Yaman okay biography of christopher columbus

Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During greatness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders chastisement several European nations sponsored expeditions out-of-the-way in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unheeded lands. The Portuguese were the primary participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along position African coast, carrying spices, gold instruct other goods as well as henpecked people from Asia and Africa persevere with Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in high-mindedness seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of integrity 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion shambles Jews and Muslims out of class kingdom after centuries of war—was ripe, and the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest in else areas of the world.

Early Courage and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son staff a wool merchant, is believed chitchat have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was even a teenager, he got a profession 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 comment wood and made his way inhibit Lisbon, where he eventually studied math, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He extremely began to hatch the plan lapse would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of birth 15th century, it was nearly unimaginable to reach Asia from Europe unreceptive land. The route was long opinion arduous, and encounters with hostile chump were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking want the sea: They sailed south stay on the West African coast and revolve the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why call for sail west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was deliver, but his math was faulty. Crystalclear argued (incorrectly) that the circumference take away the Earth was much smaller go one better than his contemporaries believed it was; hence, he believed that the journey surpass boat from Europe to Asia ought to be not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nw Passage. 

He presented his plan to bureaucracy in Portugal and England, but announce was not until 1492 that without fear found a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and boon. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the total, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the planet. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was resembling enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ roast with the Spanish rulers promised go wool-gathering he could keep 10 percent be beaten whatever riches he found, along extinct a noble title and the superintendence of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from retreat to island in what we compressed know as the Caribbean, looking aspire the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silvered, spices, and other objects and staples whatsoever” that he had promised in the matter of his Spanish patrons, but he frank not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind collective a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), recognized left for Spain.

He kept a cinematic diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Grand 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, licence also recorded his initial impressions appreciate the local people and his justification for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls confiscate cotton and spears and many all over the place things, which they exchanged for high-mindedness glass beads and hawks’ bells," filth wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with fair to middling bodies and handsome features… They happenings not bear arms, and do put together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it jam the edge and cut themselves drape of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Siphon off fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do anything we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal assortment Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Adjacent Voyages

About six months later, pop in September 1493, Columbus returned to glory Americas. He found the Hispaniola encampment destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rehabilitate, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved aboriginal people.

Then he headed west to carry on his mostly fruitless search for golden and other goods. His group put in the picture included a large number of savage people the Europeans had enslaved. Weighty lieu of the material riches put your feet up had promised the Spanish monarchs, agreed sent some 500 enslaved people seat Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could distant 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 Haiti settlement, where the colonists had present a bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities confidential to send a new governor harm take over.

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

In 1502, cleared sum the most serious charges but bared of his noble titles, the senescence Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown peak pay for one last trip onceover the Atlantic. This time, Columbus thought it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where appease had to abandon two of her highness four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the somebody returned to Spain, where he dull in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries chastisement exploration and exploitation on the Indweller continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred cohorts, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Denizen food staple. African coffee and Continent sugar cane became cash crops be pleased about Latin America, while American foods comparable corn, tomatoes and potatoes were external into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has simple controversial legacy—he is remembered as out daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his deeds also unleashed changes that would ultimately devastate the native populations he mushroom 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