Among the other powers which participated in the great partition, Russia continued her pressure in two of the three directions which she had earlier followed-south-eastwards in Central Asia, eastwards towards China.  In both directions her activity aroused the nervous fears of Britain, while her pressure upon China helped to bring Japan into the ranks of the militant and aggressive powers.  But Russia took no interest in the more distant quarters of the world.  Nor did Austria, though during these years her old ambition to expand south-eastwards at the expense of Turkey and the Balkan peoples revived under German encouragement.  Italy, having but recently achieved national unity and taken her place among the Great Powers, felt that she could not be left out of the running, now that extra-European possessions had come to appear an almost essential mark of greatness among states; and, disappointed of Tunis, she endeavoured to find compensation on the shores of the Red Sea.  Spain and Portugal, in the midst of all these eager rivalries, were tempted to furbish up their old and half-dormant claims.  Even the United States of America joined in the rush during the fevered period of the ’nineties.

Lastly, Britain, the oldest and the most fully endowed of all the colonising powers, was drawn, half unwilling, into the competition; and having an immense start over her rivals, actually acquired more new territory than any of them.  She was, indeed, like the other states, passing through an ‘imperialist’ phase in these years.  The value attached by other countries to oversea possessions awakened among the British people a new pride in their far-spread dominions.  Disraeli, who was in the ascendant when the period opened, had forgotten his old opinion of the uselessness of colonies, and had become a prophet of Empire.  An Imperial Federation Society was founded in 1878.  The old unwillingness to assume new responsibilities died out, or diminished; and the rapid annexations of other states, especially France, in regions where British influence had hitherto been supreme, and whose chieftains had often begged in vain for British protection, aroused some irritation.  The ebullient energy of the colonists themselves, especially in South Africa and Australia, demanded a forward policy.  Above all, the fact that the European powers, now so eager for colonial possessions, had all adopted the protectionist policy aroused a fear lest British traders should find themselves shut out from lands whose trade had hitherto been almost wholly in their hands; and the militant and aggressive temper sometimes shown by the agents of these powers awakened some nervousness regarding the safety of the existing British possessions.  Hence Britain, after a period of hesitancy, became as active as any of the other states in annexation.  Throughout this period her main rival was France, whose new claims seemed to come in conflict with her own in almost every quarter of the globe.  This