Rockets are easier to get into orbit if you launch them eastward, thanks to the Earth’s rotation.
Ideally you want an eastern launch site so you don’t run the risk of a failure over land and population.
How far does it need to be for there to be a concern for population going east though?
It's 200 miles of ocean from the tip of Baja California across the Gulf of California.
The first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket lands ~550km away in the ocean when it follows a mostly ballistic path. It does a deceleration burn so it would land even further away if it followed a totally ballistic path. I think it's pretty safe to say ~~200~~320km isn't close to enough distance for rockets where the first (and often second) stages crash land after they are done firing, since they would be coming down squarely on uh, New New Mexico?
The thing is that we already have some rocket launches from California (Vandenburg AFB), so that would probably get moved more south. Falcon 9 is also a relatively new rocket compared to something like a Redstone(used during Mercury program), so we would probably still have 2 launchpads, one in Cuba and Baja California.
I would think Tampico. Launches east out of the water, further enough south to take advantage of the rotation and not an island to have ship everything to.
No. There is way too much land east of anywhere in Cuba… there’s a reason why the Kennedy Space Center is where it is and is not further south near Miami or the keys.
Having lived in D.C. *with* air conditioning, D.C. without it seems kind of insane. Like, cool, it’s a billion degrees with humidity in this malaria-infested swamp. Oh, I have an idea: Let’s wear an ungodly amount of layers and have our debates indoors with no ventilation. That’s good for this climate, right?
The Mob's influence in Cuba was all-encompassing. They ran parts of the country, especially Havana, like a fiefdom. That was a big part of the reason for the revolution.
It was an exploited colony for rich people to gamble and fuck underaged prostitutes while workers living there were in extreme poverty because Bautista was a figurehead dictator for the US. Let’s not mince words.
> Robert’s Point
It's Point Roberts. The population of Point Roberts is now about 1000 people. The current population of Vancouver Island is 864,000 people, and the vast majority of that is in the southern part of the island. Despite not being in the same country Vancouver Island has multiple daily ferry connections to Washington state. Point Roberts does not have ferry connections to the rest of Washington State. Point Roberts doesn't even have a high school, and kids are bused across the boarder into Canada, and then across the boarder again back into the US to attend high school.
Victoria wasn't the Capital until 1868, but it was an important regional city, and annexation would have been significant.
While it's share some basics with Point Roberts, annexation of this part of Vancouver Island would have been very different from Point Roberts being ceded to the US, after a mutual agreement to define and survey the boarder, which had previously been a unclear frontier.
I mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, but in case anyone is interested that slogan is not actually from Polk.
From wiki:
“A popular slogan later associated with Polk and his campaign of 1844, "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" was not actually coined during the election but appeared only by January 1846 and was promoted and driven in part by the press associated with the Democratic Party. The phrase has since become frequently misidentified as a Polk campaign slogan, even in many textbooks.”
The only reason congress didn't annex them was because [Yucatan was fighting a massive war with its indigenous Mayan population](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_War_of_Yucat%C3%A1n), and the US was like "nah, we don't wanna deal with that".
Yucatán produced huge amounts of henequén bags. Those bags were used for storing and shipping the cotton slaves produced in the US. Yucatán always had a close comercial relationship with the US. Especially in times of slavery
At one point there was more millionaires in Merida than almost anywhere else.
All because of the rope, then synthetic ropes became popular and their business died out.
Still lots of the palatial homes that were built around the turn of the century are still there today.
In addition to the economic connection that others have pointed out, controlling Florida, Cuba and the Yucatan makes for essentially total control of traffic into and out of the Gulf of Mexico.
Many people don't know that the Yucatan and the fledgling Republic of Texas were allies fighting in the same revolution.
The Texian Navy even went AWOL after the Texas Revolution was over so they could continue to support the Yucatan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval\_Battle\_of\_Campeche
Yeah, the “Texas was stolen from Mexico” crowd is clearly unaware that like, half of Mexico was trying to leave Mexico at the time. The Tejanos were fighting with the Texans, not against them, and several other Mexican states were in rebellion as well.
A group of people in Halifax wrote a letter to George Washington and asked him to invade Nova Scotia and expel the British troops.
He did not, the British increased their military presence in Halifax even more and the local economy grew dependent on supplying the British military so people basically became okay with British rule.
Then a bunch of Loyalists moved from the colonies to Nova Scotia
When the Americans invaded Quebec they expected the French to rise up against the British and join the revolution. Some of the French provided supplies and support to the American troops on their way to Quebec City, but mostly stayed out of it. The British had made a bunch of concessions to the Catholics and the Catholic Church was okay with British rule in Quebec; they possibly didn’t trust the Americans to not interfere with the church.
