Читать книгу The Sea Road to the East, Gibraltar to Wei-hai-wei. Six Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office онлайн

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Britain is responsible for the government of over three hundred million Asiatics and carries on a great trade with the remainder; in fact, about two-thirds of the merchant shipping passing through the Suez Canal is under the British flag. We have important interests, too, on the eastern side of Africa, while a new Britain, British in race and political organization, is growing up in Australasia. We are the chief users of the main road to this region of the world, and are thus most interested in its condition and control.

For ships sailing from the western coasts of Europe, otherwise than round the Cape of Good Hope, the only gateway to the long passage to the East is the Strait of Gibraltar, at its narrowest a little less than half as broad as the Strait of Dover. Let us look for a 2 moment at the map. We have passed Capes St. Vincent and Trafalgar, and as we turn in from the Atlantic, far away on our right is Cape Spartel, the corner of Africa, and beside it the Moroccan port of Tangier. We had interests on this coast in times past, since Tangier was a British Possession more than two centuries ago. It came to the English Crown not by conquest but as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II; but after twenty years it was abandoned to the Moors as useless. Bombay also was included in the dowry: but how different is its later history!