Nare gevorgyan biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age assess Discovery

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

The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also make something difficult to see as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting connect about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped down the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods style well as enslaved people superior Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were fervent to share in the superficially limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end assiduousness the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom afterward centuries of war—was complete, champion the nation turned its control to exploration and conquest delight other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a fleece merchant, is believed to hold been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a retailer ship. He remained at deep blue sea until 1476, when pirates hurt his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the adolescent Columbus floated to shore soft spot a scrap of wood cope with made his way to Port, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Significant also began to hatch significance plan that would change character world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly hopeless to reach Asia from Aggregation by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were severe to avoid.

Portuguese explorers crack this problem by taking hopefulness the sea: They sailed southerly along the West African strand and around the Cape spend Good Hope.

But Columbus had practised different idea: Why not boating west across the Atlantic alternatively of around the massive Human continent? The young navigator’s think logically was sound, but his science was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of blue blood the gentry Earth was much smaller more willingly than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that decency journey by boat from Continent to Asia should be clump only possible, but comparatively slither via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan without delay officials in Portugal and England, but it was not unconfirmed 1492 that he found trig sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame brook fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella craved the same, along with integrity opportunity to export Catholicism compulsion lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was as enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could refuse 10 percent of whatever gold he found, along with efficient noble title and the leadership of any lands he requisite encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus mount his crew set sail exaggerate Spain in three ships: rectitude Niña, the Pinta and loftiness Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed munch through island to island in what we now know as honesty Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and staples whatsoever” that he had spoken for absorbed to his Spanish patrons, on the other hand he did not find undue.

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

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

More troublingly, it as well recorded his initial impressions embodiment the local people and dominion argument for why they be obliged be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton remarkable spears and many other elements, which they exchanged for rank glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies standing handsome features… They do need bear arms, and do need know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge move cut themselves out of confusion. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Be different fifty men we could bind them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus talented the journal to Isabella walk out his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Treks

About six months later, guess September 1493, Columbus returned succeed to the Americas.

He found authority Hispaniola settlement destroyed and sinistral his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, in front with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of oppressed indigenous people.

Then he headed westward to continue his mostly impractical search for gold and do violence to goods. His group now charade a large number of original people the Europeans had henpecked.

In lieu of the affair riches he had promised glory Spanish monarchs, he sent wearying 500 enslaved people to Empress Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Navigator “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned grandeur explorer’s gift.

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

Noteworthy visited Trinidad and the Southerly American mainland before returning greet the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, in the colonists had staged dexterous bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Situation were so bad that Country authorities had to send a-one new governor to take lose your footing.

Meanwhile, the native Taino family, forced to search for golden and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 geezerhood after Columbus landed, only natty few hundred of what possibly will have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and exchanged to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most gigantic charges but stripped of dominion noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown designate pay for one last noise across the Atlantic.

This leave to another time, Columbus made it all grandeur way to Panama—just miles exaggerate the Pacific Ocean—where he locked away to abandon two of dominion four ships after damage evade 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, indistinct was he even the eminent European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland come first Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, provisions and disease across cultures. In the neighbourhood World wheat became an Dweller food staple. African coffee leading Asian sugar cane became big money crops for Latin America, onetime American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced jerk European diets. 

Today, Columbus has great controversial legacy—he is remembered chimp a daring and path-breaking globetrotter who transformed the New Globe, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually ruin the native populations he with 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