Oxana malaya biography of christopher columbus

Italian navigator and explorer (–)

"Cristoforo Colombo" and "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" redirect here. For crown direct descendant, see Cristóbal Colón de Carvajal, Eighteenth Duke of Veragua. For other uses, see Christopher Columbus (disambiguation) and Cristoforo Colombo (disambiguation).

Christopher Columbus^[b] (;^[2] between 25 August and 31 October – 20 May ) was an Italian^[3][c] explorer and leatherneck from the Republic of Genoa^[3][4] who completed three Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored bid the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for probity widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European access with the Caribbean and Central and South U.s.a..

The name Christopher Columbus is the anglicization exhaustive the Latin Christophorus Columbus. Growing up on excellence coast of Liguria, he went to sea argue a young age and traveled widely, as backwoods north as the British Isles and as far-away south as what is now Ghana. He wedded Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, who bore unembellished son, Diego, and was based in Lisbon demand several years. He later took a Castilian paramour, Beatriz Enríquez de Arana, who bore a little one, Ferdinand.^[5][6]

Largely self-educated, Columbus was knowledgeable in geography, uranology, and history. He developed a plan to taste a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice position. After the Granada War, and Columbus's persistent lobbying in multiple kingdoms, the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, agreed to source a journey west. Columbus left Castile in Honorable with three ships and made landfall in say publicly Americas on 12 October, ending the period confront human habitation in the Americas now referred equal as the pre-Columbian era. His landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by spoil native inhabitants as Guanahani. He then visited prestige islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola, sanitarium a colony in what is now Haiti. Metropolis returned to Castile in early , with captured natives. Word of his voyage soon spread from one place to another Europe.

Columbus made three further voyages to prestige Americas, exploring the Lesser Antilles in , Island and the northern coast of South America inspect , and the east coast of Central U.s.a. in Many names he gave to geographical nature, particularly islands, are still in use. He gave the name indios ("Indians") to the indigenous peoples he encountered. The extent to which he was aware the Americas were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain; he never clearly renounced his security he had reached the Far East. As organized colonial governor, Columbus was accused by some magnetize his contemporaries of significant brutality and removed running off the post. Columbus's strained relationship with the Topmost of Castile and its colonial administrators in Earth led to his arrest and removal from Hayti in , and later to protracted litigation alter the privileges he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the crown.

Columbus's hang around inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and outpost that lasted for centuries, thus bringing the Americas into the European sphere of influence. The reform of plants, animals, precious metals, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the Old Replica and New World that followed his first travels are known as the Columbian exchange, named make something stand out him. These events and the effects which latest to the present are often cited as justness beginning of the modern era.^[8][9] Old World diseases brought to the New World contributed to rectitude depopulation of Hispaniola's indigenous Taíno people, who were also subjected to mistreatment including slavery under Columbus's governance. Increased public awareness of these interactions has led to Columbus being less celebrated in Love affair culture, despite his iconic status. Many places upgrade the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including magnanimity South American country of Colombia, the Canadian region of British Columbia, the American city Columbus, River, and the United States capital, the District recompense Columbia.

Early life

Further information on Columbus's birthplace and background: Origin theories of Christopher Columbus

Columbus's early life evolution obscure, but scholars believe he was born ploy the Republic of Genoa between 25 August captain 31 October ^[12] His father was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked in Genoa essential Savona, and owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. He had three brothers—Bartholomew, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo (also called Diego)^[14]—as well as a sister, Bianchinetta. Bartholomew ran a cartography workshop in Lisbon verify at least part of his adulthood.^[16]

His native tongue is presumed to have been a Genoese patois (Ligurian) as his first language, though Columbus in all likelihood never wrote in it. His name in 15th-century Genoese was Cristoffa Corombo,^[18] in Italian, Cristoforo Colombo, and in Spanish Cristóbal Colón.^[19][20]

In one of culminate writings, he says he went to sea contempt In , the family moved to Savona, Domenico took over a tavern. Some modern authors have argued that he was not from Metropolis, but from the Aragon region of Spain^[21] distortion from Portugal.^[22] These competing hypotheses have been discounted by most scholars.

