Who is South America named after? Life of wonderful names. How an Italian gave the Welsh name to America

There is an opinion about the historical injustice to Christopher Columbus, who discovered America, but never immortalized his name in its name. America was named after another person. What is the injustice? Columbus did not discover America. He discovered the West Indies, for which he shook all the laurels due to him. He sailed to open a new trade route, with the help of which it would be possible to bypass troubled Asia and shorten the travel time.

After him sailed Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed many times along the northern and eastern coasts. open land. The maps of Columbus added almost nothing to the maps of Magellan, and the maps of Vespucci made it possible to form a correct idea of ​​America as a mainland. Vespucci helped outfit Columbus' expeditions and was his friend.

According to contemporaries, Vespucci was honest, smart person and had great talent. Thanks to this talent, he left notes on new lands, in which he described their nature, fauna, starry sky, and the customs of the natives. They say that he exaggerated a little, but the writer's talent is to blame.

Vespucci never tried to claim the laurels of Columbus as a discoverer. The sons of Columbus made no claims against their father's friend. It was Vespucci who proposed calling the open lands the "New World". It is not his fault that Martin Waldseemülle, a cartographer from Lorraine, one of the greatest experts of his time in this field, declared him the discoverer of the "fourth part of the world."

The cartographer's decision was based on material provided to him by Vespucci, not by Columbus. So Waldseemülle named the mainland in honor of its discoverer Amerigo - America. Thirty years later, the name became generally recognized and spread in the Mercator map to North America.

The biggest historical injustice is that Columbus discovered America. That is, it is not injustice that he discovered a new continent, but that we call this continent the name of a completely different person.

The most common opinion is that this person was called Amerigo Vespucci (1454 - 1512)

Amerigo is a native of Florence, and his native city is rightfully proud of him. The statue of Amerigo, among other world-famous Florentines, is installed in front of the famous Uffizi art gallery. (Which translated from Italian means just “offices”. There was once a city office here)

Amerigo was born into a family of a notary and after his studies began to work in the banking house of the Medici. At a very mature age for those times, at the age of 36, Vespucci received a promotion and became the representative of the Medici bankers in Seville. Seville was the center of Spanish navigation, although the ocean is 87 kilometers from here. From a long voyage, the Spanish ships returned to the port of Cadiz, and from there they went up the Guadalquivir River to Seville. Here the ships were assembled on an overseas trip.

At this time, the Portuguese tried to circumnavigate Africa by sea and reach India, which was reputed to be a country of fabulous wealth. They methodically captured the islands and coasts on their way, creating bases and ports in the most convenient places. This was also done in order to prevent competitors from following the already open path.

Then they saw only one competitor - the growing strength of Spain. As a result of the marriage of the Aragonese king Ferdinand to the Castilian princess Isabella, most of the Christian lands of Spain were united under a single royal authority.

The kingdom turned out to be not weak - it occupied almost the entire Iberian Peninsula. Strictly speaking, the royal power in what was then Spain was not single, but dual. Ferdinand and Isabella ruled jointly, they even had a combined throne.

The third ruler of the country was the Catholic Church. And a ruler no less powerful, although he did not sit on the throne. The support of the Catholic Church provided funding for the centuries-old Reconquista - the reconquest of the peninsula from the Muslims. But, more importantly, only faith rallied the numerous people subject to Ferdinand and Isabella into something united, united by a common goal. The king and queen simply could not neglect such power. That is why, after the victory over the Muslims in 1492, they gave in to the fundamental demands of the church, and took a step that, from the point of view of any other ruler, is crazy - they expelled the Moors and Jews from Spain. That is, farmers, merchants and artisans, thereby economically castrating the newly conquered country.

But there was an overabundance of warriors in the Spanish kingdom. Even in more than a hundred years later, written "", the author's cry is clearly heard: "Guys, that's enough! There is no one to fight anymore! Get down to business!"

Good to say, get to work! It was not arable farming that was to be done by a noble hidalgo, and not despicable trade! Only new conquests! So Columbus, with his discovery of the sea route to India, came in very handy. Thanks to him, in 1492, overseas lands were also annexed to the possessions of the Spanish crown, where the country successfully and with great benefit for herself she "merged" all her passionate warriors.

Amerigo Vespucci was in charge of equipping the Spanish Royal Navy. He was friends with the navigator Christopher Columbus and helped equip his second and third expeditions to India (as he sincerely believed).

Amerigo Vespucci was not only a successful businessman. Being engaged in the supply of ships, he acquired a lot of seemingly superfluous knowledge for a merchant: he thoroughly studied the structure of ships, navigation, astronomy and cartography. But this knowledge turned out to be not at all superfluous when, in 1499-1500, Amerigo made his first trip to the shores of the continent, which would later be named after him. On the expedition of Alonso Ojeda, he acted as navigator and commanded two of the three ships. These two ships, by the way, were equipped at the expense of Vespucci.

