The Alabama, British Neutrality, and the American Civil War (review)

The Alabama, British Neutrality, and the American Civil War is a posthumous collection of essays by the accomplished Civil War diplomatic historian, the late Frank J. Merli. Merli, who passed away in 2000, had a number of projects in progress, all dealing with Civil War diplomacy and the complex relationship between the United States, the Confederacy, Great Britain, and France. Merli was especially interested in the crisis over the CSS Alabama and other diplomatic activities related to maritime and naval issues. The essays in this book were taken from several of these unfinished projects.

Edited by friend and fellow historian David M. Fahey, the book contains several fascinating essays that illustrate Merli's exceptional mastery of the history of Civil War diplomacy. A student of the great Robert Ferrell, Merli was one of a sadly diminishing corps of traditional diplomatic historians. The focus of the essay collection is the Alabama incident and the diplomatic maneuverings and blunders that led to her dramatic departure from England and her ultimate demise at the hand of the USS Kearsarge off the coast of France.

The book begins with Fahey's excellent introductory essay—a wonderful outline of Merli's life and scholarly achievements, which were many. In the next four essays, Merli lays out his key findings related to Civil War diplomacy generally and the Alabama affair in particular, including his substantive revision of the classical works on the subject, Ephraim D. Adams's Great Britain and the American Civil War (1925) and Frank L. Owsley's King Cotton Diplomacy (1931). Merli believed that these works have had a particularly pernicious influence on generations of American diplomatic historians due to their numerous errors of fact and the authors' faulty conclusions. Merli was determined to set the record straight with his meticulous use of archival resources both in the United States and Great Britain. His many years spent exploring the diplomacy between the North American belligerents and the major European powers during the Civil War, led Merli to ascribe a rather unemotional realpolitik tendency to British and French policy toward the Civil War: "Hostility to slavery did not prevent Britain and France from supporting the Confederacy. National interests, rather than sympathy for one side or the other, dictated the ways in which the European powers answered the questions posed by the war" (p. 1).

The criticism of Adams and Owsley and the many authors who have accepted their conclusions without question or serious inquiry is judicious and fair throughout the various essays. However, the critiques are repeated over and over, and most readers will feel as if they have been historically bludgeoned. The editor could have eliminated much of the repetition. Also, with the exception of the first four essays, there is no real coherence to the chapters. This is understandable given the posthumous nature of the work, but it reduces the book's appeal.

This is an important book, and the editor has done a great service by saving and publishing these essays. It is an essential contribution to the literature, but it is also primarily a book for the specialist interested in Civil War diplomatic history and especially the Alabama affair.