Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War

Abstract

The coauthors of this ambitious book, an international relations specialist and a scholar of Jeffersonian America, contend that the Civil War was “arguably, the first fully modern war” and a conflict that would never have occurred had the belligerents not been “modern nations” from the outset (p. 345). They also claim that “radically different approaches to world markets and irreconcilable ways of life led to disunion and war” (p. 10). Part 1 is a learned account of how a variety of thinkers, from medieval times to the early nineteenth century, conceptualized the relationship between individuals and society in the context of burgeoning market activity, global war, and state formation. Part 2 charts the ways in which northerners and southerners came to regard themselves as distinct peoples—in part because of evolving attitudes about the role of government in market activity. Both parts brim with insight, but the result, in terms of contributing to the scholarship on Civil War causation and Confederate nationalism, is somewhat disappointing.