Another theory, I guess, might be that England had more economic power longer than Spain or France, and so its colonies got a stronger start?

Well, if you happened to be non-white, poor, or a later immigrant, it did kind of happen in the US. We didn't really become a superpower till the 20th Century, especially after WWII. But we were spared true colonialism, due to a number of factors, in my opinion.

1. Our Founder Fathers were, to a large degree, hypocrites, but the ideas they put down in the Constitution were solid ones, and since they're codified, we've at least made some effort to live up to them, resulting in progress. Other nations merely went through cycles of replacing colonialist dictators with native ones.

2. Economics: We did kind of hit the jackpot in terms of natural resources, which drew more people here from all over, which gave us a big advantage in terms of in-country talent.

Just spitballing.

But I'm not really talking about immigrants, but about how the power arose from the first colonial settlements. Cortez went in and slaughtered everyone, but there still seems to be a "Mexican" identity that's distinct from Spanish and still relies on native traditions (I do know that some of the Chicano movement is recent, though, so maybe I'm overplaying that in my head). There's not an "American identity" that's based on Native American traditions/thoughts/strengths; it's all about the Europeans who came here and why and what they accomplished.

Another theory, I guess, might be that England had more economic power longer than Spain or France, and so its colonies got a stronger start?

Francis Parkman would say that England was more successful in the New World than France because England tended to send its cultural and religious outcasts to the colonies (who had a greater motivation to make a go of things as a result), while France tended to order people of privilege to the colonies who already practiced the religion of the state--not only were they unmotivated and would rather have been back in France anyway, but they lacked the necessary practical experience to grow the colony. Granted, he was writing in the 1860s, but maybe there's something to it anyway.

BIG question.

I don't know the whole answer but I have some pieces.

For one thing, American natives aren't culturally homogenous, unlike the pre-contact populations of many smaller island nations. Identifying opposition to Europeans as a common interest meant identifying together as a single people, and early Natives did not do that. Some pursued trade opportunities and diplomacy as a way of spreading their empires as Native groups, while others retreated or resisted.

In general there was quite a bit more Native resistance than we ever hear about. It was largely quelled in the East by 1700, so it's not often talked about, but that's giving Natives the short shrift. There were some awfully heinous and bloody conflicts between colonists and various groups. But again, each defeat was group by group, so when one group was defeated it usually moved away to try to assimilate with another Native group (farther West, in most cases). Indians did not unify against the white enemy because of their loyalty to their own distinct cultural groups and their interconnected history of centuries of complicated relationships.

When the first European colonists arrived in New England and started staying year-round, they encountered much less resistance from the indigenous population than they normally would have. That's because the Eastern woodland people had been nearly wiped out - decimated is too weak a word - by a series of smallpox epidemics brought by earlier traders and fishermen. The effects of the epidemics were profound, destroying the structure of small-group leadership that had existed before. Drastically reduced populations re-organized and banded together - people who hadn't formerly shared space, beliefs, or languages began to re-form into new groupings. Part of the fallout of that was that there was quite a bit of inter-Native strife and war. Both the intertribal war and the reduced population meant that it was awfully hard to stave off the European settlers. Many of these groups retreated inland quite swiftly. Those who didn't ended up getting caught up in the mess of King Phillip's War.

Also, even though the colonists did a lot of truly heinous things, there was a certain degree of attempted diplomacy and negotiation. This didn't always work out well for natives, of course, but there wasn't a total absence of attempts to make peace. The colonists knew they were greatly outnumbered by 'heathens' and didn't launch an attempt to take over the extractive industries of the entire continent. They just couldn't. Instead, they made local habitation for natives inhospitable, killing or sickening enough to make the rest retreat into the foothills or farther West.

Then, in the 1700s and 1800s, the Indian conflicts just moved incrementally westward and each band was subdued separately from the others.

