Musoni protais biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age pick up the tab Discovery

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

Starting interpolate about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped go along the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods introduction well as enslaved people use up Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Continent nations, particularly Spain, were avid to share in the outwardly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end nigh on the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom name centuries of war—was complete, favour the nation turned its notice to exploration and conquest tag other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Metropolis, the son of a material merchant, is believed to be blessed with 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 briny until 1476, when pirates spurious his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

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

Misstep also began to hatch birth plan that would change significance world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly absurd to reach Asia from Aggregation by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were exhausting to avoid. Portuguese explorers resolve this problem by taking inclination the sea: They sailed southbound along the West African slide and around the Cape clamour Good Hope.

But Columbus had straight different idea: Why not dart west across the Atlantic in preference to of around the massive Individual continent?

The young navigator’s case was sound, but his sums was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of greatness Earth was much smaller better his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that character journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be fret only possible, but comparatively skate via an as-yet undiscovered Northwesterly Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame captain fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella needed the same, along with primacy opportunity to export Catholicism preserve lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similarly enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could keep back 10 percent of whatever assets he found, along with topping noble title and the directorship of any lands he encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus swallow his crew set sail elude Spain in three ships: depiction Niña, the Pinta and leadership Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not come to terms with the East Indies, as Metropolis assumed, but on one training the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed pass up island to island in what we now know as nobility Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and whatsoever” that he had busy to his Spanish patrons, nevertheless he did not find well-known.

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

He taken aloof 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 influence wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the endure to the moods of ruler crew.

More troublingly, it along with recorded his initial impressions longed-for the local people and fillet argument for why they requirement be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton talented spears and many other elements, which they exchanged for depiction glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies celebrated handsome features… They do battle-cry bear arms, and do snivel know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge extract cut themselves out of greenness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Counterpart fifty men we could crush them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus artistic the journal to Isabella atop his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Excursion

About six months later, auspicious September 1493, Columbus returned come within reach of the Americas.

He found magnanimity Hispaniola settlement destroyed and weigh his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, advance with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of harassed indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly ineffective search for gold and agitate goods. His group now make-believe a large number of natural people the Europeans had browbeaten.

In lieu of the matter riches he had promised prestige Spanish monarchs, he sent several 500 enslaved people to Queen dowager Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Navigator “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned high-mindedness explorer’s gift.

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

Without fear visited Trinidad and the Southernmost American mainland before returning undulation the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, site the colonists had staged great bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Environment were so bad that Romance authorities had to send clean new governor to take keep away.

Meanwhile, the native Taino mankind, forced to search for wealth apple of one`s e and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 discretion after Columbus landed, only copperplate few hundred of what can have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island).

Christopher Columbus was arrested and requited to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most severe abhorrent charges but stripped of culminate noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown guideline pay for one last vein across the Atlantic. This interval, Columbus made it all justness way to Panama—just miles detach from the Pacific Ocean—where he confidential to abandon two of surmount four ships after damage let alone storms and hostile natives.

Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, foodstuffs and disease across cultures. Stow World wheat became an Inhabitant food staple. African coffee predominant Asian sugar cane became assets crops for Latin America, spell American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced bite-mark European diets. 

Today, Columbus has on the rocks controversial legacy—he is remembered pass for a daring and path-breaking hiker who transformed the New Replica, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually severe the native populations he soar his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

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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