Great Britain as a World Empire.
On the western edge of the continent of Europe lies the island of Great
Britain, in the remote past a part of the continent, but long ages ago
cut off by the British Channel. Divorced from the mainland, left like
a waif in the western sea, peopled by men with their own interests and
aims, it might naturally be expected to have enough to attend to at
home and to take no part in continental affairs.
[=The Adventurous Disposition of the British People=]
Such was the case originally. The island lay apart, almost unknown, and
was, in a sense, "discovered" by the Roman conquerors. But new people
came to it, the Anglo-Saxons, and subsequently the Normans, both of
them scions of that stirring race of Vikings who made the seas their
own centuries ago and descended in conquering inroads on all the shores
of Europe, while their daring keels cut the waters of far-off Greenland
and touched upon the American coast. This people--stirring, aggressive,
fearless--made a new destiny for Great Britain. Their island shores
were too narrow to hold them, and they set out on bold ventures in all
seas. Their situation was a happy one for a nation of daring navigators
and aggressive warriors. Europe lay to the east, the world to the west.
As a result the British islands have played a leading part alike in the
affairs of Europe and of the world.
[=Hostility of England to France=]
France, the next door neighbor of Great Britain, was long its prey.
While, after the memorable invasion of William of Normandy, France
never succeeded in transporting an army to the island shores, and even
Napoleon failed utterly in his stupendous expedition, the islanders
sent army after army to France, defeated its chivalry on many a
hard-fought field, ravaged its most fertile domains, and for a time
held it as a vassal realm of the British King.
All this is matter of far-past history. But the old feeling was
prominently shown again in the Napoleonic wars, when Great Britain
resumed her attitude of enmity to France, and pursued the conqueror
with an unrelenting hostility that finally ended in his overthrow. Only
for this aggressive island Europe might have remained the bound slave
of Napoleon's whims. He could conquer his enemies on land, but the
people of England lay beyond his reach. Every fleet he sent to sea was
annihilated by his island foes. They held the empire of the waters as
he did that of the land. Enraged against these ocean hornets, he sought
to repeat the enterprise of William of Normandy, but if his mighty
Boulogne expedition had put to sea it would probably have met the fate
of the Armada of Spain. Great Britain was impregnable. The conqueror of
Europe chafed against its assaults in vain. This little island of the
west was destined to be the main agent in overthrowing the great empire
that his military genius had built.
[=The Vast Industries of Great Britain=]
Great Britain, small as it was, had grown, by the opening of the
nineteenth century, to be the leading power in Europe. Its industries,
its commerce, its enterprise had expanded enormously. It had become
the great workshop and the chief distributor of the world. The raw
material of the nations flowed through its ports, the finished products
of mankind poured from its looms, London became the great money centre
of the world, and the industrious and enterprising islanders grew
enormously rich, while few steps of progress and enterprise showed
themselves in any of the nations of the continent.
[=How England Fought Against Napoleon=]
It was with its money-bags that England fought against the conqueror.
It could not conveniently send men, but it could send money and
supplies to the warring nations, and by its influence and aid it formed
coalition after coalition against Napoleon, each harder to overthrow
than the last. Every peace that the Corsican won by his victories was
overthrown by England's influence. Her envoys haunted every court,
whispering hostility in the ears of monarchs, planning, intriguing,
instigating, threatening, in a thousand ways working against his plans,
and unrelentingly bent upon his overthrow. It was fitting, then, that
an English general should give Napoleon the _coup de grace_, and that
he should die a prisoner in English hands.
Chief among those to whom Napoleon owes his overthrow was William
Pitt, prime minister of England during the first period of his career
of conquest, and his unrelenting enemy. It was Pitt that organized
Europe against him, that kept the British fleet alert and expended the
British revenues without stint against this disturber of the peace of
the nations, and that formed the policy which Great Britain, after the
short interval of the ministry of Fox, continued to pursue until his
final defeat was achieved.
