This is the essay for the 21st week of the 7th Grade Ron Paul Curriculum. It’s about Amerigo Vespucci.

Amerigo Vespucci

 

Amerigo Vespucci was born in 1454 and spent his childhood in Florence, Italy.

Instead of going to university, like the rest of his family Vespucci learned about the mercantile lifestyle from his uncle. After that, he was hired by the Medici family to be a clerk.

His work as clerk brought him to Spain, where Vespucci supplied several of Columbus’s journeys to the New World. In 1496 Vespucci met Columbus in person and had a conservation with Columbus. This conservation sparked an interest for Vespucci to travel to the New World. So due to the conservation with Columbus, when King Manuel 1 of Portugal asked Vespucci if he wanted to accompany him on a trip to South America, Vespucci accepted the offer. Vespucci found out that South America went farther south than they thought because this was before Ferdinand Magellan used it to get to the Pacific Ocean.

During his expeditions, Vespucci was a geographer and he wrote down what he saw in a book. He published it when he returned from South America. In Vespucci’s book, he thought that the New World wasn’t a part of Asia, but a whole new continent. In 1507 a cartographer Martin Waldseemuller read Vespucci’s book and made a map of the New World. He decided to name the new continent “America” after Amerigo Vespucci.

After his travels, Vespucci became the master navigator of Spain. For this job Vespucci had to select and train new navigators, Vespucci also had to gather information about the America’s. Vespucci died on February 22 of 1512, because of Malaria in Spain.

Vespucci and several other Italian explorers were crucial to the early exploration of the New World. Vespucci is remembered as the first person to think that America is a different continent altogether.