Paging Harry Turtledove: What if it had been the Catalans?

When did the Italian Renaissance end? You might say the “The Sack of Rome” in 1527, or the beginning of the Roman Inquisition in 1542. Kenneth Bartlett in his superb lecture series isn't really transfixed by nny particular date: he's more disposed to the perspective of long, slow decline. But he does offer one provocative takeaway: it was he Spaniards wot done—more precisely, the Castilians, the men on horseback, the feudal lords who trailed in with the baggage of Hapsburg Emperor Charles V. These guys had exactly no interest in all the things that had made Italy great: commerce, intellectual curiosity, free discussion, a sense of res publica. The Italians quickly grasped that the jig was up: better not to make waves, accept the inevitable and settle into a mode of risk-averse mediocrity.

It's a theory worth considering, and I would like to like it to another bit of idle speculation. Note these were not Spaniards we're talking about here; they were Castilians—inland farmers with a tradition of soldiering and religion. How different from the Catalans on the Mediterranean cost, with their long tradition of enterprise and commerce. I've often wondered what would have happened had it been the Catalans and not the Castilians and not the Catalans who had conquered Central and South America. The standard mantra says it was “capitalism” that destroyed the New World, but I wonder if it might be just the opposite—whether the very absence of capitalism that led to an encounter so destructive to the victims.