Genoese bankers displaced by Ottoman advance financed Iberian Atlantic exploration

Evidence

Italian bankers, much of whose activities were blocked by the Turks, were the financiers for a big part of ocean-borne trade. There was a Genoese commercial colony in Seville and local links with the Italian banking house of Spinola and Di Negri, Columbus’s old employer. Francesco Pinelli, a Genoese banker of Seville and co-director of the Santa Hermandad, the Spanish state police, guaranteed a loan for the Columbus plan. Pinelli’s fellow police director was none other than Luis de Santangel, the royal treasurer. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 548

Categorization

• XREF: Supports Robinson’s thesis that Italian merchant capital, disrupted by the Ottoman eastward thrust, was redirected westward and financed the slave trade system.
• CANDY: The financiers of Columbus — including a banker who co-directed the Spanish state police — make a striking light conversation fact.