Could the CSA defeat Mexico.

I'm not sure why some people think Max needs to cut ties with France after the Franco-Prussian War.

France would be the one cutting ties with Max, assuming by some miracle Max lasts till 1871, because it suddenly has far more important things than occupying Mexico. Without French support, Max will be swiftly deposed and forced to flee (or even be executed as OTL if he fails to run away) by liberals because of his own lack of native support.
 
In my mind, it was the other way around.
France would be the one cutting ties with Max,
What does France stand to gain from adding to their losses?

Did France completely strip any of its other colonial/imperial ventures of their detachments durring or after the Franco-Prussian War? Only one I know of was the recall of the Roman garrison, but that was moving a relatively small force a relatively small distance and yielding a much less substantial prize.
 
What does France stand to gain from adding to their losses?

Did France completely strip any of its other colonial/imperial ventures of their detachments durring or after the Franco-Prussian War? Only one I know of was the recall of the Roman garrison, but that was moving a relatively small force a relatively small distance and yielding a much less substantial prize.

I was operating from the assumption that like OTL, French public opinion had turned against their interests in Mexico. It's not certain that a CSA victory would bolster such sentiments or retard them. I opted for the status quo, although any option could be justified, IMO.
 
What does France stand to gain from adding to their losses?

Did France completely strip any of its other colonial/imperial ventures of their detachments durring or after the Franco-Prussian War? Only one I know of was the recall of the Roman garrison, but that was moving a relatively small force a relatively small distance and yielding a much less substantial prize.

None of its other colonial ventures had large and troublesome nationalist insurgencies which French liberals sympathized with.
 
I was operating from the assumption that like OTL, French public opinion had turned against their interests in Mexico.
I was assuming that in order for 1871 to be a factor to begin with the French-Imperial faction would need to have won at some point (as even without US diplomatic pressure the casualties and expenses associated with the war were wearing the French out). So either a Maximilian who is different enough to be better able to drum up popular support, or the republican faction is somehow incompetent enough to discredit itself.

If by 1870 the situation has stabilized enough for for French capitalists and prospectors to be poking around Mexico, then I don't see France bailing.

None of its other colonial ventures had large and troublesome nationalist insurgencies which French liberals sympathized with.
See above.
 
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.

In OTL the American South was expansionistic, before, during, and after the Civil War. Balance of free states versus slave states was not their only reason for supporting expansion. The Confederacy would still believe in Manifest Destiny. The Confederacy would still want new lands for their growing population. They would still want new land to replace land worn out by soil exhaustion. Controlling northern Mexico will still be seen as necessary for a route to the Pacific. Controlling Central America will still be seen as necessary for control of trans-ithmus traffic. Controlling Cuba will still be seen as necessary protect trade in the Caribbean. Victory in the Civil War will be seen as vindicating belief in Confederate racial and military superiority, which is likely to increase Confederate expansionism. Why would an independent Confederacy be less expansionist than in OTL?
 
That's a great idea, let's replace our current patron to a slightly worse patron with less power projection and one that was also thumped by the Prussians.
Where as the CSA and is even weaker has no power projection to speak of...

Also losing to Prussia is rather irrelevant to what a patron state offers Mexico, Max isn't fighting the Prussians.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
The CSA had a decent chance of beating Mexican armies in a field war, it has a very low chance of holding populated Mexican territory. The USA faced quite competent guerrilla resistance in the small populated areas of Mexico (essentially 3 routes into Mexico city) it occupied during the war, the CSA would be driven out within a few years if it tried to occupy the much larger expanses needed to annex territory. People tend to forget that the bits of Mexico the US annexed without too much difficulty (just 20 years of social banditry defending Mexican interests!) was practically uninhabited by Mexicans.

So, in answer to the question, if the war's aim is so extremely limited that the Mexicans decide to fold after losing a few battles, then yes. If the war is expansionistic, and happens before 1880, not only would the CSA lose, they would likely lose the territory of Sonora and the populated part of New Mexico stolen during the Mexican-American War in the peace. (this assumes NM goes to the confederacy, if not, obviously this would not happen)

Though once we move further into the ATL, everything would depend on what butterflies occur.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
Well Mexico(1865: 8.259.080) and the CSA(1860:9.103.000) have more or less the Same population, plus mexico don´t have a huge slave population that could be aroused to fight, and have is more or less the same level of industrialization than the CSA, so if anything if stupid for and independent CSA declare a war against Mexico

You forget, in AH Latinos always surrender, it is part of our AH genetic make up. That is why for every TL where the Mexicans win an alt-Mexican-American war, there are 43 where William Walker becomes emperor of somewhere that ends with a vowel.
 
