And richer, of course, at least for Mexico. I agree Central America might make up the difference given what we know about them (or at least parts of Central America), but a lot of them are likely to flee to Mexico instead of the United States, being closer, probably richer, and much closer in culture, language, religion, and so on.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
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And richer, of course, at least for Mexico. I agree Central America might make up the difference given what we know about them (or at least parts of Central America), but a lot of them are likely to flee to Mexico instead of the United States, being closer, probably richer, and much closer in culture, language, religion, and so on.
A considerably less Latino USA saddens me, but then I consider that gringo tourists in Mexico would be visiting a country considerably closer in standard of living to the USA than OTL, and the relationship would be more like Britons visiting France or anyway Spain, and we might get our necessary infusion of Latin culture that way, across a border more similar to the US/Canadian border than the OTL one.
I'm also hoping that El Salvador will prove more and more an anomaly and eventually get drawn upward by belated socio-political transformations of some kind (perhaps awfully violent ones) toward a higher standard for Central America as well, with those nations more closely resembling OTL Costa Rica than Salvador.
In particular, without the apparatus of a small but semi-global empire the USA had in the first half of the OTL 20th century and its indirect but quite hegemonic world empire of the later half, the US presence in Nicaragua will less and less resemble the OTL Panama Canal Zone it presumably has a passing semblance to initially; maintaining pro-Yankee "order" overseas with local concerns being secondary is not a game the ITTL Americans are going to be much experienced with; embarrassing questions in the press and in Congress are going to be asked earlier and more often, and the pressure will be on to evolve US involvement in the canal zone in Nicaragua to something more like a free bilateral relationship between sovereign nations and less like a colony. Especially because I gather the canal is not a US government project, exactly, and perhaps other nations are in the consortium running it as well, and perhaps other canals will be built to compete, in Panama or Mexico. I imagine the US Navy will always be anxious to maintain some guaranteed route for capital ships across the isthmus that is Central America somewhere or other; if rival canals appear the US government may be moved to sweeten the deal for the Nicaraguans and for US merchant traffic (by paying to widen that canal, say, for bigger ships) and thus keep the Nicaraguans on-side by carrots rather than sticks, giving US shipping incentive to continue patronizing "our" canal. Or alternatively a Panamanian one (on Colombian soil, of course!) might be a US-backed project when relations with Managua go sour--Mexico holds the third likely canal zone, if one dismisses something as absurdly grandiose as an All-US canal across Texas and the Southwestern states through the Continental Divide
, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec--the route over land is much longer but the maximum elevation to be crossed is lower than the alternatives, so it is doable, but Mexico seems likely to be too strong and too close to the USA to be attractive to Americans concerned with guaranteed passage in all political circumstances; the Colombians are far enough from El Norte to look at an iron-clad deal more coolly and consider it if it is attractive enough, and agree to something unconditionally binding for sufficient compensation. Well, I've been all wet in the timeline before and I certainly hope for good and ever-improving relations between Washington and Mexico City, so maybe the Yanks will ditch Nicaragua for Tehuantepec after all; I wouldn't expect the Colombians to surrender any part of Panama absolutely and perhaps a close and friendly Mexico will seem a more reliable partner than distant Colombia after all. But in that case it seems more likely as well that the Americans will have continued and improvingly cordial relations with Nicaragua as well and thus stay put with their relationship with that canal regime.
The three possible canal zones are after all about equivalent in terms of miles US Navy ships have to steam from around the tip of Florida, though the Mexican one would have a Pacific outlet significantly closer to San Diego, and be notably more convenient for trade from the Gulf Coast ports to the Pacific as well--but involve a really long transit through land, though quite low land.
In any case a more prosperous and less politically repressive Mexico and Central America would have a rather different relationship with El Norte than OTL; it could go many ways, either friendly to the point of near commonality or hostile but with resources to keep the gringos out--Mexico would surely become a regional hegemon in that scenario, and need to be much more heavily armed, but the timeline has pretty decisively ruled that direction out by now; it would take some very crazy political movement either in the USA or Mexico to introduce it at this late date (and in the latter case the USA might be invited in by the Central Americans to keep the Mexicans contained). I assume the positive evolutions prevail and that US people and business interests can visit and operate in northern Latin America on non-hegemonic, mutually beneficial terms, with the sovereignty of the local nations never in doubt.
I'm also hoping that El Salvador will prove more and more an anomaly and eventually get drawn upward by belated socio-political transformations of some kind (perhaps awfully violent ones) toward a higher standard for Central America as well, with those nations more closely resembling OTL Costa Rica than Salvador.
