What Was Columbus’s Goal In Setting Forth Across The Atlantic In 1492? Was His Voyage Successful?
Posted by admin | Posted in Main Content | Posted on 13-07-2009
Spain had been trading and colonizing in Atlantic waters since the 1300s and had competed with Portugal for control over the Atlantic islands and the west coast of Africa.
Spain’s movement into the Atlantic largely followed a mercantile approach embodying commercial practices also employed by Portugal and Genoa in dealing with non-Western peoples. This was to be expected, as the ports of southern Spain had long been integrated into the Mediterranean mercantile world. But Spanish expansion also enacted a new approach – that of full settlement of Reconquest – which emerged during Christian Spain’s seven centuries of episodic warfare against Islamic Moorish kingdoms on the peninsula.
This struggle reached a successful conclusion just as the Spanish undertook systematic colonization across the Atlantic.
Columbus was trying to find an Eastern Passage to Asia. unfortunatly he made some massive errors based on different units of length and wound up calculating that the world was only a mere 25,255 kilometers. he was off by about 14,745 km and was intercepted by North America.
technically he failed his original objective, but instead he managed two new continents, get a buttload of money, and start a whole new age (colonization age) that entailed the development of the idea of mercantilism.
even if North/South America wasn’t there he would have run out of supplies and they would have all died.
He was trying to find a western passage to India.
He failed miserably as he only got as far as the Caribbean.