(And further to the point…what ARE the top four largest economies, anyway? USA & Japan are one and two, obviously, and I assume the other two are European nations, but which ones?)
The reason I think this wouldn’t be the case is that it would naturally make Mexico one of the top 4 world economies, which seems laughable. (My apologies to all Mexican citizens.) Beyond that, though, I haven’t a clue. Would a Mexican California have a problem with illegal American immigrants?
http://www.usmayors.org/uscm/metroeconomies/chart_10.pdf
According to this site, California (los Angeles anyhow) ranks #18, this was back in 1998, cant find a more recent one ATM. Might have moved up, I’m not sure.
As for the four largest economies, America is number one, China comes in at number two http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html
Japan comes in at number three and I believe Germany in number four.
I don’t think California would be anywhere near as well off as it is now if it stayed under Mexican rule. The rest of the USA is very wealthy, while Mexico is poor, and I don’t think that California alone is determining factor in the rest of the nations wealth.
The largest economies :
1)USA
2) China (due to its size, not to its wealth, obviously)
3)Japan
4)Germany
Then France, Italy, UK, roughly on par…
Well, I know Calif.'s #5 from all those attack ads from the gubernatorial campaign last month, it sorta drilled it into my head. Also, I remember as far back as the 1976/1980/1984 conventions when California’s delegation couldn’t help announcing its votes without adding, “…which, if independent, would be the 7th largest economy in the world…” Obviously we’ve moved up in the world since then.
Hmm, I was hoping to stir up more of a debate regarding the Mexico question. Oh, well.
I would assume that a large part of California’s incomes comes from crops/food. Without the water, they could never have produced what they currently do. Mexico could never have gotten the water piped in IMHO. Now, I don’t know much about it. I just think this would be asignificant factor
Theres an old joke: two things were wrong about America stealing half of Mexico, one was the stealing itself, two, they stole the half with all the roads.
Oh, I actually don’t think this would be such a huge factor - Or not exactly anyway. Spanish Colonial North America included the Colorado drainage that irrigated ( and in part still does ) the So.Cal deserts. A lot of the irrigation water for the enormously productive Central Valley comes in-state from No.Cal. Technically there is no reason that Mexico couldn’t have conceivably have done the same things the U.S. did.
They just likely wouldn’t have. California was far, far away from the center of government in Mexico, was very lightly populated, and low on the priority list. Though, yes, this may have changed with time, it would have been a pretty long time if immigration from the U.S. was prohibited. If that immigration wasn’t prohibited ( and some way found to enforce it ), they would have eventually lost California to demography and distance anyway ( just as they eventually did ).
At any rate, even if Mexico had held on to CA, it wouldn’t have been as wealthy, no. CA enjoys some huge advantages, but Mexico, which had a significantly different colonial experience than Anglo-America, would have been ill-positioned to take full advantage of them in quite the same way.
Mexico had less of the excess population eager for land and capable of crossing the deserts to settle. It had an almost feudal, entrenched oligarchic system left over from the Spanish Colonial period, which was rather more caste-like, corrupt, and inflexible than the simple divider of wealth found in the U.S. colonies. It had less internal instability. Fewer resources ( though they certainly were blessed with an abundance of some ).
etc.
Given enough time CA under Mexico might have become, with its natural advantages, very significant on a smaller scale - a sleeping giant ( relative to Mexico ) that roused itself, perhaps leading to a serious bipolar split between “North Mexico” and “South Mexico”, with unpredictable results. But it wouldn’t be quite the dominant world economic engine it is today.
Gah. Less internal stability.
Actually, that’s food for thought – I can suppose that a USA missing the former parts of Mexico (Texas, Cali, NM, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Colorado – it’s a stretch to think we’d take all the desert and let them keep Alta California, whose north and centralvalley is quite pleasant and fertile) would still have eventually made it to a major-power status, but not as fast or in the same manner.
