A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910

The Penguin History of the United States #3

by Steven Hahn

In this monumental story of American imperial conquest and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Steven Hahn dismantles the conventional histories of the 19th century and offers a perspective that promises to be as enduring as it is controversial. It begins and ends in Mexico and is throughout internationalist in orientation. It challenges the political narrative of sectionalism, emphasizing the national footing of slavery and the struggle between the Northeast and the Mississippi Valley for continental supremacy. It places the Civil War in the context of many domestic rebellions against state authority, including those of Native Americans. It fully incorporates the trans-Mississippi West, suggesting the importance of the Pacific to the imperial vision of political leaders and of the West as a proving ground for later imperial projects overseas. It reconfigures the history of capitalism, insisting on the centrality of state formation and slave emancipation to its consolidation. It identifies a sweeping era of reconstructions in the late-19th and early 20th centuries that laid the foundations for corporate liberalism and social democracy simultaneously.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Politics, American, Civil War, Audiobook

Audible Audio

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Steven Hahn is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor in American History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Steven Hahn writes early in A Nation Without Borders, the general consensus regarding the course of American power is that America began as a nation immediately following her break with Great Britain. She only emerged as an empire near the end of the 19th century, following the outcome of the Spanish-American War. Hahn’s book offers a different view of American transformation, one that he argues convincingly. He believes that:

[T]he model of governance inherited from the British was empire; that from the birth of the Republic the United States was a union with significant imperial ambitions on the continent and in the hemisphere, many pushed by slaveholders and their allies; that the United States only became a nation, a nation-state…in the midst of a massive political struggle in the 1860s; and that the new American nation reconfigured the character of its empire, first in the South and the trans-Mississippi West before reaching overseas.

This seems a rather nuanced position for such a prodigious book. Heck, at first blush, it kind of sounds like the type of thing you'd overhear two political science undergrads arguing about while sipping craft beer at trendy new (but not too trendy) micro pub. And to be sure, A Nation Without Borders does not hail from the Everything You’ve Ever Learned About American History is Wrong school of thought. It is not written as a radical polemic, and does not ask you to trash all your cherished (or not so cherished) notions of America.

But Hahn isn’t out to prove some arcane academic notion either.

He is presenting a fascinating reinterpretation of America’s rise to worldwide eminence. This is a work of revision, not of the facts, but of what those facts mean. It is beyond clichéd at this point to say that understanding the past helps us reconcile the present. Indeed, I spent a good fifteen minutes just now trying to find a better way of stating the obvious. I can’t, and so we’re left with the trite but true. America today has a reach that extends into every corner of earth. There are consequences to that. We can’t fully appreciate those consequences - the reactions of the rest of the world, the reactions of left-behind Americans - unless we have a firm grasp of the context from which American might arose.

The scope of Hahn’s book is massive. In 518 pages of text, it covers roughly 80 years of American history. A Nation Without Borders begins in Mexico in 1836, with Santa Anna leading an army meant to crush a rebellion in Coahuila y Tejas. This is fitting place to start, since America’s continental imperialism (Hahn views the acquisition of western territories as a form of colonialism) began on the borderland between Texas and Mexico. The book ends around the time of World War I, with Mexico once again dealing with a revolution, and the United States once again playing a key role.

A lot happened between those two bookends. Indian tribes were dispossessed of their lands. Railroads were built. Slaves were freed and then de facto re-enslaved. Black people fought for their civil rights. Women fought for their civil rights. Corporations became people, and had to do very little fighting for civil rights. A continental empire became a Pacific empire (though not necessarily a pacific empire). Not only is this an eventful period, but it’s remarkably compressed. Someone born in 1830 might easily have lived long enough to remember the Alamo, the Civil War, the first flight of an airplane, and the First World War.

This is clearly too much incident for any single volume to handle. Hahn’s solution is to break things down into a series of rebellions. The outcomes of these various insurgencies, Hahn writes, shaped the destiny of the United States. The most obvious and heavily covered is the rebellion of slaves verses slave-owners, culminating in the Civil War (which Hahn unnecessarily but consistently refers to as the War of the Rebellion). Other insurrections include the Indian tribes rebelling against the Federal Government, women rebelling against the patriarchy, and workers rebelling against their employers. By focusing on these discrete conflicts, he is better able to harness a huge amount of information and hone it into a coherent argument that is both readily graspable and a pleasure to read.

Unsurprisingly, Hahn’s big centerpiece is the Civil War and Reconstruction. His handling of this well-covered era is emblematic of A Nation Without Borders as a whole. Instead of tackling the subject directly, by discussing the political breakdown between North and South, and then following the warring armies as they batter each other for four years, Hahn takes a different route altogether. He uses the Civil War to explain how America became a nation-state with centralized power. He does this by focusing a lot on the West, which had proved a bedeviling Gordian knot in antebellum America. Once the war began, and Southern opposition moved to an entirely different arena, Lincoln used his authority to carve out territories, pass a homestead law, introduce new states (beholden to the Republican Party), and lay railroad tracks to ensure that those new (and loyal) states and territories were connected to the rest of the country.

