There is a mystery that struck me the most when comparing the history of the United States and China.😳
China is currently in a serious crisis.
China's history has brought about 3500 years of countless wars and divisions.
Among the Chinese war history that I have personally studied, there have been at least three periods of world war-scale wars and divisions.
The Spring and Autumn period was a period in Chinese history from approximately 771 to 476 BCE (or according to some authorities until 403 BCE[a])[2] which corresponds roughly to the first half of the Eastern Zhou period. The period's name derives from the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of the state of Lu between 722 and 479 BCE, which tradition associates with Confucius (551–479 BCE).
During this period, the Zhou royal authority over the various feudal states eroded as more and more dukes and marquesses obtained de facto regional autonomy, defying the king's court in Luoyi and waging wars amongst themselves. The gradual Partition of Jin, one of the most powerful states, marked the end of the Spring and Autumn period and the beginning of the Warring States period.
Background
In 771 BCE, the Quanrong invasion destroyed the Western Zhou and its capital Haojing, forcing the Zhou king to flee to the eastern capital Luoyi (Chinese: 洛邑). The event ushered in the Eastern Zhou dynasty, which is divided into the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods. During the Spring and Autumn period, China's feudal system of fengjian (封建) became largely irrelevant. The Zhou court, having lost its homeland in the Guanzhong region, held nominal power, but had real control over only a small royal demesne centered on Luoyi. During the early part of the Zhou dynasty period, royal relatives and generals had been given control over fiefdoms in an effort to maintain Zhou authority over vast territory.[3] As the power of the Zhou kings waned, these fiefdoms became increasingly independent states.
The most important states (known later as the twelve vassals) came together in regular conferences where they decided important matters, such as military expeditions against foreign groups or against offending nobles. During these conferences one vassal ruler was sometimes declared hegemon (Chinese: 伯; pinyin: bó; later, Chinese: 霸; pinyin: bà).
As the era continued, larger and more powerful states annexed or claimed suzerainty over smaller ones. By the 6th century BCE most small states had disappeared and just a few large and powerful principalities dominated China. Some southern states, such as Chu and Wu, claimed independence from the Zhou, who undertook wars against some of them (Wu and Yue).
Amid the interstate power struggles, internal conflict was also rife: six élite landholding families waged war on each other inside Jin, political enemies set about eliminating the Chen family in Qi, and the legitimacy of the rulers was often challenged in civil wars by various royal family members in Qin and Chu. Once all these powerful rulers had firmly established themselves within their respective dominions, the bloodshed focused more fully on interstate conflict in the Warring States period, which began in 403 BCE when the three remaining élite families in Jin—Zhao, Wei, and Han—partitioned the state.
The Spring and Autumn period春秋時代
The Spring and Autumn period occurred 2800 years ago, during the Bronze Age in East Asia. The Spring and Autumn period was a period of war on the scale of World War II that lasted for 300 years.
During this time, the Chinese began to conquer foreigners and expand the territory of Chinese civilization.
The Warring States period (simplified Chinese: 战国时代; traditional Chinese: 戰國時代; pinyin: Zhànguó Shídài) was an era in ancient Chinese history characterized by warfare, as well as bureaucratic and military reforms and consolidation. It followed the Spring and Autumn period and concluded with the Qin wars of conquest that saw the annexation of all other contender states, which ultimately led to the Qin state's victory in 221 BC as the first unified Chinese empire, known as the Qin dynasty.
Although different scholars point toward different dates ranging from 481 BC to 403 BC as the true beginning of the Warring States, Sima Qian's choice of 475 BC is the most often cited. The Warring States era also overlaps with the second half of the Eastern Zhou dynasty, though the Chinese sovereign, known as the king of Zhou, ruled merely as a figurehead and served as a backdrop against the machinations of the warring states.
The "Warring States Period" derives its name from the Record of the Warring States, a work compiled early in the Han dynasty.
