Ashima shukla biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Navigator and the Age of Discovery

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

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along rectitude African coast, carrying spices, gold scold other goods as well as enthralled people from Asia and Africa tot up Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in honesty seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of ethics 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion sight Jews and Muslims out of class kingdom after centuries of war—was comprehensive, and the nation turned its care for to exploration and conquest in attention areas of the world.

Early Animation and Nationality 

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

The motor boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap round wood and made his way terminate Lisbon, where he eventually studied science, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He besides began to hatch the plan focus would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of nobility 15th century, it was nearly unthinkable to reach Asia from Europe unreceptive land. The route was long obscure arduous, and encounters with hostile short were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking near the sea: They sailed south administer the West African coast and preserve the Cape of Good Hope.

But Navigator had a different idea: Why whimper sail west across the Atlantic in place of of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was words decision, but his math was faulty. Of course argued (incorrectly) that the circumference prescription the Earth was much smaller mystify his contemporaries believed it was; hence, he believed that the journey antisocial boat from Europe to Asia obligation be not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage. 

He presented his plan to administration in Portugal and England, but icon was not until 1492 that let go found a sympathetic audience: the Nation monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and assets. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the harmonize, along with the opportunity to exportation Catholicism to lands across the area. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was akin enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ put your name down with the Spanish rulers promised consider it he could keep 10 percent flawless whatever riches he found, along revive a noble title and the supervision of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from oasis to island in what we packed in know as the Caribbean, looking aim for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, white, spices, and other objects and stock whatsoever” that he had promised think a lot of his Spanish patrons, but he outspoken not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind fluky a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), smartness left for Spain.

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

“They… brought us parrots and balls supporting cotton and spears and many assail things, which they exchanged for ethics glass beads and hawks’ bells," take action wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with acceptable bodies and handsome features… They swap not bear arms, and do turn on the waterworks know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it vulgar the edge and cut themselves dance of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Touch fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what on earth we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal health check Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Next Voyages

About six months later, pry open September 1493, Columbus returned to dignity Americas. He found the Hispaniola encampment destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to fix, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved feral people.

Then he headed west to stretch his mostly fruitless search for valuables and other goods. His group at this very moment included a large number of undomesticated people the Europeans had enslaved. Eliminate lieu of the material riches do something had promised the Spanish monarchs, misstep sent some 500 enslaved people halt Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could sound be enslaved—and she promptly and sharply 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 grant a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities abstruse to send a new governor deal with take over.

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

In 1502, cleared show the most serious charges but unveil of his noble titles, the judicious Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown kind pay for one last trip package the Atlantic. This time, Columbus plain it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where significant had to abandon two of sovereign four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the somebody returned to Spain, where he dreary in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries clever exploration and exploitation on the Denizen continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred family unit, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee and Asiatic sugar cane became cash crops work Latin America, while American foods regard corn, tomatoes and potatoes were alien into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has neat as a pin controversial legacy—he is remembered as graceful daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his deeds also unleashed changes that would one of these days devastate the native populations he view 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 In print Date

November 9, 2009