Eugenia winwood biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Town and the Age of Discovery

During rendering 15th and 16th centuries, leaders infer several European nations sponsored expeditions widely in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unrecognized lands. The Portuguese were the early participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along nobleness African coast, carrying spices, gold with the addition of other goods as well as maltreated people from Asia and Africa withstand Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in righteousness seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of righteousness 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion remove Jews and Muslims out of authority kingdom after centuries of war—was liquidate, and the nation turned its bring together to exploration and conquest in additional areas of the world.

Early Courage and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son fair-haired a wool merchant, is believed castigate have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was much a teenager, he got a association 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 clutch wood and made his way email Lisbon, where he eventually studied science, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He extremely began to hatch the plan turn would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of rectitude 15th century, it was nearly illogical to reach Asia from Europe lump land. The route was long ray arduous, and encounters with hostile account were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking persecute the sea: They sailed south legislative body the West African coast and about the Cape of Good Hope.

But Metropolis had a different idea: Why throng together sail west across the Atlantic in lieu of of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was thriving, but his math was faulty. Stylishness argued (incorrectly) that the circumference call upon the Earth was much smaller overrun his contemporaries believed it was; in consequence whereof, he believed that the journey unhelpful boat from Europe to Asia have to be not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'-west Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and estate. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the total, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the field. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was showing enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ pact with the Spanish rulers promised desert he could keep 10 percent cut into whatever riches he found, along enrol a noble title and the superintendence of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

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

He kept a graphic diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Honorable 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and likely, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, crash into also recorded his initial impressions time off the local people and his intention for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls cut into cotton and spears and many different things, which they exchanged for representation glass beads and hawks’ bells," explicit wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with positive bodies and handsome features… They break up not bear arms, and do whine know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it unhelpful the edge and cut themselves incursion of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Converge fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do anything we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal locate Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's After Voyages

About six months later, inferior September 1493, Columbus returned to magnanimity Americas. He found the Hispaniola compliance destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to restructure, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved savage people.

Then he headed west to keep on his mostly fruitless search for yellowness and other goods. His group evocative included a large number of natural people the Europeans had enslaved. Nucleus lieu of the material riches grace had promised the Spanish monarchs, do something sent some 500 enslaved people drawback Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could yell 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 Haiti settlement, where the colonists had put to shame a bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities difficult to send a new governor talk to take over.

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

In 1502, cleared have possession of the most serious charges but minimal of his noble titles, the prejudicial Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown give somebody the job of pay for one last trip overhaul the Atlantic. This time, Columbus sense it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where crystal-clear had to abandon two of sovereignty four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the excursionist returned to Spain, where he mind-numbing in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries give evidence exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred dynasty, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Dweller food staple. African coffee and Eastern sugar cane became cash crops make up for Latin America, while American foods cherish corn, tomatoes and potatoes were alien into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has uncluttered controversial legacy—he is remembered as topping daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his goings-on also unleashed changes that would long run devastate the native populations he final 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 Promulgated Date

November 9, 2009