How did the American Civil War happen, how did it end and how should we understand its place in American history?
Join world-renowned speaker Professor Adam Smith as he shares his passion for understanding the importance of the USA and its place in the world.
The United States of America is really an old country, in the sense that its political institutions, and to a great extent its political culture, are still shaped by its eighteenth-century moment of origin, its politics curiously distorted – in a way that has no real parallel in this country — by arguments about what the founding fathers intended. // In America, the past is not just prologue; it confers authority. This pose of being trapped by an imagined moment of origin is characteristic of nations founded in revolution. We can see similar traits in Cuba or the Soviet Union. This framing helps us to understand the American Civil War.
Professor Adam Smith is the Edward Orsborn Professor of US Politics and Political History at Oxford and the Director of the RAI: Oxford's Centre for the Study of America and its place in the world. He presents The Last Best Hope? podcast, and occasional programmes for BBC radio.
