Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America

I picked up this book to learn about that the man after which America was named. In this book, I learned a lot - a lot of what I didn't expect. Amerigo and his story are more complex than someone like Christopher Columbus. This book is well-researched, and carefully explains what facts are definitive and what are questionable and unverifiable. The diction used in this book is at a high and appreciated level. There are a few downsides. 1st: At times, portions are repetitive and boring - the book could have been shorter and more concise. 2nd: What I was searching for in this book was clarity on how, why, when, and by whom (I expected it to be Amerigo) it was realized that the "New World" was actually a completely new land that was originally thought to be the Indies when Columbus arrived. This book did not clearly answer that. It vaguely explained that, while focusing more on how it was that America was named after Amerigo and not Columbus. Overall, the book is interesting, and you will learn a lot about the deeper background of Amerigo, whom you might only prior know a few generalities about, some of which might even be wrong.

It has been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Christopher Columbus (aka, Cristobal Colom) was indeed a venetian... of converso-jewish-catalan extraction. Neither he nor his heirs seemed to mind Vespucci's "usurpation" which, by the way, has also been proved to be a fabrication. See excerpt below. AMERIGO VESPUCCI BY FREDERICK A. OBER The name America thus got placed upon several maps as an equivalent for what we call Brazil, and sometimes came to stand alone for what we call South America, but still signified only a part of the dry land beyond the Atlantic to which Columbus had led the way." That there was no evil intention on Vespucci's part is amply proved by the fact that, while he himself lived four years after the Introductio was published, a certain contemporary of his, one Ferdinand Columbus, who was most acutely interested in seeing justice done the name and deeds of his father, survived Vespucci twenty-seven years. He not only saw this book, but owned a copy, which, according to an autograph note on the flyleaf, he had bought in Venice in July, 1521, "for five sueldos." This book is still contained in the library he founded at Seville, and as it was copiously annotated by him, it must have been carefully read; yet, [Pg 249] though he has the credit of having written a life of his father, Christopher Columbus, he makes no mention whatever of the "usurpation" by Vespucci. Ferdinand Columbus knew the Florentine, and was an intimate friend of his nephew, Juan Vespucci; yet the question seems never to have arisen between them as to the great discoverers' respective shares of glory. The explanation lies in this fact: that Vespucci's name had been bestowed upon a region far remote from that explored by his father, who had never sailed south of the equator. Notwithstanding the good feeling that prevailed between them, however, long after Ferdinand's death, when the name America had become of almost universal application, the veteran Las Casas, in writing his great history, marvels that the son of the old Admiral could overlook the "theft and usurpation" of Vespucci. The old man's indignation was great, for he was a stanch friend of Columbus, and revered his memory. He made out a very strong case against Vespucci--being in ignorance of the manner in which his name came to be given to the lands discovered by Columbus--and when, in 1601, the historian [Pg 250] Herrera, who made use of the Las Casas manuscripts, repeated his statements as those of a contemporary, all the world gave him credence. Vespucci's name rested under suspicion during more than three centuries, and was not even partially cleared until 1837, when Alexander von Humboldt undertook the gigantic task of vindication. It was not so much to vindicate Vespucci, however, as to ascertain the truth, that Humboldt made the critical and exhaustive examination which appeared in his Examen Critique de l'Histoire de la Géographie de Nouveau Continent. Even Humboldt, however, did not se

Vespucci will never be as well-known as Columbus, but Fernandez-Arnesto's portrait gives a face to the man who gave his name to America. This slim biography of Amerigo Vespucci makes the most of a maddeningly slim body of primary materials. The author relies on contextual criticism and cultural and family resources to flesh out the story of a minor merchant of Florence who ends up in Seville in the service of the Spanish throne, much like his countryman Columbus. But unlike Columbus, Vespucci wasn't a navigator. He was basically a supplier of navigators, until he found himself on two (or three, or four; the sources conflict here) cross-Atlantic trips to the Novus Mundi which he reported to his adopted country in a slim volume of the same name attributed correctly--the author concludes--to Vespucci. The assignment of the feminine Latin version of his name (following the model of Africa, Asia, and Europa) to the coast of the eastward-jutting edge of the future Brazil was made by cartologist Waldseemuller on his famous map of 1507, based on the reading of Vespucci's reports and the incorrect conclusion that Vespucci preceded Columbus on the new continent. The usage spread, so that by the time Waldseemuller discovered his mistake and reverted to the term "Terra Incognita" in 1513, it was too late to change the name that had spread from a corner of the southern continent to encompass the full continent both North and South. As Fernandez-Arnesto argues, the naming may be for the best, given the negative historical freight associated with Columbus (evangelism, imperialism, colonization, massacre) and the relative obscurity of Vespucci which has enabled his name to be associated with the values of democracy, liberty, and opportunity associated with the United States of America that dominates the northern continent. Fernandez-Arnesto concludes with an interesting question and the brief beginnings of an answer worthy of its own book-length study: why was it that Atlantic exploration was driven by citizens of the land-locked Mediterranean (Columbus and Vespucci the best-known representatives) in the service of the Atlantic-facing nations?

