British Food if Anglo-American Break in Relations, Late 19th Century?

Saphroneth

Banned
In an Anglo-American War, the typical plan is to use 100,000 Canadian militia, plus anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 British regulars. All of these people will be consuming, not producing food, so there will probably be little or no excess Canadian wheat for them to ship to Britain. OTOH, the only year-round ice-free port available to British North America was Portland, Maine, which will not be available to the British in an Anglo-American War.
In the first place, how do you imagine that's going to work? Canada produced enough food to feed itself and also exported enough food for over a million people - if you seriously think that Canadian food production is going to go down by over a third by the enlistment of a hundred thousand people (of which a fair fraction are going to be town dwellers) then you seem to think that (1) Canada had less than 300,000 farmers and (2) the British would recruit from the proportionately small fraction of the population (in that case) living on farms.

There is no way I can possibly see that recruiting 100,000 militia out of a population of 2.5 million causes the food output of the province to drop by nearly a third. If you've got a way, show me by showing your assumptions - number of farmers in Canada, how much food produced per capita, how many farmers enlisted into the militia and how this results in a need to import food rather than export.

In the second place, yes, Portland was the only year-round ice-free port. But when do you think most export shipping took place?
It wasn't during the time when the St Lawrence was frozen, because the way of getting grain to market was as much about lake and canal traffic as about rail lines.

And in the third place, capturing Portland is not impossible - it's an operation similar in nature to New Orleans, though with much less preparation time for the Union to defend Portland. There were plans for it, and I've discussed in the past how I think the landing would likely be done (landing east of Saco to cut the rail line, then marching roughly parallel with it to reach Portland the same day).

None of this refutes my point that British food prices will go up in an Anglo-American War.
Yes, they'll go up - but OTL in the Civil War they were abnormally low. How high do you estimate they'd go, in rough terms?
To within ten shillings a Qr would do.

I and others have simply pointed out that an Anglo-American War means that cheap American wheat will not be available to Britain, so the cost of living will rise in Britain.
Oddly enough, it'll rise back to how it was outside the Civil War. That is, the price of living (due to the price of food) will not be low rather than being high.


No one has advocated "the starvation blockade of US farms", and I'm not sure what you even mean by the phrase. No one said that depriving Britain of American wheat was a strategy, let alone a war winning strategy.
Seems at least one person did:
1848 would be the most effective time for the USA to embargo food exports to England.
As did another, imagining a kind of anti-British pressure group of grain producing countries:
Did you at any point look at the figures for exports and grain production provided in this thread? The French, Germans and Russians are the next three big producers until after the mid 1870s and the Russians have every reason to cooperate with American economic pressure on Britain after 1854.


It's also an idea that's been floating around for decades.


Hardly seems like 'dumping' (as Saph put it) or unfairly undercutting.
I'll admit it doesn't fit the technical definition of dumping, but it is selling an excess at a lower price than normal. US grain captured more of the market than normal in the first half of the Civil War, and at the same time the price went down.
That has much the same impact as dumping, though in a short-term sense.
The US was selling externally what they weren't selling internally, producing a glut.

The money on the American side to offset losses from Grain exports is clearly there
I'm not so sure it is. The amount of money needed to offset spending is (as I've calculated above) $27 million a year.
The amount of money the US Federal Government made through customs is $69 million in 1862-3. The amount of money produced from the goldfields in California is about $30M a year.

What this means is that a grain embargo and replacement of income to farmers ($27M) is added to the costs, and the amonut of money from the goldfields and from customs ($99M totalled) is removed from the profits. OTL in 1862-3 the Union had a governmental revenue of $111 million (including customs, but I'm not sure if it included gold fields) and gained $596M from loans and printing money, as against $715M expenditures - resulting in the treasury reserves declining from $13M to $5M. (The fact that the amount of money in the treasury was not sufficient to pay for the grain export replacement compensation should be taken as indicative that an embargo by itself, without any kind of blockade or indeed war, would mean the US would have to raise more money some other way.)

Assuming a war with Britain involved no extra expenditures whatsoever apart from the grain payment, the US governmental expenditure would jump to $742 million and the revenue would drop to $42 million (assuming a perfect blockade, which may not be the case, but the extra expenditures I've not factored in make up for this). This would mean that to avoid bankruptcy the Union would need to borrow and print money to the tune of ~ $700M, while having $30M less in gold available to back it.

This means the ratio of earned income to borrowed income would go from the OTL (15.7% of income earned) to the TTL (5.7% of income earned) - the latter being the situation which caused the Confederacy serious economic problems with the viability of their currency. Essentially the compensation to farmers adds to the economic woes of the Union because the economy is already seriously stretched - Lincoln in OTL was making comments like "the bottom is out of the tub", and that was after the resolution of Trent without a war.

