Ezna sands biography of christopher columbus
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His career in exploration started when he was very young. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.
For months, Columbus sailed from island to island in what we now know as the Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that he had promised to his Spanish patrons, but he did not find much.
Empty-handed, the explorer returned to Spain, where he died in 1506.
Legacy of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer. However, in 1500, on the orders of the Spanish monarchy, Columbus was arrested and placed in chains.
Columbus' exploration came at a critical time of growing imperialism and economic competition between developing the nation states in Europe who were seeking wealth from the establishment of trade routes and colonies. Others take a more critical view of Columbus, arguing that his “discovery” was not really a discovery – because the land was already populated and that through his actions the ensuing European colonisations led to the mistreatment and genocide of the Native American people who already lived there.
Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan.
The Portuguese were the earliest participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also known as “Age of Exploration.”
Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods as well as enslaved people from Asia and Africa to Europe.
Did you know?
Christopher Columbus was not the first person to propose that a person could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe.
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Land Sighted!
After stopping in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, Columbus’s ships hit the open seas.
He did not actually reach the American mainland until his third voyage in 1498. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over.
Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for gold and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island).
His group now included a large number of indigenous people the Europeans had enslaved.
Towards the end of his life, he was frequently in physical pain from his journeys.
Columbus is venerated by many European Americans as the man who helped put America on the map. In fact, scholars argue that the idea is almost as old as the idea that the Earth is round. In lieu of the material riches he had promised the Spanish monarchs, he sent some 500 enslaved people to Queen Isabella.
His discoveries and travels laid the framework for the later European colonisation of Latin and North America.
“You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
– Christopher Columbus
Short bio Christopher Columbus (1451–1506)
Christopher Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today Northwestern Italy.
Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking to the sea: They sailed south along the West African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.
But Columbus had a different idea: Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent? "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance.