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It is too bad that Princeton University Library chose to tarnish its
reputation by hosting a map exhibition through 2010 concerning the exploration
and cartography of the Pacific that conflicts with Magellan's own truthful
disavowal of being the Strait's discoverer.
Magellan's clear, repeated and widely published disavowal (see
Antonio Pigafetta's bestseller in Europe throughout the 1500s) to his crew and
before that to Emperor Charles V is supported by more than 20 pieces of
solid evidence and analysis of both non-cartographic and cartographic
documentation from 1501 onward -- about which more below.
Keep in mind that while the study of maps has its value, it should
not be an end in itself but only a means to another end, a much more
worthwhile objective: namely, the recovery of the past as much as possible
through a meticulous multidisciplinary evaluation of all relevant historical
evidence. Maps by themselves often do not tell the full story and surely
this is the case with the 1492-1522 period in particular since concealment and
deception were widespread at a time when the supply and demand for and
protection of secret knowledge about the New World sky-rocketed.
As far as the narrower data base of cartographic evidence germane to
Magellan's disavowal, much of this evidence -- such as the Lenox globe,
the Nordenskiold globe gores, Waldseemueller's globe gores then known as
Hauslab gores and the Stobnicza & Glareanus copies of Waldseemueller's still
undiscovered world map -- was already well known in the late 1800s,
And in fact, this evidence caused famous and reputable
scholars/experts -- such as the great Swedish scholar/explorer Baron
Nordenskiold,
Benjamin Franklin de Costa, Henry Stevens the Older (1819-1887), Francis Henry
Hill Guillemard (the famous Magellan biographer and member of the Royal
Geographical Society), Emerson Freeman, Archibald Fite, etc. to conclude -- as
Ringmann, Waldseemueller knew and also Schoener knew (see more below) --
that the Strait and the Pacific were known well before Magellan and even
before Balboa.
You presumably will have no inkling from the Princeton exhibition
that all these modern scholars (even Justin Winsor) in the late 1800s
questioned the knee-jerk defense of the Magellan-First Orthodoxy that had been
defended in the early 1880s by Franz von Wieser who (ironically) lived to see
in 1901 his protege (Joseph Fischer) discover the Waldseemueller world map
of 1507 which based on even a casual glance fuels even more skepticism
about this Orthodoxy.
For these reasons and more reasons below, I predict that this
Princeton exhibition which is a grossly one-sided presentation will prove to
be
the most foolish decision by an academic institution since Yale University
purchased the bogus Vinland map in the 1960s. These are strong, even
harsh words but they are fully justifiable given the following reminders.
The Overwhelming Case Against the Orthodoxy
As I said in a recent post on Maphist, I now cite in my
multidisciplinary dossier of supporting evidence John Hessler's unpublished
stealth
essay in limited circulation regarding how far along the South American coast
that Amerigo Vespucci reached in a Portuguese expedition in 1501-1502, an
expedition that may well have been financed by the Fugger agent Cristobal
de Haro who financed many such expeditions for King Manuel prior to the
Waldseemueller map. And de Haro once in Spain also in 1519 financed the
expensive Magellan expedition to reach the Strait and ultimately the Moluccas
entirely out of his own pocket which for a businessman means he knew a sure
thing.
Hessler's analysis stands on its own merits but it is internally
consistent what we know about de Haro'si pivotal role and also the roughly 20
other pieces of solid evidence which I analyze in my Multidisciplinary
Magellan-Vespucci Dossier posted on Maphist earlier this year and partly
given in PowerPoint form for
the New York Map Society last November. Frankly, I do really not have to
rely on Hessler's stealth essay to make my case in already connecting
numerous, substantial pieces of contemporaneous documentation in a compelling
fashion but I am more than happy to cite it.
This dossier includes the highly revealing legal deposition of
Valentine Fernandez of Bohemian origin and no doubt a friend/compatriot of
the
King's cartographer Martin Beheim who died in Lisbon in 1506 and upon whose
map Magellan claimed to have seen the Strait. Fernandez asserted
emphatically that the Portuguese had reached 53 degrees latitude south (more
than
enough to reach the strait) no later than May 1503 in his deposition made in
Lisbon at that time.
