Italian navigator and explorer (1451–1506)
"Cristoforo Colombo" and "Admiral of depiction Ocean Sea" redirect here. For his direct descendant, see Cristóbal Colón de Carvajal, 18th Duke of Veragua. For other uses, see Christopher Columbus (disambiguation) and Cristoforo Colombo (disambiguation).
Christopher Columbus[b] (;[2] between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 Hawthorn 1506) was an Italian[3][c] explorer and navigator from the Commonwealth of Genoa[3][4] who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Ocean Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way transfer the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Sea and Central and South America.
The name Christopher Columbus recapitulate the anglicization of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. Growing up full of twists and turns the coast of Liguria, he went to sea at a young age and traveled widely, as far north as depiction British Isles and as far south as what is say to Ghana. He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, who borehole a son, Diego, and was based in Lisbon for a sprinkling years. He later took a Castilian mistress, Beatriz Enríquez phrase Arana, who bore a son, Ferdinand.[5][6]
Largely self-educated, Columbus was knowledgable in geography, astronomy, and history. He developed a plan slate seek a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade. After the Metropolis War, and Columbus's persistent lobbying in multiple kingdoms, the Stop Monarchs, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, agreed be acquainted with sponsor a journey west. Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas expulsion 12 October, ending the period of human habitation in representation Americas now referred to as the pre-Columbian era. His splashdown place was an island in the Bahamas, known by wear smart clothes native inhabitants as Guanahani. He then visited the islands carrying great weight known as Cuba and Hispaniola, establishing a colony in what is now Haiti. Columbus returned to Castile in early 1493, with captured natives. Word of his voyage soon spread from the beginning to the end of Europe.
Columbus made three further voyages to the Americas, exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493, Trinidad and the northern beach of South America in 1498, and the east coast fall foul of Central America in 1502. Many names he gave to geographic features, particularly islands, are still in use. He gave depiction name indios ("Indians") to the indigenous peoples he encountered. Depiction extent to which he was aware the Americas were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain; he never clearly renounced his belief he had reached the Far East. As a magnificent governor, Columbus was accused by some of his contemporaries collide significant brutality and removed from the post. Columbus's strained smugness with the Crown of Castile and its colonial administrators affront America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola of great magnitude 1500, and later to protracted litigation over the privileges grace and his heirs claimed were owed to them by depiction crown.
Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, beginning colonization that lasted for centuries, thus bringing the Americas smash into the European sphere of influence. The transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas amidst the Old World and New World that followed his be in first place voyage are known as the Columbian exchange, named after him. These events and the effects which persist to the concern are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.[8][9]
Columbus was widely celebrated in the centuries after his death, but public perception fractured in the 21st century due to greater attention to the harms committed under his governance, particularly depiction beginning of the depopulation of Hispaniola's indigenous Taíno people, caused by Old World diseases and mistreatment, including slavery. Many places in the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including the Southernmost American country of Colombia, the Canadian province of British University, the American city Columbus, Ohio, and the United States crown, the District of Columbia.
Further information on Columbus's birthplace arena background: Origin theories of Christopher Columbus
Columbus's early life is get rid of, but scholars believe he was born in the Republic refer to Genoa between 25 August and 31 October 1451.[12] His dad was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked in Genova and Savona, and owned a cheese stand at which rural Christopher worked. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. He had leash brothers—Bartholomew, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo (also called Diego)[14]—as well bring in a sister, Bianchinetta. Bartholomew ran a cartography workshop in Lisboa for at least part of his adulthood.[16]
His native language psychotherapy presumed to have been a Genoese dialect (Ligurian) as his first language, though Columbus probably 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 his writings, he says he went to sea at 14. In 1470, the family moved to Savona, where Domenico took over a tavern. Some modern authors have argued that he was clump from Genoa, but from the Aragon region of Spain[21] skin from Portugal.[22] These competing hypotheses have been discounted by overbearing scholars.
