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THE ITALIAN LEGACY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
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youthful years, and the Portuguese and Castilian experiences, as having taken place in the shadow of the factions
present for centuries in this and other European and non-European Courts—essentially the big-business lobby,
as in the Court of Queen Isabella—whose members constantly faced off with each other in Genoa but who
were responsible for both internal political management and public debt administration through the powerful
Banco di San Giorgio, which subsidized the State, and the conception of variables to be implemented within
the framework of a global strategy that was constantly being modernized and restructured. Since the eleventh
century, the deep involvement of both lay and religious people within an elite willing to migrate temporarily or
permanently together with the key technicians and workers, and the people who accompanied them, was quite
palpable. These were groups and individuals operating at risk, but who knew that they could benefit from social
and economic protection at all levels through vertical and horizontal solidarity.
Columbus’s bond with them, and their family branches naturalized elsewhere, served as a model that lasted
through time. This formula or
modus operandi
, which made the family the axis of Genoa’s political, economic and
social system, was quickly consolidated with the creation of the “albergo”
3
an institution that continued to be the
basic structure of the political-institutional variants of this city-State and that was also proposed in the manage-
ment of the Banco di San Giorgio. This was the reality that framed Columbus’s experience.
Columbus (Colombo) was born in Genoa in 1451. His family originated in the lands of the powerful Fieschi,
who were continually present in their lives. His father Domenico, the son of Giovanni de Moconesi de Fon-
tanabuona, who moved to Quinto (Genoa), was a wool weaver and also guardian of the Porta dell’Olivella in
the town of Santo Stefano; a few years later he moved to Porta Soprana, which became, after various events, the
permanent residence of the family. Columbus’s mother, Susanna Fontanarossa, was originally fromVal Bisagno.
Christopher had four siblings: Giovanni Pellegrino, Bartolomeo (Bartholomew), Giacomo (later Diego), and
Bianchinetta. According to a very common custom in all social circles of the Genoese and Ligurian area, and
although he learned the first rudiments of crafts in the family environment, he embarked when still very young.
Despite the meager information available about his youth—spent partly in Genoa and partly in Savona, where
his family moved between the 1470s and 1480s—records indicate that he sailed throughout the Mediterranean
and areas of the Atlantic that were closest to the continent.
Columbus’s activities, directed by the needs of the Genoese international network, continuously ranged be-
tween war and trade—from the island of Chios, in Genoese hands until 1566, to Flanders. In the disputes of the
time, in which the great Genoese and Ligurian families (including the della Rovere and Cibo families, to which
the pontiff of that time belonged) played an important role, Columbus participated in military activities on the
Angevin-Aragonese front lines before reaching Portugal perhaps in 1476, if not earlier. The last document record-
ing Columbus’s presence in Genoa, briefly involving a matter with regard to a Madeiran sugar shipment between
the great Centurion and Negro clans, dates from August 25, 1479.
Thereafter, the rest of his life would be linked to the Iberian Peninsula, where for centuries a noteworthy Ge-
noese and Ligurian presence made itself known through hundreds of renowned and other families. Among other
examples, beginning in 1317, the Pessagno family played a very important role in connecting different powers,
controlling the Portuguese Admiralty and the maritime activity of twenty so-called “experts of the sea,” which
contributed to the cooperation of the Genoese and Portuguese in the enterprises of “discovery” and Atlantic col-
onization. In Lisbon, Columbus met up with his brother Bartholomew and with many of his friends, well-known
Genoese protégés, who were also present in the contiguous Andalusian zone and in the Atlantic islands, where
they focused principally on the monopoly of the sugar market and the slave trade.
Records indicating voyages to Iceland (1477), Madeira (1478-79), and the Elmina Castle along the Gulf of
Guinea (1482) date back to this period. In 1479, Columbus married Felipa—the daughter of Bartolomeo Pere-
strelo, originally from Piacenza, a member of the Order of Santiago and a “donatary captain” from Porto Santo—
who bore their son Diego. It was during these years in the late 15
th
century, when the Portuguese expeditions to
the African coast were being carried out and colonization of the Atlantic islands was under way, that Columbus,
between ocean navigation studies and trips from the far north to Guinea, developed his project of searching for