Denee petracek biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus — was an Italian explorer, colonizer, and navigator. He is remembered as the principal European discoverer of the Americas and he helped bring the Americas to the forefront of the western consciousness. His discoveries and travels laid the framework for the later European colonisation of Latin and North America. His father was a middle-class wool merchant, though it was relatively humble beginnings for what he later became.

Denee petracek biography of christopher columbus: This guide provides information

Columbus learnt to sail from an early age and later worked as a business agent, travelling around Europe to England, Ireland and later along the West coast of Africa. He was not a scholar but was an enthusiastic self-educated man, who read extensively on astronomy, science and navigation. He also became fluent in Latin, Portuguese and Spanish.

Christopher Columbus was a believer in the spherical nature of the world some Christians still held the view that the world was flat. An ambitious man, Christopher Columbus hoped to find a Western trade route to the lucrative spice markets in Asia. Rather than sailing east, he hoped that sailing west would lead to countries like Japan and China.

To gain the necessary funding and support for his journeys, he approached the Catholic Monarchs of Spain.