North America "destined" to be developed, Latin America "doomed" to be backward?

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A few critical PoDs are being missed here: Have Amazonia's civilizations not collapse like the Mississippians but stay around to fight like the Mesoamericans and the Inka. With that Amazonia becomes a fertile and prosperous area. Other things that could work into a syncratic culture that develops between the Indigenous Amazonians and the Europeans, such as the adoption of crossbows and writing.

When you say Amazonians are you referring exclusively to tribes in the Amazon, or more generally to non-Inka South American societies?
 
The problem was, to some extent, the way the Spanish ran their vast colonies for over three centuries. It's a lot easier to get another power (or multiple powers) control what we in OTL call Latin America than it is to change the Spanish approach to imperialism. Say that the early French colonies in South America fare better, likewise with the Dutch, and you have not only a non-Spanish/Portuguese Brazil but also a much weaker Spanish control over the Andes region. Assuming that competition over South America and the silver trade sparks wars every generation or so, which is likely, this might give the various Indian groups chances to rebel. In the best possible situation, a series of protectorates and independent states in the Andes with decent infrastructure is possible. Worst case scenario, the Spanish crush the rebellions, but still have too weak a hold on the area to fully institute the encomienda system.

Alternatively, you could have the silver trade collapse due to even heavier Caribbean piracy than OTL, to the point that no Spanish city with any concentration of wealth along the coast be safe from raids.
 
That doesn't explain the OTL fate of Argentina and Chile, both of which have fairly European-like geography, climate, resources, etc.

What? Argentina and Chile had tiny amounts of industrial materials like iron and coal, or much energy resources at all, are much further from Europe, and form much smaller interconnected market regions. They are not remotely comparable to North America :rolleyes:
 
What? Argentina and Chile had tiny amounts of industrial materials like iron and coal, or much energy resources at all, are much further from Europe, and form much smaller interconnected market regions. They are not remotely comparable to North America :rolleyes:

Its my understanding that the lower Andes between the two states have substantial iron and coal deposits, but the coal in particular is somewhat inferior in quality to European or North American, and they're rather difficult to get to prior to industrial-era tech.

I am referring to the slash and char practicing settled societies of the Amazon Basin.

Well, like the Mississippians, the Amazonian tribes collapsed due to the introduction of European diseases, as well as invasive species like pigs. Consider that when the first European explorers sailed up the Amazon they saw villages and small city-states everywhere, but just a few decades later there was no evidence of such and the earlier claims were written off. To save the Amazonians you'd have to make some very far back PODs to affect the native's genetics, which could potentially butterfly much of native history. I actually opened a thread on the subject when I first joined the community.
 
Not at all. Spain's luck in OTL was pretty exception, I'm sure people in other universes would laugh if we posted it, dubbing it an implausible "Spain-wank". Without a PoD pre-1400s Amazonia and Patagonia are always going to a bit less settled and developed, but La Plata, Brazil, the former Incan Empire, Guyana/Venezuala north coast under less supressive rule could've flourished. Likewise, imagine if the CSA had survived in North America (or some other slave state), or if Britain tried hard to repress or assimilate Quebec.
 
A few critical PoDs are being missed here: Have Amazonia's civilizations not collapse like the Mississippians but stay around to fight like the Mesoamericans and the Inka. With that Amazonia becomes a fertile and prosperous area. Other things that could work into a syncratic culture that develops between the Indigenous Amazonians and the Europeans, such as the adoption of crossbows and writing.

Not going to happen, sadly. In addition to the disease waves most natives had to cope with, the Amazonians also had to deal with the establishment of tropical diseases from Africa like yellow fever and malaria, both an order of magnitude more virulent than most European diseases. They're doomed as soon as someone starts importing slaves to Brazil.
 
Do Argentina and Chile have better economies and quality of life than the others LA countries?

Generally speaking, and on a long-term perspective, yes, along with Uruguay I think.

However, it is worth noting that much of Latin America IS currently developing A LOT, both in the sense of stronger civil societies and stabler democracies, and in terms of economic growth. Brazil is going to be a great power in the foreseeable future and MERCOSUR will be one of the largest market in the world in perspective. Not as great as an Asean+3 thing, probably but still with more promising outlooks than NAFTA itself in the long term.
So the area lagged behind other places for several reasons, but it is recovering. Also, we should observe that LA was the seat of the MORE developed and complex pre-columbian societies; and this was among the reasons for Spain to take it and leave North America to its own devices. So, there is not geographical determination in itself, but only, possibly, in relation with Europe.
 
