Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot)

Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot, b. c. 1450–d. c. 1500) was an Italian navigator credited to be the first European to set foot in North America after the Norse, during an expedition of 1497 carried out under the English flag. Little is known about his origins, although he certainly took up Venetian citizenship, implying origin elsewhere. He was known as Zuan Chabotto in Venice, and he presented himself as a Venetian when he moved to England. As early as the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century, Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas praised Caboto’s pioneering “discoveries” (despite some confusion between the role of Giovanni and that of his son). But it was especially from 1897 (the 400th anniversary of his landing) that—following new archival discoveries—his achievement as an explorer was celebrated. Until then his role had been overshadowed by that of his son Sebastian, who in part because of the influence of Sebastian’s own accounts, had been credited with being in charge of the voyages. It was in particular Henry Harrisse, in John Cabot, the Discoverer of North America, and Sebastian his Son: A Chapter of the Maritime History of England under the Tudors, 1496–1557 (London: Stevens, 1896), who revived the figure of Giovanni, while at the same time lambasting Sebastiano as an impostor. In the same period, more or less co-incident with the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s 1492 voyage, general interest in voyages of exploration revived also in Italy, although studies on Caboto mainly focused on his origin. In the 1940s new documentary discoveries threw some light on Caboto’s years both in Spain and in Venice. In the 1950s the discovery of John Day’s letter in the Simancas archive stimulated a new wave of studies, for the letter hints at a previously unknown voyage of 1496, provides many technical details concerning the 1497 voyage (thus opening debate on the latitude of the landing), and alludes to earlier discoveries. The most important study, still a crucial reference for studies on Caboto, is James A. Williamson’s The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Hakluyt Society, 2nd Series, vol. 120, 1962). For the 500th anniversary of the landing, in 1997, several conferences were organized, in many cases leading to the publication of proceedings. The most relevant recent advances, however, have been made within the framework of the Cabot Project, based at the University of Bristol. Following unpublished leads left behind by deceased scholar Alwyn Ruddock, Evan Jones and others have proposed new hypotheses, and uncovered the first known financiers of the 1497 voyage.