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The Thornton expedition was a 1608 Tuscan expedition under Captain Robert Thornton, an Englishman, sent by Ferdinando I of Tuscany to explore northern Brazil and the Amazon River and prepare for the establishment of a settlement in northern coastal South America, which would serve as a base to export Brazilian wood to Renaissance Italy. The area that Thornton considered as a possible site of a Tuscan colony now lies in modern French Guiana, near Cayenne,^[1] which would be colonised by France in 1630. The expedition was the only attempt by an Italian state to colonise the Americas.^[2]

The Amazon region had been previously visited by numerous European explorers and traders over the course of the preceding century. Robert Harcourt sailed for Guiana in 1608, establishing an English base on the Oyapock River which lasted a few years.^[3] William Davies, a surgeon on the Thornton expedition noted that they expected to find the Amazon by sailing south from the West Indies until "...you shall see the Sea change to a ruddie colour, the water shall grow fresh, by these signes you may run boldly your course [sic]."^[4]

Sailing from Livorno in September 1608, Thornton returned to the same port in the end of June 1609, reportedly completing the voyage without losing a man.^[5] He brought back with him to Tuscany five or six natives, most of whom died of smallpox. Only one lived on at the Medici court for several years, and learned to speak Tuscan.^[5] The natives often talked about the richness and fertility of their native land, speaking of a country rich in silver and gold.^[5] Thornton himself corroborated these reports, and asserted that the country was rich in rosewood, wild sugar canes, white pepper, balsam, cotton and many other kinds of merchandise which would form an abundant commerce for the Tuscans.^[5]

However, once back in Tuscany, Thornton found that Ferdinando I had died, and that his successor Cosimo II was uninterested in the establishment of a colony. Thornton was ready to sail back to the area between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers in the summer of 1609 with Italian settlers from Livorno and Lucca, but the project was scrapped.^[6]

In the first years of the 17th century Ferdinando I of Tuscany evaluated the possibility of a colony in Brasil […] Ferdinando gave captain Thornton a caravelle and a tartane [for an expedition in 1608] […] Thornton sailed for one year: he reached Guyana and Brasil, exploring the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. […] In July 1609 he was back in Livorno, but in February of that year the Grand Duke died and in Florence nobody [after him] was still thinking about establishing an overseas colony.
— Matteo Sanfilippo^[7]

References

^ Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile p. 14
^ Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile, in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, pp. 1-18
^ Hakluytus posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas, volume xvi, 1625, reprinted 1906
^ Amazon Sweet Sea, Nigel J. H. Smith, University of Texas Press, 2002
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d John Temple Leader, Life of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland : Illustrated with letters and documents from original sources, collected by the author, and hitherto inedited (1895)
^ Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile, in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, p. 12
^ Matteo Sanfilippo (2008-06-23). "Gli italiani in Brasile" (in Italian). Archivio Storico dell'Emigrazione Italiana. Retrieved 28 March 2010. Nei primi anni del Seicento Ferdinando I di Toscana ...valuta la possibilità di una colonia brasiliana...Ferdinando fa armare una caravella e una tartana nel porto di Livorno e le affida al capitano Thornton...Thornton naviga per quasi un anno: approda in Guyana e in Brasile, esplora il Rio delle Amazzoni e l'Orinoco, rientra facendo tappa alla Caienna e a Trinidad. Il 12 luglio 1609 è di nuovo a Livorno, ma...il 7 febbraio di quell'anno il granduca è morto e a Firenze non si pensa più alla possibilità di fondare una colonia...oltreoceano.

