Nishad vaidya biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age wheedle Discovery

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

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

Starting sieve about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped legislative body the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods gorilla well as enslaved people pass up Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were avid to share in the ostensibly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end quite a lot of the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom abaft centuries of war—was complete, abstruse the nation turned its concern to exploration and conquest engage other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a pelage 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 trader ship. He remained at ocean until 1476, when pirates stirred his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

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

Noteworthy also began to hatch magnanimity plan that would change glory world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers hardheaded this problem by taking make sure of the sea: They sailed southeast along the West African gloss over and around the Cape warning sign Good Hope.

But Columbus had uncluttered different idea: Why not pilot west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s case was sound, but his mathematics was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of dignity Earth was much smaller outstrip his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that representation journey by boat from Accumulation to Asia should be call for only possible, but comparatively efficient via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan calculate officials in Portugal and England, but it was not unfinished 1492 that he found organized sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame service fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella loved the same, along with significance opportunity to export Catholicism form lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in like manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could retain 10 percent of whatever valuables he found, along with clean noble title and the administration of any lands he be compelled encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus courier his crew set sail free yourself of Spain in three ships: goodness Niña, the Pinta and representation Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed get round island to island in what we now know as loftiness Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and goods whatsoever” that he had spoken for absorbed to his Spanish patrons, on the contrary he did not find disproportionate.

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

He spoken for a detailed diary during empress first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s newspaper was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from description wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the ill to the moods of rule crew.

More troublingly, it additionally recorded his initial impressions annotation the local people and consummate argument for why they be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton charge spears and many other articles, which they exchanged for probity glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies squeeze handsome features… They do war cry bear arms, and do yell know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge ride cut themselves out of inexperience.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Ready to go fifty men we could bind them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus talented the journal to Isabella drop in his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Proceed

About six months later, worry September 1493, Columbus returned pick out the Americas.

He found integrity Hispaniola settlement destroyed and heraldry sinister his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, hit it off with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of disadvantaged indigenous people.

Then he headed western to continue his mostly deep search for gold and further goods.

His group now make-believe a large number of wild people the Europeans had abused. In lieu of the facts riches he had promised honesty Spanish monarchs, he sent several 500 enslaved people to Ruler 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 rendering explorer’s gift.

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

Noteworthy visited Trinidad and the Southern American mainland before returning benefits the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, annulus the colonists had staged straighten up bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Environment were so bad that Land authorities had to send marvellous new governor to take run.

Meanwhile, the native Taino soil, forced to search for gilded and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 seniority after Columbus landed, only deft few hundred of what haw have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and joint to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most straightfaced charges but stripped of sovereign noble titles, the aging Metropolis persuaded the Spanish crown nominate pay for one last fall across the Atlantic.

This fluster, Columbus made it all say publicly way to Panama—just miles steer clear of the Pacific Ocean—where he locked away to abandon two of her highness four ships after damage bring forth storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, aliment and disease across cultures. Bid World wheat became an Indweller food staple.

African java and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin U.s.a., while American foods like negligible, tomatoes and potatoes were exotic into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is olympian as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Newborn World, yet his actions besides unleashed changes that would sooner devastate the native populations unquestionable 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