A Greater Mexico, OTOH… would probably be doing better, but not THAT much better. What was left of Mexico does have arable land, gold, oil, minerals and a substantial population, it’s been 160 years of bad policies (political AND sociocultural, from within AND without) that has held them back. Yet it is already Latin America’s biggest economy ($620 Billion GrossDomesticProduct in 2001), having passed Brazil.
As to claims of California being the “World’s Nth largest economy if independent” – I often wonder if these take into account both actual federal (US) money transfers (subsidies, benefits, entitlements) AND the economic activities that happen in California because it is part of the USA?
The USA’s GDP in 2001 was $10.1 Trillion of which California’s “share” according to various sources I looked up is from a tenth to an eighth (that’s proportional to its population, which is about 12% of the total US). The USA’s per-capita GDP (each person’s share) is 6 times that of Mexico. Were we to suppose that the Greater Mexico would have the same economic efficiency as modern Mexico, we’d then have to figure how populated would be the estados of Alta California, Tejas, Nuevo Méjico, Aztlán, etc. – likely nowhere near their equivalents in our real-world timeline, since the immigration rate was nowhere near that for the US. Much smaller populations, and an economy not quite as productive, would result in VERY much smaller state economies.
"The best way to measure the California economy’s overall size and compare it to that of other nations and states is to look at California’s gross state product (GSP). Gross product includes the value of market transactions, but excludes such things as illegal activities and the “underground” economy.
"The figure below shows that California ranks among the world’s ten largest economies. Its gross product currently is over $800 billion. This is larger than all but eight nations (including the former USSR), $200 billion more than Canada, and 60 percent more than the next largest state, New York.
"The best way to measure the California economy’s overall size and compare it to that of other nations and states is to look at California’s gross state product (GSP). Gross product includes the value of market transactions, but excludes such things as illegal activities and the “underground” economy.
“California is noted for having one of the most diversified economies in the nation–in fact, in the world. This is a great advantage, because it means that California’s economic fortunes are not entirely dependent on how one or a very few industries perform. As a result, California’s economy has traditionally been less volatile than most. Without this diversification, California’s economic performance during the most recent recession would have been even worse than it was.”
Source: http://www.lao.ca.gov/cgep1.html
The information is dated, however, it does illustrate what the OP was seeking.
Dude, that chart is over 10 years old. You couldn’t do better?? (I’m pulling your leg, of course. In fact, I’m so impressed with the eloquent and detailed responses on this board, I feel like a dork posting to this thread, even if I started it. :))
Here’s a better chart I just found showing California in 5th place as of 2000, with a footnote showing projected growth from $1.34b to $1.50b as of 2002. (Wow, that’s pretty good for an “economic slowdown.” Might have even passed the UK by now, since Europe’s growth has been hit harder economically. How much has China grown in the past two years? I didn’t look for cites. But I’m babbling now…)
You know, nobody’s mentioned the discovery of gold yet. That would drive up the immigration rate in a hurry, from the U.S. and other places, no matter what the rules were. I can’t see the hypothetical U.S./Mexico border being very well patrolled; the vast frontier from Calif. to St. Louis was basically unpopulated until the 1860’s, or whenever the railroads came. (I always forget when it was, exactly.)
Of course, this question presumes that CA never becomes independent or part of the US (either by losing the war, or simply not caring about manifest destiny anymore.) And yes (to address the irrigation question) this also means the entire southwest (AZ, CO, NM, NV & UT, maybe not TX) belongs to Mexico too, so they would own the entire Colorado river drainage basin, for those purposes.
On the other hand…would Sutter’s Mill have even existed, without the US annexation of CA? I don’t know much about its history, but “Sutter” sounds very East Coast to me. Even so, one of those missionaries in the Sierra foothills might have stumbled across a golden rock eventually, triggering the stampede. And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t a very significant portion of the US economy in the mid-1800’s come from the gold fields?
In any case, there’s no question that CA would have become a significant part of the Mexican economy, perhaps even the center of population and government. Certainly, it would be vastly influenced by American language, traditions, and values (assuming that the bulk of immigrants were American.) But, would it still have attracted the same industries? Agriculture, certainly, but would whaling & otter pelt trading still be legal? Would tourism be as high? Would the infrastructre (from the interstates to the Golden Gate Bridge) be as extensive? Would “Silicon Valley” exist? Would tales of the building of the railroads sing about Juan de Henrio instead of John Henry?
