Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer who claimed something differently than all the other explorers of his time. What did he claim? Well, he was the first to claim that the New World wasn’t just another part of Asia, but a different continent altogether.
Born in 1454 and raised in Florence, Italy, he was given an education from his uncle, who was a Dominican Friar. He didn’t go to a university like his brothers did, due to the fact that he wasn’t interested in education. Instead, he learned the trade of a merchant. He was then hired by Lorenzo Medici to be a clerk in Venice. His work then took him to Spain, where he had the chance to supply most of Columbus’s journeys to the New World. In 1496, he even had the honor of meeting Columbus himself. After this meeting, Vespucci was inspired to visit the New World himself. So, similar to Prince Henry the Navigator, he wasn’t the chief explorer, but only went on the voyages. Eventually, in 1499, King Manuel I of Portugal, asked Vespucci to come along on several voyages to South America.
Because of these journeys, he was the first to claim that the New World was not part of Asia. This turned out to be true. On his very first voyage, he found that the land went south more than other explorers thought it did . Vespucci had then wrote about his expeditions, and published them.
Martin Waldseemüller was a German cartographer who made the first map of the New World. He was inspired by Vespucci’s book and so, he designed a map of the New World and called the new continents, “North, Central, and South America,” after Amerigo.
Though Italy didn’t establish any oversea colonies, several of the earliest explorers came from Italy. These include; John Cabot, Cristopher Columbus, and Amerigo Vespucci, who all played important roles in the New World explorations.
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