AHC: Setup for a Prosperous, Industrialized Latin America

[Goldensilver81]

Oh, please DO expand.

to be fair calbear at least i will be talking about my country peru the spanish goverment left some ugly things behind that the fututre republic stayed with
1) the slave or fuedal mind set
the spanish in lima and the north with their haciendas the natives became their fuedal peaseants and even taxed them for bogus reasons i mean there was an indian tax same the peruvian goverment kept,so while fuedal landlords and slaves are long gone the mentality stayed and land lord here and as early as 50 years ago i remember how my great grandfather was a large state owner and he always said to my dad " you have to look the peons (ie the workers ) in the eye with stricness and look down upon them remembers the owner's eye makes the horse fat " which is a common saying it means that if you dont supirvise them the lazy workers (usally poor natives from the highlands )will not work if you dont see them and obligate them to work
its kinda of clear where this mentality came from and while its good that its going away it was not going to help any one since the natives and the mestizos where a big part of the population also like history proven slavery feuidalisim or its mentality does not go well with industralization.

2) the spanish and the peruvian goverment need to get rich quickly cash grabs
well pizarro came for get rich quick scheme here and it worked subsequent spanish came to become fuedal land lords or be governor of a rich minining discrit to get rich quickly the royal fith while good on paper turned out to be a catastrophe in practice due to the rampat corruption of lords and the viceroy would could not care less how the subjects or even the country as whole was doing.
post independance was not that much diferent with presidents who cared more about getting rich quickly with gold , guano , salitre or rubber companies getting the money for him we in peru had such short sided egotistical mind sets that would make the byzantine empire jealous from a president who betrayed the souther army because of money and the fear that if general won he would take power if he won , even today with most of our current presidents are dead on in jail with huge corruption scandals that have affected the lives of thousands ,

3) the spanish goverment gave the native people no self governance with the execption of the viceroy and his cronies .

as said spain didnt give the natives not even the white settlers self governance the only thing they controled if they where lucky is their hacienda but had no real political power or say in the goverment , this combined with royal monopolies limited the enconomical growth of the colonies.

this is why post independance there was such political instability a is a consequence of how the State was organized at the birth of republican life (that it was never used to) and without a national base this led the "freedom figther generals" to assume power .

 

[EMT]

to be fair calbear at least i will be talking about my country peru the spanish goverment left some ugly things behind that the fututre republic stayed with
1) the slave or fuedal mind set
the spanish in lima and the north with their haciendas the natives became their fuedal peaseants and even taxed them for bogus reasons i mean there was an indian tax same the peruvian goverment kept,so while fuedal landlords and slaves are long gone the mentality stayed and land lord here and as early as 50 years ago i remember how my great grandfather was a large state owner and he always said to my dad " you have to look the peons (ie the workers ) in the eye with stricness and look down upon them remembers the owner's eye makes the horse fat " which is a common saying it means that if you dont supirvise them the lazy workers (usally poor natives from the highlands )will not work if you dont see them and obligate them to work
its kinda of clear where this mentality came from and while its good that its going away it was not going to help any one since the natives and the mestizos where a big part of the population also like history proven slavery feuidalisim or its mentality does not go well with industralization.

2) the spanish and the peruvian goverment need to get rich quickly cash grabs
well pizarro came for get rich quick scheme here and it worked subsequent spanish came to become fuedal land lords or be governor of a rich minining discrit to get rich quickly the royal fith while good on paper turned out to be a catastrophe in practice due to the rampat corruption of lords and the viceroy would could not care less how the subjects or even the country as whole was doing.
post independance was not that much diferent with presidents who cared more about getting rich quickly with gold , guano , salitre or rubber companies getting the money for him we in peru had such short sided egotistical mind sets that would make the byzantine empire jealous from a president who betrayed the souther army because of money and the fear that if general won he would take power if he won , even today with most of our current presidents are dead on in jail with huge corruption scandals that have affected the lives of thousands ,

3) the spanish goverment gave the native people no self governance with the execption of the viceroy and his cronies .

as said spain didnt give the natives not even the white settlers self governance the only thing they controled if they where lucky is their hacienda but had no real political power or say in the goverment , this combined with royal monopolies limited the enconomical growth of the colonies.

this is why post independance there was such political instability a is a consequence of how the State was organized at the birth of republican life (that it was never used to) and without a national base this led the "freedom figther generals" to assume power .

That doesn't justify using ludicrous, overreaching terms like 'short of divine intervention', implying that the people from the region must have a culture or society inherently incompatible with prosperity, etc. when you can go back to not just before Peru gained independence, but before the Spanish had even set foot outside of the Caribbean. It's a shit hot take, lazy and peddling stereotypes and prejudices through a thin veneer of implication. The things you just described is factors that are far from set in stone, especially with an alternate or butterflied conquest of the Inca.

As another Peruvian, I know all too well the framing narrative used by many Hispanics to describe their own countries; justifying our failures through the inherent structural flaws leftover from the Spanish occupation. And most of the time, these are very valid points that DO adequately explain how or why the post-colonial states turned out the way they did. What I take issue with is that when given a PoD that goes far, FAR back from before the Wars of Independence, and we're still validating the drive-by racist hot takes about how Latin America is inherently destined to fail using the same framing narrative we use for post-independence states when most everything that was a factor in the failure of post-independence states can be thrown out, overcome, butterflied, etc. with this much leeway.

It's permitting these types of hot takes, baseless dismissals, etc. that makes discussing anything outside of the West a pain in the ass on this site, and even more so anything that challenges Eurocentric supremacy being the default.

