WI: Colonization of the Americas was like that of the Greeks?

When the Europeans came to the Americas they claimed and settled/conquered territory for the mother country and despite self governance in several colonies they were still a part of the Colonial Empires of the day.

When the Greeks and Phoenicians made colonies it was not to expand territory. Normally it was to expand trade or alleviate population pressure. Most of these colonies were independent from their very conception but retained close ties with their mother city. For example Taras, a Colony of Sparta in Southern Italy, grew to be one of the most prominent cities in Magna Graecia and Sparta regularly assisted them in wars when called upon. Carthage started out as a colony of Tyre and itself founded it's own colonies in southern Spain. Corinth founded a colony named Corcyra who founded their own colony of Epidamnos. So colonies could found colonies of their own, and if the Peloponnesian Wars are any indication being a grandmother city made Corinth feel close enough to Epidamnos to feel like they should take sides in their conflicts.

What I am curious about is what if the Europeans followed this method of colonization, creating independent but closely allied cities states, rather than as an expansion of their own Empire? I am unsure if conquered countries like the Aztecs, Incans, and Mayans would be able to fall into this category since they were conquered but colonies founded by New Spain such as Los Angeles, Santa Fe, and Acapulco could have a 'grandmother' kind of tie like I mentioned above with Corinth and Epidamnos.
 
I think you could make the argument that the English colonies in the New World fell under that description. The settlements in Jamestown and on the New England coast did wield a high degree of autonomy for a time. They also did a bit of expansion on their own accord.

In fact many of the colonies in the New World had to be very autonomous because of the sheer distances involved.
 
Despite this being an interesting idea in how colonization could have gone differently, as was pointed out, the reasons why the Americas were colonized had different motivations than the Mediterranean cultures did in their expansion. The ultimate goal of Europe's expansion and eventual domination of the world in OTL was motivated by getting in on the trade for Asian goods and riches, not to just settle people to relieve population pressures.

As we know Colombus crossed the Atlantic in hopes of reaching Asia that way, to beat the Portuguese that went around Africa. The settlements created were meant to be outposts for trade (and to a lesser extant, launching conversion missions). Even after they figured out the Americas weren't Asia, the Dutch, English/British, and French were hoping that the greater part of North America was just as narrow as Mexico; and that their colonies would then serve as outposts for trade across the Pacific (or finding and controlling the fabled Northwest Passage with the same end result). When it turned out this wasn't possible the colonies found other ways to pay for themselves - such as plantations for cash crops and dumping grounds for social deviants.

So basically no one intended to found new countries. They were all meant to be means to the ends of reaching and dominating Asian trade. It's my opinion that a lot of confusion over this basic aim gets clouded by later part of the hemisphere's colonization, especially after the States achieved independence and developed it's national rhetoric of manifest destiny and carving a "nation out of the wilderness".

To achieve a more "Greek" style colonization you'd need a PoD that fundamentally alters the motivations for going to the Americas or one that changes the aims later on after the "discovery".
 
Top