Effects of CSA victory on abolition elsewhere

This is my first post. :D

It's a staple of Confederate victory scenarios that slavery is abolished in the Spanish Caribbean colonies and Brazil in the same timeframe as OTL, and this moves the Confederate States to reform slavery despite it being explicitly forbidden. But doesn't this ignore the political and ideological ramifications of slavery being vindicated by Confederate independence? It's pretty easy to imagine the ideological fallout of the South's success stunting the influence of abolitionists and bolstering the position of the slave owning class in the other slaveholding countries of the Americas. And with the other major example of an American state interfering with slavery ending badly and literally tearing that country apart, wouldn't the political will to act against slavery in Brazil be crippled?

Basically, instead of abolition in Brazil pressuring the CSA to get with the times, like in most timelines, wouldn't it be the other way around?
 
No, I think Brazil was well on the war to abolition already and probably didn't care at all about the Confederacy. Most of the Americas manumitted years or decades prior. Most Brazilian slaves had been slowly freed until they made up the minority of the black/mulatto population by 1880. It was only a matter of time and external factors wouldn't have mattered.

Cuba was different and might have been conquered by an independant confederacy, thus potentially prolonging slavery there as long as the south.
 
It's pretty easy to imagine the ideological fallout of the South's success stunting the influence of abolitionists and bolstering the position of the slave owning class in the other slaveholding countries of the Americas.
In the Americas, perhaps, though it depends whether their victory is ascribed specifically to slavery or a combination of factors. The effect in Europe, however, will be more subtle. By the time of the American Civil War, anti-slavery had become "an article of faith in Victorian Britain... the wrongness of slave-holding and slave trading had become an unassailable truth, unacceptable to question publicly" (Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Britain [2012] p.17). The Confederate ambassador James Mason concluded after his time in Britain that "In my conversations with English gentlemen, I have found it was in vain to combat their sentiment. The so-called anti-slavery feeling seems to have become with them a sentiment akin to patriotism."

One of the major factors in British anti-slavery was the existence of an English speaking slave-owning power just across the Atlantic. Books and plays, like Uncle Tom's Cabin or the Octoroon, provided graphic depictions of the horrors of slavery. In provincial towns and cities, local anti-slavery societies held regular meetings to bring these horrors to the attention of the public, and to raise funds in order to fight them. Anti-slavery activists went on speaking tours: not just British lecturers like Henry Vincent and Ernest Jones, not just Southerners like Archibald Mackenzie or the Virginian M.D. Conway, but escaped slaves. William Jackson, Jefferson Davis's former coachman; Jacob Green, who went from Kentucky to Heckmondwike; Henry 'Box' Brown, who toured with an anti-slavery panorama that visually depicted slave life; John Anderson, who murdered a man during his escape to Canada and who was protected from extradition for the crime by both the Canadian and British governments: all were given an opportunity to speak in front of British audiences to give their side of the story.

Historically, British anti-slavery lost much of its relevance after the American Civil War. Opposition to slavery was still a driver of British actions, whether private like Livingstone's expeditions in Africa or political like the opposition to the Fugitive Slave Circular of 1876. However, anti-slavery never regained the primacy it had previously enjoyed. The continued existence of an English-speaking slave state on the other side of the Atlantic- a state, moreover, set up specifically to perpetuate slavery- would have completely changed this dynamic. The creation of a free-state Union, shorn of its slave-owning rump, no longer tolerating slavery as the price of Union but actively campaigning against it on the grounds of realpolitik, would have changed the dynamic even further.

To bring this back to Brazil, by 1863 the British ambassador William Christie was actively campaigning for the rights of emancipados: this among other factors led to the temporary suspension of diplomatic relations between Brazil and the UK, with British demands being met in 1864. With slavery high on the political agenda, and the effect of the expansionist inclination of the Confederate state on the security of British possessions in the Americas, Britain would have almost undoubtedly taken an even more aggressive role in South America- and, in the balance of probability, would have been supported by the Union either diplomatically or militarily in doing so. As such, it's plausible that the effect of a Confederate victory would be to hasten, not to delay, Brazilian emancipation.

