Accuracy vs Storytelling in Ridley Scott’s “1492: Conquest of Paradise”

This is a revised version of a piece I originally posed on Blogspot on February 10, 2014. It’s the most popular piece I ever had on my old blog and I thought I would clean it up a bit for republishing here, with the addition of a new conclusion as well as several minor revisions throughout.

In crafting an historical drama, a filmmaker walks a fine line. Following history too closely, they risk alienating an audience with obscure period details or a movie that features no real narrative structure and is simply an account of events. But if the filmmaker strays too far from history in the dramatization then why tell a historical film at all? Not to mention the potential to disrespect the peoples and cultures represented in the work.

On the one side of that line we may find films such as Tora Tora Tora (1968), which depicts the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor with near documentary accuracy, but lacks a strong narrative focus that enables the audience to invest in what they are seeing on a level beyond the intellectual. On the other, we may find a film like Braveheart (1995), which is more akin to a Scottish remake of Spartacus than any depiction of the rebellion of William Wallace.

So it is with consideration to this precarious balance between historical accuracy and narrative efficacy that we must view Ridley Scott’s 1992 feature film 1492: Conquest of Paradise. A big budget Hollywood dramatization of the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Bahamas, it is a film that was clearly executed with much care to period detail, has an excellent cast and top-notch production values, carries the standard excellent visual flair of a Ridley Scott film, a superb score from Vangelis, and is without a doubt the best Christopher Columbus film ever made. And yet…

The historical character of Christopher Columbus, or Christoffa Corombo as he was born in 1450 in the Republic of Zêna (Genoa), is a highly problematic one, to say the least. Columbus has long been regarded as a national hero of the United States of America, venerated for discovering the American continent and proving that the Earth was round in the process. This tale has been commonly told in US primary schools, and Columbus Day is celebrated in that country on October 12. Yet the true historical Columbus is very far from the mythical one. For one thing, he did not “discover” America, as there were of course many indigenous peoples already living there. For another, he was not even the first European to have reached the continent, as Norse seamen had founded colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland as early as 986. He was not even the first European of his era to reach the mainland — that would be Amerigo Vespucci, hence the name America. And finally, the idea that he proved the Earth round to a superstitious culture which believed it to be flat is a myth invented by Washington Irving in his fanciful 1828 biography of Columbus. But most problematic of all is not so much the voyage of discovery itself, but Columbus’ governorship of the island colony he called Hispaniola thereafter. Columbus was by all accounts a tyrant: guilty of slavery, murder, torture, mutilation, and genocide on a scale that disgusted even his contemporaries in Spain.

So, if one is to do a movie about Columbus, how should you approach such things? Previous films about the explorer, such as 1949’s Christopher Columbus, embraced the patriotic myth and showed the Genoese navigator as a charming swashbuckling adventurer. In addition to Ridley Scott’s 1492, two other films were released in the 500th anniversary year of his voyage — Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (directed by John Glen) and The Magic Voyage, a German animated film. The Discovery embraces the myth of Columbus and it is also just a very bad movie, frankly — featuring a performance by Marlon Brando as Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada so phoned in that Roger Ebert wrote in his review that he wished he could “hang up”. The Magic Voyage, meanwhile, is a terrible piece of claptrap, the worst kind of “children’s entertainment” which turns Columbus into a kind of goofy comic character “suitable” for children.

So how does 1492 approach it’s central character? The film is far and away the best of any on it’s topic in terms of cinematic quality, and even in terms of history it stands head and shoulders above the others. But Scott made the decision that he wanted to portray Columbus heroically — a tragic hero yes, one capable of human faults, but still as a hero. This makes sense from a narrative point of view, as he is the central figure of the narrative, but becomes increasingly untenable in terms of historical accuracy as the story goes on. As a dramatist, it leaves three choices: glorifying Columbus’ actions as governor, whitewashing them to one degree or another, or ignoring them altogether.

Scott wants to romanticize Columbus, because he wants to tell the story of a dreamer, of a man who defied the conventions of his society to achieve something thought impossible. Although he may not be doing it intentionally, what Scott wants to do is tell the story of an Objectivist hero in the mold of Ayn Rand: that is, a hero who is smart, capable, and singularly achieves something new despite the opposition of the world he lives in.