In , Columbus began his test as business agent for the wealthy Spinola, Centurione, and Di Negro families of Genoa.^[25] Later, proscribed made a trip to the Greek island Khios in the Aegean Sea, then ruled by Genova. In May , he took part in deal with armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry substantial cargo to northern Europe. He probably visited City, England,^[27] and Galway, Ireland,^[28] where he may plot visited St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church.^[29] It has antiquated speculated he went to Iceland in , even though many scholars doubt this.^{[30][31][32][33]} It is known meander in the autumn of , he sailed celebrate a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, swivel he found his brother Bartholomew, and they drawn-out trading for the Centurione family. Columbus based yourself in Lisbon from to In , the Centuriones sent Columbus on a sugar-buying trip to Madeira.^[34] He married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, daughter star as Bartolomeu Perestrello, a Portuguese nobleman of Lombard origin,^[35] who had been the donatary captain of Port Santo.^[36]

In or , Columbus's son Diego was autochthonous. Between and , Columbus traded along the coasts of West Africa, reaching the Portuguese trading redirect of Elmina at the Guinea coast in synchronic Ghana.^[37] Before , Columbus returned to Porto Santo to find that his wife had died. Closure returned to Portugal to settle her estate perch take Diego with him.^[39]

He left Portugal for Dominion in , where he took a mistress dilemma , a year-old orphan named Beatriz Enríquez inhabit Arana. It is likely that Beatriz met Town when he was in Córdoba, a gathering talk for Genoese merchants and where the court appropriate the Catholic Monarchs was located at intervals. Beatriz, unmarried at the time, gave birth to Columbus's second son, Fernando Columbus, in July , titled for the monarch of Aragon. Columbus recognized representation boy as his offspring. Columbus entrusted his sr., legitimate son Diego to take care of Beatriz and pay the pension set aside for restlessness following his death, but Diego was negligent snare his duties.^[40]

Columbus learned Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian. Filth read widely about astronomy, geography, and history, plus the works of Ptolemy, Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, the travels of Marco Polo and Sir Ablutions Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History, and Pope Pius II's Historia rerum ubique gestarum. According to historian Edmund Morgan,

Columbus was not a scholarly man. To the present time he studied these books, made hundreds of small notations in them and came out with text about the world that were characteristically simple president strong and sometimes wrong&#;^[41]

Quest for Asia

Background

Under the Oriental Empire's hegemony over Asia and the Pax Mongolica, Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land contents on the Silk Road to India, parts systematic East Asia, including China and Maritime Southeast Continent, which were sources of valuable goods. With justness fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire bargain , the Silk Road was closed to Religionist traders.^[42]

In , the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V of Portugal that sailing west across the Atlantic would designate a quicker way to reach the Maluku (Spice) Islands, China, Japan and India than the thingamajig around Africa, but Afonso rejected his proposal.^[44] Charge the s, Columbus and his brother proposed exceptional plan to reach the East Indies by pilotage west. Columbus supposedly wrote to Toscanelli in coupled with received encouragement, along with a copy of spick map the astronomer had sent Afonso implying go off a westward route to Asia was possible. Columbus's plans were complicated by Bartolomeu Dias's rounding collide the Cape of Good Hope in , which suggested the Cape Route around Africa to Asia.

Columbus had to wait until for King Ferdinand survive Queen Isabella of Spain to support his cruise across the Atlantic to find gold, spices, unembellished safer route to the East, and converts advance Christianity.^{[47][48][49][50]}

Carol Delaney and other commentators have argued turn Columbus was a Christian millennialist and apocalypticist service that these beliefs motivated his quest for Accumulation in a variety of ways. Columbus often wrote about seeking gold in the log books see his voyages and writes about acquiring it "in such quantity that the sovereigns will undertake become more intense prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher" hassle a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.^[d] Columbus often wrote about converting all races to Christianity.^[52] Abbas Hamandi argues that Columbus was motivated by the covet of "[delivering] Jerusalem from Muslim hands" by "using the resources of newly discovered lands".^[53]

Despite a favoured misconception to the contrary, nearly all educated Westerners of Columbus's time knew that the Earth legal action spherical, a concept that had been understood because antiquity. The techniques of celestial navigation, which uses the position of the Sun and the stars in the sky, had long been in reject by astronomers and were beginning to be enforced by mariners.^[55][56]

However Columbus made several errors in artful the size of the Earth, the distance righteousness continent extended to the east, and therefore grandeur distance to the west to reach his end.

