At the close of the century a remarkable difference appears. Spain had lost practically the whole of her vast colonial empire. She had learned no lesson from England's experience with her American colonies, but maintained a policy of tyranny and oppression until these far-extended colonial provinces rose in arms and won their independence by courage and endurance. Her great domain west of the Mississippi, transferred by treaty to France, was purchased by the United States. Florida was sold by her to the same country, and by the end of the first quarter of the century she did not own a foot of land on the American continent. She still held the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico in the West Indies, but her oppressive policy yielded the same result there as on the continent. The islanders broke into rebellion, the United States came to their aid, and she lost these islands and the Philippine Islands in the East. At the end of the century all she held were the Canary Islands and some small possessions elsewhere. Portugal had also suffered a heavy loss in her colonial dominions, but in a very different manner. The invasion of the home state by Napoleon's armies had caused the king and his court to set sail for Brazil, where they established an independent empire, while a new scion of the family of Braganza took Portugal for his own. Thus, with the exception of Canada, Guiana, and the smaller islands of the West Indies, no colonies existed in America at the end of the century, all the former colonies having become independent republics. [=The Colonial Development of Great Britain=] The active powers in colonization within the nineteenth century were the great rivals of the preceding period, Great Britain and France, though the former gained decidedly the start, and its colonial empire to-day surpasses that of any other nation of mankind. It is so enormous, in fact, as to dwarf the parent kingdom, which is related to its colonial dominion, so far as comparative size is concerned, as the small brain of the elephant is related to its great body. [=Other Colonizing Powers=] Other powers, not heard of as colonizers in the past, have recently come into this field, though too late to obtain any of the great prizes. These are Germany and Italy, the latter to a small extent. But there is a great power still to name, which in its way stands as a rival to Great Britain, the empire of Russia, whose acquisitions in Asia have grown enormous in extent. These are not colonies in the ordinary sense, but rather results of the expansion of an empire through warlike aggression, but they are colonial in the sense of absorbing the excess population of European Russia. The great territory of Siberia was gained by Russia before the nineteenth century, but within recent years its dominion in Asia has greatly increased, and it is not easy to tell just when and where it will end. [=Growth of the British Colonies=]