V

EUROPE AND THE NON-EUROPEAN WORLD 1815-1878

When the European peoples settled down, in 1815, after the long wars of the French Revolution, they found themselves faced by many problems, but there were few Europeans who would have included among these problems the extension of Western civilisation over the as yet unsubjugated portions of the world.  Men’s hearts were set upon the organisation of permanent peace:  that seemed the greatest of all questions, and, for a time, it appeared to have obtained a satisfactory solution with the organisation of the great League of Peace of 1815.  But the peace was to be short-lived, because it was threatened by the emergence of a number of other problems of great complexity.  First among these stood the problem of nationality:  the increasingly clamorous demand of divided or subject peoples for unity and freedom.  Alongside of this arose the sister-problem of liberalism:  the demand raised from all sides, among peoples who had never known political liberty, for the institutions of self-government which had been proved practicable by the British peoples, and turned into the object of a fervent belief by the preachings of the French.  These two causes were to plunge Europe into many wars, and to vex and divide the peoples of every European country, throughout the period 1815-78.  And to add to the complexity, there was growing in intensity during all these years the problem of Industrialism—­the transformation of the very bases of life in all civilised communities, and the consequent development of wholly new, and terribly difficult, social issues.  Preoccupied with all these questions, the statesmen and the peoples of most European states had no attention to spare for the non-European world.  They neglected it all the more readily because the events of the preceding period seemed to demonstrate that colonial empires were not worth the cost and labour necessary for their attainment, since they seemed doomed to fall asunder as soon as they began to be valuable.

Yet the period 1815-78 was to see an extension of European civilisation in the non-European world more remarkable than that of any previous age.  The main part in this extension was played by Britain, who found herself left free, without serious rivalry in any part of the globe, to expand and develop the extraordinary empire which she possessed in 1815, and to deal with the bewildering problems which it presented.  So marked was the British predominance in colonial activity during this age that it has been called the age of British monopoly, and so far as trans-oceanic activities were concerned, this phrase very nearly represents the truth.  But there were other developments of the period almost as remarkable as the growth and reorganisation of the British Empire; and it will be convenient to survey these in the first instance before turning to the British achievement.