THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND
203. In the last chapter we reviewed the progress of affairs in eastern
Europe and noted the appearance of two new and important powers, Prussia
and Russia, which, together with Austria, were engaged during the
eighteenth century in extending their bounds at the expense of their
weak neighbors, Poland and Turkey.
[Sidenote: In the eighteenth century England lays the foundation of her
commercial greatness.]
In the west, England was rapidly becoming a dominant power. While she
did not play a very important part in the wars on the continent, she was
making herself mistress of the seas. At the close of the War of the
Spanish Succession her navy was superior to that of any other European
power, for both France and Holland had been greatly weakened by the long
conflict. Fifty years after the Treaty of Utrecht, England had succeeded
in driving the French from both North America and India and in laying
the foundation of her vast colonial empire, which still gives her the
commercial supremacy among the European countries.
[Sidenote: Questions settled by the accession of William and Mary.]
With the accession of William and Mary, England may be regarded as
having practically settled the two great questions which had produced
such serious dissensions during the previous fifty years. In the first
place, the nation had clearly shown that it proposed to remain
Protestant; and the relations between the Church of England and the
dissenters were gradually being satisfactorily adjusted. In the second
place, the powers of the king had been carefully defined, and from the
opening of the eighteenth century to the present time no English monarch
has ventured to veto an act of Parliament.[363]
[Sidenote: Queen Anne, 1702-1714.]
[Sidenote: The union of England and Scotland, 1707.]
William III was succeeded in 1702 by his sister-in-law, Anne, a younger
daughter of James II. Far more important than the war which her generals
carried on against Spain was the final union of England and Scotland. As
we have seen, the difficulties between the two countries had led to much
bloodshed and suffering ever since Edward I's futile attempt to conquer
Scotland.[364] The two countries had, it is true, been under the same
ruler since the accession of James I, but each had maintained its own
independent parliament and system of government. Finally, in 1707, both
nations agreed to unite their governments into one. Forty-five members
of the British House of Commons were to be chosen thereafter in
Scotland, and sixteen Scotch lords were to be added to the British House
of Lords. In this way the whole island of Great Britain was placed under
a single government, and the occasions for strife were thereby greatly
reduced.
[Sidenote: Accession of George I (1714-1727), the first of the house of
Hanover.]
Since none of Anne's children survived her, she was succeeded, according
to an arrangement made before her accession, by the nearest Protestant
heir. This was the son of James I's granddaughter Sophia. She had
married the elector of Hanover[365]; consequently the new king of
England, George I, was also elector of Hanover and a member of the Holy
Roman Empire.
[Sidenote: The king ceases to attend the meetings of the cabinet, which
comes to be regarded as the real governing body.]
The new king was a German who could not speak English and was forced to
communicate with his ministers in bad Latin. The king's leading
ministers had come to form a little body by themselves, called the
_cabinet_. As George could not understand the discussions he did not
attend the meetings of his ministers, and thereby set an example which
has been followed by his successors. In this way the cabinet came to
hold its meetings and transact its business independently of the king.
Before long it became a recognized principle in England that it was the
cabinet that really governed rather than the king; and that its members,
whether the king liked them or not, might retain their offices so long
as they continued to enjoy the confidence and support of Parliament.
James I (1603-1625)
|
+------------------+------------+
| |
Charles I Elizabeth, m. Frederick V,
(1625-1649) | Elector of the
| | Palatinate
| | (Winter King
+--------+-------------------+ | of Bohemia)
| | |
Charles II (1) Anne Hyde, m. James II, m. (2) Mary of Sophia, m. Ernest
(1660-1685) | (1685-1689) | Modena | Augustus,
| | | Elector of
+-------+-----+ | | Hanover
| | | |
William III, m. Mary Anne | |
(1689-1702) (1689-1694) (1702-1714) | George I
| (1714-1727)
| |
| George II
James (the (1727-1760)
Old Pretender) |
| Frederick,
| Prince of Wales
Charles Edward (d. 1751)
(the Young Pretender) |
|
George III
(1760-1820)
[Sidenote: England and the 'balance of power.']
204. William of Orange had been a continental statesman before he became
king of England, and his chief aim had always been to prevent France
from becoming over-powerful. He had joined in the War of the Spanish
Succession in order to maintain the "balance of power" between the
various European countries.[366] During the eighteenth century England
continued, for the same reason, to engage in the struggles between the
continental powers, although she had no expectation of attempting to
extend her sway across the Channel. The wars which she waged in order to
increase her own power and territory were carried on in distant parts of
the world, and more often on sea than on land.