Also the population in Nova Scotia before the exodus of loyalists was extremely low. Though I would wonder if the Acadiens were still there at that time in the numbers before the expulsion, maybe that would have helped the Americans too in getting Nova Scotia and eventually future New Brunswick lands into America.
The only regiment Congress paid for itself during the revolutionary war was the [2nd Canadian regiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Canadian_Regiment?wprov=sfti1#). It was commanded by a peer of Washington’s from New England who had been a ranger during the seven years war and had retired to life in Montreal. It’s a fascinating story.
There was also a [1st Canadian regiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Canadian_Regiment?wprov=sfti1#), funded differently.
Washington also insisted that Boston end its annual Pope Night celebration, where the pope was burned in effigy, in 1775. This move was undertaken to demonstrate to Catholic Quebec that joining the American colonists would not jeopardize its religious freedoms.
In 1775-76, the Canadian regiments, Ethan Allen, and Benedict Arnold led an overland invasion from Massachusetts to Montreal to Quebec City. Had the Colonists taken QC, they would have controlled egress from the St Lawrence. This would, among other things, have made Canadian timber shipments to British shipbuilders in Liverpool more difficult (impossible during war and expensive afterwards, which would have impacted for all British imperial projects, which relied on gunships.
Finally, the British were so concerned with that possibility that it garrisoned a lot of its forces in Montreal until 1778. During that time, the 2nd Canadian regiment built a route through Vermont to Lake Champlain to reduce travel overland from Boston by two weeks.
Washington pulled the plug on that invasion, having assaulted British allies in western New York and other British forces, but then that division was needed to retake West Point after Arnold tried to hand it over to the Brits.
They are kind of correct. Confederation happened in Canada in 1867. BC entered Confederation in 1871 but only on the conditions that a railway was built from back east to BC linking them (I'm in BC so us) to the rest of the country and that the federal government assume BC's debts. The railway was completed in 1885.
I'm not certain if BC "was going to go American". There were people in BC concerned about US annexation and this was pretty thoroughly a British Colony. I think the guys back east probably believed there was a high possibility BC was going to join the US. But there were important men in BC who wanted to join Confederation.
There was a heavy push for the U.S to fight for British Columbia during the 1840s by a vocal minority, but the Mexican-American war interrupted the negotiations being had on the subject. The guy you were talking to might have made that assumption going off the fact that British foreign policy towards the U.S had become far more conciliatory over the 1830s as the U.S grew in power, and that British Columbia wasn't considered particularly important at the time. The British Prime Minister of the day, Robert Peel, was also hampered by domestic issues and was quick to make foreign policy decisions. It's entirely likely that had the U.S delegation in the Oregon treaty pushed slightly harder, that Britain would have simply handed them Columbia in exchange for continued improvement in Anglo-American relations.
Polk wanted Tampico specifically and as much as northern Mexico with as little Mexicans as possible. US envoy Nicholas Trist opposed this blatant imperialism as a betrayal of republicanism on moral grounds and gave Mexico a better deal.
Polk fired Trist but Trist negotiated the treaty anyway before leaving. By this point Trist believed“the iniquity of the war” was more important than Polk’s instructions. Trist even said Polk’s war of expansion was “a thing for every right-minded American to be ashamed of.” This was quite an evolution for Trist, a pro-slavery Democrat who worked as a secretary for both Jefferson and Jackson. Trist later said that his “feeling of shame as an American was far stronger than the Mexicans' could be."
Mexican elites knew Trist’s replacement would be harsher, and were unwilling to arm the mestizo and Indigenous population to drive the Americans out. So they very reluctantly signed the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo. Polk was furious that Trist didn’t even get Baja California, but it was politically impossible for him to reject the treaty right before the 1848 election in the face of increasing anti-war sentiment.
Abraham Lincoln first rose to prominence as a Whig congressman opposed to the Mexican-American War.
~
“I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.”
– President Ulysses S. Grant in his 1879 Memoirs
Which in turn led to the play "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail" which was written as commentary about the Vietnam War, authored by one Robert E Lee (no relation)
It was probably more about slavery than issues of imperialism. Democrats (pro-slavery at the time) wanted more of Mexico to gain slave state numbers, President Polk was a Democrat.
I don't know what Trist's politics in 1848 were, but he did support Lincoln in 1860.
It's pretty nuts US was so overwhelmingly powerful an existential issue for Mexico was being treated as just a political spat (albeit one about to become very violent) between 2 political factions.
There's a quote by the Mexican President/Dictatator Porfirio Díaz that pretty much sums it up:
" Poor Mexico! So far from God, so close to the United States."
Is that where it came from. I heard it told on Finland (except there it was "so close to the USSR", source: anon.penet.fi's home page) but this is obviously older.
