HBO plans "Confederate", a series where the US South successfully seceded

[Mumbles]

Seems interesting, and that's pretty much required for Berneta Haynes's no-Jim-Crow scenario. But how might that plausibly happen?

To be honest, no clue - I wasn't trying to fully flesh out ideas, just give a taste of things I'd much rather see that another "What if the Confederacy won?" series. I can't even take credit for the "completed Reconstruction" idea, as it's something I saw on twitter.

 

[lpetrich]

Seems interesting, and that's pretty much required for Berneta Haynes's no-Jim-Crow scenario. But how might that plausibly happen?

To be honest, no clue - I wasn't trying to fully flesh out ideas, just give a taste of things I'd much rather see that another "What if the Confederacy won?" series. I can't even take credit for the "completed Reconstruction" idea, as it's something I saw on twitter.

Fair enough. But keeping Andrew Johnson out of the White House would have been a good start.

But if Reconstruction had continued longer, then it would have enabled the emergence of a sizable black middle class, almost comparable to the existing white middle class. Complete with getting involved in civil affairs and politics.

The North may eventually lose the political will to continue, but blacks and sympathetic whites would have been in a much better position to fight off "Redeemer" counterrevolutionaries, the sort of white people who consider it an intolerable demotion for them for black people to improve in social status.

But with black people in an improved position in the South, they may not have moved to the North in large numbers while not having much by way of assets. That would have left many northern urban areas in better shape, since in our timeline, many white people ended up producing what they feared as they fled black people moving in. They had feared lower property values, but their acting on their fears also lowered property values.

Continuing in this timeline, as Hispanic immigrants came in from south of the Rio Grande to do farm work and the like, black people would likely have joined white people in hating them.

 

[lpetrich]

I got another idea for an alternate history in which "Native Americans" hold off Europeans much better than in our timeline. It is that they domesticate the buffalo ( American bison), giving them a head start.

Despite being the closest relatives of domestic cattle native to North America, bison were never domesticated by Native Americans. Later attempts of domestication by Europeans prior to the 20th century met with limited success. Bison were described as having a "wild and ungovernable temper";[40] they can jump close to 6 ft (1.8 m) vertically,[41] and run 35–40 mph (56–64 km/h) when agitated. This agility and speed, combined with their great size and weight, makes bison herds difficult to confine, as they can easily escape or destroy most fencing systems, including most razor wire.

But much the same thing was true of aurochsen, the wild ancestors of domestic bovines ( Aurochs).

Historical descriptions, like Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico or Schneeberger, tell that aurochs were swift and fast, and could be very aggressive. According to Schneeberger, aurochs were not concerned when a man approached, but when teased or hunted, an aurochs could get very aggressive and dangerous, and throw the teasing person into the air, as he described in a 1602 letter to Gesner.[9]

Domestication took place in a rather small spot -- a mitochondrial-DNA study suggests that domestic bovines are all descended from some 80 Middle-Eastern aurochs cows around 8500 BCE (Origin of Modern Cows Traced to Single Herd | WIRED).


So in this timeline, some of the first mound builders domesticate buffalo. In our timeline, Watson Brake at 3500 BCE was the first of the mounds, and Poverty Point at 1500 BCE was a rather impressive Archaic-era construction. The  Eastern Agricultural Complex of crop plants was domesticated by around 1800 BCE, so I'll make buffalo domesticated by around 2000 BCE.

These animals prove a great convenience, just like domestic bovines. They live off of grass, so they don't compete with their masters for food. They can be eaten, they can carry loads, they can pull plows, and they can be milked. That last one would have provoked the response that it provoked among Europeans several centuries earlier: diarrhea and lots of intestinal gas from lactose intolerance. But when drinking buffalo-cow milk proves convenient for surviving famines, this creates selection for lactose tolerance, and North Americans join Europeans there.

Domestic buffalo enable this Louisiana society to spread, and they also spread across ethnic lines, as crop plants do. They spread into Mexico, and if the Aztecs emerge in this timeline, they eat beef rather than human flesh.

Eventually, maize and beans are imported northward, and they become crop staples in North America.

In the meantime, eastern North Americans domesticate turkeys, ducks and geese, getting more meat in their diet.

