Publishers Weekly
10/13/2014
Following British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston’s dictum that “Opinions are stronger than armies,” Doyle, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, offers an intercontinental history of the Civil War that emphasizes diplomacy and ideology over military tactics. Doyle (Secession as an International Phenomenon) sees the Civil War as a global referendum on the viability of republicanism and mass suffrage following the failure of the revolutions of 1848—a referendum acted out on a radically new field of battle thanks to the development of an international press. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy comes out looking good in Doyle’s account: the South’s struggle for recognition was hampered by incompetent diplomats; the North, insisting to Europeans that the war was precipitated by a legalistic disagreement about constitutional law, failed to capitalize on the powerful antislavery sentiments across the Atlantic until it was nearly too late. Throughout, Doyle lucidly contextualizes these dueling diplomatic missions within the larger machinations of European rulers: to quell dissent at home and reignite their own imperialist ambitions across the Atlantic. Doyle’s account, while lacking in organization, is nonetheless a readable and refreshing perspective on a conflict too often understood through a purely domestic context. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Bruce Levine, author of The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South
“At last! In a single judicious, skillfully constructed, and very well written volume, Don Doyle has given us a concise but panoramic view of the United States Civil War's impact on world history. We have needed such a book for a long time. It deserves a wide audience among scholars, teachers, students, and general readers alike.”
James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
“Offering new perspectives on the international dimensions of the American Civil War, Don Doyle portrays it as a world-changing conflict between liberalism and reaction. This eye-opening book leaves no doubt that Abraham Lincoln was right when he said that ‘the whole family of man' had a stake in the war's outcome.”
Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln
“Unlike any recent book on America's Civil War, Don Doyle's The Cause of All Nations breaks out of the familiar North vs. South framework to view the war, often through the eyes of foreigners, as an epic battle in a global contest over basic principles of liberty, equality, and self-government. In Doyle's telling, the quintessentially American story of ‘our Civil War' becomes an international conflict of arms and ideas, in which the future of slavery and democracy itself was at stake.”
Ted Widmer, editor of The New York Times: Disunion: Modern Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's Election to the Emancipation Proclamation
“Lincoln often claimed that American democracy meant much to the rest of the world. As this wonderful book shows, his forlorn hope turned out to be true. With precision and style, The Cause of All Nations reasserts the universal relevance of the Civil War.”
Civil War Book Review
“Doyle has written the definitive transnational account of the American Civil War and at the same time has given much food for thought to both American historians and historians of nineteenth-century Europe on a myriad of possibilities for further exploration of the connections and comparisons between the 1860s Old and New Worlds that he has highlighted in his book.”
America's Civil War
“Doyle makes a compelling case that the war can be viewed as a turning point in the global growth of democratic institutions.”
War on the Rocks blog
“What a great book!.... The Cause of All Nations is extensively well-researched, and is a useful history of both the American story and European states' international relations during this period… Above all, it sets the Civil War in its proper place in history, as a global affirmation of self-government and freedom. Anyone interested in the Civil War should have Doyle's book on his or her shelves.”
Civil War Memory
“An absolutely fascinating story.”
Military Heritage
“This work forcefully and effectively argues that the American Civil War had lasting importance not only for the United States, but also the wider world. Its points are made cogently, clearly, and with a sense of the international situation of the 1860s.”
Daily Beast
“Well researched, evenly balanced.... Doyle's greatest asset, as both a historian and writer, is his ability to patiently tell this story with color, verve, and flair: while also weighing in with his own expertise and commentary at crucial periods of the narrative.”
Forbes.com
“Masterful.”
Times Literary Supplement
“A major contribution to the history of the American Civil War…A timely reminder of the benefits of looking outwards, to Europe and the world at large.”
Daily Beast
“Well researched, evenly balanced… Doyle's greatest asset, as both a historian and writer, is his ability to patiently tell this story with color, verve, and flair: while also weighing in with his own expertise and commentary at crucial periods of the narrative.”
History Today
“[A] tour de force [that] stunningly reconceives the American Civil War.”
Roanoke Times
“This is a significant book, coming forth in good time to put the spotlight on the Irrepressible Conflict's all-too-often unacknowledged root, and the dire consequences that grew therefrom.”
