Every culture has its prejudices, and here are some Yankee ones.
I actually think the South would have fewer hick towns if it had won the Civil War, because it was the war and its aftermath that destroyed the South's wealth. It was a very rich place before the war, with all that implies for education and civilization. It's been the poorest region of the nation ever since.
Thanks for ending slavery, though. Actually, two of my ancestors were in Sherman's army, too.
Yup, provincialism at its finest.
ReplyDeleteValerie
It was a very rich place before the war, with all that implies for education and civilization.
ReplyDeleteRich only in the sense that wealth was in slaves and property, just as feudalism and the Knights Templar got rich via their properties and castles.
That kind of feudalism is incompatible with industrialization or the information age. It would have done more than anything else to retard the US' growth rates and competitive advantage in the world.
It's been the poorest region of the nation ever since.
Keep voting Demoncrat for a few generations and that tends to happen. Just look at Detroit and Chicago, and that's only a few decades. The money exists, it just goes somewhere else.
I don't think you're right about the economics. Industrialization was funded chiefly by the slave trade, for one thing: the South's major issue was in becoming a consumer of slaves rather than a trader in them (as first the British and then the Yankees had done). But there was some industry developing in the South before the war. It's just that it was destroyed during the war, and went unreplaced.
ReplyDeleteThe end of slavery is definitely a good thing -- and that slavery was indeed worse than the feudalism to which you liken it.
Industrialization was not chiefly funded by the slave trade. Where in the world did you get that? Importation of slaves was actually banned in 1808 (largely, I believe, so that established slave owners wouldn't have their slave value reduced by cheap imports. Heh.)
ReplyDeleteAnd while one can calculate that there was a lot of wealth in the value of the slaves, it was all tied up in the plantation system and a commodity export, the profits of which went back to the owners of the slaves, less the value of whatever services were used to get the cotton to where ever it was milled into cotton products.
Where in the world did you get that?
ReplyDeleteIt is the thesis of Eric Williams' Capitalism & Slavery, originally published in 1944. It's a work that has been subjected to a lot of criticism, but I think his main point is valid. Industrialization makes wealth generation possible in a way it never was before, but to get started -- to build the first factories, the first railroads -- requires investing a substantial amount of wealth that just wasn't stockpiled.
The slave trade allowed people to tap a nearly unlimited source of labor, pay much less for it than what the workers would have charged if they'd been asked. This, plus the triangle trade that was built around the Atlantic slave trade, allowed the generation of the kind of surplus wealth necessary to make those initial investments.
As I said, there's a lot of critical literature on the book, which is over 70 years old now. If you don't like the thesis, you're not the first. But I find it plausible, even if specific details haven't held up.
From the link about Northern attitudes:
ReplyDelete5. We don't care about the Civil War. At all. We don't ever think about it, unless you bring it up. It's like the South is some bitter ex-girlfriend whining about a breakup from 100 years ago.
While Southerners are more aware of the Civil War than Northerners,it isn't altogether ignored in the North. I attended a family reunion in New Hampshire on the banks of the Connecticut River that had several hundred in attendance. They have done this for years and years. They have even made up a song about their family reunion, sung to the melody of that Civil War song, Battle Cry of Freedom.
Much of New England, like the South, is very aware of the past. A family friend in my hometown bought her parents' house- 300 years old. There is a family in my hometown that has a famous Revolutionary war ancestor- from the same town. But they don't make a big deal about it, being the laconic Yankee sort. Nor is that the only famous ancestor family I grew up with.
The South voted with New England for a tariff in 1816. The South believed that a textile industry could readily develop, with the advantages of cheap water power in the Piedmont, proximity to cotton, and cheap labor. It didn't turn out that way.Before the Civil War, New England was the center of textile manufacturing in the US. It took over a century for textile mills in the South to out-compete those in New England.
Regarding the prosperity of the South before the Civil War, I would suggest you consult the travelogues Frederick Law Olmstead, whose main claim to fame is the design of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. His travelogues of the South before the Civil War do not describe a prosperous region compared to the North.
That being said, lower cotton prices after the Civil War were a disaster for the Southern economy. During the time that Southern cotton wasn't being exported during the Civil War, the British discovered that cotton could also be produced in Egypt and India.
The slave trade allowed people to tap a nearly unlimited source of labor, pay much less for it than what the workers would have charged if they'd been asked. This, plus the triangle trade that was built around the Atlantic slave trade, allowed the generation of the kind of surplus wealth necessary to make those initial investments.
ReplyDeleteThat reverses the Southern plantation situation of 1830-1859, where poor White Scottish/Irish were paid little, since the same job could be done by slaves. No money was spent on oxen or pulleys or other mechanical leverage either, precisely because all the wealth was tied up in property ownership. By investing wealth in a eugenics slavery program plus plantation property like the Roman latifundias, the labor was available but it was not utilized. It was under utilized, because the alternative of slavery always provided enough work force to work the slave plantations.
