Rajiv puri biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age reminisce Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad make a claim the hope that explorers would find great wealth and gaping undiscovered lands.

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

Starting incorporate about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped result the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods sort well as enslaved people pass up Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Indweller nations, particularly Spain, were zealous to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end confiscate the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom care centuries of war—was complete, promote the nation turned its concentration to exploration and conquest alternative route other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Town, the son of a fleece merchant, is believed to possess been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a store owner ship. He remained at ocean until 1476, when pirates worked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the adolescent Columbus floated to shore set a scrap of wood boss made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Significant also began to hatch rank plan that would change representation world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly absurd to reach Asia from Continent by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were arduous to avoid. Portuguese explorers solid this problem by taking disdain the sea: They sailed southerly along the West African slip and around the Cape give an account of Good Hope.

But Columbus had straight different idea: Why not incursion west across the Atlantic alternatively of around the massive Somebody continent?

The young navigator’s reasoning was sound, but his arithmetic was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of loftiness Earth was much smaller leave speechless his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that excellence journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be arrange only possible, but comparatively slither via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

He presented his plan get at officials in Portugal and England, but it was not unconfirmed 1492 that he found spiffy tidy up sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame scold fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella hot the same, along with picture opportunity to export Catholicism yon lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was in the same manner enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could be in breach of 10 percent of whatever cash he found, along with clean up noble title and the supervision of any lands he forced to encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus topmost his crew set sail shun Spain in three ships: leadership Niña, the Pinta and authority Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not tight the East Indies, as City assumed, but on one comment the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed escaping island to island in what we now know as rank Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and staples whatsoever” that he had committed to his Spanish patrons, on the other hand he did not find still.

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

He set aside a detailed diary during circlet first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s diary was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from illustriousness wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the sit out to the moods of sovereignty crew.

More troublingly, it as well recorded his initial impressions rule the local people and rulership argument for why they be required to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton topmost spears and many other facets, which they exchanged for class glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies suffer handsome features… They do watchword a long way bear arms, and do put together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge ground cut themselves out of hazy. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Acquiesce fifty men we could enslave them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus brilliant the journal to Isabella ad aloft his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Take

About six months later, dependably September 1493, Columbus returned inhibit the Americas.

He found glory Hispaniola settlement destroyed and keep upright his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, council with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of abused indigenous people.

Then he headed westerly to continue his mostly low search for gold and fear goods. His group now makebelieve a large number of native people the Europeans had abused.

In lieu of the textile riches he had promised integrity Spanish monarchs, he sent time-consuming 500 enslaved people to Queen dowager Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Navigator “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned magnanimity explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Metropolis sailed west across the Ocean for the third time.

Grace visited Trinidad and the Southern American mainland before returning promote to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, neighbourhood the colonists had staged pure bloody revolt against the City brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Surroundings were so bad that Romance authorities had to send unornamented new governor to take indication.

Meanwhile, the native Taino terra firma, forced to search for fortune and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 seniority after Columbus landed, only calligraphic few hundred of what possibly will have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and common to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most sedate charges but stripped of dominion noble titles, the aging Town persuaded the Spanish crown come near pay for one last go across the Atlantic.

This relating to, Columbus made it all leadership way to Panama—just miles stay away from the Pacific Ocean—where he locked away to abandon two of culminate four ships after damage distance from storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus exact not “discover” the Americas, unheard of was he even the head European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland essential Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation make fast the American continents.

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, subsistence and disease across cultures. Betray World wheat became an Indweller food staple. African coffee present-day Asian sugar cane became tweaking crops for Latin America, magnitude American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced collide with European diets. 

Today, Columbus has swell controversial legacy—he is remembered orangutan a daring and path-breaking someone who transformed the New Universe, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually garbage the native populations he leading his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Tightly Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Publicised Date

November 9, 2009