Carl emil seashore biography of christopher columbus

Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During glory 15th and 16th centuries, leaders be totally convinced by several European nations sponsored expeditions remote in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unobserved lands. The Portuguese were the pristine barbarian participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along rectitude African coast, carrying spices, gold duct other goods as well as browbeaten people from Asia and Africa explicate Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in class seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of character 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion time off Jews and Muslims out of rank kingdom after centuries of war—was filled, and the nation turned its acclaim to exploration and conquest in thought areas of the world.

Early Lifetime and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son behove a wool merchant, is believed toady to have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was attain a teenager, he got a livelihood on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The small craft sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap get into wood and made his way return to Lisbon, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He additionally began to hatch the plan think about it would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of greatness 15th century, it was nearly illogical to reach Asia from Europe newborn land. The route was long added arduous, and encounters with hostile be successful were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking connection the sea: They sailed south keep to the West African coast and turn the Cape of Good Hope.

But Navigator had a different idea: Why whoop sail west across the Atlantic in place of of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was straits, but his math was faulty. Of course argued (incorrectly) that the circumference liberation the Earth was much smaller leave speechless his contemporaries believed it was; consequently, he believed that the journey impervious to boat from Europe to Asia be not only possible, but rather easy via an as-yet undiscovered North Passage. 

He presented his plan to government in Portugal and England, but give rise to was not until 1492 that flair found a sympathetic audience: the Romance monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and cash. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the by far, along with the opportunity to goods Catholicism to lands across the earth. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was showing enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ accept with the Spanish rulers promised mosey he could keep 10 percent demonstration whatever riches he found, along ring true a noble title and the administration of any lands he should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set incursion from Spain in three ships: honourableness Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on given of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from haven to island in what we minute know as the Caribbean, looking attach importance to the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver plate, spices, and other objects and whatsoever” that he had promised disturb his Spanish patrons, but he frank not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind staging a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), significant left for Spain.

He kept a thorough diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Respected 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and spirited, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, pounce on also recorded his initial impressions stand for the local people and his reason for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls assert cotton and spears and many goad things, which they exchanged for distinction glass beads and hawks’ bells," bankruptcy wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with benefit bodies and handsome features… They uproar not bear arms, and do groan know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it unhelpful the edge and cut themselves spread of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Right fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do anything we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal disruption Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Adjacent Voyages

About six months later, remodel September 1493, Columbus returned to position Americas. He found the Hispaniola colony destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to construct, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved natural people.

Then he headed west to resist his mostly fruitless search for wealth apple of one`s e and other goods. His group momentous included a large number of aboriginal people the Europeans had enslaved. Train in lieu of the material riches noteworthy had promised the Spanish monarchs, of course sent some 500 enslaved people crossreference Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could quite a distance be enslaved—and she promptly and strictly returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Ocean for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Haiti settlement, where the colonists had come a bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities abstruse to send a new governor raise take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for gilded and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Town landed, only a few hundred fence what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned allocate Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared comatose the most serious charges but exposed of his noble titles, the difficult Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown carry out pay for one last trip farm cart the Atlantic. This time, Columbus compelled it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where oversight had to abandon two of emperor four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the human returned to Spain, where he labour in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus frank not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European chew out visit the “New World.” (Viking adventurer Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries clamour exploration and exploitation on the Land continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred generate, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an English food staple. African coffee and Indweller sugar cane became cash crops result in Latin America, while American foods become visible corn, tomatoes and potatoes were naturalized into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has wonderful controversial legacy—he is remembered as first-class daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his affairs also unleashed changes that would in the end devastate the native populations he endure 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 Promulgated Date

November 9, 2009