THE BRITISH ISLANDS AND COLONIES.

We have now gone, first through that great mass of European lands which formed part either of the Eastern or of the Western Empire, and then through those more distant, and mainly peninsular, lands which so largely escaped the Imperial dominion. ?The British islands.? We end by leaving the mainland of Europe, by leaving the world of either Empire, for that great island, or rather group of islands, which for ages was looked on as forming a world of its own.[87] ?Late Roman conquest and early loss of Britain.? In Western Europe Britain was the last land to be won, and the first to be lost, in the days of the elder Empire. And, after all, Britain itself was only partly won, while the conquest of Ireland was never tried at all. ?Independence of Britain in the later Empire.? After the English Conquest, Britain had less to do with the revived Western Empire than any Western land except Norway. The momentary dealings of Charles the Great with Scotland and Northumberland, the doubtful and precarious homage done by Richard the First to Henry the Sixth, are the only exceptions, even in form, to its complete independence on the continental Empire. ?Britain another world and another Empire.? The doctrine was that Britain, the other world, formed an Empire of its own. That Empire, being an island, was secured against the constant fluctuations of its external boundary to which continental states lie open. ?Changes within Britain.? For several centuries the boundaries, both of the Celtic and Teutonic occupants and of the Teutonic kingdoms among themselves, were always changing. But these changes hardly affect European history, which is concerned only with the broad general results—with the establishment of the Teutonic settlers in the island—with the union of those settlers in one kingdom under the West-Saxon house—with the extension of the imperial power of the West-Saxon kings over the whole island of Britain. ?Slight change in the internal divisions of England.? And, from the eleventh century onwards, there has been singularly little change of boundaries within the island. The boundaries of England towards Scotland and Wales changed much less than might have been looked for during ages of such endless warfare. Even the lesser divisions within the English kingdom have been singularly lasting. The land, as a whole, has never been mapped out afresh since the tenth century. While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh century, or even in the eighteenth, is useless for immediate practical objects, a map of England in the days of Domesday practically differs not at all from a map of England now. The only changes of any moment, and they are neither many nor great, are in the shires on the Welsh and Scottish borders.

Thus the historical geography of the isle of Britain comes to little more than a record of these border changes, down to the incorporation of England, Scotland, and Wales into a single kingdom. In the other great island of Ireland there is little to do except to trace how the boundary of English conquest advanced and fell back, a matter after all of no great European concern. The history of the smaller outlying islands, from Scandinavian Shetland to the insular Normandy, has really more to do with the general history of Europe. The dominion of the English kings on the continent is of the highest European moment, but, from its geographical side, it is Gaul and not Britain which it affects. ?English settlements beyond sea.? The really great geographical phÆnomenon of English history is that which it shares with Spain and Portugal, and in which it surpasses both. This is the vast extent of outlying English dominion and settlement, partly in Europe, but far more largely in the distant lands of Asia, Africa, America, and Australia. But it is not merely that England has become a great power in all quarters of the world; England has been, like Portugal, but on a far greater scale, a planter of nations. ?English nations.? One group of her settlements has grown into one of the great powers of the world, into a third England beyond the Ocean, as far surpassing our insular England in geographical extent as our insular England surpasses the first England of all in the marchland of Germany and Denmark. The mere barbaric dominion of England concerns our present survey but little; but the historical geography of Europe is deeply concerned in the extension of England and of Europe in lands beyond the Western and the Southern Ocean.

In tracing out the little that we have to say of the geography of Britain itself, it will be well to begin with that northern part of the island where changes have been both more numerous and more important than they have been in England.

§ 1. The Kingdom of Scotland.

