US annexes all of Mexico in 1848: what does the US look like today?

Brunaburh

Banned
I suppose the conversation would have gone like this:

US: Hello, me and my 50 thousand men with muskets would like you to dissolve your country of 7.5 million.
Mexico: Yes, that seems reasonable.
 
Guerilla warfare only works if there's an outside sponsor for it. The US covering mexican debts means the euros won't do it so forget about it and stick to the topic of the OP.
 
The only way I could see this occurring without killing both Mexico and the US is if the US Empire it; they use the established factions in Mexico [centralists, liberals, federalists, etc...] and make their own bordering version of the British Raj, even then it is unrealistic, but it could make for a good TL
 

Brunaburh

Banned
Guerilla warfare only works if there's an outside sponsor for it. The US covering mexican debts means the euros won't do it so forget about it and stick to the topic of the OP.

That Guerrilla thing is objectively false.

The US did not have the manpower or political institutions capable of administrating a colonial empire of 7.5 million subjects. There was more than enough Mexican territory free to resist the US in conventional and Guerrilla operations, the US controlled only a small part of the territory of Mexico. The thing about these threads is that nobody ever, ever wants to propose a mechanism by which Mexico agrees to dissolve itself, a peace treaty where a government agrees to cede a large territory in which 80k of its citizens live in exchange for a sum of money is a long way from agreeing to annexation.

It's baffling, I can't think of any other historical situation where the board does not expect an explanation of how something happens as a pre-condition. But Lobo marino is a special snowflake whose practicalities must not be discussed, lest she melt.
 

Brunaburh

Banned
The only way I could see this occurring without killing both Mexico and the US is if the US Empire it; they use the established factions in Mexico [centralists, liberals, federalists, etc...] and make their own bordering version of the British Raj, even then it is unrealistic, but it could make for a good TL

Except they can't, because they need 300k troops and have no means of getting them without conscription or arming shitloads of Mexicans.
 
"But Guerillas" used in any context before the 1950s/1960s strikes me as the absolute laziest possible reasoning to try cutting a discussion short that I keep seeing on here and yet it's not considered trolling, somehow. :idontcare:
 

Deleted member 67076

So, one thing that's not been mentioned is if the introduction of Mexico to the Union means a dramatic shifting of economic patterns further south to the point where you're ironically dramatically strengthening the Mexican heartland in a way that makes assimilation and long term stability harder to keep. Mainly because, in essence this just kickstarts the Porfiriato 30 years earlier. Another good example of comparison might be the Mineral Revolution in South Africa.

Lets assume the Mexican liberal collaboration holds out at first and Mexican conservatives and large landowners are co opted through Foreign Direct Investment that lines their pockets enough that they can cast their ballots with ruling American elites for the time being and make the transition into Argentina style big landowners who also start buying into industry with new industrial barons on the bloc joining the elite circle. Stability rules for the next decade and change, probably more.

Ok, what now?

As others have pointed out, if we have the addition of Mexico it means economic patterns swing south to the point where the Deep South has more industrial pockets than before (and is now linked to Mexico's labor force/markets/etc) who can now use their capital -alongside European investment to jumpstart the local economies- then Mexico as a region is going to SO MUCH wealthier to the point it will dramatically impact America at large. We can surmise that the basic extraction patterns will be established:

-the restarting of silver mining (now with modern techniques). This is especially important.
-the formation of vast new cotton estates in the Northwest- which may be owned by Southern slaveowners using slave labor draggled along- or not; considering local and immigrant labor will be available soon enough the instant rails are established with the heartland further south that's full of peasants eager for more wages
-in general, tons of newly opened mines (Pacific Mexico is full of minerals).
-cash crops; mostly in the Yucatan but also in the Gulf Coast. Off the top of my head, this includes coffee, henequen, chicle, and sugar.
-industrialization of the Valley of Mexico proper as it has the largest population and densely packed cities (and will soon become a major center for remittance flows)
-a boom in rail development in order to get extractive industries to their buyers up in California, the American South, and the Northeast
-port investments for similar reasons
-all the various secondary economic activities to support these major ones such as housing, luxury goods, clothing, and so forth.

