Why didn’t any european powers back the confederates?
Especially ones who were actual rivals to the US and wanted to halt their rising power like Britain
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Why didn’t any european powers back the confederates?
Especially ones who were actual rivals to the US and wanted to halt their rising power like Britain
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Slavery was never profitable
Why would Britain care if it’s profitable? They’d still be getting the cotton imports and manage to have severely weakened the USA as a rival
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Japan backed the confederacy, the union was the lib side.
Japan was backed by Germany and other countries.
They got Sewared
figures in both governments toyed with it but the population at large beyond the aristocracy was horrified by slavery, to the point where they'd be risking serious civil unrest with a pro-confederate intervention.
because the general population of Britain and France had little love for the confederacy since they just saw it as slave masters starting a revolt so it would be difficult at best to justify, and the other powers favored the US with Russia going as far to state any intervention against the US would mean war with them, the Ottomans benefitted from the confederacy getting blocked off from trade, and the bismark would have likely used a french intervention against them
Mexico supported the confederacy and France.
Weird considering many of the rebels who took Tejas from them 30 years prior were slavers from the South.
Juarez was a Mason and was backed up by the Yanks, they even awarded him with a MOLLUS. His kind pretty much gifted Tejas and other territories to the Americans. Santa Anna was also a mason and he pretty much waged the war in favou of them.
France invaded Mexico during the war to overthrow Benito Juarez who was pro-Union and replace him with a pro-Confederate Austrian archduke or somebody like that. One of the crazy side pieces of that period.
there was a growing fear of american domination in South america, spain and france. This led to the development of the idea of the latin world, le monde latin, a sort of lose grouping of latin speaking nations. And Napoleon via his wife was introduced to some mexican exciles that played on this to get Napoleno to back their side of mexican custerfrick number 18649.
They want to frick over their domestic enemies and napoleno wanted to turn mexico into a bulwark for the latin world against america.
They needed a figure/figure head the mexicans wanted a royal but some of those didn't want a spanjard and napolion didn't want a german. So they settled on an austrian and the rest is history
the royal navy always had more officers than they had postings for so a lot of them would enter private and foreign employment while on retainer to the royal navy. The RN kept a lot of ships in various grades of reserve and those officers where to man those if the RN went on full war footing. That they where on those ships shows that britain had no interest of joining the war
Britain did support the Confederacy with supplies that contributed to the war effort. They just never formally recognized the CSA as an independent nation state.
Those were private companies.
The British did.
They had Royal Navy officers on their ships.
France invaded to collect war debts or turn Mexico into an asset.
>They had Royal Navy officers on their ships.
Source?
>Britain
Foreign policy post-Napoleonic/Crimean War was to try their best to stay the frick out of major wars, focus on expanding trade and making economic wins. Their strength is naval, not land forces. Pissing off the Union, who were raising million-man armies right next door to Canada would doom their NA holdings even if the Confederates win. The British were also fence-sitters, preferring to let the Union and Confederates bleed each other. If the Confederates had won a decisive victory (like, destroy a whole army, conquer a whole state, or take Washington DC), then the Brits might have sided with the Confederates or at least recognized them. But the Confederates never won such an decisive strategic victory and the British weren't going to bleed themselves dry for a lost cause and unpopular slave holders.
>France
Napoleon III had an energetic foreign policy with thousands of troops tied down in the French Intervention in Mexico (somewhere like 30-50k troops). Nappy 3 did a British and was waiting and seeing. Siding with the South without them clearly winning would have guaranteed the Union being pro-British for the foreseeable future. Recognizing the Union maintained the status quo.
>Spain
Bleeding to death from the losses of their colonies, the Napoleonic war, and general mismanagement.
>Other Euros
Literally none of the other European countries had the navy or force projection to reach across the Atlantic (Prussia, Austria, Russia). So they weren't going to get into that.
Britain was the origin of the war, they ran a Confederate spy network from London, they pushed Abolitionism on the Union.
why did germany back Finland?
Britain didn't care all that much. The only time they might have gotten involved was the Trent affair but Lincoln back down pretty quickly and that was the end of it.
Why would you back the obviously losing side
To inflict as much damage to both as possible.
If the British embargoed trade with the USA and supported the confederates. They could easily have won.
The vast majority of saltpetre the union used for its guns came from British India. Americans manufacturing was also too small to supply its own army with high quality firearms en masse, and they had to be shipped in from Britain and Europe
If Britain intervened they’d easily smash the American Navy, break the union blockade on the south and trade firearms and artillery to the south while the north’s supply continually runs out
There was never a scenario where the confederacy was trying to annex the rest of the USA. They just wanted independence. However if they were clearly winning they’d probably take some border states that were contentious anyway E.g. West Virginia, Missouri, New Mexico and Kentucky
At that point the USA would be heavily weakened and susceptible to further civil wars since it now proved it could not prevent areas seeking independence or revolution.
And the confederacy would be a huge market for British manufactured goods, especially since it was an economy mainly based around agriculture whereas the north was decently industrialised. So even if the USA tried to cut off all trade with Britain forever as a consequence, it wouldn’t matter much (plus, I just don’t think America could afford to cut off trade with by far its largest trade partner without tanking its economy and fricking over its future development, while the south in turn develops faster)
The British public were quite antagonistic to slavery. Being denied Confederate cotton also had much less of an economic impact than Confederates hypothesized. Furthermore, the British-Union economies were much quite closely integrated with the nations being major trading partners. Britain would ironically suffer much more, economically speaking, from supporting the Confederates than they would remaining neutral. On that front, Britain distinctly did not want to go to war with the United States. The benefit to actively opposing the development of U.S. power also didn't seem to be widely appreciated by the British at the time. Other international events and developments were also more worrying to the British. Most notably and during the American Civil War, Britain was quite concerned about the Second Schleswig War between Denmark and Prussia, fearing the elimination of Denmark as an independent power which would have to prompt British intervention.
French intervention in Italy, just prior to the Civil War, also frightened Britain. They weren't steadfast allies with the regime of Napoleon III even though they worked together in the Crimean War.
In terms of why France didn't intervene, it must be expressed that they would only consider doing so if the British also intervened. They weren't ready to do so on their own especially given their own commitment in both Mexico and on the continent.
Other states weren't really courted by the Confederates and Russia was steadfast in supporting the Union.
>Russia was steadfast in supporting the Union.
By sending its fleet to the United States, some took the Russian stance as a sign they would have intervened against Britain and/or France if they intervened on behalf of the Confederacy.
Russia was just pre-positioning some ships out there in case the Poland thing escalated into European war
It's not that cut-and-dried for a second.