what if England hadn't become the global empire it did

Are this statements a joke? Have you never heard of Magnus Erikssons
Landslag?

As a matter of fact I have not. And since the only internet sources I can find on said document are in German or Swedish (languages I know nothing of), you'll have to enlighten me.

The majority of the population in almost every Hispano-American country is Mestizo, generally native with some white and black heritage mixed in, whereas in Anglo-American countries only a tiny number of natives survive, herded onto reservations. Quechua, Aymara, Nahuatl, Guarani and the Maya languages count their speakers in millions.

The essential purporse of most Spanish colonies was, originally, to make Conquistadors rich in gold and silver. You need people to mine the gold and silver, and the Catholic church also wanted to publish material in native languages to evangelise. Whereas the essential purpose of the British colonies was to make settlers rich in land, which requires other people being cleared off the land.

You're kidding me, right?

Why are there so many mestizos in Latin American countries? Oh, I'm sure the Natives were more than happy to just let the Spanish walktz right in and take whatever they wanted. A happy cultural exchange occurred starting with the tearing down of racial borders and Spanish men falling in love with Native beauties.

Dude, they were called Conquistadors for a reason. Yes, the Spanish needed labor, so they enslaved the Natives on their own land. In the former Inca Empire they sent hordes of people to Potosi to mine silver going directly to Spain. The Catholic Church tore down ever idol from Lima, melted it down, and sent it back to Spain. Of course, European diseases wiped out far too many of the Indians to really help some, so the Spanish purchased thousands upon thousands of African slaves to help keep their economy going long before the first cotton plantation in Dixie. I'm sure that was less-than-humane treatment.

After gold mining became a lower industry, life on a sugar plantation was probably the one place in the western hemisphere less enjoyable than life on a tobacco or cotton plantation. The class based system wasn't new to the Natives, but the new racial based hatred certainly was. The Natives were able to keep alive their language and culture because many of them were able to escape into the mountains with nothing of value. While they're not official reservations, they might as well be. Modern values and economics don't really serve the modern Latin governments well to bother the tribes, nor do they really wish contact with the outside world.

As for most Latin Americans, trace the ancestry far enough, it's mostly Spanish mixed with Native blood. Most of it is non consensual. And there reaches a point where you eventually get ancestors who are pure Indian and pure Spaniard. It's really not that far back in the ancestry. My grandfather is a steady mixture of Taino and African as far as I know. My grandmother's bloodline is basically Spaniard.

I'm not calling the English moral bastards when it comes to Indian Affairs. But they were the ones issuing the Proclamation Line of 1763 while the Spaniards had no such restrictions on what colonists could and couldn't do to the Natives.
 
You're kidding me, right?

Those language and ethnicity facts I cited are completely true and verifiable.

Why are there so many mestizos in Latin American countries? Oh, I'm sure the Natives were more than happy to just let the Spanish walktz right in and take whatever they wanted. A happy cultural exchange occurred starting with the tearing down of racial borders and Spanish men falling in love with Native beauties.

No, the conquistadors turned up wnating The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of and kept themselves busy shaggy native women and sending their men to work down mines. This is not fun, but it's not really worse than being raped (and quite a few of the interracial marriages which the Spanish encouraged actually were marriages), enslaved, and then driven off your lands and pretty much dying out.

Dude, they were called Conquistadors for a reason. Yes, the Spanish needed labor, so they enslaved the Natives on their own land. In the former Inca Empire they sent hordes of people to Potosi to mine silver going directly to Spain. The Catholic Church tore down ever idol from Lima, melted it down, and sent it back to Spain. Of course, European diseases wiped out far too many of the Indians to really help some, so the Spanish purchased thousands upon thousands of African slaves to help keep their economy going long before the first cotton plantation in Dixie. I'm sure that was less-than-humane treatment.

There was very little African slavery in the Andes. There was of course plenty of African slavery in the Spanish Caribbean, but the point is that even after the catastrophic effects of disease, the majority of Andeans were still of mostly native extraction.

They were indeed enslaved, and that's No Good, but again, it's not as bad as being enslaves and then subsequently expelled and nearly wiped out. You can get out of being enslaved, you can't get out of being dead. Call me when a native political movement is elected in the USA and adopts a native flag as co-official.

After gold mining became a lower industry, life on a sugar plantation was probably the one place in the western hemisphere less enjoyable than life on a tobacco or cotton plantation.

