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First it’s not true that New Jersey doesn’t have cities, it doesn’t have cities as large as New York, or Philadelphia. New Jersey has smaller cities, and many of them are described as “distressed cities.” One reason for the distress is loss of jobs and perhaps—this is just me making this connection—the legal “red lining” practice that prevented banks from making loans in certain areas. The quality of life in cities suffered, and the answer the government comes up are “revitalization” projects…which some people see as an effort to gentrify. I don’t doubt these forces changed cities which were population centers before the post World War II expansion into the suburbs—opportunity for some (read White).New Jersey is home to many small cities include New Brunswick, home to Rutgers University. Trenton, NJ, the state capital. Perth Amboy, which at one time planned to develop a harbor that would compete with New York City directly…the harbor was deep and accessible, so it was possible, but it did not come to pass. Larger NJ cities include Newark, Jersey City, and Camden. I haven’t checked to compare population sizes. Also, there’s Hoboken, Patterson…and I’m sure I haven’t listed all of them.New Jersey seems to be a state that loves its small towns, and home rule.This is an interesting question to look at because if you look at the history of the state, you can see patterns and missed opportunities. For example, not far from my home there is a road in a relatively rural area called “Federal City Road,” but there’s no city. Why? There was a time when it was possible that the capital of the United States would be located here, but it did not happen. Princeton and Trenton served as the seat of Federal government, although it was for a brief time.[EDIT] Historically, Although New Jersey was close to New York and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) areas, geographical proximity to these urban areas did not make New Jersey similar. New Jersey, unlike its urban neighbors was a more agrarian state that was less industrialized than its urban neighbors. The two neighboring cities drain NJ of trade and commerce.Slave labor played an important role in supporting the agrarian economy since colonial times. New Jersey failed to develop any significant cities or ports that could compete with New York or Philadelphia. New Jersey’s economic and political behavior differed from its urban neighbors—so much so that New Jersey resembled the neighboring slave states to the South, such as Kentucky and Deleware. Political sentiment at the time hesitated to support emancipation of slaves, perhaps because of the agrarian economy at the time.Read more from this source:Hawk, Emily A. (2017) "An Anomalous Case of Southern Sympathy: New Jersey's Civil War Stance," The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era: Vol. 7 , Article 5.Available at: An Anomalous Case of Southern Sympathy: New Jersey's Civil War StanceIn Colonial times, there was an East New Jersey and a West New Jersey and these were very different in at least one way. East Jersey farming relied on slave labor, in West Jersey, less so. In the beginning, New Jersey was East and West, and did not have a state-wide strategy for economic development, and maybe this is why NJ became the bedroom community area for the larger cities of NY, and Philadelphia. Read more: http://www.middlesexcountynj.gov/Government/Departments/BDE/Documents/history_buffs_guide.pdfThe research I did on my home town helped to illustrate this point. I come from a town not far away from NYC, and accessible by water from NYC. In the early days, the area was covered with forest, and cutting down the trees provided timber for building in NYC. Later, there were Orchards, and the produce was shipped to NYC. Later on factories came to town to supply stores with clothing and textiles in the New York City metro area. The town incorporated in 1898 and adopted a slogan, something like, [Our flowing Tides carry our products to the largest markets in the world]. In the front of this slogan, you see trains, and water in the background.In the early days, my town was merely a stop-over point on the land and water route from New York to Philadelphia. Riding in a stage coach was not fun travel, so the idea was to travel by water as much as possible, and my town, which was not named yet, was one stopover point.New Jersey in some ways seems to exist to support and transport people through it. The Delaware & Raritan Canal was dug in order to transport goods by barge pulled by mules on each canal bank (about 1820)… to move goods through New Jersey, to facilitate commerce, and towns along the way, and it was about moving goods between two large population centers. The New Jersey legislature adopted the first Railroad Act in 1815, the first in the United States, which would become the Camden & Amboy railroad. The tracks of what was the C&A railroad go through my home town. Then in 1951 NJ built it turnpike. Is there a pattern here? When it opened in 1951 it was the first modern toll road in NJ and the third in the United States. It was an engineering feat, but not an attractive one. It was practical. Compare this to New York City’s Empire State Building, a great example art deco architecture…a place to visit. New Jersey is known for it’s Turnpike.New Jersey does seem to sit in the shadow of New York. For example, when Penn Station was built, it was another engineering triumph…the Pennsylvania railroad had terminated in New Jersey just across the river from NYC, until it built tunnels under the river to reach NYC and built Penn Station. Access to New York was the prize when Penn Station was completed in 1910. Pennsylvania StationIt does seem like New Jersey cannot escape that much of its value is in its proximity to two major cities and as conduit to provide access to them, and to move commerce in, around, and through New Jersey and beyond.

