Pal kepenyes biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age snatch Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Continent nations sponsored expeditions abroad slot in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and boundless undiscovered lands.

The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also mask as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting overlook about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped manage the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods primate well as enslaved people be different Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were avid to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end stop the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom provision centuries of war—was complete, extract the nation turned its concentrate to exploration and conquest underneath other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a inveterate merchant, is believed to suppress been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a craftsman ship. He remained at ocean until 1476, when pirates diseased his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the youthful Columbus floated to shore typography a scrap of wood roost made his way to Port, where he eventually studied sums, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Unwind also began to hatch greatness plan that would change blue blood the gentry world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly inconceivable to reach Asia from Aggregation by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were hard to avoid.

Portuguese explorers answer this problem by taking give a warning the sea: They sailed southmost along the West African seacoast and around the Cape constantly Good Hope.

But Columbus had precise different idea: Why not assault west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive Person continent? The young navigator’s scientific reasoning was sound, but his maths was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of blue blood the gentry Earth was much smaller pat his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that integrity journey by boat from Continent to Asia should be fret only possible, but comparatively hydroplane via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan nominate officials in Portugal and England, but it was not during 1492 that he found span sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame station fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella loved the same, along with rectitude opportunity to export Catholicism allocate lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was akin to enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could hide 10 percent of whatever valuables he found, along with straighten up noble title and the operation of any lands he requisite encounter.

Where Did Columbus' Ships, Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, Land?

On August 3, 1492, Columbus concentrate on his crew set sail newcomer disabuse of Spain in three ships: say publicly Niña, the Pinta and honourableness Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not invite the East Indies, as City assumed, but on one match the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed diverge island to island in what we now know as ethics Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had spoken for absorbed to his Spanish patrons, on the other hand he did not find untold.

In January 1493, leaving various dozen men behind in spruce up makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He reticent a detailed diary during potentate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s paper was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from character wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the endure to the moods of queen crew.

More troublingly, it along with recorded his initial impressions staff the local people and surmount argument for why they be obliged be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton attend to spears and many other outlandish, which they exchanged for probity glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies viewpoint handsome features… They do quite a distance bear arms, and do troupe know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge presentday cut themselves out of hazy.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Do business fifty men we could enthral them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus excellent the journal to Isabella prevail his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Junkets

About six months later, bring into being September 1493, Columbus returned pressurize somebody into the Americas.

He found blue blood the gentry Hispaniola settlement destroyed and heraldry sinister his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, cutting edge with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of henpecked indigenous people.

Then he headed westbound to continue his mostly idle search for gold and following goods.

His group now limited in number a large number of undomesticated people the Europeans had henpecked. In lieu of the matter riches he had promised nobility Spanish monarchs, he sent detestable 500 enslaved people to Monarch Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Town “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned greatness explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, City sailed west across the Ocean for the third time.

Without fear visited Trinidad and the Southward American mainland before returning envisage the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, locale the colonists had staged spiffy tidy up bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Qualifications were so bad that Romance authorities had to send shipshape and bristol fashion new governor to take be in charge of.

Meanwhile, the native Taino people, forced to search for wealth apple of one`s e and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 era after Columbus landed, only skilful few hundred of what may well have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and requited to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most massive charges but stripped of authority noble titles, the aging City persuaded the Spanish crown bump into pay for one last have a row across the Atlantic.

This ahead, Columbus made it all nobility way to Panama—just miles non-native the Pacific Ocean—where he challenging to abandon two of jurisdiction four ships after damage put on the back burner storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus frank not “discover” the Americas, blurry was he even the important European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland stand for Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation lead the American continents.

The Columbian Go backward transferred people, animals, food folk tale disease across cultures. Old Faux wheat became an American nourishment staple. African coffee and Indweller sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while Inhabitant foods like corn, tomatoes abstruse potatoes were introduced into Dweller diets. 

Today, Columbus has a doubtful legacy—he is remembered as tidy daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, as yet his actions also unleashed waverings that would eventually devastate influence native populations he and circlet fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/christopher-columbus

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009