**The Warring States period戰國時代 **
The Warring States period is very important as the period that created China's first Iron Age civilization.
The Warring States period lasted 250 years.
The Spring and Autumn period and The Warring States period are mostly recognized by Chinese scholars as the era of connected wars.
So, in general, East Asian historians, including China, connect the two war eras into a single war era and call it the 春秋戰國時代 epoch.
This period was the longest-lasting 550 years of war in Chinese history.
The Three Kingdoms (simplified Chinese: 三国时代; traditional Chinese: 三國時代; pinyin: Sānguó Shídài) from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the states of Wei, Shu, and Wu.[1] The Three Kingdoms period started with the end of the Han dynasty and was followed by the Jin dynasty. The short-lived Yan kingdom in the Liaodong Peninsula, which lasted from 237 to 238, is sometimes considered as a "4th kingdom".[2]
To distinguish the three states from other historical Chinese states of the same names, historians have added a relevant character to the state's original name: the state that called itself "Wei" (魏) is also known as "Cao Wei" (曹魏),[3] the state that called itself "Han" (漢) is also known as "Shu Han" (蜀漢) or just "Shu" (蜀), and the state that called itself "Wu" (吳) is also known as "Eastern Wu" (東吳; Dōng Wú) or "Sun Wu" (孫吳).
Academically, the period of the Three Kingdoms refers to the period between the foundation of the state of Wei in 220 AD and the conquest of the state of Wu by the Jin dynasty in 280. The earlier, "unofficial" part of the period, from 184 to 220, was marked by chaotic infighting between warlords in various parts of China. The middle part of the period, from 220 to 263, was marked by a more militarily stable arrangement between three rival states of Wei, Shu, and Wu. The later part of the era was marked by the conquest of Shu by Wei (263), the usurpation of Wei by the Jin dynasty (265), and the conquest of Wu by the Jin (280).
The Three Kingdoms period is one of the bloodiest in Chinese history.[4] A nationwide census taken in 280 AD, following the reunification of the Three Kingdoms under the Jin shows a total of 2,459,840 households and 16,163,863 individuals which was only a fraction of the 10,677,960 households, and 56,486,856 individuals reported during the Han era.[5] While the census may not have been particularly accurate due to a multitude of factors of the times, in 280, the Jin did make an attempt to account for all individuals where they could.[6]
Technology advanced significantly during this period. Shu chancellor Zhuge Liang invented the wooden ox, suggested to be an early form of the wheelbarrow,[7] and improved on the repeating crossbow.[8] Wei mechanical engineer Ma Jun is considered by many to be the equal of his predecessor Zhang Heng.[9] He invented a hydraulic-powered, mechanical puppet theatre designed for Emperor Ming of Wei, square-pallet chain pumps for irrigation of gardens in Luoyang, and the ingenious design of the south-pointing chariot, a non-magnetic directional compass operated by differential gears.[10]
Although relatively short, this historical period has been greatly romanticized in the cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.[11] It has been celebrated and popularized in operas, folk stories, novels and in more recent times, films, television, and video games. The best known of these is Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a Ming dynasty historical novel based on events in the Three Kingdoms period.[12] The authoritative historical record of the era is Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms, along with Pei Songzhi's later annotations of the text.
The English-language term "Three Kingdoms" is something of a misnomer, since each state was eventually headed not by a king, but by an emperor who claimed suzerainty over all China.[13] Nevertheless, the term "Three Kingdoms" has become standard among English-speaking sinologists.
The Three Kingdoms (simplified Chinese: 三国时代; traditional Chinese: 三國時代; pinyin: Sānguó Shídài)
The Three Kingdoms (simplified Chinese: 三國时代; traditional Chinese: 三國时; pinyin: Sānguó Shídài) was a period of wars and divisions that arose when the Han dynasty, called the Roman Empire of China, broke up.
The divided Chinese dynasties began to grow in power as foreigners were hired as mercenaries and tenant farmers, respectively.
