Erfindung / und Schiffarten 180

Title

Erfindung / und Schiffarten 180

Description

View shows King Utina asking a wizard for advice when he sends his army to war.

ca. 1628

Artist

Bry, de - Merian (1528-1598)

In 1631, Matthäus Merian and Johann Ludwig Gottfried published a one-volume abridged version of the monumental America series by Theodor De Bry and his two sons. The Historia Antipodum can be seen as the apotheosis of the collection of voyages to the New World. After Theodor's death in 1598, Johan Theodor and his brother Johan Israel continued to run the business together in Frankfurt until the latter died in 1609. As he had no natural male successor, in 1616 he sought the help of a highly talented Basel engraver in his early twenties, Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593-1650), who soon married Johan Theodor's eldest daughter Maria Magdalena. When Johan Theodor died, Merian immediately complied with a request from his mother-in-law. After Merian moved to Frankfurt permanently in June 1626, he turned to Johann Ludwig Gottfried (ca. 1584-1633) to help him pursue a successful independent career as a publisher. In the early 1630s, Gottfried contributed to a new Latin edition of Part 3, which contained the reports of Hans Staden and Jean de Léry on Brazil, as well as to German and Latin reprints of Part 9, which was dedicated to the natural history of the West Indies by the Jesuit José de Acosta. He was probably also involved in the production of the last German volume of the America series, part 14, which was published in 1630. The most significant addition to the collection, however, was a German work entitled Historia Antipodum or Newe Welt, published in 1631, a voluminous folio volume of more than six hundred pages which, despite its size, brought together what was probably the most monumental publication of early modern Europe, the fourteen-part America series that formed part of the De Bry travel collection. In many ways, the changes Merian and Gottfried made to the travelogues for Historia Antipodum surpassed even the editorial changes made for the original volumes. The travel accounts were no longer published one after the other, each followed by its own set of relevant illustrations, but all available information was summarized in three long chapters on the history of the New World, with the engravings within the text rather than as separate sections at the end of each narrative. The first chapter of the abridged version deals with the natural world, a decision that must be seen in the light of Gottfried and Merian's personal convictions, which they expressed in their introduction to Archontologia Cos- mica. The second chapter brings together fifty-three travelogues to the New World, all of which were previously included in the collection of voyages. Finally, the third and shortest chapter presents new, recently published accounts of European expansion in the Atlantic. In the introduction to the volume, the editors introduce the reader to their objective. The dedication to Landgrave Philipp von Hessen, signed only by Merian but dated 1630, emphasizes the differences between Europeans and the indigenous population of the New World, as does the "Preface to the Reader", which bears both signatures. Merian and Gottfried adhere to the generally accepted order of information in early modern European humanities and open their Historia Antipodum with a description of the natural world. The first seventy pages are based on the German translation of Acosta's treatise, which was first used in 1601. As the original translation prepared by Johan Homberger for the De Brys comprised 327 folios, the version printed in the abridged edition was heavily edited. Books 1-3 of Acosta's work, which deal with such traditional and far-reaching topics as the Aristotelian world view, the biblical theories on the origin of the Indians, the habitability of the Torrid zone and the currents and winds in the southern hemisphere, are each reduced to a few pages in the Historia Antipodum.

Historical Description

Virginia received its name in honor of Queen Elizabeth I of England from Walter Raleigh during his expedition in 1584, when he It is known as the Sunshine State. The peninsula of the same name was discovered by the Spanish explorers during Easter and named after it: Easter also means Pascua Florida in Spanish. The east coast of Florida was discovered in 1513 by the Spaniard Juan Ponce de León. In 1521 Ponce de León - equipped and accompanied by a group of settlers - traveled again to Florida to found a colony there for Spain, which was destroyed by the indigenous population. In 1528 the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez, who hoped to find gold in Florida, explored the west coast of the peninsula, but also failed due to the hostility of the locals. Narváez eventually suffered a shipwreck, but his officer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca survived, returned to Spain and was able to report on the expedition there. Hernando de Soto was encouraged to try an invasion again in 1539. Like Narváez, De Soto landed on the west coast and embarked on an extensive expedition through the southeast of what is now the USA, but neither gold nor a suitable location for the founding of a colony was found, so that the Spaniards after De Soto's death Expedition tasks. In 1562, the Frenchman Jean Ribault, who was looking for a possible settlement for Huguenot emigrants, explored the mouth of the St. Johns River on the east coast of Florida. In 1586 San Agustín was attacked and plundered by the English privateer and later Vice Admiral Francis Drake. In the 17th century, English settlers in Virginia and the Carolinas continually tried to push the Spanish colony border further south. The French settlers on the lower reaches of the Mississippi River did the same. In 1702, the colonial governor of South Carolina, Colonel James Moore, had the town of San Agustín destroyed with the help of allied Muskogee Indians; however, he was unable to capture the Spanish fort. Two years later, Moore began burning Spanish missions in northern Florida and killing Indians who were on good terms with the Spaniards. In western Florida, the French took over the Spanish settlement in Pensacola, which had been in existence again since 1696, in 1719. After the Seven Years' War, Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain, which in turn gave the Spanish control of Havana. The indigenous people of Florida died thousands after the arrival of the first Spaniards because they were not immune to the diseases they introduced. Whole nations have been wiped out, and it is believed that after the British takeover of Florida, the Spaniards brought the few Indians who had survived their Catholic missions to Cuba to safety. In the course of the 18th century, however, the peninsula was again populated by Indians when parts of the Muskogee that had split between themselves began to flow in from the north. As a result of the Yamasee War, many Yuchi and Yamasee refugees also came to Florida. Despite their heterogeneous roots, these Indians were uniformly referred to as "Seminoles".