AHC: Make South America... Less South American

Juan Valdez

What I mean by less South American, I mean less corruption and less poverty. In other words more prosperous an industrialized.

When would the POD be? In the Viceroy days? Just after independence? Later on?
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

One thing people often forget is that Argentina was a much richer place than Canada in the early 1900s. If they could have kept good governance and kept up economically, they would have been First World in the '60s (when 1/2/3 world concepts were coined). I would imagine Chile might, too, but I don't know as much about them...

Edit: the tropical nations - (much of Brazil), Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, etc. are going to have a tougher time with disease, and it's likely going to be hard to get them 'First World'.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Dathi THorfinnsson said:
One thing people often forget is that Argentina was a much richer place than Canada in the early 1900s. If they could have kept good governance and kept up economically, they would have been First World in the '60s (when 1/2/3 world concepts were coined). I would imagine Chile might, too, but I don't know as much about them...

Edit: the tropical nations - (much of Brazil), Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, etc. are going to have a tougher time with disease, and it's likely going to be hard to get them 'First World'.
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(pedantic nitpick: to be first world when the term was coined, they would have to be US-aligned instead of Soviet or non aligned)
Pedantry aside: pre-1900 POD could possibly include
- Earlier reduction of mercantilism in latin america
- Earlier abolition of slavery in Brazil
- Globalization of Quinine as a cash crop would possibly reduce the impact of disease (Peru had monopoly on the exportation of natural quinine into the 1850s)
- Failure of the american filibusters/Monroe doctrine retooled into something more akin american cooperation against european attempts at reasserting dominance, including support to various rebellions and willingness to redirect colonization efforts away from the Rio Grande basin (more cooperation between american powers might lead to a larger Oregon - the gold rush there predates the californian gold rush)
For the rest there's little inherently latin about the situation of rest of the americas, it's pretty typical of third rate powers whenever more politically powerful countries decide to extend their clout into the region (that's part of when you can date Russia's rise as a great power in Europe: the reduction in court bribery by foreign diplomats at the imperial court).

(edit - forgot one which I put in later: less predatory reparations)
 
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Roberto

I've always maintained that the reason that the Latin American countries turned out differently than the US or Canada is because of the different ways the colonies were run. New Spain was basically just a money machine for the Spanish, with the infrastructure specifically designed so Spaniards were on top and getting the profit. Because of this, the ex-colonial countries inherited the encomienda system, the haciendas, the patrones and the peones. Get rid of this taint on the economy and you'll get a much stabler place.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Roberto said:
I've always maintained that the reason that the Latin American countries turned out differently than the US or Canada is because of the different ways the colonies were run. New Spain was basically just a money machine for the Spanish, with the infrastructure specifically designed so Spaniards were on top and getting the profit. Because of this, the ex-colonial countries inherited the encomienda system, the haciendas, the patrones and the peones. Get rid of this taint on the economy and you'll get a much stabler place.
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The US inherited a slave-driven export-dependent plantocracy, too.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Roberto said:
And yet only half of the 13 colonies were devoted such. There was also a sizeable manufacturing sector, pre-established industry, wealth distribution, etc.
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At independence, the US actually lacked most of those things apart from a few states. More than half of the states still ran heavily on plantations.
 

Roberto

archaeogeek said:
At independence, the US actually lacked most of those things apart from a few states. More than half of the states still ran heavily on plantations.
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So? There was enough industrialization that the transition from a plantation economy could occur. The conditions in Latin America were more often than not, much too bad for this transition.

Or you can refute all of my personal assertations and imply that Americans are simply superior. :rolleyes:
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Roberto said:
So? There was enough industrialization that the transition from a plantation economy could occur. The conditions in Latin America were more often than not, much too bad for this transition.

Or you can refute all of my personal assertations and imply that Americans are simply superior. :rolleyes:
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That was never the implication, for one I'm not american.
One thing they did have, though, was that a large part of their capital was not bled as war reparations by the colonizing powers right at independence (the same as for Haiti). The rest would have been reformable without this.
 