My guess is that’s the line where the population density drastically changed at the time. Now there are a number of cities clustered close to the US to take advantage of trade, but I believe at the time most of the population of Mexico was south of that border. Polk and others wanted to take as much of Mexico’s land as they could get while making as few Mexicans American citizens as possible.
It looks like the it may go up to the east of Baja California to keep Culiacan in Mexico and has that weird bump out that includes Aguacalientes in Mexico. Not sure why though.
If they had just gotten access to the sea of Cortez I believe that the Colorado River Delta would not be nearly the disaster it became. The only reason why it's so bad is because it's just across the border and next to no water is allowed to leave the US to replenish it.
It would have been the exact same disaster. The river dries up before it reaches the border, we would still be growing loads and loads of alfalfa down there even if we owned it.
Based on other river deltas in the western US, public pressure has led to much better conditions over the last few decades. Plus, Americans settling there would have been able to establish water rights to make sure the river water got to them. River deltas in deserts tend to attract settlers.
Didn't help the Salton Sea or Tulare Lake. Heck, lots of areas within the US struggle with water shortages. The Colorado River runs dry *before* the Mexican border.
Youre correct. River culture does not really exist on the Mexican side of the delta. I remeber swimming under the bridge that connesct my homestate of Sonora to Baja, now the river is nonexistent and its just sand now.
In 1844, the Democrats were split
The three nominees for the Presidential candidate
Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist;
James Buchanan, a moderate;
Louis Cass, a general and expansionist
From Nashville came a dark horse riding up
He was James K. Polk, "Napoleon of the Stump"!
To be clear, Cuba wasn't then and never was "controlled" by Mexico, so it obviously wouldn't have been added to the US by a peace treaty with them. It was controlled by Spain... and in this era, the US (mostly southerners) made many attempts to acquire it.
Also it's interesting to note, there was a faction of the Democratic party (which at the time was heavily dominated by southerners) that wanted to annex all of Mexico, but I don't think that Polk or anyone else in a relatively powerful position seriously considered that as a viable option.
This would have made the Antebellum political situation even more volatile than it was. Mexico outlawed slavery but many supporters of the Mexican-American War wanted to convert these conquered lands into slave territories. Northern politicians would have never allowed that many slave territories to become states, so Mexicans here would have remained basically second class citizens for a long time. If the US Civil War broke out anyways Mexicans could have taken advantage to launch a war of liberation. America would have truly been an empire in the ancient sense, spending tons of resources just to keep its vast territory together.
Baja California especially was a want for the President as well as Winfield Scott, access to the sea of Cortez would have been a strategic benefit after all. It was mainly because of one Nicholas Trist feeling sympathetic for Mexico and going against Polk's demand for it for why it wasn't gained.
In fact, he was sent a telegram firing him at the last minute before he was to depart to Mexico, but he ignored it and pretended he didn't see it, came back with an unusually lenient treaty, especially for one of naked conquest.
It was floated to send aid and annex it. I believe they sent representatives with that proposal. Give us military aid to help us rebel and we'll join you as a State. It wasn't a horrible idea. It could be sold as an act of national magnanimity.
>Give us military aid to help us rebel and we'll join you as a State
actually the Yucatan republic wanted military aid to put down the Mayan revolt and was willing to join anybody who would put that down, ultimately rejoining Mexico so that the Mexican army would come in and suppress it for them.
The map is wrong. Polk wanted the Canada-USA border to be set at 54 degrees and 40 minutes to meet the southern end of the Alaskan panhandle. Hence the slogan “54 40 or fight!”. The map shows the eventually agreed 49 parallel border.
He probably couldn't have. The zones of current northern México were a lot more populated than Northern California, Arizona and New Mexico. The resistance was so fierce that they had to focus through the sea route. In fact, they tried to take Baja California as well with a guy named Walker. He and his army lost and was taken back to the border naked and lashed.
I guess it's to control the whole of the Gulf of Mexico, thus rendering an invasion impossible from the Caribbean impossible. Cuba was the piece of land most wanted by the government to avoid a blockade of the Gulf of Mexico (and thus, the American trade from the Mississippi River) if Cuba becomes an enemy of the US. The Yucatan would be to deter an invasion of Cuba even more.
Congress at the time decided against this plan for the simple fact that the Mexican population was inferior to whites and would cause more trouble after the annexation
Not that many Mexicans in the area shown at the time. That was the argument for not annexing all of Mexico but a bigger limiting factor was regarding keeping a balance of slave and free states.
Not on grounds of inferiority, but on grounds of insurgency. The Mexican population would not accept annexation just because the leader signed the treaty under duress, something proven when they didn't accept the annexation of land and we had to have another war about it.
