Had Argentina Been Anglophone, Would It Have Been More Prosperous & Populous Today? (ctd.)

There was quite a substantial amount of turmoil in the Cape Colony and elsewhere in South Africa at that time as well, and some (emphasis on some) British immigrants came to that area anyway - e.g. the famed 1820 settlers who went to the present-day Eastern Cape. This exacerbated tensions in South Africa even then.

 

Do you have information about British immigration in the Cape? Where were these immigrants concentrated? It's worth noting, indeed, that these 1820 British immigrants were settled outside of the Dutch frontier.

 

Then they provide safe haven to the criollo guerrillas, as well as buying whatever they loot from the British and their allies (ie, cattle), so the British end up abandoning the area and they are left with either an independent Uruguay they can Finlandize or a weakened non British Uruguay they can invade on their own

 

This actually does not at all conflict with his observations--one rebellion can have multiple origins. The multiethnic leadership of the Lower Canadian rebels is a fact.

 

The number of British immigrants to South Africa remained pretty small until the 1870s/1880s with the diamond and gold rushes, and even at its peak at the turn of the 20th century it wasn't all that large.

In 19th century South Africa, so far as I know, British immigrants were mostly concentrated in Cape Town and especially the Eastern Cape and Natal (both of which are outside the old Dutch frontier). What I do know for sure is that these days, white Anglos in South Africa are mainly concentrated in those areas and Johannesburg.

If we were to apply such a situation to early/mid-19th century Argentina/Uruguay, that would correspond to major cities like Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rosario, plus OTL southern Buenos Aires province, La Pampa, Rio Negro, etc. (with an Indian frontier corresponding to the Xhosa/Zulu frontier of the Eastern Cape and Natal).

If it's the Portuguese who provide safe haven to the criollo guerrillas, it just doesn't make too much sense to me, because the Portuguese wouldn't want to antagonize the British too much (even if they're not always on the very friendliest of terms).

 

But the British are antagonizing them first by occupying Uruguay/Cisplatina

 

In any British-Portuguese situation, even not at the friendliest point, diplomacy will be used before they fight each other (if ever). This includes agreeing on a common border between Uruguay and Rio Grande do Sul. Under those circumstances, the Portuguese might be willing to relinquish claims to, and designs on, that area.

 

Fighting each other? Who said anything about fighting each other? It's just that if some rancher walks into Rio Grande willing to exchange cattle for weapons, why would he be refused? Wink, wink.

 

Oh I see!

I've just of another possible solution to the conundrum of the British occupying the "Portuguese" land that was Uruguay: Make Uruguay into a British-Portuguese condominium for some time, until the Portuguese (or successor Brazilians) give it up in exchange for gaining more territory somewhere else along the Brazilian border and then Uruguay just becomes British. After all, Brazil's a huge country.

 

My question here would be the interaction today between English and Spanish speaking Platans (I would pretty much prefer to call this alternate Argentina as "Plata" since it sounds cooler. Ignore it if you wish since it something I am using personally).

Not to mention I am very curious as how common would intermarriage would be between British settlers and Spanish colonists (or however you would call them).

 

I'm thinking possibly for British Argentina, in the long haul, that at first it goes through that period of instability in much of the 19th century which corresponds to the OTL Argentine/Uruguayan civil wars and which is similar enough to what went on in South Africa at that time.

Then, if it manages to overcome those tensions while the territories are still British colonies/protectorates, and they federate into what I've described before as the Argentine Confederation, they could go in for a period of economic growth (driven by wheat, beef, etc.) and massive immigration in the late 19th/early 20th centuries like OTL Argentina. (Here, I'm not talking about most of the interior, which gets absorbed most likely into Chile, Bolivia, or Paraguay and/or remain one or more independent countries. I'm talking mainly just the Pampas/Littoral/Uruguay and Patagonia.) Major differences being that major sources of immigration include the British Isles as well as Spain and Italy (folks from the latter two countries gravitating mainly to the Hispanic sectors), and that the land distribution system is overall somewhat better than OTL (especially as far as the distribution of newly-settled land is concerned) and the political culture is overall somewhat more democracy-friendly than OTL (though shaped by the British-Spanish tensions). That's where Argentina's (or at least the Pampas') geographic advantages of easily-navigable rivers and fertile land really come into play. This time is also when Patagonia is finally settled and there are a lot more Anglo immigrants there than IOTL. For all the ethnolinguistic tensions that there are, at least it's not South Africa in the sense that there are mainly just these two white groups and not also a huge non-white underclass to complicate politics in the future the way that South Africa, and for that matter neighbouring countries like Bolivia, has.

Later on, thanks largely to this Argentina automatically entering the two World Wars due to being in the British Empire/Commonwealth, as well as because of the newfound geographic and economic advantages, it industrializes for real and doesn't resort to Peron-style autarky and import-substitution industrialization. There's no real elite Conservative movement like was found mainly in the OTL Argentine interior that is bothered by all the new immigration and the democratic gains, and thus there's no coup in 1930, 1943, or really any year. Thus, that Argentina is a good deal better off than OTL Argentina, with a per capita income on the level of New Zealand (though not necessarily Australia, Canada, or the US).

Of course, the last two paragraphs are a significant "if".

 

And the Eureka Stockade was a multiethnic rebellion as well, since one member was from Jamaica, one was an African-American, and even the leader of the famous rebellion in Australian history was in fact an Italian.

 

I have another major question that involves big time for Argentina.

What would happen to the Afro-Argentines? They been around in Argentina since colonial times even though Buenos Aires wasn't much of a major slave hub for the Spanish from what I can recall.

Would the Afro-Argentines end up having it easier than in OTL and wouldn't become nearly forgotten? Or would the same thing happen to them?

