WI : Great Dukes of the New World

What if rather than establishing direct colonies, either members of the royal family, or close allies were instead granted the right to take an expedition to the New World and establish vassal realms instead.

There is a precedent in the Viking period, where rulers would gather warriors to invade a realm to build their own realms.

What sort of change might a nobility-driven colonial period have? Even if it was just undertaken by one country?
 
Spain sort of did this, often authorizing expeditions and granting titles after the fact if they were successful. But they were always careful to maintain subservience to the Spanish crown. I don't see any of the European powers in this period creating independent states, even vassal ones, when direct control is more profitable. Plus, retaining the land directly allows it to be used by the home country as a carrot, handing out positions and land as needed. Or taking them away if they displease.

If they chose this as their initial colonization structure I think they'll abandon it fairly quickly for several reasons. First, it limits the Crown's direct power and tax ability. Second, it sets it up for rebellion, or at the very least an increasingly powerful vassal realm who doesn't care for the Crown's plans and wants to do their own thing. Third, it undermines much of the nation building and territorial consolidation that has been happening in Europe for two centuries.
 
Britain did do something a bit similar in the form of the Lords Proprietor in New Jersey and the Caronlina's plus the Penn's in Pennsylvania. But that was a more a question of getting someone else to pay for colonial infrastructure than anything else.
 
Spain sort of did this, often authorizing expeditions and granting titles after the fact if they were successful. But they were always careful to maintain subservience to the Spanish crown. I don't see any of the European powers in this period creating independent states, even vassal ones, when direct control is more profitable. Plus, retaining the land directly allows it to be used by the home country as a carrot, handing out positions and land as needed. Or taking them away if they displease.

If they chose this as their initial colonization structure I think they'll abandon it fairly quickly for several reasons. First, it limits the Crown's direct power and tax ability. Second, it sets it up for rebellion, or at the very least an increasingly powerful vassal realm who doesn't care for the Crown's plans and wants to do their own thing. Third, it undermines much of the nation building and territorial consolidation that has been happening in Europe for two centuries.

This.

Spain basically started it's American colonies on a noble basis, with big hereditary land grants. Look at the early history of Mexico after the Spanish Conquest, and Spanish America in general. Basically, ambitious people either got permission to launch an expedition to conquer/settle a given territory in the Crown's name or did it anyway and asked Spain what, exactly, it was going to do about it. That's basically the story of both Cortes and Pizarro.

More specifically Cortes basically set himself up as de facto governor of Mexico, and asked the Crown to acknowledge that situation. Which it did, but removed him when Cortes' enemies played up the existing fear that he would declare himself independent of the Crown, or try to make the Viceroyalty an hereditary position in his family. Which wasn't an entirely unreasonable fear, actually given the Cortes felt entitled to the Viceroy-ship by dint of having conquered Mexico, and even after he was denied that pushed for a large and wealthy hereditary estate in the Marquisate of the Valley. And the Crown still wasn't comfortable with that, as they jumped on a pretty flimsy excuse to confiscate the grant of exile Cortes' family from New Spain in the 1540's. And one of the main things Cortes did while he was Viceroy, was put down a rebellion in Honduras by a Spanish conquistador who'd been given permission to go conquer it and decided to set himself up as independent. So the idea was very much in the air.

As for Pizarro, his forces fought a war against a rival conquistador, Almagro, over the boundary between their assigned provinces only 5 years after the Conquest itself, and eventually Pizarro executed Almagro outright, and seized his territories entirely. This was followed in 1541 by Almagro's son and a group of conspirators assassinating Pizarro, seizing Cuzco, and declaring Almagro the new Governor of Peru. Which started a new war in which Pizarro's brothers ousted Almagro and retook the Governorship.

And I only scratched the surface with all that...

Basically, the Spnish Crown was very, very concerned about the conquistadors getting too powerful or too ambitious. Basically, they were afraid of powerful nobles doing exactly what powerful nobles were known to do in the Medieval Period. And rightly so, frankly. I like to think that Charles V looked at the problems powerful and independent-minded nobles gvae him in Europe, looked at the incredible wealth of the American colonies, and went "HELL TO THE NO!".
 
And the Spanish experience was why when the British were setting up their colonies 100 years later they gave extensive rights to initial investors (who were frequently peers) but kept sovereignty firmly with the Crown in London, which would be a issue in the run up to 1776.
 
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