Great Britain and the American Civil War.

While the United States tore itself apart, an anxious Britain watched, weighed its interests, and came closer to intervention than is often remembered.

What it's about

Great Britain and the American Civil War is a study of the diplomatic and political relationship between Britain and a divided America during the war of 1861 to 1865. It examines the pressures bearing on British policy, official neutrality, the temptations of intervention, the disruption to trade caused by the cotton blockade, and the crises, such as disputes over ships and seized envoys, that repeatedly strained relations between London and Washington. The narrative traces how statesmen, opinion and events combined to keep, or nearly break, the peace.

Themes

The book explores neutrality and its temptations, the clash between economic interest and moral sentiment over slavery, and the way public opinion and the press shaped a great power's choices. It illuminates the delicate work of diplomacy in a crisis, and the fine margins by which a wider war was avoided.

Why it still matters

The Civil War was not only an American event but an international one, and Britain's role in it shaped the outcome and the long relationship between the two nations. This history remains a valuable account of that entanglement, essential for understanding both the diplomacy of the period and the wider currents, economic, moral and political, that ran through the nineteenth-century Atlantic world.

Who it's for

Readers of American and British history, students of diplomacy and international relations, and anyone interested in the global dimensions of the Civil War.