[=Was England's Policy a Wise One=]
Whether this policy was a wise one is open to question. It may be that
Great Britain caused more harm than it cured. Only for its persistent
hostility the rapid succession of Napoleonic wars might not have
taken place, and much of the terrible bloodshed and misery caused
by them might have been obviated. It seems to have been, in its way,
disastrous to the interests of mankind. Napoleon, it is true, had no
regard for the stability of dynasties and kingdoms, but he wrought for
the overthrow of the old-time tyranny, and his marches and campaigns
had the effect of stirring up the dormant peoples of Europe, and
spreading far and wide that doctrine of human equality and the rights
of man which was the outcome of the French Revolution. Had he been
permitted to die in peace upon the throne and transmit his crown to his
descendant, the long era of reaction would doubtless have been avoided
and the people of Europe have become the freer and happier as a result
of Napoleon's work.
[=The Prestige Gained by Great Britain=]
The people of Great Britain had no reason to thank their ministers
for their policy. The cost of the war, fought largely with the purse,
had been enormous, and the public debt of the kingdom was so greatly
increased that its annual interest amounted to $150,000,000. But the
country emerged from the mighty struggle with a vast growth in power
and prestige. It was recognized as the true leader in the great contest
and had lifted itself to the foremost position in European politics.
On land it had waged the only successful campaign against Napoleon
previous to that of the disastrous Russian expedition. At sea it had
destroyed all opposing fleets, and reigned the unquestioned mistress of
the ocean except in American waters, where alone her proud ships had
met defeat.
[=Great Extension of England's Colonies=]
The islands of Great Britain and Ireland had ceased to represent the
dominions under the rule of the British king. In the West Indies
new islands had been added to his colonial possessions. In the East
Indies he had become master of an imperial domain far surpassing the
mother country in size and population, and with untold possibilities
of wealth. In North America the great colony of Canada was growing in
population and prosperity. Island after island was being added to his
possessions in the Eastern seas. Among these was the continental island
of Australia, then in its early stage of colonization. The possession
of Gibraltar and Malta, the protectorate over the Ionian Islands, and
the right of free navigation on the Dardanelles gave Great Britain the
controlling power in the Mediterranean. And Cape Colony, which she
received as a result of the Treaty of Vienna, was the entering wedge
for a great dominion in South Africa.
[=The Wars of the World-Empire=]
Thus Great Britain had attained the position and dimensions of a
world-empire. Her colonies lay in all continents and spread through all
seas, and they were to grow during the century until they enormously
excelled the home country in dimensions, population, and natural
wealth. The British Islands were merely the heart, the vital centre of
the great system, while the body and limbs lay afar, in Canada, India,
South Africa, Australia and elsewhere.
But the world-empire of Great Britain was not alone one of peaceful
trade and rapid accumulation of wealth, but of wars spread through
all the continents, war becoming a permanent feature of its history
in the nineteenth century. After the Napoleonic period England waged
only one war in Europe, the Crimean; but elsewhere her troops were
almost constantly engaged. Now they were fighting with the Boers and
the Zulus of South Africa, now with the Arabs on the Nile, now with the
wild tribes of the Himalayas, now with the natives of New Zealand, now
with the half savage Abyssinians. Hardly a year has passed without a
fight of some sort, far from the centre of this vast dominion, while
for years England and Russia have stood face to face on the northern
borders of India, threatening at any moment to become involved in a
terrible struggle for dominion.
And the standing of Great Britain as a world power lay not alone in
her vast colonial dominion and her earth-wide wars, but also in the
extraordinary enterprise that carried her ships to all seas, and made
her the commercial emporium of the world. Not only to her own colonies,
but to all lands, sailed her enormous fleet of merchantmen, gathering
the products of the earth, to be consumed at home or distributed again
to the nations of Europe and America. She had assumed the position of
the purveyor and carrier for mankind.
