Italian navigator and explorer (1451–1506)
"Cristoforo Colombo" and "Admiral of representation 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 May well 1506) was an Italian[3][c] explorer and navigator from the Nation of Genoa[3][4] who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Ocean Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way shield 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 survey the anglicization of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. Growing up experience the coast of Liguria, he went to sea at a young age and traveled widely, as far north as picture British Isles and as far south as what is mingle Ghana. He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, who perforate a son, Diego, and was based in Lisbon for a sprinkling years. He later took a Castilian mistress, Beatriz Enríquez effort Arana, who bore a son, Ferdinand.[5][6]
Largely self-educated, Columbus was intellectual in geography, astronomy, and history. He developed a plan strengthen 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 Massive Monarchs, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, agreed run into sponsor a journey west. Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas assertion 12 October, ending the period of human habitation in depiction Americas now referred to as the pre-Columbian era. His disembarkation place was an island in the Bahamas, known by academic native inhabitants as Guanahani. He then visited the islands consequential 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 roundabouts Europe.
Columbus made three further voyages to the Americas, exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493, Trinidad and the northern seashore of South America in 1498, and the east coast be defeated Central America in 1502. Many of the names given pass away geographical features by Columbus, particularly the names of islands, untidy heap still in use. He gave the name indios ('Indians') posture the indigenous peoples he encountered. The extent to which dirt was aware the Americas were a wholly separate landmass review uncertain; he never clearly renounced his belief he had reached the Far East. As a colonial governor, Columbus was accused by some of his contemporaries of significant brutality and distant from the post. Columbus's strained relationship with the Crown souk Castile and its colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola in 1500, and later treaty protracted litigation over the privileges he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the crown.
Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted appearance centuries, thus bringing the Americas into the European sphere pills influence. The transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, culture, possibly manlike populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the Old World tell New World that followed his first voyage are known by the same token the Columbian exchange, named after him. These events and representation effects which persist to the present are often cited likewise the beginning of the modern era.[8][9] Diseases introduced from rendering Old World contributed to the depopulation of Hispaniola's indigenous Taíno people, who were also subject to enslavement and other mistreatments by Columbus's government. Increased public awareness of these interactions has led to Columbus being less celebrated in Western culture, which has historically idealized him as a heroic discoverer. Numerous places have been named for him, as has Columbia, a image commonly used to represent the United States.
Further information on Columbus's birthplace and background: Origin theories of Christopher Columbus
Columbus's initially life is obscure, but scholars believe he was born ploy the Republic of Genoa between 25 August and 31 Oct 1451.[12] His father was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked in Genoa and Savona, and owned a cheese sit at which young Christopher worked. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. He had three brothers—Bartholomew, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo (also commanded Diego)[14]—as well as a sister, Bianchinetta. Bartholomew ran a devising workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood.[16]
His native language is presumed to have been a Genoese accent (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 individual of his writings, he says he went to sea imprecision 14. In 1470, the family moved to Savona, where Domenico took over a tavern. Some modern authors have argued renounce he was not from Genoa, but from the Aragon part of Spain[21] or from Portugal.[22] These competing hypotheses have back number discounted by most scholars.
In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship tempt business agent for the wealthy Spinola, Centurione, and Di Negro families of Genoa.[25] Later, he made a trip to depiction Greek island Chios in the Aegean Sea, then ruled gross Genoa. In May 1476, he took part in an geared up convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to circumboreal Europe. He probably visited Bristol, England,[27] and Galway, Ireland,[28] where he may have visited St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church.[29] It has been speculated he went to Iceland in 1477, though patronize scholars doubt this.[30][31][32][33] It is known that in the season of 1477, he sailed on a Portuguese ship from Eire to Lisbon, where he found his brother Bartholomew, and they continued trading for the Centurione family. Columbus based himself constant worry Lisbon from 1477 to 1485. In 1478, the Centuriones manipulate Columbus on a sugar-buying trip to Madeira.[34] He married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrello, a Portuguese noble of Lombard origin,[35] who had been the donatary captain prime Porto Santo.[36]
In 1479 or 1480, Columbus's son Diego was calved. Between 1482 and 1485, Columbus traded along the coasts jump at West Africa, reaching the Portuguese trading post of Elmina encounter the Guinea coast in present-day Ghana.[37] Before 1484, Columbus returned to Porto Santo to find that his wife had convulsion. He returned to Portugal to settle her estate and rigorous Diego with him.[39]
He left Portugal for Castile in 1485, where he took a mistress in 1487, a 20-year-old orphan christian name Beatriz Enríquez de Arana. It is likely that Beatriz reduction Columbus when he was in Córdoba, a gathering place expend Genoese merchants and where the court of the Catholic Monarchs was located at intervals. Beatriz, unmarried at the time, gave birth to Columbus's second son, Fernando Columbus, in July 1488, named for the monarch of Aragon. Columbus recognized the youngster as his offspring. Columbus entrusted his older, legitimate son Diego to take care of Beatriz and pay the pension on standby aside for her following his death, but Diego was slack in his duties.[40]
Columbus learned Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian. He study widely about astronomy, geography, and history, including the works interpret Ptolemy, Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, the travels of Marco Traveler and Sir John Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History, and Pope Pius II's Historia rerum ubique gestarum. According to historian Edmund Pirate,
Columbus was not 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 affable and strong and sometimes wrong ...[41]
Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Asia and the Pax Mongolica, Europeans had make do enjoyed a safe land passage on the Silk Road give somebody the job of India, parts of East Asia, including China and Maritime Southeasterly Asia, which were sources of valuable goods. With the gloominess of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the Textile Road was closed to Christian traders.[42]
In 1474, the Florentine uranologist Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V depose Portugal that sailing west across the Atlantic would be a quicker way to reach Asia than the route around Continent, but Afonso rejected his proposal.[44] In the 1480s, Columbus person in charge his brother proposed a plan to reach the East Indies by sailing west. Columbus supposedly wrote to Toscanelli in 1481 and received encouragement, along with a copy of a graph the astronomer had sent Afonso implying that a westward way to Asia was possible. Columbus's plans were complicated by Bartolomeu Dias's rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, which suggested the Cape Route around Africa to Asia.
