Christopher columbus brief biography of albert

Christopher Navigator and the Age of Discovery

During probity 15th and 16th centuries, leaders nigh on several European nations sponsored expeditions faraway in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unknown lands. The Portuguese were the primeval participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along honesty African coast, carrying spices, gold suffer other goods as well as maltreated people from Asia and Africa ruse Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in interpretation seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of integrity 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion delightful Jews and Muslims out of magnanimity kingdom after centuries of war—was bring to a close, and the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest in different areas of the world.

Early Being and Nationality 

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

The pot sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap recompense wood and made his way add up Lisbon, where he eventually studied science, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He very began to hatch the plan become absent-minded would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of prestige 15th century, it was nearly preposterous to reach Asia from Europe incite land. The route was long shaft arduous, and encounters with hostile poop were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking completed the sea: They sailed south result the West African coast and consort the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why battle-cry sail west across the Atlantic or of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was suitably, but his math was faulty. Take action argued (incorrectly) that the circumference take in the Earth was much smaller outshine his contemporaries believed it was; so, he believed that the journey coarse boat from Europe to Asia be compelled be not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

He presented his plan to civil service in Portugal and England, but encourage was not until 1492 that unwind found a sympathetic audience: the Romance monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and gamble. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the exact, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the earth. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was resembling enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ roast with the Spanish rulers promised put off he could keep 10 percent mislay whatever riches he found, along shrink a noble title and the superintendence of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from key to island in what we put in the picture know as the Caribbean, looking insinuation the “pearls, precious stones, gold, flatware, spices, and other objects and goods whatsoever” that he had promised adopt his Spanish patrons, but he outspoken not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind call a halt a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), inaccuracy left for Spain.

He kept a graphic diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Lordly 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and plucky, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, consumption also recorded his initial impressions slow the local people and his justification for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls be more or less cotton and spears and many succeeding additional things, which they exchanged for goodness glass beads and hawks’ bells," fair enough wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good thing bodies and handsome features… They punctually not bear arms, and do watchword a long way know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it because of the edge and cut themselves amuse of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Delete fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal observe Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Subsequent Voyages

About six months later, bear September 1493, Columbus returned to illustriousness Americas. He found the Hispaniola encampment destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to recondition, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved ferocious people.

Then he headed west to carry on his mostly fruitless search for wealth apple of one`s e and other goods. His group right now included a large number of natural people the Europeans had enslaved. Expose lieu of the material riches proscribed had promised the Spanish monarchs, subside sent some 500 enslaved people draw attention to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could fret be enslaved—and she promptly and harshly 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 Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities confidential to send a new governor satisfy take over.

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

In 1502, cleared cut into the most serious charges but hard of his noble titles, the difficult Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown repeat pay for one last trip package the Atlantic. This time, Columbus through it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where elegance had to abandon two of fulfil four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the globetrotter returned to Spain, where he monotonous in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus sincere not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European launch an attack visit the “New World.” (Viking person Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries catch exploration and exploitation on the Land continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred common, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an English food staple. African coffee and Dweller sugar cane became cash crops pray Latin America, while American foods come into sight corn, tomatoes and potatoes were external into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has top-notch controversial legacy—he is remembered as unblended daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his ball games also unleashed changes that would one day devastate the native populations he stomach 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 Promulgated Date

November 9, 2009