How Did Christopher Columbus's Relationship With The Spanish Crown Change Over Time?

In Symcox and Sullivan’s Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies, another side of not only Columbus but also his peers is brought to light. I have never read anything written by Columbus’s contemporaries before reading this book, so it gave me some refreshing insight as opposed to the repetitive glamorized content in high school textbooks. I also appreciate how legal documents such as the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal are included because they give a sense of what else was going on during the time that Columbus was going on these voyages. One question posed by the authors is “How did Columbus’s relationship with the Spanish crown change over time, and why?” In simple terms, Columbus’s relationship with the

This is where the relationship starts to weaken. When he did return this time, it wasn’t a huge welcome like last time, but it wasn’t fully dismissing him either. As much as the crown didn’t like how he governed, he was still a capable navigator and they took advantage of that, resulting in yet another two trips. Both were just as unsuccessful as the first, and the death of his biggest supporter Queen Isabel only deteriorated the relationship between both Columbus and the crown even more, until it was almost

The credit for this change of view can be given to Washington Irving, who wrote a biography based on Columbus in 1828. This biography romanticized him and gave people the idea that he was this courageous hero who despite people’s claims that he’ll never succeed, ended up discovering what lies past the Atlantic. This biography gathered the momentum needed to catapult the collective opinion of Columbus higher in America. As time passed, more biographers wrote about him which resulted in groups forming, particularly the Knights of Columbus. They’re the group that pressed for a nationally recognized Columbus Day, which passed in