Italian domination of mediterranean trade means there's more need for capital, that leads to inventing new forms of financing, this financing drives a need for new markets, this drive for new markets leads to italians expeditions to America and around Africa. They're doing that as contractors for other states though, as Italy both doesn't have a presence in atlantic and is the battleground for other powers rather than a state in of itself.
Well, it's presumably an iterative process.
Italian domination of mediterranean trade means there's more need for capital, that leads to inventing new forms of financing, this financing drives a need for new markets, this drive for new markets leads to italians expeditions to America and around Africa. They're doing that as contractors for other states though, as Italy both doesn't have a presence in atlantic and is the battleground for other powers rather than a state in of itself.