Satpal maharaj biography of christopher columbus

His expedition marked a pivotal moment in history, as he became the first European to make contact with the Americas. His landfall in the Bahamas not only opened the door to further exploration but also signaled the start of European colonization in the New World. Columbus' voyages prompted significant exchanges of culture and goods, now referred to as the Columbian Exchange, fundamentally altering global trade and interaction.

However, Columbus faced numerous challenges during and after his expeditions. Despite his initial acclaim, his governance of the settlements he established was marred by poor leadership and harsh treatment of Indigenous peoples, resulting in conflict and resistance. Subsequent voyages revealed the stark realities of colonial exploitation and the devastating impact of introduced diseases on native populations.

Compounded by mismanagement, complaints from settlers led to his arrest and loss of authority, showcasing the difficulties of sustaining exploration efforts in the face of political and social obstacles. Ultimately, Columbus' legacy is a complex tapestry—a journey of exploration intertwined with the consequences of colonization and the suffering of Indigenous cultures.

Christopher Columbus's voyages in the late 15th century opened the Americas to European exploration and colonization, fundamentally altering the course of both European and Indigenous civilizations. His expeditions marked the beginning of extensive transatlantic exchange, known as the Columbian Exchange. This exchange involved not only the transfer of goods but also the sharing of cultures, ideas, and, unfortunately, diseases.

The arrival of Europeans led to the introduction of horses, wheat, and coffee to the Americas while crops like potatoes and corn became integral to European diets, significantly impacting agricultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the legacy of Columbus is complex and controversial. While his discoveries contributed to the rapid expansion of European power, they also resulted in significant suffering and destruction for Indigenous populations.

The introduction of Old World diseases like smallpox devastated native communities, effectively decimating their populations. As a result, the once vibrant cultures of Indigenous peoples were irrevocably altered, leading to loss of identity and heritage. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas. During the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders of several European nations sponsored expeditions abroad in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast undiscovered lands.

Starting in aboutsmall Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods as well as enslaved people from Asia and Africa to Europe. Did you know? Christopher Columbus was not the first person to propose that a person could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. In fact, scholars argue that the idea is almost as old as the idea that the Earth is round.

That is, it dates back to early Rome. Christopher Columbus is born in the Republic of Genoa. He begins sailing in his teens and survives a shipwreck off the coast of Portugal in In Octoberhis expedition makes landfall in the modern-day country of The Bahamas. Columbus establishes a settlement on the island of Hispaniola present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Satpal maharaj biography of christopher columbus

In NovemberColumbus returns to the settlement on Hispaniola to find the Europeans he left there dead. Under this system, Spanish subjects seize land and force Native people to work on it. He makes his first landfall in South America and plants a Spanish flag in present-day Venezuela. After failing to find the strait, he returns to Hispaniola, where Spanish authorities arrest him for the brutal way he runs the colony there.

InColumbus returns to Spain in chains. The Spanish government strips Columbus of his titles but still frees him and finances one last voyagealthough it forbids him return to Hispaniola. Still in search of a strait to India, Columbus makes it as far as modern-day Panama, which straddles the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Whilst he is thus standing upon the shore, a female savage, with awe and wonder depicted in her countenance, is gazing upon him.

The American Columbus myth was reconfigured later in the century when he was enlisted as an ethnic hero by immigrants to the United States who were not of Anglo-Saxon stock, such as Jewish, Italian, and Irish people, who claimed Columbus as a sort of ethnic founding father. From the s onward, a narrative of Columbus being responsible for the genocide of indigenous peoples and environmental destruction began to compete with the then predominant discourse of Columbus as Christ-bearer, scientist, or father of America.

Though Christopher Columbus came to be considered the European discoverer of America in Western popular culture, his historical legacy is more nuanced. In the 19th century, amid a revival of interest in Norse cultureCarl Christian Rafn and Benjamin Franklin DeCosta wrote works establishing that the Norse had preceded Columbus in colonizing the Americas.

Europeans devised explanations for the origins of the Native Americans and their geographical distribution with narratives that often served to reinforce their own preconceptions built on ancient intellectual foundations. O'Gorman argues that to assert Columbus "discovered America" is to shape the facts concerning the events of to make them conform to an interpretation that arose many years later.

He suggests that the word "encounter" is more appropriate, being a more universal term which includes Native Americans in the narrative. Historians have traditionally argued that Columbus remained convinced until his death that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia as he originally intended [ ] [ ] excluding arguments such as Anderson's.

Washington Irving's biography of Columbus popularized the idea that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because many Catholic theologians insisted that the Earth was flat[ ] but this is a popular misconception which can be traced back to 17th-century Protestants campaigning against Catholicism. As such it contains no sign of the Americas and yet demonstrates the common belief in a spherical Earth.

He accounted for the shift by concluding that Earth's figure is pear-shapedwith the 'stalk' portion comparing this to a woman's breast being nearest Heaven and upon which was centered the Earthly Paradise. Columbus has been criticized both for his brutality and for initiating the depopulation of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, whether by imported diseases or intentional violence.