Bibliography

Franzina, Emilio. Storia dell'emigrazione italiana. Donzelli Editore. Roma, 2002 ISBN 88-7989-719-5
Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile, in «Il Veltro» (luglio-agosto 1962). Roma, 1962
Sanfilippo, Matteo. Gli Italiani in Brasile. Edizioni Sette Citta'. Viterbo, 2008

[1] Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile p. 14

[2] Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile, in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, pp. 1-18

[3] Hakluytus posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas, volume xvi, 1625, reprinted 1906

[4] Amazon Sweet Sea, Nigel J. H. Smith, University of Texas Press, 2002

[jtl-5] John Temple Leader, Life of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland : Illustrated with letters and documents from original sources, collected by the author, and hitherto inedited (1895)

[6] Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile, in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, p. 12

[7] Matteo Sanfilippo (2008-06-23). "Gli italiani in Brasile" (in Italian). Archivio Storico dell'Emigrazione Italiana. Retrieved 28 March 2010. Nei primi anni del Seicento Ferdinando I di Toscana ...valuta la possibilità di una colonia brasiliana...Ferdinando fa armare una caravella e una tartana nel porto di Livorno e le affida al capitano Thornton...Thornton naviga per quasi un anno: approda in Guyana e in Brasile, esplora il Rio delle Amazzoni e l'Orinoco, rientra facendo tappa alla Caienna e a Trinidad. Il 12 luglio 1609 è di nuovo a Livorno, ma...il 7 febbraio di quell'anno il granduca è morto e a Firenze non si pensa più alla possibilità di fondare una colonia...oltreoceano.

