Why was Mexico's revolution less successful than the American one?

Great Debates
21

I’m going to pick apart several of the things wrong with this statement.

First, the early U.S. economy was not dependant on slave labor, in either the future Free or Slave states. There were a lot of them, but did not form a key or distinct sector. Nor was the nature of slavery fixed as firmly as it would two generations later; at the time, there was little difference betwee a poor white laborer, an indentured servant, and a slave.

Second, the population of black slaves at the time was much, much smaller; it grew very rapidly post-war.

Third, it wasn’t very productive. It didn’t become really profitable until the introduction of cotton cultivation alongside the rise of textiles in England, both partly a product of the Transportation Revolution. It wasn’t really until 1830 that cotton exploded, and the handsome “Old South” was a fairly recent innovation at the time of the Civil War. (Strictly speaking, the boom began much earlier, but needed fast, cheap water and rail transportation to fulfill its potential it also wasn’t identified with the slave plantation economy early on).

http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_cotton.htm

The raw growth of cotton might seem to be a smooth growth - or even growing faster in the early years of the Republic. However, you’ll note that the growth of cotton rose even after the price dropped immensely. While the deflationary nature of gold and silver might account for some of this, it’s not nearly enough for all. Cotton was profitable only with a huge international market on that scale.

Fourth, slavery was probably correctly viewed as being on the way out in 1800, precisely because big plantations weren’t really all that profitable. Some families managed to hold large fortunes, but these were mostly large landowners in Virginia. Tobacco and sugar simply couldn’t guarrantee a slave economy.

Fifth, the Free States were more stable and wealthier than the Slave states, and grew to be even more so, combining industry, commerce, and agriculture. This is altered a bit because the wealthiest counties in 1860 were in the slave states, but these were simply big centers of the cotton trade, which combined low population with lots of cash flow. For a modern equivalent, think of Hollywood.

22

And on top of all that, hostility to modernization in Spanish America came sometimes from a quarter you would not expect.

23

Now you’ve drifted into The Black Legend, which makes the English feel great about their behavior in the 17th Century Americas in contrast to Spain’s (especially since Ireland isn’t in the Americas).

24

Explanation is not justification.

25

I think it’s a combination of this:

…and luck. IMHO, the biggest factor in post-revolution success than whether or not the leaders of the revolution are nice people.

In other words, the US lucked out when George “Snowball” Washington became the de facto leader of the Revolution. Russia, Mexico, et al got Napoleon instead.

The tradition of representative democracy simply made the odds better that Washington wouldn’t turn around and declare this the Republic of Washington and commence with the killing of the intellectuals.

26

There were simply more peons than slaves. Mexico was a peasant society. For every educated member of the landowning elite there were 10 landless dirt-poor peasants (and not much in between). That is an extremely difficult set-up to try a mold into a successful democracy.

Slavery did cause instability in the US, but in the aftermath of the revolution the slave population was relatively low, so while that was a cause of instability (the southern states were constantly in fear of slave rebellion) it did not doom the whole exercise. Of course when slave populations did start to increase later on it ultimately led to the civil war.

27

America got Washington because of a tradition of representative governance-the Founding Fathers didn’t come out of a vacuum.

28

Except of course, there was plenty of truth to back up the black legend in relation to Spain. They treated the natives horribly, they imported lots of black slaves. The English did the same of course, the history of colonization is real fucking ugly, right up to Belgium’s heart of darkness in the Congo.

29

No, America got Washington partly because of that tradition. India got Gandhi despite having no tradition of representative governance at all. France got Napoleon in spite of a (brief) tradition of representative governance.

30

So who was the worse colonizer, Spain or England?

31

However, my point was that Spanish colonialism was and is maligned to justify Anglo-Saxon colonialism. The Cheyennes notion af a Germanic race destined to follow the sun, from Northern Europe, marshaling on the British Isles, across the Atlantic, across North America, and onward across the Pacific. Hitler chose the swastika to represent that beckoning sun, but Teddy Roosevelt bought into the theory with no less enthusiasm.

Anecdote: when the Anglo Saxons crossed the Pacific in 1898, searching to destroy the Spanish navy, they cornered them in Manila Bay. The US Asiatic Squadron had the Spanish ships outgunned, but the Spanish shore batteries had bigger guns and more shells than the Americans. However, here’s your black legend: the Spanish admiral forfeited victory because if he put his ships under his shore guns, most of the American shells would overshoot both and kill civilians. So he anchored down the shore where he was shot to pieces. And over the next five years the Americans killed 600,000 Fillipinos.

32

I’ll bet there are a dozen or more Straight Dope Great Debates thread trying to cover that topic.

33

That was because Gandhi was educated in Britain-there is a quote somewhere that basically says Gandhi was inspired by the Western heritage rather than anything Indian. In addition Gandhi’s native Indian elements included such things as support for the caste system.

Note the word brief-in other words no established tradition.

Spain by a mile. Just compare Canada and the US with Latin America

34

the mexican constitution of 1824 was a good federalist constitution but the great size of mexico and it’s very poor trade and communications network worked against uniting the several states, as did the many peculiar divisions of mexican political life, but the real clavelito for mexico was Santa Anna who was elected president in the 1830’s and abolished the constitution, becoming one of the most disinterested military dictators any country ever suffered from. abolishing the constitution became the proximate cause of the texas rebellion, which led eventually to the U.S. stealing the richest half of mexico in the 1848 war, which would screw up any country. and, of course, mexican politics have suffered from an incredible level of long term corruption, a level up to which we are just now rising…

35

It should be noted the land taken by the US in the Mexican American War were lightly populated.

36

Kind of cherry picking there, aren’t we?

37

Worse for who? The nation states that formed out of the freed colonies, or the indigenous populations? It is easy to argue that the English model led to more stable countries, but if you look at how many of the native population remain and what their position in society is today, the argument becomes much more murky.

38

Well, that and long-term engagement in Enlightenment philosophy and theory of government. The large middle class in America gave rise to lots of idealistic armchair philosophers, and some of those turned out to be damned good at it, like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John and Sam Adams, and Ben Franklin. To say that representative government produced these sorts of men as a matter of course is a bit of a misstatement. America had some of the most important thinkers of the age framing the Constitution and serving in the early government. To dismiss the influence of Enlightenment philosophers like Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Montesquieu is silly.

39

And I wonder whether the Mexican creole class – the only class in Mexico that could have produced a lot of armchair philosophers – even had access to those books, which might have been Indexed.

40

Well, anyway, what does Mexico need now? Yet another revolution? It’s really hard to mount an effective revolution against public corruption, which is the real problem here.