What really is the future of the CSA?

[AltoRegnant]

Not sure why people act like the planters wouldn't just move towards conventional agriculture or industrialization. I mean in most cases even in places where people say the planter class did everything in their power to stop industrialization isn't fully true as in many cases they did try to diversify. In many cases there were more issues to deal with, or in some cases just regressed due to economic and political circumstances. I mean for a time South America had several nations that could in theory take on the US in a naval war with thing becoming worse later on as the US rose.

to be frank- they weren't half slave. it's a lot easier to focus on economic diversification when your population can actually fill those niches. plus, the planter class actively benefited from the nation being un-industrialized, since it justified a lot of its practices on "at least we clothe and feed them unlike northern/european industrialists"

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Pre war they were starting to invest heavily into the railroad and iron industries particularly in the Alabama-Georgia-East Tennesse area. The seeds which would later grow into Birmingham, for instance, had already been planted before the war through planter investment in the Northeast and Southwest Alabama railroad. I’d like to see some evidence that this trend wouldn’t continue.

This road was chartered in 1853 to connect Meridian, Mississippi to Chattanooga. But because of money problems, only 15 miles of track had been laid by July 1862.

Northeast & Southwest Alabama Railroad

"Money problems" in this case being they'd run completely out of money by the 1860 director's report, with only 5% of the planned route completed.

 

[bguy]

The economic data is pretty strong evidence of how much investment was put into Southern industry as a whole, I think. It certainly doesn't indicate that the planters were generally speaking eager to build railroads and iron mills.

In The Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson says that the slave states quadrupled their railroad mileage in the 1850s, so there definitely was significant interest in building railroads in the south at that time.

McPherson also says that by the end of the 1850s the southern states had 16 percent of national manufacturing capacity. If McPherson is correct that is still a pretty dismal percentage but not quite as bad as the 9% number we've seen referenced elsewhere in this thread.

 

[oofo]

to be frank- they weren't half slave. it's a lot easier to focus on economic diversification when your population can actually fill those niches. plus, the planter class actively benefited from the nation being un-industrialized, since it justified a lot of its practices on "at least we clothe and feed them unlike northern/european industrialists"

Unfortunately, slaves make just as good industrial workers as free laborers. Starobin’s work showed this as far back as l the 1970s.

The economic data is pretty strong evidence of how much investment was put into Southern industry as a whole, I think. It certainly doesn't indicate that the planters were generally speaking eager to build railroads and iron mills.

It tended to fluctuate with the price of cotton. Cotton prices shot up in the early and late 1850s. People here tend to assume that due to the Civil War Europe would switch to using Egyptian and Indian cotton. It was also in the process of consolidating, moving from a lot of small, independent furnaces to larger consolidated operations.

I never intended to imply the South would be an industrial superpower. In terms of economic development by 1900, I could see it as being on par with Austria-Hungary or France. Both were mixed agrarian-industrial societies.

Northeast & Southwest Alabama Railroad

"Money problems" in this case being they'd run completely out of money by the 1860 director's report, with only 5% of the planned route completed.

You are right! If I remember correctly, the South and North Alabama railway fared much better during the same period though.

 

[Elfwine]

In The Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson says that the slave states quadrupled their railroad mileage in the 1850s, so there definitely was significant interest in building railroads in the south at that time.

Okay, getting out my copy of Railroads of the Confederacy here (italics are the author's):

"Though the Southern States, in January 1861, could claim an estimated railway mileage of 8,783 out of a country-wide total of 31,168, the whole extent of southern iron, rolling stock, and other appurtenances reflected a capital investment of but $237, 138, 482 as compared to a national figure of $1,177, 993, 818. And Britain, whose railway development of the incipient Confederacy was reputed to have surpassed so handsomely, had devoted an even larger sum to its 'permanent way' and equipment."

Also:

"By 1861 Virginia lead all the Southern States in point of mileage...the Old Dominion reported a rail system of more than 1,800 miles. Second among the states of the coming Confederacy stood Georgia, with about 1,400. Even South Carolina could point to a mileage of nearly 1,000. Only North Carolina lagged somewhat, though they nursed ambitious projects. Tarheels had completed less than 900 miles upon the outbreak of the War Between the States."

I never intended to imply the South would be an industrial superpower. In terms of economic development by 1900, I could see it as being on par with Austria-Hungary or France. Both were mixed agrarian-industrial societies.

Understood.

I think the CSA is definitely going to take after Austria-Hungary in there being some relatively well off, industrialized (not necessarily the same thing, but related) regions but more extraordinarily poor areas within its borders - and while that may not be a recipe for revolution it's not a recipe for national stability or anything else desirable either.

Lots of room for petty regionalism to throttle what might otherwise be possible, IMO, is a general millstone around its neck - even if it obviously has to do better at that than OTL to exist in 1900 at all it's not going to be easy to tame. A Confederacy with the leadership for that not to be an issue would be so unlike OTL that we might as well be talking about "strangely enough, a 'Confederate States of America' emerged in this Al-Andalus Never Falls timeline." even if the POD is in the early 1800s.