According to scholars of Native American history, George Tinker and Mark Freedman, Columbus was responsible for creating a cycle of "murder, violence, and slavery" to maximize exploitation of the Caribbean islands' resources, and that Native deaths on the scale at which they occurred would not have been caused by new diseases alone. Further, they describe the proposition that disease and not genocide caused these deaths as "American holocaust denial ".

As a result of the protests and riots that followed the murder of George Floyd inmany public monuments of Christopher Columbus have been removed. Some historians have criticized Columbus for initiating the widespread colonization of the Americas and for abusing its native population. CroixColumbus's friend Michele da Cuneo—according to his own account—kept an indigenous woman he captured, whom Columbus "gave to [him]", then brutally raped her.

For example, a study of Spanish archival sources showed that the cascabela quotas were imposed by Guarionexnot Columbus, and that there is no mention, in the primary sources, of punishment by cutting off hands for failing to pay. Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place. According to historian Emily Berquist Soule, the immense Portuguese profits from the maritime trade in African slaves along the West African coast served as an inspiration for Columbus to create a counterpart of this apparatus in the New World using indigenous American slaves.

Connell has argued that while Columbus "brought the entrepreneurial form of slavery to the New World", this "was a phenomenon of the times", further arguing that "we have to be very careful about applying 20th-century understandings of morality to the morality of the 15th century. Around the turn of the 21st century, estimates for the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola ranged betweenand two million, [ ] [ ] [ ] [ t ] but genetic analysis published in late suggests that smaller figures are more likely, perhaps as low as 10,—50, for Hispaniola and Puerto Rico combined.

Mann writes that "It was as if the suffering these diseases had caused in Eurasia over the past millennia were concentrated into the span of decades. According to Noble David Cook, "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact. There is also evidence that they had poor diets and were overworked.

The diseases that devastated the Native Americans came in multiple waves at different times, sometimes as much as centuries apart, which would mean that survivors of one disease may have been killed by others, preventing the population from recovering. Biographers and historians have a wide range of opinions about Columbus's expertise and experience navigating and captaining ships.

One scholar lists some European works ranging from the s to s that support Columbus's experience and skill as among the best in Genoa, while listing some American works over a similar timeframe that portray the explorer as an untrained entrepreneur, having only minor crew or passenger experience prior to his noted journeys. The word rubios can mean "blond", "fair", or "ruddy".

A well-known image of Columbus is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombowhich has been reproduced in many textbooks. It agrees with descriptions of Columbus in that it shows a large man with auburn hair, but the painting dates from so cannot have been painted from life. Furthermore, the inscription identifying the subject as Columbus was probably added later, and the face shown differs from that of other images.

At the World's Columbian Exposition in71 alleged portraits of Columbus were displayed; most of them did not match contemporary descriptions. While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire.

She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a satpal maharaj biography of christopher columbus story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Italian navigator and explorer — For other uses, see Christopher Columbus disambiguation and Cristoforo Colombo disambiguation. Posthumous portrait of a man, said to be Christopher Columbus, by Sebastiano del Piombo[ a ].

Filipa Moniz Perestrelo. Diego Ferdinand Diego adopted Lucayan. Domenico Colombo father Susanna Fontanarossa mother. Further information: Origin theories of Christopher Columbus. Geographical considerations. Quest for financial support for a voyage. Agreement with the Spanish crown. Main article: Voyages of Christopher Columbus. First voyage — Second voyage — Third voyage — Fourth voyage — Main article: Fourth voyage of Columbus.

Later life, illness, and death. Tomb in Seville Cathedral. The remains in the casket are borne by kings of Castile, Leon, Aragon, and Navarre. Further information: List of places named for Christopher Columbus and List of monuments and memorials to Christopher Columbus. Originality of discovery of America. America as a distinct land. Further information: Myth of the flat Earth.

See also: Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Vespucci seems to have modeled his naming of the "new world" after Columbus's description of this discovery. It contained an account of Columbus's seven-year reign as the first governor of the Indies. Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian, states: "Even those who loved him [Columbus] had to admit the atrocities that had taken place.

Two tiny portions of dust from the same source were placed in separate vials. Most modern historians reject his figures. January Visual Anthropology. ISSN Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem. ISBN Retrieved 2 January Columbus on Himself. She was of peasant parentage, but, when Columbus met her, was the ward of a well-to-do relative in Cordoba.

A meat business gave her income of her own, mentioned in the only other record of Columbus's solicitude for her: a letter to Diego, written injust before departure on the fourth Atlantic crossing, in which the explorer enjoins his son to 'take Beatriz Enriquez in your care for love of me, as you your own mother'. In Bedini, Silvio A. The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia.

Columbus never married Beatriz. When he returned from the first voyage, he was given the greatest of honors and elevated to the highest position in Spain. Because of his discovery, he became one of the most illustrious persons at the Spanish court and had to submit, like all the great persons of the time, to customary legal restrictions on matters of marriage and extramarital relations.

