Who was Amerigo Vespucci?
Why did he receive the credit for the discovery? Where was he from? Why did he come here? BACKGROUND OF AMERIGO VESPUCCI “The saying has been attributed to Bacon, that the youth of a great man often furnishes data of more importance than any other portion of his life, in guiding posterity to a just estimate of his character” (Lester, 47). Amerigo Vespucci was born into one of the most cultured and respected aristocratic families in all of Florence. “When the Vespucci family first established themselves in Florence, they chose [the] district of Ognissanti, because it was most convenient to their country estates” (Pohl, 13). “Their town housepresented a picture of comfort bordering on luxury, but not so luxurious as to dull the appetite or destroy initiative (Pohl, 13). His grandfather, also named Vespucci, served 36 years in the high position of Chancellor of the Signoria, which equates to Secretary of the Senate. His father, Nastagio, was also a prominent politician in Florence. Vespuc
He was a businessman, not a creative entrepreneur, but a street-smart Florentine who did the Medici family’s bidding in Spain. In 1498, the year Columbus set out on his third voyage to the Caribbean, Vespucci joined another expedition that landed on the coast of South America. In an effort to market himself, he wrote about it as if he had been the commander. A fine narrative might be written of Vespucci’s life if historians had the raw material — which they don’t. They have some schoolwork, tax assessments, a few letters, a couple of reports of his voyages and a pamphlet. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a professor of history at Tufts University and the author of 19 books, has spent most of his life extracting meaning from such scraps. That, and not biography, is the essence of “Amerigo.” Document forgery is a growing issue for antiquarians — some allegedly 500-year-old writings have been faked, and others have been embellished by editors. But Vespucci left his “fingerprints as a writer,” an