The bottom line is that my argument summarized in this dossier and
advanced fully in my book The Magellan Myth: Columbus, Vespucci and the
Waldseemueller Map of 1507, does not rise or fall on the basis of any one
single piece of evidence. It rests on the preponderance of solid historical
evidence that through deep, meticulous contextualization consistently points
in one direction: a pre-1507 Portuguese discovery of not only a southern
water passage (the strait and/or cape) but also a "circumnavigation" (a word
used by Schoener in 1515) although probably only a one-time achievement
given that it would have been a violation of the maritime demarcation treaty
line involving Spain.
A Stunning Cartographic Troika or Triumvirate
All the evidence in the dossier is internally consistent and supports
my conclusion in publications and lectures since October 2002 that some
Europeans knew that not only that the Strait existed but that the land mass
in question was a cone-shaped island-like continent -- as we can see clearly
depicted in the Lenox Globe, the Rosselli map and of course
Waldseemueller's globe gores -- all of which date to the 1505-1508 period and
which were
made independently in separate places within Europe.
My recent discovery (evidently the first) that Rosselli gives us no
later than 1508 the west coast of a cone-shaped southern continent surely is
quite a blow to those who want to cling to the conventional wisdom.
The salient fact that this cartographic trio was not a mere recycling
or replication of one
depiction indicates that this view of the new southern continent as
cone-shaped island-like land mass had taken hold for good solid reasons in
separate locales as opposed to being totally subjective idiosyncratic
individual
flights of fancy that "just happened" to be similar.
Thus, just for starters, this Cartographic
Lenox-Rosselli-Waldseemuller Troika or Triumvirate (to say little more about
the high accuracy of
Waldseemueller's depiction which I proved in 2002-2003) puts diehard
ultraskeptics in the Establishment in a very deep hole because all this
evidence is
pre-Balboa as well as being pre-Magellan.
The ultraskeptics lose intellectual credibility when they try to try
to sweep all evidence in the dossier off the table with the shopworn
argument that this growing mountain of evidence remains rooted in mere
fantasy,
imagination, dreams. etc. This line of argument one can find in Lawrence
Bergreen's Magellan biography and Toby Lester's book The Fourth Part of the
World -- inadequately researched books designed admittedly for general
readers but which in the process conspicuously dodge key cartographic and
non-cartographic evidence that might upset the Establishment.
Taking the long view, these two books more or less serve as sleeping
pills for the nervous scholars within the Establishment who cling to a
conventional wisdom that Baron Nordenskiold and others had more courage to
question more than 100 years ago, even if they did not know enough to connect
all the dots as I have since 2002.
For its part, Princeton University scholars did not have the courage
to ask the New York Public Library to lend its famous Lenox Globe for
inclusion into their exhibition on the exploration of the Pacific. This is to
say nothing more about all the other non-cartographic as well as
cartographic evidence in the
Multidisciplinary Magellan-Vespucci Dossier -- Including especially my
equally stunning discovery relating to Waldseemueller's colleague and
America's Godfather (Matthias Ringmann).
Ringmann's Revealing Revision in 1507
Once again, Ringmann in a very self-conscious action updated his
little poem originally attached to his August 1505 edition of Vespucci's
Mundus Novus to say that this land (meaning what we know as South America) was
now more fully known to be "surrounded by a vast ocean", He then inserted
this revised, updated poem between Cosmographiae Introductio and the new
Latin translations of Vespucci Letters in April 1507 -- the entire package
being a companion item for Waldseemueller's famous world map and globe gores.
So Ringmann and Waldseemueller had no doubts in their minds that there
was a southern water passage and a western coastline, which means the
latter's depictions of such were not considered hypothetical, just an
imaginary or
speculative recycling of what one sees in the Cantino/Caverio maps as
Lester at one point suggests in his book.
And both Ringmann and his Saint-Die colleague Gauthier Ludd made
separate assertions in print in early 1507 that choice information about this
new southern continent had come from Portugal relating to expeditions under
King Manuel. So the Saint-Die scholars were continuing to enjoy access to
a Deep Source or "Deep Throat" in Lisbon after Vespucci departed Portugal
in late 1504 or early 1505.
All this and more in my book and dossier makes a mockery of the
Princeton Exhibition.
This exhibition seems totally and woefully dependent on what we can
now see to be grossly inadequate pre-1880 scholarship that bolstered a false
narrative which I have proven originally took hold in the mid-1530s with
the proliferation of printed maps bearing the phrase "the Strait of
Magellan" -- although alternative names continued to be used as late as the
1580s.
