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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Expansion Of Europe, by Ramsay Muir
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+Title: The Expansion Of Europe
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+Author: Ramsay Muir
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+Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext# 4326]
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+
+THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE
+
+THE CULMINATION OF MODERN HISTORY
+
+BY RAMSAY MUIR
+
+PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
+
+SECOND EDITION
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The purpose of this book is twofold.
+
+We realise to-day, as never before, that the fortunes of the
+world, and of every individual in it, are deeply affected by the
+problems of world-politics and by the imperial expansion and the
+imperial rivalries of the greater states of Western civilisation.
+But when men who have given no special attention to the history of
+these questions try to form a sound judgment on them, they find
+themselves handicapped by the lack of any brief and clear resume
+of the subject. I have tried, in this book, to provide such a
+summary, in the form of a broad survey, unencumbered with detail,
+but becoming fuller as it comes nearer to our own time. That is my
+first purpose. In fulfilling it I have had to cover much well-
+trodden ground. But I hope I have avoided the aridity of a mere
+compendium of facts.
+
+My second purpose is rather more ambitious. In the course of my
+narrative I have tried to deal with ideas rather than with mere
+facts. I have tried to bring out the political ideas which are
+implicit in, or which result from, the conquest of the world by
+Western civilisation; and to show how the ideas of the West have
+affected the outer world, how far they have been modified to meet
+its needs, and how they have developed in the process. In
+particular I have endeavoured to direct attention to the
+significant new political form which we have seen coming into
+existence, and of which the British Empire is the oldest and the
+most highly developed example--the world-state, embracing peoples
+of many different types, with a Western nation-state as its
+nucleus. The study of this new form seems to me to be a neglected
+branch of political science, and one of vital importance. Whether
+or not it is to be a lasting form, time alone will show. Finally I
+have tried to display, in this long imperialist conflict, the
+strife of two rival conceptions of empire: the old, sterile, and
+ugly conception which thinks of empire as mere domination,
+ruthlessly pursued for the sole advantage of the master, and which
+seems to me to be most fully exemplified by Germany; and the
+nobler conception which regards empire as a trusteeship, and which
+is to be seen gradually emerging and struggling towards victory
+over the more brutal view, more clearly and in more varied forms
+in the story of the British Empire than in perhaps any other part
+of human history. That is why I have given a perhaps
+disproportionate attention to the British Empire. The war is
+determining, among other great issues, which of these conceptions
+is to dominate the future.
+
+In its first form this book was completed in the autumn of 1916;
+and it contained, as I am bound to confess, some rather acidulated
+sentences in the passages which deal with the attitude of America
+towards European problems. These sentences were due to the deep
+disappointment which most Englishmen and most Frenchmen felt with
+the attitude of aloofness which America seemed to have adopted
+towards the greatest struggle for freedom and justice ever waged
+in history. It was an indescribable satisfaction to be forced by
+events to recognise that I was wrong, and that these passages of
+my book ought not to have been written as I wrote them. There is a
+sort of solemn joy in feeling that America, France, and Britain,
+the three nations which have contributed more than all the rest of
+the world put together to the establishment of liberty and justice
+on the earth, are now comrades in arms, fighting a supreme battle
+for these great causes. May this comradeship never be broken. May
+it bring about such a decision of the present conflict as will
+open a new era in the history of the world--a world now unified,
+as never before, by the final victory of Western civilisation
+which it is the purpose of this book to describe.
+
+Besides rewriting and expanding the passages on America, I have
+seized the opportunity of this new issue to alter and enlarge
+certain other sections of the book, notably the chapter on the
+vital period 1878-1900, which was too slightly dealt with in the
+original edition. In this work, which has considerably increased
+the size of the book, I have been much assisted by the criticisms
+and suggestions of some of my reviewers, whom I wish to thank.
+
+Perhaps I ought to add that though this book is complete in
+itself, it is also a sort of sequel to a little book entitled
+Nationalism and Internationalism, and was originally designed to
+be printed along with it: that is the explanation of sundry
+footnote references. The two volumes are to be followed by a
+third, on National Self-government, and it is my hope that the
+complete series may form a useful general survey of the
+development of the main political factors in modern history.
+
+In its first form the book had the advantage of being read by my
+friend Major W. L. Grant, Professor of Colonial History at Queen's
+University Kingston, Ontario. The pressure of the military duties
+in which he is engaged has made it impossible for me to ask his
+aid in the revision of the book.
+
+R. M. July 1917
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Preface
+   I. The Meaning and the Motives of Imperialism
+  II. The Era of Iberian Monopoly
+ III. The Rivalry of the Dutch, the French, and
+        the English, 1588-1763
+          (a) The Period of Settlement, 1588-1660
+          (b) The Period of Systematic Colonial Policy, 1660-1713
+          (c) The Conflict of French and English, 1713-1763
+  IV. The Era of Revolution, 1763-1825
+   V. Europe and the Non-European World, 1815-1878
+  VI. The Transformation of the British Empire, 1815-1878
+ VII. The Era of the World States, 1878-1900
+VIII. The British Empire amid the World-Powers, 1878-1914
+  IX. The Great Challenge, 1900-1914
+   X. What of the Night?
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE MEANING AND THE MOTIVES OF IMPERIALISM
+
+
+One of the most remarkable features of the modern age has been the
+extension of the influence of European civilisation over the whole
+world. This process has formed a very important element in the
+history of the last four centuries, and it has been strangely
+undervalued by most historians, whose attention has been too
+exclusively centred upon the domestic politics, diplomacies, and
+wars of Europe. It has been brought about by the creation of a
+succession of 'Empires' by the European nations, some of which
+have broken up, while others survive, but all of which have
+contributed their share to the general result; and for that reason
+the term 'Imperialism' is commonly employed to describe the spirit
+which has led to this astonishing and world-embracing movement of
+the modern age.
+
+The terms 'Empire' and 'Imperialism' are in some respects
+unfortunate, because of the suggestion of purely military dominion
+which they convey; and their habitual employment has led to some
+unhappy results. It has led men of one school of thought to
+condemn and repudiate the whole movement, as an immoral product of
+brute force, regardless of the rights of conquered peoples. They
+have refused to study it, and have made no endeavour to understand
+it; not realising that the movement they were condemning was as
+inevitable and as irresistible as the movement of the tides--and
+as capable of being turned to beneficent ends. On the other hand,
+the implications of these terms have perhaps helped to foster in
+men of another type of mind an unhealthy spirit of pride in mere
+domination, as if that were an end in itself, and have led them to
+exult in the extension of national power, without closely enough
+considering the purposes for which it was to be used. Both
+attitudes are deplorable, and in so far as the words 'Empire,'
+'Imperial,' and 'Imperialism' tend to encourage them, they are
+unfortunate words. They certainly do not adequately express the
+full significance of the process whereby the civilisation of
+Europe has been made into the civilisation of the world.
+
+Nevertheless the words have to be used, because there are no
+others which at all cover the facts. And, after all, they are in
+some ways entirely appropriate. A great part of the world's area
+is inhabited by peoples who are still in a condition of barbarism,
+and seem to have rested in that condition for untold centuries.
+For such peoples the only chance of improvement was that they
+should pass under the dominion of more highly developed peoples;
+and to them a European 'Empire' brought, for the first time, not
+merely law and justice, but even the rudiments of the only kind of
+liberty which is worth having, the liberty which rests upon law.
+Another vast section of the world's population consists of peoples
+who have in some respects reached a high stage of civilisation,
+but who have failed to achieve for themselves a mode of
+organisation which could give them secure order and equal laws.
+For such peoples also the 'Empire' of Western civilisation, even
+when it is imposed and maintained by force, may bring advantages
+which will far outweigh its defects. In these cases the word
+'Empire' can be used without violence to its original
+significance, and yet without apology; and these cases cover by
+far the greater part of the world.
+
+The words 'Empire' and 'Imperialism' come to us from ancient Rome;
+and the analogy between the conquering and organising work of Rome
+and the empire-building work of the modern nation-states is a
+suggestive and stimulating analogy. The imperialism of Rome
+extended the modes of a single civilisation, and the Reign of Law
+which was its essence, over all the Mediterranean lands. The
+imperialism of the nations to which the torch of Rome has been
+handed on, has made the Reign of Law, and the modes of a single
+civilisation, the common possession of the whole world. Rome made
+the common life of Europe possible. The imperial expansion of the
+European nations has alone made possible the vision--nay, the
+certainty--of a future world-order. For these reasons we may
+rightly and without hesitation continue to employ these terms,
+provided that we remember always that the justification of any
+dominion imposed by a more advanced upon a backward or
+disorganised people is to be found, not in the extension of mere
+brute power, but in the enlargement and diffusion, under the
+shelter of power, of those vital elements in the life of Western
+civilisation which have been the secrets of its strength, and the
+greatest of its gifts to the world: the sovereignty of a just and
+rational system of law, liberty of person, of thought, and of
+speech, and, finally, where the conditions are favourable, the
+practice of self-government and the growth of that sentiment of
+common interest which we call the national spirit. These are the
+features of Western civilisation which have justified its conquest
+of the world [Footnote: See the first essay in Nationalism and
+Internationalism, in which an attempt is made to work out this
+idea]; and it must be for its success or failure in attaining
+these ends that we shall commend or condemn the imperial work of
+each of the nations which have shared in this vast achievement.
+
+Four main motives can be perceived at work in all the imperial
+activities of the European peoples during the last four centuries.
+The first, and perhaps the most potent, has been the spirit of
+national pride, seeking to express itself in the establishment of
+its dominion over less highly organised peoples. In the exultation
+which follows the achievement of national unity each of the
+nation-states in turn, if the circumstances were at all
+favourable, has been tempted to impose its power upon its
+neighbours,[Footnote: Nationalism and Imperialism, pp. 60, 64,
+104.] or even to seek the mastery of the world. From these
+attempts have sprung the greatest of the European wars. From them
+also have arisen all the colonial empires of the European states.
+It is no mere coincidence that all the great colonising powers
+have been unified nation-states, and that their imperial
+activities have been most vigorous when the national sentiment was
+at its strongest among them. Spain, Portugal, England, France,
+Holland, Russia: these are the great imperial powers, and they are
+also the great nation-states. Denmark and Sweden have played a
+more modest part, in extra-European as in European affairs.
+Germany and Italy only began to conceive imperial ambitions after
+their tardy unification in the nineteenth century. Austria, which
+has never been a nation-state, never became a colonising power.
+Nationalism, then, with its eagerness for dominion, may be
+regarded as the chief source of imperialism; and if its effects
+are unhappy when it tries to express itself at the expense of
+peoples in whom the potentiality of nationhood exists, they are
+not necessarily unhappy in other cases. When it takes the form of
+the settlement of unpeopled lands, or the organisation and
+development of primitive barbaric peoples, or the reinvigoration
+and strengthening of old and decadent societies, it may prove
+itself a beneficent force. But it is beneficent only in so far as
+it leads to an enlargement of law and liberty.
+
+The second of the blended motives of imperial expansion has been
+the desire for commercial profits; and this motive has played so
+prominent a part, especially in our own time, that we are apt to
+exaggerate its force, and to think of it as the sole motive. No
+doubt it has always been present in some degree in all imperial
+adventures. But until the nineteenth century it probably formed
+the predominant motive only in regard to the acquisition of
+tropical lands. So long as Europe continued to be able to produce
+as much as she needed of the food and the raw materials for
+industry that her soil and climate were capable of yielding, the
+commercial motive for acquiring territories in the temperate zone,
+which could produce only commodities of the same type, was
+comparatively weak; and the European settlements in these areas,
+which we have come to regard as the most important products of the
+imperialist movement, must in their origin and early settlement be
+mainly attributed to other than commercial motives. But Europe has
+always depended for most of her luxuries upon the tropics: gold
+and ivory and gems, spices and sugar and fine woven stuffs, from a
+very early age found their way into Europe from India and the
+East, coming by slow and devious caravan routes to the shores of
+the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Until the end of the
+fifteenth century the European trader had no direct contact with
+the sources of these precious commodities; the supply of them was
+scanty and the price high. The desire to gain a more direct access
+to the sources of this traffic, and to obtain control of the
+supply, formed the principal motive for the great explorations.
+But these, in their turn, disclosed fresh tropical areas worth
+exploiting, and introduced new luxuries, such as tobacco and tea,
+which soon took rank as necessities. They also brought a colossal
+increment of wealth to the countries which had undertaken them.
+Hence the acquisition of a share in, or a monopoly of, these
+lucrative lines of trade became a primary object of ambition to
+all the great states. In the nineteenth century Europe began to be
+unable to supply her own needs in regard to the products of the
+temperate zone, and therefore to desire control over other areas
+of this type; but until then it was mainly in regard to the
+tropical or sub-tropical areas that the commercial motive formed
+the predominant element in the imperial rivalries of the nation-
+states. And even to-day it is over these areas that their
+conflicts are most acute.
+
+A third motive for imperial expansion, which must not be
+overlooked, is the zeal for propaganda: the eagerness of virile
+peoples to propagate the religious and political ideas which they
+have adopted. But this is only another way of saying that nations
+are impelled upon the imperial career by the desire to extend the
+influence of their conception of civilisation, their Kultur. In
+one form or another this motive has always been present. At first
+it took the form of religious zeal. The spirit of the Crusaders
+was inherited by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, whose whole
+history had been one long crusade against the Moors. When the
+Portuguese started upon the exploration of the African coast, they
+could scarcely have sustained to the end that long and arduous
+task if they had been allured by no other prospect than the
+distant hope of finding a new route to the East. They were buoyed
+up also by the desire to strike a blow for Christianity. They
+expected to find the mythical Christian empire of Prester John,
+and to join hands with him in overthrowing the infidel. When
+Columbus persuaded Queen Isabella of Castile to supply the means
+for his madcap adventure, it was by a double inducement that he
+won her assent: she was to gain access to the wealth of the
+Indies, but she was also to be the means of converting the heathen
+to a knowledge of Christianity; and this double motive continually
+recurs in the early history of the Spanish Empire. France could
+scarcely, perhaps, have persisted in maintaining her far from
+profitable settlements on the barren shores of the St. Lawrence if
+the missionary motive had not existed alongside of the motives of
+national pride and the desire for profits: her great work of
+exploration in the region of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi
+Valley was due quite as much to the zeal of the heroic
+missionaries of the Jesuit and other orders as to the enterprise
+of trappers and traders. In English colonisation, indeed, the
+missionary motive was never, until the nineteenth century, so
+strongly marked. But its place was taken by a parallel political
+motive. The belief that they were diffusing the free institutions
+in which they took so much pride certainly formed an element in
+the colonial activities of the English. It is both foolish and
+unscientific to disregard this element of propaganda in the
+imperialist movement, still more to treat the assertion of it by
+the colonising powers as mere hypocrisy. The motives of imperial
+expansion, as of other human activities, are mixed, and the
+loftier elements in them are not often predominant. But the
+loftier elements are always present. It is hypocrisy to pretend
+that they are alone or even chiefly operative. But it is cynicism
+wholly to deny their influence. And of the two sins cynicism is
+the worse, because by over-emphasising it strengthens and
+cultivates the lower among the mixed motives by which men are
+ruled.
+
+The fourth of the governing motives of imperial expansion is the
+need of finding new homes for the surplus population of the
+colonising people. This was not in any country a very powerful
+motive until the nineteenth century, for over-population did not
+exist in any serious degree in any of the European states until
+that age. Many of the political writers in seventeenth-century
+England, indeed, regarded the whole movement of colonisation with
+alarm, because it seemed to be drawing off men who could not be
+spared. But if the population was nowhere excessive, there were in
+all countries certain classes for which emigration to new lands
+offered a desired opportunity. There were the men bitten with the
+spirit of adventure, to whom the work of the pioneer presented an
+irresistible attraction. Such men are always numerous in virile
+communities, and when in any society their numbers begin to
+diminish, its decay is at hand. The imperial activities of the
+modern age have more than anything else kept the breed alive in
+all European countries, and above all in Britain. To this type
+belonged the conquistadores of Spain, the Elizabethan seamen, the
+French explorers of North America, the daring Dutch navigators.
+Again, there were the younger sons of good family for whom the
+homeland presented small opportunities, but who found in colonial
+settlements the chance of creating estates like those of their
+fathers at home, and carried out with them bands of followers
+drawn from among the sons of their fathers' tenantry. To this
+class belonged most of the planter-settlers of Virginia, the
+seigneurs of French Canada, the lords of the great Portuguese
+feudal holdings in Brazil, and the dominant class in all the
+Spanish colonies. Again, there were the 'undesirables' of whom the
+home government wanted to be rid--convicts, paupers, political
+prisoners; they were drafted out in great numbers to the new
+lands, often as indentured servants, to endure servitude for a
+period of years and then to be merged in the colonial population.
+When the loss of the American colonies deprived Britain of her
+dumping-ground for convicts, she had to find a new region in which
+to dispose of them; and this led to the first settlement of
+Australia, six years after the establishment of American
+independence. Finally, in the age of bitter religious controversy
+there was a constant stream of religious exiles seeking new homes
+in which they could freely follow their own forms of worship. The
+Puritan settlers of New England are the outstanding example of
+this type. But they were only one group among many. Huguenots from
+France, Moravians from Austria, persecuted 'Palatines' and
+Salzburgers from Germany, poured forth in an almost unbroken
+stream. It was natural that they should take refuge in the only
+lands where full religious freedom was offered to them; and these
+were especially some of the British settlements in America, and
+the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope.
+
+It is often said that the overflow of Europe over the world has
+been a sort of renewal of the folk-wandering of primitive ages.
+That is a misleading view: the movement has been far more
+deliberate and organised, and far less due to the pressure of
+external circumstances, than the early movements of peoples in the
+Old World. Not until the nineteenth century, when the industrial
+transformation of Europe brought about a really acute pressure of
+population, can it be said that the mere pressure of need, and the
+shortage of sustenance in their older homes, has sent large bodies
+of settlers into the new lands. Until that period the imperial
+movement has been due to voluntary and purposive action in a far
+higher degree than any of the blind early wanderings of peoples.
+The will-to-dominion of virile nations exulting in their
+nationhood; the desire to obtain a more abundant supply of
+luxuries than had earlier been available, and to make profits
+therefrom; the zeal of peoples to impose their mode of
+civilisation upon as large a part of the world as possible; the
+existence in the Western world of many elements of restlessness
+and dissatisfaction, adventurers, portionless younger sons, or
+religious enthusiasts: these have been the main operative causes
+of this huge movement during the greater part of the four
+centuries over which it has extended. And as it has sprung from
+such diverse and conflicting causes, it has assumed an infinite
+variety of forms; and both deserves and demands a more respectful
+study as a whole than has generally been given to it.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE ERA OF IBERIAN MONOPOLY
+
+
+During the Middle Ages the contact of Europe with the rest of the
+world was but slight. It was shut off by the great barrier of the
+Islamic Empire, upon which the Crusades made no permanent
+impression; and although the goods of the East came by caravan to
+the Black Sea ports, to Constantinople, to the ports of Syria, and
+to Egypt, where they were picked up by the Italian traders, these
+traders had no direct knowledge of the countries which were the
+sources of their wealth. The threat of the Empire of Genghis Khan
+in the thirteenth century aroused the interest of Europe, and the
+bold friars, Carpini and Rubruquis, made their way to the centres
+of that barbaric sovereign's power in the remote East, and brought
+back stories of what they had seen; later the Poli, especially the
+great Marco, undertook still more daring and long-continued
+journeys, which made India and Cathay less unreal to Europeans,
+and stimulated the desire for further knowledge. The later
+mediaeval maps of the world, like that of Fra Mauro
+(1459),[Footnote: Simplified reproductions of this and the other
+early maps alluded to are printed in Philip's Students' Atlas of
+Modern History, which also contains a long series of maps
+illustrating the extra-Europeans activities of the European
+states.] which incorporate this knowledge, are less wildly
+imaginative than their predecessors, and show a vague notion of
+the general configuration of the main land-masses in the Old
+World. But beyond the fringes of the Mediterranean the world was
+still in the main unknown to, and unaffected by, European
+civilisation down to the middle of the fifteenth century.
+
+Then, suddenly, came the great era of explorations, which were
+made possible by the improvements in navigation worked out during
+the fifteenth century, and which in two generations incredibly
+transformed the aspect of the world. The marvellous character of
+this revelation can perhaps be illustrated by the comparison of
+two maps, that of Behaim, published in 1492, and that of Schoener,
+published in 1523. Apart from its adoption of the theory that the
+earth was globular, not round and flat, Behaim's map shows little
+advance upon Fra Mauro, except that it gives a clearer idea of the
+shape of Africa, due to the earlier explorations of the
+Portuguese. But Schoener's map shows that the broad outlines of
+the distribution of the land-masses of both hemispheres were
+already in 1523 pretty clearly understood. This astonishing
+advance was due to the daring and enterprise of the Portuguese
+explorers, Diaz, Da Gama, Cabral, and of the adventurers in the
+service of Spain, Columbus, Balboa, Vespucci, and--greatest of
+them all--Magellan.
+
+These astonishing discoveries placed for a time the destinies of
+the outer world in the hands of Spain and Portugal, and the first
+period of European imperialism is the period of Iberian monopoly,
+extending to 1588. A Papal award in 1493 confirmed the division of
+the non-European world between the two powers, by a judgment which
+the orthodox were bound to accept, and did accept for two
+generations. All the oceans, except the North Atlantic, were
+closed to the navigators of other nations; and these two peoples
+were given, for a century, the opportunity of showing in what
+guise they would introduce the civilisation of Europe to the rest
+of the globe. Pioneers as they were in the work of imperial
+development, it is not surprising that they should have made great
+blunders; and in the end their foreign dominions weakened rather
+than strengthened the home countries, and contributed to drag them
+down from the high place which they had taken among the nations.
+
+The Portuguese power in the East was never more than a commercial
+dominion. Except in Goa, on the west coast of India, no
+considerable number of settlers established themselves at any
+point; and the Goanese settlement is the only instance of the
+formation of a mixed race, half Indian and half European. Wherever
+the Portuguese power was established, it proved itself hard and
+intolerant; for the spirit of the Crusader was ill-adapted to the
+establishment of good relations with the non-Christian peoples.
+The rivalry of Arab traders in the Indian Ocean was mercilessly
+destroyed, and there was as little mercy for the Italian
+merchants, who found the stream of goods that the Arabs had sent
+them by way of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf almost wholly
+intercepted. No doubt any other people, finding itself in the
+position which the Portuguese occupied in the early sixteenth
+century, would have been tempted to use their power in the same
+way to establish a complete monopoly; but the success with which
+the Portuguese attained their aim was in the end disastrous to
+them. It was followed by, if it did not cause, a rapid
+deterioration of the ability with which their affairs were
+directed; and when other European traders began to appear in the
+field, they were readily welcomed by the princes of India and the
+chieftains of the Spice Islands. In the West the Portuguese
+settlement in Brazil was a genuine colony, or branch of the
+Portuguese nation, because here there existed no earlier civilised
+people to be dominated. But both in East and West the activities
+of the Portuguese were from the first subjected to an over-rigid
+control by the home government. Eager to make the most of a great
+opportunity for the national advantage, the rulers of Portugal
+allowed no freedom to the enterprise of individuals. The result
+was that in Portugal itself, in the East, and in Brazil,
+initiative was destroyed, and the brilliant energy which this
+gallant little nation had displayed evaporated within a century.
+It was finally destroyed when, in 1580, Portugal and her empire
+fell under the dominion of Spain, and under all the reactionary
+influences of the government of Philip II. By the time this heavy
+yoke was shaken off, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the
+Portuguese dominion had fallen into decay. To-day nothing of it
+remains save 'spheres of influence' on the western and eastern
+coasts of Africa, two or three ports on the coast of India, the
+Azores, and the island of Magao off the coast of China.
+
+The Spanish dominion in Central and South America was of a
+different character. When once they had realised that it was not a
+new route to Asia, but a new world, that Columbus had discovered
+for them, the Spaniards sought no longer mainly for the riches to
+be derived from traffic, but for the precious metals, which they
+unhappily discovered in slight quantities in Hispaniola, but in
+immense abundance in Mexico and Peru. It is impossible to
+exaggerate the heroic valour and daring of Cortez, Pizarro,
+Hernando de Soto, Orellana, and the rest of the conquistadores who
+carved out in a single generation the vast Spanish empire in
+Central and South America; but it is equally impossible to
+exaggerate their cruelty, which was born in part of the fact that
+they were a handful among myriads, in part of the fierce
+traditions of crusading warfare against the infidel. Yet without
+undervaluing their daring, it must be recognised that they had a
+comparatively easy task in conquering the peoples of these
+tropical lands. In the greater islands of the West Indies they
+found a gentle and yielding people, who rapidly died out under the
+forced labour of the mines and plantations, and had to be replaced
+by negro slave-labour imported from Africa. In Mexico and Peru
+they found civilisations which on the material side were developed
+to a comparatively high point, and which collapsed suddenly when
+their governments and capitals had been overthrown; while their
+peoples, habituated to slavery, readily submitted to a new
+servitude. It must be recognised, to the honour of the government
+of Charles V. and his successors, that they honestly attempted to
+safeguard the usages and possessions of the conquered peoples, and
+to protect them in some degree against the exploitation of their
+conquerors. But it was the protection of a subject race doomed to
+the condition of Helotage; they were protected, as the Jews were
+protected by the kings of mediaeval England, because they were a
+valuable asset of the crown. The policy of the Spanish government
+did not avail to prevent an intermixture of the races, because the
+Spaniards themselves came from a sub-tropical country, and the
+Mexicans and Peruvians especially were separated from them by no
+impassable gulf such as separates the negro or the Australian
+bushman from the white man. Central and Southern America thus came
+to be peopled by a hybrid race, speaking Spanish, large elements
+of which were conscious of their own inferiority. This in itself
+would perhaps have been a barrier to progress. But the
+concentration of attention upon the precious metals, and the
+neglect of industry due to this cause and to the employment of
+slave-labour, formed a further obstacle. And in addition to all,
+the Spanish government, partly with a view to the execution of its
+native policy, partly because it regarded the precious metals as
+the chief product of these lands and wished to maintain close
+control over them, and partly because centralised autocracy was
+carried to its highest pitch in Spain, allowed little freedom of
+action to the local governments, and almost none to the settlers.
+It treated the trade of these lands as a monopoly of the home
+country, to be carried on under the most rigid control. It did
+little or nothing to develop the natural resources of the empire,
+but rather discouraged them lest they should compete with the
+labours of the mine; and in what concerned the intellectual
+welfare of its subjects, it limited itself, as in Spain, to
+ensuring that no infection of heresy or freethought should reach
+any part of its dominions. All this had a deadening effect; and
+the surprising thing is, not that the Spanish Empire should have
+fallen into an early decrepitude, but that it should have shown
+such comparative vigour, tenacity, and power of expansion as it
+actually exhibited. Not until the nineteenth century did the vast
+natural resources of these regions begin to undergo any rapid
+development; that is to say, not until most of the settlements had
+discarded the connection with Spain; and even then, the defects
+bred into the people by three centuries of reactionary and
+unenlightened government produced in them an incapacity to use
+their newly won freedom, and condemned these lands to a long
+period of anarchy. It would be too strong to say that it would
+have been better had the Spaniards never come to America; for,
+when all is said, they have done more than any other people, save
+the British, to plant European modes of life in the non-European
+world. But it is undeniable that their dominion afforded a far
+from happy illustration of the working of Western civilisation in
+a new field, and exercised a very unfortunate reaction upon the
+life of the mother-country.
+
+The conquest of Portugal and her empire by Philip II., in 1580,
+turned Spain into a Colossus bestriding the world, and it was
+inevitable that this world-dominion should be challenged by the
+other European states which faced upon the Atlantic. The challenge
+was taken up by three nations, the English, the French, and the
+Dutch, all the more readily because the very existence of all
+three and the religion of two of them were threatened by the
+apparently overwhelming strength of Spain in Europe. As in so many
+later instances, the European conflict was inevitably extended to
+the non-European world. From the middle of the sixteenth century
+onwards these three peoples attempted, with increasing daring, to
+circumvent or to undermine the Spanish power, and to invade the
+sources of the wealth which made it dangerous to them; but the
+attempt, so far as it was made on the seas and beyond them, was in
+the main, and for a long time, due to the spontaneous energies of
+volunteers, not to the action of governments. Francis I. of France
+sent out the Venetian Verazzano to explore the American shores of
+the North Atlantic, as Henry VII. of England had earlier sent the
+Genoese Cabots. But nothing came of these official enterprises.
+More effective were the pirate adventurers who preyed upon the
+commerce between Spain and her possessions in the Netherlands as
+it passed through the Narrow Seas, running the gauntlet of
+English, French, and Dutch. More effective still were the attempts
+to find new routes to the East, not barred by the Spanish
+dominions, by a north-east or a north-west passage; for some of
+the earlier of these adventures led to fruitful unintended
+consequences, as when the Englishman Chancellor, seeking for a
+north-east passage, found the route to Archangel and opened up a
+trade with Russia, or as when the Frenchman Cartier, seeking for a
+north-west passage, hit upon the great estuary of the St.
+Lawrence, and marked out a claim for France to the possession of
+the area which it drained. Most effective of all were the
+smuggling and piratical raids into the reserved waters of West
+Africa and the West Indies, and later into the innermost
+penetralia of the Pacific Ocean, which were undertaken with
+rapidly increasing boldness by the navigators of all three
+nations, but above all by the English. Drake is the supreme
+exponent of these methods; and his career illustrates in the
+clearest fashion the steady diminution of Spanish prestige under
+these attacks, and the growing boldness and maritime skill of its
+attackers.
+
+From the time of Drake's voyage round the world (1577) and its
+insulting defiance of the Spanish power on the west coast of South
+America, it became plain that the maintenance of Spanish monopoly
+could not last much longer. It came to its end, finally and
+unmistakably, in the defeat of the Grand Armada. That supreme
+victory threw the ocean roads of trade open, not to the English
+only, but to the sailors of all nations. In its first great
+triumph the English navy had established the Freedom of the Seas,
+of which it has ever since been the chief defender. Since 1588 no
+power has dreamt of claiming the exclusive right of traversing any
+of the open seas of the world, as until that date Spain and
+Portugal had claimed the exclusive right of using the South
+Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans.
+
+So ends the first period in the imperial expansion of the Western
+peoples, the period of Spanish and Portuguese monopoly. Meanwhile,
+unnoticed in the West, a remarkable eastward expansion was being
+effected by the Russian people. By insensible stages they had
+passed the unreal barrier between Europe and Asia, and spread
+themselves thinly over the vast spaces of Siberia, subduing and
+assimilating the few and scattered tribes whom they met; by the
+end of the seventeenth century they had already reached the
+Pacific Ocean. It was a conquest marked by no great struggles or
+victories, an insensible permeation of half a continent. This
+process was made the easier for the Russians, because in their own
+stock were blended elements of the Mongol race which they found
+scattered over Siberia: they were only reversing the process which
+Genghis Khan had so easily accomplished in the thirteenth century.
+And as the Russians had scarcely yet begun to be affected by
+Western civilisation, there was no great cleavage or contrast
+between them and their new subjects, and the process of
+assimilation took place easily. But the settlement of Siberia was
+very gradual. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the total
+population of this vast area amounted to not more than 300,000
+souls, and it was not until the nineteenth century that there was
+any rapid increase.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE RIVALRY OP THE DUTCH, THE FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH, 1588-1763
+
+
+The second period of European imperialism was filled with the
+rivalries of the three nations which had in different degrees
+contributed to the breakdown of the Spanish monopoly, the Dutch,
+the French, and the English; and we have next to inquire how far,
+and why, these peoples were more successful than the Spaniards in
+planting in the non-European world the essentials of European
+civilisation. The long era of their rivalry extended from 1588 to
+1763, and it can be most conveniently divided into three sections.
+The first of these extended from 1588 to about 1660, and may be
+called the period of experiment and settlement; during its course
+the leadership fell to the Dutch. The second extended from 1660 to
+1713, and may be called the period of systematic colonial policy,
+and of growing rivalry between France and England. The third, from
+1713 to 1763, was dominated by the intense rivalry of these two
+countries, decadent Spain joining in the conflict on the side of
+France, while the declining power of the Dutch was on the whole
+ranged on the side of Britain; and it ended with the complete
+ascendancy of Britain, supreme at once in the West and in the
+East.
+
+(a) The Period of Settlement, 1588-1660
+
+The special interest of the first half of the seventeenth century
+is that in the trading and colonial experiments of this period the
+character of the work which was to be done by the three new
+candidates for extra-European empire was already very clearly and
+instructively displayed. They met as rivals in every field: in the
+archipelago of the West Indies, and the closely connected slaving
+establishments of West Africa, in the almost empty lands of North
+America, and in the trading enterprises of the far East; and
+everywhere a difference of spirit and method appeared.
+
+The Dutch, who made a far more systematic and more immediately
+profitable use of the opportunity than either of their rivals,
+regarded the whole enterprise as a great national commercial
+venture. It was conducted by two powerful trading corporations,
+the Company of the East Indies and the Company of the West Indies;
+but though directed by the merchants of Amsterdam, these were
+genuinely national enterprises; their shareholders were drawn from
+every province and every class; and they were backed by all the
+influence which the States-General of the United Provinces--
+controlled during this period mainly by the commercial interest--
+was able to wield.
+
+The Company of the East Indies was the richer and the more
+powerful of the two, because the trade of the Far East was beyond
+comparison the most lucrative in the world. Aiming straight at the
+source of the greatest profits--the trade in spices--the Dutch
+strove to establish a monopoly control over the Spice Islands and,
+in general, over the Malay Archipelago; and they were so
+successful that their influence remains to-day predominant in this
+region. Their first task was to overthrow the ascendancy of the
+Portuguese, and in this they were willing to co-operate with the
+English traders. But the bulk of the work was done by the Dutch,
+for the English East India Company was poor in comparison with the
+Dutch, was far less efficiently organised, and, in especial, could
+not count upon the steady support of the national government. It
+was mainly the Dutch who built forts and organised factories,
+because they alone had sufficient capital to maintain heavy
+standing charges. Not unnaturally they did not see why the English
+should reap any part of the advantage of their work, and set
+themselves to establish a monopoly. In the end the English were
+driven out with violence. After the Massacre of Amboyna (1623)
+their traders disappeared from these seas, and the Dutch supremacy
+remained unchallenged until the nineteenth century.
+
+It was a quite intolerant commercial monopoly which they had
+instituted, but from the commercial point of view it was
+administered with great intelligence. Commercial control brought
+in its train territorial sovereignty, over Java and many of the
+neighbouring islands; and this sovereignty was exercised by the
+directors of the company primarily with a view to trade interests.
+It was a trade despotism, but a trade despotism wisely
+administered, which gave justice and order to its native subjects.
+On the mainland of India the Dutch never attained a comparable
+degree of power, because the native states were strong enough to
+hold them in check. But in this period their factories were more
+numerous and more prosperous than those of the English, their
+chief rivals; and over the island of Ceylon they established an
+ascendancy almost as complete as that which they had created in
+the archipelago.
+
+They were intelligent enough also to see the importance of good
+calling-stations on the route to the East. For this purpose they
+planted a settlement in Mauritius, and another at the Cape of Good
+Hope. But these settlements were never regarded as colonies. They
+were stations belonging to a trading company; they remained under
+its complete control, and were allowed no freedom of development,
+still less any semblance of self-government. If Cape Colony grew
+into a genuine colony, or offshoot of the mother-country, it was
+in spite of the company, not by reason of its encouragement, and
+from first to last the company's relations with the settlers were
+of the most unhappy kind. For the company would do nothing at the
+Cape that was not necessary for the Eastern trade, which was its
+supreme interest, and the colonists naturally did not take the
+same view. It was this concentration upon purely commercial aims
+which also prevented the Dutch from making any use of the superb
+field for European settlement opened up by the enterprise of their
+explorers in Australia and New Zealand. These fair lands were left
+unpeopled, largely because they promised no immediate trade
+profits.
+
+In the West the enterprises of the Dutch were only less vigorous
+than in the East, and they were marked by the same feature of an
+intense concentration upon the purely commercial aspect. While the
+English and (still more) the French adventurers made use of the
+lesser West Indian islands, unoccupied by Spain, as bases for
+piratical attacks upon the Spanish trade, the Dutch, with a shrewd
+instinct, early deserted this purely destructive game for the more
+lucrative business of carrying on a smuggling trade with the
+Spanish mainland; and the islands which they acquired (such as
+Curayoa) were, unlike the French and English islands, especially
+well placed for this purpose. They established a sugar colony in
+Guiana. But their main venture in this region was the conquest of
+a large part of Northern Brazil from the Portuguese (1624); and
+here their exploitation was so merciless, under the direction of
+the Company of the West Indies, that the inhabitants, though they
+had been dissatisfied with the Portuguese government, and had at
+first welcomed the Dutch conquerors, soon revolted against them,
+and after twenty years drove them out.
+
+On the mainland of North America the Dutch planted a single
+colony--the New Netherlands, with its capital at New Amsterdam,
+later New York. Their commercial instinct had once more guided
+them wisely. They had found the natural centre for the trade of
+North America; for by way of the river Hudson and its affluent,
+the Mohawk, New York commands the only clear path through the
+mountain belt which everywhere shuts off the Atlantic coast region
+from the central plain of America. Founded and controlled by the
+Company of the West Indies, this settlement was intended to be,
+not primarily the home of a branch of the Dutch nation beyond the
+seas, but a trading-station for collecting the furs and other
+products of the inland regions. At Orange (Albany), which stands
+at the junction of the Mohawk and the Hudson, the Dutch traders
+collected the furs brought in by Indian trappers from west and
+north; New Amsterdam was the port of export; and if settlers were
+encouraged, it was only that they might supply the men and the
+means and the food for carrying on this traffic. The Company of
+the West Indies administered the colony purely from this point of
+view. No powers of self-government were allowed to the settlers;
+and, as in Cape Colony, the relations between the colonists and
+the governing company were never satisfactory, because the
+colonists felt that their interests were wholly subordinated.
+
+The distinguishing feature of French imperial activity during this
+period was its dependence upon the support and direction of the
+home government, which was the natural result of the highly
+centralised regime established in France during the modern era.
+Only in one direction was French activity successfully maintained
+by private enterprise, and this was in the not very reputable
+field of West Indian buccaneering, in which the French were even
+more active than their principal rivals and comrades, the English.
+The word 'buccaneer' itself comes from the French: boucan means
+the wood-fire at which the pirates dried and smoked their meat,
+and these fires, blazing on deserted islands, must often have
+warned merchant vessels to avoid an ever-present danger. The
+island of Tortuga, which commands the passage between Cuba and
+Hispaniola through which the bulk of the Spanish traffic passed on
+its way from Mexico to Europe, was the most important of the
+buccaneering bases, and although it was at first used by the
+buccaneers of all nations, it soon became a purely French
+possession, as did, later, the adjoining portion of the island of
+Hispaniola (San Domingo). The French did, indeed, like the
+English, plant sugar colonies in some of the lesser Antilles; but
+during the first half of the seventeenth century they attained no
+great prosperity.
+
+For the greater enterprises of trade in the East and colonisation
+in the West, the French relied almost wholly upon government
+assistance, and although both Henry IV. in the first years of the
+century, and Richelieu in its second quarter, were anxious to give
+what help they could, internal dissensions were of such frequent
+occurrence in France during this period that no systematic or
+continuous governmental aid was available. Hence the French
+enterprises both in the East and in the West were on a small
+scale, and achieved little success. The French East India Company
+was all but extinct when Colbert took it in hand in 1664; it was
+never able to compete with its Dutch or even its English rival.
+
+But the period saw the establishment of two French colonies in
+North America: Acadia (Nova Scotia) on the coast, and Canada, with
+Quebec as its centre, in the St. Lawrence valley, separated from
+one another on land by an almost impassable barrier of forest and
+mountain. These two colonies were founded, the first in 1605 and
+the second in 1608, almost at the same moment as the first English
+settlement on the American continent. They had a hard struggle
+during the first fifty years of their existence; for the number of
+settlers was very small, the soil was barren, the climate severe,
+and the Red Indians, especially the ferocious Iroquois towards the
+south, were far more formidable enemies than those who bordered on
+the English colonies.
+
+There is no part of the history of European colonisation more full
+of romance and of heroism than the early history of French Canada;
+an incomparable atmosphere of gallantry and devotion seems to
+overhang it. From the first, despite their small numbers and their
+difficulties, these settlers showed a daring in exploration which
+was only equalled by the Spaniards, and to which there is no
+parallel in the records of the English colonies. At the very
+outset the great explorer Champlain mapped out the greater part of
+the Great Lakes, and thus reached farther into the continent than
+any Englishman before the end of the eighteenth century; and
+although this is partly explained by the fact that the St.
+Lawrence and the lakes afforded an easy approach to the interior,
+while farther south the forest-clad ranges of the Alleghanies
+constituted a very serious barrier, this does not diminish the
+French pre-eminence in exploration. Nor can anything in the
+history of European colonisation surpass the heroism of the French
+missionaries among the Indians, who faced and endured incredible
+tortures in order to bring Christianity to the barbarians. No
+serious missionary enterprise was ever undertaken by the English
+colonists; this difference was in part due to the fact that the
+missionary aim was definitely encouraged by the home government in
+France. From the outset, then, poverty, paucity of numbers,
+gallantry, and missionary zeal formed marked features of the
+French North American colonies.
+
+In other respects they very clearly reproduced some of the
+features of the motherland. Their organisation was strictly feudal
+in character. The real unit of settlement and government was the
+seigneurie, an estate owned by a Frenchman of birth, and
+cultivated by his vassals, who found refuge from an Indian raid,
+or other danger, in the stockaded house which took the place of a
+chateau, much as their remote ancestors had taken refuge from the
+raids of the Northmen in the castles of their seigneur's
+ancestors. And over this feudal society was set, as in France, a
+highly centralised government wielding despotic power, and in its
+turn absolutely subject to the mandate of the Crown at home. This
+despotic government had the right to require the services of all
+its subjects in case of need; and it was only the centralised
+government of the colony, and the warlike and adventurous
+character of its small feudalised society, which enabled it to
+hold its own for so long against the superior numbers but laxer
+organisation of its English neighbours. A despotic central power,
+a feudal organisation, and an entire dependence upon the will of
+the King of France and upon his support, form, therefore, the
+second group of characteristics which marked the French colonies.
+They were colonies in the strictest sense, all the more because
+they reproduced the main features of the home system.