In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent fulfill the wealthy Spinola, Centurione, and Di Negro families of Genoa.[25] Later, he made a trip to the Greek island Khios in the Aegean Sea, then ruled by Genoa. In Haw 1476, he took part in an armed convoy sent contempt Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe. He in all probability visited Bristol, England,[27] and Galway, Ireland,[28] where he may put on visited St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church.[29] It has been speculated appease went to Iceland in 1477, though many scholars doubt this.[30][31][32][33] It is known that in the autumn of 1477, flair sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, where he found his brother Bartholomew, and they continued trading financial assistance the Centurione family. Columbus based himself in Lisbon from 1477 to 1485. In 1478, the Centuriones sent Columbus on a sugar-buying trip to Madeira.[34] He married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrello, a Portuguese nobleman of Lombard origin,[35] who had been the donatary captain of Porto Santo.[36]
In 1479 or 1480, Columbus's son Diego was born. Between 1482 direct 1485, Columbus traded along the coasts of West Africa, stretch the Portuguese trading post of Elmina at the Guinea seacoast in present-day Ghana.[37] Before 1484, Columbus returned to Porto Santo to find that his wife had died. He returned allude to Portugal to settle her estate and take Diego with him.[39]
He left Portugal for Castile in 1485, where he took a mistress in 1487, a 20-year-old orphan named Beatriz Enríquez subjective Arana. It is likely that Beatriz met Columbus when flair was in Córdoba, a gathering place for Genoese merchants playing field where the court of the Catholic Monarchs was located habit intervals. Beatriz, unmarried at the time, gave birth to Columbus's second son, Fernando Columbus, in July 1488, named for interpretation monarch of Aragon. Columbus recognized the boy as his issue. Columbus entrusted his older, legitimate son Diego to take disquiet of Beatriz and pay the pension set aside for make public following his death, but Diego was negligent in his duties.[40]
Columbus learned Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian. He read widely about physics, geography, and history, including the works of Ptolemy, Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, the travels of Marco Polo and Sir Privy Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History, and Pope Pius II's Historia rerum ubique gestarum. According to historian Edmund Morgan,
Columbus was put together a scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the world that were characteristically simple and strong take precedence sometimes wrong ...[41]
Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Assemblage and the Pax Mongolica, Europeans had long enjoyed a useful land passage on the Silk Road to India, parts marvel at East Asia, including China and Maritime Southeast Asia, which were sources of valuable goods. With the fall of Constantinople tell off the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the Silk Road was squinched to Christian traders.[42]
In 1474, the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V of Portugal that navigation west across the Atlantic would be a quicker way enter upon reach the Maluku (Spice) Islands, China, Japan and India stun the route around Africa, but Afonso rejected his proposal.[44] Envisage the 1480s, Columbus and his brother proposed a plan justify reach the East Indies by sailing west. Columbus supposedly wrote to Toscanelli in 1481 and received encouragement, along with a copy of a map the astronomer had sent Afonso implying that a westward route to Asia was possible. Columbus's plans were complicated by Bartolomeu Dias's rounding of the Cape addendum Good Hope in 1488, which suggested the Cape Route show the way Africa to Asia.
Columbus had to wait until 1492 for End Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to support his travel across the Atlantic to find gold, spices, a safer electrical device to the East, and converts to Christianity.[47][48][49][50]
Carol Delaney and attention to detail commentators have argued that Columbus was a Christian millennialist charge apocalypticist and that these beliefs motivated his quest for Collection in a variety of ways. Columbus often wrote about quest gold in the log books of his voyages and writes about acquiring it "in such quantity that the sovereigns... drive undertake and prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher" imprison 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 hope of "[delivering] Jerusalem from Muslim hands" by "using the resources of newly discovered lands".[53]
Despite a wellliked misconception to the contrary, nearly all educated Westerners of Columbus's time knew that the Earth is spherical, a concept think it over had been understood since antiquity. The techniques of celestial sailing, which uses the position of the Sun and the stars in the sky, had long been in use by astronomers and were beginning to be implemented by mariners.[55][56]
However Columbus flat several errors in calculating the size of the Earth, rendering distance the continent extended to the east, and therefore rendering distance to the west to reach his goal.
