This is going to concern criminals how? As long as money could be made smuggling cotton it will be smuggled. Criminals are generally uninterested in morality. If they were meth and heroin wouldn't be sold.
Poll: When Would the CSA Eliminate Slavery
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This is going to concern criminals how? As long as money could be made smuggling cotton it will be smuggled. Criminals are generally uninterested in morality. If they were meth and heroin wouldn't be sold.
No country came close to boycotting US cotton because of slavery, so there is no realistic chance of any country boycotting Confederate cotton, let alone all of them. In the Confederacy, about 1/3rd of the population were slaves. Those Confederate states who gaver Declarations of Causes for Secession made it clear that preserving slavery was their primary reason for secession. The Confederate Constitution allowed the importation of slaves from Union states, forbade any "law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves", said that slave owners had "the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves", and said that the " institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government" in any new territory the Confederacy acquired. And the Confederacy was so determined on preserving slavery that they took about half a million casualties and spent a couple billion dollars on the Civil War.
In Brazil about 1/6th of the population were slaves, half the Confederate percentage. Brazil's Constitution did not enshrine slavery. Brazil did not suffer horrific casualties and catastrophic economic damage to preserve slavery. Yet Brazil didn't end slavery until 1888.
The idea that the Confederacy would end slavery earlier than OTL's Brazil is ASB. The idea that the Confederacy would end slavery before 1900 is wildly unlikely. The soonest for the Confederacy to credibly end slavery would be the 1930s in response to the economic upheaval of the boll weevil and the Depression, if the latter isn't butterflied away. Even then, that's more likely to result in fragmentation of the Confederacy, with a good chance of slavery outliving the Confederacy in some of the Confederate successor states. The first commercially viable cotton picking machines weren't developed until the 1950s, which might lead to Confederate emancipation in the 1960s or 1970s. Of course, slavery also existed for social, not just economic reasons, so it could continue long after it made economic sense.
I wouldn't count on the Confederate Constitution to be a be all to end all protector of slavery. The slaveocrats were massive hypocrites in just about every way you can think of. I have zero difficulty seeing them able to amend their constitution if it fits their purposes.
I agree that the CSA ending slavery before OTL's Brazil is indeed implausible, but I would draw the line at slavery being kept purely as a social convention. Economics was one of the biggest reasons the slaveocrats fought to own people after all. There's far more insidious but equally oppressive if not overt ways to keep the Confederate African population down. I've always pictured a Confederacy surviving into the 20th century heading down the road of apartheid/serf like laws essentially tying 'free' Blacks to the land and permanently preventing them from voting, much like sharecropping and the apprenticeships was slavery in all but name post Civil War. It seems like the most valid tactic the Confederacy would have adopted to 'have their cake and eat it too' if they were looking to better their image abroad.
Deleted member 92121
You raise a excellent point by bringing up the case of Brazil.
I agree that the end of slavery in the CSA before the same occurred in Brazil is ASB. However, it is important to notice that in the latter, there were a series of abolitionist laws created to ensure gradual emancipation(in no small part due to international pressure). in 1871 the "Ventre livre" law was established, it determined that any children of slaves born after the proclamation of said law was free, however they still had to work for their masters until it reached the age of 21. In 1885 the sexagenary law freed every slave above 65.
So slavery was going to die in Brazil sooner or later, if not by a general emancipation like it ocurred in 1888, then at the latest in 1935(when the slave born before the law of 1871 reached 65 years of age).
If these laws had not been enacted, I could see much greater british pressure on Brazil. The same has to be considered for the CSA. A gradual move towards abolition is something that would be demanded. At the very least in paper only. And that's not even considering Union pressure, slave rebellions(which would only grow more frequent and might receive Union support with the intent of weakening it's regional rival).
I can imagine the CSA holding out on any real attempt until the 1890's, but eventually a fundamental change to their constitution would've to be organized, to allow for the gradual, slow, safe end to the end of the slave practice. I can see the institution alive for a few decades after that, an system based socioeconomical disparity coupled with repression of any rights that would ensure a de facto servile society.
