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Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the

American Civil War
Cook, Robert. The Journal of American History94.1 (Jun 2007): 278.

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). Nicholas Onuf and Peter Onuf show that the development of the antebellum
United States owed much to this complex process and that scholars cannot attain a comprehensive
understanding of the Civil War without grasping the role that debates about markets played in the
sectional conflict.

Full text
Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War. By Nicholas Onuf and Peter
Onuf. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. xiv, 362 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8139-2502-9.)
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.
In The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (2003), C. A. Bayly emphasized the
interconnectedness and interdependence of global change in the nineteenth century. Nicholas
Onuf and Peter Onuf show that the development of the antebellum United States owed much to
this complex process and that scholars cannot attain a comprehensive understanding of the Civil
War without grasping the role that debates about markets played in the sectional conflict. They
correctly stress that bitter economic disputes, rooted in generations of Western thought, often
divided Americans along sectional lines after 1800. Southern free traders, they aver, initially believed
that unfettered economic exchange across national boundaries was likely to promote international
goodwill and increase the wealth of nations. Only with the rise of proslavery southern nationalism
did southern spokesmen move closer to the position of northern protectionists and call for greater
self-reliance. In doing so they abandoned "fantasies about the coming millennium of peace and
prosperity" and acknowledged "that war was the normal condition of nations-and races" (p. 335).
Yet changing ideas about and responses to the market cannot explain the coming of the Civil
War any more than they can prove that the South was a full-fledged modern nation. The war was
the result of an intractable political crisis rooted partly in moral opposition to slavery and slavery
expansion. (Northerners' reluctance to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law was a much more significant
cause of secession than the Republicans' support for high tariffs.) The contention that the South
was a modern nation is particularly debatable. The intellectual foundations for southern nationhood
were laid during the antebellum period, but the institutional props were barely in place by 1861.
Southern nation-building did not begin in earnest until the war began. It was primarily the work of
the Confederate government and its army. Crucially, the nationalist project was thwarted by the
opposition of the United States and was never recognized as a finished product by the great powers
of Europe. Modern it may have been, but the South was never more than a would-be nation.
Robert Cook
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, United Kingdom

Indexing (details)
American Civil War, Antebellum period, Civil war, International
relations
Title
Cook, Robert
The Journal of American History
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History--History of North And South America
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http://search.proquest.com/docview/224891952?accountid=132811
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Last Updated
Databases: ProQuest Research Library: History, ProQuest Research Library

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