Thornton expedition

Ferdinando I Tuscany did an expedition in order to create a small colony in northern Brasil, between the Spanish and Portuguese territories

Italian colonization of the Americas was related to a Grand Duke of Tuscany's tentative in the first years of the XVII century to create a colony in South America.

History

Ferdinando I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, did the only Italian tentative to create a colony in the Americas.

Nei primi anni del Seicento Ferdinando I di Toscana ...valuta la possibilità di una colonia brasiliana. (In the first years of the XVII century Ferdinando I of Tuscany studied the possibility of a colony in Brasil)

Ferdinando I de' Medici organized an expedition in 1608, under captain Thornton, in order to explore northern Brasil and the Amazon river. He wanted to create a colony in that south american area, that would be a "base" for exporting to Renaissance Italy the precious brazilian woods.

But when Robert Thornton returned to Tuscany after one year of travel in South America, he found Ferdinando I dead, and his successor Cosimo II did not wanted to create colonies. Thornton was ready in summer 1609 to sail back to the area between the rivers Orinoco and Amazon with italian colonists from Livorno and Lucca, but all the project was stopped.

Indeed the galeon "Santa Lucia" of Thornton came back to Italy in 1609 with plenty of information (after exploring the area between Trinidad and the delta of the Amazon river) and even with some natives and tropical parrots.

The area that Thornton was going to propose to Ferdinando I as possible site of an Italian colony in the Americas was the actual French Guyana (around Cayenne), that later in 1630 was occupied and colonised by the French.

Modern Italian "colonies"

The Italians, like the Germans, never created real colonies in the Americas, and only made territorial colonies in other areas of the world and mainly after their political unification in the XIX century.

But many Italians 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).

Many of these Italian "colonies" were created in the second half of the XIX century, mainly in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and the south of Brasil.

In most of those "colonies" the Italian language (and dialects) is still spoken in our days: like in Capitán Pastene of Chile, in Chipilo of Mexico or in Nova Veneza of Santa Catarina (where it is spoken the Talian of Brasil).

Furthermore, no one of these "colonies" is related to the Italian Empire of the XX century.

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

See Also

• European colonization of the Americas
• Ferdinando I de' Medici