The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci – And their Centuries Long-impact

Amerigo Vespucci  (1454-1512) was an Italian explorer and the man America is named after. He played a key role in exploring the ‘New World’ of the Americas in the early 1500s. Here, Jorge Jaramillo discusses the importance of Vespucci’s letters and their lasting impact through Thomas More’s book Utopia (Amazon US | Amazon UK) – even having a role in the Soviet Union.

A depiction of Amerigo Vespucci in the Americas. A 1592 engraving by Theodor de Bry.

Context: Vespucci in the discovery of America

America was baptized after the name of Amerigo Vespucci, but there might be some disinformation surrounding this event. As history tells, it was Christopher Columbus —not Vespucci— the first European man to set foot on the continent. That’s why many would think Vespucci was someone who took too much credit for something he didn’t actually do. The thing is that from the 1500s to even today, many historians have insisted on discrediting Vespucci’s name, making people lose sight of the facts. 

It is necessary to clarify the details of what happened, to understand the many achievements of Vespucci. Coming from a context of poetry, arts and knowledge as his native Florence was, he turned out to be quite a brilliant guy. In fact, one of the things that made him go down in history the way he did, was his remarkable capacity to interpret the position of stars. This was the key factor in concluding the lands Columbus discovered were actually a “New World”, against what Columbus thought. Christopher Columbus kept thinking he found a new path to Asia by crossing the Atlantic Ocean, ignoring the possible existence of land in between.

Vespucci’s letters

But the focus of this article is a side story that became an unexpected contribution to history. As a person who enjoyed writing masterful letters, Vespucci had the habit of documenting his sailing adventures in the form of letters that he sent to relatives and friends back in Florence. One of those letters, titled “The New World”, described the reasons why he thought the lands they were going to “opened” the Atlantic Ocean, and were actually a New World. This was the letter that stirred history and resulted in America being named after him.

The total number of trips Vespucci made to the New World is still disputed, but many claim there were three. Two were providing services to Spain and one to Portugal. In the letters he wrote to his relatives in Florence, he described with great poetry the many discoveries he made on these trips. It is said that his descriptions of the New World were more poetic and detailed than the messages Columbus wrote. One could say Columbus’ focus was more on himself and his achievements as a discoverer than on the discoveries themselves.

What is interesting is that Vespucci spent considerable effort in describing his not few encounters with the indigenous communities of the northern and central-east coast of South America (modern-day Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil). As was normal, most of the European sailors felt and acted upon a sense of superiority over the cultures they were unveiling. Maybe because of the apparent contrast in technological development between locals and Europeans, but also because of the Europeans’ desire to colonize. But Vespucci was amazingly distant to that. As a matter of fact, his descriptions of the indigenous communities were, in many cases, flattering of their customs.

Mainly, Vespucci was very impressed with what most of these communities gave value to. Unlike Europeans, the indigenous people gave no importance to gold but instead gave great significance to feathers or rocks, which were absolutely worthless to the visitors. Also, he was interested in the way people shared their belongings because they didn’t believe in private or personal property. This meant that everyone in the community owned everything, and any individual could use or enjoy anything equally. Vespucci’s letters described this type of social setting, highlighting the great harmony and balance these communities enjoyed thanks to those rules.

Unexpected reach

Vespucci’s letters were later translated to several languages in Europe, allowing his findings and descriptions to reach and influence many thinkers of the time. In fact, Utopiaby Thomas More (1516) was one of the literary pieces to be notoriously influenced by Vespucci’s letters. It described a fictional society discovered in an island by Vespucci’s crew in their exploration of South American coasts. Even as a fictional work, Thomas More used many of the indigenous customs Vespucci described, to set up the social structure of this society, baptized by the author as Utopia. The inexistence of money and property, the collective lifestyle in which everyone owned everything, and the irrelevance of gold, were some of the features of Utopiathat were strongly connected to pre-Columbian cultures.

The importance and meaning of Utopia are still debated. Many authors argue that More’s fictional society was a literary reaction to the injustices and perversions he was witnessing in England and Europe. Etymologically, Utopia is a place that doesn’t exist, so in a certain sense this is what More desired but considered unachievable for a society.

