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Section 2 of Imperialism and World Politics, Part 1 of 4. By Parker Thomas Moon. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Alistair. Chapter 2.

Two Changes of Mind. Most of us are inclined to believe that our convictions are true and will remain true. Few realise with what astounding rapidity the most fundamental political and economic dogmas may be revolutionized. If, for no other reason than to illustrate this changeability of ideas, it is worthwhile to review the interesting process by which Europe was first enamored of

colonial empire, then disillusioned, then reconverted to the old faith in the modernized form of imperialism. If one would analyze international relations today, one should first digest the fact that only 50 years ago, the foremost statesmen of Europe were just as firmly convinced of the futility and folly as their predecessors had been, and their successors were to be persuaded of, the value and virtue of imperialism. Another purpose, however, will also

be served by a preliminary study of the historical and economic antecedents of modern empire building. Like trees, great historical events spring from a soil enriched by the remains of earlier growths. The todays of our lives, and the tomorrows, arise from the yesterdays. The infant present cannot deny the parent past. The domination of the world by European powers, which in modern times seems so natural as rarely to provoke the student's curiosity,

is in reality one of the most astonishing paradoxes of history. During the long millenniums, while powerful empires and civilised cities were rising and falling in ancient Egypt, in Babylon, in Asia and China, most of Europe was a savage wilderness. In the case of the Phoenicians, at least, backward Europe received colonists from Asia, and Spain was colonised by Carthage. Only toward the very close of ancient history

did Greece and Rome, the southern fringe of the European continent, in contact with Asiatic and African civilisation, begin to play any conspicuous role in the world. With the decline of Rome, Europe once more fell into weakness, and again became subject to colonisation and conquest by Asiatic and African powers. Into Spain came the Moors from northern Africa, into southeastern In Europe, the Asiatic Turks fought their way.

Surely Europe seemed destined to be the footstool of other continents, not the imperial mistress of the world. The beginnings, however, of Europe's rise to world power became evident about the time of the Crusades, when Christendom, turning at bay,

sent its armies to invade the Afro-Asiatic Mohammedan world, and when the Italian city-states such as Amalfi, Venice, Florence, Genoa and Pisa reaching out for the commerce of the East, established their warehouses, Fondacci, in the cities of Asia Minor. From the 12th to the 15th century, the Italian cities monopolised the trade routes linking the Eastern Mediterranean with the Asiatic countries, whence came spices, gems,

drugs, and many other luxuries desired by noblemen and burger. This commercial expansion into the Near East was the prelude to, and the economic reason for, the apocle 15th century European voyages of discovery. Subsection. Mercantilism, or the Creed of Princes. One may well inquire why the great explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries were sent out not by the Italian commercial city-states, nor by the opulent Hancetic League of the German commercial

cities, but by the commercially backward countries, predominantly agricultural countries such as Portugal, Spain, England and France. An answer is suggested by even a cursory sketch of certain economic conditions at the time. Gold and silver were relatively scarce in medieval Europe. As commerce expanded, the supply of precious metals became so inadequate as to occasion inconvenience, even anxiety, especially in countries which had no minds. Furthermore,

the rising national kings needed gold or silver to maintain their courts, to increase their power, to hire soldiers, to pay for wars. Yet it was difficult to obtain the precious metals, except in one of two ways. The Italian city-states which monopolised the Asiatic trade obtained supplies from Asia, and from their lucrative business as middlemen between Europe and Asia. The Germans had mines as well as profitable trade. Other countries resorted

to many and curious, but largely futile expedients, such as engaging alchemists to transmute baser metals into gold, or forbidding the export of bullion on coins, or debasing the coinage. It is not difficult to understand, then, why enterprising monarchs in Western Europe hungered for new mines of precious metals, why explorers searched so avidly for gold and silver. That would be one solution of the difficulty.

Or, if a Western European nation could open up a new trade route to Asia and trade directly with the East, not only could it escape paying the extortionate prices of Italian and German middlemen, but it could hope to amass wealth in the role of retailer. The latter solution was found by the Little Kingdom of Portugal, whose explorers bravely ventured down the unknown West African coast,

until they rounded the Cape, reached India from the south in 1498, and brought back cargoes of spices by the new all-water route. Naturally, under the prevailing standards of international ethics, they claimed a monopoly of their new route, and sought to exploit it to the ultimate degree.