[Sidenote: Peace under Walpole as prime minister, 1721-1742.]
For a quarter of a century after the Treaty of Utrecht, England enjoyed
peace.[367] Under the influence of Walpole, who for twenty-one years was
the head of the cabinet and the first to be called "prime minister,"
peace was maintained within and without. Not only did Walpole avoid
going to war with other countries, but he was careful to prevent the
ill-feeling at home from developing into civil strife. His principle was
to "let sleeping dogs lie"; so he strove to conciliate the dissenters
and to pacify the Jacobites,[368] as those were called who still desired
to have the Stuarts return.
[Sidenote: England in the War of the Austrian Succession.]
[Sidenote: 'Prince Charlie,' the Young Pretender, in Scotland.]
When, in 1740, Frederick the Great and the French attacked Maria
Theresa, England's sympathies were with the injured queen. As elector of
Hanover, George II (who had succeeded his father in 1727), led an army
of German troops against the French and defeated them on the river Main.
Frederick then declared war on England; and France sent the grandson of
James II,[369] the Young Pretender, as he was called, with a fleet to
invade England. The attempt failed, for the fleet was dispersed by a
storm. In 1745 the French defeated the English and Dutch forces in the
Netherlands; this encouraged the Young Pretender to make another attempt
to gain the English crown. He landed in Scotland, where he found support
among the Highland chiefs, and even Edinburgh welcomed "Prince
Charlie." He was able to collect an army of six thousand men, with which
he marched into England. He was quickly forced back into Scotland,
however, and after a disastrous defeat on Culloden Moor (1746) and many
romantic adventures, he was glad to reach France once more in safety.
205. Soon after the close of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748,
England entered upon a series of wars which were destined profoundly to
affect not only her position, but also the fate of distant portions of
the globe. In order to follow these changes intelligently we must
briefly review the steps by which the various European states had
extended their sway over regions separated from them by the ocean.
[Sidenote: Colonial policy of Portugal, Spain, and Holland in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.]
The voyages which had brought America and India within the ken of Europe
during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were, as we know,
mainly undertaken by the Portuguese and Spaniards. Portugal was the
first to realize the advantage of extending her commerce by establishing
stations in India and on the Brazilian coast of South America; then
Spain laid claim to Mexico, the West Indies, and a great part of South
America. These two powers found their first rival in the Dutch; for when
Philip II was able to add Portugal to the realms of the Spanish monarchs
for a few decades (1580-1640), he immediately closed the port of Lisbon
to the Dutch ships. Thereupon the United Provinces, whose merchants
could no longer procure the spices which the Portuguese brought from the
East, resolved to take possession of the source of supplies. They
accordingly expelled the Portuguese from a number of their settlements
in India and the Spice Islands and brought Java, Sumatra, and other
tropical regions under Dutch control.[370]
[Sidenote: Settlements of the French and English in North America.]
In North America the chief rivals were England and France, both of which
succeeded in establishing colonies in the early part of the seventeenth
century. Englishmen successively settled at Jamestown in Virginia
(1607), then in New England, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. The
colonies owed their growth to the influx of refugees,--Puritans,
Catholics, and Quakers,--who exiled themselves in the hope of gaining
the right freely to enjoy their particular forms of religion.[371]
Just as Jamestown was being founded by the English the French were
making their first successful settlement in Nova Scotia and at Quebec.
Although England made no attempt to oppose the French occupation of
Canada, it progressed but slowly. In 1673 Marquette, a Jesuit
missionary, and Joliet, a merchant, discovered the Mississippi River. La
Salle sailed down the great stream and named the new country which he
entered Louisiana, after his king. The city of New Orleans was founded
near the mouth of the river in 1718, and the French established a chain
of forts between it and Montreal.
England was able, however, by the Treaty of Utrecht, to establish
herself in the northern regions, for France thereby ceded to her
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the borders of Hudson Bay. While the
number of English in North America at the beginning of the Seven Years'
War is supposed to have been over a million, the French scarcely
exceeded a twentieth of that number. Yet careful observers at the time
were by no means sure that France was not destined to dominate the new
country, rather than England.
[Sidenote: Extent of India.]