There would certainly be economic hardship to both sides from a blockade and embargo - but to the British it would merely cut off a small fraction of governmental revenue (that from direct trade with the Union, about 5% of total governmental income at about £4M out of £70M) and would result in a cost-of-living increase from food (the price of wheat would go up to that in the disorder-wracked years of, say, 1868?), while to the Union it would be materially worse in terms of lost revenue (customs alone being 62% of US governmental revenue, and customs on trade with Britain bein 36% of governmental revenue) than if the British had become completely unable to collect any kind of customs duties at all (which would cost them 34% of British governmental revenue).

For the British, the embargo/blockade puts them in the situation from the 1850s in terms of grain prices and supply; for the US, the embargo just adds a further non-trivial cost onto an already strained system under as much stress as would happen for a couple of decades either side.
 
Devil's in the details... the note says:

But six bushels per capita was actually atypical - it's the consumption during the early Civil War, but the more normal consumption was 4.5 to 5:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3011606;view=1up;seq=409
With US imports cut off (at 27% of 35% of consumption) the British wheat consumption per capita in 1862 would drop from 5.6 to 5.1 bushels per capita - in short, to typical 1850s consumption.

Your link only counts wheat. The other link counted "wheat and wheat meal" (flour) so it is not an exact comparison. Lack of US wheat and flour to consume would clearly be taken up somewhere else, that does not refute my point in any way.

...what? Canadian imports at 5.6% of British consumption would mean Canadian imports would be capable of feeding 1.74 million extra people in BNA, and of course Canadians in Canada would still be in Canada - Canadian production might drop a bit as some men are put into the army, but ~60,000 militarized out of a population of 2.5 million isn't going to cause production to drop by 40%.

I'm not following your math. The link provided says that from 1861 to 1870, an average of 8.5 million British people were consuming 6 bushels of imported wheat a year. 5.5% of 8.5 million is 467,500, not 1.74 million.

I really don't get this logic - people are moving around inside the British Empire, all it functionally means is that food is being purchased directly in Canada to feed 60,000 British regulars instead of being shipped to Britain (to feed 60,000 British regulars).

You're forgetting about that 100,000 Canadian militia, who will no longer be producing food in Canada.

Food is the supreme fungible commodity, and while US production was certainly important, it's not the only supplier - unlike, say, Britain for US gunpowder in the Civil War, which everyone seems to accept would be a problem easily solved.

Britain was the primary supplier of nitre for the Union, because it was cheap, but the Union had gunpowder works like Dupont, Laflin, and Hazard. Between loss of British imports and having to run nitre from the guano islands through a blockade, Union costs for nitre would go up significantly. The problem would be solved, but it would take time and money.
 
There would certainly be economic hardship to both sides from a blockade and embargo - but to the British it would merely cut off a small fraction of governmental revenue (that from direct trade with the Union, about 5% of total governmental income at about £4M out of £70M) and would result in a cost-of-living increase from food (the price of wheat would go up to that in the disorder-wracked years of, say, 1868?), while to the Union it would be materially worse in terms of lost revenue (customs alone being 62% of US governmental revenue, and customs on trade with Britain bein 36% of governmental revenue) than if the British had become completely unable to collect any kind of customs duties at all (which would cost them 34% of British governmental revenue).

For the British, the embargo/blockade puts them in the situation from the 1850s in terms of grain prices and supply; for the US, the embargo just adds a further non-trivial cost onto an already strained system under as much stress as would happen for a couple of decades either side.

a couple of things... the US did impose an income tax during the Civil War (1861 Revenue Act) in addition to massive sales of bonds. Expanding that tax could be done (US income taxes in World War II topped out at 90% and stayed that way for a decade for the top tax bracket), as could special excise taxes (the nascent movement toward Prohibition would love one on alcohol) The Union also has the advantage of currency backed by gold and silver in considerable quantities, while the Confederate government did not have that advantage or option.

As to the specifics of the cost to farmers, some of this does depend specifically on the situation and this thread is vague as to when.
 
Last edited:

Saphroneth

Banned
Your link only counts wheat. The other link counted "wheat and wheat meal" (flour) so it is not an exact comparison. Lack of US wheat and flour to consume would clearly be taken up somewhere else, that does not refute my point in any way.
Check page 412, it has a similar story going on. Wheat and wheat meal imports in 1862 are 7.2 million cwt, of which 4.5 is American; imports in 1859 are 3.3 million cwt, of which only 200,000 or so is American; imports in 1866 are 4.97 million, of which 250,000 is American.

This suggests the "cheap" not "necessary" argument holds.

I'm not following your math. The link provided says that from 1861 to 1870, an average of 8.5 million British people were consuming 6 bushels of imported wheat a year. 5.5% of 8.5 million is 467,500, not 1.74 million.
Technically the link assumes people consume 6 bushels of wheat a year, but you're correct that I misread - I'd read it as Canadian wheat being 5.6% of total British consumption, not 5.6% of imports.

