English Canada/French Carolina: A Timeline

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Gabingston

Gabingston

Bit of a random poll here while I'm working on the upcoming Mexico update, but where do you think La Floride's GDP per capita in the modern day should fall? I was gonna make a whole thread on it, but I decided it'd be better to just post a strawpoll in here.
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What should be La Floride's GDP per capita? - Online Poll - StrawPoll

What's your opinion? Vote now: Under 20,000 OTL Dollars, 20-30,000 OTL Dollars, 30-40,000 OTL Dollars, 40-50,000 OTL Dollars, Over 50,000 OTL Dollars...
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Part 135: Union del Pueblo
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 135: Union del Pueblo​
    As I was thinking about what update I should do after my collapse of the Ottomans updates, I realized that I hadn’t covered Latin America in quite a while. I was originally planning on making one giant Latin American update, but I then realized that it’d be better to go region by region, from north to south. Thus, this series of Latin American updates will start in the northernmost country in the region, Mexico. Florida should be considered part of Latin America, being in the Americas and speaking a Latin-descended language, but I’m not going to cover it in this series of updates. Without further ado, ¡vamonos!
    We start our journey in Mexico, the northernmost of the Hispanophone countries in The Americas, stretching as far north as 38 degrees latitude. Once the center of multiple great pre-Columbian civilizations, Mexico was now a nation of blended European (mainly Spanish) and Amerindian origins, the former more in the north and the latter more in the south. In addition to the ethnic divide, there was also a large regional divide in terms of economics, as the north was significantly wealthier than the south, although the north wasn’t by any means first world and many Norteños lived in poverty. Holding a country with such large regional divisions together was quite a challenge for the Mexican government, especially since it was also prone to corruption and incompetence (I mean, it’s Latin America, corrupt and incompetent governments just kind of come with the territory). The government would have to balance out northern and southern interests carefully, as going too far in one direction could seriously piss off the other, which wouldn’t be good since both the north and south had active separatist movements.
    Anyway, there are some other things about Mexico that I touched on in my last Mexican update (dang, was it really a year and a half ago?) that I’m gonna continue with here, that being Mexican politics. I mentioned that Mexican politics since the colonial era had been dominated by the landowning elite descended from the conquistadors, with some pre-conquest native nobility thrown in there as well. A good chunk of Mexico’s land was owned by just a small handful of extremely powerful families, as well as by the Catholic Church. I also mentioned that this was beginning to change by the middle of the 20th Century. The post-independence era in Mexican politics had seen the rise of the Union del Pueblo, or People’s Union political party. Inspired by LeGrand in neighboring Florida and the Russian Popular Party in, well, Russia, the Union del Pueblo, or UDP for short, combined Mexican nationalism and folk Catholicism with populist, socialist-ish economic policies that were basically tailor made for the typical Mexican peasant or laborer. This was best exemplified through the party’s leader, Juan Ignacio Gomez, a Mestizo from the heartland of Mexico who grew up in a working class family and considered becoming a priest before going into politics. Gomez was a very charismatic speaker, and used his charisma to quickly rise within Mexican politics, with his campaign rallies becoming massive events with tens of thousands of attendees. In these speeches, Gomez railed against the oligarchs and Gringo foreigners that dominated the Mexican economy, and pledged to put the common man, whether he be an Italian winemaker in Alta California or a Mixtec peasant in Oaxaca in charge. This message proved to be massively popular with the broader Mexican public, across ethnic and regional lines, and it became clear that, sooner or later, Gomez (I dare you to take a drink every time I use that word) was going to take power in Mexico. Election season was coming up in Mexico in 1942, and it was certain that Gomez would win. The Mexican oligarchs certainly didn’t like it, but well, what could they do? Stage a coup? Well, that’d be certain to cause a civil war, one which they very well may lose. Call on the Gringos for help? That’d make it seem as though the elite and the Americans were conspiring to trample upon the average Mexican, which would enrage the Mexican public even further and possibly spark a revolution. Thus, when Gomez and the UDP won by a considerable margin in 1942, the Mexican elite bit their tongues and accepted it begrudgingly.
