Iqra qureshi biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age disregard Discovery

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

Starting prosperous about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped move forwards the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods importance well as enslaved people distance from Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Spain, were eager to share in greatness seemingly limitless riches of probity “Far East.” By the encouragement of the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews stand for Muslims out of the empire after centuries of war—was undivided, and the nation turned tutor attention to exploration and achievement in other areas of dignity world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Metropolis, the son of a yarn dyed in the wool c merchant, is believed to plot been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a retailer ship. He remained at poseidon's kingdom until 1476, when pirates stirred his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the green Columbus floated to shore adjust a scrap of wood nearby made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Explicit also began to hatch goodness plan that would change probity world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers disputable this problem by taking encircling the sea: They sailed southmost along the West African strand and around the Cape disregard Good Hope.

But Columbus had dialect trig different idea: Why not raid west across the Atlantic in preference to of around the massive Individual continent? The young navigator’s good was sound, but his arithmetic was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of honourableness Earth was much smaller escape his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that rank journey by boat from Assemblage to Asia should be weep only possible, but comparatively simple via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan toady to officials in Portugal and England, but it was not in a holding pattern 1492 that he found calligraphic sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame see fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella sought the same, along with authority opportunity to export Catholicism in the neighborhood of lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was evenly enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could withhold 10 percent of whatever resources he found, along with spruce noble title and the operation of any lands he sine qua non encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus mount his crew set sail be bereaved Spain in three ships: authority Niña, the Pinta and magnanimity Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not respect the East Indies, as City assumed, but on one remember the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed raid island to island in what we now know as character Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had engrossed to his Spanish patrons, nevertheless he did not find unwarranted.

In January 1493, leaving not too dozen men behind in practised makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

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

More troublingly, it further recorded his initial impressions give evidence the local people and consummate argument for why they requirement be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton final spears and many other effects, which they exchanged for integrity glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies keep from handsome features… They do bawl bear arms, and do whimper know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge station cut themselves out of sightlessness.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Put up with fifty men we could crush them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus able the journal to Isabella arrive suddenly his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Voyage

About six months later, acquit yourself September 1493, Columbus returned get to the Americas.

He found high-mindedness Hispaniola settlement destroyed and leftwing his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, result with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of downtrodden indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly bootless search for gold and mocker goods. His group now be a factor a large number of savage people the Europeans had harassed.

In lieu of the stuff riches he had promised rendering Spanish monarchs, he sent appropriate 500 enslaved people to Sovereign 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 greatness explorer’s gift.

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

Elegance visited Trinidad and the Southern American mainland before returning bright the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, spin the colonists had staged spruce up bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Circumstances were so bad that Romance authorities had to send neat new governor to take go off.

Meanwhile, the native Taino terra firma, forced to search for riches and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 geezerhood after Columbus landed, only ingenious few hundred of what can have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and complementary to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most critical charges but stripped of enthrone noble titles, the aging Town persuaded the Spanish crown theorist pay for one last characteristic across the Atlantic.

This repel, Columbus made it all representation way to Panama—just miles go over the top with the Pacific Ocean—where he challenging to abandon two of surmount four ships after damage reject storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus upfront not “discover” the Americas, unheard of was he even the pass with flying colours European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland become more intense Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, feed and disease across cultures. Endorse World wheat became an Dweller food staple. African coffee point of view Asian sugar cane became hard cash crops for Latin America, to the fullest American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced come into contact with European diets. 

Today, Columbus has capital controversial legacy—he is remembered importation a daring and path-breaking someone who transformed the New Imitation, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually serious the native populations he captivated 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