While you can go onto the web and research how the art and science of Navigation developed over the years, I can give you a picture of what happened from the 1960s.For years we've had a number of radio and radar aids to help pilots on over-water flights or in conditions of poor land visibility. They are a great help, but they suffer from limitations.The Boeing 707, launched in 1959, was, from the outset, designed for trans-oceanic travel. Therefore, it had to have some means of independent navigation for those parts of the routes which were not covered by ground-based navigation devices.On many routes, it also carried a human “Navigator” as a crew member.It carried a Marconi Doppler radar, a device which would send out radar beams to the ground in a Janus-like pattern (named after the Greek god who could look forward and backward simultaneously). Four beams were used, two aimed forward and two behind, and from that, the system calculated exact ground speed and angle-of-drift information. This, in conjunction with the compass heading, determined independently by a magnetic compass on board, would determine your course. This could be used by the pilots without the assistance of the navigator.Before Doppler radar was developed, a flyer had no way of knowing his exact ground speed and angle of drift. He did know his approximate airspeed, which is literally the speed of the air moving past his airplane. If the air were dead calm, an airspeed indication would give him a reasonably good idea of how fast he was actually going. But the air is never completely still. It is really an ocean of gas with currents flowing in many different directions at varying speeds. It can change speed and direction in an instant.Doppler Radar Charts the Airlanes, May 1959 Popular ElectronicsOn an Atlantic crossing a quite small error in navigation can add perhaps 300 miles to the length of the journey, and large amounts to the cost in extra fuel consumed.Theoretically, of course, there should be no marked deviations from a planned course now that captains have long-range radio aids as well as celestial navigation at their service; yet on occasions, the aids are affected by sunspots and other radiation influences, and there are times when the heavenly bodies cannot be seen.The risk of errors in dead reckoning may then be serious. This risk is of special importance in those areas where radio aids are non-existent, or are not so well maintained as those in Europe and America.Many instances of errors in dead reckoning, usually the result of drift, are on record and many more have never been reported.In the 1960s, Qantas and Air India recently began using Marconi Doppler equipment on some of their long non-stop stages; and Pan-American Airways shortly began flying with the help of the Sperry inertial navigation system. Both promised unusual accuracy, probably with a margin of error of only two or three miles on an ocean flight. Super VC10s of of BOAC, fitted with the system, went into operation on the Atlantic run soon."Self-contained" is the key word in considering these aids.Every other navigational aid depends on some sort of transmission from the ground which is received and interpreted in the aeroplane. If either part of the system fails in the course of flight, the aid is not available.Risk of failure cannot be removed by putting all the apparatus in the aeroplane, but it is halved at least and will be reduced still further if, as with Pan-Am, two sets are fitted in each liner.A further advantage in providing each liner with its own independent guidance is that the maintenance of the whole system is in the hands of the user.Doppler OperationBoth Doppler and IND detect and measure movements by the aeroplane and feed their observations into a computer for resolution into terms of distance travelled along a specified course.Doppler does this by sending downwards impulses of a known frequency and measuring the change in that frequency as the impulses are reflected back. The change can be interpreted as distance. This Doppler "shift" is proportional to the speed of the aeroplane over the ground, and because the shift is greatest along the line of motion of the aeroplane, actual direction can be determined and the angle of drift discovered.In the Marconi system, four beams are sent out from the aeroplane's aerial, two to port and starboard aimed ahead, and two similarly aimed towards the rear. This arrangement is used as a means of aligning the aerial so that it matches exactly the flight path of the aeroplane.To this end the shift in all four beams is compared and the aerial is moved automatically about the axes of yaw and pitch by a servo mechanism, until the Doppler shift from each beam is the same. The alignment is with the flight path; the difference between this and the axis of the aeroplane, or the direction in which it is pointing, is the drift angle.Over a number of years this system was under trial and development; the development has been based on experience.One improvement concerns the difference in the reflection of the beams from land and from sea. The effect of the waves on a conical beam is to produce a different shift in the front of the beam from that at the back. This was found to cause an error equal to should he pass beyond his set destination.In this event, the direction bar on the instrument dial reverses itself through 180 degrees and points towards the rear.The Doppler system is similarly supplied with a summary of the computer's conclusions displayed on the instrument panel. They show the track angle, the distance to go and any across-track error as distance in nautical miles.The system can be coupled up with the autopilot and left to control it. It can also be set up for two successive stages and an automatic