Would an Anglo South America and a Latin North America swap OTL histories?

[Strategos' Risk]

Summary: I'm wondering if we would similarly get a setup where there's multiple Anglo states in South America (for kicks maybe we can make Brazil into a French state - Antarctique), Central America is also a group of fractious Anglophone states, and finally North America is more united by a centralized Hispanophone state controlling the Mississippi watershed.

Rationale: The Brazilian United Americas thread got me thinking - is geography destiny? The fate of North America and Latin America have a lot to do with political, cultural, social, and religious factors, but harsh geography likely undeniably caused South America to be fragmented, Central America to be underdeveloped, while North America had the huge breadbasket of the Great Plains up to the Canadian Prairies. Not sure how Mexico fits in- it's got a lot of desert in the north and jungle in the south east, but the rest seem fine and it's blessed with natural resources.

Also, another major factor is the indigenous populations. There were far more aboriginal peoples from like Central Mexico southwards, while the natives in Anglo North America were relatively diffuse and less economically advanced. And given the different types of colonization patterns and so on and the different colonizing cultures involved, things could go very different.

A mestizo/metis - what's the English version, mixed-blood? - culture and people in South and Central America would be very interesting as well.

 

[Vinization]

Things would likely be either the same or very similar to OTL, only with swapped languages. The economy and culture of the US South was very similar to the likes of Brazil and Cuba, for example - they were dominated by plantations focused on growing a single product (cotton, sugar, coffee and so on) which was harvested by slaves.

 

[Neal Caffrey]

Not really geography is not at all destiny, but the main problem of South America is that Spain was the one that colonized it.

Spain was for much of its existence a feudal state in a world that was changing, due to that the feudalism that marked it was very hard to overcome by different nations that rebelled against it and when those nations started getting into a modern way of having a society they simply had bad luck with terrible governments and stupid policies that have held them back for so long.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Yeah, Latin America was always wrecked by class struggles, landowner feudalism, centralists vs. federalists, the Church's role, race issues of a different sort, etc that came from being colonized by the Iberians. But I think geography is still a huge determinant, my major three points are 1) the Mississippi watershed über alles will make whomever controls it into a world superpower, 2) South America has very tricky topography, 3) Central America has too many jungles and tropical diseases.

 

[cloistered scholar]

South America doesnt have nearly as much coal as North America, so that may impact industrialization.

 

[Otto Kretschmer]

Probably British South America is rich while Latin North America will be poor.

 

[Vinization]

Who's to say England/Britain wouldn't enact the same policies Spain did? This isn't some gigantic penal colony they can afford to leave to its own devices, but a literal mountain of gold and silver.

 

[Neal Caffrey]

South America doesnt have nearly as much coal as North America, so that may impact industrialization.

Ehhh that's actually a bit of a myth Colombia alone has as much, or possibly more, coal than Germany and while iron is a but harder to find it is still relatively common.

Yeah, Latin America was always wrecked by class struggles, landowner feudalism, centralists vs. federalists, the Church's role, race issues of a different sort, etc that came from being colonized by the Iberians. But I think geography is still a huge determinant, my major three points are 1) the Mississippi watershed über alles will make whomever controls it into a world superpower, 2) South America has very tricky topography, 3) Central America has too many jungles and tropical diseases.

Ehh the Mississippi is slightly overrated in my opinion, sure it is an incredibly powerful thing to have but a country consisting of only the lands adjacent to it will not be a superpower specifically if it had the same problem as South America, also rivers were also extensively used in Latin America for transportation in Colombia you could through most of the country in two or so months if you took the main rivers and Venezuela is the same story, and rivers helped Paraguay grow in a relatively fast pace.

Also Argentina is the best example of geography not being destiny, it has great geography but it never really developed to the point it could have.

Also another thing is that South America can and could have become rich but social issues destroy that possibility in most countries.

 

[Otto Kretschmer]

Who's to say England/Britain wouldn't enact the same policies Spain did? This isn't some gigantic penal colony they can afford to leave to its own devices, but a literal mountain of gold and silver.

US South is an exception because it was a colony of Virginia which was the only colony funded by noblesvanf not freemen

Unlike Spain England actually had demographic surplus to export to colonies

 

[Vinization]

US South is an exception because it was a colony of Virginia which was the only colony funded by noblesvanf not freemen

Unlike Spain England actually had demographic surplus to export to colonies

Colonies that would already be heavily populated in this case, even after the diseases came, thanks to the presence of organized states in Mesoamerica and the Andes, states whose administrative apparatuses would then be taken over by the colonizers.