In particular, without the apparatus of a small but semi-global empire the USA had in the first half of the OTL 20th century and its indirect but quite hegemonic world empire of the later half, the US presence in Nicaragua will less and less resemble the OTL Panama Canal Zone it presumably has a passing semblance to initially; maintaining pro-Yankee "order" overseas with local concerns being secondary is not a game the ITTL Americans are going to be much experienced with; embarrassing questions in the press and in Congress are going to be asked earlier and more often, and the pressure will be on to evolve US involvement in the canal zone in Nicaragua to something more like a free bilateral relationship between sovereign nations and less like a colony. Especially because I gather the canal is not a US government project, exactly, and perhaps other nations are in the consortium running it as well, and perhaps other canals will be built to compete, in Panama or Mexico. I imagine the US Navy will always be anxious to maintain some guaranteed route for capital ships across the isthmus that is Central America somewhere or other; if rival canals appear the US government may be moved to sweeten the deal for the Nicaraguans and for US merchant traffic (by paying to widen that canal, say, for bigger ships) and thus keep the Nicaraguans on-side by carrots rather than sticks, giving US shipping incentive to continue patronizing "our" canal. Or alternatively a Panamanian one (on Colombian soil, of course!) might be a US-backed project when relations with Managua go sour--Mexico holds the third likely canal zone, if one dismisses something as absurdly grandiose as an All-US canal across Texas and the Southwestern states through the Continental Divide
, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec--the route over land is much longer but the maximum elevation to be crossed is lower than the alternatives, so it is doable, but Mexico seems likely to be too strong and too close to the USA to be attractive to Americans concerned with guaranteed passage in all political circumstances; the Colombians are far enough from El Norte to look at an iron-clad deal more coolly and consider it if it is attractive enough, and agree to something unconditionally binding for sufficient compensation. Well, I've been all wet in the timeline before and I certainly hope for good and ever-improving relations between Washington and Mexico City, so maybe the Yanks will ditch Nicaragua for Tehuantepec after all; I wouldn't expect the Colombians to surrender any part of Panama absolutely and perhaps a close and friendly Mexico will seem a more reliable partner than distant Colombia after all. But in that case it seems more likely as well that the Americans will have continued and improvingly cordial relations with Nicaragua as well and thus stay put with their relationship with that canal regime.The three possible canal zones are after all about equivalent in terms of miles US Navy ships have to steam from around the tip of Florida, though the Mexican one would have a Pacific outlet significantly closer to San Diego, and be notably more convenient for trade from the Gulf Coast ports to the Pacific as well--but involve a really long transit through land, though quite low land.
In any case a more prosperous and less politically repressive Mexico and Central America would have a rather different relationship with El Norte than OTL; it could go many ways, either friendly to the point of near commonality or hostile but with resources to keep the gringos out--Mexico would surely become a regional hegemon in that scenario, and need to be much more heavily armed, but the timeline has pretty decisively ruled that direction out by now; it would take some very crazy political movement either in the USA or Mexico to introduce it at this late date (and in the latter case the USA might be invited in by the Central Americans to keep the Mexicans contained). I assume the positive evolutions prevail and that US people and business interests can visit and operate in northern Latin America on non-hegemonic, mutually beneficial terms, with the sovereignty of the local nations never in doubt.
Just on the issue of the High Court's nomenclature, note that High Court did mean final court in some Commonwealth jursidictions, Australia's federal High Court for one. In New Zealand, our current High Court was for over a century known as the Supreme Court (despite a court of appeal and the Privy Council) before the name was converted to High Court in order to reserve the former name for a proper final court of appeals to replace the Privy Council (which happened about 20 years later).
So, one could go either way really.
One thing that would help a closer Commonwealth cause is a proper Commonwealth Final Court (s) (one layer or two?). This could be accomplished reasonably easily in a manner as per OTL - with lots more dominion justices appointed. Then, for extra points create circuits where the CFC actually sits every year in each general area (say, Caribbean, Canada, Western Africa, Southern Africa, Antipodes, etc etc). That would be both a good move for the interests of justice (final court being in London makes litigation very expensive) as well as making the court seem more real or applicable to ordinary citizens.
According to a brief search, the Privy Council heard about 10 New Zealand cases a year at most up to 2003 and the Court of Appeal heard over 500. It was estimated that the new Supreme Court would hear about 50 cases a year prior to establishment, but it looks like outside of the first year, 2004 where about 48 cases were heard, the court has been hearing between 90 to 150 cases a year.