In Northern Britain, as in some other parts of Europe, we see a land which has taken its name from a people to which it does not owe its historic importance. Scotland has won for itself a position in Britain and in Europe altogether out of proportion to its size and population. But it has not done this by virtue of its strictly Scottish element. ?Greatness of Scotland due to its English element.? The Irish settlers who first brought the Scottish name into Britain[88] could never have made Scotland what it really became. What founded the greatness of the Scottish kingdom was the fact that part of England gradually took the name of Scotland and its inhabitants took the name of Scots. The case is as when the Duke of Savoy and Genoa and Prince of Piedmont took his highest title from that Sardinian kingdom which was the least valuable part of his dominions. It is as when the ruler of a mighty German realm calls himself king of the small duchy of Prussia and its extinct people. ?Two English kingdoms in Britain.? The truth is that, for more than five hundred years, there were two English kingdoms in Britain, each of which had a troublesome Celtic background which formed its chief difficulty. One English king reigned at Winchester or London, and had his difficulties in Wales and afterwards in Ireland. Another English king reigned at Dunfermline or Stirling, and had his difficulties in the true Scotland. ?Extension of the Scottish name.? But the southern kingdom, ruled by kings of native English or of foreign descent, but never by kings of British or Irish descent,[89] always kept the English name, while the northern kingdom, ruled by kings of Scottish descent, adopted the Scottish name. The English subjects of the King of Scots gradually took the Scottish name to themselves. ?Analogy of Switzerland.
Threefold elements in the later Scotland.? As the present Swiss nation is made up of parts of the German, Burgundian, and Italian nations which have detached themselves from their several main bodies, so the present Scottish nation is made up of parts of the English, Irish, and British nations which have detached themselves from their several main bodies. But in both cases it is the Teutonic element which forms the life and strength of the nation, the kernel to which the other elements have attached themselves. ?True position of the Kings of Scots.? We cannot read the mediÆval history of Britain aright, unless we remember that the King of Scots was in truth the English king of Teutonic Lothian and Teutonized Fife. ?Enmity of the true Scots.? The people from whom he took his title were at most his unwilling subjects; they were often his open enemies, the allies of his southern rival.

The modern kingdom of Scotland was made up of English Lothian, British Strathclyde, and Irish Scotland. The oldest Scotland is Ireland, whence the Scottish name, long since forgotten in Ireland itself, came into Britain and there spread itself. These three elements stand out plainly. ?The Picts.? But the Scottish or Irish element swallowed up another, that of the Picts, of whom there can be no doubt that they were Celts, like the Scots and Britons, but about whom it may be doubted whether their kindred was nearer to the Scots or to the Britons. For our purpose the question is of little moment. The Picts, as far as geography is concerned, either vanished or became Scots.

Early in the ninth century the land north of the firths of Clyde and Forth was still mainly Pictish. The second Scotland (the first Scotland in Britain) had not spread far beyond the original Irish settlement in the south-west. ?Union of Picts and Scots, 843.
The Celtic Scotland.? The union of Picts and Scots under a Scottish dynasty created the larger Scotland, the true Celtic Scotland, taking in all the land north of the firths, except where Scandinavian settlers occupied the extreme north. ?Bernicia.? South of the firths, English Bernicia, sometimes a separate kingdom, sometimes part of Northumberland, stretched to the firth of Forth, with Edinburgh as a border fortress. ?Strathclyde or Cumberland.? To the west of Bernicia, south and east of the firth of Clyde, lay the British kingdom of Cumberland or Strathclyde, with Alcluyd or Dumbarton as its border fortress. ?Galloway.? To the south-west again lay the outlying Pictish land of Galloway, which long kept up a separate being. Parts of Bernicia, parts of Strathclyde, were one day to join with the true Scotland to make up the later Scottish kingdom. As yet the true Scotland was a foreign and hostile land alike to Bernicia and to Strathclyde.

In the next century we see the Scottish power cut short to the north and west, but advancing towards the south and east. ?Caithness.? The Northmen have settled in the northern and western islands, in those parts of the mainland to which they gave the names of Caithness and Sutherland, and even in the first Scottish land in the west. ?Scotland acknowledges the English supremacy, 924.? Scotland itself has also admitted the external supremacy of the English overlord. ?Taking of Edinburgh, c. 954.? On the other hand, the Scots have pressed within the English border, and have occupied Edinburgh, the border fortress of England. ?Cession of Lothian, 966 or 1018.? Later in the same century or early in the next, the Kings of Scots received Northern Bernicia, the land of Lothian, as an English earldom. On the other side, Strathclyde or Cumberland—its southern boundary is very uncertain—had become in a manner united to England and Scotland at once. ?Grant of Cumberland, 945.? An English conquest, it was granted in fief to the King of Scots, and was commonly held as an appanage by Scottish princes.[90] ?Different tenures of the dominion of the King of Scots.? Thus the King of Scots held three dominions on three different tenures. Scotland was a kingdom under a merely external English supremacy; Cumberland was a territorial fief of England; Lothian was an earldom within the English kingdom. ?The distinctions forgotten in later controversies.? In after times these distinctions were forgotten, and the question now was whether the dominions of the King of Scots, as a whole, were or were not a fief of England. When the question took this shape, the English king claimed more than his ancient rights over Scotland, less than his ancient rights over Lothian.

