AHC: All Mexico

With a PoD anytime after January 1, 1790, have the United States of America annex all territory currently belonging to Mexico.

Bonus points if this doesn't result in a national collapse.

Extra bonus points if the country still manages to be a representative democracy.
 
I don't see this happening. Americans don't want Latins onto their territory. Northern Mexico (Baja, Sonora, Chihuahua) is possible but hardly any more.
 
From my understanding, ther would have to be a pretty massive change in politics in Washington D.C. for this to happen. I know there was a small "take all of it" group, but the benefits didn't outweigh the risks. Integrating a sparsely populated region that your people are already settling anyways is one thing, but annexing a heavily populated country with its own language (different from your own), its own religion (different from a lot of your people) and own traditions (not your own) is very different.

Now, this being ALTERNATE history, why not? I can see some debate in Congress about the relative slave/free state status of Mexico proper, just as there was about the OTL Mexican territory taken. Did Mexico have slaves at the time in any way? What was the attitude of the Mexican elites regarding slavery?

The occupation of Mexico could be difficult if there was guerilla resistance. And considering that Mexicans often waged guerilla war against Mexico City governments, I see no reason why they wouldn't aginst a Washington government.

So assuming a Civil War-like conflict comes about, I can see Mexico breaking away as well. This would leave the Northern leadership with a quandry: fight to keep the South or fight to keep Mexico? I imagine that the Northern leadership would be willing to come to an agreement with Mexican rebels as opposed to Confederate ones, since Mexico would be such a recent addition.

Against all odds, if the US was able to hold on to Mexico following the annexation and a civil-war like conflict, I can see some fairly major changes in the US. Maybe we would actually have two official languages like Canada as as opposed to a de facto official language. The post-Civil War "Wild West" era would probably be far different. I wonder how the larger population centers of central and southern Mexico would effect Western expansion? With that huge empire, there may very well be no reason to pick a fight with Spain, so the status of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Phillippenes would be different. No Zimmerman Telegram, assuming there is still a similar WW1, and the US might still be busy with the Mexican Insurrection in the early 20th anyways. It would be kind of cool to see Pancho Villa leading a Mexican Revolution against the US occupation.

Would the existing Mexican states be admitted as states to the US? If so, with what criteria and in what order?

EDIT: Basically what I'm saying is that its a cool idea and rife with butterflies, but I'm not sure what a good POD would be. Maybe, somehow, the US sees itself as imperial (Manifest Destiny and all that) in a slightly different way. Like, say, the US actually conquers most or all of Canada, and Manifest Destiny then comes to mean the US including all of North America?
 
Last edited:
So early PoD allows the US to take Mexico before it's an independent country. Have the Spanish Rotal Family flee to Mexico during the Napoleonic Wars and continue the fight from there, then the US invades Mexico as part from its alliance with Napoleon.
 
Now, this being ALTERNATE history, why not? I can see some debate in Congress about the relative slave/free state status of Mexico proper, just as there was about the OTL Mexican territory taken. Did Mexico have slaves at the time in any way? What was the attitude of the Mexican elites regarding slavery?

from what I've read, the elites had 'house slaves', but they were native Americans, not black. I've never read that the Mexicans had any large scale plantation type slavery, and slavery was made illegal there, although the elites tended to ignore that one. Mexico did have a 99-year indentured servant contract law, which is how the slaveholders in TX got around the no-slavery law...
 
So early PoD allows the US to take Mexico before it's an independent country. Have the Spanish Rotal Family flee to Mexico during the Napoleonic Wars and continue the fight from there, then the US invades Mexico as part from its alliance with Napoleon.

Wouldn't this require two PoDs? Having the US ally with Napoleon being one, the SRF fleeing to Mexico the other. Not to nitpick...

Also, it still raises the question of gain versus risk. All of Mexico would have to have something that outweighed the gain of occupying it. The west (north to Mexico at the time) was fairly underpopulated, full of living space and farmland and resources and Pacific coast access.

What would the rest of Mexico give the US that the OTL Mexican War didn't besides a headache? That's why I think the PoD would have to be a change in though pattern of US leaders.
 
"Did Mexico have slaves at the time in any way? What was the attitude of the Mexican elites regarding slavery?"

If you're going for a Mexican War era POD, then slavery had been abolished outright by then. In the 1820s, Mexico ended the slave trade and required that children of slaves be freed when they turned 14. It seems the Mexican leaders wanted to get rid of the "peculiar institution" as soon as possible.

EDIT: Many Mexicans wanted a Spanish prince to be their monarch, but the Bourbons refused, according to the Penguin History of Latin America. Many of the independence movements in Latin America started off as loyalist rebellions against Napoleon. Of course, Ferdinand VII was kind of an idiot. . .
 
from what I've read, the elites had 'house slaves', but they were native Americans, not black. I've never read that the Mexicans had any large scale plantation type slavery, and slavery was made illegal there, although the elites tended to ignore that one. Mexico did have a 99-year indentured servant contract law, which is how the slaveholders in TX got around the no-slavery law...
Haciendas? Many indigenous people were basically made to work the fields like serfs there, practically slaves in all but name.
 
