Possibilities for a Spanish Australia

Isaac Beach

Banned
I'm curious as to how one might go about creating a Spanish Australia? What POD would you need? How would it be administrated? Could you get an influx of other Catholics (Irish, Italians, etc.) to bolster its population? Would they intermix with the Aboriginals? That sort of thing.
I do know there was a plan in the 1790s to invade Britain's Botany Bay colony, but it's been combed over on this site before and the general consensus is that it isn't very realistic, Trafalgar or not. So I was looking for an earlier POD, which plausibility aside is probably more interesting. One perhaps far fetched idea was to get some parallelism to OTL where the English get a leg up -or otherwise the Spanish get their knees kicked out- on the new world and so get the nice bits in Mexico and Peru, and later down the line the Spanish make up for it by picking up Australia. I've not thought it through comprehensively but it tickled me.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
 
This is my pitch that people here are very likely to reject.
  1. The Iberian kingdoms unify earlier and never get under Hapsburg rule.
  2. The kingdoms are earlier made into a single kingdom and the Portuguese colonies are given heavy support.
  3. The Dutch either don't get an empire do to continental issues, or they just loss the wars with Spain/Portugal, and the Dutch control of the East Indies is mostly removed.
  4. The Spanish gain more and more control over the East Indies and notice Australia.
  5. Some Spaniards explore it further and claim it under Spain, noting how it's worth comes from preventing other nations from using it as a base to mess with the Spanish Asian possessions. They also seek to convert the natives.
  6. Churches and military bases are set across Australian coasts.
  7. They could probably transport various people in the Spanish Empire to Australia in order to set up a loyal base who won't allow the other sea powers to get an inch.
  8. If they are able to discover it's precious minerals, even more people will come.
And that's all I have that's relevant here. It would be more fun, if this were a green Australia, but that's for another time, and at that point, I'd rather have it be New Holland...
 

Metaverse

Banned
The POD could be a bit difficult. Why would they settle a land so faraway that is fully desert on it's West coast and East Coast is so faraway, when they have one of the best lands in Americas, just an ocean across? If at a later advanced stage, by then Spanish Empire was growing weaker and Britain had already ascended.

Unlike the Americas, the Aboriginals(Natives) were quite less in Australia, mostly distributed in the North and the hospitable lands were mostly in the South, as you might know very well. So probably they could be absorbed if the Settler population increased but I think the Catholic zeal would decrease by that time unlike in Americas, which happened at an earlier era.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
The POD could be a bit difficult. Why would they settle a land so faraway that is fully desert on it's West coast and East Coast is so faraway, when they have one of the best lands in Americas, just an ocean across? If at a later advanced stage, by then Spanish Empire was growing weaker and Britain had already ascended.

Unlike the Americas, the Aboriginals(Natives) were quite less in Australia, mostly distributed in the North and the hospitable lands were mostly in the South, as you might know very well. So probably they could be absorbed if the Settler population increased but I think the Catholic zeal would decrease by that time unlike in Americas, which happened at an earlier era.

Just wanted to correct a couple of misconceptions here first:
- The southwest coast of Western Australia has a Mediterranean climate not unlike Spain or southern Italy, and was historically heavily forested and still receives good rainfall. It's a small area compared to the rest of the state, but it's still the size of England. One common observation I've seen in alternate history is that the region is good for sheep farming, and I've no reason to believe that's false. Predictably, most people live here and the rest of the state is quite arid, but it would be wrong to call the west coast fully desert.
- Aboriginals were not concentrated in the north, it's only that the most intact communities exist there in modern times because not a lot of white people want to live there (and Darwin is still the smallest state or territory capital in the country because of it). The bulk of Aboriginals pre-colonisation lived in the same areas that are the most populous in modern times, i.e. the southeast, and potentially numbered in the millions. They were just killed, displaced or otherwise absorbed by the British.

As I first fancifully suggested, the Americas being a better option is the single largest hurdle to establishing Spanish colonies in Australia, and was why I suggested that England perhaps takes over those areas first, or France or Portugal or really any country other than Spain. My understanding (and it isn't my area of expertise) is that the most profitable regions of Spanish America, aside the Caribbean, were Mexico and Peru. If those are put out of reach of Spain, especially by more competitive French, Portuguese and English colonies, there might be an impetus to look elsewhere.
It's worth noting Britain only started colonising Australia when their prior convict-dump, America, gained its independence. Maybe something similar could occur here; not necessarily a problem of convicts but an impending Malthusian catastrophe, and so the Spanish start assisting their citizens in going to Australia, for example. This does likely require a POD in the 1400s or 1500s, which makes for a baffling number of butterflies.
 
