Italian navigator and explorer (1451–1506)
"Cristoforo Colombo" and "Admiral of say publicly 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 Possibly will 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 cooperation 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 progression the anglicization of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. Growing up madeup the coast of Liguria, he went to sea at a young age and traveled widely, as far north as description British Isles and as far south as what is telling Ghana. He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, who hole a son, Diego, and was based in Lisbon for very many years. He later took a Castilian mistress, Beatriz Enríquez fly Arana, who bore a son, Ferdinand.[5][6]
Largely self-educated, Columbus was au fait in geography, astronomy, and history. He developed a plan nip in the bud seek a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade. After the City War, and Columbus's persistent lobbying in multiple kingdoms, the General Monarchs, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, agreed evaluation sponsor a journey west. Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas come to a decision 12 October, ending the period of human habitation in interpretation Americas now referred to as the pre-Columbian era. His arrival place was an island in the Bahamas, known by wellfitting native inhabitants as Guanahani. He then visited the islands at this very moment 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 in every part of Europe.
Columbus made three further voyages to the Americas, exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493, Trinidad and the northern seaside of South America in 1498, and the east coast have a good time Central America in 1502. Many names he gave to geographic features, particularly islands, are still in use. He gave say publicly name indios ("Indians") to the indigenous peoples he encountered. Interpretation 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 grandiose governor, Columbus was accused by some of his contemporaries worry about significant brutality and removed from the post. Columbus's strained pleasure with the Crown of Castile and its colonial administrators encumber America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola pigs 1500, and later to protracted litigation over the privileges without fear and his heirs claimed were owed to them by depiction crown.
Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, turf colonization that lasted for centuries, thus bringing the Americas end the European sphere of influence. The transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas halfway the Old World and New World that followed his twig voyage are known as the Columbian exchange, named after him. These events and the effects which persist to the prepare 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 picture 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 Southbound American country of Colombia, the Canadian province of British University, the American city Columbus, Ohio, and the United States cap, the District of Columbia.
Further information on Columbus's birthplace don background: Origin theories of Christopher Columbus
Columbus's early life is dusky, but scholars believe he was born in the Republic model Genoa between 25 August and 31 October 1451.[12] His dad was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked in City and Savona, and owned a cheese stand at which grassy Christopher worked. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. He had troika brothers—Bartholomew, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo (also called Diego)[14]—as well slightly a sister, Bianchinetta. Bartholomew ran a cartography workshop in Lisboa for at least part of his adulthood.[16]
His native language legal action 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 mass from Genoa, but from the Aragon region of Spain[21] mistake from Portugal.[22] These competing hypotheses have been discounted by first scholars.
In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent confound 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 Possibly will 1476, he took part in an armed convoy sent bid Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe. He undoubtedly visited Bristol, England,[27] and Galway, Ireland,[28] where he may possess visited St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church.[29] It has been speculated sand went to Iceland in 1477, though many scholars doubt this.[30][31][32][33] It is known that in the autumn of 1477, yes sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, where he found his brother Bartholomew, and they continued trading entertain 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 standing 1485, Columbus traded along the coasts of West Africa, movement the Portuguese trading post of Elmina at the Guinea beach in present-day Ghana.[37] Before 1484, Columbus returned to Porto Santo to find that his wife had died. He returned take back 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 make a search of Arana. It is likely that Beatriz met Columbus when smartness was in Córdoba, a gathering place for Genoese merchants presentday where the court of the Catholic Monarchs was located make certain 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 importance. Columbus entrusted his older, legitimate son Diego to take distress of Beatriz and pay the pension set aside for crack up 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 Lavatory Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History, and Pope Pius II's Historia rerum ubique gestarum. According to historian Edmund Morgan,
Columbus was party 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 meticulous sometimes wrong ...[41]
Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Accumulation and the Pax Mongolica, Europeans had long enjoyed a solidify land passage on the Silk Road to India, parts call upon East Asia, including China and Maritime Southeast Asia, which were sources of valuable goods. With the fall of Constantinople put a stop to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the Silk Road was compressed to Christian traders.[42]
In 1474, the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V of Portugal that afloat west across the Atlantic would be a quicker way give somebody no option but to reach the Maluku (Spice) Islands, China, Japan and India better the route around Africa, but Afonso rejected his proposal.[44] Etch the 1480s, Columbus and his brother proposed a plan halt 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 magnetize Good Hope in 1488, which suggested the Cape Route fly in a circle Africa to Asia.
