Christopher Columbus - The Voyage of Italian Explorer
Christopher Columbus was born between 25 August and 31 October in the year 1451 and died on 20 May 1506. Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator who was successful in completing four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean which eventually paved the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the now known America. His travels were the first European contacts with the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, and were funded by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain.
Christopher Columbus is an abbreviation of the Latin name Christophorus Columbus. Many scholars believe that Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa and was able to speak the dialect of Ligurian as his first language. Columbus went to the sea at a very young age and travelled as far as the north of the British islands and also Ghana in the south.
Columbus married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, a Portuguese noblewoman, and lived in Lisbon for some years, but afterwards married a Castilian mistress, with whom he had one son. Columbus was well-versed in Geography, Astronomy, and History while being entirely self-taught. He devised a strategy to find a western sea route to the East Indies, intending to profit from the rich spice trade.
Columbus set out from Castile in August 1492 with three ships, arriving in the Americas on October 12th, bringing an end to the pre-Columbian era of human existence in the Americas. His landing spot was Guanahani, a Bahamas island known to the locals as Guanahani. After visiting the islands that are now known as Cuba and Hispaniola, Columbus established a colony in what is now Haiti. In early 1493, Columbus returned to Castile, carrying with him a number of captive locals. The news of his journeys quickly travelled throughout Europe.
Columbus was able to make three furthermore voyages to the Americas as he wanted to explore the lesser Antilles in 1493, Trinidad, and the northern coast of South America in 1498, and also in the year 1502, he explored the eastern coast of Central America. He was also responsible for giving the name Indios to the indigenous people which he encountered.
In this article, we are going to discuss and ask ourselves what did Christopher Columbus discover, who is Columbus and also a few of the most important and other important information.
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Who is Columbus?
Christopher Columbus was an Italian navigator and an explorer and in the year 1492, he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain in the Santa Maria with the Nina and the Pinta ships alongside with the hope of finding a new route to the land of India.
In 1492, 1493, 1498, and 1502, the explorer Christopher Columbus conducted four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain. He was adamant about finding a direct maritime passage from Europe to Asia, but he was never successful. Instead, he discovered the Americas. Despite the fact that Columbus did not “discover” the New World as millions of people already lived there and his voyages are believed to start centuries of exploration and colonization of North and South America.
The Early Life of Columbus
Due to fewer records, Christopher Columbus’s early life is not completely known but many scholars do believe that he was born in the Republic of Genoa between 25 August and 31 October 1451. Christopher Columbus’s father’s name was Domenico Columbo who was a wool weaver by profession and worked both in Genoa and Savona and was also the owner of the cheese stand where young Christopher Columbus was given the responsibility to work and manage the place. His mother’s name was Susanna Fontanarossa and he had three other brothers named Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo, and also a sister named Bianchinetta. His younger brother Bartolomeo has been believed to work in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least until he reached adulthood.
Christopher Columbus’s native language is believed to have been a Genoese dialect even though there are no records that show that Columbus wrote in that language. In the 16th century, Columbus’s name in the Genoese language would probably be Cristoffa Corombo and in Italian, it was Cristoforo Colombo.
Christopher Columbus relocated to Lisbon, Portugal, in his twenties, and subsequently settled in Spain, where he spent the rest of his life. As a youngster, Columbus travelled to sea for the first time, taking part in many commercial expeditions in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. One such journey, to the Greek island of Khios, got him the closest he would ever get to Asia.
In 1476, Christopher Columbus’s first journey into the Atlantic Ocean nearly cost him his life when the commercial fleet with which he was travelling was assaulted by French privateers off the coast of Portugal. Columbus had to swim to the Portuguese beach after his ship was destroyed by fire.
Christopher Columbus on his way of journey made it through Lisbon, Portugal, where he met a woman named Filipa Perestrelo and married her. They also had a son, Diego who was born in 1980. His wife had died and Columbus had to then move to Spain where he had another son named Fernando who was born out of wedlock in the year 1488 with Beatriz Enriquez de Arana. Columbus participated in several other expeditions to Africa and as a result that Columbus had gained knowledge of the Atlantic currents flowing the east and west from the Canary Islands.
