The Southern Economy Without Slavery?

[raharris1973]

what ideas - it's a tough one

The Southern Economy Without Slavery?
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.
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I'm curious about how we get rid of slavery by that time. It turned out to be too hard to keep slavery out of Georgia and I heard on SHWI that exclusion of slavery was never considered from Kentucky on south.

So the Dunmore idea is what you mentioned. What do we end up seeing, destabilization of slavery from British doing recruitment in the south and attracting freedmen to occupied Delmarva, the sea islands and Florida?

Just spitballing but one way to get there might be to have the constitution fail to be ratified and having a series of intercolonial wars in the 1790s.

 

[Faeelin]

So the Dunmore idea is what you mentioned. What do we end up seeing, destabilization of slavery from British doing recruitment in the south and attracting freedmen to occupied Delmarva, the sea islands and Florida?

My thinking is that the Virginians go with gradual emancipation shortly after the British and black troops burn Williamsburg. by the time the war's over, both sides have used plenty of black troops, and it's pretty clear that slavery is dead, if only because a large fraction of blacks have seen combat on one side or the other.

 

[eschaton]

I think you're confusing Northeastern Brazil with Northern Brazil. Northeastern Brazil was the first part of Brazil colonizated, mostly semi-arid and very far away from the Amazon. The only internal migrations that we had in the last 200 years was a massive emmigration of Northeasterns to the Southeast (mainly São Paulo and Rio) and to the North (the Amazon). Most of the Northeastern population are native from their region and can trace their origins back to the early colonization in the 16th and 17th century, specially because of Nordeste decaying economy ever since. I'm a Northeastern Brazilian myself, so, if you can read some Portuguese, I can show you some studies about it.

That it received little immigration since founding sort of proves my point. For populations in areas where malaria is endemic and populations are established, it's often not a huge issue - children get it, and sometimes die from it, but as long as you have large families, it doesn't matter. Yellow Fever was also not much of a problem at all, as children almost never die from it (the worst symptoms only affect those in adulthood).

Of course, Brazilian racial identification is just the extreme opposite of the American One-drop rule. However, this is easily sociologically, economically explained (also naturally to an extent), just read The Masters and the Slaves of Gilberto Freyre, an amazing classic that help us to understand racial relations and slavery in Brazil and in Latin America.

Geneologically, this is an important thing however. The Duffy antigen variant which 97% of Sub-Saharan Africans have confers resistance to Malaria vivax. Scroll down to figure 4 to see global distribution. It seems that it has a high prevalence along the coast of Northeast Brazil. One would presume, given the benefits that having this variant provided in the premodern era in terms of survival, that the gene would be selected for, and that a disproportional number of "white looking" Brazilians would even have the gene today, provided they had some African decent.

As I said, 400,000 is the number of Portuguese immigrants that came to Brazil from the very first gold vein found (1693 if I remember correctly) until the end of the 18th century. Therefore, about half of the number of Whites that colonized in present day US (including South) settled in "Uganda" though out the 1700s. The assumption that whites would just settle in temperate climates is 19th century-ish and doesn't take into consideration all Latin American history.

I didn't say couldn't. I said it wasn't as healthy an environment as uplands or cooler climes would be, which is indeed where Europeans preferentially settled if they had a choice and wanted to be smallholder farmers or urban artisans.

Uganda isn't the best comparison though. Uganda had the Tsetse Fly, and was chock full of people already.

Was all South just a big wetland? All these sanitation mesures couldn't be done in the South?

While I wouldn't know the details, a couple of things probably made it harder. First, the local form of malaria was deadlier. Second, the malarial season was longer. The higher humidity, and in some cases very flat land, probably played a role in making drainage harder as well. In addition, attempts to drain very wet areas improperly can paradoxically increase malaria - swamps are large enough that the water hosts fish and dragonfly larvae which eat mosquito larvae, but very small pools (such as today's abandoned spare tires) provide the ideal small pools for maximum breeding of mosquitoes.

Admittedly, a few crops, like rice and sugar, required a good deal of irrigation, which was probably a disincentive to drain croplands, but tobacco and cotton were grown in somewhat dryer uplands, and were more prominent crops.

 

[eschaton]

Getting back to the original point...

My thinking is that the Virginians go with gradual emancipation shortly after the British and black troops burn Williamsburg. by the time the war's over, both sides have used plenty of black troops, and it's pretty clear that slavery is dead, if only because a large fraction of blacks have seen combat on one side or the other.

The more I've thought about it, the more I think that the plantation system cannot survive ITTL with slavery changed to sharecropping.

The problem is how do you get blacks to migrate to what IOTL would be Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, where they'd be most likely to be needed as agricultural workers by a white landowner. The sharecropping system was exploitative, but white landowners couldn't (AFAIK) make a deal with a farmer further west, and then instruct a certain percentage of their labor force to pack up and move. Indeed, all that kept the labor on the farm was a lack of better options for the penniless, as the frontier was largely closed at that time.

No, in order to attract black laborers (who would still be needed in the unhealthiest country) white landowners on the frontier would have to offer a better deal than they got sharecropping back home. In turn the East coast sharecroppers would have to loosen the bonds of the system to make it less likely their labor would up and walk away. It may be even having white-owned farms with free, well-paid black tenants would be less profitable than just having black smallholders doing it themselves.