Slavery is always a repulsive system, but let's not play nationalist games with it. The worst slavery was on French Haiti, and Britain and Spain were equally enthusiastic partakers in the slave trade.

The class based system wasn't new to the Natives, but the new racial based hatred certainly was.

The Conquistadores were not tolerant progressives in the slightest, but the Spanish racial caste hierarchy is contrasted not with glroious British Meritocratic Egalitarianism but with a British model in which mixed marriages almost never ocurred, and natives basically had no rights at all, rather than proscribed ones.

The Natives were able to keep alive their language and culture because many of them were able to escape into the mountains with nothing of value.

Poppycock. The Catholic Church and the Jesuits were determined evangelisers and it was they who established the largest native langauges as literary ones. The first books to come off Mexico City's printing press were in Nahuatl. Many natives who had previously spoken something other than Nahuatl Quechua, or Aymara were evangelised in those languages, the languages of the great pre-Colombian empires, and ended up adopting them where they hadn't spoken them before.

While they're not official reservations, they might as well be. Modern values and economics don't really serve the modern Latin governments well to bother the tribes, nor do they really wish contact with the outside world.

You're talking about small Amazonian peoples who weren't discovered until fairly recently. Paraguay is a country where somewhere over 80% of the people know Guarani. It's effectively a Guarani nation. Bolivia is a country which recently made an Inca flag co-official. It had a president, and Peru has had a president, proud to display his native origins.

As for most Latin Americans, trace the ancestry far enough, it's mostly Spanish mixed with Native blood.

That is exactly what I said.

Most of it is non consensual. And there reaches a point where you eventually get ancestors who are pure Indian and pure Spaniard.

At the same time, my ancestors reach a point of pure Scotsmen and pure Germans. And?

It's really not that far back in the ancestry. My grandfather is a steady mixture of Taino and African as far as I know. My grandmother's bloodline is basically Spaniard.[/quote]

The Taino were a very differant case. Insular, fairly primitive peoples have been callously obliterated by an outside power who wasn't even particularly trying on tragically numerous occasions. Witness Tasmania, or Hokkaido.

I'm not calling the English moral bastards when it comes to Indian Affairs. But they were the ones issuing the Proclamation Line of 1763 while the Spaniards had no such restrictions on what colonists could and couldn't do to the Natives.

The Proclamation Line existed because large areas along the seaboard had already been pretty much cleared of natives, something which hasn't happened anywhere between the Carribean and the Cone in Hispanic America.

Both British and Spanish colonial models were varied, but always brutal, exploitive, and immoral. The point is that people frequently romanticise the British empire, whereas Spain still labours under the "Black Legend".
 
Both British and Spanish colonial models were varied, but always brutal, exploitive, and immoral. The point is that people frequently romanticise the British empire, whereas Spain still labours under the "Black Legend".

I'm not calling the English any sort of bastions on human rights in regards to Native American nation. But that seems like what you're basically saying about the Spaniards, but then immediately turning your argument around saying that wasn't the case.

At the same time, my ancestors reach a point of pure Scotsmen and pure Germans. And?

The Taino were a very differant case. Insular, fairly primitive peoples have been callously obliterated by an outside power who wasn't even particularly trying on tragically numerous occasions. Witness Tasmania, or Hokkaido.

Point being that as much racial mixing that went on, the racial system wasn't as benign as you make it out to be.

There was very little African slavery in the Andes.

I'm aware. I was not specific in my language enough to imply that by the time the native populations on the haciendas were suffering from the diseases the Spaniards were kind enough to bring over, African slavery kicked into gear.

Potosi was simply the clearest example I had to use of Native slavery.

Slavery is always a repulsive system, but let's not play nationalist games with it. The worst slavery was on French Haiti, and Britain and Spain were equally enthusiastic partakers in the slave trade.

Then let's not beat on the French. :p

I'm not favoring American/British slavery saying it was a bastion of liberty as opposed to the dirty Spics. The simple fact is that working life harvesting sugar in the hot Caribbean sun was significantly worse and more deadly than the American south, which of course includes Haiti in the equation. Not that I would support either system of slavery. I'm actually pretty certain I'd be an abolitionist if I lived in Pre-ACW America.

They were indeed enslaved, and that's No Good, but again, it's not as bad as being enslaves and then subsequently expelled and nearly wiped out. You can get out of being enslaved, you can't get out of being dead. Call me when a native political movement is elected in the USA and adopts a native flag as co-official.

