Forget the French Intervention; the Reform War itself will likely be different with all that land in American hands, although I can't say how (which in turn affects how the Intervention plays out, if it does so at all; a Conservative victory in the Reform War or a much quicker Liberal victory likely means no French Intervention to start with).
Effects on Mexico if the US annexes more of northern Mexico?
- Thread starter NiGHTS
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Deleted member 67076
Why exactly? There's always the Yucatan and the far south as a hotbed of rebellion.
I don't know how no rebellions = caudillos. Caudillo were a response to how weak the federal government was and the constant instability, not the other way around.
Without rebellions sapping up most of the budget and giving opportunities for warlords to rise through the ranks, I can't see you're going to get the centralized military strongmen familiar to Latin America.
Instead if anything the rule of law would be stronger, as would the regime would be able to cement control and its modernization methods would allow for a carrot and stick approach to cement control, similar to the Porfiriato.
Its a common Latin American thing: stability always leads to the fastest andost efficient levels of economic growth as foreign capital is able to safely flow into the internal market. Furthermore, wars eat up most of the national budget often taking as much as 45% of national spending (ex: Dominican Republic 1844-59); with stability comes demobilization that both increases the labor pool and frees up so much funds that can be diverted to anything else.
A Mexico with stability is North Americas Japan.
Deleted member 67076
Yes, France would have a much easier time holding the place down militarily, and the later influx of French capital would give enough of a carrot to keep the elite and middle classes happy.
Mayan peasants fighting for control of their land is far different than a safe zone where Mexican liberals can retreat to. The north also had a lot more independent economic operators - more elites and a stronger middle class. Yucatan would just be impoverished peasants on latifundia or communal village farms.
The rule of law is best understood that the government and the powerful are constrained by the law, not that the people do what they're told by corrupt dictators. The Porfiriato certainly provided stability in Mexico for a long time and brought in foreign capital, but it also dispossessed peasants from their communal land. It is one thing to split up communal land and assign it to individual families of the peasant village, but another when you claim it as state land and sell it to foreigners dispossessing the peasants from their own land. The true path of modernization relies on expanding the middle class and independent farmers, not keeping the people as campesinos. I don't think the peasants of Oaxaca and Chiapas saw a whole lot of modernization.
If Diaz had been willing to leave office in 1910, perhaps he might be considered one of the "enlightened autocrats" who set the path for a modernized nation. But he didn't, and his legacy is just a bit better than that of a Somoza rather than a Lee Kuan Yew or even a Pinochet. Diaz was good for the elite, but the masses of peasants were kept poor and ignorant. That is not a path for modernization.
Political stability is important for development, and the government needs to provide law and order, keep people safe and collect taxes. But we know the most typical kind of "law and order" provided in Latin America did not lead to North American or European levels of development. Most of the civil wars in Mexico were not about the central state not being able to collect taxes or provide for law enforcement, it was about the central government trying to take away people's rights so the government can do whatever it wants or breaking the power of the Church.
Are you suggesting that Mexico will modernize as Japan did? The two countries are completely different. Japan was a highly literate culture whose population was highly skilled in crafts. Mexico's population was mostly illiterate peasants with low work skills.
I have the feeling we are not going to convincing each other of anything. You seem to have a much higher opinion of the Porfiriato than I do, and discount the possibility that a strongman in charge may not be an enlightened modernizer.
B-29_Bomber
Banned
Yes, but the border will be significantly shorter and consequentially much easier to police. Combined with a much more stable Mexico would probably lead to border security being much much less of an issue ITTL.
Deleted member 67076
And yet the north continually lacked the economic and military force to cement their rule over the country, and liberals frequently squabbled amongst themselves.
That's a very... classically liberal way of looking at things. I'm viewing the rule of law here as just that, the law running things, not feudal landowners and bandits far away from Mexico City's watchful eye.
And it will happen, because foreign owned capital will try to save costs by reducing the need for dealing with a rentier state and constant bribery. The Foreign capital wants to be the Gatekeepers of the state, not deal with them.
This isn't inherently bad. Pushing peasants off land can and has also spurned urbanization as peasants move to cities in search of work.
