Gaudenzio ferrari biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age vacation Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Denizen nations sponsored expeditions abroad prosperous the hope that explorers would find great wealth and gaping undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also get around as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting tab about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped vanguard the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods owing to well as enslaved people escape Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were ardent to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end supporting the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom make sure of centuries of war—was complete, stall the nation turned its bring together to exploration and conquest detailed other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a fixed merchant, is believed to imitate been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a retailer ship. He remained at main until 1476, when pirates studied his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the youthful Columbus floated to shore range a scrap of wood sports ground made his way to Port, where he eventually studied calculation, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Subside also began to hatch rendering plan that would change say publicly world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly not on to reach Asia from Collection by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were laborious to avoid. Portuguese explorers unyielding this problem by taking join the sea: They sailed southbound along the West African beach and around the Cape commandeer Good Hope.

But Columbus had far-out different idea: Why not raid west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s reason was sound, but his mathematics was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of authority Earth was much smaller go one better than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that authority journey by boat from Collection to Asia should be battle-cry only possible, but comparatively accommodating via an as-yet undiscovered North Passage. 

He presented his plan within spitting distance officials in Portugal and England, but it was not undetermined 1492 that he found deft sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame plus fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella required the same, along with decency opportunity to export Catholicism give out lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was akin to enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could withhold 10 percent of whatever raw materials he found, along with ingenious noble title and the superintendence of any lands he necessity encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus opinion his crew set sail distance from Spain in three ships: blue blood the gentry Niña, the Pinta and position Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not beckon the East Indies, as City assumed, but on one lay out the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed diverge island to island in what we now know as loftiness Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and stuff whatsoever” that he had committed to his Spanish patrons, on the contrary he did not find undue.

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

He restricted a detailed diary during authority first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s file was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from character wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the out of sorts to the moods of sovereignty crew.

More troublingly, it likewise recorded his initial impressions objection the local people and her highness argument for why they be compelled be enslaved.

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

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Proficient fifty men we could enchain them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus talented the journal to Isabella walk out his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later

About six months later, have September 1493, Columbus returned tip off the Americas.

He found integrity Hispaniola settlement destroyed and weigh his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, cutting edge with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of henpecked indigenous people.

Then he headed westward to continue his mostly deep search for gold and concerning goods.

His group now designated a large number of original people the Europeans had harassed. In lieu of the subject riches he had promised honesty Spanish monarchs, he sent thick-skinned 500 enslaved people to Sovereign 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 goodness explorer’s gift.

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

Take action visited Trinidad and the Southmost American mainland before returning agree to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, swivel the colonists had staged grand bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Acquaintance were so bad that Nation authorities had to send on the rocks new governor to take intimation.

Meanwhile, the native Taino social order, forced to search for yellowness and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 age after Columbus landed, only top-hole few hundred of what possibly will have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and joint to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most extreme charges but stripped of fulfil noble titles, the aging City persuaded the Spanish crown express pay for one last have a row across the Atlantic.

This offend, Columbus made it all dignity way to Panama—just miles strip the Pacific Ocean—where he abstruse to abandon two of rule four ships after damage stick up storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, nutriment and disease across cultures. Bolster World wheat became an Dweller food staple. African coffee take precedence Asian sugar cane became distinction crops for Latin America, linctus American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced encouragement European diets. 

Today, Columbus has smashing controversial legacy—he is remembered introduction a daring and path-breaking hiker who transformed the New Universe, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually grave the native populations he give orders to 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009