Challenge: British South America

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.
 
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.

While I don't think Britain could've ruled over most of the continent, they DID attack South America during the Napoleonic Wars and met with a fair amount of success. If the British force sent to take the Viceroyalty of La Plata was larger and had a touch more luck, the souther half of South America could've easily been British.
 
While I don't think Britain could've ruled over most of the continent, they DID attack South America during the Napoleonic Wars and met with a fair amount of success. If the British force sent to take the Viceroyalty of La Plata was larger and had a touch more luck, the souther half of South America could've easily been British.

I'm sorry, but that's just delusional. The British were defeated, very heavily, by local militias. How do you propose the British supply a large army, especially in the face of determined resistance? The British failed to hold the American colonies despite a large loyalist population and bases all over the place. They're essentially operating from thousands of miles away here.

The places they seized were all coastal and with flat and easy terrain. How are they going to extend their power inland, or into the mountains of Chile?

If the British try to remain, they're going to have to devote enormous resources and get bogged down in a very long-term war. After the Napoleonic Wars, Spain, with far greater local resources, was unable to hold onto anything.
 
I think an early POD might be better. The major attempt I could find by the British to colonize South America was the attempts to settle the area around Guiana in the 17th century, both of which failed. What if one of them had succeeded? If we can engineer a series of events, we might be able to make the British much larger holders in the North of South America. Maybe if we had the British gain the Dutch claim and then aggressively pursue a policy of expansion, we could end with a medium-sized swath of Northern South America British. I'm no expert on South American history, but I do have a niggling feeling this might be rather implausible. I just don't think that a British Argentina is particularly likely, and I thought an alternate avenue might be useful.
 
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.

I never said they could do during another war, or that they would ever even think of doing it.
 

yofie

Banned
(your 1807 POD is a bit late, IMO, since it's already established by then that the British come as conquerors, not as Liberators, so the population is biased against them)

Even so, the Brits could have been able to conquer Buenos Aires in 1807. Whitelocke could have decided to send a more able regiment instead of the one that was actually sent.

Look at it this way - the Brits had a hard time conquering Quebec City in 1759 because of strong French resistance. The way I read it, resistance from Liniers' forces in Buenos Aires in 1807 was not really stronger than from Montcalm's forces in Quebec City half a century earlier.
 
The British had no need to colonize Latin America any more than they did or tried to do in their endeavors. They benefited from trade with these countries and would have preferred enjoying the benefits without administrating the place.
 

Meerkat92

Banned
Here's an idea: instead of heading southwest into the Caribbean, Columbus instead keeps heading due west from the Iberian Penninsula, landing on the east coast of North America (I'm not exactly sure where that would put him though, somewhere between Cape Cod and Chesapeake Bay maybe?). Thus, Spain builds its empire in North America, and to counteract that, England eventually starts placing colonies in South America around the same time they did in North America OTL.
 

Eurofed

Banned
In my signature TL, Britain is motivated to expand in the Rio de la Plata region during the Napoleonic Wars, and eventually sets British South America up, because Canada sided with the Patriots during the ARW, and North America was lost to the British Empire.
 
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