Do you know where I can see some stats on this?
The 1872 Brazilian census recorded 183,140 African-born people, of whom 44,580 were free (emancipados) and 138,560 slaves: Robert Conrad, 'Neither Slave nor Free: The Emancipados of Brazil, 1818-1868,' The Hispanic American Historical Review Vol. 53, No. 1 (Feb., 1973), p. 70. You might also try Herbert S. Klein, 'The Coloured Freedmen in Brazilian Slave Society,' Journal of Social History vol. 3 no. 1 (Fall 1969), pp. 30-52.
 
what effects would such an aggressive British policy have on Brazilian nationalism and the position of the monarchy?

In OTL, according to wiki for what that's worth:

Another effect was an uproar among Brazilian slave owners and upper classes, resulting in the toppling of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic in 1889 – indeed, the Lei Áurea is often regarded as the most immediate (but not the only) cause of the fall of monarchy in Brazil.

The Lei Áurea is the law that abolished slavery in Brazil for those who don't know.

With that in mind, and the potential for slave owners to be in a stronger position than they were historically, could the issue of slavery come to blows in Brazil with pro slavery revolutionaries fighting under a patriotic, anti-British banner?
 
With that in mind, and the potential for slave owners to be in a stronger position than they were historically, could the issue of slavery come to blows in Brazil with pro slavery revolutionaries fighting under a patriotic, anti-British banner?
Only if the monarchy handles the issue very poorly. It would be easy to present emancipation under these circumstances as something forced upon the government by outside circumstances, rather than an initiative of the monarchy itself. Coupled with compensated emancipation, and a period of indenture for freed slaves (both of which were absent from the 1888 measure, and both of which were successfully used by Britain) the social disruption which led to the abolition of the monarchy could have been avoided.
 
No, I think Brazil was well on the war to abolition already and probably didn't care at all about the Confederacy. Most of the Americas manumitted years or decades prior. Most Brazilian slaves had been slowly freed until they made up the minority of the black/mulatto population by 1880. It was only a matter of time and external factors wouldn't have mattered.

Cuba was different and might have been conquered by an independant confederacy, thus potentially prolonging slavery there as long as the south.

Yes, I believe by 1860 the only countries and territories left in the Americas where slavery was still legal anyway were the United States, Brazil, Paraguay, the Dutch colonies (Dutch Antilles and Surinam) and the Spanish possessions of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In each of these cases other than in the United States there were a number of internal factors as well that would have to be taken into account. Additionally, robcraufurd alluded to "the effect of the expansionist inclination of the Confederate state on the security of British possessions in the Americas" and this would likely also have been a consideration for the Spanish and the Dutch in the event of a Confederate victory. It wasn't too long ago that the Americans (partially driven by slave state interests) had been attempting to obtain Cuba from Spain. Now with the establishment of an avowed slave state in the region, the Spanish and the Dutch might be concerned about Confederate expansionist tendencies towards slave owning territories such as their colonies. Perhaps this might hasten, rather than delay the end of slavery in their colonies similar to how such tendencies might have hastened the end of slavery in Brazil as robcraufurd theorized.

Overall though, a Confederate victory isn't going to have much impact on the abolition of slavery in the Americas for the simple reason that slavery had already been abolished in the vast majority of countries and territories in the Americas.

Do you know where I can see some stats on this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil#Steps_towards_freedom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Free_Birth

The great drought in the late 1870s apparently put a lot of pressure on the slave holders and resulted in a number of emancipation societies being formed as the slave holders attempted to sell off their slaves.

EDIT: Here is a good map which seems pretty accurate concerning the abolition of slavery in the Americas:

http://hillfighter.deviantart.com/art/Abolition-of-Slavery-Americas-215869460

abolition_of_slavery_americas_by_hillfighter-d3kitxw.png


http://hillfighter.deviantart.com/art/Abolition-of-Slavery-Caribbean-213960154

abolition_of_slavery_caribbean_by_hillfighter-d3jdwpm.png
 
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No, I think Brazil was well on the war to abolition already and probably didn't care at all about the Confederacy.

