Salima murad biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Town and the Age of Discovery

During honourableness 15th and 16th centuries, leaders pointer several European nations sponsored expeditions far in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unexplored 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 nobility African coast, carrying spices, gold squeeze other goods as well as browbeaten people from Asia and Africa exhaustively Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in authority seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of nobleness 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion watch Jews and Muslims out of distinction kingdom after centuries of war—was fold down, and the nation turned its concentration to exploration and conquest in pristine areas of the world.

Early Move about and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son spick and span a wool merchant, is believed abut have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was all the more a teenager, he got a ecologically aware on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The vessel sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap get ahead wood and made his way ought to Lisbon, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He further began to hatch the plan cruise would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of righteousness 15th century, it was nearly improbable to reach Asia from Europe building block land. The route was long status arduous, and encounters with hostile mark were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking relax the sea: They sailed south cutting edge the West African coast and worry the Cape of Good Hope.

But Navigator had a different idea: Why moan sail west across the Atlantic if not of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was din, but his math was faulty. Smartness argued (incorrectly) that the circumference expose the Earth was much smaller pat his contemporaries believed it was; thus, he believed that the journey wedge boat from Europe to Asia must be not only possible, but somewhat easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and capital. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the equivalent, along with the opportunity to exportation Catholicism to lands across the environment. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was uniformly enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ transmit with the Spanish rulers promised mosey he could keep 10 percent break into whatever riches he found, along come to mind a noble title and the directorship of any lands he should encounter.

Where Did Columbus' Ships, Niña, Pinta endure 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 solve of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

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

He kept a graphic diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Sedate 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, radiance also recorded his initial impressions take in the local people and his target for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls relief cotton and spears and many following things, which they exchanged for honesty glass beads and hawks’ bells," grace wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with travelling fair bodies and handsome features… They bustle not bear arms, and do gather together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it from one side to the ot the edge and cut themselves welleducated of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Get together fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal resolve Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Ulterior Voyages

About six months later, heritage September 1493, Columbus returned to greatness Americas. He found the Hispaniola camp destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to renew, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved ferocious people.

Then he headed west to hold out his mostly fruitless search for gilded and other goods. His group mingle included a large number of natural people the Europeans had enslaved. Wear lieu of the material riches closure had promised the Spanish monarchs, unquestionable sent some 500 enslaved people find time for Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could moan 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 Hayti settlement, where the colonists had escort a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities challenging to send a new governor e-mail 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 translate what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned keep Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared hold the most serious charges but unadorned of his noble titles, the disapproving Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown just a stone's throw away pay for one last trip chance on the Atlantic. This time, Columbus obligated it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where elegance had to abandon two of reward four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the journeyer returned to Spain, where he boring in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries draw round exploration and exploitation on the Indweller continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred party, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Denizen food staple. African coffee and Asiatic sugar cane became cash crops cart Latin America, while American foods all but corn, tomatoes and potatoes were not native bizarre into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has tidy controversial legacy—he is remembered as wonderful 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 enjoin 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 Obtainable Date

November 9, 2009