French and Spanish Colonization between 1370 - 1550, a Brief Contextual Guide
While it was the Moors who first discovered the Americas, it was the kings of both France, and Castile who first exploited these new lands in an organized and systematic way, instead of the vaguely directed chaos that characterized the Ayshunid attempts. The organization of these Christian colonies quickly far outstripped that of the Ayshunids, but at the same time such expeditions were far more organized and controlled, they never produced the same sort of vibrant native culture that the Arab ones did. Indeed, the Christian colonies acted as near-complete parallels of their home countries for many decades after initial contact, well after the point where Riyshi civilization was fully developed. It would take serious stress at home to cause similar changes in the European colonies, stress that did not reach a breaking point until well into the 17th century.
As soon as word reached the Sultanate of new lands in the west, the news quickly reached the kings of western Europe through their lines of communication with the Islamic world. The lethargy of Christian rulers to fund large expeditions to the new world was not because of a lack of information but because of purely strategic choices. Over the same 150 years that southern Spain was experiencing a golden age of peace and prosperity, brought about by a series of successful military rulers, a capable bureaucracy and strong economy, northern Spain and Mediterranean Europe were deep in a series of long, brutal wars and internal political upheavals. The wars across Europe from the Italian Wars, the 100 years war to instability in the HRE meant that the discovery of the new world remained a faint curiosity to most European monarchs. Those few who recognized the sheer scale of the discovery were largely Italian merchant elites. The Genoese, and to some minor extent the Pisans, were the first Christians to reach the new world, though they never established their own colonies – finding business within the Arab spheres in the Caribbean far safer and more profitable.
As the 15th century began to draw to a close, the wars in Europe did not abate (far from it in-fact, given the scale of the Italian Wars), but what did change was the rise of more centralized monarchies, and a fortuitous series of capable kings spread across Atlantic Europe who were able to devote new energies towards expanding their dominions at the expense of the moor, rather than at the expense of their Christian neighbors. The first real impetus towards westward colonization by the Christian states was not to secure new trade routes, as it had been for the Arabs, but to ‘reclaim’ the Atlantic from an over-extended Andalusia. Also, as the wealth of the Riysh had begun to drastically boost the Iberian economy with new, exotic goods like chocolate, the economic benefits of the Americas became more palpable than simple curiosities. Many Christian kings suddenly felt that the Americas were worth their while and might even aid them in their conflicts at home. These feelings were intensified by the growing power of the Ottoman empire to the east. Europe felt itself surrounded by Muslim empires, increasingly at the losing end of global trade networks – it was only inevitable that some rulers would try and force a change.
The first non-Muslim independent colonial venture was the Castilian Drapero expedition. Henry III was among a line of forward-thinking Castilian kings who were deeply, almost fanatically set, on reconquering lost pride at the expense of their southern neighbors. These expeditions were organized entirely as military expeditions meant to capture virgin territory to establish bases of Castilian presence in the New World. The crews were hardened Hispano-Normans, primarily veterans of the middle-class militias that provided much of the fighting power of the Castilian military. Drapero himself was a former Castilian army captain. Henry III personally bank-rolled all the costs of the expedition, unlike the first Moorish sailors who had to provide much of their own supplies (but still sailed with the good graces of the Sultan on governmental vessels).
When the expedition landed in the New World, they first established a timber fort on the coast, choosing a defensible inlet backed by rocky beaches. The first expedition brought no women nor any children, but was entirely soldiers, trackers and sailors. Per the directive of the king, there was no aggression towards the natives – who were encountered soon after arrival, the general intent being to gradually convert and ally with the locals to gain native allies against the Moors (at that point, the Castilians were unaware that the northernmost Arab outposts were actually hundreds of miles south). The assumed threat of Moorish raiding meant that the entirety of the initial expedition was spent preparing defenses and scouting the nearby territory to try and ascertain lurking Moorish forces (which never actually existed). Whether it was faulty military intelligence or Drapero’s paranoia, the first non-arab expeditions in the new world were spent in frantic preparation for a war that never arrived. This did cause the intended native alliances to quickly dissolve however, as many Castilian soldiers convinced themselves that the natives were in league with the Arabs. Before Drapero’s exile and punishment in the 1470’s (over accusations of sodomy brought against him by jilted business partners, to which he was found guilty), the native-Castilian détente had completely dissolved into constant raids and counter-raids. Drapero hid much of this collapse in relations from his reports to the crown, his dishonesty as much a cause for his dismissal as his supposed personal sins. Under the command of his successor, Christopher Lorenzo de Toro, the situation hardly improved in the new world, but the damage done by Drapero to the personal brand of the crown was fully repaired (the Drapero scandals are themselves worth devoting an entire novel to). What de Toro did that was consequential was ensure the survival of the Castilian expeditions beyond their initial forays through diplomacy at home and secure enough military support to effectively suppress the natives near the coast enough to allow larger scale colonization in earnest.
