WI: Serious Spanish colonization in Southeastern US?

IN OTL Spain estabilished some colonies in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina coast but they never developed real colonization plans for this region....what if and what POD is necessary to have a real Spanish colonization of OTL Southeastern US?
 
This will be very tough to do: using Florida as an OTL example, it was relatively underpopulated by European-descended people and was eventually taken by Anglo-Americans without much effort in the longrun. It's hard to see them keeping their bases in SC and GA any better than they did for similar reasons: the Spanish mainly hoped to convert and utilize local natives but were also overwhelmed by the English colonists.

To keep them, have the Spanish decide they want to get in on the genial soil and climate of the southeast, as well as the plantation economy system, and start attracting citizens (or at least loyal people) over there, and that they have enough of a base to keep it going. This will still be tough -- OTL South Carolina was an important link in the British Caribbean trade routes and it's not impossible to see the Royal Navy and proto-Americans take it over like they did with the Dutch and Swedish colonies up north, or perhaps post-independence to annex it anyway.

If the Spanish southeast can somehow remain away from Anglo rule long enough, it could have interesting ripple effects: presuming the USA goes independent anyway, it won't have a lot of southern slave states to paralyze politics and could go for industrialization faster and will probably have no civil war without as large of a southern faction (much less deep south). I could see the USA trying to take it and annex it even there, although it would have distinct local cultures a la the Cajuns in Louisiana. If you're aiming for an independent state, though, my personal guess is that it would look a lot like a mainland Cuba. Speaking of that, I wonder if Cuba will be attached to it, or if the Spanish SE will be ruled from there.
 
They should have made a more concentrated effort at subduing the Mississipian civilization groups before they were wiped out by the series of plagues that befell them. Maybe if de Soto instead of looking simply for gold and the passage to China decided to set up home on the Mississippi...
 
They should have made a more concentrated effort at subduing the Mississipian civilization groups before they were wiped out by the series of plagues that befell them. Maybe if de Soto instead of looking simply for gold and the passage to China decided to set up home on the Mississippi...

It was probably de Soto's wandering through the area that got the diseases to the Mississippian peoples to begin with, unfortunately. OTOH a primarily-Spanish developed Louisiana and New Orleans is a fun possibility.
 
Spain was mainly interested in the southeast and especially Florida because the presence of other Europeans there would threaten the sea lanes between Mexico and Spain. Spain made several attempts at colonizing Florida, including the de Luna expedition, but only got truly serious after the French Huguenots tried to set up a colony in the area.

If there had been continuing French (or British) interest in the area in the late 1560s to early 1580s, Spain might have sustained the resource investment that led to them colonizing Florida and sporadically pushing north as far as South Carolina and into the interior of the southeast. By the time Jamestown was founded, Spain was in sharp enough decline that they weren't able to mount much of a response.

Consequences of a more aggressive Spanish push into the southeast: The Indians of the interior southeast would have probably suffered much the same fate as the Indians of Florida did. They would have been connected more directly to the pool of European diseases that historically swept in waves from Cuba up through Florida and virtually wiped out the Florida tribes. Instead of consolidating into the five civilized tribes, the Indians would probably have been nearly wiped out anywhere that Malaria could spread, and greatly reduced even in the drier mountainous areas.

I've never seen an analysis of how far into the interior southeast epidemics from Florida reached historically, but based on the pattern elsewhere there were probably sporadic epidemics that reduced populations, but spared some areas and were spaced widely enough that the tribes affected had time to recover to some extent.

Archeological studies of the protohistoric period in the interior southeast (roughly the period between Desoto and the advent of British and French traders in the late 1600s) show 150 years of gradual simplification of the Indian cultures. The Indians lost craft specializations when the specialists died out or the population got low enough that it could no longer support the specialists.

The historic southeastern Indians were essentially Mississippians with the top part of their social hierarchy and culture sawed off. The relationship was somewhat like the US as it is versus the US with 90% of the people in Washington to Boston corridor gone, 90% of the people in the thickly populated areas of southern California and Chicago plus burbs gone, and maybe half the population of the rest of the country gone. They were the same people, but without their political/intellectual elite.

Put the Spanish further into the southeast and the Indians there would probably have been reduced to the point where tribes from the periphery would have flooded in.

What would that have meant for British and French colonization? I doubt that South Carolina would have been established in its historic form. Virginia might not have either because Spain might have still been locally powerful enough to strangle it at birth. Beyond that, I don't know. The vacuum in the southeast would undoubtedly have been filled somehow. Maybe Iroquois-speaking tribes like the Erie would have pushed in, or maybe the Shawnees and their relatives. I could even see tribes from the plains filtering into the vacuum. Apaches and Comanches raiding into Georgia and Virginia? Probably not, but interesting to toy with.
 

NothingNow

Banned
IN OTL Spain estabilished some colonies in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina coast but they never developed real colonization plans for this region....what if and what POD is necessary to have a real Spanish colonization of OTL Southeastern US?

Yellow fever will be endemic to much of the south that much faster for one thing.

But the question is, what the hell does the Southeastern US have that they want?

Florida at least happened to be massively strategic, and otherwise a breeding ground for Pirates and they still didn't give a shit about it IOTL.
 
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