CHAPTER XXXV. FOREIGN AND COLONIAL INTERESTS (1820-1858) 581. Eng land and the Holy Alliance AFTER the fall of Napoleon, the monarchs of Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1815 formed a "Holy Alliance," which claimed to be a league to make the Christian religion a standard for the behavior of states. Its real object was stated in a minor clause, by which the rulers agreed to "afford one another assistance in all cases." In other words, it was proposed to defend absolute monarchy against democratic movements. France soon joined this alliance, but Great Britain held aloof, Lord Castlereagh, the foreign secretary, declaring that the constitution of the United Kingdom prevented her from joining such a union. Furthermore, when in 1823 the Holy Alliance was planning to employ its forces for restoring to Spain her revolted colonies in Spanish America, Canning, who had succeeded Castlereagh, proposed to President Monroe that Great Britain and the United States should make a joint protest against this action; and although Monroe preferred to make an independent protest, the two powers acted in harmony in recognizing the independence of the Spanish colonies. 582. Eng land and Behind this action was a distrust of Russia which has ever since influenced the international policy of Great Britain. In 1820 the Greeks began an agitation for throwing off the rule of Turkey, which had been marked by intolerable cruelty. The Russian czars had long coveted the territory of Turkey in Europe, which controlled the passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean; and Russia now aided the Greek revolution, hoping thus to gain some advantage which would bring her a step nearer Constantinople. Greece The Greeks appealed to England for aid, dreading lest a war between Russia and Turkey should prove their own destruction; and Canning, rather reluctantly, agreed to act with Russia and France in putting pressure upon Turkey, believing that Russia could be held in check more easily as an ally than as a foe. As the sultan remained obstinate, a fleet of British, French, and Russian war ships entered the Bay of Navarino in October, 1827, and after a four hours' fight entirely destroyed the Turkish fleet of twenty-eight ships of war. The Turks hastened to make peace on the basis of Greek independence; and the Pentarchy, frightened at the bugbear of republicanism, forced on the new state a monarch from among the German princes. Ten years later England was threatened with a revolt in her own colony of Canada, where the government was poorly 583. Home Canadas adapted to local conditions. In 1791 the younger Pitt Rule in the had created separate governments for the lower St. Lawrence valley, where the population was almost wholly French in blood and traditions, and for the district north of the Great Lakes, which was settled almost wholly by emigrants from England and Scotland, or by loyalists who removed from the United States after the treaty of 1783. This policy tended to perpetuate instead of to destroy race distinctions, and led to constant quarrels between the legislature of Lower Canada and the officers of the crown. In 1837 revolts against British rule broke out; and, though they were easily put down by military force, the lesson of the American Revolution was not forgotten, and it was thought best to reorganize the government of Canada. The result was the legislative union of the two provinces in 1840, into one self-governing colony; later (1867-1873) the two provinces were united with others in the Dominion of Canada, with a federal government. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Australia was being rescued from the fate to which she had hitherto seemed Australia to be destined as a convict colony. Now many industrious and upright colonists from Ireland and Scotland were emigrating thither to utilize the rich grazing lands, and the 584. Colo"ticket-of-leave men 99 (as the convicts were called) be-nization of came unwelcome. About 1835, when there were 80,000 Europeans in Australia, New South Wales began a fight against the system of transportation for convicts. She won a victory for herself, but convicts continued to be sent to Western Australia and Tasmania until the discovery of the rich gold fields (1851), which doubled the population in two years, and made Australia an unfit place for convicts. In 1857 a penal act was passed which practically abolished "transportation." During the decade from 1850 to 1860 all the Australian colonies (New South Wales, founded 1778; Tasmania, 1825; Western Australia, 1829; South Australia, 1834; New Zealand, 1841; Victoria, 1851; Queensland, 1859) began a new and vigorous life, most of them under self-governing constitutions. In 1901 all except New Zealand were joined in the federal union called the Commonwealth of Australia. far East It was during this period that Great Britain first gained a foothold upon Chinese territory. Opium was produced in large quantities in India, and found a market in Chinese ports. 