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Short essay on christopher columbus
Short essay on christopher columbus
Christopher columbus biographical essau
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Christopher Columbus is the explorer who is credited for discovering America. Of course, there were already people living in America at the time who we call Native Americans. There even was a European, Leif Ericsson, who had been to the Americas before. However, it was Columbus' voyage that started the exploration and colonization of the Americas. Before the Voyage Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. He later lived in Lisbon where he worked as a trader. He learned how to make maps and navigate a ship.
A Shortcut to China Columbus and his brother, Bartholomew, knew that there were great riches to be had in China and East Asia. However, traveling overland by the Silk Road was dangerous and a sea route around Africa seemed much too long.
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Columbus thought he could sail straight to China by crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It would turn out that Columbus was wrong. The Earth was much larger than he thought and there was another land, the Americas, between Europe and Asia. Three Ships and a Long Voyage Columbus spent years trying to convince someone to pay for his voyage. He first tried to get King John II of Portugal to pay for his journey, but the King was not interested. Finally, he was able to convince Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain to pay for the trip.
He set sail on August 3, 1492 with three ships named the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The voyage was long and difficult. At one point his men threatened to mutiny and wanted to turn back. Columbus promised them he would turn back in two days if they didn't find land. In his journal, however, he wrote that he had no intention of turning back. Finding Land on October 12, 1492 land was spotted. It was a small island in the Bahamas that Columbus would name San Salvador. He met natives there that he called Indians because he was convinced that he had landed on islands off the coast of East Asia. He also visited other islands in the Caribbean such as Cuba and Hispaniola. Returning Home After making his discovery, Columbus was eager to return home to Spain and claim his riches. Only the Pinta and the Nina were able to return to Spain, however, as the Santa Maria wrecked off the coast of …show more content…
Hispaniola. Columbus left 43 men behind on the island to start up an outpost.
Upon returning home, Columbus was treated like a hero. He presented some of the things he had found including turkeys, pineapples, and some natives he had captured. The King of Spain was pleased enough to fund future expeditions. More Voyages Columbus would make three more voyages to the Americas. He explored more of the Caribbean and even saw mainland America. He had some difficulties in being the local governor and was even arrested for his behavior and for mistreating some of the colonists. Columbus died on May 20, 1506. He died thinking he had discovered a shortcut to Asia across the Atlantic Ocean. He never knew what an amazing discovery he had made.
Columbus was first buried in Spain, however his remains were later moved to Santo Domingo in the new world and then back, again, to Spain. He brought horses to the new world on his second voyage. In his original calculations, he thought that Asia would be 2,400 miles from Portugal. He was way off. It is actually 10,000 miles away! Not to mention the huge continent in
between. By the time he was 31 or 32, Columbus had become a master mariner in the Portuguese merchant service. It is thought by some that he was greatly influenced by his brother, Bartholomew, who may have accompanied Bartholomew Diaz on his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and by Martín Alonso Pinzón, the pilot who commanded the Pinta on the first voyage. Columbus was but one among many who believed one could reach land by sailing west. His uniqueness lay rather in the persistence of his dream and his determination to realize this "Enterprise of the Indies," as he called his plan. Seeking support for it, he was repeatedly rebuffed, first at the court of John II of Portugal and then at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Finally, after eight years of supplication by Columbus, the Spanish monarchs, having conquered Granada, decided to risk the enterprise. Columbus is great, he explored many things around him and he faced many obstacles during his voyages. Such a strong personality with a very passionate heart.
Columbus and Champlain were both devoted to the success of their expeditions; however, Columbus had far more selfish intentions. Columbus was an Italian who sought aid for a journey that would travel across the Atlantic Ocean in search for riches in the East. His support did not come easy as he was rejected by the courts of Portugal, France, and England. Ultimately, Columbus was able to gain authorization and funding for a voyage to begin in 1492 by the Spanish monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel. After starting the long awaited expedition in April, Columbus was able to reach the West Indies by October of that year. Upon encountering the New World, Columbus immediately claimed the land along with its natives for his Spanish sovereigns.