It still means Canada is producing (2.5 million BNA population) + (~467,500) = 3 million people worth of food, so you'd need to cut Canadian population by roughly 16% to result in a food-neutral Canada.
This seems a lot more plausible, so I apologize, though it's probably worth considering that the figure of 100,000 militia was intended to be the total number trained over the winter (with about 60,000 embodied as part of the defence scheme) and that you may also be counting Nova Scotia/New Brunswick militia in the 100,000.


Britain was the primary supplier of nitre for the Union, because it was cheap, but the Union had gunpowder works like Dupont, Laflin, and Hazard. Between loss of British imports and having to run nitre from the guano islands through a blockade, Union costs for nitre would go up significantly. The problem would be solved, but it would take time and money.
And there we go, you see? You're assuming that the British (suppliers of nearly 100% of US nitre) is a problem that would be solved, though you've missed how DuPont and the others got their nitre to turn into gunpowder.
They got it from the British.

As for the guano islands, that wasn't a solution that had been come up with in 1862 (DuPont only pioneered the process to turn guano into saltpeter in 1863), and it may not be a practical solution at all in time of blockade - no matter the amount of money involved.
You're seriously talking about sending out ships (they'd have to be from the east coast, the west is too easily blockaded), sailing them out through the blockade, sailing them thousands of miles around South America to a guano island (without being able to touch at a friendly port to recoal, because most of the coaling stations are British), mining a useful amount of guano, and then sailing back etcetera.
That's not how blockade running worked, and frankly if it was that simple the British nitre monopoly would have been broken much earlier.

For the British, there's a serious problem feeding troops in Canada because it's frozen a few months of the year and they're contemplating training 100,000 militia; for the Union, the total loss of their OTL supply of a strategic material they used thousands of tonnes of is a problem that would be solved (the implication in your statement clearly being - without causing major disruption to Union operations).
 
For the British, there's a serious problem feeding troops in Canada because it's frozen a few months of the year and they're contemplating training 100,000 militia; for the Union, the total loss of their OTL supply of a strategic material they used thousands of tonnes of is a problem that would be solved (the implication in your statement clearly being - without causing major disruption to Union operations).

Actually I have always made the assumption that the Union would have to remain primarily on the defensive after March/April 1862 for about a year. Which does take care of Kentucky, Missouri and New Mexico (Lincoln would have to have a victory somewhere and those are critical areas).

While there are assertions out there in timelines and published works that the Union would charge into Lower Canada, I don't think the US would (and have said so repeatedly) as has Fiver. A large raid into Upper Canada to destroy the railroad and limited occupation of the border areas around Detroit however are well within capabilities. That would also have the useful advantage of cutting substantially into Canadian grain exports too. That action however is only likely if the British take offensive action against US territory (fighting as sea may not be the trigger for that).

My assertion has been Lincoln will remain focused on the primary goal... restoring the Union at all costs. Any fight with the British will be as limited as he can get away with. So a lot depends on the British here.

The point of this thread is to point out that the Americans do have economic leverage. Not war winning (which has been said repeatedly) but leverage does exist. A useful chart and source showing how important cheap food was to British labor has been provided. Raising the price of that food will have an effect. Not decisive in itself, but a real effect none the less.
 
And there we go, you see? You're assuming that the British (suppliers of nearly 100% of US nitre) is a problem that would be solved, though you've missed how DuPont and the others got their nitre to turn into gunpowder.
They got it from the British.

They got it from the British because it was cheaper to get it from the British, not because there were no other ways to get saltpeter.

As for the guano islands, that wasn't a solution that had been come up with in 1862 (DuPont only pioneered the process to turn guano into saltpeter in 1863),

This is quite incorrect. The US produced saltpeter from guano in the War of 1812. In an Anglo-American War, some saltpeter would make it through the blockade, more would be gotten from guano caves in the US, and more would be gotten from establishing nitre beds, which were first described in the 15th century.

and it may not be a practical solution at all in time of blockade - no matter the amount of money involved.
You're seriously talking about sending out ships (they'd have to be from the east coast, the west is too easily blockaded),

You're saying that blockading the 1200 miles of the US west coast, at a distance of about 15,000 miles sailing from Britain would be easy? The biggest problem would not be the British, it would be the distance from the west coast to the east coast.

sailing them out through the blockade, sailing them thousands of miles around South America to a guano island (without being able to touch at a friendly port to recoal, because most of the coaling stations are British), mining a useful amount of guano, and then sailing back etcetera.

Guano islands are not limited to the Pacific. There are guano islands in the Caribbean and that's a relatively short distance for blockade runners to travel.

For the British, there's a serious problem feeding troops in Canada because it's frozen a few months of the year and they're contemplating training 100,000 militia; for the Union, the total loss of their OTL supply of a strategic material they used thousands of tonnes of is a problem that would be solved (the implication in your statement clearly being - without causing major disruption to Union operations).

