Well it still has a ways to go before most of the country is what you'd call stable. By 1868 what we're going to end up seeing is seas of calm in central Mexico and at the major ports, while in the periphery there's still scattered violence and the simmering republican resistance in the far north. Maximilian's decision to try and coopt the Native peoples will pay dividends in the long run, but that will take time as it moves form the allegiance of strongmen and regional caudilios to political alliances and parties in Mexico City.
Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond
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Well it still has a ways to go before most of the country is what you'd call stable. By 1868 what we're going to end up seeing is seas of calm in central Mexico and at the major ports, while in the periphery there's still scattered violence and the simmering republican resistance in the far north. Maximilian's decision to try and coopt the Native peoples will pay dividends in the long run, but that will take time as it moves form the allegiance of strongmen and regional caudilios to political alliances and parties in Mexico City.
As well as allowing future Mexicans to smug off to the rest of North America.
I mean, with the US and CS poised to collapse, that chance is higher.
I suspect you may both be underestimating how divorced from reality a lot of Southerners are. I wouldn’t call it a certainty, but I don’t consider some kind of expedition into Mexico an impossibility either.
Maybe once France has pulled out and is distracted by something else but for time being Mexico is untouchable right now. The only real path towards expansion is the Carribean and only really a few islands of which only Cuba would really be worth it.
They aren't really, the US is going through a trying period but it's not on the precipice of collapse, and the CSA's "Three Good Presidents" doesn't necessarily mean that all subsequent leaders are terrible, they're just vastly overshadowed by their predecessors.
In far too many cases, deservedly so.
It won't be sunshine and rainbows for Mexico's Native peoples, but a mite less cruel and callous to their land and culture.
One explicitly sanctioned by Richmond is very unlikely, especially as the planter class had begun developing something of an aversion to annexing a large population of Spanish speaking Catholics not friendly to slavery by the 1860s. Something like filibusters to take back escaped slaves or maybe the rich province of Sonora, not an out and out impossibility.
Stupid yes, but what else can you call the other filibusters of the period? Walker was just waiting to get shot basically! The next incarnation may also suffer a deservedly inglorious end.
Cuba has a similar economic model to the CSA, some cotton, but also valuable tobacco and sugar to be exported to the world. The CSA is very much going to be an export minded economy, so more that it can add the better. Tobacco and sugar are valuable staples the CSA would definitely love to get their hands on to introduce to the global market. The sugar industry of the 19th century was an interesting one. In a small note, the US not having to worry about upsetting Southern sugar planters has already allowed Hawaii a free trade agreement on sugar in 1866 that OTL they were forever putting off, which has positive knock on effects for the Hawaiian economy and makes it just slightly less likely that the Americans on the islands will desire to annex them by force.
Call it the bad period for the US and what we can say is the good period for the CSA. The US has its "Era of Hard Feelings" after the war where everyone hates everyone contrasted with the "Era of Good Feelings" after the War of 1812.
There's not exactly an "Era of Good Feelings" going on in the CSA right now, but since most of the political acrimony is directed at Davis personally and not any party apparatus, the potential for a national divide on political lines isn't quite there yet. That may change sooner than most think.
Main POD is Prince Albert dies in October of 1861 rather than December, which removes a potential guard rail against the British cabinet being very crude with their demands. Everything else is just ratcheting up tensions.
In hindsight I probably could remove the earlier St. Alban's raid and have only had a worse Trent affair and the duel between ships and that probably would have been enough to kick off a war with the British cabinet being inclined to bellicose demands. But it does help the Americans get mad at the Canadas specifically, so there's that.
Which is another reason why the Great Powers will wish that Providence would ruddy well hurry up and smite the Confederacy.