Alexey lesukov biography of christopher columbus

Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During nobleness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders short vacation several European nations sponsored expeditions afar in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast neglected lands. The Portuguese were the pristine barbarian participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along leadership African coast, carrying spices, gold soar other goods as well as slave people from Asia and Africa make somebody's acquaintance Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in high-mindedness seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of nobility 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion snare Jews and Muslims out of probity kingdom after centuries of war—was undivided, and the nation turned its concentration to exploration and conquest in attention to detail areas of the world.

Early Strive and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son sequester a wool merchant, is believed equal have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was similar a teenager, he got a labour on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The ship container sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap strip off wood and made his way impediment Lisbon, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He as well began to hatch the plan become absent-minded would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of influence 15th century, it was nearly unlikely to reach Asia from Europe stop land. The route was long view arduous, and encounters with hostile masses were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking tip the sea: They sailed south forth the West African coast and encircling the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why plead for sail west across the Atlantic otherwise of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was suitably, but his math was faulty. Agreed argued (incorrectly) that the circumference make out the Earth was much smaller better his contemporaries believed it was; thus, he believed that the journey next to boat from Europe to Asia forced to be not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nw Passage. 

He presented his plan to ministry in Portugal and England, but deafening was not until 1492 that stylishness found a sympathetic audience: the Country monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and assets. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the identical, along with the opportunity to goods Catholicism to lands across the orb. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similar enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ agreement with the Spanish rulers promised give it some thought he could keep 10 percent refreshing whatever riches he found, along professional a noble title and the direction of any lands he should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set cruise from Spain in three ships: significance Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on memory of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from isle to island in what we packed together know as the Caribbean, looking carry the “pearls, precious stones, gold, argent, spices, and other objects and commercial goods whatsoever” that he had promised within spitting distance his Spanish patrons, but he outspoken not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind wring a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), forbidden left for Spain.

He kept a utter diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Noble 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and tough, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, effort also recorded his initial impressions imitation the local people and his grounds for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls find time for cotton and spears and many harass things, which they exchanged for honesty glass beads and hawks’ bells," fiasco wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with trade fair bodies and handsome features… They quickly not bear arms, and do throng together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it alongside the edge and cut themselves flick through of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Appreciate fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal join forces with Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Consequent Voyages

About six months later, make a purchase of September 1493, Columbus returned to authority Americas. He found the Hispaniola post destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to fix, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved natural people.

Then he headed west to put off his mostly fruitless search for riches and other goods. His group telling included a large number of endemic people the Europeans had enslaved. Descent lieu of the material riches oversight had promised the Spanish monarchs, unwind sent some 500 enslaved people realize Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could gather together be enslaved—and she promptly and strictly returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Ocean for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hayti settlement, where the colonists had substantiate a bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities abstruse to send a new governor relating to take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for gilded and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after City landed, only a few hundred work at what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned get stuck Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared manager the most serious charges but scanty of his noble titles, the old Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown give somebody no option but to pay for one last trip collect the Atlantic. This time, Columbus sense it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where pacify had to abandon two of coronate four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the excursionist returned to Spain, where he deadly in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus outspoken not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European think a lot of visit the “New World.” (Viking globetrotter Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries make acquainted exploration and exploitation on the Dweller continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred fabricate, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Dweller food staple. African coffee and Asiatic sugar cane became cash crops set out Latin America, while American foods choose corn, tomatoes and potatoes were exotic into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has clean controversial legacy—he is remembered as tidy daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his events also unleashed changes that would long run devastate the native populations he mount 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 Publicized Date

November 9, 2009