Explorer Christopher Columbus sets foot on the American mainland for the first time, at the Paria Peninsula in present-day Venezuela. Thinking it an island, he christened it Isla Santa and claimed it for Spain.
Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a sailing entrepreneur. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes. Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus’ day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century. However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world’s size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed).
With only the Atlantic Ocean, he thought, lying between Europe and the riches of the East Indies, Columbus met with King John II of Portugal and tried to persuade him to back his “Enterprise of the Indies,” as he called his plan. He was rebuffed and went to Spain, where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella also rejected him at least twice. However, after the Spanish conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in January 1492, the Spanish monarchs, flush with victory, agreed to support his voyage.
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three small ships, the Santa María, the Pinta and the Niña. On October 12, the expedition sighted land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, and went ashore the same day, claiming it for Spain. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and “Indian” captives in March 1493 and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was given the title “admiral of the ocean sea,” and a second expedition was promptly organized. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century.
Fitted out with a large fleet of 17 ships with 1,500 colonists aboard, Columbus set out from Cádiz in September 1493 on his second voyage to the New World. Landfall was made in the Lesser Antilles in November. Returning to Hispaniola, he found the men he left there slaughtered by the natives, and he founded a second colony. Sailing on, he explored Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and numerous smaller islands in the Caribbean. Columbus returned to Spain in June 1496 and was greeted less warmly, as the yield from the second voyage had fallen well short of its costs.
Isabella and Ferdinand, still greedy for the riches of the East, agreed to a smaller third voyage and instructed Columbus to find a strait to India. In May 1498, Columbus left Spain with six ships, three filled with colonists and three with provisions for the colony on Hispaniola. This time, he made landfall on Trinidad. He entered the Gulf of Paria in Venezuela and planted the Spanish flag in South America on August 1, 1498. He explored the Orinoco River of Venezuela and, given its scope, soon realized he had stumbled upon another continent. Columbus, a deeply religious man, decided after careful thought that Venezuela was the outer regions of the Garden of Eden.
Returning to Hispaniola, he found that conditions on the island had deteriorated under the rule of his brothers, Diego and Bartholomew. Columbus’ efforts to restore order were marked by brutality, and his rule came to be deeply resented by both the colonists and the native Taino chiefs. In 1500, Spanish chief justice Francisco de Bobadilla arrived at Hispaniola, sent by Isabella and Ferdinand to investigate complaints, and Columbus and his brothers were sent back to Spain in chains.
He was immediately released upon his return, and Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to finance a fourth voyage, in which he was to search for the earthly paradise and the realms of gold said to lie nearby. He was also to continue looking for a passage to India. In May 1502, Columbus left Cádiz on his fourth and final voyage to the New World. After returning to Hispaniola, against his patrons’ wishes, he explored the coast of Central America looking for a strait and for gold. Attempting to return to Hispaniola, his ships, in poor condition, had to be beached on Jamaica. Columbus and his men were marooned, but two of his captains succeed in canoeing the 450 miles to Hispaniola. Columbus was a castaway on Jamaica for a year before a rescue ship arrived.
In November 1504, Columbus returned to Spain. Queen Isabella, his chief patron, died less than three weeks later. Although Columbus enjoyed substantial revenue from Hispaniola gold during the last years of his life, he repeatedly attempted (unsuccessfully) to gain an audience with King Ferdinand, whom he felt owed him further redress. Columbus died in Valladolid on May 20, 1506, without realizing the scope of his achievement: He had discovered for Europe the “New World,” whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
And the first thing the merchant bastard did was started gathering up slaves , which good Catholic Queen Isabella forbid . When now slave trader Columbus returned to Spain with 500 native slaves, Isabelle was furious and ordered them all sent back home, which didn’t happen, because the natives died from exposure to cold and disease which they had never experienced before.
Covered here:
Isabella of Spain
William Thomas Walsh
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=D981C1329EC86A7E9BAE05E65AE3028B
“Isabella and Ferdinand, still greedy for the riches of the East,”
So greedy, they had the merchant wait 3 months to even pitch his fantastical voyage schtick and then seven years for the ships and funds to set sail. This day in history really doesn’t do history at all…it’s more of a ” narrative” thing.
Cristoforo Colombo, or as he generally called himself in
Spain, Cristóbal Colón, though he was also known as
Colom and Colomo, had three months to wait about the
court, supported at public expense, but growing more
impatient each day under his gloomy self-restraint
When the King and Queen returned to Córdoba, April
28, they heard nothing but favourable reports of the stranger
who wanted to sail west to arrive at the east. It was probably early in May
when they received him in the great hallof the Alcázar. They bade him explain his project, and
while he was speaking in his rich strong voice, whose
cadences became almost metrical as he warmed to his
subject, they studied him. He was fairly tall and robust,
with sandy hair turning grey, and a long freckled face that
flushed as he spoke. His light grey eyes shone like those of a
man with a vision. His nose, hooked like the beak of an
eagle, suggested an acquisitive and domineering nature.
As for his project, Isabel did not need to be convinced that
the world was round, any more than Father Juan Perez did,
or Luis de Santángel, or Cardinal Mendoza. It was a fact
accepted by most persons of any education at all.
The truth of his later complaint that during seven years—1485 to 1492—
he “received aid from no one, except from Friar Antonio de
Marchena” (in another place he speaks of “two friars who
always were constant”) and was repulsed and laughed at by
all, must be appraised in the light of the facts: for two years
he was maintained in the luxurious palace of the Duke of
Medina Celi, at the Duke’s expense; during the next three
years he received a pension almost equal to the salary of
one of the most famous university professors; thereafter, he
was lodged without expense at inns. During all this time he
received from the King and Queen, the Cardinal, and many
of the greatest personages in Spain, the kindness and
encouragement that might have been expected from the
aristocracy of a civilized country. Indeed, considering that
Castile was in the middle of a life-and-death conflict of ten
years, and had hardly recuperated from the anarchy of the
reign of Enrique IV, his reception was remarkable.
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=D981C1329EC86A7E9BAE05E65AE3028B
Wonder why we never get any video of these landings by people like Columbus; like no Go-Pros or YouTube, not even a Rumble vid? /S
It’s interesting that the Spaniards interbred with the peoples they invaded and used as slaves. The French and the British less so. Thus sprang up the Mexicans. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are a case study. BTW, how’s Haiti doing these days?
NOW JUST HOLD ON THE BABALOUI I THOUGHT COLUMBUS LANDED IN NY OR VIRGINNY NOT BRAZIL OR BALIZE. ACCORDING TO ALL THE EXPERTS AND PUNDITS HE DISCOVERED AMERICA. OF COURSE HE NEVER MADE IT TO THE NORTHERN CONTINENT WE NOW CALL THE USA. BUT WHO CARES WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT, RIGHT ??? ANYHOO TO BAD THE DAGGOOS PUSHED FOR CHRIS INSTEAD OF LEIF ERICKSON LIKE WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN CELEBRATING.