For a contrary view:

"The American Civil War was also a critical turning point in the struggle over slavery in both Cuba and Brazil. The defeat of the slaveholding Confederacy had a powerful effect on public opinion in both empires...The 'civilized world' had condemned slavery, and abolition in the United States was the last nail in the coffin of proslavery respectability. In Spain an abolitionist society formed in 1865, and Spanish legislators raised the question of the future of slavery in the Caribbean. In Brazil, Dom Pedro II suggested to his cabinet that they consider a plan for gradual emancipation; *all of these actors explicitly noted the end of slavery in the United States as a principal motivating factor.* [my emphasis--DT]

"With Washington DC no longer acting internationally in the interests of slaveholders, the United States finally cooperated with Great Britain in its decades-long effort to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. The Anglophone nations pressured Spain, which formally abolished its slave trade in 1866. The Spanish government also created the *Junta de Informacion sobre Ultramar* to consider colonial reforms, including the gradual abolition of slavery...The Junta disbanded with few accomplishments, which frustrated the ambitions of colonists and abolitionists alike and laid the seeds of a war on independence that would come.

"Spain's actions inspired Dom Pedro to finally make public his desire to see gradual abolition in Brazil. His 1867 address to the newly elected Chamber of Deputies charged them to consider the future of the empire's 'servile element' with a view to ending slavery. With small steps, the emperor had already begun to act toward this end. In July 1866 he responded to the petition of a French abolitionist society by observing that emancipation was 'nothing more than a question of method and opportunity. In November he granted freedom to government-owned slaves who agreed to serve as soldiers in the Paraguayan War and strongly encouraged private slaveholders to grant manumissions for the same purpose. But slaveholders were Dom Pedro's most powerful supporters, and their interests would not be ignored. These initial steps foundered, but the question of emancipation had been raised, and it did not go away...

"Conflict in Cuba and the Spanish government's [1870] Moret law contributed powerfully to Dom Pedro's ability to move the passage of Brazil's own [the Rio Branco Law]...Like the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States these laws were more important for their symbolic impacts than for the number of enslaved people freed through the formal mechanisms they put in place...

"In the urban centers of Brazil, which had grown in wealth and sophistication over the years, *the advance of international abolitionism inspired many.* [my emphasis--DT] Brazil's abolitionist movement took off in the late 1870's when reformer-legislators...became disenchanted with the inadequacy of the Rio Branco Law and publicly dedicated themselves to immediate abolition.."

Edward B. Rugemer, "Why Civil War? the Politics of Slavery in International Perspective, " in *The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War* edited by David T. Gleeson and Simon Lewis (University of South Carolina Press 2014).
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ucy7BwAAQBAJ&pg=PT27
 
*all of these actors explicitly noted the end of slavery in the United States as a principal motivating factor.* [my emphasis--DT]
Though, given that the Brazilian move failed, it seems the motivating factor provided by the Civil War was relatively small and, by extension, would not have been difficult or impossible to replace. More fundamental, slower-moving changes than the Civil War helped push Brazil towards abolition. The breakdown of the coercive system during the Paraguayan war, allowing slaves to escape, find shelter in quilombos or join the army; the rise in coffee exports, which oriented Brazil's economy to the international market; the growth of new-money coffee planters and the development of white-collar urban workers; the stimulation of manufacturing in the Paraguayan war and its continued growth after the war; foreign immigration and the changes in the labour market which it caused: none of these factors were the result of the Civil War, and all of them were critical to ensuring that the move towards emancipation which was stillborn in 1865 came to fruition in 1888.

