Meanwhile the great Spanish dominion in the New World, in both Americas and in the adjoining islands of the West Indies, has risen and fallen. ♦Hispaniola, 1492.♦ It began with the first conquest of Columbus, Hispaniola or Saint Domingo. Thus the dominion of Castile beyond the Ocean began at the very moment when she reached the full extent of her own Mediterranean coast. ♦1519.
1532.♦ Then followed the great continental dominion in Mexico, Peru, and the other lands on or south of the isthmus which joins the two western continents. But into the body of the North American continent, the land which was to be disputed between France and England, Spain never spread. New Mexico, California, Florida, barely stretched along its western and southern coasts. ♦Revolutions of the Spanish colonies.♦ The whole of this continental dominion passed away in a series of revolutions within our own century. While Portugal and England have really founded new European nations beyond the Ocean, the result of Spanish rule in America has been to create a number of states of ever shifting extent and constitution, keeping the Spanish language, but some of which are as much native American as Spanish. ♦Mexico.♦ Of these Mexico is the one which has had most to do with the general history of Europe and European America. ♦Two Mexican Empires, 1822-1823.
1866-1867.♦ It has twice taken the name of Empire, once under a native, once under a foreign, adventurer. And vast provinces, once under its nominal rule, have passed to the United States. ♦Cessions to the United States.♦ The loss of Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, has cut down the present Mexico nearly to the extent of the first Spanish conquests.
♦Spanish West India islands.
Jamaica, 1655.♦
Of the Spanish West India islands, some, like Jamaica and Trinidad, have passed to other European powers. ♦Saint Domingo, 1864.♦ The oldest possession of all, the Spanish part of Hispaniola, has become a state distinct from that of Hayti in the same island. ♦Puerto Rico.♦ Puerto Rico remains a real Spanish possession. ♦Cuba.♦ The allegiance of Cuba is always doubtful. In short, the dominion of Spain out of Europe has followed its European dominion out of Spain. The eighteenth century destroyed the one; the nineteenth century has cut down the other to mere fragments.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
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.