This work was carried on in the 1880's with the consent of Bismarck, who was willing that France should find in Africa compensation for Alsace-Lorraine. After Bismarck's fall, skilful French diplomacy secured Russian, Italian, and English support for French aggrandizement. French imperialism was more successful in its military and diplomatic phases, than as regards commerce or colonial settlement. There are only about half a million French settlers in French North Africa, although it would be difficult to find a region better suited for French colonization: the distance from the homeland is short, the climate is pleasant, the resources are rich, the native population is not too dense. France has no "surplus population" to pour into these colonies. As regards commerce, too, the French achievement has been less impressive than one might expect after consulting the map. French North Africa, West Africa, Equatorial Africa, Madagascar, Indo-China, the lesser possessions in the Pacific and the Caribbean, and the Syria mandate, make up an empire a third as large as Britain's, two-thirds as large as Asiatic Russia, and four times as large as any other, yet the total commerce of this vast domain is barely one billion dollars,1 as compared with the eleven billions of the British possessions. Equatorial Africa and Madagascar are of relatively small value. The important colonies, commercially, are Algeria, Indo-China, Morocco, West Africa, Tunis, and Syria, in the order named, but the commerce of Indo-China and Syria is not with France. India, Canada, or Australia alone is more important in trade than the entire French colonial empire. The colonial empire of the United States has fifty per cent more commerce than the empire of France.

How far Great Britain has outstripped all competitors appears clearly enough from the tables given in these pages. Whether one takes area, or population, or commerce, as the measure of achievement, the British Empire is greater than the eight others combined, unless one throws Siberia into the scales, and even then the statement is still true except for area. Much of the empire, to be sure, is a heritage from an earlier age of colonial expansion, but almost half of it has been added by modern imperialism since 1874. In size and commerce these recent acquisitions outrank those of France or of any other rival.

In 1924, as compared with 906 millions in 1922.

** Including a generous estimate for Dutch share of Dutch West Indies trade. For the East Indies the 1924 commerce was 860 million dollars, of which Netherlands enjoyed 82%, or 73 millions.

† Data not available.

tt Annuario Statistico (Rome 1925) gives total commerce for 1921 as 351 million lire, of which Italy enjoyed 115 millions or 32.5%. Assuming this percentage for 1922-23 gives the figures above.

For Britain's preeminent acquisitiveness, several reasons may be suggested, without pretending to offer any complete, scientific explanation. To begin with, England felt earlier and more keenly than any other Great Power the economic pressure which imperialism seeks to relieve the pressure of surplus goods and surplus capital on a temporarily saturated market. Partly as a result of this pressure, and partly because of insularity, British policy was effectively concentrated upon empire, while France and Germany quarreled over the old Alsace-Lorraine grievance, while Russia and Austria intrigued in the Balkans, while the United States was absorbed in domestic affairs. Moreover, it should be recognized that Great Britain had a more ample supply of capable empire-builders, missionaries, overseas traders, and capital to lend or invest than did her rivals. Her navy, too, was unrivalled. Furthermore, British settlers in South Africa and Australasia have been zealous in urging expansion.

The overshadowing significance of the British economic empire in southern Asia does not appear from the ordinary map, which shows British territories colored in a uniform pink or red, apparently well distributed in three equivalent groups-Canada and

Newfoundland; Africa; and Australasia and India. Such a map gives factitious importance to unpeopled wastes in Australia and northern Canada and the Sudan, while it conceals the magnitude of India. If a map could show population, it would reveal India as three-fourths of the British Empire. India is by far the greatest market ever acquired as a colony by any industrial empire. In this respect, Britain's Asiatic possessions bulk larger than all British Africa and British America combined. The rounding out of the Indian Empire, and the policy of surrounding India with buffer states, naval bases, and spheres of influence, as well as the policy of vetoing railways which might approach India through Mesopotamia and Persia through Afghanistan, may be regarded as fairly logical corollaries of the progress of British trade and investment in India. To India should be added the recently magnified importance of rubber plantations and tin in the Malay States and the Straits Settlements, and the British oil interests in southern Persia and Mesopotamia, and British railway-building and commerce in the Yangtse Valley, if we would appreciate the importance of southern Asia in Britain's empire.

In the partition of Africa Great Britain secured a peculiarly desirable share. In South Africa and Rhodesia the British have the diamond and gold mines, and a large area fit for white colonization. In Egypt they secured what all modern industrial empires have sought, an important supply of raw cotton, while in East Africa and the Sudan they possess the most promising area in Africa for the future development of cotton plantations. Tanganyika, Nyasaland, Kenya and Uganda are of minor economic importance, but they serve as middle links in the territorial chain connecting South Africa with the Sudan and Egypt, and thus they complete the realization of Rhodes's project of a Cape-to-Cairo empire. Nigeria, Gold Coast, and the other British colonies in West Africa are commercially important, thanks to cocoa and the oil palm. Great Britain's share of Africa may be only a little larger than that of France, but it is almost twice as populous and of much greater commercial value.

In Africa and in southern Asia British imperialism since 1874 has been principally concerned, as the imperialism of other nations in the same period has been concerned, with the economic