LAST PHASE OF OREGON BOUNDARY 165
blocked a fact that had important consequences for both nations concerned.
Through European complications not wholly germane to our present purpose, France and England were engaged in a mighty war throughout the greater part of the eighteenth cen- tury. The real significance of this great struggle is now clearly seen to be that it was for a world empire affecting the future of such vast but dissimilar countries as America and India. Aside from Europe, and only considering the rela- tive positions of the two countries in America, it is difficult to see how hositilities could have been avoided. The fortunes of war greatly favored England; Wolfe took Quebec in 1759, Amherst took Montreal in 1760, and great victories were won over France and her ally Spain at sea. By the peace treaty England, among other things, got all territory in North America east of the Mississippi between the Hudson Bay on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. To Spain went the territories west of the river. So ended the great struggle between the two leading powers of Europe for world empire, a struggle which was the most important fact of world politics during the eighteenth century. The success of Great Britain was complete and, so far, final.
The pressure of the French removed, the colonies claimed complete self-government in 1776. This claim they success- fully maintained by force of arms ; the peace negotiations which ended the war gave to the new republic the line of the Great Lakes for its limit on the north and the Mississippi on the west. The southern boundary was the subject of a dis- pute with Spain which lasted until 1819 when Florida was added to the United States.
The southern line has little to do with our present purpose, but the acquisition of Louisiana from the French in 1803 has a direct bearing. The territory called Louisiana, stretching from the borders of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, had been taken from Spain by Napoleon in 1800. In view of France's international
