Why do people assume the Confederacy will liberalize post-war?
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dcharles
Banned
And to expand on this somewhat:
The people who say that (the Confederacy would be a basket case) often do not have any particular expertise in the subject. They're just repeating a meme. They're not looking at the Confederacy that was one of the richest, most literate (at least if we're talking about white people), and dare I say, industrialized places in the world. They're not looking at the Confederacy that had more railroads than almost anywhere else in the world. They're looking at the South of the Depression, which *was* a basket case, after the complete destruction of the banking system, almost fifty years of one-party reactionary tyranny, chronic underinvestment, and economic colonization by the north.
Now, there are ways you can get from the CSA winning the war to basket case. Cinco de Mayo (the timeline, for the unfamiliar) is a great envisioning of it. But there are some very specific conditions that get us from point a to point b. Not inevitabilities.
As for the liberalism part of the OP. "Liberal" as an ideological position, has it's roots in the idea that maximizing personal liberty will result in a greater realization of the common good. In no way does the South *at any point in history* strike me as a place where a premium has ever been put on liberal values. It stands out, along with Loyalist Ulster, as a place in the Anglosphere where those values have been historically weak. Rich? Somewhat powerful? Technologically modern by Western standards? Sure. Liberal? Nah.
In that case, there was a large enough Union faction to maintain a functioning state government. That faction, acting as the legitimate state government, agreed to split into two states. The Union position was that secession is illegal, so the Confederate government was bogus and the legitimate government wanted the split so they could have it.
The Confederacy has more advantages too. Simple proximity to Europe and its markets, a massive natural resource base, especially when oil is discovered, and a common culture and language with Britain and the United States, and a much higher starting industrial base. And by the end of the war it had an incredibly strong central government that had the power to force the states into submission.
Slavery is going to be the anchor that drags the CSA down, and the aftershocks of that are likely going to be visible right modern times even in an ATL.
Hey, it worked out for Bengal, right?
There's potential there for a rather weird trade war between the Confederacy and Britain over opium markets. Opium production in India was fantastically profitable for Britain right up to independence.
FWIW, my view is that slavery is probably not going to be banned in the Confederacy in any kind of 'near' timescale. The middle of the twentieth century is probably the earliest that such a policy can even be discussed, and even then it'll probably be dismissed. On top of that, some of the provisions in the Confederate constitution make it essentially impossible to abolish slavery without consensus across the entire Confederacy. Especially Article I Section 9(4), which would likely be as sacrosanct in the Confederacy as the Second Amendent is in the modern United States.
That wasn't interpreted by the CSA Congress when it existed to impede state level decisions on slavery related matters. It does mean that in order to ban slavery at the federal level an amendment is needed which means that a supermajority of states already will have to have banned it.
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So, a strong tyranny?
This does not bode well for economic growth, or for the sorts of positive structural change that lead to intensive growth.
That assumes Texas and Louisiana don't decide to re-secede and take it with them, once cotton collapses.
By what criteria are you calling it "the most leviathan and centralized government of any state in North America until the New Deal"? This seems like a ridiculously overexaggerated claim. Yes, it is true that the Confederate States saw increasing centralization and control over wartime southern society. This included requisitioning slaves and cotton harvests, mass conscription, and state courts to seize the property of suspected northern sympathizers. With all that said, I don't even know if you can properly argue it was more centralized than the Union was, let alone "any state until the New Deal". It still routinely struggled with asserting its authority over the states during wartime. Governor Joseph Brown was able to successfully defy Richmond over and over again - even during Sherman's March, Jeff Davis was not able to get conscription actually instated in Georgia. As far as I'm aware, the central government was never able to fully impose conscription or unilateral control over Georgia's militias. Hardly a leviathan state if you can't even compel your states to follow national directives during a life-or-death fight. Brown wasn't the only one either - figures like Alexander Stephens and Robert Toombs worked to undermine central authority and caused significant clashes over the state's actual authority to carry out wartime policies. The Confederate government also exercised significantly less oversight over its field armies than the Union did. While Lincoln was essentially in constant contact with the front and used a sophisticated bureaucracy to transmit rapid updates of the action, there are periods in the war where Richmond had essentially no idea where major field armies actually were and strategic decisions were left to the initiative of local commanders. Particularly in the western theater.
