eir small huts
and gardens in the country and came to live in towns and cities. After
the steam engine came steam transportation on land and water. Then
followed an enormous demand for coal, iron, steel, and other metals.
More goods could be produced in the factories than were needed for the
people at home. Hence arose more extended commerce and the search for
foreign markets.

COLONIAL EXPANSION.--In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
Spain, Portugal, France, and England settled the American continents and
parts of Asia. By a series of wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries the Dutch secured part of the possessions of Spain and
Portugal; and England obtained almost all of the French colonial
territories. In the eighteenth century the thirteen English colonies on
the Atlantic seaboard made good their independence; and in the
nineteenth, Spain lost all of her vast possessions in America. During
the early nineteenth century, Great Britain, in spite of the loss of the
thirteen colonies, was by far the most successful colonizing country,
and her possessions were to be found in Canada, India, the East and West
Indies, Australia, and Africa.

Leaders of other nations in Europe thought these colonies of Great
Britain were the cause of her wealth and prosperity. Naturally they too
tried to found colonies in those parts of the world not occupied by
Europeans. They hoped by this means to extend their power, to find homes
for their surplus population, and to obtain markets for their new
manufactured goods. Thus Africa was parceled out among France, Germany,
Great Britain, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, and Italy. The islands of the
Pacific were seized in the same manner. Proposals for a partition of
China were made by Germany, Russia, Japan, France, and Great Britain;
and if it had not been for the American demands for the "open door of
trade" and for the "territorial integrity" of China, that nation
probably would have shared the fate of Africa. The noteworthy fact about
this rivalry for colonies is that almost the entire world, except China
and Japan, came under the domination of Europeans and their descendants.

Having noted a few general features of European history during the
nineteenth century, we shall now take up in turn each of the more
important countries.

GERMANY.--After the overthrow of Napoleon, a German Confederation was
formed. This comprised thirty-nine states which were bound to each other
by a ve