The "New World" (Latin:Mundus novus) is a term describing the majority of lands in theWestern Hemisphere, particularly theAmericas.[1][2] It was introduced in the early 16th century, during Europe'sAge of Discovery, by Italian explorerAmerigo Vespucci, who published the pamphletMundus novus, presenting his conclusion that the lands discovered west of theAtlantic Ocean (soon called Americaafter Amerigo's name) constituted new continents.[3]
This realization expanded the geographical horizon of earlier European geographers, who had thought that the world only includedAfrica,Asia, andEurope, which became collectively known as the "Old World".[4]
Historia antipodum oder newe Welt, orHistory of the New World, byMatthäus Merian the Elder, published in 1631
TheFlorentine explorerAmerigo 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.
TheVenetian explorerAlvise Cadamosto used the term "un altro mondo" ("another world") to refer tosub-Saharan Africa, which he explored in 1455 and 1456 on behalf of the Portuguese.[5] 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, anItalian chronicler at the service ofSpain, doubtedChristopher Columbus's claims to have reachedEast Asia ("the Indies"),[citation needed] and consequently came up with alternative names to refer to them.[6] 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),[7] the "new hemisphere of the earth" ("novo terrarum hemisphaerio", 13 September 1493).[8]
In a letter dated 1 November 1493, he refers to Columbus as the "discoverer of the new globe" ("Colonus ille novi orbis repertor").[9] 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").[10]
In Columbus's 1499 letter to theCatholic Monarchs of Spain, reporting the results of his third voyage, he relates how the massive waters of South America'sOrinoco delta rushing into theGulf of Paria implied that a previously unknown continent must lie behind it.[11] Columbus proposes that the South American landmass is not a "fourth" continent, but rather theterrestrial paradise of Biblical tradition, a land allegedly known, but undiscovered, byChristendom.[12] 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")[13] and that he had placed "another world" ("otro mundo") under the dominion of the Kings of Spain.[14]
Amerigo Vespucci awakens the sleeping America, a late 16th century illustration depictingAmerigo Vespucci's voyages to theAmericas
The term "New World" (Mundus Novus) was coined in Spring 1503 byAmerigo Vespucci in a letter written to his friend and former patronLorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici, which was published inLatin in 1503–04 under the titleMundus 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 byChristopher Columbus, but rather an entirely different continent that represented a "New World".[4]
According toMundus Novus, Vespucci realized that he was in a "New World" on 17 August 1501[15] as he arrived inBrazil and compared the nature and people of the place with what Portuguese sailors told him aboutAsia. A chance meeting between two different expeditions occurred at the watering stop at Bezeguiche in present-dayDakar,Senegal, as Vespucci was on his expedition to chart the coast of newly discoveredBrazil and the ships of theSecond Portuguese India armada, commanded byPedro Álvares Cabral, were returning fromIndia.
Having already visited the Americas in prior years, Vespucci likely found it difficult to reconcile what he had already seen in theWest Indies with what returning sailors told him of theEast 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.[16] Vespucci ultimately was convinced while on his mapping expedition of easternBrazil from 1501 to 1502. After returning from Brazil in the spring of 1503, Vespucci authored theMundus Novus letter inLisbon and sent it to Lorenzo inFlorence, with the famous opening paragraph:[17]
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.[18]
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.[19] Peter Martyr used the termOrbe Novo, meaning "New Globe", in the title ofhis history of the discovery of the Americas, which began appearing in 1511.[20]
The Vespucci passage above applied the "New World" label to merely the continental landmass ofSouth America.[21] 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 theAntilles discovered earlier by Christopher Columbus might still be the eastern edges of Asia, as Columbus continued to insist until his death in 1506.[22]
A1504 globe, possibly created byLeonardo da Vinci, depicts the New World as onlySouth America, excludingNorth America andCentral America.[23] A conference of navigators known asJunta de Navegantes was assembled by the Spanish monarchs atToro in 1505 and continued atBurgos 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 firstpiloto mayor, the chief of the navigation of Spain.[24]
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 they were. They set out the new goal for Spanish explorers: find a sea passage orstrait through the Americas, a path to Asia proper.[25]
The termNew World was not universally accepted, entering English only relatively late, and has more recently been subject to criticism(see below:§ Contemporary usage).[26]
While it became generally accepted afterAmerigo Vespucci thatChristopher Columbus' discoveries were notAsia but a "New World", the geographic relationship between Europe and the Americas remained unclear.[27] 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 ofEast Asia. Given the size of the Earth as calculated byEratosthenes this left a large space between Asia and the newly discovered lands.