change-over from one to the next takes place at the appropriate point.The 707 also had LORAN equipment. Long-Range Radio Navigation was a widely used over-water navigation system. It depends on a number of transmitters scattered around the world which send out arc-shaped signals. A plane receives these signals as distinctive blips on a radar-type scope. With the help of special charts, the intersecting blips from neighboring Loran transmitters are interpreted by a trained navigator.The enormous distances and lack of useful navigation points in the Pacific Ocean led to widespread use of LORAN for both ships and aircraft during the Pacific War. In particular, the accuracy offered by LORAN allowed aircraft to reduce the amount of extra fuel they would otherwise have to carry to ensure they could find their base after a long mission. This reduced fuel load allowed the bombload to be increased. By the end of World War II there were 72 LORAN stations, with over 75,000 receivers in use.Loran-A was dismantled starting in the 1970s; it remained active in North America until 1980 and the rest of the world until 1985. A Japanese chain remained on the air until 9 May 1997, and a Chinese chain was still listed as active as of 2000. In accordance with the 2010 DHS Appropriations Act, the U.S. Coast Guard terminated the transmission of all U.S. LORAN-C signals on 08 Feb 2010.It is possible for the navigator to locate his plane on an intersection and determine the direction of flight. By timing the flying time from one intersection to another, he can also compute his true surface speed.And, of course, the navigator had his trusty sextant, which he would use to “shoot” some stars through a hole made in the ceiling in the cockpit through which he would do the sighting from his sextant.No GPS! No INS! And yet navigation was conducted: accurately, perfectly, and safely!And then came the 747 in the late 60s; Doppler was gone; LORAN was gone. Instead, they each had three INS (Inertial Navigation System) units.All the navigators went to MacDonalds, where they were trained to ask, “Would you like fries with that, Sir?”In a few years, the Flight Engineers followed them.ATC, meanwhile, has been around a long time. Here is a fascinating story of the development of ATC in the US:May, 1939:NOT so long ago the writer was a passenger aboard an airline transport, flying to Newark from Cleveland. The weather was a bit soupy and we were flying on top the stuff. According to our watches, we should have been on the ground at Newark about 20 minutes ago. But we were going around in circles.A crotchety old man in the adjoining seat kept mumbling to himself about appointments. He was going to be late, he said to all who cared to listen. He looked out the window and saw banks of clouds under him. He was getting madder by the minute.“There's no blankety-blank reason for this,” he fumed. “If I wanted a nice slow trip I'd have come by train. We should be in by now. Why the blankety-blank-blank don't we land!”The stewardess tried to calm him, but he wouldn't listen. Just then we flew over a hole in the clouds. As we flitted over it, we saw another airplane between us and the cloud below us.The stewardess pointed it out.“Would you rather we take a chance on crashing into another ship on the level below?” she asked. “You know, we're not the only ship circling the airport, waiting for an okay to come in.”“What do you mean, okay to come in?” asked the old crab, half-way interested. “Who gives you the okay and what's it all about?”Which brings us into the point of our story.Three years ago the old gentleman would have had a real reason to crab. He wouldn't have been flying at all in such weather because flights would have been grounded at their point of origin.At that time most planes and pilots flew “contact”, or visual flying. It was the transition from this contact to complete instrument flight which made the lads-who-give-the-okay a necessity—and also the reason for the plane circling in an apparently aimless manner over the airport.Airways Traffic Control, now a regularly constituted section of the Civil Aeronautics Authority, is one of the newest and most important contributions to safety in air. Its establishment has not been an easy job.The writer, by chance, was in practically at the birth of this new department.It started as a vague idea in the mind of Earl F. Ward, at that time a vice president of American Airlines. Earl, a practical airman himself, had plenty of vision. He saw, through glasses focused on the future of aviation, that contact flying was going out. New developments in radio and other instruments, he rightly conjectured, would make it possible for the airline pilot to operate his plane through heavy clouds where there was no visibility.Scheduled airline traffic was growing in leaps and bounds. Ward feared crashes in mid-air between planes depending wholly on their instruments. He tried to dope out a system which paralleled the railroad's block system so that planes could be controlled from the ground by an agency which kept a tight check on all planes coming in or going out.Ward took his idea to Lieutenant Dick Aldworth, superintendent of Newark airport, and asked for space in the administration building to work out his plan. Together he, Aldworth and Ponton (“Bon-Bon”) d'Arcy, veteran pilot, built a huge map of the United States, wired it, spotted it with little lights and other gadgets, marked out the airways and experimented.The airlines took notice. They combined and pooled resources for Ward and his cohorts to work out a plan. Ward resigned his job with American Airlines to devote all his time to his baby. Hours meant nothing to Ward. He worked day and night on his plan and eventually evolved a system which worked out fairly well. A tiny room in the administration building was assigned him and the first Airway