There has been a backlash against the idea that the Confederacy "died of states rights" and an increasingly accepted idea of the wartime Confederacy as a relatively sophisticated and centralized administration. But this is only really in comparison to earlier views of the Confederacy as a loose confederation of Jeffersonian freedom fighters. It's measures were in line with most wartime governments of its period, and there were spheres where it struggled significantly to assert central authority. I don't think it was a leviathan, or even more centralized than the north was.
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@Jürgen In terms of industrialization the South sucked. Relative to the US. Its going to tend to suck in the way, say, Southern Europe did, I.E. weak great powers, 'backward' but still impressive by non-US/Northern Europe standards. It had as much industry by the early 1900s as Italy or Japan.
Also, Mexico was not ruined by the US big-picture. The US didn't help shortterm (though being next to an industrialized economy may have helped down the road). It was ruined by Spain and Mexican internal politics. In terms of government stability, GDP per capita, literacy rate it was *far**far* behind the South in 1845. Literacy rate is more predictive of long-term GDP than current GDP and by that measure the South by the Civil War had roughly 80% white literacy rate and 5-10% black. In Mexico the literacy rate was on the wrong side of 10% and virtually non-existent in rural areas. True in general with Latin America. Could they have done better? Sure, but to a large degree Latin America was already deeply screwed by the time it got independence. It looked pretty bad even compared to Southern Europe which had it relatively rough even without any US neighbor until the 1970s or so.
Also, Mexico was not ruined by the US big-picture. The US didn't help shortterm (though being next to an industrialized economy may have helped down the road). It was ruined by Spain and Mexican internal politics. In terms of government stability, GDP per capita, literacy rate it was *far**far* behind the South in 1845. Literacy rate is more predictive of long-term GDP than current GDP and by that measure the South by the Civil War had roughly 80% white literacy rate and 5-10% black. In Mexico the literacy rate was on the wrong side of 10% and virtually non-existent in rural areas. True in general with Latin America. Could they have done better? Sure, but to a large degree Latin America was already deeply screwed by the time it got independence. It looked pretty bad even compared to Southern Europe which had it relatively rough even without any US neighbor until the 1970s or so.
Yeah, that is not it.
I am thinking of the South as an economy that, despite performing well in some metrics, was deeply compromised in some key respects by its dependence on plantation slavery, this dependence in turn being based on a fundamentally irrational view of race relations that reduced almost half of its population to chattel. This superexploitable work force, in turn, created significant problems in human capital formation, and in itself was causing an increasing number of problems for the South. If European cotton workers are willing to risk famine rather than work with your chief export, you have a significant issue.
Yes, the South may have been prosperous before the civil war. Why are we to assume this would have continued if the South became independent? Argentina at its apogee had the same GDP per capita as France or Germany, and Argentina was merely so deeply unequal as to inspire an ultimately dysfunctional political radicalism. Turning to our contemporary world, the Gulf States particularly but also Saudi Arabia have been desperately trying to reorient themselves away from exclusive dependence on oil, but have had their efforts hindered by the fact that huge portions of their workforces (supermajorities of their general population, even) are immigrants excluded from any sort of citizenship. These last, at least, can draw on the populations they want; the South was always famously unpopular with immigrants because of the existence of slavery.
Why should we expect the South not to experience relative decline in its own way, based on what we know of the way it worked and the blind alleys we have seen less dysfunctional societies go down? This leaves aside entirely the ways in which violence was a political tool, whether used domestically against opponents of slavery or externally in imperialism; that alone could lead to disaster. Meanwhile, if the Confederacy makes slavery as key to its identity as Confederates said, the country places its foreign trade at significant risk.
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One thing to note about slavery in the minds of Southern leaders is that proslavery ideology was a relatively recent innovation that developed for the most part in the 1830s as the Second Great Awakening and the growing sectional divide posed questions as to its status. Before that, it was while not totally uncontroversial, something that wasn't really explicitly an ideology of sorts, more just observations on the practical issues and dilemmas of the day.
