Andre M. Fleche's main objective in writing this monograph is to demonstrate that it was far from coincidental that the American Civil War followed close behind a wave of revolutions in Europe and Latin America where issues of nationalism, race and labor were paramount. In attempting to do so, this book situates itself within a burgeoning scholarly appreciation of the transatlantic, or even global, dimensions of a conflict that, largely due to its civil nature, has long been treated as thoroughly American (the recent work of R. J. M. Blackett and Edward Bartlett Rugemer would be notable examples of the scholarly effort to “atlanticize” the Civil War). And, it must be said, Fleche has done a good job.

The monograph is divided into six chapters but these are really best conceptualized as forming three sections. The first section, consisting of chapters 1 and 2, focusses on the legacies of the revolutions of 1848 and 1849 within America. Chapter 1 discusses how white Americans reacted to foreign revolutions, whilst chapter 2 shows how the meanings of European uprisings had become contested by 1861 as an increasingly divided nation seemed to launch into a revolution all of its own. Chapters 3 and 4, the second section of the book, discuss the formation of nationalism in the North and South during the initial two years of the conflict. The Union, in their discourse, sought to try and balance American national legitimacy with an insistence that revolution, in certain circumstances, was legitimate. Needless to say, this was a difficult balancing act. The Confederacy, meanwhile, as chapter 4 fleshes out, had jumped all over the principle of national self-determination that many of the European revolutions had declared. Moreover, Confederate delegates and consuls to the Old World powers, particularly England and France, tried to compel international intervention and recognition of their nascent republic on the grounds that they were simply emulating the revolutionaries of Greece, Italy and others. The third and final section, consisting of chapters 5 and 6, looks at how the issue of emancipation shifted these dynamics. After all, there had been an association, generally speaking at least, of the European revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century with liberalism and progress. Chapter 6 outlines how problematic this was for the Confederacy. To try and counter this association, and therefore problem, the South created a narrative that stressed their revolution as a conservative one, which they posited would grant it longer-term success and stability than those of their European predecessors. Chapter 5 outlines how the new dedication to the abolition of slavery for the Union shifted their approach and outlook. Whilst in the early years of the war they had stressed a more conservative argument of national preservation, they now argued that the destruction of the slaveholding aristocracy was the only guarantee of national unity. Come 1865, the North, at least on the face of it, now embraced the liberal, progressive outlook that many European “forty-eighters” held.

In summary, this book does a fine job of outlining the ways in which Europe's revolutionary heritage played out in the era of the American Civil War and how the migrants that fled to the United States during the conservative counterrevolutions that extinguished their uprisings refused to allow their legacies to drift into obscurity. They instead fought tooth and nail to ensure that the “Age of Revolution” continued in their adopted homeland, though they often disagreed as to what exactly the legacy of these revolutions was. This is Fleche's monograph's strongest point. The discussion of the ways in which people, politicians and officials struggled to reconcile the contradictory messages of the European revolutions, the balancing of national legitimacy with the right of revolution, for example, is elucidatory for scholars of nationalism during the Civil War era. There are a few drawbacks, though. Although the book in its blurb and introduction mentions the importance of political upheaval in Latin America in shaping thought on the Civil War, it actually receives little consideration, particularly in contrast to the discussions of European conflicts. It would have been interesting if the conflicts in Latin America and Europe had been compared and contrasted in greater detail. Another criticism would be that at times the book seems to overhomogenize European ethnic groups. What roles did language and religion have within the German and Irish communities, for example, and how did this shape their thoughts on nationalism? Despite these limitations, this is an important attempt at placing the American Civil War in an international context and will provoke much thought among scholars of nationalism in nineteenth-century America.