The New World refers to the continents of the Americas—North, Central, and South America—as discovered and named by Europeans during the Age of Exploration in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. This term emerged from a distinctly Eurocentric perspective, contrasting the "Old World" of Europe, Asia, and Africa with the previously unknown lands to the west. The designation highlighted the profound geographical, cultural, and economic transformations initiated by European voyages, particularly those led by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
The concept of the New World crystallized in the early 16th century as European explorers realized that the lands encountered were not the eastern fringes of Asia, as initially believed by Columbus, but an entirely separate continent. The Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci is often credited with popularizing the term through his letters describing voyages to South America around 1499–1502, where he argued these were "a fourth part of the world." Vespucci's writings, published in 1503 as Mundus Novus (New World), influenced cartographers and scholars.
Independently, the Italian historian Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, who had access to firsthand accounts from Columbus's voyages since 1493, used the phrase Orbe Novo (New Globe) in his 1511 work De Orbe Novo, a seminal history of the discoveries. This Latin text chronicled the exploration and early colonization efforts, emphasizing the novelty of the lands. Early maps, such as a 1504 globe possibly by Leonardo da Vinci, depicted only South America as the New World, with North America still unknown or uncharted.
By the 1520s, the term was widely adopted in European literature and cartography, appearing on maps like the 1529 Waldseemüller map, which named the continent America after Vespucci. The realization of a separate landmass was gradual; Columbus died in 1506 insisting the islands were part of Asia, while subsequent expeditions by explorers like John Cabot (1497) and Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1513, who sighted the Pacific) confirmed the continental scale.
The New World's "discovery" was driven by Europe's quest for new trade routes to Asia, bypassing Ottoman-controlled land paths, and fueled by advancements in navigation like the caravel ship and astrolabe. Portugal and Spain led the efforts under papal bulls like the 1493 Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the non-European world between them.
Key expeditions included:
Indigenous populations, with advanced civilizations like the Aztecs, Inca, and various North American tribes, had inhabited the New World for millennia—evidenced by sites like Machu Picchu (15th century) and Chaco Canyon (9th–12th centuries). European arrival introduced the Columbian Exchange, exchanging crops (maize, potatoes to Europe; wheat, horses to Americas), animals, and diseases (smallpox devastating indigenous populations, reducing them by up to 90% in some areas).
Colonization began rapidly post-1492, with Spain establishing settlements in the Caribbean (e.g., Santo Domingo, 1496) and expanding to Mexico (conquest of Aztecs by Hernán Cortés, 1519–1521) and Peru (Inca by Francisco Pizarro, 1532). Motivations were the "three Gs": Gold (wealth from mines like Potosí), Glory (imperial expansion), and God (conversion via missions).
England, France, and the Netherlands followed, founding colonies like Jamestown (1607), Quebec (1608), and New Amsterdam (1624). By 1650, European settlements dotted the eastern seaboard, leading to conflicts like the Beaver Wars and the transatlantic slave trade, which forcibly brought millions of Africans to the New World.
The term persisted into the 19th century, symbolizing opportunity and reinvention, as in New World Order rhetoric, but it underscores the erasure of indigenous histories, with pre-Columbian populations estimated at 50–100 million.
Sources consulted include historical analyses from Wikipedia's New World entry, Fiveable's AP World History definition, and Study.com's Old World vs. New World lesson.