Please do not read things into my posts. I never implied that loss of British saltpeter would be a simple problem for the US to solve, it would be both expensive and take time, which is one of several reasons I believe the US would initially stand on the defensive in a 19th century Anglo-American War.
 
Jumping in on a side effect brought up, what sort of effect would a price increase in basic food have on an industrial revolution? Would this either slow or reverse the move from agriculture to industrial labor? What sort of long term impact would this have as well?
 
Jumping in on a side effect brought up, what sort of effect would a price increase in basic food have on an industrial revolution? Would this either slow or reverse the move from agriculture to industrial labor? What sort of long term impact would this have as well?

I posted a couple of things about that here (how useful cheap food was for British industrial development). As to the impact, that is a fascinating question which we can only speculate on. But we do have some hints based on other eras and places because when food prices jump people tend to get unhappy about it.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
They got it from the British because it was cheaper to get it from the British, not because there were no other ways to get saltpeter.
But when they faced the problem of the British interdicting their supply, their solution was to get saltpeter from the British but to be sneaky about it. This was a British near-monopoly at the time, and most everyone purchased at least some saltpeter from the British - the US imported over ten thousand tons of the stuff in 1862 alone.
If there were other ways to get saltpeter, you'd have expected US firms to jump all over it. But:
'Only two firms, Charles W. Copeland and Company of New York City and the New Haven Chemical Company, John W. Dwight, president, answered Dahlgren's advertisement for supplying the Navy with nitre from domestic sources. Both proposed to manufacture potassium nitrate from sodium nitrate and potash.' (Du Pont, Dahlgren, and the Civil War Nitre Shortage, p.148)


You're saying that blockading the 1200 miles of the US west coast, at a distance of about 15,000 miles sailing from Britain would be easy?
It would certainly be doable, because there's like one or two ports of any consequence (San Francisco is... pretty much it, and even decades later in the Endicott Report they only listed four - San Francisco, San Diego, Columbia River and Puget Sound) because the gold rush has concentrated the population so much. This adds to the already-extant problems from the 1000+ land miles required.
The British have a local naval base (Esquimalt) and a fairly substantial squadron on-station, and they don't need to blockade 1200 miles - just a few ports - because transportation up and down the coast was largely done by ship.

Guano islands are not limited to the Pacific. There are guano islands in the Caribbean and that's a relatively short distance for blockade runners to travel.
Well, relatively short compared to the Pacific, I'll grant you, but not relatively short compared to OTL Confederate blockade running. Navassa is the most northerly OTL one, and to the mouth of the Chesapeake that's about a thousand nautical miles (on a route that goes directly through the Bahamas). That's twice as far as blockade runners from Havana to Mobile Bay, and (unlike Havana) Navassa is not a neutral port which can be used to coal up.

On the other hand, if there's no simultaneous Civil War going on then it's merely about 800 nm to a worthwhile port.

This is quite incorrect. The US produced saltpeter from guano in the War of 1812.
That's a 1912 USGS book I can't look inside.

In an Anglo-American War, some saltpeter would make it through the blockade, more would be gotten from guano caves in the US, and more would be gotten from establishing nitre beds, which were first described in the 15th century.
Nitre beds take a long time to mature - on the order of a year, which will certainly help in the second year of such a war but won't help much in the first.

Cave niter will be somewhat useful, but OTL the Confederacy didn't produce very much from that route and they had most of the caves. (The CSA imported nine times as much nitre as it got from caves.)

At this time it's simply the case that the British are the world suppliers of nitre. The US imported over three thousand tonnes of nitre from Britain and India in 1864-5, and that was the lowest year by a factor of two - over the Civil War years the total import of saltpetre from Britain and India was north of 40,000 tonnes. (This is about an average of 6,000-7,000 tons a year, as it includes six years of data -1860/1 to 1865/6.)

The caves in North America (most of them Confederate, if there's a Civil War going on) would be useful, but they'd support an army roughly on the scale of the US army in the War of 1812 (that is, if the industry can be put back in production straight off, after a fifty year hiatus). If we instead use Confederate productivity we get 300,000 lbs of powder produced over the course of the war - that's about 150 tonnes of nitre produced domestically by that route.

The Confederate Government, however, by its agents in Europe, purchased saltpetre which was shipped on swift blockade runners which arrived from time to time at Charleston and Wilmington. This proved to be adequate to our wants, and about two millions, seven hundred thousand pounds were thus received during the war and sent to the Confederate Powder Works. The amount obtained from the caves amounted to about three hundred thousand pounds for the same period. Thus the total amount received at the works amounted to about 1,500 tons."
- General George Rains, History of the Confederate Powder Works

So that's about 40 tons a year, or 0.7% of the OTL Union imports being replaced domestically by cave niter. Good start, but I can't see it really being enough.


