A weekly look at noteworthy addresses...

A weekly look at noteworthy addresses in the Southland. John Huxtable Elliott, an Oxford University historian, addressed “The Significance of 1492 in 1992” during a three-day visit this week to Pomona College. From Elliott’s address on “The World That Made Columbus”: On Columbus Himself “Columbus was a man driven and obsessed, and it would be unwise to take an obsessive figure like this as a typical representative of his age. Yet at the same time, the obsessions themselves can provide us with valuable clues to the world from which he comes, precisely because they are likely to be expressive . . . of contemporary preoccupations and concerns. . . . The picture of Columbus as an outsider and a loner is a highly misleading one, deriving partly from the image that he assiduously fostered of himself as a man misunderstood and wronged, and partly from the romantic 19th-Century conception of the solitary genius. In reality, at the critical moments of his career, Columbus was backed up by impressive support systems.

On His World “There was a shortage of labor rather than of land, and in the 14th and 15th centuries (many) slaves were being imported into the Mediterranean countries. While initially many of these were Tartars, Russians and Caucasians, they were increasingly replaced by blacks as the Turkish advance disrupted the traditional sources of supply, and as the Portuguese moved down the west coast of Africa. . . . The doctrines of the medieval canonists allowed that non-Christian societies were viable communities which could not be arbitrarily dispossessed of their sovereignty or land. But the expansionist requirements of Christianity for the salvation of souls, the expansionist aspirations of merchants for a greater share of world trade, and the expansionist territorial ambitions of rival nation-states combined to make a dead letter of the canon law. It is from this acquisitive European civilization that Columbus emerged. This was the world that made him.”

Looking Ahead * Wednesday: Per Westerberg, Sweden’s minister of industry and commerce, will speak at 12:30 p.m. at the Biltmore Hotel. Sponsored by the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. For information, call 213-628-2333.

* Wednesday: Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” will speak at Claremont McKenna College at 7 p.m. For information, call 714-621-8099.

Announcements concerning prominent speakers in Los Angeles should be sent to Speaking Up, c/o Times researcher Michael Meyers, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053