C.S.A Mockumentory

[YankeyMCC]

Heard a brief piece on this film this morning on NRP. It's supposed to take a sort of "alternate history" tack on the Ken Burns Civil War documentary. Sounds interesting anyone else hear of it?

http://www.wbur.org/arts/2006/56057_20060222.asp

One thing the piece seemed to imply that with a victory of the Confederacy would lead to the south taking over all the US not just splitting off as a new nation. That doesn't ring right with me.

[RoyGBiv]

1. That'd be a hard sell ...

Even in fiction, it'd be a hard sell.

The lack of an industrial base and the fact the CSA's capital was largely an illusion, enslaved itself to the whims of its agricultural market, pretty much ensured that it would, at best, be a third world type of country had it continued to exist. As one example, the South's great claim to power was so-called King Cotton. They soon learned the king was naked and that the monarch was quickly and easily transferred to other emerging sources, such as Egypt. With the likely boycott of all goods from the CSA in the wake of the war, even had it won, I find it very doubtful the economy could have survived 5 years without total collapse, and it lasting that long assumes they win the war at some early point, well before the economy had already collapsed.

Of course a lot of variables would need to be considered in this sort of scenario, but few of those have any room for positives from the CSA's perspective. It was not a viable nation at the time it declared its independence and had little potential to be. Given the circumstances globally surrounding the separation, it would not have had the kind of support the USA required in its bid for independence to keep it afloat while it made itself viable.

[YankeyMCC]

2. Perhaps that's why

the movie includes the premise that the CSA victory included taking over the North so that not just the south but all of what we know today as the USA became the CSA. Thus they would've had the industrial base and everything the North had as far as resources at least.

Of course I don't see how the could've "won" to the point of taking over the North either.

[krispos42]

3. The South might have been able to take DC, but that's about it

There's a difference between taking a capital and taking a country.

I think a Southern victory would have meant forcing recognition from the North, then a peace treaty. A Southern victory would probably be pretty dependent on help from Britian and France. The CSA might have survived on for quite a while, but as a backwards nation that exported raw materials and imported manufactured goods, at least until the teachings of Lenin and Marx crossed the oceans and the black slaves rose up against their masters in a Communist revolt.

Harry Turtledove deals with this topic with this "The Great War" series of alternate history. In it, the South (with military help from GB and France) forced the North to recognize the independence of the CSA. The series of books picks up in 1914 with the assassination of that Austrian duke that plunges Europe into war. Except now the North is sided with Austria-Hungary and Germany, and the South with Great Britian, France, and Russia. Union troops are on the march, fighting across Kentucky and Virginia and in the Southwest, US and British warships are fighting on the Great Lakes, British warships are raiding up and down the US coast.

It's an interesting read. I haven't read the second book in the series yet, but the first book is called "American Front". FYI Turtledove has won major awards for his alternative-history stories.