The Wars of the 1860s and the Atlantic (Americas and Europe)

Abstract

During the 1860s, widespread warfare beset the Americas and Europe. Fighting resulted from challenges to existing political accommodations, and evolved into civil wars or interstate violence. Concurrently, economic and technological transformations through the 1860s aided long-distance communications, such as the coming of the telegraph and a much faster spread of steam power that helped to disseminate news and share experiences. All over the Atlantic, the triumph of national unification was the most visible result of the bloodbath, expanding state capacities and reinforcing the role of national symbols as common elements of a shared identity. Political and administrative centralization affected the exercise of local power in different ways, mainly in its capacity to recruit members of communities for war; appealing to national values and identities gradually became central in the demands for cooperation and sacrifice. After the end of combat, national authorities established regimes founded either on new constitutions or on amendments added to existing documents, the goal of which was reordering society according to rules capable of regulating and institutionalizing regional conflicts, simultaneously incorporating demands for representation and liberalization. These same groups demonstrated less efficiency when dealing with ethnic and social conflicts, sources of deeper divisions in societies that pretended to be consistent, progressive, and unified.