Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
Had Britain (a superpower at the time) seriously wanted to take over South America, I'm pretty sure it could have.
Assuming it's 1 on 1, any country against Britain while it's a super power is going to lose. Just as (excluding nuclear weapons) any country going 1 on 1 against the USA is going to lose (because it is a super power right now).
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If South America happened to be directly adjacent to Britain, and South America was struck by some horrible plague that wiped out a lot of the population and simultaneously killed off all the tropical forests and a freak earthquake threw down all the mountain ranges, then maybe. The British don't have the technological lead over South America that they did in India and Africa, and they are facing fairly politically sophisticated peoples that will resist heavily and effectively. The British are operating over fantastically great distances and can't really bring all that much power to bear, and certainly not without seriously compromising their position elsewhere.
Do you REALLY think trying to conquer South America is a good idea right in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars?
As for all the silly commentary about how if only the British could have ruled South America they could have freed it from corruption - sigh. We might note that British rule had just a few years early caused their American colonies to revolt - successfully - against a vigorous attempt to keep them, and that corruption in the West is just as great, but in a different form. You might have noticed recently that the world banking system collapsed and required trillions in bailouts, while the people that caused it became billionaires. That's called corruption. But when a Latin American bureaucrat wants a "tip" it's obviously because they're inferior and tainted by brownness or something.