=410. Other wars of the nineteenth century.=—After the conclusion of this great war the world enjoyed a long interval of peace. The nineteenth century has been marked by internal political development, rather than by international strife. The growth of the spirit of nationality, the idea that people conscious of likeness in language, religion, etc., should be grouped under the same government, has led to several sharp struggles between states; but these have, in general, been short and of no great commercial significance. More important, from the commercial standpoint, has been the revolution in South America, which has enabled the people, formerly bound by the restrictions of the colonial system, to establish independent trade relations. Commerce was seriously affected, moreover, by the Civil War in the United States, which closed to the world for a few years its great source of supply of cotton. Other countries proved incapable of supplying the lack; a considerable portion of the English people (one fifth, it was said then), supported by the cotton manufacture, suffered from the stoppage of work; and consumers were forced to adopt other clothing materials, and did not, for many years, use cotton as freely as before. Of the other wars preceding 1914 the only one that had great economic significance was the war between Japan and Russia in 1905, which brought into the rank of the great powers an Asiatic country with far-reaching commercial ambitions. =411. Removal of old obstacles to commerce.=—The greatest benefit which Europe enjoyed from the French Revolution and the ensuing wars was the removal of many remnants of feudal institutions which had persisted, petrified as it were, to this late period of history. Of these remnants none was more harmful to commerce than the feudal institution of the staple. This flourished especially in the German states, and resulted in depriving of a large part of their commercial value the German rivers, which were by nature the cheapest and best means of transportation. It was impossible to travel far on any German river without reaching a staple, where the boatman was subject to delay, inconvenience, and considerable expense. On the Rhine, for instance, there were thirty-two stations of this character where dues were still levied in 1800. As far as regarded the effect on commerce the flow of the rivers might as well have been interrupted by cataracts. It was a great step in progress, therefore, when these interruptions were removed, as little by little they were in the first half of the nineteenth century. The principle of free navigation was extended gradually to include important international rivers like the Scheldt and the Danube. The reader will remember that in the Middle Ages various countries tried to monopolize parts of the sea itself. Denmark had kept its hold on the straits leading into the Baltic Sea, and required ships to stop at Elsinore and pay toll, until 1857, when