In For Want of a Nail, the victory of the British Army under General Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777 leads to the eventual failure of the American Revolution and the migration of many former rebels to New Spain. At length, the British colonies become the Confederation of North America while the Patriot colony grows into the United States of Mexico. In Sobel’s work, the CNA becomes a sort of super-Canada that maintains continuous democratic government, avoids getting involved in a major war since the 1850s, and has had two black heads of government by the 1960s. Meanwhile the USM combines the less savoury elements of the OTL USA with Latin America to create a militaristic state prone to frequent periods of authoritarianism and that fails to abolish slavery until well into the 20th Century. Indeed, by 1970 Mexico is under the rule of a military regime whose leader is reminiscent of both Juan Peron and (though Soble could not have predicted this) Vladimir Putin. This seems to be a bit of an (albeit minor) alternate history trope, where whenever OTL United States is divided into two competitors, the northern one tends to be scrupulously liberal and "enlightened" while the southern, more-Latin influenced state is much more authoritarian with whiffs of caudilloism and banana republicanism (a lot of Confederate independence TLs but also Decades of Darkness). But could things have been otherwise?
After all, it is the United States of Mexico that creates a multiracial state in the 1820s under Andrew Jackson forcing the small, dominant Anglo minority to accept a political role for the vast Hispanophone majority. Meanwhile, CNA has its bouts of xenophobia and state-sponsored violence most infamously in Henry Gilpin’s suppression of the labour movement in the Northern Confederation and the later Starkist terror. In fact, if Sobel’s numbers are to be trusted, Gilpin is far by the bloodiest leader of either the CNA or the USM with some 42,000 deaths attributable to him while he is equally as warlike in foreign policy as President Pedro Hermion.
This suggests to me that some moderate divergences in the middle of the 19th Century in the world of For Want of a Nail could produce a timeline where the situations of the CNA and USM are flipped by the late 20th Century. To start with, Sobel portrays the leaders of CNA in the period from the end of the Rocky Mountain War to John McDowell’s election as far more corrupt than their Mexican counterparts who generally seem clean and even reformist (witness Arthur Conroy but also the late Kinkaid administration).
Let’s say labour agitation continues in the CNA into the 19th Century and the increasingly corrupt Liberal governments responds in appropriately brutal Gilpinist fashion while also regularly rigging elections and maintaining strict property qualifications for voting. In the Southern Confederation, the nascent “People’s Coalition” movement is crushed when establishment politicians use racialist rhetoric to divide the white and black farmers while engaging in a similar sort of White Terror (in both senses of the word!) as in the cities of the north. The reactionary factions of the Liberal Party prevail thanks to appealing to the middle classes and small farmers with the prospect of a worker and black uprising, preventing the rise of McDowell much less Ezra Gallivan and thus retarding all but the most modest of reforms. In terms of foreign policy, the continued domination of pro-business Liberals mean that closer ties to the British Empire are retained with the eventual result that the CNA gets an “administrative” role in many British colonies in the Americas and the Pacific. In the long run, the CNA becomes a semi-authoritarian state with one-party domination and an imperialistic foreign policy which nonetheless by its sheer size and wealth comes to become dominant in the British Empire and revelling in its opportunity to achieve imperial glory.
Meanwhile, happier circumstances prevail in Mexico. Here, we can identify a more direct divergence during the 1875 election when Carlos Concepcion does not secede from the Liberty Party to create his own radical, Mexicano dominated Worker’s Coalition that eventually becomes a revolutionary guerrilla movement. Instead he fully backs the liberal reformist Thomas Rogers who goes to defeat Kinkaid and win the election. Rogers proves an enormously successful President who abolishes slavery, implements land reform that breaks up the great latifundia and turns peons into small farmers, and even implements implements basic anti trust legislation. While Rogers ends up facing terrorism from both the right and the left (including some rebellions and coup attempts), his assassination in 1881 as he campaigns for reelection turns him into a martyr President just like Hermion a generation before. The result is wholesale political backlash and even the Kramer Associates falling into suspicion (though they truly had nothing to do with the assassination). In this Mexico, the assassination of Rogers serves to bolster pro-democratic forces thus preventing the rise of Benito Hermion to power while it resolves major social problems a generation or so earlier than it does in FWOAN. In the long run, Mexico becomes a highly progressive country with full universal manhood suffrage and strong civil liberties despite often rowdy and even violent domestic politics. We also see a divergence in immigration policy between the CNA and USM as the former (as happens in the actual FWOAN TL) turns nativist and strongly restricts immigration in the late 19th Century while the latter encourages all sorts of immigrants including large numbers of Germans, Italians, Russian Jews, Chinese, and even some disaffected CNA radicals. Of course, this policy isn’t entirely for liberal reasons since like OTL Argentina, many in the USM government hope to “whiten” the country and reduce the overwhelming demographic dominance of the mestizo majority.
Haven’t fully fleshed out the ideas beyond this but some other suggestions:
-Both the USM and CNA have a foothold on the Pacific in this TTL (the Rocky Mountain War is fought over both TTL’s Oregon Territory as well as territories to the west). This means that both powers compete in the Pacific as well as the Western Hemisphere.
