One of the most persistent and effective of all influences stimulating the process of expan sion has been the desire to develop more ex tensive and profitable trading relations. It was the trade which the Italian merchants carrying the Crusaders to the East built up with the Levant that produced the flourishing Mediter ranean commercial activity that was both a harbinger and a cause of the later overseas ex ploration. The jealousy on the part of the western and northern European powers of the Italian monopoly of the trade with the East led to attempts, first made by the Portuguese, to discover another route to the Indies. This resulted in that great era of exploration which brought about the Commercial Revolution and the beginnings of modern world trade. From 1F50 to the present day the development of world trade has been one of the most notable dynamic agencies promoting the movement of expausion, particularly since it has been reinforced by the Industrial Revolution, and at the present time it quite overshadows all other stimuli in this field. See Commit:err, HISTORY or; OF THE WORLD.
A powerful psychological and political mo tive for expansion is to he seen in modern na tionalism, a force which has been developing with ever greater intensity since the first ap pearance of the dynastic national states during the lfrth and 17th centuries. It was natiorialkm
which promoted the narrow and exclusive eco nomic and political policy, known as •Mercan which dominated European commer cial and colonial methods from the close of the 16th century until its overthrow by the eco nomic liberals following the middle of the 18th century It was nationalism which combined with trade rivalry to produce the series of Eu ropean wars over colonial interests in the late 17th and 18th centuries. In the period of re cent national imperialism since 1870 the national istic or patriotic impulse has played a most im portant part. Territory overseas has been sought as compensation for European losses, as in the case of France; for the purpose of stimu lating national pride, as was most evident in the case of Germany; or as a means of providing investment opportunities for national capital, which has been the case with all modern nations, but was most particularly true of Great Britain, the United States and Germany. In the last half century, the period in which the capitalis tic party gradually displaced the landlords and became the dominant group in the control of modern governments, patriotic pride in national expansion overseas has been assiduously fos tered by the governing classes in order to gain a psychological support for their imperialistic pOliCies. See NATIONAL IDEALS AND THE WAR;