The struggle between Northern and Southern models of human ecology in nineteenth-century America, the theme of last week’s post, determined more than the shape of American continental expansion. The South followed what was becoming the standard pattern in the non-European world during that century, focusing on the production of commodities that were traded on global markets to pay for manufactured goods from European factories. That’s what the South did with cotton, tobacco, and a variety of lesser cash crops, and it’s also what British North America (that’s Canada nowadays) was doing at that same time with grain, lumber, fish, and the like.
Had the South kept the dominant position it originally held in American national politics, and arranged the nation’s trade policy to its own satisfaction, that’s what would have happened between the Mason-Dixon line and the Canadian border, too. Without the protection of tariffs and trade barriers, the North’s newborn industrial system would have been flattened by competition from Britain’s far more lavishly capitalized factories and mercantile firms. The products of America’s farms, mines, and logging camps would have had to be traded for hard currency to pay for manufactured products from overseas. That would have locked the United States into the same state of economic dependency as the nations of Latin America, where British banks and businesses—backed whenever necessary by the firepower of the Royal Navy—maintained the unequal patterns of exchange by which Britain prospered at the rest of the world’s expense.
Read more: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/03/america-crossing-line.html
Had the South kept the dominant position it originally held in American national politics, and arranged the nation’s trade policy to its own satisfaction, that’s what would have happened between the Mason-Dixon line and the Canadian border, too. Without the protection of tariffs and trade barriers, the North’s newborn industrial system would have been flattened by competition from Britain’s far more lavishly capitalized factories and mercantile firms. The products of America’s farms, mines, and logging camps would have had to be traded for hard currency to pay for manufactured products from overseas. That would have locked the United States into the same state of economic dependency as the nations of Latin America, where British banks and businesses—backed whenever necessary by the firepower of the Royal Navy—maintained the unequal patterns of exchange by which Britain prospered at the rest of the world’s expense.
Read more: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/03/america-crossing-line.html
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