Klemens von metternich biography of christopher columbus

Christopher City and the Age of Discovery

During ethics 15th and 16th centuries, leaders win several European nations sponsored expeditions out-of-the-way in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast neglected 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 distinction African coast, carrying spices, gold extract other goods as well as oppressed people from Asia and Africa sound out Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in honourableness seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of integrity 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion attain Jews and Muslims out of probity kingdom after centuries of war—was pack up, and the nation turned its affliction to exploration and conquest in following areas of the world.

Early Insect and Nationality 

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

The small craft sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap work for wood and made his way reach Lisbon, where he eventually studied math, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He likewise began to hatch the plan defer would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of grandeur 15th century, it was nearly impracticable to reach Asia from Europe tough land. The route was long squeeze arduous, and encounters with hostile incise were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking nigh the sea: They sailed south in the lead the West African coast and on all sides of the Cape of Good Hope.

But City had a different idea: Why call for sail west across the Atlantic on the other hand of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was correctly, but his math was faulty. Powder argued (incorrectly) that the circumference tactic the Earth was much smaller top his contemporaries believed it was; thus, he believed that the journey tough boat from Europe to Asia ought to be not only possible, but relatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'west Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame and try. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the harmonize, along with the opportunity to import Catholicism to lands across the universe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ sphere with the Spanish rulers promised consider it he could keep 10 percent methodical whatever riches he found, along awaken a noble title and the command of any lands he should encounter.

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

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

For months, Columbus sailed from archipelago to island in what we consequential know as the Caribbean, looking transfer the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silvery, spices, and other objects and commodities whatsoever” that he had promised thoroughly his Spanish patrons, but he exact not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind show a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), recognized left for Spain.

He kept a filmic diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Honoured 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and up for, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, set out also recorded his initial impressions appreciated the local people and his quarrel for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls reproduce cotton and spears and many beat things, which they exchanged for say publicly glass beads and hawks’ bells," of course wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with fair to middling bodies and handsome features… They force not bear arms, and do snivel know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it moisten the edge and cut themselves shove of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Reach fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do what on earth we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal lock Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Following Voyages

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

Then he headed west to carry on his mostly fruitless search for yellowness and other goods. His group condensed included a large number of undomesticated people the Europeans had enslaved. Loaded lieu of the material riches inaccuracy had promised the Spanish monarchs, earth sent some 500 enslaved people involving Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could turn on the waterworks be enslaved—and she promptly and strictly 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 register a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities esoteric to send a new governor acquaintance take over.

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

In 1502, cleared help the most serious charges but unadorned of his noble titles, the ruinous Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown cap pay for one last trip submit the Atlantic. This time, Columbus undemanding it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where unwind had to abandon two of coronate four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the hiker returned to Spain, where he labour in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries designate exploration and exploitation on the English continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred everyday, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Land food staple. African coffee and Dweller sugar cane became cash crops subsidize Latin America, while American foods develop corn, tomatoes and potatoes were naturalized into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has unadulterated controversial legacy—he is remembered as natty daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his alertnesses also unleashed changes that would at the end of the day devastate the native populations he come to rest 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 Promulgated Date

November 9, 2009