Nicky wasn't there, it was his ministers who decided to shoot on them
What really is the future of the CSA?
- Thread starter EasternRomanEmpire
- Start date
Yes and he rewarded both them and the comander for the massacre. And I can always bring up the pogroms, the treatment of the Serfs and his attempt to "russify" the rest of the empire
And he was the one who ordered more recruitment of paesants during WW1 (even Rasputin thought it was a stupid idea) while diverting most of the food towards the royal court
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He was an idiot but he didn't want to make his people starve, he just made super-stupid decisions multiple times; he thought pogroms were a good way of unifying the Russians, the treatment of Serfs was nothing new and trying to russify others was just a stupid decision.
Rasputin wasn't stupid, he actually told the emperor that WW1 was a terrible idea; what is more disturbing is that a random priest from Siberia could arrive at such levels of influence by "curing" the son of the emperor.
They will understand very soon why food is important, either because they will start to use their brains or because people will start revolutions
I'm going to quote what you just said:
It's gonna be a revolution. And that's not a situation the CS can survive.
Remember that time that Nicky called the cause of rabid antisemitism "a good cause" and only told his minions to pull back on the frothing-at-the-mouth reprinting of a plagiarized antisemitic rant cooked up by a deranged Okhrana operative because he was afraid that the plagiarized antisemitic rant would be exposed as a blatant hoax and make him look bad?
Are they as bad as Nicky? It's difficult to reach that level of incompetence
It's well within the capabilities of the Southern elites. Their incompetence, narcissism, and intransigence is a matter of extensive historical record.
As much as I despise Nicky, the problems that led to the Russian Revolution were inherent to the Imperial System rather than just his fault. Like Imperial Russia, the CSA would be affected by:
- Upper classes hellbent on protecting their privileges at all costs
- A mostly rural economy where genuine attempts of industrialisation or reform would be blocked by said upper classes
- Huge economic disparities between the various social classes to the point the middle class is inexistent. Widespread poverty would be the norm
- A surprisigngly high number of hostile neightbours that really don't like the nation's racist-expansionistic rethoric. Likewise nepotism, rivaliries between officials, lac of pretty much everything and corruption will afflict the CSA army as much as the imperial army of Russia
So basically you wouldn't exclude the possibility that they end up screwing up everything.
While there were some issues in Imperial Russia, Nicky never really tried to solve them and that is why he was a complete failure as a leader.
To keep blacks in their place and to make sure that poor whites always had someone to hate on rather than going 'Hey, why do these folks have all the money and land while we have to scrape by...'
No, I think that the combination of built-in structural problems and socioeconomic incentives for the elites to ignore those problems and refuse to fix them will lead to the collapse of the CS.
And why would the upper class in the CSA be different? These guys literally told their soldiers to just starve during the OTL Civil War and at one point even suggested enslaving poor whites as well. They wanted an holigarchy where they could rule like nobles from the Middle Ages
Shit reform in the CSA would be far more difficoult than in Imperial Russia because the southern states don't have an absolute ruler in their government
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Why is this board still stuck in the historiography of the 1920s when it comes to the Antebellum economy.
Anyway. The Confederacy had already started a crash industrialization program during the war and this would likely continue during the postwar years. By 1862 it was largely recognized that the Confederacy. They saw themselves as fighting a second American Revolution and saw that the Confederacy would have to adapt after winning independence. By 1862 Southern leaders were aware that the Confederacy would have to adapt to maintain itself long term. Their goals for the postwar were to establish a modern navy and diversify the Southern economy. Cash crops would be a foundational aspect of it as they gave the South commercial power.
The idea that plantation owners weren't interested in industrialization is a myth which is still latched on to here for some reason. Even during the Antebellum you can see investment into industry by the slave owning class. During the war this turned into a craze almost. Southern newspapers frequently blustered about their wartime "industrial revolution". By 1864 you had planters buying up swathes of mineral rich territory for future post-war development. Confederate agents were being sent to Britain to study cotton mills and erect one if the South asap. Tredgar also sent people to Britain to study steel working techniques. A bill was passed by the Confederate Congress to found a polytechnic institute.
In short, Southern elite were well aware of the need to "catch up" in terms of industrialization. Industrialization and the plantation economy were not exclusive, and industrial slavery was also perfectly viable.
I doubt there will be any Confederate expansion into Latin America or the Caribbean barring the leasing of a Pacific port by Mexico (or if Arizona is Confederate) rounding off the Gadsden Purchase with a port in the Gulf of California (where Puerto Peñasco is today). The Confederate government was amicable towards Spain and saw them as a potential post-war ally. Slavery was still legal in Spanish Cuba.
@EasternRomanEmpire if you're interested in Confederate economics, read these.