+
+Nothing could have differed more profoundly from this system than
+the methods which the English were contemporaneously applying,
+without plan or clearly defined aim, and guided only by immediate
+practical needs, and by the rooted traditions of a self-governing
+people. Their enterprises received from the home government little
+direct assistance, but they throve better without it; and if there
+was little assistance, there was also little interference. In the
+East the English East India Company had to yield to the Dutch the
+monopoly of the Malayan trade, and bitterly complained of the lack
+of government support; but it succeeded in establishing several
+modest factories on the coast of India, and was on the whole
+prosperous. But it was in the West that the distinctive work of
+the English was achieved during this period, by the establishment
+of a series of colonies unlike any other European settlements
+which had yet been instituted. Their distinctive feature was self-
+government, to which they owed their steadily increasing
+prosperity. No other European colonies were thus managed on the
+principle of autonomy. Indeed, these English settlements were in
+1650 the only self-governing lands in the world, apart from
+England herself, the United Provinces, and Switzerland.
+
+The first English colony, Virginia, was planted in 1608 by a
+trading company organised for the purpose, whose subscribers
+included nearly all the London City Companies, and about seven
+hundred private individuals of all ranks. Their motives were
+partly political ('to put a bit in the ancient enemy's (Spain's)
+mouth'), and partly commercial, for they hoped to find gold, and
+to render England independent of the marine supplies which came
+from the Baltic. But profit was not their sole aim; they were
+moved also by the desire to plant a new England beyond the seas.
+They made, in fact, no profits; but they did create a branch of
+the English stock, and the young squires' and yeomen's sons who
+formed the backbone of the colony showed themselves to be
+Englishmen by their unwillingness to submit to an uncontrolled
+direction of their affairs. In 1619, acting on instructions
+received from England, the company's governor summoned an assembly
+of representatives, one from each township, to consult on the
+needs of the colony. This was the first representative body that
+had ever existed outside Europe, and it indicated what was to be
+the character of English colonisation. Henceforth the normal
+English method of governing a colony was through a governor and an
+executive council appointed by the Crown or its delegate, and a
+representative assembly, which wielded full control over local
+legislation and taxation. 'Our present happiness,' said the
+Virginian Assembly in 1640, 'is exemplified by the freedom of
+annual assemblies and by legal trials by juries in all civil and
+criminal causes.'
+
+The second group of English colonies, those of New England, far to
+the north of Virginia, reproduced in an intensified form this note
+of self-government. Founded in the years following 1620, these
+settlements were the outcome of Puritan discontents in England.
+The commercial motive was altogether subsidiary in their
+establishment; they existed in order that the doctrine and
+discipline of Puritanism might find a home where its ascendancy
+would be secure. It was indeed under the guise of a commercial
+company that the chief of these settlements was made, but the
+company was organised as a means of safe-guarding the colonists
+from Crown interference, and at an early date its headquarters
+were transferred to New England itself. Far from desiring to
+restrict this freedom, the Crown up to a point encouraged it.
+Winthrop, one of the leading colonists, tells us that he had
+learnt from members of the Privy Council 'that his Majesty did not
+intend to impose the ceremonies of the Church of England upon us;
+for that it was considered that it was the freedom from such
+things that made people come over to us.' The contrast between
+this licence and the rigid orthodoxy enforced upon French Canada
+or Spanish America is very instructive. It meant that the New
+World, so far as it was controlled by England, was to be open as a
+place of refuge for those who disliked the restrictions thought
+necessary at home. The same note is to be found in the colony of
+Maryland, planted by the Roman Catholic Lord Baltimore in 1632,
+largely as a place of refuge for his co-religionists. He was
+encouraged by the government of Charles I. in this idea, and the
+second Lord Baltimore reports that his father 'had absolute
+liberty to carry over any from his Majesty's Dominions willing to
+go. But he found very few but such as ... could not conform to the
+laws of England relating to religion. These declared themselves
+willing to plant in this province, if they might have a general
+toleration settled by law.' Maryland, therefore, became the first
+place in the world of Western civilisation in which full religious
+toleration was allowed; for the aim of the New Englanders was not
+religious freedom, but a free field for the rigid enforcement of
+their own shade of orthodoxy.
+
+Thus, in these first English settlements, the deliberate
+encouragement of varieties of type was from the outset a
+distinguishing note, and the home authorities neither desired nor
+attempted to impose a strict uniformity with the rules and methods
+existing in England. There was as great a variety in social and
+economic organisation as in religious beliefs between the
+aristocratic planter colonies of the south and the democratic
+agricultural settlements of New England. In one thing only was
+there uniformity: every settlement possessed self-governing
+institutions, and prized them beyond all other privileges. None,
+indeed, carried self-government to so great an extent as the New
+Englanders. They came out organised as religious congregations, in
+which every member possessed equal rights, and they took the
+congregational system as the basis of their local government, and
+church membership as the test of citizenship; nor did any other
+colonies attain the right, long exercised by the New Englanders,
+of electing their own governors. But there was no English
+settlement, not even the little slave-worked plantations in the
+West Indian islands, like Barbados, which did not set up, as a
+matter of course, a representative body to deal with problems of
+legislation and taxation, and the home government never dreamt of
+interfering with this practice. Already in 1650, the English
+empire was sharply differentiated from the Spanish, the Dutch, and
+the French empires by the fact that it consisted of a scattered
+group of self-governing communities, varying widely in type, but
+united especially by the common possession of free institutions,
+and thriving very largely because these institutions enabled local
+needs to be duly considered and attracted settlers of many types.
+
+(b) The Period of Systematic Colonial Policy, 1660-1713
+
+The second half of the seventeenth century was a period of
+systematic imperial policy on the part of both England and France;
+for both countries now realised that in the profitable field of
+commerce, at any rate, the Dutch had won a great advantage over
+them.
+
+France, after many internal troubles and many foreign wars, had at
+last achieved, under the government of Louis XIV., the boon of
+firmly established order. She was now beyond all rivalry the
+greatest of the European states, and her king and his great
+finance minister, Colbert, resolved to win for her also supremacy
+in trade and colonisation. But this was to be done absolutely
+under the control and direction of the central government. Until
+the establishment of the German Empire, there has never been so
+marked an instance of the centralised organisation of the whole
+national activity as France presented in this period. The French
+East India Company was revived under government direction, and
+began for the first time to be a serious competitor for Indian
+trade. An attempt was made to conquer Madagascar as a useful base
+for Eastern enterprises. The sugar industry in the French West
+Indian islands was scientifically encouraged and developed, though
+the full results of this work were not apparent until the next
+century. France began to take an active share in the West African
+trade in slaves and other commodities. In Canada a new era of
+prosperity began; the population was rapidly increased by the
+dispatch of carefully selected parties of emigrants, and the
+French activity in missionary work and in exploration became
+bolder than ever. Pere Marquette and the Sieur de la Salle traced
+out the courses of the Ohio and the Mississippi; French trading-
+stations began to arise among the scattered Indian tribes who
+alone occupied the vast central plain; and a strong French claim
+was established to the possession of this vital area, which was
+not only the most valuable part of the American continent, but
+would have shut off the English coastal settlements from any
+possibility of westward expansion. These remarkable explorations
+led, in 1717, to the foundation of New Orleans at the mouth of the
+great river, and the organisation of the colony of Louisiana. But
+the whole of the intense and systematic imperial activity of the
+French during this period depended upon the support and direction
+of government; and when Colbert died in 1683, and soon afterwards
+all the resources of France were strained by the pressure of two
+great European wars, the rapid development which Colbert's zeal
+had brought about was checked for a generation. Centralised
+administration may produce remarkable immediate results, but it
+does not encourage natural and steady growth. Meanwhile the
+English had awakened to the fact that England had, almost by a
+series of accidents, become the centre of an empire, and to the
+necessity of giving to this empire some sort of systematic
+organisation. It was the statesmen of the Commonwealth who first
+began to grope after an imperial system. The aspect of the
+situation which most impressed them was that the enterprising
+Dutch were reaping most of the trading profits which arose from
+the creation of the English colonies: it was said that ten Dutch
+ships called at Barbados for every English ship. To deal with this
+they passed the Navigation Act of 1651, which provided that the
+trade of England and the colonies should be carried only in
+English or colonial ships. They thus gave a logical expression to
+the policy of imperial trade monopoly which had been in the minds
+of those who were interested in colonial questions from the
+outset; and they also opened a period of acute trade rivalry and
+war with the Dutch. The first of the Dutch wars, which was waged
+by the Commonwealth, was a very even struggle, but it secured the
+success of the Navigation Act. Cromwell, though he hastened to
+make peace with the Dutch, was a still stronger imperialist than
+his parliamentary predecessors; he may justly be described as the
+first of the Jingoes. He demanded compensation from the Dutch for
+the half-forgotten outrage of Amboyna in 1623. He made a quite
+unprovoked attack upon the Spanish island of Hispaniola, and
+though he failed to conquer it, gained a compensation in the
+seizure of Jamaica (1655). And he insisted upon the obedience of
+the colonies to the home government with a severity never earlier
+shown. With him imperial aims may be said to have become, for the
+first time, one of the ruling ends of the English government.
+
+But it was the reign of Charles II. which saw the definite
+organisation of a clearly conceived imperial policy; in the
+history of English imperialism there are few periods more
+important. The chief statesmen and courtiers of the reign, Prince
+Rupert, Clarendon, Shaftesbury, Albemarle, were all enthusiasts
+for the imperial idea. They had a special committee of the Privy
+Council for Trade and Plantations, [Footnote: It was not till
+1696, however, that this Board became permanent.] and appointed
+John Locke, the ablest political thinker of the age, to be its
+secretary. They pushed home the struggle against the maritime
+ascendancy of the Dutch, and fought two Dutch wars; and though the
+history-books, influenced by the Whig prejudice against Charles
+II., always treat these wars as humiliating and disgraceful, while
+they treat the Dutch war of the Commonwealth as just and glorious,
+the plain fact is that the first Dutch war of Charles II. led to
+the conquest of the Dutch North American colony of the New
+Netherlands (1667), and so bridged the gap between the New England
+and the southern colonies. They engaged in systematic
+colonisation, founding the new colony of Carolina to the south of
+Virginia, while out of their Dutch conquests they organised the
+colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware; and the end of the
+reign saw the establishment of the interesting and admirably
+managed Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. They started the Hudson Bay
+Company, which engaged in the trade in furs to the north of the
+French colonies. They systematically encouraged the East India
+Company, which now began to be more prosperous than at any earlier
+period, and obtained in Bombay its first territorial possession in
+India.
+
+More important, they worked out a new colonial policy, which was
+to remain, in its main features, the accepted British policy down
+to the loss of the American colonies in 1782. The theory at the
+base of this policy was that while the mother-country must be
+responsible for the defence of all the scattered settlements,
+which in their weakness were exposed to attack from many sides, in
+she might reasonably expect to be put in possession of definite
+trade advantages. Hence the Navigation Act of 1660 provided not
+only that inter-imperial trade should be carried in English or
+colonial vessels, but that certain 'enumerated articles,'
+including some of the most important colonial products, should be
+sent only to England, so that English merchants should have the
+profits of selling them to other countries, and the English
+government the proceeds of duties upon them; and another Act
+provided that imports to the colonies should only come from, or
+through, England. In other words, England was to be the commercial
+entrepot of the whole empire; and the regulation of imperial trade
+as a whole was to belong to the English government and parliament.
+To the English government also must necessarily fall the conduct
+of the relations of the empire as a whole with other powers. This
+commercial system was not, however, purely one-sided. If the
+colonies were to send their chief products only to England, they
+were at the same time to have a monopoly, or a marked advantage,
+in English markets. Tobacco-growing had been for a time a
+promising industry in England; it was prohibited in order that it
+might not compete with the colonial product; and differential
+duties were levied on the competing products of other countries
+and their colonies. In short, the new policy was one of Imperial
+Preference; it aimed at turning the empire into an economic unit,
+of which England should be the administrative and distributing
+centre. So far the English policy did not differ in kind from the
+contemporary colonial policy of other countries, though it left to
+the colonies a greater freedom of trade (for example, in the 'non-
+enumerated articles') than was ever allowed by Spain or France, or
+by the two great trading companies which controlled the foreign
+possessions of Holland.
+
+But there is one respect in which the authors of this system
+differed very widely from the colonial statesmen of other
+countries. Though they were anxious to organise and consolidate
+the empire on the basis of a trade system, they had no desire or
+intention of altering its self-governing character, or of
+discouraging the growth of a healthy diversity of type and method.
+Every one of the new colonies of this period was provided with the
+accustomed machinery of representative government: in the case of
+Carolina, the philosopher, John Locke, was invited to draw up a
+model constitution, and although his scheme was quite unworkable,
+the fact that he was asked to make it affords a striking proof of
+the seriousness with which the problems of colonial government
+were regarded. In several of the West Indian settlements self-
+governing institutions were organised during these years. In the
+Frame of Government which Penn set forth on the foundation of
+Pennsylvania, in 1682, he laid it down that 'any government is
+free where the laws rule, and where the people are a party to
+these rules,' and on this basis proceeded to organise his system.
+According to this definition all the English colonies were free,
+and they were almost the only free communities in the world. And
+though it is true that there was an almost unceasing conflict
+between the government and the New England colonies, no one who
+studies the story of these quarrels can fail to see that the
+demands of the New Englanders were often unreasonable and
+inconsistent with the maintenance of imperial unity, while the
+home government was extremely patient and moderate. Above all,
+almost the most marked feature of the colonial policy of Charles
+II. was the uniform insistence upon complete religious toleration
+in the colonies. Every new charter contained a clause securing
+this vital condition.
+
+It has long been our habit to condemn the old colonial system as
+it was defined in this period, and to attribute to it the
+disruption of the empire in the eighteenth century. But the
+judgment is not a fair one; it is due to those Whig prejudices by
+which so much of the modern history of England has been distorted.
+The colonial policy of Shaftesbury and his colleagues was
+incomparably more enlightened than that of any contemporary
+government. It was an interesting experiment--the first, perhaps,
+in modern history--in the reconciliation of unity and freedom.
+And it was undeniably successful: under it the English colonies
+grew and throve in a very striking way. Everything, indeed, goes
+to show that this system was well designed for the needs of a
+group of colonies which were still in a state of weakness, still
+gravely under-peopled and undeveloped. Evil results only began to
+show themselves in the next age, when the colonies were growing
+stronger and more independent, and when the self-complacent Whigs,
+instead of revising the system to meet new conditions, actually
+enlarged and emphasised its most objectionable features.
+
+(c) The, Conflict of French and English, 1713-1763
+
+While France and England were defining and developing their
+sharply contrasted imperial systems, the Dutch had fallen into the
+background, content with the rich dominion which they had already
+acquired; and the Spanish and Portuguese empires had both fallen
+into stagnation. New competitors, indeed, now began to press into
+the field: the wildly exaggerated notions of the wealth to be made
+from colonial ventures which led to the frenzied speculations of
+the early eighteenth century, John Law's schemes, and the South
+Sea Bubble, induced other powers to try to obtain a share of this
+wealth; and Austria, Brandenburg, and Denmark made fitful
+endeavours to become colonising powers. But the enterprises of
+these states were never of serious importance. The future of the
+non-European world seemed to depend mainly upon France and
+England; and it was yet to be determined which of the two systems,
+centralised autocracy enforcing uniformity, or self-government
+encouraging variety of type, would prove the more successful and
+would play the greater part. Two bodies of ideas so sharply
+contrasted were bound to come into conflict. In the two great wars
+between England and Louis XIV. (1688-1713), though the questions
+at issue were primarily European, the conflict inevitably spread
+to the colonial field; and in the result France was forced to cede
+in 1713 the province of Acadia (which had twice before been in
+English hands), the vast basin of Hudson's Bay, and the island of
+Newfoundland, to which the fishermen of both nations had resorted,
+though the English had always claimed it. But these were only
+preliminaries, and the main conflict was fought out during the
+half-century following the Peace of Utrecht, 1713-63.
+
+During this half-century Britain was under the rule of the Whig
+oligarchy, which had no clearly conceived ideas on imperial
+policy. Under the influence of the mercantile class the Whigs
+increased the severity of the restrictions on colonial trade, and
+prohibited the rise of industries likely to compete with those of
+the mother-country. But under the influence of laziness and
+timidity, and of the desire quieta non movere, they made no
+attempt seriously to enforce either the new or the old
+restrictions, and in these circumstances smuggling trade between
+the New England colonies and the French West Indies, in defiance
+of the Navigation Act and its companions, grew to such dimensions
+that any serious interference with it would be felt as a real
+grievance. The Whigs and their friends later took credit for their
+neglect. George Grenville, they said, lost the colonies because he
+read the American dispatches; he would have done much better to
+leave the dispatches and the colonies alone. But this is a damning
+apology. If the old colonial system, whose severity, on paper, the
+Whigs had greatly increased, was no longer workable, it should
+have been revised; but no Whig showed any sign of a sense that
+change was necessary. Yet the prevalence of smuggling was not the
+only proof of the need for change. There was during the period a
+long succession of disputes between colonial governors and their
+assemblies, which showed that the restrictions upon their
+political freedom, as well as those upon their economic freedom,
+were beginning to irk the colonists; and that self-government was
+following its universal and inevitable course, and demanding its
+own fulfilment. But the Whigs made no sort of attempt to consider
+the question whether the self-government of the colonies could be
+increased without impairing the unity of the empire. The single
+device of their statesmanship was--not to read the dispatches.
+And, in the meanwhile, no evil results followed, because the
+loyalty of the colonists was ensured by the imminence of the
+French danger. The mother-country was still responsible for the
+provision of defence, though she was largely cheated of the
+commercial advantages which were to have been its recompense.
+
+After 1713 there was a comparatively long interval of peace
+between Britain and France, but it was occupied by an acute
+commercial rivalry, in which, on the whole, the French seemed to
+be getting the upper hand. Their sugar islands in the West Indies
+were more productive than the British; their traders were rapidly
+increasing their hold over the central plain of North America, to
+the alarm of the British colonists; their intrigues kept alive a
+perpetual unrest in the recently conquered province of Acadia; and
+away in India, under the spirited direction of Franois Dupleix,
+their East India Company became a more formidable competitor for
+the Indian trade than it had hitherto been. Hence the imperial
+problem presented itself to the statesmen of that generation as a
+problem of power rather than as a problem of organisation; and the
+intense rivalry with France dwarfed and obscured the need for a
+reconsideration of colonial relations. At length this rivalry
+flamed out into two wars. The first of these was fought, on both
+sides, in a strangely half-hearted and lackadaisical way. But in
+the second (the Seven Years' War, 1756-63) the British cause,
+after two years of disaster, fell under the confident and daring
+leadership of Pitt, which brought a series of unexampled
+successes. The French flag was almost swept from the seas. The
+French settlements in Canada were overrun and conquered. With the
+fall of Quebec it was determined that the system of self-
+government, and not that of autocracy, should control the
+destinies of the North American continent; and Britain emerged in
+1763 the supreme colonial power of the world. The problem of power
+had been settled in her favour; but the problem of organisation
+remained unsolved. It emerged in an acute and menacing form as
+soon as the war was over.
+
+During the course of these two wars, and in the interval between
+them, an extraordinary series of events had opened a new scene for
+the rivalry of the two great imperial powers, and a new world
+began to be exposed to the influence of the political ideas of
+Europe. The vast and populous land of India, where the Europeans
+had hitherto been content to play the part of modest traders,
+under the protection and control of great native rulers, had
+suddenly been displayed as a field for the imperial ambitions of
+the European peoples. Ever since the first appearance of the
+Dutch, the English, and the French in these regions, Northern
+India had formed a consolidated empire ruled from Delhi by the
+great Mogul dynasty; the shadow of its power was also cast over
+the lesser princes of Southern India. But after 1709, and still
+more after 1739, the Mogul Empire collapsed, and the whole of
+India, north and south, rapidly fell into a condition of complete
+anarchy. A multitude of petty rulers, nominal satraps of the
+powerless Mogul, roving adventurers, or bands of Mahratta raiders,
+put an end to all order and security; and to protect themselves
+and maintain their trade the European traders must needs enlist
+considerable bodies of Indian troops. It had long been proved that
+a comparatively small number of troops, disciplined in the
+European fashion, could hold their own against the loose and
+disorderly mobs who followed the standards of Indian rulers. And
+it now occurred to the ambitious mind of the Frenchman Dupleix
+that it should be possible, by the use of this military
+superiority, to intervene with effect in the unceasing strife of
+the Indian princes, to turn the scale on one side or the other,
+and to obtain over the princes whose cause he embraced a
+commanding influence, which would enable him to secure the
+expulsion of his English rivals, and the establishment of a French
+trade monopoly based upon political influence.
+
+This daring project was at first triumphantly successful. The
+English had to follow suit in self-defence, but could not equal
+the ability of Dupleix. In 1750 a French protege occupied the most
+important throne of Southern India at Hyderabad, and was protected
+and kept loyal by a force of French sepoys under the Marquis de
+Bussy, whose expenses were met out of the revenues of large
+provinces (the Northern Sarkars) placed under French
+administration; while in the Carnatic, the coastal region where
+all the European traders had their south-eastern headquarters, a
+second French protege had almost succeeded in crushing his rival,
+whom the English company supported. But the genius of Clive
+reversed the situation with dramatic swiftness; the French
+authorities at home, alarmed at these dangerous adventures,
+repudiated and recalled Dupleix (1754), and the British power was
+left to apply the methods which he had invented. When the Seven
+Years' War broke out (1756), the French, repenting of their
+earlier decision, sent a substantial force to restore their lost
+influence in the Carnatic, but the result was complete failure. A
+British protege henceforward ruled in the Carnatic; a British
+force replaced the French at Hyderabad; and the revenues of the
+Northern Sarkars, formerly assigned for the maintenance of the
+French force, were handed over to its successor. Meanwhile in the
+rich province of Bengal a still more dramatic revolution had taken
+place. Attacked by the young Nawab, Siraj-uddaula, the British
+traders at Calcutta had been forced to evacuate that prosperous
+centre (1756). But Clive, coming up with a fleet and an army from
+Madras, applied the lessons he had learnt in the Carnatic, set up
+a rival claimant to the throne of Bengal, and at Plassey (1757)
+won for his puppet a complete victory. From 1757 onwards the
+British East India Company was the real master in Bengal, even
+more completely than in the Carnatic. It had not, in either
+region, conquered any territory; it had only supported
+successfully a claimant to the native throne. The native
+government, in theory, continued as before; the company, in
+theory, was its subject and vassal. But in practice these great
+and rich provinces lay at its mercy, and if it did not yet choose
+to undertake their government, this was only because it preferred
+to devote itself to its original business of trade.
+
+Thus by 1763 the British power had achieved a dazzling double
+triumph. It had destroyed the power of its chief rival both in the
+East and in the West. It had established the supremacy of the
+British peoples and of British methods of government throughout
+the whole continent of North America; and it had entered, blindly
+and without any conception of what the future was to bring forth,
+upon the path which was to lead to dominion over the vast
+continent of India, and upon the tremendous task of grafting the
+ideas of the West upon the East.
+
+Such was the outcome of the first two periods in the history of
+European imperialism. It left Central and South America under the
+stagnant and reactionary government of Spain and Portugal; the
+eastern coast of North America under the control of groups of
+self-governing Englishmen; Canada, still inhabited by Frenchmen,
+under British dominance; Java and the Spice Islands, together with
+the small settlement of Cape Colony, in the hands of the Dutch; a
+medley of European settlements in the West Indian islands, and a
+string of European factories along the coast of West Africa; and
+the beginning of an anomalous British dominion established at two
+points on the coast of India. But of all the European nations
+which had taken part in this vast process of expansion, one alone,
+the British, still retained its vitality and its expansive power.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE ERA OF REVOLUTION, 1763-1825
+
+
+'Colonies are like fruits,' said Turgot, the eighteenth-century
+French economist and statesman: 'they cling to the mother-tree
+only until they are ripe.' This generalisation, which represented
+a view very widely held during that and the next age, seemed to be
+borne out in the most conclusive way by the events of the sixty
+years following the Seven Years' War. In 1763 the French had lost
+almost the whole of the empire which they had toilsomely built up
+during a century and a half. Within twenty years their triumphant
+British rivals were forced to recognise the independence of the
+American colonies, and thus lost the bulk of what may be called
+the first British Empire. They still retained the recently
+conquered province of French Canada, but it seemed unlikely that
+the French Canadians would long be content to live under an alien
+dominion: if they had not joined in the American Revolution, it
+was not because they loved the British, but because they hated the
+Americans. The French Revolutionary wars brought further changes.
+One result of these wars was that the Dutch lost Cape Colony,
+Ceylon, and Java, though Java was restored to them in 1815. A
+second result was that when Napoleon made himself master of Spain
+in 1808, the Spanish colonies in Central and South America ceased
+to be governed from the mother-country; and having tasted the
+sweets of independence, and still more, the advantages of
+unrestricted trade, could never again be brought into
+subordination. By 1825 nothing was left of the vast Spanish Empire
+save the Canaries, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippine Islands;
+nothing was left of the Portuguese Empire save a few decaying
+posts on the coasts of Africa and India; nothing was left of the
+Dutch Empire save Java and its dependencies, restored in 1815;
+nothing was left of the French Empire save a few West Indian
+islands; and what had been the British American colonies were now
+the United States, a great power declaring to Europe, through the
+mouth of President Monroe, that she would resist any attempt of
+the European powers to restore the old regime in South America. It
+appeared that the political control of European states over non-
+European regions must be short-lived and full of trouble; and that
+the influence of Europe upon the non-European world would
+henceforth be exercised mainly through new independent states
+imbued with European ideas. Imperial aspirations thus seemed to
+that and the next generation at once futile and costly.
+
+Of all these colonial revolutions the most striking was that which
+tore away the American colonies from Britain (1764-82); not only
+because it led to the creation of one of the great powers of the
+world, and was to afford the single instance which has yet arisen
+of a daughter-nation outnumbering its mother-country, but still
+more because it seemed to prove that not even the grant of
+extensive powers of self-government would secure the permanent
+loyalty of colonies. Indeed, from the standpoint of Realpolitik,
+it might be argued that in the case of America self-government was
+shown to be a dangerous gift; for the American colonies, which
+alone among European settlements had obtained this supreme
+endowment, were the first, and indeed the only, European
+settlements to throw off deliberately their connection with the
+mother-country. France and Holland lost their colonies by war, and
+even the Spanish colonies would probably never have thought of
+severing their relations with Spain but for the anomalous
+conditions created by the Napoleonic conquest.
+
+The American Revolution is, then, an event unique at once in its
+causes, its character, and its consequences; and it throws a most
+important illumination upon some of the problems of imperialism.
+It cannot be pretended that the revolt of the colonists was due to
+oppression or to serious misgovernment. The paltry taxes which
+were its immediate provoking cause would have formed a quite
+negligible burden upon a very prosperous population; they were to
+have been spent exclusively within the colonies themselves, and
+would have been mainly used to meet a part of the cost of colonial
+defence, the bulk of which was still to be borne by the mother-
+country. If the colonists had been willing to suggest any other
+means of raising the required funds, their suggestions would have
+been readily accepted. This was made plain at several stages in
+the course of the discussion, but the invitation to suggest
+alternative methods of raising money met with no response. The
+plain fact is that Britain, already heavily loaded with debt, was
+bearing practically the whole burden of colonial defence, and was
+much less able than the colonies themselves to endure the strain.
+As for the long-established restrictions on colonial trade, which
+in fact though not in form contributed as largely as the proposals
+of direct taxation to cause the revolt, they were far less severe,
+even if they had been strictly enforced, than the restrictions
+imposed upon the trade of other European settlements.
+
+It is equally misleading to attribute the blame of the revolt
+wholly to George III. and the ministers by whom he was served
+during the critical years. No doubt it is possible to imagine a
+more tactful man than George Grenville, a more far-seeing and
+courageous statesman than Lord North, a less obstinate prince than
+George III. himself. But it may be doubted whether any change of
+men would have done more than postpone the inevitable. The great
+Whig apologists who have dictated the accepted view of British
+history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have laboured
+to create the impression that if only Burke, Chatham, and Charles
+Fox had had the handling of the issue, the tragedy of disruption
+would have been avoided. But there is no evidence that any of
+these men, except perhaps Burke, appreciated the magnitude and
+difficulty of the questions that had been inevitably raised in
+1764, and must have been raised whoever had been in power; or that
+they would have been able to suggest a workable new scheme of
+colonial government which would have met the difficulty. If they
+had put forward such a scheme, it would have been wrecked on the
+resistance of British opinion, which was still dominated by the
+theories and traditions of the old colonial system; and even if it
+had overcome this obstacle, it would very likely have been ruined
+by the captious and litigious spirit to which events had given
+birth among the colonists, especially in New England.
+
+The root of the matter was that the old colonial system, which had
+suited well enough the needs of the colonies as they were when it
+was devised by the statesmen of Charles II.'s reign, was no longer
+suitable to their condition now that they had become great and
+prosperous communities of freemen. They enjoyed self-government on
+a scale more generous than any other communities in the world
+outside of Britain; indeed, in one sense they enjoyed it on a more
+generous scale than Britain herself, since political rights were
+much more widely exercised in the colonies, owing to the natural
+conditions of a new and prosperous land, than they were to be, or
+could be, in Britain until nearly a century later. No direct
+taxation had as yet been imposed upon them without their own
+consent. They made the laws by which their own lives were
+regulated. They were called upon to pay no tribute to the home
+government, except the very indirect levy on goods passing through
+England to or from their ports, and this was nearly balanced by
+the advantages which they enjoyed in the British market, and far
+more than balanced by the protection afforded to them by the
+British fleet. They were not even required to raise troops for the
+defence of their own frontiers except of their own free will, and
+the main burden of defending even their landward frontier was
+borne by the mother-country. But being British they had the
+instinct of self-government in their blood and bones, and they
+found that the control of their own affairs was qualified or
+limited in two principal ways.
+
+In the first place, the executive and judicial officers who
+carried out the laws were not appointed by them but by the Crown
+in England: the colonies were not responsible for the
+administration of their own laws. In the second place, the
+regulations by which their foreign trade was governed were
+determined, not by themselves, but by the British parliament: they
+were not responsible for the control of their own traffic with the
+outside world. It is true that the salaries of the executive
+officials and the judges depended upon their grant, and that any
+governor who acted in the teeth of colonial opinion would find his
+position quite untenable, so that the colonists exercised a real
+if indirect control over administration. It is true also that they
+accepted the general principles of the commercial system, and had
+reaped great benefits from it.
+
+But it is the unfailing instinct of the citizens in a self-
+governing community to be dissatisfied unless they feel that they
+have a full and equal share in the control of their own destinies.
+Denied responsibility, they are apt to become irresponsible; and
+when all allowance has been made for the stupidities of governors
+and for the mistakes of the home authorities, it must be
+recognised that the thirteen American colonial legislatures often
+behaved in a very irresponsible way, and were extremely difficult
+to handle. They refused to vote fixed salaries to their judges in
+order to make their power felt, simply because the judges were
+appointed by the Crown, although in doing so they were dangerously
+undermining judicial independence. They refused in many cases to
+supply anything like adequate contingents for the war against the
+French and their Indian allies, partly because each legislature
+was afraid of being more generous than the others, partly because
+they could trust to the home government to make good their
+deficiencies. Yet at the same time they did nothing to check, but
+rather encouraged, the wholesale smuggling by which the trade
+regulations were reduced to a nullity, though these regulations
+were not only accepted in principle by themselves, but afforded
+the only compensation to the mother-country for the cost of
+colonial defence. It is as unscientific to blame the colonists and
+their legislatures for this kind of action, as it is to blame the
+British statesmen for their proposals. It was the almost
+inevitable result of the conditions among a free, prosperous, and
+extremely self-confident people; it was, indeed, the proof that in
+this young people the greatest political ideal of western
+civilisation, the ideal of self-government, had taken firm root.
+The denial of responsibility was producing irresponsibility; and
+even if the Stamp Act and the Tea Duties had never been proposed,
+this state of things was bound to lead to increasing friction. Nor
+must it be forgotten that this friction was accentuated by the
+contrast between the democratic conditions of colonial life, and
+the aristocratic organisation of English society.
+
+It ought to have been obvious, long before Grenville initiated his
+new policy in 1764, that the colonial system was not working well;
+and the one circumstance which had prevented serious conflict was
+the danger which threatened the colonists in the aggressive
+attitude of the French to the north and west. Since the individual
+colonies refused to raise adequate forces for their own defence,
+or to co-operate with one another in a common scheme, they were
+dependent for their security upon the mother-country. But as soon
+as the danger was removed, as it was in 1763, this reason for
+restraint vanished; and although the great majority of the
+colonists were quite sincerely desirous of retaining their
+membership of the British commonwealth, the conditions would
+inevitably have produced a state of intensifying friction, unless
+the whole colonial system had been drastically reconstructed.
+
+Reconstruction was therefore inevitable in 1764. The Whig policy
+of simply ignoring the issue and 'not reading the dispatches'
+could no longer be pursued; it was indeed largely responsible for
+the mischief. George III. and Grenville deserve the credit of
+seeing this. But their scheme of reconstruction not unnaturally
+amounted to little more than a tightening-up of the old system.
+The trade laws were to be more strictly enforced. The governors
+and the judges were to be made more independent of the assemblies
+by being given fixed salaries. The colonists were to bear a larger
+share of the cost of defence, which fell so unfairly on the
+mother-country. If the necessary funds could be raised by means
+approved by the colonists themselves, well and good; but if not,
+then they must be raised by the authority of the imperial
+parliament. For the existing system manifestly could not continue
+indefinitely, and it was better to have the issue clearly raised,
+even at the risk of conflict, than to go on merely drifting.
+
+When the colonists (without suggesting any alternative proposals)
+contented themselves with repudiating the right of parliament to
+tax them, and proceeded to outrageous insults to the king's
+authority, and the most open defiance of the trade regulations,
+indignation grew in Britain. It seemed, to the average Englishman,
+that the colonists proposed to leave every public burden, even the
+cost of judges' salaries, on the shoulders of the mother-country,
+already loaded with a debt which had been largely incurred in
+defence of the colonies; but to disregard every obligation imposed
+upon themselves. A system whereunder the colony has all rights and
+no enforcible duties, the mother-country all duties and no
+enforcible rights, obviously could not work. That was the system
+which, in the view of the gentlemen of England, the colonists were
+bent upon establishing; and, taking this view, they cannot be
+blamed for refusing to accept such a conclusion. There was no one,
+either in Britain or in America, capable of grasping the
+essentials of the problem, which were that, once established,
+self-government inevitably strives after its own fulfilment; that
+these British settlers, in whom the British tradition of self-
+government had been strengthened by the freedom of a new land,
+would never be content until they enjoyed a full share in the
+control of their own affairs; and that although they seemed, even
+to themselves, to be fighting about legal minutiae, about the
+difference between internal and external duties, about the
+legality of writs of assistance, and so forth, the real issue was
+the deeper one of the fulfilment of self-government. Could fully
+responsible self-government be reconciled with imperial unity?
+Could any means be devised whereby the units in a fellowship of
+free states might retain full control over their own affairs, and
+at the same time effectively combine for common purposes? That was
+and is the ultimate problem of British imperial organisation, as
+it was and is the ultimate problem of international relations. But
+the problem, though it now presented itself in a comparatively
+simple form, was never fairly faced on either side of the
+Atlantic. For the mother and her daughters too quickly reached the
+point of arguing about their legal rights against one another, and
+when friends begin to argue about their legal rights, the breach
+of their friendship is at hand. So the dreary argument, which
+lasted for eleven years (1764-75), led to the still more dreary
+war, which lasted for seven years (1775-82); and the only family
+of free self-governing communities existing in the world was
+broken up in bitterness. This was indeed a tragedy. For if the
+great partnership of freedom could have been reorganised on
+conditions that would have enabled it to hold together, the cause
+of liberty in the world would have been made infinitely more
+secure.
+
+The Revolution gave to the Americans the glory of establishing the
+first fully democratic system of government on a national scale
+that had yet existed in the world, and of demonstrating that by
+the machinery of self-government a number of distinct and jealous
+communities could be united for common purposes. The new American
+Commonwealth became an inspiration for eager Liberals in the old
+world as well as in the new, and its successful establishment
+formed the strongest of arguments for the democratic idea in all
+lands. Unhappily the pride of this great achievement helped to
+persuade the Americans that they were different from the rest of
+the world, and unaffected by its fortunes. They were apt to think
+of themselves as the inventors and monopolists of political
+liberty. Cut off by a vast stretch of ocean from the Old World,
+and having lost that contact with its affairs which the relation
+with Britain had hitherto maintained, they followed but dimly, and
+without much comprehension, the obscure and complex struggles
+wherein the spirit of liberty was working out a new Europe, in the
+face of difficulties vastly greater than any with which the
+Americans had ever had to contend. They had been alienated from
+Britain, the one great free state of Europe, and had been
+persuaded by their reading of their own experience that she was a
+tyrant-power; and they thus found it hard to recognise her for
+what, with all her faults, she genuinely was--the mother of free
+institutions in the modern world, the founder and shaper of their
+own prized liberties. All these things combined to persuade the
+great new republic that she not only might, but ought to, stand
+aloof from the political problems of the rest of the world, and
+take no interest in its concerns. This attitude, the natural
+product of the conditions, was to last for more than a century,
+and was to weaken greatly the cause of liberty in the world.
+
+Although the most obvious features of the half-century following
+the great British triumph of 1763 were the revolt of the American
+colonies and the apparently universal collapse of the imperialist
+ambitions of the European nations, a more deeply impressive
+feature of the period was that, in spite of the tragedy and
+humiliation of the great disruption, the imperial impetus
+continued to work potently in Britain, alone among the European
+nations; and to such effect that at the end of the period she
+found herself in control of a new empire more extensive than that
+which she had lost, and far more various in its character. Having
+failed to solve one great imperial problem, she promptly addressed
+herself to a whole series of others even more difficult, and for
+these she was to find more hopeful solutions.
+
+When the American revolt began, the Canadian colonies to the north
+were in an insecure and unorganised state. On the coast, in Nova
+Scotia and Newfoundland, there was a small British population; but
+the riverine colony of Canada proper, with its centre at Quebec,
+was still purely French, and was ruled by martial law. Accustomed
+to a despotic system, and not yet reconciled to the British
+supremacy, the French settlers were obviously unready for self-
+government. But the Quebec Act of 1774, by securing the
+maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion and of French civil
+law, ensured the loyalty of the French; and this Act is also
+noteworthy as the first formal expression of willingness to admit
+or even welcome the existence, within the hospitable limits of the
+Empire, of a variety of types of civilisation. In the new British
+Empire there was to be no uniformity of Kultur.
+
+The close of the American struggle, however, brought a new
+problem. Many thousands of exiles from the revolting colonies,
+willing to sacrifice everything in order to retain their British
+citizenship, poured over the borders into the Canadian lands. They
+settled for the first time the rich province of Ontario, greatly
+increased the population of Nova Scotia, and started the
+settlement of New Brunswick. To these exiles Britain felt that she
+owed much, and, despite her own financial distress, expended large
+sums in providing them with the means to make a good beginning in
+their new homes. But it was impossible to deny these British
+settlers, and the emigrants from Britain who soon began to join
+them, the rights of self-government, to which they were
+accustomed. Their advent, however, in a hitherto French province,
+raised the very difficult problem of racial relationship. They
+might have been used as a means for Anglicising the earlier French
+settlers and for forcing them into a British mould; it may fairly
+be said that most European governments would have used them in
+this way, and many of the settlers would willingly have fallen in
+with such a programme. But that would have been out of accord with
+the genius of the British system, which believes in freedom and
+variety. Accordingly, by the Act of 1791, the purely French region
+of Quebec or Lower Canada was separated from the British region of
+Ontario or Upper Canada, and both districts, as well as the
+coastal settlements, were endowed with self-governing institutions
+of the familiar pattern--an elected assembly controlling
+legislation and taxation, a nominated governor and council
+directing the executive. Thus within eighteen years of their
+conquest the French colonists were introduced to self-government.
+And within nine years of the loss of the American colonies, a new
+group of self-governing American colonies had been organised. They
+were sufficiently content with the system to resist with vigour
+and success an American invasion in 1812. While the American
+controversy was proceeding, one of the greatest of British
+navigators, Captain Cook, was busy with his remarkable
+explorations. He was the first to survey the archipelagoes of the
+Pacific; more important, he was the real discoverer of Australia
+and New Zealand; for though the Dutch explorers had found these
+lands more than a century earlier, they had never troubled to
+complete their explorations. Thus a vast new field, eminently
+suitable for European settlement, was placed at the disposal of
+Britain. It was utilised with extraordinary promptitude. The loss
+of the American colonies had deprived Britain of her chief
+dumping-ground for convicts. In 1788, six years after the
+recognition of their independence, she decided to use the new
+continent for this purpose, and the penal settlement of Botany Bay
+began (under unfavourable auspices) the colonisation of Australia.
+
+But the most important, and the most amazing, achievement of
+Britain in this period was the establishment and extension of her
+empire in India, and the planting within it of the first great
+gift of Western civilisation, the sovereignty of a just and
+impartial law. This was a novel and a very difficult task, such as
+no European people had yet undertaken; and it is not surprising
+that there should have been a period of bewildered misgovernment
+before it was achieved. That it should have been achieved at all
+is one of the greatest miracles of European imperialism.
+
+By 1763 the East India Company had established a controlling
+influence over the Nawabs of two important regions, Bengal and the
+Carnatic, and had shown, in a series of struggles, that its
+control was not to be shaken off. But the company had not annexed
+any territory, or assumed any responsibility for the government of
+these rich provinces. Its agents in the East, who were too far
+from London to be effectively controlled, enjoyed power without
+responsibility. They were privileged traders, upon whom the native
+governments dared not impose restrictions, and (as any body of
+average men would have done under similar circumstances) they
+gravely abused their position to build up huge fortunes for
+themselves. During the fifteen years following the battle of
+Plassey (1757) there is no denying that the political power of the
+British in India was a mere curse to the native population, and
+led to the complete disorganisation of the already decrepit native
+system of government in the provinces affected. It was vain for
+the directors at home to scold their servants. There were only two
+ways out of the difficulty. One was that the company should
+abandon India, which was not to be expected. The other was that,
+possessing power, of which it was now impossible to strip
+themselves, they should assume the responsibility for its
+exercise, and create for their subjects a just and efficient
+system of government. But the company would not see this. They had
+never desired political power, but had drifted into the possession
+of it in spite of themselves. They honestly disliked the idea of
+establishing by force an alien domination over subject peoples,
+and this feeling was yet more strongly held by the most
+influential political circles in England. The company desired
+nothing but trade. Their business was that of traders, and they
+wanted only to be left free to mind their business. So the evils
+arising from power without responsibility continued, and half-
+hearted attempts to amend them in 1765 and in 1769 only made the
+conditions worse. The events of the years from 1757 to 1772 showed
+that when the superior organisation of the West came in contact
+with the East, mere trading exploitation led to even worse results
+than a forcibly imposed dominion; and the only solution lay in the
+wise adaptation of western methods of government to eastern
+conditions.