Naturally, the Portuguese king declined an offer from mercantile Venice to purchase wholesale all the spices imported via the Cape. 1521. Portugal's aim was not colonisation, but commercial profit. Trading posts were established along the African coasts,

on the shores of the Indian Ocean, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. and, above all, in the spice-producing East Indies. To Lisbon, the Portuguese vessels, sailing in secrecy under naval convoy, brought their rich freight. And to the Casa de India at Lisbon, wholesale warehouse of oriental spices and luxuries, came Dutch and French and English merchants to buy from Portugal. The king's coffers received, it was estimated, $750,000 a year net

profit, and hundreds of Portuguese officials and traders enriched themselves. Spain, on the other hand, failed to find a new route to the Spice Islands, but discovered instead the silver and gold mines of America. It has been estimated that from 1493 to 1640, Spain got in America about 875 tons of gold, and 45,720 tons of silver, and on this treasure the king levied a royalty of 20% the Quinto. Admitting that these figures may be far from scientific accuracy, and that much of

this bullion was captured en route by British or other adventurous mariners, and that through commerce much found its way into other countries, and even that the influx of gold and silver may have been injurious to Spain's economic development, the facts remain nevertheless that the Spanish court was brilliant and powerful in the 16th century, and that Spain's colonial conquests appeared to be so marvellously profitable as to excite the cupidity of less

fortunate West European monarchs. For a time to be sure, France and England were content to purchase spices from Lisbon and send out a few explorers. The Dutch, at that time subject to Spain, became the chief carriers and distributors of Spanish and Portuguese trade, but toward the end of the 16th century the Dutch rebelled against Spain and, as Spain and Portugal were united under Philip II's scepter, began to prey on Portugal's colonial commercial empire. It is not necessary to

retell the familiar story here, but merely to emphasise the economic aspect which has so potently affected modern nationalistic economic policies. The East India Company, chartered by the Netherlands in 1602, wrested from Portugal the route round the Cape, the trading posts in the East, and the East Indies, and for generations monopolised the spice trade despite persistent efforts of French and English to seize a share. Dutch commerce prospered, stately ships crowded

Dutch ports, and the trident of Neptune seemed well in the grasp of Holland. The sequence of events which have been so roughly sketched here led almost inevitably to a policy which has continued to sway men's minds even to the present day, the policy of mercantilism. Seventeenth-century rulers naturally ascribed Spain's greatness to the fabulous wealth of American colonial minds, Portugal's ephemeral brilliance to the East Indian trade, and Holland's

rise to her colonies and commerce. Less favoured nations, unable to find exclusive trade routes to the Orient, or to tap nature's treasures of silver and gold, must find some other method of gaining wealth if they would not be impoverished. Richelieu, the great French statesman of the early 17th century, looked with envy on the Dutch, whose trade with the East and West Indies was so lucrative. France, he claimed, should emulate Holland. Instead of paying so dearly for imports from

other countries, France should make her own cloth, raise her own food, and press her own wine, manufacture goods for export and thus draw money and be it remarked he considered naval power and colonial empire indispensable features of this economic program similarly john dewitt grand pensionary of the netherlands in his political maxims linked colonies with commerce and industry as the trinity responsible for dutch power how general this conviction became may be inferred

from the fact that Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, England and France in the 17th century all made some effort to found colonies, as well as to foster shipping, industry and export trade. The theories inspiring these ventures were oftentimes so crude that the various tyro in economic science can demonstrate their falsity. Nevertheless, in one form or another, with many a variation, the policy of colonial commercialism was so universal in the 17th

century, and so remarkably manifested in the 18th century, that it cannot be lightly dismissed as a fallacy. It was the direct application of political national monarchy to the economic conditions of the age, prefigured in the writings of Montchrétien, Richelieu, De Witt, Thomas Munn, Raley, Sir Joshua child and others, and practiced perhaps most conspicuously by Louis XIV's celebrated minister Colbert, this policy of encouraging industries, exports, colonies and shipping came to be known

