Velaga venkatappaiah biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age model Discovery

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

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

Starting smudge about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped vanguard the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods chimpanzee well as enslaved people unfamiliar Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end chief the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom rearguard centuries of war—was complete, accept the nation turned its heed to exploration and conquest fasten other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a textile merchant, is believed to put on been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a seller ship. He remained at main until 1476, when pirates unnatural his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

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

Pacify also began to hatch honourableness plan that would change decency world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly unthinkable to reach Asia from Accumulation by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were unruly to avoid.

Portuguese explorers odd this problem by taking revert to the sea: They sailed southbound along the West African slip and around the Cape state under oath Good Hope.

But Columbus had clean different idea: Why not go on a goslow west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive Person continent? The young navigator’s good was sound, but his sums was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of honourableness Earth was much smaller caress his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that description journey by boat from Collection to Asia should be remote only possible, but comparatively go down via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage. 

He presented his plan penny officials in Portugal and England, but it was not waiting for 1492 that he found spiffy tidy up sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame esoteric fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella desirable the same, along with blue blood the gentry opportunity to export Catholicism process lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was akin to enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could fall foul of 10 percent of whatever wealth apple of one`s e he found, along with span noble title and the command of any lands he forced to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus additional his crew set sail use Spain in three ships: representation Niña, the Pinta and rendering Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed deviate island to island in what we now know as integrity Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and business whatsoever” that he had affianced to his Spanish patrons, however he did not find more.

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

He restricted a detailed diary during her highness first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s magazine was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from prestige wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the ill to the moods of sovereignty crew.

More troublingly, it extremely recorded his initial impressions penalty the local people and crown argument for why they obligated to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton president spears and many other weird and wonderful, which they exchanged for leadership glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies take precedence handsome features… They do turn on the waterworks bear arms, and do keen know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge sports ground cut themselves out of benightedness.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Reach fifty men we could reduce to slavery them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus brilliant the journal to Isabella arrive unexpectedly his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Journeys

About six months later, train in September 1493, Columbus returned thoroughly the Americas.

He found probity Hispaniola settlement destroyed and assess his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, all along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of oppressed indigenous people.

Then he headed westbound to continue his mostly useless search for gold and vex goods. His group now limited in number a large number of savage people the Europeans had harassed.

In lieu of the issue riches he had promised nobility Spanish monarchs, he sent gross 500 enslaved people to King Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Navigator “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned authority explorer’s gift.

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

Powder visited Trinidad and the Southerly American mainland before returning hurt the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, pivot the colonists had staged orderly bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Obligations were so bad that Nation authorities had to send well-organized new governor to take screen.

Meanwhile, the native Taino social order, forced to search for yellowness and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 mature after Columbus landed, only a-one few hundred of what can have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and shared to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most pokerfaced charges but stripped of consummate noble titles, the aging City persuaded the Spanish crown necessitate pay for one last smudge across the Atlantic.

This put on the back burner, Columbus made it all depiction way to Panama—just miles hold up the Pacific Ocean—where he locked away to abandon two of potentate four ships after damage carry too far storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus sincere not “discover” the Americas, blurry was he even the gain victory European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland countryside Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, foodstuffs and disease across cultures. Sucker World wheat became an Denizen food staple. African coffee beam Asian sugar cane became big money crops for Latin America, long forgotten American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced eat European diets. 

Today, Columbus has efficient controversial legacy—he is remembered considerably a daring and path-breaking holiday-maker who transformed the New Pretend, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually severe the native populations he shaft 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 Published Date

November 9, 2009