The Boll Weevil infestation in an Independent CSA.

Spending years as a lurker here it's something I didn't see discussed all that much.

Let's just say for discussions sake that TTL's CSA is independent by an 1862 victory that is able to wrangle Kentucky, Indian Territory and Arizona Territory (south of 34th Paralell) from the Union. No Missouri, no Maryland, West Virginia is admitted into the Union. All other border states outside Kentucky are in the Union.

It also should be noted (that if it does ever come up) that the CS constitution doesn't restrict individual CS states from abolishing slavery.

How does it turn out?

And yes, my moniker is named after a "Confederate-everyman" character from TL191.
 
The CSA is going to get hit awfully hard, to the point that I would predict a population migration of some white urban dwellers back to the Union (assuming they've reestablished diplomatic relations and all that).

On the plus side, foreign suppliers of cotton will be able to take up the slack for supplying the north's textile industry.
 
The boll Weevil infestation is obviously butterflied away.












Just kidding.;) Welcome to the board.

Hey! Thanks for the welcome! But I don't think the butterfly effect of North American politics can really effect what bugs do. That little Cotton eating beetle is going to migrate from Mexico to Texas in 1892, Stars and Bars flying or not.
 
Hey! Thanks for the welcome! But I don't think the butterfly effect of North American politics can really effect what bugs do. That little Cotton eating beetle is going to migrate from Mexico to Texas in 1892, Stars and Bars flying or not.
Ummm... Could easily be 1891 or 1892, maybe even 1882 or 1902, but ja, the bugs going to get there more or less on time.
 

mowque

Banned
Ummm... Could easily be 1891 or 1892, maybe even 1882 or 1902, but ja, the bugs going to get there more or less on time.

You can play with the date more then that, I think. Animal migrations are tricky and complex. A little weather difference, a different wind gust, even a different human carrier can change things.
 
Won't really matter that much; IOTL by 1864 the pressures of war had pretty much killed the cotton monoculture anyway, with most planters diversifying into food, forage, and other crops which could be sold and consumed locally.

A Confederate victory in 1862 might delay that somewhat, but it will happen eventually because other sources of cotton such as Egypt and India will become available and the resulting competition will depress prices enough to where the more marginal suppliers will be driven out and the larger suppliers will turn to other crops and businesses to generate additional income.

By the time the weevil shows up (say 1885 to 1905) enough diversification will have taken place that the impact, although greater than OTL, will still be relatively minor.
 
By the time the weevil shows up (say 1885 to 1905) enough diversification will have taken place that the impact, although greater than OTL, will still be relatively minor.

You are leaving out that the relatively "minor" nature of the boll weevil was due to the South's integration with the greater American economy. Said "minor" problem was also one of the worst economic crises to have ever hit the American south, and it was intrinsically linked towards the mass migrations of millions of destitute southerners towards both the North and West.
 
You are leaving out that the relatively "minor" nature of the boll weevil was due to the South's integration with the greater American economy. Said "minor" problem was also one of the worst economic crises to have ever hit the American south, and it was intrinsically linked towards the mass migrations of millions of destitute southerners towards both the North and West.

I agree, I'm also going to say that in TTL Maxamillian is in charge of Mexico, he was aided by the CS (or CS mercenaries) in taking control of Mexico. So the CSA could be in line for purchasing Sonora and Chihuahua from a friendly power for a Pacific coast.
 
Won't really matter that much; IOTL by 1864 the pressures of war had pretty much killed the cotton monoculture anyway, with most planters diversifying into food, forage, and other crops which could be sold and consumed locally.

A Confederate victory in 1862 might delay that somewhat, but it will happen eventually because other sources of cotton such as Egypt and India will become available and the resulting competition will depress prices enough to where the more marginal suppliers will be driven out and the larger suppliers will turn to other crops and businesses to generate additional income.

By the time the weevil shows up (say 1885 to 1905) enough diversification will have taken place that the impact, although greater than OTL, will still be relatively minor.


I remember examining cotton prices and cotton production from the 1700s to today to get an idea of what the Southern cotton industry might be like (I really need to put the data together and put it up as a graph or series of graphs) and it turns out that cotton prices and production bounced back after the war (without slavery and with the competition from Egypt, India and Central Asia already in place). With slavery still in place and the war ending in 1862 (which is the latest point we can get for a Confederacy which survives in the form it's creators intended I think) there is very little reason to believe that cotton production wouldn't bounce back in an independent CSA.
 
