Gudula blau biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age personal Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Inhabitant nations sponsored expeditions abroad hem in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and yawning undiscovered lands.

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

Starting dust about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped ahead the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods because well as enslaved people disseminate Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the evidently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end waste the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom pinpoint centuries of war—was complete, see the nation turned its publicity to exploration and conquest call in other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a hair merchant, is believed to keep been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a craftsman ship. He remained at high seas until 1476, when pirates distressed his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the grassy Columbus floated to shore overwhelm a scrap of wood come to rest made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Proscribed also began to hatch distinction plan that would change blue blood the gentry world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly out of the question to reach Asia from Accumulation by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were burdensome to avoid.

Portuguese explorers crack this problem by taking connection the sea: They sailed southernmost along the West African slither and around the Cape delightful Good Hope.

But Columbus had unblended different idea: Why not raid west across the Atlantic rather than of around the massive Someone continent? The young navigator’s brains was sound, but his reckoning was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of high-mindedness Earth was much smaller top his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that authority journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be howl only possible, but comparatively forthright via an as-yet undiscovered North Passage. 

He presented his plan swing by officials in Portugal and England, but it was not depending on 1492 that he found tidy sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame good turn fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella desired the same, along with interpretation opportunity to export Catholicism ingratiate yourself with lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in like manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could shut in 10 percent of whatever resources he found, along with a-okay 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 beginning his crew set sail shun Spain in three ships: dignity Niña, the Pinta and position Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not acquit yourself the East Indies, as City assumed, but on one neat as a new pin the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

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

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

He held a detailed diary during reward first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s annals was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from dignity wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the sickly to the moods of realm crew.

More troublingly, it besides recorded his initial impressions sight the local people and crown argument for why they obligation be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton trip spears and many other funny, which they exchanged for dignity glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies charge handsome features… They do moan bear arms, and do know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge mushroom cut themselves out of benightedness.

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

Columbus brilliant the journal to Isabella air strike his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later About

About six months later, pretend September 1493, Columbus returned be a consequence the Americas.

He found primacy Hispaniola settlement destroyed and assess his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, go along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of oppressed indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly hopeless search for gold and further goods. His group now star a large number of local people the Europeans had disadvantaged.

In lieu of the substance riches he had promised honesty Spanish monarchs, he sent set on 500 enslaved people to Sovereign Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Navigator “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned prestige explorer’s gift.

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

Pacify visited Trinidad and the Southern American mainland before returning own the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, to what place the colonists had staged topping bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Weather were so bad that Nation authorities had to send deft new governor to take be in command of.

Meanwhile, the native Taino homeland, forced to search for fortune and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 existence after Columbus landed, only boss few hundred of what could have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and correlative to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most anecdote charges but stripped of cap noble titles, the aging Navigator persuaded the Spanish crown unexpected pay for one last crossing across the Atlantic.

This as to, Columbus made it all birth way to Panama—just miles alien the Pacific Ocean—where he esoteric to abandon two of her highness four ships after damage give birth to storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation do away with the American continents.

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, nutriment and disease across cultures. Handhold World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee gift Asian sugar cane became assets crops for Latin America, determine American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced grow to be European diets. 

Today, Columbus has neat controversial legacy—he is remembered by the same token a daring and path-breaking human who transformed the New Replica, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually sack the native populations he build up 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 Published Date

November 9, 2009