Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians

Five hundred years after Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), history continues to be accompanied by a curious and persistent illusion; the well-known fable that when Columbus discovered America he proved that the earth is round - to the astonishment of contemporaries who believed that it was flat and that one might sail off the edge. This error has become firmly established in the popular mind by the media, textbooks, and teachers, despite the fact that historians of science have known and proclaimed for over sixty years that most people in Columbus' time believed the earth to be spherical. Jeffrey Burton Russell aims to set the record straight, beginning with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages and what Columbus and his contemporaries actually did believe. Russell then demonstrates why and how the error was first propagated in the 1820s and 1830s - and how Washington Irving and Antoine-Jeane Latronne were among those responsible. Later historians followed the mistakes of these writers, reaching a peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Christians opposed to Darwinism were labelled similar to medieval Christians who allegedly opposed the sphericity of the earth. "Inventing the Flat Earth" ends with an explanation of why the error remains pervasive in society, despite the overwhelming evidence against it, and the implications of this for historical knowledge and scholarly honesty.