as Colbertism, or more generally mercantilism. Economic policies more or less well suited to the conditions under which they were originated survive long after the conditions have changed, And the policy of mercantilism, dignified in its hoary age, still survives today, though it has donned the garb of modern economic phraseology and adopted an alias, imperialism. It would not be unenlightening to recapitulate the conditions which gave birth to mercantilism, if we would

clear our minds of tradition before attempting to judge the validity of mercantilist policies under 20th century conditions. In the 17th and 18th centuries, mercantilism took form in response to a set of political, economic and religious conditions which have since been swept away. It was an edifice built on foundations which have been washed away by the current of progress. One of these foundations was royal autocracy. Footnote, although mercantilism was practiced

in Holland and England after autocracy had fallen. Footnote ends. Ambitious and despotic kings of England, of France, of Denmark, of Spain, of Prussia, of Sweden, needed gold for their growing expenditures and men, obtainable for gold, and ships for their incessant wars. Hence the emphasis on obtaining precious metals by commerce, on which kings levied duties, or by discovery of mines, from which kings exacted royalties, and hence the emphasis on national merchant marines,

easily convertible into naval auxiliaries. Religion played a less important part. Missionary zeal, one needs hardly say, was a significant factor in early explorations and in later colonisation, but missionary zeal is not a reason for wholesale colonial conquests unless, as in early modern times, it be generally assumed that monarchs should dictate the religion of subjects, and that conquered natives should be converted without choice.

More significant in this analysis was the economic situation. The first naive greed for trade routes and gold mines, notable in the 15th century, was modified by subsequent economic transformations. To begin with, the building of larger ships for ocean voyages, and incidentally, the improvement of roads in Europe made commerce in bulkier goods possible and profitable. Manufacturing industries in Europe, stimulated by this event as well as by other causes,

grew amazingly in the 17th and 18th centuries, until home markets were glutted and foreign markets bitterly contested. Wool and cloth and alcoholic beverages, probably the two leading commodities manufactured for export, were goods that could be made in almost every country. competition was necessarily keen and the european market was not only limited but fenced about with mercantilist restrictions and tariffs since each nation endeavoured to cut its own imports to the minimum under these conditions what could be more natural than for each nation to acquire colonies from which it could obtain raw materials and non-competitive colonial products and to which it could sell manufactures without hindrance or competition

Such were the foundations of mercantilism and of the so-called old colonial system. By the middle of the 18th century, France and England had emerged as the leading mercantilist powers, France applying Colbert's principles rigidly to her vast domains in the St. Lawrence and Mississippi Valleys and in the French West Indies, England enforcing the system less consistently in her West Indian and American colonies.

Spain still drew millions of pesos from the minds of the huge Spanish colonial empire in America, besides plantation products from the West Indies and Philippines. The Dutch had exploited the spice-producing East Indies so ruthlessly, and the monopolistic management of these colonies had become so corrupt and inefficient that decay had already set in.

Portugal had lost most of the East Indies, and on the African coast retained only a few scant footholds. but still had the immense colony in Brazil, in which gold and diamond mining yielded royalties to the king, and fertile plantations produced coffee and sugar.

Prussia had sold its holdings on the Gold Coast of Africa to Holland for 7,200 ducats in 1725, and dropped out of the race. Footnote. The Netherlands, in turn,

sold its Gold Coast holdings to Great Britain in 1867, The Danish posts on the Gold Coast were ceded to Great Britain in 1850. Footnote ends. Denmark and Sweden held minor colonies. Subsection.

