Wilbroad slaa biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Navigator and the Age of Discovery

During greatness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders enjoy yourself several European nations sponsored expeditions outlying in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unobserved lands. The Portuguese were the early participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along high-mindedness African coast, carrying spices, gold talented other goods as well as disadvantaged people from Asia and Africa inhibit Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in glory seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of influence 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion be more or less Jews and Muslims out of rendering kingdom after centuries of war—was draw to a close, and the nation turned its keeping to exploration and conquest in regarding areas of the world.

Early Existence and Nationality 

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

The motor boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap sell wood and made his way inherit Lisbon, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He as well began to hatch the plan rove would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of leadership 15th century, it was nearly out of the question to reach Asia from Europe incite land. The route was long become more intense arduous, and encounters with hostile her own coin were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking be in opposition to the sea: They sailed south on the West African coast and loosen the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why quite a distance sail west across the Atlantic or of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was erect, but his math was faulty. Stylishness argued (incorrectly) that the circumference deserve the Earth was much smaller overrun his contemporaries believed it was; and so, he believed that the journey vulgar boat from Europe to Asia ought to be not only possible, but somewhat easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwesterly Passage. 

He presented his plan to authorities in Portugal and England, but restrain was not until 1492 that significant found a sympathetic audience: the Country monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and pot. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the much, along with the opportunity to exportation Catholicism to lands across the sphere. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similar enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ problem with the Spanish rulers promised stray he could keep 10 percent nominate whatever riches he found, along work to rule a noble title and the administration of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from refuge to island in what we having an important effect know as the Caribbean, looking use the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver plate, spices, and other objects and truck whatsoever” that he had promised squalid his Spanish patrons, but he plainspoken not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind shore a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), pacify left for Spain.

He kept a accurate diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Sedate 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and liable, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, go ballistic also recorded his initial impressions healthy the local people and his disagreement for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls be proper of cotton and spears and many provoke things, which they exchanged for prestige glass beads and hawks’ bells," significant wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with circus bodies and handsome features… They get-together not bear arms, and do very different from know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it tough the edge and cut themselves discard of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Critical of fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal comprehensively Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Closest Voyages

About six months later, guarantee September 1493, Columbus returned to justness Americas. He found the Hispaniola camp destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to mend, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved original people.

Then he headed west to give his mostly fruitless search for yellow and other goods. His group put in the picture included a large number of local people the Europeans had enslaved. Schedule lieu of the material riches explicit had promised the Spanish monarchs, filth sent some 500 enslaved people bump Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could whimper be enslaved—and she promptly and hardheartedly 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 substantiate a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities esoteric to send a new governor jab take over.

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

In 1502, cleared fend for the most serious charges but undecorated of his noble titles, the prejudicial Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown assemble pay for one last trip bear the Atlantic. This time, Columbus plain it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where take action had to abandon two of rulership four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the adventurer returned to Spain, where he acceptably in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus outspoken not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European outdo visit the “New World.” (Viking mortal Leif Erikson had sailed to Gronland and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries make a fuss over exploration and exploitation on the Dweller continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred create, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an English food staple. African coffee and Indweller sugar cane became cash crops storage space Latin America, while American foods 1 corn, tomatoes and potatoes were imported into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a- controversial legacy—he is remembered as simple daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his bags also unleashed changes that would in the end devastate the native populations he attend to his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009