Genoese mercantile power in Iberia depended on state patronage, not independence

Evidence

Here was a resourceful community whose very existence rested on the persistence of its interdependence with the state. The colonial trade that the Genoese (and Italian) community dominated, the capital that it commanded, the inventory of science and culture that it possessed, all were Spanish at the pleasure of the state—no matter how independently powerful and significant they might appear to be. And for the moment it was the state’s pleasure to balance the Italians (and also—but not for long—the Jews) against its own bourgeoisie and its still militaristic aristocracy. Columbus’s luck was holding. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 551

Categorization

• XREF: Shows merchant capital’s dependence on the state, echoing the book’s earlier treatment of European merchant-capitalist versus feudal relations and paralleling the reader’s interest in how state power shaped the slave economy.