The acquisition of Lothian made the Scottish kingdom English. Lothian remained English; Cumberland and the eastern side of Scotland itself, the Lowlands north of the firth of Forth, became practically English also. The Scottish kings became English princes, whose strength lay in the English part of their dominions. ?Fate of southern Cumberland.? But late in the eleventh century it would seem that the southern part of Cumberland had become a separate principality ruled by a refugee Northumbrian prince under Scottish supremacy. ?Carlisle and its district added to England by William Rufus, 1092.? This territory, the city of Carlisle and its immediate district, the old diocese of Carlisle, was added to England by William Rufus. ?Cumberland and Northumberland granted to David, 1136.? On the other hand, in the troubles of Stephen’s reign, the king of Scots received as English earldoms, Cumberland—in a somewhat wider sense—and Northumberland in the modern sense, the land from the Tweed to the Tyne. Had these earldoms been kept by the Scottish kings, they would doubtless have become Scottish lands in the same sense in which Lothian did; that is, they would have become parts of the northern English kingdom. ?Recovered by England, 1157.
The boundary permanent, except as to Berwick.? But these lands were won back by Henry the Second; and the boundary has since remained as it was then fixed, save that the town of Berwick fluctuated according to the accidents of war between one kingdom and the other.

But though the boundaries of the kingdoms were fixed, their relations were not. ?1292.? Scotland in the modern sense—that is, Scotland in the older sense, Lothian, and Strathclyde—was for a moment held strictly as a fief of England. ?1296.? It was then for another moment incorporated with England. ?1327.? It was then acknowledged as an independent kingdom. ?1333.? It again fell under vassalage for a moment, and again won its independence. ?1603.? Then, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, England and Scotland, as distinct, independent, and equal kingdoms, passed under a common king. ?1649.? They were separated again for a moment when Scotland acknowledged a king whom England rejected. ?1652.? For another moment Scotland was incorporated with an English commonwealth. ?1660.
1707.? Again Scotland and England became independent kingdoms under a common king, till the two kingdoms were, by common consent, joined in the one kingdom of Great Britain.

Meanwhile the Scottish kings had, like those of England somewhat earlier, to struggle against Scandinavian invaders. ?Scandinavian advance, 1014-1064.? The settlements of the Northmen advanced, and for some years in the eleventh century they took in Moray at one end and Galloway at the other. But it was only in the extreme north and in the northern islands that the land really became Scandinavian. ?The Sudereys, and Man.? In the Sudereys or Hebrides—the southern islands as distinguished from Orkney and Shetland—and in Man, the Celtic speech has survived. ?Caithness submits, 1203.? Caithness was brought under Scottish supremacy early in the thirteenth century. ?Galloway incorporated, 1235.? Galloway was incorporated. ?Sudereys and Man submit, 1263-1266.? Later again, after the battle of Largs, the Sudereys and Man passed under Scottish supremacy. But the authority of the Scottish crown in the islands was for a long time very precarious. ?History of Man.? Man, the most central of the British isles, lying at a nearly equal distance from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, remained a separate kingdom, sometimes under Scottish, sometimes under English, superiority. Granted to English subjects, the kingdom sank to a lordship. ?1764-1826.? The lordship was united to the crown of Great Britain, and Man, like the Norman islands, remains a distinct possession, forming no part of the United Kingdom. ?Orkney. 1469.? The earldom of Orkney meanwhile remained a Norwegian dependency till it was pledged to the Scottish crown. Since then it has silently become part, first of the kingdom of Scotland, and then of the kingdom of Great Britain.

§ 2. The Kingdom of England.

