Part+6

=Introduction = The Portuguese and the Spanish were the first of Europe to explore the world. They went because they were curious, to spread their religion and to achieve economic goals. These nations were previously trading with India across the Europe and Asia and they were charged with taxes and tolls. This was getting expensive for Portugal and Spain, so for financial gains, they undertook traveling by sea to save money. (2) =Christopher Columbus =

Birth and Family
He was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy from poor but reputable parents. (1)

How he got into exploring
He began navigating at the age of 14. (1)

Others before and after him
Bartolomeu Dias traveled south along Africa’s coast but had to return to Portugal when his crew didn’t want to continue further. (4) Vasco de Gama came from Lisbon and sailed around the southern tip of Africa to India in 1498. He found so much wealth; he went back for a second time. (2)

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
These two got married to join together Castile and Aragon to make Spain. The king was from Aragon and the queen was from Castile. Columbus asked the queen if he could find a faster route to India by going west since the world was a sphere he could make it to India faster that going around Africa. The first time she declined his offer but then they funded the trip in hopes that they could share in the wealth that Portugal had found a couple years earlier. (2) “I wish only for a few ships and a few sailors, to traverse between two and three thousand miles of the ocean to the west. I will thus point out to your majesty a new and short route to India…In return I ask only that I may be appointed Viceroy over the realms I may discover, and that I shall receive one-tenth of the profits which may accrue.” (6)

Voyages
On his first Voyage, Christopher Columbus left on August 3rd, 1492, from Palos de la Fonterra at the age of 41, which was quite old at the time. He sailed to Spain to gather supplies and left on September 6th for India. (7) After 36 days of open sea they found land at 2 in the morning. (5) He took three ships with him the Santa María, Pinta and Santa Clara (later named the Nina) in 1492. He named the island that he landed on, San Salvador. (7) Between the years 1493 and 1504 he went back three more times and found what are now Cuba, Dominican Republic and Haiti. He called the land he landed on the Indies and the natives that lived there, Indians. (2)

Govern ship
After his first voyage Columbus was appointed Viceroy and Governor of the Indies, which in involved primarily the administration of the colonies in the island of Hispaniola, whose capital was established in Santo Domingo. (7)

Until Death
He died in May of 1506 in Spain and he thought that he had actually reached India even though society at the time knew that he had discovered the Islands known today as The Bahamas. His picture wasn’t painted while he was alive. (3) =Columbian Exchange = The Columbian Exchange was the trades that happened between the New World and the Old World after Columbus introduced it. This included people, food, plants, diseases, and pets. For example, the New World had potatoes which were brought to places like Ireland. This led to the infamous potato famine between the years of 1845 and 1852. The term “Columbian exchange” was coined from Alfred Crosby in his book regarding this issue. (8)

Deaths
Many people died from both sides of the Atlantic because they were not immune to the diseases that the others gave to them. Small pox was the largest contributor to deaths in both worlds. (9)

New Products
“The Europeans thought that they were just off the coast of Asia, back to Eurasia again, but they were struck by the strangeness of the flora and the fauna of the islands they had discovered.” (8) The most well-known American imports were the horses. Europeans brought them over and this lead to Native Americans hunting on horseback. “Before the Columbian Exchange, there were no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no tomatoes in Italy, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no cattle in Texas, no donkeys in Mexico, no chili peppers in Thailand and India, no cigarettes in France, and no chocolate in Switzerland… The dandelion was brought to North America by Europeans for use as an herb.” (9) Because Columbus sailed the ocean blue, we now have the items that we associate with different countries today.

(1) Washington Irving, //Columbus: his life and voyages// (G. P. Putman’s Sons, 1896), 5. (2) __World History: The Human Journey__ Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003. (3) William Eleroy Curtis//, Christopher Columbus: his portraits and his monuments. A descriptive catalogue// (The W. H. Lowdermilk Co., 1893), 3. (4) W. G. L. Randles, //Bartolomeu Dias and the discovery of the South-east Passage linking the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean// (Coimbra, 1988), 20. (5) Robin Santos, //Doak Christopher Columbus: Explorer of the New World// (Compass point books, 2005), 10. (6) John Stevens Cabot Abbott, //Christopher Columbus// (Dood and Mead, 1875), 41. (7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus (8) Alfred W. Crosby, //The Columbian exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492// (Praeger Publishers, 2003), 3. (9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange