What really is the future of the CSA?

[Elfwine]

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

I can see it.

Worth noting as far as the whole thing on "industry":

"Although the urban population more than doubled between 1890 and 1913, numbers engaged on the land remained about the same. Even on the even of the First World War, over three-fifths of the Japanese population was engaged in agriculture, forestry, and fishing..."

And France has agriculture accounting for "40 percent of the active population around 1910", so while these are not quite apples to apples, they are interesting.

 

[CarlosTheAltHistoryGuy]

There is no realistic scenario for confederate victory that doesn't result in Union bitterness.

Idk if this counts (and it's obviously ASB), but, the Union just lets the South leave? But even then, people are still gonna be mad about that.

 

[Worffan101]

Idk if this counts (and it's obviously ASB), but, the Union just lets the South leave? But even then, people are still gonna be mad about that.

Never gonna happen, "the Union is the most important object" was basically agreed by every Northern candidate in 1860. So as you said, ASB.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

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.

How about rather than using weird phrases like "industrial liliputan" you use meaningful points of comparison (as I did when I suggested it would have an industrial sector comparable to Spain) or statistics (like % of workforce employed in manufacture).

In terms of whether or not a country can be considered industrialized or not (what I am talking about, obviously a country of less than 20 million can't be a major industrial power) % of workforce employed in manufacture is what matters, not the total number of people employed in manufacture. In 1900 having around 20% (as Canada, US, and Austria-Hungary did) of the workforce employed in manufacture absolutely qualifies as an industrialized economy.

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.

It's a bad take. The difference is less than 2% of the workforce. You're basically making the argument that Monaco must be a poor country because it has only half as many millionaires as the US...

Additionally despite it's small absolute size the Canadian industrial sector wasn't really limited, Canada had the largest sheet metal factory in the British Empire, three transcontinental railways, and was rapidly electrifying. A workforce doesn't need to be big to be advanced, that's kinda the whole point of the labour saving machines in factories.

-and I'm not saying the CSA would be as industrialized per worker as Canada. I made the observation that, like pre-wheat boom Canada, the CSA would likely be better suited to the light industries. You then started this bizarre tangent about how how Canada employing 331,800 workers in manufacture in 1900 doesn't qualify it as industrialized.

 

[Elfwine]

How about rather than using weird phrases like "industrial liliputan" you use meaningful points of comparison (as I did when I suggested it would have an industrial sector comparable to Spain) or statistics (like % of workforce employed in manufacture.

Meaningful point of comparison:

Its manufacturing output is not high even compared to countries like Italy and Japan in 1860.

Its ability to maintain its railroads without imports is pretty much nonexistent due to a lack of iron and a lack of places able to manufacture things like car axles even if the iron is available. Unlike the above I do not know precisely how this compares to Italy or Japan or Spain with the information I have available, but I certainly have to bring it up in regards to "sufficient for its needs" would be a good sign for the CSA.

In short: I think the amount (and worth) of manufactured goods is a pretty useful statistic for comparing it to other places described as industrializing in this period.

Thus my "weird phrase". We're looking less at a society that would regress into agrarianism if it won and more one that hasn't left agrarianism in the first place.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

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

I quite insist.

You have four hours after your next log-in to respond.

Reminder to other members - This response is needed from the member, there is no need to provide other interpretations of the post in question

Excuse me I don't understand the question?
Are you asking me to clarify about what I was trying to tell in the post?
If yes then I simply wanted to say that the people from Germany weren't all fanatics who wanted to die for Hitler's (and high officials inside the Nazi party) ideas, I am not saying that they didn't do war crimes but that apart from the SS most soldiers were mobilized, I do not support the Holocaust or any war crime made by the Third Reich.

 

[NedStark]

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).
View attachment 896415

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.

Bonus: the entire South in 1860 had a smaller industrial output than Massachusetts.

 

[Gar48]

Another good comparison for a victorious CSA would be the rich landowners in the Two Sicilies both before and after 1861

They opposed any kind of industrialisation simply because they didn't want to mess with the traditional social hierarchy. Even more modern farming tools were frown upon as they could increase production and somehow give more power to the paesants.

Add the use of massive voter intimidation, corruption and some of landowners ruling their lands as a mixt between warlords and Middle Age nobles and you got regions in South Italy that sold all their coal abroad because they had no way to use it

The CSA would suffer the same issues

 

[WhatSantayanaSaid]

Excuse me I don't understand the question?
Are you asking me to clarify about what I was trying to tell in the post?
If yes then I simply wanted to say that the people from Germany weren't all fanatics who wanted to die for Hitler's (and high officials inside the Nazi party) ideas, I am not saying that they didn't do war crimes but that apart from the SS most soldiers were mobilized, I do not support the Holocaust or any war crime made by the Third Reich.

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.

