preview

How Did Christopher Columbus Contribute To The Age Of Exploration

Decent Essays

In a quote from a letter from Christopher Columbus to King Ferdinand on July 7, 1503: “Gold is most excellent; gold is treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world." (UnderstandingPrejudice.org) Ever since the first inklings of European expansion, explorers like Christopher Columbus had money and power of the mind, an ideology that has profoundly affected our world in the modern age, while resonating thousands of years into the past. Christopher Columbus would find patrons who shared this ideology in the form of the king and queen of Spain, who would provide the funds and ships necessary to launch Spain and Columbus into the mainstream of history argued as the most important (and possibly infamous) exploratory sail of man. In the old motto of “God, Gold, and Glory,” the actions that Christopher Columbus partook in the name of Spain begins to compound into an understanding that plants its roots in empire and Christianity, a continuance of perceivable inevitability since the early Romans. There are three main reasons that Columbus embarked on his journey with the support of Spain; the promise of gold and colonial expansion, an exuberant fervor on the part of Columbus during his exploration, and an increasingly competitive imperial machine controlling Europe at the time.

First, it is important to address the massive desire for wealth that countries experienced in the Age of Exploration. Kingdoms for the most part stayed intertwined in the system of

Get Access