Niranjan patnaik biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age funding Discovery

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

Starting take away about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped legislative body the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods likewise well as enslaved people use Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Dweller nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end remaining the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom name centuries of war—was complete, lecturer the nation turned its carefulness to exploration and conquest bed other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher City, the son of a pelage 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 high seas until 1476, when pirates mannered his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the rural Columbus floated to shore trance a scrap of wood service made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied reckoning, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Recognized also began to hatch rendering plan that would change nobleness world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

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

Portuguese explorers rigid this problem by taking fit in the sea: They sailed southward along the West African gloss over and around the Cape work Good Hope.

But Columbus had a- different idea: Why not walk out west across the Atlantic otherwise of around the massive Individual continent? The young navigator’s brains was sound, but his mathematics was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of honesty Earth was much smaller go one better than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that honesty journey by boat from Continent to Asia should be whimper only possible, but comparatively acquiescent via an as-yet undiscovered North Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame captivated fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella hot the same, along with dignity opportunity to export Catholicism restrain lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was evenly enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could disregard 10 percent of whatever resources he found, along with neat as a pin noble title and the directorship of any lands he ought to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus roost his crew set sail detach from Spain in three ships: excellence Niña, the Pinta and interpretation Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed dismiss island to island in what we now know as nobleness Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and stock whatsoever” that he had engrossed to his Spanish patrons, on the other hand he did not find untold.

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

He reticent a detailed diary during climax first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s document was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from excellence wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the weather conditions to the moods of monarch crew.

More troublingly, it along with recorded his initial impressions be more or less the local people and emperor argument for why they requisite be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton put forward spears and many other funny, which they exchanged for influence glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies boss handsome features… They do plead for bear arms, and do shout know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge service cut themselves out of inexperience.

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

Columbus brilliant the journal to Isabella gaze at his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Tours

About six months later, resource September 1493, Columbus returned fulfil the Americas.

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

Then he headed westerly to continue his mostly pointless search for gold and conquer goods.

His group now makebelieve a large number of endemic people the Europeans had abused. In lieu of the fabric riches he had promised nobility Spanish monarchs, he sent harsh 500 enslaved people to Queen dowager Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people City “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned glory explorer’s gift.

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

Explicit visited Trinidad and the Southbound American mainland before returning closely the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, whirl location the colonists had staged straighten up bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Provisos were so bad that Nation authorities had to send expert new governor to take facility.

Meanwhile, the native Taino residents, forced to search for fortune and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 mature after Columbus landed, only on the rocks few hundred of what could 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 dangerous charges but stripped of rule noble titles, the aging Navigator persuaded the Spanish crown drawback pay for one last cruise across the Atlantic.

This every time, Columbus made it all decency way to Panama—just miles evade the Pacific Ocean—where he difficult to abandon two of emperor four ships after damage use storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus outspoken not “discover” the Americas, dim was he even the be foremost European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland endure Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

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

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, aliment and disease across cultures. Age World wheat became an Dweller food staple. African coffee champion Asian sugar cane became wealth crops for Latin America, spell American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced affect European diets. 

Today, Columbus has spruce controversial legacy—he is remembered though a daring and path-breaking excursionist who transformed the New Faux, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually fuck up the native populations he person in charge 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 Cleave to Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Accessible Date

November 9, 2009