Maybe pre-columbian societies were MORE developed and complex because european crops weren't available. Once these were introduced then American temperate areas slowly but inexorably had to take the lead over the american tropical areas.
 

yofie

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Not at all: it annoys me, for instance, when people imply that the only way for Argentina to become a developed country was for the British invasion of 1806-1807 to succeed and for Argentina to become a British colony, when in fact, despite the Spanish colonial legacy, Argentina was doing just fine until the 1940s when Peron took over. Democratic development in South America only lagged 10-20 years behind Southern Europe, and some Latin American countries have shown impressive economic growth figures in the last 20 years.

Argentina didn't do fine from the 1820s to the early 1860s - the endless civil wars between federalists and unitarists, the Rosas dictatorship/the Mazorca, etc. It was from 1865 or so until the 1930s/1940s that Argentina did just fine.
 

katchen

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Perhaps one of Spanish America's failings in the late 19th Century was that it lacked a Bismarck or Bismarcks. Argentina did well in the 19th Century. Argentina was able to attract several million European immigrants in the 19th Century. But Argentina, for all of it's success was not able to unify the Southern Cone (Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, even Peru) into a nation that could hold it's own with and stand up to the United States. And by the beginning of the 20th Century, in Latin America, that was what was necessary.
An Argentina that could take over the Southern Cone and Peru (or even Brazil, conquering all), a Colombia that reconstitutes Gran Colombia by retaking Venezuela and Ecuador and then perhaps Central America all the way to Mexico by the late 1880s, all of which providing the United States with a fait accompli by the time the US is strong enough militarily and economically to look beyond it's borders; that is what is necessary for Latin America to meet the challenges of the 20th Century.
And that is the best we can do in this pre-1900 section. Other South American TLs could work, in which, for example, a Sweden that rules Norway provides the UK with real competiton and either establishes colonies in Southern South America or displaces Great Britain into establishing colonies in Southern South America. But then these areas are not Latin America, are they?
The most serious issues Latin America had to face must be addressed in the post 1900 section since they involve the role of the United States in perpetuating kleptocracies, dependence on commodities and the cheap labor to extract them and continued underdevelopment in Latin America. Development in Latin America can, in many ways be seen as something that has occurred in spite of US policies in many Administrations designed to prevent it. But that's a matter for Post 1900.
 
Perhaps one of Spanish America's failings in the late 19th Century was that it lacked a Bismarck or Bismarcks. Argentina did well in the 19th Century.
Indeed, in the 1860s Europe had Bismark, and the US had Lincoln.
South America? Solano Lopez.
 
A clue is the type of government

Brazil and Mexico are strong economies and what they have in common with the US and Canada is the federal system of government. From the very beginning most countries in Latin America had centralized authorities and the result was a total lack of economic and social policies while in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico a federal system allowed regional centers of trade, industry and culture to emerge.

The reason why Argentina today does not follow Brazil nor Mexico in the economic boom has again to do with the insane tendency to centralize everything around the capital city thus neglecting the rest of the country.

Just to contribute a little more, at the time of independence both, North and South America did have an educated elite. The real POD was that in Latin America (Mexico and below) this elite wasnt' really interesting in improving their newly creted countries but rather to duplicate Hispanic lifestyle at the expense of social exploitation.
 
why did Argentina need to stand up to the United States? For most of the south american countries, failure to modernize/industrialize had nothing to do with the size of it's wank. It had to do with culture. Almost all countries were big enough with enough resources to develop industry. Argentina's problems had nothing to do with not being big enough.

North America, especially the northeast, were a culture of education, middle class, and small business. South America was almost entirely an extraction culture (as someone above said) designed to enrich a small percentage of the population and a few back in the mother country. Not saying the early US was a bastion of knowledge from top to bottom, but SA was almost entirely illiterate and ignorant, while laboring in a culture that didn't foster industrialization (with it's own brand of using/abusing undereducated masses). Upon independence, virtually every country were tremendously lacking in almost any industry that didn't involve enriching Spain/Portugal. That was a significant disadvantage, as compared to the US. Once the cycle was started, it proved tough to emerge from.

SA is woefully lacking in useful coal, and that would have been a drawback no matter what the culture was. Otherwise, there are plenty of natural resources throughout the continent.

In the mid twentieth century, when south american gov'ts started saying screw the big robber baron industries who were perpetuating non stop poverty/worker abuse, and started nationalizing, the US threw it's military might around to ensure that US corporations could still feed at the trough at the expense of any country that didn't fly the stars and stripes. However, this doesn't excuse why south american countries didn't already have a foothold in industrialization a century after independence.
 

CalBear

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