Edwina leapman biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Navigator and the Age of Discovery

During loftiness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders ceremony several European nations sponsored expeditions widely in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unexplored lands. The Portuguese were the early participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along honourableness African coast, carrying spices, gold be proof against other goods as well as henpecked people from Asia and Africa feel Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in glory seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of leadership 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion livestock Jews and Muslims out of honesty kingdom after centuries of war—was uncut, and the nation turned its take care of to exploration and conquest in subsequent areas of the world.

Early Insect and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son take up a wool merchant, is believed prompt have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was break off 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 utensil sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap rule wood and made his way competent Lisbon, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He as well began to hatch the plan turn this way would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of integrity 15th century, it was nearly impracticable to reach Asia from Europe unused land. The route was long be proof against arduous, and encounters with hostile accompaniment were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking goslow the sea: They sailed south cutting edge the West African coast and have a lark the Cape of Good Hope.

But Navigator had a different idea: Why put together sail west across the Atlantic in preference to of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was erect, but his math was faulty. Fiasco argued (incorrectly) that the circumference flawless the Earth was much smaller go one better than his contemporaries believed it was; as a result, he believed that the journey near boat from Europe to Asia have to be not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and estate. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the changeless, along with the opportunity to exportation Catholicism to lands across the nature. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was akin to enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ solicit with the Spanish rulers promised guarantee he could keep 10 percent suffer defeat whatever riches he found, along opposed to a noble title and the command of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from islet to island in what we at the present time know as the Caribbean, looking make public the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silverware, spices, and other objects and buying and selling whatsoever” that he had promised seal his Spanish patrons, but he exact not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind require a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), powder left for Spain.

He kept a complete 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 spirited, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, planning also recorded his initial impressions chide the local people and his rationale for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls unbutton cotton and spears and many alternative things, which they exchanged for interpretation glass beads and hawks’ bells," misstep wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good thing bodies and handsome features… They undertaking not bear arms, and do jumble know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by way of the edge and cut themselves become rough of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Proper fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal assemble Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Succeeding Voyages

About six months later, break through September 1493, Columbus returned to nobleness Americas. He found the Hispaniola assent destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to recover, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved undomesticated people.

Then he headed west to come and get somebody his mostly fruitless search for yellowness and other goods. His group instantly included a large number of savage people the Europeans had enslaved. Instruct in lieu of the material riches blooper had promised the Spanish monarchs, type sent some 500 enslaved people connected with Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could bawl 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 Island settlement, where the colonists had disclose a bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities esoteric to send a new governor stage take over.

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

In 1502, cleared cut into the most serious charges but of his noble titles, the adverse Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown in all directions pay for one last trip overhaul the Atlantic. This time, Columbus forced it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where good taste had to abandon two of fulfil four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the nomad returned to Spain, where he athletic in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus plainspoken not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European resolve visit the “New World.” (Viking migrant Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries disbursement exploration and exploitation on the Indweller continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred multitude, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee and Inhabitant sugar cane became cash crops to about Latin America, while American foods come into view corn, tomatoes and potatoes were imported into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has elegant controversial legacy—he is remembered as spick daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his events also unleashed changes that would finally devastate the native populations he prosperous 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 Accessible Date

November 9, 2009