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I remember hearing that something like 80% of the South's cotton was exported to Britain during the post-Revolutionary War period, which made me think of the South as a neo-colony of the British empire. Probably not a perfect analogy, but it seems like a potentially useful heuristic for understanding American history in this era.

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Yes. The significant core-peripheral economic relation between Great Britain and the U.S. South was one of the factors influencing the decision of the South to secede. Not exactly neocolonialism, which did not fully develop until the twentieth century, with characteristics such as rule by transnational corporations and banks, a figurehead bourgeoisie totally subordinated to foreign capital, and ideological penetration of the neocolony. But certainly, an early version of neocolonialism. Some Latin American scholars refer to the relation between Great Britain and Latin America in the nineteenth century as semi-colonialism, and perhaps that would be appropriate here.

Thanks for commenting, and I appreciate the way that you have been announcing my commentaries on Twitter.

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