AHC: Castas in British America

Racial politics in Colonial Spanish America were an intricate set social tiers that recognized European-born whites, American-born whites, Africans, and Native Americans and mixtures between those people as members of different racial groups. How could a similar system be adopted in the British colonies?
 
Racial politics in Colonial Spanish America were an intricate set social tiers that recognized European-born whites, American-born whites, Africans, and Native Americans and mixtures between those people as members of different racial groups. How could a similar system be adopted in the British colonies?

Firstly, at risk of stating the obvius, white people are originally from Europe. So, Peninsular wasn't a new group, criollo was. Concerning British America, we can trace an American identity back to the ARW, maybe earlier during colonial times, but it wasn't as strong as the criollo/peninsular identity.

The rivalry was clearly about official positions. In Spanish America we had i) a big bureaucratic corpse and ii) a huge (and locally educated) aristocracy. In Brazil, for instance, there wasn't a clear divide between Portuguese and Brazilian whites. There was, indeed, an important bureaucratic machine, but Brazilian-born elite was uneducated and needed to study in Portugal to aspire to a colonial position.

In British America, the colonies were small and administrated separately (and much more autonomous than Iberian America), limiting the size of the bureaucracy.

NOW - the hardest part -, to create a different mixed-race castas, well, risking stating the obvious again, you will need mixed-raced people. And, for that, you pretty much need to change the entire colonial history of the US.
 
North America lacks the large populations of natives necessary to produce a plentiful mixed caste. Additionally the indigenous people were less numerous and settled and so easier to just brush aside, rather than live next to. Very difficult without a pre-Columbian POD to produce a large North Amerindian population.
 
North America lacks the large populations of natives necessary to produce a plentiful mixed caste. Additionally the indigenous people were less numerous and settled and so easier to just brush aside, rather than live next to. Very difficult without a pre-Columbian POD to produce a large North Amerindian population.
Not to mention the lack of institutionalized effort to evangelize and integrate both Natives and Blacks. Instead, we had the white settlers actively seeking to isolate them from society.
 
North America lacks the large populations of natives necessary to produce a plentiful mixed caste. Additionally the indigenous people were less numerous and settled and so easier to just brush aside, rather than live next to. Very difficult without a pre-Columbian POD to produce a large North Amerindian population.

Basically this. You'd need a POD hundreds of years before colonialism to give Amerindians in North America the population size necessary. Maybe somehow get smallpox transmitted into the Mississippian heartland by Vinland in the 11th century, or perhaps have corn spread north from Mesoamerica earlier. And why not somehow get potatoes transmitted from the Andes somehow.

You'll change the history of the Americas beyond recognition, but that could lead to an English-speaking mixed-race population being dominant in Eastern North America.
 
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