t, stood ready to play an equal part with the
European nations in the later stages of the long imperial struggle.

One last sphere of activity remains to be surveyed before we turn to
consider the development of the new British Empire: the expansion of
the independent states which had arisen on the ruins of the first
colonial empires in the New World. Of the Spanish and Portuguese states
of Central and South America it is not necessary to say much. They had
established their independence between 1815 and 1825. But the unhappy
traditions of the long Spanish ascendancy had rendered them incapable
of using freedom well, and Central and South America became the scene
of ceaseless and futile revolutions. The influence of the American
Monroe Doctrine forbade, perhaps fortunately, the intervention of any
of the European states to put an end to this confusion, and America
herself made no serious attempt to restrain it. It was not until the
later years of our period that any large stream of immigration began to
flow into these lands from other European countries than Spain and
Portugal, and that their vast natural resources began to be developed
by the energy and capital of Europe. But by 1878 the more fertile of
these states, Argentina, Brazil, and Chili, were being enriched by
these means, were becoming highly important elements in the
trade-system of the world, and were consequently beginning to achieve a
more stable and settled civilisation. In some regards this work (though
it belongs mainly to the period after 1878) constitutes one of the
happiest results of the extra-European activities of the European
peoples during the nineteenth century. It was carried on, in the main,
not by governments or under government encouragement, but by the
private enterprises of merchants and capitalists; and while a very
large part in these enterprises was played by British and American
traders and settlers, one of the most notable features of the growth of
South America was that it gave play to some of the European peoples,
notably the Germans and the Italians, whose part in the political
division of the world was relatively small.

Far more impressive was the almost miraculous expansion which came to
the United States during this period. When the United States started
upon their career as an independent nation in 1782, their territory was
limited to the lands east of the Mississippi, excluding Florida, which
was still retained by Spain. O