Conquest of Paradise
Before turning to the colonization of the New World, it is useful to review the history of Italy’s expansion in the old. When in 1488 Gian Federico Visconti proclaimed himself “Emperor of All Africa” he was metastasizing a longstanding Italian attitude towards the southern continent, an imperialist attitude presaged by the Grand Old Duke, Gian Galeazzo I, himself through his rapid expansion across Northern Italy and establishment of a new aristocracy in subjugated lands. Initial forays into Africa were motivated not by any abstract religious or cultural ideal but from short sighted and opportunistic economic and defensive considerations, beginning in 1410 when Gian Galeazzo I dispatched Genoese and Pisan ships to Iberia as an extension of his contest for the Sardinian and Sicilian crowns- ventures undertaken without the expectation of any overseas “empire” accruing as a consequence of such limited ventures. But that is ultimately what resulted in later decades as a consequence of these actions: Genoa’s subsequent forays into Iberia and the Moroccan Coast were autonomous from “state” interests, so to speak- Genoa herself wanted to secure access to sugar, gold and slaves, and as part of this process they established control over the Strait of Gibraltar and de facto control over several coastal cities on the Moroccan coast, ultimately creating a Genoese rather than
Italian empire, and one hardly much different from that republic’s medieval ambitions, if somewhat larger and grander in scale.
Gian Maria Visconti’s wars added a religious dynamic to this process, weaving a new imperial ideology of manifest destiny out of a semi-mythical Roman, Carolingian, and Crusader heritage. It is a mistake, however, to take this as the beginnings of any “national” consciousness. This era lacked a clear distinction between
imperator,
imperium , and Imperialism; royal legitimacy still derived largely from the medieval king’s role as warlord and ring-giver, the ideal king being a munificent conqueror who richly rewards his loyal subjects with plundered lands and treasures. Nor did “unification” immediately resolve latent tensions between the Italian cities: as one historian noted of the pre-unification era, in the Po valley a state must expand or die, and this instinctively land-hungry and opportunistic attitude, which had “inspired” Lombardy towards half a century of constant war against her Italian neighbors, seamlessly and predictably applied also to “foreigners” as the state’s horizons expanded outside Italy itself. The Wars of Unification (and of foreign conquest) furnished the Visconti regime with a powerful standing army- the professional condotierri force under Gian Galeazzo’s regime, organized through and owing its existence to the wealth and bureaucracy of the autocratic dictator, enabled the Grand Duke to disregard “conventional” medieval logistics, which made war into a seasonal affair, and wage war against Florence in the depths of winter- a feat for which he has ever after been known as the “Winter Viper.” Upon unification this professional, veteran army faced an anarchic Mediterranean world lacking any comparable opposition. Throughout the 15th century there was simply no state in Europe capable of matching Italy’s military and logistical capabilities; only the Ottomans, at the beginning of the century, and the Persians towards the end demonstrated a similar ability to field and support sophisticated, permanent armies substantially far beyond the state’s borders. North Africa especially- mired in economic malaise, political infirmity, and demographic decline- proved easy pickings for this energetic new nation, the Moroccans’ obsolete, medieval style armies and antiquated, anemic governments offering scant resistance to the depredations, economic and military, of the Latins. This peculiar state of affairs no longer remained true at the beginning next century; although the Italians retained distinct logistical and numerical advantages, the armies they faced in the 16th century had by and large adapted modern tactics and offered significantly tougher opposition.