    Right away Gomez and the UDP would run into some issues. One of the top priorities of the UDP was land reform. While the Spanish had initially not given out large land grants, over time more and more land had become concentrated in the hands of elite landowning families, as well as foreigners (mostly American) and the Church. These ranged from cash crop growing haciendas in the Mexican heartland to large cattle ranches in the North, many of these being worked by landless peasants. Gomez pledged to his followers that, if he were to come to power, he would redistribute land from the elites and foreigners to the Mexican people. This was going to be much easier said than done, though. One does not simply expropriate land, especially if it’s without compensation, as Gomez suggested he’d do if he got the chance. Once Gomez got into power after the 1942 election, he tried to find a way to pursue expropriation without compensation. The Mexican Constitution that had been drafted after the Second Global War had explicit protection of the right to private property, which would make any sort of seizure blatantly illegal. This was a big obstacle to Gomez’s goal of land redistribution, so while some land was expropriated, it wasn’t a whole lot. Gomez, however, had grown to be a pragmatic politician, especially for a working-class populist, so he had other, more indirect means at his disposal. One of these was to implement a land tax on holdings over a certain size, hoping to make large landholders sell off part of their land. This worked to a certain extent, with a good number of large landholders selling off some of their more marginal land, but there were still a lot who could afford to pay the tax or just refused to sell. The land tax law didn’t apply to the Catholic Church, as Gomez was himself a practicing Catholic and didn’t want to alienate the Church, but there was another method that did, that was directly purchasing the land. The Mexican Government under the UDP offered to purchase large swaths of land from hacienda owners and the Catholic Church, sometimes at a rate above market value, after which it’d sell them to peasants at a reduced rate. Common agricultural and grazing lands were also set up, known as ejidos, modeled off of both Amerindian and Spanish traditions. Peasants would acquire parcels of ejido land that they could use, often land taken or acquired from the large agricultural estates I mentioned earlier.
    In addition to land reform, Gomez and the UDP had several other major policies and political promises that they went about while in power. One of those was gaining control of Mexico’s natural resources. Many of the owners of Mexico’s resource deposits were foreigners, most often Americans, and while it did bring money into the country, many Mexicans felt as though it was leading to Gringo domination over the country’s economy, and that Mexico’s resources should be, well, Mexican. Thus, the Mexican government under Gomez created a new national oil company, the Sindicato Petrolero Nacional (SPN for short), or National Petroleum Syndicate, to extract and manage Mexico’s oil resources. Similar conglomerates were formed for Mexico’s various mineral resources. All foreign owned mineral and oil deposits within Mexico were soon bought off or seized before being put under the control of the new state-run enterprises. This did piss off the Commonwealth of America to a substantial degree, and a few MP’s actually proposed going to war with Mexico, but those plans didn’t go through. Instead, the Commonwealth refused to buy these goods from Mexico, which wasn’t great, considering the Commonwealth was Mexico’s largest trade partner.
    Aside from land and resource redistribution, Gomez and the UDP had several other priorities while in power. One of those was to build new infrastructure across the country. While infrastructure like railways, roads and electricity were present in Mexico, this was often limited to the major cities, while rural areas, particularly those that were in parts of the country that were more mountainous or inaccessible often lacked any modern amenities. So, Gomez’s government would go on to build new infrastructure to more easily connect these rural towns and villages to the core of Mexico. In addition to roads and railroads, the UDP would also build new schools and medical clinics in these rural areas, often with the help of the Church. This proved incredibly popular with the Mexican peasantry, who were solidified as the UDP’s strongest base of support, which was awfully convenient for them because the largest segment of Mexican society was the peasantry during this time period.
    When it came to Mexico’s cities, Gomez and the UDP would aim to grow Mexico’s industrial base. The natural resources were obviously part of this, but Gomez also wanted Mexico to develop a manufacturing base, which it mostly lacked at this point in time. For example, a new public-private autocarriage (OOC: TTL’s term for automobiles) company called Aztlan was founded, aimed at providing your average Mexican family with affordable cars. New Aztlan factories were built in major cities such as Monterrey, Guadalajara and, of course, Mexico City, employing thousands of workers and producing scores of autocarriages. While Mexico’s manufacturing industry was still in its infancy, and paled in comparison to, say, its northern neighbor’s industrial might, it was still a start, and perhaps Mexico’s industrial reach would eventually expand beyond just domestic consumption.