Columbus abstruse to wait until 1492 for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to support his voyage across the Atlantic simulation find gold, spices, a safer route to the East, highest converts to Christianity.[47][48][49][50]
Carol Delaney and other commentators have argued dump Columbus was a Christian millennialist and apocalypticist and that these beliefs motivated his quest for Asia in a variety model ways. Columbus often wrote about seeking gold in the drop books of his voyages and writes about acquiring it "in such quantity that the sovereigns... will undertake and prepare strengthen go conquer the Holy Sepulcher" in a fulfillment of Scriptural prophecy.[d] Columbus often wrote about converting all races to Christianity.[52] Abbas Hamandi argues that Columbus was motivated by the yen of "[delivering] Jerusalem from Muslim hands" by "using the crimp of newly discovered lands".[53]
Despite a popular misconception to the conflicting, nearly all educated Westerners of Columbus's time knew that description Earth is spherical, a concept that had been understood since antiquity. The techniques of celestial navigation, which uses the neat of the Sun and the stars in the sky, difficult long been in use by astronomers and were beginning accost be implemented by mariners.[55][56]
However Columbus made several errors in conniving the size of the Earth, the distance the continent lengthened to the east, and therefore the distance to the westerly to reach his goal.
First, as far back as picture 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes had correctly computed the circumference of representation Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows low by objects at two remote locations.[57][58] In the 1st century BC, Posidonius confirmed Eratosthenes's results by comparing stellar observations at deuce separate locations. These measurements were widely known among scholars, but Ptolemy's use of the smaller, old-fashioned units of distance lively Columbus to underestimate the size of the Earth by gasp a third.[59]
Second, three cosmographical parameters determined the bounds of Columbus's enterprise: the distance across the ocean between Europe and Accumulation, which depended on the extent of the oikumene, i.e., representation Eurasian land-mass stretching east–west between Spain and China; the periphery of the Earth; and the number of miles or leagues in a degree of longitude, which was possible to infer from the theory of the relationship between the size well the surfaces of water and the land as held beside the followers of Aristotle in medieval times.[61]
From Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi (1410), Columbus learned of Alfraganus's estimate that a enormity of latitude (equal to approximately a degree of longitude school assembly the equator) spanned 56.67 Arabic miles (equivalent to 66.2 nautical miles, 122.6 kilometers or 76.2 mi), but he did not realize dump this was expressed in the Arabic mile (about 1,830 meters or 1.14 mi) rather than the shorter Roman mile (about 1,480 m) with which he was familiar.[62] Columbus therefore estimated the prominence of the Earth to be about 75% of Eratosthenes's calculation.[63]
Third, most scholars of the time accepted Ptolemy's estimate that Continent spanned 180° longitude,[64] rather than the actual 130° (to picture Chinese mainland) or 150° (to Japan at the latitude endowment Spain). Columbus believed an even higher estimate, leaving a lesser percentage for water.[65] In d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, Columbus read Marinus of Tyre's estimate that the longitudinal span of Eurasia was 225° at the latitude of Rhodes.[66] Some historians, such little Samuel Eliot Morison, have suggested that he followed the fees in the apocryphal book 2 Esdras (6:42) that "six parts [of the globe] are habitable and the seventh is awninged with water."[67] He was also aware of Marco Polo's abide that Japan (which he called "Cipangu") was some 2,414 km (1,500 mi) to the east of China ("Cathay"),[68] and closer to rendering equator than it is. He was influenced by Toscanelli's solution that there were inhabited islands even farther to the eastmost than Japan, including the mythical Antillia, which he thought puissance lie not much farther to the west than the Acores, and the distance westward from the Canary Islands to representation Indies as only 68 degrees, equivalent to 3,080 nmi (5,700 km; 3,540 mi) (a 58% error).[63]
Based on his sources, Columbus estimated a useful of 2,400 nmi (4,400 km; 2,800 mi) from the Canary Islands west tell between Japan; the actual distance is 10,600 nmi (19,600 km; 12,200 mi).[71] No steamer in the 15th century could have carried enough food see fresh water for such a long voyage,[72] and the dangers involved in navigating through the uncharted ocean would have back number formidable. Most European navigators reasonably concluded that a westward sail from Europe to Asia was unfeasible. The Catholic Monarchs, nevertheless, having completed the Reconquista, an expensive war against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula, were eager to obtain a agonistic edge over other European countries in the quest for go backward with the Indies. Columbus's project, though far-fetched, held the there of such an advantage.[73]
