To ask what were the important developments of the last thirty years of the nineteenth century is to be reminded of the force of continuity in men's affairs and of the rarity of abrupt change. The growth of material power and wealth; of industrialism and urbanisation; of technology and scientific knowledge; of transport, communications and trade; of population and of the movement of population; of centralised government; of democracy; of literacy and education; of public opinion and the press—these prominent developments of the age had been almost as prominent in the generation, if not in the whole century, which ended in 1870; and the same developments are no less central to an understanding of the years which stretch from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. If we call this period simply the age of material improvement or of industrial development or of democratic progress we have not said much of value about it. Nor does it help towards sharper definition to reflect upon another characteristic of the time: that these continuing massive developments, or most of them, occurred only in European society and its off-shoots in North America and the other areas of white settlement. This restriction and the consequent predominance of European power and civilisation in the world had existed long before 1870. They were to last beyond 1900, when European monopoly of all this progress was still scarcely touched by changes in Japan, and the discrepancy between the European and less advanced societies had become more acute than it had ever been.