Make France Great Again-Chapter 927 - 918: North–South Conflict Amid Economic Crisis
"Damn it! How did I forget about this!"
After reading the newspaper, Jerome Bonaparte gently patted his forehead and muttered softly.
A few years ago, he was always thinking about the outbreak of an economic crisis in the United States of America.
To trigger an economic crisis in the United States of America as quickly as possible, he was involved in mining, real estate speculation, and even collaborated with Britain to short California gold on the international market.
Who would have thought that the resilience of the United States would be far more enduring than he had imagined. In the time frame Jerome Bonaparte expected (according to his prediction, the United States of America should have triggered an economic crisis by late 1855 or early 1856), the crisis did not occur.
With a slight sense of disappointment, Jerome Bonaparte’s attention to the United States also began to wane, compounded by the fact that he was occupied with numerous other political affairs at the time.
Over time, he gradually forgot about the economic crisis in the United States of America.
It wasn’t until today, when the secretariat delivered the newspaper to him, that he remembered the economic crisis of the United States of America.
However, what he did not expect was that the economic crisis in the United States of America had nonetheless proceeded along the historical trajectory.
He was unclear whether it was a correction of history or due to the intrinsic reasons within the United States of America.
"Let me think, what was the reason the United States of America developed an economic crisis?" Jerome Bonaparte muttered to himself, "I remember it was something to do with the railroad boom, right?"
To verify the guess in his mind, Jerome Bonaparte got up from the sofa and went to the desk, opened the bottom drawer, and took out a notebook to browse through.
"Economic crisis... economic crisis!" Jerome Bonaparte mumbled softly as he flipped backward page after page.
Soon, Jerome Bonaparte found the page he wanted.
"That’s right! This is it!" Looking at the content in the notebook, a smile appeared at the corner of Jerome Bonaparte’s mouth, and then he sighed to himself, "My memory is really good!"
According to the content recorded in the notebook, a large-scale economic crisis would start this autumn in America and then spread throughout the world.
(In reality, only Europe, America, and South America were affected by the economic crisis, with under-industrialized regions basically not experiencing much impact during this economic crisis.)
The reason for the economic crisis is due to the unrestrained development of the railroad industry in the United States of America.
Under the rough railroad planning of the United States of America, the nation built 33,000 kilometers of railroads in just 10 years, exceeding the combined total of the Kingdom of Britain and the French Empire (8,000 kilometers in Britain and 12,000 kilometers in France).
In this distorted development, the railroad bubble in the United States of America grew increasingly large.
If the United States of America had constructed the railroads using its own resources, then it would not have caused a significant impact on the world economy, and the damage would not have spread worldwide.
However, the United States of America did not build such long railroads by its own strength. The rails, ties, and steel plates used for construction were not produced in the United States but originated from the Kingdom of Britain.
American steel enterprises not only failed to reap benefits from railroad construction but instead retreated under the continuous onslaught of cheap British steel.
Many steel enterprises were on the verge of bankruptcy under the pressure of low-cost British steel.
For a sovereign nation, it is unimaginable for domestic companies to be unable to win against foreign enterprises in their own land, instead being pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by them.
The predicament faced by American steel enterprises was due to their low tariff policy, under which the Kingdom of Britain, with its mature steelmaking and metallurgy technology, crushed the newly developing steel technology in the United States of America.
Even if both sides were at the same technological level, British steel enterprises, with their excellent workers, could vastly reduce their costs compared to the United States of America.
Under this first-mover advantage, for later developing countries to make progress, they have to raise tariffs. Once excellent products from first-mover nations enter their markets, they soon lose their advantage.
Domestic companies can use this buffer period for development.
After the enterprises have developed to a certain scale, they can then moderately lower tariffs to apply pressure on domestic businesses, which in turn promotes further advancement.
However, such methods only exist in a sovereign state with relatively centralized power.
For the current United States of America, it is entirely unsuitable.
The federal government’s powers in today’s United States of America are much smaller compared to even before the Civil War, let alone compared to the United States of America after World War II.
The present United States of America is more like a country where power is only slightly more centralized than a confederation, rather than a truly federal country.
Speaking of which, one must mention the history of the United States of America.
The federal government of the United States of America was originally established based on the Thirteen States willingly ceding authority to the federal government under the pressure from Britain, allowing it to be smoothly constructed.
In essence, the founding of the United States of America was merely thirteen local lords unable to defeat the "son of heaven" from Europe, thus forced to band together for warmth.
