AHC: A successful Mexican-American alliance

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to create a successful alliance between the United States and Mexico with a POD before 1830. Bonus points if Mexico doesn't lose any territory in the process.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Spain invaded Mexico (from Cuba) in 1829...

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to create a successful alliance between the United States and Mexico with a POD before 1830. Bonus points if Mexico doesn't lose any territory in the process.

Spain invaded Mexico (from Cuba) in 1829...the Mexicans drove them off pretty handily, but if the Spanish had sent a larger expeditionary force, perhaps Mexico would have asked for US aid, especially naval aid, and given that David Porter was still in the Mexican Navy that year...

The US had annexed Florida in 1819, so there's the possible ripple of a joint US-Mexican expedition in 1830 against Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico in the aftermath of a victory over the Spanish in Mexican waters in 1829.

That's early enough that two more slave states may get into the Union in return for Arkansas and Florida both coming in early and as free states, which sounds ASB, but realize both were pretty empty in the early 1830s...whereas Cuba and Puerto Rico both had functioning slave economies.

There would still be tension in the 1830s and afterward over Texas and what was (then) northwestern Mexico; hard to see what became the Cession attracting a lot of "Mexican" settlement, event with a US-Mexican alliance in the 1830s. The geography was generally more favorable from the east than the south for Texas, and California was actually easier to reach by sea than overland from Mexico. Most of what is now the southwest, other than parts of New Mexico, was basically empty of "settled" (for lack of a better term) inhabitants, whether they would identify as Mexican or not, for the 1830s and 1840s.

Obviously, Mexico and the US both had interests in common; avoiding European adventures and dealing with the more combative native societies - the Comanche, in particular, as one example - but that seems like sort of a slender reed in the larger question of which nation would control what became the US Southwest.

Interesting question.

Best,
 
Perhaps a situation where the Mexican War for Independence started later, and Mexico and US were allies against the Spanish Empire.

IOTL, the French invasion of Spain in 1808 created the conditions for the Spanish empire to become independent as attempts to be loyal to the deposed Spanish king eventually became a war of independence from Spain. If Napoleon never invaded and imposed his brother as King of Spain, the Latin American revolutionaries may get a late start.

If the war for Mexican independence starts late enough, the US might be developed enough to risk a war with Spain in alliance with a Mexican Congress. Let's say the start of the Mexican War for Independence is delayed from 1810 to sometime in the 1820s.

By the 1820s, there are significant American state organization along the Mississippi River, and territorial organization across the river. So the US has a capability of fighting in Spain's imperial territories in North America. The US also has had some experience fighting an actual war in the War of 1812 and institutionalized its learning. Andrew Jackson is elected US President in either 1824 or 1828 with the platform of aiding the Mexican rebels.

Jackson acts on a pretext against Spain and invades Spanish Florida and Texas. He signs a Treaty of alliance with the Mexican rebels and those in South America. The Spanish revolutionary governments recognize American claims in Florida and perhaps elsewhere with the guarantee the US would extend franchise and self-government to the native people of those areas under the US Constitution.
 
One thing that could really help.....

would be to get rid of the disastrous failure that was the administration of Santa Anna. That would go a long way to keeping better relations between the two countries.
 

Deleted member 67076

would be to get rid of the disastrous failure that was the administration of Santa Anna. That would go a long way to keeping better relations between the two countries.
What about President Henry Clay instead of Polk as well?
 
What about President Henry Clay instead of Polk as well?

To be honest with you, I'm afraid that probably wouldn't change quite as much as some might think. If anything at all, TBH, Polk kinda hit the historical jackpot; odds are, had this happened in an ATL, we'd likely have gotten all the Oregon Country and the core of Texas but no California(or perhaps anything east of the Rio Grande at all).....which might very well prolong the existence of slavery for a little while, as the admission of Calif. ended up providing a vital tipping point in favor of the good guys(the abolitionists).

In all reality, Clay's primary concern with not wanting to go to war with Mexico was over concerns that the pro-slavery factions in the South might try to take advantage of any future victories(a concern which, to be fair, wasn't entirely unreasonable). But perhaps if California could attract just a few more Yankees, and perhaps if Mexico made a few more wrong moves, especially if Santa Anna stayed in power.....neither of which is at all that hard to do.....then Clay is pretty much guaranteed to act. And vice versa, if the pro-slavery factions realized earlier that they'd never gain much from the Southwest, it certainly wouldn't be terribly hard for them to convince Polk not to intervene outside of annexing Texas. Especially if Santa Anna is forced to leave office as in OTL.
 
