Jagdish khebudkar biography of christopher columbus

Towards the end of his life, Columbus became increasingly religious. He was also frustrated with his lack of public recognition and seeming demotion in the eyes of the Spanish monarchs. Inhe wrote a letter to the monarchs laying out his sense of unappreciated sacrifice. All that was left to me and my brothers has been taken away and sold, even to the cloak that I wore, without hearing or trial, to my great dishonor.

Columbus died inaged 54 from a heart attack related to reactive arthritis. Towards the end of his life, he was frequently in physical pain from his journeys. Columbus is venerated by many European Americans as the man who helped put America on the map. Columbus Day is observed on 12 October in Spain and across the Americas. Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan.

Updated 22 January 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. This duality highlights how Columbus, often celebrated as a pioneering explorer, also stands as a symbol of conquest and colonization that irrevocably changed the world.

Christopher Columbus, originally known as Cristoforo Colombo, married Filipa Perestrelo in the late s while he was residing in Lisbon, Portugal. Filipa was the daughter of a prominent nobleman, and their union provided Columbus with valuable connections that might have aided his later expeditions. Together, they had one son, Diego, who was born around Tragically, Filipa passed away when Diego was still a child, which left Columbus to navigate his early fatherhood without her support.

Columbus eventually had a second son, Fernando, born inwith Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, a woman with whom he had a long-term relationship. Columbus believed an even higher estimate, leaving a smaller percentage for water. Based on his sources, Columbus estimated a distance of 2, nmi 4, km; 2, mi from the Canary Islands west to Japan; the actual distance is 10, nmi 19, km; 12, mi.

Most European navigators reasonably concluded that a westward voyage from Europe to Asia was unfeasible. The Catholic Monarchs, however, having completed the Reconquistaan expensive war against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsulawere eager to obtain a competitive edge over other European countries in the quest for trade with the Indies. Columbus's project, though far-fetched, held the promise of such an advantage.

Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees of longitude that separated Europe from the Far East and about the distance that each degree represented, he did take advantage of the trade windswhich would prove to be the key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean. He planned to first sail to the Canary Islands before continuing west with the northeast trade wind.

The navigational technique for travel in the Atlantic appears to have been exploited first by the Portuguese, who referred to it as the volta do mar 'turn of the sea'. Through his marriage to his first wife, Felipa Perestrello, Columbus had access to the nautical charts and logs that had belonged to her deceased father, Bartolomeu Perestrellowho had served as a captain in the Portuguese navy under Prince Henry the Navigator.

In the mapmaking shop where he worked with his brother Bartholomew, Columbus also had ample opportunity to hear the stories of old seamen about their voyages to the western seas, [ 77 ] but his knowledge of the Atlantic wind patterns was still imperfect at the time of his first voyage. By sailing due west from the Canary Islands during hurricane seasonskirting the so-called horse latitudes of the mid-Atlantic, he risked being becalmed and running into a tropical cycloneboth of which he avoided by chance.

That meeting also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with news of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa near the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus sought an audience with the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castilewho had united several kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula by marrying and now ruled together.

On 1 Maypermission having been granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who in turn referred it to a committee. The learned men of Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. They pronounced the idea impractical and advised the Catholic Monarchs to pass on the proposed venture.

To keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options open, the sovereigns gave him an allowance, totaling about 14, maravedis for the year, or about the annual salary of a sailor. Columbus also dispatched his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England to inquire whether the English crown might sponsor his expedition, but he was captured by pirates en route, and only arrived in early A jagdish khebudkar biography of christopher columbus led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando de Talaverafound Columbus's proposal to reach the Indies implausible.

Columbus had left for France when Ferdinand intervened, [ e ] first sending Talavera and Bishop Diego Deza to appeal to the queen. He would be entitled to one-tenth diezmo of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity. He also would have the option of buying one-eighth interest in any commercial venture in the new lands, and receive one-eighth ochavo of the profits.

Induring his third voyage to the Americas, Columbus was arrested and dismissed from his posts. He and his sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a lengthy series of court cases against the Castilian crown, known as the pleitos colombinosalleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs.

Diego resumed litigation inwhich lasted untiland further disputes initiated by heirs continued until Between andColumbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americaseach voyage being sponsored by the Crown of Castile. On his first voyage he reached the Americas, initiating the European exploration and colonization of the continentas well as the Columbian exchange.