Hahn’s oblique approach encompasses a diversity of viewpoints. A Nation Without Borders is often told from the perspective of marginalized groups. He is dedicated to treating these groups as active participants, with agency and ability to influence their own outcomes. You see this especially during the Reconstruction phase, where he spotlights activities within the black community itself, rather than simply pitting white Republicans against white Democrats, with blacks passively awaiting the outcome.

It is important to state, if it hasn’t been clear thus far, that A Nation Without Borders is not a narrative history. It is not written in a novelistic style; it does not have big set pieces; it is not peppered with dynamic biographical sketches; it does not even hew to a rigid chronology. It is, instead, an interpretive history. Hahn is interested in the big social, economic, and political movements, and what those movements meant on a larger level.

Hahn’s purpose dictates his writing style. He cannot, after all, rely on novelistic prose or gritty details when his view is much wider-angled. That does not mean A Nation Without Borders is a turgidly phrased academic treatise descended from some ivory tower where readable sentences go to die. Hahn writes fluidly and crisply, explaining his concepts in clear, unadorned language. He does a masterful job marshaling and organizing his research. This is no mean feat when your bibliography is over 50 pages long. I never got lost during A Nation Without Borders. I never finished a paragraph and scratched my chin wondering what the hell I’d just read. I moved through the text 50 pages at a time, which I consider a testament to Hahn’s abilities. (I never expected to be so engaged by the Greenback Movement. So color me surprised!).

A Nation Without Borders is not a triumphalist history. Hahn delivers some harsh critiques, and some of this history is pretty glum. Yet Hahn is surprisingly optimistic in his epilogue:

Six decades earlier [during the Civil War], the country had been unhinged by the largest of a series of rebellions, this by slaveholders who had ridden the cotton plant to enormous wealth... But in mobilizing to defeat the slaveholders’ challenge, the Republican state empowered new classes of industrialists and financiers and sought to extend its authority over the far reaches of American territory. Forcing the rebellious states to surrender, abolishing the slave property that had undergirded their power, enlisting slaves into the military, establishing birthright citizenship, and giving their party a basis in the South, the Republicans also proclaimed the sovereignty of a new nation-state…For a time, this social and political revolution moved further than anyone could have imagined in 1861, certainly further than any revolution of its time had moved. Former slaves were voting, holding office, and helping to create new polities and civil societies. Former slaveholders had been deprived of their most valuable property, weakened on the ground, and driven from effective national power. Petty producers were fighting to assert popular control over the greenback money supply, and skilled workers were fighting for an eight-hour day…A battle for the future of the nation was clearly being waged.

The “battle for the future” did not end in 1910, of course. There would be fierce pushback against the strides that had been made; this pushback required further “rebellion”, engendering more backlash, in a seesaw struggle for progress that continues to this day. Hahn demonstrates that the road to American advancement – to the achievement of her stated aspirations – is not smooth, and not nearly complete.

But the battle continues.

(I received a copy of A Nation Without Borders from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review).

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Nation Without Borders is the 3rd book in the Penguin History of the United States. There are five volumes in the series, which offer a comprehensive history of the United States from the colonial period to the 20th century. The series seeks to bring American History in a coherent and accessible form to the public.

I love history. But I cannot tackle a book with so much information in its pages like I would a story or a work of fiction. I worked my way through this book from cover to cover over time, learning a little bit and then doing further reading on the people, events and places mentioned in the chapters. For me, it was a bit like a self study college course. I like how the 80 years covered by this book are presented with a more global and diverse attitude, rather than the limited manner American history was taught to be in school. This book goes much more in depth about the contributions to American history of Mexico, native tribes, slaves, women...and incorporates that information into the history as a whole rather than skimming over it only as a means to an end.

The information is presented in a very readable way. While it is still possible to get bogged down in a 500-page comprehensive history of 8 decades, Steven Hahn did an excellent job of presenting the facts in a way that anyone can read and understand. It doesn't come off like a high-brow, stuffy scholarly regurgitation of facts, but an interesting overview of a very important time in the development of America.

Now that I've read my way through the 3rd volume in the Penguin series on American History, I'd love to read the other four books! It will take me awhile to work my way through all of the information, but it will be time well spent.

Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author of A Nation Under Our Feet.

**I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. While I appreciate the free book, the giveaway had no effect on the honesty of my review. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

[Leo Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A NATION WITHOUT BORDERS by Steven Hahn is a well-written history. At first, based on the introduction, I thought the book would follow the path of Howard Zinn and turn American history on its ear. Which made me wary since, despite how much I loved A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, I've recently read competent historians complain about his often inaccurate and always one-sided 're-interpretation' of American history.

But it turns out that Hahn is a much better historian, and he merely re-interprets the historical record, utilizing the vast majority of the historical record that does not support a single view-point. To me, the major points of he revisions are straight-forward.

1) Slave-holding cotton plantation owners were both economically central to American prosperity, and yet desperate to maintain their way of life at the beginning of the period surveyed. These "southern gentlemen" saw their livelihoods at risk, with public opinion tilting sharply against slavery. They saw the election of Lincoln as the last straw. Funny thing is, I detected a bit of the conspiritorial, paranoid style behind their irrational belief that "Lincoln was out to get them" that echos the lunacy that sprung up around, say, Jade Helm 15. Where the US military was allegedly supposed to... invade Texas and the southwest? To... take their guns?