We should probably be unsurprised if a book entitled Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War plays up the role of the Civil War abroad, given how short it might be if it didn't do so. We should also bear in mind that this is an American book dealing with a key story in the national history which took place less than 150 years ago and with significant contemporary ramifications: avoiding at least a degree of unconscious bias under these circumstances is more or less impossible. In more general works dealing specifically with Brazilian emancipation, different views of the motivations behind abolition are given:

The increasing demand for labor in an expanding coffee economy and the rise of urban groups dissatisfied with slavery as a system made abolition a necessity. Why then, we may ask, were the first steps toward abolition taken in the late 1860s and early 1870s, before either of these forces could be considered very strong? And why was the African slave trade prohibited as early as 1850? The answer to both these questions is to be found in the pressure applied by the British. British efforts to destroy the slave trade have been much discussed and need not detain us here... It is less well known that Britain continued to put pressure on the government of Pedro II in the 1850s and 1860s until Brazil itself gave evidence of a firm commitment to end slavery. Whereas the law freeing those children of slaves born after September 28, 1871, is usually considered the first evidence of an abolitionist campaign, it was really the conclusion of the British phase of the story which had begun forty years earlier. (Richard Graham, 'Causes for the Abolition of Negro Slavery in Brazil: An Interpretive Essay,' The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 46, No. 2 [May 1966] pp. 129-130)

Indeed, there are suggestions that the Civil War may have delayed Brazilian abolition:
The U.S. model of abolition had multiple meanings for Brazilians playing a very different role in each of the phases in which the Brazilian abolitionism unfolded, the Paraguayan War being the internal element which propelled the shift in the Brazilian representation of the United States from one stage to the other. In the first phase, we found that the U.S. path to abolition was seen as a dramatic event which brought the case of the United States to the fore as a negative example and thus as a model to be avoided. The war whereby slavery was brought to an end had been too appalling in its costs and too unpredictable in its consequences which were likely, moreover, to cause further social hatred and unrest. (Natalia Bas, 'Brazilian images of the United States, 1861-1898: A working version of modernity?' [unpub. PhD thesis, University College London, 2012] pp.54-5)

To nuance the argument further, Seymour Drescher saw two models of abolitionism. One was the Anglo-American model, slow moving but employing broad popular appeal to secure abolition; the second was the Continental model, focused on central government and negotiations between key stakeholders (Seymour Drescher, 'Brazilian Abolition in Comparative Perspective,' The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 [August 1988], p.441). He suggested that Brazil's moves towards emancipation followed the second model until the 1860s: "Great Britain's role was preponderant in linking the achievement of independence with formal abolition treaties. Britain also intervened in Brazilian domestic slavery over emancipado issues... Even more blatantly than in the European context, moreover, the British government "colonised" abolitionism in Brazil through secret subsidies and covert agents." (p.443)

What I'm suggesting is that Brazil either continues to follow the Continental path or creates a hybrid between the two. The compensated emancipation and period of indenture which I suggested were a hallmark of this model, based as it was on securing the acquiescence of the slaveholders.

There's another reason I find the argument that Confederate victory would have little effect on Brazilian emancipation compelling: many of the factors you listed as being critical to its success to support your argument don't actually change in the event of Southern independence. For instance:

"With Washington DC no longer acting internationally in the interests of slaveholders, the United States finally cooperated with Great Britain in its decades-long effort to abolish the transatlantic slave trade.
This paragraph conflates slavery and the slave trade, but I'll deal purely with the latter here. After February 1862, when the US conceded the right of search to the British, slave ships can no longer escape justice by hoisting a Union flag. The Confederacy has outlawed the slave trade, and has little interest in provoking the British by refusing them the right of search. If Britain doesn't secure a clause in the peace treaty providing for mutual rights of search, or sign a separate treaty with the South after the war, the government may simply conclude that it has the right to search Confederate ships because the South's independence was not established at the time the Union signed the treaty. Palmerston's treatment of Brazilian and Portuguese slave ships provides a similar previous example of this.