Conquest, of course, was only the first step towards establishing an overseas empire, and when it came time to administer new lands the Lombard kingdom utilized various methods in her overseas ventures. Soldier colonies, in the Roman style, were not uncommon in both Provenza and the Maghreb, where the weakness of the local states, hazy post-hoc legal justifications (under Imperial enfeoffment and religious reconquest, respectively) and the relative proximity to Italy allowed the kingdom to engage in sustained expropriation and colonial expansion; but suzerainty over local client kings, counts, and tribes also played a vital role in both regions and predominated in areas farther inland or lacking in obvious strategic or economic value. Successive “waves” of encroaching settler-colonial encastellation, and overall naval supremacy formed the backbone of African “colonization”, similar to the methods employed by the Iberian Reconquista. Disease, and the strength of local states in Ghana and Mali halted outright any colonization there; beyond Morocco itself, coastal outposts were the limit of the Italian presence, as moving beyond the coast (or even far beyond the walls of these fortified outposts) was neither profitable nor practical. Such fortifications remained a significant outstanding expense and burden on the state, one which arguably persisted long beyond any practical benefit to Italy as a whole. Politically the region served as a ready outlet for aristocratic ambitions- always hungry for land and military glory- and a convenient location for bloodying Italian soldiers, but these were not unique benefits nor worth the enormous outlays to garrisoning Italian Morocco. Regardless any proposed withdrawal met obstinate opposition from the warrior nobility, church, and army and the province of Mauretania was maintained, at least on paper, for all of Gian Galeazzo III’s reign.
After the dawn of the 16th century, it was clear that Italy could not maintain her hegemony over the West African coast. Local peoples in Mauretania posed a strong and persistent challenge to Italian designs in the Western Maghreb, even as Iberian, French and English merchants contested Lombard and Genoese merchant shipping in the Atlantic littoral. Ghanan and Nigerian states welcomed the new arrivals and forcefully rejected Italian efforts to assert monopolies against their European rivals; farther north the rising Saadi state in southern Mauretania fielded impressive native artillery, as displayed at their capture of the Italian city of , and they also commanded a decisive advantage in native manpower and mastery of the local terrain. Settlements such as Ceuta, Arguim and Tanga took on the air of armed camps under perennial siege, a these lonely outposts were invariably underfunded, undermanned, faced chronic shortages of men, material, and the degradation of walls and weapons. Further inland Marraketch became a beleaguered island surrounded by a hostile and lawless countryside, and would not remain in Italian hands for long. Berber raiders, largely indifferent to Italian imperial pretensions, acted with impunity, and neither imported
Berberi mercenaries nor underpaid Swiss garrisons could resist the encroaching Saadians. Despite the burdens to the state, local governors and soldiers still viewed the outposts as worth keeping, primarily as an opportunity for glory and plunder battling the heathen Moroccans. A handful of major oligarchic-aristocratic families monopolized the outposts, growing rich off of trade and plunder, and used their influence at court to oppose any peaceful resolution or withdrawal from the region.
Further south the Italian presence, dependent on trading far more than raiding, was by necessity more peaceful and thankfully more lucrative. The local Africans certainly welcomed trade- they desired Venetian jewelry and cloth, Moroccan and Flemish textiles, Lombard and German metalware, but above all they wanted horses. Horses were much more efficiently transported by sea than across the traditional Trans-Sahara routes, especially after Genoese settled the Azores and established pasturage there; thereafter the islands became the primary source of horse stock for the militant West African kingdoms. In exchange for these wares the Africans grudgingly allowed the Lombards to build their armed outposts along the coast, and paid handsomely in gold and slaves; gold from Ghana stabilized the Lombard Ducat, bequeathing to Milan’s royal coinage a high wealth and consistent purity, but slaves- destined for the sugar plantations on San Tomas or Madeira- were ultimately to be of greater consequence for Italy’s political fortunes. Frequent wars between the local states, the pre-existing slave economy, and the relative weakness of the 15th century Maghreb supported a steady export of human flesh, most of it bound for sugar plantations on Madeira, Grenada, and Crete. The loss of Madeira in the War of the Burgundian Succession was, in the short term, devastating to Genoese merchant interests; and unsurprisingly the first Trans-atlantic charters in Genoa explicitly cited the potential discovery of new plantations as their primary motivation and goal.
