Answer: I'm balanced I agree and disagree here is why,
Peter C. Perdue's China Marches West argues that the Qing dynasty's ability to break through historical territorial barriers on China's northwestern frontier reflected greater Manchu familiarity with steppe culture than their Chinese predecessors had exhibited, reinforced by superior commercial, technical, and symbolic resources and the benefits of a Russian alliance. Qing imperial expansion illustrated patterns of territorial consolidation apparent as well in Russia's forward movement in Inner Asia and, ironically, in the heroic, if ultimately futile, projects of the western Mongols who fell victim to the Qing. After summarizing Perdue's thesis, this essay extends his comparisons geographically and chronologically to argue that between 1600 and 1800 states ranging from western Europe through Japan to Southeast Asia exhibited similar patterns of political and cultural integration and that synchronized integrative cycles across Eurasia extended from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries. Yet in its growing vulnerability to Inner Asian domination, China proper—along with other sectors of the "exposed zone" of Eurasia—exemplified a species of state formation that was reasonably distinct from trajectories in sectors of Eurasia that were protected against Inner Asian conquest.
Shatter belt is a concept in geopolitics according to which on the political map are recognized and analyzed strategically positioned and oriented regions that are deeply internally divided and encompassed in the competition between the great powers in the geostrategic areas and spheres.
It started because Lincoln had won the 1860 election on a ticket of no new slave-states, so the South was doomed to be outvoted in Congress, which would pass laws that favoured the North at the expense of the South. So most of the slave-states broke away to form the Confederate States of America.
As for when it started, there was no actual declaration of war. The Confederacy could claim that it didn't want a war at all; it just wanted to defend its borders. Lincoln could not declare war on the Confederacy, because Congress did not recognise it as a sovereign nation.
The first shots were fired by the Confederates at the US Army garrison on the island of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour on April 12th 1861, and Lincoln called for volunteer troops. The war was on.
Drifter is probably the best fit here , as it does not have too much connotations ,as vagabond ... something like that!
I hope it's a great answer!
