Matt Karp
Ph.D. Candidate (ABD)
mkarp[at]sas[dot]upenn[dot]edu
Education
B.A., Amherst College (2003)
EXAMINATION FIELDS
U.S. History, 1600-2000; The Antebellum and Civil War South; Transatlantic Politics and Culture, 1800-1900
DISSERTATION
"This Vast Southern Empire: The South and the Foreign Policy of Slavery, 1833-1865"
My dissertation traces American slaveholding attitudes about international affairs from the British abolition of slavery in 1833 through to the Civil War. Elite Southerners, I argue, pursued a “foreign policy of slavery” that profoundly shaped national politics throughout the antebellum period. This analysis challenges our knee-jerk association of pro-slavery politics with states-rights conservatism: in fact, slaveholders frequently pursued aggressive, often centralizing foreign policies, from naval expansion to territorial acquisition. Even their final decision to secede from the Union can be seen as a characteristically bold foreign policy gambit. Ultimately, I hope a new emphasis on the foreign policy of slavery can reshape old understandings of the antebellum South and the Civil War.
