Christopher Columbus (between August 25 and October
31, 1451 – May 20, 1506) was a Genoese navigator, colonizer and explorer
whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean—funded by Queen Isabella of
Spain—led to general European awareness of the American continents in
the Western Hemisphere. Italian mariner and navigator Christopher Columbus
was widely believed to be the first European to sail across the Atlantic Ocean
and successfully land on the American continent. In Spanish he is called Cristobal
Colon, in Portuguese Cristovio Colombo and in Italian Cristoforo Colombo.
Born between August and October 1451, in Genoa, Italy, Columbus was the eldest
son of Domenico Colombo, a wool-worker and small-scale merchant, and his wife,
Susanna Fontanarossa; he had two younger brothers, Bartholomew and Diego.
He received little formal education and was a largely self-taught man, later
learning to read Latin and write Castilian.
Christopher Columbus began working at
sea early on, and made his first considerable voyage, to the Aegean island of
Chios, in 1475. A year later, he survived a shipwreck off Cape St. Vincent and
swam ashore, after which he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where his brother Bartholomew,
an expert chart maker, was living. Both brothers worked as chartmakers, but
Columbus already nurtured dreams of making his fortune at sea. In 1477, he sailed
to England and Ireland, and possibly Iceland, with the Portuguese marine, and
he was engaged as a sugar buyer in the Portuguese islands off Africa (the Azores,
Cape Verde, and Madeira) by a Genoese mercantile firm. He met pilots and navigators
who believed in the existence of islands farther west. It was at this time that
he made his last visit to his native city, but he always remained a Genoese,
never becoming a naturalized citizen of any other country.
Red Indians
Christopher Columbus, after returning
to Lisbon, married the well-born Dona Filipa Perestrello e Moniz in 1479. Their
son, Diego, was born in 1480. Felipa died in 1485, and Columbus later began
a relationship with Beatriz Enríquez de Harana of Cordoba, with whom
he had a second son, Ferdinand. (Columbus and Beatriz never married, but he
provided for her in his will and legitimatized Ferdinand, in accordance with
Castilian law.)
His initial 1492 voyage came at a critical
time of growing national imperialism and economic competition between developing
nation states seeking wealth from the establishment of trade routes and colonies.
In this sociopolitical climate, Columbus's far-fetched scheme won the attention
of Queen Isabella of Spain. Severely underestimating the circumference of the
Earth, he estimated that a westward route from Iberia to the Indies would be
shorter and more direct than the overland trade route through Arabia. If true,
this would allow Spain entry into the lucrative spice trade — heretofore
commanded by the Arabs and Italians. Following his plotted course, he instead
landed within the Bahamas Archipelago at a locale he named San Salvador. Mistaking
the North-American island for the East-Asian mainland, he referred to its inhabitants
as "Indios".
Christopher and Isabella
Columbus had become a master mariner
in the Portuguese merchant service, by the time he was 31 or 32. 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 Martin Alonso Pinzon, 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.
Columbus, by the mid-1480s, had become
focused on his plans of discovery, chief among them the desire to discover a
westward route to Asia. In 1484, he had asked King John II of Portugal to back
his voyage west, but had been refused. The next year, he went to Spain with
his young son, Diego, to seek the aid of Queen Isabella of Castile and her husband,
King Ferdinand of Aragon. Though the Spanish monarchs at first rejected Columbus,
they gave him a small annuity to live on, and he remained hopeful of convincing
them. In January of 1492, after being twice rebuffed, Columbus obtained the
support of Ferdinand and Isabella.
Columbus landing for the first time
The favorable response came directly
after the fall of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, which led Spanish
Christians to believe they were close to eliminating the spread of Islam in
southern Europe and beyond. Christian missionary zeal, as well as the desire
to increase Spanish prominence in Europe over that of Portugal and the desire
for gold and conquest, were the primary driving forces behind Columbus' historic
voyage.
Christopher Columbus would make four
voyages to the West Indies, but by the end of his final voyage, Columbus' health
had deteriorated; he was suffering from arthritis as well as the aftereffects
of a bout with malaria. With a small portion of the gold brought from Hispaniola,
Columbus was able to live relatively comfortably in Seville for the last year
of his life. He was emotionally diminished, however, and felt that the Spanish
monarchs had failed to live up to their side of the agreement and provide him
with New World property and gold, especially after Isabella's death. Columbus
followed the court of King Ferdinand from Segovia to Salamanca to Vallodid seeking
redress, but was rejected. He died in Vallodid on May 20, 1506. His remains
were later moved to the Cathedral of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola, where they
were laid with those of his son Diego. They were returned to Spain in 1899 and
interred in Seville Cathedral.
The anniversary of Columbus's 1492 landing
in the Americas is observed as Columbus Day on October 12 in Spain and throughout
the Americas, except that in the United States it is observed on the second
Monday in October.
