RiceSznCartography and Print Culture Solidified "America" as the Standard Reference.
For over 250 years before 1776, the most advanced European maps labeled the continent America Septentrionalis. The global educated class knew it as "America." The colonial press—newspapers like the Boston Gazette and pamphlets like Common Sense—cemented this term in the daily discourse of the literate public. This was not an obscure academic term; it was the common geographic vocabulary of the Atlantic World, readily adopted for a new political purpose.
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