You do realize that you're repeating the Clean Wehrmacht myth, right? The Wehrmacht was massacring Jews and other civilians as a pastime (especially after the Mogilev Conference). Half of the civilians killed in Belarus were victims of Wehrmacht units. They were killing civilians (especially Jews) even before the tides started turning (plenty of massacres in 1941 and 1942 during the German advance into the USSR). Antisemitism and anti-Slavism was rife in the Wehrmacht (both from the political atmosphere and military indoctrination) and there was plenty of German soldiers who was not just drinking the Kool-Aid, but guzzling it with gusto. It's not a coincidence that ~3 million of the ~6 million Soviet POWs died while in German hands. They were starved, enslaved, and massacred because the German army saw them as inferior lifeforms.

Omer Bartov's Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich has a bunch of letters from the common soldiery starting in 1939:

"We Sudeten-German SA men want to be in the very front line, in order to render a fraction of our thanks for the liberation of our beautiful homeland by our magnificent Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. In this struggle too our Fuhrer will lead us victoriously" (149).

"this time the decision must be reach, whether the chaotic circumstances should result in the self-dissolution of our culture or in a new rational world world. We should have no fear of this battle...[W]e should also not value our lives too dearly...Our greatness must lie in the avility, not to master fate, but to preserve our fate in spite of our personality, our will, our love, and unreservedly to sacrifice ourselves to a world order which is not our own" (148).

"We all hope that we'll be transferred to the front soon. That is our greatest wish!...n the final analysis, this must be the highest and most noble goal: a manmust prove himself in battle. This battle is not only an individual struggle but also a struggle for our family as well as our German people" (149).

Was this true of every soldier? Probably not. But there was a terrifying level of enthusiasm and radicalism in the Wehrmacht (all the above example are very excited for war and justify it through a racial lens). Plenty of Wehrmacht soldiers wanted to die for the 3rd Reich and the unification and expansion of Germanic lands as a consequence of the indoctrination they were put through.

What you posted is apologism bordering on genocide denial frankly (specifically the genocidal actions of the Wehrmacht, which you're brushing aside as something all armies do when on the backfoot).

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

You do realize that you're repeating the Clean Wehrmacht myth, right? The Wehrmacht was massacring Jews and other civilians as a pastime (especially after the Mogilev Conference). Half of the civilians killed in Belarus were victims of Wehrmacht units. They were killing civilians (especially Jews) even before the tides started turning (plenty of massacres in 1941 and 1942 during the German advance into the USSR). Antisemitism and anti-Slavism was rife in the Wehrmacht (both from the political atmosphere and military indoctrination) and there was plenty of German soldiers who was not just drinking the Kool-Aid, but guzzling it with gusto. It's not a coincidence that ~3 million of the ~6 million Soviet POWs died while in German hands. They were starved, enslaved, and massacred because the German army saw them as inferior lifeforms.

Omer Bartov's Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich has a bunch of letters from the common soldiery starting in 1939:

"We Sudeten-German SA men want to be in the very front line, in order to render a fraction of our thanks for the liberation of our beautiful homeland by our magnificent Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. In this struggle too our Fuhrer will lead us victoriously" (149).

"this time the decision must be reach, whether the chaotic circumstances should result in the self-dissolution of our culture or in a new rational world world. We should have no fear of this battle...[W]e should also not value our lives too dearly...Our greatness must lie in the avility, not to master fate, but to preserve our fate in spite of our personality, our will, our love, and unreservedly to sacrifice ourselves to a world order which is not our own" (148).

"We all hope that we'll be transferred to the front soon. That is our greatest wish!...n the final analysis, this must be the highest and most noble goal: a manmust prove himself in battle. This battle is not only an individual struggle but also a struggle for our family as well as our German people" (149).

Was this true of every soldier? Probably not. But there was a terrifying level of enthusiasm and radicalism in the Wehrmacht (all the above example are very excited for war and justify it through a racial lens). Plenty of Wehrmacht soldiers wanted to die for the 3rd Reich and the unification and expansion of Germanic lands as a consequence of the indoctrination they were put through.

What you posted is apologism bordering on genocide denial frankly (specifically the genocidal actions of the Wehrmacht, which you're brushing aside as something all armies do when on the backfoot).

Armies that do a pogrom aren't an exception when things go south, obviously the Nazis took it to another level than anybody before them.
I did not intend on denying that the Nazis did genocides, if that is the message that has been passed I apologize.
In the discussion in which that post was posted I was simply denying the claim of another person that all of the Germans were enthusiastic about going to die in WW2 for Nazi ideas, obviously there always are those who did but what the Wehrmacht did was waay less radical than what the SS did.

 

[Hastings]

So the CSA is not going to be going on a colonial spree. US is probably going to frown on that and not much they can do. On the other hand, they also aren't going to be reconquered. If the Union failed the first time... Also frankly I suspect the North will soon be just fine living by themselves for both racist and non-racist reasons.