    Of course, with all this talk of a populist Latin American politician, there are bound to be downsides. You know all that land that was bought up or expropriated? Well, a lot of it was given to Gomez’s friends and cronies, who became rich off of their connections. Similarly, many times ideological allies were put in charge of the new state-run or backed companies and enterprises instead of actual businessmen, leading to inefficiency, corruption and shoddy quality. In addition, the massive state spending undertaken during this era would cause both a large increase in debt and significant inflation, which could come back to bite the country in the ass in the future. Despite the corruption, inefficiency, debt and inflation, Gomez and the Union del Pueblo were still massively popular with the Mexican people, and he would stay in power in Mexico up until 1958. As much as the traditional Mexican elite may not have liked it, the UDP was to remain a permanent force in Mexican politics for the foreseeable future, although other parties like the Liga Nacional would still be able to compete for leadership from time to time. I’ll continue the Latin American theme in the next couple of updates, the first of which should be out by the end of the month, so until then, ¡hasta luego!
     
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    • Part 136: Caribbean Queen
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 136: Caribbean Queen​
    On the second part of our Latin American journey, we move southeast from Mexico to the lands in and around the Caribbean Sea. This update will be split between the mainland regions of Central America and northern South America and the islands of the Caribbean Sea, be they larger islands like Cuba and Hispaniola or the numerous small islands of the Antilles. I’ll start with the Caribbean islands before moving to the mainland. Without further ado, let’s get this update started.
    Once inhabited by native groups like the Arawak, Taino and Carib, the latter of whom would give their name to the region, their populations swiftly declined after the region was discovered by the Spanish, due to a mix of disease and brutality on the part of said Spaniards. After taking hold of much of the Caribbean, the Spanish would mainly use the islands as a waystation to the much more important conquests of Mexico and Peru. Once other Europeans like the British, Dutch and French began to colonize the islands, though, their use changed drastically. The tropical climate and fertile, sometimes volcanic soil of the islands made them ideal for the cultivation of cash crops like sugar, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, cotton and various fruits. With this massive cash crop production, the colonial powers would need a labor source, and I think you know what that means…
    Yup, slavery. Of the 10-12 million Africans that were taken in bondage to the new world between the 16th and 19th Centuries, around 40% went to the Caribbean, where most would die within a few years of arrival due to the sheer brutality of the sugar plantations. Days were never finished, master had them working and master would most likely not set them free. Fortunately, this horrific practice would be put to an end over the course of the 19th Century, albeit without causing the suffering and death of millions, to be replaced in large part by indentured servants from Asia in many cases. The European colonial powers held onto the Caribbean into the 20th Century, but things would soon be shaken up…
    At the end of the Second Global War, the Spanish were forced to grant independence to their colonies of Cuba and Santo Domingo, the latter being merged with the newly independent French Saint-Domingue to form the new Republic of Hispaniola. In Cuba, it became like any other Hispanic American country, take it as you will. Hispaniola, though, wouldn’t wind up surviving as a unified state for long. The two halves of Hispaniola were radically different from each other to the point where maintaining unity was a hopeless endeavor. The eastern half that had been under Spanish rule was Hispanophone and largely mixed-race, while the western half that had been a French colony spoke a French Creole language and was overwhelmingly African, with a smattering of mixed and European inhabitants as well. These linguistic and ethnic differences, combined with the capital being placed in Santo Domingo on the eastern half of the island would lead to the western half declaring independence as the new Republic of Quisqueya, taking the name from one of the Taino names for the island. The government in Santo Domingo said “not so fast”, and thus the Quisqueyan War of Independence began. The landscape of Hispaniola is largely rough and mountainous, which meant that either side making progress was difficult. The Hispaniolans went on the offensive to reconquer their seceded region, with one offensive heading towards Port-au-Prince in the south and the other towards Cap-Français in the north. These stalled out, though, as the Quisqueyans were determined to defend their independence, and it soon turned into trench warfare on both the northern and southern fronts. To make a long story short, the war dragged on for two years with not much change on either side before the two decided to call it off and come to the table. In the end, Quisqueya had successfully defended their independence, and were thus officially recognized as a free and sovereign state by all parties involved. Thus, the previously unified island of Hispaniola was now split in two, with the surviving Republic of Hispaniola in the east and the newly independent Quisqueya in the west.
    Outside of Cuba and Hispaniola, the rest of the Caribbean was still under European rule, whether it be the British, French, Dutch or some other European power. This status quo had worked for a long time, but by the middle of the 20th Century, demands were rising for proper representation of the islands within their respective countries or for complete independence. We’ll go over what each country did with their Caribbean possessions. First, Britain, the largest Caribbean power. They had islands ranging from Jamaica to The Bahamas to Porto Rico and the various islands of the Antilles. With such a large amount of islands, different solutions were pursued for each region. To start, The Bahamas, Turks and Caicos opted to join the Commonwealth of America, knowing that if they were to do so, they could become massive tourist destinations. Jamaica and Porto Rico, the two largest and most populous British islands in the Caribbean became independent countries, albeit retaining the British monarch as head of state. Finally, all the other British Caribbean islands were directly annexed into the UK, with residents of the islands now being able to vote and elect their own MPs who would travel to Britain.