Through the following centuries, different thinkers from diverse ideological grounds appropriated the concept of utopia to back up their theories. In fact, in the 19th century, the idea of utopia was adopted by Marx to describe the proletarian revolution in industrialized societies. Therefore Thomas More’s work was one indirect but essential inspiration in the early development of communism. Most importantly, Utopia was in good part inspired by the indigenous cultures of the New World, making their lifestyle and customs an unexpected —and unacknowledged— influence to theories like communism. As many authors say, the society More created on the island of Utopia, which recreated many of the features Vespucci recorded from the indigenous communities, was quite close to communism to contemporary eyes. The link between utopia and communism was even reaffirmed by Lenin, who ordered the inscription of Thomas More’s name in the Obelisk next to the Kremlin. This monument honored thinkers and personalities of the revolution.

Conclusion

There are two significant conclusions that one can take from these events. For the one part, Vespucci’s letters had a fantastic value and reach, influencing many thinkers throughout history. His letters were meant to inform his relatives and friends in Florence of his discoveries but ended up being the base to name the continent after him. His writings later also served to inspire different political theories. The second conclusion is the fact that there were unexpected influences of the pre-Columbian cultures to knowledge in the modern world, even after their almost total extermination. It is quite interesting to see that maybe the remotest origin of contemporary socialism, for example, could be traced back to pre-Columbian times in America - to the tribes and cultures that Spanish and Portuguese sailors were discovering in the 15th and 16th centuries.

What do you think of Amerigo Vespucci’s influence? Let us know below.

References

Arciniegas, G. (2002). América 500 años de un nombre. Vida y época de Amerigo Vespucci(3rd ed.; B. Villegas, ed.). Bogotá D.C., Colombia: Villegas Editores S.A. (Original work published 1954).

Martínez, C. (2017, October). The impact of the New World on the invention of Tomás Moro’s Utopia. Retrieved August 28, 2019, from NÓMADAS website: http://nomadas.ucentral.edu.co/index.php/inicio/2369-utopias-entre-lo-posible-y-lo-probable-nomadas-47/3-islas-y-planetas/936-el-impacto-del-nuevo-mundo-en-la-invencion-de-utopia-de-tomas-moro#volver_2

Phélippeau, M.-C. (2017, June 30). La utopía de Tomás Moro: 500 años de enigma. Retrieved August 28, 2019, from Humanitas. Revista de antropología y cultura cristianas. website: http://www.humanitas.cl/filosofia/la-utopia-de-tomas-moro-500-anos-de-enigma

Changing our View of History? The Columbian Exchange and the Ecological Mindset

Alfred Crosby, one of the most influential historians of the 20th century, passed away on March 14, 2018. An environmental historian, he documented new perspectives on colonialism and imperialism through ecological approaches to history. One of his most lasting influences is a new perspective on the Columbian Exchange. Here, Christopher DeCou gives a brief outline of the Columbian Exchange and why it is so influential to our understanding of world history today.

A depiction of Christopher Columbus encountering the Arawak people on the island of Hispaniola in December 1492.

What is the Columbian Exchange?

The textbook definition of the Columbian Exchange is the “biological and demographic exchange of the Old and New Worlds products and peoples.” Let’s unpack that definition a bit more to see why it is so innovative.

Crosby did not coin the term Columbian Exchange, for it was in use well into the 19th century. Just one example is the now famous Chicago World’s Fair of 1892 as the centennial celebration for Columbus’ discovery of the Americas. The World’s Fair made numerous references to the ways that Europeans and Indigenous peoples interacted and exchanged materials. American History textbooks also included the Columbian Exchange in teaching as an important moment in early American history. However, in all these cases, the type of exchange that was described was surface level interaction and cultural. In other words, historians were more interested in thinking about how Columbus and later Europeans “civilized” the Americas with the printing press, philosophy, art, etc. while the indigenous peoples gave White Europeans tacos.

Crosby turned that focus on its head. Rather than thinking about ideas, he gave priority and agency to the environment. This requires a radical shift in thinking, an ecological compared to an ideological view.

