of the most remarkable facts of modern
history. An insignificant tribe, or collection of tribes, which, a
thousand years ago, occupied a small district near the sources of
the Dnieper and Western Dvina, has grown into a great nation with a
territory stretching from the Baltic to the Northern Pacific, and from
the Polar Ocean to the frontiers of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and
China. We have here a fact well deserving of investigation, and as
the process is still going on and is commonly supposed to threaten our
national interests, the investigation ought to have for us more than a
mere scientific interest. What is the secret of this expansive power?
Is it a mere barbarous lust of territorial aggrandisement, or is it
some more reasonable motive? And what is the nature of the process? Is
annexation followed by assimilation, or do the new acquisitions retain
their old character? Is the Empire in its present extent a homogeneous
whole, or merely a conglomeration of heterogenous units held together
by the outward bond of centralised administration? If we could find
satisfactory answers to these questions, we might determine how far
Russia is strengthened or weakened by her annexations of territory, and
might form some plausible conjectures as to how, when, and where the
process of expansion is to stop.

By glancing at her history from the economic point of view we may easily
detect one prominent cause of expansion.

An agricultural people, employing merely the primitive methods of
agriculture, has always a strong tendency to widen its borders.
The natural increase of population demands a constantly increasing
production of grain, whilst the primitive methods of cultivation exhaust
the soil and steadily diminish its productivity. With regard to this
stage of economic development, the modest assertion of Malthus, that
the supply of food does not increase so rapidly as the population, often
falls far short of the truth. As the population increases, the supply
of food may decrease not only relatively, but absolutely. When a
people finds itself in this critical position, it must adopt one of two
alternatives: either it must prevent the increase of population, or it
must increase the production of food. In the former case it may legalise
the custom of "exposing" infants, as was done in ancient Greece; or it
may regularly sell a large portion of the young women and children,
as was done until recently in Circassia; or the surplus