THE
PLANNED
BY the late LORD ACTON LL.D.
REGIUS
PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY
EDITED
BY
A. W. WARD Litt.D.
G.
W. PROTHERO Litt.D. STANLEY
LEATHES M.A.
VOLUME
XII
PREFACE.
OUR task is
now approaching its conclusion. The first circular issued by the Syndics of the
University Press, setting forth the plan and purpose of this History, is dated
in March, 1898. The present editors assumed their conjoint duties in November,
1901. Our first volume appeared before the end of 1902. The last volume of our
text should be published in the autumn of 1910. The volume of maps, and the
general index, with genealogical and other tables, should be ready shortly
after. We shall then have discharged our arduous undertaking, and given our
work to the world, conscious of its imperfections, but grateful for the
indulgent and sympathetic reception which it has met. Our cordial thanks must
once more be expressed to all those who have generously afforded us assistance,
and contributed their learning and wisdom to the common store.
The present
volume has unfortunately been delayed by illness and serious accident affecting
one of our contributors. The rest of the chapters have been for some months in
their final shape. Hence it is to be feared that, in certain cases, the views
on the immediate outlook expressed in our text refer to a situation which has
since been more or less modified. No great revolution has, up to this date,
occurred to confound our main conceptions of the trend of current events; but
in Hungary the prospect of an enduring parliamentary settlement no longer seems
immediate, and in Great Britain the financial question has been overshadowed by
a graver constitutional issue. Above all, since these pages were printed off,
this country and this empire have been profoundly affected by the lamented
death of our wise, self-sacrificing, and beloved monarch, Edward VII, whose
reign, though all too short, had done so much for the prosperity of his people
and for the cause of peace and goodwill among nations. In the presence of
national sorrow the violence of political passion has been abated, and a spirit
of mutual
conciliation
has descended upon us. The reign of our new King thus begins amid happy
auguries.
The period of
history with which this volume deals presents many obvious difficulties to the
historian. Living in a crowded and circumscribed fragment of a fraction of the
world which he is attempting to describe, he must transport himself by
imagination to some higher sphere whence the nations and their fortunes may be
seen to range themselves in intelligible perspective. Writing under the
influence of momentary and transitory impressions, he must free himself from
their bondage and pay homage to the future and the past. He must endeavour to
see this world, not as it affects the prejudices, interests, and limited
outlook of his contemporaries, but as it might appear to one who should look
back on it without any personal concern in its turmoil. Only partial success is
possible; but he may console himself for partial failure with the belief that
he is handing down to posterity one of those records of contemporary
impressions which history is bound to respect if only they be sincere,
impartial, and accurately informed.
Sources of
information are not lacking. Secret history, such as is included in
confidential papers and private correspondence, remains, for the most part,
unrevealed. Rumours and false reports cannot yet be controlled or checked. But
in the abundance of contemporary literature, solid as well as ephemeral, lies
the answer to nine-tenths of all the historical problems relating to this age
which will ever receive even an approximate solution. We are, in many ways,
more amply instructed about our own time than we are in the affairs of any other
age; the main difficulty lies in the fact that hardly a beginning has been made
in the sorting, sifting, arranging, and summarising of the bewildering mass of
accessible knowledge. With these difficulties we and our contributors have done
our best to cope.
A chapter on
the foreign relations of the United States during the great Civil War finds a
place in this volume, since it was observed that these relations had been
insufficiently explained in the American volume (Vol. vii.), and farther
elucidation was needed for the clear understanding of the Alabama question,
which looms large in the opening years of our period. An introductory chapter
deals with the larger aspects of world history in the period, and five chapters
at the close of the volume treat of those movements that are most distinctive
of the latter part of the nineteenth century: the development of an
international code of law,
and the
establishment of standing international tribunals; the social movement in
Europe and America; the advance of the knowledge of nature and of the surface
of the globe on which we live; and the systematic study of the history of man
from his earliest appearance upon this earth to the present time.
Our hearty
thanks are due to all our contributors and helpers; and, in particular,
Professor Pares, the author of two chapters on modern Russia, wishes us to put
on record his obligations and our own to many distinguished publicists and
statesmen in Russia who have placed at his disposal their intimate knowledge of
Russian affairs and politics, and have thus enabled him to give an
authoritative account of a most obscure and important section of modem history.
With feelings
of regret, not untempered by relief, we take our formal, though not our final,
leave of all our readers and critics. The support of the public, without which
this history could not have been brought to its conclusion, is a remarkable
proof of the serious and compelling interest taken by a large class in the
results of historical study; that interest has been fostered and encouraged by
our critics, whose comments have often been illuminating, and have never been
hostile or malicious. Had the great student, who conceived the plan of this
work, survived to see its completion, he would not, we think, have been disappointed
with his audience.
A. W. W.
G. W. P.
S. L.
Cambridge,
July,
1910.
a
5
CHAPTER I.
MODERN
EUROPE.
By Stanley Leathes, M.A., formerly Fellow
of Trinity College, First Civil Service Commissioner.
PAGE
Extension of
the European system in South, Central and North
America...... 1
In
Australasia, and Africa 2
Effects of European expansion in new
fields ....
5
Democracy
among European nations . ....
6
The burden of warlike armaments 7
Preponderance
of Germany 8
The Triple and Dual Alliances 9
The
Far East. The Near East 10
The self-assertion of minor
nationalities 11
Arbitration. The European centre of
gravity ....
12
Industry.
Finance. Literature, art, and thought ... 13
Statesmen of the period. La haute
finance............................. 14
Schemes of social regeneration 15
CHAPTER II.
FOREIGN
RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES DURING THE CIVIL WAR.
By J. Westlake, K.C., LL.D., Trinity College,
formerly Whewell Professor of International Law.
Outbreak
of war. Declaration of Paris 16
Recognition
of belligerency. British and other Declarations of
Neutrality
.......... 17
Blockade of the Southern ports. The
Trent affair ... 18
End of the Trent difficulty. British
neutrality .... 19
The Alabama and the Florida ....... 20
Armistice
and arbitration proposals 21
The
Geneva Arbitration 22
, CHAPTER
III.
GREAT
BRITAIN.
By Stanley Leathes, M.A.
PAGE
Gladstone’s
Ministry of 1868 23
The Irish Church and Irish Land
...... 24
The
Education Acts
25
Army Reform. The Civil Service ...... 26
Difficulties
of the Government. Dissolution of Parliament . 29
The
Liberal and the Conservative Parties ..... 31
Hartington and Gladstone. Disraeli’s imperialist policy. Russo-
Turkish
War 32
The Congress of Berlin ........ 33
Russian hostility. Afghan War ..................... 34
The
Zulu War. The Transvaal. Domestic legislation . . 35
General
election of 1880. Gladstone’s Ministry .... 36
Kandahar.
The Near East. Bradlaugh’s case ....
37
Irish Land Act. Boer War . . 39
Phoenix Park murders. Occupation of
Egypt ....
40
The Sudan. Liberal legislation ........................ 41
Reform
of the county franchise. Lord Salisbury’s Ministry . 42
Home
Rule Bill .......... 44
Lord
Salisbury’s second Ministry. Lord Randolph Churchill . 45
Effect of Lord Randolph Churchill’s
resignation.... 46
Jubilee
of Queen Victoria. Settlement of African questions . 47
Local
government. Fall of Parnell. The navy ....
48
General
election of 1892. New Home Rule Bill ...
49
Bimetallism. Parish Councils Bill
...... 50
Gladstone’s
retirement. Sir William Harcourt’s budget. The
death-duties......
Lord
Salisbury’s Coalition Ministry. The Far East. Venezuela 52
The
Jameson Raid. The Boer War. The new reign . . 53
Chamberlain
and TarifF Reform. General election of 1906 . 54
Relations with France and Germany gg
United
States. Russia. The Near East .....
5(3
Colonial policy. Education Act of
1902 gy
Defects of the educational system gg
Reforms
in the army and the War Office...................................
The Committee
of Imperial Defence. The navy ...
Social
legislation. National finance
Influence of socialistic thought ........................ g2
Literature
and art
CHAPTER IV.
IRELAND AND
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT.
By R. Dunlop, M.A., Victoria University.
PAGE
Consequences
of the Fenian Conspiracy .....
65
Disestablishment of the Irish Church 66
Origin
of the agrarian problem 67
Effects of the Great Famine . 68
Formation of a Tenant-Right League 69
Gladstone’s land legislation 70
Question of Irish Education 71
Gladstone’s University Bill rejected
...... \72
Home Rule movement. Isaac Butt ...... 73
Parliamentary obstruction. Parnell 74
Growing influence of Parnell ....... 75
Michael Davitt. Foundation of the
Irish Land League . . 76
Parnell and the American Irish
....... 77
Agrarian disturbances. Boycotting
...... 78
Coercive legislation. Irish Land Act 79
Parnell’s
attitude. The Land League suppressed ... 80
Forster resigns. Phoenix Park murders 81
Ireland
under Lord Spencer ....... 82
Lord Carnarvon. Ashbourne Act 83
Progress of the Home Rule movement.
First Home Rule Bill 84
The Plan of Campaign. Mr Balfour
Secretary .... 85
The
Parnell Trial 86
Death of Parnell. Second Home Rule
Bill ....
87
Agrarian troubles. Land purchase 89
CHAPTER V.
THE THIRD
FRENCH REPUBLIC.
By I^mile Bourgeois, Professor in the
University of Paris.
Position
of France in 1871 .91
Political
uncertainty and complications 92
Ultramontanism and its opponents
...... 93
The democracy and social reform 94
Foreign relations of France 97
Alliance of France and Russia 98
State aid for
agriculture . .
The State and
industrial development Canals, harbours, and railways. The Progress towards a
Republic Elections to the Assembly .
Progress of
democratic ideas Thiers and the Republic .
The
Monarchists and Thiers MacMahon succeeds Thiers .
Deadlock
among the Monarchists Establishment of the Republic Evolution of democracy .
Dangers for
the Republic .
Final
developments of the Republic Clerical reaction and its results . Freemasonry.
Attitude of MacMahon Final defeat of Clericals and Monarchis The policy of
Jules Ferry . . Conflict for the schools . . Conciliatory policy of Leo XIII .
Antisemitism and Nationalism .
The Dreyfus
affair . . . Separation of Church and State .
The Socialist
party and the Republic Socialism and the Republic . . Compact of the State with
socialism Resistance of the middle classes . Socialist divisions ....
Socialists in office. Colonial policy Expansion in North Africa . . French
empire in the Sudan . Madagascar. Indo-China . . Morocco ..... Results of
French colonial policy
)irth
rate
its
PAGE
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110 111 112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120 121 122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
CHAPTER VI.
THE GERMAN
EMPIRE.
By Hermann Oncken, Professor in the University
of Heidelberg.
The First Seven Years op the Empire}.
(1871-7.)
134
135
136
137
138
Problems of
internal policy. The new national German Empire Effects of the three great Wars
on foreign policy , . .
France
and Germany
William I and
Bismarck ........
Bismarck’s
rule. Germany, Russia, and Austria . . .
PAGE
The understanding between the three
Emperors. . . . 139
Bismarck
and the French republic ...... 140
Apprehensions of war in 1875 141
Bismarck
and the Russo-Turkish War 142
The Congress of Berlin. Russian
resentment ....
143
Austro-German Alliance ........ 144
Parties in the Reichstag ........ 146
The
Liberals. The Centre party 146
Policy of the Centre. The
KulturJeampf 147
Progress of the conflict. The “May
Laws” ....
148
The KulturJeampf and the Prussian
Conservatives . . . 149
The
National Liberals and imperial consolidation . . . 150
Breach between Bismarck and the
National Liberals . . . 151
(2)
Tee Triple Alliance and the culminating peiuod of Bismarck’s
ascendancy.
Bismarck
and Social-democracy 153
New financial
and economic legislation. Schism among the National
Liberals
......... 154
Insurance. Tariff uniformity 156
State
enterprise. Conservatism and balance of parties . . 157
The
Triple Alliance. Russia . 158
Peaceable character of Bismarck’s
policy............................. 159
Beginnings of German colonial policy 160
Great Britain and German colonial
efforts............................. 161
Bismarck’s friendliness to Russia 162
Death
of William I and succession of Frederick III . . . 163
Death
of Frederick III 164
(3)
Bismarck’s Fall, and after.
(1888-1910.)
Accession
of William II. Fall of Bismarck ....
165
Personal rule. Caprivi. Hohenlohe.
Biilow ....
166
German policy towards England and
Russia ....
167
Weltpolitik
and food supply 168
Exportation and the German navy
...... 170
New tendencies in foreign policy 171
Germany, Great Britain, and the Dual
Alliance .... 172
Difficulties of the future 173
CHAPTER VII.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.
By Locis Eisenmann, Professor in the University
of Dijon.
PAGE
The
tasks of the Habsburg monarchy 174
The Emperor Francis Joseph ....... 175
Attempts at constitutional reform 176
Autonomy or centralisation 177
The Diploma of 1860. The Patent of
1861 ....
178
Hungarian revolt against the Patent
......
179
Passive
resistance in Hungary 180
Failure
of the Patent ......... 181
Deak’s
demands for Hungary. The Prussian War . . . 182
Count
Julius Andrassy. Demands of Hungary .... 183
The
Compromise of 1867 . 184
The
Commoners’ Cabinet 185
Potocki
and Hohenwart 187
Rule of the German majority in
Austria .....
188
The financial crisis at Vienna 189
Consolidation of Hungarian parties 190
Bargain between Hungary and Austria 191
Fall of Beust. Andrassy’s ascendancy 192
Decline
of the German Liberals 193
Taaffe’s
Ministry . 194
The
demands of the Cechs and the Poles............................ 195
The question of electoral reform 196
Tisza’s rule in Hungary ........ 193
Political
and religious conflicts in Hungary ....
199
Changes in the Austrian Parliament 200
Germans and Cechs in Bohemia 201
Suspension of the Constitution 202
Further
concessions to Hungary 204
Proposed
Reform in Hungary 205
The
Emperor-King decides for Reform .....
206
Electoral Reform in Austria 207
Results on political parties 208
Political
developments in Hungary 209
The
Compromise of 1907
210
Annexation
of Bosnia and the Herzegovina • • . .
211
Results
of the reign
CHAPTER VIII.
UNITED ITALY. By Thomas Okev.
PAGE
National
unity achieved 213
Decline
of the party of the Right 214
The
Depretis Ministry 215
Death
of Victor Emmanuel 216
Crispi
in power. His defeat 217
Ministry
of Giolitti. Return of Crispi 218
Distress
and disorder in Italy 219
Riots
at Milan. 220
Obstruction
in Parliament . 222
Murder
of King Humbert 223
Policy
of Zanardelli and Giolitti 224
Attempt at a general strike........ 225
Catholic
participation in Elections 226
Railway
purchase .......... 227
Sonnino’s
Ministry and policy 228
The
Kingdom and the Papacy ....... 229
Modernism
in Italy 230
Socialist
schools in Italy 231
Socialists
in the Chamber ........ 232
National
and local finance 233
Army.
Navy. Conversion of debt ...... 234
Economic
revival in Italy 235
Manufactures.
Agriculture 236
Condition
of southern Italy 237
Condition
of Sicily 238
The
Oamorra and the Mafia. Tunis 239
Triple
Alliance. Africa ........ 240
Abyssinian
campaign 241
Italy
and the Balkan question 242
CHAPTER IX.
THE LOW
COUNTRIES.
By the Rev. George Edmundson, M.A., late Fellow and
Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford.
Holland.
De Vries,
Heemskerk, Kuyper . .
Parties and
politics in Holland . .
Revision of
the Fundamental Law .
Disputes over
electoral Reform . .
243
244
245
246
PAGE
Electoral
Reform. Liberal policy 247
Kuyper’s
Ministry. Hi? fall ....... 248
Progress
and prosperity of Holland 249
Belgium.
Parties and politics in Belgium 250
Conflict over the Schools .... ... 251
Rule
of the. Catholic majority. Socialist agitation . . . 252
Results
of electoral Reform 253
Proportional
representation 254
Progress
in Belgium 255
King
Leopold and the Congo State 256
CHAPTER X.
THE IBERIAN
PENINSULA.
By David Hannay, formerly H.M. Vice-Consul
at Barcelona.
Spain.
Stages
of progress in Spain since 1871 ............................ 257
Parties
in Spain 258
Growing
disorder. Rule of the Army 259
Carlist
risings 260
Republican
anarchy. Castelar 261
Proclamation
of Alfonso XII 262
Reign
of Alfonso XII 263
A
Regency established after his death 264
Rebellion
in Cuba 265
Increased prosperity in Spain 266
Remaining causes of discontent 267
Social disturbance and unrest 268
Spanish
literature 269
Portugal.
Stagnation
in Portugal 269
Political
factions in Portugal ....... 270
Dom
Carlos and Joao Franco ....... 271
Murder
of Carlos, King of Portugal ....... 272
CHAPTER XI.
SCANDINAVIA.
By Ludvig Stavenow, Professor in the
University of Goteborg.
Sweden.
page
Character
and qualities of King Oscar II............................ 273
His
constitutional policy ........ 274
Foreign
policy of King Oscar 275
Parties
in the two Swedish Chambers 276
National
Defence. Customs tariff 277
The
franchise. Economic development 278
Industry
and labour problems 279
Swedish
scholarship 280
Norway and the Dissolution of the Union.
Norwegian
industry and intellectual activity ....
280
The constitutional basis of the Union 281
Attempts to revise the Union 282
Parliamentarism
in Norway 283
Victory
of the Parliament over the King 284
Negotiations between Sweden and
Norway............................. 285
Question of the Consular Service
...... 286
The
communique of 1903 ........ 287
Failure
of negotiations......... 288
Dissolution
of the Union 289
Results
of the dissolution of the Union 290
Denmark.
Denmark
after 1864 290
Foreign
relations of Denmark 291
Progress
of Denmark 292
Political
conflicts in Denmark 293
CHAPTER XII.
REACTION AND
REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA.
By Bernard Pares, M.A., Trinity College,
Professor in the University of Liverpool.
Reform
and reaction in Russia 294
Reforms
after the Emancipation 295
Division
in Russian thought 296
PAGE
Radical thinkers. Nihilism 297
Repression
again systematised ....... 298
Dmitry
Tolstoy. Universities. The Zemstva ....
299
The law Courts. The Press. The
peasants ....
300
Rise of Russian industry. Labour
questions ....
301
Lavroff
and Mikhailovsky 302
Propagandists. Insurrectionists.
Jacobins............................ 303
Rural propaganda. War with Turkey 304
Evolution
of terrorism ......... 305
Murders and Courts-martial. The
Zemstva ....
306
The
“Will of the People” 307
Khalturin’s
plot. Loris-Melikoff 308
Programmes
of reform 309
Proposals
of Loris-Melikoff • 310
Murder
of Alexander II . 311
Triumph
of the reactionaries. Pobyedonostseff .... 313
Creed
of the reactionaries 314
The
Press and the Universities 315
The
law Courts. Land Captains 316
Russian thought under the reaction 317
Bunge
and Tolstdy. Peasant administration ....
318
The Zemstva curtailed. Labour crisis 319
Factory Acts. Industrial advance ........................ 320
Development
of Russian industry. Famines of 1891-3 . . 321
Nicholas II. Addresses of the Zemstva 322
Ministry of Witte. The gold standard 323
Railway
policy. The spirit monopoly 324
Subsidies to industry. Tariff war
with Germany . . . 325
Peasant distress. Rival Ministers
...... 326
Vigorous
work of the Zemstva 327
Shipoff’s
Zemstvo Conferences ....... 328
Witte’s
agricultural committees ........................ 329
Spread
of Social Democracy ....... 330
Labour
movement. Zubatoff. The Spark 331
Strikes. The Socialist Revolutionary
party ....
332
Liberalism.
The Liberators 333
Finland.
Its constitution 334
Russian
policy in Finland 335
The
Baltic Provinces. Poland 336
Russian
policy in Poland 337
Parties
in Poland 338
White Russia. Little Russia 339
The
Jews in Russia ......... 340
Foreign
policy.....
Germany
and the Balkans. The Caucasus............................ 342
Ethiopia.
Central Asia ........ 343
Persia.
Siberia .... 344
The
Siberian Railway. China and Japan 345 J
THE REFORM
MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA. By Bernard Pares, M.A.
The
Japanese War. Murder of Plehve .....
346
Zemstvo
conference 347
The
banquets. Edict of December 25 ............................... 348
Trepoff. Protests, strikes, and
murders 350
Edict
of March 3. Reforms ....... 351
Congresses
and unions 352
The Union of Unions. Agrarian riots
..... 353
( Tsushima. Deputation to the
Tsar 354
T
The Moscow Congress of July 355
The
Duma Law of August 19 356
Self-government
for the Universities 357
The
general strike 358
The
Manifesto of October 30 359
Difficulties
of Count Witte. Finland. Poland ....
360
The
Council of Workmen Delegates. The Press. The peasants 361
The
last Zemstvo Congress. Witte and Durnovo . . . 362
Moscow
rising. The franchise extended. Repression . . 363
Limitations
of the power of the Duma 364
Elections
to the first Duma. New Ministry ....
365
The
Duma’s Address to the Throne 366
Deadlock. Negotiations. The land
question ....
367
Dissolution
of the first Duma 368
Policy
of Stol^pin 369
New
land Law. Repression. The reactionaries .... 370
Elections to the second Duma 371
The
second Duma 372
Alleged
plot. Dissolution. New electoral Law ....
373
Repression
and disorder 374
Elections
to the third Duma 375
Stol^pin
and the third Duma 376
Finland.
Poland .......... 377
The
New Slavophils. Balkan crisis 378
Russia, Germany, and England ....... 379
Visit of Duma leaders to England 380
c. M. H. XII.
b
CHAPTER XIV.
THE OTTOMAN
EMPIRE AND THE BALKAN PENINSULA.
By William Miller, M.A., Corresponding
Member of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece.
PAGE
The
Bulgarian Exarchate 381
Insurrection
in the Herzegovina ....... 382
Servia and Montenegro declare war 383
The
“Bulgarian Atrocities” 384
Revolution
at Constantinople. Ahd-ul-Hamid II . . . 385
First
Servian War. Montenegrin successes ....
386
Negotiations
between the Powers 387
The
Russian army invades Turkey. Siege of Plevna . . . 388
Attitude
of the Powers ........ 389
Great
Britain opposes the Russian advance............................ 390
The
Treaty of San Stefano ........ 392
Protests against the Treaty ........ 393
Agreement
between Great Britain and Russia .... 394
The
Treaty of Berlin 395
Bosnia and the Herzegovina ....... 396
Montenegro.
Roumania 397
Greece.
Asia Minor . 398
The
Cyprus Convention. Working of the Berlin Treaty . . 399
Revolts
in Bosnia and the Herzegovina 400
The
Sandjak of Novibazar 401
Montenegro
and the Albanians. Dulcigno .....
402
The
Greek frontier 403
Bulgaria........ 404
Prince
Alexander of Bulgaria ....... 405
Union
of the two Bulgarias 406
War between Servia and Bulgaria 407
Blockade
of the Greek coast 408
Fall
of Alexander ......... 409
Ferdinand Prince of Bulgaria 410
Assassination
of Stambuloff. Reconciliation with Russia . . 411
Milan
and Alexander of Servia 412
Murder
of King Alexander 413
Montenegro.
Roumania 414
Cyprus............ 415
The
Armenians . 410
The
Armenian massacres . 417
Failure
of diplomacy
Crete....................
Crete
occupied by the Powers 420
War between Greece and Turkey 421
Results
of the War 422
Prince
George in Crete 423
PAGE
Macedonia 424
Schemes
lor Macedonian reform 425
Greeks and Bulgarians in Macedonia 426
Revolution in
Turkey ......... 427
Results
of the period 428
CHAPTER XV.
EGYPT AND THE
EGYPTIAN SUDAN.
(1841-1907.)
By F. M. Sandwith, M.D., University of Durham,
formerly Professor of Medicine, Egyptian Government School of Medicine.
Last
years of Mehemet Ali 429
Initiation
of the Suez Canal 430
Foundation
of Port Said 431
Financial
methods of Ismail 432
Opening
of the Suez Canal 433
Interference cf Great Britain and
France............................ 434
Fate
of Ismail. Succession of Tewfik 435
Arahi
War Minister 436
Alexandria
bombarded. Battle of Tel-el-Kebir .... 437
British
occnpation. of Egypt 438
Egyptian rule in the Sudan ....... 439
Rise
of the Mahdi. Defeat of Hicks 440
Defeat
of Baker. Mission of Gordon 441
Gordon
relieif expedition 442
Fall of Khartum. The Sudan abandoned
.....
443
Abyssinia.
British policy in Egypt 444
Financial
reconstruction 445
Irrigation....... 446
Reform
of the army 447
Defeat
and death of the Khalifa ...... 448
Order established in the Sudan 449
Mixed Tribunals. Native Tribunals 450
The prisons. Public health 451
Public
health reforms 452
Education....... 453
French
and English education 454
Nationalist
movement 455
Anglo-French
agreement 456
CHAPTER XVI.
THE BRITISH
EMPIRE IN INDIA.
By P. E. Robeets, B.A., late Scholar of Worcester
College, Oxford.
PAGE
Peaceful
development after the Mutiny .....
467
Lord Mayo and the north-west frontier 458
Relations
with Afghanistan . . 459
Russian advance. Conference with Sher
Ali ....
460
Relations
with Russia ......... 461
Relations
with feudatories. Finance ...... 462
Lord
Mayo assassinated. Lord Northbrook and Free Trade . 463
Bengal
famine. Relations with Sher Ali 464
Sher
Ali alienated ......... 465
Proposal for a British Resident at
Herat 466
Pressure
on the Amir 467
Negotiations
broken off 468
Russian envoy received at Kabul 469
War declared on Afghanistan 470
The
murder of Cavagnari 471
Abdurrahman
Amir. Famine. Vernacular Press Acts . . 472
Finance. Sir John Strachey 473
Estimate
of Lord Lytton’s work ....... 474
Settlement
in Afghanistan. Kandahar restored .... 475
Rule
of Lord Ripon 476
The
Ilbert Bill. Lord Dufferin 477
Demarcation
of the Afghan frontier ...... 478
Conquest
of Upper Burma 479
Civil
Service reorganisation 480
Reform
of the Legislative Council 481
The
Forward policy 482
Agreement with the Amir. Monetary
crisis ....
483
,
Effects of the fall in the value of the rupee . . ...
484
Famine
and plague 486
Fighting the plague. Chitral rising 487
The
Tribal War. Lord Curzon Viceroy 488
Settlement of the tribal districts 489
New
frontier province. Tibet 490
Persia
and the Persian Gulf 491
Russia
and Great Britain in Persia 492
Finance.
Lord Curzon’s reforms 493
The
Indian National Congress ....... 494
The
Partition of Bengal 495
Lord Curzon resigns. Lord Minto
Viceroy ....
496
Reforms
of Lord Morley ........ 497
Progress of India since the Mutiny 498
Influence of India on British policy
...... 499
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FAR EAST.
By Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas, Professor of
Chinese, King’s College, London; formerly Keeper of the Oriental Printed Books
and MSS. at the British Museum.
China.
PAGE
The
Tientsin Treaty of 1858 500
Murder
of Margary. The Emperor Tung-Chih .... 501
Rule
of the Dowager Empresses 502
Disputes
with Russia and France. Likin 503
Reception
of foreign ministers ....... 504
Railway
policy 505
Chinese
reforms. Peace with France ......
506
Macao.
Russian advance 507
Opposition
to Chinese immigration 508
China, Japan, Russia, and Korea 509
War
between China and Japan . 510
Japanese
successes 511
Treaty
of Shimonoseki ........ 512
The Cassini Convention. Kiaochow 513
Lease
of Port Arthur and of Wei-Hai-Wei .
. . 514
Missionaries
in China 515
The
opium traffic 516
The
Dowager Empress resumes power .... 517
The
Boxers’ agitation 518
Peking
isolated 519
Expedition
to Peking 520
Terms
of peace arranged 521
The
Russo-Japanese War and its results .....
522
Ann aii.
French
activity in Annam 524
War between France and Annam 525
Intervention
of China 526
Treaty
between France and China 527
French
colonial policy 528
The Philippine Islands.
The
Philippine Islands. 529
Aguinaldo. Spanish-American War
...... 530
Policy
of the United States 531
The Malay Peninsula.
The progress of the Malay peninsula 533
Siam.
page
Europeans
in Siam 534
Reopening
of Siam to European trade
Disputes
between France and Siam 536
CHAPTER
XVIII.
THE
REGENERATION OF JAPAN.
By J. H. Longfobd, Professor of Japanese in
King’s College, London; formerly H.M. Consul at Nagasaki.
Social
conditions of the people before 1871 ....
537
The
Samurai and other classes 538
The
Emperor’s Charter Oath 539
The
task of the new Japanese Government ....
540
Treaties affecting foreigners in
Japan ......
541
Proposals
for revision of the Treaties. Embassy to Europe . 542
Reforms
in Japan 543
Negotiations
with Western Powers 544
New
Treaty with Great Britain ........................ 545
Prince Ito and his friends
546
First National Council of the empire ............................ 547
Progress
towards representative Government .... 548
Earlier
forms of government 549
Cabinet
system adopted 550
Constitution
granted. Early history of the Japanese Parliament 551
Struggles
in Parliament 562
The
two Houses 553
Incident
of the Maria Luz 554
Firm
action of Japan. Results 555
Riukiu Islands, Formosa, Korea 556
Embassy
to China 557
Settlements
with China and Korea 558
Reforms
concerning the Samurai ........................ 559
Fortunes
of the Samurai
Saigo
and the Satsuma clan 561
The
Satsuma Rebellion 562
Defeat
of the Satsuma clansmen ....... 563
Japan
and Korea..
Condition
of Korea 565
Parties
in Korea. Crises in Korea 566
Chinese
intervention in Korea 567
Conspiracy and coup d’etat in Korea 568
Conflict
between Japan and China 569
Agreement
between China and Japan 570
Murder
of the Queen of Korea 571
Japanese
occupation of Formosa 572
Progress
in Formosa 573
Saghalfn.
Yezo 574
The
Anglo-Japanese alliance ....... 575
THE
RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR.
By Major F. B. Maurice,
General Staff Officer.
Treaty for
evacuation of Manchuria . . Outbreak of war between Russia and Japan Forces of
the belligerent Powers. .
The Japanese
plans of action . .
Attacks on
Chemulpo and Port Arthur The Japanese concentrate in Korea . Kuropatkin’s
difficulties. Alexeyeff .
Distribution
of Russian forces . .
Battle of the
Yalu river . . .
Invasion of
Manchuria. Port Arthur isolated Situation in the fortress. Battle of Nanshan
Strategical position. Stackelberg’s expedition Japanese advance. Vladivostdk
squadron .
Battle of
Ta-shih-chiao .... Attacks on Port Arthur. Russian fleet defeated First assault
on Port Arthur. Battle of Liaoyang Russian retreat from Liaoyang Fighting on
the Sha-ho .
Incident of
the Dogger Bank Surrender of Port Arthur .
Mishchenko’s
raid . .
Preparations
for the battle of Mukden Battle of Mukden. Russian retreat Battle of Tsushima .
. .
The War at »
deadlock . .
Treaty of
Portsmouth . . .
PAGE
676
677
678
579
580
581 682 683
584
585 686 687
588
689
690
691
692 593
694
695 596
697
698
699 600 601
THE EUROPEAN
COLONIES.
By E. A. Benians,
M.A., Fellow of St John’s College.
Progressive
emigration from Europe to new lands Formation of new peoples The Dominion of
Canada Conservative predominance The opening of the west The Liberals in power
.
Results of
the period .
Development
of the interior Immigration and land settlement The eastern provinces . .
602
603
604 606 606
607
608
609
610 611
Industries.
Communications . .
The railway
system. The French Canadians The central Government . . . Education. The
Dominion and the provinc Canada and the United States . . Fisheries and boundary
question . . Australia and New Zealand . . ■ Development of Australia . .
. Mining. Land settlement . . . Development of agriculture . . .
Railway
system
Manufactures.
Protection . . .
The towns.
Immigration . . . Exclusion of Asiatics .... Political development ....
Local
self-government ....
Social
policy. Trade unions . . Labour parties and their policy . .
State
regulation of industries . . Progress towards federation . . . Federation of
Australia . . . Policy of the Federal State . . . Labour party. Revenue. The
capital South Africa ..... Annexation of the Transvaal. Zulu War
First
Boer War
Africander
Bond. Cecil Rhodes .
Expansion in
Rhodesia . . . Friction with the Transvaal. . . Jameson’s raid. Second Boer War
. British reverses and victories . . Annexation of the Dutch republics . Grant
of self-government. Railway policy Native policy. Franchise for coloured men
Tariff question. Union of South Africa Constitution of South Africa . .
Machinery of Government . . . Relaxation of imperial control in general
Increasing colonial independence . . Imperial cooperation . . . .
The West
Indies. Emancipation . Difficulties of West Indian societies . Depression in
West Indies . . . Political developments .... Changes and rearrangements . .
Contraction of self-government . . Colonisation in Africa. The explorers
Demarcation of spheres of influence Division of North-west Africa . .
East Africa.
Zanzibar . . . British East Africa. The Congo. .
The Congo
Free State. Central Africa South-west Africa. The Italians in Africa
PAGE
612
613
614
615 016
617
618
619
620 621 622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660 661 662
663
664
PAGE
European competition in Africa 665
The
islands of the Pacific 666
Annexation
in the Pacific 667
Settlement
in the Pacific. Dutch colonies .....
668
Sumatra.
Borneo . 669
Recent
developments. Germany. Spain 670
The
British empire 671
CHAPTER XXI.
THE REPUBLICS
OF LATIN AMERICA.
Historical Sketch to 1896.
By E. A. Kiekpateick, M.A., formerly Scholar of
Trinity College.
The republics of Central America 672
The republics of northern South
America .....
673
Paraguay.
Pedro II in Brazil ....... 674
Fall
of the empire in Brazil 675
Mexico. Juarez. European intervention 676
Porfirio
Diaz. Chile 677
Frontier
of Chile and Argentina 679
Rosas
in Argentina. Uruguay 680
French
and English action in Uruguay 681
Fall
of Rosas. Settlement 682
Argentina
and Buenos Aires . 683
Relations
of South America with Europe............................. 684
The
United States and the Isthmus ....... 685
The
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The Pauncefote-Hay Treaty . . 686
Great
Britain and Venezuela 687
Development
of the Monroe Doctrine ......
688
Responsibility
of the United States ...... 689
The International Position op the Latin American. Races.
By Santiago Peeez Triana, Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary for the Republic of Colombia.
The
republics of Latin America . 690
Supreme
influence of the United States .....
691
Resources
of Latin America 692
Immunity from foreign conquest....... 693
Despotic rule. Financial bonds 694
PAGE
The
three Powers and Venezuela ...... 695
The
United States and Cuba ....... 696
Present
position of Cuba 697
Colombia
aud the Panama Canal....... 698
The
revolution in Panama 699
Panamerican
Congresses ........ 700
The
Drago Doctrine 701
The
future of Latin America 702
THE MODERN
LAW OF NATIONS AND THE PREVENTION OF WAR.
By Sir Frederick
Pollock, Bart., LL.D., D.C.L., formerly Fellow of Trinity College.
Antiquity
of International Law ....... 703
The Law of Nature. The Law of Nations
.....
704
Influence of chivalry and the Church 705
The
Church and war 706
Customary
mitigations of war. Papal arbitration . . . 707
Alberico Gentili. Richard Hooker 708
Grottos.......... 709
The
achievement of Grotius 7X0
Grotius
on the laws and the temperaments of war . . . 711
Reality
of International Law ....... 7x2
Courts administering International
Law .....
713
Authority of text-books. Treaties and
Conventions . . . 714
Usage
....... . 715
Prevention
and mitigation of war ...... 716
Classification
of disputes 7x7
The
limits of useful arbitration 7X8
Methods of international arbitration.
Instances .... 719
The
Geneva Arbitration 720
Behring Sea and Venezuela
Arbitrations .....
72X
Chile-Argentina
and Alaska Arbitrations.............................. 722
The
Hague Conferences. The North Sea incident of 1904 . 723
The
question of reducing armaments ......
724
Results
of the Second Peace Conference .....
725
Provisions for arbitral procedure
....... 726
Arbitration
Treaties and their limitations .....
727
The
Concert of Europe .' 728
The
ideal European system
SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS.
By Sidney Webb, LL.B., Barrister-at-Law.
PAGE
The
condition of Bolton in 1842 730
The knowledge of man in society 731
The
revolution in social ideas. Associations of producers . . 732
Municipal
reform in England. Associations of consumers . . 733
Western
Europe and the United States 734
Development
of urhan communities 735
Relation of central and local
authorities 736
Grants
in aid. Varieties of municipal service ....
737
Extension
of cooperation 739
Methods
of cooperative administration 740
Cooperative
production 741
Cooperative
loan societies in Germany 742
Undue predominance of consumers'
interest . . . .
743
Results
of unlimited competition 744
The
waste of human life 745
Factoiy
legislation 746
Development
of labour codes 747
Development
of Trade Unionism 748
The
resulting regulation of industry 749
The
national minimum, in sanitation 750
In
education. State regulation of conditions of labour . . 751
The
care of children and of the sick 752
Increasing expenditure on the poorer
classes . . . .
753
Friendly Societies. State insurance 754
Insurance against unemployment. . . .
. . .
755
Extension
of democratic power 756
Rise
of democratic socialism 757
The
propaganda of Karl Marx . . . . . . .758
Development
of the socialist programme............................ 759
Organic
conception of society 760
The
individual as the unit in place of the family . . . 761
Emancipation
of women • 762
Women’s
rights 763
The need for
individual responsibility. . . . . .764
Increased personal obligations
....... 765
THE
SCIENTIFIC AGE.
By W. C. Dampier
Whetham, M.A., F.R.S., Fellow of Trinity College.
PAGE
Scientific
research leading to practical application . . . 766
Mechanics of the solar system 767
Chemistry
of gases 768
The
atomic hypothesis 769
MendeleefFs table of elements 770
Nebular hypothesis. Geology 771
Conception
of evolution 772
The
Darwinian hypothesis 773
Evolution
and religion 774
The
study of religions 775
Evolution
and politics. Natural selection .....
776
The
researches of Mendel 777
Selection
and sociology 778
Bacteriology
and disease 779
Prevention
of disease 780
Sanitary
improvement 781
Undulatory
theory of light 782
Spectrum analysis. Photography 783
Kinetic
theory of gases . 785
Electronic theory of matter 789
Radio-activity 790
The
unity of knowledge 791
MODERN
EXPLORATIONS.
By J. D. Rogers,
M.A., formerly Stowell Fellow of University College, Oxford.
Asia.
Opening
of intercourse by land between East and West . . 792
Asiatic
through-routes 793
The
opening up of Siheria 794
Search for the north-east passage 795
The
unveiling of China 796
Exploration
of China. Tibet 797
PAGE
Attempts
to penetrate Tibet 798
Central
Asiatic way: eastern part ...... 799
Central
and south Asiatic ways : western part .... 800
The
opening of west central Asia 801
The
Pamirs. Central Asiatic ways ...... 802
Further
attempts upon Tibet 803
Sven Hedin. Results of Asiatic
exploration ....
804
Africa.
Africa.
The Nile and the Niger 805
The Niger problem. Mungo Park 806
Denham and Clapperton. Lake Chad 807
Niger problem solved. Livingstone 808
The
Nile problem solved 809
Stanley
explores the Congo 810
German
explorers. The river Welle 811
French
methods of exploration 812
French
concentration at Lake Chad. Dark spots in Africa . 813
Polar Exploration.
Australasian
and Polar exploration 814
Results
of Polar exploration 815
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE GROWTH OF
HISTORICAL SCIENCE.
By G. P. Gooch, M.A., formerly Scholar of Trinity
College.
True
beginnings of historical study 816
History
in the eighteenth century 817
The
romantic and nationalist movements............................. 818
Historical jurisprudence. Savigny 819
The work and influence of Niebuhr 820
The
studies of Jacob Grimm ....... 822
Study
of German origins 823
Leopold
von Ranke 824
Ranke's
work and influence 825
Opposition
to Ranke. Schlosser. Gervinus. Leo . . . 826
Waitz and Giesebrecht 827
The Prussian school of historians 828
Historical study in Austria and in
France .....
829
Thierry. Barante. Sismondi 830
Michelet.
Guizot **31
Thiers
and Mignet ®®2
PAGE
French
medievalists ......... 834
English
medievalists . . . 835
Greek
and Roman studies in England .....
836
History
and English politics. Macaulay 837
Carlyle........... 838
Froude.
The Oxford school. Stubbs ...... 839
Freeman. J. R. Green. Gardiner. Lecky
....
840
Seeley. Other English historians.
North America . . . 841
Italy. Spain. Slavonic countries
...... 842
Roman
studies 843
Expansion of Hellenic learning 845
Oriental and biblical research
....... ,846
History
of the Church and of Christianity............................ 847
Developments
in Church history 848
Kulturgeschichte 849
Study
of institutions. Anthropology 850
GHAPS. PAGES
I.................... Modern Europe 851
II. Foreign relations of the United States
during
the
Civil War ...... 852
III............. Great
Britain 853—5
IV.................. Ireland 856—62
V................... The
Third Republic ........................... 863—8
VI. The German Empire ..... 869—75
VII................. Austria-Hungary ............................ 876—82
VIII................ Italy 883—7
IX.................. The Low Countries ............................ 888—90
X................... The
Iberian Peninsula........................... 891—3
XI............. Scandinavia 894—7
XII,
XIII. Russia 898—904
XIV. The Ottoman Empire and the Balkan Peninsula 905—12
XV. Egypt
and the Egyptian Sudan . . .
913—4
XVI................ India 915—7
XVII............... The Far East 918—20
XVIII............... Japan 921—3
XIX. Russo-Japanese War ..... 924—6
XX. The European Colonies (1870—1907) . .
927—48
XXI. The Republics of Latin America . . .
949—53
XXII. History
of the Law of Nations . . .
954—6
XXIII............... Social Movements .............................. 957—66
XXV................ Modern Explorations ............................. 967—71
XXVI. The
Growth of Historical Science . . .
972—6
Chronological Table of Leading Events . . . 977—85
Index.... 987
p. 8j 1. 18.
For sixty-three read sixty-five.
p. 39,
middle. For High Commissioner of South Africa read High Commissioner for
South-East Africa, p. 46, 1. 5 from bottom. For now King Edward VII read
afterwards King Edward VII.
p. 119, 1. 7
from bottom. For Vogue read Vogiie. p. 166, 1. 19 from bottom. For 1900-8, read
1900-9. p. 249, 1. 2 from bottom. For Roeloefs read Roelofs. p. 298, 1. 13. For
1871 read 1870. p. 676, 1. 19. For 1857 read 18-58. p. 681, 1. 8 from bottom.
For Gore read Gore Ouseley.
MODERN
EUROPE.
In
this period the History of Europe becomes in a sense the History of the world.
In the sixteenth century, when our continuous narrative begins, the European
system embraced only a part of the European Continent. European culture and
European political methods had pervaded little more than the countries of France,
the Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, Spain, Italy, England. Outlying countries
such as Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, Poland, were more or less apart from
the main current of European affairs. Russia had not entered the European
circle. South-eastern Europe, including a large part of Hungary, had fallen or
was shortly to fall under Ottoman rule. The great geographical discoveries of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries prepared the way for the later spread of
European civilisation and European principles of government; but the full
effect of these discoveries was not felt until the nineteenth century. The
establishment of Spanish and Portuguese rule in Central and Southern America
brought about a real extension of European influence to the other hemisphere;
but the advance then made was arrested, and the more complete assimilation of
those areas to European standards begins with the revolt from Spain and the
creation of independent Republics on a European model during the first half of
the nineteenth century. It was carried further by the great immigrations which
took place towards the end of the same century; and it received its seal and
recognition, in 1907, when the Republics of South and Central America entered
the European Congress of the Hague as equal members of the European
confraternity. These communities may now be regarded as outlying members of the
European brotherhood, ruled under the same forms of government, practising the
same arts, pursuing the same commerce and industry by the same financial
methods, in short, as States created and living after the European pattern.
Thus, during the nineteenth century the whole of the South American Continent
was added to the realm which is dominated by European political and industrial
conditions.
In 1784 the
existence of an independent federation of European
c. M. H. XII.
CH. I.
1
2
Extension of the European system.
communities
in the North American Continent was formally recognis But much remained to be
done before the whole of that vast tern ory was conquered, and colonised, and
reduced to the European pat em. During the first half of the nineteenth century
European domination swept steadily forward—westward and northward and
southward, u the work of settlement and organisation was able to move more rapidy
after railways and telegraphs had been introduced, and the period covered by
this volume has witnessed the final consolidation all over the United States of
a new and fairly homogeneous European race; absoibing Anglo-Saxons, Celts,
Germans, Spa.^ards, Italians, Slavs, accepting every European variety, but
rejecting Mongolian intruders with resolute aversion; dwelling in enforced
proximity with multitudes of African negroes, but refusing to admit them to
social or real political equality. Meanwhile the British and French community
in Canada has been moving forward somewhat more slowly but on parallel paths,
until the whole of the North American Continent has become subject to a
transatlantic European stock, predominantly British in certain characteristics,
but constituting, through the blending of races and the influence of surroundings,
a novel European type or types.
Meanwhile, in
the Far South-East other European semi-independent communities have been
growing to political maturity. The Australian States have been consolidated and
united in a great Federal Union. The British Dominion of New Zealand is firmly
established. There also we see the same determination to preserve the European
type uncontaminated and to forbid the intrusion of Mongols or other Asiatics.
At this
moment in South Africa, after a great racial war of conservative Dutch and
Huguenot settlers against more progressive newcomers from Europe, all
nationalities and parties have agreed to unite into one State the several
British and Dutch communities from the Cape of Good Hope to the Zambesi.
Whatever may be the outcome of these changes, it is certain that the ideas and
aims of modem European enterprise must ultimately prevail against the archaic
traditions that were inherited from the isolated vortrekkers of the Veldt. In
South Africa, again, we see an instinctive aversion from Asiatic immigration
overpowering any imperial sympathy of common citizenship, and demanding
unanimously that Europeans alone should be admitted as colonists. But, there,
State-builders are also confronted with the more difficult problem of the
political relations between the dominant European minority and the aboriginal
inhabitants who form the greater part of the population. Whatever temporary
expedients may be adopted, it is certain that the European inhabitants will
demand and ultimately obtain political and social predominance.
Thus, over
two continents and part of a third self-governing communities, organised and
conducted on European lines, have established or brought to completion their
ascendancy within the period covered by
3
this volume.
In Europe itself the European system has been extended by the creation of
Bulgaria as an autonomous principality on the European model in 1878, and by
the inclusion therein of Eastern Rumelia in 1885. The recent declaration of
Bulgarian independence er.ts.br -hes a new independent European State. The
occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in
1878 was another step in the same direction; and the annexation of these
provinces in 1908 did little more than register an accomplished fact; but the
inevitable absorption of the Turkish dominions in Europe into the European
system has hitherto been delayed. The attempt initiated in 1908 to reorganise
the Ottoman empire according to European political ideas is so recent that its
results cannot yet be even guessed.
But the
extension of the sphere of European influence during recent years is not fully
set forth by the enumeration of autonomous communities which have been
established, enlarged, developed, or consolidated in Europe or in other
Continents. Almost the whole of Africa, has been partitioned among the European
Powers by the delimitation of their respective spheres of influence at the
Conference of Berlin, 1884-5, and by subsequent Conventions. The French
occupation of Tunis (1881—4) brought a fresh section of the Mediterranean
littoral under European rule. From Algeria in the north to the Congo in the
south and Senegal in the west, uninterrupted French supremac) is now recognised
; and Timbuktu is no longer a city of mystery. The protectorate of Madagascar,
asserted by France in 1883, led in 1896 to annexation of that island. British
authority is established over all the valley of the lower Niger, where the
governing powers of the Royal Niger Company were taken over in 1900. On the
Congo the French have occupied since 1884 wide tracts of country, and the Congo
Free State, set up by Europe about the same time under the rule of the King of
the Belgians, has recently been ancexed to the Belgian State. The old
Portuguese possessions in Angola, Mozambique, on the Zambesi, and south of the
Zambesi, have been delimited. The Germans have marked out great claims in the
south-west, and on the east of Africa (1884); in the race for African
possessions they started iomev/hat late, but they succeeded also in
establishing themselves in the Cameroons and in Togoland. Somaliland is divided
between the French, the Italians, and the British. The southern part of the
African littoral on the Red Sea has fallen to Italy. The British occupation of
Egypt, begun in 1882, appears likely to be permanent, and led in 1896-8 to the
conquest of the vast provinces of the Sudan, thus linking up the ten tory in
British possession from Mombasa to the Meu terranean. Bechuanaland was snatched
from the Boers in 1885; and the enterprise of Cecil Rhodes and others has
extended British dominion beyond the Zambesi, to join the province known as
British Central Africa, which has been separately developed. Abyssinia and
Morocco are almost the only
4
native Powers
in Africa which retain their independence, though Tripoli, as a dependency of
the Ottoman empire, remains outside the European system. ■
Almost the
whole of Africa has thus become an annex of Europe, and while the greater part
of it has not been settled, and much of it is unsuitable for European
settlement, the fortunes of its countless peoples and of its boundless tracts
depend upon the policy, are controlled by the force, and are contingent on the
jealousies, of the European Powers. This process of delimitation has been for
the most part initiated and carried out within the last thirty years.
The Asiatic
Powers present more obstinate resistance to European ideas and European
conquest. The Ottoman empire in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Arabia, has
remained hitherto practically impervious to European influence. In Persia the
rivalry of Russia and Great Britain has preserved the Shah’s dominions intact
in the midst of internal revolution; while the insecurity of the government and
financial instability has retarded commercial penetration. Siberia has been
opened up by the Great Siberian Railway begun in 1891; and colonisation has
been rapidly proceeding. In Central Asia, Russian power has advanced steadily
southwards till it impinges on the frontiers of Persia, Afghanistan, and
Chinese Turkestan. Further east, Tibet has been the centre of irresolute but
notable international rivalries, culminating in the British expedition of 1904
to Lhassa. But Tibet remains, except to isolated enterprise, the most
impenetrable district of the inhabited world. China herself has presented an
obstinate and gelatinous resistance to warlike or peaceful penetration. The
Russian occupation of Manchuria was brought to an end by the Japanese War of
1904-5. But the occupation of Kiaochow and the neighbouring district by the
Germans in 1897-8 involved a notable and permanent diminution of Chinese
sovereignty; the Liao-Tung peninsula has changed hands more than once and now
rests in Japanese possession; the wars of 1894 and 1904 finally destroyed
Chinese pretensions to suzerainty over Korea, and substituted Japanese
supremacy in that peninsula. The acquisition of Annam by the French, begun in
1858 by the conquest of Saigon, was completed in 1886 by the establishment of a
French protectorate over the whole of the kingdom. Siam has probably been saved
from European | absorption by the mutual jealousy of Great Britain and France.
British ■ influence in the protected States of the Malay peninsula has
been extended and recently consolidated by an agreement with Siam, the nominal
suzerain. Upper Burma was conquered and annexed by Great Britain in 1886. But the
most remarkable extension of the European system in the Far East has resulted
from the adoption of western political methods by the Empire of Japan. That
Empire has been admitted to alliance on equal terms by Great Britain; a
Japanese representative has sat in the Congress of the Hague; Japan has waged
successful war with
Effects of European expansion in new
fields. 5
one of the
greatest of European Powers; she has annexed Formosa and dominates Korea; she
has effectively claimed recognition as an equal from the members of the
European confraternity; she is on the one hand the champion of Asiatic
independence, on the other hand the pioneer in the introduction of European
sciences, European political methods, and European commercial enterprise into
some of the most impenetrable districts of the distant East. She is a bulwark
against European conquest, but a missionary of the European propaganda. The
institution of American rule in the Philippines since 1898 has established in
the Far East yet another centre of vigorous competitive activity, and added one
more to the tale of the rivals who jostle each other for commercial and
political superiority on the coasts of China and in the western waters of the
Pacific.
Thus, the
work begun by the Spanish and the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, later
taken up by the Dutch, and more rapidly carried forward by Clive, Warren
Hastings, and their successors, has moved with ever increasing rapidity as the
nineteenth century drew towards its close. Those Asiatic Powers and regions,
which have maintained their independence hitherto, can only escape European
rule by the establishment of strong and stable governments, and by the adoption
at any rate of European military arts, together with such inventions as
railways, telegraphs, and telephones, which are necessary to military
efficiency. The whole world is now the sphere of European activity; and the
compass of this History requires to be correspondingly enlarged.
It is idle to
censure the inevitable or to pass judgment upon destiny; the European nations
have resembled other conquering races in their brutality, violence, and
rapacity; this exotic rule has been seen perhaps at its worst in the valley of
the Congo, at its best in the recent government of India, and in Egypt; it has
produced some unscrupulous pirates and many conscientious, laborious,
self-sacrificing administrators; religious missions have been active, but on
the whole the benefits conferred have been rather material than moral; wealth
has increased in consequence of improved order and security; famine has been
curbed, slavery has been put down, the desert has been reclaimed, communication
has been accelerated, knowledge has been diffused; but it is perhaps too soon
to cast the balance and to set the advantages against the evils of European
rule. It is enough to note the fact that in the worldwide struggle for life,
wealth, and power the Europeans have lor the moment proved their indisputable
predominance; three quarters of the world have come under their sway; and the
independence of the remainder is held by a precarious tenure.
In Europe
itself one of the most remarkable features of the most recent period has been
the steady advance of democracy. In France, a democratic autocracy was replaced
by a democratic Republic as a consequence of the great War with Germany. The
German Empire was
established
about the same time on a democratic basis. The Italian kingdom has a democratic
Constitution. The franchise has been considerably extended in Great Britain
and the practical working of the Constitution has been rendered more democratic
in municipal and local as well as in national affairs. Bulge ia, the latest
addition to European States, is controlled by popular suffrage, as are also the
other independent polities of the Balkan peninsula. Quite recently universal
suff nge was •i j opted by Austria as an attempt to solve her racial
difficulties. Its adoption in Hungary is under consideration. In Russia, in
spite of periodic reactions, there seems to be an advance in the same direction.
Even Turkey is making the democratic experiment. If it succeeds, every country
in Europe, not even excepting Russia, will have recognised to some extent the
democratic principle, and all the self-governing European communities beyond
the seas have adopted democratic government.
Democracy, it
is true, is capable of very varying interpretations. In Germany it has proved
compatible with the existence of a powerful monarchy, which has, in the main,
succeeded in expressing more accurately the aspirations of the nation as a
whole than any representative assembly or popular press. In England, it is
still tempered by a strong aristocratic bias. In many countries the resources
of government are freely used to influence the elections. In the Ur;ted
States, the representative machinery is in great measure controlled by powerful
interests and organisations, though their domination is largely due to popular
indifference, and may at any time be swept away by the action of the people. In
Southern and Central America, democracy has commonly led to the more or less
precarious establishment of the autocratic nule of powerful Presidents; of
this the remarkable career of President Diaz in Mexico is the most striking
example; and personal ambitions, under these conditions, have brought about
periodic revolutions in most of the Latin States of America. But even in these
countries some homage must be paid to the popular will. In every countiy where
the Constitution is democratic, representative institutions afford a means,
however imperfect, for the expression of popular sentiments; they act as a real
check on the executive authorities and exercise a modifying influence upon
older national institutions and customs.
Seeing that
modem representative democracy wat practicall unknown in Europe before the
French Revolution, the universal of the democratic principle among European
nations constitutes a striking revolution, accomplished in many cases without
any violent convulsion. In theory, democracy might naturally lead to the
exercise of state authority in the sole interest of the most numerous, that is,
the poorest, class of voters. In practice, though the interests of the masses
are more carefully studied now than in any previous period, though the
socialistic movement has obtained great hold in many countries, and many
socialistic measures have been adopted the
The burden of warlike armaments.
7
introduction
of democratic institutions has not as yet led, to that political warfare of
class against class, which theorists have prophesied. Democracy promotes civil
strife; but it also affords a means for its speedy and peaceable settlement.
Simultaneously with the general introduction of democracy, in all the principal
countries of Europe the education of the people has been undertaken as a part
of government duty; and this condition, together with the development of the
popular press, and improvement of means of communication and transit, has
facilitated the introduction of this constitutional method in European
communities; some look forward to its adoption in British India and Egypt; it
is being tried in Turkey; but few would assert with confidence that democracy
was suited to Asiatics; in spite of the example of Hayti, none perhaps would
venture to propose its general application to the communities of African
negroes. It is a European invention, and perhaps only suited to the European
race and European culture.
The period
since 1871 has been, so far as western Europe is concerned, a period of peace.
Such great wars as have been waged have been fought on the confines of the
European system—in the Balkan peninsula and in Manchuria. But the peace has
been an armed peace. Following the example of Prussia, almost all the Great and
most of the minor Powers of Europe have organised their armies on a basis of
universal compulsory military service. On a peace footing the armies of the
five great continental Powers amount to over two million men and tbeir annual
expenditure reaches i?l58,000,000. On a war footing they are supposed to be able
to muster over twenty millions of soldiers. When we remember that, in addition
to defraying his share of the ■jecessary expenditure, every man in these
countries is bound if required to give up two or more years of his life to
military training, the weight of this load becomes apparent. Yet, under
democratic conditions, these sacrifices are made without serious complaint, in
republican France as in autocratic Russia. The burden of naval expenditure and
compulsory naval service has in addition to be sustained; and on the whole this
burden is rapidly increasing. Proposals for limiting military and naval
expenditure are made from time to time; but, even if it were possible to frame
the principles of such limitation and enforce them, the attempt would involve the
determination of relative national strength; no impartial authority exists to
decide what relative military strength would represent the total force, actual
and potential, of the several nations; no nation would acquiesce in a position
of permanent inferiority which it felt able to remedy by its own efforts;
moreover, conditions -hange, and any adjustment adopted today would cease in a
short time to suit the actual facts. No alteration in the existing policy as
regards armaments is in sight.
On the whole,
the existence of this tremendous military eqi-'pment makes for peace. The
consequences of war would be felt in every house-
8
Disturbance of the Balance of Power.
hold; and
statesmen, as well as nations, shrink from the thought of a conflict between
forces so immense. Peace, it is true, obliterates the memories of war; but
peace also creates habits of peace; security breeds the love of security ; we
are never safe from the outbreak of some great national passion; but the desire
of war for war’s sake, the hunger for military glory, the national impulses and
traditions which influenced the career and policy of the third Napoleon, seem
for the time at any rate to have lost their operative power; the nations appear
to desire peace, and, if they desire it, they may perhaps retain it.
The
preponderance on the Continent of Europe which came to the German Empire as a
result of the Franco-Prussian War has during subsequent years been perceptibly
increased. The German Constitution, with all its defects, has placed the whole
resources of the German nation for war and defence at the disposal of the
Federal Government. The organisation of the army has, so far as we know, been
maintained at its traditional standard of efficiency; a strong navy is being
built up; the population which in 1871 was about forty-one millions now amounts
to sixty-three millions. The wealth of the country arising from commerce and
industry has increased even beyond this proportion. The revenue, though
insufficient for the Federal expenditure, has been supplemented by loans which
the unpledged credit of the new unified State has been able to secure on
moderate terms. While Germany has thus been growing in wealth and power, the
advance of other countries has been relatively slow. French population has been
stationary; and Russia, Germany’s other great rival on the Continent of Europe,
has been recently crippled by a disastrous war and internal disorder. This
disturbance of the balance of power by natural growth and external accidents
has created a certain uneasiness in Europe and in recent years has led France
and Russia to enter into friendly understandings with Great Britain. But,
beyond a certain disposition to influence the course of diplomatic negotiation
by hints which have hardly amounted to threats, no overt act of aggression can
be laid to the charge of the German Government; and the policy of deliberate
and continued warlike expansion, of which Treitschke was for many years a chief
exponent, has received no sanction or countenance from the responsible leaders
of the German people.
In the years
immediately following the establishment of the German Empire Bismarck thought
it necessary to protect the new State by alliances tending to isolate or at any
rate to neutralise France. The first attempt in this direction was seen in the
Dreikaiserbund of 1872. This informal and elastic understanding between
Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary was shaken during the Russo-Turkish War of
1877-8, when the interests of Austria and Russia were plainly seen to be
divergent. From that date onwards, although the league of the three Emperors
was ostensibly maintained, the bonds between Austria and Germany were drawn
tighter. In 1879 Austria and Germany formed a
The 'Triple and Dual Alliances.
9
defensive
alliance against an attack by Russia on either Power. In 1884 a fresh agreement
was contracted between the three Emperors; and about the same time Bismarck
thought it well to conclude a reinsurance treaty with Russia, stipulating for
neutrality in case either Power was attacked by a third. But the rivalry
between Austria and Russia prevented any permanent accord between these two
Powers; and Germany was forced to decide whether the Austrian or the Russian
alliance was the more valuable. She decided in favour of Austria. In 1887 the
treaty between Austria and Germany became public; but in the same year Bismarck
appears to have again endeavoured to “ reinsure ” with Russia, and with this
policy he coquetted until his fall.
The French
expedition to Tunis in 1881 and the subsequent occupation of that country by
France brought about for a time the complete alienation of Italy from France,
and this led in 1882 to the accession of Italy to the Austro-German League.
This triple alliance has been maintained to the present day; though friendly
relations between Italy and France have been completely restored since 1898,
and it is doubtful how far Germany and Austria could rely on the cordial
cooperation of Italy in the event of war. On the Morocco question Italy showed
herself more sympathetic to France than to Germany; the Italian people felt
that their interests in the Balkans had not been sufficiently regarded by
Austria in her recent annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina; and no united
general policy is maintained by the Triple Alliance, similar to that pursued by
Austria and Germany.
The league of
the three Emperors was in effect determined in 1887. Overtures made on behalf
of the Central Powers to Great Britain about that time alarmed both France and
Russia; Russian loans were readily subscribed in Paris; in 1891 the French
fleet visited Cronstadt; in 1893 a Russian fleet returned the visit at Toulon;
and in 1895 a formal alliance between France and Russia was announced.
Since 1895
the European situation has been governed by the Dual Alliance of France and
Russia and the Triple Alliance of Austria and Germany to which Italy is still
formally attached. Both alliances are, so far as is known, purely defensive.
Great Britain has throughout the period maintained a cordial understanding with
Italy, and has recently established very sympathetic relations with France;
and, more recently still, her differences with Russia have been composed. She
has been accused of attempting to form a ring of all the Western Powers against
Germany; but there seems no foundation for this charge. She has, however,
departed to some extent from her policy of deliberate isolation; she has
contracted more than one intimate friendship, and, since 1902, a definite
alliance with Japan, renewed in 1905.
The alliance
with Japan requires some explanation. Until about 1894, British predominance in
the Far East was undisputed. But, after the close of the war between China and
Japan, the activity of the
other
European Powers was increased; and France, Germany, and Russia took upon
themselves to settle the outcome of that war without the cooperation of Great
Britain. The result was that Great Britain took no part in robbing Japan of the
spoils of war; on the other hand, she had allowed questions of the greatest
moment in the Far East to be decided without any reference to her wishes or
interests. For the time her prestige in the Far East was seriously impaired;
and it seems improbable that her uniqiie predominance in those quarters can
ever be restored. Britain has no need for territorial expansion; her declared
'nterest is the maintenance of the open door for commerce, and for this purpose
the integrity of Chinese territory is required. After ,rarious moves
and counter-moves, and minor annexations, the Anglo- Japanese Alliance was
adopted as a means to this end, and has up to the present fully answered the
purpose. So long as the Alliance continues, the predominance of the Allies in
Chinese waters is sufficient 1 for all probable contingencies.
If China has
been one great storm-centre of European policy, the Balkan peninsula has been
for a longer period a more serious point of danger. In the Near East, since the
Russo-Turkish War, Servia, j Bulgaria, Greece, Armenia, Crete, have each from
time to time troubled the European atmosphere; but the effective balance of
power betw een Austria and Russia has prevented up to the present any serious
change in the status quo. How long this precarious equilibrium can be maintained
is doubtful. In this district not only the rivalries of Austria and Russia have
to be considered, but also the mutual jealousies of feervia, Bulgaria, and
Greece, which make for war, and the emulous propaganda of Greeks and Bulgarians
in Macedonia. The financial and administrative weakness of the Ottoman Power is
another source of danger. The firm establishment of an honest and efficient
government at Constantinople would do much to diioj lish the danger of war.
During the
period following on the War of 1877-S, the influence of Great Britain with the
Porte, at first considerable, afterwards declined. The sympathies of the
English nation with unfortunate peoples such as the Armenians were found
inconvenient at Stamboul; and the advice of English ministers as to reforms in
methods of government, though ineffective, was resented. Germany for many years
took the place of Great Britain as> principal adviser to the Sultan, and
reaped advantages in commercial ways. However, the desire imputed to
Germany—the establishment of her industrial and commercial supremacy in Asia
Minor —has not been achieved; and the recent revolution in Turkey has for the
moment restored British influence at Constantinople.
Great Britain
has, for the most part, remained outside the Teat European combinations, taking
an independent line in each discussion that arose. The nature of her interests
demands that she should oppose in turn every Power that from time to time
threatens to disturb the
The self-assertion of minor
nationalities,
11
existing
eqr''it"fum; and no alliance or bond that she may contract is likely to
have any other end in view. Her military weakness precludes her from
intervening with effect in any purely continental struggle; her naval
predominance, so long as it is maintained, enables her to dispense, for the
most part, with extrinsic aid in the defence of her possessions across the sea;
no Esiropean alliance could assist her to protect her Indian frontier, or to
coerce her African neighbours; it is likely, therefore, that she will continue
to avoid all embarrassing Ities, so long as the existing Balance of European
Power seems secure. This policy has led her to protect the crumbling empires of
Turkey and of China. Lord Salisbury declared, in a fit of characteristic
pessimism, that Great Britain had backed the wrong horse in supporting Turkey ;
but, if internal regeneration results in either or both of these cases, the
British policy will be justified; conquest is not a remedy for mis- govemment,
though it is its natural penalty.
While the
mutual fears of the great European Powers, aided perhaps by a genuine desire
for peachave curbed their animosities for thirty years, the same forces have
shielded by an almost spontaneous international guarantee the lesser States.
Any attempt to conquer Holland or Belgium or Switzerland seems precluded by the
existing state of European feeling; and Greece, though helpless, was delivered
in 1897 from the vengeance of Turkey by the concerted action of the European
conclave. It may be that with lapse of time the States of the Balkan peninsula
will also come to be regarded as keystones of the European harmony, which it is
dangerous and criminal to disturb.
The period
prior to 1871 was a period of the formation of new States on a large scale. The
subsequent period has witnessed a reaction. The minor nationalities have
vigorously asserted their independent rights. Bohemia and Ireland have
insistently proclaimed their national individuality. Finland has maintained a
strenuous fight for independent existence. Polish nationality resists all
efforts at absorption. While Hungary demands full recognition as an equal
partner in the Dual Monarchy, she has herself to reckon with the several claims
of her subordinate Slavonic peoples. Norway has split off from Sweden. Compared
with these spontaneous manifestations of separatist feeling and national
aspirations, the Pangermanic and Panslavonic movements seem pale and
ineffective results of academic or interested propaganda. Either movement might
serve as a® excuse for the operations of dynastic ambition; neither seems
likely to exercise an independent influence on history. Cosmopolitanism has
been at a discount; and the almost universal adoption of a close protective
system of tariffs by European nations, while inspired no doubt by other and
more immediate political and economic motives, has fitted in appropriately with
the general desire for comple ;eness, raiiety, and self-sufficiency of national
life.
12 Arbitration.—The European centre of
gravity.
As a symptom
of the sincere desire for peace prevailing in Europe during this period, we may
note the extended use of arbitration for the settlement of minor disputes.
Disputes between nations can be divided into disputes which turn on limited
questions of right, capable of juridical solution, and disputes which result
from the clash of irreconcilable national impulses. No-Arbitration Court could
have ruled out the natural aspiration of Prussia to take her place as the chief
unit in a consolidated German people. No authority could suppress the right of
France to regard such a development as a menace to her own security. The rival
>1 i 1;; and fixed desires of these two Powers could not both be satisfied;
the arbitrament of force could alone decide the issue. But such minor questions
as the delimitation of doubtful boundaries, the adjudication of blame in
accidental collisions, rights of fishing, rights of sealing, petty violations
of neutrality, have often in the past separately or cumulatively led up to
breaches of the world’s peace. Such questions have, again and again, been
successfully adjusted by international arbitration in late years; arbitration
treaties.have been extensively concluded; and a permanent Arbitration Court has
been set up at the Hague before which Germany and France have recently
appeared, for the decision of a point of dignity as well as of a point of
right. The Casa Blanca arbitration is a marked ’ step towards the peaceful
consolidation of the European community and the recognition of a common and
binding code of law.
In earlier
volumes the attempt has been made to show the shifting from time to time of the
centre of gravity of Europe. From about 1660 to 1870 that centre of gravity was
undoubtedly in Paris. Since 1871 France, though still in the forefront of
European culture, has lost something of her pride of place. The centre of
European politics proper has been at Berlin; the centre of world-politics,
which are also European politics in the larger sense, has been in London. And
it is not by accident that the Hague, midway between London and Berlin and
nearly equidistant from Paris, has been chosen as the meeting- ground of
European councils. Whether the coming generation sees the centre of
world-politics transferred from London to Washington depends on various
contingencies; among others, on the policy adopted by Great Britain towards her
self-governing Colonies, and on the degree of interest which the United States
may come to take in matters outside their own boundaries. Up to the present,
the United States have taken no share in European politics, little in
world-politics; but the Spanish War and the annexation of the Philippines have
introduced a change.
During this
period of peace the population of Europe has rapidly increased; and its
overflow has gone to replenish the North and South American Continents, and to
a less degree, other quarters of the globe. Meanwhile wealth has increased
beyond proportion; and the mechanical arts have advanced with great rapidity.
The knowledge of natural processes and laws has been progressively extended;
and the application
Industry. —Finance.—Literature.
13
of science to
the satisfaction of material wants has been more effective than in any other
period of the world’s history. Not only methods of production, but methods of
finance, have been revolutionised. The development of the joint-stock company
system has rendered capital more fluid, has multiplied the owners of property,
has substituted the fictitious person with its soulless mechanism of managing
directors and board for the human and individual owner or employer, has
concentrated power without fixing responsibility, has diverted attention to
stock exchange speculation and company promotion in lieu of personal enterprise,
has given opportunity for new forms of fraud, sometimes on a prodigious scale,
and by the establishment of gigantic combinations, especially in the United
States of America, has threatened to stifle competition for the benefit of
colossal monopolies. By these changes the spirit and general aspect of commerce
and industry have been altered; the authority and economic importance of
individuals have been not diminished bat increased; but, in the eye of the
world and of the law, the company has been substituted for the man. This
process had, of course, begun before the last century, but its immense
extension has taken place chiefly in the last forty years.
The
concentration of thought and energy on the production and accumulation of
wealth has infused the whole epoch with a materialistic tinge. The systematic
and self-conscious study of the fine arts and the collection of artistic
treasures have been carried further than before; but the artistic imagination
has been sterile. A high general level has been maintained in the plastic and
pictorial arts; but genius has been conspicuously absent. Engineering has made
enormous strides; architecture has been uninspired. Fiction has flourished more
than poetry; but the great mass of stories and romances seem designed rather to
satisfy the general need for an anodyne, for temporary oblivion, than to realise
an artistic ideal. Journalistic and fugitive literature of every description
has been abundant. There have been great actors, and superb theatrical
display, but no great dramatists. The most notable productions in drama have
been critical and rebellious, like those of Ibsen, rather than enthusiastic in
the worship and quest of beauty. After the robust optimism of Robert Browning
and George Meredith a common note of pessimism becomes apparent in most of the
few writers of acknowledged European eminence who have recently come to the
front, in Anatole France, Tolstoi, Thomas Hardy, and Maxim Gorky; Maeterlinck
withdraws himself into a mystical and melancholy land of faery, far removed
from sordid contemporary struggles and the tyranny of the senses; while Gabriele
d’Annunzio makes surrender, without reserve or scruple, to the poetry of
animalism and creates a world of beauty in which thought and the higher
emotions have no place. The chief efforts of constructive political thought
have been devoted to the framing of the materialistic
14 Statesmen of the period.—La haute finance.
utopias of
social reformers. Even the Church has been infected; the modem priest is
sometimes more concerned for the unemployed than for the unrepentant. Music
alone among the creative arts has been alive and fruitful; and the production
and popularity of the romantic musical dramas of Wagnei have been perhaps the
most noteworthy artistic events of the generation.
Since the
fall of Bismarck, no statesman of unquestionable greatness has appeared in the
European arena. It may be that some were great, but emergencies did not arise
to te.t and prove their greatness. The career of William Ewart Gladstone fills
a large part of our period, bat as Prime Minister his influence in foreign
policy was felt more by the action which he declined to take, or took
unwilliiigly, than by any far-sighted course of conduct in affairs. The
inscrutable Disraeli still moves the world by the imperialistic aspirations
which he first aroused in the unimaginative souls of his fellow countrymen, but
his actual achievements were small. Lord Salisbury steered a skilful course
safely through troubled waters. Gambetta’s dominant personality touched the
imagination and won the affections of France, but his career was blighted and
ineffectual. Of men still living it is too soon to speak, but we should look in
vain for any whose actuii1 achievements entitle him to rank with
Cavour, or Lincoln, or Bismarck. Even the successes of Japan appear to have
been won, not by the efforts and policy of one man, but by the harmonious
energy of many inspired with a common purpose. In spite of democratic:
conditions, monarchs have played their full share in moulding the history of
nations. Francis Joseph, Queen Victoria, Victor Emmanuel, William II, Edward
VII, have been not the least important statesmen of the period; while
Abd-ul-Hamid and Ta’u Hsi deserve a separate sentence. But, on the whole, the
conditions of the time and the universal desire to maintain the existing
equilibrium have not favoured the rise to conspicuous power and eminence of any
individual.
But the
somewhat monotonous and generally unsensational course of public events has not
been due merely to the fear of change constricting the ambitions of statesmen
and peoples; a moderating influence has also been exercised by the constantly
increasing power of financial interests. We shall never know exactly when and
how financial considerations have enrbed the exuberance of petty States or the
ambitions of Great Powers. The interests of financiers are as a rule on the
side of peace and tranquillity; their power is constantly waxing; their means
of persuasion are multifarious and convincing, and can be employed against
govemmerts as well as against individuals; an unfavourable policy can even be
checked by an artificial stringency of credit which is felt by small and great.
Where, as in the United States, a large proportion of the population takes a
hand in speculation, thousands of voters are affected by market considerations
in the exercise of their franchise. No Power, no person, is too great, no man
too humble, to be reached by
Schemes of social regeneration.
15
the pervasive
and unseen pressure of financial interests, and financial authority. This
force, non-moral as it is, sordid as it may seem, is a growing factor in
European politics, and, as a rule, it is exercised for the preservation of
peace. It is not only ubiquitous and massive; it is highly organised, highly
centralised, and in large measure directed by skilled minds, who understand not
only the movements of the Exchange but the secret springs of popular feeling.
The obscure sense in the popular mind of the weight and momentum of this unseen
force goes far to account for the anti-Semitic movement, which is so widespread
in many continental countries. .
The age has
been prosaic and unromantic; the enthusiasm for the mechanical and scientific
triumphs of the early Victorian period has somewhat faded; the belief in
constitutional government and universal education as a remedy for all political
and social evils has been shaken; the blots on our economic and moral order
have been relentlessly drawn to light; self-complacency is no longer
fashionable; it is more popular to decry than to praise the world in which we
live. The consolations of religion have for the moment lost their efficacy in
large sections of the European population. The zeal of the young and ardent is
thrown into schemes of social regeneration. Such schemes are everywhere,
whether they take the form of personal work among the poor and the sick, or
trades-union politics, or visions of progressive legislation moving step by
step towards an improved society, or propaganda leading up to the social
revolution and common ownership of all land, machinery, and productive organisation;
or the blind schemes of murder and destruction nursed in garrets and basements
by the half-mad apostles of militant Anarchism. All these schemes alike are
materialistic in their aims; their kingdom is of this world; they seek for no
spiritual compensations, they admit no spiritual rapture; their professors
represent all grades between the extreme of self-devotion and the culmination
of hate, envy, and greed. But the belief in the possibility of social reform by
conscious effort is the most dominant current in the modern European mind; it
has superseded the old belief in liberty as the one panacea; even Bismarck paid
homage to it; and no modem statesman can afford to ignore it. Its substantial
achievements, and perhaps its disappointments, are in the future; but its
currency in the present is as significant and as pregnant as the belief in the
Rights of Man about the time of the French Revolution. The coming age will be
occupied by the attempt to translate its ideals into the phrases of practical politics.
FOREIGN
RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES DURING THE CIVIL WAR
The Civil War was so tremendous a struggle that while
it lasted the United States could concern themselves with no foreign relations
but such as could be held to have some bearing upon it. Within that sphere
questions were raised which in the end were happily settled, but which during
twelve years so seriously threatened the peace between the United States and
Great Britain that they rank in historical importance with the more exciting
narratives of wars and conquests.
The secession
of the Southern States was a challenge to arms, which Lincoln accepted in his
inaugural address by declaring that to the best of his ability he would execute
the laws of the Union. It was at once evident that the sea would bear a large1
part in the contest. On April 17, 1861, Jefferson Davis invited applications
for letters of marque and reprisal. On the 19th Lincoln proclaimed his
intention to blockade the Confederate ports “ in pursuance of the laws of the
United States and of the law of nations.” On the 24th Seward, the Secretary of
State, in order to defeat the adversary’s first move, issued the first of a
series of despatches instructing the ministers of the United States in Europe
to jffer their adhesion to the Declaration of Paris, which they had previously
refused from a desire to maintain privateering so long as enemy property
remained capturable as such at sea. But it was impossible that the Government
at Washington should bind that at Richmond; and Great Britain and France agreed
to receive the adhesion only with the reservation that it could not affect the
existing war. This Seward did not accept, and the proposal dropped. The
Congress of the Confederate States, on steps being taken by Great Britain and
France to ascertain their policy on the subject, passed a resolution to the
same effect as the Declaration of Paris except as to privateering, and the two
contending Powers were thus at one on the point of maritime law. In fact,
however, the United States issued no letters of marque, and the Confederate
States but few; and all the vessels prominent on the side of the latter were
either commissioned ships of their navy or tenders of such.
The
precedents which had been set during the wars of independence of the United
States, the Spanish American colonies, and Greece, had
I86i] British and other Declarations of
Neutrality, 17
established a
general understanding as to the rights and duties of third parties in such
cases. Two stages have to be distinguished, to the second of which, the
recognition of the separating body as a new member of the family of nations, no
third party advanced during the American Civil War. It is therefore unnecessary
to discuss the conditions necessary for such a •recognition. The first stage is
the recognition of the belligerency of the contending parties, which, when the
struggle is carried on with the methods and dimensions of a war, is necessary
for ascertaining che legal position of those who are brought into contact with
it. If, for instance, a Government desires to prevent foreign intercourse with
a coast of whieh it has lost the possession, and where therefore its laws are
no longer binding on foreigners, its authority to exclude them iepenis on the
right of blockade, which it can enjoy only as a belligerent. Again, it is only
as a belligerent that either party can capture and condemn contraband of war,
or search vessels for it at sea. And on the recognition of belligerency
follows the duty of an impartial neutrality. Whether the recognition of
belligerency is not merely the right of third parties but their duty when a war
exists in fact, is still matter of controversy; but the Confederate States, if
it had been denied them, might have pointed out that the United States, during
their own war of independence, claimed it from Denmark as a duty.
Declarations
of neutrality, which are the usual mode of recognising the belligerency of the
parties to a conflict, were issued by Great Britain on May 13,1861, and by
France, Spain, and the Netherlands during June. That they were not issued a day
too soon for giving notice of their legal position to the individuals
concerned, appears from the fact that the British schooner Tropic Wvnd was
captured for breach of the blockade on May 21. But the declarations elicited
from the United States a repudiation of all known doctrine on the subject.
Seward, in his despatches to London and Paris, laid down that there could be no
war because the United States were “still solely and exclusively sovereign
within the territories” disputed, none therefore until “the revolution should
have run its successful course.” This was to exclude altogether from
international law the recognition of belligerency as distinct from the
recognition of achieved independence. When the extravagance of such a plea was
too apparent to allow of its repetition, Seward took his stand on the
declarations having been unnecessary and therefore premature, because there was
no Confederate navy till the Sumter put to sea from the Mississippi on June
30. It thus became both the popular and the official view that the declarations
of neutrality were not the recognition but the “grant” or “concession” of
belligerent rights; that the British declaration —which in truth made nothing
lawful in England to the Confederacy or its agents and friends which was not
otherwise lawful to them—was the cause of the war by opening to them the
resources of England and by encouraging them to rely on British goodwill; and
that the same could
o. m. r. xir. OB. II.
2
18 Blockade of the Southern ports.—The Trent
affair. [i86i
not be said
of the French and other declarations because the resources of those countries
were not similarly used by blockade-runners and others—a fact due to the
superiority of the British market, though it was asserted that British
sympathies were the motive. It was forgotten that arms were more largely
purchased in England by the Government of the United States than by that of the
Confederates; and that such purchases and blockade-running, subject to the
chance of either being intercepted at sea, are allowed by the law of nations.
Such views implied that nothing less than the whole cost of the war could be
the measure of the claim which might be made against Great Britain,
The blockade,
during the first year of its existence, was far from satisfying that condition
of being effective which exists for blockades as well under the Declaration of
Paris as under older law. This was natural, considering the great extent of
coast to which it was to be applied, and the fact that the navy which was to
apply it had to be created. It became effective later, but at first the
European Powers might lawfully have refused to submit to it. That they did not
take that course may be attributed in great measure to the reluctance to enter
on forcible measures which has always placed neutrals at a disadvantage
compared with belligerents, who, being already engaged in such measures,
hesitate less to extend their area. But, when all deductions are made, the toleration
of the first year’s blockade must be allowed to show that goodwill to the
Confederate cause, though certainly prevalent in the upper classes of society,
was not in Great Britain a force capable of determining government action. That
toleration caused bitter resentment among the Confederate population, who had
relied on their dream that “ cotton is king ”; and so England became the object
of aversion on both sides. The chief source of the feeling in the North
probably lay in the disappointed hope that the anti-slavery sentiment, in which
England had led the world, would induce her to grant to the Northern cause a
benevolent and not an impartial neutrality.
The next
incident in order of time was that of the Trent. She was a steamer belonging to
a British company, carrying mails under a contract with the British post-office
between the Spanish port of Havana in Cuba and the Danish West-Indian island St
Thomas. She was stopped on November 8,1861, by the United States ship of war
Sun Jacinto, Captain AVilkes, and allowed to proceed after four persons, who
had run the blockade and come on board at Havana, had been taken from her by
forcible but not uncourteous compulsion. These. were Mason and Slidell, charged
by the Confederate Government with the duty of trying to open negotiations with
the Governments of Great Britain and France respectively, and their respective
secretaries, Macfarland and Eustis. They were on their way to Europe for the
performance of their mission, with credentials and instructions which Captain
Wilkes failed to discover. The points of law were all against
I86I-2] End of the Trent difficulty.—British
neutrality. 19
the captors.
First, the Trent held no belligerent charter, nor had she taken the four
persons on board by special contract with the Confederate Government; and she
was therefore not in belligerent service, real or constructive. Secondly,
persons in the enemy’s military or naval service are the only persons whom it
was ever lawful to seize on board a neutral vessel not in belligerent service.
The right of a neutral Government to receive, if it pleases, envoys or papers
addressed to it, prevents their capture except in enemy territory or
belligerent ships. Thirdly, contraband, even could the four persons be treated
as such, cannot be captured on a neutral ship unless it has an enemy
destination, either immediate or ulterior under the doctrine of continuous
voyage. But the Trent was bound to a neutral port; and the ulterior
destinations of the persons were neutral. The capture, which aroused a tempest
of wrath in England, was received with jubilation in the United States. The
Secretary of the Navy assured Captain Wilkes that his conduct had the emphatic
approval of that department; and the House of Representatives voted him the thanks
of Congress. Seward reserved his decision until Earl Russell had in very
temperate language claimed the liberation of the four persons with a suitable
apology, and Thouvenel, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, had supported
that claim in a reasoned despatch, in which he reminded the United States of
the part they had taken in establishing the laws which had been violated.
Seward then conceded the British claim, while maintaining the propriety of the
capture if only the Trent had been brought in for adjudication. Captain Wilkes’
reason for not bringing her in when he could have done so without danger,
namely to avoid inconvenience and loss to the innocent passengers, he held to
be insufficient. Thus the incident ended; but Austria, Prussia, Russia, and
Italy expressed to the United States strong disapproval of the capture as being
incompatible with the neutral rights always defended by them.
The year 1862
introduces a change of scene. During the remainder of the war the errors
consisted in failures to perform neutral duties; and here Great Britain was at
fault. The theory of neutral duties had been gradually advanced and rendered
more precise; but the British Government and British opinion had lagged behind
in the appreciation of the progress. At the point at which they halted, the
conception of a neutral’s duty extended but little beyond conceding or refusing
to one belligerent what he conceded or refused to the other. The prohibition to
use neutral territory as a belligerent base was scarcely felt to prohibit more
than the departure from such territory of expeditions in the popular sense. The
starting from it of a ship in belligerent service was not distinguished from
the export of a ship as contraband of war. The neutral’s duty to bring his laws
and methods of action up to the standard necessary for the adequate performance
of his international obligations was imperfectly realised. The sufficiency of
British legal provision and
,20
executive
action was now to be tested by the activity of Confederate agents and
sympathisers on British soil, under the eyes of the United .States, who bad
perfected their own Neutrality Laws in 1818. The result was that two sips,
which became famous for the ravage which, as Confederate cruisers, they wrought
on United States commerce, began their career in circumstances which the
arbitrators at Geneva held to involve Great Britain in liability. Those
circumstances need not here be derailed.. It is enough to say that the judgment
has met with general approval, in the writer’s .opinion well merited; but that
the good intentions of the British Government were above all serious question.
The two ships were the Alabama, the name of which has attached itself to the
whole (controversy in which she figured, and the Oreto, afterwards called the
Florida. Both were built at Liverpool and left that port in Confederate
service, but unarmed. The Alabama began her fighting career with a crew which
was gathered in England but not engaged in British waters for Confederate
service, and received outside British waters an arrr'ament sent to her from
England. The iOreto received her armament at the British island of Green
Cay, one of the Bahamas; but the crew which she took with her on her final
departure from British waters was only just sufficient to carry her into the
Confederate port >of Mobile. The United States sought to make Great Britain
liable for •other cruisers which had been .built or purchased in Great Britain;
but the only one for which the arbitrators found such liability to iexist was
the Shenandoah, and for her they found it only after she had succeeded in
obtaining at Melbourne an increase of her crew.
But it was
not only in the defence of its own territory from belligerent encroachment that
the British Government incurred liability for default in the performance of
neutral duties. The cruisers which had violated British neutrality gave, by
entering British ports, the opportunity of vindicating it and putting a stop to
their ravages. Instead, however, of being arrested they ■were allowed to
depart after receiving hospitality, as though, by becoming commissioned ships
of the Confederate navy, they had purged itheir previous offence. This might
have been a justifiable course if the Confederacy had been a recognised State
whose flag Great Britain was bound to respect, and from which she might have
demanded redress. But to take that course in the case of a helligerent party
from which redress could not be demanded, because it was not recognised as a
State and Great Britain had no diplomatic relations with it, was to confound
the distinction between the recognition of insurgents as belligerents and their
i ecognition as having established their independence For an analogous reason
no difference in British liability arose from the fact that the Florida, before
she made any captures, had entered the Confederate port of Mobile and there
received her commission. A belligerent body from which redress could not be
sought could not interpose its flag as a defence.
The blockade,
now strictly enforced, caused a cotton famine in Lancashire which plunged the
operatives into severe di tress; but they bore it nobly to the end of the War,
for what they perceived to be the cause of freedom. Neither by them nor by any
influential member of either House of Parliament was countenance ever given to
any proposal for recognising the Confederate States or interfering in their
behalf. In November, 1862, when the Emperor of the French was invading Mexico'
with' the avowed purpose of overthrowing her actual Republican government, he
proposed that France, Russia, and Great Britain should join in recommending to
the United and Confederate States an ari”'stice for six months, during wh h the
terms of a lasting pacification might be liscussed. Great Britain refused, and
the proposal was abortive. But the maritime commerce of the United States was
seriously damaged by the exploits of the Confederate cruisers, all the more
because the blockade prevented them from bringing in their captures for adjudication
and they consequently burnt them at sea, which multiplied the captures they
were able to make and gave them a more odious appearance. This again maintained
at the highest point the popular opinion in the United States as to the claims
justly to be made against Great Britain.
In favour of
Seward it must be recorded, first, that from the beginning he looked to
arbitration as a means of settlement* Adams, the United States minister in
London, wrote to Earl Russell on October 23,1863: “lam directed to say that
there is no fair and equitable form of conventional arbitrament or reference to
which they [the United States] will not be willing to submit.” Earl Russell
rejected the idea, but by 1866 British opinion on the point had changed.
Secondly, notwithstanding some vague references in the correspondence to
redress for national as well as private injuries, the convention which, under
Seward’s direction, Reverdy Johnson, Adams’ successor as minister, signed with
Lord Clarendon on January 14, 1869, did not provide for national injuries, but
for a joint commission before which the private sufferers from the Alabama and
her consorts might have claimed against Great Britain. The Senate of the United
States rejected the Johnson- Clarendon Convention by a majority of 44 to 1
after a very inflammatory speech by Sumner, in which the claim for damages for
national injuries was insisted on. As Chairman of the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations Sumner was consulted by Fish in the course of the further
negotiations to be mentioned, and replied with a demand for Canada and the West
Indies. “The withdrawal,” he wrote, “ of the British flag cannot be abandoned
as a condition or preliminary of such a settlement as is now proposed. To make
the settlement complete the withdrawal should be from this hemisphere,
including provinces and islands.”
Fish, who
became Secretary of State on the entrance into office of President Grant in
1869, was thus faced by a task of no common difficulty. If the treaty which was
to secure peace between the two
UH, II.
great nations
was to be accepted by the United States, it was certain that it must not
distinctly exclude from arbitration the national, or as they were also called
the indirect, claims. If it was to be accepted by Great Britain, it must not
distinctly include them among the subjects submitted for decision. Add to this
that Fish was so far from believing in the indirect claims which he had in some
measure to support, that he wished them to be adjudicated upon in order that
the adverse decision of the arbitrators might protect the United States against
claims of that nature in the future. Commissioners on both sides met at
Washington and concluded the treaty of May 8, 1871, which dealt with other
questions also, but expressed “ the regret felt by Her Majesty’s Government for
the escape, under whatever circumstances, of the Alabama and other vessels from
British ports, and for the depredations committed by those vessels.” It went on
to refer “the Alabama claims” to five arbitrators who should meet at Geneva, in
language which the respective sets of commissioners believed on the one side to
exclude and on the other to include the indirect claims. The proceedings under
the reference were commenced; and, when it was found that the printed case
submitted by the United States included those claims, the hidden difference
broke out. The arbitrators declared that, without expressing an opinion on the
interpretation of the treaty, they were of opinion that the indirect claims
were not a good foundation for an award of damages between nations. The
proceedings were then resumed on the direct claims only, and ended, on
September 14, 1872, in an award of $15,500,000 against Great Britain.
The Geneva
arbitration was rendered possible by the insertion in the Treaty of Washington
of three rules by which Great Britain agreed that it should be governed, while
declaring that she could not assent to them as having been principles of
international law in force at the time when the claims arose; and it was further
provided that the contracting parties should observe those rules as between
themselves in future. This was widely regarded in Great Britain as a serious
concession ; but it is believed that there is now no important authority in
any country who regards the three rules as having been substantially novel, or
as making any excessive demand on neutrals.
To complete
this view of the principal foreign relations of the United States during the
Civil War, it is only necessary to say that, while that war continued, their
Government maintained an attitude of reserve with regard to the French
intervention in Mexico, but that in 1865 it addressed France in terms which
have been correctly summarised by Frederic Bancroft as “withdraw or fight.”
Dates for the return of the French army to Europe were arranged between the two
Governments; and the French finally withdrew in 1867.
GREAT
BRITAIN.
The elections of 1868 on the extended
franchise gave the Liberal party the substantial majority of 112. Disraeli
resigned on December 2 and Gladstone accepted the invitation to form a
Ministry. The most noteworthy members of his Cabinet were Edward Cardwell, who
was Secretary for War, a clear-headed and capable administrator; Lord
Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, a Whig aristocrat, well suited by his genial
character and charming manner for diplomatic intercourse, by his industry,
skill, and experience for the conduct of foreign affairs, and described by
Gladstone as the only living British statesman whose name carried any influence
in the councils of Europe; Robert Lowe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose
ability was marred by defect of sympathy, narrowness of view, an unfortunate
acidity of speech, and excess of cleverness; and Lord Granville, Colonial Secretary,
whose dexterity and tact in the management of his equals stood him in good
stead as leader in the House of Lords. The Ministry also comprised two orators
of mark, John Bright, and the Duke of Argyll; and men of such varied and
conspicuous talents and qualities as Lord Hartington, Lord DufFerin, and
Goschen. William Edward Forster, as Vice-President of the Council, had the
chief responsibility for educational policy without a seat in the Cabinet.
Though he had
reached his sixtieth year, the leader was in the prime of life and vigour;
Earnest and sincere beyond question, he had enormous industry and driving
force. The revolts which his imperious methods occasioned he was generally able
to quell by virtue of his dominant personality. But, absorbed as he was at all
times in the details of the political conflict, sensitive to the movements of
feeling among his own supporters, subtle and elusive in thought and language,
his career and policy bear an opportunist stamp, which is singular in one so
sincere. His actions and efforts seem always governed by the immediate need
rather than by far-sighted purpose; in foreign complications, by the desire to
avoid the necessity of intervention, a policy which often failed to achieve its
end; in home policy, by the wish to maintain or
on. m,
24 The
Irish Church and Irish Land. [1869-71
restore his
majority, to carry through the measure of the moment, now leaning upon one
section of the community, and now upon another. Those manifestations may have
been due in part to the exigencies of parliamentary government; at any rate, no
simple formula can be framed to explain the details of his conduct; but, in
this, the first Parliament which he led, some unity is supplied by the trend of
public events, and the task which was set to him. The forces of emancipatory
Liberalism had gathered once more. Restrictions on individual liberty still
remained which could without danger be removed; needless privileges were in
existence which could be abolished; expenditure could be reduced, and the
burden of taxation readjusted. At the same time the Liberal watchword of
Liberty did not satisfy all the needs of the situation; the necessity for
constructive social legislation, especially in education, was beginning to be
felt; and the insistent problem of Irish discontent called for solution.
Gladstone on
his accession to power attributed to himself the task of pacifying Ireland. He
cannot, at that time, have understood the difficulties of this enterprise; but
he pursued it to the end with unwavering devotion. It is characteristic of him
that he should have seen in the position of the Irish Church the vital point of
grievance; it is natural that the principles which he represented should have
carried him to assault this stronghold of illogical privilege. All his own
resources, those of his party, and those of the Crown, were devoted to this
end, and the Bill was successfully pressed through. More will be said of this
measure and its consequences in a later chapter.
No sooner had
this question been settled than the more fundamental question of Irish land
tenure came in sight. Bright’s heroic remedy of land purchase and the creation
of an Irish peasant proprietary, though it was afterwards adopted by a
Conservative Government, was no doubt politically impracticable at that time.
Gladstone himself was in principle averse from interference with freedom of
contract; some of his colleagues were even more strictly wedded to the
principles of free competition; and the resulting Irish Land Act (1870), fought
through by Gladstone with little help from his chief subordinates, while
recognising in effect the part- ownership of the Irish tenant, only touched the
fringe of the subject, and left the main problems unsolved. Ireland was not
pacified, and two Coercion Acts (1870 and 1871) were necessary.
The two
greatest administrative measures of Gladstone’s first Ministry owed little to
its chief. The need of better provision for elementary education was
universally acknowledged; and the task of supplying this need was entrusted to
Forster. It was reckoned that at the time there were 4,300,000 children who
ought to have been at school. Of these, about 1,300,000 were receiving
education in schools established by voluntary effort, inspected by Government,
and receiving government grants to supplement the school fees and private
subscriptions. The
main body of
these schools were Church of England schools. About another million of children
were attending private schools which received no grant and underwent no
inspection.
Gladstone
himself believed, on the one hand, in the “ integrity of religious education”;
he held that the religious instruction imparted in the schools should be the
exposition of a definite and coherent system of beliefs, not the attenuated
common residue that might remain after conflicting creeds had been pruned of
their divergent elements; on the other band, he stood for liberty of
conscience, which in his opinion could be reconciled with the rights of the
majority by allowing elective bodies to prescribe the form of religions
instruction, and permitting individuals to withdraw their children from any
religious instruction which offended their principles. Yet the measure that was
adopted divided the kingdom of England and Wales, almost at haphazard, into two
categories of districts, the schools into two classes of schools. In the one
set of schools integrity of religious instruction was maintained, but popular
control of religious instruction was excluded, and each school was open to the
integral religious instruction of one denomination only. In the other set of
schools popular control was fettered and the integrity of religious instruction
rendered impossible by the “ Cowper-Temple clause,” providing that no
religious catechism or religious formulary distinctive of any particular
denomination should be taught. It was left at the option of the School Boards
to teach no religion; they were not permitted to teach any in its integrity.
Gladstone denounced one of the most striking features of his own Act when he
spoke (1870) of the “ popular imposture of undenominational instruction ”; and,
in fact,, the Act for which he was responsible maintained only one of his
principles, that embodied in the provision that any parent should be at liberty
to withdraw his child from the religious instruction provided. The system
established by the Act of 1870 will receive further attention elsewhere; it
will be sufficient here to note that the Act satisfied nobody, least of all the
Birmingham League, which had advocated universal gratuitous, compulsory, and
secular education, and the Nonconformists, who resented the favourable
treatment conceded to the “ Voluntary” Church of England schools. The Education
Act for Scotland passed n 1872 created there a universal system of School Boards
and left the question of religious instruction to the Boards. In Scotland this
solution presented little difficulty, as the Shorter Catechism was common
ground for the great majority of the people.
The other
great measure of Gladstone’s first Ministry—the reform of the Army—was due to
the energy and administrative ability of Cardwell. The first step was to
subordinate the office of Commander-in-chief to the Secretary of State for War.
This reform was successfully carried out, though the relics of the old dual
authority persisted until the abolition of the office and the establishment of
the Army Council in 1904. The next step was to establish an effective reserve.
The British army had
26
Army Reform.— The Civil Service.
hitherto been
a long-service army, with practically no reserve except the militia. Cardwell
(1870) introduced short service, normally six years with the colours and six in
the reserve, though the period with the colours could be prolonged or shortened
at the discretion of the authorities. He also introduced the system of linked
battalions, the battalions of the infantry being grouped in pairs, one
stationed at home to be used for recruiting and training, the other to serve
abroad, drawing its drafts from the home battalion. This system was fairly well
adapted to provide the necessary garrisons for India and the empire in time of
peace, and to supply expeditionary forces on a moderate scale; it made,
however, insufficient provision for home defence, and was inadequate for the
possible and even for the actual needs of foreign service. Soon afterwards
(1872) the army was reorganised on a territorial basis, the militia and
volunteers being grouped with the regular forces and brought under the same
control. The change, however, which excited most public notice was the
abolition of the system by which officers on retirement or resignation received
payment from those who benefited by the resulting promotion. The Bill framed
for this purpose was hung up by the Lords in 1871, and the measure was then
carried out by a Royal Warrant, abolishing the system of purchase. The Lords
were thus forced to pass the Bill, in order to secure compensation for those
who suffered by the reform.
One of the
most important measures of this Ministry, and, incidentally, one of the most
effective blows at privilege, was an administrative measure carried out by
royal prerogative. The Order in Council of June 4, 1870, established the
principle of open competitive examination for filling ordinary posts in the
Civil Service. Posts in the Indian Civil Service had for about seventeen years
been filled in this way; but the Home Service had since 1855 been recruited by
limited competitions among nominated candidates, conducted by the Civil Service
Commission, established in that year. The new Order was speedily adopted by
almost all the chief Departments—the Foreign Office remaining a notable
exception. In spite of theoretical and practical objections which can be
raised, the system of open competition has worked well, and has freed the
public service from all suspicion of jobbery in connexion with such
appointments. Many places, especially among those for which technical or
professional training is required, are still filled by limited competition
among selected candidates, and a very large number of minor posts by the
nomination of Heads of Departments, subject to a qualifying examination as to
age, health, character, and educational qualifications; but the ordinary
clerical and administrative staff, higher and lower, male and female, is now
almost exclusively recruited by various types of open competition; and the
Order in Council of 1870 has stood the test of time.
Other
measures directed towards the removal of restrictions and privileges were the
Ballot Act of 1872, which opened the way for the
1869-76]
Other legislation.—Finance.
exercise of
political pressure by the peasants of Ireland, the abolition of religious tests
for degrees, fellowships, and offices in the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge (1871), the repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act of 1851, which
prohibited the assumption of territorial titles by prelates of the Roman
Catholic Church invested with spiritual authority in England, and the Trades
Unions Act (1871), which, while giving to those bodies protection against the
embezzlement of their funds, strengthened the laws against “ picketing.” The
establishment of the Local Government Board to control the administration of
the Poor Law and other municipal functions (1871), and the Judicature Act of
1873 —which was intended to fuse the Chancery, the three Common Law Courts, and
the Admiralty, Probate, and Divorce Courts, together with the intermediate
Courts of Appeal, into one Supreme Court of Judicature consisting of a High
Court of Justice and a Court of Appeal—were important administrative and
constructive reforms which deserve to be set to the credit of this remarkable
Ministry. Lord Selbome, the Lord Chancellor, was anxious, in the interests of
simplicity, to abolish the further appeal from the Court of Appeal to the House
of Lords, and the Bill passed in this form; but in 1876, when the whole
question of appeals had to be taken up not only for England but also for
Scotland and Ireland, professional opinion proved too strong for Lord Cairns,
and the House of Lords was reconstituted as a second and final Court of Appeal.
It may further be noted that a Licensing Bill for public- houses was introduced
in 1871, which would within ten years have brought the whole value of the
licenses to the credit of the community, and have reduced the number of
licensed houses in conformity with the needs and desires of the locality. But,
on the one hand, the temperance party were not satisfied and, on the other,
the interests attacked were too strong; and the Bill was in consequence
withdrawn.
Gladstone did
not become Chancellor of the Exchequer until 1873; but his influence was
powerfully exercised in the interests of economy. Although large sums had to be
supplied as compensation for the abolished system of purchase in the army, for
the increased cost of education, and for the Alabama claims, the expenditure
was kept within narrow bounds; and the prosperity of the country was such that
in every year of the Administration there was a substantial surplus—amounting
in the year 1869-70 to six and a half millions, and in 1873-4 to nearly six—
although considerable remissions of taxation were made from time to time, and
in particular the last impost of a shilling a quarter on imported wheat was
removed. Measured by later standards, the votes for the army and navy were
chary; but they were fortunately not proved insufficient for the actual needs
of the country.
The principal
foreign questions in which the country was concerned during this Administration
were the Franco-German War and the Alabama controversy with the United States.
The origin and course of
CB. 111.
28
[1870-1
the
Franco-German War have been fully set forth in a previous volume. Just before
its outbreak Lord Clarendon had died, and Lord Granville had succeeded him at
the Foreign Offiee. It is doubtful' whether the itmost resolution', vigour, and
despatch could have done anything to prevent the collision for which both
countries had been preparing, and which Bismarek was determined to hasten; Lord
Granville was not disposed to take a strong line, and, in the result, Great
Britain’s neutrality, though scrupulously maintained, was regarded by both
Powers as unfriendly. The one decisive action taken by Great Britain was tor
recognise her individual responsibility for the maintenance’ of the integrity
and neutrality of Belgian territory. This guarantee, though it proved to be
inexpensive and effective, was not free from apparent risk, and deserves to be
reckohed to the credit of an Administration which was not often willing to take
such risks.
As an outcome
of this War, the Russian Government denounced' (October 81, 1870) the clauses
of the Treaty of Paris (1856) which forbade Russia to build or maintain ships
of war in the Black Sea. The point was probably not worth fighting about, and
in any case Great Britain did not intend to fight; but by judicious hints of
possible war Lord Odo Russell persuaded Bismarck to propose a Conference of the
Powers in London, which solemnly proclaimed the sanot;+.y of
treaties, and erased the obnoxious clauses' of the Treaty in question. Great
Britain obtained, however, an advantage in the new provision which perrvitted
the Sultan to allow the war-vessels of friendly Powers to enter the Black Sea
in time of peace in order to maintain the Treaty of 1856.
The Alabama
question is dealt with in a preceding chapter of this volume, and also, from
another point of view, in a later chapter. The depredations of the Alabama and
other vessels had formed the cardinal point of an undefined series of
grievances which had been cherished by the United States against this country
ever since the end of the great Civil War. The concessions of Gladstone’s
Government in this matter were on the liberal side; but there is now little
difference of opinion as to the blameworthy neglect of the British authorities,
and the price (i?3,200,000) paid for reconciliation was moderate compared with
the danger of prolonged friction and ill-will. The Foreign Enlistment Act
(1870) had already made provision to prevent another Alabama from being built
and sent forth under similar circumstances. Shortly afterwards, the
arbitration of the German Emperor, arranged for by the Treaty of Washington,
May, 1871, awarded the island of San Juan off Vancouver to the United States.
The foreign
policy of Gladstone’s Government, although it was probably judicious, did not
add to its popularity with the nation. The feverish energy of legislation
harassed vested interests and fatigued the people. The subtlety of Gladstone’s
mind had involved him in several tortuous transactions, innocent in themselves,
but open to hostile com
1873-4]
Difficulties of the Government.
29
ment. The
abolition of purchase by Royal Warranty the formal appointment of Sir Robert
Collier, Attorney-General, to a Judgeship in order to confer upon him the
qualification required by law for elevation to one of the paid posts on the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the nomination of a Cambridge man to
fill a living in the gift of the Crown which was reserved for members of the
Oxford House of Convocation, in which he was incorporated for the purpose—
these were all ingenious moves, harmless in intention, but unacceptable to the
British mind. In 1873, it became apparent that Gladstone’s ascendancy was
waning. A Bill was prepared for establishing a University in Ireland, to
include Trinity College, Dublin, the unsectarin Colleges of Belfast and Cork,
and the Roman Catholic University, without university chairs of theology,
philosophy, or history, and with “gagging” clauses to prevent university
teachers from offending the prejudices of any section of their classes. So bad
a Bill seems to indicate some temporary failure in the attention or the
judgment of the overworked Prime Minister, who was directly responsible. It was
thrown out on the second reading by a majority of three (March, 1873).
Gladstone handed in his resignation ; but Disraeli refused to take office. He
preferred to wait upon the flowing tide of public opinion, and Gladstone
consented to ren.ain in power. Another unfortunate transaction came to
Disraeli’s aid. In July, it became known that Post Office funds to the amount
of ,£8u0,000 had been diverted from the Consolidated Fund, to which they
belonged, to the expenses of telegraphic construction. Of the three responvble
officials, the Postmaster-General, Monsell, was retired with a peerage, Lowe
was transferred from the Exchequer to the Home Office, and Ayrton was removed
from the Office of Works to become Judge-Advocate- General. Though there was no
suspicion of malversation, the irregularity was flagrant, and the Liberal
Government lost heavily in prestige.
Gladstone
himself assumed the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer vacated by Lowe
(August, 1873). The question was afterwards raised whether he had not thereby
exposed himself to the inconvenient necessity of seeking reelection. It was a
nice constitutional point, and, so far as in him lay, Gladstone decided it in
his own favour. But his decision was not final or conclusive, and it may be
that the prospect of further trouble contributed to hasten his resolution to
dissolve. There were, however, other and weightier reasons. In the discussion
of the estimates which normally takes place towards the end of the civil year,
Gladstone, as Chancellor, pressed substantial reductions upon Cardwell for the
army and Goschen for the navy. These Ministers offered resistance, and
Gladstone determined to appeal to the country on a policy of reduced
expenditure and the abolition of the Income Tax. This resolution, once adopted,
was speedily carried into effect and announced on January 24, 1874, to the
nation. Hopes were also held out of some relief of local taxation, and of the
grant of the franchise to agricultural labourers.
oh. in.
30
Gladstone and
Disraeli.
[1874
At the
General Election which followed Disraeli obtained a majority of 50 over Irish
Home Rulers and Liberals combined, and quickly formed his Ministry (February,
1874). The most noteworthy of his colleagues were Lord Derby at the Foreign
Office, whose cautious temperament ill accorded with the spirit of his friend
and chief; Lord Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary, who also failed to follow his
leader when it came to vigorous action; Lord Salisbury at the India Office, at
one time a relentless critic, later the faithful ally, of Disraeli; Lord
Cairns, his Lord Chancellor, and a great lawyer; Sir Stafford Northcote, a
capable administrator trained in Gladstone’s school, who was made Chancellor of
the Exchequer; and Richard Assheton Cross, Home Secretary, who was responsible
for some excellent legislation.
The new Prime
Minister was a singular contrast to his predecessor, and all the better suited
to the existing temper of the nation. Gladstone was earnest and devoid of
humour; Disraeli was ironical and imaginative. Gladstone looked on government
mainly from the Treasury point of view; Disraeli had a vivid sense of the
romantic aspects of the British imperial position. Gladstone was a High
Churchman and the leader of Nonconformists; Disraeli was a Jew, and the
champion of moderate evangelical churchmen. Gladstone began life as a Tory, and
was driven by his irrepressible energy into the reforming party; Disraeli began
life with vague visions of extensive social reform and made his first mark in
politics by supporting the Chartist petition (1839); he became a Conservative
because the things he most cared for were valued by the Conservative party.
Gladstone made more impression in his generation; Disraeli had a shorter lease
of power, but bequeathed a tradition and a policy. Gladstone found a strong
party and ruined it for twenty years from 1886; Disraeli found a weak party and
nursed it into strength.
The parties
of which Gladstone and Disraeli were the chiefs were linked by continuous
historical succession with the two great sections or factions of the
aristocracy, or hereditary oligarchy, which ruled Great Britain in the
eighteenth century. But each had been transformed by national changes since the
Reform Bill. The Whigs had become Liberals, the Tories had become
Conservatives. The Liberal party had absorbed part of the principles of the
French Revolution. They stood now for individual liberty, laying especial
stress on freedom of trade, freedom of contract, and freedom of competition.
They had set themselves to break down the rule of the landowner and the Church,
to shake off the fetters of Protection, and to establish equality before the
law. Their acceptance of egalitarian principles led them to adopt democratic
ideals, to advocate extension of the suffrage, and the emancipation of the
working classes. Such principles, though not revolutionary, are to some extent
disruptive in their tendency ; and their adoption by the Liberals had forced
the Tory party to range themselves in defence of the existing order of things.
The Liberal and the Conservative
Parties.
31
They
professed to stand for the Crown, the Church, and the Constitution. They were
compelled by the irresistible trend of events to accept democratic principles
and to carry out democratic reforms. They preferred, in fact, to carry out such
reforms themselves, in order that the safeguards which they considered
necessary might be respected. Democratic principles having been adopted, both
parties made it their object to redress grievances; but the Conservatives
showed a natural predisposition to redress those grievances which arose from
excessive freedom of competition, the Liberals were more anxious to redress
those which were the result of hereditary or customary privilege. The harmony
of the State consists in the equilibrium between the two opposing forces of
liberty and order. The Liberals laid more stress upon liberty, the
Conservatives attached more importance to order and established authority.
Another, but
obscurer, element in party psychology is the influence of nationality on
political feeling. Wales and Cornwall have throughout the period shown a large
preponderance in favour of the Liberal cause. Scotland is by fundamental
preference Liberal, though, in 1900, the influence of the Boer War, coupled with
aversion from Irish Home Rule, brought about the election of a small Unionist
majority. In Wales and Cornwall this result is partly due to Nonconformity; and
in Scotland difference of religion has its political bearing. But, so far as
the Celtic portions of Great Britain are concerned, their persistent Liberalism
may also indicate some obscure racial bias. In Ireland, where racial hostility
is conscious and undisguised, it has led, not to Liberalism, but to a loose and
intermittent alliance with the Liberal party.
In foreign
affairs the Liberals were led by instinct to avoid all avoidable
complications. Palmerston and Russell, indeed, as representing the old Whig
tradition, were active in supporting the cause of foreign nations seeking
emancipation, and Gladstone himself, when not in office, was easily carried
away by such enthusiasms. But a vigorous foreign policy imposes sacrifices on
the individual, and thus tends to the diminution of liberty; hence Gladstone
and Granville, when in power, instinctively shrank from measures which might
enhance the burden of taxation, and require the increase of armaments. The
Conservatives, on the other hand, who stood for the solidarity of the State,
took pleasure in actions which manifested forth its splendour and greatness ;
moved by the subtle and unconscious influence of the principles which they
held, they appealed rather to the pride than to the pocket of the democracy.
Both parties have to some extent modified their principles since the time of
Gladstone and Disraeli, and both will no doubt modify them further; but
developments up to the present have followed similar lines, for protective
duties tend to increase the solidarity of the State and to diminish individual
liberty, while property under existing conditions is in the main a form of
hereditary privilege which Liberal legislation may consistently aim at
curtailing,
32
Disraeli's
imperialist policy. [1874-7
as ;by Irish
Land Acts, differential death-duties, differential income-tax, and Licensing
Bills.
During the
Gladstonian Ministry the chief spectacular interest of politics had been the
prolonged duel between the protagonists of the two parties. It was the more
regretted that in the new Parliament Gladstone, from the first, took little
active part and eventually, in 1875, formally resigned the leadership of the
Opposition. Lord Hartington was selected to lead the Liberals in the House of
Commons—* duty which he performed with conspicuous self-sacrifice under great
difficulties, for although Gladstone declined to lead he did not abstain from
interference, and when he interfered he carried a large fraction of his party
with him. In spite of all efforts to persuade Gladstone either to lead or (to
refrain from embarrassing his colleagues, this state of affairs continued to
the end of this Parliament and in great measure paralysed the Opposition. On
national questions Lord Hartington and Gladst> <ne were seldom ip complete
accord. Outside the House Gladstone was an unequalled force, and inside the
House his action, untrammelled as it was by any official i esponsibiluy, found
many sympathetic supporters. The position of the official Leader was almost
intolerable.
Effective
criticism was thus in large measure suspended, and Disraeli was left the more
free to pursue his enterprising policy abroad. His first bold and imaginative
stroke was the purchase, in November, 1875, of the Khedive’s shares in the Suez
Canal for four millions sterling. This transaction was prompted by the desire
to acquire a substantial, almost a controlling, interest in the British highway
to the East; but it has since been also justified by financial success. In
1876, after the impressive visit of the Prince of Wales to India and as a part
of the same policy, a Bill was passed enabling the Queen to assume the title of
Empress of India, under which style she was solemnly proclaimed in the chief
cities of India on the first day of the following year. But these were only
minor manifestations of the new spirit inspiring British action. In 1875 the Eastern
Question became acute through a rising in Bosnia and the Herzegovina; in 1876
Servia took up arms; and Great Britain, while declining to support Turkey in
any enormity she might commit, declined also to associate herself with the
other Great Powers in armed intervention to force a cessation of the conflict.
Massacres in Bulgaria followed, and Gladstone, making himself the champion of
the oppressed nationalities, aroused a somewhat deceptive enthusiasm by his
pamphlets and speeches. Russia, perhaps encouraged by Gladstone’s agitation and
its reception, certainly not deterred by Derby’s attitude of reserve, or by
Disraeli’s clear intimation of warlike possibilities (November 9,1876),
declared war on Turkey (April 24, 1877). The War proceeded with various fortune
until the fall of Plevna (December 10, 1877), while Great Britain maintained a
watchful attitude, and Gladstone pressed the anti-Turkish agitation. But, on
the news that the Russians were
1876-8]
33
advancing on Constantinople,
popular sentiment against the “unspeakable Turk” was overwhelmed by the
conviction (whether due to reason or passion) that Constantinople at least must
bei saved, and Disraeli (since August, 1876, Earl of Beaconsfield) found in the
popular will the support he needed for energetic action. The British fleet was
sent to Constantinople (February, 1878). It is believed that Beaconsfield
favoured even more decisive measures, but was outvoted in his Cabinet. It is
certain that, when he called out the Reserves to support his demand that the
whole Treaty of San Stefano should be unreservedly submitted to a European
Congress, Lord Derby finally resigned, Lord Carnarvon having left the Ministry
at an earlier stage. But the country was now behind the Prime Minister, and
experienced a pleasurable thrill when he reminded his fellow-citizens of their
imperial resources by transporting 7000 Indian troops to Malta. In the
consciousness of popular support, he pressed the Russian Government hard, and
came to an agreement (May SO) by which the principal questions at issue were
decided in accordance with British wishes.
The Congress
at Berlin which followed was not without importance, although substantial
agreement had been reached. There was still a chance of reversing the
diplomatic victory. But Beaconsfield, ably supported by Lord Salisbury,
maintained the advantage he had gained, and returned to England fairly
justified in his proud boast of “ Peace with Honour.” A convention with Turkey
had already been made public which bound Great Britain to defend the Sultan’s
Asiatic possessions by force of arms, and pledged the Sultan to introduce
suitable reforms. In return, the island of Cyprus was handed over on a
perpetual lease to British administration. This was the greatest moment of
Beaconsfield’s life, and it is probable that, if he had dissolved Parliament at
this time, he would have been returned with a substantial majority.
But a doubt
may still arise whether the results achieved were worth the risks. On the one
hand, it may be said that an access of territory was conceded to Bulgaria in
1885, and British interests have not in consequence suffered; that Batum has
not in fact remained a free, unfortified port; that Great Britain has never
been called upon to defend the Sultan’s Asiatic dominions, and that it is not
clear how she could defend them if called upon; that Cyprus is of little value
or importance to us; that the late Sultan paid no attention to repeated
exhortations addressed to him by British Ministers ; and, finally, that,
although we could rely upon Austrian support so far as European questions were
concerned,1 ad we been forced to take up arms in defence of Turkey s
Asiatic frontier, we should have stood alone and in a perilous position. Great
Britain was not, in fact, ready for war, and a few thousand Indian troops, more
or less, would not have enabled us to face the victorious Russian army, however
exhausted. Yet we wrung from the Russians a good deal more than we could have
forced them to concede. Our military
c. m. a. XII. OH. III.
3
34 Russian hostility.-^Afghan War. [i873-80
weakness, if
accepted as a ground for inaction, would have prevented us from raising an
effective protest against the occupation of Constantinople. And it is
impossible to say that, if a bold front had not been shown, the Russians would
have stopped short of Constantinople, and, holding Stamboul, that they would
have contented themselves with a M big Bulgaria.” Constantinople was
not only saved for the moment, but has been, until quite recently, more secure
than it was before the Russo-Turkish War. Some may be inclined to deny that
Great Britain has any vital interest in preserving the rule of the Turks in
Constantinople. But, if this be granted, the intervention was necessary, and
the subsequent procedure was skilfully carried out.
The greatest
drawback to the course of action pursued was that it earned for Great Britain
the persistent enmity of Russia during nearly thirty years. She has felt it in
Egypt, in Afghanistan, in Tibet, in Persia, in China, and in every dispute with
a third party for a complete generation. It has been an inconvenience, and
Beaconsfield himself probably paid the heaviest part of the price, for the
Afghan War was partly due to Russian hostility and had as much to do with his
fall as any other single incident. It has been an inconvenience, and might have
been a serious danger. But these perils have now passed, and it may be that
Beaconsfield correctly estimated all the risks and decided rather to face them
than to accept the alternative.
The remainder
of his career was less fortunate. Lord Northbrook had resigned the
Governor-Generalship of India in 1876, and Lord Lytton, a highly accomplished
diplomatist, was appointed to succeed him. He was soon called upon to face an
arduous problem. There had been difficulties since 1873 with the Amir of
Afghanistan, and, shortly after Lord Lytton’s accession to office, the proposal
was made and refused that the Amir should accept a British representative to
reside at Herat, or elsewhere, according to convenience. In July, 1878,
however, shortly after the Congress of Berlin had concluded its sessions, a
Russian envoy was received at Kabul, and the Government decided to force upon
the Amir the reception of a British envoy. Major Cavagnari was sent, but was
stopped in the Khaibar by Afghan troops. Lord Lytton prevailed on the home
Government to persevere, and war began in the winter 1878-9. The course of this
War is described in a later chapter; in the result Abdurrahman Khan was set up
as Amir; but the conclusion of the settlement was left to another Government
and another Viceroy; for on the accession of Gladstone to power in 1880 Lord
Lytton resigned.
The original
proposal to press upon the Amir a British resident was probably a mistake; if
it had not been made, it is doubtful whether Russian overtures would have been
entertained. But, after a Russian envoy had been received, the other
consequences were apparently inevitable. The War was on the whole advantageous
to Great Britain, for
1874-80] The Zulu
War.—Domestic legislation.
35
Abdurrahman
proved a strong ruler and maintained up to his death a perfectly correct
attitude. But it was not popular; the Cavagnari disaster filled Engl shmen with
dismay; and the prestige of the Beacons- field Administration was shaken.
The
annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 was made by Sir Theo- philns Shepstone,
probably in the erroneous belief that annexation was desired. The Transvaal
Republic was in fact impotent and penniless and in grave danger from the Zulus;
and it was not unnatural to suppose that they would welcome the powerful
protection of Great Britain. But in 1879 the British Government decided to
crush the Zulus. After Ulundi (July, 1879) the Boers were left free from danger
and enabled to challenge their would-be protector with success in 1880. But,
meanwhile, the massacre of a British force by Zulus at Isandhlwana (January 22,
1879) had dealt another blow to Beaconsfield’s Government, which was
responsible for the blunders of Shepstone and Chelmsford, and for the policy of
Bartle Frcre. These misfortunes shook the prestige of an Administration and a
leader who relied so much upon successful conduct of Imperial affairs; and
Gladstone’s electoral campaign in Midlothian, initiated in the autumn of 1879,
impressed upon the country in the most effective manner every charge which
could be brought against the discredited Ministry.
Their output
of domestic legislation had, however, on the whole been creditable. They had
had to reckon with a period of bad trade, succeeding the excessive inflation of
1873. Nevertheless, the financial administration of Sir Stafford Northcote had
been sound, and the establishment of the new Sinking Fund in 1875 was a wise
and ingenious measure. The principle was laid down that the charge for the
public debt should be fixed at £28,000,000 a year, a,nd that the balance of
this sum after payment of interest should go to reduction of debt which would
thus, if the principle was maintained, be diminished by a continually
increasing proportion. In the session of 1874, a Public Health Act, an
Artisans’ Dwellings Act, an Act for the protection of the improvements of
agricultural tenants, and an Act defining picketing and conspiracy in a manner
more favourable to the Trade Unions, were passed. In the following year, the
Plimsoll Act for the protection of merchant seamen became law. In 1876, the
Education Act was amended and the principle of compulsory elementary education
was recognised. In 1877, the prisons of the United Kingdom were by a salutary
measure transferred from the administration of local authorities to that of the
central Government. In addition, Acts for the prevention of pollution of rivers
and to regulate the vivisection of animals were placed on the statute book. The
Conservative party seemed to be in possession of the doctrine that their
legitimate legislative function is to initiate and carry out useful, if not
heroic, measures of social reform. Disraeli put forward the motto: Sanitas
sanitatum, omnia scmitas. But in that year and
36
[1874—«o
subsequent
years the record of legislation fell off, mainly owing to the adoption of a
policy of deliberate obstruction by Parnell and some of the Irish Home Rule
members. The Public Worship Act of 1874, introduced to check ritualistic
practices of doubtful legality in the Established Church, was ineffective for
the purpose which it was intended to serve, and led to invidious prosecutions
which did not further the interests of the Church or of the Government. The Act
establishing Commissions for the reform of the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge (1877) eventually bore fruit in a series of moderate and for the most
part useful reforms. Finally, in 1879, a disastrous harvest revealed the fact
that improved communications and Free Trade legislation had exposed British
wheat- growers to effective foreign competition which they were unable to meet;
and a prolonged period of acute agricultural depression set in. The industrial
and. commercial depression that had begun about 1875 reached its lowest point.
The formation of the Irish Land League in the autumn of 1879 confronted the
Government with another danger the magnitude of which was not perhaps at once
apparent.
Under the
cloud of disasters abroad, depression at home, and impotence in Parliament,
Beaconsfield’s Administration met the constituencies in April, 1880, with
little prospect of success. The election was fought principally on the question
of foreign policy, and Gladstone’s denunciations in Midlothian and elsewhere
had a striking effect. The Liberals were returned to power with a majority of
forty-one as against Conservatives and Home Rulers combined. Beaconsfield in
his manifesto to the people had drawn attention to the dangers of the Home Rule
agitation and called upon all men “ of light and leading ” to aid him in
resisting it. Little heed was paid to his warning at the time; but a solid
phalanx of sixty-one Home Rulers now foreshadowed the difficulties that were to
come.
On Beaconsfield’s
resignation the Queen sent for Lord Hartington, who advised her to the effect
that Gladstone was the only possible Prime Minister. TTie veteran was summoned
and accepted the task. Lord Granville became Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord
Hartington accepted the India Office, Sir William Harcourt was Home Secretary,
Forster Chief Secretary for Ireland, and, under Radical pressure exercised by
Sir Charles Dilke, Mr Joseph Chamberlain was admitted to the Cabinet as
President of the Board of Trade. One of the ablest of Liberal statesmen,
Goschen, was precluded from accepting office by his aversion from the declared
policy of extending the county franchise. Lord Lytton resigned and Lord Ripon
was sent to take his place as Viceroy of India. Sir Bartle Frere was, however,
retained in office, in spite of Radical attacks, in order that he might, if
possible, carry out his scheme for South African federation. When it became
clear that federation had no prospect of success, he was recalled (July).
Indian
affairs soon claimed the attention of the new Government. Abdurrahman had been
recognised as Amir by Lord Lytton; but Ayub
Khan, his
rival, a son of the late Amir, was still in the field, and, on July 27, he
inflicted a signal defeat on the British at Maiwand. Sir Frederick Roberts,
marching from Kabul, relieved Kandahar at the beginning of September, and ended
the war. The Cabinet decided to hand over Kandahar to Abdurrahman, and the
Afghan question was settled for the time. This decision was made public early in
1881.
During his
Midlothian campaign, a report had reached Gladstone that the Emperor of Austria
had expressed the hope that Beaconsfield might prove successful in the general
election. Angered by the supposed impropriety, he launched into a vigorous attack
on Austrian influence and policy. On succeeding to office, he found it
necessary to withdraw language used at a time when he had no intention or
expectation of returning to power. He offered an apology which produced the
desired effect; but the apology as well as the hasty utterance afforded scope
for hostile criticism. Good relations with the Government of Vienna were the
more necessary, since British endeavour was at once directed to the Balkan
peninsula, where certain points connected with the Treaty of Berlin remained to
be settled. Layard was recalled from Constantinople, and Goschen was sent on a
special mission to adjust the frontier of Greece, to satisfy Montenegro, and to
secure, if possible, better conditions for Armenia. Dulcigno was obtained for
Montenegro by the mere proposal to occupy Smyrna; the frontier of Greece was
after negotiations rectified by the union of Thessaly and part of Epirus; but
for Armenia no substantial safeguards were procured.
In Parliament
a difficulty at once arose which Gladstone’s authority was not sufficient to
meet. Charles Bradlaugh, member for Northampton, a declared atheist and
Republican, claimed to decline the customary form of oath and to substitute a
solemn affirmation as a preliminary to taking his seat. This claim having been
rejected, he then demanded to be allowed to take the oath. On June 22, the
House declared that he should neither affirm nor swear. At the following
sitting he presented himself to take the oath, and was heard at the bar of the
House. His request was rejected, and, refusing to withdraw, he was committed to
the Clock Tower. In these proceedings the Prime Minister declined to exercise
his functions as Leader of the House, and allowed Parliament to take its own
course. But on July 1, he proposed a resolution, which was carried, that any
Member should be allowed to make an affirmation, subject to the provisions of
the existing law which were of doubtful interpretation. Bradlaugh then took his
seat; but in the following year the Court of Appeal declared that affirmation
was illegal and the seat was in consequence vacated. He was then reelected, and
excluded by the House; twice again reelected and twice excluded in the same
Parliament. In 1883, Gladstone brought forward an Affirmation Bill which he
defended with more than his usual eloquence and conviction; but the Government
was defeated by a majority of
38
[188Q-8
three. It was
left for the Parliament of 1885 to admit Bradlaugh to take the oath without
question, and for another Parliament in 1888 to pass an Affirmation Bill moved
by Bradlaugh himself. Bradlaugh lived to win the respect of the assembly which
had repulsed him with scorn and hatred, and few will now deny that the course
advocated by Gladstone was not less just than generous and statesmanlike. But
he was unwilling to imperil his Government by taking a firm stand on the
principles which he avowed. He thus weakened his authority, and jxposea
Parliament to a succession of unseemly brawls. Moreover, when defeated in 1883
on the government proposal dealing with the subject, he did not resign, which
seems to show that at a still earlier stage he might without anxiety have taken
the risk of defeat.
Except for
the difficulties with Bradlaugh the session of 1880 was uneventful. Gladstone
repealed the Malt Tax, an old grievance of the British farmer, and substituted
a tax on beer. A new Education Act imposed on local authorities the duty of
making school attendance universally compulsory. A small advance was made in
the direction of enforcing employers’ liability for accidents to workmen in
their service. Agricultural tenants were permitted by the Ground Game Act to
kill and take hares and rabbits on land in their occupation. The Burials Act
removed a long-standing grievance of Nonconformists with regard to interments
in the churchyards. But a Bill designed to relieve the tension in Ireland by
allowing compensation for disturbance to tenants evicted through no fault of
their own was thrown out by the Lords, and further time was thus allowed for
discontent and disorder to spread.
The existence
of grave agricultural distress in. Ireland was undoubted. The number of evictions
was increasing in an alarming fashion. The circumstances favoured the growing
power of the Land League. Political organisation gave point, edge, and
direction to the passions inflamed by land-hunger and want. Unorganised, those
passions gave rise to crimes such as the murder of Lord Mountmorres (September
25,1880). Organised, they found a more effective means of coercion in the
exclusion from all social and industrial intercourse, first enforced against a
land-agent in County Mayo, Captain Boycott, Parliament was called together in
January, 1881, to deal with the danger that Disraeli had foreseen. So soon as
the protracted debate on the Address was concluded, Forster brought in his Bill
for the Protection of Person and Property in Ireland, which permitted the Lord
Lieutenant to imprison any person on suspicion and to detain him so long as the
Act remained in force. The failure of the prosecution for conspiracy of
fourteen Land League leaders in Dublin gave force to the contention of the
Government that exceptional powers were needed. But the resources of
obstruction were as yet unlimited, and after more than a week the House was
still discussing whether leave should be given to introduce the Bill. The
Speaker (Henry Brand) then closed the debate by his own authority, and the
first inroad was
1880-1]
39
made on the
untrammelled freedom of debate hitherto enjoyed by the British Parliament. A
few days later, it became necessary to suspend thirty-seven Irish members from
the service of the House. By these and similar means the Protection Bill became
law on March 2. An Arms Bill shortly followed, and, on April 7, Gladstone was
able to bring forward his Land Bill, which was subjected to the fullest
possible discussion. Revolutionary as its principles were thought and have
proved to be, the necessity of some such measure was admitted, and the House of
Lords declined to take the responsibility of rejecting it. Before the end of
August the Bill became an Act. The Duke of Argyll resigned. Lord Lansdowne had
previously retired from the Government on the introduction of the Compensation
for Disturbance Bill.
This session
of Parliament was almost wholly taken up with Irish affairs, and neither the
Coercion Acts nor the Land Act produced for a time any improvement in the
condition of Ireland. The Budget relieved the Income Tax by an additional tax
on spirits; and flogging in the army and navy was abolished. Hardly any other
legislation could be even considered. But the Government had other and grave
anxieties. The Afghan War had hardly been concluded, before discontent in South
Africa, encouraged by the belief that the Liberal Government was favourable to
Transvaal independence, reached a head. War broke out on December 16, 1880. Sir
George Colley, High Commissioner of South Africa, and Governor of Natal,
suffered a repulse at Laing’s Nek, and was finally defeated and killed at
Majuba Hill on February 26, 1881. Before this action an offer had been made to
the Boer President, and the acceptance was received on March 7. The Government
decided to proceed with negotiations as if nothing had happened ; and, on March
22, peace was arranged. Sir Frederick Roberts, who had been sent out to take
command in South Africa, was recalled immediately after his arrival. The Sand
River Convention was signed in August, securing a limited independence to the
Transvaal Republic under the suzerainty of the Queen.
The action
and the inaction of the Government were alike difficult to defend. Concessions
which may be reasonable in themselves assume a different aspect when they
follow a defeat. Had the Government conceded independence to the Transvaal on
their accession to power, had they opened negotiations with a view to a grant
of self-government after the failure of federation, or had they determined to
prove their military superiority after Majuba and before considering terms,
three years of war and many years of sullen hostility might have been averted.
The course actually adopted may be described as magnanimous or cowardly
according to the prepossessions of the critic; it was certainly apt to secure
the maximum of discredit with the minimum of gratitude. But, for the time
being, preoccupation with Ireland prevented South African affairs from
receiving their due share of attention.
40 Phoenix Park murders.—Occupation of Egypt.
[1882-5
The condition
of Ireland had proceedsd from bad to worse. Nine hundred suspects were in gaol
untried, including Parnell himself; nevertheless, agrarian crime was still
rife. On the other hand the attempt to boycott the Land Act had failed, and the
new Land Courts were crowded with applications for revisions of rent.
Gladstone, influenced by Mr Chamberlain, accepted overtures from Parnell
(April, 1882) which resulted in his release and the preparation of a Bill
dealing with arrears of rent in Ireland. In consequence, Forster resigned (May,
1882), Lord Spencer having previously succeeded Lord Cowper as Lord Lieutenant.
Lord Frederick Cavendish now became Chief Secretary. A few days later, he was
murdered in the Phoenix Park (May 6). The hopes of amicable agreement were
shattered. Mr George Trevelyan succeeded Lord Frederick Cavendish. A drastic
Crimes Act was passed, Irish members being freely suspended during the
discussions. An Arrears Act was then pressed through and accepted by the Lords.
Irish affairs
were all-absorbing in 1882. Yet Parliament found time for passing Acts dealing
with electric lighting, entailed estates, and the property of married women.
Meanwhile, a military revolution had taken place in Egypt, bringing the Khedive
under the domination of Arabi; Gambetta had fallen from power in France; the
Dual Control was tottering, and was brought to an end by the isolated action
of Great Britain in bombarding the forts at Alexandria (July 11, 1882). John
Bright resigned; but the Government were forced to proceed on the path they had
entered. The French Chamber refused the funds for which Frey- cinet (Gambetta’s
successor) had asked. Sir Garnet Wolseley landed at Alexandria on August 15,
and defeated Arabi on September 13 at Tel- el-Kebir. The military occupation of
the country was quickly completed. The British advisers to the Khedive became
the effective rulers of Egypt, supported at first by 12,000 British troops.
Lord Granville proclaimed to Europe (January 3, 1883) the disinterested
intentions of Great Britain, and the Cabinet sincerely believed that evacuation
would be possible in the near future. The new members of the Cabinet, Lord
Derby and Sir Charles Dilke, approved this policy and shared this belief.
Ingenuous Albion, in full sincerity of self-deception, had added to her
possessions an important strategic position, a fertile country, and a docile
population, and assumed responsibilities which even Disraeli had declined to
undertake. The evolution of British administration in Egypt is reserved for
treatment in a later chapter. But it must be noted here that difficulties for
the British Government began at once in the Sudan, and reached their
culmination with the death of Gordon at Khartum on January 26,1885. Any credit
which the Government may have obtained through the excellent conduct of the
original expedition against Arabi was destroyed by the disastrous mismanagement
of affairs in the Sudan. Action was postponed till success was impossible; the
measures taken were as a rule inadequate; the decision to “ smash the Mahdi ”
at
1882-4]
The Sudan.—Liberal legislation.
41
Khartum was
announced and then speedily revoked; finally the Sudan was left to a tyrannous
anarchy for thirteen years—a result which might have been achieved without
moving forward a man, or spending a penny.
The autumn
session of 1882 was devoted to the discussion of new rules of procedure in
Parliament, which gave power for the closure of debate and for the control of
irrelevant discussion and of dilatory motions, and established standing
Committees of the House for the discussion of Bills referred to them. By these
rules obstructive tactics were impeded.
In 1883,
parliamentary business was less exciting and more useful. Childers had become
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was able to reduce the Income Tax. The
Agricultural Holdings Act secured to farmers compensation for unexhausted
improvements. A Corrupt Practices Act endeavoured to control indirect bribery
at elections by imposing a limit on authorised election expenditure. The
Coercion Act was vigorously if ineffectively applied in Ireland. Some criminals
were discovered and punished, but crime did not diminish. It took a new form in
dynamite outrage, which led to the rapid passing of an Explosives Act. The
Irish Land League, dissolved by law, had reappeared as the Irish National
League (October, 1882). An attempt made to influence the Curia of Rome through
George Errington, an Irish Catholic unconnected with the Government, was
intended to check crime in Ireland; but the only result was papal intervention
against a collection of money for Parnell, which did not check the
subscriptions. Parnell, when assailed in the British Parliament by Forster,
declined to admit the jurisdiction of the authority before which he was
arraigned, or to defend himself there against the charge of connivance in
crime.
In 1884,
Childers’ scheme for the conversion of the National Debt failed, leaving the
question to be settled by an abler financier. A Royal Commission on the Housing
of the Poor was set up, which collected much valuable information leading to
legislation at a later period. Fawcett, the blind Postmaster-General, died
after initiating such useful measures as sixpenny telegrams, the Parcel Post,
and licensed telephony. The Sand River Convention of 1881 was modified by Lord
Derby on the representations of the Boers; and the word “suzerainty,”
afterwards a subject of controversy, was omitted from the new Convention,
whatever may have been the significance of this omission. Colonial quarrels
arose with Germany over the annexation of part of New Guinea, the Cameroons,
and Angra Pequena, and the occupation by German troops of Samoan territory. But
the chief business of the session was a Bill for the extension of the county
franchise. A motion to exclude Ireland from the operation of this Bill was
defeated, and, in consequence, the influence of the Nationalist movement in
British politics was enormously increased. The Conservative party insisted on a
complete scheme of redistribution to accompany the Franchise Act, and by the
help of the Lords they achieved their purpose. In November, the two parties
came to an agree
42
Reform of the county franchise.
[1884-5
ment as to
the principles of redistribution, and the Franchise Bill passed before
Christmas, allowing the franchise to the counties on the same .basis as in the
boroughs and adding two million voters to the Register. The settlement of
redistribution by agreement between parties was an admirable precedent
excluding all possibility of “gerrymandering”; but the increase of
representation (twelve seats) accorded to Scotland should in strict justice
have been accompanied by a diminution of the number of Irish members. In the
amicable conclusion of this controversy the .Queen played an important part.
The Redistribution Bill was introduced in 1885, and it seemed certain that a
General Election would take place in the autumn. Mr Chamberlain began to formulate
v/hat eventually became his “ unauthorised programme,” advocating reform of
local government, the encouragement of small holdings and allotments,
disestablishment of the Church, free education, the abolition of plural
voting, payment of members, and manhood suffrage, and adumbrating schemes for
the differential taxation of the rich. Both parties were manoeuvring for the
Irish vote. The Liberal Government were divided on the question of renewing
the Crimes Act, which expired in 1885. They were considering a Land Purchase
Act and instalments of Home Rule. Having narrowly escaped defeat for their
failure to relieve Khartum, they were confronted by grave dangers: arising from
the collision between Russians and Afghans at Penjdeh (May, 1885). They
weathered this storm, but were beaten on the proposal to put additional taxes
on spirits and beer (June 8, 1885) and resigned. After protracted negotiations,
Lord Salisbury consented to take office, though in a minority, in order to
carry on the business of the country until Parliament could be dissolved. But
it was not sufficient to carry on business. A policy was needed for Ireland,
and the Conservatives were not in a position to formulate and maintain a
settled policy. The result gave an impression of indecision. The Crimes Act was
not renewed, and Lord Carnarvon, the new Lord Lieutenant, had an interview with
Parnell, in which he was alleged by Parnell to have held out hopes of the
creation of an Irish Parliament with power to tax imports from England. In any
case, the Conservatives were commonly thought to be more favourable to Home
Rule than the Liberals, and Parnell was thereby encouraged to formulate demands
which Mr Chamberlain felt obliged to repudiate. Gladstone did not declare
himself, but appealed to the country to give him a majority sufficient to
enable him to deal with the Irish question without relying upon the help of the
Irish members. Phis declaration decided the Nationalists to throw their whole
weight into the scale against him (November).
The
Conservatives, having settled the Afghan difficulty in substantial conformity
with Gladstone’s policy, passed an Act for the Housing of the Poor, another for
the protection of young women and children from criminal acts, and established
a Secretaryship for Scotland,
1885-e]
43
dissolved
Parliament (November 18). The elections took place shortly after and in Great
Britain turned principally on Mr Chamberlain’s unauthorised programme and, especially
in the counties, on Mr Jesse Collings’ watchword of “three acres and a cow”
which attracted the rural labourer. In Ireland the sole issue was Home Rule. In
the result, the Liberals reckoned about 335 votes, the Conservatives about 249,
the Nationalists about 86. Gladstone’s independent majority was not in sight.
His first inclination was to allow the Conservatives to remain in power and to
give them his support in an attempt to settle the Irish question. But,
meanwhile, it had become known that he himself was prepared to deal with the
problem, and the Conservatives declined to negotiate. Lord Carnarvon’s
resignation seemed to imply a Conservative decision against Home Rule, and the
Queen’s Speech (January, 1886) was phrased so as to exclude that solution. The
Government had no sooner announced their intention to introduce a Coercion Bill
for Ireland than they were turned out on an amendment to the Address relating
to allotments for rural labourers. Gladstone was left with the task of framing
a Government pledged to examine in a favourable spirit the possibility of
granting some form of Home Rule acceptable to the Irish party, on which his
majority depended. Lord Hartington, Lord Derby, Bright, Goschen, Sir Henry
James, and other men of mark declined to join him. Sir Charles Dilke was not
available. Mr Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan joined, while reserving
their independence of judgment. Lord Spencer, President of the Council, whose
final conversion to Home Rule carried great weight, Sir William Harcourt,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Rosebery, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and
Mr John Morley, Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, gave more unreserved
support to the Prime Minister; and a strong Ministry was eventually formed,
though it contained from the first disruptive elements.
The new
Ministry had difficulties to face from the start. Lord Salisbury had accepted
the union of Eastern Runielia with Bulgaria which had been safely completed in
1885, but the extension of Bulgaria had aroused the jealousy of Greece, which
demanded compensation from Turkey. Lord Rosebery continued the policy of Lord
Salisbury, and supported the European Concert in applying pressure to the
Hellenes. War was thus averted. Upper Burma, annexed by Lord Salisbury after a
short campaign, was disturbed by rebels and dacoits for many months before its
pacification was completed. The depression of trade, already acute in 1885,
became accentuated; and, in February, 1886, after listening to speeches in
Trafalgar Square, a riotous mob plundered shops in Piccadilly and neighbouring
streets before their progress was arrested by the police. The Chief
Commissioner of Police was blamed, and his resignation was accepted. But all
other interests paled before the issue of Home Rule. Gladstone’s proposals
aroused dissension in the Cabinet, and on March 26
44
[1886
Sir George
Trevelyan and Mr Chamberlain resigned. Nevertheless, Gladstone proceeded, and
on April 8 he introduced his Bill. It provided for the establishment of a
statutory Legislature consisting of two Orders, one of 28 representative peers,
with 75 other members elected by and from the propertied classes, and the other
of elected members to the number of 204. The two Orders were to sit together,
but either could demand separate voting, in which case the concurrence of both
Orders was required to pass a measure. The customs duties and corresponding
excise duties were reserved for the Imperial Parliament, but the Irish
legislature could impose other taxes. The Irish liability for imperial
expenditure was fixed at one-fifteenth of the whole; after this sum had been
defrayed, any balance from customs and excise was to be handed over to the
Irish Exchequer. Army and navy, foreign affairs, post office, coinage, weights
and measures, trade, navigation, and copyright, were assigned to the province
of the Imperial Parliament. The Irish legislature was to be precluded from
endowing any religious body. There was to be an Irish Executive responsible to
the Irish Legislature, which would appoint the judges and magistrates; but the
Royal Irish Constabulary were to remain under imperial control for an
indefinite period. An extensive measure of Land Purchase was to accompany the
grant of Home Rule. But the crux of the whole problem was the exclusion,
contemplated by the Bill, of the Irish members from the British Parliament.
There were objections almost equally grave to the exclusion or retention of the
Irish representatives, and it was on this point more than any other that the
Bill of 1886, which excluded them, and that of 1893 which retained them, were
attacked.
Lord
Hartington and Mr Chamberlain led the attack; Gladstone and Mr Morley were
earnest and eloquent in defence; but the Liberal party was broken up, and the
Bill was defeated on the second reading by a majority of thirty (June 8).
Gladstone decided to dissolve Parliament, and appeal to the people; the answer
was decisive; Liberal and Radical Unionists fought side by side with Tories
against Home Rule; no other issue was even considered; 315 Conservatives, and
78 Liberal Unionists were returned against 191 Gladstonian Liberals and 86
Irish Home Rulers. Thus the Liberal secession very nearly balanced in
Parliament the weight of the Irish Home Rule vote, and this was to be the case
for many years to come, until the alliance between Tories and Liberal Unionists
seemed to have become part of the established order. The Conservative party was
influenced by its Liberal wing; the statesmen who acted with it were in their turn
influenced by Tory opinion; and a great change in the party system was thus, by
imperceptible degfees, introduced. The most remarkable transformation was that
of Mr Chamberlain from the protagonist of Radical Nonconformity into the
champion of imperial solidarity; the most noteworthy phenomenon was the
fidelity with which Birmingham in particular and the
1886]
45
Midlands in
general followed their chosen leader in his gradual change of attitude.
Gladstone
resigned on July 30; Lord Salisbury proposed that Lord Hartington should form a
coalition Government; this offer was declined, though the Liberal Unionists
promised their support to Lord Salisbury. His Ministry comprised Lord
Iddesleigh as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach as Chief
Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and Lord Randolph Churchill as Chancellor of
the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. This meteoric politician was
then at the height of his reputation and popularity. In the Parliament of 1880
he had been conspicuous among a small band known as the “fourth party,” who,
dissatisfied with the policy of the Opposition Front Bench, had made it their
business to harry the Government and urge their leaders to greater activity. In
Lord Salisbury’s Government of 1885 he had been Secretary for India. The
principles he avowed were those of Tory democracy; his methods were to
popularise the doctrines of the Conservative party by skilful appeals to the
impulses of the masses, to win attention by audacious humour and memorable
phrases, and to reorganise the Conservative party so as to ensure due
recognition for the wishes of the average voter. He alone of the Conservative
leaders had a personal hold on the electorate comparable to that possessed by
Gladstone and Mr Chamberlain. He had made a determined effort to capture the
Tory organisation, and in this attempt had come into collision with Lord
Salisbury. In spite of his failure to achieve this end, his influence was such
that he was able to secure for Mr Henry Matthews, a leading barrister but
untried as a politician, the post of Home Secretary. Of his former allies in
the fourth party, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff was employed on special missions to
Constantinople and Egypt (1885-7) and afterwards (1887) became British Minister
at Teheran. Sir John Gorst had to content himself with the post of
Under-Secretary for India. Mr Arthur Balfour, who had worked with the fourth
party but had separated from Lord Randolph when Lord Salisbury was attacked,
became Secretary for Scotland and shortly after received a seat in the Cabinet.
Lord
Salisbury was pledged to initiate a policy of resolute government in Ireland;
but, before he could declare the lines on which he intended to proceed, he had
to deal with a Cabinet crisis. Lord Randolph had announced a programme of
advanced social legislation; but, above all, he was bent on framing a popular
budget, and the financial measures which he proposed required the reduction of
military and naval expenditure. When his colleagues declined to effect the
economies demanded, he gave in his resignation, no doubt in the belief that he
was indispensable to his party. Lord Salisbury, after appealing to Lord
Hartington, bethought himself of Goschen, a Unionist whose Liberalism was of a
very moderate stamp, and an accomplished financier. His accession to the
Government proved a great addition to their strength.
CH. III.
46 Effect of Lord Randolph Churchill's
resignation. [i887
William Henry
Smith, a good man of business, universally respected, though not brilliant,
became leader of the House of Commons. Lord Iddesleigh, who had had great
trouble with Lord Randolph, offered his resignation, and Lord Salisbury
reluctantly accepted it. The Leader himself returned to the Foreign Office. But,
before the arrangements could be completed, Lord Iddesleigh succumbed to heart
weakness (January 12, 1887). Mr Arthur Balfour replaced Sir Michael Hicks-
Beach, temporarily invalided, as Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (March,
1887). Lord Randolph Churchill, though he continued to intervene fitfully and
sometimes effectively in debate, never recovered his position as a statesman;
later, his health broke down, and he died in 1895.
One last
effort was made to restore Liberal unity, when Sir William Harcourt, Mr Morley,
Lord Herschell, Mr Chamberlain, and Sir George Trevelyan, met at the “Round
Table Conference” to discuss a compromise on Irish policy (January, 1887). But
the more Mr Chamberlain examined Home Rule, the less he liked it. The
Conference broke up without coming to any agreement, though Sir George
Trevelyan shortly afterwards returned to his Liberal allegiance.
In order to
carry the legislation (described elsewhere) which was considered necessary for
Ireland, the rules of the House of Commons were once more reformed, and it
became possible for any member to move the closure of a debate which could
then, with the consent of the Speaker, be put to the House and carried if at
least two hundred members voted in the majority; and, this measure proving insufficient,
a timelimit was assigned by resolution of the House, after which the remaining
clauses of the Crimes Bill should be put to the vote without amendment or
debate. This was the first introduction of the so-called guillotine. Goschen
eased his first Budget by taking two millions from the sinking fund. The
Merchandise Marks Act, though intended to prevent the passing off of inferior
foreign goods as English-made, is generally regarded as having operated mainly
as an advertisement of the foreign products affected. An Allotments Act was
passed which proved to be of little value in practice.
In 1887, the
fiftieth anniversary of the accession of Queen Victoria was celebrated in
London by a procession to Westminster Abbey. Between 1861 and 1872, the prestige
and popularity of the Crown had waned, owing to the seclusion of the Queen and
her unwillingness to take part in public functions. In 1872, the celebration of
the recovery of the Prince of Wales from a dangerous illness set the current of
feeling moving in the opposite direction. The Prince, now King Edward VII, was
constantly willing to take the place of his royal mother on public occasions;
Disraeli persuaded the Queen to open Parliament in person (1876 and 1877); her
real devotion to public interests became gradually known, and her character won
the reverence which it deserved. But the Jubilee
1887-90]
47
of 1887 first
made the nation and the Empire conscious of the inestimable treasure which it
possessed in the person of its Sovereign; from that day onwards the nation and
the Crown were in perfect sympathy, and Victoria became the object of
constantly increasing loyalty and love. On the occasion of this Jubilee, the
first Colonial Conference was held, and contributions of the colonies to
imperial defence were inaugurated by Australia. The Imperial Institute, founded
to commemorate this anniversary, failed to accomplish the expectations of its
founders. In the same year the suppression of a mass meeting in Trafalgar Square,
which necessitated the intervention of the military, attracted a good deal of
attention; and the declaration of Conservative Associations in favour of
Protection and of the exclusion of indigent foreigners, though contemptuously
brushed aside by Lord Salisbury, foreshadowed an important change in public
opinion which at a later date profoundly modified party policy. The mission of
Mr Chamberlain to negotiate a treaty with the United States regulating the
right of American citizens to fish in the waters of Canada and Newfoundland
proved ineffectual, owing to the influence of the American Irish in the Senate.
Lord
Salisbury, without contracting any binding alliance, showed himself friendly
towards the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy. Thanks to the
amicable relations thus established, he was able by successive pompacts to
clear up all outstanding questions in Africa (1887-90) and to delimit the “
spheres of influence ” of the several European Powers in that Continent. During
this period the policy of incorporating Chartered Companies to administer
concessions was revived by the British Government, and applied in British
Nigeria (1886), British East Africa (1888), Mashonaland and Matabeleland
(1889). This last measure nearly led to a collision with Portugal, who deemed
her rights to be thereby infringed; but the weaker Power had to give way. By
these charters the effective area of British dominion was considerably
increased, with a corresponding extension of British responsibility. In 1890,
Heligoland was ceded to Germany in return for the recognition of a British
protectorate in Zanzibar. Other agreements assigned to France the “ light soil
” of the Sahara, and the protectorate of Madagascar. Lord Salisbury might claim
to have had a voice in the distribution of larger portions of the earth’s
surface than any other statesman.
In 1888,
William Henry Smith introduced fresh rules for the conduct of House of Commons
business. Goschen successfully converted the National Debt from a 3 per cent,
security to one bearing interest at 2f per cent, forthwith, and after fifteen
years at per cent., thus effecting an immediate saving of nearly two millions,
and an ultimate saving of nearly four millions a year. He also introduced a
system of large subventions from licenses and probate duty to local
expenditure; the additional relief of the rates amounting to about three
millions. A
48
[1888-9-2
Local
Government Bill was introduced establishing elective Councils to administer the
counties in place of the Benches of nominated magistrates which had hitherto
managed county business. About the same time a County Council for the whole of
London was set up, which superseded the Metropolitan Board of Works, but was
vested with more extensive powers. These reforms have had a wide-reaching
social effect, and testify to the irresistible trend towards democratic
institutions in this country.
Meanwhile,
the campaign against the National League, agrarian crime, and boycotting, had
been going on in Ireland. The Pope intervened in 1888 to condemn with little
result the “ Plan of Campaign ”• and the practice of boycotting. In 1888-9 the
Commission (described elsewhere) sat, in effect, to try the Irish Home Rule
Party. The case for the prosecution broke down, so far as the letters were
concerned; but, had it succeeded, the blow to the Irish cause could hardly have
been more severe than that resulting from the divorce case (1890) in which
Parnell was implicated. Parnell was ruined in the eyes of English Liberals;
dissensions arose in the Home Rule ranks; and the rest of his life was spent in
an infatuated campaign against the majority of his own colleagues. In these
circumstances, the task of Mr Balfour was made comparatively easy, and by his
useful measures and personal magnetism he won, towards the end of his time in
office, more popularity in Ireland than has often fallen to the lot of an
English statesman. In 1891, Mr Balfour resigned the post of Chief Secretary to
take the lead in the House of Commons on the death of William Henry Smith.
In 1889, for
the first time the Government took seriously to heart the necessity of
strengthening the navy. Lord Salisbury laid down the standard of equality with
the two strongest foreign Powers. A Bill was passed prescribing the expenditure
of twenty-one millions in seven years on new construction, and the navy was
thus for the time being placed on an adequate footing. In spite of this extra
charge the prosperity of the country made it possible to meet the financial
burdens with ease, until, in 1890, the embarrassments of the great firm of
Barings initiated a new period of commercial and industrial depression.
Nevertheless, in 1891, the Chancellor was able to devote the sum of two
millions to relieving parents of children attending public elementary schools
from the payment of fees. This measure was one of those advocated by Mr
Chamberlain ; but its passing was almost a necessary consequence of the
universal enforcement of school attendance. Acts for the establishment of a Board
of Agriculture (1889), for the prevention of cruelty to children (1889), for
the abolition of the dues on coal imported into London (1889), for technical
instruction (1889 and 1890), for the better regulation of factories and
workshops (1891), and a Small Holdings Act
(1892),
showed a creditable though not excessive zeal for social reform.
1891-6]
49
In 1891 it
was enacted that tithe should be in future collected from the landlord and not
from the tenant.
In 1891, in
view of the coming elections, the National Liberal Federation formulated what
was known as the Newcastle programme. It included the disestablishment of the
Churches in Wales and Scotland, local veto by three-fourths of the ratepayers
on the liquor traffic in any district, improvement of registration of voters,
the abolition of plural voting, proposals for extending employers’ liability
for accidents to workmen, and for limiting the hours of labour. As an
electioneering programme this programme was not calculated to inspire
enthusiasm, but rather to unite powerful interests in defence of the Church and
the trade in liquor. Coupled with Home Rule, and Gladstone’s proposals for the
evacuation of Egypt, it formed an unfortunate prelude for the electoral combat
of 1892. This resulted in a majority of forty in favour of the policy of Home
Rule, which was once more, though to a less extent than in 1886, the dominant
issue. In August, 1892, Gladstone resumed office. Lord Rosebery was his Foreign
Secretary, Mr Asquith his Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt Chancellor of
the Exchequer, and Mr John Morley Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant.
Gladstone was
not able to carry out his policy of evacuating Egypt. On the contrary he was
forced in 1893 to take measures further consolidating our position there.
Steps were also taken which led, in 1894, to the establishment of a British
Protectorate in Uganda. In 1893 a serious controversy arose with France in
consequence of boundary disputes between that country and Siam. The Menam was
blockaded, and war, for a short time, seemed probable; but the Siamese were
persuaded to give way, and the matter was finally settled by prolonged and
peaceful negotiations (1896). In the same year (1893) Natal received the grant
of responsible government, and war broke out between the British South Africa
Company and Lobengula, King of the Matabele. Matabeleland was conquered and
added to the territory administered by the Company. This extraordinary Company,
directed by Cecil Rhodes, profited by the speculative confidence of the public
to raise many millions which were expended on the development of their
territory. Much has been accomplished, but the extreme expectations of profit
have not hitherto been justified.
In
legislation Home Rule held the first place. Gladstone’s new Bill, introduced in
1893, adopted the alternative of retaining eighty representatives of Ireland
in the Imperial Parliament. It was at first intended that the Irish members
should vote only on matters in which Irelahd was concerned; but this expedient,
destructive of party government, was abandoned; and the Bill, as passed in the
Commons on September 1 by thirty-four votes, gave Ireland exclusive Control of
her own affairs, as well as a share in the control of English and Scottish
legislation and finance. The House of Lords rejected the Bill by 419 votes to
41 (September 8),
o. m. H. XII.
oh. in.
4
50 Bimetallism.—Parish Councils Bill. [1893-6
and events
proved two years later that they had correctly gauged the balance of popular feeling
in the larger island. Home Rule, to which Gladstone had given eight years of
his life and for which he had sacrificed the present and the future of his
party, still remains written on the Liberal programme; but, since 1893, no
responsible statesman has attempted to carry it into effect. This victory of
the House of Lords over the representative assembly gave a considerable access
of confidence to the Upper House.
A minor issue
of this session was a proposal to restore the bimetallic standard in this
country. The demonetisation of silver in Germany in 1872 had forced France to
suspend her bimetallic system. Had Great Britain then joined with France to
support the bimetallic standard by allowing the free coinage of both silver and
gold, and by making both metals unlimited legal tender at a fixed ratio, we
should probably now have more silver and less gold in circulation and at the
banks; but the ratio might have been maintained, and, instead of the
progressive appreciation of the standard of value which took place from 1872
and did not cease till about 1900, a similar depreciation would have resulted,
with a corresponding stimulus to industry and commerce. The general social
effects would have been very complicated; but it is probable that the extended
adoption of a single gold standard was premature and prejudicial to
enterprise. Even now that the production of gold has been quadrupled, there is
not too much gold for the needs of the civilised world, and its abundance has
hardly yet produced any marked effect on the general level of prices. But in
1893 it was already too late. It was then impossible to revert to the original
ratio of 15^ to 1 or 16 to 1; and it passed the wit of man to fix any other
ratio which would satisfy the chief interests concerned. In these
circumstances, Gladstone rightly dismissed the proposal of Mr Chaplin in favpur
of bimetallism; and, although the question was again raised in the United
States at the Presidential election of 1896, it is now universally agreed that
bimetallism is no longer practically possible.
In November,
1893, Parliament met again. A Parish Councils Bill was needed to complete the
democratic system of local government initiated by the Tories. Some such parish
institution was necessary, and at the existing stage of our development the
democratic principle provides the only possible basis. The Bill became law in
1894; and, although like other democratic institutions it has probably led to a
certain amount of unprofitable expenditure, it has worked as well as most
measures work in this imperfect world. An Employers’ Liability Bill, introduced
in the same winter session, broke down because the Lords insisted on a clause
allowing a majority of workmen to agree with their employers on a scheme of
mutual insurance approved by the Board pf Trade.
Gladstone was
now failing, and his retirement was probably hastened
1893-4] Sir William Harcourt's budget.—The
death-duties. 51
by his
unwillingness to accede to the demand for increased naval expenditure,
accentuated by the loss of the Victoria, a first-class battleship
(1893).
On March 1,1894, he delivered his last speech in the House of Commons, taking
the opportunity to declare that the question of preponderance between Lords
and Commons must go forward to an issue, and that his Government adopted as
their principle the supremacy of the Lower House. He was succeeded as Premier
by Lord Rosebery, who took an early opportunity of declaring that the
conversion of England as “ the predominant partner ” must precede the concession
of Home Rule. Sir William Harcourt, the new Leader of the House, was, not
unnaturally, incensed to find his claims to the Premiership ignored, and the
Cabinet was weakened by the ill-concealed dissension between the Prime Minister
and his chief colleague. But Harcourt’s budget was the chief event of the
parliamentary session of 1894. A small additional tax was imposed on spirits
and on beer, and the Income Tax was raised; but the main feature was increased
taxation on legacies and inheritance, imposed in proportion to the size of the
total estate devised. This new system of taxation, which in 1905-6 brought into
the exchequer about thirteen million pounds as against seven and a half
millions in 1893-4, has produced great social effects. It is not probable that
it has on the whole gravely diminished the net accumulations of capital. It
does not seem that it has been to any very large extent evaded by donations
during lifetime. But, being levied on the total value of real as well as of
personal estates, it has hastened the movement already in progress owing to
agricultural depression. Since 1879, the landowners and especially the small
squires had been hard hit by the fall in rentals. Many old families had been
forced to sell or let their residences and domains. Now, the incidence of the
death-duties came as a final and crushing blow to many. Even spread over eight
years, the new burden was heavy. And, if an estate changed hands several times
at short intervals, the charge was more than many estates would bear. The decay
of old families was hastened, old ties of landlord and tenant, of squire and
peasantry, were dissolved, and in many cases the place of the old landlords was
taken by those who inherited no traditional obligations to the land or its
occupants. If the object of the tax had been to depress the ancient
squirearchy, and to bring old estates upon the market, the means adopted would
have been appropriate ; but it does not appear that this was the intention of
its framers. The new tax was, in the main, a financial expedient, and as a
financial expedient it was a considerable success. This measure and the
consequent increase in the navy were the only achievements, which this
Government could place to its credit. Harcourt’s unpopular Local Veto Bill had
to be dropped. The campaign against the House of Lords had no hold upon the
country. The Irish were dissatisfied and gave iio certain support. A Bill for
the disestablishment of the Church in Wales was introduced, but aroused no
enthusiasm.
ch. in. 4—8
52 Lord Salisbury's Coalition Ministry.—Vmezuela.
[i895-8
The end came
by surprise. Following out one of the recommendations made by a Royal
Commission, set up in 1888 and presided over by Lord Hartington,
Campbell-Bannerman, the War Minister, had persuaded the Duke of Cambridge to
resign his office of Commander-in-chief. After he had communicated this
intelligence to the House, a hostile amendment of the estimates was introduced
on the ground of insuffic; nt stores of cordite, and carried by a
majority of seven in a small House. The Government resigned (June, 1895); Lord
Salisbury accepted office and after winding up the necessary business dissolved
Parliament.
The new
Ministry was a Coalition Ministry. The Duke of Devonshire, formerly Lord
Hartington, Mr Chamberlain, Lord Lansdowne, and Sir Henry James, with other
Liberal Unionists, accepted offices. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach became Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Mr Balfour was leader in the House of Commons, Goschen was
First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Lansdowne Secretary of State for War. The
result of the elections was favourable to the new Government, which had a
majority of 152 over Home Rulers and Liberals taken together. Mr Chamberlain
had probably contributed to this result by holding out hopes of an Employers’
Liability Act, and old-age pensions. In the new Government he took the post of
Colonial Secretary, with a far-sighted conception of its possibilities, and by
his imaginative and sympathetic policy he made himself the most conspicuous
figure of the Cabinet, and the most popular Englishman throughout our colonial
possessions.
Before the
Liberal Government resigned, the war between China and Japan had been brought
to an end by the defeat of China and a treaty ceding to Japan Formosa and the
Liao-Tung peninsula. France, Russia, and Germany stepped in, and insisted that
this important peninsula should be restored to China. Great Britain declined
to take part in this action, and stood completely aside, thereby shaking for a
time British prestige in the East, but leaving the road open for the subsequent
alliance with Japan. Subsequent developments led to the seizure of Kiaochow by
Germany in 1897, and the occupation of Port Arthur by Russia shortly
afterwards. The British Government vainly endeavoured to save its credit by
obtaining the lease of Wei-Hai-Wei (July, 1898). The predominance of Great
Britain in the Far East seemed to be at an end.
Meanwhile, an
agreement with Russia had been reached with regard to frontiers in the Pamirs
(March, 1895) and, after a war in Chitral, that district was annexed by Great
Britain in August, 1895. Disputes had long existed with the Venezuelan
Government concerning boundaries, and Lord Salisbury declined to proceed to
arbitration in respect to part of the territory in question. Thereupon, the
American President claimed for the United States the right to decide the points
at issue, and to impose upon Great Britain their decision. Lord Salisbury
showed great self-possession, and, eventually, an Arbitration tribunal was set up
in
1897, and in
1899 decided unanimously in favour of the chief part of the British claims.
Relations
with the Transvaal Republic had long been strained, in consequence of the
refusal of the Republic to grant the franchise to residents of alien origin. But
the whole world was surprised when it became known on New Year’s day of 1896
that Dr Jameson, the Administrator of Rhodesia, had invaded the Transvaal with
600 horse. The raid was a complete failure; and an effort was made to prove
that it was known beforehand to Mr Chamberlain, or at least to some of the
officials at the Colonial Office. The House of Commons set up a committee to
investigate the matter, which was unable to find any evidence to substantiate
these charges. Dr Jameson was put on his trial and condemned, but released on
grounds of health before his term of imprisonment was completed. Rhodes
resigned his offices of Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and Managing Director
of the South African Company, but suffered no further molestation. The failure
of the raid confirmed the Boers in their belief that if they fought they could
win, and they at once began to accumulate arms and stores for the struggle
which they were not loth to face.
But we are
now approaching the present day. We have to deal with questions still burning,
and to trench upon issues of current party strife. It will be well to summarise
as briefly as possible the course of events since 1895, to avoid so far as
possible the criticism of persons and parties, and to concentrate our attention
on the main questions that arose during the ten years of Conservative rule. The
present Parliament and the present Government can hardly with propriety be
discussed.
Lord
Salisbury’s third Government lasted from June, 1895, to 1900. In 1897, the sixtieth
anniversary of the Queen’s accession was celebrated in London, and was made the
occasion of an unparalleled display of the resources and loyalty of the British
Empire. In October, 1899, the Boer War broke out, and the General Election of
1900 was fought on the issue of a fight to a finish. The country by a large
majority declared itself in favour of the existing Government and its policy,
and for the first time there was a small Unionist majority in Scotland. Lord
Salisbury formed a fresh Government pledged to subdue the Boer Republics. The
Premier resigned the office of Foreign Secretary, and was succeeded by Lord
Lansdowne, whose place at the War Office was taken by Mr Brod- rick, now Lord
Midleton. On January 22, 1901, Queen Victoria died, and was succeeded by King
Edward VII, whose coronation was fixed for June 26, 1902. Two days before the
appointed date the country was shaken by the news that the King was suffering
from appendicitis, and an immediate operation was necessary. The operation was
successfully performed, and the King, happily restored to health, was crowned
on August 9,1902. In March, 1902, the principal countries concerned, excluding
Russia, concluded a convention for the abolition of bounties, direct or
54
[1902-6
indirect, on
the production of sugar and agreed to impose countervailing duties on
bounty-fed sugar or to prohibit its importation. On May 81, 1902, the Boer War
was brought to an end, and the Boer Republics were annexed. The completion of
the War allowed Lord Salisbury to retire on July 11,1902, and he died in
August, 1903. He was succeeded as Premier by Mr Arthur Balfour.
When the time
came to consider the remission of the war-duty of one shilling a quarter on
wheat, Mr Chamberlain advocated its remission as regards colonial produce, but
its retention as against foreign produce. During his absence in South Africa
this point was decided against him by the pressure of Ritchie, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, who threatened to resign, if Mr Chamberlain’s plan were
adopted. However, in May, 1903, Mr Chamberlain decided to raise the general
issue of Tariff Reform and Colonial Preference, and in September of the same
year he resigned, in order to prosecute his campaign more freely* His
resignation was accompanied by that of Ritchie and followed by that of the Duke
of Devonshire, also a convinced Free-Trader. Mr Balfour, who had shown leanings
towards a modification of the principles of unconditional Free Trade,
acquiesced in the retirement of the extreme partisans on either side, and
endeavoured to carry on the Government without committing himself to any policy
which would break up the Unionist alliance. He succeeded in achieving his main
object, though for the time his own authority and the prestige of his party
were seriously shaken. But in 1905 it became necessary to resign; Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman succeeded him, and dissolved Parliament in December, 1905.
The general
election of January, 1906, was fought on various issues. The preponderating influence
with the electors was no doubt dissatisfaction with the Unionist Government,
its dissensions, its uncertain fiscal policy, and its long duration. The heavy
financial burdens, principally due to the war, swelled the volume of
discontent; and the undefined official policy with regard to Tariff Reform was
incapable on the one hand of arousing enthusiasm among the voters, and on the
other hand gave rise to suspicions that it was proposed to increase the living
expenses of the working-class. The employment of indentured Chinese labour in
the South African mines was also very unpopular. The Education Bill of 1902 had
aroused all the force of militant Nonconformity, and by the increased cost of
more efficient education had displeased the ratepayer. Vague social yearnings
in favour of improved conditions for the labouring masses operated also in
favour of a change, and the out-and-out Socialists either gave their support to
candidates directly claiming to represent the interests of Labour, or cast
their votes and used their influence in favour of those Liberal candidates who
showed themselves not unfavourable to some of their aspirations. The grievances
of the Post Office employees, endorsed by the Bradford
1895-1906] Relations with France and
Germany.
55
Committee,
whose report was not accepted by Lord Stanley, the Unionist Postmaster-General,
were not without electoral importance. The decision of the Law Courts, which
had declared the Trade Unions liable to damages for wrongs committed by their
officials, inclined the forces of organised labour to adopt the side of the
Liberals, most of whom were pledged to redress this grievance. Home Rule was
not made an issue of the election. The total result was an unprecedented
majority in favour of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Government. Less than 160
Conservatives and Unionists were returned, as against about 390 Liberals and
Radicals, 80 Irish Nationalists, and 40 Labour members. The Liberals had a
majority of about 120 over all other sections combined ; but, as they early
showed their willingness to act in concert so far as possible with the Labour
party and the Nationalists, their gross majority, a majority of very
heterogeneous composition, amounted to about 360. Thus ended the twenty years
of Unionist ascendancy following on the Home Rule split.
The acts and
the fortunes of the Unionist Governments which ruled from 1895 to 1905 may be
briefly surveyed under the heads of foreign and colonial policy, education,
army, navy, finance, social legislation.
In foreign
policy the result of the ten years was the abandonment of the policy of “
splendid isolation,” and the entrance of Great Britain into understandings with
several Powers and one binding alliance. With France our relations reached an
extreme degree of tension after the Sudan campaigns and the discovery of the
Marchand expedition (1898). This tension was increased by the Dreyfus affair
(1897-9) in which the British public took an interest which seemed to our
neighbours excessive and indiscreet. But in 1904, owing to the conciliatory
efforts of the British Government, the pressure of a shifting Balance of Power,
and the personal charm of King Edward, this state of things was happily brought
to an end by an understanding mainly concerned with Egypt, Morocco, and
Newfoundland, though embracing, so far as possible, all matters of dispute.
Relations
with Germany, on the other hand, did not improve. The telegram of the German
Emperor to President Kruger in 1896 was resented here. The Boer War was thought
to be unjust by the great majority of Germans, as of almost all the chief
European peoples, and inflamed the popular animosity against this country. The
British understanding with France did not mend matters, and, in 1905, at the
Conference of Algeciras Great Britain stood by France while Austria gave her
support to Germany, and the serious rift in European harmony has not yet
disappeared. Official relations have always been correct; but a strong jealousy
between Germany and Great Britain has grown up, accompanied by mutual
suspicions, which were not diminished by the later understandings with Russia
and lesser Powers. The alliance with Japan was resented in Germany as blocking
German designs in the Far East and as a breach
of loyalty to
the European community. Proposals for a diminution of armaments made in
connexion with the Hague Conference of 1907 were not well received by Germany,
and such proposals are not likely to be well received so long as Great Britain
maintains her claim to the overwhelming maritime supremacy which is necessary
to her safety.
With the
United States our relations were at their worst in 1896, at the time of
President Cleveland’s Venezuelan message The Cuban War gave us the opportunity
of showing our goodwill towards the United States in an effective manner, and
the two greatest English-speaking nations have since been on much more friendly
terms.
With Russia
our enduring feud outlasted the Unionist Government. Supposed Russian designs
upon India were a constant cause of suspicion. The expedition to Tibet (1904)
was partly the result of this mistrust. The alliance with Japan was in the main
an expedient adopted to meet the danger of a coalition to destroy British
influence in the Far East, and to close the great Chinese market to British goods.
But it was also particularly directed against Russian aggression in Manchuria,
and the predominance of Russian influence at Pekin. In the War of 1904-5, which
was rendered possible by this Treaty, Great Britain in accordance with the
terms of the Treaty kept the ring. No other Power could intervene in view of
the maritime strength of this country. Thus, without any departure from
neutrality, Great Britain’s alliance was of material assistance to Japan. But
the effects of the War and of the subsequent social disturbances in Russia
removed a menace from our frontiers, and rendered the Russian Government more
amenable to friendly overtures. The understanding with Russia concerning
Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet (1907) is due in the first place to these causes,
and in the second place to improved relations between England and France. It
has manifest dangers of its own, but it may be the beginning of a policy of
mutual forbearance in the Far East, and of a different grouping of the Powers
in Europe.
In the Near
East, the amiable sentiments of the British public have constantly urged upon
the Government forms of intervention which they knew to be impracticable or
harmful. Armenian massacres, the aspirations of Greece, the sufferings of
Cretan insurgents, the rights and wrongs of Macedonian Committees, have, each
in turn, been made the subject of clamorous demonstrations which, if effective,
could only have led to war. British diplomacy has worked long and late and
unselfishly in defence of oppressed races; but the preservation of the status
quo, however unsatisfactory, has been the only guarantee for European peace,
and the rivalry of Austria and Russia, with the impotence of the Ottoman Power,
have assisted British statesmen to attain their end. And, whatever Government
is in power, this policy must be pursued, until the Balance of Power is
changed, or one of the rivals is determined to risk a contest. Then, Great
Britain will have to decide what her
1895-1906] Colonial policy.—Education Act
of 1902. 57
interests in
the Balkan peninsula may be, and what sacrifices she is prepared to make in
order to protect them.
British
colonial policy down to 1903 was dominated by one commanding personality, Mr
Joseph Chamberlain. Towards our subordinate colonies he initiated a policy of
improvement and development by state funds, a policy of reproductive
investment. Towards our autonomous colonies he succeeded in adopting an
attitude of sympathy and comprehension which worked miracles. The first
outcome was Customs preference for British imports, first granted gratuitously
by Canada and afterwards by other colonies. The second outcome was a
spontaneous wave of enthusiastic loyalty and imperial pride, which received
material illustration during the Boer War. Had the colonies not felt
confidence in Mr Chamberlain, doubts might have arisen in their minds whether
the quarrel was just and necessary. Australian federation is a visible and
permanent fruit of his policy. Another result was the movement for Tariff
Reform on the basis of mutual preference between the colonies and the mother
country, the result of which is yet to be seen. Something more may be said on
this subject under the head of finance, and the details of colonial history are
reserved for a later chapter.
The Conservative
Government of 1895 made one or two half-hearted or incomplete attempts to deal
with the questions of primary education ; but it was reserved for the
Government of Mr Balfour to tackle the main problem. The problem was forced
upon the attention of the Government by the needs of the voluntary schools
which provided elementary education for more than half of the children of
England and Wales. The government grants, though several times increased,
together with the subscriptions of supporters, did not suffice to keep these
schools up to the average standard of efficiency maintained by the
board-schools. On the other hand, to purchase or rent these schools from the
communities that had built and assisted to support them would impose an
excessive burden on the public finances. And the friends of denominational
religious education, Church of England, Roman Catholic, Jewish, or other, were
unwilling to resign the schools which they had hitherto controlled, and to
place them under the conditions imposed by the Cowper-Teinple clause of the
1870 Act. The defects of that Act demanded a remedy; and every thoroughgoing
remedy was barred either by conflicting religious feeling, financial
considerations, or other practical difficulties. The Act of 1902 abolished the school
boards, and placed the local control of all schools alike in the hands of the
county councils, or those of town and borough councils. The existing
board-schools were maintained as undenominational schools, and the existing
voluntary schools as denominational schools; but, for the first time, the
expense of maintaining the latter was placed upon the rates, in so far as the
government grant did not suffice. The public authority assumed the direct
control of secular education in all schools ; but the religious bodies
continued to
58
Defects of the educational system.
[1870-1909
regulate the
religious instruction in the schools whose buildings they provided, and were
charged with the obligation of maintaining and, if necessary, improving those
buildings. By these provisions the existing division of schools into
denominational and undenominational was perpetuated, and Nonconformist
ratepayers were burdened in many areas with part of the expense of maintaining
schools in which religious systems obnoxious to them were subjects of daily
instruction, while the similar grievance, which had long been endured under the
board-school system by those who were not content with Cowper-Temple teaching,
was not removed. From the point of view of efficiency the reform justified the
additional cost; but conditions of acute religious strife were induced which
have not yet passed away.
Since 1870,
elementary education has been made universal and compulsory; the education
provided has been improved and a more rational system of inspection has
replaced the old plan of payment by the results of examination. But, in the
opinion of many, our scheme of elementary education is still unpractical and
unsuited to the needs of the great majority of the population, for whose
industrial and manual training insufficient provision is made. The
concentration (since 1899) of the powers of the old Education Department, those
of the Science and Art Department, and the control of educational endowments
formerly exercised by the Charity Commission, in the hands of a new Board of
Education, was an administrative improvement which has already produced some
good results. The age-limit for compulsory education has been progressively
raised. Since 1890, when a grant was first made for technical instruction out
of money originally intended for other purposes, considerable efforts have been
made to provide technical and scientific training in accordance with the needs
of the various localities; but the almost complete decay of the old system of
apprenticeship has left a gap which these facilities do not go far to fill. By
the Act of 1902, the Board of Education and the local education Authorities
have considerable powers for the control and encouragement of secondary
education; but the coordination of education between the pubb’c elementary
school and the University is still very imperfect. Mainly through private
benefactions and local effort, Universities and University Colleges have been
established in many of the leading provincial towns; but private benefaction
for this purpose lags in this country far behind the American standard, while
public expenditure is not comparable with that of the most enlightened
countries of the European Continent. State expenditure on elementary education
has risen from about £1,500,000 in 1872 to £16,000,000 in 1908-9; and other
expenditure on education has probably increased in a like proportion. But it
can hardly be maintained that individual culture and social efficiency have
proportionately improved during that period. We have yet to envisage clearly
the ends which public education should
1899-1905] Reforms in the army and the War
Office.
59
subserve, and
to come to some agreement as to the objects which can with advantage be
pursued. For definite and practical objects a much larger expenditure might be
profitable; but for the results hitherto obtained the existing expenditure is
extravagant. Meanwhile, the religious controversy blocks the path, but does
not diminish the cost.
The
deficiencies in our military system brought to public notice by the Boer War of
1899 led to a period of active and inconsequent attempts at reform. Mr St John
Brodrick, now Lord Midleton, Secretary of State for War from 1900 to 1903,
attacked the problem with great energy, acting on the advice of Lord Roberts.
The main object of his endeavour was to create an adequate reserve of trained
troops, and for this purpose he initiated a plan by which recruits should be
invited to enlist for three years only, with the option of extending their
service when this term was reached. This plan would have provided in due course
of time a large and perhaps adequate reserve of private soldiers, though the
cadres in which they were to be embodied would have been deficient. But the
scheme broke down, owing to the unwillingness of the soldiers to extend their
service, and to the consequent difficulties in supplying the drafts for India
and the colonies. Amold-Forster adopted a plan by which the War Office should
alternatively enlist men for three years, or for nine years. The nine years’
men would supply the drafts for distant service, the three years’ men the
reserve, and the War Office could control the supply by calling for men of one
class or the other or for both according to need. It was his further intention
to abolish the linked battalion system, to train recruits in centralised
depots, to reduce the term of short service in order to increase still further
the reserve; and he had a plan for forming and training a reserve of officers.
These ulterior suggestions did not obtain the assent of the Cabinet, and they
were finally abandoned owing to the change of Government. Behind all these
plans and those subsequently adopted there has been a strong movement for the
adoption of compulsory military service; but compulsory military service would
not supply the troops for our garrisons in India and the colonies, and is in
other respects difficult to accommodate to our needs and our finances. Above
all, both parties seem to believe that compulsion would be unpopular with the
electorate.
In 1903 Mr
Balfour appointed a small committee, consisting of Lord Esher (Chairman),
Admiral Sir John Fisher, and Lieutenant- Colonel Sir George Clarke, to consider
the reconstitution of the War Office, on the lines indicated by Lord Esher in
his note appended to the Report of the Elgin Commission. In pursuance of their
recommendations the office of Commander-in-chief was abolished; and the
general control of the army was entrusted to an Army Council, consisting of the
soldiers and civilians holding the chief administrative posts in the War
Office, and presided over by the Secretary of State for War. Mr Balfour
60 The Committee of Imperial Defence.—The navy.
had
previously created a Committee of Imperial Defence in which leading political,
naval, and military opinion was to be concentrated, and this Committee now
received wider functions with a permanent organisation and staff. It was hoped
that this Committee would also aid in the task of organising and coordinating
defence throughout the Empire. A general staff was also projected and
afterwards set up to consider problems of general strategy, and train a body of
special officers for staff duties in war and peace. Training of troops was
severed from administration, which was largely decentralised, and an Army
Accounts Branch was established, which it was hoped might for the future
prevent such waste and disorder as had been apparent in the South African War.
But the general policy of the Army Council still chiefly depends on the
Secretary of State for War and upon Parliament, where his influence is
paramount. Responsibility still rests with the Minister of the Crown; but
organisation has been improved and the status of the chief military authority
has been raised in public estimation. History is not yet, however, in a
position to judge of the results of the new system, which has been further
developed by Mr Haldane, on the lines laid down by Mr Balfour.
The cost of
the army increased from seventeen millions in 1891-2 to nearly twenty-nine
millions in 1905-6, a considerable part of this cost being due to an
improvement in the pay and other conditions of service. But the beneficial
effects of these improved conditions were considerably diminished by the
difficulty found in securing civil employment for discharged soldiers—a problem
which still occupies the attention of our military authorities.
The Unionist
Governments devoted much attention to the navy, which steadily increased in
magnitude and effective strength. The growing competition of foreign Powers
imposed a progressive burden on the taxpayer; the total expenditure on the navy
rising from fifteen and a half millions in 1891-2 to thirty-seven millions in
1904-5, which fell in 1905-6 to thirty-three and a half millions, in
consequence of administrative economies. The abandonment of naval stations
abroad, the concentration of the main fleet in European waters, the demolition
of obsolete vessels, and the use of nucleus crews, resulted in a considerable
saving without, as it was believed, loss of efficiency. But the competitive
increase in the tonnage and armament of battleships and first-class cruisers
bids fair to absorb all possible economies. The Cawdor programme of 1905
foreshadowed an annual expenditure of £8,000,000 on capital ships alone, without
reckoning the cost of other classes of ships, harbours, or docks, and, after a
short period of relaxed effort, it seems probable that this expenditure may be
exceeded in the near future. Our immediate rivals in this field are no longer
France and Russia, as in the past, but Germany and the United States, the two
most vigorous nations of the world. In 1902, it was decided to modify
Social
legislation.—National finance.
61
the system of
training for naval officers. Thenceforward, the engineer officers, the marine
officers, and the executive officers were to receive the same training during
youth, and specialisation was to be deferred until after they had received
their commissions.
Irish affairs
receive treatment in another chapter. The efforts of the Unionists to combine
generous legislation with resolute suppression of crime have up to the present
had results which must be described as disappointing. The task of pacifying and
reconciling Ireland, which Gladstone took up in 1868, is not yet accomplished,
and Mr Wyndham’s comprehensive scheme of Land Purchase has been impeded and
almost wrecked by the liberality of its own terms, and the rise in the current
rate of interest for loans.
The chief
measures of social legislation initiated by the Unionist Governments were the
Employers’ Liability Acts of 1897 and 1900, which secured compensation for
injuries received in the course of their employment to various classes of
workers, estimated to amount in all to seven million persons, and the Licensing
Bill of 1904<, which resulted durifig 1905 and 1906 in the extinction of
more than a thousand licenses with compensation paid by levy on the trade,
while securing license-holders against dispossession without compensation, and
has led and will in natural course lead to further like results. The London
Government Act (1899) created in the metropolis a number of Borough Councils to
control many of those local services which in other cities are directed by a
single authority. It was thought that without such subdivision the
responsibility of the London Council might exceed its capacity for executive
work, and that its authority in the capital of the Empire might prove to be
excessive. Reasons partly similar led to the establishment of a separate and
independent authority, to take over the undertakings of all the London water
companies (1902). The Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905 was only a tentative and
experimental reconnaissance in a difficult and embarrassing country. Minor
Acts of collective importance were the Agricultural Rates Act (1896), the
Conciliation Act (1896), the University of London Act (1899), the Housing of
the Working Classes Act (1903), the Employment of Children Act (1903), and the
Aliens Act (1905). But the legislation of Parliament has been supplemented by
the activity of many municipal bodies; and a school of reformers has arisen
which sees a fruitful prospect in the steady extension of municipal supply of
many services to the community, and direct employment of labour by the
municipalities. At the municipal elections of 1906 there was a general reaction
against the cost of municipal socialism, but it remai is to be seen whether
this reaction will last.
Great
Britain, like most of the chief European nations, has found the problem of
national finance increasingly difficult. The policy, inherited from Peel and
Gladstone, of reducing expenditure and lightening taxation
ch. in.
62
Influence of socialistic thought.
has been
abandoned, and state expenditure increased from 90 millions in 1891-2 to 140
millions in 1905-6, besides six millions in the latter year charged to capital.
After a short struggle to reduce expenditure lasting from 1906 to 1909, public
expenditure for 1909-10 is again estimated to show a substantial and
progressive increase. The increase is mainly due to expenditure on the army,
navy, and education; but all services have become more costly, owing partly to
the extension of the field of government activity, and partly to improved
remuneration demanded by and conceded to many classes of public servants. In
these circumstances, it has become clear that the system of finance hitherto
adopted by both parties is not adequate to meet the national needs. Hence
arises, on the one hand, the Tariff Reform movement, intended to supplement- or
replace existing sources of revenue by import duties on manufactured goods, and
possibly on some articles of food, with preferential rebates to British
colonies, and, on the other hand, the Liberal Budget of 1909, which is a
far-reaching attempt to supply present and future needs without abandoning the
principles of Free Trade. The supporters of these two schools are now locked in
their first serious encounter, the issue of which cannot be foreseen. Both
parties now admit the necessity of increased expenditure; they differ as to the
merits of rival methods of taxation.
Both parties
have been affected by the spread of tendencies, properly called socialistic:
the Liberals more than the Conservatives, for it involved a greater sacrifice
of principle on the part of the Liberals to abandon the doctrines of free
competition in favour of those of government regulation and government
beneficence. The Liberal party, in the past supremely individualistic, has
found cause to shed a large part of its individualistic prepossessions. The
Conservative party was always less individualistic. The prosperity of the State
and of the individuals that make up the State depends upon a due balance of
individualism and socialism; but the movements of the past century have given
so much latitude to individualism that the efforts of this century must by
necessity be concerned with correcting the effects of too much liberty. Mr
Lloyd George’s Budget of 1909 shows this tendency in one shape, Tariff Reform
in another; and there are a score of different forms of socialism, constitutional,
revolutionary, centralised, decentralised, academic, philosophic, aristocratic,
democratic, autocratic, predatory, philanthropic, idealist, materialist,
Christian, anti-Christian, which can hardly be grouped in a single party. It
may be anticipated that both parties will be more or less socialistic for some
time to come, and their respective success will depend upon the kind of
socialism which their leaders administer. Meanwhile, there is apparent the
formation of a new party or section, including men of very varying shades of
thought, but agreed in the desire to effect a redistribution of the national
income by one means or another, and adopting the name of “Socialists.” The
influence, direct or indirect, of this extreme
63
left wing
npon politics has already been great; and there is no reason to suppose that it
will diminish.
Reviewing the
results of the whole period here surveyed, we see a vast increase in material
prosperity, a great increase in territory and in imperial solidarity, an
increase in national strength though our absolute preponderance has not been
maintained. Our export trade, after remaining nearly stationary from 1871 to
1898, increased rapidly from 1899 to 1906. On the other hand, imports showed a
fairly steady increase over the whole period, indicating a progressive addition
to the total profits arising from our dealings with the rest of the globe. The
population of the United Kingdom has steadily increased from thirty-one
millions in 1871 to forty-one millions in 1901, though the fall in the
population of Ireland has continued. The death-rate has diminished by about
thirty per cent.; the birth-rate has also diminished, though in a less
proportion. The proportion of pauperism has greatly diminished since 1868,
though it has been nearly stationary since 1891. The cost of pauperism has,
meanwhile, very greatly increased, owing mainly to better conditions in
workhouses and asylums. Social organisation has improved, chiefly through
reforms in municipal administration, and the greater efficiency of government
supervision. The defects in that organisation are more closely scrutinised, and
many evils have been brought to light, few of which are new. Special attention
has been directed to fluctuations in industrial employment, to the existence of
a large class of persons incapable of continuous employment, to industries
carried on under conditions which do not admit of decent existence, to
physical deterioration, to the evils of drink, to excessive infant mortality.
For these and other social evils remedies are demanded, which will require the
application of entirely new principles. The old specific of letting things
alone is out of fashion; the manifold responsibilities of the State are
recognised. In spite of all expedients to curtail debate and save parliamentary
time, the efficiency of Parliament has not increased in proportion to the
greatly extended functions now assigned to the legislative authority.
The old rural
aristocracy has been to a large extent displaced by newcomers. The rural
labouring population has diminished; the urban population has increased beyond
all proportion. Emigration has proceeded steadily, with periodical
fluctuations, though it has not increased in proportion to the increase of
population. The proportion of emigrants proceeding from these islands to the
United States has diminished, that destined to British North America and
British South Africa has greatly increased; emigration to Australasia has not,
until recently, been progressive. The general standard of living has improved,
among the wealthier classes to the point of extravagance, among the middle
classes and the more prosperous manual labourers to a high degree of comfort;
and even in the lowest classes it has probably not deteriorated. The general
level of wages for manual labour has risen, and irregularity of
ca. iiii
64
employment is
probably not greater than it was forty years ago. Crime has diminished, taking the
whole period under review, but of late years it has shown a slight tendency to
increase. The consumption of alcohol has diminished in all classes, especially
of late years. Gambling on horses and on stocks and shares has become even more
prevalent.
In literature
few great writers have arisen to take the place of those who have passed away
during the period. Ephemeral publications of every description absorb a great
deal of energy and talent, and more durable works run the risk of being pushed
aside and forgotten. But a public exists which welcomes works on natural
science, history, biography, and travels. The interest in social and economic
subjects is unfailing. There are many accomplished writers, but few great names
stand out from the throng. In drama the taste of the public has demanded light
entertainment rather than tragedies and works of poetic imagination, though the
plays of Shakespeare still hold the stage. The general scheme of domestic
decoration has greatly improved since the aesthetic movement of the seventies;
but decorators have relied much on the designers of the eighteenth century, and
originality has leant towards affectation. In painting, the conventions of the
Victorian school still hold the public taste; the Preraphaelite school has spent
its vigour; and the efforts of younger men to find new modes of expression have
found little encouragement. The craze for the antique and the rare has diverted
funds from the support of contemporary art; but the lack of sincere and
spontaneous impulse to artistic production in harmony with our modern life is
the main cause of sterility. Museums and picture galleries enshrine the
memorials of a creative instinct which no longer exists. In architecture the
Gothic revival has passed away, and important buildings are now designed in
the grandiose Palladian style; but the public cares little which style is
adopted, and the desire for advertisement has produced most of the striking
edifices which have been erected in our streets. Domestic architecture in the
cottage style, to suit the taste of cultivated people of moderate means, has
produced some fantastic and many delightful country residences which, with
their gardens and interiors, are the expression of a genuine love of beauty in
a narrow class. Of all the minor arts, gardening has been pursued with the
greatest sincerity and enthusiasm.
This has been
an age of immense material progress, but not an age of conspicuous moral
improvement, and with increased prosperity has come a sense of unrest and discontent,
and discontent finds sympathetic support from the widespread compassion of the
fortunate for the unfortunate. Translated into common sense, this discontent
should lead to social reform; but it remains to be seen whether the pervading
sentiment of compassion will be used to carry measures framed in the true
interests of the whole community, or wasted on palliatives which diminish
self-reliance and energy.
IRELAND AND
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT.
The consequences of the Fenian conspiracy
were out of all propoi tion to the conspiracy itself. It is well known that the
execution (1867) of the “ Manchester martyrs ”—Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien—for
their share in the constructive murder of police-sergeant Brett proved the
turning- point in the life of Charles Stewart Parnell, and there is not a
little truth in O’Leary’s remark that Gladstone’s conversion to Home Rule dates
from the attack on Clerkenwell gaol in the same year. The fact is that, though
unimportant in themselves, these events, occurring as they did in England,
brought forcibly home to Englishmen the intense hatred with which the English
rule in Ireland was regarded by the bulk- of Irishmen. Added to this, it was
the first time that American-Irish influence had made itself felt in domestic
affairs. These incidents furnished food for serious reflexion to a generation
which had just succeeded in securing for itself a fuller participation in the
government of the country by the acquisition of the household franchise. For
good or for evil, the balance of political power had passed into the hands of
the democracy, and there was something repellent to it in a system of governing
Ireland in opposition to the will of the majority of its inhabitants. The
conscience of the nation was touched, and a strong desire was manifested to
break with the bad traditions of the past and to do justice to Ireland. There
was perhaps more of sentiment than of knowledge in this view of the question.
For it can hardly be said that Englishmen generally knew anything of the real
causes that lay at the bottom of the Fenian conspiracy. But they were willing
to learn, and in Gladstone they found a sympathetic exponent of their desire to
act justly towards Ireland.
Himself
keenly sensitive to the trend of public opinion, he had already accorded to
Ireland a principal place in his political programme. From the question of the
disestablishment of the Irish Church, on which, with the majority of
Englishmen, he had made up his mind in 1865, he passed on to other objects. The
anomalous position occupied by the Established Church in Ireland was only one
aspect of the Irish problem. The root of the evil, as it seemed to him, was to
be found in the fact that English
c. M. H. XII. OH. IV.
6
66
Disestablishment of the Irish Church.
[1869
statesmen had
all along tried to govern Ireland in accordance with English ideas and in the
interest of a small Protestant minority. But, if Ireland was ever to be
pacified and Irish discontent removed, the process must be reversed and an
attempt made to legislate for Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas, and for
the benefit of the entire nation. He announced his intention, if the
opportunity was afforded him, of disestablishing the Irish Church, of settling
the Irish land question, and of providing for the educational needs of the
Irish people. The opportunity he asked for was given him. His theory appealed
to Englishmen educated in the political school of Jeremy Bentham and John
Stuart Mill, and at the general election in 1868 he was returned to power with
a majority of 118 votes in a House consisting of 658 members. He at once
addressed himself to the task he had taken in hand. On March 1, 1869, he
introduced a Bill for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church in
Ireland. The Bill, with some modifications made in the House of Lords, received
the royal assent on July 26.
Unlike
Catholic Emancipation, which was preceded by a long and stormy agitation,
dating back to the middle of the eighteenth century, the disestablishment of
the Irish Church came suddenly, without any particular demand for it, and was
apparently attributable rather to the anomalous position of the Irish Church as
a highly privileged and richly endowed corporation in a country the majority of
whose inhabitants professed another religion, than to its constituting, at
least since the settlement of the tithe question, any oppressive grievance. The
Irish Church was an offshoot of the Church of England. It was the Church not of
the natives, or of the gentry of Anglo-Norman descent, but of the English
planters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like them, it had grown
rich on the spoils of conquest and confiscation. It was, like the plantation
itself, of exotic origin. Notwithstanding its privileged position as the Church
of the State, it had from the first had a hard fight to hold its own against
Roman Catholicism on the one hand and Presbyterianism on the other. It never
was and never could be a missionary Church. This was ground and cause enough in
the opinion of philosophic radicalism to destroy it. “It had failed in its
mission,” said Englishmen, anxious to render justico to Ireland, but a little
uncertain where to begin. “ Cut it down : why cumbereth it the ground ? ”
But the Act
of Disestablishment was not a simple measure of destruction. Though cut adrift
from the State, with its revenues and its privileges curtailed, the Irish
Church was left standing as a self- governing body. It was confirmed in the
possession of its religious edifices; liberal provision was made for its
sustentation; clergymen who wished to retire were enabled to compound for their
services; and a fund was set aside to satisfy all vested interests. In itself
it suffered nothing by the change. On the contrary, it gained by being freed
1609-1869] Origin of the agi'arian 'problem.
67
from
political influences, its activity increased, it lost its aggressiveness, it
became more than ever it had been the home of piety and learning, and in the
devotion of its members it found ample compensation for its loss of material
wealth. A proposal made while the Bill was in progress to save it by the
concurrent endowment of the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian Churches was
rejected; but, to satisfy the sense of justice, provision was made for the
discontinuance of the Maynooth Grant and the Regium Donum,. Henceforth, all
three Churches were to stand on the same level. For good or for evil, however,
the Act of Disestablishment marks a distinctly new step in the relations
between Great Britain and Ireland. It was the first expression of the new
political ideal of governing Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas. Those who
argued in favour of Disestablishment did so on the ground that the Irish Church
had failed in its mission. The same argument would apply to the whole system of
the English rule in Ireland. In denouncing Disestablishment as an infringement
of the Act of Union, its opponents instinctively felt that more important
interests than even the fate of the Irish Church were at stake. In particular,
the clause in the Act enforcing the compulsory sale of church property and
enabling the tenants of the Church to become, with the assistance of the State,
the owners of their holdings, was of serious significance for the future. In
passing, it may be noticed that of the 8432 tenants of the Church the great
majority took advantage of this clause to become the owners of their farms at
an average price of 221 years’ purchase.
Having
settled the question of the Church, Gladstone proceeded to attack the land
problem. The “Great Famine” (1845-7) is the cardinal fact of Irish history in
the nineteenth century. In importance it holds a place beside the Rebellion of
1641-52 and the War of the Revolution. Attention has been drawn in former
chapters to the effect of those events on the economic history of Ireland. It
has been pointed out how, in consequence of the depopulation created by the
wars of the seventeenth century, the English settlers, in their capacity of
Irish landlords, tried to extract an immediate profit from their estates by
turning their lands into grazing pastures and sheep-runs, and that, while they
succeeded in creating a flourishing provision trade and an equally flourishing
woollen industry, the natives were driven off to the bogs and sterile parts of
the island to make room for cattle. English legislation destroyed the woollen
industry; but during the first half of the eighteenth century Ireland was a
corn-importing country. This condition of things lasted till England entered on
her career of a great manufacturing country. The commercial concessions made to
Ireland in 1780, and the encouragement offered to agriculture by Foster’s Com
Laws, enabled her to take advantage of the favourable juncture. Ireland became
a corn-growing and corn-exporting country. The outbreak of the war with France
made agriculture a profitable
5—2
68
Effects of
the Great Famine. [isoo-49
business, and
the Napoleonic period saw Ireland at the height of her prosperity. With the
peace there came a decline; but the impetus given to population continued, and
in 1841 Ireland numbered 8,175,124 inhabitants: The Great Famine was awful in1
its consequences; but it was less the Famine than the adoption of Free Trade
principles by England that put a sudden end to the artificial prosperity of the
country. With the adoption of Free Trade agriculture ceased to be a profitable
business, and, step by step, year by year, Ireland has reverted' to her
primitive condition of a grazing country.
So far as the
land question was concertied the immediate result of the Famine was twofold. In
the first place, many landlords were irretrievably ruined by their inability
to collect their rents, while others, rtbt so hardly pressed, seized the
opportunity to eject their non-rent- paying tenants, and to turn their lands into
grazing pastures Secondly, and in consequence of the inability or reluctance of
the landlords to forgo their rents for a time, the peasantry, being most of
them tenants- at-will, were forced to quit their holdings and constrained to
take refuge within the inhospitable walls of the workhouse, or in circum-
itances of indescribable suffering to seek out new homes for themselves beyond
the Atlantic; or to eke out a miserable existence' by harvest work in England
and Scotland. Parliament met the situation by two Acts—the one, the
Encutribered Estates Act, to enable bankrupt landlords to get rid of their
lands by removing the restrictions placed by the law on the sale of entailed
estates: the other for the relief of evicted tenants, by rendering it obligatory
on evicting landlords to give to the Poor Law guardians, forty-eight hours’
notice of intention to evict, so as to enable them to make provisi’on for the
shelter of the persons evicted. The real author of the Encumbered Estates Act
was Sir Robert Peel. In pondering over the Irish problemj Peel had reverted to
the ideals of English statesmeh in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Like Bacon, he argued that Ireland could only be pacified by planting her
thickly with English colonists. The devastation created by the Famine had, in
his opinion, created a favourable opportunity to put the experiment in
execution. As he had foreseen, the market was, in consequence of the Act,
flooded with estates. Landlords’ who, with a little helpy might have tided over
the crisis were forced to part with their ancestral properties at greatly
depreciated prices. But the British capitalist, on whom stach store had been
set, held aloof. Of the 7216 purchasers for the 3197 estates sold during the
next twenty-eight years only 314 were Englishmen. Most of the new proprietors
were small Irish capitalists of a not very desirable type. Anxious to make the
most of their bargains and bound by none of those scruples that had influenced
thfe conduct of their predecessors^ they evicted their defaulting tenants with
remorseless energy.
The
discontent aroused by the proceedings of the “ Exterminators ”
1850-3] Formation of a Tenant-Right League.
69
led to the
foundation in 1850 of a Tenant-Right League. The object of the League was to
obtain for the tenant what was afterwards known as the “ three F’s ”—a fair
rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale—or, in other wprds, to secure for him a
legal recognition of ;his ,claim to dual ownership, with the
landlord, of the land cultivated by him. The movement spread rapidly. For once
laying aside their religious prejudices, Protestant farmers of the north
agreed to unite with their Catholic brethren of the south in a demand for
legislation on the basis of the proposals of the League. The time seemed propitious.
Early in 1852, the Ministry of Lord John Russell was succeeded by that of Lord
Derby; but, in consequence of his inability to command a majority, Parliament
was dissolved in the summer of that year. At the general election Ireland
returned some fifty members pledged to make Tenant Right a cabinet question.
Votes were at a premium in the new Parliament, and the Ministry showed a
desire to conciliate the Irish contingent. Facilities were afforded the
Leaguers to give expression to their policy; and at the same time the
Attorney-General for Ireland, Mr (afterwards Sir) Joseph Napier, submitted four
Bills for [the regulation of the land question, admitting the principle,
insisted on by the Leaguers, of retrospective compensation fpr tenants’ improvements.
But the House of Lords refused to lister to the proposal; and the Prime
Minister, anticipating defeat if he insisted, beat a retreat. His action was
resented by the Leaguers, and, transferring their votes to the Opposition,
they succeeded in bringing about the fall of the Ministry.
A thrill of
joy parsed through the country. The fate of Ireland was seen to rest in the
hands pf its own elected representatives. Without their consent no ministry, it
was thought, could be formed, and /the price of their consent was Tenant Right.
But even then signs of disruption in the ranks of the Leaguers had become
visible. The question of the Eccjesiast'cq.1 Titles, the activity of the.
Catholic priests, and the violent language pf the editpr of the Tqblet, Frederick
Lucas, had awakened a feeling of distrust among the Ulster Presbyterians. The
hostility of the Catholic Primate, Archbishop Cullen, and the treachery of
individual members pf the League, completed the mischief. Reduced by desertion
to insignificance, the League ceased to be a political factor with which
English parties had tP reckpn. The attempt to create an independent Irish party
had failed and its failure discredited parliamentary tactics for more than a
generation. Meanwhile, the process of depletion continued. Year by year
thousands of Irish men and women quitted the country. Their sufferings \yere
intense; but the prospect for those who remained grew brighter and the idea
gained ground with English politicians that “the abstraction pf the Celtic race
at the rate of a quarter of a million a year was a surer remedy ifor the
inveterate Irish disease than any human wit could have imagined.” The Fenian
conspiracy destroyed the fond delusion, and revealed a new danger.
70
[l870
Instead of
simplifying the Irish problem, emigration had added to its complexity by
introducing a new factor—the American Irish. To the Irishman in America,
boiling over with hatred against England, the question of the land had become
absorbed in the greater question of national independence. The time had not yet
come to put into practice Lalor’s advice to link repeal to the land question,
like a railway carriage to the engine ; but it was coming rapidly.
Meanwhile, on
February 15, 1870, Gladstone submitted his Bill for a “ final ” settlement of
the Irish land question to the House of Commons. The Bill contained no
recognition of the principle of the “ three F’s,’’ which its author expressly
stated to be incompatible with the rights of property. But it did admit the
claim of the tenant to compensation for improvements effected by him, and it
gave the force of law to that form of tenant-right which prevailed in Ulster.
At the same time it left a loophole of escape for the landlord, by allowing the
tenant to contract himself out of the law, with the avowed purpose of
assimilating the tenure of land in Ireland to that in England on the basis of
pure contract, regardless of the fact that there was all the difference in the
world between an independent English farmer, able to make terms for himself,
and an Irish peasant, shackled, so to speak, to the soil. Briefly stated, the
Bill proposed to recognise Ulster tenant- right wherever it existed; to
encourage the creation of leases for thirty-one years; to afford a beneficial
right of occupation to the tenant so long as he paid a reasonable, i.e. a
government valuation, rent, by enabling him to claim compensation for “
disturbance,” i.e. eviction, vajying inversely with the value of his holding;
and, by the “ Bright Clauses,” to facilitate the creation of a peasant
proprietary, by enabling the Board of Works to advance two-thirds of the
purchase money, to be repaid at the rate of 5 per cent, per annum spread over
thirty-five years. There is no denying that this was an honest attempt to solve
the question; but it must be admitted that the intention of assimilating the
law in Ireland to that in England was inconsistent with Gladstone’s undertaking
to legislate in accordance with Irish ideas. The measure, however, met with
little opposition, and after some alterations, further complicating it, in the
House of Lords, it became law on August 1.
Having
settled the church and land questions to his satisfaction, Gladstone turned to
consider the question of higher education. To understand the problem that
confronted him, we must go back to the middle of the sixteenth century. At that
time, primary education in Ireland rested on two Acts of Parliament, viz. 28
Henry VIII, c. 15; providing for the establishment of parish schools, and 12
Eliz. c. 1, establishing a free school in every diocese. But the education thus
provided was, even where the Acts could be enforced, of a very elementary
sort, and, in the absence of any means of higher education at home, the Irish
gentry of the Pale began to send their sons to be educated in
1591-1872]
71
Spain,
France, Italy, and the Spanish Netherlands. But the danger of exposing the more
intelligent class of the community to Catholic influences was speedily
recognised, and led to the foundation in 1591 of Trinity College.
Unfortunately, the remedy came too late. Religion had ceased to be a matter of
indifference to the natives, and the Irish gentry would have nothing to do with
an institution which was avowedly based on proselytising principles. As it had
repelled the Catholics so it failed to attract the Presbyterians, who looked to
Glasgow University for their intellectual and theological training. Thus, like
the Irish Church, of which it was indeed a branch, Trinity College remained, as
it had begun, an institution confined to the English planters, and like her,
too, was enriched by the spoils of conquest and confiscation. The Commonwealth
left its mark on education in the charitable foundations of Erasmus Smith, as did
the Revolution in the Charter schools, and the Union in the Kildare Place
schools. A notable effort made by the Irish Parliament in 1787 to deal with the
whole question of elementary, intermediate, and higher education, unfortunately
led to no result. But the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 was followed by the
establishment of a training college for the Irish Roman Catholic priesthood at
Maynooth. Nothing, however, was done to meet the educational needs of the
country till 1831, when the Irish Secretary of the day, Lord Stanley, carried a
measure to combine a scheme of united secular education with separate religious
instruction in state-aided schools. The success attending the National School
system encouraged Peel to attack the question of higher education in the same
spirit, by the establishment in 1845 of three secular colleges at Cork, Galway,
and Belfast, called the Queen’s Colleges, and combined as a University. But it
soon became apparent that a system of secular training, acceptable so long as
it concerned itself with the rudiments of learning, was utterly distasteful to
a people which, whether Catholic or Protestant, was intensely religious, when
it came to teaching such subjects as history, philosophy, and science. Except
in Belfast, where a more rationalist spirit prevailed, the “Godless Colleges”
were left rigidly alone by extreme Churchmen on both sides. The Church of
Ireland had Trinity College, to which parents, if they had sufficient means,
could send their sons. The needs of the Presbyterians were fairly met by the
new Queen’s College at Belfast and Magee College at Derry. The Catholics alone
were entirely unprovided for. To supply the deficiency, private benevolence was
enlisted, and a Catholic University, of which Cardinal Newman was the first
rector, was founded at Dublin in 1854. But, though a university in name, it had
no power to grant degrees, and being disregarded by the State, it had from the
first a hard struggle for existence.
On the whole,
then, there was no question that the subject of higher education in Ireland
required serious attention when Gladstone took up the matter in 1872.
Unfortunately, Gladstone had no personal
72
Gladstone’s University Bill rejected.
[1873-4
experience of
Ireland, and his attitude towards the problem was rather that of a benevolent
sciolist than that of a well-informed statesman. Though theoretically distinct
from each other, Trinity College and Dublin University were practically one and
the same thing. In his Bill Gladstone proposed to revert to the theory, and,
regarding the University as an entity in itself, to associate Trinity College,
the Queen’s Colleges of Cork and Belfast, together with the Catholic University
and Magee College, as colleges affiliated to it. An elaborate scheme was
prepared for its administration under the control of the State. But the
University was to be a teaching as well as an examining body. The education
afforded by it was to be purely secular, and, as the National School system had
solved the question of teaching national history by entirely omitting it, so
the University was to achieve its end by excluding from its curriculum
theology, philosophy, and modern history. None of these topics were to be
admitted as compulsory subjects in examination for its degrees. The scheme was
greeted with derision and indignation. Catholics and Protestants were unanimous
in their condemnation of it. Never, indeed, had an English statesman so
thoroughly mistaken public opinion as did Gladstone on this occasion. What
Irishmen of all classes and creeds wanted was not secular education, but
education based on religion—Anglican education for the Anglican Protestant,
Catholic education for the Catholic, and Presbyterian education for the Presbyterian.
The Bill was rejected on its second reading, and early in 1874 Gladstone
surrendered the seals of office to Disraeli.
Gladstone’s
failure to solve the Irish problem justified and at the same time gave
considerable impetus to a movement which began to make itself felt in Ireland
at this time. Home Rule is not simply Repeal in a new dress. It is an idea of
European rather than of native origin. It has its roots in that stronger
feeling of nationality, which sprang into being about the middle of the century
and has led to such diverse results as the consolidation of Italy, the
foundation of the German Empire, the separation of Norway from Sweden; to Pan-
Germanism and Panslavism in Europe, and Monroism in America. The author of the
Home Rule movement in Ireland was Isaac Butt. He was a man of singular ability,
by birth an Ulsterman, by tradition a Conservative, and by profession a
barrister. His progress in his profession had been rapid. At thirty-one he was
made a Q.C., and he had already filled the chair of Political Economy in
Trinity College, Dublin; but it was his defence of the principles of the Union,
on the occasion of the Corporation Repeal Debate, inaugurated by O’Connell in
1843, that first attracted public attention to him. Years went by. He was still
a Unionist and a Protectionist when he entered Parliament in May, 1852, as M.P.
for Harwich. At the general election in that year he was returned for Youghal,
which he represented till 1865. He was defeated at the general election in
"that year; but was returned to Parliament for
1870-4] Home Rule movement. Isaac
Butt.
73
Limerick city
in 1871. In the interval he had acquired a reputation as the defender of the
Fenian conspirators. More than this, he had from his intimate connexion with
them become convinced that the Fenians “ were not a mere band of assassins
actuated by base motives, but real earnest patriots.” He was led to ponder on “
the depth, the breadth, the sincerity of that love of fatherland that
misgovernment had tortured into disaffection, and misgovernment, driving men to
despair, had exaggerated into revolt.” When the Amnesty Association was
started in 1868, he accepted the position of President. The day, predicted for
him by O’Connell, when he would change his political faith, had come.
It need
hardly be said that Disestablishment had created a feeling of bitter resentment
against England among Irish Protestants. Fenianism, though scotched, was still
alive. The feeling of dissatisfaction with England drew Churchmen and Fenians
together, and led, in May, 1870, to the foundation of the “Home Government
Association.” The object of the Association was to secure for Ireland, “ under
a federal arrangement” by which matters of imperial concern were to be left to
the Imperial Parliament, the management of her own domestic affairs by a
national legislature. The name of the association was altered to that of the
“Home Rule League,” and, in 1873, a branch of it, called the “Home Rule
Confederation of Great Britain” was established at Manchester. At the general
election in 1874 some sixty members were returned to Parliament pledged, more
or less strictly, to the principles of the League. Unlike O’Connell, however,
whom he in many respects resembled, Butt was neither a parliamentary tactician
nor a born leader of men. His position was a difficult one. The party, of which
he was the nominal chief, was composed of the most heterogeneous
elements—Orangemen, O’Connellites, Young Irelanders, Tenant-Righters, and
Fenians. His authority, always more acknowledged than obeyed, suffered greatly
from the fact that he was overwhelmed with debt and consequently unable to
devote his entire attention to his parliamentary duties. Moreover, his policy
was not calculated to inspire enthusiasm. His object, as stated by himself, was
to make an assault along the whole line of English misgovernment, to bring
forward every Irish grievance, in the hope and confidence that, if
liberal-minded Englishmen were made acquainted with the real needs and wishes
of Ireland, “ they would come in the end to the conclusion that they had but one
way of giving good government, and that was by allowing us to govern
ourselves.” In the pursuit of this impossible ideal, he submitted session after
session a motion in favour of Home Rule. Session after session he brought
forward Bills to amend the tenure of land, to develop the industrial resources
of the country, and to improve the system of municipal and county government.
He was thoroughly conversant with his subject and spoke with great ability and
marked moderation ; but he spoke to deaf ears. His Bills were one and all
rejected, and his Home Rule proposal was laughed out of court. The
74 Parliamentary obstruction. Parnell. [i874-7
situation
recalled the days of the “ dignified policy ” of Catholic agitation before
O’Connell took the matter up.
Most of
Butt’s followers were quite satisfied with the result; but there were one or
two of the party, whom the annual farce of begging for justice provoked to
indignation. Joseph Biggar was not the father of parliamentary obstruction; but
he was the first to reduce it to a system. The idea of speaking against time
had come to him quite accidentally; but, as the importance of the Rule of the
House, forbidding contentious measures to be taken after midnight, dawned on
him, he recognised what a formidable instrument of obstruction an unscrupulous
use of it might prove. If Englishmen would not legislate for Ireland, neither
should they legislate for themselves. His opinion was shared by the junior
member for county Meath, Charles Stewart Parnell, a Protestant, owning land in
county Wicklow. But it was some time before the future leader of the Irish
party took an active share in the debates of the House. It was an almost
involuntary exclamation that first attracted public attention to him. The Irish
Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, had, in the course of one of those academic
debates on Home Rule, instituted by Butt, alluded to the “ Manchester
murderers.’1 “ No! No! ” exclaimed Parnell, adding, when called upon
to withdraw, “I do not believe, and never shall believe, that any murder was
committed at Manchester.” The exclamation and explanation were characteristic
of the man.
It is a
common reproach against Englishmen that they know nothing of Irish history; but
there were probably few members of the House of Commons who did not know at
least as much of it as Parnell. His ignorance of everything that preceded his
personal experience was astounding, and the fact is of considerable importance
in trying to fairly estimate the man and his policy. He had been born and brought
up in an atmosphere of intense hatred towards England. This hatred of England
kept him steady and gave consistency and force to his policy. In intellectual
versatility and in his knowledge of the Irish problem he was greatly inferior
to Butt. But he saw, what Butt would never recognise, that, if Home Rule was to
be obtained, it was not by trying to persuade liberal-minded Englishmen of its
justice, but by making the government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament an
impossibility. England, in short, was to be worried into the concession. Biggar
had discovered the way. Parnell began by supporting him; but under his
direction obstruction assumed a more definite and intenser form. Other members
of the party gave in their adhesion. The session of 1877 saw the system in full
swing. A Prisons Bill, introduced by Government, was obstinately contested
clause by clause. Seventeen divisions were taken on the usually undisputed
Mutiny Bill. But it was during the debate on the South Africa Bill that the
policy of obstruction was pushed to its extreme limits. The House was indignant
at the open contempt with which it
1877-8] Growing influence of Parnell.
15
was treated,
and pressure was brought to bear on Butt to control his unruly followers. Butt
did as he was desired. He was rewarded with the cheers of the House; but his
words caused strange searchings of conscience among Irishmen.
The session
came to a close on August 13. A few days later, Parnell, addressing a Home Rule
meeting in Dublin, declared his utter indifference as to the opinion of
Parliament. His words made a great impression on the extreme wing of the party,
and at the annual meeting of the Home Rule Confederation at Liverpool Butt was
deposed and Parnell elected President in his place. But parliamentary
obstruction was only one side of Parnell’s policy of forcing Home Rule.
Agitation outside the House was as necessary as obstruction inside it. “ I
think," he said, addressing his constituents at this time, “ that that
opposition to English rule is best which is most felt....O’Connell gained
Catholic Emancipation outside the House of Commons....No amount of eloquence
could achieve what the Clerkenwell explosion and the shot into the police van
had achieved.” His words caused the Fenians to prick up their ears. Fenianism,
as we have remarked, was still an active principle in Irish politics. At home
it was represented by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, with its headquarters
at Paris; in America by the Clan-na- Gael. The object of both associations was the
forcible separation of Ireland from England. Neither believed in the
possibility of achieving it by constitutional agitation; but, while the former
based its hopes on a successful insurrection, for which money and arms were
being collected, the latter looked to forcing a conflict between England and
the United States as the only practical method of realising its object. But war
was a remote chance, and in the meantime some of the Clan-na-Gael, tired of
their enforced inactivity, began to wonder if something might not be made of
Parnell’s agitation. They had no faith in Butt’s method; but Parnell’s openly
expressed contempt for English opinion and his defence of the “ Manchester
martyrs ” obtained their sympathy and paved the way for a closer understanding.
Meanwhile,
things were working favourably for Parnell in another direction. The question
of higher education, left unsolved by Gladstone, was taken up by Lord
Beaconsfield. The old Queen’s University was dissolved, and a new Royal
University, with power to confer degrees on students educated in any of the
Irish colleges, was founded. The creation of a mere examining board did not
satisfactorily solve the university question; but it was a considerable step
forward, and, early in 1878, a Bill dealing with intermediate education was
introduced into Parliament by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. The Bill made no attempt
to go to the root of the matter ; but it was favourably received by the Irish
party, and it enabled Parnell to point the moral that obstruction, far from
having, as Butt asserted, alienated English sympathy, had achieved a notable
success.
Foundation of the Irish Land League.
[1878-9
The rest of
the session passed quietly away, and it seemed as if obstruction was dying
down. But appearances were deceptive. For seven years Ireland had enjoyed a
succession of good harvests with high prices and a corresponding increase of
rents. The general prosperity had served to conceal the defects of the land
legislation of 1870. But the harvests of 1877-8 had been greatly below the
average, and that of 1879 threatened to prove a complete failure, while prices
showed a tendency to fall. Agricultural distress and inability to pay rents led
as a natural consequence to evictions on an extended scale. When Parliament met
in 1879, the attention of the Chief Secretary, James Lowther, was called to the
seriousness of the situation and the pressing necessity of amending the Land
Act of 1870. But Lowther turned a deaf ear to the suggestion, and obstruction
broke out afresh. To one man, however, the situation seemed to call for
immediate action. Michael Davitt, the son of a Mayo peasant, knew by personal
experience what eviction meant for his countrymen. A man of small education but
of lofty ideals and an ardent social reformer, he had, when little more than a
boy, thrown in his lot with the Fenians, and for nearly eight years had paid
the penalty as a prisoner in Dartmoor gaol. But his punishment only served to
strengthen his views on the land question, and, on being liberated on a ticket-of-leave
in December, 1877, he returned to Ireland a confirmed Fenian. Among those who
welcomed him was Parnell. An interchange of views followed, and in August,
1878, Davitt sailed for America. Parnell had made a great impression upon him,
and in America he exerted his influence with the leaders of the Clan-na-Gael to
induce them to support Parnell’s policy. Opinion in Fenian circles was divided
as to the merits of what was called the “New Departure”; but it was agreed to
send a message to Parnell promising support, on condition that he would go for
Home Rule pure and simple, and make the land question (with the view to
establishing a peasant proprietary) a main plank in his platform. To this
overture Parnell made no reply.
Early in 1879
Davitt returned to Ireland. The pinch of famine had begun to make itself felt
and evictions were on the increase. To guard against them, Tenants’ Defence
Associations were formed, and an agitation commenced to secure a reduction of
rents. Parnell was induced to attend a meeting arranged by Davitt at Westport
in June. It is significant that he was still in doubt as to what attitude to
take up in regard to the agrarian question; but he advised his hearers to keep
at all costs a firm grip on their homesteads. This was enough for Davitt. The
time had come for putting into practice Lalor’s advice, to graft a
constitutional movement on an agrarian agitation. On October 21, there was a
conference of Nationalists and land reformers at Dublin, when the Irish
National Land League was established for the purpose of bringing about a
reduction of rack-rents and facilitating the creation of a peas&.it
proprietary. Parnell was elected President of the
1879-80]
Parnell and the American Irish.
11
League, and a
resolution was passed requesting him to visit America “ for the purpose of
obtaining assistance from our exiled fellow countrymen.”
On December
21 Parnell sailed for America But his object in going was not merely, or even
chiefly, to solicit relief for evicted tenants. “A true revolutionary movement
in Ireland,” he said at this time, “ should, in my opinion, partake both of a
constitutional and an illegal character. It should be both an open and a secret
organisation, using the constitution for its own purposes, but also taking advantage
of its secret combination.” The precise meaning of his words may be disputed;
but it is clear that what really took him to America was the necessity he felt
of coming to an understanding with the Clan-na-Gael, and of capturing, if
possible, their organisation. At heart he was as much a Fenian as any of them,
and he would have grasped at any weapon which promised to secure Irish
independence; but he was convinced that the constitutionalism they despised
was, in the circumstances, the only method that promised success. In this
respect his mission was only partially successful. As a body, the Clan-na-Gael
would have nothing to do with the “new departure.” But there were thousands of
Irishmen who were not Fenians, and on them Parnell’s arguments made a deep
impression. Personally and financially, his tour in the States and Canada was
an unqualified success. It was brought to a sudden close by the news that
Government was about to dissolve Parliament. Hastening home, Parnell threw
himself energetically into the election campaign. Fenian opposition, Stronger
even in Ireland than in America, dogged his steps and crippled his action. A
resolution was passed by the Land League forbidding the application of any part
of its funds to promoting the interest of any parliamentary candidate. At
Enniscorthy, his meeting was broken up, and he was himself pelted with rotten
eggs. But he refused to be discouraged, and, being returned for three
constituencies, he elected to sit for Cork city. The general election of 1880 placed
the Liberal party, with Gladstone at its head, in power. Out of the 103 members
returned by Ireland 65 were professedly Home Rulers. Of these only a minority
were unequivocally in favour of a “forward policy ”; but they were strong
enough to secure Parnell’s election as chairman of the party in opposition to
Butt’s successor, “Sensible” Shaw.
When
Parliament met at the end of April, 1880, the attention of Government was at
once drawn to the state of Ireland. After some hesitation the necessity of
putting a stop to the increasing number of evictions, especially in the West,
was admitted by the Chief Secretary, William Edward Forster. A measure of
temporary relief was introduced, and a Royal Commission was promised to
investigate the working of the Land Act of 1870. The Compensation for
Disturbance Bill, as it was called, was, in the opinion of Government, a mere
corollary to the Act of 1876, rendered necessary by the exceptional
circumstances of the
78
Agrarian
disturbances. Boycotting. [188O
situation; but
it was vehemently opposed by the Conservatives and rejected by the House of
Lords. In Ireland its rejection caused great indignation. Addressing a meeting
of tenant farmers in county Kildare, on August 16, Mr John Dillon advised his
hearers “to pay no more rent until justice was done them.” The Chief Secretary
denounced his words as “ wicked and cowardly ”; but this criticism was fiercely
resented by Parnell, and obstruction broke out with redoubled violence.
Government was in an awkward position, all the more serious owing to the
absence, through illness, of the Prime Minister. From the first, Forster had
been extremely anxious to govern Ireland without asking for exceptional powers.
His sympathies were entirely on the side of the tenants,, struggling against
starvation and menaced by eviction. He was convinced that the Compensation for
Disturbance Bill would have killed the agitation by acting as a deterrent
influence on the small class of unscrupulous landlords, who were seizing the
occasion to evict their tenants and consolidate their farms for grazing
purposes. But the Bill had been rejected, and, unless he resigned, he had no
option but to maintain law and order at all costs. To comply with the demand
for a short Act to suspend evictions during the recess was beyond his power. On
the other hand, his soul revolted against the barbarous outrages daily recorded
in the newspapers, and, as the session drew to a close, his words of warning
were mingled with threats of coercion.
Parliament
was prorogued on September 7. The situation, in Parnell’s opinion, called for
immediate action. Notwithstanding the prospect of a good harvest, 15,000
persons, it was calculated, were threatened with eviction. Parliament had
refused to protect them; they must be taught to protect themselves. It was
perilous ground on which he was standing. Ireland was seething with discontent.
During the summer there had been a great development in the operations of the
League. Money was flowing in from America, and not money only. Thousands of
copies of the Irish World, edited by Patrick Ford, openly advocating
assassination, were in circulation. But Parnell showed no hesitation. The time
for action had come. Speaking at Ennis on September 19, he advised his hearers
to resort to boycotting, as the practice came to be called from the name of its
first important victim, Captain Boycott, in order to bring obnoxious landlords
and land-grabbing peasants to reason. “Depend upon it,” he said, “ the measure
of the Land Bill next session will be the measure of your activity and courage
this winter.” The mot <Fo?-dre had been given. Within a month Ireland was in
the throes of an agrarian war. Some landlords, bolder than their fellows,
defied the League and continued to evict; but, in general, evictions stopped.
On the other hand, agrarian outrages, accompanied in a few cases by murder,
increased at an appalling rate. Government watched the rising storm with
anxious attention. The reluctance felt to resort to coercion was rapidly
yielding to a conviction that the ordinary law was unable to cope with the
1880—lj Coercive legislation.—Irish
Land Act.
79
situation. As
the Lord Lieutenant (Earl Cowper) said, it was not so much the outrages
themselves that caused anxiety as the universal sympathy shown with the perpetrators
of them. On November % information was filed against Parnell and the principal
officials of the League for conspiracy to prevent the payment of rent, to
resist the process of ejectment, to prevent the taking of farms from which
tenants had been evicted, and to create ill-will among her Majesty’s subjects.
The trial lasted twenty days and ended in the acquittal of the accused.
The verdict
removed the last feeling of hesitation on the part of the Cabinet. Parliament
met on January 6, 1881. The Queen’s Speech foreshadowed exceptional legislation
for the vindication of law and order, and a new Land Bill. On January 24, the
Chief Secretary moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the protection of person
and property in Ireland. The motion was fiercely resisted by the Pamellites.
Government was entreated to give precedence to its measure of remedial
legislation. But Gladstone was inexorable. This time it should not be said of
him that he had yielded to intimidation. The patience of the House was sorely tried
by the obstructive tactics of the Irish party, and at last, after an unbroken
sitting of 41 hours, the Speaker put an end to the debate on his own authority.
His action was challenged as a breach of privilege, and, when the Prime
Minister rose to propose certain new rules of procedure, he was met with such a
storm of abuse as led to the suspension and forcible ejection of the entire
Parnellite party. The new rules were passed, and on March 2 the Protection of
Person and Property Bill became law. It was followed three weeks later by a
Peace Preservation Act. The additional powers acquired by Government no doubt
enabled it to confront the Laud League with greater confidence; but the
recurrence to coercion was a severe strain on Liberal principles, and it was
with a genuine sigh of relief that Gladstone, on April 7, rose to move for
leave to introduce his new Land Bill. The Bill was a practical concession of
the demand for a fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale. The “ three E’s,”
which in 1870 he had denounced as an encroachment on the just rights of private
property, Gladstone now, with some circumlocution, admitted to be not only just
but necessary. In a word the Bill expressly recognised a dual ownership in the
land, and provided for the creation of a Court to mediate between landlord and
tenant as to what constituted a “fair” rent. This Gladstone emphasised as its
cardinal feature. No tenant was to be prevented from appealing to the Court;
but on the other hand an appeal was not obligatory, and, if they preferred it,
landlord and tenant could arrange matters between themselves on the basis of
simple contract. When, however, the appeal had once been made, the verdict of
the Court was to be binding for fifteen years. At the same time, the principle of
the “Bright Clauses” of the Act of 1870, enabling the tenant to purchase his
holding, was
m,
w.
80 Parnell's attitude.—The Land League
suppressed. [1881-2
maintained,
and certain defects in that Act as to compensation for disturbance were
remedied.
The Bill
fairly astonished the Irish members by its completeness. But it was no part of
their policy to recognise its merits. On the contrary, they concentrated their
attention on its defects. In the first place, the Bill was not a measure for
the establishment of peasant proprietorship, and therefore could not command
the approval of the extreme wing of the Land League, whose object was the
compulsory expropriation of the landlords. But, in the opinion of those who,
like Parnell, were willing to accept it as an instalment, its chief defect was
that it was not retrospective—that it practically (though not expressly)
excluded from its benefits all those peasants, who, for one reason or another,
were in arrear with their rent. The Bill received the royal assent on August
22, and a day or two later Parliament was prorogued. On September 14-16 there
was a great convention of the Land League at Dublin. The question was what
attitude the League ought to adopt in regard to the Act. Parnell’s
quasi-acceptance of it had greatly annoyed his Fenian allies, and he was in
danger of finding himself, as the Marquis of Hartington had shrewdly predicted,
in the awkward position of either having to defy them, or of running counter to
the wishes of his followers and probably to his own convictions. He struck a
middle course. The Act was to be neither accepted, nor rejected; it was to be
tested. Select cases were to be submitted to the Court, and judgment suspended
till it was seen what interpretation was placed by it on the “ fair rent ”
clause. The fact that Gladstone had himself admitted that the Land Court was
the cardinal feature of the Act furnished Parnell with a p^usible ground for
his proposal. But the attitude he took up and the extraordinary ovation
accorded him at this moment by the Dublin populace were regarded by Government
as a direct challenge. Speaking at Leeds on October 7, Gladstone roundly
asserted that his real object was “to arrest the operation of the Land Act”;
but he warned him that “ the resources of civilisation against its enemies were
not exhausted.” Parnell retorted that the charge was “ unscrupulous and
dishonest.” This afforded Government the opportunity it wanted, and a day or
two later Parnell found himself lodged in Kilmainham gaol as a “ suspect.”
His imprisonment
(followed by that of several of his colleagues) proved an egregious blunder.
The League at once issued a manifesto, calling on the tenants to pay no rent
until their leaders were released. Government retaliated by suppressing the
League. But this step only added to the popularity of the “uncrowned king,” as
it became the fashion to call Parnell, while it greatly strengthened his hold
over the Fenians. The situation was emphasised by a resolution of the Dublin
Corporation, on January 3, 1882, to confer the freedom of the city on him and
his fellow-prisoner John Dillon. During the winter, outrages, instead of
diminishing, grew in numbers and ferocity ;
Forster resigns.—Phoenix Park
murders. 81
the gaols
were crowded with “ suspects ”; while the congested state of the Land Court, in
consequence of the large reductions of rent granted by it, testified to a
nervous desire on the part of Government to bid for popularity. But, as time
went on, it became clear that the Government had suffered a serious defeat.
The question of “a new departure” was broached in the English Press. Coercion,
it was argued, had proved no remedy. The country, instead of improving, was
becoming more hopelessly disorganised; while the discovery, by the police, of
the existence of a secret society, known as “ Invincibles,” whose object was “
to remove all tyrants from the country,” added to the general feeding of
uncertainty. Meanwhile, the number of “ suspects ” had grown to 872, and the
responsibility of detaining them in prison weighed heavily on the conscience of
the Cabinet. Yielding to the strain on his nerves, Lord Cowper had tendered his
resignation, and, at Forster’s suggestion, a Minister of cabinet rank had been
appointed Lord Lieutenant in the person of Earl Spencer.
Such briefly
was the situation when an overture reached Government from, or on behalf of,
Parnell, offering, in the event of his release, to assist in pacifying the
country, on condition that the question of arrears of rent was settled. The
offer was scouted by Forster. Nothing, he declared, would induce him to consent
to Parnell’s release, except the certainty that he was powerless to cause
further mischief. But, despite his opposition, the negotiations for a
compromise went forward. There was no question of a compact, and still less of
a “ treaty but, through the mediation of Mr Chamberlain, an understanding was
reached as to Parnell’s desires and intentions. On the basis of this
understanding, the Cabinet, on May 2, came to the unanimous resolution to release
him at once, and to review the list of “ suspects,” “ with a view to the
release of all persons not believed to be associated with crime.” Forster
immediately handed in his resignation. His successor was Lord Frederick
Cavendish.
On Saturday,
May 6, the new Chief Secretary, bearing the olive branch of peace, arrived in
Dublin. The same evening, as he and the permanent Under-Secretary, Thomas Henry
Burke, were crossing the Phoenix Park, which was full of people, they were set
upon by a band of assassins and done to death. The blow filled the Irish with
consternation, and, foreseeing the mischief that was likely to follow, Parnell
wrote to Gladstone, offering to retire for a time from parliamentary life. His
offer was not accepted by the Prime Minister, who feared, as he explained to
Lord Granville, to lose his “ restraining influence.” But a strongly worded
manifesto, signed by Parnell, Dillon, and Davitt, denouncing “ the cowardly and
unprovoked assassination,” was deemed necessary in order to exculpate the
national party from complicity in the plot. The murders, of course, put an end
to the “ new departure ” policy. Five days afterwards, a Crimes Bill, limited
to three years but of unprecedented severity, suspending trial by jury and
giving the police unlimited power
82
Ireland under
Lord Spencer. [1882-5
of search and
arrest on suspicion, was introduced by the Home Secretary. Every species of
obstruction that ingenuity could suggest was resorted to by the Irish members
in order to delay its progress. Night after night, for twenty nights, the
debate continued, till it was dramatically cut short, on July 1, by the
suspension of the entire party. On July 12 the Bill became law. But, severely
as he had felt the blow, Gladstone was not to be diverted from his purpose of
rendering justice to Ireland; and, simultaneously with the Crimes Bill, a Bill
dealing with arrears of rent, on the lines laid down by Parnell, was pushed
through Parliament and received the royal assent on August 12. Coercion firmly
applied produced its inevitable result. Discontent was driven underground, and,
though several horrid murders occurred in the autumn, the country gradually
resumed an air of tranquillity. On October 17 a great National Conference was
held at Dublin, when the suppressed Land League was revived under the name of
the Irish National League. But Government kept a close eye on its
proceed?" gs, and the practical suppression of free speech during the
remainder of Lord Spencer’s viceroyalty frustrated its attempts at agitation.
Notwithstanding
his open disavowal of the Phoenix Park murders, public opinion in England and
on the Continent refused to believe that the leader of the Irish party was
entirely blameless. When Parliament reassembled after the Christmas recess,
Forster openly charged him with conniving at crime. But, beyond retorting that
the charge was false, and asserting that he had no sympathy with Patrick Ford’s
dynamite propaganda, Parnell declined to defend himself. The attack, however,
was warmly resented by his colleagues, and, as a sign of the country’s
undiminished confidence in him a public testimonial was set on foot. By the
middle of May, 1884, £10,000 had been collected, when the Pope interfered with
a strong disapproval of the project. But Ireland had not changed since the days
when O’Connell, in the heat of his Catholic Emancipation struggle, had laid
down the doctrine that Irishmen were willing to take their theology, but not
their politics, from Rome. The attack stimulated subscription, and, when the testimonial
was presented to Parnell at a public banquet. on December 11, it amounted to
about £38,000. Meanwhile, a solemn silence brooded over the land. The inclusion
of Ireland in the new Franchise Act excited some curiosity as to its probable
effect, and in England it was confidently predicted that it would tend to
diminish Parnell’s influence. In April, 1885, the Prince and Princess of Wales
visited the country; but the black flags that everywhere met their gaze were
sufficiently significant of the situation. The time for the expiration of the
Crimes Act was drawing on, and the question of its renewal greatly exercised
the public mind both in England and Ireland. The Cabinet was believed to be
divided on the subject; and, when in May Gladstone announced his intention to
renew its chief provisions, the situation created was too tempting to be
1885]
Lord
Carnarvon.—Ashbourne Act. 83
resisted by
an astute Opposition. On June-8 Government was defeated on a budget question by
a combination of Irish, Tories, and disaffected Liberals. Gladstone at once
resigned, and, after some hesitation, the Marquis of Salisbury consented to
form a Ministry.
No compact
had been made with the Irish; but it was generally understood that coercion was
to be dropped, and, as a token of goodwill, Lord Carnarvon, who was believed to
favour the concession of a large measure of local government to Ireland, was
appointed Lord Lieutenant, and general director of Irish politics. He met with
a gratifying reception from the populace on the occasion of his state entry
into Dublin on July 7, and shortly afterwards he had, at his own request, an
interview with Parnell. What, he asked, did Parnell think of the establishment
of a central legislative body for Ireland on the basis of a System of county
boards? Parnell, astonished and delighted at the question, recognised his
opportunity, and thought that such a proposal would not satisfy Ireland: in
fact, he thought, the central legislative body would have to be a Parliament,
in name and fact. Carnarvon seemed to assent, and Parnell withdrew, believing
that a national legislature was within measurable distance. Meanwhile
Government, in pursuance of its policy of conciliation, had introduced a
measure, known as the Ashbourne Act, to enable tenants on estates, where the
owners were willing to sell, to become the proprietors of their holdings. In
introducing the Bill, Lord Ashbourne admitted that it was an extension of the
principle contained in the purchasing clauses of the Acts of 1870 and 1881.
Unfortunately, the “Bright Clauses” in the former Act, advancing two-thirds of
the purchase money, had, in eleven years, only led to the creation of 870
peasant proprietors; while the Act of 1881, advancing three-fourths, had, since
it came into operation, created 733. The object of the present measure was to
establish a fund of £5,000,000 for the purpose of advancing the whole of the
purchase money at the rate of 4 per cent., repayable in forty-nine years. It
was, unquestionably, a distinct step forwards in the direction of creating a
peasant proprietary and one fruitful in consequences for the near future. The
Bill having become law, Parliament was prorogued on August 14.
To Parnell
the prospect seemed encouraging. Speaking a few days later at Dublin, he declared
his conviction that the next Parliament would see the restoration of the
legislative independence of Ireland—the establishment of an Irish Parliament
(consisting of a single Chamber) and an Irish executive in Dublin, managing
Irish affairs, developing Irish industries, and regulating the life of the
nation. His speech, taken in connexion with one at Arklow, claiming for an
Irish Parliament the right to impose protective duties, naturally attracted
much attention in England. Speaking at Waterfoot on August 29, the Marquis of
Hartington expressed his belief that the leader of a party of twenty-six was
slightly overestimating his power both in Ireland and in Parliament.
ob. iv. 6—2
84
Progress of the Home Rule movement.
[i885-e
Mr
Chamberlain, who earlier in the year had announced that he was in favour of a
scheme conceding to Ireland “ the right to govern itself in the matter of its
purely domestic business,” now declared that, if those were Parnell’s terms, he
could have nothing to say to them. On the other hand, the Marquis of Salisbury,
speaking at Newport, on October 7, intimated, or at any rate led people to
believe, that, while determined to maintain the Union, he was prepared to
consider any practical plan of Home Rule with an open mind. In November, during
the course of his Midlothian campaign, Gladstone, after devoting serious
thought to the subject, declared himself in favour of a generous measure of
local government; but insisted on the necessity of securing a large Liberal
majority independent of the Home Rulers, in order to enable him to deal with
the question satisfactorily. Parnell, who was watching eagerly, seized the
occasion to invite Gladstone to formulate a plan of Home Rule on his own lines.
This Gladstone refused to do. Thereupon Parnell, on November 21, issued a
manifesto calling on the Irish of Great Britain to vote solid for the Tories.
The result of
the general election of 1885 was satisfactory to no one but Parnell. Eighty-six
pledged Pamellites held the balance between 335 Liberals and 249 Tories. It was
clear that the latter had gained very little by coquetting with Home Rule, and
evidence was soon forthcoming of a desire on the part of the rank and file to
return to the traditional policy of the party. Up to this time the state of Ireland,
though not free from outrage, had been regarded as fairly satisfactory. It was
suddenly found that without “ exceptional ” powers law and order could not be
maintained. In January, 1886, Lord Carnarvon retired from the government of
Ireland. His retirement indicated a policy of retreat, which was rendered
easier by the appearance, on December 17, of an unauthorised scheme of Home
Rule professing to issue from Gladstone. Parliament met on January 21, and a
few days later the Irish Secretary, William Henry Smith, asked for leave to
introduce a Bill to enable him to deal with the National League. This was
Parnell’s opportunity. Government was defeated on a side issue and at once
resigned. Being called upon to form a Ministry, Gladstone accepted the task,
and, in indicating the principles on which his administration was to be based,
he announced his determination to try to give effect to the constitutionally
expressed desire of the Irish people “ for the establishment by statute of a
legislative body to sit in Dublin and to deal with Irish as distinguished from
Imperial affairs.” A consideration of his Bill belongs rather to English than
to Irish history; it was defeated on its second reading on June 7, by 343 to
313. A fortnight later Parliament was dissolved.
So far as
Great Britain was concerned the general election of 1886 resulted in a victory
for the Unionists: in Ireland the Nationalists maintained their position. Lord
Salisbury returned to power, and for a time
1886-7] The Plan of Campaign.—Mr Balfour
Secretary. 85
at any rate
the question of Home Rule was shelved. But Ireland, with her needs and
aspirations, remained. The prospect was not encouraging. Owing to a general
fall in the price of agricultural produce, it had become doubtful whether the judicial
rents, falling due in November, could be paid. When Parliament met in the
autumn, Parnell declared that the situation was more serious than it had been
even in 1880. On September 10 he introduced a Tenants’ Relief Bill, for the
revision of judicial rents; but the measure was rejected on its second reading
by 297 to 202, with the result he had predicted. During his illness and without
his knowledge, Mr William O’Brien and Mr John Dillon, in October, launched the
“ Plan of Campaign ” and another agrarian war broke out. The Plan of Campaign
was in no sense a “No Rent” manifesto. To put it briefly, it amounted to an
agreement among the tenants on a given estate as to what abatement they thought
to be just on the November rent. Having agreed on this point, they were then to
go in a body to the landlord or his agent and tender the reduced rent as a
settlement in full. In case of refusal, the money was to be handed over to a
managing committee and lodged with some trustworthy person, to be used for the
purposes of the struggle. As the law in regard to trades combination stood, the
Plan was undoubtedly illegal; but it received the sanction of Archbishops Walsh
and Croke. It was put into operation on about forty estates, when, though
resisted by some landlords, it was acquiesced in by the majority, and the
winter passed away in comparative tranquillity. An attempt was made to
prosecute the leaders of the movement, but had to be abandoned; and, when
Parliament assembled in January, 1887, the Queen’s Speech alluded to the
necessity for “ reforms in legal procedure,” “ to secure the prompt and
efficient administration of the criminal law.”
Shortly
before the Easter recess Mr Balfour, who had succeeded as Irish Secretary,
introduced a new Crimes Bill, possessing the novel feature of permanency. The
Bill, though strongly opposed by the Irish and Gladstonian Liberals, became law
on July 18, simultaneously with a Land Bill, conceding the principle of
Parnell’s Tenants’ Relief Bill. Armed with these two measures Mr Balfour
proceeded to the restoration of “law and order” in Ireland. His task was not an
easy one. Landlords were indignant at the new Land Act, while the Nationalists
were infuriated at the renewal of coercion. It was made more difficult by the
close alliance between the latter and some leading members of the Gladstonian
party. Unfortunately, too, at the very beginning of the new Administration a
serious collision with the police occurred at a public meeting at Mitchelstown.
One man was killed; and “ Remember Mitchelstown ” became for long a watchword
at Gladstonian meetings. But the new Secretary held doggedly to his course,
administering justice all round and refusing to allow himself to be imposed
upon either by the sneers of his opponents in Parliament,
or by the
frantic clamour of Gladstonian Liberals investigating coercion an the spot.
Little by little the prospect grew brighter. Mr Balfour’s ippearance of cynical
indifference to anything but accomplishing the task he had undertaken yielded
to a deeper and more sympathetic interest in the fortunes of the people he
governed. Twice during his administration, in 1888 and in 1890, he introduced
Bills to increase the facilities for purchasing land, supplemented in the case
of the latter by a measure for the creation of a Congested Districts Board,
which was followed by admirable results. But it was probably his Light Railways
Bill which, by opening up the country, has done most to entitle him to the
gratitude of the Irish peasant.
Meanwhile,
the Times had been making a vigorous effort on its own account to kill Home
Rule by a series of articles, entitled “ Parnellism and Crime,” in which the
charge preferred by Forster against the leaders of the party of conniving at
crime was repeated and emphasised. The series culminated in the publication, on
the eve of the second reading of the Crimes Bill, of a facsimile letter,
purporting to have been written by Parnell shortly after the Phoenix Park
murders, excusing his condemnation of them on the score of expediency. The
letter produced a tremendous effect. Naturally, it was supposed that a paper of
the standing of the Times had absolute proof of its authenticity, and Parnell’s
repudiation of it was regarded as merely another in the long series of
deceptions that had marked his parliamentary career. The Tories were jubilant;
the Gladstonians correspondingly dejected. The current of public opinion
threatened to sweep Parnell into political obscurity. A demand by him for a
special committee of the House of Commons to enquire into the fact was refused
by Government. He was told that the Courts of law were open to him and he might
bring a libel action against the Times. This he refused to do, on the ground of
the impossibility of obtaining justice from a London jury; but he accepted the
offer of a special commission, consisting of three Judges, to enquire into the
entire working of the movement. The appointment of the commission was condemned
by the Liberals, and severely criticised by Lord Herschell, as establishing “
a precedent most novel and fraught with the utmost danger.” But, as Parnell
said, the Government was determined to have the investigation, whether he liked
it or not. The Court sat from September 17, 1888, to November 22, 1889. Public
interest in its proceedings, which had grown languid when it was found that no
“ revelations ” were to be expected, suddenly revived when it was elicited that
some, at all events, of the letters, which had been the real cause of the
trial, were forgeries. The case was settled out of court, the Times agreeing to
pay Parnell £5000 damages. The Report of the Judges, if on the whole hostile to
the movement, rehabilitated Parnell personally in public opinion. But the
victory he had gained was almost immediately neutralised by his appearance as
1889-96] Death of Parnell.—Second Home Rule
Bill. 87
co-respondent
in the Divorce Court. It is unnecessary to enter into the details of the case
of O’Shea v. O’Shea and Parnell. The full force of the blow was not immediately
felt, and his colleagues, believing the storm would pass over, unanimously
reelected him chairman of the party. But an intimation reached Parnell from Mr
Gladstone that the continuance of his leadership would imperil the cause of
Home Rule. Parnell replied by expressing his determination to “ stick to his
guns.” But Gladstone’s attitude and the openly expressed disapproval of
Parnell’s conduct by the Irish Catholic Bishops produced a strong effect on his
followers and ended in their repudiation of his leadership by 45 to 26. After struggling
for several months, with the madness of despair, to recover his authority,
Parnell succumbed to his exertions, and died of inflammation of the lungs on
October 6,1891.
Parnell’s
death, however, did not heal the breach between the two sections of the
Nationalist party, and the divisions and recriminations between them
considerably abated the interest in Home Rule. Gladstone was not unconscious of
the fact; but Home Rule had grown to be a principle with him, and, recalled to
power at the age of eighty-three, he, on February 13, 1893, again submitted a
Home Rule Bill to Parliament, this time unencumbered by any land legislation
and with a provision for the retention of the Irish members, on a reduced
scale, at Westminster. The Bill was rejected by the House of Loids. Had
Gladstone had his way, he would have dissolved and once more have appealed to
the country; but his colleagues were averse from the proposal, and early next
year he handed over the reins of government to Lord Rosebery. Meanwhile, Mr Morley,
as Irish Secretary, had been trying, not unsuccessfully, to give practical
expression in his administration of the country to the spirit of Home Rule. His
task was rendered easier by the split in the National party, the feeling of
exhaustion produced by the long struggle, and the growing desire on the part of
Irishmen generally to drop the subject. It was useless, Archbishop Croke
candidly admitted, for any reasonable man to hope for a national legislature
within measurable time. Speaking at Portadown early in 1894, Lord Londonderry
declared that the real policy of the Unionists was the settlement of the land
question on the lines of the Ashbourne Act. Outside Ulster, Ireland’s
prosperity, he insisted, depended on the development of her agriculture, and in
his opinion the most pressing need of the nation was the establishment of an
Agricultural Department. His words did not pass unheeded.
On the
accession once more of Lord Salisbury to office in 1895, a determined effort
was made, as the new Irish Secretary, Mr Gerald Balfour, put it, “to kill Home
Rule by kindness.” In pursuance of this policy a new Land Bill, based on a
measure prepared by Mr Morley, was submitted to Parliament in April, 1896. The
Bill provided for the gradual and voluntary expropriation of Irish landlords
and the
88
[1896-9
automatic
adjustment of “fair” rents. The acceptance of it by the House of Lords proved a
severe strain on its traditional loyalty to the Conservatives ; but, after
nearly leading to a revolt, it became law on the last day of the session. Two
years later (1898) a Local Government Act was passed conferring on Ireland the
same degree of local autonomy as was possessed by Great Britain. More important
perhaps, however, was the support extended to an invitation held out by Mr (now
Sir) Horace Plunkett, member for South County, Dublin, to all sections of
politicians to meet together, “ to consider the means, outside politics, by
which the material prosperity of Ireland might be stimulated.” Notwithstanding
some discouragement, a fairly representative committee was got together and led
to the foundation of an Irish Agricultural Society. By uniting men of different
shades of opinion in a common object, the society had the effect of diminishing
the acrimony of party politics. The work of reconciliation was greatly promoted
by the Report issued in 1896 of a Commission appointed under Lord Rosebery’s
Administration to consider the working of the Act of Union in so far as it
regarded the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland. According
to this Report, the Act of Union had imposed a far too heavy burden on Ireland,
inasmuch as the taxable capacity of the country, as compared with Great
Britain, instead of being one-eleventh, had for years heen actually not more
than one-twentieth.
The feeling
that the Act of Union had not been an unqualified blessing, as they had
hitherto supposed, gained ground in Unionist circles, and found vent in a great
meeting at Cork on December 12, when Unionists and'Home Rulers spoke from the
same platform. Still, there could be no question that, despite the continual
emigration, which was draining off the life-blood of the nation, the country
was showing signs of advancing prosperity. The deposits in the Savings Banks,
which in 1886 had amounted to ^*4,710,000, nearly doubled that amount in 1896.
The cooperative dairy farming system was beginning to prove a success; so, too,
was the cottage industries movement. Both were helped forward by the
establishment of a number of small credit banks, based on the Raiffeisen
system, which did much to relieve the peasant from the village lender or
“gombeen man.” Government watched the movemeut sympathetically; and an
Agricultural and Industries Bill, which passed Parliament in 1899, led to the
formation of a permanent Department. No doubt, there was another side to the
picture. Emigration continued at a frightful pace; between 1886 and 1906 the
population diminished by more than half a million; large tracts of land
continued to pass out of cultivation; and in 1898 there was a recurrence of
famine in the west, leading as usual to fresh evictions. Landlords, who were
tired of the everlasting struggle to get their rents, discovered that sheep and
cattle were easier to manage than recalcitrant tenants. Individuals, mostly
well-to-do shopkeepers, were found willing to take
1899-1904] Agrarian troubles.—Land purchase.
89
grazing lands
on an eleven months’ lease, whereby no tenant-right was created. In this way
vast tracts of land were cleared of human beings and turned into cattle
ranches.
To meet this
new danger Mr William O’Brien, the author of the Plan of Campaign, started a
United Irish League in county Mayo, the centre of the disturbed district
(1899). It took firm root and incidentally furnished the basis for a
reconciliation between the two sections of the Nationalist party, under the
leadership of Mr John Redmond. It declared war, not indeed to the knife, but
what was almost as much feared, to the extent of social ostracism by the familiar
process of boycotting, against evicting landlords and “grabbing” graziers. From
Mayo the League spread by degrees over the adjacent counties. Even strong
Unionists, such as Mr Thomas Wallace Russell, if they did not actually join it,
expressed sympathy with its demand for the compulsory sale of landed property
(1900). Government itself unintentionally gave an impetus to the movement.
Shortly after the foundation of the League, the Congested Districts Board
purchased Lord Dillon’s estate for something over £250,000. There were about
4000 tenants on the estate paying an average rent of £3 a year. The Board at
once reduced rents all round by 10 per cent. Further, it remitted £20,000
arrears and purchased 2000 acres of adjacent grazing land to enlarge the
tenants’ holdings. The result was that tenants on the neighbouring estates,
particularly those of Lord de Freyne, struck for what they called the “ Dillon
rent.” They received the support of the League, and a fresh agrarian war broke
out, to which Government, at the instigation of the Irish Unionist Alliance,
replied (1902) by putting into force several of the provisions of the Crimes
Act of 1887. But coercion was recognised to be only a temporary expedient. It
was suggested that a conference should be arranged between the friends of the
tenants and those of the landlords. The idea was scouted as ridiculous. All the
same, the conference actually met in December; and, having elected Lord
Dunraven chairman, it passed resolutions in favour of the total abolition of
dual ownership of land on the basis of voluntary sale. The resolutions were
confirmed by an Irish Landowners’ Convention on January 7,1903, and on March 25
a Bill was submitted to Parliament, proposing the creation of a new 2f per
cent, stock, redeemable in thirty years, for the purpose of advancing
£100,000,000 for the purchase of saleable estates in Ireland, at the rate of
£5,000,000 annually. The Bill became law in August.
The
unexpected success that had attended the land conference strengthened the
desire on the part of men of all parties to join hands in the regeneration of
their common country. In August, 1904, the Land Conference Committee resolved
itself into an Irish Reform Association. At a subsequent meeting a scheme of
Devolution, prepared by Lord Dunraven, was adopted, of which the object was to
secure the
90
[1904-5
transference
from the Treasury to an Irish Financial Council, whose decisions were only to
be reversible by a not less than one-fourth majority vote of the House of
Commons, of an annual sum of about =£*6,000,000, to be employed by the Council
for purely domestic purposes. The proposal was greeted by a storm of protest.
The fact was that the course of recent legislation was little to the taste of
the extreme wing of the Unionist party. They had long been of opinion that the
method of “killing” Home Rule by kindness pursued by Government was tending,
almost as much as Home Rule itself would have done, to weaken the connexion
between the two countries. An attempt made by them in 1900 to capture Sir
Horace Plunkett’s seat in the interest of one of their own number had only
ended in handing it over to the Nationalists. They were more successful in
their opposition to the Devolution scheme, and, though unable to secure the
removal of the permanent Undersecretary, Sir Antony (now Lord) Macdonnell,
they managed by their protests to force the resignation of the Chief Secretary,
Mr Wyndham, and to wring a disavowal from Government.
The strike of
the extreme Unionists had its counterpart in the ranks of the Nationalists.
Ever since the Liberals had taken up the cause of Home Rule, there had been a
tendency to coalition with them on the part of the Irish parliamentary party.
But the abandonment of the old policy of neutrality was strongly disapproved by
a large section of the Nationalists, especially by those in whom the old leaven
of Fenianism was still active. Parliamentarism, it was urged, had proved a
failure. The ideal of Home Rule in 1905 was further off than ever. The true
policy was one of abstention from Parliament, and of passive resistance to the
Administration. Ireland was and would continue to be an independent nation,
whether England liked it or not. Until the wrong done to Ireland was made good,
there could be no friendship with England. Meanwhile, Irishmen were to adopt an
attitude of indifference both to England and the Irish parliamentary party.
They were to learn to rely on themselves. There was plenty of work for them to
do. The Irish language must be revived and made the language of the nation,
emigration, that weakened the national strength, prevented, young Irishmen
dissuaded from enlisting in the army, the use of articles of English
manufacture discouraged, and so forth. The movement culminated in the Sinn Fein
policy. Such was the general situation of affairs at the close of 1905, when Mr
Balfour’s Government resigned.
THE THIRD
FRENCH REPUBLIC.
Seldom has any nation had to face more problems,
problems of more vital importance, of more manifest urgency, with fewer
apparent resources to aid in their solution, than was the case with France in
the summer of the year 1871. Almost half her territory was in the occupation of
German armies, under a commander exercising an authority more peremptory and
better obeyed than Thiers, who throughout May was, with the help of the
Assembly at Versailles, struggling against the Commune in Paris. At the
beginning of May, 1871, peace with Germany was not yet concluded. Negotiations
were still proceeding on the basis of the preliminaries of February 26, which
stipulated for the cession of Alsace and part of Lorraine and the payment of a
heavy indemnity, and left further details to a conference on neutral territory,
at Brussels. Here the diplomats charged with the duty of concluding the peace
seemed to have doubts as to their prospects of success, ard to be awaiting a
renewal of hostilities.
Though, under
the pressure of military occupation, the bulk of the lation, with its
representatives in the Assembly and Thiers, desired peace, even at the cost of
heavy sacrifices, another party in France, particularly the advanced
Republicans in the great cities and above all in Paris, protested against the
peace and the sacrifices which were its price, and demanded for France,
mutilated in her territory and menaced in her unity, revenge, either immediate
or, at least, in the near future. At any time, the choice between that
acquiescence and' these persistent hopes would have involved risks and doubts.
It was specially difficult for a nation which at the moment had no Government;
for after the defeat of Sedan the Empire had definitively collapsed. On the
other hand, the men who had taken upon themselves the task of organising
national defence, Republican deputies and deputies of Paris, had regarded their
task as completed upon the cessation of hostilities. The only legal authority
still existing in France was a National Assembly which met on February 13,
1871, at Bordeaux, with the immediate duty
92
[1871
of deciding
between peace and war, and was subsequently charged at Versailles, on the
invitation of Thiers and under his direction, with the task of reorganising the
forces and resources of the nation, though it had received no mandate to
determine the form of government to be eventually established. It is true that
this Assembly had chosen as its President Jules Grevy, a Republican, and had,
on February 16, nominated Thiers as “chief of the executive power of the French
Republic.” But the Government thus set up was still provisional; and, while
accepting the agreement between itself and Thiers, known as the Pact of
Bordeaux, the Assembly clung persistently to its hopes of a restoration of the
monarchy. All the parties which for the past hundred years had in greater or
less degree swayed the fortunes of France—Legitimists who supported the Comte
de Chambofd, adherents of the Orleans family grouped round the Comte de Paris,
Republicans who believed themselves authorised to link up the threads which had
been broken by the coup d'ttat, Bonapartists who, in the face of the decree of
deposition of February 28, persisted in their hope of some reactionary movement
in favour of the Prince Imperial—all these parties believed themselves to have
rights or strove to create them during a period of uncertainty so favourable to
the development of their designs and intrigues. No condition of things could
have appeared more hopeless for a nation whose soil was in hostile occupation,
whose fortunes were wrecked, on the morrow of a civil war which had brought
bereavement and ruin and left a legacy of bitter animosities.
Moreover,
everything at that time in France seemed to have been cast once more into
chaos, principles as well as political systems and material interests. In the
history of the Catholic Church, which is so inextricably interwoven with the
destinies of the French nation, the events of 1870 counted for as much as the
Franco-Prussian War in the realm of politics. The decrees of the Council of the
Vatican were the decisive effort of Roman supremacy and of ultramontane
doctrines against the liberty of modem societies, against the assertions of
reason and of science, and the claims and traditions of national Churches.
These decrees indicated so great an increase in pontifical authority that in
Catholic countries men might expect the extremest demands on the part of a
clergy and of a faithful laity who were themselves incapable thenceforward of
offering any resistance to the will of Rome. In France, especially, the religious
Orders which had long been proscribed, even under the monarchy, had returned in
great numbers to seize, thanks to the Law of Falloux (1850), the direction of
popular education, and to conduct the education of the middle classes on
Catholic lines, in direct opposition to the University. Moreover many public
officials, deputies, and officers of the army and the navy, were inclined from
conscientious or interested motives to aid this ultramontane campaign. France
seemed, therefore, destined to become the
1871] Ultramontanism and its- opponents.
93
field of this
contest between Church and State. Since, moreover, the Council’s decrees had
almost synchronised with the entry of the Italians ihto Rome and the end of the
temporal power of the Popes, the Church Militant was enabled to excite the zeal
of its partisans by compassion for the Church Oppressed and for the fate of the
aged Pope, a victim of force and a prisoner in the Vatican. If France, the
eldest daughter of the Church, in order to manifest her fidelity, freshly
tempered by the Cult of the Sacred Heart, had been willing to become the
avenging champion of the Holy See, such a crusade, undertaken immediately after
cruel reverses, would have been a convincing proof of the absolute devotion of
the nation to the interests and will of Rome.
This,
however, was far from being either the desire or intention of many of the
French—those who had always nourished a distrust of “priestly government,” or
those others, among whom were conspicuous the younger members of the Republican
party, who were attracted by the doctrines and writings of Comte, Littre,
Renan, Berthelot, Taine, and Saint-Simon. A movement of free thought which
recalled the efforts of the philosophers of the eighteenth century against the
Church, but possessed a more scientifically rigorous method, a wider and more
enlightened curiosity; a genuine renaissance of study in the schools, which had
been entrusted by Napdleon III to Victor Duruy, a resolute adversary of the
Congregations; finally, the formation of numerous societies for popular
instruction, more or less inspired by freemasonry, which was becoming more
intimately permeated from day to day with the principles of positivism—all
these influences had raised up in France against Ultramontanism adversaries who
were resolute, well-instructed, and fully accredited. The political struggles
aroused by the invasion and the fall of the Empire were to be complicated by
acrimonious religious disputes to which the nation had been long a stranger.
If, on the other
hand, the middle classes and Thiers, victorious over the Commune, had imagined
that the defeat of the labour and socialist party would settle the social
question to their advantage, and that the claims of the people and of Paris
would be silenced for a considerable time, the event was destined to show them
their error. In a country where universal suffrage was still the basis of
public life, it was impossible that, even under the pressure of a state of
siege which strangled the Press and all socialistic activities, the masses
should resign themselves to the total and definitive abandonment of their
interests and of their hopes. Moreover, ever since the Republican party had
adopted its doctrine and its programme, they had always represented themselves
to the people, and especially to the artisan classes with whose aid they were
unable to dispense, as seeking political reforms for the sake of the social
improvement which they would render possible. The bloodstained days of the
Commune had dug a gulf between the people and the politicians. But, as. it was
essential that the democratic party
94
The democracy and social reform.
[l871
should pull
itself together, these social reforms quickly forced themselves upon its
attention, while the artisan classes, ever since the month of July, 1871,
formed the chief support of the political programme and aims of the Republican
party. A like anxiety to develop popular education, an equal fervour for all
attempts to form professional associations, trade unions, societies for mutual
benefit, and cooperative companies, had already determined, on the side of
labour, men like Barberet, Chabert, and Tolain, and on the Republican side, men
like Vacquerie and Louis Blanc, editors of the Rappel, with thinkers like
Renouvier and Charles Bigot, to waive their differences in order to cement
afresh the alliance between the middle and the lower classes. And, if we wish
to appreciate how much strength and hope were left to the labour party, it is
enough to observe the extraordinary efforts not only of the Republicans, but of
all the middle class parties to attach to themselves the masses—Jules Amigues
with money and instructions received from the fallen Emperor, Napoleon III; Mun
and La Tour du Pin in the Catholic workmen’s clubs placed under the direction
of the Bishops; the disciples of Le Play in the Social Peace Societies which
had come into being in the year 1871; and last of all the Bishops, as the
central bureau of the Catholic Workmen’s Associations. “ Let us make no error,”
said a Conservative of the time; “ socialism is taking a benign character, but
in appearance only and for this sole reason, that, thinking themselves capable
of becoming masters of the political world by virtue of their numerical
majority, many of the socialists are convinced that they have everything to
hope from the regular exercise of universal suffrage.” In point of fact, it was
still a question, and it was a question of capital importance for France at
that time, to decide whether the social peace, which had been reestablished
and could hardly be maintained by mere force, would be secured by a regular
system of legislative measures such as the artisan class would be willing to
await and the middle classes willing to grant them without too long delay.
Nor must we
forget that, in Europe and the rest of the world, the misfortunes of France had
naturally not arrested in any way the course of history, that a critical period
had arrived in the progress of the European nations, and that the future of
France was involved as much as that of other nations in these world-changes. At
this moment new continents, such as Africa, were being opened up by the
enterprise or conquest of European peoples, and in other undeveloped continents
were being established nations and empires, children indeed of Europe, but
children mature and independent, such as the United States of America,
Australia, the Canadian and the Africander peoples. Ancient races of the Far
East, long time forgotten, like the Chinese and, above all, the Japanese, were
taking a fresh lease of life by admitting the commerce, influences, and
education of European nations, while Russia and England were extending to the
furthest bounds of Asia the limits
95
of their
colonial empires, already approaching and rivals in Turkestan. The year 1869
was an important date in the history of humanity, for it was then that General
Grant, President of the United States, hammered the last bolt on the line of
the Pacific railway from New York to San Francisco. The earth was now girdled
by its greatest highway of commerce. Was France to claim her proper share in
this universal life, she who had prepared herself for it by her efforts in
Algeria, Senegal, and ®§ypt, and, more recently still, by her enterprise in Indo-Chinese
territory ? Amid her sorrows, her ruin, and her doubts as to the comiug day,
would she have the leisure, the resources, or even the desire to take her part
?
Thus, at one
and the same time, France had before her the task of recreating her material
life, her political system, her intellectual and moral existence, her civic
unity which had been broken up by the disputes between capital and labour, and,
finally, to make an effort, whose extent and tendency could not be for the
moment fully gauged, to associate herself with the expansion of Europe in
distant and new lands. From this time onward, her simultaneous and successful
struggle with all and each of these tasks, with the aid of those wise and
patriotic guides who have never been wanting to her, constitutes the history of
the latest French democracy.
Her first
care was to complete the peace, in order to free herself from foreign
occupation. She had no hesitation, between May 4 and May 18, 1871, in
submitting to all the conditions which Bismarck, emboldened by the insurrection
of Paris and supported by the demands of the Prussian military party, inserted
in the Peace of Frankfort. The National Assembly on May 18 ratified the
articles signed at Frankfort by Pouyer-Quertier and Jules Favre in the name of
Thiers; the obligation to pay a milliard and a half in specie in order to
obtain the recall of the invading troops; the right of the army of occupation
to be supported generously by France ; the right of Germany to be treated by
France as the most favoured nation ; and, finally, the exchange imposed upon
France of the district of Belfort for a whole district of Lorraine lying around
Thionville, a region rich in metallurgical industries, and, most important of
all, advantageous for the occupation of Luxemburg by the Germans. If France
approved these sacrifices, it is because she was ready to pay for them out of
her savings. When, on June 20, Thiers carried a vote for a loan of two
milliards and a half at 5 per cent., the subscribers upon whom he called replied
by offering the Government this sum twice-told, that is to say, the whole sum
necessary for the total indemnity for the War. At the end of September, 1871,
one milliard and a half was paid to Germany, and two-thirds of the conquered
French territory was forthwith evacuated. France showed herself ready to
anticipate the payments in order to be quit the sooner if Bismarck had been
willing. But she was forced to await a new
96
[1871-89
agreement
which was signed on October 12, 1871, and which reduced the army of occupation
to 70,000 from 650,000. A third agreement, signed on June 29, 1872, gave the
hope of a speedy and final liberation, which the loan of three milliards, voted
on July 15, and subscribed seven times over in France alone, and as many times
in the rest of Europe, made it possible to realise without delay.
The question
at stake for France was not merely that of the payment of a debt, but of the
means for assuring her future, her frontiers, and the restoration of the country’s
well-being. Moreover, in the hearts of many of the French, lacerated as they
were by the cruel parting with the people of Alsace, there endured the
pertinacious hope of revenge, kept alive by the final efforts of the determined
opponents of the peace. Beyond the fifteen milliards which represented the loss
by the War, the country resigned itself with great self-denial to the increase
in taxation necessitated by the establishment of a national army, which was
worked out by the Assembly between April, 1871, and July, 1872. By laying down
the principle of compulsory service, of five years’ personal service with the
colours in the active army, or one year for certain classes of citizens, with
fifteen years’ obligation to temporary recall to the reserve and territorial
forces, France showed that she had grasped of her own initiative, without a
master, without a reigning house, almost without a Government, the necessity of
this triple burden—military, pecuniary, and social. She voted for the military
forces an annual sum of 500 millions, proceeded to the fresh equipment of the
foot and artillery forces, and everywhere set up at great expense barracks and
camps. And shortly after the formation of a Committee of Defence on July 29,
1872, she had no hesitation in organising the country as a vast entrenched
camp, whose fortresses, established as “ defensive screens ” on the north-east
frontier, at Paris, and at Lyons, were to secure for her the means to live and
work in peace.
Naturally,
there was no lack of deputies and public men to point out the excessive weight
of this burden and its unequal division between the children of the people and
those of the middle classes, who were partially exempt by virtue of their
educational studies. Down to the year 1882, for ten whole years, the nation,
the Government, and the Assemblies fought against any essential modification of
this military organisation, which seemed to be necessary for the national life.
It was only after 1882 that the Ministers of War, Billot, Lewal, and, above
all, General Boulanger, on May 25, 1885, decided to propose the reduction of
military service to three years, together with the abolition of the dispensations
extended to the liberal and religious professions in order to increase the
effective total of the army, which was becoming more and more the nation under
arms. And it was only after seven years’ discussion, on July 15,1889, that the
new law was passed, as by degrees France became aware of her strength and the
place she still held in the
1872—1906]
97
world. As a
sequel to this law and a result of the same reasoning, or owing to the fear
engendered in a free nation by permanent armies and a professional army, a
further reduction of the time of service to two years, coupled with complete
suppression of all the then existing exemptions, passed into law in 1905.
There was, moreover, an inclination to reduce the period of liability to recall
to the reserve and territorial forces. It is evident that the sacrifices, once
eagerly undertaken by the nation for its safety, appear less urgent and more
burdensome to the more recent generations which have not experienced the
danger, and are not actuated to the same degree by the bitterness of defeat and
the desire of revenge.
During these
forty years, in which the progress of French military power has never
interfered with the expenditure devoted to the navy, though the total cost of
national defence amounted to one milliard annually, the French nation has also
looked for and found, outside and beyond itself, the conditions and elements of
safety. From the month of May, 1872, one of the principal Paris papers, the
Temps, foretold as inevitable an alliance between Russia and France. When, in
the month of September, 1872, the Tsar Alexander II went to Berlin to meet the
two Teutonic Emperors* the victor and the vanquished of Sadowa, who seemed to
be meditating a union against France, he went not, as was believed in Paris at
the time, in order to strengthen this threatening alliance, but to secure
France against it, and to permit her to reestablish in peace her finances and
her armies. “We need a powerful France,” said the Chancellor GorchakofF to the
British ambassador at Berlin, Odo Russell. England agreed with the Tsar. In
1873 the Prince of Wales gave his friendly help to adjust the difficulties with
Germany caused by the provocative language of the French Bishops, and in July,
1874, he warned Decazes and the French Ministry to beware for the future of
similar incidents. When the Assembly in Paris was invited by Marshal MacMahon
to proceed with the organisation of the army by adding a fourth battalion to
each regiment, the military party in Germany drove Bismarck to measures of
intimidation, which almost amounted to an ultimatum, placing France in a
dilemma between loss of honour or a premature rupture. Although they were not
allies of France, England and Russia interfered in May, 1875—Queen Victoria by
an emphatic letter, Alexander II by a visit to Berlin—and demanded from the German
Emperor a disavowal of the provocative conduct of his Ministers. And
immediately after this intervention the Tsar said to Le Flo, who had suggested
it: “ Our relations will become more and more cordial. We have common interests
: we should hold together.”
The formation
by France of such ties, which both resulted from and supported her moderation
in external affairs and her strength at home, was hindered by the skill
displayed by Bismarck in the Eastern Question; he managed to divert the Tsar’s
attention, and to embroil him with
98
Alliance of France and Russia.
[i87i-i9io
France at the
Berlin Congress. He contrived, moreover, to foment the colonial rivalry
existing between England and France in Egypt and Tunisia. And, so long as the
French remained isolated, they lived in perpetual, though perhaps excessive,
fear of some accidental rupture, until 1891, when the French fleet, on its
entry into the port of Cronstadt, received a welcome such as the
representatives of France had nowhere received since 1871. The new era was
marked in 1893 by the visit of the Russian fleet to Toulon, and the
enthusiastic hospitality offered by the Parisians to Admiral Avellain’s crews.
It seemed as if an alliance, prepared by Carnot and Alexander III before their
deaths in June and November, 1894, had been already sealed, promising to the
French all possible security and even all possible hope against Germany. It
was, however, only a defensive understanding, which was completed in 1896 by
more far-reaching and precise military agreements concluded between President
Felix Faure and the Tsar, Nicholas II, who had come to France to review the
fleets and the “ allied and friendly army.” In this form it has existed ever
since, unshakable in spite of the external crises, political and social, in
Russia, which have put it to a severe test, and it has afforded France security
and confidence in herself, proportionate to the place to which she has been
restored in the concert of Europe. Hence has followed her reconciliation with
Italy, whose King and Ministers had counted since 1873 among the most
troublesome and discontented of her neighbours—first by a treaty of commerce in
1898, and then by a formal act of friendship concluded in 1900. Finally, as if
mindful of the aid which he had given to France immediately after the War, in
1873 and 1875, the Prince of Wales, now King Edward VII, once more brought to
the policy of peace upheld by his nephew Nicholas II the support of England,
whose interest it was to check any pretensions on the part of Germany to
hegemony in Europe.
To sum up, in
1910, the situation of affairs is strangely altered, since the time when the
last armies of France were capitulating at Metz, Paris, and Belfort, flying in
disorder towards Switzerland or Britanny, unable from lack of transport, arms,
and provisions, if not of courage, to make head against the invaders; while on
the other hand Bismarck and the sovereigns of Germany grouped round the King of
Prussia debarred unprotesting Europe from holding any communication with France,
whose isolation had been made complete by the Revolution of March, 1871.
Though the danger resulting from the undue propinquity of the frontier and the
capital has made itself felt from time to time, as in October, 1905, and
December, 1908, at any rate France has seen the benefit of her burdensome but
effective military organisation, and the effect of the alliances grouped about
her. At Algeciras, she was able to calculate the value of the sacrifices
undergone, and the pledges given to Europe by her moderation. She has fulfilled
the programme
1871-1905] Protection for agriculture.
which
Vacherot, one of her most enlightened thinkers, drew up in 1881. “ The Balance
of European Power is the end towards which our national policy should tend, now
that France is able to look beyond herself. This policy does not bring a nation
glory, but it enables it to live with honour and security. That balance can
only be maintained by means of alliances. France can find opportunity to ally
herself now with England, now with Russia, now with Italy, and now again with
those three Powers simultaneously, if a common and compelling interest urges
such a coalition in the interest of European equilibrium, threatened by the
predominance of Germany, strengthened by Austrian support.”
It is
manifest that the whole of this work of recuperation, which has restored to the
French nation consciousness of its own strength, security, and external
influence, was based upon the resources of industry and thrift belonging to a
people valiant in toil and possessing a country of great natural wealth. It was
furthered, in addition, by the care bestowed after 1871 in the management and
development of these resources. The robust rural economy which France owes to
her climate and her soil, and which manifests itself in the unequalled number
of her landed proprietors, inspired a policy of special favour for agriculture
and the peasant population. A system of tariff protection in favour of
agricultural produce, especially of wheat, was foreshadowed in 1875 by
Teisserenc de Bort; it was realised by the laws of March 25,1885, and March 29,
1887, which laid upon foreign wheat a duty of five francs a quintal, and
completed by the customs tariff of January 12,1892, which the Minister, Meline,
prevailed upon the country to accept. In pursuit of a similar policy, Acts
passed in July, 1884,1891 and 1897, favoured the French refineries of sugar and
the development of beetroot growing. When French vineyards had been ravaged by
the phylloxera, considerable grants were voted by the Laws of 1878 and 1879 in
aid of the vine-growers, while bounties to the extent of two millions were
voted to foster the culture of flax and hemp, four millions for silkworm
culture, an equal sum for silk spinning, and more than twice that amount for
the breeding of horses, thoroughbred or half-bred, from French stock.
If the State,
in order to provide for the prosperity of agriculture, had merely increased the
burden of the taxpayers and the consumers, the benefits of its enterprise would
have been open to question, and, probably, in 1881 the establishment of a
Ministry of Agriculture, which was to receive in 1905 a grant of 44 millions as
against three millions in 1869, would have justified some misgivings. In
reality, the State relied less upon Protection than upon the stimulation of
energy and progress, particularly after the Law of 1884 had given to small
peasant proprietors the right to form themselves into cooperative societies for
the improvement of their equipment and of the standard of cultivation. Ten
years later, a Law passed on November 5,1894, placed at the disposition of
these
100
[1871-1907
bodies the
resources of an Agricultural Mutual Loan Society, which in 1905 were increased
by loans granted, without interest, up to, 40 millions by the Bank of France.
In 1905 this society numbered 1113 local branches, and 60 district branches,
with nearly 50,000 persons on its books. And, in this connexion, mention must
be made of the Agricultural Mutual Assurance Societies, which from 1894 to
1905 have increased almost fivefold, and insure their members against the risks
of hail and fire to the amount of over 300,000 millions.
One of the
chief needs of an agricultural people is a complete system of schools, professors,
and lectures on agriculture. After 1871, by the scientific researches at the
National Institute of Agronomy, which was added to the School of Woods and
Forests and the Veterinary Colleges of the eighteenth century, by the diffusion
of knowledge which was entrusted to the professors of the National Schools,
especially the forty Technical Schools of viticulture, horticulture, dairy and
cheese farming, and the two hundred professors established by the Departments,
it has been proved to French farmers that the secret of their prosperity lies
in the substitution of scientific cultivation, based upon methodical
experiment, for the simple customs of the past, often mistaken and
unproductive. Not since the middle of the eighteenth century had a like effort and
a like progress been experienced in French agriculture. Everywhere, great
improvement in methods has been manifest; the soil has been enriched by a more
judicious and orderly employment of fertilising materials; the adaptation of
cultivation to different soils is better understood, and by specialisation the
land has become more productive; agricultural machinery has been transformed in
these forty years. In short, the agricultural output, which between 1800 and
1860 only rose from four to six milliards, has now reached a total of 11
milliards; the values of land and rents in country districts naturally show a
like increase.
This care for
the enhancement of the value of the national land has not hindered the
industrial development of the nation, which had begun to make itself felt in
the time of the Second Empire, as a result of the establishment of railways.
One obstacle, it is true, has always stood in the way of this development, the
dearth in France of coal, “ the bread of modern enterprise.” This dearth is
sufficiently indicated by noting the 58 millions of tons of coal exported by
F.ngland in 1907 as against the 10 million tons which France was obliged to
import. She has been able to reduce this inferiority by the better development
of her mines. A notable success has been achieved in the Pas de Calais, where
the output from 1876 to 1903 has been more than doubled, rising from 15 to 35
million tons. To grasp the progress achieved, thanks to this effort, by French
industries, we have only to look at the development of machinery. The number of
machines in use has gone up from 30,000 to
92,000 in the last 40 years, and has multiplied
itself tenfold in power, from 870,000 horse-power to 8,600,000. So early as
1878, when the
1869-1905] The State and industrial development.
lOi
Universal
Exhibition afforded an opportunity of comparing French industrial effort with
that of foreign nations, France was conscious that she could support the
comparison, thanks to the impulse of the previous six years of restorative work.
The ebullition of joy which Paris manifested in the month of June, 1878, was at
one and the same time a proof of achievement and an augury for the future. In
the more important manufactures the chief progress has been made in the iron
works and chemical works of the east, from Nancy to the Belgian frontier, and
in the textile industries of the north and round Rouen. The output of the blast
furnaces has been multiplied sixfold between 1870 and 1904. The industrial
establishments have been in continual process of augmentation, especially the
great factories where labour, cjapital, and production tend to become
concentrated. And, though the chief market for these industries is at home,
there is none the less an increase of 22 per cent, to show between 1869 and
1905 on exported goods. Perhaps it is to be desired that the nation should, for
its industrial and technical education, make sacrifices equal to those which it
has undertaken for the benefit of its agriculture; Initiative has doubtless
been shown by the towns, the universities, and private individuals; but, out of
600,000 young men employed in manufacture and commerce, only 20,000 have
started with a real professional training.
In the matter
of manufactures and commerce, the resources of the State were especially, and
at this period lavishly, employed in creating for the nation a material
equipment, which had been left in a singularly inadequate condition by the
Second Empire, occupied as it had been with other matters. Credit is due to
France that, immediately after her disasters, she did not shrink from this
increase of burdens, but reasoned that by this means alone she could be enabled
to liquidate the claims of her onerous debt. From this period dates the
creation of roads and highways with such ramifications into country districts
that the strivings of the new life from that time onward touched the tiniest
villages and hamlets. The extent of the new roadways has been estimated at
200,000 kilometres, and at 1200 millions the grants given since 1876 for this
network; 120 millions are required for its annual upkeep. It has completed the
great national and departmental highways, temporarily sacrificed to the need
of railroads, and since restored to high honour.
When, in
1878, Freycinet was appointed to the Ministry of Public Works, this engineer,
who under Gambetta had organised the outfit for national defence, claimed the
equipment necessary for France in time of peace, even five milliards, if
required, for the completion of the railway system, the utilisation and
development of canals, and the improvement of seaports. The Minister Dufaure
decided to issue, as the works required, a loan at 3 per cent, redeemable in 75
years, for. this great enterprise (March and June, 1878). The work began
simultaneously in
102 Canals, harbours, and railways.-The
birth-rate. [1870-1906
all parts of
the territory; 2000 kilometres of canals were added in 25 years to the existing
3000, a total which went back to the time of Louis XIV. These canals were freed
from all public dues by the Law of February, 1880, and from all private tolls
in 1889. Ninety thousand kilometres of new railroad were laid between 1873 and
1906 at a cost of two and a half milliards; the harbour-basins were deepened at
Dunkirk, Dieppe, Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Bayonne, and new basins made at
Le Havre, Cette, La Palice, St Nazaire, without counting the improvements
carried out at nearly 200 smaller and secondary ports. The total expenditure
for twenty years has amounted to 700 millions, to which we must add a new grant
of nearly 100 millions voted by the Law of December, 1903, for the benefit of
seaports, with the approval of the Chambers of Commerce.
In 1900 the
Chief Council of Industry and Commerce declared, rightly, that the country
would reap greater benefits from this mighty effort if it were better
coordinated and leas subordinated to the influences of local politics. The
canals and railways should be organised as in Germany, not with a view to
mutual competition, but to cooperate towards the diminution of prices and the
facilitation of traffic; the seaports should be aided by the economic
development of the districts which they serve ; maritime commerce, whose
prosperity is but mediocre, should be assisted by the development of inland
navigation: such were the methods, too long neglected in F.ance, needed to reap
the full benefits of the sacrifices undertaken since 1872, by an increase Ox
debt in twenty-five years from 19 to 40 milliards. It is too often forgotten
that this debt, which imposes so heavy a burden of interest, more than a
milliard added to the annual budget, has nevertheless been a source of wealth,
since capital, invested in French. securities, has tripled itself in the thirty
years from 1870 to 1900,60 milliards in place of 20, while the increase of
foreign securities, nearly 20 milliards in the sixteen years from 1884 to 1900,
has proceeded in quite due proportion. The one striking phenomenon of recent
years, in which the will of the nation is seen to act contrary to its own interests
and its economic development, is the growing diminution in the birth-rate;
there are ten births per 1000 inhabitants less since the beginning of the
century, and four per 1000 less during the last forty years; while in the
neighbouring countries of Europe increase in the population, though also
diminishing, is still considerable and continuous.
In this
far-sighted policy of development, all has been the calculated and persevering
work of a nation which has sought primarily in the instinctive qualities of the
race, industry, thrift and good sense, as well as in the munificence of its
land and its climate, restoration after defeat, provision for the morrow,
security for the future. This nation, which since the French Revolution had
tried and overthrown so many
Governments,
proved, even at the moment when it was devoid of any government at all, and
ever since, that it was capable of governing itself. The history of its
adhesion by steady stages of progress to the Republican ideal is peculiarly
fitted to throw light upon the way in which the French since 1871 have: made,
or rather remade, their destinies. The National Assembly, elected in the day of
adversity to decide the question between war and peace, for the most part
monarchical in sympathy and yet powerless to give form to the monarchy, could
hardly serve as guide to the nation. Almost at once the nation assumed the task
of giving direction and guidance. In the month of July, 1871, when the
Assembly, by a powerful majority, had decided upon the repeal of the laws of
exile passed against the Bourbons and the family, of Orleans—against the will
of Thiers, who would have preferred by postponing this decree to discourage
the hopes of the monarchical party—at the complementary elections held on July
2, out of 111 seats the nation filled 100 with Republicans of all shades,
Republicans by conviction or tradition, Conservative or Radical, from Duvergier
de Hauranne to Gambetta, Naquet, and Pascal Duprat. In vain did the entire
forces of reaction, royalist and religious, unite together: from the month of
April, 1871, the followers of the Princes of Orleans had been negotiating with
the adherents of the Comte de Chambord for the purpose of effecting an
agreement between the two branches of the family. Dupanloup was the soul of
this coalition, to which Thiers refused to lend his support, and which was
finally frustrated by the Comte de Chambord, who had come to Paris to be
reconciled with the head of the younger branch, the Comte de Paris (June 30 to
July 5). The Prince showed himself less adaptable than the priest: he preferred
exile to the sacrifice—useless as it probably would' have been—of principles of
divine right and royal absolutism, symbolised by the “white flag of Joan of
Arc, Francis I, and Henry IV.” Immediately ‘ after this disappointment, the
Catholic party in the Assembly and the -Bishops sought for compensation in a
French intervention in favour of the Pope at Rome (July 22), an action which
resulted in the retirement of Jules Favre from office. All these intrigues and
plots underwent their first check in the month of August after the Republican
elections. As adroit at exploiting the unpopularity of the parties of the Right
as at establishing his own reputation for practical and unswerving Liberalism in
the eyes of the Republican party, the French nation, and the nations abroad,
Thiers succeeded, by the Loi Rivet drawn up by a group of his friends, in
obtaining from the Assembly, despite its monarchical sympathies, the legal
establishment of his authority as head of the Republic.
Certainly,
these powers were still limited to the time of the duration of the Assembly.
The Assembly retained the right, formally recognised in the preamble to Rivet’s
Law, of framing some day a permanent constitution. But the bestowal upon
Thiers of the title “ President of the
104
[1871—6
Republic ”
was a fact of moment for the future. The provisional and undefined rule which
had existed since the month of February, 1871, was beginning to yield place to
an embryonic constitution, which took, by popular consent, a Republican form.
Meanwhile,
other organisations were called into being by the Law of August 10,1871—the
Councils-General, to which the Assembly, acting upon the ideas of
decentralisation which had gained ground in Royalist circles during the
previous ten years, had entrusted wider and more active functions. When the
Assembly rose for its vacation on September 18, Thiers, in order to watch over
the elections to these new bodies, asked the deputies to “ take counsel with
the country in order to bring their ideas into line with those of the nation.”
On October 8,1871, the departmental elections gave fresh testimony in favour of
Republicanism of all shades; Republicans formed two-thirds of the members then
elected, and already held a majority in thirty departments out of eighty- six.
Then, when the Orleanists, the most numerous opponents of the Republic in the
Assembly, becoming alarmed at its progress, invited their Princes to take their
seats in their midst, Thiers on December 16, 1871, gave a further impulse to
the establishment of the new order, to which for the first time he professed
unreservedly his own adherence. “ I am of the number of those,” he said, “
whose continual care is the Republic; I have nothing in common with those
charlatans who would try this form of government with the desire to bring it to
ruin.” More and more, henceforth, we shall see the country declaring itself “
for the Government of Thiers.” The elections of January 7, 1872, gave success
to eleven Republican candidates in sixteen electoral areas. In six months the
nation had reinforced by more than a hundred members in the Monarchical
Parliament the party hostile to attempts at a Royalist restoration.
In this
fashion and out of these elements was formed that Left Centre party in the
Assembly which played the decisive part from 1872 to 1875. In proportion as the
days of misfortune receded into the distance, the days when the country, to put
an end to foreign occupation, had chosen that pacific and reactionary
Assembly, the gulf widened between this Chamber and the great body of citizens,
who were also weary of provisional government, but absolutely opposed to the
Assembly in opinions and sentiments with regard to a permanent rule. The
majority of the representatives were anticipating and preparing in secret the
return of the royal House of France and of a Government devoted to the
interests of the Church. And although, refusing the power for himself
personally and to the cadet branch the right to claim the power in his stead,
the Comte de Chambord, by the Declaration of Antwerp (January 25, 1872), had
made known his intention of preventing the birth of “a Revolution Monarchy,”
the deputies of the Right would never abandon their desire to impose the
monarchy upon France. On
the other
hand, the people, especially the dwellers in the towns, desired the triumph of
the Republic—“ word of magic power over the minds of the workers.” The reason
was that the Republic, with universal suffrage as its base, stood for
democratic principles, tendencies, and institutions, for social progress
without violence, by the spontaneous effort of the popular will of the people,
and by the harmony of interests; and, last of all, it stood for determined
opposition to the Clerical party. In spite of all the efforts of its leaders,
and of Gambetta, the “ tireless bagman of democracy,” who devoted his entire
efforts to reassuring the country districts and the middle classes, lest they
should be led to the side of Empire by their fear of socialism, the adhesion of
France to the democratic idea was rather calculated to estrange the National
Assembly from a Republican form of government than to convert it to that form.
Gambetta felt this so clearly, that, from the end of 1871, he never ceased to
demand in the name of his party the dissolution of this Assembly and an appeal
to a real Constituent Assembly.
What would
have happened if the Assembly, in its determination to work for the restitution
of the monarchy, had given the power and a provisional presidency to the Due
d’Aumale, who expected it in 1872 ? Or what would have resulted if the
Assembly, when called upon to dissolve, had refused to do so ? Civil war beyond
doubt, or, as Thiers said one day, the time-honoured oscillation from anarchy
to despotism, and from despotism to anarchy. Between the irreconcilable
extremes, the Left Centre was a half-way house, an intermediary, which, for the
part it played in this crisis by the side of Thiers, has earned a place in the
history of France. With its President, General Chanzy, “ republican by virtue
of having been the heroic leader of the national defence,” the Left Centre
party consisted to a large extent of old Orleanists who, converted by Thiers,
had abandoned their monarchical leanings, men such as Casimir Perier, Remusat,
Dufaure, and Rivet. The system of government to which this party in their turn
desired to convert the country and the Assembly was Republican in form, so as
to please popular opinion, and Conservative in policy, so as not to displease
the deputies. With Thiers at their head secretly encouraging and directing
their efforts, this party in spite of everything found the means to reassure
the middle classes and the Assembly as to the possible dangers to property and
religion involved in progress towards Republicanism. By their loyal adherence
to Republican institutions, they afforded to the country at large a sense of
security against the intrigues of the unconverted Monarchists.
By the
vicissitudes of this slow groping towards a definite rigime, we can judge the
importance of this transitional party. Towards the month of June, 1872, when
the elections of Republicans were becoming more and more significant,
especially that of Paul Bert for Yonne, the Assembly, stirred by indignation
against Thiers, began to
106
[l872—3
become
restive. The Orleanists made fruitless advances to the members of the party of
the Left Centre; then, on June 20, by the hands of Changarnier and the Due de
Broglie, they sent an ultimatum to the President. They imagined that they would
realise their dream more easily under another leader of the executive. Thus
opened a campaign against Thiers which lasted for a year and was destined to
prove at one and the same time the stubbornness of the Monarchist party and its
impotence.
It began by
the President’s challenge to the majority. On November 13, 1872, he read to the
Assembly a message which invited it to give, like the President, their adhesion
not only in fact, but in principle, to the Republic. It was understood, of
course, that he meant to the “ Conservative Republic ” which his friends of the
Left Centre desired; On November 18 the Assembly took up the challenge, and, at
the request of the Legitimist, Audren de Kerdrel, nominated a Commission to
censure the conduct of affairs;' then, the same day, Changarnier and the Due de
Broglie summoned Thiers to give an explanation of the conduct and language of
Gambetta, whom in his adherence to the Republic he had accepted as an ally. To
this attack Thiers, seconded by Dufaure, replied by a formal demand for a
Constitution, and for the immediate selection of thirty members of the Assembly
who should be charged to draw up a scheme. Up to this point, offensive measures
seemed to bring him success. His demand, which was also that of his Ministers,
was welcomed by a majority of 37, and in Paris by a serried crowd shouting
“Vive la Ripublique.” And, in fact, this “Commission of Thirty,” after many
changes, was to have the honour of establishing the Republic. The eleven
members of the Left Centre, though a minority on that Committee, proved therein
the force of their perseverance and their influence.
It would seem
that, at this point, the fear of pushing the quarrel still further and of
losing his power, which by his own confession he valued for its promise of
glory, determined Thiers to retreat, or at any rate to accept a truce. He
believed that he saw a warning in the success of an interpellation directed on
November 30, 1872, against Lefranc, his Minister of the Interior, by the
Bonapartists Rouher and Prax-Paris. He filled the place of the Republican,
Lefranc, by Goulard, a member of the Right Centre, and appealed to Fourtou,
another member of the same party, rather than to one of his own friends of the
Left Centre. Finally, on December 14, he permitted his Minister Dufaure to
issue what almost amounted to a declaration of war against the party of the
Left, Gambetta and Louis Blanc; while the Government invited the Assembly to
restore to the family of Orleans its property, confiscated since 1852, to the
amount of forty millions (January 9,1873).
The steps
taken in the months of January and February, 1873, by Dupanloup and his
Legitimist and Orleanist friends, to soften the
107
Comte de
Chambord and reconcile him with the Comte de Paris—a third attempt once more
defeated by a letter from the Prince, February 18, 1873—and the efforts of the
Bishops and the Clericals to involve France in the affairs of Rome, proved very
soon to Thiers that between him and the Monarchists there could be no truce,
still less an agreement. Accordingly, he made haste to complete his task, the
liberation of the whole of French territory; and, assuredly, his chances of
coming to an agreement with Berlin upon this question were greater than those
of effecting a reconciliation between the party of the Right in the Assembly
and his Government. When, on March 17,1873, Remusat in Thiers’ name read to the
deputies the agreement with Bismarck, signed on March 15, for the complete
recall of German troops before the prescribed term of two years, the
Monarchists affected reluctance in associating themselves with the
manifestations of gratitude which the President received from the whole country.
They had already brought upon themselves the reproaches of one of their own
side, Gontaut Biron, who negotiated this advantageous treaty at Berlin, for
their intrigues, which deprived Thiers and his agents of part of the authority
necessary for treating with their conqueror. They cared little, provided that
their rancour or their ambitions were satisfied at the President’s expense.
They found another means to show him that they desired his services no longer:
they forced the Republican President of the Assembly, Jules Grevy, to resign
(April 2, 1873) and replaced him by a fighting President, Buffet. As, moreover,
the Left party had been displeased by the advances that Thiers had been making
for five months to the Monarchists, and as they showed their displeasure
unmistakably by the election in Paris of Barodet, a teacher, in opposition to
Remusat, the most intimate friend and associate of the President, the
Government was wholly unprotected against the intrigues and assaults of the
Right. So early as the beginning of May the Monarchists had agreed upon a
successor to Thiers; failing the Due d’Aumale, whom the Legitimists finally
rejected, or Changamier, who was too old, this was to be Marshal MacMahon, a
Legitimist by birth and family, and a Bonapartist by circumstances.
At this
moment, decisive as it was for his authority and his task, the President felt
the mistake he had made in estranging the deputies of the Left Centre. As they
had been the first to propose to the Assembly, on March 17, 1873, the
glorification of the “liberator of French territory,” so they were his last
resource in this struggle for Republican institutions. Supported by Casimir
Perier, Waddington, and Berenger, who had been called to the aid of Dufaure,
Remusat, and Leon Say, Thiers on May 23, ]873, called upon the Assembly to take
his side and to decide upon a form of government. Since it was impossible to
establish a monarchy favourable alike to the Houses of Bonaparte and of Orleans
and agreeable also to the Comte de Chambord, the majority, forming a coalition
directed by Broglie and Rouher, resolved simply to demand a President
1,08
[1873-4
and Ministers
hostile to the Republic, on the pretext that the Republic stood for
“Radicalism, anarchy,,and moral chaos.” By the defection1 of the
members of the Right Centre, of the Target group, upon whom Thiers had believed
he could count, they obtained the satisfaction of their desires on May 24,
1873, when, by a majority of 360 to 344, they brought about the downfall of the
President and his friends.
