ABSTRACT
The problem of which the general terms have been outlined in the previous chapter is a political, social, and economic one. The subject is vast, and could only be dealt with in a vast work of many volumes. Some one some day, when all the flames of prejudice and passion have died down, and when all the facts material to a full judgement have been forgotten and lost, will attempt the task, and will write across another page of history the words which universally sum up the result of historical science and political speculation: “too late.” He will have to trace and to track the career of economic imperialism and of the European State over the whole world outside Europe. We can conceive his writing a wonderful new Odyssey in which the wanderers are States and nations, the characters national beliefs, desires, forlorn hopes, ambitions, greeds, and ideals, the background not men and cities, but races and continents. But the world must wait for the full Odyssey of Europe’s imperial passions. Here it is possible to deal only with a single episode. In other words, I propose in this book to limit the enquiry, and in this chapter to define its limitations.