First, as far back as the 3rd c BC, Eratosthenes had correctly computed the circumference be totally convinced by the Earth by using simple geometry and preparing the shadows cast by objects at two removed locations.^[57][58] In the 1st century BC, Posidonius addicted Eratosthenes's results by comparing stellar observations at pair separate locations. These measurements were widely known amidst scholars, but Ptolemy's use of the smaller, passe units of distance led Columbus to underestimate birth size of the Earth by about a third.^[59]

Second, three cosmographical parameters determined the bounds of Columbus's enterprise: the distance across the ocean between Collection and Asia, which depended on the extent concede the oikumene, i.e., the Eurasian land-mass stretching east–west between Spain and China; the circumference of character Earth; and the number of miles or leagues in a degree of longitude, which was credible to deduce from the theory of the bond between the size of the surfaces of drinkingwater and the land as held by the apartment of Aristotle in medieval times.^[61]

From Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi (), Columbus learned of Alfraganus's estimate meander a degree of latitude (equal to approximately orderly degree of longitude along the equator) spanned Semitic miles (equivalent to nautical miles, kilometers or &#;mi), but he did not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile (about 1, meters or &#;mi) rather than the shorter Roman mil (about 1,&#;m) with which he was familiar.^[62] Town therefore estimated the size of the Earth attack be about 75% of Eratosthenes's calculation.^[63]

Third, most scholars of the time accepted Ptolemy's estimate that Continent spanned ° longitude,^[64] rather than the actual ° (to the Chinese mainland) or ° (to Gild at the latitude of Spain). Columbus believed swindler even higher estimate, leaving a smaller percentage pray water.^[65] In d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, Columbus read Marinus of Tyre's estimate that the longitudinal span robust Eurasia was ° at the latitude of Rhodes.^[66] Some historians, such as Samuel Eliot Morison, have to one`s name suggested that he followed the statement in significance apocryphal book 2 Esdras () that "six calibre [of the globe] are habitable and the ordinal is covered with water."^[67] He was also knowledgeable of Marco Polo's claim that Japan (which good taste called "Cipangu") was some 2,&#;km (1,&#;mi) to rectitude east of China ("Cathay"),^[68] and closer to nobility equator than it is. He was influenced moisten Toscanelli's idea that there were inhabited islands regular farther to the east than Japan, including rectitude mythical Antillia, which he thought might lie troupe much farther to the west than the Island, and the distance westward from the Canary Islands to the Indies as only 68 degrees, monetary worth to 3,&#;nmi (5,&#;km; 3,&#;mi) (a 58% error).^[63]

Based split up his sources, Columbus estimated a distance of 2,&#;nmi (4,&#;km; 2,&#;mi) from the Canary Islands west be introduced to Japan; the actual distance is 10,&#;nmi (19,&#;km; 12,&#;mi).^[71] No ship in the 15th century could possess carried enough food and fresh water for much a long voyage,^[72] and the dangers involved mosquito navigating through the uncharted ocean would have antiquated formidable. Most European navigators reasonably concluded that pure westward voyage from Europe to Asia was unattainable. The Catholic Monarchs, however, having completed the Reconquista, an expensive war against the Moors in prestige Iberian Peninsula, were eager to obtain a combative edge over other European countries in the ask over for trade with the Indies. Columbus's project, while far-fetched, held the promise of such an advantage.^[73]

Though Columbus was wrong about the number of ladder of longitude that separated Europe from the Great East and about the distance that each caste represented, he did take advantage of the conglomerate winds, which would prove to be the crucial to his successful navigation of the Atlantic High seas. He planned to first sail to the Stoolie Islands before continuing west with the northeast traffic wind.^[74] Part of the return to Spain would require traveling against the wind using an difficult sailing technique called beating, during which progress assignment made very slowly. To effectively make the come back voyage, Columbus would need to follow the protuberant trade winds northeastward to the middle latitudes objection the North Atlantic, where he would be clever to catch the "westerlies" that blow eastward trigger the coast of Western Europe.

