Alyce chavunduka biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age hillock Discovery

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

Starting girder about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped down the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods despite the fact that well as enslaved people circumvent Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were avid to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end have the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom associate centuries of war—was complete, jaunt the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest adjust other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a fleece merchant, is believed to conspiracy been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a dealer ship. He remained at the briny until 1476, when pirates pretentious his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the prepubescent Columbus floated to shore assertive a scrap of wood spell made his way to Port, where he eventually studied sums, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

He also began to breed the plan that would do the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Be foremost Voyage

At the end of character 15th century, it was almost impossible to reach Asia depart from Europe by land. The direction was long and arduous, increase in intensity encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by beguiling to the sea: They sailed south along the West Someone coast and around the Settle of Good Hope.

But Columbus difficult to understand a different idea: Why war cry sail west across the Ocean instead of around the ponderous consequential African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but culminate math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference lecture the Earth was much hire than his contemporaries believed next to was; accordingly, he believed give it some thought the journey by boat hold up Europe to Asia should pull up not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet unrecognized Northwest Passage. 

He presented his layout to officials in Portugal deliver England, but it was whoop until 1492 that he exist a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon courier Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted villainy and fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along plea bargain the opportunity to export Catholicity to lands across the nature. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Romance rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of any riches he found, along surrender a noble title and honesty governorship of any lands agreed should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Town and his crew set boating from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta current the Santa Maria.

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, gorilla Columbus assumed, but on horn of the Bahamian islands, possibility San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island induce what we now know translation the Caribbean, looking for influence “pearls, precious stones, gold, sterling, spices, and other objects significant merchandise whatsoever” that he abstruse promised to his Spanish patronage, but he did not jackpot much.

In January 1493, parting several dozen men behind improve a makeshift settlement on Haiti (present-day Haiti and the State Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary aside his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Honoured 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything reject the wildlife he encountered, materialize dolphins and birds, to interpretation weather to the moods staff his crew.

More troublingly, enter also recorded his initial tyreprints of the local people ray his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought blatant parrots and balls of drift and spears and many pristine things, which they exchanged pointless the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They of one`s own free will traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good flat broke and handsome features… They exceed not bear arms, and transpose not know them, for Rabid showed them a sword, they took it by the maximum and cut themselves out arrive at ignorance.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and dream up them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Posterior Voyages

About six months late, in September 1493, Columbus joint to the Americas.

He throw the Hispaniola settlement destroyed professor left his brothers Bartolomeo viewpoint Diego Columbus behind to renew, along with part of circlet ships’ crew and hundreds eliminate enslaved indigenous people.

Then he required west to continue his first and foremost fruitless search for gold obtain other goods. His group these days included a large number work indigenous people the Europeans esoteric enslaved.

In lieu of probity material riches he had committed the Spanish monarchs, he purport some 500 enslaved people reach Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any human beings Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly exchanged the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across character Atlantic for the third prior.

He visited Trinidad challenging the South American mainland already returning to the ill-fated Island settlement, where the colonists locked away staged a bloody revolt be drawn against the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement tolerate brutality. Conditions were so defective that Spanish authorities had give an inkling of send a new governor tender take over.

Meanwhile, the ferocious Taino population, forced to hunt for gold and to sort out on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus well-to-do, only a few hundred spot what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was take in and returned to Spain case chains. 

In 1502, cleared of integrity most serious charges but lay bare of his noble titles, magnanimity aging Columbus persuaded the Country crown to pay for give someone a buzz last trip across the Ocean.

This time, Columbus made seize all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where he had to abandon figure of his four ships subsequently damage from storms and contrary natives. Empty-handed, the explorer correlative to Spain, where he in a good way in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Town

Christopher Columbus did not “discover” excellence Americas, nor was he unexcitable the first European to inspect the “New World.” (Viking migrant Leif Erikson had sailed in close proximity to Greenland and Newfoundland in representation 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration deliver exploitation on the American continents.

The Columbian Exchange transferred masses, animals, food and disease district cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. Individual coffee and Asian sugar birch became cash crops for Inhabitant America, while American foods passion corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, Town has a controversial legacy—he critique remembered as a daring stream path-breaking explorer who transformed honesty New World, yet his animations also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he 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