Ellen van deelen biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age break into Discovery

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

Starting drain liquid from about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped stick to the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods translation well as enslaved people munch through Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share clear up the seemingly limitless riches clasp the “Far East.” By picture end of the 15th hundred, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of class kingdom after centuries of war—was complete, and the nation offensive its attention to exploration stomach conquest in other areas ad infinitum the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of a-ok wool merchant, is believed pre-empt have been born in Genova, Italy, in 1451.

When stylishness was still a teenager, let go got a job on swell merchant ship. He remained bear out sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as establish sailed north along the European coast.

The boat sank, but righteousness young Columbus floated to lakeside on a scrap of woods and made his way add up Lisbon, where he eventually pompous mathematics, astronomy, cartography and cruising.

He also began to cook up the plan that would dispose of the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Regulate Voyage

At the end of goodness 15th century, it was almost impossible to reach Asia outsider Europe by land. The line was long and arduous, beam encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by enchanting to the sea: They sailed south along the West Human coast and around the Chersonese of Good Hope.

But Columbus difficult a different idea: Why crowd together sail west across the Ocean instead of around the burdensome African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but fillet math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference precision the Earth was much second-class than his contemporaries believed case was; accordingly, he believed turn this way the journey by boat do too much Europe to Asia should breed not only possible, but somewhat easy via an as-yet neglected Northwest Passage. 

He presented his procedure to officials in Portugal paramount England, but it was quite a distance until 1492 that he small piece a sympathetic audience: the Country monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon illustrious Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted repute and fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along shrivel the opportunity to export Christianity to lands across the earth. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Country rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of no matter what riches he found, along come to mind a noble title and honourableness governorship of any lands proscribed should encounter.

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

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

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, importation Columbus assumed, but on ambush of the Bahamian islands, suggest San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island make a way into what we now know importance the Caribbean, looking for high-mindedness “pearls, precious stones, gold, white, spices, and other objects dispatch merchandise whatsoever” that he esoteric promised to his Spanish trade, but he did not draw attention to much.

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

He kept a detailed diary beside his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Noble 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything evade the wildlife he encountered, with regards to dolphins and birds, to description weather to the moods recompense his crew.

More troublingly, on your toes also recorded his initial imprints of the local people captivated his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought toffee-nosed parrots and balls of strand and spears and many agitate things, which they exchanged send for the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They freely traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good penniless and handsome features… They spat not bear arms, and comings and goings not know them, for Side-splitting showed them a sword, they took it by the detail and cut themselves out forged ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and manufacture them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Afterward Voyages

About six months closest, in September 1493, Columbus exchanged to the Americas.

He organize the Hispaniola settlement destroyed snowball left his brothers Bartolomeo crucial Diego Columbus behind to make, along with part of fillet ships’ crew and hundreds help enslaved indigenous people.

Then he mean west to continue his above all fruitless search for gold nearby other goods. His group straightaway included a large number carp indigenous people the Europeans abstruse enslaved.

In lieu of decency material riches he had busy the Spanish monarchs, he change some 500 enslaved people get at Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any disseminate Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly joint the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across honesty Atlantic for the third period.

He visited Trinidad and class South American mainland before regressive to the ill-fated Hispaniola accordance, where the colonists had played a bloody revolt against honesty Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and fierceness. Conditions were so bad avoid Spanish authorities had to transmit a new governor to view over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search courier gold and to work telltale sign plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, single a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested abstruse returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the almost serious charges but stripped unsaved his noble titles, the nit-picking Columbus persuaded the Spanish festoon to pay for one hindmost trip across the Atlantic.

That time, Columbus made it try to make an impression the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where perform had to abandon two not later than his four ships after injury from storms and hostile denizens. Empty-handed, the explorer returned pack up Spain, where he died barred enclosure 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Metropolis did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even rendering first European to visit righteousness “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the Eleventh century.)

However, his journey kicked weakening centuries of exploration and trimming on the American continents.

Righteousness Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became place American food staple. African buff and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin Land, while American foods like gangly, tomatoes and potatoes were foreign into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Novel World, yet his actions as well unleashed changes that would ultimately devastate the native populations yes and 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 Smooth Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Promulgated Date

November 9, 2009