AHC:Make vigilantism a popular world wide idea

Your challenge if you choose to accept it is to have vigilantes begin to become widespread and common place pod has to be after 1600 but before 1900
 
Vigilantism soars in contexts of a (perceived) weakness of statehood, which is not really so weak as to descend into outright warfare, though.
That alone makes the OP difficult - with regards to the global nature.
So we`re barred from constructing a nuclear world war PoD with vigilantes in a post-apocalyptic world.
But before 1900, if there wasn`t the Victorian trust in the British Empire, and there wasn`t even Prussian/German obedience to state authorities, nor strong French centralism etc. etc., how do you envision European colonisation of almost the entire world to continue and escalate? And in its absence, how do you bring global socio-ideological trends about?
 
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