This observation brings me to my final observation relating to
Johannes Schoener's nomenclature -- which like Ringmann's calculated update
for
his poem in 1507 -- betrays the German cartographer's inner thoughts and
awareness about the true level of European knowledge about the New World and
the Pacific prior to Magellan's voyage in 1519-1522.
Schoener on Magellan and the Second Ocean
This Princeton Exhibition evidently overlooks the fact that Schoener
-- who owned the Waldseemueller map now in the Library of Congress and who
based his 1515 essay Luculentissima on the Fugger newsletter Newen Zeytung
account of the discovery of a strait by a Cristobal de Haro financed
expedition -- made a globe in 1533-1534 that is highly revealing and the
analysis of which further reinforces message of my Multidisciplinary
Magellan-Vespucci Dossier.
On this globe, Schoener curiously refused to name the strait in
honor of Magellan, a strait which in fact was being given other names in the
1520s -- such as "the Strait of Sant Antoni" and "the Strait of All Saints".
The famous German scholar Johann Georg Kohl in 1860 cited the latter name
in his book on Diogo Ribeiro's manuscript maps from the 1520s but not the
former name (Strait of San Antoni) given by Juan Vespucci -- Amerigo's
nephew and a pilot serving under Sebastian Cabot (pilot major) within the Casa
de Contraction (Trade) in Seville.
So what did Schoener do on his 1534 globe?
He decided instead to name what we know as the Pacific Ocean in honor
of Magellan -- Mere Magellanicum -- the Magellan Ocean. This was a clear
reversal from his decision to name the second ocean on his 1515 and 1520
globes as "oceanus orientalis" -- which for emphasis he used twice on the
1515 globe both above and below the Equator. So here before Magellan's
departure from Spain in 1519, Schoener was even more emphatic than
Waldseemueller was in 1507 about a vast second ocean separating Asia from
Europe.
Concerning Schoener's later 1534 globe, Harrisse in his book The
Discovery of North America (1892) argued that this globe had probably been
prepared earlier and nearly identical to a now lost globe that he made in 1523
in direct response to the first news about the Victoria's return to Spain
in October 1522.
But the crucial substantive point is that here in 1533-1534 we have
Schoener -- the owner of the famous 1507 Waldseemueller world map, and also
the creator of two globes in 1515/1520 clearly showing a southern water
passage and a cone-shaped southern continent -- and also a scholar who in his
companion book for his 1515 globe cribbed from the Newen Zeytung account
of a de Haro-financed expedition -- still refusing to name the strait for
Magellan more than a decade after the return of the Victoria to Spain in
1522. Instead, Schoener prefers to name (only) the vast ocean in honor of
Magellan.
Why this hesitancy to honor Magellan, this strange choice regarding
the Strait?
The answer can be found in his pre-1521 publications and globes.
Schoener in the Luculentissima (1515) refers explicitly to a
"circumnavigation" by the Portuguese: "Circumnavigaverunt itaque
Portugalienses eam
regionem".
His choice of words -- a Portuguese circumnavigation -- is
impossible to reconcile with von Wieser's argument that the Cristobal de Haro
financed-expedition described in Newen Zeytung did not get much beyond the Rio
de
la Plata. To be sure, the Newen Zeytung account is a garbled account but
not enough to sustain von Wieser's interpretation. And we should note
that Nordenskiold and Varnhagen were convinced that the Newen Zeytung account
dates to 1504 a date handwritten on one surviving example.
The bottom line is that Schoener knew long before the ship Victoria
returned to Spain in 1522 -- that the a southern water passage and a vast
second ocean already had been discovered by the Portuguese (as Ringmann and
Waldseemueller knew in 1507) which was in fact the basic assertion or
message of Magellan himself who was a young clerk from 1496-1505 in the Casa
de
Mina/India where all the charts and maps were kept. During this time
period, the young Magellan, Vespucci, de Haro, Valentine Fernandez, and of
course Martin Beheim -- whose map with a strait Magellan cited explicitly --
were all right there, there in Lisbon. It was a very small world,
something like 5 men in the same phone booth.
The Bottom Line
The apparent absence of any of the substantive evidence assembled
in my Multidisciplinary Magellan-Vespucci Dossier being reflected in the
Princeton Exhibition is confirmation of the outdated scholarship upon which
this inadequate exhibition rests.
