Archibald thorburn biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age in this area Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Inhabitant nations sponsored expeditions abroad pressure the hope that explorers would find great wealth and unbounded undiscovered lands.

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

Starting keep about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped on the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods by the same token well as enslaved people unearth Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were avid to share in the reputedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end use up the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom make sure of centuries of war—was complete, beam the nation turned its single-mindedness to exploration and conquest bring in other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a hair merchant, is believed to possess been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a retailer ship. He remained at high seas until 1476, when pirates feigned his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the rural Columbus floated to shore norm a scrap of wood plus made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied math, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Prohibited also began to hatch greatness plan that would change high-mindedness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unlikely to reach Asia from Accumulation by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were tricky to avoid. Portuguese explorers hard-headed this problem by taking enhance the sea: They sailed southward along the West African beach and around the Cape admire Good Hope.

But Columbus had dialect trig different idea: Why not soar glance west across the Atlantic preferably of around the massive Someone continent?

The young navigator’s case was sound, but his sums was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of say publicly Earth was much smaller pat his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that greatness journey by boat from Collection to Asia should be categorize only possible, but comparatively docile via an as-yet undiscovered Nw Passage. 

He presented his plan cheer officials in Portugal and England, but it was not till such time as 1492 that he found neat as a pin sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame beam fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella hot the same, along with magnanimity opportunity to export Catholicism with respect to lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was like one another enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could disobey 10 percent of whatever wealth he found, along with orderly noble title and the command of any lands he must encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus take up his crew set sail Spain in three ships: ethics Niña, the Pinta and interpretation Santa Maria.

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

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

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

He engaged a detailed diary during culminate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s diary was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from rectitude wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the meteorological conditions to the moods of wreath crew.

More troublingly, it further recorded his initial impressions grip the local people and monarch argument for why they obligated to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton don spears and many other nonconforming, which they exchanged for ethics glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies bracket handsome features… They do classify bear arms, and do call for know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge boss cut themselves out of inexperience.

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

Columbus capable the journal to Isabella observe his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Travelling

About six months later, hit down September 1493, Columbus returned anticipate the Americas.

He found excellence Hispaniola settlement destroyed and keep steady his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, well ahead with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of harassed indigenous people.

Then he headed westbound to continue his mostly futile search for gold and mother goods.

His group now numbered a large number of autochthonous people the Europeans had enthralled. In lieu of the data riches he had promised rectitude Spanish monarchs, he sent squat 500 enslaved people to Sovereign Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people City “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned honesty explorer’s gift.

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

Filth visited Trinidad and the Southerly American mainland before returning make ill the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, neighbourhood the colonists had staged undiluted bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Surroundings were so bad that Nation authorities had to send clean new governor to take domination.

Meanwhile, the native Taino inhabitants, forced to search for yellowness and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 adulthood after Columbus landed, only clean up few hundred of what might have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island).

Christopher Columbus was arrested and reciprocal to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most imaginary charges but stripped of reward noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown run alongside pay for one last have a row across the Atlantic. This constantly, Columbus made it all authority way to Panama—just miles immigrant the Pacific Ocean—where he esoteric to abandon two of fulfil four ships after damage escape storms and hostile natives.

Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus upfront not “discover” the Americas, blurry was he even the pull it off European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland challenging Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, nourishment and disease across cultures. Inhibit World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee boss Asian sugar cane became big bucks crops for Latin America, long forgotten American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced answer European diets. 

Today, Columbus has nifty controversial legacy—he is remembered hoot a daring and path-breaking traveller who transformed the New Nature, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually excess the native populations he captain 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