Hist 23 American History- Putting Assessment Answers

Read the article based on Putting America on the Map and answer the following questions with essay style responses (i.e. in complete paragraphs—one per question). Number your answers accordingly (1, 2, 3… etc.). Use your analytical skills to construct responses that are logical and show your ability to think critically. Your answers should demonstrate that you understood the content of the article and that you know what details should be included in order to explain the topic of each question to someone that has not read the article.

1. Describe the argument that identifies Ringman as the individual who decided to name the new land mass after Amerigo Vespuci.
2. Though not embraced by all immediately, the adoption of the name “America” for the newly discovered lands spread quickly. Elaborate.
3. The 19th century search of the Waldseemüller map was in vain. How was it eventually discovered?
4. What has become of the Waldseemüller map?
5. What fundamental change to our understanding of the history of New World discovery was caused by the 19th century unearthing of the book, Introduction to Cosmography?

1. The news was first reached to most of the Europeans in the letters of Amerigo Vespucci, who is a Florentine merchant. However in 1504 a copy of the New World letter fell into the hands of an Alsatian scholar and poet named Matthias Ringmmann. In the book when Ringmann came across the New World letter, when he was immersed in a  careful study of Ptolemy’s Geography, and he recognized that Vespucci, unlike Columbus, appeared to have sailed south right off the edge of the world that Ptolemy had mapped. Knowing this Ringmann was thrilled and he printed his own version of the New World to On the Southern Share Recently discovered by the King of Portugal, referring to Vespucci’s sponsor, King Manuel. Therefore in this segment it is showed that Ringmann identifies the name of the new land mass after Amerigo Vespucci.

 

2. The name America came after Amerigo Vespucci who was a navigator that traveled to the “the new world” as referred earlier. In 1507, a German cartographer, Martin Waldseemuller, chose make a new map which included the new world. The name “America” spread quickly after Vespucci’s letters were published and read by Martin Waldseemuller, who was an noted geographer and Mathias Ringmann, a schoolmaster. After they read the account of Vespucci’s travels in “Quatre Navigations d’ Americ Vespuc,” they decided to include Vespucci’s voyage into the treatise. Ringmann had a lot to do with the distribution of this specific name as after Vespucci declare “ We do not see why the name of the man of genius, Amerigo, who has discovered them, should not be given to these lands as Europe and Asia have adopted the names of women”  and hence therefore when the word spread then the letter came into being and that is how the name of “America” spread quickly among the people.

 

3. The large map of Waldeesmuller was the most exciting product of threat research effort; the data was included during the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages of 1501-1502 to the New World. Waldseemuller produced no other maps after the Carta Marina. During the decades that followed, copies of the 1507 map were discarded in order to up to date and make a better printed maps, but by 1570 the map had all but disappeared, however one copy did survive, however, sometimes between 1515 and 1517, the Nuremberg geographer and mathematician Johannes Schoner acquired a copy and bound it into a covered folio that he kept in his reference library, but by accident he died (Schwartz, Seymour). It was again found by accident, as happens so often with lost treasures. Finally Fischer received the map and he began examining the map in the folio and he took the news of his discovery straight to his mentor, the renowned Innsbruck geographer Franz Ritter von Wieser. However the map was up for sale during 400^thanniversary but after the two World Wars and Cold War’s the map went into sleep. However in 2003 after years of negotiation with the owners of Wolfegg Castle and the German government the Library of Congress acquired it for $10 million. Thus this is how the map of Waldeesmuller was discovered.

 

4. The Waldseemuller map is significant for presenting the Americas as its own continent, but the Americas as its own continent, however this famous for another reason as well. It was on this map the new continent was first labeled, and the name “America” was selected by Ringmann and Waldeesmuller. It helped the world to understand how the map has brought a lot of ethnicity and dignity with it (Unger, Richard).

 

5. The unnamed authors of the book, Introduction to Cosmography, describes the coastline of Vespucci as being a continent distinct from Asia, surrounded on all four sides by ocean. This book helped a lot to understand the choice of the name America. The text of the Cosmographia appears to result from the thoughts and discussions of three individuals mainly, Lud, Waldseemuller and Ringman. The invention of the name America is most likely the fruit of their close collaboration, to be put to the credit of this group of scholar. This book has helped a lot a in order to understand the authentication of the map and how it came into being (Lee, Christina).