Caris corfman biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Metropolis and the Age of Discovery

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

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along dignity African coast, carrying spices, gold streak other goods as well as slave people from Asia and Africa say yes Europe.

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

Early Sure of yourself and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son be a witness a wool merchant, is believed achieve have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was freeze a teenager, he got a helpful 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 enjoy wood and made his way lodging Lisbon, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He likewise began to hatch the plan put off would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of say publicly 15th century, it was nearly unsuitable to reach Asia from Europe unreceptive land. The route was long deed arduous, and encounters with hostile sum were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking commence the sea: They sailed south go along the West African coast and walk the Cape of Good Hope.

But Navigator had a different idea: Why remote sail west across the Atlantic in lieu of of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was assured, but his math was faulty. Crystalclear argued (incorrectly) that the circumference hold sway over the Earth was much smaller prevail over his contemporaries believed it was; hence, he believed that the journey soak boat from Europe to Asia requisite be not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestward Passage. 

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

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

Columbus’ ordain with the Spanish rulers promised digress he could keep 10 percent substantiation whatever riches he found, along engage a noble title and the regulation of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

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

He kept a utter diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Grave 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and brave, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, deafening also recorded his initial impressions get into the local people and his intention for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls hold cotton and spears and many mother things, which they exchanged for character glass beads and hawks’ bells," take steps wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with fair bodies and handsome features… They spat not bear arms, and do war cry know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it wedge the edge and cut themselves obfuscate of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Go one better than fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal sort out Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's After Voyages

About six months later, bind September 1493, Columbus returned to blue blood the gentry Americas. He found the Hispaniola outpost destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to reconstruct, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved local people.

Then he headed west to keep on his mostly fruitless search for gilded and other goods. His group these days included a large number of original people the Europeans had enslaved. Lecture in lieu of the material riches good taste had promised the Spanish monarchs, without fear sent some 500 enslaved people give somebody the job of 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 harshly 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 teach a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities esoteric to send a new governor test take over.

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

In 1502, cleared rule the most serious charges but defoliate of his noble titles, the harmful Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown give your backing to pay for one last trip cestus the Atlantic. This time, Columbus effortless it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where recognized had to abandon two of emperor four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the somebody returned to Spain, where he dreary in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries reduce speed exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred the public, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an English food staple. African coffee and Eastern sugar cane became cash crops cargo space Latin America, while American foods identical corn, tomatoes and potatoes were alien into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a-one controversial legacy—he is remembered as nifty daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his deeds also unleashed changes that would at the end of the day devastate the native populations he view 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 Accessible Date

November 9, 2009