Let us imagine that America never expanded beyond the borders of the original thirteen states. We’ll assume that the Revolutionary War did occur, and we still won. But we never annexed Florida, never made the Louisiana Purchase, etc. Would we still have fought the Civil War? Would the Spanish have remained in the New World and if not who would have taken their place? Would Democracy still have developed in the rest of the world?
This is going to end up getting moved to GD. 
Here are two completely personal conjectures:
-
We probably still would have ended up fighting a Civil War; the root problem (i.e. Southern economy dependent on slavery) would still have existed if there weree only the 13 states. However, since the argument over the spread of slavery into new territories was what really brought things to a head, if you take that expansion out of the equation, maybe a more peaceful solution would have come about.
-
Spain probably wouldn’t have stayed in the New World any longer than they did; their empire problems (i.e. resources and manpower spread too thin to maintain NW colonies) had little to do with us. However, the intriguing question is what would have happened. Would Mexico have become an enormous nation, keeping California, Nevada and Arizona? Would Texas have managed to remain an independent republic? Without the Monroe Doctrine (or without a sufficiently muscular U.S. to back it up), would other European nations have come calling?
You do realise that the US didn’t invent democracy? You do realise that the whole Revolutionary War was fought because American colonists were being taxed without democratic representation, right?
And if you do realise those things then can you possibly explain why all European colonies wouldn’t be just as democratic as they are today? Seriously, I don’t get this. How could New Zealand or Canada not be a democracy even if the US never expanded? What possible chain if events can you see that would result in such an action?
I could certainly see the reverse argument, that without a monolithic superpower in western hemisphere overthrowing democratically elected government and sponsoring “freedom fighters” the world would be far more democratic than it is.
Let’s imagine that I’ve moved this to Great Debates.
samclem
-
I think the Civil War would never have occured. A non-expansionist USA is a USA that would be 13 loosely allied independent nations. When South Carolina wanted to go they would have just gone and be done with it.
-
I think we’d see a lot more European colonies inland. French, Spanish and English all looking to get to the sea. With the French holding Louisiana, and therefore the mouth of the Mississippi Valley it’s importantance would have been even greater than before. Ditto the St Lawrence up north.
So, North America would be a hodge-podge of competing nations a bit more like Europe than the relatively stable Canada/USA/Mexico we see through the 20th century.
The Republic of Texas would currently be engaged in a prolonged war with the California Republic.
International tensions are rising—Texas was scandalized to it’s Großdeutsches Reich allies after the Rangers were implicated in prisoner-abuse and mass-lynchings in occupied Fresno, and even the Eurasian Union of People’s Democratic Republics has begun to condemn California’s disasterous agricultural policies, which have caused unprecedented crop losses from E. coli contamination and inadequite pest control, raising fears of upcoming famine.
Thing is, you can’t just postulate that the US doesn’t expand. WHY doesn’t the US expand? Maybe Napoleon doesn’t decide to sell the patrimony of the Louisana territory to the US. But then what happens to the Louisana territory?
Is it kept by France? Or is is seized by Britain, and become part of Canada? Or do various colonists from various places pour in pretty much the same as in real history, but the territory is never annexed to the United States and instead becomes…what? An independent country? How does the sparsely populated Louisiana territory maintain its independence from the more populous US, not to mention the colonial powers?
If the US couldn’t hold or take the Louisiana territory then there probably would be no civil war. But the union probably would never be as strong as in real history, each individual colony would retain much more power than in real life. And when and if the slavery issue came to a head the union would probably dissolve without a shot being fired, into somewhere between 2 and 13 countries. Which small countries would inevitably find themselves as pawns of the European colonial powers, either they ally with France to protect themselves against British-controlled Louisiana, or they ally with Britain to protect themselves against French-controlled Louisiana. Or they ally with Britain because Britain controls Louisiana + Canada and they can dictate terms to their former rebellious colonies.
Spain probably wouldn’t be able to keep their colonies, they all became independent, or were seized by the expanding US, or were seized by some other colonial power. Look for lots of nominally independent latin american countries that are actually controlled by a colonial power, ala Emperor Maximillian of Mexico.
There are really two parts to this question though. Are anglophone settlers from the original 13 colonies able to move into the new territories, but for some reason they can’t be annexed by the US, or are settlers from the US kept out somehow?
Because these territories were fairly easily annexed by the US because France and Spain and Mexico were pretty much powerless to stop it. Napoleon ceded the sparsely populated Louisiana because he needed the money and he knew Louisiana was indefensible, and if he didn’t the area would be overrun eventually. And this is what happened in Texas, settlers from the US were able to seize Texas from Mexico. What mechanism do we postulate that would prevent these people from crossing invited or uninvited into Louisiana territory or Mexico? How are they kept out? If they are kept out, then do the other colonial powers–France, Britain, Spain, later Mexico–somehow populate the territories with other people? Where do these people come from? How many French peasants is Napoleon going to ship to Louisiana, when he needs those peasants for his European campaigns? How many Mexican peasants are going to be shipped to California or Texas to keep those territories in Mexican (or maybe Spanish) hands?