His role in history is thus important to the Age of DiscoveryWestern historyand human history writ large. In Columbus's letter on the first voyagepublished following his first return to Spain, he claimed that he had reached Asia, [ 97 ] as previously described by Marco Polo and other Europeans. Over his subsequent voyages, Columbus refused to acknowledge that the lands he visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

On the evening of 3 AugustColumbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships. On 7 October, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds". At around the following morning, a lookout on the PintaRodrigo de Trianaspotted land. I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them asking what they were; and they showed me how people from other islands nearby came there and tried to take them, and how they defended themselves; and I believed and believe that they come here from tierra firme to take them captive.

They should be jagdish khebudkar biography of christopher columbus and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak.

Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited Los Indios 'Indians'. I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased. Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28 October. The wreck was used as a target for cannon fire to impress the native peoples. Columbus left 39 men, including the interpreter Luis de Torres[ ] [ i ] and founded the settlement of La Navidadin present-day Haiti.

Half of his crew went ashore to say prayers of thanksgiving in a chapel for having survived the storm. But while praying, they were imprisoned by the governor of the island, ostensibly on suspicion of being pirates. After a two-day stand-off, the prisoners were released, and Columbus again set sail for Spain. Another storm forced Columbus into the port at Lisbon.

After spending more than a week in Portugal, Columbus set sail for Spain. Returning to Palos on 15 Marchhe was given a hero's welcome and soon afterward received by Isabella and Ferdinand in Barcelona. Initially, Diego had been recognized for his intelligence and rapid acquisition of Spanish customs, and would serve as a guide and interpreter on each of Columbus's subsequent voyages.

By the second voyage's departure later inDiego was the only Native out of the ten taken to Europe who had not died or become seriously ill as the result of disease; while on this voyage, he played a vital role in the discovery of La Navidad. He subsequently married and had a son, also named Diego, who died of illness in Following Columbus's death, Diego spent the rest of his life confined to Santo Domingoand does not reappear in the historical record following a smallpox epidemic that swept Hispaniola in Columbus's letter on the first voyageprobably dispatched to the Spanish court upon arrival in Lisbon, was instrumental in spreading the news throughout Europe about his voyage.

Almost immediately after his arrival in Spain, printed versions began to appear, and word of his voyage spread rapidly. They were replaced by the Treaty of Tordesillas of He sailed with nearly 1, men, including sailors, soldiers, priests, carpenters, stonemasons, metalworkers, and farmers. On 3 November, they arrived in the Windward Islands ; the first island they encountered was named Dominica by Columbus, but not finding a good harbor there, they anchored off a nearby smaller island, which he named Mariagalantenow a part of Guadeloupe and called Marie-Galante.

Upon landing, Columbus christened the island San Juan Bautista after John the Baptistand remained anchored there for two days from 20 to 21 November, filling the water casks of the ships in his fleet. On 22 November, Columbus returned to Hispaniola to visit La Navidad in modern-day Haitiwhere 39 Spaniards had been left during the first voyage. Columbus found the fort in ruins.

Columbus then established a poorly located and short-lived settlement to the east, La Isabela[ ] in the present-day Dominican Republic. A number of Spanish were killed in retaliation. By the time Columbus returned from exploring Cuba, the four primary leaders of the Arawak people in Hispaniola were gathering for war to try to drive the Spanish from the Island.

Columbus assembled a large number of troops, and joined with his one native ally, chief [Guacanagarix], met for battle. Columbus implemented encomienda[ ] [ ] a Spanish labor system that rewarded conquerors with the labor of conquered non-Christian people. It is also recorded that punishments to both Spaniards and natives included whippings and mutilation cutting noses and ears.

Columbus and the colonists enslaved many of the indigenous people, [ ] including children.

Jagdish khebudkar biography of christopher columbus

In FebruaryColumbus rounded up about 1, Arawaks, some of whom had rebelled, in a great slave raid. About of the strongest were shipped to Spain as slaves, [ ] with about two hundred of those dying en route. In Junethe Spanish crown sent ships and supplies to Hispaniola. He renewed his effort to get supplies to Columbus, and was working to organize a fleet when he suddenly died in December.

