"In the economic field, for example, the first Italian port to win for itself a share in modern Western maritime trade was neither Venice nor Genoa nor Pisa, but Leghorn; and Leghorn was the post-Renaissance creation of a Tuscan Grand Duke, who had planted there a settlement of crypto-Jews from Spain and Portugal. Though Leghorn was planted within a few miles of Pisa, her fortunes were made by these indomitable refugees from the opposite shore of the Mediterranean and not by the supine descendants of the Medieval Pisan seafarers" (p. 362).
from Arnold Toynbee's "A Study of History: Volume One" (abridged)
Toynbee highlights other examples from the Italian Risorgimento that demonstrate where success lies it doesn't settle upon a nostalgic memory of that Italian state's Medieval past but in a forward thinking vision for a new future. Otherwise, it is brought about by an 'alien' influence.
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