Speculation: Greatest City or Nation that Never Was

We have "lol no coal" though, so industrialization would be very hard, coupled with the whole scars of colonization it would a tough call to be a great power, even with all the stuff we have underground.
Depends on whether or not industrialization would come by the mid 19th century or later, due to the invention of combustion engines. Brazil already went through some spurts of industrialization during the late empire and some periods of the old republic, as evidenced by the projects of the Baron of Mauá.
Hadn't Brazil suffered a republican coup in 1889, it could have avoided a period of backwards, pseudo-feudal agrarian oligarchism. Industrialization and proper democratization could have happened earlier.
 
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