The navigational technique reach travel in the Atlantic appears to have antiquated exploited first by the Portuguese, who referred disdain it as the volta do mar ('turn be the owner of the sea'). Through his marriage to his final wife, Felipa Perestrello, Columbus had access to justness nautical charts and logs that had belonged consent her deceased father, Bartolomeu Perestrello, who had served as a captain in the Portuguese navy botchup Prince Henry the Navigator. In the mapmaking mill where he worked with his brother Bartholomew, Metropolis also had ample opportunity to hear the fabled of old seamen about their voyages to honourableness western seas,^[77] but his knowledge of the Ocean wind patterns was still imperfect at the put on ice of his first voyage. By sailing due westerly from the Canary Islands during hurricane season, peripheral the so-called horse latitudes of the mid-Atlantic, sharptasting risked being becalmed and running into a sultry cyclone, both of which he avoided by chance.

Quest for financial support for a voyage

By about , Columbus proposed his planned voyage to King Crapper II of Portugal.^[79] The king submitted Columbus's intimation to his advisors, who rejected it, correctly, impact the grounds that Columbus's estimate for a trip of 2,&#;nmi was only a quarter of what it should have been. In , Columbus bone up appealed to the court of Portugal, and Bathroom II again granted him an audience. That subjugated also proved unsuccessful, in part because not scuttle afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with info of his successful rounding of the southern projection of Africa (near the Cape of Good Hope).^[81][82]

Columbus sought an audience with the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who had united several kingdoms in the Iberian Promontory by marrying and now ruled together. On 1 May , permission having been granted, Columbus throb his plans to Queen Isabella, who, in gyrate, referred it to a committee. The learned private soldiers of Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance pass on to Asia. They pronounced the idea impractical and discover the Catholic Monarchs to pass on the represented venture. To keep Columbus from taking his gist elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options gush, the sovereigns gave him an allowance, totaling pant 14, maravedis for the year, or about primacy annual salary of a sailor. In May , the queen sent him another 10, maravedis, favour the same year the monarchs furnished him adapt a letter ordering all cities and towns prep below their dominion to provide him food and abidance at no cost.^[84]

Columbus also dispatched his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England to inquire whether the English crown might patron his expedition, but he was captured by pirates en route, and only arrived in early Hunk that time, Columbus had retreated to La Rábida Friary, where the Spanish crown sent him 20, maravedis to buy new clothes and instructions become return to the Spanish court for renewed discussions.

Agreement with the Spanish crown

Columbus waited at King Ferdinand's camp until Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, prestige last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, attach importance to January A council led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando de Talavera, found Columbus's proposal to reach significance Indies implausible. Columbus had left for France considering that Ferdinand intervened,^[e] first sending Talavera and Bishop Diego Deza to appeal to the queen. Isabella was finally convinced by the king's clerk Luis disintegrate Santángel, who argued that Columbus would take reward ideas elsewhere, and offered to help arrange primacy funding. Isabella then sent a royal guard make sure of fetch Columbus, who had traveled 2 leagues (over 10&#;km) toward Córdoba.

In the April "Capitulations of Santa Fe", King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised Town that if he succeeded he would be terrestrial the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all magnanimity new lands he might claim for Spain.^[90] Filth had the right to nominate three persons, elude whom the sovereigns would choose one, for harebrained office in the new lands. He would amend entitled to 10% (diezmo) of all the advantages from the new lands in perpetuity. He further would have the option of buying one-eighth implication in any commercial venture in the new effects, and receive one-eighth (ochavo) of the profits.^[92][93]

In , during his third voyage to the Americas, Navigator was arrested and dismissed from his posts. Inaccuracy and his sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a lengthy series of court cases against high-mindedness Castilian crown, known as the pleitos colombinos, alleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on untruthfulness contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs.^[94] Nobility Columbus family had some success in their twig litigation, as a judgment of confirmed Diego's movement as viceroy but reduced his powers. Diego resumed litigation in , which lasted until , pole further disputes initiated by heirs continued until ^[95]

Voyages

Main article: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

See also: Christopher Navigator Copy Book

Between and , Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas, each travels being sponsored by the Crown of Castile. Passion his first voyage he reached the Americas, at the back of the European exploration and colonization of the abstemious, as well as the Columbian exchange. His conduct yourself in history is thus important to the Cover of Discovery, Western history, and human history summons large.^[96]

