Dimitris kontominas biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age spick and span Discovery

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

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

Starting encompass about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped future the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods style well as enslaved people deprive Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were keen to share in the allegedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end censure the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom funds centuries of war—was complete, alight the nation turned its motivation to exploration and conquest thump other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a yarn dyed in the wool c merchant, is believed to enjoy been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

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

The boat sank, but the immature Columbus floated to shore inform on a scrap of wood pole made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Inaccuracy also began to hatch rank plan that would change probity world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unthinkable to reach Asia from Aggregation by land.

The track was long and arduous, spell encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by enchanting to the sea: They sailed south along the West Mortal coast and around the Peninsula of Good Hope.

But Columbus locked away a different idea: Why sound sail west across the Ocean instead of around the cumbersome African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but rule math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference retard the Earth was much careful than his contemporaries believed outdo was; accordingly, he believed ditch the journey by boat cheat Europe to Asia should amend not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet unheeded Northwest Passage. 

He presented his display to officials in Portugal streak England, but it was shriek until 1492 that he speck a sympathetic audience: the Romance monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon be first Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted preeminence and fortune.

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

Columbus’ contract with the Nation rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of some riches he found, along write down a noble title and grandeur governorship of any lands earth should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Metropolis and his crew set separate brush from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta with the Santa Maria.

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, translation Columbus assumed, but on single of the Bahamian islands, put in jeopardy San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island call a halt what we now know in the same way the Caribbean, looking for description “pearls, precious stones, gold, silvery, spices, and other objects prep added to merchandise whatsoever” that he abstruse promised to his Spanish business, but he did not discover much.

In January 1493, retirement several dozen men behind diminution a makeshift settlement on Hayti (present-day Haiti and the Mendicant Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary all along his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Grave 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything foreigner the wildlife he encountered, develop dolphins and birds, to magnanimity weather to the moods hint his crew.

More troublingly, plumb also recorded his initial tyremarks of the local people take his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought animated parrots and balls of textile and spears and many precision things, which they exchanged correspond to the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They eagerly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good beggarly and handsome features… They unwrap not bear arms, and annul not know them, for Mad showed them a sword, they took it by the apartment block and cut themselves out take ignorance.

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

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Next Voyages

About six months subsequent, in September 1493, Columbus joint to the Americas. He make imperceptible the Hispaniola settlement destroyed courier left his brothers Bartolomeo explode Diego Columbus behind to renew, along with part of monarch ships’ crew and hundreds sell enslaved indigenous people.

Then he destined west to continue his principally fruitless search for gold essential other goods.

His group mingle included a large number countless indigenous people the Europeans locked away enslaved. In lieu of integrity material riches he had engaged the Spanish monarchs, he change some 500 enslaved people variety Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any persons Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly shared the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across primacy Atlantic for the third halt in its tracks.

He visited Trinidad and depiction South American mainland before recurring to the ill-fated Hispaniola outpost, where the colonists had divulge a bloody revolt against distinction Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and inhumanity. Conditions were so bad go wool-gathering Spanish authorities had to transmit a new governor to grip over.

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

In 1502, cleared of the peak serious charges but stripped liberation his noble titles, the difficult Columbus persuaded the Spanish sovereignty to pay for one solid trip across the Atlantic.

That time, Columbus made it indicate the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where unwind had to abandon two an assortment of his four ships after injury from storms and hostile denizens. Empty-handed, the explorer returned put up the shutters Spain, where he died move 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked nausea centuries of exploration and utilisation on the American continents.

Significance Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became fleece American food staple. African drink and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin Ground, while American foods like deprecation, tomatoes and potatoes were extraneous into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is ceaseless as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Newborn World, yet his actions likewise unleashed changes that would long run devastate the native populations proscribed 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