The Popular Science Monthly, June, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, June, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
that a no smaller sum was expended in New Zealand. The colonists
honorably bear their share. The premier of the latter colony told a
London audience in jubilee year that it was now cheerfully paying the
interest on a debt of eleven millions incurred in “holding the colony
for the empire.” After a Kaffir war Cape Colony was saddled with a
debt of three or four millions. Other losses fall more directly on the
settlers. Probably none have borne such disasters and so much suffering
as the early colonists of North America. The destruction of property
in a single New Zealand campaign amounted to £150,000, and the farmers
on the frontiers of Cape Colony have suffered far more severely, as
those on the frontier of Queensland are suffering now. If blood and
money, poured forth like water, can furnish conquest with a valid title
to territory, not a few British and French colonies have been justly
annexed.
The expansion of an organism or a species is determined also by its
struggle with other equal organisms or species which conflict with it.
The hardest fight is with individuals of the same or similar species.
So are rival colonizing powers usually more formidable opponents to the
acquisition of a country than its indigenes. The Carthaginians were
robbed of some of their colonies by the more numerous Greeks, and the
Greeks of many of theirs by the all-conquering Romans. The Swedes lost
a colony to the Dutch. The short but decisive struggle between the
Dutch and the English was followed by the loss of the Dutch colonies
in North America and the West Indies. In the eighteenth century,
after every great war a group of colonies fell into the hands of the
victorious power. The West India Islands and those of the Indian Ocean
were for many years tossed as in a game of battledore and shuttlecock
between France and England. The possession of Canada was a bone of
contention between the two countries for several decades. Seeley
even maintains that the hundred years’ war ending in 1815 was a long
rivalry between France and England for the New World and India. If
so, it was marked by striking acts of generosity. Conquests made in
Canada by England, with the efficient aid of the American colonies,
were more than once given back to France. When all but two of the West
India colonies were surrendered in 1814 the Foreign Minister explained
that it was desired to open to France the means of peaceful expansion,
and it was not the interest of England to make her a military and
conquering power. The rivalry did not end with the Napoleonic wars.
According to one historian, Australia was saved to the English in 1788
by six days, and for long afterward there was a constant jealousy of
French occupation. Ships were sent by Australian governors to take
possession of Van Diemen’s Land, of southern, western and northern
Australia when it was believed that the French had designs on them.
An English war ship, sent by the governor of the North Island of New
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