Columbus and the others: The historiographic and schoolbook image of the Italian navigators

Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, from early explorations of the Atlantic to Columbus, Vespucci, Caboto and Verrazzano, Italian navigators made a decisive contribution to the discovery of the new worlds. Then and afterwards, they were celebrated, especially by their cities of origin, and the importance of their exploits immediately became clear. However, they had carried them out in the service of the great European monarchies outside Italy, and right at the moment when the independence of the states of the Italian peninsula went into crisis and a long phase of economic and cultural decline began. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the authors of the great historiographical syntheses that would shape for a long time a widely shared image of the history of Italy (Denina, Balbo, Cantù) evaluated in negative terms the consequences for Italy of the geographical discoveries. Such a judgment was resumed in the school manuals that, after unification, had to provide for the historical education of the new generations of Italians. In the primary school textbooks produced by the fascist regime, the image of the navigators changed: their enterprises were presented as the link between the maritime power of the Roman Empire and the colonial and imperial ambitions of fascism. Global history is now putting in crisis the traditional reading of the great discoveries from the viewpoint of the nation-states, and enhances the Italian contribution to the Age of Encounters regardless of its identification with a nation-state. This essay tries to clarify the process of formation and diffusion of the classical interpretation that today is being questioned, and ends by underlining the multiple identities of the great navigators, from Columbus to Caboto, now as then sons of many homelands.