Did the world close off its economic ties to Saudi Arabia prior to 1966? Or was slavery overlooked there, as well as other qualms. Even now, business with many supposed unscrupulous nations are undertaken by western nations.
Many countries was as bad or worse than Apartheid South Africa, and didn’t end up boycotted. It really depend on global awareness of these things and how a country are seen. As for CSA it would be embarrassment for the English speaking world, which would result in a public push for doing something to force them to get rid of slavery. Saudi Arabia in 1966 on the other hand was pretty much one of those countries, most Western people knew nothing about, most likely didn’t know it existed, much like Mauritania today (which also suffer under slavery today). South Africa was a embarrassment for the 1st World, and USSR used this to great effect, which was why we saw as strong reaction to it as we did.
ObAHQ: How long until they reform it into something substantially different from antebellum chattel slavery?
Until the first and second generations who fought and bled for the repugnant ideology that they enshrined in bodies and law, you will see it persist. Until they are dead to almost a man you won't see the rise in social pressure to the amorality of it; you won't see the movement for abolition until well into the 1900s. The folks saying 1880s are being very generous in my opinion.
I think what you eventually see is a system of “socialized” slave labor for lack of a better word. Elites and the wealthy keep domestic servant type slaves for prestige and convenience. But access to the “benefits” of slave labor gets democratized via something not dissimilar to the black codes and vagrancy law chain gangs. Essentially, have the government shoulder much of the cost to supply slavery as a public good so that the businessman or lower class white gets to share in the “benefits” while not having to singly pay to feed, clothe, and shelter the slaves. This would be a way to keep a permanent underclass and co-opt the continued support of poor and middle class.
Imagine a depraved and early form of the gig economy as a public “welfare system.”
Alcsentre Calanice
Gone Fishin'
Which is, of course, a nice declaration, but a pretty useless one; US Congress didn't have such powers either, at least not before the 13th amendment.
Where in the US constitution does it say that the Congress can´t ban slavery? And as icing on the cake the CSA constitution also says that any new state or territory shall be a slave area
Alcsentre Calanice
Gone Fishin'
Nowhere, but that's not how the American constitution (or other federal constitutions) work. The constitution grants certain legislative powers to Congress, and the "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively."
So, because US Congress isn't granted the legislative power to ban slavery, it can't do it. This obviously changed with the 13th Amendment, but we're talking about the antebellum period here.
I have to wonder if the shithole that the CSA would soon become, faced with international pressure, boycotts, etc., would result in the CSA falling apart, and the individual pieces outlawing slavery - possibly as a result of rejoining the US or possibly on their own.
So the answer might be 'never', in that the CSA ceases to exist before slavery there does.
So the answer might be 'never', in that the CSA ceases to exist before slavery there does.
I could see Texas becoming independent again, LA and the border states rejoining the Union, and the rest going Red.
Who will bother doing that?
If Britain does it, her rivals won't, and vice versa.
How often, in the Victorian/Edwardian period, were such sanctions imposed on any country for anything?
Constitutions can be amended.
That said, at earliest I can see it going in the 1910s. But in the meantime the CSA would go from being arguably richer if less industrialized than its morthern neighbor in 1860, to a dysfunctional, corrupt pariah state, especially as India becomes an alternate market for cotton. The CSA would probably suffer the resource curse in spades.
Mr. House
Banned
As long as it existed they would have slavery. Chattel slavery still exists to a large extent in our timeline. Less stringent forms of slavery are the norm. In fact if you consider the modern modes of production to be effectively wage slavery, and I do, within our capitalist society then most labor is performed today under a type of slavery. Slavery under capitalist production is the norm. Now if you are asking about chattel slavery specifically it depends on how much the developed world cares about the internal affairs of the CSA. Given the developed world's track record of simply wrapping real politic concerns in the flag of humanitarianism I wouldn't expect intervention along those lines solely.
kernals12
Banned
Most Europeans thought of slavery as abhorrent, and certainly a mass boycott movement of Confederate goods would develop. And the British would be happy to eliminate a competitor to Indian cotton
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