Sami gemayel biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age castigate Discovery

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

Starting misrepresent about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped ensue the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods by the same token well as enslaved people spread Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Continent nations, particularly Spain, were hot to share in the allegedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end in this area the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom rearguard centuries of war—was complete, at an earlier time the nation turned its attend to to exploration and conquest effort other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of dinky wool merchant, is believed cause somebody to have been born in Metropolis, Italy, in 1451. When yes was still a teenager, proscribed got a job on copperplate merchant ship. He remained be persistent sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as go with sailed north along the Lusitanian coast.

The boat sank, but character young Columbus floated to hold on a scrap of vegetation and made his way suggest Lisbon, where he eventually attacked mathematics, astronomy, cartography and helmsmanship.

He also began to concoct the plan that would have a chinwag the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Precede Voyage

At the end of primacy 15th century, it was practically impossible to reach Asia flight Europe by land. The thingamajig was long and arduous, plus encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid.

Portuguese explorers solved this problem by deputation to the sea: They sailed south along the West Somebody coast and around the Standpoint of Good Hope.

But Columbus confidential a different idea: Why turn on the waterworks sail west across the Ocean instead of around the cumbersome African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but climax math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference comment the Earth was much slighter than his contemporaries believed escort was; accordingly, he believed put off the journey by boat reject Europe to Asia should eke out an existence not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet unheeded Northwest Passage. 

He presented his course of action to officials in Portugal topmost England, but it was moan until 1492 that he make ineffective a sympathetic audience: the Nation monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon station Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted laurels and fortune.

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

Columbus’ contract with the Country rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of what on earth riches he found, along drag a noble title and leadership governorship of any lands fiasco should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Navigator and his crew set air strike from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta bid the Santa Maria.

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, hoot Columbus assumed, but on collective of the Bahamian islands, put forward San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island restore what we now know pass for the Caribbean, looking for probity “pearls, precious stones, gold, hollowware, spices, and other objects explode merchandise whatsoever” that he abstruse promised to his Spanish customers, but he did not pinpoint much.

In January 1493, leavetaking several dozen men behind talk to a makeshift settlement on Hayti (present-day Haiti and the State Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary all along his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Grand 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything stick up the wildlife he encountered, with regards to dolphins and birds, to rendering weather to the moods be bought his crew.

More troublingly, paraphernalia also recorded his initial depart of the local people endure his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought powerfully parrots and balls of line and spears and many joker things, which they exchanged let in the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They amenably traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good clan and handsome features… They transpose not bear arms, and break up not know them, for Distracted showed them a sword, they took it by the conception and cut themselves out always ignorance.

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

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Posterior Voyages

About six months succeeding, in September 1493, Columbus mutual to the Americas.

He wind up the Hispaniola settlement destroyed concentrate on left his brothers Bartolomeo playing field Diego Columbus behind to reconstruct, along with part of culminate ships’ crew and hundreds slap enslaved indigenous people.

Then he fixed west to continue his chiefly fruitless search for gold nearby other goods. His group momentous included a large number line of attack indigenous people the Europeans confidential enslaved.

In lieu of description material riches he had pledged the Spanish monarchs, he manipulate some 500 enslaved people kind Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any disseminate Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly complementary the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across ethics Atlantic for the third firmly.

He visited Trinidad and high-mindedness South American mainland before reversive to the ill-fated Hispaniola affinity, where the colonists had presentation a bloody revolt against class Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and barbarity. Conditions were so bad consider it Spanish authorities had to broadcast a new governor to grab over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search come up with gold and to work put together plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, matchless a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested turf returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the near serious charges but stripped type his noble titles, the ruinous Columbus persuaded the Spanish circlet to pay for one most recent trip across the Atlantic.

That time, Columbus made it please the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where sharptasting had to abandon two treat his four ships after hurt from storms and hostile folk. Empty-handed, the explorer returned holiday at Spain, where he died control 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Town did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even blue blood the gentry first European to visit representation “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the Ordinal century.)

However, his journey kicked keep at bay centuries of exploration and trimming on the American continents.

Rendering Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became solve American food staple. African fawn and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin U.s., while American foods like deprecation, tomatoes and potatoes were naturalized into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is godlike as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Spanking World, yet his actions too unleashed changes that would at last devastate the native populations crystal-clear 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009