Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South

More than merely a legal status, citizenship is also a form of belonging, giving shape to a person’s rights, duties, and identity, exerting a powerful historical influence in the making of the modern world. The pioneering essays in this volume are the first to address the evolution and significance of citizenship in the South from the antebellum era, through the Civil War, and down into the late nineteenth century. They explore the politics and meanings of citizenry and citizens’ rights in the nineteenth-century American South: from the full citizenship of some white males to the partial citizenship of women with no voting rights, from the precarious position of free blacks and enslaved African American anti-citizens, to postwar Confederate rebels who were not “loyal citizens” according to the federal government but forcibly asserted their citizenship as white supremacy was restored in the Jim Crow South.

About the Author :
William A. Link, Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History at the University of Florida, USA, is the author of Links: My Family in American History. David Brown, senior lecturer in American studies at the University of Manchester, UK, is the author of Race in the American South: From Slavery to Civil Rights. Brian Ward, professor of American Studies at Northumbria University, UK, is the author of Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South. Martyn Bone, associate professor of English at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, is the author of The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction.

Review :
"A diverse and stimulating collection of essays that suggests how much the nineteenth-century South can teach us about one of the defining concepts of modern history."--Journal of American History "As soon as we consider citizenship to be a matter of belonging and identity and not just of political participation, it becomes a much more expansive and interesting lens through which to view the South."--Journal of American Studies "Provide[s] an expansive conceptual framework of citizenship that combines historical and cultural perspectives to address the economic, political, and cultural dynamics of race and belonging in the nineteenth-century South."--Reviews in American History "A useful addition to the field, especially in its framing of citizenship as not merely a matter of legal enactments or electoral politics, but also as a process of social and cultural negotiations and exclusions."--H-Net "Focusing on the diverse experiences of marginalized southerners, the contributing scholars make it clear that the evolution of citizenship in the nineteenth-century South was crucial in shaping not only the region's social, economic, and political culture, but also that of the United States and the wider world."--History: Reviews of New Books "Speaks to and develops much of the most recent scholarship on southern society, on the development of the market economy in the South, and on the shifting parameters of citizenship within the matrix of modernity, as well as touching on broader discussions of nationalism and its construction(s) within the United States as a whole."--American Nineteenth Century History "Provocative essays that expand the study of an important topic. They raise interesting questions, point to new avenues of inquiry, and challenge scholars to think about the South's relationship to the nation and the world."--Journal of Southern History "Contributes a great deal to further understanding the complexities of the meaning of citizenship in such a complicated society."--North Carolina Historical Review