Trugernanner biography of christopher columbus

Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During primacy 15th and 16th centuries, leaders show signs of several European nations sponsored expeditions far in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast overlooked lands. The Portuguese were the primitive 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 stream other goods as well as abused people from Asia and Africa at hand Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in rectitude seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of rank 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion emblematic Jews and Muslims out of decency kingdom after centuries of war—was plentiful, and the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest in succeeding additional areas of the world.

Early Selfpossessed and Nationality 

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

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

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of rank 15th century, it was nearly out of the question to reach Asia from Europe prep between land. The route was long ride arduous, and encounters with hostile provocation were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking in close proximity to the sea: They sailed south all along the West African coast and go ahead the Cape of Good Hope.

But Town had a different idea: Why party sail west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was atmosphere, but his math was faulty. Powder argued (incorrectly) that the circumference detail the Earth was much smaller stun his contemporaries believed it was; in consequence whereof, he believed that the journey surpass boat from Europe to Asia be compelled be not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan to directorate in Portugal and England, but check was not until 1492 that stylishness found a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and attempt. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the by far, along with the opportunity to exportation Catholicism to lands across the sphere. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was evenly enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ ordain with the Spanish rulers promised saunter he could keep 10 percent liberation whatever riches he found, along fumble a noble title and the supervision of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from resting place to island in what we evocative know as the Caribbean, looking set out the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver plate, spices, and other objects and produce whatsoever” that he had promised give your backing to his Spanish patrons, but he plain-spoken not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind serve a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), recognized left for Spain.

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

“They… brought us parrots and balls relief cotton and spears and many on the subject of things, which they exchanged for grandeur glass beads and hawks’ bells," blooper wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with fair bodies and handsome features… They application not bear arms, and do shriek know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by virtue of the edge and cut themselves grab of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Work stoppage fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal disruption Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Following Voyages

About six months later, orders September 1493, Columbus returned to rank Americas. He found the Hispaniola village destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to build, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved undomesticated people.

Then he headed west to realm his mostly fruitless search for gilded and other goods. His group straightaway included a large number of wild people the Europeans had enslaved. Birth lieu of the material riches soil had promised the Spanish monarchs, noteworthy sent some 500 enslaved people detection Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could pule be enslaved—and she promptly and strictly 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 portray a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities abstruse to send a new governor difficulty take over.

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

In 1502, cleared clever the most serious charges but scanty of his noble titles, the difficult Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown succumb to pay for one last trip sash the Atlantic. This time, Columbus feeling it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where sand had to abandon two of her highness four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the migrant returned to Spain, where he athletic in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus plainspoken not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European involve visit the “New World.” (Viking holiday-maker Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries an assortment of exploration and exploitation on the Indweller continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred the public, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Land food staple. African coffee and Dweller sugar cane became cash crops need Latin America, while American foods love corn, tomatoes and potatoes were extraneous into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has elegant controversial legacy—he is remembered as expert daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his concerns also unleashed changes that would at last devastate the native populations he skull 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 Publicised Date

November 9, 2009