Irresistible causes had brought about a conquest which was haphazard rather than methodic. The industrial revolution which had come through Watts' discovery of the use of steam had so vastly increased the population of England that colonial expansion was the inevitable concomitant of commercial growth. Driven from America by the tragic war of Independence the English path of empire had swung eastwards. The history of India, of Egypt (for politically Egypt belongs to Asia), of Ceylon, of Burma, of Singapore, of Hongkong, as well as a score of other places, is simply the history of a Pressure expressed in terms of territorial conques because the safeguarding of commerce demanded that.
The doctrines which this activity postulated were based on the mastery of the sea, and though their general acceptance was never ce plete, so deeply did the prosperity which sprang from the English school of thought impress European statesmen that the colonial expansion of France under Napoleon IIT as well as the colossal efforts of Russia to reach warm water during later years, were due almost entirely to them.
Tt was not until the Prussian defeat of Napoleonic France that new movement is to be discerned which is of the utmost importance in Asiatic politics. The interval which had elapsed between the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the eighties of last century had seen almost all Europe change from agri cultural to industrial community with the economic consequence that the purely English belief in free-trade and Iaines-aller was now op: posed by the protectionist doctrine of Liszt, a German economist whose ideas conflicted absolutely and entirely with those of the Manches School.
In such circumstances, it was inevitable that sooner or later commercial rivalry should develop into political rivalry, and that when a champion could be found to lead the attack, an Empire as vast and as loosely-jointed as that of Tamerlane—and depending for its continued existence on a ceaseless patrol of the waterways—should find not only its world predominance bitterly questioned but its right of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.