In chapter three of The Prince, Machiavelli advises his reader to set up colonies in order to make his newly conquered state more secure. Obviously he had ancient rulers in mind when he said this, but did anyone take him up on this advice, or were there contemporaries of his that were notable for doing so?
The plantation of Ulster just falls out of your timeframe
I'm reading 'The Plantation of Ulster' by Jonathan Bardon, and he discusses how contemporary authors cited Classical examples, biblical ones (the conquest of Canaan), or the example of the Spanish in America, because there weren't really many European parallels post-Rome. According to Bardon, essentially the only one was the 'Saxon' colonisation of Transylvania. In the middle of the twelfth century King Géza II of Hungary invited German settlers (not all from Saxony) to settle in some sparsely populated, mostly Romanian-speaking parts of Transylvania. They were followed by another wave in the early thirteenth century. The settlers had fairly strict requirements to build and fortify towns, build fortified churches and normal feudal duties. They also were granted various privileges denied to the natives, and ended up completely dominating the areas they settled (particularly the towns) at the expense of the (orthodox) Romanians.
