United States History Student Edition

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EXAMINE THE SOURCE 1. Explaining Why did Vespucci call the land he explored a “new world”? Why is that description inaccurate? 2. Predicting How does Vespucci view the lands he explored? Does he believe they are valuable to the Spanish? with abundant argument that it was a habitable land. But that this their opinion is false and utterly opposed to the truth, this my last voyage has made manifest ; for in those southern parts I have found a continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa, and, in addition, a climate milder and more delightful than in any other region known to us . . . . ” —from Mundus Novus: Letter to Lorenzo Pietro di Medici, 1503; translated by George Tyler Northup, 1916 aver to declare positively manifest obvious Mundus Novus Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer who sailed to the Americas on at least two journeys. Vespucci worked in Spain for an organization that outfitted ships for long voyages. He might have been present when Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage, and it is believed that he assisted in the preparation for Columbus’s future trips. In 1497, Vespucci began his own series of voyages as a navigator, at first for Spain, and later for Portugal. He explored the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, northern South America, and Brazil. After completing his second expedition in 1501–1502, Vespucci penned a letter in which he declared that he did not reach Asia, as he (and Columbus) had thought, but rather a mundus novus , or “new world.” The letter was translated, printed, and widely distributed, leading the “new world” to be named after Amerigo Vespucci: America. PRIMARY SOURCE: LETTER “ On a former occasion I wrote to you at some length concerning my return from those new regions which we found and explored with the fleet . . . And these we may rightly call a new world. Because our ancestors had no knowledge of them . . . most of [our ancestors] hold that there is no continent to the south beyond the equator, but only the sea which they named the Atlantic; and if some of them did aver that a continent there was, they denied

Vespucci, Amerigo. 1504. Mundus Novus: Letter to Lorenzo Pietro di Medici. Trans. George Tyler Northrup, 1916. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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