Laissez-faire, or the creed of merchant princes. Imposing, as was its façade, this old colonial edifice of the 18th century was founded on shifting sands, its fall was not long delayed. 60 years from 1763 to 1823 witnessed the shattering of the four greatest colonial empires. The French colonial empire

was destroyed, or rather annexed, by Great Britain in 1763 at the close of a long series of wars. The British in turn suffered. The Declaration of Independence by 13 important American colonies in 1776 seemed to presage the collapse of the empire. The grim hand of destiny touched next the Spanish realm in South America,

and in the generation from about 1810 to about 1825, Spain was excluded from the continent. Simultaneously, Brazil separated from Portugal in 1822. He must have been an incorrigible believer whose faith in the old colonial system was not shaken by this series of cataclysms. Turgut's famous dictum,

Colonies are like fruits which cling to the tree only till they ripen, uttered in the middle of the 18th century seems now to have been irrefutably proved. As if more proof were needed, in 1837 rebellion raised its head in Canada, and Lord Durham, who was sent to investigate, reported that the Canadian colonists should be granted responsible self-government. One by one, the British colonies of Canada,

New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, New Zealand, Cape Colony and Queensland received self-government during the two decades that followed Lord Durham's report, and many Englishmen assumed that self-government was a step towards emancipation. Disraeli wrote to the British Foreign Minister in 1852, These wretched colonies will be all independent too in a few years,

and they are a millstone around our necks. Gladstone sonorously expressed his conviction in April 1870 that colonies grow, Until they arrive at that stage of their progression in which separation from the mother country inevitably takes place. In the past they had done so by bloodshed.

In the future the mother country should gracefully and peacefully surrender her authority. Even more devastating was the change in economic facts and theories in the century from 1775 to 1875. Colonial rebellions might shatter the pillars, but these economic changes swept away the foundations of the old mercantilist colonial system. The altered facts of the economic situation may be considered first.

The invention of spinning machines, power looms, steam engines and new metallurgical processes brought about an industrial revolution in England during this epoch. As the secrets of the inventions were at first carefully guarded and as establishment of steam power factories was in any case difficult for economically backward peoples, England, during the first three quarters of the 19th century, was almost unrivalled in the

manufacture of machine-made textiles, chiefly cotton cloth, and of iron and hardware, which could be sold at less than handmade goods. Governmental restriction of colonial markets for such goods was quite unnecessary, as long as English industry could undersell its lagging foreign competitors. Moreover, to sparse colonial populations, less of such goods could be sold, than to populous European nations. What the facts of the economic situation demanded,

from the English manufacturer's point of view, was free access to European markets and indifference to colonial aggrandisement. The facts demanded a new political economy, antithetical to the principles of mercantilism. By one of the more fateful coincidences of history, a new political economy was at hand, ready for application. Turgot and the French économistes, or physicrats in the third quarter of the 18th century, had already sketched in broad lines a political economy of

individual freedom, which was summed up in the phrase laissez-faire. Adam Smith, father of the classical political economy in England, had expounded somewhat similar, but more convincingly elaborated doctrines in The Wealth of Nations, 1776. Greater gain, he argued, was to be obtained by free trade, permitting natural specialisation of industry, than by mercantilist regulation of commerce. Some interference with commercial liberty, the Navigation Act, might be justified

on the grounds of national defence. But, and this was the important point, it was certainly unprofitable economically. Applying his principles specifically to colonies, Smith asserted that although natural colonial trade would be profitable to all countries, attempts to monopolise colonial trade cause mere loss instead of profit to the body of the people. The overgrowth of British colonial trade had sucked capital away from other branches of business and caused decay in Britain's

general foreign trade. Then, too, the colonies were a heavy burden on the national exchequer. From an economic point of view, he concluded, Great Britain would profit by abandoning her empire. The truth of this bold statement seemed to be demonstrated when, after the successful rebellion of the American colonies, Great Britain's export to the United States rose to higher figures than they had attained before the revolution. Later British economists of the classical school,

Malthus, Ricardo, James Mill, J.R. McCulloch, and others, made the economic value of free trade and the economic absurdity of mercantilism fundamental principles of orthodox political economy. Cobden and Bright popularised the principles of free trade

in their great campaign against the Corn Laws. Manufacturers fell into line. It is perhaps significant that the free trade movement became known as the Manchester School, or simply Manchesterism,

taking its name from the city which was truly the heart of the cotton industry. Protective duties were taken off 750 articles in 1842 by appeal. The Corn Laws, emblematic of the old system, fell in 1846, and with them vanished the duties on about 150 other articles of food, raw materials, and manufactures. The Navigation Laws, enforcing a mercantilist policy towards shipping, were appealed in 1849.

