Angela Zimmerman is professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1998. Her research focuses on modern Germany, the United States, and West Africa. Her most recent publications are “Cotton Booms, Cotton Busts, and the Civil War in West Africa,” and “Primitive Art, Primitive Accumulation, and the Origin of the Work of Art in German New Guinea.” She is working on a project tentatively titled "Slaves and Soldiers in the Red and Black Atlantic: A Transnational and Revolutionary History of the American Civil War."