Could the CSA defeat Mexico.

Anaxagoras

Banned
Why would they want to?

Expansionist attitudes in a victorious Confederacy are going to be very different than they were when the South was still part of the Union. The men who wrote the Ostend Manifesto and all that jazz were thinking in terms of creating new slaves states so as to maintain the balance between slave states and free states in the Senate. But if the Confederacy has secured independence from the Union, that will no longer be a factor. Consequently, the desire to expand slave territory will lose much of its impetus.
 
Most TLs have the CSA purchase Mexican territory, which seems likely to me. Chihuahua and Sonora were Republican strongholds, far away from Mexico City's center of control, and weren't really valuable in the 1860s-80s except for Pacific access, which Mexico already has plenty of. It would make sense for Max to sell off those two provinces to make a quick buck (which he really needs) and wipe his hands of the problem of lingering Republicanism. Meanwhile, the population of both provinces was tiny up until the early 1900s, so even if a guerrilla war was waged against the South, it's likely that they wouldn't have enough people to sustain it beyond a few years.

As part of becoming Emperor of Mexico, Maximilian had to swear an oath to never sell off parts of Mexico to anyone. Besides, if Max was short on cash, he'd want to keep Sonora for the silver mines. If he had attempted to sell Sonora or Chihuahua to the Confederacy, more people would flock to the Republicans and the faction that was supporting Maximilian would probably depose Max rather than let him sell Mexican territory. There's also the question of how the Confederacy would pay for the land - the Confederacy has virtually no hard currency, their paper money wasn't worth much, and Mexico already grew enough cotton. The Confederacy would have fight the locals to get the territory, but the Confederacy failed abjectly in their attempt to seize New Mexico and Colorado. Sonora and Chihuahua have much larger populations and the Confederacy would have much longer supply lines over very inhospitable terrain. It also wouldn't be just guerillas fighting the Confederates, it would be the Republican Army, which would likely be getting covert aid from the Union.
 
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In isolation I would say yes, the Confederates could probably defeat Mexico in an offensive war (and certainly defensively). In reality the CSA cannot ignore the possibility of armed US intervention after the war with Mexico starts, nor the possibility that the Great Powers (and the CSA’s largest trade partners) would act against the expansion of slavery into new territory. Not to say that the CSA definitely wouldn’t try to conquer Mexican territory; governments make dumb choices all the time.

OTL's Confederacy always failed when it attempted to invade and seize Union territory. I don't see any reason for them to do better against Mexico. Also, Mexico had a larger free population than the Confederacy.
 
OTL's Confederacy always failed when it attempted to invade and seize Union territory. I don't see any reason for them to do better against Mexico. Also, Mexico had a larger free population than the Confederacy.

And that was when they were cranked up for Total War and sacrificing pretty much their entire economy and built up wealth to the war effort. An offensive campaign into Mexico isen't going to have nearly the same ratio of Dixon vital energy thrown behind it.
 
In 1865, yes, but by 1900 IOTL the former States of the Confederacy had shot up to around 30-40 million to around 10 Million Mexicans.

By 1900, the population of the former Confederacy was 18,975,655, while Mexico had about 13,607,000. That leaves the Confederacy with roughly the same free population as Mexico, which makes for little chance of offensive success for either.

It's notable that Union armies advancing over the entire Confederacy failed to engender this, so I'm skeptical fighting localized to Texas would do such.

The advance of Union armies didn't trigger a slave uprising, but they did lead to about 500,000 slaves running away and about 100,000 joining the Union Army. It's wildly unlikely that Mexico would be able to advance into Confederate territory, but Texas would probably see a spike in number of slaves running away, with many joining the Mexican Army.

The Confederacy was 15% of the 1860 Industrial base of the United States and had the second highest amount of railways per capita in the world. Confederate GDP per capita, meanwhile exceeded that of France and Germany into the 1880s and 1890s, as well as that of Fascist Italy into the 1920s. The CSA is far and away more industrialized and better off economically than Mexico is.