All of this is to say that by the time of Ambrosia’s “discovery” Italy had a century’s old imperial ideology and ample experience sending “crusaders” overseas to carve out new settler colonies from infidel lands. Italians looked hungrily on this rich and vulnerable continent, which conveniently provided a new outlet for imperial energies frustrated by the lack of easy expansion closer to home.
By various treaties established in the wake of the Peace of Augsburg, European powers acquiesced, in theory, to Italian dominion over the “Empire” of St George and all its associated lands, although in practice the Georgians (and even to a degree native states) initially acted more as allies than subjects, owing to distance and logistical difficulties. By the time of contact the Empire of St George was half a century old; they had expanded into the Caribbean Sea, and established a thalassocratic, piratical state on the mainland. Georgian settlement was largely transitory and semi-nomadic: outside of their core “cities” and ports along the southern Caribbean, they sustained intermittent expeditions ranging as far north as the Mississippi River and Sea of California. All of these lands were claimed, with Papal backing, by the newly crowned Italian Holy Roman Emperor, but to make good on this claim would require Italian sailors to explore, map, and settle them.
The first expedition was chartered in late 1493, outfitted with four caravels and an old slaving carrack. Departing Naples on the morning of March 6th 1494, they sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar, briefly making port at Seville on March 22nd before departing south to the Canaries. Thus far the route was well traveled and relatively straightforward, but on April 29th 1494 the fleet departed Gran Canaria on a due west course- away from the African coast and its familiar commerce, and into the open ocean of the Atlantic. The crossing was fraught with storms but passed without casualties, and the fleet made landfall on July 28th 1494, on the coast of Brazil. Striking north along the coast (at the advice of wary natives, who invariably insisted that “the lands of gold and iron” were far, far away from the present location) they discovered a large island on August 4th 1494, christening it St William and claiming it in the name of the king. The expedition encountered and subsequently enslaved native Taino fishermen, pressing ever farther north (again at the islanders’ advice) into the Caribbean along the Antilles Island chain, eventually making making landfall at a new, large island, thereafter named Galeazia in honor of the royal family. To the delight of the crew they discovered that the interior held gold, but unfortunately the natives were unrelentingly hostile, ambushing Italian explorers as they attempted to forage the land; Taino captives told tales of seaborn slavers who spoke a language similar to the Italians, quite unsurprisingly souring them to the new arrivals. During this time the captain discovered that one of his carracks had rotted through from ship-worms, and after salvaging what they could the crew burned it on the shore; as a demonstration to local chiefs he ordered a cannon round fired into the hulk, which caused “great consternation” among the locals. After consulting among his officers he captain and his remaining ships turned west, making landfall on the island of Colba, whose natives were more amenable to Italian entreaties. Native docility and “backwardness” frequently misled Europeans as to the ease by which they might be made into both slaves and Christians. The captain decided, at the suggestion of some of his men, to build a fort at the harbor, named San Giovanni. The natives of Colba insisted that the “People from across the waters” were far, far away, on a great continent to the south and west. Accordingly the fleet- absent one of its remaining ships and the settlers- departed Cuba, making landfall on Mexican shore on September 4th and encountering the Tarascan civilization. A strong headwind impeded the fleet’s progress, but they managed to make landfall on September 20th. Unfortunately a storm hit and scattered the fleet; the caravel
San Pietro was lost, with all hands, although some survivors washed up on shore and were subsequently enslaved by native powers.
A second expedition of 1495- this one much larger, and significantly better armed- set out to explore the mainland and make contact with its mysterious inhabitants. This flotilla made landfall at Galeazia on October 5th, and after anchoring at San Giovanni the captain ordered his soldiers to sack the native villages and slaughter and enslave its inhabitants, who had been weakened by disease and infighting and were helpless before the Italians’ cavalry. This done he continued further west, making landfall in Mexico on October 29th. Survivors from the
San Pietro- enslaved by the natives- were rescued, and provided valuable information as well as- critically- access to native languages.