I expect the south to be held back in a lot of ways. But remember the standard. It is still one of the most economically complex, literate, industrialized societies in the world. Yes, it has 20% the industrialization of the North. It will underperform those fundamentals, but realistically it will still be well ahead of Latin America and fairly competitive with South America.

Like someone suggested it will be a worse Brazil. Brazil in 1890 had a literacy rate of about 15%. Southern US in 1860 it was about 2/3rds. Argentina built its first railroad in 1857. Brazil 1854. The South in 1833. I think this site dramatically underestimate just generally how deep a hole Latin America was in even by their Wars of Independence and conversely overstates how backward the South was. Absolutely horrible slave system, but very much a developed country by mid-1800s standards. Low-end great power in theory with the issue that its neighbor is going to become a high-end great power, which makes it hard in practice. Also it 1000% will end up economically dominated by Northern financial institutions which does pose risk it tries to do something geopolitically stupid like nationalize those interests under an ATL Huey Long type character.

 

[WhatSantayanaSaid]

Armies that do a pogrom aren't an exception when things go south, obviously the Nazis took it to another level than anybody before them.
I did not intend on denying that the Nazis did genocides, if that is the message that has been passed I apologize.
In the discussion in which that post was posted I was simply denying the claim of another person that all of the Germans were enthusiastic about going to die in WW2 for Nazi ideas, obviously there always are those who did but what the Wehrmacht did was waay less radical than what the SS did.

But Wehrmacht WASN'T on the backfoot when they started massacring civilians and enslaving/starving/murdering POWs. It was literally the point for them. And it's not like the German soldiers were ignorant of that point either, they were inundated by propaganda about how their way of life was threatened by Judeo-Bolshevism, that they needed to fight for the future of the German race itself. The Wehrmacht and the 3rd Reich's society as a whole indoctrinated the soldiery into a frenzied racial hatred against Jews and Slavs, hence the monstrous death tolls on the Eastern front as the Germans were ADVANCING. There were German soldiers praying that the Soviets wouldn't get the upper hand eventually because of the retribution the Soviets would enact upon Germans for what the Germans did to Soviet citizens and soldiers.

The whole premise of what you're arguing is flawed. The German citizenry and soldiery was very enthusiatic about fighting and dying for Nazi ideas (that was the whole point of the propaganda and fascist ideology in general, the whole cult of death in Eco's Ur-Fascism) and the Wehrmacht was responsible for millions of deaths and rapes.

As per Kay and Stahel in Crimes of the Wehrmacht: A Re-evaluation, "Pohl found that the number of divisions deployed on the eastern front in which no war crimes were committed was ‘low’ and added that members of the Wehrmacht may have constituted the majority of those responsible for mass crimes carried out on the part of the German Reich."

"Not only was there a willingness on the part of German soldiers on the eastern front to perpetrate acts that indirectly led to enormous suffering and high mortality rates, there was also a clear enthusiasm for lending their support to more immediate acts of murder, namely as spectators at massacres (and other atrocities). This passive acceptance of the killing process among the soldiers gave legitimacy to the murders, while providing another forum for soldiers to participate indirectly inthe war of annihilation. Christian Hartmann has correctly concludedthat the number of ‘members of the Wehrmacht, who articulated their disquiet about the Holocaust, or even resisted it’, was ‘even smaller’ than the size of the group directly involved in implementing the genocide of Jews...They orchestrated executions, beatings and other abuse not just in front of the camera but also for the camera."

When the crimes are in the millions, the relative awfulness of the SS vs the Wehrmacht doesn't serve much purpose.

 

[Worffan101]

Armies that do a pogrom aren't an exception when things go south, obviously the Nazis took it to another level than anybody before them.
I did not intend on denying that the Nazis did genocides, if that is the message that has been passed I apologize.
In the discussion in which that post was posted I was simply denying the claim of another person that all of the Germans were enthusiastic about going to die in WW2 for Nazi ideas, obviously there always are those who did but what the Wehrmacht did was waay less radical than what the SS did.

...you do know that the Wehrmacht had standing orders to summarily execute POWs on the Eastern Front, right? The order was signed off on by Hitler, Müller, Halder (a Nazi himself), Keitel (a spinless yesman, but a yesman for war crimes so that isn't really an excuse), and Warlimont, all of whom knew damn well it was criminal, but they did it anyway. And Wehrmacht personnel participated in Operation Hummingbird, too. Keitel personally signed off on not prosecuting war crimes by Wehrmacht personnel, authorizing officers to summarily execute any civilian they felt like, collective punishment of civilians, and explicitly authorizing "annihilation" and "extreme measures" against even the tiniest rebellion by civilians. Hoepner personally authorized close collaboration with the Einsantzgruppen by his troops, Nehring personally ordered the execution of his soldiers' rape victims, von Seyditz-Kurtzbach signed off on the random torture and implicit murder of children--the Wehrmacht war crimes on the Eastern Front weren't "pogroms when things went south" or a singular criminal action covered up by the government like My Lai*, they were standing official policy.

