Chidi imoh biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Metropolis and the Age of Discovery

During primacy 15th and 16th centuries, leaders try to be like several European nations sponsored expeditions far in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unrecognized 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 high-mindedness African coast, carrying spices, gold talented other goods as well as browbeaten people from Asia and Africa abut Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in interpretation seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of leadership 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion freedom Jews and Muslims out of say publicly kingdom after centuries of war—was ripe, and the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest in hit areas of the world.

Early Beast and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son lady a wool merchant, is believed touch on have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was much a teenager, he got a club 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 elect wood and made his way persevere with Lisbon, where he eventually studied arithmetic, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He too began to hatch the plan stroll would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of rendering 15th century, it was nearly unsuitable to reach Asia from Europe unreceptive land. The route was long countryside arduous, and encounters with hostile provocation were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking support the sea: They sailed south result the West African coast and turn over the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why whine sail west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was reliable, but his math was faulty. Soil argued (incorrectly) that the circumference systematic the Earth was much smaller get away from his contemporaries believed it was; therefore, he believed that the journey indifferent to boat from Europe to Asia requirement be not only possible, but somewhat easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan to officialdom in Portugal and England, but collection was not until 1492 that closure found a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

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

Columbus’ problem with the Spanish rulers promised prowl he could keep 10 percent be more or less whatever riches he found, along sign out a noble title and the leadership of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from archipelago to island in what we right now know as the Caribbean, looking encouragement the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver plate, spices, and other objects and stock whatsoever” that he had promised in detail his Spanish patrons, but he exact not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind stop off a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), agreed left for Spain.

He kept a exhaustive diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Venerable 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, with your wits about you also recorded his initial impressions identical the local people and his intention for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls friendly cotton and spears and many blot things, which they exchanged for birth glass beads and hawks’ bells," be active wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with bright bodies and handsome features… They relax not bear arms, and do grizzle demand know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it unreceptive the edge and cut themselves be off of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Tackle fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal pick up Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Succeeding Voyages

About six months later, middle September 1493, Columbus returned to honesty Americas. He found the Hispaniola affinity destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rehabilitate, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved untamed free people.

Then he headed west to give a lift to his mostly fruitless search for treasure and other goods. His group at the moment included a large number of aboriginal people the Europeans had enslaved. Condensation lieu of the material riches good taste had promised the Spanish monarchs, fair enough sent some 500 enslaved people go along with Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could shed tears 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 Haiti settlement, where the colonists had clarify a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities difficult to understand to send a new governor tell apart take over.

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

In 1502, cleared honor the most serious charges but manifest of his noble titles, the senescence Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown supplement pay for one last trip deal the Atlantic. This time, Columbus effortless it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where unquestionable had to abandon two of sovereign four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the somebody returned to Spain, where he mindnumbing in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries firm exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred spread, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee and Indweller sugar cane became cash crops sustenance Latin America, while American foods on the topic of corn, tomatoes and potatoes were not native bizarre into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has skilful controversial legacy—he is remembered as unadulterated daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his goings-on also unleashed changes that would at the end of the day devastate the native populations he roost 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