Toward The Setting Sun - New World Discovery
Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci and The Race For America - David Boyle
Jul 3, 2008
Christopher Columbus sailed for Spain. John Cabot sailed under the English flag. Amerigo Vespucci sailed for both Spain and Portugal but mainly sailed as a business man. The story that is not heard in school was that these three Italian born adventurers knew each other quite well. John Cabot was born in the same town of Genoa as Christopher Columbus. All three followed the same man who inspired them with his cartographical vision, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscannali.
This "Sage of Florence" used his influence as a physician to mix with all of the great travelers of the 15th century. He became the collector of maps for the Medici Family, publishing his research in a book with the culturally overdone title: "The Immense Toils and Serious Lucubrations* of Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli". It was this seminal study that gave him credibility when he claimed that you could go east by sailing west.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
Vilified as the careless and cruel destroyer of native American Culture, Boyle includes all of the new detail that has been found about Columbus's "reign" on the island of Haiti but shows him from a human point of view. The thread that really ties these men together is their quest for a business justification for exploration. The reason Columbus went from Italy to Portugal to the Court of Aragon and Castile in Spain was because he could not sell anyone on the idea that there would be a return on their investment.
By this time, the claim that the world was flat was more an excuse to pry Columbus's foot out of the royal doorway than any actual belief that ships would fall of the edge of the world. The greatest doubt of success was the finite range a ship could sail without replenishing supplies. Columbus's biggest fudge in his sales pitch was his estimation of how far it actually was from Spain to west to Japan. It was fortunate that the Caribbean islands intervened to cut the actual distance in half.
John Cabot (1454-1498)
Cabot did not face the same "pull yourself up by your own bootstrap" kind of obstacles that Columbus encountered. While a youngster, the Cabot family moved to Venice and for the rest of his life, Cabot would consider himself Venetian. He was also considered a local hero of sorts for some feat he accomplished with Pirates. He was enshrined at the unheard of age of 21 in the most prestigious club in Italy, the Confraternity of John the Baptist. It opened up all of the doors that an exclusive businessmen’s club might. The instant credibility helped him launch his career as an explorer.
Boyle informs his readers that we have very little information about Cabot, comparatively, but what is known is that he sailed for the Continent of North America for a consortium of British Royalty and businessmen. His first voyage in 1497 reached Greenland but his second voyage in 1498 ended in a shroud of mystery. It was a voyage for which there was no return!
Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512)
While that 1492 date when "Columbus sailed the ocean blue" is fixed in the collective memory, The namesake of the American World has suffered a bit of a public relations disaster. Vespucci was, before anything else, a businessman. Boyle writes a very detailed report about Vespucci's efforts as the treasurer and fundraiser for Columbus's voyages. He was respected and successful, but, because none of the Aztec gold started flowing into Spain’s coffers until well after the demise of Columbus, Vespucci was left almost alone, reeling under the tremendous debt of discovery.
It was his "if you can’t get things done, do it yourself" attitude that inspired him to take a crack at exploration. During one of these voyages in 1499, his ship became the first to carry Europeans to continental South America. This propelled his name into becoming the accepted moniker for both western continents. While he has been portrayed as a self-promoter who stole Columbus's discovery, the reality is that it was a German cartographer named Martin Waldseemuler who must bear responsibility. He placed Amerigo's name on one of the first widely distributed maps of the New World. It was printed on twelve large sheets of paper that totaled 95 inches in width. This “Saint Die' Map” had an initial printing of 1000 copies; easily a best seller by the standard of the day..
David Boyle
This work is full of new discoveries and new theories based on these findings. Boyle brings these disparate pieces together to paint a very believable picture of the cooperation and competition between three men and gave the tired old European world a shot n the arm that has injected a half a millennium of new life into the entire world. Boyle concludes, definitively and authoritatively, that human "blindness and cruelty" also accompanied "courage and determination". He challenges us to "learn from their mistakes and borrow from their courage, so that we can push forward into the unknown, ourselves."
Source
Toward the Setting Sun, Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, and The Race for America by David Boyle, 2008, Walker and Company
*Authors Note: "Lucubration" was the generally accepted though seemingly ostentatious, while very literal term for "burning the midnight oil" or "burning the candle at both ends". (Where else but historical study would you get a chance to use the words lucubration and ostentatious in the same sentence!)
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