The changes of boundary between England and Wales begin, as far as we are concerned with them, with the great Welsh campaign of Harold. ?Enlargement of the border shires.? All the border shires, Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, seem now to have been enlarged; the English border stretched to the Conway in the north, and to the Usk in the south. ?The Marches.? But part of this territory seems to have been recovered by the Welsh princes, while part passed into the great march district of England and Wales, ruled by the Lords Marchers. ?Conquest of South Wales, 1070-1121.? The gradual conquest of South Wales began under the Conqueror and went on under his sons; but it was more largely the work of private adventurers than of the kings themselves. The lands of Morganwg, Dyfed, Ceredigion, and Breheiniog, answering nearly to the modern South Wales, were gradually subdued. ?Flemish settlement in Pembrokeshire, 1111.? In some districts, especially in the southern part of the present Pembrokeshire, the Britons were actually driven out, and the land was settled by Flemish colonists, the latest of the Teutonic settlements in Britain. ?Character of the conquest of South Wales.? Elsewhere Norman lords, with a Norman, English, and Flemish following, held the towns and the more level country, while the Welsh kept on a half independence in the mountains. ?Princes of North Wales.? Meanwhile in North Wales native princes—Princes of Aberffraw and Lords of Snowdon—still ruled, as vassals of the English king, till the conquest by Edward the First. ?Cessions to England, 1277.? In the first stage the vassal prince was compelled again to cede to his overlord the territory east of the Conway. ?Conquest of North Wales, 1282.? Six years later followed the complete conquest. But complete incorporation with England did not at once follow. ?The Principality of Wales.? Wales, North and South, remained a separate dominion, giving the princely title to the eldest son of the English king.[91] Some shires were formed; some new towns were founded; the border districts remained under the anomalous jurisdiction of the Marchers. ?Full incorporation. 1535.? The full incorporation of the principality and its marches dates from Henry the Eighth. Thirteen new counties were formed, and some districts were added or restored to the border shires of England. One of the new counties, Monmouthshire, was, under Charles the Second, added to an English circuit, and it has since been reckoned as an English county.

Setting aside these new creations, all the existing shires of England were in being at the time of the Norman Conquest, save those of Lancaster, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Rutland. The boundaries were not always exactly the same as at present; but the differences are commonly slight and of mere local interest. ?Two classes of shires.? The shires, as they stood at the Conquest, were of two classes. ?Ancient kingdoms and principalities.? Some were old kingdoms or principalities, which still kept their names and boundaries as shires. Such were the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, and Essex, and the East-Anglian, West-Saxon, and Northumbrian shires. Most of these keep old local or tribal names; a few only are called from a town. ?Mercian shires mapped out in the tenth century.? In Mercia on the other hand, the shires seem to have been mapped out afresh when the land was won back from the Danes. They are called after towns, and the town which gives the name commonly lies central to the district, and remains the chief town of the shire, except when it has been outstripped by some other in modern times.[92] Both classes of shires survived the Conquest, and both have gone on till now with very slight changes.

On the Welsh border, all the shires, for reasons already given, stretch further west in Domesday than they do now. ?Cumberland and Westmoreland.? On the Scottish border Cumberland and Westmoreland were made out of the Cumbrian conquest of William Rufus, enlarged by districts which in Domesday appear as part of Yorkshire. ?Lancashire.? Lancashire was made up of lands taken from Yorkshire and Cheshire, the Ribble forming the older boundary of those shires. The older divisions are marked by the boundaries of the dioceses of York, Carlisle, and Lichfield or Chester, as they stood down to the changes under Henry the Eighth. ?Rutland.? In central England the only change is the formation of the small shire of Rutland out of the Domesday district of Rutland (which, oddly enough, appears as an appendage to Nottinghamshire), enlarged by a small part of what was then Northamptonshire.

§ 3. Ireland.

The second great island of the British group, Ireland, the original Scotia, has had less to do with the general history of the world than any other part of Western Europe. Its ancient divisions have lived on from the earliest times. ?The five provinces.? The names of its five great provinces, Ulster, Meath, Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, are all in familiar use, though Meath has sunk from its old rank alongside of the other four. The Celtic inhabitants of the island remained independent of foreign powers till the days of Scandinavian settlement. Just like the English kingdoms in Britain, the great divisions of Ireland were sometimes independent, sometimes united under the supremacy of a head king. ?Settlement of the Ostmen.? Gradually the Northmen, called in Ireland Ostmen, settled on the eastern coast, and held the chief ports, as Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, two of which names bear witness to Teutonic occupation. ?Irish victory at Clontarf. 1012.? The great Irish victory at Clontarf weakened, but did not destroy, the Scandinavian power. ?Increasing connexion with England.? And, from the latter half of the tenth century onward, the eastern coast of Ireland shows a growing connexion with England. Any actual English supremacy seems doubtful; but both commercial and ecclesiastical ties became closer during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. ?The English conquest, 1169-1652.? This led to the actual English conquest of Ireland, begun under Henry the Second, but really finished only by Cromwell. ?1171.
Fluctuations of the Pale.? All Ireland admitted for a moment the supremacy of Henry; but, till the sixteenth century, the actual English dominion, called the Pale, with Dublin for its centre, was always fluctuating, and for a while it fell back rather than advanced.

