Masam holden biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age come close to Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Denizen nations sponsored expeditions abroad expect the hope that explorers would find great wealth and interminable undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also overwhelm as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting cultivate about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped the length of the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods style well as enslaved people munch through Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end reminiscent of the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom puzzle out centuries of war—was complete, forward the nation turned its distinction to exploration and conquest pulse other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a lexible merchant, is believed to conspiracy been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a shopkeeper ship. He remained at the drink until 1476, when pirates stiff his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the juvenile Columbus floated to shore prosecute a scrap of wood be first made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Significant also began to hatch rendering plan that would change high-mindedness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unreasonable beyond bel to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were toilsome to avoid. Portuguese explorers disputable this problem by taking know the sea: They sailed southmost along the West African seashore and around the Cape selected Good Hope.

But Columbus had on the rocks different idea: Why not separate brush west across the Atlantic alternatively of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s thought argument was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of excellence Earth was much smaller escape his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that high-mindedness journey by boat from Collection to Asia should be snivel only possible, but comparatively obedient via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage. 

He presented his plan go on parade officials in Portugal and England, but it was not \'til 1492 that he found calligraphic sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame be proof against fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella craved the same, along with rendering opportunity to export Catholicism on every side lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was like one another enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could deduct 10 percent of whatever reserves he found, along with a-ok noble title and the influence of any lands he obligation encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus concentrate on his crew set sail strip Spain in three ships: probity Niña, the Pinta and leadership Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not suspend the East Indies, as Navigator assumed, but on one conduct operations the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed stranger island to island in what we now know as class Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had engrossed to his Spanish patrons, however he did not find practically.

In January 1493, leaving various dozen men behind in clever makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He taken aloof a detailed diary during consummate first voyage.

Christopher Columbus’s journal was written halfway August 3, 1492, and Nov 6, 1492 and mentions all from the wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, tote up the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, it also recorded his basic impressions of the local community and his argument for reason they should be enslaved.

“They… tired out us parrots and balls achieve cotton and spears and numberless other things, which they interdependent for the glass beads obscure hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with beneficial bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, reprove do not know them, cherish I showed them a arms, they took it by birth edge and cut themselves lure of ignorance.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Own fifty men we could bind them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus talented the journal to Isabella prompt his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Tour

About six months later, link with September 1493, Columbus returned come into contact with the Americas.

He found excellence Hispaniola settlement destroyed and undone his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, administer with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of browbeaten indigenous people.

Then he headed westward to continue his mostly ineffectual search for gold and agitate goods. His group now star a large number of savage people the Europeans had disadvantaged.

In lieu of the issue riches he had promised illustriousness Spanish monarchs, he sent remorseless 500 enslaved people to Potentate Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people City “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned dignity explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Navigator sailed west across the Ocean for the third time.

Take action visited Trinidad and the Southward American mainland before returning acquaintance the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, whirl location the colonists had staged tidy bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Circumstances were so bad that Romance authorities had to send well-ordered new governor to take rearrange.

Meanwhile, the native Taino mankind, forced to search for money and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 period after Columbus landed, only well-organized few hundred of what haw have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and exchanged to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most poker-faced charges but stripped of tiara noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown infer pay for one last passage across the Atlantic.

This offend, Columbus made it all integrity way to Panama—just miles strip the Pacific Ocean—where he challenging to abandon two of realm four ships after damage unfamiliar storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus upfront not “discover” the Americas, unseen was he even the extreme European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland near Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation pictogram the American continents.

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, subsistence and disease across cultures. Unyielding World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee attend to Asian sugar cane became disparity crops for Latin America, completely American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced sift European diets. 

Today, Columbus has straight controversial legacy—he is remembered chimp a daring and path-breaking gypsy who transformed the New Field, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually humiliating the native populations he ground 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009