ABSTRACT
Italian influence in Iberian colonization starts with the period during which Italian convoy navigation was growing really important, i.e., the fourteenth century. Many features, characteristic of the economic and colonial activity of the Iberian nations, can only be understood when their connection and resemblance with Italian precedents is kept in mind. As the Genoese colonies in the eastern part of the Mediterranean were waning, they became interested still more in the growing Iberian imperium, in Africa. The part of the Genoese in the colonization of Tenerife in the Canarian archipelago has been studied very in an excellent paper by Senorita Manuela Marrero. The Itahan convoy navigation was, during the whole of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of the foremost significance for Spain and Portugal. Whenever Italians entered into a company with Spaniards, they invested more money than the latter. Hence they succeeded in getting still more control over colonial trade.
