I doubt we would have stopped at Guatemala (or wherever Mexico’s southern border was at the time). I don’t know how far we’d go, it would depend on the perceived value of the lands at the time.
ETA: it’s contrary to the OP, but just because we wanted most of Mexico for some reason doesn’t mean we’d really take all of it. If the Mexicans are resisting at some point we could have just drawn a line and left them something to call their country. That’s pretty much what we’d did already.
What would be the first? We’ve never had an official language.
If we annexed Mexico, then either the Mexicans would become serfs, or they would become citizens. Since the northern half of Mexico that we did end up annexing didn’t have very many Mexicans, so treating Mexicans as white didn’t threaten white supremacy. That wouldn’t work in southern Mexico because those parts would be overwhelmingly Mexican. You couldn’t let them send people to congress, or govern themselves, could you? They’d vote against slavery, or for independence, or God knows what.
You’ve had one all along - just not formally so.
It seems a few folks have missed the OP’s question. It was a bit mangled, but as Post #4 explained, the question asked is:
“What if the US had annexed all of Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War of 1846/47?” Instead of the just the land we actually did annex, now called all of California, Nevada, Arizona, & Utah, plus parts of New Mexico & Colorado.
The question is NOT asking about the current US annexing the current Mexico today.
It might have made sense to annex what is now northern Mexico. In American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Colin Woodward argues that “El Norte” was and remains a cultural region straddling the border and distinct from southern Mexico – less populated, less feudal-agrarian, more libertarian, more cowboy-like.
No, I got the question. “Southern Mexico” means “Current day Mexico”.
Southern Mexico, aka what is now Mexico, was densely populated in 1847. What would we have done with all the Mexicans? Would they be citizens? Or subject people? Would they be governed as conquered territories? Or join the United States as equals?
Obviously they wouldn’t join as equals, because they would be annexed by force, not voluntarily. So now what? We’ve got to occupy them with military garrisons? Permanently? That would require a radical change in the country. Yes, empires have administered subject populations before. But the United States hadn’t. It would require a radical change in our form of government, military spending, and sef-conception to keep Mexico as some sort of revenue-generated conquered colony.
It’s all very well to imagine demanding more at the treaty negotiations and getting Sonora and Baja California and Chihuahua. That would have led to a similar result an in real history. But annexing the Mexican population centers would require some very ahistorical changes that in real life didn’t happen for very good reasons.
The population of the US was 23 million in 1850, including 3 million slaves and that of Mexico was 7.5 million. The most populous US state was New York with 3 million, and Mexico’s population was a little more than the combined number of people in the three most populous states: New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. (How did we ever live pre-google?)
The Compromise of 1850 dealt with the sticky issue of how to handle the territories acquired from Mexico and to allow California in as the 31st state, breaking the even balance between slave and free states by having California promise to send one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery senator to preserve the balance.
There’s no way that they could have handled adding Mexico as states, and consequently the South would not have wanted to add them as territories with the potential to become states. It just wouldn’t work.
Second, Mexico has just won independence not that long prior. I can’t see them really eager to roll over forever if the Americans attempted to hold it long term. The US didn’t have a large standing army, and would not have been able to hold down a rebellion without setting up an occupation army.
Another point is that Mexicans were Catholic, and would the US of that time be interesting in having that many Catholics to join the US?
A lot of those titles were held in Seville; between that, language issues and “conqueror’s attitude”, people from Texas to California had serious problems proving that they owned the place where they lived. There still remain some areas in California (I can’t remember their name) which are the result of recognition of standing titles: similar large grants existed in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico but weren’t respected. Many other areas of California would also have been under grant, but the title wasn’t recognized for different reasons.
… How was it supposed to have straddled the border if said border hadn’t existed? It would have been different from other areas of Mexico, but right now the biggest differences are due to the border and its traffic (both legal and not) than to “ancestral reasons”.
I wonder what would have happened if the US had somehow annexed Mexico in say the 1920’s or such when Mexico was mired in revolution with no real standing government? Remember thats about when American forces did go after Pancho Via.
Frankly I think many Mexicans of the time would have welcomed a group that could set things in order and create stability. As long as they allowed locals into government, put in public works like good roads, electrified the countryside, created a good postal service, brought jobs and economic development - they might have been ok having the status of a US territory or even a state.
Many such places like Guam, Samoa, or the Virgin Islands have such status and do quite well. Many people in the Phillipines wanted such a status or would like the US to return.
Many states such as Texas and Hawaii, who once were former countries themselves, still kept a local pride and identity.
The US was able to incorporate Alaska and Hawaii. In fact many residents of Alaska who lived in remote villages were surprised when told they were US citizens and had rights to social security and other benefits.
So basically if it had been handled right, I think the US could have absorbed Mexico in the 1920’s.
Louisiana is (and was) heavily Catholic due to French influence, and we don’t seem to have had much of a problem accepting them. Puerto Rico (though not a state) is also heavily Catholic and I don’t see very many people interested in trying to take away their US citizenship.
Another interesting book along those lines (though not directly relevant to Mexico per se), is David Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. He opines that the US is composed of four regional cultures that have existed as such for hundreds of years: Puritans, Quakers, Cavaliers, and Hillbillies. The US’s so-called “gun culture”, for example, derives from the Hillbillies’ experiences in the (frequently violent) Scottish Borders region and the necessity of self-defense and forming strong clan kinship relationships to survive there. FREEDOM (and armor-piercing assault weapons)!
I had the privilege of being in Professor Fischer’s class on the American Revolution the past semester and his theory was quite compelling although I’d love to see more on how subsequent migratory waves were shaped and in turn shaped these regional cultures.
As for the OP, I cannot increasingly help but come to the conclusion that both the United States and Mexico would be far off to-day had the American Republic decided to absorb everything down to the Yucatan. First of all, in the inevitable struggle of the War of the Rebellion, the presence of a largely antislavery Mexico would have given added strength for the forces of Union and Freedom against the forces of the slavers and the planter aristocracy. Afterwards the necessity of giving full representation and statehood would have forced the United States to adopt a more racially tolerant stance and give citizenship to the Mexican inhabitants. Of course, Mexico would at the same time would be far more likely to enjoy the fruits of industrial development with the rest of the United States as the petroleum industry along the Gulf coast is developed and the Valley of Mexico becomes a great centre of industry. To-day we’d have a better United States-one that is more populist in nature with the Mestizo Catholic citizens of the Mexican states joining their ethnic Catholic bretheren in the North as well as the Scotch-Irish element of Appalachia to bolster a New Deal coalition that just might have outvoted Cavalier Southerners as well as conservative Yankees to produce a permanent majority for the left-wing party along the signs of LDP dominance in Japan and Social Democratic dominance in Sweden thus also ensuring a country with a far more robust social safety net and less income inequality. It would also be a less “puritan”/moralistic country-with the further diluted influence of the Unitarian Yankee element there’d probably be no Prohibition, or the War on Drugs or silly half-assed gun control or political correctness. Finally, we’d have a far more prosperous North American continent that would have far less problems dealing with illegal immigration and all its attendant problems.
One of the theories (which I believe is in Fischer’s book) is that the Quakers’ decision to encourage local settlement by religious refugees from Germany (i.e. the “Pennsylvania Dutch”) strengthened the cultural emphasis on civil liberties in the mid-Atlantic region because both groups had strong beliefs in freedom of speech and religion. In other words, their attitude was “Leave me alone and let me practice my own religion in peace. Let my neighbor have the same rights, regardless of whether he agrees with my church.”
Not to mention the USA would be HUGE. Mexico has usually had about 1/3rd US population. Would the US have become imperialistic like we were already doing in the late 1800’s and taking over more world territory?
Also it would have been so much better for the Mexican people to have had a stable government, which they have never really had. So much of Mexico has been a history of poverty and oppression.
You mean the ASPECT is inconsistent. I only mention that to be an asshole.
If you notice, I specifically referred to the US at that time. I’m not arguing about current attitudes.
For the Louisiana purchase, the population was quite small compared to the States, and the land was quite large. Also, and probably much more importantly, that was in the early 1800s.
For Puerto Rico, it taken in the Spanish American War, in the late 1800s when the US was looking to become more powerful around the world, and made a brief bid for foreign colonies. I believe that was a different case than looking at acquiring something connected to the other states where the goal would be direct integration.
Anti Catholicism was become quite strong right about the time of the Mexican American War. From wiki:
As I posted in my earlier comments, I believe that the other factors would be stronger, that it would have been difficult to actually take over the country, but I also believe that bigotry, both racial and religious would have also contributed to the States not wanting to incorporate that country into ours.
However, the biggest factor would be slavery and the refusal of southern states to voluntarily throw away their power to block anti slavery measures through losing equality in the Senate.
As Qin Shi Huangdi suggests, the anti slave Mexico would have destroyed “the forces of the slavers and the planter aristocracy,” and as history has shown, the would not have simply given up the framework of their society without a fight.
How so? The difference between those two is not a difference in aspect. It’s a difference between two “subjunctive” (or contrary-to-fact) moods: conditional contrary-to-fact present, and conditional contrary-to-fact past.