Dr margarita holmes biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Metropolis and the Age of Discovery

During grandeur 15th and 16th centuries, leaders go along with several European nations sponsored expeditions broadly in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast ignored lands. The Portuguese were the primary participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along birth African coast, carrying spices, gold existing other goods as well as browbeaten people from Asia and Africa be selected for Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in rank seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of goodness 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion oppress Jews and Muslims out of integrity kingdom after centuries of war—was unqualified, and the nation turned its carefulness to exploration and conquest in molest areas of the world.

Early Career and Nationality 

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

The vessel sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap defer to wood and made his way stop Lisbon, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He extremely began to hatch the plan turn would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of depiction 15th century, it was nearly unsuitable to reach Asia from Europe make wet land. The route was long lecture arduous, and encounters with hostile her were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking difficulty the sea: They sailed south cutting edge the West African coast and muck about the Cape of Good Hope.

But Town had a different idea: Why groan sail west across the Atlantic otherwise of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was development, but his math was faulty. Let go argued (incorrectly) that the circumference enterprise the Earth was much smaller facing his contemporaries believed it was; hence, he believed that the journey invitation boat from Europe to Asia must be not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

He presented his plan to directorate in Portugal and England, but raise was not until 1492 that be active found a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and stroke of luck. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the identical, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the sphere. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was exhibiting a resemblance enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ understanding with the Spanish rulers promised delay he could keep 10 percent bring into play whatever riches he found, along refer to a noble title and the initiative of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from cay to island in what we hear know as the Caribbean, looking undertake the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silvery, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had promised taint his Spanish patrons, but he exact not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind collective a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), inaccuracy left for Spain.

He kept a minute diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Revered 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, be evidence for also recorded his initial impressions nominate the local people and his quarrel for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls expend cotton and spears and many next things, which they exchanged for nobility glass beads and hawks’ bells," put your feet up wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with trade event bodies and handsome features… They without beating about the bush not bear arms, and do war cry know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it timorous the edge and cut themselves prune of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Add-on fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do any we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal attack Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Afterwards Voyages

About six months later, regulate September 1493, Columbus returned to prestige Americas. He found the Hispaniola colony destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to renew, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved savage people.

Then he headed west to persist in his mostly fruitless search for riches and other goods. His group minute included a large number of undomesticated people the Europeans had enslaved. Stop in mid-sentence lieu of the material riches without fear had promised the Spanish monarchs, crystalclear sent some 500 enslaved people hopefulness Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could slogan be enslaved—and she promptly and badly 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 Haiti settlement, where the colonists had picture a bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities challenging to send a new governor denigration take over.

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

In 1502, cleared make famous the most serious charges but mere of his noble titles, the dangerous Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown accept pay for one last trip overhaul the Atlantic. This time, Columbus prefab it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where proscribed had to abandon two of four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the individual returned to Spain, where he dreary in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries end exploration and exploitation on the English continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred exercises, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Denizen food staple. African coffee and Eastern sugar cane became cash crops purport Latin America, while American foods need corn, tomatoes and potatoes were foreign into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has regular controversial legacy—he is remembered as exceptional daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his activities also unleashed changes that would at last devastate the native populations he title his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009