The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas, certain Atlantic and Pacific oceanic islands to which the closest continental shelf is that of the Americas (such as Bermuda), and sometimes Oceania (Australasia). The term originated in the early 16th century after America was discovered by Europeans in the age of discovery, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the Middle Ages, who had thought of the world as consisting of Africa, Asia, and Europe only: collectively now referred to as the Old World. The term was first coined by Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The Americas were also referred to as the "fourth part of the world"
Usage
One can speak of the "New World" in a historical context, e.g., when discussing the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Spanish conquest of Yucatán and other events of the colonial period. For lack of alternatives, the term is also still useful to those discussing issues which concern the Americas and the nearby oceanic islands, such as Bermuda and Clipperton Island, collectively. This usage is seen as problematic by many for its narrowness of perspective and implication that discovery by European explorers was the beginning of history for the Americas.
The term "New World" is used in a biological context, when one speaks of Old World (Palearctic, Afrotropic) and New World species (Nearctic, Neotropic). Biological taxonomists often attach the "New World" label to groups of species which are found exclusively in the Americas, to distinguish them from their counterparts in the "Old World" (Europe, Africa and Asia), e.g. New World monkeys, New World vultures, New World warblers. In this context, the "New World" label does not encompass Australasian species, which are in a distinct ecozone of their own (Australasia) and usually referred to separately.
The label is also often used in agriculture. Africa, Asia and Europe share a common agricultural history stemming from the Neolithic Revolution, and the same domesticated plants and animals spread through these three continents thousands of years ago, making them largely indistinct and useful to classify together as "Old World". Common Old World crops (e.g. wheat, barley, rye, oats, peas, lentils) and domesticated animals (e.g. sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses) did not exist in the Americas until they were introduced by post-Columbian contact in the 1490s (see "Columbian Exchange"). Conversely, many common crops were originally domesticated in the Americas before they spread worldwide after Columbian contact, and are still often referred to as "New World crops". Maize, squash and common beans (phaseolus) - the "three sisters" - as well as the avocado, tomato and wide varieties of capsicum (bell pepper, chili pepper, etc.) and the turkey were originally domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples in Mesoamerica, while agriculturalists in the Andean region of South America brought forth the potato, peanut, cassava, quinoa and domesticated animals like the llama, alpaca and guinea pig. Other famous New World crops include rubber, tobacco, cocoa, vanilla, cashew, sunflower and fruits like the pineapple, papaya and guava. There are rare instances of overlap, e.g. the calabash (bottle-gourd), yam, cotton and the dog are believed to have been domesticated separately in both the Old and New World, their early forms possibly brought along by Paleo-Indians from Asia during the last ice age.
Origin of term
Vespucci first approached this realization in June of 1502, during a famous chance meeting between two different expeditions at the watering stop of "Bezeguiche" (the Bay of Dakar, Senegal) - his own outgoing expedition, on its way to chart the coast of newly-discovered Brazil, and the vanguard ships of the Second Portuguese India armada of Pedro Álvares Cabral, returning home from India. Having already visited the Americas in prior years, Vespucci probably found it difficult to reconcile what he had already seen in the West Indies, with what the returning sailors told him of the East Indies. Vespucci wrote a preliminary letter to Lorenzo, while anchored at Bezeguiche, which he sent back with the Portuguese fleet - at this point only expressing a certain puzzlement about his conversations. Vespucci was finally convinced when he proceeded on his mapping expedition through 1501-02, covering the huge stretch of coast of eastern Brazil. After returning from Brazil, in the Spring of 1503, Amerigo Vespucci composed the Mundus Novus letter in Lisbon to Lorenzo in Florence, with its famous opening paragraph:
Vespucci's letter was a publishing sensation in Europe, immediately (and repeatedly) reprinted in several other countries.In passed days I wrote very fully to you of my return from new countries, which have been found and explored with the ships, at the cost and by the command of this Most Serene King of Portugal; and it is lawful to call it a new world, because none of these countries were known to our ancestors and all who hear about them they will be entirely new. For the opinion of the ancients was, that the greater part of the world beyond the equinoctial line to the south was not land, but only sea, which they have called the Atlantic; and even if they have affirmed that any continent is there, they have given many reasons for denying it is inhabited. But this opinion is false, and entirely opposed to the truth. My last voyage has proved it, for I have found a continent in that southern part; full of animals and more populous than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and even more temperate and pleasant than any other region known to us.