For purposes of argument, I’ll say that the founding fathers never included anything in the Constitution about expanding territory or adding new states. Furthermore, the idea of Manifest Destiny never took hold. We were just never interested in expanding.
Counterfactual history is one of my little hobbies. I agree with Lemur866. One of the “rules” of the game is that only seemingly small, realistic changes to historical events are permitted. The suggestion that Napoleon decides not to sell Louisiana (or Congress refuses to ratify the treaty) is a good example. Then you run scenarios from there. IMHO, the same outcome as with the purchase. Settlement of the continent was driven by population pressure. It would have taken more military muscle than any of the European powers could bring to bear to keep the Americans cooped on the Atlantic coast.
One scenario would be that Spain and France rise to become world powers in the 19th century. This might lead to those two nations from making inroads in the British Empire. Another related scenario might involve the colonies and the United States fighting against each other and/or a war among the world powers.
World War I would have happened in 1870!
Clarification. On reflection, “seemingly small” isn’t quite the right description. I have seen counterfactuals based on what can only be described as pretty large events, e.g., the Greeks lose the Persian War. But, the point there is to play out the scenario on a broad scale, in comparison to which the assumed counterfactual is comparatively small. And, I think most people would agree that the smaller the assumption, the better the counterfactual. In any event, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where the basic underlying elements of the scenario are changed. “We were just never interested in expanding” is too big.
One way that could work is that Napoleon doesn’t sell Louisiana to the US. After the British beat the French in the Napoleonic wars they demand Louisiana in the peace treaty.
So both Canada and Louisiana are British, and the British have a vested interest in keeping US settlers out. So they arm and train allied indian tribes backed up by redcoats to keep Louisiana British. Only settlers willing to swear alligience to the King are allowed across the border.
So we eventually get a US-British war in the mid 1800s over the status of Louisiana and Canada. Trouble is, US probably wins, even in its reduced state, because of logistical issues. Louisiana is right over the US border, it’s halfway across the world from Britain. The British can control New Orleans and the Mississippi, but nothing else. Eventually they’ll have to give up.
Of course, this substantially delays US expansion. Suppose Mexican peasants discover gold at Sutter’s Mill before there are substantial US settlers in California? Then California becomes worth fighting for. Maybe the British or the French rather than the US try to grab it from Mexico. And the Oregon Territory becomes part of Canada, even if Louisiana eventually falls to the US.
I am not educated enough in the nuances the other colonial powers at the time to contribute a guess, but assuming someone else came in to take up the void, I wonder if the native indians in those areas would have fared better or worse because of it?
When you look at Spain, as an example, obviously Columbus is a good example of Spanish thoughts on the role of native peoples (slavery and exploitation), but what about settlers from Mexico? Or Canada? Or France?
Spain was a has-been, former world power by the 19th century. I can’t think of any realistic scenerio where Spain undergoes an 11th hour revival at the beginning of the 19th century.
If the United States had not been independent and actively expanding by the 1790s then the whole issue of what might have happened becomes hopelessly entangled in the geopolitics of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. In a nutshell, Britain relentlessly opposed the French Republic/Empire whereever it could, France sought to achieve dominion of Europe (with the fate of it’s New World colonies of secondary importance), and Spain was reduced to a swing vote, sometimes siding with France and sometimes against it. The position of English or former English North American colonies would depend on who retained control of what in the New World. An added complication might be competing Royalist and Bonapartist factions among the French colonies, either of which could favor either independence or loyalty to France depending on- well, which way the wind was blowing.
Had you played “Conquest of the New World” or “Europa Universalis” you would know that french colonists have a significant bonus for dealing peacefully with natives. 
(By the way, “Europa Universalis” is a great game for people who like alternate history. Just letting the computer play against itself is fun)
If France and Spain possess the Louisiana territory and the Southwest territory respectively then they will rise to become world powers and their respective empires will only decine if they lose the territory to the United States. That’s what happened in actual history; Spain went from naval power with the Armada and exploration to a modern-day constitutional monarchy and France went from . Look at the British Empire. Just as the British were loosing their colonial possessions, the sun was setting on their Empire.
The premise of the OP is that France and Spain do not lose their possessions to the United States. The question is this: what is the difference in the waxing and waning of the Spanish, French, and British Empire, and how would the loss of colonial possessions fit into the equation?
If the Revolutionary War was won, how would the thirteen colonies’ original borders remained the same, since once of the important things the War accomplished was American expansionism to the Mississippi? Even without the Louisiana Purchase and the purchase of Florida, we would still have the territories we know as Ohio, Kentucky, Vermont, Tennessee, Illinois, Michigan, and possibly Maine.
The only way the original borders of the thirteen colonies would have been kept intact over numerous decades would be if Britain had done much better in the Revolutionary war. Perhaps from their stronghold in Canada, the British could have established outposts and settlements in the aforementioned areas west of the thirteen colonies and hemmed them in.
I think you have cause and effect confused. The British lost their possessions largely becuse they had lost their position as a world power and could no longer maintain them. Ditto for France and to some extent Spain. Those nations didn’t lose thier position because they lost their colonies, they lost their colonies because they lost their position.
Oh, and Alabama, Mississipi and Indiana.
I, for one, welcome our new Metis overlords.