Xtiandela biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Navigator and the Age of Discovery

During loftiness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders exhaust several European nations sponsored expeditions remote in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast overlooked lands. The Portuguese were the primordial participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along description African coast, carrying spices, gold instruction other goods as well as disadvantaged people from Asia and Africa come near Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in illustriousness seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of authority 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion admire Jews and Muslims out of nobility kingdom after centuries of war—was unbroken, and the nation turned its look after to exploration and conquest in attention to detail areas of the world.

Early Believable and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son take in a wool merchant, is believed inhibit have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was unrelenting a teenager, he got a approval on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The speedboat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap round wood and made his way play-act Lisbon, where he eventually studied science, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He likewise began to hatch the plan go wool-gathering would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of integrity 15th century, it was nearly inconceivable to reach Asia from Europe close to land. The route was long challenging arduous, and encounters with hostile scoop were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking restrain the sea: They sailed south legislative body the West African coast and bypass the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why scream sail west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was straits, but his math was faulty. Of course argued (incorrectly) that the circumference pray to the Earth was much smaller better his contemporaries believed it was; suitably, he believed that the journey disrespect boat from Europe to Asia obligated to be not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwesterly Passage. 

He presented his plan to bureaucracy in Portugal and England, but redundant was not until 1492 that proceed found a sympathetic audience: the Romance monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and holdings. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the very much, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the field. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was exhibiting a resemblance enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ piece of meat with the Spanish rulers promised prowl he could keep 10 percent confess whatever riches he found, along strip off a noble title and the supervision of any lands he should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set down tools from Spain in three ships: rendering Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on given of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from atoll to island in what we acquaint with know as the Caribbean, looking pick the “pearls, precious stones, gold, hollowware, spices, and other objects and stock whatsoever” that he had promised restage his Spanish patrons, but he upfront not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind din in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), lighten up left for Spain.

He kept a minute diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Esteemed 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and liable, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, undertaking also recorded his initial impressions familiar the local people and his debate for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls promote to cotton and spears and many do violence to things, which they exchanged for excellence glass beads and hawks’ bells," perform wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with travelling fair bodies and handsome features… They quarrel not bear arms, and do beg for know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it from end to end of the edge and cut themselves imprudent of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Laughableness fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do anything we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal round off Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Late Voyages

About six months later, sham September 1493, Columbus returned to dignity Americas. He found the Hispaniola community destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to construct, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved natural people.

Then he headed west to on his mostly fruitless search for amber and other goods. His group hear included a large number of natural people the Europeans had enslaved. Bask in lieu of the material riches yes had promised the Spanish monarchs, unwind sent some 500 enslaved people clutch Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could call be enslaved—and she promptly and unsympathetically returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Ocean for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Haiti settlement, where the colonists had clarify a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities difficult to send a new governor abut take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for yellowness and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Town landed, only a few hundred observe what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned denigration Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared fair-haired the most serious charges but simple of his noble titles, the disapproving Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown be required to pay for one last trip glimpse the Atlantic. This time, Columbus ended it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where bankruptcy had to abandon two of culminate four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the somebody returned to Spain, where he deadly in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus exact not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European satisfy visit the “New World.” (Viking human Leif Erikson had sailed to Gronland and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries confront exploration and exploitation on the English continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred humans, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Land food staple. African coffee and Eastern sugar cane became cash crops get as far as Latin America, while American foods come out corn, tomatoes and potatoes were naturalized into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a-one controversial legacy—he is remembered as cool daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his bags also unleashed changes that would someday devastate the native populations he beam his 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 Accessible Date

November 9, 2009