Wait! What? The elite class of land-owners were incredibly violent, and they licensed violence.
Not buying it.
What really is the future of the CSA?
- Thread starter EasternRomanEmpire
- Start date
Wait! What? The elite class of land-owners were incredibly violent, and they licensed violence.
Not buying it.
The OTL South didn't have significant industrial development (other than the central Alabama steel mills) until the New Deal. I don't see the CSA doing a whole lot better with no investment from the North.
While it's unlikely that the CSA would turn into a basket case failed state, there's no reason whatsoever to expect them to leap ahead in any way.
Their most likely outcomes are:
* De facto economic colony of American and British commercial interests, with non-planter or land based commercial assets mainly in foreign hands, and dependent on external financing structures;
* No military expansionism, sorry - no Cuba, no Mexican provinces, no Fillibusters. No expansion into the Caribbean. They simply don't have the power projection.
* Some centrifugalism, notably Texas and Louisiana are likely to and capable of breaking away.
* Consistent economic underdevelopment and regression. The CSA in terms of performance would be somewhere between Spain and Mexico at best.
* Internal conditions in the CSA are likely to be horrific for black people and poor whites, chronically violent, with regressive social structures, mostly rural communities and lack of urban centers. Middle class are likely to be marginal and dependent. Politics and policy will be the province of the elite.
The OTL United States is definitely a world economic and political power. The ATL US is likely to be so. The ATL Confederacy is at best a regional power, and more likely, simply a no-account minor state with no particular economic, military or political sway.
Their most likely outcomes are:
* De facto economic colony of American and British commercial interests, with non-planter or land based commercial assets mainly in foreign hands, and dependent on external financing structures;
* No military expansionism, sorry - no Cuba, no Mexican provinces, no Fillibusters. No expansion into the Caribbean. They simply don't have the power projection.
* Some centrifugalism, notably Texas and Louisiana are likely to and capable of breaking away.
* Consistent economic underdevelopment and regression. The CSA in terms of performance would be somewhere between Spain and Mexico at best.
* Internal conditions in the CSA are likely to be horrific for black people and poor whites, chronically violent, with regressive social structures, mostly rural communities and lack of urban centers. Middle class are likely to be marginal and dependent. Politics and policy will be the province of the elite.
The OTL United States is definitely a world economic and political power. The ATL US is likely to be so. The ATL Confederacy is at best a regional power, and more likely, simply a no-account minor state with no particular economic, military or political sway.
It's possible, but IMO it's at least as likely that reunification will become associated with nationalism and the national myth.
There was substantial ideological commitment to the cotton plantation economy by 1860, for a number of reasons (middle-tier landowners being pushed out of the market, increasing radicalization of pro-slavery Southerners in response to the obvious cliff they were heading towards, marginalization of moderate voices who might have been open to economic diversification by the increasing ideological sectional dispute), but by the time the CS actually rebelled the power brokers were almost universally extremely hardline fire-eater wackos, with some even proposing enslaving poor whites and reopening the Atlantic slave trade. @thekingsguard used to have a really good writeup on his blog about the situation in the CS, but I can't seem to access said blog at the moment so I can't check his sources.
This is irrelevant when every single state is deliberately set up to favor the interests of the plantation elite.
Cuba was what was proposed in the post I was responding to.
I still say they pivot from cotton to opium production when weevils destroy the former.
They didn't enlist, they were enlisted; being in the Wehrmacht wasn't optional; the only ones you could say that were enthusiasts were the SS but those were radicals not the norm.
Did they went themselves on the streets to beat up some black men that was passing around there?
Nothing is eternal
Was the North really interested in investing in the South?
The future of the Confederate States is industrialized slavery, with the majority of whites falling deeper and deeper into total improvishment whilst the oligarchy reeps the rewards. The south for all the claims of "non industrialization" was still probably in the top ten most industrialized places in the world.
Would they really reach the same level of power projection as OTL? I doubt about that.
You mean top ten in a time when there were like 10-12 industrialized countries.
According to Paul Kennedy, the US accounted for 7.2% of total world manufacturing output in 1860. At the same time, according to the US Census of Manufactures in 1860, the South only accounted for 10% of US national output (and produced less output than the state of Massachusetts). This means that the South’s global share of manufacturing output was less than 1% - a rough estimate based on population stats can show that it was less industrialized than even Italy.
