Don H. Doyle

Introduction: The Electric Chain of Transnational History

The American Civil War was not only the culmination point of a hitherto “unfinished nation” and the central crisis in American history but it also had significant international ramifications for the political, social, economic, and military conditions in many parts of the world. What usually is described as an ‘age of nationalism’ witnessed the rise of the modern constitutional state and globalized interdependent capitalist economies. America’s Civil War was central to the transformation of the modern world in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The Transnational Significance of the American Civil War

Conference at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, September 15-18, 2011. Co-sponsored by the GHI Washington, the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, the Ernst Abbe-Foundation, the American Embassy in Berlin, and the Faculty of Philosophy of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Conveners: Jörg Nagler (University of Jena), Marcus Gräser (GHI). Participants: Sven Beckert (Harvard University), Richard Blackett (Vanderbilt University), Robert Bonner (Dartmouth College), Amanda Brickell-Bellows (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Leslie Butler (Dartmouth College), Richard Carwardine (Oxford University), Enrico Dal Lago (National University of Ireland, Galway), Don Doyle (University of South Carolina), Paul Finkelman (Albany Law School), Stig Förster (University of Bern), Susan-Mary Grant (Newcastle University), Nicholas Guyatt (University of York), Mischa Honeck (University of Heidelberg/ GHI), Axel Jansen (University of Frankfurt), Hartmut Keil (University of Leipzig), Axel Körner (University College London), Nicola Miller (University College London), Paul Quigley (University of Edinburgh), Evan C. Rothera (Pennsylvania State University), Brian Schoen (Ohio University), Zachary Sell (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Jay Sexton (Oxford University), Aaron Sheehan-Dean (University of North Florida), Nimrod Tal (Oxford University), Andrew Zimmerman (George Washington University).