*Which other small or lesser known colonial empires are there?*

"I got Mexico"--Spain "I got India"--England "I got a Rock"--Norway

When your colony has a colony, you know your doing something right.

Fun fact: one time russia almost sold Alaska to Liechtenstein instead of america

When your colony starts colonizing Britain: *Cries* They grow up so fast!

One big empire that always goes unnoticed is the Omani empire, it held territories from modern day Pakistan all the way to modern day Mozambique and were probably the only non-European colonizers of Africa in the 20th century.

New Sweden: Exists The Netherlands: it’s a free real estate New Netherlands: Exists The British: it’s a free real estate

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: "You know, I'm somewhat of a coloniser myself"

"Courland colonies in today's Ghana" It's the Gambia,not Ghana. An error I've just spotted.

fun fact about Courland is that in Ghana, they were protected by the native tribes against Dutch attacks. they cut off water and food supply for the aggressors resulting in Dutch retreat. and they had many more stories like that there. you could make a solid movie based on those adventures.

The Swedish owned Saint-Barthélemy for almost a century before selling it back to the french. Not less then a year.

I saw the danish colonial empire in the history of the Caribbean and the history of India

When it comes to St. Barthelemy there’s still some Swedish influence on the island. The flag of St. Barthelemy has the Three Crowns, representing Sweden, on their flag. A couple of streets have Swedish names and some streets are even bilingual in French and Swedish. Some places and buildings even have Swedish names; the airport is named after our previous king Gustaf III, there’s a fort named Fort Karl (probably after Charles XII) and the capital of the island is named Gustavia, also after King Gustaf. One of last islanders of Swedish descent Marius Stakelborough (a descendent of Swedish governour Bernt Robert Gustaf Stackelberg) died in june 2020. St. Barthelemy was our longest overseas procession, we had it from 1784 to 1878.

New Zealand also to this day 'owns' Tokelau, Niue and the Cook Islands which are all in the "Realm of New Zealand"

John Sutter, was a Swiss living in the US, who at one point made some attempts to colonise California. His first settlement, Sutter's Fort, is now known as Sacramento.

Well if New Zealand tecnically had a colony then so did South Africa, when they took control over Namibia, and held on to it well passed independence

The Norwegian 'colonial' empire is also known as Norgesveldet, if anyone wanted to know a fact for today.

Expected Scotland's attempted colonies in Central America to be here tbh!

Almost goes without saying, but Siberia wasn’t uninhabited.

Courlands tobago colony didn't fail ,because of natives. As Latvian from documentation we had. Netherlands who also owned part of the island took it.

I like that, you being Portuguese, you never forget Portugal when talking about colonialism like most people do.

I actually live in what used to be “New Sweden”. One of their settlements still exists in my home town in the form of a small log cabin and some ruins of other small buildings next to a creek. It’s called the “Lower Swedish Cabin”, but we just call it “The Swedish Cabin”. It’s one of the oldest log cabins in the United States as well. People claim they can hear ghosts and stuff at night there, so it’s considered one of the most haunted places in America. You can visit it any time, but you can only go inside on Halloween.

A way to get cash from colonies: sell them to France or Britain

In the same way of the New Zealand Empire, Australia controlled Papua New Guinea, from 1932-1975, and Narau, from 1927-1968. Today Australia also controls Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. the Cocos (or Keeling) Islands and Norfolk Island. All of these are part of Australia, but are given autonomy as Overseas Territories. Australia also has claims on Antartica, with the Australia Antarctic territory (AAT), but after the Antartica Treaty in 1959, this became inactive.

You forgot Australia’s rule over PNG, the Solomon Islands and now most of Antartica and all of Norfolk Island.

The fact that Norway actually colonized iceland greenland and the faroe islands, but Denmark formed a union over us, so they get the credit..

I think this video needs a part 2, talking about the empires of USA, Japan, Australia, Scotland, Oman and maybe China

Good video! I just wanted to point out that Sweden actually controlled St Barthelemy for close to a hundred years, from 1784-1878

"Courland colonies in Ghana" Shows a map of Gambia

The Austrian was unexpected

Random European colonizer : "so our colony would be like a start-up" *Britain , France , Spain etc : "well you see , we are the big businesses then"*

Thank you so much for doing these!

This looks like a good one

9:54 The island of Saint Barthelmy was ruled by Sweden between the years 1784-1878 which is closer to 94 years, not 1 year. Their biggest city, Gustavia is even named aver the Swedish king during that period, Gustav III. The island also has several streets with Swedish names, the welcome sign when you arrive has the word "välkommen" which means welcome in English. The coat of arms even includes three crowns as a reference to their Swedish colonial rule.

The fact that some of these nations are actually quite bigger and stronger, makes me think how Portugal stood its colonies the way it did.

You could have mentioned Franz-Josef-Land für Austria (an Archipelago in the Arctic Sea discovered by Austria and now owned by Russia)

Belgium colonising Congo: Not big enough to be a colonial power, too big to be in the lesser-known section.

