AH Challenge: These Colonial Empires

What post 1000 A.D. POD is requied to get these countries to be colonial empires by present day. Dutch, Portugese, Italian State (Not united Italy) German State (Austria Counts), Danish, Swedish. Any input is appriciated, even if only some of these countries are possible (Define "colonial empire" however you see fit).
 
What post 1000 A.D. POD is requied to get these countries to be colonial empires by present day. Dutch, Portugese, Italian State (Not united Italy) German State (Austria Counts), Danish, Swedish. Any input is appriciated, even if only some of these countries are possible (Define "colonial empire" however you see fit).

Really anything predating the annexation of the Congo, or a variety of POD's in the 1920's.
 
Dutch and Portugeuse are kind of easy, Venice could keep its colonies in Greece and perhaps gain some in africa during the scramble, Prussia could gain colonies fairly easily and countries such as Hanover could have small efforts, Scandanavian countries are limited by low population and low funds but given enough time could have a decent settler colony, perhaps Danish canada ?
 
How about the English don't take over other countries' colonies in what would OTL become the United States, and these colonies develop. That gives you Swedish and Dutch colonies (the Dutch also OTL have Indonesia). Either England's weaker, or they have different diplomatic relations with their fellow Protestants. The Danes already have Iceland and Greenland; the Portuguese have Brazil and parts of Africa, and even India and Indonesia if they repel the Dutch and English. Basically, for almost all parties you can just contrive to have them be able to keep the colonies they establish, which seems plausible through diplomatic shenanigans.

The Germans and Italians are a bit trickier - neither colonized anything until after unification.

Also, you need the imperial era to survive to the present day for any of these colonies to survive, so try to avoid World Wars, especially of the Two variety.
 
I actually think Venice would be a prime candidate for some level of colonisation if not for their focus on Mediterranean style ships instead of open ocean vessels. If you can get them to find a need for ocean going vessels, and make lose their Greek lands sooner then I think they can do it, but their window is pretty much th 16th century, since they can't keep pace with the likes of England and Spain forever as a citystate.
 
For an Italian state, why not Naples? If Naples can maintain independence, and maybe gain control of Sardinia and Corsica, they could eventually gain control of, say, Tunisia as part of a winning coalition in a war against the Ottoman Empire. This could even be maintained as long as they could develop their economy with some sort of export industry, perhaps textiles?
 
None of these are impossible, and most of them had colonies at some point.

How about the English don't take over other countries' colonies in what would OTL become the United States, and these colonies develop. That gives you Swedish and Dutch colonies (the Dutch also OTL have Indonesia). Either England's weaker, or they have different diplomatic relations with their fellow Protestants. The Danes already have Iceland and Greenland; the Portuguese have Brazil and parts of Africa, and even India and Indonesia if they repel the Dutch and English. Basically, for almost all parties you can just contrive to have them be able to keep the colonies they establish, which seems plausible through diplomatic shenanigans.

The Germans and Italians are a bit trickier - neither colonized anything until after unification.

Also, you need the imperial era to survive to the present day for any of these colonies to survive, so try to avoid World Wars, especially of the Two variety.

This first of all.

Then throw in Italian colonies shouldn't be too hard. Columbus was Italian, there was the Ottoman Empire there, which was a main reason for the search for the route to India anyway. Its actually kind of strange that an Italian power (most likely Venice) never put any effort into expanding past the Med.

Also, I think you need to weaken not just England, but Spain (and maybe even France). Having Castile and Aragon stay separate should help, permanently or at least for longer. The problem is the colonies were basically monopolised by a few countries. In fact Spain basically started with a huge advantage by the time most others even considered it.
 
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