More broadly, it is also testimony to the pathetic state of
conventional wisdom in the groves of academe regarding European knowledge of
the
Pacific and its abject failure to grasp how much more quickly the Europeans
(including Columbus himself) synthesized a fairly accurate picture of the
geographical configuration of a new land mass that could not be confused
with Asia.
Remember Columbus' highly revealing remark after a meeting in his own
home in Seville with Vespucci shortly after his return from Portugal in
early 1505: "His majesty (i.e. King Ferdinand) should know that his ships
have seen the Best of the Indies" -- which I have cited in earlier posts and
a sentence which Lester cuts out of his book even though he quotes from
this same Columbus letter to his son Diego. The Admiral would never had made
such an awesome statement like this unless knew all the geographical
basics before he died in May 1506, meaning he did not believe he was near Asia
-- another old myth as is also the idea that Florida was not known by the
Spanish until 1513. All are old myths that belong in the trash can, and not
to be celebrated with misguided exhibitions as we see here now in
Princeton's Firestone Library.
The Challenge for a Debate
Given the poor judgment on the part of Princeton University to host
an exhibition based on outdated scholarship to bolster a false narrative,
I issue once again my challenge to debate in public with any scholar or
scholars who think that they might be brilliant enough refute my
claims/scholarship which rewrites history in a more truthful fashion.
Let us all keep in mind that Gavin Menzies with his wild
Chinese-first theories was easy for the Establishment scholars to dismiss and
refute.
But not so in my case. Thus, I continue to wait for a serious
challenger (e.g. meaning obviously neither Menzies nor others who are not
familiar
with all relevant primary source materials). Some scholars who tell me
that they agree with me in private are afraid to do so openly.
Okay let them continue to hide.
Is there a scholar committed to the Orthodoxy celebrated at
Princeton with enough intellectual fire power to take me on? I do not think
so.
We should by now have seen someone willing to step into the ring if it was
so easy to finish me off for once and for all as was the case with Menzies
with whom I had a confrontation on BBC television in October 2002. There
is no reason at this late hour for me to be shy.
You do not have to be a genius to sense that my book and its summary
(the dossier) presents a very powerful case and that any attempt to sway
open-minded persons against all the internally consistent evidence found
therein is a very high risk proposition. I have already pointed out on
Maphist the formidable challenge facing anyone who wants to try to find solid
contemporaneous evidence that "proves" nothing happened, nothing was known or
discovered.
It is a very tall order to prove a negative proposition in this
particular case which requires one at the same time to dismiss the growing
pile
of internally consistent pre-1519 evidence that points in one direction
(my interpretation) as just all mere fantasy, dreams, or delusions on the
part of persons -- such as Magellan, de Haro, Beheim, Vespucci, Valentine
Fernandez, Ringmann, Schoener, Waldseemueller, etc.
The core of such a brazen argument would be that these fellows had a
grasp of reality that was inferior to that enjoyed 500 years later by the
proud ultraskeptics who dwell comfortably in the groves of academe today.
Ha!
What a ludicrous proposition! Talk about hubris, intellectual
arrogance! But I fear nothing because those who would try to defeat me in a
public debate really face Mission Impossible, in my opinion. To be sure,
agreeing privately with me sotto voce or putting on misleading exhibitions
remain intellectually dishonorable fall-back options for those who still wish
to cling to an untruth.
However, I have made my case since 2002 and it is growing stronger
with each passing year. And like the anti-war protesters who chanted in
front of TV cameras during the turbulent decade of the 1960s -- "the whole
world is watching" -- "the world" means here in this situation in 2010 the
global reach of the Internet.
Unlike Menzies who was easy to dispatch, I am going to have the
last laugh unless someone of professional stature (ideally an historian who
has mastery of both the relevant non-cartographic as well as cartographic
evidence) musters up some courage and steps into the ring to try to knock me
down, knock me out in front of the whole wide world.
So let's see if anyone can find someone who is brilliant enough to
refute, falsify, totally shred my analysis as contained in my book and
summarized in the Multidisciplinary Magellan-Vespucci Dossier.
Continued silence in Princeton and elsewhere would cede victory to
me.
Peter Dickson
Arlington, Virginia
Phone: (703) 243-6641
Email: [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected])
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