2. To protect their power, and reduce the influence of the growing industrial north, "southern gentlemen" wanted to create an expanded American empire of slave-holding states. Shocked and scared by slave uprisings, especially in Haiti, they wanted to expand the reach of America into other plantations cultures in Latin America. They had their sites on Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, whom they saw as a special threat since the nation had outlaws slavery in the 1810s.

3. Hahn refers to the Civil War with the more-accuracte name, "The Slave-Holder's War of Rebellion." I like this, because it does highlight what really drove the conflict. It wasn't about rural versus urban. It wasn't "southern gentlemen" fighting for a "southern way of life" — drinking mint juleps and sipping lemonade on the front porch, waiting for a hog to smoke so they could share a barbeque. Instead, the southern plantation owners revolted to protect their economic interests.

4. Hahn shifts focus from the east-coast to the interior. As a denizen of "fly-over America," I love this shift. And it is more honest since most of Americans did not inhabit New York, Boston, Atlanta or Charleston. Even in 1860, 90% of Americans were rural. Indeed, even America's early phases of industrialization were rural.

5. The genocide and forced relocation of Native Americans is contextualized, and the American Empire ends up looking petty. This post War of Rebellion material is good but given too little weight in the text. This leads me to suspect that perhaps he should have written two books: 1830 through Reconsctruction, and then another focusing on America's westward expansion.

All told, an excellent history book. Well-written, measured, it studies the lives of Americans as the nation evolved from a slave-holding state into the more progressive nation-state we inhabit today. And it tells the story, showing warts and ll. Four-stars because, as a survey with no primary focus, it often skims lightly across too many things.

[Reid tries to read · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers a massive chunk of U.S. history from 1830 to 1910. During this duration, the population of the United States grew by 10 times, while the country’s boundaries expanded from the Mississippi river all the way to the Pacific coast, and then to the Hawaiian islands within the Pacific itself. As this process took place the country was transformed from an agricultural mode of production to an industrialized and urbanized economic powerhouse.

When the colonies rebelled against the British empire, they did not rebel against the idea of imperialism itself. In fact, they embraced certain ideas of empire from Britain, especially an idea that the central metropole should effectively coordinate imperial endeavors in its periphery. The founding fathers themselves (a.k.a. the intellectual and political leaders behind the American revolution and early American system) often embraced a rhetoric of empire and imperialism. They believe expansion Westward would help paper over internal American contradictions and was necessary for a healthy republic. The first big expansion of the American borders was the Louisiana purchase after Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory to Jefferson. Napoleon had originally intended to build a vast American Empire based in the West Indies with Louisiana territory as the periphery, but after failing to completely subdue and conquer Haiti, Napoleon abandoned his visions and sold Louisiana to The United States. The next ambition of the United States was the conquest of Florida, an area under Spanish control which had long been a thorn in the side of slave owners who had become frustrated by their runaway slaves escaping to Spanish Florida. In 1812, militias from Georgia, with the unofficial support of American government gunboats, tried to invade Spanish Florida. However, escaped slaves as well as Seminole Indians fought back and repelled the attack. Undeterred, Andrew Jackson himself would help lead the next attack against a fortification of freed slaves and Indians known as “Negro fort”. By 1818, Jackson took full control of a force that consisted of Tennessee militia men and Creek Warriors, who were enemies of the Seminole tribe, in order to launch further incursions into Florida; along the way this force razed Seminole villages and killed or captured any black man they found. On his own volition, Jackson then decided to lead the troops on a full campaign across the entirety of Florida. After a complete defeat of the Spanish in Florida, Spain acquiesced the territory to the United States in 1819.

Post-American independence, especially after the war of 1812, the United States became more and more aggressive with the removal of American Indians from their lands to make way for settlers and land speculators. For example, the state of Georgia did not recognize any Indian sovereignty over any piece of land, thus codifying Indian removal into law. The ethnic cleansing further sped up after Jackson was elected president in 1829. Henceforth, it became official government policy to forcibly remove Indians from “American land” and put them into reservations that were equivalent to open air prisons or concentration camps. These territories were supervised by the commissioner of Indian affairs and commanders of American military bases. Territories allocated to Indians were given no political power; for example, while most territories could apply for statehood once they reached a population of 60,000, Indian territories had no such right to do so. Jackson also had imperial ambitions for taking over Texas. He held a long-standing view that Texas was supposed to be part of the Louisiana Purchase and therefore belong to the United States, not Mexico. The Mexican government would not sell Texas to the United States, so Jackson and his administration cooked up many different justifications to try and snatch the territory from the Mexican government. Their most convincing argument tried to claim that indigenous tribes were using Texas as a base to launch raids into the United States.

