Liberty and Slavery

About this book

"In Liberty and Slavery, Niels Eichhorn suggests that the language of slavery--the essence of human oppression--was a crucial component for revolutionary struggles, especially separatist ones, in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. By tracing separatist uprisings and revolutionaries from 1830 and 1848 to 1861, his study shows that separatism was a widespread phenomenon during the nineteenth century and that the southern Confederacy in America was nothing unique. In addition, by looking at the language of slavery, which served to justify separatism in places like Poland and Hungary but not Ireland or Schleswig-Holstein, Eichhorn's work provides additional answers to why European separatists sided with the Union rather than the Confederacy during the American Civil War. He places the events in North America in a broader international framework and illustrates important complexities regarding trans-Atlantic migration studies"--