In the early days of the conquest Ireland is spoken of as a kingdom; but the title soon went out of use. The original plan seems to have been that Ireland, like Wales afterwards, should form an appanage for a son of the English King. It became instead, so far as it was an English possession at all, a simple dependency of England, from which the King took the title of Lord of Ireland. ?1542.
Relations of Ireland to England.? Henry the Eighth took the title of King of Ireland; but the kingdom remained a mere dependency, attached to the crown, first of England and then of Great Britain. ?1652.
1689.? This state of things was diversified by a short time of complete incorporation under the Commonwealth, and a short time of independence under James the Second. ?1782-1800.? But for the last eighteen years of the last century, Ireland was formally acknowledged as an independent kingdom, connected with Great Britain only by the tie of a common king. ?1801.? Since that time it has formed an integral part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

§ 4. Outlying European Possessions of England.

Ireland, the sister island of Britain, has thus been united with Britain into a single kingdom. Man, lying between the two, remains a distinct dependency. ?The Norman Islands. 1205.? This last is also still the position of that part of the Norman duchy which clave to its own dukes, which never became French, but always remained Norman. It might be a question what was the exact position of Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark, and their smaller neighbours, when the English kings took the titles of the French kingdom and actually held the Norman duchy. Practically the islands have, during all changes, remained attached to the English crown; but they have never been incorporated with the kingdom. ?Other European dependencies, Aquitaine, &c.? Other more distant European lands have been, some still are, in the same position. Such were Aquitaine, Ponthieu, and Calais, as fixed by the Peace of Bretigny. Since the loss of Aquitaine, England has had no considerable continental dominion in Europe, but she has from time to time held several islands and detached points. ?Outposts and islands.? Such are Calais, Boulogne, Dunkirk, Gibraltar, Minorca, Malta, Heligoland, all of which have been spoken of in their natural geographical places. To these we may add Tangier, which has more in common with the possession of Gibraltar and Minorca than with the English settlements in the further parts of Africa. Of these points, Gibraltar, Heligoland, and Malta, are still held by England. ?Greek possessions, Ionian Islands, 1814-1864.? The virtual English possession of the Ionian Islands made England for a while a sharer in the fragments of the Eastern Roman Empire. ?Cyprus, 1878.? And later still she has again put on the same character by the occupation, on whatever terms, of another Greek and Imperial land, the island of Cyprus.

§ 5. The American Colonies of England.

England, like France and Holland, became a colonizing power by choice. Extension over barbarian lands was not a necessity, as in the case of Russia, nor did it spring naturally out of earlier circumstances, as in the case of Portugal. But the colonizing enterprise of England has done a greater work than the colonizing enterprise of any other European power. The greatest colony of England—for in a worthier use of language the word colony would imply independence rather than dependence[93]—is that great Confederation which is to us what Syracuse was to Corinth, what MilÊtos was to Athens, what Gades and Carthage were to the cities of the older Canaan. ?The United States.? The United States of America, a vaster England beyond the Ocean, an European power, on a level with the greatest European powers, planted beyond the bounds of Europe, form the great work of English and European enterprise in non-European lands.

The settlements which grew into the United States were not the first English possessions in North America, but they were the first which really deserved to be called colonies. The first discoveries of all led only to the establishment of the Newfoundland fisheries. ?Attempts of Raleigh, 1585-1587.? Raleigh’s attempts at real colonization ninety years later only pointed the way to something more lasting. ?The Thirteen Colonies.? In the seventeenth century began the planting of the thirteen settlements which won their independence. Of these the earliest and the latest, the most southern and the most northern, began through English colonization in the strictest sense. ?Virginia, 1607.? First came Virginia. ?The New England States, 1620-1638.? Then followed the Puritan colonization much further to the north which founded the New England states. The shiftings among these settlements, from Plymouth to Maine, the unions, the divisions, the colonies of colonies—the Epidamnos and the SinÔpÊ of the New World—the various and varying relations between the different settlements, read like a piece of old Greek or of Swiss history.[94] ?1629-1692.? By the end of the seventeenth century they had arranged themselves into four separate colonies. ?1820.? These were Massachusetts, formed by the union of Massachusetts and Plymouth, with its northern dependency of Maine, which became a separate State long after the Revolution; New Hampshire, annexed by Massachusetts and after a while separated from it; Connecticut, formed by the union of Connecticut and Newhaven; Rhode Island, formed by the union of Rhode Island and Providence. These New England States form a distinct geographical group, with a marked political and religious character of their own. ?The Southern Colonies.? Meanwhile, at some distance to the south, around Virginia as their centre, grew up another group of colonies, with a history and character in many ways unlike those of New England. ?Maryland. 1646.
Carolina. 1650-1663.
Divided, 1720.? To the north of Virginia arose the proprietary colony of Maryland; to the south arose Carolina, afterwards divided into North and South. South Carolina for a long while marked the end of English settlement to the south, as Maine did to the north.

