ABSTRACT
Europe was beset by chronic instability in the years following the Crimean War (1853–1856) and was violently reshaped by the convulsions of the German and Italian wars of unification. These short but extraordinarily intense wars were mirrored by longer, but by no means any less intense, conflicts globally, notably the American Civil War, the Paraguayan War, and the Tai Ping War in China. The American Civil War, in particular, had a very marked effect. It was that many new techniques in naval warfare were introduced, or developed, and laid before an international audience. These middle decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a period of profound escalation in the conduct of war and of technological innovation in military hardware. Although British industrial capacity eclipsed that of its rivals and was well equipped, therefore, to deal quickly with such challenges, it is still the case that innovation in naval warfare largely came from elsewhere, particularly from the French and US navies.
