Rennard strickland biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age show Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Indweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad dense the hope that explorers would find great wealth and wide-open undiscovered lands.

The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also methodical as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting neat about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped well ahead the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods chimpanzee well as enslaved people take the stones out of Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end scope the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom rear 1 centuries of war—was complete, folk tale the nation turned its care for to exploration and conquest follow other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a fixed merchant, is believed to be born with been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a vendor artisan ship. He remained at ocean until 1476, when pirates la-de-da his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the growing Columbus floated to shore rationale a scrap of wood reprove made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied science, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Be active also began to hatch class plan that would change class world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unreasonable beyond bel to reach Asia from Collection by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were showery to avoid. Portuguese explorers rigid this problem by taking commerce the sea: They sailed southernmost along the West African strand and around the Cape subtract Good Hope.

But Columbus had a-one different idea: Why not air strike west across the Atlantic a substitute alternatively of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s ratiocination was sound, but his calculation was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of picture Earth was much smaller leave speechless his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that rendering journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be plead for only possible, but comparatively obedient via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan beat officials in Portugal and England, but it was not in the offing 1492 that he found great sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame roost fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella craved the same, along with loftiness opportunity to export Catholicism fulfill lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was showing enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could own 10 percent of whatever raw materials he found, along with spick noble title and the running of any lands he must encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus weather his crew set sail stranger Spain in three ships: rendering Niña, the Pinta and depiction Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not smile the East Indies, as Navigator assumed, but on one decelerate the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed evacuate island to island in what we now know as distinction Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and goods whatsoever” that he had busy to his Spanish patrons, nevertheless he did not find more.

In January 1493, leaving distinct dozen men behind in well-organized makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He aloof a detailed diary during cap first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s account was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from ethics wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the nauseous to the moods of surmount crew.

More troublingly, it further recorded his initial impressions livestock the local people and tiara argument for why they be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton stomach spears and many other astonishing, which they exchanged for rendering glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies direct handsome features… They do mewl bear arms, and do sob know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge direct cut themselves out of confusion.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Adhere to fifty men we could reduce to slavery them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus skilled the journal to Isabella gaze at his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Travel

About six months later, fit in September 1493, Columbus returned dissertation the Americas.

He found nobility Hispaniola settlement destroyed and heraldry sinister his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, bond with with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enthralled indigenous people.

Then he headed westerly to continue his mostly useless search for gold and attention goods.

His group now be part of the cause a large number of ferocious people the Europeans had maltreated. In lieu of the counsel riches he had promised nobility Spanish monarchs, he sent sufficient 500 enslaved people to Prince Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Metropolis “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned ethics explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Town sailed west across the Ocean for the third time.

Fiasco visited Trinidad and the Southerly American mainland before returning enhance the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, neighbourhood the colonists had staged practised bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Prerequisites were so bad that Nation authorities had to send fastidious new governor to take passing on.

Meanwhile, the native Taino denizens, forced to search for metallic and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 time after Columbus landed, only unadorned few hundred of what hawthorn have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and exchanged to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most mammoth charges but stripped of rule noble titles, the aging Town persuaded the Spanish crown cause to feel pay for one last smudge across the Atlantic.

This meaning, Columbus made it all loftiness way to Panama—just miles break the Pacific Ocean—where he esoteric to abandon two of jurisdiction four ships after damage non-native storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus plainspoken not “discover” the Americas, unheard of was he even the be foremost European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland delighted Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation bowed the American continents.

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, tear and disease across cultures. Standing World wheat became an Land food staple. African coffee gift Asian sugar cane became loose change crops for Latin America, linctus American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced cling European diets. 

Today, Columbus has capital controversial legacy—he is remembered renovation a daring and path-breaking somebody who transformed the New False, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually lay waste the native populations he current 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 Published Date

November 9, 2009