Mexcio or Canada: Which is more likely to be completely annexed to America?

More likely to be annexed


  • Total voters
    205
Status
Not open for further replies.
Yes, but it's heavily concentrated into a local area and with a long history and culture of its own completely separate from the Anglo-American.

I know that, I was saying that if we did annex all of Mexico for whatever reason then the population would be a quarter at the most but not half.

Anyway I think Mexico was more likely to be annexed by the US. Maybe it’s because I'm not being creative enough but I can't recall any moment in OTL that we came even remotely close to annexing Canada at least through force. I don't care if they speak English or not the entire British Empire had there back, the challenge a military expedition would only be rivaled in OTL by the Nazis trying to annex Russia, and even if our ragtag army managed to win Canada then so what? All we get is a huge ice cube that few people would want to settle in. Woo hoo. Sure maybe we could take Canada in a world war like event but seriously I don't see how that would be easier then Mexico.

Now we could have annexed Mexico if we wanted to the problem was we just literally didn't want to. And I'm not saying it's impossible to annex Canada I just think that Mexico would be easier then Canada.
 

Skokie

Banned
Quebec is so freaking lame, with their relative peacefulness and all.

They make us francowankers' jobs real hard! (At least until the 1960s.)
 
Last edited:

MacCaulay

Banned
This is kind of an unrealistic question anyway, and it should probably be put in the ASB section.

But as it stands...Mexico.

Seriously: I know this is going to sound like I'm being a jerk. But as a guy who used to live in Canada, you folks who think it's Canada are wrong. Period. It's that simple. The Quebecois didn't want to be in America. That's why they didn't join when they had the chance in the Revolution.
The Canadians have had their share of problems, but least among them is a lack of national identity. If anything, they've had more of one than the Mexicans have. They didn't have to give up or sell whole parts of their country to another nation.
 
Barring some fluke that sees it annexed in the 1770's Canada is very unlikely to be annexed. After that its a mix of Catholic French speakers and refugee loyalists who if they can agree on one thing its that they don't want to be ruled from Washington. Also, remembering this is the pre-1900 forum, they have the small factor of British backing.:D

Mexico is unlikely because of the higher population of non-WASPs but still markedly more likely than Canada. Its conquerable and a fair number of people who dreamed of conquest in that time period never bothered themselves about what the locals might think about it. Hence may not stay conquered for long and could get very messy but definitely far, far more possible than Britain.

Steve
 
Again,

Darkling said:
This is like asking whether I'm more likely to spontaneously grow gills or grow wings.

Also Canada is implausible because the full force of the British Empire will be upon the U.S. if they try anything fishy. Embargos + Sepoys being shipped to stomp out the rebellious colonials? Cool.
 
Like it was said before,I doubt that Mexico would be annexed. The reason was why Mexico wasn't taken at the end of the Mexican-America war,was basically because of racial reasons. The USA did not want a non European people under their flag,Canada seems more likely due to their shared British colonial heritage.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Like it was said before,I doubt that Mexico would be annexed. The reason was why Mexico wasn't taken at the end of the Mexican-America war,was basically because of racial reasons. The USA did not want a non European people under their flag,Canada seems more likely due to their shared British colonial heritage.

But the shared colonial heritage didn't seem to help in 1776 when the Continentals crossed into Quebec, or in 1866 when the Fenians crossed into Ontario.

Thousands of Canadians fought for the Union during the Civil War. (NOT the Confederacy, as some "What if the British entered the Civil War?" folks might want to remember) After the war ended, over 90 percent of them went home.

If they liked the idea of America more than Canada, then they would've stayed there.

Just like I had that choice when I served in the Canadian Forces. I went back to America. It doesn't mean I don't like Canada, it just means that I'm a member of a group that has a national identity. And even in the 1700s and 1800s, the Canadians did.
 
Like it was said before,I doubt that Mexico would be annexed. The reason was why Mexico wasn't taken at the end of the Mexican-America war,was basically because of racial reasons.