    The latter strategy of direct annexation with representation would be the strategy pursued by the other European powers as well. The Netherlands properly annexed the ABC Islands and Sint Maarten, France integrated Guadeloupe, Denmark did so with the Virgin Islands and Sweden did so with Saint Barthelemy. Trinidad and Tobago, the last part of The Americas under direct Spanish rule, voted to join New Granada. The integrated regions would now be full parts of their respective nations, being able to vote in elections and holding full citizenship, which allowed them to migrate to the metropoles of their respective countries, which thanks to air travel was now possible within a day or less. With the Caribbean being poorer than the metropole, this meant that large amounts of Caribbean migration to the metropole began to occur. For example, Jamaican, Puerto Rican and other West Indian quarters began to pop up in London, New York and other Anglo-American cities to larger and larger extents, and if it weren’t for the cooler weather, you’d think you were in Kingston or San Juan. In return, the Caribbean islands began to get large amounts of tourists and retirees, mostly from the Commonwealth of America. Air travel made it possible to go from the core of the Commonwealth of America to the Caribbean in just a few short hours, and soon American tourists were flocking to the Caribbean in droves, especially during the winter. Tourism would come to be the main economic engine for much of the Caribbean, leading the shift away from agriculture and fishing towards urbanization in the region.
    On the south shore of the Caribbean in New Granada, though, urbanization was occurring for an entirely different reason, that being the massive oil reserves that had been discovered. One of these was located around the Maracaibo Lagoon and the other along the Orinoco River, both of them in the region of Venezuela, as well as a few smaller deposits scattered around the rest of the country. This was a game changer for New Granada, as this mostly rural and agrarian country now had a major commodity to export. Cities in Venezuela like Maracaibo, Caracas and Puerto La Cruz began to balloon in size due to either their proximity to the oil fields, acting as the locations where the crude oil was refined and then exported, much of it going to the oil poor Latin countries of Southern Europe, who the New Granadans had strong commercial ties with.
    With all the wealth flowing into Venezuela, the oil boom did accentuate many of New Granada’s regional divisions. While the country had stayed together since independence, it hadn’t always been easy. New Granada, while not the largest of countries, was still pretty sizable, and was divided internally by the Andes and various jungles, including part of the Amazon Rainforest. The territory of New Granada had even been split up at times throughout its past before being remerged into one unit. In addition, New Granada was also a very ethnically diverse country, with the largest segment being Mestizos but with large European, Native and African components as well. Needless to say, the central government in Bogota often had a hard time keeping these disparate regions and ethnic groups together. One would think that the oil wealth would help, and in a way it did, but it also made the other regions of the country jealous of oil-rich Venezuela. The non-oil producing regions wanted much of the revenue to be spread around the country, while oil producing Venezuela naturally wanted to keep the fruits of their labor. Thus, the government would have to walk a fine line when addressing the different regional interests when it came to oil revenue. As with other Latin American countries that had natural resources, the New Granadan government established a state-run oil company, PetroGranada, which would handle the extraction, processing and export of New Granada’s oil reserves. They’d then use the profits from the oil industry to invest in infrastructure, education and other useful things for the country’s development (as well as siphoning off money to cronies, but that’s to be expected for Latin America). The oil industry provided thousands of well paying, stable jobs to New Granadan citizens, as well as a sizable number of immigrants both from nearby countries and from Europe, most of them settling in Venezuela. Knowing that putting all of your eggs in one basket wasn’t a good idea, the New Granadan government also began to pursue other industries such as tourism along with improvements to the mining and agricultural sectors that had long been the dominant forces in the New Granadan economy. Foreign economic advisors were brought in to assist with and manage the development and modernization and to boost trade connections between New Granada and the other questions. Even with that, New Granada was still a rather poor country, with a long way to go in terms of economic development, and whether they’d actually get there is still an open question (OTL’s Venezuela certainly didn’t). With that said, we’ve still got one more country to go before this update is complete, so let’s get to it, shall we?
