ABSTRACT
The Americans only figured prominently when Europe contemplated the western hemisphere or the terms of transatlantic trade. The American Civil War was an important global event that influenced other parts of the world even as developments elsewhere fundamentally shaped the conflict. Scholars who have studied the diplomacy of the Civil War have been slow to view the conflict from a global perspective. Reliance on British capital to finance infrastructure projects, commercial exchanges, and government debt compelled American statesmen to moderate their tone when dealing with Britain. European powers greeted this expansion and these acquisitions with mixed feelings. The Anglo-French entente that had endured since the 1840s had increasingly come under strain. The presidential election of 1860 turned the calculations of all powers with interests in North America and the circum-Caribbean on their head. European statesmen, journalists, and intellectuals had long thought that sectional differences, exacerbated by the deficiencies of American democracy, would cause a crisis.
