Historical Analysis: What caused the Civil War - Research Paper Example

In the wake of the American Civil War, the slaves from the cotton producing south gained freedom leading to fears by the global capitalists on what might transpire next in the world economy. The question that therefore begs to be asked is what caused this war from the perspective of European or non-western countries. The upshot is that the American Civil War was a bourgeois revolution espoused by adoption of capitalist ideologies that involves free labor as opposed to forced labor. Just before the American Civil War, the state of Mississippi, which produced the largest quantity of cotton; thus, revenue for the Confederacy cut its production, and in turn, a strategic diplomatic reasoning to coerce The United Kingdom to recognize the Confederate States of America but this failed as the British government had affirmed its neutrality in the war.

However, through this move, they had succeeded in forcing Britain to supply it with arms and ammunition for the war.i According to Davidson, there is a Marxist interpretation of the civil war as it involved two distinct and incompatible social groupings or systems that were aimed at changing the economist view of each other at the end of the war.ii He argues that though the North had fought the southerners for the liberation of the slaves, it was not interested in abolishing slavery as evidenced by the abandonment of the African American population after 1877.

The American Civil War was therefore a revolution aimed at expanding capitalism through free farming and industrialization. Ashworth and Engelmann state that the origins of the American Civil War was the differing of views between the South and the North that resulted in bringing forth and entrenching capitalist forms of production in the United States.iii However, they also argue that the people from the North defended the Union as they supported labor for wages and were strongly opposed to any form of slavery, which they deemed to be oppressive and unacceptable.

To them, the North was not doing badly economically before the war and their development of a capitalist society would not have been hindered by the slavery practiced in the South. The main aim of bourgeois revolutions is normally to transform a society from one form to another and most are political in nature. Therefore, secessionists from Georgia argued that establishing a confederate was a political revolution made necessary to stop the social revolution that would be put in place on them by the North if it succeeded in abolishing slavery.

There is therefore no reason to believe that the Southerners would not be able to be viewed as capitalists though their markets were restricted that acted as a barrier due to the little consumption rates of the slaves in the plantations.iv The plantations of the South could only be secured more growth through expansion of new territories to secure more land and this meant even expanding the slavery to other states. Without the land to expand to, the slaves were deemed by the Southern entrepreneurs as physical capital or assets for holding wealth.

In order for the ruling class from the south to survive before transiting into a capitalist society, they came together to form the Confederate States of America through the support of the majority who were not slaves themselves. The main aim of the Confederacy was to entrench slavery towards the north in order to stop the spread of capitalism