Even prior to Vespucci, several maps, e.g. theCantino planisphere of 1502 and theCanerio map of 1504, placed a large open ocean between China on the east side of the map, and the inchoate largely water-surrounded North American and South American discoveries on the western side of map. Out of uncertainty, they depicted a finger of the Asian land mass stretching across the top to the eastern edge of the map, suggesting it carried over into the western hemisphere. E.g. the Cantino Planisphere denotesGreenland as "Punta d'Asia"—"edge of Asia".[27]
Some maps, e.g., the 1506Contarini–Rosselli map and the 1508Johannes Ruysch map, bowing to Ptolemaic authority and Columbus's assertions, have the northern Asian landmass stretching well into the western hemisphere and merging with known North America, Labrador, Newfoundland, etc. These maps place the island of Japan near Cuba and leave the South American continent—Vespucci's "New World" proper—detached and floating below by itself.[27]
TheWaldseemüller map of 1507, which accompanied the famousCosmographiae Introductio volume, which includes reprints of Vespucci's letters, comes closest to modernity by placing a completely open sea, with no stretching land fingers, between Asia on the eastern side and the New World. It is represented two times in the same map in a different way: with and without a sea passage in the middle of what is now named Central America on the western side—which, on what is now named South America, that same map famously labels simply "America".Martin Waldseemüller's map of 1516 retreats considerably from his earlier map and back to classical authority, with the Asian land mass merging into North America, which he now callsTerra de Cuba Asie partis, and quietly drops the "America" label from South America, calling it merelyTerra incognita.[27]
The western coast of the New World, including thePacific Ocean, was discovered in 1513 byVasco Núñez de Balboa, twenty years after Columbus' initial voyage. It was a few more years before the voyage ofFerdinand Magellan's between 1519 and 1522 determined that thePacific Ocean definitely formed a single large body of water that separates Asia from the Americas. Several years later, the Pacific Coast of North America was mapped. The discovery of theBering Straits in the early 18th century, established that Asia and North America were not connected by land. But some European maps of the 16th century, including the 1533Johannes Schöner globe, still continued to depict North America as connected by a land bridge to Asia.[27]
In 1524, the term "New World" was used byGiovanni da Verrazzano in a record of his voyage that year along the Atlantic coast of North America in what is present-dayCanada and theUnited States.[28]
The term "New World" is still commonly employed when discussing historic spaces, particularly thevoyages of Christopher Columbus and the subsequentEuropean colonization of the Americas. It has been framed as being problematic for applying a colonial perspective ofdiscovery and not doing justice to either the historic or geographic complexity of the world. It is argued that both 'worlds' and the age of Westerncolonialism rather entered a new stage,[29] as in the 'modern world'.
Inwine terminology, "New World" uses a particular definition. "New World wines" include not onlyNorth American and South American wines, but also those fromSouth Africa,Australia,New Zealand, and all other locations outside the traditional wine-growing regions of Europe, North Africa and theNear East.[30] The usefulness of these terms for wines though have been questioned as arbitrary and too generalized.[31]
In a biological context, species can be divided into those in the Old World (Palearctic,Afrotropic) and those in the New World (Nearctic,Neotropic). Biologicaltaxonomists often attach the "New World" label to groups of species found exclusively in the Americas, to distinguish them from their counterparts in the "Old World" (Europe, Africa and Asia)—e.g.,New World monkeys,New World vultures,New World warblers.
The label is also often used in agriculture. Asia, Africa, and Europe share a common agricultural history stemming from theNeolithic Revolution, and the same domesticated plants and animals spread through these three continents thousands of years ago, making them largely indistinct and useful to classify together as "Old World". Common Old World crops, e.g.,barley,lentils,oats,peas,rye,wheat, and domesticated animals, e.g.,cattle,chickens,goats,horses,pigs,sheep, did not exist in the Americas until they were introduced bypost-Columbian contact in the 1490s.
^"America."The Oxford Companion to the English Language (ISBN0-19-214183-X). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 33: "[16c: from the feminine ofAmericus, the Latinized first name of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). The nameAmerica 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 theWestern Hemisphere, often referred to as theAmericas. Since the 18th century, it has come to represent theUnited States, which was initially colonialBritish America until it established independence following theAmerican Revolutionary War. The second sense is now primary in English: ... However, the term is open to uncertainties: ..."
^"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)
^J.Z. Smith,Relating Religion, Chicago (2004: pp. 266–67)
^Columbus 1500 letter to the nurse (in Major, 1870:p. 154)
^Columbus's 1500 letter to the nurse(Major, 1870:p. 170)
^The letter says 17 August 1501, although translators variously rendered it also as 7 August 1501, 10 August 1501, or 1 August 1501.Canovai, Stanislao (1832).Viaggi di Amerigo Vespucci. p. 158.Archived from the original on 20 September 2023. Retrieved18 November 2020.Bonari, Bruno (July 2013).Amerigo Vespucci. Centro Tipografico Livornese editore. p. 222.ISBN9788890695681.Archived from the original on 20 September 2023. Retrieved18 November 2020.
^Varnhagen,Amerígo Vespucci (1865:pp. 13–26) provides side-by-side reproductions of both the 1503 Latin versionMundus Novus, and the 1507 Italian re-translation "El Nuovo Mondo de Lengue Spagnole interpretato in Idioma Ro. Libro Quinto" (fromPaesi Nuovamente retrovati). The Latin version ofMundus Novus was reprinted many times (see Varnhagen, 1865:p. 9 for a list of early reprints).
^de Madariaga, Salvador (1952).Vida del muy magnífico señor Don Cristóbal Colón (in Spanish) (5th ed.). Mexico: Editorial Hermes. p. 363."nuevo mundo", [...] designación que Pedro Mártyr será el primero en usar
^J.Z. Smith,Relating Religion, Chicago (2004: p. 268)
^F.A. OberAmerigo Vespucci New York: Harper (1907: pp. 239, 244)
^S.E. MorisonThe European Discovery of America, v.2: The southern voyages, 1492–1616.(1974: pp. 265–66).
^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.
^For an account of Vespucci at Toro and Burgos, see NavaretteColección de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV(1829: v.iii,pp. 320–23)
^C.O. SauerThe Early Spanish Main. Cambridge (1966: pp. 166–67)
