EARLY BELGIAN COLONIAL EFFORTS - The University of Texas at ...

location, as those the Republic had offered Britain, Germany, and France (through
Henri Castro).
The outline of the offer as stated by Pirson was:
If a company for the introduction of 1,000 families is farmed, the
concessions accorded me will be as follows:
640 x 1000 acres for the colonists
640 x 100 acres with option
640 x 10 acres Church property
Total 710,400 acres or 160 square leagues, as 4428 acres make a
league. In making the choice a surface reserved for me covers 100 X 25=2500
miles=277 leagues=1.226.556. 173
Although there was no further information in Pirson’s writings as to the
intended composition of the colony, the terms of the Henri Castro grant may offer some
additional insight. Castro’s grant was located approximately twenty-five miles west of
San Antonio de Bexar, as it was then known. Under his grant Castro established not
only Castroville (3.3), but the towns of Quihi, Vandenburg, and D’Hanis. The charter
indicated a general statement of goals, laws, and rights that would be the basis of the
settlements Castro established. 174 It did not state, or even imply, that there was any sort
of extraterritoriality in the grant, something Leopold desired. It was a simple statement
of purposes and ideals. 175 Additionally, Pirson was provided copies of the agreements
173
Pirson to de Briey, 10 March 1842, AMAE 2013 and BL.
174
Pirson file AMAE 2013.
175
Castro was able to attract almost 700 people (mostly from the Alsatian district of France) to
this enterprise. Also present in AMAE, along with the two maps of Texas, was a copy of the original city
layout for Castroville, (3.3) AMAE 2018. Although there is no way to relate this map to the purported
Belgian colony, its presence in the same dossier as the other maps gives rise to a reasonable inference that
it would have been consulted by the Belgian Foreign Office in regard to potential layout and design had
there been a colony in Texas. It is instructive to compare the proposed map of Castroville with the
proposed map of Santo Tomas (Map 4), Young Anderson, “Map of Abbottsville, (1837?) AMAE 2013;
both seem to be highly stylized and attempted to project what the cartographer wanted the viewer to see
or envision.
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