Page:The Science of History and the Hope of Mankind.djvu/42



and Islamised and began to be the seedbeds of new thought and culture.

The political boundaries of the states of Mediæval Asia and Europe had to undergo rapid changes. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, formation of new independent states, the gradual establishment of autonomy in Britain, Gaul, and the Iberian peninsula, wars of religion and expansion of theocracies, rise and development of Saracenic kingdoms, fall of ancient states and creation of new state-systems in India, revolts and secessions throughout the length and breadth of the known world, destruction of liberties and loss of autonomies, origin of new principles of unity and association—in fact, all those ceaseless transformations that characterise the stirring times—received their peculiar