The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015 | Page 41

of such changes were tremendous—along with the rewards for those bold enough,
or desperate enough, to step into the power vacuum. If the United States
disintegrated, a major world power such as France would have a literally golden
opportunity to tap into the immense wealth of the Americas, a wealth that had only
recently been wrenched free from European imperial control.
A captain of the French officer corps, the comte Émile de Kératry, who
would participate in the Mexican adventure, wrote about the reasons the French
believed they went to Mexico in the first place—and the United States was at the
heart of this reasoning. “It was the apparent dissolution of the United States which
has been at the origin of the Mexican venture, just as their resurrection was
sufficient to annihilate this ephemeral throne.” 12 As the Civil War grew fiercer and
more prolonged, the seemingly imminent collapse of the United States drew a
global power player into the periphery of the borderlands and conflict, waiting for
the right time to strike.
During this crucial time in the mid-nineteenth century, a sudden
disruption of American cotton exports coincided with the explosion of textile
manufacturing, and in itself signaled heightened American influence on the global
stage. England knew this time as the “Cotton Famine,” and the Union blockade of
Southern cotton exports during the Civil War years severely crippled Britain’s
great textile industry. 13 Britain and others scrambled to increase cotton production
in areas such as India and Egypt. The United States caused this global disturbance,
which was an unintended consequence of a military policy designed to win a
domestic war. However, Louis Napoleon’s flaunting of the Monroe Doctrine
during and after the same war warranted direct action by the United States. The
consequences of this action would set the Second French Empire on a downward
slide that would culminate in its overthrow in 1871, resulting in Napoleon III’s
capture by the Prussians and the establishment of the Third French Republic. Not
only was the Second French Empire damaged by America’s threatened use of
force but Americans forced Europeans and others who flocked to Mexico to leave,
and in doing so, severed the establishment of potential global connections.
By threatening France, a global power, the United States altered the
global balance of power. The Second French Empire, having been thrown off
guard in Mexico, was not fully able to meet the threat from Prussia’s Bismarck
that soon crippled French interest on the continent vis-à-vis Prussia’s attacks on
Denmark and then Austria herself. 14 A still unprepared France fell to Prussia just a
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