ished at two points on the coast of
India. But of all the European nations which had taken part in this
vast process of expansion, one alone, the British, still retained its
vitality and its expansive power.

IV

THE ERA OF REVOLUTION, 1763-1825

'Colonies are like fruits,' said Turgot, the eighteenth-century French
economist and statesman: 'they cling to the mother-tree only until they
are ripe.' This generalisation, which represented a view very widely
held during that and the next age, seemed to be borne out in the most
conclusive way by the events of the sixty years following the Seven
Years' War. In 1763 the French had lost almost the whole of the empire
which they had toilsomely built up during a century and a half. Within
twenty years their triumphant British rivals were forced to recognise
the independence of the American colonies, and thus lost the bulk of
what may be called the first British Empire. They still retained the
recently conquered province of French Canada, but it seemed unlikely
that the French Canadians would long be content to live under an alien
dominion: if they had not joined in the American Revolution, it was not
because they loved the British, but because they hated the Americans.
The French Revolutionary wars brought further changes. One result of
these wars was that the Dutch lost Cape Colony, Ceylon, and Java,
though Java was restored to them in 1815. A second result was that when
Napoleon made himself master of Spain in 1808, the Spanish colonies in
Central and South America ceased to be governed from the
mother-country; and having tasted the sweets of independence, and still
more, the advantages of unrestricted trade, could never again be
brought into subordination. By 1825 nothing was left of the vast
Spanish Empire save the Canaries, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippine
Islands; nothing was left of the Portuguese Empire save a few decaying
posts on the coasts of Africa and India; nothing was left of the Dutch
Empire save Java and its dependencies, restored in 1815; nothing was
left of the French Empire save a few West Indian islands; and what had
been the British American colonies were now the United States, a great
power declaring to Europe, through the mouth of President Monroe, that
she would resist any attempt of the European powers to restore the old
regime in South America. It appeared that the political control of
European states over non-European regions must be sho