The rivalry of England and France was not confined to the wildernesses
of North America, occupied by half a million of savage red men. At the
opening of the eighteenth century both countries had gained a foothold
on the borders of the vast Indian empire, inhabited by two hundred
millions of people and the seat of an ancient and highly developed
civilization. One may gain some idea of the extent of India by laying
the map of Hindustan upon that of the United States. If the southernmost
point, Cape Comorin, be placed over New Orleans, Calcutta will lie
nearly over New York City and Bombay in the neighborhood of Des Moines,
Iowa.
[Sidenote: The Mongolian emperors of Hindustan.]
A generation after Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut,[372] a Mongolian
conqueror, Baber,[373] had established his empire in India. The dynasty
of Mongolian rulers which he founded had been able to keep the whole
country under its control for toward two centuries; then their empire
had fallen apart in much the same way as that of Charlemagne had done.
Like the counts and dukes of the Carolingian period, the emperor's
officials, the subahdars and nawabs (nabobs), and the rajahs--i.e.,
Hindu princes temporarily subjugated by the Mongols--had gradually got
the power in their respective districts into their own hands. Although
the emperor, or Great Mogul, as the English called him, continued to
maintain himself in his capital of Delhi, he could no longer be said to
rule the country at the opening of the eighteenth century when the
French and English were seriously beginning to turn their attention to
his coasts.
[Sidenote: English and French settlements in India.]
In the time of Charles I (1639), a village had been purchased by the
English East India Company on the southeastern coast of Hindustan, which
grew into the important English station of Madras. About a generation
later the district of Bengal was occupied and Calcutta founded. Bombay
was already an English station. The Mongolian emperor of India at first
scarcely deigned to notice the presence of a few foreigners on the
fringe of his vast realms. But before the end of the seventeenth century
hostilities began between the English East India Company and the native
rulers which made it plain that the foreigners would be forced to defend
themselves.
The English had not only to face the opposition of the natives, but that
of a European power as well. France also had an East India Company, and
Pondicherry, at the opening of the eighteenth century, was its chief
center with a population of sixty thousand, of which two hundred only
were Europeans. It soon became apparent that there was little danger
from the Great Mogul; moreover, the Portuguese and Dutch were out of the
race. So the native princes and the French and English were left to
fight among themselves for the supremacy.
[Sidenote: England victorious in the struggle for supremacy in America.]
206. Just before the general clash of European rulers known as the Seven
Years' War came in 1756, the French and English had begun their struggle
for control in both America and India. In America the so-called French
and Indian War began in 1754 between the English and French colonists.
General Braddock was sent from England to capture Fort Duquesne, which
the French had established to keep their rivals out of the Ohio valley.
Braddock knew nothing of border warfare, and he was killed and his
troops routed. Fortunately for England, France, as the ally of Austria,
was soon engaged in a war with Prussia that prevented her from giving
proper attention to her American possessions. A famous statesman, the
elder Pitt, was now at the head of the English ministry. He was able not
only to succor the hard-pressed king of Prussia with money and men, but
also to support the militia of the thirteen American colonies. The
French forts at Ticonderoga and Niagara were taken in 1759. Quebec was
won in Wolfe's heroic attack, and the following year all Canada
submitted to the English. England's supremacy on the sea was
demonstrated by three admirals, each of whom destroyed a French fleet in
the same year that Quebec was lost to France.
[Sidenote: Dupleix and Clive in India.]
In India conflicts between the French and the English had occurred
during the War of the Austrian Succession. The governor of the French
station of Pondicherry was Dupleix, a soldier of great energy, who
proposed to drive out the English and firmly establish the power of
France over Hindustan. His chances of success were greatly increased by
the quarrels among the native rulers, some of whom belonged to the
earlier Hindu inhabitants and some to the Mohammedan Mongolians who had
conquered India in 1526. Dupleix had very few French soldiers, but he
began the enlistment of the natives, a custom eagerly adopted by the
English. These native soldiers, whom the English called Sepoys, were
taught to fight in the manner of Europeans.[374]
[Sidenote: Clive defeats Dupleix.]
But the English colonists, in spite of the fact that they were mainly
traders, discovered among the clerks in Madras a leader equal in
military skill and energy to Dupleix himself. Robert Clive, who was but
twenty-five years old at this time, organized a large force of Sepoys
and gained a remarkable ascendency over them by his astonishing bravery.
Dupleix paid no attention to the fact that peace had been declared in
Europe at Aix-la-Chapelle, but continued to carry on his operations
against the English. But Clive proved more than his equal and in two
years had established English supremacy in the southeastern part of
India.