 

[Gar48]

Unfortunately, slaves make just as good industrial workers as free laborers. Starobin’s work showed this as far back as l the 1970s.

But not good customers. Remember how widespread poverty among english workers caused multiple economic crises between the 19th and the 20th Century?

Same thing but the workers have also good reasons to burn the factory down in the CSA

 

[JohnBull]

I never intended to imply the South would be an industrial superpower. In terms of economic development by 1900, I could see it as being on par with Austria-Hungary or France. Both were mixed agrarian-industrial societies.

So CSA would be right there amongst the world's greatest powers?

 

[AltoRegnant]

Same thing but the workers have also good reasons to burn the factory down

to be fair you'd be hard pressed to argue that northern workers in the 1870s didn't. but the slaves would have a much better reason

 

[Gar48]

to be fair you'd be hard pressed to argue that northern workers in the 1870s didn't. but the slaves would have a much better reason

Considering Marx's deep hatred for slavery, his ideas will be very popular among both black slaves and white workers ITTL

 

[Hydra1234]

McPherson also says that by the end of the 1850s the southern states had 16 percent of national manufacturing capacity. If McPherson is correct that is still a pretty dismal percentage but not quite as bad as the 9% number we've seen referenced elsewhere in this thread.

Don't have McPherson's book, but the 1860 Census has manufacturing statistics, down to the state level: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/manufactures/1860c-21.pdf (the last page has the total value broken down by region).

So the South, comprising Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee, produced 155.5 million USD out of a total national output of 1.886 billion US, 8.2% of the US' manufacturing value.

The South employed 110.6 thousand out of 1.31 million workers, 8.3% of the total industrial workforce of the US, and received about 96 million USD in investment out of a billion dollars spent nationally.

The caveat here is that this is just factories, so handicraft production and primary processing on plantations may not be properly counted in the census, but I'm skeptical those could make up 50% of the South's manufacturing value to get to a 16% figure.

So industrial investment and output was not negligible, but at the same time, for a region that had a third of the US' population, it's seriously disproportionate.

 

[oofo]

Same thing but the workers have also good reasons to burn the factory down in the CSA

It’s a nice idea, and resistance was and would continue to be widespread, but usually it took much less drastic forms. The most common method was simply feigning illness. Despite this the slave economy continued to be immensely profitable.

So CSA would be right there amongst the world's greatest powers?

Sort of? It would be an important player, probably more stable and wealthy than any Latin American countries. Not as strong as the rump United States. It is sitting on massive oil reserves in Texas though.

I would consider both France and Austria-Hungary to be “punching above their weight” in terms of power by 1900.

Lots of room for petty regionalism to throttle what might otherwise be possible, IMO, is a general millstone around its neck - even if it obviously has to do better at that than OTL to exist in 1900 at all it's not going to be easy to tame.

The main problem in the postwar will be “tories” aka unionists. A lot will probably move north after the war, but some will stay. At the same time, Missouri/Kentucky confederates will move South. It will definitely take several decades to adjust. The South was for the most part able to keep places like East TN under control though. They had a pretty good policing system thanks to the home guard, which derived somewhat from antebellum slave patrols.

Victory in the war is also going to serve as a means of unifying the various states.

Funnily enough, the Confederate Constitution specifically stated that the CSA was to be a permanent union. So secession from the CSA has less legal footing than secession from the US.

 

[Elfwine]

Running some math here to compare the CSA to other states in 1860:

https://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/population.htm Austria(-Hungary) is about the size of the US in 1860.

Its "Relative share of world manufacturing output" per Kennedy is 4.2%. So how does the Confederacy compare?

April 2015 - History - U.S. Census Bureau

The archived home page from the Census Bureau's History Web Site for April 2015.

www.census.gov

If the Confederacy was equal to the US average per capita, with about 28% of the total population , it would be slightly lower than Japan and Italy in 1860 (2.6% and 2.5% respectively) - about 2.3%.

So much changes by 1900 I'm not even tackling that.

The main problem in the postwar will be “tories” aka unionists. A lot will probably move north after the war, but some will stay. At the same time, Missouri/Kentucky confederates will move South. It will definitely take several decades to adjust. The South was for the most part able to keep places like East TN under control though. They had a pretty good policing system thanks to the home guard, which derived somewhat from antebellum slave patrols.

Funnily enough, the Confederate Constitution specifically stated that the CSA was to be a permanent union. So secession from the CSA was more explicitly defined as illegal when compared to the US constitution.

It is pretty funny. But not just tories/unionists as that what Alabama wants (in building up Birmingham) may not be what other places want (in wanting cheaper manufactured goods), and do I ever not envy whoever has to herd those cats.

At least things like East Tennessee can be kept down by force if worst comes to worst (however bad that may be locally) as far as the country falling apart, but that's not really a solution to a senator being a spiteful, self-centered twit.

