thirds being almost equally divided between our Own colonies and extra-European countries. 171. Our Colonial Trade.-This increase of our colonies, and our trade with them, has been one of the most striking features in our commercial history of this century. The development of India since it ceased to be the property of the East India Company in 1848 has been remarkable. Railways, canals, and telegraphs have been built, the production of corn, wheat, and silk encouraged, so that it is now the richest of our possessions. Perhaps nothing showed the wealth of India and our colonies so well as the Colonial Exhibition in London in 1886. There were gathered all the commercial products of our settlements in all quarters of the globe. From Asia came the riches of India, Ceylon, and the East Indies; from Australia and New Zealand gold and silver, copper, iron, tin, wine, wool, and grain. From Africa came the gold and diamonds of the Cape, its wool and ivory and feathers, and the ivory and gold dust of the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone. Canada sent her timber, and grain, and the furs of Hudson's Bay. Central America contributed mahogany and sugar from Honduras, and the products of South America were represented by British Guiana. The West Indies sent spices, rum, and sugar. And besides these native products the colonial manufactures showed how rapidly our race had progressed in other parts of the world. 172. England since 1850.-Much has occurred between the two Exhibitions of 1851 and 1886. Not long after the first, Europe and England were plunged into the Crimean War. This, like most European conflicts, did no harm to English industry, but on the contrary greatly stimulated one branch of it, our agriculture. The Chinese War of 1857, which followed, was as regrettable as that of 1842, but both served to extend our commercial relations with the east. The Civil War in America (1861-65) produced terrible distress in our cotton trade owing to the stoppage of the cotton export, but the waste caused in the States by this struggle created an urgent demand for English goods. One or two short wars in Europe between Austria, Prussia, and Denmark (1864-66) had little effect upon us; but in 1870-71 all Europe was shaken by the internecine conflict between France and Germany-a war by which our manufactures benefited largely. Since then we have had one or two commercial depressions, notably in 1873, 1883, and the following years; but on the whole our prosperity has been remarkable, and the national wealth has increased enormously,1 although, as we shall see in the next chapter, other European nations compete actively with us in manufactures. The increase of wealth has brought with it grave industrial problems, more especially in the relations of capital and labour. Let us hope that England will solve them wisely and justly. 1 The trade of the United Kingdom in 1889 was larger than in any previous year, the total of imports and exports together being no less than £742,343,336. The highest total reached before was in 1883, but it was £10,000,000 less than this. CHAPTER VII MODERN EUROPE. FRANCE AND GERMANY 173. Modern Industrial and Commercial Development. -We have now traced the history of the chief European states up to the middle of the last century. We have seen also how an industrial revolution took place in England that was destined to change all the features of our former industry. We now see this revolution operating on the Continent, and mark the immense growth of mining and manufactures under the factory system in every European country. As the inventions that led to this revolution came first from England, we find that England naturally has taken the first position in Europe as a manufacturing country; while her success in the Seven Years' War, and in the great French wars of 1793-1815, gave her a similar position as the first maritime and commercial power. But of course since then other countries have developed their manufacturing and agricultural industries, their shipping and their general commerce, so that England, though still first, is only one among a number of other powerful commercial states. The commercial position of these states in modern times—. that is, since what we might fairly call the general Industrial and Commercial Revolution that was almost contemporary with the French Revolution-has been largely determined, as of course was only natural, by various factors peculiar to themselves. One country has valuable natural resources, such as France in her fertile soil, England in her coal and iron, Germany in her minerals. Another has a favourable Others geographical position, as Italy and Holland have. again may succeed by the characteristic energy or diligence of their inhabitants, as has been the case with England and Germany and especially with Holland, whose people have literally snatched from the sea the land on which they live and work. And in the fifteen years of peace between the Crimean and Franco-German wars, and in the twenty years of peace since 1870, each country has had favourable opportunities of developing the special resources which it possesses. The result has been a really remarkable progress in commerce, which in turn has led to a common desire to increase colonial possessions in imitation of English success in that direction. 174. France during the Continental War.-The first country we must notice is France, our great rival of the eighteenth century. In 1763 we left her defeated and despoiled during the Seven Years' War, with the loss of her most valuable colonial possessions. After devoting herself to industry and trade for a time, she plunged eagerly into the American war with England in 1776; and, scarcely half a dozen years after its close, she was in the throes of the memorable Revolution (1789). The causes of that revolution were largely economic. It was due to the impoverishment of the country by constant war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and especially to the misery of the agriculturists—the peasants-who were ground down into unutterable misery by a taxation from which their masters were exempt. From the moment when the final crash came till the conclusion of peace by the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, France was fearfully distracted at home and involved in continual war with nearly all Europe abroad. Trade was almost completely ruined; and Napoleon, by his Berlin Decree (§ 162), not only injured the trade of his enemies but that of his own country as well; and, by his attempt to paralyse English navigation, nearly annihilated the shipping trade of Europe. The English captured not only French ships but French colonies (§ 165), and the very valuable colony of San Domingo was lost by a negro revolution. French shipping was so seriously injured that many of the imports had to come in through Germany or in German ships. It is amusing, for instance, to find that in spite of Napoleon's decrees France was so sorely in need of English goods that they were smuggled into the country in large quantities across the Rhine. At the same time the Berlin Decree caused home industries in France to revive, in order to supply the demand for manufactured goods whose importation was difficult; and to supply the loss of colonial produce, tobacco, maize, and madder were cultivated. At this crisis, too, the cultivation of beetroot was introduced for the purpose of making sugar to take the place of the cane-sugar that could only be procured from English colonies. The invention of beet-sugar was indeed the severest blow to England's trade that Napoleon inflicted, though its consequences were not immediately felt. It aided largely the decline of our West Indian colonies, though it must be admitted that our emancipation of the negroes was an equally potent factor in this decay. 175. France from 1815 to 1870.-However, in spite of all attempts, French trade languished hopelessly, so that throughout the war, until 1815, the exports never rose above the average annual value of the exports in the period of 1763-76. After the peace of 1815 financial exhaustion and bad harvests caused much distress. But the splendid natural resources of the country gradually restored it to some measure of prosperity. Agriculture was improved, and the cultivation of commercial plants was carefully attended to. A foolish attempt in 1822 to exclude foreign competition by raising the import tariff had the usual effect of protective measures, and the export of wine and manufactured silk suffered considerably, especially as other countries also raised their tariffs. The restoration of the Bourbons (Louis XVIII. and Charles X.) brought little prosperity, and their reign was terminated by the revolution of 1830. Then came an era of prosperity under Louis Philippe (1830-48); but again industry was arrested by the revolution in 1848. Then came a short period of the republic, with its dissensions, and the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon, finally terminating in the empire founded by |