The Expansion of England, by J. R. Seeley, M. A.
“Here is a fundamental characteristic of the European states during the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries, which is seldom borne in mind, namely, that each of the five Western states has an empire in the New World attached to it. Before the seventeenth century this condition of things was but beginning, and since the eighteenth it has ceased again to exist. The vast, immeasurable results of the discovery of Columbus were developed with extreme slowness, so that the whole sixteenth century passed away before most of these nations bestirred themselves to claim a share in the New World. There existed no independent Holland till near the end of that century, so that a fortiori there could be no Greater Holland, nor did either England or France in that century become possessors of colonies. France did indeed plan a settlement in North America, as the name Carolina, derived from Charles IX of France, still remains to prove, but the neighbouring Spaniards of Florida interfered to destroy it. A little later Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony in the same neighbourhood disappeared altogether, leaving no trace behind it. Accordingly, during almost the whole of that century the New World remained in the possession of the two states which had done most to lay it open, viz., Spain and Portugal, Spain looking chiefly towards America and Portugal towards Asia, until in 1580 the two states coalesced in a union which lasted sixty years. The Dutch made their grand entrance into the competition for empire in the seven years from 1595 to 1602, and they were followed by France and England in the early years of the seventeenth century, that is, in the reign of our King James I.
“Again in the nineteenth century, the competition of these five states in the New World ceased. It ceased from two causes: wars of independence, in which Transatlantic colonies severed themselves from the mother- country, and the colonial conquests of England. I have described already the Hundred Years’ War in which Greater France was swallowed up in Greater Britain; Greater Holland in like manner suffered serious diminution, losing the Cape of Good Hope and Demerara to England, though even now a Greater Holland may be said to exist in the magnificent dependency of Java, with a population of not less than nineteen millions. The fall of Greater Spain and Greater Portugal has happened in the present century within the life-time of many who are still among us. If we estimated occurrences less by the excitement they cause at the moment and more by the consequences which are certain to follow them, we should call this one of the most stupendous events in the history of the globe, for it is the beginning of the independent life of almost the whole of Southern and Central America. It took place mainly in the twenties of this century, and was the result of a series of rebellions which, when we inquire into their origin, we find to have arisen out of the shock given to Spain and Portugal by Napoleon’s invasion of them, so that in fact one of the chief, if not the chief, result of Napoleon’s career has been the fall of Greater Spain and Greater Portugal, and the independence of South America.
“The result of all these mighty revolutions—of which, however, I fancy that few of you know anything—is that the Western states of Europe, with the exception of England, have been in the main severed again from the New World. This of course is only roughly true. Spain still possesses Cuba and Puerto Rico, Portugal still has large African possessions, France has begun to found a new empire in North Africa. Nevertheless these four states have materially altered their position in the world. They have become in the main purely European states again, as they were before Columbus crossed the Atlantic” (pp. 62-64).
“Thus then we see in the seventeenth and still more the eighteenth century a period when the New World was attached in a peculiar way to the five Western states of the European system. This attachment modifies and determines all the wars and negotiations, all the international relations of Europe, during that period. In the last lecture I pointed out that the struggle between England and France in those centuries cannot be understood so long as we look at Europe alone, and that the belligerents are really the World-Powers, Greater Britain and Greater France. Now I remark that in like manner during the same period we must always read for Holland, Portugal and Spain, Greater Holland, Greater Portugal and Greater Spain. I remark also that this state of things has now passed away, that the Spanish Empire, and in the main also the Portuguese and Dutch Empires, have gone the same way as the Empire of France. But Greater Britain still remains. And thus we perceive the historical origin and character of this empire” (pp. 64-65).
“We had been involved in two great wars mainly by our colonies, and the final breach was provoked not so much by the pressure of England upon the colonies as by that of the colonies upon England. If we imposed taxes upon them, it was to meet the debt which we had incurred in their behalf, and we saw with not unnatural bitterness that we had ourselves enabled our colonies to do without us, by destroying for their interest the French power in North America” (p. 75).
“In the Middle Ages England was, from the point of view of business, not an advanced, but on the whole a backward country. She must have been despised in the chief commercial countries; as now she herself looks upon the business- system and the banking of countries like Germany and even France as old-fashioned compared to her own, so in the Middle Ages the Italians must have looked upon England. With their city-life, wide business- connections and acuteness in affairs they must have classed England, along with France, among the old-world, agricultural, and feudal countries, which lay outside the main current of the ideas of the time” (pp. 96-97).
“Competition for the New World between the five Western maritime states of Europe—this is a formula which sums up a great part of the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is one of those generalisations which escape us so long as we study history only in single states” (p. 108).
“How came we to conquer India? Was it not a direct consequence of trading with India? And that is only the most conspicuous illustration of a law which prevails throughout English history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the law, namely, of the intimate interdependence of war and trade, so that throughout that period trade leads naturally to war and war fosters trade. I have pointed out already that the wars of the eighteenth century were incomparably greater and more burdensome than those of the Middle Ages. In a less degree those of the seventeenth century were also great. These are precisely the centuries in which England grew more and more a commercial country. England indeed grew ever more warlike at that time as she grew more commercial” (p. 120).
“Indeed it is not easy to approve the conduct of those who built up Greater Britain” (p. 145).
“Perhaps you may ask whether we can expect or wish her to prosper, if crime has gone into the making of her. But the God who is revealed in history does not usually judge in this way. History does not show that conquests made lawlessly in one generation are certain or even likely to be lost again in another” (p. 146).
“Like our colonial empire itself, our participation in the slave-trade was the gradual growth of the seventeenth century. By the Treaty of Utrecht it was, as it were, established, and became ‘a central object of English policy’ (the phrase is borrowed from Mr. Lecky. See History of England in the Eighteenth Century, II, p. 13). From this date I am afraid we took the leading share, and stained ourselves beyond other nations in the monstrous and enormous atrocities of the slave-trade” (p. 148).
“I have suggested that in the modern world distance has very much lost its effect, and that there are signs of a time when states will be vaster than they have hitherto been” (p. 308).
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