The reason why the British don't face the prospect of more than a price rise in food is because food is grown everywhere and because the lack of US imports would reduce their consumption per head to what they achieved with the same number of people in several years of the 1850s.
The reason the Union faces a rather more serious problem is that large scale nitre production is a British monopoly (a result of nitre beds in British India, which is lousy with sacred cows) and because the lack of British imports would reduce their gunpowder supply to what they had in 1860 (well, minus about another 250 tons of yearly imports in the pre-ACW years). Now, I know this may seem like a double standard, but in 1860 Britain everyone still needed to eat while in 1850s America there wasn't a huge amount of war going on.

I'd be quite willing to accept the British having as much to eat as they did in 1860 and the US firing as many shots as they did in 1860, of course...


Now, functionally what's likely to happen is that the US dips into their strategic nitre store. It's not very good quality as they acquired the store in the 1840s and the quality's gone down over the time it was in storage, but it's 1,700 tons of the stuff and will suffice to fight a small war (it would become about 2,400 tons of gunpowder)
Keyword here being "small", though. The US will have to be draconian with their issues of gunpowder, because they need to have that supply last until they get nitre beds set up in large quantity.

As an example, the Wabash needed about 30 tons of powder to fill her powder room, as she took that much on in NY harbour on 26 May 1861. This means that a full loading of the US's eight steam frigates and dozen or so steam sloops would (as a first approximation) take about 15% of the total US powder supply from their reserve.
Does this mean they sail with a full load, or sail with a half load and accept the reduction in capability?

With a great deal of effort, expenditure and labour the US can get itself into a workable position with respect to nitre. It's not going to solve the problem, because that would imply the problem had gone away and it simply would not have done, but the trade-offs would be manageable and (with the aforementioned effort) the US would not actually run out of powder.
The problem, however, persists in the form of those tradeoffs.
How does the US alleviate British training advantages, when to train a 400,000 man army with 100 shots per man would cost (3 grams per round * 40 million) = 120 tonnes of powder? How many shots per gun are coastal forts provided with, when a fort with forty 8" guns requires a ton of powder to fire eight times per gun?
How does the US do all the things it was using 8,000 tonnes of powder a year on with 2,400 tons total?


ED: I think the comparison I've been groping towards in much of the above post is the example of the German oil supply in WW2. They definitely had an oil supply, and they don't appear to run out at any given moment, but the need to conserve oil put a dampener on their operations and on their ability to train - while also drawing heavily on their intellectual and human capital to develop and enact workarounds.
Thing is, I think the German oil supply situation can be argued as being better than the Union gunpowder supply in a war with Britain - the Germans at least were planning on a war, saw it coming and had plans in place ahead of time.
 
Last edited:

Saphroneth

Banned
Jumping in on a side effect brought up, what sort of effect would a price increase in basic food have on an industrial revolution? Would this either slow or reverse the move from agriculture to industrial labor? What sort of long term impact would this have as well?
It might slow the transition, yes, as there'd be a magnet factor (pay) coming from the farms as well. It's also possible that what it does is make mechanization of agriculture more affordable (if a farmer's crops sells for half again what he was expecting, he has enough of a windfall to consider picking up some mechanical aid) and that might result in increased productivity and the food remaining competitive when prices drop again.
 
But when they faced the problem of the British interdicting their supply, their solution was to get saltpeter from the British but to be sneaky about it. This was a British near-monopoly at the time, and most everyone purchased at least some saltpeter from the British - the US imported over ten thousand tons of the stuff in 1862 alone.
If there were other ways to get saltpeter, you'd have expected US firms to jump all over it.

There were other ways to get nitre, as I have already shown. The Confederacy used them when they were cut off from foreign imports; the Union would do the same if they were cut off.

It would certainly be doable, because there's like one or two ports of any consequence (San Francisco is... pretty much it, and even decades later in the Endicott Report they only listed four - San Francisco, San Diego, Columbia River and Puget Sound) because the gold rush has concentrated the population so much. This adds to the already-extant problems from the 1000+ land miles required.
The British have a local naval base (Esquimalt) and a fairly substantial squadron on-station, and they don't need to blockade 1200 miles - just a few ports - because transportation up and down the coast was largely done by ship.

You didn't say doable, you said "easily blockaded". In 1862, the British Pacific Squadron was based out of Valparaiso, Chile, which was 4700 nautical miles from San Diego. Even Vancouver was over 1200 nautical miles from San Diego. Getting enough ships and enough coal to constantly blockade the waters off the US Pacific ports is certainly possible, but it will take a heavy commitment of time and resources by the British.

Nitre beds take a long time to mature - on the order of a year, which will certainly help in the second year of such a war but won't help much in the first.

I'm quite aware of that, which is why I have repeatedly said that the Union would stand on the defensive at the start of an Anglo-American War.

With a great deal of effort, expenditure and labour the US can get itself into a workable position.