That's an example where the US could have annexed Mexico, but chose not to. There is no example in OTL where the US could have annexed Canada, but chose not to.

otL's US invasion of Mexico in OTL was a dramatic success. The attempts to invade Canada we not.
 
Mexico was the only one we could have annexed... taking Canada would mean taking on Britain, and pre-1900, the USA can't take on Britain and win... Mexico had no one backing them up...
 

Eurofed

Banned
Mexico was the only one we could have annexed... taking Canada would mean taking on Britain, and pre-1900, the USA can't take on Britain and win... Mexico had no one backing them up...

The assumptions you make about Britain successfully holding on Canada like dear life are unreasonably broad IMO.

History has shown that Britain was eventually willing to give up most (and the most valuable part) of British North America after it failed to keep it in the ARW. Canada itself or keeping a strategic foothold in North America were surely not more valuable to British imperial interests than the 13 colonies or the Ohio-Mississippi Valley. Therefore, it is wholly reasonable to assume that an ARW where Canada joined the Patriots, or was militarly seized by them, would have ended up in London giving it up in 1783 like the rest of BNA.

Likewise, it stands to reason that if America had waged the early War of 1812 more efficiently, conquering Canada in 1812-13, a Britain still ankle-deep in the really important fight against Napoleon would have taken it as another confirmation after the ARW that British North America was a lost cause, and conceded Canada in a compromise peace.

Last but not least, it is not unreasonble to imagine that the appropriate pre-1900 PoD may make the US join the CPs during WWI, and this would surely end up in the defeat of the Entente and American conquest of Canada.
 
Last edited:
Inasmuch as the US never seriously considered annexing all of Mexico but tried twice to conquer Canada, an AH in which the USA includes all of Canada is much more likely. Also, during the 1776-1815 period the US would have only had to conquer a few key settlements and forts relatively close to the US to assure its eventual control of the rest of what became modern "Canada" in OTL. By the 1840's when the US attacked Mexico, they would have had to conquer and assimilate the large and densly populated areas of central and southern Mexico. Not only would this be difficult, few people seriously advocated this.

But I didn't vote. The whole question is typical Americawank. A more interesting and realistic question would be - if the USA never acheived its independence, where would the eventual border between British North America and Mexico/Spain be?
 
The assumptions you make about Britain successfully holding on Canada like dear life are unreasonably broad IMO.

you can search for and read a zillion other threads on this topic... all of them basically stumble on the fact that Britain's navy can just too easily whomp the USN and blockade the US into submission... the US just has no counter to this.
Last but not least, it is not unreasonble to imagine that the appropriate pre-1900 PoD may make the US join the CPs during WWI, and this would surely end up in the defeat of the Entente and American conquest of Canada.
Maybe, but this is outside the pre-1900 setting... and it's also the basis behind Turtledove's 'timeline 191' series... :)
 
Inasmuch as the US never seriously considered annexing all of Mexico but tried twice to conquer Canada

but Mexico was the one we could have done... we had beaten Mexico in a war, there was talk about annexing the whole country... whereas we never came close to conquering Canada... so, if you have to pick a POD to annex either one, the one for Mexico is far easier, since we were halfway there already...

Of course, this doesn't mean the annexation would have been peaceful or successful, just the most likely to have actually happened...
 

Eurofed

Banned
you can search for and read a zillion other threads on this topic... all of them basically stumble on the fact that Britain's navy can just too easily whomp the USN and blockade the US into submission... the US just has no counter to this.

