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| Christopher Columbus |
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator and colonizer. Born in the republic of Genoa, Columbus, under the auspices of the Catholic Monarch of Spain, completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. Those voyages and his effort to establish settlement on the island of Hispaniola, initiated the permanent European colonization of the New World.
At the time when European kingdom were beginning to establish new trade routes and colonies, motivated by imperialism and economic competition , Columbus propose to reach the east indies by sailing westward. This eventually received the support the Spanish Crown, which saw a chance to enter the spice trade with Asia through his new route. During his voyage in 1492, He reached the new world instead of arriving in Japan as he has intended, landing on an island in he Bahamas archipelago that he named San Salvador. Over the course of three more voyages, He visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America claiming all of it for Crown of Castile.
Though preceded by short-lived North colonization of North America led by Leif Erikson in the 11th century, Columbus is the European explorer credited with establishing and documenting route to the Americas, and inaugurating a period of exploration, conquest and colonization that lasted for centuries. His exertion thereby strongly contributed to the development of the modern Western world. He also founded the transatlantic slave trade and within 25 years of being colonized the population Hispaniola natives declined, dying from enslavement massacre or disease.
Columbus had set course in hope of finding a western routes to the Indies. He called the inhabitants of the land that he visited indios. His strained relationship with the Spanish crownand its appointed colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and dismissal as governor of the settlement on the island of Hispaniola in 1500, and later to protracted litigation over the benifits that he and his heirs claimed were owned to them by the crown.
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