Dominion of Southern America - Updated July 1, 2018

Glen

Moderator
The Dominion of Southern America was developinga rich local tradition in food, music, and literature. While some critics in England felt that the popular culture of the Dominion was vulgar, others found it refreshing. The literature of the early Dominion was famous for the Southern Gothic novel and so-called 'Western' story, and towards the mid 19th century, a romanticism with the Plantation lifestyle, Neo-Plantationism, become popular especially among the upper classes. Robert Daley's semi-autobiographical novel, 'White Gold' was a typical example from the 1870s.

"George Tuttle sat on the veranda of the big house, enjoying his tea as he mused about the arrival of his bride to be. Anna Belle was from poor, Scotch Irish stock, but her fair skin would make up for the coarseness of her ways. George's own father had been the son of a planter and his slave-woman, but had run away to fight with the Loyalists. His surname, Tuttle, had been adopted by his father, not after the man who had sired him, but the Loyalist militia colonel who had taken him in and treated him like a man, fighting side by side for the British Empire. After the war, George's father took up trading between the Civilized Tribes of Indiana and the rest of the South. He'd found himself a half-breed squaw-bride among the Cimeroan, making George half white, a quarter native, and a quarter negro. He was thankful that so much of his good, white ancestry showed. That and his father's war service and wealth from his very successful business had bought George a fine education and entry into more polite society. George was grateful to his father, but he was a man of the land, not a trader. When he came into his inheritance on his father's death, he had bought his dream, a plantation of good cotton growing land, in West Florida; he hadn't wanted to deal with the tribal politics of Indiana. George sipped his tea as the carriage brought Anna Belle to the front of the big house. He gestured for his negro boy to play some music on his banjo. The boy was talented, son of one of his few remaining renters, negros who still clung to the land, unlike so many before who had migrated to the cities or the west. More than half of the plantation was being worked by Hindoos from the Asian subcontinent by now. He had sent the boy, Randolph, down to the Dominion capital at Baton Rouge, to learn all the new music coming out of the delta, catchy stuff that he hoped would please his new bride. She was a sweet girl. However, it would be a spell before he could take her on his arm to polite society parties. His mistress, a fine negro woman educated down in New Orleans, would take her in turn under her wing to teach her the finer points of polite society. Anna Belle swept up the steps of the veranda, a sweet smile on her face. As he stood to receive her, he thought how good life was along the Mississippi."
rosswood-plantation-photo.jpg
 
Now you have got me wanting to buy 'White Gold'; A different racial discrimination situation in the South.
Now how would be a mystery all it's own.


Great update, Glen
...And I'll catch up on the rest in due time.
 
Love it!

And I particularly enjoy, how despite the fact that there is a kind of racism, there is also a kind of romanticism for the mixing of races and what it does to Southern culture. I might not be long before someone speculates that "the gap between races will be bridged in the DSA, after their split thousands of years ago". Or something like that.
 
Wow that is very different from OTL and I'm pretty sure that's not plausible if that plantation is typical. The DSA like every society of its era will be an agrarian one with over 75% living in rural areas. The Deep South at this time was 80% rural.
Now if the majority (51%) of blacks have left their former plantations (unlike OTL where most stayed as share croppers) you are talking about the movement of 2,000,000 people and the removal of half the labour force of the DSA main export industries. And if you've got every plantation "mostly" worked by Hindoo's then even with reduced manning we're talking about the import of at least 1,500,000 "Hindoo's" into the Deep South to replace them. That is migration on a massive scale. And would involve immense economic dislocation and enormous cost.
Further more where are these 2,000,000 million former slaves going, assuming they are matching the 75% rural 25% urban split of the general population then the DSA has to be giving the the overwhelming majority of the land in the West to Blacks and if they are going to the cities then either the DSA is undergoing a China like industrial boom and urbanisation or a lot of blacks are going to be starving to death in the gutters.
I would really recommend thinking about the numbers.
 