I’ve always found the statement about California’s rank in the world economy slightly annoying, and it was double-plus annoying to have it repeated in political commercials. It makes it sound as if California managed to build itself up on its own despite the obvious fact that it’s easier to do business domestically. I guess I’d prefer the question to be, “Would California contribute as much to the Mexican economy (were it part of Mexico) as it contributes to the US economy?”
My answer also goes to part of the question of the ‘independence’ of California, with respect to its development. Assuming some massive revision of history, let’s say California remains Mexican. Gold still brings a fair number of immigrants, so the Bay Area & Sacramento Valley might start to develop similarly.
As to your last post, KGS, Sutter was in California when it was still Mexican, but he clearly wanted it to become part of the US. It depends on how you want to rewrite history. The Bear Flag Revolt was in 1846 and demonstrated that Mexico had pretty much lost at least the northern part of the state; after a few months the territory was claimed by the US and ended up mostly under martial law, but it wasn’t until the end of the war (1848) that Mexico officially ceded the land. If you suppose that there wasn’t support for the rebellion and that the US loses the Mexican-American War, it’s possible that Sutter might have packed up or simply tried to deal. Still, somebody would have discovered gold.
A big change is that the Transcontinental Railroad is routed to, say, Portland (maybe Seattle, but I doubt it). And it might not get built until a few years later, I’d guess. As a result, you probably get more people settling along the coast and in the bay than moving further inland, so the Valley takes more time to develop. Not to mention that some of the rest of the West takes a little longer to build up too. If you thought real estate in Nevada was cheap now …
What I’m wondering is if LA gets built up as much. I doubt it. Not that it wouldn’t be a major Mexican city today, but I’m guessing it’d be barely two-thirds as strong economically and not quite so big.
So Alta California becomes a state still developing, and it probably missed out on some of the industry that sustains the US version. It might even be Mexico’s strongest state, but a lot of the US would beat it. And there might have been/ would be a bigger fight over the Colorado River.
The big winner, though, is Oregon. I bet they’d be so well off they wouldn’t even charge taxes and they’d get people to pump your gas for you like you were a rich person.
If Mexico hadn’t lost any territory to the US, they certainly would’ve had vastly more mineral wealth with which to play around. Oil in Texas. Gold in California. Silver (the Comstock Lode) in Nevada. The question is what would have happened with that wealth under the social system Tamerlane describes. Would it have been used to finance infrastructure (roads, railroads, dams, utilities, etc.), leading to still greater wealth? Or would it have lined the pockets of the elite?
¿Como?
tracer…cute. 
Of course we ought to be among the top “nations”, because we certainly have a nation-sized population. I don’t know about the supposed benefits of being part of the U.S. The federal government defends us, but we send most of our income taxes to them as well. We could probably do fine on our own, if we could keep that money here. And immigration is another issue which affects us profoundly, but we have no legal option for dealing with it, because it’s a Federal matter. Who’s to say that left to its own devices, California couldn’t work with Mexico to craft a more constructive immigration and economic collaboration policy?
Well, my feeling goes to my earlier point about the development of California as part of the US or as part of Mexico. I don’t think we’d be where we are today if California had somehow become a sovereign nation in the 1840s. Again, not badly off, but not as big of an economy for some of the same reasons as noted above. And it could be worse off than if it were even still part of Mexico.
You might have a point that if you could dissociate the state from the USA without causing both economies to collapse, California could make a good run of it as its own nation. The claim to ranking among ‘world economies’ still sounds awfully arrogant to me.
I also realized that if Sutter pulls out - no Sacramento. The capital’d probably be Monterey, as there’d be little reason to move it north or south. And if Mexico wasn’t involved in WWII, no industrial/tech boost from that (and the Pacific War might have lasted a little longer, who knows).