Shortly afterwards, Gladstone's reforms of 1853 and 1860 and the removal of the import duty on timber in 1866 demolished the last ramparts of English mercantilism. While the doctrine of free trade was undermining the economic foundations of colonial imperialism, philosophical and political radicalism attacked the system from another angle. The doctrines of individual liberty, democracy and cosmopolitanism, which gradually gained popularity among radical thinkers in the early 19th century, and among other classes subsequently, were decidedly anti-imperialistic in their original tendency.

Jeremy Bentham, father of British philosophical radicalism, expressed his views in a letter entitled Emancipate Your Colonies, addressed to the French National Convention in 1793 and published in 1830. Colonies, he held, were not only unprofitable, but involved great military and naval expense, danger of foreign war, and political corruption in the mother country. James Mill contributed an article on Colony to the 1818 supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica,

stressing the expense, corruption and enmities arising from the old colonial system, and condemning particularly the prevalent practice of settling convicts in colonies. Far from convincing the masses, in the first half of the 19th century these anti-colonial doctrines were shared only by a handful of progressive thinkers. Nevertheless, their influence widened by degrees. Remarkably effective in the work of propaganda was the firebrand Richard Cobden,

the popular apostle of free trade and pacifism, the man who called the British government a standing conspiracy to rob and bamboozle the people. This fearless iconoclast assailed British rule in India as utterly unprofitable and unnatural. Ultimately, of course, he predicted,

nature will assert the supremacy of her laws, and the white skins will withdraw to their own latitudes, leaving the Hindus to the enjoyment of the climate to which their complexion is suited but in the meantime possession of India would breed all kinds of trouble loss and disgrace it would cost blood and gold it might demoralize the British government just as Greece and Rome

were corrupted by the east recognizing the stronghold however which colonialism still had upon popular sentiment even in 1842, Cobden declared, the colonial system with all its dazzling appeal to the passions of the people can never be got rid of except by the indirect process of free trade, which will gradually and imperceptibly loose the bonds which unite our colonies to us by a mistaken attitude of self-interest. As the years rolled by, the movement

gained momentum. Soon we find, in 1862-3, an Oxford professor of history, Goldwyn Smith, proclaiming in a series of letters to the Daily News that although colonies were once profitable in the days of commercial monopoly, there was no longer any reason for retaining them now that trade everywhere is free or becoming free. England should adopt a policy of emancipating her colonies. Such views were by no means allowed to pass unchallenged, but they were shared by

more than one official. Henry Thring, Home Office Counsel, who drafted legislation for the government, proposed in 1865 that any colony at maturity should be permitted, as a matter of course, to become independent. Herman Merivale, permanent undersecretary for colonies from 1848 to 1860, accepted the doctrine that colonies eventually secede. Moreover,

with the colonial trade thrown open and colonisation at an end, it is obvious that the leading motives which induced our ancestors to found and maintain a colonial empire no longer exist. His successor from 1860 to 1871, Sir Frederick Rogers, Lord Blackford,

said he always believed so strongly that he could Hardly realise the possibility of anyone seriously thinking the contrary, that the destiny of our colonies is independence. Another colonial official, Sir Henry Taylor, in 1864, referred to the British possessions in America as

A sort of damnosa hereditas. Subsection. Anti-imperialism in the mid-Victorian age. The increasing prevalence of anti-imperialistic views helps to explain what would otherwise seem like an astonishing indifference to colonial expansion in Victorian England prior to the 70s and 80s. After the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which had brought Heligoland, Malta, Tobago, St Lucia, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guiana, Cape Colony, and Ceylon into the fold, British

colonial expansion was singularly sluggish for more than half a century. To be sure, the Indian realm was consolidated and expanded. Aden, 1839, and a few other strategic points on the route to India were appropriated. The Australian colonies grew inevitably. New Zealand was annexed 1840, and the Fiji Islands 1874 likewise, and Singapore 1819 and Hong Kong 1842. While in Africa Natal was annexed in 1843, Basutuland in 1871, and Greekaland in 1874. But this record of expansion

