Nations, Markets, And War ― Modern History And the American Civil War

Modern history, suggest the authors (a professor emeritus of international relations at Florida International U. and a professor of history at the U. of Virginia) is in many ways the product of changing liberal conceptualizations of the nation, the individual, and the market. After setting out the broad outlines of these concepts' development over time, they use the American Civil War as an exemplar for how competing conceptualizations of markets can lead to conflict between nations. In this formulation, the roots of the Civil War lie in logics of economic development that led to Southern conceptions of nationhood as lying in their own region and Northern conceptions of the nation as continental. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Nicholas Onuf is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Florida International University and the author of The Republican Legacy in International Thought. Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia, is the author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Virginia).