This is why people shouldn’t try to write alternate history without doing their technical reading first.
If South’d won Civil War? Slaves would’ve soon been freed anyway, South would now be banana republic, & North the greatest civilisation ever
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) June 29, 2015
Assuming – big assumption. Big, big, BIG assumption – that that scenario would have been the likely result of a Southern victory in the American Civil War*, well, consider the implications. To start off with: even assuming that Europe forced manumission on the CSA at some point (a fair assumption), it is highly unlikely – read, impossible – that the CSA would have permitted the Great Migration north, or that the USA would have let it occur. For that matter, the border between the USA and Mexico – which would almost certainly be an Empire under Maxmilian for at least a bit longer – would have been much, much shorter (California at most: the CSA was ready to contest the New Mexico territory). So. Virtually no Northern African-Americans in Richard Dawkins’ Northern Utopia. Very few Hispanics. White people, as far as the eye can see – with all the brown people in the quote-unquote ‘banana republic’ where Richard Dawkins apparently thinks they belong.
And it’s all being enforced by fortified borders. Not fences: borders, with troops, and cleared land, and fortifications, and probably dedicated airbases and artillery bastions and armor parks. Because as Harry Turtledove noted in rather pointed detail, imagine how World War I would have played out if the USA and CSA were both glaring at each other over a fortified border.
I… think I like the current timeline better.
Moe Lane
*There are a plethora of ways that that could have happened, with significant changes in each one.
We’d be Pakistan and India right now. Only we’d probably be more likely to nuke ourselves then they are.
To be fair though the CSA probably would’ve their own secession crisis, and ultimately ended up as a British Protectorate.
The Union might’ve joined Germany on the promise of regaining the South from the British Empire. Not sure if Seward’s folly happens.
Except the Underground Railroad. That wouldn’t have stopped.
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Now, maybe the north easterners would have expatriated all the escaped slaves, or forced them into Canada, but I doubt it.
Not to mention that two states would have resulted in death for the early unions as both countries turned to the indentured servitude system of company script and company stores. The early unions would have been seen as threats to National Security by both sides and eliminated. Lower class whites and blacks would probably still be working for their parents employers to pay off the family debt.
Not to mention the technological stagnation of such a system. Rome had all the information for the industrial revolution but never used it because they had all those slaves to do the work instead. The US result would have been similar. With lots of cheap labor who needs machines. So both countries would have ended up as technological backwaters more focused on competing with each other than anyone else. Germany might have chosen to send Lenin here instead of Russia. Maybe that’s what Dawkins’ meant.
Due to the Potato Famine and a few other things, the Union was awash in cheap labor before the ACW. It didn’t stop then from industrializing.
Nor did they stop in the aftermath of the war, when returning veterans and a major population influx from the defeated South made labor even more of a glut.
As a British Protectorate or client state the CSA would have been in WW2 early on bleeding and dying. The North on it’s own Maybe could have beaten Japan but there’s no unconditional surrender. You can kiss off D-Day. So Nazi Germany might still be around. The Soviets might have been bought off with buffer states in Eastern Europe since there was no American supplies, so they’d still be around too (No Reagan). Japan would probably still control China, Italy might still be Fascist, everybody plays the North versus South diplomacy game, not a very nice world to live in.
Why would there be a WW2, when history is going off the rails in the 1860s? WW2 required WW1, which required a very specific set of circumstances. Consider all the differences in world relations that would occur:
– Would there be a Spanish American war? Probably not (at least, not between the US and Spain)
– Would Teddy Roosevelt, assuming he becomes president (a fluke, anyway), be able to broker peace between Russia and Japan? He’s presiding over a country with a much smaller powerbase, so quite possibly no.
Already, the geopolitical landscape shifts from those events. If the Russo Japanese war drags on longer, why assume that Russia will even be in any condition to fight in 1914? Why assume that any of the key players of WW1 would even be alive or in power? Many of them likely would not even have been born. Why assume that any revolution in Russia would result in a communist takeover (consider that, when the monarchy fell, it was not the communists in charge to begin with)?
I could keep going, but every single example listed would be a result of how WW1 plays out, and, given that even that is not a sure thing, there’s no reason to assume anything.
Soon the Left will openly be talking about “re-education” camps.
I did a similar project for my college Current History class a few years back:
What if Nixon had not been involved in Watergate. Long paper short – No 9/11.
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A scandal free Nixon was a popular one. It was Nixon’s unpopularity that opened the door for Carter in 76. Riding on the popularity of Nixon, Reagan could have easily been elected instead, making it much less likely that the USSR invades Afghanistan with Reagan vice Carter running things. No USSR in Afghanistan-> no mujahadeen-> no need for OBL-> no al Qaeda-> no 9/11.
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Also, Iran would have turned out a bit differently as well. Reagan would have stood behind the Shah, possibly nixing the Revolution and pre-empting the Iran/Iraq War. The Iran today could look a lot more like Jordan.
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Alas, I only got a B. But AltHist was FUN!
Re: Arizona/New Mexico – actually, they may have ended up in the Union. By July 1862, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of West Texas were in Union hands. So even if Lee’s 1862 invasion of Maryland had succeeded, it would take some awfully good negotiating to recover the Confederate West.
As for extrapolating forward down the alternate timeline… does anyone think the USA and CSA would have eventually reconciled, like the U.S. and Great Britain?
Churchill thought so; at least, he wrote an alternate history story arguing that.
Depends how badly the Union loss is–if it’s the full-on Turtledove _How Few Remain_ type, with the Army of the Potomac destroyed after Lee isn’t stopped at Antietam, and with DC (and Lincoln) in Confederate hands, “give back west Texas” would probably be the LEAST of the Reb demands.