Great video, but when you mention the main European colonial empires at the beginning, you list Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy - but you forgot Belgium, which held the Belgian Congo under King Leopold.

Love your videos! Keep the great work up!

A few years back i wrote an article about the Courland/Latvian colonization attempts in the 17th century. They pretty much only tried a few times, mostly in the Gambia and on the Carabean island of Tobago. Courland had a pretty big fleet at that point in time, so commercially the colonies were somewhat of a succes for a few years. However the setler colony on Tobago was plagued with... well plagues. Europeans did not fit well into the tropical climate and harsh conditions, and the first few settlements got wiped out after a few years. I believe the 3rd try on Tobago was a bit more succesful, but that was partially due to the fact the Courish were kind of working together with a Dutch effort to colonize the island at that point. The colonial attempts of Courland seized to exist after a few decades. The nation got caught up in a massive war between Sweden and Poland, the Duke got captured and the fleet was unable to compete with larger nation in the long term. All Courish settlements were either abandoned or taken over by other colonial powers.

2:31 "When you think of early modern empires, your mind wwent off and think of Latvia as being a colonizer"

New Zealand still has some additional colonies in Niue, Cook Islands, Tokelau and a claim to Antarctica. Australia also has several colonies. The list was much longer in the early 1900's but still consists of a handful of islands and a claim to Antarctica.

Very nice video! It was interesting to watch! I appreciate the irony starting at 7:41 : Maria Theresa founded the Austrian Company of Trieste that tried establishing a gold mining company on the coast - the latter being in... Africa.

I saw this in my recommended and didn’t realize it was released like 5 minutes ago

Thanks for the discussion of NZ and Samoa. NZ still had a large Samoan ethnic population and there are still close ties between the two countries. NZ also still had a dependency called Tokelau in the Pacific as well as two associated states called Cook Islands and Niue, which are independent but they look to NZ for defense and foreign policy. They also retain NZ citizenship.

Saint-Barthélemy was controlled by Sweden for 96 years from 1784-1878 and another cool thing was that there capital is called Gustavia named after the Swedish king Gustav III who bought them

5:05 The Ragusan Colony in India was in the village of São Braz (now called Gandaulim), in Goa. My family's native village is near to that place.

Gracias por el video, esto era justo lo que estaba buscando. Like 👍

Saint Barthelemy was Swedish 1784 - 1878 and it's capital is still called Gustavia after the Swedish king at the time (Guadeloupe was formally a year, although 4 years in total 1810-1814)

Uses Indian map in thumbnail Indians: You have once again provoked our powers

Great video as always!

At 3:22 you showed "Courland Colonies in Today's Ghana." I think that is a mistake and should in "The Gambia." Besides that, great video! Loved it :)

3:23 mistake, you probably meant Gambia, not Ghana

Chile annexed Rapa Nui (then called Easter Island/Isla de Pascua) from the kingdom that was sovereign of the island under the mistranslation of a treaty of protection which in spanish said another thing. It's a pretty interesting history the one of Rapa Nui and I would consider that it is an example of colonization by a Latinoamerican country as it is located on another continent which is Polynesia, Oceania. I recommend you reading through the history of the island and specially from their people

Best Geopolitics/History Channel

+rep for recognising SMOM, I went there a few years back and was let in by a janitor driving something like a limo. Truely a homie

Awsome i love history but i didnt know anything about these colonial empires. Thank you

Poland was trying to set up a colonial outpost in Angola in the 1930s. I think there was even a Polish coffee plantation there. And then there was also one failed attempt of a kind-of-colonial relation with Liberia just somewhere around 1936.

Your best video till now !!!!

There was also a short-lived colony of Scotland in Panama. (Darien scheme)

U forgot the empire of Oman Muscat

imagine if Malta was a super power and fought in the world wars with it's own colonies as it's allies...

Please continue with fun with flags

To be fair, the Danish Colonial Empire still exists. Also some non-european countries (other than Japan) got one, like Oman and Muscat (East African Coast, India, some dispersed Islands), the Ottoman Empire (Parts of Indonesia, Upper Nile, Libya, Crimea, etc..), several Malay states in the Sundanesia Islands, Morrocco and some adventures in Sub-Saharian Africa.

Australia had colonies too. Papua New Guinea and Nauru were former colonies. PNG being the largest. Australia still owns Norfolk island, cocos (keeling) islands, Christmas Island, and a bunch of other islands. They even governed New Zealand for a bit.

Wow! I never knew about Austrian India, despite being Indian. I knew there had been Danish colonies in Nicobar and Serampore, but Austria!? That was unexpected!

Love that u included Norway

You have made me realise that I thought I knew more than I did about colonialism, thanks for making this video. Great quality too!

You should check out New Zealand’s Realm countries. The Cook Island 🌴 , Niue 🇳🇺,Tokelau 🇹🇰 and the Ross Dependency in Antarctica 🇦🇶

Interesting topic. Sweden rules at Barthelemy for 100 years not 1. Also what about Japan and Belgium?

