Why Great Britain entered so reluctantly into the Pacific as a colonising Power may probably be explained by the fact that at the time the ocean came to be exploited British earth hunger had been satiated. The unsuccessful war which attempted to hold the American colonies to the Mother Country, had made her doubtful whether overseas dominions were altogether a blessing and whether the advantage to be gained from them outweighed the responsibilities which their holding entailed. It seemed to be the natural conclusion from the American War of Independence, that once a colony or a group of colonies arrived at the stage of growth which allowed it to be of some use to the Mother Country, the inevitable next development was for it to throw off the bonds of kinship and enter upon a career of independence at the price of an expensive and humiliating war to its parent. Thus, whilst British sailors were to the front in the exploration of the Pacific, British statesmen showed a great reluctance to take any advantage of their discoveries; and it was a series of accidents rather than any settled purpose which planted the Anglo-Saxon race so firmly in this ocean. India, it must be noted, a century ago was a country having very little direct concern with the Pacific. The holding of the Indian Empire did not depend on any position in the Pacific. That situation has since changed, and Great Britain would be forced to an interest in the Pacific by her Indian Empire if she had no other possessions in the ocean. In an earlier chapter on Japan, something has been written concerning the reasons which would argue for the absence of an Imperial impulse in the Japanese islands and its presence in the British islands. The inquiry then suggested as to the instincts of expansion and dominion which were primarily responsible for the growth of the British Empire is full of fascination for the historian. If it comes to be considered carefully, the Empire-making of the British people was throughout the result of a racial impulse working instinctively, spasmodically, though unerringly, towards an unseen goal, rather than of a designed and purposeful statesmanship. The racial origin of the British people dictated peremptorily a policy of oversea adventure, and that adventure led inevitably to colonisation. In the beginning Britain was a part of Gaul, a temperate and fertile peninsula which by right of latitude should have had the temperature of Labrador, but which, because of the Gulf Stream, enjoyed a climate singularly mild and promotive of fecundity. When the separation from the mainland came because of the North Sea cutting the English Channel, the Gallic tribes left in Britain began to acquire, as the fruits of their gracious environment and their insular position, an exclusive patriotism and a comparative immunity from invasion. These made the Briton at once very proud of his country and not very fitted to defend its shores.