AHC: An Anglophone CSA-Analogue With Racial Views Like OTL Brazil

That was in India where British behaviour was on the Spanish model, i.e. (overwhelmingly male) soldiers and administrators coming to run an empire rather than clearing the land of natives and setting up family farms. British colonisation of America was completely different with groups liked the Plymouth Brethren coming to start new lives, complete with women.

British behavior in India changed significantly when the Suez canal came in and more British women followed their husbands to India. That largely backs up everyone's points.

In my Spanish Intervention TL, northern Brazil is a Dutch colony and largely settled by Calvinists from across Europe, complete with even gender ratios. This leads to development of a racial ethos much more like that of the OTL Anglo South. In Dutch North America, a very different settlement pattern is emerging, and it will have very different effects on racial ideas. Meanwhile, French *Argentina and the Danish far northern territories are going to have such low and heavily male-dominated levels of white migration that they are going to end as heavily Amerindian as OTL Paraguay.

So, I'd say the best way to do it would be to keep British migration levels low, and change the pattern of colonization so as to have a disproportionate number of males. Not pilgrims, but gold prospectors, say, or traders. Also, any kind of law or custom restricting female migration to the New World would bring about this effect.
 
Maybe it's not true for the Spanish that the Mestizo and the Mulattos were considered just as Spanish as the Criollos -- you know with the Limpieza de Sangre (Purity of Blood) policy and all.

But the Portuguese simply did not have the demographics to colonise their Empire. So accepting those mixed race (with exceptions, of course) as Portuguese was a social and economic necessity. Thus a theory developed -- that if a person is culturally Portuguese enough, he's Portuguese.

At least that's what I gather. But I am by no means an expert in Lusitan history.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
That's actually not true. In terms of population density and carrying capacity Spain had a much bigger surplus population than Britain in the 1600's when the divergence between colonisation patterns started.
However you are correct in the different motivations. Spaniards went to America to strike it rich and go back to Spain. The Spanish government wanted to make money to fund its wars in Europe.
The British colonies where a mix of religious radicals wanting somewhere to be nuts in peace, and utopians wanting to create their perfect society.

This reminded me: it could work for some british colonies: early Virginia was very much like that. figure out a way to butterfly away the Powhatan wars, maybe have a larger "viceroyalty of Virginia" type deal covering the Carolinas and Maryland (i.e. everything not part of the New Netherlands to the south) and no effective change in the settlement mentality? More integration of natives, less settlement overall; maybe have mega-Virginia stick together in these conditions (for a while it was very much a creole society).
 
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The problem is that the shorter distance the difference nature of the settlement (i.e. a goal of fully functioning society, rather than just silver and gold mines) means you have to make the change in purpose before any of the English settlements are established.
 
This reminded me: it could work for some british colonies: early Virginia was very much like that. figure out a way to butterfly away the Powhatan wars, maybe have a larger "viceroyalty of Virginia" type deal covering the Carolinas and Maryland (i.e. everything not part of the New Netherlands to the south) and no effective change in the settlement mentality? More integration of natives, less settlement overall; maybe have mega-Virginia stick together in these conditions (for a while it was very much a creole society).

Yeah, I too was reminded of the way that early Virginia was set up as an exploitative colony in the Spanish model. But IIRC the Powhatan wars were pretty early; butterflying them away while still keeping a "Virginia" would take some doing.

Aracnid said:
That's actually not true. In terms of population density and carrying capacity Spain had a much bigger surplus population than Britain in the 1600's when the divergence between colonisation patterns started.

So what happened to Spain's surplus population? Where'd they go?
 
Yeah, I too was reminded of the way that early Virginia was set up as an exploitative colony in the Spanish model. But IIRC the Powhatan wars were pretty early; butterflying them away while still keeping a "Virginia" would take some doing.



So what happened to Spain's surplus population? Where'd they go?
Spain didn't have a surplus population, they just had a lot more people but they also had a lot more room at home. IIRC Castille had 6,000,000 before 1550. Britain didn't match that until the 1700s I think.
 
Spain didn't have a surplus population, they just had a lot more people but they also had a lot more room at home. IIRC Castille had 6,000,000 before 1550. Britain didn't match that until the 1700s I think.

Spain is about twice the size but has less agricultural land and less productive land meaning in terms of carrying capacity they are about the same, yet at this point had around twice the population to Great Britain. So Spain had a much bigger "surplus population". The main difference is birth rates. Despite stereotypes about Catholics at this point Britons were some of the most fertile people in Europe.
 
Spain is about twice the size but has less agricultural land and less productive land meaning in terms of carrying capacity they are about the same, yet at this point had around twice the population to Great Britain. So Spain had a much bigger "surplus population". The main difference is birth rates. Despite stereotypes about Catholics at this point Britons were some of the most fertile people in Europe.
I'd like to see some data on the agricultural statistics if you could furnish them. The main issue to me has always appeared that England was able to consolidate farms at a much greater rate and to a greater extent than Spain.
 