Hey man nice video, my ancestors are danish colonizers that went to at at croix, nice to know more facts about the empire haha

I would love to see a video going over the very long and strange history of the knights hospitalier pleaseee take the time to make one because they have a very lomg history and after seeing recent videos seeing what theyve became now and im curious so pleasee make this happen for me p.s. i love your videos!

New Sweden should be mentioned first it was much larger than Cabo Corso (Swedish Gold Coast) and built from scratch (the advisor was Peter Minuit that is famous from buying Manhattan for the Dutch)

Ragusa was not "croatian", they considered themselves a Merchant Republic with italian ethnicity just like Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, etc. It changed owner several times during the Napoleonic Wars from being independent to France and then to Croatia inside the Austrian Empire. But the timeline you mention in the video it was an italian city (ethnically speaking) not croatian.

I'm so happy someone finally recognized Courland!! Love to our Latvian brothers 🇱🇻❤🇵🇭

I love these type of videos. The Norwegian way of colonisation is interesting, no human beings to rule, only animals (maybe)

I think the line is very blurry between European colonialism and "normal" empires. Also many many non-European states could be considered colonizers. For Japan's expansion into Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria was definitely colonial, and on an industrial scale. The Khedivate of Egypt did take part in the "scramble for Africa" when they colonized present day Sudan and South Sudan. Even the borders of modern day Ethiopia reflect Emperor Meneliks huge territorial expansion that happened during the African scramble era (1878-1904), taking territories belonging to the Oromos, Somalis and many other peoples. In this way Ethiopia did take part in the colonization of Africa. which is still a reflected in the ethnic tensions in the present day country. Oman was definitely a Middle Eastern colonial Empire in - ruling many coastlines of eastern Africa and western Asia and profiting imensly on on slave trade and traded with spices harvested by slaves - from modern day Pakistan to modern day Mozambique. They also threw out the Portuguese from many areas. Several Indian states did colonize parts of South East Asia. Was the Ottoman empire a colonial empire? - It ruled many countries a a long way from its core territory, also very far away places such as Aceh in Indonesia and modern day Eritrea in east Africa.

The Cook Islands are also a colony of New Zealand, and Nauru was shared with Australia and the UK. As Norway, they also claim a part of the Antarctica.

Great series this.

Not sure if that factory in India can be called a colony, there was also a factory in Canton by the Swedish East India Company (Ostindiska kompaniet with HQ in Gothenburg, building still standing and is history museum) a fun thing is that the Swedish flag can be seen in contemporary paintings of Canton: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Factories#/media/File:Canton_factories.jpg

“And finally New Zealand” Me: ‘Sad Polish noises.’

It's pretty cool the part of my heritage from my grandpa is Latvian 🇱🇻, but specifically Courland. Where his last name is part the the "Curonian Kings". History and famil history is quite interesting

Glad you mentioned dubrovnik or ragusa grettings from croatia

New Zealand invaded SaMOA in 1914, it also has dependencies in the Coolk Islands, Nuie, and Tokelau Islands as well as parts of Antarctica, Sott Base.

The ex-Danish colonial buildings in India have just been renovated (reconstructed). An inn, university, church and a fort

I was convinced on that earthquake... totally :)

fun fact: austria-hungary had a small neighborhood in china, brunei and a small part of malaysia

Like the service madly in the background

Doesnt USA count as a colonial empire? It has had a lot of insular territories at the pacific and at the caribean sea. What about Liberia and Panama Canal Zone?

Aren't you forgetting the Darien Expedition by Scotland? It was that that led to the Union and the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Nice video as always🌝

Many Westerners complain about Japan's past colonies, but But when it comes to their own history of colonization, they talk happily.

Chile annexing Easter Island in 1888: "You know, I'm something of a colonial empire myself". Sad that you missed this one, though, because unlike most, it was a success and not a short lived initiative. And later in the 60s, Easter Island and the natives gained equal status with the rest of Chile.

I think you should know New Zealand actually was very into colonialism. Policy makers had ambitions for New Zealand to be the ‘Britain of the south seas’ in a cultural aswell as colonial sense. New Zealand to this day administers cook islands, Nuie and Tokelau with Samoa gaining independence in the 60’s. Not to mention New Zealand’s conquest of Maori held lands in the New Zealand Wars. New Zealand was not only involved with pacific colonialism, it was quite prolific especially for its small size.

If New Zealand counts you have to count Japan who gained Pacific islands off of Germany as well. Not to mention their colonization of Okinawa, Hokkaido, Taiwan, and Korea amongst others

Australia was the same as New Zealand, administering Papua Niugini up until the 70s, as well as Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands in the east Christmas & The Cocos Islands in the west and McDonald, heard & Macquarie islands in the south as well as large parts of Antarctica. The Cocos Islands in particular are an interesting case.

If General Knowledge formed his own empire it would be the best one of all time

Switzerlandchad a kind of colony in Brazil (1818) called "Nova Fribourgo"

For New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau could also be included.

Your handwriting is so good