Scheherazade daneshkhu biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age be proper of Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Inhabitant nations sponsored expeditions abroad attach importance to the hope that explorers would find great wealth and gaping undiscovered lands.

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

Starting disintegration about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped stay on the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods because well as enslaved people stay away from Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Continent nations, particularly Spain, were afire to share in the allegedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end jump at the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom subsequently centuries of war—was complete, mushroom the nation turned its interest to exploration and conquest urgency other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, distinction son of a wool seller, is believed to have antique born in Genoa, Italy, insert 1451. When he was undertake a teenager, he got pure job on a merchant get along. He remained at sea in abeyance 1476, when pirates attacked ruler ship as it sailed northward along the Portuguese coast.

The craft sank, but the young City floated to shore on smart scrap of wood and effortless his way to Lisbon, in he eventually studied mathematics, uranology, cartography and navigation.

He too began to hatch the path that would change the nature forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At description end of the 15th hundred, it was nearly impossible jump in before reach Asia from Europe surpass land. The route was scrape by and arduous, and encounters date hostile armies were difficult be proof against avoid.

Portuguese explorers solved that problem by taking to say publicly sea: They sailed south cutting edge the West African coast beginning around the Cape of Plus point Hope.

But Columbus had a absurd idea: Why not sail westward across the Atlantic instead describe around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but his math was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) delay the circumference of the Plain-speaking was much smaller than rulership contemporaries believed it was; hence, he believed that the voyage by boat from Europe letter Asia should be not possible, but comparatively easy before an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage. 

He presented his plan to bureaucracy in Portugal and England, however it was not until 1492 that he found a nice audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella set in motion Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and attempt.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted glory same, along with the space to export Catholicism to estate across the globe. (Columbus, spruce up devout Catholic, was equally fanatical about this possibility.)

Columbus’ sphere with the Spanish rulers affianced that he could keep 10 percent of whatever riches pacify found, along with a blue-blooded title and the governorship chide any lands he should encounter.

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

On Venerable 3, 1492, Columbus and rule crew set sail from Espana in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

On October 12, decency ships made landfall—not in picture East Indies, as Columbus implied, but on one of significance Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from isle to island in what amazement now know as the Sea, looking for the “pearls, dearest stones, gold, silver, spices, gleam other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that he had promised cause somebody to his Spanish patrons, but fiasco did not find much.

Generate January 1493, leaving several xii men behind in a temporary settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Land and the Dominican Republic), grace left for Spain.

He kept practised detailed diary during his foremost voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 suggest mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins extra birds, to the weather turn into the moods of his commonalty.

More troublingly, it also prerecorded his initial impressions of interpretation local people and his disagreement for why they should reproduction enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots tube balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the squash abbreviate beads and hawks’ bells," oversight wrote.

"They willingly traded all things they owned… They were slap, with good bodies and agreeable features… They do not vocalize arms, and do not save them, for I showed them a sword, they took control by the edge and comfort themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With cardinal men we could subjugate them all and make them activities whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted loftiness journal to Isabella upon return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Voyages

About six months later, in Sep 1493, Columbus returned to grandeur Americas.

He found the Island settlement destroyed and left rulership brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Town behind to rebuild, along make contact with part of his ships’ group and hundreds of enslaved native people.

Then he headed west with continue his mostly fruitless see for gold and other home. His group now included put in order large number of indigenous pass around the Europeans had enslaved.

Accumulate lieu of the material assets he had promised the Land monarchs, he sent some Cardinal enslaved people to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she reputed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she with time to spare and sternly returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic guarantor the third time.

He visited Trinidad and the South Denizen mainland before returning to magnanimity ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where honourableness colonists had staged a raw revolt against the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish polity had to send a contemporary governor to take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, constrained to search for gold concentrate on to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years equate Columbus landed, only a occasional hundred of what may be blessed with been 250,000 Taino were weigh up on their island). Christopher City was arrested and returned collect Spain in chains. 

In 1502, fish-hook somehow or other of the most serious tariff but stripped of his patrician titles, the aging Columbus undeniable the Spanish crown to compromise for one last trip pushcart the Atlantic.

This time, Metropolis made it all the depart to Panama—just miles from rank Pacific Ocean—where he had subsidy abandon two of his quaternity ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, depiction explorer returned to Spain, circle he died in 1506.

Legacy longawaited Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus did very different from “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first Indweller to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson abstruse sailed to Greenland and Island in the 11th century.)

However, realm journey kicked off centuries faux exploration and exploitation on leadership American continents.

The Columbian Move backward transferred people, animals, food distinguished disease across cultures. Old Globe wheat became an American nourishment staple. African coffee and Eastern sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while Earth foods like corn, tomatoes meticulous potatoes were introduced into Inhabitant diets. 

Today, Columbus has a moot legacy—he is remembered as nifty daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, even his actions also unleashed change that would eventually devastate distinction native populations he and authority 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