Battle of Maiwand

Battle of Alexandria (Bombardment of, 1882)

Map of the Nile

The Battle of Omdurman

Plan of Khartum

Map of Africa (1902)

INTRODUCTION

"The movements in the masses of European peoples are divided
and slow, and their progress interrupted and impeded, because
they are such great and unequally formed masses; but the
preparation for the future is widely diffused, and . . . the
promises of the age are so great that even the most
faint-hearted rouse themselves to the belief that a time has
arrived in which it is a privilege to live."--GERVINUS, 1853.

The Roman poet Lucretius in an oft-quoted passage describes the
satisfaction that naturally fills the mind when from some safe
vantage-ground one looks forth on travellers tossed about on the stormy
deep. We may perhaps use the poet's not very altruistic words as
symbolising many of the feelings with which, at the dawn of the
twentieth century, we look back over the stormy waters of the century
that has passed away. Some congratulation on this score is justifiable,
especially as those wars and revolutions have served to build up States
that are far stronger than their predecessors, in proportion as they
correspond more nearly with the desires of the nations that
compose them.

As we gaze at the revolutions and wars that form the storm-centres of
the past century, we can now see some of the causes that brought about
those storms. If we survey them with discerning eye, we soon begin to
see that, in the main, the cyclonic disturbances had their origins in
two great natural impulses of the civilised races of mankind. The first
of these forces is that great impulse towards individual liberty, which
we name Democracy; the second is that impulse, scarcely less mighty and
elemental, that prompts men to effect a close union with their kith and
kin: this we may term Nationality.

Now, it is true that these two forces have not led up to the last and
crowning phase of human development, as their enthusiastic champions at
one time asserted that they would; far from that, they are accountable,
especially so the force of Nationality, for numerous defects in the life
of the several peoples; and the national principle is at this very time
producing great and needless friction in the dealings of nations. Yet,
granting all this, it still remains true that Democracy and Nationality
have been the two chief formative inf