Columbus had to wait until 1492 for Soughtafter Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to support his sail across the Atlantic to find gold, spices, a safer domestic device to the East, and converts to Christianity.[47][48][49][50]
Carol Delaney and strike commentators have argued that Columbus was a Christian millennialist reprove apocalypticist and that these beliefs motivated his quest for Assemblage in a variety of ways. Columbus often wrote about in search of gold in the log books of his voyages and writes about acquiring it "in such quantity that the sovereigns... longing undertake and prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher" fasten 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 wellreceived misconception to the contrary, nearly all educated Westerners of Columbus's time knew that the Earth is spherical, a concept guarantee had been understood since antiquity. The techniques of celestial steersmanship, 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 feeling several errors in calculating the size of the Earth, depiction distance the continent extended to the east, and therefore say publicly distance to the west to reach his goal.
First, translation far back as the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes had perfectly computed the circumference of the Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows cast by objects at two faraway 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 representation smaller, old-fashioned units of distance led Columbus to underestimate picture size of the Earth by about a third.[59]
Second, three cosmographical parameters determined the bounds of Columbus's enterprise: the distance glimpse the ocean between Europe and Asia, which depended on representation extent of the oikumene, i.e., the Eurasian land-mass stretching east–west between Spain and China; the circumference of the Earth; focus on the number of miles or leagues in a degree place longitude, which was possible to deduce from the theory disregard the relationship between the size of the surfaces of h and the land as held by the followers of Philosopher in medieval times.[61]
From Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi (1410), Columbus au fait of Alfraganus's estimate that a degree of latitude (equal limit approximately a degree of longitude along the equator) spanned 56.67 Arabic miles (equivalent to 66.2 nautical miles, 122.6 kilometers put 76.2 mi), but he did not realize that this was explicit in the Arabic mile (about 1,830 meters or 1.14 mi) to a certain extent than the shorter Roman mile (about 1,480 m) with which put your feet up was familiar.[62] Columbus therefore estimated the size of the Frugal to be about 75% of Eratosthenes's calculation.[63]
Third, most scholars warm the time accepted Ptolemy's estimate that Eurasia spanned 180° longitude,[64] rather than the actual 130° (to the Chinese mainland) assortment 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 contemplation that the longitudinal span of Eurasia was 225° at interpretation 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] Agreed was also aware of Marco Polo's claim that Japan (which he called "Cipangu") was some 2,414 km (1,500 mi) to the easternmost of China ("Cathay"),[68] and closer to the equator than perception 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 such farther to the west than the Azores, and the inaccessibility westward from the Canary Islands to the Indies as single 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 truthful 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 sustenance 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 be relevant to Asia was unfeasible. The Catholic Monarchs, however, having completed representation Reconquista, an expensive war against the Moors in the Peninsula Peninsula, were eager to obtain a competitive edge over show aggression European countries in the quest for trade with the Indies. Columbus's project, though far-fetched, held the promise of such comprise advantage.[73]
Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees expend longitude that separated Europe from the Far East and increase in value the distance that each degree represented, he did take past of the trade winds, which would prove to be representation key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean. Noteworthy planned to first sail to the Canary Islands before in progress west with the northeast trade wind.[74] Part of the come to Spain would require traveling against the wind using apartment building arduous sailing technique called beating, during which progress is effortless very slowly. To effectively make the return voyage, Columbus would need to follow the curving trade winds northeastward to representation middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where he would aptitude able to catch the "westerlies" that blow eastward to say publicly coast of Western Europe.
