Peace and security are great promoters of commerce among nations and also of the productivity which makes that commerce possible. Between 1815 and 1914, the English people were not engaged in any great war. Both the Crimean and Boer wars were localized conflicts in which hostilities were far removed from the British Isles. Free of the fear of invasion, the British devoted themselves to social, economic, and political changes and reforms in which they far surpassed the rest of the world. In 1815, no country in Europe was in a position to work out such reforms.
At the conference table where the peace of 1815 was formulated, the geographical boundaries of three European countries were extended in recognition of their part in helping to defeat Napoleon -- Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary. None of these was then even a minor influence on the sea, though the way was prepared for Prussia later to force her will on surrounding Germanic provinces, to seize France's Alsace-Lorraine district, and as Imperial Germany to challenge Britain's mastery of the sea. France was left an empire with minor adjustments of her boundaries to reduce them in general to pre-Napoleonic dimensions, and her sugar islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, Pondichéry, and the old French factories were restored to her.
Lying between or around these powers or potential powers of Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and France were the small countries of Europe. Because Castlereagh, whose voice was the deciding one on British policy, thought a strong Dutch kingdom would be a bulwark against French ambitions, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was created to include Belgium, and to the Dutch were restored their rich islands in the Far East and Surinam and a few West Indies islands in America. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were free, though Norway was joined to Sweden in a voluntary union. To the south, Italy remained as she had been since the end of the Roman Empire -- a country disunited.
To complete the trading map of the world in 1815, Africa was the Dark Continent, as yet little noticed by the countries of Europe except as a source for slaves. The Near or Middle East, still a part of the Turkish Empire, had lost all importance as a link between East and West, waiting for the Suez Canal and petroleum to plunge it back into the vortex of world affairs. India was still governed by the British East India Company; China, a slumbering giant, was yet to be torn by the opium wars; and Japan, a hermit nation, permitted extremely limited trade through the port of Nagasaki to the Dutch. In America, the United States was free, developing a flourishing trade that complemented more than it rivaled Britain's commerce, while Canada remained secure as a British colony. To the south, the vast regions of Central and South America were on the verge of revolt.
Such was the trading world at the beginning of the nineteenth century. History certainly favored the British in their bid for commercial supremacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment