ColumbusFriend or Foe essays

ColumbusFriend or Foe essays Explore, discover and develop or seek, destroy and conquer. Almost everyone recognizes the name Christopher Columbus and understands what his role was in changing the views, lifestyles, politics, and geography of the fifteenth century modern world. Christopher Columbus discovered a world known to no European, African or Asian. He discovered the New World, the Americas. However, is todays society aware of the consequences, which came with this newfound world or are they blinded by biased history books and school texts. My view of Christopher Columbus and his glorious discovery was a traditional one. Columbus, the great explorer, heroically discovered the Americas making friends with the natives creating a new way of life for the entire world. I am sorry to say that I was misguided in my education about Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa in 1451 the son of a weaver and by the time he reach his late teenage years he went to sea and voyaged for many years trading for various employers in Genoa, Italy. His work eventually took him to England in 1477 and West Africa in 1482. About this time he began to seek financial support for a major Atlantic expedition. Most writers and philosophers, along with Columbus, had accepted that the Earth was round, and so Columbus understood that China and Japan could be reached by sailing west. His idea was logical, but not factual. Columbus didnt count on there being giant landmasses between the two, which was never explored by anyone outside of the Eastern Hemisphere. For some years Columbus failed to obtain support for a transatlantic expedition but in March 1492 the catholic monarchs of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, approved his voyage and awarded him the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and the governorship of any new land he might discover. He set sail in August 1492 with his fleet of three ships and one hundred men and ...