Sinking Columbus: Contested History, Cultural Politics, and Mythmaking during the Quincenterary

"This is the most conventionally scholarly of my five books, and it’s also the one that takes us furthest from a Columbus biography. There’s almost no biography in here at all, but an assumption that you won’t need all that information, because you can get it elsewhere. As the title indicates, it’s about contested history, cultural politics, and mythmaking. It focuses on the 1992 Quincentenary, which is absolutely crucial to understanding anything about Columbus since then. People say that they like how, in my book, I connect statues being pulled down in the 2020s back to the 19th century, and even back to Columbus’s own lifetime. And, absolutely, yes, but the huge event that took place between today and all of that is the 1992 Quincentennial, which was very contested. In the lead up, people preparing the celebrations thought it would be like 1892, which was the absolute peak of Columbus adulation. All kinds of stuff came out of the 1890s in America, which might not be super interesting to you if you are not here in the States, but, for example: American children have to pledge allegiance to the flag in elementary school every morning, right? Generations have grown up like that, and Americans don’t think anything is wrong with that, but people outside America are astonished at the blatant instilling in Americans of this level of patriotism, which is relatively unusual in the modern world. It’s one of the things that makes America stand out. I think Europeans often see this not just as patriotism but kind of jingoistic. It’s so out of sync with modern ways of thinking about nationalism in Europe. But some of it dates from 1892 and is actually about Columbiana. It’s about taking Columbus as a patriotic figure and using him to socialise American children to be very loyal and patriotic to their nation. Columbus became part of that. Fast forward 100 years. The US Post Office was reissuing the 1892 stamps, which in the 1890s had been the biggest-selling stamps in US history. They are very important in the history of philately, if you care about that. They were a cultural phenomenon, and in 1992 they reissued the stamps and simply changed the ‘8’ to a ‘9’. Everything else all the same—these 19th-century images of Columbus. But stamps like that were very out of step with how many Americans now saw Columbus. There was a huge battle over the Quincentenary. So, that’s what Sinking Columbus is about— Columbiana not Columbus. I would argue that you can’t just read books about Columbus in 1492 and then understand how he is seen today. President Trump repeatedly issued statements in 2025, for example, that ‘we’re bringing Christopher back,’ or ‘we’re going to put more statues up,’ or ‘we’re going to make sure that Columbus Day is an official holiday’—which it already is and has been for 100 years. But all that is less about what Columbus did and more about what he has come to stand for. That’s important, because Columbus is still a battleground today. But I would like to see that turned around. He shouldn’t be a battleground, but a talking point, or a site for people to exchange contrary opinions and beliefs in a way that leads to mutual respect and understanding. I think he can be a figure that is used to better understand what happened not only 500 years ago, but in the last 200 years, and not just in the United States, but in the whole Atlantic world."