element in the commercial and manufacturing cycle on which the whole structure of power reposed. Viewed economically, that colony was the most serviceable whose commodities supplemented rather than competed with raw materials of the home market. Fur, for example, was a more interesting commodity to a European home market than were wheat and fish. The latter competed more or less directly with the wheat and fish of Europe, whereas the former created a new and immediate value to be taken out in products of home manufacture. Similarly islands like the West Indies, devoted almost wholly to the production of sugar, indigo, or tobacco, were encouraged to a one-sided industrial life in which the production of staples alone necessitated the purchase in the mother country of almost every other article of utility. A sugar island was, in fact, the supreme illustration of mercantilism as an ideal economic system. The interests of empire and of colony dovetailed in a perfect harmony. It was only in sterner climates, in regions of temperate-zone products where the interest of the colonist was more identical with that of his fellow subject in the homeland, that the demand arose for local production of the very products which the mother country monopolized, and the colonial surplus for export interfered with the profits of the merchants in the mother country. Under circumstances such as these, the seed was sown for rivalries and controversies in which the home market was almost inevitably favored, while the colony became increasingly aware of its separatist interests. PIONEERS OF EMPIRE As beneficiaries of the early voyagers, Spain and Portugal led in the race for empire. The former from the viewpoint of mercantilism was singularly fortunate in acquiring colonies which yielded gold and silver directly without the complications ordinarily incident to procuring a balance of trade. For the rest of the world, the colonial problem consisted during at least the first century of Spanish imperialism of attempts to dislodge the Spanish monopoly by intrusion upon territories claimed by Spain, or better still, by lying in wait for the treasure fleets, a game in which England particularly excelled. The conflict of the haves with the have-nots partook of the nature of a crusade. Religious fanaticism was responsible in part for Spanish eagerness in conquest. A similar exaltation lifted the best of the sea-robbers from the level of piracy to a species of religious and nationalistic fervor, and the diplomacy of the age wore a distinctly religious aspect. As early as 1493, the Holy See intervened on behalf of the Most Catholic King by the famous Bulls of Demarcation in which the dominions beyond the seas already or yet to be discovered were apportioned between the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal.1 No room here for heretics, nor even for other nationals of the true faith. Four years later another good son of the church, Henry VII of England, by his modest and frugal patronage of the Cabots, laid the foundation of an empire destined in time to surpass the Spanish and indeed the Roman, and to become the greatest political reality of which the mind of man has so far conceived. But with Henry it was only a claim. destined long to lie dormant. His son, by an active naval policy and a revolution in marine architecture, laid foundations which in another reign were to prove decisive in a struggle determined by sea power. Domestic interests and a bitter partisanship in religion together with a rapidly shifting economic system absorbed British energies in the brief and unhappy reign of Edward VI (1547-1553). And his sister Mary was too preoccupied with her Spanish husband, Philip II, and her zeal for restoring Britain to the Papal allegiance, to entertain any idea of a colonial policy which must inevitably conflict with the interests of her husband's kingdom. Under Elizabeth (1558-1603) the rivalry of two great nations, two conflicting religions, and two mighty sovereigns, though long carried on in devious and obscure ways, 1 For a comprehensive account of this Papal arbitration, see Harrisse, Henry, The Diplomatic History of America, its first chapter, 14521493-1494 (London, 1897). burst finally into the greatest naval war of the age, and in the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) undermined past all recovery that Spanish sea power on which colonial dominion must ultimately rest. In a sense the wars and diplomatic maneuvers of these spacious days of Great Elizabeth were European, but in a broader sense the basis was now laid for a colonial empire in which Anglo-Saxons might develop an extra-European civilization but little hampered by the Latin ideal. Although the direct efforts at colonization under Elizabeth proved premature and the Roanoke project of Sir Walter Raleigh was abortive, nevertheless the circumnavigation of the globe by Drake, the singeing by the same hero of the King of Spain's beard, the exploits of Gilbert, Frobisher, Raleigh and their brilliant contemporaries, played no small part in rendering possible in the next generation the actual colonizing of British America. France was equally delayed in entering the colonial field, though from a somewhat different