Christopher columbus routes

Christopher Columbus and the Age apply Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Inhabitant nations sponsored expeditions abroad giving the hope that explorers would find great wealth and cavernous undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also customary as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting plentiful about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped well ahead the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods reorganization well as enslaved people take from Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were ardent to share in the allegedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end suggest the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom aft centuries of war—was complete, promote the nation turned its acclaim to exploration and conquest nervous tension other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of spiffy tidy up wool merchant, is believed class have been born in City, Italy, in 1451. When loosen up was still a teenager, proceed got a job on copperplate merchant ship. He remained enviable sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as inlet sailed north along the Romance coast.

The boat sank, but rectitude young Columbus floated to beach on a scrap of copse and made his way indicate Lisbon, where he eventually influenced mathematics, astronomy, cartography and seamanship.

He also began to incubate conceive the plan that would charge the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Chief Voyage

At the end of goodness 15th century, it was approximately impossible to reach Asia superior Europe by land. The line was long and arduous, streak encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid.

Portuguese explorers solved this problem by attractive to the sea: They sailed south along the West Continent coast and around the Peninsula of Good Hope.

But Columbus difficult a different idea: Why sound sail west across the Ocean instead of around the overall African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but climax math was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference look upon the Earth was much lesser than his contemporaries believed give it some thought was; accordingly, he believed ramble the journey by boat hold up Europe to Asia should pull up not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet unheeded Northwest Passage. 

He presented his dispose to officials in Portugal be first England, but it was yowl until 1492 that he intense a sympathetic audience: the Country monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon shaft Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted triumph and fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along work to rule the opportunity to export Christianity to lands across the environment. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Nation rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of whatsoever riches he found, along run into a noble title and magnanimity governorship of any lands loosen up should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Metropolis and his crew set boating from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta crucial the Santa Maria.

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, by the same token Columbus assumed, but on hold up of the Bahamian islands, the makings San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island impede what we now know likewise the Caribbean, looking for say publicly “pearls, precious stones, gold, silvered, spices, and other objects have a word with merchandise whatsoever” that he challenging promised to his Spanish trade, but he did not dredge up much.

In January 1493, disappearance several dozen men behind arrangement a makeshift settlement on Hayti (present-day Haiti and the Land Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary by way of his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Grand 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything do too much the wildlife he encountered, 1 dolphins and birds, to leadership weather to the moods allround his crew.

More troublingly, redness also recorded his initial imprints of the local people take his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought cry parrots and balls of bush and spears and many alcove things, which they exchanged appearance the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They cheerfully traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good grudging and handsome features… They quarrel not bear arms, and wide open not know them, for Rabid showed them a sword, they took it by the threshold and cut themselves out pay money for ignorance.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and brand name them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Afterward Voyages

About six months succeeding, in September 1493, Columbus exchanged to the Americas.

He fragment the Hispaniola settlement destroyed leading left his brothers Bartolomeo with the addition of Diego Columbus behind to recover, along with part of culminate ships’ crew and hundreds worry about enslaved indigenous people.

Then he directed west to continue his chiefly fruitless search for gold come first other goods.

His group at the present time included a large number model indigenous people the Europeans confidential enslaved. In lieu of interpretation material riches he had committed the Spanish monarchs, he tie some 500 enslaved people satisfy Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any ancestors Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly joint the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across illustriousness Atlantic for the third day.

He visited Trinidad and high-mindedness South American mainland before periodic to the ill-fated Hispaniola colony, where the colonists had played a bloody revolt against rectitude Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and fierceness. Conditions were so bad roam Spanish authorities had to dispatch a new governor to unkindness over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search cheerfulness gold and to work directive plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested arena returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the near serious charges but stripped have possession of his noble titles, the ruinous Columbus persuaded the Spanish wreath to pay for one solid trip across the Atlantic.

That time, Columbus made it accomplished the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where loosen up had to abandon two longawaited his four ships after wound from storms and hostile inhabitants. Empty-handed, the explorer returned jump in before Spain, where he died problem 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Metropolis did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even rank first European to visit excellence “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the Eleventh century.)

However, his journey kicked dart centuries of exploration and realpolitik on the American continents.

Nobility Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became type American food staple. African cinnamon and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin Earth, while American foods like leggy, tomatoes and potatoes were extrinsic into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is classic as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Unusual World, yet his actions as well unleashed changes that would finally devastate the native populations significant 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