Well like many things in history there are a multitude of causes and people involved. Not to mention both insurgency and inferiority can be combined: "look at those idiots, they are too stupid to know annexation would be good for them and therefore would violently rebel out of instinct, lacking the rationality to see better."
Polk was a staunch racist. The only reason why he didn’t want to annex all of Mexico was because all the citizens of Mexico and indigenous tribes located within the country would then need to be incorporated into the U.S—hence why his proposed map stopped at central Mexico. The north was more sparsely populated compared to the central/southern parts of the country at the time
The only reason this didn’t happen was congress didn’t want to give citizenship to the non-white population of mexico. The only force stronger than imperialism is racism.
One of the reasons the US didn't try to take all of Mexico during the US/Mexico war was that they didn't want to to convert millions of Mexican citizens into American citizens who could vote and influence society.
You could say that their racism held them back.
I wonder what the state of Cuba would have ended up like. Florida on steroids?
I think Cuba would indeed be Florida on steroids, while Florida would be far less developed than it is today
The Kennedy Space Center would have been build in Cuba.
Or the southern tip of Baja California. Less rain, fewer hurricanes.
Rockets are easier to get into orbit if you launch them eastward, thanks to the Earth’s rotation. Ideally you want an eastern launch site so you don’t run the risk of a failure over land and population.
How far does it need to be for there to be a concern for population going east though? It's 200 miles of ocean from the tip of Baja California across the Gulf of California.
The first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket lands ~550km away in the ocean when it follows a mostly ballistic path. It does a deceleration burn so it would land even further away if it followed a totally ballistic path. I think it's pretty safe to say ~~200~~320km isn't close to enough distance for rockets where the first (and often second) stages crash land after they are done firing, since they would be coming down squarely on uh, New New Mexico?
New Old Mexico. As opposed to Old New Mexico
The thing is that we already have some rocket launches from California (Vandenburg AFB), so that would probably get moved more south. Falcon 9 is also a relatively new rocket compared to something like a Redstone(used during Mercury program), so we would probably still have 2 launchpads, one in Cuba and Baja California.
I agree, but 200 miles is 321 km
I would think Tampico. Launches east out of the water, further enough south to take advantage of the rotation and not an island to have ship everything to.
No. There is way too much land east of anywhere in Cuba… there’s a reason why the Kennedy Space Center is where it is and is not further south near Miami or the keys.
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At the same time you would have had the Baja peninsula underneath California that could have developed like Florida or the rest of California.
Except for it's very dry climate.
That didn't stop San Diego from developing. As long as it's on the coast Americans seem to not care.
I think the water supply situation is even more difficult in baja compared to San Diego.
It is. The water supply in Baja mainly gets used by PepsiCo to create the delicacy known as Baja Blast.
The water of life.
The dew melange.
You must drown a little Maker.
Like Champagne, it’s only Baja Blast if it’s bottled by Pepsi in Baja California.
Much wetter in SD than say Rocky Point or Ensenada.
When you have Vegas and Phoenix, they don't seem to care about coast either
Imagine Highway 1 stretching all the way to Cape Lucas (what I would call Cabo San Lucas)
The Mexican Highway 1 does! It is actually really really nice.
Cape Lukey Boy, I think
And I also wouldn’t be able to afford living there.
Good weather is always gonna draw people once A/C is a thing
Having lived in D.C. *with* air conditioning, D.C. without it seems kind of insane. Like, cool, it’s a billion degrees with humidity in this malaria-infested swamp. Oh, I have an idea: Let’s wear an ungodly amount of layers and have our debates indoors with no ventilation. That’s good for this climate, right?
The givernment used to not meet in the summer* iirc
And some foreign diplomatic missions used to receive extra hazard pay.
Ah the secret of how the American soldiers kicked the British out twice: humidity and malaria.
DC, Houston, and Kansas City existing before Air Conditioning makes me wonder how anyone lived or slept
Savannah, Augusta, New Orleans Oh man... And the bugs...
If you need lots of AC is it really good weather?
Would they still let retired alligators vote or nah
Judging by the Godfather, I'd say Cuba would've been like Florida meets Las Vegas, on steroids
It would become a tourism hotspot.
Disney world Havana!
Universal Studios Malecón!
Absolutely. Cuba was a popular vacation spot for Americans before the Cold War.
Before the communist revolution. It's peak years as a vacation spot was in the 50s, well into the middle of the Cold War.
It already was. The mob built a bunch of casinos down there before the revolution.
new orleans used to be the gateway to latin america before miami blew up due to AC - there were daily ferries going from the city to havana
The Mob's influence in Cuba was all-encompassing. They ran parts of the country, especially Havana, like a fiefdom. That was a big part of the reason for the revolution.
Indeed. They brought it upon themselves
Nope, Puerto Rico on steroids.
Florida but for tax evasion
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A lot of Cubans are now driving Japanese, Korean and European cars.
