The Expansion Of Europe | Page 8

Ramsay Muir
classes for which
emigration to new lands offered a desired opportunity. There were the
men bitten with the spirit of adventure, to whom the work of the
pioneer presented an irresistible attraction. Such men are always
numerous in virile communities, and when in any society their numbers
begin to diminish, its decay is at hand. The imperial activities of the
modern age have more than anything else kept the breed alive in all
European countries, and above all in Britain. To this type belonged the
conquistadores of Spain, the Elizabethan seamen, the French explorers
of North America, the daring Dutch navigators. Again, there were the
younger sons of good family for whom the homeland presented small
opportunities, but who found in colonial settlements the chance of
creating estates like those of their fathers at home, and carried out with
them bands of followers drawn from among the sons of their fathers'
tenantry. To this class belonged most of the planter-settlers of Virginia,
the seigneurs of French Canada, the lords of the great Portuguese

feudal holdings in Brazil, and the dominant class in all the Spanish
colonies. Again, there were the 'undesirables' of whom the home
government wanted to be rid--convicts, paupers, political prisoners;
they were drafted out in great numbers to the new lands, often as
indentured servants, to endure servitude for a period of years and then
to be merged in the colonial population. When the loss of the American
colonies deprived Britain of her dumping-ground for convicts, she had
to find a new region in which to dispose of them; and this led to the
first settlement of Australia, six years after the establishment of
American independence. Finally, in the age of bitter religious
controversy there was a constant stream of religious exiles seeking new
homes in which they could freely follow their own forms of worship.
The Puritan settlers of New England are the outstanding example of
this type. But they were only one group among many. Huguenots from
France, Moravians from Austria, persecuted 'Palatines' and Salzburgers
from Germany, poured forth in an almost unbroken stream. It was
natural that they should take refuge in the only lands where full
religious freedom was offered to them; and these were especially some
of the British settlements in America, and the Dutch colony at the Cape
of Good Hope.
It is often said that the overflow of Europe over the world has been a
sort of renewal of the folk-wandering of primitive ages. That is a
misleading view: the movement has been far more deliberate and
organised, and far less due to the pressure of external circumstances,
than the early movements of peoples in the Old World. Not until the
nineteenth century, when the industrial transformation of Europe
brought about a really acute pressure of population, can it be said that
the mere pressure of need, and the shortage of sustenance in their older
homes, has sent large bodies of settlers into the new lands. Until that
period the imperial movement has been due to voluntary and purposive
action in a far higher degree than any of the blind early wanderings of
peoples. The will-to-dominion of virile nations exulting in their
nationhood; the desire to obtain a more abundant supply of luxuries
than had earlier been available, and to make profits therefrom; the zeal
of peoples to impose their mode of civilisation upon as large a part of
the world as possible; the existence in the Western world of many
elements of restlessness and dissatisfaction, adventurers, portionless

younger sons, or religious enthusiasts: these have been the main
operative causes of this huge movement during the greater part of the
four centuries over which it has extended. And as it has sprung from
such diverse and conflicting causes, it has assumed an infinite variety
of forms; and both deserves and demands a more respectful study as a
whole than has generally been given to it.

II
THE ERA OF IBERIAN MONOPOLY
During the Middle Ages the contact of Europe with the rest of the
world was but slight. It was shut off by the great barrier of the Islamic
Empire, upon which the Crusades made no permanent impression; and
although the goods of the East came by caravan to the Black Sea ports,
to Constantinople, to the ports of Syria, and to Egypt, where they were
picked up by the Italian traders, these traders had no direct knowledge
of the countries which were the sources of their wealth. The threat of
the Empire of Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century aroused the
interest of Europe, and the bold friars, Carpini and Rubruquis, made
their way to the centres of that barbaric sovereign's power in the remote
East, and brought back stories of what they had seen; later the Poli,
especially the
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