-Starting in the late 19th Century, Great Britain and the CNA sees a pan-Anglo Saxon movement that not only calls for the unity and continued expansion of the Empire but believes in the eventual destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race to rule the entire globe, borrowing elements from Social Darwinist as well as Moral Imperative thought. A particularly romantic movement known as the Knights of the Round Table emerges that calls for the restoration of real to the King-Emperor to bring about the symbolic return of King Arthur (obvious inspiration from OTL’s Japanese Imperial Way faction)
-Not sure how Europe or the rest of the world should develop. Seems to be that having the equivalent of the French Revolution happen only in 1880 is too late. Perhaps have TTL’s version of Napoleon/Fanchon stage an invasion of Britain (supported by Irish and republican risings) that is eventually beaten back but still necessitates the evacuation of the court to CNA thus symbolizing the transfer of the seat of power?
Thoughts? Suggestions? (Would especially love it if For All Nails writers comment, since I hope to read through the timeline for some suggestions)
After all, it is the United States of Mexico that creates a multiracial state in the 1820s under Andrew Jackson forcing the small, dominant Anglo minority to accept a political role for the vast Hispanophone majority. Meanwhile, CNA has its bouts of xenophobia and state-sponsored violence most infamously in Henry Gilpin’s suppression of the labour movement in the Northern Confederation and the later Starkist terror. In fact, if Sobel’s numbers are to be trusted, Gilpin is far by the bloodiest leader of either the CNA or the USM with some 42,000 deaths attributable to him while he is equally as warlike in foreign policy as President Pedro Hermion.
This suggests to me that some moderate divergences in the middle of the 19th Century in the world of For Want of a Nail could produce a timeline where the situations of the CNA and USM are flipped by the late 20th Century. To start with, Sobel portrays the leaders of CNA in the period from the end of the Rocky Mountain War to John McDowell’s election as far more corrupt than their Mexican counterparts who generally seem clean and even reformist (witness Arthur Conroy but also the late Kinkaid administration).
Let’s say labour agitation continues in the CNA into the 19th Century and the increasingly corrupt Liberal governments responds in appropriately brutal Gilpinist fashion while also regularly rigging elections and maintaining strict property qualifications for voting. In the Southern Confederation, the nascent “People’s Coalition” movement is crushed when establishment politicians use racialist rhetoric to divide the white and black farmers while engaging in a similar sort of White Terror (in both senses of the word!) as in the cities of the north. The reactionary factions of the Liberal Party prevail thanks to appealing to the middle classes and small farmers with the prospect of a worker and black uprising, preventing the rise of McDowell much less Ezra Gallivan and thus retarding all but the most modest of reforms. In terms of foreign policy, the continued domination of pro-business Liberals mean that closer ties to the British Empire are retained with the eventual result that the CNA gets an “administrative” role in many British colonies in the Americas and the Pacific. In the long run, the CNA becomes a semi-authoritarian state with one-party domination and an imperialistic foreign policy which nonetheless by its sheer size and wealth comes to become dominant in the British Empire and revelling in its opportunity to achieve imperial glory.
Meanwhile, happier circumstances prevail in Mexico. Here, we can identify a more direct divergence during the 1875 election when Carlos Concepcion does not secede from the Liberty Party to create his own radical, Mexicano dominated Worker’s Coalition that eventually becomes a revolutionary guerrilla movement. Instead he fully backs the liberal reformist Thomas Rogers who goes to defeat Kinkaid and win the election. Rogers proves an enormously successful President who abolishes slavery, implements land reform that breaks up the great latifundia and turns peons into small farmers, and even implements implements basic anti trust legislation. While Rogers ends up facing terrorism from both the right and the left (including some rebellions and coup attempts), his assassination in 1881 as he campaigns for reelection turns him into a martyr President just like Hermion a generation before. The result is wholesale political backlash and even the Kramer Associates falling into suspicion (though they truly had nothing to do with the assassination). In this Mexico, the assassination of Rogers serves to bolster pro-democratic forces thus preventing the rise of Benito Hermion to power while it resolves major social problems a generation or so earlier than it does in FWOAN. In the long run, Mexico becomes a highly progressive country with full universal manhood suffrage and strong civil liberties despite often rowdy and even violent domestic politics. We also see a divergence in immigration policy between the CNA and USM as the former (as happens in the actual FWOAN TL) turns nativist and strongly restricts immigration in the late 19th Century while the latter encourages all sorts of immigrants including large numbers of Germans, Italians, Russian Jews, Chinese, and even some disaffected CNA radicals. Of course, this policy isn’t entirely for liberal reasons since like OTL Argentina, many in the USM government hope to “whiten” the country and reduce the overwhelming demographic dominance of the mestizo majority.
Haven’t fully fleshed out the ideas beyond this but some other suggestions:
-Both the USM and CNA have a foothold on the Pacific in this TTL (the Rocky Mountain War is fought over both TTL’s Oregon Territory as well as territories to the west). This means that both powers compete in the Pacific as well as the Western Hemisphere.
-Starting in the late 19th Century, Great Britain and the CNA sees a pan-Anglo Saxon movement that not only calls for the unity and continued expansion of the Empire but believes in the eventual destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race to rule the entire globe, borrowing elements from Social Darwinist as well as Moral Imperative thought. A particularly romantic movement known as the Knights of the Round Table emerges that calls for the restoration of real to the King-Emperor to bring about the symbolic return of King Arthur (obvious inspiration from OTL’s Japanese Imperial Way faction)
-Not sure how Europe or the rest of the world should develop. Seems to be that having the equivalent of the French Revolution happen only in 1880 is too late. Perhaps have TTL’s version of Napoleon/Fanchon stage an invasion of Britain (supported by Irish and republican risings) that is eventually beaten back but still necessitates the evacuation of the court to CNA thus symbolizing the transfer of the seat of power?
Thoughts? Suggestions? (Would especially love it if For All Nails writers comment, since I hope to read through the timeline for some suggestions)
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