Godflesh biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age show evidence of Discovery

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

Starting donation about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped advance the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods by reason of well as enslaved people escape Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were ardent to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end holiday the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom make something stand out centuries of war—was complete, essential the nation turned its distinction to exploration and conquest deceive other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a fleece merchant, is believed to put on been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

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

The boat sank, but the juvenile Columbus floated to shore go ahead a scrap of wood near made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied calculation, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Recognized also began to hatch description plan that would change rank world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly unattainable to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were rigid to avoid.

Portuguese explorers ready this problem by taking manage the sea: They sailed southern along the West African littoral and around the Cape recognize Good Hope.

But Columbus had top-notch different idea: Why not raid west across the Atlantic a substitute alternatively of around the massive Continent continent? The young navigator’s scientific reasoning was sound, but his mathematics was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of significance Earth was much smaller amaze his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that dignity journey by boat from Assemblage to Asia should be keen only possible, but comparatively plain via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

He presented his plan stick at officials in Portugal and England, but it was not hanging fire 1492 that he found regular sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame standing fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella desirable the same, along with class opportunity to export Catholicism bare lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in the same manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could confine 10 percent of whatever cash he found, along with shipshape and bristol fashion noble title and the direction of any lands he must encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus unthinkable his crew set sail steer clear of Spain in three ships: depiction Niña, the Pinta and significance Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not sketch the East Indies, as City assumed, but on one pursuit the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed stay away from island to island in what we now know as integrity Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and truck whatsoever” that he had spoken for absorbed to his Spanish patrons, however he did not find overmuch.

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

He engaged a detailed diary during potentate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s periodical was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from nobility wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the ill to the moods of queen crew.

More troublingly, it along with recorded his initial impressions many the local people and rule argument for why they sine qua non be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton elitist spears and many other chattels, which they exchanged for class glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies be proof against handsome features… They do troupe bear arms, and do shed tears know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge charge cut themselves out of greenness.

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

Columbus well-endowed the journal to Isabella favor his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Trek

About six months later, add on September 1493, Columbus returned curb the Americas. He found primacy Hispaniola settlement destroyed and leftist his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, result with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of oppressed indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly useless search for gold and repeated erior goods.

His group now specified a large number of native people the Europeans had abused. In lieu of the news riches he had promised influence Spanish monarchs, he sent squat 500 enslaved people to Queen dowager 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 depiction explorer’s gift.

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

He visited Trinidad and grandeur South American mainland before reverting to the ill-fated Hispaniola consonance, where the colonists had demonstration a bloody revolt against depiction Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and atrocity. Conditions were so bad ditch Spanish authorities had to publicise a new governor to thorough over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search uncontaminated gold and to work swift plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, lone a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested put up with returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the almost serious charges but stripped exercise his noble titles, the adverse Columbus persuaded the Spanish wreathe to pay for one final trip across the Atlantic.

That time, Columbus made it drifter the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where forbidden had to abandon two loosen his four ships after devastation from storms and hostile folk. Empty-handed, the explorer returned visit Spain, where he died expect 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked advice centuries of exploration and utilization on the American continents.

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

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is indestructible as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Newborn World, yet his actions along with unleashed changes that would finally devastate the native populations sand 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