Spanish immigration to Louisiana /Texas

[galanx]

Why wasn't there any (or very little) Spanish immigration to the Louisiana Territories (before the Purchase)or the Texas area?

Was it discouraged for domestic reasons- wanting to keep up the population of Spain- or a desire on the part of the authorities in those areas to keep settlers out?Or was it just that nobody wanted to go?

[Texas, not Texaso or Texaco.]

 

[Mr.brightside]

There was the Comanche in west Texas making it difficult for settlers to travel.

 

[GeneralInTheShell]

The Spanish weren't big on actually settling territory and they got into the game pretty late.

A possible Pod could be that the five rebel leaders of the Louisiana Revolt don't trust Alejandro O'Reilly and continue fighting. Perhaps O'Reilly is killed by the sniper bullet of a French guerrilla and his troops get badly mauled without him leading the Spanish sending an even larger force to put the rebellion down. After putting the rebellion down the Spanish start trying to bring in Spanish or at least non-French settlers into the region to swamp the French and start a policy similar to the colonization of California and start setting up Missions and forts along the Mississippi.

 

[Odd_Numbered_Bonaparte]

There was really nothing of value up in Texas/Louisiana, or at least nothing valuable enough to drive major settlement. Texas was mostly seen as a nice buffer for Mexico.
Mexico had more than enough space for livestock, cotton really become a major export in the western hemisphere until much later, no fur or precious metal trade to speak of. Louisiana had some sugar plantations, but that's about it and the French already settled them.

 

[funnyhat]

I think it was simply an issue of Spain having a lot of other places where immigrants could go. Why settle on the frontier where your odds of a violent and/or disease-ridden death were much greater, when you could move to Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Havana, etc.?

 

[TFSmith121]

There are also the realities of Spain's position on

There are also the realities of Spain's position on religion in terms of European emigrants to Spanish America, generally, and the simple fact it cost less in time and money to get to New York from Britain or Ireland or northern Germany than it did to get to the Gulf from Spain or Italy or southern France...

Time and distance is real, and geography makes a difference.

At in the amount of temperate land (essentially) free for the taking betwee (say) Massachusetts and the Carolinas (as opposed to between Mobile and Monterrey) and it becomes even more (or less, depending on one's perspective) an attractive trade.

Best,

 

[EMT]

If Spain fights a war with the United States over Louisiana that sees them (barely) winning, then you could trigger a strong Spanish interest in settling along the Mississippi River, the best-case scenario for this being one where the Spanish managed to avoid Napoleon's invasion of Spain letting them shuttle French royalists, Italians, and Germans displaced by the Napoleonic Wars as well as settlers from central Mexico and Spain to Louisiana as a bulwark against future American aggression. The question is how to get this scenario to come about.

But provide enough of a populace quickly and early enough, and there's a legitimate chance that the Spanish can populate the Mississippi enough to shut America out of lands west of the Mississippi once birth rates appropriate to the large amounts of land available.

Can anyone think of a window for the French ceding Louisiana to the Spanish earlier than IOTL?

 

[unprincipled peter]

simple:
there wasn't a real excess of Spaniards to migrate, except from the Canary Islands, and the numbers weren't impressive except in comparison to the population of the islands.

In the Spanish Louisiana years, migration wasn't really all that big a thing, anywhere, any mother country. Britain sent a fair number of immigrants to the american colonies, but compared to the mid-late 19th century numbers, it wasn't that impressive. Still, as best I can figure, immigration to the British NA colonies was the main population movement in the world. Spain spent the Louisiana years building up Cuba. It also had half of South America to send migrants to.

Post revolution, the numbers dropped off for US immigration, too. They had a high population growth, and an affinity toward movement vs building up cities. I've read that Mexico, in the same timeframe, wasn't that far behind in population, but a larger percentage in cities as opposed to pressing the frontier as the US did. Of course, it doesn't help that the frontier for Mexico was desert which got worse and worse before it got better, whereas the US had to get over the appalachians, and then there was great farmland.

