European Historians and the War for Southern Independence

French historian Dominique Venner

We traditionally expect impartial neutrality from jurors deciding guilt or innocence. Historians should not be handing out verdicts of good and evil, although that is often what they do. Rather, they should properly be trying to help us understand past times. The past is like a foreign country. We can’t live there but it is interesting to visit.


You can study the personal writings of representatives of nearly every European country who were in America during the great bloodletting of 1861-1865. Nearly all of them described the war as an exercise in the Northern imperial conquest of the South. Nobody believed that freeing the slaves was motivated by benevolence.


Good European historians have approached that war with seemly neutrality. They have broader views of history than most Americans. Most importantly, they do not see a great moral crusade. They are free from the stance of Yankee self-righteousness.


A good example is the outstanding Italian historian Raimondo Luraghi. Three of his books are available in English: The Rise and Fall of the Plantation South, A History of the Confederate Navy, and Five Lectures on the American Civil War. These are very much worth the attention of any student of Southern or War between the States history. Luraghi has new and illuminating perspectives.


There are two books of the prolific and deeply insightful Frenchman Dominique Venner. Venner was a wide-ranging historian, and perhaps relevantly a veteran soldier. His work deserves translation.


First, Le Blanc Soleil des Vaincus, described as a study of the War of Secession, 1607-1865, the dates being a signal of superior insight. Second, Gettysburg. This work concerns more than the battle. It is a full history of the Confederacy.


Both of these books have Confederate battle flags on the covers of the quality paperback editions.

Know any good French translator?
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