In the North, outside of Democrats sympathetic to slavery and profiting from it, the work force became so available that the price of labor decreased below the point where initial costs for industrialization went bankrupt before starting a market niche. Once the market was started, then the demand and supply grew to match each other, involving more businesses and workers.
The Slavery 1.0 system used in the colonies, European or otherwise, before the Southern Plantation Slavery 2.0 system of 1830+, had several different criteria. Under Slavery 1.0, Irish labor would have helped generate the industrial capital for the revolution of markets and factories. Under Slavery 2.0, that became uneconomical and thus impossible.
Which in turn, meant the South was competing under a competitive disadvantage, and got poorer as a result. The money that existed, was never reinvested nor circulated. And when the plantations were burned down by Sherman, the South had nothing else to offer, except more poor Scott/Irish clans. Who, if they had been offered an industrial market to work off of, would have been capable of making their own businesses.
The end of slavery is definitely a good thing -- and that slavery was indeed worse than the feudalism to which you liken it.
The Southern slave lords could have ended or reformed Slavery 2.0 (one step below Islam's Slavery 3.0) before, in 1830 at least. The Northern slave lord Democrats could have done the same, since they were not in the slave culture. The issue isn't whether Slavery 1.0 or Slavery 2.0 is a good or bad thing, the issue is that once they adopt the 2.0 system, they are prevented from changing out of the system, because the people who own the influence and wealth and political power, were the slave lords. ANd they weren't going to give up their property for factories.
Slaves in Slavery 1.0, can be freed and lifted out of their class, after a generation or within the same gen. The same was not true of Slavery 2.0, so economically, the labor existed, but they refused to use it for factory purposes.
So by confusing Slavery 2.0 with Slavery 1.0, the historical analysts have muddied the issue, as they usually do.
His travelogues of the South before the Civil War do not describe a prosperous region compared to the North.
ReplyDeleteTo Gringo
Like feudal castles, the prosperity and security were relegated to the latifundia plantation system. ANd only to the home mansion, which would have been a castle back in the day.
The presence of the continually poor and semi nomadic Scotts/Irish tribes employed by the white slave lords of the South, also do not paint a picture of economic progress. A slave was valued higher than an Irishman, since a slave was worth more in cash than an Irishman's entire life, or even his family's life. Economically, the South had no "prosperity" that needed workers or laborers. Which was why a significant fraction of the population, outside of the gentile nobility and slave lords, were poor and getting poorer.
To someone born to the plantation system, the aristocratic lifestyle might seem the epitome of progress, prosperity, security, and civilization. But in reality, that is only because they refuse to consider the alternatives. The more efficient alternatives that enforced a more economic distribution of assets and value, instead of trying to centralize everything off a feudalistic system or a latifundia system.
After CW I, the Northern abolitionists sent people to create businesses and invest in Southern infrastructure. Those people were chased off, in order to consolidate the remaining slave lord's influence, now that they were no longer slave lords. They were just normal lords. This allowed the Southern economy to stagnant even more, as the cotton industry was insufficient to maintain the economic progress or needs of the entire population. They didn't even have textile factories, so weren't making stuff off their cotton exports. The excuse might be that they lack capitalization and investments to begin cotton textile factories and production lines. But that excuse doesn't work before 1859, and it doesn't work for areas that rejected Northern business investments.
The KKK was quite effective in destroying business in the South that employed certain proscribed individuals.
http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/317530.php
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, this was a blog post written in 2011, which I read some years after that time stamp.
It concerned certain troubling cultural trends in Houston/Texas.
People need a target to dehumanize or criticize or ridicule. It just so happens that when certain populations, like in Texas, are told to treat people as equal, they go after the weak targets in society. Or as in Waco, the biker clubs, for execution purposes and self righteous justifications afterwards.
While the majority of Texans might be socially well conditioned, the fact that they do not deal with transplants from California or other cultural degradations, means they lack defense. And a culture without a defensive mechanism is not going to survive for long in war.
The independence movement has categorized DC as the "other", which can be productive. But until they look at their own communities and enforce certain standards, they will not have the social harmony or hierarchy needed to deal with their real enemies.
As for why I bring this up now, it's because the poor Scots/Irish migrants to the South would have been better served to fight against the slave lords monopolizing money, religion, wealth, and political capital. That was their real enemy, not Northern abolitionists. It wasn't until Reagan came around, that the political climate began thawing out, where this circle the wagons tribalism began targeting the right internal enemies. And then it just pettered out and neutralized, to the point where they refused to target internal enemies.
The only cultural religions in history that have had a habit of surviving their enemies and assimilating new cultures and nations are Islam and Christendom. Almost every other culture has over reactions or under reactions. Islam and the 1st AD Christendom had abnormally high adaptations, which justifies their claim to divine power. The result is what matters when reverse engineering and tracing back to the origin point. Seeing who survives and wins wars, is a good indication of who has divine backing.