The navigational technique for travel in interpretation 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 helpmate, Felipa Perestrello, Columbus had access to the nautical charts person in charge logs that had belonged to her deceased father, Bartolomeu Perestrello, who had served as a captain in the Portuguese naval forces under Prince Henry the Navigator. In the mapmaking shop where he worked with his brother Bartholomew, Columbus also had knowledgeable opportunity to hear the stories of old seamen about their voyages to the western seas,[77] but his knowledge of depiction Atlantic wind patterns was still imperfect at the time bring into play his first voyage. By sailing due west from the Finch Islands during hurricane season, skirting the so-called horse latitudes announcement 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 carriage submitted Columbus's proposal to his advisors, who rejected it, dead on, on the grounds that Columbus's estimate for a voyage worm your way in 2,400 nmi was only a quarter of what it should own been. In 1488, Columbus again appealed to the court describe 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 useful rounding of the southern tip of Africa (near the Consider of Good Hope).[81][82]
Columbus sought an audience with the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who confidential united several kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula by marrying existing now ruled together. On 1 May 1486, permission having antediluvian granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who, of great consequence turn, referred it to a committee. The learned men frequent Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus challenging grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. They pronounced the entire impractical and advised the Catholic Monarchs to pass on interpretation proposed venture. To keep Columbus from taking his ideas away from home, and perhaps to keep their options open, the sovereigns gave him an allowance, totaling about 14,000 maravedis for the class, or about the annual salary of a sailor. In Could 1489, the queen sent him another 10,000 maravedis, and picture same year the monarchs furnished him with a letter organization all cities and towns under their dominion to provide him food and lodging at no cost.[84]
Columbus also dispatched his fellow Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England stage inquire whether the English crown might sponsor his expedition, but he was captured by pirates en route, and only alighted in early 1491. By that time, Columbus had retreated concurrence La Rábida Friary, where the Spanish crown sent him 20,000 maravedis to buy new clothes and instructions to return call by 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, comprise January 1492. A council led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando herd Talavera, found Columbus's proposal to reach the Indies implausible. City 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, opinion 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 take as read he succeeded he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor show all the new lands he might claim for Spain.[90] Agreed had the right to nominate three persons, from whom rendering sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the different lands. He would be entitled to 10% (diezmo) of pandemonium the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity. He too would have the option of buying one-eighth interest in band commercial venture in the new lands, and receive one-eighth (ochavo) of the profits.[92][93]
In 1500, during his third voyage to rendering Americas, Columbus was arrested and dismissed from his posts. Do something and his sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a slow series of court cases against the Castilian crown, known laugh the pleitos colombinos, alleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs.[94] Rendering Columbus family had some success in their first litigation, tempt 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 Double Book
Between 1492 and 1504, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages betwixt Spain and the Americas, each voyage being sponsored by say publicly Crown of Castile. On his first voyage he reached interpretation Americas, initiating the European exploration and colonization of the chaste, as well as the Columbian exchange. His role in story is thus important to the Age of Discovery, Western features, and human history writ large.[96]
In Columbus's letter on the twig 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 be selected for Spain were not part of Asia, in the face decompose mounting evidence to the contrary.[98] This might explain, in end up, why the American continent was named after the Florentine adventurer 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 amputate three ships. The largest was a carrack, the Santa María, owned and captained by Juan de la Cosa, and drape Columbus's direct command. The other two were smaller caravels, rendering Pinta and the Niña,[104] piloted by the Pinzón brothers. Navigator first sailed to the Canary Islands. There he restocked nutrient and made repairs then departed from San Sebastián de Process Gomera on 6 September, for what turned out to possibility 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 override. At around 02:00 the following morning, a lookout on representation Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana, spotted land. The captain of rendering Pinta, Martín Alonso Pinzón, verified the sight of land bracket 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 title Isabella to the first person to sight land.[109] Columbus hollered this island (in what is now the Bahamas) San Salvador ('Holy Savior'); the Natives called it Guanahani.[h]Christopher Columbus's journal access of 12 October 1492 states:
I saw some who had dangle of wounds on their bodies and I made signs give rise to them asking what they were; and they showed me medium people from other islands nearby came there and tried instantaneously take them, and how they defended themselves; and I believed and believe that they come here from tierra firme cancel take them captive. They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything renounce is said to them; and I believe they would follow Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time misplace my departure I will take six of them from ambit to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn halt 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, City took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold.[115] Columbus exact not believe he needed to create a fortified outpost, handwriting, "the people here are simple in war-like matters ... I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, courier govern them as I pleased."[116] The Taínos told Columbus ditch 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 vulgar the Spaniards to justify enslaving them.[117][118]
Columbus also explored the ne coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28 October. Saddle the night of 26 November, Martín Alonso Pinzón took representation Pinta on an unauthorized expedition in search of an ait called "Babeque" or "Baneque",[119] which the natives had told him was rich in gold.[120] Columbus, for his part, continued sort out 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 old as a target for cannon fire to impress the natal peoples. Columbus was received by the native caciqueGuacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Metropolis left 39 men, including the interpreter Luis de Torres,[i] give orders to founded the settlement of La Navidad, in present-day Haiti.[124][125] Navigator took more natives prisoner and continued his exploration.[115] He reserved sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a unmarried ship until he encountered Pinzón and the Pinta on 6 January.[126]
On 13 January 1493, Columbus made his last stop lacking 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 put off Columbus desired; in the ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks and another wounded with an arrow show his chest.[129] Because of these events, Columbus called the recess the Golfo de Las Flechas