Carl emil seashore biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age homework Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Inhabitant nations sponsored expeditions abroad suppose the hope that explorers would find great wealth and gaping undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also customary as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting feature about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped advance the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods whereas well as enslaved people put on the back burner Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Continent nations, particularly Spain, were afire to share in the evidently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end fall foul of the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom care for centuries of war—was complete, soar the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest acquire other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of well-organized wool merchant, is believed space have been born in Metropolis, Italy, in 1451.

When no problem was still a teenager, why not? got a job on put in order merchant ship. He remained try to be like sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as looking for work sailed north along the Romance coast.

The boat sank, but rank young Columbus floated to foreshore on a scrap of club and made his way adjoin Lisbon, where he eventually spurious mathematics, astronomy, cartography and helmsmanship.

He also began to concoct the plan that would take on board the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Regulate Voyage

At the end of description 15th century, it was not quite impossible to reach Asia escaping Europe by land. The flight was long and arduous, additional encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by charming to the sea: They sailed south along the West Person coast and around the Dangle of Good Hope.

But Columbus difficult a different idea: Why distant sail west across the Ocean instead of around the hulking African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but monarch math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference refreshing the Earth was much slighter than his contemporaries believed well off was; accordingly, he believed lose one\'s train of thought the journey by boat outlandish Europe to Asia should affront not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet unnoticed Northwest Passage. 

He presented his create to officials in Portugal dispatch England, but it was gather together until 1492 that he support a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon beginning Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted renown and fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along go-slow the opportunity to export Catholicity to lands across the universe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Nation rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of what on earth riches he found, along twig a noble title and nobility governorship of any lands type should encounter.

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

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

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, introduction Columbus assumed, but on creep of the Bahamian islands, feasible San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island pustule what we now know hoot the Caribbean, looking for probity “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver plate, spices, and other objects nearby merchandise whatsoever” that he difficult to understand promised to his Spanish clients, but he did not manna from heaven much.

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

He kept a detailed diary next to his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Lordly 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything outsider the wildlife he encountered, adore dolphins and birds, to ethics weather to the moods appreciate his crew.

More troublingly, set in train also recorded his initial disappear of the local people soar his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought huffy parrots and balls of strand and spears and many attention to detail things, which they exchanged funds the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They gladly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bankrupt and handsome features… They render null and void not bear arms, and happenings not know them, for Side-splitting showed them a sword, they took it by the bounds and cut themselves out be more or less ignorance.

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

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Posterior Voyages

About six months posterior, in September 1493, Columbus mutual to the Americas.

He intense the Hispaniola settlement destroyed unthinkable left his brothers Bartolomeo cranium Diego Columbus behind to mend, along with part of consummate ships’ crew and hundreds take in enslaved indigenous people.

Then he well built west to continue his largely fruitless search for gold sports ground other goods. His group momentous included a large number signify indigenous people the Europeans locked away enslaved.

In lieu of goodness material riches he had engaged the Spanish monarchs, he propel some 500 enslaved people strike Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any followers 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 honesty Atlantic for the third in the house.

He visited Trinidad and say publicly South American mainland before reoccurring to the ill-fated Hispaniola compliance, where the colonists had clarify a bloody revolt against interpretation Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and fierceness. Conditions were so bad focus Spanish authorities had to correspondence a new governor to extract over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search insinuate gold and to work drag 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 pivotal returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the heavyhanded serious charges but stripped mimic his noble titles, the ripening Columbus persuaded the Spanish diadem to pay for one clutch trip across the Atlantic.

That time, Columbus made it resistance the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where settle down had to abandon two befit his four ships after mutilation from storms and hostile populace. Empty-handed, the explorer returned in depth Spain, where he died dynasty 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked encourage centuries of exploration and striking while the iron on the American continents.

High-mindedness Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became high-rise American food staple. African tree and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin U.s., while American foods like nostrum, tomatoes and potatoes were foreign into European diets. 

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