I wonder what made the Spaniards stop at Florida instead of advancing farther northeast. Given that conquistadores took on the Aztec and Incan empires, you'd think the Algonquian and Siouan peoples on the east coast wouldn't be as big of a problem. So it seems that the problem might have been more economic than military. What made that region more palatable to England than Spain?
Why didn't Spain have successful colonies north of Florida?
- Thread starter Herman Gigglethorpe
- Start date
I think Spain was too busy digesting what it already had. Much of the Spanish colonies existed on paper only IOTL. Outside a few missions and settlements, almost the entire Spanish colonies in the modern day United States was still controlled by the local Indians. I think it's a case where they did not have sufficient resources to hold what they already claimed much less expand.
Deleted member 93645
The Spanish had a policy of conquering existing empires and tribes, rather than displacing them like the English, or trading with them like the French and Dutch. With the lower population density of North America, this subjugation based strategy broke down.
The same reason why Spain had trouble in interior Argentina and the North of Mexico (California, Texas, and New Mexico as well). Their whole strategy for dealing with the natives utterly failed when the natives were much less organised. The organised societies of Mesoamerica and the Andes proved "easy" to subjugate long-term because Spain could just insert their own guys over the former ruling class. That wasn't really doable with most American Indian groups in nowadays US, and Spain wasted tons of resources pretending it was.
Which does make me wonder what would've happened if a Spanish explorer had found the gold in Georgia. There was probably enough gold in Georgia and the Carolinas to try and get the Spanish to devote some semblance of effort to colonisation, although they'd probably be disappointed the place wasn't as productive as the mines of Mexico or Peru.