AHC: Swap the economic/political fates of Australia and Argentina

[yofie]

Wow, you've convinced me of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon master race. I will now kill myself for being a worthless darkie savage for half my DNA comes from the tropics.

I really wasn't meaning to be racist at all - I love people of all different colours. I was just being objective about what has actually transpired - that it's been Europeans who have been the biggest movers and shakers of the world system in the last few hundred years, and non-Europeans have been unfortunately victimized on the whole and have been undeservedly labelled as savages at worst. If you guys still aren't convinced about the superior quality of the British legal system and British political institutions in playing a role in a country's economic development, as compared to those of France, Spain, etc., take a look here.

 

[Æsir]

What?

Being English does not magically makes you stable and rich.

And with a POD where Spain settle Australia in an analogue of Argentina(circa late 1500s-1600s), the British Empire as we know it might not come around.

Haven't you read enough "developed Argentina" threads yet to understand? The Anglo-Saxon, Germanic race has the innate qualities required to run a state whereas Latins have never and will never be able to develop competent administrations. And of course, as bad as the French are, that doesn't even compare to the Spanish. Africa begins at the Pyrenees, after all.

 

[juanml82]

Yeah, to think that if the locals hadn't beaten the crap out of the British in 1806-07 Argentina could be sharing the glorious fate of former British colonies such as Kenya, Pakistan or Myanmar...

 

[Æsir]

Yeah, to think that if the locals hadn't beaten the crap out of the British in 1806-07 Argentina could be sharing the glorious fate of former British colonies such as Kenya, Pakistan or Myanmar...

To be fair, Burma and Kenya have potentially bright futures ahead of them. It's just that this comes after decades of systematic problems, and decades of British colonial oppression and fuckuppery before that.

But Pakistan is still screwed.

 

[CalBear]

Sure it does, if and only if we're talking about lands that are in the temperate zone (amenable to those from the British Isles) and that don't have heavy indigenous populations to begin with. In such a setting, like in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and an ATL British Argentina, it would be easy for British settlers to move there and for British institutions and laws (which are generally superior to their Continental European counterparts) to take full effect. (A partial exception might be the plantation-based economy of the US South until relatively recently.) Other areas that the British colonized in, like India and much of Africa, are in the tropics and already have had large (and relatively advanced) indigenous populations, and British colonization there takes a very different form which is not amenable to early industrialization. The Anglophone Caribbean is an interesting case, because while it's a) not as developed as North America, W. Europe, Australia/NZ, etc., b) there were plantation economies, c) most of the people there are descended from African slaves, d) in the tropics, the folks there are much more devoted to the British ideal than the rank-and-file in India or ex-British Africa and are generally much better educated.

How did you manage to hide this level of hyper-nationalism and racial elitism for so long?

In any case, you have allowed it to escape and foul the Board.

Banned.

We Divorce you.

To Coventry with you.

 

[Nassirisimo]

I really wasn't meaning to be racist at all - I love people of all different colours. I was just being objective about what has actually transpired - that it's been Europeans who have been the biggest movers and shakers of the world system in the last few hundred years, and non-Europeans have been unfortunately victimized on the whole and have been undeservedly labelled as savages at worst. If you guys still aren't convinced about the superior quality of the British legal system and British political institutions in playing a role in a country's economic development, as compared to those of France, Spain, etc., take a look here.

It its a bit too late, seeing as how you live in Coventry and all now, but I've noticed a few errors in that source of yours. Seriously people. Mixing up Vilayet and Millet should be a crime punishable by harsh Muslamic stoning. It is the only law that our crony societies know.

 

[Coyote Knight]

Saving Argentina's economy is probably not too difficult; avoiding all those military coups and perhaps some diversification would probably with a bit of luck leave them as wealthy as any Western country per capita. Giving Argentina's fate to Australia though seems a bit more difficult, especially in a world which allows for states to reach OTL Western levels of wealth as the question implies. Is Australia susceptible to military coups? Seems rather unlikely, though in the right circumstances probably possible. Maybe a more destructive pacific war? Australia just seems too stable and tied to the major world economies to knock over easily.

Apparently Australia was susceptible to coups, but a better armed and more violent Aborigine population as well as a historically unheard of level of drought might be able to help push Australia over the edge so to speak.

 

[TxCoatl1970]

Can I ask a WI?

Would Australia's economic development have been more canted to industrialization if WW2 hadn't given them an incentive to develop as much as they could locally due to the OTL Japanese threat?

Also, WI Western Australia seceded in the 1930's?
Couldn't that have buggered Australian economic development for couple of decades, regardless of coup attempts?

Argentina seemed to go from economically promising to silly pretty much from 1920 on, mainly b/c they had a rather prosperous agribiz sector
that was fat, dumb, and happy able to buy what they wanted from abroad. They didn't need industry locally building stuff.

The last thing the farming and ranching interests wanted was for wages in the cities to be competitive, luring gauchos off the pampas and allowing for a lot of progressive ideas to have more of a constituency.

Butterfly that and Argentina contnues being prosperous I'd say on the same track or better than Brazil. YMMDV