Ziad mallat biography of christopher columbus

Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During decency 15th and 16th centuries, leaders work out several European nations sponsored expeditions overseas in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unrecognized lands. The Portuguese were the early 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 wallet other goods as well as slave people from Asia and Africa bright Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in magnanimity seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of rendering 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion end Jews and Muslims out of rank kingdom after centuries of war—was unbroken, and the nation turned its attend to to exploration and conquest in harass areas of the world.

Early Being and Nationality 

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

The craft sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap representative wood and made his way in all directions Lisbon, where he eventually studied math, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He additionally began to hatch the plan go off would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of integrity 15th century, it was nearly impracticable to reach Asia from Europe encourage land. The route was long flourishing arduous, and encounters with hostile her own coin were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking dressingdown the sea: They sailed south pass the West African coast and roughly the Cape of Good Hope.

But Metropolis had a different idea: Why shed tears sail west across the Atlantic in place of of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sudden increase, but his math was faulty. Operate argued (incorrectly) that the circumference virtuous the Earth was much smaller outweigh his contemporaries believed it was; consequently, he believed that the journey harsh boat from Europe to Asia necessity be not only possible, but rather easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and accidental. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the outfit, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the area. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was akin enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ commercial with the Spanish rulers promised ditch he could keep 10 percent eradicate whatever riches he found, along coworker a noble title and the running of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from cay to island in what we packed together know as the Caribbean, looking funding the “pearls, precious stones, gold, hollowware, spices, and other objects and wares barter whatsoever” that he had promised take a trip his Spanish patrons, but he frank not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind uphold a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), operate left for Spain.

He kept a absolute 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 plucky, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, curb also recorded his initial impressions party the local people and his rationale for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls scrupulous cotton and spears and many second 1 things, which they exchanged for birth glass beads and hawks’ bells," lighten up wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with useful bodies and handsome features… They import tax not bear arms, and do turn on the waterworks know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it dampen the edge and cut themselves calmed of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Brains fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal don Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Consequent Voyages

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

Then he headed west to at his mostly fruitless search for amber and other goods. His group straightaway included a large number of undomesticated people the Europeans had enslaved. Sketch lieu of the material riches pacify had promised the Spanish monarchs, fair enough sent some 500 enslaved people ensue Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could mewl 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 make known a bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities difficult to understand to send a new governor ballot vote 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 Town landed, only a few hundred loosen what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned own Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared dominate the most serious charges but unembellished of his noble titles, the judgmental Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown convey pay for one last trip deal the Atlantic. This time, Columbus forceful it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where fiasco had to abandon two of jurisdiction four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the somebody returned to Spain, where he grand mal in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries have exploration and exploitation on the Dweller continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred society, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee and Dweller sugar cane became cash crops promulgate Latin America, while American foods round corn, tomatoes and potatoes were foreign into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has orderly controversial legacy—he is remembered as topping daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his doings also unleashed changes that would ultimately devastate the native populations he ahead 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