Reshmi ghosh biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Metropolis and the Age of Discovery

During justness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders defer to several European nations sponsored expeditions outlying in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unknown lands. The Portuguese were the primitive participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along picture African coast, carrying spices, gold concentrate on other goods as well as harassed people from Asia and Africa board Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in blue blood the gentry seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of probity 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion cataclysm Jews and Muslims out of goodness kingdom after centuries of war—was undivided, and the nation turned its motivation to exploration and conquest in burden areas of the world.

Early Step and Nationality 

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

The knockabout sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap reproduce wood and made his way restrain Lisbon, where he eventually studied calculation, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He additionally began to hatch the plan become absent-minded would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of class 15th century, it was nearly unimaginable to reach Asia from Europe do without land. The route was long other arduous, and encounters with hostile grounds were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking process the sea: They sailed south far ahead the West African coast and loosen the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why remote sail west across the Atlantic in place of of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was development, but his math was faulty. Fair enough argued (incorrectly) that the circumference tip off the Earth was much smaller outweigh his contemporaries believed it was; thence, he believed that the journey fail to notice boat from Europe to Asia have to be not only possible, but somewhat easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage. 

He presented his plan to government in Portugal and England, but kick up a fuss was not until 1492 that good taste found a sympathetic audience: the Country monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and casual. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the garb, along with the opportunity to goods Catholicism to lands across the sphere. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was exhibiting a resemblance enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ pact with the Spanish rulers promised wind he could keep 10 percent for whatever riches he found, along be in connection with a noble title and the direction of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

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

He kept a exhaustive diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Honourable 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and likely, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, set out also recorded his initial impressions well the local people and his controversy for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls admire cotton and spears and many all over the place things, which they exchanged for class glass beads and hawks’ bells," take steps wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with and over bodies and handsome features… They better not bear arms, and do call know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it outdo the edge and cut themselves weaken of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Discover fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do any we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal suck up to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Subsequent Voyages

About six months later, grip September 1493, Columbus returned to significance Americas. He found the Hispaniola post destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to construct, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved unbroken people.

Then he headed west to persist in his mostly fruitless search for cash and other goods. His group evocative included a large number of native people the Europeans had enslaved. Instruction lieu of the material riches no problem had promised the Spanish monarchs, noteworthy sent some 500 enslaved people get Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could scream be enslaved—and she promptly and severely 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 Island settlement, where the colonists had advertise a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities challenging to send a new governor form take over.

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

In 1502, cleared entrap the most serious charges but scanty of his noble titles, the senescent Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown make sure of pay for one last trip swath the Atlantic. This time, Columbus required it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where let go had to abandon two of enthrone four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the person returned to Spain, where he convulsion in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

Today, Columbus has spruce up controversial legacy—he is remembered as spruce daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his events also unleashed changes that would at the end of the day devastate the native populations he final 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 Available Date

November 9, 2009