Why The Lack of A Venetian Presence During The Age Of Discovery?
- Thread starter 2fistedhistory
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Eh were did you got the info that Portugal, and Spain and France for that matter, was "internally backward" during this period?
Most of which were trade posts or opportunistic captures. They certainly weren't settler colonies, nor a meaningful attempt at Empire.
1) Lets just ignore the entire series of Italian Wars shall we? France tries to invade, Spain tries and succeeds in Naples, Austria pushes in from the Northeast.
2) I said Italian experience was for the Med, not that they had NO Atlantic experience. It was clear that most Italians were trained for sailing in the Med, especially when it came to military craft when they primarily used Galleys or similar craft. Much like the Ottomans. Great in the Med, lousy in the Atlantic. Hence why the ships and crew for Columbus were SPANISH in origin, Cabot used sailors from Bristol, and Verrazano was French-educated and used French sailors.
Italy had plenty of intellectual talent (Columbus' errors notwithstanding), but its everyday sailors had little tradition in the Atlantic. Sure, they captained, but what about those bods doing the actual SAILING
Eh? The Italian Wars raged through the early half of the 16th century (1494 to 1559), with Spain and France trying quite hard to cement power in northern Italy. By the end of it, the Italians were all either crippled or annexed (Venice's expansion was altogether halted in the War of the League of Cambrai and "lost what it had taken them eight hundred years' exertion to conquer"). The Ottomans were more of a threat after that period.
I think "Atlantic experience" refers to the infrastructure and naval tradition of the nations themselves. Italian sailors did cross the Atlantic but the majority kept to the Mediterranean and the shipwrights mostly produced ships designed for the Mediterranean (the Arsenal of Venice making a ship per day in its heyday). They specialized in their home sea, not an open ocean ~2400km away (from Venice to Gibraltar by land. Would've taken longer by sea due to the peninsula). Getting one guy to captain a fleet across an ocean is one matter; convincing a whole society that's specialized in one region for hundreds of years to shift its focus to a very faraway, very different region is another.
POD would likely have to be before the Italian Wars, when the Iberians and French are busy elsewhere and the Turks are not crushing the Balkans. Post 1500 doesn't bode well for Venice (or most of Italy, in fact).
@2fistedhistory Hey np
Yeah kinda off-topic but John Julius Norwich is amazing. Books are getting old now but they are still wonderful. He has many European history books, including a comprehensive three book series on Byzantium... another great read!
Yeah kinda off-topic but John Julius Norwich is amazing. Books are getting old now but they are still wonderful. He has many European history books, including a comprehensive three book series on Byzantium... another great read!
Venice is pretty hard to do, but Italy is very possible. Take one or another Italian warlord and have him succeed before the Italian Wars happen (I am very partial to Gian Galeazzo Visconti); let Northern Italy congeal and reform; if no Italian Wars (or similar conflicts) come knocking, a population boom like the one of 1300 is likely to pop up circa 1500. You now have a major regional power with an extremely solid population base - probably too solid, if the conditions just before the Black Death tell us anything, which gives a reason for migration and settlement. Of course, the problem remains that Spain (or Castile) controls the tollgate to the Atlantic, and either relations are amicable enough (but piracy is likely a scourge anyway), or Italy needs a toehold in the region, like Gibraltar.
I think this might be why a united Italy may be interested in an aggressive approach to dealing with the Barbary pirates. Having control of North Africa gives Italy access to the Atlantic (even if they have to go overland for a bit if Spain as Ceuta). A unified Italy with the southern side of the straits under their control on the other hand is an open door to the Atlantic. For this reason I think Italian Ceuta and Tangiers would be two of the most fortified naval bases in the region - they would be the key to preventing Spain from isolating Italy.
Faeelin
Banned
I'm not sure how this makes sense. Venice turned Crete into a massive sugar plantation, for instance, and the Venetians seized islands across the Mediterranean to gain naval bases. Sounds pretty colonial.