From that
time the new chief of the executive power, Marshal Mac- Mahon, and the
Ministers whom the majority, with its views of the social danger, imposed upon
him, the Due de Broglie, Beule, Emoul, Batbie, Magne, Admiral Dompierre
d’Homoy, General du Barail, •ogether with the deputies, that is to say,
executive and legislative alike, prepared first to delay, and afterwards to
prevent entirely, the establishment of a democratic rule. This struggle only
served to exhibit in the full light of day the impotence of the Monarchist
parties and the resolution of the nation, which grew daily more marked, to
support all shades of Republicanism. If the deputies of the Right had imagined
that, after the removal of Thiers and his associates, they could work at their
will upon the electors and influence their choice, they were quickly
undeceived. Neither the official orders as to candidature transmitted to the
Prefects by Broglie, nor the practical censorship imposed upon the Press in
virtue of the state of siege, nor the influence exercised upon the mayors of
all the communes, whose nomination the Government arrogated to itself by the
Law of 1874, were sufficient to prevent the Councils-General and their
presidents in the month of August from making an emphatic pronouncement against
a monarchy. Moreover, in the country generally, opinion remained sceptical, and
was under no illusion as to the chance of a monarchical restoration, which the
party of the Right was incapable of uniting to carry through.
From the
first moment when they perceived that the coalition was turning in favour of
the Bourbons—a change noticeable in June and still more in October, 1873—the
Bonapartists Rouher and Raoul Duval separated themselves from it. They had only
entered into it in order to bolster up the Republic until the Prince Imperial
should attain his majority (January, 1874), in fact, to gain a year’s time;
thus they were accomplices, not dupes. The Comte de Paris on his side, at the
request of his adherents, on August 5, 1873, paid a visit to his cousin, the
Comte de Chambord, at Frohsdorf, and was favourably received by him as heir
presumptive, on the condition, however, that he should accept and maintain a
Legitimist monarchy until he should himself in his turn ascend the throne, when
he would be free to adopt such principles as he might prefer. After his return
from Austria, the Comte de Paris felt the difficulty of enforcing upon the
Orleanists an acceptance of Legitimism and the white flag, which implied the
total condemnation of their theories and their history. All that he gained from
them was a series of conferences and meetings which resulted, on
1873-4]
Deadlock among the Monarchists.
109
October
4>, 1873, in the appointment of a committee of nine members and the despatch
of a new deputation to the Comte de Chambord. Chesnelang, who was charged with
this mission, believed that he could convert the grandson of Charles X to the
necessary concessions, and establish him “ at the foot of the throne.” All
these intrigues had no other result than an emphatic letter, a manifesto of
uncompromising Legitimism, addressed to France on October 17 from Frohsdorf by
the Comte de Chambord. In it he asserted the clearest intention of renouncing
the throne rather than surrender his principles and the white flag. The leader
of the Legitimists dismissed the Orleanists from his service. By this action he
rendered a monarchy impossible, although, on November 27, he conceived the
project of going in secret to Versailles to demand of Marshal MacMahon, his
faithful subject, his restoration by the help of the army. The powerlessness of
the Monarchists then became evident in the action of the Bonapartists, who were
emboldened to the point of demanding an appeal to the nation, and in particular
in the proposals which Changamier brought before the Assembly on their
behalf—to prolong so far as possible the powers of Marshal MacMahon. They
desired, in default of anything better, a military dictatorship of legal and
provisory character, half-way between exacting democracy and reviving
Caesarism.
Thus the hour
was approaching when the members of the Left Centre, though a minority, were to
direct the future, because they alone, Conservative Republicans, were the bond
between a Conservative Assembly and a Republican nation. It was one of their
number, Laboulaye, who was charged to defend Changamier’s proposal and wrest it
from the Bonapartists. Together with the prolongation of the Marshal’s power,
which was, in spite of everything, the prolongation of a provisional Republic,
he almost persuaded the Assembly to take into consideration a republican
Constitution. But under the influence of Broglie, who, irritated by his
persistent failures in the last six months, was bitter against all Republicans,
even the moderates, the deputies of the Right refused their support to the
project. They came round later, when the Due de Broglie, in order to maintain
himself in power with the Due de Decazes, was, after the beginning of 1874,
forced to go hat in hand, so to speak, in face of the steady progress of the
Republic, to implore the help and alliance of Bonapartism. This time, the
majority, through fear of Caesarism, was broken up, for the Legitimists had not
refused concessions to the Orleanists in order to grant them to the
Bonapartists. The Liberal Monarchists shrank from a reconciliation with men
like Rouher and Ollivier, whom they had fought for ten years without
intermission. The individual members of the shattered Right broke away by degrees
and drifted to the Left Centre, in whose hands the whole party of the Left, and
its leaders, Gambetta, Ferry, and Brisson, cleverly left the conduct and
direction of affairs.
110
Establishment of the Republic.
[1874-5
The first
decisive sign was the election to the Vice-Presidency of the Assembly, under
Buffet, whose authority was diminishing, of a friend of Thiers, Martel (May
13). The second event, which was still more significant, was the defeat of the
Ministry of the Due de Broglie, which was overthrown on May 18,1874, by the
defection of the Legitimists in a body. And, finally, what could be more
important to contemporary France than the sight of Casimir Perier announcing at
the tribunal of the Assembly the desire of his party, the Left Centre, for a speedy
enactment of the laws which were destined to organise the Republic, with its
President and two Chambers ? Casimir Perier defeated the Monarchists by a
majority of four on June 15, 1874. The next day Wallon brought forward a Bill
to define the powers of the President of the Republic, and to lay down the
method of revising the Constitution.
Every day in
that period saw some advance in the schemes^ the ideas, the actions, and even
the number of the members of the Left Centre, which was strengthened by the
adhesion of Montalivet and Leonce de Lavergne. And, on July 29, 1874, when
Broglie, a better orator than Casimir Perier, believed that he could force him
to beat a retreat with his republican programme, Wallon, the modest spokesman
of the Left Centre, who had gained over the Monarchists of the Right Centre and
lilinile de Girardin, the greatest journalist of his day, was quietly preparing
the approaching victory. On January 28, 1875, Laboulaye helped it forward by a
speech inspired by an ardent patriotism, which did not, however, finally decide
the Assembly to pass the republican declaration, which he demanded. But,
shortly afterwards, it accepted Wallon’s amendment (January 30), which was
passed by a majority of one—an important majority, when we reflect that a
Monarchical Assembly, in deciding upon the regular and unlimited succession to
the Presidency, had in effect established the Republic.
One month
afterwards, again not without difficulty, on February 24, the Assembly
established a Senate, to hold office for nine years, appointed by an electoral
body composed of all persons elected by the country, from the deputies to the
representatives of the municipal bodies, with seventy-five permanent Senators,
to be chosen by the National Assembly and afterwards by the Senate itself. On
the following day, the Law creating public authorities finally established a
Chamber of Deputies, the only one of these authorities which rested on
universal suffrage. When in the course of the year the Law of July 16 on the relations
of these public authorities, the organic Law of August 2 on the election of
Senators, and that of November 30, 1875, on the election of the deputies, had
been framed, the Republican Constitution was completed. This Constitution
differed widely from those which France had set up in the past, because, for
the first time, it was not the work of a Constituent Assembly, and its
establishment was regarded by one party as a pis-aller, by another as a
bargain, by all as a compromise. Only, it
1876-84]
Ill
was a
compromise destined to endure, because it was stamped by the nation’s approval,
and because the democracy has adopted it, and has been able to find in it the
expression of its needs and of its aspirations.
Since 1875,
the Republican Constitution has been but very slightly modified in the letter.
The principal modification was that of August 18, 1883, “ The Republican form
of government cannot be made the subject of a proposal for revision ”—a clause
which for the first time placed the political principles and the political life
of the nation above party discussions, regrets, and hopes. The suppression in
December, 1884, of the permanent Senators, whose places were taken by members
elected like the rest, “ in such a way as to bring that body into harmony with
the democratic character of society,” was also an important change. Yet, in
spite of all, it amounted to very little. Experience and use have done much
more to alter in accordance with democratic tastes the work of the Republicans
of the Left Centre, which has proved at the same time sufficiently elastic and
very durable. Such monarchical character as inhered in the right conferred upon
the President of dismissing Ministers or dissolving the Assembly has become
attenuated by lack of exercise to the point of extinction. The aristocratic
character of the Senate, which, together with the right of initiating laws,
possessed the right to veto all the proposals of the Chamber, has not been able
to resist the daily increasing authority of the Lower House over the Ministry,
the budget, and the administration in general.
To a certain
extent, this current, this evolution, of democracy was the result of the futile
attempts made against republican institutions. After Marshal MacMahon had appointed
a Ministry of the Left Centre, charged under Dufaure, and later under Jules
Simon, with the task of governing together with the two newly-elected Chambers
(March and November, 1876), the Conservatives, infuriated by their defeat,
persuaded him, first, to dissolve the Chamber (June, 1877), then, with the help
of a fighting Ministry (Broglie and Fourtou), to manipulate the elections to
their taste; finally, after the failure of this pressure upon the electors,
they commenced the employment of force. Although, to complete this effort, the
Marshal refused to take the plunge and attempt a coup d'&tat, the
newly-born Republic was in grave danger throughout the year 1877. The necessity
of defending their work forced the Republicans of the Left Centre to ally themselves
closely with the whole of the Left, even the most advanced. Against the menace
of a military dictatorship, their chief safeguard lay in the force of the
nation’s attachment to its liberty.
When the
crisis had passed, it was seen that a new Republic, different from that planned
by Thiers (who had died on September 8, 1877), a system inspired rather by
Gambetta, had been set up in accordance with the republican ideas set forth for
fifty years by the partisans of a material and moral development of the entire
nation in conformity with the
112
Hangers for
the Republic. [i879-99
principles of
universal suffrage. In consequence of their unwillingness or inability to
comprehend this revolution, from 1879 onwards the Left Centre—Dufaure, Jules
Simon, and Leon Say—found themselves bereft of their power. Under the
presidency of Grevy, who, in January, 1879, succeeded MacMahon, on his
resignation before the end of his seven years, authority was in the hands of
the democratic Republicans. They decreed, in 1881, the complete liberty of the
Press and public meetings, an amnesty in favour of those proscribed after the
Commune, and more important still, in 1884, the right of workmen to form
societies analogous to the English trade unions. Forgetfulness of class quarrels
and interests was the price that the Republicans thought due to the labouring
classes whose votes had brought about their triumph. The only dispute was as to
the extent of the concessions to be made: the Opportunists, led by Gambetta,
who was Minister but a short time (November, 1881, to January, 1882) and died
prematurely in December, 1882, and by Jules Ferry, whose spell of power was the
longest, from 1880 to 1885, refusing to their Radical colleagues, such as
Clemenceau and Floquet, reforms which were too hasty or too sweeping. This
division of forces, however, was to become a danger, as was seen on the return
to the Chamber at the elections of 1885 of many deputies of the Right; then, in
1886, by the intrigues of the Comte de Paris which resulted in the expulsion of
the Princes; and, finally, by the plot formed at this date round an ambitious
and rebellious soldier, General Boulanger, who appealed to patriotic passions
irritated by the provocations of Germany in connexion with the arrest of
Schnaebele (April, 1887).
Once again
parliamentary liberty seemed to be in grave danger, especially as President
Grevy, compromised by family scandals, had been obliged to send in his
resignation at the beginning of his second Presidency (December 2, 1887). The
two Republican parties, Radical and Opportunist, could not agree to elect as
his successor the man best fitted for the post, Jules Ferry. The first two
years of Carnot’s Presidency (1887-94) were difficult. But, once again, the
country, warned of the dangers of a military dictatorship by the successes of
General Boulanger in secret alliance with the Monarchists (1889), forced union
upon all the Republicans. Thus the Constans Ministry found strength to crush
this popular idol before the High Court, and drove him into exile, to an
inglorious death, and into oblivion.
In one last
crisis this democratic evolution was finally completed, at the beginning of the
twentieth century. When, after President Carnot, who was assassinated by an
anarchist at Lyons (June, 1894), after his successor Casimir Perier, who
resigned shortly after his appointment (January, 1895), and after Felix Faure,
who only served four years of his time, Loubet (February, 1899) received the
Presidential power, which had been shaken by this series of events, the
Monarchists, in conspiracy with certain dissatisfied generals of the army,
were seeking, in the affaire Dreyfus, a
1871-1909] Final developments
of the Republic.
113
roundabout
way for overthrowing the liberties of the people. The nation followed the
leader of the Opportunist party, Waldeck-Rousseau, when in the month of June,
1899, he did not hesitate to invoke the aid of a Socialist Minister, Millerand
: his accession to power carried with it the valuable and decisive support of
the masses.
Down to 1905,
the Ministers Waldeck-Rousseau and Combes, styling themselves “ Ministers of
republican defence,” relied upon the whole body of the democracy, to whom they
offered the Laws upon the right of combination, 1901, upon labour councils, and
upon public health, and finally the separation of Church and State. And though,
for a brief space, from 1905 to 1907, the attention of the nation was perforce
directed towards foreign affairs, yet, at the beginning of 1906, the grouping
together in one and the same Ministry appointed by the new President of the
Republic, Fallieres (February, 1906), of Poincare, a Moderate, as Minister of
Finance, Sarrien, a Radical, as Minister of Justice, Clemenceau, a
Socialist-Radical, as Minister of the Interior, Briand, a Socialist, as
Minister of Education, indicated the same desire to base the administration of
the Republic on the claims of the working classes and the people at large. The
last manifestation of this desire was the creation in Clemenceau’s
Administration, which held office from October, 1906, till 1909, of a Ministry
of Labour, and the appointment to it of a Socialist —a measure which earlier,
in 1848, had by its object and tendencies produced irremediable division
between the moderate Republicans and the democratic party.
There is no
room for doubt that the duration of the Third Republic in France, the most
long-lived system since 1789, is the result not only of the individual weakness
of all the non-Republican parties, but also of the strength which the Republicans
have gathered daily, in their progress towards democracy, from the interested
devotion of this democracy to their doctrines and their ideals.
The sole
force which the French Republic has encountered since 1871 capable of uniting
in resistance to it all the parties of the past with certain Republican and
democratic elements, was the great party of militant Catholics, the Bishops and
the Ultramontane Orders with the fiery deputies of the Right, the forces which
Gambetta styled Clericalism when he declared that “ Clericalism was the enemy.”
The period of
the National Assembly seemed the moment favourable to the triumph of this
party. Devotional fervour, which had been cleverly implanted among the people
by the religious bodies which were freely developing-—Jesuits, Eudists,
Assumptionists, societies dedicated to St Joseph, St Benedict, St Anthony of
Padua, to the Virgin, the Immaculate Conception, and to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus (to which the whole of France was soon consecrated), societies of laymen,
charitable or intellectual, working men’s societies, and leagues of St Vincent
de Paul—>
114
Clerical reaction and its results.
[1872-4
had been
preparing the opinion of the people in favour of service and obedience to the
See of Rome from 1872 onwards. The clergy, thanks to the Law of Falloux, which
they upheld against all Jules Simon’s attempts at reform, set their hand upon
the primary schools, multiplied, in opposition to the lycies, the free colleges
which were widely opened to the middle classes, and finally, under the pretext
of liberty for superior studies, demanded the right to grant university degrees
on an equal footing with the State (1873). Throughout the country there was a
violent campaign directed by the Bishops, as if they were ilready masters,
against Italy in defence of the Temporal Power, and against Germany and
Bismarck to damage the credit of the authors of the Kulturhampf. And, summoned
by them for like ends, innumerable pilgrimages reached Paray-le-Monial and
Lourdes, to the chant of “ Save Rome and France.” France seemed wholly won over
to the Holy See, .as the champion of Christ and Rome dreamed of by ardent
Catholics.
In reality,
the country was taking alarm at the way in which it was being compromised
abroad. At the end of 1873, when the German Chancellor, irritated by this
campaign against his religious politics, called upon Fourtou and Broglie to
punish the intemperate Bishops and later, when he threatened to bring an action
himself against them before French tribunals, great emotion was felt in
political circles. Decazes was forced to make an apology to Germany (January,
1874) which warned the nation of the danger of these clerical intrigues.
The favour
which the Republicans began to experience at elections, in spite of the unhappy
recollections of the Commune, proceeded in great part from the dislike and
uneasiness inspired in the majority by Ultramontane enterprise. Their
programme of resistance, in conformity with .the wish of a people who looked to
their schools for the resources necessary for their reestablishment, was above
all the organisation of studies and of intellectual life in all its branches.
The “League of Education,” with its million petitioners, demanded schools which
should be secular, free, and compulsory. Gambetta, Paul Bert, Jules Ferry, and
Jules Simon, led this propaganda. Jules Simon instituted in the ‘‘lycies a
system of reform destined to bring secondary studies into harmony with modem
needs and modem culture. And the whole scheme of university reform, for which
Renan and Taine had been working since 1865, seemed on the point of oeir.g
realised, to the great advantage of science in France; for science, inspired by
the example of Germany, was demanding its status and its right to regenerate
the nation. Those private ■eformers, who did not even wait to see what
action the State might take . before creating the “ Free School of the
Political Sciences ”—Boutmy, Vinet, and Taine—showed the measure of their faith
in the destinies of France when illumined by science.
„ While the
religious Orders were leading Catholics to the assault, -believing, in 1873,
after the resignation of Thiers, when the hopes of a
1872-6] Freemasonry.—Attitude of
MacMahon. 115
monarchy were
higher, that they would be able to seize the power and use it to the advantage
of Rome, the association of Freemasons was turning all the while towards
democracy in order to call in the aid of science to strengthen their
resistance. The Grand Master waived the obligation upon his initiates to
believe in the “ Great Architect ” and called upon them to maintain all the
educational institutions in which the Republicans reposed their hopes of
national, intellectual, and political emancipation. The battle, almost always
victorious, waged by the democratic party in the electoral divisions under the
leadership of Gambetta, whose speeches from 1872 onwards were so many manifestos,
was a threefold struggle for liberty of thought, tolerance, and education.
At times,
under the Ministry and Presidency of Buffet and MacMahon, the two chief
magistrates of a Catholic Republic, in view of the influence of “orthodox”
officials, the pressure exercised upon families and interests, the increase of
pilgrimages to Lourdes and Rome, and the cult of relics, it might have seemed that
the times of the Restoration had returned. “Between the Church and the
Revolution,” said the Comte de Mini, one of the eloquent leaders of the
all-powerful faction, “ there exists absolute incompatibility. The Church
cannot perish and therefore it will kill the Revolution.” It was a military
officer serving with the colours who spoke thus. His colleagues, recruited more
and more from the religious colleges, pupils of the monks, though they had not
his talent, worked with him to gain the help of the army to aid the success of
this Ultramontane doctrine—Gesta Dei per Francos. But, by refusing its
suffrages to Buffet and many others like him, the country showed that it had no
inclination to ratify this programme.
Marshal
MacMahon, and even the first Republican Cabinets imposed upon him, those of
Dufaure and Jules Simon, seemed not to have understood this decision of the
electors against the attempts of the Ultramontane party. At any rate, they
refrained from carrying it into effect, either because the Marshal, in
obedience to the secret counsels of Dupanloup and those of his own wife,
awaited a reactionary movement on the part of his Catholic officers on behalf
of the Church; or because Dufaure and many others of his party who had remained
Catholic in sympathy were afraid of the attacks made by the freethinkers upon
their opinions and their faith. It was above all the religious question that
began to widen the gulf between the Republicans of the Left Centre and the mass
of electors headed by the democratic politicians. The last-mentioned had never
pardoned Jules Simon, once a freethinker and Radical, for having, at the time
when this question was raised between them and the Ministers of the Legitimist
MacMahon, chosen the party opposed to theirs, and for having accepted the
Presidency of the Council. The militant Catholics, on the other hand, showed no
gratitude towards him for having compromised himself
116 Final defeat of Clericals and Monarchists.
[i87e 83
on their
behalf with his own party. The more regard he showed for the Church, the more
exacting they appeared, and the more imprudent abroad. This was the time when
the General Assembly of Catholics, under the direction of Chesnelong, and with
the encouragement of the whole body of Bishops, demanded from the
Marshal-President decisive action in Italy, to support the independence of the
Holy See against the national monarchy. They succeeded so far that, irritated
and uneasy, Victor Emmanuel and his people were moving towards the Triple
Alliance with the Emperors of Germany and Austria, whose object was to watch
France and perhaps to stifle her (1882). When, on May 16, 1877, MacMahon
appointed Broglie to the fighting Ministry, and dissolved the Republican
Chamber, it was with the hope of obtaining from the elections, by means of
official pressure, an Assembly that would continuously favour the claims of the
Ultramontane party, “ the government of parish priests,” what was called at the
time “moral order.”
But the
result was a crushing defeat, not only for the Clerical party, but also for the
Monarchists who had entered the lists for the last time. France had paid too
dear, in 1870, for the error of uniting her interests with those of the Papacy
and the cause of the Temporal Power not to understand the danger to which she
exposed herself in taking sides against the Republicans with the uncompromising
Ultramontane party. The senatorial elections of January 5, 1879, finally gave
the majority in the two French Chambers to those Republicans who were most
resolute in refusing to tolerate the exacting demands of the Clerical party.
Warning was then given of the intentions of this majority, who, in the
interests of the Republic, demanded, first of Dufaure (January 20) and then of
MacMahon (January 28, 1879), that the offices of the State should be filled by
Republicans. Both resigned, in order not to have to execute the necessary
weeding out of officials.
This task was
entrusted from 1879 onwards, under Grevy’s Presidency, to Jules Ferry. An
unshakable Republican and an avowed freethinker, this Minister had formerly
proclaimed himself an opponent of the alliance of the secular State with the
Roman Church, and of the Concordat which was definitely condemned together with
Gallicanism in 1870, and a supporter of that separation of civil and religious
power which had long been a fundamental article of the democratic programme. At
the moment when he was summoned to the direction of Public Education in its
relations with the Church, it seemed to him that prudence demanded compromises
and half-measures. The important thing was to attack the militant Clericals
without irritating the mass of the Catholic party, to respect beliefs while
ruining political and Ultramontane plans. He hoped to sow discord between the
monks, the forces of Rome organised for contest, and the parish priests, who
were more intimately associated with the national life and cared more for the
sacraments and for education
than for
politics. It was in this spirit that, on March 15, 1879, he brought forward his
Bills for the suppression of the right claimed by the Congregations of
appointing teachers without degrees to the public schools, for the exclusion of
the clergy from university councils, and the abolition of their right to confer
degrees. Article 7 of this Law was the decisive one; it took from every
Congregation that should not have obtained the recognition and authorisation of
the State, and from the Jesuits in particular, the right of imparting
instruction.
It was
principally by getting possession of the education of the young that all the
Congregations since 1850 had imposed themselves upon the French nation: it was
the teaching Orders that Jules Ferry first attacked, limiting his scope in
order to be assured of gaining his end. We shall see that, for more than twenty
years, this continued to be the method of all Republican politicians in
pursuance of their policy of regaining the ground acquired by the Clerical
party since 1850; they have proceeded step by step, in order not to estrange
the Liberals and the Catholics. To appreciate their hesitation, we must
remember the storms of anger aroused by Article 7 of the Law of 1879 among the
Bishops and their faithful flocks. Greatly moved, Waddington, the chief of the
Ministry, resigned ; his successor, Freycinet, who was secretly in sympathy
with the members of the Left Centre, supported Article 7 in the Senate, but
with so little vigour that the majority of this less advanced Assembly threw it
out. The Chamber, however, forced him to issue the two decrees of March 29,
1880—one ordering the expulsion of the Jesuits within three months, the other
compelling the Congregations to seek from the State authorisation for their
continued existence in French territory. When these decrees had been issued,
Freycinet began to negotiate with the Papacy, through the mediation of Cardinal
Lavigerie, for a truce in return for a vague promise of nonhostility towards
the Republic. Warned by Gambetta, the Republicans overthrew Freycinet in
September, 1880, and entrusted the carrying into effect of the decrees to Jules
Ferry, who, on his appointment to the Presidency of the Council, carried a vote
for the closing of the Houses of the religious Orders, though not for the
dissolution of the Orders themselves. The result of all his efforts was rather
to increase the hostility of these Orders to the Republic than to reduce them
to obedience to the democracy.
On the other
hand, it was more easy to organise the schools of the Republic. The Law of June
16,1881, established the right of the people to free primary education and thus
justified the Government the next year (March 28, 1882) in making it
compulsory. Under certain conditions as to the degrees and character of
teachers, this last-enacted Law proclaimed the freedom of the primary schools ;
but, on the other hand, it prescribed the secularity and neutrality of all the
state schools. In order to provide teachers for the work of public education,
the Republic under
118
[1878-68
took the
responsibility for their salaries and their training as regards the Normal
Primary Schools of each department. Moreover, the Republic established at
Saint-Cloud and Fontenay near Paris Normal Schools of Higher Grade, where the
teachers of these Normal Schools, recruited from among the children of the
people, received instruction whose influence should penetrate the minds of
dwellers in the most remote hamlets—a great concerted effort on behalf of
education with which the name of Jules Ferry is still associated. This was the period,
moreover, when the Republicans established a scheme for the education of women
of the middle classes, a scheme sketched by Duruy and obstinately opposed by
the Church, by passing on December 21, 1880, and July 26, 1881, the Laws
dealing with schools and colleges for girls, and with the Normal School at
Sevres, whose object was to train mistresses for these schools. Jules Ferry
also summoned to the Ministry, to take the direction of Higher Education, the
eminent archaeologist, Albert Dumont, whose persistent efforts and moderate
views restored life to the French Universities, and multiplied laboratories,
professorial chairs, and the numbers of students. Never had any Government or
even any Minister showed greater devotion to the interests of science, to the
intellectual development of any country or nation.
Doubtless it
was the efficacy of the weapon which the democracy had forged for itself by the
passing of these laws on education, that disposed the Ministers of the Republic
to listen to the offers of reconciliation which came to them at this moment
from Rome. Leo XIII, who on February 20, 1878, had succeeded to the
uncompromising and passionate Pius IX, while he abandoned none of the
deep-seated and guiding principles of Roman policy, desired to bring about
their triumph by different means, by gentleness and urbanity rather than by
peremptory demands, by adroit concessions rather than by stubborn resistance to
modem ideas, by understandings cleverly planned rather than by ruptures with
societies, nations, and Governments. Such an understanding appeared to him most
urgent in France, where disquieting tendencies were manifested in laws on
divorce, on the secularisation of funeral ceremonies, and the suppression of
honours paid to Bishops, and of public prayers; and on November 19, 1885, an
Encyclical, Immortale Dei, appeared from Rome which called upon Catholics, so
far as the interests of the Church and of religious truth permitted, to
recognise French political institutions and to take part in the rule of
democracy in France. The clergy and faithful in France certainly did not
immediately fall into line with this advice. But three years after, in the
midst of the Boulanger episode, when the reactionary parties together with the
Clericals were hastening to make their attack upon the Republic, Leo XIII
published his Bull Libertas in the same spirit of gracious submission and
gentleness as that of 1885. So well did he succeed that, at length, the Curia,
which had so long disturbed, now began to reassure, almost to tempt the
Republicans
in
power—President Carnot, his Ministers and his friends, Tirard, Constans, and
Ribot.
In 1889,
these members of the Government, deeply attached as they were to the democracy
and to secularism, found themselves confronted by the Socialist party, which
had been reconstituted since the amnesty under German influence; and, like the
Left Centre after May 16, they were then obliged to form alliances with a party
whose doctrines and excesses they feared. If the Pope had been more energetic,
or had been better able to ensure obedience from the Bishops in France who were
obstinately hostile to the Republic, President Carnot’s Ministers, above all
Freycinet, would perhaps have become reconciled with Leo XIII in order to
ensure religious and social peace. But it was not until 1892 that he made known
his wishes in the Encyclical, Inter innumeras: they were at any rate original
and important. French Catholics for the first time received the order from Rome
to abandon all attempts at political domination, and to rally to the democracy,
“ for the civil power, upon every theory, comes from God.” To this invitation,
Loubet, the chief of the Ministry in France, whose qualities had not yet become
known, replied by a promise of liberal and prudent toleration. The Pope, in his
turn, replied by a letter to the French Cardinals on May 3, 1892, which brought
Mun and the militant Catholics to obey the command and to rally to the
Republic. The result was that, at the elections of 1893, the separation of the
Church and the State, with the other anti-clerical measures, had almost
disappeared from the programmes of the Republicans, even of the Radicals.
In the
history of the strained relations between Church and State, in France since
1871, the period of Carnot’s Presidency (1887-94), especially the years 1893
and 1894, was a sort of breathing-space, a relaxation. With men like Casimir
Perier, and still more with Spuller and Meline, chosen deliberately among the
most moderate Republicans to arrest the progress of the Socialists who, led by
Guesde and Jaures, at that time numbered fifty deputies in Parliament, the “new
spirit” began to inspire ministerial counsels. The anarchist attempts at the
end of 1893 and 1894 accentuated and hastened the reconciliation. It even
seemed that, apart from political exigencies, a certain way to agreement was
being made ready in the minds of men by the moral and neo- Christian movement,
first inspired by Renan’s school, and supported by a certain distaste for
materialistic science and a general aspiration for enlightened altruism,
preached by Vogue, Brunetiere, and Paul Desjardins. But these conditions were
not destined to endure.
Under the
shadow of the understanding which had grown up between the politicians and the
faith, the religious Congregations raised their head, protected as they were
against the ordinary menaces of anticlericalism. While men were talking of
social and religious peace, journals of violent Ultramontane sympathies,
financed from the coffers of
120
[1894-8
the middle
class pupils of the Jesuits and Assumptionists, papers such as the Libre Parole
and the Croix, declared war to the death on French citizens of the Jewish and
the Protestant faith. Drumont gave the signal in La France Juive, which created
Antisemitism in France. The journal issued by the same writer spread tenfold
the propaganda of the book, excited the priests, and through them the faithful,
against the Freemasons and the Jews. Brunetiere, in the Revue des Deux Mondes,
declared war for his part against science and the critical spirit. In 1895 he
began a campaign against the democracy, demanding blind submission to the
discipline of the Church of Rome.
The
Republicans, surprised by this awakening of hatreds and religious factions,
yielded so far as to let themselves be forced by the threats of Ultramontane
journals to accept the sentence of degradation and exile to Guiana, passed upon
Captain Dreyfus, who was accused without proof of having betrayed his country
to Germany (December, 1894). This conviction was the proof of the progress made
by Antisemitic feeling, and above all of the enormous influence which the
Church had obtained, in the four years past, in all classes of society and
especially in the army. Thenceforth the Minister for War was in their power
through,, his complicity in a crime against justice. The Chief of the Staff,
Boisdeffre, and all the Commanders of Army Corps, formed a sort of military
parliament, encouraged by a false patriotism, which began to be called
“Nationalism,” to aim at the exclusion of the Jews, the Protestants, and even
all Liberals, from French citizenship. Though, doubtless, many Catholics did
not lend themselves to these proceedings, the Clerical party at least rejoiced
in the progress made by these doctrines, and above all in the complaisance of
Meline’s Ministry, which from 1896 to 1898 pushed the fear of socialism to such
a point that they saw and knew nothing of this movement towards a military and
monastic tyranny.
The silence,
so propitious to intrigue, was rudely broken by the unexpected announcement of
Captain Dreyfus’ innocence, which was made by Scheurer-Kestner from July, 1897,
onwards, and confirmed, to the great displeasure of the Nationalists, civil and
military, by Colonel Picquart at the end of the year. In vain did Meline’s
Ministiy at first offer opposition to the solicitations of the family of
Captain Dreyfus and of his friends, whose numbers increased daily and included
men like Reinach, Jaures, Zola, Clemenceau, Gabriel Monod, Havet, and Laborie,
on the plea that it was impossible to go behind a “judgment given.” In vain did
the General Staff, attempting to involve the “honour of the army ” in the
crimes of the Antisemitic party, refuse to recognise in Esterhazy the real
author of the bordereau, the document upon which the charge of treason against
Dreyfus had been based. By slow but sure degrees, the country, the deputies,
and the judges, became aware of the machinations of the Clerical party in
league with the generals of the army. The elections of 1898 brought about the
downfall of Moline’s
Ministry. The
accession to power of a Radical President of Council, Henri Brisson, who had
had no traffic with the Ultramontane party, soon converted his party who up to
this time, with the Socialists, had been opposed to a revision of the sentence.
The Minister of War, Cavaignac, Nationalist though he was, was forced to make
known the forgeries committed at the General Staff by Colonel Henry and his
accomplices, with a view to completing finally the ruin of Colonel Picquart and
Dreyfus. On the discovery of his crime, Henry passed sentence on himself by
taking his own life in prison; and the Government finally ordered a fresh trial
(August, 1898).
Another year
elapsed before the trial began at Rennes—a year full of efforts made, even in
Dupuy’s Ministry, from October 30, 1898, onwards, in order to prevent the Court
of Cassation from pronouncing its decision. Success was only attained after the
sudden death of Felix Faure, who had connived at these hindrances and delays
(February .16, 1899), after the election of President Loubet, and the failure
of a Nationalist plot organised by Deroulede and Roget; and it was due to the
establishment of Waldeck-Rousseau’s Ministry, which resolved to bring about the
triumph of justice by the help of the Socialists, who did not play them false.
It was through fear of socialism that moderate Republicans had let themselves
slide into this policy first of indifference to, and subsequently of complicity
with, the intrigues which were in danger of bringing about a dictatorship, as
in 1851. Similarly, it was the reconciliation with the Socialists, and the
inclusion of one of their party, Millerand, in the Ministry for the “Defence of
the Republic,” which enabled Waldeck-Rousseau, himself a Moderate, and a friend
and pupil of Gambetta, to avenge Dreyfus and his partisans. By the Council of
War at Rennes Dreyfus was once more condemned; but President Loubet granted a
pardon, in anticipation of the decision issued a year later by the Court of
Cassation, declaring the innocence of this man whose sole crime was his birth.
The three
years’ struggle had been severe for Republican Ministers, who could not but see
in the “Dreyfus affair” a concerted attempt at establishing, as at the
beginning of the Republic in 1876, an Ultramontane rule in France by the aid
of the chiefs of the army. Moreover, there can be no doubt but that the
Congregations, the “confederate monks,” as Waldeck-Rousseau called them, were,
this time also, the principal actors. After 1900, Waldeck-Rousseau adopted the
tactics and aims of Jules Ferry, and, without threatening the Church or
liberty, began the attack upon the religious associations, by enacting for the
first time freedom of combination (Law of 1902). His shattered health, which
was becoming more enfeebled as his end drew near, forced him to retire (1902).
His successor, Combes, proceeded to the legal, and, this time, complete
dissolution of those religious associations (other than charitable) which had
refused to report to the State their
122
Separation of Church and State.
[1903-7
statutes and
endowments (1903-4). Faithful to the tactics of all Republican Ministers, he
had declared publicly when he entered office, that he would spare the priests
while attacking the monks. He relied in this policy upon the Concordat.
Contrary to
his calculation, events were hastened forward, either owing to the intrigues of
the expelled Congregations, who exercised pressure upon the Curia and the
secular clergy to bring about a rupture with France, in the hope of a religious
war of revenge, or as a result of the alliance, which was daily becoming
closer, between the Socialists in power and the Radical Republicans. When,
after the death of Leo XIII, the new Pope, Pius X, whose very name stood as the
symbol of an era of non-compromising policy, protested against President
Loubet’s visit to the'King of Italy (April 24-29, 1904), the French Government
at first was inclined to meet the insult with silence. With provocative intent,
the Pope then made it public. On May 17,1904, the parliamentary leader of the
Socialist party, Jaures, demanded reprisals. The Government, accordingly,
recalled their ambassador, Nisard, from the Vatican.
Thenceforward,
the separation between Church and State showed itself to be inevitable, in
consequence of the policy of Rome, which had resolved to avenge the dissolution
and expulsion of the Congregations, and of that of the French democratic party
also, who were no longer restrained by the fear of breaking the Concordat. In a
commission established in 1903 to enquire into this grave matter, a Socialist,
Briand, had come into prominence by his character, which showed itself alike
tactful and firm, resourceful and alert. In the month of January, 1905, after
the retirement of Combes’ Ministry, his successor as Minister of Public
Worship, Bienvenu Martin, came to an agreement with Briand for the purpose of
bringing forward a definitive project of Separation which Briand carried in the
Chambers at the end of the year (December 9). This Law Briand, Minister of
Public Worship in his turn, administered in Clemenceau’s Cabinet without
yielding, but also without heat, and without arousing the least emotion in the
country (1906-7).
Before this
Law, as to which the Pope had not been consulted, though in his opinion the
nature of the Concordat made it incumbent upon France to consult him, Pius X
naturally refused to bow : he would not even take cognisance of its provisions.
He enjoined upon the Catholics in France to consider it as null and void. He
preferred to sacrifice the property of the French Church rather than permit the
faithful to establish the associations for public worship ordained by the
legislature to take charge of and administer its goods. Thus it came about
that, by the deliberate will of the Holy See, this Law, which its authors had
desired to be full of tolerance, equity, and regard for consciences and for
vested rights, was transformed in practice into a series of measures of
spoliation and persecution.
However, the
general indifference of the nation in this crisis, which in
1871-1910] The Socialist party and
the Republic.
123
other times
would have brought about a civil war, has permitted absolute tolerance and
freedom in the practice of religion. The Catholic Church has completely lost
to-day in France the financial and moral assistance of the State, the right to
form any associations except for purposes of charity, the privileges of
exemption from military service and from taxation which had hitherto been
accorded to the clergy—all of these weapons which had been used against the
democracy under the pretext of defending and propagating Catholic beliefs. But
it does not appear that the respect due to these beliefs as to all others or
religious peace has hitherto suffered any serious hurt.
When we come
to follow in detail the sequence of phases through which the union between the
Church and State passed after 1871, before it finally ended in the divorce of
1905, we cannot but be struck by the way in which these phases correspond to
the evolution of the Socialist party. The Separation was carried out by Jaures
and Briand, that is to say, at the moment when the Socialists began to make
their weight felt in Parliament and in the administration. Never, on the other
hand, was the domination of the Clerical party over the Assemblies, over education,
and over public opinion, so strong as immediately after the Commune, during
the period which was, for the labouring classes, a “nine years’ terror,” during
which they seemed to be of no account in the nation.
It is of
importance, therefore, to consider the relations between the Church and the
State in conjunction with those existing between the Socialist party and the
Republic. After the defeat of the leaders and troops of the Commune, there was
no Socialist party until November,
1877, when Jules Guesde, with the assistance of
Lafargue, the son-in-law of Karl Marx, founded a paper, Ultgalite, for a
collectivist propaganda, for which Das Capital was already put forward at
Brussels and Beni as a sort of international Bible, in spite of the resistance
of the Anarchists. The amnesty accorded in 1879 to those proscribed in 1871
gave back their leaders to the working classes, and to the champions of the
doctrines of Marx their most convinced disciples. The amnesty had been won by
the violent demands of a working men’s congress held at Marseilles, at which
Collectivist orators, such as Lombard, Foumiere, and Ernest Roche, gained
enthusiastic support for the doctrine of war between classes, in every field,
intellectual, economic, and political. In 1880 the party of “Socialist Workers”
in France was formed with organisation in six districts; its leaders, almost
its apostles, were Benoit, Malon, and Guesde, inspired by the revolutionary
doctrine of Marx and Engels, its programme; and its organs were Le Proletaire,
Ultgalite, and La Revolution. “Never before,” said a Conservative spectator,
“did any doctrine make as great progress in so short a time.”
This progress
of socialism was soon, however, checked by Republican' politicians, who saw,
not unreasonably, in the renewal of revolutionary
124
[i88i-9
threats, a
danger which menaced the development and success of their own ideas among the
middle classes and the peasants who were deeply attached to order, social
tranquillity, and the rights of the individual. Clemenceau, the most ardent of
the Radical leaders, absolutely refused to accept the doctrines of Marx “with
his convents and his barracks.” This resistance, supported by the chief talent
and authority in the country, caused certain of the Socialists to reflect—among
them Malon in particular, and Brousse, and subsequently Allemane, Joffrin, and
Clovis Hugue, who began to question whether partial reforms obtained by slow
degrees would not serve the proletariate better than a total recasting of
society, an aim remote and perhaps wholly unattainable. They themselves wanted
whatever was possible; and these “ Possibilists ” were strong enough at the
Labour Congress at Reims in 1881 to carry their , system in spite of the
opposition of Jules Guesde, the overbearing and uncompromising leader, and to
break with him at the Congress of Saint-Iiltienne on September 25, 1882. The
Collectivist party thus broke up on a tactical question almost before it was
organised—the question whether the war between classes should be conducted by
patient sap or by hasty and violent assault.
In 1884, the
Republican Government pressed forward a Law, which, in the view of its authors,
was likely to alienate the labouring classes from the revolutionary groups by
satisfying the interests of their class. By the Law of March 21, 1884,
permitting artisans and peasants to form trade unions, in a country where the
right of combination did not exist, the Republic conferred a great boon upon
the working classes, all the greater in that the right was conferred upon these
trade unions to form themselves into groups and even into a universal
federation. From 1884 to 1889, every effort was used to develop and encourage
cooperative societies of consumers and producers in the spirit of practical
socialism inaugurated by the school of Nimes, by Boyve and Gide. One of the
most important enactments was that of 1888, which allowed these societies to
compete for state contracts on favourable terms. Under the beneficent eye of a
Government that had established a journal in its offices to follow the
movement, the first general congress of Mutual Aid Societies was held at Lyons
in 1883 and made further claims for liberty. In Parliament the party of social
reform daily gained fresh sympathisers; Jaures, whose conversion from the Left
Centre to the Extreme Left began in 1887; Millerand, who went over entirely to
the party of extreme Radicalism ; and many other Moderates, such as Poincar^,
Hanotaux, and Jamais, were in agreement with them in demanding from the Chamber
special attention—two sittings a week—for social questions.
At the moment
when the Republicans at the Exhibition of 1889 were demonstrating the success
of their efforts to give back to a free and industrious France her rank among
the nations, they contracted with the Socialist party what may be called a
mariage de raison.
1889-92] Compact of the State
with socialism.
125
The meetings
of the Collectivist party, Possibilists and Guesdites, held at Paris in 1889 to
demand international legislation upon the labour question, made French
politicians perceive, by the strength of their organisation and the threats of
a general strike, which was attempted on May 1, the necessity of a Concordat
with this new religion. This was to be based upon the following conditions: the
intervention and assistance of the State, which the political and economic
creed of the Liberals had consistently condemned, was to be extended to the
furtherance of the moral and material well-being of the proletariate, and the
Collectivists on their side were to abandon the hopes of a violent revolution,
which they had hitherto put forward in opposition to the needs of the public peace
and the demands of the law.
As in all
schemes of compromise, there has been ever since this time an alternation of
concessions and demands, regulated by circumstances or the claims of one party
or the other. In 1890 an important Law (July 8) gave to miners the right of
appointing delegates to watch over their safety; an enquiry was set on foot by
the Chamber in its Labour Committee upon the possibility of limiting the legal
working day in factories. Finally, another Law (December 27) laid down the principle
of compensation in favour of a working man whose working contract was broken
without cause. This movement for legislation in the interests of labour became
more marked in 1891 by the creation of a Supreme Council of Labour, recruited
equally from employers of labour and those employed by them ; by the promise
made by Constans on the question of working men’s pensions; and by the
institution, on July 20, of a Labour Section in the Ministry of Commerce, and
of Labour Exchanges in the provincial towns. A proportionate advance was shown
by trade unions and cooperative societies. Something like a reaction set in at
the end of 1891, when a strike in the north, at Fourmies, provoked a bloody
conflict between the military force and the miners, and still more as a result
of the Anarchist attempts of Ravachol in Paris. But the positions occupied by
all the Socialist sections—by Brousse and Allemane in Paris, by Guesde,
Lafargue, and Camelinat in the north—were already so strong that the progress
of socialism suffered no check from these events. On the eve of the municipal
elections of 1892, valuable assistance was afforded to them by the democratic
middle-class party, followers of Millerand, who set forth in his journal, the
Petite Republique Franfaise, the terms of the Concordat arranged between the
labouring classes and Republicans, a necessary and fruitful alliance. “ We must
be either with the people or against them. To accomplish social reforms, we
demand the help of all branches of Socialists, no matter how bold their
theories, provided that they do not desire to triumph by means other than
pacific and constitutional.” With the aid of these reforming or radical
Socialists, Jules Guesde and his followers conquered Roubaix, a fortress, and
the
126
Resistance of the middle classes.
[1893-7
followers of
Brousse gained Paris, a platform; at the elections to the Chamber of 1893,
fifty Collectivist deputies entered Parliament, with the idea of winning for
men of their way of thinking all the public offices, and using them for the
transformation of capitalist and individualist society in accordance with
their ideal of the socialisation of the instruments of labour and of
production.
The middle
classes, however, became uneasy when faced with the theories set forth in 1894
by Jules Guesde in the Chamber, especially after the assassination of President
Carnot at Lyons. The election as President of a great capitalist, one of the
Casimir Periers of Anzin, and the laws brought forward by Dupuy’s Cabinet,
which were called the lois scelerates, seemed to the working classes
indications of reaction and rupture. However, on November 20, 1894, Parliament
passed the law to provide “ cheap and sanitary dwellings ” for working men, and
reenacted with greater precision the earlier laws regarding the labour of women
and children. “We need social laws,” said one of the most moderate deputies,
Paul Deschanel, in 1896. Was this declaration very different from the programme
of pacific development which Millerand laid down for the Collectivists at St
Mande on May 30, 1896: “ Our sole appeal is to universal suffrage. To be
invincible we only need to be united.” It seemed that a continued accord
between Republicans of every shade of thought, except the partisans of physical
force, was not only desirable but expedient. The accession to power of Meline’s
Ministry, which was formed on April 30, 1896, following upon a vote of the
Senate against a proposal for income-tax which had been passed by the Chamber
of Deputies, brought to a head the resistance of the middle classes to the
wishes of the Socialist party.
The Dreyfus
affair emphasised this opposition in 1897. Not that in the debate upon this
celebrated affair the Collectivists had taken the side of the innocent man. On
the contrary, Jaures, who quickly declared himself against military justice and
its errors, was thrown over by his constituents, his friends, and the people of
Paris. But, when it became evident in political and professional circles that
this Socialist leader was making common cause with Zola, a revolutionary even
in literature, and with Clemenceau, the indefatigable opponent of Conservative
Ministries, in order to compel the military leaders to recognise their error,
the fear took shape and became widely spread, that an anarchist attempt was
afoot, planned with the Jews and foreign Powers, to overthrow the army. It is
in this fear that we must look for the explanation of the resistance offered by
the Ministries of Meline and Dupuy to the revision of the sentence, as much as
in the intrigues of the Nationalists, who were as clever as in 1850 at
awakening the terror of the “Red peril.” On the other hand, these moderate
Republicans underestimated the service which, by concealing the faults of
certain officers, they were rendering to the Socialists, who had been called
upon
1899-1902]
127
by the
democratic party to defend Republican institutions against any future possible
revival of Caesarism. Towards the end of this crisis, the necessary Concordat
between the Republic and collectivism, which had been on the point of breaking
down, was more firmly cemented. Millerand, who had been at the head of his
party ever since 1893, and had in 1896 formulated at St Mande the demands of
the Socialist party, became a member of Waldeck-Rousseau’s Ministry, in order
to direct, as Minister of Commerce and Industry, what was, in effect, a
Department of Labour (June, 1899). It is only necessary to recall the days of
June, 1848, and of the Commune in 1870, in order to appreciate the importance
of this event in the history of French socialism.
Moreover,
this participation of a Socialist in a Republican Government was so much of a
compromise that those Collectivists—Guesde, with his followers and friends—who
were firmly attached to the doctrine of war between classes and to
revolutionary principles, were incensed at the concessions arranged beforehand
by Millerand and Jaures in their agreement with Waldeck-Rousseau. They
denounced them at the great party Congress on December 3, 1899, which did not
venture to pronounce absolutely whether they were in the right or in the wrong.
The party of labour and revolution became daily more hostile to the independent
Socialist or reforming party, and broke with the partisans of Millerand,
Jaures, Viviani, and Briand at the Congress of Lyons in May, 1901.
These
divisions and disputes did not interfere with the influence that a Socialist
Minister was able to exert upon the legislation and political feeling during
his tenure of power. In his department, Millerand organised a “ Board of Labour
” and a “ Board of Thrift and Aid,” based upon Councils in part elective. One
of his first acts was to limit the working day to a uniform eleven hours. This
working day was limited in 1902 to nine hours and a half. In 1904 it was fixed
at ten hours. The decree of January 2, 1901, established “ Labour Councils ”
for the pacific adjustment of disputes between employers and employed. Another
Law, passed on December 29,1900, settled the hygienic conditions under which
work was to be carried on, while a general Law for the protection of Public
Health (February 15, 1902) brought under systematic control the dwellings of
the working classes, and secured state aid for other improvements. During the
three years in which Millerand held office, the attention of the Cabinet, in
which for the first time his party had gained a footing, was not distracted for
one moment from the task of finding progressive solutions of social problems.
When, in 1902, he resigned the Ministry of Commerce, he had decided upon a
scheme of reform more fundamental and general still, which he has never ceased
since that time to demand from the State, namely, the establishment and
organisation of old age pensions for labouring men.
Though this
reform, so often demanded, has not yet been realised,
128
[1902-10
yet the
impetus given to the Socialist party by its union with the Republicans has not
slackened. Briand, a Socialist, was appointed to the Ministry to apply the law
of the separation of Church and State, which was the chief work of their party
from 1902 to 1907. In 1907 a Ministry of Labour was created in Clemenceau’s
Cabinet for the benefit of Viviani, one of Briand’s friends. Moreover, with
great skill, from 1902 onwards, without the least friction with his friends in
office, Jaures has managed to soothe the anger of the extremists, and has
subscribed to the conditions of unification of the Socialist party, in
accordance with the example of Collectivism in Germany and under its influence.
Thus, for some years, the Socialists have drawn advantage from their
revolutionary demands as well as from their participation in the government. '
If this
party, whose strength in the Republic has waxed in proportion as that of the
Church waned, has risks to run, they will come from the excesses of the
extremist parties formed on its flanks and among its own members, the
Anarchists, the Antimilitarists, who desire to destroy the army which protects
the laws they deny, and the “Syndicalists,” hostile to Marxism, and still more
hostile to parliamentary methods, bent on conferring upon trade unions, grouped
more or less closely in a General Confederation of Labour, the powers which now
belong to the Republican and middle-class State. The success of the Syndicalists,
or the progress already made by them as a result of the fact that public
officials are inclined to form common cause with them, appears calculated to
break the alliance which has existed for ten years between the Republic and the
labouring classes. The problem of the hour is the relations of the Republic
with the Socialist party, since such relations are essential and necessary to
the life and development of a democracy.
While
Millerand was thus engaged in organising labour and arranging for state
assistance for the labouring classes, as Minister of Commerce he never forgot
that the maintenance and progress of national wealth were the indispensable
conditions of the benefits promised by the Republic to the working and poorer
classes. In point of fact, nothing has contributed more to the continuance of
the economic prosperity of France than the trade with French colonies, which
has steadily increased since 1870 from 350 millions to nearly two milliards.
The work of
colonising has been for France, ever since her defeat, the constant and almost
instinctive care on the part of her Government and her people. She has
increased tenfold the population under her sway, as well as the new territories
opened to her civilisation and her commerce. The line followed by France in her
work of colonisation is naturally the result and development of the system
pursued by earlier Governments and prescribed by circumstances: first of all in
North Africa. Revolts on the part of the inhabitants of Algeria have become rarer
and less
1854-1900]
129
important
that of Mokrani in Kabylia in 1881, the most violent, the briefer rising of the
Aures in 1879, and those of 1881 of Bou Amema and Si Tlemcen in the south of
Oran, have all tended to establish the permanence of French rule. Round this
solid kernel progress gradually proceeded by successive advances. From the
province of Constantine, the valley of the Medjerda inevitably led the French
towards Tunis, where the acts of brigandage of the Kroumirs on March 31, 1881,
gave a legitimate ground for interference. The Treaty of Bardo, concluded with
the Bey on May 12,1881, placed the country under the protectorate of the
Republic. This Treaty raised hardly any opposition in Europe, except at first
in Italy, and subsequently proved most favourable for the development of the
dependency. Commerce has increased in it in twenty years from 27 to 200
millions. A similar phenomenon of expansion is seen in the south, in the oases
of the Sahara, where French influence has been established. The attacks of the
Touaregs upon French outposts in the Aures have by degrees compelled the occupation
of the districts in the south of Algeria, explored since 1860 by intrepid
French travellers. Down to 1880, the boundaries of French territory were
Ain-Sefra in Oran, Laghouat in Algeria, and Ouargla at the limit of
Constantine. From 1895 onwards, the railroad was extended into the desert
towards Igli and El Goleah to facilitate the police work of the French troops.
In 1900, the Government decided upon the simultaneous occupation of Insalah,
Tidikelt, Touat, and Gourara on the frontiers of Morocco, the most advantageous
positions and from a strategical point of view the most important in the
Sahara. Moreover, by gentle pressure, France opened for herself the trade
routes of Morocco, and the way to the Sudan, which little by little she has
succeeded in colonising.
This result
was mainly due to the efforts of Faidherbe to open up the hinterland of
Senegal, of which he had been appointed Governor under the Empire. With method
and wisdom this general had subdued the Moorish tribes, who barred the river,
and established outposts at Bakel in the interior. More than that, from 1854 to
1865 he had founded a tradition and set an example to a whole generation of
officers, enterprising like himself and desirous of spreading French authority
as far as the table-lands which separate Senegal from Nigeria. For ten years
this was the patient labour of Briere de TClle, Gallieni, and Bayol, who in
1881 reached Nigeria by way of the table-lands, and of Archinard and Bonnier,
who, in 1894, occupied Timbuktu. The explorations of Binger (1887-9) in the
bend of the Niger, of Marchand in the district of Kong, of Monteil about Lake
Chad (1891), the conquest of Dahomey by Dodds and Audeoud in 1892, linked by
the efforts of Ballot and Destenave with the Niger, and the annexation of the
Ivory Coast which was arranged with England in 1892, have in the last years of
the nineteenth century established a French empire in the Sudan—an empire
consisting of two million square kilometres, whose population,
o.
M. H. XII. ch. v. 9
130 French empire in the
Sudan. [1885-1901
protected as
they now are against wars and famine, and for the most part industrious and
healthy,, will soon outgrow their present numbers and furnish the elements
necessary for the development and cultivation of this district, rich as it is
in natural resources.
The whole of
this development in North Africa was the result of an agreement made between
France and England on August 5, 1890, for the union of French Upper Senegal
with Guinea, and fqr the delimitation of the respective spheres of the two
nations in the region of Lake Chad along the line from Say to Barua. Another
treaty (June 14, 1898) defined more clearly this first agreement, and arranged
the union of Senegal with the middle Niger and Dahomey.
France
received an important share, although some criticisms were parsed on the amount
of aesert land accorded to her, in .this occupation of new territory in the “
Dark Continent.” The energy of her explorations had well deserved this reward.
When the first settlement of African territory took place at the Congress of
Berlin in 1885, and the neutrality of the Congo Free State was recognised,
Europe, nevertheless, permitted the creation of a French Congo from the Ogowe
to the Ubanghi, It was only just to permit France to reap the reward of her
energies, and the discoveries of, Savorgnan de Brazza. Moreover, encouraged by
this international decision, France extended her colonies to the north and
north-east of the Congo, thanks to the discoveries and struggles of Crampel,
Dybowski, and Mizon, both towards Lake Chad and towards Benue (1888-92). After
penetrating the valley of the upper Ubanghi, the French pressed on, in 1896-8,
with Marchand as far as the valley of the Bahr-el-Gazal, where their meeting
with the army of the English Sirdar, Kitchener, all but provoked a formidable
crisis. The Franco-German Convention of the Cameroons (March 15, 1894) had
confirmed to France her approach to the territory of Lake Chad by the Sangha
which had been explored by Clozel. The Franco- British Convention of March 21,
1899, in return for the French evacuation of the Nile valley, granted to the
French Congo exclusive powers of extension in the kingdoms of Chad, Baghirmi,
Wadai, and Kanem, territories whose subjection to France was finally
accomplished by Liotard and Gentil after the defeat and death of Rabah (1901).
To complete
the picture of French colonisation in Africa, we must not omit her
establishment in Madagascar in 1895. So far back as the days of Napoleon III,
the Hovasr the warlike and dominant tribe in Madagascar, had
accepted a French protectorate. They had recognised it once more in 1885. But
it needed General Duchesne’s expedition, from January 14 to September 30, 1895,
and the presence of the French troops at Antananarivo to force upon the Queen
and her reluctant aristocracy respect for the terms of the agreements.
Meanwhile, by the Treaty of August 5,1890, England and France had agreed upon
the formal annexation of the protectorate of Zanzibar by the one, and that
1865-96] Madagascar,—Indo-China.
131
of the great
island opposite by the other. From that time no European Power disputed the
right of France to Madagascar, not even when she was forced in September, 1896,
to substitute a direct rule for a protectorate and to deport the Queen and her
Minister Rainalaiarivony to Algeria.
Thus, since
1870, France has become one of the chief Powers in Africa, and, like Russia in
Turkestan, whose methods of penetration she imitated, a Mohammadan Power in
Maghreb. It was at the same moment that France began to realise, with the
conviction of her restored strength, her colonial destinies in Asia.
There, even
more than in Africa, it was a sort of reawakening of the past—either of the
efforts which the French had made at the end of the eighteenth century to
indemnify themselves in Indo-China for the loss of Hindustan, or of the more
recent colonial enterprises recommended to Napoleon III by Duruy and
Chasseloup-Laubat in 1865 and 1867 at the time of the occupation of Saigon and
the neighbouring provinces. The exploration of the Mekong by two intrepid naval
officers, Francis Gamier and Doudart de Lagree, who laboured for three years
(1866-9) at the investigation of this great peninsula, demonstrated the
importance of finding a path of penetration towards Chinese territory other
than the river-course, impeded as it is by rapids. After Garnier’s death (1873)
France contented herself with a vague treaty with the Emperor of Annam which
gave her the protectorate (March 15, 1875). But, after the death of Commandant
Riviere, who had been sent to Hanoi to defend French traders, and who was
killed in an ambuscade (May 19, 1883), Ferry’s Ministry, bent upon colonial
enterprise, commissioned Admiral Courbet, first, to force the Emperor of Annam
to acknowledge the French protectorate (August 25, 1883), and afterwards to
wrest from the Black Flags, who were secretly aided by the Chinese, the delta of
Tonkin (Treaty of Tientsin, May 11, 1884).
The Chinese
Government then took the offensive, in virtue of secular rights, long since
passed into oblivion, and unwilling to have France as a neighbour. Colonel
Duchesne, who had been ordered to occupy Langson in virtue of the treaties, was
suddenly attacked by the Chinese soldiery in the Bac-le pass. Once more Admiral
Courbet received orders to cany out French vengeance. His fleet, by a bold
stroke, destroyed on August 23,1884, in the river Min, the arsenal of Foo-chow.
Then, it took possession of Formosa, of the port of Kelung, and of the
Pescadores islands, blockading all the southern ports of China in order to
hinder the trade in rice. The Chinese had struggled, so long as they believed
themselves strong enough by land, to expel the French from Tonkin. Already,
they were retiring towards their frontiers, when a momentary panic put to
flight General Negrier’s brigade before an enemy who believed themselves
beaten, just below Langson. The French Chamber, misled by incorrect
information,
believed that
an irreparable disaster had taken place, censured Jules Ferry, and overthrew
his Ministry on April 2, 1885,
Immediately
afterwards, the news reached Paris that the victories and blockade of Admiral
Courbet had finally decided China to accept peace, which was definitely signed
on June 9,1885, at Tientsin. The reward of these efforts was the definitive
establishment of a French protectorate in Tonkin and Annam, and its recognition
by China, who promised to throw open to French traders and French influence her
southern provinces, particularly Yunnan. This was the most extensive attempt
made at establishing a European maritime empire in Asia since the events of the
preceding century. As a result and by reason of the treaties with Siam (October
3, 1893) and with England (the declaration of 1896 and the treaty of October 7,
1892), the French empire in Indo-China also strengthened and established the
position of Cambodia, the other old- established Indo-Chinese kingdom under
French protection.
Nevertheless,
France does not appear to have thought of imitating Russia, England, and
Germany, when these Powers profited by the disturbances in China to occupy
Port Arthur, Kiaochow, and Wei-Hai-Wei. At that time the French Government was
pursuing other ends in Africa which it judged more important, those which
Delcasse endeavoured to realise in Algeria and Morocco. Without any intention
of attempting the subjection or even the establishment of a protectorate in
this region, which was now almost entirely surrounded by her empires of Maghreb
and the Sudan, France was nevertheless uneasy at the anarchy which was
threatening the kingdom of Abd-el-Aziz, and formed the scheme of offering him
her help, in order to establish special claims on his gratitude. On July 19,
1903, Delcasse published his programme of pacific penetration, which he had
drawn up with a view to procuring for France “the privilege and advantage of
transforming Morocco into a modem State ” in accordance with the treaty agreed
upon with Abd-el-Aziz in July, 1901.
By a protocol
signed with Italy in 1900, and renewed in 1902, by a promise of help made from
St Petersburg in 1901, which was still open, and finially by the Treaty
concluded on August 8, 1904, in London, arranging to leave the English absolute
liberty of action in Egypt, in return for a similar liberty in Morocco, the
French Cabinet seemed to have gained the consent of Europe. Germany alone had
been silent when France had intimated her intention of treating Fez differently
from Tunis. All at once, either to satisfy the desires of the German colonial
party who were anxious to possess a Moroccan port on the Atlantic, or because
he was annoyed at the promises made secretly to Spain by Delcasse of a part of
Morocco (Treaty of October 3, 1904), the Emperor William II landed at Tangier
in March, 1905; the dismissal of Delcasse was demanded, and subsequently
obtained by a sort of ultimatum addressed to France and Spain in the month of
June, 1905.
1905-9] Results of French colonial policy.
133
Relying,
however, on the alliance and friendship with England, France did not intend to
give up the rights on the borders of the Sherifian empire resulting from her
long-established position in Algeria. She agreed to the International Conference
at Algeciras in September, 1905, in order to prove that sbe had no desire for
the conquest or economic annexation of Morocco. But she upheld her legitimate
claims to a privileged position in Morocco, and asserted them with the consent
of Spain, in a new agreement of May 16, 1907. Nothing prevented her, not even
the overthrow of the Sultan Abd-el-Aziz by his brother Moulai- Hafid, from
exacting vengeance for the massacre of her countrymen by the fanatics of Casa
Blanca. She occupied the port and neighbouring district of Shawia, pressing
forward with her troops into the valley of the Moulaya and the oases of the
south. In February, 1909, Germany recognised the political preponderance of
France in this region, which France had undertaken to leave open to the
enterprise of German traders.
Thanks to
these efforts, the colonial policy of the Republic has led to the establishment
of an empire whose extent has been raised from
804,000 square kilometres to nearly 12 millions,
with a population of 50 millions and still increasing. In reviewing this
policy, we are struck by the small number of wars that it has entailed: none
with any European Power, in spite of the dangers of Fashoda and Tangier. In
point of fact, it would seem that the French, who found some difficulty in
adapting themselves to the conditions and consequences of these enterprises,
did not grasp the consequent liability to European disputes.
On the other
hand, France has shown great anxiety to associate herself with all the plans
concerted between the Powers at the two Peace Conferences of the Hague, and
with all efforts to prevent wars by arbitration treaties, while diminishing by
international legislation their risks and deadly consequences. The restoration
and development of her resources, commercial, agricultural and colonial, a
foreign defensive policy directed towards the maintenance of her safety and the
Balance of Power —these, and these alone, have been her general aims, her
instinctive and national policy.
THE GERMAN EMPIRE.
THE FIRST
SEVEN YEARS OF THE EMPIRE.
(1871-7.)
After centuries of dismemberment and impotence the
German people had between the years 1866 and 1871 reestablished their claim to
rank as a nation. Bismarck's statesmanship and the political and military
resources of Prussia had combined to bring about at last the realisation of
that new German Empire of which so many generations of patriots had dreamed.
Though the time-honoured titles of Emperor and Empire might at first recall the
past glories of the Holy Roman Empire, their meaning had undergone a
fundamental change; for the future they were to imply no universal claims, no
ancient ecclesiastical sanctity, no huge agglomeration of semi-independent
institutions of earlier ages; the old names were to stand for a new order of
things—the German national State.
War, ever the
most potent factor in the founding of States, had brought unity to the German
people. Their new State, outcome of this unify, was as yet in the earliest
stage of its construction, for only the general outline had been laid down in
the Treaty of Versailles of November, 1870, between the North German
Confederation and South German States. It was astonishing that a people, while
engaged in a life and death struggle with a neighbouring Power, should
determine the political setting for its future existence. The next step must be
to ensure a corporate political life for the new State, of which the outward
form alone had been fixed. In those fateful years from 1867 to 1870 the
foundations had been laid of common institutions which had now to be built up
and extended over the whole empire. Every obstacle to
i864-7i] Effects of the three great Wars on
foreign, policy. 135
unity must be
removed, so that the new State might be the home of a people united politically
as in every other respect. At the same time, it was of importance that what had
been acquired should be held against all endeavours from without; the young
Power which had sprung up so rapidly must be brought into the circle of the older
Great Powers and the lines of its foreign policy must be defined. Thus a great
mass of political problems confronted the German people on the conclusion of
the War.
Problems
connected with foreign policy naturally arose out of the very genesis of the empire
in the three Wars of 1864,1866 and .1870-1. The new empire bore a peaceful
character from the outset; Emperor and Chancellor constantly insisted on the
fact that Germany, as newly constituted, had her fill of power and entertained
no further military ambitions. Nevertheless, there was something convulsive
about the impression created by the astoundingly rapid rise of the empire; the
smaller neighbouring Powers felt themselves menaced and dreaded a revival of
the traditions of the old Empire. The Great Powers, too, were ill-pleased to
see the centre of Europe occupied thenceforth by a compact Power of great
military strength—a state of affairs which entirely altered the former European
constellation. The Germans were soon to learn that a nation of poets and
philosophers, the Germany of Goethe and Hegel, with ideals other than
political, had been more to the world’s liking than the Germany of Bismarck now
coming forth into the arena with political claims of its own.
In the first
place, the after-effects of the late Wars were not to be so quickly
obliterated. Had not Austria-Hungary so recently as the summer of 1870 been on
the verge of making common cause with Napoleon III ? Such an alliance would
have been the natural result of the war of 1866. But the effects of the French
war in creating enmities, opposition, and suspicion, were to be of much longer
duration. By the terras of the Treaty of Frankfort the French had not only to
pay the huge sum of five thousand million francs, but they had also to cede two
provinces, Alsace and part of Lorraine. Both provinces, it is true, had
formerly belonged to the Empire and a large proportion of their population
still spoke the German language. Even without these annexations the breach
between France and Germany naturally resulting from the war would not have
closed within the next generation, but now it was certain to remain long open.
The motive
for the annexations is often misrepresented. Everyone knows the famous words
spoken by Leopold von Ranke, the historian, to Thiers in the autumn of 1870,
after the fall of Napoleon III. “ It is against Louis XIV that we have now to
wage war ”; that is to say, we have now to fight against the country which has
for centuries looked upon the defenceless condition of the Germans as the
strongest bulwark
136
France and
Germany. [1861-1905
of her own
hegemony on the Continent. Bismarck’s motive for the annexation lay in no faded
memories of past imperial history upon which national enthusiasts dwelt, but in
the real and pressing necessity for permanent military defence of German unity
against all attacks from the west—a unity which had been threatened, so lately
as 1866, by the preposterous demand of Napoleon III for the cession of Mainz
and a portion of the left bank of the Rhine. This necessity alone impelled him
to shift the frontier across the Rhine into the Vosges mountains, for southern
Germany had been long enough at the mercy of French artillery. For this reason
too, and for this alone, he decided, almost under compulsion from the generals,
to acquire the fortress of Metz, situated in the French-speaking area, in
addition to Alsace, which with the large German element in its population might
be expected to become gradually assimilated to the empire. The annexation, far
from being a deed done on the spur of the moment by the caprice of an
individual, was the inevitable outcome for both nations of several centuries of
their history, and more than one generation of French and Germans alike will
have to abide by it.
Any danger to
be apprehended solely from the French desire for revanche was certainly less
than before and would further diminish with the lapse of time. In 1861, shortly
before Bismarck took the helm in Prussian affairs, the population of France
amounted to 37,400,000 and that of Prussia to 19,100,000; five years later the
French population numbered 38,100,000, and that of the North German
Confederation 30 millions. After the War and the annexations, the population of
France had fallen to 36,100,000, while the German empire had
41,100,000 inhabitants. The rapid increase of the
German population and the comparative sterility of the French increased the
disproportion; so that by 1905 the population of France only numbered upwards
of 39,500,000, whereas that of the German empire amounted to upwards of
60,300,000. As time went on, superior numbers were bound to have a more and
more important effect both on the military capacity of the nations and on their
economic position.
Nevertheless,
from the very outset the new structure of the German empire was burdened as it
were by a French mortgage, since every foreign foe could henceforth reckon
unconditionally on French support. As in the past Frederick the Great had had
to vindicate his conquest of Silesia in a seven years’ war against a European
combination, so Bismarck in his turn was painfully aware that the incubus of a
coalition hourly weighed upon his new creation. The great aim of his policy,
from the first, was to prevent the formation of any such coalition.
The internal
policy of the empire was fraught with no less difficult problems. The new
national State did not include all the German
1866-88]
137
elements, nor
was it composed of exclusively German elements. Since 1866 there had been
nearly eight million Germans in Austria who had no political connexion with
their old country and thenceforward went their own way. It was one of the
axioms of Bismarck’s policy to regard this severance as irrevocable. On the
other hand, the new empire contained many who had no natural place in its
system and were included in it against their will: for example, the Prussian
Poles and the population of Alsace-Lorraine. Though the regions annexed by
Prussia in 1866 had been, to some extent, assimilated to the Prussian nation,
yet in Hanover the Guelfic nobility was becoming the centre of a separatist
party intensely hostile to Prussia. Furthermore, in the most recent struggle
for political hegemony in Germany, religious discord between Protestants and
Catholics had been reawakened. In considering the internal obstacles to unity
account must also be taken of the far-reaching social changes which had come to
pass within the last decades. The middle class had long since been pushing its
way to the front, and the development of capitalism received a powerful impetus
by the payment of the enormous war indemnity. Not only so, but the working
classes were attaining to political consciousness, and social problems of a new
order were looming ahead. Such were the internal questions demanding solution
at the hands of the new empire, which was now entering upon the task of
elaborating its new Constitution.
The two men
who together had called the empire into being were destined to direct its
affairs for nearly twenty years. First, in virtue of his rank, stands the
Emperor William I, an old man of seventy-four at the close of the war, for whom
no one foresaw seventeen further years of life and rule. He became in an
increasing measure a venerable figure among the crowned heads of Europe, and a
personality which strengthened the monarchic principle in the world. His was a
fine character: he was imbued with a strong sense of duty and an honest desire
for peace, inclining more and more towards Conservatism after his experience of
violent European convulsions. His gratitude towards the one man whom he felt to
be increasingly indispensable found voice in the famous “ Never! ” with which
he answered Bismarck’s request for dismissal. It was Bismarck, however, the
uncrowned founder of the empire, who really wielded the power of the State;
yet, during the two decades in which he was omnipotent as a Minister, he held
sway for no mere puppet master as Richelieu had done. William never
relinquished his royal prerogative, or ignored his own responsibility for all
that was done in his name. Yet, though the Emperor sometimes declined to adopt
the policy of his Minister and often moderated it, in all important matters
Bismarck had his way in the end.
138 Bismarck's rule-Germany, Russia, and Austria.
[1866-90
He united in
his person an almost regal combination of functions. As imperial Chancellor he
was the sole responsible officer of the empire, director alike of its foreign
and its home affairs; at the same time, in the Prussian Government he was
President of the Council, Foreign Minister, and for a period (1870-90) also
Minister of Commerce. . In the exercise of these offices he had, of course, to
cooperate with a considerable number of separate authorities established under
the Constitution : with the Bundesrat, in which the separate Governments were
represented so as to vindicate the federal principle in the empire; with the
Reichstag, elected on the basis of an absolutely democratic, equal and
universal suffrage, in concert with which the internal consolidation of Germany
had to be effected; and, lastly, with both Chambers of the Prussian Landtag.
Altogether, the machinery of government was extremely complicated and required
the haud of a master in political tactics. We do not know what were Bismarck's
ultimate objects at every stage, for even his memoirs describe, not so much how
things actually happened, as how he, the statesman who was called upon to act,
desired his deeds to be regarded by his fellow-dtizens and by posterity. For
twenty years he held his own in Germany and in the world, keeping the threads
of home and foreign policy in his own hand and manipulating them adroitly, ever
ready with suggestive ideas and astute lines of action, subduing with
irresistible force of will every opponent whether at home or abroad, ever more
keenly aroused by any obstacle which lay athwart his path, hardened at last by
the sense of power, standing in lonely eminence while friends and colleagues
remained far behind. Throughout his whole life he despised pomp and outward
honours, desiring nothing but the reality of power; and even this he did not
desire for himself, but for that German empire which was his creation and in
whose service every force of his being was with passionate devotion exerted and
expended.
Germany occupied
a central position in Europe between three Great Powers, against two of which
she had been very recently at war. On this account it was of vital importance,
for her more than any other Power, to prevent coalitions of her opponents by
her own strength and adroit foreign policy. During the War of 1870, Bismarck
had determined on a permanent political alliance with Russia and Austria, which
should minimise the risks of an anti-German coalition and make a war of
■evenge on the part of France utterly impossible. A Russo-German alliance
was a tradition with both countries and both royal Houses; for the dynastic
relations dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century were warmly
maintained in the friendship existing between the Emperor William I and his
nephew, Tsar Alexander II. The Russian Chancellor Gorchakoff had, in the
sixties, looked upon Bismarck almost
1872-4] The understanding between the
three Emperors. 139
as his pupil
in diplomacy, and during the Wars of 1866 and 1870-1 he had observed a friendly
neutrality towards Prussia. There were no conflicting interests between the two
countries; indeed, the Polish question established a community of interests
which Bismarck sought to strengthen further by appealing to the strength of
monarchical and conservative opinions in Europe at large, as against the new
tendencies which both governments feared.
It was a far
more difficult task for the victors of 1866 to arrive at an understanding with
Austria-Hungary; but the considerate terms of the Treaty of Prague had paved
the way for this; and the fact that the new empire had declined to exert its
political force of attraction over the German-Austrian population was
calculated to allay Habsburg suspicions. Thus Bismarck managed to bring about a
meeting at Berlin, in September, 1872, between the Emperors Alexander and
Francis Joseph, both accompanied by their chief Ministers, and the Emperor
William. Ostensibly, this meeting was a solemn and brilliant recognition of the
German imperial dignity on the part of the two European sovereigns bearing the
same title; and the visit of the two potentates implied an impressive guarantee
of the position of Germany and a pledge of European peace. Bismarck might well
say with pride: “ I have thrown a bridge across to Vienna, without breaking
down that older one to St Petersburg.”
Many were
reminded of the league between the three Eastern Powers in the days of the Holy
Alliance; but it was impossible to deny that now the centre of gravity of the
new combination was Berlin, not, as formerly, Vienna or St Petersburg. This
reminiscence of past history affords, however, no exact parallel to the actual
facts. No “ Dreikaiserbilndnis” no League of three Emperors, was concluded in
September, 1872, as the history books used to relate; there were no written
agreements, and Alexander II made a point of reassuring the French ambassador.
It should rather be called a “Dreikaiserverhaltnis,” an understanding between
three Emperors; or, to use a convenient French expression, an entente between
three Powers which by a friendly interchange of opinion arrived at a friendly
agreement on questions at issue. In the following year (1873) a treaty was
actually concluded with Russia, which was signed only by the two monarchs and
their respective Field-Marshals Moltke and Baryatinski. Italy, too, seemed
Jready to be inclining towards the new constellation of Powers, for King Victor
Emmanuel visited Berlin in 1873. Although Great Britain remained more aloof,
Lord Odo Russell, her ambassador, was nevertheless able to report in February,
1874, that “ our relations with Germany were never better, more cordial, or
more satisfactory than at present.”
Bismarck was
thus entirely free to watch the shaping of relations
with France.
In a treaty of March 15, 1878, France agreed to pay the rest of the war
indemnity by September 5, 1873, although it was not due until March 1, 1875,
while Germany conceded the evacuation of French territory by July 5,1873. To
all appearances, then, normal relations were reestablished between the two
countries. What they would be in the future depended partly upon the form of
government which should be adopted in France after the fall of Thiers. Count
Harry Arnim, German ambassador in Paris, an ambitious politician of legitimist
leanings, endeavoured to assist the efforts then initiated in France for the
restoration of the monarchy. Bismarck, on the other hand, who looked at
questions of foreign policy with the eye of a practical statesman, never with
that of a doctrinaire, preferred the republican form of government for France,
although everywhere else in the world in general he was a firm advocate of
monarchic institutions. A republic, he thought, would not be able to
consolidate the latent forces of the nation and would be less capable of forming
alliances with other Powers in Europe (in which conjecture, for the time at any
rate, he was right); above all, from its very nature, a republic would pursue a
more peaceful policy than a monarchy, which could only regain its sway over the
affections of the French by warlike success, that is to say, by a war of
retaliation against Germany.
So early as
December 20, 1872, Bismarck wrote: “It is certainly no task of ours to render
France powerful by the consolidation of her internal relations and the restoration
of a settled monarchy, and thus to make her capable of entering into alliances
with those Powers that have hitherto been our friends. The hostility of France
compels us to desire that she may remain weak.” During the ensuing years,
therefore, he did all in his power to uphold the republican form of government
in France. By this line of action he came into conflict with Arnim, who
appealed to the legitimist opinions of Berlin court circles and even of the
Emperor himself, exceeded his instructions, and finally embarked on intrigues
with Bismarck’s enemies at home. The Chancellor succeeded, however, in
obtaining Arriim’s recall and, at a later date, even in bringing about his
subsequent criminal prosecution for the refusal to surrender official papers.
It was a struggle in which Bismarck fought, as his custom was, with implacable
energy to the bitter end, a struggle in which personal animosities were also
involved and the final question of actual supremacy was at issue, but which
also had fax-reaching effects upon the system of the foreign policy of the
empire.
Although
Bismarck fostered no unfriendly sentiments towards the young French republic,
relations between the two Powers became so strained in 1875 that war seemed
imminent. The ostensible reason for this tension lay in the French Law of March
13, 1875, by which
141
the army was
to be considerably strengthened, France thus manifesting her fixed intention to
build up armaments equivalent to those of Germany. Certain measures adopted by
France also appeared in the eyes of the Prussian staff to involve immediate
danger to Germany. The subsequent course of events has been frequently
described. Certain German diplomats and officers hinted in the course of
conversation at the dangerous character of these French preparations; one or
two of them used language that might be described as threatening; the officious
German press began to publish inflammatory articles, and a leader in the Berlin
Post in April, 1875, spoke of “war within sight,” and took no pains to conceal
the source from which it was inspired. The French Government determined to
invite the diplomatic intervention of Russia, and, when public opinion in
Europe had been thoroughly aroused by an article in the Times, Tsar Alexander
II appeared with Gorchakdff in Berlin on May 10, 1875, to announce there that
peace was assured. Queen Victoria and Lord Derby had taken similar, if less
obtrusive, steps. To the French it seemed as if Bismarck had meant to overwhelm
them by another war, and that he had only been prevented from so doing by
Russian intervention ; and certainly Russia, and England too, had made it clear
that they would not look on calmly at any fresh humiliation of France. What was
the significance of all this from the standpoint of German policy? There is no
reasonable doubt that Germany had not the faintest serious purpose of making
war; it did not so much as occur to the Emperor to break the peace; and, though
a few officers may have shown a bellicose spirit, Bismarck was in no case in
favour of a preventive war—a fact now recognised on almost all hands, just as
he resisted the leanings of the General Staff in that direction in 1867 and
again towards the end of the eighties.
Bismarck’s
actual intentions can only be judged from his general policy. Presumably his
only motive was to make the French think that in certain contingencies he might
desire war; probably he meant to warn the newly constituted republic against a
policy of armaments and retaliation, and to induce peacefully disposed Frenchmen
to set their faces against such tendencies; perhaps, too, the rattling of
sabres served the purpose of nipping in the bud any efforts to promote a
coalition which might have been facilitated at that time by the Kulturkampf,
the famous struggle between Church and State then proceeding in Germany.
Bismarck’s terrorist policy towards France was ralrnlatprl solely to contribute
to the maintenance of peace; but a clever move by the French and one flattering
to GorchakdfFs vanity converted a piece of tactical bluff into an apparently
serious crisis.
Though
official relations between Germany and Russia continued undisturbed, the
personal relations of the two Chancellors became
somewhat
strained from that time forward. The Eastern question soon afterwards cropped
up again, reviving the old conflict of interests between Russia and Austria,
and thus disturbing the entente of the three Emperors. At first, only Russia
and Austria were involved, but the third party was thereby confronted with a
difficult choice. So early as the summer of 1876, Tsar Alexander enquired
officially in, Berlin whether Germany would remain neutral, if Russia went to
war with Austria over the Eastern question. Bismarck employed all the
diplomatic skill at his command in evading a direct answer to this brutally
frank question; he expressed a friendly feeling for both Powers, and the
distress which a breach between them would cause to him. While proclaiming in
principle the maintenance of neutrality, he made it perfectly clear at the same
time that there was a limit which Russia would not be allowed to pass in her
dealings with Austria without German intervention—precisely as in the previous
year Russia had taken her stand before Europe for the maintenance of France in her
existing territorial limits. Bismarck's answer was the prelude to the Alliance
of 1879. The consequence was that Russia decided to lead up to her campaign
against Turkey by a different diplomatic road.
During the
Russo-Turkish War the Emperor William took a deep personal interest in the
defeats sustained by the Russian army. The imperial Chancellor, however,
absented himself from Berlin during almost the whole period of the War (April,
1876, to February, 1877), and obviously wished to avoid any premature pronouncement;
he was determined to observe the strictest neutrality and reserve, and to this
determination he adhered when, after the Treaty of San Stefano, Russia incurred
the risk of war with Great Britain and Austria-Hungary. Not until Count
Shuvaloff had come to terms with Lord Beaconsfield in London in principle as to
the mutual concessions which were necessary to form the basis of a European
Congress did Bismarck express his willingness that this Congress should be held
in Berlin under the presidency of Germany. But, from the very outset, his one
object was to avoid throwing the weight of German influence at this Congress
into one scale or the other. In his speech in the Reichstag of February 19,
1878, he expressed himself to the following
effect: “ In the mediation of peace, I do not see why we should arbitrate
between divergent opinions and say: ‘ It must be thus or thus, and the German
empire supports this side or that’; I rather propose to assume a humbler r6le,
more like that of an honest broker who really means to put the business
through.”
And this was
the line of action he pursued. The Congress of Berlin (June 13—July 13,1878)
disclosed a policy of self-denying renunciation so far as German interests were
concerned. While most of the Powers extended their possessions in the East or
had a view to some such
1866-78]
The Congress of Berlin. Russian resentment. 143
territorial
expansion in the future, Germany did not make use of her leading part to secure
a share of the spoils for herself, but adhered to her attitude of “satiation”
assumed since 1871, and confined herself to the task of mediation without
ulterior motive. At this Congress (the details of which do not belong to German
history), the trend of Bismarck’s policy was to pave the way in European
opinion for the relinquishment by Russia of some of her conquests, but to
oppose any excessive demands on the part of her enemies. Outwardly, the
Congress of Berlin, which brought statesmen from every European country to the
capital of the new empire, constituted a magnificent acknowledgment of the
position of Germany and one of the greatest achievements of Bismarck’s policy.
How great a contrast it afforded to the Congress of Paris in 1856, to which the
representatives of Prussia were grudgingly admitted at the eleventh hour!
Nevertheless, the thankless task of mediation was not without its drawbacks for
Bismarck, for it led up to a readjustment of the relations between the Powers
which he had till then been able to prevent.
Bitter
feeling was aroused in Russia at being thus deprived by Europe of part of the
spoils of victory, and this soon gave place to a sense of disappointment,
resulting in animosity directed, strangely enough, against Germany. The
Panslavonic Press, in particular, fostered the notion that Germany, whose rear
had been covered in 1866 and 1870-1, had not shown gratitude for these services
in the hour of need, that she could have done more for Russia if she had
wanted, and that the humiliation of Russia was therefore to he laid at her
door. Perhaps this temper was the psychological outcome of the realisation by
Russia that, painful as it might he to her pride, she must henceforth cede her
leading position on the Continent to Germany. Russian mortification found
expression the following year when, during the discussions as to the execution
of the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin, the German representatives on the
international commission did not advocate in every detail what Russia desired
but voted in accordance with the correct interpretation of the terms of peace.
The Tsar in an autograph letter to the Emperor William I, under cover of an
accusation against the Minister who was said to have failed to keep his
promise, conveyed thinly veiled threats of war against Germany, if she adhered
to her present policy.
In face of
this attempt to reduce Germany to the condition of an unquestioning supporter
of Russia’s Eastern policy, Bismarck at once determined to ensure the
independence of Germany’s attitude and at the same time to protect her against
any possible attack; this he did with all the more speed, since he was informed
that Russia was at the time making advances to France. While the Emperor
William, contrary to Bismarck’s advice, tried to settle the differences by a
personal meeting
144
[1879-87
with the
Tsar, his Chancellor went to Gastein and discussed a treaty of alliance with
Count Andr&ssy,1 who was then at the head of Austro- Hungarian
foreign affairs. The conclusion of the Treaty was postponed for weeks, as the
Chancellor encountered serious opposition from the Emperor on the subject.
William I was now eighty-two years old, and at his age desired no innovations
in policy, but held firmly to the Russophil traditions of his House, desiring
no agreement with Austria outside the entente of the three Emperors. It was
only by threatening to resign office that Bismarck wrung from him a tardy
consent to this change of attitude.
The Alliance
between Germany and Austria was concluded on October 7, 1879, on the following
terms. The two Powers undertook to assist each other with their entire forces
in the event of an attack by Russia on either of them; if either of the high
contracting parties were attacked by another Power, it was stipulated that the
other must give no assistance to the assailant and must at least observe a
friendly neutrality towards the ally so attacked; but, if the assailant should
be supported by Russia “ whether in the way of active cooperation or by
military measures threatening the assailed Power,” then the obligation of
assistance at once operated in full force. This Treaty, which was kept secret
until 1887, was solely defensive in character, as its terms clearly indicate.
In particular, it implied no breach with Russia: the Emperor William at once
communicated the terms of the treaty to the Tsar; and Bismarck thenceforth made
every effort to renew friendly relations with St Petersburg. Bismarck had not
succeeded in securing any stipulation with Austria for assistance in case of a
French attack on Germany; but, as he felt strong enough to resist any such
attack singlehanded, he was satisfied to have made an Austro-French
combination an impossibility and to have ensured the help of Austria against
any concerted action by Russia and France; moreover, he was already
contemplating the possibility of drawing Italy into the alliance.
It was not
without some misgivings that Bismarck carried out his change of front in 1879;
to the last, he would have preferred the greater security of an alliance between
the three empires. Why, it may be asked, when confronted with the choice
between the two Powers, did he not prefer Russia, which was materially the
stronger, and equally willing to enter into an alliance ? Because he knew that,
in a Russo-German alliance, Russia would have had the best of the bargain and
would have made use of the German army to cover her rear in a policy of
military expansion; and he feared that, in these circumstances, Germany would
have to bear the brunt of a coalition between Austria and the Western Powers.
The stronger of the two possible allies would have hampered the free play of
German policy to a far greater extent, and any countermove on the part of
France or Austria tor bringing about a hostile
1871-7]
145
combination
would have found Germany in a position of dangerous dependence on Russia.
In this
Alliance a firm basis was created for the foreign relations of the German
empire, and the mai<i lines of Bismarck’s policy have not been abandoned
from that day to this. The Alliance met with unanimous approval from all
parties in Germany, Conservatives, Liberals, and Clericals alike, different as
might be the special reasons in each case; it also found acceptance with
dynasties like Bavaria and Saxony, which had long been associated by
traditional friendship with the House of Habsburg. The whole nation shared the
conviction that at length the breach was healed which the War of 1866 had
created between the States then joined in the German confederation. Bismarck
had seen that, considering the large German element in the population of the
Austro- Hungarian monarchy, an alliance with Russia against Austria would have
been a moral impossibility for the young German empire. Though a link which had
once been embodied in the Constitution of the empire had only been reforged in
international form, yet the alliance of 1879, which closes the second period of
the empire’s foreign policy, was none the less the essential complement to
Bismarck’s solution of the German problem in 1866. Not only did it correspond
to the necessity of the two mid-European monarchies, which had been thrown back
on each other for support by the current of events, but at the same time it
satisfied the national leanings of the two peoples (at any rate of Germans and
German-Austrians), for whom this alliance bore an entirely different character
from all other alliances.
The home
policy of the empire during its first period (1871-7) was in the main
determined by the configuration of parties within the Reichstag. There were at
that time no great historic parties; these only grew up in course of time out
of the separate States within the federal union, and the earliest political
conflicts were largely the result of the preliminary struggles for constituting
the empire; conflicting economic interests operated to a less extent in the
first instance. Among the 382 deputies (397 with the addition in 1874 of those
from Alsace-Lorraine), the Conservatives, Bismarck’s former partisans, were but
poorly represented (54 seats in 1871, 21 in 1874, 40 in 1877); they had little
sympathy with the new turn of affairs and the abolition of many of their
favourite institutions; in fact, they were Prussians rather than Germans. They
were at that time without leaders of any eminence and were at first heartily
opposed to the parliamentary system. The Free Conservatives or German
Imperialists (with 38 seats in 1871, 33 in 1874, 38 in 1877) took a greater
interest in the empire and were more adaptable; they tended more and more to
support the Ministry and were personally devoted to Bismarck.
The Liberals,
on the other hand, though their tactics might differ, were one and all
determined on principle that the par amentary system, which had as yet only
received its external form and outline, should attain thorough and complete
realisation. Here also there was a cleavage into two groups. The National
Liberals were the stronger; on them had fallen the succession and traditions of
the Erbkaiser- partei (Hereditary Emperor party) of 1848-9 and of the
Nationalverein (National Union) of 1859; they were imbued with a deep sense of
national unity, and were at the same time Liberals who had learnt practical
wisdom in the school of experience, who wanted, as it were, to graft the old
political ideals of the Prussian monarchy on to the new parliamentarian
doctrine. Towards Bismarck they adopted a policy of, opportunism. They were
the, dominant party in the first three periods of the Reichstag (with 120 seats
in 1871, 145 in 1874, 128 in 1877), represeating almost all parts of Germany
equally and also a large proportion of the German intellectuals. The most
important of their leaders were: Rudolf von Bennigsen, President of the
Nationalverein, 1859-66; Johannes Miquel, Prussian Minister of Finance, 18901901,
both Hanoverians; two Prussians, Max von Forckenbeck, Chief Burgomaster of
Berlin, and Eduard Lasker, a clear-headed Jewish lawyer whose cogent reasoning
often carried the day in debates, and a Bavarian, Franz von Stauffenberg; the
two national historians, Heinrich von Sybel, and Heinrich von Treitschke, also
belonged to this party. The left wing of the Liberals, the Fortschrittspartei
(party of Prpgress), with 45 seats in 1871, 49 in 1874, 34 in 1877, remained
for the most part in theoretical opposition to the Government and long
perpetuated opinions which had taken form in the days of, the inner Prussian
conflict. It still included Liberal veterans like Schulze-Delitzsch, founder of
the German Societies for mutual assistance (Genossemchqften unit Selbsthilfe);
and, on the death of Freiherr von Hoverbeck, an East Prussian, the leadership
passed to Eugen Richter, a party organiser and debater of an exceptional order,
but possessed of less talent for practical politics.
, The most
peculiar party was the Centre, which, though its name committed it to no
definite attitude or policy, was in reality the political organisation of the
extreme Catholics and Ultramontanes. It embodied the Grossdeutschen (the party
of Greater Germany), who had suffered defeat in 1866, and to whom the exclusion
of Austria and the elevation of the Protestant Hohenzollem to the imperial
throne were alike distasteful. They felt themselves now reduced to a
minority—according to the census of 1905 the population of the German empire is
62-08 per cent. Protestant and 36'44 per cent. Catholic; but they were
determined to organise this minority solidly and make it the basis of a party,
the Prussian elements of which (the Rhinelands, Westphalia,
1871-7]
Policy of the Centre.—The Kulturkampf. 147
and Silesia)
were considerably strengthened by the accession of the South Germans, in
particular of the Bavarians.
The Centre
was federalist, to some extent even particularist in its tenets, in utter
contrast to the National Liberals with their Unionist aims and objects.
Combining as it did conservative with democratic elements, it hovered between
two extremes of policy, at one time presenting itself as the surest bulwark of
the throne, at another combining with the Fortschrittspartei to champion the
parliamentaiy rights of the people. It possessed solid support in the orgai
sation of the Catholic hierarchy and the whole body of Catholic societies. Of
its leaders, Ludwig Windthorst, formerly Hanoverian Minister of Justice,
gradually became the most influential personality, dominating the brothers
Reichensperger and Heinrich von Mallinckrodt, all three Rhinelanders, and
Freiherr von Schorlemer, a Westphalian; Windthorst was unquestionably the most
skilful tactician of the Parliament. The Centre increased from 58 seats in the
election of 1871 to nearly 100 in 1874, which number has been regularly
maintained since. Its hostile attitude towards the Government was intensified
by the fact that the uncompromising Guelfs of Hanover, despite their Protestant
persuasions, received support from the Centre through the mediation of
Windthorst; moreover, the Polish deputies and some of those from
Alsace-Lorraine sought to establish sympathetic relations with this party. With
these further groups, which were in part openly hostile to the empire, the
Centre soon commanded some 130 votes in the Reichstag, fully one-third, that is
to say, of the total number, and, like the Irish Nationalists in the English
Parliament, it could throw this weight now into one scale, now into the other,
and make terms for its support.
Of the
remaining groups, the Social-democrats alone deserve mention; they held only
two seats in 1871 and twelve in 1877.
During the
first seven years of the empire, its home policy (also that of Prussia) was
determined by Bismarck’s attempt to break up the Centre, whose continuance he
considered fatal to the future welfare of the empire; in this struggle he was
obliged to rely in the first instance on the support of the National Liberals,
both in the empire and in Prussia. The characteristic note of this period is to
be found in the “ Kultiirkamgf” and Liberal legislation.
The
Kulturkampf had its root in the deep-seated unrest then permeating the Catholic
Church. The Declaration of Infallibility, made at the Council of the Vatican,
aroused the gravest scruples in many German Catholics. The German Bishops,
though at heart upp«_sed to the new dogir.a, had ended by submitting to it
outwardly; but a large number of Catholic professors and priests protested on
148
Progress of the conflict. The fi May Laws.” [i87i-5
religious
grounds, among them Ignaz von Dollinger of Munich, the greatest scholar among
the adherents of German Catholicism. Their protest led to the formation of Old
Catholic communions which repudiated the Vatican; and, when at the first
congress in Munich on September 22,1871, 300 Old Catholic communions were
represented, it seemed as though the new movement had a great future in
Germany. What line was the State to take, if Old Catholic professors and clergy
came into conflict with the Roman Church and appealed for help, or if
Ultramontane pretensions provoked a fresh struggle between Church and State?
The leading
German Ultramontanes doubtless contrived the formation of the Centre party in
order to tide themselves over their internal confusion by means of this
external organisation, and so that they might constantly impress upon their
adherents the necessity of being on their guard as a confessional minority
against aggressive action by the State and the Protestants; nothing would more
effectively restore order in their ranks than a fresh outbreak of hostility
between Church and State. Bismarck, on the contrary* looked upon the Centre,
which was, in its political essence, a force of Opposition, as a religious
party up in arms against the State; its alliance with the Guelfs, and still
more that with the Poles, decided him to take the offensive. The political
conflict, which was inevitable from the very nature of the case, was waged not
so much in the empire as in the individual States to whose jurisdiction
ecclesiastical affairs belonged.' On the motion of the Bavarian Government, the
so-called Kanzelparagraph (pulpit paragraph) was adopted in the Reichstag,
penalising the discussion of public matters in sermons in a manner dangerous to
the peace. The final pretext for the struggle was afforded by the Pope’s
refusal to receive Cardinal Gustav Hohenlohe (brother of the subsequent
Chancellor) whom Bismarck had intended to accredit as German ambassador to the
papal Curia. It was on this occasion, May 14, 1872, that he uttered the famous
words, “To Canossa we shall not go, either in the flesh or in the spirit.” An
Act was passed immediately afterwards excluding the Jesuits and all kindred
Orders from the empire.
In Prussia it
was chiefly after the appointment of Adalbert Falk as Kultusminister (Minister
of ecclesiastical affairs and public instruction) that the struggle began over
the line of demarcation between State and Church. Between the years 1873 and 1875,
a series of laws was passed which were intended to increase the influence of
the State and the German nation upon the life of the Catholic Church and to put
an end to all encroachments on the political and social sphere by the Church.
The first “May Laws” (Maigesetze) of 1873 forbade public excommunication,
instituted a public Court of laymen to decide appeals from ecclesiastical
decisions, required that theological students
1872-e]
The Kulturkampf and the Prussian Conservatives. 149
should take a
three years’ university course and pass a state examination in general
knowledge, ordered state inspection of seminaries for priests, and established
compulsory notification of church appointments and state veto of the same. In
order to cope with the passive resistance of the Catholic clergy aroused by
these drastic measures, the May Laws of 1874 made it a punishable offence to
omit notification and provided for the administration of vacant bishoprics.
By the Bull
Quod mmquam Pope Pius IX pronounced this legislation by the State in affairs of
the Church to be null and void, whereupon the struggle reached its height in
the May Laws of 187.5. An Act regulating the suspension of temporalities (“
Sperrgesetz") empowered the State to stop payments to the Catholic Church
and her ministers, and a convent law suppressed the establishments of all
religious Orders except those which undertook the care of the sick.
The more
fiercely the Kulturlcampf raged, the keener was the attack made by the Centre
under Windthorst’s leadership upon Bismarck’s foreign policy, in particular on
the friendly relations of the empire towards Italy. In the Amim affair the
Catholics showed decided sympathies in favour of the restoration of the
monarchy in France, condemned Bismarck’s action, and took sides with his
opponent. In the course of the KtdturJcamgf, moreover, the State was obliged to
resort to action by the police and in the Courts of law, and the Chancellor was
gradually impelled to take steps which put him in the wrong morally in the eyes
of large Catholic circles. The Bishops who had been imprisoned for violation
of the May Laws were regarded by the faithful as martyrs, victims of another
Diocletian, persecutor of the Christians. The number of obedient “ State
Catholics ” (Staatskatholiken) remained small, and the Centre united its
adherents into an ever firmer phalanx. The Prussian Conservatives, who chiefly
represented the orthodox Lutherans, looked askance at the Kulturlcampf, their
distaste increasing as time went on; and the Court, including even the Empress
Augusta, condemned it openly. Bismarck’s breach with the Conservative party led
to his temporary relinquishment in 1872 of the Presidency of the Prussian
Council, which he made over to his old comrade von Roon, Minister of War. After
the excessively malicious and calumniatory attacks of the Kreuzzeitung upon the
Chancellor in 1876, the connexion between Bismarck and the party from whose
ranks he had risen seemed completely severed.
In these
circumstances, the Government in the empire and in Prussia was driven to rely,
during the first seven years of the new imperial administration, mainly upon
the parliamentary support of the National Liberals, and in this period the
consolidation of the empire was achieved on moderate Liberal lines. Bismarck
(who still held aloof from economic
questions)
had as his principal colleague Delbriick, President of the office of the
imperial Chancellor, who, like his friend Camphausen, Prussian Minister of
Finance, firmly adhered to the principles of Liberal economic policy at home
and abroad. The first problem was to build up the economic unity of the empire.
The metric system of weights and measures had been already introduced by the
Customs Parliament (Zollparlament), and in 1873 a uniform monetary system was
adopted for the whole empire, namely that of the mark as the unit of a currency
based on the gold standard: also, in 1876, the Rekhsbank (Imperial Bank) took
the place of the Prussian Bank as the central institution of Germany for
exchange, finance, and the issue of notes. Free Trade was made the principle of
foreign economic relations, the last protective duties being removed on
December 31, 1876.
At the same
time the administration of law and justice was unified throughout the empire.
Hitherto, the most confusing diversity had prevailed, particularly in civil
law; in the old Prussian provinces the Prussian code (Preussisches Landrecht)
held good, in other largo areas of Germany the common (that is, Roman) law, on
the left bank of the Rhine the Code NapoUon, and in Baden and Saxony special
codes. In 1870 a general penal code had been drawn up, and in 1873, despite the
opposition of the particular States, whose judicial supremacy was at stake, the
Reichstag determined to extend the jurisdiction of the empire to the whole
range of civil law, to legal procedure in civil and criminal cases, and to the
organisation of justice. The Acts passed in 1876 concerning civil and penal
proceedings and the organisation of justice took effect on October 1, 1879; the
supreme Court of appeal, the Reichsgericht (Imperial Court), was shifted to
Leipzig, with a view to its absolute independence of the political power at
Berlin, despite Bismarck’s opposition—this is one of the few instances in which
Prussia was outvoted in the Federal Council (Bundesrat). A much longer time had
to elapse before the Reichstag, after most careful preparation, was able to
issue, in 1896, the civil code (Biirgerliches Gesetzbuch), which came into
force on January 1, 1900, and created legal uniformity within the nation such
as had never heretofore obtained.
Several of
these laws, it is true, were only passed by means of a compromise between the
views of the Government and the wishes of the Liberals; but the question of
legislating in regard to the military equipment of the empire led to the very
verge of conflict in 1874. The King and the army authorities would have
preferred to see the discussion of military expenditure in Parliament
restricted, and aimed at getting supplies voted once for all, by a perpetual
law (Aeternat); while the Liberals, in accordance with constitutional doctrine
and practice, wished these grants to be submitted with the rest for annual
1877-87]
Breach between Bismarck and the National Liber a/s. 151
settlement in
the budget. A middle course was at that time adopted, the Reichstag regulating
the effective force of the army and voting supplies for seven years
(Septennat). This compromise was, in the main, adhered to in the subsequent
renewals of the vote, in 1880 and 1887.
The most
difficult problem awaiting solution was that of establishing the financial
independence of the empire, which hitherto had levied no separate revenue, but
had received from the separate States contributions proportionate to their
population ([Matrikularbeitrage). The most delicate and important political
points were involved in the settlement of imperial finance: the respective
jurisdictions of the empire and of the individual States had to be defined, and
institutions developed either on a more centralised or on a more federalistic
basis; in this connexion arose the question of transforming the imperial
Chancellor’s office into a Cabinet of Ministers by the creation of imperial
Ministries, which would be an initial step in the direction of reconstituting
the empire as a parlf .mentary State. Finally, the necessity for a separate
system of imperial taxation and revenue raised the question whether the
existing Free Trade system should be retained and a few taxes for revenue
purposes deemed to meet the case, or whether the protective system long
demanded from various quarters should be adopted. Bismarck made an attempt to
decide these questions with the help of those who had hitherto been his
parliamentary allies, and during 1877 treated on several occasions with
Bennigsen, leader of the National Liberals, as to his joining the Ministry.
When the negotiations between Bismarck and Bennigsen failed, in December, 1877,
the Liberal era was doomed, and a new epoch in imperial policy began to dawn.
152
[1848-78
THE TRIPLE
ALLIANCE AND THE CULMINATING PERIOD OF BISMARCK’S ASCENDANCY.
The
apparently sudden change manifested in the course of 1877 was in reality the
outcome of long reflexion on Bismarck’s part. He had begun to doubt the
economic advantages of Free Trade; the retirement of Delbriick in 1876 was the
first indication that the Chancellor’s convictions were altering; the critical
condition of the iron industry showed him that in this direction Free Trade was
benefiting the foreigner, and he was still more troubled by the fact that
agriculture, especially the corn production of the large estates in the eastern
provinces, was paying worse and worse in consequence of the importation of
Russian corn. His position was very little removed from that of the
German-Conservative party, as newly constituted on the basis of the
agricultural interest. He was, therefore, the less inclined to see the
authority of the Crown and his own great power limited by the parliamentary
claims of the Liberals, who to a large extent adhered to Free Trade. Moreover,
whatever might be Bismarck’s leanings, the old Emperor, a stauncher
Conservative than ever at the age of eighty, would not hear of anything
approaching a parliamentary regime, but demanded a stronger resistance to the
rising tide of radicalism.
Thus, after
the failure of his negotiations at Varzin, Bismarck began slowly to put about
the helm of the ship of State. On the death of Pope Pius IX a few weeks later
(February, 1878), he at once recognised the possibility of making peace with
the new Pope, Leo XIII, cutting short the Kulturkampf, and carrying his new
policy with the help of a readjustment of parties. The crisis was hastened in
the summer of 1878 by the culpable excesses of Radicalism, and Bismarck
determined to open the attack on Social-democracy.
The
Social-democratic party had then existed in Germany for just a decade and a
half. It had its roots on the one hand in the socialistic theories of western
Europe and on the other in the democratic republicanism of 1848, which, though
almost extinct in the middle classes, had gained fresh ground among the working
people. The leading thinker of this party was Karl Marx, a Rhinelander, who,
with his friend Friedrich Engels had published in 1848 the “ Communist
Manifesto ” (Kommunistisches Manifest), setting forth the special features of
his materialistic view of history and of his socialistic programme, and who
during his ten years’ exile in London became the head of the “ International.”
In 1867, he had written the first volume of Das Capital, a
masterpiece
in dialectics, which was thenceforward the book of the law for his adherents.
Independently of thisy Ferdinand Lassalle, a demagogue of brilliant talents,
had in 1863-4 made the first attempt at a political organisation of the working
classes by the foundation of the Universal German Working Men’s Association
(Deutscher aUgememer Arbeiterverein). Between Lassalle’s followers and the
Marxists, whose leaders in the Reichstag were Bebel and Liebknecht, there had
at first been the deadliest enmity; but, in 1875, at a congress in Gotha, they
combined into a single party, which in the Reichstag elections of 1877 secured
nearly half a million votes and won twelve seats.
Such were the
beginnings of a movement in which the rapidly growing working classes took up
arms for their own legitimate social interests against capital, and soon
attained to consciousness of their political power. This class movement,
however, was permeated with the violent revolutionary spirit of its leaders,
and excited the masses to a pitch of exasperation which Bismarck regarded as a
grave danger for the empire, then in process of internal consolidation. Though
not a direct outcome of the Social-democratic agitation, it was an indirect
consequence of the demoralisation caused by it in unscrupulous minds, that, in
May and June, 1878, the Emperor’s life was twice attempted by men of criminal
type who had come in contact with the agitation. On the second occasion—at the
time when the Berlin Congress was assembling—the old Emperor was dangerously
wounded by a quantity of small shot.
These
murderous attempts, which aroused tremendous excitement in the German nation,
afforded Bismarck an unexpected opportunity, not only of dealing a severe blow
at social-democracy itself, but at the same time of settling accounts with the
Liberals.
After the
first crime, Bismarck introduced the draft of a Bill for an exceptional law
directed against social-democracy, but the Reichstag rejected it by a large
majority; after the second crime, he dissolved it with the undisguised object
of wrecking the National Liberal party hitherto in the ascendant, or else
bringing it to heel, in the election which was to take place amid the immense
excitement then prevailing. The new Reichstag could not do otherwise than
assent, in October, 1878, to a Socialists Act (Sodalistengesetz) prohibiting
and heavily penalising the organisation, societies, meetings, and Press of
Social-democracy. The Law was passed to cover a period of two and a half years
and was reenacted in 1880 and twice subsequently.
During the
first years of its enforcement, Social-democracy was materially weakened by the
almost wholesale destruction of its external organisation, though the Act could
not lastingly impair its internal vitality. An immense feeling of resentment
gathered among the masses
154
New financial and economic legislation. [1879-90
thus deprived
of their rights, while the /authorised deportation of dangerous persons simply
contributed to the geographical expansion of the party. On the expiration of
the Act on September 80, 1890, in the year of Bismarck’s resignation, it became
evident that the growth of tbe party had not been prevented by these measures,
but merely retarded for the time being. Though Bismarck resorted to violent
■epression of the purely political aims of the Social-democrats, or
rather of their revolutionary nucleus, he resolved at the same time to deal
with what lay at the root of their legitimate social demands by undertaking
extensive legislation for the state protection of the economically weak; the
programme of this was announced in the Emperor’s message at the opening of the
Reichstag in 1881.
It was in
these stormy times that the various parties in the Reichstag in 1879 approached
the long premeditated financial and economic legislation with which Bismarck
now introduced the second great era of his imperial policy at home. With the
tariff of 1879, the German empire left the ranks of the Free Trade States and
joined those of the protectionists. Under the new tariff, agriculture, on the
one hand, was protected by an import duty on foreign corn, which, though low at
first, was afterwards materially increased; while, on the other, manufactures
were protected by import duties on foreign goods; at the same time, the duties
constituted an important source of revenue for the empire.
Henceforth,
it became the guiding principle of Bismarck and his successors in their
economic policy to further the interests of agriculture and manufacture, the
two most extensive branches of production in Germany, by means of state
protection and provision. Naturally, economic considerations began to be
involved to a greater extent in the general policy of the empire and to affect
the character ot parties, which had hitherto been based on constitutional
divergences. The initial move towards a new constellation of parties was made
when the customs tariff was adopted in the Reichstag by an unusual majority,
composed of Conservative and Centre, with whom only a few National Liberals
were associated. The first result was a split in the National Liberal party in
the following year, on account of economic differences; the right wing, which
retained the name, became a moderate party, while the left wing, the seceders,
drew ever closer to the Opposition till in 1884 they united with the
Fortschrittspartei (party of Progress) under the name of Deutschfreismnige
Partei (party of German supporters of freedom). The ultimate consequence was
that Liberalism, tom by internal disunion, was unable to retain or regain its
earlier dominance.
The Centre,
on the other hand, which had for the first time taken an active part in
legislation in connexion with this tariff question, began to
1880-6]
155
move into the
position vacated by the Liberals. They became the most powerful single party in
the Reichstag, and used their power to secure their individual ends. Bismarck
was only able to win their cooperation by the repeal, between 1880 and 1886, of
most of the Prussian Church Laws passed during the Kulturkampf. Although he had
tried during the seventies to wreck the ecclesiastical party organisation of
the Centre and to increase the power of the State over the Church, he was now
obliged to sound a retreat from most of the positions then taken up. The
journey to Canossa was made easy and undramatic; but it nevertheless took
place. A considerable effect was also produced on constitutional development by
this shifting of the balance of power. Within the empire Liberal tendencies
towards centralisation under parliamentary supremacy were abandoned; the
further development of imperial institutions proceeded rather on the
federalistic lines specially advocated by the Centre.
The new era
in Bismarck’s home policy was to be marked, during the eighties, by a fresh
series of great constructive measures.
The message
from the Throne of November 17, 1881, declared that the cure for social evils
was not to be sought solely in repression, but equally in the promotion of the
workers’ wellbeing, and announced the insurance of workmen against accident,
the establishment of sick-funds, and insurance aga’nst old age and incapacity
to earn a livelihood. These initial steps in social legislation showed a
complete break with the view as to the action of the State held by the
Manchester School and with the maxim of laisser-aller; at the same time, they
implied a return to the political conceptions of the kingdom of Prussia in the
eighteenth century and to the ideas of Kant and Hegel as to the moral
obligation of the State.
For some
years, German economists like Wagner, Schaffle, and Schmoller had been moulding
these ideas and preparing public opinion, heedless of the sobriquet
Kathedersozialisten (“socialists of the professorial chair”) applied to them.
Similar tendencies were making themselves felt among the parties of the Right,
in the Centre, and among the Conservative “Christian Socialists” under the
demagogic leadership of the Court-preacher Stocker, who became also a leader of
the Antisemitic party; the scientific theorists were also joined by practical
men in the Prussian civil service, like Botticher, Bosse, and Lohmann. But, in
order to carry through the whole of this new legislation, in the face of
opposition based on principle and opposition prompted by pocket interest, there
was needed the dominating personality of Bismarck, who in 1880 had taken over
the Ministry of Commerce also; without him, the reforms might have stopped
short after a few futile attempts, or might only have been accomplished after
decades of
156
Insurance.—Tariff uniformity. [1883-1907
effort. In
1883, the Law with respect to insurance against illness was passed, in 1884
that with respect to insurance against accident, and in
1889, by a narrow majority, the Law concerning
insurance against old age and incapacity, which came into force on January 1*
1891.
This
legislation has in its social operation produced inestimable benefits. The
protective legislation of Bismarck, while preserving the agricultural industry
from destruction, had hastened the industrial development of Germany. The more
rapid' the transformation of Germany into an industrial State, the more urgent
it became to remedy the abuses consequent upon the transition. A few figures
will show what has been achieved in this direction. In 1907, the number of
those insured against illness in the German empire amounted to thirteen
millions, those insured against accident to twenty millions, those insured
against incapacity to fifteen millions. The amount of compensation paid in all
three branches of insurance was, in 1907,626 million marks (66*31,300,000), the
total sum for the years 1885-1907 being 6310 million marks (i?315,500,000). In
recent years the empire has contributed to insurance against incapacity, on an
average, fifty million marks (■£’2,500,000), the state contributions for
the years 1891-1905 amounting altogether to 485 million marks (^24,250,000);
the capital of the state insurance agencies was, in 1907, 1500 million marks
(^75,000,000).
The first
task of the immediate future will probably be a simplification of the
bureaucratic machinery; next will come the extension of insurance to widows and
orphans, perhaps even to cases of unmerited unemployment. Though at first many
were keenly adverse to these dangerous experiments in state socialism, all
opposition has since died down; indeed, the German system is being adopted more
and more as a model by most other Powers. These measures did not, however,
produce the political effect which Bismarck had at the same time contemplated,
for he had hoped by such means to cut the ground from under the feet of the
Social-democratic agitators. It is probable, however, that they mitigated the
keenness of social discontent, and facilitated the maintenance and extension of
the protective policy.
The economic
policy of the eighties had also a predominantly positive side. In the first
place, complete tariff uniformity was achieved, the Hanse Towns having hitherto
held aloof. It was only after violent opposition that the cities of Hamburg and
Bremen agreed to their inclusion in the customs area, which took effect on
October 1, 1888; though a separate free port district, for the storage in bond
of foreign imports, was excepted in each town. The shipping trade, especially
that of Hamburg, began to increase enormously from this time, and the scruples
at first entertained by the Hanseatic merchants were thus allayed.
But the most
important result of state intervention in private
1884-7]
Conservatism, and balance of parties.
157
undertakings
was that achieved in railway policy. Bismarck’s original idea had been to
establish a system of imperial railways through the purchase by the empire of
all private lines and the transfer to it of the railways belonging to the
separate States; by this means he intended to secure on the one hand a certain
and increasing source of imperial income, on the other the centralised control
of the whole railway service, as in the case of the postal and telegraphic
service. This scheme having been wrecked by the separatist tendencies of the
individual States and by Delbriick’s opposition, he limited his original
programme to the acquisition by the Prussian State of the private railways of
Prussia, which was accomplished by the skill of Maybach, Prussian Minister of
Public Works. The same tendency in economic policy, the deliberate fostering of
profitable industrial enterprise by public initiative, showed itself further in
the subventions granted by the State to transmarine steamship lines, and finally
in the initiation of a German colonial policy, which will be referred to in
connexion with foreign policy. Bismarck also planned the introduction of a
state monopoly on tobacco, which was to furnish a permanent internal source of
revenue for the empire; but this he did not succeed in carrying through the
Reichstag.
On the whole,
then, the eighties saw an unmistakable strengthening of conservative elements
and the forces of authority in political life; the moneyed classes, whose
interests had been powerfully advanced both in agriculture and industry by the
new protective duties, became the bulwarks of the policy of that era. In the
eyes of many, Bismarck appeared to have reverted to the ideals of his earlier
days. One section of the Liberals, the National Liberals, chiefly influenced by
Miquel, changed more or less with Bismarck, whose masterful personality, with
its ever growing authority, seemed to exercise an irresistible attraction. But
the Chancellor’s new policy was all the more keenly opposed by the Liberal left
wing, which in 1884 united the members of the old Fort- schrittspartei and of
the Secession under the designation of the Deutsch- jreisinnige Partei. The new
party calculated too openly upon the approaching change of monarch, and under
Eugen Richter’s leadership rushed wildly into a passionate and personal
hostility towards Bismarck, and an opposition devoid of all constructive ideas.
In the elections of 1887, however, Bismarck succeeded in uniting both groups of
Conservatives and the National Liberals by means of an election agreement
(“Kartell”), thereby securing a majority of implicitly loyal followers in the
Reichstag: It was just such a balance of parties which had been his great aim
and object from the very outset.
During the
last decade of his government Bismarck’s personality had increasingly dominated
the home policy of the empire; meanwhile, that epoch in his foreign policy was
dawning in which his influence
on European
destinies reached its zenith. Those were the years which even a foreign
observer like M. Seignobos, a Frenchman, has characterised as the period of
the German hegemony; this statement must, at the same time, not be taken to
imply that the power wielded was extended and used to the utmost as in the case
of Napoleon I, but simply that Germany found herself the centre of the ruling
constellation of the Great Powers, without, however, utilising her position
otherwise than for the maintenance of peace and the development of her
resources and alliances.
In the first
instance, in May, 1882, the Chancellor supplemented the alliance with
Austria-Hungary, which had formed the bedrock of his policy since 1879, by the
long premeditated alliance with the kingdom of Italy. Italy had returned
empty-handed from the Congress of Berlin, saw herself outflanked by France in
Tunis, and felt the need of abandoning her complete isolation. By means of this
alliance a solid block of Powers was set up in central Europe, which presented
an insuperable barrier to the bare possibility of a union of forces between
Russia and France. The two Powers which, so late as the summer of 1870, had
been on the point of attacking Prussia as allies of Napoleon III were now
united with the German empire in an alliance directed—solely on the
defensive—against France.
The Triple
Alliance was at first concluded for five years, but was destined to become one
of the most durable agreements of modern history; in 1887, it was renewed for
another five years, and in 1891, and again in 1902, it was extended for a term
of twelve years. The character and stability of the Triple Alliance have
unquestionably suffered certain modifications within the present generation,
and some of its terms have been altered; beyond doubt, also, the centre of
gravity within the Alliance in Bismarck's time lay more decidedly in Berlin
than was the case later; nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the newly
formed combination had from the first an eminently peaceable character, which
it shared with the foreign policy of the empire since 1871, and that it thus
made strongly for continuity in European politics.
In any
appreciation of the Triple Alliance and its significance for German policy
during this first decade, two facts should be borne in mind. In the first
place, Bismarck was firmly resolved from the outset, in spite of the agreement
with Austria-Hungary and Italy, to maintain the friendly relations with Russia.
He did not intend, as he expressed it, to have the wire to St Petersburg cut
{“den Draht nach Petersburg abreissen zu lassen”). Success crowned his efforts
when, at a meeting of the three Emperors at Skiemewicze in September, 1884, he
was able to obtain a renewal of the old understanding and also an agreement
with Russia for mutual friendly neutrality in the event of either Power being attacked
by a third. In the second
1871-85]
Peaceable character of Bismarck's policy. 169
place, the
inclusion of Italy in the Triple Alliance was a step regarded with anything but
disfavour by England as a Mediterranean Power, since England had just then fallen
out seriously with France about the Egyptian question. Considering these
interrelations, it may perhaps be said that Bismarck had by this unforeseen
combination caused most European Powers to fix the orientation of their policy
by reference to Berlin. And it is one of the strongest proofs of the peaceable
character of his policy as a whole that the position thus secured, which
amounted almost to a hegemony and precluded all possibility of French
reprisals, was not utilised by him to exert any undue pressure on France in her
isolation, or to check in any way her assertion of her power in the world. On
the contrary, he endeavoured during these years to prove that if France would
only give up “staring as if hypnotised into the gap in the Vosges” and live at
peace with her neighbour on the lines of the Treaty of Frankfort, she could
reckon on the loyal friendship of the German empire in the outside world.
Hence, Bismarck everywhere backed the colonial policy which the French Minister
Jules Ferry inaugurated on a large scale in Africa and Asia between 1883 and
1885; and, for a moment at any rate, it looked as if the breach created by the
events of 1870-1 would be healed in this way.
After
Bismarck had secured the strongest possible guarantees for the maintenance of
the position of Germany in Europe, the first moves outside the Continent were
made, and the empire embarked on its colonial policy. One consequence of the
former political disintegration of Germany was that, despite considerable
emigration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Germans had
remained a purely continental people; like Schiller’s poet, they had come on
the scene too late when the world was already parcelled out, and even in 1871
there were but few to whom it occurred to demand the cession by France of her
possess.jk in Further India. When, however, the empire had been founded, it was
natural that a strong nation conscious of itself should resolve on an attempt
to retrieve the omissions of the past, so far as might be, at the eleventh
hour. From the close of the seventies there was a movement in Germany—at first
purely academic— in favour of acquiring colonies, mainly in order to open up to
the stream of emigrants some territory where they would not, as in the past, be
entirely lost to the German nation—in the twenty years from 1866 to 1885 the
United States alone had admitted over two million Germans. But there was a
further incentive to the formation in 1882 of the German Colonial Association
(Deutscher Kolonialverem). The universal enthusiasm for colonial exploration
and conquest on African soil which possessed men at this time, especially since
Stanley’s discoveries and the
160
Beginnings of German colonial policy. [i878-84
colonisation
schemes of King Leopold of Belgium, necessarily reacted on the Germans. The
partition of Mohammadan North Africa had been proceeding since the Congress of
Berlin, and the time Seemed also ripe for a division of the entire Dark
Continent among the European nations. In view of the newly awakened antagonisms
among the other Powers, in connexion with their colonial policy, Bismarck
thought the moment not unpropitious for Germany, if she were to resolve to make
a bid for a share in the process of partition.
Thus the
colonial policy of the empire was the outcome of no conscious, formulated plan,
but, sprang rather from the chance of the moment and the favourable position of
affairs; the object of Bismarck was not so much to provide colonies for
emigration as to open up new regions to German trade. There had been a prelude
to this policy at the close of the seventies in the abortive effort to interest
the empire in Samoa, and likewise in the contemporaneous Treaties of commerce
and amity in the South Seas, which renounced all projects of acquiring land for
colonisation and confined themselves to the object of founding naval stations.
Then, in 1881, the idea of the subvention of steamship lines was first mooted,
which gave rise in April, 1884, to a Bill for the state assistance of steamer
communication with Eastern Asia and Australia. The discussion of this Bill,
which did not pass till 1885, marks the beginning of the official colonial
policy of the German empire.
The decisive
step was taken on April 24, 1884, when the empire extended its protection to the
settlement made by Liideritz, a Bremen trader, on the coast of Angra Pequena in
South-west Africa; Bismarck promised the protection asked for, and gained his
point in face of the objection raised by England. The occupation of Togo and
the Cameroons followed immediately on the direct initiative of the German
empire, men-of-war being despatched thither and an imperial commissioner, Dr
Nachtigal, the African traveller. The acquisition of German East Africa was
due, in the first place, to the private enterprise of certain brave discoverers
like Peters, Count Pfeil, and Jiihlke; not till the venture had been crowned by
success was any recognition forthcoming from Bismarck, who had maintained an
attitude of extreme reserve towards its beginnings. A part of New Guinea and
of the adjacent groups of islands was next acquired by means of a joint
undertaking of private capital and state subvention. It had been Bismarck's
original idea on securing colonies to adopt the English system rather than the
French: it was his intention that the trader should go first; the flag should
follow in his wake; military and official machinery being dispensed with as far
as possible. But it was soon found that individual companies which had received
privileges under the protection of the empire were unable to hold their own
unaided against native risings, and direct intervention by the State proved
necessary, especially in Togo and the Cameroons.
1884-5]
Great Britain and German colonial efforts. 161
The colonies
which Germany had acquired all occupied areas to which no other Power had an
indisputable prior claim according to international law. Nevertheless, it was
inevitable that public opinion in England should be violently opposed to the
course pursued by Germany. The opposition emanated more from the English
colonies of Africa and Australia than from the Gladstone Ministry itself; Cape
Colony resented the seizure of Angra Pequena, the Australians the occupation
of New Guinea and the Pacific Islands ; these Britons beyond the seas would
have preferred to oust the troublesome rival from regions which they had long
been wont to regard confidently as spheres of future expansion, though they
possessed no legitimate title to them. Even the English at home did not at
first take Germany’s colonial intentions seriously, with the inevitable
consequence that, before long, a grave condition of tension was produced
between the two countries, upon the details of which Earl Granville’s memoirs
threw some light a few years ago. That Bismarck nevertheless substantially
achieved his end is the more astonishing, if it be remembered that Germany then
possessed no fleet to speak of and, in case of need, could have brought no
effective force to bear in Africa or Australasia.
It was the
international relations of the moment which favoured the policy of Germany, and
Bismarck made use of these with consummate skill for attaining his object.
England, on her new footing in Egypt, had fallen out with France and was forced
to rely on the goodwill of the Triple Alliance; in addition to which she was
seriously embroiled with Russia in Afghanistan, so that her hands were full.
Moreover, Bismarck had shortly before summoned the Congo Conference in
collaboration with France and thereby silenced Germany’s sole opponent on
non-European questions. Only when, on Ferry’s fall, the conciliatory policy
towards France proved futile, did Bismarck strike a milder note in the colonial
difference with England, and by his son Herbert’s mission paved the way for a
better understanding and a final settlement. Though at heart no friend of
Germany, Gladstone on this occasion seized the proffered Viand and called down
blessings on Germany’s efforts at colonisation; he expressed himself to the
effect that England would regard Germany as her friend and ally in the
interests of the human race, and would give her every encouragement in her
labours for the spread of civilisation.
Thus the
transition of Germany to a colonial policy became an accomplished fact. A
certain cooperation with England, designated during the ensuing years as the
“colonial marriage,” was taken for granted. Any profit from German colonies was
as yet of course far to seek, and the Germans, like other nations, had to pay
heavy premiums on this new departure. Neither did Bismarck allow the colonies
to dominate his general policy, which continued to bear chiefly on European
162
Bismarck’s friendliness to Russia. [1885-8
affairs.
What, however, the great empire-builder had done was to seize the opportunity
of opening up at the last moment a future over seas for his people,
The
favourable political situation was destined soon to be disturbed. Since the
Bulgarian question had come up in September, 1885, antagonism between Russia
and Austria in the East had been reawakened, and, although Bismarck continued
to maintain in the matter an attitude friendly to Russia rather than neutral,
it sensibly; affected the relations between RuYsia and Germany. The growth of
Panslavic and anti- German movements in Russia, to which Tsar Alexander III
allowed freer play than his predecessor, led France, thirsting for revenge on
Germany, and instigated by the military adventurer Boulanger, to hold out eager
hands for an alliance against the common foe. Even this danger Bismarck’s
statesmanship was able to avert. He soothed the Tsar’s grievances and put the
finishing touch to his own policy by concluding a fresh agreement with Russia,
the “ Ruckversicherungsvertrag ” (“Reinsurance Compact ”)—kept secret even from
the members of the Triple Alliance—by which the Skiemewicze settlement was
renewed between two at any rate of the imperial Powers.
The
inauguration of his Polish policy, involving the expenditure of large sums on
the purchase of Polish estates and the settlement of German peasants in the
Polish districts of the province of Posen, was intimately bound up with the
Russophil policy of Bismarck’s last years.
On the other
hand, after the ejections of February, 1887, which were intensely influenced by
the Boulanger episode, he effected a great increase in the army: internally and
externally, he was asserting his power. And thus, although he had to call into
play more and more forcible methods of action, the imperial Chancellor
maintained to the end his policy of counterpoises, playing off foe against foe
and utilising all occasions of mutual animosity among his enemies, and carried
the empire, in a position of diplomatic ascendancy, over the double change of
sovereign which took place in 1888.
The
Hohenzollem dynasty and Bismarck had become indissolubly linked together in the
course of a quarter of a century. It would be difficult to find another
instance of such a relation existing between a sovereign with the monarchic
consciousness of Emperor William I and a Minister with the dominating force of
Bismarck. The Chancellor was no Richelieu, who quite openly cast his royal
master in the shade; rather, he genuinely felt like a Brandenburg vassal
towards his margrave^ and it was an honest impulse which prompted him to have
himself described on his tombstone as a faithful servant of his master. The
Emperor was
far from being blindly amenable to his Chancellor’s policy, and, even in 1879,
he withstood long and vehemently the change to an Austrian alliance for which
the latter was working. During the eighties, it is true, the feeling took root
within the sovereign which found expression in that “ Never! ” once written by
him on a letter of resignation from Bismarck, and he acquiesced in all
decisions arrived at by the Chancellor. During this long period a friendship
had grown up between the two men, which reveals itself in the deep personal
note of their correspondence to the last.
But, the
closer the tie had become between William and Bismarck, the further the Crown
Prince had drifted from the Chancellor during the last ten years. Frederick
William still adhered to the Liberalism of the sixties, which his clever
consort Victoria, the English Princess Royal, had fostered in him; he regarded
the revolution in home policy effected since 1879 as a disastrous change, and
refused to abandon his personal connexion with Bismarck’s Liberal opponents.
After the heir apparent had won his early laurels in war, all that awaited him
was the difficult task of marking time, as it were, till his fifty-eighth year
in unsatisfying leisure, remote from affairs and the exercise of any power.
And, when at last his turn came, a still harder lot befell him, for he ascended
the throne mortally ill.
He was taken
with a disease of the throat, which was diagnosed in April, 1887, as probably
incipient cancer, and might then have been arrested by the operation already in
contemplation. The optimistic view of the English physician Sir Morell
Mackenzie, led, however, to the postponement of the operation, and the
malignant character of the disease increased until it was too late. In
November, 1887, the Crown Prince could only be saved from suffocation by
opening the larynx, and all hope of recovery was gone. It looked almost as if
the aged father would survive the son. Then, in March, 1888, Emperor William I
fell ill and died a few weeks before his ninety- first birthday. All Europe
mourned the death of the man who headed the new line of German Emperors, and
who had vindicated the monarchic principle worthily before the world.
The Emperor
Frederick III, a doomed man, hastened from San Remo through snow and ice to
take up the reins of government. He confirmed Bismarck in his offices, at the
same time endeavouring to give expression to his divergent views in a
proclamation. Some differences of opinion could not fail to arise: Bismarck
succeeded in preventing the marriage of Princess Victoria to the former Prince
Alexander of Bulgaria, which would have aroused considerable suspicion in
Russia; but he was obliged to give way when the Emperor, in his last days,
insisted on the dismissal of the Conservative Minister von Puttkamer
for illegal
influence exercised in the elections. But the hundred days of Frederick III—he
died on June 15, 1888—were a mere episode, though an intensely tragic one. It
was significant for the evolution of Germany that this generation and its
ideas—the tendencies of National Liberalism, which Frederick III embodied and
represented— found no expression in the conduct of state affairs; this tone of
feeling and political aspiration, which is, as it were, a complementary colour
between the spirit of the generation of the old Emperor and that of his
grandson’s, left no mark on history, save an example of heroic devotion to duty
in the midst of suffering.
BISMARCK’S
FALL, AND AFTER.
(1888-1910.)
The
succeeding Emperor, William II, was only twenty-nine years of age and but newly
acquainted with affairs of government when he so unexpectedly ascended the
throne. All that was known of him was that he had military tastes, and was
happy in his marriage with Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg;
it soon became evident that a man of almost tempestuous energy had taken his
stand at the head of the empire. The circumstances which had so suddenly placed
him there account for his honest determination to adhere to Bismarck’s policy
and principles: “the course remains the same.” Nevertheless, the characters of
the two men account for the fact that in little more than a year William was
familiarising himself with the idea of parting with his grandfather’s
coadjutor.
The grounds
of the rupture and of Bismarck’s resignation (March 18, 1890) lay of course,
when all has been said, in the individuality of the man who attained in virtue
of his birth to the supreme power of sovereign, and in that of the man who for
nearly a generation had virtually exercised that power. The one was urged
forward by the impulsiveness of youth and perhaps, too, by a feeling that the
dominant figure of a Minister had too long overshadowed the wearer of the
crown; the other, in the ripe experience of his age, felt that he commanded the
situation and was indispensable, and the enjoyment of authority had gradually
become with him a passion.
Various
tangible differences contributed to complete the breach. Bismarck rightly blamed
the impetuosity of the young Emperor in foreign affairs, which was disturbing
the tranquil continuity of the status quo. In home affairs, the Emperor was
bent on arousing high hopes by a social policy on a large scale and by
convening an international congress, all of which seemed mere Utopian schemes
in the practical eyes of Bismarck. When the elections of January, 1890, had
destroyed the majority in the Reichstag of Bismarck’s Kartell (group of allied
parties), the Chancellor meditated plans for the overthrow of the Opposition,
at the risk of a struggle, perhaps of a coup d'lttat, and for the modification
of the Constitution, if that were necessary; the young Emperor very naturally
shrank from beginning his reign with measures of this sort. The fall of
Bismarck was a disaster to the German nation—not so much as regards home
policy, in which, as he grew old, he had delayed many necessary
166
Personal rule. Caprivi. Hohentohe. SUlow. [i890-i908
reforms, and
his successors achieved lasting results; but in the sphere of foreign policy
his loss was absolutely irreparable. For eight years the vast wealth of his
experience, with which that of no living European statesman could compare, lay
idle and unserviceable. The catastrophe was above all painful to the nation,
for it regarded as a national calamity the disagreement between the sovereign
and Bismarck, whose criticisms of the new policy daily became more embittered.
After March,
1890, political decisions no longer hinged upon the will of a leading Minister,
but were subject to the “personal rule” of the Emperor—a personal rule which
was of course exercised within the limits imposed by the Constitutions of the
empire and of Prussia. Also, as time went on, the power of the Crown varied in
character and scope. It was greatest during the Chancellorship of Count Caprivi
(1890-4), who conceived of his office as demanding the obedience of a Prussian
general to the monarch, and, burdened with the heavy task of remodelling the
work of Bismarck, followed in whatever new direction the Emperor led. Caprivi’s
successor, Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, who was Chancellor from
1894 to 1900, was able to take a rather more independent stand. He had a long
and successful career behind him, as President of the Bavarian Council
(1867-70), ambassador in Paris (1874-85), and Governor of Alsace-Lorraine
(1885-94); moreover, he was related to the Emperor and therefore had a
different personal status, at any rate until old age gradually sapped his
energy. The fourth imperial Chancellor, Prince Bernhard von Bulow (1900-8), by
his skill in dealing diplomatically with men, was able gradually to regain a
large measure of independence in the exercise of his office. On his
resignation, he was succeeded by Dr von Bethman-Hollweg.
Caprivi’s
tenure of office, which had to bear the mark of contrast to that of Bismarck,
was not without its good results, at any rate in home affairs. The introduction
of the two years’ term of service (for infantry and foot artillery), the
accomplishment of the reform of Prussian finance by Miquel, the gifted Minister
of Finance, and other acts of the legislature, showed progress. An attempt at
legislation for Prussian primary education on conservative and ecclesiastical
lines was ultimately checked by the Emperor himself, who yielded to the
unanimous opposition of public opinion. Caprivi’s economic policy culminated in
the conclusion of commercial treaties with Austria- Hungary, Russia, Roumania,
and Italy, by which the protective duties on com were lowered in return for
favoured treatment of German exports. These concessions were in part only
carried in the teeth of opposition from the Conservative Agrarians, who founded
on this occasion, and thenceforward maintained, in the Bund der Landwirte
1890-4]
German policy towards England and Russia. 167
(League of
Agriculturists), an organ of growing power for dominating the rural populace
and exercising pressure on political parties. Privately countenanced by the
ex-Chancellor, who was living at Friedrichsruhe in high displeasure, the
Conservative Agrarians became the most violent opponents of his successor.
The
new bearing in the foreign policy of the empire was fraught with more important
consequences than the deviation from Bismarck's course in home policy. To begin
with, relations with Russia became cooler, while a rapprochement with England
was effected. On July 1,
1890, the imperial Government made a treaty
with Great Britain by
* .vhich the
island of Heligoland was ceded to Germany, in return for
certain considerable
advantages in respect of boundary lines in East Africa. Stanley, the African
explorer, observed that England had got a new suit in exchange for a
trouser-button; but, though this was clearly going too far, yet German colonial
politicians did complain bitterly of their disappointed hopes when all claim to
Uganda, Witu, and Zanzibar was forfeited. The island of Heligoland, lying
before the mouths of the Elbe and Weser, in the event of War might attain great
strategic importance for the defehce or attack of the German coast; but its
practical value was not at all apparent at first, and the general public
therefore supposed that the Treaty—which was first announced on the eve of the
seventy-fifth anniversary of Waterloo—■ signified an absolute change of
front in foreign policy.
This
impression was of necessity confirmed in Russia, when the German Emperor and
his advisers at the same time determined not to fall in with Russia’s proposal
for a renewal of the secret “ reinsurance compact,” which expired in 1890. The
action of Germany was prompted presumably by political loyalty to Austria,
whose relations with Russia were believed to be sorely strained. In addition to
this, the Prussian Government abandoned the anti-Polish policy adopted in
1886—there was a time when the Polish members of the Reichstag, under the
leadership of Koscielski, actually belonged to the Government majority. All
these symptoms of a change of attitude aroused the suspicions of the Russian
Government, with the result that advances were made to France in the summer of
1891, and finally an alliance was concluded with the republic. The ascendancy
of the Triple Alliance was materially restricted by the formation of this Dual
Alliance, and ; France was liberated
from that isolation which Bismarck had to the
last so
rigidly maintained. The German nation inevitably listened with ever closer
attention to the keen criticisms of the veteran ex-ChancellOf, and popular
confidence in the new directors of affairs was shaken.
After
Hohenlohe had become Chancellor (October 27, 1894), so far as relations with
European Powers were concerned, the policy of
168 “ Weltpolitik ” and food-supply. [wo-i9io
Germany began
to revert gradually to the course pursued by Bismarck ; but at the same time
greater activity was displayed in pressing German interests outside Europe, and
the era of “ satiation ” was brought to a close in that direction. The somewhat
pretentious term “ world-policy” (Weltpolitik) has been applied to this new
development, and its use indicates that Germany has by degrees ceased to regard
exclusively the Continent of Europe in framing her foreign policy. These new
tendencies are no chance outcome of the personality of a monarch possessed by
exuberant schemes of world-conquest, or of the excessive energy of ambitious
statesmen, or even of the wild imaginings of small groups of Pangerman
enthusiasts without political influence; rather, they form part of that strong
tide of evolution which irresistibly bore the German State out beyond the
bounds of its earlier policy. William II’s historical significance lies in the
fact that he recognised the inevitable betimes, and put forth the whole energy
of his temperament and will to impel the empire along the new course. '
The
explanation of this turn in German policy must be sought, first of all, in the
fundamental fact of the yearly increase of German population and the question
of food-supply. In the forty years from 1871 to 1910, the population of the
German empire has risen from forty-one to sixty-five millions; in recent years,
the surplus of births has been eight to nine hundred thousand annually, and
will soon be not far short of a million. Considering that emigration to North
America has , greatly fallen off since the middle of the eighties, and that the
German colonies—some of them tropical and as yet undeveloped—are for the most
part unsuitable for the habitation of white men, and can therefore be quite
left out of consideration for the present, the problem at issue is to secure an
economic subsistence in the home country for the vast bulk of the annual
addition to the population. In a country but moderately fertile on an average,
agriculture of course could and can only afford employment to a relatively
small proportion: in the main, it is to manufactures that the population must
look for employment and maintenance; that is to say, the sale of manufactured
goods must increase pari passu with the population, and, as the home market is
inadequate for this, the export trade comes to be more and more important.
This fact has
been confirmed by the actual process of Germany’s development within the last
generation. In 1870, she was still a corn- exporting country, and her
manufactures for export were moderate in amount; since then, she has been
transformed into a country importing com and exporting manufactured goods on a
constantly and rapidly increasing scale. In 1882, the census of occupations
reckoned the number of wage-earners (including members of their families)
employed
1870-1910]
169
in
agriculture as 19'23 millions, in manufactures as 16‘06 millions, in trade and
commerce as 4'53 millions; in 1895, there were 18'5 millions employed in
agriculture, 20-25 millions in manufactures, 5-97
millions in trade; in 1907, 17'68 millions in agriculture, 2639 millions in
manufactures, and 8'28 millions in trade.
In view of
these figures it would be an exaggeration to speak of the transformation of an
agrarian into an industrial State, for it is the characteristic feature of
German development that, in consequence of protective duties, agriculture has
retained its economic strength and profitableness, and that its prosperity has
not been permanently impaired, as it has been in England, by the growth of
manufactures. There can be no denying, however, that the economic structure of
the German empire has changed fundamentally within the last generation and is
continuing to change. In 1871, 63'9 per cent, of the population lived in
communities of under two thousand inhabitants, in 1905, only 42'6 per cent.; on
the other hand, in 1871, 1'96 per cent, of the population lived in towns of
over one hundred thousand inhabitants, by 1905 the number had already risen to
19 per cent. Thus Germany, while developing into an industrial State, has at
the same time become a land of large towns.
A few figures
will further illustrate the industrial growth which has taken place. In 1870,
there was a demand for 26 million tons of coal; in 1906, for 137 million tons.
The production of pig-iron amounted, in 1870, to 1'35 million tons; in 1906, to
12'29 million tons, more than one-fifth of the total output of the world, the
United States contributing 25’73 and Great Britain 10'31 million tons. The
shipping trade in German ports increased in volume by 53'5 per cent, from 1890
to 1908; the German merchant-fleet, in the years 1900-9, increased 62'6 per
cent, in net volume, or 1'08 million tons; the capital of the shipping
companies rose from 273 million marks (£13,650,000) in 1899 to 631 million
marks (£31 ,550,000) in 1908. In 1880, German imports amounted in milliards of
marks to 2'86 (£143,000,000), German exports to 2‘95 (£147,500,000); in 1899,
to 4 37 (£218,500,000) and 5-78 (£289,000,000) respectively; in 1907, to 8'75
(£437,500,000) and 6 85 (£342,500,000) respectively. The value of the total
foreign trade of Germany has thus risen to 15'6 milliard marks (£780,000,000);
it exceeds that of France with 8 milliard marks (£400,000,000) and even that of
the United States with 12'5 milliard marks (£625,000,000), and distantly approaches
the figure which Great Britain has to show with her 21 milliard marks
(£1,050,000,000). Every student will agree that Great Britain, the United
States, and the German empire, constitute the group of nations whose industrial
and financial development and productive power have made the greatest
progress—progress on a scale far surpassing that of all other States.
170
Exportation and the German navy. [1&70-1910
Though the
population and industrial activity of Germany, her export trade and capital, have
thus greatly increased, yet, unlike other Great Powers, she possesses no large
oversea dominions which are in a position to receive her surplus men, goods,
and capital; for the Germans were so late in entering upon the field of
colonial policy that the value of their colonies to meet the economic needs of
the home country is for the present allnOst negligible. Unquestionably, in the
great struggle for existence the Germans have entered the lists under less
favourable conditions than those nations which have long pursued an
imperialistic policy. If, in the world competition diligence and order,
technical skill and scientific discovery, in themselves give a favourable
chance to German effort, yet the political and economic difficulties to be
surmounted are all the greater. Be that as it may, two incentives may be
recognised with certainty as determining the policy of Germany in the outside
wbrld. The more Germany, for the reasons stated, was obliged to depend on
exporting her industrial products, the more zealously she had to strive either
to maintain the open door in as
• many countries as possible beyond the
seas, or else, by securing colonies, leases, spheres of influence, or coaling
stations, to augment her share in the economic advantages to result from
opening up remoter regions, if she was to hold her own among the other far more
powerful countries of the world. The second object in view was to afford
protection for these vastly increased transmarine interests by the enlargement
of the German fleet, which in Bismarck’s time had remained of nlodest size, and
was now no longer adequate to the altered situation.
It was this
last consideration which prompted the new bent of William II’s general policy.
The need of expansion, of an eminently economic nature, had manifestly no
connexion with a military craving for conquest, which enemies of Germany
thought must be inferred from scattered remarks of the Emperor. His statements
were sometimes formulated in a vigorous and imaginative form, in order to
bring home to his own people the vital questions affecting their existence, and
were not always happily calculated to convey to other nations a true impression
of the aims of German policy. This, however, does not alter the fact that the
Emperor had fully and correctly appreciated the pressing needs of the nation,
and has vindicated them before the world. Generations of men still living are
too closely concerned in the several aims of this policy for the historian to
venture upon any exposition of it in greater detail from authentic sources.
Among particular moves in this policy may be cited, for example, the leading
part played by Germany in the cdhstruction of the Anatolian railway and in the
scheme for the Bagdad railway, and, generally speaking, in the economic development
of Turkey in Asia; further, the lease of Kiaochow and the acquisition of a
sphere
1895-1904]
New tendencies in foreign policy.
171
of influence
in Shantung, in 1897, and the purchase of the Caroline Islands after the
Spanish-American War. The same object was also in view in the attempt made to
preserve the open door in Morocco after the Anglo-French entente of 1904*.
It was the
Emperor who in every instance gave the initial impulse; at the same time, he
bent his energies, first and foremost, on the task of converting the German
fleet from its helpless condition into an effective instrument for the
protection of maritime interests and transmarine trade as well as for the
defence of the home coast. With the completion of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal in
1895, the connexion between the Baltic and the North Sea had been provided
which was the essential preliminary to the pursuance of any maritime policy by
Germany; and the Reichstag passed the first Navy Act (Flottengesetz) in 1898
and the second in 1900, which decreed a gradual and systematic construction of
a fleet during a fixed number of years. Every class in the German nation,
enlightened by the labours of the Deutscher Flottenverein (German Navy League),
had realised the necessity of taking up this new burden. The interests of the
nation had hitherto been chiefly confined to internal matters; but it now began
to drink in the free invigorating breeze of that colonial and naval activity
which has made the English so great and powerful a people.
These new
tendencies in foreign policy could not but react upon the relations of the
empire with other Powers, and in the end they have completely altered the
international position of Germany. Although, at the beginning of his reign,
the Emperor had drawn closer to England and thereby helped to precipitate
Russia into the arms of France, it soon became necessary to assert the
independence of Germany’s policy as against the wishes of England, chiefly in
order to avoid strong pressure from the Russo-French Alliance. It was
presumably for this reason that, after the War between China and Japan, Germany
took her stand beside the Dual Alliance; the Emperor’s demonstration of
friendship to the Boers after the Jameson Raid in 1896, though quite
intelligible from the general point of view of human sentiment, already betrays
a further cooling off towards England, and its final explanation may well be
sought in considerations of world-policy alone.
Prince Biilow
had since 1897 held the office of Foreign Secretary (Staatssekretariat des
Ausw&rtigen) under the aged Chancellor, Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe; on
October 17, 1900, he succeeded to the Chancellorship and supreme responsibility
for the entire policy of the empire, taking over the helm with steady, expert
hand. At every turn, he found himself confronted with the necessity of choosing
between
172
Germany, Great Britain and the Dual Alliance. [1901-7
England and
the Dual Alliance, just as, in the seventies, Bismarck had been obliged to make
choice between Russia and Austria. It seems that, in 1901, he. deliberately
rejected the advances of British statesmen, in order that Germany might not
become “the sword of England upon the Continent ” and have to bear the brunt of
any Russo-French onslaught. The determination to pursue an independent course
in the end created ill-feeling across the Channel. Some mistakes there were;
during the Boer War the sympathies of the Germans as of other nations lay with
the weaker side; but at this crisis the Emperor staked his whole influence, nay,
some measure of his popularity, against the popular feeling, tempered the
bitterness aroused, and withstood every temptation from any other quarter. In
the long run, however, apprehensions as to the commercial competition and
naval preparations of Germany gained the day in England; indeed, impelled by
Chauvinistic sentiment on both sides, the English nation began to accustom
itself to the idea of a German peril, and finally to join the ranks of those
opposed to Germany. After the Anglo-French entente of 1904 and the Algeciras
Conference, a change in the old alliances began which introduced a new era in
international politics; for the moment it looked as if Germany was to be
exposed to the danger of isolation and to a policy of hemming in
(“Einkreisungspolitik'") on the part of her enemies, led, as was thought,
by King Edward VII.
The new
situation taught a double lesson. The course of the Morocco affair showed that
the German empire had been hampered in the free use of opportunities for
pursuing its Weltpolitih by the union of its opponents old and new. The events
of the conflict about Bosnia and the Herzegovina proved that these opponents
were not at the time strong enough on the Continent to sever the close
connexion between Germany and Austria and to treat the central Power of Europe
as a negligible quantity. After these great trials of strength the differences
and vexations, to be sure, lost much of their acrimony, and the mists of
suspicion were dispelled by frank and friendly discussion, especially in the
case of Germany and England.
Even so, the
new position of Germany is not without its difficulties. At every step forward,
she is confronted by the political and economic opposition of alliances and
ententes, and fully realises that, despite the Triple Alliance, it is upon her
own strength that she must rely first of all in any emergency. This state of
things requires that she should strain every nerve. There is no other great
nation in the world which would or could have taken upon itself simultaneously
the three great charges of a strong army, a considerable fleet, and a
far-reaching social policy; and the burden has been increased by the oversea
policy adopted, the participation in the Chinese campaign, and the quelling of
the South-west African revolt (1904-7). Greatly as the national
1910]
173
wealth has
grown within the past generation, the growth of the national debt has not been
without its effect upon the ordering of imperial finance. A good deal of
self-confidence and healthy optimism has been needed to keep to the road once
chosen, despite all difficulties. Even if Germany confines herself to
maintaining for her part peace in Europe, which since the rise of her empire
she has not disturbed, and to securing a sunny place for herself in the world
at large, as Prince Bulow expressed it, she will yet learn, the truth of that
moral law of the existence of nations, that life means struggle.
In view of
her geographical and military position, set in the centre of the international
constellation of Powers, and impelled by the inward necessity for further
development, this country is subjected to a stronger tension of conflicting
forces than any other Power, and therefore needs to put forth her strength the
more effectively if she is to hold her own. It is only the fullest exercise of
her strength which has sufficed since the days of the Saxon and Hohenstauffen
Emperors to vindicate the existence of the Germans as a nation. Long centuries
of weakness and dismemberment have taught them that, without this determined
display of force, the heart of Europe will become an object of attack and
spoliation for their neighbours. In the new empire, Emperor, princes, and
people, all parties and all ranks, are agreed that these lessons of the centuries,
taught by the heights and depths of the nation’s history, shall not have been
given in vain.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.
The history of Austria-Hungary, during the last fifty
years, has presented real unity, despite an outward appearance of great
variety. This unity is due to the continuous development of constitutional
institutions. That development has not been regular nor free from
interruptions; from time to time it has been checked by delays and
retrogressions. It originated in periodical oscillation between two
constitutional systems, of which the first, rooted in traditional sentiment,
was moderate, conservative, aristocratic, and favoured provincial decentralisation,
while the second was progressive, radical in its methods and liberal in its
formulae, middle class, bureaucratic, Viennese, and favoured centralisation. It
was only later, after 1867 and 1871, that the progress became more regular.
But, from 1859 to 1909, the purpose remained the same—to adapt the modem system
of constitutional and, finally, of parliamentary government, to the Austrian
monarchy despite its incongruities of tradition and of race.
The problem
was one of extreme complexity. On the ruins of the ancient dynastic and feudal
empire, which had fallen in 1848, a modem, popular, and Liberal monarchy had to
be constructed. That monarchy needed to cousolidate and strengthen itself, on
the one hand by concentrating its efforts and resources, on the other by
disarming, through wise concessions, the traditional and national antagonism
between peoples and sectional divisions; the ancient policy of the Habsburgs,
which had been imperial in the extended and medieval sense of the word, had to
be replaced by an Austrian or Austro-Hungarian policy, modern, territorial, and
popular. On this fundamental problem others were dependent, forming part of it
and presenting successive or simultaneous aspects of the whole, such as the
adjustment of the relations between the two parts of the monarchy, the
Cisleithanian and Transleithanian, by the happy reconciliation of their
requisite unity and their historical diversity; the solution, or at least the
clear definition and the continuous reduction to simpler terms, of the question
of nationalities; the formulation of a foreign policy which would satisfy all
the different peoples of the monarchy; the gradual introduction into the
organisation of the empire-kingdom and
1859-1909]
175
its
subordinate parts of the modem forms pf participation by the citizens in the government
and in the administration of their interests and affairs. This task,
accomplished in the infinite and unique complexity of the Austro-Hungarian
environment, despite the intellectual, moral, social, and economic diversity of
the peoples of the monarchy, despite the force of tradition, weighing heavily
on peoples and dynasty alike, gives its historical value to the reign of
Francis Joseph I.
This period
of fifty years from 1859 forms only a part of a single reign, and the figure of
Francis Joseph I dominates the whole. The monarch who, between 1849 and 1859,
had given his authority to a process of rigorous absolutist centralisation, in
1867 confirmed the compromise which estab^ lishad dualism; he who at twenty
years of age revoked the first Constitution which had come into existence in
Austria, nearly sixty years later not only accepts and supports but actually
forces upon the privileged classes and upon his timid Ministers an electoral
reform which has established universal suffrage in Austria and renders its
introduction in Hungary probable. The whole of . his public and private life is
full of similar con-r trasts. Although a German prince, imbued with German
sentiments, he presides over a transformation of the monarchy which does not
favour the German preponderance ; although a zealous Catholic, he appends his
signature to laws establishing extensive religious freedom in his States;
although an aristocrat by birth and sentiment, he throws open to democracy the
gates of public life. He humiliates Prussia and Italy, and is afterwards
vanquished by both these countries, with whom he finally enters into an
alliance. After thirty years of defeats and territorial losses, he adds Bosnia
and the Herzegovina to the monarchy, and thus, like the ancient Emperors, he
also becomes Mehrer des Jteichs. His only son, the hope of his dynasty,
perishes in a mysterious tragedy. His wife, after a troubled and unhappy
existence, is stabbed by an assassin in a foreign land. In all his misfortunes
he has been supported by the consciousness of his mission and of his duty.
Always prudent and reserved, at times overcautious, in later life he has laid
aside the fire and impetuosity of youth, to become still more prudent, still
more cautious, but in reality, more courageous. He has grown old, surrounded by
the affection of his subjects and the respect of foreigners; these he won, in
the first place by his misfortunes, and in the second, by his real goodness and
wisdom. He is now the last survivor of his generation, and the patriarch of the
sovereigns and nations of Europe. Assuredly, the existence of the monarchy does
not depend on him alone; but, by his good qualities and his misfortunes he has
undoubtedly strengthened the dynastic loyalty which is traditional in Austria.
This man, not in virtue of any conspicuous intellectual gifts, but by his
diligence, benevolence, and devotion to duty, will give his name to the epoch
of which his reign, from 1859 onwards, constitutes the unity.
At the first
glance, these fifty years divide themselves into five
176
Attempts at constitutional reform. [1859-1909
periods. From
1859 to 1867 we have the preparation for, and the establishment of, dualism.
From 1867 to 1878 dualism preserves the spirit of its organisers. From 1878 to
1895 it lives on, warped and deformed in use, and on the brink of ruin. From
1895 to 1906, Cisleithania, the dual monarchy, and Hungary are agitated in turn
by constitutional crises. Finally, from 1906 onwards, we begin to perceive the
bold outline of a new policy, of which the first-fruits are the renewal of the
Compromise in 1907, electoral reform in Austria and Hungary, and the annexation
of Bosnia and the Herzegovina.
Ever since
the Crimean War, public opinion in the monarchy had looked for a defeat which
should overthrow absolutism. This came at Solferino. The general discontent in
Hungary, of which the slackness of the Hungarian soldiers in this war gave
proof, necessitated the abandonment of the policy of centralisation and
Germanisation, and the want of money led to the abolition of absolutism. Only
the upper middle classes, who had profited by the economic development
resulting from the enfranchisement of the peasants, could furnish the necessary
loans; and they favoured Liberal principles. The aristocracy, which had opposed
Bach, was striving to recover its influence at Court; the foreign policy
adopted by the Emperor—revenge on Italy and extension of his influence in
Germany—was not compatible with the constant threatenings of internal trouble.
Such were the reasons which, in the summer of 1859, led Austria to take the
first steps towards constitutionalism.
And very
timid steps they were. Hungary had the chief attention of the Government; but
of Hungarian needs and desires it understood little. The moderate schemes for
reorganisation, which Count Emil Dessewffy, the zealous and self-accredited
spokesman of his country, submitted to Rechberg, caused great astonishment and
were regarded as the work of a dreamer. For Dessewffy, like all Hungarians,
spoke of laws and rights, whereas for years the imperial Government had
recognised only decrees and imperial grants. Count Leo Thun let loose once more
Magyar national opposition in Hungary by the promulgation of a patent for the
Protestants, which, though relatively liberal, erred in being a patent, an
arbitrary act, a concession. Financial distress led to the first decisive
action. Bruck, the Minister of Finance, in despair, discredited in public
opinion by the disclosure of the expedients to which he had been obliged to have
recourse, unjustly suspected of complicity in the malversations of the military
administration, had committed suicide. His successor, Ignatius von Plener, an
experienced official of Liberal tendencies, pledged himself unreservedly to a
measure of constitutional reform. On March 5, 1860, an imperial decree convoked
the first legislative assembly of the monarchy as a whole, the “reinforced”
(verstcirkter) Reichsrath.
It was little
more than a consultative imperial council. In addition to the members of the
permanent Reichsrath, a sort of Council of State
I860]
111
composed of
officials, there were to be extraordinary life members, and 38 delegates, to be
chosen by the Emperor hereafter on the recommendation of provincial Diets which
were to be called into being, but, for this first occasion, directly nominated
by him. Three-fourths of the new members were chosen from among the higher
aristocracy, the clergy, and the official classes, only ten from the middle
classes. The Assembly was convoked for the month of May, so that it might
examine the budget for 1861. By force of circumstances it exceeded the narrow
sphere which had been assigned to it, and was the first assembly to discuss in
parliamentary fashion the affairs of the entire monarchy. This was mainly due
to the Hungarian members. They were all legitimist Conservatives, and they
hoped to see the ancient Hungarian Constitution restored, with such
modifications as the social changes of 1848 required, and the relations between
Hungary and the monarchy established on the basis of moderate dualism. They
wished to secure historical and legitimate rights, respect for tradition and
for law. They found allies amongst the Conservative party of the Austrian
nobility, and especially amongst the nobility of Bohemia. Ignoring the
historical and constitutional barriers, which, since 1620, have separated
Bohemia from Hungary, Count Clam-Martinic, the chief representative of this
nobility, came to an understanding with Count Anton Szecsen, the ordinary
spokesman of the Hungarian party, on a platform claiming the due recognition of
“ historical and political individualities.”
This
Conservative and autonomist programme was opposed by that of the more or less
Liberal advocates of centralisal on, who were officials and representatives of
the German middle classes. But they were undecided and timid, above all,
fearful of displeasing the Emperor, and they dared not express, or even avow to
themselves, the meaning of their own aspirations. They flatly repudiated their
colleague Maager, a Saxon from Transylvania, ivhen he alone dared to state that
the real need of the empire was a modern representative constitution. In the
course of this session the Reichsrath had received from the Emperor the right
to confirm any imposition or increase of taxes, and the raising of any loan.
But the Conservatives were unwilling that the Reichsrath should depart from its
consul v.ative role. The only result of these discussions was two
•xldresses to the Emperor, that of the majority, and that of the minority, both
equally obscure and timid—nevertheless, that of the former revealed autonomist
and provincial tendencies, and that of the latter gave evidence of aspirations
towards a centralised and Germaii’sed system.
The Emperor
adopted the motion of the majority. On October 20, 1860, in an imperial Diploma
{the October Charter), he declared that, for the future, he intended to share
the legislative power and the right of imposing taxes and raising loans, for
the different sections of the monarchy with their several Diets* and for the
whole empire with a Reichsrath, consisting of delegates from the Diets. The
reasons for this
178
The Diploma of 1860.—The Patent of 1861. [186O-1
great change
were set forth to the peoples in a manifesto and in several rescripts, which
prescribed the measures needful for putting it into effect. Taken as a whole,
these constitutional acts produce a confused and contradictory impression. The
Diploma is a mixture of centralism, dualism, and federalism; moreover, on the
one hand, it respects the continuity of traditional rights, on the other, it
upholds the principle of imperial grants. The only clear statement contained
therein is that of the monarch’s intention to break with absolutist
centralisation, and to inaugurate a new and essentially constitutional policy,
which was to be based on a compromise between the unitary and the autonomist
principles.
Some months
later the October Diploma was, in official language, completed, but actually
superseded, by the February Patent (February 26, 1861), setting up a
centralised Constitution. There were several reasons for this sudden change. In
Hungary the Diploma had given rise to a real revolutionary movement. In order
to give the nation a pledge of the constitutional sincerity of the new system,
the Government had restored the system of administration by comitats. The
assemblies of the comitats or counties were the traditional home of Hungarian
selfgovernment and of resistance to Austrian interference, and their restoration
was the greatest incentive to Hungarian self-assertion. Throughout the comitats
the partisans of De&k and those of Kossuth rejected the new Constitution,
demanded the restoration of the Laws of 1848, and acted as though these had
already been reestablished; the sources which furnished supplies for the army
and the exchequer of the monarchy were thus in danger of being blocked. In
Austria the first enthusiasm, aroused by the proclamation of the new
constitutional charter, had been shortlived. The provincial statutes which
Count Goluchowski, Minister of the Interior, drew almost unaltered from the
drafts bequeathed to him by Bach, presented a reactionary and feudal aspect,
particularly galling to the German middle classes. It was dangerous to irritate
these classes, because they alone could be relied on to support the credit of
the State, at that time lower than ever, and because the new external policy
also required their willing concurrence. The rapid progress of Italian unity
deprived Austria of all hope of regaining supremacy in the peninsula: she
therefore concentrated her efforts on Germany. There she had a rival in
Prussia, who was passing through her brief period of Liberalism; in order to
meet and overcome her rivaky Austria must have the support of German opinion,
and how could Germans be expected to support a country which was neither
Liberal nor German ? Moved by these motives and swayed by Schmerling, who had
taken the place of Goluchowski, dismissed after experience of his incapacity,
the Emperor signed the Patent, which, under constitutional forms, brought the
monarchy back to the leading ideas of Bach’s system.
The Patent
instituted a Reichsrath, composed of two Chambers. In the first, the Chamber of
Lords, were represented, by right of succession
1861]
Hungarian revolt against the Patent.
179
or
nomination, those who, by birth, position, or merit, belonged to the
aristocracy. In the second, the Chamber of Deputies, sat 343 representatives,
who were elected by the provincial Diets on the system of the representation of
interests. Like the members of the Diet itself, they were divided into four
Curiae, namely, the great landowners, the Chambers of Commerce, the cities, and
the rural districts. In each Curia a certain payment in taxes was the
qualification for the franchise. The ^ value of the vote varied considerably in
the several Curiae and provinces: some deputies were elected by two or three
votes only, others by between ten and twelve thousand. In every case, the
German provinces or districts were favoured and the Slavs treated unfairly.
Under the cloak of principle, all principle was ignored; for the sole object
was to set up a Reichsrath which would not hamper the Government. Moreover,
both in the Diets and in the Chamber of Deputies, everything was calculated to
ensure a permanent majority of the great landowners, on whose unflinching
devotion the Government reckoned in all circumstances. The power of the
Reichsrath was ill defined and still worse protected; there was no right of
calling Ministers to account by interpellation, no ministerial responsibility;
moreover, by Article 13, a famous article of the Constitution, the Cabinet
might take the place of the Parliament during vacation, with no other
obligation than that of accounting for its actions during the following
session. On the surface, the system of the Patent is more Liberal than that of
the Diploma; in reality, it is certain that, if the Diploma had remained in
force, Cisleithanian Austria would have enjoyed greater freedom, and a more
regular, less discordant, constitutional development.
In
Hungary, the Patent meant a declaration of war. In fact, it treated Hungary as
an Austrian province ; an autonomous province, it is true, seeing that its
internal affairs lay within the jurisdiction of the Hungarian Diet (while those
which affected only the Cisleithanian provinces were dependent on the smaller
Reichsrath, composed of the non-Hungarian deputies), but none the less a
province; since all its most important affairs, such as military and financial
questions, were removed from the jurisdiction of the Diet, and entrusted to the
full Reichsrath, where the deputies from Austria and Hungary sat together. In
the Diet of 1861, Hungary protested against this violation of the promises made
in October, and this return to the ideas of Bach. Through the lips and pen of
Dedk, “the nation’s sage,” in an address to the sovereign, the nation,asserted
the contractual character of the Pragmatic Sanction, and demanded the
restoration of her Constitution, “ which is not a gift, but was founded on
mutual agreement, and sprang from the very life of the Nation.” “Law and
justice and the sanctity of treaties are on our side, material force is against
us.” Hungary has a right to “autonomy and legal independence as a State”; her
connexion with Austria is a personal union. In the Cabinet there were heated
discus- ch. vii, 12*—2
sions on the
reply to be sent to this address; finally, the centralist party triumphed, and
the, Hungarian Minister® resigned. To the imperial rescript, which rejected
every single idea and claim contained in the address, Dedk replied by a second
address', which ended with the declaration that Hungary adhered strictly to
the laws of 1848, that she refused, and always would refuse to send deputies to
the Relchsrath, that she declared void and invalid all the resolutions which
the latter might make concerning Hungarian affairs, and which dearly stated the
points at issue. “The rescript does not take its stand on the basis of the Hungarian
Constitution* but it considers the imperial Diploma and Patent as fundamental
laws; these are acts of absolute power, opposed to the essence of our
Constitution. As for us, our duty to our country, our position as
representatives, and our convictions, bind us to the Hungarian Constitution,
and it is only on the basis of this Constitution that we can deliberate.
Between these two different, nay, opposing principles, it is not possible to
arrive art; a compromise, desirable though it be.” Arbitrary power on the one
hand, continuity of rights on the other, such were, in fact, the two apposing
propositions. A conflict so serious and critical could only result in the
dissolution of the Diet. A few months later, the whole of the national
administration, which had been reestablished less than a year before, was once
more suspended; military government and councils of war resumed their sway in
Hungary, and the administration of Schmerling revealed its true colours,
appearing openly as the renewal of the system of Bach.
From that
moment, its ultimate fete could be foreseen. In the Diet prophetic warnings had
been heard. Hungary resumed the passive tactics which had served her in good
stead under Badh, and, in addition, she refused to pay the taxes. Defilk was the
national oracle: the Hungarian Slavs, who had leamt from their experience
under Bach, did not hesitate to side with the Magyars and based their
expectations on the Hungarian Parliament Mid D-j&k’s sense of justice. Of
the Magyars, the Liberals followed him blindly, and the Radicals and
Conservatives drew closer to him daily. Croatia Rejected the advances of
Vienna, but did not accept those of Pest. Only Transylvania with her Saxons,
who were naturally attracted by the system Of centralisation and Ger- manisation,
and her Roumans, who, inspired by lo ng-standing hatred of the Magyars, joined
the camp of their adversaries, could be said to welcome the system; of the
Transleithanian provinces Transylvania alone sent deputies to the Rekhsrath.
But this success was insignificant. In reality, Hungary remained impregnable,
waiting until the mistakes of her enemies and the labours of her friends should
prepare the way for the triumph of her rights.
Schmerling
was assuredly under no delusions on the subject of his chances in Hungary.
Victory could only come from without, from the success of the system in
Austria, and from the success of Austria in
Germany; suck
success would have paralysed the Magyar opposition. Dut this twofold success
was not for Schmerling. In Austria the Cechs, after giving the Reichsraih a
trial, withdrew from it when they found themselves oppressed, ill-treated, and
deprived of all hope of obtaining the' revision of the constitutional laws
which by artificial provisions made them a minority even in Bohemia. The other
Slavs shared their passion and their rancour. The Germans-, who at first had
enjoyed playing at Parliament,, soon wearied of the game on discovering that
they were really powerless. They were specially interested n i mancial reforms,,
and brought to bear uipon this subject their hour gems love of order and
economy; the Cabinet, spurred on, by the Court, which continued to pursue its
empty dreams of traditional foreign policy, exasperated the Germans by
continually asking them for money, and grew impatient when they refused to
grant it. A real constitutional system, or again, a scheme of Liberal political
and religious legislation, jupersedirg the Concordat might have persuaded the
majority to make financial sacrifices; but the Cabinet was neither able nor
willing to consent thereto. In Parliament mil isterial responsibility, with
liberty of combination and of public meeting, were demanded, but in vain; the
liberty of the Press, which had been partial)) established by law, was, by the practice
of the Courts, turned into absolute persecution, and the Concordat remained
intact. Moreover, the annual deficit, on an average fifty million florins, was
doubly galling to the parliamentary majority; its orators declared that the
nation had come to a financial Solferino, and for what purpose ? Failure in
Hungary ; in Germany, failure which had been acknowledged since the fiasco of
the Congress of Princes in 1863; failure even in Austria—what was the good of a
Constitution which, at any moment, might be altered or suspended by means of
one of its own clauses, namely, the famous Article 13 ? From 1864 onwards,
there was a definite breach between the Cabinet and the majority. The last
sessior, from Novembei', 1864, to July, 1865, was a long death- struggle.
The Emperor
had not long continued his early trust in Schmerlmg. It is possible that he had
never placed complete confidence in him: it seems as though Schmerling had
ne?er had quite a free hand against Hungary. Was Francis Joseph influenced by
his wife, who was devoted to the chivalrous and romantic people of that
country? or was he swayed by Count Maurice Esterb azy, a Minister without
portfolio, an Austrian diplomatist, but a Hungarian legitimist and a zealous
Catholic, who in Schmerling’s Cabinet represented the internal and external
traditions of the policy of Mettemich? In any case, the interval of time which
elapsed without bringing to Schmerling any part of the promised and hoped-for
success, was a gain to the Hungarians. Not far from the sovereign, a group of
Conservatives was awaiting the favourable moment when De£k, at their signal,
might offer, in the name
of the
nation, to come to an agreement. So long as Vienna remained intractable, Dedk
was to remain irreconcilable. In his celebrated Contribution to Hungarian
Constitutional Law, he asserts the principle of personal union in connexion
with an autonomous Hungary. In 1861, the Reichsrath, moved by Schmerling, had
declared for the Emperor and the Cabinet against Hungary. But from 1863 onwards*
the majority of the German deputies had held and had openly stated that, in
order to secure the existence of constitutionalism in Austria, it was necessary
to come to an understanding with Hungary; however, they insisted that this
understanding should be based on the Patent. A year later, having learnt
wisdom by experience, they had resigned themselves to making very important
coucessions to Hungary. Instead of insisting on the presence of the Hungarians
in the Reichsrath, they were willing that the Diets of Hungary and Croatia
should revise the Laws of 1848, so as to bring them into accord so far as
possible with the Patent. Then De£k, who had been informed that Schmerling’s
position, both in Parliament and at Court, was now far from secure, took a step
forward. In his well-known declarations of Easter and May, 1865, he formulated
the programme, which was afterwards almost wholly carried out by the
Compromise. He said, “We are always prepared to take any legal measures to
modify our laws so as to secure the safety and solidarity of the monarchy.” The
Emperor welcomed this programme with joy. He gave proof of his satisfaction in
April, 1865, when he spent a few hours in Hungary, and again in June, when he
stayed there for several days. On June 26, without telling Schmerling, he
called to the Hungarian Chancery George Mailith, a Conservative. This meant
wholesale disavowal of the system ; and nothing remained for Schmerling but to
tender his resignation, which had been expected and accept a.d in
advance.
The period of
the monarchical reorganisation which then ensued lasted for two years; it was
only in December, 1867, that the work of reconstitution was completed by the
passing of the new Cisleithanian constitutional laws. The forces which brought
about this conclusion were the Emperor, the Hungarians, and Prussia; for the
Austrian crisis took place at the same time as the German crisis, and the two
are connected. The final solution was delayed until the autumn of 1866, on
account of the uncertainty of the issue of events in Germany; on the other
hand, once the result of these was known, affairs in Austria progressed
rapidly; Beust, an antagonist of Bismarck, who had passed from the service of
Saxony to that of Austria-Hungary, advised the sovereign to yield to the
demands of Hungary, in order to restore to the monarchy its freedom of action
in German affairs. In fact, modern dualism owes its origin to Sadowa.
In September,
1865, the February Patent was suspended. The Austrian Germans protested
strongly, but in vain; the Cechs, the Slavs,
1865-7]
The Prussian War.—Demands of Hungary. 183
and the
Poles, who were delighted, hastened to present their federal and autonomist
programmes, all of which opposed centralism and dualism, Irawing their
inspiration from the ideas set forth in the Diploma. Count Belcredi, the
Minister of State, appeared favourable to their programmes, and had their
confidence. But in Hungary there arose a new force behind De&k, in the
person of Count Julius Andr&ssy, a politician and diplomatist, who had been
cured of his revolutionary illusions of 1848 by exile and diligent study; a man
equally capable of negotiating with the Court and of solving the problems of
European politics. The form and legal tenour of the Compromise were due to De&k,
its political tone to Andr&ssy. From the very beginning of the crisis,
Andrdssy had laid down the principle of a Liberal government on the basis of an
agreement between the two sections of the monarchy, the Germans to have the
upper hand in Cisleithania and the Magyars in Transleithania. This continued to
be the leading idea of his policy, whilst, under the direction of De£k, a
commission of the Diet was drawing up a comprehensive scheme for the
organisation of the government for affairs common to both sections of the
monarchy. This scheme had just been completed when, in June, 1866, the Diet was
prorogued in consequence of the opening of hostilities. Thus, it constituted
the programme of Hungary— the maximum programme if Austria should be victorious
in the war, the minimum should she be defeated. When, therefore, after the
defeat, the Emperor secretly summoned Dedk to Vienna, and asked him, “What does
Hungary demand ? ” the sage of the nation was able to make the justly
celebrated reply, “ Only what she demanded before Sadowa.” But, after Sadowa,
she was in a position to accept nothing less.
Andrissy,
whom De&k had designated as future Prime Minister, opened negotiations in
the name of his country. On the part of the Austrian Ministers, who desired to
make Austria more Slav and more federalistic, he encountered a lively
opposition to his policy, until Beust assumed control over the Cabinet. The
struggle between Beust and Belcredi was concentrated on one definite point: the
constitutional modifications which the agreement with Hungary had rendered
necessary in Cisleithania had to be ratified by the representatives of the
countries concerned, but whence were these representatives to be drawn ? From
the old Reichsrath, according to the desire of Beust ? or, in accordance with
the wishes of Belcredi, from an extraordinary Reichsrath, to be freely elected
by the Diets without distinction of Curiae, a Reichsrath which would sympathise
with the Slavs ? The whole question of the Compromise was contained in this
alternative; for it was known, on the one hand3 that Belcredi was
opposed to dualism, and that the extraordinary Reichsrath was certain to amend
the Hungarian scheme, and, on the other, that Beust was in favour of dualism
and that the smaller Reichsrath was prepared to accept the Hungarian scheme as
it stood in consideration of the reintroduction into Cisleithania of the
centralist Constitution.
The Emperor,
under the influence of Andrassy, decided in favour of Beust, and Belcredi
withdrew*
Henceforward,
matters progressed speedily. On February 17, the Hungarian Constitution was in
effect restored by the appointment of a responsible Cabinet, over which
Andrdssy presided. In May, the smaller Reichsrath reassembled; by means of
dissolutions and by dint of pressure, Beust had managed to put the machinery of
Schmerling into good working order and to make sure of a German dualistic
majority. In June, Francis Joseph had himself crowned King of Hungary; thus,
after eighteen years of an illegal and absolutist interregnum, he reknit the
broken threads of the Hungarian Pragmatic Sanction of 1722-8. In October the
Government brought before the Reichsrath the laws dealing with the Compromise,
of which the economic part had been settled in August and September between the
deputations of the two Parliaments. Of its own accord, the Reichsrath added
some laws which amended the Patent in a Liberal sense, and decided that all
these laws, the Compromise, and the revised Constitution of Cisleithania,
should come into force at the same time as one whole. Thus it overcame the
Emperor’s oppos Hon to a part of the revision laws. At the close of the! year
1867 the new constitutional fabric was complete in Hungary, Austria, and the
monarchy: on the basis of the Compromise, the edifice of dualism had been
completed.
Its main idea
is as follows. The Austro-Hanganan monarchy is a Power consisting of two
States, the empire of Austria (officially entitled “the kingdoms and countries
represented in the Refchsicith”} and the kingdom of Hungary Each of them is
independent and supreme: they are therefore absolutely equal, in a word, they
are peers. But, since they are in subjection to the same dynasty, they can only
be represented and xct abroad as a whole; and since, by the Pragma+ic Sanction,
they have mutually pledged themselves to maintain the rights and integrity of
the ^/ossessirns of the dynasty, they are bound to act together for defence.
The organisation suitable for this purpose was set up by the Compromise. It
maintained a common diplomatic service, and a unified army so far as command
and purely military control are concerned, but the vote of its several
contingents was still to remain at the discretion of each Parliament. The
sovereign was to be the executive head of these common services, as ited by
Ministers acting for both countries, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, War, and
Finance. The last named is merely an administrator of the Common Treasury,
which receives the funds contributed by both States for common purposes—the
monarchy, which has no private resources, being dependent on their subsidies.
To ensure respect for constitutional principles in the government of the
empire-kingdom, these Ministers were to be checked by the Delegations. These
Delegations do not constitute a Parliament. They consist of two committees,
named, in 1867, “ international committees ”; each is compiled of 60 members,
each
Parliament
electing its own committee, in the proportion of 20 delegates from the Upper,
and 40 from the Lower* Chamber. The two committees sit apart, meeting
simultaneously once a year, not to legislate— which they have not the power to
do—but to vote the common budget, and to scrutinise the administration of the
common Ministers. Beyond the sphere of common action, of which we have just traced
the limits, there are no affairs in common. Nevertheless,, between two States
thus politically united, which, for more than three centuries, had been still
more closely linked,there must necessarily be affairs of common interest; for
instance, the economic, commercial, and financial relations of both countries.
As a preliminary, such questions were to be discussed either between the two
Cabinets or between “ Deputations,” elected for each occasion by the
Parliaments ; they were to be finally settled by the vote of two several laws,
Austrian and Hungarian, which were to> be in the main identical. Similarly,
identical laws were to regulate questions which, although not common, could
only be decided by cooperation, such as military organisation, or the ratification
of an international treaty. Ten years was the ordinary term for economic
conventions between the two States. As a matter of fact, since 1867, as since
1850, Austria and Hungary have formed a single territory for commerce and
customs tariff, and their respective contributions towards the common
expenditure, orig, ually fired at 70 per cent, for Austria and 30 per cent, for
Hungaiy, maintained nearly the same proportions for about thirty years, subject
to an allowance made for the military districts restored to Hungary in 1873.
The Compromise guaranteed constitutional laws to both States of the monarch]\
In Hungary, the traditional Constitution, which had been transformed by the
Laws of 1848 (these same laws having, in 1867, been adapted to the new system
of common affairs), provided for a parliamentary Government. In Austria the
Constitution of December, 1867, slightly modified the Patent in a Liberal
sense. But it left untouched the essential part, namely, the artificial
electoral laws, and Article 13, thenceforward known as Article 14. The internal
crises in Austria were due to these laws and that article. The Compromise,
taken as a whole, although far from being wholly just or perfectly wise, has at
least secured for the monarchy, for the last forty years, a comparatively
regular and homogeneous development, which forms a happy contrast with the
uncertainty of its progress between 1848 and 1867.
The
Reichsrath, which, by the revision of 1867, had been reduced to 203 members,
still elected by the Diets, found itself confronted by a Cabinet known as the
“Commoners’ Cabinet,” although its President was Prince Carlos Auersperg, “the
first nobleman in the empire.” Giskra, Minister of the Interior, Herbst, the
Minister of Justice, Hasner, Minister of Education and Brestel, Min stei of
Finance, gave the tone to the Cabinet. They had before them a heavy task, which
they bravely attacked. The following is a list of their chief claims to
186
[1865-9
the honour of
posterity: they reformed administration and justice by separating the one from
the other; they organised primary education, which was made compulsory by the
celebrated Law of 1869 ; they set in order the finances by the unification of
the Debt, by the imposition of a tax on coupons (which meant partial
repudiation of the Debt), and by the diminution of the deficit, which was
reduced from 39 million florins in 1868 to 3 millions in 1869: they passed
political and ecclesiastical laws which considerably limited the scope of the Concordat.
But against all this must be set their serious blunders; they absolutely failed
to understand the modem social movement (Giskra declared that, within the
Austrian frontier, the social question was non-existent), and, what was more
serious, they blindly opposed the irresistible force of the national movement.
The question
of nationalities disturbed and troubled their Ministry, and was the direct
cause of their fall. In 1865, when the Patent was suspended, Francis Ladislas
Rieger, the leader of the Cechs, a zealous, enthusiastic politician, and an
idealist of persuasive eloquence, had endeavoured to come to an understanding
with the Liberal section of the Germans, in order that Austria might have, what
the Kremsier Diet had almost secured for her in 1849, a Constitution accepted
by all her peoples. The uncertainty of the political situation and the
distrustful attitude of the Germans caused this scheme to fail; soon afterwards
the tactless intervention of Beust revived and inflamed all the hatred of the
Cechs. It was in vain that the celebrated Article 19 of the constitutional Laws
of 1867 proclaimed the right of all nationalities to equality and state
protection. Since 1848 all the Austrian Constitutions had contained similar
clauses, and experience had shown that they were worthless. The Cechs, deceived
and deluded by the example of Hungary, adopted passive tactics. They refused to
appear in the Reichsrath; they deserted the Diet of Bohemia; and, in their
celebrated Declaration, of August, 1868, they formulated their claim to the
recognition of Bohemia as a State on the following lines. Bohemia has the same
traditional rights as Hungary; hence, her relations towards the monarchy can
only be adjusted by means of an agreement between her Diet and her sovereign; a
real Bohemian Diet can only exist on the basis of a just and equal electoral
law. The Government proclaimed a state of siege in Bohemia. But the Slovenes,
in Camiola, made common cause with the Cechs ; the Poles in Galicia, not
contented with the extensive provincial autonomy granted to them by Beust in
exchange for their vote in favour of the Compromise, demanded new concessions
in their Resolution. The Emperor, always ready for conciliation, when this is
possible, authorised Beust to open negotiations with the Cechs.
These
negotiations failed; but Auersperg forthwith resigned, and thus inaugurated a
long ministerial crisis. Auersperg was replaced by Count Taaffe, who had been a
friend of the Emperor from his youth,
and who, like
him, was in favour of conciliation. The majority of the Cabinet remained
persistent Centralists; Taaffe, unable to convince them, retired in January,
1870, with his colleagues, Count Potocki, a Pole, and Berger, a German Liberal,
who was more clear-sighted than the rest of his party. Hasner then became
President of the Council. But the opponents of Centralism, conscious of the
insecurity of their enemies, joined forces for a final attack : the clerical
party, the Slovenes, the Roumans, the Italians, and, lastly, the Poles, left
the Reichsrath. The Ministry, having thus lost all prestige and authority,
retired. Potocki accepted the office of President of the Council, on the
understanding that he was to reconcile the peoples of Austria with each other
and with the State.
He failed
completely, for he was too centralistic for the Slavs and too federalistic for
the Germans. Moreover, the importance of the events which were taking place in
Europe threw all questions of internal policy into the background. The
Franco-German War had set before the monarchy the problem of an alliance with
France against Prussia. In spite of Beust and the generals, the influence of
Hungary, which was henceforward decisive, imposed a policy of non-intervention
in Germany, in accordance with the logic of the Compromise. But the completion
of German unity created other anxieties at the Court of Vienna. Would not the
new Germany prove expansive and acquisitive ? Would she not find support among
the Austrian Germans, among whom a national Radical party was being formed ?
How could Austria defend herself from this danger except by the help of the
Slavs, and more especially of the Cechs ? On the frontier of Bohemia the
threatening Germans must find themselves opposed by a contented Slavonic
people. And, moreover, since the battle of Sedan had put a definite end to the
policy of promoting Austrian influence in Germany, since there only remained
to the monarchy the East—the Slavonic East-^was it not necessary to make sure
that, here also, Austria would be supported by the Slavs ? Potocki was not
capable of effecting so great a change; in February, 1871, he gave place to
Count Hohenwart.
Hohenwart was
a high official who, up to that time, had diligently served the Liberal scheme
of administration. The programme of his new Ministry had been drawn up by
Schaffle, the Minister of Commerce, a German by origin, and a professor of
political economy in Vienna. Schaffle, under the influence of the economic and
social doctrines which he had adopted, was hostile to the middle class
capitalists. Hence, he wished to replace the Liberal system of the 1861 Patent
by a Conservative system, resting on the higher nobility and the lower middle
classes. He therefore appealed to all the enemies of German Liberalism, to its
political enemies, the clerical and the feudal party, and to its national
enemies, the Slavs. His policy found expression in schemes for electoral reform
lowering the franchise, for the extension of the power of the Diets and
provincial autonomy, for the legal establishment of equal rights
188
Buie of the German majority in Austria. [i87i-3
for
nationalities. It failed; yet its failure was not due to the energetic
opposition of the Germans, as they da'Med, but to the blindness of the Cechs
and to foreign intervention. For Bohemia, the Ministry, in agreement with the
Cechs, proposed a law dealing with nationalities, which would have provided for
the Germans and Cechs real equality without oppression on either side, and
Fundamental Articles. These articles were to be the Bohemian Compromise: they
assigned to the Diet of Prague almost all the functions of the Reichsrath,
without trenching on the province of the Austrian Delegation; thus they
established federalism in Cisleithania. Did the national interests of the Cechs
urgently call for such a revolution in the Constitution ? It was afterwards
apparent that far slighter modifications of the Constitution of 1867 would have
•ufficed to provide for extensile national development. But they sacrificed
themselves to their allies, the Conservative nobility, whom they had joined in
1861. Clam-Martinic, led astray by feudal romanticism, proud and unforgiving,
wished to obtain for Bohemia exactly what Hungary had obtained, to humiliate
the German Liberals, and perhaps even to make his will felt by the Emperor.
Beust protested against the Fundamental Articles in the interests of external
policy (for Austria was already on the way to a reconciliation with Germany),
and ^ndrdssy on behalf of the rights of Hungary. In order to avert a very
serious crisis, the Emperor requested the Cechs to make some concessions,
which concessions Clam-Martinic forbade them to grant. On October 27,1871,
Hohenwart fell from power, and a month later Prince Adolf Auersperg, younger
brother of Carlos, assumed the direction of affairs, together with the second
German Liberal Ministry.
In the hands
of Hohenwart, Schmerling’s system had produced Diets favourable to federalism.
In the hands of Lasser, the new Minister of the Interior, backed up by enormous
governmental pressure, and by a corruption which was at that time without
precedent, it produced a German majority. The first care of this majority,
which had learnt wisdom by experience, was to strengthen its own position.
Lasser succeeded where the Ministry of the Commoners had failed—in
establishing direct election to the Reichsrath (Law of April 2, 1873).
Henceforward, the Reichsrath was independent of the Diets; it was no longer
possible for a whole province to remain without representatives in Parliament to
the detriment of its prestige and authority. In this way, the Law of 1873 gave
the death-blow to the old passive tactics; it destroyed the chances of
federalism. On the other hand, it added to the injustice of Schmerling’s
electoral legislation instead of reforming it. The privileges of the German
middle classes were increased now that the complement of the Chamber was raised
from 203 to 353 members, the number of deputies from the towns and the Chambers
of Commerce being doubled, while those from the country districts were only
increased by two-thirds: in Moravia, the German population had five times as
much electoral power
1873-4]
The financial crisis at Vienna.
189
as the fiech.
Hence, the Reichsrath remained powerless against the Emperor.
The majority,
thus consolidated, took up the political and religious legislation, which had
become inevitable since the denunciation of the Concordat in consequence of the
proclamation of the dogma of infallibility (1870). The Laws of 1874, in a
spirit of moderate Liberalism, determined the civil status of the Catholic
Church, and the application of the principle of religious liberty. The Emperor
refused to sanction a law dealing with the religious Orders. This legislation,
together with a judiciary reform, which provided for a timid and precarious
introduction of the jury system, constitutes the sole success of the Auers-
perg Ministry. It had many failures to counterbalance this. The finarr cial
crash in Vienna (1873), following a period of frantic speculation, which
practically dated from the Compromise, not only shook the economic equilibrium
of Austria, but revealed corruption in the very highest circles of the
Government—even in .the Cabinet, for one of its members was forced to resign in
consequence; it affected the moral authority of the middle class Liberals. The
Conservative party, with its Catholic, Christian-Socialist, and, later,
Antisemitic tendencies, profited by the crash, which also strengthened the
anti-Centralist coalition.
All the Slavs
were involved in it, except the Ruthenes, who sought from the Germans
protection against the oppression which they still suffered in Galicia at the
hands of the Poles. The latter enjoyed, at the same time, the advantages of
power and the benefits of opposition ; they were represented in the Cabinet by
a Minister for Galicia, but they professed to draw a careful distinction
between the Emperor, towards whom they professed infinite devotion and implicit
obedience, and the centralised Ministry and the Parliament, which they found it
profitable to oppose, seeing that, at regular intervals, their opposition had
to be disarmed by concessions. The southern Slavs had formed an alliance with
the German Catholics, under the able direction of Hohenwart. The fiechs
persisted in holding apart, but the democratic movement of the “ Young Cechs,”
who bitterly opposed the influence of the nobility, and declared themselves- in
favour of an active policy, gained rapidly in strength. Adolf Auersperg, like
his brother before him and Schmerling before both of them, tried to solve the
Bohemian question by violence and a state of siege. The parliamentary majority
was even more extreme than he; the blindness of national prejudice prevented it
from seeing that these disputes made Austria powerless as towards Hungary, and
that they deprived the Parliament of the strength to struggle against the
renewed attacks of absolutism.
In Hungary,
the Compromise had inaugurated a period of brilliant and regular development.
Andr&ssy and his colleagues, Horvdth, the Minister of Justice, Joseph
Eotvos, the Minister of Education and ■Religion, and Lonyay, the Minister
of Finance, had first completed the
190 Consolidation of Hungarian parties. [1867-76
reconstruction
of the. territorial integrity of the kingdom. The Principality of Transylvania
had been simply reincorporated into Hungary, in accordance with the Law of
18.48. With Croatia, Hungary had concluded the Compromise of 1868, which
conceded to the Croats for their internal affairs a fairly wide autonomy and the
exclusive use of their own language. In addition to this, Croatia was allowed
forty representatives in the Lower Hungarian Chamber and three in the Upper.
This Compromise was in some respects obscure, and, throughout, it has given
rise to disputes which were occasionally serious. The military frontier
districts, originally organised as a defence against the Turks, were now
divided between Croatia and Hungary. The political administration was reformed
in a modem sense; the liberty of the comitats was not suppressed, but subjected
to a ministerial control which was sufficiently powerful to prevent it from
degenerating into its former condition of licence and actual rebellion; justice
was transformed by the institution of a professional magistracy nominated by
the Government. The law of nationalities of 1868 reconciled, by truly liberal
provisions, the rights of the Magyar tongue as the state language, and those of
the other tongues spoken in Hungary. This law bore the stamp of Dedk’s sense of
justice and of Eotvos’ political intelligence; but Magyar arrogance soon
enforced an interpretation which was contrary to the spirit of its authors and
to its own letter. In external politics, Andrdssy established the influence of
Hungary. He had invented the idea of the Delegations, and he knew how! to .
make this instrument serve his purposes, which were wholly inspired by the
interests of his country. He also knew how to use the great influence which he
had acquired over the Emperor and Empress.
But, before
long, there was reaction. The work of the restoration and organisation of the
Hungarian State had exhausted Dedk’s party, which was losing all its best men.
Dedk, a worn-out old man, was living in partial retirement; Eotvos had died in
1870; Andrdssy had been made Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1871 ; and Lonyay
was discredited on account of corruption. The support of the Magyar country
districts was bringing to the front Koloman Tisza, who, since 1861, had been at
the head of the party which opposed Dedk. He was a very typical representative
of the national nobility of middle rank, which had never been affected by the
atmosphere of Vienna. During 1873 and the following years a terrible financial
crisis devastated the country: in some years, the deficit rose to 62 million
florins—one-fourth of the receipts; the national credit was ruined. To
extricate the country from this dangerous situation a new strong party was
needed, vigorous with the vigour of youth. It came in the shape of the Liberal
party, formed under the patronage of Dedk, and consisting of his own followers
combined with those of Tisza. A few months later (January 29, 1876), Dedk died,
honoured by the tears of the nation and the dynasty, the respect of his
opponents and of Austria. An epoch of Hungarian history came to an
1867-77]
Bargain between Hungary and Austria. 191
end with him.
He bequeathed to his country an undisputed legacy— the modem State of Hungary,
restored on the lines of dualism. Tisza was soon to breathe a new spirit into
the form which Dedk had created.
While his
young and brilliant colleague, Koloman Szell, was reforming the finances, Tisza
took in hand the renewal of the economic Compromise, that is to say, the
decennial commercial and financial arrangements with Austria. His own past tradition,
and the economic embarrassment of the country, necessitated his obtaining in
the new agreements advantages for Hungarian trade and commerce, together with
supplies for the Hungarian budget. But Austria, who, by the arrangement of
1867, was bound to bear two-thirds of the common expenditure, and almost the
whole of the old debt, was very conscious of her economic superiority, and, not
without reason, looked to the economic Compromise to compensate her for the
equality which had been imposed upon her by the political Compromise. Finally,
Hungary triumphed all along the line. The Austrian Bank became the
Austro-Hungarian Bank, although Austria retained a predominant control therein;
the new fiscal tariff established the increase in duties which the Hungarian
budget needed; and Hungary’s proportionate contribution towards the common
expenditure was not raised.
The
Austrians, who since 1867 had been watching the rapid development of Hungarian
influence, attributed their own misfortunes to the defective organisation of
dualism. From time to time the Radical section of the German majority demanded
the suppression of the Delegations. The Law of 1873 had retained in force the
election of the Delegates of the Chamber of Deputies by provinces; on the other
hand, the Delegates of the Hungarian Parliament were elected by the whole
Chamber— that is, by the majority. Thus, the one Delegation was heterogeneous,
the other homogeneous ; and, on more than one occasion, when the two were at
variance, the Delegates of the Chamber of Peers, and those of the minority of
the Austrian Chamber of Deputies had won the victory for the Hungarians against
the majority of the Austrian Deputies, As a matter of fact, the weakness of
Austria was due to the impotence of a Parliament which had sprung from a false
and deceptive electoral law, and which did not possess the support of the
country. The centralist Germans shut their eyes to this truth. Their wilful
blindness was the swift cause of their ruin. And, as usual, it was external policy
which led to a complete change of system in Austria.
From 1867 to
1870, Beust had prepared the way for revenge on Prussia. But Andrdssy watched
him closely; he pointed out to Beust, and, occasionally, to the foreign
diplomatists, that henceforward, the monarchy must consult the wishes of
Hungary with regard to her foreign policy. Sedan changed the situation.
Austria’s former jealous hostility towards Berlin was succeeded by friendship.
Beust was not the man to carry out this policy for long. His fall was hastened
by the ill-will of
192
Fall of Beust.—Andrassy's ascendancy. [i87i-9
the
Emperor-King, who could not forg'\ e him for having originated the policy of
Potocki and Hohenwart, though he had perceived the danger of it at the eleventh
hour. A week after Hohenwart’s dismissal) he was asked to send in his
resignation, and .vas succeeded by Andr&ssy. Under this statesman, the
policy of the monarchy became a truly Hungarian policy; as a matter of fact,
after 1866 and 1870, it could never have been anything else. Despite the
opposition of both Delegations and both Parliaments, Andr&ssy had long been
preparing the monarchy to claim Bosnia and the Herzegovina as her share of the
inheritance of Turkey. By the Congress of Berlin she acquired them. Thus, the
occupation of these provinces constituted the triumph of the personal policy of
the Emperor-King and his Minister. Hungary, whose opposition had been due to
her hostility towards the Slavs and to her ancient sympathy for Turkey, which
had been revived in 1849, did not maintain a futile attitude of sulkiness, when
the occupation had become an accomplished fact. On the other hand, the Germans
were steadfast in their opposition; the Eastern policy was expensive, and it
increased the Slav population of the monarchy; they refused to accept the logic
of facts. The Catholic Right and the Slavs took advantage of this blunder, and
identified themselves with the new Eastern policy. Thus they were ready to
support the Emperor in a change of system, henceforward inevitable.
Auersperg,
between the demands of his majority on the one hand, and the resistance of the
Court on the other, had, like Schmerling, soon come to the end of his
resources; after 1876 the Ministry dragged on a maimed existence. In July,
1878, he handed in his resignation: but matters were somehow patched up and
Lasser was the only one to retire. He had been deputy in 1848, head of a
Department under Bach, a Minister under Schmerling ; he was the very soul of
the Cabinet, the incarnation of that Germanising and absolutist bureaucracy,
whose narrow Liberalism exhausted itself in sullen anti-clericalism and respect
for constitutional forms. The Emperor was not in favour of a sudden change. But
it was forced upon him by the obstinacy, the blindness, and the wounded pride,
of the chief members of the majority. They were simple enough to believe that
no other system could last for more than six months, not realising that they
themselves had owed all to the grace of the sovereign. Taaffe, together with a
provisional Ministry, “ made ” the election^. Schmerling’s machine worked as
well in his hands as in those of Lasser; in accordance with the desire of
Taaffe and the Emperor, the vote of the great Bohemian landowners threw the
Liberal party into a minority in the Reichsrath. There was a complete change,
as was inevitable, in consequence of the transformation of external policy and
the whole social and intellectual evolution in Austria.
The
Austro-German alliance was signed in 1879 by Haymerle, Andr Assy’s successor,
but it was really the work of Andrdssy. It besrs the Hungarian stamp ; the
Slavs rejected the very idea of an Allfenoe;
the Austrian
Germans would have had it more close—not international, but, for Cisleithania
at any rate, constitutional. But neither Hungary nor the dynasty wished it to
be so close as to imperil independence, or more lax, for they looked to it to
protect them, in their Eastern policy, from the hostility of Russia. Eastern
policy, as appealing to the Slav peoples, demands that at least some part of
the Slavs in the monarchy should not have to complain of oppression; on the
other hand, the dynasty, always concerned about the national aspirations of its
German subjects, and possible intrigues of Prussia, has never, since 1860,
dared to favour the Slavs, except when it felt sure of the disinterestedness of
Germany. Moreover, in 1878, the Slavs were not what they had been in 1848, or
even in 1859 and 1860. Under the protection of the constitutional system and
the influence of the Germans, % national middle class had grown up amongst the
Cechs, a product of the development of trade and industry and of the spread of
education. The Universities, which were still German, produced scholars,
lawyers, and officials, who remained Cech at heart; these men inspired and
organised the lower middle classes, the artisans, the peasants, whom an
increase of wealth and a better system of education had rendered more conscious
of their nationality and more exacting in their demands. The Conservative
aristocracy sided with them. Thus the German party, which was falling to
pieces, found itself confronted by a solid phalanx. The financial crash of
1873, which led to a general economic crisis, had shaken the Liberal
ascendancy. The lower middle classes, who had hitherto been Liberal-Radical,
began to return to clerical Conservatism. This party had been clever enough to
perceive the weak point of their opponents ; the Jews, who play an important
part in the commercial and financial life of Austria, constituted one of the forces
of German Liberalism, and it was easy to point to them as the cause of all the
evil. This the clergy did not fail to do; thus began the period of
Antisemitism. The great Conservative, clerical, and feudal nobility realised
how many weapons it possessed against the detested Liberalism of the narrow and
prejudiced middle class. The first Congress of the Austrian Catholics (May,
1877) revealed to close observers the imminent formation of new political
parties. Thus, the German Liberals were weakened and attacked on all sides ;
they were too self-satisfied to perceive their own mistakes, too much puffed up
with nationalist pride to seek safety in an agreement, at which they might
quite well have arrived, with the Liberal Cechs of the middle class. Should the
dynasty desert them, they must perforce succumb.
After the
elections of 1879, Count Taafle became President of the Council, which office
he retained for fourteen years (August, 1879, to October, 1893). He changed his
colleagues and his programme several times: at first his Cabinet was
Liberal-Conservative; from 1880 to 1890 it was Conservative-Nationalist; and
from 1891 to 1893 it reverted to
its former
colours. Nevertheless, throughout these fourteen years, the leading idea of the
Prime Minister remained the same, namely, to strengthen the power and authority
of the Emperor, his former playmate, whom he served all his life with unshaken
fidelity, and to be the “Minister of the Crown ” as opposed to the
parliamentary Ministers. Although he did not meddle with the forms of the
Constitution, Taaffe intended that the Emperor should be in reality supreme in
high policy, in diplomatic and military affairs, and that the bureaucratic
administration should govern internal affairs in his name, subject to the control,
but not to the compulsion of Parliament. This system necessarily involved the
depression of Parliament. To the parties who supported him, Taaffe systematically
declined to make any concession of principle concerning the Constitution or the
administrative organisation; but he did grant them some practical concessions
in questions affecting the rights of individuals, and, more especially, those
of nationalities. Naturally, these concessions were not obtained without
bargaining, and the Minister did not suffer in the bargain. His enemies, the
German Liberals, constantly reproached him for weakening the State. It is
scarcely paradoxical to maintain that he did exactly the contrary. The defeat
of the Fundamental Articles and the long duration of the Auersperg Ministry had
led the opponents of the Constitution to despair of a sudden and complete
constitutional change. Taaffe inured them to the application of the
Constitution, which they detested; he proved that it might even be of service
to them; thus he strengthened it, and he strengthened the State, for his
reading of unsatisfactory clauses rendered them tolerable even to those against
whom they had been directed. National struggles had existed before his time; he
was not responsible for them. On the contrary, by making Parliament the field
of combat for national struggles, he undoubtedly lessened the danger which they
represented to the State, and he contributed towards preparing the way for the
condition of equilibrium and national agreement towards which Austria was
slowly progressing.
The gradual
breaking up of the parties favoured his policy. The German Liberals, who had
been placed in a minority by the elections of 1879, were still more weakened by
the elections of 1885, for the electoral reform of 1883 had given the Cechs an
assured majority among the great landowners of Bohemia, and, by lowering the
franchise, it had placed in the hands of the lower middle classes a great
number of constituencies in the towns and country districts. Moreover, the Liberals
were divided, and the Nationalist Radicals were making headway against them.
The three groups which supported the Ministry—the Cechs, the Poles, and the
Catholic Centre—were almost equal in numbers, but widely different in
aspirations and interests; they were only united in their hatred of Liberal
Germanism, and their fear lest, by a sudden change of policy, the Emperor might
begin once more to favour it. They were thus at the mercy of the Ministry,
whose real strength lay in
the gradual
disintegration and separation of the political groups. Its success and long
life must be attributed to the skill and facility with which it contrived to
take advantage of this process.
After the
struggle with the finances had continued for ten years, Dunajewski, a Slav Minister,
succeeded in getting them into order. From 1877 onwards the State began to
resume the railways, which it had sold for a very low price at a time of great
pressure. A system of state insurance for the working classes was set up, and,
on the other hand, the system of incorporated crafts was revived. However, this
vaunted panacea was of no avail to the industrial lower middle class, the
artisans. Finally, the organisation of the Austrian Landwekr was strengthened
by military laws in accordance with the wishes and demands of the Emperor.
Although the Triple Alliance was anything but popular with the majority, it was
never seriously attacked.
The various
parties of the majority gained distinct advantages, albeit considerably fewer
than they had hoped for. In 1878, the Cechs had been obliged to abandon the
hope of obtaining decisive concessions in exchange for their return to the
Reichsrath after ten years’ absence: they had to content themselves with
promises and one portfolio. Afterwards, in the Bohemian Diet and in the
Bohemian deputation to the Reichsrath they obtained the majority and secured a
national University—founded in 1882 by dividing between the Cechs and the
Germans the old University of Prague—together with a number of secondary
schools. By the decrees of 1880 and 1886, their language was placed on an
almost equal footing with German in Bohemia and Moravia for public or official
life. A number of Cechs were admitted to the ranks of the Austrian administration
without being obliged to conform to German standards. In moments of irritation
or depression, Rieger himself was wont to deplore this “ policy of crumbs.”
Nevertheless, the results obtained by it were really valuable, as was shown
several years later. It was under Taaffe that the progress which the Cech
nation had been making since 1848 assumed such solid proportions as prevented
any aggressive or durable return to the policy of Germanisation.
The Poles
established their sway in Galicia, as Taaffe had handed over to them the second
nationality of the country, the Huthenes, who, since 1848 and 1861, sought the
protection of the German Liberals. Under pretext of developing autonomy in the
country, the Polish nobles made it their private preserve, allowing no voice to
Vienna, to the Government, or to the Reichsrath, save for grants of favours to
themselves, such as the construction of railways more or less strategical, or
the remission of taxes. The Catholic Centre had, for its share, the schools and
the general Conservative spirit of the administration; in 1883 the principle of
denominationalism was restored by a side-wind; in 1888, Prince Liechtenstein
wished to have it proclaimed openly. But there was such lively resistance, not
only on the part of the German Liberals, but also
196 The question of electoral reform. [i86i-96
ou that of
the Young fiechs, that the Emperor himself intervened to have the proposal
withdrawn. The Ministry, undermined by this shock, began to decline from that
date onwards.
The
parliamentary bargaining, which was the daily routine of Taaffe’s system, was
only possible in the political conditions established by the Constitution of
1861, with deputies elected, not by a really popular vote, but by a limited and
distorted franchise—deputies who represented, not the people, but cliques. Now
the Government had exhausted its store of concessions, and, at the same time,
the evolution of intellectual, economic, and political life was creating new,
spontaneous, and popular forces, which attacked the system. Bohemia was the
cause of its ruin. From 1861 onwards, and more especially from 1867, the
Austrian question had centred in Bohemia. For the question of nationalities in
Cisleithania is essentially the question of Cechs and Germans. The party of the
Old Cechs had forfeited their influence by following blindly the lead of the
nobility; their policy was denounced as reactionary and anti-national by the
Young fiechs, who were Liberals and Radicals, and who invoked the tradition of
Hus; finally, their uncertain attitude towards Liechtenstein’s proposal
completed the reversion of feeling. The elections of 1889 gave the Diet of
Bohemia to the Young fiechs. The Government, to defeat them, attempted to
reconcile the Old Cechs and the Germans; and the Emperor intervened in person.
But the force of public opinion brought about the failure of the scheme, and,
in 1891, the Young Cedis obtained all the fiech seats of Bohemia in the
Reichsrath. Taaffe, after making a vain attempt to come to an understanding
with the German Left, proposed an electoral reform on the basis of what was
almost universal suffrage, which would have revolutionised the condition of
Austrian politics. The combination of his Liberal enemies on the Left and his
clerical friends on the Right, forced him to withdraw. In his last project he
had risen above himself, and given to Austrian politics a new and fruitful
impulse which was almost revolutionary.
From 1893 to
1896, there was but one question in Austria, that of electoral reform. The
original narrowness and injustice of Schmerling’s system had increased tenfold
during the last thirty years. The middle classes, to whom it had confined the
electoral franchise, had, under the influence of economic and social changes,
melted away; in the interval between the elections of 1885 and those of 1891,
the proportion of electors to the population had fallen from 70 to 61 per mille
in the towns, and from 77 to 75 per mille in the country districts. The working
classes, although daily increasing in numbers and social importance, had no place
in the Constitution. The agitation in favour of universal suffrage, which had
begun several years before, was supported, in the first place, by the
Socialists, who, since 1888, had united to form a single party; secondly, by
the Christian-Socialists, whose programme, highly tinged
1893-6]
191
with
Antisemitism, received the growing support of the lower middle classes;
thirdly, by the German Nationalists, from hatred of the Moderate Liberal middle
class; and lastly, by the Young Cechs, because of their opposition to their
Conservative nobility and the Old Cechs. This coalition of all the political
and national opponents of the German middle classes, this remarkable
combination of extreme national sections and new international or supernational
parties, Socialist and Antisemitic, was profoundly significant. Only by
electoral reform could the Austrian Parliament be charged with new life and
vigour; only by the removal of the barriers to the franchise was it possible to
merge the narrow selfinterested cliques, which were enthralled by the
Nationalist spirit in its most vulgar form. For these could only be swept away
by the popular flood of men who, in order to live, must needs work, and who,
without in any way sacrificing their own nationality, would refuse to
subordinate their existence and their interests as men to the self-interested
subtleties of Nationalist politicians. Taaffe had identified himself with this
just point of view. He had committed the Government to electoral reform, and thus
made it inevitable. The coalition Government which succeeded him, and in which
the German Liberals and the clerical and Polish Conservatives had, for want of
a programme, pooled their selfish interests and their terror of innovations,
strove during the two years of its barren existence to find a formula by which
it might decently bury the question of reform. This reform was finally voted
under the next Ministry, a coalition Cabinet of officials, with Count Badeni, a
former Governor of Galicia, as President. The electoral reform, which was
promulgated in June, 1896, merely completed the work of Schmerling. To the four
Curiae already in existence it added a fifth, the Curia of universal suffrage,
in which all Austrian citizens above 24 years of age, whether privileged
electors or not, were enrolled. There were 72 representatives of this Curia,
which comprised 5£ million voters; the four privileged Curiae retaining 353
seats for 1,700,000 electors. It was a caricature of Taaffe’s scheme, and it
involved the inevitable failure of his great idea; it meant, not the
substitution of economic struggles for national disputes, but the addition of
one to the other. But, for this very reason, it also meant the certainty of a
new reform within a brief period. The reform of 1896 marks the close of an
epoch in Austrian history; it prepares the way for a ten years’ crisis, during
which the internal conditions of Austria and the relations between the two
States of the monarchy were alike transformed.
In Hungary
Tisza remained in power for exactly as many years as Taaffe in Austria. He also
changed his colleagues more than once, but never changed his policy. His system
was essentially national—a system of Magyarisation; while in Austria the
efforts of Germanisation were relaxed, in Hungary the forces of assimilation
were being stretched to their utmost limit. At the slightest manifestation of
national spirit,
198
[1873-90
not even
political, but purely literary or religious, the Slovaks, and still more the
Roumans, were accused of Panslavist or seditious sentiments, and severely
punished. From these persecutions, and the injustice of the electoral laws,
which sanctioned every kind of pressure and corruption, they took refuge in
passive tactics. In 1873, the Saxons of Transylvania lost a great part of
their former privileges. The Croats opposed more lively resistance. Their
autonomy was irksome to the national zeal and domineering instincts of Tisza;
both were still further stimulated after that the occupation of Bosnia and the
Herzegovina had aroused in Croatia the desire and the hope of forming a great
southern Slav State, which, together with Austria, and Hungary confined to the
limits of the Drave, would constitute the third section of a triple monarchy.
The Hungarian and Croatian Compromise was renewed in 1879, and again in 1889,
but not without difficulty. There were riotous scenes at Agram in 1883. Order
was restored, but Tisza had to give way; and the recollection of these
conflicts gave to Hungarian and Croatian relations, in spite of their
superficial correctness, a sense of hostility and insecurity.
The finances,
which had once more been drained by the cost of the occupation of Bosnia, were
set in order by Wekerle, one of Tisza’s ablest colleagues. The formation of a
state system which included all the important railways, with the exception of
one, secured for Hungary the control of the commercial land routes to the East.
Baross, a Minister of genius, introduced into this system the well-known “Zone
tariff”; and the consequent reduction in prices led to an enormous increase in
the number of travellers, and the rapid development of trade and commerce. The
reform of the Chamber of Magnates secured for this assembly greater authority
and dignity, and at the same time, by the institution of a qualification of
3000 florins paid in land-tax, it diminished the number of hereditary members,
which had hitherto been excessive; it also introduced an aristocracy of merit,
by the creation of fifty life magnates, nominated by the King. But all these
reforms, though useful in themselves, did not constitute sufficient
justification for so protracted a Ministry. Tisza, like Taaffe, but in a
different way, had demoralised Parliament: he was the head of a clique rather
than a party; he looked upon power as an end in itself, and, although himself
incorruptible, he strengthened his position by obtaining material advantages
for his followers, such as salaried posts or seats on the boards of industrial
or financial companies. He fell from office in 1890, owing to the hatred of his
enemies and the lassitude of his own party.
There ensued
several years of political and ecclesiastical conflict. The majority of the
Magyars are Catholics; but the Protestants are numerous and influential. Mixed
marriages are of frequent occurrence • by the Law of 1868, the children of such
marriages were to be brought up in the religion of the parent whose sex they
have inherited. But the civil registration was in the hands of the
ecclesiastics, and the Catholic
priests,
encouraged by Rome, began, in defiance of the law, to baptise all the children
of mixed marriages and to inscribe their names in the parish registers. Thus it
became necessary.to transfer the civil registration to the secular administration;
and public opinion, reform having been begun, insisted that it should be
complete, demanding civil marriage. Tisza s successor, Count Szapdry, being
opposed to civil marriage, withdrew. Under Wekerle, who succeeded him,
Szil&gyi, Minister of Justice, proposed the reform; it was accepted by the
deputies, but rejected by the magnates, under the influence, so it was said, of
the Court. The Ministry resigned, but it was found impossible to replace it.
Then Wekerle and Szildgyi, recalled to power, and fortified with the King’s
consent, passed the law concerning civil marriage; then they again withdrew,
for the King could not forgive them for their resistance to his will. Count
Khuen-Hederv&ry, the Banus of Croatia, was called upon to form a Cabinet for
the second time within a few months. He was high in the King s favour, and it
was thought that he was destined to become the Hungarian Taaffe; again he was
unable to find colleagues amongst the majority. (He has been more successful in
1901.) Then Baron B&nffy, President of the Chamber, formed a Liberal
Ministry, which passed the latest political and religious laws. In sum, these
laws instituted lay civil registration for all, together with religious
freedom; they placed the Jewish faith on a footing of equality with the various
Christian religions. They had, moreover, a national bearing, for they
transferred, to state agents the important functions of civil registration
hitherto exercised by the priests, who, among the orthodox Slavs and Roumans,
were agents of Nationalist and anti-Magyar propaganda, or were looked upon as
such. Hence, Hungary gained a twofold victory, which doubly strengthened her
position.
The fusion of
Hungarian parties and the change of system established in Austria in 1879
exercised a very perceptible influence on the working of dualism. The
preponderance of Hungary in the monarchy, which was the inevitable consequence
of the system established in 1867, became more and more marked. Tisza
controlled a solid and loyal majority, but it was at the same time strong and
exacting. On the other hand, Taaffe’s Parliament was weak and disunited. In
consequence, the Court did not treat the two Delegations in the same way; it
made concessions to the Hungarians, but exercised authority over the Austrians.
In external policy, besides Count K&lnoky, who had succeeded Haymerle in
1881, Tisza was the only person of importance. The Austrian Parliament,
Conservative and Slav, was averse from the Triple Alliance, which, however,
accorded with the ideas and sentiments of the Magyars. The government of Bosnia
and the Herzegovina, the occupied provinces, had been attached to the common
Ministry of Finance. K&llay, a Hungarian, received this portfolio in 1882.
He understood the problem, pacified and reorganised the two provinces, assured
their material prosperity.
200
Changes in the Austrian Parliament. [1887-97
He had been a
diplomat before he became a Minister; his traditions were Conservative; his
administration and politics were directed by the general interests of the
monarchy.. But Hungary, whose Kings had formerly reigned over Bosnia, looked
upon the country as belonging to her, and the Austrians were incensed that they
should have to pay two- thirds of the expenses of its occupation, and at the
same time, enjoy no more authority over it than the Hungarians, perhaps even
less. On all sides, they saw the advance of Hungarian influence and Hungarian
claims, and the decay of the former unity of the monarchy. In 1889, the army
exchanged its old unitary title of Imperial Army for the dualist title of
Imperial and Royal Army; many Austrians thought that even the dynasty was
abandoning its time-honoured ideal of unity. Then, why should Austria saddle
herself with the burden of dualism for the sake of a precarious and delusive
union? In 1887, the economic Compromise had again been renewed without much
difficulty; but, in 1897, the task promised to be both difficult and dangerous.
It was to
fulfil this task that Count Badeni had been called to power in Austria. His success
in Galicia had won for him the reputation of a capable administrator. But he
knew nothing about the rest of Austria or the Reichsrath. His methods were
those of cunning and violence rather than those of an accomplished statesman.
His fall was rapid and complete. He had only one success, his electoral reform,
and that was, to a great extent, due to his predecessors. The Chamber which
resulted from it, and which was elected in 1897, was quite unlike those which
had preceded the reform. Even more clearly than the reform itself, it bore the
stamp of the social transformations of the last twenty years, and of the
political changes heralded by the method of Count Taaffe. The united German
Left, the old middle class party, had lost its unity, and one-half of its
numbers; on the Right, it was being abandoned by the group of great landowners,
who were inevitably attached to the Government; on the Left, it was losing the
deputies from the towns and country districts, “ the Progressives,” who,
henceforward, were scarcely to be distinguished from the Populist party, the
ancient German Nationalist party, which had grown to be the largest of the
German parties. The Clericals, whether Conservative or demagogic
(Christian-Socialists or Antisemites), had won a great number of seats. Bohemia
and Moravia had elected a majority of the Young Cechs. Among the
representatives of universal suffrage, there figured for the first time
fourteen Socialists (Germans, Cechs, and Poles). The 425 deputies were divided
into 24 groups. The Slavs, together with the German Catholics, made up a
ms'ority, but they did not possess the majority of two-thirds which was
required to bring about any change in the Constitution. In view of this minute
subdivision of parties, Count Badeni wished to reintroduce the system of Count
Taaffe; but the time for it had passed by, and the pupil lacked the master’s
cunning. The
1897]
201
renewal
of the economic Compromise constituted his chief difficulty. In order to obtain
a majority inclined to ratify the concessions which he was making to Hungary,
Count Badeni granted to the Cechs the “linguistic” decrees of April 6, 1897,
which are described below. But thereby he aroused opposition on the part of the
Germans, and produced a parliamentary crisis which, after more than ten years,
is not yet concluded.
The
question of Bohemia is, as we have said, the central point of the
constitutional question in Austria. It is in order to maintain their relations
with the Germans of Bohemia that the Germans of the Alpine provinces of Austria
are in favour of centralisation, and it is in order to secure for themselves a
compact and formidable base of Germanic support against the attacks of the
Slavs that the Germans of Bohemia adhere to this policy. As Herbst once said,
they gravitate towards Vienna; for them Bohemia is merely “a geographical
expression.” At present they are asking for it to be divided in accordance with
the linguistic boundaries; the German parts, the “closed German territory,” to
have a national administration, which would be independent of Prague, and
subject to the direct authority of Vienna. The Cechs are federalists. For them,
Austria is not a State, but rather a collection of States, namely, Bohemia,
Moravia, and Silesia, countries subject to the Crown of Bohemia; Galicia,
Tyrol, Archduchy of Austria, and others. They hold that all these States have
as much right to exist and to preserve their integrity as Austria herself,
which they unite to form. They therefore refuse to accept the division of
Bohemia according to the preponderance of German or Cech nationality. The
decrees of 1897, which practically required from every government official
employed in Bohemia and Moravia an equal knowledge of Cech and of German were
doubly galling to the Germans. In the first place, these decrees imposed a
special rule, the same for both countries, which virtually created for them a
special body of government officials, thereby seemingly consecrating the idea
of federalisation and preparing the way for its fulfilment. In the second, the
decrees required of all government officials an equal proficiency in the two
languages, thereby favouring the Cechs, who, through tradition, and for
purposes of education, had always learnt German, while the Germans of Bohemia
had, from pride, long refused to learn Cech, which they looked upon as an
inferior language. These decrees were no revolutionary innovation, for those of
1880 and 1886 had formed precedents, indeed, the 1880 decrees worked perhaps an
even greater change, taking into consideration the time at which they appeared.
But the whole of the political, the social, and consequently, the national,
atmosphere of Austria had changed. In 1880, the Germans had confined themselves
to verbal protest; in 1897, their hostility assumed the positive and effectual
form of popular manifestations and parliamentary obstruction. For the time
being, they were victorious; but it was their turn to be surprised when the
Cechs met the withdrawal of the decrees—which constituted
202
Suspension of the Constitution. [1897-1901
the
triumph of the Germans—with obstruction that proved likewise invincible. For
neither Germans nor Cechs were any longer inclined to accept without demur the
dictates of bureaucracy. Although not yet capable of establishing for
themselves a new national order of things, by coming to an agreement with each
other, they had, nevertheless, arrived at a stage of sufficient strength and
maturity to enable them to withstand any change in the existing national order
of things made without their collaboration, and opposed to their interests.
They had arrived at what has been correctly termed “ negative national
autonomy.”
Neither
by gentleness nor by force could Count Badeni overcome the German opposition:
his attempt to use violence led to a parliamentary revolution, disturbances in
Vienna, and, in December, 1897, to his own resignation. A provisional Ministry,
under Baron Gautsch, adjourned Parliament, in order that the Ministry might
exercise its power of promulgating the budget by decree, together with a
provisional Compromise with Hungary. It was the first time that the famous
Article 14 had been applied in this way, and it involved a practical suspension
of the Constitution; but otherwise the life of the State would have been
obstructed. The semi-parliamentary Ministry of Count Francis Thun-Hohenstein,
formed in March, 1898, was similarly driven by opposition to the use of the
same expedient. When the opposition threatened to prevent the election of the Austrian
Delegation, thus impeding the action of dualism, the Court became agitated and,
in October,' 1899, Count Clary, assisted by a Cabinet of officials, took
office. He announced that the language question would be settled by
legislation. Within two months, the opposition of the Cechs forced him to
withdraw. After an interval, the Emperor entrusted to Korber the task of coming
to an agreement with the Germans and the Cechs. In many ways, the new Prime
Minister recalled the statesmen of the period of enlightened despotism. He was
an official of wide experience and great ambition, with an exceptional capacity
for hard work (at certain times, he directed as many as three departments at
once); with ideas, which were in many cases very Liberal, he combined methods
which were occasionally peremptory and almost despotic. He had no real sympathy
with Parliament, he did not believe in the value of its help, nor was he
sincerely convinced of the need to put it in working order. He invented the
system of non-political politics; that is to say, he set aside the national and
political questions and endeavoured to concentrate the attention of the people
on economic and material subjects, which bring them together. Nevertheless, the
essential problem of Austria, that is, the problem of nationalities, is always
certain to reappear in the foreground, and imperiously to demand a solution.
Korber
began by bringing in Bills on the language question ; these bills, which were
regarded unfavourably by Cechs and Germans alike, did not succeed in disarming
obstruction. He then tried a dissolution. But
1901-6]
203
the
elections of January, 1901, brought still more strength to the National-
Radical parties; the number of declared Pangermanists was trebled, and they
announced in public that it was their desire to see Austria absorbed into
Germany. On this Chamber the Ministry tested the value of its formula. It
placed before the Chamber a programme of important works, such as the
improvement of navigable ways, the proposed connexion of the basins of the
Danube, Elbe, Oder, Vistula, and Dniester, to be accomplished by a network of
canals; the construction of a new railway system which was to cross the Alps,
bringing Bohemia and Upper Austria into communication with Trieste. This gold
mine, for it required a loan of about a thousand million Kronen, was joyfully
welcomed by all the parties; but, no sooner had the credit been voted, than
they returned to the burning question of the languages. The fiechs led in obstruction,
but all parties were annoyed by the stagnation of Parliament and the
helplessness of the Government. Korber, attacked by both Court and Parliament,
was obliged to resign in December, 1904. In consequence of the development of
the Hungarian crisis, Baron Gautsch, his successor, suddenly found himself
confronted by the question of universal suffrage. This Prime Minister, who had
at first very decidedly opposed Reform, ended by yielding to the manifestations
of popular feeling; in February, 1906, he brought in the scheme for the
introduction of universal suffrage into Austria. In the following April,
parliamentary difficulties compelled him to retire, but his successors, Prince
Conrad Hohenlohe, and, a month later, Baron Beck, declared themselves still more
openly in favour of Reform.
The
decline of constitutionalism in Austria had necessarily increased still further
the power which Hungary had possessed in the monarchy since 1867. The
Compromise enforces, as one of the preliminary conditions of the union of the
two States, the exercise of a constitutional system in Austria. Hungary was,
therefore, in a position to make her own terms for accepting the application of
Article 14 to the renewal of the economic agreements. She was in control of the
situation, and Baron B&nffy had no difficulty in obtaining from Count Thun,
not only concessions of form, which were highly flattering to her self-respect,
but also very material advantages, namely, a considerable extension of
Hungarian influence over the Austro-Hungarian Bank, and a more advantageous
distribution of the common customs receipts. On his side, he agreed that the
new arrangements should remain in force, not for a given period of time, i.e.
ten years, but merely until they should be revoked. As revocation could only be
accomplished by means of a law, and therefore with the consent of the monarch,
he was left in control of the situation, and the decennial crisis of dualism
was effectually prevented. These arrangements aroused the opposition of the
Extreme Left or Kossuthian party, whose programme consisted in the substitution
of personal union for dualism. In order to overcome this opposition, Baron
BAnfly, and Tisza, his
patron,
attempted a parliamentary coup d'lttat; but it failed, owing to the secession of
the most distinguished members of the majority, and Baron Banffy fell from
power. Under Koloman Szell, the new Prime .Minister, the spirit of De&k
seemed to recover its advantage in the Liberal party over the system of Tisza.
By a new coalition the Liberals won the support of the National party, which
had hitherto centred itself round Count Albert Apponyi. They gained thereby in
numbers, moral authority, parliamentary value, and influence throughout the
country, and, what was more important, henceforward they were able to avail
themselves of the eloquence, patriotism, integrity, and popularity of Count
Apponyi. The economic questions were settled by the “formula of Szell”: this
made temporary provisions which were to be valid until 1907. That year was the
date not only for the expiration of the new economic arrangements—which, for
the first time, assumed in Hungary the form of autonomous laws, not treaties
with Austria—but also for the termination of the commercial treaties with
foreign countries. Thus, in 1907, Hungary was to control the economic future of
the monarchy. A new fiscal tariff was drawn up with the consent of Austria to
take effect in 1907.
The
Ministry had won the sympathy of the Opposition by its attempts to purify and
protect parliamentary representation, as evidenced in the law prohibiting
members from taking part in the direction of companies having dealings with the
State, and that which transferred to the Supreme Court the right of
invalidating elections. But hostility was again aroused by a projected military
law. The party of independence and of 1848, that is to say, the Nationalist
Kossuthian Opposition, is, on principle, antagonistic to the common
institutions and especially to the common army, for it claims the right to a
national Hungarian army. To the Court, the essence of dualism consists in
military unity. The conflict thus did not admit of compromise. Szell, overcome
by the Opposition, resigned. Finally Count Khuen-Hedervdry was made President
of the Council; but, suspected by the Opposition and almost equally by the
majority, and weakened by the remembrance of his former failures, he was
obliged to retire at the end of a few months. He was succeeded by Count Stephen
Tisza, son of Koloman Tisza, a well-informed and gifted man, hard-working and
energetic, but obstinate and inflexible, superior to his father in ability, but
more unfortunate. In order to make matters easier for him, the sovereign
granted some military concessions. These were as follows: the existing flags
and banners of the common ai*my were to be exchanged in the Hungarian regiments
for new ones which were to bear insignia denoting the sovereignty of Hungary;
the Hungarian regiments were to be commanded by Hungarian officers only; though
German was to remain the common language for military purposes, the use of
Magyar was to be extended. But Tisza had too many enemies ; as a strict and
zealous Protestant, he was exposed to the hostility of the Catholics; as his
father’s son, he incurred the hatred of
the
Kossuthian party. He also met with personal hostility; Count Apponyi abandoned
the Liberal party as soon as Tisza was made head of it, and Count Julius
AndrAssy, son of the first President of the Hungarian Council, who had
inherited his father’s ability, assumed an attitude of reserve and suspicion.
Tisza
wished to effect a radical parliamentary cure. In order to curb obstruction it
was necessary to introduce closure into the Hungarian Parliament; he therefore
proposed to reform the rules of the Chamber. A President, who was devoted to
him, attempted to pass this measure by violent means; whereupon a group of
dissidents, led by Andrassy and Szell, left the Liberal party; turbulent scenes
ensued in the Chamber, and Parliament was dissolved. By the elections of
January, 1905, the Independent party, which was opposed to the Compromise, and
still more to the way in which it had been administered since 1867, became the
largest party in the Chamber; together with its allies, the Dissidents and the
Catholics (the latter formed a “popular” party which had originated with the
political and ecclesiastical campaign of 1894), it was in the majority. Five
months were spent in the attempt to form a Ministry, chosen from among the
coalition, the latter demanding important military concessions which the King
refused to grant. Then, in June, 1905, General Fej£rv£ry, who for fifteen years
had been Minister of National Defence in the Liberal Cabinets, and who
possessed the entire confidence of the sovereign, sacrificed himself to form a
Government which would protect the King and attempt to reconcile the Crown and
the parliamentary majority. The latter proved unmanageable. In order to reduce
this majority, the Government under the guidance of Kristoffy threw out the
idea of an electoral reform, which was to introduce universal suffrage into
Hungary.
The
aim of the Reform was the same in Hungary as in Austria. First, to extend the
suffrage with a view to opening the door of politics to the working classes,
who bear the heaviest share of the public burdens, and who care little to
discuss the details of the language question or the subtleties of public law;
not to eliminate from public life the question of nationalities, for this would
have been impossible, but to put it in competition with economic and social
questions, and hence to secure the active, normal existence of the State. The
electoral system of Hungary is even worse than that of Schmerling ; its extreme
complexity
there are thirty-six electoral
qualifications—gives clear evidence of the
intention
to confine the electoral franchise almost exclusively to the Magyars, and,
amongst these, to a few privileged classes. The electoral arrangements give to
the Magyars a representation which may be twelve times as great in proportion
to their numbers as that of the Roumans, for instance. The procedure for
deciding upon electoral qualifications allows the Minister presiding over the
offices in which the lists of voters are drawn up to exclude practically all
the electors whom he disapproves
from
the exercise of their rights. The proportion of electors to the population,
which has been steadily decreasing for some time, has now sunk to 52'5 per
mille. One-fourth of the electors are officials or employees of the State.
Under these conditions, and in consequence of historic tradition, the political
and parliamentary staff is chosen almost exclusively from one caste, that of
the lesser nobility, whose education is purely formal, juridical, and verbal,
and who adhere to the old “gravaminal” policy of seeking out and denouncing any
real or fancied attack on the constitutional rights of Hungary. Under the
projected Reform, which trebles the number of electors, this petty and
turbulent element ought to yield to the force of the workers, to the productive
element; for the labouring classes, which had hitherto been excluded from the
electoral body, would constitute one-third of it. Without impairing the Magyar
hegemony, the Reform ought to secure for the non-Magyar nationalities a
representation which, if not proportionate to their numbers, would nevertheless
be considerable. It should thus compel the Magyar parties to unite, for how
could they continue their vain discussions about trifling points, when they
found themselves confronted by the serious question of nationalities in a
Parliament thus transformed ? Moreover, among the deputies of the minor
nationalities (the Roumans, Slovaks, Serbs, and Germans) the Court hoped to
find allies who would join with the Magyar moderate element in securing the
uninterrupted working of the dualist forms of government for affairs common to
both countries.
It
was not without hesitation that the sovereign had identified himself with
Reform. Count Goluchowski, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Baron Gautsch,
represented to him that universal suffrage would prove infectious; if it were
granted to Hungary, how could it be withheld from Austria ? Would it be
possible to preserve the continuity of the external policy of the monarchy,
and, more especially, to maintain the alliance with Germany, which forms the
mainstay of this policy, in the face of Delegations elected (though indirectly)
by universal suffrage, Delegations that would prove more exacting and less
manageable than before ? It was the obstinacy of the Hungarian coalition, which
rejected all his attempts at conciliation, that finally decided the
Emperor-King. Even when thus threatened, the coalition remained obdurate; in
vain Count Andr&ssy opened direct negotiations with the King in its name.
Then the Fejervdry Ministry announced the dissolution of the Chamber; the
Parliament buildings were occupied by soldiers, and a colonel read the decree
of dissolution from the platform. At the same time, the commercial treaty,
which had recently been concluded between Germany and the monarchy, was put in
operation by a royal decree, in defiance of the Constitution. There was no
really serious movement on the part of the people in response to this twofold
attack on constitutional law. Then the coalition yielded. Wekerle, the Prime
Minister, identified with
1906]
207
political
and ecclesiastical reforms, formed a coalition Cabinet, in which Francis
Kossuth, son of the great Louis Kossuth, together with Count Apponyi, stood for
the Independent party, and Count Andr&ssy for the dissidents, who had
become the Constitutional party. The “ compact ” made with the Crown secured,
in the first place, indemnity for the members of the Cabinets of Tisza and
Fejerv&ry, and for the officials who had served them ; in the second,
parliamentary ratification of the commercial treaty with Germany; in the
third, the normal working of the government and the administration in Hungary,
and the satisfactory conduct of affairs common to both countries ; in the
fourth, the postponement of any change in the army until the electoral Reform
should be put into effect. This was to be done so soon as current affairs and
arrears had been cleared up. The Reform was to be at least as extensive as that
designed by the Fejerv&ry Ministry, and based on the principle of universal
suffrage (April, 1906). The old Liberal party decided to dissolve itself, and
in the May elections the Kossuth party obtained an absolute majority in the
Chamber.
A
period of transformation and rejuvenescence in the history of Austria and
Hungary began with the almost simultaneous accession to power of the respective
Ministries of Beck and Wekerle. The forms of government which, in 1867, had
been instituted in Austria, Hungary, and in the dual system, expressed very
nearly the equilibrium of political, economic, social, and national forces at
that date. Since that time these forms of government had remained practically
unchanged whilst, on the other hand, the equilibrium was being shifted. This
had given rise to parliamentary difficulties, to crises of obstruction, and to
that surprising and ridiculous phenomenon, a monarchy which, in external
affairs, tries to play the part of a Great Power and occasionally succeeds,
whilst, so far as home affairs are concerned, it is unable to obtain for itself
a peaceful existence and an assured future. Since 1906, electoral Reform has
been accomplished in Austria and promised to Hungary beyond recall; the
economic Compromise has at length been renewed, and, for the first time, to the
equal satisfaction of both States; external policy has been revived and
reinvigorated by a bold offensive in the East, which is not without errors or
defects, but which, by forming new ties of mutual interest between the two
States and by exposing them to common dangers, has strengthened the feeling of
solidarity and brought them together. All this affords a new guarantee for the
duration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which has sometimes appeared to be
on the point of vanishing, and which has so often been declared essential to
the well-being of Europe.
In
Austria, Baron Beck formed a mixed Cabinet of officials and members of
Parliament (May, 1906). He withdrew all the schemes for the economic Compromise
which his predecessors had put forward, thus asserting the complete freedom of
Austria in the requisite negotiations.
208
He
then gave his undivided attention to the electoral Reform, which had matured
under the Governments of Gautsch and Hohenlohe and was now ready to be put into
execution. It only required a few modifications. The Chamber of Peers deemed it
revolutionary, and, in order to obtain their support, the Government was
obliged to fix, by law, a maximum and minimum for the number of Life Peers,
that is to say, to furnish a guarantee against the wholesale creation of Peers.
The new electoral Law of January 26, 1907, granted the right to vote to all
Austrians above 24 years of age, who had not forfeited their rights, and who
had resided in a commune within the constituency for a year. It suppressed the
Curiae. Henceforward, each parliamentary district was to have its own deputy.
These constituencies, which were divided into two classes (urban and rural
respectively) and which were, so far as possible, of homogeneous nationality,
differed considerably in extent and population; their boundaries were
determined by law, once for all. By means of this inequality, and of the
unchangeable nature of the law, it was found possible to safeguard, within the
requisite proportions, the privileges of certain nationalities, whose hostility
might have imperilled Reform. Hence, it did not establish absolute equality and
perfect justice. The Germans, who formed 35*8 per cent, of the population, were
allowed to retain 45 per cent, of the seats; whereas the fiechs, for a
population of 23'2 per cent., had only 20'6 per cent., and the Ruthenes 6 2 per
cent, for a population of 13 2 per cent. The aggrieved nationalities protested;
not one, despite the justice of its complaints, wished to impede the success of
a Reform which was, in the main, beneficial to all of them, but they reserved
for themselves the right of removing this remaining injustice in the future.
The
Reform was justified by the elections of 1907, which completely upset the
proportions of the different parties. The Parliament elected by universal
suffrage was quite unlike the old Parliament of Curiae. In the new Chamber,
which has 516 members, the two strongest parties were no longer the nationalist
but the economic parties, namely, the Christian Socialists, who had 96 seats,
and the Social Democrats, who had 87; on the other hand, the Pangermans had
fallen from 15 to 3. Among the different German parties, the votes were
distributed as follows:
720,000 Christian Socialists; 514,000 Socialists;
146,000 Agrarians ( this is a mixed party, economic and nationalist, but less
irreconcilable than the old nationalist parties) ; 146,000 Populists (the
nationalist party of the lower middle classes); 116,000 Liberals (upper middle
class and intellectuals) ; 71,000 National Radicals ; 20,000 Pangermans.
Similarly, among the Cechs, mixed parties, such as Catholics and Agrarians, had
gained considerably at the expense of the purely nationalist parties, and the
Social Democrats had obtained two-fifths of the whole votes. It was, in fact,
the dawn of a new Austria—an Austria which was stronger than the old one, and
quite determined to live.
The
history of the Parliament in 1907 and 1908 furnishes additional proof of the
efficacy of this reform. There are still fierce national struggles, possibly
more violent than heretofore, but they are no longer able to impede the action
of Parliament. Obstruction has become the weapon of the weakest sections, and
in their hands it has lost its force. In decisive moments, the great parties,
more especially the economic parties (i.e. the Socialists, Christian
Socialists, and Agrarians), have shown clearly and vigorously that they do not
intend to allow the people’s Parliament to be paralysed. Thus the sovereign
has been justified in his faith in universal suffrage; he has been rewarded for
his energetic and unfaltering support of it. But all the difficulties are not
yet surmounted; far from it. The national struggle is raging in Bohemia today
with unparalleled violence; it has led to the fall of Baron Beck, and it has
placed Baron Bienerth, his successor (1907), in a position which presents
difficulties seemingly inextricable. But the electoral reform has indicated the
path which leads to solutions ; an understanding between the peoples, becoming
more and more conscious of their own strength and of that of their opponents.
Advance in democracy has naturally involved advance in national autonomy which,
by entrusting to each nationality a national administration and the care of its
own exclusively national interests, will eliminate the chief causes of strife
and promote agreement concerning the important political and economic interests
common to all. In the rescript which summoned Baron Bienerth to the Ministry,
the Emperor proclaimed his faith in parliamentary government, thus showing that
he comprehends the needs and interests of his subjects more clearly than many
of those subjects themselves, and that he is determined to continue in the way
opened out by the electoral Reform.
In
Hungary, constitutional procedure, which had been interrupted by the Fejervary
Ministry, was reestablished under the regime of the coalition. The officials
who had served under his unconstitutional system, and who had been less
protected, or at any rate, less openly protected by the King, than their
superiors, were dismissed from office. The Magyar national feeling was appeased
by a new educational law, the work of Count Apponyi, calculated to ensure the
rapid development of the Magyar tongue, and by a more pronounced encouragement
of trade than heretofore, which, in accordance with the programme of its
promoter, Francis Kossuth, would seem to prepare the way for the fiscal
separation of the two States, and the economic independence of Hungary. But
Hungary has been perturbed by the secession of the Croats, whose cooperation
had materially contributed to the Pyrrhic victory of the coalition in the
recent struggle with the King. The Croats declared that, in spite of the
promises which had been made to them, they had not been adequately rewarded,
and that they were no better treated than before. There was rioting at Agram
and the Constitution was suspended by the Barms. The Hungarian Government,
despite its air of indifference, perceives the
danger
of this situation and desires to come to an agreement; but the difficulty is
enhanced by the unreasonable attitude of the extreme parties on both sides.
Electoral Reform has been the cause of no less embarrassment. Count
Andr&ssy, whose task it was to establish universal suffrage without
weakening the national Magyar character of the Hungarian State—which he did not
wish to do, even had the majority permitted it—gradually worked out a scheme of
compromise, by which plural voting and the skilled delimitation of constituencies
were to keep the nationalities in check under a system of universal suffrage.
With a view to the changes in the political situation which Reform will necessitate,
the present coalition is tending towards a real amalgamation. The
Constitutional party and the Kossuth Independents have drawn together during
the last three years, the latter having made most of the advances. The King
will certainly not give up universal suffrage. It remains to be seen whether
the Magyar parties will unite on a common-sense programme for practical
moderate action, such as the economic and social development of the country,
reconciliation with Croatia and the nationalities without loss of the requisite
unity of the Hungarian State, some form of union with Austria, whereby, under a
system which would more clearly define the independence and sovereignty of both
States, their political and economic solidarity would be more firmly secured.
The
economic Compromise concluded under the administration of Beck and Wekerle
already bears the stamp of a new adjustment of political bearings. Since 1867,
the formula of the Compromises had always been the same, namely, Hungary, in
return for the “national” sacrifice imposed on her by the community of
diplomacy, and more especially, of the army, demanded economic concessions
which the Austrian Ministers, under pressure on the part of the Court,
invariably elided by granting. Baron Beck reversed the formula, for he sold
political advantages to the Hungarians, in return for economic advantages for
Austria. For the first time in these negotiations, the Austrian Cabinet allowed
itself to be swayed, not by the dynastic interests connected with the common
diplomatic and military organisation, but by interests purely Austrian, namely,
the requirements of the finances, of trade, and of the Austrian people. In
fact, the task of the Beck Cabinet was facilitated by the general economic
situation and the reaction on Hungary of the European financial crisis; it was
not a suitable moment for Hungary to quarrel with Austria, her best customer
and chief creditor. The agreement, after a keen conflict of interests, settled
the bulk of the economic questions still pending between the two States, with
the exception of that of the Bank, which, by mutual consent, was reserved for
subsequent negotiations. Hungary was gratified by the form of an international
treaty, instead of that of a union, and by a guarantee that, in future
commercial agreements with foreign countries her independence and sovereignty
should be more clearly emphasised, and, lastly, that the Austrian market
should
be opened without restriction to her loans. Austria gained the declaration and
confirmation of the principle' of commercial freedom between the two countries,
and of equality of their respective subjects before the fiscal laws; the
institution of arbitration to settle any difficulties which might arise in
connexion with the economic Compromise (this last she had demanded in vain for
forty years); the recovery of her liberty in the matter of railway tariffs
which, for the last ten years, had been curtailed to the advantage of Hungary;
finally, a favourable settlement of the proportional contribution towards the
common expenditure, which, henceforward, was to be at the rate of 36'4 for Hungary
and 63'6 for Austria. Hence, on this occasion, neither country profited at the
expense of the other, the Compromise being in conformity with the interests of
both countries, as conceived by them. This Compromise did not, like those which
had preceded it, give rise to bitterness and malice. It was adopted in both
States before the end of 1907. On January 1, 1908, the constitutional
interregnum that had lasted ten years came to an end.
The
pessimists called this Compromise “ the Compromise of Separation,” and
foretold that, on its expiration in 1917, the last traces of the economic union
between the two States would disappear. But it rather seems as though the new
Compromise had strengthened the ties between them, in that it subordinated form
to matter, promoted free and equal discussion between the two contracting
parties, and proved to the Hungarians that dualism is not detrimental to
Hungarian sovereignty, and to the Austrians that it does not necessarily
involve sacrifice and humiliation on their part. ,
.
Since 1866, the monarchy has become an Eastern Power and is now that alone; its
external policy being wholly concentrated on the Balkans. The occupation of
Bosnia and the Herzegovina in 1878 had been the first step in this direction.
Since then, the necessity of consolidating this conquest, and the shock
resulting from internal trouble, had impeded the Austro-Hungarian advance. The
external policy of the monarchy, which was characterised by caution under Count
Kdlnoky, and by timidity under Count Goluchowski, faithfully followed the lead
of Germany. In the autumn of 1906, Count Goluchowski was sacrificed to the
ill-feeling of the Hungarians, who blamed him for having postponed the
conclusion of the constitutional struggle. He was succeeded by Baron
Aehrenthal, formerly ambassador in St Petersburg, who was expected to be the
promoter of an Austro-Russian agreement of a still more intimate nature than
that contained in the programme of Murzsteg. But he prided himself on his
modern, practical, and economic policy; in order to assist the development of
Austro-Hungarian trade in Macedonia, he started the scheme of the Novibazar
railway, which was to connect the Bosnian system with the Turkish line towards
Salonica. Russia, to salve her wounded feelings, made overtures to England,
but, at that moment,
the
Young Turks took a hand, and the whole of the Balkan card-table was overthrown.
Austria-Hungary had good cause to fear that the regenerate Turks would take it
into their heads to demand that her occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina should
come to an end, and, naturally, she would never have consented to this. In
October, 1908, in order to settle the matter, the Emperor-King proclaimed that
the law of succession established by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1722-3 was to be
extended to those two provinces, in other words, that they were annexed by the
monarchy. The complications which ensued have not yet been completely solved.
Nevertheless, the annexation is irrevocable, Austria and Hungary are at one in
their desire to maintain it.
On
December 2, 1908, Francis Joseph I celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of his
accession to the throne. On the occasion of his Jubilee (December, 1898),
Europe had viewed with fear and distrust the future of the monarchy, which
seemed inevitably doomed to dissolution at the death of Francis Joseph. But ten
years have elapsed since then, and the prognostications are wholly different.
The acute crisis has been dispelled solely by the internal forces of -the
monarchy. The external dangers, that is to say, Pangermanism and Panslavism,
appear much less serious today than at that time. Pangermanism has been swept
aside by universal suffrage, and the Panslavonic feeling is growing weaker;
moreover, it suffers from the reaction due to the enfeeblement of Russia and
the Balkan evolution. There is still a violent struggle between the
nationalities, but the inevitable solution is in sight. The union between
Austria and Hungary has, in reality, been strengthened by the new Compromise
and the new Eastern policy. It seems as though all the Austrian, Hungarian, and
Austro-Hungarian questions could be settled from within. It is in this that the
progress consists; herein lies the great security for the future.
It
would be equally unjust to attribute to Francis Joseph alone all the honours of
this far-reaching and peacefr1 transformation, and to deny that he
had any part in it. His wisdom, self-control, moderation, tact, and freedom
from prejudice, have done much to help it on its way. Much will depend upon his
successor. But fifty years of national and constitutional life have endowed the
peoples of the monarchy with the strength to enforce their wishes side by side
with those of their sovereign, and, if necessary, in opposition to him. They
are of age, and can control their own destinies if they wish to do so, provided
only that they agree amongst themselves. They have come to realise the common
interest which keeps them united in the monarchy and in time they will become
conscious of the strength by means of which they can govern it in accordance
with their own interests. The monarchy no longer rests on the power of the
dynastic tie alone, but also on their conscious desire for union. Herein lies
its great internal change; herein lies its mighty new strength; this is the
great, the enormous result of the reign of Francis Joseph.
UNITED
ITALY.
When the last French soldier had sailed from Civita
Vecchia and the papal mercenaries laid down their arms at the breach of Porta
Pia, the task of national union, to which three and a half centuries earlier
Machiavelli had urged the princes of Italy, was at length accomplished.
Therewith a new epoch opens in the history of the peninsula.; the stirring days
are past and the problems that absorb Italian statesmen will be henceforth
predominantly domestic. During the six years subsequent to the opening of the
first Italian Parliament at Rome (November 27, 1871) the great historic party
of the Right, whose enlightened conservatism had presided over the fortunes of
the young monarchy, was in rapid disintegration. A great cause had evoked great
leaders, but, the goal once reached, the tension slackened. No statesman of
first-rate ability was brought to the front, and men of second rank were
confronted with racial, political, ecclesiastical, and social problems which
would have taxed the genius of a Cavour in the plenitude of his powers. The
Right attempted to deal, and not unsuccessfully, with the perilous situation
caused by the intrusion of the secular power into the ecclesiastical capital;
they wrestled with the financial chaos and reduced it to some degree of order;
they maintained a cautious foreign policy; they laid the basis of a new
military organisation and set about the creation of a navy. But they had grown timid;
they were absorbed in political and financial expedients, while fiscal
oppression and widespread poverty were engendering discontent and a new and
passionate ideal of social regeneration was permeating the democracy of Italy.
Internal dissension parted the Lanza-Sella and the Minghetti sections, and was
only kept in check by fears of a Radical administration under Rattazzi. Eagerly
watching to grip and throw the leaders of the Right stood the men of the Left,
compact, united, big with promises, impatient of a sterile Republicanism. Their
leaders had supported Sella in restraining Victor Emmanuel from his chivalrous
but mad impulse to involve the nation in the dibacle at Sedan, and had spurred
the recalcitrant and hesitating
Right
to the final consummation of Italian hopes at Rome. Rattazzi’s death in the
summer of 1873 paved the way for a Minghetti Cabinet, and the general elections
of the autumn of 1874 gave the new premier a substantial majority. But the
Left, despite unscrupulous official pressure and corruption, had strengthened
their position; and among their deputies sat Saffi, leader of the popular
party, who with Signor Fortis and other Romagnuol democrats had been
arbitrarily arrested at Villa Ruffi during the elections.
Among
the most odious of the taxes imposed (1869) to fill the maw of the ravenous
exchequer was the grist tax, known all over Italy as the “ tax on hunger ”; and
the extension of the tobacco monopoly to Sicily in 1874 had aroused fierce
opposition. In 1876 a big scheme of railway redemption and state management,
introduced at a time when a thousand million lire of forced currency were in
circulation and Italian paper stood at 10 per cent, discount, gave the Left
their chance. There were ominous signs, too, of insubordination among the
Tuscan deputies of the Right, who were disappointed at their exclusion from
office and irritated by Minghetti’s unsympathetic attitude towards the
desperate financial situation at Florence, caused by the sacrifices she had
made when, a sleepy provincial town, she was summoned to become the capital of
Italy. Minghetti, unconscious of the gathering storm, having triumphantly
announced, on the opening of the spring session, that the finances had found
their long-desired equilibrium, and having traced the lines of his railway
policy, was met by a hostile vote. A motion was carried (March 18, 1876)
condemning the oppressive incidence of the grist tax. The long reign of the
Right was at an end, and on March 28 the first Ministry of the Left sat in the
Parliament at Rome. The new premier, Depretis, had been one of the earliest
disciples of Mazzini, but long since had made his peace with the monarchy and
had served as pro-dictator of Sicily. In addition to the Presidency of the
Council he took the Department of Finance; Baron Nicotera, the famous Calabrian
patriot, who had organised the party victory, held the portfolio of the
Interior, and Zanardelli, a clever Radical jurist, that of Public Works. An
early opportunity was taken to dissolve the Chamber and “ work the elections ”
in accordance with approved Italian practice. Nicotera drove the electoral
machine at tremendous pressure; the prefects were lashed by disciplinary
measures, threats, and promises, to feverish activity on behalf of the
government candidates; and, aided by the widespread desire for change and
disgust at the long dominion of the Consorterie, a crushing defeat was
inflicted on the Right, who returned to the new Chamber (November, 1876) a
disorganised rump.
The
Depretis Ministry assumed power with a heavy load of promises. The forced
currency was to be redeemed, the hated grist tax abolished, and a more
equitable distribution of public burdens was to relieve the poorer taxpayer.
The resources of the country would be developed,
trade
fostered by an extensive scheme of railway construction, existing treaties of
commerce revised in a free trade direction. They promised to introduce a
comprehensive measure of electoral reform, to maintain the right of public
meeting and the freedom of the Press, to organise free and compulsory secular
education, to observe rigidly the Law of Guarantees, and to meet any
encroachment of the ecclesiastical power by an Unflinching assertion of the
paramount authority of the civil Government. Victor Emmanuel, despite the
scared countenances of his late advisers and their croakings of imminent
revolution and chaos, accepted the new situation with absolute sincerity; and,
bluff, honest soldier as he was, inserted with his own hand a clause in the
Speech from the Throne expressing his full and frank confidence in the
Ministers he had called to office. Signor Crispi, the most outstanding figure
of the Left, was elected President of the Chamber, and all fair auguries seemed
to attend the birth of the new Ministry.
But
it is one thing for advanced politicians to combine in opposition : another to
work harmoniously in a wide programme of progressive legislation. The new
Ministers were tried administrators, but three only had experience of office;
they had no Foreign Minister equal to Visconti- Venosta, no financier of
Sella’s capacity: some, of forceful individuality, were moved by personal
ambition. There was little cohesion and less willingness to sacrifice private
aims to the common weal. Moreover, they lacked originality: their opponents’
Railway Bill was adopted with the addition of a clause empowering the State to
lease the railways to private companies. The tardy abolition of the grist tax
(1884) made no sensible diminution in the price of bread; and an increase of
the duties on com from 2s. 6^. to 5s. 3d. a quarter in April, 1887, followed by
a further increase in February, 1888, to 8s. 9d., made the abolition a mere
mockery of the poor. Reform was sacrificed to clamorous interests, and the
petty crafts of parliamentary legerdemain became paramount. With all their
faults, the Right had been a political party: the Left initiated the system of
government by factions and sectional interests. For a whole decade, with two
short interruptions, the premiership was held by Depretis, a man in whom
Cavour, thirty years before, had discerned, beneath an austere and resolute
exterior, a petty mind and infirm will. Personally clean-handed and averse from
ostentation, the new premier had a profound insight into the darker places of
the human soul and was skilled in playing on the baser motives that sway the
actions of men. Cynical, cold, devoid of enthusiasm, he relied for his
ascendancy on his consummate tactics, his adroitness in parliamentary fence. In
his hands, Italian politics degenerated into a welter of corruption
unparalleled in the history of the monarchy. Ill-assorted connubii of hostile
party leaders had already been known in Italian politics: to Depretis belongs
the inglorious distinction of having elaborated the shameless promiscuity of
alliances known as trasformismo, which has ever since fouled the
streams
of parliamentary life in Italy. With Minghetti’s aid and under the pretence of
uniting moderate men from all parties against the “ insolence of the piazza ”
and the extra-legal agitation of the Extreme Left, Ministers were chosen from
those heads of factions and interests who commanded most votes in the Chamber;
it was a system negative of all political rectitude and destructive of healthy
party distinctions.
An
act was passed (July 15, 1877) making elementary education compulsory for
children between the ages of six and nine, but no adequate machinery for
enforcing attendance was provided, and the burden of expenditure was laid on
the communes; a Bill, introduced during the domination of the Right to regulate
the employment of women and children, was carried in 1886 so far as regarded
child labour alone; a considerable, though somewhat timid and complicated,
Electoral Reform Bill was carried in 1881, which extended the franchise from
621,896 voters (1879) to 2,017,829 (1882); some energy was shown in suppressing
brigandage in the south. But the closing years of the Depretis Ministry were
years of inertia, of a petty hand-to-mouth policy, of grave financial
miscalculation, and of a light-hearted embarkation on a disastrous career of
African adventure. The annual effective expenditure (excluding railways) which
during the last six years of the Right (1871-6) had averaged £43,460,850 rose
under the first six years of the Left to £48,284,580.
On
January 9,1878, the whole Italian nation was plunged into profound grief by
the death of its first King, whose imperturbable courage and faith, sterling
honesty, and burly good sense, had been essential factors in its emancipation.
Many have been the pompous titles added by fear or flattery to the names of
princes; to Victor Emmanuel belongs the unique distinction of having been known
to his people as the King who was an honest man (II re galantuomo). Twenty-nine
days later the last Pope-King passed away. One of the latest acts of Pius IX
had been to send Monsignor Marinelli, his own father confessor, to the dying
Victor Emmanuel with his blessing and with the Blessed Sacrament which was
administered by the royal almoner, Canon Anzino. The new King, Humbert I, took
the oath to the Constitution on January 29, 1878, and was acclaimed with
confidence and loyalty: on February 20 one of the shortest conclaves in the
history of the Papacy and one of the least distracted by external pressure,
elevated to St Peter’s chair, Cardinal Pecci, known as Leo XIII.
On
June 2, 1882, a heavier sorrow even than that evoked by the death of Victor
Emmanuel fell upon the people of Italy: Garibaldi, their darling hero, last
survivor and best loved of the four great creators of Italian Unity, closed the
glorious drama of his life at Caprera where, his patriotic warfare done, the
scarred warrior had laid aside his sword and turned to his plough. Victor
Emmanuel’s death had left him inconsolable: the disclosure of the incompetence
and folly that led to the betrayal of
Italian
hopes at Tunis had touched the old soldier to the quick. He suffered himself to
be drawn into a popular demonstration of protest at Palermo and never recovered
from the fatigue and excitement of the journey.
The
advent to power in August, 1887, of Crispi, the old revolutionist and member of
the Expedition of the Thousand, was viewed with small favour by the Court.
Although the new premier had given the watchword that rallied the bulk of the
Republicans to the monarchy; although he had sacrificed his dearest principles
and friendships to the common j°°d of the Unitary movement—the House of Savoy
never forgot nor forgave his opposition to the Napoleonic alliance, which he
consistently distrusted, and believed (not without justification as the sequel
proved) to be pregnant with humiliation to Italy. The country at large,
however, was won by his undoubted force of character and by his imperturbable
faith in the future of his country. After the last six slumbrous years of
Depretis’ rule a premier who could govern with vigour and act with promptitude
made a powerful appeal to the party of order. Everyone in the government
departments, from highest official to humblest doorkeeper, felt the grip of a
strong hand on the reins when Crispi was in the saddle; and, had but sagacity
and insight informed his will, he might have worn down opposition. But he was
proud, impatient of criticism, self-centred, difficult of access. Nursed in
conspiracies, his hot southern imagination saw plots and dangers everywhere;
his impulsive temperament led him into the strangest inconsistencies. Now, he
threatened to occupy the Vatican with Italian troops: now he opened
negotiations for an understanding with the Papacy. He would free the workman
from the slavery of capital: then he would pursue Radicals and Socialists with
implacable hostility and appeal to all parties of order to unite against the
menace of subversive propaganda. In addition to the Presidency of the Council,
Crispi bore the burden of the Foreign Office and of the Interior, and, in spite
of his enormous capacity for work, these responsibilities induced an
irritability of temper that gave his enemies easy prize. But it was not until
1891 when, confident in his quasi-dictatorship, he dared to lay a reforming
hand on the bureaucracy and grew restive under the tutelage of the Right, that
he fell into the trap prepared for him by a combination of party groups
(January 31). A coalition of the Right and Left Centres under the Sicilian
patriot, Marchese di Rudini, and Baron Nicotera, succeeded in forming a Cabinet
among whom were tried and incorruptible administrators such as Luzzatti, Luigi
Ferraris, and Professor Villari. The new Ministry met the Chamber with an
admirable programme of retrenchment, but it lacked cohesion and vigour and was
unskilled in, or contemptuous of, the art of lobbying. Its indecision in face
of riots at Rome irritated the extremes of Right and Left alike; and a proposal
to reduce the number of Army Corps roused the opposition of the Court and
military
party; in May, 1892, the Left under Signor Giolitti returned to power.
The
new premier, who had climbed at a comparatively early age from a modest
position in a government office to political eminence, was a man of amazing
intellectual suppleness and versatility; of indefatigable industry; a precise
and lucid rather than an eloquent speaker; an adroit organiser and accomplished
master of the art of electoral corruption. Giolitti was the first to attempt
the creation of a Liberal and monarchical party that should include all
progressive politicians who were willing to break definitely from the
anti-dynastic Extreme Left; but he was indifferent as to means and careless of
principles, if only he could maintain his footing on the slippery heights of
power. Ill-hap pursued his first Ministry, some of whose members were
conspicuous neither for capacity nor integrity. A crushing exposure of grave
irregularities in the relations between eminent politicians and Tanlongo,
Director of the Banca Bomana, was met by Giolitti with denials of complicity
But the shameful indictment was too well authenticated, public disgust too
profound; and, though Tanlongo and his accomplices were acquitted by juries, it
was only as a protest against the immunity of more highly placed culprits.
Meanwhile, the Ministry, besmirched and discredited, were too demoralised to
grapple with the growing unrest in the peninsula and the more serious agrarian
insurrections in Sicily. A wave of national revulsion swept them from power;
and an almost universal cry for Crispi, as the one strong man able to deal with
the situation, again lifted the veteran leader of the Left into the saddle
(December 14, 1893). Crispi’s iron hand was soon felt. Martial law was proclaimed;
the Labourers’ Unions in Sicily were dissolved; 271 popular associations were
suppressed—55 in Milan alone. The premier, whose perfervid imagination, worked
upon by police spies, saw a vast conspiracy aiming at a Federal Republic and
plots to sell Sicily to France or Austria, had recourse to a brutal policy of
repression that recalled Bourbon and Austrian days. Savage and indlscriminating
sentences by military commissions, arbitrary arrests of men suspected of
holding advanced opinions, revolted the popular conscience and prepared a soil
wherein the seeds of socialism rapidly germinated. On December 4, 1894, an
impotent report of the Parliamentary Commission on the bank scandals deplored
the “indelicate relations” between responsible politicians and the banks of
issue; and, a week later, Giolitti, flourishing a bundle of papers, declared in
the Chamber that he held in his hand Crispi’s moral ruin. A committee of five
appointed to examine the papers reported next day that the premier and other prominent
politicians had received considerable sums from the Banca Romana for the
purpose of electoral and press corruption. Crispi, by a daring stroke,
prorogued the Chamber and quashed all discussion (December 12, 1894). Giolitti,
it was found, had used a private correspondence between husband and wife
to
help to drag the premier down; and, although party warfare in Italy is not
over-chivalrous in its methods, this action was felt to be a blow beneath the
belt. Shamed by the general disgust, he left the country for a time. Crispi,
having ridden the storm and won the acquiescence of the monarchy, now headed
for a thinly disguised dictatorship. During the process of revising the
electoral register in accordance with a law passed July 11,1894, voters
suspected of hostility to the Ministry were struck off the rolls and in all a
purge of 813,320 electors was made out of nearly 3,000,000. Crispi then
dissolved the Chamber and, by a vigorous application of the government screw,
obtained an overwhelming and more subservient majority. The elections were a
mere parody of representative government; and it has been estimated that the
336 official candidates were returned by about 600,000 electors out of a
population of 31,000,000. Even this could not prevent a small but resolute band
of Socialist deputies and some of Crispi’s bitterest enemies from appearing on
the benches of the Extreme Left; and, led by the fiery Cavallotti, the campaign
against the premier was resumed with unabated rancour. Crispi’s. position
however was too secure to be shaken: he was even spoken of as Minister for
life. But Africa, the grave of reputations, ruined him. Lured by grandiose
visions of a vast Italian empire in Erythrea, his forward colonial policy met
its Sedan at Adowah; and, in March, 1896, he was hurled from power amid the
execrations of the people. King and army demanded an avenging campaign to wipe
out the shame of defeat; but lack of money no less than the temper of the
nation forbade, and a peace Ministry was formed. A period of rapid ministerial
changes ensued and between March 10,1896, and June 26,1898, four Cabinets were
made and unmade.
The
opening months of 1898 were marked by ominous indications of a social upheaval.
The people were losing faith in their rulers and, amid the widespread disorder,
the teachings of the extreme democrats fell on willing ears. At the celebration
of Cavallotti’s funeral (March, 1898) the authorities with alarm beheld the
bannered hosts of socialist and revolutionary clubs march through the streets
of Milan and Rome— a veritable review of the forces of democracy. Those alone
who have had personal experience of Italy in the nineties can appreciate the
utter misery and dejection of her people in those distressful times. Wheaten
bread, owing to bad harvests and the high tariff (in December, 1894, the import
duty on corn had been raised to 13s. the quarter), was a luxury of which the
more fortunate contadmi on feast days bought precious morsels weighed out with
niggard hand. Gaunt, half-starved labourers, mattock in hand, gathered on the
piazzas and shouted for “ bread and work.” Early in 1898, in the Mantovano, in
the Marches, and in the Napoletano, the smouldering discontent blazed out into
open riots; the Puglie were in revolt; and, while King and Senators were
uttering pleasant platitudes in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the
Constitution,
Sardinian
peasants were dying of hunger. The half-suppressed troubles in the centre and
south were soon answered by grave disorders in Tuscany and the north; for a
whole day Florence was in the hands of a mob, and the troops, after standing
idly by, were tardily and without necessity ordered to fire on the people.
Similar scenes were witnessed in Pavia, where the popular young Muzio Mussi of
Milan was killed while attempting to prevent bloodshed. The indignation at
Milan was profound, and some workmen who struck work in protest on the morning
of May 7 were harried by the police; troops were called out and bleeding
victims mutely called for vengeance. Sporadic risings occurred in various
quarters of the city, and a rabble of hooligans, factory girls, and excited
workmen paraded the streets, breaking shop windows and perpetrating some acts
of petty larceny. As yet no serious development had taken place, and prompt,
vigorous, and concerted action would have restored order. But, owing to the
imbecility of the authorities, sufficient force was displayed to provoke, not
to overawe, and they allowed the riot to make head. Discontented and unemployed
labourers from the suburbs poured in ; parts of the city lay for a time at the
mercy of the disaffected of all classes, and three barricades of tramcars were
erected. Meanwhile, martial law had been proclaimed and General Bava-Beccaris
appointed dictator; reinforcements were hurried up, and soon the Piazza del
Duomo was a mass of soldiers and artillery. Old men rubbed their eyes—the days
of Radetzky and the Austrians seemed to have come back again. A remorseless and
indiscriminate repression followed, which rapidly degenerated to a vicious
man-hunt in the streets. No attempt at a stand was made, for the rioters were
unarmed and unorganised. Some labourers going to work were shot down; even
women and boys met a like fate. The butcher’s bill tells its own tale. The
number of civilians killed—men, women, and children—was officially returned
(and certainly below the mark) at 82; the wounded were counted by hundreds: one
soldier only was killed, by a tile thrown from a roof; 23 were wounded, mostly
by stones.
After
the rifles and cannon had done their work, came the turn of the prisons. A raid
was made on everyone suspected of advanced opinions: deputies, editors of
Socialist, Radical, and Catholic papers, were dragged from their homes and
ostentatiously led handcuffed through the streets; sentences of imprisonment
varying from 3 to 12 years were inflicted. The procedure at the military Courts
was a mere travesty of justice. No evidence of organised sedition or
insurrection was forthcoming; any article expressive of advanced opinion, any
phrase of “subtle irony,” was held to be a constructive incitement to violence.
Rich and cultured Milan, the moral and intellectual capital of Italy, beheld
the jack-boot and sabre enthroned in her midst, and an indelible impression was
left in her memory of a savage, military tyranny.
When
the grave news of the three days at Milan reached Rome,
1898-9]
221
losing
none of its sinister aspect by filtering through the minds of scared officials,
the more timid saw looming before society the dread spectre of the red
republic. Thirty provinces were placed under military rule; Courts-martial with
feverish zeal inflicted centuries of imprisonment on a multitude of suspects; a
general suppression of popular organisations —Socialist, Republican,
Catholic—followed; even village banks and cooperative societies were raided and
dissolved. After a ministerial crisis, General Pelloux succeeded in forming a
coalition Cabinet from the monarchical parties, and in his opening speech to
the Chamber dwelt on his past record as a Liberal and promised substantial
reforms. But no less than four service members (two generals and two admirals)
held portfolios, and soon the habits of the quarter-deck and of the parade
ground led his Ministry to a series of harsh and coercive measures which
alienated the Left. By July, however, the situation had become so far normal
that the military tribunals were abolished; and the com duties (which had been
reduced to 8s. 9d. per quarter on January 25 and wholly abolished on May 6)
were on July 1 reimposed at 13s., reduced to 8s. 9d. on the 4th, and on August
16 again raised to 13s. The popular parties regained activity and a petition
signed by 360,000 persons demanded a general amnesty from the monstrous sentences
inflicted by the military Courts. In the local elections of the north and
centre the popular candidates swept the board, and the year closed with a
partial amnesty which restored to liberty, but not to full civil rights, 2700
political prisoners.
The
year 1899 dawned under fairer auspices. A period had been put to the disastrous
tariff war with France and a new treaty of commerce atoned for many of the
Government’s mistakes. But the calm was a delusive one; on June 1 a Bill was
pushed forward by the Government incorporating certain political ordinances
(provvedimenti politici), which empowered the Prefects or the police to
proclaim public meetings and conferred arbitrary powers on the Government for
the suppression of any association regarded as subversive of social order or of
the Constitution. The Extreme Left, led by Signor Pantano, declared that the
Bill involved a breach of the Statuto, and decided to obstruct its further
progress. After a fortnight’s heated debate and a futile attempt by the Conservative
leader, Baron Sonnino, to pass guillotine resolutions, the measure had made no
progress; and on June 22, having obtained a provisional vote for six months’
supplies, Pelloux prorogued the Chamber until the 28th. On the 23rd he
promulgated the ordinances by royal decree (decreto legge). When the sittings
were resumed, the majority gave the premier a Bill of indemnity, and on the
30th, after a scene of unparalleled violence in which the voting urns were
overthrown, the session was abruptly closed. In December, a general amnesty was
granted, but with reservations which largely neutralised its effects as an act
of grace.
On
February 22, 1900, an unexpected check heaped confusion on the Government. The
Court of Cassation at Rome, with admirable independence, declared that the
decreto legge of June 23 had no legal validity, and once again the undignified
conflict was resumed on Pelloux’ attempt to legalise its provisions. To
checkmate obstruction, revised standing orders were prepared, which, it was intended,
should be provisionally enforced without debate. This flagrant overriding of
parliamentary privileges only intensified obstruction and embittered the
conflict. Pantano spoke through a whole sitting, and on April 3 he and Zanar-
delli, together with their followers of the Constitutional and Extreme Lefts,
walked out of the House in protest, and the revised orders were adopted by the
remaining deputies. Pelloux prorogued the Chamber, and on April 5 withdrew the
decreto legge.
The
disorderly scenes were renewed with even greater acridity on the resumption of
the sittings on May 15. The Extreme Left met all attempts to apply the new
orders with indomitable obstruction; the sitting closed in violence and
confusion, amid the defiant strains of Garibaldi’s hymn. Pelloux, with his
enormous and subservient majority reduced to impotence, dissolved the Chamber,
and, confident of victory, appealed to the country to decide between himself
and the obstructionists. The elections fixed for June 3 found the popular parties
prepared, and an alliance of Radicals, Republicans, and Socialists, fought with
unity and enthusiasm. The Government obtained its majority by the usual
electoral methods; but, while the official candidates were returned by narrow
margins, those of the Union of popular parties were elected by triumphant
majorities. In the progressive north the Opposition polled a majority of 70,000
votes, while the ministerialists carried the corrupt and reactionary south by
90,000. The Extreme Left increased its members from 60 to 98, and, exultant in
its moral victory, confronted the discredited majority. At the first trial of
strength, Pelloux surrendered (June 18); and the Crown, anxious for an issue
from a perilous situation, appealed to the patriotism of the venerable
President of the Senate, Saracco, who, by his exalted position and honourable
record, stood above all parties. A ministry of conciliation was formed; the
vote of April 3 was rescinded, and a Committee of Procedure, including three
deputies of the Extreme Left, drew up modified standing orders, which were
passed almost unanimously. Thus the crisis ended to the profound relief of all
parties (July 2), and the attempt of reactionary politicians to set back the
clock in Italy ignominiously failed. The obstructionists had played a perilous
game, and nothing but a consciousness of the tremendous issue at stake and the
conviction that the better sense of the nation was behind them could have
justified their action.
Never
had the monarchy driven so close to the breakers. Pelloux acted, if not with
its approval at least with its acquiescence, and the
disservice
wrought to the House of Savoy was serious. On July 29 Humbert I was to
inaugurate a gymnastic festival at Monza. The municipality of Milan had refused
to attend the King at the railway station; and, by an amazing lack of
forethought on the part of the police authorities, no precautionary measures
were taken for his safety. With the indifference to danger characteristic of
his House, Humbert mingled freely with the crowd, whose coldness and indeed
hostility were manifest. The ceremony ended, the ill-fated King was about to
depart, when Bresci, an Italian anarchist from America, mounted the royal
arriage, and deliberately aimed, with fatal effect, four shots at his breast.
Humbert
I inherited his father’s courage, but not his genial personality and force of
character. He was well-meaning and loyal to his coronation oath, but his
political outlook was a narrow one; and towards the end of his reign, as we
have seen, he suffered a small clique of military and reactionary politicians
to blind him to the signs of the times. The Prince of Naples, who ascended the
throne as Victor Emmanuel III, while steadfastly opposing any reduction in
armaments, has frankly accepted the more liberal and enlightened policy that
the country demanded. Holding a high ideal of the kingly office, his
enlightened and cultured mind and simplicity of life have brought a much-needed
standard of clear thinking and clean living to the Italian Court. And, while it
would be a grave error to assume that the monarchy is deeply rooted in popular
affection or that the House of Savoy evokes any passionate enthusiasm in the
country, it has undoubtedly gained in esteem during the present reign and is
loyally accepted by all save the revolutionary extremists.
The
vacillation of the Saracco Ministry in face of some labour troubles at Genoa
brought about its fall in February, 1901; and the young King, resisting
pressure from the Right, boldly charged Zanar- delli with the formation of a
Cabinet from the two Lefts. The Radicals, however, refused office owing to
fundamental differences with regard to military expenditure, and the Cabinet
was chiefly composed of members of the Constitutional Left (February 14).
The
Zanardelli-Giolitti Ministry marks a new departure in Italian politics. For the
first time since 1870 the working classes felt that in disputes between capital
and labour the sword of state would not be flung into the capitalist scale; and
old-fashioned parliamentarians were shocked to hear a responsible Minister of
the Crown speak of the legitimate aspirations of the workers to a better place
at the banquet of life. Giolitti, after a long eclipse, resumed his policy of
demonstrating to the democracy that political liberty and social reform were
compatible with loyalty to the House of Savoy. It was understood that freedom
of speech and of public meeting, though not legally formulated, would be
unquestioned, that combinations among workmen would be unchallenged
and
a neutral attitude observed towards strikes so long as they were conducted
within the limits of the law. Labour was not slow in taking advantage of the
novel situation. The number of industrial strikes, which in 1900 amounted to
383, increased in 1901 to 1042; the strikers from 80,858 to 196,540. In
agriculture, the increase was even more startling—from 27 strikes in 1900 to
629 in 1901. From the Alps to Sicily considerable increases of pay were gained,
especially by agricultural labourers. The new policy of non-intervention was,
however, early in 1902, severely strained by a gas strike at Turin and by a
threatened general strike of railwaymen. A corps of engineers was sent to take
the place of the strikers at Turin, and the railwaymen were forbidden, as
public servants, to leave their work. When the prohibition was met by defiance,
those of the men who were subject to military service were called under arms;
and absence from duty thus became equivalent to desertion. Meanwhile, the
Government promised to use its influence with the companies to obtain an
amelioration of the men’s condition; and, partly at the expense of the
Government, partly at the charge of the companies, a contribution of nearly a
million sterling was made to their provident funds.
The
compact group of the popular parties exercised its controlling pressure with
unsuspected moderation, and its influence on legislation showed itself in the
important social measures that were added to the Statute Book. The Employers’
Liability Act and the (contributory) Government Old Age Pension Scheme of 1898
were amplified and amended; the Factory Acts of 1886 regulating child labour
were strengthened and extended to women, who, together with children under
thirteen, were excluded from labour underground and from night work; an
important measure was foreshadowed, creating a national (contributory)
Maternity Fund to provide for the maintenance of women operatives during the
month of abstinence from work after child-birth required by the Act. The octroi
duties on bread and flour products were abolished; permissive legislation for
the municipalisation of public services was passed; facilities for the creation
of local agrarian credit institutions in the south were given to the Banks of
Naples and Sicily. The efficacy of social legislation in Italy is, however,
intimately involved in the attitude of the Government towards armaments and
administrative probity. The crushing burden of taxation—in no other European
country is the proportion to income so high—renders any increase of civil
expenditure impolitic, and for lack of funds to provide an adequate staff of
inspectors the laws are largely evaded. The Law of July 18, 1904, creating a
superior Council of Public Charities and conferring on its Commissioners wide
powers of coordination, reorganisation, and control, appointed only four
inspectors to deal with the 40,000 charitable foundations of the kingdom.
The
firmness shown by the Government in the face of a general strike
1903-4]
225
at
Rome in April, 1903, and in suppressing disorder in the south, won approval
even from Conservatives, and they were applauded for asserting their
independence of Socialist pressure. The Extreme Left, however, grew restive,
and soon dealt the Ministry a heavy blow. An interpellation from a Socialist
deputy (June 5) on the proposed return visit of tlie Tsar to Italy, and hot
protestations against arbitrary arrests on Italian soil, said to have been
dictated by the Russian secret police, added to charges published in the Avcmti
of maladministration and corruption in the Navy Department, led to the fall of
the Ministry (June 17); but the Cabinet was reconstructed, without Giolitti, on
June 25, and Zanardelli, by an adroit speech, won a vote of confidence. The
advanced Socialist wing at once organised a vigorous agitation against the
proposed Imperial visit; and in October the King handed to Zanardelli an
autograph letter from the Tsar, intimating a renunciation of the journey. The
veteran statesman, profoundly affected by the humiliation of Italy, laid down
his charge, and on December 26 passed away from earthly strife.
On
August 3, 1903, the Chair of St Peter, rendered vacant by the death of the
venerable and politic Leo XIII, was filled by the elevation to the papacy of
the devout Cardinal Sarto, Patriarch of Venice, under the title of Pius X: his
election was largely due to the ill-feeling engendered among some of the
Cardinals at the exercise of the Austrian veto against Cardinal Rampolla, the French
candidate.
Giolitti
was generally indicated as Zanardelli’s successor; after the refusal of
portfolios by the Radical and Socialist leaders, Sacchi and Turati, a Cabinet
was formed (November 30), mainly of Conservatives which included Luzzatti, the
most eminent of Italian financiers. Luzzatti’s promise of a big surplus of two
and three-quarter millions sterling for the year 1903-4, and the reduction of
the petroleum duty by 50 per cent, were happy auguries for the new Ministry ;
but the inevitable defects of a trasformismo Cabinet were soon manifest. Their
tolerance of violence among strikers was regarded by the Right as the price
paid for the support of the Extreme Left; and the Government, yielding to
pressure, swung round to a more resolute policy which led to angry meetings of
protest at Milan. On September 16, 1904, a Committee of Resistance was formed,
which declared a general strike in order to force the resignation of the
Government. The threat was not taken seriously; and great was the consternation
when, on the 17th, the citizens of Milan, Genoa, Venice, and Turin, beheld
civic life paralysed and an attempt being made to terrorise society and
overthrow the State by starvation and darkness. Many hardships were suffered,
especially by the sick and helpless. Shopkeepers who refused to close saw their
windows smashed; the railway lines converging on Milan and Genoa were torn up
to block the advance of troops. At Rome, Florence, and Naples, the strike was
less general, but characterised by the same anarchic violence, The
Mayor
of Milan was forced to haul down the flags that had been hoisted on public
buildings, in celebration of the birth of an heir to the throne; and they were
trampled under foot amid cries of “ Down with the House of Savoy.”
But
Giolitti refused to fan a riot into a revolution: the authorities were
instructed to resort to force only in the event of definite criminal acts. The
troops behaved with admirable self-control in face of great provocation, and
the movement soon came to an end. Three dastardly assassinations disgraced the
strikers in the northern cities, and about a hundred soldiers and police were
more or less injured. The revulsion was profound. Even extreme politicians felt
that the fundamental laws of social life had been brutally violated; and an
appeal to the country was made amid a reaction of auger and disgust. Abandoning
their usual apathy at elections, the middle classes made a determined effort to
inflict a crushing defeat on the popular parties, and the desire of the
Catholic electors to bear their part in the struggle between the powers of
order and anarchy was so intense that the hand of the Vatican was forced. The
declaration of the Cardinal Penitentiary on the occasion of the general
elections of 1874< that it was inexpedient for Catholics to vote at
political elections, known as the non escpedit, and subsequently interpreted by
the Holy Office to imply absolute prohibition, was partially withdrawn; and the
Bishops were instructed to permit the Catholic laity to vote in order to combat
the subversive parties and uphold the principles of social order and respect
for religion. The boycott of Italian political life by the Catholics that had
begun in 1861 with Don Margotti’s manifesto Ne eletti, ne elettori, was at length
removed. For the first time in the history of United Italy political meetings
of Catholics were held at Milan, and the haughty isolation of the Catholic
nobility of Rome was changed to active participation in the turmoil of
political elections. The rout of the popular parties at the first ballots was
significant. At Milan an avowed Catholic was elected, while, of the Extreme
Left, Turati alone, who had opposed the general strike, was returned: at
Mantua, Livorno, Parma, Naples, even at Reggio-Emilia, the cradle of socialism,
a flood of reaction overwhelmed their candidates. The triple alliance of
Socialists, Republicans, and Radicals, which had dissolved in mutual
recrimination, was renewed in face of the common disaster; some seats were
retrieved at the second ballots, others were won from the Conservative
Opposition by the help of Government pressure; but the verdict of the country
was unmistakable. The interest evoked by the contest in the cities was unique;
85 per cent, of the electorate are said to have gone to the polls at Florence,
and the official average of the whole kingdom was returned as 67 per cent., a
higher percentage than that of any other general election since 1861. The
Communal electors subsequently confirmed and emphasised the verdict of the
political electorate.
In
the new Chamber, Giolitti had an overwhelming majority, even against the
section of the Conservative opposition led by Baron Sonnino and the Extreme
Left combined. But the latter, although purged of its more subversive elements
and reduced in numbers by about a score, was, by the energy of its members,
still potent for mischief; its favour was deemed worth buying, and the
Government supported the Radical Leader, Marcora, in his candidature for the
Presidency of the Chamber (December 1). The winter session of 1904 closed with
an optimistic financial statement by Luzzatti, who indicated a surplus of over
a million and a quarter sterling, and announced that the agio on gold had at
length disappeared.
The
railway conventions were now approaching their term, and a strong movement
declared itself in favour of state administration. Giolitti was opposed to
state management; but the universal irritation caused by the obstructionist
tactics of the railway employees and their threats to strike in the early
months of 1905 forced the hands of the Government. On Giolitti’s resignation
through illness (March 4) Fortis succeeded in forming a Cabinet pledged to
railway purchase (March 28). Clauses negative of the right to strike were
included in the Bill presented early in April, and were carried by an enormous
majority. A threatened strike collapsed, and the men were solaced by promises
of increased wages and an augmented pension fund. On June 30, 1905, the transference
of management took place, and within a few days the purchase money was raised
at home at 3 65 per cent. The haste and levity with which this enormous
responsibility was assumed were remarkable even in Italian legislation, and the
action was aptly compared by a leading politician to that of a man who would
set forth in evening dress to climb Mont Blanc. A long period of disastrous
railway chaos ensued, partly no doubt due to the accumulated defects of twenty
years’ private management. The whole carrying trade and passenger traffic of
the country were dislocated, and goods consigned to Italy were landed at
foreign ports, owing to lack of trucks at Genoa and Venice.
Fortis’
power gradually crumbled, and the Ministry resigned on February 1,1906. Baron
Sonnino, who for personal integrity, breadth, and precision of view, and
profound knowledge of the economic condition of the country, stood head and
shoulders above his colleagues, but whose support of the reactionary Government
of 1899 had been remembered against him, was now called to office; the
prolonged political chaos— there had been five crises in little more than a
year—seemed destined to give place to order and good government. The
Conservative leader appears to have aimed at the formation of a Ministry of all
the talents. So wide was the range of his choice that all previous examples of
trasformismo paled into insignificance. Never had such an array of probity and
ability been seen since the days of Cavour and Ricasoli:— Luzzatti and Carmine
from the Right Centre; Boselli and Salandra
from
the Centre; Guicciardini and Bacelli from the Left Centre; the Republican
Pantano and the Radical Sacchi from the Extreme Left. On March 8, 1906, Sonnino
unfolded an admirable programme of economic and social legislation, including a
comprehensive scheme for the regeneration of the south, whereby he proposed to
reduce the land tax by SO per cent, on assessments below £24>0 pending the
completion of the new cadastral survey; to grant subsidies to agrarian credit
banks; to exempt the lowest assessments from the family tax and the tax on
cattle; and to compel landlords to make certain advances to cultivators for
seed and other purposes. Increased subsidies to the communes for elementary
education, the opening up of remote districts by additional roads, tramways,
and light railways, the repeal of the press laws, were also: included in the
scheme. On the 16th, Luzzatti promised a magnificent surplus of nearly two and
a half millions sterling. But the new premier was lacking in qualities that
make the successful leader of men. Autocratic in temperament, devoid of
personal magnetism, a good speaker but no orator, he had small experience of,
and cherished the utmost contempt for, the petty arts of parliamentary finesse
that play so large a part in the science of government in Italy. The Extreme
Right was irritated at the inclusion in the Cabinet of an avowed Republican,
and of a notorious Anti-clerical as Minister of Public Worship; threatened
interests were active, and, while the Ministry were occupied with measures,
Giolitti had returned and was busy with men : with consummate skill he brought
the disaffected forces into line, and the confederation of integrity and
capacity succumbed to the first assault of menaced interests and disappointed
ambitions (May 17). Giolitti came into power: by restoring the secret service
fund-(which Sonnino had discontinued) he was able to tune the Press, and, appropriating
much of his predecessor’s programme, he succeeded in carrying several measures
during the brief summer session, Luzzatti’s long-prepared scheme for the
conversion of the debt was triumphantly realised; Sonnino’s measures for the
economic regeneration of the southern provinces, previously attacked in
opposition, were now adopted with some modification in the interests of the
landlords, and the drastic report of the Royal Commission on Navy
Administration was decently interred.
The
winter session of 1906 closed with the announcement of an estimated surplus for
the financial year 1905-6 of over two and a half millions sterling, despite the
extraordinary expenditure of nearly a million and a half in aid of the
sufferers from earthquake in Calabria and from the eruption of Vesuvius. The
railway chaos was yielding to the energy of the new Director; and by the authorised
expenditure of over thirty- six millions sterling for the purchase of rolling
stock and the improvement of the permanent way, and of twenty-four millions
for the construction of new lines, it was hoped to place the service on a
satisfactory footing,
The
status of the Pope and the relations between the Civil Power and the Papacy are
defined by the Law of Guarantees (May IS, 1871). The Pope’s claim to sovereign
honours and prerogatives is recognised, and, his person being declared sacred
and inviolable, all attacks, or incitements to attack, are subject to the same
penalties as those directed against the King; he is guaranteed the use of the
Vatican and Lateran Apostolic palaces and of Villa Gandolfo, with their
artistic and literary treasures, and a perpetual net annual endowment of
=£129,000. The absolute spiritual authority of the Pope and his control of all
papal seminaries, academies, and colleges are also recognised, and the fullest
liberty to hold conclaves or councils is granted. The Government surrendered
the privilege of nominating to benefices and offices in the Church, provided
that Italian subjects only were appointed; Bishops were exempted from the oath
of allegiance to the King; the exequatur and the pladtum regium were abolished,
except so far as regards temporalities. These and other clauses of the law were
so many conditions imposed on the Papacy by superior force; they were never
recognised by it and the proffered annual endowment has, owing to French
pressure, never been accepted. The law, like so much modem Italian legislation,
was too hastily drafted, and an ill-defined borderland of overlapping interests
and jurisdictions has been a source of much friction. But, on the whole, it has
worked well, despite papal assertions of the impossibility of compromise;
though there have been intrigues with the enemies of Italy and much angry
hostility on the surface, the personal relations between Pontiff and King have
been generally conciliatory. Pius IX resigned himself with dignity and good
humour to the new situation; he resolutely declined to listen to any proposal
to leave Rome and always remained on excellent terms with Victor Emmanuel II.
Leo XIII, while equally inflexible in upholding papal claims to temporal
sovereignty, maintained the same friendly personal relations with the monarchy,
and mutual concessions for the solution of practical difficulties were the rule
during his long pontificate. During the reign of Victor Emmanuel III, and
especially since the diplomatic rupture between the Papacy and France,
relations have been even more cordial, and the protectorate of the Catholic
jnissions in the East has been transferred to Italy. Official hostility has
been relaxed on either side, and, but for ttie violence of extremists in both
camps and financial considerations at the Vatican, together with the fear that
an avowed reconciliation with the monarchy would loosen the ties between the
Papacy and the Catholic world and accelerate the tendency towards the creation
of national churches, the kiss of peace would already have been exchanged. A
significant declaration by an illustrious Italian Bishop was published in
November, 1904, rejoicing that the non expedit was ended, and the Temporal
Power dead and buried. In July, 1905, the venerable Bishop of Cremona published
the details of a remarkable
interview
he had at Florence in 1879 with Cardinal Manning, who, drawing up his tall
ascetic figure, solemnly warned him that it was madness for the Papacy to think
of regaining the Temporal Power; that no European State would lift a finger to
restore it, and that, by asking the monarchy to give up Rome, they were asking
it to commit political suicide.
The
encyclical II Fermo Proposito (June 11,1905), practically shelving the non
expedit and expressly calling on Catholics to prepare to take part in
parliamentary life, is a tacit surrender to an accomplished fact and the end of
futile claims to temporal dominion. But the occasion and manner of the changed
policy at the Vatican have sorely tried the feelings of the Catholic democracy.
They complain that what was refused during a whole generation to national
sentiment has been conceded to fears of Socialism in the moneyed classes, and
that the Church has allied herself with a party in the State, her avowed enemy
for half a century. The triumph of the Spanish Cardinals in the Curia and the
suppression of Don Murri’s organ, the Cidtura Sociale, with its “ American ”
policy of interesting the clergy in moral and social reform, have been followed
by the encyclical Pieni T Animo (July 28,1906), which requires the absolute
submission of the priests to episcopal authority in all their social and
political activities and prohibits any connexion with the Lega Democratica
Nazionale, any utterance of words that tend to provoke hostile feelings against
the upper classes, or any breath of concession to the exigencies of modem life.
In the fields of philosophy, theology, and science, the triumph of medievalism
has been complete. The syllabus Lamentabili, July 3, 1907, and the encyclical,
Pascendi Dominid Gregis (September 8, 1907), are a reversion to the attitude of
the syllabus of 1864. The Church, with maternal vituperation, denounces her
modernist children as factors of heresy, destroyers of all religion, and lures
to atheism; the Bishops are urged to eradicate modernism from the seminaries by
means of press censors and vigilance committees acting in secrecy, and to block
every aperture by which a ray of advanced thought may penetrate. Despite
penalties of major excommunication, the modernist leaders have decided to
persist in their effort to raise the scientific and philosophical equipment of
the priesthood and remove it from its present position towards all that
concerns the problems of the modern world.
The
end of the nineteenth century, and the opening of the twentieth, have been
remarkable for the advent of two new forces into Italian politics which give
some promise of a healthier tone in public life. The more recent of the
two—that of the organised Catholic laity—points to the active cooperation of an
orderly Conservatism, which has too long passed by on the other side; the
earlier and more important movement, that of organised socialism, has given the
democracy a new hope and a
constructive
faith, which have largely weaned it from the solvent forces of anarchism. Its
rise has been rapid. In 1879 the young Andrea Costa, breaking away from the
International, began to preach the Marxite faith in Italy. He taught that the
days of barricades were past; the old doctrine of violent revolutions to be
achieved by a few men of ideas, acting upon and leading the unconscious masses,
must give place to the patient work of propaganda among the proletariate; the
workers must be educated to act as a self-conscious force in A class struggle for
economic emancipation, culminating in their inevitable victory and in the
collective possession and administration of the wealth of the community.
Socialism,
however, made little way till early in the nineties, when Filippo Turati and
other enthusiastic young Marxites founded the Critica Sociale, and began an
active and fervent propaganda. The new social gospel made an irresistible
appeal to the ardent young intellectuals of cultured and industrial Milan and
the north generally, and by the adhesion of thinkers such as Lombroso, Ferrero,
Antonio Labriola, and Anna Kuliscioff, pf poets and authors as Graf, de Amicis,
and Ojetti, of professional men as Ferri, the eminent criminologist, and
Bissolati, of economists as Loria, the movement sprung at a bound into robust
maturity. In 1893, the party divided into opposing camps: the Riformisti, under
Ferri, who were willing to accept the monarchy so long as it was not ranged
against them, and to work temporarily with Radicals and Republicans for
definite measures of reform that had socialistic tendencies; the Intransigenti,
under Turati, rigid and exclusive Marxites who would have no compromise with
any form of capitalistic society. In 1896, by a curious evolution, the leaders
changed positions • Turati became chief of the Riformisti, and Ferri of the
opposing group. At the congress held at Rome in 1900 the two groups were alike
confronted by a new section, the Sindacalisti, led by the fiery Neapolitan,
Arturo Labriola, who, more uncompromising even than Ferri, insisted on the
fundamental revolutionary character of socialism and looked for victory from
the direct action of the organised workers—operai smdacati —fighting for their
own hand.
In
1903 the party organ, the Avanti, was captured from the Riformisti, and Turati’s
colleague Bissolati gave place to the more aggressive Ferri as editor. At the
socialistic congress of 1904 at Bologna the clash of principles, embittered by
personal antagonism, led to angry scenes in which Ferri, passionately pleading
for the unity and integrity of the party, intervened as peacemaker between
Turati and Labriola and carried the Right and Left Centres with him in a
resolution which declared that, while asserting the necessity of combating
capitalistic society by revolutionary propaganda, unity must be sought in the
varied activities of all socialists. The resolution was a compromise, and its
supporters were known as IntegraUsti. Such was the growing
importance
of the Socialist party that the meeting of the congress at Rome in 1906 evoked
scarcely less attention than that of the Chamber itself. The veteran Andrea
Costa presided, and debates, hot and passiorate, proved how wide and deep was
the schism. Ferri again dominated the assembly, and with the aid of the
Riformisti carried by a large majority—26,947 against 5278 of the votes
represented—a resolution affirming that the party, while agreeing to make use
even of general strikes as a means, would avoid an excessive or too frequent
use of that weapon. Fundamental questions, such as that of passive resistance
to military service, were not faced, and although broadly it may be said that
the advocates of the catastrophic, as opposed to the evolutionary and
parliamentary principle, had lost in numbers and influence, the gulf that
separated the groups was not bridged. Ferri remained director of the Avanti
and, by his aggressive energy and powerful eloquence, the acknowledged leader
of the socialists in the Chamber. Although their deputies were reduced in the
1904 election from thirty-three to twenty-seven, the Socialists then polled
316,790 votes, and the party, monopolising as it does the labour movement in
Italy, wields an influence out of all proportion to its numerical strength. The
Socialists are naturally strongest in the industrial north; they have a large
following in Parma, in the villages of the Romagna, of Reggio- Emilia, and
among the labourers of the Po valley; some headway has also been made in Naples
and the south. The election statistics of 1904 give 177,439 Socialist votes to
the north; 108,231 to the centre; and 31,120 to the south, including the
islands of Sardinia and Sicily. So far as the immediate demands of the
parliamentary group are concerned, they amount to little more than a
compendium of urgent social and political reforms of which many have been
accepted by enlightened Conservatives, such as Professor Villari and Baron
Sonnino. The old Republican party has waned in numbers and importance as social
questions have more and more imperiously demanded solution; but the Constitutional
Radicals who, while refusing to utter the socialist shibboleth, yet differ
from the socialist programme only in minor details, are a force to be reckoned
with, and number in their ranks men of the highest capacity and integrity.
The
story of Italian finance, since 1870, is that of a grievous and increasing
burden of expenditure patiently borne by a country poor in natural resources
and young in the practice of industry. The system of national book-keeping is a
complicated one, and the mass of printed matter dealing with public finance is
portentous.
The
effective expenditure which, in 1871, amounted to £40,531,000, rose in 1881 to
£49,183,000; in 1890-1 to £64,601,000; in 1900-1 to £66,094,000; and in 1906-7
to £74,252,500. The lean years of recurrent deficits, 1885-6 to 1896-7, have
since given place to handsome
and
gradually increasing surpluses, amounting to .£378,440 in 1897-8, and to nearly
four millions sterling in 1902-3. In 1906-7 the surplus of effective revenue
over expenditure was £3,929,900. These sums, however, owing to varying
deficits in the categories of railway construction and financial operations,
finally worked out in 1897-8 to a deficit of £44,220, and to a reduced surplus
in 1902-3 of £2,788,520; the final surplus in 1906-7 however amounted to
£4,073,900. The National Debt is oppressive in its magnitude. From £323,618,000
in 1871, it steadily increased to £505,343,000 in 1897. Ranging between 512 and
521 millions during the next decade, it fell to 508 millions in 1905, rose again
to 521 millions in 1906, and in 1907 reached £524,797,000, of which however
£14,059,000 were railway bonds raised 'in June, 1905, at 3'65 per cent., and
£4,280,000 raised in December, 1906, at 3'50.
The
increase in local indebtedness is also a matter of grave concern. The
provincial and communal debts, which in 1877 stood at £34,235,000, had in 1899
increased to £56,671,000, to which should be added a depreciation of communal
property by sales of woods amounting to ten millions sterling. The annual local
expenditure has increased from sixteen millions in 1871 to over twenty-six
millions sterling in 1899. In local, as in national taxation, the incidence
falls with crushing effect on the poorer classes, who contribute a
disproportionate amount of their income owing to the large revenue drawn from
indirect taxation (food and drink). Some relief has been afforded by the
abolition of the octroi duties on bread and flour products; but the condition
of the labourer is a serious problem, for to millions of Italians wheaten bread
and even salt are still luxuries. In local as in national expenditure reform is
a moral as well as a political question. Enlightened and upright statesmen of
all shades of opinion concur in demanding a purification of the public
services, and bewail the lack of honest and efficient administrators. Italy
still awaits the courageous and resolute reformer, who shall grapple with the
shameless corruption which is so exhausting a drain on the national resources.
In
the race for armaments, Italy has not yet decided whether to run with the great
Powers or with the small. Her army, organised on German lines in 1875 by
General Ricotti, is nominally composed of a permanent force of about 250,000
men and a first reserve of about 500,000: a second reserve, the milizia mobile,
numbers 310,000, and a third, the milizia territoriale, about 2,225,000. The
total strength in 1901—since when confidential returns have been issued to the
military authorities alone—was officially returned as 3,366,920 officers and
men, excluding the African forces. But the paper strength is subject to
important reservations. The legal period of training is, for financial reasons,
considerably curtailed in practice; the milizia mobile is rarely called out,
and a competent Italian military authority has recently
declared
that in the event of mobilisation nine-tenths of the second reserve would join
the colours deficient in training: in point of efficiency the third reserve is
probably in even worse case. The proportion of conscripts who fail to pass the
medical examination and are either rejected as physically unfit or referred
back for a year, is a high one, and for the past thirty years has averaged
about 50 per cent.
Army
expenditure has increased from six millions sterling in 1871 to nearly twelve
millions and a quarter in 1906-7; naval expenditure from over a million in 1871
to over six millions in 1906-7. The number of officers and men on the navy
rolls has risen from 15,215 in 1873 to 59,587 in 1906. The proportion of army
and navy expenditure, about 21 per cent, of the whole, is considerably lower
than that of the Great European Powers; in proportion to private incomes it is,
however, much higher.
