Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/14

8 advanced. India, Northern Asia, almost the whole of Africa, Madagascar, the Indian and Polynesian archipelagoes, and the Philippine Islands now own civilized masters of European stock, as do all the aboriginal races of America. Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, Siam, and in a sense even China, are now overshadowed by European Powers, and prevented from passing under the control of some one or more of these only by the jealous vigilance of the others. The same forces or motives have worked to bring this result about which induced the conquests of earlier days. But two new factors have been more active and pervasive than ever before—the desire of civilized producers of goods to secure savage or semi-civilized consumers by annexing the regions they inhabit, and the rivalry of the great civilized States, each of which has been spurred on by the fear that the others would appropriate markets which it might win for itself. The process has been much swifter than was desirable in the interest of either conqueror or conquered. But we can now see that it became inevitable, so soon as the progress of Science had prodigiously increased the cheapness both of production and of transportation.

The Completion of this World-process is a specially great and fateful event, because it closes a page for ever. The conditions that are now vanishing can never recur. The uncivilized and semi-civilized races cannot relapse into their former isolation. In passing under the influences of civilized Powers they have indeed given to the world a new kind of unity. They have become in a new sense economic factors in its