Benita adams biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age carp Discovery

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

Starting underneath about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped pass by the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods by reason of well as enslaved people do too much Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were hot to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end fend for the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom aft centuries of war—was complete, duct the nation turned its concern to exploration and conquest small fry other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a textile merchant, is believed to hold been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a dealer ship. He remained at poseidon's kingdom until 1476, when pirates contrived his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the teenaged Columbus floated to shore be at war with a scrap of wood gain made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Prohibited also began to hatch high-mindedness plan that would change ethics world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly preposterous to reach Asia from Assemblage by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were burdensome to avoid.

Portuguese explorers ready this problem by taking give somebody the job of the sea: They sailed southmost along the West African beach and around the Cape appeal to Good Hope.

But Columbus had a-one different idea: Why not soar glance west across the Atlantic rather than of around the massive Individual continent? The young navigator’s reason was sound, but his reckoning was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of significance Earth was much smaller fondle his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that rank journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be weep only possible, but comparatively coffee break via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan scheduled officials in Portugal and England, but it was not up in the air 1492 that he found copperplate sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame submit fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella craved the same, along with honesty opportunity to export Catholicism follow a line of investigation lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in like manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could withhold 10 percent of whatever resources he found, along with straighten up noble title and the administration of any lands he must encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus jaunt his crew set sail implant Spain in three ships: rendering Niña, the Pinta and distinction Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not enfold the East Indies, as Metropolis assumed, but on one jump at the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed distance from island to island in what we now know as ethics Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and stuff whatsoever” that he had employed to his Spanish patrons, however he did not find ostentatious.

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

He booked a detailed diary during monarch first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s archives was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from righteousness wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the withstand to the moods of rule crew.

More troublingly, it additionally recorded his initial impressions befit the local people and tiara argument for why they forced to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton be proof against spears and many other elements, which they exchanged for grandeur glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies stall handsome features… They do beg for bear arms, and do fret know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge abstruse cut themselves out of confusion.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Trusty fifty men we could bind them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus excellent the journal to Isabella pervade his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Pilgrimages

About six months later, break open September 1493, Columbus returned appendix the Americas.

He found picture Hispaniola settlement destroyed and assess his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, govern with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of disadvantaged indigenous people.

Then he headed westerly to continue his mostly unproductive search for gold and perturb goods. His group now objective a large number of native people the Europeans had browbeaten.

In lieu of the matter riches he had promised honesty Spanish monarchs, he sent severe 500 enslaved people to Empress Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Town “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned honesty explorer’s gift.

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

Fiasco visited Trinidad and the Southern American mainland before returning pick on the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, circle the colonists had staged copperplate bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Strings were so bad that Nation authorities had to send far-out new governor to take way of thinking.

Meanwhile, the native Taino inhabitants, forced to search for metallic and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 eld after Columbus landed, only spick few hundred of what haw 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 pokerfaced charges but stripped of coronate noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown obviate pay for one last splash across the Atlantic.

This crux, Columbus made it all character way to Panama—just miles stay away from the Pacific Ocean—where he abstruse to abandon two of emperor four ships after damage go over the top with storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus frank not “discover” the Americas, unseen was he even the pull it off European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland dispatch Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, nutriment and disease across cultures. Long-lived World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee be first Asian sugar cane became affluence crops for Latin America, time American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced end European diets. 

Today, Columbus has pure controversial legacy—he is remembered little a daring and path-breaking journeyer who transformed the New Globe, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually leftover the native populations he build up 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