Unfortunately, the historical Columbus was not really that kind of man, and so Scott must bend historical facts in order to portray him as one. Whether this makes 1492 a bad movie or not depends on how much a viewer values accuracy in a film like this, and how much alteration to the historical record they are willing to forgive. To a certain extent, shifting facts to make a better story is expected of any historical drama — but in the case of Christoffa Corombo, it becomes very, very troubling if shifted too far.

After watching the movie, I was not sure how to judge it. While at times cartoonish and melodramatic, it is for the most part very effective, immersive, and entertaining. One feels this is the best depiction we may ever have of these momentous events on film. And yet as it goes on, it strays further and further from the facts.

So I have decided to enumerate the historical inaccuracies as I found them, along with any necessary notes, so that anyone who reads them and watches the movie can decide for themselves if Scott went too far in his alterations. I still think that if one must watch a Columbus movie, 1492 is the most worthwhile pick — but if one watches the movie and reads these notes, then at least they have a more informed understanding.

It must be noted, before I begin, that I am no historian. I have had a lifelong interest in history, but aside from history courses in university, I am primarily a storyteller. That puts me more on Scott’s side than against it in terms of occupational bias. I understand the need to alter and adapt to create a better narrative. In the breakdown to follow I have made no distinction between “nitpicking”, ie. minor historical errors that do not effect story, and notes of major inaccuracies and falsehoods. What research was done for this was completely amateur in nature, using online sources and no trips to any libraries. That means that maybe I am not entirely accurate either, but it also means that nothing of what I’m noting is obscure trivia, but easily accessible information.

So, follow along with me as I recount the failings, trivial and major, of 1492: Conquest of Paradise.

