This site provides a place for me (Robert Bonner, Dartmouth History Department) and my students (particular those in Hist 25.1) to explore the American Civil War's global dimensions. The topic, long a staple of first-rate diplomatic history, has expanded to incorporate economic, cultural, and social histories. Most of my own work has approached the crisis in response to these two core questions: 1) what drove Southern slaveholders' global ambitions and why did their position shift late in 1860, as they pursued a program of separatist nationalism ? 2) what challenges did the new Confederacy confront in seeking to establish their government as a sovereign member of the international community?
Those who want to sample questions posed by other historians can eavesdrop on two roundtables that situate the Civil War in the international of the 1860s. Both appeared during the war's sesquicentennial:
Armitage, David, Thomas Bender, Leslie Butler, Don H. Doyle, Susan-Mary Grant, Charles S. Maier, Jörg Nagler, Paul Quigley, and Jay Sexton. "Interchange: Nationalism and Internationalism in the Era of the Civil War." The Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (2011): 455-489.
Prior, David M., Robert E. Bonner, Sarah E. Cornell, Don H. Doyle, Niels Eichhorn, and Andre M. Fleche. "Teaching the Civil War era in global context: a discussion." The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 1 (2015): 97-125.