RE: The GZG Digest V2 #1175

> Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 10:21:04 -0500
> From: Allan Goodall <agoodall@att.net>
> Subject: Re: [OT] Invading America
>
> On Thu, 30 May 2002 10:46:43 -0400, John Sowerby
> <sowerbyj@fiu.edu> wrote:
>
> >Yes, the politics is pretty strange. I know that the
> British wanted to look
> >the other way at times for the sake of the cotton, but the
> slavery issue
> >should still have been a sticking point in any alliance
> between the CSA and
> >GB.
>
> Not if Britain had recognized the South early on in the
> Civil War.

Makes no difference, the UK recognised a number of slave using
countries [Brazil for example] without ever being their ally.

> Britain and France were both pretty close to recognizing
> the CSA in 1862.

Over the blockade and the fact they had managed to stay independant.
That is a fait acompli rather than any sympathy.

> The average Briton was against slavery (the
> British aristocracy felt a bond with the Confederate
> "aristocracy", though)

Less than Americans might think. Abolition got through the Lords
without any major upset and the Conferate "aristocracy" were a bunch
of rebellious colonials with no breeding.

> so the Proclamation would make it politically difficult for
> Britain to recognize the Confederacy.

> Britain in particular backed away from Southern recognition.

Britains main interest was being able to trade. Southern recognition
didn't help it because that requires the RN to clear the blockades and
the benefits were not worth the costs.

> (British commerce was affected by the war, after all) and would have
> intervened if the Union had balked. The South would have gained its
> independence.

Depends how that settlement happened. The British Empires methods for
such things in India wouldn't leave the Confederacy as an ally but a
satrap and economic dependancy.

> The South would then become an ally of Britain.

This is where the construct fails. The Confederacy has little value as
more than a counterwieght to the Union. Thus the British Empire plays
the same diplomatic games on the two of them it plays on France and
Germany. Unless it decides to play the Raj in North America. Let the
Foreign office loose on drawing up a peace treaty and you are likely
to end up with North-South borders as well as east-west ones. Not
because Britian cares about the Indians [though it would go down well
with Her Majesty] but because then we can assimilate bits of the
continent we want. Californa when the gold rush starts for example.

> It would probably start to dismantle slavery, though perhaps
> not for one or two decades after the war.

Having won a war that is has taken as it triggering clause the right
to have slavery that is unlikely without some external force. If the
British then they are modifying the Confederacies internal politics on
a scale they usually reserve for Indian States that are about to join
the Raj.

> In either case, the slavery issue would not prevent Britain
> from being allies with the CSA in this alternative time frame.

Other than the possibility of the CSA balkanising over the issue and
the hardening British attitudes on slavery [Note the RN was definetly
against it, because they could condemn slave trading vessels as
prizes, and British Naval Officers have an almost pavlovian response
to the chance to gain prize money], You like Turtledove assume that
there would be a peace lasting decades. There is a good chance the
Union will want a rematch if nothing else.

Adam
--
"It was one of the zoological high points of the Council's varied
political history, right up there with the infamous Incendiary Cat