Prior usage
While Amerigo Vespucci is usually credited for coming up with the term "New World" (Mundus Novus) for the American continent in his 1503 letter, certainly giving it its popular cachet, similar terms had nonetheless been used and applied before him.The Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto had used them term "un altro mundo" ("another world") to refer to sub-Saharan Africa, which he explored in 1455 and 1456 on behalf of the Portuguese.However, this was merely a literary flourish, not a suggestion of a new "fourth" part of the world. Cadamosto was quite aware sub-Saharan Africa was firmly part of the African continent.
The Italian-born Spanish chronicler Peter Martyr d'Anghiera often shares credit with Vespucci for designating the Americas as a new world. Peter Martyr used the term Orbe Novo (literally, "New Globe", but often translated as "New World") in the title of his history of the discovery of the Americas as a whole, which began to appear in 1511 (cosmologically, "orbus" as used here refers to the whole hemisphere, while "mundus" refers to the land within it). Peter Martyr had been writing and circulating private letters commenting on Columbus's discoveries since 1493 and, from the start, doubted Columbus's claims to have reached East Asia ("the Indies"), and consequently came up with alternative names to refer to them.Only a few weeks after Columbus's return from his first voyage, Peter Martyr wrote letters referring to Columbus's discovered lands as the "western antipodes" ("antipodibus occiduis", letter of May 14, 1493), the "new hemisphere of the earth" ("novo terrarum hemisphaerio", September 13, 1493), and in a letter dated November 1, 1493, refers to Columbus as the "discoverer of the new globe" ("Colonus ille novi orbis repertor"). A year later (October 20, 1494), Peter Martyr again refers to the marvels of the New Globe ("Novo Orbe") and the "Western hemisphere."("ab occidente hemisphero").
Christopher Columbus touched the continent of South America in his 1498 third voyage. In his own 1499 letter to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, reporting the results of his third voyage, Columbus relates how the massive waters of the Orinoco delta rushing into the Gulf of Paria implied that a hitherto-unknown continent must lie behind it.However, bowing to the classical tripartite division of the world, Columbus discards that hypothesis and proposes instead that the South American landmass is not a "fourth" continent, but rather the terrestrial paradise of Biblical tradition, not a previously unknown "new" part of the world, but a land already "known" (but location undiscovered) by Christendom. In another letter (to the nurse of Prince John, written 1500), Columbus refers to having reached a "new heavens and world" ("nuevo cielo e mundo") and that he had placed "another world" ("otro mundo") under the dominion of the Kings of Spain.
Acceptance
The Vespucci passage above applied the "New World" label to merely the continental landmass of South America. At the time, most of the continent of North America was not yet discovered, and Vespucci's comments did not eliminate the possibility that the islands of the Antilles discovered earlier by Christopher Columbus might still be the eastern edges of Asia, as Columbus continued to insist down to his dying day. A critical step in the transition was the conference of navigators (Junta de Navegantes) assembled by the Spanish monarchs at Toro in 1505, and continued at Burgos in 1508, to digest all existing information about the Indies, come to an agreement on what had really been discovered, and set out the future goals of Spanish exploration. Amerigo Vespucci attended both conferences, and seems to have had an outsized influence on them - Vespucci ended up being appointed the first piloto mayor, the chief of navigation of Spain, at Burgos. Although the proceedings of the Toro-Burgos conferences are missing, it is almost certain that Vespucci articulated his recent "New World" thesis to his fellow navigators there. It was during these conferences when Spanish officials seem to have finally accepted that the Antilles and the known stretch of Central America were definitely not the Indies they had originally sought, and Columbus had insisted they were, and set out the new goal for Spanish explorers: to find a sea passage or strait through the American landmass which would permit them to sail to Asia proper.Cartographic representation
The western coast of the New World - the Pacific Ocean - was only discovered in 1513 by Vasco Núñez de Balboa. But it would take a few more years - Ferdinand Magellan's voyage of 1519-22 - to determine that the Pacific definitely formed a single large body of water separating Asia from America. It would be several more years before the Pacific Coast of North America was mapped, dispelling lingering doubts. Of course, until the discovery of the Bering Straits in the 17th century, there was no absolute confirmation that Asia and America were not connected, and some European maps of the 16th century still continued to hopefully depict North America connected by a land bridge to Asia (e.g. the 1533 Johannes Schöner globe).
In 1524, the term was used by Giovanni da Verrazzano in a record of his voyage that year along the Atlantic coast of North America, land that is now part of the United States and Canada
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