Europeanization of America

No other region of the world in human history has experienced greater and more sustained Europeanization than that of the Americas, which includes South and North America as well as Central America and the Caribbean. Europeanization began in 1492 through the discoveries and conquests of the Genoese sailor and merchant in Castilian service, Christopher Columbus. The discovery of America was the consequence of Portuguese and Castilian expansion in the southern Atlantic of West Africa, with the pioneers of this expansion mostly being Genoese, Florentines and Sephardic Jews. The costs of these projects were borne by Genoese and Florentine banks such as the Banco di San Giorgio and the Banco Cambini in Genoa or the Banco di Medici in Florence. Their pay included expansionists like Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci or slave traders like Bartolomeo Marchionni and Juanoto Berardi. There were also various other investors and investor groups, for example the Centurione, the Di Negro and the Spinola, who were also based in Genoa, or Sephardic and New Christian investors from Castile and Aragon, e.g. Luís de Santangel, Gabriel Sánchez or Abraham Senior.

The long and particularly strenuous journeys across the Atlantic were the result of the scientific revolution in seafaring triggered by the European Renaissance. The new knowledge of astronomy, physics and cartography was responsible for the invention of new nautical instruments, new types of shipbuilding, new types of sails and new maps. The shipyards of Venice and Genoa produced ships on an assembly line for the first time, and a new worker culture shaped the production conditions. This European modernity of the seas encountered the ancient and still-medieval, feudal and Catholic structures of the Iberian Peninsula and shaped the dimensions of the Europeanization of the Americas for the next 250 years.

Project management:
Christian Cwik

Project employee:
Verena Muth

Funding provider:
University of Graz - Funding from the “1/2020 start-up funding” call as part of the profile-building area “Dimensions of Europeanization”