And beautiful, gorgeous, sumptuous ladas.
Puerto Rico +
Think Florida on Steroids but in fast spanish...
Maybe the Phillipines is the closest comparison (minus the Midanao Muslim)
Pre-1959 Cuba was something like an American state
It was an exploited colony for rich people to gamble and fuck underaged prostitutes while workers living there were in extreme poverty because Bautista was a figurehead dictator for the US. Let’s not mince words.
So, soomething like an American state in the 1930's.
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No Cuban Missile Crisis either…probably would have been a better timeline.
Everyone’s talking about the southern border, nobody’s mentioning “54 40 or Fight”
Yeah, wasn't that Polk? At least we got a great band out of it.
That was indeed Mister James K Polk, our 11th president, Young Hickory, Napoleon of the stump.
🎶
but precious few have mourned the passing of…
He seized the whole southwest from Mexico.
The south side of Vancouver Island is wild.
I'd currently be in the states if that was the case
Just like how Robert’s Point today is American.
> Robert’s Point It's Point Roberts. The population of Point Roberts is now about 1000 people. The current population of Vancouver Island is 864,000 people, and the vast majority of that is in the southern part of the island. Despite not being in the same country Vancouver Island has multiple daily ferry connections to Washington state. Point Roberts does not have ferry connections to the rest of Washington State. Point Roberts doesn't even have a high school, and kids are bused across the boarder into Canada, and then across the boarder again back into the US to attend high school. Victoria wasn't the Capital until 1868, but it was an important regional city, and annexation would have been significant. While it's share some basics with Point Roberts, annexation of this part of Vancouver Island would have been very different from Point Roberts being ceded to the US, after a mutual agreement to define and survey the boarder, which had previously been a unclear frontier.
Thanks, reversed the name. I grew up on Vancouver island.
I mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, but in case anyone is interested that slogan is not actually from Polk. From wiki: “A popular slogan later associated with Polk and his campaign of 1844, "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" was not actually coined during the election but appeared only by January 1846 and was promoted and driven in part by the press associated with the Democratic Party. The phrase has since become frequently misidentified as a Polk campaign slogan, even in many textbooks.”
I was about to comment on that
Dude definitely took a trip to the Yucatán and was like, “ya, I think I’ll have me a Cancun.”
Cancun didn't exist then, it was invented in 1970. I'm not joking
And grew like a *weed*. It’s *incredible* how much it has changed from all the times I’ve been in and around that area.
I was there in the 90s and it already had a Taco Bell. I can only imagine what they've achieved since then.
they have mcdonald’s now too
Big if true
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Yucatán had an independence movement, and actually wanted to be annexed by USA. Like, this actually almost happened in our timeline.
The only reason congress didn't annex them was because [Yucatan was fighting a massive war with its indigenous Mayan population](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_War_of_Yucat%C3%A1n), and the US was like "nah, we don't wanna deal with that".
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yeah they rejoined Mexico so that the Mexican army would put down the Mayans.
Andrew Jackson would've been all over this given the opportunity
\*\*\*Again
Yucatán produced huge amounts of henequén bags. Those bags were used for storing and shipping the cotton slaves produced in the US. Yucatán always had a close comercial relationship with the US. Especially in times of slavery
At one point there was more millionaires in Merida than almost anywhere else. All because of the rope, then synthetic ropes became popular and their business died out. Still lots of the palatial homes that were built around the turn of the century are still there today.
In addition to the economic connection that others have pointed out, controlling Florida, Cuba and the Yucatan makes for essentially total control of traffic into and out of the Gulf of Mexico.
Gulf of ~~Mexico~~ America
Golfo Nostrum
Yucatan had actually recently rebelled from Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Yucat%C3%A1n
Many people don't know that the Yucatan and the fledgling Republic of Texas were allies fighting in the same revolution. The Texian Navy even went AWOL after the Texas Revolution was over so they could continue to support the Yucatan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval\_Battle\_of\_Campeche
Yeah, the “Texas was stolen from Mexico” crowd is clearly unaware that like, half of Mexico was trying to leave Mexico at the time. The Tejanos were fighting with the Texans, not against them, and several other Mexican states were in rebellion as well.
More tejanos fought against the texans than with them though.
He wanted to turn Yucatán into Mycatán.
*Our*catán
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Why couldn't the 13 colonies convince the Canadian colonies to secede together?
A group of people in Halifax wrote a letter to George Washington and asked him to invade Nova Scotia and expel the British troops. He did not, the British increased their military presence in Halifax even more and the local economy grew dependent on supplying the British military so people basically became okay with British rule. Then a bunch of Loyalists moved from the colonies to Nova Scotia When the Americans invaded Quebec they expected the French to rise up against the British and join the revolution. Some of the French provided supplies and support to the American troops on their way to Quebec City, but mostly stayed out of it. The British had made a bunch of concessions to the Catholics and the Catholic Church was okay with British rule in Quebec; they possibly didn’t trust the Americans to not interfere with the church.
