Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONThough the reputation of the Russians for expansionism was fargreater (at least among the British), their actual conquests were moremodest. The Tsar in this period merely managed to acquire some largeand empty stretches of Kirghiz steppe east of the Urals and somebitterly-contested mountain areas in the Caucasus. The USA on theother hand acquired virtually its entire west, south of the Oregonborder, by insurrection and war against the hapless Mexicans. TheFrench, on the other hand, had to confine their expansionist ambitionsto Algeria, which they invaded on a trumped-up excuse in 1830 andattempted to conquer in the next seventeen years. By 1847 they hadbroken the back of its resistance.One provision of the international peace settlement must, however,be mentioned separately: the abolition of the international slave-trade.The reasons for this were both humanitarian and economic: slaverywas horrifying, and extremely inefficient. Moreover, from the pointof view of the British who were the chief international champions ofthis admirable movement among the powers, the economy of 1815-48no longer rested, like that of the eighteenth century, on the sale of menand of sugar, but on that of cotton goods. The actual abolition of slaverycame more slowly (except, of course, where the French Revolution hadalready swept it away). The British abolished it in their colonies—mainly the West Indies—in 1834, though soon tending to replace it,where large-scale plantation agriculture survived, by the import ofindentured labourers from Asia. The French did not officially abolishit again until the revolution of 1848. In 1848 there was still a very greatdeal of slavery, and consequently of (illegal) slave-trading left inthe world.108