Society for U.S. Intellectual History
“[A] wonderfully informative and entertaining book…a finely wrought narrative, with a strong underpinning of intellectual history…It is Doyle's great achievement in The Cause of all Nations to remind us that the movement to end slavery in the United States was international in both scope and effect.”
Library Journal
“This fascinating work on the impact of the Civil War on the Atlantic world is an essential read for anyone interested in the conflict.”
Publishers Weekly
“Doyle lucidly contextualizes these dueling diplomatic missions within the larger machinations of European rulers.... A readable and refreshing perspective on a conflict too often understood through a purely domestic context.”
Kirkus, starred review
“Doyle…provides some novel insights about this most chronicled of conflicts.... An important—even necessary—addition to the groaning shelves of Civil War volumes.”
Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2014
Economist
“An enlightening and compellingly written book.... More than any previous study, it tells the story of how America's civil war was perceived, debated and reacted to abroad, and how that reaction shaped the course of the war at home.”
Foreign Affairs
“Doyle's important book reveals why the war was more than a domestic quarrel; it was also a geopolitical event that shook the global balance of power.”
Wall Street Journal
"Mr. Doyle goes beyond conventional diplomatic history to shed much new light on what he calls history's first ‘deliberate, sustained, state-sponsored' campaign to shape foreign public opinion."
Chicago Tribune
“A lively and entertaining new history.... For Civil War buffs, reading the book is like arriving at your favorite restaurant from the street you never take; you know exactly where you are, but nothing looks quite the same from this angle…[Doyle] similarly succeeds in telling a story that is both familiar and wholly original.
Library Journal
★ 11/15/2014
Doyle (history, Univ. of South Carolina; New Men, New Cities, New South: Atlanta, Nashville, Charleston, Mobile, 1860–1910) proffers an examination of the Civil War from multiple European perspectives. Although the work includes some diplomatic history for context, the primary focus is on the public square. Some individuals questioned the role of slavery as a cause of the war. They correctly noted that if the fight was about slavery, why did Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address promise not to interfere with slavery in the Southern states? Others viewed the war as a moratorium on the sustainability of republican government. That the first and longest-running government managed by representatives of the general populace had fractured into a civil battle was viewed by some as proof that "the people" were incapable of preserving liberty over time. With many questions being posed in the public square by citizens from different classes and countries, agents of both the Union and the South worked to shape mass opinion to serve their nation's interest. VERDICT This fascinating work on the impact of the Civil War on the Atlantic world is an essential read for anyone interested in the conflict. Readers should also consider Duncan Andrew Campbell's English Public Opinion and the American Civil War.—John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2014-10-08
Before and during the Civil War, both North and South lobbied hard in key European capitals to convince officials and the general population of the justness of their causes.Impressively, Doyle (History/Univ. of South Carolina; Secession as an International Phenomenon: From America's Civil War to Contemporary Separatist Movements, 2010) provides some novel insights about this most chronicled of conflicts. Although he alludes periodically to the military campaigns—from Bull Run to Appomattox—he uses them principally as reference points, signposts on his journey through the complex and fierce diplomatic efforts underway in England, France, Italy and the Vatican. Many Europeans, especially those with republican sympathies, could not understand why Abraham Lincoln, early in the war, refused to declare the North's effort as a war on slavery; Southern diplomats sought to downplay the slavery issue for their own reasons and focused on the tyranny of the North and on the Southern desire for independence. The South desperately sought political recognition from European powers and hoped for military and financial aid as well. They found precious little, and as the war wound down, the European powers backed off (some had made renewed efforts to re-establish themselves in the Western Hemisphere—France in Mexico, for example), especially when the South remained intransigent about slavery. Doyle brings onto the stage a number of figures unfamiliar to all but scholars of the Civil War—envoys and diplomats, some of whom surreptitiously sought to enlist the participation of Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was virulently opposed to slavery and who toyed somewhat with the offers to lead the Union Army. Lincoln's eloquent oratory was among the most powerful of the Union's weapons abroad, and Doyle ably conveys the widespread, genuine grief in Europe when news of his assassination arrived. An important—even necessary—addition to the groaning shelves of Civil War volumes.