Even for a united Italy by 1500 (not really happening even with in a Viscontiwank - someone should write that TL btw - the papacy is a very invonvenient stumbling block for anyone whishing to control the whole peninsula) I doubt that Atlantic adventures would be a priority when compared to the traditional eastern route. Smashing the Ottomans in concert with Persia seems a better course of actions for someone with lots of hindsight and a secure alpine border.
Ok, maybe I should have said Naval Bases and Trade Posts - But Candia was literally a case of "I don't want this, you want to buy it in exchange for helping me?" - "OK" - Quick fight with Genoa, and then hire lots of mercs to keep the locals in line. It certainly wasn't a settler colony. Nor were they trying to seize great swathes of land - which considering they did manage to take the Morea from the Ottomans at one point, suggests if they wanted to, they could have tried to conquer great swathes of territory overseas.
But, as my initial point was - they wanted control over the trade, not the territory. Defending territories (like Candia) is expensive.
Unless of course you consider Akrotiri and Dhekelia colonies, alongside Gibraltar. I would call the Venetian possessions more akin to that then the 13 Colonies and India.
I dunno, the inital Poruguese presence in India was rather comparable- they seized control of islands, coastlines, and the sealanes with the goal of controlling trade, hence Goa, Aden, Muscat, Ceylon, Malacca, Macao etc. It was the Dutch and especially the English who really went hog wild in the Old World.
Faeelin
Banned
I don't think not having British India shows you don't have colonial aspirations. By this logic, the Dutch didn't have them either.
¬.¬ My point is that taking control of Bangladesh is not the same as taking control of Pera, Kerch, or Azov. Taking Corfu is not the same as conquering Epirus. I can't help but feel you're being purposely obtuse.
In fairness, maybe this is caught up in the vagaries of what a colony is vs something else - but I think it is fair to say that neither Venice nor Genoa were setting up vast settler colonies and displacing the local population, at least not in the way the Spanish or British were.
However, my INITIAL point
Was about territory. Venice/Genoa/Pisa/, with the exception of Candia and later the Morea - really wasn't going about conquering vast swathes of territory to settle. They were seizing strategically placed locations in order to dominate trade. Why, when Candia proves that holding even that scale of territory is expensive, compared to the more profitable approach of Corfu/Zara/Pera/Kerch scale holdings would Venice change its strategy?
Faeelin
Banned
I agree with this, but I think you're mapping forward unfairly. In the 17th century, the British didn't rule Bengal, or did the Dutch rule all of Indonesia. And the Italian city states are much smaller than those territories. Not sure why taking Kerch isn't the same as ruling a trading post on the site of Bombay.
How is this different than seizing Malacca to dominate trade? My point is that by your logic there was never a Portuguese empire, which doesn't seem right.
The Venetians and Genoese were plugged into the Mamluk-run spice system that Portugal personally circumvented (although many Genoese individuals served the Iberians, and helped Portugal eventually discover India).
After that, they were too far away and too often antagonistic to the Sublime Porte to ever have a hope of getting back into the Asia game, and were too far away to make any serious attempt at the New World either.
After that, they were too far away and too often antagonistic to the Sublime Porte to ever have a hope of getting back into the Asia game, and were too far away to make any serious attempt at the New World either.
I'm sorry, I really don't know enough about the Italian Wars to agree or disagree with the assertions made regarding those.
In so far as 'not into colony building,' most of the responses had made it sound very much like national endeavours, when I don't feel that they needed to have been. If I may quote from another post:
In a great many instances of colonization, they were individual or small-group actions taken with *permissions* of the government. Georgia was given to Oglethorpe for debtors and small farmers, Singapore was built By Raffles as part of the East India Company. India was originally an East India Company operation until the Sepoys.