In
1906, the extraordinary and continued improvement in the national finances and
the serener political atmosphere made it possible to carry out the great scheme
of debt conversion contemplated since 1899 and already elaborated in 1903 by
Luzzatti. In 1871 the minimum quotation for the rendita on the Paris Bourse was
50*50: in 1905 it never fell below 103'55, despite the reduction of the net
interest in 1894 from £4<. 6s. 9d. to £4s per cent. Meanwhile the average
rate of exchange for gold in London fell in 1905 to 25'14. Of the gross amount
of Italian consols, 400 millions sterling, no less than £327,640,000 was
subjected to conversion. The Bill, laid on the table at three o’clock of the
afternoon of June 29, 1906, became law at eight o’clock amid a scene of
unparalleled enthusiasm. Rising as one man, the whole Chamber turned to where Luzzatti
sat, a simple deputy, and united in a magnificent ovation to the father of the
financial risorgimento of Italy. The heroes of the conversion were, however, as
Luzzatti modestly said, the patient Italian taxpayer and the thrifty and
patriotic Italian emigrant. By the conversion, the net 4 per cent, rendita was
to be reduced to 3‘75 per cent, from July 1, 1907, to January 1, 1912: it it
was then to be reduced to 3'50 per cent., and guaranteed from further
conversion up to January 1, 1921. So successful was the operation that holdings
to the amount only of £187,000 were refunded and not a breath disturbed the
money markets of Europe. On the eve of the conversion the rendita was quoted in
Paris at 105'10: on the morrow at 104 80: during the first six months of 1907
it averaged 102-50. The annual economy to the exchequer wm estimated
at £800,000 for the first, and £1,600,000 for the second period. The position
of the Finance Minister after the conversion recalls that of the winner at dice
in the opening terzim of the sixth Canto of Purgatory— clamorous interests
plucking at his sleeve asking for relief. Luzzatti’s original purpose was to
exonerate the poorer taxpayer by reducing the duties on the first necessities
of life; but the prospective saving is already
engulfed,
as former surpluses have been, by the increased demands of railway
construction, military and naval expenditure, state employees and protected
interests. The economic expansion which rendered this conversion possible has
been no less remarkable. Exports and imports (excluding the precious metals)
amounted in 1872 to £93,790,890. Some slight increase in imports took place in
the later seventies; between 1880 and 1887 the rise in imports was more marked,
while the exports remained stationary. Under the increased protectionist duties
and the disastrous tariff war with France, the volume of foreign trade, which
in 1887 reached ,£104!,283,360, contracted in 1888 to £82,661,440, the exports
to France having fallen from £16,192,240 to £6,814,320. Some slight recovery
ensued, and foreign trade remained af an average of about eighty-seven millions
until 1897, when a rapid and sustained revival took place. In 1898 it rose to
£104,676,180, and by progressive increases reached in 1907 the handsome total of
£193,181,500.
Many
causes have contributed to this happy result—the termination of the tariff war
with France; commercial treaties with Germany and Austria; the increasing
utilisation of hydro-electric power; the growth of cooperation; the sobriety,
industry, and alert intelligence of the Italian workman ; the new ideas and
heightened standard of comfort introduced by returning emigrants. The growth of
cooperative banking has been striking. From 64 in 1871 the number of Banche
Popolari has increased to 832 in 1906; the two pioneer banks of Milan and
Bologna, founded in 1866, have increased their turnover, the former from four
and a half millions sterling in 1870 to one hundred and six millions and a half
in 1906; the latter from £437,452 to £7,624,187. The savings entrusted to the
750 banks which made returns to the Cremona Congress in 1907, amounted to
twenty-eight and three quarter millions sterling. The amount of deposits in
credit, ordinary, and Post Office Savings Banks has increased from £26,046,000 in
1876 to £152,724,000 in 1906. During the period 1881-1905, £16,604,584 have
been given or bequeathed to charitable institutions, which in 1900 possessed
property worth £88,198,228. Excluding credit associations, the number of
legally constituted cooperative societies .has increased from 1203 in 1897 to
4042 in 1906, among which the 50 Agricultural cooperative have increased to
622, and the Builders and Decorators cooperative from 349 to 818. A remarkable
development has recently taken place at Reggio-Emilia under the auspices of the
socialists, who by means of the Labour Bureau (Camera del Lavoro), have
federated no less than 425 workmen’s associations, of which 175 are
cooperative, 38 provident societies, and 212 trades unions. Under the new law
(July 7, 1907) which facilitates the concurrence of cooperative societies in
contracts for State Railway construction, 39 of the Reggio-Emilian cooperative
have combined and contracted to construct and work the Reggio-Ciano line of
about 20 miles.
The
increase in exports of manufactured goods since 1892 has been
more
than threefold, in imports of raw material more than twofold. The exports of
raw and manufactured silk have risen from ,£*13,248,500 in 1897 to ,£27,347,000
in 1906, and the home production of raw silk from a million and a quarter tons
in 1876 to over six millions in 1906. The struggle for supremacy between Lyons
and Milan has, since 1892, ended in a victory for the Lombard capital; in 1905
the total quantity of silk conditioned at Milan was 9439 tons as against 7010
at Lyons. In 1903, 191,654 operatives were employed in the Italian silk
industry.
The
cotton trade, from small beginnings, has attained large proportions : the home
market has been captured and the value of cotton exports increased from ,£827,968
in 1888 to <£’4,952,915 in 1906. In 1903 the industry gave employment to
138,880 operatives, despite a large increase in the use of steam and
hydro-electric power. The woollen industry, although highly protected, is a
sickly one, and is of relatively small importance. Some progress has been made
in iron, steel, and chemical manufacture. The production of steel, largely due
to high tariffs and a virtual monopoly of government orders, especially for
armour plates, has increased from 4212 tons annually during 1881-5 to 135,856
tons during 1900-4. There can be no doubt that, as the latent potentialities of
hydro-electric power are increasingly harnessed for the service of Italian
industry and vexatious fiscal impediments removed, a great impetus will be
given to home manufactures. The amount of water power available has been
variously estimated at from two and a quarter to ten million horse-power, of
which, in 1904,
490,000 horse-power only had been tapped.
But
with little iron, no coal, and exiguous mineral resources generally, Italy is,
and probably will long remain, chiefly an agricultural country. Her exports in
1905 amounted to twenty-four millions sterling—less than those of Belgium,
whose population numbers less than seven millions, little more than one-fifth
of the Italian total; and, according to the census of 1901, no less than
16,836,551 persons in Italy were dependent on agriculture. In her agriculture,
however, a risorgimento is still to seek. Italy is not naturally a fertile
land. With one-tenth of barren rock and one-third mountain, she has, except in
Lombardy and Venetia, but few plains of rich alluvial soil, and south of the
Tiber, no great rivers. The mysterious pellagra and malarial fever are
permanent scourges; untamed watercourses ravage the soil; earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions periodically leave ruin and desolation in their train. The
dweller in the bleak and sullen north, his ears ringing with Mignon’s Kennst du
das Land, conjures up visions of Italy as a land of fatness, laughing with corn
and wine and oil; a land of golden-hued orange trees glowing in the sunlight,
and lemon groves laden with cooling fruit. But over vast tracts of the south,
how grievous is the reality! The traveller in the Basilicata, in Calabria, in
Lecce, beholds fever-stricken deserts;
hopeless,
helpless misery; the piteous aspect of villages each, with sadly appropriate
nomenclature, possessing its Via Addolorata.
Much
agricultural progress has, however, taken place in the north, owing to
cooperation, rural credit banks, and improved methods of culture. Casse Ruraii,
the first of which was established by Dr Wollemborg in 1883, have profoundly
influenced the development of peasant farming in north Italy and have starved
out the usurer. In 1892 the system was vigorously taken up by the clericals,
and a rapid growth ensued; in ten years the Casse increased from 93 to 1099. In
1906, 1467 were in operation, or, including the analogous Casse Agrari, 1663,
only a few score of which were unsectarian.
The
political emancipation of the south was achieved in a few months; forty years
have passed, and its economic emancipation is still to seek. The fiscal and
economic burdens of unification have fallen with terrible incidence on the
south; it is estimated by Professor Nitti that the old kingdom of the Two
Sicilies pays in direct taxation £1,200,000 annually more than it ought. The
problem is that of a bigger Ireland, of an Italia Irredenta far more urgent
than that of the provinces still Austrian—a riddle which yet awaits its
Oedipus.
The
evil in its urban aspect is centred at Naples: in its rural aspect in the
Basilicata. Nitti has proved that in Naples alone of the great cities of Italy
the consumption of food per head has been decreasing, and that there alone the
diseases due to innutritive, unwholesome, and insufficient food have steadily
increased instead of diminishing. A confidential report by Dr Franzoni,
prepared at the request of the Zanardelli Government, gives an appalling
picture of the exhaustion and misery in the once fertile but now miserable and
derelict Basilicata —squalid fields ; deserted farms, unsalable, unlettable;
fiscal extortion of incredible ferocity; a population inhabiting filthy hovels
in abject misery and troglodyte promiscuity. The causes specified by Dr
Franzoni are manifold—lack of capital, ravages of floods, deafforestation, the
advent of railways and consequent competition of external produce, the grievous
burden of taxation, lack of roads, prehistoric methods of cultivation,
latifondi, absenteeism, suppression of the religious Orders, monstrous usury,
corrupt and inefficient administration.
The
statistics of illiteracy tell their own tale: in the Basilicata, in 1901, after
a quarter of a century of nominally compulsory education, 75 4 per cent, of the
population were illiterates as compared with 17’7 in Piedmont. The increasing
exodus of the able-bodied male inhabitants from this land of despair has
assumed alarming proportions. Since 1899 emigration has doubled, and in 1906,
out of a total population of about half a million, over 18,000 expatriated
themselves, of whom 98 per cent, crossed the ocean to the lands of promise in
the west. The Basilicata is the only province of Italy where the population per
square mile has shown a decrease instead of an increase. The result of
emigration has
been
twofold: while on the one^pand, wages, during the past five years, have
doubled, and relatively considerable sums of money have been sent from America
to the families left behind by the emigrant, on the other, owing to the
grievous financial position of many of the landowners, crushed between the
heavy taxation and increased wages, fewer hands have been employed and more
land has gone out of cultivation. The Apulian aqueduct voted in 1902, a vote of
two and three-quarter millions sterling in 1904 for public works in the
Basilicata, and a law to encourage the growth of industries at Naples, were so
many partial attempts to deal with the problem. But it was not till 1906, when
Sonnino introduced his measures for relief, that any statesmanlike effort to
grapple with the problem as a whole was made. The Naples law (July 8, 1904)
contains great potentialities. A large zone of territory free from duty on raw
materials has been set apart for the encouragement of manufactures. Already
factories are springing up and a Genoese company, founded under the auspices of
the chief iron and steel works in Italy, has acquired about 270 acres of land
on which it is proposed to erect blast furnaces and rolling-mills capable of an
annual turn-over of a million tons of raw material and steel products. The
works for the construction of the great Apulian aqueduct begun in 1904 are
estimated to involve an expenditure by the State of four millions sterling,
and, by the Communes of Foggia, Bari, and Lecce, of another million. Grave
technical defects have, however, been indicated by eminent engineers and
geologists; and local medical officers in the province of Lecce, and especially
at Gallipoli, unanimously attribute the increased mortality, which it was one
of the objects of the aqueduct to check, not to bad water but to the
insufficient quantity and bad quality of the food of the inhabitants.
The
problem of southern unrest is, in Sicily, complicated by racial Characteristics
and historical traditions. The islanders, with their intense local patriotism
and strains of Saracen and Norman blood, have ever been distinguished by their
passionate love of independence, and it was always easy to raise a separatist
movement there, whether under Spanish or Bourbon rule. The economic misery of
the southern mainland finds its parallel in the island. Illiteracy and
emigration are as prevalent
as
across the straits—127,603 emigrants left Sicily in 1906_____ whole
populations
are largely maintained by money sent by relatives from America, and a new form
of usury has been created to supply passage money and landing capital to
emigrants. Sicily, more than any other agricultural region of Italy, has been
hit by American competition, and the mosca olearia pest, as on the mainland,
has wrought havoc with the olive crops. Two-thirds of the agrumi (lemon,
orange, etc.) plantations are in Sicily, and the fall in prices in these
products has been disastrous. Sulphur too, another Sicilian staple, has
severely depreciated in value. Here, as on the peninsula, huge estates, short
leases, lack of
capital,
monstrous usury, and a corrupt administration, are evils imperatively
demanding broad and statesmanlike remedies. Crispi, in 1894, confronted by the
agrarian insurrections, made a bold attempt to deal with the problem, but his
schemes were wrecked by the powerful landed interests represented in the
Chamber.
In
the Napoletano and in Sicily a further complication arises from the corroding
of social life by the Camorra, and the Mafia. Among populations accustomed for
centuries to regard the official machinery of the law as something hostile,
venal, superimposed by a foreign despotism, secret societies find a congenial
soil. In their better aspect, they constitute a sort of rough popular justice
and a degenerate chivalry; they keep the ring clear for the play of those
fierce passions, which from time immemorial have made personal revenge of
injury a sacred law: in their coarser aspect they are but gangs of criminals,
blackguards, and ratteners, whose only bond is a community of antipathy to all
established order or government. The apotheosis of criminals, such as Palizzolo
and of the disgraced Minister Nasi in Sicily; the immunity of the former and
the tardy and derisory sentence passed on the latter ; the deplorable revelations
at their trials of perversity, jobbery, and lack of principle in high places,
leave an impression of widespread corruption on the mind. It is one of the
ironies of the Nasi scandal that the incriminated Minister held the portfolio
of Public Instruction in more than one Government and authorised the use of
Mazzini’s Duties of Man as a reading book in Italian schools.
The
prevailing tendency of Italian diplomacy since 1870 has been towards alliance
with Germany. Even down to October 13, 1874, a French frigate remained at
Civita Vecchia at the Pope’s disposal; and, until Gambetta routed the forces of
clerical and monarchical reactionaries in 1877, there was a very real danger of
seeing the French bayonets at Rome again. Moreover the determination of the
Italian Government to create a powerful modern navy was held to be a menace to
French interests in the Mediterranean. In 1878 Italy had returned empty-handed
from the Berlin Congress, though cherishing hopes of an Italian protectorate in
Tunis, to which she had been urged by Austria and Russia, but from which she
had abstained from fear of wounding French susceptibilities : in 1881 she
beheld her statesmen outwitted and herself forestalled by the French occupation.
To her utter stupefaction, no protest was raised by Great Britain or Germany,
for it was not then known that France had been paid for her acquiescence in the
secret acquisition of Cyprus by an invitation to compensate herself in North
Africa. The Treaty of Bardo (May 12) was a response to Lord Salisbury’s Prenez
Tunis, addressed at Bismarck’s suggestion to Waddington at Berlin, and it
fanned Italian hostility to France to fiercest flames. In October, Bismarck,
who had always desired formally
to
include Italy in the German-Austrian alliance, contrived, in spite of
irritation caused by the Irredentist agitation, a meeting between Humbert I and
Francis Joseph at Vienna. To the amazement and disgust of Italian patriots,
their King returned an Austrian colonel, and (May 20, 1882) an alliance was
concluded with the arch-enemy of Italian independence.
The
popular sympathy with Arabi Pasha, to help whom Menotti Garibaldi was raising
an Italian legion, made it impossible to accede to a formal invitation to join
Great Britain in the occupation of Egypt, and since 1882 some coolness had
arisen between the two nations. But in 1884 it was indirectly intimated to the
Depretis Ministry that, in view of French activity, the occupation by a
friendly Power of certain positions on the Red Sea littoral would not be
regarded unfavourably at Downing Street. Secured by the Triplice from attack by
land, and by agreement with Great Britain from attack by sea, the Government
decided on a forward policy in Africa. Early in 1885 Beilul and Massowah were
occupied by an Italian expedition, H.M.S. Condor having preceded it with orders
to observe and report. The new policy, which had been acquiesced in rather than
approved by Depretis, was inaugurated with no clear grasp of the magnitude of
the issues involved and, indeed, against the personal advice of Lord Cromer to
the Italian Consul-General at Cairo. The abandonment of the Sudan by Great
Britain was an unforeseen blow, but the occupation was made good and subsequent
operations on the mainland evoked protests from King John of Abyssinia. Early
in January, 1887, rumours reached Rome of hostile forces gathering under Ras
Alula; but the Minister of War, Count Robilant, airily declined to attach
importance to the movements of a “handful of raiders” (quattro predoni). On
January 26 Depretis rose in the Chamber, ashen pale, and with faltering voice
read a telegram announcing that a whole battalion of 500 men had been cut to
pieces at Dogali. A force of 20,000 men was sent to retrieve the disaster, but,
after a period of inaction on either side and many losses from dysentery and
fever, the expedition was recalled. In the anarchy that followed the death of
King John in 1889, Menelik of Shoa was promised Italian support against his
rival of Tigri; and the ambiguous Treaty of Accialli with the Shoan Chief,
negotiated by Count Antonelli, nephew of the famous Cardinal, was interpreted
by Crispi to involve the suzerainty of Italy over Abyssinia; money was coined
with the impress of King Humbert, wearing the Ethiopian crown, and the African
possessions were constituted (January, 1890) a Colonia Eritrea. Brilliant
victories over the dervishes at Agordat (December 21, 1893) and Cassala (July
19,1894) were hailed with transports of joy in Italy; and Crispi, who had
returned to power in 1893, sailing on the full tide of success, aimed at a vast
African empire. On January 14, 1895, General Baratieri, Governor of the colony,
defeated Ras Mangascia at Senafe,
and
the premier proposed to occupy the province of Tigri. But at the end of the
year large Abyssinian armies were threatening the Italian outposts; a force of
2350 men was routed and a garrison at Makale compelled to surrender. Hastily
formed and ill-disciplined reinforcements^ were despatched from Italy, and Crispi
angrily telegraphed to Baratieri demanding an “authentic victory.” The
Governor, concentrating his forces, advanced, and on February 7,1896, sighted
the enemy under Menelik. The Abyssinian army retired to Adowah: Baratieri
remained inactive, and hinted at withdrawal. On February 22 General Baldissera
was appointed to supreme command; and on the 25th Crispi despatched a furious
telegram to Baratieri, characterising the operations as “ military phthisis,”
and declaring that the country was prepared for any sacrifice to save the
honour of the army and the prestige of the monarchy. Goaded, perhaps, to a
desperate effort to retrieve his position before the arrival of his superior,
Baratieri advanced with 20,000 men to meet the enemy 80,000 strong at Adowah.
He was a dashing Gari- baldian soldier of the old school, but over-weighted by
the command of an expedition that demanded high powers of organisation. His
army service was inadequate, and he was a long distance from his base. The
columns lost touch; a whole brigade went astray; and on March 1 the Italian
army was routed, losing all its artillery. The long retreat through mountain
defiles, harassed by a savage and hostile population, was more agonising even
than the defeat. The disaster was complete and overwhelming; 254 officers,
including two generals, and nearly 4500 men were killed; 45 officers and 1500
men captured. The attempt to hunt with the lions in colonial aggrandisement had
ended in humiliation; the suzerainty over Abyssinia was abandoned, and the
colony, finally delimited by the Treaty of Peace signed September, 1900, was
reduced to a territory of about 80,000 square miles; in December, 1906, an
agreement on Ethiopian affairs was signed by Italy, France, and Great Britain.
Up to 1906 African adventures had cost the State =£’17,591,567. The balance
sheet of the colony of Erythrea is a melancholy one. Out of a population of
about 300,000, only 2800 are Europeans, and the annual charge on the Italian
exchequer is about £320,000. The total imports in 1905 were valued at £516,367,
of which Italy contributed £138,852; the total exports £270,897, of which only
£31,303 were home consignments. A small caravan trade, totalling £209,965 in
1906, was done with Ethiopia. In 1905 the Italian Government assumed direct
administration of the Somaliland Protectorate, after the unhappy results of
exploitation by two private companies.
Since
the end of the tariff war with France in 1898, and the subsequent acquiescence
of the Republic in Italy’s claims on Tripoli, the sister Latin nations have
drawn closer. Popular Italian sentiment has always favoured an alliance with
democratic France rather than with Germany; an agreement on Mediterranean
affairs was effected
in
December, 1901, and, early in 1902, the French ambassador, in a speech to the
French colony at Rome, declared that a conflict between the two Latin nations
was no longer possible. The visit of President Loubet to Rome in the spring of
1904 sealed the bond of amity, and support was given to France at the Algeciras
conference even at the cost of some friction with Germany. The Triple Alliance,
nevertheless, has been maintained: it was renewed in June, 1902, in conformity
with the new situation and still remains one of the bases of Italian foreign
policy, tacitly accepted but not loved. The Italia Irredenta agitation for the
redemption of the Trentino and the other Italian-speaking provinces from
Austrian rule has, since 1897, been overlaid by the more absorbing question
raised by the Balkan policy of the Dual Monarchy. The menace of an Austrian
Albania, with an Austrian Biserta at Valona commanding the Straits of Otranto
is intolerable to Italian diplomacy, which appears to overestimate the capacity
of the Gulf of Valona as a possible naval base: equally insufferable to
Austria is the prospect of an Italian occupation of Albania. Officially, both
Powers are bound to maintain the status quo, and repeated statements have been
made by successive Foreign Ministers in the Italian Chamber that Italy and
Austria are in full accord with regard to Albania. But, while officially the
attitude of both Powers is correct, each is pursuing among the Catholic
population of northern Albania a policy of “pacific economic penetration” by
means of the religious Orders and schools, and, generally, by shipping
subsidies, and strenuous efforts at commercial supremacy. Increased armaments
on both sides; anti- Austrian agitations in Italy; the exploitation of her
dynastic relations with Montenegro; the pressure of the Pangermanic movement in
Austria, and rival railway policies—these are disturbing elements in the
situation that demand the utmost delicacy and sagacity on either side. The
strategic railway projected by Austria through the Sandjak of Novibazar between
Uvatz and Mitrowitz would place her in direct communication with Salonica and
the Aegean, and cut across all lines of penetration from the Albanian ports to
the east; and, if the additional railway, which is already being studied at
Vienna, descended the coast of Albania from Cattaro, the province would be
enclosed in a girdle of steel and necessarily fall under Austrian control. To
counter this, Italian diplomatic support and the promise of a subsidy of
<£1,600,000 have been given to the rival Servian scheme of a Danube-Adriatic
line. Italy, in her present economic position, perhaps stands to lose more by a
European convulsion than any other nation, and in the face of the
ever-gathering, ever-shifting stormclouds in the Balkans she will need all
possible wisdom and fortitude in her statesmen.
THE
LOW COUNTRIES.
HOLLAND.
The political
history of the kingdom of the Netherlands during the greater part of the period
(1870-1905) of which this chapter treats is of no great general interest. The
death of Thorbecke left the Liberal majority in the States General weak and
divided, and, as there was also a dearth of statesmen of mark and intellectual
distinction, there is little of moment to record beyond the succession of
Ministries. The task of forming a Cabinet was confided by the King in 1872 to
Gerrit de Vries, who held office until 1874. His Ministry saw the beginning of
the war with the Sultan of Achin in north Sumatra, which was for so many years
to drain the resources of Holland. An expedition of 3600 men under General Kohler
sent against the rebel Sultan (April, 1873) had to retreat with heavy loss,
many dying from disease, including the commander. A second larger expedition
under General van Swieten was successful; the Sultan was deposed and his
territory occupied. This war, however, involved the home country in heavy
expenses, and was very unpopular in Holland. The provision of the necessary
funds increased the difficulties of a Ministry which could not rely upon the
support of a united party. In June, 1874, they resigned, and were succeeded by
another Liberal Ministry under Jan Heemskerk, which held office for three
years. Heemskerk, who had been Prime Minister from 1866 to 1868, was a capable
man; but during his second Ministry he can scarcely be said to have been in power.
He administered affairs not because he had the loyal support of his party, but
rather because it was felt that “the King’s government must be carried on.” He
had to contend against the opposition of the Progressives under Joannes
Kappeyne and of the Anti-revolutionary party, which, after the death of
Gulielmus Groen van Pfinsterer (May, 1876), found a new leader, Abraham Kuyper,
who effected a considerable change in its aristocratic character by infusing
into it the principles of democratic Calvinism, which he himself professed.
This Ministry passed a useful measure of reform in the judiciary, and attempted
to deal in a temporising spirit with the thorny question of
primary
education. Their proposals, however, gave satisfaction neither to the advanced
Liberals, nor to the Anti-revolutionaries, nor to the Catholics. Heemskerk
resigned and was succeeded by the leader of the Progressives, Joannes Kappeyne,
who found himself after the election of 1877 supported by a majority of 16 in a
House of 80 members. His Ministry was marked by the creation of an eighth
department of State, that of Commerce and Waterways. His treatment of the
primary education question, which refused to grant the subsidies to the “
private ” schools, was carried in the teeth of the bitter opposition of the
Antirevolutionary (Calvinist) and Catholic parties, who were united in
desiring full state support for religious instruction. But the Cabinet were
confronted with the difficulty of providing “ways and means” in consequence of
the cost of the protracted Achin war; and, although a succession duty, and
other unpopular taxes were forced through the Chamber by a narrow majority, the
Finance Minister, Johan George Gleichman, found himself unable to meet the
deficit, which confronted him, without having recourse to a loan of 44 million
florins. In these circumstances the proposals of the Minister of Waterways, Tak
van Poortvliet, to make a number of new canals were not favourably received,
and were rejected (May 20, 1879) by 40 votes to 39. This led to the resignation
of the Ministry. Kappeyne asked for the support of the Crown to revise the
Fundamental Law, but this the King refused.
William
now asked a member of the Anti-revolutionary party, Constantius Theodorus Count
van Lynden van Sandenburg, to form a “Ministry of affairs” composed of moderate
men of all parties. He succeeded in doing so, and, which is more wonderful,
though he had not the hearty goodwill of any section of the Chamber, he
remained in office for the greater part of four years (1879-83). The divisions
in the ranks of the Liberal majority and the steady support of the King enabled
van Lynden by his tact and resourcefulness to carry on the government during a
period of much disquietude and uncertainty. A series of disasters fell at this
time in rapid succession upon the Royal House, which seemed to threaten the
extinction of the line of Orange- Nassau. In 1877 Queen Sophia died; in 1879
Prince Henry, the King’s brother, for some years Stadholder of Luxemburg; a few
months later (June 11) the Prince of Orange, aged 39 years; in 1881 Prince
Frederick, the King’s uncle; and in 1884 Prince Alexander, his younger and sole
surviving son. It cannot honestly be said that the national regret at the
tragically premature deaths of the two young princes was called forth by regard
for their personal qualities. William ended his days at Paris, and at the time
of his decease had estranged himself from his countrymen by his continued
residence in a foreign capital, whose distractions he preferred to the more
homely life in Holland. He was, however, a man of parts; but Alexander was
sickly in body and enfeebled in mind, and his death was an important event only
because he was the
last
heir-male of the famous family of Orange-Nassau with whose fortunes those of
Holland had been for three centuries so closely bound up. The King had in
January, 1879,- taken in second wedlock the youthful Princess Emma of
Waldeck-Pyrmont, and the birth of a daughter, Princess Wilhelmina (August 31,
1880), caused general rejoicing throughout the country.
During
van Lynden’s Ministry the public interest in Holland was much stirred by the
events, which followed the uprising of the Boers of the Transvaal against
English rule and led to the formation of the South African Republic. It was
also still much occupied by the continuance of the Achin difficulty. The
Administration fell through an adverse vote (66 against 12) on a proposed
modification of the electoral franchise, February 26, 1883.
The
Liberals having now a very narrow majority and being split into hostile
fractions, the task of conducting the administration was again, for the third
time, confided to Jan Heemskerk at the head of a coalition Ministry of neutral
character. By the death of Prince Alexander (June 21,1884), the question of
providing for the succession of a female sovereign and a Regency became urgent.
A modification of the Fundamental Law was necessary, and provision was made for
Qiieen Emma to become Regent during her daughter’s minority with full powers. The
parliamentary deadlock made, however, that larger revision of the Fundamental
Law, which had been so long deferred, a matter of vital necessity to the
country. The unsatisfactory financial position, due to the pressure of the
Achin campaigns, the call for an alteration in the conditions of military
service and provision for the national defence, and for extension of the
suffrage in a democratic direction in order to combat more effectively the
active Socialist agitation under the leadership of Domela Nieuwenhuis,
compelled the Government to take this revision seriously in hand. The
opposition of the King was withdrawn, and in 1887 the revision became an
accomplished fact. The First Chamber was to consist of 50 members, chosen as
before by the Provincial Estates. The Second Chamber of 100 members to be
elected every fourth year by an electorate which included all males of 23 years
and upwards, being householders or lodgers at a certain minimum rent or
possessing “signs of fitness and social well-beinga formula reserved for
definition in a future law. By this reform the number of electors was raised
from (about) 100,000 to 350,000.
The
first elections under the new system resulted in the victory of the
Anti-revolutionary (27) and Catholic (25) coalition over the Liberal groups
(46). One independent Conservative and one Socialist (Domela Nieuwenhuis) were
also returned. In April, 1888, a new Ministry came into office under Baron
Aeneas Mackay, a man of moderate and conciliatory views. One of the first efforts
of the Coalition was to secure that subsidising of the “ private ” schools by
the State, which had
246
Disputes over electoral
Reform. [1889-93
been
denied them (1889). The private schools thus supported must number at least 25
scholars, must conform to the official regulations, and must be organised by a
society or body recognised by the law. The death of King William, who had been
for some time incapacitated by ill-health, took place on November 23, 1890.
During his long reign the people knew that their King, whatever his prejudices
or mistakes, had been heart and soul devoted to the welfare of the nation, and,
though he had never made any effort to win popularity, the traditional loyalty
of the Dutch to the House of Orange-Nassau rendered the person of the last male
representative of the race an object of deep-rooted affection, and his death
was generally mourned. An attempt of the Coalition Ministry to introduce a
system of universal personal military service alienated the Catholic wing of
their supporters, and at the elections of 1891 the Liberals obtained a
majority.
The
new Ministry under the leadership of Cornelis van Tienhoven, a man of moderate
views, was generally of a Progressive type, and contained a number of able
men, notably Nicolas Gerard Pierson, Minister of Finance, and Tak van
Poortvliet, Minister of the Interior. Failure had always attended hitherto the
attempts of finance Ministers to meet the constantly recurring deficits and to
make the budget balance by means of an income tax. Pierson succeeded. He
imposed a tax on all incomes of 650 florins and upwards derived from commerce,
industry, or salaries, but not on the interest of capital, on rents, or
agricultural, profits; he placed, however, a tax upon capital above 13,000
florins. He was able, at the same time, to remit the tax on patents, and to
lower the land tax and various duties. Under his skilful management funds were
found for the much-needed reorganisation of the national defences as well as
for social reforms. The Liberal party was, however, once more to be divided and
the Ministry shattered, by differences of opinion on the question of the
extension of the franchise and the interpretation of the qualification under
the Act of 1887—“signs of fitness and social well-being.”, Tak van Poortvliet
brought forward in 1893 a proposal for practically universal suffrage. He
understood by “fitness” being able to write, by “social well-being” not having
received assistance from public charity. His proposal, if carried, would have
raised the number of electors from 350,000 to 800,000, but it was strenuously
opposed. The moderate Liberals under Samuel van Houten’s leadership conducted a
campaign against it in the Chamber, in the Press, and on the platform, and they
had as allies the Conservative section of the Anti-revolutionary party headed
by Alexander Frederick de Savornin-Lohman, and the bulk of the Catholics. On
the other hand the radical Progressives supported Tak, as did also the
democratic Calvinists (Anti-revolutionary party) under Kuyper, and a small
group of Catholics who followed Schaepman. The parties were broken to pieces,
and, the States General being dissolved in March,
1894,
an appeal was made to the people. The election was fought not on the ordinary
party lines, but as a contest to the death between “ Takkians ” and “
anti-Takkians ” or “ van Houtians.” The results of the polling showed that the
van Houtians were in a majority, and the Takkians could only muster 46 votes
against 54 opponents. The Ministry therefore resigned, and was replaced by a
Cabinet formed by Jonkheer Johan Roell with van Houten occupying the post of
Minister of the Interior in succession to Tak van Poortvliet. It was on van
Houten, therefore, that the duty fell of preparing an alternative project of
electoral Reform. His proposals were finally accepted in 1896, and contained
the following provisions. The members of the Second Chamber are to be returned
by 100 single member districts; all males, being Netherlanders, and 25 years of
age, are electors, provided they come under one of the following categories:
(1) persons who pay in direct taxation at least one gulden, (2) householders or
lodgers paying a certain minimum rent and with certain conditions as to length
of residence, (3) proprietors or hirers of vessels of at least 24 tons,. (4)
earners of salaries or wages varying according to the place of habitation from
275 florins to 550 florins per annum, (5) holders of investments of 100 florins
in the public funds or of 50 florins in the Savings Banks, (6) persons who have
passed certain examinations. This scheme raised the number of electors to about
700,000.
The
elections of 1897 after a severe struggle resulted in the return of an
increased number of Progressives, and the Roell-van Houten Ministry resigned,
giving place to a Liberal concentration Ministry drawn from the various
sections of the Liberal party under Pierson, who resumed his place as Minister
of Finance, and Hendrik Goeman Borgesius, Minister of the Interior. This
Ministry passed a number of useful measures of social, educational, and
administrative reform: among these a law which made it obligatory on parents to
send their children to school until the age of 13, and at the same time raised
the salaries of teachers and the subsidies of the State. At last, in 1898,
after a quarter of a century of wrangling and discussion personal military
service was established, students and ecclesiastics excepted. In this year
(August 31, 1898) Queen Wilhelmina attained her majority, an event which was
celebrated with much enthusiasm, and many expressions of grateful recognition
were offered to the Queen Mother for the admirable way in which she had for the
past eight years discharged the duties of Regent.
The
following year was rendered memorable for Holland by the gathering on the
initiative of the Tsar Nicholas II of the first International Peace Congress
at the Hague. The sessions, at which delegates from all independent States were
present, were held from May 18 to June 29 at the royal residence known as The
House in the Wood, A few months later (October 10) the Boer War broke out,
which,
m-.
aroused
among the Dutch an intense feeling of sympathy for their kinsmen in South
Africa. The fugitive President Paul Kruger took refuge in Holland. He rect ,ed
a most friendly welcome from the Queen in person, and in this she reflected the
feeling of the country, which was for a time very bitter against England. The
Ministry, however, did its utmost to preserve a correct attitude, and to
maintain friendly relations with a Power which it was hopeless to oppose. This
attitude, together with a certain measure of unpopularity attaching to the laws
establishing personal military service and obligatory school attendance, led to
the overthrow of the Liberals at the elections of 1901. The orthodox Calvinists
(Anti-reVolutionaries) and the Catholics of all groups united on the basis of a
defence of Christian belief against a party whose profession Of religious
neutrality they denounced as “paganism.” Kuyper, to whose talents and energy
the victory at the polls was largely due, became the head of a Coalition
Ministry.
Earlier
in this same year (February 7, 1901) Queen Wilhelmina was married to Prince
Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. It was a match of affection, which commended
itself to the Dutch people, whose deep- rooted attachment to their Queen and
dynasty was most touchingly shown in the spring of the following year (April,
1902) when her very serious illness threatened to expose the Netherlands to the
danger of a disputed succession to the throne. Socialism had for years been a
grdwing force, having its chief centres in the large towns, especially in
Amsterdam and in Friesland, under the leadership of the eloquent young
advocate, van Troestra. In 1903 the Socialist propaganda bore fruit in the
threat of a general strike unless the Government were prepared to concede the
demands of the Democratic Labour Party. The Ministry met the threats with
firmness. The military were called out, and an “ Anti-strike ” Bill introduced
and carried. The determined attitude of the authorities met with the success it
deserved, and the strike was a complete failure. The rebellion in Achin again
assumed serious dimensions in 1902, involving a costly campaign, which resulted
in 1903 in the submission of the Sultan. In 1904, however, hostilities once
more broke out, and there was sanguinary fighting, in the course of which a
number of women and children met their deaths at the hands of the Dutch troops.
The news aroused much indignation, and the conduct of the war was Severely
arraigned in the Second Chamber. When the general election of 1905 drew near,
the sections of the Liberal party which had been so long divided sank their
differences in a united assault upon the Ministerialists, whose popularity had
been gradually diminishing. After a close struggle 45 Liberals with 7
Socialists were returned against 48 followers of Kuyper. There was thus a
narrow majority against the Government dependent on the Socialist vote. Kuyper
therefore resigned and was succeeded as Prime Minister by a moderate Liberal,
Goeman Borgfesius. ,
During
the period with which this chapter deals the Kingdom of the Netherlands had
been progressing steadily in material wealth and general well-being. The
population had more than doubled since 1845, and amounted to more than
5,000,000. The poldering of the estuary of the Y (1873-7) had converted yet
another district of many thousands of acres, once covered with water, into
fertile pasture land, with the North Sea Canal passing through its midst. This
fine canal, fifteen miles long and capable of conveying the largest ships, has
given to Amsterdam a uew outlet to the ocean, and has done much to restore its
commercial and maritime prosperity; while the port of Rotterdam has, since the
opening of its new waterway, made even more rapid strides. Rotterdam is a great
emporium of German trade, and the tonnage of the ships visiting it is now
twenty-five times greater than half a century ago. Agricultural depression
during the last decades of the century was severely felt, the trade in butter
and cheese especially suffering from Danish competition ; but with the advent
of the twentieth century there were signs of revival. The fisheries remain, as
they have been for centuries, a profitable source of occupation to many
thousands of the seafaring population.
In
the general diffusion of culture* and in intellectual and scientific
distinction, Holland can compare favourably with any other country. While the
reader must be referred on this head to the brief sketch of literature in the
Netherlands which was given in the previous volume; two fields of study may be
indicated in which deserved preeminence has been attained—critical theology and
national history. The representative names are Abraham Kuenen and Robert Fruin.
The'former has gained a world-wide reputation. But the work of Fruin has been
scarcely less remarkable, for by his influence arid example he created a school
of historical workers whose researches in the national archives, conducted on
sound and scientific principles, have been most fruitful.
This
account of the period 1870-1905 would not be complete without mention being
made of the great revival of Dutch painting which it has witnessed. There are
some critics who have so high an opinion of the merits of the modem School,
that they venture to think it not unworthy to take rank with that which in the
seventeenth century made Dutch art famous. This may be confidently stated—that
not since the age of Rembrandt has there arisen in any other country such a
group of consummate artists, distinguished for the originality and variety of
their genius, for their technical skill and richness of colouring, as in the
Holland of our own times. The names of Josef Israels and Hendrik Willem Mesdag,
of the three brothers Maris, of Anton Maure, Vincent van Gagh, and Albert
Bilders, are familiar to all lovers of art, and besides these may be mentioned
others of great merit—Rochussen, Bles, Roeloefs, Bosboom, and of younger men,
Neuhuys, Blommers, van Borselen, van de Sande Bakhuysen, de Haas, Duchatel, and
Haverman.
250
Parties and politics in Belgium.
[1870-8
The
qualities of this school show that the Dutch race of today have inherited from
their forefathers an artistic temperament singularly sensitive to the poetry of
form and colour, and the power to give it outward expression.
BELGIUM.
The
outbreak of war between France and Germany was a cause of great anxiety and no
small danger to Belgium. Fortunately, in no small measure owing to the
exertions of the King, steps had been taken to maintain an efficient army of
100,000 men with an adequate reserve, and to fortify the valley of the Meuse.
Hostilities had no sooner begun than the Belgian Government gave orders for the
mobilisation of the troops for the defence of the frontiers. This prompt
action, and the declaration of Great Britain that she would resist any
violation of Belgian territory, secured the neutrality of the country. After
Sedan, a body of French soldiers fled for refuge across the frontier; but they
were at once disarmed and interned.
It
has already been told how in this year (1870) a Catholic Ministry under Baron
d’Ariethan took office. Aided by a split in the Liberal ranks the Catholics had
at the elections of August obtained a majority in both Chambers. The
restriction of the franchise to the moneyed middle class, the great mass of the
people being without votes, had given the Liberals a long lease of power. They
had used it in trying to banish religion from the schools, and so far as
possible from civil life, and at the same time in not unsuccessful efforts more
and more to centralise the administration and to make it increasingly
bureaucratic. They also consistently refused to regulate by legislation the
hours or the conditions of labour or to reform the law on military service. In
their case, the name of Liberal signified rather that the party consisted of
freethinkers and Anti-Clericals than of men devoted to the cause of progress
and reform. The Catholics on the other hand must not be regarded as in any
sense a purely Clerical party. The distinction between them, apart from their
attitude towards religious questions, might perhaps be thus expressed; the
Catholic party was in its principles democratic and essentially national; the
Liberal party oligarchic and cosmopolitan, with French leanings.
In
1871 Malou succeeded Baron d’Anethan as head of a Cabinet composed of moderate
men. This was largely owing to the determination of the King that the
Ultramontanes should not be allowed to commit the Belgian Government to take
any active part in the agitation for the restoration of the Pope’s Temporal
Power. Nothing very noteworthy occurred during the seven years of their tenure
of office. The voting qualification for electors to provincial and communal
Councils was lowered to 20Jrancs and 10 francs, (direct taxation)
respectively,,
and
a law was passed making personal service in the army obligatory. Faced however
by the opposition. of a section of reactionaries in their own ranks as well as
by the whole Liberal party, which had gained strength in adversity, the
Administration did not retain its hold on the electorate. In 1878 the Liberals
were once more in a majority, and Walthere Frere-Orban became Prime Minister.
His tenure of office was signalised by a resolute attempt to secularise
education.
A
Bill was introduced and carried after fierce opposition, by which the system of
primary education, which had subsisted since 1842, was completely subverted.
All communal schools were placed under the strict supervision of the State, and
the teaching of religion was strictly forbidden, although an attempt was made
to conciliate the Catholics, by the introduction of a clause permitting the
clergy of all cults to give instruction in the school buildings out of school
hours to the children of such parents as desired it. The private schools were
allowed to exist, for the privilege of freedom of education was conceded by the
Constitution; but in the choice of schoolmasters, and indeed of all persons
employed in the public service or under the local administrations in the
magistracy or the notariate, on railways or in charitable institutions, an
exclusive preference was given to the pupils of the state schools. The
Catholics met the attack with an organised resistance. The Bishops appealed to
the faithful for funds, and so liberal was the response that soon private
Catholic schools were built in almost every commune in the kingdom. This appeal
was accompanied by drastic action. The clergy, carrying out the instructions of
the episcopate, refused absolution to all teachers in the “ Godless ” schools
and to the parents whose children frequented them. The Government replied by
the refusal of public assistance or employment. But the influence of the clergy
prevailed. Many of the state schools were almost deserted. In Flanders over 80
per cent, of the children went to the Catholic schools. The intervention of the
Pope was requested; but the Holy See declined to take any action, and such was
the resentment felt that the Belgian envoy at the Vatican was recalled. To
maintain the struggle the Liberal party needed all their strength; but a split
took place between the two sections, known as the Doctrinaires and the
Progressists, on the question of the extension of the franchise. This was fatal.
The elections of 1884 resulted in the return of a large Catholic majority;
indeed so permanent has been the revulsion of feeling against the Liberals,
that the party has remained excluded from office for a quarter of a century.
The new Ministry, at first under the presidency of Malou, and afterwards of
Auguste Beemaert, set to work without delay to undo the educational legislation
of their predecessors. The Liherals had established a special department of
education. This was abolished. Authority over the schools was restored to the
communal Councils, which had the power either to maintain a public (state)
school, or to “adopt” and give a grant to a private
school,
provided that it conformed to the regulations and submitted itself to the
inspection of the State. At the demand of 25 heads of families, the commune was
required to provide a Catholic or a neutral school, as the case might be; but
the teaching of religion was made compulsory, whenever the parents desired it.
Under this law, in a large number of communes the unsectarian schools ceased to
exist, and the religious education passed into the hands of the Catholic
clergy. Some members of the Cabinet would have proceeded still further in a reactionary
direction; but the King, seeing that the aims and views of this ultramontane
section were arousing strong hostility in many municipalities and communes,
insisted on their removal from the Ministry. Their place was taken by moderate
men. The Schools Law of 1884 has Worked well, and the settlement of the religious
question embodied in it has not been since disturbed.
During
the next few years, the Catholic majority devoted themselves to the furtherance
of a policy of social legislation, and several useful Acts were passed. The
Liberal Doctrinaires and Progressists were still divided on the subject of
electoral Reform, and did not prove formidable adversaries ; but a new party
arose—le parti owsrier beige—whose opposition, as the years went on, had to be
seriously reckoned with. Socialism, based upon the principles of Karl Marx, had
been making great headway among the Flemish industrial classes, especially at
Ghent and Brussels, while among the Walloon population, who worked in the coal
mines and factories of the south and east, a revolutionary socialism of the
French type had taken root, with headquarters at Liege and Namur. Serious
strikes, in 1886, had to be suppressed by military force. A Government
Commission was nominated to enquire into the grievances of the strikers^ and,
in 1887, councils of arbitration were Appointed to settle disputed questions
between employers and employed. Fresh strikes and disturbances took place,
however, in 1888, with the result that the Socialist party determined to set on
foot a vigorous agitation to secure representation in Parliament, whose
watch-cries were to be universal suffrage and reduction of the military
service. In making these demands they found the Liberal Progressists willing to
act with them up to a certain point; but the violence of the Socialist leaders
alienated gradually all moderate men, who were not prepared to accept the
doctrines of collectivism pure and simple. The principle of revision of the
Constitution was at length agreed to, and the Chambers were dissolved in 1892.
The result of the election was an increase in the Catholic majority, which
numbered 92 to 60 Liberals. But the Catholics did not even now possess the
two-thirds majority required by the Constitution. Much discussion ensued; but
no definite decision was for some time arrived' at. Meanwhile, the parti
ouvrier continued its agitation; and a general strike was threatened unless
universal suffrage was conceded. The Chamber, however, rejected the proposal to
establish universal
suffrage
(April, 1893). Nevertheless, it was felt by all sections of the Catholic party
that a wide extension of the franchise was called for, and the compromise of
universal suffrage safeguarded by the plural vote, as proposed by a Catholic
deputy—Albert Nyssens—was ultimately adopted (September 3, 1893).
This
system gave a vote to every male citizen of 25 years of age and upwards; but it
granted a supplementary vote to all fathers of families, to the owner of real
property valued at 2000 franc-?, or of investments bringing in an income of 100
francs, and two supplementary votes to everyone possessing diplomas of higher
education and to certain functionaries, with the proviso that no one should
have more than three votes in all. The first election under the new system,
which increased the possible total of votes tenfold, was held, October 14,1894.
The result gave an overwhelming majority to the Catholic party, who numbered
105. The Liberals only succeeded in holding 18 seats; but the Socialists made a
great stride forward and had 29 representatives in the new Chamber. They now
began with renewed vigour, under the leadership of Emile Vandervelde, to
conduct an active agitation in the country, while they found in Parliament an
opportunity, if not of thwarting the will of the majority, at least of
expounding their aims and views with insistence and ability. The first care of
the Ministry of de Burlet, who had succeeded Beemaert in April, 1894, was to
carry out a reform of the provincial and communal electorate on the same lines
as the parliamentary. An attempt was again made to terrorise the Government by
means of a general strike and by riots, but the authorities were firm, the
military was called out, and the strike collapsed. The passing of these
electoral reforms strengthened the hold of the Catholic party upon the administration
of the country. In 1895 an education Bill was introduced, which completed the
work of 1884. Religious instruction in public schools was made compulsory, and
the communes were forbidden to give free education to the children of parents
able to pay a fee. At the same time, social reform in many directions occupied
a foremost place in the programme of the Catholic party, and Acts were passed
dealing with old age pensions, workmen’s dwellings, and employers’ liability;
much was also done for the encouragement of thrift by subsidies to the Savings
Banks, and to mutual societies.
The
partial elections of 1896 resulted in raising the number of Catholic deputies
to 111, while the Liberals numbered 12, and the Socialists 29. The next
elections in 1898 left the relative strength of the parties practically
unaltered. In 1896 Count de Smet de Naeyer became head of the Ministry in place
of de Burlet. One of the first acts of his Ministry was a law making Flemish,
as well as French, the official language of the country. The Flemish movement
thus, in 1897, attained the realisation of its aim. All laws were henceforth to
be published in
the
two languages. The results of the last elections, which had left the Liberal
party in a hopeless minority, and had actually destroyed the more moderate wing
of that party, the Doctrinaires, had led to a demand for proportional
representation. The great Catholic majority, as is so often the case, having an
overwhelming superiority over all opponents, began to split up into groups, and
they found themselves in face of a resolute Socialist minority, which was bold
and enterprising, and did not scruple to make full use of all the arts of
parliamentary obstruction. The split in the ranks of the majority caused, in
the early part of 1899, a change of Ministry, Count de Smet de Naeyer giving
place to van den Peereboom. The new Prime Minister however found himself
confronted by organised obstruction from the Socialists, and after a brief
tenure of office he resigned, and Smet de Naeyer returned to his former post.
A
Bill for the adoption of a system of proportional representation was now
pressed forward and carried. By this measure, in every arrondisse- ment each
party receives a number of seats proportional to the votes recorded in its
favour, provided these exceed a certain fixed minimum. The first elections
under the new system were held in May, 1900, and, as had been anticipated,
resuscitated the almost defunct Liberal party. The Catholics were still in a
decided majority, the actual distribution of seats being, 85 Catholics, 31
Liberals, 32 Socialists, 3 Radicals, 1 Christian Democrat (dissentient
Catholic). The burning question at this time was that of military service. The
Belgian army had been raised by conscription mitigated by a somewhat indulgent
system of substitution. The measures now proposed modified the compulsory
system by encouraging voluntary enlistment while at the same time reducing the
time of active service and the numbers with the colours. The real aim of the
Catholic party was, in opposition to the wishes of the King and of his military
advisers, to adopt for Belgium the Swiss rather than the German model of army
organisation. At the same time, the subject of social reform was always in the
foreground of the settled policy of the Catholic party, and laws were passed
regulating contracts of labour, protecting workers from insanitary conditions,
and guaranteeing to married women the free control of their savings. But the
activity, of the Catholics in their social legislation only stirred the
Socialist leaders, whose growing influence with the industrial masses it was
intended to undermine, to more bitter and determined opposition. The demand was
made for universal suffrage pure and simple; and, in April, 1902, attempts were
made to force the hand of the Government by strikes and riots. But the
authorities were firm, the strikes failed, and public opinion refused
to
be terrorised. There were many loud words, but the general strike
threatened
for April 18—proved a fiasco, in face of the determination of the employers,
and the promptness with which the authorities quelled all riotous disturbances
by calling out the troops and civic guards to the assistance of the police.
A
month later (end of May, 1902) the returns of the parliamentary election
confirmed the Catholic party in their long tenure of the reins of power—by
giving them a majority of 26 over the combined forces of the Liberals and
Socialists. Under the capable leadership of Count de Smet de Naeyer, the policy
of the Catholic party continued to follow frankly democratic lines. Smet de
Naeyer was a skilled financier. With a rate of taxation per head of the
population about one-half of that paid in England and much less than one-half
of that paid in France, the budgets could boast of annual surpluses, despite
the large amounts expended in providing old age pensions, in subsidies to
mutual societies, on the promotion of technical education, and other measures
for the encouragement of thrift in the working classes. Probably more is done
in Belgium than in any other country, through the agency of a network of
savings banks, mutual societies, and building societies, to encourage the
investment of savings and to provide loans secured by life insurance policies
for the purposes of agriculture or for the purchase of dwelling houses. The old
age pension system established by the Laws of 1902 and 1903 entitles every
workman who deposits one franc to an old age pension fund in a savings bank to
receive an addition of 60 centimes from the State until a sufficient amount
stands to his credit to provide an annuity of 360frames per annum. Shortly
after the passing of the amended Act of 1903 the government grant to more than
two hundred thousand pensioners amounted to 15,000,000 francs. The partial
elections of 1904, though the strength of the Liberal party was increased, left
the Catholics with a majority of 20 votes.
The
whole of the period which we have been considering was one of uninterrupted
industrial progress and commercial prosperity. It was also marked by the first
steps for the acquisition by Belgium of colonial possessions. These steps were
solely due to the initiative of King Leopold II. The remarkable personality of
the King had a large share in shaping the destinies of the country. During the
whole of his reign his strength of character, his trained experience, his
diplomatic skill, and his varied culture, exercised a constant and growing
influence. The wisdom of Leopold I built up the Belgian State; his son with
equal abilities was cast in a very different mould. Leopold II was not content
to play the role of the constitutional ruler of a petty neutral kingdom. He
wished that his people should have a place in the world movement of colonial
expansion. By his patient diplomacy, capacity for organisation, and undaunted
resolution in the face of difficulties that seemed insuperable, he succeeded
in creating the Congo Free State under his own sovereignty. The Geographical
Congress (1876), summoned by King Leopold to meet at Brussels under his
presidency, led to the formation of the International Association for the suppression
of the slave trade and the opening out of Central Africa. Of this International
Association King Leopold was the moving spirit.
He
enlisted the services gf Stanley, and a Belgian expedition under his leadership
in 1879 made its way to the Upper Congo. There however it found rivals in a
French expedition under Brazza; and the Portuguese also advanced claims to the
possession of the Lower Congo. Only by the exercise of much tact and adroitness
did King Leopold succeed in preserving a way of access from the coast to the
navigable reaches of the river above the Cataracts. At the Congress of Berlin,
November, 1884, a vast domain in Central Africa was recognised as the sphere of
influence of the International Association) and was erected into an independent
State under the sovereignty of the King of the Belgians, with the proviso that
freedom of commerce and freedom of religion should be guaranteed, and that
slavery should be suppressed and no trade monopolies granted.
It
was more difficult for King Leopold to win the assent of the Belgian people to
his assumption of the sovereignty. The large majority of the Belgians felt no
eagerness to throw away the advantages which 3elgium enjoyed as a neutral State
under the protection of the Powers by running any risk of being drawn into the
vortex of international politics. The King, however, addressed himself to the
two Chambers, and their approval of his acceptance of the sovereignty was
given, April 28 and 30, 1885. King Leopold needed also the financial help of
the Belgian people; and, to make it clear that his African enterprise had not
been undertaken for personal aggrandisement but for the ultimate benefit of
Belgium, he devised to the Belgian State by a will dated August 2, 1889, his
possessions in the Congo; and a treaty was concluded between the Free State and
Belgium, by which the latter advanced 25,000,000francs for the purposes of
railway construction and the opening of the Upper Congo territory to commerce.
It was not without strong opposition that the Chambers thus officially
associated themselves with the King’s projects, and after the extension of the
franchise in 1894 this opposition became more and more accentuated. A fresh
loan of 5,600,000 francs was granted indeed in 1896, but only by 61 votes to
57, and there were 20 abstentions. Nevertheless, by the energy of the King, all
difficulties were gradually surmounted. The railway to Stanley Pool above the
Cataracts was at last completed and opened for traffic in 1898. The commerce of
the Congo State has progressed by giant strides. The exports, which reached a
total of 1,980,441 francs in 1887, amounted to 15,146,976/ranM in 1897, and had
risen in 1903 to 54,597,836francs. Since 1898 other lines of railway have been
rapidly pushed into the interior. Now that the Congo Free State has been
transformed into a Belgian Colony (1909), it may be hoped that the pressure of
public opinion will correct any irregularities and abuses.
King
Leopold II died on December 17, 1909, and was succeeded by his nephew, the
Count of Flanders, as King Albert I.
THE
IBERIAN PENINSULA.
SPAIN.
Between the year 1871 and the present time,
Spain has progressed, through internal disorder and colonial disaster, to a
condition of comparative material prosperity, and towards a state of political
stability. The most vigorous of living Spanish novelists, Don Vicente Blasco
Ibanez, speaking through the mouth of a character in his story La Catedral, observes
that Spain has been dragged on by the general advance of Europe, but has
herself contributed nothing, and has made no spontaneous movement. Don Vicente
speaks with the licence of a domestic critic. A foreigner will prefer to say
that Spain has at last begun to awake from delusions, and to learn to look at
facts. Her course during these years has been divided into six stages: the
reign of Amadeo of Savoy (January, 1871, to February, 1873); the Republic
(February, 1873, to December, 1874); the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty by
the pranunciamiento of Murviedro (December 28, 1874); the reign of Alfonso XII
(December, 1874, to November 25, 1885); the Regency of Dona Maria Cristina
(November, 1885, to May, 1902); and the period since the present King, Don
Alfonso XIII, attained his majority. These six stages may be grouped into three
divisions. From the arrival of Don Amadeo until the proclamation of Alfonso
XII, Spain was contending with anarchy; from the close of 1874 to the end of
1898 she was struggling to retain the remnants of her colonial empire; since
she had to pay the penalty of centuries of error by the disasters of that year,
she has begun, for the first time, to endeavour to make full use of the
neglected resources of her own soil. The realities of her history will be best
grasped by adhering to these divisions, rather than by giving undue attention
to such distracting, and frequently meaningless incidents, as changes of
Ministry.
,
The reign of Don Amadeo was in itself but a part of a period. It represented
nothing more than the hopeless attempt of a body of military and civil
conspirators to set up an imitation of the government of William III in Great
Britain, without the aid of any one of the conditions which rendered the
Revolution settlement of 1689 possible. No
party
supported his throne. Three real parties existed in the country —the
Republicans, who had been represented by 63 votes in the Constituent Cortes,
the Carlists, and the Alfonsists. The last of the three was as yet weak. It was
hampered by the youth of its candidate, Don Alfonso, the son of Isabel II, and
by the discredit which the personal weaknesses of the Queen had brought on the
Bourbon family. The Carlists were formidable. They were, however, divided among
themselves. The official head of their branch of the Bourbon family, Don Juan
de Bourbon, was disposed to coquet with constitutional principles. He was even
prepared to be content with the position of Regent for his cousin Don Alfonso.
Their party manager in Spain, Don C&ndido Nocedal, was averse from the use
of force. He agreed with Don Antonio C&novas del Castillo, who became the
official leader of the Alfonsists in 1872, in thinking that the monarchical
parties should wait until the revolution settlement broke down by its own
inherent weakness, when the country would turn to them for salvation. The
policy of both, which C&novas was in time to make effective in the interest
of his own party, was accurately defined by the Jacobite cant phrase, “box it
about and it will come to my uncle.” But Don Juan de Bourbon was repudiated by
the bulk of his followers, and by his own sons, Don Carlos and the younger
brother Don Alfonso. There were a few Carlists, of whom the most famous was
Ramon Cabrera, in favour of concessions to Liberalism ; but they had little
influence and in the end drifted into the ranks of the Alfonsists. The real
strength of the Carlists lay in the clergy, and the influence they exercised
over the country people in all parts of Spain, and more especially in the
Basque Provinces, Navarre, Upper Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. The clergy
were deeply offended by the choice of a King from the House of Savoy, which had
just occupied Rome, and had made the Pope “the prisoner of the Vatican.” They
were even more sensibly affected by the irregular payment of their stipends,
and by the fear that the religious budget would be suppressed, and that they
would be thrown on the voluntary contributions of the faithful who, in spite of
the ardent Roman Catholicism of the Spaniards, have always been very niggardly
to the parish clergy. Therefore, the priests were well disposed to do all they
could to promote a Carlist rising, The revolution settlement had in fact no
support except the army. This would indeed have been sufficient if the army had
been united and well-handled. Amid the indifference, local patriotism, and
factions of Spain, the army is the only great national secular institution. So
long as it is united it can control “ the machine,” the centralised administration
which interferes in all Spanish life, through its local unofficial instruments,
the caciques, when it does not act by direct order. Therefore it can command
the services of place-hunting politicians, and it can secure the election of
Cortes with an obedient majority by administrative pressure or corruption.
During the revolutionary period a third means
of
coercion was much employed—the notorious partido de la porra, “ party of the
cudgel.” They were hired gangs of ruffians who terrorised the voters. But in 1871
the army had been deprived by the assassination of Prim of the only leader who
was popular with the ranks, commanded a personal following among the officers,
could hold the stick and strike with it. Moreover, the army was subject to the
action of a strong dissolvent. When in 1867, Prim made his abortive attempt to
persuade the garrison of Valencia to revolt, he had promised the abolition of
compulsory service. This promise was repeated by the Republicans, and by some
of the politicians who served the Government of Don Amadeo. It deeply offended
the officers, who knew that voluntary service would mean the destruction of the
army; but it was very popular with the soldiers, who desired nothing better
than to be free to return home. In the meantime, and apart from the Carlist
intrigues of the clergy, the country was menaced by growing disorder. A great
recrudescence of the endemic brigandage of Andalusia had followed the
revolution of 1868. The “ Kidnappers,” Palma alias Bando, Pulli, Pitono, and
others, blackmailed the orderly population. Many of them were enrolled in the
partido de la porra, and had their official protectors in Madrid. Anarchism and
socialism began to increase in the towns, and agrarian socialism, the natural
fruit of large estates owned by absentee landlords and worked by gangs under
exacting middlemen, became rampant in the south.
From
January, 1871, to September, 1873, all these elements of disorder grew, till
they threatened the very existence of the national unity and the State. Don Amadeo’s
share in this access of fever was that of a transient and embarrassed phantom.
He and his beautiful wife were insulted, and his life was threatened. His
Ministers pursued factious quarrels, and their feuds were promoted by
Republicans and Carlists in the Cortes, who combined to make government
impossible by joining with any section of malcontents on any question. Six
ministerial crises and three general elections in twenty-four months served
only to manifest the instability of the artificial monarchy of Don Amadeo. He
was at last told by the army chiefs that he must agree to the suspension of constitutional
guarantees, and rule by the sword. The King was resolved to reign as a
constitutional ruler, and refused his consent. His fall became a mere question
of time, and he availed himself of a military question to escape from a
desperate position. The officers of the artillery refused to obey General
Hidalgo, formerly a member of their own corps, who had been responsible for the
murder of several of his colleagues at the San Gil barracks in 1866. The Prime
Minister of the day, Ruiz Zorrilla, insisted on dismissing them. The King
attached his name to the decree, resigned his crown, and left Spain on February
12, 1873.
During
this sterile agitation in Madrid the Carlists had gained ground. They were at
first represented in the field only by such men as
the
Cura de Santa Cruz—a brutal fanatic who enforced his demands for blackmail by
shooting men, and by stripping, tarring and feathering, or flogging women. Santa
Cruz operated in Navarre and Biscay; but he had imitators elsewhere. In 1872
the Carlist Princes were encouraged to take the field themselves. Don Juan de
Bourbon had resigned in favour of his eldest son; and, on May 1, Don Carlos
crossed the frontier of Navarre from Prance, relying not only on his own
partisans and on deserters from the army but on republican cooperation. His
following was easily scattered at Oroquieta on May 4 by General Moriones, and
he fled back to Prance. Serrano, then Prime Minister, came to the north, and
entered into a convention with the Carlist leaders at Amoravieta. He promised
an amnesty to all, even to deserters from the army. The convention exasperated
the Liberals in all parts of Spain, but especially those of the towns of
Navarre and Biscay, who considered that they were left at the mercy of their
hereditary enemies, the country people and their clerical leaders. After the
abdication of Don Amadeo, the Cortes, which had just been elected by Ruiz
Zorrilla and the partido de la porra to support his monarchy, proceeded to
proclaim the Republic. The deputies endeavoured to retain control of affairs by
means of a committee till new Cortes were elected. It was set aside forcibly
by the real Republicans; and Senor Figueras was named interim president.'
The
simmering disorder of the country now boiled up with frightful rapidity. First
came the paralysis of the army. General Gaminde, who held the command in
Catalonia, concentrated his troops at Barcelona, and endeavoured to induce them
to proclaim Don Alfonso. The soldiers, misled into the belief that the Republic
would abolish compulsory service, refused to follow him. He fled to France, and
most of the officers went into hiding. The soldiers disbanded themselves, and
the open country was left to the Carlists. The example set at Barcelona was
widely followed. The army was not wholly disbanded, but it was much weakened,
and discipline was all but destroyed. In Catalonia one column murdered their
general, Cabrinetti, and then surrendered to the Carlists. The forces of Don
Carlos increased rapidly. He reentered Spain on July 17,1873, and before the
end of the year he had forty-five thousand men in arms. In Navarre and the
Basque Provinces, where he occupied a compact body of territory, with the
exception of a few fortified towns, his troops were regularly organised. In
other parts of Spain the Carlist forces were never more than
gucrrilleros—numerous in Catalonia and Valencia, but confined to a few
wandering bauds in La Mancha and Estremadura. By the end of 1875 they had risen
to
75,000 men with 143 guns, with the same
differences in the various parts of the country. In Navarre and the Basque
country a regular army was based on a territory with a civil administration, a
revenue, a capital at Durango, cannon foundries, Courts of law, and even a
university at Onate. Supplies were received across the French frontier by the
connivance of
Marshal Macmahon’s Government. Elsewhere the Carlists continued to be composed
of guerrilleros and bandits.
Great as the
peril from the Carlists was, it was thrown into the background for a time by an
even more pressing danger. The proclamation of the Republic was followed all
over the south by an outbreak of the deeply-rooted and ancient particularism,
local or even tribal, of Spain. In Andalusia and Murcia big towns and little
threw off the control of the central Government and assumed practical
independence under the name of “ cantons.” At Carthagena, the cantonalists
seized nearly the whole fleet, and the navy was even more completely disorganised
than the army. The few troops left in the south were concentrated at Cordoba.
The cantonalists quarrelled among themselves; but they agreed in refusing to
pay octroi duties (consumos) or to remit taxes to Madrid.
The
Republican leaders, Figueras, Pi y Margall, and Salmeron, proved incapable of
dealing with the crisis they had provoked. All were professors, journalists,
and talkers, who had received the worthless superficial education given in
modem Spain. They had acquired what knowledge they possessed from easily read
French sources, and were moreover divided in opinion. Emilio Castelar, a man of
the same stamp, but of more fluent and redundant eloquence, and of better
natural capacity, did not at first obtain a position of leadership. Figueras
was terrified by the Republic when he saw it. He fled the country in May rather
than face the first Cortes, which were elected in the midst of prevailing
turmoil, but only by about a third of the electors. The deputies chose as his
successor Pi y Margall, a Federalist Republican, who endeavoured to deal with
anarchy by leaving freedom to provide a remedy. The country was brought to the
verge of disintegration. Under the influence of fear the deputies set him aside
and put Salmeron, a Unitarian Republican, at the head of affairs. Salmeron made
an effort to restore order. A small force, composed in part of trustworthy
troops, but very largely of officers left without employment by the
disappearance of their regiments, was sent to Andalusia under the command of
Manuel Pavia. He brought the troops at Cordoba to order, and crashed the
cantonalists of Seville after a fierce fight. His success showed that the army
could still save Spain, and that no other force could. But, if the army was to
do the work it would inevitably resume its predominance. Salmeron’s fear of
militarism overpowered his fear of anarchy, and he stopped Pavia in full career
of victory. With the deputies, fear of anarchy continued to be more acute than
dread of the soldiers. Salmeron was set aside on September 7, 1873; Emilio
Castelar was put in his place, to save society; and the Cortes were prorogued
till January.
Nobody
doubted that Castelar was commissioned to rescue the country by the use of
force. He was as much responsible for all the mischief that had happened as any
man; but the fact that he did his
work with an
avowed disregard for his reputation for consistency and a single eye to the
good of Spain put him iu a category apart from other Republican leaders. The
artillery officers were brought back on their own terms, and a conscription of
120,000 men was raised. The docility of the mass of Spaniards to a vigorous
central Government made it possible to carry out the measure, but it killed the
Republic. Freedom from the “blood tax” was in the eyes of the overwhelming
majority of the popula tion the one good they could obtain from the Republic.
When the promises made to them were falsified, they returned to the old
attitude of submission to the central authority and the local caciques.
Cantonalism was broken down, though the cantonalists held Carthagena for some
months, and the army resumed the position to which it is entitled by the fact
that it alone can act as a national secular institution. In the absence of an
accepted monarchy by divine right, and in view of the utter incapacity of the
Spaniards to combine for a definite political purpose, the eocercitus is the
The deputies,
who had made Castelar dictator in September in order that he might save the
country by means of the army, were frightened at the consequences of what they
had done. When the Cortes met again in January, 1874, it was notorious that
they would condemn his policy as being too military, and it was no less
notorious that the army would not tolerate a return to the anarchy of the
spring. When the Cortes were about to pass a vote hostile to Castelar on
January 3, they were expelled by Pavia, who had recently been appointed
Captain-General of New Castile. Pavia’s summary measure surprised nobody and
offended very few. The restoration of the son of Isabel II was now seen to be
the one possible solution. It was delayed, because Don Antonio Cdnovas, who had
organised the Alfonsist party thoroughly, preferred to gain time for preparing
public opinion. It was also his wish that the army should first suppress the
Carlists, and then summon free Cortes. No Cortes elected in such circumstances
could have been free in any other sense than that in which an English Chapter
is free to elect the Bishop presented to it by the Crown. But Don Antonio’s
course would have preserved a decent appearance of leaving the decision to the
civil power. An interim military Government, with Sjrrano at its head, was set
up. It kept the Carlists at bay, and even succeeded in forcing them to raise
the siege of Bilbao. In December, 1874, Don Alfonso, who was now over sixteen,
and therefore of age, issued a proclamation drafted for him by Cdnovas
promising an amnesty and constitutional government. In that month the army
acted on the facts of the situation. Two battalions stationed at Murviedro were
induced by General Martinez de Campos to proclaim Don Alfonso, and the armies
in all parts of Spain followed their example.
With the
establishment of Don Alfonso XII, Spain reached a tenable position half-way
between the absolute monarchy of Don Carlos, with
its following
of priests, Basques, and guerrilleros, on the one hand, and Republican anarchy
on the other. Carlists of constitutional leanings rallied to Don Alfonso, and
so did many who had been Republicans so long as the Republic was the only
alternative to Don Carlos. The professional politicians naturally adhered to
the power which disposed of offices. The Pope recognised the young King, and,
though the Church did not receive all it had been promised, it was conciliated
by the payment of its budget, and by an article in the Constitution of 1876
which forbade the public manifestation of any other form of worship. This
article has not in practice prevented the opening of dissenting chapels, native
and foreign, nor has it seriously limited the activity of foreign Protestant
teaching missions to which large numbers of workmen send their children because
they give a better education than native schools. We cannot dwell on successive
Ministerial changes, which were not in any case the result of conflicts on
questions of principle, but were mere alternations in office of the
place-hunting coalitions, respectively led by Antonio C&novas, and
Pr&xedes Mateo Sagasta. The centre of interest has shifted in Spain since
1874. Irreconcilable Carlists and Republicans have continued to intrigue, and
from time to time down to 1886 there were local outbreaks of military disorder.
But the mass of Spaniards has ceased to believe that they would gain by any change
in the form of government. The establishment of a money qualification for
voters in 1876 was submitted to with indifference. The restoration of universal
suffrage in 1889 produced no effect on the character of the elections to the
Cortes. The country was tired of agitation, and asked only to be allowed to
live in peace, and to have an opportunity for attaining some measure of
material prosperity. It has, in the main, been granted what it asked for. The
level of Spanish public life has continued to be low. The administration has
not been less corrupt than of old, nor less unintelligent and dilatory. But
politicians have abstained from the excesses of Narvdez and Gonzdlez Bravo. The
administration has not prevented the country from profiting by the great stimulus
given to its wine trade by the ravages of the phylloxera in France, or by the
great development of the mining industry of Biscay due to foreign—mostly
English—skill and capital. Roads, railways, and irrigation works have combined
to raise Spain to a level of industrial activity which would render a return of
the disorders of 1868-74 intolerable. At the two great crises of its recent
history the politicians and the people of Spain have shown themselves capable
of averting internal armed strife. The politicians, military and civil, had
been taught by the events of 1868-74 that excess of unscrupulous intrigue would
recoil upon themselves.
The first
crisis came on the death of Alfonso XII in November,
1885. The young King’s reign had, on the whole,
been prosperous. The Carlists had been swept out of Valencia and Catalonia in
the course of 1875. By the end of January, 1876, they were crushed in Biscay,
and
264
A Regency established. [i868-98
the fueros
were abolished. A settlement with the Church, the Constitution of 1876, a
modified version of the Constitution of 1844, and a composition with the
national creditors, permitted the country to return to quiet at home, and to
honourable relations with its neighbours. The King’s marriage with his cousin
Mercedes, daughter of the Duke of Montpensier, in January, 1878, healed a
family quarrel. After her death in June, he married Maria Cristina, daughter of
the Archduke Rainer of Austria, in 1879. This marriage gave Spain a profitable
connexion with a great Power. The King’s foreign policy was not fortunate. A
desire to obtain a place for Spain among the Powers of Europe led him into
making advances to Germany, and caused deep offence to the French, who, as the
chief owners of the Spanish railways and the chief purchasers of Spanish wine
and wool, have a strong financial hold on the country. He was insulted in the
streets of Paris in 1883, and in 1885 a dispute about the Caroline Islands
rendered the German connexion extremely unpopular. It was settled by the tact of
Prince Bismarck, who referred the question to the arbitration of the Pope. Don
Alfonso showed courage and humanity in visitations of flood and epidemics. Yet
he lost the respect of his subjects. He had been surrounded from his youth by
members of his mother’s Court, who helped if they did not instigate him to
indulge in excesses which ruined his health, and filled the palace with
scandals as in the reign of Isabel. On his death various members of his family,
headed by his mother, entered into intrigues against his widow. Alfonso had
left two daughters, and his queen was with child. The aim of the family
intrigue was to oust her from the regency. The danger of a return of Bourbon
stock-jobbing, corruption, and clericalism, was met by a determined rally of politicians,
civil and military. The ex-Queen Isabel was forced to withdraw, and a male
member of the family, who permitted himself to indulge in insolence, was
sternly punished. Maria Cristina was established as Regent, with Sagasta as
Prime Minister, and the support of all parties, even of those Republicans who
followed Castelar. The birth of her son Alfonso XIII, on May 17,1886,
strengthened her position, and it was confirmed by her tact, her devotion to
her son, the dignified order of her life, and her political judgment.
The second
crisis was far more serious. It came in 1898, when Spain lost the remains of
her colonial empire. On October 10, 1868, one month after the revolution in
Spain, a Cuban rising began at Yara.
It
smouldered on, till Martinez de Campos brought it to a termination
or rather to
a pause—by the convention of El Zanjon in 1878. He succeeded more by making
promises of concessions than by force. His promises were repudiated by the home
Government; a second rising in the eastern end of the island—the so-called
“Little War”—was brutally crushed. Then Cuba simmered in discontent till the
final revolt of 1895. It is superfluous to insist on the vices of Spanish
colonial administration.
The Spaniards
have never been able to take any other view of a colony than that it should be
treated as a milch cow to be milked for the exclusive benefit of Spanish
traders and officials. On that point all parties were agreed, and they were
ready to combine to meet every colonial request for self-government with
insulting denial. The Spanish immigrants engaged in trade, and settled in the
towns, were the most noisy opponents of all concessions. They were organised
into regiments which never fought the insurgents in the bush, but were always
at hand to coerce their rulers when they might suspect them of an inclination
to yield to Cuban demands. From the day when they displaced General Dulce in
1869 down to that on which their clamours forced General Primo de Rivera to
send Admiral Cervera’s squadron to destruction, these men were the prime cause
of the evil done in the island. Their chiefs were capitalists who profited
enormously by disorder, for they acted as contractors to the army and made vast
illegitimate profits.. Unhappily, they had the support of politicians at home
and notably of C&novas. Cuba provided so many opportunities of rewarding
political services that no party chief would willingly consent to
administrative reform. The services of Cdnovas to his native land, which were
considerable, were largely counterbalanced by his arrogant obstinacy, and
wilful blindness towards the colonies. He assured his countrymen that, if they
had been unable to control their vast possessions on the mainland, they could
always in the end quell a limited territory like Cuba, because they could shed
more blood. He would not face the probability that the United States would
intervene. When hard pressed from Washington he would, indeed, make a pretence
of drawing up schemes for the self-government of the island. His schemes, and
those of other politicians, were transparently and childishly fraudulent.
Canovas would advise other politicians to yield, and would himself yield on
particular points, as when he counselled Castelar to apologise, and pay an
indemnity for the seizure of the Virginius, in 1873, or when he himself settled
some rather dubious claims patronised by the United States Government. But he
would not hear of any serious concessions to the Cubans.
The renewal
of the rebellion in 1895 found Spain in an even worse position than she had
held in 1869. The total abolition of slavery in
1886, without indemnity to the owners, had
displeased them and had not conciliated the blacks. The fall in the price of
sugar had made it less possible for Spain to find resources for the support of
the War in the island. The amount of American capital invested in Cuba had
doubled since 1878, and the American people had stronger reasons for
intervening than ever. Spain might have conquered, if adequate military
measures had been taken; but the conduct of the War was inept. Martinez de
Campos was sent out in the fatuous hope that he would be able to conciliate the
insurgents. He failed, and reported that not only the creoles, but many even of
the immigrants from Spain, were irreconcilably
266
Increased prosperity in Spain. [1895-1906
hostile to
the government of the mother country. He added that the authority of Spain
could be restored only by barbarous methods which he was not willing to apply.
The General was recalled in 1896, and replaced by General Weyler, who was
willing and even eager to apply the methods of barbarism. His policy was to
destroy the crops and houses, and concentrate the population in the towns, in
order to starve the rebels in the bush. This policy began to shock the Spaniards
themselves, and the burden of the War grew insufferable. The murder of Cdnovas
at Santa Agueda on August 8, 1897, saved him from seeing the results of his own
policy. The United States, which had shown much patience, intervened at last,
and Cuba was lost in 1898.
At the same
time Spain’s possessions in the Philippines were torn from her. She had never
occupied the islands fully ^ and the population was oppressed by religious
Orders which performed the functions of a parish clergy.. A revolt had broken out,
about the time of the final rising in Cuba; but the Philippines were lost
because the United States took them as a prize.
Yet this year
of disaster and of punishment saw the beginning of a new and better era for
Spain. As in 1885, politicians and people rallied to avert internal disorder.
The monarchy passed through a crisis which in the opinion of hasty observers
threatened it with destruction. The burden of the Cuban debt was honestly
assumed. The foreign debt was left untaxed, and foreign holders were paid in
gold. The credit of Spain improved. Freed from the strain of colonial wars, and
the temptation to waste their scanty capital on colonial enterprises, the
Spaniards have begun to develop the resources of their own country. Having been
at heart tired of Cuba, they soon reconciled themselves to their loss, and
learned to consider it a gain. The proof they gave of probity and selfcontrol
raised them in the estimate of other Powers. To Spain, together with France,
has been entrusted the duty of policing the coast of Morocco. The majority of
the young King, which was attained in 1902, was welcomed as the beginning of a
new era. His marriage in 1906 to a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria was
welcomed by the great majority of his subjects as a proof that he would frankly
take his place among constitutional sovereigns. The courage shown by the young
couple when a savage attempt was made to murder them on their wedding day, and
their boldness in coming unguarded among their people on the morrow, touched
popular sympathies. The total disintegration of the Liberal parties has thrown
political power into the hands of the moderate and constitutional
Conservatives, who on the whole best represent the wishes and opinions of the
average Spaniard. There is a very fair prospect that Spain, chastened by her
sufferings between 1868 and 1874 into a horror of domestic war, and cured by
the disasters of 1898 of all inclination towards foreign adventures which are
far beyond her resources, is settling down to a period of recuperation. The
establishment of cordial
1862-83]
Remaining causes of discontent.
267
relations
between France and England is a great element in her favour, for it has
suspended their rivalries at Madrid, and secures her the friendly offices of
her chief customers and creditors.
Though the
period of violent political unrest has apparently passed, other causes of
disorder exist, and the country is still far from the possession of a good
Government. The material progress of the nation has produced its inevitable
effect. The poor, whether in town or country, have experienced some improvement
in their condition, and for that very reason are awakening to desires which
were unknown to their fathers. Having gained something, they are eager to win
more. The agrarian discontent of the south has never been removed. So far back
as 1862 it was manifested by the revolt headed by the horse-doctor, Pedro
Alanio, at Loja. The rising was suppressed with ferocity, and the Government
made it an excuse for forbidding trade unions and socialist propaganda. The
revolution of 1868 paralysed the hand of the State for a time. Agrarian and
urban socialistic longings were found to have spread widely under the surface.
During 1873 Alcoy, in Murcia, was the scene of some dreadful outrages
perpetrated by workmen on their employers. The brigandage of Andalusia has its
root in the misery of the agricultural population, who are collected in gangs
on the cortijos, or granges, of absentee landlords, and are exploited by
middlemen bound to them only by the cash nexus. The brigand is the popular hero
who is supposed to avenge the poor on the rich. The restoration of order
brought no sufficient improvement in the state of the agricultural labourers.
In 1883 strong measures had to be taken to break up the secret society known as
the Memo Negra (the Black. Hand) which «rrorised the landowners and their
agents. In other parts of Spain, small holdings and metayer tenancies are
common. The unrest of the labouring class has not been shown so violently as in
the south. Yet it exists and is justified by the wrongs of a class on which the
weight of taxation falls heavily. The excessive emigration of the agricultural
class to the River Plate, to Cuba since the island became independent, and to
the west of the United States, is stimulated by misery. Some of the emigrants
return when they have made a little money, and most of them remit part of their
earnings home to their families. But the returned emigrants, known in Spain as
Indios, and the remittances, alike serve to spread the conviction that men can
prosper better anywhere than at home. There is a growing though still
unenlightened understanding of the fact that the poverty of the lower orders is
due to a bad fiscal system, and to protection carried to a point at which it
all but strangles the movement of trade: a sense of wrong, a wish to escape,
and a tendency to revolt, are spreading.
If this is
the case with the ill-organised country population, it is still more so in the
towns and the mining districts where combination is easy. Strikes, provoked
less by long hours of work and bad wages than
268
Social disturbance and unrest.
by a
scandalous truck system, have been frequent in Biscay. They would have been
still more violent if the Government, in its eagerness to maintain peace, had
not occasionally compelled the employers to make concessions. In Barcelona,
which has always been turbulent, the workmen have fallen under the influence of
militant socialists. The result has been a long series of revolts and of bomb
outrages in theatres and on religious processions. These excesses have been
suppressed, but in ways which have intensified the evil. There is no doubt that
torture was used to extort confessions from large numbers of people arrested at
random. It was not applied as by the Inquisition and the old criminal
procedure, on a regulated system and under the supervision of magistrates, but
at the discretion of the lowest class of police agents. These cruelties were
quoted by Michael Angiolillo, as his justification for murdering Cdnovas. The
memory of the torturings in Monjuich has done much to excite the social hatred
of the poor against the rich—a sentiment once hardly known in Spain, but now
too common.
This hatred
and distrust of the employers has had one consequence of a peculiarly
unfortunate character. The merchants and manufacturers of the maritime
provinces, which contain the larger part of the population, and much the
'arger part of the wealth of Spain, have many reasons to resent the corruption,
the perpetual interference, and the delays of the central administration. The
burden is most acutely felt in the most industrial province of Spain, the
principality of Catalonia. It led to a revival of “ regionalism,” that is to
say, a demand for Catalan self-government. The demand was often advanced in
terms offensive to other parts of the country. Yet it had much in it to invite
sympathy and cooperation. There was at least a possibility of the formation of
a national party grouped round the united Catalans (the Solidarios) to insist
on administrative reform. The hostility of the workmen has postponed, if it has
not destroyed, the hope of the formation of such a party. They are convinced
that the employers, and their agents the lawyers, have no other aim than to
acquire entire command of the local administration in order to be able to
exploit the working classes without fear of check. These divisions of course
tend to confirm the power of the overstaffed, meddlesome, and dilatory central
administration.
The literary
movement in Spain during the last forty years has had two features of undoubted
novelty and real interest. The two most popular writers of books of
entertainment in this period have both been didactic and vigorous assailants of
all that the conservative Spaniard praises as castizo, i.e. truly national and
Spanish. The Episodios Nacionales of Benito Perez Galdos, though obviously
modelled on the tales of Erckmann-Chatrian, have a genuine originality. Their
literary merit is not great, but Galdos has the Spanish capacity for telling a
story and giving reality to his characters. His Episodios are significant
because they give a succession of pictures of the history of Spain from
269
the
administration of Godoy down to the present day, from the Liberal point of
view. The returns of circulating libraries show that they are far more popular
than the works of any contemporary writer. Blasco Ibanez, who sat in the Cortes
as Socialist deputy for Valencia, is a far more emphatic enemy of the old order
of Spanish life. In La Cated/ral, La Horda, Sangre y Arena, and other books, he
assails the Church, and boldly argues that the purely Spanish things and ideas
beloved of the Conservatives have been the causes of the material ruin and
intellectual stagnation of the nation. Then, it is certainly not without
significance that the dominant figure of Spanish literature has been neither
poet nor novelist, but the very copious and learned historian and critic,
Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo—author of Los Heterodoxos Espanoles, Las Ideas
Estiticas en Espana, and of innumerable monographs. Menendez, who wrote his
Heterodoxos Espanoles in a spirit of militant Roman Catholic orthodoxy, has
never recanted his opinions. Yet the reader who compares that work with the
later writings of the author will note a marked alteration in tone, and will be
materially helped to appreciate the change of spirit which has come over the
country. Seiior Menendez has been surrounded by a school of writers, some of them
his own pupils, who have devoted themselves to the study of particular passages
in the literary and political history of Spain.
PORTUGAL.
The history
of Portugal since the year 1871 has continued to present the same kind of
contrast with the contemporary course of affairs in Spain as that observable
during the preceding generation. Portugal has escaped great internal
convulsions and serious disaster abroad. The continuance of peace has allowed
of a certain development of industry. Trade and revenue have increased. But
this being granted, nothing can be adduced which tends to show forth the
intellectual or moral improvement of the nation, nor are there more than
extremely faint indications of future advance. During this period of nearly
forty years the bulk of the population has remained suffering and discontented
but impassive, while the weight of a most unfair taxation has grown till it has
become crushing, while a constantly increasing expenditure has more than kept
pace with a growing revenue, and the national treasury has passed through a
bankruptcy. This has happened because the country has been governed by
contending factions of professional politicians who have had no other aim than
their own immediate personal advantage. There have been bread riots made by
starving people. There has been one Republican rising, the work of a handful of
briefless barristers, journalists, and students, which was instantly crushed.
There has been one professed attempt to bring about a reformation from above,
which was discredited
by the
manifest self-seeking of the pretended reformers, and defeated by a great
political crime. When the temporary interruption in the course of parliamentary
faction had been brought to an end by murder, the political world of Portugal
returned to its familiar contentions, unchecked —unless indeed a tardy murmur
of expostulation from the trading class of Lisbon is destined to have some
effect.
The most
visible part of Portuguese contemporary history, its parliamentary
kaleidoscope, has gone constantly round and round. Ministerial crises, or
reconstructions due to personal quarrels, have occurred at the rate of nearly
one a year, without producing any other result than a rearrangement of the
items composing the Regenerator and the Progressive parties. Reform Bills have
been passed, and the constitutional machine has been modified in a democratic
sense. The main result has been that the Upper Chamber has been changed from an
hereditary to an elective senatorship—whereby the number of places of dignity
and emolument open to professional politicians has been increased.
The outer
world has affected Portugal in two ways. In 1875 Marshal Macmahon, then
President in France, who had been asked to arbitrate on the respective claims
of Great Britain and Portugal to Delagoa Bay, decided in favour of the smaller
country. This decision gave a stimulus to the reviving colonial activity of the
Portuguese. They began to extend in South Eastern Africa and to advance great
territorial claims which soon brought them into sharp collision with Great
Britain. The details of these conflicts belong to the history of the partition
of Africa, which was one of the great historic movements of the nineteenth
century. Their reaction on Portugal has been on the whole most unfortunate..
Between 1880 and 1890 Portugal suffered several disappointments, and in the
latter year was forced to submit to an ultimatum presented to it by Lord
Salisbury. That part of the people of Portugal who take any interest in public
affairs held the monarchy responsible for the humiliation inflicted on the
national pride. It was to some extent soothed by a few manifestations of
resentment, such as the return of the Order of the Garter by the King Dom Luiz,
and the refusal of tradesmen in Lisbon to open their shops during a visit paid
to the port by a British squadron. But the Liberal monarchy, already far from
strong, was distinctly weakened by the discovery that it could not save
Portugal from the consequences of being a small State, or enable her to indulge
ambitions out of all proportion to her resources.
The
disappearance of the Empire in Brazil in 1889, and the establishment of a
Republic, had a very similar effect on Portugal. The Portuguese emigrate
largely to their former colony and prosper there. Many return with the fortunes
they have made, and some of them bring back a belief that there is a healing
virtue in the name and form of a Republic. In 1891 a Republican rising was
organised at Oporto with money contributed by returned emigrants. It was headed
by Alves Veiga,
a lawyer and
journalist, and it found its only effective support in some 600 soldiers whose
services were bought. The population of Oporto remained indifferent and the
rising was easily put down. Yet a militant Republican party was established in
Portugal, and refugees who crossed the Spanish frontier entered into relations
with the party in that country. Their influence was confined to a portion of
the inhabitants of the towns, and was trifling. Nevertheless, they introduced
one more element of weakness and possible disorder.
On the death
of Dom Luiz on October 9,1899, he was succeeded by his son Dom Carlos, a
gentleman of sporting tastes and profuse habits. He was married to Marie Amelie
de Bourbon, daughter of the Count of Paris, who brought him a large fortune,
but he habitually anticipated his civil list, and became heavily indebted.
Successive Ministers met his demands by advances of money from the Treasury,
and the monarchy became a partner with place-hunting politicians in robbing the
revenue. The French Queen was followed by French religious Orders and Jesuits,
who had no legal right to be present in the country. This invasion aroused the
hostility of the University of Coimbra and of the politicians. An anti-clerical
agitation arose; but the unstable governing factions could not carry out any
definite policy of repression. It is impossible to say with confidence how far
clerical intrigue combined with the financial embarrassments of the King to
produce the strange crisis of 1907-8. Clerical influence was certainly not
employed to avert it.
The
employment of dictatorial powers to tide over some pressing crisis had not been
unusual in Portugal. But, before 1907, this peremptory device had only been
used by some political faction which was itself in haste to restore the normal
working of the Constitution—that is to say, the habitual alternations in
office, and divisions of the spoils among the professional politicians. In this
year, however, Dom Carlos entered on a course which had undeniable novelty. He
found in Joao Franco, a wealthy man of apparently resolute character, a
Minister who was prepared to govern without the Cortez. Parliamentary
government was suppressed, and Portugal was promised an honest administration.
There is no reason to suppose that, if this venture had been made with a
serious purpose, it would have met with any national resistance. The Portuguese
knew that Joao Franco told the truth when he said that the politicians,
Regenerators and Progressives alike, were greedy unscrupulous adventurers, who
pilfered the revenue. If they had found any substantial relief in the King’s
coup d'lttat they would have dispensed with constitutional forms. But it soon
became obvious that the change in persons was not to bring with it any
lightening of the burden on the taxpayer. Franco exposed the roguery of the
politicians, and made a show of retrenchment. But he was forced to increase the
pay of the army on which he had to rely, and the King was aided by a collusive
arrangement which freed him from his debt to the Treasury and
received an
increase of his civil list. It became obvious that what was taken off with one
hand was to be imposed by the other—and the people remained indifferent. The
politicians were exasperated by the loss of their profits, and by measures of
repression. The King, who entertained a confidence which had the appearance
rather of infatuation than of courage, exposed himself in the streets of his
capital. On February 1, 1908, while driving through the streets of Lisbon with
his wife and his two sons, he was assailed by a gang of assassins. He and his
eldest son were murdered. His second son, Manuel, the present Eng, was wounded.
The Queen had an extraordinary escape in the midst of a fusillade of carbines
and revolvers.
The crime
stands alone among the many regicides of the present age in that it was
absolutely successful. The royal family was terrorised. Franco fled the
country. Constitutional government was restored, and the professional
politicians resumed all their power. The quiescence of the nation was absolute.
The Republicans made no movement. The political life of Portugal appears to be
concentrated in factions of office- seekers, who have only been stimulated by
their victory in 1908 to a more reckless pursuit of personal feuds. The remedy
must be found outside the professional political world. It can only be provided
by honest and patriotic Portuguese prepared to unite for the creation of a
healthy public opinion, and to act together for the real good of the docile and
long-suffering majority of the people of Portugal, whose somewhat too passive
good qualities are recognised by foreign observers, but have been cruelly
abused by their masters.
SCANDINAVIA.
SWEDEN.
Chakles XV died in September, 1872, without male issue,
and was succeeded by his younger brother, Oscar, on the thrones of Sweden and
Norway. The new King was a man in the prime of life—he was born in January,
1829—and had had many years, as heir presumptive, in which to prepare for his
high calling and to gain experience and information. King Oscar II was
undoubtedly a personage of far more significance than his brother. Endowed with
a clear judgment, a quick mental grasp and an unusually retentive memory, he
was, moreover, possessed of exceptional culture and of varied knowledge,
attained by means of profound study as well as extended travel in Scandinavia
and abroad. As a writer on military history he had won distinction, and the
University of Lund had presented him with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy,
in genuine recognition of his scholarship. The artistic endowments which had
also distinguished his elder brothers were prominent in King Oscar, and found
their chief scope in the domain of music and poetry. He was an eminent orator,
and his literary productions revealed a sensitive, poetic soul. To these
advantages of talent and culture were added a noble character, a stem sense of
duty and rectitude, with a benign and captivating, yet withal kingly manner.
King Oscar was a humane man in the full sense of the word, filled with the
sincerest endeavour to benefit the two nations whose sceptre had been entrusted
to him. The impulses of his nature occasionally found expression in a certain
vehemence and impatience in the presence of opposition, or revealed themselves
in outbursts of enthusiasm and sanguine hopes; but his subjective preferences
and sentiments were in the end ever subordinated to his mature experience of
the world and his judicious rule of life. His imposing and noble presence,
which grew more majestic and august with the passing of the years, commanded
the respect of all who came in contact with him. Despite his personal merits,
the new King had in the beginning to encounter some disfavour on the part of
the general public.
274
Constitutional policy of King Oscar II. [1855-76
His
predecessor, with less sterling qualities, had won the hearts of both his
peoples, by his faults as well as by his merits, and his successor suffered by
comparison. Public opinion was slow to veer round and do justice to King
Oscar’s personality; but in time he gained a popularity more deep-rooted and
widespread than had fallen to the lot of Charles XV.
This was
increased no doubt by his marked inclination for constitutional rule. During
the reign of Charles the more personal monarchy, characteristic of the first
two kings of the Bernadotte dynasty, yielded to the constitutional demand that
the responsible Ministers should effectively control the government. But this
change had been accepted with great reluctance by Charles, who only under
compulsion consented to suppress his personal views, and did not desist from
lending his ear to private counsellors and friends to the detriment of his
official advisers. A measure of uncertainty had prevailed in constitutional
affairs, and a veiled strife was waged between the traditional personal
monarchy and the ever-growing constitutional tendency. On the accession of
Oscar II this uncertainty and this opposition ceased. The new King respected
the position and the demands of his counsellors, and, although his own judgment
always carried weight by reason of his experience, intelligence, and
seriousness of purpose, he did not press his views longer than was consistent
with the responsibility of his counsellors and the claims of the parliamentary
situation. The establishment of the annual two- Chamber Diet in 1866 secured
the political power of the Diet, and the reform which in 1876 introduced a
responsible Prime Minister has further contributed to diminish the personal
influence of the King. But in Sweden, owing to the equipoise between the two
Chambers and to King Oscar’s personal tact and authority, the Constitution did
not develop into a true parliamentary government, though the tendency was in
that direction. In Norway, on the other hand, where the royal authority lacked
the secure position which it occupied in Sweden, the parliamentary principles
implicit in the Constitution of 1814 came into full effect during his reign and
reduced the monarchy to a mere figurehead.
The external
outlook of the united kingdoms was overclouded at the time of Oscar’s
accession. The abandonment of Charles XIV’s Russo- phil policy, which followed
on the alliance with England and France of 1855, had made the relations with
Russia very strained. The vague hopes of a reunion between Scandinavia and
Finland, cherished in a number of eager Scandinavian circles, and favoured not
least by Charles XV himself, together with the hatred of Russia displayed by
the Swedish public and their enthusiasm for Poland during the Polish rebellion,
had inspired the Russian Government with a certain distrust of Swedish policy,
while on the other hand the value of the guarantees given by the Treaty of
Alliance had practically disappeared on the breaking up of the Anglo-French
friendship and the heavy defeat of
France in
1870. The Scandinavian plans, which the two preceding Bemadottes had favoured,
had proved an absolute fiasco, and a feeling of resentment was left in defeated
and mutilated Denmark, who had had to fight her battle alone, in spite of all
promises. In Germany Prussia, under the guidance of Bismarck, had carried all
before her, and had created a new German Empire, which appeared as the first
Power in Europe; her aggrandisement had taken place partly at the expense of
Scandinavia; moreover Sweden’s sympathies had all the time been with the
adversaries of Prussia, and especially during the Franco-1'russian War, when
enthusiasm for France, grief for her misfortunes, and hatred toward Germany
were deeply felt among the Swedish people, and not least by the romantic King.
The new monarch had to allay the suspicions of Swedish designs against the
peace, conceived, not without cause, by her powerful neighbours, and to
maintain in foreign policy a firm, neutral, and peaceful attitude; his efforts
clearly showed that the Government looked to actual realities. King Oscar
himself entertained sympathy for Germany and German culture, and his display of
firmness and impartiality soon convinced every neighbour of his sincere desire
for peace. During the conflicts, which disturbed the rest of Europe, Sweden and
Norway faithfully maintained the part of a neutral and impartial spectator. It
was not until towards the end of Oscar’s long reign, that the feeling of secure
external peace was to be again disturbed by Russia’s forcible incorporation of
Finland, which awakened sorrow and sympathy in the Swedish people, and brought
the two northern realms into more direct contact with their Russian neighbour,
and still more by the dissolution of the union of the two Scandinavian
kingdoms, at a time when mutual relations throughout the European world were
becoming strained.
The domestic
policy of Sweden under King Oscar II was marked by no dramatic events, striking
revolutions, or imposing personages, but it displays the pertinacious endeavour
of its statesmen to keep pace with the rapid economic and intellectual
development of the country. This task devolved in the first place on the new
two-Chamber Diet, which first assembled in 1867, and thereafter met annually.
It was soon clear that the great expectations of finding in this Parliament an
organ of reform more prompt and pliable than the old Diet of Four Estates had
been extravagant. At the outset, the First Chamber comprised the
representatives of the Estates of the Nobility and Clergy, drawn from the
higher and still mostly noble bureaucracy, and from the educated and wealthy
classes, especially the class of landed proprietors. This Chamber was, of
course, characterised by a certain conservatism, but also by varied experience
of the requirements of the State. It was a true House of Peers in the best
sense of the word. In the Second Chamber corresponding to the former Estates of
the Burghers and Peasantry, the peasants soon showed that they possessed a
decided pre
ponderance,
and skilful leaders among them were not long in forming a strongly-organised
party, the “Agricultural party” (landtmannapartiet), which during the next few
decades entirely ruled this Chamber and thus constituted the most powerful
section of the Diet. By its side there was a section known as the “Intellectual
party” (intelligempartiet), chiefly consisting of urban representatives; at
first, it often went hand in hand with the majority in the First Chamber; but,
like that majority, it lacked firm organisation.
Opposition
between the two Chambers has been a marked feature throughout all succeeding
developments. The First Chamber, however, has always managed, in sharp
conflicts, to vindicate its full equality, perhaps mainly because the question
of supply is decided by a common vote, when the First Chamber, together with a
minority from the Second, often determines the issue. The result has been a
complete dualism within the Diet, which for decades hindered the progress of
all important political reforms, and caused fruitless party strife. Another
result has been that the Government has been able to lean at will either upon
the majority of the First Chamber or upon that of the Second, or, again, to
take up a position independent of both as a mediator. It is true that the
opposition between the two Chambers diminished considerably in the process of
time, the First Chamber being more and more exclusively dominated by the large
landowners, whose common interest with the peasants during the customs
conflicts of the eighties declared itself; but, at the same time, Radical ideas
forced their way in, especially among the representatives of the big towns, and
a Liberal party of modem character was formed, which has been of growing
importance. The opposition between this party, which from 1905 onwards has
obtained a slight preponderance in the Second Chamber, and the Conservative
party, supported by the landowners of both Chambers, has gradually become the
chief factor in politics in Sweden, as in other civilised countries of today.
During the last decade the Socialists have succeeded in gaining a footing in
the Diet.
On no
question have the two parties carried on a more protracted struggle than on
that of the national defences, which during the first few decades of the new
phase of representation were the chief domestic topic discussed. The army and
navy of Sweden were thoroughly antiquated when the great European crises of the
fifties and sixties roused the nation from its sleep, and a national sentiment
of defence found its vent in the so-called volunteer movement
(skarpskytterorelsen). From the beginning, however, the reform was blocked by
the peasant party, who made any increase in the grant for defences conditional on
a complete and absolute remission of the old burdens of military tenure
establishment (indelnmgs- verb) and of land-taxes (grundskatter) on “
unprivileged ” land. The question was fought for a score of years. In vain did
the Government bring forth one scheme after another to reform the
defences—schemes
constructed
on every possible plan; the opposition between the two Chambers wrecked every
one of them. In vain did Baron de Geer, the creator of the new form of
representation, work at this reform during his second Ministry, 1875-80, and
after him the Agricultural party’s own Government under Count Arvid Posse (till
1883). It was reserved for Themptander, in 1885, to carry through a first
trifling extension of the training-period of those liable to military service,
in return for which concession a reduction of 30 per cent, on the old land
burdens was granted.
Before this
reform had advanced any further, a fierce dispute about the customs had arisen
and crowded out all other questions. During the general depression which
prevailed in the eighties there was great distress in agriculture, produced by
the fall in prices that followed the flooding of the market by American corn.
The cry for protective duties for agriculture and industry became general,
although it meant a reversal of the whole customs policy of Sweden as developed
in the middle of the century and established by the commercial treaties of the
sixties. The struggle between Free Trade and Protection agitated the Swedish
people more than any other question since the days of parliamentary reform.
After the protectionists had succeeded in gaining a majority in the Second
Chamber, the Free Trade Ministry of Themptander resigned in 1888, and heavy
duties on corn were introduced. In 1892 the new system was completed by the
protection of industry. In the First Chamber the protectionists gradually won a
stronghold. As representative of the new agricultural majority Erik Gustaf
Bostrom, a landed proprietor, became Premier in 1891 and remained in power,
with a short interruption between 1900 and 1902, until the spring of 1905.
Bostrom was a skilful tactician, and an energetic and clear-sighted statesman,
with a sharp eye for reality and essential points of policy. In the course of
his career, he detached himself more and more from his party and took up a
mediatorial attitude towards the contending factions, though always with a
strongly pronounced Conservative leaning.
Supported by
the great economic improvement which came in the nineties, and by a new tide of
national sentiment, Bostrom succeeded, in 1892, in carrying through another
step of the defence reform; the training-period of the conscripts was more than
doubled; in return, the remaining 70 per cent, of the old land burdens was
annulled. But the reformers could not be content to accept this as final. With
the growing spirit of nationality, fanned by the conflict with Norway and the
events in Finland, the goal so long aimed at was at length reached—a trained
army, based upon universal compulsory service (1901). Strong fortresses were
begun with the new century at Boden in the extreme north and outside Goteborg,
and the Swedish fleet was practically created anew ; so that at the end of
Oscar II’s reign Sweden was, in proportion to her population, one of the best
armed States in Europe.
With the
final realisation of the great defence reform, the question of the extension of
the franchise forced its way to the front. This question was embraced
especially by the Liberals, who found it the most popular plank in their
platform. Already in 1896, schemes began to be proposed by the Government to
deal with this knotty question. After the elections of 1905 the first Liberal
Ministry was formed under Staaff, a lawyer; but its Franchise Bill, based upon
election to the Second Chamber by universal suffrage in single-member
constituencies, was defeated the very next spring, owing to the opposition of
the First Chamber; and the Ministry was replaced by a Conservative Government
under Lindman. He succeeded in passing a Franchise Bill based on proportional
representation in elections to both Chambers; but, in order to win over the
Second Chamber, the Government had to make considerable concessions to Radical
ideas—universal suffrage, a lowered rating for eligibility to the First
Chamber, payment for members of that Chamber, as well as for those of the
Second, and a reform of the municipal franchise, which will considerably
democratise the municipal authorities, and not least the provincial assemblies,
which elect the First Chamber. It is probable that, as a result of this reform,
which was finally ratified by the Diet in 1909, the peasants will gain the
predominance in the Upper House, while organised labour will hold sway in the
Lower. Thus the dualism of Swedish representation will not cease, though the
principles of opposition will be changed. This issue of the franchise struggle
was both unexpected and unpopular; but a rescinding of the resolution of 1907
was, from the first, practically out of the question.
By the side
of the great political questions, which determined the grouping of the parties
and led to changes of Ministry, the domestic policy of the country has chiefly
aimed at the continuous remodelling of the community on modem lines, and
supporting, regulating, and protecting the inner life of the nation. This
development in prosperity and culture naturally forms the essence of the
history of the Swedish people during the last decades. Its economic life during
this period has been exposed to very great variations, the great prosperity in
the early seventies being followed by an economic depression, which yielded in
the nineties to a still more brilliant expansion, till, a few years after the
new century had opened, a reaction set in, which culminated in the serious financial
crisis of 1907-8. The industrial life of the country has presented the same
vicissitudes as the general economic life of Europe; but, on the whole,
economic development in Sweden has progressed with a rapidity unparalleled in
the history of that country. Agriculture—of old the country’s primary source of
prosperity and still supplying a livelihood to over half the population—has
made considerable progress by bringing new land under cultivation, by improved
methods, and more intensive development. The farmer, during the last few
decades, has devoted himself more and more to stock-raising;
so that
Sweden, which before 1880 was a corn-exporting country, now imports corn, but
in' its place exports dairy produce. Forestry, which supplies Sweden’s chief
article of export, has multiplied its yearly output during the same period. So,
too, with the mining industry: through the active working of the large Norrland
ore fields at Kiruna and Gellivare, which began in this century, Sweden should
become more and more prominent as an iron ore exporting country. A special
railway-line, the most northerly in the world, from LuleS, on the Gulf of
Bothnia, past the great ore fields, across the frontier to the icefree harbour
of Narvik in the West Fiord, has been built to deal with this valuable export.
Yet, perhaps, the advances in industry are the most remarkable. During the
reign of Oscar II, the number of workmen has been increased more than fivefold
and the value of output more than sevenfold, and the section of the population
that lives by manufactures has risen from one-sixth to one-third. A great
industrial era began in Sweden towards the end of the nineteenth century. The
use of electric power in the service of industry promises to make Sweden, with
its numerous waterfalls that are easy of access, a great industrial power. The
system of railways, begun in the fifties, has grown to such an extent that
Sweden stands first in the world in the proportion of railway mileage to
population. The history of the telephone and telegraph tells of similar
success. The statistics of trade for the country correspond, of course, to the
economic development in general; and maritime commerce, which was for a long
time depressed, has taken a new lease of life and is opening up direct communication
with the most distant seaports. One sign of the growing riches of the country
is the increase in the state budget, from about 60 million kronor (£3,330,000)
in 1872 to over 200 million in 1907. The population rose from four millions in
1863 to over five and a half millions in the same period, exclusive of the
million Swedes who left their native shores for America during the second half
of the nineteenth century.
The great
material development has brought with it in Sweden, as elsewhere, a number of
new problems and dangers. Above all, the rise of a large class of artisans has
accentuated several problems difficult of solution. Legislation has not been
able to keep up with the fresh demands on it, and the socialist movement has
gained much ground among the working classes since the end of the eighties. In
Sweden this movement has presented itself as an unusually denationalised class
movement, and in its wake anarchist tendencies have forced their way in and
aggravated incessant strikes and lock-outs. This constitutes a danger to the
whole industrial future. In 1908 and 1909 conflicts between employers and
employed became especially violent; and, in the latter year, a general strike
broke out, which for a while threatened the foundations of the whole social
structure of the country. The labour question has become more and more the
pivot of domestic policy in Sweden.
280
Sivedish scholarship.—Norwegian industry. [1872-1909
The
intellectual advance of the nation has also been rapid during the last four
decades. Swedish scholarship found worthy representatives in every branch of
knowledge; especially in the domain of natural science, in which Torell,
Retzius, and Arrhenius have achieved world-wide fame. In geographical
discovery, Swedes, notably Nordenskjold and Sven Hedin, have been pioneers. In
literature Viktor Rydberg and August Strindberg, and more recently Froding and
Selma Lagerlof, have been distinguished figures; while Swedish art, above all
in painting and music, has had excellent and original representatives. The
Press has grown into a power that meets the demands of the modem community, and
the education of the people is not surpassed in any other country. The creation
of two new Universities, in Stockholm and Goteborg, and the establishment of a
number of technical schools, have mate ally increased the facilities for
obtaining higher education.
Thus the
reign of Oscar II has been, in an exceptional degree, a flowering time of
peaceful culture. Its end was, however, disturbed by the acute conflicts
between Sweden and Norway, which finally led to the dissolution of the Union.
This event, the most important in the political fortunes of the Scandinavians
during this reign, is discussed in the following section.
NORWAY AND
THE DISSOLUTION OP THE UNION.
Under the
long rule of Oscar II, Norway also made considerable progress in many branches
of industry. The natural resources of the country are, however, small; arable
land forms but a very small percentage of its extensive territory, while even
wooded ground is relatively insignificant; minerals are by no means so abundant
and good in quality as the Swedish. Fishery and the timber trade supply the
chief articles of export. Quite recently, the manufacturing industries have
made good headway, and in her numerous waterfalls Norway, like Sweden, has a
valuable source of power, though lack of capital, of raw material, and of
convenient markets, constitute a serious drawback. Norway’s chief branch of
industry is still, as of old, her maritime commerce, and her mercantile marine
has long been one of the largest in the world. During the second half of the
nineteenth century it increased tenfold. As this increase depends mainly on
trade between foreign ports, the continued development of the maritime commerce
is itself dependent, to a large extent, on the economic policy and advance of
other countries. The influx of tourists has become of growing importance to the
finances of the country. But the economic depression of the early years of this
century fell very heavily on Norway.
1814-1900]
The constitutional basis of the Union.
281
The second
half of the nineteenth century was also a period of great intellectual activity
in Norway. Her literature aroused admiration through the great dramatist
Henrik Ibsen, the lyric poet and novelist, Bjornstjeme Bjomson, and the
novelist Jonas Lie. Norwegian art, especially music, represented by Grieg,
flourished, while learning has been represented by notable men, such as the
gifted philologist Bugge. In polar exploration Fridtjof Nansen gained European
renown. A curious linguistic movement, in favour of an artificially constructed
language, Landsmaal, . threatening' to displace the present standard language,
essentially based on Danish, must be regarded, in the main, as a manifestation
of deep-rooted nationalism. It may entail a serious danger to the intellectual
development of Norway.
Political
life has been largely controlled by the country’s relations to Sweden. The
question of the Union has influenced the fortunes of parties and cabinets in
Norway much more than in Sweden, where it only began to be of importance in
domestic policy from the middle of the last decade of the nineteenth century.
All the great questions in the political life of Norway duriug this epoch were
connected, in some way, with the predominant question of the Union.
From the
beginning, the Union suffered greatly from lack of clear definition. According
to the Swedish conception, Norway was ceded to Sweden by Denmark in the Treaty
of Kiel, although the King of Sweden, after a short war with his new and
rebellious subjects, came to an agreement with them which guaranteed to Norway
in domestic matters an independent position and a distinct entity. The
Norwegians, for their part, maintained that they were an independent nation,
and that the Union was legally based on their own free decision and the
election by the Storthing of Charles XIII as King of Norway. On one point,
however, both were originally agreed, namely, that the Fundamental Law of
November 4, 1814, was the original Act of Union, which was supplemented by the
Riksakt of 1815. It followed, that any change in the Norwegian Fundamental Law
required Swedish consent; and, when that conclusion became obvious, the
Norwegians soon came to assert .the new interpretation that the Riksakt was the
sole compact. Thus the general historico-political as well as the juridical
principles of the Union were subjected to different interpretations. Not less
unsatisfactory were the actual terms of the Union, since the compact lacked
provisions for the administration of foreign affairs. The King conducted them
on the lines of the Swedish Constitution and with the counsellors prescribed by
it. In a word, the administration of foreign affairs under the Union was
Swedish. This was disputed by nobody, and was implied by the convention of
Union. The Consular Service, on the other hand, was from the beginning a matter
of joint arrangement. Also, in external emblems and other details, the
subordination of Norway was manifest.
282
[1835-73
Charles XIV
appointed Norwegians to the legations and the Foreign Office in Stockholm, and
in 1835, on his own authority, gave a Norwegian Cabinet Minister a seat in the
Swedish Diplomatic Council. On his accession to the throne Oscar I granted
perfect equality as regards minor and emblematic details. But, on the Norwegian
and on the Swedish side alike* there had grown up a feeling of dissatisfaction
with the legal organisation of the Union; and a committee, appointed in 1839,
was deputed to draw up a scheme for a new Act of Union, based on a complete
equality of rights and obligations. That was the beginning of the futile
attempts to revise the Union. These failed, owing to the fact that on the
Swedish side there was a desire to develop and strengthen the Union, preferably
by setting up a common Parliament, while Norway with her newly awakened,
sensitive national sentiment feared the Swedish amalgamation plans and rejected
every attempt to strengthen the connexion. But, without closer union, a
satisfactory scheme of common administration in foreign affairs was scarcely
possible. Another circumstance that rendered more difficult a rearrangement and
in the end made it impossible to maintain the Union was the essentially different
position of the monarchy in the two countries. In Sweden there was a strong
constitutional monarchy, in Norway a kingship possessing only a suspensive
veto and lacking inter alia a free control of the military forces of the
country and the right to dissolve the Storthing and demand a new election. Both
the first large union committee, whose proposal was presented in 1844, and a
later one of 1865, whose proposal was formally rejected by the Storthing in
1871, failed in their attempts to revise the Union.
The first
serious conflict which threatened the existence of the Union turned on the
abolition of the post of statkolder (King’s lieutenant in Norway). In 1859-60
the Storthing resolved that the King’s right to appoint a statholder in Norway
should cease. On the Swedish side the proposal was not disputed; but it was
claimed that the King’s consent to this change in the Norwegian Fundamental Law
should be given in the combined Council of State, since that law had come into
existence through negotiations with Sweden. The Storthing angrily disputed this
demand, and declared that the Riksakt was the sole compact. As no unanimity
could be arrived at, Charles XV had to refuse his sanction to the decision of
the Storthing. Not till after Charles’ death did the Storthing renew their
decision about the statholdership, and King Oscar II was face to face with his
first great difficulty on the subject of the Union. His Swedish counsellors
yielded this time, not on the principle, but because the question was of so little
intrinsic importance, and the office of statholder was abolished in 1873. This
was a considerable success for Norway, because it implied that Norway by
herself had the right to revise her Fundamental Law, and that Sweden had lost
the right to consider alterations in the original document of the Union,
however significant they might be for its existence.
By far the
most important occurrence in the political life of Norway under the government
of Oscar II before the dissolution of the Union, and the actual turning-point
in its history, is the assertion of parliamentarism in Norway. As a matter of
fact the King’s power, according to the Constitution, was so poorly equipped as
against the Storthing, that the supremacy of the latter would have been established
long before, had not the King been at the same time King of Sweden. Charles XV
had still maintained his right to chose his Norwegian Ministry at his own
discretion and to refuse his sanction to resolutions of the Storthing that
seemed to him to threaten the Union. The introduction of yearly Storthings,
from 1871 onwards, increased the power of the Storthing, however, and at the
same time the great Liberal party arose through the uniting of the peasants and
the Radicals under the able and unscrupulous leadership of Johan Sveidrup, a
lawyer. In order to obtain greater influence in the Government, the Storthing
resolved in 1872 to alter the Fundamental Law so as to give the members of the
Council the right to take part in the deliberations of the Storthing. The King
gave his consent only on certain conditions, including the concession to him of
the right to dissolve the Storthing and appeal to the electorate, which
conditions were rejected by the Storthing. The conflict was now engaged. The
most significant fact was that the Liberal party now advanced the preposterous
theory that the King, even for changes in the Fundamental Law, only possessed a
suspensive veto, and resolved to push forward the reform in this way. Thus the
position of the monarchy as an independent power in Norway was at stake; if the
voice of the Storthing were to prevail, it could then, by means of fresh
reforms, deprive the King of any other of his rights.
Besides the
fact that the Fundamental Law clearly prescribed methods of procedure for
alterations in itself which differed widely from those laid down for other
legislation, the Storthing had repeatedly acknowledged the King’s veto in
connexion with the Fundamental Law, and the jurists of Norway itself always
maintained the same opinion. Amid increasing tension the Storthing, in 1874,
1877, and 1880, passed the change in the Fundamental Law already mentioned;
each time the King refused his sanction. The third time the Storthing declared
the resolution had become a Fundamental Law without the King’s sanction, and
requested the Government to publish it accordingly; the Government refused. The
Storthing had recourse to the Court of Impeachment (Riksret), composed,
according to the Norwegian Constitution, of the Supreme Court of Judicature and
the Lagthing, one section of the Storthing. But, as the Liberals were not sure
of the issue, proceedings were postponed until after the new elections of 1882.
By means of violent agitation the Liberals won a brilliant victory at the
polls, and in 1883 the Selmer Ministry was impeached. It was now possible to
pack the Lagthing with staunch Liberals; and, by diminishing the number of
members of
the Supreme
Court and irregularly disregarding every protest raised against the
parliamentary members of the Court of Impeachment, a strong party tribunal was
created, which in February, 1884, sentenced Selmer and seven other Cabinet
Ministers to be deprived of their offices, and three others to be fined. The
procedure showed a shameless disregard of legal forms and principles; so that
Oscar II could justly declare, on the report of the Council of State, “ that
the management of legal proceedings and the composition of the Tribunal have
been interfered with, in violation of the principles of an impartial
administration of justice.” He continued to assert his right, but accepted the
resignation of the Selmer Ministry with an expression of gratitude. After
abortive attempts to form a new stable Conservative Ministry, King Oscar was
obliged to take the bitter and humiliating step of entrusting the formation of
the Government to the leader of the Liberal party, Sverdrup. Although the
Storthing had to content itself with adopting a fresh resolution about the
participation of the Ministry in its deliberations, which now received the
royal assent—a conclusion which formally left unsettled the question of the
King’s veto in constitutional matters—in reality, the assembly had gained a
notable victory. No constitutional device could obscure the fact that the
Storthing had carried its point, overthrown the Ministry that had opposed it,
and entrusted its own leaders with the government of the country. The day of
parliamentarism had arrived, and the power of the Norwegian King was broken.
Amid acute party struggles between Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals, and
rapidly changing Ministries, the development of the Norwegian State has from
that point gone hastily forward towards a consistent evolution of the usual
Radical programme, universal suffrage, trial by jury, and so forth; and, like
all uncontrolled party rule, Norwegian parliamentary government has been marked
by the oppression of those who are opponents, recompenses to partisans, and
doctrinaire legislation. At the same time, it has undoubtedly set free many
sources of popular energy which were formerly fettered.
The fall of
the royal power in Norway in reality also determined the fate of the Union. It
may therefore seem strange that Sweden looked on at the constitutional struggle
in Norway without attempting any other intervention than an ineffective
utterance from the Government, to the effect that the King’s veto on any change
in the Fundamental Law of Norway was one of the essential principles of the
Union. But the issue of the statholder question had deprived Sweden of the
formal right to intervene, and a large section of the Swedish people were
indifferent to the crisis in Norway or ignorant of it, or they applauded the
brilliant victories of parliamentary ideas. This, together with Oscar IPs
peace- loving nature, explains why he did not use every effort to vindicate by
force his clear right and the original compact with his dynasty. But by this
inaction the Union was doomed.
1885-93]
Negotiations between Sweden and Norway. 285
Perhaps
nothing contributed more to open the eyes of the Swedes in this matter than the
Norwegian Military Service Act of 1885. By means of a mere change of name it
transformed a large part, and that the most efficient, of Norway’s regular
military forces into a local defensive body, thereby withdrawing them from the
common army of the Union, which was the real guarantee of its existence.
Proposals
were now made from the Swedish side to alter the Fundamental Law so as to
amend what was most deficient in the Union, the arrangement of the Foreign
Office. The Swedish Cabinet proposed (1886) an addition to the Riksakt, by
means of which the Diplomatic Council should formally be turned into an
institution of the Union, consisting of three Swedish and three Norwegian
Ministers. The Norwegian Government rejected the proposal because it was
stipulated that the Minister for Foreign Affairs should be a Swede, and they
declined to confirm this stipulation by law. Some years later, the proposal was
again taken up. The Sverdrup Ministry had now rapidly become disintegrated ;
and, in 1889, a Conservative Ministry was formed by Emil Stang. This
Government, which was friendly to the Union, in January, 1891, agreed with the
Swedish Government upon a similar proposal', in which the stipulation as to the
nationality of the Minister for Foreign Affairs was omitted. The Liberals
grudged the Conservatives this success; they already had a new programme of
their own; and the Storthing thirew out the Bill. A Radical Government under
Steen came into power.
The vital
struggle as to the continuance of the Union now began. The new Radical
programme contemplated the appointment of a separate Norwegian Minister for
Foreign Affairs, a point that was stubbornly maintained subsequently. Sweden
could not accept this, since it annulled the external unity of the two realms,
which alone gave value to the Union, and would also, by reason of the far
stronger position of the Storthing as against the King in comparison with that
of the Riksdag, impose a serious disadvantage upon Sweden. On the other hand,
the idea of a common Foreign Minister, Swede or Norwegian, was approved in principle
; and this was officially stated by the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs in
1893. In order to pave the way for its own reform programme, which could
evidently not be carried into effect at once, the Radical party in Norway took
up the question of a separate Norwegian Consular Service. This was alleged to
be necessary for the commerce and maritime trade of Norway, although the
leading Norwegian shipping companies declared that they were not desirous of
any change in the joint Consular Service, which had always worked
advantageously. In 1892, the Storthing passed the momentous resolution for the
establishment of a Norwegian Consular Service and requested the King’s sanction
to it as a purely domestic matter. The King refused his sanction, as he was
bound, however powerless, to do, since it was a direct attack upon the Union; a
joint
286
Question of the Consular Service.
[l892—5
institution
of this kind, which had existed since the beginning of the Union, could not be
abolished without negotiation with Sweden; and, according to the unequivocal
words of the Riksalct, the King’s decision could only be given in a combined
Council of State. But the King of Norway might be coerced, and the Steen
Ministry sent in their resignation, thinking the King would not succeed in
forming or supporting another Government opposed to the will of the Storthing.
However, the Conservatives did not leave the King in the lurch; and in 1893
Emil Stang again accepted office in open hostility to the majority in the
Storthing. In vain did the angry Storthing withdraw the grant to the joint
Consular Service; the Government succeeded in covering the deficit from the
surplus of other revenues. In vain did it refuse the grant to the Diplomatic
budget; the Swedish Treasury advanced Norway?s share in this item.
In its animosity the Stortbing even reduced the Civil List of the King and
Crown Prince. A new Radical victory at the polls, though with only a slight
majority, finally induced the Stang Ministry,, after a two years’ struggle with
the Storthing, to send in their resignation ; but the King refused to form a
new Government on Radical conditions, and the Stang Ministry had to remain in
office. Things looked threatening, and in the spring of 1895 King Oscar called
a secret committee of the Riksdag to confer upon the aspect of affairs. In
Sweden the indignation against the challenges of the Norwegian Radicals was
growing. Norwegian nationalism had aroused the Swedish national spirit. The
Riksdag thoroughly approved the King’s attitude, and urged a general revision
of the articles of Union. A sign of the feeling against Norway was the
denunciation of the existing Suedo-Norwegian mutual tariff law, which was held
to favour Norway economically. Additional supplies were voted in view of a
possible war, and at the head of the Foreign Office there was a staunch
supporter of the Swedish national movement. Among Conservative circles in
Sweden there was a strong current of sentiment in favour of a firm attitude on
the question of revision, to be backed if necessary by an appeal to arms. The
Radical party in Norway could evidently get no further with mere resolutions
that could not be upheld by force, and the Storthing had to beat an ignominious
retreat. The decision about the Norwegian consuls was revoked, the grants to
the Consular Service and the Diplomatic budget were renewed, and the money
advances from Sweden were made good. A coalition Ministry under Hagerup took
the reins of government, and in a large union committee were buried for a time
the burning controversies of the preceding years.
This union
committee, the third in order, came to no unanimous decision. Its proceedings,
in which the Norwegian Radicals had certainly not taken part with any
intention of coming to a genuine agreement, served in the main only to
demonstrate the honest endeavour of Sweden, as well as of the Norwegian
Conservative party, to secure, on
perfectly
equal terms and by means of a common Minister for Foreign Affairs and a common
Consular Service, an equitable adjustment of the Union ; at the same time it
demonstrated the equally determined aim of the Norwegian Radicals to prevent
it. This brought about a few years’ respite in the bickerings about the Union.
But during this pause the Norwegian Radicals got ready to take their revenge
for 1895. Further strengthened by the new elections, in 1898, they again
assumed the government. Against the King’s veto, the symbol of the Union in
the canton of the Norwegian flag was struck out, regardless of the fact that
this was arbitrarily altering an agreement made with Sweden. Already in 1895
the development of the Norwegian armaments had begun; in 1901 a row of
fortifications along the eastern frontier was commenced, obviously intended to
serve one purpose only, the disruption of the Union. These warlike measures,
the object of which could not be misunderstood, led to similar defensive
preparations in Sweden, further accentuated by Russia’s high-handed proceedings
in Finland, which seemed to point to the necessity of the Scandinavian peoples
making common cause. Under this conviction the Swedish Government once more
opened negotiations with Norway.
Hitherto it
had been maintained in Swedish circles that the question of the Consular
Service could not be solved unless in connexion with a reform of the Foreign
Office, and the union committee had worked on that presumption. The Norwegian
Radicals asserted the opposite, and were ready to resume their old programme of
the early nineties. The Swedish offer now accepted the principle of a separate
settlement for the Consular Service. In the autumn of 1902 preliminary
negotiations between delegates from the two countries were set on foot, and
resulted, after a few months’ work, in a summary notification to the general
public of a preliminary agreement. This was the famous communique of March 24,
1903, declaring that an understanding had been come to for the establishment of
a separate consular system for each of the two countries on the condition that
the relations of the respective consuls to the Foreign Minister and the
legations should be regulated by similar, unalterable laws, subject only to
revision with the consent of both contracting parties, and guaranteeing that “
the consuls should not overstep the proper limits of their activity and that
the necessary collaboration between the Foreign Office and the consular system
of the two countries should be thus secured.” Though this document achieved
little, it held out some hope of success. Therefore the Radical Ministry gave
place once more to the Hagerup Ministry, and the King commissioned the Councils
of the two countries to draw up a final scheme for the consular question on the
basis of the communiqui. Everything now depended on whether an agreement could
be come to about the “ similar ordinances ”; and here insuperable difficulties
soon presented themselves. On the part of the Swedes, the claim had to be
insisted
upon that the
Norwegian consuls should be placed to some extent under the control of the
Foreign Office. The Norwegians declared that they could not accept this, but
they had no other expedient to propose than to rely upon the tact and goodwill
of the future Norwegian Consular Board for harmonious cooperation with the
Foreign Office. With no further guarantee it was impossible for the Swedish
statesmen to disorganise the Foreign Office of their country and of the Union.
Every suggestion from the Swedish side, however moderate and considerate it
might be, was rejected, and finally, in February. 1905, the Norwegian
Government broke off the negotiations.
The failure
of the negotiations roused great excitement in Norway. The Radical party again
came into office, under Michelsen, a ship-owner. Its programme this time was,
in effect, the rupture of the Union. The animosity toward Sweden was stirred up
to the highest pitch. The grossest invectives were hurled by the Radical Press
of Norway against the Government and the people of Sweden, and in the foreign
Press distorted accounts of Sweden’s design to assert her supremacy and her
breach of faith were circulated—all in order to cover the attack upon the Union
which had been planned long before. The path the Norwegian Radicals were now
determined to follow led to the dissolution of the Union, not by open action,
undertaken with a full sense of responsibility, but by a misuse of the forms of
law. In vain did the Crown Prince of Sweden, in the capacity of Regent, with
the concurrence of every member of the Cabinet and both Chambers of the
Riksdag, propose (April, 1905) a new offer for negotiations on the basis of a
common Foreign Minister and a separate Consular Service. With this offer, made
in a strictly official form that allowed of no misinterpretation, the Swedes
had gone as far as they possibly could. Every consideration for Sweden’s
historic right, her numerically superior population and greater contribution to
the collective forces, and the divergent Constitutions of the two realms, was
sacrificed in order to preserve the Union, the safeguard of the external
security of the two peoples. The offer was rejected. Instead, the Storthing
resolved to establish a Norwegian Consular Service within an appointed time.
When the King, as could have been foreseen, refused his consent to this, the
whole Ministry tendered their resignation. Although the King refused to accept
it, as he was unable “ at the moment ” to form a new Ministry, every member of
the Norwegian Government simply resigned his official position. After this had
been announced in the Storthing (June 7), the Storthing declared that, since
the King had announced his inability to form a new Government, he ceased ipso
facto to reign, and consequently the Union with Sweden was dissolved. The
retiring Ministry were commissioned to officiate provisionally.
This was
revolution. Norway had violated her Fundamental Law and the Riksakt. But the
people of Sweden also had a voice in the
matter.
Exasperation at the manner in which the rupture of the Union had taken place,
the manifest perversion of justice, and the unwarranted accusations against the
old King and against Sweden itself, flared up and found expression in the warm
protestations of loyalty which poured in from every part of Sweden to King Oscar.
The Riksdag, summoned to an extraordinary meeting, was agreed that only after
formal negotiations between the two realms and upon certain conditions,
contained in an Address to the King of July 28, 1905, could they recognise the
dissolution of the Union, and public opinion was unanimous in supporting this
clearly formulated course. On the Norwegian side there was haste to comply.
After a general election had declared for the dissolution of the Union, the
Storthing addressed to the Swedish Government a formal request for a
discussion; whereupon four members of each Government met in Karlstad at a
conference which, on September 23, resulted in a number of agreements, all of
which were in substantial conformity with the conditions laid down by the Riksdag.
The first condition was the establishment of a neutral zone, consisting of a
narrow strip on both sides of the frontier from the Skaw up to 61° lat., within
which no fortifications were hereafter to exist, nor troops to be stationed.
Thus Norway was bound to demolish the continuous line of fortifications along
the frontier of Sweden, which had been put in working order or had been built
up in the last few years, from Fredriksten to Kongsvinger. The last-named old
fort, which lay within the neutral zone, but not so close to the Swedish
frontier as to constitute a direct menace to Sweden, was, however, to remain in
its then condition, with a limited garrison. This concession was the only one
which the Norwegian negotiators succeeded in obtaining. Furthermore, the old
privilege of the nomadic Laplanders as to reindeer pasturage on both sides of
the frontier was secured, as well as the right to export Swedish ore from the
iron ore fields of Norrland by the port of Narvik. Among the other articles was
an engagement that for the future certain classes of dispute should be referred
to the permanent Arbitration Court at the Hague. These agreements, which were
approved by the Riksdag and the Storthing, received King Oscar’s sanction on
October 26, 1905.
Thereby the
Union was formally and legally dissolved, and each kingdom went its own way
after all mutual claims had been peaceably adjusted. Still, the tension had
been high before the final settlement had been come to, and at one moment
during the Karlstad conference a war, for which both sides were prepared,
nearly broke out. Such a war would have answered no useful purpose, since a
forcible reestablishment of the Union could not have been considered desirable
and would only have led to interference on the part of the European Powers. As
the result of a general election, the Norwegians declared for the preservation
of a monarchical form of government; and the Storthing elected Prince Charles,
younger son of the Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark
and his wife,
the Swedish princess Louisa, to be King of Norway. The new King, who was
married to the youngest daughter of the King of England, assumed the name
Haakon VII. The venerable old King Oscar II, the evening of whose life had been
clouded by these events, did not survive them long. He passed away on December
8, 1907, and was succeeded by his son, King Gustavus V.
The rupture
of the Union has undoubtedly diminished the external security of the two
Scandinavian States. By herself Norway is a small, weak Power, owing to her
poverty and her scanty population; her independence may easily be seriously
threatened in certain circumstances. She has sought protection by entering into
a Treaty (1907) with England, Russia, Germany, and France, by which these
countries have guaranteed to Norway her territorial integrity. For Sweden, too,
the divorce from Norway made the international position more difficult and
dangerous; but, at the same time, the dissolution of the Union was felt as a
relief from the continual conflicts with Norway, and national feeling in Sweden
had grown during the conflict to a fuller and clearer consciousness than it had
possessed for centuries. In her national homogeneity and territorial
compactness, which do not invite conflicts with other Powers, and in a highly
developed and numerous army of defence, she possesses the guarantee of
continued peace and security from without. Sweden has tried to strengthen these
guarantees in her own way, by acceding to the Baltic and North Sea Conventions,
concluded in the spring of 1908, which guarantee the possessions of the
different contracting parties along the coasts of these seas. To the Baltic
Convention, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Russia were parties; to the North
Sea Convention, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, and Great Britain.
DENMARK.
After the
loss of Schleswig and Holstein (1864) Denmark became one of the smallest Powers
in Europe, and the question of her existence as an independent State might well
cause anxiety to her statesmen. The recent losses had brought one advantage
with them, in that the German element of population was now entirely divided
off from the Danish State. Unfortunately, the purely Danish population in north
Schleswig, some 200,000 souls, had also come under the German dominion. The Peace
of Prague, 1866, it is true, held out a prospect of the return of north
Schleswig through the well-known clause about a future vote of the people in
that district, but the defeat of France in 1870 and the agreement of 1878
between Prussia and Austria to annul the Prague clause frustrated the hopes the
Danish people had cherished to the very last for the reunion of Danish
Schleswig. In the population of that district,
however, the
Danish national spirit has continued with undiminished vigour, and the Danes
have felt it obligatory to maintain and strengthen the national and cultural
bond.
The unhappy
issue of the conflict with Germany naturally awakened a strong national feeling
against that Power, which Prussia’s attempt to Germanise north Schleswig by
force helped to keep up. Danish policy has, for its part, always observed an
unswerving neutrality, dictated by the country’s situation; but it could
scarcely conceal the fact that the Danish people now looked for support rather
to the Powers which were possible opponents of Germany—in the first place to
England and Russia, with which countries Denmark was closely allied
dynastically, since the heirs apparent of both these countries (afterwards King
Edward VII and Tsar Alexander III) had wedded Danish princesses. The disaster
of 1864; also produced a certain animosity against Sweden and Norway, who had
left Denmark alone in her struggle; but the cultural ties with the Scandinavian
Powers were kept up as keenly as before and strengthened by means of currency
and postal conventions, by a conscious striving for greater conformity in
legislation, by scientific gatherings of Scandinavians, and so forth. The
dissolution of the Union of Sweden and Norway and Denmark’s attitude towards it
again produced a feeling of coolness, this time on the part of Sweden, but this
too is likely to pass away before long. The tension between Denmark and Germany
has noticeably decreased of late. The economic and intellectual relations
between the two countries have proved to be so close that an amicable feeling
even in political matters could not be permanently excluded. Both Denmark and
Germany were parties to the Baltic and North Sea Conventions of 1908.
With
wonderful energy the people of Denmark, after the War of 1864, set themselves
to the task of developing Denmark’s internal resources and civilisation.
Zealously they turned to the chief natural source of plenty in Denmark, the
soil. The Hedeselskabet (society for the cultivation of the heaths), formed in
1866, has gradually changed half of the barren Jutland moorlands into
productive fields, meadows, or woods. Danish agriculture is among the most
highly developed in the world. From a corn-producing country Denmark has become
more and more a stock- farming country. The surplus of such products,
especially butter, bacon, and eggs, constitutes Denmark’s chief export. By the
side of agriculture Danish manufactures have made great strides—they support
one-third of the population. Foreign trade, after a period of depression
towards the middle of the nineteenth century, has also been exceedingly
prosperous. The United Steamship Company of Denmark has played a great part in
the development of the maritime commerce. Esbjerg was founded in 1868 as a
seaport for the growing export trade to England. The free port of Copenhagen
(since 1895) has contributed materially to the prosperity of the Danish transit
trade. The develop
ment of the
Danish railway system belongs mainly to this period. Whether the prosperity of
Denmark can reach a yet higher level, is doubtful. The little nation has braced
up her energies to the fullest extent that the country’s resources render
possible; and the result attained to by the work of the last few decades is, in
its way, extraordinary.
Denmark’s
intellectual culture must also be ranked very high. Danish art and belles
lettres have been long renowned; characterised less by lofty invention and
striking originality than by a high average standard, they bear witness to an
old, refined culture which is maintained by a large section of the population.
In the ethical and religious life of Denmark sharp contrasts exist between the
critically negative, radical, and cosmopolitan spirit, represented by the
author and historian Georg Brandes and his numerous followers, and conservative
national principles, upheld by positive religious currents, either of an
orthodox tendency (inland missions), or evangelical (Grundtvigianism, etc.).
These variances have been fought out mainly among the middle class and peasant
population, which latter has risen more and more to a social equality with the
former. During the last twenty years serious social conflicts have taken place
between this middle class and the working classes, imbued with socialistic
ideas. The enlightenment of the masses in Denmark has proceeded rapidly,
especially through the high schools for the people, which are a distinctly
Danish institution and have spread from Denmark over Scandinavia and Finland.
In all branches of scientific knowledge Denmark has had illustrious representatives,
especially perhaps in history, philology (Vilhelm Thomsen) and medicine
(Finsen).
This fertile
internal development under the long reign of Christian IX has proceeded in
spite of unusually violent political divisions. The King himself was at first,
as a German and the founder of a new dynasty, received with a certain coolness
by the Danish people; but his thoroughly honourable, lovable, and unpretentious
nature won him an ever-growing popularity. He was not a man of commanding
intellect or even of any learning; but he had a naturally sound judgment and
was thoroughly trustworthy, faithful, and loyal to the Constitution. After the
latter had received its final form (1866) and the sharp disputes were at an
end, there began a complete remodelling of the Danish political parties;
several scattered liberal or radical fractions joined a great Liberal party
which soon had a majority in the Folkething. This united party, whose most
conspicuous leader during the seventies and eighties was Kristen Berg, aimed at
controlling the Folkething and reforming the State according to its ideas. In
opposition to it the Conservatives and National Liberals made common cause;
they had their main support in the Landsthing, and accordingly maintained that
this institution had an equal constitutional position with the Folkething. The
royal House of
Denmark
naturally sided with this Conservative party, which defended constitutional
ideas against the parliamentarism of the Folkething. After several changes of
Ministry, Jakob Estrup became leader of the Government in 1875. For nearly two
decades, with rare courage, tenacity, and power he maintained the political
independence of the monarchy and the Landsthing against the Folkething. When
the Liberal majority in the Folkething tried to coerce the Government by
stoppage of supplies and the systematic rejection of every Bill, Estrup made
use of the power which the Constitution gave the King of issuing provisional
Acts, among them also finance Acts (in 1877 for the first time), and, backed by
the Landsthing, defied the increasingly furious attacks of the Folkething. The
climax of the struggle was reached during the years 1885-94, when the
Government ruled for nine years without a legal grant of supplies. Year after
year, the Estrup Ministry ruled by means of a provisional budget and carried
out the fortification of Copenhagen—one of the chief demands of the
Conservatives. But the whole political life of Denmark suffered from these
constitutional struggles. At last a split occurred in the Liberal party, and a
moderate fraction approached the Conservatives, who for their part were longing
to come to some agreement. In 1894 Estrup made way for a moderate Conservative
Ministry, a legal Bill of supply was again established, and the defensive works
that had been undertaken were approved of. But the party disputes were not at
an end. The development threw the centre of gravity of power more and more into
the Folkething and, as the general elections of 1901 were strongly in favour of
the Liberals, King Christian was forced to accept a Liberal Government. This
change of policy was welcomed with great joy. Yet it has hardly been accompanied
by the success expected, even if a policy of reform has been accelerated.
The leading
personality on the Liberal benches during the rise of the party was Jens
Christian Christensen, formerly an elementary school teacher, whose
parliamentary talents raised him to the leadership of the Folkething in the
nineties, and then to the Government, first as Minister of Church and Education
and then (1905-8) as President of the Council. The old King, Christian IX, died
in January, 1906, and was succeeded by his son, Frederick VIIL
REACTION AND
REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA.
The Crimean War had so thoroughly
discredited the reactionary system of Nicholas I that for a time even the
officials seemed to be Liberal. The first and greatest of the reforms of
Alexander II—the Emancipation of the serfs (March 3, 1861)—was a political and
social measure of the first magnitude, challenging countless vested interests,
and carried through, after many revisions and hesitations, entirely from above
and by a great effort of public spirit on the part of the sovereign. The
outlines of the settlement were broad and liberal; but the labour bestowed on
it had been immense, and the sympathies of the official world were for the time
exhausted. Alexander II was not a strong man; his Court, at which the German
landowners from the Baltic provinces possessed a disproportionate influence,
reflected the mood of the country gentry, whose interests had suffered most
from the Emancipation; officialism was scared by the rapid growth of public
opinion, which had received the strongest nourishment from the great peasant
question, and had imperatively demanded a share in its solution.
The Emperor,
naturally, sank back into his old surroundings. A notable turning-point in
opinion came with the Polish rising of 1863. The Poles had the support of
Bakunin, Hertzen, and other enemies of the bureaucracy; they were so foolish as
to claim the Lithuanian and White Russian provinces where the population was
mainly Russian; General Mieroslawski even sought to sow confusion in Russia by
disseminating Radical ideas there, while recommending the death penalty for a
similar propaganda in Poland. A national reaction followed, especially on the
vain threat of French intervention.
Public
interest in reform was not, however, extinguished; and the Emancipation Act
evidently needed supplementing by changes in local government, the legal
system, and the relations of the peasants towards their superiors. But, owing
to the increasing conservatism of the ruling caste, these reforms were
conceived in a less liberal spirit. The reform of the Universities in 1863 was
comparatively successful. At the beginning of the reign the limitation of the
number of students had
been
withdrawn, and a multitude of young men of humble origin had been admitted. The
students organised themselves for certain corporate objects, such as the
formation of secular Sunday Schools. A few revolutionary proclamations
appeared; and in September and October, 1861, a riotous demonstration took
place in St Petersburg. The rules of June 12 abolished the right to form
corporate organisations; they were followed by speeches, demonstrations, and
arrests. The Emperor then issued the Statute of 1863, which conceded to the
University authorities a considerable measure of independence from police
control.
The Law of
January 13, 1864, second in importance only to the Emancipation of the serfs,
instituted Zemstva or County Councils, elected indiscriminately from all
classes, in the central provinces of the Empire. Each district elected a
Zemstvo; the district Zemstva elected to the Zemstvo of the province. Their
competence embraced “ affairs of local well-being.” But this Law was early
subjected to considerable limitations. The institution of a practically new
system of law Courts and the introduction of trial by jury followed (December
2, 1864). The old system stood condemned on all sides, and in principle the
change was most beneficent; but two grave defects were allowed to pass into the
actual Law—political cases were to be tried by a special Court without a jury,
and officials could only be tried with the consent of their superiors.
Moreover, the Law was only put into operation with extreme timidity and delay.
The drafting of the Press Law of 1865 was seriously modified under the
influence of ValuyefF, the Minister of the Interior; the preliminary censorship
was abolished for the newspapers of the* capital, but the punitive censorship
which replaced it was vested, not in the law Courts, but in the Minister
himself; so that this measure, introduced as a reform amid the enthusiasm of
the educated classes, was hardly a reform at all. This Act ends the reforming
period, though self-government in a more restricted form was extended to the
towns (1870), and the reorganisation of the army on the basis of conscription
(1874) was conceived by Dmitry Milyutin in an exceptionally broad and liberal
spirit. The obligation of service was extended to the privileged classes; only
sons were exempted; the period was reduced from 25 years to 5, to be followed
by 8 to 10 years in the war reserve. Between 1861 and 1881, the army was put
upon a territorial basis, the training of officers was much improved, and the
military law Courts were reformed.
After
KarakozofFs attempt on the Emperor’s life (April 15, 1866) many Liberals became
more conservative; the Liberal Minister of Public Instruction, Golovnin, gave
place to Count Dmitiy Tolstoy; and the police of St Petersburg was entrusted to
General Trepoff. The two Ipnrling Rfldir.a.1 monthlies, the Contemporary and
the Russian Word, were suppressed; and an appeal was issued inviting the aid of
the people to combat pernicious ideas subversive of religion, order, and
property.
As for these
“ pernicious ideas,” the Russian Government, since the French Revolution of
1792, had been wag ig an intermittent war with an almost imaginary enemy. The
Decembrists of 1825 were undoubtedly dangerous because of their high position
and their high intelligence; they were vaguely tinged with socialism, but they
were few in number, and their attempted revolution was hopeless. The dreamy
socialist thinkers of 1849, called the Petrashevtsy, who included the writer
Dostoyevsky, were hardly more numerous and of no political importance. But
these two abortive movements were of no account as ags ist the repressive
system which, throughout the r ign of Nicholas I, lay like a dead weight on the
whole population. Byelinsky, the first great Russian literary critic, did much
towards creating a reading public with a high standard of intelligence.
Meanwhile, Fourier and the French socialists obtained increasing influence; in
the Russia of the autocracy it was the tradition of individualism that was
deficient. In spite of the rigorous censorship, Russian thought, though
emancipated, was not at this time revolutionary. The Liberal wave of the
forties was strongly felt in Russia; but men so different as Katkoff and
Bakunin were at first intimates and fellow-thinkers. Of the two chief schools
of thought, the Westemisers and the Slavophils, the former were not
revolutionary, nor the latter reactionary: the censorships curiously enough,
was most severe towards the conservative and patriotic Slavophils. Then came
the preeminence of Hertzen, who led the campaign against the abuses of the
representative system. He was as much a Liberal as a socialist; before all
things he was a great moral force; and his paper, the Bell, published in
London, penetrated even to the Emperor’s cabinet.
Early in the
reign of Alexander II a deep division becomes observable among Russian
political thinkers, corresponding to that which was in progress in official
circles—between those who wished to go forward and those who wished to go back.
In each case it was the enemies of compromise who showed most will and
conviction; thus, while the Government became more reactionary, the educated
classes became ircrea. .ngly revolutionary. Hertzen at this time represents the
Liberalism of the “conscience-stricken gentleman,” swamped by the so-called
“men of mixed class ” who were streaming into the Universities. Retaining their
sympathy with the peasant world from which they had sprung, these men entered
an atmosphere of intelligence entirely foreign to that world, without gaining
foothold within the charmed circle of authority. Chernyshevsky, who has been
called the father of Russian socialism, set the tone to this new class in the
Contemporary. His mind was acute and powerful, and shrank from no conclusions.
In his view, the welfare of a nation depended not on its corporate wealth but
on the comparative distribution of well-being; and he made this principle his
point of departure. Like the Slavophils, he wished to preserve the primitive
socialism of the village commune; but he looked
1861-8]
297
forward to a
Russia which, by a chance of history, should escape the capitalist stage of
modern Europe and achieve its development in accordance with the theories of
modem socialism.
Chernyshevsky
welcomed enthusiastically and even extravagantly the Emperor’s earlier
pronouncements on peasant reform; but for the allotment of land to the peasant
he set up a revolutionary standard, iand, as concessions at first suggested
were gradually whittled away, he passed into a permanent mood of bitter
hostility. It seems certain that he inspired the university protests of 1861;
the Contemporary was stopped for ei»ht months, and, for alleged complicity in a
violently revolutionary manifesto, he was sentenced to seven years of penal
servitude. His work was continued by the brilliant young critic Dobrolyuboff,
who poured contempt on the impotence and characterlessness of Russian life and
on the timid Liberals who preached patience and moderation. Dobrolyuboff died
before his friend’s catastrophe; but the bitterness of both became much more
extreme in Pisareff, another young man fresh from the student’s bench, who
developed the protest of Dobrolyubofl: into a complete egoism, isolating the
sacred personality of the egoist from all that was dominating in environment,
from all that was authoritative in the present or in the past. He despised
politics and he could not have been of any party; at the most he admitted
groups of kindred spirits: his Russian Word was continually in controversy with
the Contemporary. But his influence over a certain section of opinion was
great, since he met its instincts as the apostle of negation; for four years
(1862-6) he wrote from a prison cell. The “nihilist” type had been presented in
literature in the Fathers and Children of Turgenieff: but, while the critics of
the Contemporary regarded the brilliant characterisation of Bazaroff as a
pitiful caricature, Pisareff avowed it and extolled it. With his gospel of
annihilation he led his generation into a blind alley, the end of all
civilisation. When Pisareff was drowned at the age of 27 (1868), his ideas were
in a state of transition; certainly, he had not said his last word; but his
strange teaching was exaggerated still further by his followers; and it is thus
that we reach the so-called “ short formulae ” of the nihilists, such as :—“
man is an animal,” “ the belly is the centre of the world,” “ love is simply a sexual
attraction,” “photography is higher than art.”
The word “
nihilism ” has been far too loosely applied. At this time the movement was
chiefly literary; there were as yet no terrorist organisations and only
isolated terrorist acts; and, before these became common, there had been a
strong reaction from the ideas of Pisareff amongst the Russian revolutionaries.
The Government, however, did not perceive this; and, unfortunately, there
existed no strong body of central and moderating opinion to mediate between
reactionary and revolutionary thought. Nine-tenths of the population consisted
of an ignorant and recently emancipated peasantry. Among the educated
298
Repression again systematised.
[1804-80
classes were
only scattered groups of individuals, each possessing its own shade of view,
and free expression was discouraged. Hertzen, living abroad, had misjudged
Russia. The Bell had alienated patriots by its Polish sympathies and estranged
revolutionaries by its censure of Karakdzoff. At home the silence of Liberal
opinion was seldom broken after 1864. Several attempts had been made by the
gentry to persuade the Emperor to “crown his edifice” by summoning
representatives of the people, and, in 1865, the Moscow gentry repeated the
request: “truth,” they pleaded, “will reach your throne without hindrance.”
Alexander, in replying, claimed “ the exclusive right to initiative in the
chief sections of this gradual work of completion,” and hoped to meet with “ no
more embarrassments of this kind from the gentry of Russia."
In 1871, the
Government took advantage of the downfall of Napoleon to declare itself free
from the restrictions imposed on it in the Black Sea by the Treaty of Paris;
and even Slavophils believed that this relief to the national pride might be
followed by concessions to the Russian people. Under the direction of Ivan
Aks&koff, Sam&rin, and Prince Cherkassky, the City Council of Moscow
drew up a loyal and convincing appeal to the sovereign, pleading especially for
“ freedom of opinion and the printed word, without which there is no room for
sincerity.” The address was returned as “ couched in an unfitting and
unbecoming form.” Samdrin himself had had to print abroad his patriotic work on
the Frontiers of Russia, in which he stood for the old culture and social
system of Russia against the feudalism of Baltic Germans and Poles. The
Slavophil organ of Aks&koff, Moscow, was suppressed in 1869; and until 1880
the party of national traditions had no other means of public expression of its
views than occasional speeches in the Slavonic societies of the capitals. Even
Katkoff, the editor of the Moscow Gazette and the ally of Count Dmitry Tolstdy,
came into open conflict with Valuyeff over the limitations placed on the powers
of the Zemstva and on the Press. Valuyeff resigned (1868), but only to be
replaced by the reactionary Tim&sheff, formerly Chief of Gendarmes; and in
the licensed Press only the most pliable could survive. However, the admirable
monthly, the Messenger of Europe, was successfully conducted on Liberal lines
by Stasyulevich and Asenyeff.
Thus isolated
from the public the Government went on towards the great catastrophe. The reaL
leader of the reaction was Count Dmitry Tolstdy. His tendencies were
unmistakable; he had conducted an official persecution of the Catholics, and
his criticism of the project of Emancipation was so reactionary that the
Emperor wrote on it “ This is not a criticism but a lampoon.” He had served in
the Ministry of Public Instruction, and had been Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod.
During his long tenure of office (1866-80) the chief sphere of Count Tolstoy’s
.repressive activity was the Uniyexsitieg„and the schools. His object being to
drive out the new generation of men oT mTxed rank, it
1866-71]
Dmitry Tolstdy.—Universities.—Zemstva. 299
was necessary
to begin from the bottom. Scholars of the “Real Schools ” were subjected to a
revised syllabus, and refused access to the Universities; the Gymnasia,
retained as nurseries for the Universities, were remodelled on strictly classical
lines (1871). It must be remembered that in Russia educated men are
comparatively few, and in great request as officials or professional men; and,
as the school certificate and university diploma are required for any higher
public appointment, they have a high market value. This explains the
effectiveness of exclusion from studies as a punishment, the indignation which
it has always excited among the students when applied to their leaders, and the
chivalry which has so often induced whole masses of them to challenge the same
fete. Tolstdy frankly aimed at a diminution in the number of students and a
monopoly for those whose means enabled them to prepare for the school entrance
examinations in the dead languages. Transition from one grade of school to another
was also made as difficult as possible—and all this at a time when the results
of the Emancipation were carrying Young Russia irresistibly forward in pursuit
of instruction. Tolstdy became and remained the most unpopular man in Russia.
The ordinance of 1871, which establiiEecThis system, was enforced with certain
modifications till recent times. The Universities lost most of the rights
conferred on them by Golovnin’s statute, and passed practically under police
supervision. In 1869 the primary schools were removed from the control of the
Zemstva, and put under the supervision of government inspectors, whose duties
were largely of a police character. The books supplied to the pupils and the
political opinions of the teachers were henceforth closely watched; and in
Poland and the western provinces the schools were turned into an engine for
Russifying the population.
The Zemstva
had begun their work with great enthusiasm; their members received a training
in public business conducted on the principles of publicity and responsibility,
and their officers were in close contact with the people. They were therefore
distrusted by the Government, and their powers and representative functions
were constantly diminished. They retained the constructive work of school
organisation; but they lost the right of control. Valuyeff, who was almost as
hostile to the Zemstva as to the Press, aimed at making the local Governors as
absolute as himself; in 1866 he obtained from the Emperor an order which
forbade the appointment of officers by the Zemstva without the Governor’s
consent; and this act of administration, like many others, has remained in
force much longer than the law which it so arbitrarily amended. The Zemstvo
executives had their own elected Presidents; the Marshals of the Gentry
presided over the full assemblies, and in 1867 they received ample powers for
closing debates; the printing of resolutions or debates was made subject to the
consent of the Governor. In consequence of this policy many of the most active members
lost all interest in their work.
300
The law Courts.—The Press,—The peasants. [i865-80
The new law
Courts also found many devoted workers, qualified to set up a high standard of
dignity and independence. But a single sentence of acquittal in a press case
led to the removal of all such cases to a Court without a jury. Provincial
judges were put into relations with the Governors similar to those of other
officials. Count Pahlen (1868) lost no time in attacking the new system: the
examining magistrates were made removable, and in 1874 he obtained the right to
exercise a veto even over the list of private lawyers. Other laws, which
removed political cases from the cognisance of juries, must be judged
differently, since they were called forth by exceptional circumstances of an
alarming kind.
Between 1865
and 1870 forty-four press warnings were issued by the censorship, and seven
periodicals, including those of Aks&koff and tCatkdff, were stopped for
terms ranging from two to six months. In 1868, Tim&sheff, in defiance of
the law, obtained permission from the Committee of Ministers to forbid the sale
of any newspaper on the rj streets. This measure, declared at the
time to be temporary, wasfnever^' abrogated; and the precedent for evading a
regular decision of the Council of State was followed in a number of other
regulations. Prom 1869 to 1871 there were twenty-three warnings; six
periodicals were stopped, and nine deprived of their sale on the streets. In
the next five years the figures rose to 72, 16, and 45, and those for 1878-9
were still higher. In 1873 editors were made liable to expulsion from their
posts if they refused to divulge the names of contributors. In 1879 the
Government assumed the power of forbidding a paper to print advertisements; the
penalty of suspension or suppression was extended to provincial papers, which
were already subjected to preliminary censorship. These measures were applied
to practically all the chief Russian periodicals, except the revolutionary
publications, which were printed abroad and distributed in secret. Works of
Mill, Spencer, Lecky, and Finlay were excluded from circulation in Russia.
Thus there
was open war between the Government and the Russian “Intelligence”; let us turn
now to the vast background of peasants. After the Emancipation, the peasants
were for a time forgotten, but the reform went forward of itself. In 1863 the
emancipating law was applied to the serfs of the sovereign and of the imperial
appanages, and in 1866 to those of the State. All these received a more liberal
allotment of land than the former serfs of the gentry; and the peasants of the
appanages were from the first put into a position much closer to that of
personal proprietors. Meanwhile, the impoverished landlords were glad to allow
the redemption of the land on the terms prescribed, and in ten years two-thirds
of their serfs had acquitted themselves of their old obligations. But the
accident of bad crops in northern Russia in 1867-8 made it clear that the
peasant had the greatest difficulty in discharging his new dues to the State.
It was proved that the governmental burdens of the peasant often exceeded
1858-80]
Rise of Russian industry.—Labour questions. 301
the whole
income from his holding, and could only be met from other sources. Thus the
purely agricultural districts, where there were no earnings from factories or
cottage industries, were being exhausted; a peasant who had bread all the year
round was becoming a rarity. Prince Vassilchikoff showed that, whereas the
ordinary landowner was paying 3fd. an acre, the peasant was paying Sis.—besides
an almost equal sum levied for special purposes. Three bad crops in succession
led in 1873 to a famine in the grain-growing provinces ; the peasants sold
their cattle to buy bread, and were therefore unable to manure their land. The
Government advanced some ,£260,000; it remitted taxation, and the arrears of
two years; much help was also obtained from private charity; but repressive
measures were at the same time adopted. In 1874, Committees, consisting partly
of local officials, replaced the X “arbiters of the peace” who had
satisfactorily carried out the first application of the Emancipation Law. The
police colonels received disciplinary powers over the peasants elected to
responsible posts in the governance of their class.
The
Emancipation found Russian industry in a very primitive stage, and it inflicted
great loss on the old serf-worked factories. A fury of speculation set in after
the Crimean War, followed by a financial crisis in 1858—9; and the fever of
railway development at the end of the sixties again led to a crisis in 1873-4.
Speculation reached greater dimensions than ever from 1878 to 1880, to be
followed by seven years of depression. These figures show that the periods of
commercial /igour corresponded with those of great public interest in reform,
and also that Russia already reflected in a marked degree the commercial
fluctuations of western Europe. The second of these phenomena implies that,
for good or for evil, Russian-had—passed-into ,the_fitagfc_ot'_capitalism. Many
of the former serfs, uhable to pay the redemption dues on their holdings,
streamed into the towns; and, as Russian peasants, after migration, still
maintain a permanent connexion with their native village, the peasant turned
artisan was still a peasant; he bore his share of the village taxes, and in old
age returned to his native place; thus was developed an army of “ go-aways,”
who brought the peasantry into contact with modem conditions of life and
thought. In the factories, the introduction of machinery made the employer more
independent of the worker; and, though wages were higher, prices rose faster
still. The Government scarcely attempted to face these new questions. The
employers of the St Petersburg district favoured reform; but the Moscow
manufacturers were hostile to new methods of working, and nothing was done. One
effect of this advent of industrialism was to divert many able minds from the
pursuit of the public welfare; and there was an alarming increase of corruption
and bribery, especially in the official world.
Naturally,
this negative record does not cover the whole life of a
nation full
of tension after the promise and inception of far-reaching reforms. Russian
thought was rapidly being revolutionised, and becoming absolutely independent
of the received order of things. The Russian mind is acute, and it had become
embittered: the Intelligence, though small in numbers, was compact, and ready
to follow any powerful thinker who could express its instincts. It was
completely severed from the Government; and it is, therefore, all the more
remarkable that this period of reaction should be marked by a revulsion from
the negation of Pisareff. His literary nihilism was discarded; it gave place to
a generous devotion to the needs of the people, and to the arduous and almost
impossible task of educating the masses. Under existing conditions, enthusiasm
was not likely to respect lawfully constituted authority; and, in accordance
with Russian instincts, the movement was in character socialistic.
The first to
recall Russian thought from the blind alley of Pisareff was Professor Lavrdff.
From his exile in the province of Vyatka, he sent to the Week in 1868 his
notable Historical Letters, and after his escape from Russia he established the
revolutionary periodical Forwards in London (1873). Lavrdff aimed at the
creation of a moral system for the Russian revolutionary Intelligence;
returning to the school of Hertzen, he placed supreme emphasis on the sacred
value of character, and he urged on Young Russia the duty of devoting itself to
the people from which it had sprung. The young student was able to study
because the peasant tilled and the artisan worked; and he owed such light as he
could give in return to the struggling and ignorant masses. The teaching of
Lavrdff was infinitely deepened by a much more profound thinker, Mikhailovsky.
This eminent writer, who contributed to Notes of the Fatherland from 1868 to
1883, was the exponent of a whole system of philosophy, described^
as^saciological individualism.” He acknowledged two standards—the development
of individual character, and the welfare of the people, defined as those who
labour—and he maintained that these two ideals, if rightly understood, are
complementary to each other. To the struggle for pvistpnrp he opposes the
struggle for individual completeness, which, he says, involves the fullest
sense of the world around us. Like Chemyshevsky, he believed that Russia could
escape the period of capitalism, and he wished therefore to strengthen the
village commune, while aiming at the formation of character in its individual
members. Mikhailovsky’s teaching was intensely moral, but it was quite
unrestrained by consideration for established civil or religious systems; and
his influence largely helped to develop jthe strong rationalism of present-day
Russian society. At the same time, he^greatlxdeepened the sense ofthe debt of
the Intelligence to the labouring classes.
Under its own
self-chosen masters Russian thought had thus become contemptuously regardless
of the negative direction imposed by the
1861-76]
Propagandists.—Insurrectionists.—Jacobins. 303
Government.
The chief care of the thinkers was how best to smuggle contraband ideas past
the censorship. Meanwhile, the conservative Slavophils were punished precisely
because they spoke and wrote quite plainly. In a few very limited circles,
however, protests of a more practical character were preparing—conspiracies for
organised propa- gandism or for revenge on certain typical representatives of
the administration. There were three main tendencies, each with a small number
of adepts and a much larger number of active or passive sympathisers. The
Socialists of Lavrdff were for propaganda and the preparation of a new world;
the Anarchists of Bakunin were for rousing the peasants to immediate
insurrection; tEe Jacobins, such as NecMyeff and Tkacheff, attached less
importance to the cooperation of the people and conspired to seize on power by
a violent coup d ’’etat. At first only the two former tendencies commanded any
popularity. The proclamations of 1861, “ To the young generation,” “ To the
landlords’ peasants,” etc. were aggressive and sometimes insolent; but they
were the work of individuals or very small groups; the bloodthirsty
proclamation, “Young Russia” (1862), had even less authority. The far more
moderate manifestos of the secret societies, “The Great Russian” (1861), and “
Land and Liberty ” (1863), were more serious-; several officers took
partin the~ first; thesecond was an attempt to unite all the revolutionary
groups; it met with little success until 1876. Karakdzoff, who fired at the
Emperor in 1866, was indeed a member of a very small revolutionary group; but
he was a neurotic, and his design had been discountenanced by his
fellow-members. The repression which followed was a turning- point in the
movement. Many of the chief revolutionaries were now beyond the frontier; there
they created a literature of periodicals and pamphlets which was smuggled in
large quantities into Russia. The People's Business of Bakunin appeared in
Geneva in 1868, and his pamphlet Statecraft and Anarchy followed in 1873, the
same year as the Forwards of Lavroff. The disturbances in the Russian
Universities had continued, and the University of Zurich was for a time the
chief meeting ground of revolutionary students. The first organised conspiracy
was the work of the Jacobin Nech&yeff, and it was neither general nor
popular. There were riots at St Petersburg University in 1869, and NecMyeff
tried to make the students bring forward political claims. He acted as
secretary of an imaginary committee, and planned a vague system of wholesale
niurder; he ordered and carried through the murder of a rebellious associate;
but he could not collect more than £30 in Moscow, and the whole scheme was
discovered. The Government gave the case full publicity, and eighty-seven
persons were brought to trial in 1871. Nech&yeff had escaped, but was
handed over by the Swiss Government and sent to penal servitude.
Despite this
disillusionment, Bakunin went on preaching from Geneva a general rising of the
peasants. Lavrdff advocated a propa-
304
Mural propaganda.— War with Turkey. [1867-78
ganda of a
slower and more reasoned kind. In St Petersburg, Nicholas Chaikovsky had
gathered round him a knot of young revolutionary idealists, who held classes
for working men and distributed books and pamphlets. Similar groups were formed
in Kieff and Odessa. It became the fashion to learn a trade and live the life
of a workman. Arrests continued, and most of the followers of Chaikovsky
passed under lock and 5 key. It was now (1872-5) that whole masses of students
decided to turn their backs on the towns and live among the peasantry. Great
sacrifices were often made; high office, aristocratic homes, were abandoned for
a workman’s bench in a factory, or a bed on the cold ground; but only a few of
the rarer spirits ever got into real touch with the peasants. Many turned back
at the first contact with the rough peasant life; most lived on aimlessly in
villages, meeting each other with pass-words and surreptitious greetings and
never extending their circle. Two or three talks with peasants earned a
fictitious reputation for success, and inspirited the whole fraternity. In the
end, confounded by the police system, by the distrust and hostility of the
peasants, and by the sense of their own ignorance and failure, they drifted
back to the towns. Here they lived without passports—that is, in a permanent
state of conspiracy. Countless arrests were made by the Government, and each
trace of a propagandist visitor was taken to imply the existence of a powerful
local organisation. Many persons, such as the future regicide, Kibalchich, were
arrested for trivial offences, were kept in prison for years without trial, and
became confirmed revolutionaries. Huge and long delayed trials, such as that of
193 persons in January, 1878, gave the bolder spirits the best chance of airing
their views. There was a premium on violence, whether of the police or of their
opponents; the passportless wanderers, desperate and nerve-shaken, rapidly
passed into the mood of terrorism, and the professional class and even some of
the Zemstvo workers were more or less in sympathy with this new mood.
It was at
this point that Russia drifted into the War with Turkey, which is treated in
another chapter. The War was preceded by a strong and genuine movement amongst
minds with Slavophil tendencies; but there was too evident a contrast between a
liberating policy abroad and suffocation both of Poles and Russians at home.
"Panslavism required as its basis a true Slavophilism at home, without
which the whole strength of the idea was gone; and in Russia, as we know, the
Slavophils were forbidden to speak freely. Hence the comparative failure of the
officially patronised Congress of Slavs at Moscow in 1867. Ignatyeff took up
the cause of the Bulgarians as against the Greeks (1872) and Slavophil men and
money went to Bulgaria in 1875. Slavophils helped to prolong the struggle
between Turkey and Servia; and it is notable that some Russian Liberals and
even some revolutionaries volunteered with the Servians. It was undoubtedly a
national movement which carried Alexander II into war. But almost everything in
this war seemed
calculated to
mortify the Russian people. Turkey flattered western Europe and derided Russia
with a semblance of constitutional rule; the two main armies, nominally led by
Grand Dukes, were blocked by apparently insignificant fortresses; in glaring
contrast with the devoted bravery of the soldiers stood forth the disgraceful
peculation of military officials and contractors; the tide that carried Russia
to the gates of Constantinople brought her face to face with a war with half
Europe; the Treaty of Berlin was a humiliation ; the one Russian gain,
Bessarabia, embroiled her with her only ally, Roumania; for the Russian
protectorate of the liberated States was substituted a European guarantee of
them against Russian aggression; the victories of Russia gave a constitution to
Bulgaria, whilst she herself remained under police rule. To the outburst of
mortified patriotism from the Slavophils the Government’s only answer was to
suppress the Slavophil committees.
The mood of
those malcontents who had decided to live without passports was now fully ripe
for terrorism. The most prominent actors were not the leaders of revolutionary
thought, but very young men and women. Beginning with prison escapes and
rescues, they passed without plan and almost unconsciously to armed resistance against
arrest, and to murders of traitors, spies, and lower police officials. From
this it was an easy step to the murder of a Governor, or even to plots against
the life of the Emperor. As this process evolved itself, a gap opened between
the simple propagandists and the more violent revolutionaries; these last,
becoming more compact and businesslike, adjourned the realisation of their
vague social theories, resolved to dispense with any active popular support,
and organised themselves on a basis of conspiracy pure and simple.
The first act
that marked this evolution was peculiarly characteristic of the issues
involved. The student Bogolyuboff, imprisoned for his share in a notable
demonstration before the Kazdn Cathedral, refused to uncover before General
Trepoff, who, as head of the police, was visiting the prison. In defiance of
law, Trepoff ordered him to be flogged. A young girl, Vera Zasulich, who did
not know Bogolyuboff, sought an interview with Trepoff, fired at him, threw her
revolver on the ground, and surrendered herself (February 5, 1878). The
Minister of Justice recommended a trial with a jury; the defence disclosed
other arbitrary proceedings of the police, and the jury acquitted the prisoner.
The police attempted to rearrest her, but she was rescued by the crowd outside
the Court, and passed over the frontier. The censorship allowed full
discussion of the trial, and after it even some men of moderate opinions
altered their view of terrorism. The terrorists gained confidence, and the
effective work of the revived society ‘' Land and Liberty,” which aimed
specially at “disorganising” the Government,y dates from this
time. Spies were the easiest prey, and murders were committed in Rostoff,
Odessa, Moscow, and Kieff. One hundred and
306
Murders and Courts-martial.—The Zemstva. [1878-9
fifty
students were expelled from Kieff University, and their passage through Moscow
provoked a students’ demonstration and violent police measures.
The
revolutionaries had now succeeded in printing their papers in Russia, and this
facilitated the stricter organisation of their authority, which was chiefly the
work of Alexander Mikhailoff. In Kieff the chief mover was the high-strung and
moody Osinsky, styled “the empirical creator of terrorism"; but he found more
than his match in the versatile police officer Sudeikin. In August the head of
the Third Section of the police, General MezentsefF, was killed in broad
daylight in one of the central squares of St Petersburg, and the murderer,
Kravchinsky (Stepniak), not only escaped but was able to circulate his printed
justification of the deed. All political cases had by this time been removed
from the cognisance of juries: they were now handed over to Courts-martial.
Most of the ten members of “ Land and Liberty ” in St Petersburg were arrested;
but Mikhailoff soon restored the organisation.
The
Courts-martial were accompanied by an appeal from the Emperor to his people. It
was not long unanswered. The Zemstva, as the only official elective
institutions in Russia, could claim a special authority. Since 1870 there had
been occasional meetings of Zemstvo Liberals. In 1878 they held a conference at
Kieff, to which they invited .several prominent revolutionaries. These they
urged to desist from terrorism; meanwhile, the Zemstva would ask the Emperor to
restore local government, the law Courts, and the Press, to the same condition
as before the • eaction, and also to summon representatives from every Zemstvo
to St Petersburg. No promise was given; but terrorism did in fact cease, and
some revolutionaries joined the Liberals in a “T.gqmiP r>f pppr»- sitional
Elements.” Some ten Zemstva sent answers to the Emperor’s ajbpeal. The most
notable address was that submitted to the Zemstvo of Chernigoff. It threw a
searching light on the evils that were sapping Russian loyalty. “ The struggle
with destructive ideas,” it said, “ would be possible only if the public
possessed its own weapons—freedom of speech and of the Press, of opinion and of
instruction.” Its author, Petrunkevich, was exiled to Kostromd. (1879), and
afterwards was allowed to buy an estate in Tver, where he became one of the
central figures of a later Liberal movement. A similar address was drawn up at
Tver. Liberal demonstrations in St Petersburg called forth a strong expression
of displeasure from the Emperor. The wholesale arrests continued: there were
strikes and street conflicts in St Petersburg. In February, 1879, Prince
Kropotkin, Governor of Kharkoff, was shot down by the hysterical Goldenberg,
who afterwards betrayed his colleagues. In March Mirsky fired at General
Drenteln, the successor of MezentsefF. In April Solovy^ff fired five shots at
the Emperor, without effect. To meet the emergency, the Government
dividedJEtussia into six districts, eaclT under
a Governor-General
with full powers. ' Gurko in St Petersburg, Totleben in^tMessa^
-aKdrChert-koff^TrrKiefF, arrested and exiled wholesale; passports were
rigorously examined, and the whole population of the capital was subjected to
the espionage of the concierges. The Government had been very slow to apply the
death penalty, but armed resistance was now punished with dearth; Osinsky was
hanged for this in Kieff.
Thfe-reVoIutionary
movement was now avowedly controlled by “Land and Liberty”; the central Society
had provincial branches both in town and country, notably on the lower Volga.
It was joined by the artisan Khalturin, who had been vainly trying to organise
a “Northern Union of Workmen”; and the peasantry were represented by a youth of
singular daring and feverish activity, the ex-student Zhely&boff. This was
a typical “ man of mixed class,” who combined peasant vigour and devotion with
the abnormal half-educated intelligence of the new generation. For such men the
pace was too slow ; but many of his comrades were doctrinaire socialists who
reprobated terrorism. In June, 1879, Zhelyaboff and fourteen of his associates
resolved to form an inner circle called “The Will of the People” to carry
through the revolution by terrorism, retaining if possible the wider organisation,
as representing those vague socialistic principles which were common to all
the revolutionaries. The sense of the general meeting was against terrorism,
but henceforth “ Land and Liberty ” disappeared as a whole.
The “Will of
the People” remained as a small self-appointed committee; and from the
peaceful majority was formed a new body called “ the party of the Black
Partition ” (i.e. partition of property), which eschewed both politics and
terrorism, and aimed at achieving a distant social revolution by propaganda
alone. The separation was friendly, and the organ of the Black Partition was at
one time printed at the secret press of the “Will of the People.” The split
followed the lines of division previously noticed. The “ Black Partition ” were
the Lavrdff propagandists of the past and the Social Democrats of tlie luture.
The “Will of~the People” now consisted"oFtEe Bakunin insurrectionists
organised on Jacobin lines, who later became the Socialist Revolutionaries.
PlekKarioffV Stefanovich, and ojher experienced revolutionaries headed
the-“Black Partition'1'’; the younger and more vigorous leaders
joined the “Will of the People.” They were men of action as opposed to the
thinkers, and they received the larger share of the passive sympathy accorded by
the public.
The “ Will of
the People,” as Sophia Perovsky and many of its members knew, broke the
sequence of the Russian revolution. Not only did it commit the revolutionaries
to a hopeless struggle of force against the Government, but even in case of victory
it was Certain that no national assembly would adopt their ill-conceived ideas.
But this only made their activity more desperate and feverish. They were acting
“ for the good of the people?’; but the people looked on, and only individuals
gave passing
help. The few conspirators were proscripts, harried by constant fears from one
lodging to another. The life was an impossible one; in so small a number every
arrest made a sensible gap, and even Zhely&boff could see that terrorism
was using itself up.
The
conspirators at once organised a hunt after the life of the Emperor. They had
their own mining experts; Kibdlchich possessed an unusual knowledge of
explosives. In the summer of 1879 fifty persons worked at the construction of
three mines at Odessa, Alexandrovsk, and Moscow. The Emperor’s train was to be
destroyed on the road from Livadia; but the mine at Alexandrovsk failed to
explode, and that at Moscow destroyed the wrong train. In January the Society’s
press was tracked down, but those in charge defended it long enough to enable
them to destroy all compromising papers. Khal- turin next obtained work as an
enameller at the Winter Palace, mapped out the rooms, and with remarkable
patience and boldness worked daily at a mine two stories below the Emperor’s
dining room. A plan of the Palace was found on an accomplice, and stricter
guard was kept within its walls; but the dynamite hidden under Khalturin’s
pillow was not discovered. On February 17, 1880, he fired his mine: ten
soldiers were killed and fifty-three wounded; but, owing, to a fortunate delay,
the Emperor was not in the dining room. Khalturin escaped, to suffer for
another crime under another name in 1882.
Under the
existing system, the destinies of Russia depended on the i
mood produced in a few leading individuals, and especially in one. The ruthless
crime at the Winter Palace had different results from its predecessors. The
Liberal movement was still strong in the Zemstva; and in January the
opportunist Valuyeff suggested that the public should be allowed to take a
larger share in business of State. Meanwhile, a Supreme Disposing Commission
was established to deal with revolution, whose head, General Loris-Melikoff,
was invested with dictatorial powers over other MinistersTtnd^ll^EKe"resources
of the State. Melikoff had commanded a Russian army in the late war, and had
been disgusted by the disorganisation and peculation which he had witnessed. As
Governor- General of Kharkoff, he had applied his extraordinary powers with
wisdom and clemency. He had much moral courage and a strong sense of order, and
his views were those of a liberal-minded official. He was hostile to any kind
of national assembly, and to any concession that might be attributed to fear or
even to public criticism; but he desired that local self-government should be
developed, and that the law-abiding population should not suffer from measures
directed against the revolutionaries. He appealed for its support as “the
chief force that could help the Government to restore the regular course of
public life.” These words met with a grateful hearing, and Melikoff’s rule is
known as “ the .dictatorship of the heart.”
Four
programmes were before the public. The Slavophil scheme, as
elaborated by
Kosheleff, was as follows. Autocracy must remain unimpaired ; but, as the
autocrat cannot know everything, he must be kept in touch with his people by a
permanent consultative assembly, elected by the Zemstva and dealing with all
new legislation, including the budget. The Liberal “ League of Oppositional
Elements,” founded in the south, had become the Zemstvo Union; its programme,
published so late as 1882, claimed freedom of person, conscience, speech, and
association, local elective law Courts, the right to prosecute officials, and
a new system of local government, freed from the class basis and the
limitations imposed on the subject nationalities; it suggested an Imperial
Duma, with direct control of the administration, and also a Federal Duma,
elected by the assemblies of the enlarged areas into which it proposed to
divide the empire; this scheme, which was the germ of the future “ Cadet ”
programme, would have established parliamentary government and
decentralisation. Thirdly, radicals and revolutionaries demanded a Constituent
Assembly. A fourth suggestion, originating with a small group of officials, was
limited to the introduction of delegates from the Zemstva and town councils
into the existing Council of State.
Moderate
representations were received by MelikofF from various cities and Zemstva
(1880). No utopian theories were put forward, and the terms chosen showed
remarkable restraint. Terrorism was described as “the madness of a few
individuals,” and gratitude was expressed for the first measures of the
dictatorship.
Loris-Melikoff,
though he had almost at once to stand fire from the revolutionary Mlodetsky,
carried out his ideas without perturbation. He freed the Zemstva from some
vexatious restrictions and sent four Senators to report on the working of the
existing Zemstvo law. After consulting with editors and leaders of thought, he
allowed to the Press a measure of liberty; and a Commission was appointed to
revise the Press Law. An immediate outburst of journalistic activity ensued.
Aks&koff could now express his strong Slavophilism in the Rus; and the
Voice, the Zemstvo, the Country, and Order gave utterance to more Liberal
opinion. The Courts-martial^and-Jjavemors-GLeneral were retained; but
repression became more discriminating, and many prisoners wKcThad never been
brought to trial were set free. The irresponsible “Third Section” (political
police)jvas^made a branch of^the—P&lice—
-tinder
Jteldirection _ of PleKve. Besides all this, there were important changes in
the ’personnel of "the Ministry. Count Dmitry Tolstdy was dismissed amidst
general rejoicings; Pahlen had already been replaced by Nabokoff as Minister of
Justice; Greg, the discredited Finance Minister, gave way to a Liberal, Abaza •
and a more pronounced Liberal, Saburoff, became Minister of Public Instruction.
After six months of work, the Supreme Disposing Commission was dissolved, and
the dictator became Minister of the Interior, with something like the powers of
a Prime Minister.
The almost
universal demand for some kind of Constitution had still to be met. Melikoff
licensed joint-meetings between various Zemstva; he referred for their decision
the revision of laws on the peasants; and on February 9,1881, he laid before
the Emperor a report embodying his views. He had previously taken pains to
repudiate the ideas of both Slavophils and Liberals: he now urged that the
reforms of the reign should be completed, and that for this purpose the
opinions of local men should be heard. The ancient Zemsky Sobor of the
Romanoffs, recommended by the Slavophils, he rejected as out of date, and the
imperial Duma of the Liberals as exotic; but further means were to be devised
for consulting the people. The projected reforms were to be prepared by the
Government from materials collected by it and submitted to drafting Commissions
in the autumn. Their conclusions should then be debated by a General
Commission, consisting of members and a president nominated by the Emperor,
with elected delegates from the Zemstva and chief towns. The powers of this
Commission were to be strictly consultative; and its conclusions, with the
comments of the Minister concerned, would come before the Council of State for
further discussion.
Melikoifs
proposals did not err on the side of boldness; and the Emperor, after some
hesitation, on March 13, before starting for the Michael Riding School,
returned MelikofFs draft with his approval, and desired that it should be read
to the Council of Ministers on March 26. At the Riding School he said to his
wife, “I have just signed a paper which will, I hope, make a good impression
and show Russia that I grant her everything that is possible.”
It was all
that was possible for himself—more perhaps than could have been expected; for
in Russia the greatest social reforms come easier to the sovereign than very
small political concessions. The peasants would have received it with
indifference, the gentry with tempered gratitude, the revolutionaries with
derision. The “ Will of the People ” now possessed twelve local branches, with
special sub-committees for propaganda amongst officers, students, and workmen,
for Press work, and for the manufacture of explosives. The actual members were
about five hundred; and the more determined were divided into fighting bands of
some ten persons each. In February, Zhelyriboff picked his volunteers; Kibalchich
gave lessons in the handling and throwing of bombs, Bogdandvieh undermined the
Little Saddvaya, and Zhely&bdff the Stone Bridge. Ou March 13, 1881, six
bomb-throwers were at their posts, awaiting the signal from Sophia Perovsky.
The Emperor, after visiting the Michael Riding School, was driving down the
deserted Catharine Canal, when a boy of nineteen, Rysakdff, threw a bomb which
killed many of his escort. Alexander dismounted to attend to the wounded, and
walked fearlessly down the street towards the assassin. “What, that one ? ” he
asked, “ why, he’s nice-looking.” He had hardly turned back when another
conspirator, Grinevetsky, threw a second bomb, which
tore all the
lower part of his body to pieces; he was able to whisper, “Home quick...take me
to the palace, to die there”; he reached the palace unconscious, and died the
same afternoon.
Zhelydboff,
already arrested and in a neighbouring prison, openly showed his joy at the
sound of the explosions; but the monstrous act was the deathblow to his party.
The chief danger—the very general passive sympathy with the revolutionaries—was
removed. Propagandist work among the peasants became almost impossible, and the
leaders of the “ Black Partition ” soon crossed the frontier. The police could
now deal with the terrorists; and Plehve soon succeeded in capturing nearly all
the conspirators. The terrorist organ boasted of the execution of the death
sentence, and a letter was even sent to Alexander III proposing terms of peace.
Threats of further vengeance were printed during the trial of the ringleaders;
but five, including Zhelydboff, Perovsky, and Kibdlchich, were condemned and
hanged. The ranks of the terrorist organisation were thinned past refilling
(March, 1881, to February, 1883). Fresh plots were concerted, the most notable
being what, of Vera Figner, for the occasion of the new Emperor’s coronation in
May, 1883 ; they led to the formation of a patriotic league to protect the
sovereign’s life, and the ceremony passed without accident. The last notable
murder was that of Sudeikin, Chief of the Detective Department, in December,
1883. He~Ea3T'Sitei^^nf6~iiIafions-wit’H”iEhe terrorist Degayeff
which enabled him to lay hands on Vera Figner. Deg&yeff escaped to Geneva,
but was compelled by his associates to return to Russia and kill Sudeikin. A
final attempt to revive the terrorist organisation was made by the bold and
resourceful conspirator Lopatin, who was arrested in St Petersburg in 1884. ^
----
Though the
project of the General Commission had not been published it had become known,
and many references to it were introduced into the addresses from the Zemstva
to the new Emperor. They all strongly condemned sedition; but all agreed that
the real remedy lay in the personal contact of the sovereign with his people.
The Liberal Press spoke in a similar sense; but Slavophils, such as
Aks&kofF, while still bent on their own combination of autocracy with a
national assembly, used all their influence on the side of authority, and the
semiofficial Katkdff went still further. Memoranda were sent in by persons who
had ties with the official world, and Melikoff at this time received three—from
Gradovsky, from the Pole Vielopolski, and from Chicherin—each paying its due to
the panic of the time. Gradovsky recommended a national assembly, “ to identify
the causes of disorder.” Vielopolski’s note condemned constitutional
aspirations as a disease, but also condemned centralisation, and advised the
extension of the Zemstvo system to his own fellow-countrymen. Chicherin, while
denouncing even the constitutionalists as a band of rebels, urged the execution
of Melikoff s scheme, or the submission of all legislative projects to selected
experts.
312
[i88i
Alexander
III, with whom the decision rested, was a personality in the very strongest
contrast with the nervous spirit of the time. He had immense physical strength,
was slow and easygoing, and had a great reserve . of will-power. His mental
limits were narrow; he was no thinker, but he knew his own mind. Not at first
destined for the throne, he went much his own way in the matter of education.
His tastes remained those of a military Grand Duke, and his manners and habits
were those of a simple country gentleman. He was extraordinarily obstinate and
had violent outbursts of temper; but, after a somewhat wild and profitless
youth, he became a model husband and father; he was absolutely honest and had
the highest sense of duty; in spite of all his strength, the Crown was for him
an immense burden. His extreme shyness imparted to the Court a narrower and
duller atmosphere during his reign; but the intrigues which were natural to
such conditions were well controlled, and there was always a master who could
keep everyone in his place.
It is
believed that he at first intended to issue Loris-MelikofFs project as the last
testament of his father; anyhow, the Minister made an announcement to this
effect on March 17. Three days later, the Emperor called together a special
conference; nine Ministers were for publishing the project, and five members,
specially invited, were against it. While the Ministers were still discussing,
an imperial manifesto had already been drafted by Alexander’s former tutor,
Pobyedonostseff. It appeared on March 23. “The Voice of God,” it said, “orders
us to stand firm at the helm of government...with faith in the strength and
truth of the autocratic power, which we are called to strengthen and preserve,
for the good of the people, from every kind of encroachment.”
Full reaction
did not set in at once. Melikoff resigned, and Abaza, Milyutin, and Saburoff
followed him; though Nabokoff stayed on to be superseded later, Melikoff may be
said to have replied to his adversaries with the first declaration of Cabinet
solidarity. The new Ministry was also more or less homogeneous: it represented
the Slavophil formula of autocracy, coupled with local self-government and
Chicherin’s principle of consultation with experts. In this there was nothing
inconsistent with autocracy, since the experts were not representative and were
chosen by the Government. Count Ignatyeff became Minister of the Interior, and
issued a circular which censured the bureaucracy and declared that the reforms
of Alexander II would be developed with the aid of local men. But distrust of
the representative principle implied distrust of public opinion and of the
Press. The Russian Courier was stopped for four months and the Liberal Voice
for six, and an attempt to replace the latter by the New Gazette was at once
crushed. In a word, the time of free expression of opinion was ended.
A majority of
the Zemstva declared themselves against the expert principle in legislation.
Ignatyeff applied it in the important Com
mission of
KakMnoff, which was appointed to revise the system of local government, and in
an enquiry into the reduction of the peasants redemption dues. But it was
clearly shown that the summoning of a few picked experts was no substitute for
the proposals of Melikoff; and, though adverse resolutions were repressed by
the Governors, twelve Zemstva petitioned for the right of electing the men who
should represent the public. The general opinion was unmistakable. The
Slavophils continued to urge their old scheme of a revival of the ancient
Zemsky Sobdr. Their plan, as elaborated by Golokhv&stofF, excluded all
constitutionalism, imitation of the West, or restriction of the autocracy. An
assembly, chosen by each class separately, would meet the autocrat, to be
harangued on the sanctity of property, on loans to peasants and redemption dues,
and on the diminution of drunkenness; later, a Congress might discuss local
government. Ignatyeff, supported by General Skobeleff, favoured some such
scheme; he was strongly opposed by Katkdff, Tolstdy, and Pobyedonostseff. But
the Emperor was tired of the whole question of reform, and by May, 1882, the
struggle was over. Tolstdy succeeded Ignatyeff as Minister of the Interior, and
reaction triumphed for twenty-two years.
Tolstdy
remained Minister till his death in 1889, and his traditions were continued by
his successor, J. Dumovo, a routine official, to 1895. On Prince GorchakdfTs
death in 1882, Giers obtained the Foreign Ministry in preference to Ignatyeff,
and held the post till 1892. Pobyedonostseff continued to be Procurator of the
Holy Synod till 1905.
The
Government was now quite cut off from the people. It was taken for granted that
each office-holder was the executor of commands from above; that each was
chosen, not so much for any opinion which he might represent, as for his
supposed ability to do a certain definite piece of work to order; that the
monopoly of criticism was vested in his superiors, and, finally, in the
sovereign. In principle, there was complete centralisation; but it was quite
impossible for the Emperor to read a tithe of the reports for which he had the
ultimate responsibility. The empire was vast, and it was growing; but private
ini ative was suspect as such, and official action was governed by telegraph
from a far comer of Russia. The repression of all criticism made official
arrogance inevitable; a more serious danger was the general lack of training in
common sense, presence of mind, and personal responsibility. The public silence
also inevitably entailed an atmosphere of intrigue. The worst effects of the
system were not to be felt till the death of Alexander III.
It was
Pobyedondstseff who supplied this system of government with a formulated creed.
He was a man of fine intelligence and a first-class jurist; he won the
confidence of three Emperors; he had conviction, and he was plain-spoken. A
thorough, degpiser of human nature, he turned reaction into a system of
philosophy. According to him, modem
Europe was a
solemn warning to unspoilt Russia. Parliaments were nothing but nests of the
most selfish and sordid ambitions; the Press existed chiefly to disseminate
falsehood; instruction was dangerous in itself; trial by jury was simply a
field for the “ arts of casuistry.”. Law was no substitute for absolute power:
it was “a vain fancy.” Practically, the most important of real forces was
“inertia.” PobyedonoststfTs gospel was autocracy and an official Church; but,
though he was an almost inspired talker, the positive side of his creed
remained extremely vague, and in the end he must be classed as the doctrinaire
nihilist of officialism. His long administration of the Church brought it into
direct conflict with all ideals of enlightenment, and turned the theocratic
power into the weapon of a political clique. The monastic caste, though
markedly inferior in intelligence to the parish clergy, became more predominant
over it. Timeserving was at a premium, and the clergy were more and more cut
off from their parishioners.
The strictly
political side of the same doctrine was developed by Pazhukin (1885). He saw
salvation in the system of close compartments for each separate class: the
patriarchal landlord directing the peasant’s life and thought, the peasant
carefully isolated from all outside influences; while all the reforms of
Alexander II, except the Emancipation, were condemned as sinning against these
canons. “ A Zemstvo elected without a class basis means all, and all means no
one.” The new law Courts were “filled with persons who had no ties with the
locality.” Katkoff gave his last energies to anticipating or explaining the wishes
of the new rulers (to 1887), and his successor, Gringmuth, continued till 1907
to hound the public against Zemstva,"^students, Jews, and Englishmen.
Suvorin’s Novoe Vrertiya, conducted with consummate tact, continued to be an
admirable register of the breezes of court favour.
MelikofFs
Press Commission had lapsed on his downfall; and journalists remained till the
end of the century under the harrow of Tolstdy’s special ordinance of 188%.
Papers which had received a third warning could only be continued under the
preliminary censorship. A council of four Ministers could stop any periodical
without warning and forbid the editor to engage again in any similar
enterprise. From 1882 to 1889 fourteen papers were stopped, and upwards of
sixty were warned, deprived of their street sale, or forbidden to print
advertisements. Before Tolstdy’s death very few papers remained, and these were
thoroughly cowed; nevertheless, the warnings, stoppages, and prohibitions under
his successors continued. A new growth of public interest produced a number of
periodicals—the Russian Review (1890), God’s World (1892), and the New Word
(1894)—and revived others, such as the Wealth of Russia and the Russian
Gazette. All the papers were lowering their prices and increasing their circulation.
But fresh barriers were erected; and from 1896 newspapers were only licensed
temporarily, so that they could be crushed without explanation. Sipy&gin’s
hand was less heavy
(1899-1902);
but Plehve (1902-4) was prodigal of measures of repression. Prince Ukhtomsky, a
strong Conservative and personal friend of the Emperor, suffered for publishing
the fact—attested by the Zemstvo President, Count Bobrinsky—that the Governor
of Tula was concealing the existence of a famine in his province. Such was the
practical application of the paradoxes of Pobyedondstseff. This system was
continued till Plehve’s death in 1904.
The Press
being thus muzzled, the inevitable protest came from the students of the
Universities, who were being taught the lesson that learning can only be free
in a free State. Their grievances were not primarily political; and, indeed,
the revolutionary organisations were themselves for a long time quiescent or
ineffective. The students claimed independence for the Universities as learned
institutions, the abolition of the system which shut up the different faculties
in close compartments, and the right of association for the support of their
poorer comrades and for the maintenance of the code of student honour. In 1882
there were disturbances and protests from the students of Kaz&n and St
Petersburg; and two years later Delydnoff introduced the new University
Statute, which destroyed the reforms of Golovnin. After further protests from
the five chief Universities (1887), the powers of the official inspectors were
enlarged, and new class limitations restricted the admission of students. One
new University was founded; but the Government showed a predilection for modem
High Schools, of which oiany were established under Alexander III and Nicholas II.
It hoped to put a premium upon “useful knowledge”; but the men turned out by
these institutions were as radical as the rest. In 1899, a very general strike
of students led to the closing of the Universities. Bogolyepoff, who had
succeeded Delydnoff, introduced new “ temporary rules” restricting students’
associations; and many of the protesting students were sent to serve as
privates in the army. Bogolyepoff was killed by the student Karpovich.
Enquiries were instituted, with no result. In 1904 the repression was worse
than ever, and the protests were more frequent. Professors, like Paul
Vinogrddoff, who in these years sought at once to restrain the students and to
draw attention to abuses, suffered for any display of independence. The more
vigorous students threw themselves into the socialist propaganda among the
working men. The higher teaching of women was greatly developed during this
period. Attempts were also made to organise home reading and university
extension lectures; but here again the Government took fright; manuscripts had
to be sent in, and any deviation might bring punishment; Milyukoff, one of the
ablest lecturers, was banished to Ryazan; the movement was extinguished in
1902. Police discipline and Tolstdy's block system still reigned in the
secondary schools, but a few exceptional peasants were able to surmount its
barriers. In the Zemstvo schools the power of the inspectors was absolute
whenever asserted, and many a schoolmaster
was driven
from his post. A number of church schools were founded; but the average priest
was so ill-qualified for educational work that PobyedondstsefFs attempt to
place primary education under clerical control was abandoned. The Government,
however, was not altogether regardless of education; it established several
well staffed primary schools, training colleges for teachers, and special
schools under the ^Ministries of Finance and Communications.
The law
Courts had lost all the guarantees of independence before 1882. The Minister of
Justice, Manassein, was hostile to the spirit of the new institutions. In 1887,
though supported only by a minority in the Council of State, he obtained power
to close the Courts to the public at his own discretion. The lists of jurymen
were further revised, persons of small property being excluded; in 1889 class
representatives nominated by the Government replaced the juries in whole
categories of cases. The next blow was aimed at the very foundation of the new
system. The elected Justices of the Peace, who presided in the local Courts,
had done their work well; but they were in touch with the Zemstva, and Pdzhukin
desired to replace them by a new class of nominated officials, called Land
Captains, who should combine with their judicial duties the supervision of the
peasants as a class. Pazhukin was put at the head of the chancellery of the
Ministry of the Interior and brought forward his scheme, which, in spite of the
opposition of Manassein and of the majority in the Council of State, was
adopted by Alexander III.
The Land
Captains were nominated, not by the Minister of Justice, but by the Minister of
the Interior; they had no legal training; the ideal set before them was not law
but common sense; and their duties were so extensive as to include interference
in quarrels between man and wife. As belonging to the administrative system,
they had a discretionary power of imprisonment without form of law. Even in the
towns judges of lower official standing, removable at pleasure, replaced the
Justices of the Peace. The independence of the judges grew less and less, and,
from the Senate and higher Courts down to the Land Captains, the administration
of the law was varying, contradictory, and extremely dilatory. The exemption of
all officials from trial without permission of their superiors remained as an
established principle; and conditions of life were often in fact determined by
the Code of exceptional ordinances, drafted by Plehve in 1881, which regulated
the application of a state of siege. Thus the life of the great reforms was
crushed under a heap of circulars, ordinances, and regulations, nominally
temporary but far more permanent than the laws which they modified; and their
governing assumption was that the commonplaces of civilised Europe were false
when applied to Russia.
The war against
the Intelligence naturally lasted longest in these three fields—the Press, the
Universities, and the law Courts. The
I881-7]
Russian thought under the reaction.
317
period of
idealism and aspiration came to an abrupt end with the murder of Alexander II.
Educated Russian society was prostrated. There was a strong revulsion of
educated opinion, not only against the revolutionaries, but also against every
importation of Western innovations. “ It is time to go home,” said the
Slavophils. But when Ignatyeff fell and the Slavophils themselves were suspect,
the moral reaction gave place to sheer apathy and the pursuit of purely selfish
interests. Meanwhile Leo Tolstoy cut$ himself off from the world to live the
life of self-perfection. Others preach that man exists for art. Chekhoff, who
has been styled “the poet of the twilight,” finds his whole epoch monstrous and
ridiculous: “ men only eat, drink, sleep, and die.” Yet it is the same man who
writes: “Our Russia is rich with every variety of life; I am sure that we are
on the eve of something great.” His time is indeed a turning-point. The
theorists of both political extremes had ignored one possibility, namely, that
Russia, like other countries, might pass through the stage of capitalism. This
development was already upon them; it raised economic questions of the first
magnitude which could only be solved by common sense; and the days of both the
extreme doctrines were already numbered.
Even the
peasants, the pet playthings of both parties, so far from being bom socialists
or bom reactionaries, had in them the makings of a petty bourgeoisie; to the
manipulation of all their superiors they opposed a shrewd attitude of
“non-committal.” They were the vast background of the population; and it was
gradually recognised that their economic future was a question which challenged
the very existence of the State.
Loris-Melikoff,
in one of his first reports, had roundly condemned “the immobility in peasant
reform.” The financial aspects of the question were ably handled by the Finance
Minister Bunge (1881-7). He found that the Government had gained by the terms
on which it had paid off the landlords at the Emancipation; and he diminished
by 12,000,000 roubles the redemption dues in Great and Little Russia, inviting
the Zemstva to allot the relief. Still larger reductions were granted in 1885;
and, though the arrears were more than 12,000,000 roubles, the Government still
gained. In 1885-6 the poll-tax was removed; but at the price of new burdens on
the Crown peasants. Meanwhile the payments of the “landless peasants” were
lightened. Bunge also tried to- improve the collection of the revenue, and in
1881 he joined the Ministers Ignatyeff and Ostrovsky in their attempts to aid
the peasants to acquire more land. For this purpose was founded the Peasants’
Bank, at first designed to help the more needy to get level with their
neighbours and therefore offering help only on condition of special distress,
but afterwards applied to the creation of private holdings in general. The Bank
had an income of only some £500,000 a year, and for some years it did
considerably less in transferring land to
the peasants
than the peasants had done for themselves. In 1885, under the influence of
other ideas, there was founded a Land Bank for the gentry, who were rapidly
selling off their estates in consequence of the depression of agriculture in
general. With this Bank was incorporated in 1890 the Mutual Land Loan Society,
founded in 1866. Peasants’ Bank and Gentry Bank worked side by side, with separate
staffs, but in the same buildings; they represented two different sides of one
and the same operation; and, certainly, in the transference of land the gentry
received the greater consideration.
The third
question with which Bunge dealt was the spontaneous and irregular migration of
peasants. It had gone on for over fifty years; and, though legally permission
was necessary, 40,000 persons dispensed with it each year between 1876 and
1881; as was to be expected, many of them failed to find new homes. A new
system of licensing these migrants was established and worked successfully
(1881). Starting from the principle that migration was normal and necessary, a
Commission proposed to put it partially under the control of the Zemstva; but
their work was cut short by Count Tolstoy’s accession to power. Tolstoy’s Law
of July, 1889, contained an empty threat of bringing back those who had
migrated without license; but it freed those who were licensed from military
service and from Crown taxes for a term of years. It also helped them to
acquire land in Siberia, and even in Europe; but the communal system and the
antiquated mutual guarantee of the local taxes were retained in the new
settlements. With or without this Law, some 400,000 persons migrated to Siberia
between 1887 and 1894, mostly from south Russia.
Loris-Melikoff,
in one of his first reports, had planned a reform of peasant administration.
After more than two years of work, a complete scheme was presented by the
important Commission of, Kakhanoff. The existing commune was to^e superseded as
an administrative unit by a kind of parish council of all classes; the canton
was to become a simple territorial unit without distinction of class, with a
chief appointed by the District Zemstva; a Court for all classes was to be set
up under the Justice of the Peace. For many years public opinion in Russia had
been practically unanimous ih favour of these changes; but, on the accession
of Tolstdy to power, the Commission was first diluted with new nominated
members and then" dissolved (1886), and P&zhukin was instructed to
draw up a new plan. Pdzhukin’s Land Captains, bad as iudges, were even worse as
administrative officials. They could revise the programme of any communal or
cantonal meeting and refuse to confirm any election. They could punish without
appeal any elected officer of commune or canton. They had control over the
reserves of com, and even the divisions of family property were under their
supervision. They were, from the first, quite unfit for the dictatorial powers
which they wielded, and they steadily deteriorated. They were not
I880-1900]
The Zemstva curtailed.—Labour crisis. 319
local
patriarchs but officials of the central machine; and for the peasants they
represented the beginning of that policy of suspicion which had been already
practised with such ruinous effect on the educated classes. No officials were
in greater odium; and later the word Land Captain summed up the popular hatred
for the reactionary system of government. By a Law of 1886 a labourer’s breach
of contract became a criminal,^ instead of a civil, offence. By the Law of
December 26, 1893, a later development of the system of Tolstoy and Pazhukin,
the sale of communal land was placed under official control; the non-communal
land acquired by individual peasants could only be sold to members of the same
commune, and thus an unnatural check was placed on the acquisition of private
property. This measure was popular with some enemies of the Government,
because it bolstered up the commune and favoured socialism ; but it was perhaps
the greatest legislative mistake of the period. In 1893, the periodical
redivisions of holdings by the commune were placed under the Land Captains.
A similar
reactionary spirit inspired the important Zemstvo Law, which was issued,
despite opposition within the Government, in 1890. Control by the Governors was
drawn closer, especially in respect of the local budgets; class distinctions
were emphasised; the franchise of the gentry was raised; the number of peasant
members was reduced, and they were to be chosen by the Governor from a list of
successful candidates. The Land Captains were made members ex officio, and the
so-called “ third element ”—that is, doctors, schoolmasters, etc., in the
service of the Zemstva—was excluded altogether. Even thus emasculated, the
Zemstva remained the strongest champions of reform. In 1900, Zemstva were
forbidden to raise their budgets by more than 3 per cent, every year—a purely
mechanical arrangement which often delayed the satisfaction of local needs.
Railway and
factory development had been the chief task of Reutem, Finance Minister under
Alexander II. Bunge was called upon to deal with the depression of trade which
succeeded the speculative activity of the mid-seventies (1880-7). Wages fell,
or if nominally maintained were diminished by arbitrary and extravagant fines.
This led to great strikes, such as that of 2000 men in Moscow. In St Petersburg
many factories dismissed half their hands; in Chemfgoff and Kostromd, two-
thirds. In Vladimir nearly two-thirds of the silk factories stopped work.
Thousands of discharged workmen were returning to their native villages.
Cottage industries were dying out; and Russia could not revert to purely
agricultural conditions. The crisis drew attention to the needs of the new race
of factory workers. The Moscow employers, enjoying a superfluity of labour and
still working under semi-patriarchal conditions, feared factory reform and had
so far succeeded in shelving it; but those of St Petersburg, who were largely
foreigners, had to create their own labour supply and favoured a system of
efficient labour and
320 Factory Acts.—Industrial advance. [1882-99
higher pay,
with shorter hours, and no stoppage of work. Moscow stood out for what it
called “the freedom of the people’s labour”; but Bunge obtained sanction (1882)
for a Law forbidding child labour and the night-work of persons under 21.
Factory inspectors were appointed to carry out the Law; they met with constant
opposition in the Moscow district; their reports revealed that the hours
sometimes amounted to 18, and children of three were found working with their
mothers; the system of fines was quite arbitrary and monstrously exorbitant;
most workers slept in the working rooms; the employers made large sums out of
the workmen by the factory shops. In June, 1884, the schooling of factory lads
was safeguarded. On June 15,1886, was issued a new Factory Act which owed much
to the initiative of Count Dmitry Tolstdy. The Law enumerated the legitimate
causes for dismissal and for leaving work; strikes were made criminal; and
leadership in a strike became a specially grave offence. The factory
inspectors received far more power; they were to revise all rules of factories,
the engagement of workmen, the tariffs of factory shops, and the imposition of
fines. They were to mediate in all disputes and prosecute for any infringement
of the law. They were backed by Factory Committees under the local Governor,
which could issue any special regulations as to housing and medical attendance.H
It was a
sincere attempt of the bureaucracy to secure material advantages for the
workman; in insurance, for instance, it was so favourable to him as to be
unfair to the employer; but both were denied the right of looking after their own
interests, and the new law was resented by both. The protests of Moscow drove
Bunge from office, aud his successor, Vishnegradsky (1887-92), had to relax the
law in favour of the employer (1890). The inspectors discovered all sorts of
artifices for evading the payment of workmen; and in some places disorders
ensued which caused the interference of troops.
The
principles of paternal government were now to be tested by a phenomenal growth
of Russian industry. Commercial activity rose in 1887; from 1895 it developed
with prodigious rapidity. When the Catharine Railway united the south Russian
coal to iron, factories began to spring up like mushrooms; by 1899 there were
seventeen huge factories in the Donets district, only two pf which worked on
Russian capital. Enormous dividends were sent abroad; the price of land where
there was coal increased threefold; the railways and ports were unable to deal
with the traffic. In two years (1895-7) the face of south Russia was entirely
changed. Between 1886 and 1899 the national output of iron was more than
quadrupled, till it exceeded that of France. The number of workmen and the
value of all goods increased rapidly from 1887 to 1893; and between 1893 and
1897 the former was nearly doubled and the latter tripled. Other trades
developed only less rapidly. The workers in threads increased from 400,000 in
1887 to 643,000 in 1897.
Knoop
developed an extraordinarily successful business which might almost be called a
dictatorship of the cotton trade; clients secured from him factories ready made
and ready staffed, often without being allowed any voice in the plans; England
was Knoop’s chief supplier. It was only later that large Russian capitalists
began to learn from the object lesson going on before their eyes; and even then
a comfortable share in the new development remained with the foreigner. All
this movement was in close connexion with European trade; for it was the
presence of large sums in Western Banks that brought capital into Russia. In
the nineties the St Petersburg Exchange was still a desert; from 1893 it was
crowded with carriages, and later reactions did not stop the growth of
activity. Companies were started almost entirely on credit, which, as we shall
see, was greatly facilitated by the Government; but the inevitable crash of
1899 and the subsequent war and troubles at home, if they were fatal to
individual houses, left the general trade still progressing. The factory
operatives increased in ten years (1887-97) from 1J millions to 2 millions and
now exceed 3 millions; minor trades are not reckoned in these figures. Russia
found by experience that she had new and lucrative markets to develop at home;
the immense resources of the country—particularly of the Caucasus (naphtha),
Central Asia (cotton), and Siberia (com, farm products, and minerals)—are well
known. In his last book (For the Knowledge of Russia, 1907), the Conservative
patriot Mendeleyeff gives abundant proof that Russia has passed for good or
evil into the capitalist period, and that any theoretical bolstering up of
agriculture against industry will be fatal even to agriculture itself. The
patriarchal isolators of the peasants have had their day, whether they be
reactionaries or revolutionaries; the development of civilisation in Russia is
destined to resemble that of Western Europe.
Russia was
always like a big family; there was a deep solidarity between the artisan and
peasant population; and it was ominous that these years of exceptional
industrial prosperity should have been a time of severe agricultural distress.
It is common for some part of the country to be “under famine”; but the famines
of 1891-3 were nothing less than a national calamity. Twenty provinces suffered
in the first two years, including the chief grain-producing districts; there were
no adequate reserves of com, and the peasants were threatened with extinction.
The population had been growing fas,t; the divided and subdivided holdings were
too poor to support cattle or horses; and the fields were only half tilled and
manured. Some had to find unnatural substitutes for bread; some ate the straw
roofs of their empty bams; scurvy and typhus became rampant: the feeblest
workers would lie for days on their stomachs to save the scanty store for the
others. The dilatory and suspicious Government was compelled to alter its
policy, and permit professional men and even students to engage, like its own
officials* in the work of relief. This was just the tonic which the Russian
322
Nicholas II.—Addresses of the Zemstva. [i89i-5
Intelligence
required; it revived in a much more practical form the nissionary ardour of the
seventies; and young men streamed into the country to serve as schoolmasters
and doctors. The work was an education, and the service of the Zemstva offered
a wide field for self-devotion.
With these
new factors, began a new and fateful reign (November, 1894). The life of
Alexander III had been consistent and complete; he had blocked all outside
initiative; he had himself faced the enormous burden of autocracy, and
worked—in some cases with effective common sense—at the ordinary business of
government. Steps had been taken to safeguard the great wealth represented by
the state forests; the army had been put into a much more rational uniform; the
navy had been increased. He died doing his duty as he conceived it; but Russia
was now rising from a long sleep; and much more was required of his successor.
Nicholas II was a man of amiable disposition, weak will, and only moderate
ability. As Crown Prince he had travelled in the Far East, had been President
of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and had therefore gained acquaintance with the
question of emigration; these interests set the tone to the earlier policy of
his reign. Since 1891 constitutionalism had again been in the air. Under the
direction of Nathanson a group called the “Right of the People” had put forward
a general programme of reform, such as might reconcile moderates and radicals.
The Zemstva, in their addresses to the Emperor on his accession, wore much more
modest. Nine Zemstva asked that their representatives should be summoned to
share in the drafting of laws. The most notable address was that of Tver. “We
trust,” it said, “that our happiness will grow and strengthen under an exact
observance of the law, not only by the people, but by the officials; for law,
which represents in Russia the expression of the will of the Monarch, should
stand higher than the chance views of individual officials. We ardently believe
that the rights of individuals and of public institutions will be kept
unshaken.” It suggested that the sovereign would find “a new source of strength
in relations with representatives of all classes of the Russian people, which
are alike devoted to the throne and to the country.” The chief author of this
address was the brilliant barrister Rodicheff. The Emperor’s reply to the
deputations (July 29, 1895) upheld the principles of autocracy and
characterised as “senseless dreams” the claim to participate in affairs of
internal administration. Rodicheff was excluded from the audience and forbidden
to live in St Petersburg, as a special mark of displeasure. Three of the
Zemstva withdrew their addresses after this, but Chermgoff stood firm. It
declared its loyalty but made its requests still more precise, and enumerated
in the clearest terms the chief hindrances to practical reform. There continued
to be informal communications between Zemstvo Liberals and occasional private
conferences under the guidance of Petrunk^vich.
Few changes
were made in the Ministry, and behind the scenes there
I887-1903]
Ministry of Witte.—The gold standard. 323
remained the
powerful influence of .Pobyedondstseff. But the close of the last reign had
been marked by a change of far-reach’ng mportance in the appointment of Witte
as Minister of Finance in place of Vishnegradsky. The retiring Minister had
sought to foster industry by a protective tariff, and his policy was developed
by his successor with great boldness. Witte had raised himself by sheer
ability, first to the management of the South-Western Railway, and thence to
the Ministry of Ways of Communication. He was little troubled by moral scruples
and far too clever to be blind to the gross defects of the bureaucracy; he had
made many enemies on his road. But he saw into the , future, and during his
administration (1892-1903) he set his mark on every part of the financial,
industrial, and railway administration, and committed Russia irrevocably to the
capitalist system.
Witte’s
financial policy was definite and drastic, and it was carried through in the
face of widespread opposition. A fixed value for Russian money was the first
necessity for financial credit; since 1856, both the silver and the paper
rouble had lost all stability as a medium of exchange; the exchange value
varied from 19d. to 2>\d. in two years (1888-90). Witte at once proceeded to
stop speculation in paper roubles on the Berlin exchange by threatening private
banks in Russia with the loss of credit from the Imperial Bank (1893); in 1894
he was able to secure a constant standard for the credit rouble which was fixed
at two-thirds of the old metallic rouble; and in 1897 a gold rouble equivalent
to it in value was adopted as a standard, and permanent restrictions were
placed upon the issue of paper roubles. It was objected, especially by the
party of agriculture, that the increased security of the new system was
obtained at too heavy a sacrifice for a country naturally poor; but the change
was not only salutary but imperative. Less convincing was the vast increase of
the “free balance.” By economy combined with heavy taxation, Vishnegradsky had
increased the money reserve of the State from 56,000,000 roubles in 1886 to
236,000,000 in 1893. In 1901 the gold reserve in the Bank was 648,000,000
roubles against a note issue of 630,000,000, and in 1899 the balance had been
considerably better; it was urged that excessive power was thus placed in the
hands of the Minister of Finance; yet it was Witte who secured for Russia the
means and the credit which were to carry her through the Japanese War.
Meanwhile, between 1887 and 1901 foreign loans had increased the State
indebtedness by a sum computed at 1,853,271,633 roubles nominal value, or
942,093,750 roubles capitalised at 4 per cent, after numerous conversions. A
temporary panic (1887) among German investors was balanced .by the readiness of
France to lend money to Russia; this eagerness was as much political as
financial. German credit has again been utilised, though to a lesser extent,
and it is notorious that the finances of Russia have for some time mainly
depended on foreign loans.
324
Railway poUcy.—The spirit monopoly. [isi9-i90s
A vast
extension n£_the system of ^tate monopolies was a prominent featute of
~Witte’s policy. Down £o~T889,"Tess than one-fourth of the small railway
systems was under direct state control; but Witte as Finance Minister at once
set about making the railway service a monopoly of the State. He bought up
private lines arid made new state railways at a very rapid rate: and in 1900
the State owned more than 60 per cent, of a greatly increased railway system.
The profits of these transactions were exaggerated by various manipulations of
figures. Down to 1903, it was only in three years (1896, 1898, and 1899) that
the State could claim any actual profit from the working of railways, and the
deficit of 1900 has been calculated at sixty-one million roubles. Since 1900
the Government has had to meet larger and larger deficits, notably in
consequence of the expenses of the Siberian Railway and the unsatisfactory
management of the Eastern Chinese Railway; in 1903, Witte had to protest
against the spending of large sums on lines of purely strategical importance.
His protests were justified, but his whole system of railway finance was
hazardous; the highest, praise that can be awarded to his policy is iha.t^by
affording facilities of transport it hastenedthe industrial development of
Russia.
“The
appropriation by the Government of the important spirit monopoly was also
carried out by Witte. From 1819 to 1827 there had been such a monopoly; the
sale of spirits decreased under it, and the right of sale was then farmed out
until 1863, the consumption again increasing. From 1863 to 1894 the sale was
thrown open, the State levying an excise; the consumption fluctuated, but the
profits of the State increased considerably. In 1885 the number of places of
sale was limited, and Alexander III gave instructions for drawing up a plan of
state monopoly. His wish was to limit drunkenness: Witte realised his idea in
1894, when the sale of spirits was resumed by the State without any adequate
compensation, except in the Baltic provinces, and in Poland.
The measure
was, no doubt, in part an attempt to cope with the prevailing vice of
drunkenness, but the moral advantages of the change are very doubtful. A great
number of illicit dramshops have sprung up, the lower police winking at their
existence. Drunkenness centres principally in those places which possess legal
dramshops, though the number of these has been greatly diminished. Tearooms
have been provided by local semi-official committees, but even their promoters
do riot pretend that they have been very successful. The sale of spirits, apart
from illicit sales, which do not appear in the returns, has undoubtedly
increased; even years of bad harvests have been marked by an increased
consumption; the consumption of alcohol in Russia is much less per head than in
any other country in Europe; but it is irregular, and drunkenness is frequent.
Government
credit and the loans negotiated through foreign bankers
1850-99]
Subsidies to industry.—Tariff war with Germany. 325
were
unsparingly used by Witte in his efforts to foster Russian industrial activity.
The building of factories was encouraged by extensive orders from the
Government, which often accepted shares in the companies which carried them on.
Banks were assisted in a similar way; cheap rates of transport were conceded to
commercial products. The commercial crisis of 1899 was largely due to this
systematic policy of inflation; but the industrial development which it
produced is not likely to disappear. Witte has claimed that not a single tax
was left unaltered by him; practically the whole fiscal burden was thrown on
the indirect taxes, and this is one reason why passive resistance by
non-payment of taxes became almost impossible. His policy was strictly
protectionist, and left room for all sorts of manipulation with regard to
various countries and articles of export. The tariffs of 1850, 1857, and 1867,
which tended towards free trade, had benefited the landowners and the St
Petersburg factories. Moscow was less enterprising, depended less on
improvements from abroad, and had a greater fear of competition. Moscow
influences prevailed in the tariff of 1891, and very large duties were imposed
on coal, cast iron, and other necessary imports. Witte continued this process,
and cast iron came to cost three times as much in Russia as in England.
Naturally other interests, especially the agricultural, considered themselves
to be sacrificed to the iron trade. In 1892, Germany excepted Russia from the
reduced duties on grain accorded to other countries. In 1893, Russia slightly
reduced the duties on French imports and greatly increased those on German
goods. On February 10,1894, both Germany and Russia reduced these aggressive
duties by a Treaty binding for ten years. A tariff war with Germany was hardly
compatible with the fact that Germany buys about half of the Russian export of
rye. In spite of the tariff, German imports continued to increase, chiefly
because of the businesslike methods of German traders. English imports,
however, underwent a continuous decrease, in spite of a commonly expressed
preference for English goods; branches of trade which had been almost English
monopolies began to pass out of English hands into German, although it was
against Germany that the new tariffs had been chiefly directed. Witte has
boasted that during his administration the Russian exports had come to exceed
the imports. But this is no advantage when the chief export is grain, when the
consumption of bread per head has fallen off 70 lbs. in the year, and when the
necessary agricultural implements are prevented from entering the country. The
Russian peasant, it is calculated, pays, as compared with the German, two and a
half times as much for cotton and sugar, four and a half times as much for
iron, six times as much for coal. The apparent wealth accruing to the State
from these various sources was unscrupulously exaggerated, and systematic
efforts were made to produce a deceptive appearance of prosperity.
The greatest
achievement of this period was the opening of the
326 Peasant distress.—Rival Ministers. [i892-i903
-------------------------- —
Siberian
Railway, which drew more attention to the emigration question. In 1892 Dumovd
had ordered the Governors to1 discourage migration, but Nicholas II
knew that it was normal and necessary. He replaced I. Dumovd (1895) by
Goremykin, whose reports on the peasant question had won his confidence ; large
sums were spent on emigration and allotments, and the privileges of the
settlers were increased. At the same time enquiries were made into the causes
which were driving the peasants from their homes; migration was found to be
largely due to the burden of taxation.
From 1899 to
1903 there were repeated dissensions in the Ministry. Ostrovsky advocated
drastic reform. Pobyedonostseff resisted change, and even enquiry, in the
interests of public tranquillity. When, in 1899, ' Goremykin wished to extend
Zemstvo representation to outlying provinces, Witte represented him as a
dangerous innovator, and succeeded in ousting him from his post. Sipydgin was
preferred to Plehve for the post of Minister of the Interior, and appointed a
Commission to “ complete ” the Emancipation Act. This Commission reported in
1903, after Sipydgin had been assassinated, and Plehve had succeeded him
(1902). The report laid down as immutable principles the class distinctiveness
of the peasants, the inalienability of peasant land, and the inviolability of
the traditional system of land tenure—principles opposed, in fact, to those of
the Emancipation Act, and formulated in the spirit of the subsequent reaction.
This report Plehve endorsed, and it received some support from a manifesto
issued by the Tsar in the same year, proclaiming as against the renewed
activity of socialism the sanctity of property.
Meanwhile,
Witte had been making his own enquiries into the “exhaustion of the centre of
the empire.” A decline was shown (1901) in the crops ranging up to 27 per
cent.; the grain sown was less by 35 per cent, than thirty years before. Oats
were giving place to potatoes, and horses were disappearing; the arrears of
taxes were enormous. Strengthened by1 these returns, Witte succeeded
in setting up a rival Commission to deal with “ the needs of agricultural
industry ” (1902), which appointed local committees of a semi-representative
kind. Thus an appeal was at last made for the cooperation of the Zemstva, and
Witte’s agricultural committees mark a turning-point in Russian history. But,
hitherto, the peasant question had been a weapon in the battle between
conflicting Ministers; and Witte’s sudden change of front in favour of the
Zemstva proved to be only another move in the game.
The Zemstva
and larger town councils had a full share in the new activity which followed
the famine of 1891. The more energetic members gravitated to the Provincial
Board, which was nearly everywhere more Liberal than the District Boards.
Politics were forbidden, but economic questions could be discussed and dealt
with. This work was inspired by
the highest
public spirit. The initiative fell to the Provincial Zemstvo Board of Moscow
under its President, Dmitry Shipdff (from 1893), a country gentleman of rare
wisdom and integrity; and associated with him were other men of ability, such
as Golovnin, Muromtseftj Kokoshkin, and Chelnokoff, all destined to win
distinction in a wider field. Their work was based throughout on careful
statistical investigation, and each new enterprise was tested in one district
before it was generally applied. The grants of the Provincial Zemstvo were
always largest to those District Zemstva which were themselves ready to spend
money on improvements. Shipdff and his colleagues brought the school within two
miles of every inhabitant of the province of Moscow and the hospital within
five. Particularly admirable were the equipping of small medical outposts and
the beginnings of adequate provision for the insane. Clover was supplied to the
peasants, and there was a notable improvement in the cattle. Veterinary doctors
were established, and imported cattle were inspected. Factories were compelled
to drain their premises. The Zemstvo engaged to find water for villages. One
thousand miles of road were constructed. Great pains were taken to create
village libraries. In all these departments, each of which was committed to one
man, the Zemstvo worked without pay and was always ready to raise the rating
rather than defer improvements. The work was interrupted by the constant
interference and prohibitions of the Government; twice, Laws on the medical
administration, which had been signed by the Emperor, were denied execution by
the officials; for all that, the Moscow Zemstvo changed the face of the
province. The same statistical basis was taken elsewhere, and the same main
lines were followed. The Zemstvo of Samara established one of the first
bacteriological institutes, and by a war of many years’ duration succeeded in
almost banishing cattle- disease from the province; excellent work was also
done in Tver, Voronezh, Tamboff, Chermgoff, and notably in Vyatka, where nearly
all the inhabitants were peasant farmers and there was practi. ally a peasant
Zemstvo. The smaller town councils were less progressive; but. that of Moscow,
when once composed of Liberals, could achieve even more than the Zemstva.
Wholesale improvements were carried out, such as a new water supply, the
drainage of half of the city, a pension scheme for employees, and a very
remarkable development of the schools and hospitals. There was hardly a
prominent member of the first Duma who had not learnt his experience either as
a member or as an employee of the Councils of Local Government.
In 1894
several Zemstvo presidents were summoned to a semi-official congress on
agriculture, under Prince Shcherbdtoff. Shipdff proposed that these should act
as a distinct section of the Congress, and, as the Ministry consented, half the
Congress joined this section. Shipdff, as chairman, then for the first time
broached the idea of parish councils to be elected from all classes. Informal
meetings were afterwards held
at his house,
and a small permanent committee was formed. A Conference held at Nizhny
Novgorod in 1896 excited the fears of the Governor, but was openly supported by
Witte. At this, the reactionaries raised the scare of a Zemsky Sobor;
Goremykin, always fully informed by Shipoff, had so far been neutral; he now
forbade the next meeting in St Petersburg. From 1896 to 1902 there was a series
of semi-official Congresses on the decay of cottage industries, the prevalence
of fires, and the needs of agriculture; Shipoff made use of these and other
occasions to renew the informal conferences of Zemstvo presidents, but the
attendance sank lower and lower. The Congress on cottage industries, early iu
1902, showed that hopes were again rising. After discussion with Petrunkevich,
Shipoff called a congress for June 2, 1902. Some sixty came, and political
questions were raised for the first time. The Congress suggested a common
programme for the promised agricultural committees; it called attention to the
inequalities of civil rights, the hindrances to public instruction^ the
limitations imposed upon the Zemstva, the defects of the financial policy, and
the need of a free Press. On May 7-8,1903, during the semi-official Congress on
insurance there was another Conference; the Zemstvo men agreed that all laws on
local questions ought first to be submitted for discussion to the Zemstva and
that elected representatives from the Zemstva should assist in drafting such
laws.
Witte’s agricultural
committees met under these conditions (1902-3). Most of the original members
were officials; members of the Zemstvo Boards were included, and, in a few
districts, all the members of the Zemstva. The consultation of peasants was
severely restricted; but Count Heyden, formerly a high official and now a
devoted worker on the Free Economic Society, managed to organise an excellent
peasant representation in his district. In one district none but officials were
allowed to vote; and in one province the Governor declared that no committee
was required. There was discord in the Ministry itself; Plehve, like
Pobyedondstseff, was dead against the committees, and Witte was only using them
as a pawn in his struggle with Plehve. Accordingly, Plehve sent precise
instructions to the presidents to burke the discussion of all important
questions. There was hardly an article of Witte’s original programme but was
excluded in one or more districts; and free discussion was hampered in every
way. Reports of the proceedings were hushed up by Marshals and by Governors;
and several were omitted from the official record. Yet the results were
considerable : 118 committees contented themselves with marking time; 181
declared for enlightened Conservatism; and 418 were pronouncedly hostile to the
existing system. Many committees asked for freedom of the Press, a national
representation, and inviolability of person—that is, freedom from imprisonment
without law, and from search or arrest without warrant. Weighty protests
against the existing regime were
made in
Kostromd, Tambdff, Kharkoff, and Sudzha; the report of Voronezh was even more
daring.
The only
result of the committees was a very great increase of public interest. Witte,
in a memorandum, tried to turn their reports into a condemnation of the
Ministry of the Interior ; he paid the penalty of his manoeuvres and was
deprived of power, being appointed to the honorary post of President of the
Committee of Ministers. In January, 1904, the conclusions of Sipydgin’s rival
Commission were submitted to new provincial committees much more carefully
selected. In March, 1902, was abolished the system, already almost extinct in
practice, by which each village society was made corporately responsible for
its taxes. In the autumn of 1903 Shipoff had great difficulty in restraining
the Zemstvo men; the more advanced minority summoned a separate Congress, but
the solidarity of all Zemstva on non-party grounds was too valuable an
instrument to be sacrificed, and the Congress came to nothing. Plehve cancelled
the reelection of Shipdff as Zemstvo president in Moscow; in his place was
chosen a much more pronounced Liberal, Golovnin; but Plehve continued his
policy of undiluted repression till the summer of 1904. This brought him into
conflict with all classes and especially with the students. The Press was
silenced, and numberless persons were exiled by administrative order.
The Zemstvo
men, as representatives, had not said too much; the movement of thought had
long since passed far beyond their modest requests for political liberties. If
economic questions engaged attention, it was partly because political reform
seemed at present unattainable, but partly also because these questions
suggested a radical reconstruction of society. In 1882, “V. V.,” a dogmatising
writer of the anti-Western school, had issued a book on The Future of
Capitalism, in Russia, adopting the old theory that it had no future at all.
But in 1883, Plekhdnoffand other members of the “Black Partition” founded a
society called the “ Liberation of Labour,” which, acting entirely from abroad,
recognised capitalism as inevitable and gave its main attention not to the
peasantry but to the growing nucleus of factory workers. The work of the
society was inconsiderable until 1893, when a wave of the socialistic ideas of
Earl Marx passed into Bussia. As against the vague creed of the earlier
revolutionaries, here was an imposing system of thought, complete in itself and
gloriously disregarding all that did not enter into its scheme. Marx was ill
understood, but his works were read everywhere, and the usual tendencies of
Russian thought were freely read into them. This movement of gradual
propaganda, confident of the future, was a step forward from the confused
thought and action of the last generation; but it arbitrarily anticipated a
happy victory for Social Democracy in Russia before the bourgeoisie had rooted
itself there; it preached the theory that “ the worse things are now, the more
complete will be the crash ”;
and,
generally, it depended far too much on the inevitable and on a majority of
voices to encourage any remarkable initiative in its adherents. The Marxists,
such as PlekhanofF and Struve, at least gave the deathblow to the doctrine that
Russia was exempt from all ordinary laws of development. For the best of them,
including Struve himself, Social Democracy was but a phase of development; but
it certainly reached the masses. Marxist periodicals began to appear in the
legitimate Press—The New Word (from 1897), and Life (1899-1901). Much wider was
the influence of Maxim Gorky (from 1891), whose cynical attitude towards the
educated classes and glorification of the proletariate prove him a natural
product of this movement. The appearance of an exclusive class creed for the
masses gieatly increased their interest in public questions.
The striking
spread of education, mainly due to the work of the Zemstva, began to show
itself in the statistics of the yearly recruits; very many of the Zemstvo
employees were socialists, and many Zemstvo schools and book-stores took a
strong socialist tinge. The “ go-aways ” carried back socialism from the towns
into the country. Deported workmen had a very different influence from the old
missionary students. But the centre of activity was in the great factories, and
in the constant migrations of workmen from one to another. In 1896, at the fair
of Nizhny Novgorod, the employers set the example of “demands” addressed to the
Government. The earlier workmen’s organisations, directed by theorising and
quarrelling propagandists, were easily crushed by exile and imprisonment
(1895-6). But Lenin and others took a successful initiative in the summer of
1896, and the strike of nineteen cotton factories in St Petersburg for a twelve
hours’ day and other purely industrial demands thoroughly alarmed the
Government. Witte, with his leanings to state socialism, was not unready to
secure an ally in the proletariate. The Factory Law of June 15, 1897, limited
the hours to 11£, or to 10 of nightwork. In March, 1898, on the initiative of
some of the socialist groups, was held a Congress which formed a “ Workmen’s
Social Democratic party.’’ Divisions and jealousies were manifest from the
outset, and the drafting of a programme was deferred. Central and local
Committees were alike at once arrested, and the organ of the party was
destroyed. In the confusion which followed, there was no central initiative
except that of individual periodicals. Serious questions divided the groups.
The “Liberation of Labour” was discredited as acting from abroad. Old
propagandists, realising that the party as yet existed only on paper,
considered a democratic basis impossible, and, so long as conspirative methods
were inevitable, wished to keep a dictatorship. Most of the workmen, who were
hardly Social Democrats at all, only wanted a practical campaign for winning
practical concessions from the employers. This so-called “economic” tendency
prevailed for a time even amongst the propagandists; and even labour newspapers
preached indifference to politics. The workmen organised
1898-1900]
Labour movement Tmbatoff. The Spark. 331
permanent
funds, less for the propaganda of the party than for supporting local strikes;
and there was an increasing strike movement all over Russia. In the autumn of
1898 began a commercial crisis, aggravated by a serious famine; the Government
spent huge sums on the starving, but closed other relief agencies. A
well-organised strike of fourteen days was carried through in the Caucasus; the
movement spread along the Siberian Railway to Krasnoyarsk.
The
Government had recourse to very unusual methods. After the first series of
strikes, even the temporising Novoe Vremya had exhorted it to take up the
workmen’s question; the reply was an order to newspapers to print no article on
the subject without authorisation by the police. But in April, 1898, the Chief
Police-Master of Moscow, Dmitry Trepoff, in a lengthy secret report, proposed
to combat the propaganda of revolutionaries by counter-propaganda of the police
and support of the workmen against their employers. This was confessedly a move
by the police of the Minister of the Interior as against the factory inspectors
of the Minister of Finance ; and as such it was supported by Pobyedonostseff,
the Grand Duke Sergius, and, it would appear, Plehve; in 1899 and 1900,
circulars were issued in this sense. Zub&toff, a former revolutionary who
had become Chief of Detectives in Moscow, in a series of talks with imprisoned
workmen claimed to be working for their class. He supplied money for a labour
newspaper and subsidised labour propagandists—amongst others the priest Gapon.
In Minsk he organised a labour club and even an “ Independent Labour party.” In
Moscow he arranged public lectures on the labour question by well- known
economists; the free discussion after these lectures helped him to discover and
remove Social Democrats. Similar societies under the patronage of Governors and
Bishops were instituted elsewhere; the Minister of Finance addressed a strongly
worded remonstrance to the Emperor. In Moscow the workmen distrusted
Zub&toff; but in Odessa, one of his agents, Shayevich, protected from the
City Prefect by the Central Department of Police, organised a strike which at
last got out of hand and had to be stopped by the troops.
The exposure
of the manoeuvres of Zubdtoff quite discredited the non-political tendency
amongst the Social Democrats. The more resolute wing of the party now assumed
the lead in a new paper, the Spark (Islcra). It wished to create a real party
by formulating the socialist doctrine as a class creed and superimposing it on
the discontent of the workmen. The organisation was to be not democratic but
conspirative; terrorism was condemned as impotent and disintegrating;
propagandism was the task of the present, though Lenin and his friends did not
shrink from the idea of an ultimate insurrection. They were so rigorously
logical as to separate the interests of the peasants entirely from those of the
workmen; for the peasants they desired such impoverishment as would make the
small farmer a hired labourer and drive
332
Strikes.—The Socialist Revolutionary party. [1899-1904
him into the
proletariate. The uncompromising vigour of the Spark secured for it many
friends and many enemies. At the second congress of the whole Social Democratic
party (1903) the original split was greatly widened ; and the programme of
Lenin became the creed of the extreme wing known under the name of the
“majority men.” The “ minority men” continued moderate; they were willing to
keep up relations with other parties and to make use of parliamentary institutions
even under a monarchy. The ultimate aim of both wings was a democratic
republic. Their relative strength varied in different localities; and at the
meetings of the whole party they prevailed in turn.
The students’
movement of 1899 culminated in a demonstration on the Kaz&n Square in St
Petersburg, which was dispersed with bloodshed (March 17,1901); several leading
writers issued a united protest. Meanwhile, strikes became more political. In
November, 1902, the local committee of the Social Democrats conducted in
Rostoff-on-the-Don a great strike of factory and railway men. Still more
imposing was the strike of July, 1903, at the petroleum wells of the Caucasus.
The employers refused all concessions and summoned the troops; the answer of
the workmen was to fire the wells. In October, 1904, the union of workmen in
Baku began to talk of an armed rising. The strike of December 26 aimed at
political concessions: freedom of organisation, Press, speech, and person, with
a Constituent Assembly. It also demanded an eight hours’ day. The employers,
this time, conferred with the men; but Cossacks fired into an unarmed crowd,
killing six and wounding twenty. In the two next days the workmen again fired
the wells: “ these," they said, “ are the candles for our dead.” But this
is already the beginning of a later period.
Marxism soon
lost its hold over the best minds. Its dead monotony of principle and action
called forth a natural protest of individuality, national or personal. One
symptom of this protest was the growth of the new Socialist Revolutionary
party, formed by veterans of the “ Will of the People” almost at the same time
as the Social Democratic. It gave all its attention to the peasants. To these
the extreme logic of the “ S. D.’s ” offered no hope ; but the “ S. R.’s ” were
less doctr inaire and in much closer touch with practical life; the “ S. R.”
propagandist really lived amongst the peasants; he had to learn that their
grievances were simple and economic, and that they had no republican ideals for
the empire. Here the conditions of missionary work demanded initiative and
resource; and the “ S. R.’s ” were far more enterprising than the “S. D.’s.”
Their audience was ignorant and apathetic; and, believing in the influence of
isolated protests, the party contained a special militant section, which
renewed the practice of terrorism. The most notable assassinations of the new
period were the work of commissioned or uncommissioned “ S. R.’s.” Terrorism
was a method of political warfare licensed by the party for those who believed
in it, Most “ S. R.’s ”
were simply
resolute champions of protest in a time of gross misgovem- ment; they had no
fixed theory and might easily become ordinary radicals. Their propaganda had at
first very little success. But in May, 1902, crude and elemental disorders
broke out amongst the peasants of Poltdva and Kharkoff. The attacks on property
were punished with flogging and heavy fines, and the mood which followed was favourable
to the “S. R.’s.”
A far more
important sequel of the Marxist phase was the growth of a new and robust
idealism, based upon the rights and the duties of the individual, whether
personal or corporate. To Russians a Liberalism of tradition was denied by
history; this was the Liberalism of conviction. Many of its elements already
existed in the instincts of the Liberal gentry and of Zemstvo work; but the
creed itself was only now formulated and chiefly by reasoned
converts—Berddyeff, Struve, Bulgd- koff, and Novgorodtseff. This view was
expressed later in the reviews, A New Road (1904) and Questions of Life (1905).
The new movement had far-reaching results. Even those who remained Marxists
felt compelled to meet it half-way. When the new school split up into two
sections, its influence was only increased ; Berd&yeff and BulgakofF helped
to strengthen the budding romanticism of Russia, which had notable
representatives in the poet Balmont and the writers Merezhkovsky and Rozanoff;
and Struve and Novgorodtseff became prominent workers in the formation of a
Russian Liberal party. There had existed, since 1899, in Moscow an informal
club of progressives called the Besyeda. To this belonged enlightened
Conservatives such as Count Bobrinsky; but the predominance gradually passed to
ardent Liberals, the twin Princes Dolgorukoff and the exceptionally able and
devoted organiser, Prince Shakhovskdy. These last united with old Zemstvo
Liberals, like Petrunkevich and Rodicheff, professional men like Vinogr&doff
and Milyukdff, and radical writers like Korolyenko, to form a political group
known as the “Liberators.” Amongst the Liberators were Nabtfkoff, bom for
eminence in parliamentary life, and Kokoshkin, a constitutional expert and a
speaker of rare lucidity. The Liberators were formally united only by their
contributions to the paper Liberation, the first really important organ of
Russian Liberalism, which, on the refusal of the Government to license it, was
published in Stuttgart (from July 14, 1902). The editor was Struve; he printed
also pamphlets and documents of the first importance. In December, 1902, Struve
declared for the organisation of a broad Liberal party; this party, he
explained, must be both constitutional and democratic (February, 1903). The
other Liberators remained in Russia, and formed small local branches. They held
a small conference near Lake Constance (August 2-3, 1903). On November 21 was
formed out of their elements a special group, called the Zemstvo
Constitutionalists, which aimed at making the general movement of the Zemstva
as progressive as possible. On January
16-18,1904,
was formally founded the “Union of Liberators”; its council was allowed to
coopt new members. The Zemstvo Constitutionalists met again on March 7, and
declared for a representative assembly. The Union prepared a draft
constitution; but the general mood at the opening of the Japanese War (1904)
did nqt favour the Liberators. Their chance came in the autumn.
To complete
the picture of the empire, we must follow the policy of the reaction westwards
and eastwards. It had two kindred principles: aliens within the empire were to
be forcibly Russianised, and a moral barrier was to separate Russia from
Western Europe; meanwhile, Russia, as the missionary of the one true faith, was
to annex and Christianise the East. The root idea depended for its vitality on
religious considerations. But, under the rule of Pobyedonostseff, the Russian
Church had at this time lost much of its moral significance. Imperial expansion
might console many for the growing demoralisation at home; but the officials,
who were the chief agents in the expansion, were more demoralised than the
rest. Meanwhile, each increase of territory or addition to the system of
regulations enhanced the power of the local agents of the Government, and
diminished the control of the nominally autocratic sovereign.
Finland
especially' challenged the attention of the reactionar.es by reason of its
nearness to St Petersburg and its acknowledged constitutional liberties,
confirmed before its annexation to Russia in 1809. It possessed a Diet, elected
from the four classes of the population, and a national executive council,
called the Senate (from 1816). The Emperor was sovereign, but as Grand Duke of
Finland; he was represented by a viceroy or: Governor-General. Senate and Diet
had access to the Emperor through a Secretary of State living in St Petersburg,
who was distinct from the Russian Ministers. Bills were submitted to the Diet
after the preliminary consent of the Emperor. The population consists of
Finns, with an admixture of Swedes; the Russian element is inconsiderable.
Nicholas I did not summon the Diet, and issued some enactments on his own sole
authority. Alexander II granted a separate coinage in 1860, and in 1863 summoned
the Diet and expressly recognised “ the principles of constitutional monarchy
”; he named a committee to codify the statutes of the Constitution. The Diet
was to be summoned every five years. The army was restricted to service within
the grand-duchy, and the burden of military service was made much lighter than
in Russia (1878). Alexander III signed the constitutional guarantees; but the
Penal Code of 1888 was referred to a commission at the Russian Ministry of
Justice. The economic progress of the country was rapid; and the Finns, despite
Swedish opposition, had succeeded in legalising their language and creating a
very creditable mass of literature. Language rights were now demanded for
Russian;
and this
question led to the resignation of the Secretary of State, and a censorship of
Finnish newspapers (1891). A knowledge of Russian was made obligatory for
public servants.
Nicholas II
confirmed the liberties of Finland; but in 1898 he appointed Bdbrikoff as
Governor-General, and in January, 1899, the Diet was called upon to sanction a
complete reorganisation of the military regulations: Finland was to become a
military district of Russia, the officers were to be Russians, and the old
Finnish staffs were abolished; the oath was to be to the Emperor as such. In
May, other proposals put the period of service and the number of recruits on
the same basis as in Russia; the Finnish army was not to be increased, and the
supernumerary recruits were to be drafted elsewhere; a knowledge of Russian
would secure a curtailment of the period of service. The Diet agreed that
Finland should contribute more soldiers and that they should defend the empire
in general, but it rejected the Russian proposal; nevertheless, this was
enforced. On February 15, 1899, the Emperor, under the influence of
Pobyedondstseff, issued a manifesto declaring that Finnish Bills must be
drafted by Russian Ministers in conjunction with the Secretary of State for
Finland, and need only be submitted to the Diet if they concerned Finland
alone. In August, Plehve was appointed Secretary of State for Finland. There
was a national protest, not accompanied by any disorders. Bdbrikoff made the
censorship more severe; and the Finnish postal system was now merged in that of
Russia. The Senate pointed out that, according to the statements of successive
Emperors, the fundamental laws could only be changed by a unanimous Diet. A
thoroughly representative deputation proceeded to St Petersburg, where it was
refused an audience; a petition of 500,000 persons, signed in ten days,
received no reply. A Russian police was introduced into Finland. From 1901 to
1905 was conducted an orderly and almost unanimous movement of passive
resistance. All officials except those belonging to the party of Old Finns had
resigned; recruits refused to serve; pastors would not read out the
conscription lists. In spite of spies, gendarmes, and suspensions of
newspapers, Bdbrikoff could not prevail. In 1904 he was assassinated by Eugene
Schaumann. These troubled years gave a great impetus to the spread of Social
Democracy in Finland^
The Baltic
Provinces (Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland) are peopled by Esths and Letts,
with a German nobility and trading class; the religion is the Lutheran. The
Esths and Letts were emancipated in 1816-9: many of them were small formers,
but the hired labourers resented the feudal custom of forced labour; many
feudal rights remained, and the subject races were excluded from the
provincial Diets. Here, as elsewhere, the labour question had become acute,
especially since the rise of factories around Riga. The Germans had been
perfectly loyal since their annexation in 1721, and they had always taken a
large
9hare in the
administration of the empire. The German culture and German bye-laws of these
provinces had remained intact. After 1870, the unification and growing power of
Germany roused Russian jealousy. Antigerman sentiments were encouraged by
Russian agents among the Esths and Letts, and they were incited to claim rights
for their languages as against the German. Forests were fired and estates
wrecked, and as a remedy the revising Senator, Manassein, recommended closer
union with Russia. From 1885, Russian was introduced as the official tongue.
Lutheran churches were not to be built without leave of the Procurator of the
Synod (1885). Conversion to Orthodoxy was pushed with all the resources of
power; and pastors were imprisoned for receiving back their repentant
parishioners. In 1886 the schools of the local Lutheran consistories were
placed under the Russian Minister of Public Instruction. From 1887, Russian was
introduced into Dorpat University; and from 1889, no lectures might be given in
any other language. Even in private schools, German was forbidden. The local
law Courts were suppressed, the town councils reduced to insignificance, the
mayors nominated, the Press was put under the Russian censorship, and the local
bye-laws were abolished. German place names were changed for Russian. As the
German nobles possessed immense influence at Court, Nicholas II relaxed the
tension, and they recovered or retained much of their local power; but Germans
were not popular in the empire, and the Esths and Letts did not forget the
encouragement given to them when the disorders of 1905 put the German landlords
at their mercy. The Lithuanians (provinces of Vilna, Kovno, Grodno, and
Suwalki), like their kinsmen the Letts, developed a language movement, which
was repressed during this period.
Poland, after
the insurrection of 1863, was reorganised by a Constituent Committee (1864-6)
under Nicholas Milyutin and Prince Cherkassky, who believed that the Polish
peasants might be finally estranged from the gentry, and become a support of
Russian autocracy. The country was redivided into ten provinces; the peasants
received their holdings in perpetuity, with indefinite rights of access to the
forests and pasture of the gentry; escheated property could only be bought by
Russians. Most of the monasteries of the national religion (Roman Catholic)
were confiscated. But the Milyutin-idea was quite impracticable, for there was
no Russian element in Poland except the officials; and the Russification in
Poland became very early a policy of sheer repression, exasperated from time to
time by the evident signs of its failure. Russian was made obligatory for
official correspondence and university lectures (1869-70). General Gurko and
the Curator of Education, Apukhtin, worked for the day “ when Polish mothers
would lull their children to sleep with Russian songs”; every inquisitorial
method was brought into play. The secondary schools were entirely Russianised.
Poles were excluded from government posts in Poland. Polish literature and even
the Polish language were taught to Poles in
Russian.
Russian was also made obligatory in primary schools. Priests were constantly
transferred, fined, or arrested. Russian law Courts were introduced in 1876.
Poles were not allowed to sell their land to foreigners (1885). Prussia replied
by expelling Russian Poles, and the Law of 1885 was repealed in 1897. ShuvalofF
(1894) and Prince Imeretinsky (1896) recognised the failure of the policy of
repression; the former relaxed the severity of the administration; the latter
recommended considerable concessions; but the main grievances remained, and
were aggravated by the arbitrariness of officials. Under Imeretinsky, Russian
was introduced even in private trading concerns.
Young Poles,
excluded from public service, streamed into commerce. Thus was formed a native
middle class. Poles took a leading part in the industrial and commercial
development of the Russian empire. Between 1876 and 1896, the number of working
men increased sixfold in some trades; huge factories replaced small ones;
Warsaw grew rapidly, and Lodz became a great town.
The Polish
rising was followed by a return to sober common sense. In Galicia the
Conservative Staiiczyki began a wary policy of detail, which, between 1859 and
1872, won the confidence of the Austrian Emperor and the grant—through
circulars rather than through statutes— of practically complete autonomy. On
the other hand, the Prussian Government repressed the language and schools of
its Poles, and later took measures to drive them from their' land; its policy,
except during a short period, was to turn the Poles into a mere proletariate.
The example of Austria was not lost on Russian Poland. Here a very pronounced
development of positivism led to a general enthusiasm for “ organic work ” or “
work at the foundations,” of which the chief exponent was the brilliant
publicist Swietochowski. The narrow traditions of the old Poland of the gentry
gave way to ideals far more broadly national. This general tendency later
divided itself into three main channels. Polish socialism may be dated from
Limanowski (1868); it did not take root till 1876, when an ambitious but futile
plan of conspiracy was designed by Szimanski. In 1878 was pompously announced
the creation of a socialist party; there were many arrests; a more compact
group, the “ Proletariate,” had more success, until crushed with the greatest
severity in 1885. Later arose a “Workmen’s Union,” which in 1893 joined with
the remnants of the “Proletariate” to form the new and formidable “ Polish
Socialist party.” So far, most of the propagandists had aimed at a cosmopolitan
programme; but the party, as soon as it really took root, showed itself to he
profoundly national. From 1895 to 1899, it was able to carry out 186 strikes,
of which 127 were successful. It aimed at separation from Russia and a
democratic republic. Radically opposed to this party was the small group of
“Conciliators” consisting mainly of the richer gentry, and stronger in
Lithuania and White Russia than in Poland; their organ, the Country of Pile,
was in St Petersburg.
They copied
the Polish Conservatives of Galicia, and hoped for concessions from the
Russian Government to a loyal Poland; but Russian administrators regarded them
as wolves in sheep’s clothing. They had a fleeting success, when Nicholas II
visited Warsaw and they organised a remarkable demonstration of loyalty; but
the disillusionment which followed the visit made them extremely unpopular.
Much more
conspicuous ability characterised the Middle party. Out of the new moral and
intellectual Poland inspired by Swietochowski, arose the Society for Public
Instruction and, in 1886, the “ Polish League ” with its national fund, closely
associated with the newspaper, the Voice. Reorganised in 1895 as the “National
League,” it became the dominant moral force in Russian Poland. Count Potocki
and the able publicist Poplawski were later joined by Roman Dmowski, expelled
from Warsaw University for celebrating the centenary of the Constitution of
1791. Living in Galicia, Dmowski made the League the basis of a political
party, the National Democrats. His breadth of conception and his practical
resource were unusual, and he soon became the accepted dictator of both League
and party. In his Thoughts of a present-day Pole (1902), he defined their
principles. Poland, however sorely tried, was never to wander from sound sense;
socialism would produce a horde only fit for partisan warfare ; the Russian
Government sought to rob Poland of her individuality, and must therefore by
Poles be regarded as, in the deepest sense, revolutionary. Poland was to save
herself by the development and concentration of all the moral forces within
her. Russia “ regarded the whole Polish nation as a plot,” and was therefore to
be met at, every turn with a stubborn resistance, by the joint self-assertion
of thousands of workers, and, eventually, by the effective boycott of
everything Russian. The political virtues and the political organisation which
were required would be created in the long and patient struggle. The educated
classes would thus be brought into the closest contact with the peasants, who
required of them no new basis of morality but only political education. The
peasants, who had become enterprising small farmers, offered an admirable soil
for this propaganda. Peasant energies were directed to practicable objects, the
foundation of private schools using the Polish language, the banishing of
Russian from the business of the parish meetings. Thus the country was covered
with numberless groups of workers, who, later, would follow the lead of the
National Democrats.
The party
from 1897 to 1901 aimed at independence; but from 1901 it gave up the idea of
an armed rising. Rather, it would seek reunion by playing off against each
other the three partitioning empires. Though Poland was partitioned, the Polish
people must remain indivisible. Austria was too weak to offer any salvation;
but Russia, after quite failing to annihilate Poland, would find her own
self-evident interest in granting local government, which would turn this
discontented
1772-1903]
people into a
bulwark, and would make every Austrian or German Pole wish to be reunited with
his compatriots in the Russian empire. Dmowski’s policy was directed against
Germany to the profit of Russia; but he refused to sink the individuality of
Poland even in a Russian Liberal party; a parliamentary Russia might be more
exacting than an autocratic one. When the Voice was suppressed in 1894, these
views were much more openly preached in the All-Polish Review of Dmowski and
Poplawski, which from 1895 appeared in Cracow and had subscribers in all the
three “ Partitionments ”; for the peasants, there was the Pole with 5000
subscribers. The party, definitely organised in 1897, issued its revised
programme in October, 1903; its watchword was autonomy within the Russian
empire. It now represented most of the gentry and middle class, all the
peasantry, and a considerable section of the working men. The priests were
welcomed as valued and honoured helpers. Meanwhile it had bridged the gap
between gentry and peasants.
In White
Russia (the provinces of Vitebsk, Minsk, and Mohileff), most of the gentry are
Polish, the middle class is Jewish, and the peasants are Russians. Here Poles
were disqualified from acquiring landl The Roman Catholic priests were under a
constant persecution; they could not leave their parishes without permission.
The Uniat Church had been crushed in 1839; and in 1873 the remnants of this
Church were pursued into the Polish diocese of Kholm. Forcible conversions to
the Orthodox Church excited a stubborn resistance from the Uniats, and this led
to the use of troops. Yet in 1897 there were still 80,000 Uniats holding out,
whose marriages and children the Russian Government refused to recognise.
In Little
Russia (the south-western provinces of the empire) vague traditions of
republicanism lingered on from the time of the free Cossacks. The Little
Russians are far more independent and enterprising than the Great Russians;
their land-tenure is in effect proprietary and not communal; they have taken a
very prominent part in the recent development of industry. A literary movement
for preserving the Little Russian dialect has met with support within the
educated class; it is semi-political, and extends into Galicia; it has been
strongly opposed by the Russian Government; but the latter has encouraged the
Little Russian peasants as against their Polish landlords. On this side, Bessarabia,
with a population of Moldavians, Jews, and Russian settlers, was added to the
empire in 1878.
There are
some 5J millions of Jews in Russia. The vast majority of them live in the
western and south-western provinces; here some of their monuments go back to
the beginning of the Christian era, and the Russian Jew can almost claim to
have a second fatherland. It was the partition of Poland (1772) that brought
the Jews into the Russian empire; they were welcomed with the promise of equal
rights with Russians. Limitations began in 1804; but Nicholas I attempted to
merge the
Jews in the rest of the population (1840-5); and in 1835 they received access
to the ordinary schools, and in 1859 to the first Guild of Merchants. Educated
Jews (1861), craftsmen (1865), and veterans of the army (1867), were admitted
into the interior of the empire. A Commission reported in favour of a further
equalisation in rights (1879), but was dissolved. Among the few terrorists
there had been several Jews; and Alexander III showed the bitterest animosity
against the race as a whole. Within their area, the Jews have a complete
economic supremacy and use it to the full. In 1880 a series of armed attacks
was made upon them, never properly investigated, but apparently due to the idea
that here were victims handed over by the officials for spoliation. The
“temporary rales” of May, 1882, which evaded the ordinary process of
legislation but have been retained ever since, confined the Jews to towns and
“townships” of the fifteen provinces described as the Jewish Pale. A Commission
for the drafting of permanent laws declared for the opposite policy, and was
dissolved. New ordinances excluded Jews from all direct share in local
government, even in towns where they constituted nearly half the population and
paid three-quarters of the taxes. Only a small percentage of Jews (10 per cent,
of all the scholars) were admitted to schools almost entirely supported by
Jewish taxes; the arbitrary selection from the applicants led to grave abuses.
Special taxes on Jewish meat and candles, levied from 1835 onwards, were
supposed to provide special schools for Jews; but the money was administered by
the Government and often spent on general purposes, such as roads or police.
Lacking school diplomas, the Jews found many careers closed; they could not be
civil servants or officers in the army; but the number of recruits taken from
them was disproportionately large. They might not acquire or lease property
outside the towns, even in the Pale; they were debarred from agricultural
pursuits, and from work in factories outside the towns. Jews were forbidden to
live within a given distance of the frontier.
By these
regulations, mostly instituted between 1882 and 1892, the Pale was
impoverished, and the Russian population was encouraged to contempt and
violence. But the effect on the police was more serious. They were charged with
the interpretation of these complicated rules; they could settle what Jews
might live in the interior provinces as “craftsmen, and which members of a
Jew’s family might live with him; the occasions for bribery were unlimited.
Great numbers of Jews emigrated; some returned with a foreign education; some
became an economic menace to other lands. The towns of the Pale were filled
with paupers, and epidemics became frequent. The pogroms or mob- attacks on
Jews were renewed in 1903 at Kishineff; they were chiefly due to police
incitements. Many Jews became revolutionaries; apart from the small
terrorist-anarchist groups which formed at Byelostok, Odessa, and elsewhere,
there was created a powerful organisation allied
to the Social
Democrats, the Bund; and later local militias were formed for self-defence. But
the Jewish middle class was Liberal and peaceful. A scientific association
investigated the Jewish monuments in Russia; a society was formed in the south
for providing legal defence to Jews; and this, joining hands with the Jewish
group in St Petersburg, helped to create a strong Jewish section of the Cadet
party, which gave to the first Duma one of its ablest politietaH's'm VjitAver.
~
Russia was
isolated from western Europe by the Treaty of Berlin and the Triple Alliance.
Alexander III, in difficulties with his people, wisely eschewed all but
peaceful relations with his neighbours. Visits and compliments were exchanged;
and, though in 1884 a combination aimed against France was rejected, Russia and
Germany by a secret treaty engaged themselves to benevolent neutrality if
either were attacked. Russia was unable to prevent the union of Eastern Rumelia
with Bulgaria, and the enforced abdication of Prince Alexander of Bulgaria did
not restore Russian influence in that principality.
German
diplomacy brought about the one real success of Alexander’s reign. The Triple
Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy had been renewed in 1887, and, as it
enjoyed the goodwill of England, the Emperor’s thoughts naturally turned
towards France. When Berlin refused to lend (January, 1888), a whole series of
Russian loans was taken up eagerly in France (1889-91). The breach with Germany
had been widened by the attempts to Russify the Baltic provinces and by the
tariff war. When the Empress Victoria of Germany accepted Prince Alexander of
Battenberg as a future son-in-law (1888),, the Emperor hurried troops to his
frontier; and, though the match was broken off, the irritation on both sides
remained. The steps by which the Alliance between France and Russia was reached
are elsewhere recorded.
The Russian
people, at first, seemed to be almost as enthusiastic as the French. Doubtless,
very different motives contributed to this common result; but the Alliance
became an important factor in European politics, and the Russian Government
derived solid advantages from the loans raised in France. On August 24, 1898,
Count Mvravyeff, the Russian Foreign Minister, issued a circular proposing a
Peace Congress of the chief Powers of the world^-a sign that the isolation of
Russia was at an end. If the outcome of the Congress, which sat from May 18 to
July 29, was not equal to the conception, there were nevertheless tangible
results. Meanwhile Germany, aided by Austria, was extending her pplitical and
economic influence over the small Slav States of the Balkans, and heading off
the Russians from Constantinople by securing a firm hold there. The Pangerman
idea was thus in direct conflict with the Panslavist, and it assisted the
German pursuit of material advantages. In 1898, King Charles of Roumania, hi
tnself a Hohen- zollem, conceded a direct way of communication between the
German
and Turkish
capitals. In 1899 a German company obtained leave to build a railway from
Konieh to the head of the Persian Gulf. However, Montenegro remained firm in
friendship for Russia; and Servia could not afford to forgo Russian support.
Bulgaria was reconciled to Russia by the brutal murder of the patriot
Stambuloff (1895), and by the baptism of Prince Boris into the Greek Church.
Ferdinand was recognised as Prince, and received at St Petersburg. The Greeks
are no friends of the Balkan Slavs; but Nicholas II helped to mitigate the
penalties of the Graeco-Turkish War (1897); while Germany had throughout the
conflict been friendly to Turkey, whose army had been trained by German
officers. In England, the public mind was still confused by distrust of Russian
schemes of aggression and dislike of autocratic government; but Russia was no
longer thought to be so dangerous to the peace of the world. Turkish misrule in
Macedonia caused prolonged disorders and European intervention. The joint
action of Austria and Russia effected very little; Bulgaria seemed on the verge
of war with Turkey; and Russia appeared about ta resume her .poucy of liberator
in the Near East. Such a policy would have aroused wide sympathy in Russia. But
at this moment Japan claimed the settlement of very different issues, and the
resources of the disorganised empire were expended in an unpopular war,
conducted at the greatest possible disadvantage.
The foreign
policy of Russia—negative on its Western side, except in respect of the French
alliance—had been one of rapid expansion in the East. This was of a piece with
the anti-Western bias displayed at home, of which the natural, complement was a
political and religious crusade Eastwards.
The cession
of Batum and Kars by the Treaty of Berlin riveted Russia’s hold on the
Caucasus. This very populous district is a strange medley of races, languages,
and religions. The Georgians, who are Christian, are a military race, with a
nobility of their own. The Armeniians, also Christian, form the middle class;
the Tartars, who are Mussulmans, the working population. The task of Russia was
to keep order between the three races. The Armenians gave most trouble.
Scattered also over the eight neighbouring provinces of Turkey, they hoped for
an autonomous State of their own, and influenced FnglisVi public opinion in
this sense. Forty thousand Armenian emigrants carried this propaganda from
Turkey into Russia. Those who remained were exposed to the Kurdish massacres of
1894. In 1895, Russia joined in the ineffective demands of the Powers for
reforms in Turkish Armenia. In 1903, Plehve appropriated the funds of the
Armenian Church for administration by the Russian Government. A rapid development
of the petroleum wells of Baku, chiefly by foreign capital* added to the other
elements of unrest. Labour questions became acute, and the great strikes of
1903-4, organised by the Union of Baku
i864-i9oo]
I Ethiopia.—Central Asia.
343
workmen,
threw these important provinces into complete chaos. Meanwhile, the monk
Uspensky dreamed of a Russian religious hegemony extending southward through
Syria and Palestine as far as Abyssinia, Egypt, /Ethiopia, and the Sudan. In
1889 a Cossack adventurer, Ashinoflr, seized the ruined fort of Sagallo in the
French colony of Obok; he was dislodged, and was disavowed by the Russian
Government. Russian.1; and Abyssinians exchanged visits; and
Leontieff became Governor of the equatorial possessions of the Emperor Menelik
(1900). But Hanotaux’ plan of linking up the French Congo with Abyssinia in
concert with Russia, and thus heading off England from the Sudan, failed
in/1898 with Marchand. ■
The Tartars
of east and south-east Russia are by language, religion, and culture in close
touch with the Mussulmans of Central Asia. They are peaceable and loyal, but
have a strong corporate feeling. Their pious foundations were taken out of
their hands; they could only build mosques by leave of the local bishop; they
were hinderfed in the founding of schools. The nomad Kirghiz resented the
ill-regulated intrusion of Cossack settlements. The absorption of the Caucasus,
and the conquest of the major part of the Khanates of Central Asia between 1864
and 1879, brought Russia close to the frontiers of Persia, Afghanistan, and
India. As Gorchakoff pointed out to the English alarmists in 1864, Russia was
in these regions a civilising force, compelled to advance till she had
neighbours who could secure order on her frontier. Incidentally, her advaiice
enabled her to respond effectively to the hostile action of England, by
precipitating the collision between British India and Afghanistan (1878-81).
The process of expansion proceeded; and the tribes of the Atrek and Kopet Dagh,
and the Tekkes and Sariks of the Merv oasis, came under Russian rule (1881-4).
The Shah accepted the rearrangement of frontiers, and an Anglo-Russian boundary
commission was appointed to delimit the Afghan frontier. In 1885 the Penjdeh
incident nearly led to war. A railway, primarily strategic, was constructed, in
spite of extraordinary difficulties, by General Annenkoff between the Caspian
and Samarkand (1885-8); the Trans-Caspian railway was later extended from Merv
to the Afghan frontier, and from Samarkand in the direction of Kashgar; a
separate line links Orenburg with Tashkent; only 438 miles separate the Russian
railway system from the British-Indian. In 1895 a boundary commission of
Russians, Englishmen, and Afghans, delimited the Pamirs. There was a forward
school in Russia as in England; but it had few adherents, and was practically
limited to the reactionaries. The more general view was that India, if
conquered, could not be held, or its enormous coast line defended : Russia
could neither find the necessary funds, nor an efficient body of
administrators.
Very
different was the question of Persia, which, through the outlet of the main
Russian waterway, the Volga, has long been in close
relations
with Russia. In 1892, the Imperial Bank of Persi, directed from London,
advanced a loan to the Persian Government; in 1898 the Shah turned to Russia;
and in 1903 was founded the Bank of Persian loans, which was strictly a
Russo-Persian enterprise; thenorthem custom-houses' of Persia passed under
Russian control. The Russian trade with Persia is greater than the British;
and, as tht country divides geographically into northern and southern zones,
the question was settled for a time by the Convention of 1907.
The first
Governor of Trans-Caspia, General Kuropatkin, was an able administrator; the
form of rule was military, but the Mohammatan laws and customs were not
entirely disregarded, and the conquest repe- sents a real advance in
civilisation. As settled government prevailed, industry made rapid progress,
especially in Tashkent; in spite of bad railway administration, cotton is
exported, and other natural resources await development. But there were now
eighteen millions of Mussulmans within the empire, and the great revival in
the literary and political culture of Islam made itself felt in Russia. The
Mussulmans, organised by Topchibasheff, formed a party in the first Duma.
The wastes of
Siberia had long been regarded chiefly as a place of banishment. The progress
of the political struggle added yearly to the tale of exiles; and, when the
attention of western Europe was attracted, something was done to reform the
prison system. It was largely to the exiles that north-east Russia and western
Siberia owed a remarkable development of initiative and enterprise; but the material
was supplied by the rapidly increasing emigration of peasants. These were the
real pioneers of empire; there sprang up a hardy and independent race bound by
every tie to Russia, but feeling acutely the defects of the bureaucratic system
and the need of local self-government. Eastern Siberia, however, long remained
as a road to something beyond; and, as the swarming population of China was
approached, the balance of vital force and of migration told against Russia.
The Pacific had been reached at the close of the seventeenth century; the Amur
region had been secured by Count Muravye'ff (1858-60), and Vladivostok was
founded. Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867; but Saghali'n became
completely Russian in 1875. The Trans-Siberian Railway was suggested by
Muravyeff. It was begun in 1891, and opened in 1901. The enterprise was
imperial in character, and the Crown Prince cut the first sod on the far side.
The railway was strategic—the stations are far from the towns—and its course
was changed by political events. Instead of passing along the Amur, it went
southward to Harbin and Vladivostok; and from Harbin a line was carried through
Mukden to Port Arthur. Its length was to be 5542 miles, and the cost
^100,000,000. The difficulties were enormous. All the great rivers that run
northwards had to be bridged; Lake Baikal in summer was crossed with ferries;
the track is in constant danger from sudden thaws and flpods. The
distance and
the vastness of the undertaking gave ample room for peculation, and the service
has been hampered by numberless thefts. The resulting advantages are very
great. The journey to the Pacific was greatly shortened for passengers and
mails; the government orders for rails helped to develop the Russian iron
trade; the Siberian coalfields were opened up; Siberian com and farm produce
and Chinese tea were brought through at cheap freights to the markets of
Europe; most important of all was the immense impulse given to emigration.
In turning
their backs on Europe, the Russian reactionaries sought to find a substitute
for reform in imperial expansion. The theory, as expounded by Prince
tJkhtomsky, was that Russia, as really an Asiatic Power, had a mission to apply
autocratically to Asia the benefits of modem inventions. The Orthodox Church
rejoiced in the task of expanding Christendom. But the practical application of
such theories was in the hands of distant and self-seeking officials; and there
arose in the Far East a party of adventure, wielding extensive powers, and
powerfully backed at St Petersburg. It was thus that the Russian Government,
averted from the West, came into contact with an Eastern nation which sought to
assimilate Western culture. On the worst chosen ground, the Russian Government
joined issue with a modem army full of the initiative and patriotism of freedom
; and the wave started by Japan was to roll back to the confines of Austria and
Germany.
The Russian
Government was not prepared for the rapid triumph of Japan over China (1894-5);
but, with the aid of France and Germany, it upset the Treaty of Shimonoseki,
and Japan lost many of the fruits of victory. Russia lent a large sum to China
in 1895; and, by the Conventions of 1896-8, the Eastern Chinese Railway was
enabled to complete the Russian system through Manchuria to the sea. Port
Arthur, occupied by Russian warships in 1897, was leased from China in 1898.
The Boxer revolt and the European intervention which followed it were made the
pretext for the occupation of the whole of Manchuria. Evacuation was promised
(1902) but delayed; and fresh demands were submitted to the Chinese Government
(1903). Still more hazardous was the intervention of the Russian Government in
the affairs of Korea. Here was the natural outlet for overcrowded Japan. There
followed a conflict of diplomacy, which the Japanese cut short by beginning
war.
THE REFORM
MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA.
The initial reverses in the Japanese War
produced deep mortification in Russia. Public opinion was not at all bitter
against Japan. But troops went to the front with an excellent spirit; it was a
point of honour to win; there were many volunteers for the medical service.
Public bodies sent ambulances; individuals contributed to the Red Cross
Society. Yet the Russian conduct of the War was more humiliating than the
Japanese victories. The enormous difficulties of transport were vigorously
handled by Prince Khilkdff; the mischief was in the fighting line. The
systematic misrepresentations of the official telegrams only exaggerated the
effect of private news; the Viceroy Alexeyeff was deeply mistrusted, and the
few exceptions only showed up the incapacity of officers of all ranks.
Peculation was rampant; goods sent to the Red Cross were sold in Moscow; and
one of the donors, the merchant Morozoff, was severely rebuked for protesting.
The Zemstva joined in a wide organisation of war relief; even this innocent
form of cooperation excited the wrath of Plehve. He still relied on the system
of suspicion; of the troops forwarded an excessive proportion consisted of Jews,
Poles, and over-aged reservists. On July 28, 1904, he was blown to pieces near
the Warsaw Station at St Petersburg by the revolutionary Sazdnoff. The sinking
of the Petropavlovslc outside Port Arthur and the disastrous battle of Liaoyang
followed close on his death.
For more than
a month Plehve’s place remained unfilled. The birth of a Crown Prince was
celebrated by an edict finally abolishing corporal punishment. On September 8
Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky Was appointed. He was amiable, distinguished, and enlightened,
and his govemor- generalship in Vilna had been marked by wisdom and clemency;
he received a number of journalists, and frankly asked for the confidence of
the public. This unexpected appeal was welcomed by addresses from Zemstva, town
councils, and other public bodies. There was an epoch of enthusiasm and trust.
The Liberal weekly, Right, and even the Novoe Vremya, boldly asked for Press
freedom and the civil liberties (November 2). The censorship practically
stopped working. Many of Plehve’s exiles were brought back. In October, some of
the Liberators
conferred in
Paris with Poles and with Socialist Revolutionaries, to establish, if possible,
a common platform.
The
Liberators prepared for action. A great opportunity now offered. After some
discussion between Shipoff and Prince Mirsky, it was agreed that a political
conference open to all Zemstvo members should meet without official
recognition. This conference was held in St Petersburg on November 19-22; and
Shipoff privately reported its proceedings to Prince Mirsky, who informed the
Emperor.
Ten “ points
” were submitted; an eleventh was added later. Eminent reformers from all the
Zemstva were present, and the speeches were marked by unanimity and moderation.
The conference conceived that its task was to avert a revolution by inducing
the Government to grant reforms. The “eleven points'” included inviolability of
person and dwelling; freedom of conscience, of speech, of the Press, of
meeting, and of association; equal civil rights for all Russian citizens
(notably for the peasants); the abolition of the class basis in local
government, a wider Zemstvo franchise, and smaller territorial units. The last
point led to some disagreement; all wished to petition for some kind of elected
national assembly; sixty, led by the Liberators, voted that it should have
legislative functions, and thirty-eight, led by Shipoff, that it should only be
consultative; but almost all agreed that it should fix the budget and control
the actions of administrative officials. Other requests were for the abolition
of exceptional laws, an amnesty for political prisoners, and freedom of public
instruction. Prince Mirsky would not receive any deputation; and the
resolutions were delivered to him by Shipoff in the form of a letter.
The eleven
points were supported with enthusiasm by the educated opinion of the country.
Many Zemstva and some town councils hastened to declare themselves. In some
places discussion was prevented, but telegrams and addresses continued to come
in, all advocating reform.
About the
time of the Zemstvo conference appeared two pronouncedly radical newspapers,
Our Life (November 14) and the Son of the Fatherland (November 30), both
directed by Liberators. Their unmeasured criticism revived the activity of the
censorship, which not only stopped the Son of the Fatherland for three months,
but gave two warnings to the Pravo. Circulars forbade any articles on the
Zemstvo conference or the question of a national assembly, and unlicensed news
of addresses from public bodies (November 14-December 12). Nothing was to be
printed on suggested changes in the system of government (December 14). The
newspapers continued to speak out, and more punishments followed.
The public
replied with a series of banquets and meetings, mostly organised by the
Liberators for the fortieth anniversary of the law Courts of Alexander II. The
law only recognised the right of public meeting for members of a given
profession, and that only under close
restrictions.
On December 8, at a banquet of the Union of Writers in St Petersburg, 600
persons signed a claim for a constitution. In Moscow, on December 4, a banquet
of lawyers, professors, and journalists accepted the Zemstvo programme with
some additions. The same day, 400 St Petersburg lawyers marched down the
streets and passed a resolution of protest in the Town Hall. From December 2
to 18 similar meetings and banquets in the provinces demanded free law Courts,
as promised forty years before. Other professions followed the example of the
lawyers. The engineers met in St Petersburg (December 18) and signed a
programme, ostensibly of reforms required for the material development of the
country, but really of far more general scope. If each profession met
separately to adopt a political programme common to all, the unanimity of the
public would be strikingly displayed; it was the acute mind of Milyukdff which
saw most clearly the strength of this weapon. On a programme drafted by
Vernadsky was organised the Academic Union of professors. On December 31 was
held a banquet of doctors. The Government, fearing to dissolve the banquets by
force, punished the keepers of the respective restaurants. This only drove the
demonstrations into the streets. In St Petersburg (December 11) and in Moscow
(December 19) students and schoolboys were attacked by the police; Moscow
University was closed.
The reverses
in the War continued. General Kuropatkin, after announcing an advance, had to
retreat in disorder. The fleet was crippled. Reinforcements from the Baltic fired
in panic on the Hull and Grimsby fishermen (October 22), and there was an
anxious delay before compensation was paid. In Russia the raising of recruits
and the sending off of reservists sometimes led to serious disorders. Before
the surrender of Port Arthur (January 15, 1905), the Emperor did something to
come to terms with public opinion. He summoned his chief advisers; the Grand
Dukes and Pobyedondstseff opposed concessions; Witte hesitated, and his
hesitation was reflected in the sovereign’s pronouncements of December 25-7.
The edict of December 25 foreshadowed several reforms. The peasant legislation
was to be harmonised with the other laws; official arbitrariness was to be
punished; the law Courts were to be more independent; and the exceptional ordinances
were to be revised. The Zemstva and town councils were to have a wider
franchise, and less restricted functions; a smaller territorial unit was to be
introduced into the system. Religious toleration and the rights of aliens were
to be extended; the Press laws were to be regularised; and some factory
legislation was promised. Each Minister concerned was to draft the suggested
reforms, but there was no talk of a national assembly.
The edict was
vague in wording and confused in order; it was followed, two days later, by an
official communication condemning the reformers as instigators of riots, and
declaring the claims of the public meetings to be inadmissible in view of the
unchangeable principles
1904-6]
349
sanctioned by
the fundamental laws of the empire. Meetings would be forbidden, and officials
who took part in them would be subjected to special punishment. The Zemstva
were not to touch questions outside their competence ; the Press was ordered to
restore calm. Here, as in each later pronouncement, the sovereign claimed to be
taking an initiative his own, without any reference to public opinion. More
newspapers suffered from the censorship. Liberal Zemstvo men were roughly
handled in the streets of Tamboff. On January 19, at a religious ceremony in St
Petersburg, a shot from a saluting battery threatened danger to the life of the
Emperor, who left the capital, not to return for more than a year.
At this
point, the workmen entered into the movement. Under the influence of
Zub&toff, there had sprung up in St Petersburg an Association of factory
workers, privileged by the police and directed by the priest Gapdn. It was
allowed to work for a reform of the factory laws and to collect funds. In the
course of 1904 Gapdn had created eleven district branches, whose electors and
delegates all rendered him implicit obedience. At the great Putiloff factory
the dismissal of two workmen produced a strike of 13,200 persons. A deputation,
headed by Gapdn, demanded an eight hours’ day, higher pay, better sanitary
conditions, and the right of election to arbitration committees. These demands
were refused by the employers as ruinous; and, without any disorder, Gapdn’s
whole organisation was brought into play. Other large factories struck work; a
strike committee was elected; and relief committees were established at each
branch.
As all
further negotiations with the employers failed, it was decided that Gapdn,
followed by all the strikers with their wives and children, should present a
petition to the Emperor. This petition included not only the economic demands
of the workmen but the political demands of the professional classes. Gapdn’s
followers simply meant to make an appeal to their sovereign. Gapdn himself
insisted that no arms should be carried, but there is some reason to think that
he contemplated “rescuing the Tsar” from his counsellors. Troops barred each
approach from the factories to the city; the bands of workmen, some of which
marched with ikons and church music, were mostly stopped in the suburbs, where
in several cases the troops fired on them. Gapdn fell unwounded under a corpse
at the Narva gate, but many passed the cordons in small groups and walked up
the Nevsky Prospekt; they were driven back by dragoons from the Winter Palace;
there was firing on the Nevsky; and in the Alexander Garden a volley from the
troops brought down some of the urchins who had climbed the trees; later, the
crowd was again fired upon near the Moika canal. The demonstrators offered
practically no resistance, except for the erection of some barricades in the
Basil Island (January 22). Gapdn, after shaving his beard, attended a meeting
of protest in the evening, and then escaped over the
350
Trepoff. Protests, strikes, and murders. [1905-6
frontier; he
joined hands with the revolutionaries, and gambled, nominally for the success
of the cause, at Monte Carlo. Later, he returned to enter into relations with
Count Witte’s Government, and was killed by the revolutionaries as a traitor in
1906.
The Government
went its own way. Prince Mirsky, who had lost all influence, gave way to
Bulygin, appointed to draft the promised reforms. General Trepoff became
Governor-General of St Petersburg, with extraordinary powers, and later
Assistant Minister of the Interior, with an independent control of the police
of the empire. Trepoff was honest and fearless; he had sympathies with the
workmen and with the Zemstva; but he was at home only in the routine of
repression. He arranged a “deputation” of carefully selected workmen to ask the
Emperor’s pardon for the great procession. With Kokovtseff, he issued an appeal
to the working class to stand by the Government. Four hundred employers, when
consulted by Kokovtseff, would not make personal concessions to save the
Government, and asked for general reforms (February 4-7, 1905). Two hundred
Moscow manufad;urers claimed that industrial questions could not be settled
without civil rights for all Russian subjects, including the workmen.
Trepoff
expelled many workmen from the capital* and these took home to the provinces
exaggerated accounts of the events of January 22. The Social Democrats, who had
done no more than join in the procession, now claimed the initiative in a huge
social movement. Big factories and printing presses struck work in Moscow.
Strikes followed in Kovno, Riga, Sar&toff', Vilna, Revel, and Mohileff.
Thirteen of the chief railway lines in European Russia stopped work; the
Government put nearly all railways under martial law, and allowed the railway
officials to arrest refractory employees. One after another, the Universities
closed their own doors. The Minister of Public Instruction was for coercion;
but the Ministers as a body decided to consult the Councils of the
Universities. Most of these declared against a renewal of studies, and the
Ministers decided not to reopen the Universities till September 14. Meanwhile,
there began a series of innumerable murders of police officers, especially in
the Jewish Pale. Isolated policemen were shot down in the dark, and the criminals
nearly always escaped. On February 17 all else was thrown into the shade by the
murder of the Grand Duke Sergius in the Kremlin at Moscow. The criminal,
Kal&yeff, was a thorough enthusiast, but the crime was organised by the
Socialist Revolutionaries, under the inspiration of the police agent Azeff. The
people in general showed no regret for one who as Governor-General of Moscow
had persecuted all classes alike. Meanwhile, in January and February, in St
Petersburg, Moscow, and other large towns, students or schoolboys were attacked
by hooligans in the streets; priests sometimes showed their sympathy for these
attacks, and there were already signs of instigation by the police. In the
Caucasus, where murders of policemen were especially frequent,
something
like open war broke out between Mussulmans and Armenians, and the authorities
looked on. Things were nearly as bad in the Jewish provinces. In Poland, the
National Democrats, while seeking their advantage in the general confusion, had
counselled calmness and organisation, but the socialists came into conflict
with the police. Strikes spread on so vast a scale that they quickly alienated
the business classes. The National Democrats issued a direct condemnation of
all action that might lead to an armed rising. Their own policy was much more
effective; they persuaded the peasants to refuse to do their business at the
pansh offices in the Russian language; in two-thirds of these offices the
Russian tongue de facto disappeared. In Poland, as in the Caucasus, the
Government replied by introducing martial law. But the general disorder was too
serious to admit of delay, and Yermoloff, Minister of Agriculture, a persistent
friend of reform from above, persuaded the Emperor to give shape to the
promises of December, and to summon a national assembly.
On March 3 an
imperial manifesto maintained the ancient principles of government, and
appealed to all Russian men to remember their debt of service (a phrase which
was later twisted into a text by the reactionary Union of the Russian People).
But a rescript of the same date to Bulygin declared the sovereign’s intention
of “ henceforth, with God’s help, summoning the worthiest persons elected by
the population to share in the drafting and discussing of legislative proposals.”
The Emperor did not blind himself to the difficulty of combining this
transformation with the necessary preservation of the “immutable fundamental
laws,” and, following an old precedent, in a separate edict he commanded the
Ministers to discuss all suggestions sent in by public bodies or even by
private persons. The Government hastened to publish the first results of its
own work. Ordinary legislation was more precisely distinguished from imperial
ordinances (June 19). To leave the Orthodox Church ceased to be a criminal
offence, and religious teaching was to be given according to the confession and
in the language of the given locality (April 30). In the western provinces
aliens were allowed to acquire land; the gentry received the right of electing
assemblies; and Polish and Lithuanian were licensed in private Schools (May
14). Some limitations were set to the most vexatious of the ordinances
affecting the Jews (June 29). The Ministry of Agriculture and Imperial Domains
was replaced by a more competent organ of administration (May 19), and several
sums due from the peasants to the Treasury were remitted (April 30). The right
of four Ministers acting conjointly to stop newspapers was abolished, but the
Minister of the Interior could take this action, subject to its confirmation
later by the Senate (June 5). Trials of state criminals were put on a more
regular basis (June 29). At the same time the Grand Duke Nicholas was put at
the head of a newly formed Committee of Imperial Defence, with
more than the
full rights of a Minister (June 21). The best of these measures were no more
than palliatives, and all of them came too late. Much more direct was the
effect of the invitation to the public to send in memorials. It was practically
an invitation for parties to form and draw up their programmes. .
The
initiative lay at present with the Zemstvo men, and more particularly with
those of them who were also Liberators. This section met separately in March
and declared formally for universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage. The
Liberals, as we may henceforth call them, decided to ask for elective
representation on the Commission which was to shape the national assembly. They
pronounced for two Chambers. They also adopted almost unanimously the principle
of compulsory expropriation, with compensation, and the increasing of the
peasant holdings. This they did, because they feared the popularity of the
socialist parties, and because they did not feel strong enough to carry the
ramparts of the bureaucracy without the support of great masses of the
population. It was a policy of aggression; it alienated Shipdff and the
Moderates; it split the unity of the national movement; and it complicated the
simple political issue with vast social questions.
In April the
Liberals held a larger Congress, to which some Zemstva declined to send
delegates. It pronounced for a legislative, not a consultative, parliament,
and ratified all the decisions of the Congress of February; it also refused to
take part in the local committees of the Government for the suppression of
agrarian riots. Political discussion was going on all over the country. The
organising committee of the Zemstvo Liberals invited town councillors to its
next congress; Shipdff and the Moderates arranged a meeting of their own (June
4).
The Zemstvo
Liberals were being driven forward by the professional class, which was
profoundly radical, and had very few capable politicians. This class rapidly
developed the idea suggested by the banquets of.1904. From each profession was
organised a union, and each union had a similar programme, of a content almost
purely political. The union of Engineers was the most energetic and one of the
most radical. The Academic union was more moderate. Clerks, primary school
teachers, doctors, lawyers, Jews, chemists, writers, women, teachers in
secondary schools, and railway employees, all formed unions in April or in May;
and the same months witnessed a series of meetings in which the several unions
took as their watchword a Constituent Assembly, with equal rights for all
religions and nationalities and for both sexes. Milyukdff desired to make the
unions a school from which could be developed a more compact Liberal party, as
opposed to the revolutionaries; while he held back the unions, he used them to
press on the Zemstvo LiberaJs, with whom he had from the first been in the
closest touch. In his new party the Zemstvo men would supply the leaders and
the unions the weight of numbers. He brought to this task singular versatility
1905]
The Union of Unions.—Agrarian riots. 353
and tactical
resource, and gradually established a strong personal authority.
In May all
the unions were gathered together in a Union of Unions, an immense body which
on general questions could claim to express the opinions of a large section of
the Russian people. Fourteen unions sent delegates to the first Congress, which
met in Moscow on May 21; it arranged for bi-monthly meetings, and appointed a
committee to promote joint action. The sum contributed by each union was trifling
(£2.10s.); but the scheme at least realised on a huge scale the forbidden right
of association, and there was no doubt as to the democratic character of its
programme. Milyukoff became its President.
The Congress
of Professors in April adopted MilyukofTs definition— “constitutional
democratic principles”—and claimed self-government for the Universities. The
Academy of Sciences, the highest learned body in the country, declared for
immediate freedom of the Press. On April 7 a meeting of printers demanded an
eight hours’ day. The warnings of the censorship ceased almost entirely. The
Railway union marked the junction of the professional class and the working
class, for it included both. Two thousand five hundred Moscow workmen
petitioned Kokdvt- sefF for the rights of association and striking, and for
industrial Courts with equal representation of employers and employed. The
Minister’s answers were not hostile. The Social Democrats made many converts;
strikes took place all over Russia, and processions with red flags sometimes
ended in conflicts with the police. In Poland there was during two months an
epidemic of strikes, extending to the railways; the Polish socialists, whilst
abandoning the demand for independence, claimed a special Constituent Assembly
for Poland; meanwhile, the schoolboys under the direction of the National
Democrats refused to remain in schools where they were taught in Russian. The
Law of June 19 allowed teaching in Polish in private schools; but such scholars
were still denied access to public posts. For all that, these schools were
organised on a vast scale, and a national Society (the “Mother of Schools”),
whose collecting-boxes stood everywhere, practically took the education of the
country into its own hands. In the Caucasus there was still chaos, and the
tolerant Count Vorontzoff-Dashkoff was appointed Viceroy.
Still more
threatening were the growing disorders among the Russian peasantry. They began
in the impoverished provinces of Orel and Kursk (February 23) and became more
organised when they spread to Chemigoff. The solidarity of the commune,
artificially preserved by the reactionaries, could in a time of excitement be
turned to the profit of revolution. A village would move as one man; it would
call in other villages, and the whole mass would present itself at midnight
before the manor-house, cut down the timber, wreck the gardens, pillage the
barns, and carry oft’ the plunder in carts brought for the purpose. Sometimes
the cattle were taken; less often the house
354
Tsushima. Deputation to the Tsar.
[l905
itself was
wrecked; but violence to persons was very exceptional. The example of the
south-centre was followed in Vitebsk, Lublin, and Bessarabia, and still more
extensively in the Caucasus. Disorder spread to the provinces of Podolia,
Vordnezh, and Nizhny Novgorod. Petitions streamed in from the peasants asking
for seven acres per head, relief of taxation, the remission of the remaining
redemption dues, freedom to rent land or to leave the commune, the liberation of
agrarian rioters, the grant of state lands to those who tilled them, partial
expropriation of landowners with compensation by the State, a legal limit to
the extent of estates, freedom from special class laws, freedom of instruction,
and especially the abolition of the Land Captains. Most of these claims
reflected the influence of the Socialist Revolutionaries, and were adopted,
despite the Land Captains, at the ordinary communal meetings. The peasant’s
idea was that the projected National Assembly was summoned chiefly in order to
give him land; and curious compromises, on the basis of joint occupation, were
made between landlords and peasants for the interim period.
Meanwhile the
great battle of Mukden had ended in a confused retreat (March 23); and now the
Baltic fleet was destroyed in the battle of Tsushima (May 27-8). This was a
crowning catastrophe; and the censorship, completely disorganised, could not
prevent its importance from being immediately realised. The official world was
as if bewildered; the local authorities lost their heads; the word bureaucrat
became the current term of abuse.
On the news
of Tsushima, the Moderates and Liberals of the Zemstva reunited in a coa!';ion
congress held in Moscow (June 6). Marshals of the gentry and members of the town
councils also attended. The congress adopted a direct address to the sovereign;
it spoke of the criminal negligence and abuses of his counsellors, and urged
the speedy summons of representatives of the whole empire. “Do not delay,
Sire”; it ended, “in the terrible hour of the nation’s trial, great is your
responsibility before God and Russia.” The Emperor received the deputation on
June 19; the spokesman was Prince Sergius Trubetskdy, who, like ShipdfF, had
won the respect of all parties and classes. In simple language, he exposed the
dangers which threatened society in general; few of the Emperor’s counsellors
could enlighten him as to the real state of things; it was all-important that
the sovereign should be put in full touch with his people. The Emperor listened
attentively, and returned the most gracious answer. “Dismiss your doubts,”^he
said; “the will of the Tsar to summon national representatives is
unchangeable”; he asked his hearers to invite the cooperation of all in the
task of reform. His words were published, and their effect was immense; old men
shed tears that they had lived to see this day. But the Rua was stopped for a
month for its bold comments, and two other papers suffered.
Meanwhile,
the reported details of the scheme for a National Assembly quite failed to
satisfy progressive opinion. The Union of Unions, meeting in congress (June
6-8), demanded a Constituent Assembly, to finish the war and change the system
of government. On the initiative of the engineers, several of whom had been
arrested, a form was drawn up by which members of each implicated union
declared their membership and invited arrest. The arrested were set free
without trial. The Union of Unions held a third Congress in St Petersburg and
in Finland on June 14-16. The advanced radicals carried a resolution condemning
the scheme of a Duma before it was published, and urging that the elections
should be boycotted. Milyukoff was now losing control: he turned for
cooperation to the Zemstvo Liberals (July 24); the chief obstacle was a
resolution of the Union of Unions covertly sanctioning terrorism. Not long
afterwards, he and certain of his colleagues were arrested. He was soon set
free; but his connexion with the Union of Unions was practically at an end; on
the other hand, his task of forming a Liberal party in Russia was nearly
accomplished.
A Peasants’
union had joined the Union of Unions. It became an imposing reality when some
of the more clear-headed of the Socialist Revolutionaries, dropping out of
their propaganda all questions as to the form of government, circulated the
enticing formula: “ all the land for those that labour.” Villages began to
adopt this programme wholesale. Revolutionary propagandists had long been
active in the navy; when the Black Sea fleet visited Odessa for its summer
manoeuvres, a petition for better food was preferred on the Prince Potemkin;
the ringleader, Matyushenko, was at once shot down, and the sailors in revenge
killed most of their officers and took control of the ship. Admiral Kruger did
not dare to engage the mutineers, and sailed away with the other ships. The
Potemkin terrorised Odessa, where the sailors gave Matyushenko a public
funeral; but, in the absence of any further plan, they interned the ship in
Roumania and later returned on a promise of pardon.
On
June 15, members of various town councils had decided to create an organising
committee similar to that of the Zemstvo Liberals. On the 28th, a Congress of
86 town councils met which unanimously condemned the published outlines of the
government scheme for a Duma, and approved a draft of the Zemstvo Liberals,
which included women’s juflrage. Zemstvo men and town councillors now planned a
great joint Congress for July 19 in Moscow. Trepoff ordered the organising committee
to dissolve, and threatened to use force if the Congress met. The committee
informed the Government that it had repeated its invitations, and 235 persons
attended the Congress. The police entered the place of meeting and bade the
assembly disperse; the President, Count Heyden, and the Chairman of the
committee, Golovnin, refused, referring to the Emperor’s appeal for
cooperation; and the police withdrew. The Congress gave its preliminary
approval to a draft of a constitution ob.
xhi, 23—2
made by
Muromtseff, Kokoshkin, and Shchepkin. A sort of Grand Remonstrance was also
drawn up, enumerating the failures of Ministers to realise declared intentions
of the sovereign, and a shorter address to the people was adopted and signed by
the majority. It was couched in loyal terms, and discountenanced all violence ;
but it invited the people to meet as the Congress had done, without regarding
police prohibitions. Golovnin presented the resolutions in person to General
Trepoff; but the Government took no action, except to punish Moderate and
Liberal papers for their reports of the proceedings.
A month
later, on August 19, at last appeared the Act establishing an imperial Duma.
The Duma was expressly declared to be consultative, and all alterations in the
Duma Law were to be the exclusive business of the sovereign. For all electors
there were two stages of election, and for most three or even four. Each
village assembly sent men to the canton; the canton chose delegates; the
delegates chose electors. The lesser gentry chose delegates, and these in
conjunction with the greater gentry chose electors. The holding in land which
entitled to a direct vote for the electors ranged in different provinces,
according to value, from 250 acres to 2000; there was a similar franchise for
other property and for commercial undertakings. Persons without property in
country districts (doctors, schoolmasters, etc.) were eixcluded altogether. In
the towns there was a high lodger franchise (a monthly rent equivalent to
£10-11); the factory workmen as a class were entirely left out. Twenty-seven
towns had their own members. The rest of the country elected by provinces:
first, a peasant was chosen from each province, and then all the electors
united to choose members for all the remaining seats. Thus a majority of one in
a province could carry all the seats but one for that province: this was, in
fact, a premium on quick changes in public opinion, and a temptation to
manipulation by the local officials. Each class could only choose delegates
from its own members; hence the large number of peasants in the Duma. No man
could be elected except for his own district, and thus many capable men were
debarred from election. The control of the lower peasant elections was put in
the hands of the Land Captains; but there was a right of appeal. Local
electoral committees controlled the higher elections, and the Senate was the
supreme arbiter.
The Duma thus
elected was in general to sit in at least four sections; later events led to
the dropping of this regulation. It was to choose its own presidents, a
concession given late in the day at the instance of General Trdpoff. Its
members were inviolable, unless charged at law with criminal offences; they
received £1 per day, and took a solemn vow to the Emperor and Autocrat. The
Duma appointed its own clerks and ushers, but not • its police. It could
discuss the public part of the budget, alienation of state property, and the
railway administration ; it Could interpellate the Ministers on the conduct of
the
officials; it
could discuss any Bills drawn up by the Ministers. It could itself initiate
laws; but here the procedure was cumbrous in the extreme. No action could be
taken for a month, after which the Minister returned the Duma’s Bill with his
criticisms. In case of disagreement with him, the Duma required a two-thirds
majority to press the Bill further. The Bill then passed to the already
existing Council of State, a nominated and purely bureaucratic body. If the
Duma disagreed with the Council of State, a joint committee of both sat under
the presidency of the latter. The last step was the assent of the sovereign. In
case of delays on the part of the Duma, its consent could be dispensed with
altogether. The Press was admitted, except to sittings specially closed by the
President or a Minister. The Peace of Portsmouth followed on August 29.
The public
was eagerly discussing whether to take part in the Duma. The Union of Unions
was sharply divided; some argued for a general political strike. But the
Liberators were all against boycott, and Muromtseff set to work to draw up an
order of procedure inside the Duma on the basis of the new Law. Even the more
moderate of the Zemstva and town councils asked for the immediate grant of the
civil freedoms as necessary for the conduct of the elections. Another Zemstvo
Congress, including Poles, Cossacks, Caucasians, and Siberians, met without
hindrance on September 25. It decided to elect to the Duma, in order to make it
legislative and secure universal suffrage. The Congress voted almost unanimously
for compulsory expropriation of land, with compensation to private landholders.
This was the last great Congress. With the Zemstvo Liberals, the influence of
Milyukoff had become more and more paramount. They had broken with the moderate
minority and had turned the Zemstvo into a party weapon. It remained to constitute
the new Constitutional Democratic party; and this was fixed for October 25.
By the Edict
of September 9, the university professors were to choose their own Rectors and
Deans of Faculties, and to be responsible for the internal order of their
respective institutions; the inspectors of discipline were now subordinated to
the elected Rectors. The students set about organising university meetings for
the general public. Their leaders were revolutionaries, and their guests were
of the most motley character; sometimes they numbered several thousands;
violent speeches were in a few cases followed by damage to the arms and
portrait of the Emperor; a severe rebuke from the elected Rector of Moscow,
Prince Sergius Trubetskdy, passed unheeded; and soon afterwards he died
suddenly, while pleading at the Ministry of Public Instruction for a more
general reform. University Councils pressed the Government to license public
meetings outside. On October 25 a decree accorded this right with many
reservations; notice had to be given some days in advance; the programme and
names of speakers had to be submitted;
and in case
of any deviation, the meeting could be closed with heavy punishments. On
October 28 the police, after a veiy clear warning, temporarily seized certain
university buildings. While the Commission of Kobeko sat revising the press
laws, the censorship was unusually severe.
In the
centre, in the south, and especially in the Baltic provinces, peasants burnt
down manor-houses, escorted the landlords to the railway, and appropriated
land. The more moderate confined themselves to very orderly meetings ; their
language was plain, and their demands were radical; but it was clear that they
were breaking loose from the propagandists and finding their own natural
leaders. With very few exceptions, all were profoundly loyal to the monarchical
principle; they quite understood that the Duma meant access to the sovereign,
past the Land Captains. On August 16 the Peasants’ union held its first
Congress in Moscow; delegates came from twenty-three provinces; it joined the
Union of Unions, but exercised a sobering and restraining influence, notably on
its own propagandist organisers; however, the Radical land programme was
adopted in its sharpest definition and was for a long time to complicate the
transition to constitutional government; the peasantry of whole provinces held
Congresses reminiscent of the Federations of the French Revolution.
Much closer
was the bond between the professional class and the workmen. The mass meetings
in the Universities were under the direction of socialists, who in Kieff and
Odessa boldly demanded a democratic republic. In October the strike movement
rapidly spread. On October 20 it was wrongly reported that the Congress of the
Railway union had been arrested in Moscow; at once the railway men in Moscow
struck work for the civil freedoms and a fall amnesty; the example was followed
by nearly every railway in the empire. Factories were immobilised and the
Government was paralysed. Prince Khilkdff and Count Witte were informed that
the strikers would only stop for an immediate grant of the civil freedoms, a
Constituent Assembly, and universal suffrage. On the 27th, Trepoff ordered the
troops not to spare their cartridges; the same day, all the unions joined the
strike; they sent men to stop all work in banks, business offices, law Courts,
schools, and even in the Senate. Chemists, doctors, and magistrates refused to
work; the newspapers did not appear; the electric light was cut off and there
were fears for the water supply; silence reigned in the streets and the
inhabitants prepared themselves to stand siege against famine. The workmen now
put forward purely political demands, and began to organise on a permanent
basis. A Council of Workmen Delegates from the different factories met on
October 27 and secured the obedience not only of its own class but of the
professions; it ordered employers to close their works under threat of wrecking
(October 30); it bade the workmen cease all payments for food or lodging while
the strike lasted, and threatened any purveyors
who might
protest. In the midst of this turmoil, the new Liberal party, the
Constitutional Democrats (a name soon shortened to “Cadets”), was holding its
first meeting in Moscow. Thoroughly frightened, the Government gave way.
