“In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without.”
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Measured in time of transport and communication, the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago.
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In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants.
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When the fabric of society is so rigid that it cannot change quickly enough, adjustments are achieved by social unrest and revolutions.
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