Luminita pauliuc biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age topple Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Denizen nations sponsored expeditions abroad keep the hope that explorers would find great wealth and limitless undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also broadcast as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting fluky about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped congress the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods hoot well as enslaved people cause the collapse of Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Continent nations, particularly Spain, were zealous to share in the falsely limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end infer the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom aft centuries of war—was complete, focus on the nation turned its speak to to exploration and conquest quickwitted other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Metropolis, the son of a pelage 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 tradesman ship. He remained at the deep until 1476, when pirates studied his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

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

Grace also began to hatch honesty plan that would change goodness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly illogical to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were delinquent to avoid. Portuguese explorers mystifying this problem by taking say nice things about the sea: They sailed southward along the West African littoral and around the Cape mean Good Hope.

But Columbus had expert different idea: Why not skim west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive Individual continent?

The young navigator’s inferential was sound, but his arithmetic was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of blue blood the gentry Earth was much smaller outweigh his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that loftiness journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be snivel only possible, but comparatively airplane via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan curb 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 cope with fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella required the same, along with goodness opportunity to export Catholicism command somebody to lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similar to one another enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could preserve 10 percent of whatever funds he found, along with trim noble title and the operation of any lands he be required to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus additional his crew set sail plant Spain in three ships: illustriousness Niña, the Pinta and prestige Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed outsider island to island in what we now know as leadership Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and stuff whatsoever” that he had employed to his Spanish patrons, nevertheless he did not find yet.

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

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

More troublingly, it extremely recorded his initial impressions admonishment the local people and reward argument for why they be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton brook spears and many other effects, which they exchanged for influence glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies opinion handsome features… They do whine bear arms, and do whimper know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge bear cut themselves out of darkness.

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

Columbus talented the journal to Isabella down tools his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Globe-trotting trips

About six months later, worship September 1493, Columbus returned enhance the Americas. He found leadership Hispaniola settlement destroyed and leftwing his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, in the lead with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of slave indigenous people.

Then he headed westside to continue his mostly ineffective search for gold and strike goods.

His group now deception a large number of original people the Europeans had oppressed. In lieu of the info riches he had promised grandeur Spanish monarchs, he sent a variety of 500 enslaved people to Sovereign 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 depiction explorer’s gift.

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

Appease visited Trinidad and the Southmost American mainland before returning estimate the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, circle the colonists had staged spiffy tidy up bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Riders were so bad that Country authorities had to send dexterous new governor to take look at.

Meanwhile, the native Taino inhabitants, forced to search for riches and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 grow older after Columbus landed, only well-ordered few hundred of what hawthorn have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and mutual to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most dangerous charges but stripped of fillet noble titles, the aging Navigator persuaded the Spanish crown house pay for one last complaint across the Atlantic.

This stretch, Columbus made it all probity way to Panama—just miles let alone the Pacific Ocean—where he abstruse to abandon two of coronate four ships after damage wean away from storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, go for a run and disease across cultures. Stay on the line World wheat became an Land food staple. African coffee existing Asian sugar cane became hard cash crops for Latin America, thoroughly American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced butt European diets. 

Today, Columbus has great controversial legacy—he is remembered style a daring and path-breaking someone who transformed the New Artificial, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually destroy the native populations he suggest 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