The
Emperor was ready to dismiss his trusted but unpopular Ministers,
Pobyedonostseff, Trepoff, and others. He was not ready to accept as their
successors men who were unknown to him and represented the demands of the
people. He had, therefore, no alternative but to turn to the opposi on inside
the bureaucracy, that is, to Count Witte, whose nominal post of President of
the Ministers was now made that of a Premier with a Cabinet. Witte framed the
Manifesto of October 30 and the accompanying government communication. The
Manifesto upheld the integrity of the empire and the principle of cooperation
between sovereign and people; in the clearest terms it promised freedom of
conscience, speech, meeting, and association, and the widest possible extension
of the franchise. The Duma was made frankly legislative; that is, no law was to
be made without its consent; its control over the acts of officials was to be
made effective. The communication frankly traced the exist .g confusion to the
contrast between the system of government and the aspirations of the thinking
public; while rejecting the hysterical demands of extreme groups, it assumed
that the majority of Russian subjects were not unreasonable; all the civil
freedoms were essential and should be conceded in practice at once; the Council
of State should be recruited with elected members; repression should not be
applied to acts which clearly did not threaten society or the State. .
Officials and
police felt themselves abandoned by the new edict. The murders of policemen
were past reckoning. In the summer, the reactionaries had begun to unite to
defend their vested interests under the name of “ Genuine Russians.” They were
urged forward by the Moscow Gazette and formed provincial branches, weak in
numbers but strong in the support of the police, who had close contact with the
casual criminal class. In very many cities and towns the educated radicals were
attacked by mobs under the eyes of the police. In Kieff and Odessa, where
revolutionary Jews had been prominent, it was still worse. Here, on the
destruction of the Emperor’s insignia, the responsibility for which has never
been fixed, crowds dispersed the demonstrators, fell upon the Jews, and
plundered their shops wholesale for three days; brutal murders were committed;
official complicity in these outrages was hardly disguised; plunderers and
soldiers, even before the pogroms began, alleged the permission of the Emperor
and assigned a limit of three days, which was practically always adhered to; in
every case troops and police were able to stop the pogroms without fighting as
soon as they chose. All these facts were established by the Government through
investigations on the spot; telegrams from General Trepoff suggested his
connivance.
360
In St
Petersburg, the workmen almost seemed to be masters of the .situation. The
Council of Workmen Delegates now represented 74 factories and four trade
unions; it controlled the Union of Unions, whose saner members had followed
Milyukoff into the Cadet party. The Council stopped the general strike at
midday on November 1, “to arm for the final struggle for a Constituent Assembly
and a democratic republic.” It was punctually obeyed all over Russia.
The Cadets
feared revolution; while daiming a Constituent Assembly, they were sobered by
the Manifesto. Shipdfl’’s Moderates received it with genuine gratitude, and
united under the name of Octobrists. Before the issue of the Manifesto, Witte
had asked Shipdff to help in forming a Cabinet, reserving only the more
specialist posts. Shipdff was ready; but he saw that a Reform Minister must
carry the public as a whole; and he insisted that the Cadets should be represented.
Count Witte was prepared to invite not only Count Heyden but Muromtseff and
Petrunkevich. He invited the Cadets to name three to confer with him; but they
did not send their best men, and their spokesman demanded a Constituent
Assembly. Witte could not imperil the Emperor’s autocracy; and these
negotiations came to nothing, Witte now limited himself to the Moderates; but
he had meanwhile secured as Minister of the Interior the staunch reactionary P.
Dumovd. Shipdff therefore withdrew from the combination, and separate
negotiations with his friends, Prince Eugene Trubetskdy and Guchkdff, also
broke down by reason of the general distrust of Witte. Of the reformers only
Prince Urusoff accepted office, and the rest of the Cabinet was chiefly formed of
officials.
In Finland,
four years of passive resistance had culminated in an almost unanimous strike,
lasting for eight days. A kind of national militia, the Red Guard, was
organised; and the strike was conducted with perfect order. A manifesto was
issued which promised the restoration of the old Finnish liberties and . a
reform of the Diet on the basis of universal suffrage (November 17), and the
strike ceased at once. A Diet was electedj the first since 1899, and met in
December; it sat for three months, and passed a Bill reforming its own
constitution and another conceding universal franchise for men and women and
the principle of proportional representation. These Bills were confirmed by the
sovereign. In Poland, on November 5, a procession of 200,000 persons, with
national flags and national songs, marched through the streets of Warsaw; and
at a great meeting on the next day the National Democrats put forward the
demand for autonomy. An orderly: congress of peasants from 1200 communes
repeated their claims. To a deputation of Poles Witte returned a contemptuous
answer, and on November 10 all Poland was placed under martial law. The Polish
socialists still kept up their agitation; and strikes and murders continued. On
November 8, the sailors at Cronstadt mutinied. This was the result of
revolutionary
propaganda;
but the mutineers had no plan at all; they wrecked some houses, but were
quickly brought to order, and the ringleaders were handed over to a
Court-martial.
Disregarding
some overtures from Count Witte, the workmen went on with their organisations.
The Council of Workmen Delegates had a capable leader in Khrustalyeff, a lawyer
of peasant origin. On November 11 the Council decreed that no one should work
more than eight hours a day. Many employers closed their factories, and the
attempt failed. The Council now declared a second general strike as a protest
against the punishment of the mutinous sailors and against martial law in
Poland. This strike had little support from the public; and on November 20 the
Council stopped it, “ to save the strength of the workmen for a decided
engagement.” The Council came to be nicknamed the “ working men’s Government”;
and people asked whether Witte would arrest Khrustalyeff or Khrustalyeff arrest
Witte. The Union of Unions was by this time the satellite of the Council; it
had lost all authority and common sense, and, by drowning the public in floods
of words, it helped to bring on the inevitable reaction.
On October
81, Witte summoned the chief editors, asked for their cooperation, and promised
them a press law. The censorship opened all subjects to public discussion and
remitted many punishments. At this time anything could be printed. Social
Democrat newspapers appeared openly, forbidden books were published, and political
caricature was free. The result was a deluge of literature, violent attacks on
the bourgeoisie, and an atmosphere of hysteria and unbridled licence; picture
postcards plainly recommended political assassination. The Government hurried
on the new Law, which was issued on December 7. The programme of any newspaper,
if not criminal or immoral, was to be sanctioned; deviations from it could be
prosecuted at law and heavily punished ; incitement to strikes or mutinies and
the circulation of false or disastrous news were declared criminal offences ;
books remained under the former regime.
Witte also
secured material relief for the peasants. By the Manifesto and decrees 'of
November 16 the redemption dues, the heaviest burden of the peasantry, were
reduced by one-half for 1906 and then remitted altogether; and loans for the
purchase of land were issued on better terms. But there was famine in the
grain-producing provinces, and the agrarian riots spread everywhere; in some
districts no estate remained untouched. Revolutionaries announced that the Duma
was to give all the land to the peasants. The movement soon passed beyond their
control. Huge crowds gathered openly, and the police were powerless; there was
brutal maiming of cattle; violence to person remained rare. The Peasants’ union
tended to diminish the excesses. In Krolevetz, Sumy, and Pokzovskoe, officials
were expelled and self-government attempted. In the Baltic provinces, the
Lettish workmen and labourers gathered in thousands, besieged and stormed the
castles of the German
landlords,
engaged the local troops, overthrew the local authorities, held all the open
country, and declared a republic.
Even the
troops began to waver in their allegiance. Some seized the Siberian railway and
hurried homewards. The disorders of Cronstadt were repeated at Vladivostok. At
Sevastopol revolutionary sailors seized a ship and gave battle under Lieutenant
Schmidt. Soldiers mutinied at Kieff, Voronezh, Bobruisk, Ekaterinodir,
Novorossiisk and Moscow. Their usual demands were for better pay, food, and
general treatment; but strangely mingled with these claims were undigested
formulae of the propagandists.
On November
19, the last Zemstvo Congress met in Moscow. The majority were already Cadets;
but the agrarian disorders had had their effect on the gentry and the Moderates
were uniting in a new party, the Octobrists, to develop loyally the principles
of the Emperor’s Manifesto. The Cadets, on the other hand, still leant towards
the Left, which they hoped to assimilate and control. The Congress nearly split
up on the question of a Constituent Assembly; in the end it recommended
universal suffrage and constituent functions for the Duma. It asked for a full
amnesty and the abolition of the death penalty; and it promised moral support
to Witte, so long as he really developed the Constitution. It approved of
autonomy for Poland.
The distrust
of the country put Count Witte at the mercy of the reactionaries. The chief
force in the Cabinet was now Durnovd. He was master of the police, and he was
frankly for repression. General Trepoff, who had become commandant of the
imperial Palace, could press such a policy at the Court. The workmen were
talking of another general strike when the Government took action. The
committee of the Peasants’ union was arrested (November 29); on December 5 the
Government laid hands on Khrustalyeff. Martial law was proclaimed at St
Petersburg (December 12). Severe punishment was imposed for strikes, especially
of the railwaymen. Meetings were forbidden. The extremists replied with a
revolutionary manifesto inviting the withdrawal of deposits from the Savings
Banks, the non-payment of taxes, and an open conflict with the Government; this
manifesto they tried to print in all the papers (December 13); those which consented
were confiscated; forty printing presses were closed in St Petersburg alone.
The Council of Workmen Delegates was largely responsible for a general strike
of the postal and telegraph men (December 14) which for two months disorganised
the whole service. On December 16 almost the whole Council (190 persons) was
arrested. On December 18, the Government issued a weighty impeachment of the
revolutionary parties. These proclaimed a third general strike in St
Petersburg. This strike was insignificant; but the news travelled to Moscow
where workmen came on to the streets and fought with the police. The Moscow
revolutionaries were unready and disunited; but there was a sporadic series of
street skirmishes in the north-western part
1905-6]
Moscow rising.—The franchise extended. 363
of the city
(December 22-January 1). A committee tried to coordinate the scattered bands;
barricades were hastily erected and telegraph wires were stretched across the
streets. The insurgents were a few hundreds; the peaceful inhabitants were
between two fires; shots fired from the windows of their houses brought down
the vengeance of the troops. The result of this futile revolt was to disgust
and frighten all sober people; and the Moscow rising was the turning-point in
the story of these troubled years. Throughout, the events in the capitals had
been hastily reproduced in other towns; and to this period belong attempts to
dispense with established authorities in Sardtoff, Rostdff, Novorossiisk,
Ekaterinoslav, Sochi, Sukhum, and Pyatigorsk.
Count Witte
made his greatest concession under the influence of the Moscow rising. A decree
extending the franchise was suddenly launched on December 24. Taken together
with the Manifesto of October 30, it completely altered the character of the Duma.
It conceded votes, and with votes also eligibility, to almost all those
excluded by the Law of August 19. The franchise was given to all taxpayers; the
extension pf the lodgers’ franchise introduced the whole professional class;
the whole class of workmen was now enfranchised on a similar basis to that of
the peasants; there were excluded only factories with less than 50 workmen, the
poorer craftsmen, the lower employees in offices, and servants. The Law allowed
preliminary electoral meetings without the police; the elections were to be
controlled by more popular bodies, and the verification of them was entrusted
to the Duma itself. Though there were still the same stages of election,
universal suffrage had been virtually granted. But the enormous importance of
these concessions was overlooked in the universal disorder and the drastic
repression that followed it.
The measures
of Dumovo soon passed the bounds within which they might have secured moral
support. Punitive columns had been sent down to the more disaffected districts.
The riotous peasants had returned home, and offered no resistance. Villages
were cannonaded, and innocent and guilty perished alike. In reprisal, General
Sakharoff was killed in Sardtoff, and the brutal Luzhenovsky in Tamboff; the
account of the treatment of Luzhenovsky’s assassin, Spiridonova, after her
arrest, raised a storm of indignation and led to the murder of two police
officers. In the Baltic provinces, the stewards pointed out their chief
enemies, who were summarily dealt with. Livonia and Courland long remained in a
state of ferment; and there were numerous tales, not without foundation, of
men buried alive by the soldiers or tortured in prison. In Georgia, General
Alikhdnoff burnt villages and reigned by terror.
In the
central Police Department at St Petersburg, a gendarme, Kommissdroff, printed
at the government expense violent appeals to riot, which were circulated by the
“ Union of the Russian People ” all over the country. The Assistant Minister of
the Interior, Prince Urusoff, who had done all that he could to prevent
pogroms, brought the matter
before Witte;
but the Premier, who knew how powerful were the friends of the Union at the
Court, dared not do more than dismiss Kommiss&roff. Urusoff resigned his
office and became a candidate for the Duma.
Everybody was
now preparing for the first Russian parliament. The Government was recovering
from its panic, and set itself to increase its powers again. The Manifesto of
March 5 excluded from parliamentary discussion the fundamental laws of the
empire and the constitutions of the legislative bodies. The Ministers received
power to issue temporary laws when the Duma was not sitting. The old Council of
State was reconstituted. For legislative purposes it was to consist, half of
nominees of the sovereign, and half of members elected from.the dergy,
Universities, Zemstva, gentry, and commercial committees; the President was
chosen by the sovereign. The Council received equal legislative rights with the
Duma. The two Houses could not deal with estimates founded on existing laws,
ordinances, or imperial commands, or with credits for war or the imperial
household; ordinary military and naval estimates were to be discussed if the
Ministry could not cover them from money in hand. If the Houses did not pass
the budget, the Government could substitute the estimates of the preceding
year. When they disagreed, the Government could take the estimate nearest to
that of the preceding year (March 23). Details of loans and currency were
reserved to the Minister of Finance (April 10), and other important financial
functions to the nominated members of the Council of State. All these
ordinances were made fundamental and unchangeable. Army, navy, and foreign
policy were declared prerogatives of the Emperor; the liberties of the
Manifesto of October were again enumerated; but the room left for limitations
and exceptions robbed them of all real meaning (May 6).
A mass of
ordinary legislation was hurried through before the Duma met. The severest
penalties were imposed for the possession of explosives (February 22) ;
arrangements were made for the use of the troops for police purposes (February
20), and wreckers of property were made materially responsible for the losses
they caused (May 9); strikes of country labourers were to be rigorously
punished (April 28); “ false reports” on the action of officials or on public
calamities entailed imprisonment or fines (April 5); “false rumours” on the
financial position of the Government involved from one to two years of prison
(May 5); the press law was tightened (March 31), but the preliminary censorship
was abolished for books (May 9). The right of meeting was practically nullified
by a decree of March 17, which required a license in each case from the administrative
authorities, forbade assemblies in restaurants, hotels, or inns, and limited
the use of professional establishments to meetings for professional objects.
The right of association was still more severely limited by a decree of the
same date; all societies, including even political parties, had to obtain
legalisation from the Government; the programmes had to be submitted in detail;
any
365
deviation
entailed prohibition; membership of officials, association of ■workmen, and
the union of two societies were specially restricted; the penalties under both
these Laws were imprisonment and fines. A decree of March 17 made a bid for the
settlement of the all-important land question without the Duma; local
agricultural committees were to be constituted, consisting mainly of officials;
they were to consider measures for the relief of the peasants and the extension
of their holdings.
Meanwhile,
the elections were proceeding. The spokesmen chosen by the peasants to speak
direct to the Tsar were not so much party men as persons possessing the general
confidence. Their main thought was, of course, land; and most of them on
reaching St Petersburg massed instinctively under the title of “non-party” and
diligently attended meetings of various parties to discover who would do most
for their class. Not more than seven reactionaries, mostly peasants, were
elected to the first Duma. Workmen began by boycotting the elections: but
joined in when they saw that the Opposition would win; the “ majority men ” of
the Social Democrats remained self-excluded, and of the more moderate e‘
minority men,” at first only ten were elected. The issue lay between the Cadets
and the Octobrists. The Octobrist plea for sobriety had been seriously
prejudiced by the measures of Durnovo; Shipoff was beaten in Moscow, and
sixteen Octobrists under Count Heyden and Stakhovich formed a nucleus round
which rallied some forty other members. The Cadets alone conducted an organised
electoral campaign; they understood the Government’s electoral law better than
it did itself; and over 150 of their carefully chosen candidates were elected.
Milyukoff had been excluded on formal grounds; but he was always in the
lobbies, and every decision of the House was referred to him. There was always
a line of possible cleavage between the strong Right wing of the Cadets, which
included nearly all the ablest men, and the Radicals of the professional class:
but the strong hand of Milyukoff held together not only the party, but the Duma
itself. A third party, the Labour group, was only formed at Sardtoff during the
elections; it originated in the Peasants’ union, which since the diminution of
repression had again rapidly grown in numbers; its platform was: “all the land
for those who labour”; in St Petersburg it received the adhesion of many
peasant members, and it soon numbered 90. The various alien races grouped
themselves together and claimed self-government; the Poles (26) were all
National Democrats. The claim for Polish autonomy was favoured both by the
Cadets and by the Labour group.
There was a
new Ministry to face the Duma. Count Witte, after he had successfully
negotiated a foreign loan for immediate expenses, was dismissed. Dumovd also
left office. The new Premier, Goremykin, possessed the personal confidence of
the Emperor; but he was very old, and from the start he did not believe that
the Government could work with the Duma. Most of his colleagues were new men.
The most
notable was
the Minister of the Interior, Peter Stolypin, a country gentleman who had
served with credit in high provincial posts and, as Governor of the turbulent
province of Saritoff, had kept his head amidst the general panic of the
authorities.
On May 10 the
Emperor visited St Petersburg, received the Duma at the Winter Palace, and
delivered with great spirit a simple appeal to its patriotism. In the Tauris
Palace the distinguished jurist Muromtseff was elected Pres;dent,
almost unanimously. The Cadets, fresh from the oolls, hoped to carry the
rampai'ts of the bureaucracy by moral force; in order to secure the unanimity
of the Duma, careful account was taken of every element in it. As the Emperor’s
speech contained no programme, the Duma assumed the initiative in its Address
to the Throne, worded with restraint, but presupposing a decisive authority in
the people. It spoke of “ strictly constitutional principles,” of “ perfecting
the principles of a national representatii tn ”; it demanded control over the
executive, responsibility of Ministers and their dependence on the majority of
the Duma, a reform of the newly constituted Upper House, and for the Lower full
competence in legislation, a monopoly of financial control, and the right of
receiving petitions. The programme included the removal of all civil
disabilities of class or nationality, the final abolition of the death
penalty, expropriation of land for the benefit of the peasants, freedom of
assoc.-tion for working men, free education, readjustment of the taxes, and
local government for all races resting on universal suffrage; the Duma took on
itself the care of the soldiers and sailors; the Address concluded with an
imperative appeal for an immediate amnesty for “all acts which have resulted
from religious or political convictions.” On the demand for a complete amnesty,
the Octobrist Stakhdvich invited a solemn condemnation of the countless and
incessant murders of officials; leaning towards the Labour group, the Cadets
refused his amendment; and its few supporters left the House. The rest
unanimously adopted the whole draft.
Goremykin
replied on May 26. He separated the matters which the Duma might discuss from
those which it might not. He declared the proposal of expropriation to be
“inadmissible”; the civil liberties ought certainly to be secured, but the
exceptional ordinances must be retained to deal with murderers and robbers; his
own programme dealt on old lines with the land question, and promised Bills for
the abolition of passports, for the revision of some indirect taxes, and for
punishing all illegal acts of officials. His speech was followed by a storm of
criticism as to the whole condition of the empire; the Ministers, unaccustomed
to any questioning, kept their seats for a time and then went out; a vote of
censure was, hereupon, carried amidst the greatest enthusiasm, with 6nly eleven
dissentients.
There was now
a complete deadlock; the Ministry did not resign, and the Duma was not
^'ssolved. All interest was centred in the
i9oe]
Deadlock. Negotiations. The land question. 367
sovereign,
and it was seen that his principal advisers were not in the Cabinet.
MuromtsefFs order of procedure was discussed and adopted. The Ministry
submitted many important projects of reform, including the extension of peasant
land-tenure, the reorganisation of local law Courts, the compensation of those
who had suffered from wrongful action of the officials, and the punishment of
criminal conduct in the government service. The Duma brought in Bills as to its
right of initiative in legislation, on administrative imprisonment, on civil
equality, on freedom of conscience, as to the abolition of the death penalty,
the revision of the press laws, the freedom of meeting and association, and the
right to strike. Time was found to pass one government Bill through all the
stages of legislation; it was a vote of £1,500,000 for famine relief. The issue
before the country, however, was not any individual measure, but the question
who was master.
Depending
entirely on the support of the people, the Duma frequently turned itself into
a public tribune for exposing the abuses of the administrative system;
interpellation of Ministers was used effectively by the Cadets and
extravagantly by the Labour group. The most notable interpellation was on the
fresh pogrom' at Byelostok. Here, after many murders of policemen, the Union of
the Russian People hounded on a mob against the Jews, and murders and robberies
continued for the usual three days; the commanding officers and the civil
authorities looked on. The Duma sent down its own commissioners to Byelostdk
and printed its report. Prince Urusoff unfolded the whole story of
Kommiss&rofF, and pleaded for direct communication between sovereign and
people (July 4). Stolypin, alone among the Ministers, gained in reputation from
these debates.
Yet these few
weeks of tension were doing much for the political education of the members.
Under the able discipline of the Cadets, the initial flood of words began to
abate. The agrarian disorders continued, and in Odessa gangs of desperate
robbers invaded the restaurants; but the total of terrorist acts showed a
marked decrease. All eyes were on the Duma; letters from whole village communes
promised support, if it were touched. Meanwhile, country gentlemen protested
against this whirl of change; and the official world, though timid and correct,
showed its deep resentment; at poorly attended gatherings the reactionaries
sent telegrams to the Government Messenger begging the sovereign to dissolve
the “ seditious ” Duma.
The Labour
group brought in a Bill to expropriate all land and allow only small holdings
on the basis of personal labour. The Cadets, instead of frankly opposing this
wild scheme, based their Bill on not dissimilar principles. An enormous Land
Committee was constituted; and the Duma proposed to organise its own local
committees to collect materials. The Court was inclined to end the crisis by
accepting a Ministry from outside the bureaucracy. Communications were opened
with
Shipdff; he was summoned to the Emperor and invited to take steps to form a
Cabinet. This was the turning-point; for Shipdff, as was known, would not take
office without a frankly national Ministry. He aimed at a patriotic coalition
of all the central forces for the establishment of constitutional rule, and,
with this object, he offered the majority in the Cabinet to his rivals—the
Cadets. But Milyukoff and his party refused to join in the coalition. The
choice now lay between a Cadet Ministry and the bureaucracy. The Court was half
disposed to vield; direct negotiations were opened with Milyukdff by General
Trepoff. '
The conflict
had already become more acute. On July 3 the existing Ministry had published
everywhere a government communication, as an antidote to the popularity of the
Duma’s Land Committee. It recounted the causes of impoverishment, and promised
to the peasants ten specific measures of relief, including facilities for sale,
the conversion of communal into personal property, and perhaps even the sale
of land to peasants by the Government under cost price; it openly and at length
combated the propositions introduced in the Duma; and it ended with an
injunction to trust to the constant solicitude of the Emperor. On July 16 the
Duma again called on the Ministry to resign. On July 17 it adopted the draft of
an address to the people in reply to the government communication, which in
spite of MilyukdfFs influence was passed on July 19. The Labour group now left
the House, because it did not consider the address strong enough; and the
Octobrists abstained from voting because they did not want any address at all.
For a moment at least, the unanimity of the Duma had disappeared, and a debate
on a vital issue had ended in a fiasco.
Stotypin was
strongly against a Cadet Ministry; Trepoff urged that 30,000 workmen might
march on Peterhof; the veteran Goremykin replied that 60,000 would be better;
this sturdy interjection ruled the decision, and Stolypin was appointed Premier
with orders to dissolve and with authority to summon a new Duma on the same
electoral law. Early on Sunday, July 21, without any notice to the President,
the decree of dissolution was posted in the streets: a second Duma was summoned
for March 5, 1907; next day followed a Manifesto, which upbraided the members,
and summoned “ all well-intentioned Russians to unite for the support of the
legal power.” Troops were moved into St Petersburg, and soldiers guarded the
doors of the Tauris Palace. Some 200 ex-members, including President,
Vice-Presidents, and the Cadet and Labour leaders, gathered on Sunday night at
Viborg in Finland; the Octobrist and Polish leaders also came, but withdrew;
the rest issued an appeal to the nation not to pay taxes, not to grant
recruits, and not to consider itself bound by foreign loans until the Duma was
restored. But the Cadets possessed no organisation for conspiracy, and the
initiative was left to any town or village which
might
think fit to renew the movement of the preceding October. Thus the appeal was
nothing more than a last summons to the Ministry to surrender on moral grounds
which it did not admit. Stolypin was not frightened, he allowed the members to
return to St Petersburg, and there they scattered of themselves. The
revolutionary parties and some of the Labour members issued two separate
appeals proposing an incoherent plan for a rising. Armed risings did indeed
break out among the Russian troops at Sveaborg in Finland, among the sailors at
Cronstadt, and on a cruiser off Revel; but these feeble attempts were easily
suppressed. The vast majority of Russians strongly disapproved of the
dissolution; but the country was confused and in part alienated by the tactics
of the Cadets; and, above all, it had been exhausted by the disorders of the
preceding winter. ,
In the void
thus created Stolypin was master of the situation. He defined his policy as
presenting two fronts. He would fight revolution, that is, all attempts to
impose changes on the Government by violence; but he would separate the
revolutionaries from the peaceable population, secure for the latter all the
guarantees of civil liberty, and, assuming the initiative which the Government
had so far left to the Duma, use the interval before the next session to
introduce reforms in detail. He began with a circular ordering the exact
observance of laws by the officials, but he refused to give up the exceptional
ordinances.
Terrorism,
revived by an offshoot of the S.R.’s, under the name of Maximalists, was met by
the institution of field Courts-martial with closed doors (September 1); one
day was allowed for preparing an accusation, two for the trial, and one for the
execution of the sentence. The Socialist Revolutionaries were reduced to the
insignificance of a “ cottage industry ”; the death penalty was made applicable
to ordinary robberies and even to insults to officials. Over 600 persons were
executed under this ordinance; but ordinary crime only increased. A decree of
August 18 dealt severely with propaganda in the army.
Stolypin had
invited Shipoff, Heyden, and other Moderates to join him; they required
effective guarantees of the civil liberties which Stolypin could not obtain,
and he was left to fight his battle for reform almost alone. A brutal attempt
on his life did not change his course, but he was hampered on every side. Much
of the money voted by the Duma for famine relief had been misappropriated; and
the reactionary Assistant Minister Gurko was found guilty of criminal
negligence. The Ministers adopted a large part of the Liberal programme by
placing on the market appanage lands (August 25), communal lands (September
9), and cabinet lands (October 2). A very valuable measure abolished many class
restrictions on the peasants; they were granted full rights of admission to the
government service, could leave or join village communes, and could partition
family property and elect their Zemstvo members without interference (October
18), The
Law of
November 22 went much further; any head of a family could claim his communal
holding as personal property; the claimant could also demand that his holding,
instead of being as usual in several strips, should be united in one place; but
the final decision of doubtful points was left to the Land Captains; and there
was room for much injustice to the remaining members of the commune. This Law
was nothing less than a revolution against state socialism; it favoured the
development of personal initiative and a better standard of cultivation. The
Government applied it at once without waiting for the new Duma; but it was long
before the peasants availed themselves of it.
Stolypin
declared himself a constitutionalist, but not a parliamentarism He stood on
the Fundamental Laws; he would not be dependent on a parliamentary majority,
yet he required a Duma with which he could work. But his supporters were few at
the Court, and still fewer in the country. There sprang up a concealed and
chaotic class warfare. Instead of the open agrarian riots of the preceding
winter, there was an unending series of individual attempts, made at night,:
to bum this or that barn on the squire’s estate. The Government replied with
wholesale sentences of banishment without trial, which in this year reached the
enormous figure of 35,000. The prisons were crowded to bursting point, and
epidemics broke out. The Zemstvo franchise had not been widened, and now the
threat of expropriation lost one Zemstvo after another to the Liberals. The new
Zemstvo executives got rid of their radical employees. For the Cadets,
political propaganda was made impossible. The Cadet party was refused legal
:ecogp;j ion; officials were dismissed for belonging to it; the
Cadet club's were closed; those who had signed the Viborg appeal were struck
off the roll of electors. The Octobrists were still only a potential party.
They had no Press and no organisation; their meetings were like private
gatherings. The temporary paralysis of the mass of middle opinion favoured the
reactionaries. Courtiers and officials who resented any change from the old
system now united to work on the mind of the sovereign. They had complete
freedom of speech; they had the good will and often the active support of the
local Governors; they were backed by many of the wealthier landowners now
organised as the “ United Gentry ”; they had their own theorists, such as the
doctrinaire Sam&rins of Moscow, who now reprinted their suggestion that the
Duma Bhould be replaced by drafting commissions attached to the several
Ministries and elected partly by lot (November). But their chief spokesmen
were men of a lower type, semi-official adventurers who saw their chance in the
nominal establishment of representative institutions; such were the chief
organisers of the Union of the Russian People. These inveighed against Stolypin
as a radical; they obtained almost entire control of the machinery of the
Church; they sometimes terrorised local officials; in some provinces they
enrolled prominent landowners in their
Union, but in
general they depended on the small traders; travelling agents made promises of
material gains, indiscriminately enrolled their hearers, and then departed;
except in the south-west they had no support of numbers; but to the Emperor
they represented themselves as the national party of loyalty.
In the
Cabinet itself no principle of solidarity was maintained, and many of the
changes made were to the disadvantage of Stotypin. The local Governors were
practically emancipated from his control by the exceptional ordinances. The
electoral Law could not be modified without consent of the Duma, but it left
considerable latitude of interpretation to the Senate and to the Minister of
the Interior. These powers were freely used to disfranchise various classes of
voters; notably, all the peasant migrants to the towns, who were the most
intelligent of their class. Unsatisfactory candidates were struck off the rolls
or exiled; Jews were told that if they voted they would be expelled. Lists of
candidates were officially circulated for the Reactionaries and the Octobrists.
Other parties were punished for naming their candidates. In towns voting papers
were withheld by the police from a quarter or even a third of the voters;
polling places were reduced in number; the days for polling were not announced
or even deliberately announced wrongly; peasant farmers were called away to
their communes, under threat of fines, on the days fixed for the polling of
small landowners. A circular from the Synod instructed the priests to “take an
active part and guide their flocks,” threatening the refractory “with the wrath
of God”; priests were to become candidates, wherever possible. In some towns
the Reactionaries took away voting papers or even arrested their opponents.
The disorders
were all on one side. The Cadets, sobered by their misfortunes, abandoned their
“ storming tactics ” for a regular siege of the bureaucracy. The peasants
showed a remarkable instinct of disc iplme. To secure unanimity, they privately
chose their candidates in advance, regarding them as “consecrated to
chastisement.” They mustered in full, the younger voters taking the leading
part. In spite of all devices for influencing the elections, the choice of
peasant electors was a complete triumph for the Opposition, and especially for
the Labour group. The list included doctors, schoolmasters, statists,
engineers, students, writers, and editors. It was only the peasants who
deliberately reelected men disqualified by the Government; they even chose men
who had been p-srilpH administratively; and one such was set free to sit in the
Duma. The small landowners showed less initiative. Yet here the peasant farmers
carried the day, and even many of the successful priests were their choice. The
large landowners chose mostly members of the Right or Octobrists. Eighty-four
per cent, of the town electorate polled; where Cadets joined forces with the
Left they invariably prevailed; and, where they opposed each other, they in a
few cases let through members of the Right or Octobrists. All efforts to
manipulate
the list of
chosen electors were in vain. The final elections yielded:—12 Reactionaries,
who desired to displace Stotypin and abolish the Duma; 34 Independent Tories;
17 Moderate Right or Cohservatives, under Count Bobrinsky, who detested
revolution but welcomed the institution of a Duma; 32 Octobrists; 24 Non-Party;
37 Independent Liberals; 123 Cadets, robbed of their chiefs and again led by
Milyukdff from outside; 101 members loosely united in the Labour group; 14 of
the non-conspirative People’s Socialists; 35 Socialist Revolutionaries; and 54
Social Democrats. Most of the new members were young professional men with
secondary education; where eminent Zemstvo men were cancelled, obscure
revolutionaries sometimes passed; more than a quarter of the whole House had at
some time undergone administrative punishment.
On the Left
there was not a single able politician; but the Social Democrats, mostly
“minority men,” commanded attention by their apartness, frankness, and
discipline. The Cadets had to depend for a majority on agreements with other
parties; but by their ability they assumed and kept the leadership of the Duma;
their moderating influence on the Left was very marked. Both Cadets and Labour
group, giving up all idea of aggression, set themselves to keep the Duma from
dissolution as long as possible, and thus failed to use many opportunities for
a weighty protest. The 36 Mussulmans usually voted with the Cadets. In Poland,
only a minority of the Socialists still believed in violence; and the Moderate
parties, led by Dmowski, carried all the seats. He gathered in the Poles
elected from other provinces, enforced the strictest discipline, and, seated between
Cadets and Labour group, decided severed issues.
The second
Duma met on March 5, 1907. Throughout, the atmosphere of tension was almost
intolerable. Approach to the House was hedged about in every way; spies were
attached to several of the members, and, outside, their gathering places were
nearly all semi- conspirative. Stolypin entered the Duma as its master, and his
able speeches were listened to with respect. His attitude was conciliatory, but
he was unwilling and unable to make any real concessions. He required an
understanding with a constant and intelligent majority and good constructive
work in the Committees. For this the mutilated Assembly had neither the
ability, nor the time to acquire it. It was with difficulty that the Cadets
prevented the Left from refusing the yearly recruits, from seizing on the
sovereign’s right of amnesty, and from declaring for expropriation of land
without compensation. Almost every sitting was interrupted by provocations from
the reactionaries. Their plan was always to demand a public condemnation of
revolutionary terrorism. On May 30, the House found itself listening to a
formula on terrorism from each of the nine parties. Much the best, that of the
Poles, simply stated that terrorism was incompatible with parliamentary
institutions; and this would have passed but for the party jealousy of the
Cadets. The House was left without any formula. Meanwhile, Pikhnd
urged at
Court a coup d'etat on the part of the sovereign; Gringmuth proposed a military
dictatorship, and Professor Martens prepared foreign opinion. Suddenly, the
discovery of a plot to kill the Emperor was announced, and the Duma was invited
to congratulate him on his escape. A group of conspirators, whose services had
been refused by the Socialist Revolutionaries, had consulted with a Cossack,
Ratmi'roff; on the advice of his officer, he had promised to send telegrams as
to the movements of the Grand Duke Nicholas and Stolypin. The telegrams were
sent, but the conspirators went no further. Declaring the plot to be instigated
or imaginary, the Left block decided to boycott the demonstration as aimed at
themselves. The vote of congratulation was adopted unanimously by the rest in a
half empty House. Thus the Duma was again discredited. More was to follow. On
the vaguest evidence, an Act of accusation was framed against all the Social
Democrat members of the Duma; the Act was loosely drawn up; generally omitting
dates, it strung together pronouncements of the party since 1905; beyond the
published programme of the party it brought evidence against not more than
one-third of the persons accused. Here was a weapon ready for use. Meanwhile,
the fate of the Duma was warmly debated by the Ministers and at the Court.
Stolypin’s hand was forced by the reactionaries; and by June 14 the question
was practically decided. The Premier suddenly demanded a secret session. He
spoke for a few minutes, asking the speedy consent of the Duma to the exclusion
of all the Social Democrats; and the Act of accusation, which had riot previously
been communicated even to the persons accused, was then read out. The Duma
referred the matter without delay to a committee for investigation of the
evidence. Without waiting for its decision, on the morning of June 16, while
the members were in their beds, a Manifesto was published dissolving the Duma.
The members, it stated, had not been real representatives of the needs and
wishes of the population; and the manner of election would therefore be
changed by the authority which had granted the Duma, the Emperor responsible to
the throne of God.
The new
electoral Law, prepared in advance, followed without delay. Five provinces
which had always sent Opposition members lost fourteen seats. Siberia lost six
out of twenty-one. Central Asia, full of Mussulmans, was disfranchised
altogether. The Caucasus out of twenty-nine seats lost nineteen. In
Transcaucasia, as in Vilna and Kovno, special seats were created for the small
Russian population. Out of thirty-six seats Poland retained only fourteen; and
of these two were allotted to the Russian residents. Of the towns of the empire
only seven retained seats of their own; the rest were merged with their
respective provinces. In each of these seven, the representation was equally
divided between two categories of voters; for the first category was
established an exceedingly high rating. Many classes were formally
disfranchised. The preponderance of the country members of Russia proper
having thus been
assured,
measures were taken to put their election entirely into the hands of the larger
landowners. They were able to determine the choice even of the peasant members
of the Duma. In 34 out of 53 provinces, the number of “ electors ” was so
distributed as to give the landowners an absolute majority over all other classes,
including town-voters and workmen; in most other cases they were practically
supreme. The Minister of the Interior, and under him the local Governors,
received extensive powers for the further interpretation of this most
complicated law; it was they who defined without appeal the categories of the
voters and could separate nationalities or unite two separate districts. The
whole law may be regarded as a partial triumph of the supporters of the class-
basis and the reactionary scheme, but also as a partial victory for Stotypin.
At least there was a Duma, with undiminished powers of legislation.
From June
16,1907, onwards, the Government attempted a wholesale liquidation of its
grievances, a process which seemed to have no end. Of the Social Democrats, who
were tried with closed doors, thirty- one were sent to Siberia. Most of the
other ex-members were carefully isolated from their constituents; many were
expelled from their posts; some were imprisoned; some went into hiding. In the
winter (December 25-31) those who had signed the Viborg appeal were condemned
to three months imprisonment and permanently deprived of the franchise. Trials
for offences committed in 1905 went on until 1909, when thirty- two death
sentences were pronounced in Ekaterinoslav. New “obligatory ordinances” of the
police imposed fines up to £300 or imprisonment up to three months on those who
published or circulated any articles “arousing a hostile attitude to the
Government.” The discretion was left with the police themselves; thus, many
provincial papers were crushed, and the rest found it best to submit each
number to the police in advance; there was no unity of system, and articles
which passed in the capitals were fined when reprinted elsewhere. The right of
meeting within the Universities was restricted (1907), and female students were
excluded from their new university rights (1908). From the law Courts high
legal officials were dismissed for their independence; many persons condemned
for pogr6ms were publicly pardoned by the sovereign (1908). Local Governors
exceeded in arbitrariness all that was done by the central authorities.
Wholesale expulsions of peasants culminated in the formation of bands of
brigands. In some villages the malcontent majority burned down the houses of
any who had property. The field Courts had been discontinued, but death
sentences by ordinary Courts- martial showed a constant increase; in 1906 and
1907, 4131 officials were killed or wounded and there were 1503 executions. In
1908, the attacks on officials sank to 1009, but the executions rose to 825;
after the revolutionary organisations had been stamped out, the crimes were
symptomatic of sheer social disorder; many criminals escaped, but whole batches
were condemned without discrimination.
The second
dissolution was followed first by complete prostration, next by indifference to
public interests and a feverish search for other excitements. But then began a
healthy rally of public opinion. Struve drew attention to the economic
development of the country, as a school of detail and as the decisive factor in
politics. Such was also the tendency of important merchants of Moscow, and even
of many of the peasants; cooperative societies multiplied. The Cadets set
themselves the sane ideal of a constitutional Opposition. After all, there
remained a national assembly, free discussion of the budget, and more freedom
of the Press than under Plehve. There were many able business minds which had
not yet accepted political organisation; and out of these Guchkoff, whose moment
had now come, sought to make an effective party of Octobrists or Conservative
Reformers. . He could expect support from merchants, small traders, and
enlightened but sober country gentlemen. Even the gentry of the Right were
rather Tories than reactionaries, and had no great affection for unreformed
officialdom. A sharp natural line separated all these elements from the few
reactionaries. These were nearly all dependent on the old regime, and for them
the real issue was between vested political interests and financial publicity.
Their only method was still to flog the corpse of the dead revolution; and
Purishkevich announced that he and his friends were going to the third Duma in
order to destroy it.
The new
elections were held in October, 1907. This time, the Law worked of itself. The
elections immensely strengthened the hands of Stotypin; they finally proved
that there was no national basis for the reactionaries. The third Duma met on
November 14, 1907. It was in complexion a House of the upper class, with a
predominance of country gentlemen who had served in the army, in the upper
branches of local administration, or in the bureaucracy. There was a sprinkling
of merchants. The few prominent reactionaries were young men unknown except
for the extremeness of their views. The Moderate Right (70), with some six men
of distinction and parliamentary ability, followed Stolypin and drew more and
more away from the Extreme Right. The Octobrists (153) included a large number
of able men with court rank, administrative experience, and established
reputations. Their leader, Guchkoff, was the real master of the Duma. Milyukoff
carried St Petersburg with a vote of 22,000, and the Cadets numbered 54. The
new President, the Octobrist Khomyakdff, exhibited composure and shrewd good
sense, and exercised on the House a sobering influence which promised
stability.
The Duma had
still to create the middle term between the Government and the country; its
failure would involve the failure of Stolypin. After a while, in the Committees
hard work began for all the leading men irrespective of party; a whole mass of
government information had to be mastered; frequent aiid informal discussion
with heads of
Departments
of the Government proved educative for all concerned. Stolypin was in close
touch both with the Moderate Right and with the Octobrists. GuchkofF and the
Octobrists supported Stolypin against the more reactionary Ministers; theirs
were the Departments which the Duma chose to criticise. For the first time, the
budget was discussed in detail. The chief ground chosen for patriotic criticism
was the mismanagement of the army and navy. The Duma refused to pass a credit
for new warships without a thorough naval reform. GuchkofF, in a telling
speech, exposed the unpunished favourite, Admiral Alexdyeff, and made the whole
question a test of the sincerity of the constitutional Manifesto (June 6,
1908). Three days later the army estimates were brought forward. GuchkofF
pleaded. for a system where character and talent should replace nepotism, and
ended by naming Grand Duke after Grand Duke and inviting them to resign their
military posts. On the estimates for Public Instruction, von Anrep offered a
strongly critical analysis of the whole policy of this Ministry from the days
of Count Dmitry Tolstoy. The session ended without dissolution. The Government
secured the money for the battleships from the Council of State; but the
Emperor dissolved the Committee of Imperial Defence under the Grand Duke
Nicholas (August 21).
In the
vacation, the reactionaries tried hard to oust Stolypin. Count Witte had
renounced his constitutionalism of 1905; and a first-rate financier with
foreign ties was very necessary, if the Duma was to be abolished. Duma and
Stolypin were attacked as undermining the prerogatives of the Emperor by
encroachments in the domains of foreign policy, the army, and the navy. The
enormous number of death sentences in January, 1909, increased the moral
tension. An extraordinary revelation further excited public opinion. The
police spy Azeff had for years been a member of the Central Committee of the
Socialist Revolutionaries; he had known of, but not averted, the murders of
Sipydgin, Plehve, and the Grand Duke Sergius. Azeff was allowed to disappear,
and Lopukhin, formerly Chief of the Department of Police, was sent to penal
servitude for acquainting the Revolutionaries with Azeff’s real position (May).
Meanwhile, Stolypin had sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed in his
attempts to bridle reactionary officials; and the temporising Novoe Vremya
printed articles for and against him side by side. New appointments to
Ministries reflected the continual hesitations of the sovereign. The Premier
was, however, able to send revising Senators to investigate the administrative
abuses in Moscow and Turkestan (September-December, 1908). Senator G£rin
discovered in Moscow a whole system of blackmailing practised by the secret
police. The City Prefect, Rheinbot, was put on trial, and the Governor-General,
Horschelmann, was displaced. Mishchenko was removed from Turkestan, Pyeshkoff
from Kharkoff, and Prince GorchakofF from Vyatka. Meanwhile, from February,
1909, onwards, there was a steady and rapid fall in
the number of
executions; and at Easter a telegram from the Minister of War required that
only murders of exceptional brutality should be punished with death. Stolypin
began to replace martial law by milder measures. These were very material
triumphs; and, in March, while Stolypin was in the Crimea, recovering from a
serious illness, the reactionaries made a desperate attack upon him at Court,
for submitting to the Duma, in accordance with the fundamental laws, the
estimates for the new naval staff. The Premier hastened back from the Crimea.
After a sharp crisis, he was retained in power, but received orders to redraft
the Fundamental Law in question. Before the end of the session, the Duma
confirmed the temporary land Law of November 22, 1906, with the important
modification that existing holdings could be claimed as property without
reference to the village commune. The incidental difficulties of the Law were
simplified; and the Act was an instance of successful cooperation on a vital
question between Duma and Government (May 20).
The struggle
as to the system of government in Russia had meanwhile assumed a much wider
scope. In Finland, after the Manifesto of November 17,1905, the Red Guard
passed into the hands of socialist workmen; it became so troublesome that the
middle class organised in opposition a White Guard; there were conflicts, in which
members of the White Guard were killed. The Red Guard tried to prevent the
passage of loyal Russian troops at the time of the mutiny at Sveaborg; it was
disowned even by the socialists, and was disbanded by the Finnish Senate. In
1907 it was partially replaced by the Voima (Force), originally a gymnastic
association on a national rather than a party- basis; imported stores of
fire-arms were discovered. The first Diet elected on the new franchise met in
the spring of 1907. Early in 1908, the Socialists carried a wild resolution for
the active defence of the rights of Finland, and the Diet was dissolved. At the
Russian Court, former supporters of Bdbrikoff were again prominent. They
appealed for a patriotic policy; Stolypin agreed, but invited the cooperation
of the Duma. In an able speech he outlined the case of the Russian Government;
Russian revolutionaries had hatched plots with impunity in Finland, and in such
a matter unity of control was imperative. Milyukoff replied with a masterly
review of the case for Finland. Stolypin, without further consultation, put his
policy into execution. By the Ordinance of June 2, the Cabinet was to discuss
any matters which concerned the whole empire; it was to see all state papers of
Finland; the Secretary of State for Finland could not report separately to the
sovereign. This amounted to an abrogation of the constitutional independence of
the country; and the Government entered upon a serious conflict with the
Finnish Diet, which is not yet concluded.
In Poland,
hardly any concessions had been made and martial law was continued. But, as
Russian Liberalism became practical and
constructive,
the Polish question attracted its intelligent interest. An article by Struve on
“A great Russia” (January, 1908) outlined a whole series of ideas. The new
regime called for the development of a strong and Liberal patriotism. Russia’s
role in Europe was the defence of Slavonic interests; but western Slavs could
not trust Russia whilst there was administrative anarchy in Poland; a contented
Poland would not be a danger to Russia, but the advanced guard of the Slavonic
world. The present system served the interests not of Russia but of Germany,
which, being unable to assimilate its own section of Poland, depended on. the
continuance of even worse repression beyond tire frontier. The forward policy
of Germany and Austria south-eastwards could only be successful at the expense
of the minor Slav States; English influence no longer opposed Russia in Turkey;
it was Germany that sought there an outlet in the direction of Persia. For
every reason, moral and material, the friendship with England should be
strengthened and developed. The antecedents for this view went far back. It now
drew together under the name of New Slavophils leading men of the Moderate
Right, the Octobrists, the Peaceful Reform, and the Cadets. In the summer of
1908, Dr Kramarz and other eminent Slavs of Austria were received by all
parties and everywhere insisted that a Liberal policy in Poland was the
condition of their confidence in Russia. In July a Congress of the various
Slavonic peoples was held at Prague; before their brother Slavs, the Russian
delegates, Bobrinsky, Maklakoff, and others, declared for an understanding with
Poland. The expropriation law of the Prussian Government had led to an
extensive boycott of German goods in Russian Poland.
The
enthusiasm of the Congrers had not subsided, when, after a previous meeting
between the two sovereigns, Prince Ferdinand declared the independence of
Bulgaria, and Austria the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. The
annexations roused the greatest indignation in Russia; the independence of
Bulgaria was welcomed with satisfaction, but the Bulgarian Government was
regarded as treating with a German Power to the disadvantage of another
Slavonic people. When Count Pourtales, the German ambassador in St Petersburg,
suddenly demanded and secured from the Russian Government a full retreat from
even the moral championship of Servia, the humiliation made manifest the need
of union between Government and people. So enlightening was the action of
Germany that reactionaries like Bashmakdff and Liberals like Milyukdff found
themselves discussing at a common Slavonic Congress what was to be done for the
people of Poland.
Revolution in
Persia and in Turkey surrounded Russia with constitutional movements; and two
reactionary sovereigns were deposed. A greater interest attached to the
possibility of an economic and political conflict between Germany and England,
and, consequently, to the relations of Russia with both countries. Up to 1904,
only the official
1904-9]
379
Press In
Russia could speak freely; the legitimate annoyance of the Russian Government
at the anti-Russian policy of England had become stereotyped and traditional;
the friendship between the reigning Houses of Russia and Prussia was, likewise,
traditional, since the time of the Partition of Poland; yet Englishmen and
Germans who had lived long in Russia almost invariably maintained that it was the
German who was disliked. There were reasons why this should be so. Russians at
large were more nearly touched by their own system of government than by
questions of foreign policy, and here the Germans were constantly presented to
them as the agents of power. Baltic Germans were strong at the Court; they held
many of the highest administrative posts and were in every chancellery; they
had, for instance, a disproportionate share in the work of the Courts-martial.
German stewards with scrupulous exactness collected the revenues of their
absent masters. German firms captured the strategic posts of trade, and German
managers ruled Russian workmen. Owing to a strong contrast of character between
the two races, their use of their power was often contemptuous and rarely
sympathetic.
Meanwhile,
English capital was only lent to the Government distrustfully and in driblets;
and English merchants had not enough knowledge to enter the far more profitable
path of private enterprise in Russia. The alliance of England with Japan, and
the supply of contraband of war by some English firms, gave new fuel to Russian
indignation. Yet, in the general public, this irritation was only superficial.
During the war, Germany relieved Russia of all solicitude for her western
frontier; but with the rising movement for reform came open ill-will against
Russian Germans, and against the official world of Germany which was believed
to be on the side of reaction. It was to the German Emperor that Schwanebach
addressed his impeachment of Witte and of the October Manifesto. Meanwhile,
freedom of the Press proved that the subsidised organs were alone in their
antipathy to England. The political ideals both of Cadets and of Octobrists
were learnt chiefly from England, the study of whose constitutional history had
aroused in Russia an enthusiasm hardly intelligible to a present day
Englishman. The difference was that the Cadets sought to apply English
principles and the Octobrists felt a kinship with English instincts. All three
Dumas, representing different aspects of Russian opinion, were remarkably
friendly to England, and England supplied the staple of the precedents and
parallels for quotation. The attitude of the British Government in the time of
transition was tactful and sympathetic; the beginnings of constitutionalism
coincided with the agreement as to Persia; and at Revel the King of England
toasted both sovereign and people. During the Balkan crisis, friendly support
was given to Russia. This goodwill, coming not after but during the transition,
was of material service to it. With the beginning of steady constructive work,
the ties were naturally
380 Visit of Duma leaders to England. [1908-9
drawn closer.
Struve put forward as one of his ideals “the economic penetration of Russia by
England ”; industrial England might put its movable capital in contact with the
unworked resources of rural Russia. Visits of sixty Polish merchants and of the
future Minister of Commerce, Timirydzeff, to England (September, 1908), and the
establishment of an Anglo-Russian Chamber of Commerce in St Petersburg,
coincided with a new interest in Russia amongst English commercial men. But
here, too, everything was not to be settled in a day. Effective publicity in
financial affairs, a reign of law, and the liberation of enterprise, would, as
they were realised, set free the influx of English capital. In other words,
apart from all political formulae, closer ties with England depended on
progress in Russia.
Under these
conditions a lively interest was taken in a visit to England of the President
of the Duma with the leaders of all the Moderate parties (June and July, 1909).
The invitation was signed by seventy of the most representative Englishmen. The
visitors were received by the King, and entertained in the House of Commons, by
municipalities, by Universities, and by Chambers of Commerce. The heartiness of
their reception was everywhere more than conventional. The solidarity between
Russian parties was increased by the journey; and it was in the Mansion House
that Milyukoff formally renounced the tactics which had placed the Cadets in
direct opposition to the Tsar. The two sovereigns, meeting at Cowes, exchanged
cordial references to the national reception of the Duma. For England, the
discovery of the friendliness of the Russian people introduced a profoundly
important factor into the balance of foreign relations.
THE OTTOMAN
EMPIRE AND THE BALKAN PENINSULA.
The year 1870, so important in the
history of western Europe, marked the beginning of a new era in the Near East.
Before that time, outside the borders of the kingdom of Greece and the
principalities of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro, the Christian population of
the Balkan peninsula was classified not by race but by religion. All the
Christian subjects of the Sultan in south-eastern Europe, whatever their
nationality, came under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch;
they were therefore regarded as Greeks. But when, on March 10,1870, Abd-ul-Aziz
signed the firman creating the Bulgarian Exarchate, he laid the foundations of
a new Power. Christian and Greek were thenceforth no longer synonymous in
European Turkey; another nationality, long forgotten by Western statesmen who
knew nothing of the medieval glories of the Bulgarian Tsars, arose as a competitor
of the Hellenes, hitherto regarded as the “sick man’s” only heirs. The Greeks
saw at once the full import of a step which Fuad Pasha in his political
testament had recommended in the interest of Turkey, and which Ignatyeff had
supported in that of Russia. The Ecumenical Patriarch only managed to postpone
for two years the appointment of the first Exarch, and then excommunicated him
and his adherents as schismatics. The Bulgarian Exarchate, indeed, came to
bring not peace but a sword. Henceforth the rivalry of the Christian races of
the Balkan peninsula was as serious an obstacle to the settlement of the
Eastern question as were the jealousies of the Great Powers, and the situation
became much what it had been before the Turkish conquest. Then, the mutual
animosity of Slavs and Greeks had aided the Ottomans to extend their dominions
in Europe; now the conflicting ambitions of Hellenes, Serbs, Bulgarians,
Albanians, and Roumanians facilitate the retention of Thrace, Macedonia,
Albania, and Epiros by the Sultan, whose policy it has been to play off one
Christian nationality against the other, always favouring that which for the
moment was weakest.
The
Franco-German War, which enabled the Italians to enter Rome, provided Russia
with an opportunity for tearing up the Treaty of Paris. On October 81,1870, the
Russian Chancellor announced, in a circular to the Powers, that his Imperial
master no longer considered himself bound by the restrictions imposed upon his
sovereignty in the Black Sea; and the Convention of London (March 18, 1871),
which resulted, abandoned the neutrality of the Euxine. A further Turco-Russian
Convention permitted both States to build Black Sea fleets. Sevastopol could be
restored; the Russian navy might once more become a menace to Constantinople.
But the next Russo-Turkish War came too soon for Russia to avail herself of
this advantage.
The Eastern
question remained dormant during the three years which followed the appointment
of the first Bulgarian Exarch. But, in
1875, the outbreak of an insurrection in the
Herzegovina led to the most important developments which south-eastern Europe
had witnessed since the creation of the modem kingdom of Greece. Bosnia and the
Herzegovina more nearly resembled Crete than any other part of the Turkish
empire. Their inhabitants, though divided into Christians arid Mussulmans, were
all of the same Slav race, with this difference only, that most of the
Christians were Orthodox Serbs, while a minority consisted of Catholic Croats.
Of Turks, as in Crete, there were practically none, except the functionaries
sent from Constantinople, Thus, the Mussulman oppressors in these two Slavonic
provinces belonged to the same stock as their Christian victims,' who were
nominally their equals before the law, but were virtually debarred from giving
evidence in the higher Courts, and could only obtain justice against members of
the dominant creed by enormous bribes. Some years before the outbreak, the
British Consul had uttered the significant warning that “ without some powerful
intervention, Bosnia and the Herzegovina might soon witness scenes similar to
those which have lately terrified Europe in Syria.” No Christians were employed
in the administration ; the police purchased their places and reimbursed themselves
by extorting money from those whom it was their duty to defend; and, worst of
all, the exactions of the tax-farmers were such that the peasant seldom kept
for himself more than one-third of his crop. It was this last iniquity which
occasioned the ultimate outbreak in 1875.
The harvest
of 1874 had been a very bad one, yet the tax-farmers did not on that account
diminish their demands. The unhappy peasants of Nevesinye, a place a little to
the east of Mostar, were unable to pay and rose in revolt The insurrection, at
first regarded by the Turks as a merely local disturbance, soon spread. The
Catholic clergy, who had long looked to Austria for aid, were excited by the
recent visit of the Emperor to Dalmatia; the Orthodox Serbs turned their eyes
to Montenegro, whence help had so often come, and where the fugitives from
Turkish tyranny were only awaiting the moment to strike. A manifesto
1875-6]
Servia and Montenegro declare war.
383
was issued,
demanding vengeance for the battle of Kossovo (1389), the Waterloo of the
medieval Servian empire, and tor the five centuries of servitude which it had
caused. The agitation extended to Bosnia; volunteers came down from the crags
of the Black Mountain; and the movement, which had at first been directed not
against the Sultan but against the local authorities and the Mussulman
landowners, developed into a revolt against Turkish rule. All attempts at
conciliation failed. The Powers sent their Consuls to confer with the rebels,
but in vain; the Porte made its usual promises, but its Christian subjects had
heard them before. Count Andrdssy, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister,
addressed a note to the Turkish Government, urging the real equality of
Christians and Mussulmans before the law, the abolition of the system of farming
the taxes, and the formation of a local assembly representative of both
religions to control the administration. This famous document, intended to
secure peace, was as barren of results as were the negotiations of the Austrian
Baron Rodich with the insurgents. Unsubdued in the field, and encouraged from
both Servia and Montenegro, they now ine'eased their demands, and insisted that
one-third of the land should be handed over to the Christians. A final effort
of the three Emperors to make the Sultan carry out reforms met with no support
from the British Government, then pledged to Disraeli’s Turcophil policy.
Servia and Montenegro armed; and on July 1, 1876, Servia, and on July 2 Montenegro,
declared war againsi Turkey on behalf of their brother Serbs. The moment had at
last come, so the Pi. .ice of Montenegro told his subjects, to restore the
Servian empire, which had fallen with Murad I and should revive with Murad V,
the new Siman.
The situation
of the Turkish empire in the summer of 1876 might, indeed, justify the sanguine
rhetoric of Prince Nicholas. The insurrection in the Herzegovina had not only
aroused the sympathies of the two neighbouring Serb States but quickened the
national feeling of the Bulgarian peasants. Economically, the condition of the
Bulgarians during the later years of Ottoman rule contrasted favourably with
that of some independent Christian races. Midhat Pasha, the most Liberal of
Turkish statesmen, had been for four years Governor of the Vilayet of the
Danube, as Bulgaria was then officially styled, and his residence at the
provincial capital of Rustchuk had conferred great material benefits upon the
thrifty, laborious population. In fact, the Russian officers, who visited
Bulgaria during the war of 1877, found that the “little brothers,” whom they
had come to free, were better off under the Turkish yoke than many of their own
mujiks under the benevolent despotism of the Tsar. In the words of an impartial
eye-witness, to exchange places with the Bulgarian rayah “would have been no
bad bargain for the Russian peasants.’* But a revolutionary committee, composed
of educated men, had existed for several years at Bucharest, and had extended
its branches across the Danube. Despite the heroism
of
Vasil Levski, an ex-deacon, who was the chief of these itinerant “Apostles” and
died on the gallows at Sofia, where a monument still preserves his memory, the
efforts of these intellectual leaders had exercised little influence on their
stolid and unimaginative countrymen, till the Serbs of the Herzegovina gave
them the example of another Slavonic nationality struggling to be free. A new
revolutionary organisation was founded in Roumania; wooden cannon were
hollowed out of cherry-trees, and on May 2,1876, the insurrection broke out at
Tatar- Bazardjik. In itself it was of little importance, but the cruelty with
which it was suppressed aroused the indignation of the whole civilised world.
The credit of having first disclosed to the public the horrible massacre of
Batak was due to the enterprise of an English newspaper correspondent, whose
story, so far from being exaggerated, was amply confirmed by the British and
American Commissioners. The village of Batak, on the northern spurs of Rhodope,
was preparing to join the national movement, when a force of Bashi-Bazuks under
the command of Achmet Aga of Dospad and his colleague, Mohammad Aga of Dorkovo,
arrived there. After some attempt at defence, the villagers surrendered on the
distinct promise that their lives should be spared. Then began what Baring, the
British Commissioner, stigmatised in his official report, drawn up after a
visit to the spot, “ as perhaps the most heinous crime that has stained the
history of the present century.” Achmet Aga and his men spared neither age nor
sex. Some of the victims were butchered in cold blood; others were burned to
death in the school; others again perished amid the flames of blazing petroleum
in the church. For more than tvto months the stench of the unburied corpsea
kept every living soul away; and when the British Commissioner arrived he found
no one but a solitary old woman in this once flourishing village. Only after
his arrival did the survivors begin to return from the woods where they had
found shelter. It was estimated that 5000 out of a population of 7000 had
perished at Batak alone, while the Christians slaughtered throughout Bulgaria
in that fatal month of May made up a total of 12,000. - ,
The
“Bulgarian Atrocities” aroused the indignation of the whole Christian world. In
England Gladstone’s famous pamphlet ran through many editions, while the most
powerful orator of the day levelled all his moral force, all his rhetorical
skill, against the system of government which could not only allow, but reward,
such crimes. Lord Derby, the Conservative Foreign Secretary, telegraphed to
Constantinople that “ any renewal of the outrages would be more fatal to the
Porte than the loss of a battle”; and an Ottoman official, perceiving when it
was too late the full political import of the Batak massacre, asked one of its
authors how much Russia had paid him for a deed which would furnish her with a
fresh excuse for intervention on behalf of the persecuted Slavs of the Balkan
peninsula. Since that day there have been atrocities in the
Turkish
empire on a far larger scale; but the Armenian massacres had much less effect
upon politics than the butchery of Batak.
Meanwhile, a
revolution had broken out in the heart of the Turkish capital. The national
party, discontented with the lack of firmness shown by Mahmud Neddim, the
Russophil Grand Vizier, raised the cry of “ Turkey for the Turks ”; at
Constantinople several thousand softas, or theological students, forced the
Sultan to dismiss his Minister; at Salonica the French and German Consuls were
murdered. Matters reached a climax when, on May 29, Mehemed Ruchdi, the new
Grand Vizier, and his confederates, having obtained a Jetvah from the Sheikh-
ul-Islam authorising the deposition of Abd-ul-Aziz on the ground of his
incapacity and extravagance, declared the throne vacant and on the following
day proclaimed his nephew Sultan under the title of Murad V. Four days later,
the death of Abd-ul-Aziz prevented all danger of a restoration. The cause of
his death has been much contested; five years afterwards, Midhat Pasha and others
were tried and convicted of the Sultan’s assassination; but the trial, held
under the shadow of Yildiz, was an absurd travesty of justice, and it was the
opinion of a British doctor1, who saw the dead man’s body, that
Abd-ul-Aziz committed suicide by cutting his arteries with a pair of scissors.
The removal of his uncle did not, however, confirm Murad on the throne for
long. The tragedy of his'sudden elevation to power affected a mind naturally
feeble; the national party soon recognised that he was not the man to direct
the fortunes of the empire in a time of dire distress. On August 31 he was
deposed in his turn, and his brother Abd-ul-Hamid II took his place. Murad
vanished in the palace of Cheragan on the Bosporos, which had witnessed his
uncle’s tragic death, and his fate remains one of the mysteries of
Constantinople.
Seldom has a
Sultan begun his reign under greater difficulties than the astute diplomatist
who now ascended the throne. He found Bosnia and the Herzegovina in revolt
against his authority, Servia and Montenegro fighting on their behalf. The two
Servian States, although they had begun the war nearly at the same time, were
of very different calibre and had very different leaders. Prince Milan of
Servia, who had now come of age, was a man of considerable natural shrewdness,
but he was no soldier, while his character had been spoiled, as is that of most
Orientals, by a Parisian education, and further marred by the bad example of
his Regents. He was suspicious and jealous of Prince Nicholas of Montenegro, a
man of much diplomatic ability and far greater force of will, whose poetic
nature never lost touch with realities, who had already taken part in one war
against his hereditary enemy, and whose people, in the words of Tennyson, were
a nation of “warriors beating back the swarm of Turkish Islam tor five hundred
years.”
1
The late Dr Dickson of Constantinople, who communicated this to the author.
Between these
two rulers there could be no unity of purpose, for neither was willing to cede
to the other the headship of that great Servian empire, which it was the
ambition of each to revive. Milan, accordingly, entered into the struggle
against his will, and in deference to public opinion, which would have severely
punished an Obrenovich who should have abstained from championing the cause, in
which his rival, the pretender Peter Karageorgevich, was fighting as a
volunteer among the hills of “ lofty Bosnia.”
The Servian
army, increased by a body of volunteers, was under the command of an
experienced Russian officer, General Chemai'eff, whose plan of campaign was to
invade the Turkish territory on the south and east by the valleys of the Morava
and the Timok, while at the same time despatching detachments to the frontiers
of Bosnia and of the Sandjak of Novibazar. But the Russian commander’s strategy
was frustrated by the inferior material of which the Servian forces were
composed. Unlike the Montenegrins, the Serbs had been at peace for two
generations with their former masters, for whom they were no match in the
field, while the Bulgarians, cowed by the massacres, did not rise as was
expected. Chemai'eff, indeed, crossed the Turkish frontier to the south, and
carried the Turkish camp by a sudden attack. But, while one Ottoman general
checked the Servian advance to the east at Zajechar and laid the important
strategic post of Knajajevats in ashes, another descended the valley of the
Morava,. and completely. defeated the retreating army of the south at
Aleksinats. Prince Milan, from his headquarters at Parachin, had already
invited the Powers to intervene. An armistice was granted, but the negotiations
for a settlement were hindered by the ill-timed proclamation of Milan as King
of Servia at Deligrad on September 16, at ChemaiefFs suggestion, and the
fighting was resumed. The Serbs made a desperate stand at Djunis, but in vain ;
Aleksinats was lost; all southern Servia was in the power of the Turks, and the
road was open to Belgrade. Then the Tsar intervened, to save Servia from
annihilation. General Ignatyeff handed a Russian ultimatum to the Porte,
demanding the conclusion of an armistice within 48 hours with both Servia and
Montenegro. The Turkish Government yielded; on November 1 an armistice of two
months was signed, which was subsequently extended till March 1, 1877, when a
definite peace was concluded between Prince Milan and the Sultan. Servia
neither lost nor gained by the War of 1876; her territory was left
undiminished; her finances were unencumbered by a war indemnity.
Meanwhile,
the Montenegrins had fought with far more success than their Servian allies.
The forces of the Black Mountain were divided into two armies, that of the
north, under the command of the Prince, which invaded the Herzegovina, and that
of the south, under Bojo Petrovich, his cousin and subsequent Prime Minister,
whose instructions were to watch the Albanian frontier. The northern army
defeated the
Turks with
great loss at the village of Vuchidol, and the advance guard reached the old
castle of Duke Stephen only a few miles from Mostar. But bad news from the
south compelled the Prince to hasten back to the defence of his country, only
to find that his cousin had twice routed the enemy at Medun near Podgoritsa.
Another Montenegrin victory at Danilograd in the Zeta valley and the capitulation
of Medun concluded the campaign of 1876. Montenegro signed an armistice with
the Porte on the basis of uti possidetis; Bojo Petrovich was sent to
Constantinople to negotiate peace, with instructions to ask for an increase of
territory, including the cession of the then Turkish fortress of Spizza, which
commands the bay of Antivari. The Porte was willing to cede Spizza, but
declined to give up Nikshich, whereupon the Prince recalled his envoy and
prepared for a second campaign. •
European
diplomacy did not remain idle while Servia and Montenegro were keeping their
truce with Turkey. The British Government had sent the fleet to Besika Bay near
the mouth of the Dardanelles, when the Bulgarian troubles began, and the
language of the Prime Minister was warlike; but, on the proposal of Lord Derby,
a Conference of the Powers for the settlement of the Eastern question assembled
at Constantinople. On the day of its opening (December 23), Midhat Pasha, who
had just returned to power, obtained from Abd-ul-Hamid II the publication of a
decree, creating a Turkish Parliament composed of two Chambers, and proclaiming
the equality of all Ottoman subjects before the law and the integrity of the
Ottoman empire. This last doctrine provided a pretext for the rejection of the
proposals submitted by the Conference, of which the principal were the
rectification of the Montenegrin frontier, and the autonomy of Bulgaria,
Bosnia, and the Herzegovina, under Govemors-General to be named by’ the Porte
with the consent of the Powers. These propositions were examined by a national
Council, convoked for the purpose; and, on its refusal to accept them, the
Conference broke up in January, 1877, and Prince Gorchakoff^ the Russian
Chancellor, addressed a circular note to the other Powers, asking what measures
they proposed to take for enforcing the decisions of Europe. The British
Government made one further attempt to preserve peace. A fresh Conference was
held in London; and, on March 81, the representatives of the Powers signed a protocol,
taking cognisance of the conclusion of peace between Turkey and Servia and of
the promised reforms, and calling upon the Porte to make those reforms
effective and to place the Turkish army on a peace footing. Meanwhile, Midhat
Pasha had fallen, and with him all hope of serious reform had disappeared ;
the Parliament which he had created was without experience of public life,
while dependent on the Government; and it supported the Government in rejecting
the London protocol. War was now inevitable; Russia signed a military
convention with the Prince of Roumania for the passage of her troops across his
territory, and on April 24 the
388
The Russian army invades Turkey.
Russian
troops crossed both the European and the Asiatic frontiers of Turkey. Five days
later Montenegro reopened hostilities.
Turks and
Russians alike realised that Roumania was the key of the situation. Powerless
in the Black Sea, where the Turkish fleet was then superior, the invaders could
only attack Turkey by land, and in Europe every facility for doing so was
placed at their disposal by the principality, which lay between the Danube and
the Russian frontier. The Porte, which still took the strictly legal view of
Roumania as a vassal State, not only protested against the convention as a
violation of the Treaty of Paris, but also ordered the bombardment of the
Roumanian town of Calafat on the Danube—an act which provoked a declaration of
war by Roumania, and the proclamation of Roumanian independence on May 21. A
month later, the Russian troops crossed the Danube almost without opposition at
two points, one facing the Dobrudja, the other opposite Sistova, and Bulgaria
became the theatre of the War. The Tsar, confident of the success which seemed
to await him in this Slavonic province, attended a solemn thanksgiving in the
church of Sistova; and General Gurko surprised Tmovo, the medieval Bulgarian
capital, traversed the Balkans by the low pass of Hainkoi, entered the valley
of the Tundja, and took the Shipka pass in the rear. It seemed as if this
daring officer would reach Adrianople, or even appear at the head of his
cavalry before the walls of Stamboul. A panic broke out at the Turkish capital;
Abd-ul-Kerim, the Ottoman commander in Europe, was deposed; Mehemed Ali, a
German renegade of French extraction, took his place, while Suleiman was
recalled from Montenegro to Thrace. Then the fortune of war turned ; Gurko,
despite the desperate bravery of his Bulgarian allies, was defeated at Stara
Zagora and driven back to the Balkans ; Osman Pasha, hitherto stationed in
compulsory idleness at the “virgin fortress” of Vidin* occupied Plevna, whose
defence was to be the most heroic episode of the campaign. That small town,
easily captured in the first Russo-Turkish War of the century, proved to be the
chief barrier to Russian success in the fourth and last.
The siege of
Plevna began on July 20 with a Russian repulse, which was followed ten days
later by a second and far more crushing defeat. The Roumanians, who had
hitherto taken little active part in the War, now crossed the Danube, and
Prince Charles was appointed Commander- in-Chief of the allied forces before
the beleaguered town. On September 11 they attacked the strongest of all the
defences of Plevna, the “ indomitable Grivitsa redoubt,” and after three
attempts placed the Roumanian colours on its summit. But the assault upon a
second •redoubt failed. Unable to take Plevna by storm, the allies shut in the
garrison so closely on every side that at last Osman’s supplies ran out; he was
compelled to resort to a general sortie, and, after performing prodigies of
valour, surrendered on December 10 with all that was left of his gallant army.
Meanwhile, the Turks had in vain endeavoured to
dislodge the
Russians from the Shipka pass, and in Asia had lost, for the third time in
history, the strong citadel of Kars, captured by an Armenian general,
Loris-Melikoff. On the west of the Balkan peninsula, the Montenegrins, after
craftily luring their enemies into the Zeta valley, had surprised and driven them
back with great loss, and Prince Nicholas achieved the military feat of which
he is still most proud—the capture of Nikshich after a four months’ siege.
Everywhere—in Montenegro, in Bulgaria, in Asia Minor—the Turks were worsted.
Now a fresh enemy appeared in the field. Two days after the fall of Plevna,
Servia again declared war against Turkey. It seemed as if, unaided, the Turkish
empire must collapse before this combination of Christian nationalities.
But the
Russian advance had alarmed those powerful interests, which had so long
prevented the disappearance of Turkish rule from Europe. Austria-Hungary, since
she had heen driven out of Italy in 1866, had looked upon the western half of
the Balkan peninsula as the peculiar sphere of her diplomacy; the Emperor
Francis Joseph had, indeed* promised his neutrality during the War in the
meeting which he had had with the Tsar at Reichstadt on July 8, 1876, on
condition that the occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be his share
of the spoil; but the Austrian Government.was anxious lest this condition
should not be observed by the victorious Russians, who would by such a
concession have heen convicted of betraying that Panslavonic cause, of which
Russia had constituted herself the champion. In Great Britain, the Prime
Minister was an avowed friend of Turkey— an attitude attributed by his friends
to political insight and dread of Russia, by his foes to his Jewish blood and
his Asiatic imagination—while public opinion, although deeply moved by the
Bulgarian atrocities, was still under the influence of the country’s
traditional policy towards her old ally of the Crimean War, and was not
prepared to see the Russians installed at Constantinople. The occupation of the
new Rome had, indeed, been expressly discountenanced by the Tsar; hut he had
now returned from the seat of war to Russia, and his generals, careless (after
the fashion of military men) of diplomatic conventions, might seek to win
eternal fame for themselves by planting the cross once more over Santa Sophia.
While the Porte appealed to the Powers for their mediation, the Russian,
Servian, and Montenegrin armies continued to advance. Gurko recrossed the
Balkans, took Sofla and routed Suleiman near Philippopolis; Skobeleff and
Radetzky surrounded the Turkish army, which had fought so valiantly in the
Shipka pass, at the neighbouring wood of Shejnovo on January 9, 1878; eleven
days later the Russians, as in 1829, entered Adrianople. The terrified
Mussulmans fled before them to the fastnesses of Rhodope, and the brutality of
the Cossacks towards these refugees almost equalled that of the Turkish
irregulars to the Bulgarians. The Serbs, more fortunate than in the previous
campaign, defeated the Turks at Pirot, while
Prince Milan,
amidst general enthusiasm, entered the ancient Servian town of Nish in
triumph—an achievement which has ever since endeared the ill-fated Obrenovich
dynasty to the citizens. A third Servian victory at Vranya completed the
successes of this brief war. At the same time, the older branch of the Servian
stock realised the great ambition of Prince Nicholas to reach down to the
Adriatic ; the coveted fortress of Spizza on the bay of Antivari, the town of
Antivari itself, and the old pirate stronghold of Dulcigno fell before the
victorious Montenegrins, whose poetic ruler addressed an ode to the sea, to
which he had at last cut his way. He was on the point of beginning the siege of
Skutari-in- Albania when the news of the armistice reached him, while the same
intelligence cut short the Roumanian siege of Vidin. On January 31, the
document suspending hostilities had been signed at Adrianople. Events in
England had, more than aught else, contributed to the conclusion of the
armistice. The Conservative Cabinet was divided, but its most powerful member
was ready to risk a war, for which he had said that Great Britain was better
prepared than any other Power; and there was a war-party out of doors, excited
by music-hall ditties and bellicose leading articles, which asked for nothing
better than another victory over the rival whom British troops had beaten
little more than twenty years earlier. Not yet entrenched in Egypt, even though
she had half the Suez Canal shares in her pocket, Great Britain still regarded
the occupation of Constantinople by a Great Power as a menace to her Cndian
empire, while the intemperate language of men like Edward Freeman only damaged
the cause which they had at heart. Accordingly* che British fleet was ordered
to Constantinople—a destination at once altered for Besika Bay after the
resignation of Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary—-and Parliament was asked
to vote =£*6,000,000 for armaments. As the Russian lines were now moved close
to Constantinople, a part of the British fleet was ordered to enter the Sea of
Marmora for the protection of British life and property at the capital. The
forces of the two Great Powers were within a few miles of each other; war
seemed to be inevitable. The Grand Duke Nicholas established his headquarters
at the village of San Stefano, the British Admiral was stationed off the island
of Prinkipo.
At this
moment another nationality intervened to complete the confusion of the
situation. The Greeks had hitherto taken no part in the struggle. The
insurrection of the Slavs in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, the first Servian and
Montenegrin campaigns, had found the Hellenes merely interested spectators; the
Bulgarian rising naturally could not have been expected to command their
sympathy. But when Russia, the great Orthodox Power, which had been one of the
three benefactresses of the young Greek kingdom, entered the field, the
position changed. There were some who wished to avail themselves of' this
Russo-Turkish War, as they had desired in that of 1854, to excite
1877-8]
391
insurrections
in the Greek provinces of Turkey; while the national pride rejected the idea of
a fresh, and perhaps final, settlement of the Eastern question, in which
Greece, the oldest factor in the problem, should be ignored. It was felt at
Athens that party dissensions must cease in the face of this crisis in which
the future of Hellenism, the realisation of “the Grand Idea,” might be at
stake. A coalition Cabinet, an “Ecumenical Government,” as it was called, was
formed in June, 1877, under the presidency of old Admiral Kanares, who more
than fifty years before had fired the Capitan-Pasha’s ship at Scio, and who had
as colleagues no less than four ex-Premiers. Such a “ Ministry of all the
talents” has never been constructed in Greece before or since; but, in similar
circumstances, it has lately been imitated in Servia, by the coalition Ministry
of all parties in February, 1909. Following the advice of the British
Government and the national disinclination of the Hellenes to identify their
cause with that of the Slavonic elements in the Balkan peninsula, the majority
of the Cabinet declined the invitation of the Russian Minister during the siege
of Plevna to join in the conflict and share in the spoils. Blit, when the news
of the Russian advance on Adrianople arrived, the excitement of the populace
became intense. The “Ecumenical Government,” whose chief was already dead,
resigned; and one of its members, the most experienced of Greek statesmen,
Koumoundouros, who formed the new Cabinet, had to satisfy public opinion by
supporting insurrectionary movements in Epiros, Thessaly, and Crete, and by
preparing to join in the war. The Greek forces had reached Domokos, when the
conclusion of the Russo-Turkish armistice convinced the Greeks that, if they
attacked Turkey now, they would fight alone. Great Britain promised that the
Greek claims should be considered at the coming Congress ; the Greek troops
were recalled, but the insurrections went on. The movement in Epiros was soon
suppressed; but that in Thessaly was more serious. The picturesque villages
which gleam on the slopes and nestle in the folds of Pelion rose in rebellion;
a provisional Government was formed, which proclaimed union with Greece ; and
the fall of Makrinitsa, the headquarters of the insurgents, is still associated
with the death of the Englishman Ogle, whose name is borne by a street at Volo.
At last, British intervention in May ended the insurrection in Thessaly, while
in Crete, which demanded complete autonomy, desultory fighting continued.
The Treaty of
San Stefano, which had meanwhile been signed by the Russian and Turkish
delegates on March 3, 1878, was not calculated to satisfy Hellenic aspirations.
That abortive instrument, still regretted in Bulgaria, would have restored the
Bulgarian empire of the Middle Ages, and, while hopelessly dismembering Turkey,
would have put a final end to Greek ambitions in Macedonia. It provided for the
creation of a vassal principality of Bulgaria, with a frontage on both the
Euxine and the Aegean, and with an inland frontier which marched with the
Danube
on the north
and comprised the Macedonian lakes of Prespa and Ochrida, once the home of the
Bulgarian Tsars, and the seat of the Bulgarian Church. To Servia, as the reward
of her two campaigns, was assigned a considerable slice of territory, which
included Nish, while her southwestern frontier was drawn in so favourable a
manner as almost to touch the enlarged eastern boundary of Montenegro. The two
Servian States would thus have practically joined each other, and an
all-Servian railway might have united Belgrade with the Adriatic. To these
territorial advantages were added the recognition of Servian independence and
the cessation of the tribute, which since 1867 had been the last vestige of
Turkish suzerainty. Montenegro was more than trebled in size, and doubled in
population; she was to retain her recent conquests of Nikshich, Spizza,
Antivari, and Dulcigno; Bilek and Gacko in the Herzegovina, Podgoritsa and the
medieval Montenegrin capital of Jablyak on the side of Albania, Priepolye in
the Sandjak of Novibazar, were included in the enlarged principality, while
diplomacy calmly assigned to Prince Nicholas the unruly Arnauts of Plava and
Gusinje. Montenegrin independence, which had really existed for five centuries,
was at last formally recognised by the Sultan. Roumania, which had rendered
such splendid service to Russia during the siege of Plevna, was treated far
less generously than the Bulgarians, whose country had, indeed, been the
theatre of operations, but who had played a much less important part in the
actual fighting. While the independence of Roumania was admitted by the Porte,
Russia acted with base ingratitude towards her Latin ally. She was resolved to
acquire at all costs, preferably at that of her Roumanian neighbours, the
southern part of Bessarabia, which she had been compelled to surrender after
the Crimean War, and which had been joined to Moldavia by the Treaty of Paris.
She, therefore, obtained from Turkey in lieu of part of the war indemnity the
barren district of the Dobrudja, which lies between the Danube and the Black
Sea, with the object of exchanging it compulsorily for the far more desirable
strip of Bessarabia. For herself Russia stipulated alsn for Ardahan, Kars,
Bayazid, and Batum with a strip of coast in Asia, so that Trebizond and Erzerum
would become the first important towns within the new Turkish frontier. In
order still further to cripple her adversary, she insisted on the demolition of
all the Danube fortresses, and a war indemnity, which, after the
above-mentioned deductions, still remained large. On behalf of the Christian
populations still left under Turkish rule, she demanded autonomy for Bosnia and
what remained of the Herzegovina under a Christian Governor-General, subject to
modifications thereafter to be made by Turkey, Austria-Hungary, and herself; ’
in Crete the Porte promised “ to apply scrupulously the Organic Law of 1868,”
and to introduce “ analogous arrangements adapted to local requirements into
Epiros, Thessaly, and the other parts of Turkey in Europe”; finally, by Article
16 it engaged “to carry into effect,
1878]
S93
without
further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in
the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and to guarantee their security from
Kurds and Circassians.” The subsequent Armenian massacres form a striking
commentary on this article.
The Treaty of
San Stefano was a wholly Slavonic settlement of a question which concerned
other races as well. It would have given the final blow to the Turkish empire
in Europe by cutting the remaining Ottoman territory in two separate parts, and
by imposing a Bulgarian barrier between the two chief pities of European
Turkey. More than that, it would have aggrandised the Bulgarian at the expense
of the Greek nationality in Macedonia and Thrace, and would have sacrificed the
Albanians to the greater glories of Montenegro and Bulgaria. From every part of
the ceded districts came protests against this flagrant violation of justice
and ethnology. The Greeks addressed an erudite disquisition to the British
Government on this complete disregard of their historic claims; the Mussulmans
appealed to Queen Victoria as the Empress of a hundred million Moslem subjects;
the Lazes begged for British protection to prevent the cession of Batum and the
consequent ruin of Trebizond; the Serbs protested against the inclusion of
Servian regions in Bulgaria; the Albanians formed a league to “ resist until
death” any attempt upon the inviolability of their land; the Roumanians were
justly indignant at the loss of Bessarabia. But what chiefly moved the British
Government to oppose the treaty was the conviction that the “ big Bulgaria ” of
San Stefano would be merely a Russian province, a constant menace to
Constantinople, and a basis for a future Russian attack upon it. The idea of
the late Sir William White had not then gained acceptance in England, that our
true policy in the East is the formation of strong and independent Balkan
States, which would serve as a barrier between Russia and her goal and might
even become the allies and the outposts of a reformed Turkey against Muscovite
aggression. Yet close observers of the attitude of the Bulgarians during the
War might have noticed that the “ little brothers,” whom the Russians had come
to free, were very glad of freedom, but had no desire to exchange one despotism
for another, even though the latter were Orthodox and Slavonic. At that moment,
however, all the appearances justified the British suspicions. The past policy
of Russia towards the Eastern Christians had not been disinterested; her past
relations with Greece proved that what she did not want was the erection of a
really strong Christian State on the ruins of Turkey. All the circumstances
attending the birth of the new Bulgaria pointed in the same direction—the
Prince to be “freely elected by the population,” and the future administrative
organisation to be drawn up by an assembly of notables, “under the supervision
of a Russian Commissioner,” who would watch for two years over its application.
Nor was Great Britain the only Power opposed to the Treaty. Austria-Hungary had
greater interests in the Balkan
peninsula;
she had been promised at Reichstadt the occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina;
she contemplated that Drang nach Osten, which would be as effectually barred as
the Greek advance towards Constantinople by a “ big Bulgaria," which would
have cut her off from Salonica. In France, the new Foreign Minister,
Waddington, who had been educated in England, had strongly British sympathies,
whenever French interests did not conflict with them.
Even before
the Treaty of San Stefano, Austria-Hungary had proposed the summons of a
Conference to Vienna, which subsequently became the Congress of Berlin—the
capital of the Power least interested in the Eastern question, and the abode of
the great statesman who had both the frankness to offer himself as “ an honest
broker ” and the authority to secure the acceptance of his friendly offices. Russia
was willing to entertain the proposal, provided that she might select what
clauses of the treaty she pleased for discussion at the Congress. The British
Government, on the other hand, demanded the examination of the treaty as a
whole, and followed up its demands by action. Lord Derby, indeed, declined to
be responsible any longer for a warlike policy with which he had long been out
of sympathy, and resigned the Foreign Office to Lord Salisbury, the late
British delegate at the Constantinople Conference, who lived to make the
sorrowful confession that in her pro- Turkish policy Great Britain had “backed
the wrong horse." Lord Beaconsfield then called out the reserves and
ordered a force of native Indian troops to Malta, while his new Foreign Secretary
in a circular addressed to the other Powers summed up the British Government’s
objections to the Treaty of San Stefano. The mobilisation of the Austrian army,
the indignation of Roumania at Russian ingratitude, the discontent at home—all
contributed to induce the Tsar to listen to the British arguments. Through the
mediation of Count Shuvaloff, the Russian ambassador in London, a secret
agreement, which Speedily found its way into print, was made between the two
Governments for the modification of the “ big Bulgaria,” and the way was paved
for the meeting of the European Areopagus at Berlin.
The Congress
of Berlin, which opened on June 13 and closed on the same day of the following
month, was the most important gathering of statesmen that has ever met since
the last great liquidation of the Eastern question at Paris in 1856. All the
Great Powers were represented by their best men—Great Britain by the Prime
Minister and the Foreign Secretary; Russia by Prince Gorchakdff and the Russian
ambassador in London; France by Waddington; Austria-Hungary by Count Andrdssy
and Baron Haymerle; Italy by Count Corti, her Minister for Foreign Affairs;
Germany by the “ Iron Chancellor,” who was elected president of the Congress.
Each Power was also assisted by the counsels of its ambassador in Berlin, while
Turkey, the object Of these deliberations, sent Karatheodori and Mehemed Ali,
the one
a Greek, the
other a German, to plead Moslem interests at the Congress. The admission of
Greece was championed by Lord Salisbury, in pursuance of the British pledge to
see that Greek claims should not suffer from Greek neutrality in the war. He
pointed out that the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate had made the Greeks
and Bulgarians rivals, and that, while Bulgaria enjoyed the protection of Russia,
Greece was unrepresented at the Council which was about to decide on the future
of the East. The Congress decided, however, that the Greek delegates, Theodore
Dely&nnes and Alexander Ragkaves, should merely be admitted, like those of
Roumania, to state their views without the right of voting. Thus, none of the
small States immediately concerned in the settlement were allowed direct
representation at the council- board.
The Congress
of Berlin, in ■ spite of the threatened departure of the British delegates
at a critical stage of the negotiations, accomplished its work, and drew up on
July 13 what has been ever since, at least on paper, the charter of the Balkan
peninsula. The Treaty of San Stefano was almost entirely nullified by the
Treaty of Berlin. Instead of a “big Bulgaria” stretching* from the Danube to
the Aegean and from the Black Sea beyond the Macedonian lakes, it created a
small “autonomous and tributary principality under the suzerainty of the
Sultan,” which was bounded by the Danube, the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the
Servian and Macedonian frontiers, and had a harbour at Varna. South of the
Balkans, there was artificially formed an autonomous province, known by the
diplomatic name of “ Eastern Rumelia,” and placed “ under the direct political
and military authority of the Sultan,” but administered by a Christian
Governor-General “named by the Porte, with the assent of the Powers, for a term
of five years.” The recent history of Moldavia and Wallachia might have
suggested the reflexion that national feeling will sooner or later join
together what diplomacy has severed. But for the moment the separation of
Bulgaria into two sections was regarded as a triumph of British statesmanship
and a diminution of Russian influence. Such is the shortsightedness erf the
ablest diplomatists that, when the union of the two Bulgarias came only seven
years later, it was the British Government that supported and the Russian that
condemned it. It was further provided that the Prince of Bulgaria should be “
freely elected by the population and confirmed by the Porte, with the consent
of the Powers,” and that no member of any reigning dynasty should be eligible.
Until a Bulgarian Assembly of Notables should have dr&wn up an organic law
for the principality, a Russian Commissioner was to direct the administration,
but the duration of this provisional arrangement was limited to nine months.
The organisation of Eastern Rumelia, on the other hand, was entrusted to an
European Commission, which was allotted three months for its labours, i
While the
articles affecting Bulgaria were intended to minimise Russian influence in the
eastern Balkans, the clauses regarding the Serb population were favourable to
the growth of Austria in the west. In pursuance of the Reichstadt Jgrecment,
and on the proposal of Lord Salisbury, Bosnia and the Herzegovina were to be
“occupied and administered by Austria-Hungary,” which thus became what she had
been for two decades of the eighteenth century—a Balkan State. Arguments, alike
practical and historical, could be advanced for this arrangement. The two
provinces contained few Turks, and were distant from the Turkish capital, while
the coexistence of two Slav races and of three religions, Orthodox, Roman
Catholic, and Mussulman, suggested the administration of a strong foreign Power
as the best means of securing order and good government, which should be the
aim of practical statesmen in the Near East rather than exclusive attention to
the doctrine of nationalities. Austria-Hungary had already a number of Croatian
and Servian subjects; and, though the Magyars had sympathised with the Turks
during the war, so lately as 1869, Count Andrassy had alluded to the ancient
historical claims of the Hungarian Crown to Bosnia, the north of which had been
annexed by Austria in 1718. Moreover, the British Foreign Secretary saw in an
Austrian occupation the best means of preventing a chain of Slav States from
stretching across the Balkan peninsula. But this was not the only blow dealt
by the Berlin Treaty to the hopes of Servian and Montenegrin patriots. Article
25 further gave to the Dual Monarchy “ the right of keeping garrisons and
having military and commercial roads” ill the Sandjak of Novibazar, which
remained as a Turkish wedge between the two Servian States, a funnel through
which Austrian influence could penetrate into northern Albania and Macedonia. A
further Convention, dated April 21, 1879, between Austria-Hungary and Turkey,
while confirming this treaty right, stated that Austrian troops would only be
placed at the three points of Priboy, Priepolye, and Bielopolye, which last
place was almost immediately changed for Flevlye. In accordance with the views
pf Austria, the territorial additions made to modem Servia at Berlin were not
in Stara Serbia, the ancient land of the Servian Tsars, which still remained
Turkish, but at Nish and Vranya, and in the Bulgarian-speaking district of
Firot—a total increase of one-fourth of the former principality. Servia now
obtained the formal recognition of her independence; but, like the other two
Slav States, she was to pay her share of the Ottoman debt for these new
possessions. Montenegro, now also recognised at last as a sovereign State, had
to be content with twice, instead of thrice, her original territory. She received
the important places of Podgoritsa, Spuj,and Jablyak, and the Albanian towns
of Gusinje and Plava with the villages depending on them. She obtained an
outlet on the sea at the bay of Antivari, but was forced to restore Dulcigno to
Turkey and to cede Spizza to Austria. The former of
these
grievances was redressed in 1880; the latter has never been forgotten, for the
twin forts of what has since 1878 been the southernmost village of Dalmatia
command the bay and dominate the Prince s palace on the shore. Yet further^ to
prevent Antivari becoming a possible landing- place for Russian forces and
ammunition, it was provided by Article 29 that all Montenegrin waters should “
remain closed to the ships of war of all nations,” that the principality should
have neither fleet nor naval flag, and that the maritime and sanitary police of
the small strip of Montenegrin coast should be in the hands of Austria-Hungary.
These inexorable conditions were a bitter disappointment to Prince Nicholas. He
saw the Herzegovina, the cradle of his race, the stony land where he had fought
so valiantly against his hereditary enemy, occupied by his arch-foe—-that
Erzfeind who is now so much more feared at Cetinje than the Erbfeind of other
times. He saw, too, Spizza—the poor man’s “ ewe lamb,” as his ardent admirer
Freeman called it—taken from him, its captor, by a Power to which it had never
belonged.
A still
greater injustice was perpetrated by the articles dealing with Roumania.
Roumanian independence was made conditional on the retrocession of south
Bessarabia to Russia in exchange for the Dobrudja with an additional strip of
territory to the south, extending as far westward as the walls of the famous
fortress of Silistria. Against this cruel condition Prince Charles and his high-spirited
people protested in vain. Russia insisted on thus rewarding the splendid
services of her Latin allies, to whose assistance her victory had been largely
due, while the additional piece of land given as a consolation to Roumania was
benevolently taken from Bulgaria. The empire of the Tsar was thus once more
bounded by the “ accursed stream,” which, after twenty-two years of union,
again separated the free Roumanians from their brothers in Bessarabia, a region
historically and ethnographically a Roumanian land, while the Dobrudja
contained large Bulgarian and Turkish elements, and was still as desolate as at
the time when Ovid had lamented that it was his place of exile. Moreover, the
consignment of a Bulgarian population to Roumanian rule tended, and was perhaps
designed, to sow discord between the two adjacent States. The energy of
Roumania has, indeed, made the best of this compulsory exchange; a splendid
bridge now spans the Danube, uniting the trans-Danubian province to the rest of
the country, and making the barren Dobrudja a highway, by the now flourishing
port of Constantsa, from Berlin to the Bosporos. But the ingratitude of Russia
still rankles in the mind of the Roumanians, and has had the effect of driving
the “ Belgians of the East ” into the orbit of the Triple Alliance. The other
and much more plausible condition of her independence—the abolition of Jewish
disabilities—Roumania has sometimes evaded and sometimes ignored. It is argued
by Roumanian statesmen that in their country, and especially in Moldavia, the
Jewish question is not religious but social and economic, and that the
admission
of the
Semitic foreigners to full rights would swamp the native population. In order,
however, to obtain the recognition of the Powers the Roumanian Government had
to revise Article 7 of the Constitution, which permitted the naturalisation of
Christian aliens only; but, even then, the naturalisation of the Jews was
limited by various legal restrictions, with which a preoccupied Europe did not
trouble to interfere. Other less contentious clauses of the Treaty excluded
men-of-war from the Danube below the Iron Gates, and entrusted to
Austria-Hungary the removal of that natural obstacle, which was accomplished in
1896.
Greece
received by the Treaty of 1878 no increase of territory. DelyAnnes had told the
Congress that, in view of the general desire of a pacific settlement, his
Government would be content for the time being with the annexation of Crete and
of the Turkish provinces bordering on the Greek kingdom—an arrangement which,
as he justly argued,'would be a guarantee of peace. Accordingly, the Congress,
on the proposal of Waddington, invited the Porte, in its 13th protocol, so to
rectify the Greek frontier as to make the northern boundary of Hellas march
with the Peneios on the east, and with the Kalamas, which flows into the sea
opposite the southern half of Corfu, on the west. An article of the Treaty
reserved to the Powers the right of offering their mediation to facilitate this
settlement. Crete, on the other hand, was to remain Turkish, the Porte
promising to apply the Organic Law of 1868, while the rest of the Turkish
empire, for which no special administration was provided, had to be content
with the prospect of a similar organisation, the details of which were to be
worked out by special commissions, representing the native population. This
Article, which was destined to cover Macedonia, Thrace, Albania, and the larger
part of Epiros, remained a dead letter.
Such were the
main provisions of this new Charter of the Near East, so far as it affected
Europe. In Asia, the Black Sea frontier, as fixed at San Stefano, was preserved
at Berlin; the Porte ceded Ardahan, Kars, and Batum to Russia, but retained
Bayazid; while the Tsar promised that Batum should be made “ a free port,
essentially commercial.” Eight years later, his successor, despite the protests
of the British Government, repudiated this solemn promise. Finally—most futile
of all these pledges —by Article 61 the Porte undertook “ to carry out, without
further delay j the ameliorations and reforms demanded in the provinces
inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the
Circassians and Kurds.” Periodical statements of these reforms were to be made
to the Powers, who would “superintend their application.” A special
responsibility for the protection of the Armenians devolved upon Great Britain
in virtue of the Cyprus Convention, which had been signed on June 4, and the
publication of which during the Congress came as a thunder-clap upon the
diplomatic world. By this Convention, Great Britain engaged to join the Sultan
in the defence of his Asiatic
dominions
against any further Russian attack, and the Sultan promised, in return, “ to
introduce necessary reforms ” there, in consultation with his ally. In order to
enable the latter to fulfil her engagement, he assigned to her the island of
Cyprus as “ a place of arms ” in the Levant, on payment of an annual tribute,
and on the understanding that a Russian evacuation of the recent Asiatic
conquests should be followed by a British evacuation of Cyprus. Thus Lord
Beaconsfield “consolidated” the Turkish empire by assigning the administration
of Bosnia and the Herzegovina to Austria-H angary, and that of Cyprus to Great
Britain, with which its sole historical connexion had been the conquest by
Coeur-de-Lion nearly seven centuries earlier. His own opinion of these
diplomatic achievements was summed up in the memorable phrase, in which he told
the British people on his return from Berlin, that he had brought them “peace
with honour.”
The
experience of the thirty years that have elapsed since the signature of the
Berlin Treaty forces us, however, to add the following notes upon its
provisions and the observance they have received. It has not proved in any
sense a permanent settlement of an eternal question; it has not secured the
peace of the Balkan peninsula; it has not ensured the just treatment of the
Christian races which it left under Turkish rule. Almost every signatory Power,
and more than one small State, has violated some provision of this solemn
international instrument. Turkey has broken Articles 23 and 61 by doing nothing
to reform the lot of the Macedonian and Armenian populations, while no Power
has taken effective steps on behalf of the latter; Russia has tom up Article 59
by closing and fortifying Batum; Austria-Hungary has arbitrarily extended the
provisions of Article 25 by annexing Bosnia and the Herzegovina; Roumania has
defied Article 44 by her persecution of the Jews; Greece has received only a
portion of the territory indicated as hers in the 13th protocol; Bulgaria has
contemptuously and successfully ignored two whole series of clauses by the
union of Eastern Rumelia and the recent declaration of Bulgarian independence; the
Montenegrin frontier has been modified by an armed demonstration ; while Crete
has protested against her situation to such purpose, that four of the signatory
Powers have placed her under the government of a Greek Commissioner, Two short
but desperate wars, one of them fratricidal, have demonstrated the futility of
supposing that any parchment bonds will heal the racial jealousies or restrain
the racial ambitions of centuries in a part of Europe —if Europe it can be
called—where the claims derived from medieval, and even ancient, history are
constantly invoked as if a thousand years had been as yesterday. Yet, if the
Treaty of Berlin presents a sadly lacerated appearance today, it has
nevertheless marked an advance towards the ultimate solution of the Eastern
question. Whatever theorists may say, the thirty years of Austrian occupation
in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, with which we may compare the British occupation
of Egypt and the
French
protectorate of Tunisia, have converted two wild Turkish provinces into a
pattern Balkan State; free Bulgaria has, on the whole, proved to be a success;
while the exemption of the Macedonian Greeks from Bulgarian rule has, at least,
led later Greek politicians to bless the name of Lord Salisbury for his
services in helping to destroy the Treaty of San Stefano.
The three
years immediately following the Berlin Congress were occupied with the
delimitation of the new frontiers and the establishment of the new order of
things, which, in the case of Bosnia, Montenegro, and Greece, proved to be more
difficult than had been expected. Sixteen days after the signature of the
treaty, the Austrian troops under Baron von Philippovich crossed the Save in
four columns, the chief column following the historic route along the Bosna
valley which Prince Etigene had taken on the occasion of his famous dash on
Sarajevo in 1697. But the Austrians had reckoned without the fanaticism of the
Bosnian Mussulmans. On August 3 the Moslems of Maglaj treacherously cut to
pieces a squadron of hussars, and a series of skirmishes followed, until the
second column, having captured the ancient city of Yaytse (Jajce), where the
last Bosnian King had met his death, effected a junction with the main body and
pressed on to Sarajevo. When the Austrians approached, an insurrection broke
out in the capital; the Turkish governor was deposed; and a fanatic, named
Hajji Loja, preached a holy war against the Christians. On the 19th the
Austrians opened fire upon the city, which, after a desperate resistance, fell
into their hands; a large part of the town perished in the flames, and the
grave of many an Austrian soldier still bears silent testimony to the fury of
the defenders. Meanwhile, a guerrilla warfare had broken out in the rear, under
the command of Muktija Effendi, an Albanian from Novibazar, who was joined by
some Turkish regulars. The Bosna valley was once more the scene of constant
conflicts ; and the Herzegovina, which had at first submitted to Baron
Jovanovich almost without a blow, became restive. It was necessary to send four
more army corps to the relief of the army of occupation. The valley of the
Bosna was then cleared; the Herzegovina was subdued by the end of September;
and on October 20 the last stronghold of the Bosnian insurgents surrendered. In
1882, however, another insurrection broke out in the Herzegovina, and it was
not till the appointment of the late Baron von Kdllay to direct the destinies
of the “ Occupied Territory,” that the constructive work, which has gone on
ever since, began. At last, after thirty years of Austro-Hungarian occupation,
the two former Turkish provinces were annexed to the Dual Monarchy on October
7,1908.
The military
occupation of the three points in the Sandjak of Novibazar began with the
entrance of the Austro-Hungarian troops into Plevlye on September 10, 1879. The
Austrians sent only one civil official there, and the Turkish administrative,
judicial, and financial
authorities
continued to exist, while Turkish troops were stationed in the same towns as
the Austrian garrisons. The friendly relations which were maintained during the
period of this mixed occupation between the Austrians and the Turkish
authorities were largely due to the tact of Ferik Suleiman, the perpetual Pasha
of Plevlye, who was appointed soon after this strange and hybrid arrangement
began. The exclusion of Turkish irregulars from the Sandjak by the
Austro-Turkish Convention also had an excellent effect, while Ottoman pride was
characteristically salved by the diplomatic device of forming the three towns and
the four small intervening watch-posts occupied by the Austrians into a new and
smaller Sandjak of Plevlye. But with the natives of this district, mostly
Serbs—for here was Rascia, the nucleus of the old Servian empire—the “
Europeans ” were never popular. These “ enslaved ” Slavs were never allowed by
their free Servian and Montenegrin neighbours to forget the Treaty of San
Stefano; and they regarded the Austro-Turkish wedge which prevented the union
of the two States on either side of them as an obstacle to that dream of a
revived Servian realm, which, five centuries since the death of Stephen Dushan
(1355), is still ever present to the imaginative minds of the scattered Serbs.
Hence, when, in part compensation for the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina,
Austria- Hungary withdrew her troops from the Sandjak on October 28, 1908, they
were regretted only by those who had made their living by ministering to the
wants of the soldiers. Europe was told that this act of renunciation signified
the definite abandonment of the Austrian advance to Salonica, of which Plevlye
had been sometimes regarded as the first stage. The initials of the Emperor
Francis Joseph on the hill-side at Plevlye mark the furthest point which the
Austrian double-eagle has reached since it threatened, for a moment in 1689,
the walls of Uskub.
While Austria
was thus taking up her new position as the “ sentinel of the Balkans,” her
neighbour, the Prince of Montenegro, was unable to obtain the two Albanian
districts of Gusinje and Flava, which had been assigned to him at Berlin. The
inhabitants were first-class fighting- men, who cared for neither the Congress
nor the Sultan, and objected to have their homes and themselves transferred
without their consent to another State, which, being admittedly better governed
than their own, might interfere with their time-honoured privileges of
lawlessness. The Sultan’s first envoy, Mehemed Ali, they murdered as he fled
from his burning house; the second they refused to obey. Accordingly, in 1879,
hostilities broke out between them and the Montenegrins; and the “ Albanian
League,” which had been formed to combat the Treaty of San Stefano, was
revived, probably at the suggestion, certainly to the satisfaction, of the
Porte. Turkey was thus able to make the national sentiment of a race, which had
had no separate existence since the days of Skanderbeg, and no great local
leader since Ali of Janina, an excuse for not carrying out its inconvenient
engagements. A
compromise,
suggested by Count Corti, the Italian ambassador at Constantinople, according
to which Montenegro should receive instead of the towns of Gusinje and Plava a
portion only of the former district and a larger strip of territory between
Podgoritsa and the lake of Skutari, was accepted on April 12,1880, but proved
to be impracticable, owing to the determined opposition of the Albanians. Those
who inhabited this region were Roman Catholics, and, if the Mussulman Albanians
had objected to Prince Nicholas as a Christian, the Catholics repudiated him
as what was worse—an Orthodox one. Prenk Bib Doda, the Mirdite Prince, whose
territory to the south of the Drin was not menaced by the proposed
aggrandisement of Montenegro, marched at the head of his tribe to the aid of
his brothers in faith, and ere long
10,000 men were on the frontier.
Meanwhile,
Gladstone had returned to power in England, and his well-known Montenegrin
sympathies facilitated a solution of the question. The plenipotentiaries of the
Powers met in conference at Berlin in June to consider the best means of
securing the performance by Turkey of the unfulfilled engagements made there
two years before, and proposed, in lieu of Count Corti’s scheme, that
Montenegro should receive the town of Dulcigno and a strip of seaboard as far
as the river Bo} ana. This proposal the Porte refused to accept, on the ground
that Dulcigno contained a Moslem population, and secretly urged the Albanians
to resist its cession. Thereupon, at the suggestion of the British Government,
a naval demonstration of the Powers was held in September before the old
Venetian colony, while Montenegrin troops approached it by land. As the Porte
still held out, and the admirals were anxious not to bombard the town, this
existence of Dulcigno far niente, as Count Beust wittily called it, might have
continued indefinitely, had not the British Government suggested the seizure of
the rich custom-house at Smyrna. The mere suggestion had the desired effect;
the Turkish commander drove out the Albanians, and at last, on November 26, the
Montenegrins peaceably occupied Dulcigno. Prince Nicholas publicly expressed
his gratitude to Great Britain. Dulcigno is not the natural frontage of the
Black Mountain; indeed, it is a mere open roadstead, and the neighbouring bay
of Val di Noce has never been exploited. But, at any rate, Montenegro, if she
still lacks a good harbour, if her coast was, till this year, bound by Austrian
fetters, has a seaboard of 30 miles, and she owes its extension, as she owed
her brief occupation of Cattaro in 1813, to the aid of a British fleet. Doda
was exiled, and has only lately returned. Oroshi, his capital, was laid in
ashes.
The
rectification of the Greek frontier, suggested at the Berlin Congress, gave
even more trouble than that of Montenegro. Lord Beaconsfield had told Greece
that she had a future, and that she could accordingly afford to wait. She had
to wait three years before she obtained one portion of the new territory
indicated as her due; she is
waiting still
for the remainder. The Porte pursued its usual dilatory policy, and the “
Albanian League ” made its appearance in Epiros, as well as in northern
Albania. When the Greek delegates at last met the Turkish Commissioners at
Preveza early in 1879, their deliberations proved futile, and the venue was
removed to Constantinople, where the negotiations could be supervised by the
Powers, but with the same negative result. The accession of Gladstone to power
in England in 1880 was hailed in Greece as in Montenegro, for the new Prime
Minister was gratefully remembered as the author of the last extension of
Hellas sixteen years earlier. At the Conference held in Berlin for the settlement
of the Greek and the Montenegrin questions, the frontier adopted was in Epiros
the river Kalamas, in Thessaly the crest of Olympos, and this line was so
liberally drawn that both Janina and Metzovo would have been ceded to Greece.
Athens went wild with excitement at the news ; Trikoupes, then Prime Minister,
at once accepted the proposal of the Conference, and, when the Porte rejected
it, mobilised the Greek army. A change of Ministry in France, however,
seriously injured the Greek cause. Hitherto, the British and French Governments
had been the best friends of Greece; but Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, the new
French Minister for Foreign Affairs, whom the Greeks had ingenuously regarded
as a Philhellene because he had translated Aristotle, adopted arguments which
his British colleague qualified as those of the Turks. The result was that the
Porte, finding the Powers disunited, made a firmer resistance; and a Conference
of their representatives at Constantinople finally, on May 24,1881, limited
the new territories of Greece to Thessaly and that portion of Epiros which
formed the district of Arta, whose famous bridge became, and still remains, the
boundary. The British delegate, Goschen, admitted that Greece deserved a larger
share of Epiros, and a journey from Arta or Preveza to Janina will convince the
traveller of the predominantly Hellenic character of that unredeemed district.
But the arrangement was the best that could be made under the circumstances. In
Thessaly the Greek kingdom gained a valuable province, which had been Turkish
for wellnigh five centuries, while at Arta it recovered the historic capital of
that medieval despotat of Epiros, which, when the Crusaders partitioned the
rest of Greece, became the chief refuge of Hellenism.
The most
important creation of the Berlin Treaty—the principality of Bulgaria—was
entrusted to Russian hands during the interregnum which lasted until a Prince
could be elected. The Russian Commissioner, Prince Dondukoff-Korsakoff, was a
rich man who kept open house and was personally popular; but he treated the
country as a Russian province. All the chief posts were filled by the Russian “
liberators,” in disregard of the fact that the Bulgarian peasants are
extremely suspicious of foreigners. At first, while the memories of Turkish
rule were fresh in men’s minds, recognition of Russia’s services reconciled
the natives
to this alien domination; but political gratitude, even in the Balkans, is
usually short-lived; and ere long the Bulgarians began to show that they had
not ceased to be Turkish rdyah in order .tot become Russian subjects.
Yet further
to strengthen the hold of Russia, the Commissioner framed a Constitution, at
once ultra-democratic and ultra-conservative, which was so devised that the
Prince could be checkmated by the people and the people by the Prince, while
the real power would •emain with the Tsar; unfortunately, paper constitutions
never produce in practice the results which they are intended to achieve. It
never occurred to the astute framer of the Bulgarian charter, that he had not
provided against one contingency which actually occurred—the union of Prince
and people against their “ liberators.” Meanwhile, Bulgaria, a land of peasants
without the smallest experience of parliamentary institutions, was suddenly
endowed with a single Chamber, or ordinary Sobramye, elected by manhood
suffrage, with free, compulsory, elementary education, equal electoral
districts, payment of members, and a free Press. As against these democratic
provisions, the Ministers were made independent of the Chamber, and the
creatures of the Prince, who was given the further power of dissolving the
Sobranye whenever he chose. No second Chamber was instituted, nor would it have
been easy to devise one in a land without an aristocracy, without great
fortunes, and without either a leisured or a highly cultured class. But for
great changes, such as the election of a Prince, the nomination of Regents, the
extension, cession or exchange of territory, or the revision of the
Constitution, an extraordinary assembly, or Grand Sobramye, was declared
necessary. This body was formed of twice the number of members composing the ordinary
Chamber. The Constitution was passed by an Assembly of Notables, held not at
Sofia, the newly chosen capital, but at the ancient imperial city of Trnovo, on
April 28,1879. Next day, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, son of Prince
Alexander of Hesse and nephew of the Tsar, Alexander II, was elected first
Prince of Bulgaria. Two months later, the new ruler set foot in his
principality and took the oath to the Constitution at Trnovo.
Prince
Alexander at the time of his election was only 22 years of age. But he had
already seen service in the land of his adoption. He had taken part in the
Russo-Turkish War, had crossed the Danube at Sistova and the Balkans with
Gurko; he had fought at Nova Zagora and had stood in the trenches at Plevna; at
the time of his election he was serving as a Prussian lieutenant at Potsdam.
But, if his military experience and his tall, martial bearing fitted him for
one part of his duties, his complete lack of both political education and
statesmanlike capacity were serious drawbacks to the performance of the other.
He was obstinate, talkative, and apt to quarrel with his advisers, and he had
the great disadvantage of having to trust for some time to inter
preters in
his intercourse with them. A stranger to the tortuous politics of a newly
emancipated oriental land, in which personal questions naturally played a
prominent part, he was certain to make mistakes in the closet, though he
redeemed them on the field of battle.
For the first
two years of his reign, the Prince, who had ascended the throne as the nominee
of Russia, naturally inclined towards the Russophil, or Conservative party,
although the Nationalists, or Liberals, were in a majority. Finding himself
unable to work with his Parliament, in 1881 he suddenly issued a proclamation
announcing his resignation, unless irresponsible authority were conferred upon
him for seven years, and appointed the Russian General Emroth president of the
provisional Administration. A packed Assembly, held at Sistova under threat of
the Prince’s instant departure on the steamer which lay ready in the Danube,
conceded his demands; the coup d'lttat had succeeded, and he was, to all
appearance, master of the country. But Russia was the power behind the
brand-new Bulgarian throne; two more Russian Generals, SobolefF and Kaulbars,
arrived from St Petersburg to assume the posts of Premier and Minister of War,
and representative institutions were reduced to a small Chamber which had no
function beyond that of voting the budget. Both the Prince and his people,
however, soon resented the tactless conduct and imperious ways of the Russian
generals, who treated the free Bulgarians as Asiatics, and detested their ruler
as a German. Accordingly, in 1883, he restored the Constitution of Tmovo, and
his two Russian Ministers retired to their own country.
Meanwhile,
the International Commission had drawn up the organic statute for Eastern
Rumelia; and in 1879 Alexander Vogorides, son of a Rumeliote who had been first
Prince of Samos, and himself a Turkish official, was appointed the first
Governor-General. Aleko Pasha, as he was called in the Turkish service, thus
represented in his own person the three nationalities of the
province—Bulgarians, Greeks, and Turks —whose languages were all declared to be
official. The Rumelian Constitution was more conservative than that of the
neighbouring principality. The local assembly consisted of 56 members, of whom
86 were elected on a property or educational franchise, while the others were
either nominated or ex officio members. Politics were excluded from its
discussions, which were occupied with financial and administrative questions;
the “spoils system,” which is the curse of all Balkan States, was avoided by a
permanent civil service, and the chief posts were filled by well-to-do
Rumeliotes of good family. Six Directors conducted the administration, the
chief of whom, the Secretary-General, was, like the Governor, a Rumeliote with
Samian experience, Gavril Krstyovich. Under these circumstances, Eastern
Rumelia was materially better off than the principality; the Thracian plain is
naturally the richest part of the two Bulgarias; and the absence of political
agitation is the greatest of blessings that any Balkan land can enjoy. Only in
the Rhodope
mountains,
where a half-English, half-Polish adventurer, named St Clair, had been hailed
as a “saviour” by the Mussulman insurgents at the close of the war, twenty-two
communities of 19,000 Bulgarian Moslems formed the so-called “Pomak Republic,”
independent alike of Turkey and of Eastern Rumelia, to which the Berlin Treaty
had assigned them. One of the authors of the massacres of 1876 maintained
himself as the chief of this band of fanatical robbers, until, in 1883, the
Porte, heedless of the Berlin Treaty, annexed the “Republic” by the cheap
device of decorating and giving official uniforms to the leading “
Republicans.”
Nationalist
feeling was maintained, despite the prosperity of Eastern Rumelia, by the
Bulgarians of Sliven; and, when the first Governor- General’s five years of
office expired, there was an Unionist party, which advocated the nomination of
Prince Alexander as his successor. For the moment, the Unionists were defeated,
and Krstyovich was appointed under the name of Gavril Pasha. But the tactless
exercise of the Porte’s right of veto on Rumeliote legislation, and the wish
for a Bulgarian customs union, increased the desire for political unity. On the
morning of September 18,1885, Major Nikolaieff and other officers surrounded
the Pasha’s Kondk at Philippopolis, while the Unionist leader, Stoianoff,
entered his room and told him that he was a prisoner. The aged Governor-General
yielded to superior force; he was drawn round the town in mock triumph with a
Bulgarian schoolmistress holding an unsheathed sabre by his side, and then sent
away to Sofia and thence to Constantinople. Not a single drop of blood stained
the revolution; the Union of the two Bulgarias under Prince Alexander was
proclaimed, and a provisional Government formed to await his decision.
The Prince
had been forewarned of the conspirators’ plans, but he hesitated at first to
defy Turkey and the Powers by accepting the offer which they now made him.
Stambuloff, then Speaker of the Chamber, plainly told him that, if he did not
advance to Philippopolis,, he would have no option but to retire to Darmstadt.
Bulgarian opinion wanted the Union, and would abandon a Prince who had not the
moral courage to achieve the national desire. Alexander, accordingly, ordered
lie mobilisation of the army, and on September 21 entered Philippopolis. The
Saibranye at once approved the Union, and voted an extraordinary credit for its
defence.
To the
general surprise, the Sultan contented himself with protests and merely
defensive preparations, while Great Britain, where Lord Salisbury was then in
power, strongly supported the Union, in direct opposition to the policy adopted
after San Stefano. The Tsar, Alexander III, was indignant at his cousin’s
audacity; he struck his name out of the army list, and recalled all Russian
officers from Bulgaria. Still more violent was the opposition of Bulgaria’s two
rivals in the Balkans, Greece and Servia. Both countries demanded territorial
compensation for the aggrandisement of the principality, and the Cretans
proclaimed once more their union with Greece.
1882-6]
War between Servia and Bulgaria.
407
• The only
serious danger was on the side of Servia. On March 6, 1882, Prince Milan, to
show the superiority of his position, had been proclaimed King, Servia being
raised to the dignity of a kingdom. But the glamour of this title did not make
King Milan popular; his life was attempted in the Belgrade Cathedral; his
peasant subjects rose in rebellion against the arbitrary measures of his “ iron
Minister,” Kristich; while the Karageorgevich pretender was more threatening
because he had married a daughter of Prince Nicholas of Montenegro. Dynastic
reasons, therefore, suggested a spirited foreign policy as the best means of
raising the prestige and increasing the popularity of the Obrenovich family.
Nor were there lacking other motives for a conflict. The Bulgarians coveted
Pirot, the Serbs desired Vidin; and the river Timok, by changing its course,
had created a delicate question of frontier between the mutually jealous
neighbours. A tariff war yet further embittered their relations, so that the
news of the Philippopolis revolution found both King and people predisposed for
war. The result was a complete surprise. When, on November 14, Servia began
hostilities, the general belief was that the “ King of Servia and Macedonia,”
as the Belgrade populace styled Milan, would have a triumphal march to Sofia.
Appearances pointed to such a conclusion, for the Bulgarian army was denuded of
its Russian instructors, whose places had been hastily taken by young officers,
while the Servians had had the experience of two campaigns. But the Bulgarians
were fired with zeal for the national cause; even the Moslems of the
principality rallied to the side of a leader who had shown them toleration;
recruits from Macedonia crossed the frontier, and the main body of the Servian
army, when on November 16 it approached the picturesque village of Slivnitsa,
which lies on the direct route to Sofia, found Prince Alexander facing it at
the head of his hastily collected forces. The battle of Slivnitsa, which lasted
for the next three days, was the Bulgarian principality’s baptism of fire. The
night before the battle, the raw Bulgarian levies were still doubtful; but,
when the fighting began, the splendid example of the Prince inspired them with
firmness. The critical moment was reached on the third day, when a rumoured
march of the Serbs on the capital from the south caused a panic at Sofia and
the Prince had to reassure the terrified citizens by his presence. The alarm
proved to be false, the Serbs were defeated at Slivnitsa; their siege of Vidin
was quite fruitless; King Milan asked in vain for an armistice; and the
Bulgarians, after a two days’ battle at Pirot, occupied that coveted town. The
road to Belgrade lay open to the invaders, but next day Austria intervened to
save her protigi, and informed Prince Alexander that, if he advanced further,
he would find an Austrian army before him. Thus, on November 28, ended this
fourteen days’ fratricidal war; an armistice was signed in Pirot, and on March 3,1886,
the Treaty of Bucharest restored the status quo. Bulgaria gained from Servia
neither territory nor money by her victory; but she
had
established in the eyes of Europe that right which comes of might to the
possession of Eastern Rumelia. A diplomatic compromise was made at
Constantinople, by which the Sultan appointed the Prince of Bulgaria his new
Governor-General of Eastern Rumelia, thus preserving the letter of the Berlin
Treaty, and relinquished his right to keep 1 Turkish garrison there in return
for the purely Turkish district of Kyrdjali and the adjacent home of the Pomaks
in the Rhodope. Thus, in the eyes of Turkish theorists, Eastern Rumelia
remained a separate province, united by a limited personal union with the
principality; while the practical Bulgarians regarded it as southern Bulgaria,
whose administration was merged in that of Sofia, and whose 91 representatives
sat with their northern brothers in the same National Assembly.
The Bulgarian
triumph at Slivnitsa had yet further increased the excitement in Greece.
Dely£nnes, then in his first premiership, made preparations for war against
Turkey, and reintroduced the forced paper currency, which has existed ever
since. Warlike demonstrations took place at Athens and in several Greek country
towns; a large force of men was mobilised; and the situation became so
critical, that the Powers intervened, and finally, on May 8, 1886, ordered
their fleets to blockade the Greek coast from Cape Malea to the frontier of
Thessaly. The French Government alone took no part in this blockade, which was
organised by the Gladstone Ministry and carried out by the Duke of Edinburgh,
who, as Prince Alfred, had been offered the Greek crown twenty-three years
before—circumstances which made Great Britain and the great Philhellene
temporarily unpopular. Delyannes then resigned; and, though fighting took place
on the Thessalian frontier, Trikoupes was able to prevent further hostilities.
Greece disarmed, and the blockade ended. But the feeling against Bulgaria
continued.
Prince
Alexander did not long enjoy his triumph. An enemy more insidious than Servia
was scheming for his overthrow. Russia had not forgotten his audacity in
achieving for himself what she had failed to accomplish for her own ends at San
Stefano. There were discontented officers in the army, whose services had not
been adequately rewarded and who were ready to play the Russian game, certain
to be disavowed in case of failure, sure to be recognised in case of success.
Of these officers the chief were Bendereff, the acting Minister of War, and
Gruieff, the head of the Military Academy. The conspirators, some 80 in number,
selected the moment when Sofia was stripped of troops in consequence of a
rumoured Servian invasion, and at two o’clock in the morning of August 31,1886,
entered the palace, and forced Alexander, by pointing their loaded revolvers at
his head, to sign a paper abdicating the throne. Three hours later he was
driven to the monastery of Etropol and next day to the Danube, where he was
conveyed on board his yacht, and on the morning of August 23 landed on Russian
soil. Thus, the Prince of Bulgaria, like Prince Couza of Roumania twenty
years before,
was kidnapped and deposed before Europe could say a word. Obviously, the
romance of the Middle Ages was still to be found in the prosaic capital of
modem Bulgaria.
Sofia
remained for three days in the hands of the conspirators. As not infrequently
happens in Balkan States, a churchman, in the person of the Metropolitan
Clement, was found to pronounce his blessing upon the band of traitors, and to
assume the presidency of a provisional Ministry, which assured the people of
the Tsar’s protection. But, as the Balkan proverb says, “ the clouds are high,
and the Tsar is far off”; Stambuloff, at that time Speaker of the Sobranye, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Mutkuroff, who was in command at Philippopolis, appealed to
their fellow-countrymen against the conspirators, and dissolved the provisional
Government. The next step was to discover the kidnapped sovereign’s whereabouts
and to bid him by telegraph return to his faithful people. Alexander accepted
the invitation, and a fortnight after his abdication reentered his capital.
But the “hero of Slivnitsa” had lost his nerve under the trials of the last
twelve months. A poor diplomatist, he was induced by the Russian Consul, who
met him on his landing at Rustchuk, to despatch an obsequious telegram to the
Tsar, which concluded with the expression of his readiness to resign his crown
to the sovereign whose father had given it. Alexander III disliked his cousin,
and had grown distrustful of Bulgaria; he telegraphed back that he could not
approve the Prince’s return. This fatal mistake cost the latter his throne.
Despite the pressing arguments of Stambuloff, he publicly announced his
abdication on September 7; and, after appointing that energetic statesman, with
Mutkuroff and Karaveloff, as Regents, next day left Bulgaria for ever. Under
the name of Count Hartenau, the first Prince of “ the peasant State ” lived for
seven years the happier life of an Austrian officer, an example of the rule
that assassination or abdication is the fate of most Balkan rulers.
Russia,
having got rid of Prince Alexander, made a bold but mistaken attempt to recover
her lost influence. As her agent for this purpose she selected Major-General
Nicholas Kaulbars, brother of the former Minister of War, ostensibly to “
assist ” the Bulgarians at this crisis. But the methods of this strange
diplomatist alienated more than anything else the sympathies of the stubborn
peasants from their Russian patrons. While the Regents wisely desired the
interregnum to be as short as possible, Kaulbars was resolved to postpone the
elections to the Grand Sobranye, which was to choose the new Prince. With this
object he stumped the country as an imperial anti-election agent, only to find
that his interference had increased the national spirit of the people. The
Grand Sobranye met, and on November 10 unanimously elected Prince Waldemar of
Denmark, brother of Queen Alexandra and brother- in-law of the Tsar. Prince
Waldemar, not meeting with the autocrat’s approval, declined the offer; and for
the next six months the Bulgarian
410
Ferdinand Prince of Bulgaria. [i887-93
Crown went
a-begging, while Russian plots, despite the departure of the ineffable
Kaulbars, continued to undermine: the principality. Various candidates were put
forward—the Princes of Mingrelia, Oldenburg, and Leuchtenberg, and the King of
Roumania, were all mentioned. At last, three delegates, sent to find a Prince,
discovered at Vienna the man whom they, sought in the person of Ferdinand,
youngest son of Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg and descended through his mother
from King Louis-Philippe. Except in point of age—he was at this time 26 years
old—the second Prince of Bulgaria bore no resemblance to the first; by training
and temperament he was the exact opposite of his future subjects. A poor
horseman and an officer only in name, he was fonder of botany than of sport; he
was a Roman Catholic, while they were preponderantly Orthodox; he was a
stickler for etiquette, while they were convinced democrats. But he was
well-connected, wealthy, and willing; and, accordingly, on July 7, 1887, he was
at Tmovo elected Prince of Bulgaria. Russia, however, protested against his election,
and long refused her consent; this refusal involved his social boycott by the
Powers but had no other serious consequences. In fact, the absence of a Russian
agent was a positive advantage. The Prince, who is one of the ablest of Balkan
diplomatists, bided his time; and for nearly seven years his great Minister,
Stepan Stambuloff, defied Russia and won the admiration of Great Britain as “
the Bulgarian Bismarck.”
Alike in his
methods and in his fall, the son of the Tmovo innkeeper resembled the German
Chancellor. During his long tenure of the premiership, he was absolute master
of Bulgaria; for the Prince was at first much in the position of our George I,
ignorant of the language and the customs of his subjects, and Stambuloff was
for some years indispensable to him. The Minister had no constitutional
scruples; he held that his end—the maintenance of Bulgarian freedom—justified
his means, which included the manipulation of elections and the persecution of
political opponents. He saw clearly that it was the interest of Bulgaria to
establish friendly relations with Turkey; he was thus able to secure Turkish
support against Russian schemes and to establish Bulgarian schools and
bishoprics as the nucleus of a Bulgarian propaganda against the Greeks and Serbs
in Macedonia. Russophil conspiracies he suppressed with the utmost severity,
and Major Panitsa, who had trusted that Russia would save him from the penalty
of his treachery to his Prince, was tried by Court-martial, and shot as a
traitor. Assassination then became the weapon of the discontented; one of
Stambuloffs colleagues was shot by his side at Sofia; his agent was stabbed in
the street at Constantinople. These acts of violence rendered it imperative to
provide for the future of the throne; the Prince, in 1893, married a Bourbon
Princess, Marie-Louise of Parma; and the birth of an heir, who received the
name of the ancient Bulgarian Tsar Boris, gave Bulgaria the promise of a
national dynasty. The marriage proved, however, to
be the cause
of Stambuloff’s fall. United to a Bourbon, the Prince naturally desired society
for his wife and due social recognition for himself, while at the same time he
felt strong enough to dispense with his too powerful and most uncourtierlike
Minister. The relations between them became so strained that at last Stambuloff
resigned, and Prince Alexander’s former secretary, Stoiloff, became Premier.
Like his German prototype, the fallen statesman vented his spleen in newspaper
interviews, which called down upon him signal retribution. The end came on July
15,1895, when the one great man of modem Bulgaria was brutally assaulted at
Sofia by three assassins; three days later he died of his wounds; and the tardy
trial of his murderers cast suspicion upon the Government and discredit upon
the country.
Freed from
all control, the Prince now made his peace with Russia. The sacrifice of
Stambuloff was followed, in 1896, by the conversion of Boris to the Orthodox
faith, after a more than usually unseemly theological controversy. Russia
thereupon recognised Prince Ferdinand, whose policy thenceforth became steadily
Russophil. The officers implicated in the kidnapping of his predecessor were
reinstated; Russian training was encouraged in the army; Russian Grand Dukes
came to celebrate the anniversaries of Shipka and Plevna. At the same time, the
Prince was careful to cultivate the good graces of his suzerain. His neutrality
in the Graeco-Turkish War of 1897 was rewarded with further concessions in
Macedonia, which embittered his relations with Greece, while internally the
principality made steady material progress, of which the Balkan exhibition in
1907 gave Englishmen a proof. A serious agrarian revolt, and the beginnings of
a socialist movement were the shadows which fell upon “ the peasant State.”
Servia, after
her unsuccessful war with Bulgaria, was mainly occupied with the domestic
squabbles of the royal family. King Milan, though an able man, had the vices of
the Europeanised oriented, while his beautiful wife, Queen Natalie, possessed a
strong will of her own. International politics widened the breach between the
royal pair, for the King was an Austrophil, while the Queen, as befitted the
daughter of a colonel in the Russian army, was an adherent of the Tsar. At
last, Milan obtained a divorce from his wife, and followed this domestic
victory by granting a Constitution far more Liberal than that of 1869.
Scarcely,
however, had this new charter come into force, when he abdicated in favour of
his son, Alexander, on March 6, 1889. As the young King was only thirteen years
of age, three Regents were appointed to govern the country, the chief of them
being Jovan Ristich, the ablest Servian statesman, who twenty-one years before
had been one of Milan’s own guardians. The bickerings of the divorced couple
and the Queen’s assertion of her right to reside in her son’s capital, however,
kept Servia in a constant ferment, till at last they not only both consented to
live abroad for their country’s good, but made up their private differences, in
order to save
the throne from the Karageorgevich pretender. Meanwhile, Alexander, who had
been hitherto apparently immersed in the study of constitutional history,
suddenly amazed his Regents by ordering their arrest at his dinner-table on
April 13,1893, proclaiming himself of age, and dissolving the Skupshtina. The
success of this coup d'etat directed against the Regents encouraged him to make
another against the Radicals. Accordingly, on May 21 of the following year, he
abolished the Constitution of 1889 and restored that of twenty years before.
This drastic act was followed, five years later, by a wholesale proscription of
the Radical and Russophil party, which the Court sought to implicate in the
attempted assassination of Milan, Commander- in-Chief since 1898, by a certain
Knezevich, said to be an agent of the pretender (July, 1899). In August, 1900,
Alexander, who had hitherto been successful, committed the serious political
mistake of marrying a lady-in-waiting of his mother, Madame Draga Mashin, widow
of a Bohemian engineer and herself of “Bohemian” tendencies, which Belgrade
gossip speedily exaggerated. This union proved his ruin. The Tsar, indeed,
hastened to congratulate the King, and in the following year the death of
Milan, who had retired in disgust, removed one of the constant irritants of
Servian public life. But the lack of an heir, the suspicion that Queen Draga
was scheming to secure the succession for one of her brothers, and the petty
jealousies of Belgrade society, rendered the King’s position insecure. In vain
he granted an amnesty to the proscribed Radicals; in vain, in 1901, he
celebrated the anniversary of the Turkish evacuation of Belgrade by the issue
of a Constitution more Liberal than that of 1869, but less Radical than that of
1889, giving the country the safeguards of a second Chamber and a Council of
State. Discontent grew apace in a soil so congenial to political intrigue as is
that of the Servian capital. The first sign of the coming tragedy was the proclamation
of King Peter Karageorgevich by an adventurer at Shabats in
1902. To secure himself against similar
conspiracies, the King appointed a military Cabinet, and on April 7,1903,
perpetrated a third coup d'lttat, by which he suspended the new Constitution
until he had rid himself of the Radical elements which it had produced, and
then revived it with a Senate and a Council devoid of a single Radical. The
final blow to Radical hopes was the abolition of the ballot. Thus deprived of
their constitutional remedies, the Radicals were driven to seek refuge in the
usual Balkan device for desperate emergencies—a palace revolution.
The Serbs are
fond of historical anniversaries, and the conspirators appropriately selected
that of Michael’s murder in 1868 for the assassination of the King, to whom
they, as officers, had all taken the oath of allegiance. Their motives were as
sordid as those of any hired band of bravoes. Colonel Mashin, their leader, was
brother of the Queen’s first husband and her personal enemy; others, it was
said, were well paid for their murderous work, while behind the actual
assassins stood the
smug>
black-coated politicians, ready to profit by what was cynically proclaimed to-
be a “ glorious revolution.” On the night of June 10,
1903, the conspirators met at the “Servian
Crown” to arrange their plans; the 6th regiment occupied the approaches to the
palace; the door' was exploded with dynamite; and in the ensuing darkness the
murderers groped about, till at last they found the royal couple hiding in a
cupboard. The wretches, who wore the King’s uniform, showed no mercy to their
sovereign. The last Obrenovich fell, clasping his wife in his arms, while the
ruffians who profaned the name of officer stabbed and outraged the body of the
Queen. Throwing the two mangled corpses out of the window, the assassins
continued their work in the city. The Queen’s two brothers, and also the Prime
Minister and the Minister for War, were shot in cold blood; the occasion was
seized for gratifying private revenge; and Belgrade proved to the world that
she was still, after a century of practical freedom, inhabited by thinly
polished barbarians. Nor was this impression diminished when, in the morning,
the capital was decorated with flags, the church bells rang, and dance music
enlivened the squares. When night fell, two carts conveyed the bodies of the
King and Queen to their last resting-place in the church of St Mark, where the
second and least conspicuous Obrenovich Prince had been buried.
The country
experienced but a short interregnum. Prince Peter Karageorgevich may not have
been privy to the murders; but it was he who profited by them, for on June 15
the National Assembly unanimously elected him King. The new sovereign, who nine
days later mounted the blood-stained Servian throne, had spent 45 of his 57
years in exile— now in Hungary, now at the Court of his Montenegrin
father-in-law, now at Geneva—and was therefore practically a stranger to the
land, over which his father Alexander had ruled for sixteen years. He was the
puppet and the prisoner of the regicides, to whom he owed his crown ; yet by
retaining them about his person he offended the moral sense of those nations,
like Great Britain, which regard political expediency as no excuse for murder.
Of the Great Powers, Austria and Russia, traditional rivals for influence in
Servia, alone recognised him, till in 1906 the retirement of the chief
conspirators induced the British Government to send a Minister to Belgrade.
Meanwhile, the palace became once more a hotbed of scandals, owing to the
freaks of the Crown Prince; the garrison of Nish conspired for a restoration of
the Obrenovich dynasty, still represented by a natural son of Milan and by a
cousin of Alexander, married to Prince Mirko of Montenegro, whence covetous
eyes were ever directed towards the Servian throne; and a tariff" war with
Austria- Hungary injured the material interests of the peasants. Such has so
far been the result of this Karageorgevich restoration.
The history
of Montenegro since the completion of her territory in 1880 has been very
different from that of the other two Slav States.
Prince
Nicholas has had to solve the problem of converting an Homeric society of
fighters into a modern commercial and agricultural community. With the
exception of an occasional brush upon the Albanian frontier, his warriors have
kept the peace. From Turkey he has had nothing more to fear; indeed his
relations with the Sultan have become excellent; while Austria-Hungary he has
wisely so far abstained from attacking. None the less, he has instituted for
defence a standing army based on compulsory service. Admirable roads now
traverse and connect the old with the new and more fertile Montenegro, which
was the result of the Berlin Treaty and the subsequent arrangements. A railway
has been opened from Antivari to Virbazar, and steamers furrow the blue waters
of the Lake of Skutari. A new code was introduced in 1888, and in 1905 the
Prince, on the advice of his eldest son, came to the conclusion that it was
time to grant parliamentary institutions. The first Montenegrin Assembly met on
December 19 of that year, and, already, the Black Mountain has had its full
share of cabinet crises and political conspiracies. So long, however, as
Prince Nicholas lives, he will always be the real ruler of Montenegro. Socially
and politically alike, he has gained importance by the splendid marriages of
his daughters, notably by that of Princess Elena in 1896 with the Prince of
Naples, now King Victor Emmanuel III. This Italian connexion, though not
popular in Italy, has made Montenegro much better known in Europe and has
stimulated Italian commercial enterprise on the eastern shore of the Adriatic.
A series of picturesque anniversaries—the 400th of the foundation of the first
Slavonic printing-press, the bicentenary of the Petrovich dynasty, and the
Jubilee of the battle of Grahovo—have all drawn attention to the stirring
annals of “ the smallest among peoples,” while in August, 1910, the Prince
celebrated his fifty years of rule. Nor has Prince Nicholas, while active as a
diplomatist and statesman, ceased to enrich Servian literature. One of his two
dramas, the “ Empress of the Balkans,” possesses special interest, since, under
the thin disguise of an historical play, it contains his opinions on Balkan
politics.
Even more
prosperous has been the course of the one Latin nation of the Near East.
Roumania, which became a kingdom in 1881, has been chiefly occupied with social
questions. Antisemitism, due to economic rather than to religious causes, has
been one characteristic of contemporary Roumanian history; agrarian
riots—twice, in 1888 and 1907, assuming the proportions of an insurrection—have
been another. Riches and poverty are brought into sharper contrast at Bucharest
than at other Balkan capitals, with the inevitable result. The ability and long
experience of her German King have been of immense value to “ the Belgium of
south-eastern Europe,” while the literary fame of “ Carmen Sylva,” his
accomplished Queen, has conferred distinction on her adopted land. Armed and
fortified more strongly than in 1878, Roumania has proved a serviceable outpost
of the Triple Alliance, though she has never
drawn the
sword since then. In Balkan politics she has coquetted, now with Greece, and
now with Bulgaria, in the interval suspending her diplomatic relations with the
former, and once talking of war with the latter. The Kutzo-Vlach movement in
Macedonia has chiefly determined the attitude of Roumania to both these States.
The
settlement of 1878 embraced, as we saw, besides the Balkan States, the island
of Cyprus and the Armenian provinces still left to the Sultan, the island of
Crete and the rest of the Turkish dominions in Europe. The British Government,
according to the terms of the convention, occupied Cyprus in July of that
year. A High Commissioner was appointed, as had been the case in the Ionian
Islands, and in 1882 a more Liberal Constitution was announced. At present
Cyprus, dependent on the Colonial Office, possesses a legislature of 18 ex
officio and 12 elected members, representative of the Greek majority and the
Moslem minority. While, however, material progress has been achieved, the
payment of the Turkish tribute, fixed at i?92,800 a year, has proved a handicap
to the island, which Bosnia was spared. The present occupation of Cyprus may be
regarded from three national standpoints. The Turkish Government has gained by
the punctual payment of a settled sum; the British have found that neither as
“a place of arms” to command an eventual Euphrates railway, nor as a commercial
speculation, has the island realised the hopes of Beaconsfield; the Greeks,
though economically better off" and politically better governed, demand
union with Greece, and quote as a precedent the cession of the Ionian Islands.
British statesmen have replied that, if Great Britain were to withdraw, she
would be bound to restore Cyprus to Turkey, to which three of the Seven Islands
had never, and only one had for any length of time, belonged, while they refer
to the disinclination of the Moslem minority to be united with the Greek
kingdom. But the maps used in the Greek schools already represent Cyprus as
part of “unredeemed Greece,” although it has not been governed by Greeks since
the close of the twelfth century; and, whenever Crete obtains union, Cyprus
will be further encouraged to demand it. Finally, regarded as a guarantee of
Armenian reforms, the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1878 has been a complete
failure.
The Armenian,
Cretan, and Macedonian questions have been the most serious problems which Europe
has had to face in the Near East since the Treaty of Berlin. The Armenians are
in a position different from that of all the other Christian races of Turkey.
While the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Kutzo-Vlachs can look for support to
Athens, Sofia, Belgrade, and Bucharest, the Armenians have no Armenian State to
which they can turn for protection. In that respect, they resemble the
Albanians, but with this important difference, that the Albanians are
first-rate fighting men who can defend themselves, while the
Armenians,
with the exception of a few in the Russian service, are not. Unfortunately,
this unwarlike race has as its neighbours the savage Kurds, the Albanians of
Asia Minor, who treat it much as the Amauts treat the Serbs of Old Servia.
Divided between Russia and Turkey, deprived for more than five centuries of the
last remnant of national independence, the Armenians, in a secret petition
presented to the Congress of Berlin, had disclaimed political ambition and had
begged for an arrangement modelled on that of the Lebanon, under a Christian
governor. Instead of this, the collective wisdom of Europe was content with a
vague promise of security and reforms. Great Britain did indeed send consuls to
report on the condition of Asia Minor; but even Gladstone, when he came into
power in 1880, dropped the Armenian question at a hint from Bismarck.
Down to 1889
the question attracted no further attention. But in that year the first news of
outrages in the Armenian provinces of Turkey reached England. Abd-ul-Hamid II
had, meanwhile, established a system of highly centralised personal government;
Midhat’s short-lived Parliament had long been dissolved, and its author had
died in exile; the Palace had superseded the Porte, and the Sultan’s favourites
had more influence in the affairs of the empire than his Ministers. At the same
time the Armenians had become the objects of suspicion to the Sultan and the
Tsar alike, and both Russians and Turks professed to discern an “Armenian peril
” in the material progress of these clever and industrious, but unpopular, men
of business. When the cry of oppression was raised, the Turkish authorities
merely prosecuted a Kurdish chief, who was acquitted, but ultimately exiled.
The Armenians, on their part, were already agitating; their societies, of which
the chief bore the significant name of Hmdchak (“the Bell”), sounded the alarm
in the ears of somnolent diplomacy. The Kurds, reinforced by the fanatical
Mussulmans whom the events of 1878 had driven 44 bag and baggage ”
into Asia, redoubled then- exactions; conflicts arose, and the Armenian
massacres began.
For three
weeks in the late summer of 1894 the district of Sasun in the province of
Bitlis became the scene of horrors which recalled those of Batak. The Kurds,
aided by Turkish troops, under the command of Zekki Pasha, destroyed 24
villages and butchered, with the most revolting cruelty, every Armenian whom
they could find. Zekki was decorated for his “services”; but Great Britain
demanded the appointment of a Commission of enquiry, which British, French, and
Russian delegates should accompany. The Commission, officially designated as
intended “to enquire into the criminal conduct of Armenian brigands,” conducted
its proceedings with the partiality which might have been expected from this
statement of its object, and proved as dilatory as most Turkish official
bodies. In vain, the three Powers presented a scheme of Armenian reform; in
vain, great meetings were held in London and Paris on
behalf of the
Armenians. An Armenian demonstration at Constantinople on September 30, 1895,
only resulted in a massacre of many in the capital and of many more at
Trebizond. But this was nothing compared with what was to come. While the
ambassadors were presenting a new scheme of reforms to the Sultan, which he
promised to see cai -’ed out faithfully, a gigantic massacre was taking place
in Asia Minor. During part of October and the whole of November the Armenians
were murdered wholesale, the murders being organised by the Sultan’s officials,
headed by Shakir Pasha. The British ambassador wrote home that “ over an extent
of territory considerably larger than Great Britain ” all the large towns save
three and almost all the villages had suffered, and that a moderate estimate
put the loss of life in those six weeks at 30,000. Still, however, the
massacres continued; Van, hitherto spared, was selected for the next great
holocaust; while the Powers, fearful of reopening the Eastern question by
active intervention, which would have aroused mutual suspicions, left the
Armenians to their fate and contented themselves with demanding the presence at
Constantinople of a second stationnaire for the protection of their own
subjects. But Europe was soon to learn that, under the very shadow of the
embassies, the unhappy Armenians could be butchered with impunity. A body of
the latter, more desperate than the rest, indignant at the supineness of the
Powers and infuriated at the forced resignation of the Armenian Patriarch and
the irregular appointment of his successor, seized the premises of the Ottoman
Bank and only left them under promise of a safe conduct and the protection of
the ambassadors. Scarcely had they been shipped on board a French steamer, when
the infuriated Sultan took a terrible vengeance upon their innocent
compatriots. For the next two days, August 27 and 28, 1896, the streets of
Constantinople were the theatre of an organised massacre. The Armenian quarter
was attacked by gangs of men, armed with clubs, who bludgeoned every Armenian
whom they met, and forced their way into the houses of Armenians, or foreigners
who had Armenian servants, in pursuit of their victims. Police officers and
soldiers aided, and even directed, this Turkish St Bartholomew; and it was not
till the representatives of the Powers, who had seen with their own eyes what
had occurred, sent a strongly worded note to the Palace, that the order was
issued to stop the slaughter. Some 6000 persons perished in this horrible
carnage, and, in the words of a British diplomatist, it seems to have been “
the intention of the Turkish authorities to exterminate the Armenians."
The perfect organisation of the shambles was proved by the fact that scarcely
anyone who did not belong to that race perished, and that these few exceptions
were due to such accidents as will happen even in the best regulated massacres.
The “
disturbances at Constantinople,” as they were euphemistically called by
diplomatists, convinced even the most incredulous that the
previous
massacres in remote parts of the empire had not been mere inventions.
Gladstone, for the last time, sallying forth from his retirement, as he had
done at the moment of the Bulgarian atrocities, twenty years before, branded
Abd-ul-Hamid II as “the Great Assassin”; French writers pilloried him as “the
Red Sultan.” But no steps were taken to punish the author of the Armenian
atrocities. Germany, anxious to obtain concessions in Asia Minor, avowedly
supported the Sultan, and reaped the reward of her selfish' policy.
Austria-Hungary was too deeply interested in the Balkan peninsula to risk a
policy, of which it was difficult to foresee the results. Russia had cynically
declared through the mouth of Prince Lobanoff, that she did not desire the
creation of another Bulgaria in Asia Minor. Lord Salisbury, again Prime
Minister and Foreign Secretary, solemnly and publicly warned the Sultan of the
consequences of his misgovernment, and suggested the eventual necessity of
employing force. The French ambassador at Constantinople advocated the despatch
of a fleet as the only means of intimidating Abd-ul-Hamid; and among British
residents at the Turkish capital the opinion was expressed that Great Britain
should, and could, have acted with more vigour. The British ambassador
sorrowfully confessed to a leading Englishman that his mission had been a
failure; the most that can be said is that Great Britain, having greater
responsibilities towards the Armenians, did a little more than any other Power
for their support. Further, but smaller, massacres took place at Tokat. Then a
new phase of the Eastern question attracted public attention; all eyes were
fixed on Crete, and the sufferings of the Armenians were forgotten by a
preoccupied Europe.
Crete, as we
saw, had received a promise at Berlin that the Organic Law of 1868 should be
applied with any modifications that might seem equitable. Accordingly, on
October 25, 1878, the island received a supplementary constitution, called the
Pact of Halepa, from the consular suburb of Canea, where it was signed. This
additional charter, which merely modified the Organic Law, provided that the
Governor-General should hold office for five years, and should be assisted by
an adviser of the opposite religion; that there should be a General Assembly
sitting publicly for 40, or at most, 60 days in the year, and composed of 49
Christians and 31 Mussulmans; that Greek should be the language of both the
Assembly and the law Courts; that natives should have the preference for
official posts; and that, after the cost of local administration had been
deducted from the insular revenues, the surplus should be divided in equal
shares between the imperial treasury and the schools, hospitals,1
harbours, and roads of the island, upon which practically nothing had been
spent since the days of the Venetians. Paper money was prohibited, newspapers
were allowed, and an amnesty and the remission of arrears of taxation completed
the benefits to be conferred
upon the
islanders. In theory, at any rate, the Pact of Halepa was the high-water mark
of Ottoman concessions to Crete.
For the next
eleven years the island almost realised that rare form of! happiness
which consists in having no history. For the larger portion of that period
Crete was governed by Photiddes Pasha, a Greek of conciliatory disposition and
administrative capacity. His successor, a Greek from Epiros, was unpopular, and
in the year of his appointment the union of the two Bulgarias caused the
Cretans to demand union with Greece. It was not, however, till 1889 that a
fresh insurrection took place, which, originating in the mutual disputes of the
Christians, developed into a movement against the common enemy. The reply of
the Sultan was to issue a firman, on November 24 of that year, which virtually
repealed the Pact of Halepa, and placed the Assembly, now reduced to 57
members, under the influence of the Governor-General, a Mussulman, and
therefore inclined to favour the dominant Mussulman minority. Desultory
disturbances went on in the usual fashion of that turbulent island, which no
Government has found easy to govern, until the Sultan, in 1895, at last yielded
to the violent importunities of the Cretans, and appointed Alexander
Karatheodori Pasha, a Christian, as Vdli (Provincial Governor). The increase of
the numbers of the Assembly to 65—40 Christians and 25 Mussulmans—seemed to
have dissipated the dangers of further disputes.
But the
Cretan Moslems, like most minorities accustomed to the exercise of power, were
resolved to demonstrate the futility of attempting to govern Crete through the
medium of a Christian. Murders of Christians began; a Christian Committee of
Reform was founded and embittered the situation, while Karatheodori, who had
made himself personally popular to the Mussulmans, was deprived by his
Government of the means of paying his gendarmerie. The appointment of a Turk as
his successor, instead of satisfying the Moslem party, disgusted both sides,
for the Mussulmans wanted a military Governor, while the Christians desired
another Christian. Such was the state of tension, when the insurrection, which
was to end in the practical destruction of Turkish rule over Crete, began on
May 24, 1896, with a sang nary conflict in the streets of Canea. Too late, the
Sultan accepted the advice of the Powers, revived the Pact of Halepa, promised
to summon the General Assembly, and to grant an amnesty, and appointed a
Christian Governor in the person of Georgi Berovich, who had been Prince of
Samos. One Commission, comprising European officers, was to organise the gendarmerie',
another to reform the tribunals. This arrangement, accepted by the Christians,
was regarded by the Mussulmans, who derived their inspiration from the Palace,
as one of the usual paper reforms, which they were expected to resist; and the
arrival of the Turkish officer, who had been connected with the Armenian
massacres at Van, encouraged their resistance. The customary delay in beginning
the work of organ
ising the
police made the Christians also suspicious; and a Mussulman outbreak at Canea
on February 4, 1897, followed by the burning of a large part of the Christian
quarter, renewed the civil war. The Christians occupied Akrotiri, the “
peninsula ” between Canea and Suda bay, and proclaimed union with Greece.
Meanwhile,
the news of a massacre at Canea had caused immense excitement at Athens.
Trikoupes, who had counselled quiet at the time of the last insurrection, was
now dead, and Delydnnes, the bellicose Minister of 1885, was once more in
power. But even the strongest of Greek statesmen could no longer have resisted
public opinion. Greece had incurred enormous expenses for the maintenance of
the Cretan refugees at Athens, while there were numbers of Cretans established
in Greece, whose influence was naturally in favour of intervention. Prince
George, the King’s second son, left the Piraeus amidst enthusiastic
demonstrations with a flotilla of torpedo boats to prevent the landing of
Turkish reinforcements; and on February 15 a Greek force under Colonel Vassos,
with instructions to occupy Crete in the name of King George, to restore order
and to drive the Turks from the forts1, landed a little to the west
of Canea. The same day the Admirals of the Five European Powers, whose ships
were then in Cretan waters, occupied the town, whence the last Turkish Governor
of the island had fled for ever. The insurgents on Akrotiri now attacked the
Turkish troops, until the Admirals forced them to desist by a bombardment,
which caused intense indignation at Athens and some disgust in London among
those who remembered Navarino. A note of the Powers promising autonomy on
condition of the withdrawal of the Greek ships and troops met with an
unfavourable reply; and, though the Admirals issued a proclamation of autonomy,
they followed it up by a blockade of the island, and by another bombardment of
the insurgents at Malaxa above Suda bay.
The conflict
between Hellenism and its hereditary foe could no longer be confined to “ the
great Greek island.” In Greece a body, called the “ National Society,” forced
the hand of the Government; an address from 100 British members of Parliament
encouraged the masses, ignorant of the true conditions of British politics, to
count upon the help of Great Britain; the King, in a speech to the people,
talked of putting himself at the head of an army of 100,000 Hellenes. The
secret history of the weeks immediately preceding the War is still only a
matter of surmise; but the opinion is now held in Greece, that King George
expected the Powers to prevent hostilities at the last moment; he could then
have yielded to their pressure without risking his position with his subjects.
Neither he nor the Sultan wanted a war, from which the latter knew that, if
successful, he would gain nothing, and at the outbreak of hostilities he was
less unpopular at Athens than the German
1
Parliamentary Papers: “Turkey, No. 11 (1897),” p. 59.
1897]
War between Greece and Turkey.
421
Emperor,
whose officers accompanied the Turkish army. The Emperor’s policy throughout
had been bitterly hostile to the country of which his sister would one day be Queen,
and he is still held largely responsible for the war. Among the Greeks, who had
not been at war with Turkey since the struggle for Independence, there was
intense enthusiasm, unfortunately unaccompanied by organisation. Greece is a
profoundly democratic land, where the soldier does not recognise a social
superior in his officer, where the critical faculty is highly developed, and
the natural tactics of the country are aptly described by the phrase “ klephtic
war ” (K\6^T07ro\e/io?), while the fine military qualities of the Turks had
been schooled by German instructors. Thus, the contest was unequal, even though
a band of red-shirted “ Garibaldians ” of various nations under a son of the
great captain came to the aid of the Greeks, and money poured into the war fund
from abroad.
On April 9,
armed bands of the “National Society” crossed into Macedonia; further conflicts
occurred on the Thessalian frontier; and on April 17 Turkey declared war. True
to his traditional policy of dividing the Christian races of the Near East
against each other, the Sultan secured the neutrality of Bulgaria and Servia by
an opportune grant of bishoprics, commercial agents, and schools in Macedonia.
An Austro-Russian note to the Balkan Courts warned them not to interfere in the
struggle. Thus any hopes of common action by the Christians were dissipated,
and the ring was confined to the two combatants.
The “ Thirty
Days’ War ” was an almost unbroken series of Greek disasters. The Greek navy,
which was superior to that of the Turks, aiid upon which great hopes had been
placed, effected nothing except the futile bombardment of Preveza, the capture
of a cargo of vegetables at Santi Quaranta, and that of a Turcophil British
member of Parliament. This inaction is one of the mysteries of the War. No
doubt, a bombardment of Smyrna or Salonica would have mainly damaged the Greek
populations of those cities; but Turkish islands could easily have been taken,
and better terms thereby obtained at the peace. Probably the paralysis of the fleet
was due to considerations of diplomacy. On land, the campaign naturally fell
into two divisions—one in Thessaly, the other in Epiros. In Thessaly Edhem
Pasha, the Turkish commander, after severe fighting in the Melouna pass, and an
obstinate battle at Reveni, occupied Larissa, whence the Crown Prince’s troops
had fled in disorder; in Epiros the battle of Pente Pegadia (“ Five Wells ”)
between Arta and Janina saved the latter town. The Turkish advance across the
Thessalian plain aroused a reaction at Athens. The indignant crowd marched on
the unprotected palace, and the King owed his throne to the prompt intervention
of RMlles, the most influential leader of the Opposition, and the idol of the
Athenians, who was forthwith appointed Prime Minister. Colonel Smolenski, “ the
hero of Reveni,” the one officer who had distinguished himself, repulsed the
Turks
in a first attack on Velestino, the scene of the legend of Alcestis, but had to
yield in a second battle; the classic field of Pharsalos was the scene of one
Greek defeat, and the unknown village of Gribovo in Epiros that of another; and
the climax was reached when, on May 17, the battle of Domokrfs opened to the
Turks the Phourka pass which leads down to Lamia. A panic seized the Athenians
at the news; the royal family durst not show itself in the streets; the royal
liveries were changed; pictures of Smolenski took the place of royal portraits
in the shops. Then the Powers intervened; an armistice was signed: on May 19
and 20 in Epiros and Thessaly, and Colonel Vdssos, who had already left Crete,
was followed by the rest of his men. A treaty of peace was concluded at
Constantinople on December 4, which prov' i(y’ for the evacuation of Thessaly
by the Turkish troops, and the cession for the second time of that province to
Greece, except one village and certain strategic positions, which bring; the
Turkish frontier very near Lai isa. Greece was ordered to pay a war indemnity
of £T.4,000,000, and accepted an European control of her finances. In 1898 the
Turks left Thessalyi and with them almost all the remaining Moslem begs
(landowners). A series of quiet years followed the war, broken only by the
“Gospel Riots,” a disturbance arising out of the translation of the New
Testament into the vernacular. Theotdkes, a lieutenant of Trikoupes, became the
leading force in Greek politics, and, after the assassination of Delydnnes in
1905 for his attempt to suppress the Athenian gambling- riells, and the
subsequent split in the Delyannist party, was able to form a long administration.
Greece has recovered from the wounds of 1897; her finances are more
flourishing; her paper currency has approached par; and her internal politics
have been, till last year, steadier than in the days of “ grandfather ”
Dely&nnes—a patriot, but more of a demagogue than a statesman. But in the
summer of 1909 the renovated Turkish Government assumed a menacing attitude;
Greece had to abandon for the time the cherished union with Crete, and a body
of officers, in the name of army reform, demanded the removal of the Royal
Princes from their commands, and took up a threatening position outside Athens.
Three cabinet crises followed in rapid succession, and for a moment the
abdication of the King and his withdrawal with his whole family from the
country were rumoured. The “Military League” under Colonel ZoiMs has forced its
policy upon the terrorised Chamber; but the revolt of a naval officer, named
Typaldos, was easily suppressed in the classic waters of Salamis. It has now
been decided to convene a National Assembly to revise the Constitution; and on
March 29, 1910, the Military League, after an existence of seven months, was
accordingly dissolved. ,
The
settlement of the Cretan question long vexed the diplomatists of Europe.
Eighteen months were spent in the search for a Governor. A Swiss Federal
Councillor, a Luxemburg Colonel, a Montenegrin
Minister,
were in turn proposed, until at last, owing to the influence of the Tsar,
Prince George of Greece was appointed High Commissioner of the Powers.
Meanwhile, Germany, followed by Austria, had retired from the European Concert
on the Cretan question, and the forces of the four other Powers, supported by
their fleets under the command of the Italian Admiral Canevaro, had occupied
the coast towns, the British holding Candia, the Russians Rethymno, the French
Sitia and the islet of Spinalonga, the Italians Hierapetra, and all four Canea.
In these places, especially within the cordon of Candia, the Mussulmans were
herded, while the Christians held the whole of the open country, and a
migratory assembly, presided over by Dr Sphakian'&kes, issued decrees under
the seal of Minos. An attack upon the British in the harbour of Candia and the
murder of their Vice-Consul on September 6, 1898, hastened the settlement of
the Cretan question. Admiral Noel’s energy achieved what diplomacy had long
striven to obtain; the ringleaders were hanged; and, two months after the
affray at Candia, the last detachment of Turkish troops left the island; the
fort on the islet in Suda bay was thenceforth alone occupied by Ottoman
soldiers. Such was the state of affairs when, on December 21,1898, Prince
George set foot in the island.
The Prince’s
appointment, originally made for three years, lasted for nearly eight, and for
the first five Crete remained tranquil. Naturally popular with the Christians,
he endeavoured to reassure the Mussulmans, whose numbers had dwindled by
emigration to such an extent that the census of 1900 showed them to be only
one-ninth of the population. A gendarmerie of Cretans officered by Italian
carabineers took the place of the Montenegrins; and each of the four Powers
advanced ■£*40,000 for the initial expenses of the new administration. An
assembly met to adopt a new Constitution, which provided the Prince with five
Councillors, one of them a Mussulman, and created a Chamber of deputies, ten of
whom were nominees and the rest elected every two years. A Cretan flag, Cretan
postage-stamps and small coins, were further proofs of autonomy. But, early in
1904, discontent became rife in the island. The Prince, influenced by his Greek
secretary, descended into the arena of party politics against Venizelos, the
ablest of the Cretan politicians, who was accused of advocating the erection of
Crete into an independent principality, on the lines of Samos—a proposal
strongly denounced at Athens. The Italian Foreign Office warned the Prince to
act constitutionally, and a crisis was reached when, in March, 1905, the
Opposition took to the mountains and established its headquarters at Therisso,
a strong position already famous in the annals of Cretan warfare. The
insurgents there declared themselves a provisional National Assembly,
proclaimed union with Greece, and held out till winter forced them to surrender
to the Consuls of the Powers. The following summer Prince George, weary of
Cretan politics, resigned, despite a
petition of
many deputies in his favour. Thereupon, the Four Powers, whose representatives
in Rome had since the time of Admiral Canevaro formed a Cretan Areopagus under
the presidency of the Italian Foreign Minister, entrusted to King George the
selection of a new High Commissioner. His choice in September, 1906, fell upon
Zaimes, the most Conservative and most silent of Greek statesmen, and the
choice has been fully justified by results. Little more was heard of Crete,
till, in October, 1908, the news of the annexation of Bosnia and Bulgarian
independence caused the proclamation of union with Greece which has hitherto
been without effect.
Armenia and
Crete had scarcely ceased to occupy the attention of Europe when a third
question, more complex than either of them, became acute. Macedonia is the land
of conflicting races and overlapping claims. During a large part of its history
it has been entirely Greek; in the Middle Ages it was alternately under the
hegemony of Bulgarian, Servian, and Byzantine Emperors, until the conquering
Turk put all these Christian races under his dominion. But the memory of their
respective sovereignties lives on, while of late years a fourth propaganda,
that of the “lame” or Kutzo-Vlachs, the work of a certain Apostolos Margarites,
has been encouraged by Roumania. Religious differences revived these racial
hatreds. The firman creating the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 provided that,
outside of what is now Bulgaria, a petition by two-thirds of the inhabitants
could secure the transfer of a district from the Patriarch to the Exarch; and
“Patriarchists” and “Exarchists” thenceforth represented respectively the Greek
and the Bulgarian cause in Macedonia, while Servia and Roumania, seeing the
political advantages of an ecclesiastical propaganda, began to agitate for the
restoration of the Servian Patriarchate of Ipek and the erection of a separate
Roumanian Church. The Treaties of 1878 naturally made the Balkan States regard
Macedonia as their promised land. Servia, cut off from expansion in Bosnia and
the Herzegovina by the Austrian occupation, and bound by a secret treaty not to
agitate there, looked to the north of Macedonia and to Uskub, where her great
Tsar Dushan had once been crowned; Bulgaria remembered the frontiers which were
awarded her at San Stefano; Roumania, recognising in the Kutzo-Vlachs long-lost
kinsmen, hitherto considered as Greeks, saw that, by first fostering and then
sacrificing them, she might claim compensation nearer home; while Greece
regarded these newer nationalities as upstarts who had no rights in the home of
Alexander the Great, the land redeemed from the barbarians for the Byzantine
Empire by Basil “the Bulgar-slayer.” Austria-Hungary, for her own purposes, was
glad to divert the attention of Servia from the Bosnian Serbs, and that of
Roumania from the Roumans of Transylvania; while, at the same time, established
in the Sandjak of Novibazar, she might contemplate a descent upon the valley of
the Vardar and upon Salonica. For reasons of its own, the Turkish
Government,
too, was glad to increase the confusion of races. The Turks in Macedonia are a
mere handful; and Turkey maintained her empire by dividing her subject
nationalities, favouring now the Bulgarian, now the Serb, now the Greek, and
in 1905 the Kutzo-Vlach, according to the weakness or importunity of each.
Needless to add, the usual Turkish misgovemment continued; of the reforms
stipulated in Article 23 of the Berlin Treaty not one had been carried out by
the Porte.
The
Austro-Russian agreement of 1897, which aimed at preserving the status quo in
the Balkans, and pledged the two ancient rivals to abstain from exercising a
separate influence there, had the effect of stifling the question, but only for
a time.
The first
impulse to the Macedonian agitation came from Bulgaria. The principality was
full of Macedonians, who occupied posts in the army, in the schools, and on the
Press. A Macedonian Committee, which had its seat at Sofia, addressed a
memorial to the Powers in
1899, advocating an autonomous Macedonia under
a Bulgarian Governor- General. But the president, Boris Sarafofl, was aware
that Europe thinks of the Balkan races only when they are cutting each other’s
throats. Bulgarian bands crossed the Macedonian frontier, a Bulgarian emissary
shot a Roumanian professor opposed to the propaganda of the Com- mitteej and
the whole world became aware of the existence of a Macedonian question, when
Miss Stone, an American missionary, was captured by a gang of political
brigands. Meanwhile, Old Servia was the scene of Albanian feuds, which
culminated in the murder of Mollah Zekko, a donkey-boy who had risen to be the
leader of a movement for an autonomous Albania, and whom even the Sultan feared
and conciliated. So serious was the state of things, that Moslems as well as
Christians were agreed1 “that the provinces of Turkey in Europe
cannot be allowed to remain in their present deplorable condition.” Austria and
Russia, the two Powers most directly interested, were of the same opinion;
their Foreign Ministers met at Vienna and drew up in February, 1903, a modest
scheme of reforms for the three vilayets of Salonica, Monastir, and Kossovo,
which the other Powers supported. They recommended the Sultan to appoint an
Inspector-General for a fixed number of years; to reorganise the gendarmerie
with the aid of foreign officers, and to compose it of Christians and Moslems
in proportion to their numbers; and to establish a separate budget for each of
the three vilayets, upon the revenues of which the cost of local administration
was to be a first charge. The Sultan accepted the Austro-Russian reform scheme,
but its only result was to increase the disorder. The Albanians of Kossovo,
suspecting interference with their liberties, rose in rebellion, shot the
Russian consul at Mitrowitz, and
1
Sir A. Biliotti in Parliamentary Papers: “Turkey, No. 1 (1903),” p. 274.
426
Greeks and Bulgarians in Macedonia. [1903-5
held up the
Sultan’s envoys at Ipek. The Bulgarian bands, despite the dissolution of the
Macedonian Committees by the Bulgarian Government, blew up railway bridges, and
mined the Ottoman Bank at Salonica. The Greeks were terrorised by the Bulgarian
Committeemen and plundered by the Turkish irregulars. This state of things
induced Austria and Russia in October, 1903, to issue a second edition of their
reform scheme, called, from the place of signature, the Miirzsteg programme.
This programme, which was also accepted 'by the Sultan, attached Austrian and
Russian Civil Agents to Hilmi Pasha, the Inspector-General who had been
appointed a year earlier; entrusted the reorganisation of the gendarmerie to a
foreign general, aided by military officers of the Powers, who were to divide
Macedonia among them; and demanded the reform of the administrative and
judicial institutions of the country with the participation of the Christian
population. General de Giorgis, an Italian officer, was appointed to command
the gendarmerie, and his successor is another Italian, Count di Robilant. All
the Powers, except Germany, sent a small contingent of officers, subsequently
slightly increased, and Macedonia was, for police purposes, divided up into
five secteurs, the British taking Drama, a rich district almost wholly peopled
by Pomaks, the French Seres, the Italians Monastir, the Austrians Uskub, and
the Russians Salonica. Most of the vilayet of Kossovo, the worst of all, and
part of that of Monastir, were excluded from this arrangement. An agreement
between Bulgaria and Turkey for the prevention of armed bands helped to improve
the condition of Macedonia in 1904.
But, in the
autumn of that year, a new disturbing element arose. Unable to obtain
protection for their fellow-countrymen against the Bulgarians, the Greeks organised
bands in their turn; and Paul Melas, one of their leaders, who fell in
Macedonia, became a national hero at Athens. The rival parties, which took
their titles from the Greek Patriarch and the Bulgarian Exarch, and were
secretly encouraged by consuls and ecclesiastics, murdered one another in the
name of religion, which in Macedonia is a pretext for racial animosity; while
the Sultan widened the breach between Greece and Roumania by recognising the
Kutzo-Ylachs as a separate nationality, with the right of using their language
in their churches and schools. These national quarrels spread beyond Macedonia;
the Bulgarians destroyed the Greek quarters of Anchialos and Philippopolis; the
Roumanians demonstrated against the Greeks resident in their country; a common
danger caused Greeks and Serbs to fraternise. Meanwhile, the British
Government, disgusted with the slow progress made by the Miirzsteg programme,
proposed in 1905 its extension to the vilayet of Adrianople, and the
appointment of a Commission of delegates, nominated by the Powers, under the
presidency of the Inspector-General, for the purpose of framing financial
reforms. The Sultan at first refused to allow foreign interference in his
finances; but the occupation of Mitylene by an international fleet forced
him to
recognise the four financial experts whom the other Powers had already sent to
Salonica as colleagues of the Austrian and Russian Civil Agents. In 1908, all
the arrangements made for the pacification of Macedonia—the appointments of Inspector-General,
civil and financial agents, and gendarmerie officers—originally made for two
years, were prolonged, for six. The civil and financial agents were, however,
suppressed in the following year. But still the bands increased, while the
British proposal to increase the gendarmerie met with no support from the other
Powers, mainly occupied with the rival railway schemes of Austria and Servia.
In short, European intervention in Macedonia has been so far unsuccessful. If
the taxes have been better collected and administered, if the Turkish troops
have committed fewer outrages, the strife between Greeks, Bulgarians, and
Kutzo-Vlachs has been bitterer than ever.
The Eastern
question suddenly entered on a new and acute phase in the summer of 1908. The “Young
Turks,” or party of reform, whom diplomatists had hitherto been wont to regard
as dreamers, had long carried on a secret propaganda, which had made great
progress in the army. A bloodless revolution took place in Constantinople on
July 24, the Sultan restored the Constitution of 1876, all the nationalities of
.the empire temporarily fraternised, a general election was held, and a Turkish
Parliament met. This grant of constitutional liberties to the subjects of
Turkey proved a serious embarrassment to a Christian Power like Austria, whose
wards in Bosnia and the Herzegovina did not enjoy similar privileges. At the
same time, the internal difficulties of the new Turkish Government suggested to
Austrian and Bulgarian statesmen that this was the moment for realising their
long-deferred hopes. There, seems to have been an understanding between the
Austrian Emperor and Prince Ferdinand that each would help the other against
Servia, which was thus taken between two fires. Accordingly, on October 5,
1908, Bulgaria declared her independence and the Prince was proclaimed at Tmovo
“Tsar of Bulgaria,” a title since altered to “ Tsar of the Bulgarians.” Two
days later, Austria-Hungary annexed the two provinces which she had occupied
for thirty years. The Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs treated the matter
as merely the destruction of a diplomatic fiction; but Great Britain protested
against the unauthorised departure from treaty provisions. Servia armed, and
demanded a strip of Bosnia which would unite her with Montenegro; while the
Prince of Montenegro announced that, if the Austrian annexation were allowed,
he would be no longer bound by the restrictions imposed at Berlin upon the bay
of Antivari. The proclamation of the union of Crete with Greece increased the
difficulties of the situation, and the evacuation of the Sandjak of Novibazar
by the Austrian troops was not regarded as adequate compensation. Turkey has,
however, accepted i?T.2,500,000 for all the domain lands in Bosnia and the
Herzegovina.
Thus, the Treaty of Berlin has suffered three more breaches, but so far, as in
1885, Europe, like Turkey, has accepted accomplished facts, and Servia has been
forced to forgo all territorial concessions. All the Powers have recognised the
independence of Bulgaria, and the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina ;
Austria, while retaining Spizza, has suppressed or modified other limitations
on the freedom of the bay of Antivari. Crete is not yet united with Greece, but
the troops of the four Powers were, in July, 1909, replaced by stationnaires.
At present the Cretan question is dormant.
Meanwhile, a
counter-revolution had broken out in Constantinople. The “Young Turks,”
however, held their own; the army of Salonica, the cradle of the Liberal
movement, marched upon the capital; on April 27, 1909, Abd-ul-Hamid II was
deposed, and his next brother proclaimed Sultan under the title of Mohammad V.
The dethroned ruler was conveyed to Salonica—a striking instance of that poetic
justice which has ever illuminated the tragic annals of Byzantium.
To sum up the
results of the last three decades, Turkey has lost Bosnia and the Herzegovina,
Bulgaria, Thessaly and part of Epiros, a portion of Albania, and—in all but the
name—the island of Crete. Roumania and Servia have thrown off the last shreds
of vassalage, and both they and Montenegro have been enlarged at her expense.
Thrace, • Macedonia, Albania, and part of Epiros alone remain of the once vast
Turkish empire in Europe; Cyprus and Egypt are practically British; Tunisia,
over which the Sultan claimed a vague suzerainty, is a French protectorate.
Tripoli, coveted by Italy, is the only fragment left to the Turks in Africa;
even in Asia, their original home, their frontier has receded. It remains to be
seen whether reforms aided by European and Balkan jealousies can prevent the
end of European Turkey.
EGYPT AND THE
EGYPTIAN SUDAN. (1841-1907.)
Satisfied with the hereditary governorship of
Egypt, which was affirmed by the Five Powers of Europe in 1841, Mehemet Ali,
already over seventy years of age, abandoned all idea of further aggrandisement
and devoted himself for the next seven years to the social and material
improvement of his country, with an aggregate of results which caused him to be
ranked by his admirers in Europe with Saladin, Peter the Great, Napoleon, and
Cromwell.' His boundless ambition had led him to sacrifice almost everything to
the dream of becoming the head of a powerful empire, independent of the Porte.
With this end in view, he introduced various European sciences, arts, and
manufactures into Egypt, and the works issued from the printing press which he
had imported in 1821 were solely intended for the instruction of his military,
naval, and civil officers. Hardly able to read and write, and ignorant of the
language of his adopted country, he nevertheless created a new era for Egypt
and raised a State sunk in misery into one of comparative prosperity. He left
behind him canals and roads, factories and arsenals, schools and hospitals, and
introduced into the Delta the cotton plant, which was destined to add so
greatly to the wealth of Egypt. He was an oppressor of barbarous habits, but he
had the merit of protecting his people from all oppression but his own, and,
though severe, he was not wantonly cruel. In 1847, he laid the first stone of
the Barrage, fourteen miles below Cairo; but in the following year the “Lion of
the Levant” was attacked by senile dementia and resigned in favour of his son,
Ibrahim, the hero of Konieh and Nezib, who was already in his sixtieth year and
only reigned four months.
In 1849
Abbas, a grandson of Mehemet Ali, came to the throne shortly before his
grandfather’s death, and in a short reign of five years, by reason of his
hatred of Europeans, did much to stem the progress of civilisation. His troops
were driven from Nejd, while the Wahabi State regained its independence; but,
on the outbreak of the Crimean War, he
placed his
army and his fleet at the disposal of the Saltan. The power of the Pasha of
Egypt within his own dominions was almost supreme, and he could cause any one
of his subjects to be put to death, without the formality of a trial, and
without assigning any cause; a simple horizontal motion of his hand was enough
to decree the sentence of decapitation, with which thefts were often punished.
Other offenders were exiled to the army in Upper Egypt or were made to work on
the canal corvte. Cruel, avaricious, and sensual, Abbas I was murdered by his
own slaves on July 13, 1854.
He was
succeeded by his uncle Said, an amiable and liberal-minded prince, who
retrieved much of the mischief done by his predecessor and raised the army to
50,000 men, though he lacked the vigorous intelligence and force of character
of the founder of the dynasty. The initiation of the idea of railway
construction must be credited to Mehemet Ali; but it was not until 1855 that
the first railway was made between Alexandria and Cairo. British influence with
the Pasha surpassed for the moment that of France. Robert Stephenson was
appointed the engineer, and for some years, until Egyptians had been trained,
the drivers and stokers were mostly Englishmen. Egypt thus preceded Turkey and
most European countries in railway construction.
For centuries
the most enlightened rulers of Egypt had paid special attention to the
possibility of restoring communication between the Mediterranean and the Red
Sea. In 1845, after some twenty years of indomitable perseverance, Waghorn
succeeded in conveying the mail from Bombay to London in thirty days by the
overland route which traversed Egypt from Suez to Alexandria, whence the
letters were despatched to Trieste and, later, by French influence, to
Marseilles. But it was not until November SO, 1854, that Ferdinand de Lesseps
obtained from Said Pasha a preliminary concession for accomplishing the great
work which Napoleon had abandoned, and Robert Stephenson (in 1846) had
pronounced impracticable. After accepting the modifications recommended by an
international commission^ comprising representatives of seven Powers, the final
concession was signed by the Pasha on January 5, 1856. Meanwhile the British
Government, under the influence of Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary,
endeavoured, for a variety of political reasons, to throw obstacles in the way
of the enterprise, and so far succeeded as to prevent the Sultan from granting
his sanction to the concession. Palmerston, mindful of Napoleon’s invasion of
Egypt and of Louis-Philippe’s intrigues to establish a French protectorate in
the days before the bombardment of Acre, strongly objected to the establishment
of a powerful French company on Egyptian soil, and foresaw that, if the Canal
were successfully made, Great Britain would be the country most interested in
it, and would therefore be irresistibly drawn into a more direct interference
in Egyptian affairs, which he deemed it was desirable to avoid, because
she had
already enough upon her hands and because any unnecessary intervention on her
part might lead to a rupture with France. This remarkable forecast was justified;
for, in spite of the commercial advantages of the Suez Canal, there can be no
doubt that it has often rendered acute the political differences between the
two Powers which strove for so many years for supremacy in Egypt. It was also
argued that the Canal might cause England to lose her trade with the East, just
as Venice had suffered by the discovery of the Gape route.
English
opposition rather stimulated than discouraged the enthusiasm of Lesseps, while
it also stirred up the national feeling of France, and thus enabled him, in
1858, to launch on nearly every Bourse in Europe a company with a capital of
£8,000,000. Rather more than half of this amount was subscribed for, chiefly in
France; and eventually, in 1860, Said Pasha was induced to take up the remaining
unallotted shares. Disregarding British objections and the indifference of the
rest of the world, and not waiting for the consent of the Porte which was
withheld till 1866, Lesseps, accompanied by a dozen Europeans and 100 native
workmen, began the stupendous work on April 25, 1859, by cutting a small trench
in the narrow belt of sand on the shore between Lake Menzala and the sea, and
named the desolate spot Port Said in honour of the Viceroy. The very site,
however, of the future town had to be formed, and this was done by spreading
over the sand the mud dredged from the adjoining lake, which the summer heat
soon hardened into a sufficiently firm foundation for the workshops that
rapidly sprang up along the line of the new harbour. The pioneers were
dependent for fresh water on Damietta, 30 miles away, whence Arab sailing boats
reached them at very irregular intervals. On this unpropitious site arose,
within ten years, a French town of nearly 10,000 inhabitants, well laid out in
streets and squares, with docks, quays, churches, mosques, hotels, and a
freshwater canal.
It is to Said
Pasha’s credit that he encouraged, under French influence, the discovery and
preservation of the old monuments of his country, and founded the Bulak Museum
in Cairo. But his contact with Europeans led him into extravagant expenditure,
which caused him, in 1862, to take the first step towards Egypt’s bankruptcy,
by contracting for the Government a loan of £3,292,800 at an annual charge of 8
per cent, without any adequate arrangement for repaying the sum borrowed.
At his death
on January 18, 1863, Ismail, the son of Ibrahim and grandson of Mehemet Ali,
succeeded to the throne and to this national debt, in his thirty-third year. By
the end of 1876, this reckless spendthrift had raised the debt, nominally, to
91 millions, though in reality it considerably exceeded this figure. A country
of some six million inhabitants, mostly peasants with less than one acre of
cultivated land apiece, had thus added to its financial burdens at the rate of
seven millions a year. Yet, when, at Ismail’s professed desire, Stephen Cave
investigated
and reported upon the details of Egyptian finance in
1876, he stated that for the enormous debt
there was “ absolutely nothing to show but the Suez Canalj the whole proceeds
of the loans and floating debt having been absorbed in payment of interest and
sinking funds, with the exception of the sum debited to that great work.” The
total amount sunk by the Egyptian Government in the Suez Canal exceeded sixteen
millions; yet Egypt had no longer any share whatever in the vast profits of
that undertaking. Each loan cost the State more than 12 per cent, per annum,
while the railways loan of 1866, contracted nominally for three millions at
seven per cent., actually cost 26 9 per cent., including the sinking fund. The
terms of borrowing became increasingly disadvantageous, so that of the great
£32,000,000 loan of 1873, which pledged every available security of real value,
only £20,700,000 reached the Egyptian treasury. Foreign adventurers swarmed
around Ismail and battened on the unscrupulous despot, who was his own Finance
Minister and kept no accounts, and whose inveterate love of speculation and
trickery made him an easy prey. Even when he could afford to spend some of the
borrowed money upon himself or upon the country, he always contrived to obtain
the least possible value for his expenditure, and, while funds were being
raised in enormous quantities, his people were subjected to the most cruel
exactions. Not only was the taxation of land increased by fifty per cent., but
no faith was kept with those from whom the money was extorted. The discontent
caused by the perpetual plundering of Ismail’s agents made foreign intervention
inevitable.
Though the
settlement of 1840-1 had made Egypt virtually independent, the relation of its
ruler to the Porte was still that of a Governor-General, ranking little higher
than that of the Governor of Bagdad. Ismail, soon after his accession, began
negotiations with Constantinople which resulted in two imperial firmans (1866
and 1872). By these he received the title and rank of Khedive, insured the
succession to the throne directly from father to son, instead of its passing to
the eldest male of the family of Mehemet Ali, as had been fixed by the treaty
of 1840, and rid himself of limitations of his prerogative with regard to the
strength of his army, the right of contracting foreign loans, and that of
concluding commercial treaties. These firmans were approved by the Five Powers,
and all that the Khedive nominally gave in exchange for independence was the
doubling of his yearly tribute to the Sultan. But it is an open secret that the
bakshish extorted from the Egyptian treasury by Abd-ul- Aziz, his Ministers,
and every official through whose hands the prolonged negotiations passed,
amounted to more than a million pounds. Ismail’s policy was to buy from the
Porte the freedom which Mehemet Ali had failed to gain by force of arms.
Early in
1864, the Suez Canal works came almost to a standstill; for,
by Lord
Palmerston’s instructions, the British ambassador in Constantinople protested
to the Porte against the employment of forced labour on Turkish territory for
the benefit of a foreign company. Lesseps saved the situation by persuading the
Khedive to submit the question to the Emperor Napoleon as arbitrator, who
decided that the withdrawal of Egyptian labourers, thousands of whom had
already died from exposure and insufficient rations, was a breach of Said
Pasha's original contract, and he accordingly awarded the Company e payment of
about £3,000,000 from the Egyptian treasury. The Company lost no time in
substituting machinery for manual labour; and on November 17, 1869, the Canal
of a total length of 100 miles, was opened for the traffic of 48 ships, the
first vessel to pay the dues flying an English flag. It may be calculated that
Egypt contributed nearly one-half of the capital by which the Canal was built,
and yet received no pecuniary benefit of any kind. The inauguration of the
Canal was made the occasion of a series of magnificent fetes, attended by the
Empress Eugenie of France, the Emperor of Austria, the Crown Prince of Prussia,
the Grand Duke Michael of Russia, Prince Henry of the Netherlands, and hundreds
of distinguished guests, whose expenses were lavishly defrayed by the Khedive
from and to Europe and during their stay in Egypt. Some six weeks before the
opening ceremony, as it had been represented to the Khedive that the Empress
would wish to visit the Pyramids of Giza, he ordered a road seven miles in
length to be constructed* connecting them with Cairo. Ten thousand peasants,
driven by the lash, carried out the work in the appointed time, in spite of
intense heat. Ismail, then at the height of his grandeur, turned a deaf ear to
the creditors who were becoming alarmed at his extravagance, dreamed of
founding a new empire in Africa, and never reckoned on the possibility of the
downfall at Sedan, which helped to bring about his own collapse.
The
importance of the Suez Canal to the commerce of the world depended upon the
economy of time and distance effected by it as com- ■ Jared with the
route round the Cape—for instance, the saving from London and Marseilles to
Bombay was respectively 4840 and 6940 miles— but it was not until 1872 that the
receipts of the Company exceeded the expenses. The gross receipts gradually
rose from £264,000 in 1870 to £4,804,000 in 1907, while the number of ships
paying Canal dues increased from 491 to 4267 in the same years. The ships in
1907 belonged to 20 different nations, 2651 being British, while Germany came
next on the list with 580 vessels. For many years the British ships numbered
more than three-fourths of those passing through the Canal; and when, in 1875,
Disraeli became aware that Ismail was negotiating in Paris for the mortgage of
his only remaining unpledged asset —the Canal shares originally allotted to
Said Pasht: -he at once borrowed £4,000,000 on his own authority, bought the
shares from the Khedive, and had his prompt action ratified by Parliament, thus
causing his
434
Interference of Great Britain and France. [1875-9
country for
the first time to become a partner in the Canal enterprise. Three English
Directors were appointed to the Board of the Company, a number afterwards
increased to one-third of the body.
The success
of Said Pasha’s original loan proved to be the ruin of Ismail; for, at the
accession of the latter, Egypt’s credit as a borrower stood high in Europe,
while the price of Egyptian cotton rose enormously in consequence of the Civil
War in America. With the downfall of the Confederate Government came the
collapse of the cotton boom; but fresh loans enabled him for a time to extend
the railways, schools, and public works of the country, to provide some 10,000
dependents with daily food at his chief Cairo palace, to send military
expeditions to the Sudan, to waste money in every possible way, and, by fair
and unfair means, to raise his own personal holding of land from 30,000 to
916,000 acres, mostly cultivated by forced labour.
When Ismail
could no longer borrow at ruinous rates of interest he, on April 8, 1876,
suspended payment of his treasury bills, following the example of the Ottoman
Government some six months earlier.
On May 2 the
Commission of the Public Debt was instituted by Khedivial decree, France,
Austria, and Italy each selecting a commissioner, though Lord Derby, the
Foreign Secretary, declined to appoint one from England. The British Government
refused any interference in the internal affairs of Egypt, and paid small
attention to Cave’s report and to the financial arrangements negotiated by
Goschen and Joubert, which resulted in the appointment of two
Controllers-General of Egyptian finance, one French and one English—the Dual
Control; but eventually, in 1877, Major Baring (now Lord Cromer) was nominated
British Commissioner to the Public Debt by Goschen, to whom the Khedive had
privately applied for a. suitable official.
Ever since
the treaty of 1841 England had been regarded as the special champion of Turkish
suzerainty; while France had adopted the role of protector of the Viceroys;
but, in April, 1878, Great Britain, on the eve of the Berlin Congress,
brusquely departed from her former attitude and joined the French Government in
demanding a full enquiry into the financial condition of Egypt, to which the
Khedive was obliged to consent. In order to check his arbitrary power, he was
induced to recognise the principle of Ministerial responsibility; the Dual
Control was suspended; Nubai Pasha, an able Armenian, Sir Rivers Wilson, and
Blignieres, were appointed Ministers and remained in power for five months,
while most of the Khedivial property was ceded to the State, on the security of
which the Domains Loan of £8,500,000 was at once raised.
Early in
1879, Ismail, by encouraging a mutiny in his army and by intriguing against his
own Ministers, showed his unwillingness to resign his autocracy and demanded
the retirement of Nubar, whom he accused of undermining his authority. Nubar
was succeeded as Prime
Minister for
four weeks by Prince Tewfik, the heir apparent, and then by Sherif Pasha, while
the European Ministers were dismissed and many leading officials resigned,
including the Commissioners who had been enquiring into the finances of Egypt.
Ismail's resumption of power caused some embarrassment in Europe; for Great
Britain was still honestly striving to avoid the burden of increased
responsibility; France hesitated between a natural desire to exclude England’s
supremacy and the fear that a joint occupation with her neighbour would prove a
certain cause of disagreement between herself and England; Italy secretly
befriended the Khedive, while vaguely hoping that she might gain some advantage
from his imminent downfall; Russia held aloof; and Turkey waited anxiously to see
if her suzerain rights were endangered, fully aware that not one of the Powers
would consent to a Turkish occupation. Ismail’s hope that he had defied Europe
with impunity received a severe shock from an unexpected quarter. Germany had
never displayed much interest in Egyptian affairs, and the world was therefore
astounded to learn that Bismarck threatened active intervention in Egypt in
order to protect the interests of certain German creditors of the State.
Matters were thus brought to a crisis. England and France joined Germany in
demanding the deposition of the Khedive by the Sultan; and, on June 26, 1879, a
telegram reached Cairo from Constantinople, addressed to “ Ismail Pasha, late
Khedive of Egypt,” informing him of his deposition and of the nomination of his
son Tewfik in his stead.
When the blow
fell, nothing became Ismail better than the dignity with which he accepted the
inevitable; he salaamed to the new Khedive and retired to Naples with his
personal attendants and some 300 ladies of his harem. In 1887 he was invited by
the Sultan to Constantinople, where he passed the last eight years of his life,
a state prisoner, hoping against hope that some lucky chance would assist his
return to power in Egypt.
Tewfik Pasha
succeeded to a bankrupt State, an undisciplined army, and a discontented
people, and could bring nothing to cope with these but youth and inexperience,
for, unlike his brothers, who were of better maternal parentage, he had not
been educated in Europe. An attempt was at once made by Turkey to tighten her
hold upon Egypt by a new firman, the clauses of which both England and France
contested in the interest of the new Khedive, whose right to contract loans
was, however, withdrawn, while his standing army was limited to 18,000 men. The
Anglo-French Dual Control was revived; confidence was restored with a new
Egyptian Ministry; half the annual revenue was set aside for the creditors of
the Egyptian Government; and matters seemed at last to be on a more
satisfactory basis until February, 1881, when the Khedive dismissed his War
Minister on the demand of some mutinous regiments. Before the end of the year,
the whole Ministry was dismissed in order to
appease other
disaffected officers, headed by Arabi, a colonel of peasant origin, who, on February
5, 1882, became War Minister. While the Khedive chafed under the. power of his
rebellious army and of the national anti-Turk party, which the officers
professed to represent, Turkey saw another chance of interfering and sent two
Commissioners to Egypt, who were only withdrawn by the Syltan when England and
France each sent a man-of-war to Alexandria. The two Powers thus took the str
ing line of deciding that Turkish intervention was inadvisable and acted
loyally together; for Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire said that his Egyptian policy
“was summed up in the absolute necessity, as in the past so in the future, of
perfect frankness between the two Governments and joint action on every
occasion.” Early in 1882, Lord Granville reluctantly yielded to pressure from
Gambetta; and a Joint Note was addressed to the Khedive with the view of
strengthening his authority* which rendered European military intervention an
absolute necessity. This attempt to free the Khedive from military domination
failed. Great Britain and France despatched fleets to Alexandria, while all the
Powers decided that Egypt was a matter of general European interest, and that
the Sultan should be invited to attempt to restore order by sending to Cairo a
Special Commissioner. In the meantime, die Khec re was threatened with death if
he obeyed the Anglo-French advice to dismiss Arabi from the Ministry; and the
rebels seriously talked of deposing the Viceroy and exiling all his relations.
Turkey,
faithful to her diplomatic traditions, sent two Commissioners with
diametrically opposite instructions, each to report independently to the
Sultan; but, within a few days of their arrival, the hand of European diplomacy
was disagreeably forced by an anti-Christian massacre in Alexandria on June 11,
1882. Arabi became more than ever master of the situation. The work of the
Government was at a standstill, panic spread, and by June 17, 14,000 Christians
had left Egypt, while thousands more were anxiously awaiting steamers to carry
them away. On June 23, the Six Powers met in conference at Constantinople, to
decide upon what terms the Porte should be invited to lend troops to restore
order in Egypt; but, before the Sultan had made up his mind to be represented
at this Conference, British patience, after eighteen months of useless
negotiation, was exhausted, and Arabi’s folly in raising batteries to defy the
British fleet necessitated the bombardment of Alexandria, on July 11. At this
time there were no less than 26 warships in the harbour, representing ten
foreign navies. On July 3, the British Admiral had been instructed to prevent
work on the fortifications and, if it were continued, to destroy the earthworks
and silence the batteries.
The French
fleet sailed away; for the French Government, on being invited, to cooperate,
had already informed the British ambassador in Paris that the proposed
bombardment would be an act of war against
1882]
437
Egypt and
that such an act, without the express consent of the Chamber, would violate the
French Constitution.
On July 12,
when the batteries were all silenced, the Egyptian troops set fire to the town
and left it to be pillaged by the mob, which took the opportunity of outraging
some Turkish ladies and of murdering several Europeans. Gladstone's Cabinet,
which lost Bright at this juncture, refused for several hours to allow troops
to be landed to counteract the work of the incendiaries, because it involved
“the assumption of authority upon the Egyptian question.” But England, now
determined to substitute order for anarchy, obtained the partial cooperation of
France, until mistrust of Germany brought about the fall of the Freycinet
Ministry and finally ended the question of French military intervention in
Egypt. An appeal to Italy was answered by friendly assurances, coupled with the
evident desire to abstain from active alliance, inspired by a natural
reluctance to separate from the European Concert and by fear of an ultimate
collision with France.
The Sultan
expressed himself willing to issue a proclamation denouncing Arabi as a rebel
and also to enter into a military convention with Great Britain, indicating the
manner in which 5000 Turkish troops were to be employed; but the diplomacy of
the Porte was more than usually tortuous, with the consequence that the
convention was still unsigned on September 13, the date on which Lord Wolseley
defeated the Egyptian army at Tel-el-Kebir.
For two
months after the bombardment of Alexandria there were two rival Governments in
Egypt—that of the Khedive, practically a prisoner in his palace near Alexandria
(although he was supported indirectly by Great Britain), and that of Arabi,
backed by the Egyptian army; yet both of these professed equal hostility to the
British invasion of Egypt. On July 20, the British Government announced its
intention of sending British troops to Egypt in default of foreign cooperation,
in order to restore the Khedive’s authority; the House of Commons voted the
necessary money by a large majority; the troops reached Alexandria; and on August
18, the British fleet sailed thence with the military transports. The rebel
army was drawn up to oppose the advertised landing at Aboukir; but the fleet,
contrary to expectation, steamed straight for Ismailia, from which point the
advance to Cairo had been secretly planned. In spite of the complaints of
Lesseps, the troops were gradually poured across the desert from the Canal, the
enemy retiring before them. After an unsuccessful attack on the British camp at
Kassassin, Arabi entrenched himself in a strong position at Tel-el-Kebir. In
the early morning of September 13, about 13,000 British soldiers drove twice
the number of Egyptians from their entrenchments and captured all their 70
guns; Arabi Pasha was one of the first to fly, while officers and men vied with
each other in the rapidity with which they cast away rifles and uniforms and
assumed the garb and habits of
peaceful
peasants engaged in tilling the fields. The 11,000 troops in and near Cairo
surrendered unconditionally, by Arabi’s orders, as soon as a handful of
Englishmen had pushed on to the capital, and within a week all the outlying
garrisons had laid down their arms. On September 19, a laconic Decree, signed
by the Khedive, appeared in the Journal Officiel, “The Egyptian Army is
disbanded.” So ended an undisciplined force which, in Lord Cromer’s words,
could mutiny but could not, or would not, fight. In spite of the unconcealed
satisfaction of the Egyptians at the arrival of English troops and a petition
signed by 2600 European residents in Alexandria in favour of a permanent
British occupation, Lord Granville announced that he “ contemplated shortly
commencing the withdrawal of the British troops from Egypt.” Lord Dufferin was
despatched from Constantinople to Cairo on a special mission “ to advise the
Government of the Khedive in the arrangements which would have to be made for
reestablishing his Highness’ authority.” His first step was to obtain the
release of all prisoners under the rank of major who were confined on charges
connected with the mutiny. The British Government handed the ringleaders over
to the Khedive, with the stipulation that no sentence of death should be
carried out without the approval of the British authorities. Arabi was defended
by two English barristers, and, after a protracted and unedifying trial, Lord
Dufferin arranged that Arabi and four other Pashas should plead guilty to the
charge of rebellion, and be sentenced to death; and that the Khedive should
commute the sentence to one of banishment. Ceylon was chosen as the place of
exile; and there most of the Pashas lived in comfort for over 18 years, when
the survivors were allowed to return to Egypt. Riaz Pasha, the Prime Minister,
objected so strongly to the injustice and impolicy of this leniency that he
resigned office.
Shortly after
the military occupation of Egypt, the British Cabinet intimated to France its
intention to withdraw from the Dual Control, and on February 4, 1883, Sir
Auckland Colvin was appointed as the first Financial Adviser to the Egyptian Government.
Great Britain declined to listen to French protests on this point; the French
Government “ resumed its liberty of action in Egypt,” and, until the signature
of the Anglo-French agreement in 1904, remained more or less persistently
hostile to England.
Lord
Dufferin, on February 6,1883, submitted to the Foreign Office his proposals for
the reorganisation of Egypt in an eloquent despatch which concealed both from
the British and the Egyptians the extreme difficulties which he was
clear-sighted enough to foresee; and, though he recommended the formation of a
Legislative Council and Assembly, he hinted that the masterly hand of a
Resident would have to bend everything to his will. Before returning to
Constantinople he caused the Khedive to prohibit the bastinado, which until
then had been invariably used to extort confessions, and he arranged for the
reconstruction, Under
1819-83]
439
British
chiefs, of the departments of Irrigation, Army, Justice, and Police. He had
hardly left Egypt when that unfortunate country was paralysed by outbreaks of
rinderpest and cholera, the latter introduced by pilgrims returning from Mecca.
The British Government sent medical officers from England and India, who were
powerless to do more than make recommendations which the Egyptian officials
were both unwilling and unable to carry out. Gladstone’s Cabinet refused to
entertain the idea of a protectorate and was still bent on withdrawing from the
country as soon as possible. Sir Evelyn Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer) was
appointed as Agent and Consul-General and took up his new duties in Cairo on
September 11, 1883.
In spite of
the unwillingness of the Cabinet, the British occupation, dreaded by Mehemet
Ali and foreseen by Kinglake in Eothen, had already lasted twelve months—a
logical sequence of the labours of Waghom and Lesseps, and of the magnificent
follies of Ismail.
Egyptian
sovereignty in the Sudan (or the country of the blacks) dates from 1819, when
Mehemet Ali sent troops thither and ultimately established his authority over
Sennar and Kordofan. The Victoria Nyanza Lake was discovered by Speke in 1858
and the Albert Nyanza by Sir Samuel Baker in 1864, while in 1866 Suakin and
Massowah were assigned to Egypt by the Sultan. In 1871 Baker conquered and
annexed the Equatorial Provinces, having been engaged by the Khedive for four
years to subdue the countries south of Gondokoro, to suppress the slave trade,
and to open to navigation the great lakes of the Equator. He tried to change
the name of Gondokoro to Ismailia in honour of his master, and, by establishing
military posts and making maps, laid the foundation of future government. He
was succeeded in 1874 by General Charles Gordon, who had been fired by the
Khedive and Nubar Pasha with their dream of a Central African empire, and who
only stipulated that his salary should be £2000 a year instead of £10,000 as
proposed by Ismail. In the following year Darfur and Harrar were annexed to
Egypt, and steamers were taken up the Nile to ply on Lake Albert Nyanza. In
February, 1877, Gordon, already Governor-General of the Equatorial Provinces,
was promoted to be Governor-General of the Sudan, and astonished the Arabs by
the rapidity of his camel marches and his feverish love of inspecting outlying
districts. The Egyptian Sudan then consisted of an area some 1300 miles long by
1300 miles in breadth at its widest part. Gordon found that no trade worthy of
the name was carried on excepting in slaves and ivory; and he resolutely set
himself to harass the slave dealers in every possible way. After a series of
engagements against rebel slave hunters in 1879, Gessi, one of Gordon’s
officers, shot Suleiman, the son of Zobeir Pasha, the most influential black in
the Sudan and the recognised chieftain of some
11,000 troops. Gordon’s crusade against the sla^ve
traders, who were
usually in
collusion with government officials, followed by his prompt resignation so soon
as he heard of Isiriail’s downfall, greatly contributed to spread discontent
throughout the Sudan, while the disastrous War in Abyssinia in 1875, where
Prince Hassan had been taken prisoner, and 900 Egyptians, armed with rifles,
had fallen before King John’s swords and spears, had by no means discouraged
Sudanese rebellion.
Gordon’s
departr,re for England coincided with the return of the slave dealers. The
Egyptian Government became universally hated; the Treasury was empty; and the
army was worthless, without pay, discipline, or loyalty. Everything was ripe
for the Mahdi, who, in August, 1881, proclaimed his mission to conquer Egypt,
overthrow the Turks, and convert the whole world. He declared war equally
against orthodox Mohammadans, Chrkti ns, and pagans, and thousand? of fanatics
who. had eageujy assimilated his mysticism flocked to his standard. In consequence
of Colonel Stewart’s valuable reports on the growing movement, several British
officers were appointed in the spring af 1883 to the staff ei the Egyptian army
in the Sudan, under the command of General Hicks, who found his
recommendations paralysed by Cairo intrigues, until he was appointed
Commander-in-Chief in July. Lord Granville took the extraordinary and
undignified line of disclaiming all responsibility in Sudanese affairs; the
Egyptian Ministers failed to realise the military and geographical situation;
and Hicks, with a worthless rabble, was allowed to start from Duem on September
8,1883, to attempt the reconquest of Kordofan from the Mahdi. His army was led
astray by false guides into the desert, where those who did not succumb to
thirst fell an easy prey to the Mahdi’s hordes, about 30 miles south of El
Obeid. Hicks and his staff died like men, fighting, within a mile of a, large
pool of water of which they were in complete ignorance. So soon as rumours of
Hicks’ defeat reached Cairo, Sir Evelyn Baring impressed upon the British
Cabinet the uselessness of separating Egyptian from Sudanese affairs; and Lord
Granville informed him that in no case would British, Indian, or Turkish troops
be sent to reconquer the Sudan, and that, as Egypt had neither soldiers nor
money, it was necessary to abandon the Sudan to its fate. This decision was
very unpopular in Egypt and resulted in a change of Ministry in January, 1884,
while votes of censure on Gladstone’s policy were moved in both Houses of Parliament.
Public opinion in England and Egypt was strongly in favour of an attempt being
made to relieve the loyal garrisons in the Eastern Sudan, then beleaguered by
Osman Digna, a former slave dealer, who had been appointed as the Mahdi’s Emir,
and whose prestige had been greatly increased by unsuccessful Egyptian
expeditions against him in the neighbourhood of Suakim The new Egyptian army,
commanded by Sir Evelyn Wood, whicji was hardly a year old, was considered too
raw to be despatched, and General Valentine Baker was hurriedly sent to the Red
Sea with his newly formed gendarmerie, some of whom had
been
recruited from Arabi Pasha’s army defeated at Tel-el-Kebir. On February 5,
1884, Baker’s force of 3500 men, marching to relieve the Tokar garrison, was
attacked by less than 1000 of the enemy. His men threw down their arms, fled,
and allowed themselves to be killed without making the least resistance. It was
thus conclusively proved that the Egyptian peasant of that day was incapable of
fighting. Baker’s defeat caused a panic at Suakin. Admiral Hewett was obliged
to land a small force for its protection, and he was placed in civil and
military command of the town. Sir Gerald Graham was sent from Cairo with 4000
British troops and fought two successful engagements in March at El Teb and
Tamai, near Suakin, though Tokar had in the meantime capitulated; but his
victories were rendered almost useless by the refusal of the British Government
to advance troops from Suakin to Berber.
Early in 1884
the proffered services of General Gordon had twice been refused by Sir Evelyn
Baring and the Egyptian Ministers; but when it was found that the most suitable
Egyptian Pasha (Abd-el- Kader, who had latelj been Governor-General of the
Sudan) declined to go thither, Gordon’s appointment to Khartum, to carry out
the best policy of withdrawing Egyptian troops and civilians from the interior
of the Sudan, was rapidly approved in London and Cairo. Lord Granville took the
General’s ticket; Lord Wolseley carried the hand-bag which contained all his
outfit; and the Duke of Cambridge held open the door of the railway carriage.
Gordon reached Cairo on January 24, and there met Colonel Stewart.
Public
feeling in England was strongly in favour of Gordon’s mission; the Cabinet
placed great faith in his powers of personal magnetism and quite failed to
realise that his past popularity in the Sudan had been with liberated slaves
and victims of oppression, and not with the ruling classes whose place had now
been taken by the followers of the Mahdi. Gordon himself disbelieved in the
wide spread of the religious movement and at first talked confidently of being
able to execute his mission in three or four months, though his sagacious
companion, Colonel Stewart, was no sharer of his optimistic views. Gordon, at
his own request, was again appointed Governor-General of the Sudan, and arrived
at Khartum on February 18. During his brief stay in Cairo a dramatic meeting
took place at the British Agency between Gordon and Zobeir Pasha. This Pasha,
who claims descent from the Abbaside dynasty of Khalifs, must have strange
views on the steadfastness of British policy. When Gessi had caused Zobeir’s
son to be shot, in 1879, a letter was found from the father inciting the son to
revolt, and consequently Zobeir was tried in Cairo for rebellion against the
Khedive and was condemned to death. This sentence was, however, commuted into
residence in Cairo with a pension of i?1200 a year from the Khedive. On January
22,1884, while on his way to Egypt, Gordon suggested that Zobeir should be
watched and deported to Cyprus; yet three days later, upon accidentally
meeting
Zobeir in Cairo, he experienced a “mystic feeling” that he could trust him, and
recommended that Zobeir should accompany him to Khartum in order to settle the
affairs of the Sudan after evacuation by Egypt. No official in Cairo at that
time supported Gordon’s demand for the ex-slave hunter. But the mystic feeling
in favour of the cooperation of Zobeir grew into a settled conviction, as
Gordon came to closer quarters with the appalling difficulties of his task..
His arguments in favour of trying to form a buffer State under Zobeir’s
command, between the Mahdi’s forces and Egypt, gradually won over Colonel
Stewart, Nubar Pasha, the astute Prime Minister of Egypt, and Sir Evelyn
Baring. Gordon’s repeated requests for Zobeir, cogently backed in Cairo, were,
however, negatived in March, 1884, by the British Cabinet, which feared the
Anti-Slavery Society and parliamentary opposition. During the advance upon
Khartum Zobeir was deported as a prisoner to Gibraltar, but was allowed to
return to the Sudan in
1900, where he is now a peaceful farmer.
By May, 1884,
Berber and the Bahr-el-Gazal province had fallen into the hands of the Mahdi,
and all communication between Khartum and Egypt was cut off, while, on
September 18, Colonel Stewart was murdered on his .journey north with
despatches from Gordon.
In April,
1884, Gladstone’s Government was urged by Lord Wolseley, Sir Evelyn Baring, and
others to prepare for a military expedition to rescue Gordon; but four valuable
months were lost in indecision, and it was not till October that Lord Wolseley.
was able to begin the Nile campaign, which then became a race against time
rather than a fight against man. Disregarding local military advice, Lord
Wolseley persuaded the Cabinet against the desert route from Suakin to Berber
(280 miles) and the Nile march from Berber to Khartum (200 miles), for, mindful
of the success of his Red River Expedition, he preferred the long river route of
1650 miles from Cairo to Khartum. He was also considerably influenced by the
important fact that Berber was already in the hands of the enemy. The army was
thus struggling upstream, against cataracts, with 800 special “ whalers ” built
in England to convey the troops, Canadian “ voyageurs ” to navigate the rapids,
«nrl even West African Kroomen to carry the stores around the cataracts. Every
detail was well thought out by the military staff—time alone was lacking. By
Christmas day the main part of the expeditionary force was concentrated at
Korti. Gordon, standing heroically alone, without any trustworthy subordinates,
with 34,000 useless mouths to feed, forced to reduce the rations of the
garrison to crushed palm fibre and gum, was so closely hemmed in by the
dervishes that his life was obviously in imminent danger from treachery within
and storming parties without. Lord Wolseley therefore resolved to divide his
force into two columns, the smaller, under Sir Herbert Stewart, to march across
the desert to the Nile at Metemma, while the larger, under General Earle,
continued its
i885-9i]
Fall of Khartum.—The Sudan abandoned. 443
advance up
the river in order to capture Berber, as advised by Gordon. This desert march
of 160 miles was no part of the original programme. Camels, though proffered
and refused months before, could not be procured in sufficient numbers, and
much delay was caused by having to establish forts at the desert wells and by
compelling the transport to double and treble its journey.
On January
17,1885, the desert column was attacked by the dervishes in force, armed with
rifles captured from General Hicks, and after several sharp engagements, during
one of which Sir Herbert Stewart was mortally wounded, the troops reached the
Nile and found four steamers which had been sent by Gordon to meet the
expedition. On the 24th Sir Charles Wilson steamed on towards Khartum, under
heavy fire from the banks, only to learn on the 27th that the Mahdi had entered
the capital and that its heroic defender had been killed. Various gallant
incidents occurred during this forced march which added lustre to the prowess
of the British army. The river column also met with the enemy and lost its
General at Kirbekan.
Encouraged by
Gordon’s arrival, the inhabitants of Khartum had decided not to fly, because
they chose to believe that he was only the precursor of an English expedition
which should capture the Sudan for England. This belief arose, in spite of the
deathblow which Gordon had himself dealt to his mission when he announced, both
at Berber and at Metemma, on his way to Khartum, that Egypt had abandoned the
Sudan.
The failure
of the “ too late ” expedition to relieve Gordon, “ the hero of heroes,"
raised intense excitement in England; and, as the lowness of the Nile and the
limited force available precluded any immediate action, the British Government
announced its intention of renewing the campaign in the autumn for the purpose
of overthrowing the power of the Mahdi and of constructing a railroad from
Suakin to Berber. But in May, partly because Russian relations with Afghanistan
had made a European war possible, enthusiasm died away, evacuation was ordered,
and the whole of the Sudan, with the exception of the Red Sea ports, was
surrendered to the rule of the Mahdi and Osman Digna, which lasted for thirteen
years, during which time the country was devastated and almost depopulated.
An armed
truce prevailed until 1889, when the Khalifa, who had succeeded the Mahdi on
his death, five months after the fall of Khartum, impelled to action by famine
among his followers, caused one of his chiefs to attack the Egyptian army at
Toski on August 3. The dervishes were utterly defeated, and their project of
invading Egypt, which had been maturing for years, entirely collapsed. The
defeat of Osman Digna near Tokar in February, 1891, permitted Egypt to reoccupy
and tranquillise part of the Eastern Sudan, and to remain content for about
five years behind a settled frontier.
Among the
garrisons abandoned by Egypt in 1883 none were in more imminent danger than the
soldiers quartered on the Abyssinian frontier, who found ;hemselves between the
triumphant hordes of the Mahdi arid the savage Abyssinians. Admiral Sir William
Hewett was therefore sent on a diplomatic mission to King John, who agreed, in
consideration of annexing the fortresses and their munitions, to allow the
Egyptian garrisons to retreat peacefully through his dominions while the
Italians, fired with colonial ambition, occupied Massowah on the Red Sea coast.
Fighting soon occurred between the Italians and the Abyssinians, who pursued
their invariable custom of slaughtering the wounded and mutilating the
prisoners and the slain. A second mission was consequently despatched in
October, 1887, under Gerald Portal, with letters from Queen Victoria to King
John, to bring about peace between him and the Italians.
Early in 1889
King John determined to attempt the capture of Galabat, with the idea of
marching thence to Khartum. His troops stormed the town successfully, but he
himself was killed by a stray bullet, and the Abyssinians were eventually
routed by the Mahdi’s troops, After this, both parties seemed tired of
hostilities, and some trading between them ensued.
While the
eyes of Europe were eagerly turned on Gordon at Khartum, a imall band of
Englishmen in Egypt was trying to evolve order out of chaos, prosperity out of
discontent. The country was dangerously near to bankruptcy; French hostility
was active; and the other European Powers, excepting Italy, openly sympathised
with France, while Turkey fomented discord by proposing at intervals that Halim
Pasha should replace Tewfik as Khedive. Gladstone and Lord Granville were bent
on withdrawing the troops from Egypt, and could hardly be made to understand
that a country in which all Europe has interests cannot be treated as
Afghanistan or Ashanti. To gain time, they despatched at different times two
officials, whose missions were complete failures. Clifford Lloyd reached Cairo
in the autumn of 1883 to inspect reforms and naturally found that none as yet
existed. He became Under-Secretary of State for the Interior, initiated many
useful improvements, offended several Oriental susceptibilities, and was
compelled to resign office in May, 1884. Lord Northbrook’s mission (1884)
resulted in nothing but increased depression among the English officials in
Egypt.
British
Ministers in 1884 found that the Egyptian question was a subject more
complicated and fraught with more dangers than any item of foreign policy in
which England had been concerned for more than half a century. They were
obliged, for instance, to hold three cabinet meetings on three successive days
in April of that year before they arrived at the momentous decision of forcing
Egypt to abandon the Sudan.
Lord
Salisbury, in 1885, sent Sir Henry Drummond Wolff to Egypt as a Joint
Commissioner with the Suitan’s nominee, to settle^ if possible, the most thorny
points of the Egyptian question; but, after eighteen months of discussion, the
Sultan, under the influence of France and Russia, refused to ratify the
Convention, and no result was achieved except that Egypt became saddled with
the presence of a permanent Turkish Commissioner.
Egypt, by a
single impression of the Khedive’s seal, had decided that the Egyptian peasant
must not be flogged, and had then determined on the further reform that he
should not be forced to give his labour gratuitously. For centuries it had been
the custom every year, with the aid of whips made of hippopotamus hide, to
force the people to clean out the canals, in which they often had no personal
interest. In theory the annual canal clearing required the services of
one-eighth of the population during three months; but, as the rich found no
difficulty in evading the duty, a severe burden fell upon the poorest peasants
for at least half the year. France put every difficulty in the way of allowing
Egypt to abolish the corvee and to pay the labourers a small wage; but the
British Government temporarily agreed to provide the funds by postponing the
payment of the money due to England on account of the interest on her Suez
Canal shares. It was not until after eight years of diplomatic squabbling that
money was permanently found to pay for the free labour which had taken the
place of the corvee.
The first six
years of the British occupation were an unceasing struggle against bankruptcy,
for it was not until 1888 that the annual deficit was replaced by financial
equilibrium. This happy result was in some measure due to Sir Evelyn Baring’s
courage and success in facing the Powers in 1885 with a demand for permission
to raise a new loan of nine millions sterling to pay off the Alexandria war
indemnities, to wipe out the deficits of four preceding years, and to provide a
million pounds for new works of irrigation. This extra million, skilfully
spent, saved the irrigation system, the agricultural crops, the government
taxes, and the finances of Egypt. Since those struggling days, when the Finance
Ministry had difficulty in providing the monthly pay of government officials, an
annual surplus has been gained, taxation relieved by £2,000,000 a year, revenue
increased from £9,000,000 (in 1883) to more than £16,000,000 (in 1907), and
Egyptian credit raised to a level little below that of the richest European
Powers. During the same years the annual expenditure has risen with the growing
revenue, but has been so well controlled that the increase has amounted to
little more than half the extra revenue, thus allowing for the formation of a
Reserve Fund. This is the more remarkable, because much of the extraordinary
expenditure on railways, canals, and public buildings has been provided out of
annual revenue. The only increase in taxation has been in the tobacco duty. A
sound fiscal policy, honest administra
tion and
encourapement to native proprietors of small holdings of land, aided by the
efforts of the industrious peasants, have succeeded in producing a
transformation in a quarter of a century which appears to be unique in history.
Our limits
forbid an enumeration of the various benefits which have accrued to Egypt
during British rule, but a few of them may be briefly set down. Next to
finance, the success of which is due to Lord Cromer himself, the two
departments in which British officials have achieved great renown are those of
irrigation and the army, for in both the necessary control has been entrusted
to experts, and there has been no international interference. The British
engineers, when summoned from India, found themselves obliged to grapple with
chaos resulting from half a century’s want of technical skill and
administrative morality. Canals were cleared and extended, drainage of the land
introduced, and the great Barrage below Cairo utilised. This dam, though built
by forced labour, had cost the Government nearly two millions sterling, and,
owing to faulty foundations, had remained practically useless until Sir Colin
Scott- Moncrieff' rendered it capable of doing excellent service. When the
British engineers had been at work for ten years, the cotton crop and sugar
crop were both trebled, and the country, which had been entirely roadless, was
being gradually covered with a series of light railways and agricultural roads.
Many minor reforms in agricultural irrigation bear testimony to the value of
the English occupation; but they are eclipsed by the success of the magnificent
dam at Assuan, which was begun in 1898. More good has already accrued to Egypt
by the expenditure there of three and a half millions than by the hundred
millions of Ismail Pasha’s debt. Work is now in progress to add to its
usefulness by heightening the existing dam, which will more than double the
storage capacity of the reservoir; by this addition water will be provided
during the summer to irrigate a million acres of land now lying waste in the
northern tracts of the Delta. Exploration and surveying are being carried out
with the view of creating future reservoirs in the Sudan and of controlling the
waters from the Great Lakes to the sea. To the Egyptian Irrigation Department
must be accorded the praise of having most benefited the people and of having
made the fewest errors of judgment.
The
agricultural population has invariably appreciated the labours of the
Anglo-Indian Irrigation Inspectors, and in 1888, when some thousands of acres
in Upper Egypt were threatened with absolute failure of the inundation in
consequence of a low Nile flood, and were only saved by the personal exertions
of Mr Willcocks, the grateful inhabitants put their religious fanaticism on one
side and insisted on the Christian attending a thanksgiving service in the
mosque of the chief town, side by side with the Egyptian Minister of Public
Works, who came specially from Cairo to attend the ceremony.
Before the
British occupation the army conscripts were torn from their homes, chained
together like convicts, and, escorted by their shrieking women, despatched to
distant garrisons whence they seldom returned. When Sir Evelyn Wood became the
first English Sirdar of the Egyptian army it had been well proved that the
troops, officered only by Egyptians, were quite useless; and the new military
advisers were reminded of Ibrahim Pasha’s dictum after his successes in Syria,
that no Egyptian should ever advance beyond the rank of sergeant. Six thousand
peasants were taken straight from the land, and, to their astonishment, found
themselves well fed, well clothed, unbeaten, paid punctually, and even allowed
furlough to visit their families. As the power of the Mahdi grew, it became
obvious that Egypt must possess a larger army and several regiments of black
volunteers from distant parts of the Sudan were enrolled.
In 1887 the
composite force of Egyptians and Sudanese had lived down its doubtful
reputation and was entrusted with the defence of the southern frontier at Wadi
Haifa; but it was not until 1896 that a forward advance was made to reconquer
the Sudan. On March 1 the Italian troops were totally defeated by the
Abyssinians at Adowah, and rumours were afloat that the dervishes contemplated
an attack on Cassala. Lord Salisbury, when invited to create a diversion in
Italian interests, at once gave orders to reoccupy the once fertile province of
Dongola. It was decided to employ only Egyptian troops under the command of the
Sirdar, Sir Herbert Kitchener; but a British battalion was sent from Cairo to
Wadi Haifa for moral assistance, and Suakin was garrisoned for six months by a
contingent from the Indian army. Dongola was occupied on September 23 after two
fights, in spite of an outbreak of cholera and unprecedented storms, which
washed away the desert railway on which the army was dependent for food and
stores. While the army was fighting, the financiers were wrangling as to who
should pay for the expedition. The British Cabinet decided that Egypt should
provide funds to reconquer her lost territory. Egypt had the money in her
treasury and was willing to pay, but could not do so without the consent of the
six Commissioners of the Debt. Four of them authorised payment; but two
dissentients, representing France and Russia, appealed to the law Courts and
compelled the Egyptian Government to refund the money. The matter was
eventually settled by the British Government lending £800,000 to Egypt at 2§
per cent, interest. News from the Sudan, brought by Slatin Pasha and other
escaped prisoners, had confirmed rumours that the Khalifa’s rule was crumbling
to decay; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the House of Commons
on February 5, 1897, that Egypt could never be considered permanently secure so
long as a hostile Power was in occupation at Khartum, and that it was
England’s duty to give the final blow to the Khalifa. Before the close of that
year, the Egyptian troops had
constructed a
desert railway from Wadi Haifa towards Berber, Abu Hamed. and Berber were both
wrested from the dervishes, and Cassala was taken over from the Italians* who
were glad to get rid of an pensive possession.
Early in
1898, in consequence of the threatening attitude of the dervishes, foiir
British battalions were sent from Cairo to strengthen the Egyptian force
between Berber and the Atbara river; and, on April 8, the Sirdar destroyed the
entrenched camp of 12,000 dervishes, nearly all of whom were killed or taken
prisoner. The desert railway steadily and rapidly advanced, plans, long and
secretly thought out, were deliberately matured, and by the end of August the
Sirdar had with him a force of 22,000, including two British brigades, massed
about 40 miles north of Khartum.
On September
2 Sir Herbert Kitchener's victorious army captured Omdurman, the stronghold of
Mahdiism; and two days later a religious servi ze, under the British and
Egyptian flagi. was held at Khartum in memory of General Gordon, near the spot
where he fell thirteen years before. The Khalifa fled from Omdurman into the
wilds of Kordofan, wandered about for a year, and was then killed with all his
principal chiefs by a force under Sir Reginald Wingate, the present Sirdar of
the Egyptian army. The economy practised in the Sudan campaign of
1896-8
was noteworthy, for, after deducting d£?lj200,000 spent on railways and
telegraphs, the actual costs of the military expedition only just exceeded one
million pounds.
Hardly were
the two flags floating over the capital, when news reached Khartum that six
white men were encamped at Fashoda, a village on the White Nile, some 300 miles
to the south. Lord Kitchener despatched all newspaper correspondents to Cairo
and hurried by steamer to Fashoda, which he reached on September 18, to find
that Major Marchand had arrived there with 100 native troops from Senegal* and
had already hoisted the French flag. The Egyptian flag was also hoisted, a
salute was fired in honour of that event, and some delicate negotiations took
place on the subject between Paris and London. The British Government adopted a
very firm attitude, and eventually Major Marchand received orders to haul down
the tricolour and return to Europe. That the incident may not be needlessly
recalled to mind, the name Fashoda has been removed from the maps of the Sudan,
and the village is now called Kodok.
In January,
1899, an agreement between the British and Egyptian Governments regulated the
political status of the Sudan, giving a valid title to the exercise of
sovereign rights in the Sudan by the King of England in conjunction with the
Knedive, based on the right of conquest. The southern frontier was left
undefined. It was also provided that the supreme civil and military command of
the Egyptian Sudan should be vested in the Governor-General, who must be
appointed
1899-1907]
Order established in the Sudan.
449
by Khedivial
decree on British recommendation, and that no foreign consuls should be allowed
to reside there without the previous consent of Great Britain. No serious
opposition to this agreement was encountered in Europe, partly because it was
provided that in all matters concerning trade with or residence in the Sudan “
no special privileges would be accorded to the subjects of any one or more
Powers.”
In the
ensuing ten years, the Sudan has slowly advanced towards fiscal and material
prosperity. The financial deficit is gradually lessening and, with growing
resources, it is confidently expected that the burden on the Egyptian budget
will be lightened year by year. The retirement of Belgian troops from the
south-rwestem districts of the Bahr-el-Gazal, the settlement of the frontiers
of Abyssinia and Uganda, and a more definite understanding as regards the
Darfur frontier, have diminished the external difficulties of the Sudan
Government. Excluding the Egyptian and maritime boundaries, there are some 4000
miles of frontier to watch, while the neighbouring tribes are savage and under
merely nominal control, so that peace has frequently been disturbed and raids
have taken place. The gradual extension of the telegraph system to more remote
districts has aided the band of English administrators who, under the Sirdar as
Governor-General, have done much to provide security and protection for the
inhabitants. The population, greatly reduced under Mahdiism, is increasing
rapidly and now exceeds two millions; in spite of locusts, cotton and cereals
are gradually covering the irrigated land; imports and exports are yearly
increasing; while at Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, an arid desert has been
transformed into a well-equipped harbour, which will greatly add to the economic
development of the resources of the country.
The future
prosperity of the Sudan depends upon its agricultural development for which two
essentials are needed, labour and water. Unlike the Egyptian, the Sudanese
prefers fighting to tilling the soil, while long years of tribal warfare and
inherent laziness have caused him to relegate agricultural work to his women
folk, though the present generation is being gradually trained to cultivate the
land. When the English had reconquered the Sudan they found the region of the
great swamps blocked by weed barriers, called sudd. Some of these were three-
quarters of a mile in width and being perfectly firm were overgrown with long
reeds and high grasses. The White Nile wandered for nearly 400 miles through these
marshes, entered them as a fine river but emerged a somewhat insignificant
stream, having lost by evaporation and by the absorption of the water plants
more than half the supply brought down from the Lakes. The marshes varied in
width from five to twenty miles, and, after some months of experiment in 1900,
it was found that the sudd could be removed. The entire channel has been free
to navigation since 1902; but the question of keeping the Upper Nile
permanently free from sudd and of preventing a waste of water in the marshes
still remains
450
Mixed Tribunals. Native Tribunals. [1876-94
an important
problem under consideration. Years spent on surveying and levelling have
resulted in the Nile beiiig mapped, while a series of permanent gauges on both
the Blue and White Niles have been erected throughout the limits of the
Egyptian Sudan. The water levels are now daily recorded, and a register of the
highest importance is thus kept.
Until the
close of Ismail’s reign, Europeans in Egypt were, in respect of all criminal
and civil questions, under the sole jurisdiction of their own consuls. This was
in virtue of the Capitulations, or concessions contemptuously conferred on
foreign traders by the Ottomans when they were the terror of Europe. Some of
the consuls were accustomed to use their influence to urge upon Egypt the
payment of most preposterous demands, and in 1876 there were <£*40,000,000
of foreign claims outstanding against the Government. In that year, Nubar
Pasha, after eight years of weary negotiation, succeeded in obtaining the
consent of all the Powers to the creation of the Mixed Tribunals, which were
made competent to try all suits in which the plaintiff and defendant were of
different nationalities. The judges of the Mixed Tribunals are nominated by the
Great Powers, with the approval of the Egyptian Government, by whom their
salaries are paid, and it was agreed that their jurisdiction should be based on
the Code Napolion. The new Tribunals had the right of curtailing the Khedive’s
power of contracting debts in the name of Egypt and thus indirectly brought
about Ismail’s deposition.
The Native
Tribunals, instituted in 1883 under Lord Dufferin’s auspices and based on a
French model, were new creations dealing with all civil cases in which both
parties are Egyptian subjects, and with all criminal cases in which an Egyptian
is the accused party. The Department of Justice was practically left in
Egyptian hands, until it was discovered in 1889 that the Brigandage
Commissions, which had temporarily superseded the Native Tribunals, had
allowed witnesses to be tortured and innocent persons to be imprisoned, if not
hanged. In 1891 the Egyptian Government consented to appoint Sir John Scott as
Judicial Adviser. His tact and knowledge of the country enabled him at once to
inaugurate a sound judicial system; and those who were firmly persuaded that no
Egyptian could withstand the temptation of a bribe or condemn a Pasha to prison
must allow that the standard of efficiency among Egyptian Judges is at the present
day not only high but steadily rising. Out of a total staff of 1600 in the
Department of Justice, only 86 are now Europeans.
Soon after
the British occupation of Egypt, attempts were made to improve the public
security of the country by appointing European police officers to counteract
the evil influence of the Mudirs of the provinces ; but every Egyptian
Minister proved more or less hostile to the new system, until, in 1894, a
compromise was effected by the appointment of Mr (now Sir Eldon) Gorst as adviser
of the Ministry of the Interior,
1827-1907]
The prisons. Public health.
451
with a small
body1 of English inspectors who successfully prevent some of the
abuses of tht past.
The old order
of Mudirs has passed r,way in a cloud of corruption and nepotism, and the modem
occupants of that post are carefully chosen from amongst those who have learnt
to rule the villagers without resorting to the whip or unjust imprisonment.
Before the British occupation, and even for a year or two after it, the
prisons were crowded to excess, not only with convicted criminals, but also
with accused persons who had to wait months or years without trial, while many
innocent witnesses were imprisoned’ with them, because it was considered more
convenient to detain them until they were wanted. The inmates, half starved,
covered with vermin, lacking exercise and occupation, were kept, with no change
of clothing, in insanitary dormitories, which were annually visited by typhus
and relapsing fevers. Gradually, the old prisons have been ventilated and made
sanitary; many new gaols have been built for both sexes; reformatc ies for
children have been instituted; trades are taught; proper diets and clothing are
provided and “gaol fever” has been, abolished; while the work of the police has
been made more easy by the successful establishment of the system of finger
prints.
The sturdy
Egyptian, living for the most part an outdoor life in a good, sunny climate,
knew nothing of Public Health questions until Mehemet Ali, under quarantine
pressure from Europe, established a military sanitary service, followed by a
Board of Health and hospitals for treating sick civilians. Clot Bey, an able
Frenchman, was placed at the head of the medical department and found himself
obliged, in 1827, to open a medical school in order to furnish surgeons and
apothecaries for the army, which then consisted of 200,000 men. , This was
actually the earliest government school in Egypt, and by steady perseverance
all prejudices were overcome and human dissection was permitted for the first
time since the reign of the Ptolemies. In spite of dire visitations of plague
and cholera, the population of Egypt gradually increased* partly in consequence
of the introduction of vaccination, for it is said that, before Clot Bey’s time,
60,000 children usually died of smallpox every year.
The sanitary
department and medical school were, after 1858, left entirely in Egyptian
hands, and proved to be quite useless during the cholera epidemic of 1883. In
the following year Englishmen were appointed as heads of the Public Health
Department of the Interior and of the International Quarantine Service,,which
had been formed at the request of Europe to prevent exotic disease, human and
veterinary, from entering Egypt. There were theiji in existence twenty-three
government hospitals, insanitai y, ill-furnished, nursed by old soldiers who
had been <lis« ’ arged from the army. The inmates consisted entirely of
government employees, prisoners, foundlings,,idiots, and prostitutes, all sent
and detained by order of the Mudir or Governor. The public firmly believed
that the sick
were beaten and robbed by the orderlies, and were then put to death by the
doctors. Refractory patients were fettered in chains, anklets, and handcuffs,
while sick men transferred from the prisons, wore, until they died, heavy
chains six feet long round their ankles. The one state lunatic asylum, near
Cairo, was in an even more pitiable state. Thtee hundred lunatics—for it was
only the most dangerous to society who were incarcerated by the police—«ked out
a miserable existence in filth, hunger, chains, and nudity. The most maniacal
were confined in dark dungeons, where they were chained to the walls and floor.
There was no resident doctor and the chief treatment employed was venesection.
The British Government and its representatives in Egypt were, in the early
years of the occupation, so deeply engaged in the race against bankruptcy
and;in protective measures against the dervishes, that little could be done
except by the removal of flagrant horrors, but money was gradually forthcoming
to build new hospitals, renovate and equip old ones, provide accommodation for
infectious diseases, and create Hygiene, Vaccine, and Anti-rabies Institutes,
all now doing excellent work under Europeans. The chief hospital in Cairo has
had the advantage of English nurses since 1888; and many generations of
Egyptian students, trained since that time in the Medical School attached to
it, have carried away into distant parts of Egypt and the Sudan the practical
knowledge of what a hospital should be. The lunatic asylum, now under resident
British doctors, matron, and steward, has been so enlarged and reformed that it
is difficult to discover the buildings where the horrors were enacted a quarter
of a century ago. To the asylum and to the general hospitals in country towns
thousands now willingly travel for medical advice, which their parents not
unnaturally shunned.
When the
Public' Health Department was reorganised in 1884, it was found that no
sanitary house, hotel, or hospital existed in all Egypt. Three-fourths of the
primitive town drains ended directly in the Nile or in canals which supplied
drinking water to the villages on their banks, while the remainder found their
way into large, stagnant ponds surrounded by houses, in which cattle were
watered and children paddled. The principal towns have now been supplied with
pure drinking water and drainage schemes are being gradually introduced.
Twice since
1883 cholera has been imported by pilgrims returning from Mecca and has
successfully been grappled with. The fear of this disease, with its attendant
quarantine restrictions and dislocation of traffic and commerce, has proved to
be the best ally to the Public Health officials. Khedivial and Ministerial decrees
have been signed, money voted, experts engaged, and material provided for
fighting other enemies such as human plague and cattle plague. Quarantine
officers see that pilgrims returning from the Hadj are examined and washed,
while their property is disinfected; the supervision of steamers ensures their
travelling
in
comparative comfort on the sea, though they are still plundered by Beduin and
poisoned by sewage-infected water in the Hedjaz.
Plague was
absent from Egypt from the middle of the nineteenth century till 1899, and
though the recent outbreaks have in some districts obstinately recurred, the
disease has been well controlled and has never blazed out as it did in former
periods of Egyptian history. “Egyptian ophthalmia” is more rife in the Nile valley
than in any other part of the world, but it is slowly yielding to education and
the crusade against dirt. Aided by a munificent gift from Sir Ernest Cassel,
eye hospitals and dispensaries are springing up to which the more enlightened
Egyptians willingly subscribe. Many chronic diseases, which sap the vitality of
the agricultural labourers, have been discovered of recent years; and a highly
trained European staff is endeavouring to restore to the Egyptian student in
the English tongue the modem fruits of that knowledge which was for so many
years almost a monopoly of his forefathers in the famous cities of Memphis,
Heliopolis, and Alexandria.
It is greatly
to the credit of Mehemet Ali that, uneducated as he was (for he did not learn
to read till he was 47 years old), he placed a high value on the education of
children. He established elementary schools in the towns and forced boys to
attend them. This measure was so unpopular that mothers actually blinded their
sons or cut off their right forefingers to prevent their being able to write,
rather than have them clothed, taught, fed, and paid at government expense. The
succeeding generation slowly woke up to the fact that, unless their children
were sent to school, they would be unable to enter the service of the
Government, though they still expected all instruction to be given to them
gratuitously; but the parents of today are perfectly.willing to pay moderate
school fees.
During the
worst financial years before Ismail’s downfall, the government expenditure on
education reached only £29,000 a year; and, though this sum was more than
doubled under the Dual Control, it was not until 1890 that the Ministry of
Finance felt rich enough to increase the grant to £81,000. Since then, the
education budget has gradually risen until 1908, when provision was made for
the expenditure of £450,450, besides special credits for the construction and
maintenance of school buildings. The census of 1897 showed that 88 per cent, of
males and 99’5 per cent, of females in Egypt were unable to read and write. The
village school, which had hitherto contented itself with teaching a few
children how to spell and how to learn by rote whole chapters of the Koran, in
consideration of grants-in-aid came under government supervision. The primary
and secondary schools,.directly under the Ministry of Education, increased in
number as finances permitted and in efficiency when English teachers were
introduced. Every effort has been made to encourage training schools for
teachers of both sexes, and the success of a few secondary schools for girls
shows that the
idea is
gaining ground that education heed ho longer be a male monopoly. Ismail
established in Cairo the first scho&l for girls ever known in the Ottoman
empire.
Though much
of the correspondence in government offices was conducted in the Turkish
language, France held for three-quarters of a century the intellectual
domination of Egypt. The upper classes knew, as a rule, no European language
but French* and it was but natural in the early years of the British occupation
that a very large majority of pupils elected to continue their school studies
in French in preference to English. But the tide slowly tinned, and, since
1899, after the reconquest of the Sudan, and especially after Great Britain’s
attitude at the time of the Fashoda incident, the increase m scholars on the
English side became more marked, so that in 1905 they outnumbered the French
class by 1962 to 370. The technical colleges comprise a school of agriculture,
a polytechnic school of engineering, a medical school, and two schools of law,
besides training colleges' and industrial schools. There is every difference
between the orderly, clean, well- appointed government school of today and the
insanitary establishments of the past, in which the students were never trained
to use their brain or eyes except by committing to memory whole chapters of an
Arabic work, often incorrectly translated from a European edition already out
of date. A similar change may be noted in the physical and moral aspect of the
scholar.
But Great
Britain, which has with some success been helping a handful of young Egyptians
to awaken intellectually,. has now to face the problem of how . far the
pendulum must swing towards granting self-government. No European acquainted
with Oriental races can doubt the absurdity of suddenly bestowing autonomy on a
country saddled, as Lord Cromer has said, with “one of the most complicated
political and administrative machines which the world has ever known."
Even if a far greater number of Egyptians had acquired the necessary character
and ability, they would be ■ unable to cope with the executive impotence
too often caused by administrative internationalism and the all-powerful
Capitulations, which grant equal rights to sixteen different kinds of
foreigners. The ever increasing number of European residents, about half of
whom are Greeks and Italians, constitutes one of the difficulties of
government; it was calculated in 1852 that there were not more thar. 6000
foreigners in Egypt, but in 1882 the number had risen to 100,000, and today
there must be at least 150,000.
The present
Nationalist party came gradually into existence during the few years of unrest
which followed the death of the Khedive Tewfik on January 7, 1892—an event
accelerated, if not caused, by the incompetence of his, native doctors. During
those years relations were, unfortunately, strained between the young Khedive,
Abbas II, and the British Agency. Mustapha Kamel, a bold young man with great
gifts
of eloquence,
placed himself at the head of the self-styled “Nationalists,’ and conducted
from Paris a press campaign agaii.st British rule. Since his death in March,
1908, no leader of eminence has yet been found to succeed him, but the
multiplication and unbridled licence of Egyptian newspapers has forced the
question of Nationalism on the attention of the world. Though many of the
unthinking youths of the day proclaim themselves members of the party, they
have no right to pretend that they are in any measure representative of the
feeling of the country. The movement is distinctly Mohammadan and takes no
account of the Copts and other Christians.
The bulk of
the people is still crassly ignorant and quite indifferent to local politics;
for even in Cairo and Alexandria, where the agitation is hottest, only one per
cent, of the voters can be induced to come to the poll to elect members for the
Provincial Council or General Assembly. Few of the elections are contested and
the great majority of the population is entirely apathetic. The extreme
Nationalists demand the immediate withdrawal of the army of occupation and the
substitution of Egyptians for Europeans throughout the whole administration, so
that all authority should be in native hands. British zeal for education and
for encouraging the spirit of independence, together with liberty of speech and
writing, have brought about a condition which is opposec to the ruling
authority. But the Young Turk party in Constantinople has fully recognised that
the Egyptian Nationalists have no grievances except those of sentiment, and
that Egypt should rest content at present with the municipalities and local
commissions which have been established during the last twenty years.
For a score
of years after the British landed in Egypt, reproaches were levelled against
them, chiefly by France, for not having fulfilled their promise of evacuating
the country; and the reply invariably given by British Ministers was that the
necessary work of reform to put the Government of Egypt on a firm basis was not
yet completed. It is significant that dwellers in Egypt never raised that
question, though French newspapers, published in Cairo, used to print in large
letters on their front sheet the unfulfilled rash promises of British
statesmen. During these twenty years the views of the public both in England
and in France changed considerably. The English gradually came to be proud of
the reforms initiated by a handful of their countrymen and fully recognised
that it would be shameful to abandon an unfinished task. The French people
found that their investments in Egypt became more valuable every year that the
helm was in British hands, and it was slowly conceded that the great national
sentiment of France for Egypt, which had existed ever since Napoleon’s “ Battle
of the Pyramids,” did not justify her in provoking England to war. Both nations
were looking for a convenient occasion honourably to bury international
susceptibilities. The opportunity presented itself in the summer of 1903, when
it had
become evident
that continued misgovernment in Morocco, culminating in revolution, called
loudly for the intervention of Europe. As a result of diplomatic negotiations,
on April 8,1904, an Anglo-French agreement was signed by Lord Lansdowne and M.
Paul Cambon, the French ambassador at the Court of St James. Besides dealing
with various debatable questions in Newfoundland, Nigeria, Siam, Madagascar,
and the New Hebrides, the French Government diplomatically recognised for the
first time the predominant position of Great Britain in Egypt “The Government
of the French Republic, for their part, declare that they will not obstruct the
action of Great Britain in that country by asking that a limit of time be fixed
for the British occupation or in any other manner.” Germany, Austria, and Italy
subsequently adhered to this agreement; although difficulties afterwards arose
between France and Germany resulting in the Algeciras Conference, Egypt gained
financial liberty by means of several important clauses; the English position
in Egypt, by official sanction, ceased to be in any way irregular, while France
was compensated elsewhere for any apparent diminution of her political status
in the Valley of the Nile. As further concessions to France, the British
Government recognised the Suez Canal convention (signed in 1888, but not made
operative) which had for its object the neutralisation of the Canal at all
times and to all Powers, and the final conversion of the Egyptian Debt was
postponed till 1912, in consideration of the sacrifices of the bond-holders in
the past.
On May 6,
1907, Lord Cromer relinquished his great work in Egypt and was succeeded by his
former subordinate, Sir Eldon Gorst. The country, found by Lord Cromer in 1883
in the midst of military and financial ruin, has become, not only freed, but
prosperous; the land, once wrested from its owners and forfeited to creditors,
is being redeemed; contentment has taken the place of misery; and even the
regenerated Anglo-Egyptian Sudan bids fair to become self-supporting. Lord
Cromer’s position was unique, and as a benevolent despot he compelled the
lasting respect of the Oriental by his common-sense justice. During his early
years as British Agent and Consul-General he did not enjoy the complete
confidence of the Cabinet; but, little by,little, he won the trust of
successive British Ministries, and thus obtained a secure hold over his
office—an advantage which has often been denied to great Englishmen in
situations highly momentous for the welfare of the empire.
THE BRITISH
EMPIRE IN INDIA.
The Mutiny was the last great danger from
human agency that has seriously threatened the existence of British power in
India. Sir John Lawrence, who had lived through the heroic age, inaugurated as
Governor-General a more prosaic but happier era. The conquest of India proper
within its natural frontiers was over. By a self-denying ordinance Britain had
deliberately set limits to her own dominion; and the feudatory States of the
interior, with frontiers defined, dynasties established, and continued
existence guaranteed, were left encircled in the peaceful ocean of the Pax
Brita/nnica. Sir John Lawrence’ viceroyalty gave India a needed space for
recuperation after the prolonged horrors of the Mutiny, and served as a trial
period for testing the new imperial Constitution. The exhaustion of the land
was too recent for more than a few tentative essays in the new work of
conciliation, concentration, and reform, which may properly be said to date
from 1869—the point of departure for this chapter.
The period to
be dealt with is likely to suffer in interest when compared with those that
have preceded it. The annals of sound administration are dull. There are few
striking episodes except that of the Afghan War. Within India itself, the foes that
Englishmen are called upon to meet are those intangible enemies plague and
famine, folly and ignorance. Even after the conquests that extend the frontier
the real struggle, with few exceptions, only begins when the sword is sheathed.
The victories and defeats of the administrator and the political officer
provide a less stirring narrative than those of warring armies, though the
attempt of a Western nation to solve the problems of Eastern dominion by the
standards of its own civilisation should be of the profoundest interest. There
is henceforward far greater continuity in Indian history. The division into
viceroyalties becomes less satisfactory as a principle of classification. We
often find that the solution of any important question, though finally effected
by one Governor-General, has been mooted, prepared, and developed by his
several predecessors. The time is too recent for official secrets to be
divulged, and it is not
458
Lord Mayo and the north-west frontier. [1849-93
easy to
apportion to each man his due meed of credit. Especially is this true of the
more permanent officials, the pillars of the Supreme Government, who serve
Viceroy after Viceroy, bear the heat and burden of the day, and leave the
guerdon and the praise to others. Such men are sometimes called upon to
administer a policy which in its earlier stages they have conscientiously
opposed, and their lips are sealed in the face of criticism and obloquy.
Finally, the treatment of the period must be subject to considerable reserve;
for many of its problems are yet unsolved, and it deals largely with the work
of living men. An atmosphere charged with the heat arid dust of controversy
still hangs over much of the field to be surveyed.
In 1868, the
Earl of Mayo, who had thrice held the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland
under Conservative Administrations, was appointed by Disraeli to succeed Sir
John Lawrence. His name was received with a popular clamour of dissent, for
which there was little justification; and, when Disraeli fell from office
before the Governor-Generalship was technically vacant, Gladstone, the new
Prime Minister, was loudly but vainly urged to cancel the appointment. On his
arrival in India, the Viceroy found the most pressing question of foreign
policy to be that of the north-west frontier. The annexation of the Punjab in
1849 bad carried British dominion up to the base of the mountains of
Afghanistan; but it would be a mistake to assume that the frontiers of the two
countries met in a clear-cut and indisputable boundary line. From Baluchistan
northwards to Chitral there was, and still is, a debatable zone of tribal
territory lying along the spurs of the hills, and pierced by the passes that
debouch into the plains of the Punjab. Till 1893, the fierce and warlike tribes
which occupy this region nominally owned the suzerainty of the Amir of
Afghanistan, though they were completely beyond his effective control. The
western and northern frontiers of Afghanistan were equally indefinite; and many
years were to pass before the loosie and chaotic territories that form the
Amir’s dominions received, owing to the jealousy of two great European Powers,
a well-defined but artificial boundary line.
It is a
standing problem for Indian strategy to decide the best line of defence to be
held in northern India in view of the rapid advance of Russia southwards from
central Asia. A retirement to the Indus, the subjugation of the tribal zone,
the partition of Afghanistan or its conquest as far as Herat and the Oxus—all
these policies have had their advocates. But the course adopted, with some
wavering in detail, has been to stop at the base of the mountains, leaving to
the tribes a nominal independence limited by the presence of isolated British
garrisons at strategical points, and to guarantee the inviolability of the
buffer State of Afghanistan. The Afghan question, as Lord Mayo found it, was,
to some extent, a legacy from his predecessor, and a few words must be said on
Sir John Lawrence’ treatment of it. Dost Mohammad,
whom the
issue of the lamentable First Afghan War had left upon the throne of Kabul,
died in 1863. His death was followed by an internecine conflict between his
sons. Sher Ali, the heir designate, held the throne for two years on a very
precarious tenure, and was then driven from Kabul and Kandahar by his elder
brother Afzal. Afzal died in
1867, and, as his eldest son Abdurrahman waived
his claim to the a uccess: 'n, he was succeeded by another brother Azim. In
1868 Sher Ali, from his base at Herat, almost the only one of his ancestral
territories left to him, began a victorious campaign which ended by placing him
in possession of all the dominions of Dost Mohammad. These dominions he ruled
with more or less success during the next lecade. The interregnum had rendered
the policy of the Indian Government exceedingly difficult. Lawrence was only
anxious that Afghanistan should be strong and independent, and he was intensely
opposed to interference in its internal affairs. Dost Mohammad had expressed a
desire, in 1857, that after his death his sons might be left, in the time-
honoured Afghan fashion, to fight out the question of sovereignty for
themselves; and, as he had loyally refused to take advantage of British
difficulties in the Mutiny, Lawrence felt bound to respect his wishes as far as
possible His policy was therefore to recognise the de facto ruler. For two
years, however, it was by no means ea3y to decide which of the two claimants to
the throne would make good his position, and British policy was driven into a
rather unedifying and tortuous course. It was prepared to recognise one or all
of the candidates for sovereignty, in so far as they were strong enough to
establish themselves. In 1867, Lawrence actually held official relations with
one claimant as Amir of Kabul, and with another as ruler of Herat. The Afghans
contended, with some force, that this policy was a direct incentive to
successful revolt. No Amir could be expected to set a high value on British
support, which was likely to be transferred to his most formidable rival at the
very time that he most required it.
The factor
that complicated the question in later years—the approach of Russia to the
frontiers of Afghanistan—only began towards the end of Sir John Lawrence’
viceroyalty. After the occupation of Samarkand (1868), he pressed on the Home
Government the desirability of agreeing with Russia upon a line of demarcation
between the spheres of influence of the two countries, the crossing of which
line should involve war with Great Britain in all parts of the world. Lawrence
believed that, if such an understanding were arrived at, the Government of
India would be freed from apprehension, and might welcome the civilising
influence of Russia on the turbulent races of central Asia. The British
Government had indeed no right to set a limit to Russian expansion other than
the frontier of Afghanistan, for that expansion bore the closest possible
resemblance to the advance of the English from the sea coast to the Himalayas;
and, in fact, no overt objection to the Russian
460
Russian advance.^—Conference with Sher Ali. [1868-9
absorption of
Khokand, Bokhara, and Khiva was ever made byJEngland, though envoys from the
doomed States appealed to her for assistance. Lawrence has been rather unfairly
charged with neglect of the frontier problem. His inactivity was due to a
reasoned conviction, and not to carelessness; and he succeeded on the whole in
marking out the course which British policy was to follow under the guidance of
his successors, till its reversal at the hands of. Lord Lytton. So soon as Sher
Ali had consolidated his power, Lawrence granted him a present of. arms and
money. Further than that he was not prepared to go. When he was asked to
comment upon the famous Minute of Sir Henry Rawlmson in
1868, which suggested the occupation of Quetta,
the formation of a close alliance with the Amir, and the grant of a subsidy, he
clearly showed his dissent from what was soon to be known as the “ Forward ”
policy. He declared, with the acquiescence of Henry Maine, Sir Richard Temple,
and John Strachey—an authoritative consensus of opinion—that it would be
impolitic to decrease any of the difficulties that Russia would naturally
encounter in an invasion of India, by meeting her half-way in a difficult
country and in the midst of a hostile and exasperated population. The true
defences of British India against any possible invasion from without, or
rebellion from within, lay in a rigid abstinence from antanglements in
Afghanistan, a compact and efficient army holding the inner lines of communication,
a careful husbandry of finance, and the acquiescence of the Indian peoples in
the justice and advantages of British rule.
Sher Ali met
Lord Mayo in conference at Amballa in March, 1869, and laid before him very
definite proposals for a closer alliance. He asked for a new treaty, a fixed
annual subsidy, assistance in arms and men whenever he required it, a full
recognition and guarantee of the claims of himself and his dynasty to the
throne of Kabul, and the acknowledgment as his heir of his favourite younger
son Abdulla Jan. Such terms went far beyond the Lawrence policy, and neither
the Home nor the Indian Government was prepared to accept them. The Viceroy was
charged with the difficult task of refusing all the Amir’s proposals without
alienating his friendship. He accomplished what might almost seem an imposs'ble
feat, by his diplomatic handling of the Conference, fine courtesy, and great
personal charm. Sher Ali, coming from his own barren and semi-barbarous country
to the magnificent pageantry and military pomp of the Durbar, representing in
its most effective form the power and resources of British India, showed an
almost pathetic eagerness to win the approval and countenance of the Viceroy.
Instead of his •agerly desired treaty, he took back with him only the written
promise of Lord Mayo that the British Government would assist him with arms,
ammunition, and money, at its own discretion, and would give him its strong
moral support, whatever that somewhat intangible commodity might be worth. Yet
be was apparently contented, and on his return to
Afghanistan
made some earnest though occasionally misguided efforts to carry out the
reforms in his administration that Lord Mayo had pressed upon him.
The proper
complement of the Lawrence policy of non-interference in Afghanistan was a
clear and friendly understanding with Russia. The result of negotiations
between the two Governments in Europe and the mission of Douglas Forsyth to St
Petersburg in 1869 was a general agreement that the Oxus should be the boundary
of Sher Ali’s dominions to the northward, and that Russia should respect the
integrity of his country, so long as he renounced all intention of interfering
in Bokhara. In 1871, the Russians objected to Badakshan being included within
the Afghan frontier; but after two years they waived their claim and accepted
the British line. In detailed delimitation of the boundary much remained to be
done in subsequent years; but the understanding with Russia on the main
question was an important landmark in the history of the central Asian problem.
It might, however, with advantage have been more definite. The constant and
ever increasing correspondence of General Kaufmann, Governor of Russian
Turkestan, with the Amir was certainly not in accordance with Russia’s pledge
that Afghanistan should be considered to lie outside the sphere of her
influence. The despatches from Kaufmann were not welcomed by Sher Ali, who
disclosed his uneasiness to Lord Mayo. The Viceroy informed him that they were
merely complimentary, and deprecated his objections. Subsequent events were to
prove that the Indian Government would have been well advised if they had
requested the Russian authorities to communicate with the Amir only through
British representatives.
The geniality
and tact of Lord Mayo, which had been so happily displayed in his negotiations
with Sher Ali, performed an important service in the dealings of the Indian
Government with the feudatory Princes. Since the Mutiny the relations of the
Supreme Government with the Native States had entered upon a new phase. The
fact that the thrones of Indian dynasties now rested ultimately on the faith of
treaties and the sanctity of a solemn pledge increased the moral responsibility
of Great Britain for any case of misgovernment, while it tended also to limit
her power of intervention and control. It was unthinkable that the Indian
Government, in its capacity of suzerain, should keep silence in the face of
gross tyranny or maladministration; too punctilious a respect for a Prince’s
right might mean toleration of his people’s wrong; yet, now that the policy of
lapse and annexation was barred, the means by which these evils were to be
encountered were not too clearly indicated. The practical solution was only
gradually worked out in the course of the next thirty years, though Lord Mayo
outlined the attitude of his successors. Henceforward, it was the part, of the
Viceroy to press personally upon the chiefs the need of righteous government
and the responsibilities of their high ofBce, while carefully
avoiding
any appearance of official dictation or of injudicious middling in their
internal affairs. In the event of grave abuses continuing after the resources
of remonstrance and moral persuasion had been exhausted, it was recognised that
the action of the paramount Power must be limited to the establishment of
regency councils, temporary administration through a British Resident, or, in
extreme cases, as in that of the Gaekwar of Baroda, in 1875, the deposition of
a sovereign though not of his dynasty. Lord Mayo frankly, yet diplomatically,
pointed out to the chiefs that, if England were not disinterested, she would be
only too glad to see their peoples weak, poor, and disorderly; she deliberately
preferred to take the honourable risk of fostering their growth into rich,
strong, and well-ordered communities. .
Internally
the period of Lord Mayo’s rule was notable for the advance made in all
departments of social, economic, and administrative reform. The path of
progress was resumed, which had been inaugurated by Lord Dalhousie but
interrupted by the cataclysm of the Mutiny. The Department of Public Works,
which was spending money lavishly and injudiciously, was drastically reformed.
An attempt was made to set on foot a system of elementary education, artd a
determined advance •vas made with that policy of developing the material
resources of the country by the construction of railways and canals which has
been sedulously carried on down to the present time. But the most important
reform was in the Department of Finance, where Lord Mayo was called upon to
meet a very serious crisis. The last three years of his predecessor’s rule had
shown a deficit of nearly six millions sterling, and the prospects of his own
first year of office were gloomy in the extreme. Much of the credit for the
actual expedients adopted belongs to the Viceroy’s able advisers, Sir R’chard
Temple, and the Strachey brothers (John and Richard); but Lord Mayo shared in
their labours, gave them his ungrudging support, and strengthened their hands
by his expressed determination, at whatever cost, to avoid another deficit. The
temporary crisis was first averted by prompt and uncompromising measures.
Reductions .amounting to over a million were forced upon the great spending
departments; the salt duties were increased in provinces where they had before
been low; and the Viceroy risked his popularity by a sharp rise in the income
tax. By these heroic expedients the estimated deficit for the first year of his
Governor-General- ship was converted into a small surplus. It remained to
provide for the future by means that strained the administrative machinery less
severely. The Financial Department of the Government of India was reorganised
and overhauled in the interests of economy, and the whole system of its control
of the finances of the Provincial Governments was altered. Hitherto grants to
the Provincial treasuries were made annually by the Governor-General in
Council, and every penny was allocated to a special purpose. In the event of
any money being saved it was not to be
1860-75]
Lord Mayo assassinated.—Lord Northbrook. 463
retained by
the local authorities, but returned to the Imperial treasury. It was therefore
to the advantage of each Provincial Government (its legitimate needs being
unlimited) to ask for as much as possible, and spend as much as it could get.
By the new system a fixed yearly grant, subject to revision every five years,
was made to each province, to be allocated and distributed within certain
limits to its various needs without interference from the Viceroy and Council.
The deficits of five and three-quarter millions for the years 1866-9 were
converted into surpluses amounting to nearly six millions for the four
following years; and the most satisfactory feature was that the change was
brought about, for the most part, by economy, retrenchment, and reorganisation.
The revenue to be raised was actually reduced from =£*51,600,000 in 1868-9 to
£50,100,000 in 1871-2. There are few instances on record of a great financial
crisis more successfully dealt with.
In 1872 Lord
Mayo was assassinated by a Pathan fanatic when visiting the convict settlement
in the Andaman Islands. His period of office had hardly lasted long enough for
a final verdict to be pronounced; but in achievement and still more in promise
it had signally falsified the ungenerous criticisms passed on his appointment,
and had afforded another proof of Disraeli’s well-known insight into character
and his faculty of choosing men. Lord Napier of Merchistoun was hastily
summoned from Madras as acting Governor-General till a successor could be sent
out from England. The premier’s choice fell upon Lord Northbrook, the head of
the Baring family, a sound and cautious administrator of the Whig school, at
that time holding office as Under-Secretary for War. His viceroyalty was on the
whole singularly uneventful. Except for the year of famine, 1873-4, India
enjoyed a period of financial prosperity. Her foreign trade was now beginning
to feel the beneficial effects of the Suez Canal, which had been opened in
1869. Lord Northbrook was able to abolish the income tax in 1873, and to take
an important step towards the adoption of Free Trade principles in India. From
the year 1860 the rate of duty on all imports had been 10 per cent, ad valorem
and 3 per cent, on most e-sports. The import rate had been reduced to per cent,
in 1864 and in 1875 it was lowered by Lord Northbrook to 5 per cent., while all
export dues were swept away, except those on oil, rice, indigo, and lac. Orthodox
economic opinion in England had as yet no doubts about the universal advantage
of laisser faire in fiscal policy, and the Home Government pressed upon the
Viceroy a much further advance in the Free Trade direction. But, though Lord
Northbrook personally required no conversion on this point, he appears to have
doubted whether he could afford to give up the revenue which these duties
yielded to the exchequer. He was supported by official opinion in India, which
is never wont to be swayed overmuch by a priori reasoning. The only other
important feature of his internal policy was the attempt to deal with a famine
by means which have since become part of the
routine
machinery of Indian administration. A serious scarcity was threatened in Bengal
and Behar in 1873-4. The Viceroy and Sir George^ Campbell, the
Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, determined that not a soul should perish of
starvation, if they could help it. Immense purchases- of rice were made in
Burma; transport and distributive agencies were rapidly extemporised; and
relief works were widely established. No considerations of economy were allowed
to conflict with the Viceroy’s purpose. As a result, the loss of life was
practically nil; valuable lessons, both in what to aim at and what to avoid,
were learnt for future occasions; and over six millions sterling were spent
from the Indian exchequer.
- ■
Lord Northbrook’s relations with the Amir of Afghanistan were less happy than
those of his predecessor. Sher Ali’s acquiescence in the policy pressed upon
him by Lord Mayo was largely due to personal reasons, and the Viceroy’s tragic
death snapped the closest tie that bound him to the British Government. He had
already been greatly dissatisfied with an award given by British commissioners
in a dispute as to the province of Seistan between himself and the Shah of
Persia. He showed a growing uneasiness at the rapid advance of the Russian line
of conquest. One after another, the central Asian States were absorbed and
incorporated in that vast empire. The Russian outposts were pushed ever nearer
to the northern frontiers of his kingdom. The advance was probably far less
deliberate than it appeared at the time either to Sher Ali or to observers in
England. As Prince Gorchakoff pointed out in his able Minute of 1864, Russia,
in approaching Afghanistan, was influenced by the same imperious law that had
led the armies of Great Britain across the plains of Hindustan and the Punjab
till they reached the mountains. She was urged irresistibly onward in spite of
her oft-repeated protests, genuine enough at the time when they were uttered,
that her chief desire was to know where to stop. But Sher Ali could hardly be
expected to realise what only the coolest heads in England were capable of
understanding. Nor, if he had done so, would it have added to his peace of mind
to discover that the two greatest European Powers were being drawn by a
magnetic attraction to a region of contact of which his own kingdom formed the
centre. A conference held at Simla in 1873 between Lord Northbrook and an
Afghan envoy did not, unfortunately, do much to mend matters. The Amir., whose
alarm had been intensified by the Russian conquest of Khiva in June, pressed,
as he had done before, for a closer alliance. But Lord Northbrook was not
allowed by the Liberal Government, fearful of complications in Afghanistan, to
do more than reiterate the vague assurances of support given by Lord Mayo. Sher
Ali earnestly implored the Viceroy to give him a written promise that Russia
would be considered as an enemy if she committed aggression on his frontier. It
was only with the greatest difficulty that he could be made to understand that
European diplomats
could not
categorically admit the possibility of “ enmity ” on the part of a friendly
State. Though there were many weighty objections to any hard and fast alliance
with a semi-barbarous Power whose political future was so doubtful as that of
Afghanistan, it is probably to be regretted, in view of after events, that the
opportunity was not seized of making the connexion with Sher Ali more binding.
,rhen, if ever, was the time to do so at the spontaneous request of the Amir,
who, seeing that he must enter into closer relations with one or other of his
European neighbours, had deliberately given the preference to Great Britain. It
was certain now, as it had not been in Sir John Lawrence’ time, that Sher Ali
was a strong and capable ruler. A treaty carefully drawn up and free from any
burdensome conditions on either side might well have been regarded as a logical
outcome of the Lawrence policy rather than as its reversal. But the moment was
allowed to pass. In 1873 it was the Liberal Government that held back, rather
against the weight of Indian opinion, just as two years later it was the
Conservative Administration that put strong pressure in the other direction
upon Lord Northbrook and his Council.
Sher Ali was
bitterly disappointed. He soon afterwards proclaimed his younger son Abdulla
Jan as his heir, and treacherously arrested and imprisoned the latter’s eldest
brother, Yakub Khan. He angrily resented the dignified rebuke administered by
Lord Northbrook; but, though he seems henceforward to have listened with
greater tolerance to the insidious promptings of Russian agents, he still
showed no tendency to welcome the presence of Russian troops near his frontier.
By care and diplomacy he might probably have been won back to his old friendly
attitude; but, at this juncture, a change of Government in England prejudiced
and precipitated the whole question. In 1874 Disraeli became Prime Minister,
with Lord Salisbury as Secretary of State for India. They approached the Afghan
problem from quite an opposite standpoint to that of their predecessors. They
had conceived a lively dread of the power of Russia in Asia, and they suspected
Sher Ali of equivocal dealings with her. That the existing state of things was
not altogether satisfactory has been already indicated. As Lord Salisbury
afterwards forcibly pointed out, the ill-defined dominions of the Amir were
being “ brought within a steadily narrowing circle, between the conflicting
pressures of two great military empires, one of which expostulates and remains
passive, while the other apologises and continues to move forward.” The new
Cabinet had been greatly impressed by a Minute from the able pen of Sir Bartle
Frere, suggesting that, in view of the critical situation in Asia, it could no
longer be regarded as satisfactory that the only representative of the British
Government in Afghanistan should be a native Mohammadan agent. They therefore
desired the Viceroy to press upon Sher Ali the admission of a British Resident
into his country, to be stationed in the first instance at Herat and afterwards
466
Proposal for a British Resident at Herat. [1869-77
at Kabul.
Against this change of front on the part of the Imperial Government, the
Viceroy, supported by his whole Council, lodged a weighty protest. He pointed
out that the sudden reversal of policy must necessaii’y bewilder and alarm the
Amir. On two occasions, in 1869 and 1873, Sher Ali had himself earnestly prayed
for a closer alliance with Great Britain, and expressed lively apprehension of
Russia’s designs. He had been assured again and again that his fears were
groundless. He was now suddenly to discover that the British Government, for
no apparent reason that did not already exist in 1873, had contracted a severe
attack of Russophobia, and were thrusting upon him the alliance they had
hitherto refused to concede, saddled with the one condition that he had
consistently declined even to discuss. These arguments made no impression on
Lord Salisbury, who continued to exert pressure' upon the Viceroy. He
suggested, in a much criticised despatch, that the mission might avowedly be
directed to objects of lesser political interest which “might easily be found
or if need be created.” Lord Northbrook was not the sort of man to carry out a
policy of finesse of this nature, and resigned his office, ostensibly for
personal reasons (1876).
Lord
Northbrook was succeeded by the second Lord Lytton, the son of an eminent man
of letters and himself a man of literary distinction, striking talents, and
impulsive temperament, under whose guidance India within three years drifted
into the Second Afghan War. The responsibility for this result, which at the time
was popularly attributed almost wholly to the Viceroy, must be shared by
Disraeli, and was due to his grandiose conception of foreign policy. The
Viceroy, however, was given a very free hand, and the actual shaping of the
policy in detail was left to him almost entirely. He was empowered to concede
most of the demands that Sher Ali had put forward in 1873, which, if granted at
the time, might have made the Amir the firm friend of the British Government.
Unfortunately, everything was made to depend on the fatal condition that a
British representative should be stationed at Herat. A plausible pretext for a
mission was found in the assumption by the Queen of the title “Empress of
India,” which had been proclaimed by Lord Lytton at a great Durbar on the Ridge
of Delhi on January 1,
1877. To Lord Lytton’s request that he would
receive an envoy to lay before him the full import of this ceremony, the Amir
sent a polite refusal on the ground that it was unnecessary. He further allowed
it to be known that, among other reasons, he feared his own inability to
protect an envoy from the fanaticism of his subjects, and that, if he received
a British ambassador he could not refuse to grant the same privilege to the
Russians. Lord Lytton considered this an act of grave discourtesy, and warned
Sher Ali that he was isolating himself from British alliance and support. He
failed however, on this point, to carry with him three members of his Council.
Sir William Muir, Sir Henry
Norman, and
Sir Arthur Hobhouse, held that it was not dealing fairly with the Amir to lay
stress on the temporary and complimentary character of a mission, the real
intention of which was the establishment of a permanent embassy in Afghanistan;
and they declared that, however advantageous it might be to Great Britain to
have an agency in the country, the Amir was perfectly justified by the Treaties
of 1855 and 1857 in declining to receive it. There is little doubt that the
dissenting Councillors were in the right; but the Viceroy was impulsive and
impatient. He was convinced that Sher Ali was actively intriguing with Russia,
though the evidence on which he depended was far from conclusive. Ultimately,
no doubt, Sher Ali did enter into relations with the emissaries of the Tsar;
but for a long time his only idea was to maintain his territory unviolated by
either of his European neighbours, and, down to a very late date (May, 1877),
all letters from Russian officials were opened in the presence of the British
native-born representative and communicated to the Viceroy, Sher Ali was,
indeed, in Lord Lytton’s picturesque phrase, an earthen pipkin between two iron
pots. None realised that fact more clearly than he did himself, and his chief
desire was by every means in his power, by every desperate expedient, to keep
his European suitors with their embarrassing attentions at arm’s length.
At
the end of 1876, the British occupation of Quetta, by arrangement with the Khan
of Kalat, naturally appeared to the Amir as the first step in a general British
advance upon his frontier. Early in 1877, Lord Lytton once more pressed his
demands in a prolonged conference at Peshawar between the Amir’s envoy and Sir
Lewis Pelly. The conference could have but one issue. Syad Nur Mohammad, the
Afghan ambassador, was not to be dislodged from the position that to admit a
British Resident into Afghanistan was impossible. Neither the Viceroy nor the
Home Government seems to have grasped the sound reasons for this objection. For
an Amir to lie open to even the shadow of a taunt of being the puppet of a
foreign nation is fatal to his prestige. The Afghans are, and always have been,
intensely jealous of outside domination in any form. The First Afghan War was
a striking example of this trait in the national character; and, in after
years, Abdurrahman, in spite of his real admiration and friendship for the
British, would never admit for a moment the proposal of a resident envoy at his
Court. Nor did the Viceroy in his impatience place himself in the position of
Sher Ali, consider the limitations of his knowledge, or understand how
difficult it was for him to be sure of the good faith of the British
Government. It was a common report in the Indian bazaars at this time that the
marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh with a Russian Princess implied a conspiracy
between England and Russia for the partition of Afghanistan. An oriental ruler,
standing in a position of such isolation as Sher Ali, and ignorant of the
dynastic inter- cb. xvi. 30—2
relations of
European Courts, had no trustworthy means for testing such a rumour. He only
knew that he was face to face with a people who might be as merciless as they
were undoubtedly powerful, and whose policy in the last resort, as he shrewdly
suspected, would be determined by their own interests.
The Viceroy’s
brilliant special pleading made no impression upon Syad Nur Mohammad. In his
attempt to prove that the Amir had given an “anticipatory consent” to the
admission of a Resident, and that British obligations were limited to the
Treaty of 1855 (the Treaty of 1857 being for a temporary purpose only and Lord
Mayo’s letter containing no binding pledge), Lord Lytton played a rather
disingenuous part, which caused the Amir to doubt the good faith of Great
Britain altogether. It is more than likely that from this point he definitely
turned to the Russian alliance. He had no love for either of the great European
Powers; but by Lord Lytton’s precipitancy he was driven to the conviction that,
if he must enter into close relations with one or other, it had better not be with
the nation which had in the past interfered by armed force in the affairs of
his country.
In March,
Syad Nur Mohammad, whose health throughout the conference had been in a
precarious condition, died, maintaining his position to the end with a certain
quiet and pathetic dignity, and saddened by the fatalistic conviction that his
efforts were destined to be in vain. Lord Lytton seized the occasion to declare
the conference at an end, though a successor to the dead envoy was already on
his way from Kabul, charged, so rumour ran, With instructions to concede the
British demands. All communications were now broken off with the Afghan Court.
In May, Lord Lytton justified his conduct of the negotiations in a long and
able despatch* which has been adversely criticised as lacking the impartiality
desirable in a great state paper.
Within a few
months the Afghan problem, through the outbreak of international complications
in Europe, entered on a new and startling phase. In 1876 the misgovernment of
the Turk in Europe caused armed insurrections in Servia and Montenegro. In the
following year Russia declared war upon Turkey, and in January, 1878, her
armies crossed the Balkans. Lord Beaconsfield, who believed that England could
not afford to permit the disintegration of Turkey, stood aloof from all
proposals to coerce the Porte, ordered the British fleet to pass the
Dardanelles, and brought some regiments of Indian troops to Malta. The Russian
Government, finding a quarrel forced upon them in Europe by Great Britain, endeavoured
as a diversion to stir up trouble on the Indian frontier. The two countries
were now on the brink of war; but, partly through the mediation of Germany, a
settlement was agreed to at a conference of the Great Powers, and ratified by
the Treaty of Berlin. Unfortunately the pacification came too late to avert the
Afghan War. The electrical disturbance which had hovered over the
1878] Russian envoy received at Kabul.
469
Western world
round the storm centres of London and St Petersburg passed away eastwards, and
exerted its destructive energy against an oriental ruler who could know little
of the real causes of dispute. On June 13th, the day on which the Congress of
Berlin held its first sitting, a Russian mission under General Stoletoff
started from Tashkent for Kabul; and it had been for some weeks in the Afghan
capital before the news of the Peace was known in Asia. Sher Ali had vainly
endeavoured to stay StoletofFs progress, using the same arguments that he had
already employed against the British; but a hint was thrown out to him that, if
he proved obdurate, the Russians could put forward a dangerous rival to his
throne in the person of Abdurrahman, his nephew, who had long been their
pensioner. The unfortunate Amir bowed to necessity, and there is some evidence
to show that he now definitely signed a treaty with the Russian Government.
When the news
of StoletofTs reception by Sher Ali reached Lord Lytton, his worst fears of
Russian aggression seemed to be realised. He promptly despatched a letter to
the Amir, demanding that a like privilege should be accorded to Great Britain;
and, without waiting for a reply, he announced his intention of sending Sir
Neville Chamberlain as his representative. The death at this point of Abdulla
Jan, the Amir’s youngest son, which was reported to have almost unhinged his
reason, delayed the setting out of the embassy. Meanwhile, ten days after Lord
Lytton’s letter, Stoletoff had left Kabul on the news being brought to him that
the British intended to send a mission. No reply was received from Sher Ali to
the Viceroy’s despatch, and on September 21 an advance party of Sir Neville
Chamberlain’s mission under Major Cavagnari was challenged at Ali Masjid, a
lonely frontier post, and prevented from entering the Khaibar pass. Though the
Afghan officer showed great courtesy to the British commander, he made it quite
clear that his instructions would oblige him to oppose the further progress of
the mission by force. The situation was now veiy critical; but a more
conciliatory statesman than Lord Lytton might not have considered the resources
of diplomacy to be exhausted. It was clear that Russia was far more to blame
than Afghanistan for the sending of the mission, and it was she, as Lord
Lawrence contended, who ought to have been called to account. In view of the
settlement at Berlin, StoletofTs entry into Kabul might fairly be regarded as
an unfriendly act, and pressure should have been exerted at St Petersburg for
his recall. There is little doubt, in view of what subsequently happened, that
the demand would have been complied with. Neither the Home Government nor Lord
Lytton seems to have understood that Russia’s action at this time was far less
an attack on India than a counterstroke directed at British policy in Europe,
which, whatever its justification, was certainly unfriendly to Russia. The
mission having been withdrawn, it was obviously the right policy for the
British Government, even if it had any doubts upon the
470
War declared on Afghanistan. [i878-9
point, to
assume in its dealings with the Amir that the departure of Stoletoff was
welcomed by him, and to endeavour by all possible means to reestablish friendly
relations with Afghanistan. Granted that there was no other way of preventing
the installation of a Russian envoy in Afghanistan, the ethical question still
remains whether the Indian Government had a right to force a representative of
its own upon Sher Ali, who was nominially an independent Prince.
Lord Lytton
eagerly seized upon the incident at Ali Masjid as affording him a plausible
pretext for a war which he had long believed to be inevitable. He described the
arrest of the mission with undoubted exaggeration as a forcible repulse, and
clamoured for permission from the Home Government to launch across the frontiers
the troops that were already massed at the entrance of the passes. But the
Cabinet imposed upon him a few weeks’ delay, and an ultimatum was despatched to
the Amir requiring a definite acceptance of the British terms within a
specified time. The belated reply that reached the Viceroy was considered
unsatisfactory, and meantime war was declared on November 581,
1878. The mountain boundary of Afghanistan was
pierced simultaneously by the advance of three columns. Sir Samuel Browne
marched through the Khaibar to Jalalabad. Major-General Roberts entered by the
Kuram valley, and drove the enemy from the heights that command the Peiwar
pass. General Stewart marched from Quetta upon Kandahar. There was little
organised opposition, and the military occupation of the country between Kabul
and Kandahar was speedily carried out. In December, Sher Ali fled northwards to
Afghan Turkestan, leaving his son Yakub Khan to make what terms he could with
the invaders. Russian support proved a broken reed in the hour of trial.
General Kaufmann cynically bade the Amir make peace with the British if they
gave him the chance, and plainly told him that Russia would neither send troops
nor further his expressed intention of going to St Petersburg to appeal to the
Tsar in person. All that Russia appears to have done is to have extracted a
pledge from the British Government in London that the integrity of Afghanistan
should be respected. Sher Ali, worn out with anxiety and disease, died at
Mazar-i-Sharif in February. The earthen pipkin was crushed at last. It is
impossible to withhold a certain measure of sympathy from the deluded Amir, or
to resist the conviction that the tragic sequel might have been avoided by more
considerate and less precipitate statesmanship on the part of the Viceroy.
The Cabinet
now determined to recognise Yakub Khan, Sher Ali’s eldest son, though the
Viceroy’s personal opinion was in favour of proceeding to the disintegration of
Afghanistan. The new ruler was compelled by the Treaty of Gandamak, in May,
1879, to surrender all the points in defence of which his father had forfeited
his crown. He agreed to conduct his relations with foreign States according to
the advice of the British Government, to permit a British officer to reside
at Kabul, and
to surrender to British control the districts of Kuram, Pishin, and Sibi with
the guardianship of the Khaibar and Michni passes. In return for these
concessions the Amir was to be supported with arms, money, and troops against
any foreign aggression, and to receive an annual subsidy of six lakhs of
rupees.
The Treaty of
Gandamak was the high-water mark of the Disraeli- Lytton policy, and all the
objects for which the War had been entered upon seemed secured. But the fair
prospect was only too soon to be overclouded. Once more, England had to learn
by bitter experience that it was impossible to govern the turbulent Afghan
nation through an Amir supported by foreign bayonets. In July, 1879, Sir Louis
Cavagnari took up his residence at Kabul. On September 6, only a few days after
the envoy’s last laconic message, “AJ1 well,” had been telegraphed to the
Viceroy, the terrible news came over the wires that he and all his suite had
been massacred three days before by the disorderly Afghan army, which had risen
in revolt. Yakub Khan’s precise degree of innocence or guilt was never
ascertained; but he seems at any rate to have made no serious attempt to
protect the embassy. The murder of Cavagnari was a staggering blow to Lord
Lytton, for it shattered his hopes at the moment of their realisation; but he
set himself doggedly to recover lost ground. Retribution was not long in
falling upon Afghanistan. Stewart reoccupied Kandahar; Roberts once more
traversed the Kuram valley and moved on Kabul. He defeated the rebels at
Charasia and entered the city. A stern vengeance was meted out to all those
whose complicity in the murder could be proved. Yakub Khan surrendered himself
as a suppliant, abdicated the throne, and, after an inconclusive enquiry into
his conduct had been held, was deported as a state prisoner to India.
The
difficulties of the army of occupation were, however, but beginning. In the
winter there were many serious risings round Kabul, and it was only by hard
fighting that Sir Frederick Roberts kept his communications with India open. In
the spring of 1880 Sir Donald Stewart, by his victory at Ahmad Khel, cleared
the road between Kandahar and Kabul, and joined Roberts at the latter place. In
the meantime, the Indian Government was anxiously seeking for a way out of the
mpasse in which it found itself. It was in effective occupation of only a small
part of Afghanistan. To subdue and hold down the whole country with the forces
at its disposal was utterly beyond its power. To withdraw, without establishing
some form of government, was to abandon Afghanistan to anarchy. The solution
came from an unexpected and not altogether friendly quarter. Abdurrahman Khan,
the nephew of Sher Ali, had been living since 1868 in exile beyond the Oxus
under Russian protection. He now appeared in northern Afghanistan, with the
connivance of his patrons, who probably believed that his presence there would
be an embarrassment to the British. The
472
Abdurrahman Amir.—Vernacular Press Acts. [i876-80
Indian
Government, having reviewed and reluctantly rejected the claims of all other
candidates, determined to offer the throne to Abdurrahman. The decision was a
singularly bold one; but Lord Lytton seems to have correctly gauged the
character of the future Amir, and his famous leap in the dark was thoroughly
justified by success. But, before his decision could be formally ratified, he
had ceased to be Viceroy. In April, 1880, Gladstone succeeded Lord Beaconsfield
as Prime Minister, with the Marquis of Hartington as Secretary of State for
India. They had been returned to power largely on an outspoken and sweeping condemnation
of the foreign policy of the Conservative Government. Of that policy the Afghan
War formed an important part, receiving a special measure of unfavourable
criticism. It would have been impossible for Lord Lytton to serve under men who
had opposed his policy for the last four years; and when he heard of the fall
of Lord Beaconsfield’s Government he tendered his resignation.
Internally,
his viceroyalty had been marked by the occurrence of a famine which in extent
and severity was hitherto unparalleled. It lasted for two years (1876-8),
affected the whole of southern, with part of western and central India, and
left behind it a deadly sequel of fever and cholera. Such a cal amity could not
be averted, as Lord Northbrook had averted the Behai' scarcity in 1874. The
desire to save life had to be tempered with a stem resolution to practise the
severest economy. Sir John Strachey and Sir Richard Temple rigorously
administered the finances on these principles. About eight millions sterling
were spent by the Indian Government; but even so, over five million persons
perished from starvation or disease, while the economic loss to the country
from remissions of land revenue and land going out of cultivation cannot be
exactly estimated. Two all-important results were the establishment of a
special famine insurance fund, for the maintenance of which new revenue
amounting to a million and a half was thenceforth to be raised, and the
appointment of a Commission, under the presidency of General Richard Strachey,
which carefully collected and compared the experience of the past, and laid
down regulations, afterwards embodied in the Famine Code of 1883.
One of the
most widely criticised acts of Lord Lytton’s viceroyalty was the passing of the
Vernacular Press Acts (1878), which placed the censorship of the native Press
in the hands of the Executive. Opponents of the policy, including three
dissenting members of Council, contended that repressive legislation was not
required, and that it was invidious to make a distinction between English and
vernacular newspapers. In view of the fact that the Acts were safely repealed
by his successor these criticisms may be considered justified; but the problem
was a difficult one. A priori maxims as to the danger of driving the evil of
sedition underground, or the peril of sitting on the safety valve, hardly apply
without qualification in an oriental State, where the ordinary
1876-80]
473
criteria of
sound judgment are not valid. The real charge against Lord Lytton is, not that
he inaugurated a deliberate attack upon the freedom of the Press, but that he
committed an error of judgment as to the time at which the State should step in
and exercise its controlling power.
In the sphere
of finance, Lord Lytton gave a loyal support to the great reforms of Sir John
Strachey, whom he persuaded to leave his Lieutenant-Govemorship of the
North-West Provinces for the thankless post of Financial Minister (1876).
Chief amongst these were the equalisation of the salt tax throughout India and
the consequent abolition of the famous customs line formed of cactus hedge,
wall, and ditch, which stretched across the peninsula for 2500 miles and was
guarded by an army of revenue officials. Another great stride was made in the
direction of establishing Free Trade in India. The Lancashire cotton
manufacturers were loudly clamouring for the abolition of the import duties
levied at Indian ports on the produce of their looms. The House of Commons, by
a resolution passed unanimously, called upon the Indian Government to sweep
away the imposts as soon as the finances could bear the strain, and Lord
Salisbury pressed the reform upon the Viceroy. The pressure was unnecessary,
for Lord Lytton was at one with his Finance Minister in eagerly desiring the
change—not, as he was careful to state, to secure the political support of the
powerful Lancashire interest, but because he was convinced that Free Trade
would ultimately prove the best policy for India itself. In spite of the fact
that the Afghan War and the famine subjected his financial policy to a severe
test, Lord Lytton abolished duties on twenty-nine articles in the tariff in
1878, and in the following year did away with those levied on the coarser kinds
of cotton cloth. In carrying this reform, he showed that he had the courage of
his convictions and was not afraid to risk the imputation of unworthy motives.
Throughout, he supported Sir John Strachey against the majority of his constitutional
advisers, this being the only instance in recent times of a Governor-General
exercising his legal right to override the expressed opinion of the majority on
his Council. Lord Lytton’s avowed desire was to make India a great free port
open to the commerce of the whole world. The pressure of special circumstances
prevented him from fully realising his ideal, but he definitely committed the
Indian Government to the course which was ultimately completed by his immediate
successor. In 1880, Sir John Strachey, who had occupied almost every important
post from that of Acting Viceroy downwards, left India and afterwards served a
long period on the Council of the Secretary of State (1885-95). Through the
faulty system on which the accounts of the Military Department were kept, a
serious error had been made in estimating the cost of the Afghan War. This was
the only blot upon his extraordinarily successful administration; and it is
noteworthy that that part of the war charges (fifteen millions) which fell upon
the Indian Exchequer was paid for out of revenue—a striking proof of his
financial skill.
474
Estimate of Lord Lytton's work. [i876-so
Few Viceroys
have been submitted to fiercer criticism than Lord Lytton. This was partly due
to the fact that his Afghan policy—the domain in which he was least
successful—almost monopolised public attention because of the space it occupied
in the party conflicts of the day. Even here, though the verdict of history has
on the whole gone against him, time has greatly modified the severity of
contemporary judgments. He took long views, but pressed them too impetuously on
his subordinates. He was apt to be impatient of opinions that clashed with his
own, and there was a precipitancy about many of his actions which conflicted with
true statesmanship. Of an unconventional cast of mind, he was not always
punctilious enough in regard to those trifles which are no longer trifles for a
man in his high position; and the literary faculty, which he found it so hard
to curb, of employing the most striking and picturesque phrase to express his
meaning, was sometimes misunderstood by men accustomed to the studiously
neutral style of Indian official papers. His internal policy had many merits,
and in some respects he was in advance of his age. He was in favour of
introducing a gold standard into the coinage of India, and, if the change had
come when the value of the rupee stood at about one and ninepence, the saving
to the revenues would have been very great. He advocated that formation of a
North-West Frontier Province distinct from the Punjab, which was only carried
out thirty years later; and he put forward a bold and striking, though possibly
premature, scheme for the creation of a native Indian Peerage and the summoning
of a great Indian Privy Council of feudatory chiefs. Sharing the imaginative
political conceptions of his friend and leader Disraeli, he did not underrate,
as the men of his generation were apt to do, the effect of pageantry,
sentiment, and symbolism on Eastern minds. The Royal Titles Act, which
conferred the designation of Empress of India upon the Queen, excited open
disapprobation and even ridicule in England. The criticism was founded in part
on high constitutional grounds. The leaders of the Liberal party disliked the distinction
between England and India implied in the new designation for the Crown, which
seemed to them to indicate that, while sovereignty at home was based upon the
supremacy of law, in India it depended upon the power of the sword. In their
view the Act was dangerously like an admission that Great Britain was faltering
in her expressed intention of gradually extending to India the benefits of free
institutions. Criticism in Lidia was far less vocal; but the attitude of the
Civil Service, honourably distinguished by its care for realities and
disregard for show, was hardly sympathetic. At the great Durbar on the Ridge of
Delhi the majority of its members who were present stood by acquiescent but not
enthusiastic. Many were converted when they noted the effect of the gorgeous
ceremonial on the assembled feudatory chiefe, some of whom gained on that day
for the first time a clear conception of the majesty of the empire in which
they occupied a high and honourable place.
1880-3]
475
In 1880, Lord
Ripon, who had in former years been Secretary of State for India, was appointed
Viceroy to succeed Lord Lytton. He went out with instructions to effect a
peaceable settlement with Afghanistan. The Liberal Cabinet was firmly resolved
to return as far as possible to the state of things which existed before 1876.
Lord Hartington pointed out with some force that the only result of two
successful campaigns and lavish expenditure had been the disintegration of the
State which the British Government desired to see strong, friendly, and
independent, the incurring of new and unwelcome liabilities in regard to one of
its provinces, and a condition of anarchy throughout the rest of the country.
In July, Abdurrahman was formally acknowledged as Amir, with the understanding
that he was to have no foreign relations with any Power except Great Britain.
He was to be defended from outside aggression so long as he observed this
condition, but he was not required to admit a British Resident into his country.
It was not however originally intended that he should succeed to all the
dominions of Sher Ali. Kandahar was to be separated from Kabul and to be ruled
by an independent Prince, while Herat remained for the time in the power of
Ayub Khan, a son of the late Amir. The British forces were preparing to
evacuate the country, when the news came that Ayub Khan had marched upon
Kandahar and almost annihilated a British brigade at Mai wand. Roberts, who was
at once despatched from Kabul by Stewart with a force of 10,000 men,
accomplished his famous march of 313 miles in twenty days, and defeated Ayub
Khan at the battle of Kandahar. The episode was not allowed to interfere with
the evacuation of the country, and the British forces were withdrawn through
the Bolan and the Khaibar passes. The independent ruler that had been set up in
Kandahar proved a failure, and his opportune resignation was accepted. Kandahar
was evacuated in 1881 and handed back to Abdurrahman, in spite of the protects
of a party in England which wished this important strategic post to be retained
permanently in British hands. The sacrifice proved well worth making. Nothing
bound the Amir so closely to the British alliance as the cession of a place he
had always ardently coveted. For a time, however, it looked as though Kandahar
were destined to fall into other hands. Ayub Khan, marching from Herat, seized
and held the city for a few months; but he was finally defeated by Abdurrahman,
who thus regained both Kandahar and Herat. In 1883, his subsidy was increased
to twelve lakhs. The dominions of Dost Mohammad were now consolidated under a
very capable and independent Amir with a firm conviction of his own divine
tight to rule. There was very little altruism in his attitude to the English,
and he was not disinclined on occasion to cause them trouble on the frontier;
but he clearly understood that, while it was Russia’s interest to dismember his
country, it was Great Britain’s to keep it intact. Thus, though he was
determined to debar all Europeans from
entering his
territories, he was content to put himself under the protection of the British
Government, accept its aid in money and arms, and fulfil his part as an outpost
in defence of the northern frontier of India.
The Afghan
question thus happily settled, no other serious foreign problem occurred during
the viceroyalty of Lord Ripon. The country enjoyed a time of peace and
prosperity. The financial reforms of Sir John Strachey bore their full fruit in
years of rising revenue and surplus budgets. Under these favourable
circumstances the Free Trade policy inaugurated by Lord Northbrook and Lord
Lytton was earned to its natural completion. In 1882, the remaining duties on
cotton goods and the general five per cent, tariff on imports were abolished—
reforms which resulted in remissions to the Indian taxpayer amounting to two
and a half millions sterling. In this prosperous interval between the Afghan
War and the era of difficulties due to famine, plague, a falling exchange, and
increased military expenditure, a great impetus was given to political and
social reform. Lord Ripon, a life-long Liberal, had a robust faith in the
efficacy of Western political ideals and theories as applied to orientals. Down
to the time of his rule immense material benefits had been procured for the
Indian races by a disinterested bureaucracy, which preferred to work for the
people rather than through the people. In the minds of those natives who
responded most promptly to the influences of British rule there was gradually
growing up a natural and healthy desire for an active share in the work of
government, and even for a part in the social life of men who had taught them
to believe that, in theory at any rate, there was no such thing as inequality
of race. To these aspirations Lord Ripon showed himself peculiarly sympathetic,
and he probably believed that some sacrifice of efficiency was worth incurring
in order to train the subject races in the rudiments of self-government and
self-control. Every reform affecting the moral or intellectual well-being of
the people received his hearty support. An elaborate enquiry was held into the
state of education throughout India, and measures were taken for the
improvement of primary and secondary instruction, which had hitherto received a
very small share of state support in comparison with that lavished upon the
colleges. Lord Lytton’s Vernacular Press Acts were repealed, and all
restrictions were thus removed from the free expression of opinion on political
and social topics. Increased powers of self-government were made over to local
boards and municipalities, and the elective principle received considerable
extension. Subsequent experience was to show that the instinct for the working
of such institutions is of very slow growth; but, though as yet bodies of this
nature have to be carefully supervised and controlled by British officers, the
experiment has proved well worth making. To Lord Ripon fell the duty, in 1881,
of handing over to the Hindu dynasty of Mysore the government of its dominions,
which for the past fifty years had been administered by the British.
The native
approval of Lord Ripon flared up into widespread enthusiasm when his
championship of their cause seriously embroiled him with the European
population. In 1883 there was stirred up one of those delicate and dangerous
questions underlying the surface of Anglo- Indian society which it is much more
convenient to ignore than to face. Many natives of ability and education had
risen to high positions on the judicial bench, and it was proposed, in a Bill
framed by Mr (now Sir) Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert, to confer upon them criminal
jurisdiction over European British subjects. Hitherto it had been a recognised
rule, that, save in the Presidency towns, no European could be tried except by
a European magistrate or judge. A fierce agitation was at once set up against
the measure by the European residents in India. Feeling on both sides became
lamentably embittered, and the Bill was only passed in 1884 by a compromise
which permitted Europeans to be cited before magistrates of native birth who
had attained the standing of district magistrate or sessions judge, with the
proviso that the accused might claim to be tried before a jury half of whom
were to be of European or American birth. On the resignation of the Viceroy in
1884, remarkable manifestations of regret were evoked from all classes of the
native population, and the route of his journey from Calcutta to Bombay was
attended by enthusiastic crowds.
Lord Ripon
was succeeded by the Earl of Dufferin, a statesman and diplomatist whose full
and varied career afforded the finest possible training for his new post. As a
former Under-Secretary of State for India and British Commissioner in Egypt he
had an expert knowledge of Eastern questions, and as ambassador at St
Petersburg and Constantinople he had studied at first hand the foreign
policies of England’s most formidable rival in Asia and of the great European
Mohammadan Power. His diplomatic skill and personal charm were destined to
allay the embittered feelings of the European population, which had been
aroused by his predecessor’s eagerness for reform.
The field of
Lord Dufferin’s activity in foreign politics lay mainly in the north-west and
south-east. The occupation of Merv by Russian troops in 1884 once more raised
the question of the demarcation of a boundary between Afghanistan and Russian
territory in Asia. The first meeting of British and Russian Commissioners
charged with this task took place at Sarakhs in October, a month before Lord
Dufferin’s arrival in India, the portion of the frontier line to be demarcated
being that between the Hari Rud and the Oxus. The Russians unscrupulously
occupied much of the territory in dispute, and the Afghans, with the natural
wish to forestall them, kept pushing their outposts forward. The British
Commissioners were thus left in an embarrassing position,, being hampered by.
the fact that the Home Government had not accurately defined the extent of the
claims which they regarded as essential. Another source of difficulty was that,
the Commissioners
being
subordinate to the British and Russian Foreign Offices, the Indian Government
had no direct control over the proceedings. The Russians had warned off the
troops of the Amir from Penjdeh, which they definitely claimed for themselves.
The Afghans, however, occupied the place; and, in March, 1885, they were
attacked and driven out by Russian trobps. This high-handed action made the
situation extremely critical. The popular voice in England clamoured for war,
which was only with great difficulty averted by the statesmanlike forethought
and restraint of Abdurrahman and the skilful diplomacy of Lord Dufferin.
Fortunately, when the incident. occurred, the Amir was actually on a visit to
the Viceroy at Rawal Pindi. Abdurrahman was never anxious to extend his
dominion in the turbulent region of the north-west; he was honourably desirous
of conferring a service on his protectors, and quite determined to avoid at all
costs, what he knew would be an unmitigated calamity for Afghanistan, the
outbreak of war between his powerful European neighbours. He professed his
readiness to abandon all claims to Penjdeh if he were allowed to hold Zulfikar.
To this peaceful solution of the difficulty Lord Dufferin bent all his energies,
declaring that a war between England and Russia would be a combat between a
whale and an elephant. He realised, with broad-minded tolerance, that the
advance of Russia to the borders of Afghanistan had, in great measure, been
imposed upon her by an irresistible law, and he believed that, if the present
position were accepted, and her future progress limited with her own consent,
the general interests of humanity and civilisation would be benefited. This
happy consummation was reached by the labours of the Afghan Boundary Commission
in 1885-6, supplemented by an agreement signed at St Petersburg in 1887. The
demarcation of the frontier from the Hari Rud to the Oxus fixed the main line
barring the advance of Russia in the direction of British India, and thus
settled an important question in the world policy of Asia. The war panic,
however, did not pass without leaving a permanent mark on India. The hurried
preparations burdened the Exchequer with a sum of two millions, and one of the
results was an increase in the permanent strength of the army, both native and
European. From the spontaneous offers of assistance made by the feudatory
chiefs in 1885, sprang the institution of the Imperial Service troops
maintained by native States for the defence of the whole empire. The conference
of Abdurrahman with the Viceroy at Rawal Pindi was in all respects
satisfactory. Lord Dufferin won the confidence of the Amir as completely as
Lord Mayo had gained the goodwill of his predecessor. He understood, what Lord
Lytton with all his ability had failed to perceive, that by the necessities of
his position the Amir of Afghanistan could not make certain concessions which
seemed altogether advantageous to the Indian Government. Strong and able as
Abdurrahman’s administration was, it was also to Western eyes barbarous and
cruel. The Amir himself cherished no illusions as to the very limited
advance in
the direction of civilisation made by his subjects, and he was determined at
all hazards to exclude from his country the interference of the British
official with his coldly observant eyes. Lord Dufferin tentatively proposed to
send British officers to organise the defences of Herat; but, when he saw that
the Amir instantly took alarm, he wisely refrained from pressing the point upon
him.
On the
eastern frontier of India Lord Dufferin completed the conquest of Burma. The
First and Second Burmese Wars had shorn that country of its maritime provinces,
Arakan, Pegu, and Tenasserim. The Third was to reduce the whole of it to
subjection. Relations with the independent Burmese Government had for some time
been very difficult to maintain upon a friendly footing; but they grew rapidly
worse after the accession in 1878 of King Thibaw, an oriental despot of the
most savage type. In 1879 the British Agent had been withdrawn from Mandalay.
In 1885 the Indian Government ascertained that the King was preparing to enter
into relations with the Franch administrators of Indo-China, while at the same
time he threatened to impose a heavy fine upon a great British commercial
company. An ultimatum was promptly despatched to the Court at Ava, demanding
the reception of an envoy at Mandalay, a permanent Resident at Court, and an
immediate answer to both demands. As the reply was unsatisfactory, General
Prendergast invaded the country by a flotilla of boats up the broad stream of
the Irrawaddy. So rapidly was the blow directed that Thibaw was taken
•completely by surprise, and surrendered unconditionally when the British
expedition approached his capital. Within a fortnight from the beginning of
the advance, the country was nominally subdued. Thibaw was deported to India,
and the country was annexed by proclamation on January 1, 1886. The
difficulties of the occupation were, however, as great as the conquest had been
easy. The disbanded soldiers of the Burmese army took cover in the jungles, and
for two years maintained a desperate guerrilla warfare by murder, rapine, and
dacoity. Further reinforcements were drafted into the country; and in spite of
climatic and local difficulties of every kind British sovereignty was made
effective.
The Burmese
henceforward enjoyed the benefits of humane and civilised government; but it
must be admitted that Lord Dufferin’s action was sufficiently high-handed. It
would be hypocritical to pretend that mere misrule on Thibaw’s part would have
brought upon him so crushing a doom. As in the case of Sher Ali, the near
approach of another European Power proved his undoing. The real reason for the
war was the desire to forestall the designs of the French, who had
theoretically a better right than the British to extend their influence over
Burma, for they came by the express invitation of the King. England, however,
for good or ill, considered that she could not afford to see the country absorbed
by any Power except herself.
In the domain
of social reform, Lord Dufferin carried through, in
1885, the
great agrarian measure known as the Bengal Tenancy Act, which his predecessor
had initiated. It aimed at ameliorating the lot of the peasantry, who through
their ignorance and poverty were often at the mercy of the landlords. The
Government stepped in to check the free play of economic competition, where it
pressed too hardly upon a submerged proletariate. The Bill gave the ryots a
certain fixity of tenure, defined the limits under which rights of occupancy
could be acquired, checked and limited the practice of indiscriminate eviction,
and generally provided for the interests of the cultivators of the soil. Later
Acts followed on the same lines relating to Oudh and the Punjab. An important
reorganisation of the Civil Service followed upon the recommendations of a
Commission presided over by Sir Charles Aitchison, which sat in 1886-7 to
enquire into the possibility of giving natives a larger share in the
administration of the country, and so carrying out the promise made in the
Charter Act of 1833 that no man should be disqualified by reason of his
religion, place of birth, descent, or colour from holding office under the
Company—a promise that had been definitely reaffirmed in 1858 on the part of
the Crown. From 1855, vacancies in the Covenanted Civil Service were filled by
open competition after examination held in London. The necessity of crossing
the sea practically guaranteed that only a small proportion of successful candidates
would be natives of India. In 1870, an Act of Parliament empowered the
Governor-General in Council with the approval of the Secretary of State to draw
up special rules for the admission into the Covenanted Civil Service of men of
native race, without the need of their passing the examination held in London.