In short, these are all high profit, and extensively labor intensive economic activities. There's going to be immense demand for getting the rural peasantry and any immigrants into these sectors (and therefore incentivizing them to learn Spanish and assimilate into Mexican culture), for hacienda owners to modernize themselves and diversify the economy (given the Porfiriato's experience, they did this quite well), and for extensive immigration to come south into Mexico to meet the demand. Immigration from either the Caribbean, Asia, or Europe. (I suspect mostly the latter two). Combined with the end of decades long warfare and the assumption of Mexican debt into the US's name, and this frees up so much extra capital for Mexicans themselves to invest in. In short, a dramatic economic boom thats going to feed into a massive population boom as wages increase, food production increases, the death rate decrease, more people move in, and the demographic transition kickstarts. It would not surprise me if Mexico reached its 1910 population by the late 1870s (basically from 7.5 million to 15 million, and quickly surpassing the Confederate population for comparison)

You might wonder, well what does this mean for slaveowners who would likely move their slaves west? It looks good at first, but it really isn't. Slavery is incredibly expensive both in maintaining people's food/clothing/medicine/etc, and buying (and now the price of slaves will skyrocket since there's so much demand for it out west but importation is negligible). To say nothing of the security costs and ensuring slaves don't escape south or north. Immigrants and peasants are going to be in the long run cheaper due to less maintenance costs (and probably start up costs in transferring all those people over). To say nothing of using non slave labor just looking better from a marketing standpoint.

I don't expect tensions over slavery to diminish, now there's an additional front of wage workers who will dramatically dislike competition from slaves alongside the various moral arguments. If anything it'll probably flare up as before and the American Civil War pops up. From there, it depends on how big Mexican nationalism is. My money is it'd come back in a big way, since Mexico proper would have been knitted together into a functioning unit in about a decade and a half of all these changes.

Come the war, you might get a 3 way civil war with the Confederacy in worse shape. Incredibly hard to say after that, given all the potential variations.
 
"But Guerillas" used in any context before the 1950s/1960s strikes me as the absolute laziest possible reasoning to try cutting a discussion short that I keep seeing on here and yet it's not considered trolling, somehow. :idontcare:
I mean, the Seminole wars lasted decades and cost millions of dollars to prosecute, and that was just a few thousand natives. It stretches belief that the US would be able to summon the political will to put down a Mexican rebellion which would lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of American troops and be a massive cash sink.
 
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economic considerations

These kinds of considerations are exactly why I had 1) dixie-mexican labor connections leading to slavery dying in the 1880s 2) an analogue to the great migration to the north/dixie(the bottleneck for factories there tl was not enough slaves+VERY FEW free people happening in my speculations.

I also had tensions peaking in the 1860s and an ACW being avoided thanks to well, what you said on railroads, combined with tariff/infrastructure investment funding commitments being given to yankees to even just get mexican annexation/the spanish american war passed.
 

Brunaburh

Banned
"But Guerillas" used in any context before the 1950s/1960s strikes me as the absolute laziest possible reasoning to try cutting a discussion short that I keep seeing on here and yet it's not considered trolling, somehow. :idontcare:

The US controlled Mexico city, the Camino real and a road from Veracruz to Mexico city. It also had a strip of coastal territory from Texas down to Tampico. Why and how do you see a government accepting Annexation under that situation? There may be a way, but I can't see it. So your job, as a proponent of this theory, is to explain how it happens, what changes the attitude of the Mexicans and the Americans. If there is no treaty, and even if there is one, the US needs to extend political and military control over a country of 7.5 million people and 770,000 square miles (in addition to the near uninhabited by Mexicans territory further north, ceded OTL). I reckon that requires hundreds of thousands of men even if there is no organized resistance, which there would be. The US can't afford that, and I doubt they can even politically do it in the 1840s.

So, sorry, I am not trying to shut down debate, but I'm trying to keep it based on history rather than fantasy. By all means propose a scenario by which the US annexes Mexico, but don't just go "US gets Mexico" (waves hand).
 
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Now that I think about it, Sobel's USM and espectially the version of the For All Nails posters' canon, but majority anglophone strikes me as what the US would look like in these kinds of TLs. Instead of being the most prudish/moralistic portion of the anglosphere*, the United States would end up being an anglophone latin american country, even if it's the most stable/richest by far instead due to demographic/cultural reasons*.

* The most xenophobic portion of western civilization.
* Even if the US is majority european. My guess is still nominal 'white' majority but TTL's "white" wouldn't automatically exclude someone who say looks italian because of a spanish last name, for example.
 

Deleted member 67076

These kinds of considerations are exactly why I had 1) dixie-mexican labor connections leading to slavery dying in the 1880s 2) an analogue to the great migration to the north/dixie(the bottleneck for factories there tl was not enough slaves+VERY FEW free people happening in my speculations.

I also had tensions peaking in the 1860s and an ACW being avoided thanks to well, what you said on railroads, combined with tariff/infrastructure investment funding commitments being given to yankees to even just get mexican annexation/the spanish american war passed.
I think that'd delay rather a civil war at best rather than prevent it. Because the political considerations of being outflanked and outvoted without needing the Southern states are still going to happen and the fear of slaveowners to have to give up slavery won't go away. If anything now there'll be a two way outflanking, and soon enough much of Mexican investments are going to be self funded (granted I doubt London and Paris would be too happy to see the American behemoth become the world's largest economy that quickly) after the new middle class sprouts up with and supplant old liberals with their ideas of nationalism and identity.