 

[Belisarius II]

to be fair calbear at least i will be talking about my country peru the spanish goverment left some ugly things behind that the fututre republic stayed with
1) the slave or fuedal mind set
the spanish in lima and the north with their haciendas the natives became their fuedal peaseants and even taxed them for bogus reasons i mean there was an indian tax same the peruvian goverment kept,so while fuedal landlords and slaves are long gone the mentality stayed and land lord here and as early as 50 years ago i remember how my great grandfather was a large state owner and he always said to my dad " you have to look the peons (ie the workers ) in the eye with stricness and look down upon them remembers the owner's eye makes the horse fat " which is a common saying it means that if you dont supirvise them the lazy workers (usally poor natives from the highlands )will not work if you dont see them and obligate them to work
its kinda of clear where this mentality came from and while its good that its going away it was not going to help any one since the natives and the mestizos where a big part of the population also like history proven slavery feuidalisim or its mentality does not go well with industralization.

2) the spanish and the peruvian goverment need to get rich quickly cash grabs
well pizarro came for get rich quick scheme here and it worked subsequent spanish came to become fuedal land lords or be governor of a rich minining discrit to get rich quickly the royal fith while good on paper turned out to be a catastrophe in practice due to the rampat corruption of lords and the viceroy would could not care less how the subjects or even the country as whole was doing.
post independance was not that much diferent with presidents who cared more about getting rich quickly with gold , guano , salitre or rubber companies getting the money for him we in peru had such short sided egotistical mind sets that would make the byzantine empire jealous from a president who betrayed the souther army because of money and the fear that if general won he would take power if he won , even today with most of our current presidents are dead on in jail with huge corruption scandals that have affected the lives of thousands ,

3) the spanish goverment gave the native people no self governance with the execption of the viceroy and his cronies .

as said spain didnt give the natives not even the white settlers self governance the only thing they controled if they where lucky is their hacienda but had no real political power or say in the goverment , this combined with royal monopolies limited the enconomical growth of the colonies.

this is why post independance there was such political instability a is a consequence of how the State was organized at the birth of republican life (that it was never used to) and without a national base this led the "freedom figther generals" to assume power .

Although the specific condition across Latin America are varied the problems you describe are wide spread. The racial divide runs deep in many places. A lady friend of mine told me a story years ago. My friend is on the political left, and believes racism is the biggest problem facing the United States. She was dating a man from Peru. He was a tall slim blond haired blue eyed rich Whiteman. A prime topic of conversation for him was the oppression of Black Americans. One day she dared to ask, "What about the way you treat Indians in your country?" In a highly emotional state he replied, "That's different, their animals!"

The kind of top down social order you describe, along with the racial divides are not conducive to ether social, or economic progress. On other threads I've argued that if the CSA had gained it's independence, it would've become the world greatest Banana Republic. It would've shared the worst aspects of much of Latin America, and would have added others. These problems are far from being confined to Latin America, but they are a serious problem, and have held back the development of much of the population of many of the countries we're discussing. These attitudes prevent a country from fully developing it's human capital, and human capital is the greatest resource any country has.

 

[Goldensilver81]

That doesn't justify using ludicrous, overreaching terms like 'short of divine intervention', implying that the people from the region must have a culture or society inherently incompatible with prosperity, etc. when you can go back to not just before Peru gained independence, but before the Spanish had even set foot outside of the Caribbean. It's a shit hot take, lazy and peddling stereotypes and prejudices through a thin veneer of implication. The things you just described is factors that are far from set in stone, especially with an alternate or butterflied conquest of the Inca.

As another Peruvian, I know all too well the framing narrative used by many Hispanics to describe their own countries; justifying our failures through the inherent structural flaws leftover from the Spanish occupation. And most of the time, these are very valid points that DO adequately explain how or why the post-colonial states turned out the way they did. What I take issue with is that when given a PoD that goes far, FAR back from before the Wars of Independence, and we're still validating the drive-by racist hot takes about how Latin America is inherently destined to fail using the same framing narrative we use for post-independence states when most everything that was a factor in the failure of post-independence states can be thrown out, overcome, butterflied, etc. with this much leeway.

It's permitting these types of hot takes, baseless dismissals, etc. that makes discussing anything outside of the West a pain in the ass on this site, and even more so anything that challenges Eurocentric supremacy being the default.

Yes the mentality left by the Spanish conquest was bad and I mentioned also the peruvian government failures at keeping policies and the mentality it's goood thing over the last 30 years we have been moving away from them and with a pod you can change many things but if it's the 1530 Spain conquering latin america and then you do need a radical pod for Spain to fix things for one Spain didn't sent it's best, my father actually has a pod he has told me is that the king of Spain flees napoleon and goes to Lima , mexico or buenos aires the king with the highest of the noblity and he sees how bad the situation has gotten really is ( the king sent people to control the place he never knew the real picture and even if he didn't he could hardly enforce anything against the viceroys ) in that timeline the king is there and much closer to home so he can actually attempt to fix things
That makes the Spanish empire last longer and thus when the king returns to Spain he tries to fix his colonies or he leaves his son or sons like the king of Portugal did with pedro
Either one is a good start as it avoids the numerous civil wars followed since there would not be any caudillos as the king sons would be in power or figurehead the true legitimate rulers .

 

[Goldensilver81]

Although the specific condition across Latin America are varied the problems you describe are wide spread. The racial divide runs deep in many places. A lady friend of mine told me a story years ago. My friend is on the political left, and believes racism is the biggest problem facing the United States. She was dating a man from Peru. He was a tall slim blond haired blue eyed rich Whiteman. A prime topic of conversation for him was the oppression of Black Americans. One day she dared to ask, "What about the way you treat Indians in your country?" In a highly emotional state he replied, "That's different, their animals!"

