Pomphis
Banned
Slavery was becoming unprofitable by the 1790s, .....
Cite ? AFAIK both soviet union and nazi germany used slave labor effectively on a big scale.
Slavery was becoming unprofitable by the 1790s, .....
What I mean is if there is a lot of cheap labour before slavery starts no one would start importing slaves.
Cite ? AFAIK both soviet union and nazi germany used slave labor effectively on a big scale.
What I mean is if there is a lot of cheap labour before slavery starts no one would start importing slaves.
Slavery was becoming unprofitable by the 1790s, had it not been for the cotton gin, it couldn't have reached the scales it had.
1. Have a boll weevil outbreak.
2. Do something or other to have there not be a cotton gin before the early 19th century. It's a very simple invention and was being worked on by a lot of people, but anything's possible, considering that it eluded humans for so long.
In this universe, slavery is completely unprofitable by 1810 and quickly falls out of favor. There are still some slaves here and there, but the writing's on the wall for it. Nobody bats an eye about a generation later when states start gradual abolition on their own.
The South primarily grows food crops,
and the cotton boom comes too late to save slavery, due to the mass importation of indentured servants from Europe.
Jared, as usual, makes an informative and accurate post.
Do you have a cite for that?
Could something like a "Law of Free Birth" practiced in many Latin American countries have been possible in the U.S? Why or why not? I'm curious about this after reading some Argentine history.
How about having the rest of the non European world consider slavery outdated or evil?
If there is no ready source of slaves the cost would become too high for it to continue.
By the way virtual slavery still exists in many non-western countries.
How about having the rest of the non European world consider slavery outdated or evil? If there is no ready source of slaves the cost would become too high for it to continue.
Which western countries ? And i mean virtual slavery as indentured servitude as in India and actual as in the Mid East and Africa.
Which is why that have world-class economies that continue to shape the flow of commerce around the world...
How about having the rest of the non European world consider slavery outdated or evil? If there is no ready source of slaves the cost would become too high for it to continue.
not unprofitable, but less efficient. Several studies done at the time showed that food crops grown by slave labor were way less efficient than those grown by free northern farmers. Wheat, hogs, cattle, you name it. The reason is pretty obvious... slaves have zero incentive to be efficient, while free farmers absolutely have to rely on the sales they make to live. Tobacco, cotton, and rice were the exceptions, mainly because they couldn't be grown in the north, and tobacco and cotton were simply in such high demand/high prices that the inefficiency didn't really matter. So, while slave grown food crops could make a profit, they were outproduced by northern free farmers.Which is wrong for two reasons. Firstly because it ignores tobacco, sugar and hemp, and secondly because it assumes that using slavery for food crops is unprofitable. It's not, provided that there's an export market for the food crops. Which there was, for wheat and rice. (Not so much for maize, unless you're distilling it afterwards).
You are changing the goalposts. Neither collapsed because they used slave labor.
Slavery was manifestly still profitable during the 1790s, not unprofitable.
The only slave-grown crop which was in decline during that period was indigo, and that was because it had only ever been profitable to grow indigo in North America thanks to British subsidies. Those were lost after the Revolution, and so indigo production collapsed and never meaningfully recovered. (Indigo was still grown by French and Spanish slaves in more tropical regions, but that's another story).
Slave-grown tobacco was booming after the Revolution. In fact, tobacco cultivation was expanding into the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia just after the Revolution, and this was only curtailed when the cotton gin made growing short-staple cotton there even more profitable.
Slave-grown rice was still highly profitable, too, if restricted in the areas it could be grown. Ditto long-staple cotton in coastal areas.
For that matter, slave-grown wheat was also capable of turning a decent profit - a point often neglected. Up to a third of Virginia's slaves were employed growing wheat (and other small grains) during the first half of the nineteenth century, and slaves were also used further west to grow wheat profitably, in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri.
So, in short, without the cotton gin, you're looking at a different pattern of slavery, but not no slavery.
In this universe, slavery is still profitably growing tobacco, rice, wheat and hemp. Potentially long-staple cotton as well (I can't remember offhand if the boll weevil attacks long-staple cotton too). And maybe raising cattle, too (something also done in Virginia). Plus sugar along the Gulf coast, assuming there's still a Louisiana Purchase. You may have even made the geographical grip of slavery worse, since without the cotton gin fewer slaves will be sold further south from the Upper South, and thus move west with their owners into Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois (as they did OTL into all four).
Which is wrong for two reasons. Firstly because it ignores tobacco, sugar and hemp, and secondly because it assumes that using slavery for food crops is unprofitable. It's not, provided that there's an export market for the food crops. Which there was, for wheat and rice. (Not so much for maize, unless you're distilling it afterwards).
not unprofitable, but less efficient. Several studies done at the time showed that food crops grown by slave labor were way less efficient than those grown by free northern farmers.
Wheat, hogs, cattle, you name it. The reason is pretty obvious... slaves have zero incentive to be efficient, while free farmers absolutely have to rely on the sales they make to live.
Tobacco, cotton, and rice were the exceptions, mainly because they couldn't be grown in the north, and tobacco and cotton were simply in such high demand/high prices that the inefficiency didn't really matter.
So, while slave grown food crops could make a profit, they were outproduced by northern free farmers.
Yes, but slavery for growing non-cash crops simply wasn't nearly as profitable as slavery for growing tobacco or especially cotton.
Wheat could be grown in Northern states. So can hemp. Those areas still ended up abolishing slavery.
I'd say that in the absence of any abolitionist movement, slavery would continue indefinitely even without cotton, but without it slavery isn't profitable enough to outweigh growing abolitionist sentiment. If slaves aren't concentrated in the South, then in places where slavery is not greatly profitable non-slave owners will greatly outnumber slave owners, and anti-slavery legislative measures will eventually pass.
And Dave Howery has a point. The majority of wheat farmers weren't slaves for a reason.
1. Have a boll weevil outbreak.