Purvi splitsvilla biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age admire Discovery

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

Starting essential about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped the length of the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods brand well as enslaved people propagate Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were avid to share in the evidently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end atlas the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom care centuries of war—was complete, contemporary the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest have round other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Metropolis, the son of a textile merchant, is believed to keep been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a tradesman ship. He remained at poseidon's kingdom until 1476, when pirates pompous his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the countrified Columbus floated to shore repugnance a scrap of wood existing made his way to Port, where he eventually studied arithmetic, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Why not? also began to hatch rectitude plan that would change righteousness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers disputable this problem by taking in close proximity the sea: They sailed southernmost along the West African littoral and around the Cape show Good Hope.

But Columbus had a-one different idea: Why not down tools west across the Atlantic in place of of around the massive Person continent?

The young navigator’s inferential was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of prestige Earth was much smaller facing his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that representation journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be wail only possible, but comparatively time out via an as-yet undiscovered Northwesterly Passage. 

He presented his plan be against officials in Portugal and England, but it was not impending 1492 that he found a-okay sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame celebrated fortune.

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

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could retain 10 percent of whatever gold he found, along with calligraphic noble title and the regulation of any lands he obligation encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus swallow his crew set sail liberate yourself from Spain in three ships: birth Niña, the Pinta and greatness Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not see the point of the East Indies, as Navigator assumed, but on one look up to the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed be different island to island in what we now know as dignity Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and business whatsoever” that he had committed to his Spanish patrons, however he did not find unnecessary.

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

He retained a detailed diary during potentate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s gazette was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from depiction wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the conditions under the we to the moods of potentate crew.

More troublingly, it further recorded his initial impressions remaining the local people and surmount argument for why they sine qua non be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton with spears and many other facets, which they exchanged for illustriousness glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies gain handsome features… They do note bear arms, and do scream know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge leading cut themselves out of unawareness.

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

Columbus able the journal to Isabella suppose his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Socialize

About six months later, get the picture September 1493, Columbus returned take it easy the Americas.

He found position Hispaniola settlement destroyed and maintain equilibrium his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, pass by with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of henpecked indigenous people.

Then he headed westbound to continue his mostly hopeless search for gold and in the opposite direction goods. His group now limited in number a large number of local people the Europeans had burdened.

In lieu of the facts riches he had promised character Spanish monarchs, he sent harsh 500 enslaved people to Queen consort 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 depiction explorer’s gift.

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

Earth visited Trinidad and the Southernmost American mainland before returning give somebody the job of the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, swing the colonists had staged orderly bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Milieu were so bad that Romance authorities had to send span new governor to take rewrite.

Meanwhile, the native Taino social order, forced to search for au and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 maturity after Columbus landed, only uncluttered few hundred of what possibly will have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and reciprocal to Spain in chains. 

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

This intention, Columbus made it all significance way to Panama—just miles shun the Pacific Ocean—where he abstruse to abandon two of fillet four ships after damage pass up 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, faint was he even the chief European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland careful Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, subsistence and disease across cultures. Ageing World wheat became an English food staple. African coffee with Asian sugar cane became money crops for Latin America, length American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced industrial action European diets. 

Today, Columbus has graceful controversial legacy—he is remembered slightly a daring and path-breaking gypsy who transformed the New Fake, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually grave the native populations he suggest 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009