But between these two groups of English colonies in the strictest sense lay a region in which English settlement had to take the form of conquest from another European power. Earlier than any English settlement except Virginia, the great colony of the United Provinces had arisen on Long Island and the neighbouring mainland. ?New Netherlands, 1614.? It bore the name of New Netherlands, with its capital of New Amsterdam. ?New Sweden, 1658.? To the south, on the shores of Delaware Bay, the other great power of the seventeenth century founded the colony of New Sweden. Three European nations, closely allied in race, speech, and creed, were thus for a while established side by side on the eastern coasts of America. ?Union of New Sweden with New Netherlands, 1655.? But the three settlements were fated to merge together, and that by force of arms. A local war added New Sweden to New Netherlands; a war between England and the United Provinces gave New Netherlands to England. ?New York.? New Amsterdam became New York, and gave its name to the colony which was to become the greatest State of the Union. ?1674.? Ten years later, in the next war between the two colonizing powers, the new English possession was lost and won again.

Meanwhile the gap which was still left began to be filled up by other English settlements. ?The Jerseys. 1665.
1702.? East and West Jersey began as two distinct colonies, which were afterwards united into one. ?Pennsylvania, 1682.
Delaware, 1703.? The great colony of Pennsylvania next arose, from which the small one of Delaware was parted off twenty years later. Pennsylvania was thus the last of the original settlements of the seventeenth century, which in the space of nearly eighty years had been formed fast after one another. ?Georgia, 1733.? Fifty years after the work of the benevolent Penn came the work of the no less benevolent Oglethorpe; Georgia, to the south of all, now filled up the tale of the famous Thirteen, the fitting number, it would seem, for a Federal power, whether in the Old World or in the New.

By the Peace of Paris the Thirteen Colonies were acknowledged as independent States. The great work of English settlement on foreign soil was brought to perfection. The new and free English land beyond the Ocean took in the whole temperate region of the North American coast, all between the peninsula of Acadia to the north and the other peninsula of Florida to the south. Both of these last lands were English possessions at the time of the War of Independence, but neither of them had any share in the work. ?Nova Scotia, 1713.? Acadia, under the name of Nova Scotia, had been ceded by France in the interval between the settlement of Pennsylvania and the settlement of Georgia. ?Conquest of Canada, 1759-1763.? Next came the conquest of Canada, in which the men of the colonies played their part. ?The French barrier at Alleghany.? Hitherto the English colonies had been shut in to the West by the French claim to the line of the Alleghany mountains. The Treaty of Paris took away this bugbear, and left the whole land as far as the Mississippi open to the enterprise of the English colonists. Thus, when the Thirteen States started on their independent career, the whole land between the great lakes, the Ocean, and the Mississippi, was open to them. ?Florida again Spanish, 1781-1821.? Florida indeed, first as an English, then again as a Spanish possession, cut them off from the Gulf of Mexico. The city of New Orleans remained, first a Spanish, then a French, outpost east of the Mississippi, and the possessions still held by England kept them from the mouth of the Saint Lawrence. ?Extension to the West.? But within these limits, such of the old States as were allowed by their geographical position might extend themselves to the west, and new States might be formed. Both processes went on, and two of the barriers formed by European powers were removed. ?Louisiana, 1803.
Florida, 1821.? The purchase of Louisiana from France, the acquisition of Florida from Spain, gave the States the sea-board of the Gulf of Mexico, and allowed their extension to the Pacific. The details of that extension, partly by natural growth, partly at the expense of the Spanish element in North America, it is hardly needful to go through here. ?A new English nation.? But, out of the English settlements on the North-American coast, a new English nation has arisen, none the less English, in a true view of history, because it no longer owes allegiance to the crown of Great Britain. But the power thus formed, exactly like earlier confederations in Europe, lacks a name. ?Lack of a name.? The United States of America is hardly a geographical or a national name, any more than the names of the Confederates and the United Provinces. In the two European cases common usage gave the name of a single member of the Union to the whole, and in the case of Switzerland the popular name at last became the formal name. In the American case, on the other hand, popular usage speaks of the Confederation by the name of the whole continent of which its territory forms part. ?Use of the word America.? For several purposes, the words America and American are always understood as shutting out Canada and Mexico, to say nothing of the southern American continent. For some other purposes, those names still take in the whole American continent, north and south. But it is easier to see the awkwardness of the usual nomenclature than to suggest any improvement on it.