Anglo-Indian opinion was strongly against the reform, and by the mere dead
weight of inertia effective action was postponed till Lord Lytton’s time. In
1879, however, rules were at last framed and
the Statutory Civil Service was founded, members of which were to be natives of
India appointed by the local Governments. One-sixth of the posts ordinarily
filled by Indian civilians selected in England were ultimately to be set apart
for them. The Statutory Civil Service proved a failure, and it was discontinued
on the recommendation of Lord Dufferin’s Commission. Henceforward, the Civil
Service was divided into three branches, the Imperial Indian Civil Service,
recruited in England, but open to Indians who cared to make the journey and
were successful in the competition, the Provincial, and the Subordinate Civil
Services, both of which were recruited in India and filled almost entirely by
men of native origin. To the Provincial Civil Service were now assigned many of
the administrative and judicial posts hitherto held by members of the
Covenanted Civil Service.
Though he did
not actually carry them out, Lord Dufferin prepared the way for important
reforms in the constitution and procedure of the Legislative Council of the
Governor-General, as established by the Indian
Councils Act
of 1861. He recognised that the more moderate demands of the Indian National
Congress, which first met in 1886, were based upon political aspirations that
were to some extent natural and proper. His policy was to grant speedily and
with a good grace whatever could be safely conceded, to declare plainly that
such a settlement must be regarded as final for a number of years, and to
repress any incendiary agitation, in the direction of which native political
activity normally tends to run. He declared that he would personally feel it
both a relief and an assistance if he could rely more upon the experience of
Indian advisers in the consideration of questions that came before the Council.
He proposed, therefore, to increase the number of additional members, who,
added to the Executive Council, transform it into a legislative body. The new
members were, so far as possible, to represent various native classes and
interests. His proposals, though modified to some extent by the Home
Government, were embodied in Lord Cross’ Indian Councils Act of 1892, which
became operative in the viceroyalty of Lord Lansdowne. The additional members
were to be at least ten, and at most sixteen, in number, and not more than six
of them were to hold official positions ; five were to be appointed on the
recommendation of the non-official members of four Provincial legislatures and
the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce. The Provincial legislatures were themselves
enlarged by additional members, who were to be nominated by various
municipalities, University Boards, and commercial associations. The
representative, though not the elective, principle was in fact tentatively
introduced. The Legislative Council had hitherto been allowed no opportunity of
criticising the financial policy of the Government, except when it was found
necessary to impose new taxation. The budget was now to be laid annually before
the Council, every member of which, speaking in turn, had the right to express
his views upon it. Subject to much the same safeguards as have been found
necessary in the House of Commons, the right; of interpellation was also
granted, both as a concession to native demands and as affording the executive
an opportunity of defending its measures. These concessions did not satisfy
the extreme party of Indian reform; but they were of no mean significance. Men
of native birth, seated side by side with the highest executive officers, were
henceforward able to make their opinions known at the Viceroy’s council-table.
They were listened to with deference, and, though their opinions might not
prevail, it was at least incumbent upon the Governor-General and his Ministers
to reply to their criticisms and endeavour to win their approval. The Government
thus openly acknowledged that it not only desired, as it had always done, the
moral and material welfare of the millions committed to its charge, but also
held it of the greatest importance to work towards the realisation of that high
aim, so far as possible, with the approval, and even through the agency, of the
ruled.
In December,
1888, Lord Dufferin handed over his office to the
Marquis
of Lansdowne. New problems and new dangers were arising in India. The era of
comparative prosperity which dated from Lord Mayo’s time, and had proved
buoyant enough to withstand the strain of war and famine under Lord Lytton, was
now definitely approaching its end. A cloud of troubles, due to falling
exchange, bad harvests, and frontier wars, was looming up to burst over the
country in the next decade. •
Abdurrahman
had remained consistently faithful to Great Britain. His loyalty was never
really in doubt; but his cordiality towards different Viceroys varied with
their personal characters and the policies they were called upon to follow.
Lord Lansdowne could hardly be expected to win the intimate place which his
predecessor had held in the Amir’s regard; but the main reason for a certain
estrangement that now sprang up between Abdurrahman and the Indian Government
was to be attributed to a gradual change in British frontier policy. The belt
of tribal territory left between the British boundary line and Afghanistan was
necessarily a constant source of trouble. The Indian Government was held
accountable for any depredations the tribesmen might commit against the Amir’s
country, but was alike unable to foresee and to prevent them. On the other
hand, it was easy for Abdurrahman, remaining himself in the background, to
foment disturbances among the tribes, if he wished, for any reason, to put
pressure upon his ally. A school of Indian administrators arose which
advocated the substitution of a real for a nominal control over these
semi-independent clans, the rectification of the Afghan-British frontier, the
extension of strategic railways, and the gradual reduction of all the turbulent
districts to order. The chief arguments against this policy were the great
cost, the wide extent of country to be controlled, and, above all, the risk of
offending the Amir, whose continued loyalty claimed from Great Britain every
concession that was compatible with her own security. For ten years after 1885,
the Indian Government made some cautious steps in the direction of what is
known as the Forward policy. The movement stopped far short of the schemes of
Lord Lytton and never contemplated a rupture with Afghanistan ; but it was
sufficiently marked, especially when Sir Frederick Roberts was
Commander-in-Chief (1885-93), to cause uneasiness to Abdurrahman, who viewed
the gradual approach to his frontiers with great jealousy, and strongly
preferred that the tribes owning his religious headship should be left
independent. In 1888 a mission under Mr (now Sir) Mortimer Durand was on the
point of starting for Afghanistan to explain and justify British policy, but
was postponed in consequence of the rebellion of Ishak Khan, who rose against
the Amir in Afghan Turkestan. Things drifted from bad to worse. Abdurrahman had
causes of complaint against the Russians for acts of aggression in the Pamirs,
the only region where the Afghan-Russian frontier had not been demarcated, and
he looked with increasing suspicion and dislike upon the British railway lines
i873-i9oi]
Agreement with the Amir.—Monetary crisis. 488
creeping
nearer and nearer to Kandahar. In 1890 the tension was extreme and Lord
Lansdowne declared that, up to the eve of his departure, all the conditions of
the frontier problem were calculated to lead to a rupture with Afghanistan. In
1892 it was proposed to send a mission under Lord Roberts to confer with the
Amir. Considering that Lord Roberts was a devoted adherent of the Forward
policy, and had played the principal part in the Second Afghan War, the choice
of an envoy was not particularly tactful.. But the Amir proved equal to the
occasion, and managed to delay the mission on plausible pretexts till Lord
Roberts had left India. Sir Mortimer Durand took his place, and met the Amir at
Kabul in 1893. The results were thoroughly satisfactory. It was decided that
the Afghan boundary line both on the Indian frontier and in the Pamirs should
be settled as soon as possible. The Amir’s annual subsidy was raised from
eighty thousand to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and further supplies
of arms and ammunition were promised him. From that date till his death in
1901, the cordiality of his relations with the British Government remained
unimpa;"ed.
During Lord
Lansdowne’s period of office a serious monetary problem which had long been
impending came to a head. The decline in the value of silver throughout the
world was a disturbing economic feature of the latter part of the century which
no human foresight could have met or warded off. It was due partly to increased
production through the opening of new mines, partly to the demonetisation of
silver by Germany and the renunciation of bimetallism by the States of the
Latin Union. The silver coins throughout the greater part of Europe thus became
token money only, but the effects on India were far more momentous. Before 1873
the value of the rupee had approximated closely to two shillings. From that
date it began to fall. The decline became accelerated after 1885 and in 1890
the rupee was worth only one shilling and fourpence. In 1890-1 there was a
temporary rise due to special legislation in America; but after 1892 the value
of the rupee was again on the downward grade. India was affected in most of her
dealings with the outside world, and especially with England. Since the two
countries had not the same standard of value, the loss fell altogether upon
India, the silver-using country; for her liabilities in London, including the
interest on her public debt, payments for public works, pensions, and the
upkeep of the India Office, had to be discharged in gold. Year by year, as the
fall continued, she was called upon to pay a ‘greater number of rupees for each
pound sterling. Further, with the annexation of new territory and the increased
expenditure on railways and public works, the amount to be remitted home
constantly tended to increase. Larger and larger quantities of gold had to be
purchased with depreciated and rapidly depreciating silver. In 1892, when the
value of the rupee had by no means touched bottom, it was estimated that nearly
six million pounds more revenue had to be
raised by
taxation from "the Indian peoples than would have been necessary if the
rupee had retained the value it bore in 1873.
Other
economic evils naturally followed. It was impossible for the Finance Minister
to make accurate estimates for even a few months ahead. A further temporary
rise or fall of a halfpenny in the value of the rupee confounded the most
painstaking and careful forecasts. The violent fluctuations checked and
discouraged mercantile enterprise, and hampered the flow of capital from
Europe. The artificial stimulus given to the export trade was a poor
compensation for other evils, and, by an inexorable economic law, could not
ultimately haVe anything but an impoverishing effect upon the general welfare.
To meet the increasing charge, further taxation, some of it retrograde and
economically vicious, was found to be necessary. The salt dues were enhanced
and an income tax reimposed—two methods of raising revenue to which Indian
statesmen are rightly loth to have recourse. It is not surprising that, at the
end of the decade 1880-90, the Indian Government warned the authorities at home
that, unless a remedy could speedily be found, the country was drifting rapidly
to financial bankruptcy and political ruin. In 1892, they approached the India
Office with the suggestion that a fixed ratio between gold and silver should be
established by international agreement; failing that, they were prepared to
let economic orthodoxy go by the board and close the Indian mints to the free
coinage of silver, with the aim ultimately of introducing a gold standard. In
accordance with this policy, Indian representatives were despatched to the
International Monetary Conference at Brussels, but without result; Bimetallism
being for practical reasons impossible, and the alternative of additional
taxation n°t one to be faced, the Home Government reluctantly fell
back upon Lord Lansdowne’s second proposal, and, fortified by the report of
Lord Herschell’s Commission of 1893, agreed to the closing of the Indian mints
to the unrestricted coinage of silver—a measure which was carried out in the
concluding year of Lord Lansdowne's period of office. The immediate effect was
slight. Lord Elgin, who became Viceroy in 1894, was confronted with the
prospect of a serious deficit, to meet which the five per cent, import duties
abolished in 1882 were reimposed on all goods except cotton cloths. Within the
year even that exception was removed, though, to prevent the duties from being
iri any way protective, a countervailing excise duty was levied on the products
of Indian cotton-mills. The rupee continued to decline in value till 1895, when
it reached the lowest point at thirteen pence. From that date the effect of the
closing of the mints and the restrictions on the import of silver began to be
felt, and the rupee gradually rose till it touched one shilling and fourpence,
the amount at which the Government proposed to introduce a gold standard at the
rate of fifteen rupees to one pound.
In Lord
Elgin’s time an important military reform was finally carried out which had
been advocated by many Viceroys. The old system of three separate Presidential
armies under three Commanders-in-Chief was
1842-95] Military reforms.—Opium.
485
abolished. A
Commander-in-Chief for the whple of India was appointed, with four
Lieutenant-Generals as his subordinates. The reform was typical of the change
that had passed over British dominion in the East. The original arrangement
dated from the time when each of the three Presidencies was surrounded by a zone
of hostile territory. From three centres the irresistible onset of British
power had spread, like the waters of three converging rivers, till it had
covered the whole peninsula. For many years Madras and Bombay had possessed no
frontier. The pressure from foreign Powers was felt only on the far north
beyond the barrier of the Himalayas, or, further still, beyond the protected or
subsidised States of Baluchistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Nepal, Bhutan, and the
independent Burmese tribes, where the limits of British influence marched with
the frontiers of Persia, China, Tibet, and the French possessions east of the
Mekong. That great exterior line was rounded off in 1895 at the one point where
the demarcation, as it affected Russia and Afghan ;st0*\, had been
left incomplete, by the Commission which adjudicated debatable territory in the
Pamirs.
A
controversial question was settled in 1895 for some years by the report of a
Commission on opium. The cultivation and preparation of this drug in British
districts is a state monopoly from which a considerable revenue is obtained.
The Government regulates the extent of poppy culture, and manufactures the
finished product at the state factories of Ghazipur and Patna—one of those
exceptional functions which vividly recall the fact that the Indian empire
sprang from a trading company. A body of reformers in England had long called
upon the State to relinquish the traffic for moral reasons, even at the cost of
severe financial loss. They averred that the effects of opium, except when used
medicinally under strict supervision, were pernicious and degrading; and they
held that the Chinese, with whom the chief export xade is done, were
unrighteously coerced into permitting the importation of the drug by the Opium
War of 1842. The apologists of the Government, however, maintained that the
real reason for the destruction by the Chinese of the opium chests in 1842 was
not the effects of the drug upon the population, but the drain of bullion from
the country to pay for the escess of imports over exports. Whether, even so,
England was justified in going to war, to teach an oriental nation a sounder
view of the phenomena of international trade, is perhaps open to question; but
there seems good reason to hold that the Chinese Government in the Treaty of
Tientsin (1858) admitted opium of their own accord as a legal article of
import. The Commission found that the evil effects of the drug in India had
been greatly exaggerated; they drew a parallel between its temperate use and
that of alcohol in England, and intimated that prohibition was not more
necessary in the one case than in the other. They threw upon the Chinese
Government the burden of taking action if it wished the importation of opium
forbidden,
and claimed that the state monopoly really amounted to a restriction of
cultivation, since it was confined to definite areas. The Indian product was at
least opium in its best and purest form. Deprived of it, the Chinese would only
have recourse to the homegrown supply, which was in every way inferior.
Finally—a reason that probably outweighed all others in the opinion of
politicians—the Commissioners considered that the Indian revenues could not at
present afford the financial loss that would be entailed by prohibition. The
report has by no means put an end to the anti-opium agitation, the promoters of
which are prepared to challenge many of the statements of fact put forward by
the Commission; but the question has, since 1908, entered on a new phase
through the agreement with China for a gradual decrease of the export trade.
Few Viceroys
have had a sterner struggle with adversity than Lord Elgin. The evils of
unstable exchange brought about a series of financial deficits. The countiy was
visited by famine and plague; and to these evils was added a serious frontier
war. The famine of 1896-7, which, radiating from central India, reached as far
as Rajputana and Upper Burma, first put to a severe test the Code of 1883. The
mortality in British territory was estimated at 750,000 deaths; and the cost of
relief, exclusive of remissions of revenue and charitable funds, amounted to
over five millions sterling. Yet so terrible was the problem to be faced, and
so much was done under adverse circumstances, that these results were
considered relatively successful and economical, and only a few changes in
detail were recommended to be made in the Code. Before these could be carried
out, at an interval of only two years, Lord Elgin’s successor, Lord Curzon of
Kedleston, was called upon to deal with an even more terrible famine, that of
1899-1900. Coming, as it did, before the country had fully recovered from the
ravages of the previous one, and attended by an outbreak of cholera and
malarial fever, it taxed the resources of the Government to the extreme point.
The cost of relief amounted to over six millions, and more than a million
persons are said to have perished in British districts alone.
The bubonic
plague broke out in India in 1896. Identical with the epidemic described by
Thucydides, which visited Athens in b.c. 431,
with the Black Death of the Middle Ages, and the Great Plague of London in
1665, this scourge of nations has had a strange and interesting history. It
came originally from the East, probably from the most populous centres of the
Chinese empire, and moved slowly westwards till it reached the shores of the
Atlantic. After periodical and destructive outbreaks lasting through several
centuries, it gradually receded by well- defined steps to its original home in
the East. It li igered longest in the south-east of Europe, where the
boundaries of the two continents meet under the suzerainty of the Turk. Even in
Asia it appeared, for more than a hundred years, to lose its virulent and
destructive force, tending to become merely endemic in certain localities.
1893-8]
Fighting the plague.—Chitral rising.
487
At the end of
the nineteenth century the plague seemed to be endued with a new and baneful
activity. In the autumn of 1896 it appeared in Bombay, causing an exodus of the
population, and dealing a serious blow at the commercial prosperity of the
city. In 1897 it spread through western and central India, and in 1898 the
first cases were reported in Calcutta. The Administration was confronted with a
new problem requiring the most delicate handling. To frame counsels of
perfection was easy; the difficulty was to apply them. It was often found
impossible in practice to employ the preventive measures recommended by
science, owing to the panic of the native population and their unconquerable
opposition to isolation hospitals, house to house visitation, segregation
camps, and inoculation. In the early stages of the campaign against the
disease, serious riots broke out in Bombay, and, owing to incendiary writings
in the vernacular Press, the law in regard to seditious publications was made
more stringent—a measure which, however necessary, naturally intensified the
popular discontent. After 1898, milder methods of prevention and cure were
employed, which proved actually more successful in action, as they conflicted
less with the prejudices of the people. In spite of the most devoted efforts,
little real progress has been made towards stamping out the plague in India. To
keep it fairly under control seems now the utmost that can be hoped for, and it
remains a most serious and ever present problem for Indian statesmen.
By the Durand
agreement of 1893, the hill State of Chitral, abutting on the mountain range of
the Hindu Kush, had been embraced within the British sphere of influence. An
agency was established at Gilgit and British political officers occasionally
visited the capital. In 1895, the native Government was overthrown by one of
those violent revolutions which occur periodically in the history of all
oriental States. The ruling chief was assassinated, and all the forces of
disorder united for a brief moment in an attempt to drive out the British
representative, who was closely besieged in Chitral itself. He was only
released, and the Chitralis defeated, after an invasion of the countiy by
16,000 troops. Though the Viceroy advised the retention of Chitral, Lord
Rosebery’s Government decided upon an evacuation of the country. But the
Liberal party lost office before the troops could be withdrawn, and the
Conservative Ministry of Lord Salisbury reversed their decision.
But the
Chitral rising proved only the harbinger of further troubles, and soon the
whole extent of the tribal country was aflame with rebellion. To this effect
many causes contributed, each of which was in turn hailed as the main reason for
the war by partisans in England. The tribesmen were intensely jealous of their
independence, and they looked with growing distrust upon the Forward policy of
the past ten years, the construction of roads and railways up to the limits of
their territory, and the nearer and nearer approach of the outposts of British
power.
They were
taught by the fanatical priests of their religion that the boundary line lately
drawn between their territory and Afghanistan was intended, on its southern
side, to be also the northern frontier of British India, and, untrue as the
insidious suggestion was, their suspicions and fears were natural enough. But
other great events at this time were sending a thrill through the whole
Mohammadan community. The crushing victory over the Greeks obtained by Turkish
arms aroused the warlike fervour which is never wholly extinct in the breast of
the true believer. The abuse of the Sultan, which was common on popular
platforms in England at this time, is credibly alleged to have aroused strong
anti-Christian feeling; and the Amir of Afghanistan himself had lately
published an academic treatise on the jehad or holy war against infidels as
enjoined in the Koran.
The War
subjected British arms to the severest strain imposed upon them since the Mutiny.
In June, 1897, a rising took place in the Tochi valley. In the following month,
fierce attacks were made by the Swatis on the fortified posts at Chakdarra and
the Malakand, which had been occupied by British troops since the Chitral
expedition. In August, the Mohmands raided within twenty miles of Peshawar, and
the Afridis besieged the fortified stations on the Samana Ridge, where a Sikh
garrison made a gallant resistance, dying to a man at their posts. The Afridis
next captured all the British positions in the Khaibar, defended though they
were by tribal levies of their own countrymen. The challenge thus given was
speedily accepted. Retribution fell first upon the Mohmands. The Malakand field
force, under Sir Bindon Blood, invaded their territory in September, 1898.
Operations were concluded in the following January after fierce fighting and
considerable loss of life. The campaign in the Tirah valley did not begin till
October, when Sir William Lockhart took command with an army of 40,000 men. The
heights of Dargai were brilliantly stormed at a cost of two hundred casualties.
The country was traversed and the villages were destroyed; but the march was
everywhere harassed by desperate rearguard actions, and some of the hardest
fighting in the campaign was experienced when the enemy’s territory was being
evacuated by two separate routes at the end of the year. On the return from the
Tirah valley the Khaibar posts were again occupied by British troops. Under
threat of another invasion in the spring, the Afridis agreed to pay the fines
imposed upon them and to surrender their arms. British losses in the war
amounted to three hundred killed and nine hundred wounded.
In
January, 1899, Lord Elgin was succeeded by Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who had
served in Lord Salisbury’s Government as Undersecretary for India and for
Foreign Affairs, and left what promised to be a brilliant career in the House
of Commons at an unusually early age to take up his new office. ■
The first
problem that demanded solution at his hands was the
1S97-9]
Settlement of the tribal districts.
489
settlement of
the north-west frontier. The Tirah'campaign was barely concluded when he took
the oath of office. More than ten thousand troops were still quartered over the
border in Chitral, the passes, Lundi Kotal, and the Tochi valley. A shrewd
statesmanship was required to guide and shape the policy of the future. The
advocates of the Forward policy held that the expenditure of lives and money,
the despatch of punitive expeditions, and the construction of strategic
railways, were unavoidable steps in the demarcation of a scientific frontier.
The extreme adherents of this view looked forward to the time when the tribal
territory should be finally subdued and the frontiers of India and Afghanistan
should coincide. To men of the opposite school the approach to the mountain
walls seemed a needless, costly, and hazardous course of aggression, though
they were not clear as to where the line should be drawn, now that the barrier
of the Indus had once been passed. Before he left England, Lord Curzon was
looked upon as a champion of the Forward policy; but he proved no supporter of
it in office, if it meant extending British dominion till it touched the Afghan
frontier. He was, on the other hand, no devotee of the Lawrence school, if that
required the evacuation of Chitral, Quetta, and the points already reached.
Indeed, though the basis of his policy lay in a fresh and independent study of
the problem, it proved in operation something of a compromise between the two
warring sections. British troops were gradually withdrawn from the Khaibar, the
Malakand, Dargai, and the Euram valley, and their places were taken by tribal
levies trained and commanded by British officers. All interference with the
religion or independence of the tribes was eschewed; but they were firmly made
to understand that order must be kept on the borderland. Within the British
lines there was a certain concentration of force and a numerical increase in
the garrisons. The traffic in arms and ammunition was, so far as possible,
suppressed, and strategic railways were pushed forward to Chaman, Dargai, and
Jamrud. The widespread conflagration of
1897-8
has been succeeded by twelve years of peace on the north-west frontier—an
eloquent testimony to the success of a policy that happily combined the
advantages of economy, military efficiency, and respect for the independence of
the tribesmen.
Lord Curzon’s
border policy was rounded off and completed by an administrative reform of the
first importance—the separation of the north-west frontier districts from the
Lieutenant-Governorship of the Punjab. The Punjab had itself in the past been
the typical frontier province of British India, and had produced a famous
school of administrators, who ruled their districts almost untrammelled by
Government interference with a personal and benevolent autocracy. But, as the
boundary line of British India shifted further and further away towards
Afghanistan, the status of the Punjab approximated to that of the more
constitutional and settled Provinces. Lord Lytton, it will be remem
bered, had
proposed the creation of a separate frontier charge under specially appointed
officers subject only,to the Supreme Government; but the projected reform
remained in abeyance, till it was carried into effect by Lord Curzon in 1901.
Even then, the change was stoutly resisted by many of the Punjab officials, who
were loth to see their extraordinary powers curtailed. , The new province was
made up of the trans-Indus districts of the Punjab, together with the political
charges of the Malakand, Khaibar, Kuram, Tochi, and Wana.
The peace
observed along the north-western frontier of India had as one of its happiest
results the continuance of satisfactory relations with Afghanistan. Abdurrahman,
who had met Lord Curzon in earlier years, and had formed a high opinion of his
character and abilities, died in 1901. The greatest testimony to the unique
position he had obtained was the peaceful succession of his son Habibulla,
which was directly contrary to the Afghan precedent of an internecine conflict
between the sons of a dead Amir. Down to the present time, the new ruler has
succeeded fairly well in maintaining his power and in holding back his unruly
subjects from serious depredation on the frontier; but he does not appear to
possess his father’s abilities, and there are not wanting signs that the Afghan
question will again become a very difficult and dangerous one for Indian
statesmen.
The other
Asiatic Power with which Lord Curzon had important dealings was Tibet. Though
the suzerainty of the Emperor of China was nominally recognised, the government
of the country was really in the hands of the Dalai Lama or Buddhist High
Priest of T.hassn ., or of those who controlled that sacred pontiff. British
relations with Tibet dated back to the time of Warren Hastings, who on two
occasions sent missions to the country in the hope of establishing trade. In
1887, the Tibetans invaded the protected State of Sikkim, but were repulsed
with loss. In 1890, a convention was agreed upon between the Indian Government
and China, whose sovereign rights over Tibet the British found it convenient to
recognise, for the opening of commercial intercourse between the two countries.
The Tibetans, however, did their best to render the concession valueless. They
refused to cooperate in a demarcation of their frontier line or to meet the
Chinese and British representatives in a conference. In 1904 a mission under
Colonel Younghusband was sent to penetrate into the country and negotiate a
settlement. Resistance was offered to the progress of the mission by the troops
of the Dalai Lama, a mere rabble, which were repulsed with some loss of life on
their side. Lhassa was entered for the first time by a European army. The Dalai
Lama abdicated, and a treaty was negotiated with his successor, which was
afterwards modified in some important particulars by the Secretary of State.
Lord Curzon’s action in Tibet seemed hardly consonant with his former
unaggressive policy upon the frontier, and earned the adverse criticism of a
section of the Liberal party in England. It was said in
defence that
the Dalai Lama was known to desire an alliance with the Russian Government; but
there were many who doubted the moral right of the Indian Government to force
trade relations upon an independent country, or to deny it the privilege of
negotiating with other European Powers.
In 1903, Lord
Curzon visited the Persian Gulf, which lies beyond the range of a Viceroy’s
ordinary autumn tour. The future destiny of Persia is one of the most uncertain
of Asiatic problems. Russia presses upon her from the north, Great Britain from
the south, though the influence of the two Powers is very different. Great
Britain holds in her hands the bulk of the foreign trade of southern Persia,
and claims a general control of the whole Asiatic coast line from Aden
eastwards to Baluchistan, whether the shore itself be under the sovereignty of
independent Arabian tribes, the Ottoman Government, the sultanate of Oman, or
the Shah himself. Since 1853, the waters of the Gulf—an early theatre of
British effort and enterprise in the seventeenth century—have been cleared of
pirates and opened to vessels sailing under every flag. Great Britain has never
coveted territorial possessions on either shore. It is her avowed policy to
preserve the integrity of Persia, to further the commercial and political
development of the country, and to prevent it from falling under the sway of a
rival European Power, and so forming the base for an assault upon India.
While England
approaches Persia from the sea, the pressure exerted by Russia upon the
northern frontier is far more direct. Her conquest of the Turcomans and
absorption of Khiva and Bokhara have made the boundaries of the two empires
conterminous for about a thousand miles. The development of navigation on the
Volga and the construction of the Transcaspian railway have given to Russia the
bulk of the trade with northern Persia. But the commercial weapons of Russia
are monopoly and prohibition. She has laid an interdict upon the making of
railroads in Persian territory, and has often opposed measures that might
regenerate the country. And further, Russia is said to aim at more than a
preponderating influence. Persia naturally looks north, and the capital itself
is within a hundred miles of the Caspian, now to all intents and purposes a
Russian lake. A body of Persian Cossacks, trained and commanded by Russian
officers, is by far the most efficient part of the Persian army. Were Russia
left a clear field, all indications point to the gradual but complete
absorption of Persia into the huge framework of the Muscovite empire; but the
commercial and political rivalry of Great Britain bars the way. Persia stands
on a different level from that of the central Asian khanates, though she is
hardly more able than they to resist by material force the relentless advance
of Russia. She possesses an ancient though decaying civilisation; and the
glamour of her past still faintly illumines her present degeneracy.
Down to 1887,
the influence of England in Persia, at one time great,
had steadily
tended to decline, but the appointment of Sir Henry Drummond Wolff to Teheran
in that year did much to restore her waning prestige. Lord Curzon had
consistently advocated, for many years before his viceroyalty, the extension of
British interests in southern Persia by the establishment of consulates in the
ports of the Gulf and the trading cities inland, the extension of telegraphs
and the development of the Nushki-Seistan trade route. As Viceroy he did much
to realise all these projects. It was hopeless now, even if it were desirable,
to supplant Russia in her predominant position in the north—the natural and
fitting outcome of her great military and political strength in that region.
But Russia was credited with the desire of proceeding ultimately to the
annexation of the northern provinces of Persia, especially of Khorasan, and
penetrating by way of Seistan along the Afghan frontier to a port on the
Persian Gulf. On all such aspirations, if really entertained, a check was put
by the British Foreign Secretary’s pronouncement in May, 1903, that Great
Britain would regard the establishment of a naval base or of a fortified port
in the Persian Gulf by any other Power as a grave menace to British interests,
to be resisted by all possible means. Lord Curzon’s visit to the Gulf was the
complement of this notable declaration; but the final development of the policy
was not reached till after he had laid down his office. On September 1, 1907, a
convention was signed with Russia at St Petersburg relating to Persia,
Afghanistan, and Tibet. In Afghanistan there was pract ally a mere recognition
of the status quo. The suzerainty of China over Tibet was acknowledged; and the
country was closed alike to Russia and Great Britain except so far as it was
opened to the latter by the Treaty of Lhassa in 1904 and the Anglo-Chinese
convention of 1906. In regard to Persia the agreement was far more important.
It sums up and ratifies a solution to which the work of diplomatists and
boundary commissions have been directed for many years. The two Powers promise
to respect the integrity and political independence of Persia. Great Britain
binds herself to set no barriers in the way of Russian influence in northern
Persia exercised through political and commercial concessions granted by the
Shah, while Russia engages to respect in like manner the position of Great
Britain in the south-eastern provinces. Both Powers were impelled to a definite
agreement by the knowledge that the Persian problem, already difficult enough,
was soon to be complicated by a new factor. Persia has proved receptive to the
new spirit stirring among the peoples of the East, and has endeavoured to
establish a form of parliamentary government. But constitutionalism is not
easily brought to the birth in oriental countries, and in the period of
transition there will be many tempting opportunities for either England or
Russia to intervene, unless they are bound by clear and valid terms.
At the end of
the century, the finances of India emerged from the long depression in which
they had been plunged during the period of
unstable
exchange. After 1899, the Finance Minister found himself each, year in the
possession of a handsome surplus. Accordingly, an Act was passed, on the
recommendation of Sir Henry Fowler’s Commission, to make the British sovereign
legal tender in India at the value of fifteen rupees. The desired result was
obtained, and a steady flow of gold to India set in. The profits of the silver
coinage were paid into a gold reserve fund, which, when Lord Curzon left India,
amounted to nearly nine millions sterling. The expedient adopted has worked
well in practice and has signally falsified the prognostications of those who
opposed; the closing of the mints. Theoretically, however, the
monetary position of India is very anomalous. Gold is the standard of value,
but as yet the Indian mints have not begun to coin it. The silver coinage: is
really a token currency with an exchange value above its intrinsic worth, so
that the Government makes a considerable profit on it; but it is still legal
tender to any amount. The improvement in the finances enabled Lord Curzon to
grant valuable remissions of taxation after the terrible famine of 1899-1900. In
1902 over a million and a quarter of the land tax was given back to the most
distressed provinces, and in the two following years the incidence of the salt
tax was made lighter than it had been since the days of the Mutiny.
In internal
affairs Lord Curzon’s period of office formed an important landmark. Every
department and branch of the administration was subjected to a searching and
impartial test. The method employed was in nearly every case the
same—preliminary investigation by: a strong commission, followed by an
independent consideration of their report and prompt legislative action.
Procedure by commission, so often a plausible way of shelving inconvenient
questions, was abundantly justified by the extraordinary complexity of the
field to be surveyed, and became in Lord Curzon’s hands a preparation for
drastic action. The numerous reforms can be only briefly specified here. On the
military side, the native regiments were rearmed, the artillery was
strengthened, and the transport service was reorganised. Contingents of the
Indian army played a prominent part in the task of defending the British
empire in many lands. They fought against the Boxer insurgents in China, and
against the Mullah in Somaliland. In 1905 a thoroughgoing reform of the police
service, which in its lower branches was notoriously corrupt and oppressive,
was inaugurated. An important agrarian measure was passed, designed to free the
cultivators of the soil in the Punjab from oppression at the hands of the
money-lenders. A new Department of Commerce and Industry was established, with
a sixth member of the Viceroy’s Council as its President. The procedure of
government Departments was simplified and improved. A determined assault was
made upon the abuse of the system of report writing, described by the Viceroy
as the most perfect and pernicious in the world. It had grown within recent
years to such a pitch that it threatened to clog the whole administrative
machinery.
The education problem was thoroughly sifted by a conference at Simla and the
labours of a University Commission. A large annual grant was set aside for the
extension of primary schools. On the position of higher education the
Commission produced a cautiously worded but rather discouraging report. The old
theory, put forward in 1854, that a college education opened to the higher
classes would “ filter ” down to the masses of the people, had proved a vain
hope. A university degree was looked upon by the clever Bengali as a mere passport
to a post in the provincial or subordinate Civil Service. The Universities
themselves, mere examining boards, fostered a system of “cramming” which,
deleterious enough even for Europeans, produced the most deplorable results,
from an educational point of view, when applied to the imitative intelligence
and facile memory of oriental races. In 1904 the Senates of the Universities
were reorganised in the hope that the new governing bodies, mainly composed of
the teaching staff, would frame regulations more with regard to sound
educational principles and less with the aim of turning out as large a number
as possible of qualified or partially qualified graduates.
The
educational policy of his Government, more than anything else except the
partition of Bengal, brought Lord Curzon into conflict with the so-called
National party in India. That party is the outcome of the higher education
given in the colleges. It is nourished on a careful study of English classics,
especially the political philosophy of the Whig and Liberal schools of thought.
Its avowed aim is the establishment in India of a democratic and
constitutional government—a transplanting of the full-grown tree of the Western
State to Eastern soil. It had first risen to prominence in 1885 from the
organised demonstrations in honour of the Tetiring Viceroy, Lord Ripon; and,
from that year onward, an annual meeting was held in one of the big cities of
India under the title of the Indian National Congress. The Congress remains as
yet officially unrecognised, but its existence, embarrassing as it is to the
Indian Government, is the natural outcome of some of the best and most liberal
aspects of British rule. It has done excellent work in falling attention to
legitimate grievances, and, were it more under the control of the moderate
constitutional party, its beneficial activity would be greater than it is. Many
of its members have been men of ability and public spirit; but its aims as
formulated in recent years are considered by most Indian statesmen to be
considerably in advance of what is at present practicable. It endeavours, not
always with success, to combine democratic ideals with national aspirations
which are at bottom intensely aristocratic. The attempt to disguise this
fundamental cleavage, and to bridge over the diversities of race feeling, weakens
the Congress as an effective Opposition to the Indian Government. It is
thoroughly representative only of the comparatively small section of native
Indians who know English. Its claim, so loudly made, to speak for the great
mass of the cultivators of
the soil, has
little justification, and it is, as a rule, looked upon with distrust by the
feudatory chiefs and the bulk of the Mohammadan community.
The Congress,
inclined at first to welcome Lord Curzon, became alienated from him when, with
characteristic outspokenness, he declined to advance along the path it had
pointed out, and forced it to perceive that his interest lay in social and
administrative reform rather than in constitutional experiment. Yet Lord Curzon
was always eager to extend the sphere of action open to men of native birth,
and no Viceroy was ever more inflexible in meting out stern chastisement to any
European who had insulted or ill-treated a member of the subject races. He
freely risked his popularity with the army and the European inhabitants in his
firm determination to punish such lapses severely.
On January
1,1903, Lord Curzon proclaimed King Edward VII, who had himself visited India
in 1875 when Prince of Wales, as Emperor of India at the coronation Durbar at
Delhi—a pageant which surpassed even that of 1877. In 1904 the Viceroy came to
England for a few months, but was reappointed for a further term of office. He
carried through on his return an administrative reform of the first importance—
the partition of Bengal, which had often been suggested in the past. The
original Presidency of Fort William had been already lightened in 1836 by the
formation of the North-West Provinces (combined with Oudh in 1877 and renamed
the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh in 1901), and by the creation of Assam in
1874 as a separate Commissionership. The time was now ripe for a further
subdivision. The Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal was expected to administer the
affairs of a population nearly twice as great as that of the United Kingdom.
No one denied that the task had grown to be beyond the capacity of a single
man, and that it was destined to grow still heavier year by year. The Indian
Government accordingly decided to divide the province. Many alternative schemes
were considered, and, to a certain extent, the plan adopted was modified in
accordance with outside criticism. Finally, a new province was created, by
amalgamating fifteen districts of the old province of Bengal with Assam, under
the title of Eastern Bengal and Assam.
Before the
reform was completed, a fierce popular agitation broke out against the change.
Though partly genuine, and, in so far as that was the case, largely based upon
a misapprehension of the facts, it was mainly directed by the literary class,
and deftly manipulated to suit the aspirations of the Indian National Congress
party. What the Viceroy described as a mere adjustment of administrative
boundaries was represented as the partition of a homogeneous nation and as a
deliberate attack upon the social, historical, and linguistic ties of the
Bengalis. The extreme presentment of the opposition case tended to assume, as
Indian political movements so often do, an element of the grotesque; but the
saner members of the National party, supported by
496
Lord Curzon resigns.—Lord Minto Viceroy. [1904-5
a small
English section, argued that the particular method selected by the Indian
Government, whatever its abstract merits, should have been abandoned on the
ground that no political change can be really beneficial which is strongly opposed
by national sentiment. They could not deny the necessity for some change; but
they proposed that the ruler of Bengal should henceforth be a Governor instead
of a Lieutenant- Governor, and that he should be assisted, as in Madras and
Bombay, by an Executive Council. Lord Curzon replied that the establishment of
an Executive Council in Bengal would divide and weaken the responsibility of
the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor; for that province, with its variety of
races and civilisations and its many complex problems, still above all others
required a strong personal control. Here was revealed the wide gulf that
separated the official and non-official views. Looking mainly to the efficiency
of the administration, the Viceroy and his advisers desired to decentralise as
little as possible; while the National party only saw in the proposed change a
favourable opportunity for advancing in the direction of constitutional and
representative government, and to impose definite limits upon the autocratic
power of the head of the executive.
Lord Curzon
declined to be moved from his purpose by popular clamour, and the reform was
duly carried out in 1905. It was the last important act of his viceroyalty. In
1904 the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Kitchener of Khartum, with a view to the
simplification and concentration of business, had proposed certain changes in
the elaborate military department in India which, in Lord Curzon’s;
opinion, would tend to make the head of the army dangerously independent of the
civil power. In the face of this conflict of opinion, the Home Government found
itself in a difficult position. Misunderstandings and recriminations ensued;
and Lord Curzon, considering that he had not received the support to which he
was entitled, resigned office and returned to England in 1905. He was succeeded
by the Earl of Minto, great- grandson of the first Earl, who had been
Governor-General from 1807 to 1813.
Lord Minto’s
task has proved no easy one. The agitation against the partition of Bengal has
developed into a demand for Indian Home Rule. The advent to power of a Liberal
Government at the end of 1905, with Mr John Morley (soon created Viscount
Morley of Blackburn) as Secretary for India, aroused many extravagant hopes;
and, when it was found that, though he lent a sympathetic ear to all Indian
reformers, he declined to reverse Lord Curzon’s action in Bengal, or make rash
constitutional experiments, a considerable amount of open discontent was
manifested. India is now passing through a period of unrest. Even in the
National Congress there has been an open breach between the moderate and the
extreme party. A disconcerting feature has been the outbreak of an anarchist
propaganda and the occurrence of murderous attacks upon Europeans. It has been
found necessary to curb the licence
of the Press
by drastic measures against seditious journalists, to pass an Explosives Act,
and to extend the summary jurisdiction of the Courts in cases of violence. But,
while the methods of repression have been prompt and stem, neither the Viceroy
nor the Secretary of State has faltered in following the policy of reform to
which they were already committed. Lord Morley has appointed a native Indian to
the Executive Council of the Viceroy, and two others to the Council which
advises him at the India Office. By the Indian Councils Act of 1909 and by
Regulations authorised under the Act, the. number of members serving on the
Viceregal and Provincial Legislative Councils has been nearly trebled. An
official majority is still retained on the Viceroy’s Council but has been
dispensed with on the Provincial Councils. The Executive Councils of Madras and
Bombay are to be enlarged, and new Councils may be created in Provinces ruled
by Lieutenant-Governors. In the Constitution of the Legislative Councils the
principle of election is to be introduced side by side with that of nomination.
Special electorates of Mohammadans, landowners, and trading communities have
been formed to secure the representation of classes and interests rather than
of territorial areas. Much greater latitude than before has been given to the
Councils in regard to interpellation, criticism, and the initiation of
business; and it seems likely that the changes will effectively associate the
people of India with the Government, not only in the work of legislation, but
also in that of actual administration.
The main
characteristics of British Indian history since the Mutiny are not difficult to
discern. Internally, there have been sweeping political, social, and economic
changes. Though India is still mainly an agricultural country, the mill, the
factory, and the workshop have sprung up in many districts with all the
influence, partly progressive, partly degrading, which they are wont to
exercise over the life of a people. The foreign sea-borne trade has been
multiplied five times in value since 1857, and the immense improvement in
communications has not only brought great economic benefits, but has done
something to break down the ancient barriers of race, caste, and faith. If
these developments have not produced a more marked increase in the prosperity
of the bulk of the population, that is because, by an inexorable law, good
government in India produces its own problems and difficulties. It stays the
ravages of famine, interdicts civil war, and forbids infanticide, only to find
itself called upon to support a population pressing ever nearer and nearer to
the verge of subsistence, now that the former checks on its increase have been
removed.
Externally,
the only important acquisition of territory has been the annexation of Burma.
But, though elsewhere the land frontier, having reached the mountains, has on
the whole remained stationary, it has .been rectified and settled. British
supremacy has radiated outwards,
4&8 Progress of India since the Mutiny.
beyond the
administrative boundary proper, over protected or subsidised States and
political spheres of influence, till it comes into touch with other great
Asiatic Powers, Western or Eastern—Persia, Russia, China, Siam, and French
Indo-China. The process which continually demarcates and defines political
boundaries in Asia, though it removes some dangers to the world’s peace,
creates others. The storm centre shifts from the frontiers of European Powers
to the protected States occupying thte margin of territory between their great
Asiatic empires. Any European Power that finds its frontier endangered by some
outburst of anarchy in a semi-civilised country may be driven to armed
intervention, but it will not easily persuade its jealous rivals that it has no
ulterior aims. Therein lurks the peril of the situation! ■ The
maintenance of peace, for example, between England and Russia, may depend,
quite apart' from all other causes^ upon the power of the Amir of Afghanistan
to impose upon his turbulent subjects an order and a discipline which are alien
to their nature.
The history
of the rise of British dominion in India has in the course of this work been
carried down from the first meeting of a small body of Elizabethan traders in
the hall of a City Company to a sketch of the vast empire of today. So rapid
has been its growth and expansion tha:t the whole tale is rounded off within
the compass of a History whose title is “Modern.” When all qualifications and
deductions have been made, it may be justly claimed that Great Britain has
built up a model system for the administration of an oversea empire under subtropical
skies. It is interes ng to observe how abiding were the lines of policy and how
permanent were the instruments which from the beginning she brought to the
solution of the problem. The Factory, with its President and Council, is the
direct parent of the Viceroy and his Executive Council. Just as each member
today holds a separate portfolio for which he is responsible, so each of the subordinate
officials of the old Presidencies was head of a branch factory or special
department. English rule in India has ever been, as Burke pointed out, a
government of writing and a government of record. The administration has always
been carried on with a formidable machinery of despatches, minutes, and
reports. In the earliest days of the Factory period, as now under the imperial
Government of the Crown, those members of Council who dissented from the
opinion of the majority were expected to enter a written and signed protest, to
be forwarded for the rnformation of the authorities at home. The old corrupt
Covenanted Civil Service of the Company was purified by Cornwallis; and its
later history made it a worthy forerunner of the imperial Civil Service with
its lofty traditions and honourable record of devoted work. The salutary
tendency which impels British thinkers to criticise their best institutions has
not spared this Service; but no responsible voice breathes a word against the
ability or cleanhandedness of its members. They
Influence of India on British policy,
499
have their
own rewards and are led onward by the allurement of an honourable ambition; yet
few have ever risen high without dedicating far more of their abilities and
powers to the service of India than a narrow conception of their duty required
of them.
If England,
for the past hundred years, has held the fate of India in the hollow of her
hand, India, in turn, has exercised a potent influence over the destinies of
her suzerain. She has afforded a unique training ground for soldiers and
statesmen. She has attracted and engrossed the genius of some of England’s most
gifted sons. She has taken heavy toll of English talent and English lives. The
resources of her commerce and the prestige which her possession confers have
set Great Britain in the foremost place among the nations of the world. The
defence of India and the maintenance of free communications with her shores is
a problem which increasingly dominates British policy and British diplomacy.
The pathway over the seas is dotted throughout its length by coaling stations
and fortified posts. British possessions in the Mediterranean—■ the
milestones and relics of the great continental wars of the eighteenth
century—acquired a new and unexpected value when the Cape route was abandoned
for that of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. Gradually and imperceptibly, Great
Britain tends to extend her control over the shores and waterways along the
line of intercommunication. The occupation of Egypt and Cyprus, the control of
the Persian Gulf, the policing of the Arabian Sea, are all ultimately due to
the desire to keep open the approaches to India. No effort, no sacrifice has
been considered too great to retain the splendid prize; but that determination
has gone hand in hand with a consistent and sustained attempt to ameliorate the
condition of the Indian peoples, to confer upon them the benefits of Western
knowledge and Western ideals of government, and so to justify on high political
and ethical grounds the existence of an empire which, in the peculiar
circumstances of its acquisition and development, has assuredly no parallel in
the history of the world.
THE FAR EAST.
CHINA.
The Tientsin Treaty of 1858 and the
subsequent Conventions opened to the Chinese a new view of their relations and
duties towards the Treaty Powers. Down to that date the old idea of supremacy
which had hitherto dominated their political conduct had prevailed, and they
were now for the first time brought face to face with the policy of the
equality of States. By the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin
foreigners—missionaries and others—were to have, for the first time, the right
of travelling and of residence in the interior of the empire, and the privilege
of being represented by diplomatic agents at the Court of Peking. Though the
Chinese agreed on paper to yield these privileges, they were in spirit as much
opposed to them as ever; and their subsequent conduct was in strict keeping
with the traditional policy of yielding only as much as they had not the power
to withhold.
In 1856, the
Mussulmans of Yunnan rebelled against the Chinese Government and established
themselves at Talifu. Trade between Burma and Yunnan and thus with the rest of
China was in consequence interrupted. Nevertheless, in 1868, Major Sladen
penetrated from Mandalay to Bhamo and visited Talifu. In 1873, the Mussulman
rebellion was suppressed; and, in 1874, the British Government, being desirous
of establishing a trade route between north-eastern Burma and south-western
China, sought from the Tsungli Yamen passports for another expedition commanded
by Colonel Horace Browne. This expedition assembled at Bhamo and there awaited
the arrival of Augustus Margary, of the British Consular Service, who travelled
from Shanghai via Hankow to act as interpreter to Colonel Browne. In due
course, he arrived at Bhamo (January 17,1875), and brought so glowing tin
account of the treatment he had received en route that no antagonism was
anticipated. Before, however, the expedition was ready to start, rumours
reached the camp that opposition was meditated. Margary offered to go ahead of
the expedition and to test the disposition of the Kakhyens
and Chinese
who occupied the intervening territory. He reached the Chinese frontier without
hindrance; but at Manwein, a city near the boundary, he was murdered, and at
the same time Colonel Browne’s escort was attacked. So large was the opposing
force that Colonel Browne deemed it advisable to retire; which he did, reaching
Bhamo in safety.
Sir Thomas
Wade at once demanded reparation for the crime, insisting that an enquiry
should be held on the spot. This was agreed to by the Chinese, who, however,
carried out their part of the bargain in so dilatory a manner as to nullify the
effect intended; whereupon Wade hauled down his flag and left Peking. In
response, however, to an appeal from the Tsungli Yamen he agreed to meet Li
Hungchang in negotiation at Chifu. Here they came to terms, a condition of
which was that an envoy should be sent to London to apologise for the crime.
Fortunately, a Mandarin named Kwo Sungtao was chosen for this office; and so
effectively did he execute his commission that he was left in charge of the
newly established legation at the Court of St James.
Meanwhile the
Emperor T’ung-Chih had arrived at man’s estate, that is to say, he had reached
the age of sixteen, and was thus bound to assume the imperial sceptre and to
take to himself an Empress. Hitherto the affairs of the empire had been
administered by the Empresses— Tz’u An, the widow of the late Emperor Hsien
Feng and the titular Empress Tz’u Hsi, the mother of the Emperor T’ung-Chih.
These two ladies now handed over the reins of power to the young Emperor and
sought among the daughters of the Manchu magnates a lady to share his throne.
Their choice fell upon Alute, the daughter of Ch’ung Chi, a Manchu official. On
October 16, 1872, this imperial marriage took place, with the usual pomp.
It had long
been felt that the non-reception of the foreign representatives at Peking
placed them in an anomalous position, and the fact that T’ung-Chih had come of
age invalidated the excuse that his youth precluded him from granting official
audiences. In answer to the applications of the foreign representatives, he
granted them an audience on June 29, 1873. The good effect of this step was
somewhat marred by the fact that the ceremony was held in a hall used for the
reception of subordinate Mongolian Princes. Doubtless a similar slight would
have been prevented in the future if T’ung-Chih’s reign had been prolonged. But
an attack of small-pox proved fatal to him, and on January 12, 1875, his
Imperial Majesty became a “ guest on high.” Sinister rumours were current as to
the nature of the disease. It was certain that he had rebelled against the
Dowager Empresses; but, however that may be, his death placed the regency once
more in the hands of the Dowagers, whose first duty was to nominate a successor
to the throne. Their choice fell on the son of Prince Ch’un, the seventh son of
Tao Kwang (1820-50), aged four years.
This
selection met with opposition, since it violated the custom that the heir to
the throne should be of a later generation than' the last occupant. The Dowager
Empresses were, however, sufficiently powerful to ignore this usage; and the
infant sovereign ascended the throne without further opposition, under the
title of Kwang Hsii, or “ Succession of Glory.” But the Dowagers had to
overcome another objection to their hasty election. At the time of the death of
T’ung- Chih his widow Alute was enceinte; and, according to usage, the Regents
should have waited until it was proved whether the infant were a son or a
daughter. Fortunately for them, the death of Alute solved the difficulty, and
Kwang Hsii was left the unopposed occupant of the throne. Considerable
ill-feeling had lately arisen against the Japanese in consequence of their
having demanded reparation for the murder of shipwrecked Japanese sailors by
the natives of the east coast of Formosa (1874). The Japanese failing to obtain
satisfaction landed troops in Formosa, and war was only averted by the
intervention of Sir Thomas Wade, who undertook to induce the Chinese to comply
with the demands of the Japanese (1874).
At the same
time, a strong anti-foreign current of opinion prevailed; throughout the
empire. Missionaries were attacked, and in some instances murdered. It is
always difficult to reach the cause of these outbreaks. Commonly some local
circumstance or the presence of an inimical official sets the spark to the
train; and when once the fuse is lighted a Chinese mob quickly passes beyond
control. A French missionary was murdered in Szech’uan, and mission premises
were destroyed in several parts of the country.
European
demands could not, however, be permanently ignored; and, in the second year of
Kwang Hsu’s reign, the Chinese Government agreed; to open four new ports to
foreign trade—Pakhoi,: Wenchow, Ich’ang and Wuhu (1876). Unfortunately, this
further opening of the country to foreigners was followed by a disastrous
famine (1878). Nine millions are said to have perished, and many more would
have suffered the same fate had it not been for the missionaries, who organised
relief works for the benefit of the sufferers. This evidence of goodwill was
not without its effect on the Chinese Government, from which a circular letter
of thanks was received by the foreign representatives at Peking.
A period of
comparative tranquillity followed throughout the empiie, and the Tsungli Yamen
had time to devote to the affairs on the northerr frontier. They had been too
much occupied in suppressing the T’aip’ing rebellion and the Mohammadan
revolution in Yunnan to pay attention to such outlying districts as Kashgaria
and Kuldja. But, now that their hands were free, they set about reviving the
old order of things. The agitations, which had led to the overthrow of Chinese
power in central Asia ending in the triumphs of Yakub Khan in the districts of
Kashgaria and Yarkand (1864-9), had so disturbed the Russian frontier
that, with
the consent of the Chinese, the Russians had occupied the province of Kuldja
(July, 1871) on the understanding that, so soon as the Chinese were able to
reoccupy the territory effectively, it should be restored to them. This time
had now come. Yakub Khan had died suddenly (1877), and the Chinese were supreme
within their own frontiers. They, therefore,, renewed negotiations with the
Russians, whom they found ready to treat.
With strange
ineptitude, they appointed (August, 1878) Chunghow as their ambassador, whose
only qualification was that he had carried a message of apology for the
Tientsin massacre to the French Government. He now concluded an agreement
(October, 1879) which left the best part of the province to the Russians. This
arrangement was condemned at Peking, and the ambassador’s crime was aggravated
by his returning to China before he had the imperial sanction to leave his
post. For these misdemeanours he was promptly condemned to death—a sentence
which would probably have been carried out, had it not been for the
intervention of Queen Victoria, who, shocked at a sentence so disproportionate
to the crime, pleaded for his life.
Meanwhile,
Kwo Sungtao had been recalled from London, and the Marquis Tseng had been
appointed in his place. Fortunately for China, Tseng was ordered to take up the
negotiations which Chunghow had mismanaged. He recovered nearly all the land
ceded, in consideration of a sum of money, which the Chinese Government was ready
to pay. In April, 1881, the senior Dowager Empress, the widow of Hsien Feng,
died, or, as the Emperor expressed it at the time, “drove the fairy chariot and
went a long journey”; and this put an end to the disputes that used to occur
when there were two pilots at the helm. But the danger of entrusting the
affairs of the empire to one head, however able, soon became apparent. For some
time the relations between France and China with regard to Tonkin had been
signally unsatisfactory—not so desperate, however, that a conciliatory
attitude might not have averted the threatened evil. But Tz’u Hsi showed a
determined front to all overtures for peace, and thus, as is shown in another
section, brought about a war which dragged its slow length along from 1882 to 1885. ;
One fruitful
cause of diplomatic disputes during 1885 and previous years was the chronic
question of the likin tax, an impost levied on the passage of goods into the
interior, and falling with unjust incidence on foreign commodities. This tax
was, like our income tax, in its origin, a war tax, and, also like our income
tax, has long survived the cause of its imposition. The likin fell with special
weight upon opium. When once this article of commerce crossed the boundaries of
the foreign settlements, it became a prey to the tax-gatherer and contributed a
considerable part of the incomes of the local officials. The evils attending
the collection of likin were so patent that Lord
Salisbury (in
1885) proposed to the Marquis Tseng, when Chinese Minister at the Court of St
James, the drawing up of a convention which should impart regularity to its
collection. It was finally aigreed that a toll of eighty taels per chest, in
addition to the thirty taels of import duty, should be imposed on all opium
imported into the country, and that, in consideration of this additional
payment, opium should be free from all further imposts of every sort. This
proposal was readily welcomed at Peking, though it met with considerable
opposition in the provinces. Under the old system, local Mandarins squeezed as
much out of the opium as it would bear, and sent to Peking as small an amount
of the tax as the Central Government would accept; whereas, under the new
convention, the whole eighty taels went into the court exchequer. In spite,
however, of this extra tax illegal perquisites continued to be levied from the
trade by the provincial Mandarins.
In 1889 the
Emperor came of age; and, as in duty bound, the Dowager Empress chose for him a
wife, who happened to be the daughter of her brother, General Kwei-hsiang, and
therefore a cousin of the Emperor. This young lady, Yeh-ho-na-la by name, was
officially described as “a maiden of virtuous conduct, and becoming and
dignified demeanour.” The age at which the Emperor had arrived, however,
entailed more than the taking of a wife. It meant that he had reached the stage
in the imperial career when he should take over the reins of power; and with
many laudatory expressions he accepted the resignation of the Dowager Empress
as Regent and took upon himself the burdens of empire. The two imperial
personages kept up for a time an antiphonal chant of praise; but the harmony
was not of permanent duration.
At this epoch
the diplomatic world at Peking was surprised by the appearance of an imperial
edict containing a proposal of the Emperor to receive the foreign ministers in
imperial audience on lines “ in accordance with the reception of the twelfth
year of the reign of T’ung- Chih” (1873), and a command that they should be
entertained at a banquet given by the officials of the Tsungli Yamen. This
privilege was graciously accorded, but unfortunately the Emperor suggested for
holding it no other place than the Tsze-Kwang-Ko, where his late Majesty had
granted the solitary audience on record. The only difference in procedure on
this occasion was that each Minister was given a separate audience, instead of
all being received together. It was generally felt by the diplomatic body to be
derogatory to the sovereigns whom they represented that they should be
received in this pavilion, and they allowed it to be known that for the future
they would prefer to forgo the privilege. The Emperor yielded to the protest of
the foreign ministers, and received the newly arrived Austrian and British
plenipotentiaries in the Cheng-Kwang Hall of the palace. A still further
advance was made in international usage when, in 1898, Prince Henry of Germany
visited
Peking. On this occasion the Emperor greeted the Prince with the cordiality due
to royal personages, and returned his visit after the short interval prescribed
by etiquette. But still greater favours were accorded to the Prince. The
Dowager Empress received him in state, and confided to him her intention of
receiving the ladies of the legations on her approaching birthday.
From 1878
onwards the progressive party, led by Li Hungchang, had been urging on the
Throne the advisability of constructing railways for commercial and military
purposes. Their first design was to construct a line which would serve the
purpose of exploiting the coal mines at K’aip’ing, a place situated half-way
between Taku and Shan-hai-Kwan. The first step was to get the imperial sanction
to the undertaking. This the united influence of Li Hungchang and Tong
Kingsing, a Cantonese merchant, succeeded in doing. But so successful were the
arguments used against it at Peking that the imperial sanction was withdrawn.
Li Hungchang and his confederates, among whom was Claude William Kinder, a
railway engineer, were not, however, to be thus rebuffed; and, if a railway was
impossible, they declared themselves content to have a tramway, the trucks of
which were to be drawn by mules. At the same time Kinder, with his own hands,
constructed a railway engine out of old iron, and, when this strange motive
power was completed, it was quietly placed on the rails and made to do the work
of the mules. Another edict was sought to sanction the evasion. This was
granted. The construction of this line fired the imagination of Li Hungchang,
who proposed to the Throne that a line should be constructed connecting Taku on
the coast with T’ungchow, twelve miles from Peking. Li pointed out that the
line from K’aip’ing to the sea coast would be of great commercial advantage,
while its continuation to Shan-hai-Kwan on the one hand and T’ungchow on the
other would add enormously to the military strength of the empire. But he had
determined enemies to deal with in the capital. So powerful was this party that
the Dowager Empress was unable to thwart them; and, following the usual course
in such circumstances, she ordered the several Viceroys to report to her on the
subject. One or two, notably Liu Ming-chuan, memorialised in favour of the
project, and Chang Chihtung gave a qualified approval. He argued that the
construction of railways near the coast constituted a danger, since it would
enable invading forces to pass rapidly into the interior of the country, and,
further, “that the same prudence which made England veto the Channel Tunnel
should make China veto the Tientsin- T’ungchow railway.” But he held that trunk
railways were necessary to maintain the commercial advantages of China, and he
advocated the making of such a line from Peking to Hankow on the Yang-tsze, 760
miles in length. Much to his own surprise, his proposal was accepted, and he
was ordered to take up the viceroyalty of the two
506 Chinese reform#,—Peace with France, [i
SC0-1002
Hu provinces
so that he might be able personally to superintend his nission (1889). Li also
gained his point; and the line from Tientsin now enters the Imperial City at
the Chien Gate.
Meanwhile,
reforms were being initiated in other directions. For many centuries the system
of competitive examinations throughout the empire had remained unchanged, the
ancient Chinese classics being the subjects which tested the abilities of the
candidates. This system had no affinity to modem requirements, and Prince Kung
(1866) recommended to the Throne that subjects of modem foreign literature
should be admitted to the curriculum. It often happens, however, that projects
which are recommended to and approved by the Throne remain entirely
inoperative, and such was the case on this occasion. Much the same failure
attended the institution of schools and colleges. A school of modern science
which was opened at Peking failed to attract pupils, and had to be closed. It
required further impetus to impel the Chinese along the path of progress.
The year 1887
saw a move iij an important direction. It may be said generally that there is
no coin in the currency of China, the only join being that locally known to
Europeans as “ cash,” twenty of which equal in value about a penny. At this
time, in a moment of progressive zeal, the Dowager Empress issued an edict on
reforms in the currency and directed that the officials should combine to
produce a uniform system throughput the empire. This is a much-needed work; and
one or two Viceroys, amongst whom was Chang Chihtung, set up mints which did
well for a time, but in times of difficulty were allowed to fall into decay;
recently, however, Chinese copper and silver coins have been struck and have
come into circulation.
Although
peace had been proclaimed between France and China and a Treaty arrived at
(1885), the ambitions of the Republic were not satisfied; and a further
convention (1887) was signed and sealed, by the terms of which the towns of
Lungchow in Kwangsi and Meng-tzu in Yunnan were to be open to foreign trade.
This was so obviously an attempt to draw the trade of southern China through
Tonkin that the Hongkong merchants became alarmed and agitated for the opening
of the West river, which, taking its rise in Yunnan, runs through Chinese
territory to the sea near Canton. The Chinese, for the time being, successfully
resisted this proposal, and it was not until lately that the privilege of
trading up the river in question so far as Nanningfu, 560 miles, from its
mouth, has been accorded (1902).
The year 1888
may be said to have seen the beginning of what Lord Salisbury described as “the
battle of concessions,” and its inception took place in a most unlikely
quarter. For three hundred years Portugal had been the only European country
which had held a footing on the mainland of China. In the year 1557, the
Chinese rented to the Portuguese traders the peninsula of Macao for 500 taels
per annum.
Down
to the year 1848* the Portuguese continued to pay this sum and held undisturbed
possession of the territory. In that year, the Governor, Amaral, declined to
continue the payments. The distance of the disputed piece of land from Peking
made the Chinese Government regard the transfer with comparative indifference;
but, at all events, it,left the Portuguese in possession, though at the
sacrifice of the life,of the Governor, who was assassinated in broad daylight
in the main road near the town. By a Treaty signed in 1887 the Chinese
guaranteed “the perpetual occupation and government of Macao and its
dependencies by Portugal, on the same footing as any other Portuguese
possession,”, Portugal, at the same time, agreed not to alienate Macao and its
dependencies without the consent of China. ■
, ,
In an
important memorial presented to the Throne in 1889, a note of warning was
struck by the Governor of Kiangsu as to the intentions, of Russia in the Far
East. He pointed out “ tha.t Russia overlaps us on the north round the Chinese
Province of the New Dominion, Mongolia, and Heilung Kiang; and to the east
round Kirin....Her left; eye looks covetously at Korea, and her right at
Mongolia ” The design of constructing a line of railway which was to connect
Moscow with Vladivostok would have been enough to have suggested this warning,
and a Treaty concluded between Russia and Korea in the preceding year added a
special point to the Governor’s forecastings. Under its terms Russia was to “be
allowed to vrade at Kiong-Lyng as well as at the ports of Chemulpo, Gensan,
Fusan, and the town of Seoul.” This was one of the first steps. taken by Russia
in the course which led up to the War of 1904, and it would never have been
carried through except for the help of Ld Hungchang, who at this time was a
warm supporter of Russian schemes. Chang Chihtung was powerless in face of
Russia backed by Ld.
Another man
who might have stood as a shield to Korea against Russia was the Marquis Tseng,
whose policy led him to oppose the machinations of the Dowager Empress and Li
Hungchang. He was, however, removed from the thorny path he would have had to
follow, by death in circumstances which gave rise to suspicions of foul play.
He was taken ill after a dinner given him by some of his colleagues, and died a
few days later, on April 12, 1890.
Though the
Chinese may be from time to time induced to adopt progressive methods, as a
rule they revert in course of years to their former ways. An attempt had been
made after the War with France to establish a fleet, and Captain Lang of her
Majesty’s Navy was seconded for service as Admiral. For a time things went
well, but indifference supervened; and, finding it impossible to maintain the
standard of discipline necessary for the fleet, Admiral Lang resigned his
appointment, and after his retirement the fleet greatly deteriorated.
There had
lately been uneasiness in the relations with foreigners in
the empire,
and Admiral Lang’s resignation entailed from a Chinese point of view the
necessity of making some concession. With little persuasion, therefore, the
Tsungli Yamen was induced to sign a convention with Great Britain (1890)
opening the important trading centre of Chung K’ing to foreign trade. This city
stands at the head of the four hundred miles of rapids which separate it from
Ich’ang and is practically unapproachable by steamers. Two or three gun-boats
have, after infinite trouble, made the passage, but, unless some method is
adopted for clearing a passage down the rapids, native junks must remain the
only means of trade communication between the two cities.
In this year
(1890) the Duke and Duchess of Connaught visited China; but the Chinese found
pretexts for avoiding a royal reception at Peking, and the Duke and Duchess
were therefore obliged to confine their visit to the Treaty Ports. At this time
and during the following year (1891) central China was in a disturbed state,
and a feeling against foreigners was dominant. Besides the reasons for
hostility already enumerated, strong opposition had been offered in the United
States and Australasia to Chinese immigration. The Chinese complained that,
while their countrymen were being thus excluded from white communities, the
Powers were demanding that China should be thrown open to foreigners and
foreign trade. The passing of the Geary Exclusion Act, May, 1892, by which the
landing of Chinese in the United States was prohibited, aroused so much
opposition that the Act was never enforced. But the hostility which it provoked
produced a strong feeling in China, and probably had much to do with the
ill-will which found expression during the early nineties. During this epoch
several missionaries lost their lives (1891), and two Swedish missionaries were
murdered at Hankow under circumstances of great atrocity.
Though Burma
had been annexed to the British Crown, the boundary between that country and
the French acquisitions in the neighbourhood of Siam had never been clearly
defined; but in 1894 a Convention was signed with the French Government by
which it was arranged that a commission should be appointed to mark out the
boundaries between the two territories, and, meanwhile, it was agreed that a
neutral zone should be established on the joint frontiers. By this agreement it
was kid down that the Emperor of China should not cede either the State of
Munglem or that of Kianghung to any other nation without previously coming to
an agreement with her Britannic Majesty. But in spite of this compact China
ceded to France during the following year (1895) a portion of the reserved
territory. This breach of faith was strongly resented by the British
Government, which insisted that the district of Kokang and part of Wangting should
be granted to Great Britain by way of compensation, which was done (February,
1897).
Korea, which
for centuries had held the anomalous position of a country tributary to two
separate Powers, was destined at this time once
1875-87]
China, Japan, Russia, and Korea.
509
more to
attract international attention. During the reign of T’aitsung of the Tang
Dynasty (a.d. 627-650), the King
of Korea, who had never yielded full obedience to the Emperor of China, taking
advantage of the accession of a new line of Chinese sovereigns, began to resist
any interference with the internal affairs of his kingdom. Resenting this
attitude on the part of his tributary, T’aitsung espoused the cause of a small
State, which had revolted against the King of Korea, and placed a large army on
the frontier. Dismayed at this display of force, the King yielded the point in
dispute; and Korea renewed her payments to China.
A chance
incident, in 1875, foreshadowed the Chino-Japanese War of 1894-5. In that year
it happened that a Japanese man-of-war was surveying the coast of Korea and was
fired on without notice by a fort. Japan replied to this action by preparing a
punitive expedition against the offending district. The Koreans, however, came
to their senses in time to prevent hostilities; and a treaty was made under
which two ports were opened to foreign trade and the right of sending a
minister to reside at the Court of Korea was granted to the Japanese. In these
negotiations Korea had been treated as an independent kingdom, and the tribute
formerly claimed by Japan was allowed to drop. The hostile attitude assumed in
1875 by Korea towards the foreign Powers was due to the machinations of the
King’s father, T’aiwen Kun, who had presented an. unyielding front to all
reforms. So unmanageable was he that the Chinese Government despatched an
envoy to kidnap him, and T’ai wen Kun was safely brought to Paoting,Fu in
China. Unfortunately, the Chinese, allowed him later to return to his native
country. He had no sooner arrived on the Korean shores (1884) than, at his
instigation, an attack was made on the Japanese legation. Another expedition
was fitted out to avenge this outrage. When events reached this critical stage,
the Chinese despatched an army to the “ Hermit Kingdom.” Meanwhile, suggestions
for peace were thrown out; and Count Ito and Li Hungchang met at Tientsin to
arrange terms of amity.
In the course
of these consultations it became obvious that China was unwilling to give up
her suzerainty over Korea, which was capable of being used as a lever to
enforce conditions with Japan. The two plenipotentiaries agreed that, if events
should necessitate the despatch of either Chinese or Japanese troops to Korea,
notice of the intention to send them should be given to the other Power.
Affairs had
become so entangled in Korea that European nations took keen interest in the
imbroglio. Russia began to cast longing eyes on Korean territory, and so
imminent appeared the danger (1885) that the British Government occupied the
islands known as Port Hamilton, off the coast of Korea. This roused so much
opposition on the banks of the Neva that, after the lapse of two years
(February 27, 1887), the British flag was hauled down, and the islands were
returned to
their
previous owners on the: understanding that in no case should they be
handed over to any other foreign Power.
' Korea at
this time once more attracted international attention. In 1884, a rebellion had
broken out in that misgoverned peninsula, and the leader of the outbreak,
Kim-ok Kiun, had sought safety at Tokio. For a time his absence secured peace
in the Korean capital. But, like most exiles, he continued to conspire; and so
disturbing was his influence that it was determined to decoy him on to Chinese
soil, where he might be put out of the way with the least inconvenience. Emissaries
were sent to entice him to Shanghai, where he was murdered (1894). His body was
carried to Korea, accompanied by his murderers, who were accorded a cordial
welcome, while the ex-rebel's remains were subjected to eveiry insult. This
murder still further inflamed the political passions of the rebels known as the
Tong Haks, to whose banners the people flocked. In their difficulty the Koreans
appealed to China for help; and that Power, ever ready to pose as a suzerain,
despatched two thousand troops to the neighbourhood of the Korean capital, at
the same time, as by treaty bound, giving notice to Japan of their action. In
response, the Japanese despatched an equal force to the peninsula and collected
at Hiroshima a reserve army in case of emergency. These preparations had a
moderating effect on tbe Tong Haks, and China arid Japan made ready to withdraw
their troops.
In the
interests of permanent peace, however, Japan prbposed to China that they should
conjointly urge on the Korean Government the adaption of reforms in the
administration of the kingdom. True to her reactionary policy, China declined
to have anything to do with such a project and reminded Japan that, since Korea
had claimed independence as an empire, she should be left to carry out her own
reforms. Japan next turned to Korea itself; but, meeting with no satisfactory
response, the Japanese minister, Otori, presented an ultimatum calling upon
Korea to accept the reforms within the next three days (July 20, 1894). On the
22nd an unsatisfactory reply was received, and an attack was at once made on
the capital. 1 ■ The city1 was taken without
serious opposition and the King was made a prisoner. Meanwhile, both empires
prepared for war. On July 21, several Chinese transports sailed for the Yalu
river which forms the northern boundary of Korea, and for Asan on the southwestern
coast of the peninsula. On the part of Japan three men-of-war were sent to
guard the coast; and on July 25 they sighted two Chinese men-of-war. An
engagement followed, and within an hour one of the Chinese ships Was driven
ashore, while the other escaped to Wei-Hai-Wei. At the close of this action a
Chinese man-of-war, escorting a transport, the Kowshing, appeared on the
horizon. The man-of-war yielded herself a ready prey; but the Kowshing, &
British vessel, refused to haul down her flag or to obey the Japanese order
that she should follow the squadron to a Japanese harbour. Thereupon, the
Japanese
opened fire
and sent the transport to the bottom with fifteen hundred men. The fleet
protecting Asan having thus been disposed of, the Japanese opened the assault
on that stronghold. The Chinese occupying force was commanded by General Yeh,
who, so soon as the Japanese ships approached the harbour, vacated the city and
marched off to Ping Yang, a position of great strength further north. Thus
deprived of its garrison, Asan was straightway occupied by the Japanese, who
followed the flying Yeh to Ping Yang. At this point Yeh was joined by two corps
d1armie under the command of Generals Ma and Tao, who arrived
on September 14 before the doomed city. On the next day the Japanese opened
fire, and after a fierce assault captured the city, only to find that the
garrison had made its escape by the northern gates. The Japanese had, however,
before attacking the city, occupied the passes leading from the northern gates.
As the fugitives showed themselves, the Japanese opened fire on them,
slaughtering fifteen hundred of their number;1 the
remainder, continuing their flight, made their way northward across the Yalu.
Two days
after the date of this battle, a naval engagement took place off the mouth of
the Yalu river. Both Chinese and Japanese had been busily engaged in landing
troops on the coast of Korea and were so engaged when the fleets met off the
island of Hai-Yang. So far as numbers were concerned, the two fleets were
equal, and there was no hesitation about entering on the conflict. The Chinese
adopted the older formation, placing their ships in line, while the Japanese
steamed round them, taking every advantage of their formal antagonists. The
battle lasted three hours; four Chinese ships were sunk, while another was so
severely damaged that she was run aground. The Japanese did not lose a ship,
though two were badly injured. After this victory the Japanese presented
themselves on the bank of the Yalu. Contrary to Chinese expectations, instead
of attempting to cross the river at the point where the southern road strikes
its bank, they marched a few miles higher up and found little difficulty in
crossing the stream. The Chinese had retreated to Chiulien-ch’eng, a city of
considerable strength, but deserted it on the approach of the foe. In the same
way they occupied and deserted Antung, Fenghwangch’eng, and Hsiuyen, all places
of importance. Having thus driven back the enemy, the Japanese contented
themselves with marching on Yingkow, the town of the treaty port of Niuchwang.
Successful so
far, they now attacked Port Arthur on the Liao-Tung peninsula. The attacking
force under Marshal Oyama landed at Hwayuenk’ow and without difficulty occupied
the cities of Kinchow and Talienwan, both of which had been deserted by the
Chinese. At Port Arthur the harbour was encircled by a continuous chain of
forts, which had been constructed on the newest principles by French engineers.
On November 21, the Japanese advanced to the attack. For a short time
the Chinese
fought well; but towards the end of the day they took to flight and made their
escape northward along the line of the coast.
This defeat
was of so overwhelming a nature that Li Hungchang memorialised the Emperor,
suggesting that overtures of peace should be made. The Emperor consented and
appointed an envoy. But no plenipotentiary powers having been conferred on
him, he was not recognised at Tokio. At this time only one more stronghold
remained to the Chinese. This was Wei-Hai-Wei, a fortified place of great
strength on the north shores of the Shantung promontory. This position was held
by Admiral Ting, who had fought at the battle of the Yalu, and who exerted
himself to inspire his men with courage against the persistent attacks of the
Japanese under Admiral Ito. This was difficult, and,1 after losing
five ships of war, he surrendered the position. Having at the same time secured
the lives of his surviving men, he committed suicide (February, 1895). This
brought the War to a close, and the field was left open to the peacemakers. With
persistent folly, the Chinese again sent an unauthenticated emissary, who was
treated by the Japanese as his predecessor had been; and it was not until Li
Hungchang presented himself at Shimonoseki (March 19, 1895) that negotiations
were begun. The first meeting was held two days later, and after some
successful sittings Li, on returning to his hotel, was shot in the face by a
Japanese fanatic. Fortunately, the wound was slight and only for a while
delayed the proceedings. On April 17, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed. By
this treaty China ceded to Japan the Liao-Tung peninsula, the island of
Formosa, and the Pescadores group. A war indemnity was fixed at 200,000,000
taels, which was to be paid in eight instalments. The cities Shashih, Chung
K’ing, Soochow, and Hangchow were to be opened to trade “ under the same
conditions, and with the same privileges and facilities as exist at the other
open cities, towns, and ports of China,” while Japanese vessels were allowed to
navigate the waters of the Upper Yang-tsze, the Wusung river, and the canals
connecting Shanghai with Soochow and Hangchow. Until these conditions were
fulfilled, China consented to the occupation by Japan of Wei-Hai-Wei. The
ratifications of this treaty were exchanged at Chifu on May 8.
But the end
was not yet. While critics were expressing surprise that Li Hungchang should
have consented to the cession of the Liao-Tung peninsula, meetings were being
held by the ministers of Russia, Germany, and France, which ended in the
presentation to Japan of a collective note, in which the Mikado’s Government
was urged to forgo the cession of the territory, on the ground that any foreign
Power possessing Port Arthur would dominate Peking. With great wisdom, Japan
assented to this proposition, in return for the payment of an additional
indemnity of 30,000,000 taels. Then followed a succession of secret conferences
between Li Hungchang and Count Cassini, the Russian
1895—V]
The Cassini Convention.—Kiaockow.
513
minister at
Peking, which ended in a secret convention, the terms of which have never been
officially published; but it is believed that they included guarantees to China
for the integrity of the empire, especially in the event of any further attempt
on the part of Japan to obtain a footing on the mainland; while China bound
herself to afford facilities for the construction of a system of Russian
railways through Manchuria, together with certain contingent rights along the
coast line of northern China.
In 1896, Li
Hungehang was sent to represent China at the coronation of Nicholas II, Tsar
of Russia. He went to St Petersburg with the Cassini Convention in his pocket
and obtained the ratification of it by Prince Lobanoff, the Russian Minister
for Foreign Affairs. To meet her financial engagements arising out of the
Shimonoseki Treaty China found to be no easy task, and opened negotiations with
England for a loan of <£12,000,000 sterling. Against this arrangement Russia
entered a violent protest. So strong was the pressure brought to bear on China
that the Tsungli Yamen begged the English authorities to allow them to forgo
the loan. Having achieved this triumph at Peking, the Russian Government
changed the venue of the negotiations to St Petersburg and arranged with the
Chinese minister at that Court to furnish China with the necessary supplies.
This arrangement was opposed by Great Britain; and, finally, the money was
advanced by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, with the assistance
of a German Bank.
On November
1,1897, two German missionaries were murdered in a village near Chining Chow in
the province of Shantung. The murder was peculiarly cold-blooded, and, so far
as it was possible to discover, it was entirely causeless. The German Admiral,
Diedrichs, resolved on immediate action; and, steaming into the harbour of
Kiaochow in the incriminated province, took instant possession of the island of
Tsingtao within that port. The Germans demanded an indemnity of 200,000 taels
of silver; the rebuilding of the chapel destroyed during the riot; the
repayment of the expenses incurred by Germany in the occupation of Kiaochow;
the dismissal from the public service of Li Pingheng, the Governor of Shantung;
and the infliction of the severest penalties on the actual murderers. A
ninety-nine years’ lease of the captive territory and the cession of mining
rights and railways within its boundaries were also demanded and granted. Full
use has been made of these privileges; a line of railway has been constructed
and opened to Tsinan Fu, the capital of the province, while a typical German
town has already come into existence at Tsingtao.
Other
cessions followed. Russia opened negotiations at Peking for permission to
winter her fleet in Port Arthur (1897). This was readily granted, and led to a
further request for the lease of the port on the same terms as those accorded
to Germany. This was also granted without demur. The importance of this
position may be judged from
the fact that
Port Arthur lies only one hundred and sixty-three miles from Taku and still
nearer to Chifu, constituting the key to the position of northern China. The
Convention by which this concession was granted was signed on March 15, 1898.
On July 1 of the same year Sir Claude Macdonald signed a Convention by which
Wei-Hai- Wei was leased to Great Britain, so long as Russia was in occupation:
of Port Arthur. Not to be behindhand, the French Government demanded the port
of Kwang Chow Wan, and accepted an assurance from the Chinese Government that
that portion of the empire should be recognised as being under French
influence. At the same time, Great Britain asked for and was granted an
accession of territory at Kowloon on the mainland opposite Hongkong, consisting
of an area of two hundred square miles, together with an assurance that no
other foreign Power would be admitted to any territorial rights in the valley
of the Yang-tsze Kiang. • While these negotiations were being carried on,
Prince Kung died at Peking, after having guided the foreign policy of the
empire for nearly fifty years. In the following year (1899) China gained one
political victory in a matter of concessions. Encouraged by the success which
had attended the efforts of others, the Italian minister at Peking opened
negotiations for the lease of the port of Sanmen on the coast of Chekiang. To
this unnecessary request the Chinese returned such an answer that nothing more
was heard of the matter.
During the
year 1898 the questions connected with the spread of Christianity in China came
once more prominently to the front. The two parties to the
controversy—respecting the rights of missionaries and their converts—were
powerful and determined. On the one side were the native converts, few in
number, though, as has since been proved, firm in purpose, backed by European
missionaries and diplomatic action ; and on the other the great bulk of the
non-Christian natives, who enjoyed the full support of the Mandarin class. This
official antipathy may be said to have arisen in the seventeenth century, when,
in opposition to the Jesuit missionaries, the Dominicans insisted on the
question of the religious nature of the worship of ancestors being referred to
the Pope. As it had already been declared by the reigning Emperor K'anghsi
(1662-1722) that the rites were not religious, this reference to Rome was
regarded as an insult to the Chinese Throne. But, apart from the religious
difficulty,, there has always been a political side to the question, and the
Roman Catholic priests have given offence by the adoption of the emblems of
official rank. Apart from its obvious impropriety, this assumption confers the
right of entry into Courts of justice and entitles the wearers to interfere in
legal cases. Missionaries of all societies, Roman Catholic as well as
Protestant, have been accused of using influence in favour of converts in the
native Courts of justice; and, doubtless, Roman Catholic missionaries have
freely used their influence for political as well as religious aims.
All this
makes the action of the Chinese Government in 1899 the more astounding; for on
March 15 in that year an imperial edict was issued, officially granting to
missionaries of all creeds a political status of an important character. This
edict was issued in obedience to pressure brought to bear on the Government by
the French legation, and was at once put in force by the Roman Catholic
missionaries. To their credit be it said, the privileges proffered were
declined by the Protestants; and by a recent edict (1908) they have been
withdrawn.
Another
matter which created odium against Roman Catholic missionaries was a clause in
the French Treaty of 1860, which entitled them to recover religious buildings
which may have been snatched from them during the outbreaks of the past. Many
of these buildings have for more than a century been converted into temples and
dwelling- houses, and the attempt to restore them to the jforeign owners must
necessarily give occasion for bitter disputes. But probably, the most direct
cause of the numerous outbreaks against missionaries is the existence of
orphanages conducted by Sisters of Mercy. To the practical Chinese it is
unthinkable that men and women should leave their native countries to establish
these institutions with no other object than that of benevolence. As the
Tsungli Yamen said, in all the Chinese provinces native orphanages exist,
making the institution of foreign homes superfluous. The orphanage at Tientsin
was the direct cause of the massacre in 1870.
On the whole,
the Chinese have a case, more especially against the Roman Catholic
missionaries. The wisdom which guided Father Ricci and his comrades in the
sixteenth century has long since ceased to direct the counsels of the
missionaries. One marked feature of Chinese life is the publicity in which the
people live. It is not considered a trespass freely to enter a neighbour’s
house, and, if there should be shown any disposition to resent the intrusion,
it is at once held to suggest that the householder has some sinister motive for
secrecy. Reared in this belief, the people are at a loss to explain on any
other grounds the isolation in which Roman Catholic priests live. This is the
most prominent of the causes which have led up to missionary riots, and to some
extent it is fostered and promoted by increased knowledge of foreign affairs.
In the western province of Szech’uan disturbances have of late (1899), also,
been of frequent occurrence, and are to be traced more or less directly to the
ill-feeling aroused by the wars with France and Japan. One of the numerous
placards, which were issued to stir up the hostility of the natives against
foreigners, warned the English, French, and Americans, that, if in the future
they wished to preach their doctrine in China, they must drive the Japanese
back to their own country.
Until lately
Hunan has been regarded as the most anti-foreign province in the empire, and it
was from this locality that the most virulent anti-foreign documents were
issued. One of these, entitled
“ A
Death-blow to corrupt Doctrine,” had a wide circulation and did infinite
mischief; while, later, an illustrated work of the same nature^ full of
scandalous insinuations and baseless charges, had been issued to the people.
The Roman Catholics call their faith “ the Religion of the Lord of Heaven.” It
so happens that the Chinese word for “pig” has the ■ same sound as that
signifying “lord,” and the author of this blasphemous work throughout its pages
translates the “ Religion of the Lord of Heaven ” by the “ Religion of the
Heavenly pig.” It was discovered that a man named Chow Han, holding the rank of
a Taotai, was the author of these works. But so accurately had he given
expression to the feelings of the people that no efforts of the British
legation could move the Tsungli Yamen to take adequate action against him.
Although
religious questions occupy a foremost place in the charges levelled against
foreigners, other matters fill up the cup of their misdeeds, and among the
chief of these is the opium traffic. There can be no question that very great
evil is produced by this drug. But it is easy to overestimate the mischief. It
is commonly stated that a man who has smoked long enough to have acquired the
yin, or “craving,” is incompetent to become a father; and it is frequently
asserted that 40 or 50 per cent, of the male population are slaves to the ym.
The teeming population of the country is the best answer to this exaggerated
charge; and in great parts of the country, especially in the low-lying river
beds, small doses of opium produce the salutary effect which they are known to
have in the fens of Lincolnshire. Bui there can be no doubt that, speaking
generally, the evils attending opium smoking are vastly greater than the good
it effects ; and it is not to be wondered that men like Chang Chihtung, who
have the good of their country at heart, should desire to see it abolished.
Chang Chihtung writes: “ Assuredly it is not foreign intercourse that is
ruining China, but this dreadful poison... Opium has spread with frightful
rapidity and heart-rending results through the provinces. Millions upon millions
have been struck down by the plague...The ruin of the mind is the most woeful
of its many deleterious effects. The poison enfeebles the will, saps the
strength of the body, renders the consumer incapable of performing his regular
duties...It consumes his suhstance and reduces the miserable wretch to poverty,
barrenness, and senility. Unless something is soon done to arrest this awful
scourge in its devastating march, the Chinese people will be transformed into
satyrs and devils.”
Since the
appearance of Chang Chihtung’s work, however, a gigantic effort has been made
to abolish opium smoking altogether in the Middle Kingdom. On September 20,
1906, the following edict was issued hy order of the Emperor: “ Since the first
prohibition of opium, almost the whole of China has been flooded with the
poison. Smokers of opium have wasted their time, neglected their employments,
ruined their constitutions, and impoverished their households. Thus, for
several
decades China
has presented a spectacle of increasing poverty and weakness...The Court is now
determined to make China powerful; and it is our duty to urge our people to
reformation in this respect. We decree, therefore, that within the limit of ten
years this harmful filth be fully and entirely wiped away. We therefore command
the Council of State to consider means for the strict prohibition both of opium
smoking and of poppy growing.”
Altogether,
there is much to be said for the Chinese complaints against foreigners. The
Chinese have everything that they want within the empire; and if foreigners
force themselves upon China, it is maintained that they should submit to the
country’s laws.
In the later
eighties these grievances found expression in a series of outrages along the
valley of the Yang-tsze Eiang. At Chin Kiang an organised attack was made on
the foreign settlement, in the course of which the British consulate was burned
to the ground. Other localities suffered in the same way. In Kwangsi, in
Szech’uan in the west, and in Shantung in the north, similar outrages were
perpetrated. And this at a time when foreigners were contributing considerable
sums of money for the alleviation of the distress caused by one of the
recurrent floods of the Yellow river, and increased by a bad harvest.
The national
disgrace entailed by the War of 1894-5 brought home to the Emperor and some of
his advisers the imperative necessity of introducing reforms into the
administration of the empire. Individual reformers had long been at work; and,
in particular, K’ang Yuwei, who had earned for himself the title of the “Modern
Sage,” had plans cut and dried for revolutionising the body politic. Like most
reformers, K’ang exaggerated the efficacy of his remedies; but in an interview
granted to him by the Emperor he told so plausible a tale that Kwang Hsii
adopted his views with enthusiasm. Everything was to be changed, from the
Officers of State to the wearing of the queue, and the Emperor was by the
stroke of his pen to create a new heaven and a new earth for China. The
reactionary party at Peking appealed to the Dowager Empress to resume the reins
of power. Nothing loth, she accepted the invitation, and, facing her imperial
nephew, told him he must once more resign all rule into her hands (1898). This
he did, and in quick succession edicts appeared reversing his decrees, and
ordering the instant punishment of K’ang Yuwei and his associates. Fortunately
for the “ Modem Sage,” he had notice of the coming storm and escaped; but his
brother and five others were executed.
This reversal
of official policy was reflected in the popular movements throughout the
northern provinces of the empire. In Kiangsu, Anhui, Shantung, and Chili,
disturbances, directed mainly against Christians, broke out. From the disorder
which followed emerged a society known as the Iha Ch'uan, or Society of Boxers
(literally patriotic harmonious fists). China is honey-combed with secret
societies, and this one required
but the touch
of the official hand to give it life and vigour. Edicts appeared in the Peking
Gazette which gave imperial support to the agitation. The Powers, the people
were told, cast looks of “tiger-like voracity on the empire.” Viceroys and
Governors were ordered to unite their forces and act together without
distinction of jurisdiction. Never, they were told, should the word “Peace”
fall from their lips, but each should strive to preserve his ancestral home and
graves from the ruthless hands of the invader. This is a specimen of the
exhortations issued by the Dowager Empress, who had a complete belief in the magical
powers professed by the Boxers. An edict, signed by the Emperor, declared that,
“finding there tvas no probability (or even possibility) of his having a child,
he had besought the Dowager Empress to select some suitable person to be
adopted as heir to the Emperor Tung-Chih.” P’uchiin, a son of Prince Tuan, was
Upon this chosen to be the heir apparent.
Meanwhile,
the political horizon became so overcast that the foreign ministers urged the
Tsungli Yamen to suppress the Boxer movement, and in reply received assurances
that everything was being done which could possibly conduce to that end; and
they pointed to the arrival of a large army, commanded by General Thing
Fuhsiang, as proof of the sincerity of their assurances. Unfortunately, Tung’s
record was a bad one, and from the date of his arrival matters assumed a still
more threatening aspect. In October, 1899, three British officers went to
Luk’ou to inspect the railway bridge there under construction. This they found
occupied by a party of T’ung’s soldiers, who, instead of leaving the bridge
when asked to do so, pelted the foreigners with stones. From this time matters
went from bad to worse. The Boxers drilled openly, and constantly threatened
foreigners and their native servants. At this juncture it was announced that
Yiihsien, the notoriously anti-foreign Governor of Shantung, had been
transferred to the, Governorship of Shansi. Against this appointment the
foreign epresentatives remonstrated, but in vain. All through the winter of
1899-1900 matters continued extremely grave, and in April, 1900, Favier, the
Vicar Apostolic of the Roman Catholic Mission at Pekingj reported to the French
minister that Christians had been massacred and villages burnt in the
neighbourhood of Paoting Fu. In the following month an attack was made upon the
railway works at Fengt’ai near Peking. The Boxers burnt the station and tore up
the railway.
Matters had
now reached such a pitch that the foreign representatives applied to the
Admirals at Taku for additional guards, and in response 340i men from the ships
arrived at the various legations in Peking. At this crisis the appointment of
Prince Tuan, a professed Boxer, to the chairmanship of the Tsungli Yamen, made
the situation clear; and it was felt that even the legations could no longer be
regarded as places of safety. In this whirlpool of disorder, the Boxer army
mustered
and marched
to rapine. So critical was the danger that the Admirals were again telegraphed
to for reinforcements; and Admiral Seymour, at the head of a force of about
2000 men, left Tientsin for the capital on June 10. At first they met with
little opposition; and an advance party reached Antung, where they found the
railway line destroyed, and a large force of Boxers holding the position. On
June 17 Admiral Seymour found that the line had been cut behind him at
Yangtsun. The trains that attempted to communicate with Antung were unable to
get through. Finding that weight of numbers made it impossible for him to
advance, he determined to retreat to Tientsin by river. On the 22nd the force
arrived abreast of the Siku arsenal, which opened fire on the flotilla.
Accepting this challenge, Admiral Seymour attacked the arsenal and took it. In
it were found large quantities of rice and ammunition. A small party of marines
were sent to cut their way through to Tientsin by night, but were forced to
retire. On the morning of June 23 the Chinese made a desperate attempt to
recapture the arsenal, but were repulsed after hard fighting. Happily, a
messenger succeeded in making his way through the Chinese lines to Tientsin,
and a relieving force was sent which returned with the expeditionary troops to
Tientsin on June 26.
Meanwhile,
the Taku forts had been taken by assault on June 16, an act that was held by
the Chinese to constitute a declaration of war. The imperial troops now joined
the Boxers and the legations at Peking and the foreign settlements at Tientsin
were besieged. The settlements at Tientsin were in a very unprotected state,
and, had it not been for the fortunate arrival of a force of 1700 Russians, the
probability is that they would have been destroyed and the legations taken. As
it was, the foreigners in the settlements were powerless. Their communications
with the Taku forts were cut off, and their defensive works were of the
crudest. On June 15, the Boxers set fire to parts of the native city, and,
having sixty guns at their disposal, were able to play havoc from the city
Walls on the settlements and their surroundings. At length, on June 24, a
relieving force of 2000 strong made its way through from Taku, and, with this
increase of numbers, the allied commanders prepared to attack the city. During
the whole of July 13, the allies bombarded the city wall, and the next moaning
they advanced to the attack. Just before sunrise the Japanese sappers made an
attempt to blow in the outer city gate. The Chinese met them with a tremendous
fire, and a bullet cut the electric wire which was intended to ignite the
charge. Second Lieutenant Inouye then pluckily rushed forward and exploded it
with a lighted fuse. This gate only led into an enclosure; one of the soldiers,
however, climbed the wall, and opened the gate from the inside> Thereupon,
the Chinese fled, and the city was occupied by the allied forces. ■
Instant
preparations were now made for the relief of the legations
at Peking;
and, on August 4, a relief column composed of 18,800 men taken from the allied
armies set out on their march to Peking. At Peitsang, Yangtsun, and Hosiwu,
engagements were fought in which the Chinese were easily routed. T’ungchow,
twelve miles from Peking, was found to be evacuated ; and, in the middle of the
night of the 13th, word was brought to the British commander that the Russians
had commenced their attack on the city wall of Peking and were asking for
reinforcements. These were supplied from the Japanese lines, but the honour of
being the first to relieve the legations was reserved for General Gaselee, who,
in obedience to a note from Sir Claude Macdonald, entered the city by the Water
Gate on the southern wall.
For eight
weeks the legations had withstood a strict siege. When it was reported to them
that Seymour’s relief column was to start on June 10 from Tientsin, Sugiyama,
of the Japanese legation, went to the station to welcome it. There he found
T’ung Fuhsiang’s troops in possession. These bandits set upon the helpless
Japanese and beat him to death. This may be said to have marked the beginning
of the war in Peking. On June 19 the Chinese Government wrote to the legations,
giving the foreigners twenty-four hours in which to leave the capital. The
ministers in consultation wrote to the Tsungli Yamen to ask for an interview.
No answer to this proposal having been received on the following day, the
ministers, with the exception of Baron von Ketteler, the German minister,
agreed to await events. Von Ketteler set forth alone to pay the proposed visit
and was shot dead within a few hundred yards of his legation. Peace was no
longer possible, and the foreigners of all nationalities retreated to their
legations. The British legation, be’T'g the largest and best appointed, formed
the refuge of all those who, as the siege progressed, were driven out of their
places of retreat. The Peit’ang, under the direction of Bishop Favier,
withstood all the assaults of the enemy.
That such
small bodies of men should have succeeded in keeping so large a force at bay
would suggest that the besiegers were not anxious to proceed to extremities;
and, in fact, as the relieving force approached the capital, attempts at
conciliation were made by the members of the Tsungli Yamen. The Chinese
Ministers sent civil letters and presents to the different legations* On the
arrival of the column, the Chinese made but a faint-hearted defence; and, as it
entered the southern gates, the Dowager Empress, with the Emperor and Court,
sought safety in flight to Si-an-fu, the capital of the province of Shensi,
Thus for the second time this lady was driven from her capital by foreign
invading forces (1860 and 1900). Prince Ching and Li Hungehang were appointed
plenipotentiaries to arrange terms of amity.
The Chinese
proposals were singularly inadequate, and were at once dismissed. In their
place, it was demanded that due punishment should be inflicted on the officials
implicated in the Boxer movement; that an
i899-i9oi] Terms of peace arranged.
521
indemnity
should be paid; that the Taku and other forts between Peking and the sea should
be dismantled; that the importation of firearms should be prohibited; that
permanent legation guards should be established; that the Tsungli Yamen should
be abolished; that the provincial examinations in those districts where
foreigners had been murdered should be suspended for five years; and that a
rational system of intercourse with the Emperor should be arranged.
After much
discussion these terms were virtually conceded by the Chinese; and Princes Tuan
and Tsailan were sentenced to death, three other high officials were condemned
to commit suicide, and three other high-placed Mandarins were beheaded. It was
further agreed that Prince Ch’un should proceed to Berlin to convey to the
German Emperor the expression of the regrets of the Son of Heaven for the
assassination of Baron von Ketteler, and that another mission should be
despatched to Tokio to apologise for the murder of Sugiyama. The indemnity was
fixed at the sum of 450,000,000 taels. With the signing of this protocol
(September 7,1901) peace was restored, shortly followed by the death of Li
Hungchang after a brief illness on November 7,1901.
The Boxer
movement had been eagerly watched by the Russian Government. When the Boxers
appeared to be making way, some anxiety was felt in the outlying posts occupied
by the Russians in Manchuria—at Blagovestchensk, among other places. The growth
of this town had been rapid, and a small force of Russians found themselves
opposed to a large Chinese population. The disparity between the two
nationalities so alarmed General Chichegoff, the Governor, that he ordered all
Chinese to cross to the south side of the river Amur. There was some hesitation
about obeying this order, upon which the Governor commanded his soldiers to
drive the people across the river. This they did at the point of the bayonet,
4500 people being drowned in the process.
Meanwhile,
the relations between Japan and Russia had become threatening. The demand for
the retrocession of Port Arthur at the end of the War had aroused the suspicion
of the Japanese, and the persistent way in which Russia continued to pour
troops into Manchuria provided further food for reflexion. The agreement by
which China, in addition, granted permission to Russia to make railroads
connecting her Siberian system with Vladivostdk and Port Arthur gave further
indications of Russian policy. If, however, Russia had stopped there, matters
might have been arranged; but she cast longing eyes on the port of Masampo on
the south-eastern coast of Korea. This movement elicited a vigorous
remonstrance at Seoul, and Russia found it advisable not to proceed with the
demand (1899). Thus baffled in Korea, the Russians devoted more detailed
attention to Manchuria; and this culminated in an agreement made on November
11, 1900, with the Tartar general at Mukden, by which Admiral Alexeyeff invited
the Chinese to resume the
government of
the country under the protection of Russia, the latter to have the right of
navigating the Yalu and cutting timber on its banks. This produced 'another
protest from Japan.. The position of affairs was at this time considerably
altered by the conclusion of an offensive and defensive alliance between Great
Britain and Japan (1902). The effect of this treaty was instantaneous; but
still Russia refused to believe that Japan would proceed to extremities against
her, and considered that the British nation was satisfied with an agreement
(1899) in which it was declared that the portion of the Niuchwang railway line
inside the Great Wall was within the British sphere of influence, and that any
railway north of the same barrier was within that of the Russians. After some
delay in the negotiations, Japan sent an ultimatum to St Petersburg, in which
she proposed to recognise Manchuria as Russia's sphere of influence, provided
Russia would recognise Japanese influence as paramount in Korea. Not receiving
a reply to this message, Japan withdrew her ambassador from St Petersburg on
February 6, 1904, and three days later Admiral Uriu sank two Russian cruisers
which were lying at Chemulpo in Korea. Later on the same day, Admiral Togo
attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and sank two battleships and one
armoured cruiser. The causes and results of this War are dealt with in a
separate chapter.
The victory
of Japan came as a revelation to the Chinese, to whom it naturally occurred
that, if the Japanese could do such things, they might do likewise. This idea
made the Chinese seek to discover wherein the great strength of the Japanese
lay. They found the explanation in Western learning, and they hastened to
establish reformed schools and colleges throughout the empire. The learning of
Confucius was at a discount; and all public temples except those under special
imperial guarantee were converted into schools. Numbers of Japanese professors
were imported to instruct the youths, and on the other hand thousands of
Chinese young men were sent to study in Japan. At the same time, five
commissioners were sent in 1905 to Europe and America to examine the systems of
government adopted in those continents. The problem which the commissioners
were called upon to solve was a difficult one; and it is questionable whether
the time they devoted to the task—three months—was sufficient for their
purpose. On their return, they requested the Throne “to issue a decree fixing
on five years as the limit within which China would adopt a constitutional form
of government." Four of these years have already sped, and the first step
towards a constitutional government has only recently been taken by a decree
establishing provincial assemblies.
But, though
there may be delays, much has been accomplished, and since the war of 1904—5 a
general desire for foreign education has been everywhere shown. One remarkable
development has been the translation of European works into Chinese. In
military matters vast strides , in advance have been made, and the recently
(January 2, 1909) dismissed
1787-1909]
523
Yuan Shikai
had already shown how much may be effected by the zeal and energy of a single
man. At recent autumn manoeuvres the regiments under his command showed a sense
of discipline and order which was most remarkable and suggested the idea that
the old order of military things had indeed disappeared. In other directions
much progress is to be observed—notably in the construction of railways. The
practically minded Chinese have readily learned to value this new mode of
transport, and the work is proceeding. Already (1907) 3539 miles of railways
have been constructed and are in operation, while 1285 miles are under construction.
The history
of the foreign customs affords an example of what a foreigner may accomplish in
China. In 1905 Sir Robert Hart was able to return an income from the foreign
customs of £5,281,000, a sum which alone out of the various sources of Chinese
revenue furnished an acceptable security for foreign loans. A postal system, also
established by Sir Robert Hart, is returning an increasing income year by year.
In 1904 it yielded 400,000 dollars and in 1905, 600,000.
If a new era
is to begin for China, the almost simultaneous deaths of the Emperor Kwang Hsii
and of the Dowager Empress Tz’u Hsi, announced in November, 1908, may perhaps
be destined to serve as the landmark from which the initiation of the new order
will have to be dated. The death of Tz’u Hsi, at any rate, closed an eventful
epoch.
ANNAM.
For many
centuries Annam, consisting of the provinces of Tonkin on the north, Annam in
the centre, and Cochin China on the south, had been in an intermittent state of
disorder. At the time of the expansion of England in India the position tempted
the ambitions of the French King, who was desirous of founding an Asiatic
kingdom as a counterbalance to our Indian empire. At this time King Gialong of
Annam had been dethroned, and through the influence of the Bishop Pigneau de
Behaine had petitioned for the help of France to recover his Crown. The Bishop
promptly escorted the ex-monarch’s son to Paris, where he was received with
cordiality by Louis XVI, who concluded a treaty with him in 1787. In
consequence, however, of the French Revolution the full design was allowed to
lapse into oblivion, though Gialong was restored to the throne with French
assistance.
In 1824, the
French officers remaining in the country were expelled and foreigners were
thenceforward excluded. Many French and Spanish missionaries were put to death;
a condition of affairs that existed until the Anglo-French campaign in China,
which ended in the Treaties of Tientsin (1858), furnished a convenient
opportunity for despatching an expedition to the country. The result of this
mission was the capture
of the
important city of Saigon, where the French established themselves in March,
1859. The occupation of this city was the beginning of an Indo-Chinese
conquest, resulting in the cession to France of the provinces of Saigon,
Mytho, and Bienhoa, with the islands of Pulo-condore (1862), the establishment
of a French protectorate over Cambodia (1863), and the occupation of the three
provinces lying to the south-west of Saigon (1867). In 1866, an expedition was
organised for the exploration of the Mekong river. This stream was found to be
no waterway, a fact which compelled the explorers to seek some other route by
which they might reach the Chinese province of Yunnan; and, in this search,
they struck the Red river, which connects Yunnan Fu with the Gulf of Tonkin.
At this time
Yunnan was in the hands of Mohammadan rebels, and the Chinese were anxious to
secure a safe route by which they might import arms to their forces in that
province. They therefore fiirthered the French project and gave the explorers
letters of recommendation to the authorities at the provincial capital. On the
other hand the French, while anxious to do all they could to support the
expedition, were unwilling to commit themselves irretrievably. Captain Senez,
who commanded the vessel in which it was arranged that Dupuis, the explorer,
should take his passage northward, arrived off the coast of Tonkin in November,
1872. Without delay he proceeded up the river to Hanoi, and at once opened
communications with the authorities. He found them to be less complacent than
he had anticipated, and he had no sooner sailed again for Saigon than direct
opposition became apparent. Upon this, he seized some native boats, and, having
loaded them with arms, ascended the river. His progress was watched by the
natives, who efused him supplies. He had, however, the satisfaction of handing
over his cargoes to the Chinese Commandant of Yunnan Fu. On his return to
Tonkin, he found that the opposition of the Annamese officials had become
intensified. At the same time, a request was made to Saigon that the Governor
should send an official to adjudicate on the points in contention. In reply to
this appeal Garnier, who had taken an active part in the exploration of the
Mekong, was sent to Hanoi (1873). He immediately issued a proclamation informing
the people that he had been despatched to promote trade and to further the
prosperity of the province. In reply, the Annamese authorities notified the
people that they were quite ahle to take care of themselves and did not want
any interference on the part of the French. Thereupon, Gamier issued a further
proclamation, announcing that the country was open to foreign trade, and
demanding the surrender of the citadel of Hanoi, as well as the issue of
instructions to the native Governors to obey the orders of the French, and the
granting of permission for Dupuis to enter freely into Yunnan. This document
Gamier treated as an ultimatum, and, when acceptance of it was refused by the
Annamese, attacked the citadel and captured it without difficulty.
1873-82]
525
Being now
committed to offensive operations, Gamier and his subordinates attacked the
fortified places within their sphere of action and made themselves masters of
the delta of the Red river. With a courage begotten of contempt, Gamier
disregarded the threatening attitude of the Annamese and Chinese troops now in
the field against him. A considerable force of these allies advanced to
recapture Hanoi. Gamier placed himself at the head of the garrison and sallied
out to meet the enemy. When leading on his men, he stumbled and fell, and was
immediately stabbed to death. A like fate overtook his second in command.
Though so far
successful, the Annamese were anxious for peace, and sent an emissary to Saigon
to ask for the appointment of a plenipotentiary. In reply, the Governor of
Saigon appointed an emissary to arrange a treaty with the Annamese. This
document assumed that the Annamese had the right to make a treaty without
reference to their suzerain power, China (1874). Tolerance was promised to
missionaries and their converts, and the internal peace of the country was
guaranteed. The terms of this Treaty were, however, ignored by the Annamese,
who, as time went on, became more active in their oppression of the Christians
within their dominions. For some time France endured these outrages; but in
1882 affairs reached such a point that she felt bound to intervene again, and
Captain Riviere was despatched to Hanoi to support French interests. Following
in the footsteps of Gamier, Riviere attacked the citadel, and lost his life in
so doing.
Meanwhile,
China had been silently watching events and had encouraged the “Black Flags”
to support the Annamese in their opposition to the French. These irregulars
gave backbone to the Annamese forces, as the French were beginning to find out.
They saw the futility of protracting this state of warfare and demanded the
conclusion of a treaty which would cede to them Tonkin. Already, a similar
proposition had been brought forward at Peking by the French minister Bourree,
who suggested that the portion of the province of Tonkin north of the Red river
should remain tributary to China, while the portion south of the Red river
should be ceded to France. In return, France was to defend Tonkin against all
comers. The conclusion of this Treaty (December, 1882) was irregular. By
tradition and law Annam was one of the dependencies of China, and the King
therefore had no power to conclude a treaty without the concurrence of his
suzerain. Its terms were no sooner communicated to the Tsungli Yamen than
Prince Kung repudiated them. Meanwhile the French troops again took the field,
and, in spite of a warning that an attack on the city of Sontai would be
treated by the Chinese as a declaration of war, laid siege to and captured that
fortress. About the same time the strongholds of Hanoi and Haiphong also fell
into their hands. The loss of these places produced consternation at Peking.
The King of Annam formally declared
war against
France, and the occupation of Hue, the capital city, followed (1883). But while
fighting was going on negotiations were in progress; and the plenipotentiaries
of the two Powers at this time came to an understanding that France was to
assume a protectorate over Annam (1883).
Li Hungchang
was the only man who could lead China out of the entanglements into which she
had fallen, and the Dowager Empress acted wisely when she appointed him
Commander-in-Chief in south China. Subsequent events proved that he carried
with him powers beyond those attaching to his military command; for, on
arriving at Shanghai, he proceeded to open negotiations with Tricou, the newly
arrived French minister. So promising did these pourparlers prove that Li
hastily returned to Peking to urge on his imperial mistress the advisability of
making peace with their enemies.
On the
question of peace or war the Peking Cabinet was divided; and Prince Kung was
dismissed from all his offices for venturing to advocate a pacific policy.
While the issues were still confused, a chance meeting at Canton between
Captain Fournier, commanding a French man-of-war, and Detring, of the imperial
Customs Service, led to further complications. By some argument which has never
been explained, Detring persuaded Fournier to steam northwards to Tientsin for
the purpose of opening negotiations with Li Hungchang, without , any regard to
Tricou at Peking. Behind the back of the minister, Fournier was authorised from
Paris to play the part of a plenipotentiary, and with as little delay as
possible these two agents concluded the Convention known by Fournier’s name.
This document was signed on May 11,1884, and by its terms France undertook to
protect the southern frontiers of China, while China on the other hand agreed
to withdraw her garrisons from Tonkin and to respect the treaties concluded
between France and the I lgdom of Annam. A verbal undertaking was at the same
time given by Li that all Tonkinese garrisons near the boundaries of Kwangtung
and Kwangsi should be evacuated within twenty days from the date of the Treaty,
while the fortresses abutting on Yunnan should be evacuated within forty days.
In case of non-observance of these limits of time, France should be free to
expel the laggard garrisons. The Fournier Convention was arrived at under a vow
of secrecy, Tricou being informed that, though negotiations had been going on
at Tientsin, nothing definite had taken shape.
The two
agents parted, holding divergent views on the limits of time at which the main
fortified posts in Tonkin were to be evacuated by the Chinese. General Millot
believed himself to be within his rights when he ordered Colonel Duchesne to
occupy Langs,on. On approaching the walls of this fortress, the French
encountered a Chinese force, the commander of which declined to give way before
the invaders, as he had not received any instructions to that effect; while,
through a further misunderstanding, an engagement was precipitated, in which
the French
were defeated and put to rout. The news of this disaster caused consternation
in Paris, and Jules Ferry at once despatched remonstrances to the Tsungli
Yamen, where the French minister was met by the round assertion that the French
troops were the invaders, and that the Chinese commander was only doing his
duty according to the terms of the Treaty.. A reference to this document proved
that the Chinese were technically in the right. Both sides stood to their guns,
and an end was put to the prevailing uncertainty by the presentation of an
ultimatum demanding that the terms of the Fournier Convention should be carried
out at once, and that the Chinese troops should evacuate Tonkin without delay.
Negotiations were reopened at Shanghai, while at the same time a French fleet
was blockading the northern coast line of Formosa. Some doubtful successes were
obtained by the French arms in this direction, but a more substantial though
less honourable advantage was gained by an attack made on the Chinese fleet in
the harbour of Foo-chow. As it was there understood that negotiations for peace
were in progress, no opposition was offered to the entrance of the French
fleet, which opened fire on the Chinese ships, most of which were in a few
minutes either sunk or disabled. It was now plainly impossible that the French
representative could remain at Peking. He therefore hauled down his flag and
took up his residence at Shanghai. The Chinese now poured troops into Tonkin,
but success did not attend their banners. Langson was successfully occupied by
the French, and other places of less note fell into their hands.
Sir Robert
Hart bad throughout these proceedings been active in the interests of peace,
and had charged his representative at Paris to lose no opportunity of laying
the Chinese aspect of the quarrel before the French Ministry. The result of
these efforts was that a protocol was signed on April 4, 1885, which was
followed by a Treaty, signed on June 9, by the two most important Articles of
which (1 and 11) it was laid down that “ France engages to reestablish and
maintain order in those provinces of Annam which border upon the Chinese
empire. For this purpose, she shall take the necessary measures to disperse or
expel the bands of pirates or vagabonds who endanger the public safety...
nevertheless, the French troops shall not, under any circumstances, cross the
frontier which separates Tonkin from China, which frontier France promises both
to respect herself and to guarantee against any aggression whatsoever. On her
part China undertakes to disperse or expel such bands as may take refuge in her
provinces bordering on Tonkin, and to disperse those which may be tempted to
form there for the purpose of causing disturbances amongst the populations
placed under the protection of France; and, in consideration of the guarantees
which have been given as to the security of the frontier, she likewise engages
not to send troops into Tonkin.” The signature of this Treaty restored peace to
Tonkin, juid it has been maintained down to the present time.
pp. *VJJ,
Bismarck once
described the colonial positions of the three great Powers in the epigram, “
England has colonies and colonists; Germany has colonists but no colonies;
France has colonies but no colonists." This last clause accurately
represents the case of France. The French colonies have formed the happy hunting
grounds of political partisans who have successfully competed for the
administrative posts in the far- off regions. This was eminently the case with
Annam down to the year 1896. Prior to that date, swarms of office-holders
swelled the annual budgets and added little to the efficiency of the
administration. They knew nothing of the languages of the natives, and cared
nothing for the maintenance of civil law and order.
In these
circumstances, the colony became a heavy burden on the Parisian exchequer, and
constant outbreaks disturbed the relations of the colony with the mother
country. Fortunately for all concerned, M. Doumer was appointed
Governor-General of Indo-China in December, 1896, and he at once, by his
administrative ability, changed the aspect of affairs. The principal items of
his programme of reforms were the improvement of the financial situation of
Indo-China, and the creation of a financial policy suited to the country and
its needs; the pacification of Tonkin; the organisation of a Government-General;
the completion and the reform of the administration of the protectorate; and
the extension of the influence of France and the development of its interests
in the Far East, particularly in the countries adjoining the colony— that is,
in Siam and China.
M. Doumer’s
first step towards the attainment of these objects was to constitute a
Legislative Council, which was divided into four committees, the first dealing
with military and naval affairs, public works, railways, commerce and
agriculture; the second with legislation and administrative organisation ; the
third with the budgets; and the fourth with other financial matters. Under this
reformed administration the colony flourished abundantly. The foreign trade of
the colony increased from 162,000,000 of francs in 1893 to 400,000,000 in 1902.
Of these sums the share of France increased from 30,000,000, or less than one-
fifth, to 148,000,000, or more than one-third. Happily for the colony, the
reforms introduced by M. Doumer have been maintained, and there is every
prospect that the colony will continue its successful career in the future.
THE
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.
The
Philippine Islands first appear in history in 1520. In that year Magellan, in
pursuance of the Papal Bull which divided the world of discovery between Spain
and Portugal, steered his course in the direction of the Spice Islands. In this
quest he found himself in touch
with a group
of islands, which he named after his sovereign the Philippines. Here he met
his death in .1521. This archipelago consists of upwards of 1600 islands of all
sizes. The whole surface is extremely volcanic—23 volcanoes being active at the
present time; and between 1880 and 1896 the surface of the land was disturbed
by 221 earthquakes. The Philippines contain a population of 7,572,199, which
mainly consists of aborigines and Malays, with a liberal sprinkling of Chinese.
Among these
inhabitants missionary friars actively pursued their work of conversion, and,
although constant quarrels disturbed their relations with the civil
authorities, much good work was done. Schools and colleges were established and
charitable institutions as well as hospitals were founded.
The
wars and rumours of wars that psrenniaHv disturbed the relations between the
Spaniards and the natives were further complicated by the advent of Chinese
expeditions, which commonly ended in frightful massacres. In 1591 an envoy from
Japan arrived, demanding the allegiance of the native King to the Emperor of
Japan. This visit caused much anxiety; but the Governor-General by his
judicious treatment of the ambassador succeeded in inducing him to conclude a
treaty of peace with Spain. •*
In 1762 the
alliance entered into by France and Spain against England brought England into
the field as a competitor for the ownership of the Philippines. Without much
difficulty, the British effected a landing and hoisted their flag on Port
Santiago, where it flew until January 30, 1764, when news of the Treaty of
Paris reached Manila. During the nineteenth century the disputes between the
natives and the Spaniards led to some formidable insurrections. In 1872 a
rebellion against the Spanish yoke broke out, led by a distinguished Filipino,
Burgos. Ibis outbreak failed, through a misunderstanding of the signal agreed
upon; and after some sharp fighting the Spaniards gained a decisive victory.
But, though
this particular revolt was thus brought to an end, peace was not secured. In
course of time the rule of the friars had become harsh and tyrannical, and
simultaneously there had grown up a desire for more extended liberty among the
natives, many of whom had visited Europe, while some few had represented the
Philippines in the Cortes at Madrid. In consequence of the resulting
dissatisfaction a series of outbreaks occurred, which showed the advisability
of granting administrative reforms to the archipelago. Commissioners were
appointed from time to time to study the political conditions; educational
facilities were given to the natives; and changes were brought about in the
iystem of civil administration. These reforms did not, however^ satisfy the
Filipinos, who demanded the expulsion of the friars; a political administration
similar to that granted to Cuba; the return to the owners
630 Aguinaldo.—Spanish-American War. [i896-8
of the land
seized by the friars; the prevention of insults to the Philippine natives; and
economy of expenditure. In 1896 a petition was addressed to the Emperor of
Japan, inviting him to annex the islands. The Japanese Government forwarded
this document to Madrid, thus putting the Spaniards in possession of the
revolutionary plan which was on foot. Martial law was proclaimed and numerous
arrests were made; but the action of the Spanish authorities was hampered by a
serious outbreak in Cuba, which demanded the presence of a large force of men.
The Governor-General deemed it wise, in these circumstances, to offer an
amnesty to all those who should lay down their arms. Many Filipinos accepted
this offer, and the revolutionary movement would probably have died out, had it
not been for the appearance, on July 2,1897, of an edict imposing severe
restrictions on the movements of the people in the towns, who Were placed under
pain of being treated as rebels. The reply to this edict was a document urging
all to take up arms, demanding the expulsion of the friars, popular
representation, freedom of the Press, and more just laws in general. In face of
this uprising, the Spaniards thought it wise to negotiate, and appointed Pedro
Patemo, a Filipino, to negotiate with Aguinaldo, who represented the
insurgents. A treaty was the result, by the terms of which the Filipinos were
to lay down their arms, and Aguinaldo and other leaders were to be deported
from the archipelago.
Affairs were
still in an unsettled condition, when news of the declaration of war between
the United States and Spain reached Manila. The first local incident of this
War was the destruction of the Spanish fleet at Cavite on May 1, 1898. Two
months later, American troops were landed in Luzon; and on August 13 Manila
surrendered to them. General Merritt, who commanded the troops, was nominated
Governor; and on the following day he issued a proclamation in which he
declared the abolition of Spanish authority and the continuance of municipal
laws, extending protection to places devoted to religious worship, art,
science, and education. By the Treaty of Paris, December 10, 1898, peace was
restored, and the Philippines were ceded to the United States. Meanwhile,
General Aguinaldo had returned to Manila on May 19,1898, on board a United
States man-of-war. There seems to have been some confusion about the terms on
which this agitator was allowed to return. By the Americans he was given
considerable latitude of action, which he stretched according to circumstances.
On landing, he immediately began to organise an army and a government under the
American flag, and notified his fellow subjects that the American Government
was for the future merely to exercise a protectorate over the islands, leaving
the natives to govern themselves. These measures led to friction. He, however,
continued to promise to the people national independence, and formed a Cabinet
for the government of the archipelago. He established a Philippine Republic,
with himself as President.
Gradually,
the relations of the Americans with the Filipinos became more strained; and on
February 4, 1899, the shooting of a native soldier who attempted to cross the
American lines in the darkness produced an outbreak of hostilities. Thus war
again broke out, and the American troops overran the archipelago without
serious difficulty. In August Malalos, the insurgent capital, was taken, and
central and northern Luzon were subdued. By November, 1899, all organised
opposition had ceased, though guerrilla warfare and brigandage continued. In
April, 1901, Aguinaldo was captured, and other prominent insurgent officers
were afterwards taken. The insurrection was declared at an end on July 1, 1901,
when the President of the United States issued a proclamation handing over the
islands to a civil Government, of which Judge Taft was appointed the head.
Under this new form of administration three Filipino members were added to the
Commission, which it was intended should be ultimately superseded by a
Philippine Assembly, to consist of from fifty to a hundred members, composed of
representatives from each province; and thus, it was hoped, would be
established a distinct separation of State, Church, and military interests. All
these functions had, under the Spanish rule, been exercised by the Spanish
Governor-General, and no such thing as a representative assembly was known.
Under the present American scheme “ the governing body itself is composed
partly of Filipinos; the majority of the provincial Governors are natives; the
Chief Justice and certain other members of the supreme Court are likewise
Filipinos; the judges of the Courts of first instance are largely native born ;
and the municipal officials, with the exception of the health officer in
certain places, are always Filipinos.”
It is admitted
on all hands that the Filipinos are not as yet ripe for self-government.
Meanwhile, the Americans are educating them up to the level required for this;
and, in the interval, the condition of the archipelago is improving; trade is
increasing, as is shown by the fact that the total trade in 1905 amounted to
£12,701,064, an increase of £925,618 over that of the preceding year; and
education is spreading. “I firmly believe,” said President Roosevelt in his
message to Congress in December, 1904, “that you can help them (the Filipinos)
to rise higher and higher in the scale of civilisation and of capacity for
self-government, and I most earnestly hope that in the end they will be able to
stand, if not entirely alone, yet in some such relation to the United States as
Cuba now stands.”
THE
MALAY PENINSULA.
A glance at
the map is sufficient to show how completely the Malay peninsula with the
islands which start from its southern point separates the China Sea from the
Indian Ocean, and it is, therefore, not surprising to find that its shores
formed the scene of a constant struggle for the
532
[1786-1876
mastery
between the Dutch and the English during the early days of Eastern exploration;
indeed, it was not until towards the end of the eighteenth century that British
supremacy in the peninsula was definitely recognised.
. The British
flag was hoisted at Penang on August 11, 1786, and Malacca surrendered to the
British just nine years later. The Crown colony known as the Straits
Settlements, comprising Penang, the province of Wellesley and the Dindings,
Malacca and Singapore, was established later. Connected with these settlements
are the Federated Malay States, which consist of the sultanates of Perak,
Selangor, the Negri Sembilan, and Pahang. The relations between these States
and Great Britain were established gradually, and were formed in the haphazard
way which has marked the incorporation of so many of our colonial dependencies.
Down to the year 1873, when Sir Andrew Clarke was appointed Governor of the
Straits Settlements, the government of the Malay States was still in its
pristine condition: every necessary as well as every luxury of life was heavily
taxed; in the law Courts the decisions depended solely on the relative wealth
or influence of the litigants, and the punishments were barbarous; a system of
debt-slavery existed, under which not only the debtor but his wife and their
most remote descendants were condemned to hopeless bondage; forced labour was
exacted for indefinite per’ods and entirely without remuneration; and the Rajah
had the right to compel all female children to pass through his harem.
Sir Andrew
Clarke brought with him to Singapore instructions from the Colonial Office to
examine into and report upon the political systems of the several States.
Enquiry revealed to him the barbarous systems existing under the rule of the
Rajahs, and he at once determined to improve on the instructions given him in
Downing Street. Without much difficulty he persuaded the Sultans of Perak,
Selangor, the Negri Sembilan, and Pahang to receive British Residents at their
Courts and to submit to their advice on political and financial matters,
leaving out of account all social customs and religious rites.
The new
system appeared to work well and had been in operation about a year when Birch,
the Resident at Perak, was murdered with the connivance of the Sultan of that
State (1875). This proceeding alarmed the Colonial Secretary of State, who
severely censured Sir Andrew Clarke for having exceeded his instructions. The
government at Perak by British officers in the name of the Sultan was
forbidden; the duties of the Residents were limited to the “ giving of
influential and responsible advice”; and the Resident of Perak was warned that
“ the Residents have been placed in the native States as advisers, not as
rulers, and if they take upon themselves to disregard this principle they will
most assuredly be held responsible if trouble springs out of their neglect of
it.” These instructions were plausible, and, if the Malays were capable of
tempering the evils of despotism by statesmanship, would have been
i884-i9oi]
The progress of the Malay peninsula. 533
judicious and
wise. But the constitution of Malay society made this impossible.
The Malay
people may be divided into two classes. On the one hand are those who. can lay
daim, however indirectly, to royal lineage, and on the other the main body of
the people, who by enforced labour are compelled to supply a quota of the
revenue. It is from the first class that the exercise of any reforming power
could alone be expected; but their personal interests are bound up in the
present system. The people are inherently indolent, and so long as their labour
can produce enough to maintain life they are content. In view of this position,
the British Government, after mature consideration, determined to revert to the
policy of Sir Andrew Clarke, and, through the European advisers on the staffs
of the sultanates, to secure step by step the complete control of the administration.
The results have proved eminently satisfactory. By the year 1884 slavery had
been abolished throughout British Malaya; in 1888 Pahang, the largest State of
the Federation, accepted a British Resident; in 1895 the small States forming
the Negri Sembilan were placed under one native ruler; and in the following
year the four States -—Perak, Selangor, the Negri Sembilan, and Pahang—were
combined in a Federation for the purpose of mutual assistance, continuity of
policy, and uniformity of administrative methods.
The main
wealth of the Federated Malay States consists of the tin mines, which supply
the greater part of the world’s tin. In 1901, out of the total export trade
valued at $71,350,000, tin represented $61,689,000, or more than 68 per cent,
of the whole. In the same year tin paid as export duty $8,439,000; and the
opium, spirit, and gambling licenses brought in $3,726,000. A marked feature in
the financial condition of the States is that owing to the indolence of the
natives the revenue of the country is nearly all paid by Chinese immigrants.
Thus the tin is produced entirely by the industry of the Chinese miners; and
the sums derived from the opium, spirit, and gambling licenses are drawn from
them.
The Federated
Malay States cover an area of 25,000 square miles, and, with the province of
Wellesley and Malacca, they include the whole eastern shore of the Straits of
Malacca. Excluding Pahang for which no returns are available, the population of
the Federated States amounts to 570,454. Of this total 61 per cent, are foreign
immigrants, chiefly Chinese, and only 39 per cent, are Malays. Each of the four
Federated States is governed by a State Council consisting of the Sultan, the
British Resident, the secretary to the Resident, a number of Malay chiefs, and
one or more prominent Chinamen to represent the interests of the Chinese
community.
Under British
administration the Federated States have flourished abundantly. They have
obtained security of life and property; slavery and the exaction of unpaid labour
have been abolished; free education and free hospital treatment have been
provided for all; more than a
thousand
miles of metalled roads have been constructed, and 300 miles of railway have
been built. The revenue of the States has been raised from $400,000 in 1875 to
$22,500,000 in 1902; meanwhile the foreign trade has increased from $1,500,000
to $127,000,000.
SIAM.
Siam was
first introduced to the notice of European historians by Portuguese explorers
and adventurers. The trading of these pioneers was little better than smuggling
and buccaneering, while they sold their military support to the highest bidder,
irrespective of the merits of the causes which they espoused or assailed.
During the sixteenth century, the Portuguese enjoyed a monopoly of the foreign
trade of Siam, and it was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century
that the Dutch sought to enter into competition with them. This intrusion was
resented by the Portuguese, who spread reports hostile to the political honesty
of the new-comers. An embassy which was sent to Java discovered the falsity of
these charges, and for some time the Dutch settlers stood high in favour at
Ayuthia, the then capital of Siam. But the Dutch influence did not last; and at
the present day little is left to mark the residence in the country of the
natives of Holland except the ruins of the Dutch factory, still visible in the
jungle near Paklat, on the banks of the Menam. During the seventeenth century,
the Jesuits were active in the Far East and established a mission in Siam. It
so happened that a Greek named Phaulkon at that time stood high in favour at
the Court of Siam, and, being a proselyte to the Roman Catholic Church, he gave
active support to the Jesuit missionaries. A cleavage was thus developed which
produced two hostile parties—the nationalists, who served their own gods, and
the missionaries with their converts. In order to strengthen the Jesuit party,
it was arranged by Phaulkon that King Louis XIV should send an embassy to King
Phra Narai of Siam; and, in 1685, an envoy presented himself at the Court of
Ayuthia bringing a letter from the French monarch together with a collection of
presents. A return mission was sent in the following year under the direction
of Father Tachard, a Jesuit missionary. One or two missions followed; but their
effect was partly nullified by the fact becoming known that, much as the French
King desired Siamese trade, he cared far more for the spread of his religion.
King Phra Narai became alarmed since these designs were supported by the
arrival from time to time of small detachments of French soldiers, nominally as
guards of honour to the King. The death of Phra Narai in 1688 brought matters
to a climax; and the national party at once took action. Under a Minister of State
named Opra Pitrachand they at once took the field. They seized the next heirs
to the throne and sent Phaulkon to execution. The late King’s brothers were
murdered, and Opra
1767-1855]
Reopening of Siam to European trade. 535
Pitrachand
usurped the throne. The French soldiers were transported to Pondicherry, and a
state of war prevailed.
Meanwhile,
relations were opened between the British Government and Siam. Sufficient
encouragement was given British merchants to settle in the country, and, as the
first arrivals concerned themselves with trade only and left the natives in
undisturbed possession of their own religion, they were cordially welcomed. But
troublous times were ahead for the nation. Fierce persecutions broke out
against the Jesuit missionaries and their converts, which were in the end
checked by the presence of a French fleet off the coast. Wars with Burma also
frequently occurred; and in 1767 the Burmese captured and destroyed the capital
city of Ayuthia. During these years Siam had been blotted out of history, so
far as Europe was concerned, and it was not until 1822 that she again appeared
on the surface. In that year John Crawfurd was sent to Bangkok as envoy by the
Indian Government with instructions to obtain commercial facilities but not to
conclude a treaty. Up to this time it had been the practice of the King’s
Ministers on the arrival of a vessel to ransack her cargo, to purchase at a low
cost those articles which suited their taste, and to retail them to the native
merchants at their full value. Against these impossible conditions Crawfurd
protested strongly, and succeeded in inducing the King to modify them in the
direction of free trade. Four years later Captain Burney followed in Crawfurd’s
footsteps, and concluded a treaty, by the terms of which free trade was
established between the merchants of both countries, without the intervention
of any third parties. This was a distinct advance; but on the other hand trade
was limited to certain centres, and Englishmen were bound to conform to Siamese
rules and regulations of life.
The
conditions of this treaty were before long violated by oppressive monopolies
and its provisions became a dead letter. A few years later (1833), the United
States of America sent an envoy, who concluded a treaty with Siam similar to
that of Burney. Later, in 1850, Sir James Brooke was despatched by Queen
Victoria to negotiate a treaty with the King; but the attitude of the officials
and people had become so hostile that Sir James took his leave without even
opening negotiations with the Government. This unpromising attitude did not
however continue long; and in 1855 Sir John Bowring, her Majesty’s
Superintendent of Trade in China, was received in Siam with every sign of
hospitality, and succeeded in concluding a treaty which was a distinct advance
on all previous efforts. By it a British consul was to be established at
Bangkok who should try all cases in which British subjects were defendants ;
the free exercise of the Christian religion was permitted; and liberty to build
churches was granted. All imports except opium, which was to be imported free,
were to pay a duty of 3 per cent, ad valorem; and all exports were to be taxed
according to the specifications in the
tariff
attached to the treaty. Merchants were allowed to buy or sell without let or
hindrance, and a most-favoured-nation clause was inserted.
About this
time the French idea of a colonial empire in Indo-China began to take shape,
and a desire was developed to extend and establish the French boundaries in and
about Annam. As matters then stood, the eastern frontier of Siam was the range
of mountains running north and south on the left bank of the Mekong, and, on
the plea that the territory on the left of the river from the frontier of
Yunnan to the sea had formerly belonged to Annam, France laid claim to it as
suzerain of that country,i and she further demanded that the bordering
territory measuring fifteen- miles on the right bank of the Mekong should be
handed over to her on the same conditions. On October 3, 1893, a treaty was
signed at Bangkok giving effect to these conditions. But, meanwhile, the French
had found it necessary to send two gunboats to Bangkok and to blockade the
Menam in order to enforce their claims. This action was so threatening to the
interests of Great Britain that she was almost drawn into war to protect her
rights, (July, 1893). Fortunately, this catastrophe was averted, and a treaty
between the two Powers (England aid France) was subsequently entered into
(1896) guaranteeing the integrity of Siam proper. By this instrument Great
Britain and France, consented to refrain from any armed intervention or the
acquisition of any special privileges in the Siamese possessions included
within the basin of the Menam; and at the same time the preponderating
influence of Great Britain in the western, and of France in the eastern
portions of the Siamese dominions, were tacitly recognised.,
Later,
still—1907—a treaty was signed between Great Britain and France, the chief
feature of which was the cession to France by Siam of the territories of
Battambang, Siem-reap, and Sisophon in return for the territories of Dan-sa'i
and Kratt, as well as all the islands situated to the south of Cape Lemling,
including Koh-Kut. Moreover, a further agreement has been arrived at by which
the Malay States of Kelantan, Trengganu, and Kedah, have been recognised as
being under the influence of Great Britain; and in return Siam secures a loan
with which to construct a railway system, by which it is hoped that direct
railway communication will soon be established between Bangkok and Singapore;
and Great Britain relinquishes those exterritorial rights which place foreign
subjects of British nationality outside the jurisdiction of the oative Courts.
, The main
object of the policy, which France had pursued on the eastern frontiers of
Siam—to promote the French trade in lndo-China— has not been attained; and the
construction of the line of railway from Bangkok to Korat shows that the
direction of trade is westward rather than eastward. France is so far from
gaining a monopoly of the trade with Siam that, as appears by the returns of
1905, 86 per cent, of the export trade and 79 of the import trade of that year
fell to the share of the British.
THE
REGENERATION OF JAPAN.
In the preceding volume the history of Japan was
traced down to the year 1871, closing with the record of the deposition of the
territorial barons from their ancient positions as quasi-sovereigns of their
fiefs, and the conversion of those fiefs into prefectures, administered by
officials of the Government at Tokio. The final step was thus taken in the
unification of the government of the empire.
Great as had
been the changes during the thirteen years in which Japan had been open to
foreign intercourse, they were as nothing compared to those which followed
during the succeeding years, and which it is the object of this chapter to
describe. In order that a proper appreciation may be formed of their character
and of the onerous task imposed upon the Ministers who carried them to their
final accomplishment, a short description of the social conditions of the
people as they were until 1871 seems desirable.
First in rank
came the Kuge or court nobles, the attendants at the Court of the Emperor at
Kioto, who, invariably tracing their descent from collateral branches of the
imperial family and therefore sharing to some extent the prestige of the
Emperor’s divine origin, were, though poor and landless, recognised without
question as the highest in the land next to the imperial family. They performed
no military duties; their time was passed in the seclusion of the Court, in the
performance of court duties, in studying court etiquette and polite
accomplishments. At the time of the Restoration they numbered one hundred and
fifty houses; they stood apart, a class by themselves.
The Daimio or
territorial nobles were the descendants of great military adventurers of the
Middle Ages who enriched themselves by taking permanent possession of lands
which they had won by the sword, or had received from the Shogun as rewards for
their services. They had no claim to the ancient lineage of the Kuge; but on
the other hand they were feudal chiefs of territories that in some cases
comprised entire provinces. All were wealthy, though in varying degrees; all
were practically sovereign lords of their fiefs, governing them as petty
kingdoms, exercising independent administrative and
judicial
powers within their limits, issuing their own paper currency, framing their own
laws, and supporting their own armies. The armies of the Daimio were composed
of Samurai, military retainers of the chief, a greater or less number being
maintained in each fief in proportion to its wealth and magnitude. Each Samurai
wore two swords, and the right of wearing arms and of using them in their
lord’s service was solely vested in this class. Prom their lord they derived
subsistence for themselves and their families, and in return they rendered him
the most unquestioning loyalty and obedience, and were ready at any time to
sacrifice their lives for his sake or at his command, either by their own or an
enemy’s hand. The majority devoted their time exclusively to military training;
to fencing, riding, and learning the use of the spear and the bow; but the highest
in rank and the more intelligent acted as counsellors to their lord, and as
administrators of the public affairs of the fief, fulfilling the same functions
that in a kingdom are discharged by Cabinet Ministers and permanent officials.
The Daimio and their retainers constituted the Samurai, the first of the four
classes into which the registered population was divided.
The remainder
of the population consisted of three classes which, in order of social rank,
were No, farmers, Ko, artisans, Sho, traders; but just as, at the top of
society, the class of Kuge stood by itself, apart from and above the four
classes, so in the very lowest strata were found two other unclassed sections
of the population, the Eta and Hmin—the latter word meaning “ not human ”—the
pariahs of the nation, who lived entirely apart from their fellow countrymen,
whose avocations were the slaughtering of animals, tanning, burying the bodies
of executed criminals, and similar pursuits, regarded with loathing and
detestation. The touch, even the presence, of these outcasts was looked upon
as contamination by the three lower classes of citizens.
While
the latter were immeasurably above the Eta and Hinin, the social conditions in
which they lived rendered them little better t>mn serfs in comparison with
the haughty military class, the Samurai. Iyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa
dynasty of the Shoguns, in the legacy or testament which he left for the
guidance of his successors, thus defined the relative positions of the Samurai
and the other three classes: “ The Samurai are the masters of the four Farmers,
artisans, and merchants may not behave in a rude manner towards Samurai, and
the Samurai is not to be interfered with in cutting down a fellow who has
behaved to him in a manner other than is expected.” These principles were
guiding laws throughout the whole period of 265 years during which the Tokugawa
dynasty held sway, and even for the first few years of the present Emperor’s
reign. In the struggles which preceded the modem Revolution, in all the
political movements that followed during the succeeding the
lower classes
had neither voice nor part. They were never consulted; they never thought of
obtruding their voice in discussions or their persons in fighting. The lot of
the commoners was to obey, to furnish the means that were required for the
maintenance of the Samurai, to be left without any security as to the continued
safe possession of what they might acquire for themselves, to remain contented
not only in the station of life but in the actual locality in which they were
born, each man, no matter what were his tastes and abilities, being bound to
follow in the footsteps that had been trodden by his direct forefathers. Rigid
sumptuary laws prescribed their dress; none was allowed to ride on horseback.
When in the presence of a Samurai, they either prostrated themselves upon the
ground in an attitude of craven humility or, if circumstances required them to
stand, they did so with bent backs, with eyes fixed on the ground, and spoke with
bated breath, using words expressive of the most profound respect for their
auditors and utter depreciation of themselves. If struck, no thought of
retaliation ever entered their minds; if murdered in pure wantonness, as often
happened, no thought of vengeance or legal punishment of the assailant occurred
to their families or successors.
It was with
these materials that the founders of modem Japan had to begin their great work.
No more unpromising task has ever been carried through with greater success to
a triumphant issue.
In 1871, the
Emperor was served by a body of Ministers who, throughout the civil and
military struggles which culminated in the Revolution, had given proof of being
possessed not only of moral and physical courage, of strong and persevering
determination, but of many attributes of wise and far-seeing statesmanship.
They formulated in the Emperor’s name their new policy, which was outlined in
the oath taken by the young Emperor early in 1868, before an assembly of his
own Court and of the territorial nobles. This oath was subsequently known as
the “Charter Oath,” and consisted of the following five clauses: a deliberative
assembly shall be summoned and all measures shall be decided by public opinion;
high and low shall be of one mind in the conduct of the administration; matters
shall be so arranged that not only the government officials and Samurai, but
also the common people, may be able to obtain the objects of their desire and
the national mind may be completely satisfied; the vicious and uncivilised
customs of antiquity shall be broken through, and the great principles of
impartiality and justice coexisting with heaven and earth shall be taken as the
basis of action; intellect and learning shall be sought for throughout the
world for the purpose of firmly establishing the foundations of the empire.
In carrying
out the policy outlined in these clauses, the Government had to face the most
deeply rooted conservative prejudice, and the constant terror of assassination,
which has, down to recent years, been a
recurring
incident in Japanese politics; to obtain all the best services of a
heterogeneous population; to accomplish great domestic reforms simultaneously
with the management of foreign affairs that bristled with present humiliation
and future menace.
The
downfall of the feudal system entailed the abolition of the old class
distinctions. The court and territorial nobility were merged under the title of
Kwazoku or nobles. The remainder of the Samurai, irrespective of gradations of
rank and influence in their particular fiefs, were newly grouped under the
title of Shizoku, and the rest of the population under that of Heimm or
commoners, the Eta and Hinin being included in these. Class disabilities of
every kind were abolished, and every office in the Government was thrown open
to all ranks of the people. The nobles were permitted to go abroad with their
wives and families for purposes of pleasure or study: the Samurai to lay aside
their treasured swords and betake themselves to trade or agriculture; the
commoners to choose their occupations at will. All sumptuary laws were
abolished. ;
Further
reforms were inaugurated before or soon after the close of 1871. The
foundations of a national army, recruited by universal service, were laid; a
beginning was made with the navy; railway, postal, and telegraph services were
organised; a scheme of compulsory education was founded which provided
facilities for the education of every child in the empire; and a mint was
established which turned out an honest uniform coinage in the place of the
debased and varied tokens previously current in the fiefs.
The internal
difficulties which faced the new Government were sufficiently serious to absorb
all the attention of the Ministry, and they were complicated by international
questions demanding a degree of diplomatic skill to which the Ministry, either
in its individual or in its collective capacity, could lay no claim. The
Ministry was further handicapped by its consciousness of the country’s military
impotence and pressing financial difficulties. The Government had neither army,
navy, nor war chest, while claims were either being actually pressed or
threatened, which affected the territorial integrity and the prestige of the
empire. Finally, the Ministry had also before it the question of the revision
of the Treaties which controlled Japan’s international relations with Western
Powers.
The original
Treaties between European Powers and Japan were concluded on the same basis as
those already existing between European and other oriental nations. All these
Treaties, without exception, reserved to the European contracting Power a
complete system of exterritorial jurisdiction over its citizens residing within
the limits of the oriental Power. This reservation was as necessary at the time
the first Treaty was concluded with Japan as it continues to be in the case of
China at the present day. Japan had no known system
Treaties affecting foreigners in Japan.
541
of law; no
organised Courts of justice or competent legal officers; torture was an
incident of every criminal trial; the death penalty was daily inflicted for
offences against property or person of the most trivial character; and the
prisons were infernos of human suffering. The assent of the Shogun's Government
was given to these Treaties, not only under threats of force which it had no
means to resist, but in ignorance of the ordinary international rights of
sovereign States. When the Emperor’s Government came into office, it had to
assume the obligations of the Treaties, and to face in its foreign relations a
condition of affairs which was now known by it to be derogatory to the national
prestige of a civilised State. The national laws had no application to foreign
residents; none of the latter could be punished for criminal offences or
civilly sued except in Consular Courts of their own nationality; and these
Courts—even those which were actuated by an honest desire to use their powers
with equity and whose judges possessed the knowledge and experience that are essential
for the administration of justice— could only administer their own laws. No
foreign Power, except Great Britain, had made any legal provision by which
sanction could be given without delay to Japanese laws and ordinances, however
urgent and necessary they might be for the safety not only of natives but of
foreigners. Before any law could be made effective against foreigners of other
nationalities, the consent and approval of its terms by their respective
Governments had to be severally obtained, and many of these Governments,
however well disposed to Japan, had no legal machinery, such as existed in the
British Orders in Council, by which they could deal with their citizens in a
foreign country in respect of offences unknown to their own laws. Great Britain
had done all that lay in her power to render her jurisdiction effective. Her
Consular Courts were presided over by men whose qualifications would have
fitted them for similar duties in their own country, whose honesty and
impartiality were never once questioned, and who were vested with very
extensive powers both of civil and criminal jurisdiction. A Court of Appeal,
presided over by a judge of the professional status of a member of the High
Court of Justice in England, was founded in Shanghai. The majority of the other
Powers were represented by merchant consuls without legal or official
experience of any kind; and, where consuls de carriere were maintained, as in
the cases of Franjce, Russv, and the United States (Prussia was content with
merchant consuls), their experience and training were entirely political or
official, and gave them no qualifications for the efficient exercise of
judicial functions. An appeal from their decisions could only be made in civil
cases to Courts in Europe or in the United States—a procedure altogether beyond
the means or comprehension of a Japanese suitor. None had any power to inflict
the death penalty or even a long sentence of imprisonment, and several were
vested with no higher functions than those of a committing magistrate. As the
higher
Criminal Courts were in some cases not less distant than the Civil Appeal
Courts, it is not difficult to infer that gross miscarriages of justice were
frequent in serious cases. In fact they were the rule, rather than the
exception.
In addition
to the exterritorial clauses, the Treaties also contained customs tariffs, by
which both import and export duties were fixed on an average ad valorem basis
of five per cent.; and, while the Government was at its wits’ end for money, it
could not, during the continuance of the treaty tariffs, look for a single
penny of increased revenue from its customs. No confidence was placed during
the last years of the Shogun’s Government in its ability to protect the large
foreign community resident in Yokohama against its subjects in rebellion,
whose gathering cry was “expulsion of the foreigners from Japan.” Great Britain
and France, therefore, maintained garrisons of considerable force in
Yokohama—that of Great Britain especially forming in itself a small army
complete in every military detail—and continued to do so during the first seven
years of the Emperor’s rule. The presence of these garrisons was galling in the
extreme to the Government, so soon as it had learned that in ordinary
international intercourse between civilised nations it would have been regarded
as a sign of conquest.
Very early in
its existence the Government appealed to the foreign diplomatic representatives
in Japan for their help in procuring from their own Governments an amelioration
of the Treaties; but, finding little sympathy, it despatched an embassy on a
large scale to the United States and Europe with the object of obtaining for
Japan complete judicial and tariff autonomy (1871). Iwakura Tomomi, a court
noble of high rank, was chosen ambassador, and four of the ablest members of
the Government were attached to him with the title of vice-ambassadors.
The embassy
was absent for nearly three years; but, as might have been foreseen, it wholly
failed in its main object. Not only was it well known to European Governments
that social conditions in Japan were such as Europeans could not accept, but a
strong bias was created by the rigid inhibition still laid by the Japanese
Government upon the profession or practice of Christianity by its subjects, and
by the severe penal consequences which any violation of that inhibition
entailed. At the close of 1869, a persecution was instituted on a large scale
against the inhabitants of certain villages who, it was suddenly discovered,
still practised the doctrines of Christianity taught to their forefathers by
Jesuit missionaries three hundred years previously, having clung to these
doctrines throughout all the long interval, without help or encouragement from
Christian Europe, at the risk of social ostracism and legal tortures by their
own people; and this persecution still continued when the embassy sailed. If,
however, the embassy failed in its main object, its results deserve more than a
brief mention. Besides the purely diplomatic staff, officials of every
department of the public service
were attached
to it. They investigated and reported, with the minute painstaking detail that
characterises Japanese administration down to the present day, on . the civil,
military, and commercial conditions of every country which they visited, and
there was no important country in the West that they did not visit. The result
was a series of reforms at home which may be said to constitute the foundations
of modem Japan. Military instructors were engaged in France, and naval
instructors in England, to create a national army and a navy. Men of high
scientific qualifications were also engaged to develop the system of national
education, and to establish colleges of science and medicine; to commence the
preparation of codes of laws, which should take the place of the semi-barbarous
laws derived from China and ultimately justify foreign Governments in
submitting their citizens in Japan to native jurisdiction. Torture in criminal
trials, if not wholly abolished, was shorn of its worst features. The
punishment of crime was brought more into consonance with modem Western ideas
by the abolition of the death penalty for offences not of the first order of
gravity; the sale of children or of young girls to brothels was forbidden; acts
and customs which violated the European sense of decency were also prohibited;
and, though last, far from least, the public inhibition of Christianity was
withdrawn and the way paved to universal religious toleration. Many of the
reforms were at first rather apparent than real; but all became questions of
practical politics and their effective accomplishment was only a matter of
time.
Every
recommendation made by the embassy, every step taken on that recommendation,
was influenced by the burning desire to procure the abolition of
exterritoriality. Social reforms were made in order to raise the standard of
national civilisation to a level with that of Western nations; military and
civil systems and educational institutions were started, so that the Japanese
might be able to back their demands by force, should these not be granted in
response to the arguments of right and justice.
The story of
the diplomatic negotiations which finally culminated in the realisation of
Japan's aspirations is too long to be told with any approach to fulness in this
chapter. From first to last, eight Japanese Ministers for Foreign Affairs were
engaged in the negotiations. Proposal after proposal was brought forward as a
basis upon which revision might be proceeded with, each in turn only to be
rejected by the Western Powers to whom they were submitted as asking too much,
or by the Japanese as granting too little. Two conferences sat at Tokio—the
first in 1882, the second in 1886—both presided over by the Minister for Foreign
Affairs and attended by the diplomatic representatives of all the Treaty
Powers.
At the first
conference, Great Britain was still represented in Japan by Sir
Hairy Parkes, a man of masterful and determined character,
whose
knowledge of Japan, acquired during eighteen years’ residence, commencing
almost contemporaneously with the first political movements against the
Government of the Shogun, was wide and profound. This knowledge, combined with
his character and irresistible energy, gave him a commanding influence among
his colleagues which was successfully exerted to keep the discussions within
practical bounds; and the result of the conference was the establishment of
certain broad principles on which, as it seemed at the time, new Treaties might
be based. The second conference held its first meeting in May, 1886. Sir Harry
Parkes had in the interval been transferred to China. His United States
colleague, also a man of long experience and considerable ability, had left
Japain, and there was no one of the representatives of the Treaty Powers in
Japan whose ability, knowledge or personal character enabled him to take any
decided lead in the proceedings. All the representatives were ostensibly of
equal rank; all claimed the same rights to a full hearing. The representative
of Great Britain, with all her immense commercial and shipping interests,
surpassing at that period the aggregate of all other Powers, with the rights
and claims of a large resident British population to guard, had Only the same
vote and voice in the proceedings as the representatives of Austria and Spain,
who had neither trade nor citizens to protect, or as those of small Powers such
as Belgium and Portugal.
But, although
the second conference failed to produce revised Treaties, an agreement was
arrived at on so many points that it was comparatively easy to deal with the
remainder. Advanced education, and the growing influence of a Press which was
never silent on the subject of the recovery of the national rights, had by this
time developed considerable political activity among the mass of the people,
who had never before meddled in state affairs. Under the growing pressure of
public opinion, the Japanese Government pressed steadily forward to the
attainment of their great object. Agreements were made with some of the Great
Powers, which gave rise to temporary hopes of a solution of the question; but
none succeeded in Satisfying the Japanese people, who, as time went on, became
more and more averse from accepting any settlement short of the entire
abrogation of the existing Treaties. When the Constitution came into force, and
the first Parliament met, its earliest efforts were devoted to urging on the
Government the revision of the Treaties on the basis of absolute equality
between the contracting Powers. In two instances the national wishes were
gratified. Mexico, whose commercial intercourse with Japan was of the most
insignificant nature and who had no subjects to protect from the tender mercies
of Japanese administration and justice, concluded a Treaty on equal terms in
1888. Four years later, Portugal withdrew her diplomatic and consular
representatives from Japan, as one of several measures of economy necessitated
by financial stress at home. Japan, thereupon, denounced the exterritorial
clauses of
the Treaty and assumed complete jurisdiction over Portuguese subjects in Japan,
on the ground that Portugal had failed to discharge her obligations, implied in
the Treaty, to provide efficient means for the judicial control of her
subjects, whose number was not inconsiderable. The embassy of Iwakura, the two
Tokio conferences, the Mexican and Portuguese Treaties in their different
aspects, were the most prominent incidents from an international point of view
in the long series of treaty negotiations.
Taught by the
experience of the two conferences that negotiations in Tokio were hopeless, the
Japanese transferred their activity to Europe and dealt, not with all foreign
Powers in conference, but with each separately under the pledge of diplomatic
secrecy. Here at last accord was reached. Little by little during the course of
the laborious negotiations the difficulties in the way of an understanding
were removed; and, on July 18, 1894, the representative of Great Bxitain signed
a Treaty which conceded everything for which the Japanese had worked. Where
Great Britain, whose interests in Japan were still paramount, led the way, the
other Western Powers had perforce to follow. Some of them did so slowly and
reluctantly and with greater regard to the interests of their citizens in Japan
than had been shown by the British Foreign Office; but all finally consented;
and on June 30,1899, the Emperor was able to proclaim to his subjects that “his
long-cherished aspirations, exhaustive plans, and repeated negotiations had at
last been crowned by a satisfactory settlement with the Treaty Powers ” and
that exterritoriality in his dominions was at an end.
It was a
proud day for the nation, celebrated with public rejoicings such as might have
been expected at the close of a long and successful war with a powerful enemy.
It was the first experience in history of the unreserved submission of
Europeans to the jurisdiction of an oriental State; and was regarded at the
time with much misgiving by those who were affected. Time has, however,
justified the experiment. The step having been taken by their own Governments,
foreign residents in Japan had perforce to accept it; and the Japanese, in
their triumph, could on their side afford to be generous and use their newly acquired
powers with moderation. Individual cases of hardship occurred, where Courts of
law violated the spirit of European equity in dealing with cases which were
wholly novel to them; a very heavy load of taxation was imposed where none had
been leviable before; inquisitorial regulations, foreign to advanced
sentiments of personal liberty, had to be endured; but, on the whole, Europeans
have succeeded in accommodating themselves to their surroundings, and have been
dealt with by the Government and its local administrators on the same terms as
Japanese subjects. Only one of the five members of Iwakura’s embassy, Prince
Ito, survived to witness, twenty-eight years later, the realisation of its
object.
Bom a simple
Samurai of the Choshiu clan, one of the many
546
thousands of
the same position, Prince Ito, in his early youth, discerned the material
advantages of Western civilisation. At that period, Japanese were forbidden
under pain of death to leave their native shores; but, in their thirst for
knowledge, Ito and four fellow clansmen braved this penalty and, secretly
leaving their homes, succeeded in making their way to England. Two of the five,
in order to acquire a practical acquaintance with navigation, shipped before
the mast in a British sailing vessel, the Pegasus, and worked their way in her
as common sailors all through the voyage round the Cape to England. These two
were Prince Ito and Marquis Inouye. Throughout all the stages of Japan’s
development, Marquis Inouye steadily worked side by side and in complete
harmony with Prince Ito, and was only second to him in the great services he
has rendered to his country and in the distinction he has merited and won. Both
remained long enough in England to acquire a thorough practical knowledge of
the language and to see and learn much besides; but both hastily returned to
Japan when they heard of the troubles which culminated in the bombardment of
Shimonoseki. After these events, both remained in the clan, but both had
incurred the odium of their fellow clansmen, the more prejudiced and ignorant
of whom regarded them as in some degree responsible for the misfortunes which
had fallen upon their lord. Attempts were made to assassinate both. Inouye
escaped with his life, but, to this day, bears the scars of the terrible wounds
he received. Ito’s escape from death was due to a young girl, scarcely in her
teens, who, with a courage of which Japanese history affords several examples
among women, succeeded in hiding him from the band of wouldbe murderers who
were searching for him, and subsequently became his wife.
On the
accomplishment of the revolution, Ito was clearly marked for the service of the
imperial Government by the reputation which he had acquired in his own
influential clan for exceptional ability, and his knowledge of the English
language and of European customs caused him to be chosen for an office in which
he would be brought into constant intercourse with foreigners. The port of Kobe
(Hiogo) had very recently been opened to foreign trade and residence.
Arrangements, which demanded unusual tact and business capacity, had to be made
for the settlement of foreigners in it, and Ito was chosen to carry them out
and for the purpose was appointed Governor. In that office he laid the foundations
of what is now the greatest commercial port in the Far East. In less than two
years he had completed his task. He was then transferred to Tokio as
Vice-Minister of the Board of Works, and, after having been another two years
in that office, was appointed one of the vice-ambassadors in Iwakura’s mission.
In every crisis of the empire, whenever a mission of diplomacy which demanded
exceptional tact,: firm decision, sacrifice and broadmindedness, or
elaborate investigation, had to be sent abroad, Ito was chosen as the
ambassador. He was the first
1868-74]
First National Council of the empire.
547
Prime
Minister when the system of responsible government was introduced and he has
held that office no less than four times. To the time of his death (1909) he retained
the respect and gratitude of his countrymen, and, whether in or out of office,
he was the confidential adviser of the Emperor in every emergency of the State.
Like all
young students, he was, from the first, attracted by constitutionalism, and sought
to develop in his countrymen a capacity for representative government. His
thoughts, were shared by other political leaders and students, and their
realisation was foreshadowed in the first clause of the Charter Oath, under
which clause the first National Council of the empire was convoked in 1869 at
Tokio. It was composed of representatives of all the feudal clans, one
representative being nominated by the authorities of each clan. It was, we
should remember, a council of Samurai only. Public opinion was still their
prerogative. The rest of the people were unconscious of political rights, and
indifferent to their acquisition. The Council was dignified by the name of
Parliament but possessed no legislative power, its functions being merely to
debate and to advise, without any substantial expectation that its advice
would be taken. It remained in session for a few months at Tokio, and summaries
of its proceedings were published. Proposals were debated for admitting
foreigners into commercial partnerships with Japanese, for abolishing some of
the privileges of the Samurai, such as the practice of seppuku (vulg. harakiri
or disembowelment) in expiation of offences, and that of wealing two swords;
but they were rejected almost unanimously. The general mass of the people, on
the very rare occasions on which they were referred to, were mentioned in terms
of haughty contempt, and the whole spirit of the assembly was that of
conservatism in its most rigid aspects. It was soon dissolved, and no attempt
was made to repeat the experiment until 1874.
Throughout
the intervening period, the Press had been steadily growing in ability and
influence. Many writers in it had been educated in the United States and had
there imbibed, in au exaggerated form, the doctrines of constitutional
government, without acquiring the capacity of recognising the unfitness of
their own countrymen, who had only recently been liberated from the iron
fetters of feudalism, to exercise the rights and privileges of a people who had
imbibed the spirit of constitutionalism almost with the first breath of life.
In the extravagance of their aspirations and in their methods, which included
the undisguised advocacy and the practice of assassination, they strongly
resembled the Nationalists of British India at the present day. Their cry was
for the creation of a deliberative and legislative assembly, elected by and
from the people in fulfilment of the terms of the Charter Oath. The influence
of public lectures and outspoken memorials to the Government was added to that
of the Press, with the result of extending political knowledge and aspirations,
not only among
the Samurai
but among the commons. In 1875, the first important steps were taken towards
the fulfilment of the Oath. The chief local authorities of the different
prefectures were convened in Tokio under an imperial rescript, to form a
deliberative council, “in which the measures that might be thought necessary
for the welfare of the people should be discussed, and the sentiments of the
people made known to the Emperor.” This council was not elective, being
composed entirely of officials who owed their appointments to the central
Government; but it was intended to be the means of the gradual introduction of
constitutional forms. In the same year the Genroin, or Senate, was also
constituted under an imperial rescript. It consisted of officials selected by
the Emperor as a consultative body for deliberating and advising on the
measures submitted to it by the several departments of the Government.
Neither of
these bodies possessed any legislative powers. The Emperor still remained the
sole source of all law. Neither of them could claim to be representative; but
their functions gave them somewhat of a parliamentary character. It was the
original intention that the council should meet yearly; but, after its first
meeting, the pressure of international difficulties in regard to Korea and the
domestic crisis of the Satsuma rebellion, followed by the assassination of the
ablest member of the Government, provided abundant reason for its not being
convoked again until 1879, when it met once more, on this occasion under the
presidency of Ito. The meeting was utilised to procure the acceptance of a law
for the formation of urban and prefectural Assemblies, to consist of
representatives elected by and from the people of each locality, with an
effective voice in the administration of local affairs. These were the first
representative popular assemblies in Japan; and, while at first they seemed to
promise little hope of success, they served as schools of training in popular
representation. Meanwhile, political agitation continued throughout the country
with unabated vigour, and the pressure that was brought to bear on the
Government, combined with the hope ongendered by a better spirit that
manifested itself in the local assemblies, had at last their due effect. In the
year 1880, the Emperor in a further rescript declared that a national
Parliament should be established in 1890, “in order that the imperial purpose
of gradually establishing a constitutional form of Government might be carried
out.”
Agitation at
once ceased. The imperial promise was given, and the most persistent agitators
were satisfied. Ito was the member of the Government chosen by the Emperor for
the preparation of the draft of the Constitution, and he spent the next
succeeding years in Europe studying the constitutions and laws of various
countries, and extracting from each whatever appeared to be most suitable to
the peculiar conditions of Japan. In 1884 he returned to Japan with his
material, and his arduous task of drafting the Constitution was commenced with
the aid of
able advisers, both of his own and other nationalities. The preparation of the
Constitution was however only one of the burdens laid upon him. Complications
which occurred in Korea, described in another part of this chapter, demanded
his presence in China early in the following year; and at the close of the same
year a step was taken for remodelling the whole form of the Government, amounting
almost to a second revolution in its drastic changes, for which he was mainly
responsible.
The form of
central government eventually adopted on the completion of the Revolution was
framed on an ancient Chinese model which had served in Japan prior to the first
Shogunate in the early Middle Ages. A similar system was universal among the
feudal principalities. Its main principle was that the chief posts should be
filled by men of high rank who exercised only a nominal authority, while the
actual administrators of the several departments of the Government, men of
ability but without the prestige of high social status or long descent, should
hold only subordinate positions. The principal members of this Government were
a Chancellor of the Empire, who was directly responsible to the sovereign, and
two Ministers known as a Minister of the Left and a Minister of the Right, who
had no administrative responsibility and performed no functions beyond that of
giving the Chancellor the benefit of their advice and the prestige of their
names. Beneath them were the heads of the various departments, who together
formed a Council of State and were responsible to the Chancellor as the
representative of the Emperor. The Chancellor’s authorisation was required to
give validity to any act done by a member in his executive capacity, and the
Chancellor alone was responsible to the sovereign and the sole medium of
communication with him.
The first
Chancellor of the Empire was Sanjo Saneyoshi, and the Ministers of the Left and
Right were Iwakura Tomomi and Shimadzu Saburo. Beneath them, either at the head
of the several departments of the Government or holding important positions in
them, were men such as Saigo, Okubo, Kido, ltd, Inouye, Okuma, and Itagaki, and
many others whose names are now historical—all simple Samurai, possessing no
qualifications of rank or descent to differentiate them from thousands of
others born in the same class of life. Sanjo and Iwakura were both court nobles
(Kuge) of high degree. Both had not only lent their names to the promoters of
the Revolution, but had taken an active part in it. Both had been closely
associated with the Emperor from his youth and possessed his confidence and
friendship. Shimadzu was the father of the feudal lord of Satsuma, the latter
having succeeded to the chieftainship of the clan by adoption, and therefore,
though far below Sanjo and Iwakura in rank and lineage, possessed the social
status of the highest orders of the territorial nobility. These three nobles
gave the prestige of their names to the Emperor’s Government in its early
days when
ancient lineage and high rank were still the most important factors in
influencing the people in general, both Samurai and commoners. Sanjo and
Iwakura were both men of ability, industry, and courage, and, apart from birth,
possessed every qualification for their high offices. It was under Shimadzu’s
guidance and influence that the Satsuma clan cast its lot with the Reformers
before the Revolution, and his own and his elan’s services were therefore
properly recognised by his appointment as Minister of the Right. But he had no
sympathy with the subsequent drastic reforms of the new Government. His whole
character was that of rigid unbending conservatism, and in a very few years he
resigned his office and withdrew to his native province, taking no further
share in the imperial administration.
Iwakura died
full of honours, loved by his sovereign and reverenced by the people to the
last, in July, 1883. Kido died in May, 1877 ; and Okubo was assassinated almost
to a day a year later, paying with his life for his share in the suppression of
the Satsuma rebellion. The fate of Saigo is told below. Itagaki and Okuma both
seceded from the Government, the former in 1873 and the latter in 1881, in
disapproval of its unwillingness to hasten the establishment of
constitutionalism, and became the leaders of independent political parties. The
five Ministers last mentioned were, in their several spheres, the most
prominent active members of the first Government of the Emperor. Their removal
left Ito unquestionably the ablest civil administrator still in office.
In 1885 Sanjo
was still Chancellor of the Empire, and the Minister on whom the whole nominal
responsibility of the Government fell. Age was however telling on him; the
increasing complications of both domestic and foreign affairs were not only
intensifying the burden of his office, so much so as to render the efficient
performance of its duties beyond the capacity of one man, even if in the prime
of vigorous manhood, but at the same time proving the system unsuited for the
prompt and efficient transaction of the business of the State. Ito, with his
expert knowledge of Western institutions, came to the rescue; and, at the dose
of the year 1885, an imperial rescript proclaimed the abolition of the old and
the foundation of a new form of administration. Sanjo was relieved of his
office at his own request. A Cabinet was created consisting of ten Ministers of
State, nine of whom were also chiefs of the principal executive departments. At
their head was a Minister- President without a portfolio, and both the
Minister-President and every member of the Cabinet were personally in their
several capacities responsible to the Emperor, and were appointed and directly
controlled by him.
The formation
of the Cabinet was an important onward step on the path leading to
constitutional government, and the appointment of Ito, the official charged
with the preparation of the Constitution,
as the first
Minister-President under the new system satisfied the hopes of the nation that
the question would be treated as one of the most important among the many which
the Government undertook to solve. One change which was part of the new system
may be mentioned as illustrating the spirit of the times. Hitherto, the
Minister for Foreign Affairs was the lowest in rank of departmental chiefs.
Henceforward, he ranked in the Cabinet next in order to the President. The
President and the Minister for Foreign Affairs were charged with solving the two
most important public questions of the day—the establishment of constitutional
government as it is understood in the West, and the revision of the Treaties.
The work and progress of every other department, whether Finance, Army, Navy,
Commerce, Communications, or Law, were ancillary to those two great questions,
and whatever success was achieved in these departments was valued mainly as
contributing to the realisation of the two main national aspirations.
Four years’
laborious preparation followed, and at last, on February 11, 1889, the Emperor
with all due solemnity bestowed upon his subjects, amidst universal popular
rejoicing, the Constitution framed by the best intellects of his country. In
the summer of 1890 the first general election took place, and in the following
November the new Parliament met.
The first few
years of its existence were not promising, and their record is little more than
that of a continuous struggle on the part of the majority of the members of the
lower House against the executive Government and of factious opposition to
every measure submitted by the Government to the consideration of the House.
The more advanced Radical section of the people, who took an active share in
domestic politics, had been in some degree disappointed by the Constitution.
They had hoped for one modelled on that of England, under which the Government
would have been responsible to Parliament and held their offices at its will.
What was granted was a Constitution modelled on that of Germany, under which Ministers
were responsible to the Emperor and held their offices solely at his will. Many
of the members had, during the agitation which preceded the grant of the
Constitution, suffered both heavy fines and long imprisonment and still
cherished bitter animosity against the Government at whose hands they had
suffered. There was, besides, a strong animus among the members against what
was called the Sat-Cho combination, which was prominent not only in the Cabinet
but among the permanent officials of every department of the State, both
military and civil. Satsuma and Choshiu had been the two most powerful feudal
clans prior to the Revolution, and had contributed most, both by moral and
physical force, to the overthrow of the Shogunate. If their services to their Emperor
and country were great, the rewards which they assigned to themselves were in
proportion. Throughout all the intervening years they had never lost their grip
on office, and had never ceased to;
exercise its
privileges in favour of their own fellow clansmen. When the first Parliament
met, the Minister-President and eight of the other nine members of the Cabinet
hailed from one or other of the two clans: the officers of the navy were said
to be exclusively recruited from Satsuma, and those of the army from Choshiu,
while the majority of civil offices throughout all the departments of the
Government, from assistant-Ministers of State and judges down to policemen and
postmen, were shared amongst the less distinguished cadets of the two clans.
The antagonism of the people at large to this combination, constantly and
forcibly fulminated in the Press, found expression in the Diet. Government
measures, both of legislation and finance, were ruthlessly obstructed by every
device that the utmost ingenuity could invent. On the other side, the
Government made free use of the weapons which the Constitution placed at its
disposal; and suspensions and dissolutions followed each other with a rapidity
that almost seemed to nullify the existence of the Diet.
The early struggles
between the Government and the Diet had one important result on the foreign
policy of the Government. They were to some extent the cause of the War with
China. The diplomatic representative of China at Tokio urged on his own
Government a firm resistance to the Japanese demands in regard to Korea, as he
was convinced that political discord in Japan would prevent the Government from
venturing to declare war, while the Government, on the other hand, were led to
run this risk largely through their despair of reconciling the opposition of
the Diet. They judged the patriotism of their countrymen better than the
Chinese diplomatist. From the moment at which war was declared, and throughout
its continuance, the opposition in the Diet was stilled, and every measure
brought forward by the Government was passed without dissent, almost without
debate. The same experience occurred ten years later when war broke out with
Russia, the people from the highest to the lowest being once more solidly
united against a foreign foe. In the intervening period of peace, when the
conditions in which Japan found herself imposed on her a national expenditure
more than twofold what it had been before the first war, opposition to the
Government was still a continuing characteristic of the Diet; but there were
occasional sessions in which a more harmonious spirit prevailed and many
important measures were passed, notably those which embodied a new Civil Code
of Law and Procedure (1896-9)—measures of pressing importance in view of the
cessation of exterritoriality which was imminent at the time.
It is
impossible in the space that is available in this chapter to describe in detail
the struggles between the Government and the lower House which have been the
principal characteristic of parliamentary proceedings in Japan, or to give any
intelligible account of the numerous parties of which the lower House has been
made up, or of their political
platforms. On
the one side, there has been a continual effort to subject the Government to
the House, to render its' continued existence impossible without the support
of a majority of the House—in fact, to establish the purely party government
which was the darling object of the leaders of the Radical party before the
Constitution; on the other, to maintain in all its integrity the principle of
the Constitution, that the appointment of the Ministers and their continuance
in office rest with the Emperor alone. The reformers have freely used the chief
weapon which the Constitution placed in their hands, that of either rejecting
in toto or drastically amending the financial bills submitted to the Diet by
the Government. The financial condition of the country subsequent to the
Chinese War, the policy of military and commercial progress, with the consequent
necessity of providing for an enlarged national expenditure, caused this weapon
to be always available and effective. The Government, on the other side, has
met the implacable opposition of the Diet with repeated suspensions and
dissolutions. Reformers have, on occasion, shown themselves not unwilling to
sacrifice important interests of the State to their own personal advancement or
to the suppression of their opponents. Some of them have not been guiltless of
corruption in a more degrading form. On the other hand, the successive
Governments have endeavoured to stifle opposition or even discussion by an
uncompromising use of the Emperor’s authority and name. The House of Peers is
mainly an elective body, only 53 out of a total of 328 members holding their
seats solely from the accident of birth. It has throughout conserved its
dignity both n the proceedings in its own Chamber and in the general policy of
acting as a bulwark against untimely or violent reform. It has had the
advantage of including among its members not only chosen representatives of the
wealth and intelligence of the nation, but all the survivors of the men who
have made modem Japan, all the “elder statesmen” as they are called, men who
were already in office in 1871, and the most distinguished representatives of
the military and naval services and of science and literature. A House composed
of such elements could never fail to exercise great influence in political
life; and the House of Peel's has on several occasions used its powers with effect.
Whenever it has done so, it has been with the approval and sympathy of the best
elements among the people.
The
experiment of constitutional government has not been without some marked
success in its short life, or without definite promise for its future. The
rules of the two Houses provide for the speedy transaction of business; and, on
all occasions when passions are not stirred by the venom of party antagonism,
measures of prime importance are passed with a celerity which might fill
British Cabinets with envy. There are no purely academic debates. Eloquence is
unknown, but so, too, is the stammering, hesitating, diffident speaker. The
Japanese are entirely
free from
selfconsciousness, and a member of Parliament addresses the House with as much
ease, as much confidence in himself, as a rector in England speaking to an
audience of respectful villagers in his own parish. Party government has not
yet come, but parties have on more than one occasion proved their power, and
the realisation of the ambition of their leaders is less visionary than was
that of the first agitators for any form of constitutional government.
It is now
necessary to return to 1871, the first year in which the central Government
started on the course of reform contemplated by its leaders. What they
gradually succeeded in accomplishing has already been briefly indicated. Space
does not admit of describing the various stages in the progress that industry,
perseverance, and patience, under the best teachers that the West could give,
enabled Japan to make from this year onwards till 1894, when in the War with
China she gave to the world the first real demonstration of what she had done.
Some internal opposition was experienced in the early days of wholesale reform,
and revolts occurred, in a few districts under the leadership of Samurai,
formerly supporters of the Revolution, who either thought their services had
been insufficiently rewarded, or had taken part in the Revolution in the belief
that its success would be the prelude to a crusade against all foreigners,
ending in their general expulsion and Japan’s reversion to her old customs and
policy of exclusiveness. The revolts were easily suppressed, though not without
bloodshed; and the reforms of the Government received the active sympathy of
the nation at large, an extraordinary desire manifesting itself among all
classes for the acquisition of Western knowledge and, as a first aid to that
end, of the English language.
In 1872 the
first incident occurred which was to bring Japanese diplomacy prominently
before the world and to offer the first proof of the courage and determination
with which Japan was prepared to deal with international questions and of the
ability which she could bring to their solution.
The Peruvian
ship Maria Luz, on her voyage from Macao to Peru with 322 contract Chinese
labourers on boaid, had been disabled by a gale in the Pacific and had
consequently put in to Yokohama in distress. Peru had no treaty with Japan, and
her ships and subjects coming to Japan had therefore none of the exterritorial
privileges enjoyed by those of the Treaty Powers. The Maria Luz consequently
became subject to Japanese jurisdiction from the time she had entered the
territorial waters. Shortly after her arrival, a Chinaman was found at night alongside
the British flag-ship on the China Station, the Iron Duke, which happened to be
in Yokohama harbour, and was taken out of the water in a condition of great
exhaustion. He stated that he had escaped from the Maria Luz and had swum the
intervening distance of fully two miles; that he and his fellow countrymen had
been confined in the ship against their will, after being originally either
enticed on board
at Macao by
fraudulent promises or actually kidnapped. The coolie trade between Peru and
Macao was at that time notorious for the cruelty with which it was carried on,
both by Peru which obtained by it a supply of forced labour for her guano
diggings, and by Portugal, to whose colony of Macao it brought a large annual
revenue. The British charge d’affaires, when handing over the fugitive to the
Japanese authorities, called their attention to these facts, and very forcibly
urged 011 them their duty not to permit “ the Government to be disgraced by
affording the smallest possible countenance to the abominable traffic in which
the Maria Luz was engaged.”
The
suggestion was promptly adopted. A public enquiry was held— the first trial
ever held in Japan with open doors—where both parties were represented by
counsel, members of the English Bar practising in Japan, and where verbatim
reports of the proceedings were taken. The master of the Maria Luz, his
officers, and the coolies were examined, and precedents furnished by
international law were carefully and exhaustively investigated, with the
result that all the coolies were released from their servitude, which was
declared to be contrary to the law of Japan, and sent back to China. Throughout
the proceedings the Japanese had the full moral support of both the British and
United States diplomatic representatives, but met with strong opposition from
those of other Powers. This opposition was fearlessly faced, and no warnings as
to the possible penalty which they might ultimately be called upon to pay for
their humanity caused the Japanese to waver from what they considered to be
their obligations as a nation.
On the
release of the coolies, the master of the Maria Luz returned to his own
country. Peru despatched a diplomatic mission to Japan, and, as she possessed
at that time one of the most powerful ironclads afloat, the Independenda, she
threatened to back her diplomacy by force if her demand for an apology and an
indemnity was refused. But it was intimated to her that the British fleet would
await the arrival in Japan of the Independenda and her consorts, and the
Peruvian vessels were recalled ere half their voyage had been completed.
Diplomacy procured the submission of the question to the arbitration of the
Tsar of Russia, whose decision, given nearly two years afterwards, was entirely
in favour of Japan.
The result of
the case was far-reaching. The Government of China, roused to shame by the
publicity of the case, instituted a blockade of Macao, which effectually
prevented the ingress from the mainland of junks carrying kidnapped labourers.
Portugal, unable in consequence of this blockade to carry on the traffic on a
profitable scale, was at last roused to forbid its continuance in Macao; and
the way was paved for the opening of diplomatic intercourse between Japan and
China on a new footing, which was destined to be very speedily used in the
solution of the important pending questions of the Riukiu Islands and Korea.
556
Biukiu Islands, Formosa, Korea. [1871-5
The Riukiu
Islands, lying midway between Japan and Formosa, were regarded as an appanage
of the daimiate of Satsuma, by which they had been invaded and conquered in the
year 1609, the clan claiming that, in their annexation, they were only
restoring an authority which had existed centuries previously. The ruler of the
islands used, however, the title of king, and till 1395 ruled what was really
an independent kingdom. In that year the islands came under the suzerainty of
China and commenced the payment of an annual tribute; but they continued to
enjoy complete autonomy till 1875, when they were formally annexed by Japan,
and constituted a prefecture on precisely the same conditions as prefectures in
the main islands.
In the latter
part of 1871, a Riukiu junk was wrecked on the southeastern coast of Formosa,
and her crew of sixty persons were murdered by the Bhotans, one of the eastern
Formosa savage tribes. The Riukiuans appealed for help to obtain redress not to
their suzerain China but to Japan. The matter was at once taken up by Japan;
but precedent demanded that, prior to active measures, the views of the
Government of China should be ascertained, as to whether that Power held itself
responsible for the misdeeds of the inhabitants of Formosa as its subjects and
reserved to itself the rights of controlling and punishing them. It was also
advisable to ascertain definitely the position which China assumed with regard
to Korea.
Since the
invasion of Korea by Hideyoshi at the close of the sixteenth century, when the
whole country was devastated by the Japanese armies and the inhabitants were
treated with ruthless cruelty— the memory of which, even to this day, causes
the words “the accursed nation” to be an ordinary Korean vernacular equivalent
for Japan— commercial intercourse between the two countries was confined to
narrow limits. A Japanese trading settlement was maintained at Fusan; but it
was under conditions which, if less humiliating, were not less restrictive than
those imposed by the Japanese on the Dutch at their factory at Desima in the
harbour of Nagasaki. Subsequently to the unification of the Government under
the present Emperor, an intimation of the changes which had occurred in Japan
was sent to Korea; but the mission bearing it was received with contemptuous
insult by the Korean authorities, and later endeavours to open relations by
further missions had no better result. These facts did not become publicly
known until 1873, when some Korean despatches were published in which Japan was
mentioned m degrading terms and upbraided for having forsaken the ancient
civilisation of China in favour of that of the barbarians of the West. It was
afterwards proved that these despatches were forgeries, but at the time they
were accepted as genuine. Public opinion in Japan (that is, m this period the
opinion of the Samurai alone) was at once aflame. An immediate declaration of
war against Korea was eaeerlv demanded, not without the sympathy of some of the
most influential
members of
the Government. But China stood in the way, and her possible interference could
not be lightly regarded in the actual condition of Japan.
Soyejima,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was recognised as one of the most profound
Japanese scholars in Chinese classical literature, was ordered to proceed to
Peking as ambassador (1878). The choice was a fortunate one. In addition to his
Chinese scholarship, the ambassador was gifted with tact, perseverance, and
diplomacy, and he succeeded in carrying all his points with the Chinese
Government. China disclaimed all authority over the eastern half of the island
of Formosa, and acknowledged the rights of Japan to punish the savages
inhabiting that part of the island for the murder of the Riukiuans, thereby
recognising Riukiu as being under Japan’s protection. As regards Korea, China
acknowledged that, both in its internal administration and in the conduct of
its foreign affairs, that country was independent. Incidentally, Soyejima
secured another diplomatic triumph. The audience question was still unsettled
when he arrived at Peking. The diplomatic representatives of the Western
Powers for several years had been pressing a demand that they should be
received in audience by the Emperor with the formalities observed in European
Courts. They had not yet succeeded in overcoming Chinese scruples when Soyejima
arrived upon the scene as ambassador, a rank which he alone held among the
foreign representatives. By his firmness he put an end to the procrastination
of the Chinese authorities, and by his expert knowledge of Chinese tradition
and customs he was able to secure that no veiled discourtesy should mark the
proceedings. The audience took place: as ambassador, Soyejima properly took
precedence of his European colleagues, and he was accordingly received by the
Emperor of China in person without the degrading prostrations which had been
for generations past regarded as indispensable.
The final
step in the incorporation of Riukiu with Japan, a culmination which the
considerations of race, language, and geography, as well as politics, rendered
natural and proper, was taken two years later. Formosa and Korea, on the other
hand, continued to be questions of acute contention, and Korea was the
principal subject of Japan’s foreign policy down, it may be said, to the
present time.
Soyejima
returned to Tokio from Peking, and Iwakura from Europe in the autumn of 1873.
National indignation against Korea was at its height; China’s non-intervention
was apparently secured; and war was eagerly demanded by a large section of the
Samurai, supported by influential members of the Government. Others equally
influential, with Iwakura at their head, recognised Japan’s unfitness, both
from her military and economic conditions, to prosecute a foreign war
successfully, and were as resolute in favour of peace as their colleagues were
for war. Their differences had to be settled by the Emperor, who decided in
favour
of peace.
Five members of the Government at once resigned their offices. One carried his
resentment so far as to raise an armed revolt, and within a few months paid for
his audacity with his head. Iwakura narrowly escaped assassination, and more
serious consequences followed later.
Another
outlet than Korea had to be found for the warlike aspirations of the Samurai.
The Formosan expedition was accordingly undertaken. Early in 1874, a force of
over 3000 men was conveyed with great difficulty to the island and landed.
Insignificant military operations were carried on with little loss either to
the invaders or to the savages they had come to punish, and, after the
occupation of a small and remote part of the island had lasted for about seven
months, the force was withdrawn, having achieved nothing besides provoking the
serious irritation of China, who awoke too late to the fact that the integrity
of her dominions was being violated.
The only
result of her tardy protests was to furnish Japan with reasonable grounds for
the demand of an indemnity to cover the expenses of the expedition. This was
strenuously resisted by China, and for a time a rupture was imminent between
the two Governments. By the intervention of the British Minister at Peking,
peace was preserved, and an arrangement was made by which China agreed to
recognise that Japan had rightfully undertaken the expedition for the
protection of her own subjects, and to pay a sum of 500,000 taels, one-fifth as
compensation to the families of the murdered Riukiuans, and the remainder to
recoup the cost of, roads and buildings constructed by the Japanese during
their occupation and left by them on their evacuation. By this arrangement both
parties were satisfied.
In September,
1875, a Japanese gunboat, which was surveying the mouth of the river Han in
Korea, was fired on by a Korean fort. The insult to the flag was promptly
avenged. A landing party from the gunboat stormed the fort and slaughtered the
garrison and many innocent rustics in the vicinity, and then, having first
taken as booty all the military implements, guns, banners, drums, etc., that
were found in it, set fire to the fort. Once more, the Korean question came to
the front and once more there were loud demands that Korea should be punished
by war. Japan was now in a position very different from that of 1873. In the
intervening two years substantial progress had been made in the acquisition of
Western science and methods. The foundations of a mercantile steam marine and
of a navy had been laid; the conscript army, recruited from all classes of the
people, though small, was well drilled; and the Government was no longer
dependent solely on the Samurai for its fighting material or obliged to defer
to their clamour, however loud. Japan was united within itself and had the
confidence which springs from experience. It could therefore have undertaken
war with every hope of success; but the determination was adopted of
endeavouring in the first place to induce Korea to conclude a treaty of
friendship and
commerce
as a preliminary step towards drawing the hermit kingdom out of its seclusion.
An embassy, accompanied by a fleet of war vessels and of transports carrying
troops, was accordingly despatched to Korea in January, 1876; and in a little
more than a month a treaty was signed, and the members of the embassy had made
a peaceful entry into the capital. The provisions of the Treaty were generally
similar to those of the Treaties originally concluded by Japan herself with Western
Powers, which, as she afterwards complained, had been unjustly extorted from
her by those Powers in her ignorance of international equity and her military
helplessness. ,
This Treaty
may be said to make Japan’s third triumph in diplomacy. The Maria Luz case put
an end to the slave trade of Portugal in the Far East. Soyejima solved the
audience question in Peking. The seclusion of Korea was now ended. In all three
cases, Japan succeeded where Western Powers had failed.
The success
of the Government enabled it to employ its enhanced prestige in the
promulgation of further domestic reforms. The national demand for Treaty
revision and a parliament continued to find expression both in the Press and
on political platforms; but the most unsparing use was made of press and public
meeting laws of exceptional severity and a rigorous censorship. Editors and
speakers were consigned to prison for long periods, and newspapers were
indefinitely suspended on the fiat of the Home Office whenever their utterances
threatened the public peace or their criticism of the Government became too
outspoken; and the completion of reforms, which had been tentatively essayed in
1873, was initiated early in 1876. These reforms concerned the Shizoku or
Samurai.
When the
fiefs were mediatised and the chiefs deprived of their revenues, the
Government, of necessity, undertook to provide for their retainers, who,
unfitted as they were by their previous training and experience for
bread-winning occupations, must otherwise have starved. Pensions were assigned
to them, based on their former hereditary or life allowances, and paid out of
the revenues of the fiefs, now collected by the imperial Government in the form
of land taxes. This system continued until 1873, when a scheme of voluntary commutation
was promulgated under which hereditary pensions could be commuted, at the will
of the holders, for six, and life pensions for four, years’ purchase, the
purchase money being paid one-half in cash and the other in 8 per cent, bonds,
redeemable in three years. This scheme naturally found no large acceptance on
the part of the pensioners; but, though its success was small, such were at the
time the financial difficulties of the Government that it was only enabled to
meet the obligations under it by a loan of $2,400,000 (then worth about
£500,000) from an English bank. The financial difficulties increased rather
than diminished during the succeeding two years, and the continued payments of
the Samurai pensions became a serious burden on the resources of the n»**— It
was
therefore
decided that commutation should be made compulsory, on a basis varying from
five years’ purchase in the case of large pensions to fourteen years in those
of the smallest, the payments being made in bonds bearing interest of from 5 to
7 per cent. (1876).
This measure
was accepted without protest by the sufferers, though its results were in many
instances cruel in the extreme. The number of the Samurai who, either from
natural capacity or through training, had a modicum of commercial or industrial
aptitude was infinitesimal. In blind ignorance, many at once sold their bonds
and, with the capital thus raised, entered into trade. Japan has never been
wanting in adventurers who in their unscrupulousness, cunning, and
mercilessness to their victims, are worthy compeers of the worst products of
the exchanges of Berlin and Paris. To these the Samurai, with their small
capital, offered a ready prey. Some opened small shops, willing for a
livelihood to accept what they had, only five years previously, regarded as
contamination. But, as a native writer said, “ however skilful in wielding the
halberd or the sabre, they know nothing of the abacus ; they bought in the
dearest and sold in the cheapest markets,” and bankruptcy was soon the result.
New institutions and new pursuits afforded, on the other hand, humble
occupations to many. The new police force was almost entirely recruited from
them—a fine force, marvellously efficient in the performance of its duties and
in the prevention and detection of crime, ready to undertake active military
service when occasion called for it, incorruptible, and as courteous and ready
to help the stranger as the police of London. The rapidly extending railways
gave openings to others as guards and signalmen ; and in the Press, yearly
expanding at that period in quantity and in circulation, and in the public
influence which it exercised, they were found not only as reporters and
writers, but as compositors, printers, and doorkeepers.
Instances
were known of their serving as stokers on small coasting steamers, as domestics
in the houses of foreign residents. These were the fortunate among their order.
Hopeless poverty and social ruin were the lot of many. An epidemic of
burglaries of the worst form according to Japanese law, in which the offenders
were armed with swords and ready to use them, broke out at this period in
Tokio. Many of them were committed by destitute Samurai, who paid for their
offence by felons’ deaths on the scaffold. The ranks of licensed prostitutes
were largely recruited from their daughters, who performed what was regarded as
the noblest act of self-abnegation in order that their parents might be
provided with the common necessaries of life.
Time has
atoned for much of what the Samurai underwent at this period. Those who
survived it with honour, no matter how humble the means which enabled them to
do so, continued to instil into the minds of their sons and daughters the
ethical principles which they had imbibed in their own youth. The zealous and
conscientious service which they
formerly
rendered to their feudal lords was by their sons given to the Emperor. All
offices, both military and civil, were thrown open to all classes of the
Emperor’s subjects. The Samurai were, in feudal days, the brains of the
country. That they retained a marked intellectual superiority over their fellow
citizens was soon shown. From among them have come, not all, but a great
majority of the successful candidates in open competition for appointments in
the naval, military, and civil services. The most prominent members of the
legal, medical, and engineering professions are Samurai; and, while all the
outward and visible marks of their status are gone—their picturesque dress,
their swords, their haughty demeanour—they are still a class apart in the
general registers of the people and enjoy the social consideration which is
given in the most democratic countries of the world to long descent and gentle
blood.
While,
as has been said, the edict for the commutation of pensions was received
uncomplainingly, another, which had preceded it by a few months, proved too
severe a test for many of those against whom it was directed. It has been
mentioned that, in 1873, the Samurai were permitted to discontinue the wearing
of their swords. Some, in the general wave of democratic innovation that was
inundating the country, had done so, but they were the exceptions rather than
the rule. The majority still clung to the only outward mark that remained to
them of their status, to the sword which was “ the living soul of the Samurai.”
The new edict (1876) peremptorily forbade the continuance of the practice.
Armed revolts on the part of those who refused to obey broke out in three
places. They were promptly suppressed; but they were soon followed by a fourth,
which tested the resources of the Government to the utmost. ' '
Among the
five Ministers of the Crown who resigned their offices at the crisis of 1873
the most prominent was Saigo Takamorij originally a Samurai of the Satsuma
clan. In feudal days Saigo was one of the chief councillors of his lord, and in
the military operations which preceded the revolution, he commanded the Satsuma
forces in the field. His prestige, his strong character, his commanding
personality, (he was exceptionally tall and powerful for a Japanese), and his
position as chief representative of the most powerful clan of the empire gave
him a commanding influence in the first Ministry of the Emperor, and the
Emperor’s own fiat was required to override his wishes in regard to the policy
to be adopted towards Korea. When that fiat was issued, Saigo resigned and
withdrew in umbrage to his native province of Satsuma, where he was said to
devote his. time to farming and field sports. But. these pursuits were only a
cover for preparations to carry out his own policy in defiance, if necessary,
of his former; colleagues, the ablest of whom was, like himself, a Satsuma
Samurai, who had continued in the service of his sovereign. First and foremost,
Saigo was a Samurai and
as such clung
tenaciously to the Samurai privileges. Every step taken by the Government to
diminish those privileges met with his disapproval, above all the creation of
a conscript army from all classes of the people. In his own clan his
all-powerful influence was used to maintain the Samurai on their old footing
and to train them as soldiers who should be as eflicient in modem warfare as
they had been in the days of swords and spears. He was able to do this with
little difficulty.. His whole life, his services made him the subject of
enthusiastic devotion on the part of his fellow clansmen. Even the loyalty
which both be and they owed, under all the teaching and traditions of
feudalism, to their feudal lord, gave way when it became a question of choosing
between obedience to Saigo or to the lord.
The
conditions which continued to characterise the old daimiate of Satsuma, even
subsequent to the great change of 1871, lent themselves to the successful
promotion of his designs. Satsuma was always the most powerful of the daimiates
in feudal days. It was also the most exclusive, the one which most strictly
guarded its imperium in imperio. Its geographical position in the extreme south
of Japan, with a frontier of hills, crossed only by steep and narrow passes,
its capital town at the head of a long narrow bay whose approaches from the sea
could be easily guarded, facilitated the maintenance of its exclusiveness. In
1871, when all the other clans in the empire, including Choshiu, Tosa, and
Hizen, almost the equals of Satsuma in strength, wealth, and reputation,
accepted, without even a murmur, the edict of the Government which destroyed
the jurisdiction of their lords and in,posed upon them strangers from other
parts of the empire as their new Governors, Satsuma contemptuously rejected
the officials sent from Tokio and, returning them on the same steamers that had
conveyed them to Kagoshima, continued to administer its own affairs precisely
as it had done before the revolution. The Government of the Emperor had not
the means to enforce compliance to its orders. What was possible was done in
humouring the lord of the clan with all the honours that could be conferred on
and shown to him, in heaping honours on Saigo himself, and in employing other
members of the clan in every possible capacity in the government service. But
all in vain; the clan continued to maintain its exclusiveness; and
communications throughout the whole empire were at that time so limited and so
jealously guarded in Satsuma that very little could be learnt at Tokio of what
was actually taking place within the clan.
The new edict
of the Government broke down the last fences which had hitherto bounded Saigo’s
patience. His Samurai were now well equipped with modern weapons and well
drilled in their use, and they retained all their old skill in the use of their
terrible swords, their dauntless courage, and their, hereditary contempt for
all who had not been bom in their privileged class. The Government had its
conscript army of about 40,000 men, mainly recruited from the peasants and
tradesmen,
whose compeers in Satsuma still were serfs. While Saigo was living in seclusion
at Kagoshima, he had no opportunity of estimating the results of efficient
military training and discipline, and he regarded the whole government army
with contempt, believing that its units would scatter and fly like frighteued
hares when called to face the swords of Samurai, as they would have done in
feudal times.
The gauntlet
was thrown down, and on February 15, 1877, Saigo marched out of Kagoshima at
the head of 14,000 men on his way to Tokio, for the purpose, in the words of
his own curt manifesto, “of addressing some enquiries to the Government.” Early
in the same month the Emperor had proceeded from the capital to Osaka for the
formal opening of the newly constructed railway between the great commercial
city of Osaka and the old court capital of Kioto, linking the two cities which
in former days had stood at the extreme poles of social life—Osaka,
wealthy,progressive,but despised; Kioto poor, conservative, but aristocratic,
even sacred. In the midst of the festivities the first intimation reached the
Government of disquieting occurrences in Kagoshima. One of its members, a
Satsuma Samurai, was at once sent to the spot to endeavour to conciliate the
malcontents and to preserve peace; but his mission proved fruitless, and the
Government was forced to accept the challenge which had been flung at it.
The campaign
which followed lasted over seven months and was as bitterly fought on both
sides as any in European history. The tactics of the Satsuma clansmen resembled
those of Prince Charlie’s Highlanders in 1745. They fired a few volleys with
their rifles, then, sword in hand, rushed upon their enemies and endeavoured to
bring them to close quarters. The Government had at first little confidence in
the steadiness of their conscripts, and in the early stages the first fighting
line was composed mainly of policemen who were Samurai like the clansmen,
equally skilled in the use of the sword, equally fearless, and many, as members
of rival clans, animated by traditional hatred of Satsuma. But it was soon
found that the soldiers could be trusted, and numbers and discipline produced
their inevitable result. The clansmen, at first victorious, were gradually
beaten back, and their surviving remnants were finally hopelessly surrounded.
Saigo and a few hundred of his most devoted followers broke through the lines
and, leaving the remainder to save their lives by surrender, entrenched
themselves on a hill near Kagoshima, determined to die rather than surrender.
This was the last incident in the struggle. The hill was stormed by the
imperial troops, the leaders and the majority of followers were killed, only
200 wounded being made prisoners by the Imperialists (September 24, 1877). More
than 40,000 fighting men had from first to last been engaged on Saigo’s side,
though his available fighting strength never exceeded 20,000 to 22,000 men at
one time. The aggregate of the Government troops engaged numbered over 65,000.
Saigo’s losses in
killed and
wounded exceeded 18,000, while those of the Government troops were 17,000, in
all nearly one-third of the forces engaged on both sides. The cost of the
campaign to the country was 42,000,000 yen (i?8,400,000), and as it had to be
defrayed by an increased issue of the existing inconvertible paper currency,
this became depreciated, with disastrous results to. the general economic
condition of the empire. 1 -
Heavy, as the
cost was,, both in life and treasure, the results of the struggle were not
bought by the nation at too dear a price. Feudalism received its last blow*
Satsuma, beaten to its knees, was crushed and placed under the administration
of officials from Tokio. No murmur of rebellion has ever since been raised* and
as, where Satsuma failed, no other clan could hope, for success, this was the
last, as it was the most formidable, armed opposition that the Government has
had to face. Internal peace has since continued unbroken. The campaign conveyed
two, important lessons.—it showed that the Government could rely on the loyalty
of its own servants. Four of the Emperor’s leading Ministers, some of the most
distinguished generals in the army, and a large number of subordinate officials
of every grade, both in the central and local government offices, were Satsuma
Samurai. Not one man among them forsook the Government during the struggle.
Even Saigo’s own brother, like himself a distinguished soldier, ■ though
he did not take the field, continuied to discharge his duties in the War
Office; and the navy, officered, exclusively by Satsuma men, never wavered.
More important still, it. proved that the Samurai no longer possessed the
monopoly of the fighting spirit of the nation and that the mass of the people
could be trained into trustworthy soldiers. The rebellion was the first
practical test of the men who have since proved themselves to be among the most
formidable soldiers of the world, and of a military organisation which hag
shown itself to be efficient and complete in every detail. •
Since the
termination of the Satsuma rebellion Korea has,, apart from the question of
treaty revision, been the keynote of Japanese foreign politics. . That this
should be the case is natural from the geographical propinquity of the twq
countries which rendered Korea of immense strategic importance to Japan, and
from the internal conditions of both. Ini Japan there was always a war party,
keen for the unimpaired maintenance of the imperial prestige, anxious for
fields in which to display the national military spirit and efficiency, anxious
also for the personal glory of military success, and cherishing the memories of
the successful invasion of Korea by, Hideyoshi in the sixteenth century and of
its traditional conquest by the mythological Empress Jingo in prehistoric
times. How Korea’s repeated affronts to Japan made her, during the first decade
of the Emperor’s Government, the object of this party’s aspirations has to some
extent already been told. Korea continued to be their object during the succeeding
two decades. Twice war was demanded
and only
avoided by the firmness of the Government and by energetic diplomacy backed by
a display of force strong enough to drive all thought of armed opposition from
the minds of the impotent Koreans. When war at last did break out—not with
Korea but with China— Korea was its ostensible cause and it was the real cause
of the later war with Russia.
The
possibility of Korea’s ahsorption by Russia was present as a perpetual
nightmare to the most thoughtful and peace-loving members of the Emperor’s
Government, from the moment at which they were first in a position to devote
their minds to foreign politics. They knew of Russia’s longing for an open
harhour such as the Korean coasts offered in several places, and saw the
perpetual menace to Japan which such a harbour would constitute in Russia’s
hands. They knew of Korea’s incapacity to resist foreign aggression, not only
from her ignorance of all modem military science, but from her own internal
disorganisation, from the wholesale corruption that was rife in every
department of her Government, and from the want of national spirit or
patriotism among her people, engendered by centuries of misgovernment, cruelty
and oppression.1 Their own history taught them the impossibility of
any country maintaining exclusiveness against the rest of the world, and their
■ixperence showed them that it was not hopeless for a people to remedy
the neglect of centuries and take its place with dignity among the nations.
When Japan,
playing the same role as that played hy Commodore Perry in her own case, opened
Korea to the world, Japanese statesmen were not solely influenced by their
desire to put a stop to the continued recurrence of petty affronts which they
had suffered.- They hoped that foreign intercourse would, in time, help to end
internal disturbance in Korea, to foster a national spirit of independence and
patriotism, to secure some degree of honesty arid efficiency in the Government,
and to lead the nation at large into the paths of European civilisation. In
cherishing these hopes, they failed to estimate rightly the different
characters of their own and the Korean people. Their own lower classes were not
less servile, not less apathetic than those of Korea; on the other hand, while
the upper classes of Japan, as represented by the Samurai, were wholly
indifferent to self-interest, full of high-spirited patriotism, of lofty ideals
of personal honour, and always ready for any sacrifice on behalf of their
lords, while feudalism still existed, or, when it ended, of their country, the
Korean upper classes were not less entirely devoted to the interests and the
enrichment and aggrandisement of themselves or their families. Hence, not only
was progress impossible, but peace and order were neglected, and a corrupt
system of administration was sedulously maintained in force.
With such a
governing class—a class whose chief weapons were duplicity and treachery—it is
not surprising that all hopes of reformation were falsified; From the conclusion
of the first Treaty down to the
Chinese War,
Korea’s history was that of continued misgovemment and repeated disturbance,
one party endeavouring to oust another from the spoils of office. The country
continued to be an unceasing source of anxiety, as always threatening the peace
of the East and offering itself as a ready prey at any time that Russia should
choose to lay hands on it. Japan, notwithstanding her honest intentions, was
not herself wholly irresponsible either for Korea’s political anarchy or for
the failure of the people to advance. She was, on more than one occasion, most
unfortunate in the officials who represented her in Korea and in their
ill-judged participation in the sordid struggles of Korean politicians. Men
standing high in her military and civil services took part in the horrible
murder of the Queen. The Japanese private citizens who took advantage of the
new Treaty by taking up their residence at the open ports, included among them,
at least in the first decade, the very worst possible types of unscrupulous
adventurers, whpse methods partook equally of the qualities of the bully and
the swindler. Among all the transformations which have taken place in Japan
nothing is more marvellous than that of the lower classes. The timid, cowering
serfs of feudal times have become fearless soldiers; many of them have also in
their daily lives developed into truculent and offensive ruffians. Numerous
specimens of this class found their way into Korea, and their behaviour towards
the gentle, broken, submissive natives was such as might have been expected.
Their misconduct was noted by every impartial European who visited Korea, and
it received little, if any, estraint from the Japanese officials whose
privileges of exterritoriality should have first been used for the preservation
of order among their own citizens and the stem punishment of their offences.
From 1882 to
1904 four distinct crises occurred, spoken of by Japanese writers as the “
Korean affairs ” of 1882, of 1884, of 1894, and of 1904. The two last were the
immediate preludes of the Chinese and Russian Wars. These have been narrated in
other chapters of this volume.
The condition
of Korea during the early years after her opening presented a strange
similarity to that of Japan immediately after the Restoration. There were two
parties in the country—the one led by a few clever but ambitious young men,
who, seeing to what Japan had attained in economic and military development,
were anxious that Korea should pursue the same path with the same end in view
and ultimately become a strong and united nation. They therefore desired to
cultivate foreign relations to the utmost, and, most of all, to strengthen
friendly relations with Japan. There was however a background to these young
men’s designs. They were still sunk in domestic intrigue, and they hoped to
utilise Japan as a lever in their own favour in domestic politics. On the other
side, there was the Conservative and anti-foreign party, which hated every
element of Western civilisation and intercourse and clung to Chinese suzerainty
and to the doctrines of
Chinese
philosophy, whose dearest wish was to see Korea resume her ancient
exclusiveness. The two parties, which, it is to be remembered, consisted, as in
Japan, only of the upper classes, kept the country in a state of continual
unrest, and the miseries of the common people, harried by both parties, were
increased by continued extortion and oppression.
From 1880,
when the building of a legation was completed, the Japanese envoy resided in
the capital, but made little advance in cementing friendly relations with the
Government, which was mainly composed of members of the Conservative party, or
in promoting reform. At the head of this party was the Tai Won Kun (in Chinese,
T’aiwen Kun), actual father <*f the King, who had been the adopted son of
his predecessor. In the summer of 1882 a mutiny occurred among the Korean
soldiers in the capital, consequent upon their having been defrauded of their
pay, and, in the general disorder which ensued, the soldiers, incited by the
Tai Won Kun, attacked and burnt the Japanese legation, and killed several
members of the staff. The survivors, with the Minister at their head, fought
their way out of the legation through the mob which surrounded it, and
succeeded in reaching the sea, where they were rescued and conveyed to Nagasaki
by a ship of the British navy, the Flying Fish, which happened to be engaged in
surveying the coast.
As in 1873
and 1875, a cry for war was, once more, raised in Japan; but, once more, prudent
counsels prevailed, and after protracted negotiations, backed as usual by a
strong display of force, Korea made full reparation by the payment of an
indemnity, an apology, and the punishment of those who could be proved to have
taken part in the attack. One incident, however, marked the negotiations which
was pregnant with grave future results. Korea, frightened by the presence of
the Japanese military and naval forces, appealed to her suzerain China for
assistance. The appeal was answered with a promptitude unprecedented in modem
Chinese history. A strong Chinese military and naval force was despatched to
Korea, ostensibly for the protection of the King, and for a time a collision
appeared to be imminent between China and Japan. It was avoided by Korea’s
acceptance of Japan’s moderate demands. The Tai Won Kun was decoyed into the
Chinese camp, placed under arrest, and conveyed to Tientsin as a prisoner, so
that the most disturbing element in Korean politics seemed to be removed; but
from that time onwards China maintained in Korea, not very far from the
capital, a permanent garrison of well drilled and equipped soldiers, varying in
number from two to three thousand. Its alleged purpose was the maintenance of
the King upon his throne and his protection against his own rebellious
subjects. China assumed this duty as the suzerain to whom the King was entitled
to look for aid in time of need. The Japanese, on their side, kept a small
force of two companies of infantry as legation guards in Seoul. This was the
“affair of 1882.”
668 Conspiracy and coup d’etat in Korea. [i884
During the
next two years, Treaties were concluded by Korea as an independent Power, free
from all Control of China in her foreign relations with the principal Western
Powers, including Great Britain; and, by 1884, the diplomatic and consular
representatives of these Powers were resident in the capital.' A new minister
represented Japan. Many Koreans had visited Japan in the course of these years,
and what they saw and learnt there taught them that the main hope of their
country’s national independence and material progress lay in her adoption of
Western civilisation. On their return, they naturally allied themselves with
the Progjessive party, and they succeeded in obtaining to some extent the
King’s sympathy with their ideas. The Cdhservative party was, however, still
sufficiently strong both in itself and in the support of China, to control the
King and to limit the exercise of his principles of Liberalism, and to retain
for its members all the chief offices of the State. Hostility increasea between
the rival parties, and culminated in a conspiracy on the part of the
Progressives to overthrow the Government and establish their own members in
its place.
On the night
of December 4, 1884, a banquet was given to celebrate the opening of a new
post-office, at which the principal Korean Ministers and all the foreign
representatives except the Japanese were present. Towards the close of the
banquet an alarm of fire was raised, and both hosts and guests hurriedly
dispersed. As they did so, an attempt was made to murder one of the principal
Ministers. The leaders of the Progressive party then made their way to the
palace and easily persuaded the weak, terror-stricken King that his life was in
danger and that his only resource was to appeal to the Japanese minister for
protection.
' The
Japanese minister was, as has been stated, riot present at the banquet. Two
letters from the Court, one of them an autograph letter from the King, reached
him in quick succession at his legation, both entreating him in urgent terms to
proceed at once to the palace for the purpose of protecting the sovereign’s
person. The legation guard, consisting of 130 soldiers, under the command of a
captain, was at once paraded and marched to the palace, where they took
possession of all the gates, and effectually cut off the King from all
communication with his responsible Ministers. Whether the Progressive
conspirators had hoodwinked the Japanese minister, or whether the latter was a
conscious partner in their design oi destroying for ever by one coup d'Aat the
Chinese and Conservative party of the Korean Government, has never been
publicly explained and only the confidential archives of the Tokio Foreign
Office; could solve the doubt. Be that as it may, the conspirators had now the
matter in their own hands. The principal Ministers were arrested during the
night, hurried to the palace, and ruthlessly butchered along with court
officials, eunuchs, and others, who were known to be favourable to them; and
the King, helpless in the hands of the conspirators, at once conferred the
vacant posts upon their leaders.
The Chinese
soldiers were stationed at some little distance from the capital. The
conspirators were able to prevent any information reaching them until the
tragedy was over, and it was only on the following day that they received an
appeal for help from the surviving Conservatives. Theraison d'etre of the
Chinese garrison was to protect the King against his rebellious subjects. Here
was a case in which it was clearly the duty of the commanders to act, if they
were ever to do so, and they had no hesitation in assuming the responsibility,
even at the risk of a serious collision with the Japanese. The troops were
marched to the palace; a brisk encounter took place between them and the
Japanese guard, in which the latter, though hopelessly outnumbered and
fighting, not against a rabble, as in the affair of 1882, but against soldiers
as well disciplined as themselves, fought with their usual fearlessness. The
inevitable result followed. The Chinese gained possession of the palace and of
the King. The Government was once more in the hands of the Conservatives and
the conspirators’ game was over. Some of them escaped out of the country; those
who were found met with the same mercy that they had shown to their political
antagonists.
Simultaneously
with the attack on the palace, a general anti- Japanese riot broke out
throughout the whole capital, and the populace vented its hatred by destroying
the residences of the Japanese traders scattered through the capital, and in
many cases murdering the inmates: The minister and his overpowered guard made
their way back to the legation, fighting their way through the streets, and
found themselves, with all the remnants of the Japanese civil population who
had taken refuge in the legation, in a state of .-liege, without provisions or
the means of procuring them. The situation was desperate. But the minister
showed no lack of courage, promptitude, or determination; The soldiers were
formed into a square, with the wounded and fugitives in their centre; and, with
the minister and his staff at their head, as in 1882, they once more fought
their way through the streets and reached the coast, after a toilsome march,
the hardships of whiqh were intensified by a heavy snowfall in the night. The
legation was burned by the mob, after its evacuation. ■ • ■
When the news
of the events that have been described reached Japan, the usual cry of the war
party again broke out and was fully vented in the Press, on this occasion more
against China than against Korea.! China was accused of having
wantonly used her troops in Korea to attack Japan’s representative and to
imperil the lives of himself, his guard, and his countrymen—the indiscretion,
to use the mildest term, of the representative being ignored. The Government
was wiser and better informed than the Press and showed the same restraint and
prudence that it had exhibited in previous Korean complications—in fact, in every
incident of its foreign relations. Its two ablest and most experienced members
were commissioned to negotiate. Inouye, the
Minister for
Foreign Affairs, suspended his treaty revision labours in order to proceed to
Seoul, and Ito his preparation of the Constitution to proceed to Peking. The
missions of both were successful. Japan was not guiltless in the affair, and
the reparation demanded from Korea was very moderate. Inouye obtained it in
full. The negotiation with China was more complicated. China was at the time
flushed with triumph at her successful resistance to France and little disposed
to give way before a Power such as Japan, whose military strength was, she
believed, in no way superior to her own. It was only Prince Ito's personality
that finally, after repeated and long protracted discussions, induced Li
Hungehang to assent to an acceptable agreement. Its principal stipulations were
that both Powers should withdraw their troops from Korea; that both should have
the right of sending them back, should circumstances in Korea render that
course advisable or necessary; but that, whenever either Power proposed to
exercise that right, notice should be given in advance to the other; and that
Korea should be encouraged to work out her own reformation, especially in the
training of an efficient army of her own people.
The Korean
affair of 1884 was thus ended; but Chinese influence continued to be paramount
in Seoul, and Chinese traders, presenting a vivid contrast in their conduct and
methods to the Japanese, to absorb the trade of Korea. Friction repeatedly
occurred; but peace was preserved for ten years, when the result of the War of
1894 entailed the complete renunciation of China's suzerainty and ended the
active interference of her officials in the domestic administration of Korea.
Japan's influence now supplanted that of China, and the former Power enjoyed an
unique opportunity to act in Korea's regeneration. She proved that she was
honestly desirous of performing this task conscientiously and thoroughly by
allotting its discharge to Count Inouye. But Inouye made the one great mistake
in his brilliant career. He proceeded too rapidly. Legislative, financial, and
administrative reforms were imposed on the Koreans with a rapidity that could
only be bewildering to a nation that had been stagnating for centuries and that
had none of the receptive qualities of the Japanese. While Count Inouye
remained in Korea, all apparently went well; but, so soon as his commanding
influence was withdrawn and the supervision of the reforms he had inaugurated
was left to a less gifted official, all quickly reverted to chaos.
The Queen of
Korea was a woman of as great strength of character and intellectual ability as
her husband was the reverse. She was filled with ambition both for herself and
her country; but its welfare depended in her eyes on its continued association
with China and the conservation of Chinese civilisation. The Tai Won Kun, her
father-in-law, who had been released from his detention in China and permitted to
return to Korea, shared her predilection for China; but between him and the
Queen feelings of bitter antagonism existed. The
Queen used
her influence with the King to procure the nomination of her own blood
relations to all the highest offices of the State; even Count Inouye, while in
Korea, had found it expedient to yield to her in this respect. The Tai Won Kun
desired these offices for his own relations and disciples. That desire could
never be satisfied while the Queen lived, and a plot was accordingly formed
into which the representative of Japan allowed himself to be drawn. On the
morning of October 8,1895, a sudden attack was made on the palace by the Tai
Won Kun, at the head of a crowd which included some Koreans but was mainly
composed of Japanese. Among the Japanese were some civilians of the worst type
of educated rowdies, a class which had lately appeared and risen into
prominence in the political life of Japan, whose arguments were those of the
cudgel and the sword-stick; but the majority were soldiers and government
employees, including even officials of the legation. An entry was effected into
the Queen’s apartment, where she and some of her ladies were ruthlessly
murdered with every circumstance of cruelty and indignity that unrestrained savagery
could dictate. It was subsequently asserted that the actual murderers were
Koreans disguised as Japanese; but it was not denied that Japanese officials
were present.
When the news
of this incident was confirmed in Japan, all the participants in it were
promptly recalled. The military officers were tried by Court-martial, but
acquitted on the grounds that they had taken part in a coup d'etat on the
instructions, which it was alleged they were bound to obey, of Japan’s chief
representative in Korea. The latter, a lieutenant-general in the army and a
viscount in the peerage, was arraigned before the ordinary criminal Courts; but
his trial was not earned beyond the preliminary Courts which, in Japan, fulfil
the functions of the police Court and grand jury in England. All proceedings
in these Courts are carried on with closed doors, and it can therefore only be
presumed there was not sufficient evidence to justify the committal of the
accused to public trial for complicity in the crime of murder. His share in the
plot was not a crime, and the only penalty that could legally be inflicted upon
him for it was the cessation of his employment by the Crown and the
condemnation of his countrymen. These were not wanting, and many of his
compatriots urged on him the old Samurai atonement of seppuku (harahiri).
The price
which Japan had to pay was a heavy one. No murdered Queen in history has been
more heavily avenged. The incident might be called the remote cause of the War
with Russia. The King took refuge in the Russian legation in Seoul, and two
years elapsed before he again ventured outside its walls. All that Japan had
done or tried to do was undone. Russian influence took the place of Japanese,
and the country’s retrogression into administrative chaos was rapid. It seemed
only a question of time, at what date Korea would become a Russian possession
in name as it was gradually becoming in fact—when the War with Russia
once more
enabled Japan to assert her interest and her influence. Korea now stands to
Japan in much the same relation as that of Egypt to Great Britain. The task of
her reorganisation was undertaken by Prince Ito, who, having nearly reached the
allotted age of threescore years and ten, might well have demanded the repose
to which his long services had entitled him.
Under the
Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on April 17, 1895, which terminated the War, the
island of Formosa, together with the outlying group of islands known as the
Pescadores, were permanently ceded to Japan. Some sentiment influenced the demand
for its cession, made by the victorious Japanese, as it was claimed that
Formosa was occupied by their ancestors in the thirteenth century and that
geologically it formed a link in the continuous chain of islands that
constitutes the empire. The practical reasons were its strategic importance,
commanding the narrow straits, which are the highway for all the shipping
entering the China Seas from the south, and the promise of its providing a
valuable field of emigration for the increasing population of Japan. Little
had been done by the Chinese during their long occupation to develop the
resources of the island; but it was believed to offer immense possibilities in
agriculture and mining, given good government and intelligent administration.
It was known to possess valuable coal-fields, and a considerable quantity of
gold had been found in it by primitive methods of surface washing; its tea
commanded high prices; its sugar and rice were exported in large quantities to
Japan and China; and it was the chief source of the camphor supply of the
world.
The physical
conditions of the country are peculiar. It lies almost due north and south, its
length being 221 miles and its breadth varying from 60 to 90 miles. The western
half consists entirely of low plains which are thickly populated by industrious
emigrants from southern China; the eastern, of forest-clad mountains which rise
abruptly from the plains to a height of 7000-8000 feet and continue eastwards
to the sea where they also rise abruptly from the coast in granite cliffs to
the height of 5000-6000 feet. The entire eastern coast line, unbroken by a
single harbour, when viewed from ships, the largest of which can approach quite
close to it, presents one of the most sublime and aweinspiring views of the
world. Only the western half of the island was ever brought under the effective
domination of China. The eastern half is sparsely inhabited by untamed savages
of the most bloodthirsty type, to whose gloomy mountain fastnesses the Chinese
were never able to penetrate.
The cession
of the island to Japan was received with such disfavour by the Chinese
inhabitants that a large military force was required to effect its occupation.
For nearly two years afterwards, a bitter guerrilla
resistance
was offered to the Japanese troops, and large forces—over
100,000 men, it was stated at the time—were required
for its suppression. This was not accomplished without much cruelty on the part
of the conquerors, who, in their march through the island, perpetrated all the
worst excesses of war. They had, undoubtedly, considerable provocation. They
were constantly attacked by ambushed enemies, and their losses from battle and
disease far exceeded the entire loss of the whole Japanese army throughout the
Manchurian campaign. But their revenge was often taken on innocent villagers.
Men, women, and children were ruthlessly slaughtered or became the victims of
unrestrained lust and rapine. The result was to drive from their homes
thousands of industrious and peaceful peasants, who, long after the main
resistance had been completely crushed, continued to wage a vendetta war, and
to generate feelings of hatred which the succeeding years of conciliation and
good government have not wholly eradicated.
The first
steps in the civil occupation of the island were not more promising than the
military occupation. Many of the officials were undoubtedly honest, and
sincerely desirous of performing their duties as much in the interest of the
natives as in that of their own country and countrymen; but among them were
also many who united flagrant corruption with tyrannical abuse of their
executive powers. All, whether honest or dishonest, were entirely ignorant of
the local dialects, and they made the fatal mistake of employing as
interpreters and informants the subordinate officials of the former Chinese
Yamen. These men, the most dishonest and unscrupulous products of the official
system of China, created what was almost a reign of terror. They levied
wholesale blackmail on the most wealthy and prosperous of their countrymen,
and, when their demands were refused, they procured the execution or ruin of
many innocent persons by fabricated evidence which the Japanese were
incompetent to test.
Whatever were
their early shortcomings, the Japanese have since made ample amends for them,
and the results which they have already achieved speak well for their
capabilities as colonists. Harbours have been improved; railways, waterworks,
and roads constructed; schools and hospitals founded; modern scientific methods
introduced into the sugar and camphor industries; and, while native adults are
being furnished, for the first time in their lives, with the concrete example
of honest executive and judicial administration, their children are being
trained in Japanese sentiment and Japanese methods, so that they may grow into
patriotic subjects of the empire. For ten years, the island was a heavy burden
on the Japanese finances, large annual subventions being required from the
Treasury; but, in 1906, it became financially independent for the first time,
and its revenue has since increased, owing to the profits derived from camphor,
salt, tobacco, and opium monopolies, so that a large surplus can be annually
applied to permanent productive
works.
Attempts are now fcr ng made to. penetrate the mountains in the east and to
subjugate the savage inhabitants; but, in view of the natural difficulties
which have to be overcome, this task will require years for its accomplishment.
The island is governed as a crown colony, the inhabitants neither possessing
the parliamentary franchise nor being liable to military service.
In the island
of Saghalin, fishing settlements were established by Japanese during the
eighteenth century, and, very early in the nineteenth, it was explored by a Japanese
navigator and proved to be an island. It remained, however, a terra incognita,
to the Shogun?s Government, which took little notice of the Russian
encroachments that were gradually made on it. When it did awake to the
threatened loss of the island, it was too late, and the best terms in regard to
it that could be obtained were that it should be occupied in common by the
subjects of both countries, an agreement being concluded to that effect when
the first Treaty with Russia was made in 1855. Subsequent endeavours to set up
the 50th parallel of latitude as the line of demarcation of the spheres of the
two countries failed, and Russian settlements steadily grew in number, until
they extended to the extreme south and Russia was in virtual occupation of the
whole island. Japan, unable by reason of her military weakness and internal
disorganisation to oppose this aggression, yielded to necessity, and by a
Treaty signed at St Petersburg in 1875 ceded the whole island to Russia, who,
in return, recognised the chain of the Kurile Islands as Japanese territory.
Consolation
was found at the time for this very unequal transaction in the thought that the
climatic conditions of Saghalin rendered it unsuitable as a colonising field
for Japanese, and that the loss was a small price to pay for the removal of a
possible cause of serious friction between the two Powers. But, as time went
on, it was realised that Japan had parted with an integral portion of her
dominions, and in doing so had exchanged an island rich in possibilities for a
few barren and inhospitable rocks. By the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905), the
island south of 50° was ceded to Japan as one of the conditions of peace, and
she has now the opportunity of testing her colonising capacity in a sub-arctic
climate as well as in the sub-tropical climate of Formosa, while in Saghalin
there is no hostile population to subdue. The original cession of the whole
island to Russia proved to be not without advantage to Japan. It left her free
to expend her energies and her money, both to a very large extent, on the
development of the resources and defences of the island of Yezo, as much a part
of Japan as Ireland is of the United Kingdom, while Saghalin is merely an
outlying island which could be perfectly well spared at a period when no
surplus population required an outlet from the main islands. Even Yezo was
threatened by Russia, when Japan, during the struggles of the Revolution, was
apparently in
hopeless
anarchy and military impotence. A very able Russian official was stationed at
its principal port under the guise of a consul; a large mission of the Russian
Church was maintained under Bishop Nicholai, the noblest and most devoted
Christian missionary who has given his life to Japan since the days of Francis
Xavier; Russian hospitals were also established, and Russian influence
insidiously but steadily spread among the natives. It was, probably, only the
knowledge that all she did was carefully watched by the able and determined
British minister in Japan, who never shirked responsibility and who always had
at his call the whole British fleet in Chinese waters, that prevented Russia
from establishing a foothold in Yezo whence Japan might have had considerable
difficulty in dislodging her.
The history
of Japan’s international relations during the Meiji period may be closed with
the mention of two further incidents. The first was the Boxer movement in
China, which is fully described in an earlier chapter. Japan has not, however,
received the credit she deserves for her share in its suppression. When the
foreign communities of Peking and Tientsin were surrounded and threatened with
annihilation by overwhelming Chinese hordes, when distance rendered it
impossible for relieving forces to arrive from Western countries in time to save
them, Japan came to the rescue, and quickly landed at Taku an army of 21,000 of
her best soldiers, fully equipped in every military detail. Throughout the
campaign, this army was distinguished by no less skill on the part of its
generals and no less bravery on the part of its soldiers, than were the British
and American allies by whose side it fought. The evil record made for
themselves by the Japanese soldiers in Formosa, under conditions of great
provocation and temptation, was thoroughly erased by their conduct in northern
China. It was as strongly marked by discipline, restraint, and humanity as that
of some of the European armies was by the reverse of these qualities. What the
Japanese saw of the Russian generals and soldiers in this campaign filled them
with selfconfidence and enabled them to meet the Russian armies in Manchuria
without a shred of doubt as to the side to which victory would ultimately fall.
Great Britain learned, for her part, that she need not hesitate to accept the
Japanese as worthy allies. Having learned that lesson, she had no hesitation in
concluding with Japan the defensive alliance, first signed on January 30,1902,
and amplified and strengthened on August 12, 1905. By these Treaties, Great
Britain and Japan became the guarantors of peace in the Far East. Great Britain
was relieved from the expense of maintaining in Eastern waters a powerful
modern fleet—a burden which might have proved insupportable under the new
conditions that are manifesting themselves in the present year, 1910. Japan
obtained the final acknowledgment of her status as a great and civilised Power.
The Charter Oath of the Emperor was thereby fulfilled to its last clause, and
the “ foundations of the empire were firmly established.”
THE
RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR.
On April 8,
1902, a Treaty was signed between China and Russia. By its terms Russia
undertook to respect the integrity of China and to evacuate Manchuria; China
agreeing to be responsible for the safety of Russian subjects and enterprises
in that province. Thus the prospect of peace in the Far East was, after many
dark and stormy days, once more bright. Russia had, by her lease of the
Liao-Tung peninsula, reached her long sought goal,, an icefree pprt on the
Pacific, and her communications with that port seemed safe. Japan, having
secured a working agreement with Russia as to Korea, felt free to develop her
legitimate sphere of influence in that kingdom, now that she was relieved from
the menace which an apparently permanent domination of Manchuria had
constituted. The evacuation was to be completed in three periods of six months
each, and at the end of each period a section of the province, defined in the
Treaty, was to be restored to China. In October, 1902, Russia duly met her
engagements; but in the following April the second section was still in the
hands of Russian troops. The Chinese ambassador at St Petersburg, in reply to
enquiries, was informed that any further evacuation must be conditional on his
Government agreeing to certain concessions and guarantees as to Manchuria not
mentioned in the original Treaty. This China, supported by Great Britain, the
United States, and Japan, refused to do. Almost simultaneously with the
formulation of these fresh demands a marked increase in the activities of
Russian subjects in northern Korea took place. A Russian speculator,
Bezobrazoff, who was engaged in exploiting a concession obtained from the
Korean Government, carrying with it the right to cut timber on the Yalu and
Tumen rivers, had interested influential personages in the Tsar’s entourage in
his schemes. Work was begun on the Yalu in April, 1903, and on this pretext
Russian troops were moved towards the river. This was a direct violation of the
agreements with regard to Korea which had been concluded by Russia and Japan.
The latter had expended much blood and treasure in order to secure a
predominating interest in the Korean peninsula. She had
recognised
that, with Russia established there, not only would her own natural field of
development be at once closed but her existence as a nation would be eventually
threatened. The rapid growth of Russian power on the Pacific coasts, the
enforced cession of Saghalln in 1875, and of the Liao-Tung peninsula with the
hard-won Port Arthur twenty years later, had aroused profound distrust of
Russian designs in the ininds of Japanese statesmen. Japan accordingly made
representations at St Petersburg that the proceedings of the agents of Russia
in the Far East did not square with her pledges to withdraw from Manchuria, and
offered a fresh treaty for acceptance, which, while safeguarding Russian
interests in Manchuria, defined in unmistakable terms Japan’s position in
Korea. After various pourparlers, Russia’s answer was presented at Tokio on
October 3,1903. This proposed to place certain restrictions on Japan with
regard to Korea, but left Russia free to develop her interests on the Yalu, and
to do as she pleased in Manchuria. Several months of negotiation followed,
during which Russia was gradually strengthening her military position in the
Far East. At length, on January 13,1904, Japan agreed to regard Manchuria as
outside her sphere of influence, but required in exchange, as an irreducible
minimum^ that Russia should give a similar undertaking as to Korea. In view of
Russian military movements actually in progress, the Japanese ambassador was
instructed to press for an early reply to this communication. None having been
received by February 4, the Emperor determined to end the negotiations, and, on
February 5, diplomatic relations with Russia were severed. On the next day, the
first orders for mobilisation were issued in Japan.
It might well
fill the world with amazement that an Asiatic people, relatively small and
comparatively untried in war, should deliberately challenge one of the great
military Powers of Europe to a trial of strength in circumstances which
compelled them to become the aggressors, and to flout their mighty enemy in
what was de facto his own territory. For Japan could not gain her object, which
was to stop Russian aggression in Manchuria and Korea, by sitting still within
her islands, and defying Russia to come on. But the chances at every step in
the negotiations which led to the outbreak of war had been carefully
calculated, on one side at least. The Japanese statesmen and soldiers knew that
for their purpose the measure of Russia’s strength was not the vast array which
impressed Europe, but the number of ships and soldiers which she could deliver
and maintain in what was to be the theatre of war.
In the
beginning of February, 1904, Russia had, east of Lake Baikal, approximately
80,000 field troops, 25,000 fortress troops, required to garrison Port Arthur,
Vladivostok, and the minor defences in the maritime province, and some 30,000
railway troops and frontier guards. These forces were scattered over the
immense area lying between Lake
Baikal
on the west, Vladivostok on the east, Nikolaievsk on the north, and Port Arthur
on the south, the two main groups, about Vladivostok and Port Arthur, being 900
miles apart* The rate at which the immense resources of European Russia in men
and materiel could be made available in the Far East was dependent upon the
capacity of the Eastern Siberian Railway. The cost of laying the 5500 miles of
line between Moscow and Vlad: ostdk, and the extension of 600 miles from Harbin
to Port Arthur, had caused the standard of construction to be the lowest which
would meet the requirements pf commerce. Neither the permanent way, nor the
number and accommodation of stations and sidings* nor the quality and quantity
of the rolling stock, was suited to the strain of the heavy traffic which the
formation and maintenance of a great army would involve. But the chief
difficulty was Lake Baikal, rhere was, at the beginning of 1904, still a gap of
more than 100 miles of mountainous country in the railway which was being
constructed round that lake, and, until this line was completed, everything had
tp be transported across thirty miles of inland sea. By January 27, 1904, the
steamers which ordinarily performed this work were frozen in; all troops had to
march across the iGe, and until the end of February; when a light railway was
constructed paJ^gjce^all stores had to be haulea across on slediT During the
latter half of April traffic across the lake was almost at a standstill because
of the thaw, and it was not until ,May 5 that the steajners were able to resume
work. Most of the reservists, and much of the transport and materiel required.
to fit the troops already stationed east of Lake Baikal to take the field had
to come from Europe. At the same time, the rolling stock and railway personnel
an the Manchurian railway had tp be increased. Fortunately for Russia, the
resources of Manchuria and of the neighbouring Chinese provinces made the importation
of foodstuffs unnecessary; but even with this advantage no very cpnsiderable
reinforcements could be delivered in Manchurii before the end of April. Thus
Japan could calculate that, even under the most favourable conditions, Russia
would not for some months be able to put more than 80,000 troops in the field,
and it was highly improbable that even this nuinber could be concentrated on
any one battlefield. ; ■ .
The land
forces pf Japan at the outbreak of hostilities consisted, approximately, of an
active army of 180,000 men with a first reserve
200,000 strong, and 470,000 other trained men, or
about 850,000 trained men in all. Behind this there was a reserve of population
capable of bearing arms of about 4,000,000. From these land forces about 150,000
men, organised in divisions, could be mobilised immediately. .
The naval
forces in the Far East were more eyenly divided. Japan had s}x first-class and
one second-class battleships, six first+class cruisers, besides two purchased
in Europe which reached Japan about a week after hostilities began; twelve
second-class and thirteen third-class
cruisers.
Russia had seven battleships, nine first-class, two second-class, and six
third-class cruisers. Thus, on paper, Russia’s battle fleet was slightly superior;
but it was divided. Seven battleships, four first-class and two second-class
cruisers were at Port Arthur, four first-class cruisers at Vladivostok, and one
at Chemulpo. It was necessary to send out naval reinforcements from Europe in
sufficient strength to avoid defeat in detail, and the preparation of a fleet
for such a voyage was a matter of many months.
The situation
of the two Powers at the moment when diplomatic relations were broken off
affords a striking example of the value of a complete understanding between
statesman, soldier, and sailor at each step of negotiations which may culminate
in war. The Boxer rebellion, her relations with China, her wish to secure an
icefree port in the Pacific, had decided for Russia the number and distribution
of her troops east of Lake Baikal. The desire to evade obligation^ which might
involve the abandonment of promising undertakings led her to drift into a
situation which threatened war, under what were, at the time, very unfavourable
conditions. Japan had on the other hand calculated to a nicety how. long she
could afford to wait for satisfactory guarantees from Russia. Statecraft had
secured for Japan the military advantage of the initiative, and left her free
to prosecute an offensive campaign, since Russia could not collect sufficient
transports in the Pacific for any serious expedition against the Japanese
islands.
The necessary
prelude to offensive pperations on land was the command of the sea, which
involved an attack on the enemy’s main fleet at Port Arthur. As to the next
step, it was clear that neither army, when concentrated in strength, could live
for long in Manchuria without the assistance of a railway. This limited the
possible lines of operations to two, the Vladivostok-Harbin line, and the Port Arthur-Harbin
line. It was of importance to the Japanese to force the Russians to fight
before the arrival of reinforcements from Europe. Landings could be made on the
coasts of western Korea and of southern Manchuria earlier than on the coast
about Vladivostok, which is icebound until the end of April, and this was in
favour of 1;he southern line. But the chief factor which determined the choice
was undoubtedly Port Arthur itself. The most glorious and popular achievement
in the Chinese War had, in the eyes of the Japanese people, been the assault
and capture of Port Arthur. By the intervention of Russia, Germany, and France,
Japan had been forced in 1895 to yield up this fortress, and her jxasperatipn
was not lessened when Russia obtained possession of it two years later. It is
not too much to say that the national sentiment of Japan regarded the capture,
of Port Arthur as the first objective of the War. Apart from national
sentiment, Japan went to war, first, to ensure her own predominance in Korea,
secondly, to force the Russians to withdraw from .Manchuria. The overthrow of
the Russian empire on land was
out of the
question; but, if Japan were to secure these objects for the future, she must
gain the command of the sea in permanence, not merely for the duration of the
campaign. To obtain possession of the only icefree port in the Pacific which
Russia held was the surest, and indeed the only real, guarantee for this. ^
The Japanese
plan of campaign was therefore: to attack at once the Russian ships at Port Arthur
and Chemulpo; under cover of this attack to reinforce the Legation guard at
Seoul, and to move a division across the Korean Straits in order to force the
Korean Government to acquiesce in and prepare the way for an advance of an army
through Korea to the Yalu ; as the progress of the naval operations permitted,
to land other armies on the southern coast of Manchuria with which to prosecute
the siege of Port Arthur and to cover the siege operations; For the development
of this plan it was of great importance to Japan to anticipate Russia in Korea,
in order to secure the ports of that country for her own uses, to prevent them
from serving as bases for operations of the Russian fleet, and to force the
Korean Government, in which the Russian and Japanese parties were nicely
balanced, to adopt an attitude of benevolent neutrality. Russian patrols were
known to be on the Yalu, and a cruiser, a gunboat, and a transport* with troops
on board from Port Arthur, were in Chemulpo harbour. Secrecy and rapidity of action
were essential. Accordingly, at 6 a.m. on February 6, four battalions at peace
strength, so as to avoid the stir of mobilisation, were embarked at Sasebo and,
escorted by seven cruisers and twelve torpedo boats under Admiral Uriu, sailed
for Chemulpo, while the main fleet under Admiral Togo made for Port Arthur. On
the afternoon of February 8, the Russian gunboat Korietz steamed out of
Chemulpo harbour and, meeting the scouts of Uriu’s squadron, fired the first
shot of the war. The gunboat returned, and that evening the Japanese flotilla
appeared and began disembarking troops, which on the next day occupied Seoul.
During the forenoon of February 9, the Russian ships Variag and Korietz, on
Uriu’s summons, gallantly came out to meet the Japanese fleet and were
overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, on
this same eventful morning of February 9 Togo had been busy at Port Arthur. The
entrance to that harbour was difficult of navigation, and, to be ready for
erriergencies, the Russian fleet had a week before moved into the roadstead.
There it was surprised during the early hours of the 9th by the Japanese
mosquito flotillas, and two battleships and a first-class cruiser were badly
damaged by torpedoes. The arrival of Togo’s main fleet brought on a general
engagement, in which four more Russian ships were seriously injured. Thus,
before any formal declaration of war had taken place, more than half the
Russian naval strength in the Yellow Sea had been put out of action, and, at a
cost of six men killed and 45 wounded, the command of the sea which was the
foundation of the Japanese plans was, for a time at least, assured.
The
unexpected completeness of Togo’s success allowed the original plan to be
modified, and, to avoid the long and difficult march from Pusan to Seoul, the
twelfth Division was shipped, as soon as it had mobilised, direct to Chemulpo,
where it had disembarked by February 21. On March 10 the advanced guards of
this division were in touch with the Russian vedettes on the Chechen river.
With a screen of troops established in Korea, and Togo ready to counter every
attempt of the Russian ships to break out of Port Arthur, the time had arrived
when a concentration in northern Korea could be begun. A First Japanese Army,
composed of the Guard and second Divisions, together with the twelfth Division
already in Korea, had been organised and placed under the command of General
Kuroki. The ice off the harbour of Chinnampo began to break up in the first
week of March, and soon afterwards the earliest troops of the Guard and second
Divisions began disembarking at that point. Japan had chosen the moment for
beginning hostilities with such nicety that she was able to use the harbours of
the north-western coast of Korea for her scheme of concentration, the moment
they became available. Any earlier rupture of diplomatic relations would have
involved long marches through roadless Korea, a later might have found the
ports in Russian hands. By March 29 the whole of Kuroki’s troops had
disembarked; and, by the 20th of the following month, after weary struggles
with the Korean roads, which the thaw had converted into rivers of mud, the
First Japanese Army had driven back the Russian outposts and was concentrated
behind the Yalu.
While the
Japanese transports were plying to and fro, Togo was ensuring their safety by
ceaseless activity before. Port Arthur. Torpedo attacks and attempts to block
the mouth of the harbour were frequent. Early in March, the arrival from Europe
of Admiral Makaroff^an able and energetic officer, had infused new vigour intfa
the Russian fleet, which began to leave the shelter of the harbour. The
Japanese succeeded in laying mines secretly in the channels generally used by
the enemy’s ships, and, on April 13, the battleship PetropavlovsJc, in
returning to port, was sunk by a mine, with Admiral Makaroff and about 600 men
on board, while a second battleship, the Pobieda, also struck a mine and was
injured.
During the
two and a half months which had elapsed since the outbreak of the War,
something had been done towards grouping the scattered Russian forces in
positions -from which they could act in concert. On March 27 General
Kuropatkin, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Far East, arrived
at Liaoyang and took up his duties. He was a general with a European
reputation, who had earned his chief title to fame as SkobelefTs right-hand man
in 1877 and had been for some years at the head of the War Ministry at St
Petersburg. He formed a plan of campaign which was suited to the circumstances.
The command of the sea gave the Japanese power to land
troops
wherever the natural conditions were favourable. The mountainous character of
the greater part of the country limited the possible lines of advance from the
coast which the Japanese armies could use; and, for the same reason, these
armies must eventually operate up the great Liab valley along the line of the
Manchurian railway. The routes from Korea and from the southern and western
coasts of Manchuria met at Liaoyang. Kuropatkin accordingly decided, after
providing garrisons for Fort Arthur and Vladivostok, to make his first
concentration at Liaoyang and, while watching the coasts and delaying the
Japanese advance with detachments, to refuse a decisive battle until he had
assembled sufficient strength to allow him to assume the offensive with effect.
Some such plan is usually forced upon a Power which is compelled to fight in or
for a distant dependency against an enemy on the spot. If Government, people,
and subordinate leaders are prepared to accept the sacrifices which it
involves, and support the commander of their armies loyally, the inevitable
difficulties may be overcome; but, at best, the advantage of the military
initiative must, for a time at least, be yielded to the enemy, and some loss of
territory and prestige must be faced. If, on the other hand, the Government
press their general to guard this place or that, if the people, angry at the
apparent immunity with which the enemy takes what has been theirs, clamour
against him, and if subordinate leaders stubbornly refuse to give way before an
enemy they despise, then only a commander with a genius for war and an iron
will—- such a commander as is seldom vouchsafed to a nation—can put this plan
into execution.
Kuropatkin
was faced with such difficulties from the outset. Up to the date of his arrival
in the Far East, the supreme command of Russia's naval and military forces had
been exercised by her Viceroy, Admiral Alexeyeff. He had been chiefly
responsible for the conduct of affairs which led up to the outbreak of
hostilities, and his position naturally carried great weight. For various
reasons he was disposed to disagree with Kuropatkin’s proposals. In the first
place, he was deeply interested in the various enterprises for the development
of Manchuria. Further, he and many of the military commanders who had hitherto
served under his orders were inclined to look with contempt upon a yellow race,
whose military methods and organisation they had neglected to study, and to
scorn even the appearance of giving way. Last, his training and education led
him to look at the problem from a naval point of view. He saw that, if Russia
was to regain command of the sea, a fleet must be organised in Europe and sent
to the Far East. Port Arthur, as the only icefree harbour provided with docks
which could receive this fleet, had even greater value than it possessed as the
base and refuge of the fleet already in Eastern waters. Alexey eff knew that
the declaration of war had found the fortifications and armament of Port Arthur
in an incomplete condition, and was very apprehensive of the
danger of
leaving the fortress to look after itself. He was not soldier enough to
understand that the place must fall to the ul* aiate victor, no matter how
often it changed hands in the course of the War, nor did he see that for the
Russians to engage the enemy before they were strong. enough to strike a
decisive blow was to make bad worse. Alexeyeff found at the Russian Court many
who could not brook to see their interests abandoned to the enemy without a
struggle and were therefore prepared to support his views, and Kuropatkin was
thwarted by men who did not understand the wisdom of his proposals. That he was
not the man of blood and iron needed in order to cope with the situation does
not absolve those who made that situation impossible fot one who was both a
skilful leader and a gallant soldier.
At the end of
April, the Russian field troops east of Lake Baikal were distributed in four
main groups. There were some 45,000 men along the Manchurian railway, chiefly
about Liaoyang under the direct command of Kuropatkin; some of these troops
were still on their way to join him, some had been pushed as far south as
Niuchwang: Lieutenant- General Stoessel had 19,000 in Port Arthur and the
Kwantung peninsula, Lieutenant-General Linevich about 16,000 around
Vladivostok: last,
19,000 men were deployed along the southern coast
of Manchuria and the Korean frontier under Lieutenant-General Zasu7 ;h. These
figures represent the approximate numbers of effective fighting troops; the
paper strengths were much higher, but every regiment was, from a variety of
causes, below its war establishment.
It is with
General Zasulich’s command, which was already in touch with Kuroki on the Yalu,
that we are first concerned. On April 22, when Zasulich himself arrived on the
Yaluj his force was watching a front of some 170 miles from Pitzuwo on the
coast to a point about 50 miles up the river. This distribution was in
agreement with Kuropatkin’s reiterated orders that the enemy were to be watched
and delayed without committing the troops to a decisive battle. Zasulich
appears to have misconceived his rdle completely, aud to have made up his mind
from the outset that, if he were attacked on the Yalu, the strength of his
position and the quality of his troops would give him victory. Fhe bulk of the
Russian troops were grouped about Antung, and a point a few miles further up
the right bank of the Yalu opposite Wiju. Here they had constructed strong but
very conspicuous entrenchments on the low hills commanding the four mile width
of open sandy plain, which, broken only by the many channels of the Yalu and
its tributaries, formed the valley separating the two armies. Thti Japanese had
already crossed the river in face of the Chinese in 1894; and, by means of
spies and of every known form of reconnaissance, they had accurate information
of their enemy and his position. Kuroki, who could dispose of 40,000 men,
inferred that Zasulich, who had troops extended far along the coast of southern
Manchuria, and had occupied Antung in strength, was appre-
herisive of a
landing on his right, and he determined to play on that fear. He, therefore,
decided to keep the Russians employed near the mouth of the river, and to make
his real crossing at and above Wiju. By April 28, Kuroki’s plans were far
enough advanced to allow him to fix May 1 for the attack, and, after some
preliminary skirmishes and bombardments, the chief bridges were completed by
April 30. On the morning of May 1 the valley was shrouded in a.dense mist, and
when this lifted the Russians found their left threatened by immensely superior
numbers. At 7 a.m. Kuroki ordered the general attack. After two hours of sharp
fighting the Russian left was driven from its first position, and the Japanese
were firmly established on the right bank of the river, while the large proportion
of the Russian force about Antung was still expecting the main attack to be
delivered against it. By 10 a.m. Zasulich had reached his left flank and, after
taking in the situation, he ordered a general retirement. But it was now too
late; the Japanese right, swinging round, cut in on the Russian line of
retreat, and only desperate and gallant fighting by the rearguard prevented the
retirement from becoming a rout. The first battle with equal weapons, under
modem conditions^ between yellow and white troops, had ended in a decisive
victory for the former; the Russians lost 1800 killed and wounded, 600
prisoners, 21 guns, and 8 machine guns; the Japanese 1021 killed and wounded.
The
importance of this success to Japan could hardly be overestimated. The
prestige of Russian troops stood very high before the War, and the fact that
they had been met and decisively beaten in battle was to stand Japan in good
stead when she went to the exchanges of Europe for the means to prosecute the
campaign. Though Japan owed her victory to the blunder of a subordinate
general, the moral effect of the success on her troops was as great as if their
prowess alone had won the day. She had chosen for the training of her army the
best German instructors available, and these had set themselves to adapt the
natural fighting qualities of the people to the conditions of the twentieth
century. The soldiers produced by this system were by nature sturdy, cleanly,
and abstemious, by religion and tradition eager to sacrifice their lives for
Emperor and country, by training equal to the requirements of a modern war.
They were led by officers who had received a scientific education of a standard
similar to that of the military schools of Europe. But, with all this, there
was very naturally a certain anxiety until the system had stood the ordeal of
battle with a European foe, and the telegram sent by the Japanese general
staff officers to their German instructors from the field of battle gave
expression to the exultation of the whole people in the fact that their
theories had been put to the test and not found wanting.
The
characteristics displayed by the Russian soldiers in this battle marked them
throughout the War. The men were dogged and determined fighters, patient under
hardships, but slow and quite incapable of thinking for themselves; the junior
officers—particularly of the Siberian regiments
—were not
abreast of modern progress in their profession; the seniors were too much given
.to intrigue and to quarrels. In the result,, the Russian army in the Far East
was a ponderous and clumsy machine, capable of gallant fighting on the defence,
but with little power of manoeuvre or of initiative, and its want of capacity
to seize such chances as the fortune of war presented forced it continually to
follow the movements of an adversary, who had thr. courage to assume and the
skill to keep the offensive. ^
Kuroki’s
victory had made Japan paramount in Korea, and cleared the way for the next
step in the campaign, the isolation of Port Arthur. While the First Japanese
Army was assembling along the Yalu, a Second Army, consisting of the first,
third, and fourth Divisions under General Baron Oku, had been quietly collected
in transports at Chinnampo. On May 3, Togo reported that his efforts to block
the mouth of the harbour at Port Arthur had so far succeeded as to prevent the
egress of battleships and large cruisers; and by dawn on May 5 the first
transports of Oku’s army were anchored off Howtushih, a place on the southern
coast of Manchuria, some twelve miles southwards of Pitzuwo, where the Japanese
had landed in 1894. Though the coast presented great physical obstacles to a disembarkation,
which involved the assembling of a fleet of eighty transports, and though the
landing of the fighting troops alone required eight days, no attempt at
interference was made by the Russians; yet Port Arthur, with its channels still
open to navigation by destroyers and torpedo boats, was only sixty miles away,
and General Stoessel had men busy fortifying the neck of the Kwantung peninsula
at Nansht* i, aot forty miles off. Zasulich had withdrawn northwards to
Fenghwangch’eng after his defeat on the Yalu, and his cavalry, which had been
watching the coast, fell back with him. The Japanese had kept the size and
composition of the forces which were disembarking in Manchuria almost entirely
secret, and in the absence of any troops through which to gain information the
Russians had relied upon native rumour. This had wildly exaggerated the number
and extent of the Japanese landing. Toward; the end of May, Kuropatkin had
directed the cavaliy to resume touch with the coast; but the Japanese had then
established a screen on land which could not be penetrated. On May 14, Oku cut
Port Arthur off from direct communication with the outside world. Five days
later the main body of the Japanese tenth Division under General Kawamura had
completed its landing at Takushan. This small force of less than 10,000 men was
destined to act as a connecting link between Kuroki on the right and Oku on the
left. But it played a part out of all proportion to its size, for rumour
represented it as an army of several divisions, and it was not until long
afterwards that its real strength was known. The Russian intelligence
department was never able to correct the data upon which its calculations of
Japanese strength were based, and this affected Kuropatkin’s strategy
throughout the War.
By May 21,
the fifth Division had joined Oku, who left it with a cavalry brigade to
protect his rear against any Russian movement from the direction of Yingkow,
and marched with the first* third, and fourth Divisions against Port Arthur
Simultaneously, a Japanese squadron demonstrated along the coast toward
Yingkow, as if searching for landing- places, and this Stopped all idea of a
Russian advance southwards along the railway. The position in Port Arthur was
curious. General Stoessel was the senior officer on the spot, but, as he had
had no experience of the charge of an important fortress, General Smirnoff had
been sent specially from Europe to be fortress comtnahdant. Kuropatkin, foreseeing
difficulties, ordered Stoessel to leave shortly before communication with the
oiitside world was cut; but Stoessel suppressed the fact of the receipt of this
order, and remained. Thus the situation was from the outset unfavourable to
unity of command.
Under the
supervision of General Kondratenko, the senior engineer in Port Arthur, the
neck of the Kwantung peninsula at Nanshan, where it is only 4000 vards wide,
had been strongly fortified. It was this position, washed by tbe sea on either
flank, which Oku now proposed to attack with his three divisions, about 39,000
strong. To hold it, Stoessel had sent the fourth Eastern Siberian Rifle
Division under General Fock,' who deployed but a small part of his force in the
entrenchments, keeping the bulk under his own hand. After some preliminary
fighting on May 25, Oku made his attack on the 26th, assisted by four gunboats
and four torpedo boats, no larger vessels of Togo's fleet being able to stand
in close enough to be of use in the shallow waters of Kinchow bay. Weeks of
careful preparation had made Nanshan almost a fortress. Assault after assault,
delivered with all the devotion of which the Japanese infantryman s capable,
was stubbornly repulsed. The Russian guns ran short of ammunition early in the
day; but Fock had his large reserves in hand, and by a bold counter-stroke
might have secured the victory, had he been a man to dare. As the sun was
setting, the infantry of the fourth Japanese Division, wading breast high
through the ebbing tide in Kinchow bay, turned the Russian left and at last
secured a foothold in the position^ Fock had already telegraphed to Stoessel,
who remained all the day in Port Arthur, that the situation was extremely
critical. He received in reply an order to retire, which was executed in some
confusion, 82 guns falling into Japanese hands. Though not less than 15,000
Russians had been in the immediate neighbourhood of the battlefield, barely a
fifth of that number had been engaged; yet so well had that small body fought
that they left 700 of their comrades to be buried by their foes, of whom 4613
officers and men were killed and wounded. The spoils of victory included Dalny,
with all the equipment of a modem commercial harbour, which was occupied on May
29; but its waters had been so thickly sown with mines that it was some weeks
before it could be used. Mines had already inflicted a heavy loss on Togo, the
1904]
Strategical situation. Stackelberg's expedition. 587
battleships
Hatsuse and Yashima having been sunk by this means on May 15; on the same day a
second-class cruiser was lost by collision in a fog. With the help of that
extraordinary power t>f reticence which )vas not the least of the aids to
victory employed in this war, the loss of the Yashima, unobserved by the
Russians, was concealed for many aionths, though all her crew were saved and were
drafted to other ships.
At the
beginning of June the Japanese were ready to engage in direct operations
against Port Arthur; the eleventh Division had landed and, joining the first
Division, had formed a Third Army under General Baron Nogi, who was to conduct
the siege. This left Oku with the third, fourth, and fifth Divisions for the
advance up the railway towards Yingkow. The first troops of the tenth Division
had meanwhile reached Hsiuyen and Euroki had occupied Fenghwangch’eng with the
First Army. This distribution was in great measure due to the mountainous
character of southern Manchuria. Three roads only- led from the coast into the
ralley of the Liao—the first, by which Euroki was advancing, through the Motien
pass; the second, followed by the tenth Division, through the Fenshui pass ;
the third, allotted to: Oku, followed the railway. On each the number of men
who could be fed was strictly limited; for even the railway was of little
assistance, until Talien bay had been cleared for shipping, and rolling stock
been landed. Kuropatkin, for whom rein* forcements were now arriving steadily,
had on his left Zasulich’s force, reinforced to 20,000 men, under
Lieutenant-General Count Keller, in touch with Euroki; in the centre, General
Mishche iko with 3000 Cossack cavalry watched the tenth Division; on the right,
Lieutenant-General Stackelberg had 35,000 men distributed along the railway at
and south of Yingkow, while as a central reserve there were 50,000 men around
Liaoyang and in Mukden. The obvious course for the Russian Commander-in-Chief
was to hold in check two of the Japanese columns and concentrate all his
efforts on crushing the third; but, as often happens in war, the obvious course
was the most difficult; Kuropatkin had noi the transport to enable him to send
a1 large force into the mountains at a distance from the railway,
and, were he to develop his strength against Oku, a successful advance by
either of the other Japanese columns would cut his line of communications. His
information led him to believe that the enemy, particularly the central column,
was much stronger than was actually the case, and so far his subordinates had
failed conspicuously. Therefore he proposed to make his concentration yet
further in rear, at Harbin, and was preparing to evacuate Liaoyang when
Alexeyeff intervened, and, supported from St Petersburg, demanded an immediate
effort to relieve the pressure on Port Arthur. So Stackelberg was sent southward
with 26,000 men to draw upon himself as large a part as possible of Oku’s army,
but to avoid a decisive battle. The landing of the eleventh Division left Oku
free to bring 37,000 men against Stackelberg, whom he met and defeated at
Telissu on June 14 and 15. in a battle in which
the Japanese
lost 1190 killed and wounded, the Russians more than 4000 killed and wounded,
and 16 guns. Bad weather, difficult country, and want of ammunition checked the
Japanese pursuit and allowed Stackelberg to withdraw from an expedition during
which he was throughout acting on faulty information, for the Russians believed
the greater part of Oku’s army to be completing the investment of Port Arthur.
Immediately after Telissu, Oku was reinforced by the sixth Division from Japan.
The scene of
real struggle was now for a time shifted to the rear of the army, whose
progress depended on the rate at which panting coolies and Chinese carts could
haul stores through the Manchurian roads converted into quagmires by
torrential rains. With occasional skirmishes, toilsome marches, and long
halts,, the Second Japanese Army crawled into K’aip’ing on July 8. The other
Japanese columns had, with no less difficulty, made some progress in the
mountains. Kuroki had by June 24 collected sufficient supplies to permit his
advance from Fenghwangch’eng, and on June 30 had secured the important Motien
pass. Vacillation and uncertainty at the Russian headquarters were responsible
for this. It was feared that the mysterious centre column would cut off
Stackelberg; so troops were withdrawn from the left to oppose it just when
Keller needed them most, and returned to him too late to be of use. On July 4,
and again on the 17th, Keller tried hard to wrest the pass from Kuroki, but the
Japanese, enjoying for once the luxury of defending strong positions, were not
to be shaken.
The tenth
Division began its forward movement on June 25, and two days later had
possession of the Fenshui pass. Then, as the difficulty of supplying the centre
column had not proved so great as had been anticipated, it was decided to
strengthen it by the tenth Reserve Brigade from Japan, which, with the tenth
Division, formed the nucleus of the Fourth Army under General Count Nodzu, who
assumed command on July 16. So the three armies were drawing in towards the
Liao valley, but their progress was slow, for important events elsewhere had,
even more than the obstacles presented by nature, checked the rate of advance.
For some time
the four powerful Vladivostdk cruisers had been making their existence felt by
raids from that harbour, and a Japanese squadron under Admiral Kamimura was
keeping them in check. On June 12 the Russian ships left the port, evaded
Kamimura, and sank three Japanese transports in the Straits of Korea, the
majority of the troops on board perishing. The cruisers regained Vladivostdk on
the 20th, after scattering a quantity of merchant shipping. On June 23 Admiral
Witthoft, who had succeeded Makaroff, sailed out of Port Arthur with six
battleships, four cruisers, and their attendant destroyers and torpedo boats.
This showed that the Russians had repaired their battleships secretly, that the
channels of Port Arthur were navigable by their largest ships, and that, owing
to the Japanese losses, the Russian fleet at Port
Arthur was
numerically superior to anything Togo could bring against it. For a short time
the command of the sea hung in the balance. Had Witthoft attacked and gained
even a partial victory, or had he evaded Togo and joined the Vladivostok
squadron, the Japanese land operations must inevitably have been seriously
compromised. But Witthoft did not perceive his chances, and on sighting one of
Togo’s divisions steamed back to port without fighting. This revival of Russian
naval activity seriously alarmed the Japanese, the despatch of reinforcements
and supplies was temporarily stopped, and by this all four armies were more or
less affected. Togo at once resumed torpedo • boat attacks on the harbour, and
the blockade was made more stringent, while on June 26 Nogi began active
operations against the land defences by capturing Stoessel’s advanced
positions.
The
convergence of the Japanese armies now made it desirable that the controlling
mind should be nearer the scene of action. So Marshal Oyama, who had been
appointed to the supreme command, left Japan on July 6 and established his headquarters
at K’aip’ing. During its halt at that place Oku’s army had been living almost
from hand to mouth, and, partly from want of supplies, partly owing to bad
weather, he was unable to move forward until July 23. Stackelberg had fallen
back on to the fourth Siberian Corps which had assembled under General
Zarubeieff at Ta-shih-chiao. Here they were joined by Mishchenko’s cavalry,
which gave Zarubeieff, the senior general, a force of 36,000 men. Oku, who had
55,000 to bring against him, attacked on the 24th,
but during daylight could make no impression on the Russian position, and had
begun to try his fortune under cover of darkness, when the Russians were found
to be retreating. Zarubeieff had heard that Nodzu’s army was advancing, and, in
agreement with Kuropatkin’s instructions that he was not to risk a decisive
defeat, had ordered a withdrawal, which was carried out almost without
molestation. The Russians lost about 2000 killed, wounded, and missing, the
Japanese 1044 killed and wounded. The chief prize of the victory was the
harbour of Yingkow with its connecting lines of railway, which supplied the
Japanese with a valuable base, and made the long and difficult line of
communication to Talienwan un- jecessary.
After
Ta-shih-chiao Nodzu was joined by Oku’s fifth Division, which henceforward
formed part of the Fourth Army, and yith this reinforcement he was able to
push back the Russians in front of him and to join hands with Oku at Haicheng
on August 1. On the right Kuroki anticipated Keller, who, having been
reinforced by the tenth Army Corps from Europe, was slowly preparing to attack
the Motien pass, when the Japanese assumed the offensive on July 31 and secured
the whole of the valley of the Lan-ho. In this fighting Count Keller was
mortally wounded. The Russians lost 2000 killed and wounded, the Japanese 989.
The Japanese
armies were now in two groups, separated by thirty miles
690
Attacks on Port Arthur. Russianfleet defeated. [1904
of
mountainous country, each group being about sixteen miles from Liao- yang,
round which Kuropatkin had collected his whole available force, and where he
was receiving daily reinforcement. The Russians were jlready in superior
numbers to, the. three Japanese armies in front of them, and the time had come
for them to strike one of the enemy’s groups boldly before it could unite with
the other. But Kuropatkin was in no mind to be bold. He credited the Japanese
with at least two divisions more than they possessed ; they had all the
prestige of victory, and he believed they would attack at once; his thoughts
were therefore turned rather to warding off than to striking blows. So
difficult is it for a commander to wrest from his adversary the initiative
which, maybe through no fault of his own* he has been forced to renounce.
Thanks to the enemy’s inaction, the Japanese were able to tide over an anxious
period of delay, for once more lack of supplies brought their armies to a
standstill. It was necessary to clear Yingkow harbour of mines and to build up
a new line of communication for Oku’s army, while Kuroki in the mountains was
in continual difficulties, and his men were at times on half rations.
The pause was
filled by renewed activity round Port Arthur. By July 23 Nogi had been joined
by the ninth Division and a reserve brigade, which gave him 60,000 men. He at
once began to press his attack. The Russian field and garrison troops in the
fortress numbered 41,600; and these could be increased to 50,000 with the addition
of sailors from the fleet and a body of partially trained civilian inhabitants.
The deficiencies in the land defences had been to a great extent made good by
improvised works ably designed by General Kondratenko, and the armament was
supplemented by guns from the fleet. Nogi had complete information of the state
of the defences at the beginning of the War, arid he did not apparently give
sufficient credit for the work that had been done since. He had carried the
place by assault before, and seems to have thought he could do so again; for,
on the night of July 26, he opened his attack on the outlying works, and,
fighting two days and two nights, eventually turned the line of defence, when
the Russians fell back. He had lost 4000 men in merely clearing the way for his
real work. The attack on the main defences was at once begun; and, after many
failures, by August 8 two small outlying forts on the eastern face had been
taken at a cost of 2200 killed and wounded. Nogi’s energy had an unexpected
result. Alarmed for the safety of the fleet, the Tsar authorised Admiral
Witthoft to break out and try to reach Vladivostok. : So, on the
morning of August 10, six battleships and four cruisers steamed out of harbour.
But the ships were in poor trim for battle; the repairs had not been completed;
indeed, some of the guns that had been landed had not been replaced. Even so,
the Russian ships had all but gained a fair start; of Togo’s main
squadron—such are the difficulties of blockade in these days of steam—when a
chance shot killed Witthoft and temporarily disabled
1904] First assault on Port Arthur-Battle of
Liaoyang. 591
the flagship
which was leading. This gave the Japanese the long-sought opportunity of
bringing the enemy to a battle, which ended in the virtual annihilation of the
Russian fleet. One battleship, two cruisers, and four destroyers escaped to
neutral ports wherie they were disarmed; one cruiser, the Novile, after a
gallant fight, was beached on the island ot SaghdUn; five battleship^ and a
cruiser, all more or less severely injured, were driven back into the harbour;
thus the sting of the Port Arthur fleet was finally drawn.
The
Japanese siege artillery was now ready for action, and, after two days of
cannonade, all too short to damage the works seriously, Nogi began a general
assault on August 20. Then was seen the curious and horrible spectacle of
chivalrous devotion and berserker contempt for death at grips with every engine
of destruction which modem science has devised. For two days and nights this
wonderful infantry flung itself against powerful works, manned by a stubborn
and unyielding foe. Small remnants, left by the waves of assault, clung
desperately to such positions as they had won, till they were forced back at
last, human endurance being incapable of more, with a gain of two small
redoubts and a loss of more than 15,000 killed and wounded. Such a lesson was
needed to teach these heroic soldiers that there were limits to the power of
their valour. So the siege settled down to the slow business of sap, mine, and
counter-mine, while the main armies returned to active attack and'defence.
■
, Oyama had
stores enough for an advance on August 18; but, as the weather then made
movement impossible and as Kuropatkin showed no signs of taking the offensive,
the Japanese Commander-in-Chief decided to wait and see how Nogi fared. When it
became clear that not a man could be spared from Port Arthur, Kuroki began the
nine days’ straggle known as the battle of Liaoyang. Kuropatkin had for months
been fortifying positions six miles south of that town on the left bank of the
Taitzu-ho; and for their defence he had the third Siberian Corps and tenth Army
Corps with the seventeenth behind them as a reserve, and on his centre and
right the second Siberian and first Siberian Army Corps with the fourth
Siberian Corps in second line, a total of about 140,000 men. Besides these, the
first troops of the fifth Army Corps had already reached Liaoyang, and its main
body was at Mukden on the way south. Oyama had under Kuroki on his right 40,000
men in three divisions and a reserve brigade; in the centre, under Nodzu,,
35,000 men in two divisions and two reserve brigades; and on the left, under
Oku, three divisions of 60,000 men.1 Thus Kuropatkin was from the
first slightly stionger in numbers, and during the battle he received about
10,000 men in reinforcements. On the 24th the Russian forces were well in
advance of the main fortified positions, and Oyama’s first object was to push them
back on to these, Kuroki, having the most difficult country to traverse, was
directed to begin. There ensued four days of fierce fighting in the hills and
valleys of the Tan-ho. By August 28, General Bilderling, who commanded oft
592
Russidn retreat from Liaoyangl
[l904
the Russian
left, had been compelled to draw heavily on his reserves; But 'Kuroki, still
isolated, was by no means secure, till Kuropatkin, persuaded by the advance of
the Second and Fourth Japanese Armies that the time had come for him to man his
defensive works, ordered a retirement. Oyama had determined, on the previous
day, to move to the assistance of his gallant lieutenant, and had set Oku and
Nodzu free to attack. On August 29 the three Japanese armies were in touch, and
on the 30th Oyama began his main attack on the Russian south front with the
Second and Fourth Armies. Kuropatkin’s pos‘ ions had been strengthened with
much skill and labour and were sternly defended, so that here the Japanese
could make no progress. On the east front Kuroki’s hard-fighting Guards had met
with greater success, and by the 31st had thrust so far into the Russian
position that they were for a time in extreme danger. Fortunately for them,
Kuropatkin had sent his reserves to help in warding off the fierce attacks on
the south front, and he could not seize the opportunity when it occurred. As
the south front could not be penetrated, Kuroki was ordered to cross to the
right bank of the Taitzu-ho, and begin a turning movement against the Russian
left. To meet this movement, Kuropatkin had to form a new reserve and to move
it across ground cumbered with the paraphernalia of a great army. Thus it was
not until September 2, when Kuroki was firmly established north of the river,
that the Russian Commander-in- Chief was ready for his counter-attack. Then
Kuroki’s twelfth Division threw the movement into confusion by surprising and
almost annihilating one of the leading Russian brigades. With this, Kuropatkin
lost heart and ordered a retreat, which was carried out skilfully and in good
order on September 3. The victory won was far from decisive, the attacks of the
Second and Fourth Japanese Armies had been continually repulsed, and it was by
sheer desperate fightings which left Kuropatkin no breathing space to organise a
counter offensive, that the day was won. The Japanese, who had lost 23j615
killed and wounded, were far too exhausted to pursue; the Russians, who had
been almost entirely on the defensive, lost 16,500.
It had become
apparent to the Japanese Government that both the carrying capacity of the
Siberian railway, which had been steadily improved since the outbreak of
hostilities, and the power of resistance of Port Arthur, had been
underestimated, and that the further development of the military strength of the
country had become a necessity. A law amending the terms of service in the
army, so that troops hitherto available, only for home defence could be sent
abroad, was accordingly promulgated. The War Office at St Petersburg was
equally busy in preparing reinforcements for Kuropatkin. After Liaoyang, the
Russians had retired on Mukden and taken up a position behind the Sha-ho,
whither Oyama had followed them leisurely. During September, Kuropatkin was
reinforced by the first Army Corps from Europe, and by
a newly
formed sixth Siberian Army Corps, which gave him an effective force of about
220,000 men. The Japanese efforts were directed rather to restoring the
regiments already at the front to their.full /strength, and by the end of
September Oyama had 100,000 men. These were extended on a front of 90 miles,
from the mountains on the east across the Sha-ho, where it bends southwards to
join the Taitzu-ho, into the Hun-ho valley. The extent of ground occupied by
both armies in this campaign was a new feature in war, and had become possible
because of the improved means of communication which science has placed at the
disposal of generals in the field. Here, for the first time, we see the
directing mind far from the shock of battle, controlling by telegraphs and telephones
the movements of widely separated armies.
His access of
strength convinced Kuropatkin that the time had come for him to attack and on
October 2 he issued a flamboyant proclamation to his army announcing his
decision. The relative position of the Japanese armies was unchanged. Kuroki
occupied the right, Nodzu the centre, and Oku the left. Kuropatkin proposed to
hold Nodzu and Oku to their ground and to throw his weight against the Japanese
right. For this he formed his army into two wings and a reserve. Bilderling,
with two and a half corps, was to advance on either side of the railway igainst
the Second and Fourth Armies, Stackelberg, with four and a half corps, was to
move through the mountains against Kuroki, while three and a half corps formed
the central reserve. Bilderling started a cautious advance on October 4; but
the cumbrous Russian machinery was not suited to a swift offensive in
mountainous country, and it was not until the 10th that Stackelberg, after
painfully pushing in Kurokj’s advanced troops, was able to develop his strength
against the Japanese right. Then Oyama, confident that Kuroki’s tried fighters
would hold their own, like a skilled boxer who has parried with his right,
struck back heavily with his left. On the 11th and 12th Bilderling was steadily
forced back, and Kuroki, cooperating, defeated the fourth Siberian Corps which
formed the connecting link between Stackelberg and the Russian right. This
threatened Stackelberg’s line of retreat and induced him to look to his own safety
rather than to the defeat of Kuroki. The last days of the battle, as the
Russians fell back fighting on to the Sha-ho, were remarkable for a dramatic
struggle in the centre, where, on the left bank of the river, rose out of the
valley a bare hill crowned by a single tree with the village of Sha-ho-pu at
its foot. On the 14th this was twice captured, and twice recaptured by the
Russians, Kuropatkin himself directing the struggle from the hill-top,, On the
15th a skilful surprise gave both village and hill to the Japanese; but on the
next day General Putiloff, collecting a force from the debris of many failures,
led it at dusk once more to the assault. Taking the exhausted enemy unawares,
he drove them from the summit and captured 14 guns. The village was once again
taken by the Japanese; but the.Russians were not to be moved
from the hill
to which the captor had now proudly given his name. Putiloff Hill thus became
an advanced post to the lines behind the Sha- ho, into which the Russians had
withdrawn and on which the Japanese attacks could make no impression. On the
19th weariness put an end to the fighting, which had cost the Russians 32,300
killed, wounded and prisoners, the Japanese 20,300. A long truce of recovery
and preparation for the severe Manchurian winter followed this ten days’
struggle.
After the
failure of the bloody assaults of August on Port Arthur, Nogi had perforce to
resort to more deliberate methods. Siege batteries were built, parallels
opened, and a heavy bombardment of the Russian works begun; On September 19 a
series of attacks was initiated upon advanced works on the northern and
north-western fronts, which ended in the capture of Fort Kuropatkin in the
north, and! in good progress towards a prominent hill which, under the name of
203 Metre Hill, was to play a prominent part in the siege. After a month of
sapping and bombardment, a general attack on the main defences of the eastern
face was begun on October 26 and lasted for five days. The ditches of many
works were entered; but the Russians by fierce hand to hand fighting drove
their enemy out again, and, though some of the chief forts were seriously
damaged, none at the end remained in Japanese hands. These attacks had cost the
Japanese 151 officers and 1970 men killed and wounded.
Meanwhile,
the pressure of events elsewhere had made the reduction of Port Arthur a matter
of great urgency. By the middle of October the Baltic Fleet, the preparation of
which had been for months a topic of newspaper discussion, had actually put to
sea under Admiral Rozhdestvensky. On the night of October 21 a division of
this fleet, in crossing the Dogger Bank, passed through a group of Hull fishing
smacks, and opened fire upon them. One smack was sunk, two of the fishermen
were killed and eighteen wounded. The news of this astounding event did not
reach England till the evening of the 23rd, by which time Rozhdestvensky had
passed down Channel without reporting the incident. Such a wave of indignation
swept over Britain as might have forced a weak Government into war.
Fortunately, Mr Balfour and Lord Lansdowne never lost control of a critical
situation, and on October 28 in a speech at Southampton the Premier was able to
announce that the Tsar had expressed his regrets, promised compensation, and
agreed to detain the responsible officers. The whole matter was to be referred
to arbitration. Accordingly an international Commission of Admirals met in
Paris in January, 1905. The Russian defence was that they had been attacked by
torpedo boats Concealed among the fishing smacks. There is no reason to doubt
that the mistake was made in good faith, absurd though the explanation sounded
to English ears at the time. The Baltic Fleet had been mobilised with
difficulty, the crews were untrained, and many of the hands were landsmen.
Rumours as to Japanese designs were
rife and a
condition of nervous anxiety pervaded the fleet. In the darkness the signals
for the movements of the steam trawlers were mistaken by credulous,
suspicious, and not over-skilful eyes for those of torpedo boats. The
Commission found by a maj rity that the torpedo boats were mythical and awarded
compensation for the damage done, but agreed that the situation justified
Rozhdestvensky’s anxiety.
While Europe
had been on the verge of war, the Baltic fleet had continued its voyage, and
had ceased to be an empty menace. So the seventh Japanese Division was landed
at Dalny to reinforce Nogi, and a steady stream of drafts was poured into the
divisions which had lost so heavily. A third assault was attempted against the
eastern forts on November 26, but with no better success. Without pause, Nogi
directed his efforts to the north-west front, and on the next day began a
series of attacks on 203 Metre Hill. By sapping, desperate assaults; and continuous
bombardment, the assailants worked their way forward foot by foot, until on
December 5 the prize was won, but at a terrible cost. Since November 25 the
Japanese had lost 13,000 men, 9000 of these falling round 203 Metre Hill; in
the works there, which had been blown to pieces by high-explosive shell, 400
Russian corpses were found. The importance of this capture lay in the view over
harbour and town which the hill, though not in the main line of the defences,
commanded. With modern artillery it is unnecessary that the man who aims the
gun should see the target. If an observer can see where the shells alight, fire
can be directed with complete accuracy. So, with a good observing station in
their hands, the Japanese were able to make certain that the warships remaining
in the harbour should not again put out to sea. Saps were now begun from 203
Metre Hill towards the western forts, and the eastern forts were steadily
undermined. On December 15 the garrison suffered a heavy loss in the death of
General Kondratenko, who had shown himself the only high commander in the place
with a single purpose and character strong enough to subordinate all else to
its attainment. On the 18th, one of the eastern forts was taken by assault,
after mines had been exploded beneath it; and another fell ten days later. The
generals in the fortress were now at open disagreement—-the one side for surrender,
the other for fighting; but, on January 1, Stoessel solved the problem by
sending a flag of truce to Nogi without the knowledge of his council. On the
same evening the capitulation was signed, and the Japanese had gained the first
of the great objects of the War. Though the situation had become desperate
after the fall of the eastern forts, it was Stoessel’s clear duty to keep Togo
and Nogi employed to the last possible moment, and at the time of surrender the
means of defence had not been exhausted. 878 officers, 23,491 men marched out
as prisoners of war, and provisions for three months and 2£ million rounds of
small arm ammunition were found in the place. Had there been loyal cooperation
between the higher commanders, and a more skilful use of the
$96
[l905
resources of
the fortress during the early days of. the siege, the defence might well have
been prolonged till the arrival of the Baltic fleet, when Togo’s work would
have been greatly complicated. But, if Stoessel proved unequal to his task,
nothing but honour is due to the Russiaii soldiery, who bore themselves nobly
throughout the 148 days of siege, in face of a foe whose courage, skill, and
determination have rarely been pycplWLip war. 28,200 Russians were killed or
woundeirctnrifig— the siege. The capture cost the Japanese the huge total of
57,780 killed and wounded, while the losses from sickness were very heavy, as
they always are where a large, force is kept for long in one place.
. As the fall
of Port Arthur had set 100,000 men free to join Oyama, it became imperative for
Kuropatkin to bnjtfe the winter, and to act before Nogi’s army could arrive.
The numbers of the Russian army were approaching the limit which the
single-line of railway could maintain during the winter, when hard weather
increased the needs of the troops, and made traffic more difficult. The rate at
which reinforcements arrived had therefore steadily diminished. Early in
January, Kuropatkin could put 250,000 men in the field; these were organised in
three armies—the First under General Linevicb, the grey-haired veteran who had
been throughout the war in command at Vladivostok, the Sejcond Army under
General Grippenberg, the Third under General Kaulbars. While this
reorganisation was in progress, Alexeyeff was recalled; and the Russian
Commander-in-Chief became the supreme representative of the Tsar in the Far
East.
During the
three months since the battles on the Sha-ho the Japanese War Office had been
busy making good Nogi’s enormous losses and increasing his strength, so that
Oyama had received only the eighth Division and sufficient men to replace the
wear and tear of war, which gave him a strength of 185,000 men. Kuropatkin
desired to delay Nogi’s arrival; so, on January 8, he sent a force of about
6000 Cossack cavalry under General Mishchenko to raid the Japanese
communications. For a cavalry dash the force was too large, and was encumbered with
too much transport. It moved down the Hun-ho valley, round the Japanese left,
and reached the base at Yingkow on the 12tb. The alarm had been given
everywhere, and the posts were manned by small bodies of infancy sufficient to
repulse a cavalry who knew not how to use their rifles. On the 15th Mishchenko
returned to the Russian lines in safety, having accomplished little beyond
gaining information of Nogi’s movement and destroying a few hundred yards of
railway which were quickly repaired. On the night of January 24, Grippenberg
began another effort.. A great part of the Second Army, which formed
Kuropatkin’s extreme right, was on the right bank of the Hun-ho. Grippenberg
crossed that river on the ice, succeeded in surprising the advanced troops on Oku’s
left, and captured the village of Hokutai, which formed part of the Japanese
main position. On the 26th, the fight
1905] Preparations for the battle of Mukden.
597
resolved
itself into a struggle for the possession of the adjoining village of Sandepu.
The village was taken by the Russians, but they were unable to drive the
Japanese from a work on its outskirts, and it was finally evacuated and left in
flames. Still, Grippenberg’s right continued to make progress and Oku’s left
was slowly pressed back, until the night of the 27th brought reinforcements
which Oyama had collected on learning the extent of the Russian successes.
Grippenberg clamoured for support so that he could make good his gains; but
Kuropatkin had not the nerve for bold enterprises. Remembering the
counterstroke on the Sha-ho, he watched the Japanese centre and right,
fearfully clinging to his reserves. Grippenbetg, enraged against his chief, was
otdered back, and on the 29th both armies were in their old positions. This
fruitless fighting had cost the Russians 10,000 killed and Wounded, the
Japanese 8900. The one result was that Grippenberg broke out openly into
recrimination against Kuropatkin, and was deprived of his command.
It was
important that Oyama should use the access of strength derived by him from the
addition of Nogi’s army and from the new formations due to the alterations in
the Japanese terms of service, before the thaws of spring turned the plains of
Mukden into a morass. The disposition of the reinforcements, which had been
used already with such good effect during the war, was again employed to
bewilder Kuropatkin. A Fifth Army, composed of a reserve Division and the
eleventh Division from Port Arthur under General Kawamura, was moved through
the mountains and extended Kuroki’s right; the presence of the eleventh
Division was allowed to become known, and convinced the Russians that Nogi’s
army was about to carry out a great turning movement against their left. The
First, Fourth and Second Armies retained their relative positions from right to
left, and were rearranged and strengthened by reinforcements. Nogi’s army, with
the exception of the eleventh Division, was moved with great secrecy into a
position on the left bank of the Taitzu-ho, where the general disposition of the
troops in front shielded it from prying eyes. Last, a general reserve of 20,000
men was formed under the direct control of Japanese Headquarters. Oyama thus
had about 300.000 men under his orders. The Russians still held approximately
their old positions on the Sha-ho, the First Army under Linevich being in the
mountains on the left, the Third Army under Bilderling in the centre, and the
Second, now under Kaulbars, stretching down to and across the Hun-ho.
Kuropatkin posted his reserve at Mukden, and had altogether about 310,000 men.
Of the rival armies the Japanese was considerably the stronger in infantry, the
Russian in cavalry; the artillery was fairly evenly divided, but the Russian
guns were far superior.
Kuropatkin,
once more, proposed to anticipate the enemy; but, once more, the Japanese
struck while the Russians were still preparing to move. On February 23,
Kawamura advanced through the mountains and attacked
598
Battle of Mukden. Russian retreat.
[l905
the Russian
extreme left. The next day Kuroki assailed the whole front of the Russian First
Army. Linevich was, on the whole, able to hold his ground, but Oyama’s plan had
fulfilled its purpose. Kuropatkin expected attack on his left and, seeing in
Kawamura’s army his real danger, hurried his reserves to his left flank. On the
27th, when the Russian Commanderrin-Chief was committed to this movement, Nogi
crossed the Hun-ho quietly, and on the 28th was in line with Oku menacing the
Russian right. Then began a slow but irresistible wheel, in which Nogi and Oku
gradually bore back Kaulbars, while elsewhere a doubtful battle raged to and
fro, in attack and counter-attack, round the Russian earthworks. Kuropatkin
hastily assembled a new reserve for a counter-attack against Nogi; but the
patchwork organisation of the battlefield could not work smoothly, and the.
attack was not ready until March 6 when it was repulsed. That evening
Kuropatkin began to prepare for retreat on Tieling. During the 7th Nogi,
supported by Oyama’s reserve, extended his left steadily northwards, and
Kuropatkin ordered Linevich, who had held his ground through twelve days’
fighting, back into new lines which had been fortified in front of Mukden on
the right bank of the Hun-ho. Throughout the 9th and 10th, Linevich continued
to repulse all attacks on his front, and, though Bilderling and Kaulbars
suffered heavily as they withdrew, they were able by gallant fighting to
prevent Nogi from cutting the line of retreat and bringing about a new Sedan.
The weary Japanese occupied Mukden but were never able to turn the retreat of
the stolid Russian columns into a rout. By March 14 the Russian armies had
passed through Tieling, and a week later were astride the railway in new
positions some 80 miles north of that town. Oyama occupied Tieling on the 16th
and fixed his headquarters there, pushing outposts to within 12 miles of the
Russian advanced troops. Thus the two armies faced each other with little
change till the end of the War. The exhaustion of men and stores, which was the
consequence of the fourteen days’ battle round Mukden, and the thaws of spring,
made both commanders disinclined to undertake lightly the difficulties of
active operations. The Japanese had lost 71,014 killpd and wounded during the
battle, the Russians about 60,000 killed and wounded and 25,000 prisoners, and
an immense quantity of materiel. Immediately after the battle, Kuropatkin, who
felt that he had no longer the confidence of the army, tendered his resignation
to the Tsar, asking at the same time to be employed in a subordinate capacity.
Linevich was appointed as his successor, and Kuropatkin took over the command
of the First Army.
The fall of
Port Arthur had made the time of the arrival of the Baltic Fleet in the Far
East a matter of minor importance. Accordingly Rozhdestvensky had made a long
halt at Madagascar, partly in order to train his inexperienced crews, and
partly to await an additional squadron, which was composed of the dregs of the
Russian naval
establishments.
Steaming slowly eastwards, while overcoming all difficulties of coaling and
feeding his fleet in a manner which displayed exceptional powers of
organisation, Rozhdestvensky united his various squadrons in the China Sea on
May 9. His fleet consisted of eight battleships, four of them slow vessels of
old type, four armoured and eight protected cruisers, of which about half were
out of date, nine destroyers, and a number of auxiliary ships. The bottoms of
all these ships were foul with their long voyage. Togo had had four months in
which to refit his ships and rest his crews. He had four modem battleships, one
battleship of old type, and three coast defence battleships, eight armoured and
fifteen protected cruisers, with a swarm of gunboats, torpedo boats and
destroyers. The Japanese squadrons were homogeneous, and almost all the ships
of the most modem type. The impossibility of carrying coal sufficient for
fighting a battle and at the same time for making the wide detour round the
islands of Japan, compelled Rozhdestvensky to take the direct route to Vladivostdk
by the Straits of Tsushima. Togo had established a complete system of
reconnaissance over all waters by which the Russian ships could approach, and
had fixed his base at Masampo, on the Korean side of the Straits, whence he
could bring the enemy to battle close by, if the latter attempted to force the
direct route, and could anticipate him if he chose the more circuitous way to
Vladivostdk. At 5 a.m. on May 27, one of Togo’s lookouts reported by wireless
telegraphy that the Russian fleet was steaming for the Straits of Tsushima;
and henceforward the faster Japanese cruisers were able to observe unharmed and
report every movement of their enemy. Rozhdestvensky advanced in three long
columns with his unarmed auxiliary ships in the centre, a formation which
served indeed to protect these, but allowed Togo to concentrate an overwhelming
fire against the leading ships. The battle began, about 2 p.m., to the east of
the island of Tsushima, the Japanese engaging the enemy at 7000 yards, a range
at which the superior training of their gunners enabled them to make the most ,
of their weapons. By steaming across the Russian fleet, so as to bring every
possible gun to bear, the Japanese developed a crushing fire, while that of the
Russians was comparatively ineffective. In less than three- quarters of an hour
the battleships leading the two main columns were out of action and
Rozhdestvensky was severely wounded. By nightfall every attempt of the Russian
ships to break through to the north had been frustrated, and all cohesion in
the fleet had been destroyed. During the night the Japanese torpedo boats
continued the work which the heavy cannon had begun, and on May 28 a general
chase of the flying enemy completed the work of destruction. Four battleships,
four armoured and three protected cruisers, five destroyers, and five auxiliary
ships were sunk; four battleships and two hospital ships were captured; three
protected cruisers, one destroyer, and two auxiliary ships reached neutral
ports and were disarmed; two protected cruisers and two destroyers
alone Reached
Vladivostdk. Thus the question of the command of the Pacific was definitively
settled.
< It was
fitting: that the last great success in the War should have been gained by the
one genius whom the struggle had produced. The success of Japan was only
possible if she held the command of the sea. Togo’s shoulders had borne the
greatest weight of responsibility, and his brain had designed the only absolute
and unanswerable victory. On land there was a deadlock. Oh the side of Russia
the Siberian railway was, with the advance of spring, again working at its full
power; but it would be many months before the losses of Mukden could be
replaced, and a sufficient superiority accumulated to restore lost confidence
and enable an offensive campaign to be attempted again. The country was tom by
internal dissension, in many places open rebellion was rife. The War was
thoroughly unpopular, as a disastrous colonial enterprise to be got rid of at
any reasonable cost, not a vital struggle to be fought out so long as any power
of resistance remained. Japan, with all her prestige of unbroken triumph, had
little behind the bold front she presented to her enemy and to the world; her
resources both in men and in money were nearly exhausted. The campaign on land
gave little promise of a decisive result. There was no place which Japan could
seize,, so as to crush, once and for all, her enemy’s power in the Far East. A
siege of Vladivostdk, another and more formidable Port Arthur^ was out of the
question. She could at most hope for another Mukden, leading to a similar
position of stalemate. Both armies were tied to the single line of railway, the
artery through which flowed their life’s blood. With a theatre of operations
limited on the one flank by inhospitable mountain country, and on the other by
the frontier of a neutral State, brilliant combination and decisive manoeuvre
were impossible. Before the battle of Tsushima, friendly Powers, led by the
United States, had begun to make tentative overtures of mediation; bat, until
her last venture on the sea had been staked, Russia was unwilling to listen to
advice. When, however, the naval campaign had been finally decided, the time
was ripe for negotiation. So on June 10, at the suggestion of the President of
Hie United States, the belligerents agreed to nominate representatives to
consider terms. No armistice was and fighting went on; but on the part of Japan
this was rather a rearrangement of her cards, so as to provide her
plenipotentiaries with the Strongest possible hand, than a seeking of decisive
results. Two divisions of reserve ti-oops Under General Hasegawa drove the
Russians out of north-eastern Kora*, and appeared to threaten an advance on
Vladivostdk, while, one expeditionary force was landed in Saghalin and secured
possession of that island Without difficulty* and another occupied the motith
of the 'Amur.
The Japanese
representative, Baron Komura, and the Russian, Count Witte, met at Portsmouth
in the United States of America at the
beginning of
August, and three weeks of anxious negotiations followed, during which the
chief stumbling-block to an agreement was Witte’s refusal even to consider the
payment of an indemnity by Russia. At last on August 29, when hopes of peace
had sunk very low, Baron Eomura was able to announce that his Master had, in
the interests of humanity, agreed to waive his demand for any payment of money.
The Russians offered half Saghalm, and the Japanese, much to the surprise of
Witte, accepted the offer from first to last.
The chief
articles of the Treaty of Portsmouth were those which recognised the
preponderating influence of Japan in Korea, agreed to the evacuation of
Manchuria, and ceded to Japan the Ldao-Tung peninsula, including Port Arthur
and Dalny, together with the southern part of the island of Saghalm. The world
in general was astonished at the moderation of the Emperor’s Government, and
the disappointment of the Japanese populace showed itself in serious rioting.
The uniform and apparently decisive success of their armies and fleets had
aroused hopes for which there was no justification. The statesmen of Japan had
arrived at a correct appreciation of the conditions, for it is now certain that
an indemnity could have been wrung from the Tsar only at a price which would
have at least equalled its value. The War had cost Japan about i?100,000,000
and Russia slightly less; despite her victories, the former had to pay more for
her loans than the latter. Each nation had mobilised about11,000,000
men; of these, 230,000 Japanese and
220,000 Russians had been killed or wounded, or had
died of sickness.
The
success of Japan cannot be ascribed to the greater valour of her troops.
Splendid as was the courage of the Japanese soldiery, the Russians, whom no
glimmer of success had come to cheer, fought with a dogged determination which
commands equal respect. Nor can it be ascribed altogether to the leadership of
her armies, for Europatk i had assembled at Liaoyang a greater force than Oyama
could bring against him ; strategy can rarely expect to do more. It is true
that on the sea the genius of one man was supreme. With no margin for failure,
Togo had borne, through days of deep anxiety, the responsibility of making
possible and of sustaining the war on land. The apparent ease with which he won
each decisive success tends to conceal the merit of his achievement, for the
blockade of Port Arthur may take rank with the blockade of Brest. But, since
her fleet alone could not give Japan the victory, we must look elsewhere for
the cause of her triumph. In the island kingdom statesman, diplomat, soldier,
and sailor had worked together as a well-trained team to develop the maximum of
offensive power; on the other side the nationa) spirit of Russia had never
fired her armies or her fleets, nor singleness of purpose inspired her leaders.
Japan had been victorious because she had learnt from her German tutors that
war is the business, not merely of the soldier or of the sailor, but of the
nation as a whole. :
THE EUROPEAN
COLONIES.
Ever since the discoveries of the fifteenth century
revealed to the nations of Europe the existence of new lands beyond the seas, a
stream of men bearing a knowledge of Western civilisation has gone forth to
their conquest and occupation. The few years under present consideration form a
brief period in this long process. Yet they have seen an awakened interest in
colonisation and an extension of the field of enterprise which give them a
unique significance. The comparative tranquillity of domestic and foreign
affairs in most countries of Europe has favoured a great outburst of colonising
energy, for which the growth of popidation and industry has provided the
principal motive. The growth of population has swollen the stream of
emigration; the expansion of industry has increased the desire to control
sources of supply for raw materials and markets for finished products. A rapid
improvement in means of communication and transport has facilitated intercourse
between distant parts of the world. A vast store of accumulated wealth in old
countries has been available for investment in new. Modem ideas have stimulated
the imaginations of nations, and a keener spirit of rivalry has stirred their
ambitions. Thus there has resulted an immense extension of European influence
into undeveloped lands and over primitive peoples. Old commercial interests
have been transformed into political connexions. New scenes of action have been
found. The tropical interior of Africa, the neglected archipelagos of the Pacific,
and parts of Asia, have become the possessions or spheres of influence of the
Great Powers. What form colonisation may take in some of these newly occupied
territories the future will declare; the outstanding feature of recent
activity has been the keen competition for spheres of action, and the rapid
partition of almost all available territory amongst the chief nations of
Europe, the United States, and Japan.
While the
opening of fresh fields of enterprise and the coming forward of new nations to
assume the colonising role form an interesting and important chapter of recent
colonial history, the maturing of results in the older centres of colonisation
makes up the main part of the story. The transformation of colonies into
nations is a development of deep
significance,
and one which the present generation has witnessed. In considering this
development, it is with British colonisation that we are chiefly concerned. In
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the process of settlement and
State-building proceeded, during the first half of the nineteenth century, so
surely and rapidly as to foreshadow the formation in these countries of new
peoples at no distant date. That promise has been slowly fulfilling itself. In
recent years, under the influence of “laws of political and economic
gravitation,” the greater English colonies have been taking shape as nations
and States. It is in this development that we find the idea which informs and
interprets their recent progress. Politically and socially, they have all been
in a process of formation and transition ; and, though each has been passing
through a different stage of development, they have all been moving towards the
same goal in obedience to the same impulse. Political institutions have been
fashioned; a social order moulded; standards of life and civilisation set up;
national ideals formed; and, behind all this, has been in each case the
conscious and unconscious struggle for unity and national being. Nor must it be
forgotten that this process of growth has taken place amidst conditions that
differ much from the environment of earlier colonial societies. Modern progress
has brought these great colonies very near to the life of the Old World which
has accelerated and controlled their growth. They have drawn largely on its
resources of wealth and population, and their freedom to shape their own course
has been qualified by their situation in the midst of the complex play of
forces, political and economic, which modern conditions have generated. But, while
they have in some respects shared the same influences, and felt the same
impulse, they have experienced the greatest variety in those general
circumstances which give its particular character to a nation’s history. The
geographical surroundings, the races concerned, the opportunities of economic
progress, the political problems, the degree of pressure from foreign Powers,
the domestic difficulties involved in the presence of native peoples, have been
different in each case. Amid diverse scenes, and with varied experiences, these
new nations have been growing up ; each has its own story and its own chequered
tale of progress.
The modern
development of Canada takes its character from two great events which have been
described in the preceding volume of this work —the confederation of the
provinces, and the transference of the vast western territories to the new
Dominion Government. Through many difficulties the little group of British
colonies had been steered at last into the broad path of their permanent
interest. The acquisition of the west completed the wide theatre of their
history; political union gave them the strength and organisation necessary if
they were to take advantage of their great opportunities and aspire to a high
national destiny. The indispensable conditions of progress were thus provided;
the work
of building a
nation and developing the vast resources of the country remained to be done.
Brief as is the time that has elapsed since confederation, the colonies that
then emerged from the gloom of their early troubles and bargained doubtfully
for union are far removed from the Dominion of today, with its confidence,
ambition, and growing solidarity. Grasping a definite national ideal, and aided
by the resources which our modem control over nature has afforded, the
Canadians have laboured to overcome the obstacles that historical conditions
and the geography of the country opposed to their union and progress. Hard toil
and great sacrifices have been required, but today they look back on part of
their task well done.
In 1867, when
the union was formed, the canal system of the country was inadequate and
rudimentary, and railway building was in its beginnings. There were no
efficient means of communication between the Canadas and the maritime colonies,
or between the east and the west. Each colony tended to be in closer connexion
with the neighbouring States of the Union- than with its sister colonies. The
settlement of the country had always been regarded from a local point of view;
and the competition of the United States had limited its progress as well as
drawn off enterprising young Canadians to wider and busier scenes. Save for
Lord Selkirk’s small but historic colony on the Red river, the fertile plains
of the interior lay unoccupied. The mining community of British Columbia was
isolated in the valleys and mountains of the Far West. The manufacturing
industries of the country were of little importance; agriculture and trade were
suffering from the denunciation of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United
States; but in Ontario settlement was being extended along the valleys of the
Ottawa and its tributaries, and the population had already grown fair beyond
that of Quebec. In the maritime' colonies political life too often centred
round petty issues; in the united provinces it struggled under the incubus of a
race feud. The French had not been drawn ifito closer sympathy with the
English, and treasured as jealously as ever their own life and nationality. To
unite the two races in work for the common good, to give a real unity to the
far-divided members of the Confederation, to open to colonisation the great
western territory, to develop the economic strength of the countiy, and thus to
create in their vast half-continent a strong nation capable of resisting the
absorbing influence of the neighbouring Republic, was the task before the
Canadian leaders. It will be convenient first to follow out in its broad
outline the course of political history, and then to survey and summarise the
results that have been achieved.
The new
problems that came to the front after confederation dissolved the old political
groups. The Radical tradition of Papineau gradually spent its force in Quebec.
The Grits of Ontario had realised some of their democratic principles arid
abandoned others. New issues formed new parties—^Liberal and Conservative—which
have since, in turn, held
the reins of
government. The Anglo-French Conservative party, which came into power in 1867
under the leadership of Sir John Macdonald, and carried out the work of
confederation, governed from 1867 to 1873, and again from 1878 to 1896. Its
long tenure of office during a 'formative period gave it a controlling
influence over the future destiny of Canada. It stood for a strong national
government, Protection for the encouragement of industry, energetic railway
construction to promote the unity and settlement of the country, the
strengthening of the imperial connexion, and close commercial relations with
the mother country rather than with the United States. These principles,
accepted with some qualifications and some accentuation by the Liberal party
when it came into power in 1896, may be regarded as the guiding lines of
Canadian policy.
In the first
years after confederation, the most important question was the building of
railways to unite the provinces. At the elections of 1872 Sir John Macdonald
had been returned to power. The Intercolonial Eta way was then in course of
constructs n, and a transcontinental line was projected. The financing of so vast
an undertaking was a matter of immense difficulty, and, while plans were being
d- rnssed, a grave scandal was caused by the discovery that one of the
capitalists with whom the Government was negotiating had contributed to the
Conservative party chest. Macdonald resigned (Nov. 1873), and Mr Alexander
Mackenzie formed a ministry, which, on a dissolution, gained an overwhelming
victory at the polls. The four years of Liberal government saw much legislation
of a useful character. The North West Territories were separated from Manitoba.
Treaties, were made with the Indians, and their relations with the Dominion
Government placed on the happy basis on which they have since remained. It is
well to remember, however, that the relatively small numbers of the Indians
and the abundance of land in Canada have combined with the just and sympathetic
policy which the Government has pursued to save the country from the everpresent
native question which has troubled some colonies. A Supreme Court of Appeal was
established, the election laws were amended in a democratic direction, and a
local option temperance measure was passed— an experiment in licensing reform
which had little lasting result. But in its commercial policy, and its dealings
with the problem of a transcontinental railway, the Liberal Government was not
fortunate. In 1874, it took powers to construct the railway as a public work,
and planned to utilise the vast water stretches on the route. It made surveys,
and proposed to proceed gradually as the country seemed able to hear the
expenditure. Little was done, and the dissatisfaction of British Columbia
increased so much that it threatened to secede from the union. An attempt,
also, to negotiate a new reciprocity treaty with the United States broke down
completely (1874). Meanwhile, Canada was passing through some lean years.
Already suffering from the competition of the fertile
prairies and
strong industries of the United States, it felt severely the depression which
followed the financial crisis of 1873 in that country. In these circumstances,
Macdonald launched into Canadian politics the issue of Protection. Appealing to
the national sense that was making itself felt, he proposed “the adoption of a
National Policy which, by a judicious readjustment of the tariff, will benefit
and foster the agricultural, the mining, the manufacturing, and other interests
of the Dominion.” In 1878 the Conservatives were returned to office by a large
majority, and they remained in power for eighteen years. The construction of
the Pacific railway was taken up more determinedly. Since the resources of the
country seemed inadequate for the task, Macdonald turned, as he had turned
before, to private contractors, and in 1881 concluded an agreement with a group
of capitalists. The policy of building gradually was abandoned in favour of the
bolder plan of building straight across the Continent. Generous terms were
conceded to the Company, including large grants of money and land; and,
throughout, the Government gave it a whole-hearted support. The financial and
engineering difficulties were successfully overcome, and in four years the
great national enterprise was completed. Canada gained a new sense of unity,
and the way was open for the settlement of the west. Just before the work was
finished, the country was disturbed by a revolt of the half-breeds settled at
St Lawrence on the Saskatchewan, who had become anxious as to the security of
their lands (1884). Some Indian tribes joined them; but the rebellion was
promptly suppressed, and Riel, who had instigated it, was executed, in spite of
the efforts of Quebec to secure his reprieve. In 1885, the Conservatives dealt
with the franchise for the Federal Parliament. Their measure aimed at
establishing a uniform franchise based on a small property qualification, to
take the place of the provincial registers which had hitherto been in use. The
Act proved unpopular, and when the Liberals returned to power was speedily
repealed (1898).