9 Fanged Hummingbird

9 Fanged Hummingbird

Roberto said:
I've always maintained that the reason that the Latin American countries turned out differently than the US or Canada is because of the different ways the colonies were run. New Spain was basically just a money machine for the Spanish, with the infrastructure specifically designed so Spaniards were on top and getting the profit. Because of this, the ex-colonial countries inherited the encomienda system, the haciendas, the patrones and the peones. Get rid of this taint on the economy and you'll get a much stabler place.
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So what if Paraguay had more luck then? El Supremo did much to get rid of these Spanish colonial remnants. Granted, he was brutal as all hell and probably in the most totalitarian dictator I've heard of in the sense that he literally controlled just about every single thing in the country, but he did make it more modernish, and did much for equalization.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
corditeman said:
...Petete123123 and myself are doing this in the 20th Century with British Tierra del Fuego - the poor Fuegans are currently having to be part of a 'Noble Experiment' in the southern two states of Argentina.

And we can always do with more comments...:D

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=160650&page=17 post 335 and keep chuckling...
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The execution is interesting but it's still of the "united kingdom takes over a shitty arctic waste/desert/wasteland, instant economic miracle" base idea which irks me :p
 

corditeman

Uhhh...Nope

You have to read it. The BTdF isn't a wank - the Colony's development is actually painfully slow and they can't afford much in the way of weapons, so they have to depend on their wits and everyone else's hand-me-downs. Economically, they have depended on agriculture, the mining of poor-quality coal, re-processing scrap, timber working, whaling, fishing and (eventually, 1970s on) petrochemicals and electronics. Much as Argentino and Chileo TdF now. And they're as cosmopolitan as the rest of the South Cone - except that I had to establish a Maori colony there. The only advantages were a gold rush (1900s) and oil and gas (1940s-1960s).

And they nearly get creamed several times. Pete thought my casualty figures for Ferrettistas' massacres too high. Would you believe (yep, think of Russian methods) that some Land Guard are armed with Crimean-era muskets? I recall that a Napoleon film filmed in Russia, the Russians exported the prop rifles to third-world revolutionaries. In the 1980s, the Russians warehoused a lot of WWII tanks. You have to survive to survive. Anything else is daft.

And it just goes to show that neither the Middle East nor Norteamericanos have any right to rule the world. Should I be writing a Britwank, or would it be a dead bore?

BTW, Fuegan Brandy is not for the faint-hearted - you'd be safer with a case of Newcastle Brown.
 
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Simon

Simon

I believe Sa'id Mohammed was being somewhat sarcastic, since there is something of a cliche of alternate timeline countries being British colonies and becoming almost insta-successes as opposed to our timeline versions in some scenarios. Now that's not to say that things like rule of law, free trade, property rights etc. - at least if for a lot of the time if you were white and western - might not of helped some countries to develop better, you've still got the post-colonial period and then the US and Soviet Union messing about with countries for them to survive though which seems to have done for Nigeria and Pakistan.
 

corditeman

Prosperity...

...Nigerian oil? Pakistani nukes?

Who's in charge there, now? As far as I know, they've been independent for ages. Nigeria's part-Christian, part-Muslim, Pakistan's mostly Muslim.

Pers'nly, m'boy, I'm British Empire Loyalist...

Anyway, I thought this was a South American thread!

<Waves a handful of flags of South American states>
 

archaeogeek

Banned
corditeman said:
...Nigerian oil? Pakistani nukes?

Who's in charge there, now? As far as I know, they've been independent for ages. Nigeria's part-Christian, part-Muslim, Pakistan's mostly Muslim.

Pers'nly, m'boy, I'm British Empire Loyalist...

Anyway, I thought this was a South American thread!

<Waves a handful of flags of South American states>
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Heee, pretty colors (there's supposedly this theory of Goethe about the beauty of primary colors and their relevance to the enlightened world which Miranda wanted to test when he designed his banner...).
Also one thing that could do a lot of good for Colombia: have Francisco de Paula Santander's reforms succeed. One good option might be to have Bolivar do a Washington, serve one term, step down and leave Santander running things. He could probably have had more success than Bolivar at keeping the country together, too.
 
juanml82

juanml82

Hresvelgr said:
So what if Paraguay had more luck then? El Supremo did much to get rid of these Spanish colonial remnants. Granted, he was brutal as all hell and probably in the most totalitarian dictator I've heard of in the sense that he literally controlled just about every single thing in the country, but he did make it more modernish, and did much for equalization.
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They needed large internal market to develop a serious industry, as well as easy access to iron, coal and, later on, oil and bauxite. They didn't have any of them. The USA's North East, OTOH, had them.
And without those risky, boring and extremely repetitive jobs in factories, during the 19th century, a country would just be a primary goods exporter.
 
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