Trade and the Flag 49 



may now be considered cotton-growing colonies. England, 

 France, Italy and Belgium have followed Germany's example. 

 Lately Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands have begun cotton 

 culture. 167 (4) The industries upon which the imperial trade is 

 built up may experience a decline. Many examples of such cases 

 might be given. To-day Madagascar is half-ruined because of 

 the exhaustion of the soil 168 and commerce must suffer in conse- 

 quence. The camphor trade of Formosa was very valuable at 

 one time but, under a short-sighted policy, it was farmed out; 

 this led to the employment of wasteful and injudicious methods 

 whereby the trees were so damaged that the amount of camphor 

 obtained was almost nothing. 169 In Fiji the cultivation of coffee 

 has been almost entirely abandoned owing to the attacks of a 

 little insect called the A cams coffeae, which destroyed the 

 leaves. 170 The cotton and indigo industries, for which the West 

 Indian island of Tobago was once famed, have disappeared. 171 

 In the Madeira Islands sugar was at one time the most important 

 industry; then in 1775 the wine trade occupied first place. 172 In 

 the Canary Islands the cochineal industry suffered from compe- 

 tition with aniline dyes and exports of cochineal fell from 

 £789,993 in 1869 to £50,877 in 1892. 173 (5) Competitors may 

 appear in the field strong enough to wrest the colonial trade from 

 the mother country in spite of the latter's position of vantage. 

 For a century the Portuguese enjoyed a monopoly of the rich 

 trade with the East Indies but in 1595 a Dutch ship appeared on 

 the scene and the monopoly was broken. England has long 

 monopolized markets in China, especially along the line of cotton 

 manufactures, but now the Japanese show a strong tendency to 

 encroach upon this field. And Japanese rivals are not to be con- 

 sidered lightly judging from their success in wresting from Eng- 



167 "Cotton Culture in German Colonies," in U. S. Monthly Consular 

 Reports, December, 1904, 103. 



1W Seignobos, Contemporary Civilisation, 363. 

 169 Colquhoun, Mastery of the Pacific, 394. 

 1,0 Greswell, British Colonisation, 226-227. 

 m Ibid., 15. 



171 Brown, Madeira and the Canary Islands, 268. 

 173 Ibid., 278-280, 266. 



225 



