In this episode, we explore one of the most intriguing alternative-history scenarios of the Age of Discovery: what if Christopher Columbus had been financed not by Spain or Portugal, but by Florence—the city of bankers, merchants, Renaissance thinkers, and the Medici?

Instead of a New World shaped first by a conquering monarchy, America begins to develop under the influence of a commercial, urban, and financially driven republic. From 1500 to 1800, we follow how Florentine trading posts, port cities, banking networks, and Renaissance culture might have created a very different Atlantic world—one built less on crowns and feudal conquest, and more on contracts, capital, urban institutions, and mercantile power.

But this is not a gentler history. Florentine America would still face violence, disease, slavery, rivalry with Europe’s great  ...