• We’re in trouble from the moment the introductory text begins, wherein it is claimed the Spanish Inquisition persecuted men for “daring to dream” — the Inquisition didn’t really care about scientists or dreamers, it’s target was converted Jews and Muslims, and it’s goal was the expulsion of those faiths from Spain and the establishment of Catholic hegemony. Columbus didn’t “challenge this power” — he was a devout Catholic and did not come before the Inquisition, and he was not “driven by a sense of destiny”. But Scott obviously feels that he must from the beginning set up the idea of Columbus as a heroic outsider to society’s norms.
• “No man dared to venture” across the western Ocean Sea (as the Atlantic was then called) — in fact the Europeans of the 1490s knew people had sailed west before. While the Viking expeditions to “Vinland” were not as well known in the mainstream Christian world, the “Island of St. Brendan” was a well known legend since the 9th century of a mythical journey of Catholic monks from Ireland to an island in the Atlantic in 512.
• The Myth of the Flat Earth: all educated men (priests, navigators, cartographers, philosophers, etc) knew the Earth was round. Indeed, globes and maps with a round Earth survive from this time period and a spherical Earth was the basis of all maritime navigation — this was known since at least the 4th century BC.
• It bears mentioning that as Columbus was Genoese, his accent should be more Italian than French, although Genoese has aspects of both. But then, the accents in this movie are all over the place anyway. In Genoese his name is Christoffa Corombo, however he signed his name in Latin as Christophorus Columbus — in Italian he is called Cristoforo Colombo, in Portuguese Cristóvão Colombo, and in Spain he was known as Cristóbal Colón.
• The movie accurately portrays Columbus’ belief that Japan was 3,000 miles west of the Canary Islands. He based this on the writings of Marinus of Tyre (who incorrectly judged the size of the Earth) and Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī aka Alfraganus of Baghdad — but he did not realize Alfraganus was using the longer Arabic mile rather than the shorter Roman one. Columbus was less of a visionary navigator than he was an incompetent one. The use of a Muslim source would be problematic to his position, but the movie instead paints the Jewish Ezras as the potential problem in his sources — Columbus took nothing of his theory from Ezras, who was a biblical scribe, not a cartographer, making the connection nonsensical.
• Catholic priests at the Inquisition in Cordoba are shown doing Last Rites in Spanish when all Catholic rites would be in Latin until after 1965. As with many Hollywood historical movies, there is an unspoken conceit that the characters are speaking Spanish but this is being rendered in modern English for the sake of the audience, making the choice of Spanish for the Last Rites doubly strange.
• The film tries to make it seem as though it is superstition and ignorance that drives the monks of Salamanca to reject Columbus, but they are in fact completely justified in laughing at him. Columbus thought that the distance from Spain to Cipangu (Japan) was 3,000 miles! He maintained until he died the belief that the native peoples of the Bahamas were Indians and that Cuba was a peninsula of China! The monks knew from the writings of Aristotle and Ptolemy that Asia was much farther than that as the Greeks had calculated the circumference of the Earth with great accuracy centuries ago — the issue was less of a doubt that Asia could be found to the west and more that it was believed no European ship of the time could cross such a distance because of issues of supplies and provisions. To reject funding such an enterprise was the most rational decision in the world. Columbus landed at the Bahamas not because he was a visionary, but because he got lucky — because there was land halfway between his port of origin and his intended destination.
• Columbus calls the Kingdom of China one of the richest in the world, but the name China would not be recorded by westerners until 1516. Columbus would have known it as “Cathay.”
• Columbus’ son Diogo (Diego) is portrayed as a priest/monk, but I could find no evidence he ever was one. At the time of Columbus’ first voyage he was in fact a page at the Spanish court, according to the biography of Columbus written by Diego’s younger brother Ferdinand.
• Martín Alonso Pinzón did not meet Columbus until after his journey was approved by the Crown — he was an experienced mariner who Columbus promised half the profits to in order to get access to his ships and his men as he could not otherwise convince any experienced seamen to sail with him.
• Pinzón did not introduce Columbus to Luis de Santángel. Santángel was Queen Isabella’s finance minister and intervened in January 1492 to convince Isabella to fund Columbus so that he would not take his idea to Charles VIII of France. Santángel and Isabella’s treasurer Gabriel Sanchez believed that while it was unlikely that Columbus would return, it was worth the attempt because Spain otherwise had no trade routes to the East thanks to interference from Portugal and the Turks, and the Kingdom badly needed the funds after the costly war to drive the Moors from Spain. The movie vastly glosses over these motivations.
• Luis would’ve thought the sack of Granada tragic not for cultural reasons but for financial ones — the eight month siege had been expensive and its cost was the main reason the Crown of Castile and Aragon had not funded Columbus’ voyage before this point. Luis himself was a Jew forced to convert by the Inquistion.
• In the movie Columbus’ demands are rejected by Gabriel Sanchez but Isabella has him called back. Historically, it was Isabella who rejected and her husband King Ferdinand who called him back. Ferdinand draws the short stick in this movie, with no lines.
• Columbus is depicted as unique in navigating by the stars “as the Moors do”, something which none of his men know how to do. In fact celestial navigation had been in use by westerners for over 200 years by this point and its methods were widely known.