    In between Mexico to the northwest and New Granada to the southeast lay Guatemala, which spanned the bridge between North and South America. A land of dense jungles, towering volcanoes and ancient Mayan ruins, Guatemala was a surprisingly diverse country for such a small area, both geographically and demographically. Said diversity came with challenges, though, as governing a country split by geographic features and between multiple different ethnic groups was difficult to say the least, made only more so by the lack of infrastructure to connect the country together. Guatemala also had pretty much no industry to speak of, with the economy being overwhelmingly based on agriculture, particularly tropical cash crops. Demographically speaking, Guatemala might just have been the most Indigenous country in The Americas, with the vast majority of the population being of full or partial Native descent. Some of the natives in more isolated rural areas were even monolingual speakers of their ancestral tongues, quite impressive considering that it’d been 400 years since the Spanish conquest of the region. Really, there isn’t a ton to say about Guatemala, at least at this moment. The update is already running long, and I’ve got other stuff to work on, so I’ll call it here. Hopefully I’ll have another update out before the end of the year. I’m gonna try to get this TL wrapped up in 2023, after which I’ll start the Maps & Graphics Spinoff. FOr the time being though, I must say goodbye, I’ll see you next time.
     
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    • Part 137: Incas and Gauchos
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 137: Incas and Gauchos​
    For the third part of our Grand Tour of Latin America, we travel south to the countries of Peru and La Plata. These two countries contained an incredible variety of both natural and man-made environments, from native villages high up in the Andes to large, European-style cities. I’ll start in Peru before moving down to La Plata, which will complete our journey through Hispanic America, although I’ll cover Brazil and Patagonia afterwards. So, without further ado, let’s get this update started!
    Before the Spanish conquest in the mid 16th Century, Peru was one of the great centers of Amerindian civilization, being home to millions of people and one of pre-colonial America’s greatest states, the Inca Empire. Long story short, a mix of disease, civil war and incredibly good luck on the Spanish end led to the Inca Empire being conquered by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in the 1530s, with the last Amerindian resistance folding by the 1570s. From there, Peru would be under Spanish colonial rule for three centuries, with the silver mines (particularly the Cerro Rico of Potosi) becoming a major source of revenue for the Spanish crown (which they would mostly waste on failed attempts to conquer Europe). It wasn’t until after the First Global War that the Spanish Crown would grant the Peruvians self-governance as the Kingdom of Peru, still with the Spanish monarch as head of state but independent in every other way. While there was talk about putting the nation’s capital in the old Inca capital of Cusco, it was decided to keep it in the Viceroyal capital of Lima, the largest city in Peru and the main gateway to the country. Lima was a surprisingly cosmopolitan city, with the district of Callao being the largest port in the country. In the city were Peruvians of all stripes, as well as various European immigrants and even a sizable Asian population. Outside of Lima and a few other major cities, though, Peru could be a very isolated country with few connections to the rest of the world. Peru was possibly the most Amerindian country in The Americas, with a significant portion of the population speaking Indigenous languages like Quechua or Aymara natively. These Amerindians mostly lived in rural areas, often with a lifestyle not too different from their pre-contact ancestors, though with the Sun God having been replaced by the Son of God. The majority of Peruvians by this point though were Mestizos of mixed Amerindian and European (mainly Spanish) ancestry, with a bit of African scattered in there as well. Mestizos were a bit more urbanized than Amerindians and mostly spoke Spanish as their first language, but many Amerindian cultural traits and practices survived among them. While not as large as in other Latin American countries, there was also a decent sized White population, whether of colonial-era Spanish origin or from the more recent European immigrants, though Peru wasn’t an immigration magnet like some of its neighbors. As was the case in other Latin American countries, this immense ethnic diversity made the country difficult to govern at times. This was made more difficult by the geography of the country, namely the towering Andes, which bisected the country and made transportation very difficult. Needless to say, Peru wasn’t exactly the wealthiest country, and much of, if not the majority of the population lived in grinding poverty, particularly in the aforementioned isolated rural areas. As in other parts of Latin America, populism began to rise in the Mid 20th Century, as more and more Peruvians gained access to the franchise, which required one to be literate in Spanish at the time, though this would be changed to allow all adult citizens to vote in the future, in large part due to the populists pushing for it. As in other areas, a big part of the populist platform was land reform, handing over land from large haciendas to the peasants who worked them. The old aristocracy of Peru still held a lot of power and influence, though, so it wouldn’t be easy. That’s enough about Peru for the time being, so now I want to move south to the land of the Tango, Gauchos and Dancing Cucumbers, that being La Plata.
