This volume of pioneering essays brings together an impressive array of well-established and emerging historians from Europe and the United States whose common endeavor is to situate Americas Civil War within the wider framework of global history. These essays view the American conflict through a fascinating array of topical prisms that will take readers beyond the familiar themes of U. S. Civil War history. They will also take readers beyond the national boundaries that typically confine our understanding of this momentous conflict. The history of Americas Civil War has typically been interpreted within a familiar national narrative focusing on the internal discord between North and South over the future of slavery in the United States.

Jörg Nagler is Senior Professor of North American History at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. He has written extensively on nineteenth and twentieth century U.S. history, with a particular focus on war and society, comparative and transnational history. His publications include On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (co-edited with Stig Förster).

Don H. Doyle is McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, USA. He is the author of The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War and several other publications dealing with the US and the world during the nineteenth century.

Marcus Gräser is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, where he has taught since 2011. His main areas of interest are American and Central European History (in comparative perspective). He is presently preparing the volume on North America in the series "Neue Fischer Weltgeschichte".

Introduction: The Electric Chain of Transnational History Jörg Nagler, Don Doyle and Marcus Gräser.- Chapter 1 Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Seas?: Civil War Statecraft and the Liberal Quest for Oceanic Order Robert Bonner.- Chapter 2 The American Civil War and the Transatlantic Triumph of Volitional Citizenship Paul Quigley.- Chapter 3 Lincoln as the Great Educator: Opinion and Educative Liberalism in the Civil War Era Leslie Butler.- Chapter 4 Southern Wealth, Global Profits: Cotton, Economic Culture, and the Coming of the Civil War Brian Schoen.- Chapter 5 International Finance in the Civil War Era Jay Sexton.- Chapter 6 Uprooted Emancipators: Transatlantic Abolitionism and the Politics of Belonging Mischa Honeck,.- Chapter 7 Africa and the American Civil War: The Geopolitics of Freedom and the Production of Commons Andrew Zimmerman.- Chapter 8 The United States, Italy, and the Tribulations of the Liberal Nation Tiziano Bonazzi.- Chapter 9 Nation-Building, Civil War, and Social Revolution in the Confederate South and the Italian Mezzogiorno, 1860-1865 Enrico Dal Lago.- Chapter 10 Race and Revolution: The Confederacy, Mexico, and the Problem of Southern Nationalism Andre M. Fleche.- Chapter 11 Tocquevilles Prophecy: The United States and the Caribbean, 1850-1871 Nicholas Guyatt.- Chapter 12 Reconstructing Plantation Dominance in British Honduras: Race and Subjection in the Age of Emancipation Zach Sell.