Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/310

294 were the first to take the colonial field. The invention of the astrolabe and the discovery of the magnet made distant voyages practicable. All through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they stretched ever farther the scope of their trade till they had annexed the Atlantic islands, begun settlement at the southern cape, and laid the foundations of those colonies their shadowy claims to which (in Mashonaland) for some time resisted, a few years ago, the more invincible assertion of British armed occupation. Columbus's great voyage of discovery was but an extension of shorter trading voyages, and one of his three ships was equipped by merchants. Dutch colonies were still more an extension of Dutch commerce; they were planted mainly under the auspices of chartered companies, and while Spanish and French colonizers threw a glamour of religion over their undertakings, and Swedish and English colonies were often largely philanthropical, trade has ever been the chief, almost the sole, object of Dutch colonization. The West India Company founded New York, which was for years no more than a place of meeting where fur traders exchanged European commodities for skins, and the commercial agent of the company was its first governor. Canada was won for civilization by the same agency. Cartier's second expedition, which gave Canada to France, De Monts's and Champlain's were fitted out, in whole or part, by Breton merchants of St. Malo. Even the French Company of the Hundred Associates, which set the seal on the colonization of Canada and had Richelieu and princes of the blood for figureheads, was financed by merchants. Companies of the East Indies and the West, of the North, the Levant, and Senegal were formed in France in rivalry of those in England and Holland. The commercial conquest of Algeria and Madagascar was attempted by such companies two centuries before it was finally accomplished. But the tale of the foundation of colonies by commerce would be too long to tell. Not only the origin but the extension of colonial possessions are the work of commercial enterprise. Africa is at this day being colonized by chartered companies. Governments are deliberately colonizing and annexing to create markets. "Trade follow? the flag," says Lord Salisbury. The French admit that no Platonic views but the need of openings for trade lies behind their late-born colonizing ambition; and Señor Canovas del Castillo avowed that Spain is making desperate efforts to keep Cuba and the Philippines not only for historical and sentimental reasons, but as Spain's last markets. What needs to be noted here is that the commercial colony, like the adventurers' and the fisheries colonies, is at first mainly asexual. The merchants who engineer them do not themselves go out to them; the traders do not at first permanently settle; there are