WI: Larger Mexican Cession?

[JesterBL]

Maximilian is a weird figure whose preferred policies were largely the same as Juarez's, he resisted French demands at points, and the French lose influence over the country within a decade of entering it in my speculation because Napoleon II will still be ousted from power after the Franco-Prussian war.

Franz Joseph II broke with Maximilian OTL and removed the latter from his position of Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia because Maximilian wasn't reactionary; and Cavour was relieved when he heard Maximilian was removed from his position in Italy since Cavour viewed Maximilian's good governance and liberalism as a hindrance against the cause of Italian unification.

I'm gonna emphasize that Maximilian was suckered into being Emperor of Mexico. He conditioned his acceptance on the Mexican people actually wanting him, and he was presented with phony plebiscite results. He was invited by reactionaries, and ironically had something close to the opposite of his politics. I don't see why arguing that a government that hews closer to Juarez's policies than to the OTL Porfiriato is close to apologism.

The guy who got suckered into a clearly ludicrous plot and then was hung out to dry by his foreign sponsors once he was no longer useful to them and was subsequently hanged as an example to discourage future foreign interventions being a competent and insightful leader is just a bit of a stretch for me*. He can have all the supposedly good intentions in the world, he will still be a foreign invader installed and maintained by force.

*especially when the scenario would involve a Mexico which had lost even more territory and suffered an even greater humiliation and defeat (and a US that would likely be more involved).

 

[Charles EP M.]

If Maximillian does break with France quite a bit, wouldn't he also be at risk of being replaced? The French wanted Mexico on their terms

 

[Jackson Lennock]

If Maximillian does break with France quite a bit, wouldn't he also be at risk of being replaced? The French wanted Mexico on their terms

It's a different French government

The guy who got suckered into a clearly ludicrous plot and then was hung out to dry by his foreign sponsors once he was no longer useful to them and was subsequently hanged as an example to discourage future foreign interventions being a competent and insightful leader is just a bit of a stretch for me*. He can have all the supposedly good intentions in the world, he will still be a foreign invader installed and maintained by force.

*especially when the scenario would involve a Mexico which had lost even more territory and suffered an even greater humiliation and defeat (and a US that would likely be more involved).

The loss of territory is a separate matter from the French invasion.

And administrative competence and political intelligence seem like two very different things. It's possible that he'd just get screwed over by the Country's conservatives when he starts acting in too liberal a manner.

 

[JesterBL]

It's a different French government



The loss of territory is a separate matter from the French invasion.

And administrative competence and political intelligence seem like two very different things. It's possible that he'd just get screwed over by the Country's conservatives when he starts acting in too liberal a manner.

The loss of territory is what in this scenario would increase the chances of success of the French expedition and would undeniably impact the political environment into which Maximilian would be thrust. Mexico having lost even more territory to the Colossus of the North will further color the country's already sordid record with foreign domination.

There isn't really any evidence he had administrative competence or that he would be able to implement any such structure on a conquered and occupied country. There is definite evidence against his political savvy and competence.

 

[History Learner]

The loss of territory is what in this scenario would increase the chances of success of the French expedition and would undeniably impact the political environment into which Maximilian would be thrust. Mexico having lost even more territory to the Colossus of the North will further color the country's already sordid record with foreign domination.

There isn't really any evidence he had administrative competence or that he would be able to implement any such structure on a conquered and occupied country. There is definite evidence against his political savvy and competence.

Except for the multiple examples of reforms @Jackson Lennock has already provided? As for his competence, you could also look to his historical performance in Lombardy while realizing he was the victim of circumstance in Mexico.

 

[History Learner]

As out of my field of interest as this is, I've been fascinated by the implications of a slightly larger Mexican Cession as a born-and-raised Tucsonian. Let's assume that Trist is out of the way and Polk ends up securing a cession encompassing OTL's Northern Mexico from Tamaulipas to Baja California, something like this:

I'm particularly fascinated in how these territories would develop along economic, cultural and political lines, how statehood would proceed (and when) as well as the implications on Mexican history (having been the hotbed of the Mexican Revolution, among many others). Unfortunately I really don't have much to add to this topic, which is why I'm turning it over to you all as a free-wheeling conversation--thoughts?