Alongside Indian removal grew the practice of colonization, as it was known, whereby slave abolitionists bought land (like Liberia) and would send free black people there. Both reflected the growing centrality of white supremacy as hegemonic to American political thought. This would be a country ruled by the white man, and all others need to leave or submit. And throughout this period the white man did gain more political power. Property requirements to vote were eased or abandoned, and more and more official positions were decided through voting rather than through bureaucratic appointments. For the first time America saw mass political participation in terms of voting, which would remain strong up until the 1970s. Politics in the early 19th century is described in this book as “bare knuckle” and “paramilitary”. Local elites would often organize rallies (often incorrectly described as disorganized riots) to abuse and even murder abolitionists. The act of voting was often done while being wedged between the two competing parties literally engaging in drunken melee combat. There was little beauty to early American mass (white man) democracy.

The 1810s and 1820s saw the rise of cotton as the leading commodity of the age, and large landed estates purely dedicated to the cultivation of cotton spread across the South. By the 1830s-40s cotton plantations had spread into the Mississippi valley. Once harvested, their cotton was often sent to New Orleans (which grew 10x in population from the Louisiana purchase of 1803 to 1830 thanks to the economic cotton boom), where it was then shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to England and France, as well as across the country up to the North. Once arrived, raw cotton was turned into yarn, cloth, and other textile goods for the mass consumption market. Another important circuit of global trade of this era started in America’s Southern neighbor: Mexico. Mexico traded huge quantities of silver and gold for American goods. America then traded the bullion to China for silks and porcelain (since China had no use for any other large quantities of commodities produced in America). This Chinese gold was then sent to Bengal and other opium producing hubs in India, therefore making its way into the pockets of the East India Trading Company and the British empire. When Britain ended the East India Company’s monopoly on the Opium trade in 1834, any merchant in the world with schooners capable of making the voyage jumped at the chance to insert themselves into the trade. American merchants in particular (including the Grandfather of FDR) wasted no time in jumping into the opium trade. Domestically, “speedy and easy communication” was an emphasis of public work projects promoted by the government in order to get commodities from rural areas to urban centers like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or New Orleans. Thus, as the widespread proletarianization of the workforce led to an inevitable surplus army of labor, these surplus laborers were absorbed into public works projects to do things like dredge canals or pave roadways. These projects helped expand the power of the federal and state governments; while roads could often be contracted out to private entities, the vastness of the canal projects and their need for unprecedented amounts of labor required widespread coordination of state and federal actors.

In the 1840s America’s imperial ambition turned eastward towards California, Oregon, and the Pacific coast. Not only were these areas rich with resources such as fur, they would also serve as openings to the Pacific Ocean and Asia itself. American elites and political leaders had been attempting to acquire Pacific coast port cities such as San Francisco from Mexico for decades. American imperialists also saw continental expansion out East as a way to prevent America from succumbing to problems plaguing Great Britain: they looked at their overcrowded cities, vicious class conflict, and other various ailments as diseases that could be cured through expansion. Overall, manifest destiny and Continental expansion was a solution embraced across the political spectrum, and the only differences were in methodology. The Whigs, for example, believed that expansion should be done through diplomatic measures. Whigs’ main concerns about rapid expansion revolved around integrating “inferior races” like Mexicans into the American body politic, while also being troubled by the prospect that the rapid expansion of slavery could hurt the Whigs’ political power. Expansionist Democrats, on the other hand, viewed Continental conquest as a way to accrue more land for rural smallholders and thus avoid the perils of industrialization while boosting America’s overall stature and strength. To the Democrats, expansion offered an opportunity to turn America into an agricultural empire.

In 1846 the United States declared war on Mexico; in a year and a half they had defeated the Mexican army, occupied Mexico City, secured the annexation of Texas, further took California and Pacific coast territory from Mexico, and also cut out a chunk of Mexican territory for itself and renamed it “New Mexico”. The annexation of Texas was a huge victory for the Democrats and slaveholders in America. This gave America, in the eyes of many, a virtual monopoly on the cotton trade coming out of the North American continent. Now the question was what to do with the victory. Should the new territories become states and their inhabitants citizens? Should it be ruled through military decree a-la British India? Should the United States simply conquer the entirety of Mexico? At the outset of the war, James K Polk and his cabinet had simply hoped to embarrass Mexico while demonstrating the real strength of the American military, with hopes of forcing Mexico into an unfavorable peace negotiation. After occupying Mexico City, however, the ambition of many ruling class Americans grew considerably (some were so bold as to believe that the U.S. should not only conquer Mexico, but all of South America as well). The slave owning elites, seeing that Mexico had entirely abolished slavery, believed the ‘All Mexico’ movement to be counterintuitive to their ambitions; ironically, there were more than a handful of imperialistic abolitionists who supported splitting all of Mexico into new U.S states. Others like John C. Calhoun feared that mixing Mexicans, an apparently “Indian nation”, into Anglo-America would be a racial disaster for “the Caucasian race”. These imperialists wanted the territory, not the people in it. Over the course of the war, the American people became weary of a conflict which had killed 10% of American soldiers (mostly due to disease) and left 20% either dead, maimed, or wounded. Noticing these changing tides, the Polk administration began negotiations with Mexico, ending the war and adding New Mexico, disputed territory in Texas, and California into America as annexed territories (eventually to become states). Shaped by the fact that California was to be entered into the union as a non-slave state, the slave holding planter elites of the South began formulating plans and campaigns for a conquest of Cuba to re-establish “balance” into the American political system. Their shock troops would be disaffected war veterans from the Mexican American war men who had already cut their teeth fighting American imperial battles. As the author claims “no year during the decade passed where an invasion of Cuba or some area of the Caribbean basin was not in plans.”. Yet slaveholders were also seeing increasingly worrying signs for slavery’s future. In the 1840s the Wilmot Proviso, which banned slavery in the newly acquired Mexican states, was passed in the House of Representatives before being shot down in the senate. During the compromise of 1850 there was the rapid introduction of California into the Union as a free state (under the administration of slave owning Zachary Taylor no less). Finally, the slave trade was outlawed in Washington D.C, the literal and symbolic heart of the nation.