Traffic Control station was born. This was in 1935.Because the airlines were behind it, they assigned men to assist Ward and to learn the business of regulating air traffic. The first men were not all pilots. Traffic men, radio men and dispatchers tried out. Some of them made the grade, others flunked.Some of the old-timers objected to this absolute control. Arguments against its practicability arose but Ward, confident his idea was a good one, kept plugging.In spite of these objections, Ward plodded on.Because the little cubbyhole of an office was sponsored by the airlines, their pilots were compelled to follow orders. They were instructed to observe the “westward-even” and “eastward-odd” altitudes, but this alone was not enough. Through their company ground stations their positions were relayed to Ward's little tower and instructions sent back to the pilots via company radio. The ATC never was and is not now in actual contact with the ship itself.By this time (early 1936) Ward had trained enough men to start a second station at Chicago. Ships were routed from that point to Newark and were compelled to stay at the altitudes and routes directed.The expense of maintaining this bureau still rested with the airlines.Ward felt it was important enough to be official and spoke to the Secretary of Commerce in Washington. After the usual red tape the air cleared and Airway Traffic Control became a part of the Bureau of Air Commerce, with Ward as its chief.It soon was pointed out that this bureau, in congested traffic areas, had become a necessity for safety in flight because of the vast increase of air traffic under conditions of reduced or no visibility where protection from collision must come from without the ship.In other words, through ground control.Most of Ward's operators now were men with airline experience, either pilots or dispatchers, men who could put themselves in the position of the man aloft and think with him.The Bureau of Air Commerce, by direction of the Secretary of Commerce, acquired experimental airway traffic control stations previously established by the scheduled airlines at Newark, Cleveland and Chicago.In July, 1936, similar stations were equipped and started at Pittsburgh, Detroit, Washington, Los Angeles and Oakland.These stations originally operated during periods of greatest traffic density, generally from early morning until about midnight. These stations, it is admitted now even by most of the diehards, have increased the protection and efficiency of operation of scheduled as well as private and public aircraft.And, at the larger airports such as Newark, Chicago and other points, men are on duty 24 hours of the day.Getting back to the early days, the success of these frankly experimental control units, even with the limited means of communication, was such as to create an immediate demand from the flying public for an expansion of the system to afford greater protection at all danger points.There now are approximately 11 additional fulltime or “primary” stations, operating 24 hours, with continuous service at all points within their control areas, in order to have uninterrupted protection in the more congested areas.At some of the less congested areas continuous airway personnel is not required, yet there are periods of dangerous congestion. At these points, the services of communications personnel in handling traffic control during generally quiet hours is supplemented by trained men during those periods when traffic is heaviest.“The need for complete airway traffic control coverage,” Ward said, “can best be demonstrated by the fact that at least two major airlines are already planning one-stop straight-line flights, coast to coast, and the Army frequently makes nonstop straight-line flights from March Field, California, to Langley Field, Va. The attendant problem of fitting these flights into the many local traffic patterns through which they must pass demands a complete control system as non-stop flights, commercial or military, are now possible between almost any two points in the United States. Too much stress cannot be attached to its importance as a vital factor in safety.”Another important function of the ATC teletype network, which connects with all sections of the CAA, Weather Bureau and airlines, are requests and authorizations for shutting down radio aids to navigation for periods of routine inspection, repair and servicing to forestall equipment failure. These periods run for some 15 minutes daily and, one day each month, are off for eight consecutive hours.Aircraft may be flying one radio range course and using a cross leg of another radio range station for position fixing. The communications at the other station, possibly 150 miles away, cannot know when aircraft are determining their positions by using their facilities when that plane may be many miles away and following different airways from which the range is located. The necessity for approval from the ATC before “letting down” is obvious.Direct telephone systems are maintained between the Airways Traffic Control and each airline ground station, in addition to one which connects with the airport traffic control tower. Every conversation held by ATC operators over these systems is automatically recorded on wax cylinders, similar to those used by the ordinary office dictaphone. These are listed and filed for reference so that there never can be an argument as to the instructions given and received.That is another of Ward's efficiency methods. He believes in keeping a verbal or written record of every transaction in which the control figures.Due to his knowledge of all aircraft movements in a given area, an airway control station operator is in a position to determine the necessity for continuous service of any of the given radio aids for navigation in its control area at any time. His is an important trust.At