The Legacy of Christopher Columbus in the Americas examines the impact of Columbus’ imperial vision and the manner in which his encounter with the New World inspired ideas about the translation of empire from Europe to the Americas. Deploying close textual and iconographic analysis—literary as well as historical approaches—Bartosik-Vélez explores the nature of the Columbian imperial theme in comparative methodological contexts, as well as how representations of Columbus became useful tools to formulate an imperial ideology. In the United States, these imperial aspirations were marked, above all, by territorial expansion. They are contrasted with what Columbus and the translatio imperii meant to Spanish American revolutionaries and intellectuals during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for whom imperial ideology, sometimes represented by the very figure of Columbus, addressed questions of power, authority, and republican values rather than territorial expansion.
Bartosik-Vélez’s broad, interpretive goal is discussed throughout and fully articulated in...