• Columbus states a mistake of one degree would put them off course by 600 leagues, in fact one degree is only 16 leagues.
• The crew in the movie gets restless when they haven’t spotted land after nine weeks. Columbus’ first voyage took five weeks.
• Pinzón is depicted as worrying about a mutiny among the crew while Columbus is steadfast and confident in their voyage. In fact, the reverse was true. The historical Columbus was somewhat paranoid about people doubting him and turning against him.
• Columbus promises 10,000 maravedis (~$650US today) to the first man to sight land. In fact, this reward had been promised by the Crown, and after Rodrigo de Triana spotted land Columbus claimed he’d already seen it the night before so he could claim the reward.
• The first sign of land was a mysterious light spotted the night of 11 October. Land was sighted at 2 am, 12 October, but Scott has it later in the evening, near sunset, with fog enshrouding Guanahani (San Salvador Island) so its reveal can be mysterious and dramatic.
• The Lucayan people are depicted with long hair, but Columbus recorded in his journal that they kept it cut short, except in the back.
• In the movie, Columbus’ journal of 21 October states that if the natives are to be converted it will be with persuasion, not force, and that they should be treated with honor, respected and that pillaging and rape will be punished. Conversely, the real Columbus’ journal of 12 October reads “they ought to make skilled servants, for they repeat whatever we tell them” — Columbus wrote this after discovering that the Lucayans were often attacked by the mainland to be taken as slaves. In the same entry he writes “they can be very easily made Christians, for they seem to have no religion,” and noted their lack of advanced metallurgy, writing “I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern as I pleased.”
• The Lucayans are shown with gold nose rings and necklaces, and when Columbus inquires of the source of gold they are lead to Cuba. In history it was their gold earrings which piqued his interest and so he took some of them prisoner (this is glossed over by the movie) and headed to Cuba, which he named Juana, on 28 October.
• Pinzón is shown with syphilis in Cuba, which he will bring back to the Old World and die of, but he is not shown getting it — the only way being sex with the natives.
• Pinzón is shown landing with Columbus on Hispaniola (Haiti) on 5 December, still sick. In actuality he had disobeyed orders from Columbus, setting off on his own on 21 November in search of more plentiful gold, and landed at Hispaniola separately in the Pinta, while the Niña and the Santa María went on without him.
• Columbus asks permission of the Taino chieftain Guacanagaríx, cacique of the Marien, to leave 39 men behind to build a fort and stay until he returns. The true reason for this was that on 25 December the Santa María ran aground and was abandoned and the Niña did not have room for all the men.
• The movie shows all three boats returning, but it was material from the abandoned Santa María that was used to construct the settlement La Navidad.
• The movie completely ignores Columbus’ 16 January encounter with the Ciguayos of the Samana Peninsula who were the only natives to attack the Spanish, killing two of them. As mentioned earlier, it also ignores Pinzón’s mutiny, and the reunion of the Pinta with the Niña on 6 January. Pinzón was furious that Columbus had left 39 men behind, convinced that they would be killed or otherwise die. Columbus threatened to have him hanged for insubordination.
• The movie also ignores the 25 Taino prisoners Columbus took, of which only six survived the trip back to Spain, although they are shown with him in the Spanish court when he returns, but the question of their consent in coming along is lampshaded.
• Due to a storm, the Pinta and Niña were separated, with the Pinta reachng Pelos on 15 March 1493, while the Niña landed at Lisboa (Lisbon) in Portugal. Columbus controversially spent a week with King João II (John II) before carrying on to Spain.
• Columbus is shown bringing tobacco to the Spanish court — in the form of smoking a TOTALLY MODERN TIGHT ROLLED CIGAR! The tobacco smoked in Hispaniola was smoked in a pipe, and not brought back to Spain until the 1520s. Rodrigo de Jerez brought his habit back to his hometown and was imprisoned by the Inquisition because “only the Devil could give a man the power to exhale smoke through his mouth.” Modern cigars would not exist until the 1800s.
• Columbus describes the religion of the “Indians” in terms of “God and Nature as one” — a very ’90s New Age kind of idealistic appropriation of Native culture. As noted earlier the historical Columbus felt the Taino had no religion and thus could be easily converted, indeed this was one of the primary rationales of Spanish colonization and exploration — to spread the word of God. In fact, the Taino had a polytheistic religion with two main gods — Yucahu, god of the crops, and Atabey his mother, goddess of water and fertility. There were also many other minor gods and a fairly developed mythology.
• Columbus’ second voyage is described as comprising 17 ships and 1,500 men. It was in fact 1,200.
• Columbus’ brothers Bertomê and Giacomo (Bartholomew and Diego) are depicted as unwilling to go along and govern with Columbus in Hispaniola, but in fact it was Bertomê the mapmaker who devised with Christoffa the entire West Indies scheme.
• Bertomê actually missed the boat on the second voyage and had to go on his own voyage in 1494 to meet Columbus, where he was made governor of Hispaniola in Columbus’ absence. Both brothers were fiercely loyal to him, as opposed to what is portrayed here.
• Columbus’ second voyage returned to Hispaniola on 22 November 1493, but the movie has this as 28 November for some reason.
• Adrián de Moxica is shown landing with Columbus at the second voyage, but did not in fact join him until the third voyage.
