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Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During class 15th and 16th centuries, leaders party several European nations sponsored expeditions remote in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unknown 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 fairy story other goods as well as maltreated people from Asia and Africa display Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in loftiness seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of picture 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion show consideration for Jews and Muslims out of rectitude kingdom after centuries of war—was finished, and the nation turned its acclaim to exploration and conquest in succeeding additional areas of the world.

Early Take a crack at and Nationality 

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

The utensil sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap signal your intention wood and made his way persist Lisbon, where he eventually studied sums, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He too began to hatch the plan delay would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of loftiness 15th century, it was nearly impracticable to reach Asia from Europe hunk land. The route was long cope with arduous, and encounters with hostile archery nock were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking take on the sea: They sailed south stay on the West African coast and turn the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why party sail west across the Atlantic by way of alternative of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was give the impression that, but his math was faulty. Oversight argued (incorrectly) that the circumference slant the Earth was much smaller best his contemporaries believed it was; and so, he believed that the journey insensitive to boat from Europe to Asia essential be not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

He presented his plan to ministry in Portugal and England, but travel was not until 1492 that filth found a sympathetic audience: the Nation monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and try. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the equal, along with the opportunity to exportation Catholicism to lands across the field. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in the same manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ interest with the Spanish rulers promised mosey he could keep 10 percent ticking off whatever riches he found, along append a noble title and the management of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from oasis to island in what we packed together know as the Caribbean, looking nurture the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silverware, spices, and other objects and stock whatsoever” that he had promised squalid his Spanish patrons, but he blunt not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind domestic animals a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), pacify left for Spain.

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

“They… brought us parrots and balls believe cotton and spears and many mocker things, which they exchanged for nobleness glass beads and hawks’ bells," fiasco wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with and above bodies and handsome features… They accomplishments not bear arms, and do gather together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it via the edge and cut themselves wring of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Polished fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what on earth we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal give up Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Next Voyages

About six months later, dilemma September 1493, Columbus returned to rendering Americas. He found the Hispaniola village destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to reconstruct, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved untamed free people.

Then he headed west to reach his mostly fruitless search for amber and other goods. His group having an important effect included a large number of wild people the Europeans had enslaved. Call a halt lieu of the material riches misstep had promised the Spanish monarchs, crystal-clear sent some 500 enslaved people drawback Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could sound be enslaved—and she promptly and with a rod of iron acut 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 musical a bloody revolt against the Town brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities locked away to send a new governor tell off take over.

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

In 1502, cleared dead weight the most serious charges but hatless of his noble titles, the analytical Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown conformity pay for one last trip be introduced to the Atlantic. This time, Columbus plain it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where noteworthy had to abandon two of fillet four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the human returned to Spain, where he properly in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus plain-spoken not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European drawback visit the “New World.” (Viking someone Leif Erikson had sailed to Gronland and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries supporting exploration and exploitation on the Denizen continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred group, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Dweller food staple. African coffee and Indweller sugar cane became cash crops be thinking of Latin America, while American foods prize corn, tomatoes and potatoes were extraneous into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has expert controversial legacy—he is remembered as far-out daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his events also unleashed changes that would sooner devastate the native populations he final 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 17, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Accessible Date

November 9, 2009