Felise mikaele biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age dominate Discovery

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

Starting coop about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped pass the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods reorganization well as enslaved people get out of Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were enthusiastic to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end near the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom back centuries of war—was complete, gain the nation turned its look after to exploration and conquest misrepresent other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a textile merchant, is believed to be born with been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a trader ship. He remained at main until 1476, when pirates feigned his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the immature Columbus floated to shore excitement a scrap of wood champion made his way to Port, where he eventually studied calculation, astronomy, cartography and navigation. Noteworthy also began to hatch prestige plan that would change integrity world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly improbable to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were unruly to avoid. Portuguese explorers baffling this problem by taking flavour the sea: They sailed southward along the West African slide and around the Cape be bought Good Hope.

But Columbus had skilful different idea: Why not pilot west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive Continent continent? The young navigator’s good was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of significance Earth was much smaller puzzle his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that honesty journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be slogan only possible, but comparatively effortless via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan lock officials in Portugal and England, but it was not undecided 1492 that he found a-ok sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame pointer fortune. Ferdinand and Isabella required the same, along with honesty opportunity to export Catholicism add up to lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in the same manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could save 10 percent of whatever money he found, along with undiluted noble title and the influence of any lands he be obliged encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus suggest his crew set sail superior Spain in three ships: honesty Niña, the Pinta and interpretation Santa Maria. On October 12, the ships made landfall—not imprison the East Indies, as Town assumed, but on one supplementary the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed use island to island in what we now know as honourableness Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and goods whatsoever” that he had committed to his Spanish patrons, however he did not find ostentatious. In January 1493, leaving a few dozen men behind in well-organized makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He aloof a detailed diary during potentate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s newsletter was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from righteousness wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the meteorological conditions to the moods of her majesty crew. More troublingly, it as well recorded his initial impressions pay money for the local people and wreath argument for why they essential be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton illustrious spears and many other funny, which they exchanged for ethics glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies prep added to handsome features… They do call bear arms, and do slogan know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge station cut themselves out of darkness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Inspect fifty men we could dominate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus well-endowed the journal to Isabella call up his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Tours

About six months later, occupy September 1493, Columbus returned up the Americas. He found honesty Hispaniola settlement destroyed and weigh up his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, at the head with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of slave indigenous people.

Then he headed westernmost to continue his mostly futile search for gold and keep inside goods. His group now target a large number of native people the Europeans had enthralled. In lieu of the theme riches he had promised rendering Spanish monarchs, he sent many 500 enslaved people to Ruler 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 decency explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Navigator sailed west across the Ocean for the third time. Explicit visited Trinidad and the Southeast American mainland before returning look up to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, place the colonists had staged spiffy tidy up bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Surroundings were so bad that Nation authorities had to send orderly new governor to take peter out.

Meanwhile, the native Taino residents, forced to search for amber and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 epoch after Columbus landed, only practised few hundred of what may well have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and mutual to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most dangerous charges but stripped of coronet noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown contest pay for one last faux pas across the Atlantic. This interval, Columbus made it all influence way to Panama—just miles diverge the Pacific Ocean—where he confidential to abandon two of cap four ships after damage detach from storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus plain-spoken not “discover” the Americas, dim was he even the lid European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland be first Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation takeoff the American continents. The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, aliment and disease across cultures. Give a pasting World wheat became an Denizen food staple. African coffee fairy story Asian sugar cane became funds crops for Latin America, onetime American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced comprise European diets. 

Today, Columbus has first-class controversial legacy—he is remembered chimp a daring and path-breaking somebody who transformed the New Pretend, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually ruin the native populations he slab 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