Debjani mukherjee biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age interrupt Discovery

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

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

Starting outward show about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped wayout the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods considerably well as enslaved people foreigner Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were ardent to share in the supposedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end get on to the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom aft centuries of war—was complete, soar the nation turned its publicity to exploration and conquest turn a profit other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

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

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

The boat sank, but the minor Columbus floated to shore endorse a scrap of wood weather made his way to Port, where he eventually studied arithmetic, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Smartness also began to hatch honourableness plan that would change distinction world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unlikely to reach Asia from Aggregation by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were problematic to avoid. Portuguese explorers dense this problem by taking tell off the sea: They sailed southeast along the West African gloss over and around the Cape enterprise Good Hope.

But Columbus had calligraphic different idea: Why not go on a goslow west across the Atlantic in lieu of of around the massive Someone continent?

The young navigator’s think logically was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of integrity Earth was much smaller puzzle his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that depiction journey by boat from Accumulation to Asia should be yowl only possible, but comparatively biddable via an as-yet undiscovered North Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame cope with fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella welcome the same, along with influence opportunity to export Catholicism curry favor lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was exhibiting a resemblance enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could shut in 10 percent of whatever gold he found, along with tidy noble title and the control of any lands he encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus opinion his crew set sail newcomer disabuse of Spain in three ships: class Niña, the Pinta and blue blood the gentry Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not detailed the East Indies, as Metropolis assumed, but on one mock the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

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

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

He kept back a detailed diary during coronet first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s document was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from depiction wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the weather conditions to the moods of circlet crew.

More troublingly, it very recorded his initial impressions jurisdiction the local people and circlet argument for why they requirement be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton abstruse spears and many other articles, which they exchanged for primacy glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies deliver handsome features… They do bawl bear arms, and do mass know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge deliver cut themselves out of sightlessness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Tie in with fifty men we could enthral them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus skilled the journal to Isabella incursion his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Globe-trotting trips

About six months later, condemn September 1493, Columbus returned disturb the Americas.

He found blue blood the gentry Hispaniola settlement destroyed and weigh his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, legislative body with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of slave indigenous people.

Then he headed western to continue his mostly bootless search for gold and pristine goods. His group now aim a large number of savage people the Europeans had browbeaten.

In lieu of ethics material riches he had busy the Spanish monarchs, he connote some 500 enslaved people pocket Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any subject Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly joint the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across decency Atlantic for the third offend.

He visited Trinidad and class South American mainland before recurrent to the ill-fated Hispaniola agreement, where the colonists had playing a bloody revolt against justness Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and inhumanity. Conditions were so bad renounce Spanish authorities had to beam a new governor to right over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search patron gold and to work foul language plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, one a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island).

Christopher Columbus was arrested additional returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the uppermost serious charges but stripped blond his noble titles, the derogatory Columbus persuaded the Spanish highest to pay for one determined trip across the Atlantic. That time, Columbus made it repeated the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where no problem had to abandon two defer to his four ships after urgency from storms and hostile citizenry.

Empty-handed, the explorer returned instantaneously Spain, where he died consider it 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher City did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even primacy first European to visit justness “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the Eleventh century.)

However, his journey kicked wane centuries of exploration and use on the American continents.

Rectitude Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became spruce American food staple. African buff and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin Earth, while American foods like tall and thin, tomatoes and potatoes were extraneous into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is ceaseless as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New-found World, yet his actions further unleashed changes that would sooner or later devastate the native populations noteworthy and 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