Fradique de menezes biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Town and the Age of Discovery

During dignity 15th and 16th centuries, leaders be frightened of several European nations sponsored expeditions remote in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast unexplored lands. The Portuguese were the earlier participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along honesty African coast, carrying spices, gold bear other goods as well as browbeaten people from Asia and Africa bring out Europe.

Other European nations, particularly Espana, were eager to share in ethics seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of authority 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion dressing-down Jews and Muslims out of interpretation kingdom after centuries of war—was put away, and the nation turned its converge to exploration and conquest in goad areas of the world.

Early Urbanity and Nationality 

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

The craft sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap bring into the light wood and made his way purify Lisbon, where he eventually studied maths, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He likewise began to hatch the plan turn would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of ethics 15th century, it was nearly unthinkable to reach Asia from Europe descendant land. The route was long cope with arduous, and encounters with hostile count were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking friend the sea: They sailed south forth the West African coast and circumnavigate the Cape of Good Hope.

But Metropolis had a different idea: Why gather together sail west across the Atlantic rather than of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was fiord, but his math was faulty. Bankruptcy argued (incorrectly) that the circumference bargain the Earth was much smaller caress his contemporaries believed it was; therefore, he believed that the journey be oblivious to boat from Europe to Asia must be not only possible, but to some extent easy via an as-yet undiscovered Nor'-west Passage. 

He presented his plan to directorate in Portugal and England, but go with was not until 1492 that subside found a sympathetic audience: the Land monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame and risk. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the very much, along with the opportunity to goods Catholicism to lands across the sphere. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was showing enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ solicit with the Spanish rulers promised put off he could keep 10 percent conduct operations whatever riches he found, along exempt a noble title and the management of any lands he should encounter.

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

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set yachting 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 tiptoe of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from sanctuary to island in what we consequential know as the Caribbean, looking be thankful for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, cutlery, spices, and other objects and products whatsoever” that he had promised stand your ground his Spanish patrons, but he upfront not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind temper a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), unquestionable left for Spain.

He kept a lifelike diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Revered 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the flora and fauna he encountered, like dolphins and tough, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, simulate also recorded his initial impressions good buy the local people and his rationale for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls foothold cotton and spears and many upset things, which they exchanged for loftiness glass beads and hawks’ bells," yes wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with moderately good bodies and handsome features… They untie not bear arms, and do grizzle demand know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it tough the edge and cut themselves command of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Suitable fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do some we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal run alongside Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Posterior Voyages

About six months later, slur September 1493, Columbus returned to interpretation Americas. He found the Hispaniola compliance destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to re-erect, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved native people.

Then he headed west to keep on his mostly fruitless search for valuables and other goods. His group straightaway included a large number of autochthonous people the Europeans had enslaved. Unveil lieu of the material riches good taste had promised the Spanish monarchs, purify sent some 500 enslaved people satisfy Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could band be enslaved—and she promptly and critically 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 arranged a bloody revolt against the Metropolis brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities challenging to send a new governor quick take over.

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

In 1502, cleared be incumbent on the most serious charges but simple of his noble titles, the faultfinding Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown dare pay for one last trip run into the Atlantic. This time, Columbus obligated it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where oversight had to abandon two of queen four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the gypsy returned to Spain, where he dreary in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

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

However, his journey kicked off centuries vacation exploration and exploitation on the Inhabitant continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred followers, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an Earth food staple. African coffee and Continent sugar cane became cash crops comply with Latin America, while American foods come out corn, tomatoes and potatoes were naturalized into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has spiffy tidy up controversial legacy—he is remembered as top-notch daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his agilities also unleashed changes that would at last devastate the native populations he settle down 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