Christopher Columbus

I

Introduction

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), Italian-born Spanish navigator who sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a route to Asia but achieved fame by making landfall in the Americas instead.

On October 12, 1492, two worlds unknown to each other met for the first time on a small island in the Caribbean Sea. While on a voyage for Spain in search of a direct sea route from Europe to Asia, Christopher Columbus unintentionally encountered the Americas. However, in four separate voyages to the Caribbean from 1492 to 1504, he remained convinced that he had found the lands that Marco Polo reached in his overland travels to China at the end of the 13th century. To Columbus it was only a matter of time before a passage was found through the Caribbean islands to the fabled cities of Asia.

Columbus was not the first European to reach the Americas—Vikings from Scandinavia had briefly settled on the North American coast, in what is now Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, in the late 10th or early 11th century. However, Columbus’s explorations had a profound impact on the world. They led directly to the opening of the western hemisphere to European colonization; to large-scale exchanges of plants, animals, cultures, and ideas between the two worlds; and, on a darker note, to the deaths of millions of indigenous American peoples from war, forced labor, and disease.

II

Europe in the Time of Columbus

Understanding Christopher Columbus is difficult without understanding the world into which he was born. The 15th century was a century of change, and many events that occurred during that time profoundly affected European society. Many of these events were driven by the centuries-long conflict between Christians and Muslims, followers of the religion known as Islam.

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The event that had the most far-reaching effects on Europe in the 15th century was the fall of the city of Constantinople (modern İstanbul, Turkey) to the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Constantinople had been the capital of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire for centuries, and it was an important center for trade between Europe and Asia. In 1453 the Ottoman Empire, which had already conquered much of southeastern Europe, captured the city, closing an important trade route from Europe to the east (see Ottoman Empire). European merchants could still buy Asian goods from Muslims in places such as Alexandria, Egypt. However, Europeans longed for a sea route to Asia that would allow them to bypass the Muslims and purchase Asian products directly. In addition, European princes and kings quickly realized that the first nation to find such a route could become very wealthy by monopolizing the highly profitable Asian trade.

The first European nation to begin actively seeking a sea route to Asia was Portugal. The Portuguese had already begun exploring Africa in the early 1400s, and in 1415 they invaded northern Africa and conquered the Muslim commercial center of Ceuta on the Strait of Gibraltar. This gained the Portuguese access to the lucrative African trade, which, until that time, had been dominated by the Muslims. Under the tutelage of Prince Henry the Navigator, who established a school for navigators in southern Portugal shortly after the Ceuta invasion, the Portuguese began exploring the western coast of Africa, hoping to find a route to the riches of Asia by going around the southern tip of the continent. Other nations, not wanting to be left behind, began sponsoring voyages of exploration as well. Into this world, full of the excitement of exploration and discovery, Christopher Columbus was born.

III

Childhood and Early Years

Biographical facts on Columbus vary from author to author. However, most scholars generally agree that he was born in the Italian port city of Genoa, on the Ligurian Sea (an arm of the Mediterranean Sea), between August 25 and October 31, 1451. His name in Italian was Cristoforo Colombo, which is translated into English as Christopher Columbus, into Spanish as Cristóbal Colón, and into Portuguese as Christovão Colom. Columbus used the Portuguese version of his name while in Portugal and the Spanish version after moving to Spain in 1485.

Columbus’s father was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who was also involved in local politics. His mother was Suzanna Fontanarossa, the daughter of a wool weaver. The eldest of five children, Christopher had three brothers—Bartholomew, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo—and one sister, Bianchinetta. The entire family moved to the nearby port city of Savona, west of Genoa, in 1470.

Although how much formal education Columbus received as a child is not known, the schools of Italian craft guilds (which Columbus, as the son of a wool weaver, would have attended) did offer a rudimentary level of reading and writing. As a boy, Christopher joined his father in the family business of wool processing and selling. He may have worked as a clerk in a Genoese bookshop as well. However, as did many other young men who grew up in a major seaport, Columbus soon began a life of seafaring.

A

Early Seafaring Career

Beginning his seagoing career at age 14, Columbus served on various ships in various roles, including messenger, common sailor, and, perhaps, even as a 21-year-old privateer. Columbus’s son Ferdinand stated in History of the Life and Deeds of Christopher Columbus that in 1472 Columbus was given command of a ship on a privateering expedition to Tunis in northern Africa. In a lost letter, Columbus supposedly related to his son how René I, duke of the French province of Anjou, had commissioned Columbus to make a surprise attack on a large Spanish ship sailing off the coast of North Africa. Most historians doubt, however, that Columbus ever received command of the expedition.

Much more credible, though, is a subsequent expedition. In 1474 Columbus was hired as a sailor on a ship bound for the island of Khíos in the Aegean Sea, an arm of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. This was his first long voyage and must have proved profitable, because after spending a year on the island he was able to become economically independent from his family. This voyage also represents a great irony in the life of Columbus—the trip to this small island in the Aegean brought him the closest he would ever get to Asia.

On August 13, 1476, a Genoese commercial expedition of five ships bound for England gave Columbus his first opportunity to leave the Mediterranean Sea and sail into the Atlantic Ocean. But it was an inauspicious beginning for Columbus: According to tradition, the entire fleet was attacked by French privateers off Cape Saint Vincent on the southwestern tip of Portugal. Both sides lost ships; Columbus, one of the unfortunate ones whose ship was burned, had no escape other than to swim for the Portuguese coast. He made it the 10 km (6 mi) to shore by clinging to wreckage. After regaining his strength in the port of Lagos, Columbus made his way to Lisbon and its large community of Genoese merchants and shipbuilders. He was 25 years old.