There was, as historians have since discovered more evidence of, a large wave of manumissions either at the time of inheritance or on holidays, in the 1770s through the 1810s or so before this started to slow down and more efforts went into the colonization movement. The influence of the American Revolution as well as a tumultuous labor market from a great wave of immigration and population movement are generally attributed as the causes, and the abolition of slavery in northern states was often not vigorously fought.
So I think an obstacle to abolition that is underestimated (the economic and social arguments are well covered here) is that regardless of the practicality of having a slave society, many of the youngest members of the aspiring elite in the Confederacy would have been strong believers in the moral goodness of the practice of slavery. There were paternalistic arguments, religious arguments, as well as scientific-racial ones, and had adherents who spent a lot of time discussing and refining these arguments in debates and conversations with business partners and friends elsewhere in the world. The papers of James Henry Hammond, for example, show him engaging in constant letter writing debates and conversations with pro or anti slavery aristocrats in France and Britain throughout the 1840s. In other words, a lot of personal prestige was wrapped up in this for prominent elites in the South who might have indeed profited more from an industrial wage labor system. So I don't think economic or political rationalism are going to be the basis of abolition in the short term. Jefferson Davis's consideration of gradual emancipation in March 1865 in exchange for French intervention was an act of desperation and perhaps not a serious one (as far as I know it never left the cabinet) but that is the kind of situation I see as likely to bring about abolition - a crisis moment in which it is chosen as the best of a set of bad options.
There was, as historians have since discovered more evidence of, a large wave of manumissions either at the time of inheritance or on holidays, in the 1770s through the 1810s or so before this started to slow down and more efforts went into the colonization movement. The influence of the American Revolution as well as a tumultuous labor market from a great wave of immigration and population movement are generally attributed as the causes, and the abolition of slavery in northern states was often not vigorously fought.
So I think an obstacle to abolition that is underestimated (the economic and social arguments are well covered here) is that regardless of the practicality of having a slave society, many of the youngest members of the aspiring elite in the Confederacy would have been strong believers in the moral goodness of the practice of slavery. There were paternalistic arguments, religious arguments, as well as scientific-racial ones, and had adherents who spent a lot of time discussing and refining these arguments in debates and conversations with business partners and friends elsewhere in the world. The papers of James Henry Hammond, for example, show him engaging in constant letter writing debates and conversations with pro or anti slavery aristocrats in France and Britain throughout the 1840s. In other words, a lot of personal prestige was wrapped up in this for prominent elites in the South who might have indeed profited more from an industrial wage labor system. So I don't think economic or political rationalism are going to be the basis of abolition in the short term. Jefferson Davis's consideration of gradual emancipation in March 1865 in exchange for French intervention was an act of desperation and perhaps not a serious one (as far as I know it never left the cabinet) but that is the kind of situation I see as likely to bring about abolition - a crisis moment in which it is chosen as the best of a set of bad options.
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dcharles
Banned
Broadly, I think those are all good reasons why liberalization is very unlikely, and I think they are important factors to consider when trying to imagine how the Confederate economy would have modernized (or failed to). I weigh those factors against some of the others that I mentioned.
Of the negative conditions that you mentioned, I think that the emphasis on the plantation agriculture would be likelier to diminish in a victorious Confederacy than the OTL conquered South. The reasoning is fairly straightforward. All of the reasons to diversify from OTL would still manifest. All of the same areas for potential diversification would still exist. But almost by definition, a victorious Confederacy would begin its life several billion dollars richer than the OTL conquered South, simply by having a banking system and slaves. So especially in the early decades, you're looking at some of the same motives to change and opportunities to diversify, but with a greatly expanded means with which to do so.
I do question whether simply having more capital available would in itself be enough to create structural change. Would it just give the existing system more money and not lead to transformation?
dcharles
Banned
And I think that that's where the individual author's read on it starts to come in. Like, there have certainly been societies that squandered advantages and slipped into decay, as well as those who have done the opposite. Usually it's a little of column a, little of column b. So, to me, there's good stories in vivid worlds that cohere and hang together as AH anywhere in that range--squandered advantages to wise investments. But beyond that, I think that the trope of the innately backward, benighted South is as much a myth as the enlightened masters and happy darkies of the Old South. Myth can be fun to play with, but it's not really what I'm looking for with AH, and a lot of people kind of botch it anyway.