the present writing there are some 95 men employed by the Airway Traffic Control system in various parts of the country. Of these it is safe to say 60 per cent are men who have been pilots. The others have held or still hold private licenses and are experienced in radio meteorology or dispatching.Of the 11 Airway Traffic Control centers operating at major airports in the United States nine managers are members of the original group which trained in that cubby-hole at Newark Airport.Ward himself is chief, assisted by Glen A. Gilbert and John Huber. At Oakland we meet “Bon-Bon” d'Arcy; at Pittsburgh the head man is H. H. MacFarlane. Rod Sturtevant, former United Air Lines pilot, holds the reins at Burbank and Homer Cole is the boss at Cleveland. At Newark Emerson R. Mehrling, pioneer aircraft radio expert, is in charge; Bob Eccles swings the whip at Chicago; C. J. Stock at St. Louis; Ted Westlake at Salt Lake City and H. R. Copeland at Detroit. The other two who trained at Chicago are L. E. Warren, chief at Washington, and C. T. Talpo, in charge at Fort Worth.New stations are being considered and it is not improbable that new points will be operating before this opus reaches your hand. Recently—as a matter of fact, just about a month ago—there were 11 passenger planes milling about in the soup over Newark. They were piled up 11 high, each one a thousand feet above the other. Each was assigned its altitude by Airways Traffic Control and told to hold to it until notified it was their turn to come in. The ships were spaced at approximately 15 minute intervals, alternating with departing planes. As each ship was given its okay to come in and it made its way through the soup to the ground, the ship directly above was instructed to drop a thousand feet to the level recently vacated by the ship which had just made a landing. And so on, all the way up the line; each ship dropping a thousand feet.This process is known as “laddering down.” At times, congestion became too heavy and there seemed a possibility of too much gas consumption by the ships above. Those on the topmost rung were advised to continue on to Floyd Bennett airport in New York, or even to Camden, N. J.Because the situation was controlled by level-headed, experienced men on the ground, things were at all times in hand. Naturally, all planes were safely landed in due course of time.Let's take a theoretical flight from Cleveland to Newark. Before departing the pilot of our ship has submitted his flight plan to the company ground station at Cleveland which, in turn, puts it before the Cleveland Airways Traffic Control office for approval. Cleveland okays it to 25 miles east of Mercer, Ohio, at the same time TXing the complete plan to Mercer, Bellefonte, Allentown and Newark, whose jurisdiction we will be under when we reach Mercer.Newark thereupon estimates the plane's arrival time over Mercer, sends a PX to that point, telling them to work the flight—if it is a private, itinerant or military plane—giving approved altitudes. If it is a scheduled airliner, the instructions are issued from the company dispatcher at the Newark ground station. For clarity, we will assume this ship is receiving instructions all along the line.An approved altitude of, let us say, 9,000 feet to Bellefonte is given, with instructions to contact that station on crossing. There he is told to continue at the given altitude over Allentown. At Allentown he is told, because of traffic, to descend to 7,000 feet.Flights take odd altitudes going east. Then he is told to continue at that altitude until he is over New Brunswick where he is instructed to drop to 3,000 feet. At New Brunswick he is informed he will be the third ship into Newark, there being two other ships ahead of him, one from the west and another from Boston.Ship No. 1 is told to cross the Mitchel intersection, near New Rochelle, N. Y., at 2,000 feet. This ship is estimated in at 11 o'clock. He reports his position over the Newark radio range station at Elizabeth and is told to hold at 1,000 until advised the field is clear to land.In the meantime, Ship No. is told to cross New Brunswick at 2,000 feet and hold that altitude until No. 1 is cleared in and landed.At approximately 11:13 No. 1 is on the ground and No. 2 from the south is told to report at 1,000 feet and land.Our plane has followed suit, dropping from 3,000 to 2,000 having received the report that No. 2 has reached 1,000.Over the Newark station our ship circles, apparently in an aimless manner, until the radio informs the pilot No. 2 is safely on the ground.When the second ship has landed, Airway Traffic Control clears our ship and we set down safely through the stuff to a clear field.Thus there is no chance of three ships tangling wing-tips in the overcast, a condition that might easily prevail if there was no Airway Traffic Control on the ground to play the traffic cop.Certainly, it annoyed the crotchety old man on the Cleveland-Newark plane. How was he to know all this? Who had the time, inclination or patience to explain it to him? And the chances are he would not have listened if they had.The next time you come in by airplane and the ship starts circling and circling for what seems to you to be an indeterminably long time, just relax. Take out a cigarette, read a magazine and wait. There's nothing else you can do about it anyway.If you should happen to be a co-passenger of the crotchety old gent or his counterpart, incidentally, take time out and tell him what it’s all about. END

