ABSTRACT
While military commentators digested the apparent lessons of the Napoleonic Wars, rulers and politicians considered how best to use force to achieve their purposes. The building of overseas empires was a major theme for Western powers, which will be addressed in the next chapter, but struggles over the identity and character of states were also important. In some cases, such as France, these were short term, more seizures of power than conflicts, but in many states there were protracted civil wars. In part, this was a consequence of the politicization of an age of spreading nationalism, with the volatility of major social changes including large-scale urbanization and industrialization, but this politicization was also focused by specific differences over the policies of states. These differences in some cases included questions about whether the states should continue unchanged, be divided to create new territories (the central issue in the American Civil War), or be united by force to form new powers (the key question in the Wars of German and Italian Unification).