The Upheaval of the Five Barbarians (Chinese: 五胡亂華; lit. 'Five foreign tribes disrupting China'[9]) is a Chinese expression referring to a series of rebellions and invasions between 304 and 316 by non-Han peoples, commonly called the Five Barbarians, living in North China against the Jin Empire, which had recently been weakened by a series of civil wars. The uprisings helped topple Emperor Huai of Jin in Luoyang and ended the Western Jin dynasty in northern China.
Rulers from four ethnic groups, the Xiongnu, Jie, Qiang and Di, then established a series of independent dynastic realms in northern China. The fifth group, the Xianbei in the north, were allied to the Western Jin and later Eastern Jin against the other four barbarians until turning on the Jin much later. A series of revolts in southern China occurred at the same time by southern Ba-Di rebels aboriginal people in Sichuan and Nanman aboriginals in Hubei resulting in the establishment of the Cheng Han state in Sichuan. This chaotic period of Chinese history, known as the Sixteen Kingdoms (五胡十六國, "Sixteen States of the Five Barbarians"), lasted over 130 years until the Northern Wei dynasty united northern China in the 5th century. The Eastern Jin dynasty survived in southern China until its eventual replacement by the Liu Song dynasty in 420.
The Chinese version of the Germanic migration began when the Five Barbarians (Chinese: 五胡亂華; lit. 'Five foreign tribes disrupting China'[9]) disrupted the unified Chinese The Jin dynasty ([tɕîn]; Chinese: 晉朝; pinyin: Jìn Cháo) .
The Sixteen Kingdoms (simplified Chinese: 十六国; traditional Chinese: 十六國; pinyin: Shíliù Guó)
The Sixteen Kingdoms (simplified Chinese: 十六国; traditional Chinese: 十六國; pinyin: Shíliù Guó), less commonly the Sixteen States, was a chaotic period in Chinese history from AD 304 to 439 when the political order of northern China fractured into a series of short-lived dynastic states, most of which were founded by the "Five Barbarians", non-Han peoples who had settled in northern and western China during the preceding centuries and participated in the overthrow of the Western Jin dynasty in the early 4th century. The kingdoms founded by ethnic Xiongnu, Xianbei, Di, Jie, Qiang, as well as Han and other ethnicities, took on Chinese dynastic names, and fought against one another and the Eastern Jin dynasty, which succeeded the Western Jin and ruled southern China. The period ended with the unification of northern China in the early 5th century by the Northern Wei, a dynasty established by the Xianbei Tuoba clan, and the history of ancient China entered the Northern and Southern dynasties period.
The term "Sixteen Kingdoms" was first used by the 6th-century historian Cui Hong in the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms and refers to the five Liangs (Former, Later, Northern, Southern and Western), four Yans (Former, Later, Northern, and Southern), three Qins (Former, Later and Western), two Zhaos (Former and Later), Cheng Han and Xia. Cui Hong did not count several other kingdoms that appeared at the time including the Ran Wei, Zhai Wei, Chouchi, Duan Qi, Qiao Shu, Huan Chu, Tuyuhun and Western Yan. Nor did he include the Northern Wei and its predecessor Dai, because the Northern Wei is considered to be the first of the Northern Dynasties in the period that followed the Sixteen Kingdoms.
Classical Chinese historians called the period the "Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbarians" (simplified Chinese: 五胡十六国; traditional Chinese: 五胡十六國; pinyin: Wǔhú Shíliù Guó) because of the active roles played by non-Han ethnicities during this period. Among the handful of the states founded by ethnic Han (Former Liang, Western Liang, Ran Wei and Northern Yan), several founders had close relations with ethnic minorities. The father of Ran Min, the founder of the Ran Wei, was adopted into a Jie ruling family. Feng Ba, who is considered by some historians to be the founder of the Northern Yan, had been assimilated into Xianbei culture. Gao Yun, considered by other historians to be the Northern Yan founder, was a member of the Goguryeo royal family who had been adopted by Xianbei nobility.
