For too many years, Reconstruction history seemed to stop at the water’s edge—that water being the Ohio River. Only recently have scholars given it a more national scope, spreading its impact to Comanche and Modoc country and the barrios and Chinatowns of the West. Now Reconstruction in a Globalizing World carries it overseas, not as diplomatic historians do by focusing on war, expansion, trade but by uncovering what non-Americans learned from Reconstruction and how Americans, home-grown and naturalized, helped to shape its course. Like most collections, the topics range far and wide, onto four continents and into two hemispheres. Along with this varied subject matter, again like any collection, the individual chapters bear an uneven quality—in this case, happily, between good and superb.
Matthew J. Hetrick’s study of Liberia College finds parallels between the search for uplift and preconceptions about color and class in the Reconstruction South and in the...