Wow that is very different from OTL and I'm pretty sure that's not plausible if that plantation is typical. The DSA like every society of its era will be an agrarian one with over 75% living in rural areas. The Deep South at this time was 80% rural.
Now if the majority (51%) of blacks have left their former plantations (unlike OTL where most stayed as share croppers) you are talking about the movement of 2,000,000 people and the removal of half the labour force of the DSA main export industries. And if you've got every plantation "mostly" worked by Hindoo's then even with reduced manning we're talking about the import of at least 1,500,000 "Hindoo's" into the Deep South to replace them. That is migration on a massive scale. And would involve immense economic dislocation and enormous cost.
Further more where are these 2,000,000 million former slaves going, assuming they are matching the 75% rural 25% urban split of the general population then the DSA has to be giving the the overwhelming majority of the land in the West to Blacks and if they are going to the cities then either the DSA is undergoing a China like industrial boom and urbanisation or a lot of blacks are going to be starving to death in the gutters.
I would really recommend thinking about the numbers.

excellent points
 
That is a very good question. What do you think?

Windsor is the most obvious it's the premier Royal Palace and the one most able to be turned into a name. Stuart has too many bad connotations and they can't claim descent from any of the previous Royal families.
 
Windsor is the most obvious it's the premier Royal Palace and the one most able to be turned into a name. Stuart has too many bad connotations and they can't claim descent from any of the previous Royal families.

Aracnid

Why would they use Stuart? The new consort is Scottish but I don't see any link to the Stuart dynasty in the wiki link.

If their feeling particularly nationalistic someone might suggest Lyon, possibly even Anglicised to Lion.;) Alternatively Windsor might be an option as you suggest.

Steve
 
I'm not sure why the dynastic name isn't going to be "Lyon-Bowes" here. That's the way it has always worked - the renaming to "Windsor" OTL was a fluke of politics, not an indicator of a trend.
 
I'm not sure why the dynastic name isn't going to be "Lyon-Bowes" here. That's the way it has always worked - the renaming to "Windsor" OTL was a fluke of politics, not an indicator of a trend.

I was having a brainfart, forgot who she had married and was thinking Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
 

iddt3

Donor
Wow that is very different from OTL and I'm pretty sure that's not plausible if that plantation is typical. The DSA like every society of its era will be an agrarian one with over 75% living in rural areas. The Deep South at this time was 80% rural.
Now if the majority (51%) of blacks have left their former plantations (unlike OTL where most stayed as share croppers) you are talking about the movement of 2,000,000 people and the removal of half the labour force of the DSA main export industries. And if you've got every plantation "mostly" worked by Hindoo's then even with reduced manning we're talking about the import of at least 1,500,000 "Hindoo's" into the Deep South to replace them. That is migration on a massive scale. And would involve immense economic dislocation and enormous cost.
Further more where are these 2,000,000 million former slaves going, assuming they are matching the 75% rural 25% urban split of the general population then the DSA has to be giving the the overwhelming majority of the land in the West to Blacks and if they are going to the cities then either the DSA is undergoing a China like industrial boom and urbanisation or a lot of blacks are going to be starving to death in the gutters.
I would really recommend thinking about the numbers.
Perhaps those are Yankee Cities?
 
Perhaps those are Yankee Cities?

The OTL US population was 31,443,321 in 1860 (I assume that was the timeframe of the book extract). This TL's US probably has about 22,000,000 including Canada. In OTL the US had an urbanization rate of 25% in 1870 (source), so we can assume that the North which was more urbanised in OTL probably reaches that urbanisation rate in 1860. That means there are roughly 5 million urban citizens in TTL USA at this point. Now the influx of 2,000,0000 new urban citizens would be massively disruptive even in the unlikely event that the US lets them over the border.
As for the DSA taking a population of 14 million (as opposed to 9 million in OTL) and putting many of those extra people in urban areas thus boosting the urbanisation rate from its OTL 15% to 20% the combined population of the DSA cities is still only 2 million. Now without Virgina there will be roughly 3,400,000 blacks still if 50.1% lave their plantations that is 1,600,001 people. The would still take up most of the good farmland in the West leaving little for DSA and British born whites who are realistically going to get priority, and even if you divided them between urban and rural areas with only half going west you and the rest going to urban areas then you are still talking about an influx that will overwhelm the jobs market. The number of Blacks coming off the land needs to come down dramatically.
That's before you even start on the financial implications of shipping over 1.6 million Indians.
 
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It could be that plantations in that area for some fluke of migration had mostly indian laborers, and not the entire DSA

That would make much more sense. If you look at the West Indies some plantations fired all their share croppers and brought in Indians on contracts while most kept the share-croppers and didn't hire any Indians. Still I was more referring to this

The boy was talented, son of one of his few remaining renters, negros who still clung to the land, unlike so many before who had migrated to the cities or the west.