Not really, that's one way of doing it but not the only way. Iran modernized very effectively from a premodern basis into a semi industrialized state using elite monopolization of resources to crush regional elites. Similarly, Venezuela, Morocco, Thailand, Egypt, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Sokoto, Russia, etc, all went through phases of rapid economic growth and modernization powered through by illiberal (often landed) elites; not Middle Class landowners or artisans.
Foreign ownership of capital will not prevent the development of industry, increased urbanization and the expansion and overhaul of infrastructure; merely tilt where the profits go to. If anything it will speed modernization up as infrastructure and extractive industry take off faster than OTL, alongside the crushing of bandits and regional gatekeepers, and really, any other barrier to
The long term costs will be of course evident, I don't deny that and have never claimed otherwise, but the short to mid term will be seen as a semi beneficial era.
His policies also led to industrialization, a common language taking hold (Spanish), the growth of an actual urban elite to counterbalance rural landowners, and the destruction of banditry, a drop in infant mortality and a 50% increase in the Mexican population that created the relatively high rates of growth during the period.
Not at all nice for peasants, but history is never friendly to them.
Stability allows for law and order to take root and for effective methods of taxation to take hold, not the other way around.
This is more due to economies based solely on resource extraction, tiny populations within states, and the lack of educated classes than merely a corrupt leader(s).
Which in turn led to regionalization, a hardening of conservative viewpoints, and the dominance of a reactionary elite that was always able to amass more resources than Liberals as they could marshall up peasants who could barely understand what voting meant.
This trend is repeated similarly in Colombia, Guatemala, Argentina, the Dominican Republic- really all throughout Latin America. Constant instability is not worth it if its caused by Liberal victories in war and an inability to control the state and its peoples. Unless the Liberals brutally crush everyone and force reforms down the throat of everyone, you won't get that happy shiny development one saw in North America.
I'm suggesting the cartels that become equivalent of Zaibatsu, massive population growth, ISI style industrialization and an emphasis on infrastructure and a strong state.
Gains in productivity the way Japan did can come later after all of that is finished.
I'm not discounting that; my basis is merely that stability is just as important as providing structural reforms. No point in doing reforms if you can't force them.
Hell even a corrupt strongman that keeps enough stability to provide the change toward industrialization and urbanization has already tilted his state toward the modern era without knowing it. It may require a revolution or 2 to achieve the needed reforms and realize the state's true potential, but the ball's already started rolling.
Anglo ideas of freedom are based far too much in (Northern) American and English histories of development; stability is worth much more than legal freedoms, which, in Spain as in the Americas as in our South, often signified nothing more than the ability of landed or sometimes urban elites to do as they wished.
Reducing the power of the state increases the power of private actors, which has rarely worked out well in Latin America. While becoming entangled in foreign capital is never good in the long-run, in the short term it can lead to a great deal of gains for the domestic population.
Reducing the power of the state increases the power of private actors, which has rarely worked out well in Latin America. While becoming entangled in foreign capital is never good in the long-run, in the short term it can lead to a great deal of gains for the domestic population.
Baja California probable attached to Southern California which is split from Northern Californi.
Arizona probably has access to the Gulf of California.
Sonora probably extends further south as a result.
Chihuahua.
Coahuila.
Probably some state named after a US President.
New Leon.
I don't see Tamaulipas being a state name.
Soverihn, you are betting very hard that the strongman is Lee Kuan Yew. Unfortunately, history teaches us the more likely person is more towards the side of Mobuto Sese Seko. Comparison to Somoza is probably the most likely scenario. Stable -for a time until it all implodes - and corrupt. You'll get Peru, not Japan.
Would there still be an Arizona, or would it just be the northern part of a State of Sonora?
Deleted member 67076
Not really. I'm betting on a Juan Vincent Gomez, a Lilis Heureaux, a Reza Shah, even a Leopold Senghor or a Nasser would be fine. A middle of the road leader that manages to keep control of the state, centralize it and impose standardized control that allows for a major transformation of the nation through decades of stability, some investments in military and infrastructural sectors, improvements in roads, resource extractions, and basic education for technocratic elites to improve running the state and bleeding the stone of the peasantry. Maybe a military industrial complex and a bloated public sector thrown in there for good measure.
