The book is dedicated to two outstanding seafaring travelers. The first is Amerigo Vespucci. The whole continent is named after him. The second is Fernand Magellan. He did the first trip around the world, discovered the strait in the southern tip of America, proved that the Earth is round.
Documentary materials, as well as vivid narratives by Stefan Zweig, acquaint us with the deeds of these two people, whose names are reflected on the world map, in the history of culture, discoveries and travels.
Amerigo was the first owner of the office, and his responsibility was to train pilots, learn their craft skills, and collect New World navigation data. This he incorporated into the great Padron Real, a master card held in his office in Seville. Biographers differ sharply in their judgments of Vespucci. Frederic Julius Paul, Amerigo Vespucci, Pilot Major, completely rejects the maiden voyage and considers Soderini's letter to be false, while Herman Archinigas, Amerigo and the New World: The Life and Times of Amerigo Vespucci claims that both flights and letters are genuine.
Amerigo Vespucci, Antonio Pigafetta, Stefan Zweig
"AMERIGO VESPUCCI. FERNANE MAGELLAN."
Towards the New World and Around the World: Two Heroes of the Same Play
Travel and discovery! It is difficult to find another plot that is equally interesting for people of different ages and different professions. It is not surprising that the literature on travel and discovery numbers many hundreds, even thousands of titles. Their authors are, first of all, the pioneering travelers themselves - from Herodotus and Pliny to Livingstone, Miklouho-Maclay and Heyerdahl. Further, these are numerous researchers and popularizers. geographical discoveries... Readers who have been interested in this subject for a long time, probably have a five-volume book by I.P. and V.I. Magidovich, books by Ya.M. Sveta, N.G. Fradkin, K.V. Malakhovsky, A.B. Ditmar, to which the works of RK Balandin, AN Tomilin, VA Subbotin, and others, not to mention foreign authors, have recently been added. These books are usually kept in families, then children and grandchildren are fond of them.
The dispute over the competitive merits of Columbus and Vespucci is dealt with in De Lamer Jenson's book, The Expansion of Europe: Motives, Methods, and Significances. An overview of Atlantic travel is Gerald Rowe Crone, Discovery of America. □. Florentine navigator and pilot-major of Castile, Spain, Amerigo Vespucci, for whom America is named, played a large role in the study of the New World.
A new look as a discovery
Domenico Ghirlandaio painted Amerigo in a family portrait when the young man was about nineteen. However, the explorer had reached his forties by the time he began his journey to America, so Ghirlandaio's painting only shows a rough idea of Vespucci's mature species. It is known that Vespucci visited France with his uncle's company when he was about twenty-four years old, and that his father intended a business career for him. He did run business first in Florence and then in Seville, Spain, at a bank.
It happens much less often that such a topic attracts professional writers. There are two options here. The first is when a writer talks about his own journey, as, for example, N. M. Karamzin about his trip in a carriage through Europe at the end of the 18th century ("Letters of a Russian Traveler") or I. A. Goncharov about his sea voyage to Japan (" Frigate "Pallada" "). Among the writers-travelers of the XX century are M. M. Prishvin, K. G. Paustovsky, as well as the traveler-scientist V. K. Arseniev, who became a famous writer.
Later, in Seville, he entered into a partnership with fellow Florentine Gianetto Berardi, and this continued until Berardi's death at the end. During this time, he and Vespucci met and talked, and Amerigo seemed to doubt that Columbus believed he had already reached the outskirts of Asia. Moreover, Vespucci's curiosity about the new lands was aroused along with but no longer young, to see them for themselves.
According to the controversial letter, Vespucci started from Cadiz, Spain, in the Spanish navy on May 10 Serious doubts have been raised about the letter's authenticity because the dates in the letter are not coordinated by identifying events, and because the journey, if done, presents serious geographic problems and seem to have gone unnoticed by the cartographers and historians of the time.