BOTH IN AREA and character the Empire that grew into the Commonwealth differs greatly from the one we left 170 years ago. It is almost a brand-new one—but not quite. Our Revolution weakened the first Empire, but did not destroy it. Thirteen American colonies revolted, but seventeen remained loyal. Most of these were West Indian islands; the others included Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, while in the remote north the Hudson’s Bay Company had its fur-trading stations.Outside America the old Empire consisted of two slave-trading posts in West Africa, a spice-buyers’ depot in Sumatra, ports of call at St. Helena and the Falkland Islands, the naval base at Gibraltar, and some territory which the British East India Company controlled in India.This catalogue of colonies was not impressive. Our Revolution had reduced the Empire’s white population from 2,000,000 to about 170,000 and half these were French Canadians. No wonder, therefore, that some Britons felt that the empire business was played out and that the game was not worth the cost. It seemed ridiculous to spend vast sums of money defending and developing colonies if they broke away as soon as they felt strong enough to do so. Other colonies would probably want to follow the example of the ungrateful thirteen. Like apples they would drop off the tree when they were ripe; like children they would leave home when they grew up. Well, let them, argued these Britons, but meanwhile don’t bother to plant any more apple trees or have any more children.This doubt concerning the value of an empire influenced British policy for almost a century. True, the British did not abandon empire building, but they lost all enthusiasm for it. World trade was the business in which they became interested, and for a long time their colonies provided only a small fraction of that commerce. Until the latter part of the nineteenth century debates on colonial questions were dull and listless. Any political party, it was said, would rather lose a colony than a vote in the House of Commons. No large sums of money were allotted for overseas development, and the post of secretary of state for the colonies was one of the least attractive cabinet offices.The new British EmpireYet the Empire grew, as the series of maps on page 9 makes clear. There is grim humor in the fact that we and the French, who combined to wreck the old Empire, gave the first impetus to the building of the new one.When we drove out those colonists who remained loyal to England during the Revolution, about 30,000 of them made their homes in Nova Scotia or in the new colony of New Brunswick, next door to Maine. About 6,000 others settled among the French Canadians in Quebec or in the wilderness of Upper Canada, now the province of Ontario. The latter were sturdy backwoodsmen from upstate New York. They knew how to create farms out of the forest lands that were given them. Then they wrote to their friends back home in the United States to join them.The invitation was eagerly accepted by thousands who were more interested in the quality and low price of the land underfoot than in the pattern on the flag overhead. By 1812 this migration had given Upper Canada a population of 80,000. Yet when we tried to capture Canada in the War of 1812, there was little fifth-column help up there. British North America had become strong enough, with aid from Britain, to preserve its independence and lay a firm foundation for the building of a dominion that eventually stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.Our Revolution had another early effect on the British Empire. British judges had for a long time been sentencing minor offenders to “transportation” to some overseas colony. When the Revolution stopped these shipments to our shores, a new destination had to be found. Someone remembered that in 1770 the British explorer, Captain Cook, had discovered fertile land on the east coast of Australia. When a batch of convicts and their guards landed there in 1788, Australia got its first settlers. Soon vast grazing areas were discovered beyond the coastal mountains, and sheep ranching spread rapidly. Free settlers went out to supplement and then supplant the “transportees.” By 1850 Australia had become the world’s largest wool producer, just as in the same years we had become the world’s largest cotton producer.Spoils of the Napoleonic WarsThe Empire over TimeWhile we thus stimulated these two developments, the French provided a third. From 1793 to 1815, France and Britain were locked in a gigantic struggle. At times Napoleon had virtually all Continental Europe under his thumb or on his side. For reasons of our own we teamed up with him in 1812. Yet British sea power, backed by a strong home front, wrecked Napoleon’s dreams of world dominion. His fleet was smashed by Nelson at Trafalgar and a British army gave him the final knockout blow at Waterloo.Britain emerged from the struggle so powerful that it could have kept all the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish colonies it had captured. But Britain had no enthusiasm for large-scale empire building. Its only interest was in naval bases and ports of call. It kept strategically placed Singapore and Malta, and the Dutch colonies of Ceylon, Guiana, and the Cape of Good Hope, but returned the rich spice islands. Of the French possessions it retained only Mauritius and three West Indian islands. In this way Britain further fortified the sea lanes along which its merchantmen must travel to its own colonies or to foreign markets and increased its ability to protect those colonies and ships against any naval power that might challenge it in the future.No such power did challenge it for nearly a century, until Germany, having become a large industrial nation, resolved to be a great naval and imperial power as well. For just under a hundred years, 1815–1914, the world at large enjoyed a period of peace.Enterprise and expansionIn such a world the British Empire could move easily along the three lines already laid down, as an empire of settlement, of trading posts or areas, and of naval bases or ports of call.Force played its part at some points, as it did in our own westward movement which was taking place