The civil war would increase the powers of the federal government dramatically as the American state became more and more of a committee of the bourgeoisie. Banking became more centralized to facilitate the selling of war bonds (which funded some 75% of the Union’s war expenditure). Tariffs were put in place to help nurture and grow manufacturing sectors; especially notable was the corporate welfarism dispersed upon the railroad industry in order to facilitate western expansion. The construction of railways, while not immediately economically profitable, was politically a necessity for the Lincoln administration. In exchange for massive subsidies, large railroad companies gave stock options to members of congress, thus interlocking the interests of the two. The central government also had to increase its powers in order to both abolish slavery, and then reintegrate the Southern states politically into the union. This would require the stripping of slaves from the planter class, the facilitation of new elections overseen by the U.S. central government, and the use of the standing army of the Union to maintain all of this with force. Under the ruling Republican regime, the American empire was transformed into a strong central state.

After the war, the Federal government possessed approximately 900,000 acres of land formerly owned by members of the Confederate planter class. Deciding how to distribute this land became a defining feature of presidential reconstruction. To prevent newly freed black Americans from exercising political power and thus gaining access to the best land, racist vigilante mobs engaged in violent, anti-black terrorism throughout the South; even black union troops could fall victim to murder at the hands of the terrorists. Black people would not get their 40 acres and a mule promised in Sherman’s act; instead, land would stay in the hands of elites, but the labor system would no longer be based on forced compulsion. It would now be based on contracts. In many areas, such as sugar plantations in Louisiana, former slave laborers became tenant farmers living lives not much different than as slaves.

2 big changes happened within the plantation system, besides the ending of slavery, thanks to the victory of the Union:
1. Under new tariff laws, which increased the prices of many inputs, and without the cheap labor of slaves, plantation owners relied more and more on credit from local merchants/financiers, who in turn could only get the funds to supply these plantations by going to the big Northern banks. Thus, the power and wealth of the large Northern financiers grew.
2. Plantations now sold their goods to local urban centers rather than overseas. The Union blockade during the war had forced overseas nations like England and France to turn to other sources of cotton out of necessity. This crowded out the market for Southern cotton and eventually unraveled the entire cotton economy of the South as the prices of cotton were slashed worldwide by the 1870s.

The industrial boom that occurred postwar would change American agriculture into a heavily mechanized process that hired very few laborers, most of which were seasonal workers. Wheat and corn became the new agricultural staples of the nation. This transition towards industrialization occurred between 1860 to 1900. At the eve of the Civil War, most American firms produced consumer goods such as clothing like boots and shirts, or foods like flour and sugar. By 1900, consumer goods had been supplanted by things like iron and steel making, the production of machinery, and the rubber, petroleum, metal refining, and chemical industries. As manufacturing grew to outpace agricultural production, wage labor became the predominant form of social relation throughout America. In the 1860s and 1870s, most manufacturing firms only hired about 10 people and were run by those who had risen out of the artisan class. By the century’s end the largest manufacturing plants had grown massive enough to hire 10,000 workers.

[Ezra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good book for learning about many of the very important, yet not well known changes that took place in the U.S. from 1830-1910. These changes are still affecting us today.

1. One aspect was highlighting the pivotal role that escaped enslaved African Americans as well as free African Americans played in transforming the Civil War from a war to preserve the Union, to a war that included the goal of the total abolition of slavery.

2. During the Civil War, the U.S. government helped create a new class of wealthy industrialists through war and railroad contracts. It shows that capitalism does not thrive in spite of the government, but because of it.

3. The book also focused more on Native American nations of the west. Unfortunately, during the Civil War, the U.S. government used its armies in the west to fight and subjugate the Native Americans. So while some Union soldiers were fighting to help free African Americans, others were fighting to take away Native American freedom.

4. It also covers the creation of the U.S. empire both in the Continental U.S. and in the Caribbean and Pacific.

There is a lot more, but those are some of the big topics.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, if you read this book know what the word "liminal" means. It is used often, and is central to Hahn's vision.