So:

-weakened population
-some early diplomacy and minimzation of perceived threat
-internecine struggle among a highly diverse native population
-localized divide-and-conquer strategy
-gradual dislocation

That explains some of it, but it's something historians dicker about all the time. I only know a bit about it, but there are some excellent resources online - try googling Native American history. There are some university and LoC collections and online exhibits that might help.

I'd imagine that's because only the aristocracy of the Spaniards stayed 'pure' in Mexico whereas the peasantry intermarried all over the place, so the history of the indigenous population is far more intertwined with that of the nation as a whole. In the US, by the 20th Century, the native population was small, and those who hadn't intermarried with Europeas and/or African-Americans to the point of being able to assimilate tended to stay on reservations and band closely together, making them almost a separate nation.

/amateur history buff
//I'm probably completely wrong

-internecine struggle among a highly diverse native population

This is important. It's not like ethnic conflict is a uniquely Euro phenomenon. There was tension and warfare between native groups, too. Sadly, tribal hatred seems to be a universal phenomenon.

there still seems to be a "Mexican" identity that's distinct from Spanish

Oh, I get what you're asking more now.

The Spanish and French did have a really different colonial attitude, which favored more assimilation, and a lot less compunction about interbreeding with a Native population (heck, they even had a language for it!). Hence, Creoles everywhere the French and Spanish colonized.

The Reformation English were convinced that their Anglo purity was divine and interbreeding was very much taboo. They simply did not pursue it as a colonial population in any great numbers.

There's not an "American identity" that's based on Native American traditions/thoughts/strengths

I'd argue that point - the 'American Identity,' inasmuch as there is one, is pretty deeply informed by ideas about Native Americans. The whole cowboy ethos is pretty much a borrowing from Plains culture. Independence, strength, self-reliance, toughness in war, resourcefulness, being at ease in the wilderness, bravery, stoicism, loyalty, -- all are values that earlier anglo-Americans associated with natives and eventually incorporated into 'Americanness'. We still remain fascinated with Native ideas and culture today - go to a powwow, and 80% of the people are white.

The economic comment is more in line with things also there is a racial component as well.

When the US was colonized, Native Americans were expelled from society rather than integrated. In Latin America, Native Americans were integrated (to some degree) by being bred with. There was also a slight religious component to it. Initially, people settling North American didn't believe in preaching to the natives while the catholics were heavy into converting the indians..before enslaving them and killing them off through over work and diseases.

Latin America had it's culutral ties attached to Spain which gradually lost economic and industrial might. Spain lost a large percentage of it's population to colonizing efforts and its frequent wars and political missteps in Europe kept Spain unable to establish their colonies as economic powerhouses. Also, Spain didn't encourage economic development in its colonizes. Spain was only interested in gold and robbing those territories of raw materials. The early colonizers of the US failed to find gold or silver and to make the US colonies viable, they needed to become an actual market for birtish goods and services. Also, even when all these colonies won their independence, they still were culturally and ecnomically tied to their original colonizers. With Spain stiffling, Latin America couldn't grow. However, the US was tied to the biggest military and economic powerhouse in the World.

Also, the US was allowed to grow and develop without ferice competition from any other nation. The US could expand and gain territory while other nations in Latin America could only fight each other for territory, resources, and presitage. The political history of south america is much much more fragmented than in the US. Also, with a weaker political and ecnomic backer (Spain), South America became one of those pawns that european statesmen would use to disrupt their enemies. The US, however, was able to retain it's political independence because it had the largest merchant fleet. The US, from the start, became very active in international trade and became valuable and needed by the global community.

Great points, stynxno! Especially about the role of Catholicism.

My high school World Hist. teacher had a great mnemonic for the colonial mindset in Latin America: as opposed to the British interest in developing markets and supplying Europe with natural resources like timber and codfish, the Spanish and French were more interested in The Three G's -- Gold, Glory, and God.

Ah ha, Stynxno, that would explain why the phrase "benign neglect" kept popping up in my head this morning, though in a different context. I knew there were relevant ideas rattling around up there somewhere, just couldn't access them...