+
+Thus Britain found herself faced with an imperial problem of
+apparently insuperable difficulty, which reached its most acute
+stage just at the time when the American trouble was at its
+height. The British parliament and government intervened, and in
+1773 for the first time assumed some responsibility for the
+affairs of the East India Company. But they did not understand the
+Indian problem--how, indeed, should they?--and their first
+solution was a failure. By a happy fortune, however, the East
+India Company had conferred the governorship of Bengal (1772) upon
+the greatest Englishman of the eighteenth century, Warren
+Hastings. Hastings pensioned off the Nawab, took over direct
+responsibility for the government of Bengal, and organised a
+system of justice which, though far from perfect, established for
+the first time the Reign of Law in an Indian realm. His firm and
+straightforward dealings with the other Indian powers still
+further strengthened the position of the company; and when in the
+midst of the American war, at a moment when no aid could be
+expected from Britain, a combination of the most formidable Indian
+powers, backed by a French fleet, threatened the downfall of the
+company's authority, Hastings' resourceful and inspiring
+leadership was equal to every emergency. He not only brought the
+company with heightened prestige out of the war, but throughout
+its course no hostile army was ever allowed to cross the frontiers
+of Bengal. In the midst of the unceasing and desolating wars of
+India, the territories under direct British rule formed an island
+of secure peace and of justice. That was Hastings' supreme
+contribution: it was the foundation upon which arose the fabric of
+the Indian Empire. Hastings was not a great conqueror or annexer
+of territory; the only important acquisition made during his
+regime was effected, in defiance of his protests, by the hostile
+majority which for a time overrode him in his own council, and
+which condemned him for ambition. His work was to make the British
+rule mean security and justice in place of tyranny; and it was
+because it had come to mean this that it grew, after his time,
+with extraordinary rapidity.
+
+It was not by the desire of the directors or the home government
+that it grew. They did everything in their power to check its
+growth, for they shrank from any increase to their
+responsibilities. They even prohibited by law all annexations, or
+the making of alliances with Indian powers. [Footnote: India Act
+of 1784] But fate was too strong for them. Even a governor like
+Lord Cornwallis, a convinced supporter of the policy of non-
+expansion and non-intervention, found himself forced into war, and
+compelled to annex territories; because non-intervention was
+interpreted by the Indian powers as a confession of weakness and
+an invitation to attack. Non-intervention also gave openings to
+the French, who, since the outbreak of the Revolution, had revived
+their old Indian ambitions; and while Bonaparte was engaged in the
+conquest of Egypt as a half-way house to India (1797), French
+agents were busy building up a new combination of Indian powers
+against the company.
+
+This formidable coalition was about to come to a head when, in
+1798, there landed in India a second man of genius, sent by fate
+at the critical moment. In five years, by an amazing series of
+swiftly successful wars and brilliantly conceived treaties, the
+Marquess Wellesley broke the power of every member of the hostile
+coalitions, except two of the Mahratta princes. The area of
+British territory was quadrupled; the most important of the Indian
+princes became vassals of the company; and the Great Mogul of
+Delhi himself, powerless now, but always a symbol of the over-
+lordship of India, passed under British protection. When Wellesley
+left India in 1805, the East India Company was already the
+paramount power in India south-east of the Sutlej and the Indus.
+The Mahratta princes, indeed, still retained a restricted
+independence, and for an interval the home authorities declined to
+permit any interference with them, even though they were
+manifestly giving protection to bands of armed raiders who
+terrorised and devastated territories which were under British
+protection. But the time came when the Mahrattas themselves broke
+the peace. Then their power also was broken; and in 1818 Britain
+stood forth as the sovereign ruler of India.
+
+This was only sixty years after the battle of Plassey had
+established British influence, though not British rule, in a
+single province of India; only a little over thirty years after
+Warren Hastings returned to England, leaving behind him an empire
+still almost limited to that single province. There is nothing in
+history that can be compared with the swiftness of this
+achievement, which is all the more remarkable when we remember
+that almost every step in the advance was taken with extreme
+unwillingness. But the most impressive thing about this astounding
+fabric of power, which extended over an area equal to half of
+Europe and inhabited by perhaps one-sixth of the human race, was
+not the swiftness with which it was created, but the results which
+flowed from it. It had begun in corruption and oppression, but it
+had grown because it had come to stand for justice, order, and
+peace. In 1818 it could already be claimed for the British rule in
+India that it had brought to the numerous and conflicting races,
+religions, and castes of that vast and ancient land, three boons
+of the highest value: political unity such as they had never known
+before; security from the hitherto unceasing ravages of internal
+turbulence and war; and, above all, the supreme gift which the
+West had to offer to the East, the substitution of an unvarying
+Reign of Law for the capricious wills of innumerable and shifting
+despots. This is an achievement unexampled in history, and it
+alone justified the imposition of the rule of the West over the
+East, which had at first seemed to produce nothing but evil. It
+took place during the age of Revolution, when the external empires
+of Europe were on all sides falling into ruin; and it passed at
+the time almost unregarded, because it was overshadowed by the
+drama of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
+
+The construction of the Indian Empire would of itself suffice to
+make an age memorable, but it does not end the catalogue of the
+achievements of British imperialism in this tremendous period. As
+a result of the participation of Holland in the war on the side of
+France, the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope was occupied by
+Britain. It was first occupied in 1798, restored for a brief
+period in 1801, reoccupied in 1806, and finally retained under the
+treaty settlement of 1815. The Cape was, in fact, the most
+important acquisition secured to Britain by that treaty; and it is
+worth noting that while the other great powers who had joined in
+the final overthrow of Napoleon helped themselves without
+hesitation to immense and valuable territories, Britain, which had
+alone maintained the struggle from beginning to end without
+flagging, actually paid the sum of 2,000,000 pounds to Holland as
+a compensation for this thinly peopled settlement. She retained it
+mainly because of its value as a calling-station on the way to
+India. But it imposed upon her an imperial problem of a very
+difficult kind. As in Canada, she had to deal here with an alien
+race of European origin and proud traditions; but this racial
+problem was accentuated by the further problem of dealing with a
+preponderant and growing negro population. How were justice,
+peace, liberty, and equality of rights to be established in such a
+field?
+
+It was, then, an astonishing new empire which had grown up round
+Britain during the period when the world was becoming convinced
+that colonial empires were not worth acquiring, because they could
+not last. It was an empire of continents or sub-continents--
+Canada, Australia, India, South Africa--not to speak of
+innumerable scattered islands and trading-posts dotted over all
+the seas of the world, which had either survived from an earlier
+period, or been acquired in order that they might serve as naval
+bases. It was spread round the whole globe; it included almost
+every variety of soil, products, and climate; it was inhabited by
+peoples of the most varying types; it presented an infinite
+variety of political and racial problems. In 1825 this empire was
+the only extra-European empire of importance still controlled by
+any of the historic imperial powers of Western Europe. And at the
+opening of the nineteenth century, when extra-European empires
+seemed to have gone out of fashion, the greatest of all imperial
+questions was the question whether the political capacity of the
+British peoples, having failed to solve the comparatively simple
+problem of finding a mode of organisation which could hold
+together communities so closely akin as those of America and the
+parent islands, would be capable of achieving any land of
+effective organisation for this new astounding fabric, while at
+the same time securing to all its members that liberty and variety
+of development which in the case of America had only been fully
+secured at the cost of disruption.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+EUROPE AND THE NON-EUROPEAN WORLD 1815-1878
+
+
+When the European peoples settled down, in 1815, after the long
+wars of the French Revolution, they found themselves faced by many
+problems, but there were few Europeans who would have included
+among these problems the extension of Western civilisation over
+the as yet unsubjugated portions of the world. Men's hearts were
+set upon the organisation of permanent peace: that seemed the
+greatest of all questions, and, for a time, it appeared to have
+obtained a satisfactory solution with the organisation of the
+great League of Peace of 1815. But the peace was to be short-
+lived, because it was threatened by the emergence of a number of
+other problems of great complexity. First among these stood the
+problem of nationality: the increasingly clamorous demand of
+divided or subject peoples for unity and freedom. Alongside of
+this arose the sister-problem of liberalism: the demand raised
+from all sides, among peoples who had never known political
+liberty, for the institutions of self-government which had been
+proved practicable by the British peoples, and turned into the
+object of a fervent belief by the preachings of the French. These
+two causes were to plunge Europe into many wars, and to vex and
+divide the peoples of every European country, throughout the
+period 1815-78. And to add to the complexity, there was growing in
+intensity during all these years the problem of Industrialism--the
+transformation of the very bases of life in all civilised
+communities, and the consequent development of wholly new, and
+terribly difficult, social issues. Preoccupied with all these
+questions, the statesmen and the peoples of most European states
+had no attention to spare for the non-European world. They
+neglected it all the more readily because the events of the
+preceding period seemed to demonstrate that colonial empires were
+not worth the cost and labour necessary for their attainment,
+since they seemed doomed to fall asunder as soon as they began to
+be valuable.
+
+Yet the period 1815-78 was to see an extension of European
+civilisation in the non-European world more remarkable than that
+of any previous age. The main part in this extension was played by
+Britain, who found herself left free, without serious rivalry in
+any part of the globe, to expand and develop the extraordinary
+empire which she possessed in 1815, and to deal with the
+bewildering problems which it presented. So marked was the British
+predominance in colonial activity during this age that it has been
+called the age of British monopoly, and so far as trans-oceanic
+activities were concerned, this phrase very nearly represents the
+truth. But there were other developments of the period almost as
+remarkable as the growth and reorganisation of the British Empire;
+and it will be convenient to survey these in the first instance
+before turning to the British achievement.
+
+The place of honour, as always in any great story of European
+civilisation, belongs to France. Undeterred by the loss of her
+earlier empire, and unexhausted by the strain of the great ordeal
+through which she had just passed, France began in these years the
+creation of her second colonial empire, which was to be in many
+ways more splendid than the first. Within fifteen years of the
+fall of Napoleon, the French flag was flying in Algiers.
+
+The northern coast of Africa, from the Gulf of Syrtis to the
+Atlantic, which has been in modern times divided into the three
+districts of Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, forms essentially a
+single region, whose character is determined by the numerous
+chains of the Atlas Mountains. This region, shut off from the rest
+of Africa not only by the Atlas but by the most impassable of all
+geographical barriers, the great Sahara desert, really belongs to
+Europe rather than to the continent of which it forms a part. Its
+fertile valleys were once the homes of brilliant civilisations:
+they were the seat of the Carthaginian Empire, and at a later date
+they constituted one of the richest and most civilised provinces
+of the Roman Empire. Their civilisation was wrecked by that
+barbarous German tribe, the Vandals, in the fifth century. It
+received only a partial and temporary revival after the Mahomedan
+conquest at the end of the seventh century, and since that date
+this once happy region has gradually lapsed into barbarism. During
+the modern age it was chiefly known as the home of ruthless and
+destructive pirates, whose chief headquarters were at Algiers, and
+who owned a merely nominal allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey.
+Ever since the time of Khair-ed-din Barbarossa, in the early
+sixteenth century, the powers of Europe have striven in vain to
+keep the Barbary corsairs in check. Charles V., Philip II., Louis
+XIV. attacked them with only temporary success: they continued to
+terrorise the trade of the Mediterranean, to seize trading-ships,
+to pillage the shores of Spain and Italy, and to carry off
+thousands of Christians into a cruel slavery; Robinson Crusoe, it
+may be recalled, was one of their victims. The powers at Vienna
+endeavoured to concert action against them in 1815. They were
+attacked by a British fleet in 1816, and by a combined British and
+French fleet in 1819. But all such temporary measures were
+insufficient. The only cure for the ill was that the headquarters
+of the pirate chiefs should be conquered, and brought under
+civilised government.
+
+This task France was rather reluctantly drawn into undertaking, as
+the result of a series of insults offered by the pirates to the
+French flag between 1827 and 1830. At first the aim of the
+conquerors was merely to occupy and administer the few ports which
+formed the chief centres of piracy. But experience showed that
+this was futile, since it involved endless wars with the unruly
+clansmen of the interior. Gradually, therefore, the whole of
+Algeria was systematically conquered and organised. The process
+took nearly twenty years, and was not completed until 1848. In all
+the records of European imperialism there has been no conquest
+more completely justified both by the events which led up to it
+and by the results which have followed from it. Peace and Law
+reign throughout a country which had for centuries been given over
+to anarchy. The wild tribesmen are unlearning the habits of
+disorder, and being taught to accept the conditions of a civilised
+life. The great natural resources of the country are being
+developed as never since the days of Roman rule. No praise can be
+too high for the work of the French administrators who have
+achieved these results. And it is worth noting that, alone among
+the provinces conquered by the European peoples, Algeria has been
+actually incorporated in the mother-country; it is part of the
+French Republic, and its elected representatives sit in the French
+Parliament.
+
+In the nature of things the conquest of Algeria could not stand
+alone. Algeria is separated by merely artificial lines from Tunis
+on the east and Morocco on the west, where the old conditions of
+anarchy still survived; and the establishment of order and peace
+in the middle area of this single natural region was difficult, so
+long as the areas on either side remained in disorder and war. In
+1844 France found it necessary to make war upon Morocco because of
+the support which it had afforded to a rebellious Algerian chief,
+and this episode illustrated the close connection of the two
+regions. But the troops were withdrawn as soon as the immediate
+purpose was served. France had not yet begun to think of extending
+her dominion over the areas to the east and west of Algeria. That
+was to be the work of the next period.
+
+Further south in Africa, France retained, as a relic of her older
+empire, a few posts on the coast of West Africa, notably Senegal.
+From these her intrepid explorers and traders began to extend
+their influence, and the dream of a great French empire in
+Northern Africa began to attract French minds. But the realisation
+of this dream also belongs to the next period. In the Far East,
+too, this was a period of beginnings. Ever since 1787--before the
+Revolution--the French had possessed a foothold on the coast of
+Annam, from which French missionaries carried on their labours
+among the peoples of Indo-China. Maltreatment of these
+missionaries led to a war with Annam in 1858, and in 1862 the
+extreme south of the Annamese Empire--the province of Cochin-
+China--was ceded to France. Lastly, the French obtained a foothold
+in the Pacific, by the annexation of Tahiti and the Marquesas
+Islands in 1842, and of New Caledonia in 1855. But in 1878 the
+French dominions in the non-European world were, apart from
+Algeria, of slight importance. They were quite insignificant in
+comparison with the far-spreading realms of her ancient rival,
+Britain.
+
+On a much greater scale than the expansion of France was the
+expansion of the already vast Russian Empire during this period.
+The history of Russia in the nineteenth century is made up of a
+series of alternations between a regime of comparative liberalism,
+when the interest of government and people was chiefly turned
+towards the west, and a regime of reaction, when the government
+endeavoured to pursue what was called a 'national' or purely
+Russian policy, and to exclude all Western influences. During
+these long intervals of reaction, attention was turned eastward;
+and it was in the reactionary periods, mainly, that the Russian
+power was rapidly extended in three directions--over the Caucasus,
+over Central Asia, and in the Far East.
+
+Before this advance, the huge Russian Empire had been (everywhere
+except on the west, in the region of Poland) marked off by very
+clearly defined barriers. The Caucasus presented a formidable
+obstacle between Russia and the Turkish and Persian Empires; the
+deserts of Central Asia separated her from the Moslem peoples of
+Khiva, Bokhara and Turkestan; the huge range of the Altai
+Mountains and the desert of Gobi cut off her thinly peopled
+province of Eastern Siberia from the Chinese Empire; while in the
+remote East her shores verged upon ice-bound and inhospitable
+seas. Hers was thus an extraordinarily isolated and self-contained
+empire, except on the side of Europe; and even on the side of
+Europe she was more inaccessible than any other state, being all
+but land-locked, and divided from Central Europe by a belt of
+forests and marshes.
+
+The part she had played in the Napoleonic Wars, and in the events
+which followed them, had brought her more fully into contact with
+Europe than she had ever been before. The acquisition of Poland
+and Finland, which she obtained by the treaties of 1815, had
+increased this contact, for both of these states were much
+influenced by Western ideas. Russia had promised that their
+distinct national existence, and their national institutions,
+should be preserved; and this seemed to suggest that the Russian
+Empire might develop into a partnership of nations of varying
+types, not altogether unlike the form into which the British
+Empire was developing. But this conception had no attraction for
+the Russian mind, or at any rate for the Russian government; and
+the reactionary or pure-Russian school, which strove to exclude
+all alien influences, was inevitably hostile to it. Hence the
+period of reaction, and of eastward conquest, saw also the denial
+of the promises made in 1815. Poland preserved her distinct
+national organisation, in any full degree, only for fifteen years;
+even in the faintest degree, it was preserved for less than fifty
+years. Finland was allowed a longer grace, but only, perhaps,
+because she was isolated and had but a small population: her turn
+for 'Russification' was to come in due course. The exclusion of
+Western influence, the segregation of Russia from the rest of the
+world, and the repudiation of liberty and of varieties of type
+thus form the main features of the reactionary periods which
+filled the greater part of this age; and the activity of Russia in
+eastward expansion was in part intended to forward this policy, by
+diverting the attention of the Russian people from the west
+towards the east, and by substituting the pride of dominion for
+the desire for liberty. Hence imperialism came to be identified,
+for the Russian people, with the denial of liberty.
+
+But it is a very striking fact that each of the three main lines
+of territorial advance followed by Russia in Asia during this
+period led her to overstep the natural barriers which had made her
+an isolated and self-dependent empire, brought her into relation
+with other civilisations, and compelled her to play her part as
+one of the factors in world-politics.
+
+Russia had begun the conquest of the wild Caucasus region as early
+as 1802; after a long series of wars, she completed it by the
+acquisition of the region of Kars in 1878. The mastery of the
+Caucasus brought her into immediate relation with the Armenian
+province of the Turkish Empire, which she henceforward threatened
+from the east as well as from the west. It brought her into
+contact also with the Persian Empire, over whose policy, from 1835
+onwards, she wielded a growing influence, to the perturbation of
+Britain. And besides bringing her into far closer relations with
+the two greatest Mahomedan powers, it gave her a considerable
+number of Mahomedan subjects, since some of the Caucasus tribes
+belonged to that faith.
+
+Again, the conquest of Central Asia led her to overstep the
+barrier of the Kirghiz deserts. The wandering Kirghiz and Turkoman
+tribes of this barren region lived largely upon the pillage of
+caravans, and upon raids into neighbouring countries; they
+disposed of their spoil (which often included Russian captives)
+mainly in the bazars of Bokhara, Khiva, Samarkand and Khokand--
+Mahomedan Khanates which occupied the more fertile areas in the
+southern and south-eastern part of the desert region. The attempt
+to control the Turkoman raiders brought Russia into conflict with
+these outposts of Islam. Almost the whole of this region was
+conquered in a long series of campaigns between 1848 and 1876.
+These conquests (which covered an area 1200 miles from east to
+west and 600 miles from north to south) made Russia a great
+Mahomedan power. They also brought her into direct contact with
+Afghanistan. Russian agents were at work in Afghanistan from 1838
+onwards. The shadow of her vast power, looming over Persia and the
+Persian Gulf on the one hand, and over the mountain frontiers of
+India on the other, naturally appeared highly menacing to Britain.
+It was the direct cause of the advance of the British power from
+the Indus over North-Western India, until it could rest upon the
+natural frontier of the mountains--an advance which took place
+mainly during the years 1839-49. And it formed the chief source of
+the undying suspicion of Russia which was the dominant note of
+British foreign policy throughout the period.
+
+Another feature of these conquests was that, taken in conjunction
+with the French conquest of Algeria and the British conquest of
+India, they constituted the first serious impact of European
+civilisation upon the vast realm of Islam. Until now the regions
+of the Middle East which had been subjugated by the followers of
+Mahomed had repelled every attack of the West. More definite in
+its creed, and more exacting in its demands upon the allegiance of
+its adherents, than any other religion, Mahomedanism had for more
+than a thousand years been able to resist with extraordinary
+success the influence of other civilisations; and it had been,
+from the time of the Crusades onwards, the most formidable
+opponent of the civilisation of the West. Under the rule of the
+Turk the Mahomedan world had become stagnant and sterile, and it
+had shut out not merely the direct control of the West (which
+would have been legitimate enough), but the influence of Western
+ideas. All the innumerable schemes of reform which were based upon
+the retention of the old regime in the Turkish Empire have
+hopelessly broken down; and the only chance for an awakening in
+these lands of ancient civilisation seemed to depend upon the
+breakdown of the old system under the impact of Western
+imperialism or insurgent nationalism. It has only been during the
+nineteenth century, as a result of Russian, French, and British
+imperialism, that the resisting power of Islam has begun to give
+way to the influence of Europe.
+
+The third line of Russian advance was on the Pacific coast, where
+in the years 1858 and 1860 Russia obtained from China the Amur
+province, with the valuable harbour of Vladivostok. It was an
+almost empty land, but its acquisition made Russia a Pacific
+power, and brought her into very close neighbourhood with China,
+into whose reserved markets, at the same period, the maritime
+powers of the West were forcing an entrance. At the same time
+Russian relations with Japan, which were to have such pregnant
+consequences, were beginning: in 1875 the Japanese were forced to
+cede the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, and perhaps we
+may date from this year the suspicion of Russia which dominated
+Japanese policy for a long time to come.
+
+Thus, while in Europe Russia was trying to shut herself off from
+contact with the world, her advances in Asia had brought her at
+three points into the full stream of world-politics. Her vast
+empire, though for the most part very thinly peopled, formed
+beyond all comparison the greatest continuous area ever brought
+under a single rule, since it amounted to between eight and nine
+million square miles; and when the next age, the age of rivalry
+for world-power, began, this colossal fabric of power haunted and
+dominated the imaginations of men.
+
+A demonstration of the growing power of Western civilisation, even
+more impressive than the expansion of the Russian Empire, was
+afforded during these years by the opening to Western influence of
+the ancient, pot-bound empires of the Far East, China and Japan.
+The opening of China began with the Anglo-Chinese War of 1840,
+which led to the acquisition of Hong-Kong and the opening of a
+group of treaty ports to European trade. It was carried further by
+the combined Franco-British war of 1857-58, which was ended by a
+treaty permitting the free access of European travellers, traders,
+and missionaries to the interior, and providing for the permanent
+residence of ambassadors of the signatory powers at the court of
+Pekin. All the European states rushed to share these privileges,
+and the Westernising of China had begun. It did not take place
+rapidly or completely, and it was accompanied by grave
+disturbances, notably the Taiping rebellion, which was only
+suppressed by the aid of the British General Gordon, in command of
+a Chinese army. But though the process was slow, it was fully at
+work by 1878. The external trade of China, nearly all in European
+hands, had assumed great proportions. The missionaries and
+schoolmasters of Europe and America were busily at work in the
+most populous provinces. Shanghai had become a European city, and
+one of the great trade-centres of the world. In a lame and
+incompetent way the Chinese government was attempting to organise
+its army on the European model, and to create a navy after the
+European style. Steamboats were plying on the Yang-tse-kiang, and
+the first few miles of railway were open. Chinese students were
+beginning to resort to the universities and schools of the West;
+and although the conservatism of the Chinese mind was very slow to
+make the plunge, it was already plain that this vast hive of
+patient, clever, and industrious men was bound to enter the orbit
+of Western civilisation.
+
+Meanwhile, after a longer and stiffer resistance, Japan had made
+up her mind to a great change with amazing suddenness and
+completeness. There had been some preliminary relations with the
+Western peoples, beginning with the visits of the American
+Commodore Perry in 1853 and 1854, and a few ports had been opened
+to European trade. But then came a sudden, violent reaction
+(1862). The British embassy was attacked; a number of British
+subjects were murdered; a mixed fleet of British, French, Dutch,
+and American ships proved the power of Western arms, and Japan
+began to awaken to the necessity of adopting, in self-defence, the
+methods of these intrusive foreigners. The story of the internal
+revolution in Japan, which began in 1866, cannot be told here;
+enough that it led to the most astounding change in history.
+Emerging from her age-long isolation and from her contentment with
+her ancient, unchanging modes of life, Japan realised that the
+future lay with the restless and progressive civilisation of the
+West; and with a national resolve to which there is no sort of
+parallel or analogy in history, decided that she must not wait to
+be brought under subjection, but must adopt the new methods and
+ideas for herself, if possible without shedding too much of her
+ancient traditions. By a deliberate exercise of the will and an
+extraordinary effort of organisation, she became industrial
+without ceasing to be artistic; she adopted parliamentary
+institutions without abandoning her religious veneration for the
+person of the Mikado; she borrowed the military methods of the
+West without losing the chivalrous and fatalist devotion of her
+warrior-caste; and devised a Western educational system without
+disturbing the deep orientalism of her mind. It was a
+transformation almost terrifying, and to any Western quite
+bewildering, in its deliberation, rapidity, and completeness.
+Europe long remained unconvinced of its reality. But in 1878 the
+work was, in its essentials, already achieved, and the one state
+of non-European origin which has been able calmly to choose what
+she would accept and what she would reject among the systems and
+methods of the West, stood ready to play an equal part with the
+European nations in the later stages of the long imperial
+struggle.
+
+One last sphere of activity remains to be surveyed before we turn
+to consider the development of the new British Empire: the
+expansion of the independent states which had arisen on the ruins
+of the first colonial empires in the New World. Of the Spanish and
+Portuguese states of Central and South America it is not necessary
+to say much. They had established their independence between 1815
+and 1825. But the unhappy traditions of the long Spanish
+ascendancy had rendered them incapable of using freedom well, and
+Central and South America became the scene of ceaseless and futile
+revolutions. The influence of the American Monroe Doctrine
+forbade, perhaps fortunately, the intervention of any of the
+European states to put an end to this confusion, and America
+herself made no serious attempt to restrain it. It was not until
+the later years of our period that any large stream of immigration
+began to flow into these lands from other European countries than
+Spain and Portugal, and that their vast natural resources began to
+be developed by the energy and capital of Europe. But by 1878 the
+more fertile of these states, Argentina, Brazil, and Chili, were
+being enriched by these means, were becoming highly important
+elements in the trade-system of the world, and were consequently
+beginning to achieve a more stable and settled civilisation. In
+some regards this work (though it belongs mainly to the period
+after 1878) constitutes one of the happiest results of the extra-
+European activities of the European peoples during the nineteenth
+century. It was carried on, in the main, not by governments or
+under government encouragement, but by the private enterprises of
+merchants and capitalists; and while a very large part in these
+enterprises was played by British and American traders and
+settlers, one of the most notable features of the growth of South
+America was that it gave play to some of the European peoples,
+notably the Germans and the Italians, whose part in the political
+division of the world was relatively small.
+
+Far more impressive was the almost miraculous expansion which came
+to the United States during this period. When the United States
+started upon their career as an independent nation in 1782, their
+territory was limited to the lands east of the Mississippi,
+excluding Florida, which was still retained by Spain. Only the
+eastern margin of this area was at all fully settled; and the
+population numbered at most 2,000,000, predominantly of British
+blood. In 1803, by a treaty with Napoleon, the French colony of
+Louisiana, with vast and ill-defined claims to the territory west
+of the Mississippi, was purchased from France. Meanwhile the
+stream of immigrants from the eastern states, and in a less degree
+from Europe, was pouring over the Alleghany Mountains and
+occupying the great central plain; and by 1815 the population had
+risen to almost 9,000,000, still mainly of British stock, though
+it also included substantial French and German elements, as well
+as large numbers of negro slaves. In 1819 Florida was acquired by
+purchase from Spain. In 1845-48 a revolution in Texas (then part
+of Mexico), followed by two Mexican wars, led to the annexation of
+a vast area extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific
+coast, including the paradise of California; while treaties with
+Britain in 1818 and 1846 determined the northern boundary of the
+States, and secured their control over the regions of Washington
+and Oregon.
+
+Thus the imperialist spirit was working as irresistibly in the
+democratic communities of the New World as in the monarchies of
+Europe. Not content with the possession of vast and almost
+unpeopled areas, they had spread their dominion from ocean to
+ocean, and built up an empire less extensive indeed than that of
+Russia, but even more compact, far richer in resources, and far
+better suited to be the home of a highly civilised people. Into
+this enormous area there began to pour a mighty flood of
+immigration from Europe, as soon as the Napoleonic wars were over.
+By 1878 the population of the States had risen to about
+50,000,000, and was greater than that of any European state save
+Russia. A new world-state of the first rank had arisen. It was
+made up of contributions from all the European peoples. Those of
+British stock, especially the Irish, still predominated throughout
+this period, but the Germans and the Scandinavians were becoming
+increasingly numerous, and the Italians, Greeks, Poles, Czechs,
+Russian Jews, and other stocks were beginning to form very
+substantial elements. It was a melting-pot of races, which had to
+be somehow welded into a nation by the moulding-power of the
+traditions implanted by the earlier British settlers. It may
+fairly be said that no community has ever had imposed upon it a
+more difficult task than the task imposed by Fate upon the
+American people of creating a national unity out of this
+heterogeneous material. The great experiment was, during this
+period, singularly successful. The strength of the national
+sentiment and of the tradition of freedom was very powerfully
+exhibited in the strain of the great Civil War (1861-65) which
+maintained at a great cost the threatened unity of the republic,
+and brought about the emancipation of the negro slaves. And the
+Civil War produced in Abraham Lincoln a national hero, and an
+exponent of the national character and ideals, worthy to be set
+beside Washington. The America of Lincoln manifestly stood for
+Liberty and Justice, the fundamental ideals of Western
+civilisation.
+
+But in this great moulding tradition of freedom there was one
+dubious and narrowing element. Accustomed to regard herself as
+having achieved liberty by shaking off her connection with the Old
+World, America was tempted to think of this liberty as something
+peculiar to herself, something which the 'effete monarchies' of
+the Old World did not, and could not, fully understand or share,
+something which exempted her from responsibility for the non-
+American world, and from the duty of aiding and defending liberty
+beyond her own limits. In the abounding prosperity of this
+fortunate land, liberty was apt to be too readily identified
+merely with the opportunity of securing material prosperity, and
+the love of liberty was apt to become, what indeed it too often is
+everywhere, a purely self-regarding emotion. The distance of the
+republic from Europe and its controversies, its economic self-
+sufficiency, its apparent security against all attack, fostered
+and strengthened this feeling. While the peoples of the Old World
+strove with agony and travail towards freedom and justice, or
+wrestled with the task of sharing their own civilisation with the
+backward races of the globe, the echo of their strivings
+penetrated but faintly into the mind of America, like the noises
+of the street dimly heard through the shuttered windows of a
+warmed and lighted room. To the citizens of the Middle West and
+the Far West, especially, busy as they were with the development
+of vast untapped resources, the affairs of the outer world
+necessarily appeared remote and insignificant. Even their
+newspapers told them little about these far-off events. Naturally
+it appeared that the function of the republic in the progress of
+the world was to till its own garden, and to afford a haven of
+refuge to the oppressed and impoverished who poured in from all
+lands; and this idea was strengthened by the great number of
+immigrants who were driven to the New World by the failure of the
+successive European revolutions of the nineteenth century, and by
+the oppressive tyranny of the Habsburg monarchy and the Russian
+despots.
+
+This attitude of aloofness from, and contempt, or, at the best,
+indifference, to the Old World was further encouraged by the
+traditional treatment of American history. The outstanding event
+of that story was, of course, the breach with Britain, with which
+the independent existence of the Republic began, and which
+constituted also almost its only direct contact with the politics
+of the Old World. The view of this conflict which was driven into
+the national mind by the school-books, by the annual celebrations
+of the Fourth of July, and by incessant newspaper writing,
+represented the great quarrel not as a dispute in a family of free
+communities, in which a new and very difficult problem was raised,
+and in which there were faults on both sides, but as one in which
+all the right was on one side, as a heroic resistance of free men
+against malevolent tyranny. This view has been profoundly modified
+by the work of American historians, whose researches during the
+last generation have transformed the treatment of the American
+Revolution. To-day the old one-sided view finds expression, in
+books of serious pretensions, only in England; and it is to
+American scholars that we must have recourse for a more scientific
+and impartial treatment. But the new and saner view has scarcely
+yet made its way into the school-books and the newspapers. If
+Britain, the mother of political liberty in the modern world, the
+land from which these freemen had inherited their own liberties
+and the spirit which made them insist upon their enlargement, was
+made to appear a tyrant power, how could it be expected that the
+mass of Americans, unversed in world-politics, should follow with
+sympathy the progress of liberty beyond the limits of their own
+republic? It was in the light of this traditional attitude that
+the bulk of Americans regarded not only the wars and controversies
+of Europe, but the vast process of European expansion. All these
+things did not appear to concern them; they seemed to be caused by
+motives and ideas which the great republic had outgrown, though,
+as we have already seen, and shall see again, the republic had by
+no means outgrown them. The strength of this traditional attitude,
+fostered as it was by every circumstance, naturally made the bulk
+of the American people slow to realise, when the great challenge
+of Germany was forced upon the world, that the problems of world-
+politics were as vitally important for them as for all other
+peoples, and that no free nation could afford to be indifferent to
+the fate of liberty upon the earth.
+
+At one moment, indeed, almost at the beginning of the period, it
+appeared as if this narrow outlook was about to be abandoned. The
+League of Peace of the great European powers of 1815 [Footnote:
+See "Nationalism and Internationalism," p. 155 ff.] had, by 1822,
+developed into a league of despots for the suppression of
+revolutionary tendencies. They had intervened to crush
+revolutionary outbreaks in Naples and Piedmont; they had
+authorised France to enter Spain in order to destroy the
+democratic system which had been set up in that country in 1820.
+Britain alone protested against these interventions, claiming that
+every state ought to be left free to fix its own form of
+government; and in 1822 Canning had practically withdrawn from the
+League of Peace, because it was being turned into an engine of
+oppression. It was notorious that, Spain once subjugated, the
+monarchs desired to go on to the reconquest of the revolting
+Spanish colonies in South America. Britain could not undertake a
+war on the Continent against all the Continental powers combined,
+but she could prevent their intervention in America, and Canning
+made it plain that the British fleet would forbid any such action.
+To strengthen his hands, he suggested to the American ambassador
+that the United States might take common action in this sense. The
+result was the famous message of President Monroe to Congress in
+December 1823, which declared that the United States accepted the
+doctrine of non-intervention, and that they would resist any
+attempt on the part of the European monarchs to establish their
+reactionary system in the New World.
+
+In effect this was a declaration of support for Britain. It was so
+regarded by Monroe's most influential adviser, Thomas Jefferson.
+'Great Britain,' he wrote, 'is the nation which can do us the most
+harm of any one, or all, on earth, and with her on our side we
+need not fear the whole world. With her, then, we should the most
+sedulously cherish a cordial friendship; and nothing would tend
+more to knit our affection than to be fighting once more side by
+side hi the same cause.' To be fighting side by side with Britain
+in the same cause--the cause of the secure establishment of
+freedom in the world--this seemed to the Democrat Jefferson an
+object worth aiming at; and the promise of this seemed to be the
+main recommendation of the Monroe Doctrine. It was intended as an
+alliance for the defence of freedom, not as a proclamation of
+aloofness; and thus America seemed to be taking her natural place
+as one of the powers concerned to strengthen law and liberty, not
+only within her own borders, but throughout the world.
+
+The Monroe Doctrine was rapidly accepted as expressing the
+fundamental principle of American foreign policy. But under the
+influence of the powerful tradition which we have attempted to
+analyse, its significance was gradually changed; and instead of
+being interpreted as a proclamation that the great republic could
+not be indifferent to the fate of liberty, and would co-operate to
+defend it from attack in all cases where such co-operation was
+reasonably practicable, it came to be interpreted by average
+public opinion as meaning that America had no concern with the
+politics of the Old World, and that the states of the Old World
+must not be allowed to meddle in any of the affairs of either
+American continent. The world of civilisation was to be divided
+into water-tight compartments; as if it were not indissolubly one.
+Yet even in this rather narrow form, the Monroe doctrine has on
+the whole been productive of good; it has helped to save South
+America from becoming one of the fields of rivalry of the European
+powers.
+
+But it may be doubted whether the mere enunciation of the
+doctrine, even in this precise and definite form, has of itself
+been sufficient to secure this end. There is good reason to
+believe that the doctrine would not have been safe from challenge
+if it had not been safeguarded by the supremacy of the British
+Fleet. For throughout the last half-century all the world has
+known that any defiance of this doctrine, and any attack upon
+America, would bring Britain into the field. During all this
+period one of the factors of world-politics has been the existence
+of an informal and one-sided alliance between Britain and America.
+The alliance has been informal, because it has not rested upon any
+treaty or even upon any definite understanding. It has been one-
+sided, because while average opinion in America has been
+distrustful of Britain, has been apt to put unfavourable
+constructions upon British policy, and has generally failed to
+appreciate the value and significance of the work which Britain
+has done in the outer world, Britain, on the other hand, has
+always known that America stood for justice and freedom; and
+therefore, however difficult the relations between the two powers
+might occasionally become, Britain has steadfastly refused to
+consider the possibility of a breach with America, and with rare
+exceptions has steadily given her support to American policy. The
+action of the British squadron off the Philippines in 1898, in
+quietly interposing itself between the threatening German guns and
+the American Fleet, has, in fact, been broadly typical of the
+British attitude. This factor has not only helped to preserve the
+Monroe Doctrine from challenge, it has indirectly contributed to
+deepen the American conviction that it was possible, even in the
+changed conditions of the modern world, to maintain a complete
+isolation from the political controversies of the powers.
+
+During the period 1815-1878, then, while the greater part of
+Europe was still indifferent to extra-European affairs, America
+had developed into a vast state wherein freedom and law were
+enthroned, a huge melting-pot wherein diverse peoples were being
+gradually unified and turned into a new nation under the moulding
+power of a great tradition of liberty. But her geographical
+position, and certain elements in her tradition, had hitherto led
+her to abstain from, and even to repudiate, that great part in the
+shaping of the common destinies of civilisation to which she was
+manifestly called by her wealth, her numbers, her freedom, and her
+share in the traditions of all the European peoples. In the nature
+of things, whatever some Americans might think, this voluntary
+isolation could not continue for ever. It was to be brought to an
+end by the fevered developments of the next era, and by the great
+challenge to the liberties of the world in which it culminated.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1815-1878
+
+
+Mighty as had been the achievements of other lands which have been
+surveyed in the last section, the main part in the expansion of
+European civilisation over the world during the first three-
+quarters of the nineteenth century was played by Britain. For she
+was engaged in opening out new continents and sub-continents; and
+she was giving an altogether new significance to the word
+'Empire.' Above all, she was half-blindly laying the foundations
+of a system whereby freedom and the enriching sense of national
+unity might be realised at once in the new and vacant lands of the
+earth, and among its oldest civilised peoples; she was feeling her
+way towards a mode of linking diverse and free states in a common
+brotherhood of peace and mutual respect. There is no section of
+the history of European imperialism more interesting than the
+story of the growth and organisation of the heterogeneous and
+disparate empire with which Britain entered upon the new age.
+
+This development appeared, on the surface, to be quite haphazard,
+and to be governed by no clearly grasped theories or policy. It is
+indeed true that at all times British policy has not been governed
+by theory, but by the moulding force of a tradition of ordered
+freedom. The period produced in Britain no imperialist statesman
+of the first rank, nor did imperial questions play a leading part
+in the deliberations of parliament. In fact, the growth of the
+British Empire and its organisation were alike spontaneous and
+unsystematic; their only guide (but it proved to be a good guide)
+was the spirit of self-government, existing in every scattered
+section of the people; and the part played by the colonists
+themselves, and by the administrative officers in India and
+elsewhere, was throughout more important than the part played by
+colonial secretaries, East Indian directors, parliamentarians and
+publicists at home. For that reason the story is not easily
+handled in a broad and simple way.
+
+Enjoying almost a monopoly of oversea activity, Britain was free,
+in most parts of the world, to expand her dominions as she thought
+fit. Her statesmen, however, were far from desiring further
+expansion: they rightly felt that the responsibilities already
+assumed were great enough to tax the resources of any state,
+however rich and populous. But, try as they would, they could not
+prevent the inevitable process of expansion. Several causes
+contributed to produce this result. Perhaps the most important was
+the unexampled growth of British trade, which during these years
+dominated the whole world; and the flag is apt to follow trade. A
+second cause was the pressure of economic distress and the
+extraordinarily rapid increase of population at home, leading to
+wholesale emigration; in the early years of the century an
+extravagantly severe penal code, which inflicted the penalty of
+death, commonly commuted into transportation, for an incredible
+number of offences, gave an artificial impetus to this movement.
+The restless and adventurous spirit of the settlers in huge and
+unexplored new countries contributed another motive for expansion.
+And in some cases, notably in India, political necessity seemed to
+demand annexations. Over a movement thus stimulated, the home
+authorities found themselves, with the best will in the world,
+unable to exercise any effective restraint; and the already
+colossal British Empire continued to grow. It is no doubt to be
+regretted that other European nations were not able during this
+period to take part in the development of the non-European world
+in a more direct way than by sending emigrants to America or the
+British lands. But it is quite certain that the growth of British
+territory is not to be attributed in any degree to the deliberate
+policy, or to the greed, of the home government, which did
+everything in its power to check it.
+
+In India the Russian menace seemed to necessitate the adoption of
+a policy towards the independent states of the North-West which
+brought an extension of the frontier, between 1839 and 1849, to
+the great mountain ranges which form the natural boundary of India
+in this direction; while a succession of intolerable and quite
+unprovoked aggressions by the Burmese led to a series of wars
+which resulted in the annexation of very great territories in the
+east and north-east: Assam, Aracan, and Tenasserim hi 1825; Pegu
+and Rangoon in 1853; finally, in 1885-86, the whole remainder of
+the Burmese Empire. In North America settlers found their way
+across the Rocky Mountains or over the Isthmus of Panama into the
+region of British Columbia, which was given a distinct colonial
+organisation in 1858; and the colonisation of the Red River
+Settlement, 1811-18, which became hi 1870 the province of
+Manitoba, began the development of the great central plain. In
+South Africa frontier wars with the Kaffirs, and the restless
+movements of Boer trekkers, brought about an expansion of the
+limits of Cape Colony, the annexation of Natal, and the temporary
+annexation of the Orange River Settlement and the Transvaal; but
+all these additions were most reluctantly accepted; the Orange
+River Settlement and the Transvaal soon had their independence
+restored, though the former, at any rate, accepted it unwillingly.
