ABSTRACT
The conception of racial or national supremacy, based upon cultural superiority and military and financial mastery, originated during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, and was developed during the period from 1815 to 1848, coincident with the birth of the sense of nationality in Europe and the introduction of steam power into industry and transportation. Nationalism, powerfully aided by the economic changes wrought by steam power, brought about the unification of Germany and Italy, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and the creation of the Latin American republics. With Europe as the point of departure and the chief beneficiary, the Aryan race reached out for world domination. In the decade before the French Revolution Watt and Boulton began the manufacture of steam-engines in Birmingham. The use of steam-driven ships began in the second decade and of steam-engines on railways in the third decade, of the nineteenth century.