The different aims of colonialism idea makes sense, and ties things together in the way that I was looking for. I was thinking of "colonizing" as meaning only one thing, but of course it couldn't have.

And Miko, I've been reading a bit about the various Native American tribes and their tribulations over the past few weeks. Not in any formal way, just as I try to research some of the American states. A lot of what you're saying has been popping up even in that limited context (and some of it ties back into Australia and New Zealand, actually; I think it was the Maori who suddenly found themselves being described as a monolithic group when in fact there were huge differences... or maybe it was the Australian aborigines... my brain is truly not functioning this morning...).

In any event, looks like short answer is: Spain (and maybe France) had more of a "rape and pillage" colonial mentality, applied to both the land and the people. England had a "Get out of here and go make a life for yourselves elsewhere, we don't want you here" mentality, as well as stronger economic power at home, which led to more self-sufficient colonies. More or less?

And thanks, all, for your thoughtful answers. Like I said, brain's not quite clicking in on this subject for some reason. I'm grateful that y'all are willing to interpret my babbling.

Also, keep in mind that "native" cultures bifurcated in Latin America: there were elites who were Europeanized and "indians" who were looked down upon and reviled. In the history of Cuba (sort of) it's interesting to go back and read The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara (that betrayer of the common people) and see how snobbish and bigoted he is as he talks about all the indians he encounters on the way. In the history of Mexico, or, I mean, in contemporary Mexico, take a look at Chiappas where an indigenous revolt is going on against "Mexican identity."

This is an interesting discussion.

You need to read Guns, Germs and Steel. Jared Diamond says that the genesis of his book was a friend of his, a native Papua New Guinean, who asked him in patois, "Why do white people have all the cargo?" (Cargo being manufactured goods, vehicles, airplanes, etc.) This strikes me as your basic question as well.

Diamond knew it wasn't "manifest destiny" or racial superiority, but he still didn't have a good answer for his friend. After writing his book, he was pretty confident that the answer was "geography" as well as "luck".

Some of the answers that apply to the spread of global societies, among them expansive east-west temperate latitudes where standard grains could be fruitful, also apply to the US and Canada whereas Central and South America (and he discusses prehistory as well as colonialism) had much more limiting geography. You could only go north or south, to oversimplify, and so you couldn't take your agriculture with you.

Diamond addresses the altogether different problem of Australia in his later book Collapse. Certainly, I had never understood just how fragile an environment that continent is, and why it was so late to be colonized, and so difficult. Curiously, the history of the British colonial government was as a defender of the native population against settlers acting independently.

agreed birdherder. while i can't contribute anything intelligent to the discussion, i will note that i find it fascinating. also, i've sent the link to friends who should appreciate it as well.

i can only shudder to think what sort of discussion this would have sparked on AskMeFi... o wait, mefi's busted (again) today. ugh, poor mathowie.

Heh, lfr, I thought about posting it there, but was just too tired to go into the 9,000 pre-apologies the question would require. Here, at least, I figured people would be more or less willing to give me the benefit of the doubt that my intentions were good -- as well, of course, as give me some good info.

stilicho, that book has been on my "I should read this" list for a while. Looks like I shall have to bump it up.

There's a new book that might be of interest: the Cartoon History of the Modern World. You can read it in one longish sitting; it just came out so your library might have a copy but your bookstore almost certainly will; and it's a great refresher on the early colonial period 1492 - 1776.

Another point about the settlement of North America vs Central America: North America, at least the part from the Carolinas north, had a climate much more like the one the English were used to. So more of their agricultural practices etc transferred, and there was less tropical disease for them to contend with.

