Klein-Venedig in the context of "Nikolaus Federmann"

German attempts at the colonization of the Americas consisted of German Venezuela (German: Klein-Venedig, also German: Welser-Kolonie), St. Thomas and Crab Island in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Welser was a German banking and merchant family, originally a patrician family based in Augsburg and Nuremberg, that rose to great prominence in international high finance in the 16th century as bankers to the Habsburgs and financiers of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Along with the Fugger family, the Welser family controlled large sectors of the European economy, and accumulated enormous wealth through trade and the German colonization of the Americas, including slave trade. The family received colonial rights of the Province of Venezuela from Charles V, who was also King of Spain, in 1528, becoming owners and rulers of the South American colony of Klein-Venedig (within modern Venezuela), but were deprived of their rule in 1546. Philippine Welser (1527–1580), famed for both her learning and her beauty, was married to Archduke Ferdinand, Emperor Ferdinand I's son.

Claiming descent from the Byzantine general Belisarius, the family is known since the 13th century. By the early Age of Discovery, the Welser family had established trading posts in Antwerp, Lyon, Madrid, Nuremberg, Sevilla, Lisbon, Venice, Rome, and Santo Domingo. The Welsers financed not only the Emperor, but also other European monarchs. After the Reformation, both Welser and Fugger families remained in the Roman Catholic Church.

Spanish expeditions led by Columbus and Alonso de Ojeda reached the coast of present-day Venezuela in 1498 and 1499. The first colonial exploitation was of the pearl oysters of the "Pearl Islands". Spain established its first permanent South American settlement in the present-day city of Cumaná in 1502, and in 1577 Caracas became the capital of the Province of Venezuela. There was also for a few years a German colony at Klein-Venedig.

The 16th- and 17th-century colonial economy was centered on gold mining and livestock farming. The relatively small number of colonists employed indigenous farmers on their haciendas, and enslaved other indigenous people and, later, Africans to work in the mines. The Venezuelan territories were governed at different times from the distant capitals of the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru.