(^62) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
not have a new Columbus stamp, but the U.S. Post Office, swift-to-
stroke and politically irreproachable, issued a commemorative in 1992
recalling the Asians who crossed over to North America some tens of
thousands of years ago, the ancestors of the American Indians.) Be
sides, Columbus clearly did not know where he was going. In 1492,
the indigenous peoples discovered Columbus.
But of course they did, just as he discovered them. Encounter goes
two ways. To note the reciprocity, however, does not justify throwing
out one side of the pair.^6
This kind of cavil, interestingly enough, is a major issue in mathe
matics. The research mathematician finds and reveals new theorems
and proofs. He calls them "truths." Has he discovered them? Or cre
ated them? Were they always there to be found—inscribed from eter
nity in the great "Book," as Paul Erdôs called it? Or do they exist only
by virtue of being invented? No matter. The mathematician has
found/created them, and mathematical thought and imagination are
thereby altered.^7 So with Columbus's discovery: once the news got
back, thinking about the world and its peoples—the human imagina
tion—was changed forever.
The irrelevancy lies in the argument that emphasis on the Columbian
discovery Europeanizes a world process of encounter and exchange;
that this Eurocentrism induces an easy triumphalism, leading histori
ans to accentuate the false positive (the great age of exploration) and
ignore the true negative (the catastrophic consequences of invasion).
Some of this complaint is true, but a good historian tries to keep his
balance. The opening of the New World (for Europe it was new) was
an exchange, but asymmetric. The European epiphany was the one
that mattered. Europe it was that initiated the process, responded to
the discovery, and set the agenda for further developments. On the op
erative level—who did to whom—this was a one-way business.
As for the self-congratulatory grandeur of these events, people, big
and small, snatch at prestige where they may; and once invented, myths
die hard. Yet the heroic discovery myths have not commanded the as
sent of scholars for many years—certainly not in the professional liter
ature. Ever since Carl Sauer and Woodrow Borah and the California
school of economic geography announced, on the basis of archeolog-
is already inhabited by people.... It's as though I went to Yakutsk and announced diat
I had discovered that city. Tht would hardly please the Yakuts." (NB: This is transla
tion at three removes—Russian to Polish to French to English. But I don't think it tra
duces the original.)
nora
(Nora)
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