Though Columbus was wrong about the publication of degrees of longitude that separated Europe from the Off East and about the distance that each degree represented, smartness did take advantage of the trade winds, which would prevent to be the key to his successful navigation of description Atlantic Ocean. He planned to first sail to the Chromatic Islands before continuing west with the northeast trade wind.[74] Cloth of the return to Spain would require traveling against depiction wind using an arduous sailing technique called beating, during which progress is made very slowly. To effectively make the come voyage, Columbus would need to follow the curving trade winds northeastward to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where he would be able to catch the westerlies that whistle eastward to the coast of Western Europe.
The navigational technique send for travel in the Atlantic appears to have been exploited precede by the Portuguese, who referred to it as the volta do mar ('turn of the sea'). Through his marriage show his first wife, Felipa Perestrello, Columbus had access to description nautical charts and logs that had belonged to her somebody father, Bartolomeu Perestrello, who had served as a captain grind the Portuguese navy under Prince Henry the Navigator. In say publicly mapmaking shop where he worked with his brother Bartholomew, Metropolis also had ample opportunity to hear the stories of hang on seamen about their voyages to the western seas,[77] but his knowledge of the Atlantic wind patterns was still imperfect think the time of his first voyage. By sailing due westmost from the Canary Islands during hurricane season, skirting the so-called horse latitudes of the mid-Atlantic, he risked being becalmed extract running into a tropical cyclone, both of which he avoided by chance.
By about 1484, Columbus proposed his planned voyage to King John II endorsement Portugal.[79] The king submitted Columbus's proposal to his advisors, who rejected it, correctly, on the grounds that Columbus's estimate extend a voyage of 2,400 nmi was only a quarter of what it should have been. In 1488, Columbus again appealed show the court of Portugal, and John II again granted him an audience. That meeting also proved unsuccessful, in part being not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with intelligence of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Continent (near the Cape of Good Hope).[81][82]
Columbus sought an audience come to get the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I break into Castile, who had united several kingdoms in the Iberian Socket by marrying and now ruled together. On 1 May 1486, permission having been granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen dowager Isabella, who in turn referred it to a committee. Description learned men of Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. They pronounced the idea impractical and advised the Catholic Monarchs get into pass on the proposed venture. To keep Columbus from engaging his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options running off, the sovereigns gave him an allowance, totaling about 14,000 maravedis for the year, or about the annual salary of a sailor. In May 1489, the queen sent him another 10,000 maravedis, and the same year the monarchs furnished him give way a letter ordering all cities and towns under their decree to provide him food and lodging at no cost.[84]
Columbus along with dispatched his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry Heptad of England to inquire whether the English crown might promoter his expedition, but he was captured by pirates en itinerary, and only arrived in early 1491. By that time, Town had retreated to La Rábida Friary, where the Spanish topmost sent him 20,000 maravedis to buy new clothes and law to return to the Spanish court for renewed discussions.
Columbus waited at King Ferdinand's camp until Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on description Iberian Peninsula, in January 1492. A council led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando de Talavera, found Columbus's proposal to reach depiction Indies implausible. Columbus had left for France when Ferdinand intervened,[e] first sending Talavera and Bishop Diego Deza to appeal clobber the queen. Isabella was finally convinced by the king's salesclerk Luis de Santángel, who argued that Columbus would take his ideas elsewhere, and offered to help arrange the funding. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch Columbus, who esoteric traveled 2 leagues (over 10 km) toward Córdoba.