The second option is when a novelist or short story writer suddenly takes a great interest in other people's travels and begins to play the dual role of a researcher and a popularizer. A striking example of this kind is Jules Berne, who, along with his famous series of science fiction geographical novels "Extraordinary Voyages", in the second half of the 70s of the XIX century published three large volumes of "Stories of Great Voyages", bringing his story to 30 x years of the same century. Another example of this kind is the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), who became famous as the author of psychological short stories, a novel about Mary Stuart and the creator of a kind of series "The Lives of Remarkable People", which included biographies of Balzac, Stendhal, Dickens, Rolland, Verdun, Verharn, Freud, Nietzsche, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others. His books Amerigo and Magellan belong to the same series. The idea of "rediscovering them", published together with Vespucci's letters and testimony of the participant circumnavigation Magellan is welcome.
If the letter is true, the ships passed through the West Indies without seeing a single island, and thirty-seven days later reached the mainland somewhere in Central America. Upon their return to Spain, Vespucci's men discovered the inhabited island of Iti, identified by some as Bermuda... Vespucci, in all likelihood, went to America at the indicated time, but he did not have a team and still had no practical experience in piloting a ship. Inexperience could explain many of the mistakes in the letter, but there is a good chance that the letter was changed.
The fact that Stefan Zweig was attracted by the era of the great geographical discoveries is understandable. After all, these discoveries are called Great because in a relatively short period of time they actually transformed the entire geographical picture of the world, increasing the area of territories known to Europeans the globe more than 6 times! In the period from the middle of the 15th century to the middle of the 17th century, the contours of Eurasia, Africa, South America, parts of North America and Australia. As a result, according to F. Engels, "an infinitely wider horizon has opened up to the outer and inner gaze of man."
Vespucci explored at Cape Santo Agostinho, at the shoulder of Brazil, after which he drove west past the Gulf of Maracaibo. During these travels Vespucci probably discovered the mouth of the Amazon River. Vespucci, having already reached the Brazilian shoulder, seemed better man who could become an observer with a new expedition.
Vespucci did not command from the start, but eventually took charge at the request of the Portuguese officers. This journey has shed a tear on the South American coast from a point over Cape Sa Roque to Patagonia. V last years In his career, Amerigo served as a pilot major, and his responsibility was to train pilots, study their capabilities in their craft and collect data on navigation in the New World.
Of course, both works of Zweig do not cover the entire period of the Great Discoveries, but relate only to early XVI century, which can rightfully be called the period of "storm and onslaught" of the entire era of the great geographical discoveries. As the writer himself notes, this was the time when "within two or three decades, several hundred small ships leaving Cadiz, Palos, Lisbon, discover more unknown lands than mankind discovered in hundreds of thousands of years of its existence."
Amerigo and the New World: The Life and Times of Amerigo Vespucci. Baker, Nina Brown. Amerigo Vespucci. New York: Knopf. Donaldson-Forbes, Jeff. Fradin, Dennis Brindell. New York: Franklin Watts. Swan, Barry. Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Subsequently, he sailed along the northern coast of South America and among the islands. He developed a system for calculating near-exact longitude; he came up with a figure for the equatorial circumference of the earth, just 50 miles from correct measurement... Vespucci embraced South America as a new continent rather than part of Asia.
Vespucci, Amerigo
He died of malaria contracted during his travels. Thacher, Continent of America. The Italian navigator, whose name was given to the New World. Vespucci was a Florentine merchant who was hired by the city's Medici rulers to work in Seville. This feat of the sailor was made possible by a much lesser-known yet impressive feat of sales. Columbus spent 10 years trying to convince various European monarchs to fund his insane plan to sail to India across the Atlantic from the West.
But of all the navigators of this period, Zweig chose only two - Amerigo Vespucci and Fernand Magellan. Of course, you can find something that unites them. First, they lived and traveled at about the same time: the dates of Vespucci's life are 1454-1512, Magellan's - 1470-1521. Secondly, they made their main discoveries while in the Spanish service, although Vespucci was Italian, and Magellan was Portuguese (in Portuguese, his surname is Magalhães); however, both of them participated in the Portuguese expeditions. Thirdly, by and large, they are engines to the same goal, trying to find a new sea route to the rich East. Fourthly, both of them during their voyages were exposed to constant danger and many hardships. For example, describing his third voyage to the shores of the Southern continent, Vespucci narrates that “during these 67 days we had the worst weather that any navigator has ever had, with numerous storm showers, tornadoes and storms that fluttered us … ". We must not forget about the frequent skirmishes with the natives. Magellan faced even more trials during his voyage around the world. There can hardly be any doubt that it was precisely the vicissitudes of fates of both seafarers that attracted the attention of Stefan Zweig as a master of psychological portraiture.