While one set of events in the eighteenth century created an independent English nation on North American soil, another set of events in the same century, earlier in date but later in their results, has led to the formation in its immediate neighbourhood of another English nation which still keeps its allegiance to the English crown. ?Dependent confederacy.? A confederation of states, practically independent in their internal affairs, but remaining subjects of a distant sovereign, is a novelty in political science. ?British North America.? Such is the Confederation of British North America. But this dependent Confederation did not arise out of colonization in the same sense as the independent Confederation to the south of it. The central land which gives it its character is the conquered land of Canada. ?New Brunswick, &c.? Along with Canada came the possession of the smaller districts which received the names of New Brunswick and Prince Edward’s Island, districts which were at first joined to Nova Scotia, but which afterwards became distinct colonies. ?The Dominion, 1867.? Now they are joined with the Dominion of Canada, which, like the United States, grows by the incorporation of new states and territories. ?British Columbia, 1871.
Rupertsland.? The addition of British Columbia has carried the Confederation to the Pacific; that of Rupertsland carries it indefinitely northward towards the pole. This second English-speaking power in North America, stretches, like the elder one, from Ocean to Ocean. ?Newfoundland, 1713.? Newfoundland alone, a possession secured to England after many debates at the same time as Nova Scotia, remains distinct.

Of the British possessions in the West Indies a few only, among them Barbadoes, the earliest of all, were colonies in the same sense as Virginia and Massachusetts. ?Jamaica, 1655.? The greater number, Jamaica at their head, were won by conquest from other European powers. No new English nation, like the American and the Canadian, has grown up in them. ?Smaller settlements.? Still less is there any need to dwell on the Bahamas, the Falkland Islands, or the South-American possession of British Guiana.

§ 6. Other Colonies and Possessions of England.

The story of the North-American colonies may be both compared and contrasted with the story of two great groups of colonies in the southern hemisphere. ?Australia.? In Australia and the other great southern islands, a body of English colonies have arisen, the germs at least of yet another English nation, but which have not as yet reached either independence or confederation. ?South Africa.? In South Africa, another group of possessions and colonies, beginning, like Canada, in conquest from another European power, seems to be feeling its way towards confederation, while one part has in a manner stumbled into independence.

The beginning of English settlement in the greatest of islands began in the years which immediately followed the establishment of American independence. ?New South Wales, 1787.? First came New South Wales, on the eastern coast, designed originally as a penal settlement. ?Western Australia, 1829.? It outgrew this stage, and another penal settlement was founded in Western Australia. ?South Australia, 1836.
Victoria, 1837.
Queensland, 1859.? Then colonization spread into the intermediate region of Southern Australia (which however stretches right through the island to its northern coast) into the district called Victoria, south-west of the original settlement, and lastly, into Queensland to the north-east. ?Colonies Act, 1850.? Since the middle of the present century all these colonies have gradually established constitutions which give them full internal independence. ?Tasmania, 1804.
1839.? South of the great island lies one smaller, but still vast, that of Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, which was settled earlier than any Australian settlement except New South Wales. ?Six colonies, 1852.
United, 1875.? And to the east lie the two great islands of New Zealand, where six English colonies founded at different times have been united into one.