The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience (1971) by Thomas Emory (not recent but is considered the foundational revisionist text)
Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation (2009) by John Majewski
De Bow's Review: The Antebellum Vision of a New South (2013) by John Kvach
The Fortunes of War: Confederate Expansionist Ambitions During the American Civil War by Adrian Brettle (particularly chapter 6)
Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post—Civil War World (2020) by Adrian Brettle (refined version of his PhD thesis)
Food shortages during the war were largely due to distribution issues (lack of transportation during wartime) rather than a lack of food.
Nitre Bereau?
Anyway. The Confederacy had already started a crash industrialization program during the war and this would likely continue during the postwar years. By 1862 it was largely recognized that the Confederacy. They saw themselves as fighting a second American Revolution and saw that the Confederacy would have to adapt after winning independence. By 1862 Southern leaders were aware that the Confederacy would have to adapt to maintain itself long term. Their goals for the postwar were to establish a modern navy and diversify the Southern economy. Cash crops would be a foundational aspect of it as they gave the South commercial power.
The idea that plantation owners weren't interested in industrialization is a myth which is still latched on to here for some reason. Even during the Antebellum you can see investment into industry by the slave owning class. During the war this turned into a craze almost. Southern newspapers frequently blustered about their wartime "industrial revolution". By 1864 you had planters buying up swathes of mineral rich territory for future post-war development. Confederate agents were being sent to Britain to study cotton mills and erect one if the South asap. Tredgar also sent people to Britain to study steel working techniques. A bill was passed by the Confederate Congress to found a polytechnic institute.
In short, Southern elite were well aware of the need to "catch up" in terms of industrialization. Industrialization and the plantation economy were not exclusive, and industrial slavery was also perfectly viable.
They weren't incompetent. They'd been successfully running the United States for the past 80 years.
I doubt there will be any Confederate expansion into Latin America or the Caribbean barring the leasing of a Pacific port by Mexico (or if Arizona is Confederate) rounding off the Gadsden Purchase with a port in the Gulf of California (where Puerto Peñasco is today). The Confederate government was amicable towards Spain and saw them as a potential post-war ally. Slavery was still legal in Spanish Cuba.
@EasternRomanEmpire if you're interested in Confederate economics, read these.
The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience (1971) by Thomas Emory (not recent but is considered the foundational revisionist text)
Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation (2009) by John Majewski
De Bow's Review: The Antebellum Vision of a New South (2013) by John Kvach
The Fortunes of War: Confederate Expansionist Ambitions During the American Civil War by Adrian Brettle (particularly chapter 6)
Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post—Civil War World (2020) by Adrian Brettle (refined version of his PhD thesis)
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And yet the CSA constitution explicitly barred the central government from funding the substantial amounts of transportation infrastructure that would be needed for industrialization. "If Charleston wants their harbor improved, let them pay for it themselves!"
And yet, the Confederate government did it anyway. See Selma ironworks. Or the bill passed by the Confederate Congress in 1862 fund the completion of the Greensboro-Danville railroad.
Both were funded as military emergencies; the latter against strong opposition from North Carolina, and the resulting railroad was a piece of crap. The backers themselves admitted it would have been unconstitutional to fund it in peacetime.
The sheer political bickering and zero-sum thinking against a badly-needed rail link between two cities during wartime does not lead me to believe the CSA would be a proud sponsor of peacetime railroad constuction.
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Honestly I think people have a warped idea of the situation. I mean the US was one of the largest and most industrialized nations at this point which kinda shows that things weren't as easy considering how long the Confederacy lasted against them, with a shared border and a major naval supremacy for the union.
Frankly if the Confederacy survives a lot depends on what happens and frankly it's an open ended question that can change depending on the circumstances. However I do believe the Confederacy would survive in some form although weather they lose territory, have a revolution, or so on depends on the different circumstances.
Frankly if the Confederacy survives a lot depends on what happens and frankly it's an open ended question that can change depending on the circumstances. However I do believe the Confederacy would survive in some form although weather they lose territory, have a revolution, or so on depends on the different circumstances.
Does it need to be? There was already substantial pre-war interest in constructing more railroads by private ventures and state governments. Furthermore, a lot of transportation of goods was and still is done via rivers in the South due to the abundance of navigable rivers.
There was nothing banning the Confederate government from investing or promoting industry like iron works. It was solely internal improvements intended to facilitate commerce. The railroad acts passed by Congress between 1862 and 1863, allowed railroads to be seized as military property. The legal argument was thus that federal funding of railroads was for military reasons.
Southern leaders and people certainly gained awareness the importance of railroads over the course of the war.
Additionally, all it takes to propose an amendment to the Confederate Constitution is a convention of at least 3 states, and only 2/3 of the states had to agree to ratify it. When you consider that two states (Georgia and Alabama) had voted against the internal improvements clause, and a third (Louisiana) was divided about it at the Confederate Constitutional Convention, combined with the fact the TN AK NC VA didn’t even get to provide input to it (I won’t speculate on the status of KY or MI) and were more Whig leaning, it getting amended is a possibility.
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