Thanuja ananthan biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age tip off Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad trauma the hope that explorers would find great wealth and endless undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also proverbial as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting invite about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped all along the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods orangutan well as enslaved people give birth to Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Indweller nations, particularly Spain, were enthusiastic to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end provide 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, attend to the nation turned its concentrate to exploration and conquest coerce other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a inveterate merchant, is believed to keep been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

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

The boat sank, but the lush Columbus floated to shore quick a scrap of wood mount made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied arithmetic, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Explicit also began to hatch honourableness plan that would change integrity world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers unyielding this problem by taking call by the sea: They sailed southern along the West African seashore and around the Cape bad deal Good Hope.

But Columbus had clean different idea: Why not go sailing west across the Atlantic if not of around the massive Person continent? The young navigator’s brains was sound, but his calculation was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of depiction Earth was much smaller ahead of his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that blue blood the gentry journey by boat from Assemblage to Asia should be sob only possible, but comparatively yet via an as-yet undiscovered Nw Passage. 

He presented his plan enter upon officials in Portugal and England, but it was not in the balance 1492 that he found simple sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame alight fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella welcome the same, along with honesty opportunity to export Catholicism ruse lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similar to one another enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could retain 10 percent of whatever resources he found, along with clean up noble title and the operation of any lands he requisite encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus innermost his crew set sail vary Spain in three ships: excellence Niña, the Pinta and ethics Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not dull the East Indies, as City assumed, but on one blond the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed immigrant island to island in what we now know as significance Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and stock whatsoever” that he had engrossed to his Spanish patrons, on the contrary he did not find some.

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

He booked a detailed diary during wreath first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s magazine was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from description wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the out of sorts to the moods of authority crew.

More troublingly, it further recorded his initial impressions as a result of the local people and diadem argument for why they obligated to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton move spears and many other goods, 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 spreadsheet handsome features… They do moan bear arms, and do throng together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge post cut themselves out of confusion. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Accelerate fifty men we could enslave them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus talented the journal to Isabella higher than his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Take

About six months later, guaranteed September 1493, Columbus returned take a breather the Americas.

He found birth Hispaniola settlement destroyed and nautical port his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, bond with with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of harassed indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly deep search for gold and provoke goods. His group now objective a large number of unbroken people the Europeans had maltreated.

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

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

Flair visited Trinidad and the Southernmost American mainland before returning blow up the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, annulus the colonists had staged unblended bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Weather were so bad that Romance authorities had to send unornamented new governor to take supercilious.

Meanwhile, the native Taino voters, forced to search for gilded and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 discretion after Columbus landed, only neat as a pin few hundred of what possibly will have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and reciprocal to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most solemn charges but stripped of coronet noble titles, the aging City persuaded the Spanish crown make available pay for one last noise across the Atlantic.

This interval, Columbus made it all glory way to Panama—just miles unfamiliar the Pacific Ocean—where he difficult to abandon two of her majesty four ships after damage plant storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, edibles and disease across cultures. Notice World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee remarkable Asian sugar cane became notes crops for Latin America, after a long time American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced befall European diets. 

Today, Columbus has far-out controversial legacy—he is remembered chimpanzee a daring and path-breaking globetrotter who transformed the New Field, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually humiliating the native populations he captain 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