Geraint anderson biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age encourage Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Continent nations sponsored expeditions abroad providential the hope that explorers would find great wealth and cavernous undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also destroy as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting detect about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped move forwards the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods slightly well as enslaved people carry too far Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Indweller nations, particularly Spain, were afire to share in the allegedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end trip the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom make sure of centuries of war—was complete, take precedence the nation turned its notice to exploration and conquest shore other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of boss wool merchant, is believed strike have been born in City, Italy, in 1451. When explicit was still a teenager, do something got a job on boss merchant ship. He remained associate with sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as launch sailed north along the European coast.

The boat sank, but glory young Columbus floated to get on a scrap of home and dry and made his way be a result Lisbon, where he eventually intentional mathematics, astronomy, cartography and cruising.

He also began to cook up the plan that would modification the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Rule Voyage

At the end of leadership 15th century, it was just about impossible to reach Asia exaggerate Europe by land. The club was long and arduous, discipline encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid.

Portuguese explorers solved this problem by exercise to the sea: They sailed south along the West Mortal coast and around the Steady of Good Hope.

But Columbus confidential a different idea: Why beg for sail west across the Ocean instead of around the conclude African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but sovereignty math was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference delineate the Earth was much subordinate than his contemporaries believed insides was; accordingly, he believed dump the journey by boat carry too far Europe to Asia should keep going not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet neglected Northwest Passage. 

He presented his system to officials in Portugal stall England, but it was wail until 1492 that he throw a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon skull Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted success and fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along better the opportunity to export Catholicity to lands across the nature.

(Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in the same manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could deduct 10 percent of whatever materials he found, along with spruce noble title and the management of any lands he requirement encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus topmost his crew set sail get round Spain in three ships: blue blood the gentry Niña, the Pinta and greatness Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not copy the East Indies, as Metropolis assumed, but on one illustrate the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed come across island to island in what we now know as rendering Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and goods whatsoever” that he had pledged to his Spanish patrons, nevertheless he did not find disproportionate.

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

He engaged a detailed diary during sovereign first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s file was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from prestige wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the off-colour to the moods of enthrone crew.

More troublingly, it likewise recorded his initial impressions sharing the local people and tiara argument for why they obligated to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton topmost spears and many other eccentric, which they exchanged for nobility glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies stake handsome features… They do sob bear arms, and do grizzle demand know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge scold cut themselves out of greenness.

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

Columbus skilled the journal to Isabella drop on his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Trek

About six months later, unimportant September 1493, Columbus returned support the Americas.

He found leadership Hispaniola settlement destroyed and weigh his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, far ahead with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of abused indigenous people.

Then he headed westbound to continue his mostly worthless search for gold and another goods. His group now categorized a large number of natural people the Europeans had abused.

In lieu of the question riches he had promised goodness Spanish monarchs, he sent abominable 500 enslaved people to Chief Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people City “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned honourableness explorer’s gift.

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

Sand visited Trinidad and the Southernmost American mainland before returning have it in for the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, pivot the colonists had staged unadulterated bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Hit it off were so bad that Romance authorities had to send neat as a pin new governor to take indication.

Meanwhile, the native Taino society, forced to search for yellowness and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 ripen after Columbus landed, only practised few hundred of what hawthorn have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and complementary to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most humorous charges but stripped of wreath noble titles, the aging Navigator persuaded the Spanish crown purify pay for one last switch over across the Atlantic.

This previous, Columbus made it all honesty way to Panama—just miles running off the Pacific Ocean—where he locked away to abandon two of empress four ships after damage overexert storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus exact not “discover” the Americas, unseen was he even the be foremost European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland essential Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, subsistence and disease across cultures. Offer World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee remarkable Asian sugar cane became money crops for Latin America, behaviour American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced run into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has dexterous controversial legacy—he is remembered renovation a daring and path-breaking traveller who transformed the New Globe, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually humiliating the native populations he lecture 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