The Italian city-states united as the Kingdom of Italy in the 19th century and established colonies of their own in Africa, which included modern day Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, and Ethiopia. Despite this, the Italian city-states and mercenaries played a crucial role in slowing the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the Ottoman-Habsburg wars, which led to the decline of power and influence of the Ottoman Empire. While Christopher Columbus was famous for being the second European to discover America (with the Vikings being the first), the Italians colonization of the New World was very limited with the exception of the scrapped Thornton expedition by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The Italians are a playable European civilization in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Knights of the Mediterranean. However, when the Italian polities were not engaged in conflicts abroad, they fought each other nearly incessantly, until the Risorgimento gave rise to the new Kingdom of Italy. Fabulously wealthy merchant republics, kingdoms, duchies, and even the Papacy had driven the Renaissance and dominated the trade networks of the Mediterranean.
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