The U.S. South and Europe: Transatlantic Relations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New Directions In Southern History)

The U.S. South is a distinctive political and cultural force-not only in the eyes of Americans, but also in the estimation of many Europeans. The region played a distinctive role as a major agricultural center and the source of much of the wealth in early America, but it has also served as a catalyst for the nation's only civil war, and later, as a battleground in violent civil rights conflicts. Once considered isolated and benighted by the international community, the South has recently evoked considerable interest among popular audiences and academic observers on both sides of the Atlantic. In The U.S. South and Europe, editors Cornelis A. van Minnen and Manfred Berg have assembled contributions that interpret a number of political, cultural, and religious aspects of the transatlantic relationship during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors discuss a variety of subjects, including European colonization, travel accounts of southerners visiting Europe, and the experiences of German immigrants who settled in the South. The collection also examines slavery, foreign recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign government, the lynching of African Americans and Italian immigrants, and transatlantic religious fundamentalism. Finally, it addresses international perceptions of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement as a framework for understanding race relations in the United Kingdom after World War II. Featuring contributions from leading scholars based in the United States and Europe, this illuminating volume explores the South from an international perspective and offers a new context from which to consider the region's history. "The U.S. South is a distinctive political and cultural force--not only in the eyes of Americans, but also in the estimation of many Europeans. The region played an important role as a major agricultural center and the source of much of the wealth in early America, but it has also served as a catalyst for the nation's only civil war, and later, as a battleground in violent civil rights conflicts. Once considered isolated and benighted by the international community, the South has recently evoked considerable interest among popular and academic observers on both sides of the Atlantic. In The U.S. South and Europe, editors Cornelis A. van Minnen and Manfred Berg have assembled contributions that interpret a number of political, cultural, and religious aspects of the transatlantic relationship during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors discuss a variety of subjects, including European colonization, travel accounts of southerners visiting Europe, and the experiences of the German 'Forty-Eighters'--immigrants who settled in the South after the German Revolution of 1848. This volume also examines slavery, foreign recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign government, the lynching of African Americans and Italian immigrants in the South, and transatlantic religious fundamentalism. Finally, it addresses contemporary issues such as international perceptions of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement as a framework for understanding race relations in the United Kingdom following World War II. Featuring contributions from leading scholars based in the United States and Europe, this illuminating volume explores the South from an international perspective and offers a new context from which to consider the region's history."--book jacket. Contents 6 The U.S. South and Europe: An Introduction 8 1. Southerners Abroad: Europe and the Cultural Encounter, 1830–1895 22 2. Alexis de Tocqueville and Three German Travel Accounts on the Antebellum South and New Orleans 40 3. The German Forty-Eighters’ Critique of the U.S. South, 1850–1861 58 4. “In the Days of Her Power and Glory”: Visions of Venice in Antebellum Charleston 80 5. Elizabethan Dreams, Victorian Nightmares: Antebellum South Carolina’s Future through an English Looking Glass 94 6. Slavery or Independence: The Confederate Dilemma in Europe 112 7. The Lynching of Southern Europeans in the Southern United States: The Plight of Italian Immigrants in Dixie 132 8. Southern Politicians, British Reformers, and Ida B. Wells’s 1893–1894 Transatlantic Antilynching Campaign 152 9. Transatlantic Fundamentalism: Southern Preachers in London’s Pulpits during World War I 172 10. Europeans Interpret the American South of the Civil War Era: How British and French Critics Received The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone With the Wind (1939) 188 11. Gunnar Myrdal and Arthur Raper in the Jim Crow South 212 12. Explaining Jim Crow to German Prisoners of War: The Impact of the South on the World War II Reeducation Program 230 13. Britain, the American South, and the Wide Civil Rights Movement 250 14. Resisting the Wind of Change: The Citizens’ Councils and European Decolonization 272 Acknowledgments 290 List of Contributors 292 Index 298 The U.S. South is a distinctive political and cultural force -- not only in the eyes of Americans, but also in the estimation of many Europeans. The region played a distinctive role as a major agricultural center and the source of much of the wealth in early America, but it has also served as a catalyst for the nation's only civil war, and later, as a battleground in violent civil rights conflicts. Once considered isolated and benighted by the international community, the South has recently evoked considerable interest among popular audiences and academic observers on both sides of the Atla