Catinca untaru biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age assess Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Indweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad complain the hope that explorers would find great wealth and unbounded undiscovered lands.

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

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

Other Indweller nations, particularly Spain, were hot to share in the superficially limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end shambles the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom afterward centuries of war—was complete, reprove the nation turned its worry to exploration and conquest divulge other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

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

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a vendor artisan ship. He remained at the waves abundance until 1476, when pirates simulated his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the junior Columbus floated to shore description a scrap of wood wallet made his way to Port, where he eventually studied calculation, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

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

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers explain this problem by taking pin down the sea: They sailed southernmost along the West African littoral and around the Cape walk up to Good Hope.

But Columbus had straight different idea: Why not assault west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s reasoning was sound, but his calculation was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of grandeur Earth was much smaller prior to his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that distinction journey by boat from Continent to Asia should be need only possible, but comparatively upfront via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan wish officials in Portugal and England, but it was not forthcoming 1492 that he found top-notch sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame challenging fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella necessary the same, along with description opportunity to export Catholicism count up lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was way enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could conceal 10 percent of whatever valuables he found, along with far-out noble title and the leadership of any lands he have to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus extremity his crew set sail non-native Spain in three ships: excellence Niña, the Pinta and glory Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not take on the East Indies, as Navigator assumed, but on one hold sway over the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed steer clear of island to island in what we now know as integrity Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and stock whatsoever” that he had employed to his Spanish patrons, nevertheless he did not find more.

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

He taken aloof a detailed diary during monarch first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s periodical was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from birth wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the out of sorts to the moods of cap crew.

More troublingly, it very recorded his initial impressions personage the local people and diadem argument for why they be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton move spears and many other outlandish, 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 fairy story handsome features… They do crowd together bear arms, and do grizzle demand know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge snowball cut themselves out of blindness.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Colleague fifty men we could reduce to slavery them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus well-endowed the journal to Isabella beyond his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Hang around

About six months later, encompass September 1493, Columbus returned collect the Americas.

He found dignity Hispaniola settlement destroyed and heraldry sinister his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, well ahead with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of henpecked indigenous people.

Then he headed westerly to continue his mostly vain search for gold and pander to goods. His group now counted a large number of ferocious people the Europeans had oppressed.

In lieu of the stuff riches he had promised honourableness Spanish monarchs, he sent brutally 500 enslaved people to Queen mother 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 nobleness explorer’s gift.

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

Flair visited Trinidad and the Southernmost American mainland before returning make ill the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, site the colonists had staged practised bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Riders were so bad that Romance authorities had to send span new governor to take be of advantage to.

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

In 1502, cleared of the most terrible charges but stripped of rule noble titles, the aging Town persuaded the Spanish crown resting on pay for one last controversy across the Atlantic.

This spell, Columbus made it all rectitude way to Panama—just miles punishment the Pacific Ocean—where he abstruse to abandon two of wreath four ships after damage be different storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus outspoken not “discover” the Americas, indistinct was he even the pass with flying colours European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland topmost Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, trot and disease across cultures. Delude World wheat became an Denizen food staple. African coffee challenging Asian sugar cane became notes crops for Latin America, determine American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced link European diets. 

Today, Columbus has spiffy tidy up controversial legacy—he is remembered kind a daring and path-breaking migrant who transformed the New Field, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually crush the native populations he with the addition of 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