+In Australia, drafts of new settlers planting themselves at new
+points led to the organisation of six distinct colonies between
+1825 and 1859; and this implied the definite annexation of the
+whole continent. New Zealand was annexed in 1839, but only because
+British traders had already established themselves in the islands,
+were in unhappy relations with the natives, and had to be brought
+under control.
+
+But it was not the territorial expansion of the British Empire
+which gave significance to this period in its history, but, in a
+far higher degree, the new principles of government which were
+developed during its course. The new colonial policy which
+gradually shaped itself during this age was so complete a
+departure from every precedent of the past, and represented so
+remarkable an experiment in imperial government, that its sources
+deserve a careful analysis. It was brought into being by a number
+of distinct factors and currents of opinion which were at work
+both in Britain and in the colonies.
+
+In the first place, there existed in Britain, as in other European
+countries, a large body of opinion which held that all colonies
+were sure to demand and obtain their independence as soon as they
+became strong enough to desire it; that as independent states they
+could be quite as profitable to the mother-country as they could
+ever be while they remained attached to her, more especially if
+the parting took place without bitterness; and that the wisest
+policy for Britain to pursue was therefore to facilitate their
+development, to place no barrier in the way of the increase of
+their self-government, and to enable them at the earliest moment
+to start as free nations on their own account. This was not,
+indeed, the universal, nor perhaps even the preponderant, attitude
+in regard to the colonies in the middle of the nineteenth century.
+But it was pretty common. It appeared in the most unexpected
+quarters, as when Disraeli said that the colonies were 'millstones
+about our necks,' or as when The Times advocated in a leading
+article the cession of Canada to the United States, on the ground
+that annexation to the great Republic was the inevitable destiny
+of that colony, and that it was much better that it should be
+carried out in a peaceable and friendly way than after a conflict.
+It is difficult to-day to realise that men could ever have
+entertained such opinions. But they were widely held; and it must
+at least be obvious that the prevalence of these views is quite
+inconsistent with the idea that Britain was deliberately following
+a policy of expansion and annexation in this age. Men who held
+these opinions (and they were to be found in every party) regarded
+with resentment and alarm every addition to what seemed to them
+the useless burdens assumed by the nation, and required to be
+satisfied that every new annexation of territory was not merely
+justifiable, but inevitable.
+
+A second factor which contributed to the change of attitude
+towards the colonies was the growing influence of a new school of
+economic thought, the school of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus.
+Their ideas had begun to affect national policy as early as the
+twenties, when Huskisson took the first steps on the way to free
+trade. In the thirties the bulk of the trading and industrial
+classes had become converts to these ideas, which won their
+definite victories in the budgets of Sir Robert Peel, 1843-46, and
+in those of his disciple Gladstone. The essence of this doctrine,
+as it affected colonial policy, was that the regulation of trade
+by government, which had been the main object of the old colonial
+policy, brought no advantages, but only checked its free
+development. And for a country in the position which Britain then
+occupied, this was undeniably true; so overwhelming was her
+preponderance in world-trade that every current seemed to set in
+her direction, and the removal of artificial barriers, originally
+designed to train the current towards her shores, allowed it to
+follow its natural course. The only considerable opposition to
+this body of economic doctrine came from those who desired to
+protect British agriculture; but this motive had (at this period)
+no bearing upon colonial trade. The triumph of the doctrine of
+free trade meant that the principal motive which had earlier led
+to restrictions upon the self-government of the colonies--the
+desire to secure commercial advantages for the mother-country--was
+no longer operative. The central idea of the old colonial system
+was destroyed by the disciples of Adam Smith; and there no longer
+remained any apparent reason why the mother-country should desire
+to control the fiscal policy of the colonies. An even more
+important result of the adoption of this new economic doctrine was
+that it destroyed every motive which would lead the British
+government to endeavour to secure for British traders a monopoly
+of the traffic with British possessions. Henceforth all
+territories administered under the direct control of the home
+government were thrown open as freely to the merchants of other
+countries as to those of Britain herself. The part which Britain
+now undertook in the undeveloped regions of her empire (except in
+so far as they were controlled by fully self-governing colonies)
+was simply that of maintaining peace and law; and in these regions
+she adopted an attitude which may fairly be described as the
+attitude, not of a monopolist, but of a trustee for civilisation.
+It was this policy which explains the small degree of jealousy
+with which the rapid expansion of her territory was regarded by
+the rest of the civilised world. If the same policy had been
+followed, not necessarily at home, but in their colonial
+possessions, by all the colonising powers, the motives for
+colonial rivalry would have been materially diminished, and the
+claims of various states to colonial territories, when the period
+of rivalry began, would have been far more easily adjusted.
+
+These were negative forces, leading merely to the abandonment of
+the older colonial theories. But there were also positive and
+constructive forces at work. First among them may be noted a new
+body of definite theory as to the function which colonies ought to
+play in the general economy of the civilised world. It was held to
+be their function not (as in the older theory) to afford lucrative
+opportunities for trade to the mother-country: so far as trade was
+concerned it seemed to matter little whether a country was a
+colony or an independent state. But the main object of
+colonisation was, on this view, the systematic draining-off of the
+surplus population of the older lands. This, it was felt, could
+not safely be left to the operation of mere chance; and one of the
+great advantages of colonial possessions was that they enabled the
+country which controlled them to deal in a scientific way with its
+surplus population, and to prevent the reproduction of unhealthy
+conditions in the new communities, which was apt to result if
+emigrants were allowed to drift aimlessly wheresoever chance took
+them, and received no guidance as to the proper modes of
+establishing themselves in their new homes. The great apostle of
+this body of colonial theory was Edward Gibbon Wakefield; and his
+book, A View of the Art of Colonisation (1847), deserves to be
+noted as one of the classics of the history of imperialism. He did
+not confine himself to theory, but was tireless in organising
+practical experiments. They were carried out, in a curious revival
+of the methods of the seventeenth century, by means of a series of
+colonising companies which Wakefield promoted. The settlement of
+South Australia, the first considerable settlement in the North
+Island of New Zealand, and the two admirably designed and executed
+settlements of Canterbury and Otago in the South Island of New
+Zealand, were all examples of his methods: with the exception of
+the North Island settlement, they were all very successful. Nor
+were these the only instances of organised and assisted
+emigration. In 1820 a substantial settlement, financed by
+government, was made in the eastern part of Cape Colony, in the
+region of Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, and this brought the
+first considerable body of British inhabitants into South Africa,
+hitherto almost exclusively Dutch. An unsuccessful plantation at
+Swan River in West Australia may also be noted. Systematic and
+scientific colonisation was thus being studied in Britain during
+this period as never before. In the view of its advocates Britain
+was the trustee of civilisation for the administration of the most
+valuable unpeopled regions of the earth, and it was her duty to
+see that they were skilfully utilised. So high a degree of success
+attended some of their efforts that it is impossible not to regret
+that they were not carried further. But they depended upon Crown
+control of undeveloped lands. With the growth of full self-
+government in the colonies the exercise of these Crown functions
+was transferred from the ministry and parliament of Britain to the
+ministries and parliaments of the colonies; and this transference
+put an end to the possibility of a centralised organisation and
+direction of emigration.
+
+A second constructive factor very potently at work during this age
+was the humanitarian spirit, which had become a powerful factor in
+British life during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
+centuries. It had received perhaps its most practical expression
+in the abolition of the slave-trade in 1806, and the campaign
+against the slave-trade in the rest of the world became an
+important object of British policy from that time onwards. Having
+abolished the slave-trade, the humanitarians proceeded to advocate
+the complete abolition of negro slavery throughout the British
+Empire. They won their victory in 1833, when the British
+parliament declared slavery illegal throughout the Empire, and
+voted 20,000,000 pounds--at a time when British finance was still
+suffering from the burdens of the Napoleonic War--to purchase from
+their masters the freedom of all the slaves then existing in the
+Empire. It was a noble deed, but it was perhaps carried out a
+little too suddenly, and it led to grave difficulties, especially
+in the West Indies, whose prosperity was seriously impaired, and
+in South Africa, where it brought about acute friction with the
+slave-owning Boer farmers. But it gave evidence of the adoption of
+a new attitude towards the backward races, hitherto mercilessly
+exploited by all the imperialist powers. One expression of this
+attitude had already been afforded by the organisation (1787) of
+the colony of Sierra Leone, on the West African coast, as a place
+of refuge for freed slaves desiring to return to the land of their
+fathers.
+
+It was principally through the activity of missionaries that this
+new point of view was expressed and cultivated. Organised
+missionary activity in Britain dates from the end of the
+eighteenth century, but its range grew with extraordinary rapidity
+throughout the period. And wherever the missionaries went, they
+constituted themselves the protectors and advocates of the native
+races among whom they worked. Often enough they got themselves
+into bad odour with the European traders and settlers with whom
+they came in contact. But through their powerful home
+organisations they exercised very great influence over public
+opinion and over government policy. The power of 'Exeter Hall,'
+where the religious bodies and the missionary societies held their
+meetings in London, was at its height in the middle of the
+nineteenth century, and politicians could not afford to disregard
+it, even if they had desired to do so. This influence, supporting
+the trend of humanitarian opinion, succeeded in establishing it as
+one of the principles of British imperial policy that it was the
+duty of the British government to protect the native races against
+the exploitation of the European settlers, and to guide them
+gently into a civilised way of life. It is a sound and noble
+principle, and it may fairly be said that it has been honestly
+carried out, so far as the powers of the home government rendered
+possible. No government in the world controls a greater number or
+variety of subjects belonging to the backward races than the
+British; no trading nation has had greater opportunities for the
+oppressive exploitation of defenceless subjects. Yet the grave
+abuse of these opportunities has been infrequent. There have been
+in the history of modern British imperialism sporadic instances of
+injustice, like the forced labour of Kanakas in the Pacific. But
+there have been no Congo outrages, no Putumayo atrocities, no
+Pequena slave scandals, no merciless slaughter like that of the
+Hereros in German South-West Africa.
+
+The principle of the protection of backward peoples has, however,
+sometimes had an unfortunate influence upon colonial policy; and
+there was no colony in which it exercised a more unhappy effect
+than South Africa. Here the Boer farmers still retained towards
+their native neighbours the attitude which had been characteristic
+of all the European peoples in the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries: they regarded the negro as a natural inferior, born to
+servitude. It is not surprising that no love was lost between the
+Boers and the missionaries, who appeared as the protectors of the
+negroes, and whose representations turned British opinion
+violently against the whole Boer community. This was in itself a
+sufficiently unfortunate result: it lies largely at the base of
+the prolonged disharmony which divided the two peoples in South
+Africa. The belief that the Boers could not be trusted to deal
+fairly with the natives formed, for a long period, the chief
+reason which urged the British Government to retain their control
+over the Boers, even when they had trekked away from the Cape
+(1836) and established themselves beyond the Orange and the Vaal
+rivers; and the conflict of this motive with the desire to avoid
+any increase of colonial responsibilities, and with the feeling
+that if the Boers disliked the British system, they had better be
+left in freedom to organise themselves in their own way, accounts
+for the curious vacillation in the policy of the period on this
+question. At first the trekkers were left to themselves; then the
+lands which they had occupied were annexed; then their
+independence was recognised; and finally, when, at the end of the
+period, they seemed to be causing a dangerous excitement among the
+Zulus and other native tribes, the Transvaal was once more
+annexed; with the result that revolt broke out, and the Majuba
+campaign had to be fought.
+
+Again, tenderness for the natives led to several curious and not
+very successful experiments in organisation. The annexation of
+Natal was long delayed because it was held that this area ought to
+form a native reserve, and fruitless attempts were made to
+restrict the settlement of Europeans in this empty and fertile
+land. An attempt was also made to set up a series of native areas
+under British protection, from which the white settler was
+excluded. British Kaffraria, Griqualand East and Griqualand West
+were examples of this policy, which is still represented, not
+unsuccessfully, by the great protected area of Basutoland. But, on
+the whole, these experiments in the handling of the native problem
+in South Africa did more harm than good. They were unsuccessful
+mainly because South Africa was a white man's country, into which
+the most vigorous of the native races, those of the Bantu stock
+(Kaffirs, Zulus, Matabili, etc.), were more recent immigrants than
+the white men themselves. Owing to their warlike character and
+rapidly growing numbers they constituted for a long time a very
+formidable danger; and neither the missionaries nor the home
+authorities sufficiently recognised these facts.
+
+Perhaps the most unhappy result of this friction over the native
+question, apart from the alienation of Boer and Briton which it
+produced, was the fact that it was the principal cause of the long
+delay in establishing self-governing institutions in South Africa.
+The home government hesitated to give to the colonists full
+control over their own affairs, because it distrusted the use
+which they were likely to make of their powers over the natives;
+even the normal institutions of all British colonies were not
+established in Cape Colony till 1854, and in Natal till 1883. But
+although in this case the new attitude towards the backward races
+led to some unhappy results, the spirit which inspired it was
+altogether admirable, and its growing strength accounts in part
+for the real degree of success which has been achieved by British
+administrators in the government of regions not suited for the
+settlement of Europeans in large numbers. Indeed, this spirit has
+come to be one of the outstanding features of modern British
+imperialism.
+
+It was not only in the treatment of backward races that the
+humanitarian spirit made itself felt. It was at work also in the
+government of the highly developed civilisations of India, where,
+during this period, British power began to be boldly used to put
+an end to barbarous or inhumane practices which were supported or
+tolerated by the religious beliefs or immemorial social usages of
+India. Such practices as thagi, or meria sacrifices, or female
+infanticide, or, above all, sati, had been left undisturbed by the
+earlier rulers of British India, because they feared that
+interference with them would be resented as an infraction of
+Indian custom or religion. They were now boldly attacked, and
+practically abolished, without evil result.
+
+Alongside of this new courage in measures that seemed to be
+dictated by the moral ideas of the West, there was to be seen
+growing throughout this period a new temper of respect for Indian
+civilisation and a desire to study and understand it, and to
+safeguard its best features. The study of early Indian literature,
+law, and religious philosophy had indeed been begun in the
+eighteenth century by Sir William Jones and Nathaniel Halhed, with
+the ardent encouragement of Warren Hastings. But in this as in
+other respects Hastings was ahead of the political opinion of his
+time; the prevalent idea was that the best thing for India would
+be the introduction, so far as possible, of British methods. This
+led to the absurdities of the Supreme Court, established in 1773
+to administer English law to Indians. It led also to the great
+blunder of Cornwallis's settlement of the land question in Bengal,
+which was an attempt to assimilate the Indian land-system to that
+of England, and resulted in an unhappy weakening of the village
+communities, the most healthy features of Indian rural life. In
+the nineteenth century this attitude was replaced by a spirit of
+respect for Indian traditions and methods of organisation, and by
+a desire to retain and strengthen their best features. The new
+attitude was perhaps to be seen at its best in the work of
+Mountstuart Elphinstone, a great administrator who was also a
+profound student of Indian history, and a very sympathetic
+observer and friend of Indian customs and modes of life. But the
+same spirit was exemplified by the whole of the remarkable
+generation of statesmen of whom Elphinstone was one. They
+established the view that it was the duty of the British power to
+reorganise India, indeed, but to reorganise it on lines in
+accordance with its own traditions. Above all, the principle was
+in this generation very definitely established that India, like
+other great dependencies, must be administered in the interests of
+its own people, and not in the interests of the ruling race. That
+seems to us to-day a platitude. It would not have seemed a
+platitude in the eighteenth century. It would not seem a platitude
+in modern Germany. And it may safely be said that the enunciation
+of such a doctrine would have seemed merely absurd in any of the
+earlier historical empires. In 1833 an official report laid before
+the British parliament contained these remarkable words: 'It is
+recognised as an indisputable principle, that the interests of the
+Native Subjects are to be consulted in preference to those of
+Europeans, wherever the two come in competition.' In all the
+records of imperialism it would be hard to find a parallel to this
+formal statement of policy by the supreme government of a ruling
+race. When such a statement could be made, it is manifest that the
+meaning of the word Empire had undergone a remarkable
+transformation. No one can read the history of British rule in
+India during this period without feeling that, in spite of
+occasional lapses, this was its real spirit.
+
+But the most powerful constructive element in the shaping of the
+new imperial policy of Britain was the strength of the belief in
+the idea of self-government, as not only morally desirable but
+practically efficacious, which was to be perceived at work in the
+political circles of Britain during this age. Self-government had
+throughout the modern age been a matter of habit and practice with
+the British peoples; now it became a matter of theory and belief.
+And from this resulted a great change of attitude towards the
+problems of colonial administration. The American problem in the
+eighteenth century had arisen ultimately out of the demand of the
+Americans for unqualified and responsible control over their own
+affairs: the attitude of the Englishman in reply to this demand
+(though he never clearly analysed it) was, in effect, that self-
+government was a good and desirable thing, but that on the scale
+on which the Americans claimed it, it would be fatal to the unity
+of the Empire, and the unity of the Empire must come first. Faced
+by similar problems in the nineteenth century, the Englishman's
+response generally was that self-government on the fullest scale
+was the right of all who were fit to exercise it, and the most
+satisfactory working solution of political problems. Therefore the
+right must be granted; and the unity of the Empire must take care
+of itself. No doubt this attitude was more readily adopted because
+of the widespread belief that in fact the colonies would all
+sooner or later cut their connection with the mother-country. But
+it was fully shared by men who did not hold this view, and who
+believed strongly in the possibility and desirability of
+maintaining imperial unity. It was shared, for example, by
+Wakefield, a convinced imperialist if ever there was one, and by
+that great colonial administrator, Sir George Grey. It was shared
+by Lord Durham and by Lord John Russell, who were largely
+responsible for the adoption of the new policy. Their belief and
+hope was that the common possession of free institutions of
+kindred types would in fact form the most effective tie between
+the lands which enjoyed them. This hope obtained an eloquent
+expression in the speech in which, in 1852, Russell introduced the
+bill for granting to the Australian colonies self-government on
+such a scale as amounted almost to independence. It is not true,
+as is sometimes said, that the self-governing institutions of the
+colonies were established during this period owing to the
+indifference of the home authorities, and their readiness to put
+an end to the connection. The new policy of these years was
+deliberately adopted; and although its acceptance by parliament
+was rendered easier by the prevalence of disbelief in the
+permanence of the imperial tie, yet, on the part of the
+responsible men, it was due to far-sighted statesmanship.
+
+The critical test of the new colonial policy, and the most
+dramatic demonstration of its efficacy, were afforded by Canada,
+where, during the thirties, the conditions which preceded the
+revolt of the American colonies were being reproduced with curious
+exactness. The self-governing institutions established in the
+Canadian colonies in 1791 very closely resembled those of the
+American colonies before the revolution: they gave to the
+representative houses control over taxation and legislation, but
+neither control over, nor responsibility for, the executive. And
+the same results were following. Incomplete self-government was
+striving after its own fulfilment: the denial of responsibility
+was producing irresponsibility. These was the same unceasing
+friction between governors and their councils on the one hand, and
+the representative bodies on the other hand; and the assemblies
+were showing the same unreasonableness in refusing to meet
+manifest public obligations. This state of things was becoming
+steadily more acute in all the colonies, but it was at its worst
+in the province of Quebec, where the constitutional friction was
+embittered by a racial conflict, the executive body being British,
+while the great majority of the assembly was French; and the
+conflict was producing a very dangerous alienation between the two
+peoples. The French colonists had quite forgotten the gratitude
+they had once felt for the maintenance of their religion and of
+their social organisation, and there was a strong party among them
+who were bent upon open revolt, and hoped to be able to establish
+a little isolated French community upon the St. Lawrence. This
+party of hotheads got the upper hand, and their agitation
+culminated in the rebellion of Papineau in 1837. In the other
+colonies, and especially in Upper Canada, the conditions were
+almost equally ominous; when Papineau revolted in Quebec, William
+Mackenzie led a sympathetic rising in Ontario. The situation was
+quite as alarming as the situation in the American colonies had
+been in 1775. It is true that the risings were easily put down.
+But mere repression formed no solution, any more than a British
+victory in 1775 would have formed a solution of the American
+question.
+
+Realising this, the Whig government sent out Lord Durham, one of
+their own number, to report on the whole situation. Durham was one
+of the most advanced Liberals in Britain, a convinced believer in
+the virtues of self-government, and he took out with him two of
+the ablest advocates of scientific colonisation, Edward Gibbon
+Wakefield and Charles Buller. Durham's administrative work was not
+a success: his high-handed deportation of some of the rebel
+leaders was strongly condemned, and he was very quickly recalled.
+But he had had time to study and understand the situation, and he
+presented a masterly Report on Canada, which is one of the
+classics in the history of British imperialism. His explanation of
+the unhappy condition of Canadian politics was not (as some were
+tempted to say) that the colonists had been given too much
+liberty, but that they had not been given enough. They must be
+made to feel their responsibility for the working of the laws
+which they adopted, and for the welfare of the whole community. As
+for the conflict of races, its only cure was that both should be
+made to feel their common responsibility for the destinies of the
+community in which both must remain partners.
+
+Lord Durham's recommendations were fully carried into effect,
+partly in the Canada Act of 1840, but more especially by a simple
+instruction issued to governors, that their ministries must
+henceforward be chosen, in the British fashion, on the ground that
+they commanded the support of a majority in the elected house; and
+that the governors themselves must be guided by their advice. A
+crucial test of this new policy came in 1849, when the ministers
+and the parliamentary majority proposed to vote compensation for
+property destroyed in 1837. This to many seemed compensation for
+rebels, and the indignant loyalists were urgent that the governor,
+Lord Elgin, should veto it. He firmly declined to do so; and thus
+gave an invaluable lesson to both parties. The Canadian people,
+acting through their representatives, were now responsible for
+their actions. If they chose to vote for irresponsible and
+dangerous devices, they must henceforward realise that they must
+themselves answer for the consequences.
+
+Thus, within a few years of the outbreak of rebellion in two
+provinces, full power had been entrusted to the rebels themselves.
+It was a daring policy, only to be justified by a very confident
+belief in the virtues of self-government. But it was completely
+and triumphantly successful. Henceforward friction between the
+Canadian colonies and the mother-country ceased: if there were
+grounds for complaint in the state of Canadian affairs, the
+Canadians must now blame their own ministers, and the remedy lay
+in their own hands. And what was the outcome? Twenty years later
+the various colonies, once as full of mutual jealousies as the
+American colonies had been before 1775, began to discuss the
+possibility of federation. With the cordial approval and co-
+operation of the home government, they drew up a scheme for the
+formation of a united Dominion of Canada, including distant
+British Columbia and the coastal colonies of Nova Scotia, New
+Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island; and the adoption of this
+scheme, in 1867, turned Canada from a bundle of separate
+settlements into a great state. To this state the home government
+later made over the control of all the vast and rich lands of the
+North-West, and so the destinies of half a continent passed under
+its direction. It was a charge, the magnitude and challenge of
+which could not but bring forth all that there was of
+statesmanship among the Canadian people; and it has not failed to
+do so.
+
+One feature of Canadian constitutional development remains to be
+noted. It might have been expected that the Canadians would have
+been tempted to follow the political model of their great
+neighbour the United States; and if their development had been the
+outcome of friction with the mother-country, no doubt they would
+have done so. But they preferred to follow the British model. The
+keynote of the American system is division of power: division
+between the federal government and the state governments, which
+form mutual checks upon one another; division between the
+executive and the legislature, which are independent of one
+another at once in the states and in the federal government, both
+being directly elected by popular vote. The keynote of the British
+system is concentration of responsibility by the subordination of
+the executive to the legislature. The Canadians adopted the
+British principle: what had formerly been distinct colonies
+became, not 'states' but 'provinces,' definitely subordinated to
+the supreme central government; and whether in the federal or in
+the provincial system, the control of government by the
+representative body was finally established. This concord with the
+British system is a fact of real import. It means that the
+political usages of the home-country and the great Dominion are so
+closely assimilated that political co-operation between them is
+far easier than it otherwise might be; it increases the
+possibility of a future link more intimate than that of mere co-
+operation.
+
+Not less whole-hearted or generous than the treatment of the
+problems of Canadian government was the treatment of the same
+problem in Australia. Here, as a matter of course, all the
+colonies had been endowed, at the earliest possible date, with the
+familiar system of representative but not responsible government.
+No such acute friction as had occurred in Canada had yet shown
+itself, though signs of its development were not lacking. But in
+1852 an astonishing step was taken by the British parliament: the
+various Australian colonies were empowered to elect single-chamber
+constituent assemblies to decide the forms of government under
+which they wished to live. They decided in every case to reproduce
+as nearly as possible the British system: legislatures of two
+chambers, with ministries responsible to them. Thus, in Australia
+as in Canada, the daughter-peoples were made to feel the community
+of their institutions with those of the mother-country, and the
+possibility of intimate and easy co-operation was increased. Two
+years later, in 1854, New Zealand was endowed with the same
+system. Among all the British realms in which the white man was
+predominant, only South Africa was as yet excluded from this
+remarkable development. The reasons for this exclusion we have
+already noted: its consequences will occupy our attention in later
+pages.
+
+Very manifestly the empire which was developing on such lines was
+not an empire in the old sense--a dominion imposed by force upon
+unwilling subjects. That old word, which has been used in so many
+senses, was being given a wholly new connotation. It was being
+made to mean a free partnership of self-governing peoples, held
+together not by force, but in part by common interests, and in a
+still higher degree by common sentiment and the possession of the
+same institutions of liberty.
+
+In the fullest sense, however, this new conception of empire
+applied only to the group of the great self-governing colonies.
+There were many other regions, even before 1878, included within
+the British Empire, though as yet it had not incorporated those
+vast protectorates over regions peopled by backward races which
+have been added during the last generation. There were tropical
+settlements like British Honduras, British Guiana, Sierra Leone,
+and Cape Coast Castle; there were many West Indian Islands, and
+scattered possessions like Mauritius and Hong-Kong and Singapore
+and the Straits Settlements; there were garrison towns or coaling-
+stations like Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, St. Helena. To none of these
+were the institutions of full responsible self-government granted.
+Some of them possessed representative institutions without
+responsible ministries; in others the governor was assisted by a
+nominated council, intended to express local opinion, but not
+elected by the inhabitants; in yet others the governor ruled
+autocratically. But in all these cases the ultimate control of
+policy was retained by the home government. And in this general
+category, as yet, the South African colonies were included. Why
+were these distinctions drawn? Why did the generation of British
+statesmen, who had dealt so generously with the demand for self-
+government in Canada and Australia, stop short and refuse to carry
+out their principles in these other cases?
+
+It is characteristic of British politics that they are never
+merely or fully logical, and that even when political doctrines
+seem to enjoy the most complete ascendancy, they are never put
+into effect without qualifications or exceptions. The exceptions
+already named to the establishment of full self-government were
+due to many and varying causes. In the first place, there was in
+most of these cases no effective demand for full self-government;
+and it may safely be asserted that any community in which there is
+no demand for self-governing institutions is probably not in a
+condition to work them with effect. Some of these possessions were
+purely military posts, like Gibraltar and Aden, and were
+necessarily administered as such. Others were too small and weak
+to dream of assuming the full privileges. But in the majority of
+cases one outstanding common feature will appear on closer
+analysis. Nearly all these territories were tropical or semi-
+tropical lands, whose British inhabitants were not permanent
+settlers, but were present solely for the purposes of trade or
+other exploitation, while the bulk of the population consisted of
+backward peoples, whose traditions and civilisation rendered their
+effective participation in public affairs quite impracticable. In
+such cases, to have given full political power to the small and
+generally shifting minority of white men would have been to give
+scope to many evils; and to have enfranchised, on a mere theory,
+the mass of the population would have been to produce still worse
+results. It would have sentenced these communities to the sort of
+fate which has befallen the beautiful island of Hayti, where the
+self-government of a population of emancipated negro slaves has
+brought nothing but anarchy and degradation. In such conditions
+the steady Reign of Law is the greatest boon that can be given to
+white settlers and coloured subjects alike; and the final
+authority is rightly retained by the home government, inspired, as
+British opinion has long required that it should be, by the
+principle that the rights of the backward peoples must be
+safeguarded. Under this system, both law and a real degree of
+liberty are made possible; whereas under a doctrinaire application
+of the theory of self-government, both would vanish.
+
+But there remains the vast dominion of India, which falls neither
+into the one category nor into the other. Though there are many
+primitive and backward elements among its vast population, there
+are also peoples and castes whose members are intellectually
+capable of meeting on equal terms the members of any of the ruling
+races of the West. Yet during this age, when self-government on
+the amplest scale was being extended to the chief regions of the
+British Empire, India, the greatest dominion of them all, did not
+obtain the gift of representative institutions even on the most
+modest scale. Why was this?
+
+It was not because the ruling race was hostile to the idea, or
+desired merely to retain its own ascendancy. On the contrary, both
+in Britain and among the best of the British administrators in
+India, it was increasingly held that the only ultimate
+justification for the British power in India would be that under
+its guidance the Indian peoples should be gradually enabled to
+govern themselves. As early as 1824, when in Europe sheer reaction
+was at its height, this view was being strongly urged by one of
+the greatest of Anglo-Indian administrators, Sir Thomas Munro, a
+soldier of distinction, then serving as governor of Madras. 'We
+should look upon India,' he wrote, 'not as a temporary possession,
+but as one which is to be maintained permanently, until the
+natives shall have abandoned most of their superstitions and
+prejudices, and become sufficiently enlightened to frame a regular
+government for themselves, and to conduct and preserve it.
+Whenever such a time shall arrive, it will probably be best for
+both countries that the British control over India should be
+gradually withdrawn. That the desirable change contemplated may in
+some after age be effected in India, there is no cause to despair.
+Such a change was at one time in Britain itself at least as
+hopeless as it is here. When we reflect how much the character of
+nations has always been influenced by that of governments, and
+that some, once the most cultivated, have sunk into barbarism,
+while others, formerly the rudest, have attained the highest point
+of civilisation, we shall see no reason to doubt that if we pursue
+steadily the proper measures, we shall in time so far improve the
+character of our Indian subjects as to make them able to govern
+and protect themselves.'
+
+In other words, self-government was the desirable end to be
+pursued in India as elsewhere; but in India there were many and
+grave obstacles to its efficient working, which could only slowly
+be overcome. In the first place, India is more deeply divided in
+race, language, and religion than any other region of the world.
+Nowhere else is there such a medley of peoples of every grade of
+development, from the almost savage Bhil to the cultivated and
+high-bred Brahmin or Rajput or Mahomedan chief. There are sharp
+regional differences, as great as those between the European
+countries; but cutting across these there are everywhere the rigid
+and impermeable distinctions of caste, which have no parallel
+anywhere else in the world. The experience of the Austro-Hungarian
+Empire, whose confusion of races is simplicity itself in
+comparison with the chaos of India, affords a significant
+demonstration of the fact that parliamentary institutions, if they
+are established among deeply divided peoples, must almost
+inevitably be exploited for the purpose of racial ascendancy by
+the most vigorous or the best-organised elements among the people;
+and a very ugly tyranny is apt to result, as it has resulted in
+Austro-Hungary. This consequence would almost certainly follow the
+establishment of a full representative system in India. In the
+cities of mediaeval Italy, when the conflict of parties became so
+acute that neither side could expect justice from the other, the
+practice grew up of electing a podesta from some foreign city to
+act as an impartial arbiter. The British power in India has played
+the part of a podesta in restraining and mediating between the
+conflicting peoples and religions of India.
+
+But again (and this is even more fundamental), for thousands of
+years the history of India has been one long story of conquests
+and tyrannies by successive ruling races. Always Might has been
+Right, so that the lover of righteousness could only pursue it,
+like the mediaeval ascetic, by cutting himself off from the world,
+abjuring all social ties, and immolating the flesh in order to
+live by the spirit. Always Law had been, in the last resort, the
+Will of the Stronger, not the decree of impartial justice. Always
+the master-races, the predatory bands, the ruling castes, had
+expected to receive, and the mass of the people had been
+accustomed to give, the most abject submission; and these habits
+were difficult to overcome. 'In England,' says Sir Thomas Munro,
+'the people resist oppression, and it is their spirit which gives
+efficacy to the law: in India the people rarely resist oppression,
+and the law intended to secure them from it can therefore derive
+no aid from themselves. ... It is in vain to caution them against
+paying by telling them that the law is on their side, and will
+support them in refusing to comply with unauthorised demands. All
+exhortations on this head are thrown away, and after listening to
+them they will the very next day submit to extortion as quietly as
+before.' How could representative institutions be expected to work
+under such conditions? They would have lacked the very foundation
+upon which alone they can firmly rest: respect for law, and public
+co-operation in the enforcement of it. Thus the supreme service
+which the government of India could render to its people was the
+establishment and maintenance of the Reign of Law, and of the
+liberty which it shelters. In such conditions representative
+government would be liable to bring, not liberty, but anarchy and
+the renewal of lawless oppression.
+
+But although the extension of the representative system to India
+neither was nor could be attempted in this age, very remarkable
+advances were made towards turning India in a real sense into a
+self-governing country. It ceased to be regarded or treated as a
+subject dominion existing solely for the advantage of its
+conquerors. That had always been its fate in all the long
+centuries of its history; and in the first period of British rule
+the trading company which had acquired this amazing empire had
+naturally regarded it as primarily a source of profit. In 1833 the
+company was forbidden to engage in trade, and the profit-making
+motive disappeared. The shareholders still continued to receive a
+fixed dividend out of the Indian revenues, but this may be
+compared to a fixed debt-charge, an annual payment for capital
+expended in the past; and it came to an end when the company was
+abolished in 1858. Apart from this dividend, no sort of tribute
+was exacted from India by the ruling power. India was not even
+required to contribute to the upkeep of the navy, which protected
+her equally with the rest of the Empire, or of the diplomatic
+service, which was often concerned with her interests. She paid
+for the small army which guarded her frontiers; but if any part of
+it was borrowed for service abroad, its whole pay and charges were
+met by Britain. She paid the salaries and pensions of the handful
+of British administrators who conducted her government, but this
+was a very small charge in comparison with the lavish outlay of
+the native princes whom they had replaced. India had become a
+self-contained state, whose whole resources were expended
+exclusively upon her own needs, and expended with the most
+scrupulous honesty, and under the most elaborate safeguards.
+
+They were expended, moreover, especially during the later part of
+this period, largely in equipping her with the material apparatus
+of modern civilisation. Efficient police, great roads, a postal
+service cheaper than that of any other country, a well-planned
+railway system, and, above all, a gigantic system of irrigation
+which brought under cultivation vast regions hitherto desert--
+these were some of the boons acquired by India during the period.
+They were rendered possible partly by the economical management of
+her finances, partly by the liberal expenditure of British
+capital. Above all, the period saw the beginning of a system of
+popular education, of which the English language became the main
+vehicle, because none of the thirty-eight recognised vernacular
+tongues of India either possessed the necessary literature, or
+could be used as a medium for instruction in modern science. In
+1858 three universities were established; and although their
+system was ill-devised, under the malign influence of the analogy
+of London University, a very large and increasing number of young
+graduates, trained for modern occupations, began to filter into
+Indian society, and to modify its point of view. All speaking and
+writing English, and all trained in much the same body of ideas,
+they possessed a similarity of outlook and a vehicle of
+communication such as had never before linked together the various
+races and castes of India. This large and growing class, educated
+in some measure in the learning of the West, formed already, at
+the end of the period, a very important new element in the life of
+India. They were capable of criticising the work of their
+government; they were not without standards of comparison by which
+to measure its achievements; and, aided by the large freedom
+granted to the press under the British system, they were able to
+begin the creation of an intelligent public opinion, which was
+apt, in its first movements, to be ill-guided and rash, but which
+was nevertheless a healthy development. That this newly created
+class of educated men should produce a continual stream of
+criticism, and that it should even stimulate into existence public
+discontents, is by no means a condemnation of the system of
+government which has made these developments possible. On the
+contrary, it is a proof that the system has had an invigorating
+effect. For the existence and the expression of discontent is a
+sign of life; it means that there is an end of that utter docility
+which marks a people enslaved body and soul. India has never been
+more prosperous than she is to-day; she has never before known so
+impartial a system of justice as she now possesses; and these are
+legitimate grounds of pride to her rulers. But they may even more
+justly pride themselves upon the fact that in all her history
+India has never been so frankly and incessantly critical of her
+government as she is to-day; never so bold in the aspirations for
+the future which her sons entertain.
+
+The creation of the new class of Western-educated Indians also
+facilitated another development which the British government
+definitely aimed at encouraging: the participation of Indians in
+the conduct of administration in their own land. The Act of 1833
+had laid it down as a fundamental principle that 'no native of the
+said territories ... shall by reason only of his religion, place
+of birth, descent, or any of them, be disabled from holding any
+place, office, or employment.' The great majority of the minor
+administrative posts had always been held by Indians; but until
+1833 it had been held that the maintenance of British supremacy
+required that the higher offices should be reserved to members of
+the ruling race. This restriction was now abolished; but it was
+not until the development of the educational system had produced a
+body of sufficiently trained men that the new principle could
+produce appreciable results; and even then, the deficiencies of an
+undeveloped system of training, combined with the racial and
+religious jealousies which the government of India must always
+keep in mind, imposed limitations upon the rapid increase of the
+number of Indians holding the higher posts. Still, the principle
+had been laid down, and was being acted upon. And that also
+constituted a great step towards self-government.
+
+India in 1878 was governed, under the terms of a code of law based
+upon Indian custom, by a small body of British officials, among
+whom leading Indians were gradually taking their place, and who
+worked in detail through an army of minor officials, nearly all of
+Indian birth, and selected without regard to race or creed. She
+was a self-contained country whose whole resources were devoted to
+her own needs. She was prospering to a degree unexampled in her
+history; she had achieved a political unity never before known to
+her; she had been given the supreme boon of a just and impartial
+law, administered without fear or favour; and she had enjoyed a
+long period of peace, unbroken by any attack from external foes.
+Here also, as fully as in the self-governing colonies, membership
+of the British Empire did not mean subjection to the selfish
+dominion of a master, or the subordination to that master's
+interests of the vital interests of the community. It meant the
+establishment among a vast population of the essential gifts of
+Western civilisation, rational law, and the liberty which exists
+under its shelter. Empire had come to mean, not merely domination
+pursued for its own sake, but trusteeship for the extension of
+civilisation.
+
+The period of practical British monopoly, 1815-1878, had thus
+brought about a very remarkable transformation in the character of
+the British Empire. It had greatly increased in extent, and by
+every test of area, population, and natural resources, it was
+beyond comparison the greatest power that had ever existed in the
+world. But its organisation was of an extreme laxity; it possessed
+no real common government; and its principal members were united
+rather by a community of institutions and ideas than by any formal
+ties. Moreover, it presented a more amazing diversity of racial
+types, of religions, and of grades of civilisation, than any other
+political fabric which had existed in history. Its development had
+assuredly brought about a very great expansion of the ideas of
+Western civilisation over the face of the globe, and, above all, a
+remarkable diffusion of the institutions of political liberty. But
+it remained to be proved whether this loosely compacted bundle of
+states possessed any real unity, or would be capable of standing
+any severe strain. The majority of observers, both in Britain
+itself and throughout the world, would have been inclined, in
+1878, to give a negative answer to these questions.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE ERA OF THE WORLD-STATES, 1878-1900
+
+
+The Congress of Berlin in 1878 marks the close of the era of
+nationalist revolutions and wars in Europe. By the same date all
+the European states had attained to a certain stability in their
+constitutional systems. With equal definiteness this year may be
+said to mark the opening of a new era in the history of European
+imperialism; an era of eager competition for the control of the
+still unoccupied regions of the world, in which the concerns of
+remote lands suddenly became matters of supreme moment to the
+great European powers, and the peace of the world was endangered
+by questions arising in China or Siam, in Morocco or the Soudan,
+or the islands of the Pacific. The control of Europe over the non-
+European world was in a single generation completed and confirmed.
+And the most important of the many questions raised by this
+development was the question whether the spirit in which this
+world-supremacy of Europe was to be wielded should be the spirit
+which long experience had inspired in the oldest of the colonising
+nations, the spirit of trusteeship on behalf of civilisation; or
+whether it was to be the old, brutal, and sterile spirit of mere
+domination for its own sake.
+
+On a superficial view the most obvious feature of this strenuous
+period was that all the remaining unexploited regions of the world
+were either annexed by one or other of the great Western states,
+or were driven to adopt, with greater or less success, the modes
+of organisation of the West. But what was far more important than
+any new demarcation of the map was that not only the newly annexed
+lands, but also the half-developed territories of earlier European
+dominions, were with an extraordinary devouring energy penetrated
+during this generation by European traders and administrators,
+equipped with railways, steam-boats, and all the material
+apparatus of modern life, and in general organised and exploited
+for the purposes of industry and trade. This astonishing
+achievement was almost as thorough as it was swift. And its result
+was, not merely that the political control of Europe over the
+backward regions of the world was strengthened and secured by
+these means, but that the whole world was turned into a single
+economic and political unit, no part of which could henceforth
+dwell in isolation. This might have meant that we should have been
+brought nearer to some sort of world-order; but unhappily the
+spirit in which the great work was undertaken by some, at least,
+of the nations which participated in it has turned this wonderful
+achievement into a source of bitterness and enmity, and led the
+world in the end to the tragedy and agony of the Great War.
+
+The causes of this gigantic outpouring of energy were manifold.
+The main impelling forces were perhaps economic rather than
+political. But the economic needs of this strenuous age might have
+been satisfied without resort to the brutal arbitrament of war:
+their satisfaction might even have been made the means of
+diminishing the danger of war. It was the interpretation of these
+economic needs in terms of an unhappy political theory which has
+led to the final catastrophe.
+
+On a broad view, the final conquest of the world by European
+civilisation was made possible, and indeed inevitable, by the
+amazing development of the material aspects of that civilisation
+during the nineteenth century; by the progressive command over the
+forces of nature which the advance of science had placed in the
+hands of man, by the application of science to industry in the
+development of manufacturing methods and of new modes of
+communication, and by the intricate and flexible organisation of
+modern finance. These changes were already in progress before
+1878, and were already transforming the face of the world. Since
+1878 they have gone forward with such accelerating speed that we
+have been unable to appreciate the significance of the revolution
+they were effecting. We have been carried off our feet; and have
+found it impossible to adjust our moral and political ideas to the
+new conditions.
