What African colonies could the CSA get if they got in the Scramble for Africa?

If the US had no interest, why would the CSA? Remember that the CSA was part of the US in the OTL by the time the Congo was up for grabs. This would be easier if we knew Jabe's TL. The best case scenario I can think of is the CSA taking African land from Spain or Portugal. That way the US wouldn't have a competing claim. After that, "natural" expansion could reach the Congo if Leopold II goes another route and the CSA can convince Europe that it will not enslave the natives and transport them back to the Confederacy.

CSA would have interest due to acquiring "apprentices" possibly and getting access to the economic interests of the area.
 
I am inclined to think that the Scramble for Africa is too late for the CSA to get African colonies - if they wanted colonies, they'd have to claim them earlier I think.

It's possible that hard times for the cotton industry might drive such a colonial push in a way that made it palatable to liberal sensibilities in Europe. Basically Liberia-style "resettlement" colonies to get rid of excess slaves.

It does assume that there'd be an excess though... It may be that slaves would simply be used for other crops or for work outside agriculture.

As far as industry goes, it's worth remembering that during the civil war the CSA was maybe the 4th biggest steel producer in the world. They were weak compared to the Union, but the Northeast of the US was one of the must industrial regions of the world at this point. So the CSA might compare rather favourably to European states if it somehow won its independence.

Of course, the CSA could also lose its relatively good position through political dysfunction, like making the state into a slave of the planter class or by having a civil war among each-other...

The CS Congress actually adopted the tariff schedule of the US with few revisions IOTL. The Southerners' resistance to tariffs is greatly overstated. But even if they were resistant to tariffs, we understand today that protective tariffs don't work. They reward inefficient producers and discourage investment and innovation. Even when done to protect infant industries, protectionism is a dubious course of action. If industries must be protected--which is always questionable--it's a lot better to give the producers a subsidy than to tax imports. And the CSA was subsidy happy.

By modern economic understanding, the free-trading CSA should be better positioned to industrialize than a protectionist CS.

When we don't acknowledge the pitfalls of protectionism, we are in essence accepting a 19th century understanding of trade policy at face value. It was wrong then and its wrong now.

So far as I know, not a single industrial state did so without protectionism. Though sometimes the protectionist measures weren't tariffs - the patent system is a protectionist measure, for example.

Do you know any exceptions?

fasquardon
 
Well, most likely by this point slavery would have already started to phase out in the CSA. The Europeans who would have purchased the cotton would have threatened embargoing the CSA unless they got rid of slavery, and so by the 1880s the country would start the process of gradually ending slavery, probably finishing up that process around the late 1890s or early 1900s.

Damn unlikely, Southern boys fought and died to preserve slavery. They weren't going to give that up so soon. Men who fought in that war would still be around and voting. A 22 year old private in 1861 would be only in his 40's in the 1880's so he if he didn't die in the war he is likely alive and kicking.
 
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