amerigo vespucci--8/10/26

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Today's selection -- from Contested Continent by Peter C. Mancall. It was the discoveries of Amerigo Vespucci, after Columbus, and his conclusion that South America was not an island but a continent, that opened up vast new opportunities for explorers:

"Soon after Columbus's return from his third expedition, the Portuguese explorer Amerigo Vespucci, with support from Ferdinand of Aragon, led an exploratory journey into the waters south of those seen by Columbus. Vespucci, who had earlier helped Columbus prepare for his third journey, returned from his voyage of 1499-1500 with news of the resources and peoples of modern-day Guiana and Brazil. He also came back having reached a conclusion that had eluded Columbus: South America was a continent, not an island. ‘After sailing continuously for about four hundred leagues along the coast,’ Vespucci wrote, ‘we concluded that this was a continental land’ because ‘many times we chanced to see various animals, such as lions, deer, roe deer, boars, rabbits and other land animals not found on islands, but only on the mainland.’ He thought he had found an extension of Asia that no European had ever known, ‘a continent in those southern regions that is inhabited by more numerous peoples and animals than in our Europe, or Asia or Africa.’ Getting to the Spice Islands would involve navigating around what Vespucci announced in print, following the strategy Columbus had employed in 1493, as a mundus novus–a ‘new world.’ He subsequently made two more journeys, sponsored by King Manuel I of Portugal, describing territory that fell to the east of the line determined by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Vespucci was a brilliant self-promoter, extolling the importance of his exploits in printed books. As his reputation spread, Europeans began to refer to the Western Hemisphere as the Americas in Vespucci's honor.

Woodcut depicting Vespucci's first voyage to the New World, from the first known published edition of his 1504 letter to Piero Soderini

“News of Vespucci's discoveries quickly spread across the continent by word of mouth, letters, and in print. In 1504 his Mundus novus became a printing sensation, with an edition appearing in Venice, two in Augsburg, and another in Rome, with translations of his writings appearing in 1505 in Latin, German, and Italian, from printers in Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Augsburg, Kosrock, Florence, Cologne, Antwerp, Leipzig, Basel, and Munich as well as an edition in Czech printed in Pilsen. Mounting evidence suggested that the Americas contained the human and natural resources needed for European glory. One of those who paid attention was Juan Ponce de León. 

“On February 23, 1512, Ferdinand II of Spain issued a patent to Ponce de León, who had by then served as governor of the eastern portion of Hispaniola and then of Puerto Rico. But in 1511 he had lost that position when the Council of Spain decided to reorganize the administration of the islands, specifically to grant authority to Columbus's sons, a plan that Columbus had suggested at the time of his first voyage. The new patent granted Ponce de León the authority to explore only waters north of already claimed Spanish islands. He sought a rumored island called Beniny, one of many islands in the Atlantic that Europeans had either seen from a distance or vaguely heard about. If he found it, he would become adelantado (governor) and rule that land for the rest of his life, as long as he abided by certain provisions. For the first twelve years he had to give one-tenth of his revenue to the king, who would appoint someone to handle the ‘allotment of the Indians’–the sale of Native peoples into slavery and their distribution. Ferdinand also laid a claim to a share of any gold or other minerals found on Beniny and forbade Ponce de León from caking along any individuals ‘who are foreigners from outside our domains and seigniories.”

author:	Peter C. Mancall
title:	Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000-1680
publisher:	Oxford University Press
date:	Copyright 2026
pages:	73-74