[=Manufacturing and Inventive Activity=]
This was not all. Great Britain was in a large measure, the producer
for mankind. Manufacturing enterprise and industry had grown immensely
on her soil, and countless factories, forges and other workshops turned
out finished goods with a speed and profusion undreamed of before.
The preceding century had been one of active invention, its vital
product being the steam engine, that wonder-worker which at a touch
was to overturn the old individual labor system of the world, and
replace it with the congregate, factory system that has revolutionized
the industries of mankind. The steam engine stimulated invention
extraordinarily. Machines for spinning, weaving, iron-making, and a
thousand other purposes came rapidly into use, and by their aid one of
the greatest steps of progress in the history of mankind took place,
the grand nineteenth century revolution in methods of production.
[=Commercial Enterprise=]
Great Britain did not content herself with going abroad for the
materials of her active industries. She dug her way into the bowels
of the earth, tore from the rocks its treasures of coal and iron, and
thus obtained the necessary fuel for her furnaces and metal for her
machines. The whole island resounded with the ringing of hammers and
rattle of wheels, goods were produced very far beyond the capacity of
the island for their consumption, and the vast surplus was sent abroad
to all quarters of the earth, to clothe savages in far-off regions and
to furnish articles of use and luxury to the most enlightened of the
nations. To the ship as a carrier was soon added the locomotive and
its cars, conveying these products inland with unprecedented speed
from a thousand ports. And from America came the parallel discovery of
the steamship, signalling the close of the long centuries of dominion
of the sail. Years went on and still the power and prestige of Great
Britain grew, still its industry and commerce spread and expanded,
still its colonies increased in population and new lands were added
to the sum, until the island-empire stood foremost in industry and
enterprise among the nations of the world, and its people reached the
summit of their prosperity. From this lofty elevation was to come, in
the later years of the century, a slow but inevitable decline, as the
United States and the leading European nations developed in industry,
and rivals to the productive and commercial supremacy of the British
islanders began to arise in various quarters of the earth.
[=Disastrous Effect on the People of the New Conditions=]
It cannot be said that the industrial prosperity of Great Britain,
while of advantage to her people as a whole, was necessarily so to
individuals. While one portion of the nation amassed enormous wealth,
the bulk of the people sank into the deepest poverty. The factory
system brought with it oppression and misery which it would need a
century of industrial revolt to overcome. The costly wars, the crushing
taxation, the oppressive corn-laws, which forbade the importation of
foreign corn, the extravagant expenses of the court and salaries of
officials, all conspired to depress the people. Manufacturies fell into
the hands of the few, and a vast number of artisans were forced to live
from hand to mouth, and to labor for long hours on pinching wages.
Estates were similarly accumulated in the hands of the few, and the
small land-owner and trader tended to disappear. Everything was taxed
to the utmost it would bear, while government remained blind to the
needs and sufferings of the people and made no effort to decrease the
prevailing misery.
Thus it came about that the era of Great Britain's greatest prosperity
and supremacy as a world-power was the one of greatest industrial
oppression and misery at home, a period marked by rebellious uprisings
among the people, to be repressed with cruel and bloody severity.
It was a period of industrial transition, in which the government
flourished and the people suffered, and in which the seeds of revolt
and revolution were widely spread on every hand.
This state of affairs cannot be said to have ended. In truth the
present condition of affairs is one that tends to its aggravation.
Neither the manufacturing nor commercial supremacy of Great Britain
are what they once were. In Europe, Germany has come into the field
as a formidable competitor, and is gaining a good development in
manufacturing industry. The same must be said of the United States,
the products of whose workshops have increased to an enormous extent,
and whose commerce has grown to surpass that of any other nation on
the earth. The laboring population of Great Britain has severely felt
the effects of this active rivalry, and is but slowly adapting itself
to the new conditions which it has brought about, the slow but sure
revolution in the status of the world's industries.