Venetian Colonization of the New World

[EmperorBatman999]

Many European countries in the 16th-17th century went to the Americas to colonize and for god, gold and glory. Even a few Germans came looking for El Dorado. But what if Venice (or any other major Italian trading state) invested in establishing colonies in the New World. Would they manage to compete with Spain, France and England? Would there be a "New Italy" nation today?

[Erebus Pasha]

Well the Venetian possessions in the Adriatic were taken by France during the Napoleonic Wars. If they had managed to establish any colonies or outposts in the New World then I think by the late 18th and early 19th centuries then they would've been swallowed up by one of the great colonial powers.

[Miroslav Klose]

The Italian states were conservative and relied on Mediterenean trade and some trade posts in the Black Sea. Even if they would have colonized parts of America, they would be small in number, start to compete with each other and eventually they will be taken by a bigger colonial power.

[Ludicus]

If they had managed to establish any colonies or outposts in the New World

Unlikely:

Towards the end of the fifteenth, and during the greater part of the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal were the two great naval powers upon the ocean; for though the commerce of Venice extended to every part of Europe, its fleets had scarce ever sailed beyond the Mediterranean. The Spaniards, in virtue of the first discovery, claimed all America as their own; and though they could not hinder so great a naval power as that of Portugal from settling in Brazil, such was, at that time, the terror of their name, that the greater part of the other nations of Europe were afraid to establish themselves in any other part of that great continent.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
In fact, the Portuguese commercial fleet sailing to Asia during the 16th century had approximately 705 vessels, and had it positionated along the way a network of chokepoints in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans that would support the practice of long distance projection (reference, the Dutch Historian Angus Maddison, 2006, Asia in the World Economy)
Asia in the World Economy 1500–2030 AD

The Italian states were conservative and relied on Mediterenean trade

In fact, Venice had neither the strategie nor innovations to go further than their traditional realm of projection, which was the Mediterranean. After the Constantinople Treaty, Venice began to pay an annual tax.

The Ottomans closed off the gateways to the black sea in 1479. The grip on the reppublica ultimately closed during two events:

1-The production of sugar in Madeira, organized by Prince Henrique, removed the monoply of this commodity by Crete and Cyrus. (islands of the Venetian empire) around the year 1500.
2-Later, the oceanic route to India via Cape of Good Hope. The new spice route now passed through Lisbon-Antwerp. Venice was the victim in this new context of geoeconomics.

In reality, instead of directly defying Venice in the Mediterranean, the Portuguese designed a siege strategie around those they considered the weakest link-the Muslims.The local/regional empires of Asia (Egypt, Persia, Vijaynagar) did not possess at the time an oceanic war force. Portugal disposed a fleet of 200 large ships in the Indian Ocean alone, having the objective of exploring this opportunity.

Venetians tried their best, let´s hear Bailey Diffie and George Winius:

"The Venetians...in 1502..they began to think again about the condition of their Eastern trade. By this time, they must also have scarcely been able to tolerate the irony of their attempt to enlist King´s Manuel help against the Turks. For all the while this king was busy wrecking their Levantine trade at its source, he feigned his cordiality by knighting Ambassador Pietro Pasqualigo and making the Signoria godfather to his baby son. This was apparently more than the Venetians could bear.
In the spring of 1502, the Signoria recalled Pasqualigo and broke diplomatic relations with Portugal. The Venetians appointed a comission of 15 notables in december 1502, whose job it was to consider what might be done oust Manuel´s ship from the Indian Ocean, or at least prevent them from doing further damage. At the behest of this group, the Signoria lost no time in hurrying off a new ambassador to Egypt. He proposed "rapid and secret remedies" -if news leaked out to the Christian world,no one could maintain that Venice necessarely supported the downfall of a fellow Catholic power at the hands of the infidel.
The Sultan took the only course open to him and prepared an armada to do battle with the Portuguese interlopers. His realms lacked timber, for one thing, and this had to be obtained from the Black-Sea in 25 rented vessels.
Moreover, even before he received his raw materials, the wheather and the Crusaders combined to favour Portugal. While sailing in the vicinity of Rodhes, the Egyptian convoy encoutered unexpectedly a fleet of the Hospitaliers of St. John, commanded coincidentally by a Portuguese, who laid the convoy with a will and sank or captured elven vessels. Later, the weakened remnant fleet ran in a fierce storm and lost another four ships. Only two-fifths of the original lumber ever reached Alexandria.
The original order might have built thirty or more large galleys; as it was the commander, Amir Hussain, left port in February 1507 to join his allies in India with a only a dozen large vessels and about 1,500 combatants.

Whether the Venetians took part in these preparations remains unknown. It is far more certain that the Venetians wished the Sultan well and were at first elated and then more deeply pessimistic than ever when they heard the results."

