>Best piece of arable land in the world
>Control of the flow of goods of the La plata basin
>Coal in La Plata basin,easy to transport fluvially
>Biggest iron reserves and mineral reserves in your landlocked neighbor (easy to annex)
>Biggest renewable potential in the entire planet in the Iguazu
>Oil and gas reserves
>Biggest lithium reserves on the planet
Is Argentina not becoming a small USA the biggest geopolitical fuck up in history? They could have become a worthy rival to the US if they weren't retarded.They don't have the fuck up geography of Brazil and had everything in their way to recieve all catholic emigrants.If it wasn't for the constant civil wars and retarded goverments I seriously believe that Argentina would have become one of the 5 largest economies on the planet
Best piece of arable land in the world
>Best piece of arable land in the world
That is questionable and it's not necessarily an indicator of sucess. Ukraine is very fertile too.
Side note: I am in the agricultural business in the marked area but in brazil,
Good soil>less farmers needed>more human capital for the cities>more labour to develop industries.
Ukraine could be really rich,but Russia needs a poor Ukraine for their protection so it will remain poor
Not enough people. In fact that kind of thinking is what ruined Argentina.
It was as wealthy as the USA or Australia in per capita GDP but retarded nationalists in the military weren't happy with just being a Spanish-speaking Australia and wanted to be a world power. So they destroyed Argentina's huge agricultural export sector (#5 exporter in the world in the 1930s) with retarded taxes and export controls so they could build a bunch of protectionist state-subsidized industries (steel, cars, aircraft, etc) which ended up bankrupting the country. The farming sector, main source of capital, couldn't reinvest and the economy stagnated.
Meanwhile Australia is doing just fine exporting mostly mining and agricultural products, never messed up with the market system.
It was #5 exporter OVERALL by the way
#1 in agricultural products
Also (final point), I don't know what you mean with "constant civil wars", that was settled by 1860.
fair enough, replace civil wars for constant political unrest (six military coups in the XXth century)
>Not enough people
How do you think the US got people? Through inmigration.The viceroyalty of La Plata had around 3 M when it got its independence.Argentina held 3/4 of that population.The US had 4 M people at the time.They could have tryed to attract inmigrants which would have been possible if they didn't collapsed in a civil war every 10 years in the XIX century.
In fact if it wasn't for internal struggle they could have pursued military campaigns against Bolivia,Paraguay and Brazil, who at the start of the XIX century didn't have such a huge demographic advantage and had a much worse army
Argentina lost the inmigration game there.The US in 1860 had almost 50 M people while Argentina barely had 4.Really if it gained the reputation of a great country for inmigrants they could have recieved a lot more German catholics,Irish,Spain and people from Austro-Hungary
The frequent coups also discouraged foreign investment. Business in general couldn't rely on rule of law.
>Through inmigration.
Between 1880 and 1930, Argentina received 7.5 million immigrants, which multiplied the population x12. It received more immigrants than the US on a per capita basis. In absolute numbers it was second after the US during this period, and ahead of Australia, Canada or Brazil. It was incredibly successful in this regard.
>The viceroyalty of La Plata had around 3 M when it got its independence.Argentina held 3/4 of that population.
Wrong. Population at independence is estimated at only around 700 thousand to 1 million people at most. It was extremely underpopulated.
Keep in mind the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (2 million people, not 3) included Uruguay, Paraguay and parts of Bolivia.
Up to 1880, before the immigration boom, population was only 1.5 million, which had multiplied to 12 million by 1930 and 20 million by 1960.
There was no way they could have done better than that. This is just a weird point to make because it was the area Argentina was perhaps the most successful of them all.
>In fact if it wasn't for internal struggle they could have pursued military campaigns against Bolivia,Paraguay and Brazil
That's delusional. 19th century Paraguay had as many people as Argentina and an army several times larger.