at the same time. British school history books list about a score of noteworthy colonial wars, chiefly in India and Africa. Yet the use of military force for spreading political control over new areas was less important than was the energy with which explorers, missionaries, traders, settlers, shipowners, miners, and railroad builders swarmed to the frontiers and there went about their self-chosen tasks.Sometimes settlement and trade followed the flag. Quite as frequently, however, the flag followed the settler and the trader, either because they cried out for its protection or because they clamored for its support in their desire to expand their field of operations.All this energy at the circumference was matched by abounding vigor at the center. For in Britain there was a rapidly increasing population which was discovering new methods of manufacturing vast quantities of good cheap articles. It was building the ships to take them out. It was developing the banks and trading firms to handle the business. It was saving money to invest abroad. And it was ready, willing, and able to absorb whatever foods or raw materials the colonists—or anybody else—cared to send to British ports.It was this private enterprise of men at the hub and on the rim, rather than the plans of London governments—which for much of the time were apathetic toward imperial affairs—that made the Empire grow as it did.The empire of settlementSettlement went ahead in Canada and Australia. After 1815 South Africa began to attract a few British settlers. Some Afrikanders (Dutch South Africans) did not like them, their rulers, or their opposition to slavery, and moved into the interior. New Zealand began to attract settlers after 1840. The story in these four regions is very much like our own, except that we could move overland while the British colonists had to make a long jump overseas before they began to swarm over the new land.None of the areas was so rich in resources as was the United States, and progress was therefore much slower as well as smaller. Gold discoveries, the building of railroads, the importation of capital, the rise of manufactures, the coming of the steamship, good times and lean years all played their part. Staple commodities—lumber, wheat, wool, and metals, and later dairy produce, meats, fruit, and other perishables—were produced and exported, chiefly to Britain.In all areas government came close on the heels of the frontiersmen, if it was not there first. Since the colonists insisted on having a share in making or administering the laws, self-government and democratic institutions spread.Today the empire of settlement in North America, Africa, and Australasia covers about 9,000,000 square miles. It contains about 24,000,000 people of European origin, of whom 12,000,000 are in Canada and 9,000,000 in Australasia.Britain supplied virtually all the settlers for Australia and New Zealand.Canada started with Frenchmen and Americans. Then the British were the chief immigrants till about 1900. Since then there has been a large influx from the United States and from Continental Europe. Hence a third of Canada’s population is of French descent, a half of British, and the remainder has been drawn from the United States or Continental Europe.In South Africa half the 2,000,000 white people are of Dutch stock, half of British. There are 7,000,000 natives, and nearly 1,000,000 people whose ancestors were Asiatic.The empire of commerceThe empire of trading posts or areas grew during the nineteenth century. The British had an expanding output of manufactured goods to sell and hence could buy far more of the produce of Asia and Africa. India supplied the jute needed for sacks and bags. Its black tea displaced green China tea in popularity. Its indigo was in growing demand, and it had a surplus of cotton and wheat for expert.In return India became a market for British factory-made cotton goods, hardware, machines, and railroad equipment. It grew to be the largest single customer for British manufactures. The development of its resources and railroads was a fertile field for British investments of capital. And its exports of bulky commodities provided freight for a great part of the British merchant marine.Chaos and anarchy forced the East India Company to pass from trading to ruling. That passage was long. When it ended, about 1,000,000 square miles had become “provinces” ruled by British officials. The remaining 600,000 square miles were left in the hands of hundreds of native princes, who were bound by treaty to let the British supervise their relations with other princes in order to put an end to wars with neighbors. In return they were guaranteed possession of their states and thrones. The job of ruling such an India was too large a responsibility for a trading company. The task therefore passed by stages into the hands of the British government, and in 1858 London took complete control of Indian affairs.Elsewhere in Asia trading outposts were secured. Hong Kong, a pirates’ rocky nest, was taken from China in 1842 to serve as a base for trade with that country. Singapore grew to be the gateway to the Far East.When the Suez Canal was opened in 1869 a new problem had to be faced, since that canal offered a short cut to India, Australasia, and the Far East. Britain therefore bought nearly half the shares of the canal company, obtained possession of Cyprus to guard the approach from the Mediterranean, gained control of affairs in bankrupt Egypt, and established a protectorate over a bit of Somaliland at the exit from the Red Sea.In West Africa the slave-trading posts lost their importance when slavery was abolished in the United States, but by that time West Africa and the tropics generally were be coming valuable as sources of supply of a number of newly needed materials. Palm oil was being used in making soap, candles, and