[Sidenote: Clive renders English influence supreme in India.]
[Sidenote: The 'Black Hole' of Calcutta.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Plassey, 1757.]
At the moment that the Seven Years' War was beginning, bad news reached
Clive from the English settlement of Calcutta, about a thousand miles to
the northeast of Madras. The subahdar of Bengal had seized the property
of some English merchants and imprisoned one hundred and forty-five
Englishmen in a little room, where most of them died of suffocation
before morning. Clive hastened to Bengal, and with a little army of nine
hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys he gained a great victory
at Plassey over the subahdar's army of fifty thousand men. Clive then
replaced the subahdar of Bengal by a man whom he believed to be friendly
to the English. Before the Seven Years' War was over the English had won
Pondicherry and deprived the French of all their former influence in the
region of Madras.
[Sidenote: England's gains in the Seven Years' War.]
When the Seven Years' War was brought to an end in 1763 by the Treaty of
Paris, it was clear that England had gained far more than any other
power. She was to retain her two forts commanding the Mediterranean,
Gibraltar, and Port Mahon on the island of Minorca; in America, France
ceded to her the vast region of Canada and Nova Scotia, as well as
several of the islands in the West Indies. The region beyond the
Mississippi was ceded to Spain by France, who thus gave up all her
claims to North America. In India, France, it is true, received back the
towns which the English had taken from her, but she had permanently lost
her influence over the native rulers, for Clive had made the English
name greatly feared among them.
[Sidenote: Beginning of trouble with the American colonies.]
207. England, with the help of her colonists, had thus succeeded in
driving the French from North America and in securing the continent,
with the exception of Mexico, for the English race. She was not,
however, long to enjoy her victory, for no sooner had the Peace of Paris
been signed than she and her American colonies became involved in a
dispute over taxation, which led to a new war and the creation of an
independent English-speaking nation, the United States of America.
[Sidenote: The Stamp Act and its repeal.]
It seemed right to England that the colonies should help pay the
expenses of the late war, which were very heavy, and also support a
small standing army of English soldiers. Parliament therefore passed the
Stamp Act in 1765, which required the colonists to pay for stamps to be
used on legal documents. The Americans declared that Parliament had no
right to tax them, since they were not represented in that body. The
opposition to the stamp tax was so great that Parliament repealed the
act, but with the explicit assertion that it nevertheless had the right
to tax the colonies as well as to make laws for them.
[Sidenote: Opposition to 'taxation without representation.']
The effort to make the Americans pay a very moderate import duty on tea
produced further trouble in 1773. The young men of Boston seditiously
boarded a tea ship in the harbor and threw the cargo into the water.
Burke, perhaps the most able member of the House of Commons, urged the
ministry to leave the Americans to tax themselves, but George III
(1760-1820) and Parliament as a whole could not forgive the colonists
their opposition. They believed that the trouble was largely confined to
New England and could be easily overcome. In 1774 acts were passed
prohibiting the landing and shipping of goods at Boston, and the colony
of Massachusetts was deprived of its former right to choose its judges
and the members of the upper house of its legislature. These
appointments were now placed in the hands of the king.
[Sidenote: The Continental Congress.]
[Sidenote: Outbreak of war.]
[Sidenote: Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.]
Such measures, instead of bringing Massachusetts to terms, so roused the
apprehension of the rest of the colonists that a congress was summoned,
and met at Philadelphia. This decided that all trade with Great Britain
should cease until the grievances of the colonies had been redressed.
The following year the Americans made a brave stand against British
troops at Lexington and in the battle of Bunker Hill. The new Congress
decided to prepare for war and raised an army which was put under the
command of George Washington, a Virginia planter who had gained some
distinction in the late French and Indian War. Up to this time the
colonies had not intended to secede from the mother country, but the
proposed compromises came to nothing, and in July, 1776, Congress
declared that "these United States are, and of right ought to be, free
and independent."
[Sidenote: The United States seeks and receives aid from France.]