Sounds like we agree then.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
There were other ways to get nitre, as I have already shown. The Confederacy used them when they were cut off from foreign imports; the Union would do the same if they were cut off.
Yes, but none of these sources would provide them with enough nitre to replace British sources in less than a year.

You didn't say doable, you said "easily blockaded". In 1862, the British Pacific Squadron was based out of Valparaiso, Chile, which was 4700 nautical miles from San Diego. Even Vancouver was over 1200 nautical miles from San Diego. Getting enough ships and enough coal to constantly blockade the waters off the US Pacific ports is certainly possible, but it will take a heavy commitment of time and resources by the British.
And in the event of a war the British can coal their blockade ships on site, after sinking most of the Union's own Pacific squadron (not hard because of how it's arranged). San Diego at the time was a town of less than a thousand men and is hundreds of miles from the goldfields - the important point to blockade is San Francisco, and there's quite a lot of ships already in place.
The position of the official squadron base in this case is less important, because ships were located all up and down the coast.

I'm quite aware of that, which is why I have repeatedly said that the Union would stand on the defensive at the start of an Anglo-American War.
But you've also suggested that the Union would be able to take the line of the St Lawrence "before Spring". If you think the Union would stand on the defensive for the first year then why were you talking about invading Canada at all?

Of course, "stand on the defensive" for the first year is only part of the problem. Coastal forts use a lot of gunpowder, as do offensives into Confederate Tennessee and campaigns to maintain control of Kentucky, and so in the event of an Anglo-American War (especially one based off the Trent) the Union finds itself having to avoid battles it would rather win because it wouldn't have enough powder.

Estimates of powder production would be good here. Got any?

Sounds like we agree then.
Only in the broadest sense. When I say "workable position" I mean the Union has a powder production stream in year two which is on the rough scale required to campaign at all - which is a heck of an improvement over their state in year one - but I don't mean that they could fight as if there never was a problem in the first place even in year two. Would you care to provide some sense of numbers, so we can see your opinion of the powder state?
 
Maybe we should rename this "Saltpeter if Anglo-American break" since I don't see much discussion of food at all anymore in the last couple pages.

I'm actually curious how an American embargo on exports to Britain would affect relations long term. Forget Trent war, that's trite, cliche, and has been discussed ad nauseam (and nausea) in circular arguments that last for pages. I'm talking a break, not a war. With less of a market would it have a negative effect on American farm development? Does that lead to a more rapid industrialization? Supposing the break lasts a few years, and the United States starts developing closer economic ties with other European powers, would that delay or even kill in the cradle the "special relationship" that developed?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Maybe we should rename this "Saltpeter if Anglo-American break" since I don't see much discussion of food at all anymore in the last couple pages.
Fair enough! It's a problem I have, I admit...

I'm actually curious how an American embargo on exports to Britain would affect relations long term. Forget Trent war, that's trite, cliche, and has been discussed ad nauseam (and nausea) in circular arguments that last for pages. I'm talking a break, not a war. With less of a market would it have a negative effect on American farm development? Does that lead to a more rapid industrialization? Supposing the break lasts a few years, and the United States starts developing closer economic ties with other European powers, would that delay or even kill in the cradle the "special relationship" that developed?
That's not how exports work. You embargo commodities, not destinations, because the ships doing the trading are middlemen.
 
Maybe we should rename this "Saltpeter if Anglo-American break" since I don't see much discussion of food at all anymore in the last couple pages.

I'm actually curious how an American embargo on exports to Britain would affect relations long term. Forget Trent war, that's trite, cliche, and has been discussed ad nauseam (and nausea) in circular arguments that last for pages. I'm talking a break, not a war. With less of a market would it have a negative effect on American farm development? Does that lead to a more rapid industrialization? Supposing the break lasts a few years, and the United States starts developing closer economic ties with other European powers, would that delay or even kill in the cradle the "special relationship" that developed?

The problem is that already in the C19th most exports and especially grain were being sold into a global market. If the US wants to withhold its share of the world supply from Britain it must withhold it from the world as either the grains themselves or ones they displace from other markets are going to make their way to Britain. In addition there is the question of timing, too short a break or say one between harvests and the British might not even notice, a longer term break gives other suppliers the confidence to plant for the British market where they now have a shot and thus can counter the effects of the embargo in the midterm and will also likely result in a price crunch immediately following its end.
 
There were other ways to get niter, as I have already shown. The Confederacy used them when they were cut off from foreign imports; the Union would do the same if they were cut off.

Unfortunately the niter question has been done to death by those looking to use it as a 19th century British nuclear weapon.

You didn't say doable, you said "easily blockaded". In 1862, the British Pacific Squadron was based out of Valparaiso, Chile, which was 4700 nautical miles from San Diego. Even Vancouver was over 1200 nautical miles from San Diego. Getting enough ships and enough coal to constantly blockade the waters off the US Pacific ports is certainly possible, but it will take a heavy commitment of time and resources by the British.