So, one could go either way really.
One thing that would help a closer Commonwealth cause is a proper Commonwealth Final Court (s) (one layer or two?). This could be accomplished reasonably easily in a manner as per OTL - with lots more dominion justices appointed. Then, for extra points create circuits where the CFC actually sits every year in each general area (say, Caribbean, Canada, Western Africa, Southern Africa, Antipodes, etc etc). That would be both a good move for the interests of justice (final court being in London makes litigation very expensive) as well as making the court seem more real or applicable to ordinary citizens.
According to a brief search, the Privy Council heard about 10 New Zealand cases a year at most up to 2003 and the Court of Appeal heard over 500. It was estimated that the new Supreme Court would hear about 50 cases a year prior to establishment, but it looks like outside of the first year, 2004 where about 48 cases were heard, the court has been hearing between 90 to 150 cases a year.
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I envision that Central America is going to unfold reasonably peaceable, except for El Salvador. Nicaragua, both because the United States won't tolerate serious political unrest and because the government is at least nominally democratic, will probably go after a few weeks of protests. The Unidados will probably even stick around as a major political party, like the PRI in Mexico. Honduras will have a fairly rapid transition though, although much more of a real revolution; the rank and file of the Honduran army and much of the population is far more sympathetic to the cofradias than to a banana company puppet junta, and the regime might find itself very isolated very quickly. Guatemala could be bloody, and El Salvador definitely is: it's basically Natal with Spanish and, if possible, and even more noxious regime.
Still, American influence might actually be beneficial here. While corporate power is going to be calling for propping up the existing regimes, I'd expect a pretty strong argument from the Left for American intervention on the side of the revolutionaries, to stabilize the transition. That should balance out to at least the United States staying out for the most part. Without American subsidies, and with liberation theology-inspired groups in the Afro-Atlantic network more than happy to smuggle arms to Fraternalist revolutionaries, Central America may be spared the drawn-out bloodshed of OTL.
Then again, it's all up to JE
Canada's was similar, but the problem with having that in India, is that there are provincial High Courts. The whole reason for having the High Courtr of India was that it was the High Court of Bombay. I'm assuming the Supreme Court is more appropriately located in Delhi.
Secondly, Madras is also a different case, being a dual dominion, where it will probably want judicial independence from both Britain and India. (Or maybe it does fall under the Indian Supreme Court, who knows?). India would object to the Privy Council having a say in Madras anyways. I'm not sure if the reverse would happen, but that depends on Jonathan. I can see judicial ties being present between the two states.
I guess one could narrow competence? Maybe confine Court of High Finality to certain issues, depending on dominion. So if in say Madras's case there are certain co-dominion issues, they sit outside of the CHF and are resolved some other way, perhaps an ad hoc judicial panel composed by agreement at the time?
TTL's Africa still has some of OTL's issues with artificially drawn borders and colonial-era preferences - these problems aren't as universal, most countries will have better ways of dealing with them than civil war, and the existence of stronger states and better-established democratic structures also helps, but they still are problems.
For the most part, the people in the affected countries will eventually work things out, but the process will sometimes be painful.
That's a pretty good list. I'd add environmental issues, which - as we're starting to see - are an earlier problem in TTL. I'd expect that climate change would be noticed by the 1990s (the world population will be lower, but living standards and energy use in most of OTL's Third World will be considerably higher) and that it will be internationally contentious, and that there will be issues caused by the declining oil supply and the use of environmentally unsafe alternatives to get what remains. I'd imagine that use of non-fossil energy sources will also be more advanced, but there are still many, many countries and individuals for whom oil means wealth.
Mexicans were in the Southwest long before Anglos were, so there would still be heavy Mexican cultural influence in that region even without twentieth-century immigration. There will still be Laredo, El Paso, southern California and all the Arizona and New Mexico towns. It's the eastern United States that will have much less Latino influence with Puerto Rico not being an American possession and the Cuban-American connection being much more distant, although as a consolation prize, there will be more immigration to this region from other parts of the Caribbean and from West Africa.
I actually wonder whether there might be more immigration from a richer Mexico. There wouldn't be as many economic migrants, but precisely for that reason, the norteamericanos might be less afraid of Mexicans crossing the border. To use your analogy, Mexicans living in the United States (and vice versa!) might be like Britons living in France - something that's common and accepted, with millions of families having members on both sides of the border and few obstacles to business travel, tourism and temporary residence. That's assuming everything goes right, though, which won't necessarily happen - as you say, the two countries' history means that hostility is possible even if both are prosperous and ideologically compatible.
