The Voyages of Christopher Columbus

The most well known voyage by Christopher Columbus occurred in 1942, when he discovered formerly unidentified western lands of Europe, which were the Americas. Following this discovery, he went back to Spain where he received commission to a bigger fleet. Overall, he went on four journeys to these new worlds, with each one being interesting and important in its own right (Cohen, 1969).

Similar to most educated men during his time, Columbus was familiar with the world being circular and shared the concept that a ship could ultimately get to the Far East from the other direction. Map creators did not know of the Pacific Ocean or of South and North America. They did acknowledge the incorrect location for Japan proposed by Marco Polo. Columbus believed the location of Japan to be approximately 4,800 km towards Portugal’s Westside (Cohen, 1969). His belief that it was possible to circle the world is what made Columbus a unique individual. His uniqueness was in the persistence of his determination and dream to understand the “Enterprise of the Indies”. The Muslims in the area gave a lot of trouble when it came to crossing the eastern passage. It was the only way the explorers could travel to the east by land (Diaz). Bandits, sand storms, and desert heat together with various other hazards made the alternate overland courses too expensive and dangerous. The challenge was the new course by sea. Columbus may have visualized the concept of sailing west towards Asia in 1481 because of his association with an Italian scholar. Columbus proposed the trip by sea in 1486 to the Spanish Monarchs and Portuguese king in order to get a grant that would allow him to survey potential western trade routes. The idea intrigued rulers, but they did not sup...

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...e trade. Columbus insisted on creating slaves in his new discovered islands in order to generate more financial proceeds from gold. Many died from various diseases, while others were lost through slave trade. One huge fail is that modern historians believed other people discovered Americas a few hundred years prior to the arrival of Columbus. Without sailing west, Columbus might have discovered Americas 50 years before. The Native Americans also dispute the fact that Americas needed discovery. There were settlers and families that lived in the Americas by 1492, when Columbus supposedly discovered it. His main motivation was monetary and religion. He wanted to take back gold to the Spanish monarchy and discover trade routes, if this failed, he would take the natives as slaves since he believed slave trade would be profitable. Luckily, the Spanish outlawed slavery.