A NATION WITHOUT BORDERS is a useful corrective to traditional histories of the United States. In blueprint, the focus isn't on the east coast, or simply powerful white men, as new voices are added to the American story. Hahn pays attention to the west, to working men and women--in the cities and on the farms, to African Americans and to native tribes throughout the United States. He writes of Mexico in the context of its influence on the developing American nation, not simply falling back on the old standard of describing what Americans did to Mexico. Hahn writes of socialists, reformers, and labor organizers. All this is good. Even his time frame is useful, since the American story doesn't conveniently follow the chronology of the 19th century. Nor is it a pithy two-part story, with part one ending in 1865 (or 1877). Hahn's language is often corrective as well, as it is when he dismisses the term "Civil War", in favor of the paradigmatically more accurate "War of Rebellion".

A NATION WITHOUT BORDERS is part of the Penquin History of the United States series, edited by Eric Foner. As a survey it cannot cover everything, nor go into depth on everything it does cover. Yet, there are some salient problems in this book's coverage and analysis. The military history is usually simplistic, especially in its re-telling of the Mexican-American War, the discussion of African-American soldiers in the War of Rebellion, and in the all-too-brief mention of Alfred Thayer Mahan's influence (to be fair--the analysis of the post-1865 debates about professional military forces is better). Hahn wants to create a focus on the west, but at times he does not seem to appreciate the unique traits of the evolving American west. For example, you cannot understand Ohio, the first "American-made" state, without understanding the significance of squatters in developing a sui generis personality, both in the move toward statehood and in the decades after. This issue is not mentioned in A NATION WITHOUT BORDERS. Also, the site of the largest mass execution in American history, Mankato, Minnesota, is misspelled. These are not huge issues, but they do indicate that the focus on the west is artifice at its heart, something worth mentioning but not worth deep study. The hold of the East Coast bias on academia is extraordinarily strong.

Finally, this is not a bad book, it is a good book. And, it does usefully correct some traditional biases in the telling of the American story. The above comments are minor in the face of a tremendous analytical achievement. But it could have been so much more. This is a long book, densely written, trappings exacerbated by tiny print. So while I think this is a story that should be read by many people outside of academia, I don't see that happening.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone who saw me reading this told me it was "important" which made me hate reading it

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Immensely informative and detailed. This is one of the longest books I’ve read so it certainly felt like a marathon to get through. I think this would be a perfect college read as the sheer number of events, people and organizations are challenging to commit to memory. And of course some events like the Civil War are actually mentioned only briefly so there’s plenty more to be mined there.

I wish for all the author’s research and synthesis, he’d done a better job tying larger events together into themes. And because there were many large movements that coincided, he’d have to jump back decades repeatedly to cover them. Totally fine, but often disorienting as you read. I also thought his epilogue was a bit weak given its devotion to the Mexican rebellion rather than summarizing the period for readers. But it ends a good preamble to the First World War’s impact on the U.S., which I thought was masterfully documented in “American Midnight.”

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is stunning. Like he writes, it is a familiar story told in an unfamiliar way.

[Mark Weaver · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers American history from the Jacksonian Era to beginning of World War I (approximately 1830s-1910s). I found it disappointing compared to Alan Taylor’s excellent “American Colonies” which is also part of the Penguin history of the United States. Similar to Taylor, Hahn attempts to follow historiographical trends to make it a more “Atlantic” history by weaving in Mexico and larger historical forces, although it doesn’t work quite as well given the time period. The selection of period is unique given that the Civil War serves as the middle of the book rather than an ending or beginning. However, I think this harms his treatment of the war. It doesn’t help that Hahn unnecessarily refers to it as the “War of the Rebellion” throughout the book, which ends up being distracting despite his intent to reframe the war. I was genuinely interested in his treatment of the West and he explores labor history and the development of capitalism quite well. He covers race from many different angles, but I found his coverage of women’s history to be inserted rather than integrated into the narrative. If you aren’t already familiar with the era(s), this book can be difficult to follow and it doesn’t include key topics or events. While I find it useful to refocus historical study away from purely political and military history, in this type of a comprehensive text I think it does a disservice to the reader. The military history of the Civil War is almost non-existent (as Hahn recognizes). It is also a shame that there is almost no mention of environmental history in an era where national parks are developing and the Conservation versus Preservation debate gets under way. If you are interested in history, I think that Hahn does a good job of exploring certain topics and he has some unique interpretations. If you do not know as much about the topics ahead of time, it’s hard to know what Hahn is choosing to leave leave out.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic overview of America’s 19th century, tracing the history of imperial expansion, state building, and capitalist development before, during, and after the civil war. It’s a broad survey, but it does an excellent job exploring a very wide range of topics, from slavery to the conquest and development of the west, while also including occasional forays into Mexican history. I’ve long thought that late 19th century (including Reconstruction) is one of the most interesting and important topics in U.S. history, and this book does a great job explaining and contextualizing that era. I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in the nineteenth century and American history.

