Remaking North American Sovereignty
State Transformation in the 1860s
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North America took its political shape in the crisis of the 1860s, marked by Canadian Confederation, the U.S. Civil War, the restoration of the Mexican Republic, and numerous wars and treaty regimes conducted between these states and indigenous peoples. This crisis wove together the three nation-states of modern North America from a patchwork of contested polities.
Remaking North American Sovereignty brings together distinguished experts on the histories of Canada, indigenous peoples, Mexico, and the United States to re-evaluate this era of political transformation in light of the global turn in nineteenth-century historiography. They uncover the continental dimensions of the 1860s crisis that have been obscured by historical traditions that confine these conflicts within its national framework.
This expertly curated volume uncovers the forgotten connections between the North American crises of the 1860s. Ranging across the continent’s contested battlegrounds and borderlands, and foregrounding indigenous actors, as well as elites, this book demonstrates how political and economic changes in Canada, Mexico, and the United States revolved around common questions of sovereignty and state-making. Conceptually sophisticated, yet refreshingly accessible, Remaking North American Sovereignty is required reading for anyone interested in the U.S. Civil War, nineteenth century empire, and the formation of modern nations.---Jay Sexton, author of A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History (2018)
Bold, original, and extremely provocative, these essays will help scholars think beyond national borders in ways that center, rather than turn away from, domestic state-building and political formations. By connecting the mid-century sovereignty crises in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and by drawing upon imaginative scholars in each field, the editors have put together a lively collection that is at once a guide to the contemporary scholarship on sovereignty, a call to create an integrated North American history, and a series of reflections about moments in each region's domestic history that look very different when seen from afar.---Gregory P. Downs, author, The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic
This interesting collection of essays will appeal to transnational scholars as well as political and constitutional historians.---Choice
Remaking North American Sovereignty is truly a transnational volume... These lively essays will appeal to a general as much as a scholarly audience and many would make excellent additions to graduate seminars.---Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Jewel L. Spangler is Associate Professor of History at the University of Calgary. She is the author of Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century (2008) and co-editor of Remaking North American Sovereignty: State Transformation in the 1860s (Fordham, 2020). Her current project is a microhistory titled “The Richmond Theatre Fire of 1811 in History and Memory.”
Frank Towers (Edited By)
Frank Towers is Professor of History at the University of Calgary. He is the author of The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War (2004) as well as co-editor of anthologies including The Old South’s Modern Worlds: Slavery, Region, and Nation in the Age of Progress (2011); Confederate Cities: The Urban South during the Civil War Era (2015); and Remaking North American Sovereignty: State Transformation in the 1860s (Fordham, 2020).
Introduction: Sovereignty and the Nation-State in
Nineteenth-Century North America
Frank Towers | 1
Part I: Making Nations
1 The United States from the Inside Out and
the Southside North
Steven Hahn | 25
2 Confederation as a Hemispheric Anomaly: Why Canada
Chose a Unique Model of Sovereignty in the 1860s
Andrew Smith | 36
3 Civil War and Nation Building in
North America, 1848–1867
Pablo Mijangos y González | 61
4 1860s Capitalscapes, Governing Interiors,
and the Illustration of North American Sovereignty
Robert Bonner | 90
Part II: Indigenous Polities
5 The Long War: Sustaining Indigenous Communities
and Contesting Sovereignties in the Civil War South
Jane Dinwoodie | 107
6 Negotiating Sovereignty: U.S. and Canadian Colonialisms
on the Northwest Plains, 1855–1877
Ryan Hall | 132
7 Indian Raids in Northern Mexico and the Construction
of Mexican Sovereignty
Marcela Terrazas y Basante | 153
Part III: The Complications of the Market
8 State, Market, and Popular Sovereignty in Agrarian North
America: Th e United States, 1850–1920
Christopher Clark | 177
9 Reconstructing North America: The Borderlands of Juan Cortina
and Louis Riel in an Age of National Consolidation
Benjamin H. Johnson | 200
10 City Sovereignty in the Era of the American Civil War
Mary P. Ryan | 220
Conclusion: Continental History and the Problem of Time and Place
Frank Towers | 251
Acknowledgments | 261
List of Contributors | 263
Index | 265