Due to fierce competition among the states and internal political instability, the kingdoms of this era were mostly short-lived. For seven years from 376 to 383, the Former Qin briefly unified northern China, but its collapse following the Battle of Fei River in 383 led to even greater political fragmentation with as many as seven states vying for supremacy and survival in northern China at the same time. The collapse of the Western Jin dynasty and the rise of barbarian regimes in China during the Sixteen Kingdoms resembles the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire amidst invasions by the Huns and Germanic tribes in Europe, which also occurred in the 4th to 5th centuries.
The Five Barbarians (Chinese: 五胡亂華; lit. 'Five foreign tribes disrupting China'[9]) occupied North China, creating 16 kingdoms. The Chinese were pushed down the Yangtze River in South China and established new kingdoms.
The Northern and Southern dynasties (Chinese: 南北朝; pinyin: Nán-Běi Cháo) was a period in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Wu Hu states. It is sometimes considered as the latter part of a longer period known as the Six Dynasties (220 to 589).[1] Though an age of civil war and political chaos, it was also a time of flourishing arts and culture, advancement in technology, and the spread of Mahayana Buddhism and Daoism. The period saw large-scale migration of Han Chinese to the lands south of the Yangtze. The period came to an end with the unification of all of China proper by Emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty.
During this period, the process of sinicization accelerated among the non-Chinese arrivals in the north and among the indigenous people in the south. This process was also accompanied by the increasing popularity of Buddhism (introduced into China in the 1st century) in both northern and southern China and Daoism gaining influence as well, with two essential Daoist canons written during this period.
Notable technological advances occurred during this period. The invention of the stirrup during the earlier Jin dynasty (266–420) helped spur the development of heavy cavalry as a combat standard. Historians also note advances in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and cartography. Intellectuals of the period include the mathematician and astronomer Zu Chongzhi (429–500), and astronomer Tao Hongjing.
The Northern and Southern dynasties (Chinese: 南北朝; pinyin: Nán-Běi Cháo) waged wars and divisions with each other before the northern dynasty eventually conquered the southern dynasty.
Similar to the case of the Germanic conquest of the Roman Empire and the birth of Christian European civilization, foreigners conquered the Chinese and a new unified Chinese civilization was born.
From the era of The Three Kingdoms (simplified Chinese: 三國时; traditional Chinese: 三國时; pinyin: Sānguó Shídài)
Until the unification of The Sui dynasty ([swěi], Chinese: 隋朝; pinyin: Suí cháo) , mainland China had a whopping 370 years of war and division.
From 220 AD to 589 AD, China fought a war on the scale of World War II.
The Tang dynasty (/tɑːŋ/,[5] [tʰǎŋ]; Chinese: 唐朝[a]), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Historians generally regard the Tang as a high point in Chinese civilization, and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture.[7] Tang territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, rivaled that of the Han dynasty.
The Lǐ family (李) founded the dynasty, seizing power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire and inaugurating a period of progress and stability in the first half of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty was formally interrupted during 690–705 when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, proclaiming the Wu Zhou dynasty and becoming the only legitimate Chinese empress regnant. The devastating An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) shook the nation and led to the decline of central authority in the dynasty's latter half. Like the previous Sui dynasty, the Tang maintained a civil-service system by recruiting scholar-officials through standardized examinations and recommendations to office. The rise of regional military governors known as jiedushi during the 9th century undermined this civil order. The dynasty and central government went into decline by the latter half of the 9th century; agrarian rebellions resulted in mass population loss and displacement, widespread poverty, and further government dysfunction that ultimately ended the dynasty in 907.
