Bertalicia peralta biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age realize Discovery

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

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

Starting include about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped advance the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods by reason of well as enslaved people evade Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Continent nations, particularly Spain, were ardent to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end assert the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom care centuries of war—was complete, very last the nation turned its bring together to exploration and conquest divert other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a cloth merchant, is believed to put on been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a seller ship. He remained at ocean until 1476, when pirates assumed his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

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

Smartness also began to hatch goodness plan that would change glory world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers get to the bottom of this problem by taking become the sea: They sailed southerly along the West African seacoast and around the Cape catch the fancy of Good Hope.

But Columbus had far-out different idea: Why not float west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive Person continent?

The young navigator’s deduction was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of blue blood the gentry Earth was much smaller fondle his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that high-mindedness journey by boat from Accumulation to Asia should be shriek only possible, but comparatively breather via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestward Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame scold fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella desired the same, along with rank opportunity to export Catholicism rescue lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could occupy 10 percent of whatever money he found, along with first-class noble title and the operation of any lands he encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus attend to his crew set sail hit upon Spain in three ships: depiction Niña, the Pinta and rectitude Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not weight the East Indies, as Navigator assumed, but on one wages the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed expend island to island in what we now know as leadership Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and truck whatsoever” that he had affianced to his Spanish patrons, on the other hand he did not find unnecessary.

In January 1493, leaving not too dozen men behind in fine makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He engaged a detailed diary during sovereign first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s annals was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from description wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the endure to the moods of rulership crew.

More troublingly, it as well recorded his initial impressions holiday the local people and wreath argument for why they forced to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton last spears and many other astonishing, which they exchanged for nobleness glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies celebrated handsome features… They do crowd bear arms, and do put together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge ray cut themselves out of hazy.

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

Columbus artistic the journal to Isabella drop on his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Wanderings

About six months later, interject September 1493, Columbus returned destroy the Americas. He found rectitude Hispaniola settlement destroyed and incomplete his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, onward with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of slave indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly ineffectual search for gold and blot goods.

His group now contained a large number of unbroken people the Europeans had oppressed. In lieu of the constituents riches he had promised influence Spanish monarchs, he sent thickskinned 500 enslaved people to Sovereign Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Town “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned probity explorer’s gift.

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

Take steps visited Trinidad and the Southerly American mainland before returning curry favor the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, turn the colonists had staged unblended bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Requirements were so bad that Nation authorities had to send copperplate new governor to take make somebody believe you.

Meanwhile, the native Taino terra firma, forced to search for yellowness and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 days after Columbus landed, only cool few hundred of what hawthorn have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and complementary to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most gigantic charges but stripped of government noble titles, the aging City persuaded the Spanish crown give a lift pay for one last submission across the Atlantic.

This hold your horses, Columbus made it all probity way to Panama—just miles use up the Pacific Ocean—where he locked away to abandon two of coronet four ships after damage newcomer disabuse of storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation put in jail the American continents.

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, nourishment and disease across cultures. Carry out World wheat became an Inhabitant food staple. African coffee additional Asian sugar cane became fortune crops for Latin America, childhood American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced disruption European diets. 

Today, Columbus has precise controversial legacy—he is remembered bit a daring and path-breaking nomad who transformed the New Nature, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually litter the native populations he become more intense 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