The City: A Global History (Modern Library Chronicles Series Book 21) by Joel Kotkin Page B
Authors: Joel Kotkin
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material resources. This proved their undoing. For all their artistic and commercial genius, the Italians lacked the collective will that might have allowed them to ward off the new challengers.
Late Renaissance Italy, if united, was home to 13 million people, a population second only to that of France and more than 50 percent greater than Spain’s. But Italy’s rulers lacked the enlightened self-interest necessary to unite against foreign foes. Instead, as Machiavelli noted in the beginning of the sixteenth century, they “only thought of fleeing instead of defending themselves.” 28
Over time, the city-states also lacked the manpower to protect their trade lifelines, overseas possessions, and ultimately their own independence. As early as the thirteenth century, Venice had to rely largely on Greeks and Catalonians to man their fleets. 29 The plagues that devastated Europe throughout the Renaissance hit the densely packed, trade-dependent Italian cities particularly hard; between the mid-fourteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the populations of Milan, Venice, Florence, and Genoa were reduced by roughly half. 30
These cities recovered less quickly from pestilence than others that could draw on a large agricultural hinterland. Their depleted armies, made up largely of foreign mercenaries, could not match the superior forces of imperial powers such as Spain and France. Slowly, the city-states were swallowed up by these powers. Venice managed to hold on to its independence but was forced to cede parts of its own far-flung archipelago of possessions in the eastern Mediterranean. 31
THE IBERIAN ASCENDANCY
The position of the city-states was further eroded by dramatic changes in the pattern of world trade. Burning with Christian passion after their successful defeat of the Moors, the newly emergent nations of Portugal and Spain burst forth onto the oceans, starting in the fifteenth century, with an almost messianic frenzy. They opened up new, alluring markets that would eventually undermine the trade routes long dominated by the Italians and their partners.
Tiny Portugal, a backward and impoverished country with barely a million people, delivered the first crushing blow. Portuguese sailors began to reach westward to the Azores by the 1440s and soon were building colonies along the West African coastline. With Vasco da Gama’s arrival in Calicut in 1498, the tiny nation opened routes around Africa to Asia that threatened the long-standing Italian monopoly over the lucrative spice trade.
Another critical event took place in 1509, a decade before the conquest of Tenochtitlán, when a small Portuguese fleet defeated a large Muslim armada at Diu, outside Gujerat in India. From then on, the control of world trade, and the future of the cities, fell inexorably out of the control of Arabs, Chinese, and other peoples and into the hands of the Portuguese and Spaniards. 32
The brutual conquest by Spain and Portugal of the “New World” in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries further undermined Italian commercial preeminence. More and more, the route to riches for ambitious Italians lay in working for the Iberian monarchs. Italians like Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and Giovanni da Verrazano ranked among the earliest explorers of the vast new domains. The new continents would eventually be named for the explorer Amerigo Vespucci, a onetime agent for the Medici financial interests in Florence.
By the seventeenth century, Lisbon, insignificant just two hundred years earlier, had emerged as a major city, the leading port and administrative center for Portugal’s far-flung empire. With a population of more than one hundred thousand, Lisbon now took on airs of a great imperial capital, influencing events on a global scale. 33
In Spain, newly acquired riches accelerated the growth of the port of Seville as well as the capital cities of Valladolid and, later, Madrid. Conquests within Europe, both in Italy
Late Renaissance Italy, if united, was home to 13 million people, a population second only to that of France and more than 50 percent greater than Spain’s. But Italy’s rulers lacked the enlightened self-interest necessary to unite against foreign foes. Instead, as Machiavelli noted in the beginning of the sixteenth century, they “only thought of fleeing instead of defending themselves.” 28
Over time, the city-states also lacked the manpower to protect their trade lifelines, overseas possessions, and ultimately their own independence. As early as the thirteenth century, Venice had to rely largely on Greeks and Catalonians to man their fleets. 29 The plagues that devastated Europe throughout the Renaissance hit the densely packed, trade-dependent Italian cities particularly hard; between the mid-fourteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the populations of Milan, Venice, Florence, and Genoa were reduced by roughly half. 30
These cities recovered less quickly from pestilence than others that could draw on a large agricultural hinterland. Their depleted armies, made up largely of foreign mercenaries, could not match the superior forces of imperial powers such as Spain and France. Slowly, the city-states were swallowed up by these powers. Venice managed to hold on to its independence but was forced to cede parts of its own far-flung archipelago of possessions in the eastern Mediterranean. 31
THE IBERIAN ASCENDANCY
The position of the city-states was further eroded by dramatic changes in the pattern of world trade. Burning with Christian passion after their successful defeat of the Moors, the newly emergent nations of Portugal and Spain burst forth onto the oceans, starting in the fifteenth century, with an almost messianic frenzy. They opened up new, alluring markets that would eventually undermine the trade routes long dominated by the Italians and their partners.
Tiny Portugal, a backward and impoverished country with barely a million people, delivered the first crushing blow. Portuguese sailors began to reach westward to the Azores by the 1440s and soon were building colonies along the West African coastline. With Vasco da Gama’s arrival in Calicut in 1498, the tiny nation opened routes around Africa to Asia that threatened the long-standing Italian monopoly over the lucrative spice trade.
Another critical event took place in 1509, a decade before the conquest of Tenochtitlán, when a small Portuguese fleet defeated a large Muslim armada at Diu, outside Gujerat in India. From then on, the control of world trade, and the future of the cities, fell inexorably out of the control of Arabs, Chinese, and other peoples and into the hands of the Portuguese and Spaniards. 32
The brutual conquest by Spain and Portugal of the “New World” in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries further undermined Italian commercial preeminence. More and more, the route to riches for ambitious Italians lay in working for the Iberian monarchs. Italians like Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and Giovanni da Verrazano ranked among the earliest explorers of the vast new domains. The new continents would eventually be named for the explorer Amerigo Vespucci, a onetime agent for the Medici financial interests in Florence.
By the seventeenth century, Lisbon, insignificant just two hundred years earlier, had emerged as a major city, the leading port and administrative center for Portugal’s far-flung empire. With a population of more than one hundred thousand, Lisbon now took on airs of a great imperial capital, influencing events on a global scale. 33
In Spain, newly acquired riches accelerated the growth of the port of Seville as well as the capital cities of Valladolid and, later, Madrid. Conquests within Europe, both in Italy
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