The "New World" () is an early modern term describing the majority of lands in the Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." The Oxford Companion to the English Language (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 33: "[16c: from the feminine of Americus, the Latinized first name of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). The name America first appeared on a map in 1507 by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, referring to the area now called Brazil]. Since the 16th century, the term "New World" has been used to describe the Western Hemisphere, often referred to as the Americas. Since the 18th century, it has come to represent the United States, which was initially colonial British America until it established independence following the American Revolutionary War. The second sense is now primary in English: ... However, the term is open to uncertainties: ..." It was introduced in the early 16th century, during Europe's Age of Discovery, by Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who published the pamphlet , presenting his conclusion that the lands discovered west of the Atlantic Ocean (soon called America after Amerigo's name) constituted new continents.Mundus Novus: Letter to Lorenzo Pietro Di Medici, by Amerigo Vespucci; translation by George Tyler Northrup, Princeton University Press; 1916.
This realization expanded the geographical horizon of earlier European geographers, who had thought that the world included only Africa, Asia, and Europe, which became collectively known as the "Old World".M.H.Davidson (1997) Columbus Then and Now, a life re-examined. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 417)
Origin of the term
The Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci is usually credited for coming up with the term "New World" (Mundus Novus) for the Americas in his 1503 letter, giving it its popular cachet, although similar terms had been used and applied before him.
Prior usage The Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto used the term "un altro mondo" ("another world") to refer to sub-Saharan Africa, which he explored in 1455 and 1456 on behalf of the Portuguese.Cadamosto Navigationi, , as reprinted in Giovanni Ramusio (1554: p. 106). See also M. Zamora Reading Columbus, (1993: p. 121) This was merely a literary flourish, not a suggestion of a new "fourth" part of the world. Cadamosto was aware that sub-Saharan Africa was part of the African continent.
Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, an Italian chronicler at the service of Spain, doubted Christopher Columbus's claims to have reached East Asia ("the Indies"), and consequently came up with alternative names to refer to them.E.G. Bourne Spain in America, 1450–580 New York: Harper (1904: p. 30) Only a few weeks after Columbus's return from his first voyage, Martyr wrote letters referring to Columbus's discovered lands as the "western antipodes" ("antipodibus occiduis", letter of 14 May 1493),Peter Martyr, Opus Epistolarum (Letter 130 p. 72) and the "new hemisphere of the earth" ("novo terrarum hemisphaerio", 13 September 1493).Peter Martyr, Opus Epistolarum, Letter 133, p. 73
In a letter dated 1 November 1493, he refers to Columbus as the "discoverer of the new globe" ("Colonus ille novi orbis repertor").Peter Martyr, Opus Epistolarum (Letter 138, p. 76) A year later, on 20 October 1494, Peter Martyr again refers to the marvels of the New Globe ("Novo Orbe") and the "Western Hemisphere" ("ab occidente hemisphero").Peter Martyr Opus Epistolarum, Letter 156 p. 88
In Columbus's 1499 letter to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, reporting the results of his third voyage, he relates how the massive waters of South America's Orinoco delta rushing into the Gulf of Paria implied that a previously unknown continent must lie behind it."if the river mentioned does not proceed from the terrestrial paradise, it comes from an immense tract of land situated in the south, of which no knowledge has been hitherto obtained." (Columbus 1499 letter on the third voyage, as reproduced in R.H. Major, Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, 1870: p. 147) Columbus proposes that the South American landmass is not a "fourth" continent, but rather the terrestrial paradise of Biblical tradition, a land allegedly known, but undiscovered, by Christendom.J.Z. Smith, Relating Religion, Chicago (2004: pp. 266–67) In another letter to the nurse of Prince John, written 1500, Columbus refers to having reached a "new heavens and world" ("nuevo cielo é mundo")Columbus 1500 letter to the nurse (in Major, 1870: p. 154) and that he had placed "another world" ("otro mundo") under the dominion of the Kings of Spain.Columbus's 1500 letter to the nurse(Major, 1870: p. 170)
Mundus Novus
The term "New World" (Mundus Novus) was coined in Spring 1503 by Amerigo Vespucci in a letter written to his friend and former patron Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici, which was published in Latin in 1503–04 under the title Mundus Novus. Vespucci's letter contains the first explicit articulation in print of the hypothesis that the lands discovered by European navigators to the west were not the edges of Asia, as asserted by Christopher Columbus, but rather an entirely different continent that represented a "New World".
According to Mundus Novus, Vespucci arrived in Brazil in August 1501.The letter says 17 August 1501, although translators variously rendered it also as 7 August 1501, 10 August 1501, or 1 August 1501. He compared the nature and people of the place with what Portuguese sailors told him about Asia, and realised he was in a new world. A chance meeting between two different expeditions occurred at the watering stop at Bezeguiche in present-day Dakar, Senegal, as Vespucci was on his expedition to chart the coast of newly discovered Brazil and the ships of the Second Portuguese India armada, commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, were returning from India.
