About a certain vodka ad
Apparently there are people to whom the results of the Mexican-American war of 1848 are still a live issue. To most Europeans, who have had to settle borders much more recently, this is what may charitably be called crazy talk - the same kind of mentality that insists that the Falkland Islands, settled by thousands of people of British origin for over a century, should be Argentinian because a few Argentinian fishers had landed there before 1833. But since the issue has been raised, let us look at it.
By the time the war of 1848 started, Mexico had already permanently lost Texas; not because of anyone's particular wickedness, but because Texas was far more easily entered from the Missisippi valley than from the Mexican heartlands, and Anglo settlement was an unstoppable reality. Also, another band of Anglos (not everyone remembers this) had made a massive and even more ungovernable settlement around the Salt Lake - the Mormons. And in 1849, the California gold rush began - another matter which, like the Anglo settlements in Texas and Utah, had no necessary connection with American or Mexican politics, being simply the result of conditions. All the nineteenth-century gold rushes were primarily English-speaking phenomena, and there is no reason to imagine that this one would have been different, even if California in 1849 had been still under Mexican administration.
The conclusion is this: that whatever happened, even if President Polk had not unleashed what everyone agrees was an unjust war, by the eighteen-fifties there would have been a solid belt of English-speaking settlement across the whole of what we can regard as northern Mexico and independent Texas. This belt would have grown in importance and weight, and would have been completely unmanageable from Mexico City. The least that can be imagined is that the Mexicans would have found the American Mormons even more unmanageable than the United States did - they, at least, shared a common language and culture with the Salt Lake settlers. It is impossible to imagine that Texas, which had never properly made peace with Mexico, would have stayed out of the fight, or that the gold-rush settlers in California would have been unconcerned. If we suppose that the Americans (who by now would have been deeply concerned by their own impending internal crisis, whose development - apart from the existence of Texas as a federal state - had very little to do with American politics in Mexico), the least that can be imagined is either a Mexican civil war with all the Anglos on one side, or else a repetition of the Texas war of independence with California and Utah, this time, against the central government.
And this would still have been the best that could have happened to Mexico. If, by some miracle (and one such miracle, as we will see, can be imagined), Mexico had kept its territorial integrity, it is anything but certain that it would have kept its national identity. We have to remember which were the growing and dynamic elements in the American continent at the time. When President Polk started his war, twenty million Americans faced eight million Mexicans. By 1860, American population had almost doubled. The growth was fuelled both by internal dynamics - those famous Victorian families with ten or twenty children - and by massive and swiftly growing immigration from Europe. Mass immigration in the modern sense had begun in 1845 with the Irish potato famine, which multiplied the number of immigrants from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, a rhythm which never ceased from then on. It should be abundantly clear that, once an Anglo presence had been established in northern Mexico, it would have grown exponentially. Mexican population growth, by contrast, was sluggish, and not fed by any large stream of immigrants.
There is a way in which we can imagine the Mexican territory remaining intact, or even recovering Texas. As everyone knows, in the eighteen-sixties Napoleon III of France involved his country in an imperialist adventure in Mexico. Supposing the war of 1848 not to have taken place, there would have been no better way for the French to gain local support than to take up the Mexican quarrels in the north; and while American settlers of the quality of Sam Houston and his likes were more than up to the task of dealing with Santa Ana and the Mexican army, they could never have stood against a determined push from the greatest army (at the time) in Europe. But it would have been a Pyrrhic victory. Bringing the Anglo element back under the control of Mexico City, one way or another, would only have brought closer the moment when Anglo influence in a still united Mexico became overwhelming. If a weaker USA had not taken advantage of it, a stronger British Empire would; either way, the Catholic, Hispanic Mexicans would have been on the way to becoming a minority in their own country.
The Mexicans really ought to raise a statue to President Polk. By stealing the deserted and distant half of their country, he insured that the settled half remained Mexican.
By the time the war of 1848 started, Mexico had already permanently lost Texas; not because of anyone's particular wickedness, but because Texas was far more easily entered from the Missisippi valley than from the Mexican heartlands, and Anglo settlement was an unstoppable reality. Also, another band of Anglos (not everyone remembers this) had made a massive and even more ungovernable settlement around the Salt Lake - the Mormons. And in 1849, the California gold rush began - another matter which, like the Anglo settlements in Texas and Utah, had no necessary connection with American or Mexican politics, being simply the result of conditions. All the nineteenth-century gold rushes were primarily English-speaking phenomena, and there is no reason to imagine that this one would have been different, even if California in 1849 had been still under Mexican administration.
The conclusion is this: that whatever happened, even if President Polk had not unleashed what everyone agrees was an unjust war, by the eighteen-fifties there would have been a solid belt of English-speaking settlement across the whole of what we can regard as northern Mexico and independent Texas. This belt would have grown in importance and weight, and would have been completely unmanageable from Mexico City. The least that can be imagined is that the Mexicans would have found the American Mormons even more unmanageable than the United States did - they, at least, shared a common language and culture with the Salt Lake settlers. It is impossible to imagine that Texas, which had never properly made peace with Mexico, would have stayed out of the fight, or that the gold-rush settlers in California would have been unconcerned. If we suppose that the Americans (who by now would have been deeply concerned by their own impending internal crisis, whose development - apart from the existence of Texas as a federal state - had very little to do with American politics in Mexico), the least that can be imagined is either a Mexican civil war with all the Anglos on one side, or else a repetition of the Texas war of independence with California and Utah, this time, against the central government.
And this would still have been the best that could have happened to Mexico. If, by some miracle (and one such miracle, as we will see, can be imagined), Mexico had kept its territorial integrity, it is anything but certain that it would have kept its national identity. We have to remember which were the growing and dynamic elements in the American continent at the time. When President Polk started his war, twenty million Americans faced eight million Mexicans. By 1860, American population had almost doubled. The growth was fuelled both by internal dynamics - those famous Victorian families with ten or twenty children - and by massive and swiftly growing immigration from Europe. Mass immigration in the modern sense had begun in 1845 with the Irish potato famine, which multiplied the number of immigrants from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, a rhythm which never ceased from then on. It should be abundantly clear that, once an Anglo presence had been established in northern Mexico, it would have grown exponentially. Mexican population growth, by contrast, was sluggish, and not fed by any large stream of immigrants.
There is a way in which we can imagine the Mexican territory remaining intact, or even recovering Texas. As everyone knows, in the eighteen-sixties Napoleon III of France involved his country in an imperialist adventure in Mexico. Supposing the war of 1848 not to have taken place, there would have been no better way for the French to gain local support than to take up the Mexican quarrels in the north; and while American settlers of the quality of Sam Houston and his likes were more than up to the task of dealing with Santa Ana and the Mexican army, they could never have stood against a determined push from the greatest army (at the time) in Europe. But it would have been a Pyrrhic victory. Bringing the Anglo element back under the control of Mexico City, one way or another, would only have brought closer the moment when Anglo influence in a still united Mexico became overwhelming. If a weaker USA had not taken advantage of it, a stronger British Empire would; either way, the Catholic, Hispanic Mexicans would have been on the way to becoming a minority in their own country.
The Mexicans really ought to raise a statue to President Polk. By stealing the deserted and distant half of their country, he insured that the settled half remained Mexican.