The beetles that changed America

The boll weevil was a dreaded cotton killing pest that invaded the US at the end of the 19th century. It proved devastating on the south's economy, forcing cotton farmers to diversify their crops. There was no effective countermeasure until the 1970s.

So what if this pestilence hit a century earlier? How much effect would it have on slavery and the American Civil War, or on the Industrial Revolution?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil
 

cw1865

King Cotton

Of course demand for cotton + gin = heavy demand for slave labor in early 19th century. I'm not completely convinced that they wouldn't have found other uses for slavery. The South did have other cash crops including rice, tobacco, indigo and even sugar. The common view is that industrialization and slavery don't go hand in hand and that somehow, one precludes the other. Of course it prevents the formation of a mass market.

Ultimately in the face of the boll weavil epidemic, the South had to adapt and many went into mixed farming and industry. That adaption would've obviously occurred sooner, I don't see any truly compelling reason how slaves don't fit into that picture.
 
Farmland isn't all the same, though. The land that's good for cotton can't be used for rice or indigo, and isn't very good for tobacco or sugar. Cotton land that can't be used for cotton goes into producing food crops, most probably corn, not those other cash-export crops. And while, when you already have slaves and have decided to grow corn instead of cotton, of course you use your slaves, there's less benefit to using slaves on newly-established corn farms (too much idle time, no need to gin the stuff, etc). If we go with the 100 years early mark - Texas in 1792, Alabama in 1815, the whole South in 1825 - Then Alabama and Mississippi are states with low slave commitment, and Arkansas and Missouri are even lower than OTL. North Carolina has a large slave population with no easy way to unload them, so it will try industrialising along the Maryland-Delaware model. South Carolina is still South Carolina, there will still be nullification in 1833, but I shouldn't be surprised if there's no Compromise of 1850 - because when SC kicks up a fuss, they find they don't have all that much support from the rest of the South.
 

cw1865

Exports

I think by the time of the Civil War, cotton accounted for something like 60% of all US exports. So, for a 'cotton replacement' to exist I would agree that whatever replaces cotton needs to fit, or complement, the Industrial Revolution in England and also to a lesser extent in the US.

Corn can be 'turned into' whiskey and beef and we also need to remember that Argentina rode beef to be the most affluent country in the world in 1900 in per capita terms.

Clearly King Cottons' profits fuel the system - in and of itself, but I tend to think that when the wage=0 (the cost of obtaining and owning a slave of course was not 0) that there will be demand for that labor.

Nevertheless, England's industrial revolution WAS producing a country that required agricultural imports (they were importing food from the North); whether that is enough to supplant cotton? In and of itself, more than likely, not.

Cotton turns the South into a 'one horse' economy. Without it, I see a more diversified economy that continues to 'plug into' both England and the North, but I really don't see the slaves fading away until the XIII Amendment. If the South became more, for lack of a better term, co-depednent with the Northern economy as opposed to export dependent on the British economy, I see a smaller chance of the country falling into Civil War.
 
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