University Studies 



Vol. X JULY, igio No. 3 



TRADE AND THE FLAG 



BY MINNIE THROOP ENGLAND 



Present colonization is undertaken and supported almost wholly 

 from economic motives, 1 chief among which is the wide-spread 

 and oft-spoken belief that colonies furnish a peculiarly favorable 

 field to the governing country for the development of trade and 

 commerce. An inquiry into the real support which the present 

 colonial trade gives to that belief should not be fruitless. 



Formerly the word " colony," in popular usage, meant the same 

 as that which is now termed a settlement colony. The acquisition 

 of land unfit for settlement purposes has made it necessary, how- 

 ever, to expand the meaning of the term to include commercial 

 and plantation as well as settlement colonies. In its broad sense, 

 therefore, a colony may be defined as an outlying possession 

 under a different administrative system from that of the mother 

 country. 



But even after defining a colony in simple terms the applica- 

 tion of the definition is difficult. Nominally Egypt is a Turkish 

 possession ; in reality it is in all essentials a British colony. Which 

 is its mother country? Again, the westward expansion of the 

 United States and the eastward expansion of Russia in adjacent 

 territory present all the characteristic features of colonization, 

 yet, since the territory has been absorbed by the mother country 



1 Economic motives are predominant in other lines also as well as in 

 colonization. Ireland (China and the Pozvcrs, 4) says that at " the present 

 day the political action of nations is determined almost entirely by economic 

 considerations." 



University Studies, Vol. X, No. 3, July 1910. 



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