Could Argentina Grow To Rival The USA?

[AltoRegnant]

OTL, to say America has been the most powerful nation in the new world goes without saying, and giving DC a rival is a popular discussion on this thread. For me the idea is usually Mexico or Brazil, but i wonder, could Argentina become a latin american rival to the US?

Here are the factors i know could be in their favor:

• No Amazon. while the rainforest has given Brazil tons of lumber, it also limits how much of their land they can really use viably
• Argentina has a long history of being super wealthy as an agricultural economy, right up to ww2.
• Argentina has a strong mineral export industry, but if they kept it more local than they could use it as an industrial base
• Similarly, they could use the gold from the Tierra Del Fuego to attract investors to build up.

Perhaps if that gold mine had been discovered earlier in the 19th century, maybe the late 18th, we could see Buenos Aires rivaling DC?

 

[Gabingston]

Probably not, the USA is closer to Europe and already had a huge head start in terms of population and industry.

 

[AltoRegnant]

Probably not, the USA is closer to Europe and already had a huge head start in terms of population and industry.

I see your point about europe and population, but if we go back far enough for our early mineral discoveries, doesn't industry become a moot point, and if Argentina industrializes earlier than OTL, it would draw immigrants from the latin world, no?

 

[Comte de Dordogne]

Balkanize the United States with a failure of the articles of the constitution to begin with. Then make Brazil and Mexico fail to become regional powers (civil war, corruption, balkanization). Improve relations with Europe as well, which could invest in Argentina (you could set up a monarchy with a Bourbon from Spain). I'll give you some leads made in what you want.

 

[Gabingston]

I see your point about europe and population, but if we go back far enough for our early mineral discoveries, doesn't industry become a moot point, and if Argentina industrializes earlier than OTL, it would draw immigrants from the latin world, no?

Tierra Del Fuego is very remote, separated from the Argentine heartland by over a thousand miles of desert wasteland. Meanwhile, some of America's largest Iron and Coal deposits are located close to the historic industrial heart of the country.

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

As of 2018:

Argentina 44.3 million population 2,780,400 km squared land area

United States 327.2 million population 9,883,520 km squared land area

By point of comparison, South Africa has a population of 58.8 million and a land area of 1,221,037 km squared. That is the closest equivalent to Argentina in terms of size I could find on short notice.

If you keep the Viceroyalty of La Plata together, adding Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay to Argentina, that adds about another 21 million people and 1.6 million squared kilometers to the total. That is still one fifth of the population of the USA and about 40% of the area.

The United States is a continental sized empire. You can't realistically accomplish this by wanking Argentina, you have to seriously nerf the United States.

 

[AltoRegnant]

As of 2018:

Argentina 44.3 million population 2,780,400 km squared land area

United States 327.2 million population 9,883,520 km squared land area

By point of comparison, South Africa has a population of 58.8 million and a land area of 1,221,037 km squared. That is the closest equivalent to Argentina in terms of size I could find on short notice.

If you keep the Viceroyalty of La Plata together, adding Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay to Argentina, that adds about another 21 million people and 1.6 million squared kilometers to the total. That is still one fifth of the population of the USA and about 40% of the area.

The United States is a continental sized empire. You can't realistically accomplish this by wanking Argentina, you have to seriously nerf the United States.

Honestly i tend to forget how populated the US is- i tend to think of it like russia or canada- bloody enormous but all the people are localized to relatively small areas.

 

[Arnold d.c]

Argentina has a long history of being super wealthy as an agricultural economy, right up to ww2.

Argentina was already in decline after WW1.

Similarly, they could use the gold from the Tierra Del Fuego to attract investors to build up.

Well, that did happen. Britain flooded the country with capital.

It is quite difficult to determine exactly why exactly Argentina fell behind other developed countries in the early 20th century. From independence to the Golden Era, Argentina's key to economic growth was integrating itself into the world market as foreign capital was crucial for Argentina's capital accumulation. A major problem was that Argentina's saving rates were too low and thus Argentina's growth strategy was predicated on an international market that constantly had favourable conditions. Argentine economic decline set in after the Great War—only a comparison with the other struggling settler economies can make Argentina's interwar economic performance look respectable. Low saving rates meant that external dependence on foreign capital was crucial in Argentina because of the scarcity of domestic capital, which resulted in large part from demographic constraints on domestic savings. A high dependency rate, driven by a fast-growing population and substantial immigration, gave rise to an age structure with a large share of young dis-savers. When international capital flows were cut off, following the collapse of the international capital market, the balance-of-payments gap could be bridged no longer, and the demographic burden forestalled Argentine accumulation through the interwar period.

In 1929, Argentina felt the impact of the retreat of American capital after the Great Depression and decided on a new course: achieve self-sufficiency in manufacturing and industrial sectors to delink themselves from the world economy. This isolationism proved to have very serious consequences for capital accumulation: key imported capital goods (machinery, equipment and the like) rose sharply enough to deter investors from investing in capital goods, delaying growth. Economists have suggested that had Argentina should not have isolated itself from the world market and tried to achieve more favorable demographic conditions, a good portion of its slowdown in growth could have been averted. Still, I don't see Argentina becoming an equal to the United States. It could be a major economic power in the world, but there's not enough people. Immigration (from Spain and Italy) and natural growth was pretty high in Argentina so there's not much of a way to fix that.

 

[Alarico Rodríguez]

The United States is a continental sized empire. You can't realistically accomplish this by wanking Argentina, you have to seriously nerf the United States.