Under de Toro’s leadership, Castile began to actively fortify the Carolinian coast and establish a secure base for regional military operations. Castilian fleets sail both north and south to scout the coast. From the very earliest Castilian settlements in the Americas, the clear barrier dividing the nascent Castilian colonies from their desired possessions in the Caribbean is the eastern expanse of Florida. Rife with pirates, with a inhospitable shoreline and dangerous native tribes, this region became the main dividing line between Christian, and Muslim territory. By the late 1400s however, it became clear that should Castile ever be able to challenge Muslim hegemony in the region, that there needed to be a native Castilian presence in the region that could support more than coastal fortified villages. At royal behest, De Toro sent civilian settlers to the Carolinian coast, drawing from the hardy folk of northern Iberia for it. Between the 1480’s and the 1520’s, a slow, but steady expansion took place in the Carolinas, with Christian settlements popping up along the Carolinian coast. Relations with the native population understandably deteriorated further, leading to a series of wars that devastated the local population and forced them back into the interior. The most significant of these wars was the Secotano War, where an army of local Chowanacan warriors annihilated the Spanish fort at San Fernando. The debacle caused the Spanish Crown to recall De Toro and replace him briefly with his lieutenant Diego Carnan (though De Toro returned in 1528, but only governed for several more years before his death). The Secotano War also spurred a new policy of Indian relations in the Castilian Carolinas called the encomeindas, “entrustments”, organized estates granted to local nobility who were responsible for extracting resources from the land and organizing its defense. With these entrustments, the Crown in effect ‘leased’ responsibility for a territory to a private landowner instead of a governmental official, though the land and the grants legality itself existed within the graces of the Crown – a landowner who did not please the central government could have all his holding stripped without any recourse (many of these reforms were in response to Royal concerns about separatist factions that could unnecessarily hamper Royal response to a Indian attack like another Secotano War). Instead of a central lord managing the increasingly sprawling colonies, regional leaders could organize the defense of specific plots. Estates were granted to those most veteran commanders from the Indian Wars, establishing a local landed nobility but unlike in the Moorish model, one that was deeply indebted to the royalty instead of being intentionally distanced from it. This contrast more than all others was the reason the Castilian colonies were far more internally stable than the Moorish ones were.
The early-mid 1500s were defined by increasing Castilian intrusion into Islamic lands proper and the arrival of the French to the Americas, who would become the greatest rival of Castile, not the Moors as both parties had previously assumed. This was simply because while the Moors were content to remain in their own comparatively narrow band of territory (albeit the most fertile, desirable area), and colonize lands to the south, both Castile and France desired territory that either overlapped, or directly bordered each-other. The Moors never seriously contested territory north of Florida, while both Castile and France aimed to take the North American coast for themselves.
French interests in the Americas first took on a concrete form in 1490 with the Doria expeditions but there was little material French presence in the New World until the 1520’s when actual sustainable settlements were founded. In a similar vein to the early Castilian colonies, they were royally-funded expeditions with large military contingents. The presence Castile just to the south spurred quicker action on the part of the French crown, upon whose orders the town of New Laval was founded, which quickly became the capital of French St. Johns Land. Subsequent French settlement past this point was focused on inland colonization, the French crown making the bet that there were more resources to be found in the interior than along the coasts. It helped that the local native population was more amicable to the French than to Castile, due to more forward-thinking, diplomatic policies by the early French colonial leaders. This did not prevent violence entirely, as the 1534 War of the Five Nations demonstrated, or the 1540 Irinieux War. Early French efforts in the Americas were masterminded by the Royal attaché to the Colonies, Louis Tasse, who encouraged a policy of equal relations with friendly Indians while providing French aid against unruly natives. Tasse was also a skilled urban planner, and personally designed many of the French wilderness forts that soon began to dot the American northeast.
As the 16th century progressed, the French expanded in the northern forests, trading lumber and pelts while the Castilians expanded in the south. By 1550, Castile and French had signed an unofficial accord along with the Pope to subdivide the Americas between them. In reality, this accord led to yet more competition between the two, as the two nations developed a “race to the interior” policy, each attempting to outflank the other territorially (over vast regions that had in reality no European presence on the ground). In the meanwhile, Castile began to spar with Moorish pirates along the northern Florida coast, encouraging frantic Moorish settlement along the northern Gulf coast though the sheer disorganization of the Riysh meant that there was little hope going into the later 16th century of the Moors mounting an organized defense to the Castilians. Indeed, the later 16th century became defined militarily by Castilian aggression and Moorish panic. It seemed as the century wore on, that colonialism was the Christians game to lose.