Natives astonished with their ferocity, and from the beginning proved dangerous foes, picking off any men who strayed or straggled. The Indians’ bows especially proved fearsomely dangerous. To test the weapons the Conquerors unchained a captured warrior, returned his weapon, and had him target a mail coat placed over a barrel at fifty paces.
“The Indian, having shaken his arms with his fists closed in order to call up his strength, shot the arrow, which passed through the coat of mail and the basket so clean and with such force that if a man had been on the other side it would have passed through him also. Seeing the little or no protection that one coat of mail gave against an arrow, the Lombards wished to see what two would do. Thus they ordered another, very fine one put on over the one on the basket, and giving the Indian another arrow, they told him to shoot it as he had the first one, to see if he were man enough to shoot through both of them.
The Indian, again shaking his arms as if he were gathering new strength, for he defense against him was now doubled, discharged the arrow. He struck the coats of mail and the basket through the center, and the arrow passed through the four thicknesses of steel and lodged there, halfway through. When the Indian saw that it had not come out clean on the other side, he showed great annoyance and said to the Lombards: “let me shoot another, and if it does not pass clean through both sides as the first one did, hang me here and now. The second arrow did not leave the bow as I wished it to….”
The Lombards were unwilling to grant the Indian’s request because they did not want their coats of mail further mistreated.[A]
Captive native slaves insisted that the “Georgians” and their gold were far to the south, accounts corroborated by the freed Italians; the fleet thus continued along the coast, finally making contact with the Georgians. As the expedition’s account relates: “We encountered the sea peoples of St George in Mexico. They possessed little metal, and were most agitated upon seeing our weapons, insisting that we must be rich indeed to have so many princes among us. They were dark of complexion, like
Berberi, and dressed in rich scarlet and azure wools and cottons; their heads were covered by a turban of the same cloth, in the Moorish style, and they were healthy and tall, with long dark hair of many hues; in appearance they varied, African features predominating, although some had the appearance of the peoples of Valencia or Marcel… they glittered with gold ringlets, hanging like hair down their front in decorative chains, and they wove silver threads into their clothes and hair. They armor themselves in thick cloth and hide, and carry tall wooden pavises, and they fight like the Romans in firm ranks, with their missile troops shielded behind the infantry. Their main weapons are bows, especially crossbows, which by a most ingenious design they have allowed to fire several shots from a box; the bolts are mainly wooden stakes, hardened by fire and coated in poison. As sidearms they carry throwing spears with stone or copper heads, short one handed clubs and axes, and knives, frequently of stone, very rarely of weathered steel or else of copper, bronze or iron, the possession of which immediately marks men of great wealth and status; we were told that the gold was acquired on the mainland, and also via trade in a great Sunset Sea over a hundred miles across the continent, from the Empires of the might Inka and the Island of California, whose waters are bountiless in pearls and fish, and rich in many ores.[1]
By 1500 the Georgian center of gravity had shifted north, as the harsh Amazon offered little in the way of food or trade beyond ample timber. At the time of Italian contact the political capital was at Nova Cartago, located where the river San Giovanni drained the massive freshwater Lake Nicaraca; the lake, owing to its ready access to the Atlantic and proximity to the Pacific- known to the Georgians as the Mare d’Oro, for its golden sunsets and the thriving trade with Equatore, Mexico and Peru- which was in fact visible from the summit of the volcanically active Ometepe, the largest island on the lake. The Georgians found the lake a very secure base of operations- the lake itself, unlike the brackish Lake Texcoco, was thanks to drainage largely potable, and provided ready access to both the eastern and western oceans, as well as security from the shore.