Because reason I brought this up was because they are responsible for the creation of the tango, since it has African origins.

 

There would be much separateness ("the two solitudes") between the Anglos and the Spanish speakers, but there'd also be some intermarriage, especially in more recent times and especially in big urban areas.

I would say that the Afro-Argentines would be more numerous than IOTL, because the Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance) is butterflied away - Paraguay evolving too differently ITTL - and many Afro-Argentine men were recruited to fight in that war with very heavy losses (leaving the women to marry men of other races).

 

By the way, the idea that Mendoza and San Juan (along possibly with La Rioja and/or San Luis) reunite with Chile in the event of a breakdown of the former Viceroyalty of La Plata sounds plausible, but I see one problem: Just one main route between Chile and that adjacent Argentine region, known as Cuyo. The Andes are too high to allow for many routes between Chile proper and Cuyo. And that one route can be cut off for periods at a time by rough weather over by the Uspallata Pass and 1-2 other passes that that route goes through.

 

What the British possibly offer Portugal across the South American Atlantic coast that beats Cisplatina?
No, I think the British only option is to stick to the area, fight the insurgencies and win. And it's probably not worth it because they can accomplish all their objectives without loss of blood (of their own)

Inter-race marriage didn't seem to be much of a big deal in colonial "Argentina" (inter-class certainly was it), so I'm not sure marriage would be an issue. As for other interactions and language, it's hard to say because it depends on how the situation unfolds. If the British succeeds, English would become the language of the ruling class, and that tends to trickle down. OTOH, there is a significant Spanish speaking base already. Maybe it develops into a bilingual society, kind of how both Spanish and Guarani are spoken in Paraguay?

The problem with an American style of land distribution is that, in the face of insurgency, land might be the carrot the British use to gain support of the wealthier locals, so it may still result in large concentration of lands in (relatively) few hands.
There are no World Wars, of course, those get butterflied away with such an early POD, and trying to figure out the fate of the British Empire and whether it would support the industrialization of Argentina or not is anyone's guess. A story might be written in any way with regards to that.
You mention democracy over and over. What do you think was the Argentine stance on democracy through the 19th century and how do you think it differs from the British master race?

 

That might be especially true in places, like Buenos Aires province excluding its OTL south, where insurgency is at its fiercest. In those places which are newly settled, like the southern Pampas, the British could be free to distribute the land the way they like it (similar to the US, Canada, etc.), as opposed to rewarding victorious soldiers of the anti-Indian campaigns with the most land by far the way it was IOTL.

It's not nearly as early a POD as anything going on in medieval times, antiquity, etc. In my opinion, the Napoleonic Wars occur more or less as OTL (even with a bit of siphoning of British troops for the sake of the fight in the River Plate), and the World Wars occur more or less as OTL.

 

The Southern Pampas are crawling with warring natives who would take decades to conquer - I'd add them to the areas where the insurgency would be at its fiercest. Remember, these are horse mounted cavalry raiders, armed with firearms equal to those the British would wield, and who would mercilessly raid British settlements unless they are paid off, and would use the plunder from their raids to buy more guns, more gunpowder, more everything by selling it at the countries opposing the British presence. How many migrants can you get if your loving family can see their male members killed and their women kidnapped to be raped for years (until someone ransoms them)?

Wilhelm II doesn't exist ITTL (butterfly means his ancestors eat different stuff, produce different spermatozoids and have genetically different children at different times), which can easily butterfly away the German-British naval race, which has butterflies on its own. Gavrilo Princip doesn't exist, for the same reasons Wilhelm II doesn't, so there is no reason to believe the alliance system in Europe remains the same (no naval race) or that the powder keg blows at it did, or at all. No WWI, or a different one, means no WWII.

 

Actively dispossessing Hispanics will introduce yet another destabilizing factor to a British alt-Argentina. Also, why do you think the British Empire would do a better job than independent Argentina of conquering the indigenous peoples in the south?

 

How many times do I have to repeat? It's no more difficult in that sense than it was for the British in New Zealand who had to contend with the warlike Maori, or the British in South Africa who had to contend with the Boers and with the Xhosa, Zulu, and other warlike black tribes over there, or the British and Americans in the North American West/Plains who had to contend with warlike Indians tribes. As I've said before, it all balances out! All of these situations played out over literally decades, and on the other side of it, European development blossomed in those areas!

Plus, the main point of what I was saying about Buenos Aires vs. the southern Pampas is that while insurgency is as fierce in the southern Pampas as in Buenos Aires, it's from a different source and there are different consequences once the insurgents are subdued. In and around Buenos Aires, we're talking about the Spanish, and the Spanish land patterns in that area are conserved even after a total British political takeover, thus largely precluding anything like a Homestead Act. By contrast, in the southern Pampas, we're talking about nomadic indigenous peoples, and once those are subdued their lands are no longer theirs and are free for the taking, thus being friendlier to a Homestead Act.

Please prove to me that Wilhelm II's ancestors or Gavrilo Princip's ancestors ate different stuff or produced different spermatozoids just because the British take over little pockets of South America.

Two of Wilhelm II's grandparents were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They were born to royal families, ultimately tracing their descent to Germany, that was very much around in the early 1800s. As for Gavrilo Princip, he and his family were ethnic Serbs who lived in northwestern Bosnia; that part of the world was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and officially ruled by the Ottoman Empire at that time. All these settings are geographically far removed from South America. In my opinion, South America is one of those relatively few parts of the world which are somewhat isolated from general world trends and events of the past 200-300 years, as opposed to places like North America, Europe, much of Asia, and the Middle East. We don't fully know how butterflies play out, but I honestly think, juanml82, that you're taking the butterfly concept a little too far.

I'm sure that actively dispossessing Boers introduced a destabilizing factor to South Africa?!