    When it came to Spanish colonies, La Plata had always been on the backburner, with much more attention being paid to the more lucrative colonies of Mexico and Peru. The area didn’t really begin to take off until the Spanish crown established the Viceroyalty of Rio De La Plata, separating the region from the Viceroyalty of Peru and thus giving it a higher status. This enabled Buenos Aires, which had previously relied on illegal trade due to the Spanish centralizing all exports from Peru in Callao, began to take off as a major port city, becoming the main Spanish port on the South Atlantic. In contrast to the highly populated indigenous civilizations of Mexico and Peru, the native population in La Plata was rather small. This meant that the colony took on a more European character than the rest of Hispanic America. This would only be enhanced by the mass amount of European immigrants the country received from the mid 19th Century onwards. While Spain had for a long time only allowed Castilians to migrate to the colonies, this was loosened to allow any European Catholic to move to the Spanish colonies.
    While La Plata lost a good chunk of its land to Brazil after the Second Global War, it still had a lot of fertile, arable land to be settled, as well as major cities like Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Cordoba, Mendoza and Santiago. La Plata also had some of the most productive farmland in the world in the fertile Pampas, and with so much of La Plata being lightly populated well into the 19th Century, the government encouraged Europeans to settle in the countryside and grow the country’s agricultural sector. By the beginning of the 20th Century, La Plata had become a major agricultural exporter, both of crops like wheat and corn and animal products like beef and wool.
    While not rolling in the dough by any means, La Plata was the most prosperous country in Hispanic America, which made it extremely attractive to Spanish immigration, along with Italians who spoke a Romance language and didn’t have overseas colonies of their own (unless you want to count Neapolitan Libya). Between the burgeoning cities and fertile countryside, La Plata became the most prosperous of all of the Hispanic American countries, having a standard of living more comparable to Northern Italy than to their contemporaries. I wish I could write more right now, but I have some serious writer's block at the moment and am thus going to call it a day. This will likely be the last EC/FC update of 2022, and Christmas is right around the corner, so I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
     
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    A few more economic polls. FYI, Hispanic and Anglo Caribbean is meant to be an average of the countries that fall into those categories rather than for an individual country.
    Mexico: https://strawpoll.com/polls/GPgV3Oz38Za
    Guatemala: https://strawpoll.com/polls/2ayLWxqW3Z4
    Hispanic Caribbean: https://strawpoll.com/polls/XOgOJ1RJbn3
    Anglo Caribbean: https://strawpoll.com/polls/QrgeVBNVKZp
    Quisqueya (Haiti): https://strawpoll.com/polls/e6Z2e4YewgN
    Suriname: https://strawpoll.com/polls/1MnwvxVvMy7


    On the topic of polls, I think you guys are a bit too optimistic when it comes to Brazil. The south could have a GDP per capita over 35,000 USD, but I think the poorer north would drag it down to somewhere more in the range of 25-30,000 USD per capita. Also, I'm going to retcon Latin America in the Maps & Graphics TL at bit, notably by making Patagonia smaller and making Chile independent. Hope you guys are okay with that. I try to be responsible with my executive veto powers.
     
    Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Hey guys. I've decided that, in the upcoming Maps & Graphics adaptation of this TL, the capital of the Commonwealth of America will be moved to a planned city in the site of OTL's Chicago in the mid 19th Century. Chicago is in a pretty much perfect location for the Commonwealth's capital, being centrally located and having access to both the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basin. However, I'm trying to figure out what the city would be named. I've got some ideas, but I'd like to hear your suggestions as well. Hopefully the Maps & Graphics adaptation will start sometime this year, but I can't guarantee anything. I'll try to get the Brazil update out within the next week, so just hang in there. I'll see you guys next time.