Nicholas Trist dying of Yellow Fever in late 1847 is the PoD I typically use to make the "All Mexico" movement successful. Specific to your scenario, however, I think many of the same conclusions still hold.

The Compromise of 1850 did not last IOTL because it left the question of Western Territories unresolved. This ultimately led the South as a bloc to pick a fight via pushing for the Kansas-Nebraska Act, an event which precipitated the collapse of the non-sectional Whig Party and its replacement with the Free Soil Republican Party. Sectional tensions from then on only increased, ultimately leading to the Civil War. To quote from The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party by Michael Holt, on pages 981-982:

"The death of the Whig Party thus had consequences, and none graver than the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861. This is not to say that there never could have been a civil war had a bisectional Whig Party survived. If anything, this study should show how rapidly contingent events could change things. But surely the circumstances provoking that war and its chronology would be different. The historical Civil War, the one that started in April 1861, resulted primarily from the fact that an exclusively northern and overtly Anti-Southern Republican party, not a bisectional Whig party, benefited most from anger at the Democrats in 1856 and defeated Democrats for the presidency in 1860. That Southern fire-eaters who had unsuccessfully sought secession for decades could have exploited the election of a Whig president, supported by southern Whigs, to trigger disunion seems doubtful."

Further on, in pages 982-983, Holt further states that:

"...no Whig action did more to destroy the party and bring on the war than southern Whigs' easily avoidable support for the Nebraska Act in 1854, a mistake that many of them later rued."

Here, though, this has all been avoided because there is no need for Popular Sovereignty when all of Northern Mexico can be inducted into the Union on a Pro-Slavery basis, whether real or nominal. There's no need to fight over the status of Kansas or Nebraska in order to maintain a 1:1 balance in the Senate or the like when both sections can, via the extension of the Missouri Compromise Line to the Pacific, carve out new states in their image. The South had already long since conceded the North was going to dominate the House, their reliance was on the Senate to safeguard their regional interests and the fact that both parties would be Trans-Sectional would dissuade Dis-Union. Long term, I'd imagine Slavery gradually dies out between 1890-1910 due to a mixture of international pressure and changing economic structures, as it becomes more profitable factoring in everything to just switch to free labor.

For some more examples of changes, one that immediately leaps to me is that the Vicksburg to San Diego railway gets built. The route was actually considered easier to build, which motivated the Gadsen purchase IOTL and the lack of a need to do it in this ATL is certainly a boon for it as well as the fact the center of the U.S. has shifted significantly South. Such would result in San Diego becoming the premier West Coast city while San Francisco and Los Angeles would ultimately die out. Vicksburg and New Orleans would also grow into a greater importance because with the rail connections West starting there and the lack of a Civil War to divert barge traffic onto lateral rail, the commerce of the Midwest will continue to come downriver to them. This would also likely lead to greater rail developments in the Deep South, likely fostering an early development of Birmingham in the 1850s.

 

[Jackson Lennock]

Would 36-30 be extended to the Pacific, or merely to the Colorado River? If California is admitted as a single state like OTL, then the line can only be extended so far.

Plantation slavery also isn't all that lucrative in North Mexico, aside from Tamaulipas.


Here is a map of North American cropland intensity in OTL 2010s/2020s. This is after 20th century technological developments in crop quality and farming practices that reduce need for water and so forth, and includes crops other than Cotton (which is particularly prone to draining soil of nutrients). Other than Tamaulipas, and part of Nuevo Leone and Coahuila, and perhaps part of the Sonoran coast, there wouldn't be much space for plantations. Plus a lot of those lands contain Apache and Comanche, further limiting what's accessible for slavery.

