Not this shit again, please -
In my opinion, a formal British presence in Argentina would have made a huge difference in butterflying away the 19th century civil wars, the 1930 coup, Peronism, etc. As some posters have already said, the British political culture and approach to economic development (at least for an area like Argentina that's conducive to large-scale European agriculture/development) does a much better job than the Spanish legacy. Also, over time, such a presence would have moderated - if not eliminated - the gap between Buenos Aires and the interior.
Here's the problem with that scenario - we don't actually know if it would have made a difference. Regardless of whoever is the colonial power, colonialism is still colonialism and colonialism is uniformly nasty and leaves legacies of skeletons in the closet that its successors may or may not address (or address them badly). Just because one changes the majority language and colonial power doesn't make all the problems disappear and put them on a bed of roses instead of a bed of thorns. In Argentina's and Uruguay's case, I don't think a formal British presence would have helped. The British had a nasty habit of keeping thing in place as they were when a particular area was colonized; in this case, had a formal presence occurred, you would not see the implantation of British (read: English; Wales had no input, while Scotland's and Ireland's would have been minimal) political culture and approach to economic development; rather, the British would have built on what was already bequeathed by the Spanish and made colonialism much more worse than OTL; if there was any impact from political culture and economic development it would have been overwhelmingly in the negative, with the people already existing bearing the brunt of the consequences. (Furthermore, Britain already had informal economic dominance over Latin America for much of the 19th century and it didn't help one bit. You did not see any changes resulting from the British presence because everyone involved was quite happy to see the preservation of status quo. In reality, I'd hold Britain as much culpable for the economic decline of Latin America in general and the Southern Cone in particular - even without direct rule, they allowed the regional economy to sink down to India-esque levels and thus made people poorer as a result then it would have been otherwise.) In other words, Britain would not have treated the Southern Cone any different from the rest of its colonies in the Global South. Also, as an aside, a British presence in the Global South would have been much more smaller, limited to the area around the Río de la Plata with the remainder of the country remaining under Spanish (most likely Peruvian/Chilean) or Portuguese (read: Brazilian) influence - just as it was in the old days before the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata was created. So the ultimate question to the title is simple - it would not have been any more prosperous and/or populous than it was IOTL, and probably more poorer. To put in the words of someone who actually lives in the region so concerned, albeit as a neighbour:
The principal problem I have with these type of Threads, is assuming that the English Colonial period in Argentinian Will not be Exploitative and resource extraction drives as was in other parts of the World, and then to think that Argentinian will more clearly reflect the USA/Canada/Australia/New Zealand colonial pattern, and not the more exploitative and resource extraction driven that was the case in Ireland/Jamaica/South Africa/Nigeria/Egypt/Kenya/British Raj/Iraq Pattern.
There is little that make me believe Argentina will reflect the first pattern and not the Second Pattern. The Country it´s ideal to maintain the more exploitative resource driven pattern, than the other countries.
The people tend toe think the English colonial system as the Best examples where their colonial policy was successful, and not, the majority of case were their colonial policy was a disasters that still plague the current independent born from the Empire
Now, onto the specifics:
*As to the three posts quoted in the OP and which started off this thread (when this topic has been already beaten to death), let's revisit them:
Post No.# 1: "Argentina's modern problems relate to a series of incompetent juntas that took one of the top 7 economies and rising powers of the early 20th century and frittered it away."
While the juntas were incompetent, yes, they didn't exist in a vacuum. Even as late as the 1990s you already had similar situations going on in Eastern Europe, even
Turkey and the Balkans (for what else were the entities than mini-dictatorships). As I see it, the problem with this type of thinking is that it assumes that Argentina and Uruguay were special snowflakes when in reality they were very much no more or no less Latin American than the rest of the region. The rise of Buenos Aires (which is what the "top 7 economies" bit really talks about, which the OP does acknowledge) was born out of a unique
sui generis set of circumstances that would be very hard to replicate even in Spanish colonial times. As a result, they are not modern problems nor are they problems specific to Argentina or Uruguay; they're trans-national problems with some local coloring, even if the response varies as it did in the Southern Cone compared with the rest of Latin America.
Post No.# 2: "Argentina already was as wealthy as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S... in the 1940s.
The causes that led to economic stagnation in the Post-War are complex and I don't think they can be summed up as "Because Argentines don't speak English".
In fact before 1930, along with tiny Uruguay, Argentina was the only non-English speaking settler society that managed to achieve stable democratic institutions and a thriving free market economy with high standards of living outside of Europe.
