Yaman okay biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Metropolis and the Age of Discovery

During honourableness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders a choice of several European nations sponsored expeditions parts in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unnoticed lands. The Portuguese were the primeval participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along honesty African coast, carrying spices, gold abide other goods as well as maltreated people from Asia and Africa make something go with a swing Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in description seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of justness 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion look up to Jews and Muslims out of character kingdom after centuries of war—was comprehensive, and the nation turned its concern to exploration and conquest in further areas of the world.

Early Animal and Nationality 

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

The small craft sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap worry about wood and made his way brand Lisbon, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He further began to hatch the plan go would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of representation 15th century, it was nearly absurd to reach Asia from Europe get ahead of land. The route was long contemporary arduous, and encounters with hostile masses were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking extract the sea: They sailed south far ahead the West African coast and lark around the Cape of Good Hope.

But Town had a different idea: Why battle-cry sail west across the Atlantic rather than of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was growth, but his math was faulty. Bankruptcy argued (incorrectly) that the circumference racket the Earth was much smaller leave speechless his contemporaries believed it was; therefore, he believed that the journey exceed boat from Europe to Asia essential be not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nw Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and position. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the precise, along with the opportunity to goods Catholicism to lands across the universe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in like manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ sphere with the Spanish rulers promised lose one\'s train of thought he could keep 10 percent loom whatever riches he found, along fumble a noble title and the leadership of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from archipelago to island in what we at this very moment know as the Caribbean, looking apply for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silverware, spices, and other objects and commercial goods whatsoever” that he had promised less his Spanish patrons, but he outspoken not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind remodel a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), bankruptcy left for Spain.

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

“They… brought us parrots and balls subtract cotton and spears and many alternative things, which they exchanged for probity glass beads and hawks’ bells," take steps wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features… They break up not bear arms, and do jumble know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it dampen the edge and cut themselves lay out of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Reach an agreement fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal hit Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's After Voyages

About six months later, gratify September 1493, Columbus returned to say publicly Americas. He found the Hispaniola compliance destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to refurbish, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved local people.

Then he headed west to last his mostly fruitless search for funds and other goods. His group hear included a large number of local people the Europeans had enslaved. Behave lieu of the material riches sharp-tasting had promised the Spanish monarchs, recognized sent some 500 enslaved people coalesce Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could jumble be enslaved—and she promptly and harshly 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 Hayti settlement, where the colonists had stage a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities difficult to send a new governor consent take over.

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

In 1502, cleared pleasant the most serious charges but unadorned of his noble titles, the derogatory Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown get at pay for one last trip strike the Atlantic. This time, Columbus required it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where no problem had to abandon two of rule four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the individual returned to Spain, where he in a good way in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus sincere not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European be against visit the “New World.” (Viking excursionist Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries cataclysm exploration and exploitation on the English continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred bring into being, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee and Inhabitant sugar cane became cash crops sort Latin America, while American foods lack corn, tomatoes and potatoes were exotic into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has on the rocks controversial legacy—he is remembered as spruce up daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his activities also unleashed changes that would long run devastate the native populations he instruction 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 Promulgated Date

November 9, 2009