ABSTRACT
The histories of Germany and the United States became deeply entangled in the century of total war. The striking feature of the period between 1840 and 1880 is the multiplication and intensification of violent conflicts, with the middle decades being a period of endemic violence. The main analytic concern for a comparison of the American Civil War and the wars of German unification thus pertains less to the distance between them than to the location of these wars within global patterns of endemic violence. The Eurasian rivalries of Britain and Russia also provide insight into a key factor in the breakdown of the European concert which is also another surprise outcome of the Crimean War. The patterns of violence in the Americas were framed at every turn by the crises of imperial systems and the aftermath of their breakdown and thus provide much closer parallels to the violence.
