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the third quarter of the eighteenth century with illthought-outand ill-executed attempts to settle AustrianSlavs and Germans on the then frontier, but its latercolonizing policy was successful in helping to developthe country and diversify its economy, notably in southernBessarabia, conquered from the Turks in 1812. TheGermans, Lutherans or Mennonites, in particular builtup solid, prosperous colonies, but, as on the Volga, theyremained aloof, neither influenced by nor, save to aslight extent in farming methods, influencing the sea ofUkrainian peasants which surrounded their islands.By the middle of the nineteenth century New Russiahad grown to 2,250,000, by 1900 to well over 6,000,000(if Bessarabia and the Don are included, the numberswould be nearly doubled). Wheat-growing had largelyreplaced stock-raising, based on a variegated extensivesystem of cultivation, not on the three-field system.The density of the rural population was still sparse,two to three times less than the crowded black-earth landsof the old Ukraine, but already in 1900 it was fifty percent, greater than the density of the whole of Iowa,cities included, in 1920; and Iowa is comparable inmany respects in climate and soil conditions. By 1900half the land was held in individual ownership, mostlyby the gentry in great estates, and only forty per cent,in communes. By then, too, the coal of the Donetsbasin and the iron ore of Krivoi Rog had begun industrialization,and wheat was somewhat less dominant.Thus New Russia, the land of the open steppes, differedconsiderably from the wooded steppe zone to the north,almost solely given over to agriculture, serfdom, andthe commune, solidly Great Russian or Ukrainian.3. Types of ColonizationDuring the past ten centuries of Russian expansionthere has been a constant tug or struggle between thecompulsory and the voluntary elements, between theauthorities—at times damming back, at times forcingforward—and the individual and the family—at timesdeterminedly on the move, at times reluctantly conscribed.47