IV

THE ERA OF REVOLUTION, 1763-1825


'Colonies are like fruits,' said Turgot, the eighteenth-century
French economist and statesman: 'they cling to the mother-tree
only until they are ripe.' This generalisation, which represented
a view very widely held during that and the next age, seemed to be
borne out in the most conclusive way by the events of the sixty
years following the Seven Years' War. In 1763 the French had lost
almost the whole of the empire which they had toilsomely built up
during a century and a half. Within twenty years their triumphant
British rivals were forced to recognise the independence of the
American colonies, and thus lost the bulk of what may be called
the first British Empire. They still retained the recently
conquered province of French Canada, but it seemed unlikely that
the French Canadians would long be content to live under an alien
dominion: if they had not joined in the American Revolution, it
was not because they loved the British, but because they hated the
Americans. The French Revolutionary wars brought further changes.
One result of these wars was that the Dutch lost Cape Colony,
Ceylon, and Java, though Java was restored to them in 1815. A
second result was that when Napoleon made himself master of Spain
in 1808, the Spanish colonies in Central and South America ceased
to be governed from the mother-country; and having tasted the
sweets of independence, and still more, the advantages of
unrestricted trade, could never again be brought into
subordination. By 1825 nothing was left of the vast Spanish Empire
save the Canaries, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippine Islands;