Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/406

 394 THE MODERN NATIONS cally crushed. The immediate outcome was the disappearance of the East India Company, and the transfer of the government of India to the British Crown. Since that time there has been no war within India, though there has been plenty of fighting on and beyond the border. A third of the whole area remains under the government of native princes owning the British sovereignty. The other European power which advanced was Russia, under whose sway the central Asian districts passed as she moved Russia in forward step by step — her movements anxiously Central watched by some statesmen in London and most Asia> statesmen in India. British diplomacy permitted her to acquire an ever-increasing influence in Persia, a power which in itself was dangerous only because the Persian Shah is in the eyes of many Mohammedans the head of Islam, and a sub- stantial portion of the Indian population is Mohammedan. But to Russia with designs upon India, a subservient Persia might prove extremely useful. But in the far east of Asia there are two nations, China and Japan, with histories dating in one case from a period 4. China before Europe had any history and in the and other from an earlier period than any existing apan. European state. With neither had Europe come sufficiently in contact to affect her history till the nineteenth century opened. Before it closed, both, though in very different ways, were becoming profoundly important. The Chinese belong definitely to the Mongolian group of peoples in which we are accustomed to include the non-Aryan China's tribes which have invaded Europe during the P ast - Christian era, the Turks, the Mongols proper who followed Genghis Khan, and the Manchus, the stock to which belongs the dynasty now reigning in China. Historical records compiled certainly before the sixth century B.C. carry a tolerably authentic history back to 2000 years earlier, before Hammurabi ruled in Babylon, about the era of the first Sargon. The Chinese had a highly organised political system and an advanced civilisation before Rome was founded ; they had invented the art of writing when, in the sixth century u.c, the mystical religion