A massive short and mid term boost for the state.
You don't need a strong leader that is able to force reforms that transition his state into a first class economy during his rule, nor do I think that's likely. You just need one that's able to keep the peace, remove internal and direct external threats to the state, enforce the law of the state, play off or appease major interest groups to prevent rebellions and allow for stable investments.
The stability and infrastructural developments will do most of the work in improving even if wages remain stagnant overall for the lower classes and much of the profits are directed to a military/industrial/technocratic elite. Long term it will probably bite the state in the ass and create stagnation, but for the first decades the state will boom and Mexico overall will be left stronger than what came before.
You're not getting a Mobutu. Any Mexican strongman in this position would not have the leeway Mobutu had in order to do his kleptocracy. Mexico isn't a useful counter, or buffer, nor is her economy so specialized towards a few key sectors that he who controls the few resource extraction plants controls all. Plantations work against that, and already in this time there's a number of sectors that are diversified (mining for example) that make the whole rentier mastery harder to do, unlike in Congo which was just copper exports.
I think I remember a thread a long time ago when we looked at the numbers for this sort of thing. Can't honestly say the exact parts; I think most of it was pointing out that the interior states were nearly as sparsely populated as New Mexico, with the majority of the population being on the coastal provinces.
In the east, the Republic of the Rio Grande might be restored as an actual state in the union if it is annexed into the US... which creates a large problem as they would not accept slavery (being highly opposed to it). So you'd have a free state on Texas's southern border. Even if it is a slave state de jure, it will not be de facto... and it will take the opportunity to renounce it at the earliest opportunity. The interior territories to the west will remain in a legal mess, but neither Sonoro, Sinaloa, Durango, or Zacetecas would become slave states.
This, of course, messes up the whole issue with the expansion of slavery to the western territories in the south, as quite a few of those territories have a sizable population of residents opposed to slavery. (Part of the reason, if I recall correctly, that California wasn't split; all of the immigrants were Northerners for the most part) Following that precedent, any state to the south would also follow the same path.
As said, that might make Texas remain in the union as a border state, especially as the Rio Grande would be interesting in reacquiring the Nueces Strip and settling that dispute. Without that secession (assuming everything else is the same) then there might be fewer other secessions in the Upper South (Arkansas/Tennessee/North Carolina) and suddenly the Confederacy is a lot more fragile. And any French Intervention might find itself incomplete by the time the US is finished.
One point in Burnished Rows of Steel that I liked was how Lincoln oversaw the retrocession of the Gadsden purchase to the Mexicans in exchange for assistance against the Confederacy and the British; after all, the southern land was purchased for the gain of the South. Most of that unpopulated interior, and some of the southern territories that do not want to stay with the US, could have the same retrocession applied. After all, it is the federal government's decision as for what to do with its territories, organized or unorganized.
It might even be the case where during the Civil War, part of the territory is retroceded to the Mexican Republican government, but not to the monarchists. That would give them a location to flee to, along with an excuse for the US to intervene later on. There are several ways you could take this.
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However, to address OP's point: Mexico would still retain the majority of its population (indeed, the north, especially the northwest, of Mexico was very underpopulated). Mexico would be a more centralized and urbanized country and likely even more resentful of its northern neighbor. Although, that high urbanization and the lack resources spent in pacifying any norther regions (or the Yucatan for that matter) might outweigh any negatives on the economy. It might also lead to greater attempts for unity with its southern neighbors as well (or at least a pro forma alliance against their northern neighbor) if it can lock down infighting.
Canada without British Columbia was a far different beast. Without BC, don't they lose a large base for population expansion into the interior of Canada, as it must all come through the east? Canadian unification may or may not occur faster, depending on how much of Canada sees the US as a threat to its existence.
Note that Russia's objective in selling Alaska to the US was to wound Great Britain more than anything; it was a win-win on both sides. It is doubtful that Russia would lose it in an alt Crimean war that proceeds roughly the same as OTL. Russian Alaska was isolated and relatively worthless; without British Columbia, it is marginally more important, but at the same time, it is even more isolated from the rest of Canada. (Remember, there is no railroad across Canada by that point, so there is no feasible way to move troops all the way up there). That, and I think the US was already in negotiations with Russia at that time to acquire the territory; they certainly had the interest. What makes it even harder for the British and Canadians is that it makes it so much harder for the Yukon to police, as isolated as it is. ...That alone may serve to unite Canada closer to Britain than even in OTL if Canada loses the Yukon territory de facto.