• Columbus says “there will be no revenge” for the slaughter of the La Navidad settlement. He claims the Taino outnumbering them 10 to 1 as a reason not to start a war, and that they do not know which tribe to attack, and that they did not come to start a crusade. This is in STARK contrast to the true events, and this is the point where the movie takes a real turn away from history. Columbus felt a force of 50 men could conquer all the Taino with no problem. Columbus inquired with his ally Guacanagaríx of the Marien and found him not to blame but rather the chief Caonabo of the Jaragua. Columbus then established a new settlement, La Isabella, and ordered the following as retaliation: Every Taino over 14 years old was to deliver a quota of gold to the Spanish settlers every month. If this tribute was not delivered, their hands were to be cut off and they were to be left to bleed to death.
• Adrián de Moxica is depicted as cartoonishly evil. I suppose this is more of a subjective comment than anything else, but it is one of the most incredulous things in the movie.
• Nowhere is it mentioned in history that the plans for La Isabella or Santo Domingo (the movie is vague on which settlement this first town is supposed to be) were based on those of Leonardo da Vinci. This is just a goofy historical wink at the audience moment, although it is true da Vinci did draw up plans for an “ideal city” in 1488 (as did many Italian architects of the period), however implementing them in Hispaniola would have been difficult. Also, da Vinci was in Milan when he designed those plans, from 1482–1499, not Firenze (Florence).
• Columbus mentions in his journal in the movie that by adapting to the Taino diet “meat is only a memory for us,” another of the movie’s over-idealizations of native culture. After all, if they don’t hunt and don’t make war, then why do they have archers who can shoot a bird out of the sky with great accuracy? In actuality the Taino ate many meats: hutias, worms, lizards, turtles, birds, manatees and of course as Islanders they were very skilled fishermen — although their main staple was the crop cassava.
• MORE CIGARS!
• The Spanish are shown collecting the gold quota from the Taino, but the origins of this quota, the mines, etc. are not shown. This is similar to the film’s overall strategy — showing all the bad stuff Columbus did as happening, but not showing him actually doing it — thus leaving him blameless.
• Moxica is shown eating watermelon, a fruit native to Africa. No way he brought it with him unless they had refrigerators on those ships.
• Moxica is shown initiating the “chop off their hands” policy and everyone reacts in horror, including Columbus. As mentioned earlier, this was Columbus’ own policy.
• When Moxica is arrested he says the Spanish have been there for four years, which makes the setting the city of Santo Domingo and also means the second and third voyages of Columbus have been conflated — the second return to Spain and the third expedition skipped.
  It was during this crucial absence from Hispaniola that most of the anger against Columbus fermented — he had left for Spain in August of 1494, and against the explicit orders of Isabella took 1,200 of the Taino’s rival tribe, the violent Caribs, as slaves to be sold in Spain.
  This was because there was simply not enough riches of gold in the New World, and the voyages needed to be paid for somehow. Slavery of conquered peoples was standard practice for Portuguese explorers, and Columbus assumed it was the same for the Spanish. It was not. 200 of the Carib died on the way back, and Isabella was pissed.
  Because it was illegal to enslave Christians, Columbus made it illegal in Hispaniola to baptize the natives, despite the spread of Christianity being one of the project’s intended goals.
• Columbus was away for many years, returning for his third voyage on 30 May, 1498. He had left Bartholomew in charge, but during this time a man named Francisco Roldan had revolted and founded a rival regime with about half of the Spaniards.
• The goal of the third voyage was to bring supplies to Hispaniola and to search for the still yet to be found mainland of Asia — although Columbus was convinced Juana (Cuba) was a peninsula of Cathay (China). Meanwhile a mission by Amerigo Vespucci had left in May 1497 but had not yet returned — breaking the previously held monopoly of Columbus.
  Vespucci landed at Coyana and discovered the Amazon River, becoming the first European to visit the mainland continent of America, which bears his name. He would return in October of 1498 and be made chief navigator of Spain in 1508.
• Meanwhile, King Henry VII of England sent the Genoese sailor Zuan Chabotto (John Cabot) to cross the sea as well on 2 May 1497, despite a papal decree that all new lands west of the Azores were claimed for Spain.
  Chabotto made landfall at what is now called Cape Bonavista in Newfoundland on 24 June 1497, returning in August. His second voyage would be lost at sea in 1499.
• Columbus would discover Trinidad and Tobago on 31 July 1498, then explore the coast of South America until 12 August. Since Columbus still firmly believed North America was Asia, he considered South America a new continent, positioning it in his head as being roughly in the position of Australia relative to Asia.
• He arrived back at Hispaniola on 19 August 1498 to discover the rebellion. Although he initially resolved the situation peaceably, a second revolution was initiated by Adrián de Moxica, who had lead several expeditions for Spain to India in the 1480s. Columbus had Moxica’s revolt violently put down, and Moxica was hanged.
• AND NOW BACK TO WHERE WE LEFT THE MOVIE! In the film, the rebellion is depicted as the natives against Columbus in retribution for Moxica’s cruelty, before Moxica uses the fighting and confusion to attack Columbus as well. In reality, it was a revolt of the Spanish settlers who were upset that Columbus had lied to them about the gold and were disgusted by his brutal methods as a governor. That said, Moxica’s revolt probably did find plenty of support among the Taino.
• Moxica is depicted as committing a kind of honourable suicide by jumping off a cliff, when in reality as noted earlier, Columbus had him hanged. The other rebels are shown being strangled until dead, however.
• A priest in the film complains that Columbus treats “Christians equally with heathen savages”, when as noted earlier the only reason Columbus let them remain heathen savages was so it would be legal to enslave them.