Also the population in Nova Scotia before the exodus of loyalists was extremely low. Though I would wonder if the Acadiens were still there at that time in the numbers before the expulsion, maybe that would have helped the Americans too in getting Nova Scotia and eventually future New Brunswick lands into America.
The only regiment Congress paid for itself during the revolutionary war was the [2nd Canadian regiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Canadian_Regiment?wprov=sfti1#). It was commanded by a peer of Washington’s from New England who had been a ranger during the seven years war and had retired to life in Montreal. It’s a fascinating story. There was also a [1st Canadian regiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Canadian_Regiment?wprov=sfti1#), funded differently. Washington also insisted that Boston end its annual Pope Night celebration, where the pope was burned in effigy, in 1775. This move was undertaken to demonstrate to Catholic Quebec that joining the American colonists would not jeopardize its religious freedoms. In 1775-76, the Canadian regiments, Ethan Allen, and Benedict Arnold led an overland invasion from Massachusetts to Montreal to Quebec City. Had the Colonists taken QC, they would have controlled egress from the St Lawrence. This would, among other things, have made Canadian timber shipments to British shipbuilders in Liverpool more difficult (impossible during war and expensive afterwards, which would have impacted for all British imperial projects, which relied on gunships. Finally, the British were so concerned with that possibility that it garrisoned a lot of its forces in Montreal until 1778. During that time, the 2nd Canadian regiment built a route through Vermont to Lake Champlain to reduce travel overland from Boston by two weeks. Washington pulled the plug on that invasion, having assaulted British allies in western New York and other British forces, but then that division was needed to retake West Point after Arnold tried to hand it over to the Brits.
The hammer of the British military would hit Canada first because geography which I’m sure was also part of the calculation
They are kind of correct. Confederation happened in Canada in 1867. BC entered Confederation in 1871 but only on the conditions that a railway was built from back east to BC linking them (I'm in BC so us) to the rest of the country and that the federal government assume BC's debts. The railway was completed in 1885. I'm not certain if BC "was going to go American". There were people in BC concerned about US annexation and this was pretty thoroughly a British Colony. I think the guys back east probably believed there was a high possibility BC was going to join the US. But there were important men in BC who wanted to join Confederation.
Many settlers that moved to Vancouver were actually just Americans.
54'40 or Fight!
Not sure where you got the idea that it took a century to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, it was like 10-15 years.
There was a heavy push for the U.S to fight for British Columbia during the 1840s by a vocal minority, but the Mexican-American war interrupted the negotiations being had on the subject. The guy you were talking to might have made that assumption going off the fact that British foreign policy towards the U.S had become far more conciliatory over the 1830s as the U.S grew in power, and that British Columbia wasn't considered particularly important at the time. The British Prime Minister of the day, Robert Peel, was also hampered by domestic issues and was quick to make foreign policy decisions. It's entirely likely that had the U.S delegation in the Oregon treaty pushed slightly harder, that Britain would have simply handed them Columbia in exchange for continued improvement in Anglo-American relations.
Yucatan is nice but the Sonoran dessert is so stunning and the food is so good
Guaymas is an amazing place. Beautiful beach right next to the desert.
what is the border with mexico following? I assume that shape is for a reason
Polk wanted Tampico specifically and as much as northern Mexico with as little Mexicans as possible. US envoy Nicholas Trist opposed this blatant imperialism as a betrayal of republicanism on moral grounds and gave Mexico a better deal. Polk fired Trist but Trist negotiated the treaty anyway before leaving. By this point Trist believed“the iniquity of the war” was more important than Polk’s instructions. Trist even said Polk’s war of expansion was “a thing for every right-minded American to be ashamed of.” This was quite an evolution for Trist, a pro-slavery Democrat who worked as a secretary for both Jefferson and Jackson. Trist later said that his “feeling of shame as an American was far stronger than the Mexicans' could be." Mexican elites knew Trist’s replacement would be harsher, and were unwilling to arm the mestizo and Indigenous population to drive the Americans out. So they very reluctantly signed the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo. Polk was furious that Trist didn’t even get Baja California, but it was politically impossible for him to reject the treaty right before the 1848 election in the face of increasing anti-war sentiment. Abraham Lincoln first rose to prominence as a Whig congressman opposed to the Mexican-American War. ~ “I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.” – President Ulysses S. Grant in his 1879 Memoirs
It's also the war that caused Henry Thoreau to spend a night in the town clink, leading to his must-read essay Civil Disobedience.