The kind of top down social order you describe, along with the racial divides are not conducive to ether social, or economic progress. On other threads I've argued that if the CSA had gained it's independence, it would've become the world greatest Banana Republic. It would've shared the worst aspects of much of Latin America, and would have added others. These problems are far from being confined to Latin America, but they are a serious problem, and have held back the development of much of the population of many of the countries we're discussing. These attitudes prevent a country from fully developing it's human capital, and human capital is the greatest resource any country has.

Yeah animals this proves the " If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it" quote the Spanish and later the peruvian government has repeated this lie so many that people even the natives themselves believe it

As bad as the csa would have been it has one advantage at least it's people felt United and connected for a cause it was a horrible one but it was a cause latin america rarely had this even to this date most people identify with their province rather then country as whole and the few times the country has tried to unite on some issues it never works out a great example of this was in the war with chile the people understood how the army was underpaid the people of lima who rarely cared about the provinces gave their belongings or anything that would help the war effort only to have the president take the money and escape to Europe

 

[Belisarius II]

That doesn't justify using ludicrous, overreaching terms like 'short of divine intervention', implying that the people from the region must have a culture or society inherently incompatible with prosperity, etc. when you can go back to not just before Peru gained independence, but before the Spanish had even set foot outside of the Caribbean. It's a shit hot take, lazy and peddling stereotypes and prejudices through a thin veneer of implication. The things you just described is factors that are far from set in stone, especially with an alternate or butterflied conquest of the Inca.

As another Peruvian, I know all too well the framing narrative used by many Hispanics to describe their own countries; justifying our failures through the inherent structural flaws leftover from the Spanish occupation. And most of the time, these are very valid points that DO adequately explain how or why the post-colonial states turned out the way they did. What I take issue with is that when given a PoD that goes far, FAR back from before the Wars of Independence, and we're still validating the drive-by racist hot takes about how Latin America is inherently destined to fail using the same framing narrative we use for post-independence states when most everything that was a factor in the failure of post-independence states can be thrown out, overcome, butterflied, etc. with this much leeway.

It's permitting these types of hot takes, baseless dismissals, etc. that makes discussing anything outside of the West a pain in the ass on this site, and even more so anything that challenges Eurocentric supremacy being the default.

Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and others have ancient none Western Cultures, but have reached 1st world status, and have stable democratic societies. There are many cultural models that can reach modernity. Cultural changes can be introduced from the outside, but the beneficial elements have to be internalized, and added to the cultural mix. From the mid 19th Century on Japan incorporated Western Ideas into it's cultural framework, but they remained Japanese. They changed what they needed to become a modern power. Latin America can do the same thing. The main ingredients of Western success are Freedom, Equality, and rule of law. Education is the key to incorporating those concepts into Latin Culture. It's been pointed out Latinos living in Western Countries are more entrepreneurial then they were in their native lands. Given the framework of Freedom, Equality, and Rule of law they do much better. Those are the things they need to reach 1st World Status.

 

[Vinization]

snip

And such aspects cannot overcome without divine intervention because?

Anyway, here's a bunch of Cold War era PODs that would make at least some Latin American countries much better places to live in than today.

Colombia: Jorge Eliécer Gaitán isn't murdered in 1948.

Venezuela: Rómulo Gallegos, the country's first democratically elected president, isn't overthrown by a military coup in the same year.

Guatemala: Jacobo Árbenz isn't overthrown in 1954 by Operation PBSUCCESS. This country in question would be a LOT better off, since it wouldn't go through a horrible 36 year civil war and genocide of the Maya people.

Mexico: Something that ends PRI's stranglehold in power earlier. Maybe a reformist somehow wriggles his way to the presidency decades sooner.

Dominican Republic: Juan Bosch isn't overthrown in 1963.

Nicaragua: The US doesn't fund the Contras against the Sandinista government.

Chile: Allende is either elected earlier (1958 or 1964) so he doesn't feel the need to shoehorn so many reforms. Something would have to happen in the US so they're more receptive to him and don't try to "make their economy scream".

Argentina: Juan Perón isn't overthrown in 1955, and transfers power to someone who probably wouldn't be a Peronist at the end of his term in 1956. Without his exile, Peronism doesn't turn into a mess that includes both Neo-Nazis and Communists. I have no idea what said ideology would turn into, but anything would be better than OTL.

Peru: Fernando Belaúnde Terry isn't overthrown in 1968. Better yet, he's somehow elected president in 1956.

Bolivia: Víctor Paz Estenssoro doesn't run for a third term. This butterflies the 1964 coup d'état and the chronic instability that followed, as well as Hugo Banzer's dictatorship.

Finally, Brazil, my dearly beloved: Avoid the 1964 coup d'état somehow, either by making the right elect a president sometime in the period (1955 is your best bet) so they don't listen to that crow Carlos Lacerda as much. If not, make sure president João Goulart has more loyal governors and, most importantly, loyal generals commanding the field armies, people like Peri Bevilacqua and such.

 

[EMT]

Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and others have ancient none Western Cultures, but have reached 1st world status, and have stable democratic societies. There are many cultural models that can reach modernity. Cultural changes can be introduced from the outside, but the beneficial elements have to be internalized, and added to the cultural mix. From the mid 19th Century on Japan incorporated Western Ideas into it's cultural framework, but they remained Japanese. They changed what they needed to become a modern power. Latin America can do the same thing. The main ingredients of Western success are Freedom, Equality, and rule of law. Education is the key to incorporating those concepts into Latin Culture. It's been pointed out Latinos living in Western Countries are more entrepreneurial then they were in their native lands. Given the framework of Freedom, Equality, and Rule of law they do much better. Those are the things they need to reach 1st World Status.