+
+The great material achievements of the last two generations have
+been mainly due to an intense concentration and specialisation of
+functions among both men of thought and men of action. But the
+result of this has been that there have been few to attempt the
+vitally important task of appreciating the movement of our
+civilisation as a whole, and of endeavouring to determine how far
+the political conceptions inherited from an earlier age were valid
+in the new conditions. For under the pressure of the great
+transformation political forces also have been transformed, and in
+all countries political thought is baffled and bewildered by the
+complexity of the problems by which it is faced. To this in part
+we owe the dimness of vision which overtook us as we went whirling
+together towards the great catastrophe. It is only in the glare of
+a world-conflagration that we begin to perceive, in something like
+their true proportions, the great forces and events which have
+been shaping our destinies. In the future, if the huge soulless
+mechanism which man has created is not to get out of hand and
+destroy him, we must abandon that contempt for the philosopher and
+the political thinker which we have latterly been too ready to
+express, and we must recognise that the task of analysing and
+relating to one another the achievements of the past and the
+problems of the present is at least as important as the increase
+of our knowledge and of our dangerous powers by intense and narrow
+concentration within very limited fields of thought and work.
+
+In the meantime we must observe (however briefly and
+inadequately), how the dazzling advances of science and industry
+have affected the conquest of the world by European civilisation,
+and why it has come about that instead of leading to amity and
+happiness, they have brought us to the most hideous catastrophe in
+human history.
+
+Science and industry, in the first place, made the conquest and
+organisation of the world easy. In the first stages of the
+expansion of Europe the material superiority of the West had
+unquestionably afforded the means whereby its political ideas and
+institutions could be made operative in new fields. The invention
+of ocean-going ships, the use of the mariner's compass, the
+discovery of the rotundity of the earth, the development of
+firearms--these were the things which made possible the creation
+of the first European empires; though these purely material
+advantages could have led to no stable results unless they had
+been wielded by peoples possessing a real political capacity. In
+the same way the brilliant triumphs of modern engineering have
+alone rendered possible the rapid conquest and organisation of
+huge undeveloped areas; the deadly precision of Western weapons
+has made the Western peoples irresistible; the wonderful progress
+of medical science has largely overcome the barriers of disease
+which long excluded the white man from great regions of the earth;
+and the methods of modern finance, organising and making available
+the combined credit of whole communities, have provided the means
+for vast enterprises which without them could never have been
+undertaken.
+
+Then, in the next place, science has found uses for many
+commodities which were previously of little value, and many of
+which are mainly produced in the undeveloped regions of the earth.
+Some of these, like rubber, or nitrates, or mineral and vegetable
+oils, have rapidly become quite indispensable materials, consumed
+by the industrial countries on an immense scale. Accordingly, the
+more highly industrialised a country is, the more dependent it
+must be upon supplies drawn from all parts of the world; not only
+supplies of food for the maintenance of its teeming population,
+but, even more, supplies of material for its industries. The days
+when Europe, or even America, was self-sufficient are gone for
+ever. And in order that these essential supplies may be available,
+it has become necessary that all the regions which produce them
+should be brought under efficient administration. The anarchy of
+primitive barbarism cannot be allowed to stand in the way of
+access to these vital necessities of the new world-economy. It is
+merely futile for well-meaning sentimentalists to talk of the
+wickedness of invading the inalienable rights of the primitive
+occupants of these lands: for good or for ill, the world has
+become a single economic unit, and its progress cannot be stopped
+out of consideration for the time-honoured usages of uncivilised
+and backward tribes. Of course it is our duty to ensure that these
+simple folks are justly treated, led gently into civilisation, and
+protected from the iniquities of a mere ruthless exploitation,
+such as, in some regions, we have been compelled to witness. But
+Western civilisation has seized the reins of the world, and it
+will not be denied. Its economic needs drive it to undertake the
+organisation of the whole world. What we have to secure is that
+its political principles shall be such as will ensure that its
+control will be a benefit to its subjects as well as to itself.
+But the development of scientific industry has made European
+control and civilised administration inevitable throughout the
+world.
+
+It did not, however, necessarily follow from these premises that
+the great European states which did not already possess extra-
+European territories were bound to acquire such lands. So far as
+their purely economic needs were concerned, it would have been
+enough that they should have freedom of access, on equal terms
+with their neighbours, to the sources of the supplies they
+required. It is quite possible, as events have shown, for a
+European state to attain very great success in the industrial
+sphere without possessing any political control over the lands
+from which its raw materials are drawn, or to which its finished
+products are sold. Norway has created an immense shipping industry
+without owning a single port outside her own borders. The
+manufactures of Switzerland are as thriving as these of any
+European country, though Switzerland does not possess any
+colonies. Germany herself, the loudest advocate of the necessity
+of political control as the basis of economic prosperity, has
+found it possible to create a vast and very prosperous industry,
+though her colonial possessions have been small, and have
+contributed scarcely at all to her wealth. Her merchants and
+capitalists have indeed found the most profitable fields for their
+enterprises, not in their own colonies, which they have on the
+whole tended to neglect, but in a far greater degree in South and
+Central America, and in India and the other vast territories of
+the British Empire, which have been open to them as freely as to
+British merchants. All that the prosperity of European industry
+required was that the sources of supply should be under efficient
+administration, and that access to them should be open. And these
+conditions were fulfilled, before the great rush began, over the
+greater part of the earth. If in 1878, when the European nations
+suddenly awoke to the importance of the non-European world, they
+had been able to agree upon some simple principle which would have
+secured equal treatment to all, how different would have been the
+fate of Europe and the world! If it could have been laid down, as
+a principle of international law, that in every area whose
+administration was undertaken by a European state, the 'open door'
+should be secured for the trade of all nations equally, and that
+this rule should continue in force until the area concerned
+acquired the status of a distinctly organised state controlling
+its own fiscal system, the industrial communities would have felt
+secure, the little states quite as fully as the big states.
+Moreover, since, under these conditions, the annexation of
+territory by a European state would not have threatened the
+creation of a monopoly, but would have meant the assumption of a
+duty on behalf of civilisation, the acrimonies and jealousies
+which have attended the process of partition would have been
+largely conjured away. In 1878 such a solution would have
+presented few difficulties. For at that date the only European
+state which controlled large undeveloped areas was Britain; and
+Britain, as we have seen, had on her own account arrived at this
+solution, and had administered, as she still administers, all
+those regions of her Empire which do not possess self-governing
+rights in the spirit of the principle we have suggested.
+
+Why was it that this solution, or some solution on these lines,
+was not then adopted, and had no chance of being adopted? It was
+because the European states, and first and foremost among them
+Germany, were still dominated by a political theory which forbade
+their taking such a view. We may call this theory the Doctrine of
+Power. It is the doctrine that the highest duty of every state is
+to aim at the extension of its own power, and that before this
+duty every other consideration must give way. The Doctrine of
+Power has never received a more unflinching expression than it
+received from the German Treitschke, whose influence was at its
+height during the years of the great rush for extra-European
+possessions. The advocate of the Doctrine of Power is not, and
+cannot be, satisfied with equality of opportunity; he demands
+supremacy, he demands monopoly, he demands the means to injure and
+destroy his rivals. It would not be just to say that this doctrine
+was influential only in Germany; it was in some degree potent
+everywhere, especially in this period, which was the period par
+excellence of 'imperialism' in the bad sense of the term. But it
+is certainly true that no state has ever been so completely
+dominated by it as Germany; and no state less than Britain. It was
+in the light of this doctrine that the demands of the new
+scientific industry were interpreted. Hag-ridden by this
+conception, when the statesmen of Europe awoke to the importance
+of the non-European world, it was not primarily the economic needs
+of their countries that they thought of, for these were, on the
+whole, not inadequately met: what struck their imagination was
+that, in paying no attention to the outer world, they had missed
+great opportunities of increasing their power. This oversight,
+they resolved, must be rectified before it was too late.
+
+For when the peoples of Western and Central Europe, no longer
+engrossed by the problems of Nationalism and Liberalism, cast
+their eyes over the world, lo! the scale of things seemed to have
+changed. Just as, in the fifteenth century, civilisation had
+suddenly passed from the stage of the city-state or the feudal
+principality to the stage of the great nation-state, so now, while
+the European peoples were still struggling to realise their
+nationhood, civilisation seemed to have stolen a march upon them,
+and to have advanced once more, this time into the stage of the
+world-state. For to the east of the European nations lay the vast
+Russian Empire, stretching from Central Europe across Asia to the
+Pacific; and in the west the American Republic extended from ocean
+to ocean, across three thousand miles of territory; and between
+these and around them spread the British Empire, sprawling over
+the whole face of the globe, on every sea and in every continent.
+In contrast with these giant empires, the nation-states of Europe
+felt themselves out of scale, just as the Italian cities in the
+sixteenth century must have felt themselves out of scale in
+comparison with the new nation-states of Spain and France. To
+achieve the standard of the world-state, to make their own nations
+the controlling factors in wide dominions which should include
+territories and populations of varied types, became the ambition
+of the most powerful European states. A new political ideal had
+captivated the mind of Europe.
+
+These powerful motives were reinforced by others which arose from
+the development of affairs within Europe itself. In the first
+place, the leading European states had by 1878 definitely
+abandoned that tendency towards free trade which had seemed to be
+increasing in strength during the previous generation; and,
+largely in the hope of combating the overwhelming mercantile and
+industrial supremacy of Britain, had adopted the fiscal policy of
+protection. The ideal of the protectionist creed is national self-
+sufficiency in the economic sphere. But, as we have seen, economic
+self-sufficiency was no longer attainable in the conditions of
+modern industry by any European state. Only by large foreign
+annexations, especially in the tropical regions, did it seem
+possible of achievement. But when a protectionist state begins to
+acquire territory, the anticipation that it will use its power to
+exclude or destroy the trade of its rivals must drive other states
+to safeguard themselves by still further annexations. It was,
+indeed, this fear which mainly drove Britain, in spite of, or
+perhaps because of, her free trade theories, into a series of
+large annexations in regions where her trade had been hitherto
+predominant.
+
+Again, the most perturbing feature of the relations between the
+European powers also contributed to produce an eagerness for
+colonial possessions. Europe had entered upon the era of huge
+national armies; the example of Prussia, and the rancours which
+had been created by her policy, had set all the nations arming
+themselves. They had learned to measure their strength by their
+available man-power, and in two ways the desire to increase the
+reserve of military manhood formed a motive for colonisation. In
+the first place, the surplus manhood of a nation was lost to it if
+it was allowed to pass under an alien flag by emigration. Those
+continental states from which emigration took place on a large
+scale began to aspire after the possession of colonies of their
+own, where their emigrants could still be kept under control, and
+remain subject to the obligations of service. Germany, the state
+which beyond all others measures its strength by its fighting man-
+power, was most affected by this motive, which formed the chief
+theme of the colonial school among her politicians and
+journalists, and continued to be so even when the stream of her
+emigrants had dwindled to very small proportions. In a less
+degree, Italy was influenced by the same motive. In the second
+place, conquered subjects even of backward races might be made
+useful for the purposes of war. This motive appealed most strongly
+to France. Her home population was stationary. She lived in
+constant dread of a new onslaught from her formidable neighbour;
+and she watched with alarm the rapid increase of that neighbour's
+population, and the incessant increases in the numbers of his
+armies. At a later date Germany also began to be attracted by the
+possibility of drilling and arming, among the negroes of Central
+Africa, or the Turks of Asia Minor, forces which might aid her to
+dominate the world.
+
+Thus the political situation in Europe had a very direct influence
+upon the colonising activity of this period. The dominant fact of
+European politics during this generation was the supreme prestige
+and influence of Germany, who, not content with an unquestioned
+military superiority to any other power, had buttressed herself by
+the formation (1879 and 1882) of the most formidable standing
+alliance that has ever existed in European history, and completely
+dominated European politics. France, having been hurled from the
+leadership of Europe in 1870, dreaded nothing so much as the
+outbreak of a new European war, in which she must he inevitably
+involved, and in which she might be utterly ruined. She strove to
+find a compensation for her wounded pride in colonial adventures,
+and therefore became, during the first part of the period, the
+most active of the powers in this field. She was encouraged to
+adopt this policy by Bismarck, partly in the hope that she might
+thus forget Alsace, partly in order that she might be kept on bad
+terms with Britain, whose interests seemed to be continually
+threatened by her colonising activity. But she hesitated to take a
+very definite line in regard to territories that lay close to
+Europe and might involve European complications.
+
+Bismarck himself took little interest in colonial questions,
+except in so far as they could be used as a means of alienating
+the other powers from one another, and so securing the European
+supremacy of Germany. He therefore at first made no attempt to use
+the dominant position of Germany as a means of acquiring extra-
+European dominions. But the younger generation in Germany was far
+from sharing this view. It was determined to win for Germany a
+world-empire, and in 1884 and the following years--rather late in
+the day, when most of the more desirable territories were already
+occupied--it forced Bismarck to annex large areas. After
+Bismarck's fall, in 1890, this party got the upper hand in German
+politics, and the creation of a great world-empire became, as we
+shall see, the supreme aim of William II. and his advisers. The
+formidable and threatening power of Germany began to be
+systematically employed not merely for the maintenance of
+supremacy in Europe, which could be secured by peaceful means, but
+for the acquisition of a commanding position in the outer world;
+and since this could only be attained by violence, the world being
+now almost completely partitioned, the new policy made Germany the
+source of unrest and apprehension, as she had earlier been, and
+still continued to be, the main cause of the burden of military
+preparation in Europe.
+
+Among the other powers which participated in the great partition,
+Russia continued her pressure in two of the three directions which
+she had earlier followed-south-eastwards in Central Asia,
+eastwards towards China. In both directions her activity aroused
+the nervous fears of Britain, while her pressure upon China helped
+to bring Japan into the ranks of the militant and aggressive
+powers. But Russia took no interest in the more distant quarters
+of the world. Nor did Austria, though during these years her old
+ambition to expand south-eastwards at the expense of Turkey and
+the Balkan peoples revived under German encouragement. Italy,
+having but recently achieved national unity and taken her place
+among the Great Powers, felt that she could not be left out of the
+running, now that extra-European possessions had come to appear an
+almost essential mark of greatness among states; and, disappointed
+of Tunis, she endeavoured to find compensation on the shores of
+the Red Sea. Spain and Portugal, in the midst of all these eager
+rivalries, were tempted to furbish up their old and half-dormant
+claims. Even the United States of America joined in the rush
+during the fevered period of the 'nineties.
+
+Lastly, Britain, the oldest and the most fully endowed of all the
+colonising powers, was drawn, half unwilling, into the
+competition; and having an immense start over her rivals, actually
+acquired more new territory than any of them. She was, indeed,
+like the other states, passing through an 'imperialist' phase in
+these years. The value attached by other countries to oversea
+possessions awakened among the British people a new pride in their
+far-spread dominions. Disraeli, who was in the ascendant when the
+period opened, had forgotten his old opinion of the uselessness of
+colonies, and had become a prophet of Empire. An Imperial
+Federation Society was founded in 1878. The old unwillingness to
+assume new responsibilities died out, or diminished; and the rapid
+annexations of other states, especially France, in regions where
+British influence had hitherto been supreme, and whose chieftains
+had often begged in vain for British protection, aroused some
+irritation. The ebullient energy of the colonists themselves,
+especially in South Africa and Australia, demanded a forward
+policy. Above all, the fact that the European powers, now so eager
+for colonial possessions, had all adopted the protectionist policy
+aroused a fear lest British traders should find themselves shut
+out from lands whose trade had hitherto been almost wholly in
+their hands; and the militant and aggressive temper sometimes
+shown by the agents of these powers awakened some nervousness
+regarding the safety of the existing British possessions. Hence
+Britain, after a period of hesitancy, became as active as any of
+the other states in annexation. Throughout this period her main
+rival was France, whose new claims seemed to come in conflict with
+her own in almost every quarter of the globe. This rivalry
+produced acute friction, which grew in intensity until it reached
+its culminating point in the crisis of Fashoda in 1898, and was
+not removed until the settlement of 1904 solved all the
+outstanding difficulties. It would be quite untrue to say that
+Britain deliberately endeavoured to prevent or to check the rapid
+colonial expansion of France. The truth is that British trading
+interests had been predominant in many of the regions where the
+French were most active, and that the protectionist policy which
+France had adopted stimulated into a new life the ancient rivalry
+of these neighbour and sister nations. Towards the colonial
+ambitions of Germany, and still more of Italy, Britain was far
+more complaisant.
+
+It is difficult to give in a brief space a clear summary of the
+extremely complicated events and intrigues of this vitally
+important period. But perhaps it will be easiest if we consider in
+turn the regions in which the strenuous rivalries of the powers
+displayed themselves. The most important was Africa, which lay
+invitingly near to Europe, and was the only large region of the
+world which was still for the most part unoccupied. Here all the
+competitors, save Russia, Japan, and America, played a part.
+Western Asia formed a second field, in which three powers only,
+Russia, Germany, and Britain, were immediately concerned. The Far
+East, where the vast Empire of China seemed to be falling into
+decrepitude, afforded the most vexed problems of the period.
+Finally, the Pacific Islands were the scene of an active though
+less intense rivalry.
+
+It is a curious fact that Africa, the continent whose outline was
+the first outside of Europe itself to be fully mapped out by the
+European peoples, was actually the last to be effectively brought
+under the influence of European civilisation. This was because the
+coasts of Africa are for the most part inhospitable; its vast
+interior plateau is almost everywhere shut off either by belts of
+desert land, or by swampy and malarious regions along the coast;
+even its great rivers do not readily tempt the explorer inland,
+because their course is often interrupted by falls or rapids not
+far from their mouths, where they descend from the interior
+plateau to the coastal plain; and its inhabitants, warlike and
+difficult to deal with, are also peoples of few and simple wants,
+who have little to offer to the trader. Hence eight generations of
+European mariners had circumnavigated the continent without
+seriously attempting to penetrate its central mass; and apart from
+the Anglo-Dutch settlements at the Southern extremity, the French
+empire in Algeria in the north, a few trading centres on the West
+Coast, and some half-derelict Portuguese stations in Angola and
+Mozambique, the whole continent remained available for European
+exploitation in 1878.
+
+What trade was carried on, except in Egypt, in Algeria, and in the
+immediate vicinity of the old French settlements on the West
+Coast, was mainly in the hands of British merchants. Over the
+greater part of the coastal belts only the British power was known
+to the native tribes and chieftains. Many of them (like the Sultan
+of Zanzibar and the chiefs of the Cameroons) had repeatedly begged
+to be taken under British protection, and had been refused. During
+the two generations before 1878 the interior of the continent had
+begun to be known. But except in the north and north-west, where
+French explorers and a few Germans had been active, the work had
+been mainly done by British travellers. Most of the great names of
+African exploration--Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Baker, Cameron
+and the Anglo-American Stanley--were British names. These facts,
+of course, gave to Britain, already so richly endowed, no sort of
+claim to a monopoly of the continent. But they naturally gave her
+a right to a voice in its disposal. Only the French had shown
+anything like the same activity, or had established anything like
+the same interests; and they were far behind their secular rivals.
+
+But these facts bring out one feature which differentiated the
+settlement of Africa from that of any other region of the non-
+European world. It was not a gradual, but an extraordinarily rapid
+achievement. It was based not upon claims established by work
+already done, but, for the most part, upon the implicit assumption
+that extra-European empire was the due of the European peoples,
+simply because they were civilised and powerful. This was the
+justification, in a large degree, of all the European empires in
+Africa. But it was especially so in the case of the empire which
+Germany created in the space of three years. This empire was not
+the product of German enterprise in the regions included within
+it; it was the product of Germany's dominating position in Europe,
+and the expression of her resolve to create an external empire
+worthy of that position.
+
+Africa falls naturally into two great regions. The northern coast,
+separated from the main mass of the continent by the broad belt of
+deserts which runs from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, has always
+been far more ultimately connected with the other Mediterranean
+lands than with the rest of Africa. Throughout the course of
+history, indeed, the northern coast-lands have belonged rather to
+the realms of Western or of Asiatic civilisation than to the
+primitive barbarism of the sons of Ham. In the days of the
+Carthaginians and of the Roman Empire, all these lands, from Egypt
+to Morocco, had known a high civilisation. They were racially as
+well as historically distinct from the rest of the continent. They
+had been in name part of the Turkish Empire, and any European
+interference in their affairs was as much a question of European
+politics as the problems of the Balkans. Two countries in this
+area fell under European direction during the period with which we
+are concerned, and in each case the effects upon European politics
+were very great. In 1881 France, with the deliberate encouragement
+of Bismarck, sent armies into Tunis, and assumed the protectorate
+of that misgoverned region. She had good grounds for her action.
+Not only had she large trade-interests in Tunis, but the country
+was separated from her earlier dominion in Algeria only by an
+artificial line, and its disorders increased the difficulty of
+developing the efficient administration which she had established
+there. Unhappily Italy also had interests in Tunis. There were
+more Italian than French residents in the country, which is
+separated from Sicily only by a narrow belt of sea. And Italy, who
+was beginning to conceive colonial ambitions, had not unnaturally
+marked down Tunis as her most obvious sphere of influence. The
+result was to create a long-lived ill-feeling between the two
+Latin countries. As a consequence of the annexation of Tunis,
+Italy was persuaded in the next year (1882) to join the Triple
+Alliance; and France, having burnt her fingers, became chary of
+colonial adventures in regions that were directly under the eye of
+Europe. Isolated, insecure, and eternally suspicious of Germany,
+she could not afford to be drawn into European quarrels. This is
+in a large degree the explanation of her vacillating action in
+regard to Egypt.
+
+In Egypt the political influence of France had been preponderant
+ever since the time of Mehemet Ali; perhaps we should say, ever
+since the time of Napoleon. And political influence had been
+accompanied by trading and financial interests. France had a
+larger share of the trade of Egypt, and had lent more money to the
+ruling princes of the country, than any other country save
+England. She had designed and executed the Suez Canal. But this
+waterway, once opened, was used mainly by British ships on the way
+to India, Australia, and the Far East. It became a point of vital
+strategic importance to Britain, who, though she had opposed its
+construction, eagerly seized the chance of buying a great block of
+shares in the enterprise from the bankrupt Khedive. Thus French
+and British interests in Egypt were equally great; greater than
+those of all the rest of Europe put together. When the native
+government of Egypt fell into bankruptcy (1876), the two powers
+set up a sort of condominium, or joint control of the finances, in
+order to ensure the payment of interest on the Egyptian debt held
+by their citizens. To bankruptcy succeeded political chaos; and it
+became apparent that if the rich land of Egypt was not to fall
+into utter anarchy, there must be direct European intervention.
+The two powers proposed to take joint action; the rest of Europe
+assented. But the Sultan of Turkey, as suzerain of Egypt,
+threatened to make difficulties. At the last moment France,
+fearful of the complications that might result, and resolute to
+avoid the danger of European war, withdrew from the project of
+joint intervention. Britain went on alone; and although she hoped
+and believed that she would quickly be able to restore order, and
+thereupon to evacuate the country, found herself drawn into a
+labour of reconstruction that could not be dropped. We shall in
+the next chapter have more to say on the British occupation of
+Egypt, as part of the British achievement during this period. In
+the meanwhile, its immediate result was continuous friction
+between France and Britain. France could not forgive herself or
+Britain for the opportunity which she had lost. The embitterment
+caused by the Egyptian question lasted throughout the period, and
+was not healed till the Entente of 1904. It intensified and
+exacerbated the rivalry of the two countries in other fields. It
+made each country incapable of judging fairly the actions of the
+other. To wounded and embittered France, the perfectly honest
+British explanations of the reasons for delay in evacuating Egypt
+seemed only so many evidences of hypocrisy masking greed. To
+Britain the French attitude seemed fractious and unreasonable, and
+she suspected in every French forward movement in other fields--
+notably in the Eastern Soudan and the upper valley of the Nile--an
+attempt to attack or undermine her. Thus Egypt, like Tunis,
+illustrated the influence of European politics in the extra-
+European field. The power that profited most was Germany, who had
+strengthened herself by drawing Italy into the Triple Alliance,
+and had kept France at her mercy by using colonial questions as a
+means of alienating her from her natural friends. It was, in
+truth, only from this point of view that colonial questions had
+any interest for Bismarck. He was, as he repeatedly asserted
+almost to the day of his death, 'no colony man.' But the time was
+at hand when he was to be forced out of this attitude. For already
+the riches of tropical Africa were beginning to attract the
+attention of Europe.
+
+The most active and energetic of the powers in tropical Africa was
+France. From her ancient foothold at Senegal she was already, in
+the late 'seventies, pushing inland towards the upper waters of
+the Niger; while further south her vigorous explorer de Brazza was
+penetrating the hinterland behind the French coastal settlements
+north of the Congo mouth. Meanwhile the explorations of
+Livingstone and Stanley had given the world some conception of the
+wealth of the vast exterior. In 1876 Leopold, King of the
+Belgians, summoned a conference at Brussels to consider the
+possibility of setting the exploration and settlement of Africa
+upon an international basis. Its result was the formation of an
+International African Association, with branches in all the
+principal countries. But from the first the branches dropped all
+serious pretence of international action. They became (so far as
+they exercised any influence) purely national organisations for
+the purpose of acquiring the maximum amount of territory for their
+own states. And the central body, after attempting a few
+unsuccessful exploring expeditions, practically resolved itself
+into the organ of King Leopold himself, and aimed at creating a
+neutral state in Central Africa under his protection. In 1878 H.
+M. Stanley returned from the exploration of the Congo. He was at
+once invited by King Leopold to undertake the organisation of the
+Congo basin for his Association, and set out again for that
+purpose in 1879. But he soon found himself in conflict with the
+active French agents under de Brazza, who had made their way into
+the Congo valley from the north-west. And at the same time
+Portugal, reviving ancient and dormant claims, asserted that the
+Congo belonged to her. It was primarily to find a solution for
+these disputes that the Berlin Conference was summoned in December
+1884. Meanwhile the rush for territory was going on furiously in
+other regions of Africa. Not only on the Congo, but on the Guinea
+Coast and its hinterland, France was showing an immense activity,
+and was threatening to reduce to small coastal enclaves the old
+British settlements on this coast. Only the energy shown by a
+group of British merchants, who formed themselves into a National
+African Company in 1881, and the vigorous action of their leader,
+Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Taubman Goldie, prevented the
+extrusion of British interests from the greater part of the Niger
+valley, where they had hitherto been supreme. In Madagascar, too,
+the ancient ambitions of France had revived. Though British
+trading and missionary activities in the island were at this date
+probably greater than French, France claimed large rights,
+especially in the north-east of the island. These claims drew her
+into a war with the native power of the Hovas, which began in
+1883, and ended in 1885 with a vague recognition of French
+suzerainty. Again, Italy had, in 1883, obtained her first foothold
+in Eritrea, on the shore of the Red Sea. And Germany, also, had
+suddenly made up her mind to embark upon the career of empire. In
+1883 the Bremen merchant, Luderitz, appeared in South-west Africa,
+where there were a few German mission stations and trading-
+centres, and annexed a large area which Bismarck was persuaded to
+take under the formal protection of Germany. This region had
+hitherto been vaguely regarded as within the British sphere, but
+though native princes, missionaries, and in 1868 even the Prussian
+government, had requested Britain to establish a formal
+protectorate, she had always declined to do so. In the next year
+another German agent, Dr. Nachtigal, was commissioned by the
+German government to report on German trade interests on the West
+Coast, and the British government was formally acquainted with his
+mission and requested to instruct its agents to assist him. The
+real purpose of the mission was shown when Nachtigal made a treaty
+with the King of Togoland, on the Guinea Coast, whereby he
+accepted German suzerainty. A week later a similar treaty was made
+with some of the native chiefs in the Cameroons. In this region
+British interests had hitherto been predominant, and the chiefs
+had repeatedly asked for British protection, which had always been
+refused. A little later the notorious Karl Peters, with a few
+companions disguised as working engineers, arrived at Zanzibar on
+the East Coast, with a commission from the German Colonial Society
+to peg out German claims. In the island of Zanzibar British
+interests had long been overwhelmingly predominant; and the
+Sultan, who had large and vague claims to supremacy over a vast
+extent of the mainland, had repeatedly asked the British
+government to take these regions under its protectorate. He had
+always been refused. Peters' luggage consisted largely of draft
+treaty-forms; and he succeeded in making treaties with native
+princes (usually unaware of the meaning of the documents they were
+signing) whereby some 60,000 square miles were brought under
+German control. The protectorate over these lands had not been
+accepted by the German government when the Conference of Berlin
+met. It was formally accepted in the next year (1885). Far from
+being opposed by Britain, the establishment of German power in
+East Africa was actually welcomed by the British government, whose
+foreign secretary, Earl Granville, wrote that his government
+'views with favour these schemes, the realisation of which will
+entail the civilisation of large tracts over which hitherto no
+European influence has been exercised.' And when a group of
+British traders began to take action further north, in the
+territory which later became British East Africa, and in which
+Peters had done nothing, the British government actually consulted
+the German government before licensing their action. Thus before
+the meeting of the Conference of Berlin the foundations of the
+German empire in Africa were already laid; the outlines of the
+vast French empire in the north had begun to appear; and the
+curious dominion of Leopold of Belgium in the Congo valley had
+begun to take shape.
+
+The Conference of Berlin (Dec. 1884-Feb. 1885), which marks the
+close of the first stage in the partition of Africa, might have
+achieved great things if it had endeavoured to lay down the
+principles upon which European control over backward peoples
+should be exercised. But it made no such ambitious attempt. It
+prescribed the rules of the game of empire-building, ordaining
+that all protectorates should be formally notified by the power
+which assumed them to the other powers, and that no annexation
+should be made of territory which was not 'effectively' occupied;
+but evidently the phrase 'effective occupation' can be very laxly
+interpreted. It provided that there should be free navigation of
+the Congo and Niger rivers, and freedom of trade for alienations
+within the Congo valley and certain other vaguely defined areas.
+But it made no similar provision for other parts of Africa; and it
+whittled away the value of what it did secure by the definite
+proviso that should parts of these areas be annexed by independent
+states, the restriction upon their control of trade should lapse.
+It recognised the illegality of the slave-trade, and imposed upon
+annexing powers the duty of helping to suppress it; this provision
+was made much fuller and more definite by a second conference at
+Brussels in 1890, on the demand of Britain, who had hitherto
+contended almost alone against the traffic in human flesh. But no
+attempt was made to define native rights, to safeguard native
+customs, to prohibit the maintenance of forces larger than would
+be necessary for the maintenance of order: in short, no attempt
+was made to lay down the doctrine that the function of a ruling
+power among backward peoples is that of a trustee on behalf of its
+simple subjects and on behalf of civilisation. That the partition
+of Africa should have been effected without open war, and that the
+questions decided at Berlin should have been so easily and
+peacefully agreed upon, seemed at the moment to be a good sign.
+But the spirit which the conference expressed was not a healthy
+spirit.
+
+After 1884 the activity of the powers in exploration, annexation
+and development became more furious than ever. Britain now began
+seriously to arouse herself to the danger of exclusion from vast
+areas where her interests had hitherto been predominant; and it
+was during these years that all her main acquisitions of territory
+in Africa were made: Rhodesia and Central Africa in the south,
+East Africa and Somaliland in the East, Nigeria and the expansion
+of her lesser protectorates in the West. To these years also
+belonged the definite, and most unfortunate, emergence of Italy as
+a colonising power. She had got a foothold in Eritrea in 1883; in
+1885 it was, with British aid, enlarged by the annexation of
+territory which had once been held by Egypt, but had been
+abandoned when she lost the Soudan. But the Italian claims in
+Eritrea brought on conflict with the neighbouring native power of
+Abyssinia. In spite of a sharp defeat at Dogali in 1887, she
+succeeded in holding her own in this conflict; and in 1889
+Abyssinia accepted a treaty which Italy claimed to be a
+recognition of her suzerainty. But the Abyssinians repudiated this
+interpretation; and in a new war, which began in 1896, inflicted
+upon the Italians so disastrous a defeat at Adowa that they were
+constrained to admit the complete independence of Abyssinia--the
+sole native state which has so far been able to hold its own
+against the pressure of Europe. Meanwhile in 1889 and the
+following years Italy had, once more with the direct concurrence
+of Britain, marked out a new territory in Somaliland.
+
+The main features of the years from 1884 to 1900 were the rapidity
+with which the territories earlier annexed were expanded and
+organised, more especially by France. In the 'nineties her
+dominions extended from the Mediterranean to the Guinea Coast, and
+she had conceived the ambition of extending them also across
+Africa from West to East. This ambition led her into a new and
+more acute conflict with Britain, who, having undertaken the
+reconquest of the Egyptian Soudan and the upper valley of the
+Nile, held that she could not permit a rival to occupy the upper
+waters of the great river, or any part of the territory that
+belonged to it. Hence when the intrepid explorer, Marchand, after
+a toilsome expedition which lasted for two years, planted the
+French flag at Fashoda in 1898, he was promptly disturbed by
+Kitchener, fresh from the overthrow of the Khalifa and the
+reconquest of Khartoum, and was compelled to withdraw. The tension
+was severe; no episode in the partition of Africa had brought the
+world so near to the outbreak of a European war. But in the end
+the dispute was settled by the Anglo-French agreement of 1898,
+which may be said to mark the conclusion of the process of
+partition. It was the last important treaty in a long series which
+filled the twenty years following 1878, and which had the result
+of leaving Africa, with the exception of Morocco, Tripoli, and
+Abyssinia, completely divided among the chief European states.
+Africa was the main field of the ambitions and rivalries of the
+European powers during this period; the other fields may be more
+rapidly surveyed. In Central Asia and the Near East the main
+features of the period were two. The first was the steady advance
+of Russia towards the south-east, which awakened acute alarms in
+Britain regarding India, and led to the adoption of a 'forward
+policy' among the frontier tribes in the north-west of India. The
+second was the gradual and silent penetration of Turkey by German
+influence. Here there was no partition or annexation, But Germany
+became the political protector of the Turk; undertook the
+reorganisation of his armies; obtained great commercial
+concessions; bought up his railways, ousting the earlier British
+and French concerns which had controlled them, and built new
+lines. The greatest of these was the vitally important project of
+the Bagdad railway, which was taken in hand just before the close
+of the period. It was a project whose political aims outweighed
+its commercial aims. And it provided a warning of the gigantic
+designs which Germany was beginning to work out. But as yet, in
+1900, the magnitude of these designs was unperceived. And the
+problems of the Middle East were not yet very disturbing. The
+Turkish Empire remained intact; so did the Persian Empire, though
+both were becoming more helpless, partly owing to the decrepitude
+of their governments, partly owing to the pressure of European
+financial and trading interests. As yet the empires of the Middle
+East seemed to form a region comparatively free from European
+influence. But this was only seeming. The influence of Europe was
+at work in them; and it was probably inevitable that some degree
+of European political tutelage should follow as the only means of
+preventing the disintegration which must result from the pouring
+of new wine into the old bottles.
+
+In the Far East--in the vast empire of China--this result seemed
+to be coming about inevitably and rapidly. The ancient pot-bound
+civilisation of China had withstood the impact of the West in the
+mid-nineteenth century without breaking down; but China had made
+no attempt, such as Japan had triumphantly carried out, to adapt
+herself to the new conditions, and her system was slowly crumbling
+under the influence of the European traders, teachers, and
+missionaries whom she had been compelled to admit. The first of
+the powers to take advantage of this situation was France, who
+already possessed a footing in Cochin-China, and was tempted
+during the colonial enthusiasm of the 'eighties to transform it
+into a general supremacy over Annam and Tonking. As early as 1874
+she had obtained from the King of Annam a treaty which she
+interpreted as giving her suzerain powers. The King of Annam
+himself repudiated this interpretation, and maintained that he was
+a vassal of China. China took the same view; and after long
+negotiations a war between France and China broke out. It lasted
+for four years, and demanded a large expenditure of strength. But
+it ended (1885) with the formal recognition of French suzerainty
+over Annam, and a further decline of Chinese prestige.
+
+Ten years later a still more striking proof of Chinese weakness
+was afforded by the rapid and complete defeat of the vast, ill-
+organised empire by Japan, the youngest of the great powers. The
+war gave to Japan Formosa and the Pescadores Islands, and added
+her to the list of imperialist powers. She would have won more
+still--the Liao-tang Peninsula and a sort of suzerainty over
+Korea--but that the European powers, startled by the signs of
+China's decay, and perhaps desiring a share of the plunder,
+intervened to forbid these annexations, on the pretext of
+defending the integrity of China. Russia, France and Germany
+combined in this step; Britain stood aloof. Japan, unwillingly
+giving way, and regarding Russia as the chief cause of her
+humiliation, began to prepare herself for a coming conflict. As
+for unhappy China, she was soon to learn how much sincerity there
+was in the zeal of Europe for the maintenance of her integrity. In
+1896 she was compelled to permit Russia to build a railway across
+Manchuria; and to grant to France a 'rectification of frontiers'
+on the south, and the right of building a railway through the
+province of Yunnan, which lies next to Tonking. The partition of
+China seemed to be at hand. Britain and America vainly urged upon
+the other powers that China should be left free to direct her own
+affairs subject to the maintenance of 'the open door' for European
+trade. The other powers refused to listen, and in 1897 the
+beginning of the end seemed to have come. Germany, seizing on the
+pretext afforded by the murder of two German missionaries,
+stretched forth her 'mailed fist,' and seized the strong place and
+admirable harbour of Kiao-chau, the most valuable strategic
+position on the Chinese coast. That she meant to use it as a base
+for future expansion was shown by her lavish expenditure upon its
+equipment and fortification. Russia responded by seizing the
+strong place of Port Arthur and the Liao-Tang Peninsula, while
+every day her hold upon the great province of Manchuria was
+strengthened. Foreseeing a coming conflict in which her immense
+trading interests would be imperilled, Britain acquired a naval
+base on the Chinese coast by leasing Wei-hai-Wei. Thus all the
+European rivals were clustered round the decaying body of China;
+and in the last years of the century were already beginning to
+claim 'spheres of influence,' despite the protests of Britain and
+America. But the outburst of the Boxer Rising in 1900--caused
+mainly by resentment of foreign intervention--had the effect of
+postponing the rush for Chinese territory. And when Britain and
+Japan made an alliance in 1902 on the basis of guaranteeing the
+status quo in the East, the overwhelming naval strength of the two
+allies made a European partition of China impracticable; and China
+was once more given a breathing-space. Only Russia could attack
+the Chinese Empire by land; and the severe defeat which she
+suffered at the hands of Japan in 1904-5 removed that danger also.
+The Far East was left with a chance of maintaining its
+independence, and of voluntarily adapting itself to the needs of a
+new age.
+
+The last region in which territories remained available for
+European annexation consisted of the innumerable archipelagoes of
+the Pacific Ocean. Here the preponderant influence had been in the
+hands of Britain ever since the days of Captain Cook. She had made
+some annexations during the first three quarters of the century,
+but had on the whole steadfastly refused the requests of many of
+the island peoples to be taken under her protection. France had,
+as we have seen, acquired New Caledonia and the Marquesas Islands
+during the previous period, but her activity in this region was
+never very great. The only other European power in possession of
+Pacific territories was Spain, who held the great archipelago of
+the Philippines, and claimed also the numerous minute islands
+(nearly six hundred in number) which are known as Micronesia. When
+the colonial enthusiasm of the 'eighties began, Germany saw a
+fruitful field in the Pacific, and annexed the Bismarck
+Archipelago and the north-eastern quarter of New Guinea. Under
+pressure from Australia, who feared to see so formidable a
+neighbour established so near her coastline, Britain annexed the
+south-eastern quarter of that huge island. During the 'nineties
+the partition of the Pacific Islands was completed; the chief
+participators being Germany, Britain, and the United States of
+America.
+
+The entry of America into the race for imperial possessions in its
+last phase was too striking an event to pass without comment.
+America annexed Hawaii in 1898, and divided the Samoan group with
+Germany in 1899. But her most notable departure from her
+traditional policy of self-imposed isolation from world-politics
+came when in 1898 she was drawn by the Cuban question into a war
+with Spain. Its result was the disappearance of the last relics of
+the Spanish Empire in the New World and in the Pacific. Cuba
+became an independent republic. Porto Rico was annexed by America.
+In the Pacific the Micronesian possessions of Spain were acquired
+by Germany. Germany would fain have annexed also the Philippine
+Islands. But America resolved herself to assume the task of
+organising and governing these rich lands; and in doing so made a
+grave breach with her traditions. Her new possession necessarily
+drew her into closer relations with the problems of the Far East;
+it gave her also some acquaintance with the difficulty of
+introducing Western methods among a backward people. During these
+years of universal imperialist excitement the spirit of
+imperialism seemed to have captured America as it had captured the
+European states; and this was expressed in a new interpretation of
+the Monroe doctrine, put forth by the Secretary of State during
+the Venezuela controversy of 1895. 'The United States,' said Mr.
+Olney, 'is practically sovereign on this continent (meaning both
+North and South America), 'and its fiat is law upon the subjects
+to which it confines its interposition.' No such gigantic imperial
+claim had ever been put forward by any European state; and it
+constituted an almost defiant challenge to the imperialist powers
+of Europe. It may safely be said that this dictum did not
+represent the settled judgment of the American people. But it did
+appear, in the last years of the century, as if the great republic
+were about to emerge from her self-imposed isolation, and to take
+her natural part in the task of planting the civilisation of the
+West throughout the world. Had she frankly done so, had she made
+it plain that she recognised the indissoluble unity and the common
+interests of the whole world, it is possible that her influence
+might have eased the troubles of the next period, and exercised a
+deterrent influence upon the forces of disturbance which were
+working towards the great catastrophe. But her traditions were too
+strong; and after the brief imperialist excitement of the
+'nineties, she gradually relapsed once more into something like
+her old attitude of aloofness.
+
+It is but a cursory and superficial view which we have been able
+to take of this extraordinary quarter of a century, during which
+almost the whole world was partitioned among a group of mighty
+empires, and the political and economic unity of the globe was
+finally and irrefragably established. Few regions had escaped the
+direct political control of European powers; and most of these few
+were insensibly falling under the influence of one or other of the
+powers: Turkey under that of Germany, Persia under that of Russia
+and Britain. No region of the earth remained exempt from the
+indirect influence of the European system. The civilisation of the
+West had completed the domination of the globe; and the interests
+of the great world-states were so intertwined and intermingled in
+every corner of the earth that the balance of power among them had
+become as precarious as was the European balance in the eighteenth
+century. The era of the world-states had very definitely opened.
+It remained to be seen in what spirit it was to be used, and
+whether it was to be of long duration. These two questions are
+one; for no system can last which is based upon injustice and the
+denial of right.
+
+At this point we may well stop to survey the new world-states
+which had been created by this quarter of a century of eager
+competition.
