So what made North America to become a continent with only three massive states (if we don't count the Caribbean)...

american imperialism

>not understanding what he means by "state"

"State" has other meaning besides "A constituent state of the USA". I thought Americans had enough basic education to understand this.

"State" can refer to a polity, nation or nation-state, or the concept/idea/notion of such.

God damn Americans are fucking dumb

If you looked at all the original boundaries of American countries, you'd see that they're pretty much all contain only about one or two major regions of population. Since the Americas were previously unpopulated by Europeans, when they became populated the colonists clustered into small areas in order to develop cities, which left huge barren regions where no one really lived. When countries started to gain their independence, each population center was able to form their own new state, independent from those surrounding. Meanwhile the huge unpopulated areas really just went to whoever could claim them, which usually came down to political boundaries across colonies or viceroyalties.

That's important to remember because North America was much less populated by the time of independence than South America was. Below the Rio Grande you had a population cluster around Mexico City, so they were able to claim the area of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which was mostly barren. Above the Rio Grande there was almost nothing except for New Orleans, the Middle Colonies, and Quebec. New Orleans and Quebec never gained independence except by the will of their colonizers, which left the whole space of what is now the United States to that cluster in Boston/Pennsylvania.

>three massive states
only Canada and the US are big , mexico is small as fuck

>13th largest country in the world
>Bigger than any European country(except for Russia)
>small

>Mexico is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the 13th largest independent nation in the world

>It wasn't colonized by Spain.

It was. And precisely the north american spain (Mexico) didn't balkanize as much as south american spain.

I love After the End. The Caribbean Empire is god tier, so fucking fun to play. Holding it all together as a joint smoking rastafarian woman surrounded by women-hating voodoo priests and shit is awesome. Especially since your heir is a badass Barbadian pirate and one ruthless motherfucker.

Elaborate.

I meant actual states, not glorified regions.

...

the fuck

South American geography is a mess, the Andes and the Amazon jungle are difficult obstacules.

Brazil and Argentina, the largest countries, have considerable plain lands just like the US.

...

Canada, the largest state in North America has plenty of geographic obstacles. Connecting Toronto and Winnipeg required building a railroad through like 1000 miles of rocks, and there's a huge mountain range separating the west coast from the rest of the country.

Full of nothing with their only neighbour being friendly

excuse me, central america IS north america and that shit balkanized as fuck

>So what made North America to become a continent with only three massive states (if we don't count the Caribbean), instead of several "smaller" states like South America?
oppressive, successful "federal" governments (yes, even Mexico's)

>What timelines and historical events could have produced a continental North America divided between several big but not so big states?
that confederates won the war for example. they would be splitting themselves as well

you seem to forget how big Brazil is, OP. and Brazil had many separatists revolution and a few civil wars. in all of them the brazilian government got victorious, that's why they keep glued together like USA and Canada

I always forget about them, sorry. They're not very relevant for this thread though since we're talking about the big three. The caribbean islands are technically north american too and are balkanized as well.

True that brazil is very big, and could be smaller had history developed differently, but still gets to interact with a lot of other regional influential nations that are not small either.

Put in other words: Brazil borders Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and the guyanas. The USA, being bigger, border only Mexico and Canada.

>So what made North America to become a continent with only three massive states (if we don't count the Caribbean)
Because if you don't count any state except three then it becomes an only three state area.

Latin America broke into some large states and some small states.

America is huge because of Manifest Destiny and Canada is huge because there is nothing but trees.

Off topic, but I can't wrap my head around the fact that the USA has as much forested land as Canada.

Theodore Roosevelt basically. Conservation works wonders in keeping forests around.

Bully!

Also a lot of Canada is just ice, no trees just ice

>a continent with only three massive states (if we don't count the Caribbean)
Central America is part of North America you dingus.

Probably has to do with Alaska. 99% of Alaska is just arctic forests and a very small portion of the state has anyone living there.

The more literal explanation would be French imperialism, in that the US bought most of its land from the French Emperor. The Mexican-American war was a border dispute because nobody who cares about borders had been living there prior to 1845 (i.e. settlers and indians)

>Vikings on the great lakes
Its how it should have been all along, but for the skraellings

France wasn't going to stop the USA from taking that land eventually.

if the US had stayed a domain of the GB then france may have never done the louisiana purchase which would halt english advance west and create a rather large french state between english and spanish

Especially since the French didn't actually occupy it. They sold their claim to America.