Damn dude, I wish the native ancestors of today's Mexicans, Colombians, and Bolivians knew they were damned to poverty the moment the clock hit 1492 and Columbus sailed the ocean blue, nevermind if he makes landfall or not. Since you know, divine intervention is needed to save these people from poverty at any point during the Age of Exploration onwards. And to top it off, you're gonna sit there and lecture people about how Western values equate to prosperity when the PRC, Singapore for most of its history, and the Gulf states exist?

 

[NM1]

Question, are we talking about a culture without European involvement - in which case, I am not qualified to comment.

If we are talking about a world were colonisation happens, it would have to be colonisation by the British or the Dutch (or somebody Northern). Basically anybody BUT Spain and Portugal.

The most successful settler societies (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) all started as colonies established by Protestant countries and marked by Adam Smith-style economies, cultures that put emphasis on individual achievement and did not as fully transpose European class-systems straight onto the 'New World' without some adaptation or try and empty it of all it's precious metals like Spain did. Latin America underperformed because the economy to start with was flawed based on massive estates rather and sustainable yeoman farming and craft manufacture, because they were often slave economies, because the style of work and financial activity that sustained the growth of these cultures was based on Usary which is unlikely to be supported by a Catholic population and because there was limited if not no class mobility and therefore not attractive places to immigrate to until much later - even then more usually by people leaving poverty in southern Europe.

A bit simple, but Latin and Central American revolutions in the 19th century were usually led by a landed elite and the population stayed less literate because there was not the same emphasis on at least being able to read that was deemed important in Protestant cultures where ones journey to God was personal and based on your interaction with the Bible and personal contemplation. An illiterate culture is not a good place to start for building a new nation or a modern economy. This also has a huge effect on the growth of a middle class and the development of efficient government at the local or provincial level either so these often physically giant countries ended up under-explored and developed, under-populated in the interior and poorly run, suffering from corruption and then whoever rose up in the vacuum after the inevitable popular rebellion or coup removed the landlords. Compare the difference between a small settlement in rural Argentina and the people of the Falkland Islands - totally different, because their governments and ways of life are markedly different. Another example is comparing the Northern states in the US with their industry and vibrant market economy that drove forward, paying for the development of the US interior and its development into a world power, and the Southern states within the English speaking world, where more traditional, European, class-based societies and slave-owning thrived, the economy stagnated longer-term.

You probably need to change the country who colonised it and probably make the native peoples there more powerful, or rinse and repeat.

 

[Vinization]

Question, are we talking about a culture without European involvement - in which case, I am not qualified to comment.

If we are talking about a world were colonisation happens, it would have to be colonisation by the British or the Dutch (or somebody Northern). Basically anybody BUT Spain and Portugal.

-snip-

Oh My God.

Colonial empires were, by definition, built to steal resources from the colony to the imperial center in the form of either important raw materials (gold, silver, brazilwood and such) or giant slave-powered plantations of sugar, cotton, coffee and so on.

You'll notice that the southern USA is very similar to Cuba, Brazil and other countries whose economies were built on the backs of millions of slaves.

The colonizer's religion is worthless. If you want to improve the lives of those who live in the colonies, you either kick the empire controlling them out ASAP or prevent them from being conquered in the first place.

 

[Vinization]

Seriously, some of the comments here make me want to write a Latin American TL with a POD using one of the earlier colonial rebellions of the 18th century (Juan Santos Atahualpa and Túpac Amaru II come to mind) from scratch. Too bad I've already got more than enough on my plate as it is.

 

[EMT]

Question, are we talking about a culture without European involvement - in which case, I am not qualified to comment.

If we are talking about a world were colonisation happens, it would have to be colonisation by the British or the Dutch (or somebody Northern). Basically anybody BUT Spain and Portugal.

The most successful settler societies (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) all started as colonies established by Protestant countries and marked by Adam Smith-style economies, cultures that put emphasis on individual achievement and did not as fully transpose European class-systems straight onto the 'New World' without some adaptation or try and empty it of all it's precious metals like Spain did. Latin America underperformed because the economy to start with was flawed based on massive estates rather and sustainable yeoman farming and craft manufacture, because they were often slave economies, because the style of work and financial activity that sustained the growth of these cultures was based on Usary which is unlikely to be supported by a Catholic population and because there was limited if not no class mobility and therefore not attractive places to immigrate to until much later - even then more usually by people leaving poverty in southern Europe.

A bit simple, but Latin and Central American revolutions in the 19th century were usually led by a landed elite and the population stayed less literate because there was not the same emphasis on at least being able to read that was deemed important in Protestant cultures where ones journey to God was personal and based on your interaction with the Bible and personal contemplation. An illiterate culture is not a good place to start for building a new nation or a modern economy. This also has a huge effect on the growth of a middle class and the development of efficient government at the local or provincial level either so these often physically giant countries ended up under-explored and developed, under-populated in the interior and poorly run, suffering from corruption and then whoever rose up in the vacuum after the inevitable popular rebellion or coup removed the landlords. Compare the difference between a small settlement in rural Argentina and the people of the Falkland Islands - totally different, because their governments and ways of life are markedly different. Another example is comparing the Northern states in the US with their industry and vibrant market economy that drove forward, paying for the development of the US interior and its development into a world power, and the Southern states within the English speaking world, where more traditional, European, class-based societies and slave-owning thrived, the economy stagnated longer-term.

