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<jats:p>The honorable program chairman has appended to my paper a title I had not entirely foreseen, and this drove me to modify my line to some extent. I had toyed with the idea of taking a long look at a short period in the fifteenth century, when the Genoese did all they could to adjust to shrinking opportunities and to find new markets in the place of those they were losing. This will still take about one half of my time, if only because it dovetails with the paper of Harry Miskimin. But if Genoa has to be considered as a test case for market expansion, we cannot restrict ourselves to the years when the going was not so good.</jats:p>