>Between 1880 and 1930
The earlier you get inmigrants the bigger the population growth will be.The US multiply by 10 its population from 1830-1869 for example.The more inmigrants you recieved,the bigger the reputation you had which leaded to more inmigrants moving there
>implying Catholics can build functioning societies
>expecting a non-protestant country to be successfull
Sure. But times 12 > times 10.
I really don't see your point.
I can't imagine even more immigrants making the trip. It was already incredible when you consider the country:
* Wasn't a regional power like the US
* Didn't have the unconditional backing of Britain like the Anglo Dominions
* Didn't speak English (important for getting Anglo or Irish immigrants, which nevertheless we got in significant numbers - 5th largest Irish diaspora after UK, USA, Can and Aus.
They did very well given the circumstances.
This is true. And it's puzzling because between 1860-1930 there was continual unbroken Constitutional succession and an independent judiciary, a rarity for Latin America. 1930 coup was really a breaking point for the country, that's when the decadence begun IMHO.
Some say that being so open to immigrants is what caused it, in fact. Many of the Italians and Spaniards that migrated to Argentina in the late 19th century were illiterate and had no practice of democracy, unlike the immigrants the US got which were mostly from more educated Northern Europe.
>geopolitical fuck up
more like fucked up by geopolitics
They should had annexed Paraguay after the triple alliance war, look at all that arable land.
>12 > times 10.
This argument is dumb.Raw numbers is what matter.Argentina had a more compact Missisipi basin with more resources on it.There is literally no other place on earth as good for farmers as La plata basin with the exception of the Missisipi basin
Argentina is much more similar to something like Australia in most regards
>fucked up by geopolitics
By geography alone Argentina should one of the leading countries on this planet
You brought it up. Said US managed to multiply its population by 10.
Anyway it's not a dumb argument. Jobs, determined by the size of the economy, which in turn is determined in part by the population, is what attracts immigrants.
You can't expect a country to multiply its population by 20 over 50 years. 12 was already pushing it.
I know right? Well there is a difference with the US. First of all Argentina had barely any coastline until they conquered the Patagonia, while the USA had a big Atlantic coastline that was densely populares. So almost all communications had to be done by land, with the exception of cities that were on the Paraná. They were just a few, remember that most of the Northeastern parts of Argentina had not been colonized yet
Secondly Argentina did not have the mineral reserves that US has, which would let it industrialize quickly. Coal and iron are scarce there.
So the biggest bet Argentina had was becoming a huge agricultural exporter, and that's what it did.
Argentina's economy was untapped.All the Pampas region was set to be one of the breadbaskets in the early XIX century.If Argentina would have built a reasonable inmigration policy in the early XIX century they might have today 70-90M people
>Coal and iron are scarce there.
But not in its neighbors.Bolivia literally has the biggest iron reserves on the planet and 99% of the coal of Brazil is in the Basin of La Plata so it could be transport cheaply to Buenos Aires
And it was (it is) a breadbasket, today Argentina exports enough food to feed 400 million people, which is staggering.
I don't see how the population could have grown more than it did. Nowhere on Earth did a country go from having 1 million people to 70-90 million as you are suggesting. Those numbers are just not realistic.
How is a forgotten, poor Spanish backwater, as Argentina was in the 1800s, gonna attract that much people?
Australia or Canada couldn't either. America is a different story because it was already being massively settled from the 1600s onwards.
>. Nowhere on Earth did a country go from having 1 million people to 70-90 million
The US,the DRC,Nigeria more than surprassed that,Ethiopia...
But conquering them would have been impossible. At least not Brazil
Conquering Bolivia was viable.Conquering Brazil was not viable but supporting the independence of the southern provinces (which have the coal) could be viable,and as long as the coal was secure it could fuel its industry
imagine
south and central brazil + South cone single state that spoke either french or portuguese and was at least quarter protestant or more
would be amazing
>raise large amounts of cattle
>sell beef to industrialized world
>buy coal and iron
>???????????
I spawned in Argentina as the USA in Civ V once and proceeded to become do exactly that.