Aaron reviewed American Mediterranean by Matthew Pratt Guterl
American Mediterranean
3 stars
Guterl's fascinating book looks at the connection of white Southern planters in the antebellum United States to the Caribbean, and particularly Cuba. He does this both by looking at the role that these islands played in the imaginations of Southerners, but also by looking at Southerners who actually moved there, their hopes and expectations, and what they actually found when they arrived. Usually historians see the Civil War as a breaking point, but this book covers both sides of the war, letting the reader see how these ideas of the Caribbean developed over time and the implications after the war was over.