Some of the problems when studying history are the texts and documents that have been discovered are only from perspective. Furthermore, on occasion that one perspective is all there may be for historians to study. A good example of this textual imbalance can be found from the texts about the discovery of the New World; more specifically, the letters of Christopher Columbus and Pêro Vaz de Caminha during their voyages to the New World. Plenty of the text from this time is written from the perspective of the Europeans, as the Indigenous population did not have any written text. What this means is that it provided only one perspective, which can drastically hinder how history is interpreted. Columbus’s letter of his first voyage to the Caribbean
He left from Spain with six ships, three to deliver supplies to the colonies in the New World, and three for the exploration to find a more direct route to Asia, which Columbus believed he would find. He sailed to the Canary islands, then west across the Atlantic. On this voyage, Columbus got stuck in the “horse latitudes”, areas where the wind is especially calm. During this time, the crews ran low on water. They reached land on the 31th of July, in present day Trinidad. The quantity of fresh water entering the ocean had Columbus conclude he was on a continent. He concluded that the “Garden of Eden” was on this new continent. In the next months, Columbus continued to explore the surrounding areas, looking for gold and the Garden of Eden. Columbus sailed to one of his previous settlements to find citizens there rebelling against the tyrannic rule he had established there. The exact date of his return to Europe was unknown, however in 1500, the Spanish crown stripped him of his Governor
Christopher Columbus discovered the America’s for Spain in 1492. The explorers and settlers that settled in Central and South America were mostly Spanish and Portuguese. The English took notice of the Spanish success in the America’s, so they decided to explore the upper part of the America’s, North America, in the late 1500’s.
The history of the colonization of America is one written in blood. Hispaniola is no exception, and the conflict can still be seen today. In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed west. In doing so, he discovered the American continent, and with that, a whole new world. In December 1492, Columbus and his three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria landed on an island called Haiti/ Quisqueya (the original Taino names for Hispaniola).
He was intending to reach Asia by sailing west rather than taking the traditional route around the Cape of Good Horn. On October 12, 1492, Columbus and his men landed on an island in the Bahamas. “As European adventurers traversed the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they initiated the “Columbian Exchange” of plants, animals, and diseases. ”(P. 26). The Columbian Exchange refers to a period of exchanges between the New and Old Worlds.
Christopher Columbus was a famous navigator and explorer who was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy. Columbus wanted to claim land for Spain so he could be rich and spread religion. He originally set out to find the East Indies for many reasons. One was that he hoped to establish trade routes and colonies in order to gain wealth. Another was that there were now bigger guns that could be strapped on ships so he felt that his voyage had more of a chance of being successful. The main reasons for his exploration was that he wanted to find a western route to Asia to find the riches that Marco Polo talked about in his book. So basically he was not courageous, he was just greedy. He intended on arriving in Japan on his first voyage, but instead, he arrived at the Bahamas archipelago. He ended up making numerous voyages and claiming the lands he visited for the Spanish Empire. Columbus continued voyages creating the first lasting European conta...
A discovery is something that is found that used to be unknown. It doesn't matter that the Native Americans already inhabited the land when he discovered it, because Columbus and other people never knew about it before. This is how he made a discovery that gathered him fame and honor. Today's celebration of Christopher Columbus Day marks when Columbus and his men found the New World and sparked the beginning of the Age of Exploration. Overall just like Peter Gibbon says, ”We can recognize Columbus as a visionary, a sailor of incomparable skill and a hero of exploration”(Gibbon
It is thought by many that Christopher Columbus was a skilled sailor on a mission of greed. Many think that he in fact did it all for the money, honor and the status that comes with an explorer, but this is not the case entirely. Columbus was an adventurer and was enthused by the thrill of the quest of the unknown. “Columbus had a firm religious faith and a scientific curiosity, a zest for life, the felling for beauty and the striving for novelty that we associate with the advancement of learning”. He had heard of the legendary Atlantic voyages and sailors reports of land to the west of Madeira and the Azores. He believed that Japan was about 4,800 km to the west of Portugal. In 1484, Columbus wanted support for an exploratory voyage from King John II of Portugal, but he was refused. In 1485, Columbus took his son Diego and went to Spain to get some help.
