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alternatehistory.com
So a little alternate history question here. Its going to be a bit vague since it requires a lot of butterflies to make work and I'm a bit more interested in the end result then the process.
Lets say that sometime in the past some island in the Caribbean had an American style revolution where the wealthy and educated land owners took over. Over the next century or three these land owners managed to take control of the rest of the Caribbean (and maybe some mainland bits in Florida, the Yucatan, Panama, etc.). Assuming most of their land and population is in the islands and a roughly similar social development to the US how powerful could such a nation become?
I'd imagine early on they'd have a few cash crops such as sugar but once industrialisation kicks in this'll become less important. But would it be enough to fund a large merchant marine and navy and be able to levy that against industrial giants. There's a bit of oil in the Gulf I guess but that would have to wait until the twentieth century; so it'd be a question of whether or not the resources they have allow them to be a power in the nineteenth century. Of course being comprised of Islands they could definitely focus more on navy, but they'd need plenty of steel and coal to power ironclads and their descendants at the end of the century. I'm not sure how much there'd be in the Caribbean. According to a quick Google search there are minerals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Caribbean on a few islands. So they might keep up.
Of course other factors include population and rivals. I'd say to keep it simple have the rivals be the same as OTL. No idea on the population though.