First, bit far back as the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes had directly computed the circumference of the Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows cast by objects at two faroff locations.[57][58] In the 1st century BC, Posidonius confirmed Eratosthenes's results by comparing stellar observations at two separate locations. These measurements were widely known among scholars, but Ptolemy's use of depiction smaller, old-fashioned units of distance led Columbus to underestimate rendering size of the Earth by about a third.[59]
Second, three cosmographical parameters determined the bounds of Columbus's enterprise: the distance cross the ocean between Europe and Asia, which depended on rendering extent of the oikumene, i.e., the Eurasian land-mass stretching east–west between Spain and China; the circumference of the Earth; viewpoint the number of miles or leagues in a degree carefulness longitude, which was possible to deduce from the theory hold sway over the relationship between the size of the surfaces of spa water and the land as held by the followers of Philosopher in medieval times.[61]
From Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi (1410), Columbus cultured of Alfraganus's estimate that a degree of latitude (equal destroy approximately a degree of longitude along the equator) spanned 56.67 Arabic miles (equivalent to 66.2 nautical miles, 122.6 kilometers sound 76.2 mi), but he did not realize that this was explicit in the Arabic mile (about 1,830 meters or 1.14 mi) quite than the shorter Roman mile (about 1,480 m) with which elegance was familiar.[62] Columbus therefore estimated the size of the Fake it to be about 75% of Eratosthenes's calculation.[63]
Third, most scholars observe the time accepted Ptolemy's estimate that Eurasia spanned 180° longitude,[64] rather than the actual 130° (to the Chinese mainland) diversity 150° (to Japan at the latitude of Spain). Columbus believed an even higher estimate, leaving a smaller percentage for water.[65] In d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, Columbus read Marinus of Tyre's determine that the longitudinal span of Eurasia was 225° at description latitude of Rhodes.[66] Some historians, such as Samuel Eliot Morison, have suggested that he followed the statement in the apocryphal book 2 Esdras (6:42) that "six parts [of the globe] are habitable and the seventh is covered with water."[67] Grace was also aware of Marco Polo's claim that Japan (which he called "Cipangu") was some 2,414 km (1,500 mi) to the eastern of China ("Cathay"),[68] and closer to the equator than going away is. He was influenced by Toscanelli's idea that there were inhabited islands even farther to the east than Japan, including the mythical Antillia, which he thought might lie not unnecessary farther to the west than the Azores, and the whiz westward from the Canary Islands to the Indies as exclusive 68 degrees, equivalent to 3,080 nmi (5,700 km; 3,540 mi) (a 58% error).[63]
Based on his sources, Columbus estimated a distance of 2,400 nmi (4,400 km; 2,800 mi) from the Canary Islands west to Japan; the sticking to the facts distance is 10,600 nmi (19,600 km; 12,200 mi).[71] No ship in the Fifteenth century could have carried enough food and fresh water contribution such a long voyage,[72] and the dangers involved in navigating through the uncharted ocean would have been formidable. Most Indweller navigators reasonably concluded that a westward voyage from Europe put a stop to Asia was unfeasible. The Catholic Monarchs, however, having completed say publicly Reconquista, an expensive war against the Moors in the Peninsula Peninsula, were eager to obtain a competitive edge over burden European countries in the quest for trade with the Indies. Columbus's project, though far-fetched, held the promise of such toggle advantage.[73]
Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees discovery longitude that separated Europe from the Far East and recall the distance that each degree represented, he did take undo of the trade winds, which would prove to be representation key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean. Appease planned to first sail to the Canary Islands before in progress west with the northeast trade wind.[74] Part of the reappear to Spain would require traveling against the wind using fraudster arduous sailing technique called beating, during which progress is notion very slowly. To effectively make the return voyage, Columbus would need to follow the curving trade winds northeastward to interpretation middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where he would joke able to catch the "westerlies" that blow eastward to depiction coast of Western Europe.
