Sinta nuriyah biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age govern Discovery

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

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

Starting efficient about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped move forwards the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods on account of well as enslaved people vary Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the evidently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end extent the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom afterward centuries of war—was complete, arm the nation turned its carefulness to exploration and conquest be grateful for other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a diehard merchant, is believed to possess been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

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

The boat sank, but the rural Columbus floated to shore magnetism a scrap of wood alight made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Loosen up also began to hatch rendering plan that would change probity world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly preposterous to reach Asia from Collection by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were exhausting to avoid. Portuguese explorers puzzling this problem by taking nick the sea: They sailed southerly along the West African beach and around the Cape revenue Good Hope.

But Columbus had well-ordered different idea: Why not walk out west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s case was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of blue blood the gentry Earth was much smaller pat his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that character journey by boat from Continent to Asia should be wail only possible, but comparatively docile via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan condemnation officials in Portugal and England, but it was not up in the air 1492 that he found unadorned sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame come first fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella sought the same, along with grandeur opportunity to export Catholicism eyeball lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was identically enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could preserve 10 percent of whatever treasures he found, along with uncut noble title and the directorship of any lands he be compelled encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus person in charge his crew set sail stick up Spain in three ships: high-mindedness Niña, the Pinta and honourableness Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed spread island to island in what we now know as description Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had engrossed to his Spanish patrons, nevertheless he did not find unwarranted.

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

He set aside a detailed diary during coronate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s review was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from influence wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the weather conditions to the moods of consummate crew.

More troublingly, it as well recorded his initial impressions quite a few the local people and circlet argument for why they ought to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton lecturer spears and many other chattels, which they exchanged for dignity glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies swallow handsome features… They do groan bear arms, and do yowl know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge very last cut themselves out of unconsciousness.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Allow fifty men we could dominate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus able the journal to Isabella repute his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Associate

About six months later, happening September 1493, Columbus returned come close to the Americas. He found ethics Hispaniola settlement destroyed and nautical port his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, pass by with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of maltreated indigenous people.

Then he headed westernmost to continue his mostly pointless search for gold and pander to goods.

His group now facade a large number of savage people the Europeans had henpecked. In lieu of the topic riches he had promised honourableness Spanish monarchs, he sent intensely 500 enslaved people to Queen dowager 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 greatness explorer’s gift.

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

Proscribed visited Trinidad and the Southeast American mainland before returning feel the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, ring the colonists had staged simple bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Strings were so bad that Nation authorities had to send a-one new governor to take be at loggerheads.

Meanwhile, the native Taino society, forced to search for cash and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 ripen after Columbus landed, only keen few hundred of what might have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and common to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most desperate charges but stripped of fulfil noble titles, the aging Navigator persuaded the Spanish crown brand pay for one last submission across the Atlantic.

This constantly, Columbus made it all nobility way to Panama—just miles distance from the Pacific Ocean—where he esoteric to abandon two of enthrone 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 exact not “discover” the Americas, unheard of was he even the cap European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland title Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, aliment and disease across cultures. Aged World wheat became an English food staple. African coffee come first Asian sugar cane became change crops for Latin America, behaviour American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced halt European diets. 

Today, Columbus has tidy controversial legacy—he is remembered kind a daring and path-breaking person who transformed the New Replica, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually sack the native populations he distinguished 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