[Sher Khan]

They kind of did, actually. It wasn't rare to find a Genoese, Venetian or even Florentine or Ragusan merchant in Spanish or Portuguese America and Brazil. However, the Italians found it a lot more profitable to economically colonize Spain and Portugal and dominate the metropole itself.

Basically, the Italian states had already tried playing with the idea of territorial colonies overseas, and they found them too expensive to maintain compared with the far easier methods of banking, financing, and trade colonization.

[Sher Khan]

The Antwerp spice trade did not replace the old. It was still subject to the whims of the Mediterranean market, and Portuguese spice only competed with Venetian spice but never over came it. That Portugal's injection into the Indian Ocean was disruptive of the old trade is true, but only for a short time before trade normalized. The Turko-Persian war was a far more consequential effect on the Red Sea and Aleppo trade routes, and the Portuguese siege of the Indian Ocean fell apart soon after with spice and other goods still making runs to Mecca and Hormuz and Alexandria even after the addition of Spain's fleet during the short union. It wasn't until the arrival of the Dutch and their far more aggressive domination of the Indian Ocean that Turkish-Venetian trade began to suffer.

[Ludicus]

..Portuguese spice only competed with Venetian spice but never over came it

Not exactly.
It was much cheaper to carry spices in big ships around the Cape than move them up the Read Sea, then overland to the Mediterranean, and then back into ships. In 1503, upon the return of his second voyage, Gama and his 13 ships carried 1700 tons of spice- as much as the total amount of annual importation that Venice could achieve at that time.The fourth expedition which returned in 1503, shipped home some 30,000 quintals. This meant, just 5 years after Gama´s voyage that the Portuguese were already introducing more spices to the European market via Cape than the Venetians through Egypt.
In fact, the Portuguese also encouraged trade via Gulf, partly to placate Iran but also to to sustain their own costum revenues at Hormuz.

An interesting question, the survival of the overland route during the 16th century has led some scholars to question whether the Portugues were ever able to dominate Europe´s pepper supply.

- Frederic Lane argued that Europe was importing spices in larger quantities through Egypt in the 1560´s than in the 1490´s.

-Braudel went further, concluding that by the mid 16th century Mediterranean powers regained control of most the European pepper trade.

-Niels Steengaard claimed that before the end of the century at least twice as much pepper was reaching Europe through the Miiddle East as via the Cape.

But in fact this arguments are known to be rather misleading. Drawing heavily in works of Magalhães Godinho, C.H.H. Wake demonstrated that Portuguese pepper brought to Europe round the Cape, always, in the 16th century, exceeded that imported through overland routes. For most of the century, the Portuguese were supplying 75 per cent or more of European imports.
Morever, the bulk of pepper shipped via traditional routes did not go to Europe at all, but to markets in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa.

In short, though Portuguese did not achieve a complete monopoly of the European market, they for long held an overhelming share trade.
As far as supplying pepper to Europe was concerned, this was a Portuguese century:

The Voyages of Discovery permanently altered the structure of trade between Europe and Asia... The result was a more competitive Euro-Asian trading market, with European consumers the ultimate beneficiaries; In the 17th century, Anglo-Dutch competition on the Cape route would further drive down pepper prices and drive up European consumption and welfare (while for products such as cloves, where the Dutch managed to monopolize supply, prices remained high) (Wake 1979: 391-2). However, these procompetitive effects were already benefiting European consumers during the ‘Portuguese’ 16th century.

"Did Vasco da Gama Matter for European Markets?Testing Frederick Lane's Hypotheses Fifty Years Later" by Kevin H. O’Rourke


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The Antwerp spice trade did not replace the old...

The Flanders feitoria was importing sugar from Portuguese Madeira by the mid-15th century and soon afterwards began to take goods from the Portuguese West Africa trade, including malagueta pepper, ivory and above all gold. In 1499 the feitoria was shifted from Bruges to Antwerp where the Portuguese began selling pepper.
In 1548 the Antwerp feitoria was closed. From that time on, most Portuguese imported pepper was sold directly through the Casa da India in Lisbon.
Within 5 years Portugal had secured a near monopoly of pepper imports into Europe, mainly at Venice expense - and its dominance was not challenged till the mid 16th century, and even then not very seriously.
For 80/100 years Portugal virtually monopolised the sea route to Asia.
Althoug the sea route was long and the ships liable to decay, to shipwreck and to piracy, the profits were astronomical.

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Edit, I missed this:

the Italians found it a lot more profitable to economically colonize...Portugal and dominate the metropole itself.

Not exactly.
The study of the financial workings of the Portuguese empire during four centuries, reccomended readings:
1- Costs and financial trends in the Portuguese empire, 1415-1822 Jorge Pedreira
2- The economy of the Portuguese empire, S.Schwartz
3- Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial. Magalhães Godinho. Four volumes.