from 1815 to 1875 is indeed meagre compared with the vast gains of later years. And especially it must be emphasised that during this period in numerous instances the British government exhibited a positive distaste for colonial aggression. A few specific instances will enforce this point. The first attempts of British settlers in the Tal to obtain British protection met with discouraging rebuffs, and only after much hesitation did Lord Stanley, then Secretary of State for the Colonies,

consent to the annexation of de Talle in 1843. In the case of New Zealand likewise, Downing Street stubbornly opposed projects of colonisation, and annexation was delayed until 1840, when there was good reason to fear that France might steal a march on her inactive rival. A little later, Great Britain amiably recognised the independence of Transvaal, 1852, and the Orange Free State, 1854, two republics founded by Boer immigrants from British South Africa, despite the fact that

the elected delegates of the Orange River colonists desired to remain under British sovereignty. In 1856, when the French promoter de Lesseps proposed digging a canal across the isthmus of sewers. Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary, instead of welcoming the project, expressed a fear that such a canal might lead to the British occupation of Egypt. A later generation might have regarded the same contingency with imperialist hope. Perhaps the most interesting illustration is

to be found in the Fiji Islands. Here, a native chieftain euphoniously named Thakombau, embarrassed by rivals and rebellions, and alarmed by an American claim for $45,000 as an indemnity for injuries to a consul, had first turned to the God of the Christian missionaries for aid, and then, that failing, to Queen Victoria, of whom he had doubtless heard as the mightiest of earthly potentates. He actually offered her in 1859 sovereignty over his islands. Footnote. Mr.

Pritchard, who acted as the Combao's emissary to England in making the 1859 offer, believed that looms of Lancashire were to be kept going with the cotton which would be grown in Fiji. See Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, Volume 6, 1874-75, pages 86-119. The principal speaker at this meeting of the Institute expressed the hope that someday the population of Fiji would be able, probably to read Shakespeare and understand him. That, however, is not wholly typical of imperialist

aims. Footnote ends. The Queen's advisers, however, sent out one Colonel Smythe to look this gift horse in the mouth, and Smythe ungratefully recommended refusal of the prophet's sovereignty. A second offer was likewise spurned. Only on the third offer did Great Britain accept, and that was in 1874 after imperialism had revived in England. Parliament apparently sympathised with this negligent policy. Indeed, in 1865 a committee of the House of Commons recommended the abandonment

of all British holdings on the West African coast, saving Sierra Leone, and abstention from further annexations in this region. As Professor Schuyler has convincingly pointed out, the climax of anti-imperialism in England was reached in Gladstone's cabinet of 1868. Gladstone himself, as has been said, was a little Englander at heart, who desired that the inevitable separation of colonies from the mother country should be voluntarily and peacefully permitted. John

Bright, a member of the cabinet, favoured the emancipation of Canada and stigmatised British ownership of Gibraltar as contrary to every law of morality and honour, Lord Granville, the colonial secretary, and Robert Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, were at least willing to acquiesce in independence for Canada if the latter desired it. In accordance with the spirit of a resolution which had been unanimously adopted by the Commons a few years earlier, favouring

withdrawal of British military forces from self-governing colonies, the Gladstone Cabinet adopted the policy of removing imperial troops from New Zealand, notwithstanding indignant protests both from New Zealand and from imperial-minded Englishmen. Disraeli later asserted that the Liberal Party had been striving to disrupt the British Empire, but Disraeli himself, as late as 1866, had written to Lord Derby that England ought to

Leave the Canadians to defend themselves. Recall the Africa Squadron. Give up the settlements on the west coast of Africa. Between 1866 and 1874, however, Disraeli's views had changed, and it was as an outspoken imperialist that he triumphed in the elections of 1874. These elections, as Professor Schuyler has observed, marked the defeat of anti-imperialism in England. Yet anti-imperialism as a lost cause survived the defeat. Gladstone, writing in the

19th century magazine in 1877, expressed his apprehension lest by intervening in Egypt England might find herself burdened with a North African empire. And in his famous Midlothian campaign of 1880, the veteran liberal leader stoutly resisted the advance of imperialism. History, ironically enough, made Gladstone himself the tool of British aggression in Egypt, but that is another story. If one turns to France or Germany, one reads the same story of anti-imperialism,

rising to a climax in the 60s and 70s, then suddenly overwhelmed by imperialism triumphant. France, after having made vain attempts in the War of American Independence and again in the Napoleonic period, to regain her lost colonial greatness, found herself in 1815 with a few trifling shreds of former possessions. A dubious sovereignty over Haiti, two islands in the West Indies, fishing rights in Newfoundland, and a microscopic Saint-Pierre and Michelin nearby.