The Portuguese, who were the main naval forces of the time, converted Columbus three times. In fact, every sailor by that time knew that the earth was round. Not accepting an answer, Columbus approached the Castilian monarchs. They decided they had nothing to lose by letting him sail to India. Queen Isabelle didn't really expect Columbus to return, so she added some phenomenal advantages to the deal. She promised him that he would be named Admiral of the Oceanic Sea, and he would receive a 10% reduction in everything he found in India.
Origin of the name "America"
It was a great stroke of luck that allowed Columbus to land exactly where he expected to find India. For the next 10 years, he continued to believe he was in India, against growing evidence to the contrary. This biological shockwave was far more effective than the brutality and technological advantage of the conquistadors, and it destroyed almost the entire continent, killing 95% of the roughly 100 million people within a century. The latter two emphasize that the human tragedy of "discovery" - indeed a collision - created entirely new people and cultures.
Yet the differences between Vespucci and Magellan were much greater. And their lives turned out differently.
Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence to a wealthy family and was educated at home. In 1492 (this is the year of the maiden voyage of Columbus), he arrived from Florence to Spain as an agent of the Medici banking house. And only later did he really take part in Spanish and Portuguese sea expeditions to the Southern continent - as South America was then called, but not as their chief or at least the captain of one of the ships (once, apparently, there was such an episode), but in a much more modest role of either a businessman, or an "assistant", or a navigator. Vespucci really knew navigation and cartography well, as evidenced by the fact that, after completing his expeditions, he was appointed chief "pilot" of Castile, in charge of training ship helmsmen. geographic maps newly discovered land. In this position, he died and was buried in Seville. It is also known that Vespucci was not only familiar, but also friends with Columbus.
Main events of the biography
It is one of the greatest ironies in history that this land, discovered by mistake, owes its name to yet another mistake. How exactly did America get its name from Amerigo Vespucci, who was rather obscure? There is no conclusive evidence, only a few competing theories, but it seems unlikely that the two continents are named after Vespucci. Amerigo Vespucci was a navigator who made at least two flights to America. For the first time, he was probably the first to realize that a new continent was scheduled, not just the coast of Asia. Columbus was disgraced by the Spanish court, among other things, for his sympathetic attitude towards the natives of the New World, and Vespucci, who succeeded where Columbus could not find the mainland, was glorified as the "discoverer" of America. It was only after his death that Columbus was finally recognized as the first European to cross the Atlantic. The evidence for the former is at least slightly worse, while for the latter there are at least two written historical records backed up by solid archaeological evidence. A Florentine businessman who moved to Seville, where he was in charge of ship supply enterprises, he visited new world only three or four times as an officer or a passenger. The error would not have gone further, except that the teacher at a small college in eastern France- Martin Waldseemuller - worked on a revised edition of Ptolemy and updated it with a new world map. First, the translation of Amerigo into Latin "Americus", and then into his female form America. Interestingly, Vespucci is believed to have been the brother of Simonetti Vespucci - Venus Botticelli! This is all taken from Made in America by Bill Bryson. As for the question: "Why not Vespukia?" At that time in Italy it was common to mention famous people names such as Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo, etc. it was also customary to use the Latin form of the name, especially since most of the documents were in Latin. “Americus” is Latin for the Italian Amerigo. Regarding the above, although surnames were not universally used throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, Amerigo Vespucci is not an example of someone who is known only by his name. There is no reason why everything named after him would not be called "Vespuccia", and there is every reason to believe that it should have been named that way, since the names of the places come from the Latin form of the surname, and not from the first name. It may have been "Amerigo" at first, but over time, cultural pollution and time might have perverted it to America. anyway, that's not how we can ask him, is it? According to Columbus and Vespucci, they found a country more densely populated with people and animals than their Europe, Asia or Africa. It is known that the creators of the maps from time to time brought some kind of mishheif into the game, but not in this case. This is from the original mother tongue. But I'm admittedly a bit biased - he was “my family tree ornament,” and we're connected. One of my earliest documented American-born ancestors was Anna Merriken.
