Brazil driving to the Pacific seems rather difficult considering the Andes (and all the cross Hispanophones in the way).
Well, I guess it's conditioned on Brazil holding onto Uruguay, then.
Brazil driving to the Pacific seems rather difficult considering the Andes (and all the cross Hispanophones in the way).
The only way that I could ever imagine a "Brazil" with a West Coast would be using a very early POD, where Portugal manages to acquire the Plata basin and starts to expand across the OTL Argentina, reaching Chile later. But even that would be a hard task.
Let's take the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border dispute. The areas in dispute - if given to Brazil - would almost form a corridor all the way to the Pacific!
So WI during any of the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border wars Brazil steps in and offers to buy most of the area in contention plus a really narrow undisputed Ecuadorian and/or Peruvian territory strip to access Tumbes?
Both Ecuador and Peru could finally get themselves rid of border headaches saving face at the same time. The area is mostly Amazon forest so the local hispanophone population is small enough to be easily manageable. Of course it'd be hard to get Brazil to actually come up with the money to reasonably satisfy both countries. (Could a Pacific-transamazonian highway/railway eventually pay off this enormous investment?)
Also, I can't tell how much would these Hispanic countries frown upon seeing Brazil reaching a Pacific port...
I'm bookmarking this.
Also Spain did run the Phillipines as a part of one of the South American viceroyalities because of the economic connection through the Manila trade.
OK. I knew Argentina looked at Brazil as an imperialist monster but I wasn't sure there was an Hispanic consensus.Brazil was already seen by most of our neighbours as the South American Lusophone boogeyman. There is no chance that Peru and Ecuador would agree as a solution to a dispute between them to give the lands to a third country, especially if this country is Brazil. Also, we would have extreme logistical difficulties in order to have any presence there that could be safely secured.
Agreed. With Tordesilhas we couldn't expect such a large Brazil, it's quite an unlikely wank (bandeirantes advancing that much inland, Pombal securing Amazonia, independent Brazil revising in its favour the borders with almost all its neighbours...)Frankly, Brazil IOTL can almost be considered a wank, we got extremely lucky with our borders the way they are. Maybe we could have advanced in some areas, especially regarding Uruguay, Paraguay and Guyana, but in any other place an expansion would more a political and logistical headache than anything else.
But it was so successful that looking at Brazil's map one could wonder... Brazil was just a few kilometers shy of reaching the Pacific coast.
Yes, that's why I figured only a really narrow strip past the Andes could do it. I even thought that a megalomanic tunnel could provide for better communications.Sure, looking at the map it seems odd. But the fact is that most of the lands we got in the West were virtually unpopulated. But after you cross the Cerrado, the nearer you are from the Andes the more inhabited are the territories, and the inhabitants are Hispanophones. Also while Brazil could probably reach Iquitos faster from Belem then the Peruans from Lima, the opposite would happen with any land in the Andes or beyond it.
I guess Brazil could have easily taken Eastern Bolivia; even if the Brazilian Army at the time was overall very incompetent, Sucre and Bolívar would have to wait a lot of time and cross all the damned mountains to reach the battlegrounds in Santa Cruz and Chiquitos.
Bolívar's army wasn't all that big and if they attacked from the Andes, all they would get would be a draw- and the bleeding from the battle would leave the army weak enough so that Chiquitos would be able to rebel, and now virtually unopposed.
However, maybe the Brazilian Army would try to move into the Andes(I really don't know if they would be this suicidal) and we would get one of the largest curbstomp battles with nature as a decisive factor since Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The Brazilian Army would be bled white, Brazil would lose Chiquitos and maybe more. They won't take it lightly. Expect a much more bloody and violent 19th century Latin America, with several wars of revenge and border clashes to this day.
Not if they were already there, as was the case. If the governor of Mato Grosso managed to hold on, Brazil would actually have a nice chance send troops.We are talking about the same period when Brazil, with much better logistics and the support of the best South American navy of the time was defeated by a band of Argentine caudillos and could not keep a province where we already had a huge military presence. Sending an army to Eastern Bolivia would be simply impossible.
Not if they were already there, as was the case. If the governor of Mato Grosso managed to hold on, Brazil would actually have a nice chance send troops.