Columbus: The 4 Voyages, 1492-1504

He knew nothing of celestial navigation or of the existence of the Pacific Ocean. He was a self-promoting and bold entrepreneur. His maps had been a hybrid of fantasy and delusion. When he did make land, he enslaved the populace he discovered, inspired genocide, and polluted relations between peoples. He ended his profession in close to lunacy. However Columbus had one asset that made all of the distinction, an inborn sense of the ocean, of wind and climate, and of choosing the optimum course to get from A to B. Laurence Bergreen’s energetic and bracing e-book offers the entire Columbus and most significantly, the entire of his profession, not simply the spotlight of 1492. Columbus undertook three extra voyages between 1494 and 1504, every designed to show that he may sail to China inside a matter of weeks and convert these he discovered there to Christianity. By their conclusion, Columbus was damaged in physique and spirit, a hero undone by the tragic flaw of pleasure. If the primary voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, this e-book exhibits how the following voyages illustrate the prices – political, ethical, and financial.