User blog comment:Octivian Marius/Italian Explorers/@comment-7576024-20130511175603

An interesting idea. My general thought on this is that Italian city-states really could've established a few colonies, but without being united they would be forced to only have around 2-4. This would really, in my opinion, result in a larger scramble for the Americas. The other possibility is that the city-states couldn't fund huge operations like the nations of Spain, France, and England, who had massive funds.

I think that the colonialization would spark many wars among the Italian states, and may therefore create earlier unification, which would then really shift things around. Mind you, however, it may only a Sicilian Kingdom and a Northern Kingdom.