+
+First among them, in extent and importance, stood the new empire
+of France. It covered a total area of five million square miles,
+and in size ranked third in order, coming after the older empires
+of Russia and Britain. It had been the result of the strenuous
+labours of three-quarters of a century, dating from the first
+invasion of Algiers; it included also some surviving fragments of
+the earlier French Empire. But overwhelmingly the greater part of
+this vast dominion had been acquired during the short period which
+we have surveyed in this chapter; and its system of organisation
+and government had not yet had time to establish itself. It had
+been built only at the cost of strenuous labour, and many wars.
+Yet the French had shown in its administration that they still
+retained to the full that imaginative tact in the handling of
+alien peoples which had stood them in good stead in India and
+America during the eighteenth century. Once their rule was
+established the French had on the whole very little trouble with
+their subjects; and it is impossible to praise too highly the
+labours of civilisation which French administrators were
+achieving. So far as their subjects were concerned, they may
+justly be said to have regarded themselves as trustees. So far as
+the rest of the civilised world was concerned, the same praise
+cannot be given; for the French policy in the economic
+administration of colonies was definitely one of monopoly and
+exclusion. The French Empire fell into three main blocks. First,
+and most important, was the empire of Northern Africa, extending
+from Algiers to the mouth of the Congo, and from the Atlantic to
+the valley of the Nile. Next came the rich island of Madagascar;
+lastly the eastern empire of Annam and Tonking, the beginnings of
+which dated back to the eighteenth century. A few inconsiderable
+islands in the Pacific and the West Indies, acquired long since, a
+couple of towns in India, memories of the dreams of Dupleix, and
+the province of French Guiana in South America, which dated back
+to the seventeenth century, completed the list. For the most part
+a recent and rapid creation, it nevertheless had roots in the
+past, and was the work of a people experienced in the handling of
+backward races.
+
+Next may be named the curious dominion of the Congo Free State,
+occupying the rich heart of the African continent. Nominally it
+belonged to no European power, but was a recognised neutral
+territory. In practice it was treated as the personal estate of
+the Belgian king, Leopold II. Subject to closer international
+restrictions than any other European domain in the non-European
+world, the Congo was nevertheless the field of some of the worst
+iniquities in the exploitation of defenceless natives that have
+ever disgraced the record of European imperialism. International
+regulations are no safeguard against misgovernment; the only real
+sanction is the character and spirit of the government. For the
+Congo iniquities Leopold II. must be held guilty at the bar of
+posterity. When he went to his judgment in 1908 this rich realm
+passed under the direct control of the Belgian government and
+parliament, and an immediate improvement resulted.
+
+The least successful of the new world-states was that of Italy.
+Its story was a story of disaster and disappointment. It included
+some two hundred thousand square miles of territory; but they were
+hot and arid lands on the inhospitable shores of the Red Sea and
+in Somaliland. Italy had as yet no real opportunity of showing how
+she would deal with the responsibilities of empire.
+
+The most remarkable, in many respects, of all these suddenly
+acquired empires was that of Germany. For it was practically all
+obtained within a period of three years, without fighting or even
+serious friction. It fell almost wholly within regions where
+Germany's interests had been previously negligible, and British
+trade predominant. Yet its growth had not been impeded, it had
+even been welcomed, by its rivals. This easily-won empire was
+indeed relatively small, being not much over one million square
+miles, little more than one-fifth of the French dominions. But it
+was five times as large as Germany itself, and it included
+territories which were, on the whole, richer than those of France.
+The comparative smallness of its area was due to the fact that
+Germany was actually the last to enter the race. She took no steps
+to acquire territory, she showed no desire to acquire it, before
+1883; if she had chosen to begin ten years earlier, as she might
+easily have done, or if she had shown any marked activity in
+exploring or missionary work, without doubt she could have
+obtained a much larger share of African soil.
+
+These rich lands afforded to their new masters useful supplies of
+raw materials, which were capable of almost indefinite expansion.
+They included, in East and South-West Africa, areas well suited
+for white settlement; but German emigrants, despite every
+encouragement, refused to settle in them. An elaborately
+scientific system of administration, such as might be expected
+from the German bureaucracy, was devised for the colonies;
+officials and soldiers have from the beginning formed a larger
+proportion of their white population than in any other European
+possessions. Undoubtedly the government of the German colonies was
+in many respects extremely efficient. But over-administration,
+which has its defects even in an old and well-ordered country, is
+fatal to the development of a raw and new one. Although Germany
+has, in order to increase the prosperity of her colonies,
+encouraged foreign trade, and followed a far less exclusive policy
+than France, not one of her colonies, except the little West
+African district of Togoland, has ever paid its own expenses. In
+the first generation of its existence the German colonial empire,
+small though it is in comparison with the British or the French,
+actually cost the home government over 100,000,000 pounds in
+direct outlay.
+
+The main cause of this was that from the first the Germans showed
+neither skill nor sympathy in the handling of their subject
+populations. The uniformed official, with his book of rules, only
+bewilders primitive folk, and arouses their resentment. But it was
+not only official pedantry which caused trouble with the subject
+peoples; still more it was the ruthless spirit of mere domination,
+and the total disregard of native rights, which were displayed by
+the German administration. The idea of trusteeship, which had
+gradually established itself among the rulers of the British
+dominions, and in the French colonies also, was totally lacking
+among the Germans. They ruled their primitive subjects with the
+brutal intolerance of Zabern, with the ruthless cruelty since
+displayed in occupied Belgium. This was what made the rise of the
+German dominion a terrible portent in the history of European
+imperialism. The spirit of mere domination, regardless of the
+rights of the conquered, had often shown itself in other European
+empires; but it had always had to struggle against another and
+better ideal, the ideal of trusteeship; and, as we have seen, the
+better ideal had, during the nineteenth century, definitely got
+the upper hand, especially in the British realms, whose experience
+had been longest. But the old and bad spirit reigned without check
+in the German realms. And even when, in 1907, it began to be
+seriously criticised, when its disastrous and unprofitable results
+began to be seen, the ground on which it was challenged in
+discussions in Germany was mainly the materialist ground that it
+did not pay.
+
+The justification for these assertions is to be found in the
+history of the principal German colonies. In the Cameroons the
+native tribes, who had been so ready to receive European
+government that they had repeatedly asked for British protection,
+were driven to such incessant revolts that the annals of the
+colony seem to be annals of continuous bloodshed: forty-six
+punitive expeditions were chronicled in the seventeen years from
+1891--long after the establishment of the German supremacy, which
+took place in 1884. The record of East Africa was even more
+terrible for the ferocity with which constant revolts were
+suppressed. But worst of all was the story of South-West Africa.
+There were endless wars against the various tribes; but they
+culminated in the hideous Herero war of 1903-6. The Hereros,
+driven to desperation by maltreatment, had revolted and killed
+some white farmers. They were punished by an almost complete
+annihilation. The spirit of this hideous slaughter is sufficiently
+expressed by the proclamation of the governor, General von Trotha,
+in 1904. 'The Herero people must now leave the land. Within the
+German frontier every Herero, with or without weapon, with or
+without cattle, will be shot. I shall take charge of no more women
+and children, but shall drive them back to their people, or let
+them be shot at.' Ten thousand of these unhappy people, mainly old
+men, women and children, were driven into the desert, where they
+perished. There is no such atrocious episode in the history of
+European imperialism since Pizarro's slaughter of the Incas; if
+even that can be compared with it.
+
+The causes of these ceaseless and ruinous wars were to be found
+partly in the total disregard of native custom, and in the hide-
+bound pedantry with which German-made law and the Prussian system
+of regimentation were enforced upon the natives; but it was to be
+found still more in the assumption that the native had no rights
+as against his white lord. His land might be confiscated; his
+cattle driven away; even downright slavery was not unknown, not
+merely in the form of forced labour, which has been common in
+German colonies, but in the form of the actual sale and purchase
+of negroes. Herr Dernburg, who became Colonial Secretary in 1907,
+himself recorded that he met in East Africa a young farmer who
+told him that he had just bought a hundred and fifty negroes; he
+also described the settlers' pleasing practice of sitting beside
+the wells with revolvers, in order to prevent the natives from
+watering their cattle, and to force them to leave them behind; and
+he noted that officials nearly always carried negro whips with
+them. These practices, indeed, were condemned by the German
+Government itself, but only after many years, and mainly because
+they were wasteful. Government representatives have told the
+Reichstag, as Herr Schleitwein did in 1904, that they must pursue
+a 'healthy egoism,' and forswear 'humanitarianism and irrational
+sentimentality.' 'The Hereros must be forced to work, and to work
+without compensation and for their food only. ... The sentiments
+of Christianity and philanthropy with which the missionaries work
+must be repudiated with all energy.' This is what is called
+Realpolitik.
+
+Is it too much to say that the appearance of the spirit thus
+expressed was a new thing in the history of European imperialism?
+Is it not plain that if this spirit should triumph, the ascendancy
+of Europe over the non-European world must prove to be, not a
+blessing, but an unmitigated curse? Yet the nation which had thus
+acquitted itself in the rich lands which it had so easily acquired
+was not satisfied; it desired a wider field for the exhibition of
+its Kultur, its conception of civilisation.
+
+From the beginning it was evident that the colonial enthusiasts of
+Germany had no intention of resting satisfied with the
+considerable dominions they had won, but regarded them only as a
+beginning, as bases for future conquests. The colonies were not
+ends in themselves, but means for the acquisition of further
+power; and it was this, even more than the ruthlessness with which
+the subject peoples were treated, which made the growth of the
+German dominions a terrible portent. For since the whole world was
+now portioned out, new territories could only be acquired at the
+cost of Germany's neighbours. This was, indeed, at first the
+programme only of extremists; the mass of the German people, like
+Bismarck, took little interest in colonies. But the extremists
+proved that they could win over the government to their view; the
+German people, most docile of nations, could be gradually
+indoctrinated with it. And because this was so, because the ugly
+spirit of domination and of unbridled aggressiveness was in these
+years gradually mastering the ruling forces of a very powerful
+state, and leading them towards the catastrophe which was to prove
+the culmination of European imperialism, it is necessary to dwell,
+at what may seem disproportionate length, upon the development of
+German policy during the later years of our period.
+
+Filled with pride in her own achievements, believing herself to
+be, beyond all rivalry, the greatest nation in the world, already
+the leader, and destined to be the controller, of civilisation,
+Germany could not bring herself to accept a second place in the
+imperial sphere. She had entered late into the field, by no fault
+of her own, and found all the most desirable regions of the earth
+already occupied. Now that 'world-power' had become the test of
+greatness among states, she could be content with nothing short of
+the first rank among world-states; if this rank could not be
+achieved, she seemed to be sentenced to the same sort of fate as
+had befallen Holland or Denmark: she might be ever so prosperous,
+as these little states were, but she would be dwarfed by the vast
+powers which surrounded her. But the German world-state was not to
+be the result of a gradual and natural growth, like the Russian,
+the British or the American world-states. The possibility of
+gradual growth was excluded by the fact that the whole world had
+been partitioned. Greatness in the non-European world must be, and
+might be, carved out in a single generation, as supremacy in
+Europe had been already attained, by the strong will, efficient
+organisation, and military might of the German government.
+
+It was natural, perhaps inevitable, that a nation with the history
+of the German nation, with its ruling ideas, and with its
+apparently well-tried confidence in the power of its government to
+achieve its ends by force, should readily accept such a programme.
+The date at which this programme captured the government of
+Germany, and became the national policy, can be quite clearly
+fixed: it was in 1890, when Bismarck, the 'no colony man,' was
+driven from power, and the supreme direction of national affairs
+fell into the hands of the Emperor William II. An impressionable,
+domineering and magniloquent prince, inflated by the hereditary
+self-assurance of the Hohenzollerns, and sharing to the full the
+modern German belief in German superiority and in Germany's
+imperial destiny, William II. became the spokesman and leader of
+an almost insanely megalomaniac, but terribly formidable nation.
+During the first decade of his government the new ambitions of
+Germany were gradually formulated, and became more distinct. They
+were not yet very apparent to the rest of the world, in spite of
+the fact that they were expounded with vigour and emphasis in a
+multitude of pamphlets and books. The world was even ready to
+believe the Emperor's assertion that he was the friend of peace:
+he half believed it himself, because he would have been very ready
+to keep the peace if Germany's 'rights' could be attained without
+war. But many episodes, such as Kiao-Chau, and the Philippines,
+and the ceaseless warfare in the German colonies, and the restless
+enterprises of Pan-German intrigue, provided a commentary upon
+these pretensions which ought to have revealed the dangerous
+spirit which was conquering the German people.
+
+It is difficult, in the midst of a war forced upon the world by
+German ambition, to take a sane and balanced view of the aims
+which German policy was setting before itself during these years
+of experiment and preparation. What did average German opinion
+mean by the phrase Weltmacht, world-power, which had become one of
+the commonplaces of its political discussions? We may safely
+assume that by the mass of men the implications of the term were
+never very clearly analysed; and that, if they had been
+analysable, the results of the analysis would have been widely
+different in 1890 and in 1914, except for a few fanatics and
+extremists. Was the world-power at which Germany was aiming a real
+supremacy over the whole world? In a vague way, no doubt,
+important bodies of opinion held that such a supremacy was the
+ultimate destiny of Germany in the more or less distant future;
+and the existence of such a belief, however undefined, is
+important because it helped to colour the attitude of the German
+mind towards more immediately practical problems of national
+policy. But as a programme to be immediately put into operation,
+world-power was not conceived in this sense by any but a few Pan-
+German fanatics; and even they would have recognised that of
+course other states, and even other world-powers, would certainly
+survive the most successful German war, though they would have to
+submit (for their own good) to Germany's will. Again, did the
+demand for world-power mean no more than that Germany must have
+extra-European territories, like Britain or France? She already
+possessed such territories, though on a smaller scale than her
+rivals. Did the claim mean, then, that her dominions must be as
+extensive and populous as (say) those of Britain? Such an aim
+could only be obtained if she could succeed in overthrowing all
+her rivals, at once or in succession. And if she did that, she
+would then become, whatever her intentions, a world-power in the
+first and all-embracing sense. It is probably true that the German
+people, and even the extreme Pan-Germans, did not definitely or
+consciously aim at world-supremacy. But they had in the back of
+their minds the conviction that this was their ultimate destiny,
+and in aiming at 'world-power' in a narrower sense, they so
+defined their end as to make it impossible of achievement unless
+the complete mastery of Europe (which, as things are, means the
+mastery of most of the world) could be first attained. Certainly
+the ruling statesmen of Germany must have been aware of the
+implications of their doctrine of world-power. They were aware of
+it in 1914, when they deliberately struck for the mastery of
+Europe; they must have been aware of it in 1890, when they began
+to lay numerous plans and projects in all parts of the world, such
+as were bound to arouse the fears and suspicions of their rivals.
+
+It is necessary to dwell for a little upon these plans and
+projects of the decade 1890-1900, because they illustrate the
+nature of the peril which was looming over an unconscious world.
+It would be an error to suppose that all these schemes were
+systematically and continuously pursued with the whole strength of
+the German state. They appealed to different bodies of opinion.
+Some of them were eagerly taken up for a time, and then allowed to
+fall into the background, though seldom wholly dropped. But taken
+as a whole they showed the existence of a restless and insatiable
+ambition without very clearly defined aims, and an eagerness to
+make use of every opening for the extension of power, which
+constituted a very dangerous frame of mind in a nation so strong,
+industrious, and persistent as the German nation.
+
+In spite of the disappointing results of colonisation in Africa,
+the German colonial enthusiasts hoped that something suitably
+grandiose might yet be erected there: if the Belgian Congo could
+somehow be acquired, and if the Portuguese would agree to sell
+their large territories on the east and west coasts, a great
+empire of Tropical Africa might be brought into being. This vision
+has not been abandoned: it is the theme of many pamphlets
+published during the course of the war, and if Germany were to be
+able to impose her own terms, all the peoples of Central Africa
+might yet hope to have extended to them the blessings of German
+government as they have been displayed in the Cameroons and in the
+South-West.
+
+In the 'nineties there seemed also to be hope in South Africa,
+where use might be made of the strained relations between Britain
+and the Boer Republics. German South-West Africa formed a
+convenient base for operations in this region: it was equipped
+with a costly system of strategic railways, far more elaborate
+than the commerce of the colony required. There is no doubt that
+President Kruger was given reason to anticipate that he would
+receive German help: in 1895 (before the Jameson Raid) Kruger
+publicly proclaimed that the time had come 'to form ties of the
+closest friendship between Germany and the Transvaal, ties such as
+are natural between fathers and children'; in 1896 (after the
+Jameson Raid) came the Emperor's telegram congratulating President
+Kruger upon having repelled the invaders 'without recourse to the
+aid of friendly powers'; in 1897 a formal treaty of friendship and
+commerce was made between Germany and the Orange Free State, with
+which the Transvaal had just concluded a treaty of perpetual
+alliance. And meanwhile German munitions of war were pouring into
+the Transvaal through Delagoa Bay. But when the crisis came,
+Germany did nothing. She could not, because the British fleet
+stood in the way.
+
+South America, again, offered a very promising field. There were
+many thousands of German settlers, especially in southern Brazil:
+the Pan-German League assiduously laboured to organise these
+settlers, and to fan their patriotic zeal, by means of schools,
+books, and newspapers. But the Monroe Doctrine stood in the way of
+South American annexations. Perhaps Germany might have been ready
+to see how far she could go with the United States, the least
+military of great powers. But there was good reason to suppose
+that the British fleet would have to be reckoned with; and a
+burglarious expedition to South America with that formidable
+watchdog at large and unmuzzled was an uninviting prospect.
+
+In the Far East the prospects of immediate advance seemed more
+favourable, since the Chinese Empire appeared to be breaking up.
+The seizure of Kiao-chau in 1897 was a hopeful beginning. But the
+Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 formed a serious obstacle to any
+vigorous forward policy in this region. Once more the British
+fleet loomed up as a barrier.
+
+Yet another dream, often referred to by the pamphleteers though
+never brought to overt action by the government, was the dream
+that the rich empire of the Dutch in the Malay Archipelago should
+be acquired by Germany. Holland herself, according to all the
+political ethnologists of the Pan-German League, ought to be part
+of the German Empire; and if so, her external dominions would
+follow the destiny of the ruling state. But this was a prospect to
+be talked about, not to be worked for openly. It would naturally
+follow from a successful European war.
+
+A more immediately practicable field of operations was to be found
+in the Turkish Empire. It was here that the most systematic
+endeavours were made during this period: the Berlin-Bagdad scheme,
+which was to be the keystone of the arch of German world-power,
+had already taken shape before our period closed, though the rest
+of the world was strangely blind to its significance. Abstractly
+regarded, a German dominion over the wasted and misgoverned lands
+of the Turkish Empire would have meant a real advance of
+civilisation, and would have been no more unjustifiable than the
+British control of Egypt or India. This feeling perhaps explained
+the acquiescence with which the establishment of German influence
+in Turkey was accepted by most of the powers. They had yet to
+realise that it was not pursued as an end in itself, but as a
+means to further domination.
+
+But neither the great Berlin-Bagdad project, nor any of the other
+dreams and visions, had been definitely put into operation during
+the decade 1890-1900. Germany was as yet feeling the way,
+preparing the ground, and building up her resources both military
+and industrial. Perhaps the main result which emerged from the
+tentative experiments of these years was that at every point the
+obstacle was the sprawling British Empire, and the too-powerful
+British fleet. The conviction grew that the overthrow of this fat
+and top-heavy colossus was the necessary preliminary to the
+creation of the German world-state.
+
+This was a doctrine which had long been preached by the chief
+political mentor of modern Germany, Treitschke, who died in 1896.
+He was never tired of declaring that Britain was a decadent and
+degenerate state, that her empire was an unreal empire, and that
+it would collapse before the first serious attack. It would break
+up because it was not based upon force, because it lacked
+organisation, because it was a medley of disconnected and
+discordant fragments, worshipping an undisciplined freedom. That
+it should ever have come into being was one of the paradoxes of
+history; for it was manifestly not due to straightforward brute
+force, like the German Empire; and the modern German mind could
+not understand a state which did not rest upon power, but upon
+consent, which had not been built up, like Prussia, by the
+deliberate action of government, but which had grown almost at
+haphazard, through the spontaneous activity of free and self-
+governing citizens. Treitschke and his disciples could only
+explain the paradox by assuming that since it had not been created
+by force, it must have been created by low cunning; and they
+invented the theory that British statesmen had for centuries
+pursued an undeviating and Machiavellian policy of keeping the
+more virile states of Europe at cross-purposes with one another by
+means of the cunning device called the Balance of Power, while
+behind the backs of these tricked and childlike nations Britain
+was meanly snapping up all the most desirable regions of the
+earth. According to this view it was in some mysterious way
+Britain's fault that France and Germany were not the best of
+friends, and that Russia had been alienated from her ancient ally.
+But the day of reckoning would come when these mean devices would
+no longer avail, and the pampered, selfish, and overgrown colossus
+would find herself faced by hard-trained and finely tempered
+Germany, clad in her shining armour. Then, at the first shock,
+India would revolt; and the Dutch of South Africa would welcome
+their German liberators; and the great colonies, to which Britain
+had granted a degree of independence that no virile state would
+ever have permitted, would shake off the last shreds of
+subordination; and the ramshackle British Empire would fall to
+pieces; and Germany would emerge triumphant, free to pursue all
+her great schemes, and to create a lasting world-power, based upon
+Force and System and upon 'a healthy egoism,' not upon 'irrational
+sentimentalities' about freedom and justice.
+
+These were the doctrines and calculations of Realpolitik. They
+were becoming more and more prevalent in the 'nineties. They seem
+definitely to have got the upper hand in the direction of national
+policy during the last years of the century, when Germany refused
+to consider the projects of disarmament put forward at the Hague
+in 1899, when the creation of the German navy was begun by the
+Navy Acts of 1898 and 1900, and when the Emperor announced that
+the future of Germany lay upon the water, and that hers must be
+the admiralty of the Atlantic. At the moment when the conquest of
+the world by European civilisation was almost complete, two
+conceptions of the meaning of empire, the conception of brutal
+domination pursued for its own sake, which has never been more
+clearly displayed than in the administration of the German
+colonies, and the conception of trusteeship, which had slowly
+emerged during the long development of the British Empire, stood
+forth already in sharp antithesis.
+
+The dreadful anticipation of coming conflict weighed upon the
+world. France, still suffering from the wounds of 1870, was always
+aware of it. Russia, threatened by German policy in the Balkans,
+was more and more clearly realising it. But Britain was
+extraordinarily slow to awaken to the menace. As late as 1898 Mr.
+Joseph Chamberlain was advocating an alliance between Britain,
+Germany, and America to maintain the peace of the world; and Cecil
+Rhodes, when he devised his plan for turning Oxford into the
+training-ground of British youth from all the free nations of the
+empire, found a place in his scheme for German as well as for
+American students. The telegram to President Kruger in 1896 caused
+only a passing sensation. The first real illumination came with
+the extraordinary display of German venom against Britain during
+the South African war, and with the ominous doubling of the German
+naval programme adopted in the midst of that war, in 1900. But
+even this made no profound impression. The majority of the British
+people declined to believe that a 'great and friendly nation,' or
+its rulers, could deliberately enter upon a scheme of such
+unbridled ambition and of such unprovoked aggression.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE BRITISH EMPIRE AMID THE WORLD-POWERS, 1878-1914
+
+
+Throughout the period of rivalry for world-power which began in
+1878 the British Empire had continued to grow in extent, and to
+undergo a steady change in its character and organisation.
+
+In the partition of Africa, Britain, in spite of the already
+immense extent of her domains, obtained an astonishingly large
+share. The protectorates of British East Africa, Uganda, Nigeria,
+Nyasaland, and Somaliland gave her nearly 25,000,000 new negro
+subjects, and these, added to her older settlements of Sierra
+Leone and the Gold Coast, whose area was now extended, outnumbered
+the whole population of the French African empire. But besides
+these tropical territories she acquired control over two African
+regions so important that they deserve separate treatment: Egypt,
+on the one hand, and the various extensions of her South African
+territories on the other. When the partition of Africa was
+completed, the total share of Britain amounted to 3,500,000 square
+miles, with a population of over 50,000,000 souls, and it included
+the best regions of the continent: the British Empire, in Africa
+alone, was more than three times as large as the colonial empire
+of Germany, which was almost limited to Africa.
+
+It may well be asked why an empire already so large should have
+taken also the giant's share of the last continent available for
+division among the powers of Europe. No doubt this was in part due
+to the sentiment of imperialism, which was stronger in Britain
+during this period than ever before. But there were other and more
+powerful causes. In the first place, during the period 1815-78
+British influence and trade had been established in almost every
+part of Africa save the central ulterior, and no power had such
+definite relations with various native tribes, many of which
+desired to come under the protectorate of a power with whom the
+protection of native rights and customs was an established
+principle. In the second place, Britain was the only country which
+already possessed in Africa colonies inhabited by enterprising
+European settlers, and the activity of these settlers played a
+considerable part in the extension of the British African
+dominions. And in the third place, since the continental powers
+had adopted the policy of fiscal protection, the annexation of a
+region by any of them meant that the trade of other nations might
+be restricted or excluded; the annexation of a territory by
+Britain meant that it would be open freely and on equal terms to
+the trade of all nations. For this reason the trading interests in
+Britain, faced by the possibility of exclusion from large areas
+with which they had carried on traffic, were naturally anxious
+that as much territory as possible should be brought under British
+supremacy, in order that it might remain open to their trade.
+
+It is the main justification for British annexations that they
+opened and developed new markets for all the world, instead of
+closing them; and it was this fact chiefly which made the
+acquisition of such vast areas tolerable to the other trading
+powers. The extension of the British Empire was thus actually a
+benefit to all the non-imperial states, especially to such active
+trading countries as Italy, Holland, Scandinavia, or America. If
+at any time Britain should reverse her traditional policy, and
+reserve for her own merchants the trade of the immense areas which
+have been brought under her control, nothing is more certain than
+that the world would protest, and protest with reason, against the
+exorbitant and disproportionate share which has fallen to her.
+Only so long as British control means the open door for all the
+world will the immense extent of these acquisitions continue to be
+accepted without protest by the rest of the world.
+
+In the new protectorates of this period Britain found herself
+faced by a task with which she had never had to deal on so
+gigantic a scale, though she had a greater experience in it than
+any other nation: the task of governing justly whole populations
+of backward races, among whom white men could not permanently
+dwell, and whom they visited only for the purposes of commercial
+exploitation. The demands of industry for the raw materials of
+these countries involved the employment of labour on a very large
+scale; but the native disliked unfamiliar toil, and as his wants
+were very few, could easily earn enough to keep him in the
+idleness he loved. Slavery was the customary mode of getting
+uncongenial tasks performed in Africa; but against slavery
+European civilisation had set its face. Again, the ancient
+unvarying customs whereby the rights and duties of individual
+tribesmen were enforced, and the primitive societies held
+together, were often inconsistent with Western ideas, and tended
+to break down altogether on contact with Western industrial
+methods. How were the needs of industry to be reconciled with
+justice to the subject peoples? How were their customs to be
+reconciled with the legal ideas of their new masters? How were
+these simple folk to be taught the habits of labour? How were the
+resources of their land to be developed without interference with
+their rights of property and with the traditional usages arising
+from them? These were problems of extreme difficulty, which faced
+the rulers of all the new European empires. The attempt to solve
+them in a high-handed way, and with a view solely to the interests
+of the ruling race, led to many evils: it produced the atrocities
+of the Congo; it produced in the German colonies the practical
+revival of slavery, the total disregard of native customs, and the
+horrible sequence of wars and slaughters of which we have already
+spoken. In the British dominions a long tradition and a long
+experience saved the subject peoples from these iniquities. We
+dare not claim that there were no abuses in the British lands; but
+at least it can be claimed that government has always held it to
+be its duty to safeguard native rights, and to prevent the total
+break-up of the tribal system which could alone hold these
+communities together. The problem was not fully solved; perhaps it
+is insoluble. But at least the native populations were not driven
+to despair, and were generally able to feel that they were justly
+treated. 'Let me tell you,' a Herero is recorded to have written
+from British South Africa to his kinsmen under German rule, 'Let
+me tell you that the land of the English is a good land, since
+there is no ill-treatment. White and black stand on the same
+level. There is much work and much money, and your overseer does
+not beat you, or if he does he breaks the law and is punished.'
+There was a very striking contrast between the steady peace which
+has on the whole reigned in all the British dominions, and the
+incessant warfare which forms the history of the German colonies.
+The tradition of protection of native rights, established during
+the period 1815-78, and the experience then acquired, stood the
+British in good stead. During the ordeal of the Great War it has
+been noteworthy that there has been no serious revolt among these
+recently conquered subjects; and one of the most touching features
+of the war has been the eagerness of chiefs and their peoples to
+help the protecting power, and the innumerable humble gifts which
+they have spontaneously offered. Much remains to be done before a
+perfect solution is found for the problems of these dominions of
+yesterday. But it may justly be claimed that trusteeship, not
+domination, has been the spirit in which they have been
+administered; and that this is recognised by their subjects,
+despite all the mistakes and defects to which all human
+governments must be liable in dealing with a problem so complex.
+
+Administrative problems of a yet more complex kind were raised in
+the two greatest acquisitions of territory made by Britain during
+these years, in Egypt and the Soudan, and in South Africa. The
+events connected with these two regions have aroused greater
+controversy than those connected with any other British dominions;
+the results of these events have been more striking, and in
+different ways more instructive as to the spirit and methods of
+British imperialism, than those displayed in almost any other
+field; and for these reasons we shall not hesitate to dwell upon
+them at some length.
+
+The establishment of British control over Egypt was due to the
+most curious chain of unforeseen and unexpected events which even
+the records of the British Empire contain. Nominally a part of the
+Turkish Empire, Egypt had been in fact a practically independent
+state, paying only a small fixed tribute to the Sultan, ever since
+the remarkable Albanian adventurer, Mehemet Ali, had established
+himself as its Pasha in the confusion following the French
+occupation (1806). Mehemet Ali had been an extraordinarily
+enterprising prince. He had created a formidable army, had
+conquered the great desert province of the Soudan and founded its
+capital, Khartoum, and had nearly succeeded in overthrowing the
+Turkish Empire and establishing his own power in its stead: during
+the period 1825-40 he had played a leading role in European
+politics. Though quite illiterate, he had posed as the introducer
+of Western civilisation into Egypt; but his grandiose and
+expensive policy had imposed terrible burdens upon the fellahin
+(peasantry), and the heavy taxation which was necessary to
+maintain his armies and the spurious civilisation of his capital
+was only raised by cruel oppressions.
+
+The tradition of lavish expenditure, met by grinding the
+peasantry, was accentuated by Mehemet's successors. It inevitably
+impoverished the country. Large loans were raised in the West, to
+meet increasing deficits; and the European creditors in course of
+time found it necessary to insist that specific revenues should be
+ear-marked as a security for their interest, and to claim powers
+of supervision over finance. The construction of the Suez Canal
+(opened 1869), which was due to the enterprise of the French,
+promised to bring increased prosperity to Egypt; but in the
+meanwhile it involved an immense outlay. At the beginning of our
+period Egypt was already on the verge of bankruptcy, and the
+Khedive was compelled to sell his holding of Suez Canal shares,
+which were shrewdly acquired for Britain by Disraeli.
+
+But financial chaos was not the only evil from which Egypt
+suffered. There was administrative chaos also, and this was not
+diminished by the special jurisdictions which had been allowed to
+the various groups of Europeans settled in the country. The army,
+unpaid and undisciplined, was ready to revolt; and above all, the
+helpless mass of the peasantry were reduced to the last degree of
+penury, and exposed to the merciless and arbitrary severity of the
+officials, who fleeced them of their property under the lash. All
+the trading nations were affected by this state of anarchy in an
+important centre of trade; all the creditors of the Egyptian debt
+observed it with alarm. But the two powers most concerned were
+France and Britain, which between them held most of the debt, and
+conducted most of the foreign trade, of Egypt; while to Britain
+Egypt had become supremely important, since it now controlled the
+main avenue of approach to India.
+
+When a successful military revolt, led by Arabi Pasha, threatened
+to complete the disorganisation of the country (1882), France and
+Britain decided that they ought to intervene to restore order, the
+other powers all agreeing. But at the last moment France withdrew,
+and the task was undertaken by Britain single-handed. [Footnote:
+See above, p. 164] In a short campaign Arabi was overthrown; and
+now Britain had to address herself to the task of reconstructing
+the political and economic organisation of Egypt. It was her hope
+and intention that the work should be done as rapidly as possible,
+in order that she might be able to withdraw from a difficult and
+thankless task, which brought her into very delicate relations
+with the other powers interested in Egypt. But withdrawal was not
+easy. The task of reorganisation proved to be a much larger and
+more complicated one than had been anticipated; and it was greatly
+increased when the strange wave of religious fanaticism aroused by
+the preaching of the Mahdi swept over the Soudan, raised a great
+upheaval, and led to the destruction of the Egyptian armies of
+occupation. Britain had now to decide whether the revolting
+province should be reconquered or abandoned. Reconquest could not
+be effected by the utterly disorganised Egyptian army; if it was
+to be attempted, it must be by means of British troops. But this
+would not only mean a profitless expenditure, it would also
+indefinitely prolong the British occupation, which Britain was
+desirous of bringing to an end at the earliest possible moment.
+
+The romantic hero, Gordon, was therefore sent to Khartoum to carry
+out the withdrawal from the Soudan of all the remaining Egyptian
+garrisons. On his arrival he came to the conclusion that the
+position was not untenable, and took no steps to evacuate. There
+was much dangerous delay and vacillation; and in the end Gordon
+was besieged in Khartoum, and killed by the bands of the Mahdi,
+before a relief force could reach him. But this triumph of Mahdism
+increased its menace to Egypt. The country could not be left to
+its own resources until this peril had been removed, or until the
+Egyptian army had been fully reorganised. So the occupation
+prolonged itself, year after year.
+
+The situation was, in fact, utterly anomalous. Egypt was a
+province of Turkey, ruled by a semi-independent Khedive. Britain's
+chief agent in the country was in form only in the position of a
+diplomatic representative. But the very existence of the country
+depended upon the British army of occupation, and upon the work of
+the British officers who were reconstructing the Egyptian army.
+And its hope of future stability depended upon the work of the
+British administrators, financiers, jurists, and engineers who
+were labouring to set its affairs in order. These officials, with
+Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer) at their head, had an
+extraordinarily difficult task to perform. Their relations with
+the native government, which they constantly had to overrule, were
+difficult enough. But besides this, they had to deal with the
+agents of the other European powers, who, as representing the
+European creditors of the Egyptian debt, had the right to
+interfere in practically all financial questions, and could make
+any logical financial reorganisation, and any free use of the
+country's financial resources for the restoration of its
+prosperity, all but impossible.
+
+Yet in the space of a very few years an amazing work of
+restoration and reorganisation was achieved. Financial stability
+was re-established, while at the same time taxation was reduced.
+The forced labour which had been exacted from the peasantry was
+abolished; they were no longer robbed of their property under the
+lash; they obtained a secure tenure in their land; and they found
+that its productive power was increased, by means of great schemes
+of irrigation. An impartial system of justice was organised--for
+the first time in all the long history of Egypt since the fall of
+the Roman Empire. The army was remodelled by British officers.
+Schools of lower and higher grade were established in large
+numbers. In short, Egypt began to assume the aspect of a
+prosperous and well-organised modern community. And all this was
+the work, in the main, of some fifteen years.
+
+Meanwhile in the Soudan triumphant barbarism had produced an
+appalling state of things. It is impossible to exaggerate the
+hideousness of the regime of Mahdism. A ferocious tyranny
+terrorised and reduced to desolation the whole of the upper basin
+of the Nile; and the population is said to have shrunk from
+12,000,000 to 2,000,000, although exact figures are of course
+unattainable. One of the evil consequences of this regime was that
+it prevented a scientific treatment of the flow of the Nile, on
+which the very life of Egypt depended. Scientific irrigation had
+already worked wonders in increasing the productivity of Egypt,
+but to complete this work, and to secure avoidance of the famines
+which follow any deficiency in the Nile-flow, it was necessary to
+deal with the upper waters of the great river. On this ground, and
+in order to remove the danger of a return of barbarism, which was
+threatened by frequent Mahdist attacks, and finally in order to
+rescue captives who were enduring terrible sufferings in the hands
+of the Mahdi, it appeared that the reconquest of the Soudan must
+be undertaken as the inevitable sequel to the reorganisation of
+Egypt. It was achieved, with a wonderful efficiency which made the
+name of Kitchener famous, in the campaigns of 1896-98. The
+reconquered province was nominally placed under the joint
+administration of Britain and Egypt; but in fact the very
+remarkable work of civilisation which was carried out in it during
+the years preceding the Great War was wholly directed by British
+agents and officers.
+
+The occupation of the Soudan necessitated a prolongation of the
+British occupation of Egypt. But, indeed, such a prolongation was
+in any case inevitable; for the beneficial reforms in justice,
+administration, finance, and the organisation of the country's
+resources, which had been effected in half a generation, required
+to be carefully watched and nursed until they should be securely
+rooted: to a certainty they would have collapsed if the
+guardianship of Britain had been suddenly and completely
+withdrawn. The growing prosperity of Egypt, however, and still
+more the diffusion of Western education among its people, has
+naturally brought into existence a nationalist party, who resent
+what they feel to be a foreign dominance in their country, and
+aspire after the institutions of Western self-government. But it
+has to be noted that the classes among whom this movement has
+sprung up are not the classes who form the bulk of the population
+of Egypt--the fellahin, who from the time of the Pharaohs
+downwards have been exploited and oppressed by every successive
+conqueror who has imposed his rule on the country. This class,
+which has profited more than any other from the British regime,
+which has, under that regime, known for the first time justice,
+freedom from tyranny, and the opportunity of enjoying a fair share
+of the fruits of its own labour, is as yet unvocal. Accustomed
+through centuries to submission, accepting good or bad seasons,
+just or unjust masters, as the gods may send them, the fellah has
+not yet had time even to begin to have thoughts or opinions about
+his place in society and his right to a share in the control of
+his own destinies; and if the rule which has endeavoured to
+nurture him into prosperity and self-reliance were withdrawn, he
+would accept with blind submissiveness whatever might take its
+place. The classes among whom the nationalist movement finds its
+strength are the classes which have been in the past accustomed to
+enjoy some degree of domination; the relics of the conquering
+races, Arabs or Turks, who have succeeded one another in the rule
+of Egypt, the small traders and shopkeepers of the towns, drawn
+from many different races, the students who have been influenced
+by the knowledge and the political ideas of the West. It is
+natural and healthy that a desire to share in the government of
+their country should grow up among these classes: it is in some
+degree a proof that the influence of the regime under which they
+live has been stimulating. But it is also obvious that if these
+classes were at once to reassume, under parliamentary forms, the
+dominance which they wielded so disastrously until thirty years
+ago, the result must be unhappy. They are being, under British
+guidance, gradually introduced to a share in public affairs. But
+the establishment of a system of full self-government and national
+independence in Egypt, if it is to be successful, must wait until
+not only these classes, but also the classes beneath them, have
+been habituated to the sense of self-respect and of civic
+obligation by a longer acquaintance with the working of the Reign
+of Law.
+
+Since the Great War broke out, the British position in Egypt has
+been regularised by the proclamation of a formal British
+protectorate. Perhaps the happiest fate which can befall the
+country is that it should make that gradual progress in political
+freedom, which is alone lasting, under the guidance of the power
+which has already given it prosperity, the ascendancy of an
+impartial law, freedom from arbitrary authority, freedom of speech
+and thought, and emancipation from the thraldom of foreign
+financial interests; and in the end it may possibly be the destiny
+of this ancient land, after so many vicissitudes, to take its
+place as one among a partnership of free nations in a world-
+encircling British Commonwealth of self-governing peoples.
+
+The most vexed, difficult, and critical problems in the history of
+the British Empire since 1878--perhaps the most difficult in the
+whole course of its history--have been those connected with the
+South African colonies. In 1878 there were four distinct European
+provinces in South Africa, besides protected native areas, like
+Basutoland. All four had sprung from the original Anglo-Dutch
+colony of the Cape of Good Hope. In two of them--Cape Colony and
+Natal--the two European peoples, British and Dutch, dwelt side by
+side, the Dutch being in a majority in the former, the British in
+the latter; but in both the difficulty of their relationship was
+complicated by the presence of large coloured populations, which
+included not only the native African peoples, Hottentots, Kaffirs,
+Zulus, and so forth, but also a large number of Asiatics, Malays
+who had been brought in by the Dutch before the British conquest,
+and Indians who had begun to come in more recently in large
+numbers, especially to Natal. Difference of attitude towards these
+peoples between the British authorities and the Dutch settlers had
+been in the past, as we have seen, a main cause of friction
+between the two European peoples, and had caused the long
+postponement of full self-government. In the other two provinces,
+the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, the white inhabitants
+were, in 1878, almost exclusively Dutch. The native populations in
+these states were no longer in a state of formal slavery, but they
+were treated as definitely subject and inferior peoples: a law of
+the Transvaal laid it down that 'there shall be no equality in
+Church or State between white and black.' Thus the mutual distrust
+originally aroused by the native question still survived. It was
+intensified by ill-feeling between the Boers and British
+missionaries. When Livingstone, the British missionary hero,
+reported the difficulties which the Boers had put in his way,
+British opinion was made more hostile than ever. Of the two Boer
+republics, the Orange Free State had enjoyed complete independence
+since 1854; and no serious friction ever arose between it and the
+British government. But the Transvaal, which had been turbulent
+and restless from the first, had been annexed in 1878, largely
+because it seemed to be drifting into a war of extermination with
+the Zulus. As a consequence, Britain was drawn into a badly
+managed Zulu-War; and when this dangerous tribe had been
+conquered, the Transvaal revolted. The Boers defeated a small
+British force at Majuba; whereupon, instead of pursuing the
+struggle, the British government resolved to try the effect of
+magnanimity, and conceded (1881 and 1884) full local independence
+to the Transvaal, subject only to a vague recognition of British
+suzerainty.
+
+This was the beginning of many ills. The Transvaal Boers, knowing
+little of the world, thought they had defeated Britain; and under
+the lead of Paul Kruger, a shrewd old farmer who henceforth
+directed their policy with all but autocratic power, began to
+pursue the aim of creating a purely Dutch South Africa, and of
+driving the British into the sea. Kruger's policy was one of pure
+racial dominance, not of equality of rights. It was a natural aim,
+under all the conditions. But it was the source of grave evils.