So by you the Texas population Boom was mostly natural Growth? (600.000 inhabitants in 1860 3.030.000 in 1900), as was the Virginia, Nebraska, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky Louisiana population growth? come one you can´t expect I believe that the region was not benefited by the general USA immigration policies.

Yes, as immigrants as % of the population averaged 5% in the South, with North Carolina having the lowest rate in the nation at less than 1%. Also, I do not see how this would be an issue, as the same pull factors that did draw immigrants to the South would be unchanged; the Homestead Act had no effect on the South.

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)

Depends upon the exact borders of this Confederacy; adding Kentucky, West Virginia, and Oklahoma gets you to just shy of 25 Million. 1.3 Million White Southerners who left the South in the decades up to 1900 probably also wouldn't be doing so here, and you have to assume a changed demographic picture on the whole given likely reduced war losses.

all depend of the year that this war will happen, The close to the XX century the more likely is a general Slave revolt.

No reason for such to happen, given Abolitionism has been nipped entirely within a victorious Confederacy.

The cottons price failed sharping in the 1870-1900 as your same source indicate, is true that the total between value 1870-1900 rise but the production more than doubled for a little more that the 1,2% increase in the value of the total exported, if anything a independent CSA will have a horrible financial crisis in the 1870-1900 period.

There is no logical reason to assume this as Cotton prices remained steady as you noted.

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.

Except population is not the sum total of military success, hence why everyone has moved away from human wave tactics.

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.

Very few slaves in West Texas or South Texas, even presuming the Mexicans achieve such an advance.

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.

Value =/= capacity.

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.

Question was one of industrialization and it would come as a hell of shock to Zachary Taylor he needed a railroad, same for Winfield Scott.
 
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yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Depends on how unified Mexico is when the CSA attack. Mexico was quite divided itself. However if there's anything that could have unified the Mexicans it would be the damn Yankees (or in this case Dixies).
 

As a political unit, yes but industrialization had begun in 1867.

In OTL the American South was expansionistic, before, during, and after the Civil War.

Which is false; Calhoun's Pro-Slavery faction was the main opponent of the All Mexican movement. This wasn't all, however:

IMO Southerners objected to the Republican party's anti-slavery expansion position not so much because they expected slavery to expand within the current boundaries of the US (which was pretty clearly impossible after Kansas rejected Lecompton) or even because they mecessarily wanted to expand the southern slave system into Latin America--they were actually divided on the feasability and desirability of this. Rather, they objected to it because they considered it a *symptom* of the Republican Party's desire to assure northern control of the federal government, which could then be used for antislavery purposes. William J. Freehling has noted the paradox that the South Carolinians, the most ardent secessionists, were among the most skeptical of territorial expansion. Observing that Calhoun had opposed the drive to acquire All Mexico, Freehling adds:

"Some leading South Carolinians continued to harbor distaste for proposed Caribbean expansion in the 1850s. Mexico seemed full of non-American peons, Cuba full of free blacks, and the Southwest full of coarse frontiersmen. "It is not by bread alone that man liveth," intoned South Carolina's revered Francis Sumter in 1859. "We want some stability in our institutions." 12 South Carolina reactionaries wanted to stabilize their people-—in South Carolina.

"Many South Carolinians opposed a supposedly destabilizing Caribbean empire because they favored a supposedly stabilizing disunion revolution. These disunionists hoped that outside the Union and beyond unsettling northern attacks, a settled South could flourish. They feared that if the Union did acquire vast tropical lands, grateful Southwesterners would never secede and declining Carolinians would never stay east. Still, a taste for staying home and distaste for expansionism swept up the powerful South Carolina Unionist U.S. Senator James Henry Hammond, just as it did the secessionists. "I do not wish," said Hammond, "to remove from my native state and carry a family into the semi-barbarous West." https://books.google.com/books?id=MOainyyGxhsC&pg=PA168

(FWIW, Confederate diplomats during the ACW tried to reassure the Mexicans: yes, we wanted Mexican territory when we were in the Union--but only to counterbalance the political power of the Yankees. Now that we're out of the Union, we have no need for your territory, and it's the Yankees you should fear. Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they? But it was not *necessarily* entirely false...)
 
