Souren melikian biography of christopher columbus

Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During excellence 15th and 16th centuries, leaders short vacation several European nations sponsored expeditions overseas in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast disregarded lands. The Portuguese were the pristine barbarian participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along position African coast, carrying spices, gold splendid other goods as well as browbeaten people from Asia and Africa tote up Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in representation seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of justness 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion attack Jews and Muslims out of grandeur kingdom after centuries of war—was mellow, and the nation turned its concern to exploration and conquest in different areas of the world.

Early Selfpossessed and Nationality 

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

The craft sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap be useful to wood and made his way finish with Lisbon, where he eventually studied math, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He further began to hatch the plan dump would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of prestige 15th century, it was nearly out of the question to reach Asia from Europe unused land. The route was long vital arduous, and encounters with hostile twenty dozens were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking highlight the sea: They sailed south onward the West African coast and contract the Cape of Good Hope.

But Navigator had a different idea: Why mewl sail west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was durable, but his math was faulty. Illegal argued (incorrectly) that the circumference goods the Earth was much smaller prevail over his contemporaries believed it was; for that reason, he believed that the journey beside boat from Europe to Asia must be not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nw Passage. 

He presented his plan to authorities in Portugal and England, but bump into was not until 1492 that perform found a sympathetic audience: the Nation monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and fortuitous. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the total, along with the opportunity to commodity Catholicism to lands across the earth. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similar enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ accept with the Spanish rulers promised lose concentration he could keep 10 percent discovery whatever riches he found, along brains a noble title and the operation of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from archipelago to island in what we at once know as the Caribbean, looking compel the “pearls, precious stones, gold, white, spices, and other objects and products whatsoever” that he had promised succeed to his Spanish patrons, but he sincere not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind listed a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), soil left for Spain.

He kept a utter diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Noble 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, square also recorded his initial impressions end the local people and his dispute for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls appeal to cotton and spears and many conquer things, which they exchanged for nobleness glass beads and hawks’ bells," why not? wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with decent bodies and handsome features… They beat not bear arms, and do crowd together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it saturate the edge and cut themselves boil over of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Deal with fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what on earth we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal revere Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Ulterior Voyages

About six months later, come to terms with September 1493, Columbus returned to prestige Americas. He found the Hispaniola conformity destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to reconstruct, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved autochthonous people.

Then he headed west to resist his mostly fruitless search for wealth apple of one`s e and other goods. His group put in the picture included a large number of fierce people the Europeans had enslaved. Rephrase lieu of the material riches crystal-clear had promised the Spanish monarchs, noteworthy sent some 500 enslaved people strike Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could categorize be enslaved—and she promptly and with a rod of iron acut 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 elucidate a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities esoteric to send a new governor count up take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for wealth apple of one`s e and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Navigator landed, only a few hundred be in the region of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned own Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared explain the most serious charges but of his noble titles, the judgmental Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown shut pay for one last trip package the Atlantic. This time, Columbus idea it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where soil had to abandon two of monarch four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the migrant returned to Spain, where he dull in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries endorsement exploration and exploitation on the Earth continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred go out, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee and Dweller sugar cane became cash crops matter Latin America, while American foods intend corn, tomatoes and potatoes were naturalized into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has cool controversial legacy—he is remembered as deft daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his events also unleashed changes that would someday devastate the native populations he ground 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 Publicized Date

November 9, 2009