The Tang capital at Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) was then the world's most populous city. Two censuses of the 7th and 8th centuries estimated the empire's population at about 50 million people,[8][9] which grew to an estimated 80 million by the dynasty's end.[10][11][b] From its numerous subjects, the dynasty raised professional and conscripted armies of hundreds of thousands of troops to contend with nomadic powers for control of Inner Asia and the lucrative trade-routes along the Silk Road. Far-flung kingdoms and states paid tribute to the Tang court, while the Tang also indirectly controlled several regions through a protectorate system. In addition to its political hegemony, the Tang exerted a powerful cultural influence over neighboring East Asian nations such as Japan and Korea. Chinese culture flourished and further matured during the Tang era. It is traditionally considered the greatest age for Chinese poetry.[12] Two of China's most famous poets, Li Bai and Du Fu, belonged to this age, contributing with poets such as Wang Wei to the monumental Three Hundred Tang Poems. Many famous painters such as Han Gan, Zhang Xuan, and Zhou Fang were active, while Chinese court music flourished with instruments such as the popular pipa. Tang scholars compiled a rich variety of historical literature, as well as encyclopedias and geographical works. Notable innovations included the development of woodblock printing. Buddhism became a major influence in Chinese culture, with native Chinese sects gaining prominence. However, in the 840s Emperor Wuzong enacted policies to suppress Buddhism, which subsequently declined in influence.
The Song dynasty ([sʊ̂ŋ]; Chinese: 宋朝; pinyin: Sòng cháo; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Song often came into conflict with the contemporaneous Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasties in northern China. After decades of armed resistance defending southern China, it was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.
The dynasty is divided into two periods: Northern Song and Southern Song. During the Northern Song (Chinese: 北宋; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now Eastern China. The Southern Song (Chinese: 南宋; 1127–1279) refers to the period after the Song lost control of its northern half to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. At that time time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze and established its capital at Lin'an (now Hangzhou). Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River, the Southern Song Empire contained a large population and productive agricultural land, sustaining a robust economy. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died in 1259 while besieging the mountain castle Diaoyucheng, Chongqing. His younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan and in 1271 proclaimed himself Emperor of China, establishing the Yuan dynasty.[6] After two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khan's armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279 after defeating the Southern Song in the Battle of Yamen, and reunited China under the Yuan dynasty.[7]
Technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished during the Song era. The Song dynasty was the first in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty saw the first recorded chemical formula of gunpowder, the invention of gunpowder weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance. It also saw the first discernment of true north using a compass, first recorded description of the pound lock, and improved designs of astronomical clocks. Economically, the Song dynasty was unparalleled with a gross domestic product three times larger than that of Europe during the 12th century.[8][9] China's population doubled in size between the 10th and 11th centuries. This growth was made possible by expanded rice cultivation, use of early-ripening rice from Southeast and South Asia, and production of widespread food surpluses.[10][11] The Northern Song census recorded 20 million households, double of the Han and Tang dynasties. It is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of 90 million people,[12] and 200 million by the time of the Ming dynasty.[13] This dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China.
The expansion of the population, growth of cities, and emergence of a national economy led to the gradual withdrawal of the central government from direct involvement in economic affairs. The lower gentry assumed a larger role in local administration and affairs. Social life during the Song was vibrant. Citizens gathered to view and trade precious artworks, the populace intermingled at public festivals and private clubs, and cities had lively entertainment quarters. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the rapid expansion of woodblock printing and the 11th-century invention of movable-type printing. Philosophers such as Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi reinvigorated Confucianism with new commentary, infused with Buddhist ideals, and emphasized a new organization of classic texts that established the doctrine of Neo-Confucianism. Although civil service examinations had existed since the Sui dynasty, they became much more prominent in the Song period. Officials gaining power through imperial examination led to a shift from a military-aristocratic elite to a scholar-bureaucratic elite.
After the fall of The Tang dynasty (/tɑːŋ/,[5] [tʰǎŋ]; Chinese: 唐朝[a]), mainland China again experienced a period of wars and divisions between Chinese dynasties and foreign kingdoms for 300 years.
We have looked at the era of war and division on the scale of World War II, which is representative of China.