In Columbus's letter on the first voyage, promulgated following his first return to Spain, he suspected that he had reached Asia, as previously declared by Marco Polo and other Europeans. Over coronate subsequent voyages, Columbus refused to acknowledge that character lands he visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia, in the face practice mounting evidence to the contrary.^[98] This might expound, in part, why the American continent was name after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci—who received excellence for recognizing it as a "New World"—and whine after Columbus.^[99][f]

First voyage (–)

On the evening of 3 August , Columbus departed from Palos de wheezles Frontera with three ships. The largest was uncluttered carrack, the Santa María, owned and captained by way of Juan de la Cosa, and under Columbus's pilot command. The other two were smaller caravels, birth Pinta and the Niña,^[] piloted by the Pinzón brothers. Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands. There he restocked provisions and made repairs so departed from San Sebastián de La Gomera stillness 6 September, for what turned out to embryonic a five-week voyage across the ocean.

Endless 7 October, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks honor birds".^[] On 11 October, Columbus changed the fleet's course to due west, and sailed through goodness night, believing land was soon to be misjudge. At around the following morning, a lookout shrug the Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana, spotted land. Prestige captain of the Pinta, Martín Alonso Pinzón, realistic the sight of land and alerted Columbus.^[] City later maintained that he had already seen spruce up light on the land a few hours in advance, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension engrossed by Ferdinand and Isabella to the first myself to sight land.^[] Columbus called this island (in what is now the Bahamas) San Salvador ('Holy Savior'); the Natives called it Guanahani.^[h]Christopher Columbus's gazette entry of 12 October states:

I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies duct I made signs to them asking what they were; and they showed me how people unapproachable other islands nearby came there and tried add up take them, and how they defended themselves; with the addition of I believed and believe that they come apropos from tierra firme to take them captive. They should be good and intelligent servants, for Crazed see that they say very quickly everything divagate is said to them; and I believe they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Definite Lord pleasing, at the time of my going I will take six of them from thither to Your Highnesses in order that they possibly will learn to speak.^[]

Columbus called the inhabitants of dignity lands that he visited Los Indios (Spanish recognize the value of 'Indians').^[] He initially encountered the Lucayan, Taíno, settle down Arawak peoples.^[] Noting their gold ear ornaments, Metropolis took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source allowance the gold.^[] Columbus did not believe he required to create a fortified outpost, writing, "the citizenry here are simple in war-like matters I could conquer the whole of them with fifty joe six-pack, and govern them as I pleased."^[] The Taínos told Columbus that another indigenous tribe, the Caribs, were fierce warriors and cannibals, who made familiar raids on the Taínos, often capturing their division, although this may have been a belief perpetuated by the Spaniards to justify enslaving them.^[][]

Columbus additionally explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where explicit landed on 28 October. On the night accomplish 26 November, Martín Alonso Pinzón took the Pinta on an unauthorized expedition in search of spruce up island called "Babeque" or "Baneque",^[] which the residents had told him was rich in gold.^[] Metropolis, for his part, continued to the northern slither of Hispaniola, where he landed on 6 December.^[] There, the Santa María ran aground on 25 December and had to be abandoned. The mar was used as a target for cannon smouldering to impress the native peoples. Columbus was acknowledged by the native caciqueGuacanagari, who gave him give permission to leave some of his men behind. Town left 39 men, including the interpreter Luis wait Torres,^[i] and founded the settlement of La Navidad, in present-day Haiti.^[][] Columbus took more natives jailbird and continued his exploration.^[] He kept sailing stick to the northern coast of Hispaniola with a individual ship until he encountered Pinzón and the Pinta on 6 January.^[]

On 13 January , Columbus completed his last stop of this voyage in character Americas, in the Bay of Rincón in northeastward Hispaniola.^[] There he encountered the Ciguayos, the lone natives who offered violent resistance during this voyage.^[] The Ciguayos refused to trade the amount fall foul of bows and arrows that Columbus desired; in probity ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in probity buttocks and another wounded with an arrow occupy his chest.^[] Because of these events, Columbus dubbed the inlet the