As a geographer, Jared Diamond has some thoughts on North America and Latin America:
In my undergraduate geography course, I have one session on North America and then a session on South America in which I discuss why North America is more successful economically. There are several factors involved.
One factor is that temperate zones, in general, are economically more successful than the tropics because of the higher productivity and soil fertility of temperate agriculture, which in turn relates to the public health burden. All of North America is a temperate zone. South America only has a small temperate zone. It’s in the far south in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Those are the richest countries in Latin America. The richest part of Brazil also lies in the temperate zone.
The second factor is a historical one related to the sailing distance from Europe to the Americas. The sailing distance was shorter from Britain to North America. It was longer from Spain to Argentina and still longer from Spain around the horn to Peru. A shorter sailing distance meant that the ideas and technology of the Industrial Revolution spread much more quickly from Britain, where it originated, to North America, than from Spain to Latin America.
Still another factor is the legacy of Spanish government versus the legacy of British government. One could argue why democracy developed in Britain rather than in Spain, but the fact is that democracy did develop in Britain rather than Spain, and so North America inherited British government and British democracy while Latin America inherited Spanish centralist government and absolutist politics.
Then still another factor is that independence for the U.S. was a more radical break than it was in South America. After the Revolutionary War, all the royalists in the U.S. either fled or were killed. So there was a relatively clean break from Britain. Canada did not have that break, and the break in Latin America was much less abrupt and came later.
Well, Canada inherited British government and British democracy. It can be argued that the US didn’t, or at least that the Revolution radically changed the inheritance. No other Anglophone country has an effective Bill of Rights. The UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand lack freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble peacefully, the right to keep and bear arms, etc., etc. The covid lockdowns have revealed those countries to be police states.
Oh, sure, the United States is rich because of farming, right.
Very thin arguing.
I wonder why historians never factor intangibles like ambition, hope, will, vision and their links to culture.
Why the great industrial men developed in Britain, US, France, North Italy, Germany…
One of the reasons is population density.
Jared Diamond very much wants something to be true, so he oh-so-very-carefully ignores anything that might contradict his bullshit theories.
That-which-must-be-ignored is culture and virtue, pure and simple. The Spanish were a bunch of looters, and doing what looters do, they raped and pillaged their way across Central and South America, depositing a veneer of conquering nobility to keep the peasants down.
The English, not being all that much more virtuous, did a lot of bad things in North America, but without a significant native civilization to loot, they had to turn the place over to their own disgruntled peasantry. Which promptly threw them out, and went about building their own thing.
What Diamond ignores are the parallels between India and South and Central America, which put paid to his ideas about the Spaniards and distance. Also, looting–Look at Australia and New Zealand, both of which have more in common with North America than they do with India or everything south of the Rio Grande.
The Brits basically recapped the Spanish experience in India and a few other locales; in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, there weren’t any native civilizations to loot, pillage, and burn–So, the aristos didn’t have any way to try to recreate their half-ass feudalism.
Guarantee you that if there’d been a North American, Australian, or New Zealand version of either the Incan or Aztec civilizations, any of those three would look a lot more like South America than not, and that it wouldn’t matter a whit whether or not it was Britain or Spain that got to them first. Also, that if the Brits had somehow gotten to be the ones who were first-in to the Aztecs or Incas, they’d have done pretty much exactly what the Spaniards did. It would have had a slightly different flavor to it, but the end result would have been the same–The aristos can’t help themselves. What made the difference here in North America was that there was no draw for the pricks, no little fiefdoms for them to grab at. The only thing that was here was the hard work and opportunity that attracted the “little people”.
Pretty much everybody looted India. India was easy pickings for some reason. At least the Brits gave them railroads.
Why shouldn’t historians ignore intangibles? What better way to deal with something you can’t measure and are not sure even exists?
I posit the contrast of Protestantism and Catholicism as major influences on the development of government in North America vs South America. Protestantism emphasizes the individual while Catholicism is a top down ‘tyranny’.
Harry,
Ah, but Diamond is not a historian, is he? He purports to be an anthropologist, a scientist and not a scholar.
Of course, that could well be why his arguments and evidence are shit, but that’s another issue for another day.
Wang,
I don’t think it can be laid at the door of religion. I like the argument, but… I can’t say as though I’ve ever met a Catholic from anywhere who was really all that different from a Protestant, in terms of their native culture. After all, you’ve got Italian Catholics and then you’ve got Swiss Catholics, and while you can make a good argument that the Italians are incredibly hag-ridden when it comes to the Church, and incredibly incompetent at self-governance, the Swiss manage the exact opposite while remaining just as observant, religion-wise.
Likewise, the Protestants–You’ve got some non-hierarchical types, and then you’ve got your Lutherans and a few others.
My honest opinion on the whole Protestant/Catholic divide is that the religion is an expression of the culture, which grows out of whatever the hell is going on with regards to collective human behavior. If the Brits colonizing the North American continent had been Catholic, I think that end result would have been the same, and that the Catholic church that they all participated in would have looked a lot like the Anglican and other ones that they did have, historically.
And, frankly…? If the Reformation had never happened, the Catholic Church would not look a damn thing like what it does or did, historically. All those Protestants staying within the church would have changed it, warping it away from its historic course.
Which is a point that the Islamic world might want to think about… You “conquer” Europe, and then you’re going to have all those Europeans inside your religion, changing it, warping it, making it their own. And, I suspect that they won’t like what that looks like, one damn bit. Islam is really only suited for a profoundly inbred and incredibly stupid population. Fill the ummah with people who ask questions, and think…?
