Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/405

 AMERICA, AUSTRALASIA, AFRICA, AND ASIA 393 remarkable powers of military organisation, but otherwise seemed to be incapable of progress. The Napoleonic wars transferred the Dutch colony to the British. The transfer was confirmed, for cash, when William of Orange became King of Holland at the European Cap e restoration. Twenty years later, a large portion of Colony, the Dutch population, half ruined by the abolition of slavery and wholly disgusted at what they looked upon as the very dangerous restraints imposed on them in their dealings with the warlike negro tribes across the border, withdrew inland out of reach of the British government, and were ultimately allowed or encouraged to set up two independent republics, beyond the Orange River, and beyond the Vaal. But still, only a very few adventurous travellers, inspired either by missionary zeal or by a passion for exploration, had penetrated at all into the vast interior regions. Africa was still emphatically the ' Dark Continent.' In Asia two European powers were steadily advancing. The devastation wrought by the marauding bands of the Pindaris in Central India, encouraged by Mahratta princes, brought on a war which broke up the power of the Mahratta states, and added largely to the British territory. n ia " An ill-omened expedition to Afghanistan with the object of establishing there a dynasty which would resist Russian progress ended in disaster only partially retrieved by the victories of a punitive expedition which followed. The Sikh state in the Punjab was encouraged to attack the British, and two wars following each other with a brief interval ended with the annexation of the Punjab to British India in 1849. A rare act of deliberate British aggression had just before brought Sindh, the territory of the Lower Indus, into the British region ; and immediately afterwards the outrageous conduct of the King of Burmah made necessary the annexation of a great part of his kingdom, on the east of the bay of Bengal . In 1857 the outbreak of a tremendous mutiny which spread over nearly all the native troops in Northern India, but especially on the Ganges basin, endangered the British rule. In six months, however, the back of the revolt was broken, and in twelve months the mutineer forces were practi-