In the fifteenth century Genoa was among the richest and most prosperous Italian cities in Europe, close ally with the Spaniards, one of the most fierce Italian city-states in the fight against Muslim invaders, especially when Mehmed II, called the conqueror, destroyed Constantinople, causing the end of the Roman Empire (of the East), trade with the Genoese Crimea was lost and not only, but their possessions such as Chios and Candia were also threatened by both the Ottomans and the Venetians, who in the meantime under their protectorate the despotate of morea.
In Genoa in those days following the capitulation of the millennial Byzantine Empire nothing else was talked about, and there was actually fear that their commercial affairs, and the doge of the republic Pietro Fragoso called a meeting with the most illustrious families of the republic on what to do for the future, whether to want to protect Genoese interests in the Aegean at all costs or whether to move more and more to an increasingly "Atlanticist" and less and less "Mediterranean" trade.
the Council was immediately divided into two camps; the Atlanticists, or those rich merchants who believed in constantly strengthening and renewing the Genoese navy to ensure a renewed power in the maritime field to be able to reach the Indies and take all its riches, while the supporters of Mediterranean traditionalism were against spending money for long and expensive journeys to reach the indies by sea, and argued that consolidating the colonies in the Aegean was much more useful in order to have a bridgehead to be able to return to trade with the indies indirectly.
the Atlanticist faction was chaired by the D'Oria (whose previous interest in the colonization of the Canaries is included), while the Mediterranean faction was chaired by the Lords of Chios, the Giustiniani family.
the great turning point was with Christopher Columbus, who in 1492 proposed to the Doge of Genoa Agostino Adorno to support his expedition to the Indies by crossing the Atlantic, however he received a disdainful refusal, but the Dorias, and in general the "atlanticists", interested in Columbus' project, supported him economically and with three caravels Columbus left the port of Ajaccio in August 1492.