• Santo Domingo, which the movie has somewhat conflated with La Isabella, is shown being ravaged by a hurricane in a very corny — like Cecil B. Demille level corny — “wrath of God” type sequence. While this did happen, it was not until 1502, after Columbus had been arrested. The same hurricane killed Francisco de Bobadilla, who has not yet properly arrived in the story. A hurricane did destroy the settlement of La Isabella in 1495, and its failure and abandonment let to the 1498 establishment of Santo Domingo, the first European-built city of the New World.
• Gabriel Sanchez, the Royal treasurer, is shown in the film turning against Columbus for no real reason. He reports the colony’s various failings to Isabella, and makes a big point of how Columbus forced nobles to work and treated Spaniards and Indians as equals — when in reality the nobles sat back and had Taino slave labor do all the work. What really horrified Isabella was in fact Columbus’ tyranny of the natives — when she had given him explicit orders to befriend them, to convert them, and not to enslave them.
• Sanchez is depicted as learning of the failure of Santo Domingo from a discontented priest. In fact, it was from Columbus himself that the Crown learned of the failures in Hispaniola. By October 1499, Columbus was exhausted by recent events and wracked with arthritis and opthalmia. He requested a royal commissioner be sent to assist him, so the Catholic Monarchs sent Francisco de Bobadilla — depicted here as a judge and a sycophant of Gabriel Sanchez with a grudge against Columbus, in reality a member of the military Order of Calatrava.
• Bobadilla arrived in August 1500, having been appointed to replace Columbus as governor and investigate accounts of his brutality.
• Bobadilla disappoints Columbus in the movie by reporting to him of the discovery of the mainland by Amerigo Vespucci “weeks ago”. However this had happened in 1497 before the third voyage, and was already known to Columbus by this time. That said, it is true that Columbus was very resentful of Amerigo, accusing him of stealing his legacy and reputation — Columbus had naturally wanted to call the continent of (South) America Columbia, but hey at least a nation in the region would one day be named after him!
• The movie then cuts to January 1501 where Columbus is imprisoned in the very German/Disney-esque looking “Prison Castille”. In reality, Columbus was sent back to Cadíz in chains on 1 October 1500, and spent only a month and a half in prison.
• Bobadilla’s investigation had testimony from 23 people, supporters and detractors of Columbus alike, all of whom said atrocities took place, such as:
  - Cutting a corn thief’s nose and ears off and selling him into slavery.
  - Parading a woman naked in the streets and cutting her tongue off for implying the Columbus family was of ignoble birth.
  - Parading the dismembered bodies of the slaughtered rebelling natives through the streets to discourage further rebellion.
  - Rape, torture and mutilations.
  - Death and desperation: mothers so starved they could not breastfeed newborns, a massive infant mortality rate, a mining program enforced so that women did not see their husbands for eight months at a time. This and the other deaths caused the birth rate and population to plummet. The real priest in Santo Domingo, Bartoleme de las Casas, estimated the Taino death toll between 1494–1508 at three million.
• Columbus was not allowed a defense, and he and his brothers were sent to Spain in chains and jailed at Cadíz.
• In 1501, Columbus’ son Fernando is shown as all grown up, maybe 18 at the youngest, while in reality he was only 13 at the time — older brother Diogo is 22.
• Diogo is depicted all throughout the movie as being against his father’s journeys, when in reality he succeeded his father as Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy and was the most adamant fighter for the restoration of his father’s titles after he was arrested and disgraced. Fernando went on one voyage (the fourth) and hated it and stayed home to be a scholar.
• Columbus asks Isabella to be allowed to return as he as still never seen the mainland, and Isabella says yes so long as he does not take his brothers. In reality the rationale for the fourth voyage wasn’t the mainland, which Amerigo Vespucci had found but that by now had been claimed for Portugal (in April 1500 by Pedro Cabral) — and Columbus did in fact take Bartholomew and Fernando on the trip. The real rationale for the fourth voyage was to find a passage through to Asia, to Cathay and Cipangu, to the gold and spices and riches that were supposed to be the whole point! The real punishment was that all of the wealth and titles of “Cristóbal Colón” were taken, and he could no longer be governor of any lands he discovered.
• In the scene with his mistress, Columbus claims he does not need riches — yet he spent the rest of his life, as did his son Diogo, petitioning the Crown to have his title and his 10% of profits restored to him.
• The film seems to skip Columbus’ fourth voyage of 1502–1504, to show Columbus as an “old man” in 1506 — in reality he was indeed aged to white hair and infirmity by this point due to his many diseases. It is implied in the film that he has lost prestige and legacy to Amerigo Vespucci, which is something that the Columbus family did indeed claim — but then the Columbus family were a bunch of dicks anyway.
• A scene where a priest at Salamanca lectures on the geography of the New World seems to confuse Santo Domingo as being a separate place from Hispaniola, when in fact it is a city on that island.
• Columbus’ fourth voyage, in which he went to Panama and learned from the native population of the Pacific Ocean (and thus the way to China at last), was shipwrecked on Jamaica and denied rescue by the new governor of Hispaniola, impressed the natives by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse and thus convincing them he was a sorcerer, then escaped and returned safely to Spain through a hurricane that destroyed ALL his enemies in Santo Domingo — — is only covered in a brief one sentence note at the end.
• Columbus died in Spain on 20 May 1506, at 54 years old, of chronic arthritis.