Christopher Columbus Route
Columbus and many other people knew that the Asian lands near China and India were famous for their extraordinary spices and valuable gold which naturally made them the attractive destination for all the Europeans but during that time the land of India and other Asian lands were ruled by Muslim rulers and as a result of that trade routes through the Middle East made travel eastward very difficult.
As middle east routes were not available Columbus had to develop or search for another route to sell west and he did by sailing through the Atlantic to reach Asia and believed that this route would be quicker and easier. Columbus at that time estimated the Earth to be spherical in shape and the distance between the Canary Islands and Japan would be around 2,300 miles.
Many modern nautical experts disagreed with Columbus. They used a 25,000-mile estimate of the Earth's diameter from the second century B.C., which meant the real distance between the Canary Islands and Japan was roughly 12,200 statute miles.
Despite their differences with Columbus in distance, they agreed that a westward trip from Europe would be a nonstop maritime journey.
To the Portuguese monarch, then to Genoa, and lastly to Venice, Columbus offered a three-ship journey of exploration across the Atlantic. Each time, he was turned down.
In 1486, Columbus joined Queen Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon's Spanish kingdom. They first rejected Columbus because they were focused on a battle with the Muslims and their nautical experts were suspicious. The monarchs, on the other hand, must have been attracted by the notion, since Columbus was retained on retainer. In January 1492, the Spanish army seized the final Muslim bastion in Granada, thanks to Columbus' continuous lobbying of the royal court. The monarchs decided to fund his trip shortly after that.
Christopher Columbus All Voyages
In the year 1493, Columbus took upon himself on the second expedition and explored the islands in the Caribbean Ocean. When they arrived at Hispaniola, Columbus and his comrades were shocked to discover that the Navidad settlements had been completely destroyed with all his sailors being massacred. In opposition to the local queen's desires, Columbus imposed a forced labour program on the native people in order to rebuild the town and explore for gold, believing it would be profitable. His efforts yielded modest amounts of gold and a lot of resentment from the natives.
Before Columbus returned to Spain, he had left his brothers Bartholomew and Diego to control and take care of the settlements on Hispaniola and sailed briefly around the larger Caribbean islands which falsely convinced him that he had discovered the outer islands of China. Columbus did not reach the continent until his third voyage when he explored the Orinoco River in modern-day Venezuela. Unfortunately, conditions in the Hispaniola settlement had deteriorated to the point of near-mutiny, with residents alleging that Columbus' boasts of wealth had deceived them and complaining about his brothers' bad management.
Due to this incident, the Spanish Crown did send a royal official who arrested Columbus and then removed him from all his position. He sadly returned to Spain in chains to face the judgment of the royal court. As time passed his charges were dropped and he was a free man to go but Columbus did lose his title as the governor of the Indies and also all the ornaments and valuable items which he collected during the voyages were confiscated from him.
After persuading King Ferdinand that one more voyage would deliver the promised wealth, Columbus embarked on his last voyage in 1502 and sailed down the eastern coast of Central America in a fruitless quest for a passage to the Indian Ocean. One of his ships was sunk by a storm, leaving the captain and his crew stranded on the island of Cuba. Local islanders refused to supply the Spaniards during this period, fed up with their mistreatment and obsession with gold.
As the islanders were refusing to trade the gold with them, Columbus examined an almanack and developed a scheme to punish the islanders by taking away the moon in a flash of inspiration. A lunar eclipse on February 29, 1504, frightened the locals sufficiently to re-establish commerce with the Spaniards. In July, a rescue team was dispatched by the royal governor of Hispaniola, and Columbus and his men were returned to Spain in November 1504. Columbus tried to reclaim his lost titles in the final two years of his life after his last journey to the Americas. In May 1505, he was able to reclaim part of his wealth, but his titles were never reinstated.
