That gag is cute, and I’m aware I’m killing the joke here, but it would have been funnier if it weren’t for the fact that underpinning the “economic factors, both foreign and domestic” was just more slavery. The South was utterly dependent on it for their economic security and social identity, and it informed every decision their leaders made.
The squishy humanities version of this, in America at least, goes as follows:
In grade school you learn that the Civil War was about slavery.
In high school you learn that the Civil War was about a lot of complicated things.
In college you learn that the Civil War was about slavery.
Apu learned in post-grad glasses that it was complicated again.
That gag is cute, and I’m aware I’m killing the joke here, but it would have been funnier if it weren’t for the fact that underpinning the “economic factors, both foreign and domestic” was just more slavery. The South was utterly dependent on it for their economic security and social identity, and it informed every decision their leaders made.