It isn't exclusively American, although it's primarily so, and other canals have been talked about and planned but not yet built. Of course, even the possibility of a rival canal would give the US an incentive to keep Nicaragua on-side.
If I read azander12's guest update correctly, Nicaragua is under considerable American influence but not to a banana-republic degree, and that the main thing holding the government back is the interests of local aristocrats rather than the threat of an American-backed coup.
I wouldn't count Mexican influence out either. The Mexican government after the revolution was a coalition of the Catholic populists and the left, and while it has no doubt moderated somewhat over the years, it would be strongly inclined to support popular movements in its backyard. Both the leftist and Catholic factions would have particular reason to hate the Salvadoran regime - especially if, as Workable Goblin has guessed, there are many Salvadoran refugees in Mexican cities and possibly a local lobby of exiled Salvadoran intellectuals.
That's already been done to some extent, with the post-Imperial British constitution allowing for twenty judges from the empire to be appointed Law Lords (and therefore members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council). It wouldn't be too hard to expand that number by consensus, and to have occasional sittings of the court outside the UK. Something like that might well have been included in the Commonwealth agreements as a quid pro quo for mandatory Privy Council appeals.
There would only need to be one layer, I think - it would be a court of final appeal rather than a trial court, and would only have jurisdiction in a limited number of cases (capital crimes, cases that implicate the uniformity of constitutional law, maybe constitutional issues by special leave) with most appellate business being taken up by the supreme courts of the dominions and other member states.
The High Court would have moved to Delhi when the capital did, and would most likely have changed its name at that time (or else in the 1930 constitution).
Given the dual sovereignty over Madras, it would be awkward for appeals to go to either the Privy Council or the Supreme Court of India; more likely there would be a local supreme court with India and Britain each having the right to appoint some members. By the 1950s or even earlier, these appointments would be made on the advice of the dominion government, so the real power would lie with the prime minister or a selection committee.
On a completely unrelated and irrelevant note, JE, in those maps of Africa I have noticed and been unable to forget that Lagos and its northern neighbor look like a cat. Especially in the mixed European/Asian ancestry map.
Damn, I never noticed that... but I'm willing to bet some of TTL's students will. I wonder if the Yoruba lands will be referred to collectively as "the Cat" in the same way that Italy is called the Boot. "I live in Lagos - you know, over by the Cat's hind paw..."
That sound every reasonable. The Americans will probably stay out, and I would be surprised if there isn't a strong boycott movement on Salvadoran coffee by this point (at least among intellectuals and students). The Mexicans though might intervene militarily. They have ideological reasons, as well as practical ones. I'm sure they aren't exactly pleased with chaos on their southern border. There is also the possibility of a Maya state emerging in the Guatemalan highlands, what with the Carerristas' empowerment of their headmen in exchange for peace and quiet; if Guatemala goes south, the Maya might try to strike out on their own rather than side with either the government or revolutionaries.
Oh quite, I don't imagine anyone would be too keen on complicated judicial structures. Costly and requires a lot of planning and foresight. Adapting here and there is usually what happens.
I do think the circuit idea would be pretty useful though as it would make the court helpful, in a way it wasn't OTL. If one has to go to London to achieve anything then hardly anyone will, which it makes it easier to abandon the court for a local alternative.
I do think the circuit idea would be pretty useful though as it would make the court helpful, in a way it wasn't OTL. If one has to go to London to achieve anything then hardly anyone will, which it makes it easier to abandon the court for a local alternative.
Well, of course; I am Texan and a good chunk of my family lives in New Mexico, so I'm aware of how important Mexico has been along the border. Mass-scale immigration is unlikely, though, because that sort of thing generally results from major disparities in wealth, which are less likely to arise here because Mexico will be more stable and richer.
This will be common along the borders (it has been OTL), but I can't see it leading to more immigration than OTL, in the sense of people permanently migrating from one country to the other. The difference between Mexico and the United States and France and Britain is that both Mexico and the United States are a lot bigger than the European countries; there's a lot of scope for simply moving from, say, New York to California, or Baja to Veracruz if you want a change of scenery and conditions, and it's bound to be easier than going from New York to Veracruz (or vice versa). Again, this will be less true along the borders--Brownsville and Matamortos, San Diego and Tijuana, those are going to see a lot of binational activity, with Mexicans living in the United States and Americans living in Mexico--but that has been true IOTL, as I said.
