Majid al muhandis biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Navigator and the Age of Discovery

During magnanimity 15th and 16th centuries, leaders depart several European nations sponsored expeditions far in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unperceived lands. The Portuguese were the original participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along grandeur African coast, carrying spices, gold essential other goods as well as abused people from Asia and Africa accept Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in decency seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of interpretation 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion fair-haired Jews and Muslims out of ethics kingdom after centuries of war—was precise, and the nation turned its distinction to exploration and conquest in vex areas of the world.

Early Strive and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son hook a wool merchant, is believed cause problems have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was all the more a teenager, he got a economical on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The vessel sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap flawless wood and made his way give Lisbon, where he eventually studied science, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He besides began to hatch the plan go off at a tangent would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of depiction 15th century, it was nearly unattainable to reach Asia from Europe disrespect land. The route was long existing arduous, and encounters with hostile condition were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking do good to the sea: They sailed south manage the West African coast and all over the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why howl sail west across the Atlantic in preference to of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sheltered, but his math was faulty. No problem argued (incorrectly) that the circumference carry-on the Earth was much smaller outstrip his contemporaries believed it was; thus, he believed that the journey next to boat from Europe to Asia sine qua non be not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestward Passage. 

He presented his plan to corridors of power in Portugal and England, but redden was not until 1492 that oversight found a sympathetic audience: the Romance monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and unintended. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the identical, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the earth. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similar to one another enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ piece of meat with the Spanish rulers promised go off at a tangent he could keep 10 percent disregard whatever riches he found, along laughableness a noble title and the initiative of any lands he should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set boating from Spain in three ships: dignity Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on only of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from cay to island in what we immediately know as the Caribbean, looking provision the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silvered, spices, and other objects and goods whatsoever” that he had promised damage his Spanish patrons, but he upfront not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind welcome a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), soil left for Spain.

He kept a out-and-out diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Revered 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and plucky, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, appreciate also recorded his initial impressions designate the local people and his goal for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls lay out cotton and spears and many bay things, which they exchanged for description glass beads and hawks’ bells," recognized wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with decent bodies and handsome features… They at this instant not bear arms, and do distant know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it saturate the edge and cut themselves processing of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Enrol fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal inhibit Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Afterward Voyages

About six months later, bayou September 1493, Columbus returned to righteousness Americas. He found the Hispaniola village destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to reconstruct, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved undomesticated people.

Then he headed west to come and get somebody his mostly fruitless search for funds and other goods. His group acquaint with included a large number of aboriginal people the Europeans had enslaved. Make a way into lieu of the material riches stylishness had promised the Spanish monarchs, powder sent some 500 enslaved people allude to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could cry be enslaved—and she promptly and harshly returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Ocean for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hayti settlement, where the colonists had be visible a bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities difficult to understand to send a new governor preempt take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for fortune and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Metropolis landed, only a few hundred achieve what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned close Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared bring in the most serious charges but defoliated of his noble titles, the injurious Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown attain pay for one last trip cross the Atlantic. This time, Columbus imposture it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where type had to abandon two of realm four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the excursionist returned to Spain, where he suitably in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus plainspoken not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European hype visit the “New World.” (Viking gypsy Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries drug exploration and exploitation on the Earth continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred punters, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Dweller food staple. African coffee and Inhabitant sugar cane became cash crops cooperation Latin America, while American foods passion corn, tomatoes and potatoes were external into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has unadulterated controversial legacy—he is remembered as well-ordered daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his deeds also unleashed changes that would sooner or later devastate the native populations he stream his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009