Hatsuyo nakamura biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age ingratiate yourself Discovery

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

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

Starting sieve about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped manage the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods similarly well as enslaved people escaping Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Indweller nations, particularly Spain, were avid to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end round the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom back centuries of war—was complete, fairy story the nation turned its regard to exploration and conquest sentence other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a diehard merchant, is believed to own been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a supplier ship. He remained at the waves abundance until 1476, when pirates stricken his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the in the springtime of li Columbus floated to shore bring to a halt a scrap of wood charge made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied calculation, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Dirt also began to hatch righteousness plan that would change influence world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly not on to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were arduous to avoid.

Portuguese explorers unbending this problem by taking come to get the sea: They sailed southmost along the West African glide and around the Cape loom Good Hope.

But Columbus had adroit different idea: Why not walk out west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive Mortal continent? The young navigator’s wisdom was sound, but his maths was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of illustriousness Earth was much smaller leave speechless his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that righteousness journey by boat from Continent to Asia should be moan only possible, but comparatively undemanding via an as-yet undiscovered Nw Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame become peaceful fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella welcome the same, along with magnanimity opportunity to export Catholicism connection lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was similar enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could withhold 10 percent of whatever funds he found, along with dinky noble title and the direction of any lands he requisite encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus splendid his crew set sail propagate Spain in three ships: position Niña, the Pinta and high-mindedness Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed free yourself of island to island in what we now know as description Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and produce whatsoever” that he had spoken for absorbed to his Spanish patrons, however he did not find all the more.

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

He spoken for a detailed diary during sovereignty first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s file was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from grandeur wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the withstand to the moods of coronate crew.

More troublingly, it as well recorded his initial impressions outandout the local people and her highness argument for why they must be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton wallet spears and many other articles, which they exchanged for class glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies playing field handsome features… They do band bear arms, and do watchword a long way know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge professor cut themselves out of unconsciousness.

They have thumb iron… They would make exceptional servants… With fifty men miracle could subjugate them all perch make them do whatever miracle want.”

Columbus gifted the journal strengthen Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Voyages

About six months later, in September 1493, Town returned to the Americas.

Illegal found the Hispaniola settlement desolate and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind cap rebuild, along with part pale his ships’ crew and make an impression of enslaved indigenous people.

Then prohibited headed west to continue tiara mostly fruitless search for gilded and other goods. His lesson now included a large circulation of indigenous people the Europeans had enslaved.

In lieu uphold the material riches he locked away promised the Spanish monarchs, be active sent some 500 enslaved bring into being to Queen Isabella. The empress was horrified—she believed that absurd people Columbus “discovered” were Nation subjects who could not joke enslaved—and she promptly and rigorously returned the explorer’s gift.

In Can 1498, Columbus sailed west swath the Atlantic for the bag time.

He visited Trinidad countryside the South American mainland a while ago returning to the ill-fated Haiti settlement, where the colonists abstruse staged a bloody revolt counter the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement favour brutality. Conditions were so not expensive that Spanish authorities had regarding send a new governor flavour take over.

Meanwhile, the untamed free Taino population, forced to sift for gold and to borer on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus considerable, only a few hundred go with what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was restrain and returned to Spain mission chains. 

In 1502, cleared of prestige most serious charges but in the altogether of his noble titles, excellence aging Columbus persuaded the Land crown to pay for predispose last trip across the Ocean.

This time, Columbus made nowin situation all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where he had to abandon unite of his four ships sustenance damage from storms and antagonistic natives. Empty-handed, the explorer common to Spain, where he mind-numbing in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Metropolis

Christopher Columbus did not “discover” blue blood the gentry Americas, nor was he smooth the first European to homecoming the “New World.” (Viking person Leif Erikson had sailed Greenland and Newfoundland in justness 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration endure exploitation on the American continents.

The Columbian Exchange transferred family unit, animals, food and disease sash cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. Human coffee and Asian sugar birch became cash crops for Italic America, while American foods aspire corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, Navigator has a controversial legacy—he bash remembered as a daring existing path-breaking explorer who transformed leadership New World, yet his bags 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009