I laugh, just considering the implications.
British North America is 1 million square miles of just about the best land suitable for cultivation laying fallow.
USA is like Goldilocks. Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right.
“Islam is really only suited for a profoundly inbred and incredibly stupid population.”
Which it also creates, because Islam says it’s OK to have four wives while also knocking up your black African concubines. So within a century or two of a nation falling to Islam, everyone in it is brown and stupid.
Monogamy (real monogamy, no sex outside marriage and prostitution) forces men to be more selective in who they impregnate, and consanguinity laws force them to marry outside their tribe, so that tribes eventually dissolve and merge into a nation.
“Spanish experience in India”??
“I posit the contrast of Protestantism and Catholicism as major influences on the development of government in North America vs South America. Protestantism emphasizes the individual while Catholicism is a top down ‘tyranny’.”
Well Eugenism was going full in Protestant countries while Catholic ones resisted strongly. A veneer of scientysm and the whole individuality disappears from Protestant culture in one go.
It maybe that the reason is that some cultures allow different ways to measure value while others are conservative.
Catholic Church had a sort first multinational in Knight Templars — they had the same fate as Jews along history: A french King was indebted to them so he managed that the Pope called them heretics and burned at stake…no more debt. Italy Republics and Monarchies had the first banks.
Lucklucky,
I could have phrased that more clearly…
What I was getting at was that the Brits in India were far more like the Spaniards in South America than they were with their own green-fields colonies in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. In terms of taking things over and then running them for their own benefit, India looks an awful lot like the Incan or Aztec empires that Spain took over and exploited. And, yes, the Indians did get treated better in some ways, but that’s got more to do with the times and the technology than anything else. I don’t doubt but that if the Spanish had been doing the colonial thing during the Industrial Revolution, then Mexico and Peru would have gotten trains the way India did.
“The times and the technology”
So much hinges on technology. I say technology makes the times, and some cultures are better at creating technology than are others.
Both Spain and Britain had technology for conquest, but Spain had it first. Britain later developed technology for the improvement of quality of life and population growth. Spain never did. I think cultural priorities may have had something to do with it.
The conquered peoples did not have the same level of technology. That’s why they got conquered.
Great inventors drive history. The conquerors merely use what the inventors give them.
Harry,
I fear I have to disagree with your premise. After all, if superior technology was the driver, why then did the Persians fall to Alexander, and the Chin to Ghengis Khan?
Modern warfare started back around the time that the Dutch brought back drill. In that period, I would say that much of military technology was a level playing field–If you wanted it, you could do like the Turks did and hire someone to build your bloody great cannon for you.
So, tech was not the primary advantage. The real advantage that the Brits had in India was that they had their shit much more together than the locals, and that they were motivated. India was not some stone-age backwater; they had guns of their own, and fairly effective military forces. What they didn’t have going for them was a sense of unity or organization, and they still don’t. Good grief, it’s the 21st Century, and India still can’t manage to produce a workable indigenous infantry weapon. Their military procurement is entirely of a piece with the rest of their history–Bribery and back-scratching as an art form, rendering them nearly entirely ineffective on the battlefield. I would need a three-volume book to lay out the malfeasance and idiocy inherent to their procurement programs, and that still wouldn’t do it justice.
So… Culture, I would say. The tech is a side issue. What it boils down to is culture, will, and sheer bloody-mindedness. Once the Brits lost the will and the bloody-mindedness, they lost their empire.
@Adar “USA is like Goldilocks”
Look in an old map of the US for the “Great American Desert”. It described a vast area of trackless, useless land. We now call that land, “Iowa, Nebraska, etc.”
This whole Isegoria posting and comments are an attempt to explain why the arrow hit a target that was drawn after the arrow landed. Always fun to do. Always hard to do.
Of the speculations so far, I like @Kirk’s.
In 1797, a Spanish naval official named Don Domingo Perez de Grandallana, wrote a thoughtful document on the general subject “why do we keep losing to the British, and what can we do about it?” His analysis:
“An Englishman enters a naval action with the firm conviction that his duty is to hurt his enemies and help his friends and allies without looking out for directions in the midst of the fight; and while he thus clears his mind of all subsidiary distractions, he rests in confidence on the certainty that his comrades, actuated by the same principles as himself, will be bound by the sacred and priceless principle of mutual support.
Accordingly, both he and his fellows fix their minds on acting with zeal and judgement upon the spur of the moment, and with the certainty that they will not be deserted. Experience shows, on the contrary, that a Frenchman or a Spaniard, working under a system which leans to formality and strict order being maintained in battle, has no feeling for mutual support, and goes into battle with hesitation, preoccupied with the anxiety of seeing or hearing the commander-in-chief’s signals for such and such maneuvers…
Thus they can never make up their minds to seize any favourable opportunity that may present itself. They are fettered by the strict rule to keep station which is enforced upon then in both navies, and the usual result is that in one place ten of their ships may be firing on four, while in another four of their comrades may be receiving the fire of ten of the enemy. Worst of all they are denied the confidence inspired by mutual support, which is as surely maintained by the English as it is neglected by us, who will not learn from them.”
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/56200.html
Technology is very important, but it’s not everything. Culture is real.
“North America inherited British government and British democracy”
Excuse me, no.
In 1629, England had neither government nor democracy.
I propose an alternative hypothesis, the Puritan Hypothesis: chiefly, that the conquerors of Massachusetts were a race of kings such as seen not before nor since. To wit,
New England Reformers, by Ralph Waldo Emerson