"In the urban centers of Brazil, which had grown in wealth and sophistication over the years, *the advance of international abolitionism inspired many.*
Note that this says international abolitionism: I hope Rugemer wasn't thinking solely of the Civil War, because as it happens Brazil looks as much to Europe as to America in this period. Moreover, international abolitionism will still unquestionably be advancing despite Confederate independence- the very result that most British abolitionists expected.

"So attractive to the English was the vision of an emancipated North achieving a moral renaissance by sloughing off the South, and then steadily growing in strength and excellence at the expense of an independent but decadent rival, that it became something of a cliché in the next year or so." (D.P. Crook, 'Portents of War: English Opinion on Secession,' Journal of American Studies, vol. 4 p. 2 [February 1971] p.178).

As the North emancipates its slaves a few years after the war; as the North inevitably grows and the South stagnates; as British and American government officials and private activists highlight this increasing disparity; as the Union seeks engagement with the wider world in the interest of checking its new rival on the American continent, finding abolitionism a useful tool to build these links, the cause of emancipation will advance.
 
Only if the monarchy handles the issue very poorly. It would be easy to present emancipation under these circumstances as something forced upon the government by outside circumstances, rather than an initiative of the monarchy itself. Coupled with compensated emancipation, and a period of indenture for freed slaves (both of which were absent from the 1888 measure, and both of which were successfully used by Britain) the social disruption which led to the abolition of the monarchy could have been avoided.

So why didn't they do this historically?
 
So why didn't they do this historically?
Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, because the 1888 move wasn't something forced on the government by outside circumstances in the way I'm suggesting emancipation might be in the event of Confederate victory. When Britain pushed slave trade abolition on Brazil in the 1830s, it was the British judges sitting in the mixed commission courts who needed the National Guard to escort them through the angry stone-throwing crowds surrounding the courthouse: the monarch escaped the opprobrium, because he wasn't seen as responsible for the measure.
 
That doesn't explain why the monarchy mishandled emancipation like it did and got deposed, especially since the landowners were the monarchy's base of support until that time.
 
That doesn't explain why the monarchy mishandled emancipation like it did and got deposed, especially since the landowners were the monarchy's base of support until that time.
To be fair, I wasn't aware you were asking specifically why they mishandled emancipation. When you quoted the whole post and asked "why didn't they do this" I assumed it referred to what I suggested the government do- present emancipation as being forced on them by the outside world- rather than the subordinate information about what an alternative emancipation scheme might look like. There's a number of reasons why it was mishandled, but probably the most fundamental comes back to what I explained earlier about the two models of emancipation:

One was the Anglo-American model, slow moving but employing broad popular appeal to secure abolition; the second was the Continental model, focused on central government and negotiations between key stakeholders (Seymour Drescher, 'Brazilian Abolition in Comparative Perspective,' The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 [August 1988], p.441). He suggested that Brazil's moves towards emancipation followed the second model until the 1860s...The compensated emancipation and period of indenture which I suggested were a hallmark of this model, based as it was on securing the acquiescence of the slaveholders.

When the law was put together, the government wasn't concerned with the traditional landowners as much as it was appeasing abolitionist sentiment among new urban groups and coffee-planting elites which had arisen since the 1870s. As such, instead of being framed with a view to reaching a compromise with the interests of key stakeholders like the landowners- it simply emancipated the slaves in a rather bald fashion. This seems to have lost them the support of the landowners, while failing to win over the new liberal groups. In the event that the push for emancipation is coming from outside Brazil, the government will be more sensitive to its position and more likely to attempt to find a means of accommodating emancipation to the requirements of the landowners.
 
To be fair, I wasn't aware you were asking specifically why they mishandled emancipation. When you quoted the whole post and asked "why didn't they do this" I assumed it referred to what I suggested the government do- present emancipation as being forced on them by the outside world- rather than the subordinate information about what an alternative emancipation scheme might look like. There's a number of reasons why it was mishandled, but probably the most fundamental comes back to what I explained earlier about the two models of emancipation:

Wow I never saw this. But wouldn't the perception that emancipation was being forced on Brazil lead to a nationalist backlash against the monarchy?
 
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