The US didn't start that way, however, and its initial area is about 900 thousand km2, smaller than Argentina. In population, the 13 colonies had 3 million at best as well. Argentina in other words can also become a continental empire if it defeats Brazil and takes most of its area while adding the rest of the Virreinato de la Plata. This is not implausible - if the Virreinato de la Plata remains together, the population of both territories are roughly the same, and if Argentina introduces universal conscription and reforms the army, it can defeat Brazil in a war and take territory from it. The US defeated Mexico when Mexico was the bigger territory.

 

[Jürgen]

I think the answer depend on whether the Argentine population could be increased to the point where it could compete with USA. It would also help if Argentina could get some better institutions.

 

[Workable Goblin]

There's nothing to say that Argentina has to stay a rival, either; look at Japan, which was bandied about for a time in the 1980s as a rival to the United States (and even briefly came close to it in GDP) despite being far smaller and less wealthy in resources and population. It seems to me that a whole-La Plata *Argentina that can get just the right set of lucky breaks and policies could easily do something similar. Of course, it probably wouldn't last long, but for a while you could see alarmist articles talking about how Argentina is going to take over the world...

(Even without that, Argentina would probably be strong enough to prevent unilateral domination of South American politics by Washington, which would, it seems to me, basically do what you're actually asking for)

 

[AltoRegnant]

There's nothing to say that Argentina has to stay a rival, either; look at Japan, which was bandied about for a time in the 1980s as a rival to the United States (and even briefly came close to it in GDP) despite being far smaller and less wealthy in resources and population. It seems to me that a whole-La Plata *Argentina that can get just the right set of lucky breaks and policies could easily do something similar. Of course, it probably wouldn't last long, but for a while you could see alarmist articles talking about how Argentina is going to take over the world...

(Even without that, Argentina would probably be strong enough to prevent unilateral domination of South American politics by Washington, which would, it seems to me, basically do what you're actually asking for)

Plus Japan was able to compete with the big boys, just not all at once- if that means it's not a rival then Germany wasn't a rival to britain. So really we just have to keep La Plata away from a situation like that.

Okay so I didn't see the 1980s there but my point still stands.

And yeah that's a big part of what I'm gunning for

 

[AltoRegnant]

I wonder what the geopolitical effects are. Say that the Viceroyalty of La Plata remains a united polity under some such constitutional monarch. Let's also say that they find the main mineral and gold deposits throughout the early to mid 19th century, and build up a decent industrial base. I feel that Britain would have a keen interest in having them onside if the Americans start being annoying. Which would mean America would start buddying up with France, and later on Germany, no?

 

[Lee-Sensei]

This should be possible under the right circumstances. Many people between 1850 and 1950 predicted that it would. This is possible, but you’d need a far larger population and a culture and political system that puts a much stronger emphasis on the importance of industrialization. OTL, Carlos Pellegrini tried to start this process in the late 19th Century. Try starting there.

 

[David II]

Rival the United States? No. Keep them out from most of South America? Sure

 

[stevej713]

Argentina (and the rest of S. America) is lacking in coal. That alone is enough to hamstring their development in the 19th and 20th centuries.

 

[Lee-Sensei]

Argentina (and the rest of S. America) is lacking in coal. That alone is enough to hamstring their development in the 19th and 20th centuries.

There’s plenty of coal in South America and they can always buy it anyways. Many European countries did.

 

[stevej713]

There’s plenty of coal in South America and they can always buy it anyways. Many European countries did.

But the US is not Europe or Japan, which is the whole point of the OP. In 1905, the US was producing 350 million tons of coal. Its economy was already the largest in the world at that time by a huge margin. You can't import as much coal, oil, and iron as the US was producing. The simple fact is that southern S. America doesn't have the economic potential of the N. American heartland.

 

[Lee-Sensei]

But the US is not Europe or Japan, which is the whole point of the OP. In 1905, the US was producing 350 million tons of coal. Its economy was already the largest in the world at that time by a huge margin. You can't import as much coal, oil, and iron as the US was producing. The simple fact is that southern S. America doesn't have the economic potential of the N. American heartland.

I just disagree. South America has an abundance of natural resources. They have gold, silver, coal, iron ore, tin and oil. Heck, Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia. The Americans and Canadians took better advantage of their land and resources.

 

[Alarico Rodríguez]

But the US is not Europe or Japan, which is the whole point of the OP. In 1905, the US was producing 350 million tons of coal. Its economy was already the largest in the world at that time by a huge margin. You can't import as much coal, oil, and iron as the US was producing. The simple fact is that southern S. America doesn't have the economic potential of the N. American heartland.

South America is almost double the US's size and has the second biggest oil deposits in the world second only to the Arabian Peninsula, meaning its richer in some areas. South America and Latin America in general stagnated because it got independent later and because of Spanish and French support for the US both during and after the American Revolution. No European power gave such a wilful handover like Florida and Louisiana to any Latin American nation, for example. Later on, the Russians sold Alaska as well, an even more egregious handover.

I also want to touch on the issue of "institutions". Latin American countries certainly became embroiled in disputes with monarchists and caudillistas who wanted autocratic centralised rule, but it is a myth that this stagnates economies and impedes development. The Meiji of Japan were just as dictatorial and autocratic as the likes of Iturbide or any caudillo you can name, while Napoleon took France to unprecedented greatness through his centralised absolute monarchy. Russia became richer than Sweden and absorbed Sweden's previous territories while remaining an autocratic monarchy. As much as Prussia's absolutism was "enlightened", it was still absolutism and then even later regressing to some very medieval conceptions of government yet it evolved into the German Empire with an economy rivalling Britain and the US and, although I think I'm wrong here, surpassing them in terms of GDP per capita. If anything, going the way of Napoleon and Otto Von Bismarck is what the Latin American nations didn't pursuit, while the US did, absorbing northern Mexico and every Native American independent territory neighbouring it.