Confederate Industrialization and Imperialism

1) It's nice that that question can now be posed without a flame war being launched.:p

3) If the US launches a war of aggression against the British Empire, its going to wind up a much smaller country.:( If OTOH Palmerston decides to take advantage and do so against the Union (aiding and abetting a Slave Power, even allying with it) the Great Reform Act of 1867 will be passing a few years earlier. And a Socialist Government may just come to power in London before 1900!

Did you mean the British empire would be smaller or the USA?
The USA was had slaves until after he civil war was over.
 
How does your small government CSA that really doesn't like tarrrifs cough up the money that it would need to have this navy your talking about?




So they nationalize cotton production? Well the CSA truly is an example of small government.

Actually, the Confederacy would have had plenty of money for a navy at least as large as that maintained by the antebellum United States. Confederate revenues from the 12.5 percent tariff which was proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Memminger in 1861 were estimated to be $25,000,000. And based on the proposed 10-12.5 percent export tax on the $237,000,000 of anticipated export revenue for 1861, the Confederate Treasury expected to realize another $25,000,000.Source Those revenues weren't realized in OTL, of course, because the Union blockade almost immediately cut off the Confederacy's foreign trade. But it is reasonable to assume an independent, freely trading Confederacy could have realized that much, or more. And of course, that does not include other sources of revenue that existed in 1860 (for example, excise taxes on liquor, which brought in almost 10 million dollars a year for the federal government in 1860, and could be expected to bring in probably a third to a half that much for the Confederacy) and others (taxes generated by the rise of cigarette manufacturing, oil and petrochemical production, for example) which are virtually certain to arise in later years.

To give one an idea how much money we're talking about, one 1860 U.S. dollar was worth (depending on the standard of measurement used) anywhere from $27.90 to $3470 in 2011 U.S. dollars. Which means the $50,000,000 Confederate estimated revenue would be equivalent in purchasing power to $1.4 billion in 2011 dollars, at the very LOW end of the scale, and over $173 billion at the high end. And by way of comparison, the anticipated Confederate revenue from the import tariff and the excise on exports alone was not much less than the entire Federal revenue for 1860, roughly $64 million dollars.

Also, by means of comparison, the entire federal military budget in 1860 was $29,000,000 (the entire federal budget was $78 million, with the rest spent as follows...Post Office, $15 million; Other General Spending, which meant things like subsidies for businesses such as railroads, spending on other internal improvements, salaries for government officials, etc., $30 million; and $3 million interest on the federal debt).

Since the Confederacy won't be spending a significant portion its national revenue on internal improvements in the North and business subsidies for Northern businesses, as the Federal Government was doing, it should be, even with less revenue available, able to maintain at least as large a navy as the antebellum U.S. did, and maybe larger.

Given that a dreadnought cost somewhere between $4 million and $8 million to build, and the type of ships the Confederacy would likely want to build in quantity (harbor and river defense ships, cruisers for protecting trade routes) would cost considerably less, the Confederacy would certainly have the money for a navy able to protect its perceived interests, with a small fleet of battleships besides to counter U.S. power especially in the Caribbean.


nationalize ? I never said that. Most counties had some tariffs. The tariffs would be lower than the one the union had.
 
Last edited:

Spengler

Banned
First you have to understand that cotton markets were opening up all over the world throughout the late 19th century, severely cutting into the profits from cotton. Second, now why would the planters support these taxes? UNles of course a despotisim endures in the confederacy.
 
Last edited:
Most of those were emergency measures because of the war. had the south won it is independence , it is a matter of speculation as to what would have happened after that.

How often in human history has a government voluntarily made itself less powerful? Even with heavy postwar layoffs, the Confederacy will have twice as many bureaucrats per capita as the Union. Even if government expenses drop dramatically, they still have $2.7 billion in public debt, $1.5 billion of which is due 6 months after the end of the war. They still have no specie, so all Confederate currency will be inflationary unbacked fiat money.

The reason for making the CSA a non imperialist power is all the alternative histroy I have seen makes the CSA in to another imperialist power.

They were imperialist before the war. They were imperialist during the war. Why would they stop being imperialist after the war?

Much of the funding before the war came from tariff on imported and exported goods. With the lost of the southern ports income from tariffs would be greatly reduced.

None of the funding came from tariffs on exports. That wasn't allowed under the US Constitution.

Now let's look at those import tariffs. 60% of all US imports came through New York. Only $30 million in imports came through southern ports. In 1860, the tariff rate was 15%, so the south paid $4.5 million in import tariffs, which was about 8% of the total import tariffs.

92% of the US tariff income was being paid by states that were still in the Union. If the Union doesn't hand New Orleans over to the Confederacy, that rises to 98.5% of all pre-war tariff income is still being paid to the Union.
 
