models; and to this may be ascribed the
general unsettlement, the uneasy stir, that pervade Asia at the present
moment. Its equilibrium has been disturbed by the high speed at which
Europe has been pushing eastward; and the principal points of contact
and penetration are in India.

Moreover, towards the latter end of the nineteenth century and in the
first years of the present century came events which materially altered
the attitude of Asiatic nations towards European predominance. The
defeat of the Italians by the Abyssinians in 1896 may indeed be noted as
the first decisive victory gained by troops that may be reckoned
Oriental over a European army in the open field, for at least three
centuries. The Japanese war, in which Russia lost battles not only by
land, but also at sea, was even a more significant and striking warning
that the era of facile victories in Asia had ended; since never before
in all history had an Asiatic navy won a great sea-fight against
European fleets. That the unquiet spirit, which from these general
causes has been spreading over the Eastern Continent, should be
particularly manifest in countries under European Governments is not
unnatural; it inevitably roused the latent dislike of foreign rule,
with which a whole people is never entirely content. Precisely similar
symptoms are to be observed in the Asiatic possessions of France, and in
Egypt; nor is Algeria yet altogether reconciled to the _regime_ of its
conquerors.

That in India the British Government has found the centres of active
disaffection located in the Maratha country and in Lower Bengal, is a
phenomenon which can be to a large extent accounted for by reference to
Anglo-Indian history. The fact that Poona is one focus of sedition has
been attributed in this volume to the survival among the Maratha
Brahmins of the recollection that "far into the eighteenth century Poona
was the capital of a theocratic State in which behind the Throne of the
Peshwas both spiritual and secular authority were concentrated in the
hands of the Brahmins." The Peshwas, as their title implies, had been
hereditary Ministers who governed in the name of the reigning dynasty
founded by the famous Maratha leader Sivajee, whose successors they set
aside. But before the end of the eighteenth century the secular
authority of the Peshwas had become almost nominal, and the real power
in the State had passed into the grasp of a confederation of chiefs of
predatory