Gillon aitken biography of christopher columbus

Columbus' voyage, combining audacious confidence, supreme seamanship, and an explicit faith that he was called by God for the task of bringing the Christian religion to remote peoples of the world—his name meant "Christ-bearer"—inaugurated the most profound advances in humankind's awareness of the planet, and formative interchanges among disparate cultures that would lead to the emergence of the modern world.

Columbus' voyage took place during the early decades of the European Age of Exploration, following advances in ship design and navigational instrumentation that enabled Portuguese explorers to venture down the African coastline in search of a sea route to India. By the mid-fifteenth century, the historic barrier of the Sahara had been overcome and a lucrative trade in slaves and gold provided incentive for further explorations.

Columbus, instead, proposed to strike out directly west across the unknown Atlantic, and through tenacious determination secured the backing of the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, for the visionary voyage. Columbus made landfall on what is thought to be the Bahamian island of San Salvador today's Watling Island on October 12, , and explored Cuba and Hispaniola.

He only reached the South American mainland on his third voyage in , still believing until his death, in , that he had reached the Indies. Columbus' voyages 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.

Columbus founded a colony in today's Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola , which became the colonial headquarters for later Spanish explorations and the eventual conquest of powerful empires and tribal peoples from Mexico , the Caribbean , and South America.

Gillon aitken biography of christopher columbus: From Columbus to Castro: the history

Columbus' engagement with largely peaceful Indians was often brutal, and his objective of Christianizing native inhabitants was callously compromised by the expedition's quest for gold and the capture and enslavement of Indians. In the decades after Columbus' voyage, Spanish Conquistadors would overthrow the Aztec and Incan civilizations through superior military technology, singular acts of treachery, and the willing support of subject populations who lived in fear of mass ritual human sacrifice and other forms of oppression.

Native American populations throughout the Western hemisphere would be decimated through colonial occupation by the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English, largely through epidemic diseases brought by The anniversary of the voyage is observed as Columbus Day throughout the Americas and in Spain.