Cari zalloni biography of christopher columbus

Although Columbus held back some of the worst excesses of his sailors, he took back human slaves and looted property from the indigenous people. As part of the deal, the Spanish monarchy appointed Columbus Viceroy and Governor of the Indies in the island of Hispaniola. He also delegated the governorship to his brothers. However, in , on the orders of the Spanish monarchy, Columbus was arrested and placed in chains.

There were allegations of incompetence, misrule and barbaric practices in the governorship of the new colonies. After several weeks in jail, Columbus and his brothers were released, but Columbus was not allowed to be governor of Hispaniola anymore. 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.

In , he 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. 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 in , with Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, a woman with whom he had a long-term relationship. Unlike Diego, who was recognized as Columbus's legitimate heir, Fernando's status was more complicated due to his illegitimate birth. Columbus's children played varying roles in his legacy; while Diego officially inherited many of Columbus's titles and fortunes, Fernando distanced himself from some of his father's controversial actions.

Together, these children contributed to Columbus's personal life story, reflecting both his ambitions as an explorer and the complexities of his family relationships. Christopher Columbus, while primarily known for his voyages, did not amass significant wealth from his explorations during his lifetime. 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. In February , Columbus 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 June , the 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 October , Columbus sent two ships to Spain, asking the Court of Spain to appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern.

The sovereigns sent Francisco de Bobadilla , a relative of Marquesa Beatriz de Bobadilla , a 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 October , Columbus and Diego presented themselves to Bobadilla, and were put in chains aboard La Gorda , the 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 Adelantado , with 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 Martinique , where 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, Aguja , the 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 Islands , naming 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 gout.

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 arthritis , rather than gout.

In , Frank 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 about , the remains of both Columbus and his son Diego were moved to a cathedral in Colonial Santo Domingo , in 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 Osborne , who 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 Miranda , which 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 government , eventually becoming the very same national day.

For the Columbus Quincentenary in , a second Columbian issue was released jointly with Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The Boal Mansion Museum, founded in , contains 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 Boalsburg , Pennsylvania.

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 backwaters 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 Buchanan , who 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 culture , Carl 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-shaped , with 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 in , many 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. Croix , Columbus'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 Guarionex , not 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 between , and 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.

One scholar lists some European works ranging from the s to s that support Columbus's experience and skill as among the best in Genoa, while listing some American works over a similar timeframe that portray the explorer as an untrained entrepreneur, having only minor crew or passenger experience prior to his noted journeys. The word rubios can mean "blond", "fair", or "ruddy".

A well-known image of Columbus is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo , which has been reproduced in many textbooks. It agrees with descriptions of Columbus in that it shows a large man with auburn hair, but the painting dates from so cannot have been painted from life. Furthermore, the inscription identifying the subject as Columbus was probably added later, and the face shown differs from that of other images.

At the World's Columbian Exposition in , 71 alleged portraits of Columbus were displayed; most of them did not match contemporary descriptions. While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire.

She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Italian navigator and explorer — For other uses, see Christopher Columbus disambiguation and Cristoforo Colombo disambiguation. Posthumous portrait of a man, said to be Christopher Columbus, by Sebastiano del Piombo , [ a ].

Filipa Moniz Perestrelo. Diego Ferdinand Diego adopted Lucayan. Domenico Colombo father Susanna Fontanarossa mother. Further information: Origin theories of Christopher Columbus. Geographical considerations. Quest for financial support for a voyage. Agreement with the Spanish crown. Main article: Voyages of Christopher Columbus. First voyage — Second voyage — Third voyage — Fourth voyage — Main article: Fourth voyage of Columbus.

Later life, illness, and death.

Cari zalloni biography of christopher columbus

Tomb in Seville Cathedral. The remains in the casket are borne by kings of Castile, Leon, Aragon, and Navarre. Further information: List of places named for Christopher Columbus and List of monuments and memorials to Christopher Columbus. Originality of discovery of America. America as a distinct land. Further information: Myth of the flat Earth.

See also: Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Vespucci seems to have modeled his naming of the "new world" after Columbus's description of this discovery. It contained an account of Columbus's seven-year reign as the first governor of the Indies. Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian, states: "Even those who loved him [Columbus] had to admit the atrocities that had taken place.

Two tiny portions of dust from the same source were placed in separate vials. Most modern historians reject his figures. January Visual Anthropology. ISSN Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem. ISBN Retrieved 2 January Columbus on Himself. She was of peasant parentage, but, when Columbus met her, was the ward of a well-to-do relative in Cordoba.

A meat business gave her income of her own, mentioned in the only other record of Columbus's solicitude for her: a letter to Diego, written in , just before departure on the fourth Atlantic crossing, in which the explorer enjoins his son to 'take Beatriz Enriquez in your care for love of me, as you your own mother'. In Bedini, Silvio A.

The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia. Columbus never married Beatriz. When he returned from the first voyage, he was given the greatest of honors and elevated to the highest position in Spain. The Americas were forever altered, and the once vibrant cultures of the Indigenous civilizations were changed and lost, denying the world any complete understanding of their existence.

As more Italians began to immigrate to the United States and settle in major cities during the 19 th century, they were subject to religious and ethnic discrimination. This included a mass lynching of 11 Sicilian immigrants in in New Orleans. Just one year after this horrific event, President Benjamin Harrison called for the first national observance of Columbus Day on October 12, , to mark the th anniversary of his arrival in the Americas.

Italian-Americans saw this honorary act for Columbus as a way of gaining acceptance. Colorado became the first state to officially observe Columbus Day in and, within five years, 14 other states followed. Thanks to a joint resolution of Congress, the day officially became a federal holiday in during the administration of Franklin D.

In , Congress declared the holiday would fall on the second Monday in October each year. As of , approximately 29 states no longer celebrate Columbus Day , and around cities have renamed it or replaced with the alternative Indigenous Peoples Day. One of the most notable cities to move away from celebrating Columbus Day in recent years is the state capital of Columbus, Ohio, which is named after the explorer.

In July , the city also removed a plus-foot metal statue of Columbus from the front of City Hall. The Biography. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site.

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Was Christopher Columbus a Hero or Villain? Amelia Earhart. Charles Lindbergh. Barron Trump.