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.