Page 238 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth-Century Outlook. 219

are pregnant of further momentous shifting
of the political balances, profoundly affecting
the welfare of mankind.
It appears a convenient, though doubtless
very rough, way of prefacing this subject to
say that the huge colonizing movements of the
eighteenth century were brought to a pause by
the American Revolution, which deprived Great
Britain of her richest colonies, succeeded, as that
almost immediately was, by the French Revo-
lution and the devastating wars of the republic
and of Napoleon, which forced the attention of
Europe to withdraw from external allurements
and to concentrate upon its own internal affairs.
The purchase of Louisiana by the United States
at the opening of the current century empha-
sized this conclusion ; for it practically elimi-
nated the continent of North America from
the catalogue of wild territories available for
foreign settlement. Within a decade this was
succeeded by the revolt of the Spanish colo-
nies, followed later by the pronouncements of
President Monroe and of Mr. Canning, which
assured their independence by preventing Euro-
pean interference. The firmness with which
the position of the former statesman has been