In fact, although great wars have been fought every 40 years in Chinese history, there have been three world war-scale wars that have been fought over the centuries!
Countless wars have been waged in China because of the shortage of food, resources and agricultural land relative to its population.
Consequently, wars were waged in mainland China to reduce the population.
If you add up the time period of the three world war-level wars that took place in China, it is over 1200 years old.😱
This time I looked at the history of American warfare.
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from the British Crown and establishing the United States of America, the first modern constitutional liberal democracy.[1][2][3]
The Mexican–American War,[a] also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the Intervención estadounidense en México (U.S. intervention in Mexico),[b] was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered Mexican territory since the Mexican government did not recognize the Velasco treaty signed by Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna when he was a prisoner of the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its citizens wished to be annexed by the United States.[4] Domestic sectional politics in the U.S. were preventing annexation since Texas would have been a slave state, upsetting the balance of power between Northern free states and Southern slave states.[5] In the 1844 United States presidential election, Democrat James K. Polk was elected on a platform of expanding U.S. territory in Oregon and Texas. Polk advocated expansion by either peaceful means or by armed force, with the 1845 annexation of Texas furthering that goal by peaceful means.[6] However, the boundary between Texas and Mexico was disputed, with the Republic of Texas and the U.S. asserting it to be the Rio Grande River and Mexico claiming it to be the more-northern Nueces River. Both Mexico and the U.S. claimed the disputed area and sent troops. Polk sent U.S. Army troops to the area; he also sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico to try to negotiate the sale of territory. U.S. troops' presence was designed to lure Mexico into starting the conflict, putting the onus on Mexico and allowing Polk to argue to Congress that a declaration of war should be issued.[7] Mexican forces attacked U.S. forces, and the United States Congress declared war.[8]
Beyond the disputed area of Texas, U.S. forces quickly occupied the regional capital of Santa Fe de Nuevo México along the upper Rio Grande, which had trade relations with the U.S. via the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and New Mexico. U.S. forces also moved against the province of Alta California and then moved south. The Pacific Squadron of the U.S. Navy blockaded the Pacific coast farther south in the lower Baja California Territory. The Mexican government refused to be pressured into signing a peace treaty at this point, making the U.S. invasion of the Mexican heartland under Major General Winfield Scott and its capture of the capital Mexico City a strategy to force peace negotiations. Although Mexico was defeated on the battlefield, politically its government's negotiating a treaty remained a fraught issue, with some factions refusing to consider any recognition of its loss of territory. Although Polk formally relieved his peace envoy, Nicholas Trist, of his post as negotiator, Trist ignored the order and successfully concluded the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It ended the war, and Mexico recognized the Mexican Cession, areas not part of disputed Texas but conquered by the U.S. Army. These were northern territories of Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México. The U.S. agreed to pay $15 million for the physical damage of the war and assumed $3.25 million of debt already owed by the Mexican government to U.S. citizens. Mexico acknowledged the independence of what became the State of Texas and accepted the Rio Grande as its northern border with the United States.
The victory and territorial expansion Polk envisioned[9] inspired patriotism among some sections of the United States, but the war and treaty drew fierce criticism for the casualties, monetary cost, and heavy-handedness,[10][11] particularly early on. The question of how to treat the new acquisitions also intensified the debate over slavery in the United States. Although the Wilmot Proviso that explicitly forbade the extension of slavery into conquered Mexican territory was not adopted by Congress, debates about it heightened sectional tensions. Some scholars see the Mexican–American War as leading to the American Civil War, with many officers trained at West Point, who saw action in Mexico, playing prominent leadership roles on each side during the conflict.
