The second of these great political changes of the century was the rise of Russia. This was mainly due to one man, Peter, to whom history has given the title of The Great. The house of Romanoff came to the throne of Russia on the extinction of the dynasty of Rurik 1598. The 17th century was spent in breaking the power of the nobles, encouraging mining, manufactures and commerce and increasing Russian territory in the west at the expense of Poland. Peter the Great came to the throne in 1699 and reigned till 1725. He insisted on introducing the ways of European civilization, shaving of the beards of his nobles and cutting short their long gowns himself when they re fused to obey his order in the matter, for he declared that people so dressed and bearded could not be good soldiers. He made war on the Turks and conquered Azov. Just at the beginning of the 18th century, Peter made his way to Holland because he felt that Russia must have an outlet to the sea and that Holland could teach her lessons in shipbuilding. He worked as a ship carpenter for a while at Zaandam in Holland and studied the shipbuild ing methods of the English on the Thames. He returned to put down an insurrection in Russia and the Cossacks under Mazeppa (1707), and then proceeded to take territory away from Sweden which would allow him an outlet to the Baltic Sea. He established nearby his capital, Petersburg, his desired "window into Europe,'" at immense expense, setting it up on piles in the swamps. In spite of the fact that Peter was succeeded by his wife, Catherine, who reigned for several years, and that between Elizabeth and Catherine II for most of the rest of the 18th century Russia was ruled by women of the most licentious personal character, whose favorites had much to do at least with the internal affairs of the empire, the country con tinued to gather strength and importance in Europe until at the beginning of the 19th cen tury it was one of the strong factors against Napoleon on many occasions. German intrigue riddled the country, however, and especially under Elizabeth and Catherine II succeeded in Germanizing the nobility to a great extent and especially the bureaucracy and keeping the Rus sian people in the worst possible condition of serfdom and subjection.
The third important political event of the 18th century was the subjection of India to England. About the middle of the 18th cen tury the French, owing to the genius of Dupleix who had been governor of Pondicherry since 1741, came into prominence in Indian affairs. Dupleix dreamed of a French empire in India following the lines of the old Mogul Empire which had fallen at the beginning of the 18th century. Robert Clive who went to India as a clerk took on himself to make head against Dupleix who was unsupported by his own gov ernment. In the midst of the wars between England and France which occurred around 1750, the American events of which are Brad dock's defeat and the French and Indian War, and during the Seven Years War, Clive grad ually built up the Indian Empire, often under conditions that would not have been approved at home but that once concluded were accepted as accomplished facts. As a result at the be ginning of the 19th century some 300,000,000 people in India were under English rule.
The American Revolution beginning ap parently as a revolt on the part of scattered rather disconnected colonies with less than 3,000,000 of inhabitants and even those by no means strongly welded together, and with a very large party among them who remained loyal to England, so that success seemed almost impos sible, ended with a triumph that gave genuine democracy almost its first great oppor tunity in the world's history. In a new land
far from the disturbing political conditions of European countries and with magnificent re sources to develop, the American Republic proceeded to exemplify what government of the people, by the people and for the people may mean. De Tocqueville's 'American Democ racy,) written 50 years later, is the tribute of a young enthusiastic European republican to America's success. Undoubtedly the colonists owed their successful termination of the Rev olution the aid of the French, though the kingdom of France under Louis XVI was tottering to its fall and that fall was hastened by the very success of the spirit of democracy in America. From Lexington to Yorktown represented seven long years of the severest trials borne with magnificent courage and per sistency by the colonists, hampered by a large royalist contingent among them, and these virtues had their own reward. The result was a solidarity of feeling owing to sympathy and union in suffering which more than all else served to bring the colonists together. The 13 colonies had been anything but homogeneous in race and character and they were almost in finitely dissimilar in attitude toward religion and life. The Puritan of New England and the Cavalier of the Virginias and Carolinas represented opposite poles of feeling in almost every way. It• was hard enough indeed after the Revolution to bring them together or secure a working modus vivendi for their government, but it would have been quite impossible only for the long years of bloodshed and the severe vicissitudes through which they had passed in the period of travail from which the new Republic of the West was eventually born. It has well been called the greatest fact in modern history; the greatness of that fact has been en hanced by the part which the American Re public, now one of the largest of the nations, has taken in the World War for democracy.
The greatest man of the 18th century was beyond all doubt George Washington. It was the custom sometimes to speak of him as owing his reputation to a series of happy ac cidents rather than to• innate genius. Having been chosen the general of the Colonial forces, it was said that he succeeded in holding out against the British whose mistakes were so great as to facilitate this until the alliance with France and then with Spain finally brought that combination of regular military strength and organization which made Yorktown possible and brought a happy ending to the Revolution. Any such view, however, is contradicted by definite lcnowledge of the man. When scarcely more than a youth he had saved Braddock from defeat in spite of that general's utter errors. The campaign around Boston added further to his military reputation. The battles of Princeton and Trenton have been acknowl edged by modem military experts as one of the greatest series of strategical combinations under the most discouraging circumstances that have ever been made. The official documents of Washington show clearly how large and noble was his mind. His advice is still the best policy of the republic in spite of its broad extension beyond anything that he could ever have imagined in his wildest dreams. His dec lination of the presidency for the third time and the consequent tradition of but two presi dential terms was a precious heritage for the nation, and the final proof of his magnanimity. Time instead of lessening his prestige has added to his reputation and made it clear that he was a great man raised up to fit a great occasion.