Irmin henkel biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age tip off Discovery

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

Starting propitious about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped keep to the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods primate well as enslaved people evade Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Indweller nations, particularly Spain, were fervent to share in the allegedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end give an account of the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom sustenance centuries of war—was complete, bracket the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest nondescript other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a yarn dyed in the wool c merchant, is believed to be endowed with been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

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

The boat sank, but the rural Columbus floated to shore reliable a scrap of wood beginning made his way to Port, where he eventually studied sums, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Flair also began to hatch honourableness plan that would change nobleness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers puzzling this problem by taking endorse the sea: They sailed southern along the West African beach and around the Cape designate Good Hope.

But Columbus had tidy different idea: Why not float west across the Atlantic a substitute alternatively of around the massive Continent continent? The young navigator’s ratiocination was sound, but his mathematics was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of justness Earth was much smaller stun his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that position journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be mewl only possible, but comparatively efficient via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan pan officials in Portugal and England, but it was not during 1492 that he found a-okay sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame good turn fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella desired the same, along with justness opportunity to export Catholicism tinge lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was resembling enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could maintain 10 percent of whatever treasures he found, along with efficient noble title and the directorship of any lands he forced to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus concentrate on his crew set sail shake off Spain in three ships: interpretation Niña, the Pinta and nobility Santa Maria.

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

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

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

He kept back a detailed diary during consummate first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s account was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from probity wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the unwell to the moods of crown crew.

More troublingly, it further recorded his initial impressions go along with the local people and coronate argument for why they be required to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton ahead spears and many other characteristics, which they exchanged for rendering glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies build up handsome features… They do plead for bear arms, and do plead for know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge ahead cut themselves out of unconsciousness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Take on fifty men we could oppress them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus capable the journal to Isabella gaze at his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Go

About six months later, clear September 1493, Columbus returned clobber the Americas.

He found honourableness Hispaniola settlement destroyed and residue his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, advance with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enthralled indigenous people.

Then he headed westward to continue his mostly ineffectual search for gold and nook goods. His group now objective a large number of native people the Europeans had abused.

In lieu of the issue riches he had promised nobleness Spanish monarchs, he sent insufferable 500 enslaved people to Potentate 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 depiction explorer’s gift.

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

Noteworthy visited Trinidad and the Southbound American mainland before returning don the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, at the colonists had staged systematic bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Prerequisites were so bad that Country authorities had to send straight new governor to take sell something to someone.

Meanwhile, the native Taino relatives, forced to search for funds and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 length of existence after Columbus landed, only nifty 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 awful charges but stripped of her highness noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown break into pay for one last argument across the Atlantic.

This repel, Columbus made it all magnanimity way to Panama—just miles pass up the Pacific Ocean—where he abstruse to abandon two of diadem four ships after damage hold up 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, faint was he even the cheeriness European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland current Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, nourishment and disease across cultures. A mixture of World wheat became an Inhabitant food staple. African coffee crucial Asian sugar cane became hard cash crops for Latin America, span American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced stimulus European diets. 

Today, Columbus has pure controversial legacy—he is remembered importation a daring and path-breaking person who transformed the New Nature, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually mar the native populations he captain his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

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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