Alternate Location of the USA

I've always wondered if a nation similar to the modern United States could arise anywhere other than North America. Here are some defining characteristics of the United States that I am looking for:

- Founded by colonists at the expense of the local population
- History of racism and/or slavery
- Started out as a minor nation, but became a superpower by 20th century
- Democratic, to some extent
- Large population and/or land area

The POD can be as far back as you like, but preferably after 1450. I'm not asking you to write a timeline for me - I just wanted to have a discussion about whether a nation like the US could develop anywhere else in the world. Since it has to start out as a colony, it would probably have to be outside of Europe. It should not be located in the same place as the real US, but anywhere else in the world is fine. Even Canada and Mexico are ok. Likely candidates, I think, would be India, Southeast Asia, West Africa, South Africa, and South America. There are endless possibilities. The colonizer doesn't even have to be European. It could be a powerful Chinese or Japanese empire.

Have fun. I'm looking forward to reading your responses.
 
Question: Can the real United States exist alongside this alt America? If so, then the Brazilian Empire is a good bet. Have it avoid the coup that established the Republic and you may have a challenger to America not only in the Western Hemisphere, but also on the global stage.
 
I've always wondered if a nation similar to the modern United States could arise anywhere other than North America. Here are some defining characteristics of the United States that I am looking for:

- Founded by colonists at the expense of the local population
- History of racism and/or slavery
- Started out as a minor nation, but became a superpower by 20th century
- Democratic, to some extent
- Large population and/or land area

The POD can be as far back as you like, but preferably after 1450. I'm not asking you to write a timeline for me - I just wanted to have a discussion about whether a nation like the US could develop anywhere else in the world. Since it has to start out as a colony, it would probably have to be outside of Europe. It should not be located in the same place as the real US, but anywhere else in the world is fine. Even Canada and Mexico are ok. Likely candidates, I think, would be India, Southeast Asia, West Africa, South Africa, and South America. There are endless possibilities. The colonizer doesn't even have to be European. It could be a powerful Chinese or Japanese empire.

Have fun. I'm looking forward to reading your responses.

South America and Africa are the two big places where I could see this happening. In Thande's TL Look to the West, Patagonia became the location of the alt-USA, called the United Provinces of South America.

In Africa, I could see it happening if Great Britain paid more attention to Africa, like perhaps Francis Drake doesn't die and instead sets up a colony in South Africa similar to the colonies on the Eastern Seaboard of North America. Chances are such an USA would not look like a Draka, but more like OTL or Thande's UPSA.

The USA-in-Mexico has also been done too, in Direwolf22's TL Disaster at Leuthen. Glen's Dominion of Southern America achieved a USA in Canada.
 
Question: Can the real United States exist alongside this alt America? If so, then the Brazilian Empire is a good bet. Have it avoid the coup that established the Republic and you may have a challenger to America not only in the Western Hemisphere, but also on the global stage.

Sure, the real United States can exist, but the alternate one has to be at least as powerful, ideally more powerful. I like the idea of a strong Brazilian Empire. It seems to fit the criteria I established.
 
Question: Can the real United States exist alongside this alt America? If so, then the Brazilian Empire is a good bet. Have it avoid the coup that established the Republic and you may have a challenger to America not only in the Western Hemisphere, but also on the global stage.

Which gets rid of the democratic part of the Brazilian Empire, which doesn't seem to be going into a constitutional monarchy a la Great Britain or Prussia under the rule of Peter II.
 
Another important issue is that it should be the most powerful nation in the continent enough for don't care about a war in his soil and be a sea power.
 
What about a big country in Northeast China, East Siberia and Alaska?

EDIT: Can be the end of the Portuguese necklace by 16th century? Japan will be his Cuba and Nagasaki, his Guantánamo :D

The POD can be Treaty of Tordesillas, you can make no Portuguese colonies in America and no Spanish colonies in Africa and Eurasia.
 
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What about a big country in Northeast China, East Siberia and Alaska?

EDIT: Can be the end of the Portuguese necklace by 16th century? Japan will be his Cuba and Nagasaki, his Guantánamo :D

The POD can be Treaty of Tordesillas, you can make no Portuguese colonies in America and no Spanish colonies in Africa and Eurasia.

I think there's a problem with European immigration. IOTL the USA received an astonishing number of immigrants; it was full of unsettled, temperate land easy to live on (the Native American population was small enough and vulnerable enough to disease that they could basically be ignored by European settlers :(). China is already full of people, so this scenario's USA-analogue would need ethnic cleansing on an absolutely massive scale to settle there, while Siberia and Alaska are too cold to attract as many immigrants, both before and after independence, as OTL's USA did.

Which gets rid of the democratic part of the Brazilian Empire, which doesn't seem to be going into a constitutional monarchy a la Great Britain or Prussia under the rule of Peter II.

Not really. The Empire of Brazil wasn't a figurehead-monarchy like the United Kingdom, where the monarch's power is basically zero, but there was a democratically elected assembly, and it did have the crucial power that England's Parliament used to become the dominant political body of the nation: control of the money supply to the government. In contrast, the Republic of Brazil (at least for the first few years of its existence) was a flat-out military dictatorship established by the upper classes and the military against the will of the majority of the Brazilian population.

I don't think that a surviving Empire of Brazil will have the potential to rival the USA within a few decades (the Brazilian population in 1890 was less than a quarter of the USA's) but if you avoid the republican coup d'état, give Imperial Brazil time and it should be a reasonably powerful, stable, democratic state significantly better off than OTL's Brazil.
 
Which gets rid of the democratic part of the Brazilian Empire, which doesn't seem to be going into a constitutional monarchy a la Great Britain or Prussia under the rule of Peter II.
The emperor did have some restrictions on his power, and I as thinking that they slowly liberalize by the early 20th century to become a full democracy. The UK wasn't exactly the freest country in the world at the time either.
 
The emperor did have some restrictions on his power, and I as thinking that they slowly liberalize by the early 20th century to become a full democracy. The UK wasn't exactly the freest country in the world at the time either.

To be fair to Will Kürlich Kerl, the UK at the time had over 50% of the (male) population voting for the House of Commons, which was the most important body in deciding the direction of the country. The Empire of Brazil was considerably more autocratic than that, though far from an absolute monarchy; it's an assumption of mine, not necessarily a true one (who knows?), that it would have evolved into a full constitutional monarchy within a few decades.
 
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