States with aborted colonization projects

Held a useful trading port for centuries, and then sold it for a mint. This doesn't see like an aborted colonization program, I'd chalk this up as a success.

OK, but a bit nitpicky. This fits the thread's theme of colonies held by countries you wouldn't expect. Gwadar wasn't Oman's only overseas venture: it ruled Zanzibar as well for a while.
 

katchen

Banned
Leave us not forget the French Hugenot Marquis de Cologny's colonies in the New World circa 1575. One, at Port Royal was destroyed by the Spaniards and one at what is now Rio de Janiero was destroyed by the Portuguese. Neither was about to tolerate Protestants in the New World.
Had Cologny established his North American colony farther north, say at what is now Manhattan and his South American colny farther south, say at Bahia Blanca or the Rio Negro on the edge of Patagonia, it is likely that one or both would have stayed below the Spanish radar long enough to get large enough to fend off Spanish attack.
Also, in 1777 the British established a colony on the Rio Negro at what is now Viedma, Argentina. The Spanish retaliated by establishing a colony further South at Puerto Deseado. Both were abandoned following peace between Spain and Great Britain.
And leave us not forget the Chinese independent colony and Qing vassal state established at Pontianak on the island of Borneo and conquered by the Dutch in I believe 1888. And Rajah Brook's independent colony of Sarawak also on Borneo, given to the Brook's by the Sultan of Brunei that wasn't incorporated as a British Colony until 1946, after the Japanese occupied it. Or a similar colony established on North Borneo by an American company in 1855 with a grant from the Sultan of Sulu. An attempt was made to get the US to acquire the colony to no avial. The Italians wouldn't buy the place either. The British finally acquired it, but again, didn't fully colonize North Borneo until after WWII. Both Sarawak and Sabah are now states of Malaysia even though they are not ethnically Malay.
Then there is the far more recent (1950s) and more successful attempt by a Philippine entrepeneur to establish the Kalayaan Islands (the Spratly Islands) as a place called "Freedom land" and as part of the Philippines. Finally, the Clunies Ross family got control of and settled the Cocos Islands Southwest of Java. The Cocos Islands are now part of Australia though the Clunies Ross Family was ousted from feudal lordlike control only recently.
And while we are on the subject of Australia, Norfolk Island was colonized three times. Once by ordinary convict settlers at the time of the First Fleet (1788) which was abandoned after the Napoleonic Wars, again as a "supermax?" prison camp for incorrigable convicts during the 1830s and finally and rather more successfully as a colony for the descendants of the Bounty mutineers.
 
OK, but a bit nitpicky. This fits the thread's theme of colonies held by countries you wouldn't expect. Gwadar wasn't Oman's only overseas venture: it ruled Zanzibar as well for a while.

Oman also had a brief stint in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, as well as very short occupations of Bahrain and Qatar. I'm pretty sure their rule of Zanzibar extended pretty far along the East African coast, for that matter, with towns from Somalia to Mozambique.

Leopold I of Belgium was very interested in colonies, and as the notes on the third and forth pages of this paper show, he looked pretty much everywhere. It's actually a pretty bizarre list when you consider how many of those places were already settled and under firm control of another power at that time. The paper's main focus is three active colonial projects in Guatemala, Texas, and Guinea, with the first one actually coming pretty close to execution.

https://dspace.uta.edu/bitstream/handle/10106/382/umi-uta-1517.pdf?sequence=1

Austria had a few opportunities, but it seems the government was never as enthusiastic as the men working for them. William Bolts attempted a few forts in India, a fort in Mozambique, and a colony in the Nicobar Islands, but they didn't last. Of course there's also Maurice Benovsky and his Madagascar adventure. Another guy bought a lease to northern Borneo but sold it shortly after due to lack of support, while another expedition discovered and named Franz Josef Land with no further intentions to do anything with it.
 
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