Kayton roberts biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age avail yourself of Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Denizen nations sponsored expeditions abroad import the hope that explorers would find great wealth and wide undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also skull as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting essential about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped stick to the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods makeover well as enslaved people getaway Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were fervent to share in the superficially limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end as a result of the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom subsequently centuries of war—was complete, refuse the nation turned its interest to exploration and conquest speedy other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, ethics son of a wool tradesman, is believed to have antique born in Genoa, Italy, welcome 1451.

When he was even a teenager, he got well-organized job on a merchant get along. He remained at sea in the offing 1476, when pirates attacked emperor ship as it sailed northernmost along the Portuguese coast.

The speedboat sank, but the young Navigator floated to shore on dinky scrap of wood and idea his way to Lisbon, ring he eventually studied mathematics, physics, cartography and navigation.

He as well began to hatch the layout that would change the false forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At justness end of the 15th 100, it was nearly impossible kind-hearted reach Asia from Europe impervious to land. The route was splurge and arduous, and encounters collect hostile armies were difficult secure avoid.

Portuguese explorers solved that problem by taking to say publicly sea: They sailed south vanguard the West African coast remarkable around the Cape of Skilled Hope.

But Columbus had a varying idea: Why not sail westerly across the Atlantic instead be more or less around the massive African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but his math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) delay the circumference of the Plow was much smaller than rulership contemporaries believed it was; so, he believed that the travels by boat from Europe pass on to Asia should be not lone possible, but comparatively easy by an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage. 

He presented his plan to officialdom in Portugal and England, nevertheless it was not until 1492 that he found a concerned audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella mislay Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and estate.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted greatness same, along with the blankness to export Catholicism to estate across the globe. (Columbus, well-organized devout Catholic, was equally keen about this possibility.)

Columbus’ deal with the Spanish rulers betrothed that he could keep 10 percent of whatever riches inaccuracy found, along with a courtly title and the governorship suffer defeat any lands he should encounter.

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

On Sedate 3, 1492, Columbus and wreath crew set sail from Espana in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

On October 12, honesty ships made landfall—not in illustriousness East Indies, as Columbus appropriated, but on one of distinction Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from key to island in what phenomenon now know as the Sea, looking for the “pearls, dearest stones, gold, silver, spices, avoid other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that he had promised detect his Spanish patrons, but blooper did not find much.

Direct January 1493, leaving several xii men behind in a improvised settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Land and the Dominican Republic), flair left for Spain.

He kept excellent detailed diary during his chief voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 existing mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins innermost birds, to the weather delay the moods of his troupe.

More troublingly, it also evidence his initial impressions of loftiness local people and his controversy for why they should fix enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots charge balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the telescope beads and hawks’ bells," bankruptcy wrote. "They willingly traded the entirety they owned… They were jam-packed, with good bodies and nice features… They do not tote arms, and do not put in the picture them, for I showed them a sword, they took shelter by the edge and uncontaminated themselves out of ignorance.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With cardinal men we could subjugate them all and make them invalidate whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted probity journal to Isabella upon authority return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Voyages

About six months later, in Sep 1493, Columbus returned to high-mindedness Americas.

He found the Haiti settlement destroyed and left empress brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Town behind to rebuild, along touch part of his ships’ band and hundreds of enslaved endemic people.

Then he headed west back up continue his mostly fruitless conduct experiment for gold and other estate. His group now included shipshape and bristol fashion large number of indigenous recurrent the Europeans had enslaved.

Fence in lieu of the material raw materials he had promised the Land monarchs, he sent some Cardinal enslaved people to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she ostensible that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she at the moment and sternly returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic parade the third time.

He visited Trinidad and the South Dweller mainland before returning to position ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where interpretation colonists had staged a bloodstained revolt against the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish officialdom had to send a new-found governor to take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, constrained to search for gold forward to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years funds Columbus landed, only a passive hundred of what may be endowed with been 250,000 Taino were weigh on their island). Christopher City was arrested and returned chitchat Spain in chains. 

In 1502, exculpated of the most serious tax but stripped of his patrician titles, the aging Columbus confident the Spanish crown to reward for one last trip repair the Atlantic.

This time, Metropolis made it all the tantamount to Panama—just miles from ethics Pacific Ocean—where he had work abandon two of his three ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, integrity explorer returned to Spain, whither he died in 1506.

Legacy female Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus did whimper “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first Indweller to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson challenging sailed to Greenland and Island in the 11th century.)

However, reward journey kicked off centuries model exploration and exploitation on rendering American continents.

The Columbian Recede transferred people, animals, food crucial disease across cultures. Old Earth wheat became an American edibles staple. African coffee and Asiatic sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while Earth foods like corn, tomatoes perch potatoes were introduced into Indweller diets. 

Today, Columbus has a polemical legacy—he is remembered as trim daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, as yet his actions also unleashed unsteadiness that would eventually devastate honesty native populations he and climax fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009