The Southern Economy Without Slavery?

Faeelin

Banned
I've been kicking around some ideas for how to get rid of slavery in most of the southern states by the 1790s, and I've been mulling over the consequences for American history. Alas, I genuinely can't figure out what a Southern economy without slavery would look like. Plantation agriculture has played such a big role in the region that the alternative is hard to see.
 

Faeelin

Banned
That could complicate things, since even if we ban slavery, there is a large pool close by to draw on if it ever comes back in style.

Well the slave trade was abolished in the US Constitution; while I think it's possible to return, it seems messy and a little unlikely.

Also, Haiti is probably not an ideal source of slaves.
 
I've been kicking around some ideas for how to get rid of slavery in most of the southern states by the 1790s, and I've been mulling over the consequences for American history. Alas, I genuinely can't figure out what a Southern economy without slavery would look like. Plantation agriculture has played such a big role in the region that the alternative is hard to see.

Well, TBH, you might need to wait another 5 decades or so, if you really wanted to get rid of slavery before OTL 1865. Now, I suppose you could get earlier industrialization down there, particularly in Georgia and Alabama where it'd be most favorable for such; however, I imagine that the slavers would likely try to take advantage of it as much as the other capitalists of their day, maybe even more so. You could, however, make it so it ends up being not as profitable as hoped for the planters, and/or get some alienation stirred up amongst the working classes.

If nothing else, the average white worker might be turned against the planters evenutally if they realize they could have a lot better earning potential without slave labor; wage depression did occur in OTL's South, btw, primarily because of that very slavery which made the fortunes of so many "old-money" families down there. And there's no plausible POD I can think of that can totally handwave this, either, so you've a got a good candidate to get slavery tossed out earlier, if you chose to consider it.....:)
 
I've been kicking around some ideas for how to get rid of slavery in most of the southern states by the 1790s, and I've been mulling over the consequences for American history. Alas, I genuinely can't figure out what a Southern economy without slavery would look like. Plantation agriculture has played such a big role in the region that the alternative is hard to see.

Tobacco could still be farmed with out slavery, in otl lumber and cattle herding was what started the economy in the Carolinas, might continue. Florida was considered a prime source for navel stores as well as lumber. Now if you abolish slavery early, that still means that you will have a source of cheapish labour, might still see plantations. They will generate less of a profit, but still. Have you considered the impact of this on the north as well? No souther plantations system mean less cash and capital in the north, they did after all transhipp and transport the export goods from the south to Europe.
 
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Faeelin

Banned
Well, TBH, you might need to wait another 5 decades or so, if you really wanted to get rid of slavery before OTL 1865.

Why five decades?

I'm actually envisioning this as part of a Revolutionary War where Lord Dunmore's plan to free the slaves to crush the rebels escalates into hilarity.
 
Why five decades?

I'm actually envisioning this as part of a Revolutionary War where Lord Dunmore's plan to free the slaves to crush the rebels escalates into hilarity.

The only problem with this is, the biggest support for the Revolution came straight from those places most opposed to slavery; namely, places like New York, Pennsylvania, and New England. Loyalist support tended to be a little more evened out, and there were a fair number of Southerners, including many plantation owners, who backed the Brits.
 

Faeelin

Banned
The only problem with this is, the biggest support for the Revolution came straight from those places most opposed to slavery; namely, places like New York, Pennsylvania, and New England. Loyalist support tended to be a little more evened out, and there were a fair number of Southerners, including many plantation owners, who backed the Brits.

There were a few, but the idea of a loyalist majority in the southern colonies isn't borne out by what happened when the British invaded. Had Lord Dunmore been successful in using black troops which belonged to Patriots, others may well have followed.
 
Slavery was not a crucial part of the Southern economy. The use of African labor, however, was.

All of the good lands for cash crops (tobacco, cotton, rice, etc), happened to be in areas where Malaria was pretty quickly introduced by the British after the founding of Jamestown. First the European strain of Malaria was introduced by British settlers, and then the African strain with the first boatloads of slaves.

The Indian labor pool was initially used in huge numbers, particularly in the Carolinas, where not only were Indians enslaved for plantation use (usually bought from other tribes), but exported to the Caribbean and elsewhere. But Indians had no resistance to Malaria, as it didn't exist prior to the Columbian exchange. Plus they were dying in large numbers from smallpox. Using white indentured servants was also a bad idea, as most (except those who already had malaria back in their home country) had no resistance to Malaria, and their children would get sick with it anyway. Africans were turned to because they were the only group which could have a positive birth rate in the lowlands and Piedmont.

The bark of the cinchona tree was known to work against Malaria as early as 1620, but quinine wasn't actually extracted from it chemically until 1820. I suppose it could have been more widespread as medicine, but the bark was only available in the Andes, and due to being a valuable commodity the trees were prohibited from export, and only smuggled out in the 1860s by a British naturalist, whence they were purchased by the Dutch, who cultivated them in Java and had a world monopoly on Quinine. An earlier understanding of Quinine is possible, but the earlier it is mass produced, the quicker malaria will develop quinine-resistant strains.

