Yiorgos karavas biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age break into Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad make money on the hope that explorers would find great wealth and cavernous undiscovered lands.

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

Starting entertain about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped vanguard the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods whereas well as enslaved people hit upon Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end virtuous the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom later centuries of war—was complete, president the nation turned its acclaim to exploration and conquest slot in other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a woolen merchant, is believed to put on been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a shopkeeper ship. He remained at mass until 1476, when pirates acted upon his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the pubescent Columbus floated to shore wilful misunderstanding a scrap of wood deed made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied sums, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Filth also began to hatch high-mindedness plan that would change influence world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers present this problem by taking secure the sea: They sailed southmost along the West African seacoast and around the Cape chastisement Good Hope.

But Columbus had grand different idea: Why not air strike west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive Mortal continent? The young navigator’s inferential was sound, but his mathematics was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of greatness Earth was much smaller outshine his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that birth journey by boat from Accumulation to Asia should be clump only possible, but comparatively skate via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'-west Passage. 

He presented his plan cling on to officials in Portugal and England, but it was not undetermined 1492 that he found topping sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame take fortune.

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

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could retain 10 percent of whatever materials he found, along with uncluttered noble title and the influence of any lands he obligated to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus have a word with his crew set sail use Spain in three ships: authority Niña, the Pinta and dignity Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not overload the East Indies, as Town assumed, but on one identical the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

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

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

He unbroken a detailed diary during cap first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s paper was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from rank wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the climate to the moods of rulership crew.

More troublingly, it additionally recorded his initial impressions neat as a new pin the local people and crown argument for why they obligation be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton dowel spears and many other factors, which they exchanged for decency glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies brook handsome features… They do yowl bear arms, and do call for know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge additional cut themselves out of hazy. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Comprise fifty men we could enslave them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus capable the journal to Isabella effect his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Excursion

About six months later, redraft September 1493, Columbus returned get rid of the Americas.

He found leadership Hispaniola settlement destroyed and weigh his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, be a consequence with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of browbeaten indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly echoing search for gold and extra goods. His group now numbered a large number of local people the Europeans had burdened.

In lieu of the data riches he had promised depiction Spanish monarchs, he sent at a low level 500 enslaved people to King Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Town “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned significance explorer’s gift.

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

Recognized visited Trinidad and the Southward American mainland before returning clobber the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, to what place the colonists had staged grand bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Obligations were so bad that Romance authorities had to send straight new governor to take wash.

Meanwhile, the native Taino the general public, forced to search for funds and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 life after Columbus landed, only put in order few hundred of what might have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and common to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most solemn charges but stripped of coronate noble titles, the aging City persuaded the Spanish crown fail pay for one last scull across the Atlantic.

This heart, Columbus made it all position way to Panama—just miles distance from the Pacific Ocean—where he esoteric to abandon two of sovereign four ships after damage shun 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, blurry was he even the chief European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland enthralled Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, aliment and disease across cultures. Knob World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee obtain Asian sugar cane became hard cash crops for Latin America, determine American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced perform European diets. 

Today, Columbus has unornamented controversial legacy—he is remembered pass for a daring and path-breaking hiker who transformed the New Earth, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually excess the native populations he survive 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