I agree, I'm also going to say that in TTL Maxamillian is in charge of Mexico, he was aided by the CS (or CS mercenaries) in taking control of Mexico. So the CSA could be in line for purchasing Sonora and Chihuahua from a friendly power for a Pacific coast.

I also suspected that would be the case. I know I did a AH map of North America in the 1900s with an independent CSA which got both (and more) as the nothern tier of Mexican states were some of the best cotton producing states in Mexico (although there are a couple such as Sinaloa and others to the immediate south of Sonora which produce more cotton).

If the CSA were to gain any of these states then the boll weevil infestation would hit the independent CSA sooner by virtue of the weevils appearing in those newly gained states first. (so even if the TL of boll weevil migration hasn't changed the fact that the CSA now controls territory that the boll weevil infested earlier means that it will be affected earlier. Plus the transportation of cotton from those states to ports in the traditional CSA states would probably have hastened the arrival of the boll weevil in the original CSA by a matter of weeks or maybe months.

My view is that the boll weevil would have so devastated cotton production that it would lead to a revolutionary situation in the South (not revolutionary as in the people rise up and otherthrow the elected government but revolutionary as it would lead to a nearly complete change in society). Cotton production would take a big hit (and indeed in the prices and production data I found from various sources it is quite evident that the peak year of cotton in OTL in the South was 1915 (i.e. before the boll weevil). Thereafter it has been on a downward trajectory and never looked back. So we would have had plummetting cotton prices and attempts at diversification but even so some farmers will want to take up their roots and simply leave, maybe for the Union in some cases but maybe also for the cities of the Confederacy. There would then be an excess of slaves and slave prices would probably fall very quickly. In that scenario we could see more slaves being bought or leased for industrial businesses (like mining) - and before anyone says "it can't happen" I recommend you read "Slavery By Another Name" by Douglas Blackmon; slaves were bought and leased by factories in OTL and there is no reason to believe the practice wouldn't continue. Industrial businesses and smaller, diversified farms won't need quite as many slaves so slaves will still be cheaper. This means that even lower class whites could afford to buy them (probably for the first time in the lives of many) but slaves might become so cheap that a few might even be able to purchase their own freedom and in isolated cases across the South farmers may just abandon their slaves and they become free by default.

In that environment we could see new laws put in place to keep free blacks as second-class residents of the South and efforts launched to ship off "excess blacks" to places like Haiti and/or Africa (so Liberia could experience a wave of new migrants under this scenario, thereby increasing the proportion of the population that is "Americo-Liberian").
 
It turns out very, very badly for the Confederacy, which if it has any industry at all has a very minimal sector not suited for civilian manufacturing and in an economy which is predominantly monocrop cash-crop agriculture as opposed to a more balanced one. And in contrast to people who say

"1.Boll Weevil wipes out cotton.
2. ?????
3. Industrial liberal democracy with no racism and segregation and a shiny-happy-utopia"

In reality the end of the cotton monoculture and the results of the Boll Weevil would make the CSA into an English-speaking version of 1990s Mexico circa economic collapse.
 
My view is that the boll weevil would have so devastated cotton production that it would lead to a revolutionary situation in the South (not revolutionary as in the people rise up and otherthrow the elected government but revolutionary as it would lead to a nearly complete change in society). Cotton production would take a big hit (and indeed in the prices and production data I found from various sources it is quite evident that the peak year of cotton in OTL in the South was 1915 (i.e. before the boll weevil). Thereafter it has been on a downward trajectory and never looked back. So we would have had plummetting cotton prices and attempts at diversification but even so some farmers will want to take up their roots and simply leave, maybe for the Union in some cases but maybe also for the cities of the Confederacy. There would then be an excess of slaves and slave prices would probably fall very quickly. In that scenario we could see more slaves being bought or leased for industrial businesses (like mining) - and before anyone says "it can't happen" I recommend you read "Slavery By Another Name" by Douglas Blackmon; slaves were bought and leased by factories in OTL and there is no reason to believe the practice wouldn't continue. Industrial businesses and smaller, diversified farms won't need quite as many slaves so slaves will still be cheaper. This means that even lower class whites could afford to buy them (probably for the first time in the lives of many) but slaves might become so cheap that a few might even be able to purchase their own freedom and in isolated cases across the South farmers may just abandon their slaves and they become free by default.

In that environment we could see new laws put in place to keep free blacks as second-class residents of the South and efforts launched to ship off "excess blacks" to places like Haiti and/or Africa (so Liberia could experience a wave of new migrants under this scenario, thereby increasing the proportion of the population that is "Americo-Liberian").