Also, I think there was more behind-the-scenes assimilation than people acknowledge, which might be what you're getting at by "blended better." One of my great-grandmothers was a Creek from Alabama. She never admitted it in public, and though you could more or less see her heritage in my grandfather's face if and only if you knew to look for it, it's invisible in my mom's generation.

tangerine, yes, that's what I meant by "blended 'better'". It was just striking me as odd that European colonists, all of whom would be considered a single race, came to the New World, where they encountered people considered a different (but single) race, and somehow we ended up with three distinct races: White European, American Indian, and Latino. I know some of that's cultural, but part of my question's been trying to figure out how that came about (and, then, how that continued to influence economic power, when racism gets added in).

I should add, the whole "Conquer through intermingling" thing explained that part of my question.

"My question is, why didn't this happen in the U.S. and Australia?"

It did. Aboriginals on both continents are still deeply screwed and unable to get an even break.

For a while, international development was my concentration within polisci (I eventually moved to theory, because theory is more fun). Here's what I remember from my classes—

The fundamental difference between the Anglo colonies of the US and Australia, and the colonies of other countries, like Cuba or the Congo is one of economic model. The simplist answer is something that Styxno touched on, but didn't (to my mind) explain well— The US and Australia were set up to be markets, whereas the primary economic model for other colonies was one of purer resource extraction.
That meant that the infrastructure was initiated differently. In a resource-extraction model, all transit is based on the easiest route from the interior to exterior. In a market, cross-transit becomes more important. There were roads from Pennsylvania to Virginia, but there weren't internal roads from, say, Brazzaville to Kinsasha. And while the US certainly served as a resource exporter, the internal markets allowed the seat of production to be local. In fact, that was one of the causes of the Revolutionary War. (I don't mean to get so Marxist about this, but Marxism is a decent model for development studies).
This goes along with the general administrative theory of England, which was cooption of local control mechanisms. Usually, the Brits would sweep in, bribe the local potentates, supply them with guns, then take a cut off the top. This was cheaper than the eradication model that the Spanish followed, and allowed much more investment in bureaucracy to be made, which helped develop places like India (which has had a much easier post-colonial experience than most other countries).
But without local markets and manufacturing, development is difficult. One of the big reforms that Porfiro Diaz made at the end of his tenure was to start nationalizing businesses and working to make wages increase to the point of developing a middle class. (Unfortunately, he was also a dictator and the people rightly rebelled. They they came up with a fantastic constitution, had a civil war, and largely ignored their fantastic constitution.)
There are some challenges to this model, notably Thailand, South Africa and India.
India is a challenge to the model because it has the infrastructure, and is starting to develop, but still had a pretty lousy time of it (not so bad as most other colonial nations, but still). There, racial and social stratification limited the effectiveness of market integration— the local princes didn't encourage a middle class, and the British cooption of their power structures led to a more exploitative and extractive model. Thailand is a challenge to the model because they were never colonized, but still fit in with the post-colonial developmental cohort in terms of economic stratification. Part of that is because they became an extractive country in order to avoid military colonization, and have the unstable power structure today that is part of a continuing negotiation between authoritarianism and egalitarian nationalism.
South Africa is a challenge to the model because a strong productive market did develop there, but racism kept that market from being integrated.

Basically, countries that have been based on an extractive model of infrastructure and resource managment tend to have a high economic disparity, authoritarian leaders (as is required to maintain high economic stratification), little productive industry, and little local consumption.
Something interesting is the shift toward these countries having manufacturing concerns, but even then the profits are leaving the countries, leaving a lack of local market necessary for a middle class to develop.

I know, I know, it IS more Marxist than arguments based on religion and racism, but those are kind of facile when it comes to predicting developmental patterns.
You also have to remember that the Spanish effectively lost control of the seas in 1588, and were the victims of massive inflation due to New World conquests. Both of those factors also greatly influenced the decline of their influence (as did losing the Netherlands).

