and subtropical regions—notably in Hindustan and in the Caribbean Sea—British power had established itself mainly for commercial purposes; but these places, though extremely important to Britain, were then without self-sustaining capacity. In addition there were a very few isolated naval trading ports, which were of importance as places where war and merchant ships could obtain necessary stores to enable them to keep at sea. Of course Gibraltar was pre-eminent in importance in the Atlantic basin; beyond that area, except in a limited portion of the Indian Ocean, established ports of call were not needed, the operations of war and mercantile fleets not embracing the larger portion of the water world beyond the Atlantic. Such was the position in the year of Trafalgar.
Between that date and Waterloo the naval efforts and expenditure of the United Kingdom were greater and more continuous than in any period of its previous history. It was this policy, involving as it did huge sacrifices—in addition to the cost of great military expeditions and campaigns beyond sea—which placed the fleet of the United Kingdom in such a position of overwhelming superiority as to defy all thought of contesting its sea supremacy. Thus, from the overthrow of Napoleon an epoch of maritime peace was secured to the world, for Navarino and Algiers, etc., were but incidents of police supervision and action executed by naval force. Uninterrupted opportunity was thus afforded to science and civilization for the development of means and methods to increase the power of international interchange by the application of steam to navigation, land transport, factories, and mills. Naturally, an island rich in coal and iron, at no point far from the sea, and having a population largely in excess of agricultural requirements, took the lead. Thus, near the close of the period of forty years of peace, pre-eminence in trade and manufactures came to be regarded as certain to continue, and, relying on its permanency, a new policy was demanded and inaugurated by the people of the United Kingdom. It was a complete
