Amerigo Vespucci, the man who gave Americans their name, was born in Florence in 1454. Educated in a cultured family that exposed him to classical literature, astronomy, mathematics, and geography, he eventually entered the service of Lorenzo de’ Medici, working in banking and commerce. In the early 1490s, Medici sent him to Seville as a business agent to manage the family’s commercial interests, including outfitting ships for transatlantic voyages. He even assisted in preparing ships for Christopher Columbus’s later voyages, which gave him firsthand insight into the world of exploration.
While in Seville, Vespucci switched from commerce to exploration. Between 1497 and 1504, he made at least two, possibly four, expeditions to the western Atlantic, sailing under Spanish and later Portuguese flags. Between 1501 and 1502, he crossed the Atlantic leaving from Lisbon and reaching as far as Patagonia and the Rio de la Plata. Realizing that he had landed not in Asia, but on an entirely unfamiliar continent, he called it Mundus Novus—the New World.
His 1503 letter announcing his discovery of the continent caused a sensation in Europe. Four years later, in 1507, a group of cartographers needed a name for the new continent he had described. They called it America on the principle that Europe and Asia also bore feminine names. The name stuck despite later controversy that it should have been named Columbia rather than America. In 1508, King Ferdinand of Spain recognized Vespucci’s contributions and appointed him Piloto Mayor or chief navigator of Spain, a position in which examined and licensed all pilots seeking to sail to the New World, and which he held until his death in 1512.
Like other navigators in the Age of Discovery, Vespucci operated in an era when maritime medicine was rudimentary. Long oceanic voyages exposed crews to nutritional deficiencies, infectious diseases, and psychological stress. Scurvy was common due to a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables; shipboard conditions facilitated the spread of typhus and dysentery; and overcrowding, poor sanitation, and limited fresh water created environments conducive to disease outbreaks. Crews faced malaria, vector-borne illnesses, heat stress, dehydration, and new diseases.
Vespucci was not a physician, but in his writings he recorded details of diet, body modification, and healing among Indigenous peoples. These observations provided early insights into health and disease in the Americas. They showed the vulnerabilities of European sailors and the challenges they faced in these new environments.
Vespucci’s journeys highlight the consequences of transatlantic contact. Historians call these the Columbian exchange, the deliberate or unintended two-way movement of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old and New Worlds. In this exchange America contributed potatoes, maize, tomatoes, cacao, and tobacco; the Europeans brought with them wheat, cattle, and horses, but also smallpox, measles, and influenza, causing an 80 to 95 percent reduction in the Indigenous population of the Americas and their near extinction in the Caribbean. Conversely, syphilis was probably brought to Europe by the soldiers returning from the New World, with catastrophic consequences in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
The Columbian exchange reshaped the populations on both sides of the Atlantic. In the first three centuries after the discovery of America, European colonists and African slaves replaced much of the earlier indigenous population of the Americas that had been exterminated. Later, millions of Europeans from Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Netherlands migrated to the Americas. The interaction between Europeans, Indigenous Americans, and Africans has led to the creation of new, diverse populations with mixed ancestries and different cultures. The events of the past few centuries indicate that this process continues, though in ever-changing forms.