I would also venture the idea that the comparative size of the US and Australia in regard to the other "more colonial" nations made a difference. In Australia, with its vast Outback, it was easy to keep the aboriginal tribes isolated and separated from those who took it upon themselves to civilize the land. The ones settled on fertile lands didn't fare so well. As in the earlier years of the United States, there was an aggressive (though mostly unstated) policy of genocide through disease and warfare. It is relatively easy to relocate the "problematic natives" when there's lots of room to move them around. As others have mentioned, that wasn't really the Spanish approach to the issue, and in many cases wouldn't have been a viable option.

There's also the labor issue, as Spain was into the New World for its raw materials, the natives were much-needed labor. Contrast this with the settling of the US and Australia largely by marginalized populations, looking to stake a claim of their own and gain more than they would or could have had in Europe. Consider the United States, and the difference between the northern and southern colonies: the southern colonies were populated in large part by those looking to make their fortunes, and thus the importation of African slaves when the native population proved too difficult to subjugate, while the religious refugees in the northern colonies stuck together to form urban communities and drove out the native peoples who were in their way.

(On preview, I agree with what a lot of klangklangston said, and it ties in with what I was trying to say: the native peoples DID get screwed, just in different ways.)

Oh, yes, I did not mean to imply that the natives of the US or Australia did not get screwed over, big time. Australia was actually on my list of "I don't want to write about these countries, because the colonial history is turning my stomach."

What I was trying to look at was why the majority population of Mexico and other Central American countries continues to get screwed over, while the majority populations of the US and Australia, and the economies of those countries as a whole, still seems to be doing pretty well. That is, it seemed colonialism set up a racial disparity in some countries that kept some countries poor, while turning other countries European and making them rich. (And yeah, that's an oversimplification, I know.)

I have to run to class, so I only skimmed klang's comment, but I'm looking forward to reading it more in depth tonight.

Why [does] the majority population of Mexico and other Central American countries continue to get screwed over

In the simplest terms, my postulation is that in Australia and the States, the colonizing Europeans simply killed all the native majority populations, and by reproduction and immigration created a new majority. In Mexico and most of Latin America, there actually was a decent amount of assimilation, resulting in a new non-native non-European majority population. In even simpler and colloquial terms, the incoming Europeans in Latin America made the natives their bitches, and it has stayed that way, with many factors contributing to their mostly stagnant economies.

Well, yeah, but formulated the way that you just did, it's a pretty easy answer— The population density in Australia and North America was really low before Europeans got there. It was much easier to eradicate and out-breed 'em. But the number of colonies who are not now still developing nations is really small— The US, Canada, Australia, NZ... Who else? Barbados? And it's hard to make an argument that, structurally, Italy or Spain is really doing any order of magnitude better than, say, Argentina or Hong Kong.

all of whom would be considered a single race

I think that's part of the picture, too -- in the 15- and 1600s the English, French, and Spanish really didn't consider themselves the same race. All evidence to the contrary, they really felt they were very strongly separated, by culture and by blood.

The easy answer: women!

... and religion. A large portion of US colonists were escaping religion-based oppression in Europe and both genders were affected. The Spanish however were conquerors, thus primarily male as well as too poor to ship over a Spanish wife. Thus the greater intermingling.

Also, education. People who emigrated for religious reasons tended to be better educated than military grunts. A better educated populace tended to form and maintain a more stable government.

You can probably find a bunch of loopholes in my reasoning because I am just tossing these out with almost no analysis.

...I just remembered: the British sense that the French were somehow barely human lasted long enough to engender the story of the Hartlepool monkey.

Historians seem to be pretty sure this is just a legend based on a drinking song, but hatred/disgust at the supposedly subhuman French was alive and well in 1800, and is still found in traces today ('cheese-eating surrender monkeys').

mischief: those are some pretty interesting points. Especially the difference in education, gender balance, and attitude between a population of large conquering armies and a population of merchants, farmers, shipbuilders, and woodcutters.

The gender balance wasn't exactly equal in the American Colonies, but it was far better than in a military population, and by the second or third generation it was getting close to even (though there has always been a greater influx of male than female immigrants to the U.S., still true today).

