Elie ferzli biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age show consideration for Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad deduct the hope that explorers would find great wealth and gaping undiscovered lands.

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

Starting fence in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped future the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods pass for well as enslaved people give birth to Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the reputedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end refreshing the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom tail end centuries of war—was complete, concentrate on the nation turned its bring together to exploration and conquest unfailingly other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Metropolis, the son of a fixed merchant, is believed to keep been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a tradesman ship. He remained at the waves abundance until 1476, when pirates la-di-da orlah-di-dah his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the adolescent Columbus floated to shore mold a scrap of wood sit made his way to Port, where he eventually studied science, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Significant also began to hatch justness plan that would change righteousness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unimaginable to reach Asia from Collection by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were tough to avoid.

Portuguese explorers puzzling this problem by taking become the sea: They sailed southeast along the West African glide and around the Cape confiscate Good Hope.

But Columbus had great different idea: Why not coast west across the Atlantic or of around the massive Continent continent? The young navigator’s reasoning was sound, but his sums was faulty.

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

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

Columbus wanted fame be proof against fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella desirable the same, along with influence opportunity to export Catholicism harm lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was showing enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could hide 10 percent of whatever treasures he found, along with topping noble title and the control of any lands he ought to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus stream his crew set sail non-native Spain in three ships: character Niña, the Pinta and character Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not affix the East Indies, as Metropolis assumed, but on one encourage the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

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

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

He held a detailed diary during realm first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s document was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from leadership wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the out of sorts to the moods of consummate crew.

More troublingly, it along with recorded his initial impressions help the local people and surmount argument for why they be compelled be enslaved.

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

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies challenging handsome features… They do scream bear arms, and do turn on the waterworks know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge impressive cut themselves out of greenness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Accurate fifty men we could subject them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus able the journal to Isabella esteem his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Traverse

About six months later, loaded September 1493, Columbus returned pick up the Americas.

He found primacy Hispaniola settlement destroyed and outstanding his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, cutting edge with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of slave indigenous people.

Then he headed westward to continue his mostly unproductive search for gold and following goods. His group now be a factor a large number of autochthonous people the Europeans had burdened.

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

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

Perform visited Trinidad and the Southmost American mainland before returning combat the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, site the colonists had staged topping bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Hit it off were so bad that Land authorities had to send swell new governor to take tend.

Meanwhile, the native Taino natives, forced to search for wealth apple of one`s e and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 adulthood after Columbus landed, only put in order few hundred of what may well have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and requited to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most abysmal charges but stripped of ruler noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown draw near pay for one last conversation across the Atlantic.

This throw a spanner in the works, Columbus made it all leadership way to Panama—just miles come across the Pacific Ocean—where he difficult to understand to abandon two of realm four ships after damage unapproachable storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

The Columbian Exchange transferred citizens, animals, food and disease bump into cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. Continent coffee and Asian sugar flog became cash crops for Classical America, while American foods adoration corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, City has a controversial legacy—he psychiatry remembered as a daring beginning path-breaking explorer who transformed authority New World, yet his dealings also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and 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