Trice, a concise and important look. I often grow frustrated while doing Living Histories as I portray a veteran of the Crimea... and very few know the Crimea from Italy. If anything in significance the Crimea was more important than the ACW to the rest of the world; especially as the general opinion of the ACW by European General officers was that it was a contest between howling amatuers.
The stories that Rommel and Guderian studied the ACW are feel good stories w/ no real bassis in fact, in fact much of the significance given to the ACW by us is overdone. As Trice has shown the ACW did not revolutionize warfare as many claim. Yes there were some firsts... which is true of any war. Necessity is the mother of invention after all. In scope it was rather small when compared to other conflicts happening as a contemporary... it's a school yard brawl when compared to the Civil War/Rebellion happening in China at the time. A war that few know anything about or are even vaguelly aware of.
The ACW was NOT the first Total War.
The ACW was NOT the first in which RR were used.
The ACW was NOT the first to use a submarine.
The ACW was NOT the first to use modern entrenchements.
The ACW was NOT the first to see black men under arms.
Forrest did NOT revolutionize warfare by his raiding tactics.
The list could go on but suffice it to say the US was NOT the center of military advancement and invention in the 19th Century.
The best way to view all this is as a process. The ACW has a major place in it -- just not the place Americans often like to see it as, and most of what was is visible best in hindsight. The European professionals paid even less attention to that war in China than they did to the ACW
The European militaries that took the most from the ACW were Russia and Britain. There was good reason for that: both saw similarities between the situation in America and their own situation. Both faced far-flung areas where they might have to fight, often with newly-raised raw troops built on core professionals. The ACW was like that, so they drew analogies to their own situation.
The French, Austrians and Prussians didn't see the same relationship. The French and Austrians were widely regarded as #1 and #2 in the world's militaries, and so saw little reason to look for lessons from those wild Americans. The Prussians studied the Austrians and French and their own wars. There was a great deal of "not-invented-here" in their attitude toward lessons from America.
On technical matters, they were greatly interested in the effect of the new rifled guns on masonry fortifications. This is normal because there had really been no situation to that point anywhere in the world that tested this, and it was a matter of great debate in the professional journals of the day. Thus Ft. Sumter, the Charleston siege operations, and Ft. Pulaski were of great interest and studied intently.
Ironclad warships were in existence; the British and French had them. But there were only six in the world when the ACW started, and there had been no combats involving them. The European navies were very interested in seeing experimental results, and the 1862 clash between the Monitor and the Merrimac was the first opportunity to see what happened (as well as the first example of a ship with a turret in battle). Naval architects and theoreticians pored over the descriptions of such battles as a result.
RRs existed and had seen some use -- but nowhere near the scale involved in America. That's not very surprising. In 1861, Britain and the US had more RR track than any other nations -- and the Confederacy would be third if broken out of the US. Military use of RRs was very new, and the ACW was the biggest laboratory on how to use it. So military technicians paid great attention, and marvelled at what Sherman did with it in the Atlanta Campaign.
Other than technical details, most Europeans thought there was little new or noteworthy in how the Americans fought their war. This opinion is more common earlier in the war, when European observers seem to have laughed at much of what they saw. If you look at the record of British observers, the later they came, the more impressed they were. Not surprising. They normally went to Virginia, and by 1863-64 the AoP and ANV had a lot to be noticed.
On cavalry, there was a great divide in the militaries of the world. The "Old School" insisted that no true cavalryman would dismount to fight. The new radicals (particularly in Britain) favored "mounted infantry" tactics much like those of Buford and Forrest in most situations. The British radicals pointed at the ACW as well as their own operations in India and New Zealand and elsewhere. (Some had careers crushed as a result, but one of the British advocates was a general with a tremendous record and the Victoria Cross; not so easy to make him go away.)
The Russians adopted dismounted tactics for their Cossacks (long-term Regulars/professionals by that point). Noting the tendency of ACW cavalry raids to fail at demolitions and destruction, they added a sapper section to every Cossack regiment. In the 1877 war against the Turks, a deep cavalry raid by cossacks dismounted to storm a crucial town with the bayonet, and may have been the reason for Russian victory in the war.
Other than that, there is little real impact directly traceable to the ACW until the rise of G. F. R. Henderson in Britain in the 1890s. He was a Stonewall Jackson fanatic and a Lee admirer; he also was the teacher of a great many officers at Sandhurst. Lord Roberts dragged him out of teaching to run his intel operations when he went to South Africa to crush the Boers in 1900, and Henderson was probably as responsible as anyone for British success there. As a result, study of the ACW mushroomed in the British Army, with major essay questions on the war in Virginia on most officer exams in the early 1900s. Allenby of Palestine fame was a Henderson man, for example.
The French paid no attention; neither did the Germans, the Austrians, the Italians, etc. As WWI came, the French "chapels" developed a warped theory that
elan could conquer anything. This was to the extent that the French observers at the Russo-Japanese War reported the offensive was dominant (after all, the Japanese did eventually take Port Arthur after wading through a sea of blood -- the machine guns, artillery, entrenchments and barbed wire didn't stop them.) The Germans, still believing in the offensive, did at least notice that entrenchments were good for the defensive in that war, and changed their tactical manuals as a result.
Tim
Bringing the