had been performed by hand.  Steam engines could not of course be installed in every small cottage; hence a number of machines were put in one factory to be run by one steam engine.  The workers left their small huts and gardens in the country and came to live in towns and cities.  After the steam engine came steam transportation on land and water.  Then followed an enormous demand for coal, iron, steel, and other metals.  More goods could be produced in the factories than were needed for the people at home.  Hence arose more extended commerce and the search for foreign markets.

Colonial expansion.—­In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spain, Portugal, France, and England settled the American continents and parts of Asia.  By a series of wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Dutch secured part of the possessions of Spain and Portugal; and England obtained almost all of the French colonial territories.  In the eighteenth century the thirteen English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard made good their independence; and in the nineteenth, Spain lost all of her vast possessions in America.  During the early nineteenth century, Great Britain, in spite of the loss of the thirteen colonies, was by far the most successful colonizing country, and her possessions were to be found in Canada, India, the East and West Indies, Australia, and Africa.

Leaders of other nations in Europe thought these colonies of Great Britain were the cause of her wealth and prosperity.  Naturally they too tried to found colonies in those parts of the world not occupied by Europeans.  They hoped by this means to extend their power, to find homes for their surplus population, and to obtain markets for their new manufactured goods.  Thus Africa was parceled out among France, Germany, Great Britain, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, and Italy.  The islands of the Pacific were seized in the same manner.  Proposals for a partition of China were made by Germany, Russia, Japan, France, and Great Britain; and if it had not been for the American demands for the “open door of trade” and for the “territorial integrity” of China, that nation probably would have shared the fate of Africa.  The noteworthy fact about this rivalry for colonies is that almost the entire world, except China and Japan, came under the domination of Europeans and their descendants.

Having noted a few general features of European history during the nineteenth century, we shall now take up in turn each of the more important countries.

Germany.—­After the overthrow of Napoleon, a German Confederation was formed.  This comprised thirty-nine states which were bound to each other by a very weak tie.  The union was not so strong even as that in our own country under the Articles of Confederation.  But there were two states in the German Confederation which were far stronger than any of the others; these were Austria and Prussia.  Austria had been a great power in German and European