AHC: Brazil as powerful as the US

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But they already had slaves to work on plantations, which is directly out in the sun. And humid because it's Brazil.

And even though it would be hot and humid in a 19th century hypothetical Brazilian manufacturing center, it wouldn't be any worse than working out in the plantations outside as a slave in OTL Brazil.

The problem with using slaves in industry is that you make more money by keeping them working on agricultural plantations. Freed people demanded a lot of money to work as hard as slaves had to on plantations so its wasn't economical. Once the slaves are free and you can't work them to death (which was common in Brazil) it makes better economic sense to employ them in factories for very low wages. Furthermore slaves don't buy a lot of manufactured goods and having to compete with slave labour drives down everybody eases wages and the planter class is small so you have almost no market to sell your manufactured goods too.
 
The problem with using slaves in industry is that you make more money by keeping them working on agricultural plantations. Freed people demanded a lot of money to work as hard as slaves had to on plantations so its wasn't economical. Once the slaves are free and you can't work them to death (which was common in Brazil) it makes better economic sense to employ them in factories for very low wages. Furthermore slaves don't buy a lot of manufactured goods and having to compete with slave labour drives down everybody eases wages and the planter class is small so you have almost no market to sell your manufactured goods too.
I wasn't saying they'd use slaves in factories or that that'd be a good idea. All I was saying is that factories in Brazil is definitely possible despite the heat and humidity. They're better than plantations at least, for the workers because they'd be shady inside/only indirect sunlight. Plus if they're both a little ways inland, but still well inside the deforested, settled/farmed part of Brazil, then they can be less humid and thus more bearable.

Of course it could still lead to earlier A/C as people were talking about.
 
I wasn't saying they'd use slaves in factories or that that'd be a good idea. All I was saying is that factories in Brazil is definitely possible despite the heat and humidity. They're better than plantations at least, for the workers because they'd be shady inside/only indirect sunlight. Plus if they're both a little ways inland, but still well inside the deforested, settled/farmed part of Brazil, then they can be less humid and thus more bearable.

Of course it could still lead to earlier A/C as people were talking about.
Oh, sorry I misunderstood :eek:. I then agree with you, facories in the right parts of Brazil wouldn't be too hot. Especially considering most of the first factories will be processing agricultural products or manufacturing. Rather then steel mills and heavier industry.
 
Here are a few ideas I've gathered after doing a little bit studying on South American history.

  1. I've read on another thread that during the end of the Paraguayan War there was a plan to partition the land of Paraguay between the countries. What if this plan went through? Could the addition of land from Paraguay aid in Brazil's economy?
  2. An extended Monarchy in Brazil is an idea that I find very interesting. Perhaps if you prevent the coup in 1889 from being successful and find a way to place Dona Isabel on the throne Brazil could do better than it did in OTL under the First Republic.
  3. Try to find a way in which rubber is efficiently produced and exported in Brazil. As I understand it in OTL the normal practice was to go into the Rainforest, tap a tree, and cook the sap over a camp fire into a rubber ball to sell. This was a rather inefficient practice but Brazil still made millions from exporting the stuff. The British eventually outdid them though by forming rubber tree plantations in Indonesia with rubber tree saplings taken from the Amazon. These were much more efficient. If the Brazilians decided to clear more forest land earlier than they did in OTL for this purpose it could help.
 
But it is the best kind of ASB...well you could have a larger, stronger Canada, and a less screwed Mexico with both in a military alliance.

Actually now I'm wondering why it has to be ASB. Once the USA has the Louisiana Purchase, wouldn't it be obvious to Britain that a good alliance with Mexico might come in handy protecting Canada?

There's no need for Canada and Mexico to be linked directly; Canada is a British possession, the alliance is between Mexico City and London.

