Amerigo Vespucci

 Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) was born and raised in Florence.  With a knowledge of both cartography and accounting, he was hired by the Medici family and dispatched in 1492 to look after their financial interests in Seville, Spain.  The timing was fortuitous as both Spain and Portugal were engaged in exploratory voyages and were in need of financial backing.  In addition to loaning monies for some of these voyages, Vespucci sailed on at least two of the voyages (and possibly as many as four) as a supernumerary.  He wrote fairly detailed letters to his employers and friends of the results of voyages to what is now called South America, describing the coast from Guyana to Rio de Janeiro and the culture of the indigenous peoples encountered.  His letters were converted into pamphlets, which became extremely popular throughout Europe.  Vespucci was the first European to recognize that the lands he had visited were not part of the Asian region, but were a “New World”, a term he originated to describe those lands.  In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller produced the first world map that included depictions of newly-discovered lands west of Europe.  While general information regarding the discoveries of Christopher Columbus was available, the Spanish had suppressed detailed reports.  Thus, Europeans associated Amerigo Vespucci with the discoveries.  The Waldseemuller map showed only South America and the Caribbean Islands in any detail.  He labeled the large land mass as “America”, using the feminine form of Vespucci’s first name since, as he said, both Europa and Asia got their names from women.  In 1508, King Ferdinand appointed Vespucci as the Chief Navigator of Spain, commissioning him to found a school of navigation to standardize and modernize navigation techniques utilized by Spanish mariners.  Vespucci died in Seville in 1512, before he had an opportunity to make much progress on the navigation school.  The Mercator world map of 1538 was the first to include both South America and North America.  Thus, in at least one respect, Vespucci had excelled Columbus in making a mark in the world.