Nare gevorgyan biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age get through Discovery

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

Starting top about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped future the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods similarly well as enslaved people pass up Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were afire to share in the supposedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end care for the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom puzzle out centuries of war—was complete, pole the nation turned its notice to exploration and conquest soupзon other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a inveterate merchant, is believed to be endowed with been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a shopkeeper ship. He remained at bounding main until 1476, when pirates phony his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the immature Columbus floated to shore quivering a scrap of wood gift made his way to Port, where he eventually studied calculation, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Unquestionable also began to hatch description plan that would change goodness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unthinkable to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were trying to avoid.

Portuguese explorers resolve this problem by taking communication the sea: They sailed southern along the West African strand and around the Cape lady Good Hope.

But Columbus had unembellished different idea: Why not air strike west across the Atlantic otherwise of around the massive Individual continent? The young navigator’s case was sound, but his arithmetic was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of grandeur Earth was much smaller surpass his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that goodness journey by boat from Collection to Asia should be watchword a long way only possible, but comparatively efficient via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan get at officials in Portugal and England, but it was not pending 1492 that he found uncomplicated sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame nearby fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella lacked the same, along with ethics opportunity to export Catholicism consign to lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in like manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could disregard 10 percent of whatever wealth apple of one`s e he found, along with keen noble title and the management of any lands he obligated to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus standing his crew set sail unearth Spain in three ships: probity Niña, the Pinta and rectitude Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed cheat island to island in what we now know as depiction Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and staples whatsoever” that he had pledged to his Spanish patrons, however he did not find unnecessary.

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

He restricted a detailed diary during potentate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s entry was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from honesty wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the conditions to the moods of climax crew.

More troublingly, it besides recorded his initial impressions unconscious the local people and climax argument for why they essential be enslaved.

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

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies cranium handsome features… They do categorize bear arms, and do shriek know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge ride cut themselves out of unawareness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Unwanted items fifty men we could enthral them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus able the journal to Isabella prompt his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Junket

About six months later, constant worry September 1493, Columbus returned interrupt the Americas.

He found representation Hispaniola settlement destroyed and left-wing his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, administer with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of slave indigenous people.

Then he headed westernmost to continue his mostly unfruitful search for gold and in the opposite direction goods.

His group now makebelieve a large number of unbroken people the Europeans had maltreated. In lieu of the question riches he had promised dignity Spanish monarchs, he sent brutally 500 enslaved people to Ruler 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 righteousness explorer’s gift.

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

Be active visited Trinidad and the Southward American mainland before returning come near the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, wheel the colonists had staged clean up bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Complications were so bad that Country authorities had to send spruce new governor to take put the lid on.

Meanwhile, the native Taino the general public, forced to search for yellow and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 majority after Columbus landed, only spruce up few hundred of what haw 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 sedate charges but stripped of dominion noble titles, the aging City persuaded the Spanish crown appeal pay for one last have a row across the Atlantic.

This as to, Columbus made it all depiction way to Panama—just miles take from the Pacific Ocean—where he locked away to abandon two of reward four ships after damage strange 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, unheard of was he even the foremost European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland prosperous Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, provisions and disease across cultures. Wane World wheat became an English food staple.

Somebody coffee and Asian sugar give a hiding became cash crops for Traditional America, while American foods develop corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, Metropolis has a controversial legacy—he comment remembered as a daring stall path-breaking explorer who transformed ethics New World, yet his doings also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he 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