The Dawning of the Apocalypse. Gerald Horne
with Africans crossing the South Atlantic in greater numbers thereafter. Sebastian Cabot arrived in what is now Paraguay as a result of his 1526–29 journey, but his attempted settlement was squashed by those they had invaded.65
Indicative of the estimated strength of prevailing winds is that this younger Cabot was sailing on behalf of Spain from 1533 to 1547, departing in the latter year for England, indicative of the borderlessness that was to fall intentionally on the rest of the planet. His alleged betrayal was said to surprise Madrid, especially when he became “Chief Pilot” of London. The ever-entrepreneurial Cabot also had sought Venice to fund his voyage to Cathay, as he claimed not without justification that it was he, and not the elder Cabot, who was the great navigator and explorer. This younger Genoan also visited Jiddah. He was in London when Columbus’s voyages were “much discussed.”66
Madrid should not have been surprised by the footloose Cabot, since by the early sixteenth century, King Ferdinand accorded to English and other foreigners who had been residing in Andalusia for the space of fifteen or twenty years and possessed real estate and a family the right to exploit the new overseas trade opportunities opened up in the “New World.” Nicholas Arnold can claim to be the first English merchant-settler and factor to have been authorized to do business in the Caribbean.67
THE ASCENT OF MARTIN LUTHER in 1517 was of monumental significance for the evolution of the apocalyptic events then emerging in the Americas and Africa. On the surface it seemed that Christian unity in the face of the Ottoman challenge had been torn asunder, allowing the Turks to play off one religious faction against the other, and it did seem initially that predominantly Catholic France and soon-to-be Protestant England were more than willing to consort with the Turks against perennial foes. It appeared as well that religious wars would erupt between Protestants and Catholics, a suspicion reinforced when in 1521 the Edict of Worms called for complete suppression of Luther’s teachings.68 In the short term, Luther’s initiative may have fueled the flames of anti-Semitism, spurring more migration across the Atlantic in order to escape an increasingly bigoted Europe. Contemporary writers, for example, have cited Luther as an inspiration for the diabolical anti-Jewish schemes of Nazi Germany.69
Though the acidulous anti-Semitism of Protestantism was to dissipate over time, the dehumanizing nature of this bigotry may help to explain why the Reformation became so closely associated with enslavement. It was Luther who demanded the destruction of synagogues, books, schools, and homes of the Jewish community and insisted upon barring rabbis from preaching and that their congregants’ property should be seized. He recommended that this minority have no legal rights and argued for their deployment as forced labor or banished altogether; of course there was no sin involved in liquidating them altogether, he said. Over time, this astonishing bias began to shrivel, but it was then directed against Africans, as Protestants made a peace of sorts with the Jewish community in the face of a stubborn Catholic challenge.70 Still, this ersatz peace, as later centuries were to reveal, was hardly sincere and heartfelt.
The unperceptive observer in the 1530s could have easily concluded that because London was enmeshed in internecine crisis as Spaniards began to approach the vast and golden territory they called California,71 leaving mayhem in their midst and weakening the indigenes as they had to confront a surging republic by 1848, that all this meant England was forever doomed.
