CH: South America Democratic Before North

Basically, a country in South America becomes democratic and all BEFORE the United States does. Keep in mind this can include the US revolution being rather delayed.
 
At least as much as the US was in OTL when it was first founded(Which to be fair is... pretty bad actually because of voting restrictions, among other things.)
 
At least as much as the US was in OTL when it was first founded(Which to be fair is... pretty bad actually because of voting restrictions, among other things.)

Other things meaning slavery.

EDIT: Not an expert in the subject, but perhaps the Spanish–Portuguese/Anglo-Spanish Wars during the Seven Year's War turns into something much larger, or at least more lasting results. Let's say that the Spanish stick to their original plan and invade Portugal via Almeida and Alentejo, focusing towards Lisbon, instead of attacking the north with a focus on Porto. This would require someone other than the Marquis of Sarriá to be in charge of the invasion, and for bonus points let's make it someone willing, and able, to stand up to Queen-Dowager Elisabeth Farnese. So let's say Charles III is able to outmaneuver his opponents and place the Count of Aranda in charge from the get-go. The Spanish make a deep drive into Portugal, and though they can't take Lisbon due to British reinforcement, they do lay siege to the city. At the same time the the Cevallos Expeditions are more successful than OTL, with the Spanish taking not only all of Uruguay but also essentially all of Rio Grande do Sul, basically bringing all of the Río de la Plata under Spanish control earlier. However Spain loses big elsewhere due to her focus on hurting the Portuguese (in a misguided attempt to hurt the British by attacking their primary trading partner on the continent), with not only Havana and Manilla lost to the British but also Río San Juan de Nicaragua. The war drags on for another year or so (making it the Eight Year's War). The three lost territories are far more important to Madrid than either of her gains in South America, and in the ensuing *Treaty of Paris Spain regains Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Philliphines, while all of *Uruguay & Rio Grande do Sul, perhaps even all of Argentina, falls to the British. At the time it seems like a good deal for everyone; Spain gets her colonies back but has shown she's still a great power, while the British have considerably expanded their colonial empire, the Portuguese are revealed to still have a kingdom, and the French wanted the whole war to end last year so their just damn glad its over.

However British colonial policy grinds on the *Argentinians, especially so since the territories are administered by the British East India Company. A series of progressively repressive tax acts, combined with a flood of settlers to the area, mostly Spaniards, but also some French, and Irish, in addition to a sense of 'betrayal' at being 'thrown away' by the Spanish King eventually leads to increasing political rhetoric, violence, and finally outright revolution in the late 1770s, finally ending in the mid-1780s with the independence of the *Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata.

For bonus points, so that just if we were to ignore butterflies and assume that this is happening concurrently with the alt-American Revolutionary War, the lower population density in Argentina means that over the course of the war the Argentinians are forced to arm their slaves to fight the British, promising them freedom, including full citizenship and the right to vote, after the war - making the alt-Argentina even more democratic than the alt-US.
 
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This is a very difficult challenge since, if we don't count slavery, the uS was rather democratic since its independence, which took place 35 years before the start of Latin American revolutions. Morover, in some American states democratic practices precedeed independence: these wasn't the case incLatin America, were democratic practice had to be established after independence out of nowhere, with all the problems this caused.

Wow... okay, I need to raise my standards.:p

Bonus points if it's MORE democratic than the US.

If we count slavery, though, it's easier. Argentina freed in 1813 all sons of slaves born after the 1st January 1813. In 1821, universal sufrage was established in the province of Buenos Aires, and two parties were formed (the free Blacks supporting the federal party). Voters elected legislators, who in turn would elect the governor. The system was far from perfect, since voting wasn't secret, so voters could be subjected to pressure in order to vote for candidate x: that was why there were often violent clashes between groups of voters from both parties, and strongmen working on behalf of one party or the other tried to take control of parrishes and force voters to vote in one direction or the other.

It was still better than none. Of course, then came the War against brazil (1825-28), the civil war and Rosas dictatorship (1829-), and ll went to hell.

