and settlers, like Washington and Jefferson, who simply would 
not think in terms of mink. Thus the War of Independence was 
deeply involved in media and staple rivalries. Any new medium, 
by its acceleration, disrupts the lives and investments of whole 
communities. It was the railway that raised the art of war to 
unheard-of intensity, making the American Civil War the first 
major conflict fought by rail, and causing it to be studied and 
admired by all European general staffs, who had not yet had an 
opportunity to use railways for a general bloodletting.

     War is never anything less than accelerated technological 
change. It begins when some notable disequilibrium among 
existing structures has been brought about by inequality of 
rates of growth. The very late industrialization and unification 
of Germany had left her out of the race for staples and colonies 
for many years. As the Napoleonic wars were technologically a