>>> cbcox at ilstu.edu 01/10/01 12:13PM >>>
=Of course looking back at everything from the
=present and from a global perspective, the world
=would be better off had the Confederacy won,
=thus fragmenting the U.S. and permanently
=subordinating it to British imperialism.
((((((((
>CB: Is it certain that if the Confederacy had won, that the U.S. would have
been fragmented ? The "Confederacy" might >have become a centralized state,
with the northern region subordinated to the southern region, like a sort of
Russian empire.
>The Confederacy was not dedicated to confederation or states' rights on
principle, but as a means to perpetuate productive >relations of slave
labor. The Confederates weren't anarchists.
In fact, the South was quite dedicated to imperialism. Folks seem to forget that one of the recursors to the Civil War, where many of the officers got their training, was the Mexican-American War, which many in the Republican ranks had resisted as an attempt by the South to extend slavery under the Missouri Compromise. There were many who supported a far reaching slave confederacy, including adventures like Walker's in Nicaragua which attempted a coup there to bring it into the American fold with Southern support.
And the idea that the world would be better off with a more far-reaching British imperialism just seems bizarre. A strengthened British imperialism might not have been forced to give up its territories so easily after World War II. Imagine a scenario of an alliance of Southern slave imperialism extending into South America allied with a strengthened British imperialism. Somehow that alternative history does not look more appetizing.
-- Nathan newman