ABSTRACT
This chapter re-examines the evidence for the conventional wisdom based on the findings, it looks at what happened to the basic impulse behind Genoese crusading, a real taste for overseas holy war. This endeavour engages us in the activities of the best known Genoese of the century, Christopher Columbus. In 1452 the Genoese provided reinforcements to their commercial colony at Pera, across the Golden Horn from Constantinople, a place the Genoese had interests in for nearly two centuries. Records of a commercial dispute originating in Cyprus but adjudicated in Genoa, reveal that in 1441 the important Grimaldi family was actively engaged in the sugar business in Nicosia. The operation involved transporting cane, presumably by mule trains from plantations, to warehouses and a refinery with tin cauldrons in Nicosia. Columbus's endless arguments on the economic benefits to flow to Ferdinand and Isabella from his discoveries was that Castile, Portugal, Aragon, Italy, Sicily and the islands of Portugal.
