xii INTRODUCTION

down the barriers which have hitherto divided the East from the West, as to found a colossal dominion in the heart of both continents. But with the Roman, Eussian, and all other his- torical empires the mass of their territory has been accumulated by advancing step after step along the land from the central starting-point, making one foot- hold sure before another was taken, firmly placing one arch of the viaduct before another was thrown out, allowing no interruption of territorial coherence from the centre to the circumference. This was not so in the case of the Indian empire. During the time when the English were establishing their predominance in India, and long afterwards, England was separated from India by thousands of miles of sea; the Atlantic and Indian oceans lay between. The government of the English in India may thus be said to present a unique instance of the dominion over an immense alien people in a distant country having been acquired en- tirely by gradual expansion from a base on the sea. Of the political changes introduced during the last one hundred and fifty years by the overflow of Europe into Asia, the acquisition of all India and Burma by the English has hitherto been incomparably the great- est; although the steady advance of Russia, pushing forward her steel wedges into the central regions, is fraught with no less momentous import to the destinies of the continent. But while Russia has been laboriously following the well-known and well-worn routes of con- quest Jby land through the central steppes of Asia, the