[Sam Reaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most history is partisan. I don't believe that objectivity is impossible, but people are always going to argue about it. Historians bring assumptions to their work, and those govern everything from the overall thesis to the choice of data. So I think the best approach is to recognize partisan leanings and allow for them; you can always learn something, even from a historian whose politics you don't agree with. I'm a big fan, for example, of Paul Johnson's Modern Times, which has a decidedly conservative point of view, and I've argued that it's a valuable (and absolutely gripping) account of twentieth-century history that even liberals should take note of.
On the other side, Steven Hahn's A Nation Without Borders is a look at the United States in the nineteenth century with a distinctly left-of-center approach. Hahn is a skeptic of capitalism, as you might suspect when you see that the first author cited in his bibliography is the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, and that skepticism pervades the book. Well and good; nothing is beyond criticism, least of all the juggernaut of white settlement and development that rumbled westward over the course of the nineteenth century, crushing Native American cultures and irrevocably altering the landscape. As a corrective to a sanitized and simplified glorification of How the West Was Won, the book does a valuable service. From the Mexican War to the Philippine Insurrection, by way of a sabotaged Reconstruction and Jim Crow, there is much that is discreditable in U.S. history, and it is entirely right to confront it.
Hahn's main thesis is that from the start the development of the United States was driven by a desire for empire on the old British model. He stresses the place of the young United States in the global economy, oriented not only toward the Atlantic but also the Pacific. He criticizes a simplistic view that slavery existed only in the South and that the Civil War should be seen exclusively as a moral or regional conflict, examining the complicated strands of abolitionism and the slave and non-slave economies. And he recounts the emergence of corporate capitalism and the struggles with labor that ensued.
All of this is richly detailed and highly informative. And even if you're less inclined to fret about capitalism than Hahn is, you will learn a great deal. My principal complaint about the book is not its slant but rather its language; Hahn is a little too fond of jargon like "gender exclusions" and "suppressing Indian counter-sovereignties" that clogs the narrative and strives to be both academic and scrupulously woke. A more straightforward style would make it a better read and be less inclined to turn off readers who might benefit from its skeptical eye on American history.

[Andrew Washburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This history surveys the American economic and extra-national political veins of the 19th century. Topics of discussion are working conditions, minority rights, the consolidation of the Union, rise of the Republican party, takeover of politics by Capitalism, inequality, technological progress, and the rise and fall of Black political rights. This book bluntly acknowledges the vast existing literature about the Civil War, and clearly avoids any detailed retelling of it by labeling it "the War of the Rebellion." The Civil War is juxtaposed against other smaller rebellions in the century, such as worker's strikes in the 1870's. The War is also given credit for mobilizing capitalist forces in the North and Trans-Mississippi West, transforming the Republican party from radical abolitionists into the corrupt bureaucratic institution which facilitated Industrial Capitalism and increasing inequality.

What I learned most is how powerful the Black caucus became in Reconstrution Era South. Transforming the Black majority into a political minority via Jim Crow laws is another tragic episode in American history. Ironically, segregation and suppression of individual rights were seen as necessary transformations in an increasingly mobile, industrial, and impersonal society. An example of this new society is the protectorate of Panama established to build the Canal. Men labored heavily under government appointed authoritarian leadership. Blacks were paid in silver, whereas White technicians earned more stable gold-specie salaries. When the United States emerged on the vast American continent at the dawn of World War One, it was hardly recognizable from the agrarian paradise Thomas Jefferson imagined for the Democratic-Republican party he built the century prior. Political tensions, institutions, and policies which originated in the 19th century still haunt and dominate the political questions we try to answer today.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really 4.5 rather than 4.

‘A Nation Without Borders’ is the story of the United States from 1830 – 1910 (in reality it has a longer tail) and follows its imperialistic expansion into the trans-Mississippi west and also into central America, the Caribbean and ultimately the Philippines. As Hahn says in the opening sentence of the Prologue ‘This book tells a familiar story in an unfamiliar way…’ and Hahn approaches his history by adopting the viewpoint of those subject to the imperialistic imperative, opening with Mexican General Santa Anna as he rides out to deal with American settlers incursions into Mexican Texas and finishes with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 on the ever of a world war.

It is a perspective on American history that I have not encountered before and was for me very refreshing.

A book that covers a lot of ground including the defining event of American history the War of the Rebellion in so few pages, and I found the writing challenging at times. One thing that Hahn does very well is to drive a chronological narrative while exploring and returning to his theme of the expanding borders of the US and the impact that it had on American development.

[Charity · Rating 4 out of 5]

I might have gotten more out of this one had I spent more time with the physical book rather than the audio (in which the narrator pronounced "antebellum" as "ant-eye-bellum" for the first 11 chapters and used sometimes unsettling accents) and if I had made a timeline and running list of characters, but even without those, I think I have a much better sense of the rhetoric and forces that shaped the US during the 19th century and how remarkable and almost accidental the stability of the 20th century was.

Of particular note is how adept the powerful/wealthy are at intentionally fooling the population that their needs are one and the same. I also learned that corporate personhood began in the 19th c. with the active assistance of a SCOTUS that was hesitant (at best) about the personhood of actual persons who weren't white and male, how easy it is for a popular movement to get derailed by infighting, and how cobbled together our financial system is. I was hoping for some greater insights into the current climate in the US, and I did get some of those but unfortunately no ideas for how to proceed wisely (just lots of lessons on what not to do).

[Lorraine Herbon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I had really enjoyed, and learned from, Hahn’s A National Under Our Feet (or something like that). This book was nothing like that.

