This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ...social conditions which had in turn resulted from the rise of the new industrialism based on the natural resources of the northwest. London and the southeast, which as late as the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had been the progressive commercial district, was soon outdistanced by these rapidly growing industrial ...
Read More
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ...social conditions which had in turn resulted from the rise of the new industrialism based on the natural resources of the northwest. London and the southeast, which as late as the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had been the progressive commercial district, was soon outdistanced by these rapidly growing industrial cities of the north, and finally has come to be the center of English conservatism. A closely packed population of artisans in factory towns forms an ideal substructure for the building-up of a liberal party with a radical wing. It need not surprise us, therefore, that Manchester, three generations ago, should have given its name to a new school of political and economic thought, or that the northwest, later, should produce Gladstone, Bright, Chamberlain and Lloyd-George. Geography, as we have seen, has been a potent factor in determining English political affairs; it has been even more potent in the upbuilding of England's maritime supremacy. In the first known theater of maritime activity, the inhabitants of the iEgean Islands, notably the Cretans, were the great seafaring people. Some time later this primacy passed to the Phoenicians and their great colony at Carthage; but the Greeks had already emerged as a rival power in trade and col onization. Under Roman rule the Mediterranean was a highway of peaceful commerce. It was not until after the barbarian invasions that warfare on the sea was resumed and we read of the predatory Vandals establishing a temporary supremacy over the western Mediterranean basin. During the mediaeval period the northernmost wing of the Teutonic race, by their oversea expeditions, laid the foundations of England, while later still the maritime communities in and about northern Italy dominated the trade-routes of...
Read Less
