From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Paris Commune

The American Civil War and the Paris Commune of 1871, Philip Katz argues, were part of the broader sweep of transatlantic development in the mid-nineteenth century—an age of democratic civil wars. Katz shows how American political culture in the period that followed the Paris Commune was shaped by that event.

The telegraph, the new Atlantic cable, and the news-gathering experience gained in the Civil War transformed the Paris Commune into an American national event. News from Europe arrived ...