     
    Part 138: The Giant of South America
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 138: The Giant of South America​
    For the final part of our Latin American tour, we move to the giant of South America, that being the Empire of Brazil. While originally being a colony of Portugal, Brazil had by this point long surpassed the mother country as the center of the Portuguese Empire, with the emperor even residing in Rio rather than Lisbon. As mentioned in the title of a past update, the tail had long since started wagging the dog in the case of Portugal and Brazil, much more than was the case with America and Britain, where Britain could at least hold its own against their larger former colony. A very large proportion of Portuguese during the 19th and early 20th Centuries emigrated to Brazil (along with other colonies like Angola, Mozambique and Capricornia), leading to concerns that the country would empty out. It wasn’t just the Portuguese heading to Brazil, though. A massive wave of immigration had come to Brazil during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, much of it from Portugal but also from other Catholic European countries (particularly the Italian states) and from the Catholic populations in the Middle East. Most immigrants headed to Brazil settled in the southern part of the country, which had a temperate climate and lots of fertile land. When combined with the small Indigenous population and lack of slavery (and thus a low Black population), Southern Brazil became easily the more European part of the country, with Porto Alegre or Montevidéu looking like your typical Southern European city. The fertile Pampas were settled by Italian, German and Polish immigrants who would often settle in their own colonies and maintain their own culture and languages for a long period of time. The wave of immigration had only solidified Brazil’s status as the premier country in South America, one it was most likely destined to have just due to its sheer size. Brazil was the third largest country in the world by land area, only trailing Russia and the Commonwealth. While much of this land was covered by the thick and impenetrable Amazon Rainforest, this still left a lot of land ripe for settlement. The main historic export of Brazil were tropical cash crops like sugar, coffee, tobacco and cotton, historically cultivated by slave labor (more on the after-effects of that later). Subtropical Southern Brazil was more adept for European-style agriculture, but that’s already been covered here. Much of the Brazilian interior was used for pastoralism and ranching, most notably being Brazil’s huge beef sector. Brazil, however, hadn’t really industrialized up to this point, as while cities like Rio, São Paulo and Montevidéu were certainly large, most Brazilians of this era still lived in rural areas. The Brazilian government did however recognize the value of having a native industrial sector, which could really boost the economy of the country and provide many jobs to its citizens. Thus, during the middle of the 20th Century, the Brazilian government would begin a campaign to modernize the country and build a local industrial base. For example, Brazilian agriculture up to this point had still been done primarily by manual labor, with fieldhands planting, tending and harvesting crops with their two hands (and basic agricultural equipment).With the mechanization of agriculture in places like the Commonwealth of America and Europe, though, Brazil saw the value of modernizing their agriculture. Thus, beginning in the 1920s, modern agricultural technology and methods began to be used and practiced in Brazil. Machinery like tractors, planters and harvesters began to be utilized in the country, allowing more work to be done with fewer people and less time. The use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides increased output by a considerable amount, and also allowed areas like the Cerrado to become increasingly cultivated. With the mechanization of agriculture, less people were needed to work on the farms, which meant that more Brazilians would begin migrating to the country’s major cities. Brazil’s major cities would experience explosive growth during this time period as country folk would flood into the cities for work and a higher standard of living. These neighborhoods made to accommodate the new arrivals could be quite shoddily built and sometimes lacked basic modern amenities like water, sewage and electricity, but those would usually be added later on. In urban areas, industrialization would be pursued, with new factories, power plants, transportation networks and infrastructure being constructed. Rivers like the Paraná, Uruguai and São Francisco were dammed for hydroelectricity, producing massive amounts of power and creating large reservoirs in the process. The transportation infrastructure would also be improved in Brazil, with new rail lines and roads being constructed or improved. For example, the main road between Rio and São Paulo was upgraded to a multi-lane highway that could carry large amounts of traffic and would enable travel between the country’s two largest cities to be done in just an afternoon. With all the improvement going on in Brazil’s agricultural, industrial and transportation sectors, it should be no surprise that the Brazilian economy grew considerably during the middle of the 20th Century. Southern Brazil by the 1960s had a standard of living surpassing even some countries in Europe, while the north lagged significantly behind, which precipitated a sizable amount of migration from the poorer, more rural north to the wealthier, industrializing south. The north was urbanizing too, though, with Recife and Fortaleza ballooning in size during this era, each surpassing the one million milestone by 1970. With the growing cultivation of the Cerrado that I mentioned earlier, the Brazilian interior began to become more populated as well. New cities were founded in the Brazilian interior far from the traditional coastal base of the country, some growing quite rapidly into regional centers of trade, transport and commerce. Even the Amazon Rainforest was now being settled in larger and larger numbers, as the vast jungle which had previously only been settled to harvest rubber was now seen as prime real estate for expansion. With the expansion into the jungle (and Cerrado for that matter) came concerns over some of the negative environmental effects it could have. The Amazon was a treasure trove of different species, both flora and fauna, and was also home to some of the last uncontacted tribes in the world, who would be completely screwed if contact was made, largely due to disease. No existing nature reserve existed in the Amazon up to this point, since there was really not much of a need for one. With growing expansion by loggers, ranchers and others into the Amazon, though, conservationists and environmentalists lobbied the Luso-Brazilian emperor for the creation of nature reserves in the Amazon. Fortunately for them, the Emperor had gone on several excursions to the Amazon during his life, and had come to appreciate the vast, mostly untouched wilderness the region provided. The emperor was pragmatic, though, and had connections to high-profile figures in the ranching and logging sectors. Attempting to balance both environmental and business interests, the Emperor proposed the creation of several large nature reserves in the rainforest, protecting particularly the core of the rainforest around the Amazon River from deforestation. Some of the outer regions of the forest would remain open for settlement, since the industries I mentioned earlier needed to be given a reason to go along, and while a lot of the environmentalists didn’t like it, sometimes you’ve got to be satisfied with what you got. Thus, much of the Amazon Rainforest came to be protected land, some of it being used for more commercial national parks while others were made to be strictly off-limits to settlement, apart from the native tribes. While some squatters would still move into the protected areas, as the borders were difficult to enforce, deforestation declined markedly in the nature reserves, though it’d continue outside of these areas (which would lead to the creation of more protected areas in the future). I think I’ve talked enough about environmental subjects in this update, so let’s go back to demographics and politics, shall we?
