Travellers and Cosmographers by Joan-Pau Rubis;

Author:Joan-Pau Rubis;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2023-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

In this way the account of personal misfortune becomes a negative comment about the nature of the colonial society of the New World. The double demystification is in fact a single process, because the nature of the marvellous is transferred from the particular observations of strange peoples and exotic products to the unexpected realization of overall material poverty and moral corruption. The merchant does not become wealthy because the Indies are not what they are supposed to be – and this distorted response to European desires becomes the key marvel, the marvel of unexpected truth. Galeotto Cei ‘marvels’ at the poverty of the Christians in the New World. He also marvels at how fast the Indies are becoming depopulated and, above all, at how easily people in Europe believe wonderful reports about untold wealth and are even able to print them.43

The whole catalogue of negative experiences described by Galeotto Cei is certainly too vast to discuss here. It is important however to emphasize that it encompasses a wide range of considerations, from practical to moral ones. The merchant was not therefore only discussing economic profit, but rather how profit related to justice, religion and civilization. In the New World economic and moral failure were a reflection of each other. Thus, to begin with, he complained that European women in the Indies were lazy and dishonest and had acquired an enormous amount of sexual power (Galeotto Cei was obviously fascinated by sexual activities and sexual organs, a fascination that often verges on the voyeuristic). Sex was a compensation when wealth was elusive, but the alternative of a lascivious life frightened the Florentine merchant-patrician, as he associated it with loss of power, ill-health and the many insects of a hot climate.44

This alluring inner weakness found correspondance in the political and economic spheres. The business of discovery was a tale of rivalries and betrayals between Europeans, often accompanied by cruelty and exploitation towards Indians. The exploitation of Indians was done with little economic benefit or discrimination and was in fact a reflection of economic incompetence in the first place. Thus, settling a new town in a new area of the mainland of the southern continent was extremely difficult: ‘we made our village, each of us a house made of reeds, hay and wood, all of which were abundant there, and then began our struggle against hunger ...’45 Life in coastal towns, like Nombre de Dios, was like hell – both expensive (since everything was scarce) and dangerous (since there were so many illnesses). ‘Discovering’ a new area in what is modern Venezuela was about robbing Indians of their food and then enslaving them, causing their destruction without bringing any permanent wealth to the Europeans (Galeotto Cei criticized this cruelty, but often we find him joining in).46 In the Caribbean, pearls were fished out of the sea at the expense of condemning Indian slaves to a dog’s life, forced to dive and otherwise kept in prison, ‘and of six Indians that they put there, four die’.

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