Small nations colonizing?

People are overlooking the chartered companies - the Dutch, Danish etc did so well in India because they chartered a company, and thus ran colonisation on a commercial basis. The best example for this is of course Britain with the EIC, which had its own government, its own ships and its own army

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

I agree, except obviously the best example was the VOC (Dutch East India Company);):p.
 
Brandenburg was briefly in the colonial game. It briefly ruled Elmina if memory serves, in addition to its "Klein Venedig" ambitions.
 
Neither was England. Population isn't everything, and the Netherlands were very rich and developed.

The Netherlands and Portugal still compared to some of France's provinces or the empire's princes in terms of size, population and wealth. It's more a matter of being fast enough and in a good position - Brittany, Scotland, Irish princes, Denmark-Norway, Sweden to a slightly lesser extent. Morocco sort of played the gunpowder empires game in Africa as well, conquering most of Songhai in the 16th century.
 
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Malta, while ruled by the Knights of St. John, had a few islands in the Caribbean in the 1600s. Tortuga was one.

Courland, while a semi-independent Russian duchy (roughly corresponding to Latvia), had a Caribbean colony of its own. It was one of the islands that later became part of the Dutch empire.
 
Malta, while ruled by the Knights of St. John, had a few islands in the Caribbean in the 1600s. Tortuga was one.

Courland, while a semi-independent Russian duchy (roughly corresponding to Latvia), had a Caribbean colony of its own. It was one of the islands that later became part of the Dutch empire.

It was Tobago, and it was fought over by the french and the british until it definitely became part of the province of Trinidad and Tobago in the 19th century after the british snatched the island from french-allied Spain.
 
Made a quick search for parts of the HRE with colonies:
Austrian/Imperial (not a small state and very short lived):
Maputo Bay, Mozambique 1777-1781
Nicobars 1778-1783

Brandenburg:

  1. Groß Friedrichsburg (Ghana) 1683–1718
  2. Arguin (Mauretania) 1685–1721
  3. St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands) 1685–1720
  4. Krabbeninsel (today Vieques, USA) 1689–1693
  5. Whydah (Benin) ca. 1700 (trade post together with British and Dutch)
Courland (not part of HRE, but somehow often considered German):
Tobago 1654–1659 and 1660–1693
James Island (Gambia) 1651-1661

Others:
Hanuisch-India 1669-1672 northern South America
Klein-Venedig 1528-1545 Venezuela afterwards taken back by Charles V.
 
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