Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/751

 CHAPTER XLIII HOW EUROPEAN HISTORY MERGED INTO WORLD HISTORY I. THE GROWTH OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND COMPETITION ; IMPERIALISM 1032. How the World has been brought together by Modern Business. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, Europe be- came a busy world of shops and factories, which produced much more than Europeans could use. So new markets were con- stantly sought in distant parts of the world. The trade with the Far East, which, as we have seen, led to the discovery of America, had grown in the nineteenth century to an enormous extent, scat- tering the wares of England, Germany, France, and Italy through China and India and the islands of the Pacific. The eagerness to secure world trade is one of the great facts of history, for it led the European nations to plant new colonies and to try to monopolize markets in Asia and Africa and wherever else they could. This business rivalry fostered jealousies and conflicts between the nations at home, and it was one of the causes of the World War. 1033. The Steamship. The prodigious expansion of commerce was made possible by the discovery that steam could be used to carry goods cheaply and speedily to all parts of the earth. Steam- ships and railways have made the world one great market place. The problem of applying steam to navigation had long occupied inventors, but the honor of making the steamship a success com- mercially belongs to Robert Fulton. In the spring of 1807 he launched his Clermont at New York, and in the autumn of that year the "new water monster" made its famous trip to Albany. Transoceanic steam navigation began in 1819 with the voyage of the steamer Savannah from Savannah to Liverpool, which took twenty-five days, sails being used to help the engine. The Great 569