AHC: 1st World Argentina

A history teacher who made quite an impact by making books and tv shows of imprecise accuracy which depict history as a good guys vs. bad guys tale.
 
A history teacher who made quite an impact by making books and tv shows of imprecise accuracy which depict history as a good guys vs. bad guys tale.

Interesting. This was how history was taught everywhere up until the modern age, but is completely unacceptable now.
 

yofie

Banned
@Politician: I strongly disagree that a British conquest would have in any significant way helped Argentina develop, simply because the British were so racist: The British nation as a whole did not even see the Germans, the Chinese or the Indians as equals at the time, so why, using the twisted pseudoscience of race and racism, would they think the mostly Southern European-descended Argentines were equals worthy of partnership? They were attempting to colonize them, after all.

I think that Argentina being part of the British Empire would definitely have helped matters a lot. First of all, we're talking about a temperate-zone land only lightly populated by indigenous folks (so more like Australia or Canada than India or Africa). Secondly, the British weren't quite as racist as you make it out. Third, the British have had unparalleled political and legal institutions to go buy, certainly far superior to anything out of Spain.

What you also have to understand is as follows:

1) The major immigration sources (like the British Isles) would have matched the source of the investment (just like in Australia, Canada, etc.), whereas OTL, the source of the immigrants (mainly Spain and Italy) did not match the source of the investments (mainly the British Isles).

2) Many of these immigrants did not become Argentine citizens fast enough to be fully integrated, unlike in North America and so forth. Furthermore, the traditional ruling elite in OTL Argentina reacted adversely against the massive wave of immigration, and that (combined with the Depression and stuff) ushered in the coup against Yrigoyen in 1930. Such an adverse reaction would not have occurred in a British Argentina.

3) There would have been even more British investment in Argentina than OTL, and that investment money would have stayed in Argentina the way it did in British colonies like Canada or Australia, paving the way for genuine economic development.
 
I think that Argentina being part of the British Empire would definitely have helped matters a lot. First of all, we're talking about a temperate-zone land only lightly populated by indigenous folks (so more like Australia or Canada than India or Africa). Secondly, the British weren't quite as racist as you make it out. Third, the British have had unparalleled political and legal institutions to go buy, certainly far superior to anything out of Spain.

What you also have to understand is as follows:

1) The major immigration sources (like the British Isles) would have matched the source of the investment (just like in Australia, Canada, etc.), whereas OTL, the source of the immigrants (mainly Spain and Italy) did not match the source of the investments (mainly the British Isles).

2) Many of these immigrants did not become Argentine citizens fast enough to be fully integrated, unlike in North America and so forth. Furthermore, the traditional ruling elite in OTL Argentina reacted adversely against the massive wave of immigration, and that (combined with the Depression and stuff) ushered in the coup against Yrigoyen in 1930. Such an adverse reaction would not have occurred in a British Argentina.

3) There would have been even more British investment in Argentina than OTL, and that investment money would have stayed in Argentina the way it did in British colonies like Canada or Australia, paving the way for genuine economic development.
1) Canada already had an English speaking majority, and the same applies to Australia. A British takeover in 1806-7 would still keep a large Spanish speaking majority. On top, they would be unlikely to conquer the whole country (hey, they couldn't even keep one town), so you'd end up with a rump state. In any event, British citizens are still likely to emigrate to the places with a shared language and maybe religion.
2) You'd probably still have a lot of inmigrants from southern Europe, the Middle East and, basically, everywhere else. There would be different elites, though.
3) How so? There was already a lot of British investment in Argentina, aimed at creating an agrarian export country which couldn't support, by itself, the entire country's population without diversifying into bigger industry and service sectors.
 

yofie

Banned
1) Canada already had an English speaking majority, and the same applies to Australia. A British takeover in 1806-7 would still keep a large Spanish speaking majority. On top, they would be unlikely to conquer the whole country (hey, they couldn't even keep one town), so you'd end up with a rump state. In any event, British citizens are still likely to emigrate to the places with a shared language and maybe religion.
2) You'd probably still have a lot of inmigrants from southern Europe, the Middle East and, basically, everywhere else. There would be different elites, though.
3) How so? There was already a lot of British investment in Argentina, aimed at creating an agrarian export country which couldn't support, by itself, the entire country's population without diversifying into bigger industry and service sectors.

1) Canada got its English-speaking majority after the capture of Quebec from the French in 1759 and the subsequent handover of New France (renamed the Province of Quebec) to the British, and especially after Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) was carved out of Quebec, and for that matter New Brunswick out of Nova Scotia, for the sake of American Loyalists coming there after the American Revolution. After all that, British emigrants poured into what is now Canada in large numbers. French-speakers ended up remaining the majority only in what is now Quebec. I think that similarly after a successful British capture of Buenos Aires, a lot of British emigrants would come to much of Argentina/Uruguay, esp. to the Pampas/Litoral/Uruguay though some Spanish-speakers would remain in those parts and even more so deep in the interior (e.g. Cordoba, Mendoza, Tucuman). The whole country would eventually be conquered, but gradually, step by step - just like South Africa.

2) You'd still have a lot of immigrants from southern Europe, the Middle East, etc., but even more so from northern Europe and the British Isles!

3) Argentina being part of the British Empire would have stood to benefit from the proposed Imperial Preference during the 1930s Depression, the way that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. were about to. And Argentina would automatically be an Ally during World War II, ushering in more industrialization than before.
 
Yofie, can you post the flag of British Argentina and Uruguay here (Good quality one)?

Seriously, I do believe that had Argentina and Uruguay were British like Canada and Australia, English-speaking migrants would be the majority within short span of time after the conquest due to different British immigrant outflows from instead being sent at all in Australia and New Zealand, Argentina and Uruguay would get the large chunk of potential British settlers in Southern Cone.
 

katchen

Banned
Everybody seems to be acting as though British Argentina cuts off at the 33rd Parallel South and that everything north of there goes to Brazil or something. I can assure you, that is most unlikely to happen in a British Argentina TL.
Have a look at the map of Argentina. Notice the territory between the Parana and the Uruguay River, both of which are navigable. This territory has very rich soil. It is good for growing tobacco and cotton at a time when the UK needs both.
And between the Winter Monsoons and the Southeasterly Trade Winds, India is only three to five months away from Argentina with the biggest hold-up possibly coming from contrary winds at the Cape of Good Hope. And from the 1820s on, steamboats are coming into widespread use. And there's no earthly reason why a Great Britain that controls Argentina will leave Paraguay alone and not conquer Asuncion. Or maybe even go all the way to Potosi, Bolivia and Salta and Tucuman . It all goes hand in hand.
So any British Argentina is likely to be very different, all right. It's likely to have an East Indian underclass working the fields, at least outside of Patagonia, which may well be settled by convicts, just like Australia. :( In other words, Australia would be a distinctly "curry flavored" Anglo-Indian as much as Southern European Anglo-colony. Everything non-white that Australia succeeds in excluding, Argentina gets in--because Indians get brought in from the start and because Argentina-Paraguay is so very rich in cash crops that take a lot of labor to grow---and the slave trade just became illegal.
So look to Argentina to become a Christian-Hindu-Muslim-Sikh religious stew as well as what it becomes racially and ethnically, and one that leaks into interior Brazil as well as Peru and Chile if those places even remain Spanish. Whether the more conventionally White Patagonia even stays a part of this Argentina becomes an interesting question.
 
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