The North is also going to continue to get more antislavery as a matter of public opinion over time as well. No compromise of 1850 means no fugitive slave act, and thus increasing southern frustration. A TTL version of Dred-Scott could still occur too, triggering northern outrage. Eventually, a President will be elected with no Southern support who takes actions within his power to fiddle with slavery on the margins at least. And some slave states (Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri come to mind) will abandon slavery because of industrialization and immigration changing their politics. Virginia OTL demonstrated that you can have slavery and industrialization to an extent, but if a state has a sizable working white and immigrant population, they're going to be antislavery if only because they don't want to compete with free labor. Nuevomexicano, Californio, Tejano, and Nuevomexicano patrons won't want to have to compete with planters for land ownership either.

 

[JesterBL]

Except for the multiple examples of reforms @Jackson Lennock has already provided? As for his competence, you could also look to his historical performance in Lombardy while realizing he was the victim of circumstance in Mexico.

Maximilian was in place for 2 years in Lombardy, a year and a half if you count the time period when the Austrian garrison started imprisoning people before his formal removal. We know his wife learned Milanese and they were seen at the opera. We know he socialized with liberals and intellectuals, which got him some praise. We don’t actually know what his value above replacement was there and we again run into the fact that he was politically naive, easily outmanuevered and strong-armed. We also don't know how much of anything positive we wish to attribute to him is transferable to Mexico (spoiler: probably none of it, him being an Archduke and the Emperor's own brother had relevance for an Austrian ruled polity. For Mexico?)

 

[Indicus]

Maximilian was too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals, and those who might have been sympathetic to his ideology viewed him as a tool of French colonialism (which he definitely was).

The North is also going to continue to get more antislavery as a matter of public opinion over time as well. No compromise of 1850 means no fugitive slave act, and thus increasing southern frustration.

Is it? Without the fugitive slave act northern antislavery is greatly weakened. And many of those arid southern states might still be nominally slave states which send doughfaces to Congress. On the other hand southern frustration at the failure to bring slavery into those areas might result in expansionist efforts towards Cuba, and that would definitely feed into northern anger greatly.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Maximilian was too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals, and those who might have been sympathetic to his ideology viewed him as a tool of French colonialism (which he definitely was).

It was arguably the same problem that Agustín de Iturbide had faced in 1822-1823. He was both too radical for the Peninsulares and Criollos who wanted the Bourbons back and almost reactionary for the Mestizos, Native Americans and Mulattos who had actually fought for independence.

 

[Indicus]

It was arguably the same problem that Agustín de Iturbide had faced in 1822-1823. He was both too radical for the Peninsulares and Criollos who wanted the Bourbons back and almost reactionary for the Mestizos, Native Americans and Mulattos who had actually fought for independence.

Worse because he was imposed by an invading army.

 

[JesterBL]

So I got bored and went ahead and built a rough-and-ready model of Mexican population by state. I used data from 1865, the 1895 Census, UN DESA/Gapminder, and this study and tried to predict the total Mexican population in 1850. The ones that came closest to the 1850 estimate for all of Mexico (1895 less 1865, 1884 less 1865) without including the 1850 estimate, I used as the ranges for population by each Mexican state. Scientific? Not even, but it was fun to dust off some old econometrics.

Nuevo Leon 163,442-178,596
Durango 155,741-170,179
Chihuahua 139,257-152,167
Sinaloa 136,899-149,591
Coahuila 126,920-138,686
Tamaulipas 109,659-119,825
Sonora 101,066-110,436
Baja California 22,484-24,569
Total 955,469-1,044,047
Total ex-Durango and Sinaloa 662,828-724,277

OTL's Mexican Cession had a population of approximately 213,140.

(I also had one which was just Coahuila 1815-1895 which also does pretty well at predicting 1865 and 1884 from 1895, but it is way off from any estimate of 1850, at about 1.97%)

All Mexico 1865-1895 1.44% (lowest estimate of 1850 population)
All Mexico 1865-1884 1.24% (highest estimate of 1850 population)

 

[Jackson Lennock]

So I got bored and went ahead and built a rough-and-ready model of Mexican population by state. I used data from 1865, the 1895 Census, UN DESA/Gapminder, and this study and tried to predict the total Mexican population in 1850. The ones that came closest to the 1850 estimate for all of Mexico (1895 less 1865, 1884 less 1865) without including the 1850 estimate, I used as the ranges for population by each Mexican state. Scientific? Not even, but it was fun to dust off some old econometrics.

