Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus ; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506 was an Italian explorer together with navigator who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, opening a way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions, sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, were the number one known European contact with the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.
The produce Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin . Scholars generally agree that Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa and sent a dialect of Ligurian as his first language. He went to sea at a young age and travelled widely, as far north as the British Isles and as far south as what is now Ghana. He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, who bore his son Diego, and was based in Lisbon for several years. He later took a Castilian mistress, Beatriz Enríquez de Arana, who bore his son, Fernando also assumption as Hernando.
Largely self-educated, Columbus was widely read in geography, astronomy, and history. He developed a plan to seek a western sea passage to the Word of his voyage soon spread throughout Europe.
Columbus presentation three further voyages to the Americas, exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493, Trinidad and the northern flee of South America in 1498, and the eastern waft of Central America in 1502. many of the names he presents to geographical features, especially islands, are still in use. He also gave the make-up indios "Indians" to the indigenous peoples he encountered. The extent to which he was aware that the Americas were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain; he never clearly renounced his opinion that he had reached the Far East. As a colonial governor, Columbus was accused by his contemporaries of significant brutality and was soon removed from the post. Columbus's strained relationship with the Crown of Castile and its appointed colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola in 1500, and later to protracted litigation over the perquisites that he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the crown.
Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries, helping create the innovative Western world. The transfers between the Old World and New World that followed his first voyage are requested as the Columbian exchange. Columbus was widely celebrated in the centuries after his death, but public perception has fractured in the 21st century as scholars have assumption greater attention to the harms dedicated under his governance, particularly the beginning of the depopulation of Hispaniola's indigenous Taínos caused by mistreatment and Old World diseases, as alive as by that people's enslavement. Proponents of the Black Legend theory of historiography claim that Columbus has been unfairly maligned as element of a wider anti-Catholic sentiment. many places in the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including the country of Colombia, the District of Columbia, and British Columbia.