Poorer because it lacks the huge export volumes of cash crops (tobacco, rice and indigo, mostly) which made colonies so profitable in OTL.
And yet, the monied interests cogregated in the north, where a mich more diversified economy thrived.
Poorer because it lacks the huge export volumes of cash crops (tobacco, rice and indigo, mostly) which made colonies so profitable in OTL.
If chattel slavery was banned in America, and instead indentured servitude is used instead, what would be the consequences for African immigration? Would Africans willingly come to the continent for the money the plantation owners were paying? If yes, would the rising population of free blacks end up with racist white elites banning further black immigration?
And yet, the monied interests cogregated in the north, where a mich more diversified economy thrived.
In time, yes, but they took longer to develop. And the southern colonies were the wealthiest (hello, Virginia) for quite a while in OTL.
ITTL, it's an open question whether Virginia et al would be more profitable in the long run - perhaps so - but would be much poorer during the colonial era, which was the period I was referring to.
Poorer because it lacks the huge export volumes of cash crops (tobacco, rice and indigo, mostly) which made colonies so profitable in OTL.
Poorer because it lacks the huge export volumes of cash crops (tobacco, rice and indigo, mostly) which made colonies so profitable in OTL.
Something to consider is that while Chattel Slavery of AFRICANS may be banned, chattel slavery of the Irish will not be. The Irish were seen as the lowest form of scum, lower than the Africans, and as a result, slavery was seen as both a punishment and form of social control while also being an economic venture.
The hatred of the Irish ran so deep that the mortality rates for Irish slaves made them quickly die out of use, despite having tons of them shipped over after the Cromwellian clearances.
Someone has to do the work, and I doubt that indentured servitude is going to be extended to the Irish.
As for how Africans get involved in a chattel free America, I simply don't see how or why. Maybe some initially shipped over for slavery and then made indentured servants could form a community, but I hardly see anyone from West Africa going to the Caribbean or Virginia willingly to be an indentured servant.
Why would any Africans come? Chinese came to California in the 1840s because there was gold in it for them, work for the trans-contintental railway for high labor wages due to lack of labor in the west, and to escape the Taiping Rebellion. Trade was already well established between China and the West. And the immigrants originally intended to stay only temporarily. There is no obvious opportunity for Africans to want to come to the New World - certainly not to work in plantations. Africa is historically underpopulated given its size. There'd be little appeal to travel very distantly far away with little chance of getting back home.
How would they even get to the New World? The Africans don't have their own boats to transport them. Given the high incidence of death for European sailors in African waters from malaria and other tropical diseases, why would they sail there for simple transport of Africans when there is so little profit in it?
If there is no slave trade, then very few Africans make it over prior to the 20th century.
The profits of those crops (i.e. the return to capital) were extremely high, but was that because revenue was higher than crops like wheat or was it just because they stole the return to labour due to slavery? Because if the return to capital plus return to labour wasn't that much higher than other crops, then America will have nearly as much wealth, just spread more evenly. After all the Midwest was not a poor place.
The idea that the Irish were seen as lower than Africans is just absolute nonsense. They weren't even forced into chattel slavery in our timeline.
Plantation owners are going to have to find some other way to get labor (possibly supplementing indentured servants with prisoners and sharecroppers, much like the OTL post-Reconstruction South, and with more hacienda-like exploitation of the natives).
Oh sure, the system would probably crash and burn eventually, but it could last long enough to get things started. A system doesn't have to be sustainable in the long term to be established; look at OTL for evidence of that. It's not like the East Coast was entirely empty of natives, especially before the settlers started pushing them out of the best lands.A hacienda style system wouldn't be sustainable. The Spanish got lucky in the places they colonized had the most sophisticated native societies with tons of people. Running a hacienda system in the colonial U.S. would burn through the native populations at a horrific rate.
Oh sure, the system would probably crash and burn eventually, but it could last long enough to get things started. A system doesn't have to be sustainable in the long term to be established; look at OTL for evidence of that. It's not like the East Coast was entirely empty of natives, especially before the settlers started pushing them out of the best lands.