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 3QO General History of Europe thousands of miles from London, Paris, or Vienna. The great manufacturing towns of England Leeds, Manchester, and Bir- mingham owe their prosperity to India, China, and Australia. Liverpool, Amsterdam, and Trieste, with their long lines of docks and warehouses and their fleets of merchant vessels, would dwindle away if their trade should be cut off from distant lands and were confined to the demands of their own country and of their European neighbors. Europe includes scarcely a twelfth of the land upon the globe, and yet over three fifths of the world is today either occupied by peoples of European origin or ruled by European states. The possessions of France in Asia and Africa exceed the entire area of Europe. The British Empire, of which the island of Great Britain is but a hundredth part, includes one fifth of the world's dry land. Moreover, European peoples have populated the United States, Mexico, and South America. The widening of the field of European history is one of the most striking features of modern times. Though the Greeks and Romans carried on a large trade in silks, spices, and precious stones with India and China, they really knew little of the world beyond southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, and much that they knew was forgotten during the Middle Ages. Slowly, however, the interest in the East revived, and travelers be- gan to add to the scanty knowledge handed down from antiquity. 671. Colonial Policy of Portugal, Spain, and Holland. The voyages which had brought America and India within the ken of Europe during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were, as we know, mainly undertaken by the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Portugal was the first to realize the advantage of extending her commerce by establishing stations in India after Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 ( 498), and later by founding posts on the Brazilian coast of South America ; then Spain laid claim to Mexico, the West Indies, and a great part of South America. These two powers later found a formidable rival in the Dutch, who succeeded in expelling the Portuguese from a number of their settlements in India and the