Britain and the War of the Union.  Volume 1.  By Brian Jenkins.  Montreal and London:  McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974.  Pp.  xx, 315.

In the first of a two-volume study, Britain and the War of the Union reexamines Anglo-American relations during the early years of the Civil War.  Brian Jenkins, formerly of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, begins his book with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the White House in 1860 and ends in the late spring of 1862.  These later months marked several notable Northern victories at Forts Henry and Donelson and the capture in April of New Orleans.  Initially, British politicians and policymakers anticipated a short war with the Northern and Southern states going their separates ways.  But after a year of intense fighting, observers on either side of the Atlantic had little indication that “the North [would] ever offer separation to the South.  Independence would have to be won by Southern resolution” (261).  Through his synthesis, the author attempts to produce “the most comprehensive account yet to appear of [Great] Britain’s role in the American Civil War” (9).  At the time of its publication in 1974, the author’s work clearly filled a need for a fresh survey of Anglo-American relations during the Civil War.

Jenkins’s account covers the first eighteen months of the war and underscores four main areas of diplomatic concerns of the period.  First, the author addresses Confederate diplomacy toward Great Britain and attempts to gain foreign recognition.  Second, Jenkins discusses the role of Canada in Anglo-American relations.  Many British leaders feared an American attack on Canada in the midst of North American instability.  Next, Jenkins analyzes British foreign policy toward the Union, the Confederacy, and Canada.  While the Civil War primarily affected Americans, the conflict jeopardized British interests in Europe, specifically the British economy based on cotton trade with Southern states.  Finally, the author examines diplomatic efforts of the Union toward Great Britain.  In this area of research, Jenkins argues that Secretary of State William H. Seward deliberately implemented a policy of “bellicosity” as a “restraining factor” in order to dissuade British intervention on behalf of the Confederacy.  In the end, Britain officially adopted a policy of neutrality toward the American Civil War.  Contrary to some other Civil War diplomacy historians, Jenkins argues that the adoption of a this policy stemmed from foreign policy concerns, including an irrational fear that the United States would annex Canada in the middle of a Civil War, rather than British public opinion.  While the British foreign minister, Lord Lyons, believed the United States annexation of Canada was imminent, Secretary of State Seward did nothing to correct the false assumption.  Rather, Seward used the sham to his benefit in negotiating neutrality from Great Britain.

Jenkins carefully researched both primary and secondary sources.  His primary research utilizes the records of multiple archives from Canada, Great Britain, and the United States.  His secondary source research presents a thorough bibliography of virtually every monograph on Civil War diplomacy published prior to 1974.  The author’s bibliographic essay is most helpful as it separates secondary sources into their respective concentrations on Confederate, Union, Canadian, British perspectives.  While contemporary scholars may look down their noses at this work as dated, historians must remember that this work is thirty years old.  At the time of its publication, it marked a huge step forward in modernizing Anglo-American studies during the Civil War.

Jenkins’s work contributes to Civil War historiography in important ways.  First, his research presents the significance of Canada into the Anglo-American relationship.  Canada functioned as a huge bargaining chip in Anglo-American communiqué during the war, particularly in light of the proximity of Canada to a neighboring country in the middle of a Civil War.  Furthermore, many Civil War studies incorporating diplomacy and Anglo-American research moved toward more specific areas of research in the decades prior to Jenkins’s survey.  Frank Merli’s Great Britain and the Confederate Navy, 1861-1865 (1970), is one such example of narrow but detailed publications.  Jenkins’s inclusive study departed from a focused trend present in the 1970s. 

In 1974, Jenkins’s book functioned well as an updated version of Anglo-American relations during the Civil War.  The work was sorely needed as the previous work of Ephraim Douglass Adams’s Great Britain and the American Civil War (1925) appeared some fifty years before.  Few worthwhile studies documenting the complex diplomatic period emerged in the ensuing five decades.  Current Civil War historians, particularly diplomatic scholars of the period, would likely criticize the work for its sloppy research documentation and heavy reliance upon diplomatic sources.  Nonetheless, it is the work of previous historians that allow succeeding historians to identify problematic historiographic errors and address such voids in their own research. 

Dana Magill