.

_May, 1897._

Finality, the close of a life, of a relationship, of an era, even
though this be a purely artificial creation of human arrangement, in
all cases appeals powerfully to the imagination, and especially to
that of a generation self-conscious as ours, a generation which has
coined for itself the phrase _fin de siecle_ to express its belief,
however superficial and mistaken, that it knows its own exponents and
its own tendencies; that, amid the din of its own progress sounding in
its ears, it knows not only whence it comes but whither it goes. The
nineteenth century is about to die, only to rise again in the
twentieth. Whence did it come? How far has it gone? Whither is it
going?

A full reply to such queries would presume an abridged universal
history of the expiring century such as a magazine article, or series
of articles, could not contemplate for a moment. The scope proposed to
himself by the present writer, itself almost unmanageable within the
necessary limits, looks not to the internal conditions of states, to
those economical and social tendencies which occupy so large a part of
contemporary attention, seeming to many the sole subjects that deserve
attention, and that from the most purely material and fleshly point of
view. Important as these things are, it may be affirmed at least that
they are not everything; and that, great as has been the material
progress of the century, the changes in international relations and
relative importance, not merely in states of the European family, but
among the peoples of the world at large, have been no less striking.
It is from this direction that the writer wishes to approach his
subject, which, if applied to any particular country, might be said to
be that of its external relations; but which, in the broader view that
it will be sought to attain, regards rather the general future of the
world as indicated by movements already begun and in progress, as well
as by tendencies now dimly discernible, which, if not counteracted,
are pregnant of further momentous shifting of the political balances,
profoundly affecting the welfare of mankind.

It appears a convenient, though doubtless very rough, way of prefacing
this subject to say that the huge colonizing movements of the
eighteenth century were brought to a pause by the American Revolution,
which deprived Great Britain of her richest colonies, succeeded, as
that almost immediately was, by the French Revoluti