cause. The first burst of nationalism following the Hundred Years' War with England expended itself under Charles VIII and Louis XII in fruitless expeditions over the Alps. Under Francis I, a contemporary of Henry VIII, French energies were exhausted in conflict with the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire of Charles V. Under Henry II and his three degenerate sons, the Wars of Religion assumed a fierceness which paralyzed the French State. One ill-starred venture in colonizing was, it is true, the outcome of this conflict, the project of Admiral Coligny for a Huguenot settlement in Florida. But the massacre of these settlers by the Spaniard, Menendez, in a mingled rage of bigotry and patriotism, delayed a genuine French settlement until the reign of Henry IV restored order to the homeland. Under the strong government of the first Bourbon, Champlain might follow up the earlier explorations of Cartier with settlements assured of royal and national support. 2 Bourne, Edward Gaylord, Spain in America 1450-1580 (New York, 1904), pages 180-186. NEW FORCES ENTER When the Seventeenth Century opened, it was apparent, therefore, that Spain and Portugal could not hold the world in fee. Britain and France must be reckoned with. The next hundred years beheld the rapid decline of Spain herself-though the collapse of her over-seas empire was averted for still another century-and the equally rapid growth of British and French colonial enterprise. Three great powers thus occupied the colonial field when Jamestown and Plymouth, Montreal and Quebec first contested the monopoly so long maintained at Mexico and Peru, Havana, and the Port of Spain. The fortunes of the newcomers depended in no small degree on the intelligent fostering or the sometimes equally intelligent neglect of the sovereigns over-seas. It is here that the personal equation enters. For no matter how fundamental the principle of mercantilism as an economic determinant, no matter how evident the political rivalry of powerful competitors, no matter how genuine the fervor of religious fanaticism, all of which constituted the motivation for colonization and empire, its actual progress depended upon the personalities of very distinctive men, The accession of James I in 1603 to the combined thrones of England and Scotland gave him a power which his abilities failed to match. The colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth were both founded during his reign. But his personal policy scarcely comprehended a program so displeasing to Spanish interests. The inmost nature of the monarch called for peace, and peace without honor came to be the watchword of his reign. The project of a Spanish marriage for his son Charles led to a complete reversal of the anti-Spanish attitude which had in the previous century become a veritable tradition of the nation. The shift proved as unwelcome to British subjects as the celebrated reversal of his Austrian policy by Louis XV was to Frenchmen of the Eighteenth Century. The sacrifice of Sir Walter Raleigh, the greatest man of action who survived the Elizabethan age, to the new and craven policy of truckling to Spain was the most significant episode which marked the transition in power from the masterful Elizabeth to the flaccid James. And the general cause of Protestantism in Europe which had long looked for a certain degree of support to Elizabeth, who had from time to time given more or less veiled assistance to the Dutch in their war for freedom, seemed altogether betrayed at the hands of a prince who refused assistance to his own son-in-law, the sorely tried "Winter King" of Bohemia. In his purely domestic policy James inaugurated a movement destined in later times to affect profoundly the relations of his colonies with the mother country. For in the great controversy between King and Parliament, begun under James and continued under Charles, an issue arose which was not really settled until the American Revolution. Was the King sovereign in England or was Parliament? The two English revolutions of the Seventeenth Century, the one bloody the other bloodless, settled that only so far as the homeland was cerned. The triumph of Parliament in England still begged the question of whether Parliament was representative in the broad and inclusive sense of representing a colonial system which furnished it no delegates. The time was to come when the American colonies were to prefer nominal allegiance to a nominal monarch, to practical subserviency to a sovereign parliament. The Revolution was their successful protest. con Across the channel, the assassination in 1610 of Henry IV transferred authority to a weak king and an able minister. The diplomacy of Louis XIII and the great Cardinal Richelieu aimed at the humiliation of Hapsburg power whether in the Holy Roman Empire or in Spain, and to achieve such an objective was willing to patronize North German Protestants in the religious wars of the Thirty Years. At home a contrary policy was pursued. The decision to deprive the Huguenots of La Rochelle and other cities of refuge guaranteed them by the Edict of Nantes in 1598 was less a manifestation of bigotry than of a determination to centralize all authority in the national government |