 

[Viriato]

I'm not sure if Spain aggressively sought colonisation as a solution to populate its more remote areas. Perhaps they felt that they could rely on Spain's army, navy and Indian allies. Portugal sent far more colonists, often to frontier/disputed areas beginning in the 17th century, but perhaps that was because Portugal's government knew it was not as strong as the larger colonial powers.

Migration from European Countries to Americas
1700-1760
Portugal 600,000
British Isles 372,000
Spain 193,000
Germany 97,000
France 31,000
Netherlands 5,000

1760-1820
British Isles 615,000
Portugal 105,000
Spain 70,000
Germany 51,000
France 20,000
Netherlands 5,000

Population in 1700
France 21 million
Great Britain 6 million
Spain 5 million
Portugal 2 million
Netherlands 1.9 million

 

[EMT]

I'm not sure if Spain aggressively sought colonisation as a solution to populate its more remote areas. Perhaps they felt that they could rely on Spain's army, navy and Indian allies. Portugal sent far more colonists, often to frontier/disputed areas beginning in the 17th century, but perhaps that was because Portugal's government knew it was not as strong as the larger colonial powers.

Migration from European Countries to Americas
1700-1760
Portugal 600,000
British Isles 372,000
Spain 193,000
Germany 97,000
France 31,000
Netherlands 5,000

1760-1820
British Isles 615,000
Portugal 105,000
Spain 70,000
Germany 51,000
France 20,000
Netherlands 5,000

Population in 1700
France 21 million
Great Britain 6 million
Spain 5 million
Portugal 2 million
Netherlands 1.9 million

It actually looks like the British started exporting more settlers around the globe once they lost their largest settler colonies, surprisingly. But couldn't one make the argument that Spain hadn't sought aggressive colonization because they saw no need for it historically? So long as Britain and Russia maintained only de jure claims to say, the Pacific Northwest, Spain was content with de jure rule over California, with the missions only being pushed later as a result of growing British and Russian power throughout the world, not even that specific region in question. Given that context, I don't see why the Spanish wouldn't leverage aggressive colonization efforts given the incentive to do so. You could argue that by the time they'd realize this(had they retained Louisiana longer) it'd be too late for them to halt the advance of American settlers, but an early warning system in the form of a war with a newly independent United States could do wonders for triggering the Spanish's interest in mass settlement.

 

[riggerrob]

Who cares what how many Spaniards moved to Louisiana?

The real question is: how many Latino-speaking Mexican farmers, fishermen, etc. drifted north through Texas and along the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast?

 

[jkay]

Mostly because the Caribbean was closer to and much more more money in Mexico and Peru. So that's where they settled.

There were Spanish missions on most of Spanish turf, but it was pretty money-losing, and most went away, I think.

Did mention no money to loot yet?

 

[elkarlo]

I think it was simply an issue of Spain having a lot of other places where immigrants could go. Why settle on the frontier where your odds of a violent and/or disease-ridden death were much greater, when you could move to Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Havana, etc.?

True. My mom's side settled LA and that was a distant outpost in the late 1700s. Only a few hundred ever seted there.

 

[Sevarics]

According to the book I'm reading, 1 in 7 Spaniards settled in the New World between Columbus and Independence. The problem was that there were so many places for them to end up settling that they got spread out a lot compared to Britain that had way smaller and fewer colonies and Portugual, which basically only had Brazil.

 

[Alt History Buff]

I'm not sure if Spain aggressively sought colonisation as a solution to populate its more remote areas. Perhaps they felt that they could rely on Spain's army, navy and Indian allies. Portugal sent far more colonists, often to frontier/disputed areas beginning in the 17th century, but perhaps that was because Portugal's government knew it was not as strong as the larger colonial powers.

Migration from European Countries to Americas
1700-1760
Portugal 600,000
British Isles 372,000
Spain 193,000
Germany 97,000
France 31,000
Netherlands 5,000

1760-1820
British Isles 615,000
Portugal 105,000
Spain 70,000
Germany 51,000
France 20,000
Netherlands 5,000

Population in 1700
France 21 million
Great Britain 6 million
Spain 5 million
Portugal 2 million
Netherlands 1.9 million

Interesting. Where did you find this data?

