Amerigo Vespucci

This article is about the person. For the ship, see Amerigo Vespucci (ship).

Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1451 - February 22, 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and cartographer. He played a senior role in two voyages which explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. On the second of these voyages he discovered that South America extended much further south than previously known by Europeans. This convinced him that this land was part of a new continent, a bold contention at a time when other European explorers crossing the Atlantic Ocean thought they were reaching Asia.

Statue at the Uffizi, Florence

Vespucci's voyages became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him were published between 1502 and 1504. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent "America" after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts, which led to criticisms of Vespucci as trying to usurp Christopher Columbus's glory. However, the rediscovery in the 18th century of other letters by Vespucci has led to the view that the early published accounts were fabrications, not by Vespucci, but by others.

Life

Vespucci was born in Florence, Italy, as the third child of a respected family. His father was a notary for the Money Changers' Guild of Florence. Amerigo Vespucci worked for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and his brother Giovanni and in 1491 they sent him to work at their agency in Seville, Spain.

In 1508, after at least two voyages to the Americas, the position of pilot major (chief of navigation) of Spain was created for Vespucci, with the responsibility of training pilots for ocean voyages. He died in Seville in 1512.

Letters

Two letters attributed to Vespucci were published during his lifetime. Mundus Novus ("New World") was a Latin translation of a lost Italian letter sent from Lisbon to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. It describes a voyage to South America in 1501-1502. Mundus Novus was published in late 1502 or early 1503 and soon reprinted and distributed in numerous European countries.

Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi viaggi ("Letter of Amerigo Vespucci concerning the isles newly discovered on his four voyages"), known as Lettera al Soderini or just Lettera, was a letter in Italian addressed to Piero Soderini. Printed in 1504 or 1505, it claimed to be an account of four voyages to the Americas made by Vespucci between 1497 and 1504. A Latin translation was published by the German Martin Waldseemüller in 1507 in Cosmographiae Introductio, a book on cosmography and geography, as Quattuor Americi Vespuccij navigationes ("Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci").

In the 18th century three unpublished "familiar" letters from Vespucci to Lorenzo de' Medici were rediscovered. One describes a voyage made in 1499-1500 which corresponds with the second of the "four voyages". Another was written from Cape Verde in 1501 in the early part of the third of the "four voyages", before crossing the Atlantic. The third letter was sent from Lisbon after the completion of that voyage.

Some have suggested that Vespucci, in the two letters published in his lifetime, was exaggerating his role and constructed deliberate fabrications. However many scholars now believe that the two letters were not written by him but were fabrications by others based in part on genuine letters by Vespucci.

It was the publication and widespread circulation of the letters that led Martin Waldseemüller to name the new continent America on his world map of 1507 in Lorraine. Vespucci used a latinised form of his name, Americus Vespucius, in his Latin writings, which Waldseemüller used as a base for the new name, taking the feminine form America. (See also Naming of America.) Amerigo itself is an Italian form of the medieval Latin Emericus (see also Saint Emeric of Hungary), which through the German form Heinrich (in English, Henry) derived from the Germanic name Haimirich.

The two disputed letters claim that Vespucci made four voyages to America, while at most two can be verified from other sources. It is now generally accepted by historians that no voyage was made in 1497. Little is known of his last voyage in 1503–1504 or even whether it actually took place.

Vespucci's real historical importance may well be more in his letters, whether he wrote them all or not, than in his discoveries. From these letters, the European public learned about the newly discovered continent of the Americas for the first time; its existence became generally known throughout Europe within a few years of the letters' publication.

Voyages

In 1499–1500, Vespucci joined an expedition in the service of Spain with Alonso de Ojeda (or Hojeda) as the fleet commander. The intention was to sail around the southern end of the Asian mainland into the Indian Ocean. After hitting land at the coast of what is now Guyana, the two seem to have separated. Vespucci sailed southward, discovering the mouth of the Amazon River and reaching 6°S, before turning around and seeing Trinidad and the Orinoco River and returning to Spain by way of Hispaniola. Vespucci claimed, in a letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, that he determined his longitude celestially on August 23, 1499, while on this voyage. But his claim is clearly fraudulent, which casts more doubt on Vespucci's credibility.

His last certain voyage was one led by Gonçalo Coelho in 1501–1502 in the service of Portugal. Departing from Lisbon, the fleet sailed first to Cape Verde where they met two of Pedro Álvares Cabral's ships returning from India. In a letter from Cape Verde, Vespucci says that he hopes to visit the same lands that Álvares Cabral had explored, suggesting that the intention is to sail west to Asia, as on the 1499-1500 voyage. On reaching the coast of Brazil, they sailed south along the coast of South America to Rio de Janeiro's bay. If his own account is to be believed, he reached the latitude of Patagonia before turning back; although this also seems doubtful, since his account does not mention the broad estuary of the Río de la Plata, which he must have seen if he had gotten that far south. Portuguese maps of South America following the voyage of Coelho and Vespucci do not show any land south of present-day Cananéia at 25º S, so this may represent the southernmost extent of their voyages. During the first half of this expedition in 1501, Vespucci mapped the two stars, Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri as well as the stars of the constellation Crux. Although these stars were known to the ancient Greeks, gradual precession had lowered them below the European skyline so that they were forgotten.

On return to Lisbon, Vespucci wrote in a letter to de' Medici that the land masses they explored were much larger than anticipated and unlike the Asia described by earlier Europeans and, therefore, must be a New World, that is, a previously unknown fourth continent, after Europe, Asia, and Africa.

See also

Naming of America

References

• James A. Canaday, The Life of Amerigo Vespucci

External links

• Account of 'The First Voyage', 1497: Letter of Amerigo Vespucci To Pier Soderini - Fordham University (U.S.) Internet Modern History Sourcebook