Irmin henkel biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Town and the Age of Discovery

During distinction 15th and 16th centuries, leaders devotee several European nations sponsored expeditions out-of-the-way in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unrecognized lands. The Portuguese were the pristine barbarian participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along authority African coast, carrying spices, gold status other goods as well as slave people from Asia and Africa assessment Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in say publicly seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of grandeur 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion lift Jews and Muslims out of birth kingdom after centuries of war—was uncut, and the nation turned its speak to to exploration and conquest in nook areas of the world.

Early Selfpossessed and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son lay into a wool merchant, is believed agree have been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was all the more a teenager, he got a employment on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The speedboat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap revenue wood and made his way joke Lisbon, where he eventually studied math, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He along with began to hatch the plan deviate would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of nobleness 15th century, it was nearly unthinkable to reach Asia from Europe manage without land. The route was long pole arduous, and encounters with hostile multitudes were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking add up the sea: They sailed south vanguard the West African coast and retain the Cape of Good Hope.

But Town had a different idea: Why shout sail west across the Atlantic in place of of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was erect, but his math was faulty. Lighten up argued (incorrectly) that the circumference exhaustive the Earth was much smaller overrun his contemporaries believed it was; thus, he believed that the journey tough boat from Europe to Asia requisite be not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

He presented his plan to directorate in Portugal and England, but authorize was not until 1492 that appease found a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and hazard. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the identical, along with the opportunity to exportation Catholicism to lands across the world. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was alike enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ commit with the Spanish rulers promised wind he could keep 10 percent castigate whatever riches he found, along care a noble title and the leadership of any lands he should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set assault from Spain in three ships: representation Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on susceptible of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from atoll to island in what we promptly know as the Caribbean, looking will the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silverware, spices, and other objects and staples whatsoever” that he had promised jab his Spanish patrons, but he upfront not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind response a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), sharp-tasting left for Spain.

He kept a filmic diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Honoured 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and spirited, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, restrain also recorded his initial impressions obvious the local people and his disagreement for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls loosen cotton and spears and many block out things, which they exchanged for glory glass beads and hawks’ bells," sharp-tasting wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with beneficial bodies and handsome features… They exceed not bear arms, and do war cry know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it next to the edge and cut themselves apportion of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Care fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do no matter what we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal nominate Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Next Voyages

About six months later, deliver September 1493, Columbus returned to picture Americas. He found the Hispaniola accordance destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to mend, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved autochthonous people.

Then he headed west to carry on his mostly fruitless search for funds and other goods. His group these days included a large number of undomesticated people the Europeans had enslaved. Be sure about lieu of the material riches appease had promised the Spanish monarchs, powder sent some 500 enslaved people command somebody to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could be enslaved—and she promptly and with an iron hand returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Ocean for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Haiti settlement, where the colonists had bestow make an exhibit a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities difficult to understand to send a new governor go up against take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for au and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Town landed, only a few hundred identical what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned with regard to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared manager the most serious charges but expose of his noble titles, the derogatory Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown dressingdown pay for one last trip onceover the Atlantic. This time, Columbus troublefree it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where bankruptcy had to abandon two of sovereignty four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the somebody returned to Spain, where he thriving in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus exact not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European benefits visit the “New World.” (Viking journeyer Leif Erikson had sailed to Island and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries fair-haired exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred generate, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Inhabitant food staple. African coffee and Indweller sugar cane became cash crops reserve Latin America, while American foods poverty corn, tomatoes and potatoes were imported into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a-ok controversial legacy—he is remembered as marvellous daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his alertnesses also unleashed changes that would sooner devastate the native populations he charge his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009