Thornton expedition
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 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 Italian attempt to create a colony in the Americas.[1]
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.[2]
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.[3]
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 natives and tropical parrots.[4]
The area that Thornton considered as a possible site of an Italian colony now lies in modern French Guyana, near Cayenne,[5] which would be colonised by France in 1630.
Modern Italian "colonies"
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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.
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 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.
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 emigrants settled and created the Colonia Tovar (unluckily their ship sank in the Mediterranean).[6]
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 of Brazil (Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul).
In most of those "colonies" the Italian language (and dialects) is still spoken in our days: like in Capitán Pastene[7] of Chile, in Chipilo of Mexico or in Nova Veneza of Santa Catarina (where it is spoken the Talian of Brasil).
None of these "colonies" are related to the Italian colonial empire of the 20th century.
References
- ^ Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile, in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, pp. 1-18
- ^ 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.
- ^ Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile, in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, p. 12
- ^ Mirabilia et naturalia (in Italian)
- ^ Ridolfi, R. Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile p. 14
- ^ Marisa Vannini. Italia y los Italianos en la historia y en la cultura de Venezuela. Oficina Central de Información (Ministerio del Interior). Caracas, 1966
- ^ History and photos of Capitan Pastene
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