On 8 June the crew sighted land somewhere between Lisbon and Cape St. The fleet called at Madeira and the Canary Islands, where it divided in two, with three ships heading for Hispaniola and the other three vessels, commanded by Columbus, sailing south to the Cape Verde Islands and then westward across the Atlantic. It is probable that this expedition was intended at least partly to confirm rumors of a large continent south of the Caribbean Sea, that is, South America.

On 31 July they sighted Trinidad[ ] the most southerly of the Caribbean islands. On 5 August, Columbus sent several small boats ashore on the southern side of the Paria Peninsula in what is now Venezuela, [ ] [ ] near the mouth of the Orinoco river. On 19 August, Columbus returned to Hispaniola. There he found settlers in rebellion against his rule, and his unfulfilled promises of riches.

Columbus had some of the Europeans tried for their disobedience; at least one rebel leader was hanged. In OctoberColumbus sent two ships to Spain, asking the Court of Spain to appoint a jagdish khebudkar biography of christopher columbus commissioner to help him govern. The sovereigns sent Francisco de Bobadillaa relative of Marquesa Beatriz de Bobadillaa patron of Columbus and a close friend of Queen Isabella, [ ] [ ] to investigate the accusations of brutality made against the Admiral.

Arriving in Santo Domingo while Columbus was away, Bobadilla was immediately met with complaints about all three Columbus brothers. Bobadilla reported to Spain that Columbus once punished a man found guilty of stealing corn by having his ears and nose cut off and then selling him into slavery. He claimed that Columbus regularly used torture and mutilation to govern Hispaniola.

In early OctoberColumbus and Diego presented themselves to Bobadilla, and were put in chains aboard La Gordathe caravel on which Bobadilla had arrived at Santo Domingo. Not long after, the king and queen summoned the Columbus brothers to the Alhambra palace in Granada. The sovereigns expressed indignation at the actions of Bobadilla, who was then recalled and ordered to make restitutions of the property he had confiscated from Columbus.

New light was shed on the seizure of Columbus and his brother Bartholomew, the Adelantadowith the discovery by archivist Isabel Aguirre of an incomplete copy of the testimonies against them gathered by Francisco de Bobadilla at Santo Domingo in The ships were crewed by men, including his brother Bartholomew as second in command and his son Fernando.

The siege had been lifted by the time they arrived, so the Spaniards stayed only a day and continued on to the Canary Islands. On 15 June, the fleet arrived at Martiniquewhere it lingered for several days. A hurricane was forming, so Columbus continued westward, [ ] hoping to find shelter on Hispaniola. He arrived at Santo Domingo on 29 June, but was denied port, and the new governor Francisco de Bobadilla refused to listen to his warning that a hurricane was approaching.

Instead, while Columbus's ships sheltered at the mouth of the Rio Jaina, the first Spanish treasure fleet sailed into the hurricane. Columbus's ships survived with only minor damage, while 20 of the 30 ships in the governor's fleet were lost along with lives including that of Francisco de Bobadilla. Although a few surviving ships managed to straggle back to Santo Domingo, Agujathe fragile ship carrying Columbus's personal belongings and his 4, pesos in gold was the sole vessel to reach Spain.

Here Bartholomew found native merchants and a large canoe. Sailing south along the Nicaraguan coast, he found a channel that led into Almirante Bay in Panama on 5 October. Columbus left for Hispaniola on 16 April. On 10 May he sighted the Cayman Islandsnaming them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there. For six months Columbus and of his men remained stranded on Jamaica.

Columbus had always claimed that the conversion of non-believers was one reason for his explorations, and he grew increasingly religious in his later years. In his later years, Columbus demanded that the Crown of Castile give him his tenth of all the riches and trade goods yielded by the new lands, as stipulated in the Capitulations of Santa Fe.

After his death, his heirs sued the Crown for a part of the profits from trade with America, as well as other rewards. This led to a protracted series of legal disputes known as the pleitos colombinos 'Columbian lawsuits'. During a violent storm on his first return voyage, Columbus, then 41, had suffered an attack of what was believed at the time to be jagdish khebudkar biography of christopher columbus. In subsequent years, he was plagued with what was thought to be influenza and other fevers, bleeding from the eyes, temporary blindness and prolonged attacks of gout.

