Secession, the Civil War, and a Transnational Perspective with Niels Eichhorn
Photo courtesy of John Legg
Niels Eichhorn is an assistant professor of history at Middle Georgia State University. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Arkansas. His first book, Liberty and Slavery: European Separatists, Southern Secession, and the American Civil War explores southern secession from a transnational perspective, pointing to similar movements in Ireland, Poland, Hungary, and Schleswig-Holstein, but also how European separatists struggled to translate their experiences into the sectional environment in North America. In addition, he has a new book! Atlantic History in the Nineteenth Century: Migration, Trade, Conflict, and Ideas. This book is the first-ever application of the Atlantic history concepts to the Nineteenth Century to illustrate how people, ideas, goods, and money continued to traverse the Atlantic world and how interconnected this world was during the nineteenth century. He is currently torn between a Civil War diplomacy and a nineteenth-century South project. He lives in Macon, Georgia with his wife and their three rambunctious and cuddly dogs.
I very much enjoyed looking at the war from a global perspective - and honestly…I think it is always a good idea to reorient ones focus - if only to see things a little differently and (oh I don’t know…) learn something new. This was certainly the case with Niels’s book: Liberty and Slavery, which we discuss in detail:
The formation of the Confederate States of America in a global context
How European separatists would understand “liberty”
The “language of slavery” in European separatist movements in 1830 and 1848
European immigrants and their experiences with oppression…which side did they choose in the Civil War
How do we figure out Thomas Francis Meagher and Patrick Cleburne, for example?
Archives methodology in transnational studies
Academic historians writing in an accessible style…and why it’s a good (great) thing
Please follow Niels on the Twitter - and comment away! I would love to keep this conversation going :)
And please, don’t forget to subscribe to The Rogue Historian Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app so you never ever ever ever miss a show. That would be dumb.
With compliments,
Keith