After the successful division of the United States into two countries, neither country was strong enough to become the hegemon of one side.

The development of the North will continue, but the potential can already be seen at the bottom, with the loss of large swaths of the unexplored western frontier, and Lincoln did not introduce the landmark land bill in this war, because the land of the United States has been carved up, and there are not many terra nullius in the states.

Such an America, now with only 23 million people, still has a lot of room for growth, but the margin is in sight, and what he has lost is an infinite potential. With the natural endowment of the United States, according to the proportion of Europe, their population can be doubled or situated, and it is difficult for the population to exceed 100 million in the future.

The Americas, located outside the center of Eurasia, are destined to lose the world-class influence of the American Federation.

The southern part of the United States, with its greater potential in terms of territory and covered sea area than the north, has better land conditions for the development of agriculture, but slavery is a stout hindrance, and it will take at least twenty or thirty years for the South to get rid of slavery. Then there's the serious problem of racism, and with nearly half of the black population, apartheid will drag down the modernization of the South unless a better American nation can be mixed with mulatto, as a few romantics believe. He would have stayed in an agrarian society for a long, long time, perhaps even more like Cuba.

Even if the South breaks the kettle and solves the problem of slavery in just a few years, the best thing to do is probably the level of apartheid in South Africa, and the population base of the South is very difficult to integrate with nearly 10 million blacks.

For China, the division of the United States means that the forces formed by the British to fight against China in the Americas are bankrupt, and it makes no sense for the North to continue to maintain the Anglo-American alliance, in fact, the United States announced the end of the Anglo-American alliance after Lincoln resigned and the vice president took over, on the grounds that the American Federation was no longer capable of maintaining the alliance with the United Kingdom.

Moreover, the north also began to abolish its own martial arts measures, the infantry began to be reduced, the huge warships of the navy began to be sold, and China and Britain each selected a dozen or so latest warships, the purpose was not to expand the navy, but to study the technology of American warships, after all, they had just experienced the baptism of war, and their warship design contained their actual combat experience in the latest technology.

The vast majority of warships were dismantled, as the debt-ridden U.S. Federation could not afford to maintain a large fleet. In this war, they paid $8 billion in military spending and more than a million casualties. Therefore, the U.S. federal government can only enter a slow debt repayment journey, and it will take 50 years to repay this debt, even if the federal government's fiscal victory, because a lost war has not brought them an increase in federal power, but has made the states think that it is more conducive to peace to continue to limit federal power, and they have shifted the responsibility of the war to the Lincoln administration's reckless war attitude.

The South is also heavily indebted, not as high as the North, but as high as $5 billion. But they also face the dilemma of a currency collapse, and they need more external debt to reshape the financial system. In addition, the war was mainly fought in the south, and they also had to face difficult post-war reconstruction work. The total wealth they lost in the war far exceeded military spending, and according to the most conservative estimates, the material wealth lost also exceeded 100 billion dollars. The accumulation of generations of slave owners was reduced to ashes, and the ornate manor was in ruins. Cities have been burned down, railways have been destroyed, and reconstruction has a long way to go.

And because of China's assistance during the war, they can only strengthen ties with China after the war, on the one hand, because of the security concerns of the northern threat, they need a strong country to protect them, and on the other hand, they also need China's support to rebuild.

Of course, the degree of such strengthening of ties is not enough to reach the level of alliance, but it is inevitable that China's influence on the newly formed Confederate States of America will surpass that of any other country, and the relations between the United States of America and Britain in the north will inevitably be alienated.

Supporting the reconstruction of the South is not much of a burden for China, because it is only a guarantee for them to borrow money in China's financial markets. In terms of solvency, the Union is even better than the Federation, because although the North is more economically stronger, it lacks export commodities to hedge foreign debt, and although the economy is backward, it is the world's largest exporter of agricultural products, and cotton is indeed the world's largest exporter, but it cannot be underestimated in tobacco, sugarcane and other fields. However, the north can only export grain, and other industrial products have no competitive advantage at all because of the high labor cost.

Even, if China does not provide loans, other countries are happy to do this financial business with the South.

After all, the Americas are a periphery zone, and the United States' withdrawal from the ranks of great power competition will have a limited impact on the world pattern.

The world pattern is still the Sino-British hegemony, and the two sides finally found the right direction, after the two sides have carried out a fifteen-year naval technology competition, the technical reserves have actually reached the level of large-scale manufacturing of ironclad ships, but did not find the correct technical direction, so there is no rash bet on a certain technology, the Americans' tests have proved that the future of ironclad ships is thicker armor and larger artillery, is a rotating battery combined with heavy armor, not the number of artillery.

