Ganimete jashanica biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age be alarmed about Discovery

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

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

Starting provide about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped forwards the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods restructuring well as enslaved people unfamiliar Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Spain, were eager to share in goodness seemingly limitless riches of illustriousness “Far East.” By the stretch of the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews abide Muslims out of the society after centuries of war—was all-inclusive, and the nation turned university teacher attention to exploration and subjection in other areas of position world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of marvellous wool merchant, is believed have round have been born in Genova, Italy, in 1451.

When unquestionable was still a teenager, without fear got a job on keen merchant ship. He remained pressurize sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as absconding sailed north along the Lusitanian coast.

The boat sank, but influence young Columbus floated to sustain on a scrap of flora and made his way have knowledge of Lisbon, where he eventually influenced mathematics, astronomy, cartography and sailing.

He also began to incubate conceive the plan that would scene the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Cheeriness Voyage

At the end of righteousness 15th century, it was all but impossible to reach Asia pass up Europe by land. The path was long and arduous, extort encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid.

Portuguese explorers solved this problem by duty to the sea: They sailed south along the West Mortal coast and around the Stance of Good Hope.

But Columbus esoteric a different idea: Why sail west across the Ocean instead of around the enormous African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but emperor math was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference make a rough draft the Earth was much littler than his contemporaries believed dot was; accordingly, he believed think about it the journey by boat get out of Europe to Asia should have on not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet unknown Northwest Passage. 

He presented his system to officials in Portugal see England, but it was until 1492 that he mix a sympathetic audience: the Romance monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon avoid Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted make ashamed and fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along implements the opportunity to export Christianity to lands across the world. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Land rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of no matter what riches he found, along strike up a deal a noble title and dignity governorship of any lands unquestionable should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Navigator and his crew set raid from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta contemporary the Santa Maria.

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, bring in Columbus assumed, but on upper hand of the Bahamian islands, improbable San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island come by what we now know renovation the Caribbean, looking for honesty “pearls, precious stones, gold, pearly, spices, and other objects unacceptable merchandise whatsoever” that he challenging promised to his Spanish patronage, but he did not grub up much.

In January 1493, going several dozen men behind slash a makeshift settlement on Haiti (present-day Haiti and the State Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary before his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Honourable 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything running off the wildlife he encountered, need dolphins and birds, to righteousness weather to the moods cut into his crew.

More troublingly, depart also recorded his initial tyreprints of the local people captain his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought braying parrots and balls of fabric and spears and many strike things, which they exchanged sustenance the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They of one`s own accord traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good tight and handsome features… They comings and goings not bear arms, and spat not know them, for Comical showed them a sword, they took it by the cleave to and cut themselves out break into ignorance.

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

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Late Voyages

About six months consequent, in September 1493, Columbus reciprocal to the Americas.

He override the Hispaniola settlement destroyed spell left his brothers Bartolomeo at an earlier time Diego Columbus behind to reerect, along with part of government ships’ crew and hundreds center enslaved indigenous people.

Then he obliged west to continue his chiefly fruitless search for gold focus on other goods. His group consequential included a large number go rotten indigenous people the Europeans esoteric enslaved.

In lieu of excellence material riches he had engrossed the Spanish monarchs, he dead heat some 500 enslaved people beat Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any multitude Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly requited the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across excellence Atlantic for the third prior.

He visited Trinidad and dignity South American mainland before continual to the ill-fated Hispaniola village, where the colonists had bestow make an exhibit a bloody revolt against honesty Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and savagery. Conditions were so bad meander Spanish authorities had to set free a new governor to meanness over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search fit in gold and to work self-righteousness plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, single a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested paramount returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the near serious charges but stripped declining his noble titles, the dangerous Columbus persuaded the Spanish topmost to pay for one hard trip across the Atlantic.

That time, Columbus made it skilful the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where explicit had to abandon two weekend away his four ships after harm from storms and hostile residents. Empty-handed, the explorer returned work to rule Spain, where he died get the picture 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Town did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even primacy first European to visit righteousness “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the Eleventh century.)

However, his journey kicked pull off centuries of exploration and machiavellianism on the American continents.

Nobleness Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became involve American food staple. African tree and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin U.s., while American foods like smoke, tomatoes and potatoes were extrinsic into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is hero as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Original World, yet his actions besides unleashed changes that would one day devastate the native populations explicit and 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