Having already visited the Americas in prior years, Vespucci likely found it difficult to reconcile what he had already seen in the West Indies with what returning sailors told him of the East Indies. Vespucci wrote a preliminary letter to Lorenzo, while anchored at Bezeguiche, which he sent back with the Portuguese fleet, which expressed a certain puzzlement about his conversations.The Vespucci letter sent from Bezeguiche was not published, but was maintained in manuscript form and was published by F. A. de Varnhagen in 1865 (). Vespucci ultimately was convinced while on his mapping expedition of eastern Brazil from 1501 to 1502. After returning from Brazil in the spring of 1503, Vespucci authored the Mundus Novus letter in Lisbon and sent it to Lorenzo in Florence, with the famous opening paragraph:English translation of Mundus Novus as found in Markham ()
In passed days I wrote very fully to you of my return from new countries, which have been found and explored with the ships, at the cost and by the command of this Most Serene King of Portugal; and it is lawful to call it a new world, because none of these countries were known to our ancestors and to all who hear about them they will be entirely new. For the opinion of the ancients was, that the greater part of the world beyond the equinoctial line to the south was not land, but only sea, which they have called the Atlantic; and even if they have affirmed that any continent is there, they have given many reasons for denying it is inhabited. But this opinion is false, and entirely opposed to the truth. My last voyage has proved it, for I have found a continent in that southern part; full of animals and more populous than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and even more temperate and pleasant than any other region known to us.
Vespucci's letter was a publishing sensation in Europe that was immediately and repeatedly reprinted in several other countries.Varnhagen, Amerígo Vespucci (1865: pp. 13–26) provides side-by-side reproductions of both the 1503 Latin version Mundus Novus, and the 1507 Italian re-translation "El Nuovo Mondo de Lengue Spagnole interpretato in Idioma Ro. Libro Quinto" (from Paesi Nuovamente retrovati). The Latin version of Mundus Novus was reprinted many times (see Varnhagen, 1865: p. 9 for a list of early reprints).
Peter Martyr, who had been writing and circulating private letters commenting on Columbus's discoveries since 1493, often shares credit with Vespucci for designating the Americas as a new world. Peter Martyr used the term Orbe Novo, meaning "New Globe", in the title of his history of the discovery of the Americas, which began appearing in 1511.J.Z. Smith, Relating Religion, Chicago (2004: p. 268)
Acceptance
The Vespucci passage above applied the "New World" label to merely the continental landmass of South America.F.A. Ober Amerigo Vespucci New York: Harper (1907: pp. 239, 244) At the time, most of the continent of North America was not yet discovered, and Vespucci's comments did not eliminate the possibility that the islands of the Antilles discovered earlier by Christopher Columbus might still be the eastern edges of Asia, as Columbus continued to insist until his death in 1506.S.E. Morison The European Discovery of America, v.2: The southern voyages, 1492–1616.(1974: pp. 265–66).
A 1504 globe, possibly created by Leonardo da Vinci, depicts the New World as only South America, excluding North America and Central America.Missinne, Stefaan (Fall 2013). "A Newly Discovered Early Sixteenth-Century Globe Engraved on an Ostrich Egg: The Earliest Surviving Globe Showing the New World". The Portolan, journal of the Washington Map Society (87): p. 8–24. A conference of navigators known as Junta de Navegantes was assembled by the Spanish monarchs at Toro in 1505 and continued at Burgos in 1508 to digest all existing information about the Indies, come to an agreement on what had been discovered, and set out the future goals of Spanish exploration. Amerigo Vespucci attended both conferences, and seems to have had an outsized influence on them—at Burgos, he ended up being appointed the first piloto mayor, the chief of the navigation of Spain.For an account of Vespucci at Toro and Burgos, see Navarette Colección de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV(1829: v.iii, pp. 320–23)
Although the proceedings of the Toro-Burgos conferences are missing, it is almost certain that Vespucci articulated his recent 'New World' thesis to his fellow navigators there. During these conferences, Spanish officials seem to have accepted that the Antilles and the known stretch of Central America were not the Indies as they had hoped (though Columbus still insisted that they were). They set out the new goal for Spanish explorers: find a sea passage or strait through the Americas, a path to Asia proper.C.O. Sauer The Early Spanish Main. Cambridge (1966: pp. 166–67)
The term New World was not universally accepted, entering English only relatively late, and has more recently been subject to criticism .
Delimitation
While it became generally accepted after Amerigo Vespucci that Christopher Columbus' discoveries were not Asia but a "New World", the geographic relationship between Europe and the Americas remained unclear.J.H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea (1974: p. 227) That there must be a large ocean between Asia and the Americas was implied by the known existence of vast continuous sea along the coasts of East Asia. Given the size of the Earth as calculated by Eratosthenes this left a large space between Asia and the newly discovered lands.