forcible creation of both a united Italy and, of infinitely greater significance, a united
Germany. In addition, the victory of the North in the American Civil War of 1 8 61–5
had strategic implications for the twentieth century and beyond of a significance that
it would be hard to exaggerate.- Phase Three: 1871–1890:The new Imperial Germany comprised a potentially lethal
threat to the ideas and practices of international order associated with Concert
Europe. It was only the Machiavellian cunning and skill of Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck which more or less obscured that deadly fact for a while, but only for a
while. - Phase Four: 1890–1914:The post-Bismarckian German Empire of Kaiser Wilhelm
II was led by men (one can hardly claim statesmen) who had neither the ability
nor the intention to function as cooperative team players in a variant of Concert
diplomacy. The international relations of the twenty-four years of Phase Four were
characterized by the creation and extension of fixed rival alliance systems and by the
conduct of competitions in both land and naval armaments.
One must focus on the strategic history of Europe in this period, because by and large
European politics were world politics. But it is necessary to remember that there was
continuous colonial warfare in Asia and Africa, as the European empires sought to plant
their flags on every tract of extra-European land as yet unclaimed by rival imperialists.
Although there were colonial disputes aplenty, sometimes of a seriousness that could
threaten to trigger hostilities – especially between Britain and France in Africa, and
Britain and Russia in Central Asia – colonial conflicts did not have a decisive effect upon
the course of European strategic history.
The Americas too registered a strategically lively century. The former Spanish colonies
asserted and sustained their independence by force of arms, following which they
expended much blood and treasure in fighting among themselves in assertion of con-
tested territorial claims. To the north, the United States redefined itself by strategic action
from 1 8 61 to 1 8 65, in the bloodiest war in the country’s history. The United States, North
and South, suffered 620,000 fatalities in its Civil War, approximately 200,000 of which
were from battlefield causes. In proportion to its total population, American losses from
18 61 to 1 8 65 were higher than those suffered by Britain from 1914 to 191 8. The Civil
War was not a minor strategic event. Much lower on the casualty scale, but in contrast
near-continuous from the 1 8 10s to the early 1 8 90s, the United States was actively
strategically engaged in hostilities with a wide range of tribes of Native Americans on
its internal frontier. Such ‘small warfare’ was a running story throughout the century,
at least until the concluding tragedy at Wounded Knee on 29 December 1 8 90, when
150 Sioux adherents to the Ghost Dance Cult were shot by US soldiers.
Before one contrasts a nineteenth century that saw no general war with a twentieth
that recorded two such, and might have gone for gold with an even more remarkable
third, one should take note of a Chinese contribution to strategic history. It so happens
that the bloodiest war of the nineteenth century was a most uncivil civil war waged in
China between 1 8 50 and 1 8 64. The civil war of those years had as its political centrepiece
opposition to the rebellion against the Manchu Dynasty in favour of a Han dynastic
revival. This revival was inspired by an exciting ideology which attempted to fuse
Confucianism with Christianity. The extensive warfare that ensued produced fatalities
Nineteenth century: strategy 53