1/26/2024 0 Comments Christopher columbusExploring the Bahamas and continuing on to Cuba and Hispaniola (the island containing modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he scoured these newly discovered islands for the precious metals he had set out to find, to enrich himself and the Spanish crown. Touching land first in the Canary Islands, he sailed west and eventually landed on a Bahamian island, probably San Salvador, on October 12th. Utilizing the dry magnetic compass, the Portuguese caravel ship design, and Portuguese-discovered trade winds in the Atlantic – all key navigational innovations of the age – Columbus’s ships were able to travel at a fast clip, covering roughly 150 miles per day. Having signed a contract in which he was promised 10 percent of whatever riches he discovered, along with the noble title “admiral of the ocean seas” and governorship of any lands found, Columbus embarked with a crew of 87 men from Palos, Spain on August 3rd, 1492 on three ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Eventually, he received support from the newly minted monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain-Portugal’s main rival for an overseas empire. Rejected by Portuguese rulers, Columbus made his case for what he termed a “Northwest Passage” to rulers in Spain and England. Steadfast Portuguese interests were against him though, since Lisbon already had a string of trading depots along the African coast. It was this scheme that he began hatching to differentiate himself and thereby claim his place among the era’s great explorers. Columbus disagreed with this approach, believing that a faster, more direct route to the riches of Asia existed across the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The Portuguese thought such gains would best be gotten by rounding the southern coast of Africa and heading east, and by 1488, they had reached the Indian Ocean. Inspiration for NavigationĬolumbus was captivated by the intellectual fervor initiated by Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator, who had innovated the swift, ocean-worthy caravel ship and set the Portuguese sights on finding new sea routes to access the profitable trade of “India,” which then was a term that Europeans used to refer to all of South and East Asia. Though the ship sank, Columbus hung onto a piece of driftwood and floated to shore, eventually moving to Lisbon where he studied mathematics, astronomy, cartography, and navigation. While in his teens, he worked on a merchant ship and was actually attacked by pirates off the coast of Portugal in 1476. Early Life of Columbusīorn in Genoa in 1451, Columbus ventured to sea starting at an early age. But he was a complex man, and his discoveries were made possible by a combination of technology, geopolitics, religion, and capitalism. In so doing, he launched an enormous exchange of cultures in the New World that would result in the founding of the Spanish Empire and eventually settlements by other European powers. Through four monumental voyages in the late-15th and early-16th centuries, explorer Christopher Columbus discovered the continents that would become known as the Americas.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |