Introduction and First Voyage: 1492-3 Summary and Analysis

Four Voyages to the New World, or just The Four Voyages (as later editions are called), traces the four major voyages of explorer Christopher Columbus to the "New World," or North America, through original fifteenth- and sixteenth-century documents. In his introduction, editor and translator J.M. Cohen sets forth the documents he has chosen to include in this volume. He remarks that the historian Oviedo, whose writings are included, had some facts wrong (including the idea that the New World had already been discovered by earlier Spanish kings). In addition, Cohen presents a vision of Columbus as a skilled yet flawed man who did not have good leadership skills and desperately needed a quick success to prove to the king and queen of Spain that his voyages were successes.

Documents from the first...