The blockade argument has no value if Canada is seized during ARW, and about the War of 1812 it is very very questionable that a Britain still ankle-deep in the Napoleonic Wars would find Canada really so valuable in early 1800s to the British Empire that if it is lost in 1812-13, they would prefer to maintain a two-front war for another couple years, and continue a war which has got hopeless on land, with the exhaustion of the Napoleonic Wars, for just as long (since in the OTL War of 1812-15 the blockade did not bring US to its knees, so it would take until 1816 or 1817 at least) just to recover it after Napoleon is done, instead of cutting losses and conceding it at the peace table as soon as it is lost, in order to concentrate against France. Really, it seems more like Canadian nationalist wishful thinking than anything else to me. Canada and its motley crowd of Loyalists and French Catholics was nowhere that precious or dear to Britain neither in 1783 nor in 1812.
 
Last edited:
I actually think if America is going to grab Mexico, it has to be in the 1800s or 1810s. Hamilton's Army of the Republic marches to aid revolutionaries?
 
but Mexico was the one we could have done... we had beaten Mexico in a war, there was talk about annexing the whole country... whereas we never came close to conquering Canada... so, if you have to pick a POD to annex either one, the one for Mexico is far easier, since we were halfway there already...

Of course, this doesn't mean the annexation would have been peaceful or successful, just the most likely to have actually happened...

I'm not sure I agree. The population of "Canada" in the late 18th century was very small and not particularly well defended. For AH purposes I think it is easier to hypothesize a situation in which many "Canadians" support or at least don't resist the American invasion in the ARW than one in which the US conquers and assimilates all of Mexico in 1840-50. Both scenarios require some unlikely attitute shifts, but the Mexico one seems to require more to me.
 

Skokie

Banned
How the hell are you going to annex a large in population, self-consciously nationalistic, Spanish-speaking, peasant-filled, far-away, Catholic, mestizo, revolutionary nation like Mexico? :confused: You'd have to rule it as a colony, and end up with a Philippines situation on steroids.

Nope. Ain't going to happen, unless a super-early POD, like, one that butterflies away Spain's New World empire.

Canada is far more likely, given its proximity to the core of US settlement and its people's lack of a revolutionary/nationalistic heritage. It wouldn't have been a cakewalk. They did repel the colonists/US three times, I think. But if they just kept at it, they'd eventually give up and we'd all have been one happy family. ;)
 
I'm not sure I agree. The population of "Canada" in the late 18th century was very small and not particularly well defended. For AH purposes I think it is easier to hypothesize a situation in which many "Canadians" support or at least don't resist the American invasion in the ARW than one in which the US conquers and assimilates all of Mexico in 1840-50. Both scenarios require some unlikely attitute shifts, but the Mexico one seems to require more to me.

How the hell are you going to annex a large in population, self-consciously nationalistic, Spanish-speaking, peasant-filled, far-away, Catholic, mestizo, revolutionary nation like Mexico? :confused: You'd have to rule it as a colony, and end up with a Philippines situation on steroids.
)

ah, but I'm not saying "assimilated"... we're just talking annexation here... and compared to Canada, the US was on the edge of annexing all of Mexico... to be sure, it's likely the US would have retreated from the central/southern parts of Mexico later on (or kept them in a constant state of rebellion/suppressing rebellion). Whereas Canada... never came close to conquering it. The OP here is asking which is 'more likely', not 'which would be more successful'...
 
But the shared colonial heritage didn't seem to help in 1776 when the Continentals crossed into Quebec, or in 1866 when the Fenians crossed into Ontario.

Thousands of Canadians fought for the Union during the Civil War. (NOT the Confederacy, as some "What if the British entered the Civil War?" folks might want to remember) After the war ended, over 90 percent of them went home.

If they liked the idea of America more than Canada, then they would've stayed there.

Just like I had that choice when I served in the Canadian Forces. I went back to America. It doesn't mean I don't like Canada, it just means that I'm a member of a group that has a national identity. And even in the 1700s and 1800s, the Canadians did.

Indeed,if the Canadians wanted to join America..they would have. It must be the whole idea of shared heritage,I can imagine many Americans and Canadians are British cousins. But it's the whole idea of Canada being there,I've said it in other threads like this.

As for Mexico,the USA did take a lot of land during the Mexican-American war..so why more? I wonder....
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top