90% believe it because grandpa Turtledove told us it would eventually happen before he went for a beat for beat replay of WW2 with different players and the other 10% are Confederate apologists.
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It is not myth; it is a simple extrapolation of where the South was headed before the Civil War and would have gone as an independent state.
In many ways, the South underperformed compared to Brazil, its nearest analogue. Late Imperial Brazil had embarked on progressive emancipation, and has consequently changed its labour market enough to begin attracting very large numbers of immigrants. Conditions for immigrants were not as good in Brazil as elsewhere in the Southern Cone, but it did work. The contrast with the South, which before the civil war was making things hard for even free blacks and was not attracting substantial numbers of immigrants outside of such exceptional places as the port city of New Orleans and a Texas open to free settlement, is notable.
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The problem here is that the way you build up industry is through protectionism, domestic markets, and exports. CSA with the ruling elite having an interest in free trade will certainly be a very open economy, so CSA industries will have to compete with far more productive industries. Next domestic markets suffer under the same problem as Russia a large, impoverished population [1] and as for export, CSA will suffer under competition with more productive countries on the world scene.
CSA's industry will be dominated by two things, light industry producing goods with short shelf life and industries which produce to government agencies (like arms, trains, ships etc.). I do not see a independent CSA being the equivalent to Italy or Japan, I see CSA as the equivalent to Spain.
Mexico was outside countries like Paraguay and some Caribbean states, one of the Latin American countries with the worst 19th century, and the major factor in that was almost certainly the fact that they had USA as neighbor. USA was very much a destabilizing factor in Latin America until 1990 and the closer a country was to USA the more it was destabilized. Of course, with a weaker USA, Latin America have to deal with another major destabilizing factor; the Europeans.
[1] First as slaves and late as de facto bonded tenant farmers, which will also weaken the mobility of the population as we saw in Russia.
Here is my rough idea of CSA timeline
1860-65
CSA end up getting alive out of the conflict with USA, don’t know how and while it have some importance the discussion how they survive will bog any discussion down.
1865-1890
CSA: Not much happen in this period, slavery continue, some conflict between state and the confedeal government. Virginia develop into the financial center of CSA, there’s increasing tension with Texas those economy shift to depend more and more on cattle ranching in this period. CSA receive more immigration than in OTL, mostly north Europeans in the Upper South and Texas and many buy up land for farms, through some like the Irish end up mostly in industry, the Upper South also turn into the manufacturing center of the Confederation. The Deep South see a influx of Christians from the Ottoman Empire, they mostly end up as a mercantile minority. Britain and France invest heavily in CSA.
USA: USA see a political scene split between a more clear left wing movement dominated by farmers and workers and a right wing movement dominated by capitalists and financial industry. It’s a far more competitive political system than in OTL.
The rest of the world: No CSA timeline would really be a CSA timeline without a empire of Mexico, so of course its survive and do pretty well. Mexico get significant European settlement in the north, mostly from Catholic part of Germany and from the Austrian Empire.
In Europe we could just as well end up with no German Empire and instead just a NGC but life is easier if we follow OTL pattern, so a Franco-Prussian War, the 2nd French Empire ends and the German Empire arises.
1890-1900
CSA: Here we see trouble arise, Texas with its large European immigrant population see a increasing conflict with the planter dominated government in Richmond (or where the capital have ended up). So in this decade the Second Texan War of Independence happens. Texas are backed by Germany and Mexico. Mexico because they love America so much that they prefer as many Americas as possible and Germany because connection to the immigrant community there, but also because their lack of investments in CSA and the opportunity to invest in Texas and to prove themselves as a great power. US do not join the war, but end up supporting Texas with volunteers, “volunteers”, military advisors, loans, and recognization. CSA expect British and French support, but as the Texans sell the conflict as one over ending slavery, both decides that this is CSA’s own problem. Texas wins and become independent.
USA: It continues down the same road it already have begun.
Rest of the world: Here we see a major question, what happens to Spain? Do we still see a Spanish-American War without the American South? Could another country intervene and take Spain’s colonies?