Georgian society was loosely divided into four groups: the serfs- slave laborers taken from native populations on various raids and wars; the slaves- descendants of the unfree Africans- who, although technically in bondage to the free aristocracy, were by this time more akin to a hereditary warrior caste, and de facto were often more powerful than the freemen; the free men themselves, of mixed African, native and European blood, who made up the bulk of the priesthood and artisanal classes[2]; and the aristocracy, men who either by owning an oceangoing vessel or many slaves were counted among the elite. All told there were perhaps eight thousand aristocrats, free men, and slaves of African or European descent, ruling over half a million enslaved and mistreated natives. The society lived in perpetual fear of native uprisings, and warred constantly with each other and with their neighbors. Even by lax 16th century standards violence was endemic: slave raids were not merely a path to wealth, they were indispensable to the demographic growth, as without female concubines the survivors long since would have attenuated into extinction.
“The Georgian king keeps his harem on the island of Solentiname, with more than a thousand women kept there... he takes the loveliest slaves as his concubines. They are guarded by eunuchs, tended to by female slaves and young boys, and do not ever leave the island on pain of death. Any man who sets foot there is castrated. Any man who sees them without their veil is blinded. And if they lay with another man, both are crucified, their blood offered to the Lord God… Owing to their isolation, the superstitious Georgians attribute to the women otherworldly powers. They are claimed to heal the sick by their presence, to end wars with their song, to speak directly to the divine. Upon reaching old age they leave the harem and enter the priesthood, and the oldest among them are given more respect than the Spanish give to the Pope.”
Divisions within Georgian society made their survival as an independent polity after re-contact a precarious and ultimately doomed proposition: during this expedition the Europeans participated in a coup against the slaveowners, installing Colon as a self-styled duke of Managua and taking for themselves lands, brides, and titles from the remnants of the defeated Georgian nobility. Thus the “Empire of St George” was annexed wholesale into the nascent Italian colonies, and in time their aristocracy integrated many of the incoming European settlers.
New World Colonization followed proto-colonial patterns in the Old World, themselves inspired by Roman practices. The earliest expeditions were modeled quite naturally on earlier experiences in Africa: legal scholars claimed that the colonization was for the benefit of the locals, who would receive civilization and Christianization; that these lands were unclaimed and unsettled- and thus by the legal precedent of
res nullia fell to the first “civilized peoples” to arrive there and claim them; and that the Holy Roman Emperor, as the Universal Monarch, was entrusted by God and the Pope to expand Christianity’s frontiers. The Papal Bull of 1506 emphasized this point, dividing the world between Venice and Italy. Pope Adrian asserted that both dominions were conditional on the “Christianization of… many foreign peoples, the protection of Pilgrims [to the Holy Land], and Just War against infidels outside the light of the Church.” Conquest, conversion and colonization were thus joined together ideologically as a single, mutually reinforcing process.
Tales of Mexico’s anarchic and un-Christian state- and of its abundant gold- attracted considerable interest in Italy, but it was a Portuguese expedition in 1499 which ultimately inspired the crown to commit fully to the enterprise. The Pavian chancelery created a royal charter for another expedition to the Caribbean in 1505, and it was from Galeazia that the conquistadores penetrated into Mexico with the aid of native allies. Of all these men among the most famous is a Savoyard Alonse of Sitten, who like many from the poor Arpitan provinces sought wealth and power overseas. Born to a minor noble family in 1464, Alonse sought service in the army, fighting without any particular distinction or disgrace in Morocco and Spain. He eventually found his way to Marcel, where he married into a Genoese merchant family (his sister also took a Genoese husband, marrying a lesser son from an offshoot of the famous Doria clan in 1476); this and some funds left over from his wartime service secured ownership of a merchant ship, christened Saint Maurice after his homeland’s patron warrior saint. Thereafter he and the St Maurice appear regularly off the Nigerian Coastland, plying the rich trade between Italian Madeira and Southern Mauretania. His experience on both land and sea- along with his family connections- secured his appointment as overall commander of the expedition.
Acting on rumors of a wealthy empire Alonse embarked upon a mission into Mexico. The natives, according to the expedition’s accounts, were most distressed by the royal sigil, supposedly exclaiming that these pale-faced strangers must be messengers of the divine, and through a mix of diplomacy, bribes, and naked threats Alonse’s party secured safe passage to Tenochtitlan, the decaying capital of the Nahua Confederacy.