Since the 1930s, there were massive investments from the North, beginning with federal government spending.
bguy
Donor
The fire-eaters were pretty marginalized in the Confederate States after 1861.
And wouldn't the experience of a war with the United States show the Confederates just how important railroads, shipyards, and factories are?
You're assuming the plantation elite will have no interest in government intervention in the economy. I think that is rather unlikely. Most of the large plantation owners had in fact been Whigs pre-Civil War. In particular the plantation system needed ready access to capital, so the plantation owners all had a direct economic interest in supporting Whiggish measures on banks (up to and including the Second National Bank of the United States.)
(Page 30 and 31 of the attached thesis on The American Whig Party and Slavery discusses the plantation owners support for banking measures.)
Thus the plantation owners are the very ones that are going to be calling for more government intervention in the economy. They will want a reliable banking system (and government support for their own investments.)
I mostly agree with your first two points (though as described above I think the Confederates will take measures to develop their own banking system), but on the third point why would Texas try to break away from the CSA? As long as the Commanche are a threat, the Texans are going to need Confederate troops to help protect their frontier. Thus they have more reason than most Confederate states to stick with the CSA. And what would cause Louisiana to try and break away? It's not like Louisiana was a hotbed of unionism during the Civil War. I would think Tennessee (or Kentucky if the Confederates somehow get it) would be much more likely to try and leave the CSA than either Texas or Louisiana.
The post I was reacting to was seemed to me to talk about the period before the 1930s
On the other hand, the CSA has control over the mouth of the Mississippi River, which puts them in control of a huge portion of commerce flowing in and out of half of the US, while the US can dam the Mississippi's tributaries. The Union folks upstream will directly feel the impact of secession on their economics and the whole trade and water situation can very easily go sour. Just look at Ethiopia and Egypt regarding the Nile (dams, threats of war, etc.) nowadays.
I'm pretty sure the US will take care of that before signing a peace deal, it's already difficult to imagine a TL where the CS wins so they certainly can demand that before ending the war.
Yes. They will want the government to subsidize their dying economic system. They're the entrenched elite, they fought a war for cotton and slavery, they're not going to want to industrialize and diversify because that could threaten their control over the economy.
Debatable. I would say that the measures taken by the CS government were pretty clearly directed towards the interests of the hardliners in particular and the plantation elite in general.
I'm not sure. They would have won without industrial and naval superiority, after all.
I guess it depends on how the war is won, because if it's in the early stages of the ACW (the most plausible way of doing so) then probably not.
I mean, what kind of factories, and goods are the railroads carrying? It's possible for industrialization to occur, but only as a supplement to primary production, similar to how petrostates also build pipelines, oil terminals, and refineries. That does add value to the Confederacy's exports, but it doesn't really allow for true diversification from cotton and is still centered around extraction.
Yes. The largest steelmaker in the South, the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, was formed by New York investors and saw its greatest growth under Hiram Bond, another New Yorker, before being bought by the Northern-based US Steel in 1907.
The Southern Railway, one of the precursors to Norfolk Southern, was formed by JP Morgan, while the other half of NS, the Norfolk and Western Railway, was acquired and expanded by a Philadelphia bank.
Ingalls Shipbuilding and Newport News, the largest shipyards in the South, were established by businessmen from Ohio and Connecticut respectively.
Investors had a chance to invest at rock-bottom prices given the postwar devastation and underdevelopment of the region, an easy recipe to guarantee profit.
And of course, there was Reconstruction, which also spent significant sums of money rebuilding and repairing infrastructure across the South. The Army Corps of Engineers made significant improvements along the Mississippi, well after Reconstruction ended.
I am thinking that would be the case. At the end of the day, the two countries would be very intertwined with each other economically- and economics can make some very strange "bedfellows".
Then factor in that the CSA was decentralized and that there were really two "souths" including a south that was only lukewarm for the CSA. NC, TN, TX and maybe even VI would be members of this club.
Some club members may ask to rejoin the Union as slavery became uneconomical. TX may even leave the CSA and the USA and form, well, Texas.
Elites essentially licensed and encouraged violence to keep black people in their place. Elites always endorse and allow violence, while keeping their own hands clean.