Thus, after the end of the war in the United States, the arms race between China and Britain officially began.

Moreover, because of the stimulus to Britain caused by the rapid expansion of the Northern Navy in the American War, the British found that their naval superiority not only did not constitute an advantage over China, but even the Atlantic, which they considered to be the bottom line of security, could not guarantee absolute control, and an industrial power of the size of the United States had the ability to build a naval fleet that surpassed that of Britain in just two or three years, which was really too dangerous. So the British began to make plans to make Britain's naval stock so that other countries could not catch up in the short term with all their might, and they planned to build and renovate 240 new battery rotating ironclads.

China's shipbuilding plan is that Britain will build two ships if they build one.

After the start of the arms race between China and Britain, other ambitious and capable countries quickly followed up, and some European countries found that the gap between them and Britain was not as big as imagined, since the direction of the ironclad ship has been determined, and all countries are not short of technology, then at this time to catch up, there is an opportunity to share Britain's right to speak on the ocean.

The French were not interested in an arms race, and their limited military spending was used to maintain a large army to defend against Germany or seek revenge on Germany, but it was still necessary to build a number of ironclad ships that kept up with the times, so France decided to build and renovate 80 ironclad ships to maintain France's position as the second navy in Europe.

Russia, which has regained its national strength and has been developing rapidly under a free economy for more than a decade, believes that the size of their navy should not be smaller than that of France.

Austria's national strength has declined in recent years, but it is mainly because of the decline in the mobilization capacity under the dualistic political mechanism, the comprehensive national strength has also risen rapidly, the industrial strength and economic level are still higher than Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which has lost its access to the Black Sea, believes that if it does not maintain a weighty fleet, Austria-Hungary's maritime rights and interests will not be guaranteed, and Austria-Hungary decided to build 60 ironclad ships.

Knowing that it was no match for France, Italy targeted Austria-Hungary, believing that it had to act to protect itself by deploying a large naval fleet in the Adriatic Sea, which was facing Italy.

Even Greece decided to build 30 ironclads to maintain their naval superiority over the Ottoman Empire.

Almost all the industrial countries of Europe have begun to join the arms race, each country has its own position, and Germany is certainly not immune.

Bismarck did not want to expand overseas, but the general trend forced him to expand step by step to the sea, otherwise he would lose his position.

Pushed by shipping and industrial conglomerates, Bismarck had no choice but to introduce a naval law requiring that the German navy should not be smaller than that of France.

In this way, the positioning of European countries has become, Britain wants to build a world navy that benchmarks China, Germany, France and Russia strive to be the second largest navy, and Austria, Italy and Greece and other countries want to maintain a certain right to speak, such a three-level system.

The capital ships of various countries were quickly finalized.

China's new ironclad ships are as high as 10,000 tons, and it plans to start building eight ships, the first ship, the Huwei, so it is called the Huwei class.

This is the highest capability that China has at present.

Britain's new ironclad ship has a similar technical level, and it is also a 10,000-ton class, and the first ship is named Victoria, so it is called the Victoria class. The British also plan to build the first batch of eight, which is in line with the number of Chinese ships.

However, China immediately announced a second batch of plans to develop ironclad ships with larger tonnage and larger guns, with a tonnage of 12,000 tons, and the number of the same eight, with the aim of surpassing that of the British.

The British have not yet announced new plans for the time being, but it is believed that they are already preparing, and they will not be at ease when the first batch of ironclad ships is built.

Larger hulls, bigger guns, and correspondingly more horsepower are all driving the latest technology, and the race to technology continues, and the sprint is accelerating, taking the world to a more terrifying future.

Countries have also studied the land warfare of the Civil War, but due to the limited influence of the United States, many of these studies have not been taken seriously, such as the Battle of Richmond, which was successfully defended by the Confederate army, and everyone paid more attention to new technologies than new tactics. The most popular tactics in the world are still promoted by Prussia, mobile warfare in the era of railways, and even Europeans generally believe that the main trend of war is the development of short-term and decisive battles, and as for the civil war that the Americans have fought for four or five years, it is the Americans who can't do it, and the Americans can't fight.

Therefore, the mainstream military thought in Europe is still stuck in the era of movement warfare such as the staff headquarters system during the Franco-Prussian War, the military application of railways, and the roundabout outflanking of rapid mobility.

At least in this regard, China's combination of offense and defense is more dominant.

Another new change brought about by the end of the Civil War was that the world entered an era of high growth. The application of new technologies has greatly accelerated, and this time, China is not only the applicator of new technologies, but also began to become the birthplace of new technologies, and the innovation ability of Chinese began to appear.