Civil War and Agrarian Unrest The Confederate South and Southern Italy

Between 1861 and 1865, both the Confederate South and Southern Italy underwent dramatic processes of nation-building, with the creation of the Confederate States of America and the Kingdom of Italy, in the midst of civil wars. This is the first book that compares these parallel developments by focusing on the Unionist and pro-Bourbon political forces that opposed the two new nations in inner civil conflicts. Overlapping these conflicts were the social revolutions triggered by the rebellions of American slaves and Southern Italian peasants against the slaveholding and landowning elites. Utilizing a comparative perspective, Enrico Dal Lago sheds light on the reasons why these combined factors of internal opposition proved fatal for the Confederacy in the American Civil War, while the Italian Kingdom survived its own civil war. At the heart of this comparison is a desire to understand how and why nineteenth-century nations rose and either endured or disappeared.

Introduction: civil war, nation-building, and agrarian unrest in the Confederate South and Southern Italy: a comparative perspective; Part I. Inner Civil Wars and National Crises, 1860–1863: 1. Preemptive counterrevolutions: the rebellions of the elites; 2. The difficult birth of two nations; 3. Inner civil wars in East Tennessee and Northern Terra di Lavoro I, 1860–1861; 4. Inner civil wars in East Tennessee and Northern Terra di Lavoro II, 1861–1863; Part II. Civil Wars and Social Revolutions, 1862–1865: 5. Revolutions: the revolts of the lower strata; 6. Civil wars and agrarian questions; 7. Social revolutions in the lower Mississippi Valley and upper Basilicata I, 1862–1863; 8. Social revolutions in the lower Mississippi Valley and upper Basilicata II, 1863–1865.

Enrico Dal Lago is Professor of History at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He holds a Ph.D. in History from University College London. He is the author of several books, including Agrarian Elites: American Slaveholders and Southern Italian Landowners, 1815–1861 (2005), and William Lloyd Garrison and Giuseppe Mazzini: Abolition, Democracy, and Radical Reform (2013).