The Alphonsine laws forbade extramarital relations of concubinage for "illustrious people" king, princes, dukes, counts, marquis with plebeian women, if they themselves were or their forefathers had been of inferior social condition. Palgrave Macmillan. Genoa: Sagep Editrice. Genova: Grafiche Frassicomo. Archived PDF from the original on 9 October Ferdinand and Isabella.

New International Encyclopedia 1st ed. New York: Dodd, Mead. All retrieved 3 February Atlantic Monthly Press. Univ of Nebraska Press. Bedini, Silvio A. Retrieved 21 November In McGovern, James R. The World of Columbus. Mercer University Press. It is most probable that Columbus visited Bristol, where he was introduced to English commerce with Iceland.

Sture In Ureland, P. Sture; Clarkson, Iain eds. Walter de Gruyter. Ireland Revisited. Johns Hopkins University Press. Some writers have suggested that it was during this visit to Iceland that Columbus heard of land in the west. Keeping the source of his information secret, they say, he concocted a plan to sail westward. Certainly the knowledge was generally available without attending any saga-telling parties.

That this knowledge reached Columbus seems unlikely, however, for later, satpal maharaj biography of christopher columbus trying to get backing for his project, he went to great lengths to unearth even the slightest scraps of information that would add to the plausibility of his scheme. Knowledge of the Norse explorations could have helped.

Columbus, America, and the World. Council on National Literatures. Many Columbists Duke University Press. The William and Mary Quarterly. JSTOR Oxford University Press. October Smithsonian Magazine. The Christian Century in Japan, — University of California Press. Cambridge University Press. Yale University Press. Iberian Asia: the strategies of Spanish and Portuguese empire building, — Thesis.

OCLC ProQuest Comparative Studies in Society and History. Cambridge University Press : — S2CID Archived from the original PDF on 26 February Journal of the American Oriental Society. Institute of Navigation. Archived from the original on 29 October Retrieved 5 July International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. Bibcode : IJNAr. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Universe.

New York: Watson-Guptill. New York: Random House. Retrieved 20 February New York: Abrams Books. Imago Mundi. Jahangirnagar University: Retrieved 9 January IEEE Spectrum. Constructed on a framework of latitude and longitude, the Ptolemy-revival map projections revealed the extent of the known world in relation to the whole. The Atlantic.

JHU Press. Renaissance Europe 2nd ed. Lexington, Massachusetts: D. Heath and Company. MIT Press. It is also known that wind patterns and water currents in the Atlantic were crucial factors for launching an outward passage from the Canaries: Columbus understood that his chance of crossing the ocean was significantly greater just beyond the Canary calms, where he expected to catch the northeastern trade winds—although, as some authors have pointed out, "westing" from the Canaries, instead of dipping farther south, was hardly an optimal sailing choice, since Columbus's fleet was bound to lose, as soon it did, the northeasterlies in the mid-Atlantic.

Frederick Mathematics Magazine. ISSN X. Again it was rejected. In historical hindsight this looks like a fatally missed opportunity for the Portuguese crown, but the king had good reason not to accept Columbus's project. His panel of experts cast grave doubts on the assumptions behind it, noting that Columbus had underestimated the distance to China.

Chapter XIII, p. Archived from the original on 16 October Retrieved 24 May The horse from Europe allowed Native American tribes in the Great Plains of North America to shift from a nomadic to a hunting lifestyle. Wheat from the Old World fast became a main food source for people in the Americas. Coffee from Africa and sugar cane from Asia became major cash crops for Latin American countries.

And foods from the Americas, such as potatoes, tomatoes and corn, became staples for Europeans and helped increase their populations. The Columbian Exchange also brought new diseases to both hemispheres, though the effects were greatest in the Americas. Smallpox from the Old World killed millions, decimating the Native American populations to mere fractions of their original numbers.

This more than any other factor allowed for European domination of the Americas. The overwhelming benefits of the Columbian Exchange went to the Europeans initially and eventually to the rest of the world. The Americas were forever altered, and the once vibrant cultures of the Indigenous civilizations were changed and lost, denying the world any complete understanding of their existence.

As more Italians began to immigrate to the United States and settle in major cities during the 19 th century, they were subject to religious and ethnic discrimination. This included a mass lynching of 11 Sicilian immigrants in in New Orleans. Just one year after this horrific event, President Benjamin Harrison called for the first national observance of Columbus Day on October 12,to mark the th anniversary of his arrival in the Americas.

Italian-Americans saw this honorary act for Columbus as a way of gaining acceptance. Colorado became the first state to officially observe Columbus Day in and, within five years, 14 other states followed. Thanks to a joint resolution of Congress, the day officially became a federal holiday in during the administration of Franklin D.

InCongress declared the holiday would fall on the second Monday in October each year. As ofapproximately 29 states no longer celebrate Columbus Dayand around cities have renamed it or replaced with the alternative Indigenous Peoples Day. One of the most notable cities to move away from celebrating Columbus Day in recent years is the state capital of Columbus, Ohio, which is named after the explorer.

In Julythe city also removed a plus-foot metal statue of Columbus from the front of City Hall. The Biography. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site.