You probably need to change the country who colonised it and probably make the native peoples there more powerful, or rinse and repeat.

I'm impressed that you went into a thread where a good number of comments are deriding racist drive-bys and you come in here to drop the 'Good Anglo-Saxon breeding and governance will fix them'

 

[minifidel]

Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and others have ancient none Western Cultures, but have reached 1st world status, and have stable democratic societies. There are many cultural models that can reach modernity. Cultural changes can be introduced from the outside, but the beneficial elements have to be internalized, and added to the cultural mix. From the mid 19th Century on Japan incorporated Western Ideas into it's cultural framework, but they remained Japanese. They changed what they needed to become a modern power. Latin America can do the same thing. The main ingredients of Western success are Freedom, Equality, and rule of law. Education is the key to incorporating those concepts into Latin Culture. It's been pointed out Latinos living in Western Countries are more entrepreneurial then they were in their native lands. Given the framework of Freedom, Equality, and Rule of law they do much better. Those are the things they need to reach 1st World Status.

"Modernity" is a vague term applied inconsistently across time frames and regions; for instance, the idea that "modernity" arrived in East Asia with Western influence is a problematic reinterpretation of a relationship which frequently involved Western powers deliberately impoverishing Asian countries (or in the case of Korea, Japan employing European-style colonialism in the peninsula and becoming a party to the Unequal Treaties against China). China was so prosperous and modern in fact that the way the Europeans found to get around their general lack of interest in their substandard products in insufficient amounts was to flood the country with narcotics.

Then let's discuss Freedom, Equality and rule of law as "ingredients of Western success": the US remained a legally, politically, socially and economically unequal country into the 1960s; Germany was an autocratic monarchy throughout its entire period of industrial and imperial growth; the UK deindustrialized India to fuel its own industrial revolution.

Your analysis of Latin America's problems is deterministic and too narrow.

Question, are we talking about a culture without European involvement - in which case, I am not qualified to comment.

If we are talking about a world were colonisation happens, it would have to be colonisation by the British or the Dutch (or somebody Northern). Basically anybody BUT Spain and Portugal.

The most successful settler societies (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) all started as colonies established by Protestant countries and marked by Adam Smith-style economies, cultures that put emphasis on individual achievement and did not as fully transpose European class-systems straight onto the 'New World' without some adaptation or try and empty it of all it's precious metals like Spain did. Latin America underperformed because the economy to start with was flawed based on massive estates rather and sustainable yeoman farming and craft manufacture, because they were often slave economies, because the style of work and financial activity that sustained the growth of these cultures was based on Usary which is unlikely to be supported by a Catholic population and because there was limited if not no class mobility and therefore not attractive places to immigrate to until much later - even then more usually by people leaving poverty in southern Europe.

A bit simple, but Latin and Central American revolutions in the 19th century were usually led by a landed elite and the population stayed less literate because there was not the same emphasis on at least being able to read that was deemed important in Protestant cultures where ones journey to God was personal and based on your interaction with the Bible and personal contemplation. An illiterate culture is not a good place to start for building a new nation or a modern economy. This also has a huge effect on the growth of a middle class and the development of efficient government at the local or provincial level either so these often physically giant countries ended up under-explored and developed, under-populated in the interior and poorly run, suffering from corruption and then whoever rose up in the vacuum after the inevitable popular rebellion or coup removed the landlords. Compare the difference between a small settlement in rural Argentina and the people of the Falkland Islands - totally different, because their governments and ways of life are markedly different. Another example is comparing the Northern states in the US with their industry and vibrant market economy that drove forward, paying for the development of the US interior and its development into a world power, and the Southern states within the English speaking world, where more traditional, European, class-based societies and slave-owning thrived, the economy stagnated longer-term.

You probably need to change the country who colonised it and probably make the native peoples there more powerful, or rinse and repeat.

There's a lot to unpack in this post, but the bolded sentence stood out to me as particularly weird. It would be like comparing rural Maine to St Pierre and Miquelon: in the grand scheme of things, hypothetical differences in the regulatory frameworks have less to do with the different ways of life than the fact that one is a rural area and another is an isolated island whose sustenance depends solely on subsidies from the metropole.

Your proposal is further undermined that, just to use an example that you bring up but don't actually compare with your other cited countries, Argentina was just as prosperous and well-run as any of Canada, Australia or New Zealand in the late 19th and early 20th century (and arguably well into the 20th century at that). The same was true for Chile, a country which was also potent enough to fight and win an expansionist war against two neighboring countries and to defeat its former colonial masters at sea.

Furthermore, the idea that "if it had been settled by Northern Europeans it would have been prosperous" is a very dangerous idea with little relation to historical realities: aside from the fact that European colonization elsewhere notably did not lead to similar results (are we supposed to ignore South Africa, which was settled by both Dutch and English protestants?), the realities within the Thirteen Colonies themselves demonstrate that there is no hard and fast rule when it comes to "settler stock". Not to mention the fact that, y'know, imported slave labor in the East and imported Chinese daylaborers played incredibly vital parts in just the USA's nation building, it becomes an increasingly unsustainable notion.