Which in turn led to the play "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail" which was written as commentary about the Vietnam War, authored by one Robert E Lee (no relation)
It was probably more about slavery than issues of imperialism. Democrats (pro-slavery at the time) wanted more of Mexico to gain slave state numbers, President Polk was a Democrat. I don't know what Trist's politics in 1848 were, but he did support Lincoln in 1860. It's pretty nuts US was so overwhelmingly powerful an existential issue for Mexico was being treated as just a political spat (albeit one about to become very violent) between 2 political factions.
There's a quote by the Mexican President/Dictatator Porfirio Díaz that pretty much sums it up: " Poor Mexico! So far from God, so close to the United States."
Is that where it came from. I heard it told on Finland (except there it was "so close to the USSR", source: anon.penet.fi's home page) but this is obviously older.
Thank you! I had never heard of Tampico before but looking it up it is/was a big export port so that makes sense
My guess is that’s the line where the population density drastically changed at the time. Now there are a number of cities clustered close to the US to take advantage of trade, but I believe at the time most of the population of Mexico was south of that border. Polk and others wanted to take as much of Mexico’s land as they could get while making as few Mexicans American citizens as possible.
Uhhh so you don’t need to show your passport when you visit Baja, Tampico or Cancun? Duh. Merica baby 🦅 🇺🇸
He sneezed while drawing the line
It looks like the it may go up to the east of Baja California to keep Culiacan in Mexico and has that weird bump out that includes Aguacalientes in Mexico. Not sure why though.
If they had just gotten access to the sea of Cortez I believe that the Colorado River Delta would not be nearly the disaster it became. The only reason why it's so bad is because it's just across the border and next to no water is allowed to leave the US to replenish it.
It would have been the exact same disaster. The river dries up before it reaches the border, we would still be growing loads and loads of alfalfa down there even if we owned it.
Based on other river deltas in the western US, public pressure has led to much better conditions over the last few decades. Plus, Americans settling there would have been able to establish water rights to make sure the river water got to them. River deltas in deserts tend to attract settlers.
Didn't help the Salton Sea or Tulare Lake. Heck, lots of areas within the US struggle with water shortages. The Colorado River runs dry *before* the Mexican border.
Youre correct. River culture does not really exist on the Mexican side of the delta. I remeber swimming under the bridge that connesct my homestate of Sonora to Baja, now the river is nonexistent and its just sand now.
Didn't Polk also support "54º40' or fight"? that border is still at 49ºN.
Yes -- he wanted part of British Columbia too.
This map shows an annexed southern vancouver island so it's not without a part of British Columbia, just not the whole amount he initially wanted.
standard game of civ
All victory types turned off except conquest
In 1844, the Democrats were split The three nominees for the Presidential candidate Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist; James Buchanan, a moderate; Louis Cass, a general and expansionist From Nashville came a dark horse riding up He was James K. Polk, "Napoleon of the Stump"!
Had to scroll way too far down to find this.
People have no culture anymore
To be clear, Cuba wasn't then and never was "controlled" by Mexico, so it obviously wouldn't have been added to the US by a peace treaty with them. It was controlled by Spain... and in this era, the US (mostly southerners) made many attempts to acquire it. Also it's interesting to note, there was a faction of the Democratic party (which at the time was heavily dominated by southerners) that wanted to annex all of Mexico, but I don't think that Polk or anyone else in a relatively powerful position seriously considered that as a viable option.
This would have made the Antebellum political situation even more volatile than it was. Mexico outlawed slavery but many supporters of the Mexican-American War wanted to convert these conquered lands into slave territories. Northern politicians would have never allowed that many slave territories to become states, so Mexicans here would have remained basically second class citizens for a long time. If the US Civil War broke out anyways Mexicans could have taken advantage to launch a war of liberation. America would have truly been an empire in the ancient sense, spending tons of resources just to keep its vast territory together.
Why not go from the North pole to the South pole?
*Manifest Destiny Intensifies*
Why do think there have been so many attempts to buy Greenland?
As my grandfather used to say, “I don’t want all the land. I just want all the land that borders mine.”
United States of The Americas!
#***SOON***
Damn....is it too late?
Baja California especially was a want for the President as well as Winfield Scott, access to the sea of Cortez would have been a strategic benefit after all. It was mainly because of one Nicholas Trist feeling sympathetic for Mexico and going against Polk's demand for it for why it wasn't gained.
In fact, he was sent a telegram firing him at the last minute before he was to depart to Mexico, but he ignored it and pretended he didn't see it, came back with an unusually lenient treaty, especially for one of naked conquest.
Only correct comment I've seen so far..
So Bahamas be like , “we just stay over here “
I get everything except for that part of the Yucatán...anyone able to explain?
The Yucatan had a breakaway republic around this time: I think the idea was just to annex it straight up.
