618. The Colonial Expansion of England.
Meanwhile, whether from an economic point of view England is gaining or losing at home, there can be no question as to her colonial expansion. A glance at the accompanying maps of the world (see double map opposite and map facing p. 420) in 1837 and in 1911 shows the marvelous territorial growth of the British Empire.
When Victoria was crowned it had an area of less than three million square miles; to-day it has over eleven million, or more than one fifth of the entire land surface of the globe. England added to her dominions, on the average, more than one hundred and forty-five thousand square miles of territory every year of Victoria's reign.
Canada's wonderful growth in population and wealth is but one example. Australia began its career (1837) as a penal colony with a few shiploads of convicts; now it is a prosperous, powerful, and loyal patr of the Empire (S545). Later than the middle of the nineteenth century, New Zealand was a mission field where cannibalism still existed (1857); now it is one of the leaders in English civilization.
Again, when Victoria came to the throne (1837) the greater part of Africa was simply a geographical expression; the coast had been explored, but scarcely anything was known of the country back of it. Through the efforts of Livingstone and those who followed him (1840- 1890), the interior was explored and the source of the Nile was discovered (1863). Stanley undertook the great work on the Congo River and the "dark continent" ceased to be dark. Trade was opened with the interior, and the discovery of diamond mines and gold mines in South Africa (1867, 1884) stimulated emigration. Railways have been pushed forward in many directions (S622), new markets are springing up, and Africa, once the puzzle of the world, seems destined to become one of the great fields which the Anglo-Saxon race is determined to control, if not to possess.
On the other hand, the British West Indies have of late years greatly declined from their former prosperity. The English demand for cheap sugar has encouraged the importation of beet-root sugar from Germany and France. This has reduced the market for cane sugar to so low a point that there has been but little, if any, profit in raising it in the West Indies;[1] but fruit is a success.
[1] See Brooks Adams's "America's Economic Supremacy."
619. England's Change of Feeling toward her Colonies.
One of the most striking features of the "Diamond Jubilee" celebration (S607) was the prominence given to the Colonial Prime Ministers. There was a time, indeed, when the men who governed England regarded Canada and Australia as "a source of weakness," and the Colonial Office in London knew so little of the latter country that it made ridiculous blunders in attempting to address official despatches to Melbourne, Australia.[2] Even as late as the middle of the last century Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury in regard to the Newfoundland fisheries, "These wretched colonies will all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a millstone around our necks."
[2] See Traill's "Social England," VI, 684.