I listened to this on Audible, and perhaps this contributed to my disappointment. The narrative was so dull, and the reader’s voice do sonorous, that I missed chunks of the book due to sleeping. So, there’s that.

But more importantly, I couldn’t grab on to any overarching meaning. I noticed that he did a few new things with language—like referring to the conflict of 1861-1866 as the “War of the Rebellion.” He also put everything after the war and up to the end of WWI in terms of a great Reconstruction. But that perhaps there was so much detail that I couldn’t find the theme. A heavy focus on economic history added to the overall dullness of the book.

Still, I’d be a real bitch if I didn’t say that a lot of the information was useful. He made it clear that history is far more complicated than a general reader might think. He did this really when discussing the reasons behind US imperialism.

Still, overall not my favorite.

[Tdr85 · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a terrific book. My only problem is that a survey history like this is going to leave too much out. But it gets to the essence of the different eras and offers new perspective. I've read histories of the Antebellum and Civil war eras and a couple of biographies that deal with reconstruction and progressive America but a single book taking this all on is asking alot of the author. But he does the job and he does it well. I thought the one thing that was lacking was more detail of federal politics.

He gives considerable attention to the victims of 19th century America - African-americans, indigenous peoples, Mexicans and their heroic attempts to make a place for themselves in a world that for the most part only recognized white males. The thrust of the book is that America was building an empire during this period, one that brooked no opposition. There were noble moments but alot of less noble ones as well. He spends time in the latter parts of the book discussing the labor movement and its difficulty with gilded age capitalism.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book, providing a broad history of the United States from the 1830s through to the early 1900s. The author, historian Steven Hahn, presents a different view of American history, covering the pre-Civil War years through to the Progressive era. Rather than distinct historical periods, Hahn ties these decades together as a continual story of imperialist expansion, regional conflict, and economic growth emerging from the northeastern “core.” In this view, the Civil War wasn’t the abrupt end of an era but, rather, a central event in an ongoing struggle. The excesses and violence of the Gilded Age weren’t unique but, instead, the natural expression of American expansion. Hahn paints a picture of a country destined for eventual trade and manufacturing greatness, via an inevitable path of violence and domination. A fascinating relook at America on the way to great power status. Recommended for anyone wanting a different viewpoint on the late 19th and early 20th century American growth.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good, but not a great book describing the development on the US into Nation State from about 1830 through the early 20th Century. It presents a unique description of the growth of the US in the context of the world history.

The first half of the book ... through Reconstruction ... was great. However, I thought that the last three chapters were a hodge pudge of facts and detailed descriptions of relatively minor characters thrown together to complete the end of the 19th Century. It became very tedious. I believe that, if Hahn should have limited the book to 1830 to 1880, it would have been a far better treatise.

.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very impressive accounting of such amazing times in our country's history. The author has done an amazing job of presenting this history in such enlightening way. So much information that was new to me. Enjoyed very much. I highly recommend for fans of US History. I won this book in a GoodReads giveaway.

[Ryan Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hahn's interpretive framework steamrolls through narrative clarity at times - I'm not sure this book would work at all for someone unfamiliar with the period. But, I did find that interpretive framework compelling most of the time, and I did gain some new perspectives along the way. It's fascinating how different this reads from Richard White's recent survey of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great synthetic work. If you're an American history person with a focus in this era it helps put a lot of things in grand context. If you're not an American history person or if you have a large blindspot about the late 19th century this is one of the most useful single books you could read. Would happily teach from this book in a survey course on American history

[Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best American History books I’ve read, probably the best that covers such a wide period. Incorporates quite a bit of recent work across disciplines to inform a globally-integrated history of the United States’ development into a nation, an imperial power, and a budding global hegemon. Highly recommend!

[Jarred Goodall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wondered if Dr. Hahn repeated himself too much in the book, but once I made it through, I see why. He did an excellent job tying all these events and people, during this era of history, together. From there, he constructs his work in an excellent manner, making it flow real well, to where you did not want to put the book down.

[Steve Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweeping history os USA in 19th. Entury

Great summary of slavery and its demise and lays groundwork of why USA became superpower in following century. Last chapter I’m Mexico revolution seems out of place.

[Caleb Lagerwey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a nice, refreshing take on familiar periods of US History. Hahn does a great job of keeping his story moving thematically while providing detailed connections between geographical and ideological trends in US History.

[Praveen Kishore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A panoramic and insightful history of nineteenth century America, a masterly and breathtaking account of social, political and economic changes in America. A sweeping yet nuanced history of America, from 'Empire and Union' to 'Nation and Empire' as conceptualized by the author.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

An overview that is useful for getting your bearings in the political scene during the Civil War era, which is often extremely convoluted by those "in-the-know." Cons: Lots of conjecture; terrible punctuation.

[Ward Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very comprehensive history of 19th century America dealing primarily with the interplay between social and political life within the United States. Particularly revealing in the role of all Americans in this very crucial developmental stage. Well done.

[Kevin Zwiefelhofer · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay, I enjoyed some different perspectives of the time period but I struggled to finish.