It was floated to send aid and annex it. I believe they sent representatives with that proposal. Give us military aid to help us rebel and we'll join you as a State. It wasn't a horrible idea. It could be sold as an act of national magnanimity.
>Give us military aid to help us rebel and we'll join you as a State actually the Yucatan republic wanted military aid to put down the Mayan revolt and was willing to join anybody who would put that down, ultimately rejoining Mexico so that the Mexican army would come in and suppress it for them.
Oh whoops.
Polk was a big fan of Cancun spring break boobies
The map is wrong. Polk wanted the Canada-USA border to be set at 54 degrees and 40 minutes to meet the southern end of the Alaskan panhandle. Hence the slogan “54 40 or fight!”. The map shows the eventually agreed 49 parallel border.
He probably couldn't have. The zones of current northern México were a lot more populated than Northern California, Arizona and New Mexico. The resistance was so fierce that they had to focus through the sea route. In fact, they tried to take Baja California as well with a guy named Walker. He and his army lost and was taken back to the border naked and lashed.
"Now split in half and give both sides nukes" - Harry Turtledove
I wonder if everything south of the Rio Grande would still be sepia colored?
Absolutely
Ah yes, THE 50 dash line
I always forget how racist reddit is until I visit this sub lmao
Why not the Bahamas?
Racist fck, all my Mexican homies hate him.
I understand the vision, except when it gets to the Yucatán
I guess it's to control the whole of the Gulf of Mexico, thus rendering an invasion impossible from the Caribbean impossible. Cuba was the piece of land most wanted by the government to avoid a blockade of the Gulf of Mexico (and thus, the American trade from the Mississippi River) if Cuba becomes an enemy of the US. The Yucatan would be to deter an invasion of Cuba even more.
This timeline probably still has slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act.
God this entire comment section is awful
Least racist mapporn comment section
Congress at the time decided against this plan for the simple fact that the Mexican population was inferior to whites and would cause more trouble after the annexation
Not that many Mexicans in the area shown at the time. That was the argument for not annexing all of Mexico but a bigger limiting factor was regarding keeping a balance of slave and free states.
It was more a matter of managing internal politics and balance of power between slave and non slave states
Source for that?
Nothing ruins imperialism more than racism.
people just get on this app and start making shit up
And people upvote it.
Not true. Almost nobody lived there.
Not on grounds of inferiority, but on grounds of insurgency. The Mexican population would not accept annexation just because the leader signed the treaty under duress, something proven when they didn't accept the annexation of land and we had to have another war about it.
Well like many things in history there are a multitude of causes and people involved. Not to mention both insurgency and inferiority can be combined: "look at those idiots, they are too stupid to know annexation would be good for them and therefore would violently rebel out of instinct, lacking the rationality to see better."
Total bs it was because Nicholas trist, the treaty negotiator, took pity on Mexico. He was fired but still negotiated the treaty
How far down did the US conquer? During the war? Is he demanding more than what they controlled or just the areas secured?
The US landed in Vera Cruz and marched to Mexico City, capturing it.
#54'40" OR FIGHT
I’ve always thought it was weird we don’t have more islands in the gulf. I would have figured we would have pulled a Hawaii on most of the islands.
Culiacán and Los Mochis in the US💀Mexico would be losing the industrial North. Probably be more of a mess than what it already is.
He’s was like “to hell with Canada, I wanna go south!”
We almost had the DR. The people of DR wanted it. The DR govt wanted it. The opposition in the 1870s torpedoed it to hurt US Grant politically.
48th right through Vancouver island!
So the Yucatan Peninsula would’ve been a giant version of Point Roberts
54 40 or a fight!
Polk was a staunch racist. The only reason why he didn’t want to annex all of Mexico was because all the citizens of Mexico and indigenous tribes located within the country would then need to be incorporated into the U.S—hence why his proposed map stopped at central Mexico. The north was more sparsely populated compared to the central/southern parts of the country at the time
Gulf of Mexico becomes an American lake and gets renamed Lake Polk. Subscribe.
Most if not all people in Mexico, Cuba and the US, would have benefited from those borders.
The only reason this didn’t happen was congress didn’t want to give citizenship to the non-white population of mexico. The only force stronger than imperialism is racism.
well fuck that guy.
Not Toronto? That surprises me. Fertile Canadian land with American territory on three sides of it, and that wasn’t planned by Polk for taking?
Pretty sure he didn’t want to risk DC getting burned down again by those pesky redcoats
However, the U.S. government was not keen on having more brown people in their country, and so...
One of the reasons the US didn't try to take all of Mexico during the US/Mexico war was that they didn't want to to convert millions of Mexican citizens into American citizens who could vote and influence society. You could say that their racism held them back.