I'm sure if the United States was 50 countries instead of 1 like Latin America, that would happen. After all, it's really only Paraguay, Guatemala, and Bolivia that are now treating the natives as equals. Most Latin American countries ignore the issue.

As for talking about stone-age or pseudo-modern Amazonians, I was actually thinking of Mexican native peoples like the Raramuri who refuse to conform to the Mexican government, among others.

It's probably worth noting that Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Mississippi, Alabama, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho (kinda sort of), Utah, and Texas all derive their names from Native American terms. As said before, if the United States was 50 different nations, you'd probably find the Dakotas, Idaho, Wyoming, and Oklahoma adopting native ensigns and possibly in some cases language. Whereas if Latin America was a contiguous country, I doubt you'd find similar treatment of the Natives as in OTL.
 
Put me in the camp that the world would be worse off, even with a few more "natives" than the OTL, than ours. The other possible contenders for world supremacy tended to be just as bad if not worse on the empire side of things while lacking to a degree the social/civil backdrop we are accustomed to. To be more specific I have qualms that an India ruled by one of the other powers would be excelling in the technical support service today.
 
If not Britain someone else would've figured out the mechanics behind the Industrial Revolution. My bet's on the Dutch, which would give the Dutch-wankers over on the map forum something to jump for joy.

~Salamon2

The basic 'mechanics' of the Industrial Revolution were already known or knowable over most of Western Europe. In fact most of continental Europe was better educated, richer, had more rationalised judicial and administrative institutions, more modern financial systems, and had more natural philosophers, technicians and engineers than Britain prior to the Industrial Revolution.

Yet for all that, the economic and social changes that resulted in 'industrialisation', and thus drove self-perpetuating technological progress, did not happen in the far more fruitful soil of the continent.

It was only Britain that had a unique mix of the right social, economic, geographical, and technical factors that resulted in the extremely unlikely accident we now know as the Industrial Revolution.

People often make the mistake of thinking that the Industrial Revolution was a technical one.

It wasn't. The early industrial revolution utilised technology that was already in existence or simple improvements that were well within the ability of any mechanically trained artisan.

The Industrial Revolution was social and economic - the organisation of people, finance, and logistics in order to mass produce and distribute goods.

This was a massive change (and risk) and there was no incentive on the continent for large numbers of people to engage in such a novel experiment.

The incentive existed only in the unique circumstances existing in Britain in the late 18 century. Take away that incentive, and it is doubtful the spark that lit the fuse of industrial progress would ever have been lit anywhere else.
 
As to the original OP, I think the most likely way to make sure England (and if it becomes Britain) not to achieve global hegemony is for them to win the Hundred Years War. The Treaty of Troyes holds and the English are tied to the continent holding down French lords while Scotland and disgruntled Irish lords. An ambitious king might even make a serious (more serious than Henry VIII) bid for the HRE crown, further investing Albion on the continent. Discontent in both England and France abounds and the Kings are likely not able to even send Cabot off to do much. Eventually England will lose France and be left a broken, insolvent backwater while Spain grabs the whole of the Antipodes!

Whether this domination of the world by a 'radical' Catholic power is for the greater good is not a question to be considered, imho. Thats a values judgment and has no place among historians.
 
In fact, the Dutch were similar, effective-rights-wise. They were ahead of the UK on religious freedom, and WAY ahead in treating women - so long as you happened to be white. They were just as entrepreneurial. They did less -both in the Industrial Revolution and imperialism-wise, mostly because they had fewer people.

Silver Phantom and anti-Commie, you're both right, in fact. Both systems were massive genocides, ethic cleansings, and horrors in so, so many different ways. It was all too few decades before Spanish masters in the Caribbean were grumbling about how you just couldn't find a native slave. The Spanish weren't so into settling, so there were very few white women to go around - so they went with what they had. In both systems, power went with how white your skin was. In both systems, native survivors were forced to adopt badly adapted ways like suits in high heat or 100+% humidity.
 
I'm not calling the English any sort of bastions on human rights in regards to Native American nation. But that seems like what you're basically saying about the Spaniards, but then immediately turning your argument around saying that wasn't the case.

I never changed any of my positions, and I continue ti dispute that the Spanish were "as harsh or worse", but I do see that I overestimated the extent to whcih you were apologising for Britain.

Point being that as much racial mixing that went on, the racial system wasn't as benign as you make it out to be.

Where did I make this out?

I'm aware. I was not specific in my language enough to imply that by the time the native populations on the haciendas were suffering from the diseases the Spaniards were kind enough to bring over, African slavery kicked into gear.

