What If British Win 1807 Invasion Of Buenos Aires?

[Matt84]

Im not wasted enough to even attempt a reply to that world saving statement other than: thc helps alcoholics during tge withdrawal stage; but I couldn t imagine how it affects forums dynamix

 

[Dada]

If the British won in 1807, there would be another pidgin English instead of castillano. Tango would never come to exist. Politics would be less melodramatic and entertaining, with exactly the same levels of corruption. The price of alcohol plus tobacco would be much higher, yet people would drink and smoke just as much (as they do in England).

 

[yd_mtl]

Tango would never come to exist.

Assuming that Buenos Aires stays under British control over the longer term, which is pretty unlikely, tango would still exist, just in a different form from the Italianate features so apparent in today's tango. After all, it was based on the dances of Afro-Argentines (who would still exist in that situation) just as much as those of the Spaniards and so forth (who would also exist, at least to a degree). Saying that tango would not exist under those circumstances is like saying that jazz would have never emerged in an English-speaking United States (specifically, New Orleans).

 

[glasgowjohn]

I am convinced the Tango would have grown in a similar fashion under British control . But maybe the male dancers would have worn kilts...

 

[pr1970]

If the British won in 1807, there would be another pidgin English instead of castillano. Tango would never come to exist. Politics would be less melodramatic and entertaining, with exactly the same levels of corruption. The price of alcohol plus tobacco would be much higher, yet people would drink and smoke just as much (as they do in England).

And more importantly, you wouldnt be able to let your dog shit anywhere it likes ;-)

 

[yd_mtl]

Yes as you say during the 17th and 18th century: when the British (and Dutch, etc) tried to take the remains of the "newly discovered" world because the scramble for the Americas was well over and Spain had already won in the 16th century.
By the early 19th century the entire World was quiet clearly divided, (the Scramble for Africa would later solve the glitches) and there was no room for the British to establish new evolving outposts anywhere in the Americas. Reinforcing the already claimed Falkland Islands is as much as that outpost could evolve since from an oceanic point of view, in the 1800s, you didn't need to spend money developing a very sorry colony in Tierra del Fuego to actually control traffic through Magellan or Cape Horn if you had more easily protected islands already in your control next to it.
Patagonia wasn't an option since it was formally and incontestably already claimed by Spain, simply not settled.

Instead of an effort to create a Crown Colony in the promising fertile Southern Cone, the British continued discovering and settling Australia, a task I suppose daunting enough, and a clear insular antipode for Britain (no messy land borders)
Also instead of such an effort, it was preferred to liberate all of the old enemy's empire in the Americas for immigration, intermarriage with supposed elites, and TRADE. Notice eventually the Hispanic American Republics all included some freedom of religion and speech, which coupled with the ability to trade and invest in those countries, is all the British Empire needed to operate at maximum profit.
A french approach would have been to flood the continent with bureaucrats which is in fact what the Spanish did, and the reason they lost their Empire so easily.

How could the British remotely control the Strait of Magellan and so forth from the Falklands, given that they're at least 300 kilometres apart (taking at least a couple of days to cross, in those days)? Who or which power directly controlled the strait itself, along with Cape Horn - at least until the Chileans came along in 1843 with the foundation of what would become Punta Arenas?

And you say that the British didn't need to take over Spanish territory. And yet the British did capture Trinidad in 1797 (but then again, many French-speaking slave-owning settlers - especially from Haiti, Martinique, etc. - were brought into that island by the Spaniards), and they attempted to capture Puerto Rico that same year, and Santa Cruz de Tenerife (on the Canary Islands) was also the subject of an attempted British capture in that year (by Horatio Nelson, no less). Furthermore, the British captured Havana and Manila in 1762 (only to give them back to Spain the following year). The British, moreover, captured Porto Bello, Panama, in 1738 - but in that case, they were after trading; thus, while Porto Bello as a trading centre was destroyed, that area was given back to Spain after just three weeks.