Good points.

The collapse of the Southern cotton economy will have some very interesting financial implications. Cotton stayed very profitible for a long time, if I recall correctly, it was still amongst the top 5 most valuable US exports into the early decades of the 20th century. Cotton will likely be even more important in an unreconstructed CSA.

The planter elite will likely to continue to expand their holdings of land and slaves (hell many of them may diversify into railroads, industry, timber, coal and eventually oil) Nevertheless said investments will almost certainly be leveraged through assets in land, slaves, and increasingly in cotton futures. The boll weevil will cause the value of all three to plummet precipitously, and with them much of the confederacy's paper assets. Consequently the damage won't just be limited towards those directly linked to the cotton industry.
 
I also suspected that would be the case. I know I did a AH map of North America in the 1900s with an independent CSA which got both (and more) as the nothern tier of Mexican states were some of the best cotton producing states in Mexico (although there are a couple such as Sinaloa and others to the immediate south of Sonora which produce more cotton).

If the CSA were to gain any of these states then the boll weevil infestation would hit the independent CSA sooner by virtue of the weevils appearing in those newly gained states first. (so even if the TL of boll weevil migration hasn't changed the fact that the CSA now controls territory that the boll weevil infested earlier means that it will be affected earlier. Plus the transportation of cotton from those states to ports in the traditional CSA states would probably have hastened the arrival of the boll weevil in the original CSA by a matter of weeks or maybe months.

My view is that the boll weevil would have so devastated cotton production that it would lead to a revolutionary situation in the South (not revolutionary as in the people rise up and otherthrow the elected government but revolutionary as it would lead to a nearly complete change in society). Cotton production would take a big hit (and indeed in the prices and production data I found from various sources it is quite evident that the peak year of cotton in OTL in the South was 1915 (i.e. before the boll weevil). Thereafter it has been on a downward trajectory and never looked back. So we would have had plummetting cotton prices and attempts at diversification but even so some farmers will want to take up their roots and simply leave, maybe for the Union in some cases but maybe also for the cities of the Confederacy. There would then be an excess of slaves and slave prices would probably fall very quickly. In that scenario we could see more slaves being bought or leased for industrial businesses (like mining) - and before anyone says "it can't happen" I recommend you read "Slavery By Another Name" by Douglas Blackmon; slaves were bought and leased by factories in OTL and there is no reason to believe the practice wouldn't continue. Industrial businesses and smaller, diversified farms won't need quite as many slaves so slaves will still be cheaper. This means that even lower class whites could afford to buy them (probably for the first time in the lives of many) but slaves might become so cheap that a few might even be able to purchase their own freedom and in isolated cases across the South farmers may just abandon their slaves and they become free by default.

In that environment we could see new laws put in place to keep free blacks as second-class residents of the South and efforts launched to ship off "excess blacks" to places like Haiti and/or Africa (so Liberia could experience a wave of new migrants under this scenario, thereby increasing the proportion of the population that is "Americo-Liberian").

Very, very good.

I tend to think the same, but more along the lines of what robertp6165 thought, that a situation like this is going to pretty much going to be the death knell of slavery as the Confederates knew it. From a situation like this the CS will have to industrialize, not government funded or anything mind you, but instead from private investors and business entrepeneurs.

Without a doubt because of a CS victory like this the shock and hatred that brewed during Reconstruction and blossomed into Jim Crow never happened, much of the CSA's industrial base that popped up during the war is still going to be around and in good shape because the Union never got to it.

Add to it, that Blacks in the CSA (albeit gradually emmancipated) on a state-by-state level over the span of say 30-40 years from the late 1880s-1910's/1920's will be largely put into peonage, they'll be sharecroppers with no voting rights much like OTL, but no segregation model like OTL.

The POD to TTL is sometime in September 1862, anything that prevents Antietam and allows Lee to bloodynose the AotP, which also allows the Army of Mississippi/Tennessee/Kentucky to pull off a successful Heartland Offensive the following month. And probably get Arizona in a plebecite and the Indian Territory, but nothing else from the Union.
 
What is someone smuggles the Boll Weevil into the newly-independent Confederacy in the immediate aftermath of the war?
 
What TTL's CSA looks like:

All original CSA seceding states, plus Kentucky. Indian Territory is about to become the state of Sequoyah. Arizona makes up all of OTL southern AZ and NM below the 34th Paralell. By 1890-1910 Sonora and Chihuahua are CS states. Cuba is being eyed by the CSA. In all the CS has or will have 17 states, with Cuba, 18 states.
 
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