriously in the azores in 1451 as many pale colored foreign sailors' bodies were recorded as having littered the beaches of several islands with much debris!!<1451a.d.com>