 

[JohnBull]

Sort of? It would be an important player, probably more stable and wealthy than any Latin American countries. Not as strong as the rump United States. It is sitting on massive oil reserves in Texas though.

I would consider both France and Austria-Hungary to be “punching above their weight” in terms of power by 1900.

Why do you think it would be more stable and wealthier than Latin American countries and be right there amongst the world's greatest powers? There is nothing that suggests that.

 

[DG Valdron]

I find that there's a weird trend on this site where in any "bad guys win" scenario there's a crowd of people eager to argue that the bad guys will regress to agrarianism because "ideological impetus".
>Himmler idealized the "soldier peasant" therefore we can be certain that a victorious Nazi Germany would go Pol Pot on itself and force its urban population to become farmers in the east at gun point
>one of the Kodoha's founders boasted that the Japanese could defeat the Soviets with bamboo pikes therefore we can be certain that they would replace their rifles with Yari if they won the power struggle in the IJA
>the CSA was dominated by a planter elite so therefore any meaningful degree of industrialization was completely impossible!

Guys, the antebellum south was industrializing, and the South Industrialized quite a bit under the wartime pseudo-command economy.

I'm not sure I buy that.

I think that a lot of popular Bad Guys Win scenarios tend to be dramatically overinflated. Man in the High Castle, where a victorious Nazi Germany occupies the US with Japan, or Turtledove's history where the Confederacy is essentially a transcontinental world power.

I go with David Brin, we live in the timeline where the bad guys got every piece of luck and got further than they should have realistically.

So I think that there's a reaction to the 'CSA as World Striding Colossus' shtick, and a rather more realistic assessment of what the Confederacy plausibly could or could not do.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

These are not large numbers even considering Canada's population in 1900 is five and a half million.

In 1900 the Canadian workforce was only around 1.8 million. 331,800, aka 18.4%, being employed in manufacturing isn't a small amount.

For comparison, in 1900 20.3% of the American workforce was employed in manufacturing.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c1567/c1567.pdf

I believe a worsened Brazil is the most likely scenario (and I don't think Brazil is that bad: I'm actually being quite positive regarding CSA).

By the 1860's, slavery was a dying institution in Brazil whereas on CSA was still universal. The Great European immigration to Brazil only picked up for good after the abolition of slavery something that would happen much later on CSA if ever. Therefore, mass European immigration seems unlike and mass White immigration northwards to the US would be a factor.

It was an extremely brutal society and uprisings, revolutions would be a constant threat. I don't see such society thriving and having the bare minimum of societal stability to move forward.

Also entirely possible.

 

[Elfwine]

In 1900 the Canadian workforce was only around 1.8 million. 331,800, aka 18.4%, being employed in manufacturing isn't a small amount.

I'd count 331,800 as a small amount if we're talking about "is this an industrial lilliputian or not", as opposed to "is this an area with any industrial development at all" or not.

So we may be looking at different things in this in general here.

 

[CalBear]

The Nazi were radical, generals believed in Nazism; what I wanted to say is that the Germans were forced to be a part of the army, they weren't there because they wanted to die for the Lebenstraum.
Most of the war crimes were done by the SS and there aren't many armies who didn't do war crimes when things begin to go South and the Generals certainly didn't try to prevent their soldiers from doing damage at the expense of the local population.

Oh, please DO expand regarding war crimes by the Reich.

I quite insist.

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[Pangur]

I'd count 331,800 as a small amount if we're talking about "is this an industrial lilliputian or not", as opposed to "is this an area with any industrial development at all" or not.

So we may be looking at different things in this in general here.

Surely its all relative? 1900 must nations if not all had more people working the land rather than factory and its the percentage that needs to looked at?

 

[Elfwine]

Surely its all relative? 1900 must nations if not all had more people working the land rather than factory and its the percentage that needs to looked at?

Per the pdf posted, the US in 1900 is 59.8% "nonfarm", though I suppose it depends on if you count "primary" (farm, fishing, mining) as "working the land". I do not have comparably broken down data for say, Germany here, unfortunately.

I don't think Canada's 331,800 in manufacturing is indicating "quite a bit of industry" - I think that there aren't that many Canadians in manufacturing even allowing for that there's simply not a lot of Canadians (the US has a population around 75.9 million at this point) so Canadian industriy is "pretty limited".

That's my take on these numbers, at any rate.

 

[Pangur]

Per the pdf posted, the US in 1900 is 59.8% "nonfarm", though I suppose it depends on if you count "primary" (farm, fishing, mining) as "working the land". I do not have comparably broken down data for say, Germany here, unfortunately.

I don't think Canada's 331,800 in manufacturing is indicating "quite a bit of industry" - I think that there aren't that many Canadians in manufacturing even allowing for that there's simply not a lot of Canadians (the US has a population around 75.9 million at this point) so Canadian industriy is "pretty limited".

That's my take on these numbers, at any rate.

Fair enough. As for 'working the land" I would say farming and fishing, mining no so much