Writing the US Civil War Era into Nineteenth-Century World History

Recent comparative and transnational studies of the nineteenth-century United States point toward the integration of the US Civil War era into a current global historical narrative that considers the nineteenth century a crucial period in world history. In doing so, these studies reinforce the idea that the processes of nation-building and empire-building were closely intertwined throughout the history of the nineteenth-century United States, with the Civil War era as a turning point in both processes. At the same time, this perspective also shows the significance of engaging in hitherto little explored avenues of global historical comparisons with countries such as, for example, Germany and Japan, which underwent national unification/consolidation and later imperial expansion parallel to those that characterised the nineteenth-century United States.