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Since Mexico had abolished slavery long before OTL's Mexican-American War, unless the USA only takes a little bit of mostly empty northern Mexico, re-introducing slavery in the face of an anti-slave population would be a nightmare.
 
Since Mexico had abolished slavery long before OTL's Mexican-American War, unless the USA only takes a little bit of mostly empty northern Mexico, re-introducing slavery in the face of an anti-slave population would be a nightmare.

That, too. Very true.
 
Spain invaded Mexico (from Cuba) in 1829...the Mexicans drove them off pretty handily, but if the Spanish had sent a larger expeditionary force, perhaps Mexico would have asked for US aid, especially naval aid, and given that David Porter was still in the Mexican Navy that year...

The US had annexed Florida in 1819, so there's the possible ripple of a joint US-Mexican expedition in 1830 against Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico in the aftermath of a victory over the Spanish in Mexican waters in 1829.

That's early enough that two more slave states may get into the Union in return for Arkansas and Florida both coming in early and as free states, which sounds ASB, but realize both were pretty empty in the early 1830s...whereas Cuba and Puerto Rico both had functioning slave economies.

There would still be tension in the 1830s and afterward over Texas and what was (then) northwestern Mexico; hard to see what became the Cession attracting a lot of "Mexican" settlement, event with a US-Mexican alliance in the 1830s. The geography was generally more favorable from the east than the south for Texas, and California was actually easier to reach by sea than overland from Mexico. Most of what is now the southwest, other than parts of New Mexico, was basically empty of "settled" (for lack of a better term) inhabitants, whether they would identify as Mexican or not, for the 1830s and 1840s.

Obviously, Mexico and the US both had interests in common; avoiding European adventures and dealing with the more combative native societies - the Comanche, in particular, as one example - but that seems like sort of a slender reed in the larger question of which nation would control what became the US Southwest.

Interesting question.

Best,
Why, thank you. :)
Honestly, I think the best POD for a successful Mexican-American alliance would have been if the United States abolished slavery in the beginning, beginning with the passing of Jefferson's version of the Land Ordinance of 1784, thus stopping the expansion of slavery into Texas.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
You are quite welcome

Why, thank you. :)
Honestly, I think the best POD for a successful Mexican-American alliance would have been if the United States abolished slavery in the beginning, beginning with the passing of Jefferson's version of the Land Ordinance of 1784, thus stopping the expansion of slavery into Texas.

You are quite welcome.

One thing to keep in mind about Texas is that east of the Balcon, it is (naturally) pretty well wooded and watered, and looks more like the country east and west of the Mississippi than West Texas ... so even if cotton is not king due to a lack of slave labor, there's still going to be a lot of land-hungry US citizens coming down from Tennessee and across from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi into Louisiana and Arkansas after the Louisiana Purchase, and then west into Texas.

I think the single largest issue in terms of whether the US or Mexico controls what became Texas and the Cession territories is (given history as it was to 1824 or so) if and how an independent Mexico can attract European immigrants, and if they and "Mexican" nationals from the historical heartland of New Spain/Mexica can be induced to move north, and if said populations can be induced to remain loyal to Mexico.

Spain, after the initial efforts at settlement in Texas and New Mexico in the 1600s and California in the 1700s, never had luck doing the above, for a variety of reasons; whether Mexico could do much better in the (roughly) decade and a half or two they have of independence before the demographics are irrevocably in the US favor is an open question...

Putting aside any other issues, the US, by gaining independence when it did, had about a four-decade-long lead in terms of national consolidation, creating nationalist institutions and identities, building political and economic stability, and attracting immigrants from Europe, over a Mexico that gains its own independence in the 1820s...that is a difficult lead to overcome, and coupled with the simple reality that the US Atlantic and Gulf coats are closer to Europe (and hence its economic and human resources) than Mexico, and I think it is pretty much impossible for Mexico to overcome...

Note the above opinion is based simply on geography and time, not any sort of black legend vs American exceptionalism type of judgment; there are similar dynamics at work in the post-independence histories of (say) Argentina and Chile, or even Uruguay and Paraguay.

Best,
 
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