Some really good ideas (many already mentioned by you brilliant bunnies!) in this outline, looks like.

You can glean some fascinating insights into earlier American constructions of "race" just from poking around the ship's manifests at the Ellis Island website.

It's a bear to navigate, so I'll give you a few choice excerpts. This is from a ship called La Lorraine, departing from Le Havre in September 1908. (My great-grandfather's on the list, though he'd already immigrated and set up shop in New York by that time.)

The manifest lists all the passengers. Among other things, there are spaces for age, sex, marital status, literacy, nationality and race (these are clearly separate, and discusssed later), last permanent residence, contact info in home country, "final destination", whether they have a ticket to such destination, how they paid for passage, whether they have $50 on hand, whether they've been to the US before, can read and write, are polygamists or anarchists; criminal history, mental and physical condition; deformities, height, coloring, identification marks, birthplace.

Following the surgeon's affidavit, the form lists some special instructions, including some specific to the "Race or People" section:

Column 9 (Race or people) -- The entry in column 9 should show the race or people as given in list on back of this manifest.
Special attention should be paid to the distinction between race and nationality, and manifests should be carefully revised by inspectors and registry clerks in this regard. For instance, "France" appearing on a manifest does not necessarily mean "French" by race or people, and similarly, "French" appearing on a manifest does not necessarily mean "France" by nationality. An alien who is Irish, German, or Hebrew by race might properly come under the heading of United Kingdom or any other country by nationality. In this connection the following distinctions should be specially observed:

CUBAN.

The term "Cuban" refers to the Cuban people (not Negroes).

WEST INDIAN.

"West Indian" refers to the people of the West Indies other than Cuba (not Negroes).

SPANISH-AMERICAN.

"Spanish-American" refers to the people of Central and South America of Spanish descent.

AFRICAN (BLACK).

"African (black" refers to the African Negro, whether coming from Cuba or other islands of the West Indies, North or South America, Europe, or Africa. Any alien whose appearance indicates an admixture of Negro blood should be classified under this heading.

ITALIAN (NORTH).

The people who are native to the basin of the Rier Po in no arthern Italy (i. e., compartments of Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia, and Emilia) and their descendants, whether residing in Italy, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, or any other country, should be classed as "Italian (north)." Most of these people speak a Galic dialect of the Italian language.

ITALIAN (SOUTH).

The people who are native to that portion of Italy south of the basin of the River Po (i.e., compartments of Liguria, Tuscany, the Marches, Umbria, Rome, the Abruzzi and Molise, Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia) and their descendants should be classed as "Italian (south)."

Finally, at the very end of the document, following the Master's or Commanding Officer's affidavit:

LIST OF RACES OR PEOPLES.

Africa (black).
Armenian.
Bohemian.
Bosnian.
Bulgarian.
Chinese.
Croatian.
Cuban.
Dalmatian.
Dutch.
East Indian.
English.
Finnish.
Flemish.
French.
German.
Greek.
Hebrew.
Herzegovinian.
Irish.
Italian (North).
Italian (South).
Japanese.
Korean.
Lithuanian.
Magyar.
Mexican.
Montenegrin.
Moravian.
Pacific Islander.
Polish.
Portuguese.
Roumanian.
Russian.
Ruthenian (Russniak).
Scandinavian (Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes).
Scotch.
Servian.
Slovak.
Slovenian.
Spanish.
Spanish-American.
Syrian.
Turkish.
Welsh.
West Indian.

But why was there more intermingling (for lack of a better word) in Mexico among Euros and native groups than in the U.S.?

Simple. The Spaniards didn't bring very many white women with them.

So they (cough, cough) "intermingled" with native women.

It's all about the one-armed bandits.

Seriously, if the Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth Rock and found signs directing them to Foxwoods, Murkens'd all be speaking Pequot today, and Golden Arches would be serving billions 'n' billions of BigSuc Happy Meals (double pemmican burgers with a side o' succotash).