Depends upon the exact borders of this Confederacy; adding Kentucky, West Virginia, and Oklahoma gets you to just shy of 25 Million.

So...as long as they get given territory they do not control, and cannot take. Got it.

Except population is not the sum total of military success, hence why everyone has moved away from human wave tactics.
You literally tried to claim the CSA's population was DOUBLE the actual population of the region.

Question was one of industrialization and it would come as a hell of shock to Zachary Taylor he needed a railroad, same for Winfield Scott.

Its almost as if war changed a lot in 30 years.

Birmingham is not in Bibb County. Its in Jefferson (as the county seat) and Shelby counties. That source says little about Birmingham at all in fact. And the only 1867 note at all is about selling iron to New Orleans or Saint Louis, and noting how expensive the iron would be to ship.
 
So...as long as they get given territory they do not control, and cannot take. Got it.

Extremely odd claim to make given the Confederacy did in fact hold large swathes of said territory during the course of the conflict. The PoD for how the Confederacy won has also been left open, so to assume this is impossible simply has no merit; a Trent Affair War would've seen the Confederacy take all the border states, for example.

You literally tried to claim the CSA's population was DOUBLE the actual population of the region.

Yes because this is alternate history. If the Confederacy had taken more territory and had more of its young men not perish during the course of the conflict, having a much larger population than IOTL is blatantly obvious.

Its almost as if war changed a lot in 30 years.

Sure, but not enough to justify the lack of a railway preventing Confederate battle field success in Northern Mexico. I also find it amusing this is held as a disadvantage to the Confederacy but not to Mexico, which is lacking in railways in general.

Birmingham is not in Bibb County. Its in Jefferson (as the county seat) and Shelby counties. That source says little about Birmingham at all in fact. And the only 1867 note at all is about selling iron to New Orleans or Saint Louis, and noting how expensive the iron would be to ship.

An odd claim to make given the very title has Birmingham in it and the first paragraph has it said twice. However, here is another source:

After the Civil War, however, the development of railroads within Jones Valley along with the presence of rich minerals nearby paved the way for the founding of a new city.

Recognizing the area's potential, a group of investors and promoters of the North and South Railroad (which later became the Louisville & Nashville Railroad) met with banker Josiah Morris in Montgomery on December 18, 1870, and organized the Elyton Land Company for the purpose of building a new city in Jefferson County.
 
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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.

What makes you think its unlikely. The CSA is explicitly a slave state, any invasion of another country is an attempt to expand slavery and so anathema to all right thinking people. ( which includes the Tejano population). And if Max is not backed by France ( which he almost certainly would be) he would be backed by Austria.

Most people forget there is a world of difference for European powers between interfering in a disputed US election and intervening in a war of aggression by what is in fact an embarrassment to all civilised nations.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
What makes you think its unlikely. The CSA is explicitly a slave state, any invasion of another country is an attempt to expand slavery and so anathema to all right thinking people. ( which includes the Tejano population). And if Max is not backed by France ( which he almost certainly would be) he would be backed by Austria.

Most people forget there is a world of difference for European powers between interfering in a disputed US election and intervening in a war of aggression by what is in fact an embarrassment to all civilised nations.

Six words: Garibaldi's Mexican army marches on Houston.

There is, of course, a freed slave division, a Haitian contingent and an international brigade, including Coronel Federico Engels. Why do we never have cool AH? Come on? Why has nobody bothered to write this? No, let's just wank on about slightly different borders of Canada and PEI joining the continental congress. Well, no. I WANT MEXICO'S JUSTIFIED REVENGE, FEATURING GARIBALDI, ENGELS AND JOAQUIN MURIETA WHO IS A REAL PERSON.

Is that too much to ask?
 
Six words: Garibaldi's Mexican army marches on Houston.

There is, of course, a freed slave division, a Haitian contingent and an international brigade, including Coronel Federico Engels. Why do we never have cool AH? Come on? Why has nobody bothered to write this? No, let's just wank on about slightly different borders of Canada and PEI joining the continental congress. Well, no. I WANT MEXICO'S JUSTIFIED REVENGE, FEATURING GARIBALDI, ENGELS AND JOAQUIN MURIETA WHO IS A REAL PERSON.

Is that too much to ask?

With a confederate President fuming at the Geurillas screaming ' Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia'
 
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