Extracts from Journal, 1492

Extracts from Journal, 1492

World famous Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa, Italy on October 31st, 1451 (15th century). Christopher Columbus is the son of Domenico Colombo and Susanna Fontanarossa and the brother of Bartholomew and Diego Colombo; he also had two children Diego and Fernando. Christopher Colombus’s youth years were spent aiding his father in their local cheese business in Portugual. Young Christoper knew this was not his purpose in life and later began to explore the seas. In 1476 Columbus nearly lost his life in his first ever voyage into the Atlantic ocean. Columbus participated in many more voyages to Africa, around the Mediterranean and even in the Aegean Sea. These voyages sailed in Columbus’s young adulthood is what really allowed him to develop his mastery skills as a mariner. These successful voyages allowed the young man to be seen as the greatest explorer/navigator of the 15th century. Columbus is most famed for his voyage in 1492 to find a western route to Asia. Although he may have not been the first European to sail to the Americas he was still given credit for opening a new passage to the new world. Christopher Columbus’s discoveries changed the way Europeans in the 15th century saw the world they lived in and greatly impacted history.

During the 15th century the “age of exploration” was born initially because of the lost eastern route to Asia. This impacted the European nations greatly due to the fact that a lot of the Europe’s supplies were based on the importing from Asia. Basically Christopher Columbus being born in 1451 put him right into the action of the age of exploration. Christopher Columbus, who was interested with the work of Marco Polo, began to prepare his own project of finding a new route to the said “product-rich east” (Asia). Columbus took his ideas of this voyage to the west first to the King of Portugal. The King thought his ideas were not valid and therefore did not grant him support in his voyage. Columbus then took his voyage ideas to the King and Queen of Spain who were intrigued and agreed to help finance Columbus’s voyage, so long as he tried to convert Asians to Christianity and brought wealth to Spain. Portugal and Spain are the only two European countries that were able to do such voyages because unlike the rest of the other countries they were more economically stable and not busy with war, like England.

With the final agreement by the King and Queen Columbus was granted three ships (the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria) and set sail from Spain in 1492. Throughout the voyage Columbus documents what he and his crew faced in order of what happened prior to sighting first land. This primary source titled “Extracts from Journal, 1492” that Columbus wrote is perhaps the most accurate source we have to really get a good idea of what it was like to be an explorer during this expedition and to make interpretations about the values of Europeans in the 15th century. In “Extracts from Journal, 1492” Christopher Columbus takes account of all that he and his crew face in a collection of entries that explain his discoveries from October 1st, 1492 through October 15th, 1492.  The journal covers events such as first sighting of civilization, personal experiences of the crew and captain and goes in depth as to how exactly the native inhabitants behaved and lived. The audience of this source is not only Columbus himself along with the King and Queen and early European nations but also us in the present day to show just how Columbus wanted to be documented based by his written experiences. This journal is important to history because it shows just how the early beginnings of the Americas came to be found.