The American Civil War and Reconstruction: 1830-1910

This groundbreaking work explores America's political and economic transformation between 1830 and 1910.

Focusing on the 80 years surrounding the American Civil War, it recounts the establishment of the American empire and the rise of capitalism, introducing the struggles among industrial capitalists, financiers, and workers; slaveholders and enslaved people; entrepreneurs and laborers; and other forces. From the 19th to the 20th century, the United States changed from an agricultural society with a weak central government into an increasingly urbanized industrial society. The government took on a steadily more important role in shaping social and economic life, yet America's imperial character never changed.

The work overturns conventional views of the United States as a nation and an empire, exposing the nature and character of America as an empire and explaining how it crossed the long 19th century to gradually become one of the world's great powers. It also exposes the dark history and unresolved legacies of the Civil War and Reconstruction, problems that America still cannot solve today.