The South's soil was much more suited to slave plantations than the North, it was a matter of economics. I doubt those freemen wouldn't become slavocrats under the right circumstances, given they brought slaves along with them.

 

[Gukpard]

Things would likely be either the same or very similar to OTL, only with swapped languages. The economy and culture of the US South was very similar to the likes of Brazil and Cuba, for example - they were dominated by plantations focused on growing a single product (cotton, sugar, coffee and so on) which was harvested by slaves.

Yes.

For decades people tried to find theories that would put religion or race as the reason why things turned to be like they did, but these things are no the main reason with religion being moody influent and "race" being irrelevant since ain't really a factor.

Basically it is the climate. South America is hot so it is a place where profit comes from agriculture, just like the south USA. Just like the US north, the Brazilian south was more urban and had more industry since it was propense for that.

I heard, without sources being cited, that back on the 1700s when agriculture was the most profitable thing that people tough the USA had failed since Portuguese America produced more profit through the slave farm system. Things changed on the next century ofc.

 

[Sardar]

I think it would only be better if England and later Britain consciously changed how Mexico and it's South American colonies were governed, which probably wouldn't happen. Remember, the Thirteen colonies had well-developed democratic institutions, several universities, and extremely favorable climate for European settlers. The colonies were also a haven for religious minorities, like the Quakers, Puritans, etc. There was also a large, free class of merchants and artisans that formed a base of power for whoever was in charge. Essentially, the English settlers in the colonies tried to recreate their pre-industrial homeland in the New World but better. This was only possible because of the extreme dearth of natives compared to the rest of the Americas as well as the climate.

Contrast this with the Spanish colonies, which basically subsumed already existing empires and didn't really have much in the way of democratic or educational institutions. More so than the English colonies, the Spanish Empire was very much an Empire in the traditional sense, with conquered peoples being incorporated into the Spanish culture. The Spanish colonies also had the Catholic Church as it's main religion. And the geography of Mexico, Central America and South America are not really conducive to the type of settler colonies the English set up.

So yea, geography is pretty much destiny, at least for the Americas. If the English colonized Mexico, you would probably see a similar situation to OTL just with English-speakers. Perhaps it would ever be worse, as the English were unusual for colonizers in that they actually brought women from Europe with them so perhaps this alt-English Mexico would be even more racially unequal than OTL. Ditto with Central and South America.

 

[Dan1988]

Summary: I'm wondering if we would similarly get a setup where there's multiple Anglo states in South America (for kicks maybe we can make Brazil into a French state - Antarctique), Central America is also a group of fractious Anglophone states, and finally North America is more united by a centralized Hispanophone state controlling the Mississippi watershed.

In this case, I don't think OTL histories would swap that much. There's still the Dutch in the Hudson River Valley and New France that could serve as checks on Spanish (and Russian, for that matter) America. Now, there could be a possibility of the French exploring but not colonizing what would eventually become Louisiana, so that limits some of the potential for New France's fur-based economy, which would make a larger Spanish North America possible; that could be compensated by having the Dutch and French have more intense settlement in the areas that would become IOTL New England. However, by having the Dutch and the French still exist in North America, that means there wouldn't be much in terms of history swapping, since the lack of a British presence would have some considerable divergences in the histories of the Northeast and East.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Ehh the Mississippi is slightly overrated in my opinion, sure it is an incredibly powerful thing to have but a country consisting of only the lands adjacent to it will not be a superpower specifically if it had the same problem as South America, also rivers were also extensively used in Latin America for transportation in Colombia you could through most of the country in two or so months if you took the main rivers and Venezuela is the same story, and rivers helped Paraguay grow in a relatively fast pace.

I mean the Mississippi not only for trade and transportation but as a huge continental-level breadbasket.

 

[Vinization]

It would be interesting to have the Spanish raiding English treasure ships or taking some strategic island/easily fortified peninsula as their equivalent of Gibraltar.

 

[Dan1988]

It would be interesting to have the Spanish raiding English treasure ships or taking some strategic island/easily fortified peninsula as their equivalent of Gibraltar.

