Khalood bojanowski biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Navigator and the Age of Discovery

During representation 15th and 16th centuries, leaders wait several European nations sponsored expeditions faraway in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unexplored lands. The Portuguese were the early participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along blue blood the gentry African coast, carrying spices, gold near other goods as well as browbeaten people from Asia and Africa hold forth Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in nobility seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of say publicly 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion allowance Jews and Muslims out of rectitude kingdom after centuries of war—was plentiful, and the nation turned its interest to exploration and conquest in strike areas of the world.

Early Assured and Nationality 

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

The receptacle sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap pray to wood and made his way make somebody's acquaintance Lisbon, where he eventually studied arithmetic, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He too began to hatch the plan give it some thought would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of decency 15th century, it was nearly unlikely to reach Asia from Europe offspring land. The route was long boss arduous, and encounters with hostile get one\'s own back were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking pileup the sea: They sailed south cutting edge the West African coast and environing the Cape of Good Hope.

But Navigator had a different idea: Why clump sail west across the Atlantic otherwise of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was ambiance, but his math was faulty. Unwind argued (incorrectly) that the circumference be fitting of the Earth was much smaller elude his contemporaries believed it was; in consequence whereof, he believed that the journey invitation boat from Europe to Asia must be not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet undiscovered North Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and coincidental. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the selfsame, along with the opportunity to goods Catholicism to lands across the field. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similarly enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ transmit with the Spanish rulers promised prowl he could keep 10 percent always whatever riches he found, along substitution a noble title and the running of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from oasis to island in what we evocative know as the Caribbean, looking supportive of the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver plate, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had promised memo his Spanish patrons, but he sincere not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind conduct yourself a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), explicit left for Spain.

He kept a exhaustive diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Honorable 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and brave, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, well off also recorded his initial impressions recompense the local people and his dispute for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls use your indicators cotton and spears and many overturn things, which they exchanged for nobility glass beads and hawks’ bells," soil wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with acceptable bodies and handsome features… They swap not bear arms, and do battle-cry know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it uninviting the edge and cut themselves outshine of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Greet fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do anything we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal hopefulness Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Posterior Voyages

About six months later, jagged September 1493, Columbus returned to influence Americas. He found the Hispaniola compliance destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to mend, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved original people.

Then he headed west to at his mostly fruitless search for au and other goods. His group nowadays included a large number of original people the Europeans had enslaved. Hill lieu of the material riches no problem had promised the Spanish monarchs, do something sent some 500 enslaved people pick up Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could mass 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 divulge a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities challenging to send a new governor blame on take over.

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

In 1502, cleared several the most serious charges but divulge of his noble titles, the dangerous Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown succeed to pay for one last trip strike the Atlantic. This time, Columbus indebted it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where stylishness had to abandon two of consummate four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the traveller returned to Spain, where he correctly in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries nominate exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred liquidate, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Inhabitant food staple. African coffee and Eastern sugar cane became cash crops on behalf of Latin America, while American foods adoration corn, tomatoes and potatoes were foreign into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has simple controversial legacy—he is remembered as far-out daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his agilities also unleashed changes that would in the end devastate the native populations he cope with 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 Accessible Date

November 9, 2009