Sub-Saharan Africans are not the only groups which have malarial resistance. To a lesser degree some South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Mediterranean populations (Greeks, Italians, Sephardic Jews) have it as well. However, the cost of transporting Asians to the Eastern U.S. would be far more expensive than transporting people from Africa. By 1790 most of the needed agricultural force was already there, as the slave trade was almost over. A shift to sharecropping 75 years early would hardly cause a blip in the overall economic system.
 
There were a few, but the idea of a loyalist majority in the southern colonies isn't borne out by what happened when the British invaded. Had Lord Dunmore been successful in using black troops which belonged to Patriots, others may well have followed.

While loyalists did used black troops successfully in otl, it was not popular, Dunmore was recalled for raising the Royal Ethiopians after all. It was also viewed as detrimental to court the loyalist of the south.
 

Faeelin

Banned
While loyalists did used black troops successfully in otl, it was not popular, Dunmore was recalled for raising the Royal Ethiopians after all. It was also viewed as detrimental to court the loyalist of the south.

He wasn't recalled or raising them; he ended up withdrawing after he lost and was stuck in another quasi-siege of Boston in Norfolk, no?
 
He wasn't recalled for raising them; he ended up withdrawing after he lost and was stuck in another quasi-siege of Boston in Norfolk, no?

The returned to Britain in 76. I think i had that point from Wars in America 2, and turn based strategy game from a French company. Or it might some of books i have on the war (they are all British/loyalist pov). I can look into it when i get home. (Yes i have a bad habit of checking this forum while at work..)
 

Faeelin

Banned
The returned to Britain in 76. I think i had that point from Wars in America 2, and turn based strategy game from a French company. Or it might some of books i have on the war (they are all British/loyalist pov). I can look into it when i get home. (Yes i have a bad habit of checking this forum while at work..)

If you could check, that would be great.
 
Wiliam H Harrison, of Virginia origin, a true 18th Century Southerner & committed to the idea of the southern plantation elite; attempted to recreate tide water Virginia in the Indiana territory in the early 19th Century. In this he was supported by a small group of southern investors and plantation culture idealists. Harrison ran up against two problems. First the Northwest Territory Ordnance that opened the upper Ohio to Illinois region specifically forbade slavery. Harrison tried to get around this by including a provision in the first Indiana Constitution that legalized a sort of lifetime indentured servitude. That did not hold up well either in court, or in popular opnion.

The second problem was that Harrisons ideal of a bucolic array of vast plantation style farms across Indiana, sprinkled with a few necessary towns of the minimum number of tradesmen, was overrun by a horde of uncouth, illterate, barbaric migrants with half naked children. No better than the native savages Harrison had worked so hard to eject.

Point here is had Harrison been able to bring slaves enmass to Indiana he may have had a chance of denying land & political power to the migrant settlers. Had slavery been prohibited from the early 19th Century across the south, then the established plantation economy may have survived in the eastern tidewater regions, but it never would have effectively spread across the Appalachians. Kentucky, Tennesse, Alabama, & points west would have been dominated by the rednecked white settlers. Cotton would still have favored some farmers over others, but without the low cost of slave labor the larger plantation style mega farms could not have developed.

Either way, without the slavery question the political divides between the states would have fallen out differently. Up & coming western states vs the old established originals, industrial Great Lakes region vs the larger agrarian regions, Texas vs everyone else... Without the debilitating Civl War, and destruction of the Souths economy the development of the US in the latter 19th Century would have started higher, & gone further faster.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
You'd probably need some religious and colonial PoD. Have the Puritans landing in the South, instead of the North. Change immigration patters to bolster their strength, rather than weaken it over time. It won't butterfly away slavery, but it might butterfly away grand plantations, which will change the character of slavery and maybe reduce the number of africans that are imported versus the number of white indentured. Either way, you're probably going to need some religious or social constraint on not slavery perse, but the development of a planter class which can dominate Virginian politics in the early colonial period and beyond, which probably means some type of socially imposed most likely through religion leveling effects.

As to the economy, it probably still lean towards cash crops, but be somewhat more diversified, as a wealthier yeoman class would produce greater demand for non-essential goods earlier on and in a higher quantity.
 
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Not white ones anyway, not with malaria running around.

Malaria isn't nearly as big a deal in the South as it is in say, the Caribbean. Particularly the further north in the south you go, and particular if the introduction of African malaria can be avoided. I think, should someone get a critical mass of white settlers who have a cultural distaste for slavery, it is entirely possible to settle it on the New England or Pennsylvania model of yeoman farmers. The trick is getting the critical mass; perhaps if the Puritans had migrated to Virginia instead?
 
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