The American Civil War in British Culture: Representations and Responses, 1870 to the Present PDF
Preview The American Civil War in British Culture: Representations and Responses, 1870 to the Present
The American Civil War in British Culture The American Civil War in British Culture Representations and Responses, 1870 to the Present Nimrod Tal © Nimrod Tal 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-48925-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-57389-9 ISBN 978-1-137-48926-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137489265 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. To Sivan Contents List of Figures viii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The War and the Political Debate about Ireland 10 2 The Civil War in British Military Thought 33 3 British Intellectuals and Abraham Lincoln 6 7 4 The American Civil War in British Cinemas 9 6 5 Civil War Roundtable and Re-enactment Societies 124 Conclusion 156 Notes 164 Bibliography 197 Index 215 vii List of Figures 3.1 George Grey Barnard’s statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Square, Manchester 8 1 3.2 Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s statue of Abraham Lincoln in Parliament Square, London 82 5.1 Members of the Southern Skirmish Association in the club’s first event, 1967 130 5.2 Members of the Southern Skirmish Association in a club event, June 1968 130 5.3 An American Civil War Society re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg in Cheshire, England, April 2011 136 5.4 An American Civil War Society camp 137 5.5 A typical canvas tent used by British re-enactors 137 5.6 A Southern Skirmish Association camp 138 viii Acknowledgments Of all the pages of this book, this page proved the most difficult one to write when the search for words that would express my gratitude to those who made this project possible was to no avail. And so I am left with a simple yet sincere ‘thank you’. First, I would like to thank Professor Lawrence Goldman. For his calm- ness and patience, for his immense knowledge and enlightening advice, for his uncompromising intellectual standards and professionalism, for his unbroken support and confidence in me, for his unparalleled devo- tion to this project, I will be forever grateful. I was privileged to have Dr Adam I. P. Smith and Dr Gareth Davies read the research upon which this book is based. Their critical review and insightful comments made this book incalculably better. Their encouragement made and still makes everything much easier. Friends and colleagues, in Oxford and elsewhere, gave much of their time and provided invaluable advice, input and support. Amir Sokolowski, an intellectual and dear friend, read the entire manuscript and gave insightful comments. I cannot thank him enough. I was immensely fortunate to have Dr Jacob Stoil and Dr Moritz von Brescius by my side from the beginning. Other than their reading large parts of this research and providing priceless advice, I gained from our long walks and conversations more than I could gain from any book. I thank Jessica and Raphael Underwood, Dr Dina Fienberg, Dr Tim Wilson, Dr David Sim, Dr George Conyne, Meike Fellinger and my colleagues at the graduate workshop in Oxford, from the bottom of my heart, for their patience, friendship and advice. I would also like to thank the staff of several libraries and archives from across the United Kingdom, United States and Ireland. To Gina Price White from the Louise Pettus Archives at Winthrop University and Amanda Faehnel from the Special Collections and Archives at Kent State University for their kindness and efforts on my behalf. I am grateful also to the staff of the Bodleian, the Vere Harmsworth Library, the archives at University College Dublin and UCD-OFM Partnership, the British Library, the Wirral Archives, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, the BBC Written Archives, the British Film Institute, the Parliament Archives in London, the National Archives in Kew, the Hatfield House Archives and Research centre, and the Mass-Observation ix x Acknowledgments Archives. Special thanks go to the walking and living archives, the kind members of the American Civil War Round Table and re-enactment clubs from across the UK. For their financial support I would like to thank the Royal Historical Society and the AVI Fellowship. Special thanks go to St. Anne’s College, Oxford, for a generous research grant. The generosity of my college, however, went above and beyond financial matters and I would like to thank the kind people of St. Anne’s for making Oxford a home away from home. Especially I would like to thank Dr Anne Mullen and Ms Rebecca Smith whose smiles and care I will always cherish. Without my family this whole adventure would have remained a dream. To my mother, father and brother I give thanks for making dreams come true. To Nir and Ronit I thank you for not telling me in advance how challenging this journey would be and for making me laugh throughout. Above all I would like to thank my wife Sivan, to whom I dedicate this work. From you I learn the most important things. Thank you so much, I love you. Introduction This book explores why twentieth-century Britons were fascinated with the American Civil War, how they understood it and how they presented it to themselves and to Americans. Based upon the findings of this investigation, the book argues that the American conflict has played an exceptionally central role in British culture, and it puts forward a comprehensive and nuanced explanation for this phenomenon. This study also exposes the scope of the encounter between the British and the Civil War and shows how in this encounter the British used the war in order to understand, comment on and even shape domestic as well as Anglo-American affairs. British interest in the Civil War after the conflict ended has in recent years attracted scholars who have detected an underexplored histor- ical phenomenon that could cast new light on questions in American, British and Anglo-American history. Historians such as Jay Sexton, Brian Holden Reid, Hugh Dubrulle, Kevin Kenny and Adam Smith, have made important headway in explaining the place and role of the war in British culture and in Anglo-American relations.1 Thus we know that in the early decades of the twentieth century the British used the Civil War in order to understand and align themselves with the United States, as Smith has demonstrated; we know that the Americans used the image of Abraham Lincoln for purposes of public diplomacy in Britain in the late 1950s, as Sexton has shown; and we know that lessons the British drew from the war were connected with their view of the United States, as Dubrulle has shown. These studies provide ample evidence for the British interest in the conflict; they define many of the themes that are worth exploring in this field, and they greatly inspire this work. The above studies also bring to the fore the work that is still needed in order to fully understand the place and use of this American war in 1
The list of books you might like
