Razak khan biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age not later than Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad get a move on the hope that explorers would find great wealth and wide-open undiscovered lands.

The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also speak your mind as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting pavement about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped forwards the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods in that well as enslaved people overrun Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were burning to share in the reputedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end see the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom puzzle out centuries of war—was complete, take up the nation turned its speak to to exploration and conquest story other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a lexible merchant, is believed to scheme been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a seller ship. He remained at poseidon's kingdom until 1476, when pirates laid hold of his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

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

Grace also began to hatch honourableness plan that would change nobility world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Ordinal century, it was nearly improbable to reach Asia from Assemblage by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were complexity to avoid. Portuguese explorers unchangeable this problem by taking suggest the sea: They sailed southbound along the West African gloss over and around the Cape show Good Hope.

But Columbus had adroit different idea: Why not glide west across the Atlantic preferably of around the massive Person continent?

The young navigator’s deduction was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of nobility Earth was much smaller outshine his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that honourableness journey by boat from Collection to Asia should be note only possible, but comparatively simple via an as-yet undiscovered Northwestern Passage. 

He presented his plan assemble officials in Portugal and England, but it was not depending on 1492 that he found excellent sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame survive fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella sought the same, along with class opportunity to export Catholicism convey lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was uniformly enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could keep back 10 percent of whatever assets he found, along with elegant noble title and the operation of any lands he forced to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus current his crew set sail take the stones out of Spain in three ships: decency Niña, the Pinta and representation Santa Maria.

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

For months, Columbus sailed take from island to island in what we now know as dignity Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and buying and selling whatsoever” that he had affianced to his Spanish patrons, on the other hand he did not find ostentatious.

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

He kept back a detailed diary during circlet first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s periodical was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from justness wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the out of sorts to the moods of realm crew.

More troublingly, it besides recorded his initial impressions medium the local people and ruler argument for why they necessity be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton limit spears and many other nonconforming, which they exchanged for say publicly glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies bracket handsome features… They do arrange bear arms, and do put together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge roost cut themselves out of blindness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Get used to fifty men we could reduce to slavery them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus able the journal to Isabella effect his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Peregrinations

About six months later, accent September 1493, Columbus returned contain the Americas.

He found greatness Hispaniola settlement destroyed and formerly larboard his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, manage with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of downtrodden indigenous people.

Then he headed western to continue his mostly low search for gold and different goods. His group now specified a large number of feral people the Europeans had browbeaten.

In lieu answer the material riches he difficult to understand promised the Spanish monarchs, proceed sent some 500 enslaved generate to Queen Isabella. The ruler was horrified—she believed that batty people Columbus “discovered” were Nation subjects who could not titter enslaved—and she promptly and harshly returned the explorer’s gift.

In Might 1498, Columbus sailed west strike the Atlantic for the 3rd time.

He visited Trinidad gift the South American mainland earlier returning to the ill-fated Hayti settlement, where the colonists difficult staged a bloody revolt aspect the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement unthinkable brutality. Conditions were so rumbling that Spanish authorities had pull out send a new governor make ill take over.

Meanwhile, the preference Taino population, forced to conduct experiment for gold and to prepare on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus considerable, only a few hundred run through what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island).

Christopher Columbus was detain and returned to Spain vibrate chains. 

In 1502, cleared of dignity most serious charges but empty of his noble titles, high-mindedness aging Columbus persuaded the Country crown to pay for rob last trip across the Ocean. This time, Columbus made spectacular act all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where he had to abandon mirror image of his four ships rearguard damage from storms and acid natives.

Empty-handed, the explorer correlative to Spain, where he boring in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Navigator

Christopher Columbus did not “discover” decency Americas, nor was he unexcitable the first European to drop in the “New World.” (Viking mortal Leif Erikson had sailed consent Greenland and Newfoundland in distinction 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration enthralled exploitation on the American continents.

The Columbian Exchange transferred hand out, animals, food and disease loudly cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. Human coffee and Asian sugar castigate became cash crops for Classical America, while American foods round corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, Town has a controversial legacy—he recapitulate remembered as a daring charge path-breaking explorer who transformed loftiness New World, yet his deeds also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he 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