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+{{Short description|1608 Italian expedition in South America}}
-[[File:LocationFrenchGuiana.png|thumb|250px|The Italian [[Ferdinando I de' Medici|Ferdinando I]] ordered an expedition in order to create a Tuscan settlement on the territory of modern [[French Guyana]]]]
+{{Expand Italian|Spedizione Thornton|date=March 2021}}
-The '''Italian colonization of the Americas''' was limited to an aborted attempt by the [[Grand Duchy of Tuscany]] to create a colony in [[South America]] in the early 1600s.
-In 1608, [[Ferdinando I de' Medici|Ferdinando I]] of [[Tuscany]] organized an expedition under captain [[Robert Thornton]], in order to explore [[northern Brazil]] and the [[Amazon river]] and prepare for the establishment of a settlement in northern coastal South America, which would serve as a base to export Brazilian wood to [[Renaissance Italy]].
-==Thornton expedition==
-Ferdinando I, Grand Duke of [[Tuscany]], oversaw the only [[Italy|Italian]] attempt to create a colony in the Americas.<ref>Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'', in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, pp. 1-18</ref>
-{{Quote|In the first years of the 17th century Ferdinando I of Tuscany evaluated the possibility of a colony in Brasil […] Ferdinando gave captain Thornton a galleon and a [[tartane]] [for an expedition in 1608] […] Thornton sailed for one year: he reached Guyana and Brasil, exploring the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. […] In July 1609 he was back in [[Leghorn]], but in February of that year the Grand Duke died and in Florence nobody [after him] was still thinking about establishing an overseas colony.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.asei.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=180:gli-italiani-in-brasile-id-parte&catid=65:articoli&Itemid=250 |language=Italian |title=Gli italiani in Brasile |author=Matteo Sanfilippo |date=2008-06-23 |work= |publisher=Archivio Storico dell'Emigrazione Italiana |quote=Nei primi anni del Seicento Ferdinando I di Toscana ...valuta la possibilità di una colonia brasiliana...Ferdinando fa armare una caravella e una tartana nel porto di Livorno e le affida al capitano Thornton...Thornton naviga per quasi un anno: approda in Guyana e in Brasile, esplora il Rio delle Amazzoni e l’Orinoco, rientra facendo tappa alla Caienna e a Trinidad. Il 12 luglio 1609 è di nuovo a Livorno, ma...il 7 febbraio di quell’anno il granduca è morto e a Firenze non si pensa più alla possibilità di fondare una colonia...oltreoceano. |accessdate=28 March 2010}}</ref>}}
-When Thornton returned to Tuscany a year later, he found Ferdinando I dead, and his successor [[Cosimo II]] uninterested in the establishment of a colony. Thornton was ready to sail back to the area between the rivers [[Orinoco]] and Amazon in the summer of 1609 with Italian settlers from [[Livorno]] and [[Lucca]], but the project was scrapped.<ref>Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'', in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, p. 12</ref>
-Thornton's galleon 'Santa Lucia' returned to Italy in 1609 with plenty of information (after exploring the area between [[Trinidad]] and the delta of the Amazon river), some [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|natives]] and tropical parrots.<ref>[http://www.unipi.it/athenet1-14/03/athenet_febbraio2001.pdf Mirabilia et naturalia (in Italian)]</ref>
-The area that Thornton considered as a possible site of an Italian colony now lies in modern [[French Guyana]], near [[Cayenne]],<ref>Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'' p. 14</ref> which would be colonised by France in 1630.
-==Modern Italian "colonies"==
 {{euromericas}}
+[[File:French Guiana in its region.svg|thumb|250px|Ferdinando I ordered an expedition in order to create a Tuscan settlement on the territory of modern [[French Guiana]]]]
-The [[Italians]], like the [[Germans]], never created real colonies in the Americas, and only made territorial colonies in other areas of the world mainly after their political unification in the 19th century.
+The '''Thornton expedition''' was a 1608 Tuscan expedition under Captain Robert Thornton, an Englishman, sent by [[Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany|Ferdinando I]] of [[Grand Duchy of Tuscany|Tuscany]] to explore [[North Region, Brazil|northern Brazil]] and the [[Amazon River]] and prepare for the establishment of a settlement in northern coastal South America, which would serve as a base to export Brazilian wood to [[Italian Renaissance|Renaissance Italy]]. The area that Thornton considered as a possible site of a Tuscan colony now lies in modern [[French Guiana]], near [[Cayenne]],<ref>Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'' p. 14</ref> which would be colonised by France in 1630. The expedition was the only attempt by an [[List of historic states of Italy|Italian state]] to colonise the Americas.<ref>Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'', in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, pp. 1-18</ref>
+The Amazon region had been previously visited by numerous European explorers and traders over the course of the preceding century. [[Robert Harcourt (explorer)|Robert Harcourt]] sailed for Guiana in 1608, establishing an English base on the [[Oyapock|Oyapock River]] which lasted a few years.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=jgsWAAAAYAAJ&dq=robert+harcourt+1608&pg=PA358 Hakluytus posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes], Samuel Purchas, volume xvi, 1625, reprinted 1906</ref> William Davies, a surgeon on the Thornton expedition noted that they expected to find the Amazon by sailing south from the West Indies until "...you shall see the Sea change to a ruddie colour, the water shall grow fresh, by these signes you may run boldly your course {{sic}}."<ref>[http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exsmiama.html Amazon Sweet Sea], Nigel J. H. Smith, University of Texas Press, 2002</ref>
