xxxviii 1750 to 1900 later decades Elsewhere in the 1850s and 1860s Italian nationalism culminated in the unification of Italy Semiautonomous German states unified to form a single German nation, spearheaded by Prussia These unifications did not occur without conflict from both internal and external opponents The U.S Civil War of 1861–65 pitted 11 seceding southern slave states against the rest of the nation It was a total war in which more than million Americans died; it also offered some tantalizing opportunities to U.S rivals Both Britain and France considered diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy, hoping thereby to dilute the United States’s growing industrial and political power, but were dissuaded by clear evidence that the Union was likely to prevail Nevertheless, France, under LouisNapoleon Bonaparte, used America’s distraction to try to gain control of Mexico That plan failed Prior to about 1830 many non-Western powers successfully held their own against European incursions Even the Indian subcontinent, where Britain had established trading rights as early as 1619, did not come fully under British control until the 1850s Some Western states collaborated with some Asian and African states by selling them superior weaponry For example, the French helped Egypt build a modern naval fleet Persian leaders and the Ottoman sultans hired Westerners to train their armies The Japanese, watching with alarm as Western navies encroached on the Pacific, began in the 1860s, with some help from Germany, France, and Britain, to modernize their military forces and upgrade their weaponry These steps would help Japan escape the fate soon to befall China and make Japan an Asian imperial power By the 1880s European competition for colonial control was at its height In the United States, a century-long effort to “pacify” Native Americans had almost reached its goal of restricting the remaining tribes’ landholdings and occupations Britain, with its unrivaled naval power, gained dominance in Egypt and China The British also asserted control over great swaths of Africa, defeating the Zulus and the white Dutch-descended settlers in South Africa called the Boers, in the Boer War that began in 1899 French imperial activity focused on North Africa and the Southeast Asian region that came to be known as Indochina Germany, Italy, and Belgium also competed for colonial opportunities in Africa Russia was especially successful in Asia, conquering the Muslim khanates in Central Asia and acquiring lands formerly under the Qing Empire on the Pacific coast With its four-month Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States acquired Spain’s remaining American colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Philippines in Asia, joining Europeans in the imperial land rush by claiming new territory beyond its own borders Sixteen years later, the rivalries the new colonialism had provoked among the great imperial powers and the seething millions they claimed the right to control would trigger the greatest war in world history to that point