Booknotes: France and the American Civil War

New Arrival:
• France and the American Civil War: A Diplomatic History by Stève Sainlaude
  (UNC Press, 2019).

Trans-Atlantic relations during the American Civil War were complex and sometimes dangerous as Britain, France, the United States, and the upstart CSA all wrangled over sticky issues like international recognition, belligerency status, neutrality, the blockade, trade, diplomatic protocols, rights of foreign citizens during wartime, and more. With much of the Civil War international relations literature focused on interactions between the American combatants and Britain, French actions and proposals seem too often presented as mere appendages to British diplomacy. Surely much of this is unintentional and more practically based on difficulties stemming from the language barrier to research, which isn't a problem for Sorbonne historian Stève Sainlaude. His thorough examination of French diplomatic archives and other official sources has produced two groundbreaking and award-winning studies of French policy during the Civil War, with Le gouvernement impérial et la guerre de Sécession (1861-1865): L'action diplomatique (2011) offering an overview and La France et la Confédération sudiste. La question de la reconnaissance diplomatique pendant la guerre de Sécession (2011) focused on the Confederacy. His new book France and the American Civil War: A Diplomatic History is a synthesis of those two earlier French-language works for the English-speaking audience.

Sainlaude first appeared on my radar in 2017's American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s, with his excellent essay outlining Napoleon III's "Grand Plan" of creating a French-led Latin cultural and political alliance aimed at countering the influence of Britain and the United States in the Americas. That made me eager to read this new study, which "offers the first comprehensive history of French diplomatic engagement with the Union and the Confederate States of America during the conflict. Drawing on archival sources that have been neglected by scholars up to this point, Sainlaude overturns many commonly held assumptions about French relations with the Union and the Confederacy. As Sainlaude demonstrates, no major European power had a deeper stake in the outcome of the conflict than France."

More from the description: "Reaching beyond the standard narratives of this history, Sainlaude delves deeply into questions of geopolitical strategy and diplomacy during this critical period in world affairs. The resulting study will help shift the way Americans look at the Civil War and extend their understanding of the conflict in global context." I am already well into it, and it is excellent.