What if Lincoln embagos grain to Europe

What keeps countries from planting more crops is that after a poor harvest there less food for both people and animals, which leads to a slaughter of work animals then that means you are less able to efficiently grow and harvest corps which leads to less food for people and animals, and that leads to an even larger slaughter of work animals... But I digress, The threat of a grain embargo did work because there was a move by some politicians in Great Britain to recognize the CSA but only smart, cool leadership by Lord Pamlerston {who was very pro Confederacy) kept both Great Britain and France from recognizing the CSA. I have been trying to get research information about the weather and crop harvest levels but I do not have the resources to do so. As for Great Britain and France doing anything about an U.S. grain embargo they really can not project force across the Atlantic Ocean, all the U.S. has to do to win is to go in a defensive crouch, build up coastal deferences, build more ships for the navy, and if Great Britain attack, just raise 150,000 troops and take out Toronto and Halifax.
 
The threat of a grain embargo did work because there was a move by some politicians in Great Britain to recognize the CSA but only smart, cool leadership by Lord Pamlerston {who was very pro Confederacy) kept both Great Britain and France from recognizing the CSA.

Utterly incorrect, as far as Britain goes. I suggest you read David T's post which he linked to earlier in this thread, which effectively demolishes the "wheat threat" myth.

As for France, seeing as in most times France exported grain to Britain, a grain embargo made no difference whatsoever to them, other than offering their farmers some extra profits from higher prices for their exported grain.

As for Great Britain and France doing anything about an U.S. grain embargo they really can not project force across the Atlantic Ocean,

No, they just had no interest in projecting force across the Atlantic. There is a distinct difference between "choose not" and "can not". Nothing really interested Britain in going to war with the USA during the ACW, and France (i.e. Napoleon III) was not willing to move against the USA unless he had tacit British support (or, at least, confirmation that Britain would stay neutral).

all the U.S. has to do to win is to go in a defensive crouch, build up coastal deferences, build more ships for the navy, and if Great Britain attack, just raise 150,000 troops and take out Toronto and Halifax.

Britain had the industrial capacity to outbuild any U.S. shipbuilding spree by four or five to one, if not more. And how are they arming these 150,000 extra troops? (Most U.S. weapons in 1861 and 1862 were imported from Europe). And what does the CSA do while the US is pulling 150,000 troops from the South to go invade Canada?
 
There's an asymmetry in the North and the South's policy towards Great Britain during the ACW that defeats any attempt to boil it down to King Corn vs. King Cotton. The South has the one big card - cotton! All the cotton!

The United States doesn't have any single card like that - they just have, and benefit from, a large pile of things that combine to make British intervention highly unlikely as long as the US practices some pretty work-a-day diplomacy. No-one factor keeps the British out, the whole bundle of sticks do.
 
What keeps countries from planting more crops is that after a poor harvest there less food for both people and animals, which leads to a slaughter of work animals then that means you are less able to efficiently grow and harvest corps which leads to less food for people and animals, and that leads to an even larger slaughter of work animals...

You're thinking of a pre-industrial setting. A grain embargo on Britain in 1861 would not have led to a mass slaughter of draft animals because they were valuable economic assets in the hands of market-oriented landowners, not part of the household inventory of subsistence farming peasants. It would also have led to steeply rising prices, which in turn would draw supplies from other countries where the slaughter of draft animals then might happen. Especially Russia, a major exporter of grain almost regardless of the situation at home, still had a peasantry vulnerable to such effects. in Britain, it would have hurt the landless working classes both rural and urban, not the owners of productive assets.

Much more importantly, though, it is extremely unlikely the British government at the time would have given in to overt blackmail even if it had triggered an agricultural subsistence crisis. Britain didn't need to grow more food. It could afford to import more food (this is the heyday of Manchester capitalism, other countries will export for better prices even if it means literally starving their own populations). As to the military situation, assuming the US government could spare the resources for another front, I doubt Lincoln would politically survive a war with Britain.
 
Why wouldn't grain be a factor? Diplomatic war goes on every day. mild threats of embargo if Europe recognizes CSA is a weapon. so is the threat of recognition if an embargo is enacted. The same goes for a myriad of stuff. Sometimes it's the weapon that wins the day. Sometimes it's how well you play the game/use the weapon that wins the day. How the European powers treat the situation is the result of consideration of what happens if they act or don't act in a certain manner.
 
The cotton embargo was the CSA pushing cotton prices up so that the price cotton bonds - which were one of the CSA's biggest sources of foreign money - went up.

Since the USA can get foreign money without needing to do grain bonds, there won't be any deliberate attempts to force up the price of grain.
There was a French war going on in Mexico contemporary to the US Civil War. It was a pretty blatant case of imperialism, which is cause for sanctions in the opinions of some people. Not all people, but some people.
 
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Lincoln did not want to give the factions in Britain and France who were favorable to supporting the C.S.A. any more clout than they already had. He would not do something like this.
 
What keeps countries from planting more crops is that after a poor harvest there less food for both people and animals, which leads to a slaughter of work animals then that means you are less able to efficiently grow and harvest corps which leads to less food for people and animals, and that leads to an even larger slaughter of work animals...

That´s only true if countries can´t import farm animals from other countries. Which in the 1860s isn´t true.
You also presuppose that all harvests in Europe somehow fail in the same year. Given the different climates between - say - Britain and Central Europe that strikes me as unlikely.

But I digress, The threat of a grain embargo did work because there was a move by some politicians in Great Britain to recognize the CSA but only smart, cool leadership by Lord Pamlerston {who was very pro Confederacy) kept both Great Britain and France from recognizing the CSA. I have been trying to get research information about the weather and crop harvest levels but I do not have the resources to do so.

http://www.econ.ku.dk/research/publications/pink/2008/0808.pdf

Page 9, figure 5: UK and US wheat production
I´d estimate British domestic wheat production between 10 and 18 million quarters between 1860 and 1865. With a recorded harvest of 18+ million in 1864. With US production around 20+ million during that period.