Felipe has done an excellent job of writing a concise and beautifully articulate account on Amerigo, the man who gave his name to America. However, I think the subtitle should perhaps be- The man who finagled getting his name stamped upon America. This biography offers a wealth of information about Renaissance Florence, Seville and the famous characters of history that many know; yet, few seldom realize how much they overlapped each other. Due to a limited amount of factual documentation on Amerigo, Felipe needed to fill a book with additional facts, yet it was not done to simply fill out a volume, but rather to fill out the times, the mindset, and the world of Amerigo and his famous contemporaries. This includes Columbus, the Medici family, Toscanelli, Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as important men like Gianotto Berardi, the banker who along invested his life and financial resources for Columbus, but met financial disaster instead. Amerigo happened to work for Berardi, and after this financial debacle, he was forced to make an occupational shift in direction. That journey took him westward, in the footsteps of Columbus and eventually led to worldwide fame, as his name supplanted the New World's rightful hero to indelibly mark two huge continents. We as Americans shall always ponder our nation blaringly sounding the name of the Italian adventurer Amerigo Vespucci, while lamenting that it should have been Columbus or Columbia or something similar. More astounding still is how Ferdinand and other monarchs were incapable of silencing Amerigo, or any other claimant from attaining such a colossal honor. The chain-reaction of publishers jumping on the profitable bandwagon all contributed to the most colossal domino effect in mapmaking history, one so strong that even kings could not prevent. The name America would prevail for eternity. The only disappointment was the very last pages where the author expressed some personal opinions about Western Civilization. He criticizes the Mediterranean Europeans as being lazy dregs that inherited almost everything from Asian influence, including the desire to explore. This is very shortsighted, for it negates the thousands of brilliant men that shaped our advanced civilization, which no Asian entity has ever matched. Meanwhile, the desire of Europeans to explore was limited due to the immense variety of peoples within the Mediterranean sphere. The Mediterranean coastal nations were a mixture of various Caucasians, from Portugal to Germany to Norway to Italy, along with a variety of North Africans, Arabs and Asians. This volatile area boomed in advances thus negating the need to go anywhere else. However, once the Muslims sacked Constantinople the need to trade with Asia prompted the desire to find another route, hence the age of exploration. That aside, overall, "Amerigo" is a very worthy read.

We just passed the 500th anniversary of a remarkable event: America was named America in April 1507. If the excitement of discovery around that time would have allowed Europeans to be fair and rational, we would be the United States of Columbia, perhaps, part of North Columbia with South Columbia below us on the maps. We have a Columbus Day as an annual holiday, but the tribute we give to Columbus's fellow sailor and explorer is the name America, while most people have little knowledge of who Amerigo Vespucci was. In _Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America_ (Random House) by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, readers will understand how the name came to be, unfairly or not. In some ways, the name fits our nation pretty well; Amerigo was a trader and he had a talent for bustle and self-promotion, and for remaking himself when previous ventures failed. In other ways, we might not be so proud. Fernández-Armesto starts his entertaining book: "Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name to America, was a pimp in his youth and a magus in maturity." Vespucci's life story is often a murky one, with voids that Fernández-Armesto points out, and it is made more difficult because Vespucci is part of the legends surrounding the European discovery of the New World, and there are still even those who insist that he, rather than Columbus, was the real discoverer. Born in 1454, Vespucci grew up in Florence. As a young man, He took on clients and bought and sold gems, wine, debts, or sexual favors for them. He traveled to Seville to work for a firm that had the contract on supplies for Columbus's voyages. Vespucci, for whom the expeditions of others had not brought riches, joined an expedition himself in 1499, and he wrote about the voyage afterward as if he had been in command of the fleet which made it. He adopted a new persona as navigator, and he learned enough about handling the astrolabes and primitive, clumsy quadrants that he impressed those who watched him. It was almost all bogus, but he talked and acted with authority, and became an authority, the most trusted star-gazer in Europe. He published a bestseller about his travels, a book that inspired another in 1505, the _Soderini Letter_. This one, however, was a genuine fake, borrowing from other accounts. It purported to be by Vespucci and claimed that he was the true discoverer of the New World. It was the fake that was to make America's name. Ptolemy's _Geographia_ was still celebrated as a navigational standard, and in the town of St. Dié, between France and Germany, a new edition was being prepared. It was set to include updates from the new explorations when the geographers doing the updating received the _Soderini Letter_ and incorporated its "data" into the new work. Included was a huge world map, and since the Letter had claimed the true discovery of the New World should be credited to Vespucci, the area that we now know as Brazil was emblazoned with a version of Vespucci's first name