With the Georgian and (later) European expansion into the Atlantic came disease, transmitted via the extant trade routes between Peru and Mexico; these diseases crippled the Tarascans, who were thereafter subjugated by the ascendant Aztec Triple Alliance. Tarascan slaves, however, infected the Aztec heartland, precipitating a demographic and political collapse in the heart of Mexico. Tenochtitlan and its allies lost control over much of their nascent empire in the ensuing decades of civil war and rebellion, being reduced to the core around Lake Texcoco. The Aztec Capital Tenochtitlan even suffered a siege by the Texcoco, who were defeated and driven off but inflicted considerable damage in the process, destroying the dike which separated the section of the lake from the rest; this increased the salinity of the lake, which contributed to the demographic collapse. Upon discovery by the Europeans the city was a shadow of its former self, frequently flooded and with a small fraction of its former population (perhaps ten thousand at most) inhabiting the ruins of a grand city which once held half a million; not surprisingly Italian explorers quickly concluded that this was in fact the mythical Atlantis, a misconception which persisted for the rest of the century. Of special concern were the signs of human sacrifice, and of the barbaric pagan religion, recorded by Alonse’s secretary Pietro of Cadiz:
“Among these temples is one, the principal temple, that the human tongue can barely describe, so large and unique is it. This one so large that a village of five hundred inhabitants could easily fit within its very high walls…. There are easily forty towers here, all high and well constructed. Fifty steps must be climbed to reach the main part of the most important of these towers…. They are the burial places of lords, and the chapels within them are each dedicated to the idol venerated by that particular lord. Facing one tower, were sixty or seventy very tall posts set upon a broad rock and mortar platform. On steps surrounding this platform were a large number of human skulls set in mortar, with the teeth facing outward. Facing this display were two towers completely made of mortared-in skulls…. As many short poles would fit were set between these posts and on each pole were skewered five skulls, all pierced through the temples. I myself counted the poles, and multiplied by five heads per pole, and came up with 136,000 heads, not counting those built into the towers.”
Unique among the conquered peoples, historians have first-hand accounts from the Aztecs themselves during this first contact, albeit dated from after the fact and undoubtedly skewed by the desire to appease their new overlords. It is from these accounts, along with the Conquistadores’ journals, which ultimately gave rise to the contention that the Europeans were welcomed as gods.
Alonse’s accounts depict the Aztecs reacting animatedly to the royal banner; they allegedly believed the Serpent to be a sign of the god Quetzalqoatl, and demanded the foreigners be escorted to their king. Atahualpa greeted the Europeans with gifts, and- according to both Italian and Aztec accounts- allowed a priest to offer treatment for his sick son. The priest tended to the prince, and- supposedly- after recitation of the lord’s prayer he was seen to improve his health. In this manner, it was alleged, the king was converted to the Christian Faith. King Atahualpa’s (literal) conversion into an Italian client state inaugurated the beginning of the long conquest of Mexico. In 1514 the allied forces defeated the Tarascans, razing their capital of Tzintzuntzan amidst fierce fighting; although this did not immediately pacify the region, owing to the cruelties of the conquistadors, thereafter Mexico was treated as a province of Italy’s empire.
Italian colonization followed a general pattern: freebooters entered the region as traders, missionaries, and mercenaries, intermarried into the existing upper classes, and gradually exploited internal divisions and foreign rivalries to seize control of the state apparatus from the existing aristocracy. This process was neither peaceful or inexorable, and- as the Italian kings unpleasantly discovered- made administering the new territories surprisingly difficult, as despite their supposed loyalty to the crown local settlers treated royal agents in the colonies more as peers than superiors. Eventually government of Mexico was given over to centrally appointed royal administrators- typically bishops- by royal decree in 1532, which brought an end to rapine pillaging (or more cynically, organized the plunder through means of taxation and labor exploitation) and allowed administration and conversion of the provinces to begin in earnest with the reorganization of the territories into three provinces.