Being federalist (at least in theory) also helps with this, because it means that the laws are different in different places, which can be useful for some people...
I envision that Central America is going to unfold reasonably peaceable, except for El Salvador. Nicaragua, both because the United States won't tolerate serious political unrest and because the government is at least nominally democratic, will probably go after a few weeks of protests. The Unidados will probably even stick around as a major political party, like the PRI in Mexico. Honduras will have a fairly rapid transition though, although much more of a real revolution; the rank and file of the Honduran army and much of the population is far more sympathetic to the cofradias than to a banana company puppet junta, and the regime might find itself very isolated very quickly. Guatemala could be bloody, and El Salvador definitely is: it's basically Natal with Spanish and, if possible, and even more noxious regime.
Still, American influence might actually be beneficial here. While corporate power is going to be calling for propping up the existing regimes, I'd expect a pretty strong argument from the Left for American intervention on the side of the revolutionaries, to stabilize the transition. That should balance out to at least the United States staying out for the most part. Without American subsidies, and with liberation theology-inspired groups in the Afro-Atlantic network more than happy to smuggle arms to Fraternalist revolutionaries, Central America may be spared the drawn-out bloodshed of OTL.
Then again, it's all up to JE
To be fair, the US had a vaguely similar situation regarding the Middle East under Obama, IOTL. Results are, well, questionable to say the least. What I mean to say is that when interventionist pushes for different sides balance out into inaction within a major power, the actual result is more likely to be inconsistent (if not blundering) action than real inaction. But my example is not necessarily very fitting.
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Damn, I never noticed that... but I'm willing to bet some of TTL's students will. I wonder if the Yoruba lands will be referred to collectively as "the Cat" in the same way that Italy is called the Boot. "I live in Lagos - you know, over by the Cat's hind paw..."
IOTL, the cat is Iran. Seriously.
That could pull the Mexicans both ways, given that they don't want their autonomous province in Chan Santa Cruz getting too many ideas. They'd probably push for a princely state such as the Yucatan Maya and the Mapuche have.
True enough. If there are enough judges - say, 50 or so British Law Lords and another 50 from the Commonwealth - it should be possible to have sittings in every region a few times a year. Some of the judges from outside Britain could have permanent offices in their home countries as well as London, enabling leave applications to be filed, injunctions granted, etc. (That's done on a smaller scale by the Court of Appeals judges in New York, most of whom have chambers in their home cities as well as Albany.)
Fair point. Even a richer Mexico than OTL, though, would probably still be poorer than the United States, and even a moderate difference in wealth can attract migration - for instance, there's a lot of it in West Africa between poor countries and neighboring countries that are marginally less poor.
Then again, there might be a good deal of economic convergence between northern Mexico and the southwestern United States - even in OTL, Nuevo León has a per capita GDP higher than some of the EU-10 states, and ITTL it might be as rich as south Texas or at least New Mexico. That would tend to draw economic migrants there rather than the US.
I was thinking mainly of the borders - possibly the emergence of an expanded border region, with binational families as common in Houston or Monterrey ITTL as they are in Matamoros or Brownsville IOTL.
With the head somewhere around Tabriz?
I could definitely see that developing, with air travel making it easy to spend weekends in Mexico or vice-versa. It would perhaps be somewhat less common than along the border itself, just because distance always makes things harder, but I imagine there would be a fair bit of it. Obviously it also depends on the ease of movement, but historically that was not really much trouble (harder than Canada-US and Schengen, yes, but still very easy), so unless drug traffickers and massive illegal immigration show up...
Something tells me if Mexicans were to be replaced by anyone as a swarming poor immigrant wave, it will be Asians, both east and south. That'll be huge for American crime scene !
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Hmmm. Like the cartoon that inspired Flocc's signature line?
I am not sure of what you are referring to, even after having looked at Flocc's signature again.
Oops. I think it was a former signature of his. Something along the lines of 'Privyet, am sitting on cat. Is good' from a Victorian era cartoon showing the Russian bear sitting on a prostrate Persian lion, while British and French ??? characters watch. I think.
The East Asians were already there in the 19th century, and family and village ties will continue to bring them in; Indians might also find the United States attractive as an English-speaking country with recognizable legal and commercial practices. Those from Nusantara are more likely to go to Holland or Germany, but a few will find their way here, possibly through Pacific mercantile connections.
Afro-Caribbeans too. And they'll all contribute to the crime scene in one way or another - American organized crime ITTL will be a very multiethnic affair.
This one, maybe? (Upon checking, I see it was.)