“The Capitulations of Santa Fe” was not a sequel to “The Alamo”, though without it neither Hollywood nor Texas nor Mexico would have existed in its current form.
“Capitulation”, like “chapter”, “capital” and “captain”, comes from “caput”, Latin for “head”. Just as “chapters” are the head or lead sections of a written work, so a contract or a treaty was once made up of terms or articles called “capitulations”. Literally, they are “Heads of agreement”.
The Capitulations of Santa Fe was the lawyers’ contribution to a major step in western movement. Upon three months of negotiation history has not been privy to, Queen Isabella I of Castile, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Columbus executed the Capitulations on 17 April 1492. I have not sighted the last page, but I assume that the first two placed their seal and the third his signature.
The agreement provided that Columbus for his upcoming travels and travails would receive the rank “Admiral of the Ocean Sea”; the right to nominate three persons from whom the sovereigns would choose one for any office in the new lands; the right to receive 10% of all revenues from the new lands in perpetuity; and other bits and pieces.
Unsurprisingly, the litigation between Columbus’s heirs and the Crown received its own name, Pleitos colombinos. That war lasted until 1536, although one good source puts the last battle at 1790.
I have not discovered any satisfactory route for the segue of “capitulation” to “conditions” to “conditions of surrender” to “surrender on terms” to “surrender, conditionally or unconditionally”. Take the OED’s reference to a 1714 issue of The Spectator. The theme is Ovid’s view that love is a kind of warfare, and the venerable dictionary uses this to example a surrender on terms. But the text is:
Mr Spectator,
I have assisted in several sieges in the Low Countries, and being still willing to employ my talents as a soldier and engineer, lay down this morning at seven o’clock before the door of an obstinate female, who had for some time refused me admittance. I made a lodgment in an outer parlour about twelve: the enemy retired to her bed-chamber, yet still I pursued, and about two o’clock this afternoon she thought fit to capitulate. Her demands are indeed somewhat high, in relation to the settlement of her fortune. But, being in possession of the house, I intend to insist upon carte blanche, and am in hopes, by keeping off all other pretenders for the space of twenty-four hours, to starve her into a compliance. I beg your speedy advice, an am
Sir, yours,
Peter Push.
From my camp in Red Lion Square, Saturday, four in the afternoon.”
I would have thought it tolerably clear that the intended humour is directed to the writer’s misbelief that he brought the woman to parley and that he is still in possession of her house, yet she holds the fortune and he writes from the gutter.
The earliest use of “capitulate” as “surrender” I have found is in Emerson’s 1841 essay, “Self-reliance”:
Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”
We can say with certainty is that “chapter heading” is not an oxymoron. A chapter may have its own heading as much as a head must have its forehead.