As with Africa native converts were accorded legal status and protection as free subjects of the king; they were required to tithe labor, gold, and crops, but were to be accorded the same rights (at least in theory) and obligations as native Italians- namely, corvee labor and land rents. In practice the labor allotment system did little to alleviate exploitation, and efforts by the clergy to protect converted Mexicans merely accelerated the trend of importing African slaves to work the mines and plantations. Land was allotted among the settlers in groups, who in exchange for settling the land were given aristocratic ownership over it. Following the 1555 Decree, Jewish settlers were also promised limited religious autonomy in the region of Yucatan; Muslims were barred entirely, partially because the wealthiest of them were skilled craftsmen (as in Valencia especially) and partially because the introduction of Islam overseas was contradictory to the ostensible purpose of conquest and conversion. Nevertheless Valencian and Grenadine Muslims did establish illicit communities in the New World: the city of New Cadiz possessed a vibrant community of Aragonese Muslims by the 17th century, and was not unique in this regard. Uniquely among the colonizers the Italians openly welcomed foreigners, especially Germans, provided they gave an oath of loyalty and had “proof of respectability” ie, wealth or a noble title; King Gian Galeazzo was after all nominally the king of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, and German settlers were quite common in Italian North Africa even in the 15th century.
During the course of a third and fourth expedition sailors had scouted the northern coast of Mexico and beyond, passing far north into the lands of the Misssisippi people. During the latter expedition, which rounded the coast of the Red Isles, the crew encountered a “red mist, which…. Choked the life of the men, and the beach was covered in many strange lifeforms, slain by causes as mysterious as their monstrous forms.” The shaken sailors dubbed the new region the Mare di Morte, a name which eventually gave the name to the region itself- Morticia. These lands were not immediately of interest to the Italians, although the “rich and fertile plains beyond the Dead Sea” attracted some commentary (and speculation that this might be the fabled Garden of Eden). A separate expedition, charted by a Pavian noble , passed farther north, establishing a colony in the fertile lands beyond. This land was named Ambrosia, in homage to Milan’s patron saint and the nectar of the Olympian gods, and in time the name came to refer to the entire northern continent. In any event it was to be Germans, not Italians, which settled here in any serious numbers. By the Golden Bull of 1515 Emperor Gian Galeazzo III formally granted “Our German Subjects” license to settle in the new territories, provided they maintain an oath of loyalty to his own dynasty and remain true to the Catholic Church; this was expanded to Venetians, Hungarians and Czechs in 1519 and Poles and “Ruthenians and Balts” (meaning, in addition to Cossacks and Ruthenian Slavs, Lithuanians, Finns, Prussians, Russians, Latvians, and Estonians, as well as the Baltic Germans) in 1530. A Swabian count, chartered a colony in , founding a settlement named Frederickburg in honor of the late Emperor (and also, perhaps, the Duke of Wurttemburg). Dubbed New Elsass the colony saw substantial immigration from Switzerland, Baden, Wurtemburg and the Middle Rhine. It also saw large populations of African slaves, many purchased from the same Genoese vessels which sailed the Triangular Trade routes between West Africa, the Caribbean, and Iberia. African slaves accounted for more than eighty percent of all immigration in the 16th century, the overwhelming majority bound for the hellish conditions of Caribbean sugar plantations, where the average life expectancy of a slave was less than five years.