You're overestimating Confederate manufacturing capability. In 1860, the US produced about $1.9 billion in manufactured goods. Roughly $170 million of that was produced in Confederate states, while roughly $1.7 billion was produced in Union states.

Also those Confederate railroads in 1860 didn't even reach Texas, let alone Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confe...#/media/File:Railroad_of_Confederacy-1861.jpg

To invade Mexico, the Confederacy is going to need better logistics and better offensive commanders than they had in OTL. They'll probably need a real navy, too.
 

Marc

Donor
Now I'm actually laughing at a very amusing thought sparked by the thread: imagine a history where Maximilian recaptures Texas - or the Arizona Territory if somehow the South manages get it.

Sorry, there is so much poetic justice in that, regardless of how unlikely.
 
I honestly think they're more likely to be friendly than interested in fighting wars against each other. Max will be in France's pocket and at some point they're going to get thumped by the Prussians so Max is going to need an ally who is actually there to lend a hand, and since the USA was so against his regime from day one he'll be very leery of the Union.
 
Max will be in France's pocket and at some point they're going to get thumped by the Prussians so Max is going to need an ally who is actually there to lend a hand, and since the USA was so against his regime from day one he'll be very leery of the Union.
Good thing Max's brother was Emperor of another European great power, should the need to replace France actually arise.
 
I honestly think they're more likely to be friendly than interested in fighting wars against each other. Max will be in France's pocket and at some point they're going to get thumped by the Prussians so Max is going to need an ally who is actually there to lend a hand, and since the USA was so against his regime from day one he'll be very leery of the Union.

You say that as though the Rebel cabal in Richmond had any greater amount of sympathy for him and his the ideology of the Conservatives on which his throne sat (Not that he, personally, was as ultra-conservative as his regime is depicted, but his keys to power/the government as a whole were)
 
You say that as though the Rebel cabal in Richmond had any greater amount of sympathy for him and his the ideology of the Conservatives on which his throne sat (Not that he, personally, was as ultra-conservative as his regime is depicted, but his keys to power/the government as a whole were)

Considering that the two countries had a pretty close country during the war, it’s safe to assume that they would be friendly towards eachother after it.
 
Of course, if events in Europe lead to a withdrawal of support for Maximilian and he suffers a fate similar to OTL, then Mexico could either end up republican or splintered in a civil war

1917 showed what the latter can result in - Mexican raids across the border into American territory

I can see the CSA in this scenario (I don't mean 1917, I mean Mexican raids into Texas) conducting a successful police operation, taking border forts and cities, and enacting a financial compensation from Mexico

I just find it so hard to imagine them being able in any circumstance other than great power support being able to build the requisite navy to launch the amphibious attacks that would be necessary to utterly defeat Mexico and drive it to a bad bargain in territory. Sure, I have Semmes book at home, and I thoroughly appreciate the CSN, but its either a defensive or a raiding force historically.
 
since the USA was so against his regime from day one he'll be very leery of the Union.
Forgot to mention this in my original reply, but I don't think Washington can be expected to adhere to the (non-binding and periodically reinterpreted) Monroe Doctrine in a world where it doesn't have a Caribbean coast and the border of the CSA is a stone's throw away from the White House. If anything it has every reason to play nice with whoever is in Mexico City, because it needs a friend on the CSA's southern flank a lot more than it needs simmering border tensions.
 
It would make sense for Max

What makes you think that Maximilian would win in a Confederate victory? Everything I've read shows that he was bound to lose. He couldn't appeal to conservatives because he was too liberal, and he couldn't appeal to liberals because he was too conservative; on the latter point, there's also the fact that he overthrew the liberal Benito Juarez. He was also a puppet of the French. By selling so much land (assuming he has time to do so before he's overthrown), he would ruin the little domestic support he had.
 
And by 1900 the Southern states have some 19.806.000 inhabitans, not the 30 to 40 millions you say, mexico in the same epoch have some 13.600.000 inhabitants (source)
To put this into perspective, the ENTIRE US population in 1900 OTL was 76 million. So to have a population of 40 million in just the CSA would require that OVER HALF of the country's population lived in the south. Which is patently ridiculous if you know ANYTHING about American population distribution.
 
