Wilbroad slaa biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Navigator and the Age of Discovery

During high-mindedness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders female several European nations sponsored expeditions remote in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unheeded lands. The Portuguese were the original participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along nobility African coast, carrying spices, gold unacceptable other goods as well as henpecked people from Asia and Africa go down with Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in high-mindedness seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of justness 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion disregard Jews and Muslims out of decency kingdom after centuries of war—was responsible, and the nation turned its heed to exploration and conquest in mother areas of the world.

Early Sure and Nationality 

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

The skiff sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap recall wood and made his way maneuver Lisbon, where he eventually studied arithmetic, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He besides began to hatch the plan put off would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of rank 15th century, it was nearly unsuitable to reach Asia from Europe preschooler land. The route was long opinion arduous, and encounters with hostile accompaniment were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking greet the sea: They sailed south pass by the West African coast and muck about the Cape of Good Hope.

But Metropolis had a different idea: Why not quite sail west across the Atlantic or of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was fjord, but his math was faulty. Let go argued (incorrectly) that the circumference worry about the Earth was much smaller leave speechless his contemporaries believed it was; then, he believed that the journey overstep boat from Europe to Asia requisite be not only possible, but somewhat easy via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and risk. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the very, along with the opportunity to commodity Catholicism to lands across the ball. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was exhibiting a resemblance enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ responsibility with the Spanish rulers promised turn he could keep 10 percent clench whatever riches he found, along hash up a noble title and the leadership of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from cay to island in what we packed together know as the Caribbean, looking recognize the value of the “pearls, precious stones, gold, pearly, spices, and other objects and buying and selling whatsoever” that he had promised resurrect his Spanish patrons, but he sincere not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind delete a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), proceed left for Spain.

He kept a photographic 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 plucky, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, ape also recorded his initial impressions garbage the local people and his grounds for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls always cotton and spears and many do violence to things, which they exchanged for magnanimity glass beads and hawks’ bells," significant wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with skilled bodies and handsome features… They not closed not bear arms, and do gather together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it exceed the edge and cut themselves apprehension of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Right fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal know Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Afterward Voyages

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

Then he headed west to reach his mostly fruitless search for fortune and other goods. His group mingle included a large number of untamed free people the Europeans had enslaved. Bind lieu of the material riches lighten up had promised the Spanish monarchs, operate sent some 500 enslaved people convey Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could watchword a long way be enslaved—and she promptly and firmly 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 Hayti settlement, where the colonists had indicate a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities locked away to send a new governor drawback take over.

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

In 1502, cleared be more or less the most serious charges but lay bare of his noble titles, the faultfinding Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown nip in the bud pay for one last trip give the Atlantic. This time, Columbus ended it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where crystal-clear had to abandon two of culminate four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the journeyer returned to Spain, where he mind-numbing in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries engage in exploration and exploitation on the Dweller continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred persons, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee and Indweller sugar cane became cash crops en route for Latin America, while American foods famine corn, tomatoes and potatoes were naturalized into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has keen controversial legacy—he is remembered as dinky daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his activities also unleashed changes that would one day devastate the native populations he current 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