And seriously, the easiest answer to this question literally involves removing European colonization from the equation, and even then some of you seem to think the region was doomed to poverty! A blunted Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, restricting them to the Spanish Main and the Caribbean and Gulf Coasts makes an invasion of Perú itself a logistical nightmare bordering on the impossible, and that leaves a massive, organized, and prosperous native Empire in a position that even pre-Meiji Japan would have envied. And the butterflies would spread quite quickly from there, generally hampering European growth in a variety of ways: it would compound European bullion problems as they no longer get unlimited access to the plentiful gold and silver of the Americas; it would slow down the adoption of revolutionary crops in Europe like maize, tomato and especially potatoes, and would make the Pacific Ocean in general an incredibly distant and alien place for Europe compared to OTL.

This thread is illuminating in two very tragic ways: it highlights the continued popularity of certain deterministic interpretations of history that have frequently veered into (or been drawn from) racist theories about the region, and it really brings into focus the general lack of imagination when it comes to Latin America.

Seriously, some of the comments here make me want to write a Latin American TL with a POD using one of the earlier colonial rebellions of the 18th century (Juan Santos Atahualpa and Túpac Amaru II come to mind) from scratch. Too bad I've already got more than enough on my plate as it is.

This thread has only heightened my desire to write a "no conquest of the Inca" timeline with an early failure of Cortez as a POD. Well, that, and an Argentina where the 1930 coup fails.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Question, are we talking about a culture without European involvement - in which case, I am not qualified to comment.

If we are talking about a world were colonisation happens, it would have to be colonisation by the British or the Dutch (or somebody Northern). Basically anybody BUT Spain and Portugal.

The most successful settler societies (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) all started as colonies established by Protestant countries and marked by Adam Smith-style economies, cultures that put emphasis on individual achievement and did not as fully transpose European class-systems straight onto the 'New World' without some adaptation or try and empty it of all it's precious metals like Spain did. Latin America underperformed because the economy to start with was flawed based on massive estates rather and sustainable yeoman farming and craft manufacture, because they were often slave economies, because the style of work and financial activity that sustained the growth of these cultures was based on Usary which is unlikely to be supported by a Catholic population and because there was limited if not no class mobility and therefore not attractive places to immigrate to until much later - even then more usually by people leaving poverty in southern Europe.

A bit simple, but Latin and Central American revolutions in the 19th century were usually led by a landed elite and the population stayed less literate because there was not the same emphasis on at least being able to read that was deemed important in Protestant cultures where ones journey to God was personal and based on your interaction with the Bible and personal contemplation. An illiterate culture is not a good place to start for building a new nation or a modern economy. This also has a huge effect on the growth of a middle class and the development of efficient government at the local or provincial level either so these often physically giant countries ended up under-explored and developed, under-populated in the interior and poorly run, suffering from corruption and then whoever rose up in the vacuum after the inevitable popular rebellion or coup removed the landlords. Compare the difference between a small settlement in rural Argentina and the people of the Falkland Islands - totally different, because their governments and ways of life are markedly different. Another example is comparing the Northern states in the US with their industry and vibrant market economy that drove forward, paying for the development of the US interior and its development into a world power, and the Southern states within the English speaking world, where more traditional, European, class-based societies and slave-owning thrived, the economy stagnated longer-term.

You probably need to change the country who colonised it and probably make the native peoples there more powerful, or rinse and repeat.

Name one Dutch colony that's become a stable and prosperous state. And no, ones that Britain took over and did all the actual development work don't count.

 

[EMT]

This thread has only heightened my desire to write a "no conquest of the Inca" timeline with an early failure of Cortez as a POD. Well, that, and an Argentina where the 1930 coup fails.

Half this board thinks that any European power that so much as sneezes in the direction of the Inca will cause it to collapse like a house of cards as IOTL. The most they're willing to allow is that the Inca become some European puppet shortly after contact and the idea that the Inca could eventually bounce back or even expand at any point after first contact is breaking the rules. I wouldn't wish writing an Inca TL on this board on my worst enemies. People have asked me to take a shot at it and I always refuse; arguing with people unwilling to do their own research and drive-by post is enough for me.

 

[NM1]

Oh dear God! I hate it when people put words into my mouth or assume. I will just go with straight-up, unemotional logic as far as I can.

For reference, so this is VERY clear - I didn't suggest FOR A MOMENT that Empire was GOOD, it ISN'T. It's shit. I did not suggest IN ANY WAY say that colonisation was somehow good - that somebody deciding to tell me I was wrong and not being subtle about it. ALL I SAID was that colonisation worked more efficiently and left more functional states behind, in SOME places with a different model than in Latin America which happened to run by Spain and Portugal and listed a few reasons why.

Unless you are going to suddenly magic away Europeans imposing themselves abroad, you want a way to make Latin America stronger than they are now, you are going to have to find a different European power because I do not see how in God's green earth the native peoples are going to resist European powers with horses and gunpowder and cross-Atlantic shipping. So you want to answer the question, which is the least odious option available and I just gave you one. You'd have to COMPLETELY re-write early Latin American history to get a different outcome and as I said originally, I don't know enough to devise that scenario. I simply said if you wanted something that actually functioned, the British.

The reality is that in successor states which were based on the British or Dutch model (they laid the foundation and then the British took it over, maybe having a settlement far enough away from British colonies give them a shot at making a Dutch Brazil work?) and where there Northern Europeans provided the demographic majority (the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), are more stable and successful states and where the Spanish and Portuguese colonised and formed the basis of their settler states, Latin America, they are less so. There are good reasons for this which comes down to the way they were organised, funded, their attitude to the ownership of land, debt, education, and yes, religion. The British were more successful at building states where their descendants formed the majority of the population, regardless of morality than the Spanish, fact. Additionally, Japan and later South Korea, even India in its own unique way, emerged as powerhouses because they figured out how to integrate the best from abroad into their own system and in the Japanese case managed to avoid being occupied and ironically became a colonial aggressor itself. Few of the major democratic states were governed in their colonial histories by Spain and Portugal at least in part because the methods they used to do were so flawed. Angola should be amazingly powerful and the ordinary people far richer, it isn't, partly influenced by the way Portugal chose to leave and the multiplicity of problems that caused, fighting a colonial war instead of leaving peacefully.

