Columbus was Genoese
Even if he wasn't from Genoa
Sorry for the misleading title, which follows the news that a study of Christopher Columbus’ DNA has revealed that he was in fact a Sephardic Jew, but (according to the TV documentary that announced the study) they still don’t definitively know where he was from.
Good, that means that he will remain forever Genoese.
The reason why lies in geography, and that’s what I’m really writing about this time around (the old walking-to-explain thing). A couple of weekends ago I was up in the coastal massif just to the west of Genoa, a UNESCO geological place called the Beigua. I was up there with my wife, the dogs, my son and his friend, and we took advantage of some glorious sunshine to tramp up and down a couple of hills.
At the top of one I asked the two boys what the view told them about Italy. They said ‘sea and mountains’, and that was accurate enough. What we were looking at from up in the clouds was Italy’s forbidding geography.
For a start the view boasted mountains and sea, and almost nothing in between. We could see Genoa off to the east, and Savona off to the west, but both were squashed into the flat little bits of land up the steep river valleys, as though they were made of Play Doh. Even Genoa’s airport and the container port are built on little islands just off shore; there is no other room.
As soon as you leave the sea you hit uncompromising slopes. Train tracks and motorways were a mess of tunnels and bridges. (There are over 100 tunnels between Genoa and the French border.) You may remember back to that terrible August in 2018 when one of the bridges collapsed - I wrote several pieces back then detailing why this choked a city that struggled with its geography. (Here’s one from Sky News and a radio piece for BBC From Our Own Correspondent.) In that struggle, Genoa knows it will always be second best.
On the plus-side, this brutal geography does tend to make Italy look spectacular. On the minus-side, it makes life tough. The Po valley is just about it for large scale prime agricultural land, and it’s never had much coal or other sources of mineral wealth. But if you want your land to explode or break open, Italy’s volcanos and earthquake zones are here to help. Rain tends to fall all at once or not at all, meaning forest fires, droughts and floods, often in the same place in a short space of time.
Face it: Italy is a tough place to build a country, and Genoa - despite its stunning setting - is a tougher place than most.
The single most remarkable thing about Genoese history is that around 1,000 years ago the residents faced a harsh choice: continue to be bossed around by this geography, living on the margins, harrassed and raided for slaves, or come out fighting.
They came out fighting.
In this they were not unlike the Venetians, who were stuck on a clutch of marshy islands in a lagoon. Both the Genoese and Venetians had been hardened by their life in such marginal lands, and when they decided to come out and fight, they did it to win.
They wedded their seafaring knowledge to ruthless determination, a sharp eye for money, and sheer opportunism. At around this time new connections were being forged between nodes in the early medieval economy, for instance connecting manufacturing centres in Tuscany with wool from Flanders and England. The intrepid galley-traders of Genoa and Venice were an essential part of that.
They also turned east and connected the European economy with what became known as the Silk Roads, bringing wares from across Asia to the shores of the Levant and Black Sea. The Black Death came to Europe when the Genoese trading colony at Caffa was beseiged by a Mongol army that was suffering from plague. Some escaped, but they infected Constantinople, Messina and Genoa. Then it spread.
Neither Genoa nor Venice built its success on a belief in universal human rights or flower collecting. Titanic figures like Admiral Andrea Doria1 wrestled Barbary corsairs and took no prisoners. There was brutality and thuggery, and they both flourished, at least for a time.
The shift of trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and beyond meant the Genoese had to reinvent themselves to keep their heads above the waves. It pioneered banking, because the Habsburgs needed their Andean silver turned into money to pay soldiers fighting in the Spanish Netherlands. Centuries later the Suez canal reopened interest in the Mediterreanean, and the British arrived, turning Genoa into a thriving maritime service centre. They also brought football: Genoa Cricket and Football Club were Italy’s first champions (they’re still hanging on in Serie A with their curious anglicised name).
All of this explains why Christopher Columbus was Genoese. He is as one with this tradition, good and bad-going-on-downright-nasty. He was ruthlessness in a boat, hard as nails and determined to win.2 If you go for a hike up on the Beigua, and you should, you’ll see why. 3
The only Admiral that I know of who gave his name to a football team, Sampdoria. It was formed from a merger of two Genoese clubs, Andrea Doria and Sampierdarenese.
'determined to win’ - not something that can often be said of the city’s two football clubs.
Or buy my first book, “Genoa La Superba: the rise and fall of a merchant pirate superpower”.