First consider demography, the study of populations and their changes. In the 1960s, historians were interested in trying to quantify population dynamics and attempted to reconstruct historical interactions through statistical methods. One of the interesting questions vexing American historians, broadly defined, was the number of the people present in pre-Columbian North and South America and how disease decimated those populations, and consequently how did these changes impact social changes. Historical texts from the Spanish gave a variety of anecdotal evidence, but surveys and estimates on indigenous population were scanty. Historians had known for years that Columbus and his men had smallpox on board and brought this to the Taino people; but Crosby provided estimates based on new archaeological research and traced the story of disease throughout the Caribbean and Mesoamerica to the rest of the Americas. In other words, Crosby focused on disease as his historical agent. By making disease the focus of his study, he illustrated how disease demolished indigenous populations, sometimes killing more than 90% of certain populations. These population dynamics created labor supply demands with European indentured servants and also African slaves.

Another example of this biological perspective was the introduction of various plant and animal species into new environments. While Europeans introduced Old World diseases into the New World, the New World offered numerous types of plants that flourished in new environments. For instance, the tomato was discovered in Cuzco and brought back to Spain because of Pizarro. The new plant had a fantastical history in Europe, before it became a staple of the European diet. The New World strawberries followed an even more dramatic path. The strawberry was an Old World food, but by the 15th and 16th centuries a variety of diseases had impacted production of the fruit. When explorers found a similar plant in South America, they grafted New World strawberries to those of the Old Word and created hybrid plants that they found were resistant to the diseases affecting Old World strawberries. These new plants allowed for an agricultural revolution to shape the European continent.

Furthermore, New World goods traveled even further than Europe. Contact across the Atlantic and Pacific connected New World plants with Africa and Asia. For instance, manioc was quickly picked up by West African farmers and soon spread throughout the continent to become the most widely cultivated crop in Africa. While India and Indonesia had reputations since antiquity about their spices, the New World chili spread throughout the rest of East Asia and became one of the most important food items. Maize had a similar global impact.

One could give even more examples, such as the reintegration of horses into the New World and its impact on indigenous economies, the introduction of cattle and its impact on desertification, but the point remains. As Crosby tried to illustrate, the Columbian Exchange is more than a cultural affair. It is a way to see biological and demographic changes and their social impacts.

Why is the Columbian Exchange important?

Although these biological influences and their global interactions were important, Crosby’s legacy is far more ideological. One of the comments I made above was that Crosby wanted people to shift their perspective. Truthfully, most of the biological stories were already known beforehand. The history of the tomato was always a light-hearted example in the story about “evil Catholic Spain” and “freedom fighting Britain.” So, what is the real significance here?

We have to step back for a second and see that history at its most basic is how we narrate stories of the past. And until Crosby (and the other critics that contributed to this shift), most mainstream historians focused on a civilizational approach to history. The story of America was framed in European terms. It is easy to mock 19th century versions of history for their view of European superiority and their omissions; but, even in the 20th and 21st centuries, as historians have tried to incorporate more regions and parts of the world to tell more global or world histories, they can still fall prey to this worldview. In some ways, while the details might be more comprehensive, the story is really the same. The ultimate cause for social change was European demands and European exploration. This is still a story of European progress and European success.

If we take Crosby seriously, then what he is really criticizing in his book is not just historical narrative and the “facts” of history but who is the focus of history. For Crosby then, the Columbian Exchange is a story about the environment. People are certainly actors, but they are constrained by factors of the environment. In this way, population changes, food sources and food scarcity, disease – all of these environmental forces are just as important to that story. Moreover, if we allow the environment to become central to the perspective of the past, then suddenly we are able to create a new kind of global history that links geography in new ways. No longer is this just a European story, but suddenly we can see that North and South America were just as important as Africa and Asia in creating history. When we shift our focus to say disease, suddenly the boundaries and geographies that might have seemed important before must also change and reveal new ways of seeing and imagining the past.

Conclusion

Today, the Columbian Exchange is considered a standard portion of any history survey course; but, we often forget that the biological and demographic focus that Crosby integrated in his work is far more revolutionary. Crosby was calling on historians and teachers to change their worldview and discover a new way of seeing the past that moves beyond Euro-centric visions of the past and calls people to action.

What do you think of this article and Crosby’s perspective? Let us know below.