I can do one better on that, if we want to have some divergences from OTL history - the Grand Banks used to be a popular haunt for Basque fishermen before colonization (it's also speculated Basque may also be responsible for some of the more, well, weird/raunchy placenames in Newfoundland). Some of that could also be helpful, to a degree. Also, IIRC Northwestern Spain (especially Galicia) was hitting on some hard times (and would be even more so during the 19th century), so there's potential of even higher emigration from there than OTL. We already know Basque people left a huge mark on Hispanic America (to the point where, in North America today, a lot of the "typically Spanish" surnames are actually of Basque origin), so why not a few of the other peoples in Green Spain?

 

[Teutoberg Forest]

I mean the Mississippi not only for trade and transportation but as a huge continental-level breadbasket.

For sure, the Mississippi is a huge breadbasket, but what makes it that much better than the drainage basin of the Rio de la Plata, i.e. the Parana, Uruguay, and Paraguay rivers? Most of the agriculture of Argentina and Brazil, not to mention all of Uruguay and Paraguay, are either part of or adjacent to the basin, so would preventing the basin from being divided lead to a US-level power? It would be interesting to see a split Brazil between the cash crop/rainforest areas of the north and the more temperate south, with the south being part of a mega-Argentina.

 

[Vinization]

I can do one better on that, if we want to have some divergences from OTL history - the Grand Banks used to be a popular haunt for Basque fishermen before colonization (it's also speculated Basque may also be responsible for some of the more, well, weird/raunchy placenames in Newfoundland). Some of that could also be helpful, to a degree. Also, IIRC Northwestern Spain (especially Galicia) was hitting on some hard times (and would be even more so during the 19th century), so there's potential of even higher emigration from there than OTL. We already know Basque people left a huge mark on Hispanic America (to the point where, in North America today, a lot of the "typically Spanish" surnames are actually of Basque origin), so why not a few of the other peoples in Green Spain?

So a "Nueva Asturia" instead of New England, for example?

 

[Dan1988]

So a "Nueva Asturia" instead of New England, for example?

Perhaps (although that would be in Dutch/French territory, the Dutch were not too terribly worried about demographics, while France pretty much recruited from any European country willing to ship people over to New France because they had a huge problem trying to convince its population to take advantage of it; if Novo Asturias was elsewhere, the connection could be stronger).

 

[Jürgen]

Summary: I'm wondering if we would similarly get a setup where there's multiple Anglo states in South America (for kicks maybe we can make Brazil into a French state - Antarctique), Central America is also a group of fractious Anglophone states, and finally North America is more united by a centralized Hispanophone state controlling the Mississippi watershed.

Rationale: The Brazilian United Americas thread got me thinking - is geography destiny? The fate of North America and Latin America have a lot to do with political, cultural, social, and religious factors, but harsh geography likely undeniably caused South America to be fragmented, Central America to be underdeveloped, while North America had the huge breadbasket of the Great Plains up to the Canadian Prairies. Not sure how Mexico fits in- it's got a lot of desert in the north and jungle in the south east, but the rest seem fine and it's blessed with natural resources.

Also, another major factor is the indigenous populations. There were far more aboriginal peoples from like Central Mexico southwards, while the natives in Anglo North America were relatively diffuse and less economically advanced. And given the different types of colonization patterns and so on and the different colonizing cultures involved, things could go very different.

A mestizo/metis - what's the English version, mixed-blood? - culture and people in South and Central America would be very interesting as well.

I thibnk the answer is pretty complex but in general it would a no, a Protestant English Brazil would look more like the American south than Brazil (which I personally see as worse). In case of the Spanish region I think the establishment of a large Mestizo population would be unavoidable simply because of the high mortality among natives with no European admixture, and we see both African Americans and Native Americans having significant Anglo admixture, but I suspect that a British Mexico would look more like the Dutch Cape Colony than OTL Mexico with a large European population with little admixture and a large mixed race group.

As for Portuguese/Spanish North America, I think it would be more well functioning than OTL Brazil, but it would also have a lot of similarities. It's improtant to remember that Protestants and Counterreformation Catholics were a lot more educated than the more traditional Catholics, which made them more productive (in general the Danish government got around the double out a literate farmer in tqaxes as they got out of a illiterate one, which was a major argument for the push toward literacy) and more geared toward manufacturing.