Neither
protective tariffs nor the opening of the west brought immediate prosperity to
Canada. The lean years continued. Industry made but slow progress, and the
eastern farmers were engaged in a hard struggle. In these circumstances, the
Liberal party, which still adhered to Free Trade, continued to advocate closer
commercial relations with the United States, to be attained either by treaty,
or, as some desired, by a Customs Union. An annexationist element in the party
also made itself heard; but its strength was small and gradually waned. The
Liberal policy was, however, suspect, whether it took the form of commercial
union or unrestricted reciprocity (1891), and could not compete with the
protective policy by this time strongly rooted in Canadian life. Commercial
union portended political union, involved heavier direct taxation, threatened
the young Canadian industries, and seemed inimical to the imperial connexion as
well as destructive of the national idea. From Washington the Liberals received
little encouragement,
and gradually
they shifted their ground to “ a fair arid liberal Treaty of Reciprocity ”
(1893). Meanwhile, various events were undermining the Conservative position.
In 1891 Macdonald, whose personal popularity and patriotic instinct had been a
great strength to his party, died. Throughout a life wholly devoted to the
service of Canada he had played a great part in Shaping her policy and
fortunes, on which he left the imperishable impress of a great and strong man.
Death removed other leaders in quick succession, and some political scandals further
affected popular confidence in the Government! The Liberal party had freed
itself from the suspicion of disloyalty; accepting the able leadership of Mr
(now Sir Wilfred) Laurier, it secured the support of Quebec; and by an active
electoral campt »n in 1896 it drove its opponents from power.
The accession
of the Liberals to office was followed by a decade of immense activity and
progress, during which questions of tariffs and commercial treaties,
immigration and settlement, and new projects of railway and canal construction
occupied the principal attention of the country. The Liberals had fought the
election under the banner of Free Trade; but the new Government, nevertheless,
made terms with the manufacturers and accepted, substantially, the protective
tariffs and bounty system of their predecessors. The much denounced National
Policy passed out of party politics into the region of national ideas. The
fruitless “ pilgrimages to Washington ” to secure reciprocity treaties were
abandoned. New bounties were given to the iron and steel industry. The
protective policy was modified in 1897 by the grant of a preference of 12£ per
cent., afterwards increased to 33^ per cent., in favour of Great Britain. In
order to encourage trade with the mother country the Conservatives had
previously suggested reciprocal preferences; the Liberals gave an unconditional
preference—at once a proof of patriotic feeling and an offering to the fallen
god of Free Trade. Germany, not admitting the right of the various parts of the
British Empire to make special tariff arrangements with each other, seeing that
they were fiscally independent, regarded this action as unfriendly to herself,
and in 1901 excepted Canada from the most favoured nation treatment which she
accorded to the British Empire. Canada retaliated in 1903 by imposing a surtax
on German imports. A tariff war thus ensued which checked the expansion of
German trade with the Dominion, and which was only brought to an end in March,
1910. The development of markets for her produce over-sea and on the Continent:
had become of great importance to Canada; and, had it been possible, she would
gladly have followed up the grant of preference by negotiating a commercial
treaty with the mother country, as, in 1907, she succeeded in doing with France
and, in 1910, with her powerful neighbour. In 1905-6, a Commissiori enquired
into the tariff, which was afterwards revised in the interests of the
manufacturers.
In other
directions, the Liberal Government exhibited great energy
in the development
of the country's resources. = Though some political question^ of considerable
interest arose, which will be mentioned in another connexion, the chief
attention of the ‘Government was turned to the problems of the west, where the
energies of the country were concentrated on a great work of colonisation. The
resources of Canada were widely advertised through Europe., Free grants of
land, were offered to settlers. Immigrants were procured in great numbers, and
for some time without much discrimination. In recent legislation, however, the
Canadian Government has asserted its right to reject certain classes of
immigrants, to impose a small financial qualification, and to deport
undesirables. The country needs most the small farmer with capital and the farm
labourer, and has not yet the expanding industrial life which would enable it
to offer a wide and varied field of employment. At the same time fresh schemes
of railway and canal construction were projected, to open up new stretches of
territory and to facilitate the carriage of produce to ocean ports. Transport
became the centre of the problem of western settlement. A second transcontinental
line, the Grand Trunk Pacific, was commenced in 1903, the Government
undertaking to build the eastern section, and the Grand Trunk Company, which
was to administer the whole, the western section. Schemes for reaching Hudson’s
Bay by a railway from Winnipeg, and for connecting Georgian Bay and the river
Ottawa by canal, were also formed.
It is now
possible to look beneath the shifting surface of politics and survey the
substantial results which have been achieved in the upbuilding of the country.
In British Columbia, much progress has been made since the first rush of
gold-seekers in 1858 transformed the fur-trading stations of the Hudson's Bay
Company into a self-governing colony. As in the Pacific States of America,
mining was followed by more enduring industries. The great resources which the
country has in its forests, fisheries, coal deposits, fertile land, and commanding
commercial situation, have been in part developed. Settlement has extended
along streams and valleys, by the side of lakes and railways; but difficulties
of communication and transport have necessarily limited its progress. After a
few years of activity mining declined, until in 1896 fresh discoveries in the
Kootenay district led to a revival, and improved methods placed the industry on
a stronger basis, though dear labour and insufficient transport facilities
still limit its progress. With the Klondyke “rush” of 1899 and the simultaneous
revival in British Columbia the gold production of Canada reached its highest
point, from which it has since steadily declined. From the time of the gold
discoveries British Columbia was confronted by the common problem of the
Pacific seaboard—an influx of Chinese, and later of Japanese, coolies. The
labouring classes expressed their strong aversion from the Oriental immigrant
by determined agitation, and compelled the Dominion Government to take action.
Twice a
Commission
examined the question, with the result that exclusive legislation of increasing
severity has been directed against the Chinese. In the case of Japan a
diplomatic agreement for the restraint of immigration was negotiated in 1907.
This question, so liable to inflame feeling, has, together with certain
troublesome financial relations, caused some friction between the province and
the Dominion Government.
The plains of
the interior have been the scene of a greater change. Until 1869 they were
under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Company. That body served the empire well
by exploring and holding a vast stretch of territory; but it possessed neither
the means nor the inclination to open its hunting grounds to the more fruitful
operations of the settler. Yet its presence was not the chief obstacle to
colonisation, and no rush of immigrants followed the purchase of its rights.
The great problem of communications required first to be solved. In the United
States, when once the barrier of the Alleghanies was passed, the configuration
of the country favoured an uninterrupted advance of population across the
central basin of the Continent. This was impossible in Canada, where, north of
Lake Superior, a great desert stopped the westward march of colonisation. Thus,
during the middle years and far into the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, the immense tide of European emigration flowed into the cities and
plains of the United States. It was a question of comparative advantages, and
western Canada, inaccessible and little known, could not compete with the
Mississippi and Missouri valleys, where railways were opening the way for the
colonist. But the course of events and the energies of the Canadians have
steadily changed the situation in favour of the Canadian west. Apparently
without mineral wealth, its principal advantage has been a capacity to produce
the great cereals; hence, it needed markets and facilities for transporting its
grain before it could compete with the grain-growing States and attract the enterprising
farmer. Railway construction was an essential condition of settlement. When the
Canadian Pacific was carried across the Continent the work was begun. This bold
speculation in the possibilities of the north-west was abundantly justified by
the result. Population and commerce followed, and, when the initial
difficulties had been overcome, settlement proceeded rapidly. Much capital has
already been invested in railway construction, and new land is thus continually
being brought within the reach of the settler. The Canadian Northern, combining
smaller lines, has become a great artery of trade in the Saskatchewan basin.
The Grand Trunk Pacific, now building, will open a new route from east to west
and develop another belt of prairie. General conditions have at the same time
become more favourable to Canada. The demand for foodstuffs in European markets
has increased, while the United States has shown some tendency to diminish its
exports of this kind, thus enlarging the supply sought from Canada. At the same
time, the best lands of the United States have already been distributed. Thus,
in the balancing of advantages, western
Canada has
become one of the most attractive parts' of the American' Continent. The stream
of immigration that flowed into the Missouri valley has been turning
north-west, overflowing into the plains of Canada, and moving further north so
far as climate, soil, and means of communication will allow.
The energetic
policy of the Government has enabled the country to reap the benefit of the
changing conditions. After confederation, the provincial immigration agencies
were centralised under the single control of the Minister of Agriculture, and
the resources of Canada were more widely advertised in Europe and the United
States. In recent years this policy has received a strong stimulus; the
Government and the great steamship, railway, and land companies concerned have
vied with each other in procuring immigrants. By the Land Act of 1872 the land
system of the United States was borrowed and applied to the circumstances of
western Canada with great success. Provision was made for the survey of land in
townships, with reserves for educational purposes, and the practice pf making
free grants of land under certain conditions, which had been abandoned, was
restored. Thus, the acquisition of land was made easy for the comparatively
poor man. The improved methods of procuring immigrants and placing them upon
the land bore rapid fruit in the advance of settlement. By scientific enquiry
on experimental farms the Government has also done much to solve the
agricultural problems of western farming. Ignorance of the conditions and of
the requisite special methods of tillage, together with inflated hopes,
combined to cause many failures at the beginning, and the prospects of the
country were clouded. But the necessary knowledge and experience have been
acquired and diffused with the best results; and, in addition, an admirable
financial system has been created to assist the farmer. Mixed farming has begun
to take the place of the single crop. The west has valuable pastures. In
Alberta, horse and cattle ranching on a large scale was one of the first
industries; it also assumed some importance in Manitoba and Saskatchewan,
though the large ranch is now disappearing with the entry of the cultivator.
Already a
large result vaguely outlines itself. A. great agricultural community is being
planted in the west. Many different races are mingling to form it, though the
Anglo-Saxon element predominates, and the Anglo-Saxon passion for material
progress controls the spirit and fortunes of the country. Farmers from Ontario,
Canadians returning from the United States, Americans, who have proved valuable
citizens, ^nd a large number of English, are settled side by side with colonists
from almost every European country, since Canada in her eagerness for
immigrants opened her doors wide. Thus the present time finds her engaged on
the task of building up new provinces out of these diverse, elements, and
welding them into union with the older provinces by ties of common interest,
sympathy, and patriotism. The assimilation of the
new elements
must follow the extension of settlement, if national unity is to be maintained.
The main
strength ; of the Dominion is still concentrated in the eastern provinces.
Prince Edward’s Isle, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, have undergone little change.
During thirty years, 1870-1900, their population scarcely increased.
Agriculture, fishing, and lumbering remain their chief industries, though
coal-mining and the iron and steel industry have become important in Nova
Scotia. Newfoundland remains outside of the Dominion. In 1895 it made a
proposition for union, but without reaching an agreement. Its economic life
still centres in the fisheries; and the development of the interior, though
beginning, has not proceeded far. In Quebec the growth of population has
pressed upon the resources of a not too productive soil. The French, unwilling
to mix with the English in the other provinces, have gradually displaced them
along the line of the Ottawa as well as in the eastern townships of their own
province, where they form today a larger proportion of the population than in
1850. At one time they dreamed of planting their race in the plains of the west
and encircling the English, but the idea vanished and they have had very small
share in western settlement. Though not untouched by the influences of modern
progress, they still retain, amid the feverish activity of the Continent, the
singular simplicity of their old life. Migratory bands of labourers leave
Quebec to supply the permanent or periodical needs of expanding industries
elsewhere, such as lumbering in Ontario, harvesting in the west, and, more
especially, the manufacturing industries of New England. In 1900 there were
374,000 French Canadians in the United States,
nearly five times as many as there were at the same time in Canada west of the
Ottawa river. An agricultural people, their surplus numbers have drifted under
economic pressure into the nearest industrial centres. Ontario has increased in
wealth and population; but its agriculture has undergone a change common to the
whole east. When, in the seventies and eighties of the last century, the
competition of the prairie States and the falling prices of wheat depressed the
fortunes of the farmers, mixed farming, dairying, fruit-growing, and
stock-raising were substituted for the single crop system. The Government came
to their assistance with education and organisation. Scientific knowledge and
cooperative effort were applied to the solution of agricultural problems. The
hand of progress extended a new opportunity which was eagerly grasped: the
improvement of cold storage by a new system of mechanical refrigeration enabled
the Canadian farmers to build up an immense export trade in cheese, butter,
hams, and fruit, and thus in time to regain a measure of prosperity.
More
important has been the industrial progress of the country. In 1870, the
manufacturing industries were at an early stage of development. The comparatively
free commercial relations with the United States and the mother country, as
well as the want of fitting general
conditions
for the maintenance of the great industries, reduced them to repairing and the
preparation of raw materials for export. But a change came over the scene.
Political union was followed by an ideal of national being which included the
desire of a broader and more independent economic life. The systematic
Protection of manufactures was begun. Other conditions became more favourable
to industrial progress. Improvements in means of communication, the growth of
an agricultural community offering a large market in the west, the demand; for
wood pulp of which Canada can provide a great supply, the increasing use of
water power, and the investment of American capital in Canadian enterprises,
have all contributed to alter the situation. Great difficulties were presented
by the want of skilled labour, and, for a long time, of capital. The mineral
resources of the country have been more developed; but, though varied, they
have not proved to be very great. Large coal-fields exist; but they are
situated more conveniently for commerce than for industry. Some solid results
have, however, been achieved. While the application of simple manufacturing
processes to raw materials has remained the chief feature of Canada’s
industrial life, to this has been added the manufacture of cottons and
woollens, agricultural implements, wood pulp, and paper. In addition, the iron
and steel industry has been extended during the last twelve years under the
liberal bounty-policy of the Laurier Government. In Ontario many small
manufacturing towns have grown up, as the seats, some of one industry, others
of several industries, in addition to the larger centres such as Sydney,
Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, K lgston, Hamilton, and Winnipeg. Scarcely any of
the industries could dispense with the Protection they receive, the burden of
which the country bears with little complaint for the sake of the national
ideal which it appears to further. No Labour party has been formed. Even Trade
Unionism is very much localised and dependent on American organisation. The
sense of a common interest still inspires the workers of a country which
contains few very rich men and no marked distinction of classes.
The
development of means of communication and transport has played a very important
part in the recent history of Canada, whether economic progress, political
union, or the extension of settlement, be considered. To the railway, and to
the river highway supplemented by the canal, the Canadians have looked for the
uniting of a country which nature has divided. The work of improving the
channel of the St Lawrence has remained uncompleted. In 1870 a Dominion Canal
Commission laid down a policy which, with some amplification, has since been
carried out. Today, after a century of labour, ocean-going steamships can pass
to the western shore of Lake Superior, whence there is a channel of fourteen
feet to Montreal, and from Montreal to the sea of over twenty-seven. Railway
building has been more important. The first decade of construction in Canada
(1850-60) was not happy in its results, and left troubles behind its
speculations. Much inferior work was done
I860-1908]
The railway system.—The French Canadians. 613
at a high
cost. The lines proved unprofitable and, though Ontario gained, the British
investor suffered. The Government, which was already guaranteeing the interest
on capital expenditure in certain cases, was compelled to intervene further by
assisting the Grand Trunk and managing the Northern. With the progress of the
country, the larger lines were lifted out of the morass of debt and difficulty
in which they were iuvolved. Confederation gave a new impetus to construction,
and bore fruit in the Intercolonial and the Canadian Pacific. The former was
constructed, and is still managed, by the Government; but, built for a
political end, it has never proved a commercial success. The needs of
settlement and commerce and the competition to secure through traffic have been
.esponsxble for the immense activity of later years, under which the railway
mileage of the country has increased to almost 23,000 (1908), while at the same
time the larger systems have been much improved, and many small lines have been
consolidated. Though some dissatisfaction with the services of the railways has
existed amongst the western farmers, the graver abuses that often follow in the
absence of competition have not appeared. Problems of construction have
occupied the attention of the Government far more than those of regulation.
Railways have mattered so much to the country that the Government soon
abandoned the idea of trusting solely to private enterprise to provide them.
The misfortunes of the sixties, the political purpose of some of the lines, and
the difficulty of raising the necessary capital drew the State in various ways
into railway business. It has given moral support and subsidies of land and
money, as have also the provinces and municipalities, besides sharing in some
cases and assuming in others the whole responsibility of both construction and
operation. Nevertheless, the individual has always been allowed great freedom
in carrying out public works. In 1907, the national debt was little more than
one-third that of Australia. Thus the railway system of Canada stands midway
between the state system of other English colonies and the private ownership
systems of the mother country and the United States.
These
substantial changes show, in a general way, how far the economic development
and consolidation of the country has proceeded. It remains to survey the
influence of confederation on political life and unity. Through a long period
of Canadian history, a want of sympathy and cooperation between French and English
proved an obstacle to progress. Religious, social, and economic differences, as
well as a great unlikeness of character, combined to separate them, and at one
time political conditions aggravated the evil. Canada could not hope to be
strong until a sense of common interest and mutual confidence bridged the gulf
between the two races; and no more hopeful change has passed over the country
during recent years than the growth of these feelings. The French remain as
determined as ever to preserve their nationality and institutions. The Catholic
Church still exercises her controlling
influence
upon their life, and, though steadfastly loyal to the British connexion, has
opposed an intermixture of races which would divert its sheep from their fold.
But, while the French community remains what it has always been—an offshoot of
eighteenth century France, now attached to a strenuous Anglo-Saxon colony—its
outlook.and sympathies have been widened. It has acquiesced in, if it has not
sympathised with, every step in the expansion of Canada, and even in
uncongenial imperial activities and ambitions. The control which the French
possess over the government of their own province, the caution which has
sought to keep race issues out of party politics, the increasing prosperity of
the country, the wise and inspiring leadership of a statesman of their own
race, and the recognition by England and France of the possibilities of a
lasting national friendship, have all acted most favourably on their relations
with the English. Doubtless the rivalry of race and religion is not yet buried,
and there remains an underlying separation of feeling, as between two different
communities; but, none the less, since confederation, there has sprung up a
sense of common interest, and an effective and enduring cooperation which has
meant much for the progress and unity of Canada.
Self-government,
the federal system, and the extension of municipal institutions in the
provinces, seem now to have finally overcome the chief pol: ical difficulties under
which the country formerly laboured. The Constitution has proved equal to the
stress of circumstances for more than forty years, and seems well adapted to
the conditions and the genius of the people. There has been little straining of
the different parts of the Dominion against each other. Except in the case of
Quebec, provincial feeling does not arise from deep distinction of character,
but from a long-standing isolation and autonomy, and thus diminishes under
modem influences. A strong national Government was created, and has shown some
tendency to grow stronger. Its relations with the provincial Governments form
the chief feature of recent constitutional history, Macdonald, who preferred a
legislative to a federal union, superintended somewhat closely the course of
provincial politics. In 1879 he recommended the Governor-General to remove
from office Letellier de St Just, the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, on account
of the manner in which he had exercised his constitutional power of dismissing
Ministers. In a prolonged dispute over the boundaries of Ontario, which
commenced in 1871 and was only finally settled by decisions of the Privy
Council in 1884 and 1888, he maintained with the greatest tenacity the claims
of the Dominion against those of his own province. He declined, however, to
disallow an Act parsed by the Quebec Government in 1888, which gave
compensation to the Jesuit Order for their estates confiscated in 1773 and also
referred to the Pope the distribution of the money granted —on the ground that,
since the property had been vested in the provincial Government, the matter was
one of purely provincial concern. On another occasion, Manitoba vindicated
provincial rights in regal’d to
railway
policy; It had been agreed by the Dominion Government that the Canadian Pacific
Railway should not, for twenty years after its construction, be exposed to
competition within twenty miles south of the main route. Manitoba resisted this
monopoly so determinedly that the railway was compelled to abandon its
exclusive rights in return for a loan from the Dominion. In the control of the
liquor traffic it proved difficult to fix the boundaries of provincial and
national power; and the Scott Temperance Act (1878), passed by the Dominion
Parliament to confer local option on cities and counties, was contested before
the Privy Council, where its validity was confirmed.
Education was
reserved for provincial legislation, but the religious divisions of the country
have made it a battlefield of province and Dominion. The Constitution confirmed
to religious minorities such educational rights as belonged to them by law at
the time of the union; and this confirmation was inserted in the Act by which,
in 1870, the province of Manitoba was created. The Government of the new province
continued for some years the existing denominational system of education, but,
finding it inefficient and expensive, substituted in 1890 a non-sectarian
system. French Roman Catholics of the province, believing the change would
prove fatal to their schools, carried the question before the Privy Council,
which decided, on the one hand, that they had never enjoyed any right to state
maintenance of their schools, but only a right to found and carry them on at
their own expense, and, on the other, that the Dominion Government had power to
intervene if necessary to secure the remedy of their grievances. In 1871, when
a similar situation arose in New Brunswick, Macdonald refused to interfere, and
the dispute was settled by arrangement between the religious bodies concerned.
In 1895, however, the Conservative Government determined to put pressure upon
Manitoba, and endeavoured unsuccessfully to carry a remedial law through the
Dominion Parliament. The question became an important issue at the elections of
1896. On being returned to power, the Liberal party, which had defended
provincial rights and nonsectarian education, rejected their predecessors’
policy of coercion, and entered into negotiation with the provincial
Government. An amicable settlement of the dispute was thus secured, which
removed the real grievances of the Catholics by giving them protection for
their language and religious teaching in their schools. In 1905, when the
provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were formed, the state-aided denominational
system which existed in the Territories was secured in the Constitution of the
new provinces.
In the three
provinces created since confederation, the Dominion Government exercises one
set of rights which the older provinces never resigned. Land, forests, and
water power remain under its control; but, in return, a larger subsidy has been
given to the new Governments. When the whole working of the Federal Government
is surveyed, it must
be admitted
that the controlling influence of the national authorities has generally been
exercised with wisdom and tact. No fresh legislation has been required for
defining the respective powers of Dominion and province. But the financial
relations between them, fixed by special treaties in accordance with the conditions
and requirements of each province, have been less satisfactory. The agreement
with Nova Scotia caused much discontent in that province, and its subsidy had
almost immediately to be increased. In 1887, and again in 1903 and 1906,
conferences of provincial premiers were held in order to discuss the whole
question, and in 1907 a Bill was submitted to the imperial Parliament to ratify
a new arrangement. British Columbia, which claims special treatment owing to
the high cost of administration in mountainous country, still remains
dissatisfied.
No sketch of
any part of Canadian history would be complete which ignored the close
relations between Canada and the United States. Their greatest importance lies
in the strong influence which the United States has exerted on the economic and
political development of Canada, though controversies and negotiations
concerning boundaries, fisheries, and trade occupy a larger place in history.
Two kindred peoples, having a common frontier, for the most part artificial, of
four thousand miles, could not fail to be drawn in many respects into a common
life. The social structure of Canada and the methods of her politics are
American, though her political principles and institutions are English. She has
borrowed much from the experience of the United States and exhibits the same
impetuous progressive spirit, though in finance she has pursued a more cautious
policy. Over the whole Continent population and capital have flowed where the
best opportunities drew them, with little regard to the political boundary. The
greater prosperity and the busier urban and industrial life of the United
States not only prevented Canada from securing a large share in the stream of
emigration from Europe to America, but also drew away from her borders many of
her most enterprising citizens. And when, under changing conditions, the
resources of Canada began to be more developed, Americans and American capital
contributed much to the process. Hence, extensive commercial intercourse has
always existed between the two countries. From the time that Canada lost
preferential treatment in the British market to the time, fifty years later,
when imperial preferences were again discussed, a reciprocity treaty with the
United States remained the principal object of her commercial policy. The
necessities of Protection, however, limited her bargaining power, and
consistent discouragement from the United States turned her attention to the
development of oversea trade. A friendly spirit has generally marked the
relations of the two countries, and, especially during the last few years,
American politicians have shown a disposition to respect the ambition and
achievements of Canada.
Some
particular controversies deserve notice here. The Treaty of
i87i-i9io]
Fisheries and boimdary question.
617
Washington,
in 1871, attempted a settlement of the perennial dispute concerning American
encroachments on the inshore fisheries of Canada. Free trade in the products of
the sea fisheries was agreed upon, and the Americans were admitted to the
inshore fisheries on payment of an indemnity. The Treaty remained in force for
twelve years (187385). On its abrogation the troubles recommenced. As a
result, a commission was appointed by the British and American Governments to
consider the question. The proposals which it made were approved by the
Dominion Parliament, but rejected in the American Senate. Canada then offered a
modus vivendi, which has remained in force. Meanwhile, in 1886, another fishery
dispute arose. On the ground of their sole sovereignty over that part of the
sea which lay west of Alaska, the United States claimed to exclude the
Canadians from the Behring Sea seal fisheries. Great Britain, on behalf of
Canada, maintained that Behring Sea was an open sea, and her contention was
upheld by the arbitrators to whom the matter was referred. The jurisdiction of
the United States was restricted to the three-mile limit; regulations were made
for the conduct of the fishery; and the Canadian sealers received compensation.
The American ownership of Alaska produced another and more vexatious
controversy. Its boundary with Canada was regulated by an Anglo- Elussian
Treaty of 1825, the meaning of which admitted of doubt. The question assumed
increased importance when gold was discovered on the river Klondyke, since the
main sea approach to the gold-fields by the Lynn Canal passed over territory
which the Americans claimed. In 1903, it was agreed to submit the question to a
body of arbitrators consisting of three Americans, two Canadians, and the Lord
Chief Justice of England, who, on the principal practical question involved,
whether the boundary should follow the general contour of the coast, as Great
Britain contended, or pass round the heads of the inlets, as the United States
contended, gave their decision by a majority vote in favour of the American
claim, to the intense chagrin of Canada. Newfoundland has also been involved in
a fishery dispute of a most serious character with the United States. Under the
Convention of 1818, the Americans enjoy the right to take fish of every kind
off the west coast of the island. By legislation in regulation of the
fisheries, Newfoundland has recently restricted the privileges which the
Americans have enjoyed, to an extent which the Americans claim to be an
infringement of their treaty rights. Circumstances compelled the mother
country to override the Colonial Government and arrange a modus vivendi with
the United States. The whole question has now by mutual agreement been
submitted to the Hague Tribunal.
Thus, the
dawn of the twentieth century finds the expansion of Canada still proceeding.
The colonisation of the country has been a constant struggle for unity and
national being against geographical divisions, race strife, and the
assimilative power of the neighbouring republic. Recent years have seen Canada
progress a long way towards
the
realisation of these ambitions. Political conditions and economic prospects
have both been transformed, and, as they have improved, national aspirations
have grown stronger. Canada has outgrown the old conception of colonial status
and takes her place with pride as a member of a great empire. Her past history
and present position foreshadow a future of great promise.
Heirs of the
same political ideas as the Canadians, and more closely united in race and
position, the Australians have been engaged, though perhaps less consciously,
on the' same task of forming a State and a nation. In the isolation of far away
seas they worked out the beginnings of their life, and laid the foundations of
a group of separate societies. Forces horn of contiguity, kindred character and
ideals, and the possession of a common country, steadily drew them together,
until modem progress, sweeping them more completely into the world’s general
life, applied external pressure to hasten their union. The federation of the
Australian colonies was thus the consummation of a process of growing together
which forms perhaps the principal feature of their recent history. After 1870,
pioneers, attracted by the wealth of pastoral plains or the discovery of
precious metals, joined up in the interior the expanding frontiers of
settlement in this various colonies—save where nature had planted the
impenetrable desert to divide them; and even across this harrier the explorer
found a path and the line of telegraphic communication was carried. In every
colony economic development showed itself, though in different degrees, in the
growth of agriculture and commerce, the multiplication of railways, the
increase and concentration of population, and the beginnings of the
manufacturing industries. A new generation of men, natives of the land,
fashioned new ideals of social and political welfare, which bore a general
resemblance over the whole Continent. The trend of progress gradually produced
and revealed the identity of interest and character between these contiguous
societies; so that, at last, political union followed, not easily, but without
violent effort or transformation. Thus, in recent years, economic growth,
political union and the shaping of distinct ideals, have carried Australia out
of the colonial into the national stage of existence. In New Zealand a similar
development has taken place. Peopled by the same race, pursuing the same
industries, and colonised at much the same time as several of the neighbouring
colonies, its life and fortunes, though separate, have resembled theirs.
In
Australasia settlement started from a number of points on the coast, and was
carried thence into the interior. The explorer, the stock- raiser, and the
miner, pioneered the way. Exploration was almost complete and the limits of
habitable land fairly well known when the period we are surveying opened.
Between 1872 and 1877, Forrest and Giles, by different routes, traversed the
central deserts of the Continent, which alone
remained
unpenetrated, and enabled Western arid South Australia to be connected by
telegraph in 1877. Meantime, the surer work of the settler linked South
Australia to her eastern neighbours. From the coastal regions of the eastern
colonies the sheep-fariners were moving further and further west and mingling
in the plains of the interior. In New South Wales they wandered towards the
barrier range which separated them from South Australia. On Cooper’s Creek and
the Diamantina, and on the streams that flow into the Gulf of Carpentaria, the
squatters of Queensland and South Australia met in the early eighties. At the
same time, new discoveries of gold and silver at Silverton and Broken Hill
(1883) on the western borders of New South Wales, at Palmer (1873) and Mount
Morgan (1883) in Queensland, as well as others of less moment in New South
Wales and elsewhere, dispersed population from place to place. Western
Australia in 1870 was a mere fringe of settlement on the borders of a great
desert; but pastures were found on the northern and western rivers, and new
oases of human activity were formed. Then gold was found in the interior at
Kimberley and near Yilgam (1886-7), and, with the discoveries that followed
(1890-3) on the Ashburton and Murchison, at Coolgardie, and Kalgoorlie, towns
sprang up in the desert whose population soon surpassed that of the older
settled parts. In Tasmania, tin was found at Mount Bischoff (1871), silver at
Zeehan (1885), and copper at Mount Lyell (1886). The mining industiy opened up
a large district, and contributed much to improve the prospects of the island.
In New Zealand, discoveries of coal and gold led to the formation of many small
towns in Middle Island, and forged new links between the provinces.
Pastures and
mines were thus the attractive forces whose action resulted in the dispersion
of population through the Continent, and sheep- farming and gold-mining formed
at one time the principal industries of all the colonies. A more general progress
has diminished their relative importance; but, between them, they still supply
the greater part of Australasia’s immense export trade. From 1870 until 1890,
the pastoral industry continually expanded. Then came long years of trouble,
falling prices, labour disputes, financial difficulties, and the worse enemies
of drought and disease. New South Wales and Queensland suffered the most; New
Zealand almost escaped. After 1902, prosperity slowly returned. The westward
migration of the stock-farmers transferred most of the great runs to the plains
of the interior. The movement has been stimulated by land legislation and
agricultural settlement, aided by artesian bores, and rewarded by fine
pastures. In Queensland, cattle and not sheep now occupy the coast-lands.
Formerly, wool was almost the only product of the industry which found a
foreign market. But, with cheaper transport and progress in the art of
refrigeration the trade in frozen meat has now become half as valuable as that
in wool; in addition, dairy products, hides and skins, horses, cattle and
sheep, swell the volume of pastoral exports. After 1870, gold-mining offered
for many years a
diminishing
field of employment, though the conditions continually varied in the different
colonies. Between 1871 and 1897, the total annual output of Australasia never
exceeded ten million pounds, and was often less than six. Since 1897, it has
increased rapidly owing to the great discoveries in Western Australia, and also
to an increasing production in other colonies, especially in Queensland. The “
golden age ” of Victoria, New South Wales, and New Zealand belongs to the third
quarter of the century, that of Queensland and Western Australia did not dawn
until the last quarter. The mining industry, like the pastoral, has expanded
its range in recent years, and includes coal, lead, copper, and tin, as well as
the precious metals; but the latter form much the largest part of its product,
into which the great industrial mineral, iron, scarcely enters.
The
dispersion of settlement has been the work of the sheep-farmer and miner;
concentration has resulted from the progress of agriculture and new land laws;
while the rise of urban centres is connected with the expansion of commerce as
well as with industrial and railway policy. When the gold fever first waned,
men turned from the mine to the land, and the farmer began to establish himself
by the side of the stock-master; but the rise of agriculture to a position of
great importance amongst Australian industries is a recent development. The
early difficulties which confronted the farmer—the locking up of land in the
runs of the squatters, the high rate of wages, the want of means of transport
and of markets for produce—have been steadily combated. In the early sixties,
New South Wales and Victoria endeavoured to make land available for
agricultural settlement by allowing intenc tg purchasers to make free selection
on the squatters’ runs. While this policy secured its end and many farmers were
established on the land, it had also other and unexpected results. The genuine
and the pretending settler not being carefully distinguished, far more land
passed into private hands than was ever placed under cultivation. When one
colony took a step forward, competition compelled the other colonies to follow.
But Queensland and South Australia, with simpler problems before them, acted
more cautiously, and did not adopt free selection. Victoria and New South Wales
in time modified their systems. In Victoria the conditions of selection were
made more stringt at (1878), in New South Wales the selector was restricted to
the eastern and central divisions of the colony, and the western was reserved
for the stock-master, who received here greater security of tenure. But the
progress of agricultural settlement continued to be slow, and the colonial
Governments adopted new measures. The large estates which blocked the way
became a general object of attack. During the nineties, all the colonies passed
laws authorising the purchase of land from large owners for division into small
holdings to be let on perpetual or long lease. New Zealand, where the evil was
greatest, led the way. Some colonies only allowed voluntary purchase; but most
gave, or quickly added, compulsory powers. Other methods of expropriating
the large
owner or of promoting closer settlement, such as special taxation of large
estates and the sale of land to village communities or labour settlements, have
been adopted ; for repurchase of the land is an expensive operation, to which
financial considerations fix a limit. By these and other means agriculture has
been extended in suitable districts, and a variety of forms of tenure offering
easy conditions to bona Jide settlers have been created. In addition, in most
of the States, agricultural colleges have been established; and in all, except
Tasmania, Government has the power of rendering financial aid to the farmer.
The Governments have done much to make land accessible and improve means of
communication. They have had to contend against past mistakes and powerful
interests, which have hitherto been too strong for them. Yet the farmer’s worst
enemy is, after all, not the squatter but the climate, which fixes for his
operations limits that Governments cannot much extend.
These efforts
have not been without large results, as the recent agricultural progress of
the country shows. Since 1870, the area under cultivation has been more than
quadrupled. New South Wales and Victoria have ceased to be dependent on South
Australia for food products. Sugar, fruit, and wheat, the last being still the
principal crop, have become important exports. Fruit-growing, like
dairy-farming, has been extended, as improved means of refrigeration have
opened the English market. The vine is cultivated in New South Wales and
Queensland, though chiefly to supply the Australian demand. On the coast-lands
of Queensland cotton and sugar were first grown in the sixties. In the face of
American competition cotton soon ceased to be a profitable crop; but the
cultivation of sugar was much extended in the eighties. Then falling prices
ruined many of the planters, and a reorganisation of the industry followed.
Small farms took the place of large,, and the Government came to the rescue
(1893) by guaranteeing the interest on loans raised to establish central mills
in which the cane is crushed. The agricultural development of tropical
Australia has not been carried very far, and was soon found to involve labour
problems of great difficulty, which will be discussed in another connexion.
The rapid
expansion of Australasia’s great productive industries, and the corresponding
expansion of her foreign commerce, have been made possible by the improved
means of communication which have given the, interior lands access to markets
and cheapened the cost of moving produce. The general character of Australian
trade has not been much changed, but its basis has been broadened, its volume
much enlarged, and its direction somewhat modified. During the last twenty
years, Great Britain has supplied a diminishing, and Germany and the United
States an increasing, proportion of the imports; while the latter two
countries, as well as France and Belgium, have also taken an important place as
buyers or distributors of Australian produce. Large quantities of capital
have been
borrowed from Great Britain to be invested in the development of the country
and, in periods of extravagant borrowing such as 1886 to 1891, have caused
imports to exceed exports in value, though the ruling tendency has been in the
opposite direction. Much of this capital was devoted to the building of
railways. In 1871 the railway mileage of Australia was only 1030 miles, by 1907
it had been increased to 15,758. More than one-fifth of this was laid down
during the decade 1871-81, and nearly two-fifths in the following decade, which
was a period of immense activity. The financial and other troubles of the
nineties made borrowing more difficult, slackened production, and diminished
very much the rate of construction. Not all the lines were of great value. The
cost of some was unnecessarily high; there were duplications and unprofitable
extensions into remote districts. Except in Western Australia, private
enterprise played no part, for without the aid of the State the work could not
have been done. Democratic communities insisted on government action in the
opening up of the country; Government alone seemed to have the power and credit
to procure the necessary capital, and, if its work was costly, it was quick and
sure. The private capitalist would not take the great risks; the Governments,
if not always wise, were ambitious and active. Even in Western Australia, state
initiative and control assumed the upper hand in 1892, when there were
important lines to be constructed. The policy of all the colonies was to
connect the lands of the interior with the nearest or largest seaport of the
same colony. Owing to the political influence which their large population
gives them, the great ports have exercised a strong influence on railway policy
in their respective colonies, and have prevented the formation of interior
distributing centres, as well as placed some petty hindrances in the natural
course of intercolonial trade. Each colony directed its action according to the
supposed interests of commerce and settlement within its own borders, and,
whether from lack of foresight or from rivalry, no two contiguous States
adopted the same gauge. Thus, great as the work of the railways has been in
promoting the settlement, prosperity, and unity of the country, it has been in
some respects hampered by the emulation of cities and colonies. The state
management of the railways has not been a commercial success, or prevented
every abuse of their power; but the financial loss is small, and the people
gain in having a substantial control over one of the great agents in the
production of national wealth and strength. In New Zealand, railways were
extended most rapidly during the seventies, and, by bringing the various
settlements into closer communication, they contributed to render antiquated
the provincial political organisation. Thus, Australasia has on the one side of
her account her railways and other public works, and on the other side the
immense public debt which has been accumulated in the course of their construction,
amounting in 1907 to over 66 millions for New Zealand and nearly
228 millions
for Australia. New Zealand contracted its principal loans in the seventies;
Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland in the eighties; Western Australia in
the nineties. The financial burden is heavy, but the greater facilities for
economic development provide the means of bearing it; and, except in Western
Australia, the colonies have been spared the necessity of granting huge blocks
of land to private companies—the policy followed by Canada. It is scarcely
possible yet to compare the efficiency and cost of the means adopted by the two
countries.
The economic
expansion which we have hitherto considered was a normal development along the
old lines of progress—a larger production and export of staple commodities. But
the years under review have also seen the beginning of manufacturing industries
in some of the colonies. Industrial activity was necessarily very slight in a
land of small, and for the most part dispersed, population, divided into a
number of States which, raising their tariff walls against each other, limited
the free market of the manufacturer. But with the progress of the country, a
concentration of population in the chief towns took place, and, as the
production of gold begin to decline, a desire to broaden the field of
employment made itself felt. In Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and in
the larger towns of New Zealand, manufacturing industries were established
which have since assumed considerable importance. The chief are still those
which prepare raw materials for export; but, as was natural, the woollen and
leather industries have also prospered, though the greater industries which
rest on iron, cotton, silk, and '.arthenware, have not yet been founded. Their
products are still im-^ ported, for the most part from Great Britain, as well
as miscellaneous and cheaper articles from Germany and other countries. The
mother country had left the colonies free to choose their own tariff policies.
Victoria in 1877 definitely adopted Protection, and most of the other colonies
under the pressure of financial necessities drifted in the same direction,
except New South Wales, which in 1873 abandoned high tariffs and, save for a
brief period in the nineties, maintained free trade until the end of its
separate history. New Zealand, like Victoria, though later, accepted Protection
on its merits; but definite theories played a smaller part than circumstances
in guiding the policy of the other protectionist colonies. The difficulty of
collecting direct tax«?o in young, sparsely-peopled countries led Governments
to rely for their revenue on tariffs, soon raised by extravagance to a
protective level. The tariff is but one of the factors which influence
industrial and general progress; but it is interesting to observe, in the case
of the two great colonies which followed different policies, that New South
Wales has outstripped Victoria in the growth of population and wealth, while
Victoria has, against greater difficulties, maintained an industrial activity
equal to that of New South Wales.
The rise of
manufacturing industries accentuated a feature of Australian life which has
always been apparent—the large proportion of urban to rural population. As a
result, partly of geographical conditions and partly of policy, Victoria, New
South Wales, South Australia and Queensland, have all tended to Concentrate
their industrial and commercial activity. Australia has but few ports, and, in
a great trading countiy, they have naturally act, aired a special importance,
which has been increased by the policy of the railways : workers drifted into
them from the uncertain employment of the mining fields; and, when industries
were founded, they were founded where the population was already concentrated.
Melbourne and Adelaide today contain nearly 43 and 46 per cent, of the
inhabitants of their respective States ; and in other colonies the capital city
is only less powerful. In New Zealand, where different conditions prevail,
urban life is more distributed.
In addition
to the economic progress which drew the people of the different colonies
together and multiplied their mutual interests, must be noted the increasing
likeness of their social and political development, and of the ideals of
welfare which they formed. In Australasia there were seven distinct
communities. But rival Governments, although a formidable obstacle to political
union, did not shape different societies, and expressed nothing more than the
difficulty, in earlier times, of directing the affairs of a dispersed
population from a single centre. The different colonies were peopled by men of
the same stock and the same classes. The circumstances of their origin and
history varied ; but they shared the same religion, race instincts, and ideas
of social order. During recent years, this homogeneity has been powerfully
expressed in their policy, and has perceptibly increased. The aboriginal
population has never much affected the course of Australian development. In
Tasmania it is now extinct; in Victoria and New South Wales negligible; and
even in Western Australia it has not been large or formidable enough to
influence social progress. In New Zealand the situation has been different; but
the Maoris, though much has been done to preserve their old life, appear now to
be a dying race. Immigration to Australia has been confined almost entirely to
English-speaking people, and no serious problem of assimilation has presented
itself in any colony. Nor have the numbers of immigrants ever been large except
during the busy years 1881-5. Between 1870 and 1906 the total net gain to
population from this source was only 605,578; and, so great was the falling off
as a result of the recent financial and industrial troubles and droughts, that,
in the decade 1896-1905, it was little more than 5000. The immigrant seeks the
new country whose open opportunities and prosperity offer the strongest demand
for his services. The scarcity of suitable farming land available for
settlement, the absence of expanding industries, the distance and expense of
the journey, have weakened the attractive power of Australia in competition
with other countries. Nor have the Australian colonies
maintained
that free policy which has adtnitted multitudes to the cities and prairies of America.
The practice of assisting immigrants was abandoned by Victoria in 1873, South
Australia in 1886, New South Wales in 1887, and Tasmania in 1891. The Labour
parties have not favoured the immigration of artisans, and the freedom of
employers to introduce workmen under contract has been limited. The demand for
the farmer remains small, so long as much of the best land is locked up for
pastoral uses in the possession of individuals and companies. Moreover,
burdened with new responsibilities towards the weaker members of society and
doubtful of the capacity of the country to employ a large influx of people, the
Australians have further legislated to exclude, not only the diseased and
criminal, but also the poor who might become a public burden. Thus, in days
when cheaper means of transport have made possible greater movements of
population, the land problem, dull times and a cautious policy have combined to
restrict the flow of population towards Australia.! In the last few years
strong forces, particularly the desire to increase the defensive power of the
country and to develop the tropical parts by white labour, have been operating
in the other direction, and greater efforts to secure settlers have contributed
to the considerable increase of immigration since 1905.
While, in the
case of the European, the Australian colonies have sought to select, in the
case of the Asiatic they have developed a policy of practical exclusion. Here
theiy faced a far more difficult' problem. Close to the populous districts of
southern and eastern Asia, Australia, with its vast unpeopled tropical plains,
has become more and more afraid of an extensive Asiatic immigration. Very early
in the century, when labour was scarce, the squatters imported Chinese and
Hindu coolies as shepherds, and after them natives of the New Hebrides. The
sugar planters of Queensland also recruited Kanakas from some of the Pacific
islands. Meanwhile, a spontaneous Asiatic immigration began. During the first
gold rushes Chinese entered the country in considerable numbers, and from the
mines drifted on to the runs and farms of New South Wales and into the
furniture trade of Melbourne. Between 1855 and 1861, Victoria, New South Wales,
and South Australia passed their first exclusion laws, impos ig duties on
masters of vessels carrying Chinese. The immigration ceased, and the laws were
repealed. The gold discoveries in Queensland were followed by an influx of
Chinese into that colony. An exclusion law passed by the Queensland Government
in 1876 was reserved by the Governor and disapproved by the Secretary of State.
New Acts were framed in the two following years, imposing a poll tax on the
Chinese immigrant. In 1881, a fresh agitation broke out in the other colonies
and was followed by restrictive legislation. Another outbreak of alarm, in
1888, caused the strengthening of these laws. A high poll tax was placed on the
Chinese immigrant, who was excluded' from mining and naturalisation; and a
limitation according to tonnage
was placed on
the number of Chinese which a vessel might bring. In the same year, a judicial
decision of the Privy Council confirmed the right of a colony to regulate the
admission of aliens.’ Subsequent Laws in Western Australia, New South Wales,
and New Zealand (1897-9), impose an educational test which proves an effectual
means of exclusion. Save for the few capitalists who desired to import coolies,
the policy of a “ White Australia’' expressed in these Laws had the approval of
the whole country. From a working-class jealousy of a cheaper form of labour,
it has been elevated to the position of a national ideal which aspires to
preserve the type by refusing to admit into the community an element so far
different in ideas and standard of life as to be incapable of assimilation, and
thus possibly a menace to free institutions and social welfare.
In their
political development the various colonies proceeded on parallel lines. The
Constitutions which they chose for themselves in 1885 differed in some
important respects; and have never been completely assimilated. On the whole
they have worked well, in spite of some difficulties in acclimatising English
institutions under new conditions. A tendency to enlarge the functions of
Government, as well as to make democratic changes by extending the franchise,
increasing the authority of the Lower House, and limiting the duration of
Parliament, has been generally evident. But of constitutional reconstruction
there has been very little, save in the case of colonies whose development had
lfgged behind. Western Australia had received only partially representative
government in 1870, and responsible government was not granted until 1890. At
intervals, the cry for this concession was raised when some energetic
politician stirred the colony. But the imperial Government refused to hand over
a vast country to a small community, though offering to separate, and grant
self-government to, the south-western district. The Western Australians
preferred to retain “Western Australia one and undivided,” and waited for political
progress until gold discoveries brought them immigrants and wealth. In New
Zealand, the provincial Governments, established in 1852, were abolished in
1875. They had become expensive, inconvenient, and unnecessary, as the better
organisation of local government diminished their work, and improved means of
communication lessened local differences. The composition and powers of the
Legislative Council and its relations to the Assembly were in several colonies
the cause of prolonged struggles. In Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania,
the Council was an elected body; in New South Wales its members were nominated.
In 1873, Henry (afterwards Sir Henry) Parkes made an attempt to place the
Council of New South Wales on an elective basis; but the colony was not
dissatisfied with the nominated Council, and the attempt failed. The elective
Council of Victoria proved a strong body, and collisions with the Assembly
began at once, and were continued in fierce strife throughout the seventies.
The tariff, land taxation, and the payment of members, were among the subjects
of
iispute, The
struggle resulted in deadlocks, the stoppage of public business, damage to
public credit, and even in an appeal for imperial intervention. In the end, the
Assembly failed to establish its supremacy over the Council; but the latter was
by an Act of 1881 made more representative of the opinion of the colony. In
Tasmania and South Australia the elective Councils also exerted a real
influence. But in these colonies the Councils possessed the power of amending
money bills, and greater moderation marked their differences with the
Assemblies. South Australia, however, in 1881 provided a constitutional means
of dealing with a deadlock between the two Houses, by vesting in the Governor
the power either to dissolve both Houses simultaneously or to add new members
to the Council. Manhood suffrage has been adopted in every colony except
Tasmania; and in 1893 New Zealand led the way in extending the franchise to
women. South Australia followed in 1894, and even the Conservative Upper House
of Victoria gave way to a general movement. Within a decade, women’s suffrage
was granted throughout Australasia, without producing much immediate apparent
influence on the course of politics.
Throughout
Australia government has remained centralised; but the extension of a measure
of, local self-government into settled districts, which have generally been
incorporated as boroughs or shires under elective Councils with limited powers,
has continued at varying rates in the different colonies. The process was most
rapid in Victoria and Queensland, slower in New South Wales, where
incorporation remained voluntary (and often undesired) until 1905. More
important has been the progress in educational organisation. In all the colonies
there has been a movement to extinguish the dual control of education which
resulted from the original dual system of denominational and national schools;
to withdraw state aid from denominational schools; to establish an Education
Department of Government under the direction of a Minister responsible to
Parliament; and to render education compulsory, free, and secular, while
allowing at the same time facilities for religious instruction by the
denominations. Secondary education has been less thoroughly organised; and in
this field private schools, generally exempt from all government supervision
and control, play a large and increasing part. To the Universities of Sydney
and Melbourne have been added those of New Zealand (1870), Adelaide (1874), and
Tasmania (1889).
The political
life of Australia has a character of its own. The methods and spirit of English
politics were less easy to introduce than English constitutions. In societies
which had no hereditary aristocracy, no established Church, no large leisured
or learned class, no wealthy manufacturers, the material for a Conservative
party was wanting. Thus everywhere groups rather than two stable parties were
formed, with the consequence that the life of Administrations was usually very
short and the political situation continually changing. Payment of members
produced
a professional class of politicians, ana gave the electorate more control over
their representatives. Power passed into the hands of the wage-earning and
trading classes, who used it to promote new ideals. The large landowners,
failing to sympathise with the prevailing tendencies, neither guided nor
followed. New leaders were bred and trained in the strenuous, atmosphere of the
political arena. As the democracies became conscious of their power, the desire
to expand the functions of the State grew stronger. More and more, Governments
were expected to take an active part in the development of the country, and the
spirit of earlier days in Australian history, when the State ruled all thi lgs,
returned. The State had always been the great landlord; it had been called upon
to build and manage railways and waterworks, to control education, and to
defend nascent industries; now, it was further required to organise and aid
producers by loans, as well as to uplift the masses by regulating their
conditions of employment, their hours of labour, and their wages. Of its work
in some of these fields we have already spoken; of its efforts to- realise
Australasia's latest ideals of social welfare some description remains to be
given. ■
In
Australasia, the laws regulating industrial and social conditions were, until
recently, less advanced than those of older countries, owing to the peculiar
labour conditions that prevailed and the comparative absence of manufacturing
industries. But the last fifteen years have seen these arrears made up and bold
experiments ventured upon which have attracted- the interest of the world.
While New Zealand has been perhaps- the most progressive of the colonies, the
competition and close relation that exists between them all has compelled all
to act. Undoubtedly, the movement has been accelerated by the formation of
Labour parties. Before the great industrial struggles that distressed Australia
between 1886 and 1892, the working classes took little organised part in
political life. The trade unions, not long established, relied' on the more
familiar weapon of the strike. During the eighties there was great activity in
the federation of unions; the Amalgamated Miners’ Association and the
Amalgamated Shearers’ Union were formed. A feeling of unrest spreading through
industrial circles foretold the imminence of the great struggle which broke out
in 1890. The Shearers’ Union aspired to control all shearers’ labour by
preventing the employment of non-unionists. They were supported by the
Carriers’ Union and the Wharf-labourers of Sydney, as well as by the Newcastle
Miners and the Marine Officers’ Association. Many industries were paralysed,
the Broken Hill silver mines were shut down; the intercolonial steamship
service was practically suspended; and the whole of the eastern colonies and
New Zealand were affected. The general unemployment imposed too severe a
financial strain on the unions, and the strike collapsed, only to be renewed
again in 1891 with more violence by the shearers of Queensland and New South
Wales. The stock-masters, however, succeeded in
I891-4] Labour parties and their
policy. 629
importing
non-union labour from the southern colonies, and once more the strikers succumbed.
By the same means a strike at the Broken Hill mines in 1892, where the
employers sought to substitute the contract system for day work, was defeated.
In this prolonged battle capital proved stronger than labour. The strategy of
the unionists was not the wisest; and, though their cause evoked much sympathy,
they failed to convince the country that the power they sought could be
exercised for the general good. Moreover, the times were unfavourable for the
old methods of industrial warfare. Twenty years of prosperity, among the
happiest in Australian history, were drawing to an end. The excited activity
that characterised them had been stimulated by extensive borrowing, the
multiplication of credit institutions, not all prudently managed, and an unjustifiable
speculation which was followed by a reaction bringing a contraction of
employment. The general depreciation in the value of great staple commodities
such as wool, wheat, and metals, especially affected Australia. Financial
troubles began in 1891 and reached a crisis in 1893, in which year half the
banks in Australasia closed their doors. Many other difficulties had to be
faced; none the less, the real work remained and recovery soon began, though
the immense activity of the preceding period was not repeated. In these
circumstances labour leaders began to organise their followers for political
activity, that they might use the State to impose on capital some at least of
the terms which labour unaided had failed to extort. In every colony a Labour party
was formed, having its strength in the industrial, mining, and grazing
communities rather than among the farmers. With different fortunes in different
colonies, and with many vicissitudes, the Labour parties have exerted an
increasing influence on political life. In New Zealand, where the Conservative
classes had controlled the policy of the country for thirty years, the working
men, allying themselves with the old Liberal party, formed a Progressive party
which has remained in power since 1891. In South Australia and Victoria, they
have generally worked with the Radicals. In Queensland and New South Wales they
have maintained their distinctness and followed an opportunist policy.
Practical and not doctrinaire, their leaders have concentrated attention on
social and industrial reforms, inspired by the belief that Government can
secure for every worker a higher level of material welfare; and by their
definite ends and determined action they have made the Labour parties perhaps
the most powerful political force in the country. In 1894 an important Factory
Act was passed in New Zealand, which placed even the smallest workshops under
government supervision. It was the beginning of much legislation, which has
since followed in all the colonies, inspired by the idea of bringing industry
under state regulation. Factory Acts became general and were followed by Shop
Acts, less drastic, owing to the political strength of the small traders.
Bolder experiments were soon made in New Zealand and Victoria,
and speedily
copied in other colonies. The Factory Act of Victoria* 1896, established wages
boards in certain industries, the number of which has since been much
increased. The boards were specialised bodies, elected by employers and
employees, having power to fix a minimum wage and to regulate the conditions of
apprenticeship. In 1894, an Act was passed in New Zealand providing for
compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes. A dispute was to be carried,
first, before a local Conciliation Board, and, if not settled by that, before a
Court of Arbitration. Experience discredited the Conciliation Boards, and New
South Wales, in dealing with the problem in 1901, set up simply a Court of
Arbitration, while the New Zealand Act was amended to allow a dispute to be
carried directly before the Court. The effect of these measures can scarcely
yet be estimated. If they have not realised the expectation of the wage-earning
classes, they have not quenched their hope of increasing benefit from the state
regulation of industry. The Wages Boards have certainly mitigated, though they
have not eradicated, the evil of sweating, and they have acquired a broad
influence in the regulation of industrial conditions; Much the same can be
said of compulsory arbitration. Without altogether preventing strikes, it has
greatly diminished them; and the power which the Courts have of giving to
particular decisions a general application renders the process of arbitration
a powerful means of industrial regulation. But common sense levels down the
results of interference, just as the interaction of all sides of industrial
life extends its range. State regulation does not yet appear to have
injuriously affected the expansion of industry, while it has operated to
improve the conditions of the worker, to shorten hours of labour, and dimmish
the employment of children. The burden is, perhaps, borne by the consumer in
higher prices, and felt most by the best workers, fettered by average
standards. But the gain may be greater than the loss.
The most
important of the more purely social reforms has been the concession of old age
pensions. New Zealand, in 1898, established a noncontributory system, under
which age, poverty, and good character qualified natives of the islands for a
pension. New South Wales and Victoria followed in 1900. The New South Wales
scheme closely resembled that of New Zealand; but Victoria followed a more
economical policy and worked its pensions into a general plan of provision for
the aged poor. All three systems have been successfully worked, though the
financial burden and administrative difficulties proved greater than had been
anticipated. In the regulation of the liquor traffic no great experiments have
been made. The principle of local option has been generally accepted?
and various forms, from the reality in Queensland and New Zealand to the shadow
in Western Australia and Tasmania, have been established.
To be united
at some time in a single State seemed the natural destiny of the Australian
colonies, even at the time when, for
administrative
convenience, they were divided. Their continual expan on overcame to a great
extent the obstacles of distance and dispersion and closely interweaved their
affairs. The likeness in the political and social development of the several
colonies, as well as a rising consciousness of new general interests, slowly
prepared the way. The federal idea, in different forms, appeared continually on
the horizon; but it was not until liJOO that union was accomplished. From 1863,
delegates of the various colonies met in occasional conferences on matters of
common interest. But such meetings, though not useless, were hard to summon and
possessed no power. Fiscal union was at one period strongly desired, and the
imperial Parliament in 1873 passed the Australian Colonies Duties Bill, in
order to set the colonies free to make such tariff arrangements with each other
as they wished. But differences of commercial policy changed the situation, and
in 1881 the idea was abandoned. Evidently, political union could not be pursued
along the path of fiscal union. Meanwhile, a vague apprehension of trouble to
come spread through the colonies, as new neighbours appeared in their distant
waters. The occupation of the Pacific islands had begun; and questions arose in
New Caledonia, Fiji, the New Hebrides, New Guinea, and Samoa, which deeply
concerned the Australians. Only by union could they make their voice heard in
external affairs. Hence, in 1885, a Federal Council was created to deal with
certain defined matters, including marine defence, the influx of criminals, and
relations with the islands of the Pacific. The new body was permanent; but it
had neither executive nor money, and it failed to obtain general support. New
South Wales and New Zealand were never represented, and South Australia only
once. Inadequate as the Council was to act as the engine of federal action, the
nation was disinclined for the great effort required to fashion a new
constitution. Economic prosperity absorbed energy and attention, and the
rivalries of the colonies were accentuated with their progress. The various
Governments were unlikely to overcome the real obstacles in the way of union,
and it was necessary that the people should supply the motive force. The
increasing gravity of external problems forced the matter into the front again
in the later eighties; and Parkes, who had suggested and then disregarded the
Federal Council, now gave his support to the larger policy.
A convention
of delegates from the colonial Parliaments met at Sydney in 1891 and speedily
framed a constitution. The adversities of the following years delayed progress;
but the conversion of opinion proceeded, and a popular movement was
organised., A, new constituent assembly was elected, and, meeting at Adelaide
in 1897, reconsidered the work of its predecessor. The proposals adopted were
referred to the vote of gftfh colony, and were accepted at once in Victoria,
Tasmania, and South Australia, but in New South Wales and Queensland only after
certain amendments. Western Australia delayed a little longer in the hope of
further concessions. New Zealand decided not to enter the
federation.
While she desired to cooperate with Australia* she doubted the advantages of a
close union. The sentimental impulse of the national idea could not be very
strong in her; while the possible commercial and financial gain seemed not to
outweigh the loss of legislative independence and the absence of her leading
politicians during a great part of the year. Australia was far off, and New
Zealand was prosperous in isolation; nor was there the impelling consideration
of defence, since this was rather an imperial than an Australasian question.
The Federation Act was welcomed by the imperial Parliament, and received the
royal assent in July, 1900.
In framing
their Constitution the Australian colonies proceeded with deliberation. They
chose a federal rather than a unitary system, as required by their geographical
conditions and as alone practicable in the circumstances. They rejected the
close form of union adopted by Canada in favour of the looser form of the
United States; at the same time, they followed the example of the mother
country by grafting the Cabinet system on to their institutions. While
preserving in full vigour the autonomy of the States within their own spheres,
they did not deny to the new Government a range of power adequate to secure its
utility and strength. They gave to the democratic principles which had
prevailed in the colonies an even fuller exercise in the new Constitution; so
that, in a very real sense, the Federal Government is of and by the people, to
whose vote its acceptance was referred, by whom constitutional amendments must
be approved, who directly elect both Houses of Parliament, as well as decide
between them in case of obstinate differences.
In forming
the national Government, the machinery of State Constitutions was not
disturbed. The States remained separate entities, sovereign within their own
spheres, intact in their territories, capable of remodelling their own
institutions, and in direct relations with thp imperial Government; but they
surrendered to the new Government certain specified powers, including the
control of commerce, customs duties, the postal services, external affairs,
defence, family and commercial law, immigration and naturalisation, the right
to construct and acquire railways, as well as to take over and consolidate the
state debts. The States retained the control of education, police, and land,
together with a coordinate, though inferior, power of legislating on matters
over which the Commonwealth exercised authority. A Parliament, an executive
Council, and a High Court of Justice, constituted the organs of the new
Government. The Parliament consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives.
The qualification for members and for electors is the same for both Houses;.
the members of both are paid, and paid alike. The Senate embodies the federal
principle in the Constitution, and in it each original State has six
representatives. Senators are chosen for a period of six years, each State
forming a single constituency, except in the case of Queensland; one-half of
the members retire eveiy third year. The
'House of
Representatives contains twice as many members as the Senate, divided amongst
the States in proportion to population,' and is dissolved at least triennially.
Thus both Houses are in touch with popular opinion; but the predominance of the
Lower House is secured by the dependence of Ministers upon its support, and by
the fact that the Senate, while it can reject or advise on money bills, cannot
initiate or amend them. The Constitution also makes provision in case of a
prolonged dispute for a simultaneous dissolution or joint sitting of the two
Houses. The executive power is vested in the Governor-General appointed by the
Crown and a Council appointed by the Governor-Genera), of which Ministers are
always members, though all members are not necessarily Ministers. The High
Court has original jurisdiction in certain defined matters and a general
appellate jurisdiction. From its decisions an appeal can be made to the Privy
Council, though, in cases of “ constitutional powers," only by
certificate of the Court, while, in other cases, the right is subject to
limitation by statute—an arrangement which represents a compromise between
local and imperial sentiment on this question. By a provision which became
known as the “ Braddon blot," the Federal Government was bound for ten
years to distribute three- quarters of its reyenue from customs and excise
amongst the States, which could ill afford to lose suddenly their main
financial resource.
The formation
of thie Commonwealth opened a new phase in Australian history. The policy of
the country suffered no change, for the new State spoke with the samie voice as
the old colonies. But the unity which had been attained by years of progress
was now recognised in institutions and could be carried forward to completion;
while the ideals which had been shaped severally and locally could now receive
a national expression. To this work the new Government turned. National action
speedily gave a new emphasis and scope to the white Australia policy. The
importation of Kanakas was prohibited (1901), and those already on the
plantations were required to be deported by 1906. The Commonwealth Government
was forbidden to enter into mail contracts with steamship companies employing
coloured labour in . the carriage of the mails (1901)i Educational tests were
imposed on immigrants, with the object of excluding Asiatics and other coloured
peoples (1901 and 1905). Bounties were offered to sugar planters who used only
white labour.
With the
formation of the Commonwealth, tariff barriers between the States were removed,
and inter-state trade rapidly increased. On the fiscal question opinion was at first
naturally divided. The expenses of government necessitated a high scale of
duties, and the feeling in some of the States in favour of protecting
Australian industries remained strong.: A protective policy was, in
consequence, definitely adopted, and the question has now ceased to provide a
main line of political division. But, while determined to secure so far as
possible the home market for its own manufacturers, as successive increases of
the
634
Labour party.—r-Revenue.— The capital. [1900-10
tariff have
shown, the Australian Government has favoured a policy of imperial preferences.
In the interests of the mother country it slightly modified the tariff of 1907,
by granting small preferences on certain classes of goods, and in her extensive
markets it would welcome a preference for the products of Australia’s
agricultural and pastoral industries. The Labour party proved to be very strong
in the Commonwealth Parliament, and three times (1904,1908 and 1910) a Labour
Ministiy has taken office, though only on the last occasion has it obtained
real power. The regulation of industry in the interests of workers has in
consequence been a prominent question; but the industrial legislation of the
Commonwealth has been limited by difficulties in defining the respective
spheres of the State and the nation. This situation has combined with other
causes to spread the opinion that the relations between the Federal and State
Governments must be revised by an increase in the powers of the former. The
character of this change has an important bearing on the development of
Protection, government regulation of industry, land legislation, and fiscal
measures in the interests of labour. It has been the principal issue in the
election at which the policy of the Labour party, desirous of strengthening and
extending Federal control, has quite recently secured the support of the
country (1910). An increase of Federal revenue is required as well as an
increase of Federal power. Hitherto the Commonwealth has derived almost the whole
of its revenue from Customs, Excise, and the Post Office. The States have had
wider resources. In addition to the funds received from the Commonwealth, they
raise money from public works, various forms of direct taxation and the sale
and rental of Crown lands. A change in the financial relations by a revision of
the Braddon Clause and the transference of the state debts to the Commonwealth
is now under consideration, and the future will probably also see an extension
of Federal taxation. With railway problems, so vital in young countries, the
Commonwealth has, as yet, been little concerned. The handing over of the lines
by the States, provided for in the Constitution, though it has been
contemplated, has not yet been effected. The building of transcontinental lines
has not had the importance which it possessed in Canada. But, on strategic and
political grounds, an overland connexion with Western Australia is desired, and
money has been voted for the survey of a route from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta.
The country traversed is unlikely to be commercially developed, and the
assimilation of gauges in the eastern colonies has been a question of more
urgent importance. The site of the capital, which the Commonwealth Act fixed in
New South Wales, though not within 100 miles 01 Sydney, was, after much
trouble, settled in 1908 by the choice of the Yass-Canberra area, about 150
miles southwest of Sydney.
New Zealand,
which suffered far less than Australia from the calamities of the nineties, has
recently made great progress in wealth and popu-
lation.
Australia also has recovered since 1902, though the activity of earlier years
has not been repeated. Time seems to be cementing the union she has formed, and
at the same time confirming the New Zealanders in their determination to
remain apart. Both countries pursue their separate yet similar histoiy inspired
by strong ambitions and a growing national spirit. They have worked out their
destiny, attaining maturity and a distinct character, within the shelter of the
British empire, to which today they add the strength and energy of two new
nations. '
We take up
the thread of South African history at a point where it begins to bear a
similar character to that of the great sister colonies. The exploration of
Central Africa and the mineral discoveries of Kimberley and later of the
Transvaal, opening a new phase in the economic development of South Africa,
induced Great Britain to attach to that country a greater value as a field of
commerce and colonisation. New opportunities, together with the competition of
other Powers for territorial possessions, stimulated her to extend her
sovereignty into the interior and along the coast, enveloping the independent
Boer States. At the same time, progress and common problems interwove more and
more the life and interest of the English and Dutch communities; so that the
political divisions, produced by a clash of ideal and civilisation between
Briton and Boer in the first half of the century, proved to be increasingly
detrimental to a country which racial and geographical conditions made a single
whole. The idea of restoring unity to a land unhappily divided thus became a
strong motive force in its history. Much tact and wisdom were required to
reconcile and harmonise the two opposed ideals—the one stubborn and tenacious
as the other was strong and assertive—in whose cooperation and blending the
best prospects for South Africa were to be seen. But, in the difficult
circumstances, mistakes worse than those of the past were repeated, and a melancholy
train of events so far emphasised their antagonism that, at last, the relations
between the two races and the political future of South Africa were committed
to the arbitrament of war. The establishment of British sovereignty over the
Boers followed, and permitted the union of South Africa in a single State.
Signs were
not wanting in the early seventies that British policy in South Africa was
undergoing a change. Griqualand West was annexed in 1871, and self-government
granted to the Cape Colony in 1872. In the same year, the dispute with the
Portuguese about the territory south of Delagoa Bay was referred to the
arbitration of the French President, Macmahon. His decision, delivered in 1875,
was entirely in favour of Portugal, which, however, in the meantime, had agreed
not to part with the territory to any third Power, and, later, by a convention
of 1891, conceded to England the right of preemption of any of her possessions
south of the
Zambesi. A movement to secure the confederation of the South African colonies
was also on foot. The advantages of such a course were already apparent, and
the Orange Free State seemed not unwilling to agree. Lord Carnarvon despatched
James Anthony Froude, in an unofficial capacity, to promote the cause in the
Cape Colony; but his indiscretion in stirring up trouble between the colonists
and their Government had an opposite result. However, in 1877, a permissive
Federation Act was procured from the imperial Parliament. At this point the
policies of union and expansion merged in a remarkable event, pregnant with
great results. The position and conduct of the Transvaal, especially in its
dealings with native peoples, excited the concern of all South Africa. Trouble
menaced it from several sides; but its most serious entanglement was a
territorial dispute with the Zulus, who, under their new King, Cetewayo, had
restored their military organisation and become most formidable opponents.
Sir
Theophilus Shepstone, an :xpe fi euced administrator in native affairs, was
despatched to the Transvaal, with discretionary powers to annex the country if
the majority of the inhabitants so desired. Finding the government bankrupt and
in apparent collapse, and the people unprepared to resist the enemy, he
proceeded to exercise these powers, although the Boers were by no means willing
to purchase protection at the price of independence. At this juncture Sir
Bartle Frere arrived in South Africa as Governor of the Cape and High
Commissioner. A man of clear and far-reaching aims, he believed that British
sovereignty must sooner or later be extended over the whole of South Africa as
far north as the Portuguese dominions. He therefore accepted the annexation of
the Transvaal, made war on the troublesome Transkei Kafirs, and, while conceding
to the Zulus most of the land in dispute, demanded of Cetewayo the immediate
dissolution of his military polity. The result was a war which lasted through
the first seven months of 1879. Commencing with a disaster to the British arms
at Isandhlwana Hill (January 22), which, but for the heroic defence of Rorke’s
Drift, might have had serious consequences, it was crowned at last with
complete success in the decisive victory of Ulundi (July 5). The Zulu power was
broken, and Zululand, divided among thirteen chiefs, was placed under a British
Resident. Suspicion of German and Boer intentions induced Great Britain to
annex St Lucia Bay in 1884, and Zululand itself in 1887. Unlikely as it was
that the warlike Zulus could have been induced without blood to discard their institutions
and mode of life, the tragic incidents of a war which the Home Government had
desired to avoid discredited Frere’s action in England, and he was superseded
in SouthEast Africa, though retained in his post at the Cape in order to
forward the great object of South African union.
Meanwhile,
the Transvaal had become a scene of trouble. The great majority of the Boers
opposed annexation; but the imperial authorities
disregarded
their protests, believing that they would accept the accomplished fact. An
unpopular Governor and an unsympathetic and unwise administration failed
altogether to conciliate them. The freest of republics was denied even an
elementary measure of self-government. In these circumstances, fortune did not
aid the attempt to push forward the project of confederation. The Cape Dutch
were incensed at the treatment of their kinsmen, and the Cape Parliament,
disliking to be hurried by Downing Street, rejected the proposal. In December,
1880, the sullen anger of the Boers blazed into rebellion, and they raised at
Paardekraal the standard of revolt. Sir George Colley, Governor and
Commander-in-Chief in Natal, advanced with slender forces to disperse them and
relieve the invested British garrisons. At Laing’s Nek and Ingogo he found
determined opponents; pushing on, he met defeat and death on Majuba Hill (Feb.
27,1881). This slight encounter, magnified by the great results which followed
it, became: for the Boers a burning memory and a proof of British impotence and
irresolution. The British Government refused to continue the War for thp barren
end of retrieving its military prestige, and concluded with the Transvaal the
Pretoria Convention, by which the Boers regained their independence under
British suzerainty. Three years later* the agreement was qualified by the
London Convention. The express assertion of suzerainty was not repeated, but
the Transvaal agreed to make no treaty, save with the Orange Free State,
without the consent of Great Britain. For the protection of white residents in
the country some further provisions were inserted.; but, as subsequent events
proved, they were not sufficiently explicit to serve their intended purpose.
Such is the chequered story of the first annexation of the Transvaal. The false
initial step might, not impossibly, have been maintained, had not fatal errors
followed. The final issue, confused and humiliating as it was, was the best
escape from a dilemma which knowledge, wisdom, and good faith throughout,
might have avoided.
The central
interest of South Africar. history shifts at this point to the Cape Colony,
where hitherto the course of politics had been smooth. English and Dutch were
not hostile. If the Dutch were chiefly farmers and the English chiefly traders,
yet they intermarried freely and were conscious of common interests. The
development of the interior had given a great stimulus to the progress of the
Cape, and in 1874 its Government had adopted a vigorous policy of railway
construction which had revolutionised the conditions of commerce and communication.
No organised parties sprang into being on the grant of self-government, since
there was no material for their formation. With abundance of land, there was no
land question between the whites; with no established Church, no ecclesiastical
controversies; with no industries or large towns, no marked separation between
rural and urban interests; and, though native questions raised difficult
problems and the Dutch feeling was opposed to the liberal policy which the Cape
had earlier laid down, the
division of
opinion within the colony was not sharp. The struggle of the Boers for
independence, however, awakened the slumbering race sentiment of the Dutch, and
provoked an outburst of feeling which perpetuated itself in a new organisation
of political parties. In 1882 the Africander Bond was formed. Inscribing the
sacred doctrine of colonial self-government on its banner, it took for its
motto the union of South Africa; but it appealed mainly to the Dutch, and had
little sympathy with the British ideal of expansion, progress, and unity under
the British flag. It quickly secured the official use of the Dutch language in
Parliament and the law Courts. Subsequent events somewhat estranged its
sympathies from the Transvaal; at the same time, under the influence of Cecil
Rhodes, who understood and worked with the Dutch, its views were broadened and
its latent anti-British sentiment died down.
Rhodes had
come out to South Africa in 1871 and taken part in the diamond rush to
Kimberley, where, later, he consolidated the mines in one strong monopoly, and
built up the immense fortune which he devoted to his imperial schemes. From
1884, when he entered Cape politics, he played an important part in all South
African affairs, but particularly in the policy of expansion into the interior,
which had become at that time the dominant issue in South African politics.
Frere had induced the imperial Government to occupy Walfisch Bay (1878), though
it refused to annex the whole coast line as far north as the Portuguese
dominions, with the result that, in 1884, the Germans established themselves in
these parts, and threatened by eastward penetration to join hands with the
Boers moving westwards, and enclose the British south of the Orange river.
Access to the interior, with its prospects of mineral and agricultural
development, was vital to the economic progress of the Cape. While Germany was
transforming her tentative footholds into sure possession, the strife began.
North, south, and west, the Boer farmers trekked in search of land,
unrestrained by the Conventions of 1881 and 1884, which had fixed the
boundaries of the Transvaal. In Zululand they established the New Republic, in
Bechuana- land the twin republics of Stellaland and Land Goshen. The New
Republic was recognised by Great Britain in 1886, and incorporated with the
Transvaal in 1888; but, against the other republics which barred the route into
the interior, an expedition was despatched under Sir Charles Warren in
December, 1884, and they were dissolved. A British Protectorate was proclaimed
as far north as lat. 22°; and in September, 1885, the southern part of
Bechuanaland was constituted a Crown colony, to be annexed to the Cape in 1895.
The far-seeing missionary John Mackenzie urged upon the imperial Government the
northward extension of its influence. But it was left to Rhodes to carry out
this important work. To close Matabeleland to the Boers and add this vast and
rich domain to the British empire was his ultimate ambition.
and in the
foundation of Rhodesia he left the most enduring monument of his courageous
energy. In 1888, a treaty was negotiated with Loben- gula which barred
Matabeleland to foreign enterprise, and in the following year Rhodes founded
the British South Africa Company for the colonisation and development of the
country. No northern limit was fixed to its sphere of operations, for its
ambitious promoter already dreamed of a British Dominion that should stretch
from Capetown across the interior of Africa to the mouth of the Nile. In 1890,
the pioneer expedition set out, and forts were established at Salisbury,
Victoria, and Charters, round which towns in time sprang up. The expense of the
undertaking proved very great, and serious political and climatic difficulties
confronted the new settlers. The Portuguese disputed their position, until an
Anglo- Portuguese agreement (1891) defined the Company’s territory on the east.
The Transvaal in 1890 withdrew all claim to land north of the Limpopo, which
enabled Rhodes to repel by force an attempt of the Boer farmers in 1891 to trek
into Matabeleland. In 1893 war broke out with the Matabele, who disliked the
restraints placed upon their raids into Mashonaland. But the Company’s police
proved equal to the task, and Bulawayo was captured without disaster, though in
the pursuit of Lobengula a small party of English were cut off and destroyed. A
second outbreak in 1896, when Rhodesia was denuded of its police, proved less
serious, and was allayed by a personal visit of Rhodes to the native chiefs.
Meantime, the agricultural and mineral development of the country proceeded.
The railway was carried north from Kimberley to Bulawayo in 1897; and, in
accordance with the agreement made with Portugal in 1891, another line was
constructed from Beira on the coast of Mozambique to Salisbury. Other
extensions have followed. This early penetration of Rhodesia by railways has
much facilitated its occupation; but the Company has had to maintain a long and
unremune- rative struggle in developing the promising resources of the country.
Nor has its policy and government been altogether acceptable to the settlers,
many of whom would have preferred direct imperial control.
At the time
when the struggle for the interior was just beginning, a new problem was
suddenly introduced into the vexed politics of South Africa. The conflict over
the expansion of the Transvaal was succeeded by a conflict over its domestic
concerns. The existence of gold in the country had been suspected for some
years before the extensive discoveries of 1886 placed the Boers in possession
of the richest mines in the world. A rush of immigrants followed, and a
heterogeneous population with a large English element was gathered on the
Witwatersrand, where the town of Johannesburg sprang into being. An alien and
progressive community was planted in the midst of a nation of farmers, and the
prospects of assimilation were remote. Jealous of the independence they had
won, and fearful lest their distinct national being should be lost, the Boers,
by raising the qualifications required for the franchise,
effectually
excluded the Uitlanders from any share in the government of the country, though
in a few years they formed the! majority of its inhabitants. Their language had
no recognition in legal and political life; they were taxed without
representation; and* though life and property were secure, they were in many
respects in the position of a subject population. The middle classes chafed
because a defective Government denied them the conveniences of civilisation,
the capitalists because it hampered the progress of the mining industry In
1890 the Boers established a Second legislative Chamber; but the concession was
illusory, for, though the vote for this Chamber was easily obtainable, the new
body had no real power. In 1892 the National Unibn was organised on the Rand,
with, the object of securing reform of the administrative and electoral
systems* responsible government* the equality of the English and Dutch tonguesj
the independence of the Courts of Justice, and free trade in South African
products.
: The
prosperity, and then the troubles, of the Transvaal deeply affected the other
colonies. As with regard to native affairs, so with regard to railways,
immigration, customs, the relations of English and Dutch, each was interested
in the policy of the other. When the Transvaal became the centre of a great
industry with a growing commerce, Cape Colony and Natal hastened to improve
their harbours and extend their railways, in order to share in its activity.
When an influx of English carried a race question into its politics, they felt
the severing influence in their own. But the Transvaal, under the guidance of
President Kruger, failed to recognise the common interests of all the South
African States or to enter with them on a broader life. Cape Colony was
estranged by a policy which placed high duties upon its produce, excluded its
citizens from office in the same way as other immigrants, and opposed the
development of its railways. Tlie Transvaal, on its side, was mortified by the
attitude of Great Britain towards its desire of expansion. After long
negotiations and delay, Swaziland was, in 1894, placed under its control; but,
in the following year, Great Britain annexed the territory between Zululand and
Mozambique, thus finally taking from the Boers their cherished hope of securing
a seaport. Meanwhile, a railway question had been the cause of a sharp
struggle. By an arrangement with the Orange Free State the Cape system was
extended across that colony and was continued to Johannesburg in 1892. A rival
line from Delagoa Bay, commenced in 1887, entered the Transvaal in 1890 and
reached Pretoria in 1895. The Cape route was favoured by its earlier completion
and superior management; but the other had the great advantage of being
shorter. A contest for the traffic of the mines ensued, in the course of which
the Transvaal Government, in violation of the London Convention, closed the
drifts over the Vaal to imported goods—an action that awakened a storm of
indignation in South Africa and called forth an ultimatum from Great Britain to
which Kruger yielded.
But, though
Rhodes, who had become head of the Bond Government at the Cape in 1890, gained
a victory in the matter of the railways, as he had previously foiled on west
and north the Boer ambitions of expansion, and though Kruger’s unfriendly
policy had assisted him to conciliate and capture Dutch sentiment at the Cape,
yet the isolation of the Transvaal still stood between him and the realisation
of his great ideal of South African union. At this stage in the struggle,
circumstances seemed suddenly to, offer him the chance of overthrowing his
adversary by one doubtful stroke. As the Boers refused the desired concessions
to the Uitlanders, and the imperial Government failed to intervene effectually,
the National Union began to contemplate an armed uprising. Rhodes offered them
the assistance of the mounted police of the Company, whom he concentrated at
Fitsani ready to act if necessary, on the condition that the Transvaal should
accept the British flag. To this the conspirators were unwilling to agree, and
a deadlock ensued, in the midst of which Dr Jameson, who commanded the
Company’s force, taking the matter into his own hands, invaded the Transvaal
(Dec. 29,1895), only to be intercepted by a strong party of Boers and to
surrender at Doomkop (Jan. 2, 1896). The discreditable conspiracy thus
collapsed in confusion and defeat, and the precipitate action of Dr Jameson
revealed the deeper scheme of Rhodes as a design against the independence of a friendly
State. The result was to extinguish all prospects of voluntary reform in the
Transvaal, to drive the Orange Free State from its friendship with Great
Britain into a close alliance with the sister republic, and to plunge South
Africa into a turmoil of race hostility which ended at last in the storm of
war. The task of the imperial Government, represented by Mr Chamberlain, was
rendered as difficult as it could well be. Instead of standing on its legal
rights and demanding the redress of specific grievances, it proceeded to the
root of the matter, and pressed on the Transvaal proposals for constitutional
change. The atmosphere of suspicion which preceding events had created was
fatal to any understanding. A conference at Bloemfontein between President
Kruger and Lord Milner, who had been sent out as High Commissioner in May,
1897, produced no result. Both sides were preparing for a struggle, and the
weaker, with well-judged policy, struck quickly. In October, 1899, the sister
republics issued an ultimatum. Thus the two ideals which represented the main
streams of South African life came at last into determined and fatal collision.
The outbreak
of war found Great Britain in an unhappy position. Confident in her immense
power, incredulous of the Boer intentions, reluctant to precipitate a conflict,
she was suddenly involved ;n a struggle whose seriousness she had
failed to realise, and for which she had made no adequate preparation. The
sympathy of most civilised nations was with her opponents, though her colonies
and the great majority of the English people gave enthusiastic support.
Counting on her unreadiness,
the Boers
proposed to invade Cape Colony and Natal. They expected to defeat the small
bodies of troops opposed to them and to secure the support of the Cape Dutch.
If they succeeded so far, they anticipated that one or more of the Great
Powers would intervene, and that Great Britain would thus be compelled to
recognise the complete independence of the Transvaal, and perhaps the union of
South Africa under the Dutch flag. In the first few weeks of the War, the
British were obliged by their inferiority in numbers to act on the defensive.
General White, who commanded in Natal, withdrew his troops from the frontiers
of the colony, after repulsing the Boers at Talana Hill (Oct. 20) and Elands-
laagte (Oct. 21), and concentrated them at Ladysmith. In the west, defences
were hastily improvised at Mafeking and Kimberley. The great railway junctions
of Nauwport and Stormberg on the northern frontier of Cape Colony fell into the
hands of the Free State burghers, who also threatened De Aar. But, exposed as
this part of the country was, the invaders showed no great energy or
definiteness of purpose, and waited on events. East and west also, the Boers
paused in their advance to invest Ladysmith and Kimberley, whose long
resistance gave time for British reinforcements to arrive. When Sir Redvers
Buller reached South Africa in November, the War entered on a second stage. The
British took the offensive, divided their forces, and endeavoured to relieve
the invested towns. Events did not confirm the wisdom of this policy, for the
relieving forces were not strong enough to achieve their ends. Lord Methuen,
who, with 13,000 men, advanced to the relief of Kimberley, defeated the Boers
at Belmont (Nov. 23) and Graspan (Nov. 25), and forced the passage of the
Modder river (Nov. 28-9), only to suffer a tragic and costly reverse in an
attempt to storm the heights of Magersfontein (Dec. 10). On the same day
General Gatacre lost part of his force at Stormberg. The Commander-in-Chief was
not more fortunate, being driven back from the passage of the Tugela at Colenso
(Dec. 15). This series of disasters roused the imperial Government and the
colonies to a sense of the gravity of the situation. Lord Roberts and Lord
Kitchener were despatched to take command, and for months immense reinforcements
were poured into South Africa. Meanwhile, intervention was discussed by some of
the Powers; but their mutual rivalries and the supremacy of the British navy
proved insuperable obstacles.
The new
offensive movement initiated by Lord Roberts opened a third stage in the War,
wherein success was transferred to the British arms. Advancing northwards, he
relieved Kimberley, and overtook and penned the investing army of Cronje in the
valley of the Modder at Paardeberg, where it surrendered (Feb. 28,1900), to the
intense discouragement of the other Boer forces. Serious resistance in the
Free State was at an end, and Bloemfontein fell almost immediately. As the
Boers retreated in the west, the task of relieving Ladysmith became more practicable.
Attempts to approach the town by way of Spion Kop and VaaJ
Kranz had
failed; but at the end of February Buller stormed Pieter’s Hill and the long
siege was raised. In May, Mafeking, obstinately defended by Baden Powell, was
relieved by a force from Rhodesia. In the same month, the Orange Free State was
annexed. In June, Lord Roberts advanced on Pretoria, and defeated General Botha
at Diamond Hill. The annexation of the Transvaal followed in September.
The great
actions of the War were now ended; but the Boer peoples were unsubdued, and,
tenacious of their independence, waged an obstinate guerrilla warfare for
another two years. Their wandering commandos, under daring and skilful leaders,
frequently surprised and defeated detached bodies of British troops, and had to
be systematically hunted down—an operation which their mobility and the immense
area of the country rendered extremely slow and difficult. The devastating and
embittering character of this final stage of the War inflicted the severest
injury on the distracted country. At last, in May, 1902, worn out by the
fruitless struggle, the Boers sacrificed their independence, and accepted the
British terms at Vereeniging. Failing to secure decisive success at the
beginning, they had no chance of ultimate success. Singlehanded, they could not
sustain a prolonged contest against the great resources of the British empire.
Yet they had proved a formidable enemy. Their ample preparations, a central
position, familiarity with the ground and the climate, and the moral impulse of
a struggle for independence, gave them great advantages. Stubborn and skilful,
though not invincible, in defence, swift in movement, and capable of individual
initiative, but wanting the resolution for effective attack, their military
qualities, like their democratic military organisation, fitted them far better
for the defence of their native land than for the invasion of an enemy’s.
Within a brief
interval of each other died the two protagonists of this national struggle in
South Africa. Kruger died an exile broken by age and failure (1903). His life
had measured the life of the two republics, in whose fortunes he had played no
mean part. As a boy he left the Cape in the Great Trek, and he lived to guide
the Transvaal through the last troubled years of its history to the fatal issue
in which his work and ambition were finally dissolved. In him was incarnate the
invincible conservatism of the old Dutch spirit, as in his opponent the
progressive energy and broad outlook of the modem world. Rhodes died in South
Africa (1902), at the moment when the cause for which his life and fortune were
spent had achieved a costly and terrible success. Working for great ends with
such means as came to his hand, he made mistakes which time has covered, and
achieved results destined to endure. His imagination and unstinted labour
contributed in no small measure to shape the progress of South Africa.
The great
result of the War was to bring all the South African communities under British
sovereignty and so to prepare the way for their union. But before this could be
realised, a tremendous task of
reconstruction
had to be faced. The Boers were restored to their farms, and an attempt was
made to plant British settlers in the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal.
The overtrading and speculation which the commercial activity of the years of
war had stimulated were now followed by a strong reaction in the seaports and
large towns, and depression settled upon the whole of South Africa. The
mine-owners complained of the difficulty in recruiting native labour, and
desired permission to import coolies from China. Anxious to serve the immediate
interests of a great industry whose prosperity was vital to the country, the
Home Government consented, in spite of the strong dislike of this course which
was manifested in all parts of the empire. In the meantime, Legislative
Assemblies were set up in the two conquered States. A change of Government in
England in 1905 produced a change of policy in South Africa. The importation of
Chinese ceased; and full self-government was granted to the Transvaal in 1906,
and to the Orange River Colony in 1907.
This bold and
generous concession opened the way for South African union. It conciliated and
broadened the outlook of the Dutch leaders; it also assimilated the political
status of the four great European colonies. Natal had received self-government
so far back as 1893. At the time, the concession caused some anxiety in Great
Britain, since the colony contained a native population, numbering many times
that of the white, and a large Hindu community, employed on its sugar
plantations or in retail trade. The progress of Rhodesia had not been rapid enough
to justify the same change in its case; but, when the Company’s administration
was reconsidered after the Jameson “ Raid,” an imperial Commissioner assisted
by a Legislative Council, in which the elected members have been given a
majority, was placed over the south-western part. In 1907 the Earl of Selborne,
appointed High Commissioner in 1905, reviewed the situation in a memorable
document, and showed the impossibility of South Africa enjoying a real control
of its own affairs save as a single State. The railway agreements, which had
been arranged for distributing among the rival systems the traffic of the
mines, and the Customs Convention, which, first made by the Cape Colony and the
Orange Free State in 1889, had been extended at last so as to include all the
colonies, though useful as temporary measures, offered no effectual and
satisfactory means of forming a railway and commercial policy for South Africa
as a whole. The dependence of the Cape Colony and Natal on the trade of the
Transvaal was a vital consideration.
In other
ways, painful experience reinforced the same conviction. The problem presented
by the native population had grown more urgent and more complex with the lapse
of time, and demanded the consideration of a South African authority. Successive
annexations of territory had brought many new peoples under the government of
the colonies. With the prohibition of tribal wars, the numbers of the natives
increased so
rapidly as to
press, in places, upon the resources of the country. Scarcity of land caused
trouble between black and white, and, by forcing the native into new fields of
employment, raised the question of his industrial education. The progress of
the mining industry created a rapidly increasing demand for his labour which
could not easily be satisfied, and both the agricultural and the mining
industries were embarrassed by labour difficulties in spite of the immense
black population. In all the colonies there had been a tendency to disintegrate
or modify the tribal system, and bring the native under the control of white
magistrates and special legislation; but each had followed its own
policy—whether as regards land tenure, political rights, special codes of law,
education, taxation, or the liquor traffic—with a resulting diversity which,
though it reflected to some extent a difference of conditions, was also caused
by divergent ideals, and produced many unhappy consequences. Only in the Cape
Colony had much been done to assist the native to become a useful citizen, and
in the Cape Colony the liberal policy which had never denied the franchise on
grounds of colour began to awake apprehensions in the early nineties, and was
modified by raising the qualifications of the voter. At the same time, however,
Rhodes, in the Glen Grey Act (1894), so called from the district to which it
was first applied, endeavoured to lay down a broad policy, which, by giving to
the native security in his land and earnings, the opportunity of education and
some local selfgovernment, might breed in him habits of industry and
self-respect.
One other
important development, increasing the complexity of the whole question, was the
steady differentiation, under modern conditions, of classes among the natives,
from the native in the tribal state, subject to chiefs and holding land under
communal tenure, to the educated native or coloured man of Cape Colony, who
owned land and exercised the franchise. Basutoland, which was attached to the
Cape in 1871, was in 1884 restored to the imperial Government, under whose
control it has enjoyed comparative independence and prosperity. In Zululand, on
the contrary, which was annexed to Natal in 1897, the colonial Government has
experienced severe trouble, culminating in the rebellion of 1906. A numerous
and vigorous people, denied the congenial pursuit of war and not yet inured to
peaceful occupations, the Zulus have been difficult to handle; but a more
sympathetic and personal system of government would probably have prevented or
removed many of the grievances of which they complained. In a sharp clash of
opinion with the mother country arising out of this incident, Natal vindicated
her right, as a self-governing colony, to control her own native policy. The
occurrence was but one feature of a situation with which a single authority for
the whole country could best deal. Other problems also required united action
for their solution—such as those offered by the Asiatic immigrant, against whom
Natal and the Transvaal were legislating; by agriculture, in which the
necessity of scientific methods
and common
plans was apparent; and by the mining industry, with its labour problems which
affected all the colonies in a variety of ways. Evidently, an Africander
nation, guiding its own destinies, could only be shaped under common political
institutions. The conviction that the time was ripe for action grew among the
leading men of the country, and passed from them to the people. Finally, the
tariff question forced to the front the vaster problem of which it formed a
part. A convention of members of the South African Governments, assembled to
discuss tariffs, gave place to a convention summoned to consider union. Sitting
in secret from October, 1908, to February, 1909, first at Durban and then at
Cape Town, and proceeding with singular unanimity, it framed a Constitution for
a united South Africa which was forthwith submitted to the Parliaments of the
four colonies, The Transvaal accepted it, Natal and the Orange River Colony
offered some objections natural from small communities merging themselves with
larger, the Cape offered more vital objections to some of the principles of the
scheme. In a final meeting at Bloemfontein the suggested amendments were
discussed and in part adopted. The Constitution, thus changed, was accepted by
the people of Natal on a referendum, and by the Parliaments of the other
colonies. Embodied in a Bill, it passed the imperial Parliament in September,
1909. In the thirty-two years that had elapsed since Lord Carnarvon’s
Federation Act the drama of South African union had been played through all its
tragic scenes.
The aim of
the Convention was to unite the two European races in effective and enduring
cooperation. It did not seek to solve the great political and economic
questions which confronted them, but only to create a Government, based on sure
and equal principles, to which the future of the country might be safely
entrusted. To achieve that end, many opposed forces and antagonistic interests
needed to be harnessed together. Four separate colonial Governments, as well as
the imperial Government, exercised political power within the bounds of the
intended State. Three railway systems, on whose profits the financial stability
of the four colonial Governments largely rested, worked in irreconcilable
competition. The two white races had but just emerged from the War into which
their conflicting ideals and mutual distrust had plunged them. By their side,
and several times more numerous, lived an immense black population, as to whose
treatment and future there was no agreement. Rival interests divided town from
country, the coast from the inland. In the circumstances, the immense area of
the country, the race divisions and the natural clinging of the old colonies to
their historic autonomy seemed to demand a federal union. Yet, on the other
hand, the geographical unity of South Africa, the intermingling of English and
Dutch, the economic interdependence of all the colonies, the difficulty of
dividing functions between a federal and state Governments in view of the
oneness of
South African
problems, and considerations of economy, favoured the opposite course. Thus the
Convention, ignoring the example of other and kindred States and regarding only
the needs and history of its own country, decided to make a complete end of
existing political machinery and to establish in South Africa a unitary State.
The old colonies have become provinces, and new provincial Governments have
taken the place of their old Constitutions. But the new Governments are
subordinate bodies, without rights and powers guaranteed in the Constitution.
They are the agents of the Union Government, from which they receive their
authority and to whose supervision they are subject. Though the new
Constitution is not without a trace of federal ideas there is no attempt at a
balancing of powers, either between the parts of the Union and the whole, or
between legislative, executive and judicature. The central agent of the
Government is a Parliament which is, or is soon to be, a sovereign body. The
executive is dependent upon it, for the cabinet system of government is
definitely adopted; the law Courts cannot restrict its action, for they do not
interpret the Constitution ; there is no matter, not even the amendment of the
Constitution, which is not ultimately within its determination. Save for a few
temporary provisions to make easy the passage, South Africa commits itself
unreservedly to the new order. The two races come together on terms of complete
equality. Both languages receive the same recognition in political life, and
the principle of tbe equal value of the vote throughout the Union is
substantially maintained. No attempt has been made to settle prematurely the
great problems raised by the native population. The native appears in the
Constitution, in order that his existing rights may be guaranteed and not that
his future status may be determined. That work is left to the Union Parliament,
in which the point of view of the native is represented by four members added
to the Upper House on the ground of their knowledge of the native mind. Special
provisions relating to finance and railway management are designed to preserve
the railways from political interference and to guard the interests of both
inland and coast. The difficulty of the capital was overcome by a compromise.
Cape Town had historic claims and climatic advantages, Pretoria is at the heart
of South Africa. So the Convention decided to separate, what everywhere else
are united, the centre of administration and the seat of Parliament, and fixed
the former at Pretoria, the latter at % Cape Town. Such are the main principles
on which the Union was formed. The actual machinery of Government may now be
briefly described.
At the head
of the Union is the Governor-General appointed by the Crown. The Parliament consists
of two Houses, a Senate and a House of Assembly. The Senate contains forty
members, holding office for ten years, of whom eight are nominated by the
Governor-General, and thirty- two are elected in equal numbers for the four
provinces, for the first time by the old Legislative Assemblies, for the
future, unless Parliament
shall
otherwise determine, by the Council of each province together with the members
of the House of Assembly who represent the particular province. The members of
the House of Assembly are directly elected. Their distribution between the
provinces is to be proportionate to population, though the Orange Free State
and Natal at first receive a larger proportion than this principle would ensure
them. The qualifications for the franchise are those obtaining in the old
colonies, until Parliament otherwise provides; but any disqualification on
grounds of colour must be approved by a two-thirds majority of both Houses
sitting together. In each province the electoral divisions are to contain the
same number of voters, though on certain defined grounds the strict numerical
principle may be departed from, to the extent of 15 per cent, more or less than
the quota. The principle of proportional representation, adopted for the
Senate, was abandoned for the Assembly in deference to the views of Cape
Colony. Members of both Houses must be British subjects of European descent.
The supremacy of the Lower House is secured by provisions forbidding the Senate
to originate or amend money bills, and arranging for a joint session in case of
dispute at which a decision is to be made by a simple majority vote. The
provincial Governments are designed to be administrative bodies free from party
politics. They consist of an Administrator appointed by the Governor^ General
and holding office for five years, an elected Council sitting for three years
and not subject to dissolution, and an Executive Committee of four chosen by
the Council to act with the Administrator. The Councils control all purely
local institutions and works, agriculture, subject to certain conditions,
education (excluding higher education) for five years at least, and other
matters referred to them by Parliament. Though they may raise money by direct
taxation, the Union Government has effective financial control over them, and
their ordinances require the consent of the Governor-General. A Board of not
more than three Commissioners, appointed by the Governor-General for five
years, and under the presidency of a Minister, is to manage the railways* ports,
and harbours of the Union. It is to conduct the administration. on business
principles, for the general economic development of the Union, and not for
profit.
Mr Herbert
Gladstone (now Viscount Gladstone) was appointed first Governor-General of South
Africa, and the meeting of the first Union Parliament was fixed for the autumn
of 1910. With its assembly a new chapter will begin in the history of the
country. Dutch and F.nglish are not separate in South Africa but freely
intermingled; in one State many silent influences may lay to rest the clash of
ideals, and blend, or teach cooperation to, forces that ill-starred events have
in the past driven into hostility.
Some of the
conditions which have encouraged the union of groups of English colonies in single
States capable of developing a national life
i887-i9io]
Relaxation of imperial control.
649
have also
been acting upon the empire as a whole with a similar, though weaker,
influence. Two opposite tendencies have indeed been apparent in its recent
constitutional development. On the one hand, the new nations forming within its
borders have claimed more and more to control their own affairs, and in every
field of government have taken over powers from the mother country; and, on the
other hand, both they and the mother country have been developing a sense of
mutual interest and a realisation of the need for common action which, not very
long since, was almost absent. Both of these tendencies require some
consideration.
In the
legislative sphere the independence of the colonies has become more complete.
The imperial Parliament shows no disposition today to legislate for a
self-governing colony save at its request; and since 1899 the imperial power of
disallowing colonial Acts has not been exercised except in the case of Acts
that clashed with imperial interests. The judicial connexion with the mother
country has also been weakened. In 1887, the decision of the Supreme Court of
Canada was made final in criminal cases; the Australian Commonwealth Act allows
only a limited right of appeal from the Courts of the Commonwealth to the Privy
Council; and both the Australian and South African Parliaments have power to
restrict the matters on which leave to appeal may be asked. Imperial troops
have been entirely withdrawn from the Dominions, which organise their own
military defences and have in most cases laid the foundations of local armies.
Already, they exhibit an unwillingness to rely exclusively on the imperial navy
or to be content with voting annual subsidies towards its cost, seeing that
they have no voice in their expenditure. Australia, dissatisfied with the
agreements of 1887 and 1903, by which she paid for the maintenance of a small
squadron in Australian waters to guard her trade, is now, in cooperation with
the mother country, beginning to form a navy which shall be under her own
control. New Zealand remains content to offer an annual contribution; but
Canada, which has hitherto taken no direct part in imperial defence, proposes
to follow the example of Australia. In the exercise of the prerogative of
pardon it has become the practice, since 1877 in Canada and 1895 in Australia,
for the Governor to act on his own responsibility only when imperial interests
appear to be concerned. The attempt of the mother country to maintain some
control over the native policy of a self- governing cblony has failed in the
one or two cases where, owing to peculiar circumstances, it was made. In
Western Australia the care of the aboriginal population was at first vested in
an independent Department; but in 1897 this was subordinated to the Government
of the colony. In 1906 Natal successfully resisted the attempt of the imperial
Government to supervise its conduct of native affairs.
While the
foreign relations of the empire remain under the exclusive control of the
mother country, in the making of treaties a compromise
arrangement
is being slowly worked out which recognises the right of the tjreat colonies to
determine and promote their own interests in international affairs, without
giving them that unlimited freedom of dealing with other States which would be
tantamount to independence. Since 1867, Canada has always been represented in
the negotiation of treaties affecting her, and recently has conducted
negotiations by her own Ministers with France, the United States, and Japan. In
1877, it became a recognised principle that all colonies might separately
adhere to or withdraw from commercial treaties negotiated by the imperial
Government ; and, in 1900, the principle was further extended to other
treaties. The question of immigration into a colony has been responsible for
some special difficulties. As the greater colonies developed a national sense,
they became determined to control the influx of unassimilable races into their
midst, and their action necessarily affected the relations of Great Britain
with the foreign countries concerned as well as the relations of the different
parts of the empire. As a result of much discussion and some friction, the
imperial Government has admitted the claim of the colonies to control or
prevent such immigration, while they have yielded to its representations so far
as regards the form and method of their legislation. But the unity of the
empire is not of such a character that every subject enjoys the right of free
movement throughout its borders; the native of India may be excluded from
South Africa or British Columbia, and the undesirable Englishman may be turned
back from the ports of Canada or Australia.
Thus, in
every field of Government, whether in legislation, justice, administration, or
foreign policy, the great Dominions have assumed an increasing control of their
own affairs. Clearly and fully the mother country has been throwing upon them
the burden of their own destiny, which they in turn have taken up with
promptness and courage. Yet the logical and at one time not unexpected result
of such a policy—the gradual dissolution of the empire—has not followed. The
commercial and maritime progress of other countries, the widespread interest in
colonial affairs, the awakening of the East, the competitive spirit of the age,
have created a new situation, in which the belief that the disunion of the
empire is an inevitable result of national growth within its borders and
carries no evil consequences has gradually lost its force. While there has been
no desire to abandon the policy of freedom for individual development, the
feeling has grown that, in the changed circumstances of the age, this policy
does not satisfy every imperial need, and that some constructive ideal is
required to supplement its influence. For the conception of the empire as a
group of many communities, each having its own ends to realise, there has been
substituted a conception of the empire as a whole, having common interests for
the maintenance of which more adequate means of action need to be devised. The
idea of federation, which had been growing in colonial politics, was thus sown
in imperial
politics, and showed its first form of life in a Conference of colonial premiers
held in London in 1887. Too much was not attempted; but it was evident that the
colonies were developing a sense of a united empire as distinguished from a
controlling mother country which might become a creative political force. In
1894, a second Conference was held at Ottawa. It made a number of
recommendations designed to promote the unity of the empire, of which the more
important concerned the improvement of means of communication and the adoption
of a policy of commercial preferences. As a result, the imperial Parliament
removed such legislative restrictions as hampered the freedom of the colonies
in this latter respect. A third Conference met in London in 1902, at which it
was decided that the Conference should become a fixed institution and be summoned
every fourth year. The Conference of 1906 took the name of Imperial Conference
and gave to the greater colonies that of Dominion. Though the Conference has no
continuous existence and has no executive power, its periodic assembly is a
recognition of the fact that a new ideal of imperial unity has been born. The
chief problems that it has discussed—imperial defence, trade relations, and
means of communication—indicate the main lines along which an attempt has
hitherto been made to realise this ideal. Perhaps the greatest advance has been
made in the matter of defence. For a long time the feeling has been gaining
ground that in this matter all members of the empire must accept a measure of
responsibility and give their cooperation. In 1885 New South Wales sent a
contingent to the Sudan and other Australian colonies prepared to do the same.
During the South African War all the great colonies volunteered prompt and
generous assistance. An attempt has been made by the Conferences to frame a
general scheme of military defence. Moreover the Dominions have begun to accept
a liability as regards the maritime defence of the empire. In 1902 several
colonies made promises of annual contributions to the cost of the imperial
navy. Australia and Canada have gone further and are organising navies of their
own, as stated above. But the most striking manifestation of colonial interest
in imperial defence was given by the large offers of assistance which the
discussions of naval policy in the House of Commons in March, 1909, forth from
New Zealand and some of the Australian States. Much also has been done to
facilitate intercourse between different parts of the empire by a reduction of
postal rates, the laying of new cables, and the improvement of steamship
services. But, in the matter of trade relations, a serious division of opinion
has been apparent. The colonies, while not desiring an imperial Customs Union,
wish to see imperial trade encouraged by a policy of mutual preferences; and,
following the example of Canada in 1897, the greater colonies have granted
preferences of vaiying amount and value to the mother country. The latter,
adhering to Free Trade, has been unable to give any special advantage to
colonial
commerce;
though a movement, initiated by Mr Chamberlain in 1908, to secure a change of
her commercial policy which would make this possible, has received strong
support. Thus, during recent years, in various Ways a centripetal tendency has
manifested itself in the development of the empire; but at the same time it
has been controlled and limited by the strong instinct of autonomy and
self-interest which actuates each member.
The story of
progress, though not of change, is interrupted when we turn to the oldest
centre of European c&lonisation—the islands and coasts of the Caribbean
Sea. The nineteenth centuiy has been a troubled interval in the history of most
West Indian communities. New conditions have forced them to make considerable
readjustment of the rigid social structure and limited economic interests which
they had developed in different circumstances. As an ever-widening area for the
production of tropical crops has been brought under cultivation, their
commercial importance has waned, not only relatively but actually. Their
history, at the same time, has lost something of the picturesqueness associated
with its earlier chapters, though it has undoubtedly gained a profounder
interest since the abolition of slavery gave to the negro some control over his
own fortunes, and to both black and white the problem of cooperation presented
itself under the new conditions of freedom. A great work of social and economic
reorganisation thus forms the central thread of that history. On the political
side it has much variety. If the great European Powers ceased after 1815 to
make the West Indies a cause or arena of strife, yet the internal fortunes of
most of the islands have been chequered and changing. Some communities have
struggled for independence, some with it. In other cases, the Powers in
possession have been labouring to adapt their colonial systems to modern
democratic ideas. Everywhere the great problem has arisen of fashioning a
government that, both in its local and central agents, should be wise and
efficient, as well as just between ra«e and race.
When, in
1834, the emancipation of the negroes was begun in the British West Indies it
was intended that a temporary system of apprenticeship should break the step
from slavery to freedom; but unforeseen abuses influenced the imperial
Parliament to impose on the planters restrictions of such severity that, in
1838, they terminated all apprenticeship, and the great revolution was thus
suddenly completed. Once set on foot, this movement inevitably spread through
all these closely related islands. Through Haiti it had already passed, when
the doctrine of the rights of man first entered the colonial field. In the
Danish islands, a riot at Santa Cruz (1847) precipitated the grant of freedom.
In Guadeloupe and Martinique, the concession was made in 1848, but a system of
long contract service followed. In the Dutch islands, the negroes worked out
their freedom between 1863 and 1873. In the Spanish islands, where
isrt-se]
Difficulties of West Indian societies.
653
the negroes
were fewer in proportion to the white population than elsewhere, and the
relations between the two were on the whole better, emancipation was delayed—in
Porto Rico until 1873, in Cuba until 1886.
“ A race has
been freed, but a society has not been formed.” In these words Lord Harris,
Governor of Trinidad, briefly expressed the problem which confronted the West
Indian communities. The future status of the negro and the maintenance of the
plantations were both involved. Free labour migbt have suited the planter as
well as slave labour, had it been obtainable. But, where the negro could squat
on fertile land and maintain himself with little effort, he had no inducement
to work on his former master’s estate. In British Guiana, Jamaica, Grenada, and
also in the French islands, the tendency of the negroes to occupy small
holdings, quickened in places by the harshness of the planters, resulted in the
formation of a strong peasant proprietary, threatening the old plantation
system. Scarcity of land prevented this development in Barbados; and in the
Dutch, Danish, and French islands labour laws acted as a check. While the
negro, becoming wage-labourer or peasant proprietor, was gaining in happiness
and often in self-respect, the planter was suffering, especially in the English
islands. His compensation for the loss of his slaves had been inadequate, and
the labour problem presented the greatest difficulties. In 18*7, a second blow,
scarcely less heavy than emancipation, fell upon him. The mother country
adopted a free trade policy, and in a few years his advantage in the English
market was taken away.
The resulting
depression was rendered worse by a want of harmonious cooperation between the
imperial and colonial Governments in the measures required to ease the process
of adaptation to the new conditions ; and with Jamaica and British Guiana
there arose serious difficulties, which for a time frustrated progress. The
mother country assisted the colonies with loans of money, and recommended new
forms of taxation, improved methods of production, the importation of East
Indian coolies, and economy of expenditure, as well as legislation regulating
the condition of the freed negroes. Under a system of indentured labour, large
numbers of coolies were procured, chiefly from the East Indies, to supply the
needs of the plantations—of whom many, when the time of their service was
completed, remained to settle in the islands. In British Guiana and Trinidad,
whose decline was arrested by this means, the Asiatic element in the population
has become very considerable, and it is important also in Jamaica, the Leeward
and Windward Islands, and Martinique. Where the labour difficulty could be
overcome, the sugar industry generally continued, though to a diminished extent
and with declining profits. Many large estates were broken up into small
holdings, on which, in some parts, the negroes raised the cane to supply
central crushing mills. In some of the British islands the white population
began to decrease, while the coloured
increased
rapidly. The French planters were assisted by preferential tariffs which
preserved for them the home market; the Spar-' h by the great natural resources
of Cuba, its proximity to the United States, and easier labour conditions. In
the course of time, however, all began to feel the competition of the beet-sugar
industry of Europe, encouraged as it was by bounties. In some islands sugar
cultivation was abandoned or still further reduced, and an attempt was made to
develop other industries. The cultivation of cocoa was introduced into Grenada
and St Lucia, and extended in Trinidad. In St Vincent arrowroot became an
important product, in Antigua cotton, in Montserrat limes. Jamaica, never
exclusively dependent on sugar, now further developed such subsidiary
industries as the cultivation of tobacco and coffee, the cutting of dyewoods,
and ranching, and after 1870 built up a considerable fruit trade with the
United States. British Guiana was assisted in 1889 by discoveries of gold in a
branch of the Mazaruni river. Thus, while cane sugar remained the staple crop,
flourishing in favourable conditions, struggling and declining in unfavourable,
miscellaneous exports began, after 1880, to form an increasing proportion of
West Indian trade.
The last
decades of the century were, however, a period of severe trial for most of the
British islands. From 1880 to 1895, the price of sugar fell continuously.
British Guiana, Barbados, and most of the Windward and Leeward Islands, still
mainly dependent on this one crop, were especially affected. In 1897, a Royal
Commission was appointed to enquire into the causes of the depression and to
consider the general prospects of the islands. The Commissioners found that the
competition of bounty-fed sugar was chiefly responsible for the serious
position to which the cane sugar industry was reduced, and they made many recommendations
designed to broaden the basis of economic life in these colonies. As a result,
agricultural experiments have been made with a view to the introduction of new
crops, particularly cotton; and the fruit trade with the mother country has
received a great stimulus by the establishment of a direct line of steamers
between Bristol and Jamaica subsidised by the imperial and Jamaican
Governments. The export of bananas and limes from Jamaica and Dominica to the
United States has become of great value, while the sugar trade with Canada has
increased as a result of the preference granted by the Dominion to
British-grown sugar. In 1902, also, a Convention of the Powers interested, with
the exception of Russia, arranged for the abolition or restriction of the
bounty system from 1903 onwards. Unhappily, the natural calamities— hurricane,
earthquake, and volcanic eruption—to which the West Indies have always been
exposed have recently occurred with great frequency, and added to the strain
upon the resources and endurance of the islands.
The course of
their political development may now be briefly traced. Save for the troubles of
which Cuba has been the centre, the West Indies have since 1815 enjoyed
conditions of peace and security unparalleled in
their modem
history. The transference of some of the Spanish islands to the United States
has been the principal territorial change. The United States, ever since their
colonial days, have maintained a close commercial connexion with the West
Indies ; and, in the period of expansion before the Civil War, the annexation
of Cuba was one of the ambitions of the southern leaders. During the years of
reconstruction, expansion became unpopular, and opportunities of making
acquisitions in the West Indies were rejected. American interests in Cuba,
however, increased, and the unhappy misgovemment of that island by Spain
brought on the War of 1898, which resulted in the disappearance of Spain from
the Caribbean Sea and the acquisition of Porto Rico by the United States. Cuba
has not been annexed, as such action would have a disquieting effect in South
America, and there is a difficulty in receiving Cuba into the Union either as a
State or as a Territory. But the United States demand that the Cuban Government
should maintain security of life and property, and liberty. The possessions of
England remain the same, though she has been involved in some territorial
controversies. The prolonged dispute with Venezuela concerning the boundaries
of British Guiana, which assumed great importance on the intervention of the
United States, was settled by arbitration in 1899, and the larger part of the
disputed territory was awarded to British Guiana. Other boundary disputes
between French Guiana and Brazil (1900), and British Guiana and Brazil (1904),
were settled by the same means.
Wars of
independence and a social revolution that has reacted on political life have
rendered the internal political history of the islands more perturbed. The once
rich and fair island of San Domingo, the pearl of the Antilles, has been the
seat of two communities, of which one has seen a prolonged experiment in negro
self-government, with European political institutions. San Domingo, the Spanish
part of the island, declared its independence of Spain in 1821, only to be
merged in the Haitian republic in 1822, and freed itself from Haiti in 1844 to
fall again under the dominion of Spain in 1861. The independence which it
recovered in 1865 it vainly sought to surrender to the United States in
1871. Since that date it has enjoyed a quieter
existence under a liberal constitution. The history of Haiti has been even more
chequered. An arbitrary and corrupt Government, republican only in form, and
disturbed by periodical revolutions, of which one in 1849 resulted in the
establishment of a brief empire, has scarcely commended the great experiment
which it represents. The exclusive policy, which has virtually shut out the
foreigner, has not only restricted the development of the island, but, by banishing
the influence of a stronger race more experienced in the practice of
self-government, seems to have prevented the negro from making political and
economic progress.
The sentiment
of Cuban independence was bom in the great colonial revolution at the end of
the eighteenth century, though it languished
during the
golden days of Cuba’s prosperity which followed. When the emancipation of the
slaves began in the other islands and prosperity declined, the Creole chafed
more and more against a corrupt and extravagant Government, as also against a
colonial system under which privilege and office were reserved for the
Spaniard. In 1868 a civil war broke out and lasted ten years, with the result
that Spain so far modified her policy as to grant Porto Rico and Cuba a barren
right of representation in the Cortes of the mother country. In 1895 further
changes were made, including the formation of a Council of Administrators to
advise the Governor; but the civil war was renewed, until the intervention of
the United States, in 1898, secured the independence of the island. Guadeloupe
and Martinique became departments of France, sending deputies to the French
Parliament, and, with the introduction of universal franchise and other
democratic measures, political power in the islands passed into the hands of
the negroes. The English, as in previous centuries, found it a difficult
problem to organise the government of their scattered islands on the most
efficient and economical basis. The federation of all the islands has been
considered; but they lack that sense of union which would bring about a demand
for it, and the possible increase of expense has seemed a serious obstacle.
There has thus been a tendency to make small groups. The Leeward Islands have
generally formed a single Government, and in 1871 their federal constitution
was revived. The Windward Islands form another, of which in 1833 Barbados was
made the seat of government, to be separated again in 1885. With them Trinidad
and Tobago were also for a time included; but they were detached in 1876,
united as a single Government in 1889, and incorporated as one colony in 1899.
British Guiana, like Jamaica, has always formed a separate Government. British
Honduras was detached from Jamaica in 1884.
Contrary to
the general tendency of our colonial policy since Lord Durham’s famous Report,
there has been a contraction rather than an extension of self-government in the
West Indies. Though the negro has in many parts made economic progress, he has
not yet exhibited much political capacity; and neither the small white
population, nor the untutored black, can be given dominion over the other. This
has been the principal cause of retrogression. Declining prosperity and
particular occurrences have also played a part. In 1865 the negroes of the
south-east of Jamaica rose in rebellion, complaining of oppression and
insecurity in the tenure of their lands. The insurrection was suppressed by
Governor Eyre with promptitude and vigour, but with an undue and unjust
severity which necessitated his recall. After this deplorable event, the
historic legislature of the island, whose latter years added little glory to a
notable career, surrendered its continuance in favour of a stronger Government.
Grenada and St Vincent lost their representative institutions in 1876. The
Constitution of Honduras, modified in 1853 by the admission of elective members
to the Council, was modified again in 1870 by their
exclusion.
Thus, at the present time, the Bahamas, Barbados, and the Bermudas, where there
has been no change, have representative institutions without responsible
government; British Guiana, Jamaica, and the Leeward Islands, a Legislative
Council, partly elective and partly nominated; , the Windward Islands, British
Honduras, Trinidad, and Tobago, Legislative Councils, composed partly of
official and partly of nominated members. In British Guiana the Council is
known as the Court of Policy, and, in the discussion of finance, is joined by
some additional elective members in a sitting known as the Combined Court.
The course of
West Indian history seems isolated from that of other colonies during recent
years. There is no unity of development discernible in the variety of its
details. The West Indies have ceased to be the scene of activity and strife which
they formerly were, and which other new lands have become, while they, exhibit
no large result achieved for civilisation by the efforts of centuries. Their
greatness was so much the greatness of a single industry that they seem to have
shared for a time in its eclipse. Nature, which limited their chances of
progress, circumstances which divided them from each other, human policy which
gave them an unfortunate social structure, forbade them to aspire to; the
greatness and national being which other groups of colonies have attained. A
scattered group of islands, in the possession of different Powers, inhabited by
different races, each strong in local pride, though their problems have been
similar, they have never risen to a sense of common interest nor desired the
unity which they could not attain.
From this
survey of the development of the older colonies we may now turn to consider the
colonies and dependencies which have recently been founded as a result of the
revived activity of the Great Powers. The new movement has not involved much
migration of Europeans, nor, again, has it consisted in the mere establishment
of commercial stations; but, as was the case in India, it has brought about the
partition and subjection of vast tropical areas with immense populations.
Commerce rather than settlement has been the chief end in view, and
dependencies rather than colonies have been formed. Africa and the Pacific have
been the spheres of action. Such a process has many aspects of interest. The
story of the partition can be told; the attempts to utilise the couquered
territory explained; the policies of the various Powers towards the native
peoples indicated; but we cannot yet estimate the significance for Africa and
Europe of this new and close contact between them.
For
centuries, colonisation in Africa was confined to the coast. Though the
Portuguese traversed the continent from Angola and Mozambique, their
occupation of the interior was never effective, and even on the coast their
claims> were ill-defined. Africa possessed few attractions. It had been
drawn into the life of Europe only because it offered harbours' on the route to
India, a source of supply for the rough labour needed in
tropical
colonies, and a scanty trade in such commodities as palm-oil and gold-dust.
During the middle years of the nineteenth century, Prance was active and
ambitious in Africa. She established her power in Algeria, and, extending her
influence also along the Senegal to the source of the Niger, planned the union
of these dependencies in a great West Africa® empire. In South Africa England
had strong colonies; but, with a dominion vaster than public sentiment
approved, she refused to extend her dominion northwards where Dutch exiles were
planting new States. In her West African settlements she took little interest.
Their prosperity had departed with the abolition of the slave trade. They had
become little more than places of repentance, where something might be done to
atone for this wrongs of which they had been the scene. Gambia, Sierra Leone,
the Gold Coast, and Lagos, which was acquired in 1861, formed the group; from
all of which, save Sierra Leone, England trusted ultimately to withdraw. But
destiny was too strong for her. First the Danes (1850), and then the Dutch
(1871), handed over their forts, and thus left her for the time the only Power
established on the historic Guinea coast. As the trade in tropical commodities
increased, the English developed commercial interests on the Niger mouth, in
the Cameroons, and in Zanzibar, which interests German merchants came to share.
Meanwhile, a
generation of great explorers was opening the wp.y for the rapid occupation of
Africa. When Livingston a died in 1873, the chief problems of African geography
were near to their solution. Stanley, De Brazza, Thomson, and other bold
travellers, completed the work. The courses of the Niger, the Nile, and the
Congo were made known, and the commercial value of the interior regions of a
neglected continent was revealed. Signs of a new period dawning followed each
other quickly. The English changed their policy in South Africa; the French
increased their activity in West Africa. In 1879, King Leopold of Belgium
formed the Brussels International Association for the exploration of Central
Africa. This body divided itself into national committees, of which the Belgian
concentrated itself on the Congo and prepared the way for the Congo State. In
1882 England commenced that fateful intervention in Egypt which led on to a
protectorate, to the conquest of the Egyptian Sudan, and the control of the
upper waters of the Nile. Most significant pf all was the entrance of Germany
into the colonial field. In that country the prophets of colonisation had often
lifted up their voices, but the disciples had been few and scattered, until the
great impulse which brought her political unity concentrated in this field also
her divided energies. In 1878 the German African Society, and in 1882 the
German Colonial Society, were formed. The arguments of merchants with substantial
interests in Africa, the commercial needs of a great empire, the course of
events in Africa, at last convinced Bismarck that the time’had come for action.
In Damaraland and Namaqualand German missionaries
had taught,
and German merchants traded, for forty years; and, since Great Britain
hesitated to undertake the responsibilities of government outside of Walfisch
Bay, a German protectorate was in 1884 proclaimed over the remainder of the
coast. Togoland and the Cameroons also were immediately afterwards annexed; and
Great Britain, thus anticipated in several quarters, now hastened to extend her
sovereignty over the mouths of the Niger and the Oil rivers. It was in these
circumstances that in 1884 an international Conference assembled at Berlin to
consider certain African questions. The main interest was concentrated on the
Congo. The State which King Leopold had created received recogr ion, and the
Congo basin was declared open to the trade and navigation of all nations. All
the Powers concerned bound themselves to suppress the slave trade. They
declared occupation of territory to be valid only when effective, and they
defined a “ sphere of influence ” as an area within which some one Power
possessed a priority of claim. This preliminary agreement facilitated very
much the peaceful settlement of the subsequent territorial controversies.
Africa is not
divided into very clearly marked geographical areas, but the problems of
partition have had certain definite centres and are capable of being grouped.
West Africa, the western Sudan, and the Niger basin, formed one sphere of
operations; the Congo basin another; the upper Nile and the region of the great
lakes a third; Africa south of the Congo and the lakes a fourth. Outside of
these there remain Morocco, the Mediterranean littoral, Abyssinia, Somaliland,
and the surrounding islands. In West Africa, the French, extending along the
Senegal to the upper waters of the Niger, broke the power of the independent
native States, once part of a great Moslem empire in Central Africa, which
barred the way, and in 1881 established a protectorate over the left bank of
the upper Niger. They occupied points on the coast between the existing
settlements of the English and Portuguese, which they linked up with their
acquisitions in the interior. They overthrew the kingdom of Dahomey in 1892-4,
and in 1893 entered Timbuktu. Thus, by their earlier and superior energy, they
secured the upper Niger and much of the country within its great bend; while
closing the door on the expansion of the English and Portuguese settlements,
whose natural hinterland this would have been. On the lower Niger the course of
events was different. The English merchants established there united in 1879 to
form a single Company, which, after a severe struggle, defeated and bought out
a rival French institution. By Treaties with the Sultans of Sokoto and Gando
(1885), it secured access to the Benue and Lake Chad, which the Germans,
operating from the Cameroons, were preparing to close. In 1886 it received a
charter of incorporation as the Royal Niger Company, and undertook the task of
penetrating and administering an immense country. A triple contest had now
begun for the trade of the central Sudan. The French from the west, the English
up the Niger
and Benue, the Germans from the Cameroons, all pressed towards Lake Chad, where
they met, and, by a series of agreements between 1886 and 1906, divided their
spheres of influence. England left to Germany the area between the Cameroons
and British East Africa, which Germany divided with France, resigning to her
the territory east of the Shire and making her England’s neighbour in Darfur
and Bahr-el- Gazal. France thus gained the opportunity of extending her North
African empire to the Nile and the Congo; but, while she linked up the French
Congo with her other possessions, her advance to the Nile was frustrated by the
simultaneous approach of the English southwards from Egypt.
Thus has
North-western Africa been divided up. In the northern comer lies the untamed
empire of Morocco whose trade and seaports have proved a dangerous cause of
dispute amongst the Powers. Then Spain holds Tiris, and the English the river
Gambia, though its trade is now largely in French hands; while, between Cape
Roxo and the river Cajet, Portugal retains a last foothold on the coast which
her navigators first explored. Save for these two places,, the French hold all
the coast from Cape Blanco to the English colony of Sierra Leone, now an
important commercial emporium through which much trade with the interior
passes. Liberia, a negro republic, adjoins it, while on the historic Ivory
Coast the French again are established. The Gold Coast retains its ancient
name, though it has added a considerable hinterland. It still yields gold with
other more valuable products, but suffers from want of means of communication.
In Togoland, as in the Cameroons, the Germans have made considerable progress.
To the east lies the territory subjugated by the French in 1892-4, and east of
that the colony of Lagos, now included in Nigeria. In 1900, the Royal Niger
Company, after conquering the Sultan of Nupe in 1897, surrendered its political
privileges to the Crown; and the vast areas which it had governed, together
with Lagos and the Oil rivers, were formed into the two protectorates of
Northern and Southern Nigeria. Shortlived as it was, it takes a place amongst
the great commercial Companies which have extended and upheld imperial as well
as trading interests in distant and difficult lands, in the face of severe
rivalries and great financial difficulties. Enveloping Nigeria and the
Cameroons as well as the older and smaller settlements, and stretching from the
Mediterranean in the north and the Atlantic in the west to Darfur and the Congo
east and south, sweeps the great dominion of the French, to whom has fallen the
interior, immense in area though often of little value. In 1902, it was divided
into five administrative territories, with a Governor-General resident at
Dakkar.
Between the
Portuguese settlement of Mozambique in the south and Somaliland in the north,
the Sultan of Zanzibar ruled, having control of the coast and vague claims over
the interior. The commerce of his
1862-94]
661
kingdom was
largely in the hands of English and Indian merchants, and its administration
was in 1878, aiid again in 1881, offered to the British Government. In the
partition of Africa, his territories have been divided between England and
Germany. Though England and France had agreed in 1862 to recognise the
independence of Zanzibar, German emissaries in 1884, taking advantage of the
weakness of the Sultan’s position in the interior, negotiated treaties with
some of the inland tribes, and, in 1885, a German East Africa Company was
formed to develop the territory thus acquired. About the same time a British
East Africa Company was formed, and the two associations were soon in
competition. An Anglo-German agreement in 1886 made the first delimitation of
their respective spheres, and confined the Sultan’s territory to a narrow strip
of coast, of parts of which both Powers speedily obtained leases. A revolt of
the coast population in the German sphere, lasting for two years (1888-9),
resulted in the supersession of the Company by the imperial Government and the
purchase from the Sultan of the leased territory (1890). The claims which the
Germans had acquired on various parts of the coast and in the interior placed
them in a position to circumvent the English on the north and west, and to gain
access to the upper Nile. By an important agreement in 1890, which settled many
difficulties, their sphere was more expressly delimited. They surrendered
their claims on the coast between Witu and the river Jub. The northern boundary
of their territory was carried from the Victoria Nyanza to the Congo State,
excluding them from the upper Nile; and a line was drawn on the south from Lake
Nyassa to Lake Tanganyika dividing their possessions from British Central
Africa. The British Government declared a protectorate over the islands of
Pemba and Zanzibar, and the dominions of the Sultan were thus finally
partitioned.
While Germany
thus withdrew from the contest for the upper Nile, France and the Congo State
remained as rivals of Great Britain. In
1890, the British East Africa Company, which
had received a charter in 1888, asserted its authority in Uganda—a country
divided at the time by fierce feuds of a mixed religious and political
character. The resources of the Company proved unequal to the task, and two
years later it withdrew; but its action resulted in the proclamation of a
British protectorate in 1894. In the following year, the Company, which had
remained in control of the coast, sold its assets to the State, and the British
East Africa Protectorate was formed. To this Company the British owe their
position in East Africa, for, though it never prospered, it carried British
influence into the interior, and, when it failed, stronger hands took up its
work. England thus secured her position on the upper Nile, and, by leasing the
Lado enclave to King Leopold, enabled him also to attain an end which he had
sought since 1884. But the arrangement which had been made by the two Powers in
1894—that King Leopold should have the Bahr-el-Gazal basin and Great Britain a
strip
of territory
between the Albert Nyanza and Tanganyika, linking up her East and Central
African possessions—was rescinded, in consequence of the opposition of France
and Germany. The attempt of the French to reach the Nile at Fashoda was foiled
by the English conquest of the Sudan (1898).
The British
East African possessions are now organised in the three protectorates of
Uganda, East Africa, and Zanzibar. Experience has shown that East Africa is of
more commercial value than Uganda, and, owing to its altitude, capable in part
of European settlement. In 1895, the construction of a railway was begun from
Mombasa to the Victoria Nyanza, which it reached in 1902. The possession of
Uganda is of great political importance, since it both secures the command of
the upper Nile and offers to the spread of Islamic movements the barrier of a
Christian native State. The Germans have obtained a strong grip of their
territory, where considerable economic progress has been made; but its natural
advantages have not proved to be very great.
In the Congo basin,
an international and half-philanthropic undertaking issued in the formation of
an independent State, which, in the process of time, has become a Belgian
dependency. The labours of English and American explorers prepared the way for
its foundation; but the State itself was organised by King Leopold, whose
position as its sovereign was recognised by the Berlin Conference and the Great
Powers. By successful war and more successful diplomacy, he enlarged its
territories and raised its status. At the same time, he drew it into such c:ose
connexion with the Belgian kingdom, to which in 1889 he bequeathed it, that the
expectant heir at last demanded a mismanaged patrimony. Its history would be a
fine tale of European energy applied to the development of a tropical country,
had not the work been marred by a cruel spirit of exploitation gaining the
upper hand. The first ten years of its existence were a period of great
activity, during which a marvellous change came over the land. Splendid
pioneering work was done. Experienced missionaries and travellers explored the
great streams. The drink traffic, the slave trade, and cannibalism, were much
diminished. The ancient Arab dominion in Central Africa was overthrown after a
hard and costly struggle (1890-3). Routes of communication were opened, and
railway building commenced. A despotic ystem of government was organised with
energy and skill. Under the King were three Administrators-General, of whom the
Governor-General resided at Boma. At the same time, by successful negotiations
with England, France, and Portugal, the frontiers of the Congo State were
advanced to the Nile and rounded off on north and south.
So much
enterprise in exploration, expansion, and economic development soon involved
the Government in financial difficulties. The Belgian Parliament was on several
occasions invited to make loans to the King, in return for one of which, in
1890, it was agreed that the Congo State might be taken over at any time in the
succeeding ten years and six
1878-1908]
The Congo Free State.—Central Africa. 663
months—a
stipulation of which the Belgian Parliament did not think it worth while to
take advantage. In the same year the King obtained from the Great Powers a
relaxation of the Berlin Act permitting him to levy import duties. Gradually, a
new spirit asserted itself. The original ideals were neglected, in view of the
opportunities of profit which economic development brought and the necessities
which political progress created. Companies were founded to develop commerce,
and large areas were placed under their control. The Government claimed monopolies
in rubber and ivory—the staple commercial articles—and private trade dwindled
away in a region that was nominally open to the ienterprise of the world. At
the same time, the international character of the State disappeared and Belgian
officials displaced those of other nationalities.
.
But it was by
its treatment of the native peoples that the Congo State attained that evil
eminence which accumulating proof shows it to have well deserved. The system of
administration lent itself to abuses. Large powers were devolved upon men not
always adequately paid or capable of bearing their responsibilities. The
supervision of cheir conduct in the interior was impossible from places so
distant as Boma and Brussels. The native was wronged by the disregard of his
system of landowner ship and of the tribal rights to hunt and gather produce in
certain areas, as well as by a system of compulsory labour in the collection of
produce on behalf of the State, enforced by barbarous punishment and
responsible for continual and devastating warfare. In the large territories
placed under Companies chere was no adequate provision to prevent misgovemment,
and in these the abuses were worst. The Berlin Conference ventured on a
careless and unhappy experiment, when, without guarantee or security, it
committed a mighty population to the care of an autocrat. In 1896 the
Aborigines Protection Society took up the cause of the Congo native, and in
1904 a Congo Reform Association was founded; but diplomatic pressure produced
little change. Finally, the Belgian Parliament taking up the question, the
Congo State was in 1908 transferred to Belgium, and its rulers have thus become
responsible to the public opinion of a nation.
Africa south
of the Congo State and the great lakes has been divided between the Portuguese
operating from their historic settlements, the English advancing northwards
from Cape Colony, and the Germans. The ambition which the Portuguese cherished
to unite Angola and Mozambique in a transcontinental dominion was frustrated by
the activity of the English in Central Africa. Since 1878, English missionaries
and traders had established interests in the region between lakes Nyassa,
Tanganyika, and Bangweolo. Thk region the Portuguese endeavoured to secure, and
an important expedition was despatched under Major Serpa Pinto to extend their
claims in the Zambesi basin (1889). In
1891, tin Anglo-Portugueae agreement divided
the disputed territory.
664
South-west Africa.—The Italians in Africa. [1862-1904
Maslionaland
was secured to the British South Africa Company, and a British protectorate was
formed in Central Africa, a large part of which was in 1894 added to the
Company’s sphere of operations. The share which Portugal has thus obtained in
the partition of Africa, though not commensurate with her historical place in
its occupation, has been more than commensurate with her capacity to develop
its resources. Since the suppression of the slave trade, her colonies have not
flourished, and they are now a burden on her finances. German South-west Africa
has been already mentioned. The Anglo-German agreements of 1885 and 1890, and a
German-Portuguese agreement in 1886, fixed its boundaries, bringing it at one
point to the Zambesi. But the colony has proved expensive and disappointing.
Namaqualand is dry and barren, though Damaraland is capable of development and,
possibly, of European settlement. In 1904 a serious revolt of the Hottentots
and Hereros arrested their progress, and has only recently been suppressed
In the
eastern horn of Africa Italy marked out for herself a sphere of expansion.
Occupying first the bay of Assab in 1870, she secured her hold in 1882, and
extended her influence along the Red Sea coast to Obok, where the French had
established themselves in 1862. The dependency of Eretrea thus created proved
expensive; but the Italians intended to use it as a base from which to
penetrate Abyssinia. That mountain kingdom lay aloof and independent; In 1868
it had been involved in war with England. When the proud warrior king,
Theodore, offended by the action of the British Government, threw the British
consul and other European residents into prison, Abyssinia was invaded and
Magdala stormed; but no lasting intervention followed. Italy was less happy.
Near Adowah, in 1896, her forces suffered a disastrous defeat and her intention
was foiled. Meanwhile, on the other side of the horn she established a
protectorate over a large part of Somaliland, where she found a rival in Great
Britain, with whom the country was divided. The prosperity of British
Somaliland was disturbed by a destructive war, which broke out in 1903.
Such, in
brief outline, is the process by which Africa has been conquered and
partitioned. Africa has been an easy prey because of its divisions, its
military weakness, and its low civilisations. Though no one of the incoming
Powers has established its position without a struggle, only in Morocco and
Abyssinia has the native opposition proved really formidable. More serious
difficulties have been encountered in the settlement of rival claims. England
and Portugal came to the brink of war over Central Africa in 1891, as did
England and France over the Sudan in 1898, and France and Germany over Morocco
in 1904. The wide field of enterprise which has given scope to the ambitions of
every colonising Power, a spirit of reasonableness, and the definite principles
previously agreed upon for the decision of doubtful questions, have made it
pbssible hitherto to reach a peaceful settlement of all disputes. The political
divisions
European competition in Africa. 665
have not been
formed according to geographical divisions—no one of the great river basins
belongs exclusively to a single Power—but exhibit a strange diversity, being,
in each sphere, a resultant of the forces which historic position and, later,
energy and foresight gave to the competing Powers. England owes much to the
happy possession of points of access to the interior from south and north, much
also to the energy of private persons acting singly or through Companies, and
to the far-reaching conceptions of a few great leaders; as usual, she owes
least of any Power to the direct intervention of Government. France, too, has
expanded her rule from historic settlements, and owes her great dominion to the
imagination which outlined, and the steadfastness which pursued, a vast
ambition. The pertinacity with which the Germans discovered weak points in
existing claims, the swiftness of their action, their unyielding diplomacy,
have enabled them, while starting without advantages, to secure extensive
possessions. Belgium owes her share to the activity of her late sovereign, who
by benevolent profession rescued a mighty domain from the international scramble
to transform it into an estate for private gain. The Portuguese hold, much
diminished, the heritage bequeathed them from a distant past.
' The
necessity of making the tropical regions of the world contribute more largely
to its general economic needs has called forth the great colonising movement
which has subjected Africa, with its millions of inhabitants in their varying
stages of progress, to European Powers. The contact of higher and lower
civilisations, not simply in commerce but also in government, and in the
economic development of the conr tinent which has resulted, has necessarily
raised far-reaching issues. But the work of conquest and political organisation
is too recent for us to estimate its effects on the peoples of Africa, and that
of economic organisation is but beginning. One general end the Powers have had
in view—the suppression of the slave trade at its sources—now practically
achieved after a century of effort. Domestic slavery—an ancient African
institution—is a different problem, but it has been discouraged in lands under
direct British government. Tribal life continues and is deliberately preserved.
The transformation of the native economy has not been attempted. Whether
desirable or not, it is beyond the strength of any Government yet established
in tropical Africa; Economic development in most cases proceeds but slowly.
Governments are poor, for their subjects are poor; and the problem of adapting
taxation to the organisation of primitive peoples, though varying in difficulty,
has nowhere been found easy. The immense task of associating the native in the
development of the country on European lines requires so considerable a change
in his ideas and life that it may take a long time to carry out, save where it
is attempted by methods of compulsion which public opinion more and more
decisively condemns. Yet, without the aid of the native, the value of these
tropical regions to their European
conquerors is
much diminished. In Europe, the occupation of Africa has increased wealth and
trade, and cheapened some of the comforts of life; what it will mean for Africa
cannot yet be judged.
In
another part of the world, new ground has been broken. The many Archipelagos of
the Pacific, discovered by Spanish and Portuguese navigators in the sixteenth
century, remained, with the exception of the Philippines, neglected, until they
were rediscovered, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, by rival
French and English explorers who opened the Pacific once more to European
enterprise. But, though Australia and New Zealand were colonised, the
annexation of small groups of islands offered no advantage, and the Pacific
Islanders continued to live their life in peace or war as was their wont. In
time, however, missionaries penetrated into Hawaii, Fiji, the New Hebrides, and
elsewhere ; and, when Australia began the culture of cotton and sugar, labour
traders visited the Loyalties, the New Hebrides, the Solomons, and other
groups, to kidnap or hi,-e the natives for work on the plantations. In 1864,
France planted a penal settlement in New Caledonia, which she had annexed in
1853. German traders established themselves in Samoa, Fiji, the Caroline and
Marshall groups, as well as in some of the larger islands off the coast of New
Guinea. Thus, in various ways, the Pacific groups felt the touch of European
life, and, becoming the scene of its competing energies, were partitioned and
annexed. To this issue England led the way. In 1874, influenced by the abuses
connected with the labour traffic, which required regulation and oversight, the
commercial interests of Sydney, and the fear lest some other Power might
anticipate her, she annexed the Fiji Islands, whose Governor was in 1875
created High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, with jurisdiction over
British subjects in those parts.
,
In the
ensuing thirty years, the Pacific was mapped out into spheres of influence and
the smallest islands passed under the protection of some foreign Power. In
1878, the United States established a coaling and naval station at Pago Pago in
the Samoas. Both English and French were interested in the New Hebrides,
islands near both New Caledonia and Queensland; but for a time they were
content with a policy of mutual exclusion, which in 1887 gave way to joint
control. The French, meanwhile, turned to Polynesia and annexed the Windward
Islands of the Society group, to the intense irritation of New Zealand.
Australia was more concerned as to the intentions of Germany in New Guinea;
and, determined to forestall her, the Prime Minister of Queensland in J883
annexed the non-Dutch part of the island to the British empire. The mother
country repudiated the action. But Australian instinct had divined the truth;
and in 1884 Germany annexed parts of northern New Guinea, Great Britain
thereupon annexing the remainder. In 1885 and 1886, the three Powers with the
chief interests in the Pacific came to a
general
agreement as to their respective spheres of influence. Germany mapped out a
great area in Micronesia and western Melanesia in proximity to the historic
possessions of the Dutch, including the Carolines, Marshalls, part of the
Solomon group, and northern New Guinea. The French claimed a sphere of
influence in Melanesia, of which New Caledonia was the centre, and another in
Polynesia, with the Society Islands as its centre. The English sphere extended
from south-east Melanesia and Micronesia over Polynesia, almost enveloping the
French. Samoa and Tonga were for the time neutralised. In 1892 England annexed
the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, in 1893 the southern Solomons, and in 1898
Santa Cruz and the Swallow group. In this last year Hawaii ended the
vicissitudes of its political development and became a dependency of the United
States. In 1899 Germany bought the Spanish rights in the Carolines and Pelew,
and divided the Samoas, important for their harbours and situation, with the
United States. Great Britain relinquished her claims in Samoa, in return for a
greater freedom of action elsewhere, and proceeded to further annexations. She established
a protectorate over Tonga, the Manahiki and Cook Islands, which latter two
groups were in 1902 placed under the government of New Zealand. By a Convention
of 1906 her joint control with France in the New Hebrides was continued and
strengthened. Both Australia and New Zealand disclaimed responsibility for this
arrangement, on the ground that they had been allowed no real opportunity of
considering its terms.
For Great
Britain expansion in the Pacific was a natural result of the commanding position
which she held there; but her action was hastened by the competition of other
Powers and the strongly expressed apprehensions of her Australian colonies.
Other influences played a part. The protection of native peoples inspired the
annexation of several groups, as also did the interests of imperial
communications. A path of possessions across the ocean links up Canada and
Australia, helping to guard a great commercial and telegraphic highway. Germany
has sought to secure her commercial interests by political power, and to find
in the Pacific, as in Africa, that open sphere for her colonial ambition which
has existed scarcely anywhere else. The penal settlement of New Caledonia, commerce,
and the protection of the natives, have induced France to make considerable
efforts. In Hawaii and Tutuila America holds securities for her trade, and in
the Philippines fruits of the only war which affected this great partition.
The majority
of these islands are not, and perhaps will not be, extensively colonised by
white men. In veiy few cases has any effective government been established.
Annexation has generally meant the protection of white residents and, perhaps,
the maintenance of order. Of the English islands Fiji and Tonga are securely
held. Fiji is governed as a Crown colony, having since 1904 a Legislative
Council with an official majority, on which two natives represent their race.
Economic develop
ment has
proceeded apace, and the colony has a flourishing trade with Great Britain and
Australia. Coffee and cotton cultivation have given place to sugar and copra.
In Tonga a native King still reigns, though a British Resident ensures an
effective control of the Government. British New Guinea, now administered by
the Commonwealth, has also made progress. In the eastern part gold has been
discovered; but the west remains wild and unsafe. In the Solomons, two deputy
commissioners control the labour traffic and exercise the functions of
government along the coast. Of the French islands, New Caledonia remains a
penal settlement under the control of a Governor and Privy Council; the
Society group is governed from the beautiful island of Tahiti; the Marquesas
are under a Commissioner. As in Africa, Germany has devoted great energy to the
development of her possessions. Her protectorate of New Guinea includes her
share of that island as well as the Bismarck archipelago. On the island a
Company had control from 1885 to 1889, when it was bought out by the
Government. Hawaii has made considerable progress since its annexation by the
United States. In all the Pacific Islands the native population tends to
decline in numbers—whether from disease, alcohol, change of habits, or the loss
of freedom of spirit consequent on contact with the superior energies and
faculties of the white race—though the principle of preserving and not
destroying native institutions and tribal life has received general
recognition.
In the midst
of these new influences, yet not much affected by them, lie those groups of
large and small islands which form the Dutch East Indies, always the most
famous of Dutch colonies. Of recent years the reform of their colonial system
has occupied the chief attention of the Dutch, rather than any great extension
of their activity. They have modified their strictly commercial regime in
sympathy with the changing spirit of the age, and have taken up something of
the civilising role now assumed by colonising Powers. Abandoning the illiberal
policy which guarded their islands as a government preserve, they have opened
the door to private enterprise. At the same time, they have remodelled a fiscal
administration resting on government cultures and forced services and
substituted more modem forms of taxation. Before 1870, all the cultures had
been abolished except those of coffee and sugar. In the succeeding twenty
years, the transition from forced to free labour was made in sugar cultivation;
the coffee culture still remains. As the Government withdrew from business, so
it was able to enlarge its activities for the general good by developing an
educational system and building railways. The changed conditions have
encouraged economic progress. Individual enterprise and free labour have given
more elasticity and strength to industry, with the result that the trade of
Java has increased very much since 1870, though the sugar industry, here as
elsewhere, has been depressed by a period of low prices. The Internal
Possessions, Java with Madura, remain by far the most important of the group.
They
alone are
securely held and effectively governed. The process of penetrating the larger
islands has continued to be very slow. In 1899 the Dutch assumed direct control
of western New Guinea, which they had previously ruled through the Sultan of
Tidor. In Celebes only two .Residencies, or provincial Governments, have been
established, and the same number in Borneo, where Dutch rule is for the most
part nominal. Some districts of Sumatra are effectively occupied; but the
island is very little developed and its products are chiefly forest products. The
Government remains highly centralised, and still endeavours to make these
colonies what they have always been, save under exceptional circumstances—a
source of profit to the mother country. Unhappily, a long war with Achin, which
began in 1873 and continued for thirty years, has swallowed up recent
surpluses.
The
acquisition of a part of Borneo by Great Britain forms a singular story even in
the varied annals of her colonial history. When, in 1833, the China trade was
opened freely to British merchants, James Brooke secured a grant of land in
Sarawak from the Sultan of Brunei, who had maintained his independence of the
Dutch. Winning the confidence of the natives, he was offered and accepted in
1841 the Government of Sarawak, to which five years later Great Britain
attached the island of Labuan, ceded to her by the Sultan as a naval station.
Dignified, conciliatory, and sagacious, he was able to intervene between the
two races inhabiting his kingdom, Malays and Dyaks, oppressors and oppressed,
and, while guarding the privileges of the one, to secure the rights of the
other. The complete success with which he solved the problem of governing these
Asiatic peoples was witnessed in their devotion to him and his successors, as
well as in the order and prosperity of this part of the island. In the course
of time, another British subject acquired rights in the neighbouring territory
of North Borneo, east of the river Kimanis (1878); and, in 1881, the British
North Borneo Company was chartered. This Company, the first of the great modem
chartered Companies, has been rather an administrative than a commercial body;
and subsidiary Companies have been formed to carry on trade and agriculture. In
1888, its territory, together with Sarawak and Brunei, were placed under British
protection. The Governor is appointed by a Court of Directors and approved by
the Secretary of State; like the Rajah of Sarawak, he is advised by a
Legislative Council of European officials and native chiefs. The administration
of Brunei was, in 1906, surrendered by the Sultan to the Resident.
Such in its
brief outline is the story of recent colonisation. The main course of the work
accomplished has been directed by young communities controlling their own
life. Yet, from any point of view, the whole development must be regarded as a
marvellous manifestation of European energy. Europe has supplied the stream of
emigrants and
capital
without which the new lands could not have achieved their rapid progress; and
't has continued, in the words of Adam Smith, to breed and form men capable of
laying the foundations of new States. The explorers* traders, and governors of
recent times have paralleled the feats of their predecessors. It is possible
that their efforts will not bear equal fruit in the birth of European societies
in other continents, since many of the lands occupied have proved unsuitable in
climate to become the homes of white races. In some new countries, moreover,
the period of beginnings and experiment is not yet past, and it remains for the
future to declare the form which their colonisation will take. But, if in
certain directions the efforts of the colony-builder have been yielding a
diminishing return, the substantial result remains, that almost all the vacant
lands and weaker races of the world have passed under the control of Europe
-and been drawn into its economic and political life. The transformation in
many cases of a commercial connexion into political sovereignty, and the consequent
assumption of governing responsibilities over millions of people, constitute a
change fraught with so great significance that its nfluence will only slowly be
worked out.
The great
power and prestige of Germany, and the exertions which she has put forth to
increase her commerce and influence in distant parts of the world* give to her
colonial experiments and policy a singular importance. Her expanding population
and industries have compelled her to seek outlets for her trade and people in
oversea possessions. But her struggle for unity delayed so long her entry into
the colonial field that she has failed to acquire lands where white communities
can be formed; and her recent acquisitions have been for the most part trading
and plantation settlements whence raw materials to feed her industries can be
supplied. Want of experience in dealing with primitive peoples has involved her
in frequent and expensive wars; but, with conspicuous’ energy and system, she
has applied herself to master the problems of colonisation and to develop the
territories she has occupied. Her great strength, power of organisation, and
willingness to make sacrifices to achieve her purposes, mark her determined
entry into the colonial field as one of the most piegnant developments of
recent years.
Of less
importance, but of great historic interest, has been the virtual withdrawal of
one of the oldest colonising Powers. The enduring work of Spain was done in the
earlier centuries of modem colonial history. After the loss of her great empire
her energies slackened, though her name and power lingered on in the West
Indies and the Philippine archipelago. Here also, towards the end of the
nineteenth century, she surrendered her place to an Anglo-Saxon Power of
unresting activity and bold ideals. It is possible now to look back upon her
work without prejudice. The first of European people? to plant colonies in
distant lands, she created and maintained her own policy in government and
economics. Her exclusive principles never commended themselves
altogether to
other Powers, and her system was not copied; but it will be admitted that she
knew how to plant her civilisation wherever she held sway, and to secure her
authority even when her strength and maritime greatness declined. Her dominion
lasted long and died hard; today, in the two continents where it existed,
several young nations own her their parent.
The last word
may be of the British empire. The experience of the past has not been wasted on
the mother country; and, with more fortune and greater wisdom, she has been
steering through the difficult waters in which she formerly made shipwreck. Her
colonial policy has been inspired by an understanding and a wise recognition of
facts. Settlers in new countries form societies; such societies, as their
strength grows, desire the control of their own life; common interests draw contiguous
societies together, and union creates and fosters the sense of nationality.
Perceiving the course of this development, the mother country has continually
readjusted the ties that bound her to her colonies, so that they might be
appropriate to the stage of growth which each colony had reached. Wherever
possible, she has conceded to them the full control of their own affairs; and
she has encouraged contiguous colonies to unite, so that in dimensions,
resources, population, and economic strength, the indispensable material
foundations of a self- governing State could be formed. Thus, an issue which
once burst upon her with the suddenness of accident and disaster, rudely
breaking the thread of her work and transforming its political significance,
has since been sought and is in course of achievement, though in a manner that
gives a greater freedom to natural processes of growth and saves the continuity
and completeness of the work of the race, at once creating nations and retaining
them in the unity of a great State. Slowly the British empire is shaping itself
into a league of Anglo-Saxon peoples, holding under its sway vast tropical
dependencies as well as many small communities of mixed race. Strong bonds of
common loyalty, race, and history, as well as the need of cooperation for
defence, unite the white peoples. But the course of progress has carried the
empire to an unfamiliar point in political development. Loose and elastic in
its structure, it may well take a new shape under the influence of external
pressure, political and economic.
CHAPTER
XXL THE REPUBLICS OF LATIN AMERICA.
HISTORICAL
SKETCH TO 1896.
The tendency of modem developments in Latin America
has been indicated elsewhere; nor is it possible to narrate here the internal
history of all these republics. Four of them demand separate treatment as
possessing more distinct and significant histories: namely, the United States
of Brazil, the United States of Mexico, the Argentine Confederation, and the
Republic of Chile. The other countries may be very briefly treated, mainly in
two groups: first, the group of five small States lying between Mexico and the
Isthmus; secondly, the group of four extensive republics in tropical South
America.
The five
States of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, San Salvador, and Costa Rica, assumed
upon emancipation the novel and inappropriate name of Central America, in order
to suggest some geographical pretext for separation from Mexico. These States,
owing to their situation near the shortest transcontinental routes, are
prominent in the external relations of Latin America; but it would be useless
to trace their relations with one another or their internal history, half
tragical, half farcical, but always disorderly, except in Costa Rica, which has
preserved a long tranquillity. Occasional and partial efforts towards a
federation have hitherto been foiled by separatist tendencies, acting through a
long and wearisome series of wars between Governments, besides civil wars and
revolutions.
The vast
tropical region of South America, intersected by the westward and southward
curve of the Andes, is divided between four republics —Venezuela, Colombia,
Ecuador, and Peru—which, though not homogeneous in character, may be grouped
together in a historical summary. Bolivia, a fifth tropical State, can hardly
be included in any historical classification, consisting largely as it does of
a loose collection of Indian tribes, with a Government of European origin in
the capital; thus, the history of Bolivia need only be touched in regard to its
external relations, which have crushed it into remote interior forests and
mountains and excluded it from direct access to the sea. The other four
tropical
1840-94]
The republics of northern South America. 673
republics
have not yet emerged from the phase of internal struggles which followed on
emancipation—struggles of personal ambition, of contests between centripetal
and centrifugal forces, between progress and reaction, between clericalism and
liberalism, between the rights of autocratic presidents to rule and the right
of their subjects to revolt. The equilibrium, more or less stable, which has
perhaps been reached in the temperate regions further south, has here been
retarded by the large survival of indigenous Indians, by the large intermixture
of negro elements, and by the absence of any considerable European immigration.
Bolivar denounced the ignorance of his countrymen in words not quite inapplicable
today:—“ The majority are mestizos, rmdatos, Indians, and negroes: an ignorant
people is a blunt instrument for its own destruction—to it liberty means
licence, patriotism means disloyalty, and justice means vengeance.” The desire
of every educated or half-educated man to live at the expense of the State is a
fruitful source of disorder; for the educated classes lead the ignorant to
civil war, ostensibly for the sake of principle, but, in fact, largely for
place and profit. The intervals between these revolutionary episodes have
usually been periods of autocracy, more or less complete; and the character of
the Government has been in fact the character of the reding autocrat. The
merits of these personal administrations are difficult to estimate; but there
is probably justice in the general opinion that the man who, by success in
civil war, brings about a period of peace has served his country well, if only
his government is moderately free from tyranny and selfishness. Thus Ramon
Castilla, who in 1843, by victory in war, gave to Peru peace under his own
government and generally guided affairs down to 1862, may, perhaps, be justly
regarded as the best of Peruvian statesmen. Even Guzm&n Blanco, who
dominated Venezuela for twenty years (1870-89), and seems a perfect type of
farcical immorality in politics, gave to his country peace and the opportunity
of economic progress.
The written
Constitutions of these republics are models of constitutional law, based upon
European and North American experience; and some real constitutional efforts
may be traced from about the middle of the nineteenth century. One symptom of
these efforts appears in the more definite adoption of a federal form of
government by New Granada and Venezuela. New Granada in 1863 assumed the name
“United States of Colombia”; but, during the conservative and clerical
autocracy of Nunez (1884-94), federal government was suspended.
One strange
effort at reaction deserves mention. Garcia Moreno, who was President of
Ecuador from 1864 to 1869, and then, after an interval of disorder, ruled again
down to his assassination in 1875, imposed upon the country a system of extreme
ultramontane clericalism. He surrendered to the Church all ecclesiastical
patronage, declared papal bulls to be valid without the “pass” of the
Government, and forbade heretical worship. In fact, he induced the reluctant
Pius IX to
accept a
supremacy over the republic of Ecuador such as the Papacy had scarcely
possessed over any European monarchy in the Middle Ages.
The little
State of Paraguay, chiefly inhabited by Guarani Indians speaking their own
language, has a terrible history. Its first dictator, Francia (1815-40), set
the example of that brutal and capricious tyranny which was afterwards often
imitated elsewhere. The third dictator, Francisco Lopez (1857-70), by his
insane schemes of empire, ruined his country. In 1865 he invaded both Brazilian
and Argentine territory; This drew upon him the combined attack of his three
neighbours, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay: and the population of Paraguay was
almost wiped out in five years of war (1865-70), which only ended with his
death.
In Brazil,
the Emperor Dom Pedro II was declared to be of age in 1840. The following
decade was a period of pacification and slow progress, introducing forty years
(1850-89) of internal order and peace, unparalleled in South American history,
and accompanied by a great advance in economic prosperity. This peace and
progress were largely due to the character of the Emperor himself, a kindly and
slightly eccentric philosopher, devoted to the service of his people, careless
of royal state, but shrewd enough in maintaining the monarchy, whose ultimate
fate he foresaw. He used to call himself the best republican in his dominions,
and might fairly have called himself the most republican ruler in South
America. After some early and futile attempts to use English parliamentary
methods, he exercised a paternal autocracy over subjects to be guided and
controlled like children. The people were generally indifferent to forms of
government; Ministers, deputies, and officials owed their positions to the
Emperor, and representative institutions had no more essential reality than in
the neighbouring republics. His foreign policy with regard to the river Plate
was prudent and successful: Brazilian intervention led the way to the fall of
Rosas in 1852, and definitely reestablished the threatened independence of
Uruguay. The Paraguayan War (1865-70) could hardly have been avoided, but the
chief burden fell upon Brazil; whereas Argentina won the chief benefits from
the opening of the river and the disappearance of a menacing despotism in the
interior. Since that time the States touching the Atlantic have abstained from
international wars, though they have not always observed strict neutrality in
regard to the internal disputes of their neighbours.
The last
twenty years (1870-89) of Dom Pedro’s reign comprise two movements—the
agitation against slavery, and the growth of republicanism. In 1850 the slave
trade was abolished; in 1871 it was decreed that all children thenceforth bom
should be free; between 1850 and 1887 the number of slaves fell from 2,500,000
to 750,000. But
from 1884,
the question of complete abolition agitated the country. Finally, during the
Emperor’s absence in Europe, the Regent, his daughter Isabel, forced through
Parliament in 1887 a Bill for immediate abolition. The Emperor’s fall was
prepared by this grant of liberty to all his subjects and also by widespread
apprehensions concerning the supposed absolutist and clerical tendencies of the
heiress apparent, Isabel, and her husband, the Comte d’Eu. Republican doctrines
had been gathering strength for a generation; the slaveowners were bitterly
hostile to the Court; the people felt no enthusiasm for monarchy; and now Dom
Pedro’s failing health and deliberate neglect of precaution provided the
opportunity for bloodless revolution. In 1889 a military conspiracy deposed the
Emperor.
The country
accepted with indifference the change from hereditary monarchy to military
dictatorship. A federal Constitution was proclaimed for the “United States of
Brazil”; but, in fact, General Fonseca, the leader of the recent mutiny, ruled
as he chose, until he was induced, by revolt in the south and by the
disaffection of the fleet, to resign in favour of the Vice-President, General
Peixoto. The rigorous despotism of Peixoto provoked in 1893 the revolt of the
Gauchos of Rio Grande do Sul and also of the fleet stationed at the capital.
Although the insurgents disavowed royalist designs, there was obvious
probability of an alliance between royalism and insurrection.
For six
months, from September, 1893, the vast harbour of Rio was the scene of civil
war. Warships of every maritime nation were present to protect their trade,
and, in January, 1894, one of their commanders was at length provoked to take
action by an attempt of the insurgents to prevent merchant-ships from
approaching the custom-house. The insurgents having fired on three United
States merchant-ships, the United States squadron, after ineffective
remonstrance, followed by due warning to the insurgent admiral, cleared for
action, and moved up to protect their merchant-ships. This menace sufficed to
achieve its object. Six weeks later, the insurgent admiral, faced by
overwhelming forces, took refuge with his men on board Portuguese warships,
whose commander refused to give up the refugees. Peixoto, who had ruled by
terrorism during war, was inexorable after victory. Numbers perished by
sentence of Court-martial, and greater numbers were simply killed by soldiers,
often after torture. Civil war, marked by indescribable atrocities on both
sides, still dragged on in Rio Grande and was not finally closed till October,
1895.
Meantime
Peixoto, at the close of his term of office in November, 1894, retired into
private life and died six months later. It may be argued that he acted
throughout with the simplicity of a soldier, and that, apart from his
sanguinary methods, his stem maintenance of authority, even in defiance of law,
was necessary to the subsequent peace and order of the country. Since his time,
Presidents have been elected
676
Meanco. Juarez. European intervention. [1835-95
under
official influence and have ruled under republican forms; but personal
authority is mitigated by the vast size of the country, and by the
semi-independence of the provinces.
A dispute
with the Argentine Republic concerning the frontier in Misiones was settled in
favour of Brazil in 1895 by the arbitration of the President of the United
States. In a country comprising so vast a tropical region, not completely settled
or even completely explored, other questions have naturally arisen concerning
frontiers and even concerning authority over parts of its recog eed territory.
Mexico
between 1835 and 1848 lost more than half of her territory to the United
States; the conquest of Texas, California, and New Mexico, has been related
elsewhere. In 1838-9 occurred the incident known as the “ pastry war,” when a
French squadron occupied Vera Cruz to claim compensation for injured French
citizens, among them a baker whose shop had been looted. British mediation was
offered, and a strong British squadron watched the proceedings of the French,
who eventually accepted a settlement and evacuated the port.
Benito
Ju&rez, a pure-blooded Indian and a man of disinterested character and high
capacity, was President from 1857 to his death in
1872, and laboured through a period first of
civil war and then of foreign invasion to extricate the country from the vortex
of revolutions and pronunciamentos. From 1855 he pursued the “war .of reform,”
improving the police and the educational system, abolishing the fueros or
privileges of clerical and military Courts, depriving the Church of its lands
and—with limited exceptions—of the power to hold land, disqualifying the clergy
for office, suppressing convents, separating Church from State, and finally, in
1861, expelling the Papal Nuncio and five Bishops.
In 1861, in
order to avert a joint French, British, and Spanish expedition against Mexico,
Seward proposed that the United States should undertake to pay the interest on
the Mexican debt, in return for a mortgage on a large part of the Mexican
national property. This proposal aroused apprehension in Europe and was allowed
to drop. The three European Powers then invited the United States to joint action
in coercing Mexico to fulfil her financial obligations and protect foreign
residents. The invitation was declined; and in January, 1862, Vera Cruz was
occupied by 8500 Spanish and French troops with 700 British marines. The French
and Spaniards advanced into the interior, negotiations meantime proceeding
with:the Mexican Government; but Great Britain and Spain soon withdrew, owing
to ulterior French designs concerning the internal affairs of Mexico. The
fortunes of the French and of the Emperor Maximilian in Mexico and the
intervention of the United States are related in a previous volume of this
History. Porfirio Diaz, in a published account of his political life, couples
the
two foreign
invasions of Mexico, speaking of la guerre d1emancipation et
celles des invasions nord-Jmericaine et Jranqaise. The later external
difficulties of Mexico have chiefly been questions with the United States about
acts of violence committed on both sides of the frontier. In 1869, a mixed
commission met to adjust these claims and finished its work, after many
interruptions, in 1876. Meanwhile, the complaints of the United States
continued; in 1877, United States troops crossed the frontier, and the two
republics were on the verge of war. In 1882 it was agreed that troops of either
State might cross the frontier to pursue Indians.
Porfirio
Diaz, who has practically ruled Mexico since 1877, served as a youth against
the invasion of 1847. Prom 1852 to 1861 he served Ju&rez with distinction
in civil war; then, after an interval of political life, he raised troops
against Maximilian, and commanded the Republican army which recovered the
capital. In 1871 he led or joined a revolt against Ju&rez, On the death of
Ju&rez in 1872, Diaz “pronounced” against his successor, and by the usual
mode of successful rebellion became the most prominent and most indispensable
man in the country. In 1877 he became President; for four years (1881-5) he
held a subordinate post; but, since 1885, he has on each occasion been
reelected President. He at once completed the anti-clerical work of Ju&rez
by abolishing nunneries. Then, with stem but beneficent resolution, he closed
the long era of rebellions and revolutions, and suppressed disorder by means of
an improved police, inflicting summary retribution without excessive recourse
to tribunals. In fact, his methods of thwarting attacks on his power have not
differed from those employed by other American autocrats. The difference lies
in character and intention, and of him it may be said, as Bacon said of Henry
VII, that “he drew blood, as physicians do, rather to save life than to spill
it.” Thus, though disorder and revolt are repressed by terror, his authority
rests not upon terror, but upon a general loyalty which seems to approach
enthusiasm. Whether he is training the heterogeneous population, largely Indian
and half-caste, for a more constitutional system, or whether an autocratic
successor will have to be found, is a matter for conjecture. •
Chile has a
distinct history. Her civil wars have been short, definite in aim, and
conclusive in results. The Constitution of 1833 has been more than a mere form,
although parliamentary institutions have generally been used and guided by an
official oligarchy surrounding the President. After the Liberal insurrections
of 1851 and 1858, this system was modified in a constitutional direction. Then
came the dispute with Bolivia and Peru; but the reform and anti-clerical
movement was growing and achieved some triumphs after the Peace of 1883. At
last, in 1886, a coalition of Liberal groups raised to the Presidency a
vigorous and capable reformer, Jose Manuel Balmaceda, who (ten years
678
[l843—91
earlier) had
formulated a programme of electoral liberty, municipal and local independence,
and separation of Church from State. Balmaceda proceeded to use his brief
opportunity, abandoning part of this progressive programme and exerting all
the influence of the presidency to achieve the rest, striving at the same time
to weld all the Liberal groups into a party united for his support. The result
was a rapid succession of Liberal Cabinets of various complexions, a hostile
majority in Congress, an attempt to rule through irresponsible Ministers, and,
finally, a split between President and Parliament. Balmaceda observed the
letter of the law down to January 5,1891. Then came an immediate pretext for
the revolt which had been long prepared: Congress having refused to vote
supply, the President decreed the continuance of taxation. Next day the fleet
revolted in support of the Chambers against the President. For six months there
was serious fighting, with much bloodshed ; the war ended with the victory of
Congress, followed by the resignation and suicide of Balmaceda.
Public
attention in Europe justly regarded this civil war with unusual interest. The
sincerity and public spirit of Balmaceda gave dignity to the contest, and, on
the other hand, the struggle was a real war between Congress and President,
between an oligarchical parliamentary system and a ruler attempting to extend
democracy through autocracy/ Profound principles, as well as personal
ambitions, were at stake. The result has been that Chile continues to be the
most aristocratic and the most tranquil of South American States, possessing a
Congress which is a real power and maintaining clearer social distinctions than
her neighbours. There has been little European immigration, and the manual
labour of the country is done by Chilian peasants, largely of half-Indian
origin; but the educated classes received a strong infusion of European blood
both before and during the struggle for emancipation, and these classes have
aimed, with some success, at a cultured European character, both social and
political.
The external
relations of Chile are largely concerned with Peru. In 1863 a Spanish squadron,
claiming reparation for injured Spaniards in Peru, occupied the Chincha
Islands. Peru, after some negotiations and an internal revolution, made an
offensive alliance with Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador against Spain. The Spanish
squadron, having suffered some losses, bombarded the defenceless Chilian port
of Valparaiso, but failed in an attack upon Callao. Hostilities then ended;
and, some years later, peace was formally concluded by Spain, first with Peru,
and then with Chile.
The War with
Spain closed for a time the dispute in progress, since 1843, between Chile and
Bolivia concerning their frontier in the desert of Atacama, which had proved
valuable from its deposits of guano and nitrate. Conventions, concluded in 1866
and 1874, were successively broken by Bolivia, acting with the secret support
of Peru.
Finally; in
1879, the outbreak of hostilities between Chile and Bolivia led to a Chilian
declaration of war against Peru; This war, which marks an epoch in the use of
ironclad ships, opened with a decisive naval victory for the Chilians, followed
up by the invasion of Peru. At a conference held in October, 1880, through the
good offices of the United States, Peru rejected the Chilian terms. In January,
1881, Chilian troops entered Lima; but, as in 1821, Peruvian resistance
continued in the interior after the fall of the capital and the collapse of
regular government; and it was not until October, 1883, that an improvised
Peruvian Administration submitted to the demands of the conquerors. By the
Peace of Ancon the province of Tarapacd was ceded to Chile, and parts of two
other provinces were ceded provisionally for ten years, their ultimate destiny
to depend on a plebiscite of the inhabitants. These districts have since
remained in Chilian hands. The War left Peru in a state of collapse. Bolivia
was obliged to accept an arrangement which left her land-locked, Chile
occupying her Pacific coast.
An old
question concerning the Argentino-Chilian boundary in Tierra del Fuego and the
southern end of the Continent was settled, after ten years of dispute, by the
Treaty of 1881, which granted to Chile both shores of Magellan Straits, the
control of which passage is, in Chilian opinion, hardly less essential to the
national security of Chile than is the control of the Isthmus to the United
States; it was stipulated that the Straits should never be fortified and should
always be open to ships of all nations. The same Treaty declared that,
northwards from latitude 52°, the boundary should “ pass along the highest
crests of the Cordillera which divide the waters.” This settlement was
inconclusive, since the watershed does not coincide with the highest peaks.
Chile claimed the watershedj which in Patagonia lies far east of the peaks; Argentina
claimed the highest peaks, some of which stand upon Pacific islands. After ten
years of exploration and argument, the two republics were on the verge of war
in 1895. Again, in 1898j war was imminent owing to a third question} concerning
the boundary in the Puno or plateau of Atacama. But the moderation of the two
Presidents, Boca and Errazuriz, led to arbitration. The Atacama question was
settled by a tribunal sitting in Buenos Aires, consisting of a Chilian, an
Argentine, and Buchanan, United States Minister in Buenos Aires. Buchanan
solved the difficulty promptly by dividing the disputed line into sections,
proposing that a vote should be taken upon each section, and then ensuring a
majority upon each section by his own vote. The main question was submitted to
the sovereign of Great Britain; but, as the arbitration tribunal in London was
concluding its labours in 1901, both republics resumed warlike preparations.
British diplomacy, did its utmost to calm animosity* and King Edward VII
intimated that, unless these preparations ceased, he must withdraw from the
arbitration. The award was given in 1902 and was peaceably accepted.
680 Rosas in Argentina. Uruguay. [1828-45
In Argentina,
the dictator Rosas (1833-52), reigning through terror in Buenos Aires,
dominated the other provinces, claimed ineffectively authority over Paraguay,
and, after 1840, strove to reduce to his authority the republic of Uruguay,
which had been declared independent by the Argentino-Brazilian Treaty of 1828,
concluded through British mediation. These efforts have a double importance:
in the first place, they mark the failure of an attempt resembling in some ways
(though with differences of motive and character) Bolivar’s design to include
in one federation a vast group of provinces possessing a certain geographical
or historical unity; in the second place, they constitute a most significant
phase in the relations of Latin America with the maritime nations of Europe and
with the United States.
In 1838, a
French squadron, claiming reparation for the losses of French citizens,
blockaded the Argentine coast; an offer of the United States Minister in Buenos
Aires to negotiate a pacification was declined in turn by both sides; hut in
1840 France, occupied with the Egyptian crisis, withdrew the blockade and
concluded with the Argentine Confederation a Treaty which bound that
Confederation to recognise the independence of Uruguay, as established by the
Treaty of 1828. Thus, in 1840, France, in a manner, pledged herself to support
Uruguayan independence, as Great Britain had done in 1828. Meanwhile, Oribe,
President of Uruguay, having been defeated and replaced in the Presidency by
Rivera, a pastoral chief of the old Gaucho type, took refuge with Rosas. Brazil
supported Rivera as representing Uruguayan independence, while Rosas, refusing
a proffered Anglo-French mediation, proceeded to use the fugitive Oribe as an
instrument for the subjection of Uruguay. In December, 1842, Oribe, at the head
of an Argentine army, acting professedly as legal President of Uruguay, but in
fact as a militaiy lieutenant of Rosas, defeated Rivera, occupied almost all
Uruguay except the capital, and began the nine years’ siege of Montevideo^
which was defended by a “foreign legion” of Frenchmen and Italians, organised
by French naval officers. The French and British Ministers in Buenos Aires
demanded in vain of Rosas the cessation of war.
In November,
1843, Rosas declared a “modified blockade” of Montevideo, a confused
arrangement, easily evaded; but, in January, 1845, he decreed a “rigorous
blockade,” which the French Admiral refused to recognise. Thereupon, the United
States naval commander, Prendergast, declined to rccognise the blockade, unless
equally enforced against all nations, whereas Brent, the United States charge
d’affaires in Buenos Aires, recognised it. Two years later, George Bancroft, as
Secretary of the United States Navy Board, reprimanded Prendergast for his
refusal to recognise the blockade. Prendergast, in his apology, professed
himself unable to understand the error of claiming for his own countrymen the
exemption which had been claimed for Frenchmen, adding that, at any rate, he
had duly recognised the later Anglo-French blockade.
In April,
1845, Gore Ouseley and Baron Deffaudis reached Buenos Aires upon a joint
Anglo-French mission to effect a pacification, on the ground that Great Britain
and France were pledged by the Treaties of 1828 and 1840 to maintain Uruguayan
independence. This mission demanded the recognition of Uruguayan independence, the
raising of the blockade of Montevideo, an amnesty to Argentine refugees and (as
an immediate preliminary) the withdrawal of Argentine troops from Uruguay. The
proffered mediation of Brent, United States charge d’affaires, was declined by
Ouseley. In July Rosas’ Foreign Minister, being pressed for cessation of
hostilities, refused to withdraw the troops, and demanded, as a preliminary,
the participation of Brent in the negotiations, and the recognition of the
blockade. Thereupon, Ouseley and Deffaudis withdrew to Montevideo. On July 22,
the English and French Admirals seized off Montevideo the Argentine fleet (part
of which was added to a defensive Uruguayan flotilla commanded by Garibaldi);
and, in September, they declared a blockade of the province of Buenos Aires.
Brent, on the part of the United States, refused to recognise this blockade;
but Prendergast, the United States naval commander, recognised it as valid. In
November an Anglo-French squadron forced, with some loss, the passage of Punto
Obligado, a fort commanding the mouth of the Parand, convoyed a merchant fleet
up the river, and aided insurgents against Rosas in Corrientes.
The
Anglo-French blockade of Buenos Aires had lasted twenty months —Oribe,
meanwhile, continuing the siege of Montevideo—when, in May, 1847, Lord Howden
and Baron Walewski arrived on a second Anglo- French mission of pacification.
The United States Minister in Buenos Aires gave a banquet in their honour and
proposed the toast of speedy • success to their mission. An armistice arranged
by Howden and Walewski was refused by the Montevidean Government; whereupon
Howden raised the blockade of Buenos Aires, so far as England was concerned,
and withdrew from all further intervention, on the ground that the Monte-
videans were “entirely controlled by a foreign garrison,” meaning the French
legion. The French blockade still continued; but the United States Minister at
Rio now wrote to Rosas that Great Britain, Brazil, and the United States ought
to cooperate against France, since the armed mediation was unjust and irregular
both in policy and in manner.
In April,
1848, a third Anglo-French mission of pacification under Gore and Baron Gros
also failed; but, in June, 1848, the French in turn raised their blockade of
the Argentine coast, only maintaining the blockade of the Uruguayan ports
occupied by Oribe. In 1849, Great Britain concluded a treaty of peace with the
Argentine Confederation, which undertook to withdraw the Argentine troops from
Uruguay so soon as the French Government should disarm the foreign legion
defending Montevideo, evacuate both republics, make a treaty of peace and
abandon its hostile attitude. Great Britain in turn recognised the
Parand and
Uruguay rivers as interior waters. Thus Great Britain dissociated herself from
France, recognising the right of Rosas to take his own course in the river
Plate, and ceased to consider the struggle as a genuine international war.
Meanwhile,
general hatred was preparing the fall of Rosas (all the independent politicians
and all the high-spirited youth being in exile at Montevideo); but the
immediate cause of his fell was the jealousy of certain provincial Governors,
formerly his own creatures. In 1846, Urquiza, Governor of Entre Rios, revolted,
allying himself with Brazil and Montevideo. In 1851, in conjunction with a
Brazilian army, he defeated Oribe in Uruguay. Then, supported by the Brazilian
fleet, he led
24,000 men (the largest army hitherto assembled in
South America) igainst Rosas; who, deserted by half his troops, was beaten at
Monte Taseros and spent the remaining five-and-twenty years of his life farming
in England.
In December,
1852, President Fillmore, in his message to Congress, stated that, in
compliance with the invitation of France and England, negotiations were in progress
for a treaty between the United States and the States of the River Plate*
Finally, in July, 1853, by identical Treaties signed simultaneously with France
and England, the Argentine Republic granted, “ of its sovereign rights,” the
free navigation of the rivers Parand and Uruguay to the ships of all nations. A
fortnight later, a Treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation was signed
with the United States without any mention of the freedom of river navigation,
which had already been secured for all the world by Anglo-French force and
diplomacy.
This long
episode, extending from the Treaty of 1828 to those of 1853, but really
introduced by the diplomatic activities of Castlereagh * and Canning, is most
significant in regard to the external relations of Latin America. England and
France played in the river Plate the part taken by the concert of Europe in the
Levant. The attitude of the United States was so indeterminate that their
envoys on the spot could not use their opportunities: their diplomatic representative
and their naval commander took exactly opposite action in 1845, and their
Government did not decide between them for two years. The United States
Government, indeed, in one despatch to its envoy, hinted at the necessity of
opposing any permanent violation of American soil; But its agent heartily
welcomed Anglo-French efforts at pacification; and, when England desisted and
declared that Montevidean resistance was the work of France, the United States
Minister at Rio proposed that the United States should join with Brazil and
Great Britain to thwart France and play the part of “ European Concert.” Then
Brazil, a State monarchical but American, having an immediate interest and an
undoubted right of intervention, concluded the task which had been dropped by
Great Britain and France. Finally, the United States Government in 1852-3,
with a public
acknowledgment of gratitude, followed the lead of Great Britain and France. The
whole episode, if it be compared with simultaneous events in Texas and Mexico
(1835-48), illustrates the comparative insignificance of United States
interests in the river Plate fifty years ago; indeed, the silence of United
States historians ugarding these affairs sufficiently indicates that, in the
middle of the nineteenth century, the history of their country is not concerned
with the southern hemisphere; for the actions of Guizot and Aberdeen are easily
ascertained, and Bosas published in English, French, and Spanish a full
documentary history of these events down to 1849.
From 1852 to
I860, Urquiza was President of the Argentine Confederation, making his
provincial capital, Parand, the seat of federal government* The province of
Buenos Aires, meanwhile, almost formed a separate republic, aiming either at
supremacy over the other provinces or at secession. The other provinces would
not accept this supremacy and could not permit secession, since Buenos Aires
was the channel of nearly all external communication, commercial and
diplomatic, and contained nearly one-third of the population.
In 1861, the
struggle between “capitalism” and “provincialism” came to a head. General Mitre
led a long-prepared revolt of Buenos Aires against the national Government of
Urquiza, and was victorious. Buenos Aires became once more the capital, and Mitre,
the historian of South American Emancipation, became first “ Constitutional
President ” of the Confederation. But the struggle reopened, and continued down
to the “revolution” of 1880, when the province of Buenos Aires was deprived of
all chance of supremacy by being separated from the capital. Since that time,
the city of Buenos Aires has formed a federal district under national control.
This arrangement was largely the work of General Boca, the soldier who had
defeated the revolt of 1880. He had distinguished himself in 1878 by leading a
successful campaign of conquest or extermination against the Indians, by which
the habitable limits and the economic value of the national territory were
enormously increased; and now, assuming the presidency (1880-6), he proved
himself the most astute and capable of Argentine politicians and the chief
agent in securing a closer union of the provinces through the consolidation of
national government. He was President again in 1898-1904, and has been for a
generation the strongest force in the country.
But the
reactionary government of Boca’s successor, Celman (1886-90)—together with a
serious financial crisis in 1889—produced, in 1890, another revolt, which,
after sanguinary but inconclusive fighting, compelled Celman to resign. There
have since been several revolutionary outbreaks in the provinces, sometimes due
to the arrogant and lawless attitude of provincial Governors; but, in a large
sense, the national peace has been maintained, and the country has advanced both
in an economic and in a political sense. The Argentine plains have
attracted an
immense European immigration, giving to the country, and especially to the
capital, a certain cosmopolitan character which is not unfavourable to the
maintenance of public order, although it is hardly favourable to the growth of
a healthy civic sentiment pervading the whole community. The capital, with its
million of inhabitants, is far the largest city in the southern hemisphere. The
large European immigration, the spread of tillage, the advance in material
prosperity, the growth of commerce and of wealth, are influences which, making
revolution difficult and costly, favour stability and order.
In short, the
two most southerly republics have cultivated, not without success, something
of a European character. While differing in character from each other, they are
no less distinct from their northern neighbours, and may fairly adopt a
different attitude in their external relations. A Colombian historian remarks
that the attitude of the United States towards their tropical neighbours is due
to the fact that these countries are not European communities, whereas the
United States are a European community. These conditions do not equally apply
in the southern hemisphere.
The chief factors
in the external relations of Latin America are the intimate and long-standing
connexion of those countries with the Mediterranean lands and with Europe
generally, and that statement or tendency of United States policy known as the
Monroe Doctrine. With the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, the United
States became the most important Power on the shores of the great inland sea
which forms the Mediterranean Sea of the New World. Thus, the interest of the
United States in the coasts of the Caribbean Sea has a distinct history of
expansion and self-assertion; but her relations with South American States not
touching that sea—particularly with those situated in the southern
hemisphere—fall into a different category and illustrate the fact that those southern
countries have a much closer connexion, racial, historical, and commercial,
with Europe than with the United States. In fact the two American Continents,
throughout their history, have both usually faced towards Europe and not
towards each other. The river Plate is, by sea, geographically as near to
Bordeaux or Southampton as to Washington or New York, and in effect much
nearer: at the present time, United States diplomatists and officers find that
the most convenient route from New York to Buenos Aires is through Southampton.
The suggestion that Colombia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile, belong to the
same political system and must have the same external relations would resemble
(so far as geography goes) a suggestion that Morocco, Mozambique, the Transvaal,
and Damaraland belong to the same system and must have the same external
relations. Whereas the relations of the United States with the countries of the
southern hemisphere form a vague, intermittent, and inconclusive diplomatic
story, hardly
to be traced more than half a century back and showiitg no clear basis of
consistency, on the other hand their relations with the countries touching
Caribbean shores form a history of striking events and decisive acts, moved by
a fairly continuous and steady policy during a hundred years.
From 1803 to
1821, the acquisitions of the United States were wrung from the Spanish
monarchy. But Monroe’s message of 1823, which forbade the spread of any
European or monarchical system in America, was followed in 1826 by a United
States veto on Mexican or Colombian designs for the liberation of Cuba—a veto
which forbade the extension of the republican system in America over the
dependency of a European monarchy. This is a significant episode in the
deliberate and steady expansion of the United States at the cost of Latin
America, since already United States policy imposed sacrifices on republics
actually existing. Cuba had possessed a close geographical and political
connexion with the Mexican viceroyalty, and Cuban emancipation seemed to be the
natural corollary of continental emancipation. Thus, this incident of 1826
introduces the series of events whereby, between 1835 and 1848, the United
States absorbed more than half the territory of the Mexican Republic.
After the
acquisition of California with the Pacific coast in 1848, the security of
inter-oceanic communication across the Isthmus became a paramount question for
the United States. In 1846, New Granada guaranteed by treaty the right of way
across the Isthmus to the United States, which in turn guaranteed to New
Granada the neutrality of the Isthmian road and the right of sovereignty and of
property. The railway from Coldn to Pan ami, begun in 1850, was finished in
1855; but, in 1854, the Isthmian road was so insecure that New Granada sanctioned
the formation of a guard of foreign residents for the summary removal of
criminals. The Territory of Panamd, which had revolted from New Granada in 1830
and was actually detached from that State for a time in 1840-2, was formed in 1855
into a State of the New Granada Confederation, with autonomy and a separate
legislature; in 1862 it assumed the style of Sovereign State of Panamd, but did
not secede from the Confederation. Disturbances, such as are frequent in
tropical America, were not unusual here.
The Isthmian
policy of the United States had to reckon with the strong position of Great
Britain in that region, and also with the possession of Cuba and Porto Rico by
Spain. The British settlement of Belize (British Honduras) was too distant to
be dangerous; but the recent British seizure of the Bay Islands, and the
British protectorate over the Mosquito Indians, which had been lately
strengthened, alarmed the United States. Actual possession placed Great Britain
in a strong position for negotiation; but United States diplomatists showed
short-sighted haste in the concessions which they granted in the
686
The
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty.
[i850-83
Glayton-Bulwer
Treaty (1850), dealing with “ any ship canal which may be constructed.. .by the
way of the river San Juan de Nicaragua.” The two Powers bound themselves never
to obtain or maintain any exclusive control over the ship canal, never to erect
or maintain any fortifications commanding the same or in the vicinity thereof
or to colonise or exercise dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito
coast, or any part of Central America; and never to make use of any alliance,
connexion, or influence with any of these States to obtain any unequal
advantages in regard to commerce or navigation through the said canal. It was
added that “ the United States and Great Britain having not only desired.. .to
accomplish a particular object but also to establish a general principle, they
agree to extend their protection...to any other practicable communication...across
the Isthmus...and especially to the inter-oceanic communications...which are
now proposed to be established by the way of Tehuantepec or Panamd.” ^
By this
Treaty the United States tied their own hands for the future, and successive
Administrations for fifty years attempted to ignore or modify the Treaty. On
the other hand, the interest of Great Britain was to regard the Treaty as a
final settlement and ignore the existence of any further question. Moreover,
Great Britain unwittingly assumed the position of champion of the sovereign
rights of New Granada and (in certain contingencies) possibly of other tropical
republics also.
But this
Treaty also marks the beginning of a British tendency to recognise the
predominant interest of the United States round the Gulf and Caribbean Sea—a
tendency which (as the logical result of the events of 1775-83) makes the
United States the heir of British interests in those regions as of British
predominance in North America. Before 1850, the two Powers had recognised
common interests and, upon occasion, had exercised a kind of dual concert for
the maintenance of tranquillity. But after 1850, Great Britain began
voluntarily to recede from that position. Thus, in the acrimonious disputes
whether the stipulations as to acquisitions in Central America were
retrospective (as the United States urged) or only prospective (as Great
Britain maintained), Great Britain finally gave way, surrendering the Bay
Islands to Honduras and the Mosquito coast to Nicaragua by the Dallas-Clarendon
Treaty of 1856, which finally took effect in 1860. President Buchanan declared
that the United States were satisfied with that adjustment. But, twenty years
later, New Granada having granted to a French company for 99 years the
exclusive right of making a canal, President Hayes in a special message to
Congress stated: “ The policy of this country is a canal under American
control.” Between 1880 and 1883, despatches from Washington to London
attempted, first, to ignore the Treaty,‘then urged that it was a temporary
arrangement for a specific object, and that the United States would not
perpetuate any treaty “ impeaching our right and long-established claim to
priority on the American Continent,” and
cited the
Monroe Doctrine against its provisions. Successive British replies, first,
pointed to the existence of the Treaty, then to the provisions for its
perpetuity, and then to the fact that, in 1850, the United States Government
had not considered itself precluded by the utterances of President Monroe from
making the Treaty, Yet, in 1895, 1897, and 1899, Congress, ignoring the Treaty,
authorised Commissions to enquire concerning the feasibility of a canal and (on
the third occasion) to negotiate with Central American countries for control of
the land to be traversed by the canal. Finally, Great Britain in 1901 receded
from her passive position of adherence to existing engagements by concluding
the Pauncefote-Hay Treaty, which abrogated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The
deference shown by Great Britain to the United States in the Venezuelan dispute
of 1896, and the diplomatic attitude of Great Britain during the
Spanish-American War of 1898, are further symptoms of the tendency of her
statesmanship to abdicate in favour of the United States her position in those
regions. *
A
long-standing question concerning the boundary between British Guiana and
Venezuela became more pressing after 1880. Great Britain repeatedly declined,
not indeed the principle of arbitration, but the scope of arbitration proposed
by Venezuela. In 1887, President Blanco demanded arbitration concerning
everything west of the Essequibo river. Great Britain assented as to part only,
alleging the rest to be indisputably British. Thereupon, Blanco broke off
diplomatic relations. In 1895, an incident in itself insignificant and
afterwards separately adjusted, that is to say, the arrest of British officials
by the Venezuelan authorities, precipitated the intervention of the United
States, upon the implied invitation of Venezuela. A despatch from Secretary
Olney to Lord Salisbury declared that “distance and 3000 miles of intervening
ocean make any permanent political union between an European and an American
State unnatural and inexpedient... .The States of America, south as well as
north,: by geogr iphical proximity, by natural sympathy, by similarity of
Governmental Constitutions, are friends and allies of the United
States....Today the United States is practically sovereign on this Continent,
and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its
interposition....There is a doctrine of American public law...which...requires
the United States to treat as an injury to itself the forcible assumption by an
European Power of political control over an American State.”
Lord
Salisbury in reply denied that the Monroe Doctrine was international law or
applicable to this particular case. President Cleveland then submitted the
correspondence to Congress, with a message which implied that Great Britain by
an extension of boundaries was taking “ possession of the territory of one of
our neighbouring republics.” He bdded the words: “ The Monroe Doctrine finds
its recognition in those
principles of
international law which are based upon the theory that every nation shall have
its rights protected and its just claims enforced.”
The United
States Government appointed a Commission to investigate the dispute between
Great Britain and Venezuela. This Commission never reported, for Great Britain
now concluded at Washington a treaty of arbitration with Venezuela. The
Arbitration Court, sitting in Paris, decided generally in favour of Great
Britain : but this is an insignificant part of the episode. Its real
significance lies in the fact that Great Britain, after denying the right of
the United States to intervene, nevertheless accepted their intervention: in
fact, the United States assumed, with British consent, a position in the
Caribbean lands resembling that claimed in the eastern Mediterranean by the
Concert of Europe. Thus both the tendency and the successful assertion of
United States policy achieved a novel and striking development, of profound
significance for the republics of Latin America. Opinion in those republics
universally approved the action of the United States in this instance.
It may be
argued that, international engagements alone being binding, diplomatic
precedents have no existence; that Cleveland and Olney themselves tacitly
dropped their extreme claims; and that any future case must be decided on its
merits both by the United States and by any European Power concerned.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the position assumed in this instance has
been considerably strengthened by later events, has been not only recognised
but actually supported throughout by the attitude of Great Britain, and has
never been seriously challenged by any European Power. As Canning foresaw, the
destiny of the tropical republics of America depends on the relations between
Great Britain and the United States.
The history
of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and of the Venezuelan dispute illustrates the
development of the Monroe Doctrine between 1850 and 1900. An arrangement,
concluded “ as a matter of principle ” by the United States, in 1850, and
declared, in 1860, by the President to be satisfactory, was, in 1880, declared
by the United States to be inconsistent with “a doctrine which has for many
years been asserted by the United States. This sentiment is properly termed a
doctrine, as it has no prescribed sanction and its assertion is left to the
exigency which may invoke it.” This admission by the United States Secretaiy of
State of the development of doctrine does not imply any large inconsistency in
foreign policy: it merely signifies that national policy has advanced with
changed conditions, and requires restatement, involving diplomatic
contradictions for which it is easy to find precedents. But these
contradictions preclude any suggestion that this sentiment or doctrine is an
immutable principle or even a part of international law. Such a view would give
to any nation the power to modify or interpret international law to suit its
own emergencies. Thus, the defect indicated by Calvo in the Monroe Doctrine,
that it did not forbid the
acquisition
of American territory by a European Power through war or treaty, was remedied
in 1870 by Grant’s presidential message: “I now deem it proper to assert the
equally important principle that hereafter no territory on the Continent shall
be regarded as subject to transfer to a European Power.” Grant also officially
asserted that “ The time is not so far distant when, in the natural course of
events, the European political connexion with this Continent will cease.” This
declaration anticipates the startling restatement of the Monroe Doctrine by
Olney in 1895. But, obviously, there is a wide difference between diplomatic
representations and historical conclusions. Since United States historians have
generally declared the Monroe Doctrine to be a part of national policy, not of
international law, it is needless to elaborate this point.
As to the
meaning of the Monroe Doctrine for the other American republics, its tendency
may be indicated, but not its scope and limitations : for, obviously, every
future emergency will require a separate answer to the question whether
national policy counsels action or inaction. It is, however, certain that,
although the Monroe Doctrine has not protected these republics from American
aggression, such as the advance of Chile upon Peru or of the United States upon
Mexico’, it has protected them from European aggression. On the other hand, the
United States have never denied the right of a European State to make war on an
American State, and have not always openly opposed even armed coercion,
provoked in time of peace by breaches of public engagements. The United States
have never claimed that American republics should escape the consequences of
disregarding international engagements or international comity; but the
question remains doubtful how far in such cases they are to be left directly
exposed to European resentment, or how far the protection of weaker States is
to involve coercion and police interference on the part of the United States.
THE
INTERNATIONAL POSITION OF THE LATIN AMERICAN RACES.
The battle of
Ayacucho (1824) marked the end of Spanish domination in continental America.
It lasted eighty minutes, during which the final blow was dealt to the empire
reared by Spain in America, which covered an immense territory and had endured
for over 300 years. A Spanish victory at Ayacucho might have meant the
reconquest of the lost colonies for Spain. The War in Spanish America was a
civil war. The Spaniards had many adherents and partisans amongst the natives,
and the floating population—indifferent, and so far as it could be,
neutral—would have followed in the wake of victory as the waters the sloping
ground.
Emancipation
thus achieved meant the establishment of numerous sovereign nationalities,
shortly thereafter recognised by foreign Powers— in the first place by the
United States and by Great Britain. The new States adopted in their
Constitutions and their laws the model and the principles of tht Constitution
and the laws of the United States. On either side of the Atlantic, the friends
of liberty built great hopes on the birth and growth of so many new countries
devoted to the republican form of government, of which two experiments had been
then recently tried: one in the United States, which still flourished and
prospered, a sign of hope in the eyes of men; the other in France, which, bom
in the midst of tempest and uproar, after a short and chequered career, had
given place to a military despotism, destined, in its turn, to be superseded by
the old monarchical form of government. The success obtained by the United
States seemed to justify the hope that the new American republics would, in
their turn, follow a similar prosperous and harmonious development in the path
of history. Such expectations were not warranted by the circumstances.
The life of
the English colonies of New England had prepared them for liberty. The colonial
system of Spain had not admitted of the development of any elements of
self-government or of civil liberty. Spain herseli was an absolute monarchy,
and she could not give what she did not possess. The new nationalities, in
their recently acquired independence as towards the mother country, very soon
belied md disappointed the prophecies and the hopes so fondly entertained at
the hour of their struggle for emancipation.
A state of
civil strife and revolution, now open and acute, now latent and simmering,
prevailed on the Spanish American Continent, with varying degrees of intensity,
during the better part of the remaining seventy-five years of the nineteenth
century. The era of revolutions seems to have come to a close, or to have greatly
abated its manifestations, within the last two decades; yet trouble is always
ready to break out, and the tradition of the past still justifies distrust.
Some of the
Latin American States have reached a surprising degree of material prosperity,
especially Argentina in the southern, and Mexico in the northern, half of the
Continent. Chile and Uruguay come next, and the steady prosperity and progress
of Chile is more satisfactory and less disquieting than the advance of
Argentina, which rather resembles a flood than beneficent irrigation. Peru may
be reckoned next, whilst the remaining States—Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia,
Paraguay, Venezuela, and the Central American Republics—must still be counted
as more or less doubtful, and as included within the political storm-belt of
the American Continent. Revolutions have been far less frequent in Brazil fa in
other Latin American countries, and the republic has achieved during the last
few years a degree of progress and prosperity bidding fair to surpass that reached
by Argentina and Mexico.
Count Aranda,
one of the Ministers of Charles III of Spain, in a memorial addressed to his
master in 1783, foreshadowed, with prophetic insight, the future development of
international life on the American Continent, and the hegemony that would be
exercised by the United States of America. These are his words :
“ This
Republic (the United States of America) has been born, as it were, a pygmy; she
has needed the help and the assistance of no less than two such powerful States
as France and Spain, in order to conquer her independence; but a day will come
when she will be a giant, a veritable awe-inspiring colossus in those regions;
she will then forget the favours that she has received; she will only think of
her own interest
and
her own convenience The first step
of the new nation will be
to
seize Florida, so as to dominate the Gulf of Mexico. She will then conquer New
Spain and the vast empire, the defence of which will be rendered impossible to
us, as we shall not be able to struggle against a powerful nation, established
on the same continent ”
To prevent
the dire possibilities so vividly described, Count Aranda proposed the creation
of three autonomous kingdoms, into which the Spanish dominions in America
should be parcelled, under the sceptre of Princes of the Bourbon family, and
linked together under the hegemony of Spain, thus maintaining for Spain and for
her people, in Europe and in America, the reward of centuries of endeavour,
sacrifice, and heroism, which had been coupled, unfortunately, with blind and
irremediable maladministration. Aranda’s prophecy has become a living fact, one
of the most momentous facts of the world’s life in the present and for the
future.
Although
unrecognised in Europe and in America outside of the United States (for recent
explicit recognitious, as that of Brazil, do not imply a general change of
ostensible attitude), the Monroe Doctrine has been a paramount and decisive
factor in the growth and development of national and international life on the
American Continent. It does not signify, nor stand for, a compact between the
United States and other nations; it is not an agreement entailing rights and
obligations; it is the expression of the will of the people of the United
States, and thus subject to modification or expansion. Its importance therefore
depends on the power of the United States, which their geographical position
and the condition of their neighbours render unassailable by land. The Doctrine
has grown in power with the nation itself, and has steadily gained fuller and
more conscious acceptance by the American people year by year. Its influence is
bound to become more relentless and more neglectful of the claims and the
convenience of others, as opposed to those of the United States, than it has
been in the past. From the time of its first enunciation, the Doctrine has been
a paramount and decisive factor in the development of American nations.
The Spanish
American republics, in common with Brazil, share
certain
general conditions as to area, population, and national necessities, intimately
connected with their political integrity, and their material and moral
development. According to the most generous estimates, the total population of
continental Latin America does not exceed 70,000,000 inhabitants; these are
organised in seventeen different States, all labelled republics. Two or three
of these are small in area; all the others own vast territories, and the
disparity between their actual population and the population which might live
and thrive on their soil is conspicuous. Either Mexico or Colombia, Venezuela,
Peru, or Argentina, could alone contain and support the whole of the population
now scattered from the northern boundary of Mexico to the extreme southern
limit of Patagonia.
The seventeen
Latin American nations are sovereign States, recognised as such by the other
nations of the world. This recognition, however, is a convention which would
not, and could not, stand the stress of the real requirements and ambitions of
the powerful. To the more or less congested nations of the Old World, the
holding of such vast territories under the dominion of communities lost, so to
speak, in their immensity must ever appear as an anomaly, a temptation to
conquest. The colonising spirit of Europe has never been so active and
aggressive as during the nineteenth century, the very epoch during which the
Latin American nations became independent. There is no available comer of land,
no matter how remote, in Asia or in Africa, no island however small or
insignificant on any ocean, outside the waters of the American Continents, that
has not become the possession of a European Power, or has not been brought
under a protectorate or into the sphere of influence of one of those Powers.
The lands under the political dominion of the Latin American nations may be
equalled in fertility, natural wealth, and abundance of mineral deposits
elsewhere on the surface of the globe; but they are nowhere surpassed. The
coasts on the two oceans are generally provided with numerous safe and commodious
ports; in the southern Continent there exist wonderful networks of navigable
rivers, facilitating access to the very heart of the Continent, and spreading
in all directions to the inviolate forests and boundless prairies. The
mountains teem with all the mineral substances known to man; gold, silver and
platinum are found in the spurs of the Cordilleras and in the main ranges, and
gold, especially, in the low valleys and in the beds of the rivers and streams.
The powerful
nations of Europe would naturally aspire to establish in this rich Continent
colonies that should be an extension of themselves, and new centres of wealth
and prestige. Notwithstanding these powerful motives, no European colony has
been established in America since 1823. The weak Latin republics—weak by
comparison with their potential aggressors—many of them discredited by constant
misrule, and continuous disturbances, hold to this day—save what has been
incorporated
1848-98]
Immunity from foreign conquest.
693
by the United
States—the same territories as when they became independent nations. They owe
this immunity from European conquest to the Monroe Doctrine, which, however,
has not protected them from the United States themselves, as Mexico and Colombia
know to their sorrow. The door to the American Continent, or to the American
islands, for purposes of conquest or colonisation, is shut to Europe. The overwhelmingly
superior force of the United States, as compared with the other nations of the
American Continent, makes all resistance impossible. The special advantages of
position and unlimited resources of the United States, coupled with the
rivalries of the European Powers among themselves, preclude all idea of
successful European intervention against them. The Monroe declaration,
therefore, stands as the supreme law in international matters on the American
Continent, North, Central, and South.
Since the
days of their War of independence with Spain, the people of Spanish America had
looked upon the United States with admiration, and even with gratitude for the
moderate portion of sympathy shown to them, which did not take official form
until 1822, when the struggle had lasted ten years, and the final victory of
the rebellious colonies seemed assured., The identity of political ideals,
irrespective of the diversity of conditions, tended to strengthen the bond of
sympathy amongst the Spanish Americans towards the United States; whose
institutions were practically copied, so that the American Constitution was
reedited, with variations according to circumstances, in each one of the Latin
republics.
The political
boundaries of the old Spanish administrative sections were adopted for the new
nations that had superseded them. Owing to the vastness of the territory, and
to the scarcity of population, the exact boundaries in each case had not been
defined with absolute precision; furthermore, seeing that, except for Brazil,
the demarcations of territory did not signify difference of political dominion,
since everything belonged to Spain, it is not strange that they should have
been somewhat vague and open to controversy. In this there lay a source of
danger to the peace of the Continent. Fortunately, the boundary questions,
though at times they have almost brought about war, have been peacefully
settled, generally by foreign arbitration, and, where they remain still
undecided, there is little doubt that a solution of a similar kind will be
found, as the precedent is too firmly established for any other course to be deemed
possible.
The
achievement of emancipation, and the adoption of a constitution and laws, were
but preliminary, though essential, acts in the life of the new nations. As
already stated, internal affairs did not run smoothly for a long period of
years, nor can it be said that their present course is unrippled in all Latin
American countries.
The
republican form of government, “ of the people, for the people,
694
Despotic rule.—Financial bonds. [1820-1900
by tbe
people,” is that established in the letter of the written law, throughout the
Latin American Continent; such, doubtless, is the ideal of the people’s
endeavour; but in practice a great deal is still lacking. Some of the Latin
American nations have turned back towards absolutism, without ceasing to call
themselves republics. In the countries where such a thing happens, the will of
the people is not allowed to find utterance; public power is wielded by one man
styled “ President,” who retains office for life, if he can. No attempt at the
establishment of a hereditary dynasty has been made of late years; yet the
Presidents of the type described above exercise a more arbitrary power than any
European monarch of the present day. In a few instances, these despotisms have
brought about an end—at least for the time being— of the former revolutions and
disturbances. In Mexico, the material prosperity achieved under this kind of
despotism, which is a special product of Latin America, has been so great, that
it has blinded the mind of freedom-loving men in other countries to the
inherent curse that lies at the root of all despotism—never so baneful as when
it masquerades as liberty and democracy.
From the very
beginning of their life as independent nations, the Latin countries of America
have been borrowers of money. Even before the War with Spain had come to a
close, Colombia and the province of Buenos Aires had obtained loans in the
London market. Latin America to this day requires foreign capital to develop
its natural resources, to build its public works, and, not unfrequently, to
supply the requirements of its public treasury, for purposes of administration
or of armament. European capital flows, and has flowed, to Latin America since
the first loans contracted in 1820, either in the usual commercial and banking
form, or under government guarantee, in one form or another. In this latter
case, the advances made by a foreign country become a powerful international
force, which cannot be ruled out by political declarations or doctrines, even
though they be so elastic and uncompromising as the Monroe Doctrine. Thanks to
the capital received from abroad, through private enterprise or official
guarantee, Latin America, from Mexico down to Argentina and Chile, has
constructed its railroads and its ports, its public works of all descriptions,
and has developed its industries, agricultural or manufacturing,1
with a rapidity and to an extent, in some cases, unparalleled in the history of
the world. The capital thus employed has been furnished almost exclusively by
Europe, with hardly any participation by the United States. The official debt
of Latin America to Europe, that is to say, the debt guaranteed by the
Governments of the respective countries, amounts today to at least
^500,000,000. The capital invested by Europe in private enterprises, mining,
agricultural, industrial, of navigation, banking, etc., may be safely reckoned
at double that amount.
Failure or
loss in private undertakings does not necessarily nor
usually
entail international political results, when they arise from normal causes;
default in or repudiation of public debts may lead to serious international
complications, of which instances have already presented themselves ;
furthermore, such monetary claims against a debtor nation seem to lend
themselves conveniently to the disguise of imperialistic endeavours, not openly
avowed as such on account of the Monroe Doctrine. In 1903, Germany, Great
Britain, and Italy, carried out a naval demonstration along the coasts of
Venezuela, in the course of' which they exercised acts of warfare, such as the
seizure and sinking of ships, the shelling of ports, and the establishment of a
general blockade. The alleged reason for such proceedings was the refusal or
unwillingness of Venezuela to pay certain pecuniary claims of subjects of the
attacking Powers. It would have fared ill with Venezuela if the United States
had not intervened, advising the allied Powers that no permanent seizure or
occupation of territory in Venezuela would be permitted. Faced by this
declaration, and all that it implied, the three Great Powers reluctantly put to
sea, and the claims were submitted, under the auspices of the United States, to
special International Commissions at Washington, and to the Hague Permanent
Court, by which tribunals they were settled in due course.
Two remarks
appear pertinent in this case : first, that it may not be altogether wrong to
suppose that the collection of debts from Venezuela was the ostensible, but not
the real, motive. In all probability, the main and underlying aim was to test
the Monroe Doctrine, which, had it proved to be less rigorous, might have
opened an era of conquest—or, at least, of colonisation by purchase, or by some
other peaceful means—on the American Continent, to those who might consider
themselves as left out in the distribution of Asia and Africa. Secondly, that
the awards of the arbitrators—the International Commissions and the Hague Court
—whose decisions are beyond suspicion of bias in favour of Venezuela, throw a
lurid light on the action of the Great Powers; where tens of thousands were
asked for, at the cannon’s mouth, only hundreds were allotted.
In 1904, the
creditors of the republic of Santo Domingo urged the Governments of France and
Germany to collect by force the amounts claimed by them from the recalcitrant
republic ; the United States intervened, and eventually undertook the direct
administration of the revenues of the republic, apportioning them between the
creditors, and the payment of the expenses of public administration.
In the possible
cases of default, or repudiation, of its foreign debt by any Latin American
country in the future, and of a declaration by the Government whose subjects
the creditors may happen to be, of the intention to collect by force of arms,
the two cases just cited may form precedents, extending the Monroe Doctrine far
beyond the intentions of its originator. In this, its latest aspect,
intimately connected
with the ebb
and flow of life, economic and fiscal, and with the vicissitudes of commerce
and industry, its importance as an international factor greatly surpasses its
former possibilities.
Driven from
all her possessions, on the American Continent, Spain retained after 1824 the
islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. Bolivar, the victorious leader and founder of
the republics of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia—the first of which, in 1832,
divided itself into the three republics of New Granada, Ecuador, and
Venezuela—conceived the idea, in 1826, of an alliance with Mexico, to wrest
from the Spanish mother country the scanty remaining shreds of her once
boundless American empire. Preparations for the undertaking had begun, and the
project seemed in a fair way of being carried forward, when the President of
the United States, Madison, made it known that the American Government would
not consent to any attack upon the Spanish possessions. The United States
policy, it would seem, demanded, at that precise historic moment, the
maintenance of things as they were. Three years .earlier, no European
interference was to be tolerated in favour of Spain; now, it came to be Spain’s
turn to be protected from her offspring, grown not only independent, but ready
to wage against the mother country a new war of exclusion from the American
seas.
The spirit of
rebellion, ever latent in Cuba, and of which occasional signs had become
apparent at different times, culminated in 1868 in an armed insurrection, which
carried on war against Spain for ten years of uninterrupted fighting, during
which the resources of the capital were severely taxed, and great ruin and
misery brought upon the island. The peace restored in 1878 was in reality but a
truce, as later events were to show. Public sentiment in the United States was
frankly in favour of the rebellious Cubans. Several most delicate incidents ensued
during the long years of that insurrectionary movement, when war between the
United Stales and Spain was barely avoided by the most strenuous efforts of the
two Governments, which, however, increased the deep-rooted feeling in favour of
Cuba’s severance from Spain amongst the American people. The sympathies of the
Latin American peoples were decidedly with the Cuban rebels. Assistance to
their cause was forthcoming in men and money from more than one Spanish
American republic, and the Cuban emissaries and agents found a welcome and a
refuge in all of them.
In 1895, a
new insurrection broke out in Cuba; Spain nerved herself for the struggle,
heedless of all sacrifice; in a short time she landed an army of nearly 200,000
men on the island, and her generals adopted measures of the utmost rigour, even
towards non-combatants, that tended to intensify the popular feeling against
Spain all over the American Continent. On February 15,1898, the American
cruiser Maine, anchored in the bay of Havana, was blown into space; about 258
men of her
crew and
officers perished. This terrible disaster, which many people in the United
States did not hesitate to attribute to the direct and wilful action, if not of
the Spanish authorities themselves, at least of Spanish subjects, made war
between the United States and Spain inevitable. It was declared by the United
States in the month of April of the same year* and brought to an end by the
surrender of the city of Santiago on July 16, after the total destruction of
the Spanish fleet on July 1, off the entrance to the port.
As
a result of the war, the United States acquired the Philippine Islands on the
Great Ocean, and the island of Porto Rico on the Caribbean Sea; after a few
years of occupation by American troops, during which Cuba was ruled by an
American Governor, a Cuban President, elected by the people* was installed in
o^ce, the American troops returned to their country, and Cuba started on her
career as a free and independent nation, under the paternal guardianship,
however, of the Government of the United States. The United States own certain
coaling stations on the island, and have the right of interference in the
internal affairs of Cuba in cases of revolution or public disturbances. In the
manner just described, the United States fulfilled their promise, made at the
time of declaring war against Spain, that they would turn Cuba over to the
Cubans, since they were not waging, a war of conquest or of aggrandisement for
themselves. The United States have already exercised their right of
interference. In September, 1906, President Estrada Palma,, being unable to
maintain the public peace, was superseded by an American Governor, who landed
with an army of occupation, which soon restored peace and order. This second
American occupation lasted until the beginning of 1909, when a new Cuban
President, popularly elected, assumed the reins of government. The island of
Porto Rico remains a colony of the United States; in its case there existed no
promise of placing it under native government. '
It is evident
that Cuba’s independence is precarious; if a great war were to break out, in
which the United States might need to use Cuba as a base, it is certain that
they would act as if Cuba were part of their own territory, regardless; of what
the Cuban people might have to say. Furthermore, it would not be surprising if
the efforts of those who, in the United States, and even in Cuba itself,
advocate the annexation of the island to the Union, were to prove successful.
The patent fact is, that Cuba is a link in the chain of the hegemony of the
United States over the American Continent, available for that purpose as
circumstances may demand, not as her people, but as the Government of the
United States, may desire.
The
sympathies of the Latin American nations, as has been stated, were entirely
with the Cuban people in their revolt against Spain; however, the intervention
of the United States, and the War which they waged, and which ended in the
overthrow of Spain, undoubtedly caused a
revulsion of
feeling, guided more by sentiment than by reason, in favour of the mother
country, which, however, although very widely spread, did not find any official
utterance.
In 1846 the
republic of New Granada, at the -present day called Colombia, signed a treaty of
commerce and friendship with the United States by which the latter acquired
certain rights, promising in return “to guarantee the rights of sovereignty and
ownership which New Granada possessed over the Isthmus of Panama.”
The republic
of Colombia considered herself secure in her sovereignty over the isthmus of
Panamd under this guarantee and the Clayton- Bulwer Treaty. The idea of
constructing a canal across the isthmus was one that easily suggested itself,
in view of the narrowness of the strip of land that separates the two oceans at
Panama; the enterprise' had frequently been a matter of study, even during the
days of Spanish domination, and on more than one occasion it had been the
subject of discussion, and even of contract, between different parties and the
Government of the republic of Colombia. In 1878 a contract was signed between
the Government of Colombia and Bonaparte Wyse, a citizen of France, for the
construction of a canal across the isthmus of Panamd; the concessionaire was
empowered to transfer the rights acquired by him to any company that he might
desire, but the canal was to remain under the political dominion of Colombia,
subject to her laws, like any other public or private undertaking within her
borders. The concession was taken over by a French company, which raised a vast
capital, and undertook the work in earnest, with thousands of workmen, and
great abundance of costly and ponderous mechanical appliances, starting at the
two extremities of the projected canal on the two oceans.
The French
Canal Company, after a heavy expenditure of money, and after having built
fairly large sections of the canal, at the two extremities as indicated, found
itself unable to continue the work through lack of funds; although the time
allowed by the concession had lapsed, it had, on two occasions, been extended
by the Colombian Government. At one time, it seemed possible to obtain the
guarantee of the French Government for the capital required to finish the work
of the canal; but this idea was opposed by the Government of the United States,
which alleged that it could not consent to an intervention of this kind on the
part of a European Government in favour of the French Canal Company. The
concession granted by the Colombian Government stipulated that under no
circumstances would it be permissible for the concessionaire, or for his
assigns, to transfer the concession to a foreign Government; and that, should
such a transfer ever come to pass, it would, ipso facto, render the said
concession null and void.
In 1902 the
Directors of the French Company came to an agreement
with the
Government of the United States for the sale of their concession for the sum of
$40,000*000. The United States, under this agreement, could not have acquired
the rights of political dominion over the canal, which alone would have
satisfied them. The American ideal had changed materially since 1850, when the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was signed. Blaine, Secretary of State in 1881, had
declared that any waterway across the isthmus of Panami, or of that of
Nicaragua, would be the great highway between the Atlantic and the Pacific
States of the Union, and would thus substantially form a part of the coast line
of the United States, and that its control, therefore, must be in the hands of
the United States. Blaine’s utterance expressed the purpose of the American
Government, steadily maintained by the successive administrations, which
culminated in the Pauncefote-Hay Treaty of 1901, by which England consented to
the abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, thus doing away with the one great
obstacle to acquisition by the United States of political dominion over the
isthmus of Panamd; though the sovereignty of Colombia over that territory still
remained, and was guaranteed by the American Government.
In 1903 an ad
referendum Treaty was signed in Washington between the diplomatic
representative of Colombia and the Secretary of State, known as the Herran-Hay
Convention, which, in order to become valid, required the approval of the
Colombian Congress; by that agreement, Colombia leased to the United States a
belt of land across the isthmus, from one ocean to the other, for the
construction of the canal, for a period of one hundred years, renewable
indefinitely for similar periods, at the option of the United States, which,
during the time of the lease, would exercise sovereign rights over that section
of the Colombian territory. The Colombian Senate, to which the Treaty was
submitted for ratification in due course, rejected it; the disguise for the cession
of territory and loss of sovereignty, under the name of “ lease,” adopted in
the Treaty, was transparent, and the Senate declared that, even if it were so
inclined, it lacked the authority to cede any part of the national territory,
the rights over which rested exclusively with the people, who would have to be
consulted in the instance at issue.
On November 3
a revolution took place in the city of Panama, and the independence of the
province as towards the republic of Colombia was proclaimed. American men-of-war
had arrived on the Atlantic and on the Pacific ports of Panami just a few days
before. The Government of Colombia was informed by the American Government that
no landing of Colombian troops would be allowed. The independence- of Panamd
was recognised by the Government of the United States within three days of the
rebellion, and a Treaty with the republic of Panamd for the construction of the
canal, on lines far more favourable for the United States than those of the
Herran-Hay Treaty, was signed a fortnight after the proclamation of the
independence of Panaml The French
Canal Company
received the agreed price of $40,000,000, and Panami $10,000,000 for the
concessions which it granted. During all this time the Treaty between the
United States and Colombia of 1846, by which the former guaranteed Colombia’s
sovereignty over the isthmus of Panami, remained in existence, and at the time
when these lines were written (1909) it had not been cancelled.
The
high-handed policy. of the United States with reference to Colombia sent a
thrill of painful surprise throughout Spanish America; the people in those
countries were naturally led to think that, if occasion should arise, the
United States would treat them even as Colombia was treated. Officially,
however, the independence of Pan ami was very soon recognised by all the Latin
American nations, with the exception of Ecuador; but, with regard to this
recognition, it may be said that, in international matters, Governments very
frequently act in open contradiction to the sentiments of the people.
The republic
of Panamd is under the protectorate of the United States, which have the right:
of interference in its internal affairs in cases of disturbance or revolution;
Panama’s independence has not been recognised by the republic of Colombia.
In 1889 there
met at Washington, convened by the Government of the United States, a Congress
or Conference, at which all the States of Latin America were represented. The
essential object was to establish a stronger international sympathy between the
United States and its southern neighbours, and among the southern States
themselves. A second Panamerican Congress met at Mexico in 1901, and a third at
Rio Janeiro in 1906. Numerous measures of great importance have been advocated
in these Congresses; but, although perhaps they may have contributed to
international harmony on the American Continent, through the exchange of ideas,
and the better knowledge of one another produced among the several nations by
the publicity given to the facts connected with these measures, no very
tangible result has as yet been achieved by them. Mention should, however, be
made of the practically unanimous acceptance of the principle of arbitration,
embodied in numerous treaties between all the Governments of the American
Continent, which has been brought about by these Congresses.
On the other
hand, the action of the Panamerican Congresses upon actual history in the shape
of accomplished facts is necessarily slow. They have in the main resembled a
Panamerican debating society, kept in restraint by an overprudent programme
which limits the themes for discussion and even the scope within which the
themes may be discussed. As an instance of this, it may be noticed that, at the
meeting in Rio Janeiro, one of the Latin American delegates set forth what he
considered to be the logical completion of the Monroe Doctrine. This Doctrine,
he argued, condemns European conquest, and thus,
to that
extent, guarantees the integrity of the American nations; but conquest is wrong,
no matter who the conqueror may be; therefore, by positive enactment all
conquest should be henceforth forbidden on the American Continent. This
proposal was not only rejected, but it was not allowed to appear on the
official records of the Congress. Among the measures that at one time or
another have been advocated in the Panamerican Congresses may be cited:
treaties of commercial reciprocity, unification of laws and regulations, of
monetary systems, navigation, exercise of professions, etc., etc. The
Panamerican Congresses may, undoubtedly, render great services in the future;
but hitherto their achievement has not been very great.
In 1903, when
England, Germany, and Italy were carrying out their naval demonstration against
Venezuela for the purpose of collecting certain pecuniary claims from that
republic, Drago, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Argentine Republic,
addressed a note to its diplomatic representative at Washington, placing on
record the surprise caused to his Government by the action of the three allied
Powers, and laying down certain principles as to the inviolable nature of the
sovereignty of nations, which have come to be known as the Drago Doctrine. His
final words were: “ The principle which the Argentine Republic would like to see
recognised, is this: that public debts should never bring about any armed
intervention, much less the material occupation of the soil of American nations
by European Powers.”
The
proclamation of this principle constituted a protest against the action of the
allied Powers, and, if accepted, would preclude in the future any similar
occurrences arising from the default in payment of their public debts by Latin
American nations. The Drago Doctrine, which found adherents amongst very
eminent publicists in the United States and in Europe, was to have been
submitted to the Panamerican Congress of Rio Janeiro in 1906; that body,
however, decided to leave it to be considered by the Hague Peace Conference,
which was to meet in the following year, where creditor as well as debtor
nations would be represented.
The Latin
American nations were invited to attend the Second Peace Conference at the
Hague, to which all of them sent their representatives. The Drago Doctrine was
not brought up for consideration; in its stead the Porter Resolution was
adopted, which forbids the employment of force for the collection of public
debts until the claims shall have been approved of by an arbitration Court,
appointed by the creditor and the debtor countries, and the payment thereof shall
have been refused, or until the demand for an arbitration shall have been
refused or disregarded by a debtor country. By the Porter Resolution the
employment of force for the collection of public debts is thus implicitly,
though not expressly, accepted.
Mention
should also be made of the Permanent Court of Justice of
Central
America, established in 1908, under the auspices of the United States and of
Mexico, for the settlement of all questions of any nature whatsoever that may
arise between the five Central American republics among themselves. This Court,
it is expected, will contribute to permanent political stability in Central
America.
Irrespective
of political demarcation of the limitations that the ambitions and the aims of
the powerful may create, and of the action of the present political sovereigns
of the territory, the Latin American Continent is bound to become the scene of
important developments in the near future. It contains, within the tropics, a
sufficient amount of lands, situated at a high altitude above sea level and
thus fit for the habitation of the white races, to provide for a numerous white
population, even under the equator. The long years of Spanish domination, the
work of which has been continued and developed by the republics that have
succeeded Spain, have created, in all parts and sections of the Continent,
centres of civilisation, each one of which may form the nucleus of a province
or of a nation. The higher classes throughout the whole of Latin America have
attained a high degree of culture; and the practically inexhaustible resources
of the land, in the plains, in the forests, and in the mountains, constitute an
attraction for the wandering waves of humanity from the congested regions of
Europe, more powerful than any barriers or attempts to stem the tide of
humanity in accordance with the conventional interests of any given national
entity or group of nations.
THE MODERN
LAW OF NATIONS AND THE PREVENTION OF WAR.
We
are not concerned here with the speculative exactness of any particular
description as applicable to the doctrines known as the Law of Nations or
International Law. It is enough for our purpose that there is, in fact, a body
of rules and usages which among civilised independent States are recognised as
binding upon their several Governments in their dealings with one another and
with each other’s subjects. No sach body of rules can be said to have existed
before the end of the Middle Ages; there is no doubt that it exists now, or
that its extent and importance are increasing. The development of International
Law is among the subjects which eminently belong to modern history. Yet it may
claim as venerable antiquity for its origins as any branch of jurisprudence.
They go back not only to Roman law but to Greek moral philosophy; this twofold
ancestry is preserved in the term still current in Scotland, “ the law of
nature and of nations,” though probably very few scholars pause on the words to
think of it. For the law of nature, apart from the technical forms of political
and theological systems,'is the Greek appeal to an ideal rule justifying itself
by reason, and the law of nations, in this earlier sense, is the practical
Roman recognition of a working standard in the general usage of civilised
mankind. Both elements were necessary: jus naturale without jus gentium would
be an unbodied spirit, jus gentium without jus naturale would be a soulless
body. The latter days of the Roman Republic brought an expansion of Roman
jurisdiction and law, which called for a doctrinal foundation. Justice had to
be done to merchants and other strangers having no part in the domestic rules
or the religious sanctions that were applicable to Roman citizens. The Praetor,
in default of any more specific precept, fell back upon general custom—for such
is really the nearest version of jus gentium in modern English—a custom which
we may well believe was to be found chiefly in the usages of Mediterranean
trade. A generation of learned lawyers trained in Greek philosophy, and holding
frequent intercourse with Greek or Greek-speaking scholars, found it easy to
704
The Law of Nature. The Law of Nations.
identify the
principles of cosmopolitan equity, warranted in fact by the consent of all
civilised people, with the justice which had been defined as natural
(tf>v<nic6v) in the Aristotelian texts, and contrasted with legal or
rather conventional rules (vofiucov). The conception of natural law, as early
as Aristotle, involved that of rational design. Hence we find not only jus
naturale or naturae but, nearly as often, lex, which in classical Latin implies
rational design. For almost all practical purposes, jus gentium and jus
naturale were treated as equivalent by the jurists of the Roman Empire, and
there is nothing to show that one term is older than the other. Lawyers were
aware, indeed, that the common practice of the Mediterranean nations justified
some institutions which the better opinion of Aristotle’s successors would not
undertake to justify on grounds of universal reason. Such an institution was
slavery, recognised by general custom as fully as anything could be. We have
express admissions that in this point there was a discrepancy between the ideal
of enlightened reason and the facts of common usage; but our materials do not
make it clear whether in the classical periods of Roman jurisprudence there
was any official or accepted explanation of such discrepancies. Near the
beginning of Justinian’s Institutes, the repugnance of war, captivity, and
slavery, to the law of nature is stated plainly enough; we must accept them, it
seems, as necessary evils made inveterate by custom. In the absence of anything
to show the contrary, a Roman lawyer, it is conceived, would assume jus gentium
to follow jus naturale, much as an English Court, failing positive authority,
declares that rule to be the law which it thinks most reasonable.
Meanwhile the
purely ethical tradition of the Greek writers had been invested with an elegant
Latin form by Cicero, and acquired all but a definite religious sanction for
Christendom by the approval of Fathers venerated in the Church; and, early in
the thirteenth century, the revived study of Aristotle brought the schoolmen
back to the fountain-head of all this authority. We must remember that, in
every one of its forms, it was little short of sacred. Aristotle was a heathen
certainly, but he was “The Philosopher”; and the Corpus Juris, though not much
of it was originally the work of Christians, claimed submission in the name not
of an unconverted Papinian or Gaius but of the orthodox Emperor Justinian. Thus
the law of nature presented itself to medieval scholars as the crown of both
moral and legal science, a standard of human conduct independent of positive
enactment and even of special Divine revelation, binding always and everywhere
by virtue of its intrinsic reasonableness. Unhappily the very loftiness and
universality of this conception prevented it from having any certain practical
operation ; for, although every one was ready to admit that the law of nature
was supreme, it was not so easy for persons and bodies whose interests were in
conflict to agree what, in any particular circumstances, the dictates of
universal natural reason were. Moreover, men thought that
Influence of chivalry and the Church.
705
an universal
rule called for an universal jurisdiction to administer it. Thus, while
infinite speculative ingenuity was expended on a secular conflict between the
claims of the Empire and the Holy See, very little was done to arrive at a
working settlement of rules of conduct between princes.
Meanwhile,
the customs and obligations of chivalry were useful, so far as they went. There
were courtly ceremonies in peace and knightly customs in war; but their
observance was a matter of individual sentiment and honour, and, in a state of
society where private war was still possible and not uncommon, it was fortunate
that there was any restraint at all. Chivalry, moreover, belonged to the
archaic type of customs ; it was the rule not of mankind or of a nation but of
an order. To have the benefit of its courtesies as of right, a man must be a
knight, or at least capable of becoming one, a woman must be in religion or a
member of a knightly family. The condition of being an orthodox Christian would
have been added by many. Doubtless, the best practice carried the spirit far
beyond the letter, while, among the baser sort, even the letter got scant
obedience. When all is said, however, the medieval usages were not law in any
sense which we can accept at this day, but custom, and only partial custom,
tempering the default of law. Greek and early Roman usage in this as in many
other matters was nearer to the lines of advance which we have now found
profitable; for, so far as it went, it was conceived as having general and
equal application : which is a fundamental element in our modem ideas of legal
justice.
The
cosmopolitan sentiments and practice of chivalry were reinforced by the
coextensive jurisdiction and influence of the Church. So far as the common
faith of western Christendom strengthened the common tradition of justice
handed down through the institutions of the Roman Empire, and never wholly
extinguished, it made an effectual contribution to the foundations of
International Law. But, in themselves, the claims of the Church, like those of
the medieval Empire, were neither national nor international, but
supra-national. St Louis of France would not have understood the modem fashion
of investing France or England with moral attributes. He conceived his duties
as those of a Christian knight with honour to maintain and a Christian man with
a soul to be saved—duties magnified no doubt by his exalted office, but still
wholly personal. Students of medieval history must determine for themselves how
far religion succeeded in mitigating the evils of war. It is certain that the
ChUrch could not prevent Christian rulers from making war upon each other, or
from appealing to Divine sanction for their opposite causes with an equal
appearance of sincerity. The Holy Father himself, as a temporal prince, was
often a belligerent, and his adversaries felt no diffidence about invoking
their patron saints against him, as when Siena, beset by Clement VII, solemnly
renewed her commendation to Our Lady. There is no historical ground for the
assumption sometimes made by
recent
publicists that Christian doctrine, or, to speak more exactly, the teaching of
any Church that has ever enjoyed considerable authority, condemns war in itself
more than any other of the evils incident to a sinful world. We speak of the
Churches as they have actually been since Christianity became the official
religion of the Roman Empire; the question whether the Society of Friends be
not nearer the mind of the primitive Christian community than the orthodox
doctors of eastern or western hierarchies does not require solution here. It is
an obvious reflexion that war, whether between Christians or not, is eminently
fertile of temptations to almost every mortal sin except heresy; in fact, even
the killing of infidels in defence of the Church, or of one’s own life, has in
strictness the nature of sin, and, according to early medieval authority, must
be atoned for by at least nominal penance. Nevertheless, military service under
an orthodox prince was esteemed lawful at all times after the conversion of
Constantine, and war against infidel enemies not only passed for meritorious
but was even, from time to time, urgently recommended with all the influence
which the Papacy could bring to bear on temporal pc litics; and it is plain
that this could not be otherwise at seasons when the very existence of
Christendom appeared to be and really was in danger. We cannot conceive a Pope
who would have refused his blessi-g to Don John of Austria. The Templars were
ultimately condemned; but the shedding of infidel blood was not among their
alleged crimes. Besides, it was impracticable to deprive Christian citizens of
the right of self-defence merely because their assailants professed the same
faith. What was a Bishop of Siena to do when the Florentines were threatening
to storm the town and give no quarter? In Italy the spi t of chivalry, Germanic
rather than Latin in its origin, was weakest, never having been thoroughly
acclimatised, and the Church ought to have been strongest; and in Italy the inhumanity
of medieval war, whether conducted by republics or by despots, was at its very
worst. As for doctrinal discussion, there was much writing about the
righteousness of wars in the Middle Ages; but the problem was to define the
conditions for war being just, in the sense that it could be undertaken without
sin. One author’s opinion might be less favourable to war than anothei s; but
not one appears to have denied that war was sometimes just and necessary.
On the other
hand, many prelates and men of religion exerted themselves with good effect on
behalf of peace on celebrated occasions, and, we may believe, on as many others
now forgotten or obscure. Again, the Church, to her credit, always stood
against slavery, and it was never the practice to enslave Christian captives,
unless they were heretics. A few customary prohibitions had survived from
ancient times and were approved as binding on Christian warriors. We abhor the
use of poison in war; but so did the authors, or at any rate the editors, of
the Homeric poems. All that the Church can claim here is that she cast her
authoritative
vote on the right side. Other restrictions which now seem capricious were
attempted by a combination of chivalrous and ecclesiastical sentiment. Weapons
of precision, such as the cross-bow, and afterwards fire-arms, fell for a time
under a ban which might be enforced by refusing quarter.
In the way of
prevention, some good was done by the intervention of Popes as mediators or
arbitral judges. It would be idle to seek any precise definition of the
capacity in which they acted, as we might well find that, in particular cases,
the Pope thought himself entitled to judge between Kings as of right, while the
parties held themselves bound to fulfil his award only by reason of voluntary
submission. At all events it became more and more apparent that the ideal of
universal monarchy was not to be realised in this world; and in this respect
the Reformation only hastened an inevitable disillusion. After the Reformation
controversies and the Wars of Religion it was plainly impossible to maintain
that either the Pope or the Emperor could in fact, even within his own sphere
as admitted by all Catholics, exercise the universal jurisdiction which he
claimed.
There
remained, then, as a check on the greed of rulers and the excesses of their
officers, only the persuasive authority of the law of nature, an authority
still generally received, although some Protestant controversialists, anxious
to restrain Roman interpretation, maintained against the tradition of the
schools that the letter of the Scriptures came first—and this afterwards became
the orthodox Puritan position. If only something like consent on leading points
could be obtained, a real moral weight of opinion would be more effective than a
pretended sovereign power which could enforce nothing. We do not mean that the
problem was distinctly seen in tlys light at the time; any such analytical
statement can only try to sum up the drift of much speculation and many
different endeavours. But. in fact, we find, from and after the early part of
the sixteenth century, a series of writers on the law of nature, dealing, it is
true, with a wide range of theoretical jurisprudence and ethics, but still
trying in the course of their work to find some rule applicable to the
relations of States in peace and war. It would be useless for the purpose in
hand to dwell upon their arguments, or to enter on the difficult critical task
of apportioning their merits. Two of these precursors of Grotius, as they are called,
may fitly be commemorated by an English writer: Alberico Gentili, adopted by
Oxford, whose treatise is deemed by Professor Holland worthy to be caWed juris
gentium qyod hodie in usu est vera incunabula; and Richard Hooker, eminent
among the English scholars of his time.
Gentili’s
book De jure belli was first published in 1598; it is among the few singled out
for commendation by Grotius. We cannot say that Gentili realised the full
magnitude of his undertaking. He conceived it as a special problem of applying
the law of nature to a class of cases
708 Alberico Gentili. Richard Hooker.
about which
hardly anything was to be found in the Corpus Juris, the commentators, or even
the philosophers. There is nothing revolutionary about his method: he starts
from the received identity, for all material purposes, of jus gentium and jus -
naturae. The rules of jus gentium (still used in its classical sense, as
including all kinds of right and duty sanctioned by general observance) are
established by the general consent of mankind, quod successive placere omnibus
visum est; and this, as he justly notes, is the only kind of proof by which
unwritten law can ever be established. At the same time, these rules are also
binding as being prescribed by absolute and evident reason; for universal
reason is manifested in the consent of reasonable men. Here Gentili seems to be
nearer the root of the matter than several much later authors. It is a precept
as old as Aristotle to deem that reasonable which appears so to competent persons
(in this case civilised governments and their advisers), and it is constantly
applied in affairs of internal jurisdiction. Accordingly, princes and rulers
are subject in their dealings with one another, even in war, to the rule of
natural reason attested by general agreement, which may be called indifferently
jus gentium when we consider it as customary, or jus naturae when we consider
it as rational. This law of nature is not only applicable in its broad
principles but may be applied to determine specific rules by way of deduction,
provided that the case is not covered by any positive ordinance of a competent
authority; such ordinances are binding in cases otherwise doubtful, unless they
are manifestly contrary to some precept of universal justice. Gentili is here
following the distinction long familiar in the Scholastic system between the“
primary” and the “secondary" law of nature; its practical object was to
guard against the law of nature being used as a cloak for frivolous or perverse
refusal to obey the Jpw of the land. In the case of dispute between sovereign
rulers there is in fact no common positive authority, nor could Gentili, an
exile for religion’s sake, admit that either the Pope or the Emperor ought of
right to have any such authority. Thus we must seek in the law of nature,
proceeding by deduction from its general principles, the whole body of rules
which, when ascertained, will constitute thejus belli. Considering the
rudimentary state of European diplomacy at the time, Gentili s confidence in
the power of reason was altogether admirable, and the foundation of his
doctrine, which Grotius adopted in substance, is in the present writer’s
opinion quite sound.
Richard
Hooker (1554—1600) was born some years later and died several years earlier
than Suarez, whose work in this kind is more generally known. The Spanish
theologian had a distinct conception of a customary law binding on all nations
in their mutual intercourse; but the value of his insight is somewhat
discounted when he adds that the rules under this head are few, simple, and
easily deduced from the principles of natural law (De lege et Deo legislatore,
n. xix. § 9). Hooker, writing not later than 1592, when his Ecclesiastical
Polity was complete,
was much more
explicit (Eccl. Pol. i. x. 12): “ besides that law which simply concemeth men
as men, and that which belongeth unto them as they are men linked with others
in some form of politic society, there is a third kind of law which toucheth
all such several bodies politic, so far forth as one of them hath public
commerce with another. And this third is the Law of Nations.” There follow some
general remarks on the need of “society and fellowship even with all mankind,”
and the application in this region of the distinction between primary and
secondary rules of law, which Hooker uses in a rather forced way to draw the
line between rules of peaceful traffic and “ laws of arms, which yet are much
better known than kept.” Hooker then adds, with prudence showing that he was
not blind to the magnitude of the subject: “ But what matter the Law of Nations
doth contain I omit to search.” This must have been written or revised about
the time when Alberico Gentili was writing or enlarging the dissertations from
which his finished treatise was developed. It is tempting to conjecture that
the English divine and the Italian civilian may have met and talked over the
reformation of European public law. However that may be, Hooker is entitled to
stand among the most clear-sighted of the “ precursors,” and he was the very
first writer to use the term “ Law of Nations ” in English in the specialised
sense now so familiar as to be the only one generally understood.
We now turn
to the founder of the modem system. Grotius (15831645) defines his subject at
the outset as jus illud quod inter populos plures aid popidorum rectores
intercedit; and it would be hard to better this in good Latin, for jus inter
gentes would have conveyed no clear meaning to any Roman jurist; the only Latin
terms properly signifying what we now signify by the word State, a nation as a
political unit, are civitas and popuhts, and gentes is not the plural of
either, as Grotius very well knew. This by no means diminishes the importance
of the fact that “the law regulating the intercourse between distinct States or
their governors ” is a branch of jus gentium in its classical sense, though so
individual as to constitute a new head of legal science—a head of which, as
Grotius truly said, no one had yet treated fully and systematically, though it nearly
concerned the welfare of mankind. More wisely than some later authors, Grotius
did not attempt to embody in the definition itself any theory of the origin or
sanction of this law, but proceeded to indicate possible origins in the next
clause: sive ah ipsa natura profectum—the classical law of nature; aid divinis
constitutum legibus—the precepts of revealed religion, so far as any may be
found applicable; sive moribus et pacto tacito introductum
custom and implied agreement. All these
Grotius recognised as
authoritative
sources of law ; and it was needful for his purposes to rely on all of them.
Scholars and philosophers would for the most part accept the law of nature;
divines, and especially Protestants (many of whom regarded natural law with
suspicion), expected Scriptural warrant;
public men
would insist on being assured that the author who called for their attention
was walking on the ground of practical affairs and not merely setting up his
own opinions as an universal standard. The Prolegomena to Grotius’ great work,
written after its completion, show how clearly he had conceived his undertaking
and realised its extent. He had to demonstrate that a common rule of right
among States was possible; that it was capable of discovery and exposition; and
that it was not confined to peaceful relations but continued to be binding in
time of war. With such help as could be derived from earlier very incomplete
achievements, he had to establish this rule on foundations of moral and legal
justice which learned men would deem sound and men of the world would not think
fantastic. Moreover, where existing custom fell short of being tolerably just,
he had to propose amendment without assuming to dictate to sovereign princes.
This would have been much for a generation of workers to accomplish. Grotius
achieved it all himself, and so thoroughly that within half a century his
treatise was received as authoritative by the civilised world. How far he was
in advance of his fellows is shown by the fact that some of those who came
after fell back upon the old lines of composing ambitious systems of natural
law with a merely episodic treatment of international' relations, and secured
European fame and even a passing authority by the solemn exposition of
platitudes marshalled after this belated fashion. Other writers, of whom
Wicquefort is the best known, confined themselves, so late as the end of the
seventeenth century, to the ceremonial side of international usage, the
privileges of ambassadors, and the like.
In some ways,
we must allow, Grotius’ method was exceedingly artificial. He could not expect
his own opinions to be received merely on their intrinsic merits, and
accordingly he set ancient examples and authorities in array with such abundant
pomp and circumstance as are even too formidable for the modem reader. The new
law of nations was to march as a conquering host with banners, having enlisted
the whole strength of the classical jus gentium; we know not whether Grotius
foresaw that in the modem tongues the translation of the Latin phrase was to
have not only an enlarged but a transformed meaning. Triumphant exhibition of
antique authority was not, however, free from drawbacks. The Greek and Roman
writers, and even the Scriptures, appeared in many places to permit or encourage
such extreme use of a belligerent’s rights, especially with regard to the
persons and property of conquered enemies, as could not be approved by any one
seeking to frame rules of warfare for civilised nations. Nor could Grotius, in
the midst of embittered religious wars, have safely taken the position that
usage was progressive in its standard of justice and mercy, and had in fact
abolished the harsher claims of victors. At the time of the Thirty Years’ War,
and even later, the tendency of practice was, if anything, retrograde.
Moreover, jurists did
Grotius on war and neutrality.
711
not
habitually, if at all, conceive of jus gentium as a living and developing
system; and the law of nature was of course assumed to be immutable even by
writers generally rebellious to authority, such as Hobbes.
Grotius
solved the problem thus raised by an ingenious device which Whewell, perhaps,
stands almost alone in justly commending. He first stated the strict laws of
war in the crudest form and with almost ironical exaggeration. Then he
proceeded to state under the name of “temperaments” the considerations of
natural equity which forbid righteous princes and generals to use their
customary rights to the uttermost. Such a conflict between natural justice and
legality was in itself already familiar to publicists. Grotius was reproducing,
in a novel application, the contrast between jus naturale and jus gentium,
which was conspicuous at the head of the Institutes, and pleading for the
abrogation by improved practice of the harsher rules which, in the case of
sovereign princes, had not been made binding by any positive law. Not having
any coercive authority to invoke, Grotius trusted to counsels of perfection to
be effectual where dogmatic precepts might have failed. An artificial method,
certainly; but amply justified by success. All, and more than all, the
“temperaments” of Grotius have long since been assimilated by the ordinary
rules of civilised warfare.
The most
remarkable omission in Grotius’ work, to modem eyes, is that he has next to
nothing to say about neutrality considered with regard either to the duties or
to the rights of neutral States as against belligerents. In fact, the questions
which have been prominent under this head for about a century and a half had
then only begun to occur in a sporadic manner and were not ripe for definition.
For the rest, Grotius himself wrote, in his concluding chapter, words of
dignified modesty which leave very little to criticism. “ I make no claim to
have said all that might be said; but to have said so much as will lay the
foundations, whereon if any man will build up a statelier edifice, he shall not
find me grudge him aught, but rather shall have my thanks.” Others have built,
and Grotius would be well pleased in their work. The foundations are still
where Grotius laid them.
Official,
judicial, and other learned persons who cannot conceive authority divested of
official sanction have gravely pointed out that Grotius and his successors, not
being legislators, could not make law. More than twenty years ago, Sir Henry
Maine gave the right answer: “What we have to notice,” he said, “is that the
founders of International Law, though they did not create a sanction, created a
law-abiding sentiment. They diffused among sovereigns, and the literate classes
in communities, a strong repugnance to the neglect or breach of certain rules
regulating the relations and actions of States. They did this not by
threatening punishments, but by the alternative and older method, lor? known in
Europe and Asia, of creating a strong approval of a certain body of rules.” To
put it in a slightly different way, they were able to
mould the
custom of princes and their advisers while it was still plaistic; and it took
form as a real though imperfect customary law, not a mere assemblage of moral
precepts. Ever since the time of Grotius these questions have been treated as
belonging to jurisprudence, not to theology or casuistry, and have been handled
in the manner of legal argument and not of merely moral persuasion. It may be
and often is disputed what is the true rule, or how it is to be applied in
particular cases; but the rule, ascertained or not ascertained, is conceived as
an ordinance of justice and not a counsel of perfection. Beyond the domain of
positive duty there is a region for governments in the society of nations, as
for individual citizens within a State, where rights may be exercised in a more
or less friendly spirit, with greater or less consideration for the convenience
of others, equitably or with insistence on the letter of the bond, stiffly or
with readiness to give and take ; and no formal ground of complaint is afforded
by conduct which, though it may be displeasing or barely civil, is still within
the scope of lawful discretion; as in municipal jurisdiction an action will not
lie against a man for many things which do not become the character of an
amiable neighbour. In this region the skill and tact of diplomatists finds much
of its everyday work, and by no means the least important.
Certain
writers, again, for the most part in England, have assumed that the law of
nations has a merely fictitious existence because it lacks a cosmopolitan
judicial Court, with power to decree execution and enforce the decrees. So far
as there is anything more in this contention than a dispute about verbal
definitions, it seems fit to be considered that in the early history of all
systems of law the executive power at the disposal of Courts of justice has
been rudimentary. We now understand that civil justice was originally rendered
only by virtue of the parties having submitted to be bound by the judgment in
the particular case; and, even at a much more advanced stage, we may find
Courts which have an elaborate constitution and procedure but no compulsory powers
at all. Icelandic society in the early Middle Ages, as the semi-historical
sagas describe it (for there is no reason to doubt their substantial
truthfulness as a general account of manners and institutions), affords the
classical example. It is true that the law of nations is not administered by a
Court of universal jurisdiction; the defect has been discussed and lamented
ever since Dante wrote his treatise De Monorchia. It would be very far from
true to say that it is not judicially administered by any Court. Questions of
allegiance and territorial jurisdiction, of the existence of war between
foreign States or de facto Governments, and the consequences thereof, such as
blockade with its incidents, and the like, may call and have often called for
decision as affecting the rights of suitors in municipal Courts. An English
Court had to decide in 1908 whether a warranty against contraband of war in a
policy of marine insurance included the transport of belligerent officers
Courts administering International LaWi 713
in a neutral
ship, and decided it in the negative, treating the question as one of
international law. Naturally, the lawyers of every country cite their own
authorities and writers most; but it is worthy of remark when they cite others
at all. More than this, a material part of the law of war, namely the law of
prizes, has been administered by Courts of Admiralty, and expressly as an
international and not as a local law; Prize Courts have never purported to
administer merely municipal law. For Lord Stowell, certainly, the Court of
Admiralty was a Court of the law of nations and of the law of nations only: as
he said in his well-known judgment in The Maria, “ the seat of judicial
authority is locally here, rn the belligerent country, according to the known
law and practice of nations, but the law itself has no locality.” In this he
was only following the celebrated opinion of the English law officers in the
case of the Silesian Loan, an opinion in which Lord Mansfield, then Solicitor-
General, took a leading part: “ There never existed a case where a Court,
judging according to the laws of England only, ever took cognizance of
prize...it never was imagined that the property of foreign subjects, taken as
prize on the high seas, could be affected by laws peculiar to England.” As for
the opinion that nations are bound by the law of treaty only, and that there is
no other law of nations but that which is derived from positive compact and
convention, Lord Stowell rejected it as fit only for Barbary pirates (The
Helena). It may be said that a national judge may find himself in the position
of a judge in his own cause, and that it is hard for him, with the best
intentions, to be impartial. This is true; but it is also true that even in
municipal justice this drawback is not always avoidable, and that a judge in
his own cause is admitted, at need, as a less evil than total default of
justice and judgment. American opinion, it is believed, whether, expressed in
judicial decisions, in presidential messages and other domestic acts of State,
or in diplomatic intercourse, has been invariable in the same sense ever since
the United States became a nation.
Regarding the
law of nations, then, as a true customary law, though still imperfectly
organised, we may say that it is ascertained and developed in three ways: by
the authority of writers, by recognition and declaration in treaties and other
diplomatic acts, and by the embodiment of general opinion in the usage of
nations.
The authority
of writers on the law of nations is exactly like the authority (as it is often,
though according to English professional usage not correctly, called) of
private text-writers on municipal law. More or less weight is given to their
opinions, according to their reputation and the resulting probability that
those opinions correctly represent either the settled consent of civilised
Governments or, in questions allowed to be not yet settled, the conclusions in
which Governments may be expected to agree. As Grotius himself very wisely said
of the Schoolmen’s opinions on moral questions: when they agree they are not
likely
714
Authority of text-books.—Treaties and Conventions.
to be wrong.
It is absurd to suppose that the law of nations, so far as not expressed in
treaties or other authentic acts of State, is nothing but a cento of private
writers’ conjectures for every man to pick and choose from at will. Our highest
legal authorit t ■ on the contrary, have fixed the sound doctrine that
the writings of experienced and approved publicists are valuable not as mere
opinion but as evidence. As the late Justice Gray said in 1899 in the Supreme
Court of the United States (The Paquete Habana) • “ such works are resorted to
by judicial tribunals, not for the speculations of their authors concerning what
the law ought to be, but for trustworthy evidence of what the law really is.”
So, a century earlier, Lord Stowell relied on Vattel “not as a lawyer merely
delivering an opinion, but as a witness asserting a fact—the fact that such is
the existing practice of modem Europe” (The Maria). Not that the conclusions of
publicists are to be accepted without examination. We have the like right and
duty of examining them with regard to the grounds on which they purport to be
based that we have in all critical and historical enquiry But this does not
make their testimony worthless, as assumed by a few modern authors and even by
some eminent English judges.
Another kind
of evidence of the law of nations is afforded by treaties and similar
instruments. These, however, must be used with caution. For it is obvious that
the terms of an express convention between two or more Powers can of themselves
have no binding force upon any other Power which is not a party to it. The
parties may happen to recognise a general rule, expressly or by necessary
implication, as already settled; or, as is more common, their agreement may be
intended to supply the want of any settled rule. In either case the evidence is
valuable; but it must not be assumed that a rule which parties think well to
establish between themselves is therefore regarded, even by themselves, as fit
for general adoption. It is otherwise (and the distinction has in our time
become of great importance) where an agreement or declaration is made not by
two or three States as a matter of their own private business, but by a
considerable proportion, in number and power, of civilised States at large, for
the regulation of matters of general and permanent interest. Such acts are the
outcome of congresses or conferences held for the purpose, and they are now
commonly so framed as to admit of and invite the subsequent adhesion of States
which may not have been parties in the first instance. Moreover, it is certain
that, when all or most of the Great Powers have deliberately agreed to any rule
of general application, their agreement has very great weight even among States
whose consent has not been given. Declarations of this kind may, in fact, be
expected, in the absence of prompt and effective dissent by some Power of the
first rank, to become part of the universally received law of nations before
long. As among men, so among nations, the opinions and usage of the leading
members in a community tend to form an authoritative example
for the
whole. A striking proof of this tendency was given in the War of 1898 between
Spain and the United States. Neither belligerent was a party to the article of
the Declaration of Paris of 1856 against privateering; the United States,
indeed, had refused to concur in it. Moreover, the Declaration of Paris was
not, in point of form, an instrument of the highest authority. Nevertheless,
when the War of 1898 broke out, the United States proclaimed their intention of
adhering to the Declaration of Paris, and the rules thereby laid down were, in
fact, observed by both belligerents. Great Britain, again, did not accede to
the resolution of the Hague Conference of 1899 against the use of expanding
bullets, but shortly afterwards acted upon it in the South African War, and
formally acceded to it at the Conference of 1907.
The weight of
actual usage, and the proof derived from it, remain the most important factors
of all; for the final test of validity must in the case of international law,
no less than in that of any other customary law, be found in general consent
evidenced by conduct. Opinions, even the most plausible, may fail to produce
effectual conviction. Solemn declarations may remain a dead letter. Practice
alone will show what is really to be expected. Therefore, the opinion in the
case of the Silesian Loan already mentioned was careful to state that the law
of nations is “founded upon justice, equity, convenience, and the reason of the
thing, and confirmed by long usage.” Such usage, if uniform or nearly so, is
the best evidence of deliberate consent, for discordant opinions as to what is
just or convenient could never produce a uniform accepted usage. On the other
hand, when we find certain rules generally accepted by independent States, the
natural explanation is that all or most of those who are best qualified to
judge of “the reason of the thing ” believe them to be convenient and just.
Thus the elements of custom and reason in the law of nations, so far from being
in any normal conflict, are both indispensable and necessary to each other. Not
that existing usage is infallible or immutable. There will always be some
opinion, sometimes a considerable body of opinion, in advance of the average
moral sense of a community, and this no less among nations than among citizens.
Its influence will tend to keep usage well up to the mark of average opinion,
perhaps a little better. To make it much better is a task that no temporal
Government and no spiritual teacher has ever achieved, except in brief seeming
and at the price of disastrous reaction. We must aim at that which appears
right to the most competent persons, if we can be sure who those are; but, for
the time being, we must be content with such working rules as satisfy the
majority of wellmeaning and fairly competent persons; and in applying them we
must make the best of the universal rule of jurisprudence which prescribes
that, in case of doubt, the most reasonable interpretation is to be preferred.
It would be idle to Complain that Lord Stowell, or any of his predecessors or
successors in Admiralty jurisdiction, did not claim
supreme
authority in matters of faith and morals. Had they done so, they would only
have hampered progress by narrow and premature definitions. Nor are we to
expect or desire any such jurisdiction to be assumed by any congress or concert
of the Powers.
Information
as to the development of particular rules in the law of nations is not within
our province here, and must be sought in the works of technical writers on the
subject. But, within the last half-century, we have seen the beginning of
serious and concerted endeavour to make the avoidance of war easier and to
mitigate its evils when it occurs. The rate of progress is not yet such as to
content enthusiasts for peace, but it appears to be an increasing rate; and if
acute disappointment is sometimes felt about failures and shortcomings, as now
at the rather small results of the Hague Conference of 1907, it must be
remembered that such disappointment, at one stage or another, and probably at
more than one, is incident to every movement of reform. For the most part, the
reformers have set before themselves the ideal of an international tribunal
possessing, if not compulsory jurisdiction, at least such moral weight that
resort to its award, except in case of extreme necessity, may become a duty of
customary obligation. This is an admirable ideal, and the progress now made
towards it is considerable, when we remember how lately, the most that seemed
practicable was a vague suggestion of appeal to the good offices of some
friendly third Power. But we must not forget that arbitration in any form is
only an instrument for settling disputes, and is not equally appropriate in all
cases. It is not safe to assume that all questions between sovereign States are
analogous to those which cause litigation between individuals, and that no
difficulty remains in the way of judicial solution if once an adequate judicial
authority can be found. This is far from being so.
International
controversies may be divided, for the purpose in hand, into four classes. Many
particular cases are in fact of a mixed or ambiguous kind; nevertheless one or
another of the qualities to be mentioned will mostly be found to prevail in any
given example. In the first are such as relate to boundaries and territorial
rights, including the construction of any treaties or other authentic documents
bearing, on such rights. Here we have almost a perfect analogy to cases between
private owners. The main problem is to find an arbitrator, board of
arbitrators, or standing tribunal, whose decision will command the respect of
both parties. More or less trouble may occur in defining the issues to be
submitted, and coming to a preliminary understanding upon the extent of the
matters that are reasonably open to discussion. These difficulties however are
of the kind which with goodwill and good faith pan be overcome. In fact, many
cases of uncertain boundaries and the like, which in former ages would have led
to wars or furnished a convenient pretext for them, have in our own time been
peaceably and honourably settled. Moreover, it may be said of these cases, as
of
similar cases
in men’s private affairs, that a decision arrived at by competent persons after
argument is more likely to be just in itself and, what is more, satisfactory to
the parties, than a compromise arrived at by direct negotiation. We may place
in the same category with boundary settlements, though in a less important
rank, the adjustment of pecuniary claims by subjects of one State against the
Government of another, arising out of transactions or events as to which no
matter of principle is in dispute. Such claims have often been dealt with by
joint Commissions proceeding in a more or less judicial manner, and there is
seldom much difficulty about them, though the justice ultimately done is not
always prompt. Here there is still a good deal of analogy to the ordinary civil
business of municipal Courts.
A second
class of controversies turns on alleged breach or nonperformance of active
obligations arising out of the interpretation of treaties or official
declarations, or out of the common customary duty of nations in particular
circumstances, as where a breach of neutrality or excess in the exercise of a
belligerent’s rights against neutrals is complained of. Such cases are less apt
than the first class for quasi-judicial treatment. Often it happens that no
permanent settlement is possible without laying down regulations for future
action which will amount* in effect if not in form, to a new convention. Where
this is so, the better way may be to arrange the whole matter by direct
negotiation. Even where the settlement has taken the form of arbitration, we
shall sometimes find that the real controversy was preliminary and that one or
the other party conceded all or most of the substantial points in issue by the
form in which it agreed to fix the questions to be referred. A leading example
is the Alabama dispute between Great Britain and the United States. The rules
defined in the Treaty of Washington, when applied to the facts, which were
equally notorious to both parties, practically reduced the arbitral tribunal of
Geneva to a board for the assessment of damages.
A third class
of cases is that which is analogous to civil actions for wrongs. Here, a
sovereign State, for the most part representing individual grievances and
claims of its subjects, though not always or necessarily so, seeks compensation
for harm caused to innocent persons, as owners of property or otherwise, by the
incidents of warlike operations or civil disorder within the jurisdiction of
the State to which the complaint is addressed; by denial of justice to its
subjects in that jurisdiction; by alleged illegal or excessive proceedings of
that other State’s officers; or by acts done under colour of exercising some
international right, but alleged to be a manifest abuse. Arbitral proceedings
and awards have been of great use in these cases, but chiefly when the rules to
be applied have been already agreed upon by the parties or are otherwise too
plain for serious dispute. Very difficult and delicate questions arise when an
arbitrator or arbitral commission has to consider whether acts done,
perhaps, in a
remote quarter of the world and under a foreign system of public law and
legislation are to be deemed illegal or in the nature of unfriendly conduct.
For such reasons the first King of the Belgians, in 1862, declined to act as
arbitrator in a case arising out of the seizure and confiscation of certain
American ships by Peru. His reasons for declining were, however, so given as to
amount to an informal opinion unfavourable to the claim of the United States,
and thereupon the claim was abandoned.
To whatever
class a settled claim belonged in its inception, it would not be possible,
without enormous labour, to say with any certainty what proportion of such
claims have in substance been incident to the working out of former agreements,
or otherwise mere items in a series of diplomatic transactions, or what
proportion of the residue were in themselves capable of leading to serious
trouble between the nations concerned. But it may be observed as to doubts of
this kindfirst, that accumulation of unsettled differences is a source of risk
directly and indirectly, though they may be individually small; secondly, that
the prevention of war between powerful States, or the termination of dangerous
recrimination and ill-will, is much to have been accomplished even in a few
cases. It is true that Governments submit to arbitration only when they do not
want to fight; but it is also true that peaceful intentions are not always easy
to carry out in the face of excited public opinion, and the existence of a
known procedure which provides an honourable way of accommodation may make all
the difference. There are moments when any expedient is good if only it serves
to gain time.
But the
following classification may be useful. Nearly 200 cases of arbitration between
1815 and the end of the nineteenth century are collected in Mr W. Evans Darby’s
International Tribunals. Omitting from the total the cases (nearly 10 per
cent.) in which the proceedings were only after hostilities, were not of a
judicial character, led to no decision, or were not between independent States,
a rough analysis shows the remaining effective arbitrations to fall into the
following groups :— questions of title and boundaries, about 30 per cent ;
pecuniary claims of citizens in miscellaneous civil matters, about 20 per
cent.; construction of treaties (other than boundary), about 10 per cent.;
claims arising out of warlike operations and for alleged illegal proceedings,
or denial, of justice, about 40 per cent. According to the article on
Arbitration in International Law in the Encyclopaedia of the Law of England,
2nd edition, Great Britain has been a party to just 50 arbitrations during the
nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. Of these, 17
appear to have been on questions of boundaries or territorial rights.
There remains
a fourth kind of differences between States, and the most dangerous: those
which do not admit of reduction to definite issues at all, or which can be
reduced only to the ancient formula of Ennius: “ uter esset induperator.”
Contests for supremacy or predominant
Methods of international arbitration.
719
influence are
not disposed of by argument, in whatever shape they are disguised; indeed, the
Powers concerned are usually less willing to invite or tolerate interference in
proportion as the formal cause of quarrel is weak. There has seldom been, on
paper, a less substantial reason than that which was assigned for the greatest
European war remembered by living men. Only one vemedy would be quite
effectual, namely, that a coalition of Powers of superior collective strength
should be prepared to enforce the principles which now stand unanimously acknowledged
by the Second Peace Conference of the Hague. A certain number of minor wars
have already been prevented, or kept within bounds, by influence of this kind;
but the beneficent arts of diplomacy as hitherto practised have certainly not
lost their importance in maintaining peace among the Great Powers. It is a
grave mistake to depreciate them, as unthinking or ignorant enthusiasts for
arbitration have sometimes done. They have probably been successful in our own
time oftener and on more critical occasions than the Governments concerned have
yet thought it wise to make public. Meanwhile, the frequent repetition of
declarations that war ought not to be entered on without a serious attempt at
conciliation in some form—a kind of declaration which costs nothing, and which
every Power cheerfully makes, but to which no definite interpretation is yet
attached—does tend to produce, and may well in time produce, a genuine public
opinion capable of affording a considerable moral sanction. Moreover, the
existence of a standing quasi-judicial machinery makes it far easier for
friendly States to tender their good offices without giving offence to either
party.
Broadly
speaking, there are two methods of international arbitration, and subdivisions
of procedure within each of them. First, the parties may refer the matter in
difference to a judge or judges of their own choice, in pursuance of a standing
treaty or a special convention for the case in hand. The arbiter may be the
ruler of a third State, or a tribunal composed of persons named by the parties
directly, or in part by friendly Governments at their joint request. Secondly,
the States concerned may prefer to use the machinery provided by a standing
international agreement of more general scope.
All the
important arbitrations to which Great Britain has been a party have been
conducted on the system first mentioned. The reference of the Dogger Bank
affair in 1904 to a Commission of enquiry is hardly an exception, for this was
not properly an arbitration at all. The other system is that of the permanent
Court established after the Hague Conference of 1899. This Court has not yet
dealt with any dispute of the first magnitude, or with much European business;
but it is hardly the part of those who preach peace and concord to be
dissatisfied because nations are less litigious than they expected.
Many more or
less ambitious projects of international jurisdiction and tribunals have been
put forward in the course of the last two
centuries and
even earlier. It does not seem useful to describe or enumerate them here; but,
before we speak of the Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 at the Hague, it may
be well to review shortly the procedure actually employed in some of the
leading cases of arbitration under conventions limited to the special occasion.
We shall not dwell on the causes, particulars, or merits of the disputes which
were thus quieted; for such matters belong to general political history, and
some of them are dealt with elsewhere in this work.
The
Arbitration between Great Britain and the United States on the claims
generically known as the Alabama claims, for damage done by Confederate
cruisers equipped or harboured in British ports during the American Civil War,
was provided for by the Treaty of Washington of 1871; the award was made by a
composite tribunal sitting at Geneva in 1872. This case is commonly said to
have given great encouragement to the promoters of international arbitration,
and cited as a kind of prerogative instance. An admirable example was certainly
set by the determination of the two Powers to come to an understanding, and by
the skill and tact of the diplomatists who settled the Treaty under anything
but favourable conditions. There had been many months, it is said twenty, of
secret diplomatic correspondence. To judge by the samples now accessible, much
of it was, in tone and style, more like the wrangling of country lawyers over a
partnership quarrel than the arguments of statesmen. It is hard to say whether
Seward’s or Lord Russell’s temper was worse. If the American’s ill-manners were
cruder, the Englishman’s were more deliberate and had less excuse. Between
them, they came very near to involving their nations in a war which the
occasion was wholly insufficient to justify. Lord Russell, moreover, showed
remarkable ignorance of elementary legal conceptions which really do not go
much beyond elementary common sense. He objected to the test of “ due diligence
” being applied to the conduct of England as a neutral Power, because he
imagined that, if an arbitrator found the British Government wanting in due
diligence, this finding would be an insult to the national honour as involving
a charge of bad faith. If one could not be negligent without bad faith, there
would be few honest men indeed in the world. With these unpromising materials,
however, a Joint High Commission got to work at Washington in 1871, and settled
the rules of a neutral’s duty which the contracting parties embodied in the
Treaty as the law to be applied to the case. Ihis was done upon suggestions
made in the instructions of the British Commissioners; and it was the real
central point of the whole business. When these rules were accepted, the office
of the formal tribunal constituted under the Treaty was almost confined to
defining in detail a liability which, under those rules and on the notorious
facts, must to some extent be admitted, and awarding damages accordingly. The
I892-9]
Behring Sea and Venezuela Arbitrations. 721
immediate
effect in England was certainly not to increase the favour in which
international arbitration was held; nor could it well be disputed, in the
result, that the damages were excessive, since a balance for which no claimants
could be found was left in the hands of the United States.
Nevertheless,
a fruitful example remained. A dispute between two Powers of the first rank,
which, reasonably or not, had in fact become acute and even dangerous, was
reduccd to terms of judicial compensation without loss of honour on either
side. Perfection was not to be looked for in an experiment of such novelty. The
transitory details have long ceased to be material, and the precedent has been
followed with better success in other cases. It is likewise immaterial, for
this purpose, that the rules of the Treaty of Washington have not become part
of the general law of nations.
After twenty
years, another arbitral tribunal decided another questiou, that of the Behring
Sea seal fishery, between Great Britain and Canada, on the one hand (Canada,
whose interests were immediately concerned, having an official and even a
leading part in the carriage of the proceedings), and the United States, on
the other. The method may be described as that of the Geneva Arbitration, with
considerable improvement. There were seven arbitrators: two named by Great
Britain, two by the United States, one by the President of the French Republic,
one by the King of Italy, and one by the King of Sweden and Norway.
The strictly
judicial members of the tribunal were Lord Hannen for England and Justice
Harlan of the Supreme Court at Washington for the United States, and the choice
could not have been better. A distinct qualification was laid down by the
Treaty, which required the arbitrators to be jurists of distinguished
reputation, if possible acquainted with the English language. The Treaty also
stated the specific questions which the tribunal was to answer. The Court sat
in Paris, and made its award in August, 1893, a year and a half after the
conclusion of the Treaty. In the result, the claim of the United States to an
exclusive jurisdiction beyond the limits of territorial waters was disallowed
by a majority of the arbitrators, and the provisions made by the Treaty for
eventual further regulation came into play.
The political
history of the dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain concerning the
boundary of British Guiana, which had lasted for about forty years, has been
given in an earlier volume of this History. Practically, the case for Venezuela
was managed by the United States; it was therefore natural that the Venezuelan
representatives on the tribunal were two members of the Supreme Court at
Washington (Chief Justice Fuller and Justice Brewer). The British Government,
through the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, named Lord Herschell and
Sir R. Heiin
(now Lord) Collins. The four members so appointed named a fifth, Professor de
Martens, of St Petersburg, who acted as President. There were two remarkable
features about this Arbitration. First, the award was unanimous. Secondly, the
Court made rules of procedure for itself. The rules were communicated to the
Hague Conference of 1899, which was sitting at the time of the award, and
adopted by it: and thus the settlement of a controversy which had been
magnified far beyond the value of the subject-matter made a contribution of
real importance to the formation of a recognised international procedure. A
rational and acceptable scheme of procedure is the first condition for anything
like a truly judicial handling of international questions.
In 1899 the
republics of Chile and Argentina referred a long-pending boundary question to
the sole award of the sovereign of England. This was an interesting reversion
to the oldest form of international arbitration, and it was justified by
complete success. A few years earlier, jbjections would probably have been
raised in the United States to a European monarch being appealed to as arbiter
between two South American republics; but the relations between the United
States and Great Britain were now cordial, and no such objection was heard of.
An advisory Commission was appointed here, composed of Lord Macnaghten, Sir
John Ardagh, and Sir Thomas Holdich. Early in
1902 Sir Thomas Holdich undertook in person a survey
of the southern Andes for the better information of the commissioners, and in
November of the same year the King made his award. The result gave
satisfaction, it is believed, to both parties; they were certainly delivered
from an excessive burden of warlike expenditure. An incidental consequence was
the accession to the British navy of the Swiftsure and the Triumph, two
battleships of original design and of great power for their size, built to the
order of Chile and sold to Great Britain after the award. About the same time,
a boundary question between Great Britain and Brazil was in like manner
referred to the King of Italy alone; but this was so far from being a matter of
acute controversy that very few people outside the Foreign Office heard of it.
In the case
of the Alaska boundary, as in the Behring Sea case, the question was in the
first line of Canadian much more than British interest. A novel experiment was
tried in making up the arbitral Commission, which consisted of six members,
three named by each party: they all were or ought to have been “ impartial
jurists of repute ”; it is doubtful whether the first epithet fitted more than
one of the six, and very doubtful how far the rest of the description, in any
ordinary meaning of the words, included some of the others. Following the
Behring Sea precedent, the Convention of July, 1903, under which the
proceedings took place, laid down the specific questions to be decided.
The decision
was on the whole against the Canadian claim of title, and the two Canadian
judges who were members of the tribunal handed in separate dissenting opinions.
So far as any general inferences can be drawn from this case, they do not seem
favourable to the plan of referring questions to a body of arbitrators
representing only the parties. It is difficult for such arbitrators, at best,
to preserve a judicial balance of mind; the absence of an umpire makes it even
more difficult. A better scheme, on similar general lines, had been proposed in
an Arbitration Treaty of 1897 between Great Britain and the United States,
which failed to take effect in consequence of a division of opinion in the
American Senate on a purely domestic question of constitutional usage, namely,
whether it did not impair the Senate’s treaty-making power by dispensing with
the specific consent of that body to every reference of a matter under dispute.
But that project is now superseded by a much simpler form of reference to the
tribunal of the Hague, to which the Treaty of
1903 between Great Britain and France led the way.
We shall mention the recent Conventions after speaking of the Peace
Conferences, and it does not appear useful to give the details of a scheme
altogether unlikely to be revived or imitated: Enough to say that, in its
anxiety to leave no reasonable ground of objection open, it provided three
distinct forms of arbitration for different classes of disputes.
Meanwhile the
question of permanent provisions for international arbitration had been much
discussed, and there had been attempts, as we have noticed, to deal with the
problem by treaties. By far the greatest steps in advance, however, have been
made by the Peace Conference held at the Hague in 1899, on the invitation of
the Emperor of Russia, and the later Conference of 1907, held at the same place
and in like manner but with a more numerous attendance. At the Conference of
1899, the delegates of practically all the civilised Powers concurred in
establishing a permanent judiciary system ready to be called into action
whenever two or more States desire a matter in difference to be settled. After
several proposals had been made and discussed, a convention was adopted on July
28, of which the form is understood to have been largely due to the British
delegation, and especially to Lord Pauncefote. It provided for the conduct of
good offices and mediation; enquiry by mixed commissions into disputed matters
of fact; arbitral jurisdiction under agreements of reference; the constitution
of a permanent Court, with an international office, at the Hague; and rules of
procedure. Recourse to arbitration remains voluntary; but the preliminary
friction, incident to choosing the arbitrators or persons who are to nominate
them and settling their procedure, is got rid of by providing a standing scheme
of regulation to govern all references to the Hague tribunal unless the parties
have expressly agreed otherwise. The provision for Commissions of enquiry did
good service in the case of the North Sea
incident of
1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, when a Russian fleet on its way from the
Baltic to the Channel, and ultimately to the Pacific, came upon the Hull
fishing fleet off the Dogger Bank on a dark night and, mistaking them for
hostile torpedo craft, opened fire. Happily, so far as there could be good
fortune in such a conjuncture, the darkness checkered by fitful and crossing search-lights,
the confusion of a sudden and vague alarm, want of training, and a rolling sea,
conspired to make the Russian gunners’ aim as uncertain as their officers’
judgment, so that the loss of life was small and the material damage, though
considerable, less than might have been expected. One or two detached ships of
the Russian squadron itself fared ill enough.
When the
matter first became known, public feeling in England had naturally enough run
high. The informal good offices of the French Government, in alliance with
Russia and on friendly terms with Great Britain, were probably the most
important factor in bringing about an amicable settlement; but it would have
been much harder, if an appropriate general method of procedure had not been
already furnished by the cosmopolitan authority of the Hague Conference. A
mixed naval Commission was formed on the model laid down by the Hague Convention,
but with enlarged powers of deciding on responsibility as well as finding the
facts. The proceedings were carried through with becoming judicial dignity and
excellent discretion; due compensation was made; and the honour of the Russian
service, which was deemed to have been called in question, was saved without
offence to any one. It is doubtful whether a formal tribunal of jurists or
diplomatists could have handled this delicate affair so well, if at all; and
from this point of view the example is specially instructive.
The
Conference of 1899, it must be observed, was not convoked in the first instance
to do precisely the work which in the event it accomplished. Another object
was put first in the general invitation or “rescript” addressed by the Tsar,
through his Foreign Minister, to all the Powers represented at his Court
(August 24, 1898): namely, “a possible reduction of the excessive armaments
which weigh upon all nations,” to be effected by “ putting a limit to the
progressive development of the present armaments.” But it was not found
practicable, either in 1899 or in 1907, to achieve anything in this direction
beyond echoing the Tsar’s pious wishes. In 1907, any serious discussion of the
topic was declared impracticable beforehand. Indeed, it seems fairly plain to
any one acquainted with the conduct of public business, that any arrangement
for the reduction of armaments by mutual agreement among the Powers must
involve the settlement of some proportionate scheme founded on considerations
not only of the magnitude of the several States concerned but of the character
of the interests to be protected and the protection reasonably required;
further, that suqh a scheme cannot be established without some recognised
comparative
standard of
naval and military power; and, moreover, that there are great technical
difficulties in fixing such a standard, especially with regard to naval units
of widely varying date, design, functions, and efficiency. Then, it seems hard
to believe that for the necessary exchange of views on all these details, many
of them entangled with confidential matter, an open conference of delegates
from all the Governments in the world is the fittest place, or a fit or hopeful
place at all. Long and strictly private negotiation, it is submitted, must
precede any useful treatment of the disease of excessive armaments at a general
conference; and the proper moment for such negotiation to begin, with any good
prospect, among the Governments most concerned, will not be accelerated by the
rhetorical repetition of commonplaces about the wickediiess of war. Within five
years, the sovereign who had convened the first Peace Conference was himself
involved in war on a great scale by land and sea. Nothing is easier than for
irresponsible preachers to point the moral of his ill-fortune. A more sober
judgment will note the ironies of history without making haste to condemn their
victims.
As the matter
stands at present, Great Britain is the only Power that has made any definite
overture towards the end which all agree to be desirable. The British
Government has declared itself, both in Parliament and at the Hague Conference,
ready to concur in an exchange of programmes of naval construction among the
Great Powers. It is not known that this offer has met with any acceptance.
In 1907, the
Second Peace Conference passed an amended convention for the settlement of international
disputes, expressly superseding, as between the contracting Powers, the former
convention of 1899, which therefore need not be further considered. By the
provisions now in force resort to good offices or mediation is declared to be
proper, and the spontaneous offer of such is recommended; offers of this kind
cannot be complained of as unfriendly. A special form of mediation through
other friendly Powers acting as seconds, and for the time superseding direct
negotiation, is also recommended where applicable. The difference between a
mediator and an arbitrator is elementary; but we note, for abundant caution,
that a mediator’s office is to advise without purporting to decide, whereas an
arbitrator’s is judicial, and he is bound to decide but has no right to advise.
Leo XIII mediated with success between Germany and Spain in the matter of the
Caroline Islands in 1885. Commissioners of enquiry may regulate their own
procedure, and avail themselves of the offices and staff of the permanent Court
at the Hague. Practical regulations are laid down to facilitate the collection
of evidence, and the division of costs is provided for. As to arbitration, the
constitution of the permanent Court of Arbitration is confirmed. Its essential
feature is a standing list of qualified arbitrators, not more than four being
named by each contracting Power. When a Court has to be made up, each Power
concerned in the cause chooses two members from the list*
726
Provisions for
arbitral procedure. [1907
and the
arbitrators choose an umpire; there are further and seemingly effectual
provisions in case they fail to agree. The bureau international, which is the
permanent office or chancellery of the Court, is under the direction of a
diplomatic board at the Hague. Terms of reference are, as a rule, to be handed
in by the parties; but the Court may settle them itself if so requested by both
parties, or under certain conditions even if only required by one. Elaborate
provisions are made for the conduct of the proceedings. Further, a more summary
form of arbitration with two arbitrators and an umpire may be adopted in
affairs of less weight. All this appears, from a lawyer’s point of view, to be
sound and businesslike work. Doubtless, the jurisdiction is voluntary: but so
was all jurisdiction in its beginning. As time goes on, it will be less and
less reputable among civilised States to talk of going to war without having
exhausted the resources of the Hague Convention; and the necessity of any
formal international declaration in that behalf may be avoided altogether, if
the tribunal acquires by custom, as one hopes it will, a stronger authority
than any express form of words would confer. That the time is not now ripe for
any such form is shown by the vague and halting recognition “ in principle ” of
a general duty of arbitration which is embodied in the Final Act of the
Conference. Nor do we see much reason to regret the failure of an attempt to
set up a new tribunal of arbitral justice, with permanent paid judges, which
was to be more formal, more continuous, and less dependent on the parties’
choice, and, it was hoped, would eventually supersede the existing Court. This
scheme was brought forward by the United States. It broke down on the
impossibility of agreeing in what manner and proportions judges should be
appointed by the several Powers; the recognised equality of all independent
States before the law of nations being extended by several members of the
Conference; especially the leading South American delegates, to a claim for absolute
equality in all political and administrative schemes. This interpretation, we
submit, is perverse; but, on more than one occasion, it was among the gravest
hindrances to the work of the Conference. In our opinion, however, there were
much better reasons for not being in haste to imitate the forms of a Court
exercising true federal jurisdiction. What is wanted to promote peace is not
the nearest approach to compulsion, nor the most imposing Court, nor the most
learned decisions possible, nor yet the speediest (for sometimes delay is
rather of advantage), but a working plan for producing, with as little friction
as may be, decisions likely to be accepted. This the two Peace Conferences at
the Hague have given us, and it is much.
Meanwhile a
considerable number of general treaties have been concluded (M. Renault says
about sixty down to July, 1908) agreeing to refer differences to the Hague
tribunal: the Anglo-French Treaty of 1903 led the way (the text may be seen in
the Law Quarterly Review, Vol. xxi, p. 114, as well as in the usual official
publications) and has served as a
1907-9]
Limitations of Arbitration Treaties.
727
pattern. A
rather special treaty between Italy and Argentina was communicated to the Hague
Conference in September, 1907.
In the course
of 1908, several Arbitration Treaties in identical form (closely resembling
that of the Treaty between France and Great Britain) were concluded between the
United States and other Powers, Great Britain among them. The operative article
is as follows:—
“
Differences which may arise of a legal nature or relating to the interpretation
of treaties existing between the two Contracting Parties, and which it may not
have been possihle to settle by diplomacy, shall he referred to the Permanent
Court of Arbitration established at The Hague hy the Convention of the 29th of
July, 1899, provided, nevertheless, that they do not affect the vital
interests, the independence, or the honour of the two Contracting States, and
do not concern the interests of third Parties.”
Due
recognition is given to the constitutional position of the Senate in the United
States, hy requiring in every case a special agreement of reference, to be
entered into by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The
other Powers which are parties to these Conventions, down to July 1, 1908 (so
they are officially called, not Treaties), are France, Italy, Japan, Mexico,
the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. For some
reason the Conventions are limited to a period of five years, possibly to make
amendments easier if any should be thought of.
A list of the
Arbitration Treaties concluded by Great Britain down to July 1, 1909, will be
found in the Bibliography to this chapter. Brazil made Arbitration Treaties
with many Powers in the spring of 1909.
All or nearly
all the above-mentioned Treaties contain, it will be noted, an exception of
questions involving the vital interests, independence, or honour of the
contracting States. Lord Salisbury wrote, in the course of the negotiations
preceding the unratified treaty of 1897 with the United States: “Neither
Government is willing to accept arbitration upon issues in which the national
houour or integrity is involved.” Clearly, no nation will submit to any
tribunal the question whether it shall accede to demands which its rulers
consider ruinous or humiliating. What arbitrable question was there between
Elizabeth of England and Philip of Spain when the Armada was off the Lizard ?
or, as has been pertinently asked, between Austria and France in 1859, or
Russia and Turkey in 1877 ? Therefore, some such clause of exception appears
unavoidable if the good faith of treaties is to be upheld, and we confess that
we do not attach much importance to its exact form. It may be said that these
exceptions can be used frivolously or in bad faith. But the same drawback
exists in the construction and application of all treaties whatever.
Well-meant proposals were made at the Hague for settling a list of causes of
difference which should not be deemed vital; but the only result that appeared
practicable was an
enumeration
of such matters of current business as have commonly been found well within the
resources of diplomacy, and the project was wisely dropped.
We must now
say a word of the Concert of Europe, a term so current as to be familiar to
every one who has followed the course of affairs during the last generation. An
enquirer from another planet, or even a citizen of the New World who had not
attended much to recent European history, might be moved to ask : If there is a
European Concert, what heed is there of Peace Conferences, and why do armaments
continue to grow ? The answer is that the Concert of Europe is a name which in
modem practice conveniently designates a wholly local and anomalous episode in
international politics, and disguises formal irregularities which only
necessity has justified. Lord Salisbury thought the name “ somewhat absurd.”
In the earlier part of the nineteenth century the current word appears to have
been “ system.” Ever since the War of Greek Independence the Great Powers of
Europe have endeavoured more or less constantly, and with more or less good
results, to restrain the chronic elements of disorder in the Balkan peninsula
and the eastern Mediterranean, due to the superposition of a dynasty bound by
the law and the traditions of Islam on a mixed population of Christians
agreeing in nothing but that name, and at feud with one another no less than
with their nominal rulers. The Concert, such as it was, was far from harmonious
in the days of Mehemet Ali’s revolt, failed to prevent the Crimean War in
1853-4, and the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, and was impotent to deal with Egypt.
That country has come practically under British protection by a series of
accidents, makeshifts, and fictions whose outcome, now legitimate by the
consent of the Powers, is the despair of legal and political definition. On the
other hand the European Concert, in 1897, though unable to prevent war between
Greece and Turkey, reduced it to comparatively trifling dimensions; and, better
still, it pacified Crete, with much trouble, indeed, and in a clumsy fashion.
Whether the international situation of Crete be more or less anomalous than
that of Egypt is a question few publicists care to discuss if they can avoid
it. One thing is certain, that in point of form the acts of interference in
Crete undertaken by the Powers in 1897 and 1898, including a pacific blockade,
repeated prevention of Turkish troops from landing, and assumption of administrative
and judicial authority, gave the Sultan an excellent cause of war against every
one of them; but there were more excellent reasons against the exercise of his
right, and all these acts were, in fact, authorised sooner or later by the more
or less willing consent or acquiescence of the Turkish Government.
The
endeavours of the Powers to improve the state of Macedonia, which were earned
on with indifferent success for some years, were interrupted, and will, one may
hope, be superseded by the peaceful
729
revolution of
1908 which restored the Turkish Constitution. The still later events of 1908
and 1909 are too recent to be matter of historical criticism, but they have in
any case proved that the Concert of Europe no longer exists.
With regard
to the Russian initiative in the matter of peace conferences, it will be
remembered that, so early as 1804, the Emperor Alexander I proposed a league of
which the principle was to be obligatory mediation, and which should aim, among
other objects, at framing a code of the law of nations. In 1818, at the
Conference of Aix-la- Chapelle, he spoke of an ideal “system of Europe” in a
wider sense than that which the “Concert” has come to bear in later times. It
would seem that the formation of any such system can be looked for only when
the political institutions and ideas prevailing in the chief nations of the
world have become much more nearly uniform than they are; and it is far from
clear that the present tendency is to approximation, for the fashion—a passing
one, let us hope—is rather to exaggerate national and racial differences.
The
Declaration of London, 1909, does not fall within the scope of this chapter, as
it is of a technical character, and deals only with questions arising out of an
actual state of war. It is, however, an important supplement to the work done
by the Hague Conference of 1907. Better definition of the rules governing
maritime warfare and the rights and duties of nations in relation thereto will
remove occasions of controversy, which have often tended to involve neutral
Powers in the quarrels of the original belligerents.
SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS.
The condition of the people in 1842, as seen in the
streets of Bolton in Lancashire, was described by Colonel Perronet Thompson
(1783-1869) in language that palpitates with anger. “ Anything like the squalid
misery, the slow, mouldering, putrefying death by which the weak and feeble of
the working classes are perishing here, it never befel my eyes to behold nor my
imagination to conceive. And the creatures seem to have no idea of resisting or
even repining. They sit down with oriental submission, as if it was God and not
the landlord that was laying his hand upon them.” At the same time the new
Boards of Guardians throughout the whole country were employing between forty
and fifty thousand adult able-bodied men in oakum-picking, stone-breaking, and
bone-crushing, in the “ labour yards ” attached to the hated “ Bastilles of the
poor,” on pittances of poor relief just sufficient to keep them and their
families alive. Of such workers as were fortunate enough to be still in
wage-earning employment, men, women, and chilrlrpnj “ pent up in a close dusty
atmosphere from half-past five or six o’clock in the morning till seven or eight
o’clock at night, from week to week, without change, without intermission, it
is not to be wondered at,” states a contemporary government Report, “that they
fly to the spirit and beer-shops and the dancing-house on the Saturday nights
to seek those, to them, pleasures and comforts which their own destitute and
comfortless homes deny.” In the Bolton of the twentieth century, though there
is still individual squalor and personal misery to be found, the population-six
times as numerous as in 1842—may, takeu as a whole, safely be described as
prosperous, healthy, intellectually alert, taking’plenty of holidays, and
almost aggressive in its independent self-reliance. So great a change, to be
paralleled in many an industrial city of western Europe, demands an
explanation.
To some
observers of the first half of the nineteenth centuiy—to John Dalton
(1766-1844) or Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), for instance, or to Michael
Faraday (1791-1867) or Sir Charles Lyell
The knowledge of man in society. 731
(1797—1875)—it
may have seemed, as is still sometimes asserted, that it was to physical or
biological science, “ far more than to the work of statesmen or to the
creation of constitutions, or to the elaboration of social systems or to the
study of sociology ” that we had to look as “ the great ameliorator of the
human lot in life.” Unfortunately for this view, we must recognise that
physical science had already achieved great marvels, and that some of the
principal mechanical inventions which transformed English industry and
enormously increased the wealth of its wealthy classes were already more than
half a century old, when Bolton, and industrial England generally, lay, in
1842, in the lowest trough of its misery. If to ameliorate the human lot in
life had been any part of the purpose of the great mechanical inventions, or of
the far-reaching discoveries of physical science of the preceding half-century,
they must be accounted to have egregiously failed. Since then, we have had to
admit, as John Stuart Mill indicated already in 1848, that all the discoveries
of physical science and all the mechanical inventions in the world, have not
lightened, and by themselves never will lighten, the toil of the wage-earning
class. A scientific discovery or a mechanical invention, though it may
revolutionise the processes of industry and vastly augment our total productive
power, does not in itself affect the terms of the bargain which the employer of
labour is able to make with the wage-eamer; does not make the profitableness of
the “ marginal man ” to the employer any greater than before; and, accordingly,
does not by itself make the working day shorter or the wages greater.
What
mechanical, physical, chemical, and biological science has done to enlarge the
range of our knowledge and augment our power over the forces of nature will be
described in a subsequent chapter. But it is demonstrated by a whole century of
experience that, while every advance in our knowledge of the universe increases
the potential capacity of those who control affairs, this mere increase of
knowledge, as a matter of fact, does nothing in itself to prevent or to
diminish the poverty and social wretchedness of those in the rear. These are,
indeed, in the procession of civilisation, left all the further behind. The
social result of any increased power over nature enjoyed by the community as a
whole depends on the use to which the community as a whole chooses to put it.
But the ordered sequences of physical and biological phenomena which usually
claim the name of science do not exhaust its scope. Of man in society, with all
his various groupings and arrangements, as forming part of the universe, we may
also increase our knowledge, and thereby increase our power to control
phenomena outside the realm of physical or biological science, which are potent
in the amelioration of the human lot in life. In short, there may be progress
in political science, as well as in the sciences dealing with the non-human
part of the universe. What has transformed the Bolton cotton-spinners of 1842
into the Bolton cotton-spinners of the twentieth century—what falls
therefore to
be described in this chapter—is no mechanical, physical, chemical, or
biological discovery, but a certain subtle revolution in the ideas of men; a
certain advance in our acquaintance with those social laws which, to use
Montesquieu’s pregnant phrase, “are the necessary relations derived from the
nature of things ”; and, therewith, a certain increase of power to influence
social phenomena. This power to influence social phenomena has taken shape in
specific social movements associated with such appellations as municipal action
and cooperation, factory legislation and trade unionism, sanitation and
education, the Poor Law and the collective provision for the orphans, the sick,
and the aged, and all that vaguely defined social force commonly designated
socialism. These social movements, while the chemists and physicists have been
at work in their laboratories, have resulted in the development of new social
tissue; have been, in short, gradually transforming human society itself.
The
revolution of the last three-quarters of the nineteenth century in men’s ideas
about social arrangements, and the consequent changes in social tissue which
those ideas have been causing, may be described in many different ways. We may
first notice, partly as cause and partly as effect, a certain shifting of the
very basis of the local organisation of the community. In the manor, in all the
varieties of the manorial borough, in the gild, and in the unreformed municipal
corporation, men had for centuries unconsciously grouped themselves on the
basis of their occupations as producers. Whatever else these social groupings
may have been, on the economic side the manor was, at the outset, a group of agricultural
tenants, the gild a group of craftsmen or traders, even the borough corporation
a group of burgage occupiers whose economic interests were similar. These
groups of tenants, craftsmen, or burghers—at no time coextensive with the whole
of the local residents—had, by their very nature, a tendency to exclusiveness,
and inevitably became small oligarchies in the midst of an unprivileged
population, losing whatever sense they may once have had of fulfilling the
communal needs, and expressing only their own members’ separate and exclusive
interests. Thus it was, throughout western Europe, the organisation of local
administration on this old basis, which was essentially that of associations of
producers, that long stood in the way of social reform. We see in England the
slow beginnings of a different grouping in the gradual rise during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the parish vestries and the various
bodies of road or harbour or town Improvement Commissioners, the latter as yet
unnoticed by historians, which began to provide for the needs, and to act in
the name, not of this or that exclusive group, but of all the local residents.
And, as all the local residents necessarily used or enjoyed the benefits of the
roads, the harbours, the lighted pavements, the cleansed streets, the improved
thoroughfares, and the organisations for the protection of life and
property,
which these new local governing bodies, by the opening of the nineteenth
century, were beginning to develop, we may properly regard them as associations
of consumers.
This was the
real import of the revolution effected in England and Wales by the Municipal
Corporations Act of 1835. It substituted, in the structure of English local
government, for the associations which, in their economic aspect, had
originated as associations of producers, with their exclusive interests and
tendencies, an organisation of the residents of each locality, for the purpose
of satisfying their common needs. The Act was incomplete, and in many ways
imperfect. It took three-quarters of a century for the principles then adopted
to be carried into every part of English local government. The municipal
history of the nineteenth century, all-important as it has been to the life of
the nation, has found, as yet, no historian. Of the steps in the structural
development we need only mention, so far as England is concerned, the gradual
absorption, between 184<0 and 1870, of nearly all the old bodies of Town
Improvement Commissioners, and the concentration in the Town Council of
practically all the functions of municipal government; the admission, between
1835 and the present day, of a hundred-and-fifty new and growing towns to full
municipal privileges; the gradual democratisation, between 1867 and 1885, of
the municipal councils by various changes in franchise and qualification
(including the removal of all property qualification, and the acceptance, as
electors, of the dwellers in single rooms and of independent women occupiers);
the extension to growing urban communities, from 1848 onwards, under the Public
Health Acts, of what were practically municipal powers of self-government under
other names; the organisation, in 1888, of the local government of the whole
metropolitan area and of the rural districts on what was virtually the same
municipal basis; and the establishment, in 1894, of Parish Councils in the
villages.
In 1870, as
the result of changes made while the Education Bill of that year was under
consideration by the House of Commons, there was a temporary reversion to the
eighteenth century type of local organisation, separately elected School Boards
being established independently of the general local governing body of the
locality. In 1902 and 1903 these were all abolished, their duties being
transferred to the general governing body of the Borough or County. Of the
separately elected local governing bodies there remains, in 1910, only the
Board of Guardians, which had been established under the Act of 1834 to
administer the public provision for the relief of the poor; and, in 1909, a
Royal Commission, appointed to overhaul the whole Poor Law administration,
recommended the immediate abolition of this separate authority, and the
transfer of its duties to the Borough and County Councils. With the exception
of the management of some of the great rivers and ports, which does not
logically come within the functions to be entrusted to the cn. xxm.
ratepayers of
a particular urban area, and for which accordingly there are often separately
appointed trusts or commissions, the whole of England and Wales may be said to
be now under democratic municipal government, on the lines advocated by Jeremy
Bentham, adopted for the Boroughs by Lord Melbourne in 1835 and for London and
the rural counties by the Ministry of Lord Salisbury in 1888. To the local
Council of citizens, elected by ballot, annually or triennially, by the
resident occupiers of house, office, or room, without qualification or
restriction, is accorded a practically unlimited freedom, within the sphere
allotted to it by law, to spend as it pleases, without any effective government
control, the compulsory levies which, practically without legal limit, it is
empowered, by mere majority vote, to make upon all the occupiers of land or
houses within its area. It has taken more than a couple of generations for the
local government of the rural districts, as well as that of the towns, to
become (as Francis Place predicted in 1835) in this way “municipalised”; and
(as may now be added) for this democratic organisation on the basis of the
association of consumers for the supply of their own needs to be recognised as
“ Municipal Socialism.”
Of the
development of local government in western Europe and the United States—in its
collective performance for the community of services formerly left to
individual enterprise, essentially similar to that in the United Kingdom—space
does not permit us to treat. The number and variety of services performed by
the local governing bodies of France and Switzerland, Germany and Austria,
Belgium and Denmark, Italy and Holland, like that of the local governments of
New Zealand and the Argentine Republic, is often greater than in English or
American municipalities. The municipal expenditure of New York and Paris
exceeds even that of London.
However we
may regard it, to this local collective activity, in its numerous and varied
manifestations, is to be attributed a large share of the social transformation
of all the cities of the civilised world, during the last three-quarters of the
nineteenth century. We naturally see this transformation most clearly at what
may be termed the nodal points of socl'ty, the urban centres where men are most
thickly clustered together. The rapid development and multiplication of these
nodal points is at once a cause and a result of the transformation. Throughout
western Europe, the United States, Australasia, and South Afriai (and, in fact,
throughout the civilised world) the number and proportion of the dwellers in
towns has increased, and is increasing, out of all proportion to the rural
population; so that in many countries one-half, and in the most developed
countries three-fourths, of all the inhabitants are now to be found in urban
communities. In place of a world in which the towns were but exceptions in the
common range of rural life, we have a world of towns, between which there are
still to be found
interstices
of country. These urban communities have left behind them, once for all, the
ideal of a society of independent, self-sufficing households, each producing for
its own needs. Instead, they take on the character, gradually, and at first
without social self-consciousness, of cooperative communities, based upon the
obligatory membership of municipal citizenship, in which one function after
another is organised and fulfilled for the common benefit by the collective
forces of the social group. Thus, we see throughout western Europe, and
particularly in the England of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the
municipal governments administering on a communal basis such services, once
entirely a matter for individual self-provision by each household, as paving,
lighting, and cleansing the streets; the prevention of assault, theft, and
damage by flood or fire; the removal of faecal matter and garbage; the public supply
and distribution on a large scale of the primary needs of existence, such as
water, housing, milk, and now, in one place or another, even other food; the
communal provision of artificial light, of certain forms of fuel, and of
hydraulic or electric power ; the provision of the means of transport and of
intercommunication; the collective production, in public forests or on drainage
farms, or in connexion with other municipal departments or institutions, of all
sorts of agricultural products, and of this or that manufacture; the complete
and minutely detailed care of the orphans, the sick, the blind, the deaf and
dumb, the crippled, the mentally defective, the infirm and the aged ; elaborate
provision for the special needs connected with maternity, infancy, childhood,
and the disposal of the dead; the provision of schools for children and of
opportunities of instruction for adolescents and adults, as well as of
libraries, museums, and art galleries; the organisation of apprenticeship,
technical education, artistic production, and scientific research ; the public
organisation of the labour market; the prevention and treatment of destitution
and distress caused by unemployment or misfortune; and the provision, for all
classes and all ages, of music and other means of recreation, including the
regulation of amusement and even its organisation. Among the tens of thousands
of urban communities, in which more than half the population of western Europe
and Australasia and an equally rapidly increasing proportion of the United
States are now to be found, we see today an infinite variety in the extent, the
manner, and the results of this collective organisation. What is universal and
ubiquitous is a steady and continuous growth in the volume and the range of collective
activity.
In the
reorganisation of society which is thus everywhere proceeding, one important
element in the consciousness of personal freedom, on the one hand, and in the
efficiency of the social service, on the other, is the relation that exists between
the local administrative bodies and the national Government. Here we may
distinguish three main types. In France and Germany, the local administration,
which is largely entrusted
736
Relation of central and local authorities.
to salaried
officials of high professional qualifications, is, broadly speaking, closely
supervised by and completely subordinate to the various departments of the
executive Government of the State. The functions and powers of the local
^councils of elected representatives are narrowly limited; and their actual
interferences with the .local administration are, in almost all cases, subject
to the control and approval of the central executive departments. In sharpest
contrast stand the local governing bodies of the United States, which are,
broadly speaking, wholly autonomous corporations, subject only to the State
Legislature, to which the State executive departments are also subject, and
which is itself limited in its powers by the State Constitution, to be changed
only, after more or less elaborate precautions, by the electorate of the State
as a whole. The result is that the administration of the local governing bodies
of the United States is, broadly speaking, subject to no external supervision
or control other than that of the ratepaying and voting electorates of their
several localities.
In the United
Kingdom, a middle course has been pursued. Prior to the Reform Act of 1832,
there was virtually no connexion bet weep the executive departments of the
national Government and such local governing bodies as existed, which were
accordingly, within the ample scope of the powers conferred on them by the law
of the land, in practice as completely autonomous as those of the United States
have remained. Nor did any supervision or control by the national Government
enter into Lord Melbourne’s plan of 1835. Gradually, however, it was perceived
that it was essential that there should be, ,at any rate, some external audit
of local government accounts; and that some external approval should be
required before the local governing body was permitted, not merely to spend the
rates paid by those who elected it, but also to embark on enterprises to be
incurred out of loans mortgaging the future. Presently, it was realised that
the government of a town was not .merely a matter.of interest to the
inhabitants of that town, and that, whether in respect of roads and bridges, or
in respect of infectious disease, whether in the ihealth or in the education of
its citizens, the nation as a whole had something at stake. The central
executive departments had, moreover, at their command, a wider experience and a
greater knowledge than any local body could possess. The difficulty was how to
secure national inspection and audit, and national supervision and control,
without offending the susceptibilities of local autonomy on the one hand, and
without, on the other, losing the advantages of local initiative and freedom.
The problem has been solved in the United Kingdom by the expedient of the grant
in aid. The national Government, in the past three-quarters of a century, has
successively “ bought" the rights of inspection, audit, supervision,
initiative, criticism, and control, in respect of one local service after
another, and of one kind of local governing body after another, by the grant,
in aid of the local finals,
Varieties of municipal service.
737
and therefore
of the local ratepayers, of annual subventions from the national revenue. These
subventions have often been demanded by local governing bodies, and sometimes
ignorantly accorded by complacent Ministries, as mere “ doles ” in relief of
local burdens. Their actual function is, in fact, seldom explicitly realised.
The bulk of the various grants in aid are now given conditionally on particular
services being conducted in general accord with regulations framed for the
purpose, and designed to secure a certain prescribed minimum of efficiency. The
executive department necessarily assumes the duty of supervision and
inspection, in order to see that the conditions are complied with. Since the
amount of the grant may be reduced in default of such compliance, the
criticisms and suggestions of the executive department, accompanied as they may
be by a warning, come with authoritative force. They are not, as they are in
France and Germany, mandatory injunctions, leaving nothing to local initiative
and local discretion. The local governing body may grumble and dispute the
accuracy or the cogency of the inspector’s criticisms, or the value of his
suggestions. Gradually, however, in one way or another, these well-informed
criticisms and suggestions are attended to, at the instance of the local
governing body itself, and in its own way. By this process, and with the aid of
government grants, such local services as police and education have, without
loss of consciousness of local autonomy, gradually been levelled up to a high
minimum of efficiency. The process with regard to public health and the local
provision for the invalidated has only just begun.