I'd have thought it might be in the cards anyway. I guess OTL it never happened because of Mexican pride and wariness at falling under British hegemony. Could a clever and astute enough British envoy work around it? Timing is important too, another stumbling block being that during the Napoleonic Wars Britain was allied with any Spanish government that was not under Napoleon's thumb, so the secession of Spain's American possessions would have been something London had to oppose. However this didn't stop the British from eventually having very powerful influence in Latin America in general and South America especially. I'd think there would have been ample time and opportunity sometime before the late 1840s for Britain and Mexico to ally. Then the USA would know it couldn't strike either north or south without having to fight on the other front too. With British help Mexican forces might have been considerably more formidable.

Now to come at the problem of this thread more positively--recently archaeology has discovered that unbeknownst to scholarship until just this decade, there were substantial towns relying on agriculture in the Amazon river complex, the Terra Prieta cultures. So here's the POD, after though not long after 1500: some of these towns manage to survive whatever it was that devastated all of them OTL, presumably European diseases. A few, maybe the more obscure ones farther up the smaller tributaries, are decimated but survive; they manage to weather out the storm of European plagues and are still a going concern, if damaged, when Portugese missionaries find them. They manage to recruit them to nominal Catholicism while studying their methods of farming successfully in the middle of a rainforest. Eventually, come the 19th Century, Brazil is able to settle the rainforest with settlers who learn these methods. I'm not saying we can transform the Amazon watershed into the agricultural equivalent of the US Great Plains, but we could plausibly settle quite a few people there, and advance major settlements far upriver, far west, into the Andean eastern foothills I'd think. Also the rainforest settlements might be generating serious revenue, discovering interesting new rainforest products that sell well on world markets, and the rubber boom might have deeper roots and broader impacts.

Meanwhile, we have Brazilians living in the far northwest in much greater numbers. A war that leads to an attack on the admittedly still formidable Andean barrier will at least have a decent launching point. And vice versa, having developed the jungle, the Brazilians know they have more to lose if they don't prevail, so they fight seriously and hard.

What is worth conquering on the South American west coast? Well, how about those phosphate mines? If they can manage to take that, along with whatever other Andean mines lie between Brazil and them, that might be a worthwhile draw to the West coast and more revenue to reinvest in generalized industrialization. If they can hold it, they've got the potential to have a Pacific port of their own too.

Going back to terra prieta, if they can have some or all of Portugal's southern African colonies too, the techniques of farming in a rainforest might transfer over to Africa. Especially if they can make good on Portugal's claims on the Congo, pre-empting the Belgians.

Quite a few European fortunes were made on tropical products OTL; what if Brazilians are making those fortunes? Might that not tip the balance and lead to a developmental virtuous spiral?
 
Well, I am brazillian, and I have no doubt, that, if the slaver clique did not make a coup to overthrow monarchy, it would grow quickly as the US. Of course, we need to think in the extreme growth of the US, in WWI and WWII, due to the needs of Europe, that could be satisfied by US. Dom Pedro II, and his family, were liberals and nationalist, and had a great number of industrialization and modernization projects. Also, the Imperial Government had plans, and projects to help the ex-slaves, ascend to middle class. I blame the end of this so important projects, for letting a great part of our population falling into poverty. In that time, our population was not that big, as it is today, and, would be a lot more easy to combat poverty, that time. Also, different from a lot of republican lies people say, the Monarchy was against Slavery. Since our first emperor, Pedro I, he said "Slavery in inoculate all their vices, and make us cruel hearts, unconstitutional and friends of despotism.", and Pedro II, said: "I'd rather lose the crown, the consent to the continuation of slavery". Well, also, different from what a lot of people said, most of Brazil IS inhabitable. Even in the Amazon Rainforest, a lot of economical activities, like latex extraction, and logging, are executed.
 

SinghKing

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How about we just weaken America to the point where it is just as Powerful as Brazil?

Maybe no Louisiana Purchase, or a Crushing British Victory in the War of 1812 could work.

Or, given that the POD can be as early as 1500, butterfly away the USA entirely.
 
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