+Inevitably it stimulated a parallel movement in Cape Colony, where
+Dutch and British were learning to live peaceably together. The
+Boer extremists also began to look about for allies, and were
+tempted to hope for aid from Germany, who had just established
+herself in South-West Africa. Full of pride, the Transvaalers,
+though they already held a great and rich country which was very
+thinly peopled, began to push outwards, and especially to threaten
+the native tribes in the barren region of Bechuanaland, which lay
+between the Transvaal and the German territory. To this Britain
+replied by establishing a protectorate over Bechuanaland (1884) at
+the request of native chiefs: the motive of this annexation was,
+not suspicion of Germany, for this suspicion did not yet exist,
+but the desire to protect the native population.
+
+Kruger's vague project of a Dutch South Africa would probably have
+caused little anxiety so long as his resources were limited to the
+strength of the thinly scattered Boer farmers. But the situation
+was fundamentally altered by the discovery of immense deposits
+first of diamonds and then of gold in South Africa, and most
+richly of all in the Rand district of the Transvaal. These
+discoveries brought a rapid inrush of European miners, financiers,
+and their miscellaneous camp-followers, and in a few years a very
+rich and populous European community had established itself in the
+Transvaal, and had created as its centre the mushroom new city of
+Johannesburg (founded 1884). These immigrants, who came from many
+countries, but especially from Britain, changed the situation in
+the Transvaal; it seemed as though the majority among the white
+men in that state would soon be British.
+
+A simple and primitive organisation of government, such as
+sufficed for the needs of Boer farmers, was manifestly inadequate
+for the needs of the new population, which included, in the nature
+of things, many undesirable elements; and it was natural that the
+mining population should desire to be brought under a more modern
+type of government, or to obtain an effective share in the control
+of their own affairs. But this was precisely what the Boers of
+Kruger's way of thinking were determined to refuse them. They were
+resolved that Boer ascendancy in the Transvaal should not be
+weakened. They therefore denied to the new immigrants all the
+rights of citizenship, and would not even permit them to manage
+the local affairs of Johannesburg. At the same time Kruger imposed
+heavy taxation upon the gold industry and the people who conducted
+it; and out of the proceeds he was able not only to pay the
+expenses of government without burdening the Boer farmers, but to
+build up the military power by means of which he hoped ultimately
+to carry out his great project. Thus the 'Uitlanders' found
+themselves treated as an inferior race in the land which their
+industry was enriching. They practically paid the cost of the
+government, but had no share in directing it.
+
+The policy of racial ascendancy has seldom been pursued in a more
+mischievous or dangerous form. One cannot but feel a certain
+sympathy with the Boers' desire to maintain Boer ascendancy in the
+land which they had conquered. Yet it must be remembered that they
+were themselves very recent immigrants: the whole settlement of
+the Transvaal had taken place in Paul Kruger's lifetime.
+
+The diamonds and the gold of the recent discoveries had produced
+in South Africa a new element of power: the power of great wealth,
+wielded by a small number of men. Some of these were, of course,
+mean and sordid souls, to whom wealth was an end in itself. But
+among them one emerged who was more than a millionaire, who was
+capable of dreaming great dreams, and had acquired his wealth
+chiefly in order that he might have the power to realise them.
+This was Cecil Rhodes, an almost unique combination of the
+financier and the idealist. If he was sometimes tempted to resort
+to the questionable devices that high finance seems to cultivate,
+and if his ideals took on sometimes a rather vulgar colour,
+reflected from his money-bags, nevertheless ideals were the real
+governing factors in his life.
+
+He dreamed of a great united state of South Africa; it was to be a
+British South Africa; but it was to be British, not in the sense
+in which Kruger wished it to be Dutch, but in the sense that
+equality of treatment between the white races should exist within
+it, as in all the British lands. He dreamed also of a great
+brotherhood of British communities, or communities governed by
+British ideals, girdling the world, perhaps dominating it (for
+Rhodes was inclined to be a chauvinist), and leading it to peace
+and liberty. As a lad fresh from Oxford, in long journeyings over
+the African veldt, he had in a curious, childlike way thought out
+a theology, a system of politics, and a mode of life for himself;
+having reached the conclusion that the British race had on the
+whole more capacity for leading the world successfully than any
+other, he had resolved that it should be his life's business to
+forward and increase the influence of British ideas and of British
+modes of life; and he had systematically built up a colossal
+fortune in order that he might have the means to do this work. At
+the roots of this strange medley of poetry and chauvinism which
+filled his mind was an unchanging and deep veneration for the
+outstanding memory of his youth, Oxford, which in his mind stood
+for all the august venerable past of England, and was the
+expression of her moral essence. When he died, after a life of
+money-making and intrigue, in a remote and half-developed colony,
+it was found that most of his immense fortune had been left either
+to enrich the college where he had spent a short time as a lad, or
+to bring picked youths from all the British lands, and from what
+he regarded as the two great sister communities of America and
+Germany, so that they might drink in the spirit of England, at
+Oxford, its sanctuary.
+
+His immediate task lay in South Africa, where, from the moment of
+his entry upon public life, he became the leader of the British
+cause as Kruger was the leader of the Dutch: millionaire-dreamer
+and shrewd, obstinate farmer, they form a strange contrast. The
+one stood for South African unity based upon equality of the white
+races: the other also for unity, but for unity based upon the
+ascendancy of one of the white races. In the politics of Cape
+Colony Rhodes achieved a remarkable success: he made friends with
+the Dutch party and its leader Hofmeyr, who for a long time gave
+steady support to his schemes and maintained him in the
+premiership. It was a good beginning for the policy of racial co-
+operation. But Rhodes's most remarkable achievement was the
+acquisition of the fertile upland regions of Mashonaland and
+Matabililand, now called Rhodesia in his honour. There were
+episodes which smelt of the shady practices of high finance in the
+events which led up to this acquisition. But in the result its
+settlement was well organised, after some initial difficulties, by
+the Chartered Company which Rhodes formed for the purpose. Now one
+important result of the acquisition of Rhodesia was that it hemmed
+in the Transvaal on the north; and, joined with the earlier
+annexation of Bechuanaland, isolated and insulated the two Dutch
+republics, which were now surrounded, everywhere except on the
+east, by British territory. From Cape Town up through Bechuanaland
+and through the new territories Rhodes drove a long railway line.
+It was a business enterprise, but for him it was also a great
+imaginative conception, a link of empire, and he dreamed of the
+day when it should be continued to join the line which was being
+pushed up the Nile from Cairo through the hot sands of the Soudan.
+
+But Rhodes's final and most unhappy venture was the attempt to
+force, by violent means, a solution of the Transvaal problem. He
+hoped that the Uitlanders might be able, by a revolution, to
+overthrow Kruger's government, and, perhaps in conjunction with
+the more moderate Boers, to set up a system of equal treatment
+which would make co-operation with the other British colonies
+easy, and possibly bring about a federation of the whole group of
+South African States. He was too impatient to let the situation
+mature quietly. He forced the issue by encouraging the foolish
+Jameson Raid of 1895. This, like all wilful resorts to violence,
+only made things worse. It alienated and angered the more moderate
+Boers in the Transvaal, who were not without sympathy with the
+Uitlanders. It aroused the indignation of the Cape Colony Boers,
+and embittered racial feeling there. It put the British cause in
+the wrong in the eyes of the whole world, and made the Boers
+appear as a gallant little people struggling in the folds of a
+merciless python-empire. It increased immensely the difficulty of
+the British government in negotiating with the Transvaal for
+better treatment of the Uitlanders. It stiffened the backs of
+Kruger and his party. The German Kaiser telegraphed his
+congratulations on the defeat of the Raid 'without the aid of
+friendly powers,' and the implication that this aid would be
+forthcoming in case of necessity led the Boers to believe that
+they could count on German help in a struggle with Britain. So
+every concession to the Uitlanders was obstinately refused; and
+after three years more of fruitless negotiation, during which
+German munitions were pouring into the Transvaal, the South
+African War began. It may be that the war could have been avoided
+by the exercise of patience. It may be that the imperialist
+spirit, which was very strong in Britain at that period, led to
+the adoption of a needlessly high-handed tone. But it was neither
+greed nor tyranny on Britain's part which brought about the
+conflict, but simply the demand for equal rights.
+
+The war was one in which all the appearances were against Britain,
+and the whole world condemned British greed and aggression. It was
+a case of Goliath fighting David, the biggest empire in the world
+attacking two tiny republics; yet the weaker side is not
+necessarily always in the right. It seemed to be a conflict for
+the possession of gold-mines; yet Britain has never made, and
+never hoped to make, a penny of profit out of these mines, which
+remained after the war in the same hands as before it. It was a
+case of the interests of financiers and gold-hunters against those
+of simple and honest farmers; yet even financiers have rights, and
+even farmers can be unjust. In reality the issue was a quite
+simple and straightforward one. It was the issue of racial
+ascendancy against racial equality, and as her traditions bade
+her, Britain strove for racial equality. It was the issue of self-
+government for the whole community as against the entrenched
+dominion of one section; and there was no question on which side
+the history of Britain must lead her to range herself. Whatever
+the rest of the world might say, the great self-governing
+colonies, which were free to help or not as they thought fit, had
+no doubts at all. They all sent contingents to take part in the
+war, because they knew it to be a war for principles fundamental
+to themselves.
+
+The war dragged its weary course, and the Boers fought with such
+heroism, and often with such chivalry, as to win the cordial
+respect and admiration of their enemies. It is always a pity when
+men fight; but sometimes a fight lets bad blood escape, and makes
+friendship easier between foes who have learnt mutual respect.
+Four years after the peace which added the Transvaal and the
+Orange Free State as conquered dominions to the British Empire,
+the British government established in both of these provinces the
+full institutions of responsible self-government. As in Canada
+sixty years earlier, the two races were bidden to work together
+and make the best of one another; because now their destinies were
+freely under their own control. Yet this was even a bolder
+experiment than that of Canada, and showed a more venturesome
+confidence in the healing power of self-government. How has it
+turned out? Within five years more, the four divided provinces
+which had presented such vexed problems in 1878, were combined in
+the federal Union of South Africa, governed by institutions which
+reproduced those of Britain and her colonies.
+
+In handing over to the now united states of South Africa the
+unqualified control of their own affairs, Britain necessarily left
+to them the vexed problem of devising a just relation between the
+ruling races and their subjects of backward or alien stocks; the
+problem which had been the source of most of the difficulties of
+South Africa for a century past, and which had long delayed the
+concession of full self-government. Nowhere in the world does this
+problem assume a more acute form than in South Africa, where there
+is not only a majority of negroes, mostly of the vigorous Bantu
+stock, but also a large number of immigrants mainly from India,
+who as subjects of the British crown naturally claim special
+rights. South Africa has to find her own solution for this complex
+problem; and she has not yet fully found it. But in two ways her
+association with the British Empire has helped, and will help, her
+to find her way towards it. If the earlier policy of the British
+government, guided by the missionaries, laid too exclusive an
+emphasis upon native rights, and in various ways hampered the
+development of the colony by the way in which it interpreted these
+rights, at least it had established a tradition hostile to that
+policy of mere ruthless exploitation of which such an ugly
+illustration was being given in German South-West Africa. An
+absolute parity of treatment between white and black must be not
+only impracticable, but harmful to both sides. But between the two
+extremes of a visionary equality and a white ascendancy ruthlessly
+employed for exploitation, a third term is possible--the just
+tutelage of the white man over the black, with a reasonable
+freedom for native custom. 'A practice has grown up in South
+Africa,' says the greatest of South African statesmen, [Footnote:
+General Smuts, May 22, 1917.] 'of creating parallel institutions,
+giving the natives their own separate institutions on parallel
+lines with institutions for whites. It may be that on these lines
+we may yet be able to solve a problem which may otherwise be
+insoluble.' It is a solution which owes much to the British
+experiments of the previous period; and the principle which
+inspires it was incorporated in the Act of Union. This is one of
+the innumerable fruitful experiments in government in which the
+British system is so prolific. Again, the problem of the
+relationship between Indian immigrants and white colonists is an
+acutely difficult one. It cannot be said to have been solved. But
+at least the fact that the South African Union and the Indian
+Empire are both partners in the same British commonwealth improves
+the chances of a just solution. It helped to find at least a
+temporary adjustment in 1914; in the future also it may
+contribute, in this as in many other ways, to ensure that a fair
+consideration is given to both sides of the thorny question of
+inter-racial relationship.
+
+The events which led up to, and still more the events which
+followed, the South African War had thus brought a solution for
+the South African problem, which had been a continuous vexation
+since the moment of the British conquest. It was solved by the
+British panacea of self-government and equal rights. Who could
+have anticipated, twenty years or fifty years ago, the part which
+has been played by South Africa in the Great War? Is there any
+parallel to these events, which showed the gallant general of the
+Boer forces playing the part of prime minister in a united South
+Africa, crushing with Boer forces a revolt stirred up among the
+more ignorant Boers by German intrigue, and then leading an army,
+half Boer and half British, to the conquest of German South-West
+Africa?
+
+The South African War had proved to be the severest test which the
+modern British Empire had yet had to undergo. But it had emerged,
+not broken, as in 1782, but rejuvenated, purged of the baser
+elements which had alloyed its imperial spirit, and confirmed in
+its faith in the principles on which it was built. More than that,
+on the first occasion on which the essential principles or the
+power of the empire had been challenged in war, all the self-
+governing colonies had voluntarily borne their share. Apart from a
+small contingent sent from Australia to the Soudan in 1885,
+British colonies had never before--indeed, no European colony had
+ever before--sent men oversea to fight in a common cause: and this
+not because their immediate interests were threatened, but for the
+sake of an idea. For that reason the South African War marks an
+epoch not merely in the history of the British Empire, but of
+European imperialism as a whole.
+
+The unity of sentiment and aim which was thus expressed had,
+however, been steadily growing throughout the period of European
+rivalry; and doubtless in the colonies, as in Britain, the new
+value attached to the imperial tie was due in a large degree to
+the very fact of the eagerness of the other European powers for
+extra-European possessions. Imperialist sentiment began to become
+a factor in British politics just about the beginning of this
+period: in 1878 the Imperial Federation Society was founded, and
+about the same time Disraeli, who had once spoken of the colonies
+as 'millstones around our necks,' was making himself the
+mouthpiece of the new imperialist spirit. To this wave of feeling
+a very notable contribution was made by Sir John Seeley's
+brilliant book, "The Expansion of England." Slight as it was, and
+containing no facts not already familiar, it gave a new
+perspective to the events of the last four centuries of British
+history, and made the growth of the Empire seem something not
+merely casual and incidental, but a vital and most significant
+part of the British achievement. Its defect was, perhaps, that it
+concentrated attention too exclusively upon the external aspects
+of the wonderful story, and dwelt too little upon its inner
+spirit, upon the force and influence of the instinct of self-
+government which has been the most potent factor in British
+history. The powerful impression which it created was deepened by
+other books, like Froude's "Oceana" and Sir Charles Dilke's
+"Greater Britain," the title of which alone was a proclamation and
+a prophecy. It was strengthened also by the wonderful imperial
+pageants, like nothing else ever witnessed in the world, which
+began with the two Jubilee celebrations of 1887 and 1897, and were
+continued in the funerals of Queen Victoria and Edward VII., the
+coronations of Edward VII. and George V., and the superb Durbars
+of Delhi. The imaginative appeal of such solemn representations of
+a world-scattered fellowship of peoples and nations and tongues
+must not be underestimated. At first there was perhaps a
+suggestion of blatancy, and of mere pride in dominion, in the way
+in which these celebrations were received; the graver note of
+Kipling's 'Recessional,' inspired by the Jubilee of 1897, was not
+unneeded. But after the strain and anxiety of the South African
+War, a different temper visibly emerged.
+
+More important than the pageants were the conferences of imperial
+statesmen which arose out of them. The prime ministers of the
+great colonies began to deliberate in common with the statesmen of
+Britain; and the discussions, though at first quite informal and
+devoid of authority, have become more intimate and vital as time
+has passed: a beginning at least has been made in the common
+discussion of problems affecting the Empire as a whole. And
+alongside of, and in consequence of, all this, imperial questions
+have been treated with a new seriousness in the British
+parliament, and the offices which deal with them have ceased to
+be, as they once were, reserved for statesmen of the second rank.
+The new attitude was pointedly expressed when in 1895 Mr. Joseph
+Chamberlain, the most brilliant politician of his generation, who
+could have had almost any office he desired, deliberately chose
+the Colonial Office. His tenure of that office was not, perhaps,
+memorable for any far-reaching change in colonial policy, though
+he introduced some admirable improvements in the administration of
+the tropical colonies; but it was most assuredly memorable for the
+increased intensity of interest which he succeeded in arousing in
+imperial questions, both at home and in the colonies. The campaign
+which he initiated, after the South African War, for the
+institution of an Imperial Zollverein or a system of Colonial
+Preference was a failure, and indeed was probably a blunder, since
+it implied an attempt to return to that material basis of imperial
+unity which had formed the core of the old colonial system, and
+had led to the most unhappy results in regard to the American
+colonies. But at least it was an attempt to realise a fuller unity
+than had yet been achieved, and in its first form included an
+inspiring appeal to the British people to face sacrifices, should
+they be necessary, for that high end. Whether these ideas
+contribute to the ultimate solution of the imperial problem or
+not, it was at least a good thing that the question should be
+raised and discussed.
+
+One further feature among the many developments of this era must
+not be left untouched. It is the rise of a definitely national
+spirit in the greater members of the Empire. To this a great
+encouragement has been given by the political unity which some of
+these communities have for the first time attained during these
+years. National sentiment in the Dominion of Canada was stimulated
+into existence by the Federation of 1867. The unification of
+Australia which was at length achieved in the Federation of 1900
+did not indeed create, but it greatly strengthened, the rise of a
+similar spirit of Australian nationality. A national spirit in
+South Africa, merging in itself the hostile racial sentiments of
+Boer and Briton, may well prove to be the happiest result of the
+Union of South Africa. In India also a national spirit is coming
+to birth, bred among a deeply divided people by the political
+unity, the peace, and the equal laws, which have been the greatest
+gifts of British rule; its danger is that it may be too quick to
+imagine that the unity which makes nationhood can be created
+merely by means of resolutions declaring that it exists, but the
+desire to create it is an altogether healthy desire. On the
+surface it might appear that the rise of a national spirit in the
+great members of the Empire is a danger to the ideal of imperial
+unity; but that need not be so, and if it were so, the danger must
+be faced, since the national spirit is too valuable a force to be
+restricted. The sense of nationhood is the inevitable outcome of
+the freedom and co-operation which the British system everywhere
+encourages; to attempt to repress it lest it should endanger
+imperial unity would be as short-sighted as the old attempt to
+restrict the natural growth of self-government because it also
+seemed a danger to imperial unity. The essence of the British
+system is the free development of natural tendencies, and the
+encouragement of variety of types; and the future towards which
+the Empire seems to be tending is not that of a highly centralised
+and unified state, but that of a brotherhood of free nations,
+united by community of ideas and institutions, co-operating for
+many common ends, and above all for the common defence in case of
+need, but each freely following the natural trend of its own
+development.
+
+That is the conception of empire, unlike any other ever
+entertained by men upon this planet, which was already shaping
+itself among the British communities when the terrible ordeal of
+the Great War came to test it, and to prove as not even the
+staunchest believer could have anticipated, that it was capable of
+standing the severest trial which men or institutions have ever
+had to undergo.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE GREAT CHALLENGE, 1900-1914
+
+
+At the opening of the twentieth century the long process whereby
+the whole globe has been brought under the influence of European
+civilisation was practically completed; and there had emerged a
+group of gigantic empires, which in size far surpassed the ancient
+Empire of Rome; each resting upon, and drawing its strength from,
+a unified nation-state. In the hands of these empires the
+political destinies of the world seemed to rest, and the lesser
+nation-states appeared to be altogether overshadowed by them.
+Among the vast questions which fate was putting to humanity, there
+were none more momentous than these: On what principles, and in
+what spirit, were these nation-empires going to use the power
+which they had won over their vast and varied multitudes of
+subjects? What were to be their relations with one another? Were
+they to be relations of conflict, each striving to weaken or
+destroy its rivals in the hope of attaining a final world-
+supremacy? Or were they to be relations of co-operation in the
+development of civilisation, extending to the whole world those
+tentative but far from unsuccessful efforts after international
+co-operation which the European states had long been endeavouring
+to work out among themselves? [Footnote: See the Essay on
+Internationalism (Nationalism and Internationalism, p. 124 ff.).]
+At first it seemed as if the second alternative might be adopted,
+for these were the days of the Hague Conferences; but the
+development of events during the first fourteen years of the
+century showed with increasing clearness that one of the new
+world-states was resolute to make a bid for world-supremacy, and
+the gradual maturing of this challenge, culminating in the Great
+War, constitutes the supreme interest of these years.
+
+The oldest, and (by the rough tests of area, population, and
+natural resources) by far the greatest of these new composite
+world-states, was the British Empire, which included 12,000,000
+square miles, or one-quarter of the land-surface of the globe. It
+rested upon the wealth, vigour, and skill of a population of
+45,000,000 in the homeland, to which might be added, but only by
+their own consent, the resources of five young daughter-nations,
+whose population only amounted to about 15,000,000. Thus it stood
+upon a rather narrow foundation. And while it was the greatest, it
+was also beyond comparison the most loosely organised of all these
+empires. It was rather a partnership of a multitude of states in
+every grade of civilisation than an organised and consolidated
+dominion. Five of its chief members were completely self-
+governing, and shared in the common burdens only by their own free
+will. All the remaining members were organised as distinct units,
+though subject to the general control of the home government. The
+resources of each unit were employed exclusively for the
+development of its own welfare. They paid no tribute; they were
+not required to provide any soldiers beyond the minimum needed for
+their own defence and the maintenance of internal order. This
+empire, in short, was not in any degree organised for military
+purposes. It possessed no great land-army, and was, therefore,
+incapable of threatening the existence of any of its rivals. It
+depended for its defence firstly upon its own admirable strategic
+distribution, since it was open to attack at singularly few points
+otherwise than from the sea; it depended mainly, for that reason,
+upon naval power, and secure command of the sea-roads by which its
+members were linked was absolutely vital to its existence. Only by
+sea-power (which is always weak in the offensive) could it
+threaten its neighbours or rivals; and its sea-power, during four
+centuries, had always, in war, been employed to resist the
+threatened domination of any single power, and had never, in time
+of peace, been employed to restrict the freedom of movement of any
+of the world's peoples. On the contrary, the Freedom of the Seas
+had been established by its victories, and dated from the date of
+its ascendancy. The life-blood of this empire was trade; its
+supreme interest was manifestly peace. The conception of the
+meaning of empire which had been developed by its history was not
+a conception of dominion for dominion's sake, or of the
+exploitation of subjects for the advantage of a master. On the
+contrary, it had come to mean (especially during the nineteenth
+century) a trust; a trust to be administered in the interests of
+the subjects primarily, and secondarily in the interests of the
+whole civilised world. That this is not the assertion of a theory
+or an ideal, but of a fact and a practice, is sufficiently
+demonstrated by two unquestionable facts: the first that the units
+which formed this empire were not only free from all tribute in
+money or men, but were not even required to make any contribution
+towards the upkeep of the fleet, upon which the safety of all
+depended; the second that every port and every market in this vast
+empire, so far as they were under the control of the central
+government, were thrown open as freely to the citizens of all
+other states as to its own. Finally, in this empire there had
+never been any attempt to impose a uniformity of method or even of
+laws upon the infinitely various societies which it included: it
+not merely permitted, it cultivated and admired, varieties of
+type, and to the maximum practicable degree believed in self-
+government. Because these were the principles upon which it was
+administered, the real strength of this empire was far greater
+than it appeared. But beyond question it was ill-prepared and ill-
+organised for war; desiring peace beyond all things, and having
+given internal peace to one-quarter of the earth's population, it
+was apt to be over-sanguine about the maintenance of peace. And if
+a great clash of empires should come, this was likely to tell
+against it.
+
+The second oldest--perhaps it ought to be described as the oldest
+--of the world-empires, and the second largest in area, was the
+Russian Empire, which covered 8,500,000 square miles of territory.
+Its strength was that its vast domains formed a single continuous
+block, and that its population was far more homogeneous than that
+of its rivals, three out of four of its subjects being either of
+the Russian or of kindred Slavonic stock. Its weaknesses were that
+it was almost land-locked, nearly the whole of its immense
+coastline being either inaccessible, or ice-bound during half of
+the year; and that it had not adopted modern methods of
+government, being subject to a despotism, working through an
+inefficient, tyrannical, and corrupt bureaucracy. In the event of
+a European war it was further bound to suffer from the facts that
+its means of communication and its capacity for the movement of
+great armies were ill-developed; and that it was far behind all
+its rivals in the control of industrial machinery and applied
+science, upon which modern warfare depends, and without which the
+greatest wealth of man-power is ineffective. At the opening of the
+twentieth century Russia was still pursuing the policy of Eastward
+expansion at the expense of China, which the other Western powers
+had been compelled to abandon by the formation of the Anglo-
+Japanese alliance. Able to bring pressure upon China from the
+landward side, she was not deterred by the naval predominance
+which this alliance enjoyed, and she still hoped to control
+Manchuria, and to dominate the policy of China. But these aims
+brought her in conflict with Japan, who had been preparing for the
+conflict ever since 1895. The outcome of the war (1904), which
+ended in a disastrous Russian defeat, had the most profound
+influence upon the politics of the world. It led to an internal
+revolution in Russia. It showed that the feet of the colossus were
+of clay, and that her bureaucratic government was grossly corrupt
+and incompetent. It forbade Russia to take an effective part in
+the critical events of the following years, and notably disabled
+her from checking the progress of German and Austrian ascendancy
+in the Balkans. Above all it increased the self-confidence of
+Germany, and inspired her rulers with the dangerous conviction
+that the opposing forces with which they would have to deal in the
+expected contest for the mastery of Europe could be more easily
+overthrown than they had anticipated. To the Russian defeat must
+be mainly attributed the blustering insolence of German policy
+during the next ten years, and the boldness of the final challenge
+in 1914.
+
+The third of the great empires was that of France, with 5,000,000
+square miles of territory, mostly acquired in very recent years,
+but having roots in the past. It rested upon a home population of
+only 39,000,000, but these belonged to the most enlightened, the
+most inventive, and the most chivalrous stock in Christendom. As
+France had, a hundred years before, raised the standard of human
+rights among the European peoples, so she was now bringing law and
+justice and peace to the backward peoples of Africa and the East;
+and was finding in the pride of this achievement some consolation
+for the brtitality with which she had been hurled from the
+leadership of Europe.
+
+The fourth of the great empires was America, with some 3,000,000
+square miles of territory, and a vague claim of suzerainty over
+the vast area of Central and South America. Her difficult task of
+welding into a nation masses of people of the most heterogeneous
+races had been made yet more difficult by the enormous flood of
+immigrants, mainly from the northern, eastern, and south-eastern
+parts of Europe, which had poured into her cities during the last
+generation: they proved to be in many ways more difficult to
+digest than their predecessors, and they tended, in a dangerous
+way, to live apart and to organise themselves as separate
+communities. The presence of these organised groups made it
+sometimes hard for America to maintain a quite clear and
+distinctive attitude in the discussions of the powers, most of
+which had, as it were, definite bodies of advocates among her
+citizens; and it was perhaps in part for this reason that she had
+tended to fall back again to that attitude of aloofness towards
+the affairs of the non-American world from which she seemed to
+have begun to depart in the later years of the last century.
+Although she had herself taken a hand in the imperialist
+activities of the 'nineties, the general attitude of her citizens
+towards the imperial controversies of Europe was one of contempt
+or undiscriminating condemnation. Her old tradition of isolation
+from the affairs of Europe was still very strong--still the
+dominating factor in her policy. She had not yet grasped (indeed,
+who, in any country, had?) the political consequences of the new
+era of world-economy into which we have passed. And therefore she
+could not see that the titanic conflict of Empires which was
+looming ahead was of an altogether different character from the
+old conflicts of the European states, that it was fundamentally a
+conflict of principles, a fight for existence between the ideal of
+self-government and the ideal of dominion, and that it must
+therefore involve, for good or ill, the fortunes of the whole
+globe. She watched the events which led up to the great agony with
+impartial and deliberate interest. Even when the war began she
+clung with obstinate faith to the belief that her tradition of
+aloofness might still be maintained. It is not surprising, when we
+consider how deep-rooted this tradition was, that it took two and
+a half years of carnage and horror to convert her from it. But it
+was inevitable that in the end her still more deeply rooted
+tradition of liberty should draw her into the conflict, and lead
+her at last to play her proper part in the attempt to shape a new
+world-order.
+
+We cannot stop to analyse the minor world-states, Italy and Japan;
+both of which might have stood aside from the conflict, but that
+both realised its immense significance for themselves and for the
+world.
+
+Last among the world-states, both in the date of its foundation
+and in the extent of its domains, was the empire of Germany, which
+covered considerably less than 1,500,000 square miles, but rested
+upon a home population of nearly 70,000,000, more docile, more
+industrious, and more highly organised than any other human
+society. The empire of Germany had been more easily and more
+rapidly acquired than any of the others, yet since its foundation
+it had known many troubles, because the hard and domineering
+spirit in which it was ruled did not know how to win the
+affections of its subjects. A parvenu among the great states--
+having only attained the dignity of nationhood in the mid-
+nineteenth century--Germany has shown none of that 'genius for
+equality' which is the secret of good manners and of friendship
+among nations as among individuals. Her conversation, at home and
+abroad, had the vulgar self-assertiveness of the parvenu, and
+turned always and wholly upon her own greatness. And her conduct
+has been the echo of her conversation. She has persuaded herself
+that she has a monopoly of power, of wisdom, and of knowledge, and
+deserves to rule the earth. Of the magnitude and far-reaching
+nature of her imperialist ambitions, we have said something in a
+previous chapter. She had as yet failed to realise any of these
+vaulting schemes, but she had not for that reason abandoned any of
+them, and she kept her clever and insidious preparations on foot
+in every region of the world upon which her acquisitive eyes had
+rested. But the exasperation of her steady failure to achieve the
+place in the world which she had marked out as her due had driven
+her rulers more and more definitely to contemplate, and prepared
+her people to uphold, a direct challenge to all her rivals. The
+object of this challenge was to win for Germany her due share in
+the non-European world, her 'place in the sun.' Her view of what
+that share must be was such that it could not be attained without
+the overthrow of all her European rivals, and this would bring
+with it the lordship of the worid. It must be all or nothing.
+Though not quite realising this alternative, the mind of Germany
+was not afraid of it. She was in the mood to make a bold attempt,
+if need be, to grasp even the sceptre of world-supremacy. The
+world could not believe that any sane people could entertain such
+megalomaniac visions; not even the events of the decade 1904-14
+were enough to bring conviction; it needed the tragedy and
+desolation of the war to prove at once their reality and their
+folly. For they were folly even if they could be momentarily
+realised. They sprang from the traditions of Prussia, which seemed
+to demonstrate that all things were possible to him who dared all,
+and scrupled nothing, and calculated his chances and his means
+with precision. By force and fraud the greatness of Prussia had
+been built; by force and fraud Prussia-Germany had become the
+leading state of Europe, feared by all her rivals and safe from
+all attack. Force and fraud appeared to be the determining factors
+in human affairs; even the philosophers of Germany devoted their
+powers to justifying and glorifying them. By force and fraud,
+aided by science, Germany should become the leader of the world,
+and perhaps its mistress. Never has the doctrine of power been
+proclaimed with more unflinching directness as the sole and
+sufficient motive for state action. There was practically no
+pretence that Germany desired to improve the condition of the
+lands she wished to possess, or that they were misgoverned, or
+that the existing German territories were threatened: what
+pretence there was, was invented after war began. The sole and
+sufficient reason put forward by the advocates of the policy which
+Germany was pursuing was that she wanted more power and larger
+dominions; and what she wanted she proposed to take
+
+On the surface it seemed mere madness for the least and latest of
+the great empires to challenge all the rest, just as it had once
+seemed madness for Frederick the Great, with his little state, to
+stand up against all but one of the great European powers. But
+Germany had calculated her chances, and knew that there were many
+things in her favour. She knew that in the last resort the
+strength of the world-states rested upon their European
+foundations, and here the inequality was much less. In a European
+struggle she could draw great advantage from her central
+geographical position, which she had improved to the highest
+extent by the construction of a great system of strategic
+railways. She could trust to her superbly organised military
+system, more perfect than that of any other state, just because no
+other state has ever regarded war as the final aim and the highest
+form of state action. She commanded unequalled resources in all
+the mechanical apparatus of war; she had spared no pains to build
+up her armament works, which had, indeed, supplied a great part of
+the world; she had developed all the scientific industries in such
+a way that their factories could be rapidly and easily turned to
+war purposes; and having given all her thoughts to the coming
+struggle as no other nation had done, she knew, better than any
+other, how largely it would turn upon these things. She counted
+securely upon winning an immense advantage from the fact that she
+would herself fix the date of war, and enter upon it with a sudden
+spring, fully prepared, against rivals who, clinging to the hope
+of peace, would be unready for the onset. She hoped to sow
+jealousies among her rivals; she trusted to catch them at a time
+when they were engrossed in their domestic concerns, and in this
+respect fate seemed to play into her hands, since at the moment
+which she had predetermined, Britain, France, and Russia were all
+distracted by domestic controversies. She trusted also to her
+reading of the minds and temper of her opponents; and here she
+went wildly astray, as must always be the fate of the nation or
+the man who is blinded by self-complacency and by contempt for
+others.
+
+But, above all, she put her trust in a vast political combination
+which she had laboriously prepared during the years preceding the
+great conflict: the combination which we have learned to call
+Mittel-Europa. None of us realised to how great an extent this
+plan had been put in operation before the war began. Briefly it
+depended on the possibility of obtaining an intimate union with
+the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a control over the Turkish Empire,
+and a sufficient influence or control among the little Balkan
+states to ensure through communication. If the scheme could be
+carried out in full, it would involve the creation of a
+practically continuous empire stretching from the North Sea to the
+Persian Gulf, and embracing a total population of over
+150,000,000. This would be a dominion worth acquiring for its own
+sake, since it would put Germany on a level with her rivals. But
+it would have the further advantage that it would hold a central
+position in relation to the other world-powers, corresponding to
+Germany's central position in relation to the other nation-states
+of Europe. Russia could be struck at along the whole length of her
+western and south-western frontier; the British Empire could be
+threatened in Egypt, the centre of its ocean lines of
+communication, and also from the Persian Gulf in the direction of
+India; the French Empire could be struck at the heart, in its
+European centre; and all without seriously laying open the
+attacking powers to the invasion of sea-power.
+
+It was a bold and masterful scheme, and it was steadily pursued
+during the years before the war. Austro-Hungary was easily
+influenced. The ascendancy of her ruling races--nay, the very
+existence of her composite anti-national empire--was threatened
+by the nationalist movements among her subject-peoples, who,
+cruelly oppressed at home, were more and more beginning to turn
+towards their free brothers over the border, in Serbia and
+Rumania; and behind these loomed Russia, the traditional protector
+of the Slav peoples and of the Orthodox faith. Austro-Hungary,
+therefore, leant upon the support of Germany, and her dominant
+races would be very willing to join in a war which should remove
+the Russian menace and give them a chance of subjugating the
+Serbs. This latter aim suited the programme of Germany as well as
+it suited that of Austria, since the railways to Constantinople
+and Salonika ran through Serbia. Serbia, therefore, was doomed;
+she stood right in the path of the Juggernaut car.
+
+The acquisition of influence in Turkey was also comparatively
+easy. Constantinople is a city where lavish corruption can work
+wonders. Moreover Turkey was, in the last years of the nineteenth
+century, in bad odour with Europe; and Germany was able to earn in
+1897 the lasting gratitude of the infamous Sultan Abdul Hamid by
+standing between him and the other European powers, who were
+trying to interfere with his indulgence in the pastime of
+massacring the Armenians. Turkey had had many protectors among the
+European powers. She had never before had one so complaisant about
+the murder of Christians. From that date Germany was all-powerful
+in Turkey. The Turkish army was reorganised under her direction,
+and practically passed under her control. Most of the Turkish
+railways were acquired and managed by German companies. And
+presently the great scheme of the Bagdad railway began to be
+carried through. The Young Turk revolution in 1908 and the fall of
+Abdul Hamid gave, indeed, a shock to the German ascendancy; but
+only for a moment. The Young Turks were as amenable to corruption
+as their predecessors; and under the guidance of Enver Bey Turkey
+relapsed into German suzerainty. Thus the most important parts of
+the great scheme were in a fair way of success by 1910. One of the
+merits of this scheme was that as the Sultan of Turkey was the
+head of the Mahomedan religion, the German protectorate over
+Turkey gave a useful mode of appealing to the religious sentiments
+of Mahomedans everywhere. Twice over, in 1898 and in 1904, the
+Kaiser had declared that he was the protector of all Mahomedans
+throughout the world. Most of the Mahomedans were subjects either
+of Britain, France, or Russia--the three rival empires that were
+to be overthrown. As General Bernhardi put it, Germany in her
+struggle for Weltmacht must supplement her material weapons with
+spiritual weapons.
+
+To obtain a similar ascendancy over the Balkan states was more
+difficult; for the Turk was the secular enemy of all of them, and
+Austria was the foe of two of the four, and to bring these little
+states into partnership with their natural enemies seemed an all
+but impossible task. Yet a good deal could be, and was, done. In
+two of the four chief Balkan states German princes occupied the
+thrones, a Hohenzollern in Rumania, a Coburger in Bulgaria; in a
+third, the heir-apparent to the Greek throne was honoured with the
+hand of the Kaiser's own sister. Western peoples had imagined that
+the day had gone by when the policy of states could be deflected
+by such facts; especially as the Balkan states all had democratic
+parliamentary constitutions. But the Germans knew better than the
+West. They knew that kings could still play a great part in
+countries where the bulk of the electorate were illiterate, and
+where most of the class of professional politicians were always
+open to bribes. Their calculations were justified. King Carol of
+Rumania actually signed a treaty of alliance with Germany without
+consulting his ministers or parliament. King Ferdinand of Bulgaria
+was able to draw his subjects into an alliance with the Turks, who
+had massacred their fathers in 1876, against the Russians, who had
+saved them from destruction. King Constantine of Greece was able
+to humiliate and disgrace the country over which he ruled, in
+order to serve the purposes of his brother-in-law. These
+sovereigns may have been the unconscious implements of a policy
+which they did not understand. But they earned their wages.
+
+There were, indeed, two moments when the great scheme came near
+being wrecked. One was when Italy, the sleeping partner of the
+Triple Alliance, who was not made a sharer in these grandiose and
+vile projects, attacked and conquered the Turkish province of
+Tripoli in 1911, and strained to breaking-point the loyalty of the
+Turks to Germany. The other was when, under the guidance of the
+two great statesmen of the Balkans, Venizelos of Greece and
+Pashitch of Serbia, the Balkan League was formed, and the power of
+Turkey in Europe broken. If the League had held together, the
+great German project would have been ruined, or at any rate
+gravely imperilled. But Germany and Austria contrived to throw an
+apple of discord among the Balkan allies at the Conference of
+London in 1912, and then stimulated Bulgaria to attack Serbia and
+Greece. The League was broken up irreparably; its members had been
+brought into a sound condition of mutual hatred; and Bulgaria,
+isolated among distrustful neighbours, was ready to become the
+tool of Germany in order that by her aid she might achieve (fond
+hope!) the hegemony of the Balkans. This brilliant stroke was
+effected in 1913--the year before the Great War. All that remained
+was to ruin Serbia. For that purpose Austria had long been
+straining at the leash. She had been on the point of making an
+attack in 1909, in 1912, in 1913. In 1914 the leash was slipped.
+If the rival empires chose to look on while Serbia was destroyed,
+well and good: in that case the Berlin-Bagdad project could be
+systematically developed and consolidated, and the attack on the
+rival empires could come later. If not, still it was well; for all
+was ready for the great challenge.
+
+We have dwelt at some length upon this gigantic project, because
+it has formed during all these years the heart and centre of the
+German designs, and even to-day it is the dearest of German hopes.
+Not until she is utterly defeated will she abandon it; because its
+abandonment must involve the abandonment of every hope of a
+renewed attempt at world-supremacy, after an interval for
+reorganisation and recovery. Not until the German control over
+Austria and Turkey, more complete to-day, after two and a half
+years of war, than it has ever been before, has been destroyed by
+the splitting up of Austria among the nationalities to which her
+territory belongs, and by the final overthrow of the Turkish
+Empire, will the German dream of world-dominion be shattered.
+
+But while this fundamentally important project was being worked
+out, other events, almost equally momentous in their bearing upon
+the coming conflict, were taking place elsewhere. It was the
+obvious policy of Germany to keep her rivals on bad terms with one
+another. The tradition of Bismarck bade her isolate each victim
+before it was destroyed. But the insolence and the megalomania of
+modern Germany made this difficult. German writers were busily and
+openly explaining the fate marked out for all the other powers.
+France was to be so crushed that she would 'never again be able to
+stand in our path.' The bloated and unconsolidated empire of
+Britain was to be shattered. The Russian barbarians were to be
+thrust back into Asia. And what the pamphleteers and journalists
+wrote was expressed with almost equal clearness in the tone of
+German diplomacy. In face of all this, the clumsy attempts of the
+German government to isolate their rivals met with small success,
+even though these rivals had many grounds of controversy among
+themselves. France knew what she had to fear; and the
+interpolation of a few clumsy bids for her favour amid the torrent
+of insults against her which filled the German press, were of no
+avail; especially as she had to look on at the unceasing petty
+persecution practised in the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine.
+Russia had been alienated by the first evidences of German designs
+in the Balkans, and driven into a close alliance with France.
+Britain, hitherto obstinately friendly to Germany, began to be
+perturbed by the growing German programmes of naval construction
+from 1900 onwards, by the absolute refusal of Germany to consider
+any proposal for mutual disarmament or retardation of
+construction, and above all by the repeated assertions of the head
+of the German state that Germany aspired to naval supremacy, that
+her future was on the sea, that the trident must be in her hands.
+Should the trident fall into any but British hands, the existence
+of the British Empire, and the very livelihood of the British
+homeland, would rest at the mercy of him who wielded it. So, quite
+inevitably, the three threatened empires drew together and
+reconciled their differences in the Franco-British agreement of
+1904 and the Russo-British agreement of 1907.
+
+These agreements dealt wholly with extra-European questions, and
+therefore deserve some analysis. In the Franco-British agreement
+the main feature was that while France withdrew her opposition to
+the British position in Egypt, Britain on her side recognised the
+paramount political interest of France in Morocco. It was the
+agreement about Morocco which counted for most; because it was the
+beginning of a controversy which lasted for seven years, which was
+twice used by Germany as a means for testing, and endeavouring to
+break, the friendship of her rivals, and which twice brought
+Europe to the verge of war.
