The Portuguese colonization in America, in most respects resembling that of Spain, is remarkable for the development there given to an institution sadly prominent in the history of the European colonies. The nearness of Brazil to the coast of Africa made it easy for the Portuguese to supply the growing lack of native labour by the wholesale importation of purchased or kidnapped Africans.
Of the French it is admitted that in their colonial possessions they displayed an unusual faculty for conciliating the prejudices of native races, and even for assimilating themselves to the latter. But neither this nor the genius of successive governors and commanders succeeded in preserving for France her once extensive colonies in Canada or her great influence in India. In Algeria the French Government has not merely found a practical training school for her own soldiers, but by opening a recruiting field amongst the native tribes it has added an available contingent to the French army.
The Dutch took early a leading share in the carrying trade of the various European colonies. They have still extensive plantations in the East Indian Archipelago; and though their settlement at the Cape passed into British hands, a republic of Dutch-speaking boers maintains a precarious existence northward from the British possessions. The Danish and Swedish dependencies in the Antilles are but trifling in extent or importance.
It is the English-speaking race that has shown an unexampled energy and capacity for colonization. The English settlements in Virginia, New England, Maryland, and Pennsylvania had, between the second decade of the 17th and the seventh decade of the 18th century, developed into a new nation that was soon able to take rank with the most powerful of European states. Promoted in great measure by the desire to escape from the political or religious oppression of the English court, the transatlantic settlements were, though remaining under governors appointed by England, permitted to arrange their civil polity—necessarily assuming a democratic shape—very much as they chose; and, at first, troubles at home, and later, their distance, saved the colonies from much political interference on the part of successive English Governments. Though by the “Navigation Laws” and other enactments, England had always undertaken to regulate, in her own interest, the commercial relations between herself and her American colonists, encroachment, in the matter of taxation, on the immunity till then enjoyed provoked the spirit that in 1776 “solemnly published and declared that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” The vast unoccupied territories of the United States relieve her citizens and the immigrants who join them from seeking scope for their enterprize beyond the recognized limits of the Republic; but the method according to which the United States Government provides for the continuous westward advance of new settlements is essentially a system of colonization. The newly occupied lands are governed as a “territory” by the Federal Government, till the population reaches a fixed limit high enough to justify a demand to be admitted to the Union on an equal footing with the other States. The “American Colonization Society” has made an interesting philanthropic experiment for the establishment of negro freedmen in Africa; the result is the existing independent Republic of Liberia.
It is estimated that the existing colonies and dependencies of Great Britain cover about one-sixth of the land-surface of the globe, and nearly the same proportion of its population. The various origin of these colonial possessions, and their different relations to the Crown of Great Britain, suggest the question, How the foreign dependencies of a sovereign state may best be classified?
It is clear that the ultimate constitution of a colony depends but little on the manner in which the territory for settling was originally acquired. Whether it was by conquest or by formal cession from a foreign power, the new population, even if, as in the case of Canada, it at first consisted largely of people alien in blood and language to the colonizing country, may soon obtain a constitution and relations to the ruling state identical, with those of lands originally acquired from thinly-scattered and wandering savages merely by the occupancy of citizen emigrants. Of almost equal unimportance for the future organization of the colony are the motives which led the earliest settlers to emigrate. The caprice of mere adventurers, the desperate desire of broken men to repair their fortunes, and the stern determination of public-spirited men to escape for ever some unendurable civil or religious grievance at home, have in their turn given rise to colonies now hardly distinguishable in their general features. Whether the emigration be purely voluntary and undertaken with or without official sanction, or systematically promoted by a Government for the furtherance of national commerce or in order to relieve itself of over-population; whether the new lands be handed over under a royal charter to a company, or granted, as proprietary, to an individual, the traces of the initiatory conditions may speedily disappear. And around a military outpost, a mere trading factory, or the prison walls of a penal settlement, a numerous and enterprizing population may soon be tending increasing herds or engaged in the steady and profitable tillage of the soil.