Page 10, figure 6: UK consumption of wheat and population
UK consumption seems to be between 17 (1861) and 23 (1864/65) million quarters.
(The high consumption in 1864/65 might be a result of the record harvest in 1864? Resulting in lower prices?)

So imports seem to be around 5-7 million quarters of wheat per year?
Plus apparently bad harvests in 1862/63 in Britain?

On the other hand I own a book "Climate History of Central Europe". It records too dry years in 1858, 1859 and 1864 for that region of Europe. Meaning that harvests in those years probably would be below average. However 1860 to 1863 in Central Europe seem to have been perfectly normal years. So exports of wheat from Central Europe are certainly possible during those years.
While the too dry year 1864 in Central Europe is canceled out by a record harvest in Britain.

According to wikipedia, a quarter is 12.7 kilograms.
So 1 million quarters = 12,700 metric tons.
Which means that wheat imports to Britain were around 64,000 to 89,000 metric tons per year during that period.

I´ve got no data about France or Russia.
Anyway, simply saying that a bad harvest in Britain is somehow representative for the whole of Europe is quite simply wrong.
And the idea that a "grain embargo" could somehow "starve" the European powers into submission is ridiculous. 60000 to 90000 tons (minus imports from European countries) definitely won´t worry Britain.

Wheat prices certainly would have risen. And that´s it.
But by threatening a "grain embargo" public opinion in Europe might have turned against the USA.
While in OTL the "slavery question" played a big role. After all, slavery in the British Empire was abolished on August 1, 1834.

As for Great Britain and France doing anything about an U.S. grain embargo they really can not project force across the Atlantic Ocean, all the U.S. has to do to win is to go in a defensive crouch, build up coastal deferences, build more ships for the navy, and if Great Britain attack, just raise 150,000 troops and take out Toronto and Halifax.

The French did deploy 39,000 troops to Mexico around 1862. Isn´t that a "projection of force across the Atlantic Ocean"? And that was with Mexico being a project of Napoleon III (and not really of the French population).
Don´t you think the British Empire could at least match that?

Now imagine British and French newspapers telling their readers that the "dastardly Yankees" want to blackmail their countries with a grain embargo. Raising prices to make it harder for you to feed your child.
Plus honor, patriotism etc....

I also wonder if the threat of getting cut of from South American saltpeter might influence the USA?
 
Why wouldn't grain be a factor? Diplomatic war goes on every day. mild threats of embargo if Europe recognizes CSA is a weapon. so is the threat of recognition if an embargo is enacted. The same goes for a myriad of stuff. Sometimes it's the weapon that wins the day. Sometimes it's how well you play the game/use the weapon that wins the day. How the European powers treat the situation is the result of consideration of what happens if they act or don't act in a certain manner.

Of course grain was a factor. The USA were an important and valued trading partner to many European nations. But the idea that an American grain embargo would have created famine conditions and therefore could have been used to coerce them into a US-friendly policy goes a lot farther than recognising it's a factor. I'd say it's well into the hubristic nonsense that the Confederacy indulged in with cotton (and the outcome - price spikes, economic damage, development of alternative supply chains and an increasingly leaky enforcement - mirrors the likely result of a northern grain embargo pretty well IMO).
 
the devil is in the details.

Does Lincoln come out swinging this gigantic sledgehammer and verbosely threatening embargo?
Or does he simply mention sublimely that 'hey, we export a lot of grain to you'?

They are both the same notion, yet handled in completely different fashion.

that is where diplomatic generals earn their pay. sometimes, althistory posters lose track of the distinction. come out hamfisted, you lose out. play it delicately, you can bend nations to your will, or at least affect decisions.
 
I posted the post below in an earlier thread. So, a grain embargo would have hardly had an effect. France produced enough wheat for its own goods, Britain could have imported it from Russia and Continental Europe.

Though imports of grain from the United States accounted for 55.8% of all grain imports to the United Kingdom (14,771,434 bushels) in 1861, that amount did decline every year after the war. By 1864, only 588,526 bushels were imported from the United States (4.7% of the total British grain imports). With the ending of war in 1865, imports resumed and 3,532,610 bushels were imported that year (24.9% of the total). By 1866, imports of grain from the United States were up to 13,907,622 bushels (48.6% of the total).

Without grain from the United States, grain would come from Russia, Turkey, Wallachia & Moldavia, Austria, Morocco, France, Egypt and Italy as it did in 1864. Interestingly enough, the importation of Russian grain continued to increase steadily after the war as it was cheaper to import (5 cents a bushel cheaper). According to an 1881 congressional report of the period, the export of grain to Britain had become unprofitable.

Russia supplanted the United States as Britain's principal source of grains. During the 1868-1872 period, 117,867,022 bushels were imported from Russia (up from 47,306,809 were imported during 1860-64), meanwhile 116,462,380 were imported from the United States

Britain's primary import from the United States as late as 1914 was cotton. However, during the U.S. Civil War, cotton imports from the U.S. to the UK were nearly 1/3 of the 1856-60 period. However, imports from India and Egypt grew by nearly 3 times to offset the imbalance.

So, I hardly think Britain would have starved.
 
Now, could some Union President who isn't Lincoln fuck up and preemptively threaten Great Britain and France with a grain embargo in order to head off recognition at the pass? Maybe, but given the fact that Lincoln's election was what triggered secession in the first place it's a tough scenario to put together.

This looks like a job for a president Seward.
 
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