The Third Rome: Is it possible for a "contingency plan" created by a byzantine emperor to colonize America in the 1400s?

I know, I know, it's hard af, but do you guys think there is at least a small possibility? venetians, iberians and/or the genoese can also be involved. Pedro Álvares Cabral took ~40 days from Portugal to Brazil, so maybe the byzantines will take ~70 days, if the mission is successful?
 
It's not just a matter of being super hard, but of there being no real reason to. No civilization runs away many thousands of kilometers from their core area, especially before modern means of transportation.
Sorry but this is ASB.
 
This isn't Byzantium relocating to the Americas or at least not immediately. Instead of Jean de Bethencourt setting himself up as the King of the Canary Islands, have someone who is of Byzantine descent yet closely aligned to Western European political sphere, maybe a scion of the Paleologos dynasty in Montferrat. Have him conquer the islands, populate the newly conquered Canaries with Cretans, Byzantine refugees and Calabrian Greeks. He sires an heir that doesn't become a tyrant like Maciot de Bethencourt, piss off the local Guanche and sell the islands to Castile or Portugal. When Constantinople falls to the Turks, the Paleologoi in the Canary Islands invite as many Byzantine nobles and soldiers to establish new lives in the kingdom. Cape Verde is similarly settled when it's discovered by Canarian-Greek explorers. Christopher Columbus goes to the neo-Byzantines in the Canaries and requests the king to fund his trip to the New World. The Byzantines accept...
 
This isn't Byzantium relocating to the Americas or at least not immediately. Instead of Jean de Bethencourt setting himself up as the King of the Canary Islands, have someone who is of Byzantine descent yet closely aligned to Western European political sphere, maybe a scion of the Paleologos dynasty in Montferrat. Have him conquer the islands, populate the newly conquered Canaries with Cretans, Byzantine refugees and Calabrian Greeks. He sires an heir that doesn't become a tyrant like Maciot de Bethencourt, piss off the local Guanche and sell the islands to Castile or Portugal. When Constantinople falls to the Turks, the Paleologoi in the Canary Islands invite as many Byzantine nobles and soldiers to establish new lives in the kingdom. Cape Verde is similarly settled when it's discovered by Canarian-Greek explorers. Christopher Columbus goes to the neo-Byzantines in the Canaries and requests the king to fund his trip to the New World. The Byzantines accept...
the fact that this could literally happen in OTL and it's not impossible at all
 
I don't think the princes of the Canaries are going to have the resources to finance Columbus even if all the things leading up to that can somehow be worked out and even if a scion of a cadet branch of the Palaeologus dynasty is considered sufficiently "Byzantine" to count.

I'm not sure this is technically ASB, but it sure feels like a case of "this may, in some ideal combination of circumstances, be technically possible up to a point." - but colonizing the New World is certainly past that point.
 
I don't think the princes of the Canaries are going to have the resources to finance Columbus even if all the things leading up to that can somehow be worked out and even if a scion of a cadet branch of the Palaeologus dynasty is considered sufficiently "Byzantine" to count.
Sugar, slaves, and West African gold makes a pretty good basis for a late medieval economy trading with Europe.
 
Sugar, slaves, and West African gold makes a pretty good basis for a late medieval economy trading with Europe.

This is true, but the principality is going to have to establish itself and its control of the islands to be able to make any meaningful revenue from those things - especially when maintaining its own military and administration, and actually conquering the islands in the first place will eat into any profits they're able to produce here.

And it would be hard to call it even faintly Byzantine if they're just another vassal of one of the Iberian kingdoms, IMO.
 
Even assuming these Byzantine exile islands actually happen (would require a lot of handwaving I think), and even assuming they can and do successfully fund exploration of the Americas, how are they going to compete colonially? They’ll be a tiny nation (calling a horde of Byzantine nobility to resettle from their ancestral land to these far flung Mediterranean islands is a stretch) and quickly outcompeted by Spain and Portugal. Even if they do become wealthy, they lack almost all other requirements necessary for rapid colonization and the means to hold them/deny competitors. They’ll have problems enough making sure their new home islands remain sufficiently populated, let alone have the manpower to take and hold vast American domains and keep the Iberian powers out of the picture. I really can’t see this scenario working out at all except for an incredible amount of ignoring historical realities for the sake of a fun scenario.
 
Sugar, slaves, and West African gold makes a pretty good basis for a late medieval economy trading with Europe.
And shipping those requires manpower to man the transport ships and the warships needed to protect the former from pirates and rivals. The latter of whom definitely will have more of both. Essentially, if it makes enough money to fund a gamble like Columbus's expedition, then why wouldn't other, more powerful nations seize it?

Also, if they had enough frivolous spending money and lack of threats like Castille-Aragon did in 1492, why wouldn't the 'neo-Byzantines' try to fund efforts to reconquer their lost homeland? That seems a higher priority to a Byzantine rump state than paying a man who miscalculated the circumference of the planet, something the ancient Greek philosophers figured out accurately millennia ago and those educated with the material those ancients produced would also know, to exercise his poor grasp on mathematics in the real world.
 
No. No. No. These Byzantine remnants would lack the manpower, naval experience (the empire hadn't had an effective navy in some time), and financial institutions to even begin to support colonial expeditions. They would likely be a historical footnote that the Iberian states would soon have either co-opted or crushed.
 
If they were to pursue a "contingency plan" think it would make more sense for them to focus on reinforcing the Despotate of the Morea, much closer to the capital and already under their control.
 
i think having them set up in montferrat and becoming larger players in italy and then getting involved in the spice trade would be a more realistic route, basically have them become another genoa or venice
 
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