Actually, the Confederacy would have had plenty of money for a navy at least as large as that maintained by the antebellum United States. Confederate revenues from the 12.5 percent tariff which was proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Memminger in 1861 were estimated to be $25,000,000. And based on the proposed 10-12.5 percent export tax on the $237,000,000 of anticipated export revenue for 1861, the Confederate Treasury expected to realize another $25,000,000.Source

As I pointed out earlier, Memminger's numbers were, to be polite, optimistic. In fact, I overestimated Confederate revenue in my previous post. Total Confederate imports were $30 million, which would yield $4.5 million, not $25 million. Memminger's export numbers seem to be based on total US exports - export tariffs should get the Confederacy about $20 million. Real Confederate revenues should be about half of Memminger's fanciful estimates.

Combine this with a Confederacy that needs a bigger military than the the Union had in 1860 and over twice the per-capita bureaucracy, the Confederacy can expect to have $25 million in income and $75 million in expenses. Even with Memminger's nonsensical numbers, the Confederacy would be accumulating another $25 million in debt every year to add to the $2.7 billion in public debt they already have.
 
Did you mean the British empire would be smaller or the USA?

The USA, without a doubt. Assuming a war of aggression by the Union with an invasion of Canada, despite a hostile CSA to the south, the USA would be absolutely curbstomped.

If, however, Lord Palmerston decided one morning to "finish off this unruly unstable experiment in republicanism once-and-for-all":eek:, he is going to be finding himself with MAJOR political problems back home. If the average man on the street in London sees his country launching a war of aggression on their own, with little cause beyond sheer imperialism and class warfare...:mad: Democracies don't war with each other. Until 1867, Britain was not a democracy. The working man didn't have the vote yet. Something even American Blacks had by this point.:(

BELFAST said:
The USA was had slaves until after the civil war was over.

All the states north of the Mason-Dixon Line had abolished Slavery before the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter. Of the Border States, IIRC, only Kentucky had failed to do so by the time Lee surrendered. The 13th Amendment abolishing the institution of Slavery was passed not long after.

Politics is about perception. With the start of the American Civil War, no one in Europe saw the USA as a "Slave Power". Those states that still had the institution were working to get rid of it, while the CSA specifically outlawed any way for their government to even alter it. The USA was losing tens and hundreds of thousands of lives in battle to destroy a nation that was a slave power and proud of it. The Europeans, after the Emancipation Proclamation, were willing to give the Union the benefit of the doubt.:rolleyes:
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I have thus far avoided venturing into this thread despite my long-standing interest in CS Victory scenarios. I therefore apologize if what I am about to see is repeating what has already been said, but I thought I'd share my general thoughts about this question.

It would have been very difficult for the Confederacy to industrialize after the war. Before the war, the ruling elites of the South had raised their slave-based agricultural, exporting economic model to a high place among their general political ideology. Having won their independence, the ruling elites would have seen the victory as a confirmation of the rightness of their vision and would have seen no reason to change.

Moreover, the Confederate Constitution specifically prohibited the imposition of duties or tariffs designed to promote any particular branch of industry. Why should any Confederate entrepreneur invest money in building an iron foundry if he was going to be constantly undercut by cheaper British or Northern imports?

On the other hand, the Confederacy achieved surprising success in developing a war industry during the war itself (thanks mostly to Josiah Gorgas) and the government would have seen the necessity of having some sort of industrial base to provide war material for its army. What I think you might see is smaller, government-owned foundries intended specifically for the purpose of producing cannon, small arms, and other such material, but they would not have been a big factor in the economy.

In the long run, the Confederate economy model would have been a disaster, even without the slave insurrection that would eventually have taken place. The development of alternative cotton producers would have hit the South very hard, and it would not surprise me if abolitionist groups in Britain and the Union would have organized boycotts of Confederate cotton so long as slavery persisted. Eventually, the Confederate economy would have to change, but how and when it would are impossible to determine.

Regarding imperialism. . . again, you have pre-war ideology dictating the expansion of the slave system south into the Caribbean and Central America. But this was largely based on the perceived need to create more slave states to counteract the political influence of the Northern free states. If the Confederacy has succeeded in securing its independence, this would no longer be necessary. But ideology is notoriously hard to update. I think we might see the development of two political factions within the Confederacy (we saw the beginnings of this during the war IOTL, with pro-Davis and anti-Davis factions), and one of the issues on which they might disagree would be whether or not to seek to expand south.

It would not surprise me if the next Republican administration adjusted the Monroe Doctrine to apply to the Confederacy as well as to European nations.
 
Top