The US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were organised to absorb immigration from the UK (including Ireland) and then sought additional manpower through a number of different ways, including slavery. The difference is the Northern states never permitted slavery to dominate their country as it did in Brazil for example and massive estates were much the minority whereas homestead farming became the norm here. That was the point of these places, to support landless younger sons, the ambitious and the land-hungry, to absorb the excess professional class pumped out every year from Scottish universities and given them something to do, to accept populations from areas like parts of Scotland or Ireland where the population was outstripping the ability of the land to support, to have a place to put religious refugees and as a prison in some cases. TOTALLY different from what was intended with Africa and Asia. These were intended to be societies from the start and had to function properly to start with. They did. AT NO POINT did I mention Africa or Asia because they ARE different. AT NO POINT did I say it was a good thing either, just that it happened and it worked better than Spain or Portugal's attempts and why.

This is TOTALLY different from the colonies in Africa or Asia, probably due to the climate and the fact they were treated like giant ranches which ended up being and dysfunctional as hell anyway, not unlike Latin America. South Africa and Zimbabwe are their own categories of hot mess. Because they were not the same. DOESN'T make Empire good, just means it worked more effectively in the states which were intended to have a lot of Europeans migrate to them i.e. not really Africa or Asia.

And yes, religion actually does make a difference in defining how the colonising society works. I am for reference, a liberal Catholic from a Protestant country, I don't think the religion I was raised in particularly encouraged a questioning mind, the kind of thinking you need to support at least one Scientific Revolution. I was just told "because it is" a lot and told to shut up and stop annoying the Monsignor. Protestant countries place more emphasis on literacy and are much more comfortable with debt with few exceptions (Venice being the obvious one). The British never went in for mercantilism because there was constitutional governance to a greater extent than in France or Spain and therefore far more competing companies and a more diverse and sophisticated money-market that in these states (Amsterdam, Stockholm, and London are where you look for the birth of modern banking and Edinburgh for modern insurance, all Protestant states heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and with more flexible systems that allowed experimentation more readily in Absolutist Europe). You just don't get Catholic social teaching as a thing which affects the development of politics (Konrad Adenauer-style Christian Democratic parties are basically not a thing in British-created settler states), the economy, and its attendant emphasis on scientific research and technological development or the way the government or social services operates. The politics are different, the legal system is different enough it's a thing and they were far more likely to early industralise and quickly. That has a massive effect.

But hey, I said it could be worse, which means I must be evil

 

[Jürgen]

Deeper than in Romania, which was under the thumb of a straight up nut job (Nicolae Ceausescu)?

1/3 of the Argentinian export goes to South America, 3/4 of the Romanian export goes to Europe. It pretty much show the major difference in their economies. South America have mainly a resource extraction production, while even the less well functioning developed countries have a economies based on manufacturing, even developed countries with a heavy focus on the financial sectors tend to have strong manufacturing sectors.

A major factor is that South America is big, rich in resources and thinly populated, they were able to make their money on resource extraction, but it leave them weak to the economic boom and burst, which have slowly trapped many of them in a debt trap. Another major problem is that the fact that most South American countries are natural much more connected to the sea make this kind of export to the global market a natural choice.

I think that if Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia had created some kind of custom union we could have seen a greater development of local economic interconnectability and a greater focus on manufacturing and specialization.

 

[EMT]

Oh dear! I didn't suggest FOR A MOMENT that Empire was GOOD, it ISN'T. It's shit. I did not suggest IN ANY WAY say that colonisation was somehow good - that somebody deciding to tell me I was wrong. I said it worked better in some places with a different model than in Latin America which happened to run by Spain and Portugal and listed a few reasons why.

Unless you are going to suddenly magic away Europeans imposing themselves abroad, you want a way to make Latin America stronger than they are now, you are going to have to find a different European power because I do not see how in God's green earth the native peoples are going to resist European powers with horses and gunpowder and cross-Atlantic shipping. So you want to answer the question, which is the least odious option available and I just gave you one. You'd have to COMPLETELY re-write early Latin American history to get a different outcome and as I said originally, I don't know enough to devise that scenario. I simply said if you wanted something that actually functioned, the British.

The reality is that in successor states which were based on the British or Dutch model (they laid the foundation and then the British took it over, maybe having a settlement far enough away from British colonies give them a shot at making a Dutch Brazil work?) and where there Northern Europeans provided the demographic majority (the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), are more stable and successful states and where the Spanish and Portuguese colonised and formed the basis of their settler states, Latin America, they are less so. There are good reasons for this which comes down to the way they were organised, funded, their attitude to the ownership of land, debt, education, and yes, religion. The British were more successful at building states where their descendants formed the majority of the population, regardless of morality than the Spanish, fact. Additionally, Japan and later South Korea, even India in its own unique way, emerged as powerhouses because they figured out how to integrate the best from abroad into their own system and in the Japanese case managed to avoid being occupied and ironically became a colonial aggressor itself. Few of the major democratic states were governed in their colonial histories by Spain and Portugal at least in part because the methods they used to do were so flawed. Angola should be amazingly powerful and the ordinary people far richer, it isn't, partly influenced by the way Portugal chose to leave and the multiplicity of problems that caused, fighting a colonial war instead of leaving peacefully.