It would make sense for Max to sell off those two provinces to make a quick buck
Except that even IF Maximillian managed to win his position would be extremely precarious. His subjects hate him, his neighbors hate him, his European backer won't be in a position to back him. If he does something as stupid as sell off a massive amount of Mexican territory then he is dead. And he'll know it too.
 
I can't help but wonder why the Confederacy, who desperately needs the good will of France in the 1860s would invade Mexico during Maximilian's reign. Geo-politically it makes little sense. Now, I'll concede, the fire eaters were rabidly expansionistic, and if they held control of the CSA government, it's possible they could overreach and piss off any good will from France or Maximilian Mexico. But I think any elections following victory wouldn't have favored the fire eaters. Despite popular misconceptions, the fire eaters were a fairly small minority and while they were the tail that wagged the dog in the lead-up to the civil war, I'm not convinced they would be able to hold power after independence.

Now, if the CSA in their infinite wisdom decided to invade Mexico before 1870, logistics would make such a venture anything but certain. There were less than 300 miles of railroad in Texas during the Civil war, and all of it was based around Galveston Bay. Mostly as a means of getting cotton to market. It's a long dusty march from Galveston to Laredo, and while it's certainly possible to support an army far away from your logistics base, it's not efficient or cheep. For the sake of giving the CSA a western base, let's say that General Sibley's New Mexico Campaign was better organized (or just luckier) and he decisively defeated Col. Canby and the union forces and let's say he's able to win any battles up to the Colorado River. A peace treaty that gives the CSA NM and AZ everything south and east of the Colorado River gives the CSA a lot of room to expand without another war, apart from what hell the Apache would make of their expansion into NM and AZ.

I think an interesting TL would be one in which the CSA survives but allies itself with Maximilian's Mexico (maybe Maximilian pivots toward the CSA when the French get their wallets handed to them by the Prussians). What would Mexico have looked like 20 or 30 years after, if Maximilian had survived and Juarez been defeated? What would it have looked like, if it were closely allied with a surviving CSA?
 
Then what about the Gadsden purchase?

Its the example that proves the rule. It was an adjustment, and certainly not a whole state. The President sold it for money he needed, but a large body of opinion hated him for it.

No way would Mexico ever sell Baja or Sonora or Chihuahua, these places are country-sized

In the 1840s, after defeat, the USA paid compensation for the territories it seized but this was not selling
 
I'm not sure why some people think Max needs to cut ties with France after the Franco-Prussian War. The French got their clocks cleaned pretty badly, but they bounced back fast, especially in terms of overseas power (which was more or less undamaged by the war and is what would matter most to Max) as it was in the post-1871 period that France did most of its overseas expansion.

Certainly the jarring events of the war would create a scenario where he could ditch the French if he felt like it, but unless he's ditching them because he feels strong enough to stand on his own (in which case he won't be seeking the CSA's aid either) he wouldn't stand to gain anything from rocking the boat. You'd need a much worse 1871, and a Union which is seemingly eager for another war so soon after being defeated in the ACW for a CSA-Mexican alliance to transpire.
 
I'm not sure why some people think Max needs to cut ties with France after the Franco-Prussian War. The French got their clocks cleaned pretty badly, but they bounced back fast, especially in terms of overseas power (which was more or less undamaged by the war and is what would matter most to Max) as it was in the post-1871 period that France did most of its overseas expansion.

Certainly the jarring events of the war would create a scenario where he could ditch the French if he felt like it, but unless he's ditching them because he feels strong enough to stand on his own (in which case he won't be seeking the CSA's aid either) he wouldn't stand to gain anything from rocking the boat. You'd need a much worse 1871, and a Union which is seemingly eager for another war so soon after being defeated in the ACW for a CSA-Mexican alliance to transpire.
In my mind, it was the other way around. I imaged the French ditching Max... or rather so distracted at home as to amount to the same thing. OTOA, a timeline where Mexico, France and CSA build some kind of alliance system would be interesting. Of course there are no shortages of TLs where the CSA has France as an ally (thanks Harry Turtledove).
 
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