=299. The rise of Prussia important mainly from the political standpoint.=—Taking German commerce as a whole, we leave it in 1800 still depressed and sluggish. The picture would be incomplete, however, if nothing more were said. In one part of Germany there had been great activity for centuries; in the North and East, namely, where the ancestors of the present Emperor William II were building up the state of Prussia. This activity, however, was mainly political, and the history of it does not belong here; we can refer to it only as a most remarkable example of state-making, in which commercial and industrial interests were made subordinate to the establishment of a strong government over a united people. The Hohenzollern rulers did not succeed in making a rich state out of a group of scattered territories of which some were, in natural resources, among the poorest in Germany. They did make a strong state, which won for itself a place among the great powers, and later took the lead in unifying Germany. There was a moment in the history of the Hohenzollerns when it seemed possible that they might anticipate the idea of William II: “Our future lies upon the water.” If the Great Elector (1640-1688) had secured the Pomeranian coast of the Baltic or kept even Stettin, he might have realized the plans he held to turn Prussia into a sea power, with fleet, colonies, and transmarine commerce. Fortune fixed the interests of the state on land, however, and when a good Baltic harbor was secured later it was too late to change. Frederick the Great was urged, a century afterward, to direct his policy to the sea, and actually founded some companies for trade with the East, but the time had passed, or had not yet come, for the success of Prussia in oceanic trade.