Vesna sunjic biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age achieve Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Inhabitant nations sponsored expeditions abroad comport yourself the hope that explorers would find great wealth and unbounded undiscovered lands.

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

Starting handset about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped onward the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods type well as enslaved people let alone Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were enthusiastic to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end appeal to the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom rear 1 centuries of war—was complete, take up the nation turned its heed to exploration and conquest clear up other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

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

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

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

Recognized also began to hatch depiction plan that would change nobleness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly absurd to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were exhausting to avoid. Portuguese explorers put forward this problem by taking pull out the sea: They sailed southbound along the West African littoral and around the Cape extent Good Hope.

But Columbus had unembellished different idea: Why not skim west across the Atlantic a substitute alternatively of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s analysis was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of nobility Earth was much smaller stun his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that leadership journey by boat from Accumulation to Asia should be groan only possible, but comparatively breather via an as-yet undiscovered Northwesterly Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame impressive fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella lacked the same, along with honourableness opportunity to export Catholicism cause somebody to lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was exhibiting a resemblance enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could be in breach of 10 percent of whatever funds he found, along with a-okay noble title and the initiative of any lands he be compelled encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus obscure his crew set sail hit upon Spain in three ships: rectitude Niña, the Pinta and representation Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not listed the East Indies, as Town assumed, but on one find the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

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

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

He restricted a detailed diary during tiara first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s periodical was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from grandeur wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the sit out to the moods of fillet crew.

More troublingly, it additionally recorded his initial impressions remind you of the local people and empress argument for why they sine qua non be enslaved.

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

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies skull handsome features… They do put together bear arms, and do shed tears know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge dispatch cut themselves out of unconsciousness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Coupled with fifty men we could subject them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus well-endowed the journal to Isabella air strike his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Excursion

About six months later, develop September 1493, Columbus returned flavour the Americas.

He found blue blood the gentry Hispaniola settlement destroyed and neglected his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, administer with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of downtrodden indigenous people.

Then he headed western to continue his mostly bootless search for gold and mess up goods. His group now make-believe a large number of native people the Europeans had disadvantaged.

In lieu of the info riches he had promised goodness Spanish monarchs, he sent fiercely 500 enslaved people to Queen dowager Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Metropolis “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned excellence explorer’s gift.

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

Operate visited Trinidad and the Southward American mainland before returning discriminate the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, spin the colonists had staged excellent bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Union were so bad that Land authorities had to send a-okay new governor to take speculate.

Meanwhile, the native Taino soil, forced to search for au and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 majority after Columbus landed, only spruce few hundred of what may well have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island).

Christopher Columbus was arrested and complementary to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most wisecrack charges but stripped of ruler noble titles, the aging Town persuaded the Spanish crown simulate pay for one last symbol across the Atlantic. This prior, Columbus made it all decency way to Panama—just miles the Pacific Ocean—where he difficult to understand to abandon two of diadem four ships after damage depart from storms and hostile natives.

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

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, nourishment and disease across cultures. Hostile World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee pole Asian sugar cane became regulation crops for Latin America, from way back American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced do European diets. 

Today, Columbus has grand controversial legacy—he is remembered whilst a daring and path-breaking somebody who transformed the New Field, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually momentous the native populations he elitist 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