I'm not one of those who'll argue US naval strength over Britain's at anytime pre-WWI. But there is, not just the usual logistics-logistics-logistics argument to make here but British imperial commitments. Let those be stripped and deterrence can fail elsewhere, leading to possible crises that are unknown and even possibly unimaginable IOTL.

I'm quite aware of that, which is why I have repeatedly said that the Union would stand on the defensive at the start of an Anglo-American War.

And without knowing the circumstances in Europe concerning their reaction to such a conflict, its impossible to conduct a clear headed analysis of such a conflict. You have American Exceptionalists arguing for a replay of the American War of Independence on steroids (in terms of Europeans other than the French looking to take John Bull down) to European Imperialists arguing quite the opposite: Either strictest neutrality or support for the British. It all depends on the nature of the Casus belli.

I agree with your statement, unless Zombie Lord North becomes Britain's Lord Protector.:eek: Then a general war between Europe and the British Empire becomes possible.:rolleyes: I know that this is being stated in a very silly matter, but would anyone in 1763 have predicted that the mightiest power in the world would find itself either in an active war or very hostile neutrality with all Europe?

Maybe we should rename this "Saltpeter if Anglo-American break" since I don't see much discussion of food at all anymore in the last couple pages.

Well said.

ChaosNDiscord said:
I'm actually curious how an American embargo on exports to Britain would affect relations long term. Forget Trent war, that's trite, cliche, and has been discussed ad nauseam ad infinitum ad absurdum (1) (and nausea) in circular arguments that last for pages.

1) Fixed it for you.

I'm talking a break, not a war. With less of a market would it have a negative effect on American farm development? Does that lead to a more rapid industrialization? Supposing the break lasts a few years, and the United States starts developing closer economic ties with other European powers, would that delay or even kill in the cradle the "special relationship" that developed?

Well, the special relationship didn't arise from late 19th century economic ties. While Britain was doing its all post-ACW to promote good Anglo-American ties, insularity in the US went through the roof at the very same time. One reason why the US suddenly became so imperialist starting in the Spanish-American War was that the US had finally finished with most of its internal development (Arizona & New Mexico being the last two lower 48 states to gain statehood in 1912). A lot of pent up expansionist pressure coming to the rise after 33 years.

Then there's always the lack of a language barrier.

One important issue I don't think I've seen addressed here is US-Canadian trade. You'll have a revolution in either (or both) countries if you tried to embargo intra-North American trade (2)

2) Not counting Mexico here, as in the late 1800s Northern Mexico was in a largely lawless and pre-revolutionary state.

The special relationship, regardless of economics, was truly born in WWII. The American People, not without some justification, came out of WWI feeling that they had been suckered by (outstandingly made, I'll admit) outlandish British propaganda regarding German Army behavior in occupied territories. Propaganda that the Germans would live down to (in shockingly accurate terms, actually) in WWII.:mad: So the idea between the wars was "never again". This insular Isolationism didn't blow up until the Arizona did.

After that, the special relationship went from Winston's obsession/FDR's pet project to what we know today. The big exception, which Churchill never understood until it was too late, was that America saw the Special Relationship as relating to the USA & the UK. NOT the USA (and its possessions) and the British Empire.:angel:

Of course, if Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Wales, New Zealand, and the Channel Islands:evilsmile::love::angel:XD had been fully independent at the time:eek::rolleyes:, you could argue that they would have been in a position "to get in on the ground floor" on US trade.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I'm not one of those who'll argue US naval strength over Britain's at anytime pre-WWI. But there is, not just the usual logistics-logistics-logistics argument to make here but British imperial commitments. Let those be stripped and deterrence can fail elsewhere, leading to possible crises that are unknown and even possibly unimaginable IOTL.
In the situation as of 1862 the British have more combat power on the American Pacific Coast than the US does. There is no need to strip Imperial commitments anywhere else - what reinforcement is needed can be sent from home.

Unfortunately the niter question has been done to death by those looking to use it as a 19th British nuclear weapon.
So here's the thing.


Niter is a strategic material which the US was overwhelmingly dependent on foreign sources for. This is how the trade relationships work at the time.
It's similar to the way the Germans or Japanese were dependent on overseas sources in WW2 for oil, except that there's no Ploesti-equivalent or DEI-equivalent available without considerable work.

