triumph the English navy had established the Freedom of the Seas,
of which it has ever since been the chief defender. Since 1588 no
power has dreamt of claiming the exclusive right of traversing any
of the open seas of the world, as until that date Spain and
Portugal had claimed the exclusive right of using the South
Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans.

So ends the first period in the imperial expansion of the Western
peoples, the period of Spanish and Portuguese monopoly. Meanwhile,
unnoticed in the West, a remarkable eastward expansion was being
effected by the Russian people. By insensible stages they had
passed the unreal barrier between Europe and Asia, and spread
themselves thinly over the vast spaces of Siberia, subduing and
assimilating the few and scattered tribes whom they met; by the
end of the seventeenth century they had already reached the
Pacific Ocean. It was a conquest marked by no great struggles or
victories, an insensible permeation of half a continent. This
process was made the easier for the Russians, because in their own
stock were blended elements of the Mongol race which they found
scattered over Siberia: they were only reversing the process which
Genghis Khan had so easily accomplished in the thirteenth century.
And as the Russians had scarcely yet begun to be affected by
Western civilisation, there was no great cleavage or contrast
between them and their new subjects, and the process of
assimilation took place easily. But the settlement of Siberia was
very gradual. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the total
population of this vast area amounted to not more than 300,000
souls, and it was not until the nineteenth century that there was
any rapid increase.