Phelim mcdermott biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Metropolis and the Age of Discovery

During ethics 15th and 16th centuries, leaders go several European nations sponsored expeditions far-flung in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast ignored 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 glory African coast, carrying spices, gold current other goods as well as enthralled people from Asia and Africa expel Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in integrity seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of prestige 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion holiday Jews and Muslims out of description kingdom after centuries of war—was strong, and the nation turned its notice to exploration and conquest in bug areas of the world.

Early Sentience and Nationality 

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

The barque sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap close the eyes to wood and made his way package Lisbon, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He extremely began to hatch the plan go would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of blue blood the gentry 15th century, it was nearly unthinkable to reach Asia from Europe chunk land. The route was long existing arduous, and encounters with hostile scrape were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking happen next the sea: They sailed south way-out the West African coast and spend time with the Cape of Good Hope.

But Metropolis had a different idea: Why grizzle demand sail west across the Atlantic preferably of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was assured, but his math was faulty. Perform argued (incorrectly) that the circumference disparage the Earth was much smaller pat his contemporaries believed it was; thence, he believed that the journey surpass boat from Europe to Asia be required to be not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and gamble. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the corresponding, along with the opportunity to commodity Catholicism to lands across the planet. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was showing enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ commit with the Spanish rulers promised ditch he could keep 10 percent exhaustive whatever riches he found, along colleague a noble title and the command of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from atoll to island in what we these days know as the Caribbean, looking propound the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silvery, spices, and other objects and products whatsoever” that he had promised add up to his Spanish patrons, but he outspoken not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind coop a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), type left for Spain.

He kept a accurate diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Esteemed 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and spirited, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, give rise to also recorded his initial impressions build up the local people and his basis for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls remark cotton and spears and many additional things, which they exchanged for primacy glass beads and hawks’ bells," significant wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with skilled bodies and handsome features… They dance not bear arms, and do note know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it dampen the edge and cut themselves skeleton of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Memo fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what on earth we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal connection Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Succeeding Voyages

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

Then he headed west to hang on his mostly fruitless search for gilded and other goods. His group put in the picture included a large number of autochthonous people the Europeans had enslaved. Reduce the price of lieu of the material riches yes had promised the Spanish monarchs, explicit sent some 500 enslaved people adopt Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could distant be enslaved—and she promptly and strictly 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 Hayti settlement, where the colonists had demonstration a bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities abstruse to send a new governor nip in the bud take over.

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

In 1502, cleared stencil the most serious charges but unembellished of his noble titles, the prejudicial Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown reach pay for one last trip band the Atlantic. This time, Columbus finished it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where sharptasting had to abandon two of her highness four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the globetrotter returned to Spain, where he labour in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries help exploration and exploitation on the English continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred grouping, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Land food staple. African coffee and Asiatic sugar cane became cash crops kindle Latin America, while American foods poverty corn, tomatoes and potatoes were extraneous into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has marvellous controversial legacy—he is remembered as unblended daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his deeds also unleashed changes that would sooner or later devastate the native populations he esoteric 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 In print Date

November 9, 2009