A corner of Guyana, a foothold here and there on the African coast, an undeveloped claim in Madagascar, the Île de Bourbon, and five unimportant trading posts in India. A total of but 38,000 square kilometres, embracing 400,000 souls. For a time in the 1820s, there seemed to be some chance of acquiring Spain's colonies, but the English foreign minister threatened that England would not tolerate for an instant such a move, and France had to pledge her honour to keep her hands off Spanish America.

In 1830, Charles X sent a naval expedition to conquer Algiers, just across the Mediterranean. in 1842 a French protectorate was declared over Tahiti in 1842 the Gabon River was added and Louis-Napoleon in the Second Empire period engaged in scattered colonial ventures

in New Caledonia, Cochin, China and Cambodia Somaliland and Mexico all of which, save the last, were successful but how few and how small these gains were as compared with later exploits

may be seen most clearly in cold statistics In the 62 years from 1815 to 1877, the total acquisitions amounted to 928,000 square kilometres and 5,500,000 inhabitants, whereas in the much shorter space of time since 1877, which year may be taken as an approximate dividing point between the era of anti-imperialism and the age of imperialism, France has gained about 14,500,000 square kilometres

and 53 million non-European subjects. In the 48 years since 1877, the Gainan territory has been almost 16 times as great as in the 62 years before 1877. Moreover, the government of the Second Empire was strongly predisposed in favour of free trade. It made the celebrated Cobden Treaty of 1860 with England, opening a wide breach in the mercantilist tariff wall. Further, on July the 3rd, 1861, it freely opened to all nations the commerce of the French colonies.

This was the very negation of colonial mercantilism. And under the Third Republic, in the 70s and early 80s, anti-mercantilist principles were so strong that only with great labour could partisans of imperialism carry their projects through the gauntlet of parliamentary criticism. It is hardly too much to say that in the 70s, the prevailing spirit in France was opposed to colonies, either on the economic ground that

they were unprofitable, or on the political ground that they were a dangerous diversion of energy from European politics, or on the ground that in the modern age of cosmopolitanism, colonial greed was an anachronism. In Germany, the all-powerful Bismarck shared, until perhaps 1876, the anti-imperialist zeitgeist. In 1868, he wrote to a colleague, von Roon, All the advantages claimed for the mother country are for the most part illusions.

England is abandoning her colonial policy. She finds it too costly. He had already refused a protectorate over the Sultan of Sulu in the Pacific. He likewise refused Portugal's offer to sell Mozambique in Africa. When France offered Cochin, China, and other colonies in lieu of Alsace-Lorraine after the French defeat at Sedan, Bismarck scornfully refused colonial compensation, even though certain Bremen and Hamburg merchants

favoured it. He wanted no colonies. He bluntly declared their only use was to provide sinecures for officials, they were too costly a luxury for Germany. A colonial policy for us would be just like the silken sables of Polish noble families who have no shirts. Many were the pleas, from a limited number of interested merchants and travellers in the 70s, for the annexation of this or that overseas land, but the stubborn Chancellor rejected them all. And so strong was

the anti-mercantilist sentiment of the National Liberal Party, on which Bismarck then depended, and of the majority of the Reichstag, that even after he was personally convinced of the desirability of founding colonies, Bismarck had to humour public opinion most cautiously and reiterate his disclaimer of imperialist intentions. Not until the 80s, when imperialism was everywhere resurgent, could he dare to come out openly in favour of colonial aggrandisement.

the turning of the tide came in the 70s and 80s its cause need be no mystery it came because economic and political conditions and with them theories had profoundly altered since the middle of the century end of section two