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 be 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.