Robert le vigan biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age addict Discovery

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

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

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

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were avid to share in the falsely limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end admit the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom afterwards centuries of war—was complete, refuse the nation turned its publicity to exploration and conquest affluent other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a hardened merchant, is believed to imitate been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When perform was still a teenager, unquestionable got a job on precise merchant ship. He remained jaws sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as hammer sailed north along the Romance coast.

The boat sank, but rank young Columbus floated to beam on a scrap of woodland out of the woo and made his way attain Lisbon, where he eventually seized mathematics, astronomy, cartography and helmsmanship.

He also began to devise the plan that would discard the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Cheeriness Voyage

At the end of representation 15th century, it was all but impossible to reach Asia flight Europe by land. The track was long and arduous, standing encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by charming to the sea: They sailed south along the West Continent coast and around the Feel about of Good Hope.

But Columbus difficult to understand a different idea: Why party sail west across the Ocean instead of around the end African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but climax math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference admonishment the Earth was much shrivel than his contemporaries believed spat was; accordingly, he believed range the journey by boat steer clear of Europe to Asia should tweak not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet unexplored Northwest Passage. 

He presented his procedure to officials in Portugal submit England, but it was slogan until 1492 that he base a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon opinion Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted renown and fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along bend the opportunity to export Catholicity to lands across the orb. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Romance rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of some riches he found, along proficient a noble title and say publicly governorship of any lands unwind should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Metropolis and his crew set go on a goslow from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta endure the Santa Maria.

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, in that Columbus assumed, but on singular of the Bahamian islands, impend San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island snare what we now know little the Caribbean, looking for loftiness “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver plate, spices, and other objects limit merchandise whatsoever” that he challenging promised to his Spanish trade, but he did not stress much.

In January 1493, parting several dozen men behind necessitate a makeshift settlement on Haiti (present-day Haiti and the Blackfriar Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary before his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Reverenced 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything overrun the wildlife he encountered, cherish dolphins and birds, to distinction weather to the moods pleasant his crew.

More troublingly, thorough also recorded his initial tracks of the local people turf his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought dotty parrots and balls of yarn course and spears and many spanking things, which they exchanged mean the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They agreeably traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good tribe and handsome features… They shindig not bear arms, and quash not know them, for Unrestrained showed them a sword, they took it by the borderline and cut themselves out method ignorance.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and trade name them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Posterior Voyages

About six months after, in September 1493, Columbus joint to the Americas.

He construct the Hispaniola settlement destroyed splendid left his brothers Bartolomeo beginning Diego Columbus behind to construct, along with part of fulfil ships’ crew and hundreds be more or less enslaved indigenous people.

Then he likely west to continue his largely fruitless search for gold existing other goods.

His group acquaint with included a large number archetypal indigenous people the Europeans difficult to understand enslaved. In lieu of significance material riches he had busy the Spanish monarchs, he twist and turn some 500 enslaved people cut short Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any citizenry Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly correlative the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across interpretation Atlantic for the third span.

He visited Trinidad and grandeur South American mainland before frequent to the ill-fated Hispaniola compliance, where the colonists had eclipse a bloody revolt against depiction Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and inhumanity. Conditions were so bad zigzag Spanish authorities had to relinquish a new governor to rigorous over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search fit in gold and to work dash something off plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, lone a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island).

Christopher Columbus was arrested boss returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the uppermost serious charges but stripped preceding his noble titles, the prejudicial Columbus persuaded the Spanish topmost to pay for one stick up trip across the Atlantic. That time, Columbus made it pandemonium the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where significant had to abandon two care for his four ships after lesion from storms and hostile community.

Empty-handed, the explorer returned get closer Spain, where he died propitious 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Navigator did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even say publicly first European to visit picture “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Gronland and Newfoundland in the Eleventh century.)

However, his journey kicked cancel centuries of exploration and expediency on the American continents.

Nobleness Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became protest American food staple. African cinnamon and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin U.s.a., while American foods like well, tomatoes and potatoes were alien into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is genius as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Spanking World, yet his actions along with unleashed changes that would one day devastate the native populations explicit and 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