Would a victorious CSA be in the Entente or CP?

And you’ll note there wasn’t a war to impose said borders.

There had been two wars in which whether Canada would be part of the United States was an issue (though of course in the first whether the US would exist as an independent nation in the first place was the main issue...)
 
There had been two wars in which whether Canada would be part of the United States was an issue (though of course in the first whether the US would exist as an independent nation in the first place was the main issue...)
But not over the location of those borders, nor over territory that had been part of the US. Canada is not comparable.
 

JAG88

Banned
I think the fact slavery subsists in the CSA and pretty much everyone else has prohibit it will make the CSA paranoid, on top of the permanent fear of a slave uprising... with US help... John Brown, was it?
 
It depends on the relations between the United States and the CSA. If the CSA has abolished slavery earlier and improved relations with the north, then it might side with the Allies during WW1. If slavery is still legal in the Confederacy by the time of WW1, we could see the CSA joining the CP.
 
There is a school of thought that says control of North America is based on control of the waterways. The CSA's ownership of the mouth of the Mississippi limits the ability of the Mid West to get their produce to market. Everything has to get up to, then out through the Great Lakes. Or pay tolls to the CSA. That is going to have interesting effects on the attitude of the Union.
 
The CSA has to care about a couple things:

1. Be capable of wage war without outside assistance in case of a renewed US war.
2. Maintain slavery.
3. Protect its trade.

So they need to industrialize, a given, cant depend on the US.

Can they really have the luxury of enter foreign wars when you have to concern yourself with possible slave revolts? Maybe if its something limited, Mexico, some Caribbean islands...

They need a strong navy, the CSA lives on foreign trade, the US did not, so there will be the need to not only challenge but to ensure freedom from US interference in case of war. They cant make them, so they need someone else, obviously their biggest trade partner and foremost naval architects at the time. At least for a while, the slavery thing is bound to cause trouble and the CSA would aim to create a domestic industry as well.

Would there be a USN/CSN naval race? If so, that is a sensitive subject for the UK, they would react if it grows enough to be a concern. Plus, there is the Canada border concern, IOTL that was solved to the advantage of the US, here? Doubtful, the US cant push the issue too far, it isnt as big, and the CSA is behind them... is it solved to the UK's advantage or allowed to fester?

In any case, North America is a far more important concern to the UK than IOTL, and its ability to affect outcomes is also enhanced.

Once WW1 begins, the UK would play both sides to its advantage, regulate their trade as far as possible, neither can react too strongly out of concern for the other, they would simply profit as much as they could, but NEITHER would enter the war.

So the Entente folds after the Russian, Italian and French armies collapse in 1917.

Edit: Forgot one bit, the CSA's white population is less than a FOURTH of the US one, do they address that? Allow German immigration (the protestant thing)? Or is it greed too much and plan to just use slaves to exploit the land?

The day the CSA starts a naval arms race with the USA is the day they lose it
 
Butterflies... but...

A victorious CSA means Spain keeps their Caribbean positions most likely, unless a CSA victory causes worse mismanagement in Cuba, leading to sale to Germany. If Germany or Central Power Spain (if Spain were to join...) has it, the CSA may join the alternate WW1. I doubt they'll conquer anything as the Royal Navy will prey it away beford the Confederates can do anything.

But again, butterflies are way too much to not affect it. This scenario is assuming somehow everything went almost the same.
 

JAG88

Banned
The day the CSA starts a naval arms race with the USA is the day they lose it

At the time the US was a naval midget and exports werent a major concern, specially after the CSA splits, so its a matter of both lesser need and lesser resources for the US.
 
At the time the US was a naval midget and exports werent a major concern, specially after the CSA splits, so its a matter of both lesser need and lesser resources for the US.

If the US was a naval midget the. Confederacy was a naval speck and there is no way in hell the US is going to tolerate having an inferior navy
 

JAG88

Banned
If the US was a naval midget the. Confederacy was a naval speck and there is no way in hell the US is going to tolerate having an inferior navy

Why? It had little need for one before, much less one after losing the CSA beyond harrasing CSA trade in a future conflict. What could happen is US industry, after losing CSA markets, tries to sell more abroad.
 

SsgtC

Banned
If the US was a naval midget the. Confederacy was a naval speck and there is no way in hell the US is going to tolerate having an inferior navy
And the reason the CSA had such a small navy was the complete inability to build warships in any significant number. Well, that and the fact that they had such a small population, they had to choose between an army and a navy. That's not going to change. Not with a large and hostile United States sharing a land border. The Union has the manpower to not only keep a large army on the border, but also maintain a large Navy.
 
At the time the US was a naval midget and exports werent a major concern, specially after the CSA splits, so its a matter of both lesser need and lesser resources for the US.
OTL in 1865, the Union Navy was ranked 2nd or 3rd, depending on your opinion of the French Navy.RN was #1, of course.

