Forgotten Histories: Welserland
Have you heard of the Welserland colony? The Welserland colony was a colonial enterprise granted to the wealthy German banking family, the Welsers, by the Spanish crown in the early 16th century.
In 1528, Spain authorized the Welsers to establish a colony in Venezuela in exchange for gold and territory. The Welsers installed Ambrosio Alfinger as governor, and his mission was to convert natives to Christianity and find El Dorado. More governors, such as Georg von Speyer and Philipp von Hutten, continued the search for gold but it failed. By the 1540s, the colony started failing since the Welsers were only bankers, not experienced colonial administrators, and by 1546, Juan de Carvajal, a Spanish rival, arrested von Hutten and Bartholomeus Welser, marking the end of any German control in Venezuela. In 1556, the Spanish crown revoked the Welser's contract, bringing the colony to Spanish administration once again.
Do you have any opinion on this? I personally think it failed due to lack of support in Germany and also the HRE's lack of political centralization.