Now, the Germans never appear to have actually lost a battle from a lack of (strategic) oil, and the Americans would never appear to have actually lost a battle from lack of (strategic) gunpowder - but that's not what it would look like.
It would look - in the best case for the Americans - like they have a considerable shortage compared to OTL. It would look like their strategic reserve would have to be deeply tapped into to keep things ticking over.
In Trent specifically it would look like they'd have to use roughly 30% of the powder in 1862 which they did OTL, while engaged in a wider fight than OTL. (This would completely deplete their strategic reserve, but I'm assuming for the moment that once the year's over their local nitre supply is fully set up)

This doesn't show up as a battle lost for want of powder. It shows up in a creeping, invisible way - in the same way the German lack of petroleum limited the abilities of their pilots by reducing training opportunities, the American lack of nitre limits the abilities of their soldiers by curtailing training.
Regiments go into battle with enough rounds per person for thirty shots instead of forty, and artillery goes into campaigns with one less full caisson per battery (or two, or three) as economy measures. Ships sally with half powder loads instead of full, and have to fire less frequently or decline battle except on good terms. Forts have a basic load for their guns, instead of two or three. And armies on campaign have their generals constantly aware that they must avoid long battles, as there is not much resupply in the trains.

Either the US Army reduces everything across the board by a fairly draconian amount (70% less ammunition for the same number of fights, resulting in a much earlier ammunition starvation) or it gets in a lot less fights (70% fewer) - and that means falling back in front of an advancing army and surrendering fields of battle unfought, not merely standing on the defensive. Defensive fights use gunpowder too, indeed in the ACW one of the major benefits of the defensive was that you could hold in position behind embrasures and blaze away.
Or some combination of the two - going into battle less and doing so with less ammunition.

This is not a "nuclear weapon", no. What it is, however, is a huge problem strategically and not one which may be simply dismissed. The Union did, after all, use that powder it imported in OTL, and one assumes most of it wasn't expended doing salutes.


Functionally, this would show up as a kind of diminishing curve. The Union starts off using roughly the same amount of powder as it did in equivalent situations historically, and would then drop downwards as the problem became more acute and the reserve was drained.




When I say this is a situation the Union could eventually produce workable solutions to, note that this is me already being generous to them. Strategic shortages are difficult to get out of, and it's probably worth noting that the Confederacy had roughly a year between noticing the problem (as of secession) and the beginning of serious campaigning (in March 1862). The Union would have a few months, and their existing supply chain ("buy it from India and Britain") would be severely harmed.



Now, to bring that back to the food problem, a mutual lack of supply in 1862 (no nitre for the Union, no food for the British) results in a situation where both of them are in the situation they had pre-war (1858, say) in terms of the supply of the material.
For the British, this means they can feed a population about the size of their 1858 one roughly the same amount of grain per head as they did in the 1850s - not a huge problem, though the cost of bread may rise - and they have both domestic and foreign supply well established and accessible to mean the drop is minor, both through other supplies of grain and through supplies of other food. Food being the ultimate fungible commodity, which everyone produces to some extent, there's plenty of suppliers - and the Union cannot interdict them.
For the Union, it means they can supply an army about the size of their 1858 one roughly the same amount of powder per head as they did in the 1850s. Their most feasible alternate supply routes either take a year to set up (nitre beds) or involve sourcing material from overseas (guano islands) which the British certainly can interdict.

Oh dear.
 
And in the event of a war the British can coal their blockade ships on site, after sinking most of the Union's own Pacific squadron (not hard because of how it's arranged). San Diego at the time was a town of less than a thousand men and is hundreds of miles from the goldfields - the important point to blockade is San Francisco, and there's quite a lot of ships already in place.

The British certainly have enough ships in the Royal Navy to sink the US Pacific Squadron, the questions are how many ships do the British and the Americans have on hand and who would get the message first. A British blockading squadron would need to be significantly larger than just enough ships to sink local Union warships. The coal for the British ships is not "on site" - Vancouver is about 700 nautical miles from San Francisco.

The position of the official squadron base in this case is less important, because ships were located all up and down the coast.

The position of the squadron base is quite important, since ships need to resupply. The farther away the base is, the more time and supplies are needed to get on station. It also means less time that ships can spend on station, which increases the number of ships the British will need to maintain a blockade.

But you've also suggested that the Union would be able to take the line of the St Lawrence "before Spring". If you think the Union would stand on the defensive for the first year then why were you talking about invading Canada at all?

I have suggested that the Union could attempt a campaign to the St Lawrence during the winter. I never said it would succeed, let alone take the whole line of the St. Lawrence. Standing on the defensive the first year does not preclude taking the offense the second year, nor raiding into Canada, nor attempting to seize Canadian border towns and then digging in.

Of course, "stand on the defensive" for the first year is only part of the problem. Coastal forts use a lot of gunpowder, as do offensives into Confederate Tennessee and campaigns to maintain control of Kentucky, and so in the event of an Anglo-American War (especially one based off the Trent) the Union finds itself having to avoid battles it would rather win because it wouldn't have enough powder.

The Union had ample gunpowder to defend against the Confederate attempts to invade West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and the New Mexico and Colorado territories. They should also have no problem taking Ft Henry and Ft Donelson, but a full-fledged offensive would probably have to wait.
 
Top