This occurrence naturally excited great interest in France. The outcome
of the Seven Years' War had been most lamentable for that country, and
any trouble which came to her old enemy England could not but be a
source of congratulation to the French. The United States regarded
France as her natural ally and immediately sent Benjamin Franklin to
Versailles with the hope of obtaining the aid of the new French king,
Louis XVI. The king's ministers were doubtful whether the colonies could
long maintain their resistance against the overwhelming strength of the
mother country. It was only after the Americans had defeated Burgoyne at
Saratoga in 1777, that France concluded a treaty with the United States
in which the independence of the new republic was recognized. This was
tantamount to declaring war upon England. The enthusiasm for the
Americans was so great in France that a number of the younger nobles,
the most conspicuous of whom was Lafayette, crossed the Atlantic to
fight in the American army.[375]
[Sidenote: Close of the war, 1783.]
[Sidenote: England acknowledges the independence of the United States.]
In spite of the skill and heroic self-sacrifice of Washington, the
Americans lost more battles than they gained. It is extremely doubtful
if they would have succeeded in bringing the war to a favorable close,
by forcing the English general, Cornwallis, to capitulate at Yorktown
(1781), had it not been for the aid of the French fleet. Before the war
was terminated by the Peace of Paris (1783), Spain had joined in the
hostilities, and the Spanish and French fleets laid siege to Gibraltar.
Their floating batteries were finally destroyed by the red-hot shot of
the British, and the enemies of England gave up further attempts to
dislodge her from this important station. The chief result of the war
was the recognition by England of the United States, whose territory was
to extend to the Mississippi River. To the west of the Mississippi, the
vast territory of Louisiana still remained in the hands of Spain.
[Sidenote: Results in Europe of wars between Treaty of Utrecht and Peace
of Paris.]
208. The results of the European wars during the sixty years which
elapsed between the Treaty of Utrecht and the Peace of Paris may be
summarized as follows. In the northeast two new powers, Russia and
Prussia, had come into the European family of nations. Prussia had
greatly extended her territory by gaining Silesia and West Poland. She
and Austria were, in the nineteenth century, to engage in a struggle for
supremacy in Germany, which was to result in substituting the present
German empire under the headship of the Hohenzollerns for the Holy Roman
Empire, of which the house of Hapsburg had so long been the nominal
chief.
[Sidenote: Origin of the 'eastern question.']
The power of the Sultan was declining so rapidly that Austria and Russia
were already considering the seizure of his European possessions. This
presented a new problem to the European powers, which came to be known
in the nineteenth century as the "eastern question." Were Austria and
Russia permitted to aggrandize themselves by adding the Turkish
territory to their possessions, it would gravely disturb the balance of
power which England had so much at heart. So it came about that, from
this time on, Turkey was admitted in a way to the family of western
European nations, for it soon appeared that some of the states of
western Europe were willing to form alliances with the Sultan, and even
aid him directly in defending himself against his neighbors.
[Sidenote: England's colonial possessions.]
England had lost her American colonies, and by her perverse policy had
led to the creation of a sister state speaking her own language and
destined to occupy the central part of the North American continent from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. She still retained Canada, however, and in
the nineteenth century added a new continent in the southern hemisphere,
Australia, to her vast colonial empire. In India she had no further
rivals among European nations, and gradually extended her influence over
the whole region south of the Himalayas. In 1877 Queen Victoria was
proclaimed Empress of India as the successor of the Grand Mogul.
[Sidenote: France under Louis XV, 1715-1774.]
As for France, she had played a rather pitiful rôle during the long
reign of Louis XIV's great grandson, Louis XV (1715-1774). She had,
however, been able to increase her territory by the addition of
Lorraine (1766) and, in 1768, of the island of Corsica. A year later a
child was born in the Corsican town of Ajaccio, who one day, by his
genius, was to make France the center for a time of an empire rivaling
that of Charlemagne in extent. When the nineteenth century opened France
was no longer a monarchy, but a republic; and her armies were to occupy
in turn every European capital, from Madrid to Moscow. In order to
understand the marvelous transformations produced by the French
Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, we must consider somewhat carefully
the conditions in France which led to a great reform of her institutions
in 1789, and to the founding of a republic four years later.
General Reading.--For the French in America, PARKMAN, _The Pioneers
of France in the New World_ (Little, Brown & Co., $2.00), also _A
Half Century of Conflict_ (same publisher, 2 vols., $6.00). For
India, MALLESON, _Clive_ (Oxford, University Press, 60 cents), and
Macaulay's Essay on Clive. For the growth of the British Empire, H.
DE B. GIBBINS, _History of Commerce in Europe_ (The Macmillan
Company, 90 cents), and SEELEY, _The Expansion of England_ (Little,
Brown & Co., $1.75).