I didn't say they'd /want/ them to. I'm just saying I doubt the Spanish would sortie out of Gibraltar every time a Genovesi ship crossed the pillars of Heracles.
This opens them up to piracy pretty easy, no? And the Spanish menacing Genoa itself.
I didn't say they'd /want/ them to. I'm just saying I doubt the Spanish would sortie out of Gibraltar every time a Genovesi ship crossed the pillars of Heracles.
Not the same thing, but related - it's always puzzled me why more internally backward nations like Spain, Portugal, and France were able to build colonies and global maritime empires. This happened while the northern Italian states, which had had thriving middle classes and naval experience for centuries, left a much smaller footprint during that era. They then fell far behind what northern Europe and Britain would become during the development of capitalism in the early modern period.
All of the successful nations I mentioned here had easy access to the Atlantic. It looks like position really was that important.
What do you mean they didn't want colonies? What about Cyprus, Crete, Dalmatia, Morea, and the Black Sea colonies?
1.) Northern Italy not so much by other European powers IIRC. Venice's major problem was with the Ottomans gobbling up their Easter Med territories and colonies. The major issues Northern Italy has with Western Europe don't start to pop up till the end of the 18th Century (aside from France's beef with Genoa).
2.) What do you mean no Atlantic experience. Many Italian sailors captained early trans-Atlantic voyages. Columbus (Genoa), Cabot (Venice), Verrazano (Florence), etc. They had the skills, they just needed the naval architecture and gumption to set up some small colonies in the West and East Indies.
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.1.) Northern Italy not so much by other European powers IIRC. Venice's major problem was with the Ottomans gobbling up their Easter Med territories and colonies. The major issues Northern Italy has with Western Europe don't start to pop up till the end of the 18th Century (aside from France's beef with Genoa).
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.2.) What do you mean no Atlantic experience. Many Italian sailors captained early trans-Atlantic voyages. Columbus (Genoa), Cabot (Venice), Verrazano (Florence), etc. They had the skills, they just needed the naval architecture and gumption to set up some small colonies in the West and East Indies.
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.
Most of which were trade posts or opportunistic captures. They certainly weren't settler colonies, nor a meaningful attempt at Empire.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I should have stated "British India".
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.
Venice, just didn't want nor need to culturally. They had already realised what Britain realised towards the end of Empire. They want control over trade and trade routes - NOT territory.
¬.¬ 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.
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?
The English colonies grew up more or less organically (as various religious groups set up their own settlements in New England and Maryland, and a few other speculators founded colonies in more or less the same way today's rich buy baseball teams); they mostly weren't the result of a major, intentional colonization project on the part of the Crown.
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.even Austria colonized the Nicobar islands and their ports were just as far away as the Venetian ones,
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