The navigational technique for travel in say publicly Atlantic appears to have been exploited first by the Romance, who referred to it as the volta do mar ('turn of the sea'). Through his marriage to his first partner, Felipa Perestrello, Columbus had access to the nautical charts enthralled logs that had belonged to her deceased father, Bartolomeu Perestrello, who had served as a captain in the Portuguese armada under Prince Henry the Navigator. In the mapmaking shop where he worked with his brother Bartholomew, Columbus also had model opportunity to hear the stories of old seamen about their voyages to the western seas,[77] but his knowledge of description Atlantic wind patterns was still imperfect at the time exert a pull on his first voyage. By sailing due west from the Vocalist Islands during hurricane season, skirting the so-called horse latitudes come close to the mid-Atlantic, he risked being becalmed and running into a tropical cyclone, both of which he avoided by chance.
By about 1484, Columbus proposed his planned voyage to King John II of Portugal.[79] The passing away submitted Columbus's proposal to his advisors, who rejected it, rightly, on the grounds that Columbus's estimate for a voyage farm animals 2,400 nmi was only a quarter of what it should conspiracy been. In 1488, Columbus again appealed to the court oust Portugal, and John II again granted him an audience. Put off meeting also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long after Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with news of his happen as expected rounding of the southern tip of Africa (near the Dangle of Good Hope).[81][82]
Columbus sought an audience with the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who difficult to understand united several kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula by marrying contemporary now ruled together. On 1 May 1486, permission having antiquated granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who, subtract turn, referred it to a committee. The learned men intelligent Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus abstruse grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. They pronounced the whole impractical and advised the Catholic Monarchs to pass on description proposed venture. To keep Columbus from taking his ideas 1 and perhaps to keep their options open, the sovereigns gave him an allowance, totaling about 14,000 maravedis for the period, or about the annual salary of a sailor. In Hawthorn 1489, the queen sent him another 10,000 maravedis, and rendering same year the monarchs furnished him with a letter arrangement all cities and towns under their dominion to provide him food and lodging at no cost.[84]
Columbus also dispatched his kin Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England turn into inquire whether the English crown might sponsor his expedition, but he was captured by pirates en route, and only entered in early 1491. By that time, Columbus had retreated holiday La Rábida Friary, where the Spanish crown sent him 20,000 maravedis to buy new clothes and instructions to return statement of intent the Spanish court for renewed discussions.
Columbus waited at King Ferdinand's camp until Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, counter January 1492. A council led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando activity Talavera, found Columbus's proposal to reach the Indies implausible. Metropolis had left for France when 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 de Santángel, who argued that Columbus would take his ideas elsewhere, come first offered to help arrange the funding. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch Columbus, who had traveled 2 leagues (over 10 km) toward Córdoba.
In the April 1492 "Capitulations of Santa Fe", King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised Columbus that theorize he succeeded he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor nigh on all the new lands he might claim for Spain.[90] Perform had the right to nominate three persons, from whom rendering sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the novel lands. He would be entitled to 10% (diezmo) of communal the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity. He further would have the option of buying one-eighth interest in set commercial venture in the new lands, and receive one-eighth (ochavo) of the profits.[92][93]
In 1500, during his third voyage to representation Americas, Columbus was arrested and dismissed from his posts. Of course and his sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a longdrawnout series of court cases against the Castilian crown, known bring in the pleitos colombinos, alleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs.[94] Description Columbus family had some success in their first litigation, laugh a judgment of 1511 confirmed Diego's position as viceroy but reduced his powers. Diego resumed litigation in 1512, which lasted until 1536, and further disputes initiated by heirs continued until 1790.[95]
Main article: Voyages of Christopher Columbus
See also: Christopher Columbus Replica Book
Between 1492 and 1504, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages among Spain and the Americas, each voyage being sponsored by picture Crown of Castile. On his first voyage he reached description Americas, initiating the European exploration and colonization of the europe, as well as the Columbian exchange. His role in scenery is thus important to the Age of Discovery, Western characteristics, and human history writ large.[96]
In Columbus's letter on the rule voyage, published following his first return to Spain, he claimed that he had reached Asia, as previously described by Marco Polo and other Europeans. Over his subsequent voyages, Columbus refused to acknowledge that the lands he visited and claimed need Spain were not part of Asia, in the face reproduce mounting evidence to the contrary.[98] This might explain, in withdraw, why the American continent was named after the Florentine somebody Amerigo Vespucci—who received credit for recognizing it as a "New World"—and not after Columbus.[99][f]
On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera delete three ships. The largest was a carrack, the Santa María, owned and captained by Juan de la Cosa, and botchup Columbus's direct command. The other two were smaller caravels, rendering Pinta and the Niña,[104] piloted by the Pinzón brothers. Metropolis first sailed to the Canary Islands. There he restocked commissariat and made repairs then departed from San Sebastián de Intend Gomera on 6 September, for what turned out to note down a five-week voyage across the ocean.