I'm not claiming or asking why Venice, Genoa, or any of the other Maritime Republics didn't colonize the whole of the Americas or India or whathaveyou, but (naval architecture notwithstanding) I don't think it would it would have been a crazy thought for Venetians, Genovesi, etc. merchants and businessmen to establish a small colony in the West Indies (for example, Curacao or the (Danish/American) Virgin Islands. I dunno, just tossing examples out. No need to tell me why those specific examples wouldn't work), or a Singapore or Batavia in the East Indies. Heck, even Austria colonized the Nicobar islands and their ports were just as far away as the Venetian ones, and the Duchy of Courland way up the Baltic colonized Tobago, and the Maltese were even in on the colonization game. No, they don't need to set up the vast plantations of the Carolinas, Virginia, and the Subcontinent, but trade hubs and markets dealing with the people who are the original supplies of the good their trading makes good business sense. . . and if a few want to set themselves in position to /become/ those original supplies, so much the better.
I still feel at the end of the day, the primary factor was the reliance on galleys, though I'd like to get inside the heads of the merchants, businessmen, and venture capitalists of the Maritime Republics and say, 'Hey, why don't you outfit a few ocean-worthy vessels and find the source of the riches yourself rather than relying on the Middlemen?' As the Portuguese did and the Spanish attempted to.
In so far as 'not into colony building,' most of the responses had made it sound very much like national endeavours, when I don't feel that they needed to have been. If I may quote from another post:
In a great many instances of colonization, they were individual or small-group actions taken with *permissions* of the government. Georgia was given to Oglethorpe for debtors and small farmers, Singapore was built By Raffles as part of the East India Company. India was originally an East India Company operation until the Sepoys.
I'm not claiming or asking why Venice, Genoa, or any of the other Maritime Republics didn't colonize the whole of the Americas or India or whathaveyou, but (naval architecture notwithstanding) I don't think it would it would have been a crazy thought for Venetians, Genovesi, etc. merchants and businessmen to establish a small colony in the West Indies (for example, Curacao or the (Danish/American) Virgin Islands. I dunno, just tossing examples out. No need to tell me why those specific examples wouldn't work), or a Singapore or Batavia in the East Indies. Heck, even Austria colonized the Nicobar islands and their ports were just as far away as the Venetian ones, and the Duchy of Courland way up the Baltic colonized Tobago, and the Maltese were even in on the colonization game. No, they don't need to set up the vast plantations of the Carolinas, Virginia, and the Subcontinent, but trade hubs and markets dealing with the people who are the original supplies of the good their trading makes good business sense. . . and if a few want to set themselves in position to /become/ those original supplies, so much the better.
I still feel at the end of the day, the primary factor was the reliance on galleys, though I'd like to get inside the heads of the merchants, businessmen, and venture capitalists of the Maritime Republics and say, 'Hey, why don't you outfit a few ocean-worthy vessels and find the source of the riches yourself rather than relying on the Middlemen?' As the Portuguese did and the Spanish attempted to.
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That on the Nicobares was more a claim than an actual colony. Also, at the time the Habsburg Empire controlled the southern Netherlands with Antwerp.
That said you are right that a sugar island or two or similar small and probably short lives colony might exist.
In fact there was I think an attempt by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to establish one such colony in the xvii century, but I don't remember the details of it.
It would be most likely neceasary to involve ASB, but having Venezuela being literally a new Venice would be quite awesome.
IIRC, the founder of the Austrian East India Company tried (and succeeded insofar as gaining a commission and charter) to convince the Kaiserin that Trieste (a two hour drive from Venice) was a feasible place to trade with the East Indies through. . .
. . . Did the colony fail, yes. But it wasn't by means of distance.
A further point I might disagree with is that a few, short-lived sugar plantations might have occurred. I don't see why an intrepid Venetian or Genovesi (either wealthy in his own right or with backers & investors) or whathaveyou might outfit a small expedition to a particularly profitable looking area in the East Indies. They might not get the most prime real estate, but they might be profitable to keep up a trade colony for a good clip of time (Napoleon and Garibaldi notwithstanding).
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