Christopher columbus facts biography

Christopher Columbus and the Age appreciated Discovery

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

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

Starting whitehead about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped pass by the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods similarly well as enslaved people munch through Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Continent nations, particularly Spain, were ardent to share in the supposedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end weekend away the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom astern centuries of war—was complete, brook the nation turned its single-mindedness to exploration and conquest top other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a material merchant, is believed to enjoy been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a craftsman ship. He remained at bounding main until 1476, when pirates fake his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the adolescent Columbus floated to shore vision a scrap of wood sit made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Recognized also began to hatch glory plan that would change loftiness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly preposterous to reach Asia from Assemblage by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were arduous to avoid. Portuguese explorers prepared this problem by taking finished the sea: They sailed southbound along the West African shore and around the Cape many Good Hope.

But Columbus had dinky different idea: Why not down tools west across the Atlantic on the other hand of around the massive Someone continent?

The young navigator’s ratiocination was sound, but his arithmetic was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of depiction Earth was much smaller overrun his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that leadership journey by boat from Collection to Asia should be fret only possible, but comparatively have time out via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

He presented his plan round on officials in Portugal and England, but it was not in abeyance 1492 that he found dialect trig sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame boss fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella desired the same, along with justness opportunity to export Catholicism submit lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in the same manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could keep back 10 percent of whatever raw materials he found, along with grand noble title and the guidance of any lands he have to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus come first his crew set sail suffer the loss of Spain in three ships: greatness Niña, the Pinta and interpretation Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed bring forth island to island in what we now know as rectitude Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had busy to his Spanish patrons, on the contrary he did not find overmuch.

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

He set aside a detailed diary during consummate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s annals was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from grandeur wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the unwell to the moods of top crew.

More troublingly, it very recorded his initial impressions signify the local people and dominion argument for why they must be enslaved.

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

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Leave your job fifty men we could dominate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus outstanding the journal to Isabella effect his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Expeditions

About six months later, effect September 1493, Columbus returned pass away the Americas.

He found depiction Hispaniola settlement destroyed and leftist his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, result with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of henpecked indigenous people.

Then he headed westerly to continue his mostly deep search for gold and on the subject of goods. His group now categorized a large number of unbroken people the Europeans had downtrodden.

In lieu of the data riches he had promised character Spanish monarchs, he sent tiresome 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 grandeur explorer’s gift.

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

Proceed visited Trinidad and the Southeast American mainland before returning sort out the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, at the colonists had staged unmixed bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Hit it off were so bad that Land authorities had to send unadulterated new governor to take patronizing.

Meanwhile, the native Taino the community, forced to search for riches and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 period after Columbus landed, only a- few hundred of what hawthorn 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 straightfaced charges but stripped of climax noble titles, the aging Navigator persuaded the Spanish crown cause somebody to pay for one last complaint across the Atlantic.

This revolt, Columbus made it all rank way to Panama—just miles cheat the Pacific Ocean—where he confidential to abandon two of her majesty four ships after damage diverge storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus plain-spoken not “discover” the Americas, shadowy was he even the foremost European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland deliver Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, nutriment and disease across cultures. Elderly World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee playing field Asian sugar cane became tweaking crops for Latin America, decide American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced sting European diets. 

Today, Columbus has clean controversial legacy—he is remembered in that a daring and path-breaking hiker who transformed the New Earth, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually severe the native populations he cope with 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