585. BeginIn 1839 the Chinese government prohibited the impor- nings in the tation of the drug, to the great distress of the British merchants who were getting rich from the traffic. They continued to import opium, and appealed to the home government to support them; but they were informed that "Her Majesty's government can not interfere for the purpose of enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the country with which they trade." Ransome, History of England, Before this message reached China, the Chinese government had searched British vessels in Chinese ports, and had confiscated and destroyed opium valued at £1000. In spite of its previous dictum, the ministry declared this action an insult 960 to the British government, and dispatched a fleet to Canton. After a one-sided war, China was forced to purchase peace by the cession of the island of Hongkong (which later became the greatest British stronghold in the far East), by throwing open five Chinese ports to British trade, and by paying an indemnity of £4,500,000 (1842). 586. The To fore Meanwhile the specter of Russian aggression reappeared to terrify the British government. About 1832 Persia and Afghanistan (one of which commanded access to India Kabul fiasco by way of the Persian Gulf, and the other by way of the valley of the Indus) fell under the influence of Russia, and a few years later the czar undertook to protect the sultan of Turkey against his rebellious vassal the viceroy of Egypt. stall danger, Palmerston, the British foreign secretary, induced the Great Powers to guarantee the independence of Turkey (1841); and Lord Auckland, governor general of India, imposed upon Afghanistan a ruler favorable to Great Britain (1839). In 1842 the deposed ruler stirred up a revolt in Kabul, and forced the small British garrison to agree to evacuate the country; but the natives attacked the soldiers on their march from Kabul to the frontier, and out of 4000 fighting men and 12,000 civilians, only one man escaped. In 1843 an avenging army invaded Afghanistan, destroyed the great bazaar of Kabul, rescued the women who had been left in the hands of the Afghans the previous year, and then withdrew from the country. This invading army passed through Sind without permission of the native chiefs, who believed that the fiasco in Afghan 587. Continued expansion in India istan proved the weakness of the Indian government, and therefore at once plunged into war. The contest was short, and the victories of Sir Charles Napier led to the annexation of Sind in 1843. The Punjab (the district including the middle course of the Indus and its tributaries) was occupied by a race of fierce warriors called the Sikhs, who had several times invaded Hindustan. In 1848 they ventured on a fresh invasion, but met with a crushing defeat, and the Punjab was added to the British dominions. The Sikhs became later among the most valiant of the warriors enrolled in the service of the East India Company. 588. Diffi In South Africa, also, the problem of British control over alien races proved hard to solve. When Cape Colony was seized by the British a second time, in 1806, its European population consisted of about 27,000 persons, mostly culties in of Dutch descent, known as Boers, or "farmers." Their Cape Colony business stock farming-kept them scattered and ignorant; their distance from the seat of government in Europe made them impatient of control; their struggle for existence against savages and wild beasts made them sturdy fighters; and their practice of slaveholding made them cruel in their treatment of the natives. This last trait soon brought them into conflict with the English missionaries in South Africa, and later with the colonial government. The quarrel was intensified in 1833-1834, when slavery was abolished in all British colonies; for the Dutch lost 39,000 slaves, and received from the indemnity fund (as they claimed) less than half their actual value. During the same year a war with the native race of Kaffirs led to the annexation of certain territories on the frontiers, in order to secure a better natural boundary against depredations. The British government believed that the whites had provoked the war, and therefore restored to the Kaffirs their territory, and thus further embittered the Dutch. 589. Boer The Dutch farmers now decided to seek new homes where they could be free from British control. During 1836 and 1837 eight thousand Boers loaded their household goods upon ox-carts, "inspanned" their oxen, and "trekked" northward into unsettled districts (map, p. 527) — one between the Orange River and the Vaal River, the other between the emigration from Cape Colony |