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> South America has always been geographically stunted compared to North America. I believe you are very much mistaken unless your definition of "geographicall

> South America has always been geographically stunted compared to North America. I believe you are very much mistaken unless your definition of "geographically stunted" and "has always" is different than what is generally accepted. The facts show clearly that prior to 1492, Central and South America were where the larger, more organized, more sedentary, more productive civilizations were. That's why the Incas, Mayas, Olmecs, Aztecs, were all NOT in North America. So any theory of "geographical stunting" would need to explain what changed in the geography after 1492. > Without the cooperation of the natives, Europeans could get nowhere. I'm surprised that anyone would believe this "cooperation" of the natives. I have a simpler explanation. "Natives" did not cooperate willingly. Instead, through our vastly superior military technology, we imposed "cooperation" on the natives in Central and South America, while in the North, we imposed something completely different as already explained above. In the Central and South American region, we setup political and military structures to preserve ourselves at the top and keep the entirety of the other population at the bottom and also to prevent their escape. That was the defined purpose of the encomiendas. We wanted to do the same in the North but could not. North America escaped this fate precisely because the native population was far too sparse to enable viable encomiendas. So our corporations had to find alternate ways to gain profit, and that turned out to be, by enabling and giving rights to the settlers/colonialists. That difference is effectively the primary cause of what has given rise to the vastly different fates between the 2 regions.

vinceguidry 11y ago
> So any theory of "geographical stunting" would need to explain what changed in the geography after 1492. What changed was technology. Once you have ships going back and forth across the Atlantic, everything changes. Europeans introduced cows, sheep, pigs, chickens. The New World's only domesticable native animal is the llama, which is the main reason why civilizations sprung up in Central and the northern parts of South America, that's where llamas were. Now, to the Europeans, with vastly superior farming technology, the Caribbean and North America were veritable cornucopias of geopolitical possibility. Islands sheltered plantations. Europe could project real power only very closely to the shore, where the big naval guns could reach. The reason was supply. To maintain a group of soldiers requires not just food but adequate clothing, weapons, ammunition, and horses to carry all of that. It took over a century of growth for a colony to get to the point to where it could maintain and supply an army for deeper treks inland. By that time the colonies would have been deeply entrenched in native political systems. Because the warships protecting your colony could only hang around for so long, colonies were quite vulnerable to native military action, or even just having them hang around outside the settlement and killing whoever goes outside, say, to chop wood. It made sense for settlers to be nice to the locals, at least at first. CGPGrey just put out a fantastic video comparing the Old and New Worlds that neatly explains why Europe won and the Western Hemisphere lost. The actual mechanism was disease, which does not require a supply train, but there's a lot more to the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

vinceguidry 11y ago

> So any theory of "geographical stunting" would need to explain what changed in the geography after 1492. What changed was technology. Once you have ships going back and forth across the Atlantic, everything changes. Europeans introduced cows, sheep, pigs, chickens. The New World's only domesticable native animal is the llama, which is the main reason why civilizations sprung up in Central and the northern parts of South America, that's where llamas were. Now, to the Europeans, with vastly superior farming technology, the Caribbean and North America were veritable cornucopias of geopolitical possibility. Islands sheltered plantations. Europe could project real power only very closely to the shore, where the big naval guns could reach. The reason was supply. To maintain a group of soldiers requires not just food but adequate clothing, weapons, ammunition, and horses to carry all of that. It took over a century of growth for a colony to get to the point to where it could maintain and supply an army for deeper treks inland. By that time the colonies would have been deeply entrenched in native political systems. Because the warships protecting your colony could only hang around for so long, colonies were quite vulnerable to native military action, or even just having them hang around outside the settlement and killing whoever goes outside, say, to chop wood. It made sense for settlers to be nice to the locals, at least at first. CGPGrey just put out a fantastic video comparing the Old and New Worlds that neatly explains why Europe won and the Western Hemisphere lost. The actual mechanism was disease, which does not require a supply train, but there's a lot more to the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk