ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the attempts at trans-oceanic expansion made during the seventeenth century in two Italian states the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Republic of Genoa. Even though Genoese and Tuscan merchants had been involved in trans-oceanic trade from the very beginning of the Iberian expansion overseas, as the lives of Columbus and Vespucci show, their activities were first supported by their home states only in some specific moments of the seventeenth century. Chief among them were the Grand Dukes themselves and part of the political elite of the Republic of Genoa, who tried to develop trans-oceanic trade in order to enhance the political importance of their respective states. Nevertheless, in Tuscany and Genoa there were different ways to diffuse and discuss economic ideas. The situation in Tuscany was quite different: in contrast to Genoa, there was no public debate on economic policy, as the Medicis strove to censor it.