- The letters were a sensation and were reprinted in every European language.
- Richard Thompson, Allerod Denmark.
- Who cares if he's "unclear," whatever that means.
- Ray Sinclair, Pickering Ontario Canada.
- He was not an experienced sailor.
- If America was not named after Amerigo, where would it come from?
- Is it incredible, then, that these lands have already been named by the inhabitants?
- And from the last name comes our word America.
- Amruk, literally translated, "Land of the Crimson Serpent."
A native of Florence, which had already widely entered the Renaissance, Vespucci was a lively, even expansive and, of course, a very inquisitive person, who, moreover, certainly had a literary gift. This is clearly evidenced by his famous letters to his hometown, with which this volume begins. In them, he depicts the nature of overseas lands unknown to Europeans, the appearance, life and customs of Indians who "live according to nature", their attitude to European newcomers, the search for gold and pearls, as well as the beauty of the southern sky, and much more.
Turning south, he is believed to have found the mouth and reached the cape. On way back he got to Trinidad, saw the mouth and then did. Vespucci thought he was sailing along the coast at the extreme eastern peninsula where, the geographer, considered the Cattigara market; so he looked for the tip of this peninsula, calling it Cape Cuttigara. As soon as he returned to Spain, he equipped a new expedition with the aim of reaching the Ganges and the island of Takroban or Ceylon. After stopping on the Cape Verde Islands, the expedition headed southwest and reached the coast towards Cape St.
However, the main intrigue associated with these letters is their reliability. They were written in 1503 and 1504 - 500 years ago! And all this time there are endless disputes around the letters, thanks to which Vespucci, in fact, gained worldwide fame. At first, the letters were considered fiction, and Vespucci himself was a deceiver who tried to appropriate the glory of Columbus. This was also the opinion of the Spanish historian and humanist Las Casas, who knew Columbus well, who became a missionary and then a bishop in the Spanish possessions in Western India. It was only in the 19th century that such a great authority as Alexander Humboldt stood up for the Florentine, proving that he was not at all a nonentity or a swindler. Although today most researchers believe that Vespucci's "first voyage", when he allegedly reached the mainland of the southern land before Columbus, simply did not exist, just as there was no "fourth voyage". And regarding the "third voyage" it is very difficult to believe that the expedition, having left the coast of the Southern Land, approached almost the shores of Antarctica. In short, Vespucci's letters are a kind of bizarre combination of truth and fiction. It is difficult to say whether the author can be blamed for such a half-truth. After all, these were purely private epistolary messages, not at all intended for publication and wide discussion.
Vespucci Amerigo Vespucci Amerigo
(Vespucci) (1454-1512), navigator. Florentine by origin. Member of several Spanish and Portuguese expeditions (1499-1504) to the shores of South America, which he called the New World. He first suggested that these lands are a new part of the world, which the Lorraine cartographer M. Waldseemüller named (1507) by the name of Vespucci Amerigo America.
VESPUCCI AmerigoVespucci Amerigo (1454-1512), navigator. Florentine by origin. Member of several Spanish and Portuguese expeditions (1499-1504) to the shores of the South. America, which he called the New World. For the first time he suggested that these lands are a new part of the world, which the Lorraine cartographer M. Waldseemüller named (1507) by the name of Amerigo Vespucci America (cm. AMERICA). * * *
Vespucci Amerigo (March 9, 1454, Florence - February 22, 1512, Seville), Italian navigator, one of the discoverers of South America (cm. SOUTH AMERICA), Amazon delta (cm. AMAZON (river)), Gulf of Venezuela (cm. GULF OF VENEZUEL), Maracaibo lagoon (cm. MARACAIBO (lake)) and the Brazilian Highlands; chief pilot (navigator) of Spain (1508).