Nuevo Leon 163,442-178,596
Durango 155,741-170,179
Chihuahua 139,257-152,167
Sinaloa 136,899-149,591
Coahuila 126,920-138,686
Tamaulipas 109,659-119,825
Sonora 101,066-110,436
Baja California 22,484-24,569
Total 955,469-1,044,047
Total ex-Durango and Sinaloa 662,828-724,277

OTL's Mexican Cession had a population of approximately 213,140.

(I also had one which was just Coahuila 1815-1895 which also does pretty well at predicting 1865 and 1884 from 1895, but it is way off from any estimate of 1850, at about 1.97%)

All Mexico 1865-1895 1.44% (lowest estimate of 1850 population)
All Mexico 1865-1884 1.24% (highest estimate of 1850 population)

For comparison...

California (admitted 1850) had a population of 92,597 in 1850 and 379,994 in 1860.
Kansas (admitted 1864) had a population of 107,206 in 1860 and 364,399 in 1870.

 

[JesterBL]

For comparison...

California (admitted 1850) had a population of 92,597 in 1850 and 379,994 in 1860.
Kansas (admitted 1864) had a population of 107,206 in 1860 and 364,399 in 1870.

Each of the Mexican territories except Durango and Nuevo Leon would be between Rhode Island and Delaware in population, with Durango and Nuevo Leon below Iowa (and to be quite honest, I think this is overestimating the population of each Mexican state, because Northern Mexico was known for having a stagnant growth rate)

A 'Colorado Territory' composed of Monterey, Mariposa, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego counties and Baja California/Baja California Sur would have a population of 35,603 by my model (12,100 individuals from the OTL counties of 1850 California, the remainder from a Baja estimate) which would leave the northern *California with 80,497 souls.

EDIT: I am assuming you are driving at the idea that their population numbers would necessitate statehood- we have the example of New Mexico with 93,516 souls in 1860... and statehood in 1912.

 

[JesterBL]

Definitely overestimating- here are the 1865 numbers (I had only looked at the aggregate, I could probably run something to guess at 1850 numbers for each state but honestly, the magnitude and direction are the most important parts)- the lower numbers definitely seem to support the idea that it would be doable for America to control and assimilate these areas.

Nuevo Leon 152,465
Durango 103,608
Chihuahua 65,824
Sinaloa 82,185
Coahuila 63,178
Tamaulipas 71,470
Sonora 80,129
Baja California 12,420

 

[Jackson Lennock]

EDIT: I am assuming you are driving at the idea that their population numbers would necessitate statehood- we have the example of New Mexico with 93,516 souls in 1860... and statehood in 1912.

That's what I was getting at.

In fairness, most of those states which were admitted with small numbers of people were expected to have very rapid population increases. Kansas went from 107,000 people in 1860 to just under a million in 1880. California had 864,694 people by 1880. New Mexico had 119,565 in 1880, and didn't hit a million until 1970. Arizona didn't break a million until the 1950s.

 

[History Learner]

Would 36-30 be extended to the Pacific, or merely to the Colorado River? If California is admitted as a single state like OTL, then the line can only be extended so far.

I suspect it would be extended to the Pacific, given the greater land available here. The Compromise of 1850 makes sense when extending the line of the Pacific would mean four or five more Slave States for the South; by leaving the issue undecided, it left open the prospect that territory like Kansas could become Slave States later on. Here, with all of Northern Mexico annexed there is a reasonable prospect both sides can continue adding States on a 1:1 rate and thus use the pre-existing Compromise.

Plantation slavery also isn't all that lucrative in North Mexico, aside from Tamaulipas.

For agriculture, yes, but there is also mining available. In particular, exploiting Slave labor to get at Sonoran silver comes to mind.

The North is also going to continue to get more antislavery as a matter of public opinion over time as well. No compromise of 1850 means no fugitive slave act, and thus increasing southern frustration. A TTL version of Dred-Scott could still occur too, triggering northern outrage. Eventually, a President will be elected with no Southern support who takes actions within his power to fiddle with slavery on the margins at least.

