The instinct of imitation, finally, led the Italians to follow the lead of other powers in colonial expansion. They did not escape the colonial fever prevalent in the eighties, and spent money and lives lavishly, in the attempt to build up a dominion on the African side of the Red Sea. Their attempt ended in disastrous failure (Adowa, 1896), and popular opposition to such enterprises grew so strong that the government did not dare to carry out a later project for the establishment of an Italian station on the coast of China (San Mun, 1899).
538. Recent progress of Italy.—The preceding sections have been avowedly critical in tone, and are designed to make clear the great gap which separates Italy from the leaders in the world’s industry and commerce. It is important, however, that the reader should distinguish Italy, on the other side, from such backward countries as Spain and Portugal. Though Italy was poor it was not so poor as they, and it offered vastly richer promises for the future. In the closing years of the century it showed marked advances in many lines. Italian agriculturists awakened to the possibilities of their profession; they showed an eagerness to improve their methods, and by various forms of association and cooperation they scored great advances. The exports of dairy and poultry products doubled in about ten years, and became more important than the export of wine. Italian manufacturers secured now from natives the technical assistance for which they formerly depended entirely on foreigners. They emancipated themselves, in part, from coal, by their skilful management of water power, and have come to enjoy a high reputation for electrical appliances for the transmission of power and other purposes. The tariff has been made more liberal by treaties with other states and by a reconciliation with France; and commerce in the period before 1914 gave evidence of the capacity for healthy growth.
539. Spain.—Spain, with an area much larger than that of Italy, and with a population more than half as large, had in 1912 a commerce less than half that of the Italian. The fault lay not with the country, which in mineral resources is perhaps the richest in Europe, and which under the skilful agriculture of the Moors was made to bloom like a garden, but with the people who have neglected or misused their opportunities. Spain furnishes a striking example of the evil that bad politics can work in economic development. The personal absolutism of the period before 1800 has been shaken off in the nineteenth century, but experiments in constitutional government under monarchs of various families and even under a republic, have not succeeded in bettering conditions greatly. The mass of the people remained ignorant, and most of their leaders were inefficient and corrupt. There can be no wholesome economic life under these conditions. Shrewd politicians used economic enterprises merely as a means to draw money from the public treasury or from the pockets of consumers, while the investor or worker without political influence was deterred from enterprise by the heavy taxes which were heaped upon him.
540. Spanish commerce in the first half of the century.—A partial reform of the Spanish colonial system toward the close of the eighteenth century led to a growth of trade with the colonies, so that it formed, if the figures can be trusted, a considerable part of the total Spanish commerce, which was small at best. The promise of commercial development inside the Spanish Empire was of short duration. While Spain was still harassed by the Napoleonic wars, revolutions began among the Spanish colonies on the American continent; and as soon as they had achieved their independence they used it to trade with states like England rather than with the country which had asked so much of them and could offer them so little. The commerce of Spain with other countries was hampered by the Spanish commercial policy, which an Englishman of the time called “one of the most pernicious and restrictive of all the systems of trading exclusion.” Duties were levied both on imports and on exports, and included not only rates of 50 to 100 per cent but also many absolute prohibitions. Spanish commerce would have been starved out of existence if the government which set these rules had not, by its inefficiency and corruption, furnished the means of evading them. A veritable army, including, it is said, 300,000 persons, of whom one third were armed, found its chief occupation in smuggling; Spanish manufacturers maintained factories only to mask the sale of contraband goods, and even members of the government engaged in the contraband trade.
541. Recent commerce of Spain.—The turning-point in the recent history of Spanish commerce came about the middle of the century, when the worst abuses of the old tariff were shorn off. The reform was followed by a rapid increase in the country’s trade, which grew to more than fourfold in the forty years following. Especially noteworthy was the increase in this period of the importation of the implements and raw materials of industry (coal, machinery, textile fibers, etc.), showing that Spain was at last beginning to seek a place for herself among modern commercial nations. Such indications of progress must not, however, blind our eyes to the fact that it was attained by a colonial and commercial policy which retained many of the old restrictive features. The loss of the remaining important colonies to the United States in the war of 1898 was a severe blow to Spanish industries, and they have been supported since then by a protective tariff which bore heavily on many producers as well as on all the consumers in Spain. The considerable development in mining (iron, copper, quicksilver, etc.) has been due to foreign energy and capital, and the native Spaniards offered as exports to other countries little more than dessert for their dinner tables: wine, fruit, nuts, and raisins. It is noteworthy and significant that Spain suffered seriously from the competition of California in the sale of fruit in Europe; this most perishable of wares, in which a nearby country ought to control the market without effort, was packed and transported in such a slovenly fashion by the Spaniards that a people 6,000 miles distant could excel them in the quality they offered to the consumer in Paris or London. In the period from 1890 to 1910 the figures showing the value of Spanish commerce remained almost stationary.
542. Portugal.—In all the respects which concern a student of recent commerce Portugal is but a miniature of Spain, with the faults of Spain exaggerated rather than lessened by the weakness and smaller size of the country. “It is scarcely credible, but it is nevertheless a fact, that agriculture is nearly in the same condition as it was some hundreds of years since”; these words of an English author would apply now nearly as well as when they were written in 1843. Few of the inhabitants were engaged in occupations other than agriculture; rich mines remained unworked, and manufacturing has remained insignificant throughout the century. After 1850 it could still be said of the Portuguese that “their entire faith is reposed in protectionism, monopolies, restrictions, and high duties.” Portuguese trade, nearly ruined already, received a further blow by the separation of Brazil about 1820; and though considerable colonial possessions in Africa and the East were retained, the Portuguese have shown no capacity to base on them commerce of any importance. By exports, of which wine and cork were the most important, the Portuguese were able to satisfy their most pressing necessities; but the backwardness of commerce can be seen when it is realized that the trade of this country, approximately equal in population to the Netherlands, was in 1911 less than one twentieth of Dutch trade.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Social and economic conditions in Italy after 1800. [King, Hist., vol. 1, chaps. 3-5.]
2. Formation of United Italy. [Seignobos, chap. 11, middle part.]
3. Commerce of Italy about 1850. [Homans, Cyclopedia, p. 1114 ff.]