So what are we left with? Well, the movie doesn’t one hundred percent canonize Columbus. He’s depicted as fallible, as having negative qualities. But they’re all qualities we generally forgive in a hero — he’s impatient, he’s passionate, he’s quick to anger, he just believes in himself too gosh darn much. Scott decided he wanted to lean into the traditional notion of Columbus as someone who went against society and was proven right, when in fact Columbus was proven wrong even though he found the New World — it wasn’t Asia, and there were no riches there. Even his back-up plan of using the indigenous population as slave labour fell through eventually, leading to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to bring African labour to the New World.

Scott’s problem, ironically, may be that he’s a very knowledgeable guy about history and cares about period details and minutiae — I don’t think this movie’s whitewashing of Columbus’ career comes from ignorance. And that causes so much of the problems, because in deciding to depict all the negative stuff but shift the blame onto other people, it comes across as some strange pro-Columbus puff piece designed to cast his enemies in a bad light — even though all these people have been dead for five hundred years.

Columbus was a self-aggrandizer, he twisted facts and got things wrong all in service of getting himself wealth and fame. He reacted violently to perceived betrayal and had little to no empathy for people not in his immediate family. He was a poor navigator, and a genocidal tyrant of a colonial governor. And here’s Scott, making a movie that I think Columbus would be very happy with if he could see it. It’s a well made movie, and I don’t think Scott was trying to push an anti-Indigenous message but by siding with Columbus that’s what he does. He exonerates the man of responsibility for the crimes done against the indigenous people, which is ultimately disrespectful of those people and their descendants, despite bending over backward to portray the indigenous people in such a positive light he loops back around to being insulting by making them into this utopian Edenic society (a common problem with 1990s depictions of native Americans).

This isn’t necessarily Birth of the Nation, a conscious rewriting of history in favour of a vile ideology, instead the offensive qualities come across as an accidental byproduct of the incompatibility of the decision to make Columbus a hero with the notion of telling an historically accurate rendition of his life.

So why depict Columbus as a hero at all? I think part of it is that the notion of sailing off into the unknown and discovering a new world is romantic, and the events of 1492 momentous, and Columbus is the natural protagonist of the story and depicting him in all his ugliness strips away a lot of the appeal of watching such a story. But I think it also comes down to this — Columbus didn’t mean to “discover America”. Landing in the Bahamas was a mistake. It was supposed to be Asia. And ultimately, somewhere along the way, Columbus became part of the origin myth of the United States of America and it was not acceptable for the origin of the United States to be depicted as it truly is — a mistake.

There’s a lot to admire about 1492: Conquest of Paradise, it has moments that truly soar. But it’s up to each viewer to decide whether those moments are worth the cost of admission, and even if you come down on liking the movie, it’s important to understand where it’s bending and then breaking the truth.