So this proves that you don't need to be English-speaking to become prosperous, even in the more prejudiced early 20th century with the UK as its major trading partner Argentina was able to do so.
Argentina happened to embrace protectionism, autarky and corporativist economy, turning away from the free market, just as the world was beginning the longest period of economic growth recorded in modern capitalism, the post-war 1950s-1970s "Golden Years".
Inflation and high political instability starting with the 1930 coup which ended an unprecedented
70 years of unbroken Constitutional succession before that did the rest of the job in stagnating the country. That was an unprecedented event, until then Argentina had faced popular uprisings, but never a military coup. Imagine the USA having a coup in the 1930s. It was on that scale of unusual."
First off, I'm glad that this particular poster acknowledged that the Southern Cone's situation cannot be summarized by the population speaking the wrong language, though Argentina and Uruguay were not new before 1930 - Chile and arguably Colombia were also in a similar boat, and in the latter case even taking into account what transpired after. Also, the whole "Argentina was already as wealthy as countries X, Y, and Z" shtick is a red herring for what's going on and distracts from talking about Argentine and Uruguayan history (the latter in particular with its own separate history, including the importance of Batlle and its history as neutral ground in Latin America) by setting up a false comparison. The reality of that wealth was actually much more like Brazil's "café com leite" approach to politics and economics but more so. As for Argentina's separate path in particular - that was also not new, as many others in the Global North - even the US and Canada - also turned to the same solutions; the only difference was that they were more successful at it and embedding it into the whole "free market" thing. At the same time, Latin America (in general and the Southern Cone in particular) was denied the chance to replicate that same trajectory, keeping them more reliant on growing cash crops and similar economies built around primary products which by the laws of the free market and comparative advantage these countries were condemned to remain. That's the root of discontent in Latin America and why Argentina went the way it did and not simplistic explanations.
Post No.# 3: "Until the 40's and 50's Argentina had a quality of life similar to Switzerland."
Which does not mean a thing (again: red herring) since that did not apply to the vast majority of people, only a select few - as it has been in colonial and post-colonial societies. Only once the benefits were spread out among the majority - which apparently populism was willing to do as long as it was "the right sort" - did things change, even if the costs of such an unsustainable extension of the Dutch disease such as inflation.
Of these three, Post No.# 2 probably comes closer in my view to an acknowledgement of reality and there's much I can agree with. It can be built on to create a critique of the whole "British Argentina" trope that seems to creep up every now and then because some people can't seem to acknowledge that no country's colonialism is more perfect than the other. Colonialism can be mitigated, yes, but only if the majority consent to such an arrangement - and most of the time the population was never consulted to give consent. Otherwise, colonialism is something that should not have brought to the Global South and especially replacing one form of colonialism with another form of colonialism.
*Anyway, back to the OP:
It's just on the surface that Argentina (along with Uruguay) was as wealthy per capita and as democratic as Western European countries or even the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It's also just on the surface that it was because of the coups, juntas, etc. from 1930 that made Argentina go on its downward slide. The truth is much more complicated than that. And no, it's not just that Argentina had an unequal land distribution such that the wealthy landowning class controlled much of the land, and it's not just that Argentina had a corrupt political culture less conducive to long-term economic development than in many Western European and Anglo countries.
That, I agree, is a problem that people look only at the surface and thus go for a superficial solution for approaching Argentine history - which I think does not consider the deep roots of Argentine history and its relationship to its culture and society. Though it's also equally true that many of the superficial things are not new - many other countries also have similar issues and problems (even in Western countries, where there are also many countless examples of "corrupt political culture(s) less conducive to long-term economic development" - heck, I'm currently living in one! - and unequal land distribution). Ultimately, a big problem as I see it is a whole lot of "Did Not Do The Research" (assuming a bunch of hunky-doryism when things would not work out that way) and assume a considerable degree of historical parallelism akin to pop AH when the reality is that unless one is severely limiting the butterflies (say by making the British presence very limited, for example) there would be change that would happen from one simple act to make the world of an ATL unrecognizable.
One also has to consider the following factors:
1) From independence in the 1810s to roughly 1865, there was an interminable series of devastating civil wars. That put the brakes on serious economic development (plus at least a semblance of democracy) until 1865 or so. That period for Argentina was more like from 1930 to the present day than like between 1865 and 1930, in that there was lots of chaos and tension one way or another. Nothing like it existed in the Anglo countries in the 19th/20th centuries, except for the American Civil War (which was only for a few years). Western Europe did experience some devastating wars in the later 19th and 20th centuries, but economic development wasn't impacted on quite as long or continuous a basis.
