Genoese bankers financier financed Columbus’s voyages by leveraging state ties

Evidence

This would, of course, imply that the Genoese families, their joint-stock companies, and their banks were in the habit of exchanging or sharing information that might be of value to their commercial interests. Whatever the case might be, Columbus did find something of value in Seville: … 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