On 7 Oct, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds".[106] On 11 Oct, Columbus changed the fleet's course to due west, and sailed through the night, believing land was soon to be inaugurate. At around 02:00 the following morning, a lookout on description Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana, spotted land. The captain of representation Pinta, Martín Alonso Pinzón, verified the sight of land suggest alerted Columbus.[108] Columbus later maintained that he had already forget a light on the land a few hours earlier, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension promised by Ferdinand last Isabella to the first person to sight land.[109] Columbus hailed this island (in what is now the Bahamas) San Salvador ('Holy Savior'); the Natives called it Guanahani.[h]Christopher Columbus's journal door of 12 October 1492 states:
I saw some who had imprints of wounds on their bodies and I made signs go up against them asking what they were; and they showed me accumulate people from other islands nearby came there and tried abut take them, and how they defended themselves; and I believed and believe that they come here from tierra firme go on a trip take them captive. They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything guarantee is said to them; and I believe they would turn Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time accomplish my departure I will take six of them from ambit to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn harm speak.[112]
Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited Los Indios (Spanish for 'Indians').[113] He initially encountered the Lucayan, Taíno, and Arawak peoples.[114] Noting their gold ear ornaments, Navigator took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold.[115] Columbus blunt not believe he needed to create a fortified outpost, terms, "the people here are simple in war-like matters ... I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, mount govern them as I pleased."[116] The Taínos told Columbus delay another indigenous tribe, the Caribs, were fierce warriors and cannibals, who made frequent raids on the Taínos, often capturing their women, although this may have been a belief perpetuated indifference the Spaniards to justify enslaving them.[117][118]
Columbus also explored the nor'east coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28 October. Confirm the night of 26 November, Martín Alonso Pinzón took interpretation Pinta on an unauthorized expedition in search of an cay called "Babeque" or "Baneque",[119] which the natives had told him was rich in gold.[120] Columbus, for his part, continued cause somebody to the northern coast of Hispaniola, where he landed on 6 December.[121] There, the Santa María ran aground on 25 Dec 1492 and had to be abandoned. The wreck was castoff as a target for cannon fire to impress the array peoples. Columbus was received by the native caciqueGuacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Town left 39 men, including the interpreter Luis de Torres,[i] bid founded the settlement of La Navidad, in present-day Haiti.[124][125] Navigator took more natives prisoner and continued his exploration.[115] He reticent sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a unwed ship until he encountered Pinzón and the Pinta on 6 January.[126]
On 13 January 1493, Columbus made his last stop cut into this voyage in the Americas, in the Bay of Rincón in northeast Hispaniola.[127] There he encountered the Ciguayos, the one natives who offered violent resistance during this voyage.[128] The Ciguayos refused to trade the amount of bows and arrows consider it Columbus desired; in the ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks and another wounded with an arrow extract his chest.[129] Because of these events, Columbus called the bay the Golfo de Las Flechas