Under the monarchy of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Spain was provided with many advantages in its conquest of the Western Hemisphere. Spanish monarchs supported several explorers ' expeditions and one of them was Christopher Columbus. In 1492 Columbus was on the look out for a better, cheaper, and faster route to Asia in order to acquire better trade goods, expand Spanish empires, and spread Christianity. It was also his last chance to sail and prove to the Spanish monarchs that he was capable of finding riches for them. Instead, he sailed west where he ran into the Western Hemisphere and discovered new lands and new people, where he thought he found India.
Columbus was in command of three separate ships. The Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa María. Columbus taking overall command captained the Santa María. the Pinta was captained by Martín Alonso Pinzón and the Niña by Vicente Yañez Pinzón. First landfall was on the island of San Salvador. The land turned out to be a small island in the present-day Bahamas. Columbus named the island San Salvador, although he remarked in his journal that the natives referred to it as Guanahani. (Knopf). The second landfall was in Cuba. Columbus being far off on his navigation believed they had found part of China. He sent two men to investigate them being the first two people to observe the smoking of tobacco. The third landfall was Hispaniola or modern day Haití. Columbus grounded the Santa María and had to abandon ship taking command of the Niña. Columbus negotiating with the chief arranged to leave 39 men for settlement. On January 16th, the final two ships the Pinta and the Santa María reunited and departed for Spain and made landfall on March 4th. On my research of the first voyage Columbus made I found an intriguing paragraph written by Christopher Minster,
Christopher Columbus, one of the most famous explorers with an extraordinary legacy was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. He was an Italian explorer and navigator and is very well known for his four voyages and his “discovery” of the New World. Columbus began sailing when he was just a teenager in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. Later, he moved to Lisbon, Portugal and then Spain, where he spent the rest of his life. Columbus’ purpose was to find a passage to Asia by sailing West, but during his voyage he ended up in the Caribbeans and South America. Columbus’ proposal was turned down by King John of Portugal and the rulers of England and France. After several years of being declined, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella funded Columbus’ voyage
Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer, sailed for Spain looking for an alternate route to Asia. While looking for Asia, Columbus landed on an island in the Caribbean unknown to Europeans although inhabited by Native Americans. Columbus’s arrival on the island of the Bahamas earned him credit for discovering the New World, or the Americas. Based on an examination of four sources, Christopher Columbus had a positive and encouraging character. In the first source called Journal of the First Voyage to America by Christopher Columbus, Columbus chooses optimism; he sees the beauty in the island rather than the flaws. The second source called “Columbus” by Joaquin Miller portrays Columbus as encouraging and poised; no matter how sick and tired his crew became he never gave up; instead he continued to look forward to the future. Lastly, the source called “Prayer of Columbus” by Walt
Before the most famous historic voyage to the Americas Christopher Columbus had no support to go on his expedition. Christopher Columbus tried to get support from the King of Portugal John II, but he was turned down. Spain finally agreed to sponsor his voyage in 1492 across the Atlantic Ocean. By agreeing to sponsor Christopher Columbus voyage they believed they would have gained leverage in what they were trying to do in Spain. The Reconquista made the Spaniards very powerful. By Christopher Columbus finding new land with people and gold it convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to continue to support his voyages. Even though the king and queen believed that allowing him to go on the voyages benefited them it actually allowed Christopher
In the years leading up to and including 1491, European explorers had been researching and studying the world, however they lacked a real understanding of the true size and geography of our planet. When explorers finally began setting out on their expeditions in the late 1400’s, the world began to experience serious change. Before Columbus is credited with the discovery of America in 1492, the Americas were untouched by Europeans, but within a few hundred years permanent settlements would be founded on American soil despite the presence of the native people. In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail on a voyage searching for a route across the Atlantic to Asia for the Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Instead of reaching Asia, Columbus actually landed on present-day San Salvador Island.