One possible workaround would be if White would-be plantation owners turn to an outside labor force who could do the work as well as African-Americans - Haitians. Haiti will probably be independent and poor, as IOTL, and it will be much easier to turn Haitians into serfs, setting them up on a farm and telling them they need to "pay off their debts of transport" through sharecropping. Ironically, the South might thus end up blacker than IOTL.

Some other side effects might affect acquisition of further territory for the U.S. I think the rationales for the acquisition of Florida and the Louisiana Purchase are essentially identical even without slavery, but without having slaves, I have to think the Bushwhackers will be pushing into these areas more slowly. I could see the Seminole being allowed to stay in Central Florida unmolested for quite some time - possibly until the modern era. Florida might end up being an attractive place for freedmen to settle as well, as even IOTL, most of it (save the northernmost row or two of counties) was essentially unsettled through most of the 19th century due to the poor climate.

 

[Will Kürlich Kerl]

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

No cotton gin invention would do the trick too, and that wouldn't be five decades.

 

[The Uchronian]

No cotton gin invention would do the trick too, and that wouldn't be five decades.

That might be true, but couldn't the cotton gin be a double edged sword and possibly end up making it so fewer slaves were needed?

 

[Faeelin]

The problem is how do you get blacks to migrate to what IOTL would be Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, where they'd be most likely to be needed as agricultural workers by a white landowner. The sharecropping system was exploitative, but white landowners couldn't (AFAIK) make a deal with a farmer further west, and then instruct a certain percentage of their labor force to pack up and move. Indeed, all that kept the labor on the farm was a lack of better options for the penniless, as the frontier was largely closed at that time.

Mmm. Closed in the 1860s and 1870s? The Exodusters were around, after all. But yea, this is an issue.

(On the upside, the movement of poor black farmers west means we still get Memphis Barbecue!)

I agree Louisiana will be taken, but I'm not so sure about Texas. Hrm.

 

[eschaton]

I agree Louisiana will be taken, but I'm not so sure about Texas. Hrm.

While the Texas annexation might be butterflied, I think the impetus for California probably will not be. I could see in TTL the U.S.-Mexico border mostly following the 36th parallel north, although it's more likely the U.S. simply purchases California from Mexico, who which will presumably still have major debts it is trying to settle.

 

[phx1138]

One thing you have to deal with: the invention of the cotton gin. It made cotton enormously profitable, since it spiked productivity at least 10-fold. Without it, you're going to see a focus on other crops.

That might be true, but couldn't the cotton gin be a double edged sword and possibly end up making it so fewer slaves were needed?

It absolutely would: its invention drastically boosted demand for slaves, since it meant more raw cotton was needed to make use of it's increased output.

I'd suggest looking at what was done after 1865: with mainly white labor (or many fewer slaves), what do you see?

 

[Faeelin]

A silly thought.

Posit a ban on slavery by 1800. But the cotton belt is going to open up, and it's still profitable. You're going to get pressure to work it. Who do you use?

Could you see Italians moving to the American South?

 

[Sevarics]

A silly thought.

Posit a ban on slavery by 1800. But the cotton belt is going to open up, and it's still profitable. You're going to get pressure to work it. Who do you use?

Could you see Italians moving to the American South?

Maybe the South gets Slavs or some Czechs or goes the Guiana route and imports East Asians

 

[Admiral Halsey]

Almost two year old necro you have here.

 

[Sevarics]

Almost two year old necro you have here.

Well it's his thread isn't it?

 

[eschaton]

A silly thought.

Posit a ban on slavery by 1800. But the cotton belt is going to open up, and it's still profitable. You're going to get pressure to work it. Who do you use?

Could you see Italians moving to the American South?

By 1800, the external slave trade in the U.S. was almost dead, meaning almost all of the ancestors of the modern African American population were already in the U.S.

That said, if you had a ban on slavery before cotton got off the ground, more of the black population could remain in the upper South, unless they were given strong "incentives" to migrate.

I'm not sure Italians would be the best for working in the fields in the U.S. South during this period, because although they would have higher malarial resistance than Anglos, they wouldn't be as healthy as blacks in the climate. Is 1800 too early to start seeing mass migration of Indians to the U.S.?

 

[Johnrankins]

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.

Nothing stops southerners from hiring Black labor from Africa. You would find many willing to come for pay. The first Blacks to the US came as indentured servants not slaves.

 

[ManintheField]

Well it's his thread isn't it?

Not to mention it being a tremendously informative thread. Threads with informed, pointed debate like this one should be available past their natural point of death for as long as possible.

 

[Admiral Halsey]

Well it's his thread isn't it?

Didn't notice that actually.

 

[The Uchronian]

Well, I can say this: although the South's economy, to be truthful, certainly wouldn't have grown nearly as fast as it did in the real world.....there also would not have been as severe as an overall class disparity as there had been between well-off whites and poorer whites.

 

[The Sandman]

What about destroying the potential of cotton in the US? Early boll weevil, nasty diseases, earlier development of Egypt and India as sources...

Because it does seem that there was a fundamental shift in Southern slavery when cotton became the primary cash crop.

 

[Mark E.]

A silly thought.

Posit a ban on slavery by 1800. But the cotton belt is going to open up, and it's still profitable. You're going to get pressure to work it. Who do you use?

Could you see Italians moving to the American South?

I think you would need a mindset that phases out slavery by the 1750's, before some of the 19th century cash crops are "married" to slave labor. You might have a Roman type system where old slaves earn freedom and children of slaves are born free or freed at some stated age.

Face it, after 1865, the Midwestern breadbasket grew quite well after slavery was abolished.