How did the US go from colony to technological and economic leader in less than 200 years

[Avernite]

Mexico is not much different from other Latin American countries really. Yes there was foreign meddling but a country like Bolivia manages to have some sort of world record of coups (200 in 200 years) overwhelmingly if not exclusively a domestic product. The gunboat intervention by the Europeans left no real institutional mark on Mexico, the constitution remained the same. In terms of South America, Uruguay is doing the best by far, and its colonial context was cattle, trade and European settlers - few natives to coerce and exploit, no slave plantations set up. There was slave trade and slaves present, but these were domestic/urban labourers and many got freedom fighting for the country before slavery was abolished. Mexico on the other hand had an enormous coerced labour system with elites at the top extracting wealth for themselves.

In your scenario I assume the north remains free. The CSA would have been another Mexico or South Africa on its own. The north could use their restore union casus belli at an opportune moment afterwards, it was already wealthier and more powerful than the south, that divide would only grow starker as separate countries.

Yeah the constitution may not have changed that much, but when any settlement that seems equitable is overthrown by French or US meddling, at some point the institutions get strained. The Dutch Republic (admittedly already on the decline) also didn't survive Prussian intervention and British meddling during the patriot revolution with its institutions intact properly, even if constitutionally little changed - it took a French invasion, annexation, and another 30 years of on-and-off conflict before a proper reconstitution of those once-decent institutions came about.

 

[Sleepyhead]

Yeah the constitution may not have changed that much, but when any settlement that seems equitable is overthrown by French or US meddling, at some point the institutions get strained. The Dutch Republic (admittedly already on the decline) also didn't survive Prussian intervention and British meddling during the patriot revolution with its institutions intact properly, even if constitutionally little changed - it took a French invasion, annexation, and another 30 years of on-and-off conflict before a proper reconstitution of those once-decent institutions came about.

Foreign meddling can be a boon, France singlehandedly abolished feudalism and serfdom in large swatches of Europe, improved courts, put limits on authority, undermined absolutism and secured property rights. Wherever elites didn't manage to backtrack on that, industrialisation set in like Belgium, your Netherlands, Rheinland, Switzerland and North Italy. Countries where various vested interests and elites managed to backtrack or the revolution never occurred, like South Italy, Poland, Spain, Austria, Russia, the same development didn't occur in the same timeframe. The positive side of this is of course because of Napoleon's obsession with his legacy. When meddling occurs because of a factor of resource extraction like in Mexico there is less room for positivity. Still, it would appear to be a blip on the country rather than some sort of major turning point, Mexico had coups before and saw coups afterwards like other South American countries with an extractive economy and elites benefiting from it.