# Why was Mexico's revolution less successful than the American one? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 22, 2011, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750 "2011-11-22T15:06:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750/61 "2011-11-25T04:08:44Z")
> [@Capitaine\_Zombie](#): > > And yet, the supposed point of origin of the American Revolution is “lack of representation”. Chose your myth, you cant have both. The colonies developed a robust tradition of local self-government and representative (though certainly not perfectly democratic) colonial assemblies. They did not, however, have any representation in the British Parliament, which claimed ultimate power to legislate over the American colonies, overriding their own legislatures if need be. The Americans thus had a well-developed body of local leaders, and a growing conflict between this colonial ruling class and the British ruling class in the Parliament in London. ---
**Author:** ![CBEscapee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@CBEscapee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CBEscapee)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750/62 "2011-11-25T13:15:59Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > Huh? It’s above both Nicaragua and Guatemala, which was my point. Its below México which is also a neighbor and Panama and Costa Rica and most countries in South America. The point is, Belice was a British colony and ranks below former Spanish colonies in the same geographical area. Which is my point. ---
**Author:** ![CBEscapee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@CBEscapee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CBEscapee)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750/63 "2011-11-25T13:27:13Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > No look at Singapore and Malaysia. Malaysia ranks below México on the HDI index. Singapore is a special case. It was part of Malaysia until 1965. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750/64 "2011-11-25T14:09:27Z")
> [@Capitaine\_Zombie](#): > > And yet, the supposed point of origin of the American Revolution is “lack of representation”. Chose your myth, you cant have both. Lack of representation **at Westminster.** The colonists already **had** their own representative governments, they were practically petty republics already, taking care of their own business while Britain mostly left them alone. Because of this, it galled them, starting in 1763, that the Mother Country was going to start taxing them and would not even allow them a voice in Parliament. Did Spanish-American creoles of the period ever demand representation in the Cortes in Madrid? I dunno, but probably not – the Cortes being a powerless rubberstamp for the king, at the time; and, more importantly, the creoles had no institutions of autonomous representative government of their own to point up the lack. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750/65 "2011-11-25T14:25:00Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > The colonies developed a robust tradition of local self-government and representative (though certainly not perfectly democratic) colonial assemblies. They did not, however, have any representation in the British Parliament, which claimed ultimate power to legislate over the American colonies, overriding their own legislatures if need be. The Americans thus had a well-developed body of local leaders, and a growing conflict between this colonial ruling class and the British ruling class in the Parliament in London. From [_The American Way of Strategy,_](http://www.amazon.com/American-Way-Strategy-Michael-Lind/dp/0195308379/sr=8-1/qid=1166282273/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9788122-0265632?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Michael Lind: > [@](#): > > Many people remember vaguely that the American Revolution had something to do with taxes. A few remember that the issue was whether the power to tax lay with London or the American colonies. But this was a surrogate for the real issue: preserving the American way of life. > > In the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, the British colonists in North America developed a distinctive way of life quite different from that of their British cousins. Something like Britain’s aristocratic society endured in the South and parts of the Northeast. But in general, colonial society was characterized by a degree of middle-class prosperity and widespread property ownership unknown in any other society in the world. Not only were America’s yeoman farmers, artisans, and merchants better off than most Britons and Europeans, but also the cost of government was much lower. > > The trouble began in the aftermath of the French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War) of 1754-63. The British imperial government insisted that the colonists pay more of the costs of their own defense. The colonists, however, feared that the London parliament was trying to destroy the system of colonial self-government that had grown up in the preceding generations. They remembered that the London parliament had destroyed the Scottish parliament in 1707 (it would eliminate the Irish parliament in 1801). They feared that the same thing was now happening to them. They would pay ever higher taxes, even as their colonial assemblies lost authority to the London parliament. As a result, British North America might come to resemble Ireland or Scotland, impoverished countries where absentee landlords held vast tracts of land and where major decisions were made by well-connected aristocrats and merchants in London with little or no accountability to the people whom they ruled. > > \ > > This history may be familiar but the point is not. For Americans, the independence of the United States from Britain and its organization as a democratic republic was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end was the safeguarding of the communal right to self-government and the individual liberties that the British settlers in America had already enjoyed for generations under British rule. Americans adopted their own strategy for defending the American way of life against imperial centralization – independence as a democratic republic – only because their first choice, self-government within a federal monarchical empire, was rejected. Democratic republicanism and national independence were only two of several possible methods for preserving what by 1776 was the traditional American way of life, characterized by personal liberty, widespread property ownership, low taxes, and an inexpensive military. The Spanish colonies had nothing like this. In the end, the creoles simply got fed up with doing the bidding of those stuck-up lords from over the sea. But the Spanish creoles’ society was not so different from Spain’s as white American society was from Britain’s. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750/66 "2011-11-25T16:11:10Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > A large contributing factor was the economic conditions. Mexico was a peasant society with a small affluent land-owning elite, with a majority very poor peasant population. > > That is inherently less stable situation that is far harder to mold into working democracy, than one in which wealth is more evenly distributed. Give that man a gold star next to his name. 🙂 In general the legacy of the British Empire has been representative democracy and well functioning economies. The legacy of the Spanish Empire has been poverty and tyranny. I think George Washington set a good precedent by not trying to establish a royal dynasty. Until the American Revolution that had been the pattern for successful revolutionary leaders throughout history. Of course, Washington had personal reasons for not establishing such a dynasty. He had no sons. He had Mount Vernon to retire to. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750/67 "2011-11-25T19:39:58Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Good heavens, were you born yesterday? Robespierre was dead, and the Reign of Terror at its end five years before Napoleon took power. > > The other powers waged war in order to preserve Divine Right. You’ll note that at the moment the French were defeated, a Bourbon was reinstated. Which was a constitutional monarchy and which got overthrown when the Bourbons tried to turn the clock back. > [@appleciders](#): > > First, cite? Second, the American revolutionaries probably wouldn’t have minded Britain’s system of government if they had a chance to be a part of it. See for example Voltaire’s \*Letters on the English \* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters\_on\_the\_English](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_on_the_English) > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Well, this ought to be good: what the fuck are you talking about? India is backward largely due to its casteist culture-even China which was bugfuck crazy Maoist for twenty years is ahead of it now. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2011, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750/68 "2011-11-26T02:02:26Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Did Spanish-American creoles of the period ever demand representation in the Cortes in Madrid? Actually, some did, and during the Napoleonic wars while the King was busy getting his own royal self to safety, those left managing what part of Spain the anti-Bonapartists could hold on to proclaimed a constitutional monarchy and granted representation to the criollos, in what looks like a desperate measure to ensure the folks in \*ultramar \*had the _peninsulares_’ backs. But as soon as the coast was clear of the Bonapartes, Don Fernando went “constitution, what constitution?” and reasserted the bad old ways, setting off a century of civil unrest between liberals and reactionaries in the Mother Country, and leading the criollos to say, hey, if we’re gonna get shafted from across the ocean, we might as well do our own shafting right here at home, thank you very much. (It was until the 1870s/80s that the remnants of empire finally gained representation, and then mostly a limited, second-class kind; responsible government/home rule was not approved for the overseas until the eve of the Spanish-American war, again as a desperation concession but by then the Cuban War of Independence was as good as lost. The first Puerto Rico home rule parliament in 1898 barely sat in session a week, wasting it mostly on a priority of trampling on the minority party, until the Governor General got the note the Americans were invading and declared a State of Emergency, shutting the whole thing down.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-mexicos-revolution-less-successful-than-the-american-one/603750.md?page=3)