A Counterfactual Columbus
Develop a counter factual narrative and revisit the story of Columbus.
In this reimagined tale, Christopher Columbus, a native of Italy, dreams of sailing to the New World—not in search of gold or spices, but of peanut butter. He has heard rumors that in this mysterious land across the ocean, peanut butter can be found everywhere, spread thickly across North America, while in Europe it is unknown and unobtainable.
Columbus first tries to raise funds for his peanut butter expedition in Italy, but his pitch falls flat. Undeterred, he moves to Spain, where he once again makes his case—unsuccessfully at first. Still, he manages to catch the attention of Ferdinand and Isabella, who suspect there may be more to this voyage than nut paste.
Before long, the three of them are deep in conversation about a transatlantic journey—whether for gold, spices, India, China, or perhaps Malaysia—it’s not entirely clear. The discussion stretches late into the evening, the room growing dim as dusk settles. At last, Columbus excuses himself to return to his lodgings. It appears they have agreed to fund his voyage, though no one is entirely certain when it will happen, or even what the voyage is really for.
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Columbus and the Peanut Butter Hypothesis
Christopher Columbus had a theory. It wasn’t about gold or spices, at least not at first. He was convinced that somewhere across the western ocean lay a land flowing with peanut butter.
Peanut butter, as far as anyone in 15th-century Europe knew, didn’t exist. But Columbus had heard scattered reports from sailors—half-remembered tales about a spreadable paste made from ground legumes, delicious and sustaining, the sort of thing that could power an empire if only someone could find it.
He began pitching the idea in Italy. It didn’t go well. The Florentine bankers who funded voyages preferred cargoes with a proven market: silk, pepper, cinnamon. Peanut butter, they told him, was not a recognized commodity. In Venice, a maritime republic that prided itself on global trade, merchants listened politely, nodded, and then changed the subject to nutmeg.
So Columbus tried Spain.
Ferdinand and Isabella were preoccupied—with the Reconquista, with diplomacy, with establishing order in a country that had only recently stopped being several smaller countries. Yet they agreed to meet him. Columbus arrived with his maps and his conviction that the shortest route to peanut butter lay westward.
Isabella, who had a gift for diplomacy, asked questions in the careful tone reserved for enthusiastic but confused petitioners. “And this… peanut butter,” she said, “you believe it is in India?”
“Possibly,” Columbus replied. “Or beyond it. Some say China. Others, perhaps Malaysia. The accounts differ.”
Ferdinand wanted to know if it could be traded for gold. Columbus, thinking quickly, said it could probably contain gold. The meeting went on for hours, circling through topics—India, China, spices, legumes—until the sun was low and everyone was hungry.
By dusk, a vague agreement had emerged. Columbus would sail west. Whether he was seeking gold, spices, or peanut butter was left deliberately unclear.
That ambiguity turned out to be useful. When he returned years later, having found a new continent but no sign of the creamy substance he had imagined, he could still claim success of a kind. The world was bigger, Spain was richer, and the legend of Columbus was born—though Europe would have to wait another four centuries for peanut butter.
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Centuries later, historians would write about Columbus’s ambition, his miscalculations, his blindness, and his luck. But what lingers is the impulse itself—the certainty that something extraordinary must lie just beyond the edge of the map. The peanut butter, in that sense, was never really the point. It was the idea that the world was withholding something wonderful, and that only a brave, stubborn optimist could go and find it.
Europe eventually did get its peanut butter—though by then, it arrived in jars, labeled, taxed, and sold in grocery stores. Columbus never tasted it. But he would have recognized the feeling that it inspired: a small, daily promise of new worlds spread across familiar bread.
