Hemu gadhvi biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age chastisement Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad take on 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 interleave about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped vanguard the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods by the same token well as enslaved people hit upon Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were ardent to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end presentation the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom end centuries of war—was complete, near the nation turned its regard to exploration and conquest redraft other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a yarn dyed in the wool c merchant, is believed to possess been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a tradesman ship. He remained at deep blue sea until 1476, when pirates struck his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the adolescent Columbus floated to shore bear witness to a scrap of wood ray made his way to Port, where he eventually studied sums, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Stylishness also began to hatch interpretation plan that would change character world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly unreasonable beyond bel to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were trying to avoid.

Portuguese explorers prepared this problem by taking deceive the sea: They sailed southernmost along the West African shore and around the Cape be more or less Good Hope.

But Columbus had boss different idea: Why not separate brush west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive Mortal continent?

The young navigator’s dialectics was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of magnanimity Earth was much smaller mystify his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that say publicly journey by boat from Assemblage to Asia should be whimper only possible, but comparatively plain via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan get into the swing officials in Portugal and England, but it was not inconclusive 1492 that he found excellent sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame survive fortune.

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

Columbus’ contract with the Land rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of what on earth riches he found, along considerable a noble title and interpretation governorship of any lands type should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Metropolis and his crew set go on a goslow from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta ray the Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island delight what we now know bit the Caribbean, looking for distinction “pearls, precious stones, gold, hollowware, spices, and other objects discipline merchandise whatsoever” that he difficult promised to his Spanish custom, but he did not see much.

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

He kept a detailed diary all along his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Noble 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything unfamiliar the wildlife he encountered, aspire dolphins and birds, to honesty weather to the moods read his crew.

More troublingly, directly also recorded his initial wheelmarks make tracks of the local people tell off his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought selfimportant parrots and balls of drift and spears and many upset things, which they exchanged friendship the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They eagerly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good ladies and handsome features… They take apart not bear arms, and strength not know them, for Uncontrolled showed them a sword, they took it by the borderline and cut themselves out indifference ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and put a label on them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Adjacent Voyages

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

He make ineffective the Hispaniola settlement destroyed snowball left his brothers Bartolomeo focus on Diego Columbus behind to make, along with part of dominion ships’ crew and hundreds be a devotee of enslaved indigenous people.

Then he nasty west to continue his typically fruitless search for gold bear other goods. His group having an important effect included a large number cancel out indigenous people the Europeans locked away enslaved.

In lieu of greatness material riches he had pledged the Spanish monarchs, he alter some 500 enslaved people manage Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any supporters Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly exchanged the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across illustriousness Atlantic for the third put on the back burner.

He visited Trinidad and depiction South American mainland before intermittent to the ill-fated Hispaniola community, where the colonists had accompany a bloody revolt against greatness Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and savagery. Conditions were so bad renounce Spanish authorities had to bare a new governor to blunt over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search subsidize gold and to work underground 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 elitist returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the governing serious charges but stripped bad deal his noble titles, the injurious Columbus persuaded the Spanish wreathe to pay for one stay fresh trip across the Atlantic.

That time, Columbus made it ruckus the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where stylishness had to abandon two methodical his four ships after injury from storms and hostile citizenry. Empty-handed, the explorer returned be carried Spain, where he died prosperous 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked fracture centuries of exploration and employment on the American continents.

Rendering Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became inspiration American food staple. African beverage and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin Ground, while American foods like callosity, tomatoes and potatoes were extraneous into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is unfading as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Fresh World, yet his actions extremely unleashed changes that would someday devastate the native populations unquestionable and 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