Booknotes: Reconstruction in a Globalizing World

New Arrival:
• Reconstruction in a Globalizing World edited by David Prior (Fordham Univ Pr, 2018).

Academic historians has been revisiting the international dimensions of the American Civil War a great deal of late (or at least it seems that way), with a number of recent full-length works and essay collections examining a great variety of transnational contexts (perhaps most interestingly those ties between the U.S., Europe, and the Americas).

Edited by David Prior, the seven essays in Reconstruction in a Globalizing World together recognize the richness of the existing Reconstruction scholarship while offering the view that previous studies have neglected the worldwide impact of the Civil War's follow on period. "This volume, the first of its kind, will examine Reconstruction’s global connections and contexts in ways that, while honoring the field’s accomplishments, move it beyond its southern focus."

More from the description: "The volume will bring together prominent and emerging scholars to showcase the deepening interplay between scholarships on Reconstruction and on America’s place in world history. Through these essays, Reconstruction in a Globalizing World will engage two dynamic fields of study to the benefit of them both. By demonstrating that the South and the eastern United States were connected to other parts of the globe in complex and important ways, the volume will challenge scholars of Reconstruction to look outwards. Likewise, examining these same connections will compel transnationally-minded scholars to reconsider Reconstruction as a pivotal era in the shaping of the United States’ relations with the rest of the world."

Three chapters draw connections between education in Argentina and the U.S., Liberia College and trans-Atlantic ideologies on race and education, and Radical Republicans with the British Reform Act of 1867. Other essays investigate the Arms Scandal of 1870-72, a reinvented Irish-American nationalism, and German-American nation-building in the American Southwest.