You have now not just 2 but around 3 or 4 major power centers (4 in that the Pacific Coast from San Francisco to Baja might become its own megaregion due to earlier integration and money flowing around) in the republic that have to be accounted for, and that makes a potentially unstable situation pretty quickly. Its like how Iraq has to account for Kurdistan, the Gulf, and Mesopotamia all at once, and each are pretty different areas.
 
the new US bits of Latin America's showing that it's possible to keep down darker peasants WITHOUT slavery would imo relax tensions on the dixie side of things. You don't need as much controls on say sharecroppers as you do slaves to get work out of them.
 

Deleted member 67076

the new US bits of Latin America's showing that it's possible to keep down darker peasants WITHOUT slavery would imo relax tensions on the dixie side of things. You don't need as much controls on say sharecroppers as you do slaves to get work out of them.
Feeding an ever growing set of imperial expansions is going to bring a coalition upon America sooner rather than later. In addition to having new coalitions formed against whats going to be a colonial regime.
 
Debts of euro creditors being paid, combined with the US's having only relatively moderate goals and not say hemispheric conquest would smooth it over ALOT.
 
You make a good point, and I'd also gather that you have a better understanding of Mexican history than I personally do. But I still reason that the southern tier states would be Free Soil (which isn't the same as Abolitionism, of course). Look at it this way; the northern tier of Mexican states are probably going to be swamped with Southern slave holders who are going to put economic pressure on the large Landholders there and try to drive them out. In the eyes of many Mexicans, the 'bad guys' are going to be the Southrons; Northerners are certainly part of the equation, there is no question, but they are going to be less of direct competition and, as a result, less of an immediate threat.

One way to keep the Southrons out, is by making sure that the territory - and later state - that you live in is Free and doesn't allow slavery. This not only allows you to entrench your own cultural heritage and identity, but it also goes a way towards preserving your region. Secondly, by allying with Free Soiler forces, the Mexican states may be able to gain those concessions that want to help maintain their own position. At least that's my (probably badly worded) reasoning.

So if we take an 1848 conquest you think that Mexico would be so integrated in the USA by the 1860's that it would take active part on either side in a civil war? By that time the most I see the Mexicans doing is rebel for independence using the chance. If they dont I think they will sit it out and dont join either side. Which side they will be officially part of will greatly depend of the occupying troops - I still expect a significant military presence by the USA in its new Mexican territories.
 
Not really, though. In this case, the Spanish speakers are not an immigrant community moving into a English-majority nation. Though they would remain a minority - over all - in the nation, in the regions where they live they would remain the overwhelming majority.

This was exactly the case of Germans in the Midwest and they still ended up speaking English. We're also seeing this now in the Southwest.

Also, unlike an immigrant community, the social and cultural infrastructure would remain well in place and favoring the Spanish speakers in the Mexican core region (though not in the northern tier of states). In fact, if any Anglos moved into that region, it would likely be they who would be acting in the role of an immigrant community and, in order to do business and take part in governance and social life, it would be they who would likely need to learn Spanish. As others have said, the Quebec analogy is actually pretty apt. And there's really no need to think that America is in somewhat handicapped in that it is impossible for it to function as a multi-lingual nation.

Given the fact that American government structures will replace the previous ones, the Mexican population IOTL remained small until well within the 20th Century, and the fact English still becomes the global lingua franca, English will become the predominant language within Mexico within a few generations.
 
Does Central America or any other area also get annexed? Is Spanish still spoken as a regional dialect or does it become akin to Pennsylvania Dutch? What do the NFL, MLS, and music scenes look like?

"You'll have a taco truck on every street corner!"
 

Deleted member 67076

Debts of euro creditors being paid, combined with the US's having only relatively moderate goals and not say hemispheric conquest would smooth it over ALOT.
Moderate goals and being the second largest country on Earth with the largest economy/fastest growing population/propensity to annex vast swaths of territory are not compatable. Particularly when the Empire still keeps slaves.

Mexican Population snip
The factors that led to this were widespread poverty and instability, leading to a high death rate. Under any circumstances that lead to stability, sanitation improvements, and economic growth the Mexican population will begin to skyrocket as the demographic transition begins its start.

Combined with local landowners and law still being in Spanish on the state level, theres going to be great pressure for native migrant workers, immigrants, and investors to learn Spanish.
 
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