cooking fats. Cocoa was becoming a popular drink or ingredient in candy. Peanuts yielded cattle feed and the oil that went into margarine. Rubber was wanted for tires, and so on down a long list.The new imperialismAt the very moment that this demand for tropical products grew strong, about 1870, a number of countries—France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the United States in a smaller way—began to develop an acute desire to build empires and acquire colonies. It was not a desire for empires of settlement, since the tropics were too unhealthy for white men. It was rather a search for raw materials, markets, fields where capital could be invested, and for strategically valuable outposts.The thirty years before World War I, therefore, were swept by a wave of “new imperialism.” Africa was partitioned, mostly by peaceful bargaining. France took Indo-China. Britain rounded out its possession of Burma. We took control of Cuba, annexed Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, and divided the unclaimed islands of the Pacific with Britain, France, and Germany. Various nations got footholds on the coast of China.The British government at first took little interest in this new scramble, for it felt that more colonies would mean more expenditure on defense, more taxes, and more colonial or diplomatic headaches. It had to be pushed hard by the Australian colonies and by impending German expansion before it consented to take southeastern New Guinea, even after Germany had acquired the northeast part. It resisted many attempts by Cape Colony politicians to expand northward, though Germany had set foot on the southwest coast of Africa.When an East African sultan invited a British company to take charge of his coast line in order to prevent it from being seized by Egypt, the British Foreign Office refused to approve the deal. Even when an area had been recognized as a British sphere, no elaborate government was set up. The early development was left to be carried out by chartered companies which resembled those of Hudson’s Bay and East India, except that they did not get a monopoly of their trading area.Such companies undertook the development of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Northern and Southern Rhodesia in Africa, and of North Borneo in the East Indies. They had to fight the slave traders, negotiate treaties with native chiefs, try to bring peace and order, meet the rivalry of French and German companies, make roads and build railroads, wrestle with tropical disease, face the constant criticism of missionaries and humanitarians who sought to protect the natives from being exploited, and meanwhile try to organize production or trade in the hope of making a profit on their capital.“Old Joe” ChamberlainThe double task, political and economic, was often too large, too costly, and usually too meager in profit—for the tropics do not abound in easy riches. Yet it was not till 1895 that any important British statesman felt that there was merit in the companies’ work or value in the areas they were trying to develop.In that year Joseph Chamberlain, one of the top men in the Conservative party, surprised his colleagues by asking for the post of colonial secretary. With him the policy of imperial indifference ended. The government of the company areas was taken over by the Colonial Office, and a policy which sought to combine the development of resources with the welfare of the natives took shape.The new imperialism had its effect in strengthening the network of imperial trade routes and strategic bases. When Germany and others began to acquire footholds along the ocean routes or near British colonies, or when new navies appeared on the oceans, the British had to meet the changing strategic situation.The mandatesThe latest chapter in the building of the Empire came with the first World War. German colonies in the Southwest Pacific were quickly captured by Australia and New Zealand, while South Africa soon had German Southwest Africa in hand. Since Turkey was an ally of Germany, her empire round the eastern Mediterranean was overthrown by British and Anzac armies with Arab support.At the peace settlement no one wished to return these lands to their former rulers. Yet someone had to look after them till they could stand alone.The United States declined to take on any part of the job, and Italy was not regarded as suitable. Hence the former enemy colonies were entrusted as “mandates” to the British, French, Belgians, and Japanese. Each mandatory power was to regard its task as a trust, put the welfare of the natives first and foremost, ban any traffic in slaves, liquor, or arms, and be responsible to the League of Nations as a faithful steward. Where possible, self-government was to be granted as soon as any area was ready for it.On these terms the British Commonwealth received the greater part of the mandates. Britain was given control of Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq, but in 1932 Iraq became independent. It also received ex-German East Africa, which lay between two British colonies. South Africa kept the German territory it had captured next door. Australia retained ex-German New Guinea, which lay alongside her territory of Papua; and New Zealand obtained Samoa.The Commonwealth was thus increased by about 800,000 square miles and 9,000,000 people. South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand became empires in a small way. In a way, Canada had been an empire ever since the dominion government at Ottawa took over the Hudson’s Bay Company territories—including the Canadian prairies-in 1870 and the whole arctic region beyond 60° north latitude a little later. Britain’s children by their own efforts and insistence now have children of their own, and it would not be wholly incorrect to speak of the “British Commonwealth of Empires.”