The Ojeda expedition explored the coast of South America, where Brazil, Guiana and Venezuela are now located. Amerigo Vespucci discovered the Amazon Delta and climbed a hundred kilometers up it.

A year later, in 1501-1502, Amerigo, as part of a Portuguese expedition, again explored the Brazilian coast. Among the discoveries of this expedition is the bay of Rio de Janeiro.

"Rio de Janeiro" ("January River") is evidence of the mistake of the discoverers. On January 1, 1502, they entered the bay, which they took for the mouth of a full-flowing, like the Amazon, river. And, without further ado, they called this river "January". Later it turned out - there is no river, but the name on the map has already remained.

In 1503 - 1504, as part of the second Portuguese expedition, Vespucci once again visited Brazil. In 1505 he returned to Spain. When the position of chief pilot (navigator) of Spain was established in 1508, Amerigo was rightfully appointed to this position. He occupied it for four years, until his death.

As a result of his travels, Vespucci came to the conclusion that a new continent had been discovered by Columbus. He proposed to call this continent the New World. The cartographer of the Duke of Lorraine, Martin Waldseemüller, first named the new continent America on his maps. The new name was assigned to the entire continent after the release of the map in 1538.

The Anglo-Saxons are closer to another version: the new continent was named after a Bristol merchant of Welsh origin Richard Amerike (c. 1445 - 1503).

After the successful return of Columbus from his first voyage, there were many sailors who were ready to risk their lives by going on a long voyage to the west. One of them was John Cabot (c. 1450 - 1498).

Cabot's real name is Giovanni Caboto. He was quite a successful Venetian merchant. As befits a Venetian merchant, Caboto traded with Egypt and Turkey. The fact that he was not a timid ten is evidenced by his trip to Mecca, a city closed to Christians. Cabot risked not for the love of adventure. He tried to find out from Arab merchants where they brought spices and silk, which were so highly valued in Europe. It turned out that from some countries lying much east of India, at the very far eastern end of Asia. Maybe even from mysterious China.

The fact that the Earth is round in those days was no longer a secret or heresy. Caboto quite reasonably decided that the far east could be the near west. It is enough just to swim in the other direction.

When Caboto went bankrupt, he had to leave Venice. For some time he lived in Valencia, offering his services for the arrangement of the port there. Then he “surfaced” in Seville, also as an engineer on the construction of a stone bridge across the Guadalquivir River. He offered his services as a navigator successively to the Spanish, Portuguese and, finally, the English king. In 1484, Caboto received a license from Henry VII to sail and search for new lands for the English crown in the west. Now, under the name of Cabot, he moves to Bristol.

Bristol is the sea gate of England, traditionally open to the west. No wonder it was from here (but much later) that Stevenson's heroes went in search of treasure island. There were enough among the merchants of Bristol who believed the tales of distant lands to the west, where Irish monks were said to have sailed under the guidance of St. Brendan himself. And after the successful return from the voyage of H. Columbus, the number of people willing to risk capital by financing promising expeditions increased.

Richard America was not the last person in Bristol. In 1497, he served as sheriff of the city, and after that he was the chief customs officer of the port. He not only financed the Cobot expedition, but even supplied the shipyard with the timber necessary for the construction of the ship: oak trees cut down on his estate. The ship turned out to be small, they called it "Matthew". Either in honor of the Evangelist Matthew, or in honor of Cabot's wife, whose name was Mattea.

On May 20, 1497, Cabot set sail from Bristol in a ship with a crew of 18. Unlike Columbus, his path turned out to be shorter, since he sailed in northern latitudes. On the morning of June 24, Cabot's ship reached the northern tip of Newfoundland. It was difficult to mistake this land for hot India. Cobot believed he had reached China. The captain declared the open country the possession of the English king. The sailors covered the return trip in just two weeks. In the annals of Bristol we read an entry for 1497:

"... on the day of St. John the Baptist was found in the land of America by merchants from Bristol who arrived on a ship from Bristol named "Matthew".

Cabot mapped the coast of North America from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. In addition, English sailors brought American "souvenirs" to Bristol: a needle with which the natives made nets, snares with which they caught animals, a whale's jaw. Three days after the return, these items were handed over to the king.

On the way back, the sailors of J. Cabot found large shoals of herring and cod in the sea. So the Great Newfoundland Bank was opened - one of the richest fishing areas in the world. Cabot considered this find the most valuable result of his expedition. He announced to the Bristolians that now the British need not go to Iceland for fish. They have their own fishing grounds.