1900-1914
CSA are increasingly aware that slavery is a problem, it offer European powers a casus belli to intervene in CSA and make it impossible for countries like UK and France to back them in such conflicts. So slavery are abolished in this period, but the slaves are forced to buy themselves free and are placed in position which look close to serfdom. Voting rights depend on ownership of property,so the “liberation” of the slaves do not result in the political suddenly giving them political rights and they still suffere significant discrimination. Decades of Old World immigration have also resulted in growth of already free biracial group (as the immigrant to the Deep South were mostly men), to weaken any potential coalition between the biracial “Mulattos” and the rest of the Black population, the former receive rights the latter do not.
1914:
The Great War begins
CSA decides to join the conflict on Entente side, but are really not a active partner. Texas and Mexico takes a position of mostly pro-German neutrality. While USA are split with a left strongly dominated by pro-CP groups and a right dominated by pro-Entente groups. The blockade of the CP may shift USA into a more pro-CP position and spread the Great War to the Americas, making it a true World War.
1860-65
CSA end up getting alive out of the conflict with USA, don’t know how and while it have some importance the discussion how they survive will bog any discussion down.
1865-1890
CSA: Not much happen in this period, slavery continue, some conflict between state and the confedeal government. Virginia develop into the financial center of CSA, there’s increasing tension with Texas those economy shift to depend more and more on cattle ranching in this period. CSA receive more immigration than in OTL, mostly north Europeans in the Upper South and Texas and many buy up land for farms, through some like the Irish end up mostly in industry, the Upper South also turn into the manufacturing center of the Confederation. The Deep South see a influx of Christians from the Ottoman Empire, they mostly end up as a mercantile minority. Britain and France invest heavily in CSA.
USA: USA see a political scene split between a more clear left wing movement dominated by farmers and workers and a right wing movement dominated by capitalists and financial industry. It’s a far more competitive political system than in OTL.
The rest of the world: No CSA timeline would really be a CSA timeline without a empire of Mexico, so of course its survive and do pretty well. Mexico get significant European settlement in the north, mostly from Catholic part of Germany and from the Austrian Empire.
In Europe we could just as well end up with no German Empire and instead just a NGC but life is easier if we follow OTL pattern, so a Franco-Prussian War, the 2nd French Empire ends and the German Empire arises.
1890-1900
CSA: Here we see trouble arise, Texas with its large European immigrant population see a increasing conflict with the planter dominated government in Richmond (or where the capital have ended up). So in this decade the Second Texan War of Independence happens. Texas are backed by Germany and Mexico. Mexico because they love America so much that they prefer as many Americas as possible and Germany because connection to the immigrant community there, but also because their lack of investments in CSA and the opportunity to invest in Texas and to prove themselves as a great power. US do not join the war, but end up supporting Texas with volunteers, “volunteers”, military advisors, loans, and recognization. CSA expect British and French support, but as the Texans sell the conflict as one over ending slavery, both decides that this is CSA’s own problem. Texas wins and become independent.
USA: It continues down the same road it already have begun.
Rest of the world: Here we see a major question, what happens to Spain? Do we still see a Spanish-American War without the American South? Could another country intervene and take Spain’s colonies?
1900-1914
CSA are increasingly aware that slavery is a problem, it offer European powers a casus belli to intervene in CSA and make it impossible for countries like UK and France to back them in such conflicts. So slavery are abolished in this period, but the slaves are forced to buy themselves free and are placed in position which look close to serfdom. Voting rights depend on ownership of property,so the “liberation” of the slaves do not result in the political suddenly giving them political rights and they still suffere significant discrimination. Decades of Old World immigration have also resulted in growth of already free biracial group (as the immigrant to the Deep South were mostly men), to weaken any potential coalition between the biracial “Mulattos” and the rest of the Black population, the former receive rights the latter do not.
1914:
The Great War begins
CSA decides to join the conflict on Entente side, but are really not a active partner. Texas and Mexico takes a position of mostly pro-German neutrality. While USA are split with a left strongly dominated by pro-CP groups and a right dominated by pro-Entente groups. The blockade of the CP may shift USA into a more pro-CP position and spread the Great War to the Americas, making it a true World War.
One could argue it remains so to this day, except that in these last decades the drugs (and its users) are more to blame for that than the government.