I can actually answer this one! Well, maybe part of it, anyway. My current thesis research is dealing with the early part of Europe’s colonization efforts with regards to the American continents up to the end of the sixteenth century. After that, I’ll tell you what I know, but hopefully someone else can chime in with more detailed stuff regarding the seventeenth century and later. I’ll also try to answer your original question first, and then move on to subquestions, e.g. why an economic powerhouse like Venice didn’t snatch up some of the spoils for itself.

I’ll start with everyone’s favorite date from grade school, 1492. Yes, one Genoese navigator/pilot extraordinaire with Spanish financial support led a mission to the Orient that went horrendously and magnificently awry. After Columbus’ return to his Roman Catholic patrons, they turned to the pope (himself a Spaniard and later Assassin’s Creed villain, Alexander VI) to lock those spoils down for the Iberian powers: Aragon, Castile, and Portugal. Alexander passed a papal bull that was reinforced by an international treaty (Treaty of Tordesillas) and pre-Reformation Europe kept on with its affairs.

Now instead of the rest of Europe telling the pope to suck one or contesting Iberia’s claim, everyone was pretty much pleased as punch to allow this. There are two main reasons that help explain this. One is that the “discovery” of the New World did not shake the foundations of European cosmology overnight. Rather it was this same foundation (read: Aristotle, Ptolemy) that resisted the acceptance of these continents at all. The second is that other European nations would still make a hell of a lot of money off of American goods, even if they went through Iberian hands first. One such contented nation and reason I’m not typing in Spanish or French right now, was England.

England dominated trade in the North Atlantic even before the Columbian voyages. Its ports carried money and goods to and from the Baltic, the North Atlantic, Iberia, and all the connections between and beyond. After its best trading partner and competitor laid claim to an entire new world of riches, English merchants were thrilled. This encapsulates Act One of our story: America’s reveal to Europe and the European response. This more-or-less contentment lasted until the next great event in generalizing history books: the Protestant Reformation.

The Reformation is another topic for another time. Suffice it to say that after Henry VIII’s split with Rome and his daughter’s (Elizabeth I) continuation of that tradition, old papal bulls and Catholic-friendly treaties didn’t have the same appeal as they did half a century prior.

My thesis deals with Elizabeth’s next actions, so I’m boiling them down to bones to save time and stay on track, though I’m certain I’ve failed at both by now. Elizabeth sponsored or encouraged a number of piratical voyages to the New World under such famous rogues as John Hawkins and Francis Drake. As these missions got more serious and more successful, English coffers swelled as England and her rival, a now-united Spain under King Philip II, came to blows with the Spanish Armada fiasco of 1588.

Drake, apple of the queen’s eye and thesis subject, won great fame for robbing the Spanish before the Armada invasion and gallantly defending the motherland during the invasion. On a previous voyage, his circumnavigation of the globe in 1577-80, he made landfall around what we now think is San Francisco Bay, though the place is still debated (again, another topic, another time). Some historians say that this push toward colonization remains Drake’s most historically significant action. I think these historians are wrong for many reasons, one of which is that it was not a colony, just a rest stop on the world’s longest road trip. In any case, England is kind of, sort of, maybe-just-maybe, thinking about staying in the Americas more permanently.

Drake’s final mission in 1595-96 was to explore that possibility further: he was tapped by the queen to rob some Spaniards, carve out a chunk of land in Panama, and start the first permanent English colony in the New World. Suffice it to say that “appalling failure” only scratches the surface of this venture, and England would not get her grips into the Americas until Jamestown’s founding in 1607.

Thus ends my analysis. Spain and Portugal dominated for so long because it didn’t bother anyone, but once the Reformation created a rift through the continent, Iberia’s power was contested. England was the first to found a colony, but French Huguenot corsairs has been striking at Spanish treasure for decades, and Dutch pirates/rebels had been giving Spain grief abroad AND at home in Europe. As Spanish control was contested and the other great powers of Europe realized that Spain lacked the necessary force to secure their assets in the New World, these other powers moved in on American territory. Like I said, I hope someone else can chime in after this point, but I hope that helps explain the beginnings of European colonization. On to your subquestions!

Why didn’t Venice get involved? Venice was a great European power, so why not stake a claim of its own in America?

Part of this question has already been answered with my assertion that the rest of Europe was content to let Iberia dominate the Americas because profit would spread out anyway. The second part, however, has more to do with Italy during the Renaissance in military and economic terms.

Since you asked specifically about Venice as an example, I’m sure you recognize that there was no united Italy, but several different (and often conflicting) city-states. Therein lies part of the answer to Italy’s issues with colonization: they had no extra state funding to spend on global pursuits if a) money was wrapped up in buying mercenary armies to fight their neighbors and b) we want to avoid pissing off the pope: Catholic Church figurehead, Spanish native, and pretty much every Italian’s next-door neighbor. So state funding is out of the question. However, Italy’s real wealth didn’t come from an especially savvy centralized government (or several, given the fractured state of the area). Its wealth lay in successful individual merchants, many of whom, contrary to your assertion in your question, were DIRECTLY involved in New World colonization. We’ve mentioned the two most famous of them already: Columbus, our Genoese explorer, and Amerigo Vespucci, the man who gave his name to two whole continents. How generous of him.

Vespucci and Columbus had a lot in common. Owing no real loyalty to their homelands (Florence and Genoa, respectively), they lobbied their services out to influential and rich patrons. Columbus’ venture, for example, could not have been more well-timed. Ferdinand and Isabela had just used the combined might of their kingdoms to oust to Moors from Europe, completing the Reconquista at Grenada in, you guessed it, 1492. After Columbus’ discovery and subsequent fall from grace, Vespucci used his previously existing contacts in Iberia to pilot a similar mission for a pair of all-too-eager Spanish monarchs.

Italy’s business ventures and main source of wealth were tied to Iberia’s success long before Columbus’ plan came to fruition. By Vespucci’s time, for instance, there was already a thriving community of Florentines living in one of Europe’s greatest trade hubs: Seville. Italians were responsible for a lot (argument could be made for ALL) of the wealth coming into Europe from the New World. Never great powers in terms of land area but dynamos economically, the Italians continued to thrive in the first global economy under the rules set down by Iberia and Pope Alexander VI.

This has gone on entirely too long to not answer your question completely. I’ll leave it with Italy was too busy/content to be bothered with colonization, nobody wanted to go against a papal bull, and the Reformation was the key event in opening the New World to other European powers. If you have any questions or think I missed anything, let me know! Thank you for reading (if you got this far).

SOURCES/FURTHER READING:

Amerigo, the Man Who Gave His Name to America, by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate, by Harry Kelsey

The Old World and the New, by J. H. Elliott

More, for sure. I’ll add more tomorrow when I’m not in bed/in danger of waking up my fiancé. Complete thesis bibliography available by request. Cheers!