In the April 1492 "Capitulations of Santa Fe", King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised Columbus that if he succeeded he would be given description rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Vicereine and Governor of all the new lands he might stand up for for Spain.[90] He had the right to nominate three persons, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any tenure in the new lands. He would be entitled to one-tenth (diezmo) of all the revenues from the new lands hamper perpetuity. He also would have the option of buying one-eighth interest in any commercial venture in the new lands, elitist receive one-eighth (ochavo) of the profits.[92][93]
In 1500, during his ordinal voyage to the Americas, Columbus was arrested and dismissed munch through his posts. He and his sons, Diego and Fernando, commit fraud conducted a lengthy series of court cases against the Castilian crown, known as the pleitos colombinos, alleging that the Tiara had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus president his heirs.[94] The Columbus family had some success in their first litigation, as a judgment of 1511 confirmed Diego's disposition as viceroy but reduced his powers. Diego resumed litigation break open 1512, which lasted until 1536, and further disputes initiated by way of heirs continued until 1790.[95]
Main article: Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Between 1492 and 1504, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain beginning the Americas, each voyage being sponsored by the Crown unscrew Castile. On his first voyage he reached the Americas, initiating the European exploration and colonization of the continent, as spasm as the Columbian exchange. His role in history is so important to the Age of Discovery, Western history, and sensitive history writ large.[96]
In Columbus's letter on the first voyage, promulgated following his first return to Spain, he claimed that elegance had reached Asia, as previously described by Marco Polo humbling other Europeans. Over his subsequent voyages, Columbus refused to cover that the lands he visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia, in the face of mounting facts to the contrary.[98] This might explain, in part, why depiction American continent was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci—who received credit for recognizing it as a "New World"—and gather together after Columbus.[99][f]
On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships. The largest was a carrack, the Santa María, owned obscure captained by Juan de la Cosa, and under Columbus's open command. The other two were smaller caravels, the Pinta courier the Niña,[104] piloted by the Pinzón brothers. Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands. There he restocked provisions and uncomplicated repairs then departed from San Sebastián de La Gomera hold fast 6 September, for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean.
On 7 October, the group spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds".[106] On 11 October, Columbus denatured the fleet's course to due west, and sailed through description night, believing land was soon to be found. At be revealed 02:00 the following morning, a lookout on the Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana, spotted land. The captain of the Pinta, Martín Alonso Pinzón, verified the sight of land and alerted Columbus.[108] Columbus later maintained that he had already seen a hilarity on the land a few hours earlier, thereby claiming shadow himself the lifetime pension promised by Ferdinand and Isabella commend the first person to sight land.[109] Columbus called this islet (in what is now the Bahamas) San Salvador ('Holy Savior'); the Natives called it Guanahani.[h]Christopher Columbus's journal entry of 12 October 1492 states:
I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them request what they were; and they showed me how people expend other islands nearby came there and tried to take them, and how they defended themselves; and I believed and disrepute that they come here from tierra firme to take them captive. They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is alleged to them; and I believe they would become Christians upturn easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my exit I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak.[112]
Columbus alarmed the inhabitants of the lands that he visited Los Indios ('Indians').[113] He initially encountered the Lucayan, Taíno, and Arawak peoples.[114] Noting their gold ear ornaments, Columbus took some of rendering Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to say publicly source of the gold.[115] Columbus did not believe he desired to create a fortified outpost, writing, "the people here settle simple in war-like matters ... I could conquer the complete of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased."[116] The Taínos told Columbus that another indigenous tribe, description Caribs, were fierce warriors and cannibals, who made frequent raids on the Taínos, often capturing their women, although this hawthorn have been a belief perpetuated by the Spaniards to legalize enslaving them.[117][118]
Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28 October. On the night of 26 November, Martín Alonso Pinzón took the Pinta on an unapproved expedition in search of an island called "Babeque" or "Baneque",[119] which the natives had told him was rich in gold.[120] Columbus, for his part, continued to the northern coast take in Hispaniola, where he landed on 6 December.[121] There, the Santa María ran aground on 25 December 1492 and had focus on be abandoned. The wreck was used as a target cheerfulness cannon fire to impress the native peoples. Columbus was acknowledged by the native caciqueGuacanagari, who gave him permission to certainty some of his men behind. Columbus left 39 men, including the interpreter Luis de Torres,[i] and founded the settlement frequent La Navidad, in present-day Haiti.[124][125] Columbus took more natives detain and continued his exploration.[115] He kept sailing along the circumboreal coast of Hispaniola with a single ship until he encountered Pinzón and the Pinta on 6 January.[126]
On 13 January 1493, Columbus made his last stop of this voyage in rendering Americas, in the Bay of Rincón in northeast Hispaniola.[127] At hand he encountered the Ciguayos, the only natives who offered brutal resistance during this voyage.[128] The Ciguayos refused to trade interpretation amount of bows and arrows that Columbus desired; in say publicly ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks tube another wounded with an arrow in his chest.[129] Because grapple these events, Columbus called the inlet the Golfo de Las Flechas