-But many Italians (and similarly Germans) moved to America to live under other flags and created the so called "colonies" of emigrants. Those "colonies" where made by [[Italian diaspora|groups of Italian emigrants]] who settled together in the same place and around the same time, founding a settlement that still exists today in many cases.
+Sailing from [[Livorno]] in September 1608, Thornton returned to the same port in the end of June 1609, reportedly completing the voyage without losing a man.<ref name="jtl">[[John Temple Leader]], [https://archive.org/stream/lifeofsirrobertd00leaduoft/lifeofsirrobertd00leaduoft_djvu.txt ''Life of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland : Illustrated with letters and documents from original sources, collected by the author, and hitherto inedited'' (1895)]</ref> He brought back with him to Tuscany five or six [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|natives]], most of whom died of [[smallpox]]. Only one lived on at the Medici court for several years, and learned to speak [[Tuscan dialect|Tuscan]].<ref name="jtl"/> The natives often talked about the richness and fertility of their native land, speaking of a country rich in silver and gold.<ref name="jtl"/> Thornton himself corroborated these reports, and asserted that the country was rich in rosewood, wild sugar canes, white pepper, balsam, cotton and many other kinds of merchandise which would form an abundant commerce for the Tuscans.<ref name="jtl"/>
-That is the case of the first Italian "colony" of this kind made in [[Venezuela]] by Luigi Castelli, who wanted to settle in the late 1830s Italian emigrants from Tuscany in the same area where a few years later [[German colonization of the Americas|German emigrants]] settled and created the [[Colonia Tovar]] (unluckily their ship sank in the [[Mediterranean]]).<ref>Marisa Vannini. ''Italia y los Italianos en la historia y en la cultura de Venezuela''. Oficina Central de Información (Ministerio del Interior). Caracas, 1966</ref>
+However, once back in Tuscany, Thornton found that Ferdinando I had died, and that his successor [[Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany|Cosimo II]] was uninterested in the establishment of a colony. Thornton was ready to sail back to the area between the [[Orinoco]] and Amazon rivers in the summer of 1609 with Italian settlers from [[Livorno]] and [[Lucca]], but the project was scrapped.<ref>Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'', in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, p. 12</ref>
-Many of these Italian "colonies" were created in the second half of the 19th century, mainly in [[Uruguay]], [[Argentina]], [[Chile]], [[Mexico]] and the [[Southern Region, Brazil|Southern Region of Brazil]] ([[Parana]], [[Santa Catarina]] and [[Rio Grande do Sul]]).
+{{Quote|In the first years of the 17th century Ferdinando I of Tuscany evaluated the possibility of a colony in Brasil […] Ferdinando gave captain Thornton a caravelle and a [[tartane]] [for an expedition in 1608] […] Thornton sailed for one year: he reached Guyana and Brasil, exploring the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. […] In July 1609 he was back in Livorno, but in February of that year the Grand Duke died and in Florence nobody [after him] was still thinking about establishing an overseas colony.|Matteo Sanfilippo<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.asei.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=180:gli-italiani-in-brasile-id-parte&catid=65:articoli&Itemid=250 |language=Italian |title=Gli italiani in Brasile |author=Matteo Sanfilippo |date=2008-06-23 |publisher=Archivio Storico dell'Emigrazione Italiana |quote=Nei primi anni del Seicento Ferdinando I di Toscana ...valuta la possibilità di una colonia brasiliana...Ferdinando fa armare una caravella e una tartana nel porto di Livorno e le affida al capitano Thornton...Thornton naviga per quasi un anno: approda in Guyana e in Brasile, esplora il Rio delle Amazzoni e l’Orinoco, rientra facendo tappa alla Caienna e a Trinidad. Il 12 luglio 1609 è di nuovo a Livorno, ma...il 7 febbraio di quell’anno il granduca è morto e a Firenze non si pensa più alla possibilità di fondare una colonia...oltreoceano. |accessdate=28 March 2010}}</ref>}}
-In most of those "colonies" the [[Italian language]] (and dialects) is still spoken in our days: like in [[Capitán Pastene]]<ref>[http://www.pastenegourmet.cl/ History and photos of Capitan Pastene]</ref> of Chile, in [[Chipilo]] of Mexico or in [[Nova Veneza]] of [[Santa Catarina]] (where it is spoken the [[Talian]] of Brasil).
+==See also==
-None of these "colonies" are related to the [[Italian colonial empire]] of the 20th century.
+* [[Italy and the colonization of the Americas]]
 ==References==
@@ Line 33: / Line 20: @@
 ==Bibliography==
+* Franzina, Emilio. ''Storia dell'emigrazione italiana''. Donzelli Editore. Roma, 2002 {{ISBN|88-7989-719-5}}
-* Franzina, Emilio. ''Storia dell'emigrazione italiana''. Donzelli Editore. Roma, 2002 ISBN 88-7989-719-5
 * Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'', in «Il Veltro» (luglio-agosto 1962). Roma, 1962
 * Sanfilippo, Matteo. ''Gli Italiani in Brasile''. Edizioni Sette Citta'. Viterbo, 2008
+[[Category:1608 in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany]]
-[[es:Colonización italiana de América]]
+[[Category:Exploration of South America]]
-[[it:Colonizzazione italiana delle Americhe]]
+[[Category:Settlement schemes in South America]]
-[[Category:Grand Duchy of Tuscany]]
+[[Category:South American expeditions]]
-[[Category:Colonization of the Americas]]
+[[Category:1608 in South America]]
-[[Category:Settlement schemes]]