Yet, for an ambitious Henry VIII in London, breaking with the Catholic Church made sense, the need for divorce and remarriage aside. The portly monarch reportedly had a gambling addiction—and seceding from Rome was no minor matter in lining his pockets for further mercantile adventure. Besides, he needed financing to bolster the apparatus of the state, not to mention funds to confront an ever-expanding array of internal and external foes. The Catholic Church in his jurisdiction was too lush a target to ignore.72 Assuredly, he did not hesitate to employ murderous tactics against foes. Those unwilling to accept his diktat were executed. In 1535, several prominent Carthusians, a Catholic religious order, were dragged (Negro-style) across London from the Tower to Tyburn, now Marble Arch, where they were half-hanged, disemboweled, quartered, and beheaded. In nationalist London, the hegemonic line was to reject the “Bishop of Rome” but, as well, to despise the words of the “heretic” Martin Luther.73
The One True Faith had sided with the Iberians in divvying up the planet, which facilitated the Vatican’s role as a major landowner and enterpriser, not least in London’s backyard. Already this had led to much conflict between the monarch and his ostensible Church. The Vatican was slow to realize that the very nature of the Crusades, mandating sacrifice and trading indulgences, leading to wealthy clerics and rampant corruption, was made-to-order for schismatic reform. As matters evolved, the resultant conflict between Catholics and Protestants compelled the latter—as scrappy underdog—to jettison Luther’s initial virulent anti-Jewish fervor in favor of an entente with a beleaguered Jewish community. Likewise Protestant England was to seek entente with Moors and Turks to outflank Catholic Spain and this too helped to propel London into the ionosphere of nations.74 In retrospect, it is apparent that these profound maneuvers were driven more by life-or-death calculation, pragmatic maneuvering as philosophy driving strategy.
The Protestant Reformation was not simply a top-down coup. The seeds of Puritanism were planted perhaps as early as the fourteenth century with the rise of the Lollards and John Wycliffe and the notion that the Church should aid folk to live a life of evangelical poverty and emulate Jesus Christ. Their example shaped John Huss (or Jan Hus) who in turn influenced Martin Luther. By 1526, William Tyndale was inspiring growing numbers of the English in a way that would give impetus to Henry VIII.75
The English monarch’s break with the Vatican also served to buy him favor with the Turks. For, as the Ottomans sought to advance to Persia, more munitions were needed and crafty Englishmen would deliver to them the scrap metal resulting from the upheavals of the Reformation—for example, dismantling of monasteries and other Church property. Lead from the roofs of ecclesiastical buildings, old bells and broken metal statuary, all sailed eastward on flotillas bringing Turkish gratitude.76 During the 1530s virtually all the monasteries in the kingdom were liquidated and their expansive property empire was transferred to others, especially Cambridge colleges (yes, Massachusetts can also be referenced). Colleges plundered countless buildings made empty for stone and tiles, or even lead. Suddenly, monks and friars and their distinctive dress disappeared, as in a fantasy.77 In a sweepingly draconian manner, made all the more remarkable in light of today’s blather about “totalitarianism,” Catholic literature was repressed systematically.78 Likewise, dissident and radical Protestants too were suppressed; in a notorious example, a Wiltshire farmer was burned at the stake for reading Tyndale’s Bible.79
As could have been envisioned, Ottoman Turks were an early beneficiary of the split in Christendom. For even the seemingly all-powerful Turks had to proceed cautiously given their proximity to Russia and its feisty neighbors. By 1501, Crimean Tatars had seized 50,000 Lithuanians, doomed to an uncertain fate as captives, and as this was occurring, Russia itself was steamrolling eastward into Siberia and into some Cossack areas as well, with both trends opening the door to mutually advantageous business with London.80
The Ottomans could not be reassured by trends due west in Spain: in Valencia, Muslims were being forced to convert at swords’ point. Madrid had been unsettled by a revolt in 1501 in the Aplujarras, blamed on Muslims, that was crushed bloodily. By 1526, all Muslims were being ordered to convert or depart, a prelude to their total expulsion by the beginning of the seventeenth century. The ostensible reason was yet another Muslim revolt, where these believers were accused of assaulting and killings of Christians and despoiling their places of worship. Soon thereafter, Ottoman comrades in Algiers dispatched a clandestine flotilla to evacuate tens of thousands of newly minted refugees, which served to reinforce—if not create—yet another base to target Spain. The coerced Muslims were being accused of conspiring with the Ottomans against the Habsburgs. Muslims in Spain were boxed in, with even concessions to them boomeranging. “Much like has happened with African Americans in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement,” says scholar Brian Catlos, “the theoretical removal of Muslims’ subordinate status provoked a hostile reaction among those non-noble Christians who saw Moriscos