Genoese and Florentine merchants dominated Europe’s backward regions through trade
Evidence
Fernand Braudel has written: “The commercial activity of the sea, concentrating more and more in the West, tipped the balance, spelling the inexorable decline of the eastern basin which had for so long been the source of wealth. The shift brought little joy to Milan, but brought Genoa and Florence to prominence. Genoa for her share, and a lion’s share it was, acquired the Spanish and American trade… . In the second half of the century, Genoa took the lead… . Foreign catchment was the most important, and it was by this means that Florence and Genoa gained control of all the economically backward regions, whether in Eastern Europe or southern Italy, in the Balkans, France, or the Iberian peninsula.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1822
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Supports the book’s central claim that Italian merchant capital founded Atlantic capitalism.
Related
- Genoese and Florentine capital dominated Europe’s backward regions. (similarity 0.91)
- Sixteenth-century commercial power shifted west to Genoa and Florence (similarity 0.88)
- Italian merchant capitalism preceded and colonized the Iberian economies (similarity 0.82)
- Genoese and Italian capitalists bankrolled the Portuguese slave-trading empire (similarity 0.80)
- Italian capitalist networks enabled the Portuguese Empire and its slave trade (similarity 0.80)
- Columbus’s voyages were the financial project of Genoese merchant capital (similarity 0.79)
- Genoese bankers displaced by Ottoman advance financed Iberian Atlantic exploration (similarity 0.79)
- Venetian and Genoese wealth depended on trade with Muslim powers. (similarity 0.79)
- Cosmopolitan immigrant merchant groups dominated early European finance and mining (similarity 0.79)
- Italian merchant capital was indispensable to the birth of the Portuguese Empire (similarity 0.79)
- Italian merchant city-states emerged from crusade logistics into commercial trade (similarity 0.78)
- Genoa pioneered medieval credit finance and became the world’s leading financial city (similarity 0.78)
- Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Italian colonial systems in the Mediterranean foreshadowed Iberian and Dutch empires
#expands(0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1841 - Genoese credit machinery made Genoa the world’s leading financial city in the sixteenth century
#expands(0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1840 - Italian capitalist networks enabled the Portuguese Empire and its slave trade
#expands(0.55) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 538 - Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism
#expands(0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556 - Genoese merchant families supplied Portugal with admirals from 1317 onward
#expands(0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1808