Well, here is a modern map showing % of land being sown to wheat. Since wheat is still the dominant arable-land crop in western Europe, it makes for a pretty decent proxy for total amount of arable land. England looks much, much better than Spain in terms of amount of arable land in this map.

EDIT: Here is a better, if harder to read, one. It shows % of all land in a given political division that is used for any sort of agriculture. England still comes out well ahead.
 
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^Huh, you are a lurker aren't you. Never the less thank you for those maps, very useful. They don't however really get to the issue because they're for the modern day, with modern methods and crops some of which are from the new world. Even wheat, because doesn't the UK call corn "wheat"? Maybe they call it grain? Hmm... I should check.

Anyhow, I think we're thinking of surplus population differently. The latifundias for instance, had a lot of laborers who didn't own land. Maybe you'd count those as surplus population but I don't because they had a niche in the society at the time. Otherwise you had a lot of small subsistence type land parcels in terms of agriculture. My original point was that Spain and Portugal I guess though I know less about them, was empty enough to absorb the local population at that specific time period. 1500-ish.

I'm going to admit right now that I could very well be wrong. I haven't studied the formative period as much as I've read about the early Reconquista and the military aspects of the Italian Wars.
 
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MNP;3815087doesn't the UK call corn "wheat"? Maybe they call it grain? [/QUOTE said:
It's the other way around: "corn" is British for "grain" (or at least it used to be; I don't know that they don't call maize "corn" now, due to influence from us). Caused a lot of confusion in church school for me since I knew the ancient Israelites didn't have access to maize.
 
Anyhow, I think we're thinking of surplus population differently. The latifundias for instance, had a lot of laborers who didn't own land. Maybe you'd count those as surplus population but I don't because they had a niche in the society at the time. Otherwise you had a lot of small subsistence type land parcels in terms of agriculture. My original point was that Spain and Portugal I guess though I know less about them, was empty enough to absorb the local population at that specific time period. 1500-ish.

Surplus population means population greater than the ability of the land to support at a sustainable level (i.e. not one bad harvest away from famine like 1840's Ireland).
Everything I've read indicates that 16th century Spain had a lower carrying capacity (i.e. ability to feed people) than 16th century Britain despite being considerable larger due to the different soil types and climate. However Spain's population was around twice as large. Therefore Spain had massively more surplus population to dump in the colonies, if they wanted to.
 

yourworstnightmare

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Your ultimate problem is that Britain had a fundamentally different colonial strategy from Portugal and Spain.

Portugal and Spain had relatively small populations, and they weren't terribly pressed for land - what they were pressed for was economic opportunity. Spanish or Portuguese settlers weren't looking for a little farm of their own, they were hoping to strike it rich and move back to Spain or Portugal. Consequently, you had a lot of transient population, and having competent people mattered more than race or class. Sure, Miguel there has darkish skin, but he does the shop's books better than anyone else, and who says what is and isn't 'white' enough to do them?

In Britain, there was a tremendous surplus population, and so they built a tiered system - whites settle land and do skilled work, black slaves to do agricultural work. Race is defined legally (the 'one drop' rule), and it's inflexible - there are gradations, but you always knew where you stood.

Forgive me any gross oversimplifications - it's late.
Explain British Caribbean islands, only a few whites, all male, and loads of black slaves and colored workers.
 
Explain British Caribbean islands, only a few whites, all male, and loads of black slaves and colored workers.

The British colonisation of the Caribbean was an even more extreme version of the Spanish approach. That was partly due to the disease meaning families didn't go there because they tended to die and also due to the different nature of the Caribbean colonies and North American colonies.
The key difference is between a colony aimed at producing a valuable commodity and sending it home (sugar, silver, gold) which tends to mean using forced labour (Native Americans in Potosí, Africans in Jamaica) with a small cadre of white overseers and managers.
In contrast British North America, Argentina, Australia were settlements aimed at creating a fully functioning societies rather than a mere cash cow. This meant much reduced use of slave labour amd instead bringing over tens of thousands of Europeans to set up farms, towns etc.
The American South was a mix. On one hand you had plantations essentially identical to those in the Caribbean; producing cash crops, via slaves, to export to the Mother Country. On the other hand you had a healthy climate and plentiful land, not all of which was suitable for plantation crops. Therefore you had white smallholders and their families settling as in New England. This mix between the two models of colonisation led to a more equal racial balance rather than overwhelming numerical dominance by either whites, or blacks as in New England and the Caribbean. This led to rising tensions, and eventually leading to longer lasting systematic racism via Jim Crow.
 
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