This volume is a reprint of George Emra Nunn’s 1924 University of California Ph.D. dissertation, which was published that same year by the American Geographical Society—an impressive accomplishment. It is an “expanded edition,” the expansion being an essay chapter of 45 pages by Clinton R. Edwards, professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. That this small volume of less than 150 pages was seminal is beyond peradventure of doubt when we see the bibliography appended to Edwards’ essay and note the number of studies it generated, including subsequent ones by Nunn himself. Almost all serious scholars— and some not-so-serious ones—have felt compelled to join the issues: condemning, praising, explicating, or simply propounding their own particular versions, translations, or interpretations of documents and maps. Boies Penrose, in his immensely valuable Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance, 1460–1620 (1952), succinctly annotated this book with the words: “A very useful, though technical study” (p. 142). Right on both counts.
The work, as its subtitle indicates, addresses four separate and distinct, though related, problems: (1) “The Determination of the Length of a Terrestrial Degree by Columbus” (and, a crucial corollary, “An Estimate of the Extension of Asia Eastward”); (2) “The Route of Columbus on His First Voyage As Evidence of His Knowledge of the Winds and Currents of the Atlantic”; (3) “Did Columbus Believe That He Reached Asia on His Fourth Voyage?”; (4) “The Identity of ‘Florida’ on the Cantino Map of 1502.” It is not an easy task to summarize in the space of a book review the arguments for and against Nunn’s theses. Suffice it to say that the most contentious problems were (and remain) the first two.
Regarding the length of a terrestrial degree, Nunn demonstrates that Columbus measured 56⅔ miles on a meridian, was in error, but was sincere; he did not determine in advance the result he wanted in order to prove his preconceived thesis that Asia was closer to Europe than previously believed. Samuel Eliot Morison disagreed, dismissed, and expressed contempt for Nunn’s conclusions both in Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942) and The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, 1492–1616 (1974). Columbus’ knowledge of the winds and currents of the Atlantic was probably a combination of empirical wisdom gained during his pre-1492 maritime career and pure luck. Nunn concludes that Columbus probably did believe he had reached the coast of Asia (so did Balboa). As for the identity of “Florida” on the Cantino map, it probably was not what we know as Florida, and “this land was drawn under the misapprehension that it was the mainland of Asia” (p. 141).
So, then, why was this book reprinted? For one thing, it makes available, at a very reasonable price, an important contribution to Columbus historiography rather than one more of the “coffee table” illustrated books engendered by the Quincentennial. For this alone we must thank the American Geographical Society. Furthermore, Clinton Edwards’ essay is a gem, and a paradigm we should all strive to emulate. It is a judicious, factual, dispassionate discussion of Nunn’s work and the studies that followed it. Edwards does not have any personal theories or axes to grind. He acknowledges that George Nunn may have been (and was) wrong about some things but quite right about others; that Nunn’s contribution to the debate on the “Columbus Question” was very important for his time; and that the questions (problems) Nunn raised were and are important. None have been, as Edwards reminds us, fully and satisfactorily answered yet.