*yes I know about the free-fire zones and they were blatantly criminal, using My Lai here as an example of a gratuitous war crime against standing policy, bankrupt as that policy was.

Brazil in 1890 had a literacy rate of about 15%. Southern US in 1860 it was about 2/3rds. Argentina built its first railroad in 1857. Brazil 1854. The South in 1833.

Does that include the slave population?

Also, the first Southern railroad was built while it was part of the same country as the Union.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

I'm not trying to defend the Wehrmacht I simply want to say that crimes against humanity wasn't something that existed on neither side of the war, the fascist were just the more horrible.

Marocchinate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Allied war crimes during World War II - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

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.

Because in the CSA's case, that ideological impetus had the force not only of law, but of constitutionality. Specifically, Article 1 section 8 Part 3 of the Confederate Constitution, which expressly forbade the Confederate Congress from appropriating money to build 'internal improvements' to 'facilitate commerce', the only exception being improving navigation on the rivers.

Which basically means that it's impossible for the Confederacy national government to support industrialisation as a matter of policy. And that part of the Constitution was from what I understand drawn up specifically to hobble industry, to prevent any part of the country gaining an industrial advantage over the rest as had been the case with the North vs the South before the Confederacy was proclaimed.

 

[DG Valdron]

Like someone suggested it will be a worse Brazil. Brazil in 1890 had a literacy rate of about 15%. Southern US in 1860 it was about 2/3rds.

Including slaves? That seems questionable.

Low-end great power in theory

Not even close.

 

[NedStark]

Yes, it has 20% the industrialization of the North

20% is a ridiculously high estimate, especially when the 1860 Census data showed that the South only accounted for 8% of national industrial output, lower than a single Northern state (Massachusetts).

 

[Hastings]

@NedStark I was meaning 20% in per-capita terms, obviously lower in absolute, but looking at my post doesn't look like I actually said that.
@DG Valdron @Worffan101 Literacy rate for southern whites was about 80%. Literacy rate for blacks was 10% or so. Which I think vividly illustrates just how almost hopelessly Latin America was behind as people considered property and often banned from literacy still had higher literacy rates than, e.g. non-urban Mexico.

Frankly Latin America had already probably lost the 'race' against the US by the time those countries even gained independence. Some did quite well for a while, Argentina for example, but the underlying fundamentals were still frankly pretty bad. Its like looking at the South pre-Civil War and being like "oh if anything it is wealthier than the north" when on a closer look it is an export economy mirage.

 

[oofo]

Including slaves? That seems questionable.

80% of free adults, somewhere around 10% of slaves (some needed to be taught for their jobs)

The Literate South on JSTOR

BETH BARTON SCHWEIGER, The Literate South, Journal of the Civil War Era, Vol. 3, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 2013), pp. 331-359

www.jstor.org

 

[Hydra1234]

I mean, sure, the Antebellum South was more developed than Latin America, but it also is experiencing extensive postwar devastation OTL, most machinery, factories, and railroads were destroyed, either by war or simply by 4 years of neglect due to a blockade and conscription. It took Reconstruction and extensive Northern investment to bring out the industrial "New South," a process I would imagine is prolonged by the North giving a cold shoulder (or the Confederacy surrendering its economy to Northern investors and becoming a colony in all but name).

With regards to literacy rates, post-war education rates fell off a cliff in the South, despite Reconstruction building a ton of schools and Morill Land Grants injecting tons of cash into universities across the South, and educational disparities between the North and the South existed well into the 20th century. If the South has to rebuild by itself, the process would be a lot harsher and slower than even OTL.

Compounding this is the fact that while the resources driving the Latin American economies are in higher and higher demand (oil & copper for Mexico, coffee in Brazil, beef in Argentina) in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Confederacy's near-monopoly on cotton is gradually getting eroded away by the expansion of other cotton sources, and production will also go into freefall with the introduction of the boll weevil. So sure, Latin America is behind, but they have massive potential for growth even when only considering their natural resources, whereas the South needs to recover from the civil war and fund its industrialization with a resource declining in value.

Personally, I think the South would be more powerful than Latin America in the 19th century simply because it has much more productive land and a larger population than most Latin American countries, but. Best case scenario, the Confederacy has economy and military of Spain, which still does place it in the top 10 world economies, but substantially below the likes of Italy and Japan in 1900.

Of course, how the Confederacy wins changes the extent of the devastation (although I still expect most ACWs to continue until Lincoln gets voted out in 1864 and cedes office in March 1865), but even if the Confederacy was in a better starting point compared to Latin American nations, it may not be after the Civil War.