The first half of life
Born into the family of a notary, Vespucci received a liberal arts education at home. For a long time he served in the Medici banking house. In 1490 he moved to Spain, where he worked as an agent of the same firm in Seville, mainly engaged in equipping ships. He thoroughly studied the structure of ships, mastered navigation and astronomy, made various maps. In 1492 he transferred to the Spanish naval service, took part in the outfitting of the second and third expeditions of Christopher Columbus (cm. COLUMBUS Christopher) with whom he was friends. Until 1499 Vespucci did not sail anywhere.
Maiden voyage
In 1499-1500 he was a navigator in the expedition of Alonso Ojeda (cm. OKHEDA Alonso de)(on three ships), commanding two ships equipped at his own expense. In the summer of 1499, the flotilla approached the northern coast of South America at 5 ° or 6 ° north latitude, where it divided. Vespucci moved to the southeast, on July 2, he opened the Amazon delta and its estuarine branch, the Para, penetrated up to 100 km by boats. Then he continued sailing southeast to the Bay of San Marcos (44 ° West longitude), identified about 1200 km of the northern coastal strip of South America, discovered the Guiana Current (cm. GUIANA CURRENT)... From there Vespucci turned back and in August caught up with Alons Ojeda near 66 ° West longitude. Following westward together, they discovered over 1,600 km south coast mainland with the peninsulas of Paraguana and Guajira (cm. GUACHIRA), Triste and Venezuelan bays, Maracaibo lagoon and several islands including Curacao (cm. KYURASAO)... In the fall Vespucci separated from Ojeda again, surveyed the coast of South America 300 km to the southwest, and returned to Spain in June 1500.
Second voyage
In 1501-1502 Vespucci was in the Portuguese service as an astronomer, navigator and historiographer in the 1st Portuguese expedition to Gonçalo Cuellu on 3 ships. In mid-August 1501, they approached the Atlantic coast of South America at 5 ° 30 "South latitude and passed to 16 °, repeating the discoveries of the Spaniard Bortolome Roldana (1500). On January 1, 1502, the expedition discovered the bay of Rio de Janeiro (Guanabara), traced the coast 2000 km to the southwest (to 25 ° S latitude) and, after making sure that the earth was still stretching in the same direction, turned back One caravel arrived in Portugal in late June, another with Cuella and Vespucci in early September (the third, which had fallen into disrepair, had to be burned).
Third voyage
In 1503-1504 Vespucci commanded a caravel in the 2nd expedition of Gonçalo Cuell on six ships. In early August 1503, near the Ascension Island discovered by them (8 ° South latitude), one ship sank, three were missing. The Vespucci and Cuellu caravels reached the All Saints Cove, discovered in the previous voyage at 13 °. The detachment, which landed on the orders of Vespucci, first climbed the steep ledge of the Brazilian Highlands and penetrated 250 km into the interior of the country. In the harbor at 23 ° South latitude, during a 5-month stay, the Portuguese built a fort, where they left 24 sailors, and returned to Lisbon with a load of sandalwood at the end of June 1504.
The origin of the name "America" and the last years of life
As a result of sailing along the northern and eastern shores Vespucci developed a correct idea of the newly discovered land as a southern transatlantic continent, and in 1503, in a letter to his homeland, he proposed to call the continent the New World. In 1507, Lorraine cartographer Martin Waldseemüller attributed Columbus's discovery of the “fourth part of the world” to Vespucci and “christened” this continent America in honor of Amerigo Vespucci. In 1538, this already recognized name was extended to the Mercator map and to North America... In 1505, after a second move to Spain, Vespucci received Castilian citizenship. In 1508 he was appointed to the newly established post of chief pilot of Spain and held it until his death.
Vespucci as a person.
According to his contemporaries, he was an extremely honest, intelligent and observant person. Possessing an outstanding literary talent, often exaggerating, Vespucci described nature open countries, appearance and life of Indians, starry sky southern hemisphere, however, he was constantly silent about the chiefs of the expeditions and his role in them. Vespucci never claimed the laurels of Columbus, whose sons also did not make any claims to him.
encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .
