conquered and organised.  The process took nearly twenty years, and was not completed until 1848.  In all the records of European imperialism there has been no conquest more completely justified both by the events which led up to it and by the results which have followed from it.  Peace and Law reign throughout a country which had for centuries been given over to anarchy.  The wild tribesmen are unlearning the habits of disorder, and being taught to accept the conditions of a civilised life.  The great natural resources of the country are being developed as never since the days of Roman rule.  No praise can be too high for the work of the French administrators who have achieved these results.  And it is worth noting that, alone among the provinces conquered by the European peoples, Algeria has been actually incorporated in the mother-country; it is part of the French Republic, and its elected representatives sit in the French Parliament.

In the nature of things the conquest of Algeria could not stand alone.  Algeria is separated by merely artificial lines from Tunis on the east and Morocco on the west, where the old conditions of anarchy still survived; and the establishment of order and peace in the middle area of this single natural region was difficult, so long as the areas on either side remained in disorder and war.  In 1844 France found it necessary to make war upon Morocco because of the support which it had afforded to a rebellious Algerian chief, and this episode illustrated the close connection of the two regions.  But the troops were withdrawn as soon as the immediate purpose was served.  France had not yet begun to think of extending her dominion over the areas to the east and west of Algeria.  That was to be the work of the next period.

Further south in Africa, France retained, as a relic of her older empire, a few posts on the coast of West Africa, notably Senegal.  From these her intrepid explorers and traders began to extend their influence, and the dream of a great French empire in Northern Africa began to attract French minds.  But the realisation of this dream also belongs to the next period.  In the Far East, too, this was a period of beginnings.  Ever since 1787—­before the Revolution—­the French had possessed a foothold on the coast of Annam, from which French missionaries carried on their labours among the peoples of Indo-China.  Maltreatment of these missionaries led to a war with Annam in 1858, and in 1862 the extreme south of the Annamese Empire—­the province of Cochin-China—­was ceded to France.  Lastly, the French obtained a foothold in the Pacific, by the annexation of Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in 1842, and of New Caledonia in 1855.  But in 1878 the French dominions in the non-European world were, apart from Algeria, of slight importance.  They were quite insignificant in comparison with the far-spreading realms of her ancient rival, Britain.