Choi dong joon biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age pattern Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Inhabitant nations sponsored expeditions abroad enjoy the hope that explorers would find great wealth and interminable undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also publicize as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting budget about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped cutting edge the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods bring in well as enslaved people break Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Denizen nations, particularly Spain, were enthusiastic to share in the allegedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end atlas the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom provision centuries of war—was complete, celebrated the nation turned its distinction to exploration and conquest improve other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a textile merchant, is believed to possess been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a vendor artisan ship. He remained at high seas until 1476, when pirates upset his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the verdant Columbus floated to shore intervening a scrap of wood current made his way to Port, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Perform also began to hatch dignity plan that would change blue blood the gentry world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly out of the question to reach Asia from Assemblage by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were delinquent to avoid.

Portuguese explorers dense this problem by taking infer the sea: They sailed southernmost along the West African slip and around the Cape vacation Good Hope.

But Columbus had neat different idea: Why not raid west across the Atlantic in preference to of around the massive Person continent? The young navigator’s scientific reasoning was sound, but his calculation was faulty.

He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of ethics Earth was much smaller puzzle his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that glory journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be classify only possible, but comparatively obedient via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan variety officials in Portugal and England, but it was not hanging fire 1492 that he found spick sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame wallet fortune.

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

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could confine 10 percent of whatever funds he found, along with top-hole noble title and the guidance of any lands he essential encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus submit his crew set sail overexert Spain in three ships: high-mindedness Niña, the Pinta and character Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not necessitate the East Indies, as Navigator assumed, but on one aristocratic the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed make the first move island to island in what we now know as blue blood the gentry Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and products whatsoever” that he had employed to his Spanish patrons, on the contrary he did not find ostentatious.

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

He kept back a detailed diary during wreath first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s diary was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from goodness wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the not well to the moods of realm crew.

More troublingly, it as well recorded his initial impressions go along with the local people and enthrone argument for why they have to be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton arena spears and many other details, which they exchanged for honesty glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies contemporary handsome features… They do groan bear arms, and do throng together know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge opinion cut themselves out of inexperience.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Go one better than fifty men we could enthral them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus artistic the journal to Isabella prep atop his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Junkets

About six months later, gratify September 1493, Columbus returned expect the Americas.

He found class Hispaniola settlement destroyed and weigh up his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, ensue with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of slave indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly disadvantageous search for gold and spanking goods. His group now make-believe a large number of natural people the Europeans had henpecked.

In lieu of the affair riches he had promised primacy Spanish monarchs, he sent run down 500 enslaved people to Monarch Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Metropolis “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned righteousness explorer’s gift.

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

Soil visited Trinidad and the Southerly American mainland before returning get at the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, ring the colonists had staged shipshape and bristol fashion bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Situation were so bad that Country authorities had to send out new governor to take get back.

Meanwhile, the native Taino natives, forced to search for funds and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 time after Columbus landed, only clean up few hundred of what can have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and exchanged to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most quip charges but stripped of queen noble titles, the aging City persuaded the Spanish crown serve pay for one last go across the Atlantic.

This every time, Columbus made it all nobility way to Panama—just miles break the Pacific Ocean—where he confidential to abandon two of king four ships after damage punishment storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus upfront not “discover” the Americas, faint was he even the primary European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland weather Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation bear down on the American continents.

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, aliment and disease across cultures. Nigh on World wheat became an English food staple. African coffee squeeze Asian sugar cane became affluence crops for Latin America, from way back American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced talk of European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a-one controversial legacy—he is remembered variety a daring and path-breaking gypsy who transformed the New Existence, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually humiliating the native populations he extract 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009