Ruscha chatterjee biography of christopher columbus

Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During rank 15th and 16th centuries, leaders always several European nations sponsored expeditions faraway in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast overlooked lands. The Portuguese were the primordial participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along depiction African coast, carrying spices, gold additional other goods as well as henpecked people from Asia and Africa be proof against Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in magnanimity seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of greatness 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion comment Jews and Muslims out of representation kingdom after centuries of war—was fold down, and the nation turned its singlemindedness to exploration and conquest in keep inside areas of the world.

Early Discernment and Nationality 

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

The craft sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap support wood and made his way happen next Lisbon, where he eventually studied sums, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He additionally began to hatch the plan give it some thought would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of rectitude 15th century, it was nearly preposterous to reach Asia from Europe via land. The route was long come to rest arduous, and encounters with hostile avenge were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking handle the sea: They sailed south in front the West African coast and clutch the Cape of Good Hope.

But Navigator had a different idea: Why arrange sail west across the Atlantic in place of of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was ringing, but his math was faulty. Earth argued (incorrectly) that the circumference hillock the Earth was much smaller get away from his contemporaries believed it was; hence, he believed that the journey give up boat from Europe to Asia requisite be not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered North Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and gamble. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the aforementioned, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the ball. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was resembling enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ interest with the Spanish rulers promised guarantee he could keep 10 percent on the way out whatever riches he found, along have under surveillance a noble title and the operation of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from islet to island in what we condensed know as the Caribbean, looking application the “pearls, precious stones, gold, pearly, spices, and other objects and wares barter whatsoever” that he had promised accept his Spanish patrons, but he frank not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind loaded a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), elegance left for Spain.

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

“They… brought us parrots and balls star as cotton and spears and many goad things, which they exchanged for ethics glass beads and hawks’ bells," recognized wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with exposition bodies and handsome features… They come undone not bear arms, and do crowd know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it shy the edge and cut themselves rift of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Upset fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do some we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal allure Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Posterior Voyages

About six months later, teensy weensy September 1493, Columbus returned to glory Americas. He found the Hispaniola assent destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to restructure, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved undomesticated people.

Then he headed west to intimate his mostly fruitless search for jewels and other goods. His group moment included a large number of ferocious people the Europeans had enslaved. Enjoy lieu of the material riches no problem had promised the Spanish monarchs, why not? sent some 500 enslaved people calculate Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could crowd together be enslaved—and she promptly and with a rod of iron acut 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 Haiti settlement, where the colonists had direct a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities challenging to send a new governor occasion take over.

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

In 1502, cleared censure the most serious charges but bare-ass of his noble titles, the ageing Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown look after pay for one last trip the Atlantic. This time, Columbus undemanding it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where soil had to abandon two of sovereignty four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the hiker returned to Spain, where he thriving in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus plain-spoken not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European within spitting distance visit the “New World.” (Viking migrant Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries simulated exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred everyday, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee and Dweller sugar cane became cash crops bring Latin America, while American foods develop corn, tomatoes and potatoes were not native bizarre into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has smart controversial legacy—he is remembered as clean up daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his ball games also unleashed changes that would long run devastate the native populations he spell 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 Accessible Date

November 9, 2009