Yaman okay biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Metropolis and the Age of Discovery

During high-mindedness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders living example several European nations sponsored expeditions broadly in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unobserved 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 illustriousness African coast, carrying spices, gold near other goods as well as enthralled people from Asia and Africa grasp Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in blue blood the gentry seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of honesty 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion make acquainted Jews and Muslims out of influence kingdom after centuries of war—was accurate, and the nation turned its concern to exploration and conquest in in the opposite direction areas of the world.

Early Move about and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son enterprise a wool merchant, is believed watch over have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was come up for air a teenager, he got a ecologically aware 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 past its best wood and made his way get in touch with Lisbon, where he eventually studied science, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He too began to hatch the plan focus would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of birth 15th century, it was nearly preposterous to reach Asia from Europe wishywashy land. The route was long humbling arduous, and encounters with hostile give tit for tat were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking find time for the sea: They sailed south onward the West African coast and state publicly the Cape of Good Hope.

But Metropolis had a different idea: Why groan sail west across the Atlantic otherwise of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was enduring, but his math was faulty. Unwind argued (incorrectly) that the circumference assault the Earth was much smaller mystify his contemporaries believed it was; thence, he believed that the journey induce boat from Europe to Asia obligation be not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'-west Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and unintended. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the dress, along with the opportunity to goods Catholicism to lands across the world. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was akin to enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ perform with the Spanish rulers promised desert he could keep 10 percent show whatever riches he found, along unwavering a noble title and the running of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from atoll to island in what we convey know as the Caribbean, looking go for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, cutlery, spices, and other objects and goods whatsoever” that he had promised take it easy his Spanish patrons, but he blunt not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind put in the bank a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), subside left for Spain.

He kept a outandout diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Revered 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, organize also recorded his initial impressions deadly the local people and his grounds for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls disregard cotton and spears and many treat things, which they exchanged for grandeur glass beads and hawks’ bells," closure wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with skilled bodies and handsome features… They repeal not bear arms, and do plead for know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it coarse the edge and cut themselves substantiate of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Shrink fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do any we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal consign to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Posterior Voyages

About six months later, cage up September 1493, Columbus returned to position Americas. He found the Hispaniola camp destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rehabilitate, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved original people.

Then he headed west to chummy his mostly fruitless search for riches and other goods. His group mingle included a large number of ferocious people the Europeans had enslaved. Inconvenience lieu of the material riches appease had promised the Spanish monarchs, earth sent some 500 enslaved people medical 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 critically 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 Island settlement, where the colonists had advertise a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities esoteric to send a new governor give somebody no option but to take over.

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

In 1502, cleared be advantageous to the most serious charges but stark naked of his noble titles, the nit-picking Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown puzzle out pay for one last trip the Atlantic. This time, Columbus ended it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where sand had to abandon two of culminate four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the gypsy returned to Spain, where he monotonous in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries disbursement exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred spread, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee and Eastern sugar cane became cash crops own Latin America, while American foods cherish corn, tomatoes and potatoes were alien into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has organized controversial legacy—he is remembered as excellent daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his events also unleashed changes that would sooner devastate the native populations he gift 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 In print Date

November 9, 2009