England doesn't colonise North America: who does?

Besides the fact that it is hard to form a Personal Union (the Netherlands being sort of a republic), the Netherlands would completely dominate such a Union. So it would not be Denmark controling the Dutch East Indies, but the Netherlands controling the Danish East Indies.
a unified Scandanavia (along the lines of Baristram's TL), in personal union with the Dutch then?
 
Venice has a FAR bigger problem in colonization because of her geography; lacking an Atlantic coastline and with her naval accesses to... well, anything forced through no less than three major chokepoints. Its just far too easy for their tenative connection to their Empire to be snipped for them to be able to hold it from any serious contention.

How far did they actually act as chokepoints, though? I can't think of any example of, e.g., the Straits of Gibraltar being successfully blocked off during the 17th or 18th centuries.
 
However that ignores the butterflies on whatever would hinder or deny English colonization entirely. My thought is the War of Roses goes/end differently or the reign of Henry VIII goes even worse. The civil wars of England over religion or succession are much worse, Henry VIII either never establishes the Royal Navy, or too much funds for the RN are spent waging civil wars. England never becomes the naval power, etc. So my thought would be a POD in the early 1500's. Now I'm just doing a quick scenario I thought up in twenty minutes. I'm making huge generalizations.

Funnily enough, I was thinking of the opposite scenario: no English Reformation, so the country remains much more religiously homogenous and there are no big bodies of Puritans or other dissidents wanting to settle somewhere else.
 
When's the PoD? - Someone else but the usual suspects would be interesting. Scotland was mentioned, but also Sweden, Poland, German and Italian powers. Or even a surviving Brittany.
 
How far did they actually act as chokepoints, though? I can't think of any example of, e.g., the Straits of Gibraltar being successfully blocked off during the 17th or 18th centuries.

When would such an action have been relevant and worth the effort? Maybe if the Moraccan-British-Ottoman co-operation effort to subdue Spain had really fired off, but other than that the Med. and Atlantic are two entirely different commercial-political power centers. However, if military action engulfs the area\risks merchant traffic (Say, during the many Ottoman-Venetian wars and the Barbary States acting for their suzerain) you'd see a notable dip in the contact which Venice, unlike nation's with Atlantic coastlines, can't fix by rerouting their commerce and military transport to and open ocean route. For an example, let's look at the first of the choke points; the Strait of Otranto. The Turks just needed to station a strong naval force, and Venice couldn't support\effectively reenforce colonies as close as Crete and Cyprus; try projecting the force to protect traffic on the complete opposite side of the Med.
 
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