The attacks increased in duration and severity, sometimes leaving Columbus bedridden for months at a time, and culminated in his death 14 years later. Based on Columbus's lifestyle and the described symptoms, some modern commentators suspect that he suffered from reactive arthritisrather than gout. InFrank C. Arnett, a medical doctor, and historian Charles Merrill, published their paper in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences proposing that Columbus had a form of reactive arthritis; Merrill made the case in that same paper that Columbus was the son of Catalans and his mother possibly a member of a prominent converso converted Jew family.

Some historians such as H. He stubbornly continued to make pleas to the Crown to defend his own personal privileges and his family's. Columbus's remains were first buried at the Chapel of Wonders at the Convent of St. Francis, Valladolid[ ] but were then moved to the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville southern Spain by the will of his son Diego.

In aboutthe remains of both Columbus and his son Diego were moved to a cathedral in Colonial Santo Domingoin the present-day Dominican Republic ; Columbus had requested to be buried on the island. These matched corresponding DNA from Columbus's brother, supporting that the two men had the same mother. Inscriptions found the next year read "Last of the remains of the first admiral, Sire Christopher Columbus, discoverer.

Assistant Secretary of State John Eugene Osbornewho suggested in that they travel through the Panama Canal as a part of its opening ceremony. The authorities in Santo Domingo have never allowed these remains to be DNA-tested, so it is unconfirmed whether they are from Columbus's body as well. The figure of Columbus was not ignored in the British colonies during the colonial era: Columbus became a unifying symbol early in the history of the colonies that became the United States when Puritan preachers began to use his life story as a model for a "developing American spirit".

The use of Columbus as a founding figure of New World nations spread rapidly after the American Revolution. This was out of a desire to develop a national history and founding myth with fewer ties to Britain. Columbus's name was given to the newly born Republic of Colombia in the early 19th century, inspired by the political project of "Colombeia" developed by revolutionary Francisco de Mirandawhich was put at the service of the emancipation of continental Hispanic America.

To commemorate the th anniversary of the landing of Columbus, [ ] the World's Fair in Chicago was named the World's Columbian Exposition. Postal Service issued the first U. The policies related to the celebration of the Spanish colonial empire as the vehicle of a nationalist project undertaken in Spain during the Restoration in the late 19th century took form with the commemoration of the 4th centenary on 12 October in which the figure of Columbus was extolled by the Conservative governmenteventually becoming the very same national day.

For the Columbus Quincentenary ina second Columbian issue was released jointly with Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The Boal Mansion Museum, founded incontains a collection of materials concerning later descendants of Columbus and collateral branches of the family. The chapel interior was dismantled and moved from Spain in and re-erected on the Boal estate at BoalsburgPennsylvania.

Inside it are numerous religious paintings and other objects including a reliquary with fragments of wood supposedly from the True Cross. The museum also holds a collection of documents mostly relating to Columbus descendants of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In many countries of the Americas, as well as Spain and Italy, Columbus Day celebrates the anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas on 12 October The voyages of Columbus are considered a turning point in human history, [ ] marking the beginning of globalization and accompanying demographic, commercial, economic, social, and political changes.

His explorations resulted in permanent contact between the two hemispheres, and the term " pre-Columbian " is used to refer to the cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors. In the first century after his endeavors, Columbus's figure largely languished in the jagdish khebudkar biographies of christopher columbus of history, and his reputation was beset by his failures as a colonial administrator.

His legacy was somewhat rescued from oblivion when he began to appear as a character in Italian and Spanish plays and poems from the late 16th century onward. Columbus was subsumed into the Western narrative of colonization and empire building, which invoked notions of translatio imperii and translatio studii to underline who was considered "civilized" and who was not.

The Americanization of the figure of Columbus began in the latter decades of the 18th century, after the revolutionary period of the United States, [ ] elevating the status of his reputation to a national myth, homo americanus. This representation of Columbus's triumph and the Native's recoil is a demonstration of supposed white superiority over savage, naive Natives.

Capitol building where it remained until its removal in the midth century, the sculpture reflected the contemporary view of whites in the U. President James Buchananwho proposed the sculpture, described it as representing "the great discoverer when he first bounded with ecstasy upon the shore, ail his toils past, presenting a hemisphere to the astonished world, with the name America inscribed upon it.

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.

Career [ edit ]. Filmography [ edit ]. Awards [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. The Times of India. Archived from the original on 3 August Retrieved 3 August Hindustan Times Mumbai. Mumbai Mirror.