The discovery of Cabot marked the beginning of the British colonial empire. John Cabot was also the first officially registered European to set foot on the American continent. This happened two years before the landing of Vespucci in Brazil.

Who was America named after?

Not at all in honor of the Italian merchant, navigator and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. America is named after Richard America, a Welsh merchant from Bristol.

America financed the second transatlantic expedition of John Cabot - English name Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto, whose voyages in 1497 and 1498 provided the basis for subsequent British claims to Canada. In 1484, Cabot moved from Genoa to London and received permission from Henry VII himself to search for unexplored lands of the West.

In May 1497, on his small ship "Matthew" Cabot reached the shores of Labrador, becoming the first officially registered European to set foot on American soil - two years earlier than Vespucci.

Cabot mapped the coast of North America from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland.

Being the main sponsor of the expedition, Richard America, of course, expected that the newly discovered lands would be named after him. In the Bristol calendar we read the entry for that year:

"... on the day of St. John the Baptist was found in the land of America by merchants from Bristol, who arrived on a ship from Bristol with the name "Matthew".

It seems to us that the record makes it clear how everything really happened.

And although the author's manuscript of the calendar has not been preserved, there are a number of other documents of that time, where it is mentioned more than once. This is the first time in history that the word "America" ​​has been used as the name of a new continent.

The earliest map that has come down to us, where the same name is used, is big map peace of Martin Waldsmuller in 1507. However, it only applies to South America. In his notes, Waldsmuller suggests that "America" ​​most likely comes from the Latin version of the name Amerigo Vespucci. It was Vespucci who discovered South America and mapped its coastline in 1500-1502.

It turns out that Waldsmuller did not know for sure and was simply trying to somehow explain the word that he met on other maps - including on the Cabot map. The only place where the term "America" ​​was known and actively used was Bristol, a city that Waldsmuller, who lived in France, hardly ever visited. Moreover, in his world map of 1513, he already replaces the word "America" ​​with " Terra Incognita"(Unknown country (lat.)).

Amerigo Vespucci in North America never been. All early maps of this country and trade with it were English. Moreover, Vespucci himself never used the name "America" ​​for his discovery.

By the way, there are good reasons for this. New countries and continents have never been named after someone by the name of a person - only by his last name (Tasmania, Van Diemen's Land or the Cook Islands).

If an Italian explorer had consciously chosen to name America after himself, it would have become the "Land of Vespucci" (or "Vespuccia").

Not at all NOT in honor of the Italian merchant, navigator and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. America is named after Richard America, a Welsh merchant from Bristol.

Americus financed the second transatlantic expedition of John Cabot - the English name for the Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto - whose voyages in 1497 and 1498 provided the groundwork for subsequent British claims to Canada. In 1484, Cabot moved from Genoa to London and received permission from Henry VII himself to search for unexplored lands of the West.

In May 1497, on his small ship "Matthew" Cabot reached the shores of Labrador, becoming the first officially registered European to set foot on American soil - two years earlier than Vespucci.

Cabot mapped the coast of North America from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland.

Being the main sponsor of the expedition, Richard America, of course, expected that the newly discovered lands would be named after him. In the Bristol calendar we read the entry for that year:

"... on the day of St. John the Baptist was found in the land of America by merchants from Bristol who arrived on a ship from Bristol named "Matthew".

It seems to us that the record makes it clear how everything really happened.

And although the author's manuscript of the calendar has not been preserved, there are a number of other documents of that time, where it is mentioned more than once. This is the first time in history that the word "America" ​​has been used as the name of a new continent.

The earliest extant map using the same name is Martin Waldsmuller's 1507 large world map. However, it only applies to South America. In his notes, Waldsmuller suggests that "America" ​​most likely comes from the Latin version of the name Amerigo Vespucci. It was Vespucci who discovered South America and mapped its coastline in 1500-1502.

It turns out that Waldsmuller did not know for sure and was simply trying to somehow explain the word that he met on other maps - including on the Cabot map. The only place where the term "America" ​​was known and actively used was Bristol, a city that Waldsmuller, who lived in France, hardly ever visited. Moreover, in his world map of 1513, he already replaces the word "America" ​​with " Terra Incognita"(Unknown country (lat.)).

Amerigo Vespucci has never been to North America. All early maps of this country and trade with it were English. Moreover, Vespucci himself never used the name "America" ​​for his discovery.

By the way, there are good reasons for this. New countries and continents have never been named after someone by the name of a person - only by his last name (Tasmania, Van Diemen's Land or the Cook Islands).

If an Italian explorer had consciously chosen to name America after himself, it would have become the "Land of Vespucci" (or "Vespuccia").