    The indigenous population of the country was estimated to have been at least several million before colonization, but their population collapsed after the arrival of the Portuguese. Despite Brazil being the largest participant in the Atlantic Slave Trade, the Black population of Brazil never grew that large, mainly because of the high death rate for slaves as well the prevalence of race mixing (for lack of a better term) in colonial and post-independence Brazil. Most of the population of Brazil wound up being either mixed-race Pardos or European-descended Brancos, the former more prominent in the north and the latter in the south. The wave of immigration I mentioned towards the beginning of this post began to slow down after about 1930, but immigrants continued to come to Brazil during the Mid 20th Century, mainly from Portugal and Italy. During this time period, most of Brazil’s population growth came from within the country, as this was the era of Brazil’s great demographic expansion, for reasons I brought up earlier. Brazil’s population grew from 20 million in 1900 to just shy of 60 million in 1950, and further to 100 million in 1970, growing five fold within just one human lifetime. This growth was even more pronounced in Brazil’s major cities, as while they may have had lower birth rates for obvious reasons, country folk streamed into the cities for jobs and a higher standard of living. Rio de Janeiro, the capital city of the Luso-Brazilian realm, grew to nearly 10 million people in the metro area by 1970. São Paulo grew to just over five million by 1970, while Montevidéu grew to just shy of three million. Many of Brazil’s other cities also grew precipitously during the middle of the 20th century, as I’d mentioned earlier with Recife and Fortaleza. Enough of demographics for now, though, it’s time to move on to politics.
    I’ve talked in previous updates about the wave of populism in Latin American politics during this period of time, and Brazil isn’t going to be any sort of exception. Even with the growth of Brazilian cities and industry, the traditional landowning elite was still the driving force in Brazilian politics up to this point in time. Sure, slavery had been gone for half a century and agriculture itself was becoming less labor intensive and more industrial in nature, but the wealth and prestige gained in these families over the generations still made them quite prominent. The landowners made up much of Brazil’s political class, even as small farmers, industrialists and laborers gained a larger presence over time. The growth in political power in other segments of the population reached a critical mass during this era, though, as populist movements rose across Brazil. These Brazilian movements shared a lot in common with those in other parts of Latin America, a combination of redistributive, sometimes socialist economics with folk Catholicism. Populism took different forms depending on where you were in the country. In agricultural regions, it was about stuff like land reform, breaking up the plantations and giving the land to small farmers. In the industrial cities, trade unions were the big thing. Populist politicians would gain large followings and hold rallies with tens of thousands of attendees, promising to bring prosperity to the people. Populist parties, whether agrarian or urban, won seats in the Brazilian parliament and began lobbying for their preferred policies. Eventually populists became the majority in parliament, with populist politician João Luiz Ricci ascending to become the head of government. Ricci’s government pursued a lot of the same policies as LeGrand in Florida or Gomez in Mexico, gaining widespread popularity with the Brazilian public but also potentially causing some long term issues that would rear their head later on.
    Far from being a mere colony of Portugal, Brazil was now the beating heart of the Lusophone world and the center of the Portuguese-Brazilian Empire, as well as being The Giant of South America. With this, the EC/FC Latin American Tour is now complete, and while I may revisit the region again in the future, I’ve got other places to catch up on now. I know it was a bit of a wait to get this update, but I hope this has been worth it for you guys. Stay tuned, because there will be more stuff along the way. Until then, though, goodbye and have a great day.
     
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