Yes, but I understand that at least *some* of the accounts (the later
voyages?) attributed to Vespucci are highly questionable... Does Boorstin
cover this issue?
Mary Ellin
 
At 01:16 PM 5/13/98 Z, Richard Kimmel wrote:
>
>Mary Ellin-
>
>     Welcome to Vespucciland (yes, I am old enough to remember
>Firesign Theater).
>
>     Daniel J. Boorstin is my "authority" on just about everything
>world-historical.  In The Discoverers (1983), Boorstin outlines
>Vespucci's voyages to the Americas and elsewhere, and notes that he
>traveled the southern part of the South American continent.  Vespucci
>contributed to the solution of reckoning longitude, and the accounts
>of his voyages received much greater press than those of Columbus.  As
>to the naming of the "Americas,"  Vespucci had nothing to do with
>that.  Boorstin explains that an "obscure clergyman" named Martin
>Waldseemuller, while a member of a learned society in Northern France,
>had the South American continent inscribed "America" on a 1507 map
>published by the society.  This map was widely distributed and
>reprinted, and by the time Waldseemuller discovered that he had
>attributed the discovery of the Americas to the wrong person, the name
>had taken hold.
>
>     I hope this helps out.  Check out Boorstin; he really is
>entertaining.
>
>Richard Kimmel
>
>
********************************
*  Mary Ellin D'Agostino       *
*  [log in to unmask]   *
*  Department of Anthropology  *
*  University of California    *
*  Berkeley, CA 94720-3710     *
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