I don't see this as likely because, outside of the Fugitive Slave Act, the South has nothing left to lobby for internally here and the key demands of the Northern Public-of the West being Free Soil for Northern farmers-has been met. Likewise, by retaining the Whig Party, both major parties remain bisectional and thus Southern support will remain a factor for every candidate to consider. Even if that proves unfounded, a 1:1 rate in States for the Senate means Southern interests, as defined by the Planters, will continue to be met. Any Anti-Slavery agenda will go to the Upper House to die.

And some slave states (Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri come to mind) will abandon slavery because of industrialization and immigration changing their politics. Virginia OTL demonstrated that you can have slavery and industrialization to an extent, but if a state has a sizable working white and immigrant population, they're going to be antislavery if only because they don't want to compete with free labor. Nuevomexicano, Californio, Tejano, and Nuevomexicano patrons won't want to have to compete with planters for land ownership either.

Slavery was becoming more entrenched in the Border States at this time, not less.

Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise by Gary J. Kornblith, Journal of American History (Volume 90, No. 1, June 2003):

"Yet without the Civil War, it seems highly unlikely that the states of the border South would have acted to abolish slavery anytime soon. Antislavery forces were growing weaker, not stronger, in the region at midcentury. In 1851 Cassius Clay, a gradualist, lost his bid for the governorship of Kentucky by an overwhelming margin. "Even in Delaware," Freehling acknowledged, 'where over fifteen thousand slaves in 1790 had shrunk to under two thousand in 1860, slaveholders resisted final emancipation"--and they did so successfully until 1865. Perhaps most revealing of all was President Lincoln's failure to persuade border South congressmen to support gradual, compensated emancipation. Had the United States followed the Brazilian path to abolition, the South's peculiar institution would almost surely have persisted beyond 1900."

 

[JesterBL]

That's what I was getting at.

In fairness, most of those states which were admitted with small numbers of people were expected to have very rapid population increases. Kansas went from 107,000 people in 1860 to just under a million in 1880. California had 864,694 people by 1880. New Mexico had 119,565 in 1880, and didn't hit a million until 1970. Arizona didn't break a million until the 1950s.

I don't think any of these larger Cession territories would grow particularly quickly. The largest in 1895 was Nuevo Leon, with 311,665. Even assuming that American governance boosts the overall growth rate, it's still not going to look like some of the other places on the map. I don't think it is good for the United States of America, but there is a possibility of territorial rule for quite some time.

 

[Jackson Lennock]

I don't think any of these larger Cession territories would grow particularly quickly. The largest in 1895 was Nuevo Leon, with 311,665. Even assuming that American governance boosts the overall growth rate, it's still not going to look like some of the other places on the map. I don't think it is good for the United States of America, but there is a possibility of territorial rule for quite some time.

I'm still sticking with my idea that Coahuila and Nuevo Leone would be admitted as part of a single Nuevo Leone super-state. which I think could plausibly be admitted pretty quickly. Tamaulipas would be the one where slaveholders grab up lands quickly.


Sonora plausibly could grow in population quickly, since it has a seaport at Guaymas and is comparatively nice climate-wise (the Cold Pacific waters cooling the coastal temperatures west of the mountains) and even has some decent-ish lands for small-plot farming along the Yaqui River.

 

[JesterBL]

I'm still sticking with my idea that Coahuila and Nuevo Leone would be admitted as part of a single Nuevo Leone super-state. which I think could plausibly be admitted pretty quickly. Tamaulipas would be the one where slaveholders grab up lands quickly.


Sonora plausibly could grow in population quickly, since it has a seaport at Guaymas and is comparatively nice climate-wise (the Cold Pacific waters cooling the coastal temperatures west of the mountains) and even has some decent-ish lands for small-plot farming along the Yaqui River.

The issue with the first one is that Congress would have to want a relatively large, Catholic, Spanish-speaking state like that- and I don’t think they would. Maybe they agglomerate them for territorial governance and census taking- but I bet they keep them separate where they can to delay statehood.