Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and colonizer who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that opened the New World to permanent European conquest and colonization of the Americas. Columbus had embarked with the intent of finding and developing a westward route to the Far East, but instead discovered a route to the Americas, then unknown to the Old World. Columbus' voyages were the first European expeditions to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. His expeditions to Spain and the governance of the colonies he founded were sponsored by Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Catholic monarchs of the nascent Spanish Empire. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In 1511, the main Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar in Baracoa. Several cities were soon pursued, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1515, which later became the capital. The local Taíno had to work according to the structure of the encomienda, which seemed like a primitive structure in medieval Europe. Within a century the indigenous people were practically exterminated due to several factors, especially irresistible Eurasian diseases, to which they had no normal resistance, irritated by brutal conditions of severe pioneer slavery. In 1529, a measles episode in Cuba killed 66% of the few inhabitants who had recently contracted smallpox. On May 18, 1539, the conquistador Hernando de Soto set out from Havana leading a number of approximately six hundred devotees on an immense undertaking across the southeastern United States, beginning in Florida, in search of gold, fortune, popularity, and influence. On September 1, 1548, Dr. Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was named legislative leader of Cuba. He landed in Santiago, Cuba, on November 4, 1549 and immediately declared freedom on equal terms. He became Cuba's first perpetual senator to live in Havana rather than Santiago and built Havana's first brick church. After the French took Havana in 1555, the representative's son, Francisco de Angulo, went to Mexico. Cuba grew gradually and, unlike the real estate islands of the Caribbean, had a more extensive agricultural activity. In any case, what is most significant is that the state created itself as an urbanized society that mainly supported the Spanish provincial kingdom. By the mid-eighteenth century, its homesteaders held 50,000 slaves, in contrast to Barbados's 60,000; 300,000 in Virginia, both British provinces; and 450,000 in French Saint-Domingue, which had huge candy cane farms. The Seven Years' War, which took place in 1754 across three continents, eventually landed in the Spanish Caribbean. Spain's partnership with the French brought them into direct confrontation with the English, and in 1762 a British force of five warships and 4,000 soldiers set out from Portsmouth to capture Cuba. The English landed on June 6 and by August had the Havana under attack. When Havana surrendered, the chief of naval operations of the British army, George Pocock, and the commander of the land forces George Keppel, 3rd Earl of Albemarle, entered the city as the new victorious senator and assumed responsibility for the entire piece western part of the island. The English promptly opened trade with their North American and Caribbean settlements, causing a rapid change in Cuban culture. They imported food, steeds, and other products into the city, as well as large numbers of slaves from West Africa to deal with the immature sugar ways. As history scholar Ada Ferrer expressed it: “To a.