Haciendas? Many indigenous people were basically made to work the fields like serfs there, practically slaves in all but name.

I think what many of the posters are going for is chattel slavery of the kind practiced in the American South. Of course, you are right to point out the feudal economy of the haciendas. Historian James Lockhart called the people living in haciendas "vassals" (see Penguin History of Latin America yet again).
 
I think what many of the posters are going for is chattel slavery of the kind practiced in the American South. Of course, you are right to point out the feudal economy of the haciendas. Historian James Lockhart called the people living in haciendas "vassals" (see Penguin History of Latin America yet again).


How strongly would the abolition movement react to the haciendas? Would they take up the cause of the Mexican serfs in a scenario like this? From what I know about abolitionists, I can see them trying to spread a hacienda abolition movement to Mexico.

Another important factor is the Catholic Church. AFAIK, the church has had quite a bit of influence in Mexican politics. How would they react to being conquered by mostly non-Catholics?
 
How strongly would the abolition movement react to the haciendas? Would they take up the cause of the Mexican serfs in a scenario like this? From what I know about abolitionists, I can see them trying to spread a hacienda abolition movement to Mexico.

Another important factor is the Catholic Church. AFAIK, the church has had quite a bit of influence in Mexican politics. How would they react to being conquered by mostly non-Catholics?

I'm wondering how the Yanquis would react to the Catholicism myself. The U.S. had a major anti-Catholic bias at the time of the Mexican War, and continued to some extent well into the late 19th century, if even later than that. The "Know-Nothing Party", which included Millard Fillmore after his presidency, had a platform of anti-immigration and anti-Catholicism. If I remember my McKinley era imperialist sentiment correctly, many Americans discussed "Christianizing" the Philippines, which really meant "Protestantizing". There was also an early 20th century book about South America I read once called "Through Five Republics on Horseback" that considered Catholicism no better than warmed-over pagans.

JFK's Catholicism was an issue in the 1960 election too.
 
I'm wondering how the Yanquis would react to the Catholicism myself. The U.S. had a major anti-Catholic bias at the time of the Mexican War, and continued to some extent well into the late 19th century, if even later than that. The "Know-Nothing Party", which included Millard Fillmore after his presidency, had a platform of anti-immigration and anti-Catholicism. If I remember my McKinley era imperialist sentiment correctly, many Americans discussed "Christianizing" the Philippines, which really meant "Protestantizing". There was also an early 20th century book about South America I read once called "Through Five Republics on Horseback" that considered Catholicism no better than warmed-over pagans.

JFK's Catholicism was an issue in the 1960 election too.


True story! The one thing I can't come up with is a real good, justifiable reason to annex southern Mexixco besides "because Empire". Maybe if there was some valuable resource there...but the bias and cultural differences make it so hard to come up with something.
 
Another important factor is the Catholic Church. AFAIK, the church has had quite a bit of influence in Mexican politics. How would they react to being conquered by mostly non-Catholics?

Well, it's not as if the OTL liberal governments of Mexico were kind to the Catholic Church. Anti-clericalism was a central part of Mexican government policy in the later half of the 19th century, and much of the 20th. If the record of US policy in the territories taken during the Mexican-American War is anything to go by, the Mexican Catholic Church's fate would likely be better than OTL.
 
Wouldn't this require two PoDs? Having the US ally with Napoleon being one, the SRF fleeing to Mexico the other. Not to nitpick...

Also, it still raises the question of gain versus risk. All of Mexico would have to have something that outweighed the gain of occupying it. The west (north to Mexico at the time) was fairly underpopulated, full of living space and farmland and resources and Pacific coast access.

What would the rest of Mexico give the US that the OTL Mexican War didn't besides a headache? That's why I think the PoD would have to be a change in though pattern of US leaders.

The United States can take the North, the rest they would likely make a protectorate. Americans migrate to OTL 2014 North Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. By 1850, Mexico is a bilingual confederation of states associated with the U.S. ala OTL Puerto Rico, and by 1900 they might want to vote to join the Union.
 
The United States can take the North, the rest they would likely make a protectorate. Americans migrate to OTL 2014 North Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. By 1850, Mexico is a bilingual confederation of states associated with the U.S. ala OTL Puerto Rico, and by 1900 they might want to vote to join the Union.

And the U.S. kinda was allied with Napoleon IOTL.
 
I remember reading once that there were actually calls in 1847 for the United States to annex all of Mexico, now that it had occupied Mexico City. I'm guessing they were only made by a fringe, though.
 
Top