sentences:  The dispatch of about several thousand volunteers to fight in New Zealand in the early 1860s also reduced the manpower available.Further strategic concerns such as the American Civil War, Russian involvement in Afghanistan and the Franco-German War in the 1860s and 1870s, made defence reform an important item in many colonial parliaments and a number of committees and commissions were formed.The situation regarding the question of colonial defence measures had come to a head in 1870 when British forces stopped garrisoning the colonies.