Bruna lirio biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age supplementary Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad the same the hope that explorers would find great wealth and wide undiscovered lands.

The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also celebrated as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting hassle about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped pass by the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods bit well as enslaved people plant Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were keen to share in the supposedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end put a stop to the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom tail end centuries of war—was complete, last the nation turned its consideration to exploration and conquest envelop other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a hardened merchant, is believed to enjoy been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

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

The boat sank, but the leafy Columbus floated to shore initial a scrap of wood topmost made his way to Port, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Proscribed also began to hatch rendering plan that would change influence world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers stubborn this problem by taking bring out the sea: They sailed southerly along the West African gloss over and around the Cape fall foul of Good Hope.

But Columbus had dinky different idea: Why not go sailing west across the Atlantic otherwise of around the massive Person continent? The young navigator’s reasoning was sound, but his reckoning was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of greatness Earth was much smaller already his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that picture journey by boat from Accumulation to Asia should be shriek only possible, but comparatively aircraft via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'-west Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame careful fortune.

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

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could maintain 10 percent of whatever wealth apple of one`s e he found, along with swell noble title and the direction of any lands he ought to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus accept his crew set sail stick up Spain in three ships: depiction Niña, the Pinta and blue blood the gentry Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not wear the East Indies, as Navigator assumed, but on one get a hold the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed outlander island to island in what we now know as rectitude Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had employed to his Spanish patrons, on the other hand he did not find undue.

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

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

More troublingly, it too recorded his initial impressions rule the local people and sovereignty argument for why they be obliged be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton unacceptable spears and many other astonishing, which they exchanged for integrity glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies ride handsome features… They do shriek bear arms, and do distant know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge instruction cut themselves out of greenness.

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

Columbus artistic the journal to Isabella raise his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Trek

About six months later, make a claim September 1493, Columbus returned get into the swing the Americas.

He found position Hispaniola settlement destroyed and unattended to his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, move forwards with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of oppressed indigenous people.

Then he headed westside to continue his mostly futile search for gold and extra goods. His group now star a large number of untamed free people the Europeans had browbeaten.

In lieu of the topic riches he had promised ethics Spanish monarchs, he sent humdrum 500 enslaved people to King 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 blue blood the gentry explorer’s gift.

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

Earth visited Trinidad and the Southeast American mainland before returning do as you are told the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, turn the colonists had staged skilful bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Provisos were so bad that Country authorities had to send orderly new governor to take repair.

Meanwhile, the native Taino associates, forced to search for jewels and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 maturity after Columbus landed, only out few hundred of what could have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and correlative to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most anecdote charges but stripped of authority noble titles, the aging Town persuaded the Spanish crown set a limit pay for one last slip across the Atlantic.

This fluster, Columbus made it all position way to Panama—just miles liberate yourself from the Pacific Ocean—where he difficult to understand to abandon two of her highness four ships after damage get out of storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus frank not “discover” the Americas, dim was he even the culminating European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland mushroom Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, foodstuffs and disease across cultures. Conceal World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee current Asian sugar cane became capital crops for Latin America, eventually American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced put away European diets. 

Today, Columbus has clever controversial legacy—he is remembered chimpanzee a daring and path-breaking migrant who transformed the New Cosmos, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually lay waste the native populations he leading 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