While the Australian settlements were colonies in the strictest sense, the English possessions in South Africa began, like New York, in a settlement first planted by the United Provinces. ?Conquest of the Cape, 1806.
1815.? The Cape Colony, after some shiftings during the French revolutionary wars, was conquered by England, and its possession by England was confirmed at the general peace. ?Eastern Colony and Natal, 1820-1836.? Migration northward, both of the English and Dutch inhabitants, has produced new settlements, as the Eastern Colony and Natal. ?Orange River State, 1847-1856.
Transvaal, 1861-1877.? Meanwhile independent Dutch states have arisen, as the Orange River Republic, annexed by England, then set free, and lastly dismembered, and the Transvaal, more lately annexed after sixteen years of independence. Lastly a scheme of confederation for all these settlements awaits some more peaceful time to be carried into effect.

In all these cases of real colonization, of real extension of the English or any other European nation, it is hardly a figure to say that the bounds of Europe have been enlarged. All that makes Europe Europe, all that parts off Europe from Africa and Asia, has been carried into America and Australia and Africa itself. The growth of this new Europe, no less than the changes of the old, is an essential part of European geography. ?Barbarian dominion.? It is otherwise with territories, great or small, which have been occupied by England and other European powers merely for military or commercial purposes. Forts, factories, or empires, on barbarian soil, where no new European nation is likely ever to grow up, are not cases of true colonization; they are no extension of the bounds of Europe. ?English dominion in India.? The climax of this kind of barbarian dominion is found in those vast Indian possessions in which England has supplanted Portugal, France, and the heirs of Timour. ?Empire of India. 1876.? Of that dominion the scientific frontier has yet to be traced; yet it has come to give an Imperial title to the sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland, while those two European islands, as perhaps befits their inferiority in physical size, remain content with the lowlier style of the United Kingdom. Whether the loftier pretensions of Asia do, or do not, imply any vassalage on the part of Europe, it is certain that the Asiatic Empire of the sovereign of the British kingdom is no extension of England, no extension of Europe, no creation of a new English or European nation. The Empire of India stands outside the European world, outside the political system which has gathered round the Old and the New Rome. But a place amongst the foremost members of that system belongs to the great European nation on American soil, where the tongue of England is kept, and the constitution of old Achaia is born again, in a confederation stretching from the Western to the Eastern Ocean.

We have thus traced the geography, and in tracing the geography we have in a slighter way traced the history, of the various states and powers of Europe, and of the lands beyond the Ocean which have been planted from Europe. We have throughout kept steadily before our eyes the centre, afterwards the two centres, of European life. We have seen how the older states of Europe gradually lose themselves in the dominion of Rome, how the younger states gradually spring out of the dominion of Rome. We have followed, as our central subjects, the fates of those powers in the East and West which continued the Roman name and Roman traditions. We have traced out the states which were directly formed by splitting off from those powers, and the states which arose beyond the range of Roman power, but not beyond the range of Roman influence. We have seen the Western Empire first pass to a German prince, then gradually shrink into a German kingdom, to be finally dissolved into a German confederation. We have watched the states which split off at various dates from its body, the power of France on one side, the power of Austria on another, the powers of Italy on a third, the free states of Switzerland at one end, the free states of the Netherlands at the other. We have beheld the long tragedy of the Eastern Rome; we have told the tale of the states which split off from it and arose around it. We have seen its territorial position pass to a barbarian invader, and something like its position in men’s minds pass to the mightiest of its spiritual disciples. And we have seen, painted on the map of our own century, the beginning of the great work which is giving back the lands of the Eastern Rome to their own people. We have then traced the shiftings of the powers which lay wholly or partly beyond the bounds of either Empire, the great Slavonic mainland, the Scandinavian and the Iberian peninsulas, ending with that which is geographically the most isolated land of all, the other world of Britain. We have seen too how Europe may be said to have spread herself beyond her geographical limits in the foundation of new European states beyond the Ocean. We have contrasted the different positions and destinies of the colonizing European powers—where, as in the days of Old Rome, a continuous territory has been extended over neighbouring barbarian lands—where growth beyond the sea was the natural outcome of growth at home—where European powers have colonized and conquered simply of their own free will. In thus tracing the historical geography of Europe, we have made the round of the world. But we have never lost sight of Europe; we have never lost sight of Rome. Wherever we have gone, we have carried Europe with us; wherever we have gone, we have never got beyond the power of the two influences which, mingling into one, have made Europe all that it has been. The whole of European history is embodied in the formula which couples together the ‘rule of Christ and CÆsar;’ and that joint rule still goes on, in the shape of moral influence, wherever the tongues and the culture of Europe win new realms for themselves in the continents of the western or in the islands of the southern Ocean.