A common way for buffalo to carry loads is to put them on a sort of sled called a travois -- some sticks extended from a harness on the animal to the ground. That is rather awkward, and some ingenious craftsman thinks of an alternative. Put the far end of the travois on a sideways rod, and put disks on the ends of that rod, while letting the disks turn. Thus doing what some European craftsman had some several centuries earlier: inventing the wheel.

That helps domestic buffalo pull even bigger loads.

Then the first Europeans come and spread their diseases, like smallpox. But in this timeline, the populations in east-to-central North America are too high to allow the social breakdown of our timeline. The diseases spread gradually, with each afflicted population becoming a carrier to its neighbors.

Europeans also introduce horses, which go wild, and which get re-domesticated again. As in our timeline, some North Americans become horse-riding nomads, but some continues to be sedentary farmers. Like smallpox, horses spread first in the Mississippi Valley and its tributary-river valleys, then eastward across the Appalachians. Horses cause a lot of disruption, because they enable new war-fighting tactics. They also prove convenient for watching over big herds of buffalo. Thus the Indians become cowboys.

 

[Sarpedon]

A higher native population with more domesticated animals might also have had their own diseases to knock back the colonists. There were a few in reality, but in the main, the disease losses were one sided.

 

[lpetrich]

A higher native population with more domesticated animals might also have had their own diseases to knock back the colonists. There were a few in reality, but in the main, the disease losses were one sided.

So let's say that North American buffalo carry a disease that's closely related to smallpox and cowpox and a disease of Indian water buffalo,  Buffalopox. I will call it "bison pox".

Every now and then, among the buffalo domesticators, someone catches bison pox from the animals. They may get very sick, but in the early days, the disease does not spread far. As agriculture improves, and as these southern Mississippians spread northward and eastward, population densities grow, and bison pox becomes established in these populations. Every now and then there is some nasty epidemic, but for the most part, the people have a sort of detente with the bison-pox virus.

This causes trouble for Central Americans when they get into contact with North Americans, since Central Americans already had large-scale societies. Bison pox is devastating for them, but they soon recover, along with getting some domestic buffalo of their own. It is hard to proceed past Panama, so both buffalo and bison pox stop there.

Europeans are also devastated by bison pox, and they call it the "American pox" after where its first known European sufferers had been. But eventually someone notices that someone who had survived smallpox is less likely to catch bison pox -- and vice versa. Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination in our timeline, discovers in this timeline that cowpox can protect against both smallpox and bison pox.

However, Europeans at that time may consider bison pox or "American pox" a variety of smallpox.

 

[Sarpedon]

More importantly for our purposes, early colonial populations are devastated to the same proportion as the native population was by European diseases. Plus the disease carried back to europe significantly reduces the surplus population and the pressure to emigrate. Perhaps it also creates a public perception of the new world as a filthy, disease ridden deathtrap rather than a land of opportunity. Unable to expand beyond their initial footholds, the colonists can only maintain their settlements as trading outposts in the face of recovering native populations. In this era of recovery, ideas and technology are spread, allowing the natives to catch up. Perhaps all colonial nations would be compelled to follow the French model of north american colonization. Fewer, low population forts that primarily exist as trading outposts. These could become the nuclei for new American cities, with primarily native populations, as Viking trading posts became Russian cities.

The European population of America would remain small, but possibly become very wealthy.

 

[lpetrich]

More importantly for our purposes, early colonial populations are devastated to the same proportion as the native population was by European diseases. Plus the disease carried back to europe significantly reduces the surplus population and the pressure to emigrate. Perhaps it also creates a public perception of the new world as a filthy, disease ridden deathtrap rather than a land of opportunity.

Yes indeed. Not just bison pox, but turkey influenza.

This can go further. Some European settlers bring some domestic buffalo back home, hoping that they are better in semiarid environments than domestic bovines. But the buffalo are carriers of a strain of rinderpest, and this strain devastates nearby herds of bovines. The authorities keep it from spreading further by killing lots of bovines -- and all the buffalo. It isn't until Europeans made livestock quarantine a regular practice that they started importing lots of domestic buffalo.

Unable to expand beyond their initial footholds, the colonists can only maintain their settlements as trading outposts in the face of recovering native populations. In this era of recovery, ideas and technology are spread, allowing the natives to catch up. Perhaps all colonial nations would be compelled to follow the French model of north american colonization. Fewer, low population forts that primarily exist as trading outposts. These could become the nuclei for new American cities, with primarily native populations, as Viking trading posts became Russian cities.

The closest model of this is likely European colony cities in India and China. Both nations had urbanized populations for centuries, and both nations had survived devastating epidemics in their past. While the British conquered India, they did not colonize that nation -- it was likely too populous for that.

A pleasant consequence of buffalo domestication may be Wisconsin becoming known for its cheeses in this timeline as well as in our timeline -- cheeses made with dairy-buffalo milk.

 

[Mumbles]

This is what i'm talking about!

Another alternate history drama series, which has been in the works at Amazon for over a year, also paints a reality where southern states have left the Union but takes a very different approach. Titled Black America, the drama hails from top feature producer Will Packer (Ride Along, Think Like A Man franchises, Straight Outta Compton) and Peabody-winning The Boondocks creator and Black Jesus co-creator Aaron McGruder. It envisions an alternate history where newly freed African Americans have secured the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama post-Reconstruction as reparations for slavery, and with that land, the freedom to shape their own destiny. The sovereign nation they formed, New Colonia, has had a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with its looming “Big Neighbor,” both ally and foe, the United States. The past 150 years have been witness to military incursions, assassinations, regime change, coups, etc. Today, after two decades of peace with the U.S. and unprecedented growth, an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. Inexorably tied together, the fate of two nations, indivisible, hangs in the balance.

 

[lpetrich]

In this buffalo-rinderpest scenario, the owners of domestic buffalo could catch it, making buffalo measles. This is in analogy with the likely origin of measles from rinderpest.

Meaning more diseases to transmit.

 List of domesticated animals
 List of domesticated plants
 List of domesticated fungi and microorganisms

Should give some hints as to what else might have been domesticated in the Americas.

Mallard ducks were domesticated around 4000 BCE in China, and mallard ducks are widespread in Eurasia and North America, so they might have gotten domesticated in North America also.

Greylag geese were domesticated around 3000 BCE in Egypt, and while greylag geese are Eurasian, there is a possible North American one: the Canada goose.

As to sheep, the bighorn sheep might be a suitable one to domesticate, but bighorn sheep live in the Rocky Mountains, and it may take a while for the buffalo herders to spread out to those mountains.

-

Turning to metals, that may be rather difficult for these Mississippi Valley farmers and herders, since metal ores are most easily accessible in hilly and mountainous areas. Appalachian ores may be the easiest to get to, and one could start off with copper and tin, as Neolithic Middle Easterners and southeast Europeans did.

 

[lpetrich]

This is what i'm talking about!

... Today, after two decades of peace with the U.S. and unprecedented growth, an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. Inexorably tied together, the fate of two nations, indivisible, hangs in the balance.

Seems rather optimistic to me, like Shirley Chisholm becoming President or Jim Crow not happening.

But there is a path, I think. Being a small country with little taste for international empire building or military adventures. Something like Canada or New Zealand or Sweden or Switzerland or Costa Rica or Uruguay.

The US's decline, in that scenario, would be due to trying to maintain a big international empire, military adventures and all.

 

[Ford]

Just so we're clear...

If I understand things correctly, not a single episode of this series has been written, let alone produced. The show "Confederate" barely exists on paper. There's no cast, no production underway, no sets built, and not a single stitch of costuming done at this point. Just a deal to produce the show and put it on the network when it is eventually done.

Am I missing something here?


Because when it comes to being outraged, I like to have the target of my ire be a real thing.

 

[lpetrich]

If I understand things correctly, not a single episode of this series has been written, let alone produced. The show "Confederate" barely exists on paper. There's no cast, no production underway, no sets built, and not a single stitch of costuming done at this point. Just a deal to produce the show and put it on the network when it is eventually done.

That's pretty much correct. We don't even have a lot of details on how this alternate history has worked out. So there is still a risk that it will turn out to be some Confederacy-lovers' wank.

 

[Sarpedon]

There's no reason the Pueblo civilizations couldn't have domesticated the bighorn sheep. Trade between the two would have resulted in the swapping of sheep and buffalo.

 

[Mumbles]

This is what i'm talking about!

Seems rather optimistic to me, like Shirley Chisholm becoming President or Jim Crow not happening.

But there is a path, I think. Being a small country with little taste for international empire building or military adventures. Something like Canada or New Zealand or Sweden or Switzerland or Costa Rica or Uruguay.

