General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

At the close of the war, the government of India, by act of Parliament, was taken out of the hands of the East India Company and vested in the English crown. Since this transfer, the Indian government has been conducted on the principle that "English rule in India should be for India." [Footnote: Within the last two or three decades the country has undergone in every respect a surprising transformation. Life and property are now as secure in India as in England, The railways begun by the East India Company have been extended in every direction, and now bind together the most distant provinces of the empire. All the chief cities are united by telegraph. Lines of steamers are established on the Indus and the Ganges. Public schools have been opened, and colleges founded. Several hundred newspapers, about half published in the native dialects, are sowing Western ideas broadcast among the people. The introduction of European science and civilization is rapidly undermining many of the old superstitions, particularly the ancient system of caste.]

LATER EVENTS: THE ENGLISH IN EGYPT.—It only remains for us to refer to some later matters which are more or less intimately connected with England's Eastern policy.

In 1874 Mr. Disraeli, who had then just succeeded Mr. Gladstone as prime minister, purchased, for $20,000,000, the 176,000 shares which the Khedive of Egypt held in the Suez Canal. This was to give England more perfect control of this all-important gateway to her East India possessions.

In 1878, towards the close of the Russo-Turkish War, England, it will be recalled, interfered in behalf of the Turks, and, by the presence of her iron-clads in the Bosporus, prevented the Russians from occupying Constantinople. In the treaty negotiations which followed, England received from Turkey the island of Cyprus.

In the year 1882 political and financial reasons combined led the English government, now conducted by Gladstone, to interfere in the affairs of Egypt. A mutinous uprising against the authority of the Khedive having taken place in the Egyptian army, an expedition was sent out under the command of Lord Wolseley for the purpose of suppressing the revolt, and by the restoration of the authority of the Khedive to render secure the Suez Canal, and protect the interest of English bondholders in Egyptian securities.

Three years later, in 1885, a second expedition had to be sent out to the same country. The Soudanese, subjects of the Khedive, encouraged by the disorganized condition of the Egyptian government, had revolted, and were threatening the Egyptian garrisons in the Soudan with destruction. Lord Wolseley was sent out a second time, to lead an expedition up the Nile to the relief of Khartoum, where General Gordon, a representative of the English government, was commanding the Egyptian troops, and trying—to use his own phrase—to "smash the Mahdi," the military prophet and leader of the Soudanese Arabs.

The expedition arrived too late, Khartoum having fallen just before the advance relief party reached the town. The English troops were now recalled, and the greater part of the Soudan abandoned to the rebel Arabs. Further complications seem likely to grow out of England's presence in Egypt.

CONCLUSION: THE NEW AGE.

The Age of Material Progress, or the Industrial Age.—History has been well likened to a grand dissolving view. While one age is passing away another is coming into prominence.

During the last fifty years the distinctive features of society have wholly changed. The battles now being waged in the religious and the political world are only faint echoes of the great battles of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. A new movement of human society has begun. Civilization has entered upon what may be called the Industrial Age, or the Age of Material Progress.