If, due to the civil war, Buenos aires had took a separate way in the 20ies as Uruguay did, a democratic country without slavery and a bypartisan party system might have been established in the 1830ies, encompasing the Southernmost part of the continent. This is still far from a stable democratic South America, but it's something.
 
SWEET! Wonder how this state would evolve to the present?

Hard to say without looking at some two hundred years of butterflies.

The big issues in the immediate period are going to be a) Argentine support for other Latin American independence movements, b) the French Revolution making Spain focus on Europe, and c) the sociopolitical effects of having three versions of revolutionary nationalist republicanism coming into existence at the same time, in the US, Argentina, and France.*

Towards A), because of the multicultural/multi-ethnic makeup of this Argentina, you're likely going to see not only support for independence, or at least revolutionary, movements in the Spanish New World colonies, but also in Brazil, and possibly even across the Atlantic in Kongo-Angola; which would certainly be highly interesting, in the Chinese sense. Chile at least is going to be lost, and Upper Peru will likely either join the United Provinces, assuming it remains a stable polity, or become an allied sister republic. What IOTL constituents Paraguay and the South and Southeast regions of Brazil are likely also going to see revolutionary activity, which in the latter's case due to size and population concentrations might either split Brazil between a royalist north and republican south, or take the whole region away into independence. The rest of South America outside of the La Plata basin will be out of the revolutionary/republican Argentinians reach, at least for now. Coastal regions of Guinea and the Caribbean might see activity though, especially if the Argentinians, who remember have already freed and given citizenship to their blacks, support the Haitians - that alone could have serious repercussions, especially if the Haitians are more successful, and more moderate.

Towards B), even without an ATL Napoleon Spain could still be screwed. iirc the French did invade Spain repeatedly during the revolutionary period, and again, iirc, there were calls from many corners in Paris for France to either annex Catalonia or make it one of France's satelite republics. One of this is going to happen ITTL with Spain already looking weaker after Argentina goes republican and starts to encourage revolutionary activity in the other American colonies. If so than Spain won't be able to provide any troops or material to the Hapsburg holdings in Italy, and that means that even with British support all of Naples as opposed to just everything north of Calabria falls to revolutionary armies. That's going to have some very large implications for Italian nationalism and the outcome of the war. This also means that only Sardinia and Sicily remain outside of revolutionary republican control, and even then both of them are going to be the sight of some very intense battles between French & Italian revolutionaries both on the islands and trying to cross over from the mainland and the British & Spanish.

Finally, in regards to C), both the US and France experimented with several different governmental forms, the French more so than the US, who largely retained the idea of a parliamentary republic. IOTL the Argentinians first used a Junta, which then meant a federation of municipal administrators, generally elected by the local populace, with a Supreme Junta united in the capitol. These Juntas served as a collective executive, legislative, and judiciary all in one body, and employed a directorial system with several people jointly serving. If the retain this system instead of quickly changing to first a triumvirate, and then finally a presidential republic as in IOTL, this will have massive consequences. Obviously such a system is completely alien to note only the absolutism of the Spanish monarchy or the parliamentarian constitutionalism of the British, but also stands quite at odds with American style presidential republics, or the French directory, which still had a separation of powers, let alone the French consulate (which might never exist ITTL). Its open to debate whether or not such a, quote-unquote, "totalitarian," federalist, governmental structure could prove to be efficient or stable, or whether or not it would survive long, but its mere existence as a form of government as opposed to an organizational tool of a revolutionary movement would have quite an impact on republican political thought, which is going to have a serious impact on how the rest of the Atlantic and Latin American Revolutions play out.

EDIT: In regards to C), this might make the US Anglophobic if the (Democratic-)Republicans have another, major, republican state to point to besides France to counter the Federalists calls for close ties to the empire. That would have huge consequences for Britain, and for North America in general.

* Actually, eight even IOTL if you count the Haitians, Swiss, Dutch, Irish, Corsicans, and Poles - but most people usually don't, for various reasons.
 
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