Over the next several months, he explored the island that is now Cuba and another island he named Hispaniola (Santo Domingo), where he came across the first significant amount of gold. Columbus set sail with three small ships and a crew of eighty‐seven men on August 2, 1492, and made landfall on October 12 on an island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador.

With the Reconquistacomplete and Spain a unified country, Ferdinand and Isabella could turn their attention to overseas exploration. In 1492, Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, had fallen to the forces of the Spanish monarchs. With influential supporters at court, Columbus convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to partially underwrite his expedition. The Portuguese rejected his plan twice, and the rulers of England and France were not interested. Either because of his arrogance (he wanted ships and crews to be provided at no expense to himself) or ambition (he insisted on governing the lands he discovered), he found it difficult to find a patron. Like other seafarers of his day, Columbus was untroubled by political allegiances he was ready to sail for whatever country would pay for his voyage. Ignorant of the fact that the Western Hemisphere lay between Europe and Asia and assuming the earth's circumference to be a third less than it actually is, he was convinced that Japan would appear on the horizon just three thousand miles to the west.

Grant Administration Reconstruction EndsĬhristopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor, believed that sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean was the shortest sea route to Asia.

Resistance to and the Defense of Slavery.

Antebellum America: Recreation, Leisure.

Economic Growth and Development 1815–1860.Chesapeake Colonies: Virginia, Maryland.Seventeenth Century Colonial Settlements.Portuguese Explorations and West Africa.

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