| Replica of Santa Maria |
Columbus had sought an audience from the monarchs King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, who had informally united the largest kingdoms of Spain through marriage, and while ruling their kingdoms independently, their internal and foreign policies were coordinated as one. On May 1, 1489, permission having been granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who, in turn, referred it to a committee. After the passing of much time, these savants of Castile, like their counterparts in Portugal, reported back that Columbus had judged the distance to Asia much too short. They pronounced the idea impractical.In 1492 the joint rulers of the nation conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been providing Castile (Spain)with African goods through tribute, and they decided to fund Christopher Columbus' expedition that they hoped would bypass Portugal's lock on Africa and the Indian Ocean reaching Asia by travelling west.[5]
Europe had long enjoyed a safe land passage to China and India—sources of valued goods such as silk, spices, and opiates—under the hegemony of the Mongol Empire (the Pax Mongolica, or Mongol peace). With the Fall of Constantinople to the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1453, the land route to Asia became more difficult. In response to this the Columbus brothers had, by the 1480s, developed a plan to travel to the Indies, then construed roughly as all of southern and eastern Asia, by sailing directly west across the "Ocean Sea," the Atlantic Ocean.
Columbus's calculations underestimated the circumference of the Earth
A spherical Earth had been the general opinion of Ancient Greek science, and this view continued through the Middle Ages (for example, Bede mentions it in The Reckoning of Time). In fact Eratosthenes had measured the diameter of the Earth with good precision in the 2nd century BC.[12] Where Columbus did differ from the generally accepted view of his time is his (very incorrect) arguments that assumed a significantly smaller diameter for the Earth, claiming that Asia could be easily reached by sailing west across the Atlantic. Most scholars accepted Ptolemy's correct assessment that the terrestrial landmass (for Europeans of the time, comprising Eurasia and Africa) occupied 180 degrees of the terrestrial sphere, and dismissed Columbus' claim that the Earth was much smaller, and that Asia was only a few thousand nautical miles to the west of Europe. Columbus' error was attributed to his insufficient experience in navigation at sea.[6]
While Columbus was not the first European to voyage to the New World and did not actually reach the mainland until his third voyage in 1498 (when he reached South America, and the fourth voyage, when he reached Central America), his discoveries led to the major European sea powers sending expeditions to the New World to build trade networks and colonies and to convert the native people to Christianity.
Transatlantic travel played a major role in the expansion of Western civilization into the Americas. It is the Atlantic that separates the "Old World" from the "New World". In modern times, some idioms refer to the ocean in a humorously diminutive way as the Pond, describing both the geographical and cultural divide between North America and Europe, in particular between the English-speaking nations of both continents. Many British people refer to the United States and Canada as "across the pond", and vice versa.[4]
With his four voyages of discovery and several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, all funded by Isabella I of Castile, he initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World." (The term "pre-Columbian" is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the
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,
Europe had long enjoyed a safe land passage to China and India— sources of valued goods such as silk, spices, and opiates— under the hegemony of the Mongol Empire (the Pax Mongolica, or Mongol peace). With the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the land route to
The knowledge that the Earth was spherical was widespread, and the means of calculating its diameter using an astrolabe was known to both scholars and navigators.[9] Where
The true circumference of the Earth is about 40,000 km (25,000 mi), a figure established by Eratosthenes in the second century BC,[10] and the distance from the
Easterly,ever Easterly Don Pedro....
There was a further element of key importance in the plans of Columbus, a closely held fact discovered by or otherwise learned by Columbus: the Trade Winds. A brisk westward wind from the east, commonly called an "easterly", propelled Santa María, La Niña, and La Pinta for five weeks from the Canary Islands off Africa. To return to Spain eastward against this prevailing wind would have required several months of an arduous sailing technique upwind, called beating, during which food and drinkable water would have been utterly exhausted. Columbus returned home by following prevailing winds northeastward from the southern zone of the North Atlantic to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where prevailing winds are eastward (westerly) to the coastlines of Western Europe, where the winds curve southward towards the Iberian Peninsula. So he used the North Atlantic's great circular wind pattern, clockwise in direction, in both legs of his voyage.
Light, light........
In his first journey, Columbus visited San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he was convinced was Japan), Cuba (which he thought was China) and Hispaniola (where he found gold).
After 29 days out of sight of land, on October 7, 1492, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds", some of which his sailors trapped and determined to be "field" birds (probably Eskimo curlews and American golden plovers). Columbus changed course to follow their flight.[26]
Land was sighted at 2 a.m. on October 12, by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodriguez Bermejo) aboard La Pinta.[27] Columbus would later assert that he had first seen the land and, thus, earned the reward of 10,000 maravedís.[28][29] Columbus called the island San Salvador, in present day the Bahamas or the Turks and Caicos, although the indigenous residents had already named it Guanahani.
For your gains
In the first voyage he observed that inhabitants were peaceful, in the second he attacked them and enslaved them.
Columbus enslaved five hundred and sixty people. The slaves were shipped to Spain; 200 died during the route back to Spain, and half of the remainder were ill when they arrived.
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