I didn't realize Portugal exported so many people.

 

[Viriato]

Interesting. Where did you find this data?

I didn't realize Portugal exported so many people.

Portuguese historian Vitorinho Magalhães Godinho did an extensive study about Portuguese migration in 1978. The reason Portugal exported so many people in the 18th century was mainly due to the push and pull factors. Pushing people out was Portugal's isolate position at the corner of Europe making oceanic emigration much easier than land migration as in Northeastern Europe. Also, the government pursued a deliberate policy of sending settlers to areas to colonise them, in the mid-17th century hundreds of Azoreans were sent to the swampy lowlands of central Mozambique, and most died of disease within a few years. Other areas like southern Brazil were far more successful. Also, agricultural land in Portugal was among the poorest in western Europe during this period and the southern half of the country was subject to frequent droughts, while the northern half was overpopulated with tiny land-holdings, meaning that as early as the 15th century Portugal was a net importer of grain. This often caused famine, even in Lisbon which was one of Europe's largest cities and had chronic shortage of water until an aqueduct was completed in 1748. This coupled with the gold and diamond boom in Brazil which lasted until around 1760 attracted hundreds of thousands of Portuguese to Brazil.

Spain on the other hand seemed to want to keep more people at home, and strictly regulated migration to the Americas. One possibility is that Spain was far more involved in the European wars than Portugal and thought it better to have more soldiers, sailors and farmers to feed them in Europe. The early 17th century plague that swept Spain killed millions and the population of the kingdom was reduced from 7 million in 1550 to 5 million by 1700. Spain still saw itself as a major power in European affairs, and it still was a "great power" until the early 19th century, whereas Portugal's kings had no pretensions about their status.

 

[galanx]

There are also the realities of Spain's position on religion in terms of European emigrants to Spanish America, generally,

Interested in this- did Spain officially limit immigration to Catholics; was there some kind of control on who could move to Spanish America?

 

[unprincipled peter]

overall, yes, the Spaniards did limit immigration to catholics. this isn't really newsworthy, as typically, colonies were populated with people from the mother country, and typically mother countries were fairly homogenous in terms of religion. Britain send predominantly protestant colonists to NA, with the exception of Maryland. Catholics coming over was an issue and they were castigated. Britain limited Irish Catholic immigration for a long time. It's been said that the US didn't take more of Mexico because it would bring too many catholics into the situation. Heck, even as late as JFK, people bemoaned the possibility of a catholic in power.

Spain, and later Mexico, opened up in the Texas/Louisiana regions because they knew they needed a population, but had limited Catholic reserves to draw from. the thinking was that non catholics would move in, discover the wonders of Catholicism, proclaim faith to God and King, and become Spanish citizens. Didn't quite work that way.

 

[Ace Venom]

Immigration usually involves seeking some sort of opportunity. That said, there was Spanish immigration to Louisiana. The city of New Iberia was founded by Spanish immigrants. Further information on Spanish immigration to Louisiana can be found here. In a nutshell, Spain had to contend with a majority French culture that refused cultural assimilation.

What was more common in Louisiana was ethnic immigrant populations (including German immigrants) were more or less assimilated into the majority French culture. French was a far more common first language than Spanish, German, or even English in Southern Louisiana. It really wasn't until the 20th century that mandatory public education that this culture began the slow process of assimilation into the American culture.

Texas had the problem of being frontier. The main reason it became important was because it was the buffer between New Spain (yes I know Texas was a part of New Spain) and French Louisiana. However, I'm not sure you could have enticed much more Spanish immigration than you did other than offering land grants for much cheaper than they actually were. When Spain acquired Louisiana, Texas wasn't really that important again until the United States purchased Louisiana.

 

[funnyhat]

Britain send predominantly protestant colonists to NA, with the exception of Maryland.

Actually Maryland was not an exception; despite originally having a Catholic proprietary government, most of its settlers were Protestant.