Mexico’s lawlessness and various continental concerns delayed any significant endeavors to investigate the rumored “Empire” in the southern Pacific. A brief expedition in 1521 foundered due to weather, native attacks, disease, and a resulting mutiny slaughtered most of the officers. It was not until 1539 that the first successful European mission made landfall on the Andean Coast, where they learned that these lands were recent conquests of a powerful inland empire. The conquerors encouraged the natives to revolt, establishing a short-lived protectorate over them, but after a bloody battle against a massive Incan army the rebels were subjugated and the surviving Europeans enslaved. Contact thereafter was not re-established until the famous Treasure Ships of the Inka arrived in Mexican harbors in 1556. The Tewanassiyu were by no means disconnected from Mexico before this point; there was longstanding if sporadic contact between the two regions, both before and after European encroachment, mainly limited to trading luxury goods between political elites, and at least some European wares (mostly iron weapons and other tools) had already percolated into the Andes before official contact was made. Nevertheless the mission to Mexico marked a shift in the relations between the powers of the Pacific coast. Whether the Inca Emperor desired reconnaissance, trade, or merely to demonstrate his power to the rebellious coastal tribes and the foreigners overseas is something of an open question; nevertheless the Italian presence in Equatore, sparse as it was, was quite limited during this century. Italy established a trade quarter (with the approval of the Inkan Emperor) at the port of in the latter half of the century but was otherwise barred from entry into the Empire, which distrusted the foreigners and feared their priests.
Italy’s claims were from the beginning contested by her rivals. The Portuguese, based out of Madeira, made several attacks against Italian outposts in Ghana, and eventually established their own trade posts in Morocco and Nigeria. Portuguese pirates remained a constant menace off the Ambrosian coast, their great base of Tortuga a perennial menace to Italian Transatlantic trade. An English squadron raided Havana in 1503 as part of the ongoing War of the Burgundian Succession, but aside from establishing a privateering base at the islands of St Kitts they neglected the Caribbean. The English charter an expedition along traditional Basque fishing routes, claiming the island of Bermuda in 1519 and establishing a colony of New Brittany along the north Atlantic coast; this was little more than a glorified naval outpost, although in time the fur trade became a major source of income.
Anglo-Iberian hostility prompted Gian Federico Visconti to charter the Gonzalez Expedition, which rounded the coast of Africa in 1501 and made contact with Venetian outposts in Zanzibar. A second expedition made contact with the Deccan Sultanates, and prompted a diplomatic protest from the Republic of Venice; after Papal mediation this resulted in the Treaty of Lodi in 1511, whereby Venice agreed to renounce her territories south of the Horn of Africa in exchange for Ceuta[3] and being confirmed in her exclusive dominion over Bengal, the Persian Gulf, and everything east of India.
France, following her absorption of Flanders, proved the most persistent rival on both sides of the Atlantic, as the French hoped that they might find direct passage to China or at least acquire a new source of gold. , and the French made contact with the Apallachee tribes and Mayan states in 1522, offering an alliance against the Italians and their Mexican allies. In 1525 France established the colony of Louisiana slightly north of New Elsass, and attempted to colonize Brazil later that year, although this was destroyed by the Italians by the end of the decade. French settlers eventually established control over the lands of southern Morticia. The swampy, sub-tropical region proved difficult to settle, and French colonialists also turned to African slave labor, both cotton and sugar being prime exports in this century.
[1]California- now known to be a peninsula enclosing the Gulf of California- was believed to be a large island at the time. The name refers to a Spanish legend which seems to have passed into Italian discourse through frequent maritime contact with the Iberians.
[2]Both the slaves and the free men contributed to skilled labor, as did some of the native serfs; “labor” among the free class tended to be of the notarial variety, as it was this class that was the most literate, and possessed critical skills in navigation, seamanship, and commerce.
[3]These terms were on the whole unsatisfactory to the Venetians, who would have much preferred to keep the Italians out of the Indian Ocean entirely, but they were neither willing nor able to force the issue, and even if her focus was always towards the east the Serene Republic did have sufficient involvement in the Western Mediterranean to justify an outpost in the Strait of Gibraltar as well as Malta itself.
). Of course there will be other colonizers as well, specifically the French (in Cuba and IIRC Florida) and the *Spanish and English, also probably the Dutch, even the Scandinavians potentially considering OTL Denmark had a few islands; fortunately I have existing names to borrow for those.