Life After Voyages and Death
While he was young, Columbus was a nonbeliever who did not have a lot of faith in God and the reason was exploration, but as time passed and as he grew older he increasingly grew religious. Columbus wrote two books in his later years, with the help of his son Diego and his Carthusian monk friend Gaspar Gorricio: a Book of Privileges (1502), detailing and documenting the rewards from the Spanish Crown to which he believed he and his heirs were entitled, and a Book of Prophecies (1505), in which he saw his achievements as an explorer as a fulfilment of Biblical prophecies.
After a few years, Columbus demanded the Spanish Crown to give him at least 10 percent of all the profits made in the new lands as an agreement in the Capitulations of Santa Fe. As in the third voyage he was released from his duties as the governor, the crown did not feel that it was their responsibility to pay him any money and so his demands were rejected. His heirs sued the Crown for a share of the profits from commerce with America, as well as other benefits after he died. This resulted in the pleitos colombinos, a long sequence of court battles.
On his first return journey, Columbus, aged 41, experienced an attack of what was thought to be gout during a severe storm. In the years that followed, he was afflicted by what was assumed to be influenza and various fevers, as well as eye haemorrhage, temporary blindness, and extended bouts of gout. The episodes became more frequent and severe, keeping Columbus bedridden for months at a time, and eventually killing him 14 years later. So the question now is how did Christopher Columbus die? well on May 20, 1506, Columbus most likely died of acute arthritis as a result of an illness.
Conclusion
Let us be clear about whether Christopher Columbus discovered America, No. Of all the islands Columbus discovered, he did not discover America nor was he the first European to visit the New World as the Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland and Newfoundland in the 11th century which was almost 300 years before the first voyage of Columbus.
Even though he did not discover America, his journey did start the coming centuries of exploration and exploitation on the American continents. We could say that his voyage led the Europeans to know the Islands of America. People, animals, food, and illness were all transported across civilizations as part of the Columbian Exchange. Old World wheat became an American dietary staple. Latin America's cash crops were African coffee and Asian sugar cane, while American staples like maize, tomatoes, and potatoes were imported into European diets.
Today we could say that Christopher Columbus has a controversial legacy where many people are bound to believe many theories such as that if Columbus discovered India or as mentioned before was Columbus the one who discovered the islands of America. Today Columbus is regarded as a bold and trailblazing adventurer who changed the New World, but his efforts also triggered changes that would eventually destroy the local communities he and his fellow explorers encountered.
FAQs on Christopher Columbus Biography
1. When did Christopher Columbus discover America?
Answer: Columbus and several crewmen set foot on an island in the present-day Bahamas on October 12, 1492, after 36 days of sailing westward across the Atlantic, claiming it for Spain. His crew came upon a cautious but friendly group of Indians who were willing to trade glass beads, cotton balls, parrots, and spears with the sailors. The Europeans also noted the locals' use of gold as ornamentation. Columbus and his crew resumed their voyage, stopping in the islands of Cuba which he mistook for mainland China and Hispaniola to speak with native authorities.
Santa Maria was wrecked on a reef off the coast of Hispaniola at this time. Columbus' sailors rescued what they could with the aid of local islanders and used the ship's timber to build the town Villa de la Navidad. Thirty-nine men remained in the village to occupy it. With the two surviving ships, he set sail for home, convinced that his exploration had reached Asia. When Columbus returned to Spain in 1493, he presented a glowing, if slightly inflated, report to the royal court and was enthusiastically greeted.
2. Where was Christopher Columbus Born and What was Christopher Columbus Nationality?
Answer: Christopher Columbus is thought to have been born in Genoa, Italy, around 1451, he was the son of a wool merchant and his nationality was Italian. He took a job on a merchant ship when he was still a teenager. He was an Italian explorer who while travelling came across the lands of America and his journey is known to have begun the coming centuries history of colonization.