Thoughts on a Much Earlier "Kingdom of Canada" (or analogue)

An idle musing. The Wars of Supremacy featured a good bit of switching lands around among noble houses (The War of the Polish Succession seemed to be a leader in this regard.). How unlikely is it that somebody could end up ruling some colony somewhere, but not any European territory? The title of the thread comes from my first possible (or impossible) example, that of a Lorraine-ruled Canada. But, really, it could be anyone or anywhere. Any nifty schemes?
 

archaeogeek

Banned
IOTL, there were three deeply intertwined problems to this wrt colonies
- Economics: the dominant economic system through western europe was mercantilism, caracterized by triangular trade (i.e. get raw material in the colonies, send slaves and finished goods), which makes local industry weak.
- Demographics: until the 18th century, nobody is particularly interested in heavily settled colonies except Spain but that's because their colonies already have a lot of people
- Hierarchy: in Europe you're ruling europeans, in the colonies you're ruling, in lower order of hierarchy at the time: creoles, natives and blacks. Not every country has this kind of attitude and not every conqueror either: Cortez wanted the native aristocracy to be integrated to the spanish (at least Montezuma's heirs did get in; as counts and later dukes of Moctezuma). Spain was also more likely to treat its colonies as parts of the state, granting a lot of colonial titles of nobility on an equal footing to peninsular ones (France had all of one: Baron de Longueil, England had none but Charles I was planning it for Carolina's aristocracy), and even then they still had the Criollos-Peninsulares

Options I could see would be that the theories of mercantilism are agreed to be bad in France, England and Spain; thus you have stronger economies with local industry. This probably does not completely reduce the racism inherent in colonial hierarchies but it might soften it a bit. IOTL Brazil was the only colony that ended up ruling its metropolis as a province. ITTL it still wouldn't happen with France and the British but they could have the kind of political mentality, say, make Stanislas Leszczyncki king of Canada instead. You'd still need heavier settlement to make it viable, though, mercantilism does alleviate some of the problem, and makes Richelieu a happy man.

In France I suspect sacking Colbert might be one way to reach that.

The second option might be colonists, instead of acting with crown approval, act on their own. But you'd need someone popular and powerful enough to do this. Say, a noble from a conquered country decides to pack up and leave to "the new world" thinking he could set up a new kingdom there where he's not going to have angry armies knocking down: basically reviving the nomadic impulse. This would be hard though, nearly ASB I feel, and would require a less powerful Spain.
 
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1) Someone did a TL where the Tsar fled to Alaska, which became part of Canada, and he ended up as King of Canada.

2) check my signature. OK, so it's a cadet branch of the Hannoverians (sort of), but still... It meets the requirement of the title of the thread.
 
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