Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War (review)

The bloodiest war ever fought by the United States, the Civil War remains a focal point of American historical writing and research. How could Americans embark in such a war where brothers fought brothers? And what does this experience tell us about the nature of the American union, before and after the Civil War? Two brothers, historians Nicholas and Peter Onuf, confront these questions in a wide-ranging study that will challenge their readers's intellect and many pre-conceived notions.

Contradicting recent scholarship, focused on slavery and conflict over free labor ideology, the Onufs return to an earlier tradition, dating back to Charles Beard and Louis Hacker, emphasizing conflicts over commercial policy and the tariff. Modern states, the Onufs argue, are best understood as free-trade zones with boundaries defining an area of the social division of labor. They are constructed by crowns and courts who sought to build domestic markets by combining internal free trade with external protection. In a review of the evolution of western political thought that is as erudite as it is difficult to follow, they trace the developing concept of the state and nation in tandem with that of the free market.

Seen from this perspective, it should not be surprising that regional disputes over commercial policies in the United States should have precipitated a crisis within the American union and the Onufs go beyond earlier scholarship to integrate disputes over commercial policy into larger arguments about the construction of the American nation. Beginning with Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, northern protectionists sought high tariffs not only to build an American nation united by commerce, but to finance a strong state able to resist British imperialism. For Northern protectionists, the critical conjuncture was the War of 1812 which showed the need for a stronger national state, without which America would be vulnerable to a British military and commercial empire that had already blighted Ireland and India.

For the Onufs, the debate between protectionists and free traders pitted "history"—the American experience of chronic international conflict—against "theory," the free-trade economists' belief in an inherently rational, progressively peaceful international division of labor. Dismissing British threat, southerners came to resent the cost of protectionist policies; instead of a north-south free-trade-zone, they built their sense of nationhood around a trans-Atlantic trading system. Denying any serious foreign threat, southerners came to see the American union as worse than useless. Ironically, in the moment of southern independence and the creation of a southern nation, military necessity led the Confederacy to promote industry and balanced economic development, precisely the policies favored by northern protectionists.

Covering a great deal of history and political theory, this book is difficult to read; the Onuf's difficult writing style and some poor editing by their publisher make it more difficult. But, the Onufs have written a fascinating and challenging study that should be read carefully by both historians and social theorists. For American historians, their book's most important contribution is to show the interplay of commercial policy and the rise of both American and southern nationalism. That said, the Onuf's attempt to reduce free labor and slavery to secondary factors in the creation of northern and southern nationhood is ultimately unpersuasive. Antebellum political debates were fought over issues like the extension of slavery to the western territories or the national Fugitive Slave Law; by contrast, measures like the dramatic tariff reductions voted in 1857 were supported by many northerners, opposed by some southerners, and did nothing to assuage a South uncomfortable about continued union with an increasingly anti-slavery North. Slavery, rather than tariff protection, marked the division of opinion before and during the war. Those opposed to slavery were united behind the North; those who favored a slave code for western territories favored the South; but, North and South alike included both protectionists and...