+
+Morocco is a part of that single region of mountainous North
+Africa of which France already controlled the remainder, Tunis and
+Algeria. Peoples of the same type inhabited the whole region, but
+while in Tunis and Algeria they were being brought under the
+influence of law and order, in Morocco they remained in anarchy.
+Only a conventional line divided Morocco from Algeria, and the
+anarchy among the tribesmen on one side of the line inevitably had
+an unhappy effect upon the people on the other side of the line.
+More than once France had been compelled, for the sake of Algeria,
+to intervene in Morocco. It is impossible to exaggerate the
+anarchy which existed in the interior of this rich and wasted
+country. It was, indeed, the most lawless region remaining in the
+world: when Mr. Bernard Shaw wished to find a scene for a play in
+which the hero should be a brigand chief leading a band of rascals
+and outlaws from all countries, Morocco presented the only
+possible scene remaining in the world. And this anarchy was the
+more unfortunate, not only because the country was naturally rich
+and ought to have been prosperous, but also because it lay in
+close proximity to great civilised states, and on one of the main
+routes of commerce at the entrance to the Mediterranean. In its
+ports a considerable traffic was carried on by European traders,
+but this traffic was, owing to the anarchic condition of the
+country, nothing like as great as it ought to have been. In 1905,
+39 per cent. of it was controlled by French traders, 32 per cent.
+by British traders, 12 per cent. by German traders, and 5 per
+cent. by Spanish traders. Manifestly this was a region where law
+and order ought to be established, in the interests of
+civilisation. The powers most directly concerned were in the first
+place France, with her neighbouring territory and her preponderant
+trade; in the second place Britain, whose strategic interests as
+well as her trading interests were involved; in the third place
+Spain, which directly faced the Morocco coast; while Germany had
+only trading interests involved, and so long as these were
+safeguarded, had no ground of complaint. If any single power was
+to intervene, manifestly the first claim was upon France.
+
+In 1900 France had directed the attention of Europe to the
+disorderly condition of Morocco, and had proposed to intervene to
+restore order, on the understanding that she should not annex the
+country, or interfere with the trading rights of other nations.
+Some states agreed; Germany made no reply, but made no objection.
+But owing to the opposition of Britain, who was then on bad terms
+with France and feared to see an unfriendly power controlling the
+entrance to the Mediterranean, no action was taken; and in the
+next years the chaos in Morocco grew worse. By the agreement of
+1904 Britain withdrew her objection to French intervention, and
+recognised the prior political rights of France in Morocco, on the
+condition that the existing government of Morocco should be
+maintained, that none of its territory should be annexed, and that
+'the open door' should be preserved for the trade of all nations.
+But, of course, it was possible, and even probable, that the
+existing Moroccan government could not be made efficient. In that
+case, what should happen? The possibility had to be contemplated
+by reasonable statesmen, and provided against. But to do so in a
+public treaty would have been to condemn beforehand the existing
+system. Therefore a hypothetical arrangement was made for this
+possible future event in a secret treaty, to which Spain was made
+a party; whereby it was provided that if the arrangement should
+break down, and France should have to establish a definite
+protectorate, the vital part of the north coast should pass under
+the control of Spain.
+
+To the public part of these arrangements, which alone were of
+immediate importance, no objection was made by any of the other
+powers, and the German Chancellor told the Reichstag that German
+interests were not affected. France accordingly drew up a scheme
+of reforms in the government of Morocco, which the Sultan was
+invited to accept. But before he had accepted them the German
+Kaiser suddenly came to Tangier in his yacht, had an interview
+with the Sultan in which he urged him to reject the French
+demands, and made a public speech in which he declared himself the
+protector of the Mahomedans, asserted that no European power had
+special rights in Morocco, and announced his determination to
+support the 'independence and integrity' of Morocco--which in
+existing circumstances meant the maintenance of anarchy. What was
+the reason for this sudden and insolent intervention--made without
+any previous communication with France? The main reason was that
+France's ally, Russia, had just been severely defeated by Japan,
+and would not be able to take part in a European war. Therefore,
+it appeared, France might be bullied; Britain might not be willing
+to risk war on such an issue; the Entente of 1904 might be
+destroyed; the extension of French influence might be prevented;
+and the preservation of a state of anarchy in Morocco would leave
+open the chance of a seizure of that country by Germany at a later
+date, thus enabling her to dominate the entrance to the
+Mediterranean, and to threaten Algeria. But this pretty scheme did
+not succeed. The Entente held firm. Britain gave steady support to
+France, as indeed she was bound in honour to do; and in the end a
+conference of the powers was held at Algeciras (Spain). At this
+conference the predominating right of France to political
+influence in Morocco was formally recognised; and it was agreed
+that the government of the Sultan should be maintained, and that
+all countries should have equal trading rights in Morocco. This
+was, of course, the very basis of the Franco-British agreement. On
+every point at which she tried to score a success over France,
+Germany was defeated by the votes of the other powers, even her
+own ally, Italy, deserting her.
+
+But the German intervention had had its effect. The Sultan had
+refused the French scheme of reform. The elements of disorder in
+Morocco were encouraged to believe that they had the protection of
+Germany, and the activity of German agents strengthened this
+belief. The anarchy grew steadily worse. In 1907 Sir Harry Maclean
+was captured by a brigand chief, and the British government had to
+pay 20,000 pounds ransom for his release. In the same year a
+number of European workmen engaged on harbour works at Casablanca
+were murdered by tribesmen; and the French had to send a force
+which had a year's fighting before it reduced the district to
+order. In 1911 the Sultan was besieged in his capital (where there
+were a number of European residents) by insurgent tribesmen, and
+had to invite the French to send an army to his relief.
+
+This was seized upon by Germany as a pretext. Morocco was no
+longer 'independent.' The agreement of Algecras was dead.
+Therefore she resumed her right to put forward what claims she
+pleased in Morocco. Suddenly her gunboat, the Panther, appeared
+off Agadir. It was meant as an assertion that Germany had as much
+right to intervene in Morocco as France. And it was accompanied by
+a demand that if France wanted to be left free in Morocco, she
+must buy the approval of Germany. The settlement of Morocco was to
+be a question solely between France and Germany. The Entente of
+1904, the agreement of 1906, the Moroccan interests of Britain
+(much more important than those of Germany), and the interests of
+the other powers of the Algeciras Conference, were to count for
+nothing. Germany's voice must be the determining factor. But
+Germany announced that she was willing to be bought off by large
+concessions of French territory elsewhere--provided that Britain
+was not allowed to have anything to say: provided, that is, that
+the agreement of 1904 was scrapped. This was a not too subtle way
+of trying to drive a wedge between two friendly powers. It did not
+succeed. Britain insisted upon being consulted. There was for a
+time a real danger of war. In the end peace was maintained by the
+cession by France of considerable areas in the Congo as the price
+of German abstention from intervening in a sphere where she had no
+right to intervene. But Morocco was left under a definite French
+protectorate.
+
+We have dwelt upon the Morocco question at some length, partly
+because it attracted a vast amount of interest during the years of
+preparation for the war; partly because it affords an
+extraordinarily good illustration of the difficulty of maintaining
+peaceable relations with Germany, and of the spirit in which
+Germany approached the delicate questions of inter-imperial
+relationships--a spirit far removed indeed from that friendly
+willingness for compromise and co-operation by which alone the
+peace of the world could be maintained; and partly because it
+illustrates the crudity and brutality of the methods by which
+Germany endeavoured to separate her intended victims. It is
+improbable that she ever meant to go to war on the Moroccan
+question. She meant to go to war on whatever pretext might present
+itself when all her preparations were ready; but in the meanwhile
+she would avoid war on all questions but one: and that one was the
+great Berlin-Bagdad project, the keystone of her soaring arch of
+Empire. She would fight to prevent the ruin of that scheme.
+Otherwise she would preserve the peace, she would even make
+concessions to preserve the peace, until the right moment had
+come. In that sense Germany was a peace-loving power: in that
+sense alone.
+
+On the agreement between Russia and Britain in 1907 it is
+unnecessary to dwell with such fulness. The agreement turned
+mainly upon the removal of causes of friction in the Middle East--
+in Persia and the Persian Gulf, and in Tibet. These were in
+themselves interesting and thorny questions, especially the
+question of Persia, where the two powers established distinct
+spheres of interest and a sort of joint protectorate. But they
+need not detain us, because they had no direct bearing upon the
+events leading up to the war, except in so far as, by removing
+friction between two rivals of long standing, they made it
+possible for them to co-operate for their common defence against a
+menace that became more and more apparent.
+
+From 1907 onwards Germany found herself confronted by united
+defensive action on the part of the three empires whose downfall
+she intended to compass. It was not (except as regarded France and
+Russia) a formal alliance which bound these powers. There was no
+fixed agreement between them as to military co-operation. France
+and Britain had indeed, in 1906 and in 1911, consulted as to the
+military steps they should take if they were drawn into war, as
+seemed likely in those years, but neither was in any way bound to
+help the other under all circumstances. France and Britain had
+also agreed that the French fleet should be concentrated in the
+Mediterranean, the main British fleet in the North Sea. This
+arrangement (which was universally known, and, indeed, could not
+be concealed) put Britain under a moral obligation to defend
+France against naval attack, but only if France were the object of
+aggression. It was, therefore, actually a safeguard of peace,
+since it ensured that neither France nor, consequently, her ally,
+Russia, would begin a war without being sure of the concurrence of
+Britain, the most pacific of powers. As the diplomatic records
+show, at the opening of the Great War they were not sure of this
+concurrence, even for naval purposes, until August 1, when the die
+was already cast. The Triple Entente, therefore, was not an
+alliance; it was only an agreement for common diplomatic action in
+the hope of averting a terrible menace.
+
+Until 1911 Germany, or some elements in Germany, seem to have
+hoped that she could get her own way by bullying and rattling her
+sabre, and that by these means she could frighten her rivals, make
+them mutually distrustful, and so break up their combination and
+deal with them in detail. Those who held this view were the peace-
+party (so-called), and they included the Kaiser and his
+Chancellor. They would probably not themselves have accepted this
+description of their policy, but in practice this is what it
+meant. But there was always a formidable and influential party in
+Germany which had no patience with these hesitations, and was
+eager to draw the sabre. It included the men of the General Staff,
+backed by the numerous Pan-German societies and newspapers. The
+issue of the Morocco question in 1911, which showed that the
+policy of bullying had failed, played into the hands of the men of
+violence; and from this moment began the last strenuous burst of
+military preparation which preceded the war. In 1911 was passed
+the first of a series of Army Acts for the increase of the already
+immense German army, and still more for the provision of vast
+equipment and the scientific apparatus of destruction; two further
+Acts for the same purpose followed in 1912 and in 1913. In 1911
+also was published General Bernhardi's famous book, which defined
+and described the course of future action, and the aim which
+Germany was henceforth to pursue with all her strength: Weltmacht
+oder Niedergang, world-power or downfall.
+
+The events in the Balkans in 1912 and 1913 completed the
+conversion of those who still clung to the policy of peaceful
+bullying. The formation and triumph of the Balkan League in 1912
+formed a grave set-back for the Berlin-Bagdad project, which would
+be ruined if these little states became strong enough, or united
+enough, to be independent. The break-up of the Balkan League and
+the second Balkan War of 1913 improved the situation from the
+German point of view. But they left Serbia unsatisfactorily
+strong, and Serbia distrusted Austria, and controlled the
+communications with Constantinople. Serbia must be destroyed;
+otherwise the Berlin-Bagdad project, and with it the world-power
+of which it was to be the main pillar, would be always insecure.
+Austria was for attacking Serbia at once in 1913. Germany held her
+back: the widening of the Kiel Canal was not completed, and the
+fruits of the latest Army Acts were not yet fully reaped. But all
+was ready in 1914; and the Great Challenge was launched. It would
+have been launched at or about that time even if an unpopular
+Austrian archduke, significantly unguarded by the Austrian police,
+had NOT been most opportunely murdered by an Austrian subject on
+Austrian territory. The murder was only a pretext. The real cause
+of the war was the resolution of Germany to strike for world-
+supremacy, and her belief that the time was favourable for the
+great adventure.
+
+Meanwhile, what had the threatened empires been doing during the
+years of strenuous German preparation which began in 1911? Their
+governments could not but be aware of the enormous activity which
+was taking place in that country--which was unthreatened on any
+side--though they probably did not know how thorough and how
+elaborate it was. What steps did they take to guard against the
+danger? Russia was busy constructing strategic railways, to make
+the movement of troops easier; she was erecting new munition
+factories. But neither could be quickly got ready. France imposed
+upon the whole of her manhood the obligation of serving for three
+instead of for two years in the army. Britain reorganised her
+small professional army, created the Territorial Force, and began
+the training of a large officer class in all the universities and
+public schools. But she did not attempt to create a national army.
+If she had done so, this would have been a signal for the
+precipitation of the war. Besides, Britain obstinately clung to
+the belief that so monstrous a crime as Germany seemed to be
+contemplating could never be committed by a civilised nation; and
+she trusted mainly to her fleet for her own security.
+
+But Britain unquestionably laboured with all her might to conjure
+away the nightmare. From 1906 onwards she had made, in vain,
+repeated attempts to persuade Germany to accept a mutual
+disarmament or retardation of naval construction. In 1912 she
+resolved upon a more definite step. The German newspapers were
+full of talk about the British policy of 'encircling' Germany in
+order to attack and destroy her, which they attributed mainly to
+Sir Edward Grey. It was a manifest absurdity, since the Franco-
+Russian alliance was formed in 1894, at a time when Britain was on
+bad terms with both France and Russia, and the agreements later
+made with these two countries were wholly devoted to removing old
+causes of dispute between them. But the German people obviously
+believed it. Perhaps the German government also believed it?
+Britain resolved to remove this apprehension. Accordingly in 1912
+Lord Haldane was sent to Germany with a formal and definite
+statement, authorised by the Cabinet, to the effect that Britain
+had made no alliance or understanding which was aimed against
+Germany, and had no intention of doing so. That being so, since
+Germany need have no fear of an attack from Britain, why should
+not the two powers agree to reduce their naval expenditure? The
+German reply was that to stop the naval programme was impossible,
+but that construction might be DELAYED, on one condition--that
+both powers should sign a formal agreement drawn up by Germany.
+Each power was to pledge itself to absolute neutrality in any
+European war in which the other was engaged. Each power was to
+undertake to make no new alliances. But this agreement was not to
+affect existing alliances or the duties arising under them. This
+proposal was an obvious trap, and the German ministers who
+proposed it must have had the poorest opinion of the intelligence
+of English statesmen if they thought it was likely to be accepted.
+For observe that it left Germany, in conjunction with Austria,
+free to attack France and Russia. It left the formidable Triple
+Alliance unimpaired. But it tied the hands of Britain, who had no
+existing European alliances, enforced neutrality upon her in such
+a war, and compelled her to look on idly and wait her turn. In the
+present war, Germany could have pleaded that she was bound to take
+part by the terms of her alliance with Austria, who began it; but
+Britain would have been compelled to stand aloof. A very
+convenient arrangement for Germany, but not an arrangement that
+promised well for the peace of the world!
+
+Even this rebuff did not dishearten Britain. Feeling that Germany
+might have some reasonable ground of complaint in the fact that
+her share of the extra-European world was so much less than that
+of France or of Britain herself, Britain attempted to come to an
+agreement on this head, such as would show that she had no desire
+to prevent the imperial expansion of Germany. A treaty was
+proposed and discussed, and was ready to be submitted to the
+proper authorities for confirmation in June 1914. It has never
+been made public, because the war cancelled it before it came into
+effect, and we do not know its terms. But we do know that the
+German colonial enthusiast, Paul Rohrbach, who has seen the draft
+treaty, has said that the concessions made by Britain were
+astonishingly extensive, and met every reasonable German demand.
+This sounds as if the proposals of the treaty, whatever they were,
+had been recklessly generous. But this much is clear, that the
+government which had this treaty in its possession when it forced
+on the war was not to be easily satisfied. It did not want merely
+external possessions. It wanted supremacy; it wanted world-
+dominion.
+
+One last attempt the British government made in the frenzied days
+of negotiation which preceded the war. Sir Edward Grey had begged
+the German government to make ANY proposal which would make for
+peace, and promised his support beforehand; he had received no
+reply. He had undertaken that if Germany made any reasonable
+proposal, and France or Russia objected, he would have nothing
+further to do with France or Russia. Still there was no reply.
+Imagining that Germany might still be haunted by what Bismarck
+called 'the nightmare of coalition,' and might be rushing into war
+now because she feared a war in the future under more unfavourable
+conditions, he had pledged himself, if Germany would only say the
+word which would secure the peace, to use every effort to bring
+about a general understanding among the great powers which would
+banish all fears of an anti-German combination. It was of no use.
+The reply was the suggestion that Britain should bind herself to
+neutrality in this war on the following conditions: (a) that
+Germany should be given a free hand to violate the neutrality of
+Belgium (which Britain was bound by treaty to defend), on the
+understanding that Belgium should be reinstated after she had
+served her purpose, if she had offered no resistance; Belgium, be
+it noted, being bound in honour to offer resistance by the very
+treaty which Germany proposed to violate; and (b) that after
+France had been humiliated and beaten to the earth for the crime
+of possessing territories which Germany coveted, she should be
+restored to independence, and Germany should be content to annex
+her 5,000,000 square miles of colonies. In return for this
+undertaking Britain was to be--allowed to hold aloof from the war,
+and await her turn.
+
+There is no getting over these facts. The aim of Germany had come
+to be nothing less than world-supremacy. The destiny of the whole
+globe was to be put to the test. Surely this was the very insanity
+of megalomania.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+WHAT OF THE NIGHT?
+
+
+The gigantic conflict into which the ambitions of Germany have
+plunged the world is the most tremendous event in human history,
+not merely because of the vast forces engaged, and the appalling
+volume of suffering which has resulted from it, but still more
+because of the magnitude of the principles for which it is being
+fought. It is a war to secure the right of communities which are
+linked together by the national spirit to determine their own
+destinies; it is a war to maintain the principles of humanity, the
+sanctity of formal undertakings between states, and the
+possibility of the co-operation of free peoples in the creation of
+a new and better world-order; it is a war between two principles
+of government, the principle of military autocracy and the
+principle of self-government. With all these aspects of the mighty
+struggle we are not here immediately concerned, though they have
+an intimate bearing upon our main theme: some of them have been
+analysed elsewhere. [Footnote: In Nationalism and Internationalism
+and in National Self-Government.] But what does concern us most
+directly, and what makes this war the culmination of the long
+story which we have endeavoured to survey, is that this is a war
+in which, as in no earlier war, the whole fate and future of the
+now unified world is at stake. For just because the world is now,
+as never before, an indissoluble economic and political unity, the
+challenge of Germany, whatever view we may take of the immediate
+aims of the German state, inevitably raises the whole question of
+the principles upon which this unified world, unified by the
+victory of European civilisation, is to be in future directed. And
+the whole world knows, if vaguely, that these vast issues are at
+stake, and that this is no merely European conflict. That is why
+we see arrayed upon the fields of battle not only French, British,
+Russian, Italian, Serbian, Belgian, Rumanian, Greek and Portuguese
+soldiers, but Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South
+Africans, Indians, Algerians, Senegalese, Cambodians; and now,
+alongside of all these, the citizens of the American Republic.
+That is why Brazil and other states are hovering on the edge of
+the fray; why Japanese ships are helping to patrol the
+Mediterranean, why Arab armies are driving the Turk from the holy
+places of Mahomedanism, why African tribesmen are enrolled in new
+levies to clear the enemy out of his footholds in that continent.
+Almost the whole world is arrayed against the outlaw-power and her
+vassals. And the ultimate reason for this is that the whole world
+is concerned to see this terrible debate rightly determined.
+
+For the issue is as simple as this. Now that the world has been
+made one by the victory of Western civilisation, in what spirit is
+that supremacy to be used? Is it to be in the spirit expressed in
+the German Doctrine of Power, the spirit of mere dominion,
+ruthlessly imposed and ruthlessly exploited for the sole advantage
+of the master-power? That way ruin lies. Or is it to be in the
+spirit which has on the whole, and in spite of lapses, guided the
+progress of Western civilisation in the past, the spirit of
+respect for law and for the rights of the weak, the spirit of
+liberty which rejoices in variety of type and method, and which
+believes that the destiny towards which all peoples should be
+guided is that of self-government in freedom, and the co-operation
+of free peoples in the maintenance of common interests? Britain,
+France, and America have been the great advocates and exponents of
+these principles in the government of their own states: they are
+all ranged on one side to-day. Britain, also, as we have tried to
+show, has been led by Fate to take a chief part in the extension
+of these principles of Western civilisation to the non-European
+regions of the world; and, after many mistakes and failures, has
+in the direction of her own wide dominions found her way to a
+system which reconciles freedom with unity, and learned to regard
+herself as being only the trustee of civilisation in the
+government of the backward peoples whom she rules. For the just
+and final determination of such gigantic issues not even the
+terrible price we are paying is too high.
+
+The issue of the great conflict lies still upon the lap of the
+gods. Yet one thing is, we may hope, already assured. Although at
+the beginning of the war they came near to winning it, the Germans
+are not now likely to win that complete victory upon which they
+had calculated, and which would have brought as its prize the
+mastery of the world. We can now form some judgment of the extent
+of the calamity which this would have meant for humanity. There
+would have remained in the world no power capable of resisting
+this grim and ugly tyrant-state, with its brute strength and
+bestial cruelty as of a gorilla in the primaeval forest,
+reinforced by the cold and pitiless calculus of the man of science
+in his laboratory; unless, perhaps, Russia had in time recovered
+her strength, or unless America had not merely thrown over her
+tradition of aloofness and made up her mind to intervene, but had
+been allowed the time to organise her forces for resistance. Of
+the great empires which the modern age has brought into being, the
+Russian would have survived as a helpless and blinded mammoth; the
+French Empire would have vanished, and the proud and noble land of
+France would have sunk into vassalage and despair; the British
+Empire would assuredly have dissolved into its component parts,
+for its strength is still too much concentrated in the motherland
+for it to be able to hold together once her power was broken.
+After a few generations, that will no longer be the case; but to-
+day it is so, and the dream of a partnership of free nations which
+had begun to dawn upon us would have been shattered for ever by a
+complete German victory. Some of the atoms of what once was an
+empire might have been left in freedom, but they would have been
+powerless to resist the decrees of the Master-state. There would
+have been one supreme world-power; and that a power whose attitude
+towards backward races has been illustrated by the ruthless
+massacre of the Hereros; whose attitude towards ancient but
+disorganised civilisations has been illustrated by the history of
+Kiao-chau and by the celebrated allocution of the Kaiser to his
+soldiers on the eve of the Boxer expedition, when he bade them
+outdo the ferocity of Attila and his Huns; whose attitude towards
+kindred civilisations on the same level as their own has been
+illustrated before the war in the treatment of Danes, Poles, and
+Alsatians, and during the war in the treatment of Belgium, of the
+occupied districts in France, of Poland and of Serbia. The world
+would have lain at the mercy of an insolent and ruthless tyranny,
+the tyranny of a Kultur whose ideal is the uniformity of a perfect
+mechanism, not the variety of life. Such a fate humanity could not
+long have tolerated; yet before the iron mechanism could have been
+shattered, if once it had been established, there must have been
+inconceivable suffering, and civilisation must have fallen back
+many stages towards barbarism. From this fate, we may perhaps
+claim, the world was saved from the moment when not Britain only,
+but the British Empire, refused to await its turn according to the
+German plan, threw its whole weight into the scale, and showed
+that, though not organised for war, it was not the effete and
+decadent power, not the fortuitous combination of discordant and
+incoherent elements, which German theory had supposed; but that
+Freedom can create a unity and a virile strength capable of
+withstanding even the most rigid discipline, capable of enduring
+defeat and disappointment undismayed; but incapable of yielding to
+the insolence of brute force.
+
+It is still possible that the war may end in what is called an
+inconclusive peace; and as it is certain that of all her
+unrighteous gains that to which Germany will most desperately
+cling will be her domination over the Austrian and Turkish
+Empires, with the prospect which it affords of a later and more
+fortunate attempt at world-power, an inconclusive peace would mean
+that the whole world would live in constant dread of a renewal of
+these agonies and horrors in a still more awful form. What the
+effect of this would be upon the extra-European dominions of
+powers which would be drained of their manhood and loaded with the
+burden of the past war and the burden of preparation for the
+coming war, it is beyond our power to imagine. But it seems likely
+that the outer world would very swiftly begin to revise its
+judgment as to the value of that civilisation which it has, upon
+the whole, been ready to welcome; and chaos would soon come again.
+
+Finally, it is possible that the Evil Power may be utterly routed,
+and the allied empires, tried by fire, may be given the
+opportunity and the obligation of making, not merely a new Europe,
+but a new world. If that chance should come, how will they use it?
+One thing at least is clear. The task which will face the
+diplomats who take part in the coming peace-congress will be
+different in kind as well as in degree from that of any of their
+predecessors at any moment in human history. They will be
+concerned not merely with the adjustment of the differences of a
+few leading states, and not merely with the settlement of Europe:
+they will have to deal with the whole world, and to decide upon
+what principles and to what ends the leadership of the peoples of
+European stock over the non-European world is to be exercised.
+Whether they realise it or not, whether they intend it or not,
+they will create either a world-order or a world-disorder. And it
+will inevitably be a world-disorder which will result unless we do
+some hard thinking on this gigantic problem which faces us, and
+unless we are prepared to learn, from the history of the relations
+of Europe with the outer world, what are the principles by which
+we ought to be guided. We are too prone, when we think of the
+problems of the future peace, to fix our attention almost wholly
+upon Europe, and, if we think of the non-European world at all, to
+assume either that the problem is merely one of power, or that the
+principles which will guide us in the settlement of Europe can be
+equally applied outside of Europe. Both of these assumptions are
+dangerous, because both disregard the teachings of the past which
+we have been surveying.
+
+If, on the one hand, we are content to regard the problem as
+merely one of power, and to divide out the non-European world
+among the victors as the spoils of victory, we shall indeed have
+been conquered by the very spirit which we are fighting; we shall
+have become converts to the German Doctrine of Power, which has
+brought upon us all these ills, and may bring yet more appalling
+evils in the future. The world will emerge divided among a group
+of vast empires which will overshadow the lesser states. These
+empires will continue to regard one another with fear and
+suspicion, and to look upon their subject-peoples merely as
+providing the implements for a war of destruction, to be waged by
+cut-throat commercial rivalry in time of peace, and by man-power
+and machine-power in war. If that should be the result of all our
+agonies, the burden which must be laid upon the peoples of these
+empires, and the intolerable anticipation of what is to come, will
+make their yoke seem indeed a heavy one; will probably bring about
+their disintegration; and will end that ascendancy of Western
+civilisation over the world which the last four centuries have
+established. And justly; since Western civilisation will thus be
+made to stand not for justice and liberty, but for injustice and
+oppression. Such must be the inevitable result of any settlement
+of the non-European world which is guided merely by the ambitions
+of a few rival states and the Doctrine of Power.
+
+On the other hand, we are urged by enthusiasts for liberty,
+especially in Russia, to believe that imperialism as such is the
+enemy; that we must put an end for ever to all dominion exercised
+by one people over another; and that outside of Europe as within
+it we must trust to the same principles for the hope of future
+peace--the principles of national freedom and self-government--
+and leave all peoples everywhere to control freely their own
+destinies. But this is a misreading of the facts as fatal as the
+other. It disregards the value of the work that has been done in
+the extension of European civilisation to the rest of the world by
+the imperial activities of the European peoples. It fails to
+recognise that until Europe began to conquer the world neither
+rational law nor political liberty had ever in any real sense
+existed in the outer world, and that their dominion is even now
+far from assured, but depends for its maintenance upon the
+continued tutelage of the European peoples. It fails to realise
+that the economic demands of the modern world necessitate the
+maintenance of civilised administration after the Western pattern,
+and that this can only be assured, in large regions of the earth,
+by means of the political control of European peoples. Above all
+this view does not grasp the essential fact that the idea of
+nationhood and the idea of self-government are both modern ideas,
+which have had their origin in Europe, and which can only be
+realised among peoples of a high political development; that the
+sense of nationhood is but slowly created, and must not be
+arbitrarily defined in terms of race or language; and that the
+capacity for self-government is only formed by a long process of
+training, and has never existed except among peoples who were
+unified by a strongly felt community of sentiment, and had
+acquired the habit and instinct of loyalty to the law. Assuredly
+it is the duty of Europe and America to extend these fruitful
+conceptions to the regions which have passed under their
+influence. But the process must be a very slow one, and it can
+only be achieved under tutelage. It is the control of the European
+peoples over the non-European world which has turned the world
+into an economic unit, brought it within a single political
+system, and opened to us the possibility of making a world-order
+such as the most daring dreamers of the past could never have
+conceived. This control cannot be suddenly withdrawn. For a very
+long time to come the world-states whose rise we have traced must
+continue to be the means by which the political discoveries of
+Europe, as well as her material civilisation, are made available
+for the rest of the world. The world-states are such recent things
+that we have not yet found a place for them in our political
+philosophy. But unless we find a place for them, and think in
+terms of them, in the future, we shall be in danger of a terrible
+shipwreck.
+
+If, then, it is essential, not only for the economic development
+of the world, but for the political advancement of its more
+backward peoples, that the political suzerainty of the European
+peoples should survive, and as a consequence that the world should
+continue to be dominated by a group of great world-states, how are
+we to conjure away the nightmare of inter-imperial rivalry which
+has brought upon us the present catastrophe, and seems to threaten
+us with yet more appalling ruin in the future? Only by resolving
+and ensuring, as at the great settlement we may be able to do,
+that the necessary political control of Europe over the outer
+world shall in future be exercised not merely in the interests of
+the mistress-states, but in accordance with principles which are
+just in themselves, and which will give to all peoples a fair
+chance of making the best use of their powers. But how are we to
+discover these principles, if the ideas of nationality and self-
+government, to which we pin our faith in Europe, are to be held
+inapplicable to the greater part of the non-European world? There
+is only one possible source of instruction: our past experience,
+which has now extended over four centuries, and which we have in
+this book endeavoured to survey.
+
+Now while it is undeniably true that the mere lust of power has
+always been present in the imperial activities of the European
+peoples, it is certainly untrue (as our study ought to have shown)
+that it has ever been the sole motive, except, perhaps, in the
+great German challenge. And in the course of their experience the
+colonising peoples have gradually worked out certain principles in
+their treatment of subject peoples, which ought to be of use to
+us. The fullest and the most varied experience is that of the
+British Empire: it is the oldest of all the world-states; it alone
+includes regions of the utmost variety of types, new lands peopled
+by European settlers, realms of ancient civilisation like India,
+and regions inhabited by backward and primitive peoples. It would
+be absurd to claim that its methods are perfect and infallible.
+But they have been very varied, and quite astonishingly
+successful. And it is because they seem to afford clearer guidance
+than any other part of the experiments which we have recorded that
+we have studied them, especially in their later developments, with
+what may have seemed a disproportionate fulness. What are the
+principles which experience has gradually worked out in the
+British Empire? They cannot be embodied in a single formula,
+because they vary according to the condition and development of
+the lands to which they apply.
+
+But in the first place we have learnt by a very long experience
+that in lands inhabited by European settlers, who bring with them
+European traditions, the only satisfactory solution is to be found
+in the concession of the fullest self-governing rights, since
+these settlers are able to use them, and in the encouragement of
+that sentiment of unity which we call the national spirit. And
+this involves a recognition of the fact that nationality is never
+to be defined solely in terms of race or language, but can arise,
+and should be encouraged to arise, among racially divided
+communities such as Canada and South Africa. Any attempt to
+interpret nationhood in terms of race is not merely dangerous, but
+ruinous; and such endeavours to stimulate or accentuate racial
+conflict, as Germany has been guilty of in Brazil, in South
+Africa, and even in America, must be, if successful, fatal to the
+progress of the countries affected, and dangerous to the peace of
+the world.
+
+In the second place we have learnt that in lands of ancient
+civilisation, where ruling castes have for centuries been in the
+habit of exploiting their subjects, the supreme gift which Europe
+can offer is that of internal peace and a firmly administered and
+equal law, which will render possible the gradual rise of a sense
+of unity, and the gradual training of the people in the habits of
+life that make self-government possible. How soon national unity
+can be established, or self-government made practicable in any
+full sense, must be matter of debate. But the creation of these
+things is, or ought to be, the ultimate aim of European government
+in such countries. And in the meantime, and until they become
+fully masters of their own fate, these lands, so our British
+experience tells us, ought to be treated as distinct political
+units; they should pay no tribute; all their resources should be
+devoted to their own development; and they should not be expected
+or required to maintain larger forces than are necessary for their
+own defence. At the same time, the ruling power should claim no
+special privileges for its own citizens, but should throw open the
+markets of such realms equally to all nations. In short it should
+act not as a master, but as a trustee, on behalf of its subjects
+and also on behalf of civilisation.
+
+In the third place we have learnt that in the backward regions of
+the earth it is the duty of the ruling power, firstly, to protect
+its primitive subjects from unscrupulous exploitation, to guard
+their simple customs, proscribing only those which are immoral,
+and to afford them the means of a gradual emancipation from
+barbarism; secondly, to develop the economic resources of these
+regions for the needs of the industrial world, to open them up by
+modern communications, and to make them available on equal terms
+to all nations, giving no advantage to its own citizens.
+
+In spite of lapses and defects, it is an undeniable historical
+fact that these are the principles which have been wrought out and
+applied in the administration of the British Empire during the
+nineteenth century. They are not vague and Utopian dreams; they
+are a matter of daily practice. If they can be applied by one of
+the world-states, and that the greatest, why should they not be
+applied by the rest? But if these principles became universal, is
+it not apparent that all danger of a catastrophic war between
+these powers would be removed, since every reason for it would
+have vanished? Thus the necessary and advantageous tutelage of
+Europe over the non-European world, and the continuance of the
+great world-states, could be combined with the conjuring away of
+the ever-present terror of war, and with the gradual training of
+the non-European peoples to enjoy the political methods of Europe;
+while the lesser states without extra-European dominions need no
+longer feel themselves stunted and reduced to economic dependence
+upon their great neighbours. Thus, and thus alone, can the
+benefits of the long development which we have traced be reaped in
+full; thus alone can the dominion of the European peoples over the
+world be made to mean justice and the chance for all peoples to
+make the best of their powers.
+
+But it is not only the principles upon which particular areas
+outside of Europe should be governed which we must consider. We
+must reflect also upon the nature of the relations that should
+exist between the various members of these great world-empires,
+which must hence-forward be the dominating factors in the world's
+politics. And here the problem is urgent only in the case of the
+British Empire, because it alone is developed to such a point that
+the problem is inevitably raised. Whatever else may happen, the
+war must necessarily bring a crisis in the history of the British
+Empire. On a vastly greater scale the situation of 1763 is being
+reproduced. Now, as then, the Empire will emerge from a war for
+existence, in which mother and daughter lands alike have shared.
+Now, as then, the strain and pressure of the war will have brought
+to light deficiencies in the system of the Empire. Now, as then,
+the most patent of these deficiencies will be the fact that,
+generous as the self-governing powers of the great Dominions have
+been, they still have limits; and the irresistible tendency of
+self-government to work towards its own fulfilment will once more
+show itself. For there are two spheres in which even the most
+fully self-governing of the empire-nations have no effective
+control: they do not share in the determination of foreign policy,
+and they do not share in the direction of imperial defence. The
+responsibility for foreign policy, and the responsibility, and
+with it almost the whole burden, of organising imperial defence,
+have hitherto rested solely with Britain. Until the Great War,
+foreign policy seemed to be a matter of purely European interest,
+not directly concerning the great Dominions; nor did the problems
+of imperial defence appear very pressing or urgent. But now all
+have realised that not merely their interests, but their very
+existence, may depend upon the wise conduct of foreign relations;
+and now all have contributed the whole available strength of their
+manhood to support a struggle in whose direction they have had no
+effective share. These things must henceforth be altered; and they
+can be altered only in one or other of three ways. Either the
+great Dominions will become independent states, as the American
+colonies did, and pursue a foreign policy and maintain a system of
+defence of their own; or the Empire must reshape itself as a sort
+of permanent offensive and defensive alliance, whose external
+policy and modes of defence will be arranged by agreement; or some
+mode of common management of these and other questions must be
+devised. The first of these solutions is unlikely to be adopted,
+not only because the component members of the Empire are conscious
+of their individual weakness, but still more because the memory of
+the ordeal through which all have passed must form an indissoluble
+bond. Yet rashness or high-handedness in the treatment of the
+great issue might lead even to this unlikely result. If either of
+the other two solutions is adopted, the question will at once
+arise of the place to be occupied, in the league or in the
+reorganised super-state, of all those innumerable sections of the
+Empire which do not yet enjoy, and some of which may never enjoy,
+the full privileges of self-government; and above all, the place
+to be taken by the vast dominion of India, which though it is not,
+and may not for a long time become, a fully self-governing state,
+is yet a definite and vitally important unit in the Empire,
+entitled to have its needs and problems considered, and its
+government represented, on equal terms with the rest. The problem
+is an extraordinarily difficult one; perhaps the most difficult
+political problem that has ever faced the sons of men. But it is
+essentially the same problem which has continually recurred in the
+history of British imperialism, though it now presents itself on a
+vastly greater scale, and in a far more complex form, than ever
+before: it is the problem of reconciling unity with liberty and
+variety; of combining nationality and self-government with
+imperialism, without impairing the rights of either. And beyond
+any doubt the most tremendous and fascinating political question
+which now awaits solution in the world, is the question whether
+the political instinct of the British peoples, and the genius of
+self-government, will find a way out of these difficulties, as
+they have found a way out of so many others. Patience, mutual
+tolerance, willingness to compromise, will be required in the
+highest measure if the solution is to be found; but these are the
+qualities which self-government cultivates.
+
+'A thing that is wholly a sham,' said Treitschke, speaking of the
+British Empire, 'cannot in this world of ours, endure for ever.'
+Why did this Empire appear to Treitschke to be 'wholly a sham'?
+Was it not because it did not answer to any definition of the word
+'Empire' to be found in German political philosophy; because it
+did not mean dominion and uniformity, but liberty and variety;
+because it did not rest upon Force, as, in his view, every firmly
+established state must do; because it was not governed by a single
+master, whose edicts all its subjects must obey? But for 'a thing
+that is wholly a sham' men do not lay down their lives, in
+thousands and in hundreds of thousands, not under the pressure of
+compulsion, but by a willing self-devotion; for the defence of 'a
+thing that is wholly a sham' men will not stream in from all the
+ends of the earth, abandoning their families and their careers,
+and offering without murmur or hesitation themselves and all they
+have and are. There must be a reality in the thing that calls
+forth such sacrifices, a reality of the kind to which Realpolitik,
+with its concentration upon purely material concerns, is wholly
+blind: it is the reality of an ideal of honour, and justice, and
+freedom. And if the Germans have been deceived in their
+calculations of Realpolitik, is it not perhaps because they have
+learnt to regard honour, and justice, and freedom as 'things that
+are wholly shams'?
+
+This amazing political structure, which refuses to fall within any
+of the categories of political science, which is an empire and yet
+not an empire, a state and yet not a state, a super-nation
+incorporating in itself an incredible variety of peoples and
+races, is not a structure which has been designed by the ingenuity
+of man, or created by the purposive action of a government; it is
+a natural growth, the product of the spontaneous activity of
+innumerable individuals and groups springing from among peoples
+whose history has made liberty and the tolerance of differences
+their most fundamental instincts; it is the outcome of a series of
+accidents, unforeseen, but turned to advantage by the unfailing
+and ever-new resourcefulness of men habituated to self-government.
+There is no logic or uniformity in its system, which has arisen
+from an infinite number of makeshifts and tentative experiments,
+yet in all of these a certain consistency appears, because they
+have been presided over by the genius of self-government. It is
+distributed over every continent, is washed by every ocean,
+includes half the dust of islands that Nature has scattered about
+the seas of the world, controls almost all the main avenues of the
+world's sea-going commerce, and is linked together by ten thousand
+ships perpetually going to and fro. Weak for offensive purposes,
+because its resources are so scattered, it is, except at a few
+points, almost impregnable against attack, if its forces are well
+organised. It includes among its population representatives of
+almost every human race and religion, and every grade of
+civilisation, from the Australian Bushman to the subtle and
+philosophic Brahmin, from the African dwarf to the master of
+modern industry or the scholar of universities. Almost every form
+of social organisation and of government known to man is
+represented in its complex and many-hued fabric. It embodies five
+of the most completely self-governing communities which the world
+has known, and four of these control the future of the great empty
+spaces that remain for the settlement of white men. It finds place
+for the highly organised caste system by which the teeming
+millions of India are held together. It preserves the simple
+tribal organisation of the African clans. To different elements
+among its subjects this empire appears in different aspects. To
+the self-governing Dominions it is a brotherhood of free nations,
+co-operating for the defence and diffusion of common ideas and of
+common institutions. To the ancient civilisations of India or of
+Egypt it is a power which, in spite of all its mistakes and
+limitations, has brought peace instead of turmoil, law instead of
+arbitrary might, unity instead of chaos, justice instead of
+oppression, freedom for the development of the capacities and
+characteristic ideas of their peoples, and the prospect of a
+steady growth of national unity and political responsibility. To
+the backward races it has meant the suppression of unending
+slaughter, the disappearance of slavery, the protection of the
+rights and usages of primitive and simple folk against reckless
+exploitation, and the chance of gradual improvement and
+emancipation from barbarism. But to all alike, to one quarter of
+the inhabitants of the world, it has meant the establishment of
+the Reign of Law, and of the Liberty which can only exist under
+its shelter. In some degree, though imperfectly as yet, it has
+realised within its own body all the three great political ideas
+of the modern world. It has fostered the rise of a sense of
+nationhood in the young communities of the new lands, and in the
+old and decaying civilisations of the most ancient historic
+countries. It has given a freedom of development to self-
+government such as history has never before known. And by linking
+together so many diverse and contrasted peoples in a common peace,
+it has already realised, for a quarter of the globe, the ideal of
+internationalism on a scale undreamt of by the most sanguine
+prophets of Europe.
+
+Truly this empire is a fabric so wonderful, so many-sided, and so
+various in its aspects, that it may well escape the rigid
+categories of a German professor, and seem to him 'wholly a sham.'
+Now is the crisis of its fate: and if the wisdom of its leaders
+can solve the riddle of the Sphinx which is being put to them, the
+Great War will indeed have brought, for a quarter of the world,
+the culmination of modern history.
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Expansion Of Europe, by Ramsay Muir
+
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