The point, I repeat, is that the Andes have remained of mostly native extraction.

Potosi was simply the clearest example I had to use of Native slavery.

Indeed.

Then let's not beat on the French. :p

Let's not. The French were the most civilised colonial power in North America, and they were the first to abolish slavery. On Haiti, the colonial government tried to tame the worst excesses of the planter aristocracy. The Haitian revolutionaries were initially Francophile and Haiti would very likely have been better off staying a hypothetical abolitionist, revolutionary regime for longer (and thus avoiding the destrcution of the war for independence and partition, and not having to sink money into compensating the slave-owners).

But as I say, I'm concerned with facts, not nationalist blame-games, and the extreme brutality of the French slavery system on Haiti is a fact which happened to be of service to my argument.

I'm not favoring American/British slavery saying it was a bastion of liberty as opposed to the dirty Spics. The simple fact is that working life harvesting sugar in the hot Caribbean sun was significantly worse and more deadly than the American south, which of course includes Haiti in the equation. Not that I would support either system of slavery. I'm actually pretty certain I'd be an abolitionist if I lived in Pre-ACW America.

I'm sure we all are.

I'm sure if the United States was 50 countries instead of 1 like Latin America, that would happen. After all, it's really only Paraguay, Guatemala, and Bolivia that are now treating the natives as equals. Most Latin American countries ignore the issue.

Each Hispano-American country is a differant society, but of South American counties only Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are of mostly European descent. Having a Spanish-speaking mestizo population tells a differnat story from a Spanish-speaking white population.

As for talking about stone-age or pseudo-modern Amazonians, I was actually thinking of Mexican native peoples like the Raramuri who refuse to conform to the Mexican government, among others.

It's probably worth noting that Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Mississippi, Alabama, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho (kinda sort of), Utah, and Texas all derive their names from Native American terms.

True, as does "Canada" and several of its provinces. My own country, Scotland, derives its name from a tribe of Irish people. France derives its name from some Germans, and Germany may have derived its Latinate name from some Celts. Bulgaria, at any rate, gets its name from some Turks, and Greece from the obsolete name of a town in Italy. Russia may be named after a suburb of Stockholm.

I can go on.

As said before, if the United States was 50 different nations, you'd probably find the Dakotas, Idaho, Wyoming, and Oklahoma adopting native ensigns and possibly in some cases language. Whereas if Latin America was a contiguous country, I doubt you'd find similar treatment of the Natives as in OTL.

Extremely dubious. The population of Oklahoma is only about 10% pure native, whereas Bolivia's population is only about 10% pure European.
 
As a matter of fact I have not. And since the only internet sources I can find on said document are in German or Swedish (languages I know nothing of), you'll have to enlighten me.



You're kidding me, right?

Why are there so many mestizos in Latin American countries? Oh, I'm sure the Natives were more than happy to just let the Spanish walktz right in and take whatever they wanted. A happy cultural exchange occurred starting with the tearing down of racial borders and Spanish men falling in love with Native beauties.

Dude, they were called Conquistadors for a reason. Yes, the Spanish needed labor, so they enslaved the Natives on their own land. In the former Inca Empire they sent hordes of people to Potosi to mine silver going directly to Spain. The Catholic Church tore down ever idol from Lima, melted it down, and sent it back to Spain. Of course, European diseases wiped out far too many of the Indians to really help some, so the Spanish purchased thousands upon thousands of African slaves to help keep their economy going long before the first cotton plantation in Dixie. I'm sure that was less-than-humane treatment.

After gold mining became a lower industry, life on a sugar plantation was probably the one place in the western hemisphere less enjoyable than life on a tobacco or cotton plantation. The class based system wasn't new to the Natives, but the new racial based hatred certainly was. The Natives were able to keep alive their language and culture because many of them were able to escape into the mountains with nothing of value. While they're not official reservations, they might as well be. Modern values and economics don't really serve the modern Latin governments well to bother the tribes, nor do they really wish contact with the outside world.

As for most Latin Americans, trace the ancestry far enough, it's mostly Spanish mixed with Native blood. Most of it is non consensual. And there reaches a point where you eventually get ancestors who are pure Indian and pure Spaniard. It's really not that far back in the ancestry. My grandfather is a steady mixture of Taino and African as far as I know. My grandmother's bloodline is basically Spaniard.

