By Daniel C. Munson
Financial historians know that certain documents speak volumes. For instance, a stock certificate from the initial public offering of a company like Intel in 1971 and Microsoft in 1986 is more than just a piece of paper. Such documents foretell the coming of a new age.
Hundreds of years before the computer and involving something more extensive than a single-page document, Johann Gutenberg’ s Latin Bible of 1455 and the metal moveable type he used to produce it presaged the mass production of Bibles in other“ vulgate” languages— German, English, French— and is thought to have hastened the onset of the Protestant Reformation.
The history of stock certificates and the development of joint stock companies such as Intel or Microsoft can be traced to another document technologically akin to Gutenberg’ s Bible. It is neither a stock certificate nor a Bible, but instead a map— the Waldseemüller map— made using the“ woodcut” technique that operates much like Gutenberg’ s moveable type.
Martin Waldseemüller was born in 1470 in a small town on Lake Constance in what is today Germany. He became an expert cartographer, and he was fully aware of the work of navigator and explorer Amerigo Vespucci. It was Vespucci’ s knowledge of the New World uncovered by the voyages of Columbus and others that led Waldseemüller to add the details of this mundus novus to his 1507 map and to inscribe the word“ AMERICA” across the area of what is now Argentina, a name he gave the new continent that— needless to say— has caught on.
Waldseemüller’ s 1507“ Universalis Cosmographia” map was made from 12 blocks of wood carefully carved and placed together to produce a roughly 8.4 ' × 4.5 ' map. A woodcut such as this permits mass copying by pressing parchment against the inked raised portion of the woodcut, and it is believed that roughly 1,000 copies were made of the Waldseemüller map. 1 These many copies made this map quite well known in its time amongst
Previous spread: The 1507 Waldseemüller map was the first to include the name“ America” and the first to depict the Americas as separate from Asia. There is only one surviving copy, which was purchased by the Library of Congress in 2003 for $ 10 million.
cartographers and others whose ambition it was to sail the world.
The modern eye has no trouble finding fault with the Waldseemüller map. Ferdinand Magellan’ s voyage around the southern tip of South America was a dozen years off, so the map extended the Americas to Antarctica. 2 Accurate longitudinal measurements awaited the 18th century development of a chronometer able to keep“ Greenwich Mean Time” across roiling seas, so in these early maps, there is longitudinal error: the Americas are too narrow, Africa too broad and the Indian peninsula is too large and too far east. Latitude accuracy, by contrast, is very good: the Tropic of Cancer passes through Arabia and the Tropic of Capricorn passes through Madagascar, for example.
The knowledge contained in these 16th century maps is simply stunning when the years are kept in mind. It had been a mere 15 years since Columbus had stumbled upon the Americas, yet the Waldseemüller map informs the viewer of the Florida peninsula, Cuba, Hispaniola and even Lake Maracaibo. This knowledge, combined with the woodcut printing technique that permitted its mass distribution, could not help but inspire ambitious Europeans to begin to formulate far-flung plans.
Sixteenth century mariners began to add botanical detail to these maps, and to spot opportunity. The Portuguese were the first to master the long maritime route
Dutch East India Company stock certificate, 1606.
around Africa— three times the length of the Columbus voyage of 1492— and to import the value-dense spices of South Asia. They traded, on a modest scale, in peppercorns, a few grams of which can improve immeasurably the taste of a few pounds of meat. They employed other Europeans in their trading operations, and some of their Dutch employees spotted opportunity. The Dutch were skilled traders and shipbuilders, and their wealthy merchant class began planning to compete with the Portuguese.
A seminal event in the history of capitalism occurred on July 19, 1599, when four trade ships operated by Compagnie Van Verne( of“ Distant Lands”) arrived in Amsterdam bearing 800 tons of pepper, 200 tons of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. These spices had been obtained by sailing around Africa with gold and silver“ bullion” to trade directly with merchants in Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The profits connected with the sales of the spices were enormous: 400 %.
These profits sent shock waves through the port cities of northwestern Europe. English merchants were especially impressed by this audacious voyage. They had been acquiring such spices from merchants in what is now Syria— merchants who charged the English a high price because of the costs incurred in the slow land-sea-land route. This direct“ trading to the Indies” that the Dutch had pulled off,
48 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Spring / Summer 2026 | www. MoAF. org