That ranking would drop as the USN no longer had a wartime budget, to by the late 1870s, would be a joke. But a surviving CSA, that recently wreck most of the North's Merchant Marine with British and French built Raiders?

Nope, USN would keep the patrolling navy up to date, as well as the Brown Water Navy
 
Assuming that Britain helps the CSA gain / hold independence, then the USA finds itself between British Canada and British-supported CSA. I would expect the USA to stay more on a "war footing", keeping up a strong military and a strong anti-British attitude ("we fought them in '76, we fought them in '12, we fought them in '64, and we ain't gonna let them bloody our nose again!"). European history stays mostly the same (the Spanish-American war still occurs as the USA wants to keep slavery out of Cuba / PR at least, and/or establish bases to "surround" the CSA). When WWI breaks out in 1914, the CSA either stays neutral or joins the Allies supporting Britain. Either way, the USA promptly declares for the Central Powers and invades the CSA again while Britain is distracted in Europe. Within a few years, England/France is looking at a USA rapidly gearing up for war and preparing to ship hundreds of thousands of BLACK troops (freed slaves given uniforms, guns, some basic training, and pointed at Britain as the now-defunct CSA's main supporters) overseas. The Allies surrender.
 

JAG88

Banned
OTL in 1865, the Union Navy was ranked 2nd or 3rd, depending on your opinion of the French Navy.RN was #1, of course.

That ranking would drop as the USN no longer had a wartime budget, to by the late 1870s, would be a joke. But a surviving CSA, that recently wreck most of the North's Merchant Marine with British and French built Raiders?

Nope, USN would keep the patrolling navy up to date, as well as the Brown Water Navy

That would be a HUGE issue for the CSA, they rely on cotton and other exports, they cant allow themselves to be blocked again in case of war and lose their main source of revenue, can they?

For the US a navy is a good thing to have, for the CSA would be VITAL.

Which is why I highlighted the manpower problem, they need a strong army and a strong navy while its white population is a FOURTH of the US population, do they allow white immigrants in? How does THAT fit with slavery? Some can be absorbed by the need to industrialize, certainly, but they need a serious population increase.
 
It should be noted that historically, and this is true both before and after the Civil War, the states that made of the Confederacy were not particularly isolationist and arguably consistently the most expansionist or bellicose or internationalist region of the country. I can't think of any war that was opposed in the South but the other regions were OK with. They even fired the first shots of the American Civil War, when it was clearly not in their interest to do so but rather to wait and force Lincoln to make the first move.

And arguably there is some economic logic to this in being a resource extraction economy dependent on international trade. Its hard to make international comparisons, because countries in this situation tended to be part of the British Empire (Australia, Canada, South Africa) or geographically isolated (Argentina), though I guess you could argue that Brazil has gotten involved in wars that were none of its business and it has a much more laid back and pacific culture than the American South.

So I can see the Confederate States of America joining in on whatever is the next big war in Europe, if only on general principles.
 

Deleted member 94680

It’s not looking good for the CSA to be a viable nation long term, is it?
 
The CSA may eventually join the war against Germany but probably only at about the same time and for the same reason the USA did: the German resort to unlimited submarine warfare--including killing Confederate citizens on Confederate ships.

An interesting irony, considering that a victorious South might very well have conducted unrestricted submarine warfare on the Union, starting with CSS Hunley. Pre-1900, though.
 

Marc

Donor
Quote is from the Fractal Foundation>

  • The Butterfly Effect: This effect grants the power to cause a hurricane in China to a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened. A more rigorous way to express this is that small changes in the initial conditions lead to drastic changes in the results. Our lives are an ongoing demonstration of this principle. Who knows what the long-term effects of teaching millions of kids about chaos and fractals will be?

  • Unpredictability: Because we can never know all the initial conditions of a complex system in sufficient (i.e. perfect) detail, we cannot hope to predict the ultimate fate of a complex system. Even slight errors in measuring the state of a system will be amplified dramatically, rendering any prediction useless. Since it is impossible to measure the effects of all the butterflies (etc) in the World, accurate long-range weather prediction will always remain impossible.

  • Mixing: Turbulence ensures that two adjacent points in a complex system will eventually end up in very different positions after some time has elapsed. Examples: Two neighboring water molecules may end up in different parts of the ocean or even in different oceans. A group of helium balloons that launch together will eventually land in drastically different places. Mixing is thorough because turbulence occurs at all scales. It is also nonlinear: fluids cannot be unmixed.

  • Feedback: Systems often become chaotic when there is feedback present. A good example is the behavior of the stock market. As the value of a stock rises or falls, people are inclined to buy or sell that stock. This in turn further affects the price of the stock, causing it to rise or fall chaotically.
Now for pure fiction - fantasy story telling - we can ignore all that jazz, and that make up consequences or lack thereof as we wish. But if we are actually interested in alternate history as counter, but still factually, based, then we simply can't.
Which is why I believe that plausible extrapolations really are only viable for a few years after the departure event.
 
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