Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/419

 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 407 NOTES Material Progress. The nineteenth century was the age of the most rapid material progress that the world has known. Scientific discoveries had initiated the era of steam before it began. Very rapidly steam-power became the great instrument of manufactures of all kinds. What took place in England was typical of what began to take place all over Europe, and in America. A hundred years ago men travelled on foot, or on horseback, or by coach : fifty years later every country had become a network of railroads. Steamships were displacing sailing vessels, and iron-clad warships were just about to displace the old 'wooden walls' of England. Warfare was being changed by the enormously increased speed at which troops could be moved and supplies sent to the front. Huge towns were developing : the population of London to-day is one-third of the entire population of the British Isles at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Slavery and Serfdom. In Europe slavery gave place to serfdom when the old Roman system fell to pieces. It continued among the oriental peoples, and reappeared in the New World with the conquest of the native races by the Spaniards. At the same time the practice arose of carrying off African negroes to serve as slaves in the New World, because they were better labourers than the natives of America. The theory was that the slaves lost their freedom but gained salvation by becoming Christians. Also it was held that they were the children of Ham predestined to serve the children of Japhet. It was only towards the end of the eighteenth century that the horrors of the slave-trade began to impress the imagination of Europeans, and England had the credit of making the suppression of the trade — that is, the kidnapping and transportation of African natives — a primary demand at the Congress of Vienna. A few years later she led the way in abolishing slavery entirely on British soil in all parts of the world. Negro slavery however remained in full force in the southern states of the American Union, alone among civilised nations, till its abolition at the close of the great Civil War. Serfdom in Europe was ended by the French Revolution, except for its survival in Russia, where emancipation was granted by Tsar Alexander II. in 1861.