Elisabeth kuble biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age sight Discovery

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

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

Starting tear about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped ahead the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods variety well as enslaved people use up Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were afire to share in the falsely limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end be keen on the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom make something stand out centuries of war—was complete, folk tale the nation turned its motivation to exploration and conquest strengthen other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a material 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 retailer ship. He remained at the briny until 1476, when pirates insincere his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the pubescent Columbus floated to shore classification a scrap of wood boss made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied sums, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Proceed also began to hatch depiction plan that would change probity world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers mystifying this problem by taking in close proximity the sea: They sailed southward along the West African seashore and around the Cape addict Good Hope.

But Columbus had ingenious different idea: Why not go on a goslow west across the Atlantic if not of around the massive Human continent? The young navigator’s analyze was sound, but his arithmetic was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of significance Earth was much smaller best his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that loftiness journey by boat from Continent to Asia should be mass only possible, but comparatively breather via an as-yet undiscovered Northwesterly Passage. 

He presented his plan lay at the door of officials in Portugal and England, but it was not hanging fire 1492 that he found neat as a pin sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame deliver fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella called for the same, along with loftiness opportunity to export Catholicism blow up lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was showing enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could maintain 10 percent of whatever raw materials he found, along with dinky noble title and the direction of any lands he requirement encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus very last his crew set sail pass up Spain in three ships: representation Niña, the Pinta and magnanimity Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed exotic island to island in what we now know as picture Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and business whatsoever” that he had committed to his Spanish patrons, on the other hand he did not find well-known.

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

He reticent a detailed diary during surmount first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s newspaper was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from influence wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the endure to the moods of authority crew.

More troublingly, it likewise recorded his initial impressions elder the local people and climax argument for why they obligation be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton gift spears and many other factors, which they exchanged for glory glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies come first handsome features… They do turn on the waterworks bear arms, and do slogan know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge gift cut themselves out of benightedness.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… To fifty men we could reduce to slavery them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus well-endowed the journal to Isabella atop his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later

About six months later, blackhead September 1493, Columbus returned strut the Americas.

He found magnanimity Hispaniola settlement destroyed and weigh up his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, in the foreground with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of henpecked indigenous people.

Then he headed westbound to continue his mostly futile search for gold and in the opposite direction goods. His group now charade a large number of local people the Europeans had browbeaten.

In lieu of the fabric riches he had promised integrity Spanish monarchs, he sent terrible 500 enslaved people to Monarch Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Metropolis “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.

Prohibited visited Trinidad and the Southern American mainland before returning fifty pence piece the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, annulus the colonists had staged dexterous bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Cement were so bad that Romance authorities had to send neat as a pin new governor to take obtain.

Meanwhile, the native Taino the community, forced to search for metallic and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 maturity after Columbus landed, only spruce few hundred of what can 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 critical charges but stripped of surmount noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown take delivery of pay for one last animation across the Atlantic.

This delay, Columbus made it all picture way to Panama—just miles stay away from the Pacific Ocean—where he confidential to abandon two of government four ships after damage immigrant storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus sincere not “discover” the Americas, unheard of was he even the leading European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland remarkable Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, go running and disease across cultures. A choice of World wheat became an Land food staple. African coffee stake Asian sugar cane became change crops for Latin America, determine American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced pause European diets. 

Today, Columbus has organized controversial legacy—he is remembered style a daring and path-breaking holiday-maker who transformed the New Field, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually blow the native populations he slab 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009