The US's decline, in that scenario, would be due to trying to maintain a big international empire, military adventures and all.

That's somewhat along the lines of what I was thinking, as well. And yes, optimistic, but there's nothing awful about that.

My main concern is the involvement of Aaron McGruder. I like most of his work, but when he gets too deep into history...well, he was involved in the not-ver-good Red Tails. Then again, George Lucas was involved in that one as well as I recall, and it could easily be his questionable decisions (as with Star Wars 1-3) that harmed it.

 

[J842P]

Seems rather optimistic to me, like Shirley Chisholm becoming President or Jim Crow not happening.

But there is a path, I think. Being a small country with little taste for international empire building or military adventures. Something like Canada or New Zealand or Sweden or Switzerland or Costa Rica or Uruguay.

The US's decline, in that scenario, would be due to trying to maintain a big international empire, military adventures and all.

That's somewhat along the lines of what I was thinking, as well. And yes, optimistic, but there's nothing awful about that.

My main concern is the involvement of Aaron McGruder. I like most of his work, but when he gets too deep into history...well, he was involved in the not-ver-good Red Tails. Then again, George Lucas was involved in that one as well as I recall, and it could easily be his questionable decisions (as with Star Wars 1-3) that harmed it.

I can forgive McGruder for Red Tails since he called Condoleezza Rice a mass-murderer to her face.

 

[Sarpedon]

Red Tails wasn't that bad. Its main flaws was a matter of plotting and structure, not in going too far in one way or another with the race thing. It was no Glory but was a generally positive addition to the very small genre.

 

[Mumbles]

Red Tails wasn't that bad. Its main flaws was a matter of plotting and structure, not in going too far in one way or another with the race thing. It was no Glory but was a generally positive addition to the very small genre.

Yes- but I want good structure and plotting. Like I said with the series in the OP, it sounds like a bad ripoff of Harry Turtledove's series. It'd be like if the Black Panther trailer came out, and looked all bootleg. I want it to be done right.

 

[repoman]

 

[lpetrich]

Don't Give HBO's 'Confederate' the Benefit of the Doubt - The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates

HBO’s Confederate takes as its premise an ugly truth that black Americans are forced to live every day: What if the Confederacy wasn’t wholly defeated?

TNC then continued with noting Hollywood's long history of featuring the "Lost Cause" mythology of the Confederacy in its productions. This goes all the way back to The Birth of a Nation in 1915. The Ku Klux Klan appeared in it as protecting virtuous white women from lecherous black men.

He then asked which part of the South would have won. Not pro-Union Southerners, not the black population, but what everybody seems to have in mind: the Southern elite and its supporters.

The distinction matters. For while the Confederacy, as a political entity, was certainly defeated, and chattel slavery outlawed, the racist hierarchy which Lee and Davis sought to erect, lives on. It had to. The terms of the white South’s defeat were gentle. Having inaugurated a war which killed more Americans than all other American wars combined, the Confederacy’s leaders were back in the country’s political leadership within a decade. Within two, they had effectively retaken control of the South.

He then compared the Confederacy's return in post-Civil-War US with how Germany has been doing penance for Nazism. Unlike in postwar Germany, no Confederate leader was ever put on trial for treason.

 

[lpetrich]

He continues much like Berneta Haynes, asking why not these possibilities?

What if John Brown had succeeded? What if the Haitian Revolution had spread to the rest of the Americas? What if black soldiers had been enlisted at the onset of the Civil War? What if Native Americans had halted the advance of whites at the Mississippi?

John Brown? Presumably of  John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. He wanted to provoke a slave revolt, but he failed.

Black soldiers in the beginning of the Civil War? That would likely have required endorsing abolition of slavery from the beginning of the war, and President Lincoln didn't want to make enemies of Union states with slaves, like Maryland. I don't know if he was willing to take that risk at the beginning of the war.

The Haitian Revolution spreading? Presumably becoming a major slave revolt in the Southern states. It would have been hard for it to get very far without outside help, I think. Like Spain wanting to hurt an Anglo nation.

As to halting the advance of European conquerors and settlers at the Mississippi, that would have been hard without doing a lot of catching up in advance. I suspect that it would have been helped by domesticating buffalo some millennia earlier, as I've described here.