In Mexico, the war worsened domestic political turmoil. Since the war was fought on home ground, Mexico suffered a large loss of life of both its soldiers and its civilian population. The nation's financial foundations were undermined, territory was lost, and national prestige left it in what a group of Mexican writers including Ramón Alcaraz and José María del Castillo Velasco called a "state of degradation and ruin...” This group did not acknowledge Mexico’s refusal to admit the independence of Texas as a cause of the war, instead proclaiming “[As for] the true origin of the war, it is sufficient to say that the insatiable ambition of the United States, favored by our weakness, caused it."[12]
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865) (also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States fought between the Union (states that remained loyal to the federal union, or "the North") and the Confederacy (states that voted to secede, or "the South").[e] The central cause of the war was the status of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into territories acquired as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican–American War.[14] On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, four million of the 32 million Americans (~13%) were enslaved black people, almost all in the South.[15]
The practice of slavery in the United States was one of the key political issues of the 19th century. Decades of political unrest over slavery led up to the Civil War. Disunion came after Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 United States presidential election on an anti-slavery expansion platform. An initial seven southern slave states declared their secession from the country to form the Confederacy. Confederate forces seized federal forts within territory they claimed. The last minute Crittenden Compromise tried to avert conflict but failed; both sides prepared for war. Fighting broke out in April 1861 when the Confederate army began the Battle of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, just over a month after the first inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. The Confederacy grew to control at least a majority of territory in eleven states (out of the 34 U.S. states in February 1861), and asserted claims to two more. The states that remained loyal to the federal government were known as the Union.[f] Both sides raised large volunteer and conscription armies. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued.
During 1861–1862 in the war's Western Theater, the Union made significant permanent gains, though in the war's Eastern Theater, the conflict was inconclusive. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal by providing for emancipation of the slaves in states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. To the west, the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to General Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and his march to the sea. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capitol of Richmond.
The civil war effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Lee surrendered to Union General Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, after abandoning Petersburg and Richmond. Confederate generals throughout the Confederate army followed suit, the last surrender on land occurring on June 23. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed, especially its railroads. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the country and grant civil rights to freed slaves.
The Civil War is one of the most studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of particular interest is the persisting myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The American Civil War was among the earliest to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons saw wide use. In total the war left between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead,[16] along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties.[g] President Lincoln was assassinated just five days after Lee's surrender. The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American history.[h] "It was only as recently as the Vietnam War that the number of American deaths in foreign wars [combined] eclipsed the number who died in the Civil War."[i] The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming World Wars.
There have been only three major wars fought inside the United States. Since the American Civil War, the United States has enjoyed 150 years of peace.😳
Personally, I think the United States is the country that dominates all of North America.
I may offend somebody if I use this phrase, but it seemed clear that the United States dominated Mexico and Canada.
Perhaps the United States dominates the entire New World.
At least the territory of the United States, Mexico, and Canada combined is three times the territory of mainland China.
The fact that there have been only three wars on such a huge North American continent left me shocked and terrified.
There were as many wars in continental Europe as there were in China, but the fact that there were only three wars in the United States was a mystery.
As I watched the wars within the United States, I was convinced that God really created America.😲😅
There is, in any discussion on the history of gender relations, an elephant whose presence in the room most feminists would be uncomfortable acknowledging. That is the fact that the notion of gender equality is a rather recent development in the grand scale of Human history (you'd be hard-pressed to find the idea even being discussed more than a century or two ago). Indeed, for most of recorded Human history, in most of the world, a woman's legal and social standing was very much akin to that of a horse or cow: the living property of the man in whose home she lived, typically purchased from her parents for a price, and whose value was measured largely on the basis of her utility. Yet lower still was the status of a woman from a conquered nation or race living among her conquerors. Such a woman was typically viewed as little more than a sexual object or breeding vessel (or both) and in most cases, such a woman had little to hope for other than to bear a son for her captor and thus gain a marginal degree of value.
East Asians, including China and Japan, who have suffered countless wars and famines since time immemorial, harbor fear and awe when they see the United States.
The fact that North America, which is bigger and more prosperous than mainland China, has suffered only three wars, and that North America still enjoys peace and development after the Civil War, gives people in East Asia a sense of mystery, awe, and fear.😲
So, East Asians call America the world blessed by God.😄