That suggests that the majority of negros have gone to the cities or the west. Which frankly is ASB, as I hope I've shown above. The reality is that while some will go to the cities or the West most will do what their OTL counter-parts in the Caribbean and Southern USA did which is work some the same land they used to but as share croppers. The very worst masters will find themselves without a labour force and there will be a great deal of short term disruption but these are people who have limited skill sets, and the opportunities out west or in the cities are minimal.
I suspect you'll find a similar division to OTL;
15% will leave, either to West or to urban areas.
25% will take up unclaimed marginal farmland in their local area or rent under-used land off whites.
60% will be share-croppers.

Incidentally post the Civil War plantation owners found they needed less share-croppers than slaves as share-croppers worked harder so they were able to keep production up with only 75% of their previous workforce (the amount of land under cotton went down post war as marginal land was no longer viable in the absence of slavery).
 
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While I agree that expecting the black belt to be emptied by 1870 ITTL is pretty unlikely, I would expect the overall rural black population is lower than IOTL for two reasons.

1. The position of blacks economically is marginally better than the south IOTL, and far better politically. Thus we should expect it's easier for them to migrate.

2. The openness of the west (and, I think Australia) to black settlers is unlike anything IOTL, where ethnic cleansing in the north set in only a few decades following emancipation.

Counterbalanced, however, is despite the DSA being a bit more urban and industrialized than the South IOTL, it's still not very urban or industrialized at all yet. And there are more immigrants coming in to the DSA than the southern states got from Europe, so it's hard to see the black draw to the cities being all that much greater than IOTL...yet. In another 50 years, it may be another story.
 

iddt3

Donor
While I agree that expecting the black belt to be emptied by 1870 ITTL is pretty unlikely, I would expect the overall rural black population is lower than IOTL for two reasons.

1. The position of blacks economically is marginally better than the south IOTL, and far better politically. Thus we should expect it's easier for them to migrate.

2. The openness of the west (and, I think Australia) to black settlers is unlike anything IOTL, where ethnic cleansing in the north set in only a few decades following emancipation.

Counterbalanced, however, is despite the DSA being a bit more urban and industrialized than the South IOTL, it's still not very urban or industrialized at all yet. And there are more immigrants coming in to the DSA than the southern states got from Europe, so it's hard to see the black draw to the cities being all that much greater than IOTL...yet. In another 50 years, it may be another story.
I would think a fair number would be migrating north, certainly not 2,000,000, but there would be demand in northern cities for workers, and they are certainly closer then Europe, especially if less Europeans are immigrating then in OTL. I suspect race relations in the North would be better as well then OTL, there's no civil war to poisin the relationship between the black communities and immigrants. Moreover it sounds like the US in TTL is all around a bit better place to live.
 
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I would think a fair number would be migrating north, certainly not 2,000,000, but there would be demand in northern cities for workers, and they are certainly closer then Europe, especially if less europeans are immigrating then in OTL. I suspect race relations in the North would be better as well then OTL, there's no civil war to poisin the relationship between the black communites and immigrants. Moreover it sounds like the US in TTL is all around a bit better place to live.

I think Glen has said that overall social and economic conditions for blacks in the DSA and the USA are pretty similar, to the point that there is no pressing political reason for a diaspora of blacks to flee northward.

That said, there will be more economic opportunity in the cities in the USA than the DSA for some time. There will simply be more jobs in the factories, mines, and lumber yards of the North than the DSA will have for several generations. Due to the comparable lack of language issues, I'd expect that a lot of Northern employers would prefer black DSAers to non-anglophone migrants as well. Balanced against the USA being somewhat culturally alien, I think a 50/50 split for urban migration is reasonable.

In a way, this might really save the black population in the USA. One of my concerns in the longer term is blacks outside of Virginia are so thin on the ground in this USA that OTL's color line is probably never really established. Thus the likely fate of most blacks in the cities and on the frontier would be the tendency of their acculturated children and grandchildren to vanish into the white population, who would generally not have major issue with miscegenation. If DSA migrants boosted the black population somewhat higher, however, blacks would become numerous enough to seem a threat, particularly in urban areas, which would probably stabilize the ethnicity.
 
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