In the
relations in which, with regard to the several services that it renders, the
municipal association of consumers stands to its individual members, we see a
wide variety. Consumption or use of the services may be legally compulsory, or
may be left optional. It may be effectively voluntary, or virtually obligatory.
Sometimes, the services are supplied to the individual users or consumers on
payment of the whole or part of the average cost, in proportion to the amount
supplied, as with gas and electricity; sometimes, in return for payment at
generalised rates per unit irrespective of cost, as with road or bridge or
ferry tolls, or the postal and tramway services; sometimes, for payments which
purport to be made for the service, but are actually computed on some basis of
fiscal ability, irrespective of the amount of service enjoyed, as is usual with
water supply. Most commonly, however, the services are furnished on a frankly
communistic basis, that is to say gratuitously, or at a nominal charge, with or
without restriction or limit of user, the cost being defrayed from the communal
property of the inhabitants, or levied upon them, according to their presumed
ability, by means of taxation. So rapid, so unselfconscious, and so ubiquitous
has been this development of municipal services that no complete statistical or
descriptive survey of it has yet been made; and there is, as yet, no scientific
study of its fiscal processes, and espec’ally none of its “ special
assessments,” or charges on
138
the individual
for special services rendered. All that can be predicated of. western Europe as
a whole is that the extent, the variety, and the success of these communal
enterprises, is, decade by decade, rapidly increas ng ' In England, the total
capital under communal administration of this sort now amounts to more than a
thousand millions sterling (or over £22 per head of population of the whole
country)—a total that probably exceeds the entire capital of the England of
Elizabeth, of the England of Cromwell, and even of the England of Sir Robert
Walpole. To estimate how much this development of municipal services has meant
in the amelioration of the human lot in life, let anyone consider how potent,
how con ..nuous and, in the crowded city life, how all-pervading, is the
efficacy, in preventing suffering, degradation, and demoralisation among the
masses, of the schoolmaster and the policeman, of the public doctor and the
hospital, of the care of the orphans and the aged, of the systems of drainage
and water supply, of the provision of parks and libraries. It is these
things—not the discovery of radium or of the origin of species or the latest
advances in spectrum analysis—that stand between the great urban aggregations
of the twentieth century and the brutality and misery of barbarism. The typical
figure of the England of the Middle Ages was the lord of the manor; the
dominant types of the England of a century ago were the improving landlord and
the capitalist mill-owner; the most characteristic personages of the England of
the twentieth century are the elected councillor, the elementary schoolmaster,
the school-doctor, and the borough engineer.
We see an
essentially similar development of associations of consumers in another
direction, specially characteristic of the latter part of the nineteenth
century, differing from municipal government in resting on the basis of
voluntary membership.. What is known as the cooperative movement, the
beginnings of which are to be found in the eighteenth century, has assumed
different forms in different countries and in different decades. At the outset,
it often took the shape of associations of producers, little communities of
agriculturists or craftsmen, seeking themselves to own and to direct the
instruments of their joint industry, and to share its product among their own
members. These early cooperative experiments in agriculture and manufactures,
sometimes limited in their aims, sometimes passing into communistic
settlements—though taken up with fervent belief and potent driving force by
Robert Owen (1771-1858), and frequently repeated by different groups of
enthusiasts for half a century—failed to secure a permanent footing, and were
one by one abandoned. Without realising how great was the discovery that they
had made, the twenty- eight weavers of Rochdale in 1844< formed their little
cooperative society in a new way, on the basis of the association of consumers.
It was in the desire to organise jointly the supply of their own needs and to
combine for the more advantageous expenditure of their own incomes—
not in the
aspiration, which was one of the common forms of the time, towards cooperation
as producers—that “ the Rochdale Pioneers ” inaugurated, and within half a
century created, what has been aptly described as a State within the State.
Obtaining the
necessary capital by their members’ own savings, fed from the ever-growing
profits of their enterprises, the Cooperators have spread from town to town
throughout the United Kingdom, and advanced from success to success. Their
two-and-three-quarter million members, mostly of the wage-earning class, and
representing probably one-fifth of the whole population, are now aggregated in
about 1500 separate societ' is, which are themselves united in several great
federations. Among them they carry on every kind of business (except only the
provision of alcoholic drinks), from agriculture and manufacture to transport
and banking; they have their own arable, pasture, and fruit farms, and their
own creameries, butter and bacon and biscuit works, cocoa and jam and sauce and
pickle factories; their own flour-mills and bakeries; their own dressmaking and
shirtmaking and tailoring workshops, and even a corset factory; their own
cotton-mills and clothing factories; their own hide and skin and boot and shoe
and brush and mat and soap and lard and candle and furniture works; their own
tinplate works and metal ware and crockery factories; . their own printing
establishments and their own newspapers; their own tea estates in Ceylon; their
own buyers in foreign countries and their own ships on the sea; their own
thousands of distributive stores, their own arrangements for insurance, their
own banks, and even their own common libraries. Today, in the United Kingdom,
the amount of the trade thus done by the two-and-three-quarter millions of
Cooperative families with their fifty-five millidns sterling of capital—the
aggregate amount of the commodities and services thus supplied by themselves to
themselves by the agency of their little army of 50,000 salaried officials, of
the work thus performed for the common benefit without the supposed
indispensable incentive of individual profit-mak:ng, and yet without
any of the impracticabilities of communism—exceeds one hundred and twenty
millions sterling annually; or more than the aggregate receipts from all
sources of the municipalities and county councils and the other local governing
bodies put together.
The two
movements of municipalisation and cooperation have, in fact, been in the United
Kingdom the complements of each other, and have as yet scarcely overlapped.
Both represent an application of democracy to the supply of the wants of the
household. The universal and compulsory cooperation of the citizens, embodied
in municipal government, has developed so far mainly in the provision, by the
agency of a salaried municipal staff, of gratuitous or nearly gratuitous
services, or of such fundamental common necessities as water, light, transport,
and housing. The bringing under democratic control of the
manufacture
and distribution of the thousand and one commodities of food, clothing, and
furniture that each household also requires has been undertaken, in the main,
by the Cooperative Society formed on a voluntary basis and acting through its
own salaried staff of officials. Together, as the result of the growth of the
latter half of the nineteenth century these two movements in the United Kingdom
have brought under collective control the supply of commodities and services
representing an annual expenditure of something like two hundred millions
sterling, or approximately one-eighth of the whole personal expenditure of the
United Kingdo>n.
So great a
shifting of the control and management of the production and distribution of
the commodities by which we live could not fail to produce far-reaching social
changes; changes which are all the greater in that they have taken place
largely in the range of the life of the manual workers, and are, indeed, as yet
scarcely known or appreciated by the middle and upper classes.
While the cooperative
movement has, since its new birth in 1844, had enthusiastic prophets from other
social classes—prophets and propagandists like Frederick Denison Maurice
(1805-72), Thomas Hughes (1822-96), and Vansittart Neale (1810-92)—fit has been
essentially a working class movement. Moreover, it has been a movement without
ijreat intellectual personalities, in which integrity, prudence, and a certain
gift among the thousands of committee-men of patient unselfish service in
humdrum duties have counted for more than genius, though the historian must
record the lifelong propaganda of George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906). It is* in
fact, in its intellectual and moral influence upon its members and the
education of character, even more than the financial savings that it effects
and encourages, that the cooperative movement has wrought a beneficent
revolution among tens of thousands of working class families in the mining and
manufacturing centres, and has contributed so largely to the social
transformation of Great Britain. Each of the fifteen hundred cooperative
societies, administering its own tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of capital,
engaging in an innumerable variety of enterprises, manufacturing as well as
distributive, and sharing in the wider life of the federated movement as a
whole, is managed by little committees of almost exclusively working class
representatives, democratically elected by all the members, and accounting for
their action at quarterly public meetings where all the affairs of the society
are discussed. The largest society, the federal organisation known as the
Cooperative Wholesale Society, wielding six millions of capital, doing
twenty-five million pounds a year of business, employing nearly
20,000 hands * in a hundred different trades, at a
hundred-and-fifty separate establishments, in ten different counties, is all
managed by a committee of thirty-two ex-workrhen, elected annually by the. two
million members. To the half-century of training in public adminis-
tration and
in the working of representative institutions, which the cooperative movement
has provided in nearly all the English and Scottish mining and manufacturing
centres, the British working class owes much of its political education. A
similar educational effect is to be seen in Ireland, where the cooperative
movement, established practically by the patient service of Sir Horace
Plunkett, is scarcely twenty years old. Here, the prominent type is that of the
cooperative creamery or butter factory, established by a group of peasant
formers or small holders for the better disposal of the milk of their cows. The
cooperative creamery is managed by a committee of the contributing members, and
the profits are shared among them in proportion to the quantity and quality of
the milk supplied by each. Beginning with a common enterprise of this sort, the
small holders of many localities have learnt to combine and to work together
for other purposes in which they have a common interest.
The
cooperative movement is often ignorantly described as having succeeded in
distribution and failed in production. Yet, beginning first with distribution,
the fifteen hundred cooperative societies in Great Britain have built up a
large number of manufacturing enterprises of the most varied kind and not a few
of agricultural character, especially in dairy products. Their creameries and
their manufacturing enterprises enjoy a permanent and ever-growing success.
Five of the largest flourmills in England, producing annually food for two
million persons, and the most extensive boot and shoe factory in the United
Kingdom, turning out more than a million pairs a year, are both owned and
managed by the federated two millions of cooperators. It is, however, true that
another type of cooperative society, founded on the diametrically opposite
principle of the association of producers, has always languished, and has never
attained any great measure of success. Taken up by the Christian Socialists of
1848, the ideal of the “ self- governing workshop,” in which the wage system
would be superseded by groups of craftsmen, themselves owning the capital with
which they worked, and selling the common product for the common benefit, long
continued to captivate successive generations of idealistic workmen and
philanthropists. But innumerable experiments have demonstrated that this
organisation, though it may live for a time, and even for a long time in,
particular industries, is not usually compatible with the discipline, the
concentration of managerial capacity, and the accumulation of capital,
required by modern competitive industry. Cooperative societies of this kind,
generally confining themselves to industries of low capitalisation in
proportion to the number employed, either fail altogether, or else depart from
the “ self-governing workshop ” ideal—mostly coming, in fact, to consist, in
large proportion, of investing members who are not workers, and who appoint a
manager to direct wage-workers who are not members. The modem form in which the
idea of the
association
of producers now finds embodiment is that of profit-sharing, often termed
industrial copartnership, or the concession by the owners of the capital of a
bonus over and above wages, combined, if possible, with some representation of
the manual workers in the council of partners or directors by which the
business is directed. This, though in practice little more than a philanthropic
modification of joint-stock capitalism, has in certain cases had a great result
in stimulating saving among the best of the workmen, and in enabling them to
join the class of small investors. ‘ .
On the
Continent of Europe, the cooperative movement took at first other forms. In
Germany, the most prominent for a long time was that of the cooperative loan
society, where the joint savings or the corporate borrowings of the members
constituted a fund from which loans could be made to such of their own number
as required capital, a system of mutual guarantee and neighbourly supervision
enabling, this credit to be given safely to individual borrowers without means.
We need not here distinguish between the Schulze-Delitzsch banks, started about
1850 by Hermann Schulze, burgomaster of Delitzsch, specially adapted to urban
circumstances, and spreading mainly in the towns; and the Raiffeisen oanks,
begun about the same time by Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, burgomaster of a
district near Neuwied, designed to meet the needs of agriculturists, and
spreading chiefly in the country. The Schulze-Delitzsch banks, of which there
have come to be over a thousand, with over half a million members, and loan
transactions of a hundred and fifty million pounds sterling annually, are
individually larger institutions than the majority of the Raiffeisen banks, of
which there are now no fewer than
13,000 with a million and a half members, and loan
transactions approaching two hundred million pounds sterling annually. In this
form, cooperation, while bringing under collective control the banking services
needed by its members, and, so to speak, “democratising” the moneylender, is so
far from aiming at superseding individual profit- making enterprise, that it
has come to the aid of the petite Industrie, alike in manufacture and in
agriculture. Among the small masters and jobbing handicraftsmen, by whom so
much of German industry is still earned on, and especially among the peasant
proprietors and small holders who contribute so large a proportion of its
agriculture, this popular cooperation to supersede the individual banker or
usurer—to perform collectively for the common good what would otherwise be done
individually for private profit—has wrought marvels of prosperity.
In France,
the most prominent part in the cooperative movement was long played by small
cooperative societies engaged in manufacturing industry, in which many of the
workers were members. But, with increasing international intercourse, all forms
of cooperation are now to be found in all the countries of western Europe; the
largest part being now played by the Cooperative Societies of the nature of
associations of
Undue predominance of consumers’ interest. 743
consumers,
who combine in order, by their own salaried agents, to provide' for themselves
collectively, whether in agriculture, manufacturing, banking, transport, or
retail distribution, without the intervention of any profit-maker, what they
and their households individually require.
Such a
shifting as we have described of the very, basis of social organisation from
producers to consumers in the development of municipal government and the
cooperative movement, could not fail, even though largely without consciousness
of itself, to influence the politics and the legislation of the time. In the
United Kingdom in particular, the whole movement for freedom of trade, whether
it took the form of abolition of gild and apprenticeship restrictions, or
removing the customs barriers between nations, obtained its popular support and
its far-reaching influence largely from the claim of the consumer to free the
products he needed or desired, from the bonds and fetters of custom or law or
tax. The English manufacturer of the early part of the nineteenth century may
have desired Free Trade as a means of growing rich beyond the dreams of
avarice; but Peel and Gladstone opened the ports because it was felt that the
claims of the consumer could no longer be denied. Other countries followed the
lead thus given by the United Kingdom. The last remnants of gild ordinance and
customary regulations hampering free competition passed rapidly away, and “
Cobden Treaties ” and “ most favoured nation clauses ” seemed, by the end of
the third quarter of the nineteenth century, destined at no distant date to
remove all “ artificial ” obstacles, and to attain the “ Early Victorian ”
economic ideal of that perfect freedom of competition in which the consumer
finds all the economic processes of the world conducted in obsequious obedience
to his taste or whim, at the lowest possible cost of production.
But it
gradually appeared that, in this apotheosis of the consumer, there were certain
adverse features. The “ industrial revolution,” as it is called, which took
place in England in the eighteenth century and on the Continent of Europe and
in the United States at various dates in the nineteenth century, had resulted
in all forms of industry, whether mining or manufacturing, transport or retail
distribution, and even the greater part of agriculture, being organised on a
capitalist basis. Especially in manufacturing industry, and in the towns, the
typical figure ceased to be that of the master craftsman, himself a manual
worker, who, in his family group of journeymen and apprentice, owned his
industrial plant and the commodity that he produced* and sold that commodity
for his own profit. In his place, we have the capitalist entrepreneur, using
his capital to hire large numbers of lifelong wage-earners, entirely divorced
from any economic interest either in the plant with which they work or the
product which the associated labour of the factory or mine turns out for the
profit of the proprietor. The forge of the village blacksmith has been
superseded by the iron foundry, employing scores or hundreds
of “hands.”
The latter part of the nineteenth century witnessed a continuous and almost
ubiquitous tendency towards the consolidation of industrial enterprises into
larger and larger aggregates, in the twentieth century sometimes amounting to
as many as fifty thousand workmen in a single capitalist enterprise; though
this tendency is far less marked in agriculture than in other forms of
enterprise. The result has been, throughout the whole of the nineteenth
century, that the proportion of the workers who owned the product of their
labour, or who participated in the profit derived from its sale, has steadily
diminished; while the proportion of recipients of a mere wage or salary has
steadily increased. The opening of the twentieth century finds, except in the
agricultural small holdings of certain countries, and in a few surviving
handicrafts, nearly the whole manual-working class divorced from the soil and
from the ownership of the capital with which it works; dependent (apart from
its relatively small invested savings) exclusively on wages; and constituting,
in all advanced industrial nations, from two-thirds to four-fifths of the
entire population. The nations have become, not democracies of independent
producers such as Rousseau and Jefferson and Franklin contemplated, but
“democracies of hired men,” whose economic interests are primarily not in the
amount of their product, of which they enjoy no share, but in the conditions of
employment that “freedom of competition” accords to them.
It is the
growing popular appreciation of this fact, long unseen either by the economists
or by the capitalist class, which has, in the main, produced the social
movements of the past three-quarters of a century. It seemed of small advantage
to the Lancashire coal-miner of 1842 that he might get his clothes cheaper by
means of perfect freedom of competition, if this meant also that he found
himself driven to work excessive hours under insanitary conditions, in mines
where precautions against accidents were omitted because they were expensive to
the employer, and for wages which the employer’s superiority in economic
itrength inevitably reduced to the barest subsistence level. It was a poor
consolation to the Bolton cotton-spinner of 1842 that he could buy more cheaply
the coal used by his wretched household, when the cotton-mill (equipped with
the latest mechanical inventions for diminishing human toil) was compelling
him and his wife and his little children to labour for twelve or fifteen hours
a day, under revolting sanitary conditions, amid dangerous machinery left
unfenced for the sake of economy, and in an atmosphere deliberately made
unhealthy by gas and steam, in order that there might be fewer threads broken
in the yam that he was making. When the results of unrestrained competition in
the employment of labour were gradually, and very slowly, perceived by the
philanthropists, and made known by Robert Owen (1771-1858) and Lord Shaftesbury
(1801-85), the statesmen found that they had no answer. The Free Trade
economists of the first half of the nineteenth century—
and indeed,
all who, consciously or unconsciously, were basing human society upon the needs
and desires of the consumers—had learnt only half their lesson. They had been
so much taken up with the idea of removing barriers and obstacles to have
failed to realise that they had also, to get rid of those illegitimate profits,
involving a drain on the national life. M’Culloch and Nassau Senior, Cobden and
Bright, -inderatood that the grant of money aid to a particular industry out of
the rates and taxes enabled that industry to expand, and to secure more of the
nation’s brains and capita), and more of the world’s trade than was
economically advantageous. They even recognised that the use of unpaid slave
labour constituted an illegitimate drain on the national resources quite as
much. But they never comprehended that to set the employer free to make exactly
what arrangements he chose for his work, and to conclude exactly what bargains
he ehose with his individual operatives, inevitably meant, because of his
superiority in economic strength, the reduction of wages for mere “ common
labour ” to the worth of the marginal man—to a point, in fact, which experience
proved to be even below what was physiologically necessary for subsistence—the
exaction of hours of daily labour far in excess of what was compatible with
healthy existence; the harnessing to the mill of the pregnant woman, of the
nursing mother, of the immature youth, even of the child; the subjection of
them all, in the attempt to reduce expenses to a minimum, to brutalising and
insanitary conditions, and even to incessant risk of accident, for lack of the
necessary expensive precautions; and, actually, when it was found to facilitate
the manufacture, to the deliberate use of deleterious substances and the
deliberate vitiation of the atmosphere by artificial heat and moisture to the
ruin of the operatives’ health.
All this meant,
by the using up of successive supplies of human labour, each in turn to be
prematurely flung on the rubbish heap of charity and the Poor Law, a subsidy to
particular industries, not less inimical to the objects of Free Trade than if
it had been granted from the taxes. But because it came as a drain on the
vitality of the nation as a whole, paid in the first instance by the manual
workers themselves, whose blood was thus coined for drachmas, the economic
nature of the arrangement was long unrecognised. Not until the latter part of
the century was it perceived that, if the object of Free Trade was to promote
such a distribution of capital, brains, and labour as would result in the
greatest possible satisfaction of human needs, with the least expend ’;ure of
human efforts and sacrifices, the limitation of the autocracy of the
employer—the enforcement with regard to the conditions of work of the will of
the many instead of the will of the one—was not only a necessary extension of
democracy, but also as indispensable a part of the Free Trade movement,
considered as an assertion of the real interests of the consumer, as the tariff
reforms of Cobden and Bright. “During that
period,”
wrote the Duke of Argyll (1823-1900), “ two great discoveries have been made in
the Science of Government; the one is the immense advantage of abolishing
restrictions on trade; the other is the absolute
necessity
of imposing restrictions on labour_____________ And
so the Factory
Acts, instead
of being excused as exceptional, and pleaded for as justifiable only under
extraordinary conditions, ought to be recognised as in truth the first
legislative recognition of a great National Law, quite as important as Freedom
of Trade, and...like this last...destined to claim for itself wider and wider
application.”
We see this
revolt against sacrificing everything to cheapness, which unrestricted freedom
of enterprise was supposed to produce, leading gradually to factory
legislation. The first hesitating steps in the legislative regulation of the
conditions of employment, beginning with the Factory Acts of 1802, 1819, 1825
and 1833, and the Mines Regulation Act of 1842, were taken merely empirically,
with the object of remedying patent abuses, and of giving to specific classes
of wage-eamers, by the strong arm of the law, that protection against ill-usage
which they had been unable to obtain for themselves. Step by step this
legislative protection has been extended, from trade to trade, from one class
of workers to another, and from one element in industrial life to another. The
Mines Regulation Act of 1842 was followed by successive statutes, steadily
increasing the extent and minuteness of the precautions required against
accidents, of the provisions for safeguarding the workers against being cheated
in their wages, of the regulation of the work of women and boys, of the
limitation of the hours of labour even of adult men, and, generally, of the
supervision of the methods of working. By the Merchant Shipping Acts a similar
legislative protection was extended to the seamen, and all others employed on
ships. By the Regulation of Railways Acts of 1889 and 1893, the Board of Trade
was charged with the prevention of excessive hours of labour among., railway
servants, and was enabled to insist on a reduction in the hours in all cases in
which this was deemed necessary. By successive Truck Acts, Factory and Workshop
Acts, and Shop Hours Acts, practically all manufacturing industries and nearly
all retail shops employing female or youthful assistants have similarly been brought
under regulation and inspection. “ We have today,” as the biographer of Richard
Cobden enthusiastically recounts, “ a complete, minute, and voluminous code for
the protection of labour; buildings must be kept pure of effluvia; dangerous
machinery must be fenced, children and young persons must not clean it whilst
in motion; their hours are not only limited but fixed; continuous employment
must not exceed a given number of hours, varying with the trade, but prescribed
by the law in given cases; a statutable number of holidays is imposed; the
children must go to school, and the employer must every week have a certificate
to that effect; if an accident happens, notice must be sent to the proper
authorities;
special provisions are made for bake-houses, for lace-making, for collieries,
and for a whole schedule of other specified callings; for the due enforcement
and vigilant supervision of this immense lost of minute prescriptions, there is
an immense host of inspectors, certifying surgeons, and other authorities,
whose business it is ‘ to speed and post o’er land and ocean ’ in restless
guardianship of every kind of labour, from that of the woman who plaits straw
at her cottage door, to the miner who descends into the bowels of the earth,
and the seaman who conveys the fruits and materials of universal industry to
and fro between the remotest parts of the globe.”
From England,
factory legislation spread successively to France, Switzerland, and Germany; to
Austria and Italy; to all but the more backward southern States of the United
States of America; to the principal British colonies and to India; and even to
Holland and Belgium, which long remained behind the other industrial countries.
Taking the subject as a whole, and regarding administration as well as legislation,
the United Kingdom still; keeps the lead. But in many details other
nations have improved on the lessons they have learnt from England. Especially
in such matters as the minimum age at which children may be employed in the
factory, the provision for continuation of their school education, the
prevention of street trading by children and young persons, the protection of
the workers from deleterious substances, the regulation of the employment of
women just before and after child-birth, and the securing of a living wage in
the “sweated” trades, Switzerland or Bavaria, France or New Zealand,
Massachusetts or Victoria, have here and there gone ahead of British
legislation. A voluntary association; the International Union for Labour
Legislation, with its seat at Basel, now seeks to systematise and render
identical or equivalent the “ Labour Codes ” of the civilised world.
The general
acceptance and wide extension of factory legislation is, however, of very
recent date. During the first half of the nineteenth century any interference
with individual bargaining between employer and workmen found, as a principle,
no favour with the enlightened classes; and the workers, despairing of
parliamentary help, sought to protect themselves by voluntary associations. It
is, indeed, a feature of the typical nineteenth century development of the
substitution of collective for individual control that voluntary association
and government action have always gone on side by side, the one apparently
always inspiring, facilitating, and procuring successive developments of tbe
other. Just as the progress of the collective control of the conditions of life
in the form of municipal government has been paralleled by the growth of
collective control over the household supplies in the form of the cooperative
movement, so the progress of legislative regulation of the conditions of labour
in the factory and the mine has been paralleled by the advance of analogous
regulation by means of Trade Unionism.
Beginning,
apparently, at the end of the seventeenth century, but not for over a hundred
years making any great headway, the operatives in particular industries have
combined in order to maintain their standard of life. Their instrument was,
essentially, that eventually adopted by Parliament in the Factory Acts, namely,
the substitution, for the terms that the individual employer was able to impose
on the individual wage- eamer, of common rules for the trade as a whole,
embodying a minimum standard below which no employer and no operative was
allowed to descend. Parliament began with common rules as to sanitation, protection
against accidents, and the hours of labour of children. The Trade Unions began
<rith common rules about rates of wages and methods of remuneration and the
normal working day. Parliament enforced the common rules by official inspection
and criminal prosecutions. The Trade Union developed only slowly a staff of
salaried officials, and these had no right of entry to the employers’ premises;
and the only instrument on which it could rely to secure conformity with the
common rules laid down for the trade was the strike.
We need not
repeat the nineteenth century story of English Trade Unionism—how by the aid of
Francis Place (1771-1854) and Joseph Hume (1777-1855) it was grudgingly
legalised in 1824-5; how it got caught up in 1830-5 in one of the many phases
of Owenism, and yearly became entangled, in 1842-8, in the political movement
of Chartism; how it gained a new start, on more sober lines, in 1846-51, and
developed on the more solid financial basis of an industrial insurance
association; how these changes led to renewed parliamentary recognition of
Trade Unionism in 1871 and 1875 ; how the movement, which had sunk into a
somnolent acquiescence in industrial conditions, became reinvigorated in the
last decade of the century, as the result of awakening “ class consciousness ”
among the labourers; how, in 1903, in the “Taff Vale Railway case,” the judges
once more reversed the intention which Parliament had imperfectly expressed in
its statute, and made the Trade Union (though denied the rights of a corporate
body) liable for pecuniary damages as if it were a corporate body; how, in
consequence of this decision, the Trade Unions swung their whole force into the
rising “Labour party,” and extorted from an unwilling Legislature, in 1906, a
new Statute specifically conceding the inviolability of their corporate fund?.
Nor is it pertinent to recall the various pitched battles which, over the
establishment of the common rules that we have described, the Trade Unions have
fought with the employers, in the form of long and embittered strikes &nd
lockouts, from which no decade has been free. It must suffice to record that,
at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Trade Unions of the United
Kingdom number over two and a quarter million members, enjoy an annual revenue
of more than three ■>illion pounds, and possess accumulated corporate
funds exceeding six millions sterling. In many great industries—as it
significantly happens,
exactly those
in which British industry has been most successful in holding its own against
foreign competition—such as cotton-spinning and weaving, ship-building, and
coal-mining, practically every workman belongs to his Union.
Trade
Unionism, like factory legislation, has spread to all industrial nations,
adopting practically the same devices to secure its ends. Beginning, usually,
with attempts at restricting the numbers of the trade, by limitation of
apprentices or other barriers to entrance, as was natural with what, after all,
was an association of producers, though of wage- earning producers only, and
occasionally vainly seeking to adopt such typical employers’ devices as
restricting output and regulating prices, the organised workmen are seen everywhere
settling down, as they acquire experience of the practical economics of the
labour question, into the one device of the common rule, overriding where
necessary all individual bargaining. Just as factory legislation, on the points
with which it deals, lays down common rules in the form of prescribed minima,
below which no employer and no workman is permitted to descend, so the Trade
Union of workmen seeks, in treaty with the associated employers, to enact for
the trade similar common rules, prescribing minima on other matters. These
common rules everywhere include a standard minimum' rate of remuneration,
whether by time or (as an actual majority of Trade Unionists desire) more
commonly by the piece; usually, also a normal day, or standard minimum of leisure;
and, in the most advanced trades, also standard conditions relating to the
sanitation, the safety, and , the comfort of the workers. All such common rules
the Trade Union seeks to get accepted by the employers, either by the method of
collective bargaining, where the workmen as a whole, after more or less of
discussion, make a treaty with the employers as a whole; or, to the extent
that the legislature is under popular control, by statutory enactment.
Thus, in the
most advanced industrial communities, Trade Unionism and factory legislation
share the field between them. The common rules of the one supplement and
support the common rules of the other. The cotton mill-owner and the cotton
operative—in 1842, in practice almost free to do as they individually
chose—find themselves at the beginning of the twentieth centuiy moving in “ the
higher freedom of collective life.” The management of the industry is
recognised to be of common concern. No mill-owner and no operative may do “
what he likes with his own.” The associated employers, the associated workmen,
and the community as a whole represented by the factory inspector, are bound
together by elaborate codes, partly statutory, and partly the outcome of
voluntary treaties, regulating wages, hours, holidays, meal-times,
temperature, humidity, sanitary conveniences, the use of machinery, the speed
of its working, the character of the material, the duration of engagements, and
nearly every detail of the factory life. These codes, which are enforced not by
the Government factory inspectors
alone, but
also by salaried officials of the Employers’/ Association and salaried
officials of the Trade Union, who enjoy in practice the same right of entry as
the factory inspector^ impose minima only, not maxima, and thus leave freely
open to individual emulation and competitive enterprise of masters or of
workmen the utmost opportunity on the upward way, but rigorously bar, to
employer and operative alike, as inevitably leading to a degradation of the
standard of life of the whole class, any attempt to pursue the downward way.
Towards the
latter part of the nineteenth century, the historian has to record a further
development. Men have gradually become aware, dimly and imperfectly, that there
is a more fundamental basis for both factory legislation and Trade Unionism
than the mere protection of the weak against the personal power which the
command of capital gives to the employer. What is now seen to be essential is
that, whether the workman be weak or strong in his bargaining power, wise or
foolish in his demands, the community must see to it that those conditions
which are requisite for social well-being shall not be infringed. This is now
accepted, not only as a matter of emulation among nations, but, according to
the lessons which Political Economy has learnt from biology and from Darwinism,
as a fundamental necessity of national existence. “ Every society,” said Mr
Asquith, “is judged, and survives, according to the material and moral minima
which it prescribes to its members.” Hence has come the conception of what has
been called the “ national minimum ”; conditions of existence which, because
they are deemed indispensable to social health, the State insists on importing
into every bargain for the hire of labour, if not also into every act of a
man’s life.
There is a
national minimum of sanitation, including protection against avoidable
accidents and preventable diseases. Three-quarters of a century of endeavour,
beginning with Robert Owen in 1819 and Sir Edwin Chadwick (1800-90) and
Southwood Smith (1788-1861) from 1835 onward, gave us, first the general Public
Health Act of 1848, and then the successive extensions of public health
activity, by which the death- rate at all ages has been so much diminished. We
now insist by law, not only that no factory, but also that no dwelling-house,
shall be permitted to fall below the minimum prescribed for health. A new
meaning and a new universality is given to the requirement that there shall be
proper ventilation and heating of all workshops ; that machinery shall be
fenced; and that the vitiation of the atmosphere of the mill by “steaming”
shall be kept within limits. It is this conception of a national minimum of
sanitation which inspires and justifies the statutory provisions which now
demand that proper water supply, sanitary conveniences, and drainage, shall be
everywhere provided; that houses shall be properly built; that suburbs shall be
properly planned and laid out; that constantly increiasing precautions shall be
taken against infectious diseases; and that, when accidents do happen, or when,
in the course of
the industry,
certain specific diseases are contracted, the medical treatment and maintenance
of the injured workman shall be provided for by public hospitals and by a
public medical service,as well as by money compensation. All this is not merely
the protection of the weak, because it applies equally to the strong, and is
enforced even against the wish of those whom it is desired to benefit. It is an
assertion of the right and duty of the community as a whole to prescribe in its
own interest the minimum conditions of health for every one of its citizens.
There is a
similar national minimum of education. For its own sake, the State now insists
(though not yet in rural parts of Ireland) that every child from five to
thirteen or fourteen shall receive what is deemed proper instruction, and
provides (at an expense from public funds in the United Kingdom of £25,000,000
a year) an elaborate array of schools and universities of every kind. There is,
though as yet only over a part of the industrial field, a national minimum of
leisure, in the legislative prohibition of the employment of persons for more
than a specified number of hours in the twenty-four. This enforcement of a national
minimum of leisure, applied at first only to parish apprentices, then to
children in textile factories, then to women, then to other industries, has now
been extended to adult men, imperfectly in the great railway service and in
certain dangerous processes, and (in 1908) generally to all coalminers working
underground. Finally, we have in the legislation of New Zealand and
Australia—now also partially imitated in the United Kingdom and France—what
amounts to a much more important national minimum of subsistence than was
afforded in England by its Poor Law, In the “ determinations” of the Wages
Boards of. Victoria, and in the “awards” of the compulsory Arbitration
Tribunals of New Zealand and New South Wales, and by the Trade Boards of the
United Kingdom (1909), we see the imposition on the employers in particular
trades of legally enforced common rules as to the minimum rates of wages to be
paid in those trades, strictly analogous to the common rules with regard to
sanitation and the hours of labour already imposed by the factory legislation
which has spread through the whole civilised world. The same conception of a
national minimum has lent a new significance also to the intervention by the
Government of the State in the duties which have been entrusted to local
governing bodies. The opening of the nineteenth century saw each locality free,
in practice, to administer its own local affairs in the way that its own
inhabitants, or those who acted on their behalf, chose to prefer. The twentieth
century finds us recognising that we are members one of another; and that, if
any one district permits insanitary conditions to continue, or provides an
inadequate police force, or lets its roads fall below the common standard, or
starves its educational service, it is not only the local residents who suffer,
but the nation as a whole. Hence, in the United Kingdom, the enforcement upon
local governing bodies of the national minimum of
efficiency in
one service after another is becoming even more insistent and peremptory. Among
local authorities, as among individuals, the laggards are being increasingly
screwed up. This, indeed, is to some extent the explanation of the persistent
rise of local government expenditure, even in the most somnolent districts,
and of the ever widening spheres of municipal activity. Thus it is that at the
opening of the twentieth century the potent lever of the grant in aid is
securing for itself a constantly increasing field of play in English internal
administration, and is, in fact, if we consider the actual business of
twentieth century government, already the central feature of the real as
distinguished from the nominal Constitution of the United Kingdom.
There is, in
this development, yet another factor to be mentioned. In addition to many of
the services and commodities which the people use or consume being placed under
collective control, by municipalisation or cooperation, while many of the
conditions of their daily life are subjected to collective regulation, by
factory legislation or Trade Unionism, they are found, at the opening of the
twentieth century, enjoying elaborately organised collective provision for the
special needs of those among them who are unable to provide for themselves.
Here again; we have to record the parallel development of the two forms of
collective organisation, the one universal and obligatory, the other partial
and voluntary. England had had, from the latter part of the sixteenth century,
a nationally presci bed public provision for the poor. In 1842, however, this
was nothing but the relief of destitution—the bare keeping alive by doles of
necessaries those who would otherwise have starved. The actual legal scope of
the Poor Law has continued, down to the present day, essentially unaltered. But
the second half of the nineteenth century saw the growth of new methods of
provision for one class after another, until, by the end of the century, the
operations of the Boards of Guardians had come to form only a fraction of what
was being done out of the rates and taxes.
For the
children, in particular, the local Education Authorities, from 1870 onwards,
have provided more and more elaborate education; at first for weekly fees, but
after 1890 gratuitously; at first in elementary subjects only, but after 1902
without restriction of subject or grade or limit of age; at first in the form
of tuition only, but gradually also in the supply of books and instruments, by
school journeys and excursions, and (from 1906 onwards) even medical inspection
and medical treatment and school breakfasts and dinners wherever required. With
regard to the sick, the local Health Authorities have, from 1848 onwards, been
steadily increasing their organisation and their services ; until the opening
of the twentieth century sees in existence more than seven hundred municipal
hospitals, in which treatment and maintenance is provided, irrespective of
their personal means, for all who are suffering from any of a constantly
growing number of diseases in which the com-
Increasing expenditure on the poorer classes. 753
munity is
specially concerned; and this maintenance and treatment is usually provided
gratuitously. In the most highly organised cities, the salaried Medical Officer
of Health has now his own extensive staff of assistant doctors, health
visitors, and sanitary inspectors who, instead of waiting for requests, make it
their business to “ search out ” disease, and in the public interest
practically to press on the sufferers both the medical treatment and the
hospital maintenance which they may require. A special staff often visits every
house in which there is a birth; a municipal milk dispensary often supplies,
either at an unremunerative price or quite gratuitously, the requisite milk for
the infant, and keeps it under periodical observation. For the persons of
unsound mind, or in any way mentally defective, the local Lunacy Authority
provides elaborate asylums, irrespective of their means; built, equipped, and
maintained on a scale far above that of even the prosperous wage-earning household.
For the aged, following the example of New Zealand and Australia, and, in a
sense, also that of Denmark, the Government has provided non-contributory
superannuation allowances; and the local Pension Authority began in 1909 to
disburse pensions from national funds to
700,000 persons over 70 years of age whose income
did not exceed thirty-one pounds ten shillings a year. For the able-bodied men
and women in distress from want of employment, local Distress Committees,
acting under the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905, provide assistance deemed more
suited to their needs than that of the Poor Law.
Thus, with
regard to each section of the pauper army which the Boards of Guardians in 1834
were established to relieve, there has since grown up a new public authority,
making other provision deemed more suitable to its peculiar requirements.
Meanwhile the administration of the Poor Law has itself been transformed.
Instead of giving mere relief, the Boards of Guardians, under the influence of
public opinion, have provided elaborate schools for the children, highly
equipped hospitals for the sick, with all the services of modem surgery,
convalescent homes, etc., and, here and there, even comfortable asylums for the
respectable aged, apart from the evils of that general mixed Workhouse, which
meets, in the twentieth century, with ever widening condemnation. The result is
that, in place of the seven millions sterling that was being annually spent on
the poor in 1832, when the well-known Royal Commission was appointed to
restrict so terrible a drain on the nation’s wealth, the total expenditure from
rates and taxes in the first decade of the twentieth century, on the
maintenance, education, and medical treatment of the poorer classes, reached,
in the United Kingdom, nearly seventy millions sterling annually, of which less
than one-third still retains any association with pauperism or the Poor Law.
Side by side
with this steadily increasing collective provision for particular classes out
of public funds, we see a parallel development of collective provision on
voluntary lines. In 1842, when the wage-
Ite
Friendly Societies.—State insurance.
earner fell
ill, or when any of his household fell ill, there was usually, no resource on
which he could rely, except his individual savings, and the exiguous services'
contributed by the Poor Law of that period. Gradually and almost silently,
there has grown up in, the United Kingdom a marvellous network of voluntary
Friendly Societies, organised and administered by their members, in which, in
the first decade of the twentieth century, no fewer than six or seven millions
of the wage- earning and lower middle classes are enrolled. These voluntary
organisations, mar aged almost entirely by working men, or, at all events, by
men who have been manual working wage-eamers, have learnt, by the hard lessons
of experience,, how to provide for their members with safety and efficiency a
weekly money payment d.irmg sickness, the requisite medical attendance,
maintenance when necessary during convalescence, and the expenses of burial.
Thesfe benefits have been gradually developed in such a way as to constitute a
rough sort of provision against the premature invalidity of the insured
workers. But in thus developing, these voluntary Friendly Societies* unaided by
any subvention from public funds, seem to have reached the limit of their
power. Their attempts to provide for their members either old age pensions or
maintenance during unemployment hdve not achieved success. The weekly
contributions required to provide for the benefits already undertaken appear to
be as great as the mass of the wage-earners can be induced to afford—to be, in
fact, beyond the means of the millions of the more lowly paid and the more
irregularly employed labourers, among whom Friendly Society membership makes no
headway. In certain highly organised trades (comprising only 7 per cent, of the
adult wage-eamers) the Trade Unions add insurance against unemployment to the
other benefits. This insurance has, however, not been found possible by
two-thirds of the Trade Unionists, and is unknown to the other five-sixths of
the adult wage-earners who are outside the Trade Unions, the great majority
being engaged in occupations to which Trade Unionism has not yet extended. For
old age pensions there is nowhere any extensive collective provision by
voluntary organisations. Hence it was that the State stepped in to do what
voluntary agencies had failed to provide. In the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, the Government of the German Empire built up an enormous scheme of
insurance of the wage-earners against sickness, accident, premature invalidity,
and superannuation, under which no less than thirty million pounds sterling
are now annually distributed to more than three millions of beneficiaries. But
in Germany there existed nothing equivalent to the network of Voluntary
Friendly Societies that cover the United Kingdom; and the government scheme had
therefore necessarily to include provision for sickness as well as for old age.
The funds have been provided partly by a universal arid compulsory deduction
from wages, partly by an obligatory contribution from all emplojers of labour,
and partly by the State,
Insurance against unemployment. 755
which itself
controls, through a complicated hierarchy of voluntary committees, the
elaborate organisation that so great an insurance fund involves. One great
drawback of the scheme is that no provision is made for wives or widows who are
not themselves wage-eamers—a difficulty which no contributory scheme, based on
deductions from wages, or on payments in connexion with wages, has yet
surmounted.
The peculiar
combination of government and voluntary administration, and of the workmen’s
contributions with state subventions, which the German Empire has created, is
slowly being imitated, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in France
and Switzerland, Belgium and Norway. In the United Kingdom, as in Australia and
New Zealand, the existence of voluntary Friendly Societies on a large scale
apparently prevents the Government from following this example. Moreover, in
the United Kingdom at any rate, the extensive provision for the hospital
treatment of sickness made both by the Public Health and by the Poor Law
authorities, and the elaborate system of poor relief to persons incapacitated
from going to work, already covers, though in different ways, part of what is
done under the German pension scheme. Thus it is that, in the United Kingdom,
as in New Zealand and Australia, the government pension scheme has, so far,
dealt only with old age, and has proceeded on the lines of exacting no
separately earmarked contribution from workmen or employers, but of freely
awarding pensions out of the national exchequer to aged persons fulfilling the
specified conditions. In one direction, however, the grant of public funds in
aid of workmen’s collective insurance has spread even more rapidly than
government insurance schemes. The first ten years of the twentieth century saw
developed, in several continental countries, a plan by which workmen were
encouraged and enabled to undertake that collective provision for unemployment
which the better paid among the English and American artisans had long made for
themselves. Under what is called the Ghent system—instituted at Ghent in 1901,
and within seven years adopted by all the other towns of Belgium; imitated in
France (1905); at St Gall in Switzerland (1905); at Strassburg (1906); in
Norway (1906); and in Denmark (1907)—a contribution from public funds is paid
to Trade Unions and other societies giving “ out of work pay ” to their members
when out of employment, amounting to a definite proportion of the sums actually
so disbursed in the preceding year. Under this stimulus, there has been in
these countries a great development of Trade Union insurance against
unemployment. Pressure to join a Trade Union is in this way converted by the
public authorities into pressure to insure against future distress from want of
work.
Thus, in all
directions and throughout the whole civilised world, we may distinguish, as the
dominant characteristic of the social movements of the past three-quarters of a
century, an ever growing elaboration of organised common action. What was
formerly either left to the
individual
household to provide, or left altogether unprovided, is now, to an ever
increasing extent, provided for large numbers of households by some collective
administration. This collective administration takes many forms, differing
widely from country to country, from service to service, and from decade to
decade. Some of it, as we have shown, is on a voluntary basis, and the
cooperation is really optional. Much of it, on the other hand, is governmental
in its nature, whether municipal or national; though the use of the service is
often optional. The common rules may be voluntary in their origin, and yet
virtually compulsory; they may, on the other hand, take the form of peremptory
laws, which it is left open to particular localities or communities to adopt or
not as they choose. With the rapidly growing preponderance and size of town
populations, the cooperation tends, however, to become more and more
obligatory. Without the common rules that the law lays down and without the
services that the municipality supplies, the citizen of the twentieth century
would usually find it impossible to live.
But it is not
alone the nineteenth century need for collective organisation that has made
this so prominent an element in all the social movements of the last
seventy-five years. What we see in many directions is the deliberate
substitution of collective action, where individual action was still perfectly
practicable. Factory Acts and Mines Regulation Acts were not made because the
capitalist employers found any difficulty in achieving their ends. A large part
of the impulse to this collective organisation, whether in Trade Unionism, or
cooperation, factory legislation, or municipal developments^ has come from that
desire for popular self-government which is the spirit of democracy. But it is
democracy in a more extended sphere than that to which the old jurists were
accustomed to restrict it. This extension is, however, only one of a long
series. When the Commons of England had been granted the right to vote
supplies, it must have seemed an unwarrantable extension that they should claim
legislation also. When they passed from legislation to the exercise of control
over the executive, the constitutional lawyers were aghast at their
presumption. The attempt of Parliament to seize the command of the military
forces of the nation was the signal for the outbreak of a Civil War. Its
authority over foreign policy is only two centuries old. Every one of these
developments of the collective authority of the nation over the conditions of
its own life was denounced by great authorities as an illegitimate usurpation.
Every one of them is still being resisted in countries in the less advanced
stages of political development. In Russia the right to refuse supplies is not
yet definitely conceded; in Prussia control over the executive is withheld, and
throughout the German Empire the control of the army; while in Austria-Hungary,
the legislature is still without the power to control the foreign policy of
that composite empire. In the United Kingdom, we have been silently
extending the
power of the people to regulate, by means of their elected representatives, the
conditions under which they work and live. To the capitalist, as to the great
ma,ss of the middle and upper classes, this extension of collective action has
often seemed an infringement of individual liberty. To the mass of the people
it has seemed a positive increase in individual liberty, and a necessary
application of democracy. Although the power that kept the worker in the
unregulated factory for fourteen or fifteen hours, or that subjected him to
insanitary conditions, was not the tyranny of king or priest or noble, the
wage-earner felt that it was tyranny all the same, and he has sought to curb
it, and to enlarge the individual liberty that he enjoyed, by the substitution
of collective for individual control. It was not within the minds of Rousseau,
Franklin, or Jefferson, or of the leaders of the French Revolutipn, that the
personal power over men’s lives, to which they objected when it was exercised
from the throne or the castle or the altar, might also come to be exercised in
the factory or the mine. But the industrial revolution, which these early
democrats did not foresee, brought to the possessors of wealth a huge accession
of personal power, which they naturally felt as an increase in personal
freedom. To the wage-earner, however, it seemed loss of freedom ; and when at
last he learnt to use the device of the common rule, he saw his way to get
back, by means of representative institutions, some of the power over his own
life of which the industrial revolution had deprived his class. Thus it is the
extension of representative self-government from the political to the
industrial sphere, and from mere political to industrial and social
relationships, which is the dominant feature of the opening of the twentieth
century.
We are thus
brought round, by our analysis of the different social movements of the past
three-quarters of a century, to that which has latterly become the most
clamorous of them all, namely socialism itself. For it is just the conscious
and deliberate substitution, in industrial as well as in political matters, of
the collective self-government of the community as a whole, organised on a
democratic basis, for the individual control over other men’s lives which the
unrestrained private ownership of land and industrial capital inevitably
involves, that constitutes the central idea of socialism. The socialist
movement, now an intellectual and political force in every country of the
civilised world, definitely asserts this as the intellectual master-key of
nineteenth century history, and claims that the trend of the changes of the
past hundred years, as of the contemporaneous changes in economic thought and
political science, is in the direction of substituting for the personal power
of the owners of land and industrial capital the collective decision of the
nation as a whole. In accordance with the experience of the past, the socialist
demands the application of representative democracy to all the industrial conditions
of the worker’s life. Whatever the historian
may think of
the socialist movement—and no historian can pretend to be, on such a subject,
without bias—he must, at least, admit its persistence, its force, and its
ubiquity. It is possible to trace the parentage of the socialist idea, on the
one hand to Rousseau, who was hardly conscious of its economic aspect, and on
the other to Saint-Simon, who ignored its democratic features. Fichte put much
the same idea into philosophy, and Robert Owen, confusedly, into his
long-continued propaganda. But not until about 1832 does the name of socialism
seem to have been used; and it was then applied most commonly to schemes of
more or less communistic settlements, apart from the competitive world, such
as those advocated by Robert Owen (1771-1858) and Abraham Combe (1785-1827),
Franyois-Marie-Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Etienne Cabet (1788-1856); or
else to schemes of state-aided production by associations of producers, such as
Louis Blanc (1813-82) and Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64) had in view in France
and Germany, and such as the Christian Socialists of 1848 may have aspired to
in England.
With the
publication by Karl Marx (1818-83) in 1848 of the so- called “ Communist
Manifesto,” and its appeal to workers of all countries to unite, the modem
movement of organised political socialism may be said to begin. From this time
forward, socialism put aside the foundation of Utopias in the form of separate
societies or colonies, apart from the competitive world, and definitely
insisted on the reorganisation of the existing social and industrial order on
the basis of democratic government. We cannot here describe the slowly
developing political movement which has, since 1848, spread to all civilised
countries; the foundation, in London (1864), of the International Society of
Working Men, with its strange combination of Trade Unionists and revolutionaries;
of its internal straggles with an “anarchist,” or ultra-individualist section
under Michael Bakunin (1814-76); or of its final disappearance, about 1873.
Much more important in the story of the socialist movement is the retirement
of Marx from other work in order to write his book on Capital, which was
published in 1867, and which has furnished inspiration to the socialists of all
countries. Not that this book, impressive in its argumentative and rhetorical
power, describes any definite scheme of collectivism, which is rather assumed
than advocated. But Marx read in the British Museum library the English
blue-books, which had led up to the successive Factory Acts, and, on the
horrors that they revealed, he constructed a dynamic description of the
industrial revolution in England, which, put as the inevitable result of
unrestrained private ownership of land and industrial capital, has reverberated
round the world. We need not take seriously today the peculiar version of the
law of value which Marx had learnt from David Ricardo oil the one hand, and
Thomas Hodgskin on the other; and which, as explaining the paradox of mere
subsistence wages in the midst of ever
augmenting
wealth-production, was used by Marx with such impressive effect. Formally, this
theory of wages is incorrect; and it has gone overboard from the economic ship,
along with the wages doctrines of M’Culloch and Ricardo themselves. But,
substantially, Marx was, in his analysis of the wage system in modem industry,
assuming it to be uncontrolled by Trade Unionism or factory legislation, as
right as he was impressive; and it is this analysis, together with that of
Friedrich Engels (1820-95), which has indirecfly contributed to the widespread
contemporary acceptance of Trade Unionism and factory legislation, and of the
doctrines of the common rule and the national minimum that we have already
described. In England, where the effective socialist movement dates only from
1881, it has been intellectually more influenced by that other derivative from
Ricardo, the law of rent, with its corollary of the inevitable appropriation,
by the owners of land, of the economic advantage of all but the worst land in
use. This doctrine, handed on by John Stuart Mill (1806-73) who in his
posthumous Autobiography classed himself “ decidedly under the general
designation of Socialist ”—postulating as the necessary basis of the society of
the future, “ a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal
participation of all in the benefits of combined labour ”—was promulgated with
great rhetorical power by Henry George (1839-97), who may be said to have thus
unwittingly provided the motive force for the rise of an organised socialist
party in the United Kingdom.
Translated
into terms of practical legislation and administration, the socialist
programme, in England as in all other countries, is more and more shaping
itself into four several lines of social reform. We see, first, the progressive
extension of collective ownership and administration, either national or local,
of one form of industrial capital after another, typified by the ever widening
government ownership of railways, canals, telegraphs, telephones, postal
communications, forests, water power, town sites, and agricultural land; by the
municipal ownership and administration of the supply of water, gas, and
electricity, of tramways, ferries, and bridges, of sewage farms and
water-catchment areas and agricultural settlements of one sort or another; by
the provision of houses, baths and wash-houses, parks and open spaces,
organised games and free concerts; and, in short, by fill the infinite variety
of developments which mark the thousands of urban communities of western
Europe. We have next the progressive assertion of the paramount control of the
community over such land anfl industrial capital as is still left in individual
ownership, in the form of ever increasing regulations, embodied in Factory and
Workshop Acts, Mines and Railways Regulation Acts, Merchant Shipping Acts,
Truck Acts and Shop Hours Acts, and what not. These regulations denounced in 1844 as “Jack Cade
legislation,” because they
were held, in
effect, to confiscate a portion of the value of the capitalist’s
property—are
now more and more consciously inspired by the idea of securing, at all hazards,
a “ national minimum ” of education, sanitation, leisure, and subsistence to
every citizen, whether he likes it or not. All these developments of collective
action cost money; and this fact helps to make increasingly acceptable the
third line of socialist progress, namely, that (as Jeremy Bentham long ago
advised) the State should use its power of taxation in such a way as partially
to redress the inequalities of income that private ownership of the means of
production involves; and, in particular, that a steadily increasing proportion
of the shares received, irrespective of personal participation in industry as
rent and interest, should be absorbed for the benefit of the national
exchequer. Finally, we have the fourth line of the socialist advance, in the
constant elaboration of the collective provision, for those unable to provide
for themselves, of whatever may be regarded for the time being as the national
minimum that the modem State undertakes to secure to every citizen. We need
only mention the ever increasing collective expenditure on the infants and the
children of school age, on the sick and infirm, on the blind, the deaf, and the
crippled, on the mentally defective of all kinds, on the prematurely
invalidated and the aged, on the widowed mothers of young children; and now
even on the able-bodied man or woman unable, amid the complications and fluctuations
of modern industry, to find wage-earning employment.
This fourfold
path of collective administration of public services, collective regulation of
private industry, collective taxation of unearned income, and collective
provision for the dependent sections of the community—and not any excursion in
Utopia or “ cloud-cuckoo-land ”— is the way in which the socialist really
invites us to follow. Thus, much of what is claimed as the progress of
socialism might be equally well described as a merely empirical development
from the principles of Canning, Peel, Bentham, and Gladstone. In short, while
it is common ground that much of the legislation of the past quarter of a
century, and much of the economic and political writing of the time, in England
as in other countries, has been greatly influenced in the directions that we
have described, opinions will differ as to how far the world is likely to
proceed along such lines; and also as to the extent to which the vociferous
efforts of the organised and avowed socialists are a cause, or merely an
effect, of the general movement of thought.
The change
that has come over the civilised world in the various manifestations that we
have described may be summed up in a phrase. What may be called an “ atomic ”
view of human socitety has been replaced by a more “organic” conception.
Three-quarters of a century ago the dominant social philosophy was that of
Laisser Jaire. Though in England and some other countries arrangements were
made to keep the starving from death, and to prevent actual brigandage and
robbery by violence, what little collective action existed was undertaken grudg
ingly, and by
way only of exception. The community as a whole assumed no responsibility for
the individual. The pressure upon his will produced by the free competitive
struggle would, it was assumed, if only “let alone," result in the utmost
possible development of human happiness and human faculty. The current ideal of
the social order was that of a congeries of warring atoms, the free competition
of which would, it was quite confidently assumed, unconsciously result in the
best attainable social state. The unit, it was said, was the family group; by
which was meant, in practice, the male head of the family, the wife and
children being scarcely recognised by the law as human beings, with rights or
interests independent of those of the dominant adult male. By the beginning of
the twentieth century we find an altogether different conception of society.
The unit is no longer the family group, but the individual human being, whether
newly bom infant, child, adolescent, adult woman, or male head of the
household. And we no longer believe that “beneficent private war” necessarily
secures public ends.
The first of
these changes in thought, the substitution of the individual human being for
the family group, as the unit of the State, has involved the legal protection
of the child and the emancipation of the woman, both of them social movements
of far-reaching significance which are still in progress. A century ago, in
Europe and the United States, as in India and China, children were, in the eye
of the law, at the almost unrestrained disposal of their parents, and wives of
their husbands. Neither children nor wives could, without elaborate and costly
special arrangements, own property, or dispose of their own persons, or invoke
the protection of the criminal law as against the dominant male head of the
family, for any tyranny, ill-treatment, or cmelty short of actual death, and
scarcely even for that. Gradually there is being built up, in one country after
another, a legal recognition of what we may call the right of the infant, the
child, and the adolescent to maintenance and proper nurture; protection against
neglect and cruelty; education; exemption from premature work in industry or
agriculture; and even vocational training. It is, however, interesting to
notice that this gradual building up of the “children’s charter” has been accomplished
not so much on the plea of humanity—for so strong was the reluctance to “break
up the family” that England began to punish cruelty to animals before it
punished the cruelty of parents to their children—as on the ground of the
State’s paramount interest in the lives and upbringing of its citizens. It has
been, on the whole, the la,tter argument which has led to the successive Public
Health and Factory Acts, the Mines and Shipping Acts, the Education Acts and
the more recent provisions for feeding children found hungry at school and
medically treating those in need—the whole series culminating in the Children
Act of 1908, which attempts to secure to every child in the land, from the
newly born infant to the adolescent, even against its own
father and
mother, what may be termed a national minimum of proper upbringing. All the
civilised nations of the world exhibit a similar evolution, in different
degrees, and in their own way. As with factory legislation, so with the
protection of children, some countries (notably some of the New England States
and some of the Australasian colonies) have, in certain particulars, gone ahead
of the United Kingdom. Others, such as Russia and Austria-Hungary, have as yet
made few inroads on the paternal authority. All, however, may be said to have
entered on the same course. “ It is intolerable,” old natives of India
complain, “that the law Courts should treat women and children as if they were
men.” The emancipation of women has, indeed, become already more general than
the legal protection of children. This is entirely a movement of the nineteenth
century. The Vindication of the Rights of Women, which Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759-97) published in 1791, with its demand for equal rights and equal
opportunities for all human beings, irrespective of sex, found no substantial
support for half a century. The theoretical democrats of the French Revolution
definitely excluded women, not only from the political franchise, but even from
public meetings and political agitation. There were practically no
opportunities for the education of girls beyond the most elementary stage. In
the eye of the law the daughter was a household drudge, the wife a chattel.
Even in the United States, in 1840, Harriet Martineau found only seven
employments practically open to women, as alternatives to marrying for a
living, namely, teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, working in
cotton-mills, bookbinding, typesetting, and household service. About the
middle of the nineteenth century, various sporadic demands for greater freedom
for women, in the United States and in Great Britain, arrested the attention of
John Stuart Mill (1806-73), and led eventually to the publication of his
Subjection of Women, a plea for complete equality of opportunity for both
sexes. From this time onward, the movement went from success to success. Good schools
for girls were founded in all the countries of western Europe, and in the
United States. The University of Zurich led the way in 1867 in opening
university education to women; and Paris followed shortly afterwards. The
Universities of Sweden and Finland opened their lectures and their degrees to
women in 1870; those of Denmark in 1875; and those of Italy in 1876. The
University of London conceded degrees to women in 1878, and that of Dublin in
1879. The Universities of Norway followed in 1884; those of Spain and Roumania
in 1888; those of Belgium and Greece in 1890, and those of Scotland in 1892.
Meanwhile, as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and those of the
eastern part of the United States, failed to provide for women, women’s
colleges were started (Girton, 1872; Newn- ham, 1875; Somerville, 1879; Lady
Margaret, 1879) in England, and both colleges and universities for women in the
United States. In the more recent growth of state universities in western
America, and of the
Universities
of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Wales and Bristol,
women are admitted on practically the same conditions as men.
With the
opening of higher education to women, there came naturally a demand for the
opening of the brain-working professions. Elizabeth Blackwell got a legal
qualification to practise medicine in New York in 1849. Various American States
and the Netherlands were admitting women to practise medicine by 1870; England
followed in 1876; and has already between five and six hundred female doctors
at work; Russia and Belgium in 1890. Here and there, especially in the United
States, women are acting as ministers of religion and in some branches of the
legal profession. The right of married women to their own property and their
own earnings was recognised in Great Britain by the Married Women’s Property
Acts of 1870 and 1882 ; and the legal systems of most civilised countries are
now arriving in their own ways at approximately the same position. What may,
perhaps, be deemed the last phase of this progressive evolution of women into
complete social equality with men is that of the civic franchise. Women
householders had long voted in the vestries, which administered the civil
affairs of the English parishes; and, when local boards of health and town
improvement commissioners were established in 1847 and 1848, this franchise was
continued to them. It was conceded for English town council elections in 1869;
for school boards in 1870; for Scotch town councils in 1881; for county councils
throughout the United Kingdom in 1888 and 1889. Between 1861 and 1904,
analogous local franchises were conceded to women in twenty-six States of the
United States. In four States women possess the full state franchise (Wyoming,
1869; Colorado, 1893; Utah, 1895 ; and Idaho, 1896). In Australia and New
Zealand, women were, between 1867 and 1908, successively admitted to all
franchises. In Sweden, Norway, and in Finland, full rights have now been
conceded; in the latter country, indeed, nineteen women were, in 1907, elected
to the Finnish Diet.
This
substitution of the individual human being, whether man or woman, infant or
adult, for the family group, as the unit of the social order, has far-reaching
consequences. But the disintegration of what we may call the eighteenth century
form of patria poiestas, has gone along not with a more lax, but with a closer,
integration of the State. The community as a whole recognises that it has
corporate ends, which it must pursue by corporate organisation. Its interests,
which are not necessarily those of any individual member of it, loom large
before us. We see no guarantee that perfect freedom of competition among individuals
will not result in what no one of the competitors is aiming at, or has even in
view. We are more and more disposed to believe that the community, which does
not, with the aid of the best science of the time, consciously promote its
corporate interests, will probably find
764
The need for individual responsibility.
those
corporate interests adversely affected. We can, therefore, no longer afford to
“let things alone.” The universal maintenance of a definite minimum of
civilised life—recognised to be in the interest of the community no less than
in that of the individual—becomes the joint responsibility of an indissoluble
partnership, in which the State and the individual citizens, men, women, and
children, have each their several parts to play. This does not mean that
charitable doles and public assistance should be made a substitute for what the
individual can effectively procure by his own exertions. Reasonable socialists
and reasonable individualists alike recognise that the real test of any
proposed change is whether or not it will result, in fact, in stimulating and
developing the aggregate of individual faculty and individual responsibility
which alone make up the strength and force of the community. This is the potent
argument alike for the emancipation of women and for the enforcement of the
national minimum. The issue between the parties is, indeed, as regards each
successive reform, simply one of fact. What is clear is that, when the
community accepts a corporate responsibility, the fulfilment of this
responsibility by the device of the universal provision of the necessary common
service by the municipality or the State has at any rate the advantage of
leaving unimpaired the salutary inequality between the thrifty and the
unthrifty, though on a higher level than before. As a matter of fact, the
thrifty parent does not find that the universal provision of elementary
schooling, and the establishment of a “ scholarship ladder ” to the
University, at all diminish the advantage over his wasteful and extravagant
neighbour, with which his thrift and abstinence have endowed him. On the
contrary, the more the State and the municipality provide gratuitously for
all, the higher are the advantages that prudence and economy open up to the
exceptionally provident man.
Not without
bearing on this result of collective action is the fact that, as has already
been described, in the United Kingdom of the past three-quarters of a century,
an increase of governmental action has been invariably accompanied, at a
slightly later date, by an increase also in voluntary cooperation in the same
sphere. We have seen how the steady development of “municipal collectivism”
since 1835 has been accompanied by the growth of the cooperative movement since
184*4. The early Factory and Mines Acts of 1802-42 were followed by the great
extension of common rules secured by Trade Unionism since 1843. The expansion
of the Poor Law into an extensive hospital and domiciliary provision for the
sick, the infirm, and the aged, has been at leapt paralleled by the growth of
Friendly Societies. We see here no sign that governmental collective action is
inimical to voluntary cooperation in supplement and support of what is done by
the State and by the law. It is, moreover, an inevitable complement of the
corporate responsibility and the indissoluble partnership, which are the
intellectual basis of the twentieth century State and twentieth century
citizenship, that new and enlarged obligations, unknown in a regime of
Increased personal obligations.
765
Laisser
Jaire, are placed upon the individual citizen, and enforced upon him by the
community. The Bolton cotton-spinner of 1842 had no need to keep his children
in health, or his house healthy; his wife could with absolute impunity let the
babies die; the parents could put their offspring to work at the earliest age;
the whole household was free, in fact, to live practically as it chose, even if
it infected and demoralised the neighbourhood. Now, the Bolton cotton-spinner
lives in a whole atmosphere of new obligations—such as the obligation to keep
his family in health, and to send every child between five and thirteen daily
to school, properly washed and dressed, and at an appointed hour; and the
obligation not to infect his environment, and to submit when required to
hospital treatment. While it becomes more and more imperative, in the public
interest, to enforce the fulfilment of personal and parental and marital
responsibility on every adult, it becomes more and more clear that no such
responsibilities can be effectively enforced without at the same time ensuring
to every adult the opportunity of fulfilling them. To enforce the fulfilment of
these obligations on the negligent and the recalcitrant, the modem State has
other expedients than the punishments of the criminal law. What happens is that
the collective action of the community, by a series of deliberate experiments
on volition, “weights the alternatives ” that present themselves to the mind of
the ordinary man. He retains as much freedom of choice as before, if not more
than before. But he finds it made more easy, by the universal provision of
schools, to get his children educated, and more disagreeable to neglect them.
By the provision of public baths and cleansing stations, he finds it made more
easy for him to keep his family free from vermin, and more disagreeable to let
them remain neglected and dirty. By the public provision of hospitals and
medical attendance, it is made more easy for parents to keep their dependents
in health, and more disagreeable to let them die. The public organisation of
the labour market by means of labour exchanges makes it easier for the man out
of work to find employment, and enables the State (as the socialists and Trade
Unionists are at one with the rest of the world in demanding) to make it more
disagreeable for the “ work-shy.” In every direction, the individual finds
himself, in the growing elaboration of oiganisation of the twentieth century
State, face to face with personal obligations unknown to his grandfather, which
the development of collective action both enables and virtually compels him to
fulfil. The claim is made—in the spirit of the teaching of Thomas Henry Green
(1836-82), whose influence on English political thought deserves this
recognition—that this new atmosphere of personal obligation results,
paradoxically enough, in an actual increase, taking the population as a whole,
in the enlargement of individual faculty, and in the opportunity for individual
development. In short, in the growing collectivism of the past seventy-five
years, law has been the mother of freedom.
THE SCIENTIFIC
AGE.
If the last century may justify Lord Acton’s title
of the scientific age, the reason is to be sought not merely, or even chiefly,
in the rapid growth of our knowledge of Nature. Science is as old as mankind,
for in the primitive arts of life we have the application of fragmentary
knowledge of the properties of matter, and in early myth and fable we have
theories of the origin of nature and of man founded on the evidence then
available. But, during the last hundred or hundred- and-fifty years, the whole
conception of the natural universe has been changed by the recognition that
man, subject as he is to the same physical laws and processes, cannot be
considered separately from the world around him, and the assurance that
scientific methods of observation and experiment are applicable, not only to
the subject-matter of pure science, but to all the many and varied fields of
human thought and activity.
In the great
inventions of former ages we see the needs of practical life stimulating
directly the activities of the craftsman. The need precedes and calls forth the
invention, unless the invention be the result of accidental discovery. During
the last century, on the other hand, we see scientific investigation in the
laboratory preceding and suggesting practical applications and inventions. The
invention, when made, opens a new field. Thus, Faraday’s electromagnetic
researches suggested to others the invention of the dynamo and modem
electromagnetic machinery. The discovery of living microscopic organisms as the
cause of malaria and other diseases, and the agency of insects in the dissemination
of these organisms, have led to the adoption of measures whereby whole
districts have been rendered healthy for the habitation of man. Mendel’s
experiments, in the cloister of Brunn, on the growth of peas have led already
to the systematic production of improved types of wheat, and to a knowledge of
the principles governing the inheritance of specific qualities which in the
future may have incalculable effects on the welfare of the human race. There
seems no limit to the extension of sense perception, and to the possibility of
improving or modifying the conditions of human existence.
Mechanics of the solar system.
767
While the
great explorers of the past century have brought almost the whole of the
terrestrial globe within our ken, in every other direction the world has
expanded and new grounds have been opened which lie ready for investigation.
There is the correct unravelling of the past history of the earth, its inhabitants,
and their civilisation; there is the accurate observation and improvement of
the present conditions of existence, social and political; there is the
moulding of the future, to which every living soul contributes for good or
evil. And, above all, there is the work of ascertaining and making known the
great laws in accordance with which the world progresses on its way. Science
has now its supreme opportunity. When, from toiling obscurely in the rear of
empirical knowledge and practice, science passed over and held up the torch in
front, the scientific age may be said to have begun.
In this
chapter, it is proposed to illustrate the growth of scientific method by
tracing broadly the development of those branches of science which may be
classed as physical or biological, and to follow the spread of the ideas so
obtained into the general thought of the age.
At the close
of the Newtonian epoch, as shown in an earlier volume of this work, the
possibility of treating the existing state of the solar system in its
mechanical aspect by methods and principles established by terrestrial
observation, induction, and deduction, was clear to the leaders of scientific
thought. In common parlance, it was felt that the thing might be understood.
Thus the
mechanics of the solar system, first put on a sound footing in England by
Newton’s fundamental discovery of the law of gravitation, were developed and
perfected during the latter years of the eighteenth century (1773-87) by the
labours of Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), and Pierre-Simon Laplace
(1749-1827). From Newton’s law, that each particle of matter attracts every
other particle with a force proportional to the product of the masses and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance, these mathematicians explained
almost all the details of the complicated planetary motions, and proved the
essential stability of the planetary system. During his second great period of
activity (17991825), Laplace systematised all such knowledge in his monumental
treatise Mecanique Celeste, which aimed at giving a complete solution of the
whole mechanical problem of the solar system, and fell but little short of its
aim. At the same time, he carried the perfected Newtonian philosophy into
general literature by his Systeme du Monde, thus completing the work begun by
Voltaire and the encyclopedists. It was this entrance of contemporary
scientific ideas into the general thought of the time that distinguished France
in the eighteenth century among the nations of Europe.
The most
striking verification of Newton’s principles in circumstances which appealed to
the popular mind may be said to have been given
by John Couch
Adams (1819-92) and Urbain-Jean-Joseph Leverrier (1811-77), who, working
independently in the countries of Newton and Laplace, predicted the existence
of an unknown planet by the perturbations of another planet Uranus, of which
the motions were not explicable completely by the attractions of known bodies
(1845-6). Johann Gottfried Galle (1812-1910), an astronomer of Berlin, turning
his telescope to the position assigned by Leverrier, found a new planet to
which Was given the name Neptune. Probably this one discovery had a greater
effect in establishing the credibility of scientific method in the civilised
world at large than the far more important coordination of observation and
hypothesis in the preceding fifty years.
By its
success in explaining the planetary motions, the law of inverse squares is
verified to a high degree of accuracy; but the mechanism of gravitation, the
mode of action of the forces, is still unexplained by any hypothesis generally
accepted.
While thus
the most important physical property of matter was traced to its ultimate
consequences, the interpretation of the chemical composition of matter lagged
far behind. The Aristotelian conception of a substance essentially light,
embodying the principle of levity, was banished from Mechanics by the classical
experiments of Galileo, but chemists, led astray by the phenomena of flame,
maintained Stahl’s theory of phlogiston till 1783. A body while burning lost
phlogiston; and, since during the process the balance showed a gain, phlogiston
must possess a negative weight. However, in the second half of the eighteenth
century, the study of gases brought new facts to light. Although, about 1765,
Henry Cavendish showed how to collect and examine gases, the old ideas lasted
for some time longer. Even Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), who discovered the gas
oxygen, named it dephlo- gisticated air; and Cavendish, who in 1781 dethroned
water from its ancient position as one of the elements, described its newly
discovered constituents as phlogiston and dephlogisticated air. But Antoine-
Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94), repeating in 1783 Cavendish’s experiment, grasped
the fact that there was no need to invent a body with strange properties unlike
those of the material substances known directly to the senses. He
named'Cavendish’s gases oxygen and hydrogen, and recognised them as ordinary
substances possessing mass and weight, though the persistence of the older
ideas is shown by the inclusion of “ light ” and “ caloric ” with oxygen,
azote, and hydrogen among the list of 33 simple substances given in his Traite
elementaire de Chimie, published in 1789.
The way was
now clear for the detailed study and interpretation of the laws of chemical
combination. It was found that elements combined in fixed and definite
proportions by weight, while, if two elements combined to form more than one
compound, the weight of one element A which combined with a certain weight of
another B in the first compound,
bore
a simple relation to the weight of A combined with that weight of B in the
second. John Dalton (1766-1844) saw that these phenomena were best explained by
a new form of atomic theory, and in 1804 he put forward the view that the ratio
of the weights of two elements in their simplest compound measured the relative
weights of their respective atoms.
'
The
experiments of Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac: (1778-1850)* who showed that
gases always combine in volumes which bear simple ratios to each other, led to
the generalisation of Americo Avogadro (Conte di Quaregna) (1776-1856), who
pointed out that, on Dalton’s theory, equal volumes of all gases at the same
temperature and pressure must contain numbers of atoms which stand in simple
ratios to each other. Further study of the phenomenon of gaseous combination
led to the distinction between the physical molecule—the smallest part of an
elementary compound which can exist free—and the chemical atom—the smallest
part of an element which can enter into chemical combination.
Thus the
atomic hypothesis, founded by the metaphysical speculations of the Greeks,
took shape in modem guise as a definite quantitative theory framed to explain
chemical measurements. But, while the Greeks sought to resolve all matter into
a common atomic constituent, Dalton went no further than the specific atom of
each chemical element, not to be divided by the processes of Chemistry, and he
left unanswered the deeper question of the constitution of the chemical atoms
and their possible resolution, by means other than chemical, into more ultimate
parts, perhaps identical in all types of matter. But Dalton’s theory, unlike
that of the ancients, was a living, working hypothesis, necessary to explain
the facts and to suggest lines of future experiment and enquiry. By its light,
nearly all modem chemical research has been undertaken and interpreted, till in
recent years the application of the theory of energy to Chemistry gave a means
of coordinating certain phenomena without the aid of atomic and molecular
conceptions.
The number of
chemical elements has grown from the twenty to which atomic weights were
assigned by Dalton, till at the present time some eighty separate chemical
individuals are recognised. Each new method of research applied to Chemistry
has resulted in a group of new elements. Thus the use of the separating power
of the electric current in 1807 gave Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) the alkaline
metals potassium and sodium; the methods of spectrum analysis in the middle of
the nineteenth century disclosed such elements as rubidium, caesium, thallium,
and gallium by the quality of the light which they emitted when incandescent;
and the phenomena of radio-activity have added to the list bodies like radium,
which exist in nature in quantities much too small to be detected even by the
delicate means of spectrum analysis. On the other hand, an example of the new
results which may be obtained by increasing the accuracy of older methods of research
is found in
770
Mendeleeff’s table of elements.
Lord
Rayleigh’s investigation of certain minute differences in density which he
observed in the gas nitrogen when prepared from different sources. These
labours resulted in 1894 in the discovery of the gas argon as an unsuspected
constituent of the atmosphere, and led indirectly to the isolation of other new
gases, chiefly by Sir William Ramsay.
The work of
Dalton and Avogadro enabled chemists to calculate the relative weights of the
atoms of the different elements, and in 1869 the Russian Dmitri IwAnowitsch
Mendel&ff (1834-1907), systematising the earlier vague speculations of
William Prout (1785-1850) and Newlands, showed that, if the elements be
arranged in a table in order of ascending atomic weights, we see a striking
recurrence of similarity in physical and jhemical properties at regular
intervals in the table. An evident gap in the table even enabled Mendeleeff to
predict the existence and properties of an element then unknown.
This
periodic law shows that the physical and chemical properties of the elementary
atoms depend on their mass, and suggests irresistibly the conclusion that their
differences are due to differences in complexity of structure and arrangement
of parts, rather than to any essential distinction in the nature of their
ultimate substance. Thus we are again led back to the conception of an
identical physical basis for all types of matter, and kept on the watch for
evidence in favour of that view of nature. .
The
comparatively simple compounds formed by most of the chemical elements are
unlike the very complex ones built up by the unique substance carbon, which
enters into the composition of all organic compounds, from which' the bodies of
plants and animals are constructed. It was long thought that the processes
which occurred in living structures were unlike in kind to those produced
artificially in the laboratory. The synthesis of urea, a typical organic body,
artificially prepared by Friedrich Wohler (1800-82) in 1828, did much to shake
this belief, while the preparation of sugar from its elements by Emil Fischer
and Julius Tafel in 1887 solved a problem which long had baffled the
experimenter, and brought another branch of the chemistry of life into the
arena of the laboratory.
The success
of the Newtonian theory in explaining the existing mechanism of the solar
system led inevitably to speculations about the mode of origin of that system.
As Mach says: “ The French encyclopedists of the eighteenth century imagined
that they were not far from a final explanation of the world by physical and
mcchanical principles; Laplace even conceived a mind competent to foretell the
progress of nature for all eternity, if but the masses, their positious, and
initial Velocities were given.” This overestimate of the importance of one
particular and limited aspect of nature was the outcome of the striking success
of the new mechanical conceptions. Applying the idea to a less
Nebular hypothesis.—Geology. 771
ambitious
problem, Laplace sought to trace the origin of the existing solar system in its
mechanical properties by his famous nebular hypothesis, which pictured the
primordial chaos as consisting of a mass of scattered nebulous matter filling
the space now occupied by the sun and his attendant planets. Laplace indicated
that known dynamical principles might reasonably mould such a system into the
revolving spheres familiar to Astronomy. This suggestion, incapable by the
nature of the case of direct observational or experimental examination, remains
an unverified hypothesis, though the later evidence of the spectroscope has
shown that some visible nebulae are giving forth the light characteristic of
the glowing vapour which Laplace’s hypothesis suggests as the primal state of
the solar system. But the importance of the theory lies in the claim it makes
for scientific method to explore the depths of the past. Nevertheless, here, as
in other fields, speculation overran the true path of advance, which lay, for
the time at any rate, in the patient and laborious study of the earth’s surface
by the methods of Geology—a science which, in the time of Laplace, had barely
struggled into being.
Long after
dynamical Astronomy had gained freedom from the geocentric theory enforced by
the sixteenth century theologians, Geology lay bound in the chains of a too
literal interpretation of Biblical cosmogony. Primordial cataclysms or Noachic
deluges were invoked to explain the structure of rocks and the presence of
marine fossils in the depths of land areas. It was not till James Hutton
(1726-97) published his Theory of the Earth (1785) that these ideas were
questioned seriously. Hutton first appreciated the fact that many processes
competent to produce stratified rocks and to embed fossils in them are still
going on in the operations of sea, river, and lake. “No powers,” he said, “are
to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted of
except those of which we know the principle.” This, the “ uniformi- tarian ”
theory, lay forgotten for some time while “ Neptunists ” and “ Vulcanists ”
still quarrelled about the relative importance of water and fire in the
cataclysmic origin of the world.
Then came Sir
Charles Lyell (1797-1875), who grasped once more the possibilities of the'long
continued action of existing processes. Astronomy had emancipated itself from
the orthodox chronology, and other branches of knowledge were struggling into a
position to claim the same licence. Since the days of Hutton the available
evidence had been enriched by the new knowledge of Palaeontology. William Smith
(1769-1839) had assigned relative ages to rocks by examining their fossil
contents; Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) had reconstructed the extinct mammalia of
the Paris basin; and Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (17441829) had made an extensive
classification of recent and fossilised shells. Thus, not only was Lyell able
to bring evidence from all countries to show how the face of the earth is being
moulded into new forms by water, volcanoes, and earthquakes, but he was able to
explain the
sequence of
fossil remains by slow secular changes in the forms of animal and vegetable
life. Hence it was that the publication of Lyell’s Principles of Geology in
1830-3 marked the first great epoch in modem geological science. But it was not
till 1863 that Lyell considered the evidence clear enough to warrant him in
assigning to man a place in the natural series of organic types. The discovery
of flint implements, associated with the bones of long extinct animals, at
Abbeville and elsewhere, showed that man had existed on the globe for periods
compared with which the few thousand years of the accepted chronology were but
as a day, and gave to the human race a long pedigree of ancestors slowly rising
in the scale of prehistoric civilisation. The work of Thomas Henry Huxley
(1825-95) in studying the skulls of prehistoric and primitive types of man was
originally undertaken for the purpose of throwing light on the history of the
human race; but it proved to be the beginning of the new science of Ethnology.
The principle
used by Lyell and the other uniformitarians, that the past must be explained by
the present unless good cause can be shown to the contrary, and the fact that,
so far as our knowledge goes, no such cause is seen to be operative in the
history of the globe, brought once more to the front the old conception of
organic evolution. The idea of the origin of all living beings from a few
ancestral types was familiar to the Greeks; but it had vanished from the
thought of the world during the centuries of theological scholasticism. The
work of the geologists forced naturalists to face a question which already had
begun again to interest philosophers—in particular, Herbert Spencer
(1820-1903), who was advocating a general evolutionary system in almost all
branches of human thought. But nearly all competent biologists felt that the
evidence was insufficient. No clear cases of transmutation of species could be
adduced, and no cause had been suggested sufficient to explain such
transmutation. Lamarck, it is true, had put forward the view that the
accumulated and inherited effect of use and habit might, in the course of many
generations, explain the divergence of existing, species; the giraffe, for
instance, being supposed to have acquired his long neck by the continued
efforts of his ancestors to browse on trees just beyond their reach. , But no
certain evidence was or is forthcoming of the direct inheritance of acquired
characters. In other directions, too, Lamarck’s hypothesis was considered insufficient,
and till 1858 the weight of biological opinion was overwhelmingly against the
idea of transmutation. Even Lyell himself was not then prepared to accept as
conclusive the evidence of continuity in the case of organic remains.
In the year
1858 Charles Darwin (1809-82) and, independently, Alfred Russel Wallace
published a new theory, fortified, in -(;he case of Darwin, by the results of
many years of patient and laborious observation and experimen t, which he
summarised in 1859 in his great
book on The
Origin of Species. : It was known well enough that the different
individuals of a species show innate divergences of structure more or less
marked; that any one species tends to multiply till it overtakes its means of
subsistence and a struggle for life eliminates the weakest; that a certain
limited power of adaptation to environment was common to all living beings. But
no one previously had understood the true significance of these facts. As
Huxley said: “ The suggestion that new species may result from the selective
action of external conditions upon the variations from the specific type which
individuals present— and which we call ‘ spontaneous ’ because we are ignorant
of their causation—is as wholly unknown to the historian of scientific ideas
as it was to biological specialists before 1858. But that suggestion is the
central idea of The Origin of Species, and contains the quintessence of Darwinism.”
The selective action is exercised by the pressure of the struggle for life,
which favours those individuals which possess variations of direct use to them
in their surroundings. Those individuals tend to survive at the expense of the
others, and to produce offspring. The new generation shows variation also, and,
once more, those individuals which are modified in favourable directions have a
better chance of survival. Gradually, differences accumulate, generation after
generation, in the descendants of each one of the original offspring, and, in
time not one only, but many new species may be formed, as the result of minute
accumulated variations. In animals a secondary cause of selection—one by which
ornamental variations not of direct utility arise—is the choice of mates, which
tends to reproduce variations pleasing to the opposite sex. In plants, the success
of flowers in attracting the fertilising insect life is also a factor in the
situation.
Darwin’s
Origin of Species was met on its publication by a storm of criticism.
Naturalists themselves failed for some time to appreciate the strength of the
evidence which Darwin brought forward to support his case. Hence, at first,
many were found in opposition, though a few gave in their adhesion—Joseph (now
Sir Joseph) Hooker, whom Darwin had consulted throughout in the preparation of
his work, Lyell, who expressed his later conversion in the Antiquity of Mam.,
and Huxley, from the first the militant champion of Darwin’s theory. Huxley’s
work 1 popularising the new views in his book Man's Place in Nature (1863) and
elsewhere can hardly be Overestimated; while the progress of general
evolutionary philosophy, made easy by Darwin’s theory of a possible cause, owed
most perhaps to the labours of Herbert Spencer. While the objections of
biologists were founded on doubt as to the sufficiency of the evidence for
natural selection, the repugnance of others was based on unwillingness to
accept the possibility of evolution at all. Like the Copemican system of
Astronomy, which threatened to depose the earth from its central position in
the Universe, the Darwinian hypothesis was thought to dethrone man from his
proper place in the scheme of things, and was
seen to be
inconsistent with the accepted dogma of the special creat'tn of each distinct
species, and the separate and final creation of the human race as a culminating
point. Hence, outside the ranks of men of science, the opposition was led by
certain theologians who failed to distinguish between the essential and
non-essential bulwarks of the faith. In truth they did not appreciate the
characters of the men or the nature of the arguments with which they had to
deal, and were blind to the fact that scientific methods and evidence had
become a dominating factor in the history of general thought. Even men of the
world, accustomed to regard themselves as fallen from a higher state,
proclaimed with Disraeli that they were “ on the side of the angels.”
But time
brought the inevitable reconciliation. The beginning of better things was
marked by the foundation in 1869 of the Metaphysical Society, composed of
distinguished men of the most opposite schools of thought, who thus learnt
through personal intercourse and private discussion to recognise a unity of
purpose and a mutual regard unattainable before. The friendships formed among
Darwin, Lyell, Huxley, and Kingsley, Stanley, Colenso, leaders of liberal
religious thought, were of great importance in the history of the controversy.
In tracing
the result of evolutionary philosophy on religion, the effect of other
awakening influences must not be forgotten. The new lights thrown on Biblical
history by archaeological work in Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Egypt, and
Palestine; the revision of ideas about the nature of the Bible produced by
textual criticism; the comparative study of early religions by anthropologists;
and the increased knowledge of the development of Christianity in the first few
centuries—all helped to shake the old idea of immutability in religion, and to
place the Bible on its true footing as the unique record of the evolution of a
nation’s moral consciousness. When that idea was grasped thoroughly, there was
no need to claim for the Bible, or for religious records generally, any
exemption from investigation—new knowledge* from whatever source, could only be
welcomed by theologians as an integral part of revelation.
Ideas, like
natural species, are subject to variation and a struggle for survival. Age
after age, the pressure of the intellectual environment tends to destroy those
beliefs unfitted to the general knowledge of the time, and to preserve others
in harmony with the mental and moral atmosphere. The necessary variations may
arise from the slight changes which an idea undergoes when translated into
thoughts and words by different minds, or from the abrupt changes which are
made by great reformers and correspond to the “sports” of biological science.
Unchanging scientific theories, unchanging social institutions, unchanging
religious beliefs, are no more possible than unchanging species. What is living
is subject to change; what is stationary has lost the power of adaptation, and,
in a changing world, must die.
The
comparative study of primitive religions has thrown much light
on the
intellectual life of man just emerging from the savage state, and has enabled
us to trace the development from myth and magic to the elaborate religious
systems of Greece and Rome. As the survival of rudimentary organs, now useless
to their possessors, has given evidence as to the development of animal and
vegetable life, so the survival of primitive religious observances, embedded in
medieval Christianity, has shown how Jewish and pagan ideas were absorbed,
developed, and used, in the early ages of the Church, and has taught us the
continuity of religious systems in their external aspects; while man’s
essential need of some of the ideas which former ages have considered
exclusively Christian has been shown by tracing them in primitive form through
early stages of religious development. It is possible that advancing knowledge
will go further in this direction: and it is to be hoped that the time has
passed when theologians fear the influence of new knowledge.. Whether we
believe that man is led upward by an intelligent and beneficent Power, or hold
that he is struggling onward unaided, the conception of evolution remains
helpful, either as illustrating the methods of the Creator, or as pointing out
the way in which man has reached his present position, and suggesting the best
course for the future.
While
religious thought has assimilated to a certain extent the evolutionary view,
the trend of modem apologetics also shows the direct influence of experimental
and inductive science in general and of the conception of evolution in
particular. At the beginning of the period we have under review, Paley’s
Evidences of Christianity (1794) represented the arguments which appealed to
the age as confirmatory of Christian doctrine. Now, all leaders of ;
religious thought agree in holding the insufficiency of Paley, and in laying
stress on the evidential value of the individual religious consciousness and
the various types of individual religious experieuce. The importance of the
latter point of view, from the standpoint of the scientific study of
comparative religion, was, perhaps, first emphasised adequately by William
James’ book, Some Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1904. , .
This change
in mental attitude must be ascribed to the need of the age for observational,
if not for experimental, evidence in all subjects. But even more striking
examples are seen in the foundation, in 1885, of the Society for Psychical
Research to investigate by scientific methods the phenomena of thought
transference and human personality, and the work of the various schools of
Experimental Psychology in England, the United States, and France.
The
conception of evolution once formed and widely disseminated must influence
profoundly social and political theories. Instead of the ideal State,
absolutely best for all time, sought for by the makers of Utopias, we have, as
the object of our endeavour, that State which is best in the conditions of a
given period, and at a given stage of intellectual, moral, and political
development. No fixed condition can ever
be reached,
no finality obtained; the existing legal, social, and political institutions
must, in a healthy State, be merely one stage in a perennial development.
Room is still
left for the ardent reformer and for the convinced reactionary, for every man
is free to form an opinion how far the existing State has lagged behind or
departed from the best conditions for the given time; but the more temperate
discussion of political and social questions during the last quarter of a
century is to be traced, partly, to a recognition that no finality can ever be
reached, that absolute political truth is unattainable—in fact, does not exist.
As the study
of the spectra of different nebulae and stars has given evidence about the mode
of formation of suns and worlds, so the study of the social and political
condition of the different races now existing in different stages of civilisation
has shown how the more advanced peoples must have struggled through earlier
times. The scientific value of folklore and tradition, too, has now come to be
appreciated as illuminating primitive culture. And, for more advanced periods,
it is seen that development need not necessarily proceed along the same lines
for different nations even in a high stage of civilisation. It is recognised
that different institutions are suited to different peoples: no one would now
undertake a crusade to establish the universal sway of one form of government,
as did the French republicans of revolutionary times. Those social and
political forms are best worthy to survive which best fit the particular
environment, and are most capable of adaptation as the environment changes. It
is true that in Biology it is doubtful if functional adaptations are
transmitted by heredity; but in Sociology no such doubt exists—one age is
influenced profoundly by the acquired characteristics of its prcdecessoi
Since the
time of Darwin, all biological research is permeated with the idea of natural
selection. Much work has been directed to the elucidation of the phenomena and
origin of the variations which are necessary for the play of selection, and to
the study of the allied problem of the inheritance of acquired characters. If
such characters are not transmitted, no modification of Lamarck’s hypothesis
can explain evolution, and recent research has done much to emphasise the
obvious difficulty of seeing how the essential properties of the germ cells
could be affected by habits acquired after their formation. The most important
of the new investigations have been inspired by the rediscovery of the
forgotten work already referred to on the breeding of peas by Gregor Mendel
(1822-84), Abbot of Briinn.
Certain
characters both of plants and animals have been found to exist in pairs, so
that the absence of one involves the presence of the other. One such case is
that of the colours of Blue Andalusian fowls. These birds do not breed “ true
”; that is, all their offspring are not blue like the parents. On the average
of a large number, half the
chicks of
blue parents are blue, while the other half are divided equally between white
and black. Both white and black birds with a mate of their own colour “ breed
true ” and give all white or black chicks. Both white and black are true
breeds, which, kept to themselves, retain their characters for an indefinite
number of generations. White and black colours are definite Mendelian
characters, to which, evidently, something in the germ cells corresponds. Now,
a white bird mated with a black produces invariably all blue offspring, which,
mated among themselves, reproduce the phenomena described above.
Such facts
are explained if we suppose that of the germ cells of the blue birds half bear
the black character and half the white. If “ white ” meets “white” the result
is “white”—and so with black. But if “white” meets “ black ” a mixture, in this
case “ blue,” appears. In other cases the mixed form simulates one of the pure
breeds, one of the characters being “dominant” and the other “recessive.” But,
whether the mixture of breed is apparent outwardly or not, it becomes clear in
the character of the next generation, which, unlike the offspring of a pure
breed, is not homogeneous.
Mendel’s
results have removed one of the difficulties of the theory of natural
selection. It was not easy, on the old ideas, to see how a favourable variation
could avoid being bred out of the race, if its fortunate possessor had to
choose a mate from his less gifted contemporaries. But, if the character exist
pure in his germ cells, and is transmitted in right number to the germ cells of
his offspring, the chances of its meeting a corresponding character in time are
greatly increased.
Already Mendelian
principles have been used tentatively by scientific agriculturists, among
others by Rowland Biffen in an attempt to produce a new variety of wheat which
possesses the combined advantages ,of free bearing English, and “ strong baking
” foreign grain, characters hitherto considered to be incompatible with each
other. It is clear that such knowledge gives us a power of producing new
varieties of plants and animals by the light of intelligible scientific
principles, instead of by the empirical and instinctive skill of the individual
breeder, on whom we have hitherto relied.
The bearing
of these investigations on the problems of human inheritance is of immense
importance to the future well-being of the race. Instead of being formed by a
vague mixture of the qualities of all our ancestors, it is possible that we may
possess definite characteristics of some of them only, and may transr t to our
children characters we do not ourselves manifest. But, whether or not definite
Mendelian laws are found to hold good for mankind, the statistical study of the
human race gives overwhelming proof of the power of inheritance in transmitting
characters both physical and mental. The old theory of leading families, of
more than average character, ability, and physical advantages, has
been shown by
Sir Francis Galton to stand the test of careful examination. Recent work on
heredity gives an intelligible reason for such beliefs, and lays stress once
more on the importance of the aristocratic theory of the family as against the
extreme egalitarian views of the middle- class nineteenth century* Thus we find
a scientific justification of the recent revival of interest in family history.
Meanwhile, it
is a duty to notice the effects of the diverging birthrate of different
sections of the community. The fact that parents classed as feeble-minded and
the lowest grade of casual labourers have more than the average number of
children, while parents of the professional and more thrifty artisan classes
have less, is of greater significance for the future of the nation than has yet
been grasped. Already those who are consulted find that it is difficult to
supply men fitted by character and early training, as well as by intellect, to
fill the responsible posts which increase in number in proportion to the growth
of the nation as a whole. If unchecked, the wrongly directed relative change in
the birthrate of different classes may do more harm in the progressive
degeneration of the race than all the improved conditions of life can reverse by
raising the status of each fleeting generation. We may drain our cities, found
hospitals and asylums, maintain open spaces, educate expensively every child;
but it is doubtful whether we thus produce any appreciable direct effect on
future generations. While, through favourable environment, the indirect effect
of promoting the development of the natural qualities of any individual will be
immense, it is the innate qualities which we can neither create nor destroy
that are of direct and supreme importance. The function of environment can only
be to render more available the latent ability of the community. At the same
time, it is well to remember that though environment can never improve what
does not already exist, it cannot apparently, however unfavourable, destroy
utterly the germ of better things. A race may pass through a generation or two
of slum existence amid insanitary surroundings and yet retain the power of
reverting to the higher type at the first opportunity. Be that as it may, the
only sure way to bring about a progressive increase in the beauty, moral
character, physical vigour, and mental capacity of the race is to favour in
every possible way (some ways that have been suggested are impossible) the
reproduction of those elements that are valuable, and to discourage the
transmission of ugly, criminal, weak-minded, or feeble-bodied tendencies.
Medicine, and
still more Surgery, have shared in the general advance of biological knowledge.
The changes which perhaps most affect the bulk of mankind are the introduction
of anaesthetics and the recognition of the part played by living
micro-organisms in many diseases. The physiological effects of nitrous oxide
gas were demonstrated by Davy in 1800, but it was not till 1844 that it was
used in dentistry by Horace
Wells of
Hartford, Connecticut. Ether was first employed by William Thomas Green Morton
(1819-68), of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1846, and adopted in 1847 by Sir James
Simpson, of Edinburgh (1811-70), who also introduced the use of chloroform
later in the same year. Not only do anaesthetics save an incalculable amount of
pain in surgery, but they have made possible difficult and prolonged operations
which could not be carried out while patients were conscious.
The germ
theory of disease was put on a sound experimental footing by the work of Louis
Pasteur (1822-95). About the year 1855, Pasteur showed that alcoholic, acetic,
and lactic fermentation were due to the action of three different and specific
living microscopic organisms. He also disproved the occurrence of spontaneous
generation in any known case, and showed that the growth of bacteria was to be
traced in all cases to the entrance of germs from outside, or to the
development of those already present.
The analogy
of certain diseases with the processes of putrefaction and fermentation was
apparent at once. Pasteur himself demonstrated that similar causes were
operative in many cases, such as chicken cholera and the silk-worm disease, and
reduced enormously the ravages of these two scourges. Moreover, he extended
Jenner’s principle of vaccination, which till then was an isolated observation.
Pasteur discovered that, by growing pure cultures of the germs of certain
diseases, he was able to attenuate their malignity. Animals inoculated with the
weakened virus suffered little inconvenience, and were thereafter render’d
immune for a time at any rate to the attacks of. the malignant disease. In the
case of rabies he went further, and showed that inoculation after infection was
effectual, and thus diminished to about one per cent, the mortality from this
previously incurable and most dread disease.
In some
cases, part of the life history of the harmful micro-organisms can take place
only in another host. Thus the germ of malaria, discovered in 1880 by Laveran,
a French army surgeon, requires for its development one particular kind of
mosquito. About 1885, Italian observers had, by systematic investigation, found
that the infection was given to men through the bites of mosquitoes, and in
1894-7 Sir Patrick Manson and Major Ronald Ross proved that Anopheles
mosquitoes were sometimes infested by cells which turned out to be malaria
parasites in an early stage of development. These mosquitoes breed in stagnant
water, and thus,,by draining wet places, or covering stagnant water with a film
of paraffin oil, vast areas of malarious ground have been made healthy. Similar
methods have been applied with success in the case of yellow fever. Another
recent instance of successful preventive measures is to be found in the
campaign against Maltese or Mediterranean fever. During the past few years, a
committee of the Royal Society has traced this disease to a micro-organism,
passing part of its life in goats, which nevertheless remain apparently
perfectly healthy. By prohibiting the
sale of milk
from contaminated goats, by the sterilisation of the milk where the use of
goats’ milk is inevitable, or by the more satisfactory substitution of
condensed milk, the ravages of this disease, formerly so disastrous to
residents in Malta and on the Mediterranean shores, and to the detachments of
the British Army and Navy stationed in those districts, have been stopped
almost entirely.
The process
of fermentation has been further elucidated by investigations founded on a
discovery by Eduard Buchner, who, in 1897, extracted from the yeast plant a
substance solutions of which, though entirely free from living organisms, can
convert sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid, just as living yeast cells do.
Thus it seems that, in this case, yeast acts on sugar, not because it is alive,
but because it contains this substance. Many other such substances, which are
known as enzymes, have been discovered in living cells. Some of them, such as
those of the digestive secretions, pass from their cells of origin before
coming into action. Others, like the ferment of yeast, in natural conditions
never leave the cell. But the essential process seems to be the same in both
classes, and to be analogous to the physical or chemical action known as
catalysis, in which one substance hastens chemical change in another, without
itself suffering alteration.
The renown of
applying Pasteur’s results to Surgery belongs to Joseph (now Lord) Lister. The
use of anaesthetics had opened new possibilities of surgical operation, but the
potential benefits were almost neutralised by the terrible after-effects of
septic poisoning. Hospitals were hotbeds of infection, and the mortality was
such that an open wound in hospital was almost a sentence of death. Lister came
just in time to save the hospital system. Recognising at once the significance
of Pasteur’s experiments, he saw that the introduction of putrefactive
organisms must be prevented. At first by the employment of strong anl iseptic
dressings and by spraying the atmosphere with carbolic acid, and later by the
more effective method of sterilising all instruments and other objects in the
neighbourhood of the patient, Lister in time practically banished septic
poisoning. Operations impossible before could now be undertaken with comparative
safety, and the lives of countless Sufferers have been saved.
The functions
of beneficial and of pathogenic bacteria have now come to be better understood.
Among other work, that of Elias Mechnikoff stands preeminent. Mechnikoff has
traced the destruction of harmful bacteria which enter the healthy body to the
action of the colourless corpuscles of the blood, which, in a devoted army,
make their way to the infected spot and destroy the enemy at the cost of their
own lives. Whether this process is effected by an actual absorption, or by
indirect chemical means, is still a subject of controversy.
The knowledge
that many diseases are due to specific micro-organisms has had great influence
on the development of hygiene or preventive medicine. It is possible to guard
against many sources of infection
when we know
the manner in which the infection is spread, whether by water, air, earth or
food. The purity of the water supply is now the object of constant watchfulness
on the part of public authorities, while improvements in the methods of
disposal of sewage and other waste products are continually being made. Greater
care is taken to secure healthy surroundings for the sources of the supplies of
milk, bread, and meat, while a knowledge of the importance of abundance of
fresh air is producing better ventilation of buildings. The recognition of
sources of infection has led to the compulsory notification of certain
infectious diseases, and to powers given to local authorities to disinfect
houses. The discovery of the germicidal effect of sunlight shows its importance
for health, while, above all, the need of scrupulous cleanliness in every
department of household management has been proved by science. Some germs may
be banished altogether. Others, too ubiquitous to be eliminated entirely, can
be reduced in number in all dangerous places. The human body can deal with the
attacks of enemies when the invasion is confined within limits depending on the
general state of health. It is only when too many pathogenic organisms enter at
once that the outer means of defence break down, and the citadel has to stand
the dangerous siege of a specific illness.
When it is
impossible to feel confident as to the purity of the water supply, as with an
army in the field, Pasteur showed that most of the harmful germs may be
destroyed by boiling, or treating with certain chemicals, such as bromine.
Similar treatment has often been applied to other articles of food and drink.
Milk especially is liable to contain tubercle bacilli, but, unless the heating
be stopped at about 85° centigrade, a temperature sufficient to kill most
dangerous germs, changes may be produced in the substance itself making it less
digestible, while the addition in large quantities of germicidal preservatives,
such as boracic acid, is a more direct danger to health. Hence the present
tendency is to rely more on purity of supply, than on sterilisation after
contamination.
The net
result of improved Medicine, Surgery, and Hygiene is perhaps best measured by
the change in the deathrate of the population. Two centuries ago, the average
annual mortality of London was about 80 per thousand; it is now about 15 per
thousand. Doubtless, the lowered deathrate is accompanied by an improved state
of health in those who survive, though it is less easy to express the change in
figures. Whether the change produces on the whole good or evil for the innate
qualities of the race, is, as we have said above, a doubtful question.
While Geology
and Biology were passing through the changes we have traced, Physical Science
underwent an equally great extension.
Newton’s
preference for the emission or corpuscular theory of light, as against Huygens’
undulatory theory, delayed, by the influence of, his
great name,
the advance of Physical Optics. Newton did not see how to explain the
rectilinear propagation of light on undulatory principles^ though he recognised
the advantage of the theory in explaining the fringes of colour seen with thin
plates, where two trains of waves may be supposed to coalesce, and, by the
local coincidence of motion in opposite directions, produce rest, i.e. absence
of light of one particular colour. In 1801^-3, Thomas Young (1773-1829) revived
the wave theory to explain by the interference of two trains of waves his detailed
experiments on the fringes of colour which accompany shadows, especially of
thin fibres, and the colours of thin plates studied by Newton. But it was not
till Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1827) developed Young’s views, with the skill
and elegance in mathematical analysis characteristic of France, that the theory
obtained general acceptanice. Fresnel first overcame Newton’s chief objection
to the theory—the difficulty of explaining the propagation of light in straight
lines and the existence of sharp shadows, phenomena unlike those of sound, for
which an undulatory theory was accepted. Fresnel showed that such rectilinear
propagation would be a property of waves, if the wave-length was minute
compared with the size of the obstacles or the other distances concerned. The
question of the direction of the vibration which constitutes the wave was also
solved by Young, who suggested to Dominique-Fran^ois Arago (1786-1853) in 1817
that the phenomena of polarisation, whereby rays of light are shown to possess
different properties on different sides, must mean that the undulations are
transverse to the direction in which the light is travelling.
Having
established undulations, natural philosophers proceeded to adopt the old
conception of an all-pervading aether, and to use it for supplying what the
late Lord Salisbury once called “ a nominative case to the verb ‘to undulate’.”
The fortunes of this idea we shall trace later.
The opening
years of the nineteenth century saw the triumph of the wave theory of light; the
middle of the century was marked by the rise of spectrum analysis. Newton had
decomposed white light into its constituent coloured beams by passing it
through a prism, and the spectrum so obtained was found to vary with the source
of light. Joseph Fraunhofer (1787—1826) had mapped the black lines first
noticed by William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828), crossing the coloured spectrum
of sunlight, and the nature of these lines had been explained in his lectures
by Sir George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903). Any mechanical system capable of
vibrating will be set into motion if impulses fall on it timed to coincide with
its natural period. This principle of resonance is illustrated by the mode of
action of a child’s swing, and by the sound taken up by piano wires when a note
is sung in their neighbourhood. Thus the molecules of the vapours which
surround the sun, through which his rays must pass, will absorb those
vibrations which they would
Spectrum analysis. Photography. 783
themselves
emit if hotter, and deprive the light which passes on of those constituents.
Sunlight will be wanting in rays corresponding with those of the vapours in the
solar atmosphere, and the solar spectrum will be crossed by lines that are dark
compared with neighbouring regions. If those dark lines correspond with the
light lines found in the spectra of terrestrial substances when incandescent,
the presence of those substances in the sun is to be inferred. The study of
terrestrial spectra had led the German chemists Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-99)
and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824-87) to the same conclusion, and in 1860,
reviving independently a forgotten experiment which Leon Foucault (1819-68) had
made in 1849, they succeeded in producing artificially one of Fraunhofer’s
lines, by passing the intense white light of the electric arc through the
cooler vapour of sodium volatilised in the flame of a spirit lamp. A new branch
of chemical analysis—that of the sun and stars—was opened to investigation.
This
discovery has put new life into Astronomy, which had come to be concerned
mainly with the improvement of gravitational Mathematics. A new science and
literature of Astrophysics has arisen. And not only can we study the chemistry
of other worlds. An incandescent body approaching rapidly crowds its waves of
light together; more waves reach the observer’s eye in a second. But the number
of impulses in a second determines the colour, and the place of the bright line
in the spectrum of the light. Thus a slight displacement of a known line
towards the violet end of the spectrum indicates relative approach between the
earth and the origin of light, displacement towards the red end indicates
retrocession. We can estimate the movements and velocities of stars by studying
the light which they emit. The application of photography, too, has done much
to increase the delicacy and accuracy of solar and stellar spectroscopy. Visual
images persist only for some tenth part of a second. Hence the energy which
reaches an eye in that time must be: more than a certain minimum or the optic
nerve is not affected. But a photographic plate can be exposed to the light of
an invisible star for hours, and the long-continued effect eventually may
become appreciable.
The origin of
photography is to be found in the observationsj made about 1780 by Karl Wilhelm
Scheele (1742-86), a Swedish chemist, on the darkening action of sunlight on
silver chloride. In 1839, after the death of his partner, Joseph Nicephore
Niepce (1765-1833), Daguerre (1789-1851) showed how to fix an image, and about
the same time William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) also worked out a process. The
use of collodion to make a sensitive surface was suggested by Gustave Le Gray
in 1850, and the successful application of gelatine emulsions to produce rapid
plates is due initially to the work of C. Bennett in 1878. Since that date the
use of photography in scientific investigation has developed step by step with
its application in other directions.
Besides its
help to spectroscopy, mention may be made of the power it gives to the observer
of recording automatically the readings of instruments, such as those which
measure the magnetic properties of the earth. A beam of light is reflected from
a mirror carried on the moving part of the instrument on to a strip of
sensitive paper moved forward by clockwork. During the last few years, the old
problem of colour- photography has been advanced a measurable distance towards
solution.
In the middle
years of the nineteenth century a new theory of heat was illuminating all
branches of physics—indeed of science. The old idea that heat was an
imponderable substance, which bodies gave out as they cooled, had done good
work in starting quantitative measurements and in introducing the idea of heat
as a definite quantity. But, even when generally accepted as a working
hypothesis, this view had often been questioned by the best minds. Its final
overthrow is to be traced to the careful and laborious measurements of the heat
developed by friction, made, between the years 1840 and 1850, by James Prescott
Joule (1818-89). Joule showed that, however work is done, whether against
mechanical friction or electrical resistance, the amount of heat produced by
the expenditure of a given quantity of work is invariable. Heat is equivalent
to work, and appears in equivalent amount when mechanical energy disappears.
This definite quantitative result combined with a general sense of
coordination, which was arising under the name of “ the Correlation of Forces,”
to give rise to the modem conception of energy as the power of doing work, and
as a quantity which remains constant during any series of physical changes.
The principle
of the conservation of energy contains the whole theory of the change of work
into heat; but, in the converse change, which we see in steam-engines and other
heat-engines, further consideration is needed. While the heat which disappears
from the whole system is converted into work, much of the heat developed by the
fuel simply passes from one part of the system to another, and is useless for
purposes of mechanical power. The chief steps in the solution of this problem
were as follows. In 1824, Sadi Camot (1796-1832) pointed out the importance of
considering complete cycles of operation before drawing conclusions as to the
relation between heat put in from without and work done by the engine. The
working substance, steam, air, whatever it may be, must be traced back to its
initial state of temperature, volume, and pressure. Otherwise, instead of
converting an external supply of heat into work, we may be drawing on the store
of internal energy of the working substance—a store which cannot last
indefinitely. During the year 1848 and onwards, William Thomson (afterwards
Lord Kelvin, 1824-1907), William John Macquorn Rankine (1820-72), and Rudolph
Julius Emmanuel Clausius (1822-88), developed rapidly, by the aid of Camot s
cycle, the principles of Thermodynamics. Every heat-engine
works with a
difference of temperature—possesses a source of heat and a refrigerator. Its efficiency
increases as the difference of temperature increases, and the ratio between the
quantity of heat absorbed from its source by a theoretically perfect
frictionless engine and that given up to the refrigerator may be shown to be
independent of the form of the engine or the nature of the working substance.
The efficiency depends on the temperatures of the source and refrigerator
alone, and thus may be used to compare those temperatures on a true absolute
scale which is independent of the properties of any particular substance.
The
efficiency of an engine depends on the difference in temperature which the
engine can use. But, in nature, differences in temperature are tending
continually to diminish owing to conduction of heat, friction, and other leakages.
Hence, while the total amount of energy in an isolated system is constant, it
tends perpetually to become less and less available for the performance of
useful work. This great principle of the “ dissipation of energy,” or the
diminution of its availability, lies at the base of all modern Thermodyramics.
It controls the efforts of the engineer, while its consequences have given us a
general theory of chemical equilibrium at the hands of Kelvin, Hermann von
Helmholtz (1821-94), and Willard Gibbs. ,
Heat is a
form of energy, and strong evidence shows it to be the kinetic energy of the
vibratory motion of the molecules of which we suppose matter, to be composed In
a gas these motions are most free, and the kinetic theory of gases, has, been
developed during the last half century chiefly by Waterston, Kelvin, Clausius,
and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79). While we consider molecules statistically in
great numbers, the law of dissipation of energy holds. But, could we command a
daemon with faculties fine enough to control individual molecules, and separate
those which by, chance collisions had acquired high velocities from those
moving slowly, we could recon^entrate the energy of a system. Thus Maxwell
showed possible limitations to, the continual loss of availability which the
energy of an isolated system undergoes.
The
statistical method, founded on the theory of chance and probability, and
applied to the kinetic problem of gases, has been used extensively in
Sociology, and in the practical problems of political administration. While we
cannot predict what any one molecule or man will do at a given time, we ,k,now
within narrow limits the behaviour of a quantity of gas as a whole, the number
of persons who will die in a certain year, and the addition to the. national
drink-bill which will be caused by a rise of five degrees in the average
temperature of a summer season. But, unlike molecules, men can be dealt with
individually. Whilst, for the purposes of prediction, we must deal with them
only in masses, influences of various kinds, personal, philanthropic,
religious, as well as the constraints of custom and of legal enactments, may
modify the properties of the whole mass by working upon the individual.
786
Eventually,
we may perhaps hope, by segregating the physically and mentally unfit, by
encouraging the increase of healthy stock and placing them in the most
favourable environment, to assist the relative growth of desirable qualities
and thus to improve slowly the whole body of the human race, as Maxwell’s
imagined daemon could sort Out the individual molecules of a mass of gas.
The striking
development in electrical theory and practice seen during the period under
review began in the year 1800 with Volta’s discovery of the galvanic pile or
cell, which consists essentially of two plates of unlike metal placed in a
solution of an acid or a salt. The older electric machines of the eighteenth
century, while they supplied isolated charges of electricity at very high
tension, could not yield any great quantity. The electromotive force of the
galvanic battery was much lower, but it was capable of giving a continuous
current of electricity.: The chemical effects of such currents when
passed through a solution of an acid or salt were soon noticed ; they led
almost at once to the technical industry Of electroplating, and, in more recent
years, have cheapened and simplified, or even rendered possible, many chemical
manufactures and metallurgical processes such as the extraction of pure metals
from their ores.
In 1820 Hans
Christian Oersted (1777-1851) discovered that a wire carrying an electric
current deflected a magnetic needle to which it was parallel, and this magnetic
force was soon used as a measure of the intensity of the current, which was
shown by Georg Simon Ohm (17891854) in 1827 to be proportional to the
electromotive force driving it. In 1831 Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
demonstrated the momentary induction of a current in one circuit, when another
current was made or broken in another circuit, or when a magnet was brought
near or taken away. This induction of electric currents by a change in the
magnetic force through the circuit is the principle of the dynamo and of the
transformer, while the converse phenomenon gives us the electric motor. Few
single experiments have led to greater industrial developments than this
observation of a momentary electric current, barely perceptible by means of the
instruments of its discoverer.
If Faraday’s
discovery has greater direct industrial applications, Oersted’s original
observation of the deflexion of a magnetic needle by a current haS had a deeper
influence on the intellectual history of the world, for it led directly to the
invention of a practical form of electric telegraph. The rate of propagation of
an electric disturbance along a wire is so great that it may be considered
instantaneous. The first devices for electric signalling employed frictional
electricity, but the earliest application of the voltaic cell to a practical
telegraph was made about 1837 by Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-75). Long
submarine cables have a very great electric capacity, which means that they
will also absorb a large quantity of electricity before the further end is
raised
787
to a
potential high enough to affect the needle of an ordinary recording instrument.
This absorption takes an appreciable time, and thus submarine telegraphy over
great distances presents special problems of its own, which were overcome by
Lord Kelvin, who invented very delicate galvanometers, when the laying of the
first successful Atlantic cable in 1858 had shown the need for improved
apparatus.
The
locomotive engine, invented without much help from theoretical science, and the
electric telegraph, the direct consequence of laboratory discoveries, effected
the great industrial and social revolution of the middle of the nineteenth
century. Together they did more to change the mode of life of the average man
than any other development since the invention of printing.
The acceptance
of the undulatory theory of light demanded, as we have seen, a medium to
undulate. In 1865 Clerk Maxwell, developing mathematically the ideas which
Faraday with instinctive genius had put forward thirty years earlier, showed
that, to explain the properties of the electromagnetic field, it was necessary
again to imagine a medium, and a medium which possessed properties identical
with those required to explain the propagation of light. Maxwell proved
mathematically that the velocity of an electromagnetic wave through the medium
determined the relative magnitudes of certain electric units, so that, by
comparing the values of the units, the velocity could be calculated. Experiment
on the units showed that the velocity was the same as that of light— about 186,000
miles a second. The waves which constitute light, it may be inferred, are of an
electromagnetic character. In view of recent work, it should be noted that it
is not necessary to imagine the medium to be continuous; it may possibly be
fibrous in structure, and the propagation of light and other electric
disturbances may be more analogous to the running of tremors along wires than
to the spreading of waves over a continuous medium like water.
In 1888
Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the passage through space of an electromagnetic
wave produced by the oscillatory discharge of an electrified system. He
measured the wave-length, and showed that the waves possessed many of the
properties which waves of light would exhibit were their wave-length magnified
some million times. Improvements in detail in the method of producing, and
still more of detecting, these waves have been made by Sir Oliver Lodge,
Guglielmo Marconi, and others, and have rendered possible the various systems
of wireless telegraphy which are now extending rapidly. Wireless telegraphy
must affect profoundly the art of naval warfare, while, from the point of view
of science, one of its chief uses will be the extension of the area of the
meteorological observations of western Europe over the Atlantic Ocean.
The chemical
effects of the voltaic current were among the earliest scientific observations
of the nineteenth century. When a current is passed, for instance, through the
solution of a metallic salt, the metal
788
appears at
one terminal, and the acid at the other. About 1830, Faraday studied this
process in detail, and showed that the amount of chemical change was strictly
proportional to the quantity of electricity which had passed. To explain the
appearance of the products of the chemical decomposition at the terminals only,
it was necessary to suppose that the opposite parts of the salt moved in
opposite directions through the liquid. Hence, Faraday termed these parts
“ions,” and explained the passage of the current as the movement of discrete
charges of electricity carried by the moving atoms or groups of atoms of the
salt. The theoiy of ions has been developed successfully to explain many of the
physical and chemical properties of solutions, and has been applied also to elucidate
the phenomena of electric conduction through gases.
When a gas is
rarefied by an air-pump till the pressure is very low, the negative ions, then
called “ cathode rays,” where they strike solid objects give rise to the
so-called X rays, discovered accidentally by Conrad Wilhelm Rontgen in 1895.
Rontgen rays traverse many substances opaque to light, and cause phosphorescent
and photographic effects on properly prepared screens. Hence the bones in the
living body may be seen as shadows on a phosphorescent screen, or photographed
on a sensitive plate. The application of this discovery to surgery in general,
and to gun-shot wounds in particular, is well known.
If Rontgen
rays are of practical importance, the cathode rays from which they arise are of
greater theoretical interest. They were found to consist of a stream of
projected particles carrying negative electric charges. In the year 1897 Sir
Joseph John Thomson measured the velocity of these particles and also the ratio
of their mass to the electric charge they carried. This he did by determining
the deflexion of the rays, in a magnetic and also in an electric field. The
deflexions are greater, the greater is the ratio of the charge to the mass and
the less is the velocity. The velocity was proved to be about one-tenth that of
light. Soon afterwards, Thomson and other physicists showed that the charge on
each single cathode ray particle is identical with the charge on a negative ion
in liquid electrolysis, and determined its absolute value. The mass of the
particle was then calculated from the former experiments, and found to be
about the eight-hundredth part of the mass of the smallest chemical atom
known—that of hydrogen.
The charge
and the mass were found to be identical whatever the nature of the residual gas
in the tube, and whatever metal was used for the electrodes. Thus these cathode
ray particles were seen to be contained in many different kinds of matter, and
the charge with which they are associated appears to be a true fundamental
electric unit.
At this point
of the enquiry, evidence from another side became applicable. Light, as we have
seen, is an electromagnetic phenomenon, and the electromagnetic waves which
constitute light must arise from minute electric charges in a state of
vibration, just as the long waves
789
used in
wireless telegraphy are started by the oscillations of electricity on large
systems. Thus every substance must contain electric charges capable of emitting
electromagnetic waves when the substance is raised to incandescence. Led by
such reasoning, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Sir Joseph Larmor put forward an
electronic theory of matter, and imagined that the basis of the various atoms
was to be sought in differing arrangements of the fundamental electric units or
electrons. It is natural to identify this conception with that of the minute
material particles or corpuscles suggested by the phenomena of cathode rays.
Moreover, an electrified body when in motion carries electromagnetic energy
with it through the surrounding space. Hence, the space contains momentum, and
the body behaves as though its mass were increased. Thus a moving electric
charge possesses properties similar to the inertia of moving matter. It may be
that the properties we associate with matter are the effects of the electrical
elements of which that matter is composed.
On this view,
matter is resolved into electricity, or electricity into matter: it is
impossible to say that one of these conceptions is more fundamental than the
other. Owing to its effect on our muscular sense, matter, and the system of
mechanics associated with it, may seem more familiar, but, had we a special
electric sense, we might be more ready to “explain” matter in terms of
electricity than electricity in terms of matter.
The luminous
effects caused by the incidence of Rontgen rays on phosphorescent and
fluorescent substances led to the idea that such substances might themselves
emit rays. A search for such phenomena led to a discovery of a different
nature. In 1896 Henri Becquerel found that compounds of the metal uranium,
whether phosphorescent or not, and independently of any excitation by light,
emitted rays which affected a photographic plate through opaque screens, and
made the air through which they passed a conductor of electricity.
Pierre (d.
1906) and Mme Marie Curie, continuing Becquerel’s search, Oserved a greater
activity in the mineral pitchblende than its contents of uranium warranted. Led
by the gradually increasing intensity of its electrical effects as it was
concentrated into a smaller mass of material, they separated chemically, by a
long series of operations, a new element of transcendent radiating properties,
to which they gave the name of radium.
At least
three different types of radiation, differing in their penetrative properties,
are emitted by these active substances. The energy associated with the rays is
considerable, and capable, in the case of radium, of producing a marked
evolution of heat. At the same time, new kinds of matter appear. Thus radium,
as an accompaniment of its radioactivity, produces a radio-active gas or
emanation, which, while itself emitting radiation, gives rise to a solid
deposit on the containing vessel. The deposit also has radio-active properties,
and passes successively into
several new
types of radio-active solid matter. Such changes have been studied and
eluc'dated, especially by Ernest Rutherford, who, in conjunction with
Frederick Soddy, put forward, in 1903, a theory which has successfully
coordinated and explained all the radio-active phenomena hitherto observed.
In
Rutherford’s view, the energy of radio-activity is liberated by internal
changes in single radio-active atoms as a result of their explosive
disintegration. In a mass of radium, only about one atom in some millions
breaks up in any given hour; but in this way gradually the radium would, as
radium, disappear. The less penetrative type' of radiation, known as a rays,
behaves in electric and magnetic fields as would a stream of positively electrified
particles of about the mass of helium atoms, and the actual growth of helium
has been detected spectroscopically by Sir William Ramsay in a minute volume of
radium emanation. Helium seems to be a general product of radio-active change,
and has been found in proportionate quantity by Robert John Strutt in
radio-active minerals. Moreover, the amount of radium in such minerals has been
shown also to bear a constant ratio to their contents of uranium, and this
result suggested that radium was derived from uranium. The evolution of a
radio-active emanation gives an extremely delicate test for the presence of
radium, but attempts thus to trace the growth of radium in solutions of uranium
salts failed. But Bertram Borden Boltwood showed that radium was slowly produced
from actinium, another radio-active constituent of uranium minerals—a
constituent, too, which exists in such minerals in amounts proportional to
their contents of uranium. By such means a probable pedigree of some fifteen
generations has been traced for the radio-active family of elements containing
uranium and radium and their products.
The
importance of the results attained by recent physical research marks an epoch
in the history of natural science. The minute corpuscle of the cathode ray
stream is identical with the particle of the more penetrating radio-active rays
and with the negative ion of gases at low pressures and high temperatures. It
enters into the composition of all matter, and seems to be one of the basic
constituents from which, by differences in order and arrangement, the
elementary atoms are made. Till we know more about the nature of positive
electricity, a complete theory of atomic structure is impossible, but already
some tentative hypotheses have been made by Sir Joseph John Thomson, and
suggest in a remarkable manner the periodic properties of the chemical elements
when arranged in MendeleefTs table.
We have found
by experiment one common basis, perhaps an electrical basis, for matter, and
the phenomena of radio-activity have shown that the process of everlasting
change, characteristic of organic evolution and of the growth of the earth and
of the solar system, is found again in the successive types of matter which
appear in radio-active transformation.
Whether such
changes go on in all matter is still undetermined, but it is impossible any
longer to say that all chemical atoms are immutable, indestructible, eternal.
This sketch
of the development of scientific method and knowledge during the last century
may serve to indicate the ground won by science for the use and benefit of
mankind. Perhaps the most striking feature of the more recent discoveries has
been their cumulative effect. A new branch of Physics at once bears chemical
fruit, while knowledge gained in Physical Chemistry is. applied alike by
physicists, chemists, and physiologists. Archaeology throws light on
Anthropology, and Anthropology on the Comparative History of Religion. Academic
study of the problems of heredity has immediate bearing on Agriculture and
Sociology, while the mechanical arts are lying in wait for the results of
research in the laboratory, and in using extend them. We understand at last
that knowledge is one, and that only for convenience sake has it been divided
into subjects and sections along lines determined by historical reasons.
About the
future of science it is difficult to speculate. The rate of advance is never
uniform; the stream broadens or contracts, runs first fast and then slow.
Periods of quiescence allow one branch and then another to take stock of
possessions recently acquired. It may be that the mind of man itself is
changing and developing, and in time may come to possess faculties as yet
undreamed of or only dimly foreshadowed. But, on the other hand, it may be that
the power of the human intellect to probe the deeper mysteries of nature is
limited, and our age and perhaps the succeeding century may stand for all time
marked as that period of history in which the greatest advance in theoretical
science was made. However this may be, it is much less doubtful that the
practical applications of scientific knowledge will go on extending, and that
future ages will see no limit to the growth of man’s power over the resources
of nature, and of his intelligent use of them for the welfare of his race.
MODERN
EXPLORATIONS.
ASIA.
During the last two centuries, Asiatic explorers have
not discovered new kingdoms or new rivers or new courses of old rivers—if minor
discoveries may be ignored; and the discoveries, during the last fifty years,
of new mountain systems hundreds of miles long and with summits over 20,000
feet high in western China, Tibet, and Chinese Turkestan, of secluded lakes in
Tibet and unknown buried cities in Turkestan, and of the ruins of Karakorum,
once the capital of Mongolia, have not affected history. But the opening or
reopening, by white men, of intercourse by land between furthest West and
furthest East is an event of first-rate historical moment. This the explorers
have achieved or brought about; and, although the work is but begun, it has
already brought the land frontiers of Russia, England, France, and China into
contact over a considerable area. Consequently, a modem history of Asiatic
explorations will deal principally with Asiatic trade-routes, in so far as they
have been developed by European explorers.
In the
sixteenth century the new ocean way to India and China superseded the old
Asiatic through-routes, which were subsequently reopened, added to, and adapted
to European uses, by the efforts of explorers. At least four through-routes
have been opened or reopened. The first is the north-east passage along the
Arctic Ocean. The second is the great straight Russian post-road through Omsk,
Tomsk, Irkutsk, and Nerchinsk, which lies mostly between 55° and 50° N. lat.,
but has three crooked endings: one, turning south-east beyond Irkutsk to
Kiachta and crossing the desert of Gobi from Urga to Kwei-hwa-cheng, Kalgan,
and Peking, which became a Russian post-route in 1860 and was the route of the
motor race from Peking to Paris (1907); a second, turning south-east near
Nerchinsk and crossing Manchuria to the Gulf of Pe-chi-li—which became a
railroad (1904) before it was a road; thirdly, the Russian post-road, often
only a river track, down the Amur and up the Ussuri and so to Vladivostok,
which was begun in 1860 and which
Charles
Wenyon was the last to follow and describe (1895). The third through-way
consists of the caravan-routes between 45° and 40° N. lat., from the Caspian by
Khiva or Merv and Bokhara or Balkh to the mountain belt which joins the
Himalayas, Hindu Kush, and Pamirs, to the Tian Shan and Alatau, and almost
joins the Alatau to the Tarbagatai and Altai mountains, and thence, either by
Kashgar and Lob-nor to Su-chau in Kan-su (Marco Polo’s route), or by Guchen and
Hami, or by Suok, Kobdo, and Uliassutai, either to Su-chau or to Kalgan and so
to eastern China. The fourth and last is formed by the caravan-routes from the
Bosporus by Teheran, Meshed, Herat, and Kabul, or Kandahar, or else by Bagdad,
southern Persia, and the Mekran, to India, and beyond India by some half-known
jungles and mountains, from Sadiya (Assam), Bhamo, or Mandalay (Burma) to
Atuntse (Szech’uan), Momein, or Ta-li-fu (Yunnan), and so to eastern China.
These
tbrough-ways are not mutually exclusive; but there are connexions and
combinations and compromises between them. Thus, the first, third, and fourth
routes were associated in their origin, and the northernmost variants of the
third and fourth routes are ased more often than not in conjunction with the
southernmost variants of the second and third routes respectively; and at
Kashgar there is a favourite junction, so to speak, for Yarkand, Kashmir, and
India. Along the Arctic Ocean way great men, elsewhere wars and treaties, provided
the stimulus and opportunity for exploration, and knowledge of the Continent
was won by sufferings inflicted less by nature than by man. The first way was
achieved by international effort, the second by Russian effort, the third by
competitive English and Russian efforts, and the fourth by English effort; but
here too there were exceptions, and of late years representatives of all the
Great European Powers have devoted themselves to China, and Tibet has been
trodden by men of many nations, though this was only the case when victory was
within sight.
The
north-east passage was first essayed by Sir Hugh Willoughby, who discovered
Novaia Zemlia and perished, and by his companion, Richard Chancellor, who
stopped at the White Sea, swerved southward, ascended the Dwina, and arrived at
Moscow, the capital of Ivan the Terrible (1553-4). Anglo-Russian commerce began
by this way, and Sir Anthony Jenkinson, who followed in Chancellor’s footsteps
so far as Moscow, went still further southward, descended the Volga, with a
Cossack escort, crossed the Caspian, which he was the first Englishman to see,
and then visited Khiva and Bokhara (1557-8), whence he brought back ambassadors
to the Tsar, and afterwards Derbent, the Caucasus, and Persia (1561). The first
search for the first through-way to the East resulted in a through-joumey from
the Arctic Ocean almost to the Tropic of Cancer, and led to the unlocking, not
only of the first, but of the third and fourth doors to the East. The second
door was forced open a few years later, and Ivan the Terrible was again the
cause.
Ivan’s
Treaties with a Siberian chief, whom Tatars subsequently attacked, and Ivan’s
wars against rebel Cossacks, induced Ermak Timo- theevich, one of these
Cossacks, to attack the offending Tatars and to occupy Siberia, in order to
regain Ivan’s favour (1581-4). Siberia then meant the triangle of rivers of
which the apex is the junction of the Tobol and Irtish at Tobolsk; and Ermak
entered Siberia, almost where the present post-road from Perm to Vladivostdk
enters, by the Tura, which is an affluent of the Tobol, which is an affluent of
the Irtish, which is an affluent of the Ob. His followers settled upon their
conquests, and proceeded, in small parties, to discover, trade in, plunder, or
subdue the lands situated on the middle Ob, Yenisei, and Lena. The process
sometimes bore the character of exploration or trade, and sometimes of robbery
or conquest, but was invariably a process of colonisation. Settlements and
forts were established wherever the Cossacks went and their zig-zag course was
marked by the foundation of Tiumen (1586), Tobolsk (1587), Beresoff (1593), and
Tomsk (1604) on the Ob and its affluents the Tura, Tobol, and Irtish, and of
Krasnoiarsk and Yeniseisk on the Yenisei, and of Yakutsk on the Lena (between
1607 and 1632); and of Verchni Udinsk (1648) east, and Irkutsk (1652) west of
Lake Baikal. Four bye-routes were taken from Yakutsk: to the Yana, Indigirka,
and Kolima on the Arctic Ocean; up the Aldan, which is a tributary of the Lena,
and down the Ulya to Okhotsk on the Pacific Ocean; from the Kolima by sea
through Behring Strait, which Vitus Jehr'ng rediscovered (1728), to the mouth
of the Anadyr on the Pacific (1648); and up the Aldan and down the Zeia and
Amur into the Pacific and back by the second bye-route (1643-5). A fifth
bye-route led up to the sources of the Ob, Irtish, and Yenisei in the Altai
mountains, where Raskolnik heretics settled (1719 sqq.), and the Government
built forts (1718-59) and opened mines (1747), and Russia approached Chinese
Turkestan. Great navigable rivers are the key to northern Asia, as they are to
North America; and, when the first four bye-routes had been followed, eVery
important river of northern Asia was known, and Siberia, which now meant
northern Asia, ceased to be a region for the mere explorer. Thus Lieutenant
John Cochrane went from end to end of Siberia mostly on foot (1821-3), while
John Ledyard, with ten guineas in his pocket, travelled to Yakutsk (1787), and
Lieutenant James Holman, though blind and alone, travelled to Lake Baikal
without difficulty (1822-4). After 1860, free colonists poured into Siberia at
an increasing pace, and the rate now exceeds 200,000 per annum. On and near the
Siberian through-way, colonists and tourists followed the explorers, whose
efforts were now diverted to the northernmost throughway to the East.
The first
four bye-routes from Yakutsk supplied essential links for the discovery of the
north-east passage, which, although known in 1740, was only accomplished in
1878-9. Sir Hugh Willoughby’s
1580-1904]
Search for the north-east passage,
795
voyage
to the Kara Sea was repeated by Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman (1580) and by a
Dutchman named William Barents (1594-6), who, availing himself of Pet and
Jackman's journals, explored Novaia Zemlia and discovered Spitzbergen. Between
1734 and 1740, a combined national effort was made to connect the eastern
discoveries of the Cossacks with the western discoveries of the English and
Dutch navigators. Accordingly, Lieutenants Muravieff, Malygin, and Skuratoff,
sailed from the White Sea to the Ob, and Ivan Koslieloff from the mouth of the
Ob to the Yenisei (1734-8), and Fedor Minin from the mouth of the Yenisei to
the Pyasina and back (1738). About the same time, Pronch .sheff and his wife
sailed from the mouth of the Lena westward almost to the Taimur or to the
Pyasina, and returned to die (1736), and Khariton Laptieff, who took over their
task, actually reached the Pyasina, but travelled the last part of the uray by
land (1739). Meanwhile, doubts had arisen as to whether men had actually sailed
from the Lena to the Kolima, and Dmitri Laptieff tried to do so and reached the
Kolima, but he also travelled part of the way by land (1739-40). Then, the
Government desisted, and a private merchant named Shalavroff tried again and
went the whole way by sea (1761-2). The whole northern passage was known in
1740; and in 1762 all of it had been traversed by sea except a small section
east of the Pyasina. Early in the nineteenth century, the search for the
north-east passage was resumed by many nations with ocean-going ships, and
Hedenstrom and Jacob Sannikof discovered the New Siberia Islands from Siberia.
Sir Henry Kellett, R.N., sighted (1849), and Lieutenant Berry, U.S.N. (1881),
explored Wrangel Island from the Pacific, and an Austrian named Julius Payer
discovered Franz Josef Land from the Atlantic (1872). Economic as well as
international forces came into play. Norse walrus-hunters invaded the Kara Sea
(1869 sqq.), an English trader named Joseph Wiggins reached the Ob, and a Swede
named Adolf Nordenskjold reached the Yenisei from the Atlantic (1875); and, in
1878-9, Nordenskjold sailed from the Atlantic through the Arctic to the Pacific
Ocean in one sh. ), one of his companions ascending the Lena to Yakutsk by the
way. Some trade grew up between the Atlantic, the Ob, and the Yenisei, and in
1904 munitions of war were taken by water from the Atlantic to Krasnoiarsk. The
islands have chiefly been used as bases for attempts on the North Pole, Spitzbergen
being S. A. Andree’s base (1897), Franz Josef Land the Duke of Abruzzi’s base
(1899-1900), and the New Siberia Islands Fridtjof Nansen’s base (1893-6). ’
The
completion of the second through-way to the East was attended by diplomatic
complications which affected the history of the third and fourth through-ways.
Under the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), the Russians retired from the Amur below
the Shilka, and trade between Russia and China was after a time limited to
Kiachta and the Urga- Kalgan route. More than twelve hundred miles to the west
of the.
Urga-Kalgan
route, Russia advanced to Lepsinsky (1855), and Russian factories and consuls
were authorised at Chuguchak and Kuldja (1851); so that Russia now faced and
touched extramural China in Turkestan as well as in Mongolia.
Immediately
after the Crimean War came to an end (1856), Russia, England and France applied
pressure to China from different sides, for different reasons and by different
methods. An Anglo-French naval expedition occupied Canton, Taku (1858), and
Peking (1860); and, by the Treaties of Aigun and Tientsin (1858) and Peking
(1860) between Russia and China, a postal service was established between Urga
and Kalgan under Russian supervision. The left bank of the Amur, the Ussuri,
and Vladivostdk were ceded to Russia, who immediately completed her post-road
beyond Nerchinsk to Vladivostdk; and Kashgar shared the fate of Kuldja. By the
Treaties of Tientsin between China, France, and England, new Treaty Ports were
opened, and China permitted British and French travellers and missionaries to
travel inland with passports signed by their consuls and countersigned by the
local authorities (1858, 1860)—a privilege which was shortly afterwards
extended to other Europeans; and, after 1877, the Treaty Ports began to include
inland towns upon the middle Yang-tsze-kiang. The unveiling of China began
(1860). Till then, but for Marco Polo and a few missionaries in past centuries
and Earl Macartney’s political mission, which went by the grand canal from Peking
to Canton (1793), the interior of China had been a sealed book.
Immediately
after 1860, Captain Thomas Blakiston surveyed the Yang-tsze-kiang from Shanghai
and Nanking up to Ping-shan, a town 1760 miles from its mouth and reached by
H.M.S. Woodcock in 1902. In 1866-8 Lieutenant Francis Gamier ascended or
marched up by the Mekong from Saigon in Cambodia towards Yunnan; proved that
the Mekong is not the Menam; reached Ta-li-fu foodless, bootless, and ragged,
and returned by the Yang-tsze-kiang from Ping-shan to Shanghai. Next, Thomas
Cooper, “ pioneer of commerce in pig-tail and petticoats,” as he called
himself, ascended the Yang-tsze-kiang and reached Batang in Szech’uan on his
way to Sadiya in Assam (1868), and afterwards reached the Mishmee hills from Sadiya
on his way to Batang (1869); and Augustus Margary passed by Ta-li-fu and Momein
to Bhamo on an official commercial mission, but was murdered in Yunnan on his
way back (1874-5). Long afterwards, Prince Henry of Orleans passed from Hanoi
to Ta-li-fu, Batang, and Atuntse, and from Atuntse, somewhat north of Cooper’s
proposed route, through wild tribes and jungles to Sadiya (1895-6): otherwise
Cooper’s through-way has been of little use as yet. On the other hand,
Margary’s route, which was followed by an English mission to enquire into his
murder, Archibald Colquhoun’s variant of Margary’s route, which started from
Canton up the Si-kiang (1881—2), and Captain Alfred Wingate’s via media between
Margary’s
and
Colquhoun’s routes (1898-9) are now often traversed. Serious exploration of the
Red river of Tonkin began with Dupuis and Millot (1872), and of the Menam,
“which is the Nile of Siam,” with Holt Hallett and McCarthy (1881-7), and both
these rivers led towards Ta-li-fu. From east, south-east, and south, at first
by the rivers of Nanking and Cambodia, then by the rivers of Canton, Tonkin,
and Siam, explorers poured inland. The movement began in the early sixties,
immediately after the opening of China, and culminated 30 or 40 years later,
when empire followed exploration, and a succession of treaties (1893—1904)
necessitated the appointment of Frontier Commissioners, who were explorers and
something more. Every exploration on the great rivers converged on Yunnan and
Szech’uan in western China, where the Mekong, the Sal win, and the
many-branched Yang- tsze-kiang run parallel and close together between lofty
mountain ridges, and was undertaken in the interests of Anglo-Indian,
Indo-Chinese, Anglo-Malay, and Siamese trade.
Other motives
for exploration reinforced these influences. In 1860 a Prussian geographer,
Ferdinand von Richthofen, sailed for China, imbued with the ideas of Alexander
von Humboldt and in order to pursue the interests of science. When at last he
set to work (1868), he, among other things, journeyed from Canton to Peking
almost wholly on the same meridian and partly on what is now the Hankow and
Peking line of railway, and from Cheng-tu-fu in Szech’uan by Si-nan-fu to
Peking (1868-72); but he was little in Szech’uan, and neither in Yunnan nor Kanin-su.
The earliest effectual exploration of these three western provinces must be
credited to the French missionaries, who also arrived in China in 1860 under
Abbe Desgodins in order to pass on to Tibet, and have ever since been waiting
on the western frontier of China, although they still regard Tibet as their
destination. These men laid the foundations of that knowledge about western
China which Colbome Baber, who passed through Szech’uan for 2-300 miles from
Ta-chien-lu in the north to Hui-li-chau in the south. .(1877-8), and many
others, have extended but not completed.
While the
door of China was ajar and invited religious, scientific, political, and
commercial explorers, that of Tibet was double-locked and tantalised them.
Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries had penetrated Lhassa in Tibet from India
and Peking in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but in the nineteenth
century only one missionary journey was made to Lhassa. In 1845-7 two Lazarist
fathers, Evariste Hue and Joseph Gabet, went from Peking by Ning-hia-fu (on the
Hoang-ho) and Koko-nor to Lhassa, returning by Batang, Cheng-tu-fu, and the
Yang-tsze-kiang. Abbe Hue’s geography was vague; but his vivid accounts of
monasteries with 10,000 monks apiece, of courtiers putting out their tongues by
way of salutation, of yaks frozen while swimming and preserved like flies in
amber, of valleys all of which were over
12,000 feet high, of prayer-mills and
prayer-barrels, touched the imagination, so that Tibet began to lure the
adventurous.
Tibet was
assailed from all sides and first from the south. From India, Warren Hastings’
emissaries, George Bogle (1774-5) and Samuel Turner (1783-4), had visited
southern Tibet, reaching the San-po and Namling or Shigatse, but not Lhassa, by
a pass just east of Sikkhim : and Thomas Manning, a friend of Charles Lamb, had
reached Lhassa (1811-12) by the same pass. In 1865 Colonel Thomas George
Montgomerie, having educated native Indians as surveyors, sent them forth by
this and other routes, arrayed as Buddhist pilgrims with prayer- barrel (in
which compasses and field-books were hidden) and with rosary (in order that
they might count their paces); and they on three occasions visited Lhassa and
perambulated Tibet (1865-82). But since Manning no white visitor reached Tibet
by this route, nor did any white visitor, except Hue and Gabet, ever reach
Lhassa by this or any other route, until Sir Frank Younghusband marched from
Sikkhim to Lhassa, at the head of 3000 soldiers (1904).
Four hundred
miles west of Sikkhim, William Moorcroft, a horse- dealer, crossed the
Himalayas to Lake Manasarowar in Tibet, which is the intermittent source of the
Sutlej and lies close to the source of the San-po (1812); after the First Sikh
War Henry and Richard Strachey visited the lake from the same quarter (1846-7);
Arnold Landor was there (1897); some officers of Sir Frank Younghusband’s army
were sent home up the San-po to Lake Manasarowar and the upper Sutlej (1904),
mapping the trans-Himalayan range as they went; and Sven Hedin also was there,
after exploring the trans-Himalayas (1907-8). Besides these, there was no one
to solve the secular puzzle whether the lake is or is not connected with the
Sutlej, sometimes or always. But Tibet is prolific of puzzles and no one has
yet traced the San-po into the Brahmaputra; so that some people, doubtless,
still identify the San-po with the: Salwin or Irrawaddy,
Tibet was
also approached from the north-east. First, Nicolai Prjevalsky went from Peking
by Ding-hu (on the Hoang-ho) to Koko- nor and the uppermost Yang-tsze-kiang in
Tibet. Part of his route coincided with Marco Polo’s route between Europe and
China, and part of it with Abbe Hue’s route to Lhassa; but the coincidences
were not exact, and Prjevalsky returned to a point 60 miles west of Ning-hia-fu,
whence he struck, by a new route, due north by Borston Well to Urga across 700
miles of desert (1870-2). This Russian example inspired an Englishman, Ney
Elias, who with one Chinese servant went from Peking and Kwei-hwa-cheng by
Uliassutai, Kobdo, and Suok over the spurs of the Altai mountains to Russia
(1872-3). He was the first white through-traveller on the central Asiatic
through-way since the Middle Ages. And the English example was imitated by a
Russian, who accomplished a .second through-route from east to west. Hardly had
Ney Elias
returned home, when Colonel Sosnofski journeyed from Peking, in order to open
up what he declared to be the best commercial route between Russia and western
China, crossing by Su-chau, Hanoi, Barkul, and Guchen to the low-lying slit
between the Alatau and Tarbagatai mountains and to Lake Zaisan. The stimulus
which Prjevalsky’s first journey imparted to the development of the central
Asiatic route was strong, but soon spent itself. After 1875, there was a lull
in eastward and westward movements; and men’s minds and efforts were diverted
southward, to Tibet. This diversion was mainly due to the subsequent journeys
of Prjevalsky, who started from points nearer to Tibet, accompanied by an
escort of ten or twenty Cossacks “ on a war footing, rifles slung, revolvers in
their belts, watches kept night and day,” and who said that he expected to find
somewhere in northern Tibet “ a second California.”
In 1876-8,
starting from Kuldja, he went south-east by Karashahr and Kurla to the strange
migratory lake Lob-nor, which he rediscovered; and he tried but failed to go on
towards Lhassa, due south of Lob-nor across the Altyn Tagh range, which he
discovered. In three subsequent journeys (1879-88) he repeated these efforts.
In 1879, he went from Lake Zaisan, at the foot of the Altai mountains, by
Uliungur south- south-east to Barkul, Hami, Sa-chu, and across the Altyn Tagh
to the headwaters of the Yang-tsze-kiang, where he had been in 1871, and then
to within 200 miles of Lhassa. In 1883-5, he went from Urga by Koko-nor to the
sources of the Hoang-ho, which he determined; then, crossing the Altyn Tagh by
another pass, he followed its northern base from Lob-nor to Cherchen, Keria and
Khoten, whence he struck north across the desert to Aksu, and Issik Kul in the
Alatau mountains, and the neighbourhood of Kuldja. In 1888, when about to
repeat his journey of 1885 to Keria, with variations, and to make a last
attempt on Lhassa from the north, he died. These three last journeys, taken
together with each other or with one or other of his earlier journeys, involved
a circuitous east to west traverse from China to western Asia; but his
principal new routes across Chinese Turkestan were from north to south, or from
south to north.
After his
death, in 1888, Pievtsoff (1889 sqq.) and P. K. Kozloff (1899-1901; 1901 sqq.),
who succeeded him, perfected the survey of these and other routes from the
southern frontier of Russian territory to the northern frontier of Tibet, as
though their goal had been in southern, not in eastern Asia. The line of
advance of Prjevalsky and his successors intersected the east and west
trade-route at innumerable points; but the trade-route itself was never
followed for long. Except for these implied or composite traverses from east to
west by Prjevalsky, there were no recorded traverses by other
through-travellers between 1875 and 1887. Prjevalsky’s interest in Tibet was
one cause of this abstention, but other causes were at work. In the middle
seventies, two new factors
entered into
the situation. Ladakh in north-east Kashmir became a western base, not for a
through-route, but for local excursions to Tibet and to Khoten, Yarkand, and
Kashgar, in Chinese Turkestan, and to the Pamir plateau; and the Pamir plateau
presented a potent counterattraction to through-routes and even to Tibet,
But, in order
to understand why travellers went from all sides to the Pamirs, travellers’
routes to the west and north-west of India, along the western half of the
central Asiatic through-way must be discussed. These routes were traversed
partly by .officials on official business, partly by private adventurers, and
partly by officials bent on private adventure.
In 1783
George Forster, an Indian civilian, “out of curiosity and pleasure” went home
from India through Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Toorsheez, Sharud, Barfrush, and
Russia. In the early nineteenth century, France and England sent to Persia
rival ambassadors, through whose narratives Persia once more became known, and
by whose followers the ways to Persia from east and west were explored. The
diplomatic suite of Sir Harford Jones, one of these ambassadors, included James
Morier, who went on an official mission by land from Ispahan by Teheran,
Kazvin, Tabriz, Erzerum, and Amasia, to the Bosporus (1809) ; and the suite of
another, Sir John Malcolm, included Charles Christie and Henry Pottinger, who
went from India overland by Khelat—the one by Surhud, Bumm, and Kirman, and the
other by Seistan, Furrah, and Herat (1810), to join their chief at Yezd and
Ispahan. These three diplomats, between them, accomplished a through-route from
India to Constantinople along the branches of the great southern through-route
(1809-10). After diplomats we come to a horse-dealer. In 1824-5William Moor-
croft went to buy horses, passing from India by Kabul, Bamian, Khulm, Kunduz,
and Balkh, to Bokhara and Andkhui, where he died, having met with little
inconvenience except from the ingrained inability of Orientals to distinguish
between traders, ambassadors, and prisoners of State. Next, Captain Arthur
Conolly (1829-30), like Forster, went overland from England to India on his way
to rejoin his regiment, and some French officers did the same from Persia to
the Punjab. These tours led to political missions.
In 1832
Alexander Burnes went, like Moorcroft, by Kabul, Bamian, Khulm, Kunduz, and
Balkh to Bokhara—on the pretence of travelling homeward like Conolly, but in
reality upon a vague political mission. In 1836 a definite political mission
was sent to Afghanistan, with which Burnes, Conolly, Charles Stoddart, James
Abbott, Richmond Shakespear, and John Wood were associated. Of these, Abbott
(1839), Shakespear (1840), and Conolly (1841) were sent on to Khiva, on
political business, the former two continuing their journey to Russia and
England; John Wood (1837-8) was sent with Dr Lord to Kunduz, and, while Dr Lord
was treating patients, amused himself by tracing the Oxus to the Pamirs, which
he was the first white man to visit since Benedict Goez (1603), and
where he
discovered one of the sources of the Oxus in Victoria Lake; and Stoddart (1838)
and Conolly (1841) were sent to Bokhara, where both were murdered together with
their would-be rescuer Lieutenant Wyburd (1842). Russian embassies also reached
Khiva (1819), Bokhara (1820,1842), Herat, and Kabul (1837); so that Russians
and Englishmen were now in close contact at three points in west central Asia,
and it might seem that there was no more work for explorers to do here. But
these murders set the clock back: and then two of the strangest explorers that
ever were seen went wandering through the land. First, arrayed in black gown
and red doctor’s hood and with open Bible in his hand, Dr Joseph Wolff went to
Bokhara from the Euxine in order to ask what had become of Stoddart and Conolly,
learned their fate, and, still more wonderful to relate, returned safely
(1844). Secondly, in 1863, a Hungarian philologer, Arminius Vambery, dressed as
a Dervish, and yelling Ya hoo Ya halck “ 2000 times,” entered Khiva and saw
human heads rolled out of sacks “ like potatoes ” as the price of robes of
honour, and grey-beards lying eight in a row and having their eyes gouged out.
His genius for language saved him there, and at Bokhara, Samarkand, Andkhui,
and Herat, which he visited. Wolff and Vambery were the last of the explorers
who travelled through these parts with their lives in their hands. War came and
swept the pestilential slave markets of Khiva and Bokhara clean: the visits of
MacGahan (1874) and Frederick Burnaby (1875-6) to Khiva ushered in an era of
holiday tourists, and a railway was built from Krasnovodsk on the east coast of
the Caspian to Kizil- Arvat, Bokhara, and Samarkand (1888), and thence to the
foot of the mountains between Russian Turkestan and Kashgar.
Of all the
routes followed in 1838-42, John Wood’s was the only pure explorer’s route and
the only one which bore fruit in discoveries. War made west central Asia too
dangerous or too safe for exploration; in Persia, English officials, such as
Sir Henry Rawlinson (1833 sqq.) and Molesworth Sykes (1893 sqq.), and, on the
Persian, Afghan, and Baluch frontiers, Russo-Persian (1882),
Russo-Afghan-English (1885), and Perso- Afghan-English (1872,1895-7,1905)
Frontier Commissioners performed the functions of explorers. Politics ousted travel,
except, it would seem, on the Pamir plateau, towards which men streamed, but
not from the side of Badakshan.
Ladakh, which
became the starting-point for the Pamirs, had been one of Moorcroft’s bases for
horse-dealing in central Asia, and W. H. Johnson, of the Indian Survey, crossed
the Karakorum pass thence to Khoten, which no European had visited for 260
years and where he heard of cities buried in the sand (1865). This date was
also immediately after the date of the opening of China, which is the one and
only critical date in the modem history of Asiatic explorations. In 1868 Robert
Shaw, an Indian tea-planter, went by the same pass to Yarkand and Kashgar
simultaneously with an English geographer, the iUfated George
Hayward, and
with a Russian officer, Captain Rheinthal. These expeditions led to two
official English missions under the leadership of Sir Douglas Forsyth (1870-4)
and to two official Russian missions under the leadership of Generals Kaulbars
and Kuropatkin; and, during the second English mission, English surveyors on
the Pamirs came into touch with the Russian Survey from the north. New sources
of the Oxus were descried and stimulated geographical inquisitiveness; and the
ultimate source of the Oxus became the question of the hour, until Henri
Dauvergne, a trader in Kashmir, finally solved it (1889). Sport, also, made the
Pamirs popular; and then clouds began to darken the place where three
empires—Russia, England, and China—had at last met; until in 1895 Commissioners
of these three Powers delimited their frontiers here. Travel merged in
politics, and geography in history.
Ladakh was
also a base for Tibet and Chinese Turkestan; and, after the Forsyth mission
(1874), Kashgar, and in the late eighties Gilgit and Chitral, were in touch with
Ladakh. In 1885, Arthur Carey, an Indian civil servant, pioneered a circular
trip through northern Tibet and Chinese Turkestan from and to Ladakh. In
Chinese Turkestan, his route touched Prjevalsky’s routes at Khoten, Kurla, and
Karashahr: he was the first European to follow the Tarim from the confluence of
the Yarkand and Khoten to its end in Lob-nor; and he was the second—Alexander
Regel was the first (1879)—who visited Turfan after Goez (1603), although
Turfan lies on one of the historic highways between east and west. Carey’s
routes in northern Tibet resembled those of Prjevalsky, although they were not
the same; his entry into Tibet being from Lob-nor, and his exit from Tibet
being into Sa-chu. Shortly after Carey’s return, while geographical interest
was on the wane, and before politics intervened on the Pamirs, English and
other travellers once more pressed from west to east or east to west, and
interest in historic through-ways was revived. Gilgit and Kashgar became
starting-points or goals for the journey to or from Peking. In 1887, Sir Frank
Younghusband traversed the whole historic trade-route from Peking and Kalgan by
Borston Well, Hami, Turfan, Karashahr, Kurla, and Aksu, to Kashgar; returning
to India by the Mustagh glacier pass (west of the Karakorum and east of the
Pamirs) and by Gilgit. A third route was thus recovered by European for
European. In the same year, Mark Bell started from Peking and, like Sosnofeki,
crossed from Lan-chau-fu by Su-chau to Hami, Barkul, and Guchen and then turned
south by Urumtsi to Karashahr and, like Younghusband, west by Kurla and Aksu to
Kashgar. Bell’s route may be described as a combination of the second and third
recovered routes. A fifth route was recovered in 1893-4 by St George Littledale
and his wife, who reached Samarkand from the Caspian by railway, crossed the
central mountain belt of Asia to Kashgar, and passed thence by Aksu and Kurla
to Lob-nor, crossed the Gobi by a track which Marco Polo, the last
European who
used it, described as haunted by goblin voices, reached Sa-chu, Koko-nor, and
Lan-chau-fu, drifted down the Hoang-ho to its northernmost reaches, and drove
thence to Peking.
By this time,
the central Asiatic routes between the outposts of Europe and the Pacific Ocean
began to be used by tourists, such as the two American bicyclists who retraced
Sosnofski’s route from Kuldja to Peking (1894); by archaeologists, like Marc
Aurel Stein (1900 sqq.); by “ geologic and physiographic ” investigators, like
the American professor Ellsworth Huntington (1905-6), and by historical
pilgrims, like Major Clarence Bruce, who traced Marco Polo’s footsteps from
Keria 1300 miles eastward (1905-6); and they ceased to be an arena for
explorers pure and simple.
In the
nineties—while through-routes were passing from the region of poetry to that of
prose—Tibet was once more explored, not as an end in itself, but to provide an
alternative through-route which had not yet lost its atmosphere of romance. In
1889-90, Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henry of Orleans went from Kuldja to
Karashahr and thence to Keria. Then, they swooped down like Prjevalsky from
Keria towards Lhassa, were diverted eastward by the stubborn obstruction of
Tibet, emerged, like Abbe Hue, at Batang and Ta-chien-lu in western China, and
continued their journey through Yunnan to Tonkin. Then a French mission
scientifique under Dutreuil de Rhins (1890-5) followed the through-route by
Bokhara, Kashgar, and Keria as far as Cherchen, and, making the usual dash
towards Lhassa and suffering the inevitable diversion to the east, reached
Peking by nearly the same road that Abbe Hue had trodden in the reverse
direction. All attempts on Lhassa from the north failed as they had failed
under Prjevalsky’s guidance; crooked through-ways partly due south and partly
due east were useless; but at last, when Sir Frank Younghusband penetrated
Tibet and Lhassa from the south (1904), a French expedition under Comte de
Lesdain (1904-5) went straight from Ngan-si-chau by the sources of the Yang-
tsze-kiang, and by Shigatse (but not by Lhassa) to Sikkhim. Northern India and
Mongolia were united, so far as one white explorer could unite them, through
Tibet. Here, at last, descents into Tibet from the north yielded a historical
result.
During the
nineties, western China and north-western India were also put in communication
with one another by many European explorers travelling through northern Tibet.
In 1891,
Captain Hamilton Bower traversed Tibet from Ladakh to Batang and Ta-chien-lu in
China between north latitude 33° and 30°; the country through which he passed
had neither tree nor shrub, and the traveller, during five months’ travel,
never slept below an elevation of 15,000 ft. above the sea; and similarly, in
1896, Captain Montagu Wellby traversed Tibet from Ladakh, between north
latitude 35° and 36°, to the sources of the Yang-tsze-kiang, which he
determined, and thence by
804
Sven Hedin.—Results of Asiatic exploration. [i860—1908
Koko-nor,
Si-ning-fu, and Lan-chau-fu to Peking; and he too was for four months in a
desolate stony country which averaged 16,000 ft. above the sea. Similar
traverses between east and west have also been assisted by Captain Henry
Deasy’s (1896) and,Captain Cecil Rawling’s (1903) round trips from end to end
of northern Tibet from and to Ladakh, and by Woodville Rockhill’s circular trip
into Tibet by Koko-nor and out of it by Batang (1891-2), which began and ended
in Peking, where he was attached to the American embassy, and by a somewhat
similar round trip by Miss Annie Taylor (1892-3), and by Sven Hedin’s three
monumental journeys in Chinese Turkestan and Tibet (1893-7,18991902, 1906-8).
In the last
of these journeys, Sven Hedin reexamined the valley and the mountains which
border the valley of the San-po between Shigatse and the source of the
San-po—members of Sir Frank Younghusband’s expedition to Lhassa having examined
both valley and mountains cursorily (1904-5)—and it would seem that by far the
best east and west traverse of Tibet from Ladakh lies along this valley to the
neighbourhood of Lhassa, and thence by the two pilgrim routes which Abbe Hue
followed to China. Perhaps this through-way is destined to become an important
part of the chain with many links which joins Europe to China. Not only this
journey, but every other journey made by Sven Hedin, covers as much new ground
as those of any three of his fellow- travellers ; but his discoveries lie so
close to those which have already been described and are on so many routes that
they cannot be discussed here. He has fulfilled and completed the tasks of
other men.
In 1860,
between the Urga-Kalgan route and the Tian Shan and allied mountains lay 2000
miles of country, inhabited by Chinese Turki (as they used to be called) or
traversed in every direction by Mongolians, but of which, so far as we know, Europeans
knew nothing at first hand except from medieval writers. Between Chinese
Turkestan or Mongolia and India lay Tibet, larger and less known than Greenland
at that date, yet annually traversed by tens of thousands of coloured pilgrims
from time immemorial. Nowadays, white travellers’ tracks form an intricate
network over Chinese Turkestan, Mongolia, and Tibet, and virgin soil is scarce.
But, in Asia,
virgin soil means tracts open to certain Orientals and closed to every white
man. With the opening up of such tracts secluded nations begin to have external
relations and a common share in one world-history. Exploration is the pacific
method by which nations which loiter in some back-water are enticed into the
main stream of world-politics and commerce. But the process is slow;
frontier-treaties can be made in a day, but it takes many white travellers to
overcome prejudices of more than a thousand years. The travellers’ triumphs of
which mention has been made are only the prelude of the inevitable social, political,
and commercial change, and there are still vacant spots
1615-1793]
Africa. The Nile and the Niger»
805
in Asia which
no white traveller has reached: for instance, near the sources of the Irrawaddy
between Assam, Burma, and Szech’uan, in the western valleys of Kafiristan, near
Telu Dagh and the Dersim in Kurdistan, and in the south Arabian desert of
Rub-el-Khali, 850 miles long by 650 miles broad in parts: that desert, however,
is probably a real desert, not a labyrinth of passages for Asiatics like the
desert of Gobi, but an uninhabitable void, as its name denotes.
AFRICA.
In the late
eighteenth century nothing was known at first hand of any part of the interior
of Africa, nor was any lake known except Lake Tsana in Abyssinia, nor any
mountain except the Mount Atlas of tradition and Ptolemy’s mythical Mountains
of the Moon, nor the source of any river except that of the Blue Nile: and
there were rumours of a river which Pliny called the Niger, and which was
supposed to run nearly or quite across Africa along the 15th parallel of north
latitude or thereabouts : yet no white man had ever seen it, and, as in the
case of the Murray of Australia, its mouth was destined to be discovered from
its headwaters, students identifying it in the meantime with the Gambia, the
Senegal, or some affluent of the upper Nile or with both. If one-half of these
rumours were true, the Nile and Niger were to Africa what the Ganges and Indus
were to India; and the Niger and its fabulous city of Timbuktu began to perplex
the intellect and dazzle the imagination of Europe.
In 1769-71,
while James Cook, accompanied by Sir Joseph Banks, was discovering or
rediscovering Australas:«, James Bruce, who had gone out of pure
love of travel and at his own cost by Massowah to Abyssinia, was musing over
the sources of the Blue Nile—which a Portuguese Jesuit, Pedro Paez, had also
seen (1615)—and was watching Abyssinians eating live cows raw, and was
wandering from Gondar, the capital, by the sources of the Atbara to Sennar,
Shendy, Berber, and thence across the desert to Assuan and Cairo. Charles
Poncet, a French doctor, had already gone from Assiout by Sheb, Selime,
Dongola, Korti, Derreira (near Metemma), and Sennar to Gondar and returned by
Massowah many years before (1698 sqq.) : so that Bruce’s feat was not so new as
his information, which provoked equal mirth and unbelief throughout the whole
of western Europe. In 1793 a second unofficial traveller, William George
Browne, went from Assiout by Sheb, Selime, and Ein Aga, to Kobe, the capital of
Darfur, wishing to pass thence either westward to Pliny’s Niger, or southward
to the unknown sources of the White Nile, or eastward to Sennar and Gondar, but
returning after three years’ captivity by the way which he alone of white men
has ever trodden.
In 1788, the
African Association, of which Sir Joseph Banks was the moving spirit, began to
send forth “ geographical missionaries ” towards
806
The Niger problem. Mungo Park. [1698-1825
the supposed
course of the Niger. The Association was formed in the year after William
Wilberforce began his crusade against slavery; but it had no direct connexion
with philanthropy, its objects being austerely scientific. Its first emissaries
from Egypt and Tripoli were John Led- yard (1788), who had been a comrade of Captain
Cook, and William Lucas (1789), but both died almost before they began their
work; and, when England was at war, German and Swiss emissaries were selected
in the respective persons of Friedrich Homemann and John Burckhardt. Hornemann
went west from Cairo by Siwah and Augila to Murzuk in Fezzan, where he heard
that the Niger flowed eastward into a lake named Lake Chad (1799) and further
eastward towards the Nile; so, after a journey to Tripoli and back, he started
south (1800) and vanished somewhere, it was said, in Nupe on the Niger. John
Burckhardt was to follow him : and by way of practice travelled, “ nearly in
the same route by which Bruce returned,” as far as Berber and Shendy, and
thence to Suakin and Mecca and back to Cairo; but, when about to start in
Hornemann’s tracks, he also died (1817). Then the sceptre passed from the
African Association to private initiative and to the British Government.
Private initiative was represented by Wilhelm Eduard Riippell, who went from
Debbeh across the desert to El Obeid in Kordofan, where he was the first white
visitor (1825); so that explorers’ tracks now furrowed the deserts between
Egypt and the Red Sea, Abyssinia, Sennar, Kordofan, Darfur, and Fezzan. The
British Government succeeded to the tasks of western as well as to those of
eastern and northern adventurers.
In the far
west, the ground had been prepared by French and English colonists, and more
than prepared by the African Association. Andre Brue ascended the Senegal (16°
N. lat.) to its confluence with the Saleme (1698 sqq.), and two wrecked
mariners, Saugnier (1784) and Pierre de Brisson (1785), were enslaved by Arabs
and taken from Cape Blanco or somewhere near it through deserts to Morocco.
There were also English factories on the Gambia (14° N. lat.) at Pisania, and
news brought to the Senegal and Gambia invested Timbuktu and the Niger with the
halo of an Arabian Night’s Entertainment.
Daniel
Houghton (1790), the first emissary of the African Association, ascended the
Gambia and reached the upper Senegal at a point beyond that which French
enterprise had attained. There he was murdered. Mungo Park (1795—7), his
successor, started the same way, and was the first white man to see the Niger.
He noted that it flowed eastward, and followed it to Silla, 800 miles due east
of his starting- place and 200 miles south-west of Timbuktu. He was robbed,
enslaved, and feverstricken, and paid for his board by writing “ charms ” which
his hosts instead of reading licked up. He returned, convinced that the Niger
was the Congo, and bent on renewing his quest.
In 1801 Sir
Joseph Banks persuaded the Government to despatch Park on a new expedition; and
Park started in 1805 with 44 doomed
I805-25]
Denham and Clapperton. Lake Chad.
807
companions,
mostly British soldiers, to follow, more or less, his old tracks. A small
remnant of sick survivors reached Sansanding on the Niger where they embarked
on boats, and their leader wrote: “ Though I were myself half dead I would
still persevere, and if I could not succeed in the object of my journey I would
at last die on the Niger.” Six years later, natives brought news that the white
boatmen had drifted past the port of Timbuktu to Bussa, 1000 miles away, where
they perished one and all.
It was about
now that two geographers, Reichard (1808) and James McQueen (1816), suggested
the true theory of the position of the Niger’s mouth; but the Government,
spuming theorists, wavered only between the views of practical men like
Homemann and Mungo Park, and, in the year after Waterloo, sent James Tuckie to
the Congo, Major Peddie to the Nunez (10° N. lat.), and Joseph Ritchie and
George Lyon (1818) to Tripoli, of whom all except Lyon perished without adding
to knowledge: and Lyon only went to Tegerrie, or a little further than Murzuk where
Homemann was in 1799. At the same time, Thomas Bowdich went on a political
mission from Cape Coast Castle inland to Kumassi, which he was the first white
man to see. Thus the first combined assault failed. A second combined assault
followed.
In 1822, the
colony of Sierra Leone sent Alexander Laing inland to the sources of the
Rokelle, whence he saw the hills where the Niger rose, and returned. In the
same year, the British Government sent Dixon Denham and Hugh Clapperton to
Tripoli, whence they crossed the whole desert of Sahara from north to south.
Their route lay by Murzuk, Tegerrie, Bilma, and Agadem, over wastes strewn with
the skeletons of slaves to Kukawa on Lake Chad, which they discovered. Starting
from Lake Chad, Denham examined its north and south shores and discovered the
Shari, which is the chief feeder of the lake, and travelled with raiders south
but not quite so far as the Benue, returning to the lake with the loss of all
his clothes; while Clapperton travelled west along what is now the border of
northern Nigeria to Kano and Sokoto, without quite reaching the main stream of
the Niger. The two leaders returned from Kukawa by the way they came; and the
belief now prevailed that the Niger emptied itself into the Gulf of Guinea at
Volta or elsewhere, and also, by its Chadda or Benue branch, which no one had
yet seen, through the Shari into Lake Chad.
The third and
last triple effort took place under the auspices of the British Government in
1825. Dickson went from Whydah, east of the Volta, overland to Abomey, the
capital of Dahomey, and died an unknown death between Abomey and Youri on the
Niger; a little further east, Hugh Clapperton, Richard Lander, and others went
overland from Badagry by Katunga and Bussa, where Park perished, to Sokoto and
Kano, meaning to go east to Lake Chad and the Nile; but all the leaders died,
except Lander, who then turned due south and, when
808 Niger problem solved.-—Livingstone. [1825-56
almost within
sight of the Benue, was forced to retrace his footsteps to Kano and Badagry.
Alexander Laing, in the meantime, went south from Tripoli to Murzuk,
north-north-west to Ghadames, and south- south-west across the Sahara through
Ensalah, Tanezruft, and Mukhtar to Timbuktu, where he remained five weeks.
Timbuktu, the goal of so many seekers, was at last won, and the winner was
murdered three days after he quitted it. These cruel victories had two sequels:
Rene Caillie, a French adventurer, is said to have reached Timbuktu by a
variant of Park’s route (1828) and to have crossed the Sahara, west of Laing’s
route, by El Aruan, El Trab, and Tafilet, to Fez in Morocco. Richard and John
Lander crossed once more from Badagry to Bussa (1830), went upstream to Youri,
and downstream past the Benue, which proved to be an affluent not an effluent
of the Niger, to the delta of the Niger, where they were robbed and held to
ransom. The story of their sudden disaster and of their strange rescue by a sea
captain is one of the most surprising in the record of African adventure,
coming as it did at the last moment of a cloudless voyage. The secret of the
Niger was now divulged. The Sahara had been crossed in three places, or, if we
count Saugnier and de Brisson, in five: and the crucial riddle of northern and
north-western Africa was read. Commercial, philanthropical' and political
events began when the age of romance and enquiry ended: and romance and enquiry
flitted to southern Africa, to which we now turn.
In 1840, the
year in which Abbe Hue and other French Lazarists arrived in China, David Livingstone,
a missionary of the London Missionary Society, arrived in South Africa and
travelled from Algoa bay 500 miles due north to the mission-post established by
Robert Moffat at Kuruman, on the threshold of the northern wilderness. In 1849
he crossed the Kalahari desert, on a visit to some Bechuana living 500 miles
north of Kuruman on or near Lake Ngami, which he discovered. There were now
three known lakes in Africa, Lakes Tsana, Chad, and Ngami. Thence he passed to
the Makilolo, who lived on a branch of the upper Zambesi (Linyanti), and for
and with whom he travelled up the Zambesi by Lake Dilolo (which is one of its
sources) and Kassange to Loanda on the Atlantic, and back again to Linyanti;
and then to Quilimane on the Indian Ocean (1853-6). The upper Zambesi, Lake
Dilolo, and the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi were discovered, and Africa was
at last crossed by a white man. What he did was great; but what he read and
heard of and had left undone seemed greater to his imagination and lured him
still further north. He read that, when England took over Cape Colony, the
Portuguese of Angola and Quilimane tried to join hands: that they went on
embassies to Kazembe and Muata Ydnvo north of his route; and that they sent
men, whom the Governor of Angola called “slaves,” by Muata Y&nvo, from one
colony to the other: and now he conversed with natives of
Muata
Y&nvo, with Portuguese who had been not only at Kazembe but at a lake named
Lake Nyassa, out of which the Shire flowed, and, strangest of all, with Arab
slave-traders who had reached the Makilolo for the first time at the same
moment as he, and who told him of a lake named Tanganyika and of a river, the
Lualaba, rising in some other lake.
When
Livingstone returned home (1856), the Crimean War was just over and great
schemes of exploration were in the air. Two Church of England missionaries who
had been planted at Mombasa (1842 sqq.) —Krapf and Rebmann by name—saw Mounts
Kenia and Kilimanjaro (1848-9) with their snowy crests, and heard of vast
inland seas. Memories of the snow mountains and the lakes to which men traced
the Nile in the days of Herodotus recurred ; and Richard Burton and John Speke
were sent to Zanzibar, whence both discovered Lake Tanganyika, and Speke
discovered the southern shore of Victoria Nyanza (1856-9). In 1860-3, John
Speke sailed once more to Zanzibar with James Grant, and went thence by Karague
and Uganda to where the Nile issues from Victoria Nyanza, and thence, more or
less by the valley of the Nile, to Gondokoro and so to Cairo. At Gondokoro they
met Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, who had come on an independent expedition, and
who now followed the Nile to the Albert Nyanza, of which they were the discoverers.
The Nile was traced to its two reservoirs, Lakes Victoria and Albert Nyanza,
and, in the language of the day, the problem which had baffled men’s minds ever
since Israel went down into Egypt was solved.
While Burton,
Speke, Grant, and Baker were busy on the Nile, Livingstone ascended the Shire,
discovered Lake Shirwa, and explored, and perhaps discovered, Lake Nyassa while
in governmental employ; for he had now changed from a travelling teacher to a
teaching traveller. The Universities’ Mission on Lake Nyassa immediately
followed and failed; and his attempts to reach Lake Bangweolo near Kazembe were
for a time unsuccessful (1858-64).
Livingstone’s
third expedition was made under similar government auspices in 1865. His course
lay up the Rovuma to Lake Nyassa; and from the south of that lake to Lake
Tanganyika; and from the south of that lake to Lake Moero north of Kazembe and
to Lake Bangweolo 100 miles south; and from the west of Lake Tanganyika with
Arab help to Nyangwe, 450 miles north by west of Lake Moero. At, above, and
below Bangweolo, Moero, and Nyangwe, he saw the great river Lualaba, which was
the greatest of his discoveries. During this period, Henry Stanley, then in the
employ of the New York Herald, discovered and relieved Livingstone at Ujiji on
Lake Tanganyika (1871); and after a few months’ travel together they parted. Livingstone,
who was as old as Franklin when Franklin went to the north-west, hoping to
crown his life by tracing the inscrutable Lualaba in its downward course,
returned inland and died on the threshold of his great enterprise at Lake
Bangweolo (1873); and Captain Vemey Cameron, who had been sent to
help or
succeed him, went westward by Lake Tanganyika whose outflow to the Lualaba he
discovered, to Nyangwe, where he failed to get boats, then southward to Eikemba
and the western Lualaba, which he discovered ; then westward along the
Zambesi-Congo watershed to Bihe and Benguela on the Atlantic coast (1873-5).
His was the second traverse of the Continent between east and west. Stanley,
hearing of Livingstone’s death, started once more, with the assistance of the
Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald. He circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza,
which sceptics had hitherto believed to be a constellation of little lakes;
persuaded the King of Uganda to accept British missionaries; saw a new lake
afterwards called Lake Albert Edward Nyanza; reached Nyangwe much as
Livingstone and Cameron had reached it, and embarked upon the Lualaba,
wondering as he did so whether it would prove to be the Benue-Niger, the Nile,
the Congo, or haply the Shari or Ogowe. Thence, after fighting thirty-two
battles, passing forty rapids, and traversing 1700 miles of river, “through an
Odyssey of wandering and an Iliad of conflict,” he reached the mouth of the
Congo (1874—7)—an exploit to which La Salle’s descent of the Mississippi (1682)
is the only parallel. In 1879 Stanley was sent out by an international
committee, over which the King of the Belgians presided, to found a new,
non-political, philanthropic State, afterwards known as the Congo Free State,
intended to control the river area of 900,000 square miles which Livingstone
and he had opened up to the European world. It was as though a new country ten
times as large as Great Britain had suddenly arisen from the sea. Two
travellers, Livingstone and Stanley, wrought this miracle, and the spirit which
moved them was of missionary origin. Meanwhile, other forces were already at
work elsewhere.
The first
force was the pure passion for knowledge, which, since Riippell, became more
and more German. In 1849 the British Government organised an expedition,
modelled on Denham’s expedition to the Niger from the north; and, Englishmen
being engaged elsewhere, in the Second Sikh War and on the search for Franklin,
it employed amongst others Heinrich Barth (1849-55) and Eduard Vogel (1853-5).
James Richardson, the leader, having died (1850), Barth became leader. The
southward route from Tripoli lay through Asiu, Asben, and Agades to Katsena;
and Kukawa on Lake Chad was Barth’s, as it had been Denham’s centre, from which
a southward trip took him to Yola on the other side of the upper Benue, which
he was the first to see: an eastward trip took him to Masena in Baghirmi, and a
westward to Timbuktu, and he, too, went sometimes with raiders. Eduard Vogel’s
southward trip from Lake Chad reached the same point on the Benue which William
Baikie had just reached by boat from the confluence of the Niger and Benue,
while his eastward trip took him to Wara in Wadai, where he was murdered. Wadai
was hitherto virgin soil to Europeans, and patriotic efforts were made in Germany
to ascertain Vogel’s fate or to
1856-1908]
German explorers. The Welle.
811
continue what
he had begun. Fired with the same zeal for knowledge, Moriz von Beuermann from
the north (1862-3), Theodor von Heuglin and Hermann Steudner (1861-4) from the
south-east, or from what was then known as the Bahr-el-Gazal province of Egypt,
only added to the roll of scientific martyrs. Gerhard Bohlfs traversed Africa
from Tripoli by Lake Chad to Lagos on the Gulf of Guinea (1865-7), and Gustav
Nachtigal went from Tripoli and Murzuk to the Tibesti mountains, which he was
the first to see, and by Denham's route to Lake Chad, and from Lake Chad to
Borku, Abeshr (Wadai), Kibet, Darfur, El Obeid, Khartum, and Egypt (1869-74).
Nachtigal’s traverse, occurring as it did before the Egyptian conquest of
Darfur, was at that date unique, and brought together Barth’s, Vogel’s,
Browne’s, and Riippell’s discoveries. Pellegrino Manteucci (1880-1) afterwards
made a similar but a longer traverse from furthest east to furthest west, going
from Suakin by Khartum, El Obeid, Darfur, Abeshr, and Lake Chad, to the mouth
of the Niger, and died immediately after his return. Meanwhile the
Bahr-el-Gazal province, which had already been explored in part by an English
consul, John Petherick (1856 sqq.), a French trader, Jules Poncet (1857-9), a
rich Dutch lady, Alexine Tinne (1863), a poor Italian, Carlo Piaggia (1863-5),
and a Greek doctor, Papagiotis Potagos (1876—7), was put under the searchlights
of science by two German enthusiasts, Georg Schweinfurth of Riga (1868-70) and
Wilhelm Junker of Moscow (1877-86). Schweinfurth’s discovery of the
westward-flowing river Welle, south of the Bahr-el-Gazal basin (1870), was
almost as sensational as Park’s discovery of the eastward-flowing Niger, or
Lander’s of the westward-flowing Benue. Could this river be the Shari, or the
Benue ? If it was the Benue, then what the ancients said was true, and the
Niger did all but join the Nile with the Atlantic. Junker, who carried on
Schweinfurth’s work, and Stanley (1878) held that it was an affluent of the
Congo: and George Grenfell, who first ascended the Ubanghi affluent of the
Congo (1884), and officials of the Congo Free State (1887-90), eventually
proved the identity of the Ubanghi and Welle. Except for these German
expeditions and for some others between Angola and the Congo, German enterprise
in Africa became commercial and political shortly after 1871, and science was
subordinated to other ends.
It is not
proposed in this chapter to follow the footsteps of German or any other
explorers within the spheres of influence assigned to Germany or other nations
in 1878 or 1884. Between 1878 and 1908, the whole interior of Africa except
Abyssinia and Morocco was actually or virtually annexed by European nations,
and exploration became an incident of energetic colonial administration. Serpa
Pinto, Hermann von Wissmann, Sir Frederick Lugard, Sir Frederick Cardew, Sir
Harry Johnston, and Sir Alfred Sharpe, explored because they administered, and
administered because they explored, and their exploits belong to the history of
particular
colonies. But there were still some few explorations which, although national
in object and method, resembled those explorations of earlier ages which were
either disinterested or which preceded colonial history.
Joseph
Thomson’s discovery (1883-4) of the route, which is now a railway route, from
Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza, made a British protectorate of Uganda and the
union of the Egyptian Sudan with south-east Africa (which was General Gordon's
dream), or even with South Africa (which was Cecil Rhodes’ dream), possible.
Henry Stanley’s journey to Lake Albert Nyanza (1887-9) through the primeval
forests of the upper Aruwhimi, in order to take Emin Fasha, the last and latest
left of General Gordon’s lieutenants, to Zanzibar, brought to light the
original forest home of the Homeric pygmies, Mount Ruwenzori (16,800ft.) or
those very Mountains of the Moon which, according to Ptolemy, fed the Nile with
their snows, and which recent geographers had ridiculed, and Lake Albert Edward
Nyanza, which was now traced by the Semliki river into Lake Alhert Nyanza, and
was thus proved to be the ultimate western source of the Nile. French advance
during this period showed the far reach and nice sense of symmetry which
distinguished her great Canadian adventurers; but the story is somewhat long.
In south-west French Africa Paul du Chaillu, an American of French origin,
discovered gorillas, dwarfs, and, last but not least, the mouths and upper
reaches of the Ogowe (1857-65). French administrators developed the Ogowe, and
a French officer, Pietro Savorgnan de Brazza, thinking the Ogowe was
Livingstone’s Lualaba, ascended it, found its source (1878), and descended the
Alima to Stanley Pool on the Congo (1880). Next Casimir Maistre, among others,
pushed up the Ubanghi to the Shari (1891-3), where ]£mil Gentil launched a
steamer with which he reached Lake Chad (1897). Wherever Frenchmen went they
established posts; hut the effective occupation of Lake Chad was, through accidents
of war, postponed until 1899. Meanwhile, Captain Louis Binger discovered the
kingdom of Kong behind Sierra Leone (1887-90), treaties were made, and the
French colonies on the coast were connected by a common hinterland; Timbuktu
was occupied (1893-4); and an expedition from Senegal arrived at Lake Chad in
1899, just a year later than had been intended. Again, in 1899-1900, Fernand
Foureau arrived at Lake Chad from Algiers, having traversed the Sahara by a
route which had not been trodden by Europeans before or since Barth (1849); and
he too was a year late. Gentil from 1200 miles south, the Senegalese from 2000
miles west, and Foureau from 1700 miles north, met in Denham’s and Barth’s
temporary centre: and Lake Chad became a permanent base for further advances up
the Shari towards the Bahr-el-Gazal affluent of the Nile. At the same time
Jean-Baptiste Marchand went from French south-west Africa to the Congo, and up
the Ubanghi to a point reached by Junker from the east and de La K&hulle
from the
west; and
crossed to the Suet, an affluent of the Bahr-el-Gazal, which he descended to
Fashoda on the Nile (1896-8). Had not Gentil, Foureau, and the rest been a year
behind time, Marchand would now have been almost in touch with them. England
too was in the way: for 1898 was the year of the Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of
the Sudan, and the Nile and Bahr-el-Gazal were restored by right of reconquest
to Egypt and England. In 1899, Marchand resumed his journey up the Sobat and
Baro to a spot reached by Christian de Bonchamps from Jibuti in the Gulf of
Aden a year earlier, and thence by de Bonchamps1 route to Jibuti,
having accomplished his immense new traverse of 3000 miles over what was almost
all well-worn ground. As with the advance of the Cossacks, it is difficult to
know whether to regard these exploits as the exploits of travellers
simultaneously meeting around Lake Chad, or as a magnificent political
concentration around the new hub of a continental empire, like that which
France once built in Louisiana, with means equally slender and over distances
equally vast, in order to confine her rivals to the west Atlantic shores.
Organised persistent travel and conquest were almost synonymous in
three-fourths of Africa as well as in North America, and the French reading of
African destiny was nearly right; but French aspirations were not completely
fulfilled. Since 1900, Lake Chad has been the centre of a French dependency,
vast but not so vast nor yet so exclusive as some Frenchmen designed, because a
year or two later the English and German centres of gravity shifted somewhat
from the Atlantic shores inland, and round this lake three empires met. In 1902
the Governors of British Nigeria and the German Cameroons established effective
British and German rule on its west and south shores, and Lake Chad began to
combine the physical eccentricities of Lob-nor with the political interest of
the Pamirs.
Few parts of
Africa are unknown. Since 1884 traverses between German or British East Africa
and the mouth of the Congo or Angola, and since 1899 traverses from the Cape to
Cairo, and across the Sahara, have been frequent. Somaliland and south-western
Abyssinia were for a. long time almost blanks on the map, before the travels of
Frank James (1885), Samuel Teleki (1887-8), the Hungarian who discovered Lake
Rudolf, Luigi Robecchi (1888), and Donaldson Smith, the American who discovered
Lake Abaya and the northern route to Lake Rudolf (1894-5), induced travellers
to scour these lands from end to end. Yet there is not one protectorate which
has not many dark comers still. In the Libyan desert, the through-route to
Darfur from the north has only been trod by Browne, although Sheb, Selime, and
Ein Aga on the way between Egypt and Darfur were visited a year or two ago; and
Kufara has only once been reached, by Gerhard Rohlfs from the north (1878-9);
so that but for him it is an unknown island surrounded by a sea of ignorance
three-hundred miles wide.
POLAR
EXPLORATION.
Outside Asia
and Africa, there are large unexplored regions in Dutch New Guinea, Kimberley
District (Australia), the basin of the upper Amazon, Alaska, and the regions
round the North Pole, and South Pole. Immediately after the Wars with France
ended in the Peace of Paris (1763), James Cook’s three voyages (1768-71,
1772-5,1776-9) laid the foundation upon which eveiy British colony in the
Pacific, including British Columbia, was built; accordingly these voyages
belong to colonial history. But they also belong to Polar history. In the
second voyage Cook reached 71° 10' S. lat. while searching for an Antarctic
Continent; and in the third voyage he passed through Behring Strait and reached
70° 20' N. lat. in Alaska while searching for a north-west passage from the
west of North America. Immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, North Polar
expeditions recommenced witb the new search for a northwest passage, from the
point on the east of North America reached by William Baffin and John Davys two
centuries earlier. Sir John Ross inaugurated the new departure in 1818, and Sir
William Edward Parry in 1819-20, both going to Baffin Bay; Parry arriving
through Lancaster Sound at Melville Island (1819-20) and Regent Inlet (1824-5);
and Ross and his nephew, Sir James Ross, arriving through Lancaster Sound and
Regent Inlet at the magnetic North Pole and at King William Island (1829-33).
Meanwhile, Sir John Franklin (1819-22,1825-7) journeyed to the north coast of
Canada by land, and explored it on foot and by boat in the neighbourhood of the
mouths of the Coppermine river, which Samuel Heame saw in 1771, and of the
Mackenzie river, which Sir Alexander Mackenzie discovered in 1789; and ships
were sent to Behring Strait, in order if necessary to cooperate with Franklin
in his second expedition. Owing to these combined efforts and to further work
from the land side by Franklin’s successors nearly all the whole north coast of
Canada, from the neighbourhood of King William Island to Behring Strait, became
known before 1845.
In 1845 the
Admiralty made its final effort. Sir John Franklin volunteered for the command,
and, when it was objected that he was sixty years old, replied indignantly “ No
! no ! only fifty-nine.” This was Franklin’s last voyage. After passing through
Lancaster Sound (1845), he and all his crew perished on or near King William
Island (1847-8). Relief parties swept the sea in summer, and skimmed over ice
and snow both in winter and in summer, searching for news of those who were
lost. But the search only succeeded partially in 1854, and completely in 1857,
many years after the last survivor had died. One of the searchers, Sir Robert
Maclure, made the north-west passage from Behring Strait by sea along the south
of Melville Island, but lost his ship on the way (1854). As a result of the
search for Franklin, the whole northern coast and northern archipelago of
Canada became known (1845-57) i
and the
search for the north-west passage was abandoned and almost forgotten, until
people read one day that a Norseman, Captain Roald Amundsen, had made the
north-west passage by sea in one ship from Lancaster Sound by King William
Island to Behring Strait, that is to say, by Franklin’s attempted route
(1903-6). Meanwhile, before the last voyage of Franklin, Parry started towards
the North Pole and James Ross towards the South Pole, James Ross discovering
Victoria land and a mountain which he called Mount Erebus (1839-43), and there
the history of Antarctic exploration rested until the close of the century,
when the nations of Europe organised new Polar expeditions.
In the course
of the Antarctic expeditions which ensued, Captain Robert Scott reached
Victoria land and started overland from near Mount Erebus and then over
glaciers to 82° 17' S. lat. (1902-4); and, afterwards, Lieutenant (now Sir)
Ernest Shackleton adopted the same base and similar methods, and reached the
magnetic South Pole and a point 88° 23' S. lat., that is to say, 97 miles from
the terrestrial Pole (1907-9). The whole country was a glaciated tableland
rising higher and higher to over 10,000 feet above the sea and without any
living thing. The North Polar region had hitherto been only penetrated to
within 206 miles of the terrestrial Pole by the Duke of Abruzzi (1900) and
within 225 miles by Fridtjof Nansen (1895) from the Asiatic side. More
continuous and successful efforts have been made from the side of Smith Sound
between the continent of Greenland and Ellesmere land on the west of Greenland.
Charles Hall and some other Americans of the United States were the pioneers
(1860 sqq.) of this route, and Sir George Nares, Sir Lewis Beaumont, and
others, who derived their inspiration and experience from the Franklin relief
expeditions, followed in their train (1875 sqq.). Their most important
achievement was to trace the north coast of Ellesmere land and Greenland, which
Lieutenant Robert Peary, U.S.A. since 1886 has made his base for several polar
expeditions, in the last of which he reached the North Pole (1909). He started,
also, from this base on inland expeditions into Greenland. In 1888, Fridtjof
Nansen made the first traverse of south Greenland from east to west; later,
Peary traversed north Greenland and rounded the northernmost point of Greenland
from the west (1901), and a Danish expedition under Mylius Erichsen, coming
from the east, explored the last unknown north-eastern strip of the coasts of
Greenland (1906-8). Thus, one continental tableland 10,000 feet above the sea,
almost as high as Tibet and quite as high and almost as barren as Victoria
land, was dragged out of darkness into light; and exploration of the earth
arrived at its climax, here as elsewhere, in the early years of the twentieth
century. The South Pole remains unconquered: hut it now seems that the conquest
of the Poles is not likely to yield anything historically new, beyond
completing the results of previous discoveries which possessed some scientific
but little historical significance.
THE GROWTH OF
HISTORICAL SCIENCE.
Historical study begins with the humanists of
the Italian and German Renaissance. In the Middle Ages printing was unknown,
books were rare, and credulity was universal. The revival of classical learning
revealed a new world of experience and ideas, and coincided with a quickened
interest in the history of man. For a brief period the European mind devoted
itself to secular learning; but the Renaissance was destroyed by the
Reformation. History became the expression of confessional animosities, and
remained enveloped in an ecclesiastical atmosphere till the opening of the
eighteenth century. In this long struggle there is little to choose between
Protestant and Catholic controversialists, but in its course many documents
were brought to light and valuable materials were accumulated. Thus the Annals
which Baronius compiled from the Vatican archives in answer to Flacius are
still indispensable to the documentary study of Church history. In the
seventeenth century sectarian violence somewhat abated, and useful work was
accomplished by the schools of Anglican and Gallican divines, whose position
between the Protestant and the Ultramontane camps was favourable to moderate
views. Of still greater value was the work of Mabillon and his fellow
Benedictines of St Maur. Nearly every historical scholar, however, regarded
ecclesiastical history as the highest object of study, and men of the first
rank like Scaliger, Camden, and Conring, who devoted themselves to secular
research, were few in number, except in Holland.
With the
approach of the eighteenth century the study of secular history became more
general. The accumulation of material was carried on by Muratori and Leibniz,
Madox and Heame, Eckhel and other mighty scholars, whose erudition has never
been surpassed and whose works remain an inexhaustible quarry for later
generations. In the next place, the critical treatment of authorities began.
Mabillon created the science of diplomatic; Bentley exppsed the forgery of
Phalaris; Pere Simon began the critical study of the Old Testament, Reimarus
and Semler of the New; Astruc established the composite nature of the
Pentateuch;
Perizonius
and Pouilly, Beaufort and Vico, anticipated Niebuhr’s destructive criticism of
early Roman history. Throughout the century the Acadimie des Inscriptions
played an active part as an organiser of disinterested discussion and
research. Another class of writers approached history from a philosophical
point of view. Vico first treated it as the subject of a special science.
Montesquieu investigated the origin and effects of laws and institutions. Adam
Smith analysed the causes of national prosperity and decay, and Malthus sought
for the laws of population. The conception of progress, which is lacking in
Montesquieu, was clearly enunciated by Leibniz, related to history in Lessing’s
brief but pregnant essay on the Education of the Human Race, and received its
fullest development in Turgot’s Discourse at the Sorbonne. The conception of
the organic nature of civilisation, of the unity of humanity, of the debt of
every age to its predecessors, was applied by Burke and Herder; but it found no
place in Voltaire or Condorcet, who despised the past, nor in Rousseau, who
hated the present. Though the attempts to construct imposing philosophical
edifices on a basis of historical generalisation were for the most part
premature, fruitful ideas were thrown into circulation, and the conception of
history was enriched and widened. Finally, historical narrative itself reached
a high standard. National histories were for the first time written in literary
form in England by Hume, in France by Henault, in Switzerland: by Johannes
Muller, in Germany by Mascov and Schmidt. The first scholarly and comprehensive
Church history was composed by Mosheim, the first histoiy of classical art by
Winckelmann. Schlozer, Spittler, Putter, Gatterer, and Heeren made Gottingen
the centre of historic study in Germany and produced useful historical
narratives and handbooks. Voltaire founded a new genre by his Essai sur les
Mceurs, and Robertson reconstructed the age of Charles V. Above all, Gibbon
constructed a bridge from the old world to the new which is still the highway
of nations, and stands erect long after every other structure of the time has
fallen into ruins.
Although work
of the greatest value was thus accomplished, the spirit of the time, its
absolute standard, its self-sufficiency, its conviction that the past was an
old almanack, a world both dark and dead, were fatal to patient and methodical
enquiry. One result was that writers were apt to content themselves with very
superficial study. Another was that the medieval world was never really
understood. Voltaire maintained that the early Middle Ages were no more
deserving of study than wolves and bears; and Gibbon’s contempt for religious
feeling and belief rendered him blind to the meaning of many objects which he
passed during his long journey. A second general weakness was the lack of
critical faculty in dealing with authorities. To Johannes Muller all chronicles
and charters, so long as they were old, were of equal value. Rollin and Hooke
simply transcribed the legends of Livy. Scepticism itself was as uncritical as
was credulity, for Hardouin believed many of the Latin
classics to
have been written by medieval monks. Archives were guarded with a jealousy
appropriate to the custody of crown jewels. The conditions which rendered it
possible to set forth the truth without fear or favour were as rare as was the
determination to learn what the truth actually was, and what was the critical
equipment required for finding it.
The years
that immediately preceded and followed the opening of the nineteenth century witnessed
a revolt against the superficial rationalism of the eighteenth century and the
emergence of forces that rendered possible the birth of historical science. The
most powerful factor in this change of standpoint, which was felt all over
Europe but found its earliest and strongest expression in Germany, was the
Romantic movement. The seed sown by Herder germinated in a passionate love for
the past, for the exotic, for the marvellous and picturesque, for distant lands
and literatures, for strange modes of thought and utterance. During the first
decade of the century August Wilhelm von Schlegel lectured on the origins of
German literature; Tieck edited the Mimne- lieder; Amim and Brentano collected
early German songs and ballads; Friedrich von Schlegel directed attention to
the thought of the East; Boisseree revived interest in medieval art. The Eddas
and the Nibelungen were in all hands. The ages of belief and imagination were
vindicated against the age of reason. Despite their lack of critical instinct and
their fantastic taste, the Romanticists made it possible to understand and
appreciate things which rationalism had contemptuously dismissed, and widened
the intellectual horizon of Europe.
A second
factor that prepared the ground for historical science was the birth of
nationalism. The eighteenth century was cosmopolitan, and the political
organisation of Germany seemed fitted to render every idea of a common
fatherland impossible. But the battle of Jena and Napoleon’s violent
reconstruction of the map of Europe led to a pride and interest in national
history and tradition, to a new and thrilling national consciousness. The
lectures of Fichte, the songs of Arndt and Komer, the speeches of Tell put into
words the inarticulate emotions of millions of Germans. The name of France,
lately the standard of taste and manners, became an offence, and “Father” Jahn
taught the young men of Germany to worship their own country. By the end of the
War, Germany had outgrown the eighteenth century. Sensationalism had yielded to
idealism, the rule of reason to deep religious feeling, josm opolitanism to
nationalism. On every side was heard the demand for reconstruction, for the
rebuilding and strengthening of the national life.
The change is
apparent in the birth of a historical school of jurisprudence. Herder had
declared that law sprang from the spirit of a nation, and Gustav Hugo
maintained that it must be followed to its sources and could only be understood
historically. This fruitful conception was illustrated in 1808, when Karl
Friedrich Eichhom published the
Historical jurisprudence. Savigny. 819
first volume
of a history of German institutions, based on study of the sources and prefaced
by a declaration that his desire to understand the legal conceptions and
practice of the present had led him irresistibly to the study of the past.
While Eichhorn was calling attention to the indestructible value of German law
and its place in the development of national life, his friend Savigny published
an essay in which the main principles of the historical school were fully
explained. The obvious merits of the French Code, which parts of Germany had
experienced, led to a demand for a similar codification, which was forcibly
stated by the distinguished jurist Thibaut. To this challenge Savigny replied
in his Vocation of our Time for Legislation and Jurisprudence, opposing not
only the project under discussion, but any and every codification. To codify
was to paralyse. With Montesquieu, he declared that institutions must not be
judged a priori, and, with Burke, that the history and nature of a people
forbade sudden and violent changes. Law was a living thing, like language,
growing out of the life of the people and expressing itself spontaneously in
the institutions of the country, not the creation of legislation and edicts.
Its origin was custom, springing from the fundamental instincts of a nation,
and developing unconsciously and without effort. In a word, law was a
historical not a philosophical science. The project was deferred; but the
lasting influence of Savigny’s essay, both for good and evil, was far more
important than its immediate success. He did not realise that civilised nations
accumulate an ever increasing stock of common notions, and he was unjust not
only to the French but also to the German codes already in existence. He was
blind to the immense practical utility of occasionally sweeping away legal
rubbish, of simplifying, defining, and coordinating. Again, though pronouncing
the people to be the legislators, he forbids them to legislate. In the early
life of a nation law is largely an unconscious growth; but in its maturity the
people legislates by a conscious act of will. But, though hostile to political
liberty, Savigny’s teaching gave an incalculable impetus to historical study.
His evolutionary manifesto popularised the conception of organic development,
emphasised the continuity of history, and shifted attention from the play of
events on the surface to the underlying moral and intellectual influences and
the abiding institutions of national life.
A final
factor that stimulated critical investigation was the publication of Friedrich
August Wolf’s Prolegomena to Homer in 1795, which exerted a profound influence
on every branch of research. The method that appeared to give such startling
results could obviously be applied to other writings, sacred and profane. That
the sources of history themselves must be analysed and subjected to internal
and external criticism was the principle which Wolf contributed to the growth
of historic study in the nineteenth century.
All these
influences were combined in Niebuhr, the first great
820
The work and influence of Niebuhr.
German
historian. Though by no means a Romanticist, he shared the Romanticist dislike
of the rationalism of the eighteenth century. He had studied history with
passion from his earliest years, and agreed with Savigny and Eichhom that the
present could only be understood from the past. He was, in the next place, an
accomplished classical scholar and had assimilated the critical method of Wolf.
Finally, he was deeply interested in politics, and had joined Stein in
regenerating Prussia after the battle of Jena. After the foundation of the
University of Berlin in 1809, he delivered lectures on Roman History which appeared
in book form in 1811. At the close of the War he accepted the post of Prussian
Minister to the Holy See, but during his residence in Rome he did little
historical work beyond aiding Bunsen in his labours on the archaeology of the
city. On settling in Bonn in 1824, he began to recast his History, of which he
published two volumes, and at his death he left a third ready for press.
In his
prefaces, his letters, and in his conversations recorded by Lieber, Niebuhr
repeatedly indicated the conditions of his success. He had learned from his own
public career to conceive of the history of Rome as a living reality, and to
interpret its problems in the light of modem equivalents. In a well-known
passage he relates how, in the time of Prussia’s humiliation, he went back to
the study of a great people to strengthen his mind and that of his hearers. In
the next place, he declared that he could not have understood Roman history
without an intimate acquaintance with the constitutional struggles that had
taken place in England. His third qualification was his critical method. He
compared himself to an anatomist, dissecting words instead of bodies, and
defined a historian as one who could construct a complete picture from
fragments of the design, a complete figure from a torso. When his unsurpassed
knowledge of the literary sources of Roman history could add no more, the
faculty of intuition was brought into play to determine the value of
unsupported evidence.
Niebuhr was
the first to make ancient Rome a living political organism and to illustrate
Roman and universal history by one another. He was also the first to collect
and discuss the whole of the available literary evidence, and to steer a middle
course between blind acceptance of Livy’s narrative and wholesale scepticism.
To these immense merits Niebuhr owes his unassailable position as the principal
author of the great revolution in historical study effected in the opening
years of the nineteenth century. Goethe expressed a wish that all history might
be treated in a similar manner, and Savigny declared that the mere existence of
such a work was an encouragement to him in the composition of his History of
Roman Law in the Middle Ages. Bockh dedicated his first book to Niebuhr, and
the English translation of the Roman History dominated Oxford and Cambridge
for a generation. There are good reasons, however, why his fame has proved more
enduring than his writings. No
821
historian of
the front rank has possessed so little skill in presenting his knowledge to the
world. His work bristles with technical discussions that interrupt the
narrative and with parentheses that break the thread of thought. But there is a
graver fault than lack of lucidity and literary skill. The method of divination
which he believed would be the main pillar of his fame is radically unsound. In
hands less skilled than his it could only lead to disaster, and his own use of
it was in the highest degree arbitrary. The extravagances into which it led him
were pointed out with ruthless vigour by Comewall Lewis and corrected in a
kindlier spirit by Schwegler. The impetus to historical research was given by
Niebuhr; but the edifice had to be erected on surer foundations.
Between the
first and second editions of Niebuhr’s work, Bockh’s Domestic Economy of
Athens, published in 1817, applied the historic method to Greek study. He
declared that there was no philology that was not history, and be realised the
programme of Wolf by seizing the life of the ancients as a whole. For the first
time, the daily life of the Greeks was portrayed, their legislation,
administration, finance, trade, industry, their human reality, brought home to
the modem world. The book inspired the Prussian Academy of Sciences to entrust
its author with the task of collecting and editing Greek inscriptions. Bekker
and other scholars were despatched in search of material, and the first volume
appeared in 1824. Though the information was often fragmentary, it was highly
important, and the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum laid one of the foundation
stones of the study of Greek history.
Bockh’s
lectures at Berlin were of scarcely less importance than his writings; and one
of his earliest pupils shares with him the honour of being the founder of the
historical study of Greek life. Otfried Muller won distinction with his
doctor’s thesis, and quickly poured forth a series of works which illumined
almost every department of the Greek world. Bockh foretold that his brilliant
pupil would leave him far behind. Muller was not greater than his master; but
he was more original and imaginative, and his range was wider. His studies of
the Greek races, his Prolegomena to a Science of Mythology and Handbook of
Archaeology, opened up new paths through the forest. As he grew older he turned
more and more to art, and insisted on exact knowledge of the country and its
monuments. Leake had recently called attention to the wealth of material that
lay scattered over the surface of the peninsula. Muller foresaw the necessity
of excavations and realised that the country itself was one of the chief
documents of the historian. His early death during his visit to the land of his
dreams in 1840 was an irreparable blow to science; but the cause for which he
had fought had already triumphed. The great work of Creuzer on the symbolism of
the ancients, a book of wide and curious learning, had been sharply criticised
by the older school of philologists which looked to Gottfried Hermann of
Leipzig as its leader; and, though the methods of Bockh and Miiller
were utterly
different from those of Creuzer, they were attacked by Hermann with equal
bitterness for decoying students from the textual study of Greek literature.
But it was beyond the power even of Hermann to forbid the entrance of the
historical method into classical studies. The art, literature, and religion of
Greece were simultaneously studied by Welcker, her philosophy by Ritter and
Brandis, and the mysteries were explored by Lobeck.
While Niebuhr
and Bockh were revealing the anr’ent world, the study of early Germany was
gradually taking shape. The Romanticists had unlocked a rich storehouse of
treasures; but their philological equipment was too scanty to estimate its
value. From their midst appeared a man who possessed the critical insight and
the patient industry that they lacked. Though Jacob Grimm was the intimate
friend of Brentano and Amim, he traced his inspiration to Savigny, whose
lectures he attended at Marburg. During a visit to Paris in company with
Savigny, Grimm undertook investigations which led him to dedicate himself to
the study of German origins. On his return from France he began to pour forth
the flood of essays and dissertations which only ceased with his death, and in
1812, with the aid of his hrother Wilhelm, produced a work which made his name
a household word throughout Germany. What Amim and Brentano had done for the
ballads of the German Middle Ages was done by the Grimms for the fairy tales.
From the legends Grimm passed to the structure and development of the language
itself. Comparative philology had already won notable triumphs. Bopp had
established the connexion between Sanskrit and the languages of Europe; Wilhelm
von Humboldt’s Essay on the Basques had explained the principles of
philological investigation; and Rask’s Icelandic Grammar provided new material
for a study of the Teutonic tongues. With these guides Grimm produced the first
volume of his German Grammar in 1819, which brought life and law into the
development of language, established the connexion between speech and the
stages of civilisation, and served as a model for the Romance and Celtic
grammars of Diez and Zeuss. In 1828, he broke new ground in his German Legal
Antiquities, in which he detected the living voice of the people. In 1835, he
in his German Mythology collected and explained the old sagas and cosmologies,
and traced their persistence under Christian disguises. The latter years of his
life witnessed the production of a History of the German Language and the
beginning of a great German Dictionary under his direction.
Jacob Grimm
was not the first to love German origins; but he was the first to study them
critically and to make them intelligible. While Wilhelm worked with exquisite
refinement and scholarship in comparatively narrow fields, Jacob’s genius lay
in bringing order and meaning into vast territories hitherto almost unexplored.
The unifying principle of his work was his conviction that speech, mythology,
law,
and
literature alike revealed the soul of his race. But this fruitful conception
was accompanied by a certain limitation of vision. He resembled Sa. igny in his
preference of unconscious to conscious production, of folk-songs to the works
of individual poets, of nature to culture. In another direction also his work
needed supplementing. His main interest lay in penetrating to the thought
behind the word; but to place the mechanical part of philology on a secure
basis there was need of a cooler and less imaginative mind. If Grimm is the
founder of the study of German origins, LachmamTs position is at his side.
Trained in the excellent school of Benecke at Gottingen, Lachmann began his
career in 1816 by his investigations into the origin of the Nibelungenlied,
applying the method of Wolf and decomposing the cycle into independent songs.
Confining himself to the formal side of philology, Lachmann devoted himself to
penetrating the exact meaning of literary monuments, establishing their
chronology, discovering the laws of metre, restoring, punctuating, and
elucidating the texts. His inspiration is seen in the work of his friends
Moritz Haupt and Miillenhoff.
The interest
of Grimm lay chiefly in the literature, language, and beliefs of his Teutonic
forefathers. It was appropriate that the stimulus to a knowledge of their
political life and fortunes should come from the greatest German statesman of
his age. In the peaceful years of his retirement Stein planned an edition of
the sources of German history in the Middle Ages, “to create a taste for German
history, to make its systematic study easier, and thus to contribute to the
maintenance of a love for the common fatherland and the memory of our great
ancestors.” In 1819, a Society for ancient German History was formed; in 1820,
a review was founded to discuss and make preparation for the work, and Pertz, a
pupil of Heeren, was invited to direct the enterprise. In 1824 it was announced
that the work would consist of five parts: Writers, Laws, Imperial Acts,
Letters, Antiquities. In 1826, the first volume of the Scriptores appeared, and
the series of stately volumes, now under the direction of the Berlin Academy of
Sciences and supported by ample subsidies, is still unfinished. Pertz’ chief
colleague was Bohmer, who independently collected and arranged the Imperial
Acts, the first volume of which appeared in 1831. He believed that history
could only be securely written by getting behind chronicles and biographies to
the words of the actors themselves, and his volumes are of enduring value owing
to the mass of new material of the highest importance contained in them, and to
the stimulus they gave to the formation of similar collections. The Reger,ta
were printed by Bohmer without much attempt to ensure their authenticity; but
his critical power improved in later volumes, and Jaffe, Ficker, and Sickel, with
whom the editing of Regesta has reached perfection, built upon his foundations.
These publications mark a turning-point in medieval study. Wilken’s History of
the
Crusades,
Sartorius’ book on the Hanseatic League, Voigt’s volumes on Gregory VII and the
Teutonic Order, Luden’s History of the German People, had been useful and
learned works; but their treatment of sources was not equal to their industry
in collecting them. The most popular production of the pre-critical era,
Raumer’s History of the Hohensta/ufen, made no pretence to exact research. The
volumes were fresh, clear, and lively, and became the source of innumerable
dramas and romances; but they were neither strong nor deep, and they do not
compare with Stenzel’s scholarly work on the Franconian Emperors.
A still more
powerful influence now began to be felt in every department of historical
study. Leopold von Ranke had been deeply impressed by Niebuhr’s history while a
student at Leipzig, and by the works of Bockh and Otfried Muller while teaching
at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In a reminiscence dictated at the age of ninety, he
recalled that he had been struck by the difference in the portraits of Charles
the Bold and Louis XI in Quentin Durward and the pages of Commines, and had
determined to hold fast to facts. The fruits of this resolution appeared in
1824 in his work on the Romance and Germanic Peoples, 1494-1514,. The preface
announced the aim of the author to be to relate events “as they actually
happened.” The office of judging the past and instructing the future, said
Ranke, had been attributed to history; but his volume made no attempt to
perform such lofty tasks. The historian must approach his subject without
presuppositions, and write history for its own sake. The promise of complete
objectivity was abundantly fulfilled, and a lengthy supplement examined the
sources on which the narrative rested. He traced the statements of the famous
chroniclers to their source, estimated their opportunity of knowledge, and
analysed the influence of their opinions and surroundings on their writings.
The work founded the science of evidence, and the modem historical method is
generally held to date from its publication.
The success
of the book secured the author’s summons to Berlin, where he quickly
disinterred a large collection of Relazioni by Venetian and other Italian
ambassadors. With the aid of this material, Ranke produced his Princes and
Peoples of Southern Europe, a masterly survey of the constitution, army,
finances, and policy of the Turkish monarchy and of the several provinces and
dependencies of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He now fully
realised the importance of manuscripts, and obtained leave to set out on a
prolonged tour of discovery. In Vienna he composed a history of Servia, which
Niebuhr, shortly before his death, pronounced to be the best historical work in
German literature. Venice and Florence supplied him with abundant material, and
in Rome he delved deeply in the archives of the great families. On his return
to Berlin, after an absence of over three years, he possessed a clearer insight
into the development and relations of the States of modem Europe than any
living writer.
The History
of the Popes was published in 1884-6. The CounterReformation and the fortunes
of the Papal States in modem times had never been comprehensively treated; and
now there appeared a luminous survey, resting on profound research, presented
in a clear and attractive style, and dealing with the most controversial
questions in a purely scientific spirit. Ranke declared with pride that no one
could say that his book was written by a friend or a foe of the Papacy. The
work at once became an European classic; but its successor represented a
further advance in Ranke’s art. He determined to reply to the critics who
asserted that he had. not done justice to the moral superiority of German
Protestantism. For this purpose the story of the strife of dogmas was widened
into a narrative of the life of the German nation during the Reformation. In
the preface to the first volume, which appeared in 1839, Ranke expressed his
conviction that modem history could no longer be written from the reports of
contemporary historians, still less from the narratives derived from them, but
must rest on manuscript sources and the evidence of eye-witnesses and of the
actors themselves. At Frankfort he found detailed reports of the Diets from
which he reconstructed the machinery of the Empire, while extensive discoveries
at Weimar, Dresden, and Brussels enabled him to see the events of the time
through the eyes of its principal figures. He was not strong in theology; but
the work presented for the first time a picture of the Reformation as a great
national movement. Ranke’s art underwent no further development, and during the
next twenty years he applied it successively to Prussia, France, and England.
His closing years were devoted chiefly to the eighteenth century and to the
composition of his Universal History.
Ranke was
beyond comparison the greatest historical writer of modem times, not only
because he founded the scientific study of materials and possessed in an
unrivalled degree the judicial temper and sobriety of judgment at which every
historian professes to aim, but because his powers of work and length of life
enabled him to produce a larger number of first-rate works than any historian
who ever lived. He laid the foundation of our knowledge of modem political
history, and he was congratulated by Ameth on having given a masterpiece to
every country. Dollinger called him Praeceptor Gerrrumiae, and Thiers hailed
him as the first of European historians. His style is clear and flowing, and
his books are intelligible to any cultivated reader. Though he deemed it the
duty of the historian to keep himself out of sight, he declared that his first
qualification was to have a real interest in humanity, and that the supreme
purpose of history was to mark the place of men and nations in the development
of civilisation. But, though Ranke’s work was perfect in its way, it was not
complete. When the history of States has been written and the development of
the European system has been made clear, the life
of the people
and the ideas that underlie and explain action have still to be described. In
the second place, his tranquil, harmonious nature made him to some extent blind
to great tides of emotion and great outbursts of passion, to the heroism and
tragedy in the life of men. The History of England excels in expla' irg the
relation of English and European politics, but fails to penetrate the inner
meaning of Puritanism. The Reformation conveys little idea of the wild
exaltation of the time, and loses its sureness of touch when it reaches the
Peasants’ Revolt. It was well that Ranke did not cany out his plan of a histoiy
of the French Revolution. In dealing with individuals and nations alike he was
most at home in the middle regions of human experience.
Ranke’s
impersonal attitude towards history provoked widespread opposition. When he
began to write, Rotteck’s Universal History, which presented a monotonous
spectacle of tyrannised peoples and depicted the Middle Ages as a period of
barbarism and darkness, was the bible of south German Liberalism. Rotteck’s
star paled with great rapidity; but the view that histoiy was much more than a
search for truth was represented by two men of far greater ability. The most
influential historical teacher when Ranke began to write was Schlosser. In his
two greatest works, the Universal History and the History of the Eighteenth
Century, he judges from the standpoint of the strictest Kantian morality.
Though he was weak in politics, law, and economics, he had a wide knowledge of
the history of culture; but the conception of growth, of the change in
standards and ideals, was unknown to him. He was a thorough bourgeois and
treated nobles and rulers with a severity equal to Rotteck’s. Schlosser made no
secret of his distaste for Ranke’s colourless pictures and of his contempt for
his minute industry. But the manifesto of the Schlosser school against Ranke
was composed by the greatest and most faithful of its members. In Gervinus’
study of his beloved teacher, Ranke is charged with finding the principal charm
of his calling in the discovery of the unknown, however unimportant it be, and
is sharply censured for the mildness of his judgments. Though more objective in
judgment than his master, Gervinus continued the traditions of the hanging
judge, and his histories of German poetiy and of the nineteenth century,
though Works of real learning and merit, are disfigured by their censorious
tone. A more powerful attack was made from a widely different standpoint. The
chorus of praise that greeted Ranke’s first work was marred by the voice of
Leo, who belittled his critical achievements and declared that his objective
method robbed history of all value and meaning. Leo was the child of Haller and
Adam Muller, the colleague of Stahl and Gerlach in the Conservative reaction
that overtook Germany in the second quarter of the century. His History of the
Italian States possessed considerable merit; but his Universal History, which
appeared in the years 1835-44 and enjoyed immense popularity, records his
furious hatreds and his blind partialities, his adoration
of the Middle
Ages and, though a Protestant, his hatred for the Reformation, the Aufklarung,
and the Revolution.
While Ranke
was thus censured for his reserve by the schools of -jchlosser and Leo, he was
also subjected to attack on the score of want of patriotism by those who saw in
the increase of the might of Prussia the salvation of German politics* The
Prussian History which he published on completing the Reformation caused
disappointment, and in many quarters indignation, by its cool tones and its
calculated reticence. Despite these criticisms, his fame and influence steadily
increased. Though fault has been found with his critical work by Bergenroth,
Gindely, and others, and though every book he wrote has been modified or
supplemented by later research, it was he who made German historical
scholarship supreme in Europe. As a lecturer he could not compare with Savigny,
Droysen, or Hausser; but in his Seminar he was in the highest degree
stimulating. The Yearbooks of the German Kingdom,, compiled by his pupils in
the thirties, applied his methods to medieval study ; while the foundation of
the Historische Zeitschrjft, under the editorship of Sybel, twenty years later,
and the creation of the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy by his
friend and pupil King Maximilian marked the triumph of his school.
Of the three
most distinguished of Ranke’s pupils the eldest two, Waitz and Giesebrecht,
devoted the greater part of their lives to the study of the Middle Ages. After
beginning his literary career by a monograph on Henry I in Ranke’s Yearbooks,
Waitz joined the staff of the Monumenta and remained Pertz’ most valued
assistant till he succeeded him as Director forty years later. In 1844 appeared
the first volume of his German Constitutional History, which founded the
scientific study of medieval institutions. Of even greater importance for
medieval scholarship was the Seminar at Gottingen, in which he taught
generations of eager students the principles of criticism which he had learned
from Ranke. Beginning, like Waitz, with a volume in Ranke’s Yearbooks,
Giesebrecht devoted his long life to the composition of a single work. The
first volume of the History of the Medieval Empire appeared in 1855. He
combined a perfect knowledge of sources and an unsurpassed mastery of critical
method with a style of rare charm and power, and his picture of the Empire,
painted in the years of mingled depression and hope •jetween Olmiitz and Sedan,
took Germany by storm. Though a less romantic view of the Holy Roman Empire now
prevails, his great achievement is to have created a national interest in the
eventful centuries that stretch from the rise of the Saxon Emperors to the
tragic end of the Hohenstaufen. Though Giesebrecht’s explicit purpose of
national instruction and edification carries us some distance beyond the
cosmopolitanism and Olympian detachment of his master, it was left to the
youngest of Ranke’s three great pupils to break completely away from the Berlin
tradition and to share in the foundation of the “ Prussian 1
828
The Prussian school of historians.
school of
historians. After applying the critical method with brilliant success to the
First Crusade, Sybel entered political life, as an adversary of Ultramontanism,
feudalism, and radicalism. The events of 1848 turned his attention to the
French Revolution, which occupied him for thirty years. Devoting special
attention to economic conditions and international relations, Sybel at the same
time made his book the vehicle of a vigorous polemic against the doctrines of
the Revolution. His closing years were devoted to a massive History of the
Founding of the German Empire, for which Bismarck not only opened the archives
of State but himself supplied information.
While Sybel’s
devotion to Prussia did not forbid sharp criticism of Prussian policy, Droysen
and Treitschke devoted themselves to the glorification of the Hohenzollem.
After producing important works on Alexander and his successors, Droysen turned
to modem history, and in his Lectures on the Wars of Liberation and his
biography of York gave the first living picture of the heroic age of Prussia.
He took an active part in the Frankfort Parliament and devoted the last thirty
years of his life to a History of Prussian Policy, which he traced in fourteen
volumes to Frederick the Great. The work is of enduring value, owing to its precious
freight of documents; but its contention that the Hohenzollem had always been
the conscious exponents of a national German policy has made few converts. The
most striking personality and the most eloquent writer of the school was
Treitschke, the Macaulay of Germany. Beginning his literary career with
patriotic poetry, he devoted his immense powers as writer and professor before
1870 to an attack on the Bund and to a passionate demand for a national
political life based on the ejection of Austria and the forcible incorporation
of the smaller German States in the Prussian monarchy. Though Germany, when
united, remained a federal State, Treitschke’s demand for a powerful empire was
met, and he was satisfied. He had planned a history of modem Germany when a
young man; but the first volume did not appear till 1876. With the possible
exception of Mommsen’s Roman History, Treitschke’s Germany in the Nineteenth
Century is the most brilliant historical work in the language. Every side of
national life and thought is treated with a knowledge, vigour, and eloquence
that have made the book a national possession. But its faults are as
conspicuous as its merits. It is written throughout from a Prussian standpoint,
with a pronounced antipathy to the smaller States and without comprehansion for
the men and movements that opposed the military and bureaucratic rigime of the
Hohenzollem. Treitschke was the last and greatest of the Prussian school, which
arose in the years of depression and contributed powerfully to prepare the soil
in which Bismarck worked. Its inspiration was political rather than scientific,
and it disappeared with the realisation of its ideals. Their successors write
national history with greater fairness and tranquillity; and Moriz Ritter on
the Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years’
Historical study in Austria and in France. 829
War,
Erdmannsdorffer on the Great Elector, Koser on Frederick the Great, Max Lehmann
on the Wars of Liberation, Erich Marcks on the unification of Germany, and
Riezler on the evolution of Bavaria, are safer if less brilliant guides.
In German
Austria historical production is of recent date. The long rule of Mettemich was
unfavourable to intellectual activity, the censorship was active, and the
archives were only opened to men such as Bucholtz, Chmel and Hurter, whose
dynastic and religious orthodoxy was beyond question. Hammer-PurgstalTs History
of the Ottomans, the most valuable work of the period, was based chiefly on
material collected beyond the borders of the State. It was not till Ameth
became Director of the Archives that a more enlightened policy prevailed and a
flourishing school of historians arose. Ameth himself, the greatest of them,
undertook the life of Maria Theresa; Beer, Helfert, Zeissberg, Krones, Huber,
Schlitter, and Wertheimer assisted in exploring and defending Habsburg policy;
and Friedjung has lately given the Austrian side of the struggle which ended at
Sadowa. Medieval studies began with the foundation of the Historical Institute
in 1854 on the model of the itcole des Chartes, and reached a high standard
under the guidance of Sickel and Miihlbacher.
The period
which elapsed in France between the fall and the restoration of the Bourbons
was unfavourable to historical composition. The Revolution contemptuously
dismissed the past as the age of monarchy, feudalism, and monasticism. The two
chief groups of historical workers, the religious Orders and the Academies,
were swept away. The situation remained unchanged when Napoleon seized the
helm; for, though he appointed Daunou to the control of the archives, he had no
intention of rendering them more accessible. In 1808, Abbe Halma, librarian to
the Empress, asked for permission to continue Velly and Henault. The Emperor
replied that it would be most useful to continue these works; but the author
must be attached to the existing Government. When his narrative appeared, no
one would have the wish or the patience to write another, especially as it
would be discouraged by the police. This characteristic document explains why
histories of France did not appear till after the fall of Napoleon. A few works
dealing with safe subjects were written by men who were on good terms with the
Emperor. Daru produced a prolix and uncritical history of Venice, Michaud
defended the Crusades against the depreciation of the eighteenth century, and
Raynouard and Fauriel began the study of Provencal literature.
During this
period of despotism and confusion Chateaubriand’s Writings were setting free
the springs of emotion and stimulating the historical imagination, and, when
the iron hand of Napoleon was removed, the archives were thrown open. Assisted
by the Academy of Inscriptions, Daunou resumed the Benedictine Histoire
litteraire de
830
la
France, which had been suspended for a generation. It was not, however, till
1820, when Augustin Thierry, inspired by Ivanhce and Les Martyrs, issued a
series of Letters on the History of France, that the historical movement really
began. Indignant at the contrast between the chronicles and their modem
commentators, he resolved to reproduce the freshness and vitality of the
sources and to reconstruct the Middle Ages. In 1825 appeared the first volume
of the Conquest of England by the Normans, by universal testimony the revelation
of a new art. His peculiar power lay in his intuition of the sentiments and
passions of the past. Thierry was a man of deep feeling and an incomparable
artist; but, like a thorough child of the Romanticists, he was stronger in
imagination than in criticism, further, his exaggeration of the factor of raco
and his burning sympathy with the defeated led him to explain the two centuries
that followed the conquest by the continuing strife of Saxons and Normans. But
these faults are outweighed by the impetus he gave to historic study by his
contagious love for the past, his devotion to the life of the people, and his
exquisite literary art.
The standard
of historical reform which Thierry had raised was quickly joined by eager
volunteers. His brother Amedee devoted to the Gauls a series of works which,
though not strictly critical in method, obtained immense popularity. But his
most famous colleague was Barante, who prefaced his great work on the Dukes of
Burgundy with Quintilian’s words, “ Historia scribitur ad narrandum non ad
pfobandum." He proposed nothing beyond a paraphrase of his sources. He
takes no side in the Burgundian struggle, for history appeared to him »
theatre, not a court of law. Barante indeed carried the objective ideal to the
point of absurdity. His work is artificial and lifeless, because it is utterly
impersonal. He is an annalist, not a historian; yet he was eagerly read, and it
was to him that France owed her introduction to Froissart, Monstrelet, and
Commines. At the same time the first attempt at a complete history of France
was made by Sismondi, who had earned reputation by a voluminous history of the
Italian republics. His work, which appeared during the years 1821 to 1844 in 31
volumes, presented the first tolerable account of the decline of Roman power,
of the German invasions, of feudalism, of the growth of towns, of economic
changes and their influence. For the first time Frenchmen could read a full,
connected, and scholarly account of their national ht'e. But the work lacked movement
and colour, was weak in synthesis and the development of ideas, and was
disfigured by its censorious tone. He had loved the Italian republics as Grote
loved Athens; but, tried by the high standard of a Protestant moralist and a
republkan, French history assumed a gloomy air of tyranny and ignorance.
Of a widely
different character was the second attempt at a history of France. After a
boyhood spent in the utmost penury, Michelet sprang into fame in 1827 as the
author of a handbook of modern history. Four
years later,
his Introduction to Universal History revealed his passion for liberty, the
course of which he traced in the growing mastery of man over nature, in
science, religion, and industry. In 1833 he began his History of France, which
he brought down to the death of Louis XI, in six volumes, and which occupies a
unique place in historical literature. He declared, with entire truth, that his
life had passed into the book. With Thierry’s love of the Middle Ages and power
of visualising the past Michelet combined an intensity of feeling and a moral
passion that were his own. Thierry was a superb narrator; Michelet was, in
addition, a poet and preacher. On such congenial themes as St Louis and Gothic
architecture he lavishes all the colours of his palette, and the picture of
Joan of Arc, in which history and legend are mixed, is one of the imperishable
masterpieces of literature. His imagi lat • in was of the heart rather than of
the eyes; but his heart was too full, his emotions too little under control,
for a perfect student. Taine has compared him to Dore and Delacroix, Monod to a
great musician. He had not the patience to enter deeply into a problem. His
pages swarm with errors. In later volumes his faults grew upon him. He
developed an intense hatred for the Church, and his dislike of Kings and Courts
became a passion. His History of the French Revolution, which he wrote between
the earlier and later parts of his History of France, is a hymn of praise to
the people entering on the scene after centuiies of oppression. Michelet was a
magician, a Prospero calling up visions of dazzling beauty. His two great books
possess all the qualities of inspiration—movement, colour, passion, eloquence,
but none of the qualities of science—clearness, justice, measure, authority.
They are rhapsodies on the theme of France, paeans to her humble and nameless
children.
The method of
history which first emerged, which was founded by Thierry, reached its supreme
development in Michelet, and inspired the historical novels of Victor Hugo and
Alfred de Vigny, may be called the artistic or narrative school. By its side
arose a group of writers whose object was rather to explain than to recount, to
teach lessons than to paint pictures, to whom the individual was of less interest
than the collective life, the anatomy and physiology of history of greater
importance than its outward form or colour. Its founder, Guizot, had lectured
on the origins of representative government and published the first volumes of
a valuable though colourless work on the English Revolution ; but it was not
till his appointment to the Sorbonne in 1828 and the delivery of his lectures
on Civilisation in Europe that he became the founder of scientific history in
France. This masterly course still remains the most thoughtful introduction to
the study of European history. Though he lacked narrative and descriptive
power, Guizot possessed the accuracy, insight* and elevation of thought that
were needed for such a task. He was not an artist but a thinker, and he had a
marvellous power of seizing and revealing the internal concatenation of events
and
the ideas
that underlie them. On the completion of the course, he turned to the history
of France. His method was to dissect the political, economic, and intellectual
structure of society, to lay bare its elements and forces, separately and in
connexion. He has been blamed for presenting laws instead of life, abstractions
in place of men and women. A juster censor would perhaps contend that he makes
history appear more orderly and rational than it really is, and allows too
little place to the will and the passions, the follies and the failures, of
individual men.
In the early
years of the Restoration two young Provencals, Thiers and Mignet, came to
Paris, linked in intimate friendship and inspired with the same ideas and
ambitions. Their task was to overthrow the Bourbons. The direct method of
attack was by journalism; but they believed that a blow might also be struck by
writing histories of the French Revolution. They enjoyed the acquaintance of
Talleyrand, and they met many of the surviving actors at the houses of Manuel
and Laffitte. Thiers’ work, which began to appear in 1823, was a rapid,
eloquent, vivid narrative, neither learned nor profound. Its success encouraged
him to go deeper into his subject, and the later volumes show a marked
improvement. It was the first account of the Revolution written by one who was
not himself an actor or a contemporary, and Sainte-Beuve testifies that it had
the effect of a Marseillaise. It condemned the Terror; but the plain lesson of
the book was that the Revolution had been checked in mid-career and clamoured
for completion. The History of the Consulate and the Empire- which followed
revealed a remarkable talent for describing finance and military operations.
The method is that of the well-informed reporter, who achieves his effects by
accumulation of detail. He boasted that he had not scrupled to give the price
of bread, soap, and candles, the depth of snow on the passes, and the number of
ammunition carts. He belongs neither to the artistic nor to the philosophic
school. He is weak in psychology and blind to the forces that move below the
surface. His works were not so much achievements in historical science as
political events.
A far higher
place in the hierarchy of historians is occupied by Thiers’ lifelong friend.
Mignet’s sketch of the French Revolution appeared in 1824, and, like that of
Thiers, led up to the logical and political necessity of completing the
Revolution by a constitutional monarchy; but the work was far more than a
political pamphlet. He had studied as little as Thiers, and he lacked the
pictorial style and the robust prolixity of his friend. His strength lay in his
power of establishing the connexion of events, of tracing the thread of
progress through the maze of war and faction. So rare is this power that the
book, though never revised, still maintains its authority. In Thiers we meet
the man of action, in Mignet the thinker, liberal in maxims and sparing of anecdotes.
It is true that Mignet was by temperament unable to enter into the deeper and
wilder passions of the time; but his complete self
833
possession
enabled him to estimate its actual results more calmly and clearly than those
who were dazzled or scorched by the blaze. After the Revolution of 1830, he
became Director of the Archives, and in 1835 published the documents relative
to the War of the Spanish Succession, with an introduction unsurpassed for
insight, judgment, and power of condensation. His later works, dealing with the
international history of the sixteenth century, above all his Rivalry of
Charles V and Francis /, were the fruit of prolonged research, perfect in form
and arrangement, and scrupulously impersonal. In another department his fame is
equally secure. In 1837 he became Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Moral
and Political Sciences, and in this capacity produced a series of memorial
addresses which gave the eloge a new life and a classic form, and present an incomparable
gallery of portraits illustrating political and intellectual movements from
1789 till the Third Republic. Mignet’s output was relatively small; but his
work is of the finest quality.
Equally
judicial, though more conservative in temperament, was Tocqueville, the success
of whose book on the United States inspired him with the determination to study
the origins of democracy in France. After several years of research, the thin
volume on the Ancien Regime appeared. In brief but pregnant chapters, Tocqueville
explained the nature of the central and provincial government and
administration of France in the eighteenth century and analysed the economic
conditions and intellectual atmosphere on the eve of the Revolution. Though a
premature death prevented him from dealing with the Revolution itself, his book
contributed more to its elucidation than the works of Thiers and Mignet,
Michelet and Louis Blanc, Lamartine and Quinet.
Tocqueville’s
work was taken up, nearly twenty years later, by Taine, whom the horrors of the
Commune led to search for the causes of the instability of French institutions.
His Origmes de la France Contempo- raine began in 1875 with the Ancien Rigime,
in which, while recognising the faults of the old monarchy, he described with marked
hostility the growth of revolutionary ideas. The volumes which followed on the
Revolution exhibited an intense dislike of its doctrines and leaders. The
attack on Jacobinism, written, as his letters reveal, in a spirit of profound
pessimism, was greeted with delight by the monarchists of France; but its
scientific pretensions have been challenged by Aulard. Taine’s knowledge of the
period was inadequate, his use of sources in the highest degree arbitrary. His
explanation of the course of the Revolution by a political theory, and his
omission of such vital factors as the intrigues of the Court and the danger on
the frontier go far to render his book rather a brilliant polemic than a solid
contribution to history. Of far greater sanity and historical value is the work
in which Sorel exhibited the Revolution, not as an outbreak of Jacobin madness,
but as the culminating point in the series of intellectual and political
changes that had been in progress throughout the eighteenth century,
and pointed
out that in its foreign policy it was continuing the tradition of the monarchy.
Still more important has been the work of Aulard, the greatest living authority
on the Revolution, to whom we owe the publication of the records of the Jacobin
Club and the Committee of Public Safety.
Napoleon has
been studied at least as eagerly as the Revolution, and has been the chosen
theme of some of the ablest of French historians. Lanfrey replied effectively
to Thiers, and Taine described Napoleon as a condottiere bom out of due time.
His personal life has been minutely explored by Chuquet and Masson, his policy
by Sorel and Vandal, his fall by Houssaye. An admirable account of the Second
Empire has been written by La Gorce. The period of the Monarchy has been
illuminated by the Due de Broglie’s studies of the diplomacy of Louis XV, by
Boislisle’s edition of Saint-Simon, by Hanotaux’ masterly fragment on
Richelieu, and the Due d’Aumale’s history of the House of Conde. Delisle,
Monod, Molinier, Luchaire, and other medievalists trained in the Ecole des
Chartes, have produced work surpassed by no other country. The most celebrated
book on the Middle Ages written during the Third Republic was Fustel de
Coulanges’ History of the Institutions of Ancient France. Fustel believed that
by mastering every scrap of written evidence for the centuries concerned he
could reconstruct without fear of error. He collected a mass of evidence to
show that the institutions of ancient France were Roman, not German, and that
the Franks brought little but barbarism with them. His researches threw a flood
of light on the structure and development of medieval society; but he is a
dangerous guide and his results are nowhere accepted in their entirety. The
most eminent of his pupils, Camille Jullian, is at work on a monumental History
of Gaul.
While in
Germany and France historical studies grew to a large extent out of the
Romantic movement, in England the earlier Romanticists found their inspiration
less in the past than in nature and in the emotions of the human heart. Scott’s
novels appeared only in the second generation of romanticism, and, though they
aroused widespread interest in history, exerted far less influence on English
than on continental writers. At the opening of the century historical study
was at its lowest ebb. The professors at Oxford and Cambridge rarely delivered
lectures or wrote books, and the national records were allowed to rest in
peace. It was not till the appearance in 1817 of Hallam’s State of Europe in
the Middle Ages that the modern English historical school was founded. The book
was rather descriptive and explanatory than antiquarian. The preface announced
that attention would be chiefly devoted to laws and modes of government; and,
indeed, Hallam’s legal training, his calm, judicial mind, and his intimate
acquaintance with public men and the problems of State fitted him to deal with
institutions rather than with men or ideas. The work lacked colour and
movement;
but as a
first attempt to carve tracks through the forest it was of inestimable value,
and its obvious power and measured style, sometimes rising to a grave
eloquence, secured it instant recognition.
The study of
medieval England progressed rapidly during the following years. Editions of
early texts were published by Ellis and Madden, Harris Nicolas, Thorpe, and
Duffus Hardy. The first Record Commission had been appointed in 1800, and the
Surtees, Camden, Parker, Chetham, and other learned societies were founded in
rapid succession. A first attempt to utilise part of this wealth of new matter
was made by Palgrave in his Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth,
published in 1832. The impetus given by Savigny to the historical study of law
and institutions had resulted in the formation of two schools, called Germanist
and Romanist according to their estimate of the influence of Rome. In this
controversy Palgrave took his stand with the Romanists. He explained medieval
England by the blending of the monarchical powers inherited from Rome with
Teutonic freedom, issuing in a State with an absolute king and a large measure
of local independence. Social conditions, he maintained, were little changed by
the Anglo-Saxon, and still less by the Danish and Norman, conquests, the
indestructible elements remaining throughout Roman. The work was learned and
ingenious, but arbitrary and fanciful; and his neglect of Teutonic influences
was a grave fault. It was to this neglected Germanic factor that attention was
called by Kemble, whose great collection of charters was the result of
prolonged search in cathedral, collegiate, and other libraries, and whose
volumes on The Saxons in England, in which he summarised his discoveries,
founded the scientific study of early English institutions and remained supreme
till the advent of Stubbs. While recognising that the Britons were not
annihilated in any part of the country, he pronounced the character of the
Anglo- Saxon period to be entirely Teutonic, neither Celtic nor Roman elements
exerting the slightest influence. The research of Seebohm and other
investigators has profoundly modified Kemble’s view of the so-called mark; but
his contention that Saxon England was essentially Germanic, not Roman, is now
generally accepted.
During the
same period the exploration of the ancient world was commenced. Niebuhr’s
History of Rome, which was translated as it appeared in its final form, scared
certain theological circles by its free handling of authorities. To Arnold, on
the other hand, “ it opened a new world”; and on Niebuhr’s death he determined
to continue his work. Arnold possessed gifts denied to Niebuhr, among them a
clear and noble style, and his narrative of the greater moments of his story,
such as the invasion of Hannibal, is incomparable; but he accepted too much on
Niebuhr’s authority and did little to advance the critical study of Roman
history.
The progress
of Greek studies was far more rapid. In 17-84, Mitford,
a Tory squire
and member of Parliament, had begun the publication of a History of Greece,
which was not completed till 1818. Though his learning was considerable, he
made his work the vehicle of his political prejudices, rating the Athenian
democrats as the prototypes of the hated Whigs. Of far greater value were the
chronological investigations of Fynes Clinton. Aided by these works and
trained in the methods of Niebuhr, whose work he had helped to translate,
Thirlwall compiled the first scholarly history of Greece in any language. A
moderate Liberal of the school of Hallam, Thirlwall exposed Mitford’s mistakes
and perversions and painted the main events and figures of Greek history in
their true colours. Though he lacked the power of picturesque style and
arresting phrase, his work ranks among the greatest productions of English
scholarship for its learning, conspicuous fairness, and critical power. That
it never received the recognition that it deserved was due to the simultaneous
appearance of a more brilliant handling of the same theme. Grote had planned a
history of Greece as early as 1822; but his entry into political life deferred
its realisation, and it was not till 1846 that the first of the twelve volumes
appeared. Grote had never visited the country nor asked himself how nature
affected the development of the drama. Greece was simply the scene of certain
political events. The standpoint, too, was Athenian, not Hellenic, and the
early and later stages suffer in consequence. The ethnological section inspired
him with little interest, and the closing scenes are marred by his maltreatment
of the Macedonian destroyer of his idol. On the other hand, he carried forward
the criticism of the sources. While Thirlwall had rejected secondary
authorities, Grote tested Thucydides and other witnesses in the light of his
own judgment and political experience. Above all, he was the first European
writer to make the politics of Greece a real and living thing. His work has
never been surpassed in its force and vividness and, despite its democratic
bias, has done more than any other to bring the life of Greece into general
knowledge.
A bias of a
different character made itself apparent in the treatment of modem themes. No
serious attempt had been made to describe English conquests in the East, still
less to discuss the problems which it involved, before the appearance of Mill’s
History of British India in 1818. The style was bad, and the judgment both of
Hindu civilisation and of the East India Company unduly severe; but it
contained valuable information, and its power of generalisation was highly
stimulating. A second work which challenged current opinions was the first comprehensive
history of England since Hume. Its author, Lingard, had transcribed a large
number of documents at the Vatican during a visit to Rome, and in 1819 began
the publication of his history. Protestants were surprised at its temperate
tone; but it was unmistakably the work of a Catholic, and the picture of the
Reformation presented that
movement in a
new light. Subsequent editions were improved as they were called for, and the
book is not even now altogether superseded.
The most
widely read works, however, were those which represented conflicting political
interests. In the preface to his voluminous History of Europe Alison frankly
confesses that his purpose is to warn his fellow-countrymen against the perils
of change. The work became canonical with the dominant political party; but
with the downfall of the older Toryism after the Reform Bill it lost much of
its authority. If Alison found in the history of the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic wars the most suitable text for his sermon, the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries lay ready to hand as the chosen ground of the Whig retort.
The authoritative Whig presentation of modern "English histoiy was given
in 1827 in Hallam’s Constitutional History, which immediately took its place as
a text-book in the Universities and a ■lassie of political literature.
The part which has least stood the test of time, though it won the greatest
applause at the moment of its appearance, is that devoted to the first two
Stewarts.
Among those
who hailed the Constitutional History with delight was a writer in the
Edinburgh Review, who was to eclipse Hallam as the mouthpiece of the Whigs.
Macaulay had won reputation at a bound by his article on Milton in 1824; but it
was in the lengthy review of Hallam that he first fully expressed his attitude
towards the modem history of England. He found the historical essay rudimentary
and left it alive and complete, and his articles glitter like gems in the dusty
pages of the Edinburgh Review. Passing rapidly from the work to its subject, he
paints a character or a period in a few strong, broad strokes. It has been
truly said that Macaulay did for English history in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries what Shakespeare’s historical plays accomplished for
earlier times. Some essays, such as those on Temple and Chatham, are
masterpieces. The style is simple and rapid, the picture glows with colour, the
past lives again. On the other hand the essays as a whole suffer from serious
limitations. Macaulay’s knowledge, though vast, was confined to certain
periods, and he knew little of the Middle Ages or even of English history
before Elizabeth. Again, the essays formed part of the campaign against
Toryism. Macaulay was the greatest of party writers; but his trenchant judgments
and unsparing condemnations are now out of date. Thirdly, he lacked insight
into the complexities of character, and had no grasp of religious or
philosophical problems. The article on Bacon is fatal to his fame as a serious
thinker, and his treatment of George Fox betrays his narrow emotional limits.
The History of England is far more mature and satisfactory. There is more
knowledge and self-control, and the subject lends itself to dramatic treatment.
He had declared that the fragment of Mackintosh on the Revolution combined the
accuracy and judgment of Hallam with the vivacity and colouring of Southey, and
maintained
that a history of England written in this manner would be the most fascinating
book in the language. Such a book he set himself in his later years to write.
Though his William, his Marlborough, and his Penn require qualification, the
work is full of imperishable scenes and remains the most magnificent torso in
historical literature.
A writer who
stood ostentatiously aloof from the party cries of his day, but whose attitude
to history was no less determined by his personal convictions, possessed in a
conspicuous degree some of the qualifications that Macaulay lacked. Carlyle’s
main interest was in the moral world. His early essays defined history as the
essence of innumerable biographies, and the realisation of a divine plan. In
1837, after numerous studies of France in the eighteenth century, appeared the
History of the French Revolution, “ hot out of my soul, bom in blackness,
whirlwind and sorrow.” First of all writers and more successfully than any save
Michelet, he revealed the human and personal interest of the drama, its
tragedy, its pathos, its exaltation. But it is a superb prose epic, not a
history. Carlyle does not realise that the destructive work of the Revolution
was merely the completion of a process begun long before; and its constructive
work escapes him altogether. He was interested in the individual soul, and had
no real conception of the continuity of humanity or of the collective life in a
people. For this reason he was unable to grasp the significance of his subject
in relation to the history of the world. In regard to details the book is as
faulty as it is in its general conception. He exaggerated the heaviness of the
feudal burdens, the degradation of the clergy and noblesse, the desire of the
people for the complete upheaval that actually occurred. On the other hand he
excels in portraits, and the King, the Queen, Lafayette, Mirabeau, Danton,
Robespierre are still what he left them.
The French
Revolution was followed by the Lectures on Heroes amd Hero Worship, which
contain the fullest statement of Carlyle’s attitude towards history. Men being
mostly foolish, their wisest course was to follow great leaders. Mohammad,
Luther, Cromwell, and Napoleon were passed in review; but the supreme
illustration of the doctrine appeared in CromwelFs Letters and Speeches. One of
the greatest figures in European history was disinterred from a load of calumny
and allowed to speak for himself. Even while Carlyle was at work, Forster had
once again drawn the familiar portrait of the renegade republican. The Letters
amd Speeches convinced all reasonable men, Forster among them, not only of
Cromwell’s transcendent greatness but of his sincerity. By the side of this
immense achievement the faults of the book appear almost insignificant. Yet
they are grave enough, and further illustrate the weakness of Carlyle’s method.
His work is an epic, a Cromwelliad, in which the opponents and critics of the
hero are branded as fools or knaves. In the second place, Puritanism is
represented as a struggle of light against darkness, isolated from the
religious and social movements of preceding
839
generations
and perishing with the Protector. Finally, the political ideas of Cromwell
himself are misunderstood. The discovery of the Clarice Papers has revealed the
conservatism and the hesitations of the man whom Carlyle pictures as sharing
his own contempt for Parliament and advancing with unfaltering strides towards
dictatorship.
Carlyle
founded no school; but his main ideas were accepted by Froude, and set forth in
his brilliant narrative of the revolt of England against Rome. Though the fruit
of prolonged labour and containing a mass of new material, the book suffers
from faults which exclude it from the first rank. His hatred of Catholicism was
such that he turned a blind eye to the failings of the champions of the
Reformation and made Henry VIII into something like a national hero. The
volumes on Edward, Mary and Elizabeth are of greater value; but inaccuracies of
transcription and quotation are common, and his personal likes and dislikes are
violent and arbitrary. Nothing is too good to believe of the Regent Murray, while
the Casket letters are accepted en bloc in the indictment of Mary Stewart. The
same faults occur in his other works; and The English in Ireland is marred by
unconcealed animosity against the Irish Catholics. His style is unsurpassed;
but his statements need to be checked and his judgments controlled.
Meanwhile a
more exact school was forming at Oxford, the greatest figure of which was
Stubbs, the English Waitz, who made his name by editing Hoveden and other early
chroniclers for the Rolls Series, and especially by his introductions to these
editions. Succeeding Goldwin Smith as Regius Professor of Modem History at
Oxford, he began in 1874 to publish his Constitutional History, one of the two
greatest works of English historical scholarship of the last half-century. To a
knowledge of the sources which no one had ever possessed and a complete
acquaintance with German research on Teutonic institutions Stubbs joined a rare
critical acumen and an almost infallible judgment. He succeeded not only in
reconstructing the main lines of English constitutional development, but in
giving the first authoritative account of English history till the coming of
the Tudors. The first volume is now partially antiquated; but the second and
third volumes are still our best guides to the later Middle Ages. Stubbs was a
master of pregnant and weighty phrase. His character studies are often models
of portraiture, and the survey of England at the close of the Middle Ages,
which fills the last half of the third volume, is a masterpiece of lightly home
learning and artistic presentation. His friend and fellow-worker, Freeman,
differed widely from him in temperament and outlook. Stubbs was reserved and
concise; Freeman was a hero-worshipper and propagandist and dragged every
detail on which he could lay hands into his pages. Equally different was their
sphere of work. While Stubbs spent his life in studying medieval England,
Freeman preached the unity of history and was equally at home in Athens and
Rome, Aachen and
840
Freeman. J. R. Green. Gardiner. Lecky.
Constantinople.
His output was enormous and no part of it is without value. The Federal
Government and the History of Sicily are imposing fragments, and the Historical
Essays are vigorous and erudite. The Norman Conquest, with its pendant WilUam
Rufus, is the crown of Freeman’s life. Prolix though it is, disfigured by
prejudices and preferences, weak on its legal and institutional side and
neglectful of unprinted sources, it is nevertheless a noble monument of
historical research, full of sound learning and brilliant writing. The third
member of the Oxford school belonged to a younger generation than those whom,
in a famous dedication, he saluted as his masters, and died before them. Though
the historical essays of Green’s earlier life are often models of delicate
grace and his later works are solid contributions to a knowledge of early
England, it is the Short History which has immortalised his name. The hero of
his story was the English people; only thus, he taught, could English history
be conceived as a whole and properly understood. His enunciation of what has
now become a commonplace was a landmark in historic study. Not less admirable
than the design was its execution. By skilful grouping of periods and omission
of unessential detail, by a vivid style and sympathy with every aspect of
national life, social, literary, religious, artistic, no less than political,
he succeeded in giving a living picture of the development of England within
the compass of a single volume. The difficulties of such a task are indicated
by the fact that no one but Green has accomplished it in England or elsewhere.
The exact
methods of the Oxford school reappear in Gardiner’s monumental work on the
Puritan Revolution. To the detachment of Guizot and Ranke he added an immensely
greater acquaintance with the sources, and for the first time narrated the most
critical years of English history with full knowledge and unerring judgment. If
it be one of the sovereign duties of the historian to make the standpoint and
personalities of rival factions intelligible, Gardiner is one of the greatest
of historians. His knowledge and catholicity of temper enabled him to
understand men who could never understand one another. He sees the grandeur of
the political ideal of Bacon as clearly as he sees that of Coke and Pym, and
makes his readers feel how much each side has contributed to the making of
England. Though of inferior merit to Gardiner’s magnificent achievement,
Lecky’s history of the eighteenth century is a work of considerable importance.
The volumes on England are rather in the nature of a commentary on certain
aspects of national life than a narrative of events, and in no way supersede
the meritorious work of Lord Stanhope. Of far greater value are the Irish volumes,
which gave the first full and impartial account of the Grattan Parliament and
the Union and corrected the innumerable errors of fact and judgment into which
Froude had fallen.
A new vein of
historical study was opened up by Seeley. Confining
Seeley. Other English historians.—North America.
841
himself in
the main to the modem world, defining history as the life of States and keeping
ever in view their international relationships, Seeley’s knowledge of the
diplomatic history of modem Europe was wide and deep. His Life of Stein
introduced English readers to a new aspect of the Napoleonic era. His Expansion
of England explained with extraordinary clearness the relation between the
foundation of the British Empire and the struggle with France. Finally, the
posthumous volumes on British Policy traced with masterly skill the influence
of the religious and dynastic struggles of the Continent on foreign policy from
Elizabeth to William of Orange. Though his view of history was exclusively
political, Seeley was an inspiring writer and teacher, and his work, though
small in bulk, is of high quality. Several other considsrable works were
written during the last decades of the century. In Italy and her Invaders
Hodgkin produced one of the most fascinating among recent historical works.
Creighton portrayed the Papacy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the
detached and reticent manner of Ranke. English history in the nineteenth
century has been impartially related in a series of works by Spencer Walpole.
Among writings of smaller dimensions may be mentioned Bryce’s Holy Roman
Empire, Brewer’s volumes on Wolsey, Trevelyan’s Early Life of Charles James
Fox, and Church’s History of the Oxford Movement. This brief summary may be
closed with the names of two men whose loss the world of scholars is still
mourning—Maitland, whose studies of the early history of English law and
society are equally remarkable for their learning, originality and charm, and
Lord Acton, who, though he never wrote a book, inspired the writing of many
books, left behind him valuable essays and fragments, and by his universal
knowledge, manysided personality, and enthusiasm for freedom, broadened and
deepened the conception of history.
In the New
World the first notable historian was Bancroft, whose History of the United
States began to appear in 1834. It reflected the spirit of Jacksonian
democracy, exuberant, self-satisfied, uncritical. It immediately became
canonical, and it is only in quite recent years that a more critical
scholarship has challenged its dominion. A similar tendency to the idealisation
of his countrymen disfigured Palfrey’s important work on New England. While men
of all parties agreed in praise of the colonial period, differences of opinion
manifested themselves when the history of the early Presidents came to be
narrated. Thus a strong Federalist bias disfigures the valuable work of
Hildreth. This weakness has now been largely overcome, and we may trust Henry
Adams for the period of Jefferson and Madison, and Rhodes for the story of the
slavery struggle. American historians, however, have achieved their greatest
triumph outside the borders of their country. Parkman described the struggle of
France and England for Canada in a series of brilliant monographs. Prescott
wrote the story of Spain in the
842
Italy. Spain. Slavonic countries.
days of her
glory and of her conquests in the New World. Motley studied the Dutch War of
Independence in works of extraordinary power and wide research, marred by
excessive partiality for his heroes, William the Silent and Bameveldt. More
recently, Captain Mahan has illuminated history by directing attention to the
part played by sea power in the fortunes of modem States, and founded a school
of naval historians in both hemispheres.
Historical research
has been actively pursued in Italy. Mai discovered and gave to the world many
of the treasures of the Vatican Library; Visconti and Borghesi devoted their
unique gifts to archaeology and epigraphy; Troya presented the first detailed
view of the invasions; Cesare Cantu brought together much information relating
to literature and culture in his History of Italy. Litta’s studies on the Great
Families of Italy, and Sclopis’ History of Legislation, are of permanent value.
Recent events were described in Colletta’s narrative of the chequered fortunes
of Naples, Botta’s survey of the Napoleonic period, Coppi’s continuation of the
annals of Muratori, and Farini’s History of the Papal States. Historical
studies in Tuscany were fostered by the wealth and zeal of Gino Capponi, the
historian of Florence, to whom the formation of the Archivio Storico, the first
Italian historical review, was chiefly due. In the latter half of the century
Ferrari produced a brilliant narrative of the Revolutions of Italy, Romanin wrote
the first adequate history of Venice, Amari related the fortunes of the
Mussulmans in Sicily, Villari won European reputation by his biographies of
Machiavelli and Savonarola and his studies of the early history of Florence,
and Pais is at work on a comprehensive history of early Italy. In Spain
Llorente compiled his attack on the Inquisition, and the national annals were
recorded in the interminable volumes of Lafuente. Of far higher merit is the
cooperative history edited by Canovas for the Spanish Academy. In Danvila y
Collado, Menendez y Pelayo, and Altamira, Spain possesses historical scholars
of the first rank. Sweden has been provided with a national history by Geijer,
Hungary by Mailath, Greece by Paparrigopoulo. The archives of Belgium and Holland
have yielded a rich harvest to the labours of Gachard and Fredericq, Fruin and
Blok.
The Slavonic
countries have shared in the general movement. Karamsin aud Solovieff have
written the history of Russia, and BilbassofFs Catharine II has become a classic.
Lelewel, the Polish Michelet, employed his exile in compiling a work on
medieval Poland.. It is in Bohemia, however, that the growth of historical
studies has been most closely related to the national life. Since the battle of
the White Hill Bohemian culture had ceased to exist; but in the early years of
the nineteenth century the national consciousness was reawakened by the
writings of Kollar, Safafik, and Palacky, who was appointed by the Diet to
write the history of the nation. The most important part of the work,
the
magnificent treatment of Hus, was denounced by the censor; but though Palacty
cancelled certain passages and inserted others, he lived long enough to witness
the abolition of the censorship and to reinsert the original words. The book
was not only a historical masterpiece but also a political event, a revelation
to a down-trodden people of the glory of their past, and a trumpet-call to play
their part in the world once more. The critical study of history, however, has
also led to the destruction of many cherished patriotic beliefs. In
Switzerland the legend of Tell and others that Johannes ]\Xiiller had
unsuspectingly accepted were ruthlessly destroyed by Kopp. When Herculano de
Carvalho’s great History of Portugal began to appear it was so fiercely
denounced that after describing a single century the author thought well to
desist.
Historical
science is becoming increasingly international, and the remainder of the field
may be surveyed without regard to national boundaries.
The history
of Roman studies since Niebuhr is largely the record of the activity of a
single man. While Mommsen was growing up, little work of outstanding importance
appeared except Drumann’s biographies of Caesar and his contemporaries and
Rubino’s constitutional studies. After publishing his first work on Roman
Associations in 1843, he visited Italy, where he founded the scientific study
of early Italian dialects and ethnography. He then turned to Latin epigraphy.
Borghesi had made large collections for a Corpus and was hoping for aid from
Paris; but, as aid did not arrive, Mommsen began the work singlehanded, and
edited the Samnite and Neapolitan inscriptions. Shortly afterwards, the Berlin
Academy undertook the task and entrusted the direction to Mommsen. The Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinarum, the greatest historical undertaking of the century,
was the main occupation and the most important monument of his life. Liberally
supported by the Academy and aided by the Archaeological Institute in Rome,
Mommsen produced the first volume in 1863, and lived to see the appearance of
nearly twenty volumes, half of which he edited himself. The Corpus has
recovered for the world large tracts of Roman history and forms one of the main
sources of Mommsen’s own writings.
In productive
power Mommsen equalled Ranke, and surpassed all other historians of the first
rank. The most popular and personal of his works, the greatest effort of his
genius though not of his scholarship, was the Roman History, which appeared in
three volumes, in 1854-6. Written, for a series in which the results, not the
processes, of learning were demanded, the work differed fundamentally from
Niebuhr’s, and from the valuable volumes in which Schwegler was in the same
years testing Niebuhr’s results. Legendary matter was simply omitted, the
opinions of the author boldly advanced without proof. The work vibrates with
power, passion, genius. Niebuhr had reconstructed the institutions of ancient
Rome; Mommsen revealed its life. The third volume was the
844
climax of the
whole. The great events and personalities of the closing days of the Republic,
the lyrical enthusiasm for Caesar, the fiery attack on Pompey and Cicero, the
consummate style, the epigram.* and allusions, render it perhaps the most
striking single volume in historical literature. Despite well-grounded
criticisms of its political morality, the book remains without a rival. Mommsen
next turned to special departments of research and published the Chronology in
1858, the Coinage in 1860, and the Digest during the years 1868-70. He then
began his largest and, in his own opinion, most important work, the
Staatsrecht, one of the greatest constitutional treatises in historical
literature. In this he broke new ground, extending his survey to the Empire and
explaining the nature and evolution of the Principate. Before the Staatsrecht
was finished, the world was surprised by a massive survey of the Provinces of
the Roman Empire, based on the inscriptions, explaining for the first time the
character and achievements of the imperial administration, and disposing for
ever of the notion that the Empire was merely an age of despotism and decay.
The book was described as the fifth volume of the Roman History; but the
projected fourth volume, on the Empire itself, was, unhappily, never written.
The closing years of his life were mainly devoted to a gigantic treatise on
Roman Criminal Law and to editions of Jordanes, Cassiodorus, Nennius, the Liber
PontificaHs, and the Theodosian Code, thus extending the sphere of his studies
till Rome was swallowed up in the Middle Ages. His publications extended over
sixty years. There is no immaturity in his early works and no decline in the
later. The imaginative and critical faculties met and balanced the large vision
and the genius for detail. The complete assimilation and reproduction of a
classical civilisation for which scholars have struggled ever since Scaliger
has been achieved by Mommsen alone. Rome before him was like modem Europe
before Ranke. He was, too, more than a man of learning. He had championed
Schleswig-Holstein, had lost his professorship at Leipzig during the reaction,
had withstood Bismarck in the plenitude of his power, and aided the movement
for intellectual and artistic liberty. His works are alive, and however remote
the subject we feel that we are dealing with living men.
When Otfried
Muller explored Greece in 1840 he was accompanied by Ernst Curtius, and the
period which opened with his death is chiefly associated with the name of his
greatest pupil. The collection of inscriptions has gone rapidly forward, and
Bockh’s Corpus has been broken up into geographical sections; but Greek history
has gained even more from the spade. After winning his spurs with a work on the
Peloponnesus he published the first volume of his Greek History in 1861, in
which he incorporated the latest researches of himself and others in Greece and
Asia Minor. Though greatly inferior to Grote in his handling of politics,
Curtius for the first time connected Greek history with topography and dealt
fully with the aesthetic side of Greek civilisation. The work
Expansion of Hellenic learning.
845
makes an
impression rather of charm than of power, and the enthusiasm of the discoverer
has led to a somewhat idealised reconstruction of Hellenic culture; but it
widened the conception of Greek history and still retains a certain authority.
Curtius’
volumes were scarcely completed when Schliemann’s excavations in Troy, Mycenae
and Tiryns opened up prehistoric Hellas. The results were marvellous; but the
methods were crude and unscholarly. Having spent his life in business,
Schliemann brought an untrained mind to his task, embraced baseless hypotheses,
and in the process of excavation seriously damaged some of the remains. Much of
his work has had to be done over again by Dorpfeld. A more perfect technique
has been shown in the excavations of Olympia by the Germans, of Delphi by the
French, and in those now being carried on by the British School at Sparta. The
new material which has been gathered in such bewildering quantity has been
reduced to narrative form by Busolt, Beloch, Holm, Eduard Meyer, and Bury. The
economic side of Greek history has been explored by Pohlmann, and the discovery
of the Constitution of Athens has been utilised in Wilamowitz’ classical work
on Athenian institutions. Droysen’s labours on the Hellenistic era have been
resumed by Karst and Niese, Mahaffy, Bouche-Leclercq, and Bevan ; and Freeman
devoted his closing years to the history of Greek Sicily. The intellectual and
artistic life of Greece has been illustrated by Zeller, Gomperz, Brunn, and
innumerable other workers; but the problem of the Homeric poems remains as
inscrutable as ever. The history of medieval Greece and of the Byzantine
Empire, the services of which to civilisation Gibbon never appreciated, has
been reconstructed by the solid researches of Hopf and Finlay, Rambaud and
Diehl, Schlumberger, Bury, Sathas, and Lambros. Its literature has been
surveyed by Krumbacher, its law by Zacharia von Lingenthal, and its
contribution to art assessed in the brilliant studies of Strzygowski.
One of the
most notable achievements of nineteenth century scholarship was the opening up
of the East by comparative philology and archaeology. The relationship between
Sanskrit and the languages of Europe that had been established by Sir William
Jones, Colebrooke, and Friedrich Schlegel was proved in detail by Bopp in 1817.
Twenty years later, Burnouf used the Pali manuscripts discovered by Bryan
Hodgson in Nepal to reveal Buddhism to the West, and Lassen began his encyclopaedic
survey of ancient India. The key to hieratic Egyptian was discovered by Young
and Champollion, and the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria were deciphered by
the combined labours of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, Hincks, Oppert and
Rawlinson. Hittite, like Etruscan, still awaits a key. In the middle of the
century systematic excavations and surveys were commenced. Lepsius was sent to
Egypt by the King of Prussia, and his work of revelation neus been continued by
Brugsch, Mariette, Maspero, and Flinders Petrie. The spades of Botta and Layard
846
Oriental and biblical research.
brought
Assyria to light, and Lycia was revealed by Fellows. Semitic studies were
systematically inaugurated by Sylvestre de Sacy and his pupils, and have
profited by Renan’s Corpus of Inscriptions. The first critical account of
Mohammad and the early Caliphs was given by Weil in 1843, and Dozy brought
order into the chaotic and legendary history of the Moors in Spain. Almost
every province of the history of antiquity has benefited by the encyclopaedic
knowledge of Gutschmid. The researches into the ancient East were first
coordinated and popularised in Duncker’s History of Antiquity. But Duncker’s
knowledge was second-hand, and his work is now largely antiquated. The gigantic
task of writing the history of antiquity from the original sources is now being
carried out with incomparable learning and power by Eduard Meyer. The horizon
is still rapidly widening. The history of civilisation is being pushed
steadily back, and the recent sensational discoveries of the Tel-el-Amama
tablets and the Oxyrhynchus papyri, of Arthur Evans at Cnossus, de Sarzec at
Tello, de Morgan at Susa, and Hilprecht at Nippur, open up boundless vistas and
counsel arrest of judgment.
The
revelation of the ancient East has owed and contributed much to the critical
study of the Old Testament, and many of the essential problems of Jewish
history have been rescued from controversy. Before the century opened, Eichhorn
had adopted the principle of regarding the books of the Old Testament as
oriental writings, to be interpreted in accordance with Semitic habits of
thought. In the second and third decades Gesenius and Ewald laid the
foundations of exact Semitic philology, and the latter’s History of Israel, a
work unsurpassed for literary power, skilful arrangement, and freshness of
treatment, brought the Jews definitely within the circle of historic studies.
In 1836, Vatke introduced order into the books and recovered the stages of religious
development, by showing that the Law was later than the Prophets and the Psalms
later than both. His work was confirmed and continued by Reuss and Graf, and in
the hands of Kuenen and Wellhausen became the basis of a revised narrative.
Jewish history has benefited comparatively little by excavations but largely by
the light thrown on Semitic habits of thought by such scholars as Lagarde,
Noldeke, and Robertson Smith.
The Christian
Church stood equally in need of objective treatment. The school of Spittler and
Planck rejected a mass of legendary detail; but they were not yet imbued with
the historical spirit. A new era opened in 1826 with the first volume of
Neander’s History of the Church. Neander’s temperament was that of a Pietist.
He failed to appreciate the political, the national, the institutional side of
Church history, and he judged men by the measure of their edification. In
critical questions he shared the weakness of the Romanticists, relying on the
commonly accepted sources, not all of them authentic, and adding little that
was new. As a guide, despite his massive learning, he was less useful than his
contemporary Gieseler. His mission was to show the reality and beauty of the
religious life throughout Christian histoiy. At
the opposite
pole of thought stood Baur. Neander represented the new historic movement by
his passionate interest in the past, the Tubingen professor by his application
of critical methods to sacred history. His supreme achievement was to declare
that the writings of the Old and New Testaments and the events of Jewish and
Christian history must be studied in exactly the same way as other writings and
events. His second great merit was the introduction of the idea of law and
growth into the region of dogma and institutions. He had learned from Hegel to
regard history as the development of spirit, each phase necessitating its
successor; but this attitude led him, as it had led Hegel, to undervalue the
influence of individuals. In their detailed critical work, again, Baur and his
school committed serious errors, and their chronology of the Canon, their
exaggeration of the differences between Peter and Paul, above all, their
neglect of the personality of Christ in their explanations of the foundation of
Christianity, have been rejected by subsequent research.
Since the
decline of the Tubingen school, the study of Church history has made immense
progress. The opening of the Vatican archives in 1881 has rendered possible the
documentary study of the Papacy. Light has been thrown on the atmosphere out of
which Christianity grew by the researches of Schurer, Hausrath and Pfleiderer.
The constitution of the early Church has been recovered by Lightfoot, Hatch,
and Weiszacker, the life of its members revealed by Rossi’s labours in the Roman
Catacombs, and its fortunes related in Renan’s brilliant volumes on the Origins
of Christianity. Ramsay has reconstructed the history of the Church in Asia
Minor from inscriptions and monuments. The evolution of dogma has been traced
by Domer and Hamack, of Canon Law by Richter and Hinschius. Large tracts of
ecclesiastical thought and practice have been lit up by the life-long labours
of Karl Hase, by Ritschl’s profound studies of Pietism, and by the mass ’e
monographs of Henry Charles Lea, the Nestor of American historians. It is at
last becoming possible to treat Church history objectively. Hamack and Duchesne
touch at many points in the history of the early Church. Creighton and Pastor
do not seriously disagree about the Popes of the Renaissance. Kawerau’s works
on the Reformation approach very closely to the ideal of historical justice,
and some advance has been made on the Catholic side. The best account of Calvin
is by Kampschulte, and the legend of Luther’s suicide has been finally exploded
by Nicholas Paulus.
Though the
progress of historical science has been for the most part the work of
Protestants, important contributions have been made by Catholic scholars. The
renaissance of historical studies began in the second quarter of the century.
In France Montalembert and Ozanam painted some rose-coloured pictures of
monastic and medieval life; but the centre of the revival was Munich. Mohler’s
famous Symbolik revived
the methods
of Bossuet’s attack on the Reformation. Gorres studied the Mystics in a spirit
of Catholic romanticism. Phillips, Schulte, and Maassen explored the history of
Canon Law. Dollinger earned the applause of his Church by his massive attack on
the Reformation. Hefele began his classical History of the Councils;
Hergenrother published his profoundly learned study of Photius; and Pichler
related the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches.
The growth of
Ultramoiitanism under Pius IX divided Catholic scholarship into two camps.
Dollinger and his pupils not only rejected the definitions of the Vatican
Council, but proceeded to submit the entire history of the Church to a critical
if not a hostile examination. Dollinger himself denounced the papal claims in
Janus; Friedrich wrote a damaging history of the Council and of the growth of
Ultramontanism which preceded it; Reusch compiled a work of colossal erudition
on the Index of forbidden books. Schulte, the greatest of Canonists, gave the
histoiy of the Old Catholic movement, and Langen traced the history of the
Church to Innocent III. The Ultramontanes have been no less active and have
carried the war into the enemy’s camp. Hergenrother, the most learned of them
all, replied to Janus; Janssen’s famous History of the German People from the
close of the Middle Ages, the most successful of all Catholic histories, proved
that the eve of the Reformation was less dark, and the intellectual, social,
and moral confusion that accompanied it were greater, than had been supposed.
Denifle threw a flood of light on the philosophy and education of the Middle
Ages, and ended his life by a violent attack on the character of Luther. Pastor
is relating the history of the Papacy from the middle of the fifteenth century
with the aid of the Vatican archives. Gasquet has explained the methods by
which the English monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII. Onno Klopp, the
author of the monumental Fall of the House of Stewart, has explained the policy
of the Habsburgs in their struggle with Louis XIV, and Kervyn de Lettenhove has
defended the Catholic side in the Dutch War of Independence. The Gorres and Leo
Societies have formed convenient centres for Ultramontane scholarship. In
addition to the foes and friends of the Vatican Decrees, there have been
several historians who, though remaining within the fold, have had little
liking for Ultramontanism and have come into collision with authority. Kraus,
after reluctantly consenting to mutilate his valuable handbook of Church
history, turned to less directly controversial topics and produced a work of
enduring value on Christian art. Acton, after rendering yeoman’s service to
Dollinger during the Council and publishing outspoken pamphlets and letters on
the Papacy, withdrew from the fray and turned to the wider aspects of history.
Among other scholars of this class, Ehrhard, Batiffol, Loisy, and above all
Duchesne, have won an acknowledged position in patristic study and in the
histoiy of the early Church.
Increasing
attention has been paid to Kulturgeschichte, which may roughly be defined as
embracing the non-political aspects of civilisation. The founder of the genre
was Voltaire, whose Essai sur les Masters is the parent of innumerable studies
of the civilisation and social life of nations. The Volksseele was discovered
by Herder, the Romanticists, and Jacob Grimm, and intellectual developments
were included in the surveys of Guizot and Schlosser. It was not, however, till
the middle of the nineteenth century that it obtained an assured position
owing to the simultaneous activity of three distinguished writers. The
Revolution of 1848 was one of the influences that led Riehl to devote his life
to the study of German civilisation, the influence of natural conditions, the
psychology of classes, the circumstances, habits, and thoughts of the mass of
the people. By his Natural History of the German People, his monograph on the
Palatinate, and other works published during the fifties, Riehl contributed
more than anyone else to elucidate the influences that have determined German
life. While Riehl was busy with the elaboration of an historical sociology,
Gustav Freytag produced a survey of the life of the German people. His Pictures
from the Past are the nearest equivalent in historical literature to Green’s
Short History, and enjoy equal popularity. Freytag brought to his task wide
knowledge, a rare skill in the selection of illustrative material, and an
absorbing interest in the minutest manifestations of the life and character of
his countrymen. Though he was not a trained historian, his book contains much
information not easily found elsewhere and forms the best introduction to the
study of German history. The greatest of the triumvirate was Jacob Burckhardt.
His Age of Constamtme gave a vivid picture of the intellectual and religious
atmosphere of the fourth century; but it was by his incomparable Civilisation
of the Renaissance, published in 1860, that he won his position as the greatest
historian of culture. For the first time the manifold aspects and activities of
the Renaissance were studied separately and in combination, and the seed-time
of the modern world presented as a living whole. Of scarcely inferior merit to
Burck- hardt’s masterpiece is Friedlander’s picture of the life and thought of
the Roman Empire, which closely followed it in time of publication. Gregorovius’
City of Rome in the Middle Ages, Sainte-Beuve’s History of Part Royal, Lecky’s
volumes on Rationalism and European Morals, Symonds’ Renaissance in Italy,
Dill’s pictures of Roman society, are other well-known examples of a class of
works which have thrown light on problems with which the purely political
historian cannot deal. The value of Kulturgeschichte lies in its synthetic
treatment of human development, and no one would now venture to contend that
history is merely past politics. Its danger is that in its reaction against a
purely political treatment of history it may underestimate the importance of
the State, and in its preoccupation with the life of the people may overlook
the work of individuals. That these dangers are not imaginary
has been
shown in the heated controversy produced by Lamprecht’s remarkable German
History.
Since the
middle of the century the study of institutions has become one of the main
tasks of the historian. The outstanding works of Waitz and Stubbs, Fustel de
Coulanges, and Mommsen have already been mentioned. Maine’s Ancient Law and
Fustel’s La Cite Antique interested wide circles in the conceptions underlying
Greek and Roman life. Maurer and Ficker, Brunner and Gierke have explored the
law and institutions of medieval Germany, Viollet and Luchaire those of France,
Gneist, Maitland, Seebohm, Liebermann, and Vinogradoff those of England. Karl
Hegel spent a long life in studying the evolution of towns. Economic and social
conditions have also been subjected to minute scrutiny. In the middle of the
century Knies and Roscher drew attention to the relativity of economic
principles and appealed to history as a guide and a test. Shortly afterwards,
Nitzsch and Inama-Sternegg wrote the economic history of the German people, Thorold
Rogers reconstructed the economic life of England from manorial registers and
prices, and Levasseur narrated the history of the labouring classes of France.
Above all, the writings of Schmoller and his pupils have enriched history with
innumerable studies of the economic life of the past.
Finally
primitive civilisation has been brought within the circle of historical study.
The discoveries of Boucher des Perthes, Pitt-Rivers, and their successors, have
thrown back the opening of the human drama thousands of years, and we recreate
prehistoric man from language and legend, skull and weapon. Anthropology has
become a science and the habits and beliefs of our savage ancestors have been
made intelligible.
While
historical science is thus extending its conquests in every direction, the
philosophy of history lags behind. It helps us little to have been told by
Hegel that the spirit of man is progressively reaching the consciousness of its
own freedom. We should allow their due value to the efforts of Herder and
Ritter, of Buckle and Ratzel, towards measuring the influence of geographical
and natural conditions on human development and even to Comte’s attempted
formulation of the laws of mental and social evolution. But, though the day may
not yet have dawned when for working hypotheses shall be substituted a
philosophy of history, defining and explaining the purpose and the plan of
human evolution, every true historian contributes, equally with the students of
physical science and of psychology, to the progress of our knowledge of man.
Langlois, C. V. Bibliographic Historique. 2 vols. Paris. 1904. Stein, H.
Bibliographic generate. Paris. 1897.
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Irving, J.
Annals of our Time (1837-91). Last part 1892.
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Rose, J. H.
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Shadwell, A.
Industrial efficiency; a comparative study of industrial life in England,
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FOREIGN
RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES DURING THE CIVIL WAR.
Government,
Parliamentary and Congressional publications of Great Britain and the United
States.
Annuaire de l’lnstitut de Droit International. Paris, etc.
Vol. i, 1877, pp- 108-14, 139-40 (the Three Rules of Washington); Vol. xv,
1896, pp. 231, 232 (transport of persons by sea).
Bancroft, F.
Life of. By W. H. Seward. 2 vols. New York and London.
1900, '
Bernard, M. A
Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Britain daring the American Civil
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History and Digest of the International
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Paris. 1879-99.
Wallier, R. Le Vingtieme siecle politique. Paris. 1901, etc.
Principal Journals.—Monarchist: le Fran9ais, l’Univers, la Gazette de
France, le Petit moniteur universel, le Soleil, le Gaulois; Catholic: la Libre
Parole, l’^clair, la Croix; Republican, Left Centre or Opportunist: Journal des
Dibats, le Temps, la Republique Franfaise, le Figaro, le xixe Siecle
; Radical and Socialist-Radical: le Siecle, le Rappel, l’Aurore, le Radical, la
Lanterne, 1’Action; Bonapartist or Nationalist: le Pays, la Patrie, la Presse,
l’^cho de Paris; Popular or for news only: le Petit Journal, le Petit Parisien,
le Matin, le Journal; Socialist: la Petite Republique, l’Humanite, le Cri du
peuple, la Guerre sociale. (See Avenel. Annuaire de la Presse fran^aise.)
Reviews: dea Deux Mondes, de Paris, Revue Bleue, Revue politique et
Parle- mentaire, Nouvelle Revue, Grande Revue, le Correspondant, la Revue
hebdomadaire, Revue Socialiste.
B. Letters
and Memoirs.
Bardonx, A. Dix annces de vie politique. Paris. 1882.
Blanc, L. La Constitution de 1875. Paris. 1883.
Brisson, H. Souvenirs. Paris. 1908.
Callet, A., Membre de l’Assemblee nationale. Les origines de la
Troisieme Republique. Paris. 1889.
Les responsabilites. Paris. 1895.
Cassagnac, P. de. Histoire de la Troisieme Republique. Paris. 1875.
Chambord, Comte de. Merits politiques et correspondance, de 1841 a 1879.
Paris.
1880.
Chesnelong, P. C. La campagne monarchiste d’octobre 1873. Paris. 1895.
Clamageran, J. J. Correspondance. Paris. 1906.
Delafosse, J. Vingt ans au Parlement. Paris. 1899.
Delpit, M. Journal et correspondance. Paris. 1897.
Denormandie, E. Notes et Souvenirs. Paris. 1896.
Dreux Bre'ze, Marquis de. Notes et Souvenirs pour servir a l’histoire du
Parti royaliste. 4th edn. Paris. 1899.
Du Barail, General F. C. Mes Souvenirs. 3 vols. Paris. 1905.
Ducrot, General. Memoires sur les projets de Restauration monarchique.
Paris. 1909.
Falloux, Comte F. A. P. de. Memoires d’un royaliste. 2 vols. Paris.
1888. Fidus (Eugene Balleyguier dit Loudun). Journal. 4 vols. Paris. 1888,
1890.
La mort du Prince Imperial. Paris. 1887.
Gambetta, L. Souvenirs publies par Bertol-Graivil. Paris. 1883.
Lettres; in Revue de Paris. December,
1906 and January, 1907.
Gontaut-Biron,
Vicomte E. de. Memoires. 2 vols. Ed. A. Dreux. Paris. 1906, 1907.
Harcourt, Emmanuel de. Souvenirs inedits.
Lamy, E. Quatre ans de provisoire de 1871 a 1875. Paris. 1876.
Lefevre, Pontalis, A. L’Assemble'e nationale et M. Thiers. In the
Correspondant,
1879.
Lengle, P. Le neveu de Bonaparte, ou le parti bonapartiste et le prince
Napoleon,
, de 1879 a 1893. Paris. 1893.
Littre, F. L’etablissement de la Troisieme Republique. Paris. 1880.
Marcere, E. de. Entretiens et Souvenirs Politiques. 2 vols. Paris. 1894.
Le seize mai et la fin du Septennat. Paris.
1900. .
L’assemblee nationale, le gouvernement de
Thiers. Paris. 1904.
Margerie, de. Pages d’Histoire Contemporaine. Paris. 1873.
Meaux, Vicomte C. de. Souvenirs Politiques. Paris. 1904.
Perin, G. Discours Politiques et Notes de Voyage. Paris. 1907.
Richard, R. Le bonapartisme sous la troisieme Re'publique. Paris.
Simon, J. Le gouvernement de M. Thiers. 2 vols. Paris. 1878.
Le soir de ma journ^e. Paris. 1895.
Taine, H. Correspondance. Vols. hi
and iv. Paris. 1905.
Target, P. L. Dix ans de Republique. Paris. 1889.
Thiers, A. Notes et Souvenirs de 1870 a 1873. Paris. 1903.
Occupation et liberation du territoire.
(Correspondance.) 2 vols. Paris.
1903.
Vinols de Montfleury, Baron J, G, Memoires d’un Membre de l’assemble'e
nationale. Paris. 1883,
II. GENERAL HISTORIES.
Benoit, L. E. Histoire de quinze ans, 1870-85. Paris. 1886.
Berthezene, A. Histoire de cent ans. La Basse Republique, 1870-90.
Paris. 1900. Coubertin, P. de. L’evolution francaise sous la Troisieme
Republique. 1896. Eng.
trans. by T. Hapgood, with preface by Albert Shaw. Loudon. 1898.
Courcelle-Seneuil, J. G. La Societe moderne. Paris. 1892.
Denis, S. Histoire contemporaine. 4 vols. Paris. 1902.
Duret, C. Histoire de France de 1870 a 1873. 2 vols. Paris. 1901.
Ferry, J. La Troisieme Republique. In Rev. de Paris, 1897, p. 1.
Goyau, G. Patriotisme et humanitarisme. Essai d’histoire contemporaine.
Paris. 1901.
Guillon, E. Quatre-vingt ans d’Histoire nationale. Paris. 1891.
Hanotaux, G. Histoire de la France contemporaine. 4
vols. Eng. trans. by
C. Tarver. Westminster. 1903.
Latimer, E.
France in the xixth Century, 1830-90. 1906.
Lavisse, E.
and Rambaud, A. Histoire Generale. T. xn
(France). 1898.
Martin, H. Histoire contemporaine de la France. Paris. 1885.
Muel, Leon. Gouvernements, ministeres et constitutions de la France
jusqu’en 1890. Paris. 1890.
Precis historique des assemblies
parlementaires jusqu’en 1895. Paris. 1896.
Bambaud, A. Histoire de la civilisation contemporaine en France. 1888.
Teste, L. Les monarchistes sous la Troisieme Republique. Paris. 1891.
Vogel, K. Die dritte franzflsische Republik bis 1895. Stuttgart. 1895.
Weill, G. Histoire du parti republicain en France. Paris. 1900.
Zevort, E. La France sous le regime du Suffrage Universel. Paris. 1894.
Histoire de la Troisieme Republique. To
the death of President Carnot.
4 vols. Paris. 1901.
III. BIOGRAPHIES.
Aumale, Due de. By E. Daudet. Paris. 1898.
Chambord, Comte de. By Dubose de Pesquidoux. Paris. 1887.
ou Henri de France. By H. de Pene. Paris.
1884.
Histoire d’Henri V. By A. de Saint-Albin.
Paris. 1874.
Dufaure, sa vie et ses discours. By G. Picot.
Paris. 1883.
Ferry, Jules.
By A. Rambaud. Paris. 1903.
Gambetta. Sa vie, ses ide'es politiques. By Neucastel. Paris. 1885.
a
l’Assemblee. By E. de Pressense. In Revue Bleue. 1883.
By Joseph Reinach. Paris. 1885.
Souvenirs anecdotiques. By A. Toumier. 1893.
inconnu. By A. Lavertujon. Paris. 1909.
Grevy, Jules.
By Barboux. Paris.
Paris, Comte de. By le Marquis de Flers. Paris. 1888.
Say, Leon. Sa vie, ses oeuvres. By Michel. 2
vols. Paris. 1899.
Simon, Jules.
By Leon Sdch£. Paris. 1887.
Thiers, M., ou cinquante annees d’Histoire contemporaine. By
C. de Mazade. Paris. 1884.
A. By P. de Remusat. Paris. 1889.
Waldeck-Rousseau.
By E. Charles. Paris. 1902.
By H. Leyret. 2 vols. Paris. 1906.
IV. SPECIAL WORKS.
A. Political.
Broglie, Albert Due de. Histoire et Politique: Etude sur la Constitution
de 1875. Paris. 1897.
Castellane, Marquis de. Le Dernier Essai de restauration monarchique de
1873.
In the Nouvelle Revue. 1895.
Daudet, E. Souvenirs de la Presidence du Marechal MacMahon. Paris. 1879.
La verite sur l’essai de Restauration
monarchiste en 1873. Paris. 1873.
Doniol, H. La liberation du territoire. Paris. 1897.
Dufeuille, E. Les monarchistes et la Republique. In the Correspondant,
1883,
1884.
Duguet, E. Les deputes et les cahiers electoraux de 1889. Paris. 1890.
Favre, L. Histoire politique de l’annee 1877. 2 vols. Paris. 1880.
Germain-Cornille, R. Les cahiers electoraux de 1881. Paris. 1882.
Grenville
Murray, E. C. The men of the Septennat. 1876.
Hippeau, E. Histoire diplomatique de la Troisieme Republique. Paris.
1888. Lucas, A. Precis historique de l’affaire du Panama. Paris. 1893.
Mermeix, G. T. Les Coulisses du Boulangisme. Paris. 1890.
Proces du General Boulanger devant la Haute Cour. Paris. 1889.
Reinach, J. Le Ministere Gambetta. Paris. 1884.
La Politique opportuniste. Paris. 1890.
Histoire de l’affaire Dreyfus. 6 vols. Paris.
1902-8.
Verly, A. Le general Boulanger et la Conspiration monarchique. Paris.
1893.
B. Social.
Associations professionnelles ouvrieres, publies par l’Office du
travail. Vol. I. 1899. Bourdeau, J. L’evolution du Socialisme. Paris. 1901.
Chailley-Bert, J. and Fontaine, A. Lois Sociales, 1895 to 1909. Paris.
1909. Eichthal, E. de. Socialisme, communisme, et collectivisme. 2nd edn. 1901.
Guesde, J. Quatre ans de lutte de Classe a la Chambre. Paris. 1901.
Halevy, D. Essai sur le mouvement ouvrier franijais. Paris. 1901.
Jaures, J. Etudes Socialistes. Paris. 1901.
Lagardelle. L’evolution des syndicate ouvriers en France. Paris. 1901.
Lavy, A. L’ceuvre de Millerand. Paris. 1902.
Louis, P. Histoire du Socialisme franfais. Paris. 1901.
Les etapes du Socialisms. Paris. 1904.
Pelloutier, F. L. E. Histoire des Bourses du travail. Paris. 1902.
Seilhac, L. de. Le monde socialiste. Paris. 1904.
Les congres ouvriers en France, 1876-97.
Paris. 1899.
Skarzinski, Count L. Le progres social a la fin du xix° siecle. Paris.
1901. Waldeck-Rousseau, P. M. Questions Sociales. Paris. 1900.
Weill, G. Histoire du Mouvement Social en France. Paris. 1904.
C. Religious Affairs.
Debidour, A. L’lDglise catholique et l’Etat de 1870 k 1906. 2
vols. Paris. 1906.
(Based upon
the French Archives and containing a very complete bibliography.) Doumergue, E. Essai sur l’histoire du culte reforme. Paris. 1890.
Felice, G. de, and Bonifas, F. Histoire des protestants de France. 6th
edn.
Toulouse. 1875.
Legislation des cultes protestants, 1787-1887. Paris. 1887.
Mater, A. La politique religieuse de la Republique franijaise. Paris.
1909.
Les textes de la politique francaise en
matiere ecclesiastique, 1906-8. Paris.
1909.
D. Finances.
Amagat, A. L. Les finances franijaises sous 1’Assemble nationale et les
Chambres republicaines, 1883 et 1889. 2 vols. Paris.
Bodet, M. Les finances fran^aises de 1870 a 1878. 2 vols. Paris. 1881.
Chirac, A. L’agiotage de 1870 a 1886. Paris. 1887.
Clarigny, A. C. Les finances de la France de 1870 a 1890. Paris. 1890.
Nicolas, C. Les budgets de la France depuis le commencement du xixe
siecle.
Tableaux. Paris. 1883.
Sudre, C. Les finances de la France au xixe siecle. 2 vols.
Paris. 1883. Wuhrer. Histoire de la Dette publique en France. 2 vols. Paris.
1886.
E. EnUCATION AND PUBLIC
INSTRUCTION.
Beauchamp, A. de. Recueil des lois et reglements sur l’Enseignement
Supdrieur, 1789-1898. 5 vols. Paris. 1898.
Bonrgeois, E. L’enseignement secondaire et le voeu de la France. Paris.
1900. Duplan, E. L’enseignement primaire public, 1877-88. 2 vols. Paris. 1891.
Durand, A. La legislation des ecoles maternelles et des ecoles primaires.
Paris.
1882.
Duruy, A. L’instruction publique et la democratic, 1879-86. Paris. 1889.
Greard, V. C. O. La legislation de l’Enseignement primaire en France depuis
1789.
7 vols. Paris. 1890-1902.
Liard, L. L’Enseignement Superieur en France de 1789 a 1893. 2 vols.
Paris. 1889-94.
Mace, V. La ligue de l’Enseignement. Paris. 1890.
Spuller, S. E. Au ministere de l’lnstruction Publique, 1887 et 1893. 2
vols. Paris.
1888, 1895.
F. Economic Development.
Annuaire Statistique de la France. Yearly. Paris.
Statistique agricole de la France de 1892. Paris. 1897.
Resultats statistiques du recensement de la population de 1901. 1906.
Resultats statistiques du recensement des industries et professions du
29 mars, 1896. Paris. 1901.
Baudrillart, H. J. L. Les populations agricoles de la France. 3 vols.
1886, 1891. Henry, A. and de Lavergne. La richesse de la France. Paris. 1909.
Leon, P. Fleuves, canaux, chemins de fer. Paris. 1903.
Les forces productives de la France. Ouvrage collectif. Paris. 1908.
Levasseur, E. La population fran9aise depuis 1789. 3 vols. Paris.
1889-92.
Questions ouvrieres et industrielles sous la
Troisieme Republique. Paris. 1906.
Lu^ay, Comte H. de. Les voeux des agriculteurs de France, 1868-94.
Noel, O. Histoire du commerce exterieur de la France depuis la
Revolution.
Paris. 1879.
La Banque de France. Paris. 1891,
Picard, A. Les chemins de fer fran^is. 6 vols. Paris. 1883-4.
—— Rapport general sur l’Exposition de 1889. 10 vols.
Followed by the reports of the Jury of the same Exhibition. 19 vols. 1890.
I
e Bilan d’un Siecle. General report on the Exhibition of 1900. Followed
by the
reports of the Jury of the Exhibition of 1900. Paris.
1902.
Roux, C. Notre Marine Marchande. Paris. 1901.
Viger, L. Deux anne'es au Ministere de 1’Agriculture. Paris. 1895.
Zolla, D. La crise agricole. Paris. 1902.
G. Colonies.
Statistiques
coloniales, published yearly by the Colonial Ministry.
Publications
of the Miuistry on the occasion of the Exposition universelle of 1900. Amand, A. A. and Meray, H. Organisation administrative, politique et
judiciaire des colonies. Paris. 1900.
Chailley-Bert, J. Dix ans de politique coloniale. Paris. 1902.
Dorvault, F. and Imbart de La Tour, J. La proprie'te et la main d’oeuvre
aux colonies. Paris. 1900.
Dubois, M. and Ferrier, A. Un Siecle d’Expansion coloniale. Paris. 1900.
Froidevaux, H. L’lnstruction Publique aux colonies.
Guy, C. Mise en valeur du domaine colonial. Paris. 1900.
Lecomte, H. Agriculture aux colonies. Paris. 1900.
Les colonies fran^aises. Encyclopedic sous la direction de Maxime Petit.
2
vols.
Paris. 1903.
(With the most complete bibliography of the subject.)
Lorin, H. La France, puissance coloniale. Paris. 1906.
Rouard de Card, E. Les territoires africains et les conventions
franco-anglaises de 1783 a 1899. Paris. 1901.
I. BIBLIOGRAPHIES.
Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, hrsg. von der Historischen Kommission bei
der K. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Munchen. Ed. by R. von
Liliencron and F. X. von Wegele. Vols. i-lv.
Supplements, to 1899. Leipzig.
1875-1910. Biographisches Jahrbuch und Deutscher Nekrolog, hrsg. von A.
Bettelheim.
(Periodical.)
Vols. i-xii. Berlin. 1898 sqq.
Brase, M. Die deutsche Koloniallitteratur von 1884-95. Berlin. 1897. Supplements
every year in Zeitschrift fiir Kolonialpolitik.
Dahlmann-Waitz. Quellenkunde der deutschen Geschichte. 7th
edn., by E. Brandenburg. Leipzig. 1906.
Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft. (From 1878.) (Periodical.) Vols.
i-xxx. Berlin. 1880 sqq.
Singer, A. Bismarck in der Litteratur. Wurzburg. 1909.
II. CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES.
Aegidi, L. K.
and Klauhold, A. Das Staatsarchiv. Sammlung der
officiellen Aktenstiicke zur Geschichte der Gegenwart. (Periodical.) Hamburg
and Leipzig. 1861 sqq.
Annalen des Deutschen Reiches fiir Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Statistik,
herausgegehen von G. Hirth und M. von Seydel. (Periodical.) Leipzig.
1871-81. Munich. 1882 sqq.
Dokumente zur Geschichte der Wirtschaftspolitik in Preussen und im
Deutschen Reich. 5 vols. Berlin. 1889-91. (Vols. i, hi, v: H. von Poschinger, Fiirst. Bismarck als Volkswirt.
Vols. u, iv: Aktenstiicke zur Wirtschaftspolitik des Fiirsten Bismarck.)
Schulthess, H. Europaischer Geschichtskalender. Jahrgang 1-49. (Periodical.)
From 1897, by
G. RolofF. Nordlingen, Munich. 1861 sqq.
Specht, F. and P. Schwabe. Die Reichstagswahlen 1867-1903. Eine Statistik
nebst den Programmen der Parteien. 2nd edn. Berlin. 1904.
Statistik des Deutschen Reichs. Herausgegeben vom kaiserlichen
statistischen Amt. Vols. i-Lxiii. Berlin. 1873-83. New series. Vols.
i-clvii. Berlin. 1884 sqq.
Stenographische Berichte iiber die Verhandlungen des deutscheu Reichstages,
nebst Sammlung samtlicher Drucksachen des Deutschen Reichstages. Berlin. 1871
sqq.
Wippermann, K. Deutscher Geschichtskalender fur 1885 sqq. Leipzig. 1886
sqq.
Bismarck.
Bismarck, Furst Otto von. Gedanken und Erinnerungen. 2 vols. Stuttgart.
1898. Pop. edn. 1905. Anhang zu den Gedanken und Erinnerungen. (i, Kaiser Wilhelm und Bismarck, ii, Aus Bismarcks Briefwechsel.) 2
vols. Stuttgart.
1901.
Busch, M. Bismarck.
Some secret pages of his history. Being a diary kept during 25
years...intercourse with the great chancellor. 3 vols. London.
1898. German
edn. Tagebuchblatter. 5 vols. Leipzig. 1899.
Kohl, H. Bismarck-Briefe 1836-73. 7th edn. Bielefeld. 1898.
Bismarck-Jahrbuch. 6 vols. Berlin. 1894-9.
Furst Bismarck. Regesten zu einer
wissenschaftlichen Biographie des ersten
Deutschen Reichskanzlers. 2 vols. (1815-90.) Leipzig. 1891-2.
Mittnacht, Frhr. von. Erinnerungen an Bismarck. 2 vols. Stuttgart. 1904r-5.
Penzler, J. Bismarck nach seiner Entlassung. 7 vols. Leipzig. 1897-8.
Politische Reden, die, des Fursten von Bismarck. Historisch-kritische Gesamt-
ausgabe, besorgt von H. Kohl. 14 vols. Stuttgart. 1892-1904.
Poschinger, H. von. Furst Bismarck und die Parlamentarier. 3 vols. Breslau.
1894-5.
Furst Bismarck und der Bundesrat (1867-90). 5
vols. Stuttgart and Leipzig.
1896-1901.
Furst Bismarck und die Diplomaten 1852-90.
Hamburg. 1900.
Tiedemann, C. von. Secbs Jahre Chef der Reichskanzlei unter dem Fursten
Bismarck. Leipzig.
1909.
Whitman, S.
Personal reminiscences of prince Bismarck. London. 1902. Wilmowski, G. von. Meine Erinnerungen an Bismarck. Ed. by M. von Wil-
mowski. Breslau. 1899.
Bulow, Graf. Reden; nebst urkundlichen Beitragen zu seiner Politik, hrsg.
von J. Penzler. Leipzig. 1903.
Caprivi, Graf von. Reden im Deutschen Reichstage, Preussischen Landtage und
bei besonderen Anlassen 1883-93. Mit der Biographie, hrsg. von R. Arndt.
Berlin. 1894.
William I.—Wilhelms des Grossen Briefe, Reden und Schriften, hrsg. von
E. Berner. 2
vols. Berlin. 1906.
William 11.—Kaiserreden. Reden, Erlasse, Briefe, Telegramme Kaiser Wilhelms
11, hrsg. von A. O. Klaussmann. Leipzig. 1902.
Kaiser Wilhelms 11 Reden 1896-1900, hrsg. von
J. Penzler. Leipzig. 1904.
III. GENERAL
WORKS.
Blum, H. Das deutsche Reich zur Zeit Bismarcks. Politische Geschichte von
1871 bis 1890. Leipzig. 1893.
Furst Bismarck und seine Zeit. 6 vols. Munich.
1895. Register. 1898.
Egelhaaf, G. Geschichte der neuesten Zeit vom Frankfurter Frieden bis zur
Gegenwart. Stuttgart. 1908. 2nd edn. 1909.
Hahn, L. Furst Bismarck. Sein politisches Leben und Wirken urkundlich in
Tatsachen und des Fursten eigenen Kundgebungen dargestellt. 5 vols. (Vol. v, by
K. Wippermann.) Berlin. 1878-91.
Hintzpeter, G. Kaiser Wilhelm II. Eine Skizze nach der Natur gezeichnet.
Bielefeld. 1888.
Klein-Hattingen, O. Bismarck und seine Welt. Grundlegung einer psycho-
logischen Biographic. 3 vols. Berlin. 1902-4.
Kohl, H. Dreissig Jahre Preussisch-Deutscher Geschichte 1868 his 1888 in amt-
lichen Knndgebungen. Giessen. 1888.
Lamprechtj K. Deutsche Geschichte. Supplement: Zur jiingsten deutschen Ver-
gangenheit. 2 vols. 1904-6. Vols. vm-xii: Neueste Zeit. Berlin.
1906-9. Lavisse, E. Trois empereurs de l’AUemagne. Paris. 1888.
Lenz, M. Geschichte Bismarcks. Leipzig. 1902.
Lichtenberger, H. L’AUemagne moderne: son evolution. Paris.
1907.
Lowe, C. The
German Emperor William II. 1896.
Marcks, E.
Kaiser Wilhelm I. 6th edn. Leipzig. 1905.
Matter, P. Bismarck et son temps. Vol. m.
1870-98. Paris. 1908.
Mehring, F. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie. 3rd edn. Bremen. 1879.
Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie. 2nd
edn. 4 vols. Stuttgart.
1903.
Oncken, W. Unser Heldenkaiser. Berlin. 1897.
Parisius, L. Deutschlands politische Parteien und das Ministerium Bismarck.
Vol. i. Berlin. 1878.
Philippson, M. Das Leben Kaiser Friedrichs III. Wiesbaden. 1900.
Poschinger, H. von. Kaiser Friedrich. 3 vols.
Berlin. 1898-1900.
Whitman,
Sidney. Imperial Germany. London. 1888. German edn. Berlin.
1889.
IV. SPECIAL WORKS.
Foreign Affairs.
Geffcken, F. H. Frankreich, Russland und der Dreibund. Berlin. 1904.
Gontaut-Biron, Vicomte F. de. Mon ambassade en Allemagne. Paris. 1906.
Guarini, G. B. La Germania e la questione d’ Oriente fino al congresso
di Berlino. Part ii. Rome. 1898.
Handbuch des Deutschtums im Auslande, nebst einem Adressbuch der deutschen
Auslandsschulen. 2nd edn. Berlin. 1906.
Klaczko, T. Zwei Kanzler. Furst Gortschakow und Furst Bismarck. Basel. 1877-
May, G. Le traite de Francfort. ]£tude d’histoire diplomatique et de
droit international. Paris. 1910.
Meynier, V.
France and Germany from the peace of Francfort in 1871 to the peace of
Algeciras in 1906. London. 1908.