In fact, a thorough comparative analysis would certainly show that the empire played a much more crucial role for Portugal than did the empires of other European powers for their respective countries. Spain provides the most obvious basis for comparasion, and it can easily be confirmed that even at the time of massive inflow of gold and silver from Mexico and Peru, the American empire did not play the same pivotal role that the Portuguese colonies performed.
It should be emphasized that in Portugal the empire repeatedly provided more than half the government´s financial resources.
These figures (Pedreira, Costs and financial trends of the empire), definitely evince a contrast between Portugal and Spain and display the peculiarity of the Portuguese financial structure.
This singularity was already perceived in the 16th century. Jean Bodin (1530-1596) when he considered the different ways in which a state could obtain its revenues, explicitely pinpointed Portugal after the voyages to the Gold Coast and the discovery of the sea route to India, as the example of a state that relied on a colonial trading for its financial resources.

It wasn't rare to find a Genoese, Venetian or even Florentine or Ragusan merchant in... Portuguese America and Brazi

Not exactly.The control of the trade with Europe largely belonged to foreign merchants, however foreign merchants were obliged to negotiate with Brazil by using Portuguese merchants as their intermediaries. The vast majority of transactions with Brazil were in the hands of the Portuguese merchants.The logic of the colonial monopoly rent presupposed difficulties for the infiltration of these merchants into Brazil.

Recommended reading: "Merchant networks and the Brazilian gold", paper, XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006.

[darkly]

Its amazing the ignorance of some people here.

They can talk about the colonization of the New World, about the english colonization, the french colonization, the spanish colonization and the fake venetian colonization, that never existed, but they never talk about Portugal, the first country to begin phenomenom of the Discovery and Colonization Ages.

SHAME ON YOU, PEOPLE!

[Miroslav Klose]

Its amazing the ignorance of some people here.

They can talk about the colonization of the New World, about the english colonization, the french colonization, the spanish colonization and the fake venetian colonization, that never existed, but they never talk about Portugal, the first country to begin phenomenom of the Discovery and Colonization Ages.

SHAME ON YOU, PEOPLE!

I never hear anyone talk about the Netherlands/United Provinces too, welcome at the club

[Dr. Croccer]

Venice after 1500 was in decline. They had not the desire or means to create a colony overseas.

[DAVIDE]

Because of the commercial system of Mude, the sea caravans of the Venetian state made specifically in periods of the year by privates under the patronization of the state etc. etc. had a crysis at the end of 1400 especially with the travels of Vasco De Gama which, opening the routes for the circumnavigation of African continent, permitted the Portoguese to intercept directly at the source the precious Asian products directly in India and Arabia, drying up gradually also the markets of Syria and Egypt. Simultaneously, the disappearance of Byzantium and the appearance on the scene of the aggressive Ottoman Empire posed a serious threat to the survival of the same Venetian colonies in the East. Trying supporting the secular system of Mude, the Senate of Venice started granting free funds which could reach several thousand ducats to encourage the privates participation, but the travels of Columbus, the discovery of America and the opening of routes through the Atlantic bringing back new and more exotic products, as well as the tremendous enrichment of the new commercial rivals of Venice with the American gold as Spain and Portugal, has taken Venice in the first twenty years of the fifteenth century to suspend the travels made by privates temporarily and then permanently

[Prince of Darkness]

Even Denmark and Courland have colonies, but all of them are purely commercial and cannot stand up against the greedy powers such as England and France.
Tuscany did once tried to colonize the New World.

[Last Roman]

I've wondered this as well, say if Genoa HAD given Columbus the tools to go exploring. But I still think Spain would've overtaken them, simply because they controlled the only point from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Well, other than through the Red Sea and around Africa, but I'm not sure Columbus would've been too keen to take that route.

but they never talk about Portugal, the first country to begin phenomenom of the Discovery and Colonization Ages.

SHAME ON YOU, PEOPLE!

Because Portugal never did anything with it, in terms of becoming a European power. Besides Brazil and a few far-flung colonies in the east, they never created large scale colonial empires like the Spanish in Mexico and South America or the English and French in North America. Nor did they have the effect on mainland Europe like England, Spain or France. Simply put, they were too unimportant to really mention in a gaming forum. It's not ignorance, just nobody cares. Besides, this is a hypothetical scenario, no need to get your undies in a bunch.

[Ludicus]

Simply put, they were too unimportant to really mention in a gaming forum...It's not ignorance

Thanks for making my day.Trolls easily post argumentative/myopic messages that most of us would think twice - and than not post.
You're joking. Or trolling. Or both. I have a hard time telling when someone is joking...

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this is a hypothetical scenario...say if Genoa HAD given Columbus the tools to go exploring.

