What South American countries could the CSA get?

You know, there's a nation that doesn't want either the USA or the CSA to undermine the independence of the South American nations, with which it enjoys advantageous trading relations. This nation has a quite powerful Navy--and the capacity to cooperate with either the USA or the CSA if the other power threatens South American independence. That nation is called the UK, and it is slightly odd that some of the posts in this thread seem unaware of its existence. (And please, no "King Cotton will allow the Confederacy to dictate terms to the UK." The CSA needs to export cotton as much as the UK needs to import it.)
 
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Sadly, as long as the North isn't trying to reunite the country, this rump South (look, the South is part of OTL US and splitting up the banking system with 2 currencies is guaranteed to make the South's economy smaller) could go far with a few decades. Mexico and Cuba maybe. USA united could have done a LOT of colonization united (I know Walker failed with Nicaragua, but he didn't have to fail), although if it gave its conquered people the vote, they basically would kill their own government. CSA would be a lot more limited, but the status of the Latin America Republics was not powerhouses. The question is, who is footing the bill? USA in OTL didn't conquer Nicaragua due to impossibility but because they didn't throw everything they had at it, due to not being at risk of bisected if Nicaragua won.

I imagine the US wouldn't sit by idly while the CSA tries to take a few states from Mexico? I guess the timeframe would be very important. Mexico was already finishing up a bloody war of their own but they still had manpower to spare. The CSA...they were getting ready to scrap the barrel. The CSA also has a problem very similar to that of Mexico, little to no power projection. Without the Union's fleet, the CSA would have trouble invading Mexico other than attacking from Texas. They may be able to hold Mexico's northern states, but things get harder as they go south. Unlike in the Mexican American war, Mexico wouldn't mind using guerrilla warfare this time around. Cuba gets harder, there's no land border to cross and then there's the Spanish Fleet. Once again, it's the US that has the navy.

If it happens a few decades after, you'd be looking at a few questions. Did the US still have a Spanish American war? If they did, bye bye Cuba for the CSA or any Central American state. Taking Columbia or Venezuela would be...a bit of a vietnam for the CSA, to use an anachronism. I'm pretty sure the US would also expand the Monroe Doctrine to include attacks from a slaver nation, and they'd get support from the UK as David T mentioned above.

The CSA had big plans, but unless the US avoids Latin America, that's all they can ever really be. At best, taking out the Spanish before the US gets involved and pray that the US doesn't just side with Spain to spite the CSA...I mean in the name of preventing the spread of slavery... That's all they really can do.
 
Why do all of these Confederate threads assume that the US will just throw up its hands and let the CSA do whatever they want? It seems more likely to me that the minute the CSA sends its army out of the country we get to see Sherman's March II: Savana Boogaloo, now with more burning.
 
Not anything if USA is still exist. USA not allow CSA expand anywhere. CSA might be able take Cuba but hardly any more. And it would be quiet hard anyway conquer South American nation. Too much resistanse there and more viable idea would be just puppetise them.

Cuba is out, it is an island and so would last only as long as the USN doesn't get involved.
 
Barley levy taxes? That isn't supported by history or law.

And the South's economy wasn't anemic--by any stretch--nor was it unusually agrarian. I mean, the Confederacy had the third largest railroad network in the world in 1860 with about 9500 miles. Spain had 2000 miles of railway during that same period.



Vastly superior to what? You know what, forget that part. Even if we posit that the CS economy is no better than Spain's, which is questionable, Cuba is 90 miles away from the Confederacy. It's on the other side of the world in relation to Spain. That fact alone makes a war between the two states over Cuba far more difficult for Spain.

It doesn't have to be better than merely the Spanish Navy but the USN, or more accurately the combined US and Spanish navies. There is no way in hell the US will allow the CSA to grab Cuba!
 
Why do all of these Confederate threads assume that the US will just throw up its hands and let the CSA do whatever they want? It seems more likely to me that the minute the CSA sends its army out of the country we get to see Sherman's March II: Savana Boogaloo, now with more burning.

To be fair, the US has traditionally not kept the kind of standing army (pre WW-II) that would be required to do this kind of fast reaction campaign; Sherman's army was the result of several years of build-up and lessons from the School of Hard Knocks as opposed to a carefully cultivated mass military structure built up over decades. The flaw in following historical reasoning here though is that it assumes a change in the factors that lead to that willingness to keep such an informal commitment to national defense (the lack of any immediate threatening power in the vicinity; having a half-empty frozen wasteland to the north, a political basket case to the south, and vast oceans on either side) woulden't result in the US building up a military force that's at least on par with its new southern neighbor.
 
I'm usually one of the biggest defenders of the plausibility of the Confederacy to expand Post War; be it Cuba or into Mexico. Annexing the Southern Cone or even Brazil, however, is absolutely never going to happen unless the CSA later on develops a nuclear arsenal and the willingness to use it.
 
In my Dark Heart of Dixie Timeline, I have the CSA fail to take Cuba in 1897-1898. They later take it in 1940 in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish civil war. In the 1970s, it gets annexed to Alabama after a confederate breakup.
 

JJohnson

Banned
Would the CSA have that kind of money? I assume they'd be dealing with the fallout of the war, and they don't exactly scream financial superpower.
Maybe, if cotton doesn't fall in price too much, and depending on how far Sherman got in his march destroying peoples' farms and livestock. Possible but needs a spate of good luck for it to work.
 
Maybe, if cotton doesn't fall in price too much, and depending on how far Sherman got in his march destroying peoples' farms and livestock. Possible but needs a spate of good luck for it to work.

Bigger question is how the Rebels decide to structure their economy-government spending-taxation system for a peacetime environment. War damage is naturally going to recover with time and trade patterns readjust to the point normalicy will return, but depending on the culture of how much the average Dixon is willing to be taxed (and how much goes to Richmond) and what else they want to spend that money on will have a huge impact on just how much of slush fund they have to play with for big-ticket items.
 
Bigger question is how the Rebels decide to structure their economy-government spending-taxation system for a peacetime environment. War damage is naturally going to recover with time and trade patterns readjust to the point normalicy will return, but depending on the culture of how much the average Dixon is willing to be taxed (and how much goes to Richmond) and what else they want to spend that money on will have a huge impact on just how much of slush fund they have to play with for big-ticket items.

Given time is the problem here, how much time will the CSA be given? In OTL it took a generation to get back to where it was before the war began. Without reconstruction money, the US dollar replacing the CS one, having to actually pay its debts or suffering the adverse effects of a default and having to pay to at least try and defend itself from the US it will be lucky if it takes 1 and half to two.
 
In my Dark Heart of Dixie Timeline, I have the CSA fail to take Cuba in 1897-1898. They later take it in 1940 in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish civil war. In the 1970s, it gets annexed to Alabama after a confederate breakup.

How do they prevent the US just taking it for itself?
 
Bigger question is how the Rebels decide to structure their economy-government spending-taxation system for a peacetime environment. War damage is naturally going to recover with time and trade patterns readjust to the point normalicy will return, but depending on the culture of how much the average Dixon is willing to be taxed (and how much goes to Richmond) and what else they want to spend that money on will have a huge impact on just how much of slush fund they have to play with for big-ticket items.

Big differences between the CSA and USA here which I don't think gets covered enough; the Confederacy taxed cotton exports. They also instituted a 1% and later 5% taxation on slave holdings, which is a big deal considering those were valued at around $3 Billion in the wider South in 1860.
 
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