JOHN CABOT
FIRST ATTEMPT: JOHN CABOT
John Cabot was a Venetian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England was the first European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse visits to Vinland in the eleventh century.
Cabot was not the first man to set foot in North America – millions of Native Americans had seen to that. Nor was he the first European on the continent. Worse, he was not even the first Englishman to stride out confidently into God's own country. Yet when Cabot's ship, the Matthew, landed in what today is eastern Canada in June 1497, he began Britain's long and eventful association with the New World that continues to this day.
When Christopher Columbus, a fellow Genoese sailor, discovered America in 1492, he sparked off a rush of westward voyages by sailors, explorers and adventurers looking for the elusive western route to the Indies. Already mindful that. the Spanish had a head start on him in opening up the New World, Henry Vll in England took up Cabot's proposal that he set sail to find a westward route to Japan.
When Cabot landed not in Japan but on the North American mainland he remained unfazed and simply claimed the 'New Founde Lands' for the crown For establishing this foothold in Britain's new overseas empire Cabot was showered with riches to the tune of £10 and encouraged to undertake a second expedition as soon as possible. But unlike later pioneers of Britain's overseas expansion – his £10 reward notwithstanding – Cabot was not to profit from his labours. On his second voyage in 1498 he mysteriously disappeared, never to return.
Ultimately, of course, Britain came to dominate the continent, at least until George III managed to mislay it during a small dispute over tea and taxes 300 years later. By that time Britain's imprint on the Americas, initiated by an Italian serving under a Welsh monarch and ended by a German king of England, had left an indelible mark, shaping many of America's customs and institutions and prefiguring the polyglot society that America is today
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