EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND WORLD POLITICS 11 
River Niger Navigation Company in 1854. This practice 
of utilizing the services of great trading companies was taken 
up later as a regular method of colonial expansion by Lord 
Granville, when he chartered the British North Borneo 
Company in 1882. 
Through the whole period from 1830 to 1880, the spirit 
of conservatism and hesitation was triumphant. The 
British Colonial Office seemed to know its own mind; but it 
was “afraid to take in hand any definite policy.” It was 
afraid of the expense, of the jealousy of other nations, and 
of the new responsibilities that every change of policy or 
accession of territory involved. But more than these was 
the serious handicap of a procession of colonial ministers 
and secretaries, each with his own policy and theories as to 
colonial rule and colonial expansion or regression. In the 
fifty-five years, extending from 1830 to 1885, there were 
thirty colonial secretaries,! of whom six served from four 
to six years, but the other twenty-four averaged scarcely a 
year and one fifth apiece. 
Tendencies were at work as early as the sixties, which 
promised to bring to an end this period of uncertainty, and 
to create a new conception of the colonial relations and 
colonial activities of the British Empire. About 1885 the 
change in the policy and position of the Colonial Office was 
complete. The move for South African Confederation from 
1874 to 1885 and the Colonial Conferences of 1883 and 
1887 mark the beginning of a new era in the life of the 
British Empire. The “Imperial Federation Leagues” of 
Lord Rosebery and the colonial tariff union of Mr. Cham- 
berlain were the first suggestions of the movement for im- 
perial federation now so popular. One of the most impor- 
1 The office of Secretary of State for the Colonies was not created until 
1854, the work of this department being combined with the Department 
of War under one portfolio from 1801 to 1854.