The Cabot Dilemma: John Cabot's 1497 Voyage & the Limits of Historiography

In 1497, John Cabot (Giovanni Cabotto) set off on a voyage to Asia. On his way he, like Christopher Columbus, ran into an island off the coast of North America. As a result, Cabot became the second European to discover North America, thus laying an English claim which would be followed up only after an interval of over one hundred years. With such an interlude, his voyage seems mainly of academic interest. Although it is true …

…more important than the specifics of his voayge, and, moreover, the evidence for them is much clearer than the tenuous testimony relating to the trip. His petitioning of the English king, Henry VII, for a charter to explore unkown lands helped usher England into the age of discovery.65 And of more immediate importance, of course, was the opening of the New World to Old World fishermen, the most significant precursor to the colonization of Canada.