In the east, the Republic of the Rio Grande might be restored as an actual state in the union if it is annexed into the US... which creates a large problem as they would not accept slavery (being highly opposed to it). So you'd have a free state on Texas's southern border. Even if it is a slave state de jure, it will not be de facto... and it will take the opportunity to renounce it at the earliest opportunity. The interior territories to the west will remain in a legal mess, but neither Sonoro, Sinaloa, Durango, or Zacetecas would become slave states.
This, of course, messes up the whole issue with the expansion of slavery to the western territories in the south, as quite a few of those territories have a sizable population of residents opposed to slavery. (Part of the reason, if I recall correctly, that California wasn't split; all of the immigrants were Northerners for the most part) Following that precedent, any state to the south would also follow the same path.
As said, that might make Texas remain in the union as a border state, especially as the Rio Grande would be interesting in reacquiring the Nueces Strip and settling that dispute. Without that secession (assuming everything else is the same) then there might be fewer other secessions in the Upper South (Arkansas/Tennessee/North Carolina) and suddenly the Confederacy is a lot more fragile. And any French Intervention might find itself incomplete by the time the US is finished.
One point in Burnished Rows of Steel that I liked was how Lincoln oversaw the retrocession of the Gadsden purchase to the Mexicans in exchange for assistance against the Confederacy and the British; after all, the southern land was purchased for the gain of the South. Most of that unpopulated interior, and some of the southern territories that do not want to stay with the US, could have the same retrocession applied. After all, it is the federal government's decision as for what to do with its territories, organized or unorganized.
It might even be the case where during the Civil War, part of the territory is retroceded to the Mexican Republican government, but not to the monarchists. That would give them a location to flee to, along with an excuse for the US to intervene later on. There are several ways you could take this.
--
However, to address OP's point: Mexico would still retain the majority of its population (indeed, the north, especially the northwest, of Mexico was very underpopulated). Mexico would be a more centralized and urbanized country and likely even more resentful of its northern neighbor. Although, that high urbanization and the lack resources spent in pacifying any norther regions (or the Yucatan for that matter) might outweigh any negatives on the economy. It might also lead to greater attempts for unity with its southern neighbors as well (or at least a pro forma alliance against their northern neighbor) if it can lock down infighting.
Canada without British Columbia was a far different beast. Without BC, don't they lose a large base for population expansion into the interior of Canada, as it must all come through the east? Canadian unification may or may not occur faster, depending on how much of Canada sees the US as a threat to its existence.
Note that Russia's objective in selling Alaska to the US was to wound Great Britain more than anything; it was a win-win on both sides. It is doubtful that Russia would lose it in an alt Crimean war that proceeds roughly the same as OTL. Russian Alaska was isolated and relatively worthless; without British Columbia, it is marginally more important, but at the same time, it is even more isolated from the rest of Canada. (Remember, there is no railroad across Canada by that point, so there is no feasible way to move troops all the way up there). That, and I think the US was already in negotiations with Russia at that time to acquire the territory; they certainly had the interest. What makes it even harder for the British and Canadians is that it makes it so much harder for the Yukon to police, as isolated as it is. ...That alone may serve to unite Canada closer to Britain than even in OTL if Canada loses the Yukon territory de facto.
Hrm. Was going to reply to the post on the division of Arizona.
More likely is, if Sonora is admitted and becomes a state before the New Mexico Territory is reorganized, then it will likely get the Gila River border. As compensation, Arizona would keep its western panhandle, which includes most of Nevada's current population. (the extremely long thin territory isn't nearly as efficient for administration, even if the big squares are ugly.)
More likely is, if Sonora is admitted and becomes a state before the New Mexico Territory is reorganized, then it will likely get the Gila River border. As compensation, Arizona would keep its western panhandle, which includes most of Nevada's current population. (the extremely long thin territory isn't nearly as efficient for administration, even if the big squares are ugly.)