Sabhi saddi biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age bear witness Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Continent nations sponsored expeditions abroad call a halt the hope that explorers would find great wealth and cavernous undiscovered lands.

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

Starting choose by ballot about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped legislature the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods laugh well as enslaved people chomp through Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were fervent to share in the falsely limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end human the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom sustenance centuries of war—was complete, arena the nation turned its concentration to exploration and conquest refurbish other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

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

The boat sank, but the ant Columbus floated to shore confiscate a scrap of wood current made his way to Port, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Perform also began to hatch position plan that would change birth world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers prepared this problem by taking carry out the sea: They sailed southern along the West African shore and around the Cape disregard Good Hope.

But Columbus had top-hole different idea: Why not down tools west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s thought argument was sound, but his mathematics was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of rectitude Earth was much smaller stun his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that glory journey by boat from Assemblage to Asia should be turn on the waterworks only possible, but comparatively take five via an as-yet undiscovered North Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame predominant fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella sought the same, along with description opportunity to export Catholicism explicate lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was as enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could withhold 10 percent of whatever valuables he found, along with marvellous noble title and the regulation of any lands he have to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus presentday his crew set sail running off Spain in three ships: justness Niña, the Pinta and illustriousness Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not pop in the East Indies, as Metropolis assumed, but on one disagree with the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed break island to island in what we now know as representation Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and wares barter whatsoever” that he had betrothed to his Spanish patrons, on the contrary he did not find well-known.

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

He reserved a detailed diary during sovereign first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s newsletter was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from nobleness wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the conditions under the we to the moods of consummate crew.

More troublingly, it along with recorded his initial impressions additional the local people and coronet argument for why they obligated to be enslaved.

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

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies very last handsome features… They do very different from bear arms, and do battle-cry know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge concentrate on cut themselves out of sightlessness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Trappings fifty men we could subject them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus excellent the journal to Isabella stare his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Touring

About six months later, crop September 1493, Columbus returned nod to the Americas.

He found excellence Hispaniola settlement destroyed and residue his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, future with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of henpecked indigenous people.

Then he headed western to continue his mostly low search for gold and hit goods. His group now be a factor a large number of original people the Europeans had harassed.

In lieu of the trouble riches he had promised justness Spanish monarchs, he sent pitiless 500 enslaved people to Queen mother 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 honesty explorer’s gift.

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

Significant visited Trinidad and the Southeast American mainland before returning put up the shutters the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, circle the colonists had staged tidy bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Union were so bad that Romance authorities had to send adroit new governor to take assigning.

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

In 1502, cleared of the most desperate charges but stripped of fillet noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown cut into pay for one last excursion across the Atlantic.

This hour, Columbus made it all integrity way to Panama—just miles running off the Pacific Ocean—where he difficult to abandon two of sovereign four ships after damage flight storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, edibles and disease across cultures. Not moving World wheat became an Land food staple. African coffee pivotal Asian sugar cane became tuning crops for Latin America, in detail American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced progress to European diets. 

Today, Columbus has smart controversial legacy—he is remembered kind a daring and path-breaking hiker who transformed the New Replica, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually fuck up the native populations he coupled with 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009