It wasn’t like France, where through force of arms from a small area around the Paris Basin, it fought all the other lords of France, becoming the preeminent local power throughout the whole of France.
Thus, in the Constitution of the United States of America, each state possesses the autonomy to withdraw from the United States of America.
During this period, the power of the state governments was equivalent to that of a small country.
State governments held all rights except for foreign relations, minting currency, and maintaining an army.
(State governments merely lacked the authority to establish field armies; national guards and private armies were still common in the United States of America. Besides, the regular army of the United States of America at that time numbered only tens of thousands.)
The current federal government, rather than being a central government, was more of a political consultation platform for state governments.
The inability to implement high tariffs in the federal government was due to differences between the southern and northern states on the issue of tariffs.
For the northern industrialists, raising tariffs could effectively protect their factory interests, and they wholeheartedly supported it.
However, for the southern slave owners, raising tariffs was absolutely unacceptable.
Once the United States of America raises tariffs, the Kingdom of Britain will correspondingly increase tariffs on the United States of America as well.
In this scenario, the cotton in the hands of the slave owners would suffer economic losses due to the raised tariffs of the Kingdom of Britain.
It must be noted that the Kingdom of Britain is the only country in the world capable of consuming the cotton share of the United States of America.
The actions to raise tariffs by northern industrialists were essentially a death sentence for them.
Needless to say, the profit margin from industrial capital was much greater than that from agricultural capital.
In the long run, southern slave owners would only be overtaken by northern industrialists.
When the interests of southern slave owners and northern industrialists were completely at odds, the only thing the federal government could do was try to reconcile the issues between the two sides and propose conditions they could both accept.
However, getting southern slave owners to compromise was not that easy. When the federal government attempted to offset the losses from raised tariffs for southern slave owners by subsidizing agriculture, hoping to gain the agreement of southern slave owners for raising tariffs,
those representatives of southern slave owners pointed to high-end goods from Britain and France on their persons and asked representatives of northern industry if they could produce similar products in a short time frame.
The representatives of the Northern Industry, who were just getting started in the industrial and textile sectors, could only shake their heads and accuse the southern slave representatives of making unreasonable demands.
Subsequently, during the vote, the representatives of the southern slave owners would use their veto power to reject the proposal.
For southern slave owners, the fate of northern industrialists was not their concern.
Again and again, under repeated vetoes, the proposal to raise tariffs never went through.
The United States of America had no choice but to build a 33,000-kilometer railway with the "benevolent" "assistance" of the Kingdom of Britain.
Capital from the Kingdom of Britain gradually took full control of the United States of America’s steel sector, and after establishing a foothold in the steel sector, British capital extended its reach into the banking sector.
In the United States of America, the vast majority of thousands of banks had British capital involvement.
The current United States of America could be said to be half controlled by British capital. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎
The Kingdom of Britain is now the only creditor of the United States of America.
Of course, this control did not make the United States of America a puppet of the Kingdom of Britain; at most, it prevented the complete and absolute breakdown between the two.
However, British capital probably did not anticipate that the United States of America would experience a steel bubble similar to the one it once did, a bubble even larger than that of the Kingdom of Britain.
"The crisis will occur in the fall of 1857, over 5,000 enterprises will go bankrupt..." Jerome Bonaparte read each word of what he had written before.
His previous self had specifically gathered information to debate with others, little did he know that it would become invaluable in this life, "With funding from the UK, American banks, railways, and commercial companies went bankrupt one after another, British investors saw their securities sharply devalued..."
Once Jerome Bonaparte finished reading everything, he placed the notebook back in the drawer and walked out of the study, standing on the platform with Bashirio, commanding Bashirio to summon the Minister of Finance, Adolf Fuld.
Bashirio, following Jerome Bonaparte’s orders, went to the Ministry of Finance to find Adolf Fuld.
An hour or so later, Adolf Fuld was brought to Jerome Bonaparte’s study by Bashirio.
"Your Majesty, do you have any instructions?" Adolf Fuld inquired respectfully to Jerome Bonaparte.
"Fuld, come over here!" Jerome Bonaparte gestured for Adolf Fuld to sit on the sofa, then handed him a newspaper.
Adolf Fuld looked at Jerome Bonaparte with confusion, not understanding what the Emperor wanted him to do.
"Mr. Fuld, read the newspaper first! I have some questions I’d like to ask you in a while!"
