Remaking North American Sovereignty

North America took its political shape in the crisis of the 1860s, marked by Canadian Confederation, the U.S. Civil War, the restoration of the Mexican Republic, and numerous wars and treaty regimes conducted between these states and indigenous peoples. This crisis wove together the three nation-states of modern North America from a patchwork of contested polities.

Remaking North American Sovereignty brings together distinguished experts on the histories of Canada, indigenous peoples, Mexico, and the United States to re-evaluate this era of political transformation in light of the global turn in nineteenth-century historiography. They uncover the continental dimensions of the 1860s crisis that have been obscured by historical traditions that confine these conflicts within its national framework.

Introduction: Sovereignty and the Nation-State in
Nineteenth-Century North America
Frank Towers | 1

Part I: Making Nations

1 The United States from the Inside Out and
the Southside North
Steven Hahn | 25

2 Confederation as a Hemispheric Anomaly: Why Canada
Chose a Unique Model of Sovereignty in the 1860s
Andrew Smith | 36

3 Civil War and Nation Building in
North America, 1848–1867
Pablo Mijangos y González | 61

4 1860s Capitalscapes, Governing Interiors,
and the Illustration of North American Sovereignty
Robert Bonner | 90

Part II: Indigenous Polities

5 The Long War: Sustaining Indigenous Communities
and Contesting Sovereignties in the Civil War South
Jane Dinwoodie | 107

6 Negotiating Sovereignty: U.S. and Canadian Colonialisms
on the Northwest Plains, 1855–1877
Ryan Hall | 132

7 Indian Raids in Northern Mexico and the Construction
of Mexican Sovereignty
Marcela Terrazas y Basante | 153

Part III: The Complications of the Market

8 State, Market, and Popular Sovereignty in Agrarian North
America: Th e United States, 1850–1920
Christopher Clark | 177

9 Reconstructing North America: The Borderlands of Juan Cortina
and Louis Riel in an Age of National Consolidation
Benjamin H. Johnson | 200

10 City Sovereignty in the Era of the American Civil War
Mary P. Ryan | 220

Conclusion: Continental History and the Problem of Time and Place
Frank Towers | 251

Acknowledgments | 261

List of Contributors | 263

Index | 265