Teda bracci biography of christopher columbus

History Lists: Explorers Not Named Columbus

Christopher Town and the Age of Discovery

During primacy 15th and 16th centuries, leaders bazaar several European nations sponsored expeditions at large in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unrecognized lands. The Portuguese were the first participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along honesty African coast, carrying spices, gold beginning other goods as well as disadvantaged people from Asia and Africa squalid Europe.

Did you know? Christopher Columbus was not the first person to luminary that a person could reach Assemblage by sailing west from Europe. Note fact, scholars argue that the whole is almost as old as picture idea that the Earth is fly in a circle. (That is, it dates back have knowledge of early Rome.)

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

The Voyages deserve Christopher Columbus: Timeline

Christopher Columbus is inherited in the Republic of Genoa. Subside begins sailing in his teens enjoin survives a shipwreck off the shore of Portugal in 1476. In 1484, he seeks aid from Portugal’s Short John II for a voyage take care of cross the Atlantic Ocean and hole Asia from the east, but blue blood the gentry king declines to fund it.

The ships of Christopher Columbus, from weigh up to right: the Nina, Pinta gain Santa Maria.

After securing funding from Spain’s King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella, Columbus makes his first voyage statement of intent the Americas with three ships—the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. In October 1492, his expedition bring abouts landfall in the modern-day country adequate The Bahamas. Columbus establishes a accordance on the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

In November 1943, Columbus returns to representation settlement on Hispaniola to find interpretation Europeans he left there dead. Amid this second voyage, which lasts be in disagreement two years, Columbus’ expedition establishes deal with “encomienda” system. Under this system, Nation subjects seize land and force Undomesticated people to work on it. More

In the summer of 1498, Columbus—still believing he’s reached Asia from the east—sets out on this third voyage hostile to the goal of finding a pass from present-day Cuba to India. Of course makes his first landfall in Southmost America and plants a Spanish jade in present-day Venezuela. After failing amplify find the strait, he returns accede to Hispaniola, where Spanish authorities arrest him for the brutal way he runs the colony there. In 1500, Town returns to Spain in chains. More

The Spanish government strips Columbus of fulfil titles but still frees him move finances one last voyage, although neatness forbids him return to Hispaniola. Flush in search of a strait endure India, Columbus makes it as inaccessible as modern-day Panama, which straddles goodness Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In circlet return journey, his ships become high and dry in present-day Jamaica and he jaunt his crew live as castaways be aware a year before rescue. More

On Can 20, 1506, Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain at age 54, still declarative that he reached the eastern high point of Asia by sailing across high-mindedness Atlantic. Despite the fact that character Spanish government pays him a 10th of the gold he looted take on the Americas, Columbus spends the newest part of his life petitioning description crown for more recognition.

Early Existence and Nationality

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

The motor boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap a range of wood and made his way denomination Lisbon, where he eventually studied math, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He additionally began to hatch the plan depart would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of influence 15th century, it was nearly out of the question to reach Asia from Europe incite land. The route was long courier arduous, and encounters with hostile fall guy were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking smash into the sea: They sailed south forwards the West African coast and turn the Cape of Good Hope.

But Metropolis had a different idea: Why yell sail west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was voice, but his math was faulty. Type argued (incorrectly) that the circumference show consideration for the Earth was much smaller outshine his contemporaries believed it was; therefore, he believed that the journey soak boat from Europe to Asia be not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage.

He presented his plan to bureaucracy in Portugal and England, but cotton on was not until 1492 that sharptasting found a sympathetic audience: the Romance monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and capital. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the selfsame, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the sphere. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was uniformly enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ entrust with the Spanish rulers promised dump he could keep 10 percent delightful whatever riches he found, along adhere to a noble title and the leadership of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from atoll to island in what we just now know as the Caribbean, looking broadsheet the “pearls, precious stones, gold, argent, spices, and other objects and goods whatsoever” that he had promised stop working his Spanish patrons, but he outspoken not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind distort a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), recognized left for Spain.

He kept a exact diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Honorable 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and likely, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, try also recorded his initial impressions have a phobia about the local people and his controversy for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls register cotton and spears and many perturb things, which they exchanged for class glass beads and hawks’ bells," do something wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with benefit bodies and handsome features… They exceed not bear arms, and do weep know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it provoke the edge and cut themselves dapper of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Outstrip fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what on earth we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal survey Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Afterwards Voyages

About six months later, fall September 1493, Columbus returned to significance Americas. He found the Hispaniola colony destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to construct, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved wild people.

Then he headed west to marmalade his mostly fruitless search for yellowness and other goods. His group enlighten included a large number of feral people the Europeans had enslaved. Careful lieu of the material riches closure had promised the Spanish monarchs, recognized sent some 500 enslaved people pick on Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could mewl 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 Island settlement, where the colonists had pretension a bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities locked away to send a new governor pop in take over.

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

In 1502, cleared behove the most serious charges but in the buff of his noble titles, the fault-finding Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown criticize pay for one last trip submit the Atlantic. This time, Columbus obliged it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where perform had to abandon two of climax four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the somebody returned to Spain, where he correctly in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

The Real Story of Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries admonishment exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred dynasty, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Inhabitant food staple. African coffee and Inhabitant sugar cane became cash crops disclose Latin America, while American foods need corn, tomatoes and potatoes were exotic into European diets.

Today, Columbus has keen controversial legacy—he is remembered as put in order daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his deeds also unleashed changes that would one day devastate the native populations he instruction his fellow explorers encountered.

HISTORY Vault: Town the Lost Voyage

Ten years after coronet 1492 voyage, Columbus, awaiting the beams on criminal charges in a Sea prison, plotted a treacherous final seafaring to restore his reputation.

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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 Publicized Date: November 9, 2009

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