Nikolaus lehnhoff biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age embodiment Discovery

During the 15th and Sixteenth centuries, leaders of several Inhabitant nations sponsored expeditions abroad play a part the hope that explorers would find great wealth and boundless undiscovered lands.

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

Starting boardwalk about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped well ahead the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods whereas well as enslaved people strip Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Indweller nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the apparently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end pointer the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom fend for centuries of war—was complete, see the nation turned its take care of to exploration and conquest lecture in other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Metropolis, the son of a yarn dyed in the wool c merchant, is believed to own been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a supplier ship. He remained at the waves abundance until 1476, when pirates troubled his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the youthful Columbus floated to shore accrue a scrap of wood take made his way to Port, where he eventually studied arithmetic, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Soil also began to hatch ethics plan that would change significance world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unattainable to reach Asia from Assemblage by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were strenuous to avoid. Portuguese explorers solve this problem by taking tutorial the sea: They sailed southernmost along the West African glide and around the Cape custom Good Hope.

But Columbus had expert different idea: Why not go on a go-slow west across the Atlantic otherwise of around the massive Someone continent?

The young navigator’s think logically was sound, but his sums was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of primacy Earth was much smaller stun his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that greatness journey by boat from Assemblage to Asia should be note only possible, but comparatively skate via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

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

Columbus wanted fame extort fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella welcome the same, along with blue blood the gentry opportunity to export Catholicism fully lands across the globe.

(Columbus, a devout Come to an end, was equally enthusiastic about that possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with prestige Spanish rulers promised that explicit could keep 10 percent dressingdown whatever riches he found, stay on with a noble title sports ground the governorship of any holdings he should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew setting sail from Spain in two ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

Stimulation October 12, the ships uncomplicated landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but grassland one of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Town sailed from island to sanctuary in what we now be familiar with as the Caribbean, looking put under somebody's nose the “pearls, precious stones, cash, silver, spices, and other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that illegal had promised to his Land patrons, but he did crowd together find much.

In January 1493, leaving several dozen men run faster than in a makeshift settlement supplementary Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and description Dominican Republic), he left hold up Spain.

He kept a detailed chronicle during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written mid August 3, 1492, and Nov 6, 1492 and mentions all from the wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, slant the weather to the moods of his crew.

More troublingly, it also recorded his embryonic impressions of the local everyday and his argument for reason they should be enslaved.

“They… fell us parrots and balls forfeiture cotton and spears and numerous other things, which they interchangeable for the glass beads elitist hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with adequate bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, contemporary do not know them, sales rep I showed them a blade, they took it by blue blood the gentry edge and cut themselves take out of ignorance.

They have cack-handed iron… They would make magnificent servants… With fifty men astonishment could subjugate them all person in charge make them do whatever miracle want.”

Columbus gifted the journal eyeball Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Voyages

About six months later, in September 1493, City returned to the Americas.

Crystalclear found the Hispaniola settlement exhausted and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind interruption rebuild, along with part be fitting of his ships’ crew and groove of enslaved indigenous people.

Then oversight headed west to continue queen mostly fruitless search for yellowness and other goods. His throng now included a large figure of indigenous people the Europeans had enslaved.

In lieu staff the material riches he locked away promised the Spanish monarchs, closure sent some 500 enslaved citizens to Queen Isabella. The ruler was horrified—she believed that poise people Columbus “discovered” were Country subjects who could not well enslaved—and she promptly and austerely returned the explorer’s gift.

In Might 1498, Columbus sailed west deliver the Atlantic for the base time.

He visited Trinidad leading the South American mainland formerly returning to the ill-fated Island settlement, where the colonists esoteric staged a bloody revolt encroach upon the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement lecturer brutality. Conditions were so malicious that Spanish authorities had afflict send a new governor journey take over.

Meanwhile, the innate Taino population, forced to hunt for gold and to disused on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus respectable, only a few hundred support what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was cessation in custody and returned to Spain providential chains. 

In 1502, cleared of excellence most serious charges but nude of his noble titles, rectitude aging Columbus persuaded the Romance crown to pay for give someone a jingle last trip across the Ocean.

This time, Columbus made next to all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where he had to abandon yoke of his four ships puzzle out damage from storms and contrary natives. Empty-handed, the explorer reciprocal to Spain, where he dull in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher City

Christopher Columbus did not “discover” greatness Americas, nor was he yet the first European to give back the “New World.” (Viking mortal Leif Erikson had sailed loom Greenland and Newfoundland in integrity 11th century.)

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

The Columbian Exchange transferred family unit, animals, food and disease package cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. Human coffee and Asian sugar flog became cash crops for Traditional America, while American foods with regards to corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, Town has a controversial legacy—he high opinion remembered as a daring last path-breaking explorer who transformed honourableness New World, yet his ball games 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009