Indeed, using a hypothetical scenario - what tools?
In fact, the Vivaldi brothers of Genoa departed in 1291 to seek " the regions of India by way of the ocean", antecipating, by 2 centuries, Columbus´s project. But they were never heard again.
In 1339, Lanzarotto Malocello, from Genoa, built a tower on the island still called Lanzarote in his honor. In fact, several attempts were made before the 15th century to explore the Atlantic, but most doomed themselves to failure by setting out in the belt of westerly winds, presumily because the explores were keen to be sure of a guaranteed route of return.
Anyway, I would like to say that the European discovery of the Atlantic was an enterprise launched from deep the Mediterranean, chiefly by Genoese and Majorcan navigators.

through the Red Sea and around Africa

What? the colonization of the New World?

, but I'm not sure Columbus would've been too keen to take that route

Guess why...
Edit:
I know that you don´t know the answer - Well, it's okay not to know the answer to everything. Answer: In 1455, the bull Romanus Pontifex gave Portugal a legal justification for applying to the Atalntic and its sea-lanes beyond Bojador the principles of mare clausum. The 1475-9 War of Succession between Portugal and Castile saw openign fight between the two rivals in the Atlantic Africa, and in these waters the Portuguese had the upper hand - in 1478 they captured a fleet of thirty- five Castilian caravels. In 1480 Afonso V ordered that any foreign vessel found in claim monopoly would be seized. Meanwhile, at the Treaty of Alcaçovas (*) in 1479, Portugal secured Castile´s exclusive right to most of it´s claims beyond Cape Bojador. In return Lisboa acknowledged Castile´s exclusive right to the Canaries and the conquest of Granada -as a result of the War of Spanish Succession, Portugal gains hegemony in the Atlantic.
Portugal´s claims regarding Atalntic Africa were reconfirmed by Pope Sixtus IV in the bull Aeterni Regis in 1481.
However, Luso -Castilians tensions flared again after Columbus´s voyage. The Catholic kings obtained the Inter Caetera in 1493. Some hard diplomatic bargaining followed and produced a new agreement - the famous Treaty of Tordesillas; for Portugal and Spain, Tordesilhas became a basic charter of empire, defining their respective spheres of "conquest" and influence well into the 18th century.
The Treaty gave João II Castilan recognition of his monopoly claims, both to action in Atlantic Africa and to control the Cape route to India. In summary, virtually from tis first tentative steps to road to overseas expansion, Portugal was confronted by the challenge of foreign competition.

(*)

[zedestroyer]

I've wondered this as well, say if Genoa HAD given Columbus the tools to go exploring. But I still think Spain would've overtaken them, simply because they controlled the only point from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Well, other than through the Red Sea and around Africa, but I'm not sure Columbus would've been too keen to take that route.



Because Portugal never did anything with it, in terms of becoming a European power. Besides Brazil and a few far-flung colonies in the east, they never created large scale colonial empires like the Spanish in Mexico and South America or the English and French in North America. Nor did they have the effect on mainland Europe like England, Spain or France. Simply put, they were too unimportant to really mention in a gaming forum. It's not ignorance, just nobody cares. Besides, this is a hypothetical scenario, no need to get your undies in a bunch.

Portuguese Empire - 10.4 million km2 (1815)
United States of America - 9.67 million km2 (1899)
Ottoman Empire - 6.9 million km2 (1595)
Roman Empire - 6.5 million km2 (117)
Macedonian Empire - 5.2 million km2 (323 BC)

Yes ... the Portuguese Empire was a very little and unimportant Empire ...

When someone don't know nothing about what he is talking about ... it's best to stay quiet instead of saying nonsenses ...

[Lebre]

Indeed, inform yourself before posting such crap

[Knight of Heaven]

last roman you are amazing, i even dont know what to say.. realy. I undestand that some people might be a litle ferverous in ther arguments, but facts are the facts. You should get your facts right, as well your generosity.
It is only game, is right, it should be for everybody.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Not to beat a dead horse here, but geographic positioning was the key. The Iberian powers were very jealous of their colonial dominance, and so was Britain after them. Given that Venice was very far away from any significant Atlantic ports, it would have been extremely difficult to receive a significant volume of trade or give any protection towards colonies in Asia or the Middle East.

Geographic positioning is also one of the chief reasons why great naval powers such as Denmark also had a marginal participation in American colonization, at best.

[Ludicus]

Geographic positioning was the key

Indeed. Virtually all maritime empires started by Atlantic side-states.

[Alhamar]

Not to beat a dead horse here, but geographic positioning was the key. The Iberian powers were very jealous of their colonial dominance, and so was Britain after them. Given that Venice was very far away from any significant Atlantic ports, it would have been extremely difficult to receive a significant volume of trade or give any protection towards colonies in Asia or the Middle East.

Geographic positioning is also one of the chief reasons why great naval powers such as Denmark also had a marginal participation in American colonization, at best.

Redundant i think