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In his book on the Territorial Development of European Colonies, A. Supan, the geographer, gives the following brief statement of this development at the end of the 19th century:

"The characteristic feature of this period," he concludes, "is, therefore, the division of Africa and Polynesia." As there are no unoccupied territories—that is, belonging to no State—left, in Asia and America, the conclusion of Mr. Supan must be extended. We must say that the characteristic feature of this period is the definitive partition of the earth—definitive, not in the sense that a new partition is impossible, for on the contrary new partitions are possible and unavoidable but in the sense that the colonial policy of the capitalist countries has completed the conquest of the unoccupied