Every student will answer this question quickly, without hesitation: in honor of Amerigo Vespucci.
But already the second question will cause doubts and hesitations even among adults: why, in fact, this part of the world was named after Amerigo Vespucci? Because Vespucci discovered America?
He never opened it!
... In 1503, in various cities: in Paris, in Florence, it is not known where earlier, but almost everywhere, five or six printed sheets entitled "Mundus Novus" (New World) flashed simultaneously. The author of this treatise, written in Latin, is called a certain Alberic Vesputius, or Vesputius, who, in the form of a letter to Laurentius Peter Francis de Medici, reports a journey that he undertook on behalf of the king of Portugal in hitherto unknown countries. The little book is being snapped up. It is reprinted many times in the most remote cities, translated into German, Dutch, French, Italian, and immediately included in collections of travel reports, now published in all languages; it becomes a boundary, perhaps even the cornerstone of a new geography, about which the world still knows nothing.
The great success of the little book is understandable. After all, the unknown Vesputius, the first of all these navigators, knows how to tell so well and fascinatingly. Usually, illiterate sea vagrants, soldiers and sailors who do not even know how to put their own signatures gather on the ships of adventurers, and only occasionally comes across an "escrivano" - a dry lawyer, literate, indifferently stringing facts, or a pilot marking degrees of latitude and longitude. But here comes a credible and even scientist man, who does not exaggerate, does not compose, but honestly tells how on May 14, 1501, on behalf of the Portuguese king, he crossed the ocean and for two months and two days was under a sky so black and stormy that neither the sun nor the moon could be seen. On August 7, 1501, they finally saw land, and what a blessed land it was! hard work local residents unknown Trees do not require maintenance and bear abundant fruits, rivers and springs are full of clear tasty water; the sea is rich in fish, exceptionally
o fertile earth will give birth to juicy, completely unknown fruits; cool breezes blow over this generous land, and dense forests make even the hottest days pleasant. There are thousands of different animals and birds here. People live in primeval innocence; they have a reddish skin color ... In short: "If there is an earthly paradise anywhere, then, apparently, not far from here."

According to Amerigo Vespucci himself, he made four voyages to the New World. However, the most reliable and important were the second and third voyages. The map shows their routes (I. P. Magidovich).

The world-historical role of these little sheets is not based on their content, not on the inspiration they aroused among contemporaries. The main event, oddly enough, was not even the letter itself, but its headline, two words, four syllables: "Mundus Novus", which made an incomparable revolution in man's idea of ​​the Earth. Until this hour, Europe considered the greatest geographical event of the era that India, the land of treasures and spices, reached in one decade, following various routes: Vasco da Gama - moving east, around Africa, and Christopher Columbus - moving west, through no one has hitherto crossed the ocean.
But then another navigator appears, some amazing Alberic, and reports something even more amazing. It turns out that the land he reached on his way to the west is not India at all, but a completely unknown country between Asia and Europe and, therefore, a new part of the world. "My voyage proved that south of the equator I found a mainland, where some valleys are much more densely populated by people and animals than in our Europe, Asia and Africa; moreover, there is a more pleasant and mild climate than in other parts of the world familiar to us" , he wrote. These lines, tight but full of confidence, make Mundus Novus a memorable document of mankind. Vespucci removes the veil that obscured from the gaze of its great discoverer Columbus the whole significance of his own feat, and although Vespucci himself did not even remotely suspect what the actual size of this continent was, he at least understood the independent significance of its southern part. In this sense, Vespucci really completed the discovery of America, for each discovery, each invention becomes valuable not only thanks to the one who made it, but even more thanks to the one who revealed its true meaning and effective power; if Columbus has the merit of a feat, then Vespucci, thanks to this statement of his, belongs to the historical merit of understanding the feat.

Two or three years later, a Florentine printer published a thin pamphlet of sixteen pages in Italian. It is entitled: "A letter from Amerigo Vespucci about the islands discovered by him during his four travels." Geographers, astronomers, merchants find valuable information in the book, scientists - a number of theses that they can discuss and interpret do not go to waste, and a wide mass of simply curious ones. In conclusion, Vespucci promises that when he lives in peace in his hometown, he will finish a large and actually his main work on new parts of the world.
But Vespucci never got down to this great work, or perhaps it has not come down to us, just like his diaries. Thus, thirty-two pages (of which the description of the third journey is only a variant of "Mundus Novus") - that's the entire literary heritage of Amerigo Vespucci, tiny and not very valuable luggage for the road to immortality. It can be said without exaggeration: never before has a man who wrote so little become so famous; it was necessary to pile up chance upon chance, error upon error, in order to raise this work so high above its era that our century would retain this name.

Based on the book "Amerigo" by Stefan Zweig.