From Wikipedia:

Chingar is a rude reference to La Malinche, La Chingada, the mistress of Hernan Cortes. Mexicans, or at least the Mestizos among them, sometimes refer to themselves as hijos de la Chingada, her offspring, and in this sense it is not considered a profanity.

La Malinche plays an interesting role in Mexico's national mythology.

tangerine, that was a fantastic comment and such interesting information. How funny that my grandfather was classed as part of the irish "race."

Race itself is a construct that completely breaks down under all attempts to define it biologically or using DNA, so it's just as ridiculous to think there was a 'negro' or 'white' race as it is to think there was a 'slovak' or a 'montenegrin' race.

The distinction between Northern and Southern Italian is telling, and certainly survives today in the self-identification of a lot of Italian-Americans of generations older than my own. I can't help but wonder if it's traceable to Italy pre-mass-immigration, or if Italian immigrants to America started to emphasise the distinction here because the immigration authorities made a point of it.

I can't help but wonder if it's traceable to Italy pre-mass-immigration

I can't date it, but it's certainly alive and well in Italy today. The Lega Nord political party has made its entire platform northern secession from the south -- the stereotype being that the lazy corrupt south (anything south of Rome, sometimes including Rome) is "stealing" the hard-earned money of the industrially sophisticated north and spending it on vice, "vice" being either the Mafia or the national government or both.

Given that Italy wasn't actually united until the 1840s/60s, I'm guessing the splits predate the Italian-American identifications.

Tangerine, thanks so much for the Ellis Island info. One of the things I'm currently fascinated by is how formerly discriminated-against people in the U.S. could basically pay their dues then "become white" -- which is basically what happened with my family tree. Dirty Greeks and Lugans, and Catholic to boot, and now... second-generation Ivy League living with another Ivy League grad, with me getting my master's and him with an MD.

But the cost of that is the disavowal of any "tribal" identity. My grandparents' generation refused to teach my parents' generation any Polish/Lithuanian/Greek, because they were supposed to be American now.

I feel right now that the racial divide in the country won't allow the same mobility for ethnic minorities here now -- I have trouble seeing latinos or blacks being able to be accepted as "white" in the same way -- and that ethnic minorities (rightly, I think) aren't necessarily willing to make the same trade-off -- we give up our culture in exchange for white-bread advantages. But I don't know, maybe a century and a half ago, someone was saying the same thing about Neapolitans.

In fact, it's probably a given that someone was saying the same thing about Neapolitans.

Anyway. Thank you all again for your answers. I feel I have a much better handle on this now. (And I gotta love any subject for which the answer is "women"!)

(Though I'm not sure "women" explains Australia.... "forced labor," maybe...)

The role of women in shaping the course of history, in either micro or macro perspectives, should never be discounted.

I got nothin' on Australia though.

Yeah, Italy's north/south division is actually a simplification from what it used to be. There are all sorts of geographic reasons for that, too.

There wasn't even one Italian language until the 19th century.

Cool, interesting.

Occhi, they definitely were saying that about Italians 100 years ago. But we'll see - I agree that ideas of race about darker-skinned people are more deeply entrenched and will be more difficult to break down. But in terms of sheer numbers, we'll eventually see a majority of the U.S. population that identifies as non-white, and that could change things quite a bit.

"mischief: those are some pretty interesting points. Especially the difference in education, gender balance, and attitude between a population of large conquering armies and a population of merchants, farmers, shipbuilders, and woodcutters.

The gender balance wasn't exactly equal in the American Colonies, but it was far better than in a military population, and by the second or third generation it was getting close to even (though there has always been a greater influx of male than female immigrants to the U.S., still true today).

Some really good ideas (many already mentioned by you brilliant bunnies!) in this outline, looks like."

Women is a poor predictor— note the difference in colonial administration of the American West, where there were few white women or Spanish women.
It's a pat answer, but not likely a determinant one.

(You could always write off to Cecil Adams and make him do the research legwork).

klang, I finally just now read your earlier comment.