That was not unique to Argentina - much of Latin America was in the same boat (with some exceptions, such as Costa Rica), as did Southern and Eastern Europe and as were many areas of the Global South when they were colonized for the first time. One cannot pin it down as a specifically Argentine or Uruguayan problem that crippled economic development - if anything, in terms of economy it didn't seem to leave much impact other than confirming the existing status quo at that time as a power struggle among the élites. It's not like someone wanted to go full-on Solano López.
2) The apparent prosperity that Argentina enjoyed was mainly limited to Buenos Aires as well as the rest of the Pampas/Littoral. This was where European immigrants flocked to and this was where modern agriculture took hold. Other parts of Argentina (aka the interior) just didn't enjoy that sort of prosperity and it has been more stereotypically Latin American in economic development. Many people from the interior have exerted great influence on Argentine affairs as a whole, whether we're talking about various politicians from there (e.g. the younger Uriburu, who instigated the 1930 coup) or the many poor immigrants from the interior who moved to Buenos Aires and other major cities in the Pampas/Littoral.
While generally true, it also ignores one reason why so much was possible in the Argentine military - that like other countries in the world, no matter whether rich or poor, poor people will be attracted to the military because it is perceived as a way out of poverty. OTOH when we talking about the interior, we shouldn't see it as one giant monolithic unit but as a network of distinct regions, with their own cultures, dialects, and traditions. The Cuyo (which used to be Chilean) is different from Mesopotamia, which was the way it was because of the Jesuit missions (similar to neighboring Paraguay) which started off OK until the Jesuits were expelled, for example.
So let's revisit that last part I quoted first:
In my opinion, a formal British presence in Argentina would have made a huge difference in butterflying away the 19th century civil wars, the 1930 coup, Peronism, etc.
That bit would be true, yes, but only if one realizes it as a small enclave and allow the remainder of the Viceroyalty to fall apart or regroup into other entities (i.e. Cuyo, the Falklands/Malvinas, and Patagonia as fully Chilean territory, giving us a Chile-wank in the process - maintenant celà, y-a-t'il une idée uchroniale, peut-être?). If one realizes it as something other than that, that's when you have problems because while some things may be butterflied, others may not and/or new problems would arise. And what is not to say that once the British leave the population - overjoyed at becoming independent from colonialism - would not turn to similar solutions (i.e. India under Nehru). Actions have consequences.
As some posters have already said, the British political culture and approach to economic development (at least for an area like Argentina that's conducive to large-scale European agriculture/development) does a much better job than the Spanish legacy.
That to me sounds like a dubious statement that not only confuses correlation with causation but also sounds pretty deterministic without taking into account alternatives. There are other ways to approach Argentine history and give it a more positive outcome without having to rely on colonial rule by outsiders. Costa Rica is a good example for our purposes and is very instructive - much like Argentina, Costa Rica was on the fringes of the Spanish colonial empire (and later, if only briefly, Iturbide's Mexican empire) and was also a society dominated by agriculture - beef in Argentina's case, coffee (and later bananas) in Costa Rica's case. Yet Costa Rica managed to (largely) avoid the strife and civil wars plaguing Central America (and in one case in fact intervened to preserve the sovereignty of Nicaragua, a neighbor to Costa Rica - hence the legend of Juan Santamaría, the drummer boy and Costa Rican national hero who sacrificed his life and thus helped save Nicaraguan independence and preserved the separate existence of Costa Rica as a country) and managed the grow and develop politically and economically. Even Uruguay, despite the troubles of the mid-20th century, has a history with comparatively less legacy issues than Argentina. Therefore, as one set of potential alternatives, one should not ask if Argentina would have been more prosperous had it been Anglophone or under British colonial rule. Rather, we should ask if Argentina would have been more prosperous had it been more like Costa Rica and/or if Uruguay was the nucleus for the development of modern Argentina. That would allow for the possible of positive internal development with some mindfulness towards an example of another Latin American country on the high end of the scale. Even the "Spanish legacy" has features which can be utilized for a more democratic development of its political system and make incorporating "the modern world" much less onerous and more in keeping with tradition than it would otherwise have been. All these possibilities would have been denied if one went for appropriating from someone/somewhere else and which would be only skin-deep
para Inglés ver and would probably incur only major damage along with the change.