The vast majority of Spanish settlement in the Americas was from Castile, perhaps if the Aragonese want to try their hand at some small colonies, perhaps they would be willing to work with Australia if they somehow get their first.
 

Metaverse

Banned
Since the Aboriginal Australians didn't have Agriculture(probably the only continent where Agriculture didn't exist that time), any settlements could provide a good opportunity to join and assimilate into it. I could see Spanish/Portuguese building Agricultural and Trading settlements and then schooling the Aboriginal children and adults who join the settlements and eventually assimilate them.

But yes, this is a very far fetched scenario considering that Spinards and Portuguese had excellent lands in Americas. If by chance the British, Dutch, German or French empires establish settler colonies in the now Latin Americas by any chance, this could be possible along with a Spanish/Portuguese settled African Peninsula and many parts of India, due to the vacuum left by the British Empire who have settled Americas. This needs multiple PODs.
 
Couldn't a Spanish monarch just easily say?: "I don't want anyone else getting this land, so let's keep it to ourselves".
 
Couldn't a Spanish monarch just easily say?: "I don't want anyone else getting this land, so let's keep it to ourselves".
Not as easy when said Spanish monarch is fighting a long running war in Italy against various coalitions usually involving France, a never-ending war/insurgency in the Spanish Netherlands, soon followed by getting dragged into a destructive Continental war that spells the end of your military's dominance, all while maintaining your existing conquests, fending off English, Dutch, and French pirates raiding your ships and colonies, licking wounds after a failed invasion attempt of England, and trying to maintain the upper hand over the infidel Ottomans. And oftentimes finding himself bankrolling his German cousins with the hard-earned and hard-gained profits from the colonies, which was usually easier when the Spanish monarch hadn't bequeathed the Imperial title to the other side of his family yet. All while said Spanish monarch is still beholden to the individual laws of the different crowns and kingdoms he actually owns.

At any rate, let's say the Spanish are able to more expediently deal with the Dutch independence movement, where English support for the movement doesn't materialize the way it did in OTL, allowing Philip II to use more resources to strengthen his grip over his remaining possessions and be able to more effectively retain control over Portugal whenever he is able to bring it under his personal union. Truthfully, if the Spanish have more money, men, and resources available to them, they're probably not even thinking about more colonies asides from expanding the ones that they do currently have.

Still, with the English still not ready to make their own colonial voyages yet, the French lighting themselves on fire regularly during the 16th century, the Dutch not developing into a maritime superpower that continuously harassed Spanish shipping across the globe, and Ottomans only capable of limited projection of power into the Indian Ocean, perhaps a combined Spanish/Portuguese colonial venture stumbles into Australia and settles the west coast. Being the only global superpower at the moment and knowing that they need to more effectively govern their colonies, who amounts to the Spanish emperor really orders a reorganization of the combined Iberian colonies into a new series of viceroyalties. The Philippines are detached from Mexico and assigned to a new viceroyalty of the East Indies, which also includes their "Australian" possessions. I'm not so sure the Spanish would call it Australia, but perhaps New Aragon or New Catalunya or something. Of course, the Aboriginals are treated in a manner similar to the Native Americans and are converted to Catholicism whenever possible.

This is just one possible set of circumstances.
 
Actually, if both the CryptoMuslims and Hindus in Luzon faired better the Spanish might be interested to Swap Luzon for Australia, there they can launch an invasion of the Spice islands that they covet.
 
The main issue with an Spanish Australia is not finding the territory, after all Luis Váez de Torres passed by on 1606 going inbetween Australia and New Guinea. Spanish sailors explored the Pacific ocean through the XVI and XVII centuries mostly, finding only little islands with natives not worth conquering nor settling, even if some temporary outposts had been created in the Marquesas and Vanuatu. The main problem with a Spanish colonisation and/or conquest of Australia is the reason behind said effort. Why to settle a land which is mostly barren with only some territories to the south being hospitable? Australia barely has any native crops, so everything would have to be imported from Spain or America. Australia is also pretty far away and the route would likely use the South Equatorial current which would push ships northwards, avoiding the hospitable lands to the south. Australia doesn't have mineral resources that can be seen easily as natives didn't use gold nor had any kind of metallurgy. It's worth noting that most Spanish colonies didn't fit the average Anglo-Saxon colony model composed by settlers who gradually expand bringing with them European culture and pushing away the natives. The Spanish formed an elite in their possesions while the lower classes were used as workforce for agriculture or minery. As both of them are impossible or impractical in Australia at a first glance no Spanish would like to travel there to form their own "little empire". If you want to make the Spanish settle Australia you have to either make the natives worth conquering (maybe some discover gold in a river and a passerby Spanish ship contacts them and discovers the river has substantial amounts of gold) or change the Spanish way of colonising altogether.
 
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