The US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were organised to absorb immigration from the UK (including Ireland) and then sought additional manpower through a number of different ways, including slavery. The difference is the Northern states never permitted slavery to dominate their country as it did in Brazil for example and massive estates were much the minority whereas homestead farming became the norm here. That was the point of these places, to support landless younger sons, the ambitious and the land-hungry, to absorb the excess professional class pumped out every year from Scottish universities and given them something to do, to accept populations from areas like parts of Scotland or Ireland where the population was outstripping the ability of the land to support, to have a place to put religious refugees and as a prison in some cases. TOTALLY different from what was intended with Africa and Asia. These were intended to be societies from the start and had to function properly to start with.

This is TOTALLY different from the colonies in Africa or Asia, probably due to the climate and the fact they were treated like giant ranches which ended up being and dysfunctional as hell anyway, not unlike Latin America. South Africa and Zimbabwe are their own categories of hot mess. Because they were not the same. DOESN'T make Empire good, just means it worked more effectively in the states which were intended to have a lot of Europeans migrate to them i.e. not really Africa or Asia.

And yes, religion actually does make a difference in defining how the colonising society works. I am for reference, a liberal Catholic from a Protestant country, I don't think the religion I was raised in particularly encouraged a questioning mind, the kind of thinking you need to support at least one Scientific Revolution. I was just told "because it is" a lot and told to shut up and stop annoying the Monsignor. Protestant countries place more emphasis on literacy and are much more comfortable with debt with few exceptions (Venice being the obvious one). The British never went in for mercantilism because there was constitutional governance to a greater extent than in France or Spain and therefore far more competing companies and a more diverse and sophisticated money-market that in these states (Amsterdam, Stockholm, and London are where you look for the birth of modern banking and Edinburgh for modern insurance, all Protestant states heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and with more flexible systems that allowed experimentation more readily in Absolutist Europe). You just don't get Catholic social teaching as a thing which affects the development of politics (Konrad Adenauer-style Christian Democratic parties are basically not a thing in British-created settler states), the economy, and its attendant emphasis on scientific research and technological development or the way the government or social services operates. The politics are different, the legal system is different enough it's a thing and they were far more likely to early industralise and quickly. That has a massive effect.

But hey, I said it could be worse, which means I must be evil

This is a whole lot of woe is me trying to paint the same things you said earlier a prettier color. It's still ugly. From 'Europeans can't help themselves! They'll blink, and the natives will either be gone or working for them' determinism, some insane blinders being put on with respect to the Dutch colonial empire(what foundation lmao), trying to paint the state India was left in by the British as a success story, doubling down on the bizarre religious angle, etc. It goes on. And the religious angle gets even creepier when you confide that you're a Catholic in a Protestant country, and assert that your Catholic upbringing is demonstrative of a fatal flaw across all of Catholicism. And doubling down with the revisionism that Northern Europeans are able to turn anything they touch into gold. Forget the racism, this is creepy.

Just ship out and go home, these takes are terrible and the European brand of diet 'I'm not racist but' even worse about a region you clearly know very little about. It's fine to not know the answers to something, it's what the fuck to come out swinging with some Ubersmench shit and hiding it behind 'Northern social norms, governance and religion'

 

[NM1]

I thought that's what UNASUR was supposed to do Jurgen, a customs union? Presumably, that means Central America, the Caribbean, northern South America, and southern South America end up as little EECs which yeah, could work to rectify the damage. By every appreciable measure, they should have done better than they have and it is terribly sad that they haven't.

Okay, let's look at this from a whole different angle. The answer to this question depends on whether you are working within some kind of known framework, a scenario where a pathway where we know results in a high degree of stability and access to the finance to fund it, and the pitfalls are known, or if we are not. We know that it worked in North America, albeit imperfectly and we know how. I picked the easiest way in I could see, change the country in-charge and follow a pattern that's already laid out elsewhere in the hemisphere and you should still see something reasonably similar. Smallest change. Yes, FAR from perfect, yes regional variation within even the same country and a necessity for sourcing additional labour from outside grafted onto a semi-democratic system with a decent banking sector to fund it, but at least there's a reasonable probability of an outcome that isn't the same or worse than the one we have.

So, anybody else want to take a punt on how you do it? You don't use different colonising power and you don't magically assume that the Incas were better able to build something that functions effectively until now than they were? I'd be genuinely curious to know. If we aren't allowed to use the same source-book so to speak...

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

There's a lot to unpack in this post, but the bolded sentence stood out to me as particularly weird.

I rather like this post but I have two quick nitpicks.

Argentina was just as prosperous and well-run as any of Canada, Australia or New Zealand in the late 19th and early 20th century

I don't know enough about the histories of Australia and New Zealand to comment but with regard to Canada, Argentina was more prosperous, but not nearly as well run. The Canadian government went hardcore protectionist with the National Policy Tariff, and this had greatly gimped Canada's agricultural sector (in the 1890s there were actually more people emigrating from Canada than immigrating to it) but also lead to Canada developing a very strong industrial sector and many of the factories started in these years would remain operational into the late 70s/early 80s. In comparison Argentina chased short term gain by embracing agricultural export in the globalized world order that existed prior to WWI.

a position that even pre-Meiji Japan would have envied.

I think you may be low balling Edo period Japan by quite a bit there. I mean they had steel working, ocean going ships, extensive coastal fortifications, stockpiles of guns that were not too far behind those of Europe, a much larger population, a more urbanized population, extensive proto-industrialization, and written language.