Nauticus. Jahrbuch fur Deutschlands Seeinteressen. (Periodical.) Berlin.
1899 sqq.
Rohrbach, P. Deutschland unter den Weltviilkern. Materialien zur
auswartigen Politik. Berlin. 1908.
Schiemann, T. Deutschland und die grosse Politik. Annual. Berlin. 1902 sqq.
Tardieu, A. La France et les alliances. Paris. 1909.
Army and Navy.
Binder-Krieglstein, Baron E. von. Die Kampfe des deutschen Expeditionskorps
in China und ihre militarischen Leistungen. Berlin. 1902.
Kaiserliche Marine, die, wahrend der Wirren in China 1900-1. Herausgegeben
vom Admiralstab der Marine. Berlin. 1903.
Kampfe, die, der deutschen Truppen in Sudwestafrika. Herausgegeben vom
Grossen Generalstabe. i. Der Feldzug gegen die Hereros. ir. Hottentottenkrieg.
2 vols. Berlin, 1907.
Schwabe, K. Der Krieg in Deutsch-Siidwestafrika 1904-6. Berlin. 1907.
Constitutional History.
Hue de Grais. Handbuch der Verfassung und
Verwaltung in Preussen und dem Deutschen Reiche. llth'edn. Berlin. 1896.
Kloeppel, P. Dreissig Jahre Deutscher Verfassungsgeschichte. Vol. i.
(1867-77.) Leipzig. 1900.
Lahand, P. Das Staatsrecht des Deutschen Reiches. 4th edn. 4 vols.
Tubingen.
1901.
Deutsches Reichsstaatsrecht. Tubingen. 1907.
Meyer, G. Lehrbuch des deutschen Staatsrechtes. 6th edn. (Ed.
by G. Anschutz.) Leipzig. 1905.
Seydel, M. von. Verfassungsurkunde fur das deutsche Reich. 2nd edn. Freiburg.
1897.
Bayrisches Staatsrecht. 7 vols. Munich and
Freiburg. 1884-94.
Zorn, P. Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reichs. 2 vols. 2nd edn. Berlin,
Leipzig. 1895-7.
, Economy
and Finances.
Ashley, W. T.
The progress of the German working classes in the last quarter of a century. London. 1904. German trans. Tubingen. 1906.
Blondel, G. Etudes sur les populations rurales d’Allemagne et la crise
agraire. Paris. 1897.
L’essor industriel et commerciel du peuple
allemand. Paris. 1898.
Cohn, S. Die Finanzen des deutschen Reiches seit seiner Begriindung.
Berlin.
1899.
Eheberg, K. T. Die industrielle Entwicklung Bayerns seit 1800. Erlangen.
1898. Freytag, C. F. Die Entwicklung des Hamburgischen Warenhandels 1870-1900.
Berlin. 1908.
Goltz, Frhr. F. A. G. L. von der. Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft.
2 vols. Stuttgart and Berlin. 1902-3.
Gothein, E. Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Rheinschiffahrt im 19. Jahr-
hundert. Leipzig. 1903.
Handbuch der Wirtschaftskunde. Herausgegeben im Auftrage des Deutschen Ver-
bandes fiir das kaufmannische Unterrichtswesen. 4 vols. Leipzig. 1901-4. Heitz,
E. Die sozialpolitische Bewegung in Deutschland 1863 bis 90. Stuttgart.
1891.
Helfferich, K, Die Reform des deutschen Geldwesens nach der Griindung des
Reiches. 2 vols. Leipzig. 1898.
Hubener, E. Die deutsche Wirtschaftskrisis von 1873. Berlin. 1905.
Jung, J. Die Entwickelung des Deutschen Post- und Telegraphenwesens in den
letzten 25 Jahren. 3rd edn. Leipzig. 1893.
Loewe, C. Geschichte des Nordostseekanals. Berlin. 1895.
Lotz, W. Verkehrsentwicklung in Deutschland 1800-1900. Leipzig. 1900.
Mayer, A. von. Geschichte und Geographic der deutschen Eisenbahnen von ihrer
Entwicklung bis auf die Gegenwart. 2 vols. Berlin. 1891.
Peters, M. Die Entwickelung der deutschen Rhederei seit Beginn des 19.
Jahr- hunderts. 2 vols. Jena. 1899-1905.
Reichsbank, die, 1876-1900. Jena. 1901.
Rheinisch-Westfalischen Steinkohlen-Bergbaus, die wirtschaftliche
Bntwicklung des, in der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. 3 vols. Berlin.
1904.
Riesser, F. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der deutschen Grossbanken mit beson-
derer Rficksicht auf die Konzentrationsbestrebungen. 3rd edn. Jena. 1910.
Sclimoller, G. Vier Briefe fiber Bismarcks volkswirtschaftliche und
sozialpolitische Stellung und Bedeutung. (Soziale Praxis. 1908.)
Schwabe, H. Die Bntwicklung des deutschen Binnenschiffahrt bis zum Ende des
19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin. 1899.
Soetbeer, A. Die fiinf Milliarden. Betrachtungen fiber die Folgen der
grossen Kriegsentschadigung. Berlin. 1877.
Sombart, W. Die Deutsche Volkswirtschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin.
1903.
Zedlitz-Neukirch, Frhr. von. Dreissig Jahre Preussischer Finanz- und
Steuer- politik. Berlin. 1901.
Zimmermann, A. Die Handelspolitik des Deutschen Reiches vom Frankfurter
Frieden bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd edn. Berlin. 1900.
Colonies.
Dove, K. Die deutschen Kolonien. i. Leipzig. 1909.
Fabri, F. Fiinf Jahre deutscher Kolonialpolitik. Gotha. 1889.
GareiSj C. Deutsches Kolonialrecht. 2nd edn.' Giessen. 1902.
Hassert, K. Deutschlands Kolonien. Erwerbungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte,
Landes- und Volkskunde und wirtschaftliche Bedeutung unserer Schutzgebiete.
Leipzig. 1899. Nachtrag. Leipzig. 1903.
Herrfurth, K. Fiirst Bismarck und die Kolonialpolitik. Berlin. 1909.
Kiepert, R. Deutscher Kolonial-Atlas fur den amtlichen Gebrauch in den
Schutz- gebieten. (Text by I. Partsch.) Berlin. 1893.
Koebner, O. Einfuhrung in die Kolonialpolitik. Jena. 1908.
Kolonialgesetzgebung, die deutsche. Sammlung der auf die deutschen
Schutzgebiete beziiglichen Gesetze, Verordnungen, Erlasse und internationalen
Vereinbarungen. Vol. i by Riebow (1893), n-v by Zimmermann
(1897-1901), vi-ix by Schmidt- Dargitz and Koebner (1903-6), x, xi by Koebner
and Gerstmeyer (1907-10).
Koschitzky, M. von. Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte. 2 vols. Berlin. 1888.
Kfilz, W. Deutsch-Siidafrika im 25. Jahre deutscher Schutzherrschaft.
Berlin. 1909.
Leutwein, T. Elf Jahre Gouverneur in Deutsch-Siidwestafrika. Berlin. 1906.
Meyer, H. Das deutsche Kolonialreich. Eine Landerkunde der deutschen Schutzgebiete.
Vol.
i. Ostafrika (by H. Meyer) und Kamerun (by S. Passarge). Leipzig. 1909.
Perbandt, C. von, G. Richelmann and R. Schmidt. H. von Wissmann. Deutschlands
grosster Afrikaner. Berlin. 1906.
Peters, C. Das Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Schutzgebiet. Munich and Leipzig.
1895.
Die Grundung von Deutsch-Ostafrika. Berlin.
1906.
Die deutsche Emin Pascha-Expedition. Munich.
1891.
Pfeil, Graf J. von. Zur Erwerbung von Deutsch-Ostafrika. Berlin. 1907.
Schnee. Unsere Kolonien. Leipzig. 1908.
Weissenborn, W. Sechs Jahre deutscher Kolonialpolitik. Berlin. 1890.
Chubches.
Briick, H. Geschichte der Katholischen Kirche im 19. Jahrhuudert. 4 vols.
Mainz. 1887-1900. Vols. i-m. 2nd edn. 1902.
Die Kulturkampfbewegung in Deutschland 1872
bis 1900. Mainz. 1901.
Dollinger, I. von. Das Papsttum. (New edn. of Janus. Der Papst und das
Konzil.
1869.) Ed. by
T. Friedrich. Munich. 1892.
Goyau, G. L’Allemagne religieuse. Le Protestantisme. Paris. 1898.
Hahn, L. Geschichte des “ Kulturkampfes ” in Preussen. In Aktenstiicken
dargestellt. Berlin. 1881.
Hergenrother, J. Anti-Janus. Freiburg. 1870.
Hinschius, P. Die preussischen Kirchengesetze des Jahres 1873. (Fortsetzungen 1874, 1875, 1880, 1886.) 5 vols. Berlin. 1873-86.
Lefebre de Behaine, Comte E. Leon XIII et le prince de Bismarck. Fragments d'histoire diplomatique avec pieces
justificatives. Paris. 1898.
Majunke, P. Geschichte des Kulturkampfes in Preussen-Deutschland. Paderbom.
1876-88.
Nippold, Fr. Handbuch der neuesten Kirchengeschichte seit der Restauration
von 1814. 5 vols. 3rd edn. Berlin. 1889-1904.
Ursprung, Umfang, Hemmnisse und Aussichten der
altkatholischen Bewegung.
Berlin. 1873.
Schulte, J. F. von. Der Altkatholizismus. Geschichte seiner Entwicklung,
innern Gestaltung und rechtlichen Stellung in Deutschland. Giessen. 1887. Seeberg,
R. Die Kirche Deutschlands im 19. Jahrhundert. Leipzig. 1903-4. Werckshagen, C.
Der Protestantismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts in Wort und Bild. 2 vols.
Leipzig. 1901.
Philosophy, Art and Literature.
Bartels, A. Die deutsche Dichtung der Gegenwart. Die Alten und die Jungen.
6th edn. Leipzig. 1904.
Busse, C. Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin.
1901. Chamberlain, H. St. Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts. 2 vols. 4th edn.
1903.
Die ersten zwanzig Jahre der Bayreuther Biihnenfestspiele.
Bayreuth.
1896.
Francke, K.
Glimpses of modem German culture. New York.
1908.
Guilland, A. L’Allemagne nouvelle et ses historiens. Paris. 1899.
Gurlitt, E. Die deutsche Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin. 1899.
Hanstein, A. von. Das jiingste Deutschland. Zwei Jahrzehnte miterlebter
Litera- targeschichte. Leipzig. 1900.
Hinneberg, P. (and others). Die Kultur der Gegenwart. Ihre Entwicklung und
ihre Ziele. Berlin and Leipzig. 1906 sqq.
Litzm^nn, B. Das deutsche Drama in den literarischen Bewegungen der
Gegenwart.
4th edn. Hamburg. 1897.
Meier-Graefe, J. Geschichte der deutschen Kunst im 19. Jahrhundert.
Stuttgart.
1904.
Meyer, R. M. Die deutsche Litteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts. 3rd edn. Berlin.
1906.
Rethwisch, C. Deutschlands holieres Schulwesen im 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin.
1893.
Riemann, H. Geschichte der Musik seit Beethoven 1806-1900. Berlin and Stuttgart.
1901.
Stern, A. Die Deutsche Nationallitteratur vom Tode Goethes bis zur
Gegenwart.
5th edn. Marburg, Leipzig. 1905.
Windelband, W. Die Philosophic im Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Festschrift
fur Kuno Fischer. Heidelberg. 1907.
Ziegler, Th. Die geistigen und sozialen Stromungen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin.
1898. 3rd edn. 1910.
V. BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS.
Aus Ed.
Laskers Nachlass. Ed. by W. Cahn. Part i:
Fiinfzehn Jahi e parlamen- tarischer Geschichte 1866-80. Berlin.
1902.
Bigge, W.
Feldmarschall Graf Moltke. 2 vols. Munich. 1900.
Chamberlain,
H. St. Richard Wagner. 4th edn. Munich. 1907.
Denkwiirdigkeiten des Fursten Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfiirst. Ed.
by
F. Curtius. 2 vols. Stuttgart and Leipzig.
1907. Eng. trans. London. 1907.
Finck, W.
Wagner and his work. 2 vols. London. 1893.
Forster-Nietzsche, E. Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches. 2 vols. Leipzig. 1895
-1904.
Friedrich, J. Ignaz von Dollinger. 3 vols. Munich. 1899-1901.
Frobenius, H. Alfred Krupp. Dresden. 1898.
Gerlach, E. L. von. Aufzeichnungen aus seinem Leben und Wirken 1795-1877.
(Ed. by Jakob von Gerlach.) 2 vols. Schwerin. 1903.
Glasenapp, H. Das Leben Richard Wagners. 6 vols. 4th edn. Leipzig. 1906-7.
Goltz, Frhr. F. von der. Moltke. Berlin. 1903.
Hansen, J. Gustav von Mevissen. Ein rheinisches Lebensbild 1815-99. 2 vols.
Berlin. 1906.
ifassel, P. Aus dem Leben des Konigs Albert von Sachsen. 2 vols. (-1873.)
Berlin. 1898, 1900.
Husgen, E. Ludwig Windthorst. Cologne. 1907.
Jahns, M. Feldmarschall Moltke. 2 vols. Berlin. 1894^1900.
Knopp, I. N. Ludwig Windthorst. Dresden. 1898.
Kock, H. H. Das Leben des Generalfeldmarschalls Edwin von Manteuffel.
Bielefeld and Leipzig. 1890.
Krickeberg, E. Heinrich von Stephan. Dresden. 1907.
Leuss, W. Wilhelm Freiherr von Hammerstein, 1881-1895, Chefredacteur der
Kreuzzeitung. Berlin. 1905.
Oncken, H. Rudolf von Bennigsen. Ein deutscher liberaler Politiker. Nach
seinen Briefen und hinterlassenen Papieren. Vol. i: -1866; Vol. n: 1866
1902. 2 vols.
Stuttgart and Leipzig. 1910.
Parisius, L. Leopold Freiherr von Hoverbeck. 2 vols. Berlin. 1897-1900.
Pastor, L. August Reichensperger 1808-95. 2 vols. Freiburg i. Br. 1899.
Petersdorff, H. von. Kleist-Retzow. Ein Lebensbild. Stuttgart. 1907.
Pfiilf, O. Hermann von Mallinckrodt: die Geschichte seines Lebens.
Freiburg.
1892.
Philippson, M. Max von Forckenbeck. Dresden. 1898.
Puttkamer, A. and M. von. Die Aera Manteuffel. Federzeichnungen aus Elsass-
Lothringen. Stuttgart. 1904.
Richter, Eugen. Im alten Reichstag. Erinnerungen. 2 vols. Berlin. 1895.
Riehl, A. Friedrich Nietzsche, der Kiinstler und Denker. Stuttgart. 1901.
Roon, Count von. Denkwiirdigkeiten aus dem Leben des Generalfeldmarschalls
Grafen v. Roon. 5th edn. 3 vols. 1905.
Rust, H. Reichskanzler Furst Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfiirst und
seine Briider. Diisseldorf. 1897.
Schaffle, A. E. F. Aus meinem Leben. 2 vols. Berlin. 1905.
Schlenther, P. Gerhart Hauptmann. Berlin. 1898.
Schneegans, A. Memoiren (1835-98). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Elsasses
in der Ubergangszeit. Ed. by H. Schneegans. Berlin. 1904.
Spahn, M. Ernst Lieber als Parlamentarier. Gotha. 1906.
Wagener, H. Erlebtes. Meine Memoiren aus der Zeit von 1848 bis 1866 und von
1873 bis jetzt. Berlin. 1883-4.
I. BIBLIOGRAPHIES.
A. Austria.
Bibliografie
ceske historic (Bibliogr. of the History of Bohemia). Annual supplement to the
Cesky casopis historicky (Historical Review of Bohemia). Prague. 1904 sqq.
Dahlmann-Waitz. Quellenkunde der deutschen Geschichte. 7th edn., by
E. Brandenburg.
Leipzig. 1906. Erganzungsbaud. Leipzig. 1907.
Krones, Ritter von Marchland, F. Grnndriss der Oesterreichischen Geschichte
mit besonderer Riicksicht auf Quellen- und Literaturkunde. Vienna. 1882.
Masslow, O. Bibliographic zur deutschen Geschichte. Historische
Vierteljahr- schrift of Gerhard Seeliger. Leipzig.
1898, etc.
B. Hungary.
Mangold, L.
Torteneti bibliografia. In the historical review Szazadok, Budapest.
II. DOCUMENTS.
A. Legal
and Statistical Documents.
(1)
Collections of laws.
а. Official collections. A. Austria:
Reichsgesetzblatt. B. Hungary: Tor- venytar. [Begins with the laws of the Diet
1865-7; published in Magyar and translated into the other languages used in the
State.]
б. Private
collections. A. Austria: Manzsche Taschenausgabe der oster- reichischen
Gesetze. Vienna.
Among these, the Staatsgrundgesetze contain, as an appendix, the constitutional
laws of Hungary. B. Hungary: Darday, S., Kozigazgatasi torvenytar.
(2) Reports ef parliamentary proceedings.
a. Official records of parliamentary
proceedings. Austria: Stenographische
Protokolle, Ahgeordnetenhaus and Herrenhaus (minutes of the Diets). Hungary:
Forendihazi naplo, and kc'pviseltihazi naplo.
b. Private summaries or reproductions. Austria : Verhandlungen des oster- reichischen
verstarkten Reichsrathes, 1860. 2 vols. Vienna. 1860. Die neue Gesetzgebung
Oesterreichs, erlautert aus den Reichsraths-Verhandlungen. I. Die
Verfassungsgesetze und die Gesetze iiber den finanziellen Ausgleich mit Ungarn.
Vienna. 1868. Hungary: Der ungarische Reichstag. 3 vols. Budapest. 1861.
c. Statistics.
Austrian: Statistisches Jahrbuch. Vienna. 1861-81. Sta- tistisches Handbuch,
1882 sqq. Oesterreichische Statistik. Vienna. 1882 sqq. Mitteilungen aus dem
Gebiete der Statistik; since 1875 Statistische Monatsschrift. [These
four publications are directed by the Statistische Centralcommission at
Vienna.] Hungarian : A magyar Kiralyi kormany...evi mukodeserol es az orszag
kozallapotairol szdlo jelentes es sztatisztikai evkonyv. (Report of the Royal
Hungarian Government on its work during the year and on the position of the
country, with statistical summary.) Budapest. 1899 sqq. Ungarisches
statistisches Jahrbuch. Budapest. 1872 sqq. Hivatalos sztatisztikai
kozlemenyek. Budapest. 1868 sqq.
(3) Private collections of documents.
Cemy, J. Boj
za pravo (the struggle for rights). Prague. 1893.
Fischel, A. Das osterreichische Sprachenrecht. Eine Quellensammlung.
Briinn.
1901.
Materialien zur Sprachenfrage in Oesterreich.
Briinn. 1902.
Kolmer, G. Parlament und Verfassung in Oesterreich. Vols.
i-iv. Vienna.
1902 sqq. In course of publication.
Ungarische Verfassungsstreit, der, urkundlich dargestellt. In Das
Staatsarchiv. Sammlung der officiellen Aktenstiicke zur Geschichte der
Gegenwart. Herausgegeben von L. K. Aegidi u. A. Klauhold. Hamburg. 1862.
(4) Periodicals.
Only the most
important Austrian and Hungarian Journals and Reviews are indicated here.
Journals: (a)
Vienna: Presse, Neue Freie Presse, Zeit, Vaterland, Arbeiter- Zeitung; Prague:
Politik (since 1907, Union); <5as, Narodnf Listy; Cracow: Czas. (j3)
Budapest: Pesti Napld, Pester Lloyd, Budapesti Hirlap, Neues Pester Journal.
Reviews : (a)
Vienna: Oesterreichisch-ungarische Revue, Die Zeit, Oesterreichische Rundschau,
Der Kampf, Zeitschrift fiir Volkswirtschaft, Sozialpolitik u. Verwal- tung;
Prague: Osveta (Light), Naie Doha (Our Time), Ceska Revue (Bohemian Review),
Deutsche Arbeit, Pokrokova Revue (Progressist Review). (/3) Budapest :
Budapesti Szemle (Review of Budapest), Hungarian Review.
B. Memoirs,
Cobbespondence, Speeches, and Polemical Wbitinos.
Acht Jahre Amtsleben in Ungarn. Von einem k. k. Stuhlrichter in
Disponibilitat. Leipzig. 1861.
Andrassy,
Count J.—Speeches of Count J. Andrassy, edited by B. Lederer. 2 vols. Budapest. 1891-3.
Die Einheit der osterreichisch-ungarischen
Armee. Rede, gehalten im
nngarischen Magnatenhause am 5. April 1889. Vienna. 1889.
Translated from the Magyar.
Andreas Memor
(Visy Imre). Tiz ev tortenete (History of ten years). Budapest.
1885.
Andrian-Warburg, Frhr. J. von. Denkschrift iiber die Verfassungs- und Ver-
waltungsfrage in Oesterreich. Leipzig. 1859.
Apponyi,
Count Albert. Speeches, 1872-95. 2 vola. Budapest. 1897.
Arneth,
Ritter A. von. Aus meinem Leben. 2 vols. Stuttgart. 1893.
Ausgleich und Verfassungstreue. 2nd edn. Leipzig. 1873.
Baernreither, J. M. Bosnische Eindrucke. Vienna. 1908.
Belcredi, Count L. Fragmente aua dem Nachlasse des ehemaligen
Staatsministers Grafen Richard Belcredi, in the Review Kultur. (Vienna, 1905
and 1906.)
Beust, Count F. F. von. Aus drei Vierteljahrhunderten. Erinnerungen und
Auf- zeichnungen. 2 vols. Stuttgart. 1887.
Bismarck, Prince O. von. Gedanken u. Erinnerungen. 2 vols. Stuttgart. 1898.
Briefwechsel zwischen Anastasius Griin und L. A. Frankl. Berlin. 1897.
Busbach, P. Az utolso ot ev. (The five last years.) Budapest.
1893.
Egy viharos emberolto. (A trouhled period.) 2
vols. Budapest. 1897-9.
Deak,
Francis.—Ferencz beszedei. Osszegyiijtotte Kdnyi Mano (Speeches of
F. Deak, collected by Emm. Kdnyi). 6 vols.
Budapest, i-m. 2nd edn. 1903. iv-vi. 1897-8.
Levelek (correspondence). Budapest. 1890.
Ein Beitrag zum ungarischen Staatsrecht.
Bemerkungen fiber W. Lust-
kandl’s Ungarisch-osterreichisches Staatsrecht. Budapest.
1865. Translated from the Magyar. The originals
appeared in the Budapesti Szemle.
Drei Jahre Verfassungsstreit. Beitrage zur jiingsten Geschichte
Oesterreichs. Von einem Ungar. Leipzig. 1864.
Dreissig Jahre aus dem Leben eines Journalisten. 3 vols.
Vienna. 1894-8.
Eim, G.
Politicke uvahy (Political reflexions). Prague. 1898.
Emleklapok
Vajai bard Vay Miklds eletebdl (Recollections of the life of Baron Nicolas Vay
de Vaja). Budapest. 1889.
Empire, The
Austro-Hungarian, and the policy of Count Beust. London. 1870.
Eotvos, Baron J. Die Garantien der Macht und Einheit Oesterreichs. Leipzig.
1859.
Die Sonderstellung Ungarns vom Standpunkte der
Einheit Deutschlands.
Budapest. 1861.
Die Nationalitatenfrage. Budapest. 1865.
o'ischhof, A. Ein Blick auf Oesterreichs Lage. Vienna. 1866.
Oesterreich und die Biirgschaften seines
Bestandes. Vienna. 1869.
and Unger.
Zur Losung der ungarischen Frage. Vienna. 1861.
Fort, J. Ven
z pritmi (Towards full light). Prague. 1905.
Fournier, A. Wie wir zu Bosnien kamen. Vienna. 1909.
Friedjung, H. Der Ausgleich mit Ungarn. Leipzig. 1877.
Friedmann, B. Zehn Jahre osterreichischer Politik. x. Vienna. 1879.
Frobel, J. Ein Lebenslauf. 2 vols. Stuttgart. 1890-1.
Georgewitsch, V. Die serbische Frage. Stuttgart. 1909.
Gyorfiy, G., beszedei (speeches) 1884-94. Budapest.
1894.
tiz ev a magyar parlament tortenetebdl (Ten
years of the history of the
Hungarian Parliament) 1895-1905. Budapest. 1905.
Hasner, L. von. Denkwiirdigkeiten. Stuttgart. 1892.
Helfert, Frhr. J. A. von. Meine personlichen Beziehungen mit Palack^. In
Pamatnik na oslavu stych narozenin F. Palackeho. (Memoir for the hundredth
anniversary of the birth of F. Palacky.) Prague. 1898.
Revision des ungarischen Ausgleichs. 2 parts.
Vienna. 1876.
Kakay Aranyos
(pseudonym of Kecskemethy). Orszaggyulesi arny- eg fenyk^pek (parliamentary
portraits). Budapest. 1861.
tjjahb amy- es fenykepek (new portraits).
Budapest. 1866.
A
mi nagy ferfiaink (Our great men). Budapest. 1874.
Kakay Aranyos
II (Cornel Abranyi the younger). iJjabb orszaggyulesi arny- es fenykepek (new
parliamentary portraits). Budapest. 1877.
Tisza Kalman, Politikai flet- es jellemrajz
(C. Tisza, biography and political
portrait).
3rd edn. Budapest. 1878.
Grof Andrassy Gyula. Politikai elet- &
jellemrajz. Budapest. 1878.
Kecskemethy, A. von. Ein Jahr aus der Geschichte Ungarns. Vienna. 1862.
Kossuth, L. Meine Schriften aus der Emigration. 3 vols. Pressburg and
Leipzig. 1880-2.
Kramar, K. Anmerkungen zur bohmischen Politik. Vienna. 1906.
Lustkandl, W. Das ungarisch-osterreichische Staatsrecht, zur Losung der
Ver- fassungsfrage historisch und dogmatisch dargestellt. Vienna.
1863.
Masaryk, T.
G. fieskao azka (The Cech question). Prague. 1895.
Nase nynejsi krise (Our present crisis). Prague. 1895.
Meyer, B. R. von. Erlebnisse. Vienna and Budapest. 1875.
Mollinary, Frhr A. von. 46 Jahre im osterreichisch-ungarischen Heere. 2
vols. Zurich. 1906.
Nalzov, Aus dem politischen Nachlass des Grafen Taaffe, in Politik, 1904,
Nos. 335-42, 349-56.
Olah, G. A
fuzio (1875) (Fusion). Budapest. 1909.
Palacky, F. Gedenkblatter. Auswahl von Denkscbriften, Aufsatzen und Briefen
aus den letzten fiinfzig Jahren. Prague. 1874.
Spisy drobne. i. Spisy a fe£i z oboru politiky
(Essays: i. Political essays
and speeches).
Prague. 1898.
I'erthaler, H. von. Neun Bricfc uber Verfassungsreformen in Oesterreich.
Leipzig. 1860.
Palingenesis. Denkschrift uber
Verwaltungsreformen in Oesterreich.
Leipzig. 1860.
Vier Fragen. Vienna. 1861.
Rieger, F.
L.—Reci dra F. L. Riegra a jeho jednani v zakonodarn^ch sborech (Speeches of F.
L. Rieger and his parts in the legislative assemblies). Prague. 1888.
Z
vlastmch pameti F. L. Riegra. ii.
Za Belcrediho az do vit&stvi Beustova
(Fragment of
the memoirs of F. L. Rieger, from the time of Belcredi up to the victory of
Beust). In Osveta. Prague. 1906.
Schaffle, A. E. Aus meinem Leben. 2 vols. Berlin. 1904.
Siebenbiirgen und die osterreichische Regierung in den letzten vier Jahren.
Leipzig. 1865.
Szilagyi Dezso beszedei. Vol. i. Kozos ugyek. (Speeches. Vol. i. Common
affairs.) Budapest.
1906.
Tomek, V. V.
Styky me s Palackym do roku 1862 (My relations with Palacky up to 1862). In
Pamatmk. (See above under Helfert, Frhr. J. A. von.)
Varady, G.
Hullo levelek (Falling leaves). Maramaros
Sziget. 1895.
Zeithammer, A. O. Zur Vorgeschichte der Fundamentalartikel. In
Politik-Union,
1907, No. 359; 1908, Nos. 1, 5-11.
Zwiilf Artikel fiber die ungarische Frage. Reprint from
the Wanderer. Vienna. 1862.
III. LATER WORKS.
A. General.
Andrassy, Count J. Ungarns Ausgleich mit Oesterreich von Jahre 1867. (Translated
from the Magyar.) Leipzig. 1897.
Beksics, G. Der Dualismus. In Zeitschrift fur ungarisches offentliches und
Privatrecht. i. Budapest. 1895.
Cheradame, A. La question d’Autriche-Hongrie au commencement du rx*me
siecle. Paris. 1901.
Colquhoun, A. The Whirlpool of Europe. London. 1907.
Denis, E. La Boheme depuis la Montagne Blanche. 2 vols. Paris. 1903.
Eisenmann, L. Le Compromis austro-hongrois. Pang. 1904. .
Friedjung, H. Der Kampf urn die Vorherrschaft in Deutschland. 2 vols. Stuttgart. 7th edn. 1907.
Henry, R. Des monts de Boheme au golfe Persique. Paris. 1908.
Horn, G. Le Compromis de 1868 entre la Croatie et la Hongrie. Paris.
1907. Kaizl, J. Vyrovnani s Uhry r. 1867 a 1877. Historickym uvodem opatril A.
Rezek (The compromise with Hungary 1867 and 1877, with a historical
introduction hy A. Rezek). Prague. 1866.
Knatchbull-Hugessen,
C. M. Political evolution of the Hungarian Nation. 2 vols.
1908.
Leger, L. Histoire de l’Autriche-Hongrie. Paris.
Loiseau, C. Le Balkan slave et la crise autrichienne. Paris. 1900.
Luschin von Ebengreuth, A. Oesterreichische Reichsgeschichte. Bamberg.
1896. Marczali, H. A legujabb kor tortenete (Contemporary History). Budapest.
1892.
A
magyar nemzet tortenete (History of the Hungarian Nation). Vol. x.
Budapest. 1898.
Jtssterreichisches Staatsworterbuch. Published by
E. Mischler and J. Ulbrich.
2nd edn. Vienna. 1908.
Popovici, A. Die vereinigten Staaten von Grossoesterreich. Leipzig. 1906.
Rogge, W. Oesterreich, von Vilagos bis zur Gegenwart. 3 vols. Leipzig.
1872-3.
Oesterreich seit der Katastrophe
Hohenwart-Beust. 2 vols. Leipzig. 1879.
Scotus
Viator. The future of Austria-Hungary and the policy of the great powers. 1907.
Springer, R. (pseudonym of Renner, K.). Grundlagen und Entwicklungsziele
der osterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. Vienna. 1906.
Der Kampf der osterreichischen Nationen um den
Staat. i. Vienna. 1002.
Srb, A.
Politick^ dejiny naroda ceskeho od roku 1861 (Political history of the Cech
people since 1861). 2 vols. Prague. 1899-1901.
Sybel, H. von. Die Begriindung des deutschen Reichs durch Wilhelm I. 3rd
and 4th edns. 7 vols. Munich. 1890-4.
Tezner, F. Der osterreichische Kaisertitel, das ungarische Staatsrecht und
die ungarische Publizistik. Vienna. 1899.
Die Wandlungen der oesterreichischen
Reichsidee. Vienna. 1905.
Zwiedineck-Siidenhorst, H. von. Deutsche Geschichte 1806-71. 3 vols.
Stuttgart.
1897-1904.
B. Treatises on Constitutional and Political
Questions.
Adler, V. Das allgemeine, gleiche und geheime Wahlrecht und das Wahlunrecht
in Oesterreich. Vienna. 1893,
Apponyi, Count A. La constitution et le parlementarisme hongrois, in
Annuaire du Parlement. Paris. 1902.
The juridical nature of the relations between
Austria and Hungary. An
address
delivered at the Arts and Science Congress, held at St Louis in 1904. Austerlitz. Das neue Wahlrecht. Vienna. 1907.
Bernatzik, E. Die osterreichischen Verfassungsgesetze. Leipzig. 1906.
Charmatz, R. Deutsch-osterreichische Politik. Leipzig. 1907.
Eisenmann, L. Le regime des cultes en Autriche et en Hongrie, in
Bulletin de la Socie'te de Legislation comparee. Paris. 1906-8.
Gliickmann, J. Das Heerwesen der osterreichisch-ungarischen Moiiarchie 4th
edn. Vienna. 1895.
Gumplowicz, L. Das Recht der Nationalitaten und Sprachen in Oesterreich-
Ungam. Innsbruck. 1879.
Hongrie, la, contemporaine et le suffrage universel. Paris. 1909.
Kmety, K. A magyar kozjog tankonyve (Treatise of Hungarian constitutional
law).
3rd edn. Budapest. 1907.
Kremer, A. von. Die Nationalitatsidee und der Staat. Vienna. 1885.
Madeyski, S. von. Die deutsche Staatssprache, oder Oesterreich ein
deutscher Staat. Vienna. 1884.
Miklos Odon.
Ossregyiijtott munkai (complete works). 2 vols. Budapest. 1906. Mdricz, P. A
magyar orszaggyfilesi partok kiizdelmei a koronazastdl a Deak- es balkozep
partok egybeolvadasaig (the struggles of political parties in Hungary from the
coronation to the fusion of the parties of Deak and the Left Centre). Budapest.
1902.
Prazak, J.
Rakouske pravo ustavm (Austrian constitutional law). 4 vols. 2nd edn. Prague. 1901-3.
Reichsratswahlen in. Ostgalizien 1897, die. Vienna. 1898.
Rieger, B. Ustavni dejiny Rakouska (Constitutional History of Austria).
Reprint from Slovm'k naucny (Encyclopaedia) of Otto. Prague. 1903.
Ulbrich, J. Lehrbuch des osterreichischen Staatsrechts. Vienna.
1883.
C. Treatises
on the Questions of Nationalities.
Auerbach, B. Les races et les nationalites en Autriche-Hongrie. Paris. 1898. Bauer, O. Die Nationalitatenfrage und die
Sozialdemokratie. Vienna. 1907. Bertha, A. de. Magyars et Roumains
devant l’histoire. Paris. 1899.
Brote, E. Die rumanische Frage in Siebenbiirgen und Ungarn. Vienna. 1895.
Hainisch, M. Die Zukunft der Deutsch-Oesterreicher. Vienna. 1892.
Hermann von Hermritt, R. Die Nationalist als Rechtsbegriff. In Griinhut,
Zeitschrift fiir das Privat- und offentliche Recht der Gegenwart.. xxvi.
Vienna. 1874.
Menger, M. Der bohmische Ausgleich. Stuttgart. 1891.
Rauchberg, H. Der nationale Besitzstand in Bohmen. 3 vols.
Prague. 1905. Scotus Viator. Racial problems in Hungary. London. 1909.
D. Treatises
on Economic and Social Questions.
Bazant, J.
von. Die Handelspolitik Oesterreich Ungarns 1875 bis 1892.
Leipzig. 1894.
Beer, A. Die Finanzen Oesterreichs im xix Jahrhundert. Prague. 1877.
Die osterreichische Handelspolitik im xix
Jahrhundert. Vienna.
1891.
Fiedler, F.
Rakousko-uherska vyrovnani po roce 1878 (The Austro-Hungarian compromises since
1878). Prague. 1903.
Gartner, F. Der osterreichisch-ungarische Ausgleich. In Archiv fiir Sozial-
wissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. xxv. Tubingen.
1905.
Gonnard, R. L’emigration europdenne au xixSme siecle. Paris.
1906.
La Hongrie au xximt siecle, etude
economique et sociale. Paris. 1908.
Louis-Jaray, G. La question sociale et. le Socialisme en Hongrie. Paris.
1909. Majlath, Comte J. La Hongrie rurale, sociale et politique. Paris. 1909. Matlekovits, A. von. Das Konigreich Ungaro,
volkswirtschaftlich und statistisch dai-gestellt. 2 vols. Leipzig. 1900.
Rauchberg, H. Die Bevolkerung Oesterreichs, auf Grund der Ergebnisse der
Volkszahlung vom 31 Dezember 1890. Vienna. 1895.
Steinitzer, E. Die jiingsten Reformen der veranlagtea Steuern in
Oesten-eich. Leipzig. 1905.
Waentig, H. Gewerbliche Mittelstandspolitik. Leipzig.. 1898.
E. Biographies.
Arnold-Foster, F. Deak, a memoir. London. 1880.
Beksics, G.
Kemeny Zsigmond. A forradalom es a kiegyez£s (Sigismond Kemeny, The Revolution
and the Compromise). 2nd edn. Budapest. 1883.
Ebeling, E. F. F. Graf von Beust. 2 vols. Leipzig. 1870-1.
Ferenczi, Z.
Deak elete (Life of Deak). 3 vols.
Budapest. 1904.
Friedjung, H. Graf Kalnoky. In Biographisches Jahrbuch und deutscher
Nekrolog.
Vol. hi. Berlin. 1897, etc.
Goll, J. Frantisek Palacky. Prague. 1898.
Jahn, J. F. L. Rieger. Prague. 1889.
Rrones, F. von. M. v. Kaiserfeld. Leipzig. 1888.
Mayr, A. Hans von Perthalers auserlesene Schriften (with biography).
Vienna.
1883.
Thalloczy, L. von. Graf Anton Szecsen (in Oesterreichisch-Ungarische Revue,
xxix). Vienna. 1902-3.
Wolfsgruber, C. J. O. Kardinal Rauscher. 2 vols. Freiburg. 1888.
I. PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS.
Actes de S. S. Pie X. Encycliques, Motu Proprio, Brefs et Allocutions. Original
texts and French translations. 2 vols. Paris. 1906-8.
Foreign
Office. Miscellaneous Series. Report on Amount of Private Wealth in Italy as
compared with that of other Countries in Europe. No. 205. London. 1891.
Diplomatic and Consular Reports. Italy. Nos.
3744, 3778, 3795, 3799,
3902, 3912.
Loudon. 1907. Nos. 3959, 4037. London. 1908.
Lettres Apostoliqi.es, etc. de S. S. Leon XIII. 7 vols. Paris. 1903-4.
Libro Verde. Avvenimenti d’Africa. N. xxm. N. xxin bis. N. xxm ter. N. xxin quater. Rome. 1896. Trattato di
Pace. N. x. Rome. 1897. Missione Antonelli in Etiopia. N. xvii. Rome. 1891.
Livre Jaune. Affaires d’Orient. Congres de Berlin. Paris. 1878.
Livre Jaune. Affaires de Tunisie: Annexes a la Correspondance
Diplomatique sur les Affaires de Tunis. Paris. 1881.
State Papers.
Turkey (Treaty of Berlin). No. 44. (1878.) London. 1878. Egypt. Nos.
11,15,17,18. (1882.) London. 1882. Egypt. No. 1. (1883.) London. 1883. Egypt.
Nos. 14 and 16. (1885.) London. 1885. Italy. Law Respecting Papal Guarantees.
No. 1. (1892.) London. 1892.
II. STATISTICS. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.
Alongi, G. La Maffia : La Camorra. Biblioteca Antropologica Giuridica.
Serie n.
Vols. x and
xni. Turin. 1887 and 1890.
Atti della
Giunta per la Inchiesta Agraria. 22 vols. Rome. 1881-6.
Banca
Popolare di Milano. Memoria per la Esposizione di Milano, 1906. Milan.
1906.
Resoconto dell’ Assemblea generate dei Soci
tenutasi il giorno 24 febbraio,
1907. Milan. 1907-
Banca
Popolare di Credito in Bologna. Resoconto dell’ anno 1907 e Atti dell’
Assemblea generale dei Soci tenuta il 9 febbraio 1908. Bologna. 1908. Bodio, L.
Di Alcuni Indici Misuratori del Movimento Economico in Italia.
2nd edn.
Rome. 1891.
Brum, E.
Codice Doganale Italiano. Milan. 1894.
Congresso vii0
delle Banche Popolari Italiane; Cremona, 19-21 settembre, 1907.
Relazioni.
Rome. 1907.
Credito e
Cooperazione. Anno xix. Rome. 1907.
Fischer, P. D. Italien und die Italiener am Schlusse des Neunzehnten
Jahrhnn- derts. Berlin. 1899.
Franchi, L. Codici e leggi del Regno d’ltalia. 2nd edn. 4 vols. Milan.
1902-4. Martinengo-Cesaresco, Countess E. Lombard Agriculture (in Lombard
Studies). London. 1902.
Mazzoccolo, E. La Nuova Legge Comunale e Provinciale. 5th edn. 1905.
Ministero di Agricoltura. Annuario Statistico Italiano, 1904.
Rome. 1904.
Annuario Statistico Italiano, 1905-7.
Fascicolo Primo. Rome. 1907.
1905-7. Fascicolo Secondo. Rome. 1908.
Emigrazione e Colonie. Rome. 1906.
Statistica dei Debiti Comunali e Provinciali.
Rome. 1905.
Movimento delle Popolazioni nell’ Anno 1906.
Rome. 1908.
Statistica Industriale. Rome. 1905-6.
Statistica Emigrazione per l’Esterno. Rome.
1906.
Notizie sull’ Agricoltura in Italia. Rome.
1900.
Notizie sull’ Istruzione Agraria in Italia.
Rome. 1900.
Mosca, 6. Che Cosa e la Mafia ? Bologna.
1900.
Nathan, E.
Vent’ Anni di Vita Italiana. Rome and Turin. 1906.
Nitti, Prof.
F. S. L’Emigrazione Italiana e i suoi Avversari. Turin. 1888.
Scienza delle Finanze. Naples. 1903.
The Wealth of Italy. Rome. 1907.
Noseda, E. Lavoro delle Donne e dei Fanciulli: Nuova Legge e
Regolamento. Milan. 1903.
Papafova, F. La Questura di Napoli Alleata della Camorra. Giornale
degli Economisti. July, 1907. Rome. 1907.
Perdoni, T. Le Forze Idrauliche dell’ Italia e il loro Impiego. Milan.
1902. Salvatore, A. Leggi e Regolamenti sugli Infortuni degli Operai sul
Lavoro. Milan.
1900.
Statistics of
Italy: Journal of Royal Statistical Society. Vol. lxvi. Ptn. London.
1903.
Virgilii, F. Cooperazione nella Sociologia e nella Legislazione. Milan.
1900. II Problema Agricolo e l’Avvenire Sociale.
Milan. 1900.
III. HISTORIES.
Billot, A. La France et l’ltalie. Histoire des Annies Troubles, 1881-99.
Paris. 1905.
Gori, A. II
Regno d’ltalia, 1860-1900. (Storia Politica d’ltalia.) Milan. 1904. King, B.
and Okey, T. Italy to-day. 1901.
L’ltalia d’Oggi. 2nd edn. Bari. 1904.
King, B. A
History of Italian Unity. 2 vols. 1899.
Orsi, P. Italia Moderna. 2nd edn. M’lan. 1902.
Stillman, W.
J. The Union of Italy, 1815-96. 1898.
Francesco Crispi. 1899.
IV. SPECIAL TREATISES.
Arbib, E. Cinquant’ Anni di Storia Parlamentare. Vol. iv. 1870-80. Rome.
1907.
tJhiala, L. Pagine di Storia Contemporanea de 1858 al 1892. 3
vols. Turin and Rome. 1892-3.
La Spedizione di Massowa. Turin and Naples.
1888.
Tunisi. Turin. 1895.
La Triplice e la Duplice Alleanza. Turin. 1898.
Colajanni, N. Banche e Farlamento. 3rd edn.
Milan. 1893.
Gli Avvenimenti di Sicilia e le loro Cause. 2nd
edn. Palermo. 1896.
L’Italia nel 1898. Milan. 1899.
D’Avril, A. Ncgociationa relatives au Traits de Berlin. Paris. 1887.
Jonquiere, C. E. L. M. T. de la. Les Italiens en Erythrde. Quinze ans de
Politique Coloniale. Paris. 1897.
Loiseau, C. L’fiquilibre Adriatique. Paris. 1901.
Lyde, L. W. and Mockler-Ferryman, A. F. A Military Geography of the
Balkan Peninsula. 1905.
Mantegazza, V. Guerra in Africa: Appendice, II Trattato di (Jcialli.
Florence.
1896.
L’Altra Sponda. Milan. 1905.
Moran di, L. Come fu educato Vittorio Emanuele III. Turin. 1903.
Morelli, G. Vittorio Emanuele II dai Document! di sua Vita e Morte. Milan.
1903.
Orero,
General B. Ricordi d’Africa. Nuova Antologia. Jan. 16, Feb. 1 and 16. Rome. 1901.
Pinon, R. L’Empire de la Mdditerranee. Paris. 1904.
Schulthess, H. Europaischer Geschichtskalender: Italien; Die Romische
Kurie.
Nordlingen
and Munich. 1871-1907.
Villarij L.
Italian life in Town and Country. 1902.
—— (Ed. by).
The Balkan Question. 1905.
V. THE CATHOLICS: MODERNISM.
Anon. Le Idee di nn Vescovo sul Non Expedit; documenti inediti. Rassegna
Nazionale, January 16, 1904. Florence. 1904.
Anon. I Deputati Cattolici alia Camera: Parole di un Vescovo. Ibid.
November.
1904. Florence. 1904.
Barzellotti, Prof. G. L’ltalia e il Papato. Nuova Antologia, March 1,
1904. Rome. 1904.
Documenti Pontifici contro il Modernismo. Rome. 1908.
Eufrasio. II Non Expedit. Nuova Antologia, September 1, 1904.
Rome. 1904. Houtin, A. L’Americanisme. Paris. 1904.
Lebreton, I.
The Encyclical and Modernist Theology. Tr. by Alban Goodwin, S. J.
London. 1908.
Loisy, A. F. Etudes bibliques. Paris. 1903.
Etudes evangeliques. Paris. 1902. And other
works.
Murri, Don R. L’Enciclica “Pascendi” e la Filosofia Moderna. II
Rinnovamento, November—December, 1907. Milan. 1907.
Programma dei
Modernisti. Lettera Enciclica della Santita di nostro Signore Papa Pio X a
tutti i Vescovi dell’ Orbe Cattolico. Rome. 1908. Tr. by A. L. Lilley. 1908.
Rickaby,
Jos., S. J. The Modernist. Catholic Truth Society. 1908.
Sabatier, P.
Modernism. London and Leipzig. 1908.
Scotti, F. T. G. La Fine della Cultura Sociale. Rassegna
Nazionale, July 1, 1906. Florence. 1906.
II Primo Congresso della Lega Democratica
Nazionale. Ibid. Oct. 16, 1906.
Florence.
1906.
S.F.S. The
Encyclical “Pascendi Gregis.’" The Month. Nov. 1907.
Tyrrell, G. A
much abused letter. 1906.
Mediaevalism. 1908.
Un Cattolico Italiano. La Dissoluzione delle Associazioni Cattoliche.
Nuova Antologia, August 16, 1898. Rome. 1898.
VI. SOCIALISM.
Atti del Partito Socialista Italiano. IX Congresso Nazionale, Roma, 7—10
ott. 1906.
Resoconto Stenografico. Rome. 1907.
Bissolatij L. II Congresso Socialista Italiano. Nuova Antologia. October
1,
1906. Rome. 1906.
Chiappelli, A. II Socialismo e il Pensiero Moderno. 2nd edn. Florence.
1899. Gattij G. Agricoltura e Socialismo. Milan. 1900.
Magri, F. Riforraisti e Rivoluzionari nel Partito Socialista Italiano.
Pt 1.
Rassegna Nazionale, November 16, 1906. Florence. 1906.
Pt 2. Ibid. April 1, 1907. Florence. 1907.
Soldi, R. Le Varie Correnti nel Partito Socialista Italiano. Giornale
degli Economisti, June, 1903. Rome. 1903.
Sombart, W. Sozialismus und Soziale Bewegung. 6th edn.
Jena. 1908.
Villari,
Prof. P. Scritti sulla Questions Sociale in Italia. Florence. 1902.
VII. NORTH AND SOUTH.
Bosco, A.
L’Emigrazione dal Mezzogiorno. Giornale degli
Economist!, April. Bologna. 1906.
De Viti de Marco, A. Trattati di Commercio e Intertssi Meridionali. Ibid.
July, 1903. Rome. 1903.
Munthe, A.
Letters from a Mourning City: Naples, 1884. Translated from the Swedish by M.
V. White. 1887.
Niceforo, A. Italia Barbara Contemporanea. Milan. 1898.
La Delinquenza in Sardegna. Palermo. 1897.
Nord e Sud. Turin. 1900.
Provvedimenti per il Mezzogiorno. Discorso
alia Camera. Turin. 1906.
Papafava, F. La Legge per la Basilicata. Giornale
degli Economisti, March, 1904. Rome. 1904.
II Disegno di Legge per Napoli. Ibid. April
and May, 1904. Rome. 1904.
Prato, G. Emigrazione della Fame in Basilicata. Rassegna Nazionale, May
1, 1903. Florence. 1903.
Renda, A. La Questione Meridionale: Inchiesta con Risposte di C.
Lombroso,
A. Loria, G. Ferrero, N.
Colajanni, F. Squillace, etc. etc. Milan and Palermo. 1900.
VIII. CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM.
Arbib, E. La
Questione d’Africa alia Camera Italiana. Nuova Antologia. Rome. January 16 and
February 1, 1896.
L’Africa nei Libri Verdi. Ibid. February 16,
March 1, and May 16, 1896.
Vittorie e Sconfitte. Milan. 1894.
Branzoli-Zappi,
E. II Bilancio dello Stato e la Funzione Ispettiva del Parlamento.
Giornale
degli Economisti. Rome. August, 1903.
Cesaro, Duca
di. I Contadini in Sicilia. Rassegna Nazionale. Florence.
December,
1905. _
Dragoni, C.
La Camera dei Deputati e l’lspettorato del Lavoro. Giornale degli Economisti.
Rome. April, 1906.
Fante,
General C. A Proposito dei nostri Ordinamenti Militari. Nuova Antologia.
Rome.
February 16, 1903.
Ferraris, M.
Le Nuove Spese Straordinarie per la Marina di Guerra. Ibid. Junel, 1905.
Lo Sfacelo Ferroviario in Italia. Ibid. Jan.
16, 1906.
Ferrero, G.
II Fenomeno Crispi e la Crise Italiana. Turin. 1895.
Florio, F. La Conversione del Consolidato Italiano. Giornale degli
Economisti. Rome.
July, 1906.
Ghersi, L. E.
Problema Militare. Nuova Antologia. Rome. August 16, 1904. Giretti, E. La Society
dei Terni, il Governo ed il “Trust” Metallurgico. Giornale degli Economisti.
Rome. Oct. and Nov. 1903.
Johannis, A. I. de. Finanze, Sgravi, RiformaTributaria. Fti. Rassegna
Nazionale.
Florence. December 1, 1905.
Pt 2. Ibid. January 16, 1906.
Luzzatti, L. La Conversione della Rendita Italiana. Nuova Antologia.
Rome. October 16, 1906.
Manassei, P. Le Crisi Agrarie e le Imposte Fondiarie. Rassegna
Nazionale.
Florence. November 16, 1903.
Nitti, Prof. F. S. II Partito Radicale. Turin and Rome. 1907.
Papafava, Count F. L’Aquedotto delle Puglie. Giornale degli Economisti.
Rome. August, 1902.
Persico, T. Perche Abbiamo Pochi Uomini di Stato? Rassegna Nazionale.
Florence. January 16, 1906.
Sonnino, Baron S. Quid Agendum? Nuova Antologia. Rome. September 16,
1900.
Un Ex-Deputato. Dove Andiamo a Finire? Rassegna Nazionale. Florence.
January 1, 1904.
A. THE NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND).
(1) History
op the period (1870-1905).
Blok, P. J. Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk. Vol. vm. Leyden. 1908.
Bruyue, J. A. Geschiedenis van Nederland in onzen tijd. 5 vols. Schiedam,
1889-1906.
Eeuw, Een halve, 1848-98. Nederland onder de regearing van Koning Willem
III en het regentschap van Koningin Emma door Nederlanders. Gesehreven onder
redactie van P. H. Ritter. 2 vols. Amsterdam. 1898.
Houten, S. van. Vijf en twintig Jaar in de Kamer, 1869-94. Haarlem. 1905.
Kemper, J. de Bosch. Staatkundige Geschiedenis van Nederland na 1830. Met
letterkundige aanteekeningen en onuitgegevene stukken. 5 vols. Amsterdam.
1873-82.
Kepper, G. L. De Regeering van Koning Willem III. Groningen. 1887.
Het Regentschap van Koningin Emma. The Hague.
1895.
Nuyens, W. J. E. Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk van 1815 tot op
onze dagen. 4 vols. Amsterdam. 1883-6.
Rengers, W. J. van Walderen. Schets eener parliamentaire Geschiedenis van
Nederland sedert 1849. The Hague. 1889.
Rijsens, F. van. Geschiedenis van ons Vaderland. Groningen. 1904.
Woff, N. H. De Regeering van Koningin Wilhelmina. Rotterdam. 1901.
(2) Biographical and General.
Deschamps, P. La reine Wilhelmine. Paris. 1901.
De Vries, M. Handleiding tot de kennis van het leven en de werken van Mr
G. Groen v. Prinsterer. The Hague. 1895.
Fruin, J. A. De Nederlandsche Wetboeken tot 1876. Utrecht 1881.
Heemskerk Az, J. De Practijk onzer Grondwet. Utrecht. 1881.
Houten, S. Staatkundige brieven. Haarlem. 1886.
Nieuwe Staatkundige brieven. The Hague. 1909.
Huet, C. Busken. Brieven. 2 vols. Haarlem. 1890.
Husen, R. Het leven van Koning Willem III. Heusden.
1889.
Lohman, A. F. de Savornin. Onze Constitutie. Utrecht. 1907.
De Pacificatie. Amsterdam. 1889.
Marius, G. Hermine. Dutch Painting in the nineteenth
century (trans. by de Mattos). London. 1908.
Nippold, F. Die Romische Katholische Kirche im Konigreich der Niederlande
Leipzig. 1877.
r’aintingj
Modern Dutch. Edinburgh Review. July, 1909.
Pierson,
Allard. Onze Tijdgenooten. Amsterdam. 1898.
—— N. G. Verspreide Geschriften. 3 vols. The
Hague. 1901-6.
Renan, E. La Reine Sophie de Hollande. Rev. d. Deux Mondes. xxi, 952. Paris.
1877.
Versluys, J.
Het Kiesrecht van Mr Tak van Poortvliet. Amsterdam.
1892.
Vos, A. J, de. Groen van Prinsterer en zijn
tijd. Dordrecht. 1886.
Thijm, J. A. Alberdingk. By A. J. Amsterdam. 1893.
Willem III,
Guillaume III, Roi de Hollande. By F. Loliee. Nouvelle
Revue. Paris. 1890.
(3) The Ddtoh Indies.
Boys, H.
Scott. Some Notes on Java and its administration by the Dutch. Allahabad. 1892.
Day, C. The
policy and administration of the Dutch in Java. New York. 1904. Deventer, M. L.
van. Geschiedenis der Nederlanders op Java. 2 vols. Haarlem.
1887-95.
Gerlach, A. J. A. Nederlandische Oost-Indie. The Hague. 1874.
Kleyn, R. H. Het gewestelijk bestuur op Java. Leyden. 1889.
Perelaer, M. T. H. Nederlandische Indie. 4
vols. Leyden. 1881-3.
Pierson, N. G. Koloniale Politiek. Amsterdam. 1877.
Verslag van het beheer en der Staat der Nederl. bezittingen in Oost- en
West-Indie en ter Kust van Guinea. 44 vols. The Hague. 1849-96.
B. BELGIUM.
(1) History of the period (1870-1905).
Balau, Abb£
Sylvain. Soixante-dix ans d’histoire contemporaine. Brussels.
1890. Bertrand, L. Histoire de la Democratic et du Socialisme en Belgique
depuis 1860. Brussels. 1906.
Leopold II et son regne. Brussels. 1890.
Cinquante ans de la liberte. 4 vols. Brussels. 1880.
Dujardin-Beaumetz, J. F. P. Histoire graphique de l’industrie houillere
en Belgique. Paris. 1888.
Hoorebeke, Ladislas van. Quatre ans devolution, 1890-4. Ghent. 1894.
Hymans, L. La Belgique contemporaine. Mons. 1880.
Histoire parlementaire de la Belgique. 6 vols.
Brussels. 1878-80.
Juste, T. Leopold I et Leopold II, leur vie et leur regne. Brussels.
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Brockhaus and
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Derluzinskii,
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II. REIGN OF ALEXANDER II. 1861-81.
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Pub. by Ph.
Pavlenkoff. St Petersburg. 1905.
Kollupanoff,
N. Biografua Aleksandra Ivanovitfa Ko&eleva. (The Biography of A. I.
Koseleff.) Vol. i, Parts 1 and 2; ii.
Publ. by Koseleva. Moscow. 1889-92. [A Moderate Reformer.]
Kolokol.
1857-64. London. 1864-7. Geneva. [The organ of A. I. Hertzen.] Korniloff, A. A.
Obscestvennoe dvizenie pri Aleksandre II (1855-81). Istoriccskie ocerki.
Moscow. 1909. [A very valuable sketch.]
Kropotkin,
Prince P. A. Memoirs of a Revolutionist. London. 1907. [From the point of view
of an independent Revolutionary: important.]
LavrofF, P. L. (P. Mirtoff). IstoriSeskiia pis’ma. (Historical
Letters.) 4th edn. “Russkoe Bogatstvo.” St Petersburg. 1906. [This work helped
to found a school of Russian socialism.]
Lemke, M.
Epoxa cenzurnyx reform 1859-65 godov. (The Epoch of Reforms in the Censorship
(1859-65).) Publ. by M. V. Pirozkoff. Istoric. Otd. n°. 3. St Petersburg. 1904.
Na slavnom
Postu (1860-1900). Literaturnyi sbornik, posvesScennyi N. K. Mixai- lovskomu.
2nd edn. St Petersburg. 1906. [Records of Revolutionaries.] Nev£dSnskii, S.
Katkoff i ego vremia. (Katkoff and his Times.) St Petersburg. 1888.
Nikitenko, A.
V. Zapiski i dnevnik (1826-77). Vols. i-iii. Moia pov&t’ o samom sebS i o
tom “ 2emu svidetel’ v zizni byl.” St Petersburg. 1893. [A very valuable
running commentary by a Liberal censor.]
Perepiska,
Iu. T. Samarina s baronessoiu. E. T. Raden (1861-76). Moscow.
1893. [Correspondence of the Slavophil
thinker.]
PharesofiF,
A. I. Semidesiatniki. (The Men of the Seventies.) Ocerki umstvennyx i
politi£eskix dvizenii v Rossii. St Petersburg. 1905.
TatiSceff, S.
S, Imperator Aleksandr II ego zizn’ i carstvovanie. Vols. i and n. Publ.
by A.
Suvorin. St Petersburg. 1903. [The standard history of this reign.] Tun, A.
Istoriia revollucionnago dvizeniia v Rossii. (History of the Revolutionary
movement in Russia.) Perevod s nemeckago, pod redakciei i s primg&inuami L.
E. §iSko. St Petersburg. [The notes are valuable.]
III. RUSSIFICATION AND EXPANSION OF THE EMPIRE.
REACTION. 1882-1904.
Arsen’eff,
K. K. Zakonodatel’stvo o pecati. (Velikila reformy 60-x gg. v ix proSlom i
na&toIa&Sei l. Pod. red I. V. Hessena i A. I. Kamir.ka.) Publ. by P. P.
GerSunin and Co. St Petersburg. 1903. [A series of valuable articles on the
Press.] '
Berg. Zemskoe
Xoziaistvo pribaltiiskago krala. (State of Agriculture in the Baltic
Provinces.) St Petersburg.
Dmowski, R.
La Question Polonaise. Transl. by V. Gasztowtt. Paris. 1909.
[The writer
was leader of the National Democrats: a suggestive publicistic work.] Fisher,
J. R. Finland and the Tsars. 1809-99. London. 1899.
Hessen, I. V.
Sudebnaia reforma (Velikila reformy 60-x godov v ix proslom i nastolascem pod
red. I. V. Hessena i A. I. Kaminka). Publ. by P. P. GerSunin and Co. St
Petersburg. 1905. [A one-sided review of the history of the ^ Law Courts.]
Iacimirskii, A. I. Noveisaia pol’skaia literatura. (Recent
Polish Literature.) Ot Vozstaniia 1863 goda do nalix dnei. Vols. i and n. Publ.
by O. N. Popova. St Petersburg. 1908.
Koulomzine, A. N. de. Le Transsiberien. Paris. 1904.
Kouropatkine, Coloael. Les confins anglo-russes. Transl.
by G. le Marchand. Paris. 1879.
Mel’gunoff,
S. Cerkov’ i gosudarstvo v Rossii. (Church and State in Russia.)
(K voprosu o svobode so vesti.) Sbornik State!. Vols. i and n.
Moscow. 1907-9. Pobedono'scefF, K. P. Reflections of a Russian Statesman.
Transl. by R. C. Long.
1898.
Prugavin, A.
S. Zakony i spravocnyla svedeniia po nacal’nomu narodnomu obrazovaniiu. (The
Laws, etc. concerning elementary education.) 2nd edn. St Petersburg. 1904.
Samarin, Iu.
T. Okrainy Rossii. (The Outskirts of Russia.) Sobr. soSin. Vols. vih-x. Moscow. 1890-8. [The Slavophil
view: chiefly concerning the Baltic Provinces.]
Skrine, F. H.
and Ross, E. D. The Heart of Asia. Part n. Philadelphia.
1899.
Sliuzberg, G.
B. Pravovoe i ekonomiiSeskoe polozenie evreev v Rossii. (Iz materialov po
evrelskomu voprosu.) St Petersburg. 1907. [Accounted the best exposition of the
Jewish view.]
Solov’eff, V.
Nacional’nyl vopros v Rossii. (The National question in Russia.) Vols. i and n.
3rd edn. St Petersburg. 1891. [Solov'eff is known as the most eminent of modem
Russian philosophers.]
Uxtomskii,
Prince E. E. Putelestvie na Vostok Ego Imperatorskago Vyso8estva Gosudaria
Naslednika Cesarevi£a 1890-1. (Journey of His Imperial Highness the Cesarevich
to the East.) St Petersburg. 1893-7. [Contains an exposition of the Far East
policy by one of its chief supporters.] French transl. by L. Leger: Voyage en
Orient de S.A.I. le Cesarevitch. 2 vols. Paris. 1893-8.
IV. THE ZEMSTVA. 1866-1904.
Aksakoff, I.
S. Gosudarstvennyi i zemskii Vopros. Stat’i o nSkotoryx istoriiSeskix
sobytilax. 1860-86. Stat’i iz “ Dnia,” “ Moskvy,” “ MoskviiSa,” i “ Rusi.”
Polnoe Sobranie soiSinenii. Vol. v. Moscow. 1886. [A Slavophil view of Zemstvo
questions.]
Golubeff, A.
Kniaz’ Aleksandr Illarionovi# VasilSkoff. BiografiiSeskii oiSerk.
St
Petersburg. 1882.
Melkaia Zemskaia
Edinica. Sbomrk state!. 2nd edn. Kn. P. D. Dolgorukova i Kn.
D. I. Saxovskago pri uiSastii red. gaz. “
Pravo.” St Petersburg. [The Liberal view on the need of a smaller unit of local
government.]
Pazuxin, A.
Sovremennoe sostoianie Rossii i soslovnyl vopros. Moscow. 1886. [The
Reactionary view on the Zemstvo: it became the basis of the Law of
1890.] _
Skalon, V. I. Zemskie voprosy. 05erki i obozreniia. Publ. by
the Zemstvo Gazette. Moscow. 1882. [The best writer on Zemstvo questions.]
Zemskile vzgllady na reformu mSstnago
upravlenila. Obzor zemskix otzyvov
i proektov.
Moscow. 1884. [Views of Zemstvo men on local government.] Schreider,,G. I. NaSe
gorodskoe obU&estvennoe upravlenie. Etiudy oiSerki i zamStki.
Vol. i. St
Petersburg. 1902. [On self-government in towns.]
Tixonoff, T.
I. Zemstvo v Rossii i na okrainax. (The Zemstvo in Russia and in the
Borderlands.) St Petersburg. 1907.
Vasil’iSikoff,
A. K. O samoupravlenii. Sravnitel’nyl obzor russkix i inostrannyx zemskix i
ob§£estvennyx u&ezdenii. Vols. i-in. 3rd edn. St Petersburg. 1872. [A
respected public man on self-government.]
Veselovskii,
B. Istoriia zemstva za sorok 16t. Publ. by O. N. Popova.
St
Petersburg. 1909. [A good history of the Zemstvo.]
Witte, Count
S. In. Samoderzavie i Zemstvo—Zapiska. Predislovie Cerevanina. (Autocracy and
the Zemstvo. A Memorandum for official circles.) St Petersburg. 1908.
V. FINANCIAL POLICY: MINISTRY OF COUNT WITTE.
1892-1903.
BextSeff, S.
S. Xozialstvennye itogi istekgago sorokapiatilStiia. Vols. i and n St Petersburg. 1902-6. [Economic
figures of the last forty years.]
Bliox, I. S.
Finansy Rossii xix stolStila. Istorila-statistika. (Finances of Russia in the
nineteenth century: history and statistics.) Vols. i-iv. St Petersburg. 1882. [Valuable.]
Brandt, V. F.
Inostrannye Tsapitaly: ix vliianie na ekonomi£eskoe razvitie strany.
(Foreign
capital in Russia.) 3 vols. St Petersburg. 1898-1901. [Valuable.] Kovalevskii,
V. I. Rossiia v koncg xixago vieka. Ministerstvo Finansov. St Petersburg. 1900.
[An economic sketch by the Assistant Minister of Finance.]
MendelSeff,
D. K poznaniiu Rossii s prilozeniem Kai-ty Rossii. 2nd edn. A. Suvorin. St
Petersburg. 1906. Dopolnenie St Petersburg. 1907. [Suggestive notes of great
value.]
Migulin, P.
P. Russkil gosudarstvennyi kredit (1769-1899). Opyt istoriko- kritifieskago
obzora. Vols. i-iii. CharkofF.
1899-1904. [A very substantial study.]
Reforma deneznago obraSSenia v Rossii i
promySlennyi Krizis (1893-1902).
Charkoff.
1902. [On the reform of the currency; valuable.]
Migulin, P.
P. NaSa noviSisala zelgznodoroznaia politika i Zel£znodoroznye zaimy
(1893-1902). Charkoff. 1905. [On recent railway policy; valuable.] Ministeratvo
finansov 1802-1902 iSasti i-ii. St
Petersburg. 1902. [An official history of the Ministry of Finance.]
Nikolai-On
Ocerki naSego poreformennago obScestvennago xozalstva. ■ St Petersburg.
1893. [An important exposition from the anti-western school of popular
thought.]
Ozeroff, I.
X. EkonomiSeskaia Rossfia i eia finansovala politika na isxodS xix
i v naSalS xx vSka. Publ. by D. S.
GorSkoff. Moscow. 1905. [An .able but tendentious economist on financial
policy.](
Vliianie
urozaev i xlSbnyx cfin na nSkotoryia storomy russkago narodnago xozaistva. (The
Influence of crops and grain prices on certain sides of Russian Economy.)
Stat’i. Vols. I and ii. Ed. by A.
I. Cuproff and A. S. Posnikoff. St Petersburg. 1897.
Voroncoff, V.
Sud’by kapitalizma v Rossii. St Petersburg. 1882. [A partisan but important
book from the anti-western school of popular thought.]
VI. THE PEASANT QUESTION. 1861-1904.
Astyreff, N.
M. V volostnyx pisariax. OJerki krest’ianskago samoupravleniia. 3rd edn. Mag.
Kniznoe DSlo. Moscow. [An informing record of life among the peasants.]
Druzinin, N.
IuridiZeskoe polozenie krest’ian. Izsl&dovanie.
Ed. Knizn. Mag.
N. Martynova.
St Petersburg. 1897. [On the legal position of the Peasants.] lanson, I. Opyt
statistifieskago izslSdovaniia o krest’ianskix nadSlax i platezaz.
2nd edn. St
Petersburg. 1881. [Statistics on peasant holdings and dues.] IvanJukoff, I.
Padenie krSpostnogo prava v Rossii. 2nd edn. £f Obscestven.
Pol’za.” St
Petersburg. 1903. [On the fall of serfdom: very valuable.] Korniloffj A. A.
Krest’ianskala reforma. (Velikiia reformy 60-x gg. v ix proilom
i nastoiaScem.) Edd. I. V. Hessen and A. I.
Kaminko. Publ. by P. P. GerSunin and Co. St Petersburg. 1905. [A short but
useful sketch of the history of the Peasant Question.]
■
Sem’ mgsiacev sredi golodalusScix krest’Ian. Otcet o pomoSci goladavSim
nfikotoryx mSstnostel MorSanskago i Kirsanovskago uSzdov Tambovsko! gub. v.
1891-2. Moscow. 1893. [Notes on the famines of 1891-2 in central Russia.] ,y
Loxtin, P.
Bezzemel’nyi proletariat v Rossii. Opyt opredSleniia kolicestva bezzemel’nago
proletariata, sozdannago suscestvuiulcimi sposobami krest'ians- kago
zemlevladenila. Moscow. 1905. [On the landless peasants.]
Sostoianie sel’skago xozialstva v
Rossii sravnitel’no s drugimi stranami.
Itogi k xx-mu v£ku. St Petersburg. 1901. [A. comparative
survey of Russian agriculture.]
Migulin,
P. P. Vykupnye platezi k voprosu o ix ponizenii. Charkoff. 1904. [A study of
the redemption dues.] ■
Nuzdy derevni
po rabotam komitetov o nuzdax sel’skoxoziaistvennol promyslen- nosti. Sbornik
state!. Vols. i and n. Ed. N. N. L’vova i A. A. Staxovica pri ufiastii red.
gaz. Pravo. St Petersburg. 1904. [The Liberal view of agricultural distress.]
Polfinoff,
A. D. IzslSdovanie gkonomi&eskago polozeniia central’noJernozemnyx
gubernil. (Records of a Commission on the central Provinces.) Trudy osobago
sovfiSfianiia 1899-1901 g. Moscow. 1901.
;
Posnikoff, A. Ob£5innoe Zemlevladfinie Vols. i and n. 2nd edn. B-ki
A. Bort- nevskago. Odessa, 1878. [On communal land tenure.]
Postnikoff,
V. E. Iuznorusskoe krest’Ianskoe xozlalstvo. 2nd edn. Moscow.
1907. [On peasant agriculture in southern
Russia.]
Prilezaeff,
A. V. Cto takoe kustarnoe proizvodstvo ? St Petersburg. 1882.
[On cottage
industries.]
Rittix, A. A.
Krest’Ianskii pravoporladok. Syod trudov m&tnyx komitetov po 49 gubemiam.
St Petersburg. 1904. [Records of official local committees v on the
legal position of the peasants.]
Saxovskol,
Kn. N. V. Otxozie sel’sko-xozialstvennye promysly. St Petersburg.
1895. [Trades of emigrant' peasants (the
“Go-aways”).]
Sbornik
uzakonenii i rasporiazenil pravitel'stva kasaluSgixsIa krest’ianskago zemleu-
stroistva i zemlepol’zovaniia. ’Zemskii Otdgl Ministerstva Vnutrennix DS1. St
Petersburg. 1907. [The laws on peasant land tenure; official.]
Witte, Count
S. Iu. Zapiska po krest’Ianskomu dSlu. St Petersburg. 1904. [A suggestive
memorandum.]
VII. RUSSIAN INDUSTRY: THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS.
1861-1904.
Akimoff, V.
M. OiSerk razvitila socialdemokratii v Rossii. Socialdemokrati2eskii Otdgl.
Publ. by O. N. Popova. St Petersburg. 1906. [The best history of
w
Social Democracy in Russia.]
lanzul, I. I.
Fabri2nyl byt Moskovskoi gubernii. (Memoirs of a factory inspector in the
Moscow province.) Ot2et za 1882-3 g. fabriSnago inspektora nad zaniatilami
malolStnix rabocix Moskovskago okruga. St Petersburg. 1884.
Iskra. Za dva
goda. 2 vols. St Petersburg. 1906. [A publication of the Social Democratic
organ (the Majority Men).]
Pazitnoff, K.
A. Polozenie raboSago klassa v Rossii. 2nd edn. St Petersburg.
1908. [On the condition of the working-class.]
Plexanoff, G.
Zamgtki Publicista. Novyia pis’ma o taktikS i beztaktnosti. Publ. by N.
Glagoleff. St Petersburg. [The most authoritative Social Democratic publicist.]
Pogozeff, A. V. U2et Cislennosti i sostava rabotix v Rossii. Materialy
po statistikS truda. Publ. by Imper. Akad. Nauk. St Petersburg. 1906.
[Statistics on factory workers.]
Struve, P.
KritiSeskiia ZamStki k voprosu ob ekonomi^eskom razvitii Rossii. Vol. i. St
Petersburg. 1894. [A striking application of the ideas of Karl Marx to Russia.]
Tugan-Baranovskii,
M. Russkala fabrika v proSlom i nastoIaiSiSem. Istoriko- gkonomiSeskoe
izslSdovanie. 3rd edn. Kniz. Mag. Na5a 2izn’. St Petersburg. 1907. [A valuable
history of Russian industry.]
VIII. THE REFORM MOVEMENT. 1904-9.
Baring, M. A
Year in Russia. 1907.
Brian6aninoff,
A. I. Mezdudum’ie. Vol. i. St Petersburg. 1907. [Records of the interval
between the First and Second Dumas.]
Byloe.
Monthly. St Petersburg. 1906-7; and in 1908 continued under the title Minuvszie
Gody. [Important historical articles mostly from the revolutionary
standpoint.] _
JSngel, G.
and Goroxoff, V. Iz istorii studenfieskago dvizenila 1899-1906. Ed.
’ V.
Serdakovskago. St Petersburg. [On the movement among the students.]
Materialy k istorii russkoi kontr-revollucii. Vol. i.
Pogromy po official’nym dokumentam. St Petersburg. 1908. [An exposure of the
“Pogroms” of
1905, with official documents.]
Miliukoff, P.
N. God Bor’by. Publicisticeskaia xronika. 1907. St Petersburg. [Publicist
articles during 1906.]
Russia and its Crisis. Chicago. 1900.
[Lectures by the leader of the
Cadet Party.]
Osvobozdenie.
(Fortnightly.) 1902-4. Stuttgart. 1905. Paris. [The organ (but not
authoritative) of the Union of Liberation, ed. by P. 13. Struve.]
Pamiatnik
Epoxi 17ago Oktlabria. (Sputnik Izbiratella.) St Petersburg. [An elector’s
handbook of 1906 with surveys and records.]
Pravo.
(Weekly.) St Petersburg. 1899-1910. [The leading Liberal weekly.] Savic, G. G.
Novyi Gosudarstvennyi StroT: spravoiSnaia Kniga. St Petersburg.
1907. [A good
handbook of the legislation of the Reform movement.] Smiruoff, A. Kak proSli
vybory vo vtorulu gosudar’stvennulu Dumu. St Petersburg.
1907. [An interesting analysis of the second
electoral campaign.] StenografiiSeskii Otcet Gosudarstvennoi Dumy. Pervago
sozyva. Vtorago sozyva. Tret’iago sozyva. St Petersburg. 1906-9. [Verbatim
report of the three Dumas.]
Urusoff, Kn.
S. D. Zapiski gubernatora. Ki&nev, 1903-4 g. Publ. by V. Sablin.
Moscow. 1907.
[Memoirs of a Liberal Governor in KiSinev.]
Venozinskii,
V. PolitiiSeskala Zabastovka v. Spb. Universitete. OiSerk. St Petersburg.
1906. [The Great Strike of 1905 in St Petersburg.]
“Zarnicy’'
Sbornik. Vol. i. St Petersburg. 1907. [The article on the Union of Liberation
is the one authoritative record (by Prince D. I. Saxovskoi).]
Zemleustroitel’nyx Kommisii, Obzor Deiatel’nosti Uezdnyx (1907-8). St
Petersburg.
1909. [Official review: of the laud settlement:
very important.]
THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE BALKAN PENINSULA. 1. TURKEY AND THE EASTERN QUESTION
GENERALLY.
(A) BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Beugescu, G. Essai d’une notice bibliographique sur la Question
d’Orient.— Orient
europe'en, 1821-97. Brussels and Paris. 1897. [Contains only French and Belgian
publications.]
Yovanovitch
Voyslav, M. The Near Eastern Question [1481-1906]. Belgrade.
1909. [A comprehensive
bibliography.]
(B) DOCUMENTS.
The
Parliamentary Papers concerning Turkey are too numerous to mention in
detail—for the crisis of 1876-81 there are 109. They can easily be found with
the aid of the Index. The French Yellow and Italian Green Books, being less
voluminous and unindexed, are set out in full.
Documents Diplomatiques (Livres Jaunes):
Affaires d’Orient. 1875-6-7.
,, ,, Congres de Berlin. 1878.
Affaires armeniennes. 1893-7. Supplement. 1895.
Affaires de Crete. June, 1894—February, 1897.
Antonomie cretoise. May—December, 1897.
Affaires d’Orient. 1898.
Affaires de Crete. 1904-5.
Affaires de Macedoine, 1903-5.
„ „ J 906-7.
Documenti Diplomatici (Libri Verdi):
1877. Affari d’Oriente.
1889-90. Candia.
1898-9. Creta.
1904-9. Macedonia.
Papantonakes.
Kpijn/ta. Canea. 1901. [Documents relating to the Cretan Insurrection of
1897-8.]
(C)
CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES.
Abbott, G. F.
The Tale of a Tour in Macedonia. 1903.
Turkey in transition. 1909.
Abd-ur-Rahman
Sheref. Tarikh-i-derlet-i-osmaine. 2 vols.
Constantiuople. 1900. Amadori-Virgilj, G. La Questione Rumeliota e la Politica
Italiana. Vol. i. Bitonto.
1908.
Avril, Barou A. d’. Negotiations relatives au traite de Berlin et aux
arrangements qui ont suivi. Paris. 1887- Baker, Col. G. Turkey in
Europe. 1877.
Baker Pasha,
Lt-General V. The War iu Bulgaria. 1879.
Bamberg, F. Geschichte der Orientalischen Angelegenheit im Zeitraume des
Pariser und des Berliner Friedens (Allg. Gesch. in Einzeldarstellungen). iv, 5.
Berlin. 1892.
Barbarich, E. Albania. Monografia. Rome. 1905.
Beaman, A. H.
Twenty Years in the Near East. 1898.
Berard, V. La Turquie et l’Hellenisme contemporain. 5th edn. Paris.
1904.
La Politique du Sultan. 4th edn. Paris. 1900.
La Macedoine. 2nd edn. Paris. 1900.
Les Affaires de Crete. 2nd
edn. Paris. 1900.
Pro Macedonia. Paris.
1904.
Le Sultan, l’Islam, et les Puissances. Paris.
1907.
La Re'volution turque. Paris. 1909.
Bliss, E. M.
Turkey and the Armenian atrocities. 1896.
Bonghi, R. II Congresso di Berlino e la Crisi d’Oriente. 2nd
edn. Milan. 1885. Brailsford, H. N. Macedonia: its races and their future. 1906.
Brancoff, D. M. La Macedoine et sa population chretienne. Paris. 1905.
Bryce, J.
Transcaucasia. With Supplement on the Armenian Question. 1896. Buxton, C. R.
Turkey in revolution. 1909.
Buxton, N.
Europe and the Turks. 1907.
Chlumecky,
Baron L. von. Oesterreich-Ungarn und Italien. Das westbalkanische
Problem und Italiens Kampf um die Vorherrschaft in der Adria. Leipzig. 1907. Choublier, M. La Question d'Orient depuis le traite de
Berlin. Paris.
1897. Consul’s Daughter, A. (Lady Blunt.) The peoples of Turkey. 1878.
Daily News
Correspondence of the War of 1877-8. 1878.
Draganof. La
Macedoine et les reformes. Paris. 1906.
Driault, E. La Question d’Orient depuis ses origines jusqu’a nos jours. 3rd
edn. Paris. 1905.
Durham, M. E.
The Burden of the Balkans. 1905.
High Albania. 1909.
Edwards, H.
S. Sir W. White, Ambassador at Constantinople, 1885-91. 1902. Eliot, Sir C. N.
E. (“Odysseus ’’). Turkey in Europe. 2nd edn. 1908.
Galanti, A.
L’Albania. Rome. 1901.
Gladstone,
W. E. The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. 1876. The Armenian Question. 1905.
GopJevic, Sp. Oberalbanien und seine Liga. Leipzig. 1881.
Makedonien und Alt-Serbien. Vienna.
1889.
Greene, F. V.
The Russian Army and its campaign in Turkey in 1877-8. 1880.
The Campaign in Bulgaria, 1877-8. 1903.
Halid, Halil.
The Diary of a Turk. 1903.
Halil Ganem. Les Sultans Ottomans. 2 vols. Paris. 1902.
Hecquard, C. La Turquie sous Abdul-Hamid II: Expose fidele de la g£rance
d’un Empire pendant un quart de siecle (31° aout 1876—1“ septembre 1900). Brussels.
1901.
Herbert, W.
V. The Defence of Plevna, 1877. 1895.
The Chronicles of a Virgin Fortress [Vidin],
1896.
Holland, T.
E. The European Concert in the Eastern Question. Oxford. 1885. King-Lewis, G.
Critical Times in Turkey. 1904.
Knight, E. F.
The awakening of Turkey. 1909.
Krahmer,
Major-General. Geschichte des russisch-tiirkischen Kriegs auf der
Balkan-Halbinsel, 1877-8. Berlin. 1902.
La Jonquiere, Vicomte A. de. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman. Paris. 1881.
Lavaleye, E. de. La Peninsule des Balkans. 2 vols. Brussels. 1886. [English
translation. 1887.]
Leger, L. La Save, le Danube, et le Balkan. 2nd edn. Paris. 1889.
Leger, L. Russes et Slaves. 2 vols. Paris. 1890-6.
Loiseau, C. Le Ealkan Slave et la Crise autrichienne. Paris. 1898.
L’fiquilibre adriatique : l’ltalie et la
Question d’Orient. Paris. 1901.
Lyde, L. W.
and Mockler-Ferryman, A. F. Military Geography of the Balkan Peninsula. 1905.
Lynch, H. F.
B. Armenia: Travels and Studies. 2 vols. 1901.
Mantegazza,
V. L’Altra Sponda. Italia e Austria nell’ Adriatico. Milan. 1905. Maurice,
Major F. The Russo-Turkish Wax1, 1877. 1905.
Midhat Bey,
Ali Haydar. The Life of Midhat Pasha. 1903.
Miller, W.
The Balkans. (Story of the Nations.) 2nd edn. With new chapter (1896-1908).
1908.
Travels and Politics in the Near East. 1898.
Three Years of the Eastern Question
[1898-1901], In Gentleman’s Magazine,
November
1901.
The Macedonian Claimants. In Contemporary
Review, March 1903.
Minchin, J.
G. C. The Growth of Freedom in the Balkan Peninsula. 1886. Nicolaides, C. La
Macedoine. Berlin. 1899.
Percy, Earl.
Highlands of Asiatic Turkey. 1901.
(Lord Warkworth.) Notes from a Diary in
Asiatic Turkey. 1898.
Roth, K. Geschichte der christlichen Balkanstaaten. Leipzig.
1907.
Thompson, G.
C. Public opinion and Lord Beaconsiield, 1875-80. 2 vols. 1886. Vandal, A. Les Armeniens et la reforme de la Turquie. Paris.
1897.
Villari, L.
(editor). The Balkan Question: the present condition of the Balkans.
1904.
Voinov, I. F. La Question macedonienne et les reformes en Turquie. Paris.
1905. Ward, Capt. M. C. P. Handbook of the Armies of the Balkan States. 1900.
Wyon, R. The Balkans from within. 1904.
(A) DOCUMENTS.
Parliamentary
Papers:
1878. c.
1974. Vol. lxxx. c. 1968, 1969.
Vol. lxxxix.
1878-9.
c. 2330. Vol. lxxvii.
1880. c. 2633. Vol. lxxviix. c. 2637. Vol. lxxxi.
c. 2705. Vol. lxxxii.
1881. c. 2912, 2940. Vol.
xcvm. o. 2759. Vol. c.
1886. c. 4731, 4732, 4765.
Vol. lxxiv.
1898. c. 8664. Vol. cvi. c. 8778, 8818, 8849, 8851. Vol. cvn.
Documents Diplomatiques (Livres Jaunes):
Negociations relatives a la rectification des frontieres de la Grece. 2
vols.
1879-80.
Affaires de Grece. 2 parts. 1880-1.
Affaires de Roumelie et de Grece. 1885-6.
Conflit
greco-turc. February—May 1897.
Arrangement financier avec la Grece. 1898.
Documenti Diplomatici (Libri Verdi):
1830-2. Vol. x, pp. 725—903. Rettificazione della frontiera
turco-ellenica.
„ Vol. n. Conferenza di Berlino per la questione turco-ellenica. (1880.)
„ Vol. in. Questione turco-ellenica. (1881.)
1882-6. Vol. xx. Questione turco-ellenica. (1882.)
Documents Diplomatiques (Livre blanc hellenique).
Conflit
greco-turc. April—September 1897. Athens. 1897.
Hellenic
White Books:
t,’Eyypa<j)a
Kararedevra els rrjv Bov\fjv itcp\
rav eKftoXadav Kai <rK(api.av Aavptov
1872-3.
Athens. 1873.
AiirXa/uartKa
tyyparpa ircpi toO 'EXXiji/ikoC fijT^/noroy, KOTarfBivTa tv rfj BovXg rior
'EWrjvwv vito tov eiri tg>v ’E^GirepcKGtv 'Yirovpyov. Athens. 1878.
MeTarpOTrij t&v bave'uov tov 1824 Kai 1825, dSeia tov eVi tS>v
OlieovofUKfov 'Y Trovpyclov. Athens. 1879.
A(irXafiaTiKa
iyypa<j)a d<f>opZvTa els to
ficBopiaicbv £qnj/na. Athens. 1882. AtnXafiaT^a eyypa<pa KaTarcdevTa cts tt]v JiovXrjv v?to tov eVt ratv ^E^toTeptKav 'Yirovpyov nep\ rou
’AttokXho-juov. Athens. 1886.
AarXafiariKO.
tyypatpa irtpt <TTa<f>ibos (Atairpayfiarcvircis ficra rrjs ’AyyXiKrjs
Kv^epvijtreas). Athens. 1889.
“Eyypa(j>a
jrepi rrjs 'YiroOeacas Zairira, 1863-92. Athens. 1892.
AmXatpaTiKa
eyypa(j>a dtpopavra fir tov eWrjvoTovpKiKov irokep.ov toC 1897. Athens.
1897.
M€Til(j)pa<Tts
t<ov Kvpietripav vTrofivtifidrav,
fit’ <Sv Tj 'EWtjviKtj KvSepvrjdts npoa- €<J*vycv ets rfjv dtairritriav t&v ev Kwp/3rdXei TTpetrficvTtov
rStv 6 M. Avvdpeatv. Athens. 1901.
*Eyypacfia 'EWijvoppovfiaviKtjt Sta<fmpas. Athens. 1906.
(B) CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES
Becker, G. La Guerre contemporaine dans les Balkans, 1897. Paris.
1899.
Bickford-Smith,
R. A. H. Greece under King George. 1893.
Bigham, C.
With the Turkish Army in Thessaly. 1897.
Constantine,
Crown Prince. "Exfleo-ir rfjs ’A. B. ‘Y^ojXorijTor toO AiaSo^ou eirt tS>v iTfirpayjiivasv tov orpaTov
QeacraXlas Kara TTjv eKtTTpOTciav 1897. Athens. 1898.
Evangelides,
T. E. Kavoravrivos SfioXevo-KTjs. JiioyptujjiKov Aoiclfiiov. Athens. 1897.
German Staff
Officer, A. The Greco-Turkish War of 1897. 1898.
Gladstone, W.
E. The Hellenic factor in the Eastern Problem. In Contemporary Review for
December 1876. Reprinted in Gleanings from Past Years. Vol. iv, 259-304. 1879.
Goltz, Baron
C. v. der. Der thessalische Krieg und die tiirkische Armee. Berlin.
1898.
Idromenos, A. M. To Svvrayna rtjs ‘EXXaflor. Athens. 1908.
Kyriakides, E. K. ‘Iaropia tov avy^pavov 'EXXijrur/^ov, 1832-92. Vol.
u. Athens.
1894.
Miller, W.
Greek Life in Town and Country. 1905.
Nevinson, H.
W. Scenes in the Thirty Days War between Greece and Turkey,
1897. 1898. [The Campaign in Epiros. The author
was correspondent of the Daily Chronicle.]
Philaretos,
G. N. 2vvrayjia rqs 'E\\a8os. Athens. 1889.
Rose, W. K.
With the Greeks in Thessaly. 1897. [The author was Reuter’s correspondent.]
Rumbold, Sir
H. Final Recollections of a Diplomatist. 1905.
Samuelson, J.
Greece ; her present condition. 1894. [Deals with Greek finance.]
Sergeant, L.
Greece in the Nineteenth Century, 1821-97. 1897.
[A lifelike
picture of the war of 1897 may be found in Mr H. N. Brailsford’s novel, The
Broom of the War-god. 1898. The author was a volunteer.]
(A) BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Bengescu, G.
Bibliographic franco-roumaine du xix° siecle. Vol. I. Brussels. 1895. Dame, F.
(cf. infra) has bibliographies, especially for the Jewish question. Cf. also
Revue historique, vol. lxxiii, pp.
366-9; vol. xcvi, pp. 80 sqq. for Roumanian publications between 1894 and 1907.
(B) DOCUMENTS.
Parliamentary
Papers:
1878. c. 2007. Vol. i,xxxii.
1880. c. 2554. Vol. lxxix.
Documents Diplomatiques (Livres Jaunes):
Question de la reconnaissance de la Roumanie. 2 vols. 1879-80.
Commission technique europeenne. 1880. (Delimitation of
Roumano-Bulgarian frontier near Silistria.)
Livre vert roumain :
La question du Danube. Bucharest. 1881.
Kogalniceanu, V. M. Acte si documente din corespondenta diplomatic;! a
lui Mihail Kogalniceanu, 1877-8. [Documents regarding the War of those
years.] Vol. i. Bucharest. 1893.
Roumanian Academy, Trei-peci de Ani de Domnie ai Regului Carol I,
1866-96.
2 vols. Bucharest. 1897.
Sturdza, D. A. Charles Ist, Roi de Roumanie : Chronique,
Actes, Documents [1866-77]. 2 vols.
Bucharest. 1899-1904.
(C) CONTEMPORARY
AUTHORITIES.
Aus dem Leben Konig Karls von Rumanien. Aufzeichnungen eines Augenzeugen.
Vols. ii-iv. Stuttgart.
1900. Reaches to 1881. A summary, Reminiscences of the King of Roumania, has
been published by S. Whitman. London and New York.
1899.
Bellessort, A. La Roumanie contemporaine. Paris. 1905.
Blbesco, G. Histoire d’une frontiere. La Roumanie sur la rive droite du
Danube. Paris.
1883.
Boteanu, G.
Memoriu din resboiul de la 1877-8. [The war of those years.] Bucharest. 1895.
Colescu, L. Progres e'conomiques de la Roumanie, re'alises sous le regne
de S. M.
le Roi Carol I. Bucharest. 1907.
Dame, F. Histoire de la Roumanie contemporaine depuis l’avenement des
Princes indigenes jusqu’a nos jours, 1822-1900. Paris. 1900.
Eliade, P. Histoire de l’esprit public en Roumanie au xixme
siecle. Paris. 1905. Gubematis, Count A. de. La Roumanie et les Roumains.
Florence. 1898. Samuelson, J. Roumania Past and Present. 1882.
Sincerus, E. Les Juife en Roumanie depuis le traits de Berlin jusqu’a ce
jour.
1901. ’
Witte, Baron J. de. Quinze ans d’histoire: 1866-81. Paris. 1905.
4. BULGARIA
AND EASTERN ROUMELIA.
(A) DOCUMENTS.
Parliamentary Papers:
1880. c. 2634, 2636. Vol. lxxxi.
1881. c. 2992. Vol. xcvm.
1886. c. 4612, 4767. Vol.
ixxv.
1887. c. 4933-4. Vol. xci.
1888. c. 5370. Vol. cix.
Documents Diplomatiques (Livres Jaunes):
Affaires de Roumelie et de Grcce. 1885-6.
Documenti Diploraatici (Libri Verdi):
1882-6. Vol. iv. Rumelia Orientale. Ser. 1 and 2.
1886-7.
Rumelia Oiientale e Grecia. Ser. 3.—Bulgaria.
1889-90. Bulgaria.
Leonoff, R. Documents secrets de la politique russe en Orient, 1881-90. Berlin
and Leipzig. 1893.
(B) CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES.
Bath, Marquis
of. Observations on Bulgarian Affairs. 1880.
Beaman, A. H. M. Stambuloff. 1805.
Becker, G. La Guerre contemporaine dans les Balkans, 1885. Paris. 1899. Bilimek, H. Der bulgarisi h-serbische Krieg,
1885. Vienna. 1886.
Cholet, Count A. P. de. £tude sur la Guerre bulgaro-serbe. Paris.
1891.
Dicey, E. The
Peasant State. 1894.
Orandar, A. G. Cinq ans de regne. Le Prince Alexandre de Battenberg en
Bulgarie. Paris. 1884.
Les Evenements politiques en Bulgarie depuis
1876 jusqu’a nos jours.
Brussels. 1896.
Dupuy-Peyou, L. La Bulgarie aux Bulgares. Paris and Brussels. 1896.
Golovin, A. F. Furst Alexander I von Bulgarien, 1879-86. Vienna. 1896.
Gopcevid, Sp. Bulgarien und Ostrumelien, mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung des
Zeitraums von 1878-86. Leipzig. 1886.
Huhn, Major A. von. Der Kampf der Bulgaren um ihre Nationaleinheit. Leipzig.
1886. Eng. tr.: The Struggle of the Bulgarians for National Independence.
1886.
The Kidnapping of Prince Alexander. 1887.
Jirecek, C.
Das Furstenthum Bulgarien. Vienna. 1891.
Geschichte der Bulgaren. Prague. 1876.
Kanitz, F. Donau-Bulgarien und der Balkan. 2nd edn. Leipzig. 1882. Also in
French: La Bulgarie danubienne et le Balkan. Paris. 1881.
Koch, A. Mitteilungen aus dem Leben und der Regierung des Fursten Alexander
von Bulgarien. Darmstadt. 1887. Eng. tr.: Prince Alexander of
Battenberg.
1887.
Lamouche, L. La Bulgarie dans le passe et le present. Paris. 1892.
Ministere du Commerce bulgare. La Bulgarie contemporaine.
Brussels. 1906.
Eug. tr.:
Bulgaria of to-day. 1907.
Samuelson, J.
Bulgaria Past and Present. 1888.
Sobolev, L. N. Der erste Furst von Bulgarien. Leipzig.
1886.
Wolff, Sir H.
D. Rambling Recollections. Vol. ii.
1908. [The author was British delegate on the Eastern Roumelian Commission.]
Cf. also
various articles by Mr J. D. Bourchier [Times correspondent at Sofia] in the
Fortnightly Review. Vols. l, lv, lx.
(A)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Royal Servian
Academy. Essai de bibliographie fran^aise sur les Scrbes, et
les Croates (1554-1900). Belgrade. 1900.
(B) DOCUMENTS.
Parliamentary Papers:
1877. c. 1742. Vol. lxxxix.
(C) CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES.
Boskarc, S. La Mission de Serbie dans la Question d’Orient. Florence.
1887. Coquelle, P. Le Royaume de Serbie. Paris. 1894.
Cuniberti, F. La Serbia e la Dinastia degli Obrenovitch (1804-93). Turin.
1893. Durham, M. E. Through the Lands of the Serb. 1904.
fitat-Major General de l’Armee Serbe. Guerre de la Serbie contre la
Turquie,
1877-8. Paris. 1879. [Translation.]
Georgevic, V. Das Ende der Obrenovitch: Beitrage zur Geschichte Serbiens,
1897-1900.
Leipzig. 1905. [The author was Prime Minister.]
Gopcevi(5, S. Serbien und die Serben. Leipzig.
1888.
Gubernatis, Count A. de. La Serbie et les Serbes. Florence. 1897.
Hogge, J. La Serbie de nos jours. Brussels.
1900.
Kanitz, F. Das Konigreich Serbien und das Serbenvdlk von der Romerzeit bis
zur Gegenwart. 2 vols. Leipzig. 1904-9.
Lazard, E. and Hogge, J. La Serbie d’aujourd’hui. 2 pts. Gembloux. 1900. Mallat, J. La Serbie contemporaine. 2
vols. Paris. 1902.
Mijatovi<5,
C. Servia and the Servians. 1908.
Pearson, E.
M. and McLaughlin, L. E. Service in Servia under the Red Cross.
1877.
Protic, S.
The Secret Treaty between Servia and Austria-Hungary. Fort. Review, May, 1909.
rtacic, V. Le Royaume de Serbie: l^tude d’histoire diplomatique. Paris.
1901. Ristic, J. J^HMOHaTCKa HCTOpuja CBPHje. (Diplomatic History of Servia.)
1875-8. 2
vols. Belgrade. 1896-8.
Salusbury, P.
H. B. Two Months with Tchernaieff in Servia. 1877.
Stead, A.
(ed.). Servia by the Servians. London. 1909. [The official view.] SydaiSkoff,
Bressnitz von. Die Geschichte Serbiens vom Jahre 1868 bis auf den
heutigen Tag unter den Konigen Milan und Alexander. Berlin and Leipzig.
1895-6. Das Ende der Dynastie Obrenovic. Leipzig. 1900.
[Chronique scandaleuse. ]
Vivian, H. Servia, the Poor Man’s Pajradise. 1897.
The Servian Tragedy. 1904.
(A) BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Tenneroni, A. Per la bibliografia del Montenegro. 2nd edn. Rome. 1896.
Tondini, C. Notice sur la bibliographie du Montenegro. Paris. 1889.
(B) DOCUMENTS.
Parliamentary
Papers:
Correspondence
respecting the Montenegrin frontier, and Further Correspondence. Turkey. No.
22. (1880.) c. 2711. Vol. lxxxii. Turkey.
Nos. 1, 2. (1881.) c. 2752, 2758. Vol. c. '
Documents Diplomatiques (Livres Jaunes):
Affaires du Montenegro. 2 vols. Paris. 1880.
Documenti Diplomatic! (Lihri Verdi):
1880-2.
Vol. i, pp. 553—723.
Diplomatic
and Consular Reports on Trade and Finance:
Nos. 95
(1888), 1761 (1896), 1884 (1897), 2114 (1898). [None published since 1898.]
(C) CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES.
Chiudina, G. Storia del Montenero (Crnagora) da’ tempi antichi fino ai
nostri. Spalato. 1880.
Coquelle, P. Histoire du Montenegro et de la Bosnie depuis les origines.
Paris.
1895.
Denton, W.
Montenegro—its people and their history. 1877.
Gladstone, W.
E. Montenegro or Tsemagora. A Sketch. In Nineteenth Century, May 1877.
Reprinted in “Gleanings from Past Years.” Vol. iv. 1879. Gopcevic, S. Der
tiirko-montenegrinischer Krieg, 1876-8. Vienna. 1876-9. Maton, E. Histoire du
Montenegro ou Tsernagore. Paris. 1881.
Miller, W.
The Montenegrin Bicentenary. In Gentleman’s Magazine, October
1896. '
The Montenegrin Jubilee. In Macmillan’s
Magazine, September 1901.
Wyon, R. and
Prance, G. The Land of the Black Mountain. 1903.
(A number of compilations
and pamphlets of small value were published in Italy on the occasion of the
Montenegrin wedding in 1896.)
7. BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGOVINA.
Anonymous. Der Aufstand in der Hercegovina und Sud-Bosnien. Vienna. 1883. Barre, A. La Bosnie-Herzegovine, Administration
Autrichienne (1878-1907). Cvijic, I. L’Annexion de Bosnie et la Question Serbe.
Paris. 1909.
Drage* G.
Austria-Hungary. 1909. (Chapters xiv sqq.)
Evans, A. J.
Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on foot. 1876.
Illyrian Letters. 1878.
Fournier, A. Wie wir zu Bosnien kamen—eine historische Studie. Vienna.
1909. Haardt, V. von. Die Occupation Bosniens und der Herzegovina. Vienua.
1878. Hercalovid, T. Vorgeschichte der Occupation Bosniens und der Herzegovina.
Agram. 1906.
Koetschet. “Aus Bosniens letzter Tiirkenzeit.”
Mackenzie, G.
M. and Irby, A. P. Travels in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey-in- Europe. 3rd
edn. [Vol. i, chapters i-iii relate to Bosnia at this period.]
1877.
Occupation, die, Bosniens und der Hercegovina. (Generalstabswerk.) Vienna.
1879-80.
Saix, Vicomte de. Les Pays sud-Slaves de l’Autriche-Hongrie.
Spalaikovitch, M. J. La Bosnie et l’Herzegovine. £tude d’histoire
diplomatique de droit international. Paris. 1899.
Stillman, W.
J. Herzegovina and the late Uprising. 1877.
Thomson, H.
C. The Outgoing Turk. 1897.
I. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Ilbrahim
Hilmy, H.H. Prince. The Literature of Egypt and the Sudan from the earliest
times to the year 1886 inclusive. 2 vols. London. 1886-7.
II. REPORTS, SPEECHES, ETC.
Blue Books on
Egypt, including Lord Cromer’s Annual Reporta Hansard's Parliamentary Dehates.
III. HISTORIES, TREATISES, ETC.
Cameron, D.
A. Egypt in the 19th century, or Mehemet Ali and his Successors until the
British occupation in 1882. 1898.
Colville,
Colonel H. E. History of the Sudan Campaign. In two parts, with a case of maps.
1889.
Colvin, Sir
A. The Making of Modern Egypt. 1906.
Cromer, Earl
of. Modern Egypt. 2 vols. 1908.
Dicey, E. The
story of the Khedivate. 1902.
Fitzgerald,
P. H. The Great Canal at Suez, its political, engineering and financial
history. 2 vols. 1876.
Freycinet, C.
de. La Question d’Egypte. Paris. 1906.
Jerrold, B.
The Belgium of the East. 1882.
Lesseps, F. de. Le Canal de Suez. 8 vols. Paris. 1875.
Milner, A. England in Egypt. 1892. 6th
edn. 1899.
Mouriez, P. Histoire de Mehemet Ali, Vice-Roi d’£gypte. 4
vols. Paris. 1867. Royle, C. Egyptian Campaigns. 1882-99. 1900.
Vyse, G. W.
Egypt: Political, Financial and Strategical. 1900.
Wingate,
Major Sir F. R. Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan, being an account of the rise
and progress of Mahdism and of subsequent events in the Sudan to the present
time. 1891.
IV. BIOGRAPHIES, MEMOIRS, ETC.
Butler, Lt.-Gen. Sir W. F. Charles George Gordon. 1904.
Guizot, F. P. G. Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de mon temps. 8
vols. Paris. 1858-67.
Hake, A. E.
The Story of Chinese Gordon. 1884.
The Journals of Major-Gen. Gordon at Kartoum.
1885.
Hill, G. B.
Gordon in Central Africa, 1874-9. 1899.
Malet, Sir E.
Egypt 1879-83. 1909.
Murray, Sir
C. A. A short Memoir of Mohammed Ali. 1898.
T. D. and White, A. S. Sir Samuel Baker. 1895.
Vetch,
Colonel R. H. Life, Letters and Diaries of Lieut.-Gen. Sir G. Graham. Edinburgh. 1901.
Vingtrinier, A. Soliman-Pacha (Colonel Seve) Generalissime des Armies
l£gyptiennes, ou, Histoire des Guerres de l’figypte de 1820 a 1860. Paris.
1886.
Watson,
Colonel Sir C. M. The life of Major-General Sir C. W. Wilson. 1909.
V. TREATISES AND MONOGRAPHS.
Baker, Sir S.
W. The Albert Nyanza, Great basin of the Nile, and Explorations of the Nile
sources. 2 vols. 1867.
Ismailia, a Narrative of the Expedition to
Central Africa for the suppression
of the
slave-trade, organised by Ismail, Khedive of Egypt. 2 vols. 1874. Brackenbury,
Major-General Sir H. The River Column. Edinburgh. 1885. Broadley, A. M. How we
defended Arabi and his friends. A story of Egypt and the Egyptians. 1884.
Burton, R. F.
The Nile Basin. 1864.
Butler, A. J.
Court Life in Egypt. 1887.
Casati, Major
G. Ten years in Equatoria and the return with Emin Pasha. 2 vols.
1891.
Dicey, E.
England and Egypt. 1881.
Knight, E. F.
Letters from the Sudan. 1897.
Leon, E. de.
Egypt under its Khedives, or The old house of bondage under new masters. 1864.
McCoan, J. C.
Egypt as it is. 1877.
Portal, G. H.
An Account of the English Mission to King Johannis of Abyssinia in 1887.
Winchester. 1888.
Sandwitb, F.
M. The Cairo Lunatic Asylum 1888. Journal of Mental Science. Jan. 1889.
The History of Kasr el Ainy a.d. 1466-1901. Records of the Egyptian
Govt. School
of Medicine. Cairo. 1901.
Slatin, R. C.
Fire and Sword in the Sudan, a personal narrative of fighting and serving the
Derwishes 1879-95. 1896.
Speke,
Captain J. H. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile.
Edinburgh.
1863.
Steevens, G.
W. With Kitchener to Khartum. 1898.
Urquhart, A.
R. and Tuke, W. S. Two visits to the Cairo Asylum, 1877-8.
Journal of
Mental Science. April, 1879.
Verner,
Captain W. W. C. Sketches in the Sudan. 1885.
Wallace, Sir
D, M. Egypt and the Egyptian Question. 1883.
Willcocks, W.
Egyptian Irrigation. 2nd edn. 1899.
I. OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS.
Parliamentary Papers relating to the East Indies, 1869-1908.
The mere
catalogue of these fills 77 folio pages of print in the Annual Lists and
General Index of the Parliamentary Papers relating to the East Indies. The most
important for the period (1869-1909) are:—Correspondence respecting the
relations between the British Government and that of Afghanistan since the
accession of the Ameer Shere Ali Khan, 1878. Further Papers relating to the
affairs of Afghanistan published in 1878, 1879, 1881 and subsequent dates.
Reports of the Indian Famine Commissions in 1880, 1898, and 1902. Reports of
the Indian Finance Committee, 1886, of the Indian Currency Committees in 1893,
1899, and of the Royal Commission on the Administration of the Expenditure of
India,
1900. Reports of the Indian Education
Commission, 1883, and. of the Indian Universities Commission, 1902. Reports of
the Royal Commission on Opium,
1893. Papers regarding British relations with
the neighbouring tribes on the North-west Frontier of India and the military
operations undertaken against them,
1898. North-west Frontier and Punjab Frontier
administration: correspondence (1897-1901), 1901. Report of the Plague
Commission, 1902. Correspondence on Army Administration, 1905. Papers relating
to the Reconstitution of the Provinces of Bengal and Assam, 1905-6. Papers
relating to the Imperial Advisory Council and Provincial Advisory Councils,
the enlargement of the Legislative Councils, and the discussion of the Budget,
1907-9. Memorandum on some of the Results of Indian Administration during the
past fifty years, 1909. Reports on the Moral and Material Progress and
condition of India, published annually.
II. SECONDARY WORKS.
A. General.
Boulger, D.
C. India in the Nineteenth Century. 1901.
Jhesney, Sir
George, Indian Polity, a view of the System of Administration in India. 1894.
Cotton, Sir
H. J. S. New India, or India in transition. 1907.
Cunningham,
Sir H. S. British India and its rulers. 1882.
Dictionary of
National Biography. 63 vols. 1885-1900.
Dutt, R. C.
India in the Victorian Age. 1904.
The economic history of India in the Victorian
Age. 1906.
Hunter, Sir
W. W. The Indian Empire. 1893.
The India of the Queen and other Essays. 1903.
Ilbert, Sir
C. P. The government of India. Oxford. 1907.
Imperial
Gazetteer, the, of India. 26 vols. Oxford. 1907-8.
Lee-Warner,
Sir W. The Protected Princes of India. 1894.
Lilly, W. S.
India and its problems. 1902.
Lyall, Sir A.
C, The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India.
1907.
Morison, Sir
Theodore. Imperial rule in India. Westminster. 1899.
Strachey, Sir
John. India, its administration and progress. 1903.
Townsend, M.
Asia and Europe. 1905.
Trotter, L.
J. History of India under Queen Victoria. 2 vols. 1886.
Tupper, Sir
C. L. Our Indian Protectorate. 1893.
B. Biographies,
Memoirs, Speeches.
Aitchison,
Sir C. Lord Lawrence. (Rulers of India.) Oxford. 1892.
Balfour, Lady
Betty. The History of Lord Lytton’s Indian Administration.
1899.
Black, C. E.
D. The Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. 1903.
Curzon of
Kedleston, Viscount. Indian Speeches, compiled by S. C. Surha. 4 vols.
Calcutta. 1900-6.
Lord Curzon in India, being a selection from
his speeches as Viceroy and
Governor-General
of India. 1898-1905. Ed. Sir Thomas Raleigh. 1906. Dufferin and Ava, Marquis
of. Speeches delivered in India. 1890.
Forrest, G.
W. The Administration of the Marquis of Lansdowne. Calcutta. 1894. Lyall, Sir
A. C. The Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava. 2 vols. 1905. Vlallet, B.
Thomas George, Earl of Northbrook. 1908.
Martineau, J.
The Life and Correspondence of Sir Bartle Frere. 2 vols. 1895. Roberts, Earl.
Forty-one years in India. 2 vols. 1897.
Smith, R.
Bosworth. The Life of Lord Lawrence. 2 vols. 1883.
Temple, Sir
Richard. The Story of my Life. 2 vols. 1896.
Men and events of my time in India. 1882.
Thornton, T.
H. Sir Richard Meade and the Feudatory States of Central and Southern India.
1898.
C. The
North-western Frontier and Afghanistan.
Abdur Rahman
Khan, The Life of. Ed. Mir Munshi Sultan Mohammad Khan.
2 vols. 1900.
Adye, Sir
John. Indian Frontier Policy. An historical sketch. 1897.
Churchill, W.
L. S. The story of the Malakand Field Force. 1898.
Durand, A. The
making of a Frontier. 1899.
Hanna, H. B.
The Second Afghan War, its causes, its conduct, and its consequences.
Westminster. 1899 (vol. i). 1904 (vol. n).
Hensman,
Howard. The Afghan War of 1879-80. 1881.
Holdich, Sir
T. H. The Indian Borderland, 1880-1900. 1901.
Hutchinson,
H. D. The Campaign in Tirah, 1897-8. 1898.
James, L. The
Indian Frontier War, being an Account of the Mohmund and Tirah Expeditions.
1898.
Noyce, F.
England, India, and Afghanistan. 1902.
Robertson,
Sir G. S. Chitral, the Story of a Minor Siege. 1898.
Warburton,
Sir R. Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879-98. 1900.
D. The Central
Asian Question, Persia and Tibet.
Candler, E.
The unveiling of Lhasa. 1905.
Chirol, V.
The Middle Eastern Question, or some political problems of Indian defence.
1903.
Colquhoun, A.
R. Russia against India. The struggle for Asia. 1900.
Crosby, O. T.
Tibet and Turkestan. 1905.
Curzon, G. N.
(Viscount Curzon of Kedleston). The Pamirs and the source of the Oxus. 1897.
Persia and the Persian Question. 2 vols. 1892.
Forsyth, Sir
T. D. Report of a Mission to Yarkand in 1873. Calcutta. 1875. Gordon, Sir T. E.
Persia Revisited. 1896.
Knight, E. F.
Where three Empires meet. 1893.
Landon, P.
Lhasa. 2 vols. 1905.
CHINA.
Angier, A. G.
The Far East Revisited. 1908.
Ball, J. O.
Things Chinese. 1900.
Boulger, D. A
History of China. 3 vols. 1881.
Brinkley, F.
Japan and China: their History, Arts, and Literature. 12 vols.
London and
Edinburgh. 1903-4.
Chirol, M. V.
The Far Eastern Question. 1896.
Colquhoun, A.
R. China in Transformation. London and New York. 1898.
English Policy in the Far East. 1885.
Cordier, H. La France en Chine au dix-huitieme siecle. Paris.
1883.
Curzon, Lord
(Viscount Curzon of Kedleston). Problems of the Far East.
Westminster.
1896.
Davis, Sir J.
F. The Chinese. 3 vols. 1844-5.
Douglas, Sir
R. K. China (Story of the Nations). New York and London. 1899. Du Halde, P.
General History of China...done from the French of P. du H. by J. Brookes. 4
vols. 1736.
Gundry, R. S.
China and her neighbours. 1893.
Hart, Sir R.
These from the Land of Sinim. 2nd edn. 1903.
Hertslet, Sir
E. Treaties, etc. between Great Britain and China; and between China and
Foreign Powers...in force on the 1st Jan. 1896. 2 vols. 1896. Loch, Lord.
Personal narrative of occurrences during Lord Elgin's Second Embassy to China
in 1860. 1900.
Morrison, G.
E. An Australian in China. 1895.
Oliphant,
Lawrence. Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan in the
years 1857, 1858, 1859. 2 vols. Edinburgh and London. 1859.
Poole, S. L.,
and Dickins, F. V. Life of Sir Harry Parkes. 2 vols. 1894. Smith, A. H. Chinese
Characteristics. Edinburgh. 1900.
S. P. China from Within; or the Story of the
Chinese Crisis. 1900.
The
Anti-foreign riots in China in 1891. Shanghai. 1892.
The
Englishman in China during the Victorian Era, as illustrated in the Career of
Sir Rutherford Alcock. 2 vols. Edinburgh and London. 1900.
Translations
of the Peking Gazette. 1872, etc.
Weale, B. L.
P. Manchu and Muscovite. 1904.
Williams, S.
W. The Middle Kingdom. Revised edn. 2 vols. 1883.
ANNAM AND
TONQUIN.
Annales imperiales de 1’Annam, Fonds de Hue. Paris. 1889, etc.
Billot, M. L’Affaire du Tonkin. Histoire diplomatique de notre
protectorat sur 1’Annam et de notre conflit avec la Chine. Par un diplomate
(M.B.). Paris.
1888.
Chailley-Bert, J. Paul Bert au Tonkin. Paris. 1887.
Colquhoun, A.
R. The Truth about Tonquin. 1884.
Deveria, P. Relations de la Chine avec l’Annam. Paris. 1885.
Dubois, R. Le Tonkin en 1900. Paris. 1900.
Gamier, F. Rapport au ministre de la marine sur 1* mission. Paris. 1875.
Lanessan, J. L. de. L’Empire d’Annam. Paris. 1889.
Michelle, P. L. L’Amiral Courbet au Tonkin. Tours. 1887.
Norman, C. B.
Tonkin; or France in the Far East. 1884.
Philastre, P.-L. Code Annamite. 2 vols.
Paris. 1876.
Scott, J. G.
France and Tongking. 1885.
SIAM.
Anderson, J.
English intercourse with Siam in the 17th century. 1890.
Bowring, Sir
J. The Kingdom and People of Siam; with a Narrative of the Mission to that
country in 1855. 2 vols. London. 1857.
Calendar of
State Papers. Colonial Series, preserved in H.M.S. Record Office and elsewhere.
4 vols. From 1513-1629.
Crawfurd, J.
Journal of an Embassy from the Governor General of India to the Courts of Siam
and Cochinchina. 1830.
English Governess,
the, at the Siamese Court; being recollections of six years in the Royal Palace
at Bangkok. Boston. 1870.
Finlayson, G.
The Mission to Siam and Hue the capital of Cochinchina in the years 1821-2.
From the Journal of the late G. F. Esq. 1827.
Malloch, D.
E. Siam. Calcutta. 1842.
Pallegoix, Mgr. Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam. 2 vols. Paris.
1854.
Smith, W. H.
Five Years in Siam. 1891-6. 2 vols. 1898.
Somerville,
M. Siam; on the Meinam from the Gulf to Ayuthia. 1897.
MALAY
PENINSULA.
Belfield, H.
C. Handbook of the Malay States. 1904.
Bird
(afterwards Bishop), Isabella L. The Golden Chersonese. 1883.
Clifford, Sir
H. In Court and Rampong; sketches of native life in the Malay Peninsula. 1897.
In a Corner of Asia: impressions of men and
things in the Malay Peninsula.
The Oversea
Library, No. 5. 1899.
Further India; the story of exploration in
Burma, Malaya, etc. 1904.
Dennys, N. B.
Descriptive Dictionary of British Malaya. 1894.
Ireland, A.
The Far Eastern Tropics. Administration of tropical dependencies. Westminster.
1905.
MacLarty, F.
M. Affairs of the Colony; history of the Straits Settlements and British
Protected States of the Malay Peninsula. Penang. 1893.
Sherborn, C.
D. Bibliography of Malaya, 1888-90. London and Edinburgh.
1890. Straits Asiatic Society Journal, No. 22.
Skeatj W. W.
Malay Magic: an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay
Peninsula. 1900.
Wild Tribes of the Malay Peninsula.
Washington. 1903.
Straits
Settlement. Precis concerning the Straits Settlements and the Native States of
the Malay Peninsula. 1892.
Swettenham,
Sir F. A. Malay Sketches. 1895.
The Real Malay. Pen Pictures. 1900.
British Malaya. An Account of the Origin and
Progress of British Influence
in Malaya.
1907.
Wallace, A.
R. The Malay Archipelago. 1890.
PHILIPPINE
ISLANDS.
Atkinson, F.
W. The Philippine Islands. Boston. 1805.
Blair, E. H.
and Robertson, J. A. Philippine Islands. 1493-1803. Cleveland.
1903. ’
Brown, A. J.
The New Era in the Philippines. New York. 1903.
Butterworth,
H. The Story of Magellan and the Discovery of the Philippines. New York. 1899.
Caro y Mora, J. Ataque de Li-marhong a Manila en 1574. Manila. 1898.
Combes, F. Historia de Mindanao y Jol<5. Obra publicada 1667. Madrid. 1897.
Foradada, F. La Soberania de Espana en Filipinas. Barcelona. 1897.
Govantes, F. M. de. Episodios historicas de Filipinas. Manila. 1831.
Le Roy, J. A.
Philippine Life in town and country. New York. 1905.
March, A.
History of the Philippines. New York. 1899.
Medina, J. T.
Bibliografia espanola de las Islas Filipinas 1523-1810. Santiago.
1897.
El Tribunal de la Inquisicidn en las
Filipinas. Santiago. 1899.
Meyer, A. B. and Schabenberg, A. Die Philippinen, 1890, etc. Publ. des K.
Ethnographischen Museum in Dresden, No. 8. Leipzig.
1881, etc.
The Distribution of the Negritos in the
Philippine Islands. Dresden. 1899.
Montero y Vidal, J. Historia de Filipinas. Madrid. 1887,
etc.
El Archipielago filipino. Madrid. 1886.
Morris, C.
Our Island Empire. Handbook of the Philippine Islands, etc. Philadelphia.
1899.
Pardo de
Tavera, J. H. Biblioteca Filipina. Washington. 1903.
Potter, H. C.
The East of to-day and to-morrow. New York.
1902.
Retana, W. E. Catalogo de la biblioteca filipina de W. E. Retana. Madrid.
1898. Robinson, A. G. The Philippines: The war and the people. New York. 1901.
Sawyer, F. H. The Inhabitants of the Philippines. 1900.
Stephens, J.
E. Yesterdays in the Philippines. 1898.
Willis, H. P.
Our Philippine Problem. New York. 1905.
Worcester, D.
C. The Philippine Islands and their people. New York. 1898. Younghusband, G.
The Philippines and round about. 1899.
/
I. HISTORIES AND OTHER TREATISES.
Adams, F. O.
History of Japan. 2 vols. 3874.
Alcock, Sir
Rutherford, K.C.B. Capital of the Tycoon. 2 vols. 1863.
Black, J. R.
Young Japan. 2 vols. 1881.
Brinkley, F.
R. Japan and China. 12 vols. London and Edinburgh. 1903-4.
(translated by). History of the Empire of
Japan. Compiled hy the Japanese
Commissioners
to the Chicago Exhibition. Tokio. 1893.
Chamberlain,
B. H. Handbook to Japan. (Murray’s Series.) Tokio. 1907.
Things Japanese. 5th edn. 1905.
Colquhoun, A.
R. The Mastery of the Pacific. 1902.
Couvant, M.
Okoroho. Paris.
Dickins, F.
V. Life of Sir Harry Parkes. Vol. n. Japan. 2 vols.
1894.
Dyer, H. Dai Nippon. 1904.
Griffis, W.
E. The Mikado’s Empire. 2 vols. 11th edn. 1906.
Guillemard,
F. H. H. The Cruise of the Marchesa. 2 vols. Vol. i. Formosa and Liukiu. 1886.
House, E. H.
Japanese Expedition to Formosa in 1874. Tokio. 1875.
Iyenaga, T.,
Ph.D. The Constitutional Development of Japan, 1853-91. Baltimore.
1891.
Kaempfer,
Englehert, M.D. History of Japan. First published in 1727. Reprinted in three
volumes. Glasgow. 1906.
Kanagawa
Prefecture. The Peruvian Bark “Maria Luz.” Yokohama. 1874. Lanman, C. Japan and
its Leading Men. Boston. 1885.
Mazeliere, M. de la. Le Japon—Histoire et Civilisation. 3
vols. Paris. 1907. Mitford, A. B. (Lord Redesdale). Tales of Old Japan. 2 vols.
1871.
Mounsey, A.
H. The Satsuma Rebellion. 1879.
Murray, D.
The Story of Japan, with Supplementary Chapter by J. H. Longford.
1904.
Norman, H.
Real Japan. 1904.
Okakura, Y.
The Spirit of the East. 1905.
Palmer, Major
General H. S., R.E. Letters from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Correspondence
contributed to the Times, 1886-92. Yokohama. 1894.
Ransome, S. Japan in Transition. 1902.
Ratligen, K. Japan’s Volkswirtschaft und Staatshaushalt. Leipzig. 1891.
Rein, J. J. Japan nach Reisen und Studien. Leipzig. 1905.
Siebold, Frhr. A. von. Der Eintritt Japans in das Europaische Volltsrecht. Berlin.
1900. English translation. 1905.
Suyematsu,
Baron. The Risen Snn. 1905.
Encyclopaedia
Britannica. Ninth and Tenth Editions.
Japan. Vol.
13. By T. R. H. McClatchie.
Japan. Vol.
29. By F. R. Brinkley.
Korea. Vol.
30. By F. R. Brinkley.
Formosa. Vol.
28. By F. R. Brinkley.
II. OFFICIAL AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS.
Parliamentary
Papers.
Japan
No. 3. 1870. Correspondence respecting Affairs in Japan, 1868-70. Japan No. 1.
1876. Correspondence respecting the Treaty between Japan and Korea. ' .
Japan No. 1.
1894. Correspondence respecting the Revision of the Treaty. Treaties and
Conventions between the Empire of Japan and other Powers, 1854-84.
Foreign
Office. Tokio. 1884.
The Japan
Weekly Mail. Yokohama. 1870-1907. 1870-6. Ed. W. G. Howell.
1882-1907.
Ed. F. R. Brinkley.
Transactions
of the Asiatic Society of Japan. Tokio. 1874-1905.
Vol. i.
Russian Descents in Saghalin and Iturup in 1806 and 1807. By W. G. Aston.
Vol. n. The
Sword of Japan. By T. R. H. McClatchie.
Vol. hi. The Legacy of Iyeyasu. By W. E.
Grigsby.
Vol. v.
Japanese Heraldry. By T. R. H. McClatchie.
Vol. v. The
Japanese Penal Codes. By J. H. Longford.
Vol. vi.
Hideyoshi’s Invasion of Korea. By W. G. Aston.
Vol. vi.
Review of the Introduction of Christianity into China and Japan. By J. H.
Gubbins.
Vol. viii. Hideyoshi and the Satsuma Clan in
the Sixteenth Century. By J. H. Gubbins.
Vol. ix.
Hideyoshi’s Invasion of Korea. Chapter II—The Retreat. Chapter
III—Negotiation. By W. G. Aston.
Vol. xi.
Hideyoshi’s Invasion of Korea, By W, G. Aston.
Vol. xv. The
Feudal System in Japan under the Tokugawa Shoguns. By J. H. Gubbins.
Vol. xxiii.
Comparison of the Japanese and Liukiuan languages. By B. H. Chamberlain.
Vol. xxiv.
Review of the History of Formosa. By J. W. Davidson.
Vol. xxvi.
Laws of the Tokugawa Period. By J. H. Gubbins.
Vol. xxx.
History of the Rise of Political Parties in Japan. By A. H. Lay.
III. UNTRANSLATED JAPANESE WORKS.
Chosen jijo.
Korean Affairs. By Yenomoto Mnyo. Tokio. 1882.
Chosen Kinkio
Kibun. Report on the Present Condition of Korea (1882). Compiled by the
General Staff Department of the War Office.
Kaikoku go
jiu nen shi. Fifty Years History of the Opened Country, 1859-1909. By various
writers, including Princes Ito and Yamagata, Marquis Matsugata, Counts Okuma
and Yamamoto, Viscount Inouye and many others. 2 vols. Tokio. 1909.
Kizokuin Giji
Sokkiroku. Stenographic Reports of the Proceedings in the House of Peers.
Tokio. 1890 and following years. (In progress.)
Nihon Saikid
Shi. A History of Western Doctrine (i.e. Christianity) in Japan.
Published by
the Privy Council. Tokio. 1876.
Sensen Kokwa
Chosen Ronshiu. The Reasons for War or Peace with Korea. By Kishijima Shiutard.
Tokio. 1882. tjhiugiin Giji Sokkiroku. Stenographic Reports of the Proceedings
in the House of Commons. Tokio. 1890 and following years. (In progress.)
Taiwan Sotoku
Fu Hoki Teiyo. Compendium of the Laws and Regulations of the Government General
of Formosa. Published by the Section of Correspondence of the Civil Branch of
the Government General of Formosa, 1882.
Aston, W. G.
Shinto, the way of the Gods. 1905.
Fujishama, R. Le Bouddhisme Japonais. Paris.
Angers. 1889.
Griffis, W.
E. The Religions of Japan. 1895.
Haas, H. Annalen des Japanischen Buddhismus. Deutsche Gesellschaft fur
Natur- und Volkerkunde Ostasiens. Yokohama. 1908.
Lloyd, A.
Developments of Japanese Buddhism. Asiatic Society of Japan.
Yokohama. 1874.
Heron, M. Le Shinntoisme. Paris. 1907.
I. BIBLIOGRAPHIES.
No bibliography
has yet been published. '‘Recent publications of Military Interest,” issued
quarterly by the General Staff, War Office, contains the names of the chief
books and articles, dealing with the War, published since the first number
appeared in April 1907. The half-yearly supplement to the Militar- Wochenblatt,
published in Berlin in January and July of each year since 1904 and entitled
Uebersicht iiber die periodische Militar-Literatur des In- und Auslandes, also
contains much useful information. Aubert, Der
russisch-japanische Krieg 1904-5, Berlin. 1909. [Contains a list of works.]
II. MANUSCRIPTS.
The most
important documents connected with the naval and military operations have been
collected at St Petersburg and Tokio by the General Staffs of Russia and Japan
respectively. Access to them can only be obtained through diplomatic channels.
.III.
OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS.
These have
been compiled in the War Departments of the several Governments and are based,
for the most part, upon the reports of military attaches who had special
facilities for observation. They contain the most reliable information published
at the present time.
The
Russo-Japanese War. . Compiled by the General Staff, War Office. Part i. Causes of the War. Opening events up
to and including the battle of the Yalu. 1906.
Part ii. From the battle of the Yalu to
Liao-yang exclusive. 1908.
[Other parts
will follow; the maps are good and complete.]
Reports from
British Officers attached to the Japanese and Russian forces in the Field.
Compiled by the General Staff, War Office. 3 vols. with 2 cases of maps. 1909.
Medical and
Sanitary Reports from Officers attached to the Japanese and Russian Forces iu
the Field. Compiled by the General Staff, War Office. 1908.
Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften, Erfahrungen aussereuropaischer Kriege
neu- ester Zeit. n. Aus dem russisch-japanischen Kriege 1904 bis 1905. Prepared
by the German General Staff.
Heft 37, 38.
1. Port Arthur. Berlin. 1906.
Heft 39,40.
2. Yalu. Berlin. 1907.
Heft 41, 42.
3. Wafangou und Vorkampfe von Liaoyan. Berlin. 1908. Heft 43, 44. 4. Die
Schlacht bei Liaoyan. Berlin. 1908.
[The maps in
this series are good and complete.]
Mitteilungen
des Ingenieur-Komitee. Heft 40. Ein Beitrag zur Beurteilung des Kampfes um Port
Arthur. Berlin. 1905.
Einzelschriften
iiher den Russisch-Japanischen Krieg. 10 parts. Vienna. 1905-6.
[Based on
materials supplied by the Austro-Hungarian General Staff.] Fernandez de
Cordova. Campano Russo-Japanese. Madrid. 1908. [Official report of the Spanish
Military Attache to his General Staff.]
Military
Information Division. Reports of the Military Observers attached to the Armies
in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War. Farts i-v. Washington. 1906-9.
La Guerra tra
la Russia e il Giappone, 1904-5. Vol. I. Rome. 1908. Prepared by the Italian
General Staff.
PyccKO-HiiOHCKaH
BofiHa bt. coo6m,eHiflxi. HmtojiaeBCKofi AKa^euiH reaepaJiB- Haro IHiada. (The
Russo-Japanese War. Lectures given at the Nicholas Academy [Russian Staff
College].) 3 parts. St Petersburg. 1906-8. French translation: Conferences sur
la guerre Russo-Japonaise faites a l’Academie d’Etat-Major Nicolas. 3 parts.
Paris. 1907-9.
Kinai, M. The
Russo-Japanese War (Official Reports). 2 vols. Tokio. 1905-7.
London. 1907.
[An English translation of the Japanese official reports.] Schonmeyer, Major
Don Alfredo. Informe sobre la Guerra Ruso-Japonesa. Report of the Chilian
Military Attache to the Russian Army. Santiago de Chile. 1906. Ariga, Nagao. La
guerre Russo-Japonaise au point de vue continental et le droit international
d’apres les documents officiels du grand etat-mujor jjponais. Paris. 1908.
IV. ACCOUNTS BY EYE-WITNESSES.
Apushlrin, V.
A. ^4jio o C^a’ii KpfeocTH
IIopTB-ApTypi,. (The trial of officers concerned in the surrender of Port
Arthur.) St Petersburg. 1908.
Baring, M.
With the Russians in Manchuria. 1905.
Bartlett,
Ashmead. Port Arthur. The Siege and the Capitulation. 1906.
Bazini, L. La
battaglia di Mukden. Milan. 1907.
Brooke, Lord.
An eye-witness in Manchuria. 1905.
Burleigh,
Bennet. The Empire of the Far East or Japan and Russia at War.
1906.
Camperio. A1
Campo Russo in Manciuria. Milan. 1907.
Gadke,
Oberst. Kriegsbriefe aus der Mandschurei. Berlin. 1905.
Gertsch,
Colonel F. Vom russisch-japanischen Kriege. 2 parts. Bern. 1907, 1909.
Hamilton, Sir
Ian, K.C.B., D.S.O. A Staff-officer’s Scrap-book during the Russo- Japanese
War. 2 vols. 1905-7.
Klado,
Captain. The Battle of the Sea of Japan. 1906.
Kostyenko,
Major-General. Ocaja H c^a^a icp'inocTH IIopTE-ApTypL. (The siege and surrender
of Port Arthur.) Kieff. 1906.
Kuropatkin,
General. The Russian Army and the Japanese War. 1909.
Kvitka,
Colonel A. Journal d’un Cosaque du Trans-baikal. Paris. 1908. Martinov, E.
YHaciie 3apaSlieB'B BT. 6oio apn
JlaHLXKHCaHi. (The Zaraisk Regiment at Lang-tzu-shan.) St Petersburg. 1908.
Nojine, E. K.
The Truth about Port Arthur. 1908.
Nottbeck von.
Erlebnisse und Erinnerungen aus dem russisch-japanischen Kriege. Berlin. 1907.
Novitski,
Colonel. CaHfleny. (Sandepu.) St Petersburg. 1907.
Politovsky,
E. S. From Libau to Tsushima. 1908.
Romanovski,
Yu and Schwarz, A. von. 06op()Ha IIopTB-ApTypa. (The defence of Port Arthur.)
St Petersburg. 1908.
Russisch-japanische
Krieg, der. Urteile und Beobachtungen von Mitkampfem.
Vienna.
1906. ■
Sakurai,
Tadayoshi. Human bullets. A Soldier’s Story of Port Arthur. 1908. Schellendorf,
Major Bronsart von. Sechs Mouate beim japanischen Feldheer. Berlin. 1906i
Schwartz,
Oscar von. Zehn Monate Kriegskorrespondent beim Heere Kuropatkin. Berlin. 1906.
Schwarz,
Lt-Col. A. von. De l’influence des combats livres sous Port-Arthur sur la
construction des forts. Paris. 1908.
Semenov,
Vladimir. The battle of Tsushima. 1906.
Ras plata. Diary during the blockade of Port
Arthur and the voyage of
, Admiral
Rodjestvensky’s Fleet. 1909.
Smith, W.
Richmond. The siege and fall of Port Arthur. 1905.
Spaits,
Rittmeister. Mit Kosaken durch die Mandschurei. Vienna. 1907. Svyechin,
Captain. Bt. BocTO^HOMt OTpaji ot'b JIaoaHa kt> TiopeHieHy h 06paTH0. (With
the Eastern force from Liao-yang to the Yalu and back.) Warsaw. 1908.
Svyeshnikov,
Colonel. Hafiir'B Ha HHKOy. (The raid on Yingkou.) St Petersburg. 1906.
Tettau, Major
Freiherr von. Achtzehn Monate mit Russlands Heeren in der Mandschurei. 2 vols.
Berlin. 1907-8.
Thomas, V.
Trois mois avec Kuroki. Paris. 1905.
Villetard de
Laguerie, R. Trois mois avec le Marechal Oyama. Paris. 1905.
V. OrHER WORKS.
Asakawa, K.
I. The Russo-japanese conflict, its causes and issues. 1904.
Aubert,
Captain. Der russisch-japanische Krieg. Berlin. 1909.
Bardonnant,
Lt-Colonel. Du Yalou a Liao-yang. Paris. 1908.
Bujac,
Colonel E. La guerre Russo-japonaise. Paris. 1908.
Cherenisov,
Colonel. Pycc KO-JI itohcM BOHHa
1904-5 ro.ua. (The Russo- Japanese War of 1904-5.) Kieff. 1907.
Grandprey,
Colonel C. de. Le siege de Port Arthur. Paris. 1906.
Guionic,
Lt-Colonel G. Reflexions sur la Guerre de Mandchourie. Paris. 1907. Immanuel,
Captain F. Der russisch-japanische Krieg. 6 parts. Berlin. 1904-6. Janson,
Lt-Geueral von. Das Zusammenwirken von Heer und Flotte im russisch- japanischen
Kriege. Berlin. 1905.
Japan-Russian.
War, the. The Yusakusha Publishers. Tokio. 1904.
Lignitz,
General V. F. W. A. von. Der japanisch-russische Krieg. 2 parts.
Berlin. 1908.
(In progress.)
Loffler,
Major. Der russisch-japanische Krieg. 2 vols. Berlin. 1905.
Luttwitz,
Freiherr R. A. von. • Das Angriffsverfahren der Japaner im Ost-Asiati- schen
Kriege 1904-5. Berlin. 1906.
Meunier,
Major R. La guerre Russo-japonaise. Paris. 1906.
Russo-Japanese
War, the. The Kinknodo Company. 10 vols. Tokio. 1904 5. Schlacht am Schaho,
die. Supplement to the Militar-Wochenblatt. Berlin. 1906. Schlacht von Mukden,
die. Supplement to Militar-Wochenblatt. Berlin. 1905. War in the Far East, the.
By the Military Correspondent of the “Times.” 1905.
THE
EUROPEAN COLONIES. (1870—1907.)
1. General.
Fortes cue,
G. K. Subject-Index of the Modern Works added to the Library of the British
Museum in the years 1881-1900, edited by. ,3 vols. 1902-3. In the years 1901-5.
1906. See under names of Colonies and Countries.
2. The
British Empire.
(a) General.
Catalogue of
the Royal Colonial Institute arranged in chronological order under the names of
the various Colonies, includes books, pamphlets and magazines: separate
catalogues of State Papers (Imperial and Colonial) and maps.
(b) Africa (South).
See
Vol. XI. Bibliography of ch. 27 (3) 1. A.
Amery, L. S.
The “Times” History of the War in South Africa. Vol. vii, (Contains a list of books on South African History.)
(c) Australasia.
See
Vol. XI. Bibliography of ch. 27 (4) 1. A.
(d)
Canada.
See
Vol. X. Bibliography of ch. 21. 1.
(e) West
Indies.
Cundall, F.
Bibliography of the West Indies (excluding Jamaica). Kingston. 1909.
Bibliographia Jamaicensis. Kingston. 1902.
With Supplement. 1908.
Lamed, J. N.
Literature of American History. 1902. (Contains a short bibliography.)
3. Dutch
Colonisation.
Catalogus van
de Boeken en Kaarten uitmakende de Bibliotheek van het Departe- ment van
Kolonien. The Hague. 1898.
Nijhoff, M.
List of the best books relating to Dutch East India. The Hague. 1902.
Repertorium
of de Litteratur betreffende de Nederlandsche Kolonien. Vol. i,
1866-93.
Vol. ii, 1894-1900. The Hague.
1896, 1901.
4. German Colonisation.
Brose, M.
Repertorium der Deutsch-Kolonialen Litteratur von 1884-95. Berlin.
1897. (Continued annually under the same
title.)
Decharme,
P. Bibliographie critique de la colonisation allemande. Paris. 1900. Hassertj
K. Deutschlands Kolonien. Leipzig. 1898. (Contains a list of hooks relating to
German colonisation.)
-
6. The Congo State.
Wauters, A.
J. Bibliographie du Congo, 1880-95. Brussels. 1895.
L’J^tat independant du Congo. Brussels. 1899.
(Contains short lists of
hooks under
the various headings of the subject-matter.)
II. GENERAL
WORKS ON EUROPEAN COLONISATION.
Leroy
Beaulieu, P. De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes. 2 vols. 6th edn.
Paris. 1902.
Zimmerman, A.
Die europaischen Kolonien. 6 vols. Berlin. 1896-1903.
III. THE BRITISH EMPIRE.
A. General.
(1) Official Publications, Compilations of
Statistical and other information.
Abstract,
Statistical, for the Colonial and other Possessions of the United Kingdom.
Annual.
Bedwell, C.
E. A. The Legislation of the Empire, 1898-1907. Edited under the direction of
the Society of Comparative Legislation. 4 vols. 1909.
Colonial
Office List, The. Annual.
Parliamentary
Papers. (A selected list will be found under the names of the various colonies
and subjects in Messrs P. S. King and Co's Catalogue of Imperial Parliamentary
Papers. 1801-1900. A fuller list coming down to the present time will be found
in the Catalogue (Parliamentary Papers. United K'"igdom) of the Royal
Colonial Institute. A few only of the more important are separately mentioned
under the various headings in this bibliography.) Annual Reports made to the
Secretary of State by the Governors of the Colonies, 1870-86. 34 vols. 1872-87.
From 1887 the Report on each colony is published separately.
Proceedings
of the Colonial Conference 1887. Vol. I. Proceedings C. 5091.
Vol. ii. Appendix of Papers C. 5091. 1.
Constitution
of the Executive and of the Legislative Assemblies of the British Colonies. 2
parts. 1889-90. 194.
Earl of
Jersey’s Report on the Colonial Conference at Ottawa 1894, with Proceedings of
the Conference 1894. C. 7553.
Names of
Bills passed in colonies possessing responsible government to which Her Majesty
has not given her assent. 1894. 196.
Proceedings
of the Colonial Conference 1897. C. 8596.
Disabilities
or Restrictions on British Indian subjects in British Colonies and
Dependencies. 1900. 383, Sess. 2.
Papers relating
to the Colonial Conterence 1902. Cd. 1299.’
Resolutions
of Colonial Legislatures since 1890 in favour oi preferential trade with the
United Kingdom. 1905. Cd. 2326.
Census of the
British Empire, 1901. 1906. Cd. 2660.
Minutes of
Proceedings of Colonial Conference 1907. Cd. 3523.
Papers laid
before tbe Colonial Conference 1907. Cd. 3524.
Provisions in
colonial laws conferring' powers of local option in regard to licences for the
sale of intoxicating liquors. 1907. 47.
Piggott, F.
T. Imperial Statutes applicable to the Colonies. 2 vols. 1902. Proceedings of
the Royal Colonial Institute. 1869-.
Year-Book.
The British Empire. 1903.
Colonial. London. 1890-.
of the Imperial Institute. 3rd issue. 1894.
The Statesman’s. A statistical and historical
annual of the States of the
world and
their colonies.
(2) Other
Works.
Bowen, Sir G.
F. Thirty Years of Colonial Government (1859-88). Edited by Stanley Lane Poole.
2 vols. 1889.
Brassey, T.
A. Problems of Empire. 1904.
Carnarvon,
Fourth Earl of. A selection from the letters and speeches of, entitled The
Defence of the Empire. Edited by Sir G. S. Clarke. 1897.
Century and
the Empire, The. A series of Essays on Imperial Problems by various writers.
1905.
Chalmers, R.
A History of Currency in the British Colonies. 1893.
Dilke, Sir C.
W. Problems of Greater Britain. 2 vols. 1890.
British Empire. 1899.
Egerton, H. E
A short History of British Colonial Policy. 2nd edn. 1905. Freeman, E. A.
Greater Greece and Greater Britain. 1886.
Fuchs, C. J.
The Trade Policy of Great Britain and her Colonies since 1860.
Translated by
C. H. M. Archibald. 1905.
Greswell, W.
P. The Growth and Administration of the British Colonies. 183797. 1898.
Jebb, R.
Studies in Colonial Nationalism. 1905.
Jenkyns, Sir
H. British Rule and Jurisdiction beyond the Seas. Oxford. 1902. Jose, A. W. The
Growth of the Empire. 1905.
Keith, A. B.
Responsible Government in the Dominions. 1909.
The development of Colonial Self-Government in
the 19th century. Journal
of the Royal
Society of Arts. No. 2883. Vol. ivi.
Knight, E. F.
Over-Sea Britain. A descriptive record of the Empire. 1907. Labilliere, F. P.
de. Federal Britain. 1894.
Leroy
Beaulieu, P. Les nouvelles Societe's Anglo-Saxonnes, Australie, Nouvelle-
Zelande, Afrique du Sud. Paris. 1901.
Markham, V.
R. Factory and Shop Acts of the British Dominions. 1908.
Parkin, G. R.
Imperial Federation. 1892.
Payne, E. J.
Colonies and Colonial Federations. 1904.
Pollard, A.
F. The British Empire, edited by. 1909.
Root, J. W.
Colonial Tariffs. Liverpool. 1906.
Trade Relations of the British Empire. 2nd
edn. Liverpool. 1904.
Shortt, A.
Imperial Preferential Trade from a Canadian Point of View. Toronto.
1904.
Snow, A. H.
The Administration of Dependencies. New York and London. 1902. Tarring, C. J.
Chapters on the Law relating to the Colonies. 3rd edn. 1906. Todd, A.
Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies. 2nd edn. 1894. Trotter, W. F.
The Government of Greater Britain. (Temple Primers.) 1905. Whates", H. R.
The Third Salisbury Administration, 1895-1900. 1900.
Wolseley,
Viscount. The Story of a Soldier’s Life. 2 vols. 1903.
B. Africa
(exoeptino South Africa and Egypt).
(1) Official Publications, Compilations of
Statistical and other information.
For fuller
information reference should he made to the Catalogue of the Royal
Colonial
Institute, Parliamentary Papers (Colonies).
British East
Africa and Uganda. Official Gazette of the East African and Uganda
Protectorate.
1901-.
Official Orders in force in the East African
Protectorate on Jan. 1, 1903.
(For the
period 1876-1902.)
Gambia. Laws
and Ordinances, 1843-67. Bine Book. 1898-,
Gold Coast.
Ordinances. 1888-. Blue Book. 1883-.
Sierra Leone.
Ordinances and Orders in Council. 1875-. Blue Book. 1898.
Revised
edition of the Ordinances of Sierra Leone, by E. T. Packard and
D. F. Wilbraham with appendix containing Orders
in Council, etc., 1811-1908. 4 vols. 1908-9.
Southern
Nigeria. Ordinances. 1894-.
Blue Book. Lagos. 1885-.
Parliamentary
Papers (Imperial).
Report on the
condition of the settlements on the West Coast of Africa, with Maps. 2 parts.
1865. 412, 4121.
Correspondence
respecting affairs in the Cameroons, 1885, with Map. Africa, No. 1. 1885. C.
4279.
Report
relating to Uganda by Sir Gerald Portal, 1894, Africa, No. 2. 1894. C. 7303.
Report on the
condition and progress of the East Africa Protectorate from its establishment
to July 20, 1897, by Sir A. Hardinge, with Map. Africa, No. 7. 1897. C. 8683.
Papers
relative to the liquor trade in West Africa. 2 parts. 1897. C. 8480,205.
Royal Niger
Company. Revocation of Charter. Balance Sheets of Company, 1887-98. Revenue and
Expenditure of Niger Government, 1887-98,
1899. C. 9372.
Convention of
1898 between England and France delimiting possessions and spheres of influence
East and West of the River Niger, 1899. Maps, Treaty Series, No. 15. 1899. C.
9334.
Convention
between England and France respecting Newfoundland and West and Central Africa,
1904. Treaty Series, No. 5. 1905. Cd. 2383.
Archer, F. B.
The Gambia Colony and Protectorate. An official Handbook.
Part i is a
history of the colony. 1906.
Collection of
Treaties with Native Chiefs on the West Coast of Africa. African
(West), No.
411. 1892. (Printed for the use of the Colonial Office.)
Handbook of
British East Africa. Prepared in the Intelligence Division. War
Office. 1893.
Somaliland.
Official history of the operations in 1901-4. General Staff War
Office. 2
vols. 1907.
Year-Book,
the West African. 1901-,
(2) Other Works.
(a) General.
Sanderson, E.
Great Britain in Modern Africa. 1907.
■Itanley,
D. (editor). The Autobiography of Sir H. M. Stanley. 1909.
Wiart, W. E.
C. de. Les grandes compagnies coloniales anglaises au xix* siecle. Paris. 1899.
(British South Africa, East Africa, and Royal Niger Companies.)
(See also
VII, the Partition of Africa.)
(6) Central
Africa.
Johnston,
Sir H. H. Livingstone and the exploration of Central Africa. 1891. British Central Africa. 1897.
(c) East Africa.
Eliot, Sir C.
The East Africa Protectorate. 1905.
Gregory, J.
W. Foundation of British East Africa. 1901.
Hindlip,
Lord. British East Africa. Past, present and future. 1905.
Johnston, Sir
H. H. The Uganda Protectorate. 2 vols. 1902.
Lucas, C. P.
Geography of South and East Africa, revised by H. E. Egerton. Part ii of Vol. iv of the Historical
Geography of the British Colonies. Oxford.
1904.
Lugard, Sir
F. Rise of our East African Empire. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 1893. Lyne, R. N.
Zanzibar in contemporary times. 1905. (Contains a list of official papers
relating to Zanzibar.)
McDermott, P.
L. British East Africa. 1893.
Portal, Sir
G. The British Mission to Uganda in 1893, edited by R. Rodd. 1894.
Worsfold, W.
B. Portuguese Nyassaland. 1899.
(d) West Africa.
Burleigh, B.
Two Carp'oaigns, Madagascar and Ashantee. 1896.
Crooks, J. J.
History of Sierra Leone. 1903.
Ellis, A. B.
History of the Gold Coast. 1893.
Ferryman, A.
F. Mockler. British Nigeria. 1902.
Fitzgerald,
C. The Gambia and its proposed cession to France. 1875.
George, C.
The Rise of British West Africa. 1903.
Kingsley, M.
H. West African Studies. 1899.
Lucas, C. P.
West Africa. (Vol. in of the Historical Geography of the British Colonies.) 2nd
edn. Oxford. 1900.
Macdonald, G.
The Gold Coast past and present. 1898.
Morel, E. D.
Affairs of West Africa. 1902.
Reade, W. The
Ashantee Campaign. 1874.
Richardson,
R. Story of the Niger. 1888.
Septans,
Lieut.-Col. A. Les expeditions anglaises en Afrique, 1873-96. Paris. 1896.
Shaw, F. L. (Lady Lugard). A Tropical Dependency, Western Soudan and Northern
Nigeria. 1905.
Wallis, C. B.
The Advance of our West African Empire. 1903.
C. Sodth
Africa.
(1) Official Publications, Compilations of
Statistical and other information.
Cape of Good
Hope.
Votes and
Proceedings of the Parliament. 1870-.
Debates in
the House of Assembly. 1892-.
Debates in
the Legislative Council. 1892-
Statutes of
the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1901. Edited by H. Tennant and
E. M. Jackson. 4 vols. 1895-1904.
Results of a
Census taken 1875.
Results of a
Census taken 1891.
Blue Book.
1873-85.
Report of the
Commission upon the Railways of the Colony. 1878.
Natives.
Report and Proceedings of the Government Commission on Native Laws and Customs.
Cape Town. 1883.
South African
Native Affairs Commission, 1903-5. Vol. l, Report of the Commission. Cape Town.
1905. Vol. ii, Minutes of
Evidence, Cape Colony. Cape Town. 1904. Vol. iii, Minutes of Evidence, Natal.
Cape Town. 1904. Vol. iv, Minutes of Evidence, Rhodesia, Bechuanaland
Protectorate, British Bechuanaland (Cape Colony), Orange River Colony,
Basutoland, Transvaal Colony and again in the Cape Colony. Cape Town.
1904. Vol. r, Index and Annextires. Cape Town.
1905.
Frere, Sir
Bartle. Correspondence relating to the recall of. Edited by Sir B. Frere.
London. 1880.
Noble, J.
Descriptive Handbook of the Cape Colony. 1875.
Official Handbook of the Cape of Good Hope. Cape
Town. 1886.
Natal
(Parliamentary Papers).
Votes and
Proceedings of the Legislative Council to 1893.
Sessional
Papers of the Legislative Council to 1892.
Votes and
Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1893-.
Sessional
Papers of the Legislative Assembly, 1893-.
Laws of
Natal, 1875-.
Debates of
the Legislative Council, 1879-93.
Debates of
the Legislative Assembly, 1893-.
Blue Book of
Natal to 1893.
Statistical
Year-Book of Natal, 1894-.
Statutes of
Natal. A compilation of the Statutes 1845-99. Compiled and edited by R. L.
Hitchins. 3 vols. 1900-2.
Orange River
Colony.
Debates of
the Legislative Council, 1903-.
Minutes of
Proceedings of the Legislative Council, 1906-7.
Ordinances,
1902-.
Statute Law
of the Orange River Colony. Translated by C. L. Botha. Translation revised by
S. H. Barber and J. H. L. Findlay. 1901.
Transvaal.
Votes and
Proceedings of the Legislative Council, 1903-8.
Reports of
Select Committees of the Legislative Council, 1903-8.
Statute Law
of the Transvaal. Translated by S. H. Barber, W. A. Macfadyen, and J. H. L.
Findlay. 1901.
Laws,
Volksraad Resolutions, Proclamations, etc., in the Transvaal. Translated by S.
H. Barber, W. A. Macfadyen, and J. H. L. Findlay. 1901.
Political
Laws of the South African Republic, with Appendix containing the Constitution
of the Orange Free State. Translated by W. A. Macfadyen.
1896.
Parliamentary
Papers (Imperial).
Delagoa Bay
Correspondence respecting the claims of Her Majesty’s Government. 1875. With
Maps. Portugal No. 1 (1875). C. 1361.
Proposal for Conference
of Delegates from the Colonies and States of South Africa. 1875. C. 1244.
Correspondence
respecting proposed Conference. 2 parts. 1876-7. C. 1399, C. 1732.
Convention of
settlement of Transvaal Territory. 1881. C. 2998.
Report of the
Transvaal Royal Commission. 2 parts. 1882. C. 3114, C. 3219.
Convention
between Her Majesty and the South African Republic. 1884. C. 3914.
Correspondence
respecting the Convention of 1884. With Map. 1884. C. 3947. Correspondence
respecting the Conference of Delegates from the Orange Free State, the Cape of
Good Hope and Natal on the question of Customs Union and Railway Extension.
1888. C. 5390.
Correspondence
respecting the action of Portugal in Mashonaland 1890. Africa, No. 2. 1890. C.
5904.
Correspondence
relating to the proposal to establish responsible government in Natal. 2 parts.
1891, 1893. C. 6487, 216.
Correspondence
relating to the British South Africa Company in Mashonaland, Matabeleland and
Bechuanaland. 4 parts. 1893. C. 7171, 7190, 7196, 7290.
Petition from
British subjects resident in the South African Republic presented to Sir H. B.
Loch at Pretoria. 1894. C. 7554.
Correspondence
respecting the number of British subjects. 1895. C. 7633. Correspondence on the
subject of recent disturbances in the South African Republic. 1896. C. 7933.
Report from
the Select Committee appointed to enquire into the circumstances of the
incursion into the South African Republic 1897 (64). Second Report with
Proceedings, Evidence, etc., 1897 (311).
Report of the
Committee of the Cape of Good Hope House of Assembly on the Jameson Raid. 1897.
C. 8380.
Correspondence
on the proposed changes in the Administration of the British South Africa
Company’s territories. (Charter of Company, 1889. Orders in Council, 1891,
1894.) 2 parts. 1898. C. 8732, 8773.
Papers
relating to the Complaints of British subjects in the South African Republic.
1899. C. 9345.
Correspondence
relating to the Bloemfontein Conference. 1899. C. 9404. Correspondence
respecting terms of surrender of the Boer forces in the field.
1902. Cd. 1096.
Report of His
Majesty’s Commissioners on the War in South Africa. London.
1903. Cd. 1789.
Census
Returns of British South Africa. 1904. Cd. 2103.
Report of
South African Native Affairs Commission, 1903-5. 1905. Cd. 2399. Report of
Transvaal Labour Commission and Minutes of Evidence. 2 parts.
1904. Cd. 1896-7.
Transvaal
Constitution, 1906. Letters Patent and Instructions. Cd. 3250.
Report of the
Natal Native Affairs Commission, 1906-7. 1908. Cd. S889. Letters Patent and
Instructions relating to the Orange River Colony. 1907 Cd. 3256.
Papers
relating to a federation of the South African Colonies. 1907. Cd. 3564. Report
of the Delegates to the South African Convention 1908-9, with copy of Draft
South African Constitution Bill. 1909. Cd. 4525.
Second Report
with copy of Bill as finally passed by the Convention. 1909. Cd. 4721.
Year-Book,
the South African. 1902-.
(2) Other Works.
(a) Political and General History.
Ashmead
Bartlett, Sir E. The Transvaal Crisis. The Case for the British (Uit- lander)
Residents. 1896.
Baden Powell,
R. S. S. The Matabele Campaign. 1901.
Bosman, W.
The Natal Rebellion of 1906. 1907.
Bourne, H. R.
Fox. Blacks and Whites in South Africa. 2nd edn. 1900.
Brand, Hon.
R. H. The Union of South Africa. Oxford. 1909.
Bryce, J.
Impressions of South Africa. 1899.
Bryden, H. A.
A history of South Africa, 1652-1903. Edinburgh. 1904.
The Victorian Era in South Africa. 1897.
Cana, F. R.
South Africa from the Great Trek to the Union. 1909.
Carnarvon,
Earl of. The Cape in 1888. (Fortnightly Review, June.) 1888. Colquhoun, A. R.
Renascence of South Africa. 1900.
Africander Land. 1906.
Fitzpatrick,
J. P. The Transvaal from within. 1900.
Fremantle, H.
E. S. The New Nation. 1909.
Frere, Sir
Bartle. The Union of the various portions of South Africa. 1881.
Afghanistan and South Africa. A Letter to the
Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
1881.
Froude, J. A.
Two Lectures on South Africa (delivered in 1880). 1880. 2nd edn. 1900.
Garrett, F.
E. and Edwards, E. J. The Story of a South African Crisis. 1897. Greswell, W.
P. Our South African Empire. 2 vols. 1885.
Geography of Africa south of the Zambesi.
Oxford. 1892.
Hyatt, S. P.
The Northward Trek. 1909.
Iwan-Miiller,
E. B. Lord Milner and South Africa. 1902.
Kidd, Dudley.
Kafir Socialism. 1908.
Leroy-Beaulieu,
P. P. Les nouvelles societes anglo-saxonnes. Afrique du Sud. Paris. 1901.
Lucas, C. P.
A Historical Geography of the British Colonies. Vol. rv. South and East Africa.
Part i, Historical. Oxford. 1898.
MacKenzie, J.
Austral Africa. 2 vols. 1887.
W. D. South Africa. 1900.
Marindin, G.
E. Letters of Lord Blachford. 1896.
Markham, V.
R. New Era in South Africa. 1904.
South Africa Past and Present. 1900.
Mermeix, M.
Le Transvaal et La Chartered. Paris. 1897.
Molteno, P.
A. A Federal South Africa. 1896.
Moodie, D. C.
F. History of the Battles and Adventures of the British, Boers and Zulus in
Southern Africa to 1880. Vol. n. Cape Town. 1888.
Natives of
South Africa, the. Edited by The South African Native Races Committee. 1901.
Rose, E. B.
The Truth ahout the Transvaal. 1902.
Statham, F.
R. South Africa as it is. 1897.
Streatfield,
F. N. Kafirland, a ten months Campaign, 1878. 1879.
Theal, G.
McC. History of South Africa since 1795. Vol. v. 1854-72. 2nd edn.
1900.
Progress of South Africa in the Century.
(Nineteenth Century Series.)
1902.
South Africa (Story of the Nations). 6th edn.
1899.
Beginning of South African History. 1902.
Portuguese in South Africa. Cape Town and
London. 1896.
Wills, W. A.
and Col igri(fijS L. T. The Downfall of Lobengula. 1894.
Wilmot, A.
Manual of South African History. 1901.
Expansion of Southern Africa. 1894.
Wilson, D. M.
Behind the Scenes in the Transvaal. 1901.
Worsfold, W.
B. South Africa. 2nd edn. 1897.
History of South Africa. (Temple Primers.)
1900.
(6) The Zulu
War and the first annexation of the Transvaal.
Ashe, W. and
Wyatt Edgell, E. V. The story of the Zulu Campaign. 1880. Carter, T. F. A
Narrative of the Boer War. 1883. 2nd edn. 1896.
Colenso, F.
E. and Dumford, E. History of the Zulu War. 1880.
The Ruin of Zululand. 2 vols. 1884-5.
Farrer, J. A.
Zululand and the Zulus. 1879.
Leyds, W. J.
The first annexation of the Transvaal. 1906.
MacKinnon, J.
P. and Shadholt, S. The South African Campaign, 1879. 1880. Moodie, D. C. F.
History of the Battles and Adventures of British, Boers and Zulus in Southern
Africa to 1880. 2 vols. Cape Town. 1888.
Septans,
Lieut.-Col. (See under West Africa.)
Wilmot, A.
History of the Zulu War. 1880.
(c) The South African War, 1899-1902.
Amery, L. S.
The “Times” history of the War in South Africa, 1899-1902. 7 vols.
(Vol. vii
contains a bibliography.) 1900-9.
Buchan, J.
The African Colony. Studies in Reconstruction. Edinburgh and London. 1903.
Erwin, F. Der
Siidafricanische Krieg von 1899-1902. Berlin. 1903.
German
Official Account of the War in South Africa, Oct. 1899 to Feb. 1900. Translated
by W. H. H. Waters. 1904. March 1900 to September 1900. Translated by H. du
Cane. 1906.
Goodman, C.
S. With General French and the Cavalry in South Africa. 1902. Mahan, A. T. The
War in South Africa, 1899-1900. 1900.
Maurice, Sir
F. History of the War in South Africa. Compiled by direction of His Majesty’s
Government, edited by. 3 vols. 1906-8. Vol. iv. Edited by Capt. M. H. Grant.
1910.
Wet, C. R.
de. Three Years’ War, 1899-1902. 1902.
(d) Works relating to single Colonies.
Boon, M. J.
History of the Orange Free State. 1885.
Darwin, L.
Short History of Basutoland. Prepared in the Intelligence Branch, War Office.
1886.
Hensman, H.
History of Rhodesia. 1900.
Hone, P. P.
Southern Rhodesia. 1909.
Keane, A. H.
The Boer States. 1900.
Lagden, Sir
G. The Basutos. 2 vols. 1909.
Newman, C. L.
N. Matabeleland. 1895.
Nixon, J.
Complete story of the Transvaal. 1885.
Thomson, H.
C. Rhodesia and its Government. 1898.
(e) Biographies.
Butler, L.
Sir Redvers Buller. 1909.
Butler, Sir
W. F. Life of Sir G. Pomeroy Colley. 1899.
Cox, Sir G.
W. Life of J. W. Colenso. 2 vols. 1888.
Fuller, Sir
T. E. Cecil John Rhodes. 1910.
Hensman, H.
Cecil Rhodes. Edinburgh and London. 1901.
Kruger, Paul.
The Memoirs of, told by himself. 2 vols. With Appendices containing a few
documents. 1902.
Little, H. W.
H. M. Stanley. 1890.
MacKenzie, W.
D. John MacKenzie. 1902.
Martineau, J.
Life of Sir Bartle Frere. 2 vols. 1895.
Molteno, P.
A. Life and Times of Sir J. C. Molteno'. 2 vols. 1900.
Morley, J.
Life of W. E. Gladstone. 1903.
Statham, F.
R. Paul Kruger and his Times. 1898.
Vindex. Cecil
Rhodes. His Political Life and Speeches, 1881-1900. 1900.
Wood, Sir H.
E. From Midshipman to Field Marshal. 2 vols. 190G.
Worsfold, L.
B. Lord Milner’s Work in South Africa. 1906.
D. Australasia.
(1) Official Publications, Compilations of
Statistical and other information. Reference should be made to the bibliography
of Australasia in Vol. xi, ch. 27
The chief
official publications of the Commonwealth and the various States or Colonies
are:
Commonwealth.
Journals of
the Senate together with Sessional Papers, Reports of Committees, etc., 1901-;
House of Representatives, Votes and Proceedings, Reports of Committees, etc.,
1901-; Parliamentary Papers, General, 1901-; Parliamentary Debates, 1901-; Acts
of Parliament, 1901-; Index of General Papers of both Houses, 1901-7. 1907.
Official Year
Book of Commonwealth of Australia, containing authoritative statistics for
1901-7, corrected statistics for 1788-1900. No. 1, 1908, by G. H. Knibbs.
Melbourne. 1908.
New South
Wales.
Votes and
Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly; Journals of the Legislative Council;
Debates of the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council; Statutes of
New South Wales; Statutes of New South Wales to 1894, containing all Acts of
practical utility still in force. Index by H. M. Cockshott and S. E. Lamb.
Sydney. 1904. For 1894-1906. Sydney. 1898-1907.
New Zealand..
Journals of
the House of Representatives; Appendices to Journals; Journals and Appendices
of the Legislative Council; Statutes; Debates; Year Book, Official, Annual.
1891-; Statistics of New Zealand, Official, Annual.
Queensland
Votes and
Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly; Journals of the Legislative Council;
Statutes of Queensland ; Parliamentary Debates ; Census of Queensland, 1876,
1881, 1886, 1891. Published 1877, 1881, 1887, 1891.
South
Australia.
Proceedings
of the Parliament; Acts of Parliament; Debates of the Houses of Legislature.
Tasmania.
Journals of
the House of Assembly to 1883; Journals of the Legislative Council to 1883;
Journals and Papers of Parliament, 1884; Statutes of Tasmania, 182682. 4 vols.
1883; Census, 1881. 1893.
Victoria.
Papers
presented to both Houses of Parliament; Votes and Proceedings of the
Legislative Assembly; Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council;
Consolidated Statutes. 7 vols. 1890; Acts of Parliament; Parliamentary Debates
; Census of Victoria, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901.
Western
Australia.
Votes and
Proceedings of the Legislative Council; Minutes, Votes and Proceedings of the
Parliament, 1890-; Parliamentary Debates, 1876-; Acts of Parliament; Census,
1870, 1881, 1891, 1901; Report of the Aborigines Department, 1906.
Fiji.
Minutes and
Proceedings of the Legislative Council, 1884-; Ordinances, 1884-; Blue Book,
1891-.
New Guinea.
Annual Report
on, 1886-.
Parliamentary
Papers (Imperial).
Correspondence
with the Australian Colonies with reference to proposals for , Intercolonial
Tariff arrangements, 1872. C. 576.
Correspondence
respecting differences on constitutional points between the two Houses of the
Legislature of Victoria. 5 parts. 1878-9. C. 1982, C. 1985, C. 2173, C. 2217,
C. 2339.
Correspondence
relating to Chinese Immigration into the Australian Colonies with Acts passed
by Legislatures of these Colonies and Canada and British Columbia on the
subject, 1888. C. 5448.
Report of
Committee on the Western Australia Constitution Bill, 1890. Cd. 160.
Correspondence relating to the Federation Conference in Australia, 1890. C.
6025.
Official
Record of the Proceedings and Debates of the National Australian Convention
held in Sydney 1891. C. 6466.
Papers
relating to the federation of the Australian Colonies. 2 parts. 1900. Cd. 124
and 158.
Coghlan, T.
A. Statistical Summary of the Seven Colonies of Australasia. Sydney.
1902.
Coghlan, T.
A. Wealth and Progress of New South Wales. 1886-. Annual. Sydney. 1887-.
Johnston, R.
M. Tasmanian Official Record, 1890-2. Hobart. 1890-2.
Handbook of Tasmania for 1902-3. Hobart. 1892
and 1894.
Vogel, J.
Official Handbook of New Zealand. 1875.
(2) Other Works.
(a) Constitutional History.
Blackmore, E.
6. Law of the Constitution of South Australia. Adelaide. 1894. Jenks, E.
Government of Victoria. 1891.
Moore, W. H.
The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia. 1902.
Parkes, Sir
H. Federal Government of Australia. Speeches, 1889-90. Sydney. 1890.
Quick, J. and
Garran, R. R. Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth. Sydney.
1901.
(b) Economic History.
Broadhead, H.
State Regulation of Labour and Labour Disputes in New Zealand.
Christchurch,
N. Z. 1908.
Chomley, C.
H. Protection in Canada and Australia. 1904.
Clark, V. S.
The Labour Movement in Australasia. 1906.
Epps, W. The
land systems of Australasia. London. 1894.
Lloyd, H. D.
A Country without strikes. New York and London. 1000.
Lyne, C. The
Industries of New South Wales. Sydney. 1882.
Me'tin, A. Le
Socialisme sans doctrines. Paris. 1901.
Legislation ouvriere et sociale en Australie
et Nouvelle-Zelande. Paris. 1901.
Reeves, W. P.
State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand. 2 vols. 1902. St Ledger, A.
Australian Socialism. 1909.
Vigouroux, L.
L’Evolution sociale en Australasie. Paris. 1902.
Wawn, W. T.
South Sea Islanders and the Queensland Labour Trade. 1893.
(c) Political and General History.
Calvert, A.
F. Exploration of Australia, 1844-96. 1896.
Cockhurn, Sir
J. A. Australian Federation. 1901.
Coghlan, T.
A. and Ewing, T. T. Progress of Australasia in the Nineteenth Century.
(Nineteenth
Century Series.) 1903.
Colquhouil,
A. R. The Mastery of the Pacific. 1902.
Favenc, E.
History of Australian Explorations, 1788-1888. 2 vols. Sydney. 1888. Galloway,
W. J. Advanced Australia. 1899.
Grey, J. G.
Australia Old and New. 1901.
Guillemard,
F. H. H. Australasia. Vol. n. Malaysia and the Pacific Archipelagoes. Revised
by A. H. Keane. (Stanford’s Compendium of Geography.) 2nd edn. 1908.
Jenks, E.
History of the Australasian Colonies to 1893. (Cambridge Historical Series.) Cambridge.
1896.
Laurie, J. S.
The Story of Australasia. 1896.
Leroy
Beaulieu, P. P. Les nouvelles Societe's Anglo-saxonnes, Australie, etc. Paris.
1901.
Lyne, C. New
Guinea. An account of the establishment of the British Protectorate.
1885.
Rogers, J. D.
Australasia. In the Historical Geography of the British Colonies. Edited by C.
P. Lucas. Vol. vi. Part i, Historical. Part n, Geographical. Oxford. 1907.
Rusden, G. W.
History of Australia. 2nd edn. Vol. ra. Melbourne. 1897. Tregarthen, G.
Australian Commonwealth. (Story of the Nations.) 1893. Walker, H. de R.
Australasian Democracy. 1897.
Westgarth, W.
Half a Century of Australasian Progress. 1889.
Wise, B. R.
The Commonwealth of Australia. 1909.
(d) Works relating to single Colonies.
Bonwick, J.
The Resources of Queensland. 1880.
Bradshaw, J.
New Zealand of to-day, 1884-7. 1888.
Buller, J.
Forty Years in New Zealand. 1878.
Calvert, A.
F. Western Australia. 1894.
Cooper, H. S.
Our New Colony Fiji. 1882.
Fenton, J.
History of Tasmania to 1884. Hobart. 1884.
Hodder, E.
History of South Australia. Vol. n. 1893.
Irvine, R. J.
and Alpers, O. T. J. Progress of New Zealand in the Century.
(Nineteenth
Century Series.) London and Edinburgh. 1902.
Meston, A.
Geographical History of Queensland. Brisbane. 1895.
Parkes, Sir
H. Speeches connected with the public affairs of New South Wales, 1848-74.
Melbourne. 1876.
Reeves, W. P.
Long White Cloud. 1898,
New Zealand. New York. 1908.
Rusden, G. W.
History of New Zealand. Vol. in. 2nd edn. London and Melbourne. 1895.
Siegfried, A.
La Democratic en Nouvelle-Zelande. Paris. 1904. (Contains a short
bibliography.)
Stout, Hon.
R. Progress of New Zealand, 1864-84. Wellington. 1886. Thomson, B. The Fijians.
1908.
Turner, H. G.
History of Victoria. Vol. u. 1904.
Vogel, J. New
Zealand and the South Sea Islands. 1878.
Wakefield, E.
New Zealand after fifty years. 1889.
(e) Biographies.
Des Voeux,
Sir G. W. My Colonial Service. Vol. ii.
1903.
Drummond, J.
Life of R. J. Seddon. 1907.
Duffy, Sir C.
G. My life in two Hemispheres. Vol. n. 1898.
Gisborne, W.
New Zealand Rulers and Statesmen, 1840-97. 2nd edn. 1897. Henderson, G. C. Sir
George Grey. 1907.
Lyne, C. E.
Life of Sir H. Parkes. 1897.
Mennell, P.
Dictionary of Australasian Biography (1855-92). 1892.
Morris, E. E.
Memoir of G. Higinbotham. 1895.
Parkes, Sir
H. Fifty Years in the making of Australian History. 2 vols. 1892. Stebbing, W.
C. H. Pearson. Education Minister in Victoria. 1900,
St John, Sir
S. Rajah Brooke. 1899.
£. Canada and Newfoundland.
(1) Official Publications, Compilations of
Statistical and other information.
Alaska
Boundary.
British Case.
(Printed at the Foreign Office.) 1903.
Appendix to
British Case. 3 vols. Vols. n and in, Maps. 1903.
Case of the
United States. Washington. Government Printing Office. 1903. Counter Case of
the United States. Washington. Government Printing Office. 1903.
Argument of
the United States. Washington. Government Printing Office.
1903.
Census of
Canada, 1870-1. 5 vols. Ottawa. 1873-8, 1880-1. 4 vols. Ottawa.
1882-5,
1890-1. 4 vols. Ottawa. 1893-7, 1900-1. 4 vols. Ottawa. 1903-6. Census of
the...North West Territories, 1884-5. Ottawa. 1886. Census of the...
North West
Provinces, Population and Agriculture, 1906. Ottawa. 1907. Coghlan, T. A.
Report on Immigration with special reference to Canada. Intelligence
Department. New South Wales. Bulletin No. 13. Sydney. 1905. Cote, N. O.
Political Appointments, Parliaments...in the Dominion of Canada,
1867-95.
Ottawa. 1896.
Debates of
the Dominion House of Commons. Ottawa. 1870-2, 1875-. The continuous series
begins with 1875. Debates of the Senate. Ottawa. 1876-. Halifax Commission,
1877. Documents and Proceedings of. 3 vols. Washington. 1878.
Houston, W,
Documents illustrative of the Canadian Constitution. Toronto. 1891. Journals of
the Dominion House of Commons. Ottawa. 1867-; Journals of the Dominion Senate.
Ottawa. 1867-; General Index to the Journals of the House and the Sessional
Papers, 1867-90. 2 vols. Ottawa. 1880-91. Journals of the Legislative
Assemblies of all the provinces and of Newfoundland, as well as the Journals
of the Legislative Council of Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick (to 1892),
Prince Edward’s Isle (to 1893), British Columbia, North West Territories, and
Newfoundland are also published.
Papers in
reference to the Manitoba School Case, Sessional Papers. Ottawa. 1895.
Parliamentary Papers (Imperial).
Correspondence
respecting the Alaska Boundary and Map. 1904. Cd. 1877, 8. Correspondence
respecting the Case of Monsieur Letellier. 1879. C. 2445. Report to the Board
of Trade on the North West of Canada. By J. Mavor. 1904. Report to the Minister
of Agriculture in Canada on the alleged emigration from Canada to the United
States. 1882. 383.
Report of the
Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration, 1902.
Sessional Paper,
No. 54. Ottawa. 1902.
Sessional
Papers of the Parliaments of the Dominion. Ottawa. 1867-. Sessional Papers of
the Assemblies of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Manitoba are also
published.
Statutes of
the Dominion of Canada. Ottawa. 1867-. The Statutes of all the provinces and of
Newfoundland and the Ordinances of the North West Territories are also
published. The Dominion Law Index, 1867-97, by
H. H. Bligh and W. Todd. 2nd edu. Toronto.
1898.
Year-Book of
Canada, Statistical, Annual, 1885-1905, followed by the Canada YearBook.
Annual. 1906-. Ottawa.
(2) Other Works.
(a) Constitutional History.
Bourinot, Sir
J. G. Canadian Studies in Comparative Politics. Montreal. 1890.
Constitutional History of Canada. Montreal.
1888. Toronto. 1901.
Federal Government in Canada. (Johns Hopkins
University Studies.)
Baltimore.
1889.
How Canada is governed. Toronto. 1895.
Parliamentary Government in Canada. (From the
Annual Report of the
American
Historical Association for 1891.) Washington. 1892.
Clement, W.
H. P. The Law of the Canadian Constitution. Toronto. 1892.
Lefroy, A. H.
F. The Law of Legislative Power in Canada. Toronto. 1897.
Monro, J. E.
C. Constitution of Canada. Cambridge. 1889.
Teece, R. C.
A Comparison between the Federal Constitutions of Canada and Australia. Sydney.
1902.
Wheeler, E.
J. Confederation Law of Canada. Privy Council Cases on the British North
America Act, 1867. 1896.
(6) Economic History.
Breckenridge,
R. M. The Canadian Banking System, 1817-90. New York. 1895.
Chomley, C.
H. Protection in Canada and Australia. (Protection in various countries.) 1904.
Economics,
Canadian Papers prepared for reading before the Economical Section of the
British Association. Montreal Meeting, 1884. Montreal. 1885.
Fleming, Sir
S. The Intercolonial. Montreal. 1876.
Jeans, J. S.
Canada’s Resources and Possibilities. 1904.
Keefer, T. C.
The Canals of Canada. Montreal. 1894.
MacLean, S.
J. Tariff History of Canada. University of Toronto Studies in Political
Science. No. 4. Toronto. 1895.
Manufactures
of Ontario and Quebec, Guide to. Montreal. 1870.
National
Policy, Canada under the, Arts and Manufactures. Montreal. 1883.
Perry, J. R.
Public Debts in Canada. University of Toronto Studies in History and Economics.
Vol. i. Toronto. 1901.
Porritt, E.
Sixty Years of Protection in Canada, 1846-1907. 1908.
Shortt, A.
Imperial Preferential Trade. Toronto. 1904.
Trout, J. M.
and E. The Railways of Canada for 1870-1. Toronto. 1871.
Walker, B. E.
A History of Banking in Canada. In the History of Banking in all Nations. Vol.
in. 1896.
(c) Political and General History.
Balch, T.|W.
The Alaska Canadian Frontier. Philadelphia. 1902. (Reprinted from the Journal
of the Franklin Institute. March, 1902.)
Bourinot, Sir
J. G. Canada, 1760-1900. (Cambridge Historical Series.) Cambridge.
1900.
Intellectual Development of the Canadian
people. Toronto. 1881.
Our intellectual strength and weakness. (Royal
Society of Canada Series.)
Montreal and
London. 1893.
Bradley, A.
G. Canada in the Twentieth Century. 1903.
Bryce, G.
Short History of Canadian People. 1887.
Cockbum, A.
P. Political Annals of Canada. 1909.
Collins, J.
E. Canada under the Administration of Lord Lome. Toronto. 1884. Dent, J. C. The
Last Fifty Years. Canada since the Union of 1841. Vol. n. Toronto. 1881.
Ewart, J. 8.
The Manitoba School Question. Toronto. 1894.
Hodgins, T.
British and American Diplomacy affecting Canada, 1782-1899.
Toronto.
1900.
Hopkins, J.
C. The Story of the Dominion. Toronto. 1901.
Morang’s Annual Register of Canadian affairs
for 1901. Toronto. 1902.
The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs,
1902. Toronto. 1903-.
Encyclopaedia of Canada. 6 vols. Toronto.
1898-1900.
Lareau, E.
Histoire du Droit Canadien. Vol. n. Montreal. 1889.
Leggo, W.
History of the Administration of the Earl of Dufferin. Montreal. 1878. Montagu,
E. S. and Herbert, B. Canada and the Empire. 1904.
Morgan, H. J.
The Dominion Annual Register and Review. 8 vols. 1878, 1879,
1880-1,
1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, 1886, published at Montreal 1879, Ottawa
1880, Montreal 1882, Toronto 1883-6, Montreal
1887.
Morris, A.
Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North West Territories.
Toronto. 1880.
Mnnicipal
Government in Canada. University of Toronto Studies in History and Economics.
Vol. n. Nos. 1, 2, 3. Toronto. 1902-4.
Parkin, G. R.
The Great Dominion. 1895.
Prowse, D. W.
History of Newfoundland. 2nd edn. 1896.
Roberts, C.
G. D. History of Canada. 1898, 1904.
Royal Society
of Canada. Proceedings and Transactions of. First Series, 1882-94. Second
Series, 1895-1906. Third Series, 1907-. Ottawa. General Index to. Ottawa.
Toronto. London. 1908.
Siegfried, A.
Le Canada, les deux races. Paris. 1906. English Translation.
London. 1907.
Smith,
Goldwin. Canada and the Canadian Question. 1891.
Stewart, G.
Canada under the Administration of the Earl of Dufferin. 1878. Tracy, F. B.
Tercentenary History of Canada. Vol. in. New York. 1908. Whates, H. R. Canada,
the new nation. 1906.
Withrow, W.
H. Popular History of the Dominion of Canada. Toronto. 1893.
(d) Provincial History.
Adam, G. M.
The Canadian North West. Toronto. 1885.
Bancroft, H.
H. History of British Columbia, 1792-1887. San Francisco. 1887.
(Vol. xxxii of Bancroft’s Works.)
3egg, A.
History of the North West. 3 vols. Toronto. 1894-5.
History of British Columbia. London. 1894.
Toronto. 1896.
Boulton,
Major. Reminiscences of the North West Rebellions. Toronto. 1886. Bryce, G.
Manitoba. 1882.
Gosnell, R.
E. Year-Book of British Columbia, 1897, 1903. Annual. Victoria, B. C.
Haultain, T.
A. A History of Riel’s Second Rebellion. Toronto. 1885. Macdonell, J. P. The
Ontario Boundary Controversy. Proceedings before the Privy Council, edited by.
Toronto. 1896.
Metin, A. La
Colombie Britannique. Paris. 1908. (Contains a bibliography.) Osborne, E. B.
Greater Canada. 1900.
(e) Biographies.
Adam, G. M.
Sir John A. Macdonald. Toronto and London. 1891.
Biggar, C. R.
W. Sir Oliver Mowat. 2 vols. Toronto. 1905.
Black, C. E.
D. Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. 2nd edn. 1903.
Coats, R. H.
and Gosnell, R. E. Sir James Douglas. (Makers of Canada.) Toronto. 1908.
Collins, J.
E. Life and Times of Sir John Macdonald. Toronto. 1883.
Dent, J. C.
The Canadian Portrait Gallery. 4 vols. Toronto. 1880-1. Dictionary, The
Canadian Biographical, Ontario Volume. Toronto, Chicago and New York. 1880.
Gosnell, R.
E. and Coats, R. H. Sir James Douglas. (Makers of Canada.) 1908. Grant, W. L.
and Hamilton, F. George Monro Grant. Edinhurgh and Toronto 1905.
Hannay, J.
Life and Times of Sir Leonard Tilley. St John, N. B. 1897.
Wilmot and Tilley. (Makers of Canada.)
Toronto. 1907.
Hopkins, J.
C. Life and Work of Sir John Thompson. Brantford. Ontario. 1895. Lyall, Sir A.
The Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava. Vol. i. 1905. Mackenzie, A. Life
and Speeches of Hon. G. Brown. Toronto. 1882. Macpherson, J. P. Life of Sir
John A. Macdonald. 2 vols. St John, N. B. 1891. Moreau, H. Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
Paris. 1902.
Parkin, G. R.
Sir John A. Macdonald. (Makers of Canada.) Toronto. 1908. Pope, J. Memoirs of
Sir J. A. Macdonald. 2 vols. Ottawa and London. 1894. Willison, J. S. Sir
Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party. 2 vols, 1903. Willson, Beckles. Lord
Strathcona. 1902.
F. West
Indies.
(1) Official Publications, etc.
Leeward
Islands, (a) General.
Minutes of
the General Legislative Council. Acts of the General Legislature. Blue Book.
(6) Antigua
Minutes of
Legislative Council. Acts of Local Legielat are.
(c) Dominica.
Minutes of
Legislative Assembly.
Windward
Islands, (a) Grenada.
Minutes of
House of Assembly. Minutes of Legislative Council.
(6) St Vincent,
Minutes of
the Legislative Council.
(c) St Lucia.
Ordinances of
the Legislative Council.
Jamaica.
Minutes of
the Legislative Council. Journal of the Legislative Council. Laws. Blue Book.
CH. xx.
Trinidad and
Tobago.
Minutes of Legislative
Council and Council Papers. Ordinances, 1855-82, 1884. Blue Book. Debates of
Legislative Council of Trinidad and Tobago, 1900-6.
Barbados.
Minutes of
the Proceedings of the Legislative Council and Assembly. Laws of Barbados. Blue
Book.
British Guiana.
Minutes of
the Combined Court. Minutes of the Court of Policy. Ordinances. Blue Book. Laws
of British Guiana. Sir T. C. Rayner. 6 vols. 1905.
British
Honduras.
Minutes of
the Legislative Council. Acts.
Bahamas
Votes of the
House of Assembly. Votes of the Legislative Council.
Parliamentary
Papers (Imperial). See for a full list: F. Cundall. Bibliography of West
Indies. Kingston. 1909.
Report of
Royal Commission on the Public .Revenues, Expenditure, Debts and Liabilities of
the West Indian Islands. 4 parts, with Maps. 1884.
C. 3840, —I, —II, —III.
Petition from
the inhabitants of Jamaica for a change in the Constitution of the Colony and
Further Correspondence respecting tbe constitution of the Legislative Council.
2 parts. 1884. C. 3854, C. 4140.
Documents and
Correspondence. Venezuela-British Guiana Boundary Question. Venezuela. 5 parts,
with Maps. 1896. C. 7972, 8106, 8194, 8195, 7972-1, United States. 2 parts. C.
7926, 8105.
Report by Sir
David Barbour on the Finances of Jamaica. 1899. C. 9412. Report of the West
Indian Royal Commission. 5 vols. With Maps and Diagrams. 1897-8. C. 8655, 8656,
8657, 8669, 8799.
(2) Other Works.
Aimes, H. H.
S. A History of Slavery in Cuba, 1511 to 1868. Contains a bibliography. New
York and London. 1907.
Beeton, M. M.
The Foreign Sugar Bounties. 1898.
Bodu, J. M.
Trinidadiana. A chronological review of events. Port of Spain. 1890. Callahan,
J. M. Cuba and International Relations. Baltimore and London. 1899. Colquhoun,
A. R. Greater America. London and New York. 1904.
Davey, R.
Cuba, Past and Present. 1898.
Des Voeux,
Sir G. W. My Colonial Service. Vol. i. 1903.
Eves, C.
Washington. The West Indies. 4th edn. 1897.
Fiske, A. K.
The West Indies. New York and London. 1899.
Froude, J. A.
The English in the West Indies. 1888.
Gallenga, A.
L. The Pearl of the Antilles. 1873.
Gardner, W.
J. A History of Jamaica. 1873 and 1909.
Grey, Earl.
Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell’s Administration. Vol. I. 2nd edn. 1853.
Hill, R. T.
Cuba and Porto Rico, with the other islands of the West Indies. 1898.
Kirke, H.
Twenty-five years in British Guiana. 1898.
Lee
Warner, Sir W. Memoirs of Field Marshal Sir H. W. Norman (Governor of Jamaica,
1883-8). 1908. •
Leger, J. N.
Haiti, her history and her detractors. New York. 1907.
La Politique exterieure d’Hai’ti. Paris. 1886.
Livingstone,
W. P. Black Jamaica. 1899.
Lucas, C. P.
The West Indies. Vol. n of the Historical Geography of the British Colonies.
2nd edn. Oxford. 1905.
Morales, Y.
and V. Iniciadores y Primeros Mdrtires de la Revolucion Cubana Havana. 1901.
Oliver, V. L.
History of Antigua. 3 vols. 1894-9.
Olivier, Sir
S. White Capital and Coloured Labour. 1906.
Phillippo, J.
M. Past and Present State of Jamaica. 1843.
Rod way, J.
West Indies. 1896.
History of British Guiana. Vol. in. 1833-93.
Georgetown. 1894.
Root, J. W.
The British West Indies and the Sugar Industry, Liverpool. 1899. Salmon, C. S.
The Caribbean Confederation. 1888.
St John, Sir
S. Hayti or the Black Republic. 2nd edn. 1889.
Walker, H. de
R. West Indies and the Empire. 1901,
IV. DUTCH COLONISATION.
(1) Periodical Publications, Official
Publications, etc.
Jaarcijfers
Koloniale. The Hague.
Louter, J.
de. Handleiding tot de Kennis van het Staats en Administratief Recht van
Nederlandsch-Indie. 4th edn. The Hague. 1895.
Regeeringsalmanak
voor Nederlandsch-Indie. Batavia.
Staatsblad
van Nederlandsch-Indie. Batavia.
Verslag
Koloniaal. Verslag van het beheer en den staat der Nederlandsche bezittingen en
Oost- en West-Indie en ter kuste van Guinea, 1849-1901. Hague. 1850-1901.
(2) Other Works.
Reference
should be made to the bibliography of Ch. 23, Vol. xi, I. C.
Chailley,
Bert J. Java et ses habitants. Paris. 1900.
Day, C. Dutch
in Java. New York. 1904.
Encyclopaedic
van Nederlandsch-Indie. The Hague.
Gonnaud, P.
La Colonisation hollandaise a Java. Paris. 1905.
Hooyer, G. B.
Krijgsgeschiednis van Nederlandsch-Indie, 1811-94. 3 vols. Batavia. 1895.
V. FRENCH COLONISATION.
(1) Periodical Publications.
Ann£e
Coloniale, la. Paris. 1900-. _
Aunuaire
Coloniale. Annuaire agricole, commercial et industriel des colonies Franfaises.
Paris. 1888-.
Annuaire du
Ministere des Colonies. Paris. 1898-.
Quinzaine
Coloniale, la. Organe de l’Union Coloniale Framjaise. Paris. 1897-. Alan the
Annuaire and the Journal Officiel published by the Governments of the
respective colonies.
(2) Other Works.
Alcindor,
& Les Antilles Franyaises, leur assimilation politique a la metropole.
Paris. 1899.
Ballet, J. La
Guadeloupe. Renseignements sur l’histoire, ete. 3 vols. Basse Terre. 1894-1902.
Barrett, P.
L’Afrique Occidentals. Senegambie et Guinee. 2 vols. Paris. 1888. Boizard, E.
and Tardieu, H. Histoire de la legislation des sucres, 1664-1891. Paris. 1891.
Brunet, L.
L’oeuvre de la France a Madagascar. Paris. 1903.
Chailley-Bert,
J. Dix annees de politique coloniale. Paris. 1902.
Darcy, J.
France et Angleterre. Cent annees de rivalite coloniale en Afriqug. Paris.
1904.
Daville, E.
La Colonisation Franfaise aux Nouvelles Hebrides. Paris. 1895. Dubois, M. and
Terrier, A. Un siecle d’expansion coloniale. Paris. 1902.
Ferry, E. La
France en Afrique. Paris. 1905.
Lanessan, J.
L. L’Expansion coloniale de la France. Paris. 1886.
Lebon, A. La
Politique de la France en Afrique, 1896-8. Paris. 1901.
Le
Brun-Renaud, C. Les possessions Fran Raises de l’Afrique occidentale. Paris.
1886.
Legendre, P.
La Conquete de la France Africaine. Paris. 1904.
Notre Epopee coloniale. Paris. 1901.
L. C. L.
Saint-Pierre, Martinique, 1635-1902. Annales des Antilles franyaises. Paris.
1905.
Lorin, H. La
France, puissance coloniale. Paris. 1906.
Mattei,
Commandant. Bas Niger, Benou6, Dahomey. Paris. 1895.
Norman, C. B.
Colonial France. 1886.
Petit, E.
Organisation des Colonies Francaises. 2 vols. Paris. 1894.
Philebert, C.
La Conquete pacifique de l’interieur africain. Paris. 1889. Rambaud, A. La
France Coloniale. 6th edn. Paris. 1893.
Rouard
de Card, E. Les Traites de Protectorat conclus par la France en Afrique,
1870-95. Paris. 1897. •
Les territoires africains et les conventions
franco-anglaises. Paris. 1901.
VI. GERMAN COLONISATION.
(1) Documents, Official Publications,
Compilations of Statistical and other Information.
Documents
relating to the German Colonies are contained in the Library of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, of the Seminary of Oriental Languages and of the German
Colonial Society.
Debates of
the Reichstag.
German White
Books.
Deutsche
Kolonialpolitik, die, Aktenstiicke. Leipzig: 1885. Since 1885 published as
Jahrbuch der deutschen Kolonialpolitik. Leipzig. 1889-.
Deutsche
Kolonialzeitung. Organ des deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft. Berlin. Deutsches
Kolonialblatt, published twice monthly, since April, 1890. Berlin. Fitzner, R.
Deutsches Kolonial Handbuch. Berlin. 1896-.
Meinecke, G.
Koloniales Jahrbuch. First year, 1888. Berlin. 1889-.
Riebow.
Deutsche Kolonial-Gesetzgebung to 1892. Berlin. 1893. Continued to 1899 by A.
Zimmermann, since published annually.
Zimmermann,
A. Deutsche Kolonial-Gesetzgebung, 1893-7* Berlin. 1898.
(2) Other Works.
Baumgarten,
J. Ostafrica, Der Sudan und das Seengebiet. Gotha. 1890.
Biilow, H.
von. Deutschlands Kolonien und Kolonialkriege. Dresden. 1900. Cheradame, A. La
Colonisation et les Colonies allemandes. Paris. 1905.
Das
Uberseeische Deutschland; die deutschen Kolonien in Wort und Bild. Berlin.
1903.
Dawson, W. H.
The evolution of modern Germany. 1908.
Decharme, P.
Compagnies et Societes coloniales allemandes. Paris. 1903.
Fabri, F.
Fiinf Jahre deutscher Kolonialpolitik. Gotha. 1889.
Hassert, K.
Deutschlands Kolonien. Leipzig. 1898.
Klose, H.
Togo unter deutscher Flagge. Berlin. 1899.
Peters, K.
Das Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Schutzgebiet. Munich. 1895. Treitschke, H. von. Die
ersten Versuche deutscher Kolonialpolitik. Preussische Jahrbiicher. Band 54.
VII. PARTITION OF AFRICA.
(,See
also under headings British Africa, French Colonisation, German Colonisation.)
(1) Documents.
Ortroy, F.
van. Conventions internationales definissant les limites actuelles des
possessions en Afrique. Brussels. 1898.
Parliamentary
Papers (Imperial).
Protocols and
General Act of the West African Conference, 1885. Africa.
No. 4. 1885.
C. 4361.
General Act
of the Berlin Conference, 1885. Africa. No. 3. 1886. C. 4739.
(2) Other Works.
Banning, E.
Le partage politique de l’Afrique. Brussels. 1888.
Bonnefon, E.
L. L’Afrique politique en 1900. Paris. 1900.
Brown, R. The
story of Africa and its explorers. 4 vols. 1896-8.
Canuti, G. L’
Italia in Africa e le guerre con 1’ Abissinia. Florence. 1899. Chatelain, C. A.
L’Afrique et l’expansion coloniale. Paris. 1901.
Deville, E.
Le partage de 1’Afrique. Paris. 1898.
Fitzmaurice,
Lord E. Earl Granville. Vol. II. 1905.
Hertslet, Sir
E. The Map of Africa by Treaty. 3 vols. 3rd edn. 1909. Johnston, Sir H. H.
Colonization of Africa. (Camb. Hist. Series.) Cambridge;
1905.
Keltie, J.
Scott. The Partition of Africa. 2nd edn. 1895.
Kidd, B. The
Control of the Tropics, New York. 1898.
Lorin, H.
L’Afrique a l’entree du vingtieme siecle. Paris. 1901.
Reparaz, G.
Espana en Africa y otros estudios de poh'tica colonial. Madrid. 1891. Rose, J.
H. Political Development of Modern Europe, 1870-1900. 1908.
White, A. S.
The Development of Africa. 1892.
VIII. THE CONGO STATE.
(1) Official Publications, Periodicals, etc.
Annuaire de
independant du Congo. Brussels. 1903-.
Belgique
Coloniale, la. Brussels. 1895-.
Bulletin
officiel de l’Etat independant du Congo. Brussels. 1885-.
Mouvement
Geographique, le. Brussels. 1884-.
Parliamentary
Papers (Imperial).
Correspondence
and Report from His Majesty’s Consul at Boma respecting the administration of
the Congo State. Africa. No. 1. 1904. Cd. 1933. Protocols and General Act of
the West African Conference 1885. Africa.
No. 4. 1885.
C. 4361.
General Act
of the Berlin Conference, 1885. Africa. No. 3. 1886. C. 4739. Rapport de la
Commission d’enquete au Roi de la Belgique. Printed in the Bulletin Officiel of
the Congo State, Sept., Oct., 1905. Brussels. 1905. Abstract of the Report. By
G. W. Macalpine. 1906.
Report of the
Vice-Governor-General to the Secretary of State. Printed in the Bulletin
Officiel of the Congo State. July. 1904.
(2) Other Works.
Bentley, W.
H. Pioneering on the Congo. 2 vols. 1900.
Boulger, D.
C, The Congo State. 1898.
Bourne, H. R.
Fox. Civilization in Congoland. 1903.
Castelein, A.
The Congo State, its origin, rights and duties. 1908.
Cattier, F.
Droit et Administration de l’l&tat independant du Congo. Brussels.
1898.
Etude sur la situation de l’^tat independant
du Congo. 2nd edn, Brussels.
1906.
Chapaux, A.
Le Congo historique, diplomatique, etc. Maps. Brussels. 1894. Descamps, E.
L’Afrique nouvelle. Paris. 1903.
Droogmans, H.
Le Congo. Quatre Conferences publiques. Brussels. 1895. Hinde, S. L. The fall
of the Congo Arabs. 1897.
Johnston, Sir
H. H. George Grenfell and the Congo. 2 vols. 1908.
Macdonell, J.
de C. King Leopold II, his rule in Belgium and the Congo. 1905. Morel, E. D.
Affairs of West Africa. 1902.
King Leopold’s Rule in Africa. 1904.
Mountmorres,
Viscount. The Congo independent State. 1906.
Stanley, Sir
H. M. The Congo and the founding of its Free State. 2 vols. 1885. Truth about
the Civilization in England, by a Belgian. 1903.
Vandervelde,
E. Les derniers jours de l’Etat du Congo. Journal de Voyage, Juillet—octobre,
1908. Paris. 1909.
Wack, H. W.
The Story of the Congo Free State. New York. 1905.
Wauters, A.
J. L’£tat independant du Congo. Brussels. 1899.
THE
REPUBLICS OF LATIN AMERICA.
A complete
bibliography of the subject is impossible: long lists could be compiled
concerning single episodes, such as the Venezuelan frontier question or the
frontier dispute between Chile and the Argentine Republic. Moreover, almost
every State preserves pamphlets and official publications in large numbers,
besides historical and illustrative literature. Official publications are
omitted in the present bibliography, except when distinctly historical in
character ; but the most useful may be indicated here. Every State publishes
its written Constitution, sometimes also an official translation in French or
English; the legal codes, civil and criminal, are also published: in most of
the capitals an official gazette is issued, and there is usually an official or
semi-official description or survey, mainly statistical and geographical, but
sometimes including also a historical sketch. Such publications could probably
be obtained through the legations or consulates of the several republics. The
library of the Bureau of American Republics at Washington contains a
comprehensive collection of these official publications, besides historical and
illustrative works; and the periodical Bulletin of that Bureau supplies much
statistical information. The Statesman’s Year-book contains short
bibliographies of official and other publications. For the relations between
the United States and Spanish America reference may be made to thfe
bibliography of Vol. vn, chapters xi, xx and xxi.
In using the
present bibliography, it should be noted that Spaniards and Spanish- Americans
use the words “America” and “American” (Americano) in theft widest sense, as
corresponding to “European ” or “Asiatic”; but unless some qualification is
added (as America or Americanos del Norte) the words may be always taken as
applying to Spanish America.
I. GENERAL.
Akers,
C. E. History of South America, 1854-1904. 1904. .
Altamira, R.
Cuestiones Hispano-Americanas. Madrid. 1900.
Arosemena, J.
Constituciones politicos de la America Meridional. Paris. 1878.
Barral-Montferrat, Marquis de. De Monroe a Roosevelt. Paris. 1903.
Barros Arana,
D. Histoire de la guerre du Pacifique. 2 vols. Paris. 1881. Beltran y Rozpide,
R. Los Pueblos Hispano-Americanas en el siglo xx. Madrid.
1904.
Bulletin of
Bureau of American Republics. Washington. 1891-. {In progress.) Bunge, C. O.
Nuestra America. Barcelona. 1903.
Callahan, J.
M. Cuba and International Relations. Baltimore. 1899.
Calvo, C.
Coleccion completa de los tratados de la America Latina. 16 vols. Paris.
1862-7.
Clowes, Sir
W. Laird. Four Modern Naval Campaigns (including the Chileno- Peruvian war of
1879-81, the Chilian Civil war of 1891, the Brazilian Civil war of 1893-6).
1902.
Conferences:
International
American Conference. Minutes (English and Spanish). Washington. 1890.
Segunda
Conferencia Internacional Americana. Recomendaciones, resolu- ciones...
(Spanish, English, French). Mexico. 1902.
Several
treatises and pamphlets were published in Mexico in 1901-2 under the title
Conferencia Internacional Americana.
Third
International American Conference. Minutes (English and Spanish). Rio. 1907. '
Congreso
social y economico Hispano-Americano, reunido en Madrid el ano 1900.
2 vols.
Madrid. 1902.
Coolidge, A.
C. The United States as a World Power. New York. 1908.
Dawson, T. C.
The South American Republics. 2 vols. New York. 1903-4. Deberle, A. Histoire de
l’Amcrique du Sud. Paris. 1897.
Drago, L. M.
La Republica Argentina y la cuestion Venezolana. Buenos Aires.
1903.
didgington,
T. B. The Monroe Doctrine. Boston. 1905.
Enock, C. R.
The Great Pacific Coast. 1910.
Hart, A. B.
Foundations of American Foreign Politics (with bibliography). New York. 1901.
Herndon, W.
L. (Lieutenant U.S. Navy). Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon (by order of
U.S. Government). 2 vols. Washington. 1854.
Holdich, Sir
T. H. The Countries of the King’s award (Chile and Argentine Republic). 1904.
tvasson, J.
A. Evolution of the Constitution of the United States. Boston. 1904. Latane, J.
H. Diplomatic Relations of the United States and Spanish America. Baltimore.
1900.
Noel, J. V.
History of the Second Pan-American Congress. Baltimore. 1902. Perez Triana, S.
Informes y Notas de la delegacion de Colombia en la segunda Conferencia de la
Paz de la Haya. Rotterdam. 1908.
La doctrina Drago: coleccidn de documentos,
con una advertencia preliminar
de S. Perez
Triana y una introduccion de W. T. Stead. 1908.
Phelps, E. J.
The Monroe Doctrine. New York. 1896.
Quesada, V.
G. La politica Americana y las tendencias Yankees. Buenos Aires. 1887.
Reddaway, W. F. The Monroe Doctrine. Cambridge. 1898.
Robinson, A.
G. Cuba and the Intervention. New York. 1905.
South-American
Journal, the. (Published weekly in London.)
South-American
edition of The Times, the (English and Spanish). December 23rd 1909.
’
Wallace, E.
The Constitutions of the Argentine Republic and of the United States of Brazil,
translated from the Spanish. Chicago. 1894.
II. SEPARATE STATES.
A. The River
Plate (Argentine Republic, Uruguay, Paraguay).
Argentine
Republic. Registro oficial. Buenos Aires. 1879-99.
Map of Argentine Republic: with a short
description. Argentine Government Information Office.
Coleccidn de tratados celebrados por la
Republica Argentina con las naciones
estrangeras.
Buenos Aires. 1870 (?).
Argentine
Republic. Correspondencia entre el gobierno de Buenos Aires y Juan B.
Nicholson. Buenos Aires. 1839.
Affaires de la Plata. Petitions et documents.
Paris. 1844.
Coleccidn de documentos sobre la mision de los
ministros de S. M. B. y de
S. M. el rey
de los Franceses. Buenos Aires. 1845.
Correspondencia con los ministros de
Inglaterra y de Francia. Buenos Aires.
1846.
Archivo Americano: nueva serie (documents
concerning the Anglo-French
intervention).
3 vols. Buenos Aires. 1847-8.
The last
three collections are printed in Spanish, French and English. Brayssel, E. van.
La Republique du Paraguay. Brussels. 1893.
Carbajal, L.
D. La Patagonia: studi generali. 4 vols. Turin. 1889-1900. Dardye, E. de B. la.
Paraguay: the land and the people. 1892.
Dominguez, L.
L. Historia Argentina. Buenos Aires. 1870.
Garibaldi, G.
Autobiography, first volume (English translation). 3 vols. 1889. Hirst, W. A.
Argentina; its...history, political conditions, resources...and general
development. 1910.
Jourdan, E.
C. Guerra do Paraguay. Rio. 1890.
Kennedy, A.
J. La Plata, Brazil and Paraguay during the war. 1869. Kirkpatrick, F. A. Rosas
(in Cornhill Magazine, November, 1899).
Koebel, W. H.
Modern Argentina. 1907.
Marbais du
Graty, A. La Confederation Argentine. Paris. 1858.
Masterman, G.
F. Seven eventful years in Paraguay. 1869.
Mulhall, M.
G. Handbook of the River Plate. 1892.
Page,
Commander T. G. La Plata...Narrative of exploration of Tributaries of the River
La Plata and adjoining countries during 1853-6, under orders of the U.S.
Government.
Paraguay:
Concise History of its rise...and causes of the present war with Brazil. 1867.
Paraguay and
the war in La Plata. 1865.
Saldias, A.
La Epoca de Rozas (Rosas). 5 vols. Buenos Aires. 1892.
Sprague, M.
A. History of the Argentine Republic. Chicago.
Thompson, G.
The Paraguayan war. 1869.
Washburn, C.
A. History of Paraguay. 2 vols. Boston. 1871.
Zeballos, E.
de. Description amena de la Republica Argentina. 3 vols. Buenos Aires. 1881.
B. Brazil.
Abreu and
Cabral. Brazil geografico-historico. Rio. 1884.
Canstatt, O.
Das republikanische Brazilien in Vergangenheit und G.egenwart.
Leipzig.
1898.
Constitution
des Etats-Unis du Bresil. Paris. 1891.
Fialho, A.
Historia da Fundafao da Republica. Rio. 1891.
Lamberg, M. Brasilien,
Land und Leute. Leipzig. 1899.
Mosse, B. Dom
Pedro II, Empereur du Bresil. Paris. 1889.
Mulhall, M.
G. Rio Grande do Sul and its German Colonies. 1873.
Redmont, J.
C. and Curtis, W. E. History of Brazil. Chicago.
Wright, M. R.
The New Brazil. Philadelphia. 1901.
C. Chile.
Chile.
Recopilacidn de tratados...celebrados entre la Republica de Chile y las
potencias extranjeras. Edited by A. Bascunan Moutes. Santiago. 1894.
Le Chile et L’Espagne. Paris. 1865.
Echevarrea y
Reyes, A. Geografia Politica de Chile. 2 vols. Santiago. 1888. Wllint G F.
Scott. Chile: its history and development. 1907.
Figueroa, P.
P. Diccionario Biografico general de Chile (1550-1889). Santiago.
1889
o
Fitzgerald,
E. A. The Highest Andes (containing a summary of the frontier
HancockT-A.
History of Chile (with bibliography). Chicago. 1893.
Hervey, M. H.
Dark Days in Chile, an account of the Revolution of 1891. 1891-2.
Smith, W. A.
Temperate Chile. 1900.
Wright, M. H.
The Republic of Chile. 1905.
D. Mexico.
Bancroft, H.
H. History of Mexico (last 3 vols.). 6 vols. San Francisco. 1883....
Popular
History of the Mexican people. 1894.
^
Bonaparte,
Prince Roland, and others. Le Mexique au ddbut du xx» siecle. Paris.
1904.
Brocklehnrst,
T. V. Mexico of to-day. 1883.
Burke,
V. R. Life of Benito Juarez. 1894.
_
Diaz, P.
Rapport du Gene'ral Porfirio Diaz...sur les actes de son administration entre
1884 et 1896. Paris. 1897.. .
Enock, C. R.
Mexico: its...civilisation, history, political conditions...resources...
and
general development. 1907. .
George, P.
Das heutige Mexico und seine Kulturfortschritte. Jena. 1906. Godoy, J. F.
Porfirio Diaz (a biography in English). New York. 1910.
Kozhevar, E.
Report on the Republic of Mexico. 1886.
La
Be'dollifere, E. G. de. Histoire de la guerre du Mexique. Paris. 1866.
Martin, P. F.
Mexico of the Twentieth Century. 2 vols. 1907.
Moses, B.
Constitution of the United States of Mexico. Philadelphia. 1899. Romero, M.
Mexico and the United States. New York. 1898.
Sierra, J.
Mexico ; its Social Evolution. 3 vols. (English translation.) Mexico.
1905.
Zamacois, N.
Historia de M^jico. Vols. xm—xix. Barcelona. 1888.
E. The
Northern Republics (Venezuela and Colombia, iNCLuniNo Panama). Abbot, H. L. Problems of the
Panama Canal. 1905.
Arbitration
between Governments of H. B. M. and the United States of Venezuela.
Proceedings
(blue-book). 1899.
Benedetti, C.
Histoire de Colombia. Paris. 1887.
Borda, J. J.
Compendio de historia de Colomhia. Bogota. 1890.
Colombia.
Anales diplomaticos y consulares. Edited by A. T. Uribe. Bogota. 1900-1.
Descripci<5n histdrica, geografica y
politica de la Republica de Colombia.
Bogota. 1887.
Documents
regarding the frontier of British Guiana and Venezuela: with maps (blue-book).
1896.
Esguerra, J.
Diccionario geografico de los Estados Unidos de Colombia. Bogota. 1878.
Landaeta
Rosales, M. Gobiernos de Venezuela, 1810-1905. Caraccas. 1905. Moses, B.
Constitution of Colombia (translation of text). Philadelphia. 1898. Pensa, H.
La Re'publique et le Canal de Panama. Paris. 1906. [A diplomatic history, with
an essay on the Monroe Doctrine.]
Pereira, R.
S. Les Etats-Unis de Colombia; precis d’histoire et de geographie. Paris. 1883.
Perez, F.
Geografi'a general, fisica y polftica de los Estados Unidos de Colombia.
Bogota. 1883.
Petre, F. L.
The Republic of Colombia. 1906.
Scruggs, W.
L. The Colombian and Venezuelan Republics. 2 vols. Boston.
1905.
Triana, S. P.
Down the Orinoco in a canoe. 1902.
Veloz
Goiticoa, N. Venezuela, Geograffa, Recursos..., Legislation.... Caraccas.
1904.
F. Peru.
Enock, C. R.
Peru : its...civilisation, history, political conditions...resources...
and general
development (with bibliography). 1907.
Markham, Sir
C. R. The war between Peru and Chile. 1883.
History of Peru (with bibliography). Chicago.
1892.
Maurtua, V.
M. The question of the Pacific. Translated from the Spanish by
F. A. Pezet. Philadelphia. 1901. [A Peruvian
statement of the case.] Middendorf, E. W. Peru : Beobachtungen und Studien
iiber das Land und seine Bewohner. Berlin. 1893.
Paz Soldan,
M. F. Narracion de la guerra de Chile contra Peru y Bolivia. La Paz. 1884.
G. Ecuador.
Berthe, A.
Garcia Moreno, President de l’Equateur. Paris. 1888.
Cancio, A. Z.
de. Vida de...Garcia Moreno. Madrid. 1899.
Domecq, J. B.
Garcia Moreno, President...de 1’Equateur. Tours. 1896.
Grandin, L.
Garcia Moreno. In Biographies du xix0 siecle. Paris. 1888.
Josefa, M. T.
Garcia Moreno. Paris. 1892.
Kaufmann, A.
G. Garcia Moreno.
Lambel, A. P.
F. de. Garcia Moreno. Paris. 1891.
H. Bolivia.
Anderson, T.
H. History of Bolivia. Chicago.
Ford, J. N.
Tropical America. 1893.
Wright, M. R.
Bolivia. Philadelphia. 1907.
I. The Republics of Central America.
Bancroft, H.
H. History of Central America. 3 vols. San Francisco. 1883-. (Vol. m.)
Barrantes, E.
M. Elementos de historia de Costa Rica. San Jose. 1892.
Biolley, P.
Costa Rica and her Future. Translated from the Spanish. Washington.
1899.
Pector, D.
Etude economique sur la Republique de Nicaragua. Neuchatel. 1893. Squier, E. G.
Honduras; Descriptive, Historical and Statistical. 1870.
J. The Antilles,
Bonneau, A.
Haiti, ses progres, son avenir. Paris. 1862.
Hazard, S.
Santo Domingo, past 'and present; with a glance at Haiti. 1873. Justin, J.
Etudes sur les institutions Hai'tiennes. Paris. 1894.
L6ger, J. N.
Haiti, her history and detractors. New York. 1907.
Porter, R. P.
Industrial Cuba. New York. 1899.
Preiss, E. G.
Cuba unter Spanischer Regiernng. New York. 1897.
Pritchard, H.
Where Black rules White. 1900.
St John, Sir
S. Haiti or the Black Republic. 1899.
Tippenhauer,
L. G. Die Insel Haiti. 2 vols. Leipzig. 1893.
HISTORY
OF THE LAW OF NATIONS.
There are not
many works formally treating of this topic. On the other hand, the regular
text-books of international law contain historical matter which is more or less
copious and accurate, according to the writer’s predilection and scholarship. A
list of such books would be out of place here, but we may refer to the Marquis
de Olivart’s Bibliographie du droit international, Paris, 1905 and 1907 (two
parts published, a final one promised). This purports to note only works in the
author’s own library, but we know of nothing approaching it in completeness.
A concise
bibliography is appended to the article on International Law in the
Encyclopaedia of the Laws of England, 2nd edn., 1907.
The following
are (in order of publication) the only considerable works known to the writer
which treat expressly of the origin and history of the law of nations, as
distinct from its doctrinal exposition.
Balch, T. W.
L’evolution de l’arbitrage international. (Reprint from the Revue de droit
international et de legislation comparee.) Philadelphia, 1908. [An English
version of this work is promised.]
Holland, T.
E. Studies in International Law. Oxford, 1898. [Contains among other profitable
matter the fullest account of Alberico Gentili and his work.] Hosack, J. The
rise and growth of the law of nations, as established by general usage and by
treaties. 1882. [A narrative purporting only “to describe generally the actual
practice and usages of nations” down to the Treaty of Utrecht and deliberately
excluding any reference to the growth of ideas, doctrine, and literature. The
name of Grotius is not in the index.]
Lapradelle,
A. de, and Politis, N. Recueil des arbitrages internationaux. Preface de Louis
Renault. Vol. i, 1798-1855. Paris. 1905.
Moore, J. B.
History and digest of the international arbitrations to which the United States
has been a party. 6 vols. (Vol. vi consists of maps). Washington,
D. C. 1898. [A most valuable repertory of facts
and documents.]
Nys, E. Les
origines du droit international. Brussels and Paris. 1894.
Walker, T. A.
A history of the law of nations. Cambridge. 1899. Vol. i. (All published.)
Ward, Robert.
An enquiry into the foundation and history of the law of nations in Europe from
the time of the Greeks and Romans to the age of Grotius. 1795. 2 vols. [Rather
a rambling anecdotal collection of notes than a history.] Wheaton, H. History
of the Law of Nations in Europe and America from the earliest times to the
Treaty of Washington, 1842. New York. 1845.
I. FIRST PEACE CONFERENCE, 1899.
The
proceedings of the Hague Conference of 1899 were published officially by the
Belgian Government:
Conference
internationale de la paix: La Haye, 18 mai—29 juillet 1899. Ministere des
affaires etrangeres. The Hague. 1899. [Four parts separately paged. A list of
arbitration Treaties and arbitration clauses in other Treaties in force in 1899
is given in Part iv, pp. 228-39.]
The
preliminary correspondence is published by the British Government, Russia, No.
1 (1899), C. 9090, and the proceedings, or the greater part of them, in a continuation,
Misc. No. 1 (1899), C. 9534, but in the inconvenient form of enclosures
interpolated in correspondence.
General
accounts of the Conference, and reprints of the principal conventions and
declarations in French or English, may be found in several recent works on
international law and arbitration: the full text of the conventions is given in
a useful form in Whittuck, E. A., International Documents, noted below under
the head of the Second Peace Conference.
Commission of Inquiry on the North Sea incident.
There is an
apparently official report printed at Paris [1905]: Commission internationale
d’Enquete constitute en vertu de la Declaration du 12/25 novembre 1904,
echangee a Saint-Petersbourg entre les Gouvernements de Grande-Bretagne et da
Russie. The Commission purported to be “ reunie conformement aux articles 9-14
de la Convention de la Haye du 17 (29) juillet 1899, pour le reglement
pacifiquc des confiits internationaux,” but was charged not only to ascertain
the facts but to report on the question of responsibility.
The British
official papers contain the declaration constituting the Commission ; the
preliminary correspondence, Russia, No. 2, 1905; the report of the Commissioners,
Russia, No. 3, 1905 (all these in Pari. Papers 1905, Vol. cm); and a special
Board of Trade Report in Vol. lxiv, which,
however, is now of lesser importance. The evidence does not seem to have been
officially published in England.
II. SECOND PEACE CONFERENCE, 1907.
Charteris, A.
H. The Second Peace Conference. In Juridical Review. Edinburgh and London, for
Oct. 1907 and Jan. 1908. [An accurate general account, and the fullest, so far,
produced in English.]
Deuxieme
conference internationale de la paix. La Haye 15 juin—18 octobre 1907. Actes et
documents. The Hague. 1907. 3 vols., [The uniform date notwithstanding, the
volumes were issued at different times in 1908-9.]
Higgins, A.
P. The Hague Peace Conferences and other international conferences concerning
the laws and usages of war. Texts of conventions with commentaries. Cambridge.
1909. [Includes the London Naval Conference of 1909.]
International
Documents, etc. Ed. E. A. Whittuck. 1908. [Text of general conventions as to
war and arbitration, including the acts of both the first and the second Hague
Conference.]
Lemonon, E.
La deuxieme Conference de la Paix. Preface de M. Leon Bourgeois. Paris. 1908.
Parliamentary
Papers. Miscellaneous, No. 1 (1908), Cd. 3857. [Contains preliminary
correspondence, instructions to British delegates, Sir E. Fry’s report on the
results, text of Final Act and Conventions in French and English.]
Misc. No. 4 (1908), Cd. 4081. Protocols of the
eleven plenary meetings of
the Second
Peace Conference held at The Hague in 1907, with the annexes to
the
protocols. 545 pp. [French text only. The annexes, which form the greater part
of the volume, from p. 87 to the end, consist of reports and documents made or
transmitted by the standing Committees to the Conference in plenary meeting.
Annexe 66, p. 529, gives a list of arbitration treaties and treaties containing
arbitration clauses to which Italy has become a party since 1899; most but not
all of them provide for reference to the Hague tribunal.]
A note of the
final reservations and abstentions from signature of particular Powers appeared
in the Times and other public prints of July 2, 1908. Renault, L. La conference
de La Haye en 1907. In Seances et Travaux de l’Academie des sciences morales et
politiques. Paris. 1908. (P. 438.)
L’oeuvre de la Haye, 1899 et 1907. Conference
faite a l’licole libre des
sciences
politiques le 5 juin 1908. In Annales des sciences politiques, 15 July
1908. Paris.
Scott, J. B.
The Hague Peace Conference of 1899 and 1907. Baltimore. 1909.
2 vols. [Contains American documents not
published in Europe.]
Westlake, J.
The Hague Conference. In Quarterly Review for Jan. 1908 (No. 414). (See also
list of works at head of article.)
The European Concert.
Crete,
1897-9. For full accounts see the Parliamentary Papers of those years. [It
would be useless to give specific references here, as they are more readily
fouud by means of the index in any library where the papers are accessible.]
III. PERMANENT ARBITRATION TREATIES CONCLUDED BY
GREAT BRITAIN WITH FOREIGN POWERS.
Austria-Hungary:
January 11, 1905.
Colombia:
December 30, 1908.
Denmark :
October 25, 1905.
France:
October 14, 1903. (Prolonged by Exchange of Notes of October 14,
1908.)
Germany: July
12, 1904. (Renewed for one year July 1909; prolonged by exchange of Notes of
Dec. 7, 1909. As. to the latest exchange of notes with Germany, see Treaty
Series, no. 36 (1909), Cd. 4968.)
Italy:
February 1,1904. (Prolonged by Exchange of Notes of January 4, 1909.)
Netherlands : February 15, 1905.
Norway : See
Sweden and Norway.
Portugal:
November 16, 1904.
Spain:
February 27, 1904. (Prolonged by Exchange of Notes of January II,
1909.)
Sweden and
Norway: August 11, 1904.
Switzerland :
November 16, 1904.
United States
: April 4, 1908.
(All these
agreements were concluded for a period of five years in the first instance. The
Treaty with the United States contains a special provision as to the consent of
the Senate of the United States and of any self-governing Dominion of the
British Empire whose interests may be affected.)
The foregoing
particulars were prepared, by the courtesy of the Foreign Office, before the
publication of a parliamentary paper, Miscellaneous, no. 9 (1909), Cd. 4870, in
which they may now be verified.
I. LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
A. The
United Kingdom.
The Annual
Reports of the Local Government Boards for England, Scotland and Ireland; the
Local Taxation Accounts; and the annual returns as to tramways, gas, and
electricity, supply official records. The Municipal Year-Book and the London
Manual (annual) give convenient descriptions. An extensive collection of
documents (reports, accounts, proceedings, etc.) of local governing bodies in
all the principal countries is to be found at the British Library of Political
Science in connection with the London School of Economics. The Bibliography of
British Municipal History, by G. Gross (1897), and the bibliographies given in
English Local Government, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1904 and 1908), mention
practically all the works, large and small, bearing on the history of
particular towns.
Arminjon, P.
L’Administration Locale en Angleterre. Paris, 1895.
Ashley, P. W.
L. Local and Central Government in England, France, Prussia and United States.
1906.
Atkinson, C.
J. F. Concise Handbook of Provincial Local Government Law. Leeds. 1902.
M. Local Government in Scotland. Edinburgh.
1904.
Bertolini, P.
II Governo locale inglese e le sue relazione con la vita nazionale.
Turin. 1899.
Blunden, G.
H. Local Taxation and Finance. 1895.
Boverat, R.
Le Socialisme Municipal en Angleterre. Paris. 1907.
Cannan, E.
History of Local Rates in England. 1896.
Chapman, S.
J. Local Government and State Aid. 1899.
Clifford, F.
History of Private Bill Legislation. 2 vols. 1885-7.
Darwin, L.
■ Municipal Trade. 1903.
Geddes, P. A
Study in City Development. Edinburgh. 1904.
Gneist, R.
von. Das Englische Verwaltungsrecht. Berlin. 1884.
Self-government, Communalverfassung und
Verwaltungsgerichte in England.
Berlin. 1871.
Gomme, G. L.
The Governance of London. 1907.
The Principles of Local Government. 1897.
Graham, J. C.
Taxation and Local Government. 1899.
Green, Mrs J.
R. Town Life in the Fifteenth Century. 2 vols. 1895.
Grice, J. W.
National and Local Finance. 1910.
Hugo, C.
Stadteverwaltung und Munizipal-Sozialismus in England. Stuttgart. 1897. Irons,
J. E. Burgh Government. Edinburgh, 1905.
Jenks, E. The
Outlines of English Local Government. 2nd edn. 1908. Maitland, F. W. Justice
and Police. 1885.
Township and Borough. 1898.
Meyer, H. R.
Municipal Ownership in Great Britain. 1906.
Montet, E.
Etude sur le Socialisme Municipal Anglais. Paris. 1901.
Muir, R.
History of Municipal Government in Liverpool to 1835. 1906.
National
Civic Federation of New York. Report on Municipal and Private Operation of
Public Utilities in the United Kingdom. 3 vols. New York. 1907. Odgers, W.
Blake. Local Government. 1907.
O’Meara, J.
J. Municipal Taxation at Home and Abroad. 1894.
Porter, R. P.
Dangers of Municipal Trading. 1907.
Probyn, J. W.
Local Government and Taxation. (Cobden Club Essays.) 1875. Redlich, J. and
Hirst, F. W. Local Government in England. 2 vols. 1903. Scholefield J.
(editor). Encyclopaedia of Local Government Law. 1905.
Shaw, A.
Municipal Government in Great Britain. New York. 1895.
G. B. The Common Sense of Municipal
Trading. 1904.
Simon, Sir
John. English Sanitary Institutions. 1890.
Smzheimer, L.
Der London'er Grafschaftarat. Vol. i. Stuttgart. 1900.
Smith,
Toulmin. The Parish. 1857.
Suthers, R.
B. Mind Your Own Business: the Case for Municipal Management.
1905.
Vauthier, M.
Le Gouvernement Local de l’Angleterre. Brussels. 1895.
Vine, Sir J.
R. Somers. English Municipal Institutions, 1835-79. 1879. Webb, Sidney. The
London Programme. 1891.
Webb, Sidney
and Beatrice. English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal
Corporations Act, Vol. i. : The Parish and the County. 1904. Vols. ii, in : The Manor and the Borough.
1908.
History of Liquor Licensing. 1904.
The Break Up of the Poor Law. 1909.
The Public Organisation of the Labour Market.
1909.
B. The
United States.
Allinson, T.
and Penrose, J. Philadelphia, 1681-1887. Philadelphia. 1887. Bemis, E. W. Local
Government in the South and South-west. Baltimore. 1893. Champernowne, H. The
Boss. New York. 1894.
Conkling, A.
B. City Government in the United States. New York. 1894. Devlin, T. C.
Municipal Reform. New York. 1896.
Eaton, A. M.
Origin of Municipal Incorporation in England and the United States. New York.
1902.
The Government of Municipalities. New York.
1899.
Goodnow, F.
J. Comparative Administrative Law. New York. 1903.
Municipal Problems. New York. 1897.
■ Municipal Home Rule. New York. 1895.
City Government in the United States. New
York. 1904.
Gould, E. R.
L. Local Government in Pennsylvania. Baltimore. 1883.
Hatton, A. R.
Digest of City Charters. Chicago. 1906.
Holcomb, W.
P. Pennsylvanian Boroughs. Philadelphia. 1886.
Hollander, J.
H. Financial History of Baltimore, 1729-1898. Baltimore. 1899. Hosmer, J. K.
South Adams Town Meeting. New York. 1884.
Howe, F. C.
The City the Hope of Democracy. 1908.
Levermore, C.
H. Republic of New Haven. New York. 1886. Maclear, A. B. Early New England
Towns. New York. 1908. Robinson, C. M. The Improvement of Towns. New York.
1901.
Modern Civic Art. New York. 1903.
Rowe, L. S.
Problems of City Government. New York. 1909. Steffens, L. The Shame of the
Cities. New York. 1904.
Wilcox, Delos
F. The American City. New York. 1904.
The Study of City Government. New York. 1897.
Williamson,
C. C. Finances of Cleveland. New York. 1907. Zueblin, C. American Municipal
Progress. New York. 1902.
C. The
European Continent.
Acollas, P.
A. R. P. E. Les Finances Communales. s.I. 1898.
Arias, G. II
Sistema della costituzione economica e sociale italiana. Turin. 1905. Barbieri,
A. Lo Stato ed il comune. Bologna. 1886.
Bellange, C.
Le Gouvernement Local en France. Paris. 1900.
Benz, R. von.
Autonomie und Centralismus in der Gemeinde. Innsbruck. 1895. Bernimouin, E. Les
Institutions Provinciales et Communales de la Belgique.
Brussels.
1891-2.
Blodig, H.
Die Selbstverwaltung als Rechtsbegriff. Vienna. 1894.
Borioni, L.
La vita della Provincia italiana. Rome. 1893.
Colajanni, N.
Le Istituzione Municipale. Turin. 1883.
Deschanel, P.
La Decentralisation. Paris. 1885.
Dresden. Die
Deutschen Stadte. Geschildert nach den Ergebnissen der ersten deutschen
Stadteaustellung zu Dresden, 1903. Leipzig. 1904.
Dubois, P. Le
Budget Departemental.
Essai sur les Finances Communales. Paris.
1898.
Eiben, H. Die
Ortspolizei. Cologne. 1908.
Ferron, H.
de. Institutions municipales et provinciales comparees. Paris. 1884.
(Jerstfeldt, P. Stadtefinanzen in Preussen. Berlin. 1882.
Giron,
Alfred. Essai sur le Droit Communal de la Belgique. Brussels. 1868. ■
Giulini, P. II Decentramento dello Stato e la dialocazione delle imposte.
Milan. 1892.
Grais, H. de.
Handbuch der Verfassung und Verwaltung. Berlin. 1902. Guignard, A. Le
Self-Government ou la Decentralisation. Paris. 1897.
Hartman, H.
G. Administratie de Gemeenten in Nederland. The Hague. 1891. Helm, G. L. van
den. De Gemeente-Administratie. The Hague. 1882.
Hugo, C.
Arbeiterpolitik in der deutschen Stadteverwaltung. Stuttgart. 1904.
Die Deutsche Stadteverwaltung. Stuttgart.
1901.
Kaufmann, R.
von. Kommunales Finanzwesen. Berlin. 1906.
Kinne, H. Die
Autonomie der Communalverbande in Preussen. Berlin. 1908. Laufer, F. Unser
Polizeiwesen. Bibliothek der Rechts und Staats-Kunde, Vol. xxn. Stuttgart.
1905.
Leroy
Beaulieu, P. L’Administration Locale en France et en Angleterre. Paris. 1872.
Lindemann, H.
and Siidekum, A. Kommunales Jahrbuch. 2 vols. Jena (annual).
Lujay, Count
H. de. La Decentralisation. Paris. 1895.
Magne, E.
L’esthetique des Villes. Paris. 1908.
Manzoni, L.
Bibliografia dei Municipii. Rome. 1876-92.
Marcere, E.
de. La Decentralisation. Paris. 1895.
Marie, J. De
l’administration departementale. Paris. 1882.
Mercier, P.
Les Exploitations Municipales en France. Evreux. 1905.
Meuriot, P.
Les agglomerations urbaines de 1’Europe contemporaine. Paris.
1898.
Mombert, P.
Die deutschen Stadtgemeinden und ihre Arbeiter. Munich. 1902. Morgand, L. La
Loi Municipale. Paris. 1902.
Morier, Sir
R. B. D. Local Government in England and Germany. London.
1888.
Most, O. Die
Schuldenwirtschaft der deutschen Stadte. Jena. 1909.
Mounot, E.
Histoire de l’administration provinciale en France. Paris. 1885. Munro, W. B.
The Government of European Cities. New York. 1909.
Preuss, H.
Das Stadtische Amtsrecht in Preussen. Berlin. 1902.
Redlich, J.
Das Wcsen des ijsterreichischen Kommunalverfassung. Leipzig.
1910.
Richald, L.
Les Finances Communales en Belgique. Brussels. 1892.
Romera, E.
Administration local. Almazan. 1896.
Schtin, jP,
Das Recht der Kommunalverbande in Preussen. Leipzig. 1897.
Shaw, A.
Municipal Government in Continental Europe. New York. 1901. Sidenbladh, C.
Sveriges Kommuner i administrate vt, judicielt och echlesiastikt hausiende.
Stockholm. 1898.
Silbergleit,
H. Preussens Stadte. Berlin. 1908.
Simonet, J.
B. Traite elementaire de Droit Public et Administratif. Paris. 1902.
Statistisches Jahrbuch Deutscher Stadte. Berlin (annual).
Stern,. M.
Geschichten von Deutschen Stadten. New York. 1902.
Turquey, E.
Les Octrois Municipaux. Paris. 1899.
Wagener, A.
Die Kommunalsteuerfrage. Berlin.
Weber, A. Die
Grossstadt und ihre socialen Problems. Leipzig. 1908.
Zadek, J.
Hygiene der Stadte. Berlin. 1909.
Zadow, F. Der
ausserordentliche Finanzbedarf der Stadte. Jena. 1909.
II. FACTORY LEGISLATION.
Ansiaux, M.
Heures de Travail et Salaires. Paris. 1896.
Anton, G. K.
Geschichte der preussischen Fabrikgesetzgebung. 1891. Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche
Forschungen. Ed. G. Schmoller. Leipzig. 1878-. Arlidge, J. T. The Diseases of
Occupations. 1892.
Bouquet, L.
Le Travail des enfants, des filles, etc. Paris. 1893.
Brauts, V. L.
J. L. Legislation du Travail Compares et internationale. Louvain.
1903.
Brentano, L.
Hours and Wages in relation to production. 1894.
Conference
Internationale du reglement du travail, Reports of. 1890.
Deutschen
Handworker und Arbeiter-Schutzgesetze. Berlin. 1901.
Durand, E.
L’inspection du Travail en France de 1841 a 1902. Paris. 1902. France,
Ministere du Commerce. Legislation Ouvriere et sociale en Australie et
Nouvelle-Zelande. Paris. 1901.
Grillet, L.
La Reglementation du Travail. Encyclopedic scientifique des aide- memoires.
Paris. 1892-.
Hodder, E.
Life of the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. 1886.
Hutchins, B.
L. and Harrison, A. History of [English] Factory Legislation.
1903.
Jager, E.
Geschichte und Literatur des Normalarbeitstages. Stuttgart. 1892. Jeans, V.
Factory Act Legislation. Manchester. 1892.
Jones, Lloyd.
Life and Times of Robert Owen. 1889.
Kydd (“
Alfred ”), S. History of the Factory Movement. 2 vols. 1857.
Landmann, J.
Die Arbeiterschutzgesetzgebung der Schweiz. Basel. 1904. Lohmann, T. Die
Fabrikgesetzgebungen der Staaten des Europaischen Continents. Berlin. 1878.
Louis, J.
L’Ouvrier devant l’Etat. Histoire comparee des lois du travail. Paris.
1904.
Marx, Karl.
Das Kapital. 1867.
Oliver, Sir
T. Dangerous Trades. 1902.
Owen, Robert.
Observations on the Manufacturing System. 1815.
Plener, E. von.
English Factory Legislation. 1873.
Podmore, F.
Life of Robert Owen. 1908.
Rae, J. Eight
Hours for Work. 1894.
Reeves, W. P.
State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand. 1900.
Schaffle, A.
The Theory and Policy of Labour Protection, 1893.
Taylor, R. W.
C. Introduction to History of the Factory System. 1886.
The Modern Factory System. 1891.
The Factory System and the Factory Acts. 1894.
Webb, Mrs S.
(and others). The Case for the Factory Acts, 1901,
Socialism and National Minimum. 1908.
Webb, S. and
Cox, H. The Eight Hours Day. 1891.
Weyer, O. Die
Englische Fabrikinspection. Tubingen. 1888.
Willoughby,
W. F» Foreign Labour Laws. Washington. 1899.
III. TRADE UNIONISM.
There is an
extensive collection of Reports and ms. material
in the British Library of Political Science, at the London School of Economics.
S. and B. Webb’s History of Trade Unionism and Industrial Democracy contain
elaborate bibliographical lists. Isabel Taylor’s Bibliography of Unemployment
and the Unemployed,
1909, supplements these from another
standpoint.
Barnett, G.
E. Bibliography of American Trade Union publications. Baltimore. 2nd edn. 1909.
The Printers: a Study in American Trade
Unionism. Cambridge. 1906.
Beveridge, W.
H. Unemployment. 1909.
Brentano, L.
On the History of Gilds and Origin of Trade Unions. 1870.
Zur Kritik der Englischen Gewerbvereine.
Leipzig. 1872.
Bureau, P. Le
Contrat de Travail: le role des syndicats professionnels. Paris. 1902.
Commons, J.
R. Trade Unionism and Labour Problems. New York. 1905. Dechesne, L. Les
Syndicats Ouvriers beiges. Brussels. 1906.
Deffiennes,
M. La Coalition Ouvriere et la Grave, 1789-1884. Paris. 1903. Dubois, E. Les
Trade Unions et les Associations Professionnels en Belgique.
Brussels.
1894.
Ely, R. T.
Labor Movement in America. 1890.
Georgi, E.
Theorie und Praxis des Generalstreiks in der modemen Arbeiter- bewegung. Jena.
1908.
Halevy, D.
Essais sur le Mouvement ouvrier en France. Paris. 1901.
Hermans, H.
Handboek voor de moderne vakvereeniging. Maestricht. 1908. Hollander, J. and
Bamett, G. E. Studies in American. Trade Unionism. Baltimore.
1906.
Howell, G.
Conflicts of Capital and Labour. 1890.
Trade Unionism, New and Old. 1891.
Hudig, D. De
Vakbeweging in Nederland, 1866-78. Amsterdam. 1904. Jeauneney, J. Associations et
Syndicats de fonctionnaires. Paris. 1908.
Kennedy, J.
B. Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions. Baltimore. 1908.
Kessler, G.
Die deutschen Arbeitgeberverbande. Leipzig. 1907.
Kirk, W.
National Labor Federations in the United States. Baltimore. 1907. Kritsky,
Mdlle. L’e'volution du Syndicalisme en France. Paris. 1908.
Labriola, A.
(and others). Syndicalisme et Socialisme. Paris. 1908.
Levasseur, E.
Histoire des classes ouvrieres et de l’industrie en France de 1789 a 1870.
Paris. 1903.
Motley, J. M.
Apprenticeship in American Trade Unions. Baltimore. 1901. Mueller, O. Die
Christliche Gewerkschaftsbewegung Deutschlands. 1905. Powderly, T. V. Thirty
Years of Labor, 1859-89. Columbus. 1889.
Pratt, E. A.
Trade Unionism and British Industry. 1904.
Raynaud, B.
Le Contrat Collectif de travail. Paris. 1901.
Saint-Leon,
E. Martin. Le Compagnonnage: son histoire. Paris. 1901.
Sakolski, A.
M. The Finances of American Trade Unions. Baltimore. 1909. Schulze-Gaevemitz,
G. von. Social Peace. 1893.
Thorndike, A.
Zur Rechtsfahigkeit der deutschen Arbeitsberufvereine. Tubingen. 1908.
Vandervelde,
E. Enquete sur les associations professionnelles d’artisans et ouvriers en
Belgique. Brussels. 1891.
Webb, Sidney
and Beatrice. History of Trade Unionism. 1907.
Industrial Democracy. 1907.
Problems of Modern Industry. 1907.
IV. FRIENDLY SOCIETIES AND GOVERNMENTAL
INSURANCE.
Arboux, J. La
Mutualite Fra^aise. Paris. 1907.
Baernreither,
J. M. English Associations of Working Men. 1889.
Bodiker, T.
Reichs-Versicherungsgesetzgebung. Berlin. 1906.
Die Arbeiterversicherung in den europaischen
Staaten. Berlin. 1895.
Brabrook, Sir
E. W. Provident Societies and Industrial Welfare. 1898.
Brooks, J. G.
Compulsory Insurance in Germany. Washington. 1895. Derijean, G. L’assurance
contre le chomage. Paris. 1899.
Gotze, E. and
Schindler, O. Jahrbuch der Arbeiterversicherung. 2 vols. Berlin (annual).
Guillot, P.
Les Assurances Ouvrieres. Paris. 1897.
Hasbach, W.
Englische Arbeiterversicherung. Berlin. 1883.
Jenny, O. H.
Englisches Hiilfskassenwesen. Berlin. 1905.
Lefort, J.
Caisses de retraites ouvrieres. Paris. 1906.
Leyers,
Franz. Die Hulfskassen in Gegenwart und in der Zukunft. Tubingen. 1908.
Lohmar, Paul.
Die Deutsche Arbeiterversicherung. Berlin. 1907.
Schloss, D.
F. Insurance against Unemployment. 1909.
Schmidt, C.
Aufgaben der deutschen Invalidenversicherungsanstalten. Berlin.
1905.
Schmitz, J.
Arbeiterversicherung. Berlin. 1888.
Sutherland,
W. Old Age Pensions. 1907.
Tessiore, E.
L’ assicurazione e gli infortuni. Milan. 1899.
Wilkinson, J.
F. Mutual Thrift. 1892.
The Friendly Society Movement. 1886.
Willoughby,
W. F. Workingmen’s Insurance. Washington. 1898.
Zacher, G.
Arbeiterversicherung im Auslande. 5 vols. Gross-Lichterfelde.
1900-8.
V. COOPERATION.
The largest
collections of reports, ms. and
other unpublished material, so far as concerns the United Kingdom, are at the
offices of the Cooperative Union, Nicholas Hey, Manchester, and at the British
Library of Political Science, in the London School of Economics, London.
The
International Cooperative Bibliography (270 pp.) issued by the International
Cooperative Alliance in 1906, supplies an extensive list of works. Fay’s
Cooperation at Home and Abroad, 1908, gives a convenient select bibliography.
The yearly
reports of the Cooperative Union, the Cooperative Wholesale Society, the
Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society, the Labour Copartnership Association,
and the International Cooperative Alliance afford the latest available
information.
A. The United Kingdom.
Acland, A. H.
Dyke and Jones, B. Working Men Cooperators. Manchester. 1908.
Aves, Ernest.
Cooperative Industry. 1907.
Cemesson, J.
Les Societes Cooperatives Anglaises. Paris. 1905.
Faux, H. Les
Societes Cooperatives de Consommation en Angleterre. Rennes.
1905.
Fay, C. R.
Cooperation at Home and Abroad. 1908.
Holyoake, G.
J. The History of the Rochdale Pioneers. Last edn. 1900.
The Cooperative Movement To-day. 1903.
The History of Cooperation, revised and
completed. 2 vols. 1908.
Jones, B.
Cooperative Production. Oxford. 1894.
Lloyd, H. D.
' Labour Copartnership. 1898.
Pitman, H.
Memorial of E. V. Neale. Manchester. 1894.
Plunkett, Sir
Horace. Ireland in the New Century. 1905.
Potter,
Beatrice (Mrs Sidney Webb). The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain. 1892.
Schloss, D.
F. Methods of Industrial Remuneration. 1907.
Report on Profit Sharing. 1894.
Valleroux, P.
Hubert. La Cooperation. Paris. 1904.
Webb,
Catherine. Industrial Cooperation. Manchester. 1904.
Wolff, H. W.
Cooperative Banking. 1907.
People’s Banks. Last edn. 1910.
B. France.
Almanach de
la Cooperation Francaise. Paris (annual).
Berget, A. La
Cooperation dans la Viticulture Europeenne. Lille. 1902. Castlenan, E. Des
Associations de vente de vin dans le Midi de la France. Paris.
1907.
Correard, J.
Les Societes cooperatives de consommation. Paris. 1908.
Coulet, E. Le
Mouvement Syndical et cooperatif dans l’Agriculture franijaise. Montpellier.
1898.
Fagneux, L.
La Caisse de credit Raiffeisen et le Raiffeisenisme en France. Paris.
1908.
Fontaine, A.
Les Associations Ouvrieres de Production. Office du Travail. Paris. 1897.
Gide, C. Les
Societes Cooperatives de la Consommation. Paris. 1904.
Gide, C.
L’Economie Sociale. Paris. 1907.
Godin, J. B.
A. Mutualite sociale et Association du capital et du travail. Paris.
1881.
Documents pour une biographie de. By M. A.
Godin. Paris. 1901.
Hubert-Valleroux,
P. Les Associations Cooperatives. Paris. 1884.
Lucas, L. Des
Cooperatives Agricoles en France. Bordeaux. 1908.
Ministere de
1’Agriculture. Enquete sur les Societes de Cooperation. Paris. 1866.
Ministere du
Travail. Statistique de la Cooperation Industrielle et Commerciale en France.
Paris. 1907.
Protopopescco,
I. Cooperation et Societes Cooperatives. Paris. 1908,
Rieu, F. La
Cooperation ouvriere a travers les ages. Paris. 1898.
Rivet, H. Les
Boulangeries Cooperatives en France. Paris. 1904.
Rocquigny de
Farel, Comte H. M. R. de. Les Syndicats Agricoles et leur oeuvre. Paris. 1906.
Seilhac, L.
de. La Verrerie Ouvriere d’Albi. Paris. 1901.
Taton, G. La
Cooperation dans l’lndustrie Beurriere. Paris. 1908.
Tiefaine, P.
Les Laiteries Cooperatives en France. Paris. 1901.
Williams, A.
Twenty years of Copartnership at Guise. London. 1903.
C. Germany.
Jahrhuch der
Erwerhs- und Wirtschaftsgenossenschaften im Deutschen Reiche. Berlin (annual).
des Zentralverbandes deutscher
Konsumvereine. Berlin (annual).
Kaufmann, H.
Geschichte des Konsumgenossenschaftlichen Grosseinkaufes in Deutschland.
Hamburg. 1904.
Die Lohn- und Arbeitsverhaltnisse
genossenschaftlicher Angestellter und
Arbeiter.
Hamburg. 1906.
Kruger, H.
Die Deutsche Genossenschaftsgesetzgebung. Leipzig. 1908.
Vorschuss- und Kredit-Vereine als Volksbanken.
Berlin. 1904.
Lindecke, O.
Das Genossenschaftswesen in Deutschland. Leipzig. 1908.
Muller, F. Die
geschichtliche Entwicklung des landwirthschaftlichen Genossen- schaftswesens in
Deutschland. Leipzig. 1901.
Oppenheimer,
F. Die Siedl.ungsgenossenschaft. Leipzig. 1898.
Riehn, R. Das
Konsumsvereinswesen in Deutschland. Stuttgart. 1902. Schneider, F. Baugenossenschaften,
Bau- und Sparvereine. Berlin. 1899.
Konsumvereine. Berlin. 1904.
D. Belgium.
Annuaire de
la Cooperation Ouvriere beige. Brussels (annual).
Bertrand, L.
Histoire de la Cooperation en Belgique. Brussels. 1903.
Heldt, B. H.
Instellingen op social en cooperatief gebiet in Belgie. Leeuwarden.
1892.
Leger, M. A.
Les Cooperatives et l’orgauisation Socialiste en Belgique. Brussels.
1899.
Malherbe, G.
Les Fromageries ou Fruitieres Cooperatives. Brussels. 1899. Resteau, C. Traite
des Socie'tes Cooperatives. Brussels. 1906.
Rowntree, B.
S. Life and Labour : Lessons from Belgium. 1910.
Trigaut, J.
and Miserez, H. Les Machines Agricoles Syndicales. Brussels. 1901. Turmann, M.
Les Associations Agricoles en Belgique. Paris. 1903.
E. Switzerland.
Jahrbuch des
Verbandes schweizerischer Konsumvereine. Basel (annual). Jahresbericht iiber
den schweizerischen Raiffeisenverband. Frauenfeld (annual). Muller, Dr Hans.
Die schweizerischen Konsumgenossenschaften. Basel. 1896. Schweizerischer
Genossenschafts-Kalender. (Annual.)
F. Italy.
Bassi, E. Le
Latterie Sociali in Italia. Milan. 1900.
Ficcarellij
R. A. Manuale per le piccole cooperative di consumo. Milan. 1904. Ligue
Nationale, la, des Society Cooperatives Italiennes depuis 1866 jusqu’a 1906.
Milan. 1907.
Maffi, A.
Manuale per le Societa cooperative di produzione e agricole. Milan. 1908.
Niccolij V.
Cooperative rurally di credito, di assicurazione. di mutuo soccorso, di
consumo, di acquisto, di materie prime, di vendita di prodotti agrari. Milan.
1908.
Pellegrini,
U. La Cassa Rurale in Italia. Udine. 1906.
Pizzamiglio,
L. Distributing Cooperative Societies. 1891.
Rabbeno, U.
Societe Cooperativi di produzione. Milan. 1889.
La Cooperazione in Italia. Milan. 1886.
Reggiani, E.
La Produzione del latte e le latterie sociali cooperative. Milan.
1908.
Societa
Umanitaria, la. L’ opera della Societa Umanitaria della sua fondazione. Milan.
1906.
G. Other
Countries.
Apo&tol,
P. L’artele et la cooperation. 1899. [Russia.]
Bancel, A. D.
Kooperatyzin. Warsaw. 1908. [Russia.]
Bemis, E. W.
Cooperation in New England. Baltimore. 1888.
Cooperation in the Middle States. Baltimore.
1888.
Bois, W. E.
du. Economic Cooperation among Negro. Americans. Atlanta. 1908. [United
States.]
Chambres
Consultatives des Associations ouvrieres de Production. La Cooperation de
Production dans les Colonies fran9aises. Paris. 1904.
Chaves, Arias
L. Las cajas rurales de credito del sistema de Raiffeisen. Zamora.
1907. [Spain.] ., , .
Marken, J. C.
van. L’organisation sociale dans l’industrie; les societes industrielles de Hof
van Delft. Delft. 1900. [Holland.]
Medina, F.
Las Sociedades cooperativas. Buenos Aires. 1887.
Meijers, E.
M. Landbancc-operatie in Nederland. Amsterdam. 1908. Valentiner, J. Etudes sur
les Associations de credit hypoth^caire en Danemark.
1902.
VI. EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN.
Anthony, C.
Social and Political Dependence of Women. 1880.
Bebel, A. Die
Frau. Engl, transl. by H. B. A. Walther: Women in the Past, Present and Future.
1894.
Blackburn, H.
Handbook for Women. 1895.
Blackburn, H.
Women’s Suffrage: a, Record of the Suffrage movement in the British Isles.
1901.
Blackwell, E.
Pioneer Work in the Medical Profession. 1895.
Boston Public
Library. Bibliography of Higher Education of Women. Boston.
1897.
Braun, L. Die
Frauenfrage. Berlin. 1901.
Coit, Stanton
D. Women in Church and State. 1908.
Dicey, A. V.
Letters on Votes for Women. 1909.
Gilman, C. P.
S. Women and Economics. 1905.
Gnauck-Kuhne,
E. Die Franenbewegung. 1908.
Godwin, M. W.
Vindication of the Rights of Women. 1792.
International
Congress of Women, Reports of. 7 vols. 1900.
Jenks, E.
Husband and Wife in the Law. 1909.
Lange, H. and
Baumer, G. Handbuch der Frauenhewegung. 5 vols. Berlin.
1901-5.
Lawrence, W.
P. Women’s Fight for the Vote. 1909.
Lesueur, D.
L’lSvolution feminine. Paris. 1905.
Loria, A. Le
Feminisme au point de vue sociologique. 1907.
McLaren,
Lady. The Women’s Charter. 1910.
Mathew, A. H.
Woman’s Suffrage. 1909.
Mill, J. S.
The Subjection of Women. 1867.
Ostrogorski,
M. La Femme au point de vue du droit public. Paris. 1892.
Rosier, A.
Die Frauenfrage. 1907.
Stanton, E.
C. (and others). History of Woman’s Suffrage. 4 vols. New York.
1881-1902.
Stopes, C. C.
British Freewomen. 1890.
Villiers,
Brougham. The Case for Women’s Suffrage. 1909.
Wegener, M.
(editor). Merkbuch der Frauenbeweguug. Leipzig. 1908.
For
this chapter it seemed beyond its purpose to supply a bibliography.
I.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL.
Boucher de la
Richarderie, B. Bibliotheque universelle des Voyages...classes par ordre de
pays dans leur serie chronologique. 6 vols. Paris. 1808.
Fortesoue, G.
K. Subject Index of modern works added to the Library of the British Museum
1881-1900 (s. v. Asia, Africa, China, etc.). 3 vols. 1902. Ditto, 1900-5. 1907.
Royal Asiatic
Society of London. Catalogue. 1893.
Royal
Geographical Society of London. Catalogue by H. R. Mill. 1895. [Appendix I
gives contents of Collections of Voyages by Hakluyt, Pinkerton, etc. Appendix
II enumerates official publications classified by subjects, e.g. Asia, Africa,
etc.]
Studii
biografici e bibliografici sulla Storia della Geografia in Italia. 2 vols.
Rome.
1882.
II. ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES.
A. Asia and Africa.
Mittheilungen
aus Justus Perthes geographischer Anstalt. By A. Petermann. With separate
decennial indexes (Inhalts-Verzeichnisse) and Supplements (Erganzungsbande) to
the above. Gotha. 1855 sqq. (Inprogress.)
Royal
Geographical Society of London.
Journal. 50
vols. 1832-80. With separate decennial Indices, 1844,1853,1867,
1881, 1884.
Proceedings.
22 vols. 1855-78. New Series. 14 vols. 1879-92.
Journal,
including Proceedings. 1893 sqq. With separate index to first 20 vols. 1906.
(In progress.)
Supplementary
Papers to the above. 1882 sqq. (In progress.)
Societe de
Geographie. Paris.
Bulletins.
134 vols. 1822-99. Separate indexes to the Bulletins, 1822-1900.
3 vols. 1845, 1866, 1900.
Comptes
rendus. 17 vols. 1883-1900.
La Geographie
(continues Comptes rendus and Bulletins). 1900 sqq. (In progress.)
Societe
geographique imperiale de Russie. Comptes rendus. St Petersburg.
1851 sqq. (In
progress.)
Societa
geografica Italiana. Bollettini. With separate index, 1865-75, and after this
date separate decennial indices. Florence and Rome. 1868 sqq. (In progress.)
£. Asia.
(1) Principal works.
Abbott, J.
Herat, Khiva, etc. 2 vols. 1856.
Anderson, J.
Mandalay to Momien. 1876.
Bellew, H. W.
Kashmir and Kashgar. Edinburgh. 1875.
Bishop,
Isabella. Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan. 2 vols. 1891.
Korea and her neighbours. 2 vols. 1898.
Yang-Tse Valley and beyond. 2 vols. 1899.
Bruce, James.
Travels to discover the Source of the Nile. 5 vols. Edinbnrgh. 1790.
Burnes, Sir
Alexander. Travels into Bokhara. S vols. 1835.
Burton, Sir
Richard. Pilgrimage to El Medinab and Mecca. 3 vols. 1855-6. Capus, G. A travers
le Royaume de Tamerlane. Paris. 1892.
Curzon of
Kedleston, G. N., Viscount. Russia in Central Asia. 1889.
Persia. 2 vols. 1892. .
Problems of the far East, Japan, Korea, China.
1894. 2nd edn. 1896.
Dutreuil de
Rbins, J. L. L’Asie Centrale. Paris. 1889.
Mission Scientiiique. 3 vols. Paris. 1897-8.
Freshfield,
Douglas W. Travels in Central Caucasus. 1869.
Gill, W.
River of Golden Sand. 2 vols. 1880.
Hakluyt
Society Publications. Vols. lxxii,
i.xxtii : Early Voyages to Russia and Persia. 2 vols. 1886.
Hedin, Sven.
Through Asia. 2 vols. 1898.
Scientific Results of a Journey in Central
Asia. 1899-1902. Stockholm.
1904-. (In
progress.)
Holdich, Sir
T. Tibet the Mysterious. 1906.
Indian Borderland. 2nd edn. 1909.
Hosie, A.
Three Years in Western China. 2nd edn. 1897.
Hue, E.
Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie. 2 vols. Paris. 18-50. Huntington, E.
Geologic and Physiographic Reconnaissance in Central Turkestan.
Washington.
1905-.
Pulse of Asia. Boston. 1907.
Palgrave, W.
G. Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia. 3rd edn. 2
vols. London and Cambridge. 1865.
Prjevalsky,
N. Mongolia. Transl. E. D. Morgan. 1876.
From Kulja across the Tian Shan to Lob Nor.
Transl. E. D. Morgan.
1879.
Shaw, R.
Visits to High Tartary. 1871.
Sherring, C.
A. Western Tibet. 1906.
Sykes, P. M.
Ten Thousand Miles in Persia. 1902.
Wellby, M. S.
Through Unknown Tibet. 1898.
Younghusband,
Sir F. The Heart of a Continent. 1896. 2nd edn. 1904.
(2) Books by travellers.
The following
travellers have described their Asiatic travels in books with various titles:
Abbott, J.;
Allen, T. G.; Baber, E. Colborne; Barzini, L.; Bellew, H. H.; Bishop, Isabella;
Blakiston, T.; Bogle, G.; Bonvalot, G.* + ; Bower, Hamilton;
Bruce, C. D.;
Burnaby, Fred; Burnes, Alexander; Capus, G.+ ; Colquhoun, A.; Conolly, A.;
Cooper, T.; Crosby, O. T.; Deasy, H. H. P.; Desgodins, C. H.; Dutreuil de
Rhins, J. L.; Ferrier, J. P.*; Forsyth, Sir T. Douglas; Futterer, C. §;
Garnier, M. J. F.+ ; Goldsmid, Sir F. J.; Hallett, Holt; Hedin, Sven*; Prince
Henri d’Orleanst; Hosie, A.; Hue, Evariste; Huntington, Ellsworth; Jack, R.
Logan; Jones,Sir Harford; Knight,E. F.; Landor, A. Savage; Lesdain,Comte de*t;
Little, A. J.; Littledale, St G.; MacCarthy, J.; MacGahan, J.; Malcolm, Sir
John; Manning, Thomas; Margary, A.; Masson, C.; Moorcroft, W.; Morier, J.;
Nordenskjold, Adolf*; Payer, Julius*§; Potagos, Papagiotist; Pottinger, Sir H.;
Prjevalsky, N.*; Rawling, C. J.; Rawlinson, Sir Henry; Richthofen, Ferdinand
•von§; Rockhill, W. Woodville; Shaw, R.; Stein, M. A.; Sykes, P. Molesworth;
Tavernier, J. B.* + ; Taylor, Annie; Turner, S.; Vambery, Armimus*; Vigne,
G. T.*; Wellby, M. S.; Wenyon, C.; Wiggins, J.;
Wolff, Joseph; Wood, J.
(3) Notes by travellers.
Records or
authoritative notices:
Carey, A. D.
In Royal Geogr. Soc. Proceedings. 1887. [Pp. 731 sqq.] And Supplementary
Papers. Vol. hi. 1890.
Elias, N. In
Geogr. Journal. 1873.
Hayward, G.
In Geogr. Journal. 1870.
Moorcroft, W.
In Asiatic Researches. Vol. xn. Calcutta.
Prjevalsky,
N. In Royal Geogr. Soc. Proc. 1887.
Rheinthal,
Captain. In R. Michell’s Account of a Russian Mission. 1870. Shakespear, Sir R.
In Blackwood’s Magazine. Edinburgh. 1842.
Siberian
Explorers, Map of. In E. Reclus, Nouv. Geogr. Universelle (see below under m
A). Vol. v, p. 579.
Strachey, H.
Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal. Calcutta. 1848.
Geogr. Journal. Vol. xix, p. lxvii. 1849.
Sir R. Geographical Journal (New Series). Vol.
xv, pp. 150 sqq. 1900.
C. Africa.
(1) Principal works.
African
Association, Proceedings of. 2 vols. 1790—1902.
Arnot, F. S.
From the Zambesi to Benguella. Glasgow. 1883.
Barth, H.
Travels in North and Central Africa. 5 vols. 1857-8. Burton, Sir Richard. Lake
Regions of Central Africa. 2 vols. 1860.
Wander?ngs in West Africa. 2 vols. 1863.
Lands of Cazembe (Lacerda, Monteiro, Graipa,
etc.). 1873.
Duveyrier,
Henri. Sahara algerien et tunisien. Paris. 1905.
Grant, Col.
J. A. A Walk across Africa. 1864.
Johnston, Sir
H. H. The Uganda Protectorate. 2 vols. 1902.
George Grenfell and the Congo. 2 vols. 1908.
Junker, W.
Travels in Africa. 1876-86. 3 vols. 1890-2.
Livingstone,
D. Missionary Travels. 1857. Ed. F. S. Arnot. 1899.
Expedition to the Zambesi. 1865.
Last Journals. 2 vols. 1874.
Lugard, Sir
F. J. D. The Rise of our East African Empire. 2 vols. Edinburgh.
1893.
Nachtigal,
Gustav. Sahara und Sudan. 3 vols. Berlin. 1879-89.
Schweinfurth,
G. The Heart of Africa. 2 vols. 1873.
Societe de
Geographie. Documents scientifiques de la Mission Saharienne (Mission
Foweau-Lamy). 2 vols. Paris. 1905.
Speke, John
M. Journal of the Discovery of the source of the Nile. 1864. Stanley, Sir H. M.
How I found Livingstone. 1872.
Through the Dark Continent. 2 vols. 1878.
The Congo and the Founding of its Free State.
2 vols. 1885.
In Darkest Africa. 2 vols. 1890.
(2) Books by travellers.
The following
travellers have described their African travels in books with various titles:
Ardersson, C.
J.; Baikie, W.; Baker, Sir Samuel; Barth, H.*; Bonchamps, C. det; Bottego, V.
J; Bowdich, T.; Browne, W. G.; Bruce, James; Burckhardt, John; Caillie, R.;
Cameron, Verney; Capello, H.*||; Cecchi, A.; Chaillu, P. du*; Denham, Dixon;
Duveyrier, Henri+; Emin Pasha*§; Foureau, Fernand; Galton, Francis; Gentil,
Emil+; Gordon, Charles G.; Grant, James; Grenfell, George; Hornemann, F.*;
Krapf, J.*; James, Frank; Johnston, Sir H. H.; Junker, W.*§; Laing, A. G.;
Lander, R.; Lugard, Sir F.; Lyon, G. ; Maistre, C. +; Moffatt, Robert;
Nachtigal, G. §; Paez, Pedro J; Park, Mungo; Peters, Carl*§; Petherick, John;
Piaggia, C. J; Pinto, A. de Serpa*; Poncet, Charles*+ ; Potagos, Papagiotist;
Richardson, J.; Robecchi-Brichetti, L. J; Rohlfs, Gerard*§; Riippell, W. E.;
Schweinfurth, Georg*§; Speke, John; Stanley, Sir H. M.; Teleki, Count S.*;
Thomson, Joseph; Wellby, Montagu S.; Wissmann, H. von*§.
(3) Notes by travellers.
Records or
authoritative notices:
Laing,
Alexander G. In Quarterly Review. 1830.
Marchand, J.
B. In J. Poirier. De L’Oubanghi a Fachoda. Paris. 1900.
Paez, Pedro.
In C. Beccari. Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores. Vol. n. Rome. 1902 sqq.
Tinne, A. In
W. Wells. Alexandrine Tinne. New York. 1871.
Vogl, E. In
E. and C. H. Schauenhurg. Reisen in Central Africa. 3 vols. Lahr. 1859-67.
(Vol. i, pp. 493 sqq.)
%
D. Parliamentary
Papers and other Official Documents.
Papers
connected with the Development of trade between British Burma and Western China
and with the Mission to Yun-nan of 1874-5. 1876. C. 1456. Reports :
(1) By Mr Baher on the route followed by Mr
Grosvenor’s Mission. 1878.
C. 1994.
(2) By Mr Baber of his Journey to Ta-chien-lu.
1878-9. C. 2393.
(3) By A. Hosie of a Journey through Kwei-chau
and Yun-nan. 1883.
(4) By F. S. A. Bourne of a Journey in
South-Western China. 1888.
(6) By C. W. Campbell, H. M.’s Consul, on a
Journey in Mongolia. 1904. Cd. 1874.
(6) By George Kidston on a Journey in Mongolia.
1904. Cd. 1954. 1904.
Cd. 2096.
(7) By Act. Cos. Litton on a Journey in North
West Yun-nan. 1904.
Cd. 1836.
(8) By Consul-Gen. Hosie on Se-chuan. 1905. Cd.
2247.
(9) By Consul-Gen. Hosie on a Journey to the
Eastern frontier of Tibet.
1905. Cd. 2586.
(10) By W. J.
Clenell, H. M.’s Consul, on a Journey in Kiang-si. 1906. Cd. 2762.
Papers
relating to Tibet. 1904. Cd. 1920. Cd. 2054. 1905. Cd. 2370. Hertslet, Sir E.
Map of Africa by Treaty. 3 vols. 1896.
Treaties
between Great Britain, etc. with China. 2 vols. 3rd edn. 1908.
III. SECONDARY AUTHORITIES.
A. Asia and
Africa.
Cooley, W. D.
History of Maritime and Inland Discovery. 3 vols. 1830-1. Keltie, J. S. The
World’s Great Explorers. 7 vols. 1889-92.
The Story of Exploration. (In progress.)
London. 1903 sqq.
Murray, H.
Historical Accouut of Discoveries in Africa. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 1818.
Historical Account of Discoveries in Asia. 3
vols. Edinburgh. 1820.
Pinkerton, J.
Collection of Voyages. 17 vols. 1804-14.
Reclus, E.
Nouvelle Geographic Universelle. 19 vols. (separate). (In progress.)
Paris. 1876
sqq.
Stanford, E.
Compendium of Geography and Travel:
Asia. 2 vols. 1906-9.
Africa. 2 vols. 1904-7.
North America. 2 vols. 1897-8.
Central and South America. 2 vols. 1901.
Australasia. 2 vols. 1907-8.
B. Asia.
Hellwald, F.
von. Russians in Central Asia. 1874.
Krahmer, G.
Russland in Asien. Berlin. 1905. (In progress.)
Markham, Sir
Clements R. Memoir of the Indian Surveys. 1871. 2nd edn.
1878
Narratives of the Mission of C. Bogle to Tibet
and of the Journey of
T. Manning,
with notes, etc. 1876.
Michell, J.
and R. Russians in Central Asia. 1865.
Skrine F. H.
B. Heart of Asia. A History of Russian Turkestan. 1899.
Yule, Sir H.
Cathay and the Way thither. 2 vols. 1866.
C. Africa.
Keltie, J. S.
Partition of Africa. 1895.
Monteiro, J.
J. Angola and the River Congo. 2 vols. 1875.
THE
GROWTH OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE.
I. GENERAL WORKS.
Acton, Lord.
A Lecture on the study of history. Cambridge. 1895.
Adams, C. K.
Manual of Historical Literature. New York. 1888.
Altamira, R.
La *3nsenanza de la Historia. Madrid. 1895.
Barth, P. Die
Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie. Leipzig. 1897.
Bauer, A. Die
Forschungen zur griechischen Geschichte, 1888-98. Munich. 1899. Baur, F. C. Die
Epochen der Kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung. Tubingen. 1852. Bernheim, E.
Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode. Leipzig. 1908.
Bethge, R.
Ergebnisse der Germanistischen Wissenschaft im letzten Vierteljahr- hundert.
Leipzig. 1902.
Bury, J. B.
Introduction to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 1896.
An inaugural lecture. Cambridge. 1903.
Cheyne, T. K.
Founders of Old Testament Criticism. 1893.
Dollinger, I.
Akademische Reden. Vol. n. Nordlingen. 1889.
Flint, R. The
philosophy of history in France and Germany. Edinburgh and London. 1874.
Freeman, E.
A. Methods of Historical Study. 1886.
The unity of history. (Rede Lecture.) 1872.
Hausser, L.
Gesammelte Schriften. 2 vols. Berlin. 1869-70.
Hilprecht, H.
Explorations in Bible Lands. Edinburgh. 1903.
Jahresbericht
der Geschichtswissenschaft. Berlin. 1878-.
Jodi, F. Die
Culturgeschichtschreibung. Halle. 1878.
Kroll, W. Die
Altertumswissenschaft im letzten Vierteljahrhundert. Leipzig.
1905.
Langlois, C.
Manuel de Bibliographie historique. 2 vols. Paris. 1895, 1904. Langlois, C. and
Seignobos, C. Introduction to the Study of History. 1898. Michaelis, A. A
Century of Archaeological Discoveries. 1908.
Mohl, J.
Vingt-sept Ans d’Histoire des Etudes Orientales. 2 vols. Paris. 1879-80.
Rosenmund, R.
Die Fortschritte der Diplomatik seit Mabillon. Munich. 1897- Sandys, J. E. A
History of Classical Scholarship. Vols. n and in. Cambridge.
1908.
Schweitzer,
A. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. 1910.
Wachler, L.
Geschichte der historischen Forschung und Kunst. 2 vols. Gottingen. 1812,
1816.
Wolf, G.
Einfuhrung in das Studium der neueren Geschichte. Berlin. 1910. Year’s Work,
The, in Classical Studies. 1906 sqq.
II. GERMANY, AUSTRIA AND SWITZERLAND.
(a)
General Works.
Acton, Lord.
German Schools of History. In Historical Essays and Studies.
1907.
Benfey, T.
Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und orientalischen Philologie. Munich. 1869.
Bursian, C.
Geschichte der classischen Philologie. Munich. 1883.
Cardauns,
H. Die Gorres-Gesellschaft, 1876-1901. Cologne. 1901. '
Curtius, E.
Alterthum und Gegenwart. Vols. n and in. Berlin. 1882, 1889. Dove, A.
Ausgewahlte Schriften. Leipzig. 1898.
Gierke, O.
Die historische Rechtsschule und die Germanisten. Berlin. 1903. Goldfriedrich,
J. Die historische Ideenlehre in Deutschland. Berlin. 1902. Gottinger
Professoren. Gotha. 1871.
Grimm, J.
Kleine Schriften. Vol. i. Berlin. 1864.
Ilamack, A.
Geschichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin.
1901.
Haym, R. Die
Romantische Schule. Berlin. 1870.
Historische
Commission, Die, 1858-83. Munich. 1883.
Kluckhohn, A.
Vortrage und Aufsatze. Munich. 1894.
Lexis, W. Die
deutschen Universitaten. 2 vols. Berlin. 1893.
Lorenz, O.
Die Geschichtswissenschaft, Berlin. 1886.
Michaelis, A.
Geschichte des deutschen Archaologischen Instituts. Berlin. 1879. Ranke, L.
von. Reden. Sammtliche Werke, Vols. u and lii.
Leipzig.
Raumer, R.
von. Geschichte der Germanischen Philologie, Munich. 1870. Ritter, M. Ueber die
Griindung, Leistungen und Aufgaben der Historischen Commission. Sybel’s
Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. cm. Munich and Leipzig. Schaumkell, F. Geschichte
der deutschen Kulturgeschichtschreibung. Leipzig.
1905.
Sybel, H.
von. Vortrage und Abhandlungen. Munich. 1897.
Treitschke,
H. von. Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert. 5 vols, Leipzig. 1879-94.
Wegele, F.
Geschichte der deutschen Historiographie. Munich. 1885.
(b)
Monographs.
Acton, Lord.
Dollinger’s Historical Work. In History of Freedom and other Essays. London.
1907.
Arneth, A.
von. Aus meinem Leben. 2 vols. Stuttgart. 1893.
Barth, P.
Geschichtsphilosophie Hegels. Leipzig. 1890.
Burkner, R.
Karl von Hase. Leipzig. 1900.
Classen, J.
B. G. Niebuhr. Gotha. 1876.
Curtius, F.
Ernst Curtius. Ein Lebensbild in Briefen. Berlin. 1903.
Dilthey,
Karl. Otfried Muller. Gottingen. 1898.
Dorfel, J.
Gervinus als historischer Denker. Gotha. 1904.
Droysen, G.
J. G. Droysen. Vol. i. Leipzig. 1910.
Duncker, M.
Droysen. In Abhandlungen. Leipzig. 1887.
Ebers, G.
Richard Lepsius. New York. 1887.
Ennecerus, L.
Savigny. Marburg. 1879.
Erben, W.
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Eyssenhardt,
F. B. G. Niebuhr. Gotha. 1886.
Friedrich, J.
Ignaz von Dollinger. 3 vols. Munich. 1899-1901.
Gervinus, G.
Leben, von ihm selbst. Leipzig. 1893.
Gierke, O.
Rudolf von Gneist. Berlin. 1896.
Goetz, L. F.
H. Reusch. Gotha. 1901.
Grabmann, M.
Heinrich Denifle. Mainz. 1905.
Guglia, E.
Leopold von Ranke. Leipzig. 1893.
Harnack, A.
Neander. In Reden und Aufsatze. Vol. i. Giessen. 1904. Hartmann, L. Mommsen.
Gotha. 1908.
Hausrath, A.
Zur Erinnerung an Treitschke. Leipzig. 1901.
Hauviller, M.
F. X. Kraus. Colmar. 1904.
Hermann, F.
Die Geschichtsauffassung Ludens. Gotha. 1904.
Hertz, M.
Karl Lachmann. Berlin. 1851.
Hoffmann,
Max. August Bockh. Leipzig. 1901.
Hiiffer, H.
Alfred von Reumont. Cologne. 1904.
Janssen, J.
J. F. Bohmer’s Leben. 3 vols. Freiburg i. B. 1868.
Jung, J.
Julius Ficker. Innsbruck. 1907,
Kekule, R.
Das Leben F. G. Welcker’s. Leipzig. 1880.
Kittel, O. W.
von Humboldt’s Geschichtliche Weltanschauung. Leipzig. 1901. Klopp, W. Onno
Klopp. Ein Lebenslauf. Osnabruck. 1907.
Lamprecht, K.
Ranke’s Ideenlehre. In AlteundNeueRichtungen. Berlin. 1896. Lieber, F.
Reminiscences of Niebuhr. London. 1835.
Lorenz, O. L.
von Ranke. Berlin. 1891.
Lutolf, A. J.
E. Kopp. 3 vols. Lucerne. 1868.
Marcks, E.
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H. von Treitschke. Heidelberg. 1906.
Meyer, E. H.
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Sepp, H.
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H. W. H. Riehl. Munich. 1898.
Springer, A. F.
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Stenzel, K.
G. Stenzel’s Leben. Gotha. 1897.
Stoll, A.
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Trog, H.
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III. FRANCE.
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Bardoux, M.
Guizot. Paris. 1894.
Boutmy, E.
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A. Sorel. In Etudes politiques. Paris. 1907.
Caron, P. and
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Charmes,
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Notice sur la Vie et l’CEuvre de Renan. Paris. 1893.
Diehl, C. Les
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Due de Broglie. Paris. 1902.
Faguet, E.
Politiques et Moralistes. 3 vols. Paris. 1891-8.
Flint, R.
Historical Philosophy in France. Edinburgh. 1893.
Galley, J. B.
Claude Fauriel. Saint-^tienne. 1909.
Giraud, V.
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Guerard, B.
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Guiraud, P.
Fustel de Corlanares. Paris. 1896.
Guizot, F. De
Barante. London. 1867.
Hanotaux, G.
H. Martin. Paris. 1885.
Hartleben, H.
Champolliou. 2 vols. Berlin. 1906.
Jullian, C. _
Extraits des historiens fran^ais au 19eme siecle. Paris. 1897.
Livret de
l’Ecole des Chartes, 1821-91. Paris. 1891.
Maigron, L.
Le roman historique. Paris. 1898.
Margerie, A.
de. Taine. Paris. 1894.
Maury, A.
L’ancienne Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Paris. 1864. Mazade, C.
de. Thiers. Paris. 1884.
Merlet, G.
Tableau de la Litterature fran^aise, 1800-15. Vol. n. Paris. 1883. Mignet, F.
Portraits et Notices. Vol. n. Paris. 1852.
Eloges historiques. Paris. 1864.
Nouveaux Eloges historiques. Paris. 1877.
Molinier, A.
Les Sources de 1’histoire de France. Vol. v. Introduction Generate. Paris.
1904.
Monod, G.
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Jules Michelet. Paris. 1905.
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Petit, E.
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Petit de
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8 vols.
Paris. 1896-1900.
Picot, G. Le
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Quinet, Mme
Edgar. Quinet. 2 vols. Paris. 1888-9.
Cinquante Ans d’Amitie. Michelet and Quinet.
Paris. 1903.
Rapport sur
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E. Essais de Morale et de Critique. (Augustin Thierry.) Paris. 1859.
Sainte-Beuve, C. A. Portraits Contemporains. Causeries du Lundi. Derniers
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Saint-Hilaire,
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Seche, L.
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Simon, J.
Thiers, Guizot, Remusat. Paris. 1885.
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Sonolet, L.
Henry Houssaye. Paris. 1905.
Sorel, A.
Notes et Portraits. Paris. 1909.
Taine, H.
Life and Letters. 3 vols. 1902-8.
Thienot, J.
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Tocqueville,
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Wailly, N.
de. Notice sur Guerard. Paris. 1855.
Wallon, H.
Eloges Academiques. 2 vols. Paris. 1882.
IV. GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA.
Alison,
A. Autobiography. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 1883.
Bain, A.
Character and Writings of Grote. In Grote s Minor Works. 1873. Bryce, J.
Studies in Contemporary Biography. 1902.
Clark, J. W.
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Elton, O.
Memoir and Letters of York Powell. Oxford. 1906.
Firth, C. H.
Introduction to Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches. Ed. S. Lomas.
1904.
Fisher, H. A.
L. F. W. Maitland. Cambridge. 1910.
Freeman, E.
A. Grote and Thirlwall. In Historical Essays. Second Series.
1889.
Froude, J. A.
Carlyle’s Life. 4 vols. 1890.
Gardiner, S.
R. and Mullinger, J. B. Introduction to English History. 3rd edn.
1894.
Gasquet, F.
A. Lord Acton and his circle. 1903.
Green, J. R.
Letters. Ed. L. Stephen. 1901.
Grote, Mrs.
The personal Life of George Grote. 1873.
Howe, A. Life
and Letters of George Bancroft. 2 vols. 1908.
Hnth, A. H.
Life and Writings of Buckle. 2 vols. 1880.
Jameson, J.
F. History of Historical Writing in America. Boston. 1891.
Lecky, W. E.
H. Memoir of. By his wife. 1909.
Mignet, F.
Hallam. In ISloges historiques. Paris. 1864.
Milman, A.
Memoir of H. H. Milman. 1900.
Morison, J.
C. Macaulay. 1882.
Motley, J. M.
Correspondence. 2 vols. 1889.
Paul,
Herbert. Memoir of Lord Acton, in Letters to Mary Gladstone. 1904.
Life of Froude. 1905.
Rawlinson, G.
Life of Sir H. Rawlinson. 1898.
Robertson, J.
M. Buckle and his Critics. 1895.
Smith, A. L.
F. W. Maitland. Oxford. 1908.
Stanley, A.
P. Life of Arnold. 2 vols. 1844.
Stephens, W.
Life and Letters of E. A. Freeman. 2 vols. 1895.
Stnbbs, W.
Letters. Edited by W. H. Hutton. 1904.
Ticknor, G.
Life of Prescott. 1864.
Trevelyan,
Sir G. O. Life of Macaulay. 2 vols. 1875.
Vinogradoff,
P. Villainage in England, Introduction. Oxford. 1892.
Wace, H.
Memoir of J. S. Brewer. In English Studies. 1881.
Walker, Hugh.
Victorian Literature. Cambridge. 1910.
V. OTHER COUNTRIES,
Baldasseroni,
F. Pasquale .ViHari. Florence. 1907.
Blok, P. J.
Fruin. In Verspreide Studien. Groningen. 1903.
Dollinger, I.
Herculano da Carvalho. In Akademische Reden. Vol. n.' Nord- lingen. 1889.
Fredericq, P.
The Study of History jn Holland and Belgium. Baltimore. 1890. Guerrier, W.
Solovieff. In Sybel’s Historische Zeitschrift. Vol. xjjV, Munich and Leipzig.
Guiraud, J.
De Rossi. In Revue Historique. Vol. lviii.
Luchaire, J.
Essai sur 1’Evolution intellectuelle de l’ltalie, 1815-30. Paris.
1906.
Lutzow,
Count. Lectures on the Historians of Bohemia. 1905.
Nielsen, J.
Erik Geijer. Odense. 1902.
Potvin, C.
Cinquante Ans de Liberte. Vol. iv. Brussels. 1882.
Reumont, A.
von. Gino Capponi. Gotha. 1880.
Steenstrup,
J. Historieskrivningen i Danmark i det 19de Aarhundrede. Copenhagen. 1889.
Stephens, H.
M. Modem Historians and their Influence on small Nationalities.
Contemporary
Review. July 1887.
Tommasini, O.
Amari. In Scritti di Storia e critica. Rome. 1891.
OF
PRINCIPAL
EVENTS MENTIONED IN THIS VOLUME.
1823 President Monroe’s Message to Congress.
1824 Battle of Ayacucho ends Spanish supremacy in
South America.
1833-52 Rosas
dictator in Buenos Aires.
1841 The Five
Powers recognise Mehemet Ali as hereditary governor of Egypt. 1843-62 Ramon
Castilla dictator of Peru.
1845 Anglo-French blockade of Buenos Aires secures
Uruguayan independence. Franklin sails to find the North-West Passage.
1846 The United States guarantee Colombia's
sovereignty over Panama.
1847 Barrage of the Nile begun.
Use of
chloroform adopted by Simpson.
1848 First Public Health Act (Great Britain).
Communist
manifesto of Karl Marz.
1850 Irish
Tenant-Eight League formed.
1858-72
Benito Juarez President of Mexico.
1858 Atlantic Cable successfully laid.
1859 Lesseps begins the Suez Canal.
Darwin’s
Origin of Species.
1860 March. First Austro-Hungarian Reichsrath.
October. The
Diploma conferred upon Hungary.
1861 Tsar Alexander II emancipates Russian serfs.
The February
Patent annuls the Diploma in Hungary.
Mason and
Slidell dispute between Great Britain and United States.
1863 Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador ally against
Spain.
Discovery of
the sources of the Nile.
Ismail
governor of Egypt (Khedive 1866).
Mommsen's
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum begun.
1864 Constituent Committee in Poland.
Schleswig-Holstein
War.
1865 Negro rebellion in Jamaica suppressed by
Governor Eyre.
San Domingo
becomes independent.
Paraguay
declares war on Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
First French
occupation of Saigon.
1866 War between Prussia and Austriu.
1867 Francis Joseph crowned in Hungary: Andrassy
ministry.
The
Compromise: revised constitution conferred on Cisleithania. Withdrawal of
French troops from Mexico.
1867 Kai'l Marx’ Das Capital.
Fenian
outrages at Manchester and Clerkenwell.
1868 Revolution in Spain: insurrection in Cuba.
Feb.-Dee.
Disraeli prime Minister.
British
Abyssinian expedition : Magdala stormed.
December.
Gladstone prime Minister.
1869-77 Mexican Boundary Commission.
1869 Union-Pacific railway completed.
November.
Suez Canal opened.
1870-89 Guzman Blanco dictator in Venezuela.
1870-2
Cardwell’s Army reforms.
1870 Franco-German War.
Great Britain
guarantees neutrality and independence of Belgium. Vatican decrees announce
Papal Infallibility.
October.
Russia denounces Treaty of Paris (1856).
Treaty of
Versailles: William I of Prussia becomes German Emperor. Irish Land Act and
Coercion Act.
Forster’s
Elementary Education Act establishes school boards.
Irish Home
Government (Home Rule) Association formed.
1871 January. Conference of London partly abrogates
Treaty of Paris (1856). February. French National Assembly at Bordeaux.
„
Peace preliminaries between France and Germany signed. March. Commune in Paris.
,,
Bulgarian Exarchate created.
May. Peace of
Frankfort.
„
Treaty of Washington submits Alabama claims to arbitration. August. Thiers
President of the French Republic.
September.
First Old-Catholic Congress at Munich.
Amadeus of
Savoy King of Spain.
Return of the
religious Orders to France.
Fundamental
Articles announced in Bohemia.
Law
of Guarantees in Italy.
Completion of
the Japanese revolution.
1872 January. Comte de Chambord’s Declaration from
Antwerp.
July. French
Committee of Defence adopts compulsory military service. September. Agreement
between the three Emperors {Dreikaiserbund).
,,
Geneva award on Alabama claims announced.
November.
Thiers demands Commission to draw up a Constitution.
First
rebellion against Spain in the Philippine Islands.
Self-government
instituted in Cape Colony.
Death of
Charles XV of Swedeu : Oscar II.
1873 Abolition of the Statholdership in Norway.
Abdication of
Amadeus in Spain: Spanish Republic proclaimed. Anti-ecclesiastical legislation
in Prussia (Kvltwrkampf).
May.
Resignation of Thiers: Macmahon President.
July. Final
evacuation of France by German troops.
October.
Comte de Chambord’s Frohsdorf Letter.
British
Residents placed in the Malay States.
Dutch begin
the war of Achin.
Uniform
monetary system in the German empire.
1874 February. Disraeli (Beaconsfield) prime
Minister.
Russo-German
treaty.
December.
Alfonso XII King of Spain.
Stubbs*
Constitulional History of England.
1875 Final establishment of the Constitution of the
French Republic.
March. Crisis
in the relations between France and Germany.
,, Papal Bull
Quod nunquam.
May. Further
anti-ecclesiastical legislation in Prussia.
Great Britain
purchases the Khedive’s shares in the Suez Canal.
The
Herzegovina in insurrection.
Great Britain
annexes the Fiji Isles.
Russia
secures Saghalin.
Treaty
between Japan and Korea.
1876 May. Bulgarian massacres.
u
British fleet sent to Besika bay.
,,
Abd-ul-Aziz deposed : Murad V.
June. Servia
and Bulgaria declare war on Turkey.
August. Murad
V deposed: Abd-ul-Hamid II.
November.
Russian troops reach Turkish frontier.
December.
Conference of Constantinople.
Establishment
in Egypt of the Commission of the Public Debt.
1877 April. War breaks out between Russia and
Turkey.
Roumanian
independence declared.
Siege of
Plevna (surrendered December).
Montenegrins
take Nikshich.
Gordon
governor-general of the Sudan (resigned 1880).
Transvaal
annexed by Great Britain.
Permissive
Federation Act for British South African Colonies.
Parnell
leader of Irish party: organised obstruction in the House of Commons.
Satsuma
rebellion in Japan.
Porfirio Diaz
President of Mexico.
1878 January. Death of Victor Emmanuel II. Accession
of Humbert I.
„
Russians take Adrianople and Montenegrins Spizza, Antivari, and Dulcigno.
February.
Death of Pius IX. Election of Leo XIII.
„
British fleet sent to Constantinople.
,, Austria
occupies Bosnia and the Herzegovina.
March. Treaty
of San Stefano between Russia and Turkey.
June-July,
Berlin Conference: Treaty of Berlin.
June. Cyprus
Convention.
,,
International Exhibition at Paris.
September.
British envoy sent to Afghanistan.
October. Pact
of Halepa (Crete).
Colombia
grants concession for French construction of Panama Canal. Congress of Zemstva
at Kieff.
1879 January. Zulu War; battle of Isandhlwana;
defence of Rorke’s Drift. May. Yakub Khan signs Treaty of Gandamak.
July. Battle
of Ulundi.
„
Taaffe president of ministry in Austria (till 1893) and Tisza in Hungary.
September. Cavagnari murdered: second invasion of Afghanistan. Defensive
alliance of Austria and Germany.
Acute
agricultural depression begins in Great Britain.
1880 ApriL Gladstone becomes prime Minister.
„
Great Britain recognises Abdurrahman in Afghanistan.
July. Battle
of Maiwand.
,,
Battle of Kandahar.
August.
Turkey cedes part of Thessaly to Greece.
1880 November. Montenegro obtains Dulcigno.
December.
Boer revolt in the Transvaal.
Jesuits
expelled from France: Congregations required to obtain a license. Party of
Socialist Workers formed in France.
Ismail
deposed in Egypt: Tewfik Khedive.
1881 Fehruary. Battle of Majuba Hill.
March. Murder
of Tsar Alexander II. Alexander III Tsar.
May. Treaty
of Bardo: France occupies Tunis.
June. France
establishes free primary education.
„ Labour
Congress at Reims.
August. Sand
River Convention restores independence to the Transvaal.
,,
Gladstone’s Irish Land Act.
September.
Murder of President Garfield.
November.
Gambetta Minister in France (till January, 1882).
Roumania
declares itself a kingdom.
Rising of the
Mahdi in the Sudan.
French
protectorate on Upper Niger established.
British North
Borneo Company chartered.
Chilian
troops take Lima: Treaty between Chile and Argentina.
1882 Triple Alliance of Austria, Germany and Italy.
Servia
declares itself a kingdom.
War between
Servia and Bulgaria.
May. Phoenix
Park murders: Prevention of Crimes (Ireland) Act.
,, Temporary
Rules in Russia enacted against Jews.
,, Arabi
Pasha Minister in Egypt.
June.
Outrages in Alexandria: British fleet bombards fortifications. August. Battle
of Tel-el-Kebir.
Africander
Bond formed in Cape Colony.
German
Colonial Society formed.
First
Conference at Tokio.
1883 Egyptian army under Hicks destroyed near El
Obei'd.
August.
French protectorate over Annam established.
Great Britain
repudiates Queensland’s annexations in New Guinea.
First General
Congress of Mutual Aid Societies at Lyons.
Germany
begins system of workmen’s insurance.
1884 Congress of Berlin recognises French Congo and
the Congo Free State
under Leopold
II.
Renewed
alliance of the three Emperors.
Secret
neutrality treaty (reinsurance) between Germany and Russia. October. Afghan
Boundary Commission meets.
Gordon sent
to Khartum.
Wolseley’s
attempt to relieve Khartum.
Russia
annexes Merv.
Germany
establishes protectorate over Angra Pequeiia.
German and
British annexations in New Guinea.
Fournier
Convention. French military intervention in Tonkin.
Convention of
London between Great Britain and the Transvaal.
Right of
Association recognised in France.
Great Boer
treks in South Africa.
Japanese
intervention in Korea.
1885 January. Fall of Khartum : Sudan evacuated.
March. France
adopts a protective tariff.
May.
Collision between Afghans and Russians at Penjdeh.
June.
Salisbury prime Minister.
1885 June. Treaty of Tientsin between France and
China.
September.
Union of the two Bulgarias.
November. Death
of Alfonso XII of Spain. Regency of Maria Cristina. Italy occupies Massowah.
Ashbourne
Irish Land Act.
Canadian
Pacific railway completed.
Australian
Federal Council attempted.
British
annexation of southern Bechuanaland.
German East
Africa Company formed.
British East
Africa Company formed (chartered 1888).
Forcible
Russianisation of Esthonia and Livonia begins.
1886 January. Gladstone prime Minister.
May. Birth of
Alfonso XIII.
June. First
Home Rule Bill.
July.
Salisbury prime Minister.
October. O’Brien’s
Plan of Campaign.
Treaty of
Bucharest.
Alexander of
Bulgaria kidnapped, restored* and resigns.
British
annexation of Upper Burma.
British Royal
Niger Company chartered.
Anglo-German
Agreement delimits spheres of East African companies. Gold rush to the
Transvaal.
Polish League
formed.
Balmaceda
President of Chile.
1887 First jubilee of Queen Victoria.
First
British Colonial Conference. .
Ferdinand of
Saxe-Coburg becomes Prince of Bulgaria.
Treaty
between France and China.
April.
Boulanger’s plot in France.
Drummond
Wolffs mission to Teheran.
Joint control
of Great Britain and France in New Hebrides.
1888 March. Death of William I of Germany; Frederick
III Emperor.
June. Death
of Frederick III; William II Emperor.
British
protectorate over North Borneo, Brunei, and Sarawak established. Russian
railway reaches Samarkand.
Treaty
between Russia and Korea.
Conversion of
British National Debt.
Local
Government Act.
Parnell
Commission.
1889 Milan of Servia abdicates: Alexander succeeds.
Young Cech
party becomes prominent in Bohemia.
Franco-Russian
entente.
British South
Africa Company formed.
Pedro II
deposed in Brazil. _
Panamerican
conference at Washington.
China gives
permission for railway construction.
Treaty of
Accialli between Italy and Abyssinia.
1890 Death of William III of Holland. Wilhelmina
Queen.
March. Fall
of Bismarck.
Fall
of Tisza in Hungary. .
July.
Heligoland ceded to Germany by Great Britain.
British
protectorate over Zanzibar recognised by Germany.
French
protectorate over Madagascar recognised.
Anglo-French
treaty delimits boundaries by Lake Chad.
1890 Balfour’s Congested Districts Boards and light
railways in Ireland. General strikes in Australia begin.
First
Japanese parliament.
1891 Anglo-Portuguese Agreement delimits Zambesi
territories.
Trans-Siberian
railway begun.
Three years’
famine in Russia begins.
Ravachol
Anarchist outrages in Paris: strike at Fourmies.
German
general insurance system completed.
Great strike
and financial crisis in Australia.
Close of
Chilian civil war.
1892 January. Death of Tewfik Pasha: Abbas II
Khedive. Anti-British
agitation
begins in Egypt.
„ Meline Customs tariff in France.
Reconciliation
between Leo XIII and France.
France
attacks Dahomey and annexes the Ivory Coast.
Cross’ Indian
Councils Act.
August.
Gladstone prime Minister.
Witte’s
financial reforms in Russia begin.
National
Union formed on the Witwatersrand.
1893 Shipdff president of the Moscow Zemstvo.
Polish
Workmen’s Union forms a socialist party.
Matabele war
in British South Africa.
Responsible
government granted to Natal.
September.
Gladstone’s second Home Rule Bill rejected.
New Zealand
extends the franchise to women.
Arbitration
at Paris on Behring Sea fisheries concluded.
Brazilian
civil War begins.
1894 Death of Tsar Alexander III. Nicholas II.
March.
Gladstone resigns. Rosebery prime Minister.
June. Murder
of President Carnot in France.
December.
Trial and condemnation of Captain Dreyfus.
Armenian
massacres.
War between
Japan and China.
Treaty
between Great Britain and Japan.
Commercial
treaty for ten years between Germany and Russia.
British
protectorate over Uganda declared.
French take
Timbuktu.
New Zealand
Factory Act for inspection of all workshops.
Harcourt’s
death-duties budget.
1895 Franco-Russian alliance.
June. Salisbury
prime Minister.
August.
British occupation of Chitral.
October.
Murder of the Queen of Korea.
December.
Jameson raid into the Transvaal.
Murder of
Stambuloff: Ferdinand of Bulgaria recognised by Russia. Further Armenian
massacres.
Polish
National League reorganised.
Close of war
between Japan and China.
France,
Germany, and Russia intervene between Japan and China.
Secret
Russo-Chinese Treaty.
The Transvaal
violates the Convention of London: British ultimatum. Brazilian civil War ends.
Cuban
rebellion renewed.
Great opening
of mines and factories in southern Russia.
1895 Rontgen discovers X-rays.
1896 President Cleveland’s Venezuelan message.
Franco-British
treaty secures integrity of Siam.
Annexation of
Madagascar by France.
Defeat of
Italian troops at Adowah.
Egyptian army
occupies Dongola.
Massacre of
Armenians at Constantinople.
Victoria
(Australia) Factory Act establishes Wages Boards.
First
outbreak of plague in India.
1897 Second jubilee of Queen Victoria.
Massacre at
Canea: the five admirals occupy Crete.
War between
Greece and Turkey.
Germany
leases Kiaochow from China.
Afridi and
Mohmand tribes rise on Indian frontier.
Renewed
revolt of the Philippine Islands against Spain.
Murder of
Canovas.
Linguistic
decrees for Bohemia announced.
Employers’
Liability Act.
Dreyfus
agitation begins.
1898 February. Destruction of the Maine in Havana
bay.
April. The
United States declare war on Spain; Santiago taken.
July. Cuba
separates from Spain.
September.
The Egyptian army takes Omdurman and the Sudan.
,, Marchand’s expedition reaches Fashoda.
October.
Storming of Dargai: peace restored on Indian frontier. December. Treaty of
Paris between Spain and the United States.
Peace
conference invited by the Tsar of Russia.
Bdbrikoff
governor of Finland.
Russia leases
Port Arthur from China.
Great Britain
leases Wei-Hai-Wei from China.
France leases
Kwang Chow Wan from China.
The Emperor
of China resigns to the Dowager Empress.
Boxer
movement begins in China.
The United
States take Manila and annex the Philippine Islands.
The United
States annex Hawaii.
Commercial
war between France and Italy ended.
Prince George
of Greece Commissioner in Crete.
Milan riots.
Plunkett’s
Agricultural Society in Ireland founded.
Irish Local
Government Act.
1899 Death of Luiz I of Portugal. Carlos I King.
Peace
conference at the Hague.
Constitution
of Finland abrogated.
Boulanger
plot defeated in France.
Dreyfus
affair concluded.
Macedonian
Committee at Sofia demands autonomy for Macedonia.
The Transvaal
and the Orange Free State declare war on Great Britain. Sieges of Ladysmith,
Kimberley, and Mafeking.
British-Egyptian
agreement regulates the Sudan.
Germany and
the United States divide Samoa Isles.
Conclusion of
Venezuelan boundary arbitration.
Gold rush to
Klondyke.
November.
Battle of Modder river.
December.
Battles of Magersfontein and of the Tugela.
1899 O’Brien’s United Irish League.
1900 Murder of Humbert I: Victor Emmanuel III.
February.
Battle of Paardeberg, capture of Bloemfontein, relief of Ladysmith.
May. Relief
of Mafeking.
„ Annexation
of Orange Free State.
June. Battle
of Diamond Hill.
September.
Annexation of the Transvaal by Great Britain.
Royal Niger
Company surrenders to the Crown.
British
protectorate over Lagos and Nigeria established.
Boxers attack
the Legations at Peking.
Joint column
enters Peking.
Treaty
between France and Italy.
Australian
Federation Act creates Commonwealth of Australia.
Legal
uniformity within the German empire completed.
1901 January. Death of Queen Victoria. Edward VII.
Triple
Alliance renewed.
Trans-Siberian
railway opened.
July. French
treaty with Morocco.
Habibulla
Amir of Afghanistan.
Australia
excludes Asiatics and all coloured labour.
1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance.
Russo-Chinese
treaty.
Peace of
Vereeniging accepted by the Boers.
French Panama
Company cedes its concession to the United States. Balfour’s Education Act for
England and Wales.
Irish Land
Conference.
Witte’s
Agricultural Committees formed in Russia.
Russian
strikes.
1903 March. General abolition of sugar bounties.
Death of Leo
XIII. Pius X Pope.
Murder of
Alexander of Servia: Peter I (Karageorgevich).
Austria and
Russia announce the Miirzsteg Programme for Macedonia. April. Russian troops
reach the Yalu.
Polish League
issues its Programme.
Pogroms
on Jews in Russia.
Great strikes
at Baku.
Chamberlain
leaves the ministry in order to advocate Imperial preference. Irish Land
Purchase Act.
Native rising
in British Somaliland.
Great
Britain, Germany, and Italy make naval demonstration against Venezuela.
United States
recognise independence of Panama and obtain lease of Canal district.
1904 February. War breaks out between Russia and
Japan.
,, Siege of
Port Arthur begins.
April. Pius X
breaks with the French Government.
,,
Anglo-French agreement.
August.
Treaty of London between Great Britain and France.
October.
Franco-Spanish agreement upon Morocco.
„ Battles of
Liaoyang and the Sha-ho.
»
Dogger Bank incident.
General
strike in Italy.
British march
to Lhassa.
1904 Herrero revolt against German rule begins in
East Africa.
1905 January. Fall of Port Arthur.
February.
Battle of Mukden.
May. Battle
of Tsushima.
June.
Japanese take Saghalin.
„
Germany requires dismissal of M. Delcasse.
August. Peace
of Portsmouth between Russia and Japan.
„
Anglo-Japanese alliance renewed.
jj
Norway dissolves Union with Sweden: Haakon VII King of Norway. September.
Algeciras Conference.
„
International fleet occupies harbour of Mitylene.
„
Unions formed in Russia: Union of Unions meets, j, Strikes and pogroms in
Russia: liberties promised to Finland. October. Tsar’s manifesto.
Zemstvo
Congress in Moscow.
Campbell-Bannerman
prime Minister.
1906 Self-government conferred on the Transvaal.
Imperial
Conference of British Colonial delegates.
Murder of the
Grand Duke Sergius in Russia.
First Russian
Duma meets.
Separation
Law of Church and State in France.
Third
Panamerican Congress meets at Rio Janeiro.
1907 Anglo-Russian Convention settles spheres of
influence in Persia. Austro-Hungarian Compromise renewed.
Second and
third Russian Dumas.
Second Hague
Conference.
Immigration
agreement between Canada and Japan.
1908 Jubilee of Emperor Francis Joseph.
Murder of
Carlos of Portugal: accession of Manuel.
Baltic and
North Sea Conventions.
Young Turk
revolution at Constantinople.
Austria
annexes Bosnia and the Herzegovina.
Crete demands
union with Greece.
Bulgaria
proclaims her independence.
Mr Asquith
prime Minister.
1909 Death of Leopold II: Belgium annexes Congo
State.
Abd-ul-Hamid
II deposed: Mohammad V Sultan.
Federation of
British South Africa.
Declaration
of London.
Germany
recognises French sphere of influence in Morocco.
Peary reaches
the North Pole.
1910 Death of Edward VII. Accession of George V.