The Progress of France.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4874, 23 August 1884, Page 3

The Progress of France.

After the Franco-Prussian war, Franco, with her army disorganispd through successive disasters and the enormous war

indemnity imposed on her by Germany, was thought to have been crushed out of i existence as one of the first Powers, and

that it would be a long limo before her . influence would moke itself manifest. But the wonderful recuperative power cf that •nation has lonpj since assarted -itself — \hc " milliards of francs " Lave been paid long ago—and she has ,so wonderfully pro greased in the re-construction of her army and navy, that now it is not easy to divine what Tank sho may at any moment take among the nations of Ibe earth. There ia no denying the fact that she feels herself strong enough to enforce her demands re the Chinese 1 affairs of Langson. The following article in regard to her colonial empire will be read with interest:— 11 France again has the reins of foreign Empire well in hand. Within a year she has become'an Asiatic power, second only to England and Russia, and superior in - population'to the latter, by planting herself firmly in India. It is less than three months since the war in Tonquin renchrrf fruition in the treaty of peace with Anam, by which that Empire beoomes a French Protectorate. Thia added to the French

dominion a territory comprising 200,000 ' .square miles—-an area nearly as great as that of the German Empire—and having a population estimated by the best autho- . rities at 21,000,000. Only a few weeks since the cable despatches announced that the King of Cambodia, another Farther Indian State, had transferred his Empire

to..'France, receiving in return a fixed ' income for the Koyal Family. Cambodia. has been a-semi-protected State since 1867, when France founded its Oriental Empire by getting possession of the pro Tinces of Cochin China. It now becomes

an integal part of the French Dominion. It has an area of 32,380 square miles— about the same as Maine—and a popula*

tion of something less than 1,000,000. * These -two States, added to the Cochin*

China provinces, gives the French Empire in Farther India a total area in round numbers of 472,000 squares miles, with a population of 28,000,000. Besides these there are Pondicherry, Karikell, Chandernagore and Mahe—the four cities that alone remain of the former French Empire in Hindostan —which contribute a total of 276."000 souls to the present possessions'of France in India. And it is not alone in Asia that France has lately been aggrandizing herself. Her African Colony of Algeria—conquered in the last half-ceutury—has within three years been expanded by the addition of the Begency of Tunis with an area of 45,000 square miles—about the size of New York, and a population of 2,100,000 . She has also extended her control over the tribes of Senegambia, gained great influence in Madagascar, with a cession

of territory, and is about to assume con- ■ trol of Egypt, from the Soudan to the Kile Delta, jointly with England. In Polynesia, several groups of islands have . been seized, and her American Colonial ■possessions have been increased by the - cession of the Swedish West Indies. - France, with her Colonies and tributary States, not including Madagascar,\now has an area of 1,022,797 square miles, and a population of 66,821,580, making her, after the Chinese, Ibe British, and the

Russian Empires, the most populous country of the world. Her dominion is to-doy greater than it has tver been since ahe lost, her American territory in 1763 ; and ahe has risen from the condition of a State, prostrate before its victorious neighbor, to more than her old prominent "place among the great, nations of tho earth."