I'm not calling the English moral bastards when it comes to Indian Affairs. But they were the ones issuing the Proclamation Line of 1763 while the Spaniards had no such restrictions on what colonists could and couldn't do to the Natives.
Very well I will, in the ealy 13 hundreds king Magnus IV/VII he was also king of Norge decided that one law must govern the realm hence Magnus
Erikssons landslag which was to govern the entire realm. In the early
middleages the country was composed of petty kingdoms much like Britain
however this had to change because it was not one country, ergo
Magnus Erikssons landslag. Among other things this law stipulated that
slavery was to be abolished, the nobles has to respect the rights of the
peseants and so forth, the king has mostly lost the right to pass jugdement
on his subjects and the rights of the lower classes in parliament, in short
everything Magna Charta is claimed to be but is not!
 
They turned out all right arguably because of British influence.

But how exactly does that lead to larger native populations? The Spanish were as harsh if not worse on the natives than the British. Only the French proved themselves remotely kind to their Native populations... in America.

You bet, there are so many more Indians north of the Rio Grande than south of it.:rolleyes:

Spaniards were worse only in the beginning. After initial conquest they were far more hands off than the English, ruling generally by a mixture of concessions and force only when concessions had failed. That's why they could have no standing army in the Americas until the last generation or so.

Generally Protestant colonial empires treat Natives far worse than Catholic ones. Catholic nations care far more about conversion, while Protestant nations have much more of a kill-all-the-heathens attitude. There's far less intermarriage in Protestant empires, and far less syncretism of cultures and religion.

Indians in North America would've been far better off with French or Spanish rule than English, and certainly much much better than under US rule. Likely there'd be 3-4 times as many surviving today. And Indians, much like much of the rest of the world, did not need to learn about democracy from the English. It's a central part of most tribal cultures.
 
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1. A happy cultural exchange occurred starting with the tearing down of racial borders and 2. Spanish men falling in love with Native beauties.

...Yes, the Spanish needed labor, 3. so they enslaved the Natives on their own land. In the former Inca Empire they sent hordes of people to Potosi to mine silver going directly to Spain. 4. The Catholic Church tore down ever idol from Lima, melted it down, and sent it back to Spain.

5. After gold mining became a lower industry, life on a sugar plantation was probably the one place in the western hemisphere less enjoyable than life on a tobacco or cotton plantation. 6. The class based system wasn't new to the Natives, but the new racial based hatred certainly was. 7. The Natives were able to keep alive their language and culture because many of them were able to escape into the mountains with nothing of value. 8. While they're not official reservations, they might as well be. 9. Modern values and economics don't really serve the modern Latin governments well to bother the tribes, nor do they really wish contact with the outside world.

10. As for most Latin Americans, trace the ancestry far enough, it's mostly Spanish mixed with Native blood. 11. Most of it is non consensual. And there reaches a point where you eventually get ancestors who are pure Indian and pure Spaniard. It's really not that far back in the ancestry. 12. My grandfather is a steady mixture of Taino and African as far as I know. My grandmother's bloodline is basically Spaniard.

I'm not calling the English moral bastards when it comes to Indian Affairs. But they were the ones issuing the Proclamation Line of 1763 while 13. the Spaniards had no such restrictions on what colonists could and couldn't do to the Natives.

There's so many falsehoods in what you say, I wonder....maybe you had a teacher in love with the very racist Black Legend. It's about forty years out of date.

And I'm amazed you know so little about modern Latin America as well. Try reading sources written after 1960.

1. Yes, there was a cultural exchange. I would guess you'd have to have never met a Mexican in your life not to know this.

2. Yes, many Indian women did choose to be with Spaniards.

3. Indian slavery was barred in the 16th century. Google the name De Las Casas.

4. Idol? Talk about out of date and religiously bigoted terms.

5. You do realize the English had sugar plantations?

6. Actually the class based system was new to most Indians.

7. Nonsense. Most Latin cultures are today hybrid. Spaniards in the Americas adopted many Indian cultural traits, from language to food to medicine to religion.

8. Google "Indian republics."

9. Good lord, you seriously think the only Indians in Latin America live in remote areas.

Newsflash: There are millions of urban Indians, and always have been.

10. Are you kidding? Spanish ancestry is far in the minority in every country except for Argentina and Chile and Uruguay.

11. Good lord, you seriously think widespread rapes continued after initial conquest. When have you ever picked up a book that didn't portray dark skinned people as nothing but passive victims?

12. And this is the sad part. Much of what you believe is self hating.

13. Again, google Indian republics. There's so much you don't know.
 
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