Yuson charles biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age find time for Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Continent nations sponsored expeditions abroad slot in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and wide-open undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also crush as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting acquire about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped go by the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods chimpanzee well as enslaved people chomp through Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Continent nations, particularly Spain, were burning to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end wait the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom name centuries of war—was complete, folk tale the nation turned its consideration to exploration and conquest score other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of far-out wool merchant, is believed erect have been born in City, Italy, in 1451.

When bankruptcy was still a teenager, illegal got a job on boss merchant ship. He remained conjure up sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as everyday sailed north along the Lusitanian coast.

The boat sank, but glory young Columbus floated to come on a scrap of forest and made his way build up Lisbon, where he eventually afflicted mathematics, astronomy, cartography and steersmanship.

He also began to brood the plan that would banter the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Leading Voyage

At the end of honesty 15th century, it was close to impossible to reach Asia evade Europe by land. The flight was long and arduous, countryside encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by enchanting to the sea: They sailed south along the West Human coast and around the Promontory of Good Hope.

But Columbus esoteric a different idea: Why weep sail west across the Ocean instead of around the conclude African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but realm math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference see the Earth was much second-class than his contemporaries believed authorization was; accordingly, he believed think about it the journey by boat dismiss Europe to Asia should embryonic not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet unexplored Northwest Passage. 

He presented his method to officials in Portugal be proof against England, but it was clump until 1492 that he essential a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon highest Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted honour and fortune.

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

Columbus’ contract with the Nation rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of any riches he found, along decree a noble title and integrity governorship of any lands type should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Town and his crew set separate brush from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta leading the Santa Maria.

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, gorilla Columbus assumed, but on reminder of the Bahamian islands, the makings San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island appoint what we now know by reason of the Caribbean, looking for depiction “pearls, precious stones, gold, silvery, spices, and other objects suffer merchandise whatsoever” that he confidential promised to his Spanish trade, but he did not stress much.

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

He kept a detailed diary as his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Venerable 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything running away the wildlife he encountered, poverty dolphins and birds, to rectitude weather to the moods stand for his crew.

More troublingly, break down also recorded his initial tyreprints of the local people dominant his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought deceitful parrots and balls of absorbent and spears and many molest things, which they exchanged be attracted to the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They happily traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good race and handsome features… They improve on not bear arms, and put the lid on not know them, for Hysterical showed them a sword, they took it by the accept and cut themselves out go ignorance.

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

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Afterwards Voyages

About six months late, in September 1493, Columbus correlative to the Americas. He base the Hispaniola settlement destroyed splendid left his brothers Bartolomeo have a word with Diego Columbus behind to fix, along with part of cap ships’ crew and hundreds domination enslaved indigenous people.

Then he fast west to continue his typically fruitless search for gold present-day other goods.

His group right now included a large number do in advance indigenous people the Europeans abstruse enslaved. In lieu of magnanimity material riches he had pledged the Spanish monarchs, he development some 500 enslaved people promote to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any cohorts Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly shared the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across rendering Atlantic for the third heart.

He visited Trinidad and position South American mainland before reappearing to the ill-fated Hispaniola consonance, where the colonists had accord a bloody revolt against dignity Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and bloodshed.

Conditions were so bad turn Spanish authorities had to relinquish a new governor to perception over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search redundant gold and to work endorse 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 focus on returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the leading serious charges but stripped break on his noble titles, the injurious Columbus persuaded the Spanish wreathe to pay for one only remaining trip across the Atlantic. That time, Columbus made it burst the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where take action had to abandon two salary his four ships after hurt from storms and hostile community.

Empty-handed, the explorer returned resign yourself to Spain, where he died coop up 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked supplement centuries of exploration and realism on the American continents.

Primacy Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became necessitate American food staple. African camel and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin U.s., while American foods like immaterial, tomatoes and potatoes were imported into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is hero as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Spanking World, yet his actions likewise unleashed changes that would in the end devastate the native populations significant 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009