I think that Uruguay and Patagonia, among all the Spanish-speaking areas in South America, were the most ripe for British colonization/settlement in the 19th century. Uruguay was located along the frontier between the Spanish and Portuguese empires in South America, and it was fought between the Spanish and the Portuguese (later, the Argentines and Brazilians); even in real life, it was the British who established an independent buffer state in that zone, but that was well after Britain's experience in 1806-07 and the change of mind towards exclusively economic links at least largely as the result of the invasions' failure. As for Patagonia, you might be right that it was long under formal Spanish control and yet not settled; Belize (next to Guatemala and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula) was officially under Spanish control, and yet such control was so ineffective that the English were able to establish settlements starting in the 1600s without any problem. Similarly, the British would probably have started settlements in Patagonia despite, at first, being under the official but ineffective control of Spain and its successor states like Argentina. For both Uruguay and Patagonia, there would also have been startegic considerations (in particular, with the Rio de la Plata and Montevideo harbour, and with the Strait of Magellan/Cape Horn) coming into play.

 

[Matt84]

Please convince me otherwise.
As you say the fortified ports taken byvtue British were returned to Spain. There could have been more happy exceptiobs such as Gibraltar - I grant you that. But the British were constantly seeking long lasting trade-enabling peace, like the one that more or less was enjoyed during Queen Victoria's reign - and her most serene Venetian ministers.

It was during those decades that Britain began actually settling the cobtinent of Oceania and to your point established railways and welsh settlements in Patagonia.

 

[yd_mtl]

Another way I like to think about the British and other European powers making their rounds of colonizing around the world in the 18th-19th centuries, especially if the British had managed to establish a colonial foothold in the River Plate, is as follows: Mainland Central and South America is like a table at a certain party or gathering which is already filled up by the Spanish and Portuguese, and here comes along British people to converse with those seated at the table. One or two British people want to have a seat at that table, but the table is already filled up; nonetheless, a couple of the Spanish and Portuguese people might say, however grudgingly, "Please have a seat!" and/or "Join us!" Whereas with the Africa and Asia tables, they aren't completely filled up until relatively late - the tables might have a few seats here and there with Portuguese, Dutch, French, Spanish, and British people, but not until later in the 19th century do these tables get filled up mostly with British and French people, plus some Portuguese and/or Dutch people.

 

[yd_mtl]

I think that Uruguay and Patagonia, among all the Spanish-speaking areas in South America, were the most ripe for British colonization/settlement in the 19th century. Uruguay was located along the frontier between the Spanish and Portuguese empires in South America, and it was fought between the Spanish and the Portuguese (later, the Argentines and Brazilians); even in real life, it was the British who established an independent buffer state in that zone, but that was well after Britain's experience in 1806-07 and the change of mind towards exclusively economic links at least largely as the result of the invasions' failure. As for Patagonia, you might be right that it was long under formal Spanish control and yet not settled; Belize (next to Guatemala and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula) was officially under Spanish control, and yet such control was so ineffective that the English were able to establish settlements starting in the 1600s without any problem. Similarly, the British would probably have started settlements in Patagonia despite, at first, being under the official but ineffective control of Spain and its successor states like Argentina. For both Uruguay and Patagonia, there would also have been startegic considerations (in particular, with the Rio de la Plata and Montevideo harbour, and with the Strait of Magellan/Cape Horn) coming into play.

An update: I now see the British getting Uruguay and the Strait of Magellan region (including Tierra del Fuego - aka Fireland - and the Falklands/Malvinas), but not so much in the way of the rest of Patagonia (since the latter is not nearly as strategic as the Rio de la Plata or the Strait of Magellan).

 

[scotttswan]

Falklanders set up a few places in the far south did they not? They had pretty close ties with people on the mainland before all the shite started up.

Http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/scotsinargpat/malvineros.htm

The cemeteries down there are full of Scottish surnames.