WI Genoa had funded Columbus

Surely Genoa would claim a tract of land or some Islands for itself, but would it be feasible for a country as relatively small as Genoa to hold on to any colonies in the New World?
 
I don´t think Genoa could feasibly hold on to any colonies in America.

But it might change a lot. Portugal and Spain will probably divide south america anyway, but how they do it is now a very open question. Who reacts first to the news?
 
I think there would have to be a drastic change in Hispanic geo-politics as far back as the 1300's before the "Age of Discovery". It might help if Genoa obtained military control of Gibralter, Cordoba, or Grenada, beforehand. Even then, with the entrance of the Mediterenean secured, I'm not sure that a nation like Genoa could control more than a few small Islands or trade outposts.
 
I agree with the general sentiment, that Genoa could theoretically hold onto some Caribbean islands, like the Dutch did, without ever holding mainland territory. The main question in my mind is how will Columbus get there? As far as I know the Genoese didn't have caravels or otherwise oceangoing ships. That would require a POD at least a few centuries back to get the Genoese to venture through the Pillars of Hercules into the Atlantic. And that would take some serious handwaving to get them to ignore the Muslims, or get rid of the Muslim conquest of Africa. This assumes that I'm right and the Genoans didn't have many or any truly oceangoing vessels that could manage a transatlantic journey.
 

Thande

Donor
The Genoese could just hire ships and crews from one of the powers that had started to venture into those seas - the Spanish and Portuguese and to a lesser extent the French and English.
 
Fugees?

How about, after receiving the knowledge of the new lands and a war starting against the French, a large group of richer Genoese takes off for America? As they had Corsica and other possessions at the time, afaik, they would have enough ships as seaworthy as the ones Columbus used. A few more could probably be built.

A group of, say, 500 colonists, could probably turn around things quite a bit, especially if they disperse and some of them mix with the locals. Later, more refugees from war torn Italy could migrate - before the other Europeans really wake up to that.

As they would not enter the heartlands of the Americas so quickly, illnesses would be subject to the effect that they get less lethal over time, due to mainly the variants with lower lethality being transferred by surviving locals. Which means, American Indians stay larger in numbers, get knowledge about Europeans more slowly, and are less easy to overwhelm.

As Genoa was close to the Pope (afaik), that should also change agreements between Portugal and Spain.
 
The Genoese could just hire ships and crews from one of the powers that had started to venture into those seas - the Spanish and Portuguese and to a lesser extent the French and English.

True, but that's no way to sustain colonies. They might end up reverse-engineering the ships, though.
 

Thande

Donor
True, but that's no way to sustain colonies. They might end up reverse-engineering the ships, though.

I don't think they'd end up planting colonies, not settler colonies. Trade posts maybe, and then perhaps send farmers to settle the land after diseases start killing off the Caribs. But when you think about it, Spain is really the only European country in a psychological position to plant settler colonies at that point - which suggests to me that regardless of who discovered the Americas in the 1400s, Spain would have been the major early coloniser.
 

corourke

Donor
Genoans made very important contributions to the colonization and exploration of the Atlantic and Caribbean as it was. The problem was that they were voyaging under the flags of other nations (Spain, England, etc).

Genoa, as a relatively decentralized merchant republic ruled by a number of powerful families, had a hard time organizing itself behind any one cause or colonial effort. Even the cities / islands in the Eastern Mediterranean that are now viewed as having been part of a "Genoese Empire", this control usually meant that Genoans simply played an important part in local politics. There was no singular driving impetus behind Genoan imperialism like there was in the form of the Kings of Spain and Portugal.

That being said, the Genoans had extensive experience with plantation agriculture from their island possessions in the Aegean Sea. If an heir to, say, the Genoan island possession of Chios decided to try to set up a plantation agriculture somewhere in the Caribbean, it could definitely happen (and honestly probably did, only he was under the protection of the Spanish).

It's just that Genoa, because of how many different families were influencing its policy, lacked the attention span to really develop a concerted colonization effort. Monarchies are better for that.



Fernandez-Armesto has written a fantastic book on European Atlantic Colonialism before Columbus, called, unsurprisingly, Before Columbus. You can read it for free on Google Books, I really recommend giving it a look: http://books.google.com/books?id=YAFzrIOrP6MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=before+columbus#PPP1,M1
 
Hi Im new!

Anyways, I was thinking...what about if it wasnt Genoa...or maybe a different Italian Republic...like, say Venice?

But anyways, I think it wouldnt be very feasible for Genoa to send out an expedition. Its just much to small to hold onto much land. If it did somehow gain one or two sugar islands, the Spanish would probably sweep in and take it...or maybe the French or Dutch.
 
Surely Genoa would claim a tract of land or some Islands for itself, but would it be feasible for a country as relatively small as Genoa to hold on to any colonies in the New World?

Belìn (Damn)! Provided there was a way to make a load of palanche (money), they would surely do.:D
 
The Genovese wouldn't have hired him to go find undiscovered lands with easily-stealable riches. They would have hired him to find a shortcut to China, a task which he, of course, failed. They wouldn't be thinking about Christianizing anyone with the same fervor F&I had, so who knows what they would do with a very distant island discovery.
 
Genoa wasn't large or prominent enough to support colonialism. But, perhaps if Genoa was ruled by Florence like Pisa or Lucca, then this enlarged city state might have had just enough financial and political muscle to found Italian colonies and trading posts in the Americas. Getting a Medici pope slightly earlier could have afforded Florence some protection from aggressive rivals. Also, the Medici could have married into the French royal family much earlier and gained even more protection for an expansionist Tuscany.
 
Is there any way for one of the ruling families of the Iberian peninsula and one of the ruling families of Italy to unite/marry? Then a combined
Spain/Genoa or whatever, could fund an expedition. Or is that ASB?
 
Instead of Genoa proper as the colonizer, can't we have a scenario where a lot of the colonists are Genoan or just any Italian, shipped there under the behalf of a different power?

Was it possible to do settlement corporations before the creation of joint-stock companies?
 
What about a monarchy in Genoa? The word Doge (which applies to the ruler of Genoa as well as Venice) is the same as Duke in Italian, and a transfer back the other way could make colonisation more likely.
 
What about a monarchy in Genoa? The word Doge (which applies to the ruler of Genoa as well as Venice) is the same as Duke in Italian, and a transfer back the other way could make colonisation more likely.

I don't think the wealthy merchant families of Genoa would be happy with the Doge proclaiming hereditary succession. In fact, it may prompt a mass exodus of merchant families to greener pastures, and what better than the totally unexploited islands of the Caribbean? I can picture tiny Italian commercial states popping up on Caribbean Islands. What sort of commodities did the Caribbean Islands produce before sugar cane was introduced?
 
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