Interestingly, I'm also in the midst of reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is making a lot of the same points about modern American farming and food. Extracting resources that profit far-off businesses, impoverish the local populations, and create no systems to renew those resources lead to bad things.

I tend to agree with Marxist interpretations, but I don't think they're necessarily at odds with concerns about race or religion. "Who has the power?" certainly ties into those elements, among others.

Well, yeah. Most identity politics (and structural models) are explicitly post-Marxist.
It just happens that in this case, economic model is the best predictor for future development.
There was an article, which was turned into a book recently, about how the dust storms of the 1930s came to happen, and it goes over a lot of the same territory. I can't find the article, and I only heard the author talking about the book recently on Fresh Air... Guess I should track it down...

Oh, and as for why race isn't as significant as economic model— Current development problems nearly all stem from local elites utilizing the post-colonial situation to exploit their own people under the same model as the colonialists left them. Nicaragua is an excellent example, as is Mexico and pretty much all of West Africa, Ghana excepted (though they're still caught in the post-colonial trap of globalization).

I guess I wonder about race with Mexico, specifically, given the various immigration debates going on in the U.S. right now. I'm not particularly informed, but it seems like there's at least some degree of "We have to keep those brown people away from our social security but willing to do cheap labor" at work that can't really be in the best interest of Mexico itself.

I would be willing to believe the leaders of Mexico are also not working in the best interest of Mexico itself; I don't know. But it's the pressure from outside the country that I'm thinking of.

Even with Africa -- it seems that many problems there stem from past colonial exploitation, combined with a reluctance for majority-white nations to commit money/resources to help. Yes, the problems are certainly kept in place and exploited by corrupt local leaders, but the global system that keeps those leaders in place is controlled, it seems, by a bunch of people who "just happen" to be white.

I think I understand -- and agree -- with what you're saying about race as a predictive thing, but it seems like it's a factor in maintaining global disparities, at least in terms of whose problems the developed world is willing to ignore (or, in some cases, inflame).

Well, it is to some extent, though I think that it's an American perspective to emphasize race over class.
Take Mexico— there's wild racism in Mexico, from the high Spanish descent through the Mestizos to the blacks, and the purebreds are on top. But that isn't necessarily true in Nigeria (though something that's overlooked frequently is how big a part ethnic conflict plays in Africa— it's kinda like the trouble Americans had in understanding Bosnia— since everyone looks the same to us). In both developing nations, though, the economic infrastructure is dedicated to funneling the wealth to the top tiers. Where the "whites" used to be on top locally, now that cash is funneled even further up to global whites.
But in predicting whether someone will rise socio-economically, their parents' income and education is still a better predictor than their race.

So, yeah, excuse me a bit because I'm drunk and rambling about IR (and OMG, I love this shit).

Oh, what I was getting at and meaning to respond was that race is certainly a contributive factor, but not a determinant one. Also that one of those reasons why it's important to fight the Republicans here is that the third world income disparity is where the US will go under their policies (and under many of the corporatist Democratic policies as well). Local elites do excellently, and capitalize (pun slightly intended) on the infrastructure left by colonialism, but are in turn tied to supra-colonialist multi-national structures.
(Just as a side-note, one of the problems with anti-globalization rhetoric is that organizations like the IMF and World Bank are both the solution to and cause of the vast majority of global development problems).

Oh, and what's in the interest of Mexico and the US (but not in the interest of upper-class capital) is a liberalization of immigration combined with strong labor law intervention in Mexico. People, as capital, should be able to flow unconstrained by national borders, but the labor movement needs to globalize in a way it hasn't (to raise the tide and lift all boats, so to speak). But that's not in the interest of the white American elites or the Mexican elites.

Sorry, I can get to rambling. The answer is that you're right, but that it's much more complicated and that there's an almost endless level of examination possible.

No excuses necessary. I think it's all fascinating, and yes, of course, endlessly complex.