English Translation

49 - 46 - The sea has been shattered by the solid belt that the Ottoman Empire had previously laid between Europe and central and southern Asia. The eastern central Imeer becomes a transit area to the east and north. But this is the first time in history that the threat to England is posed by the expanding Russian empire in its domestic possessions and its zone of interest from there to Egypt. The contradictions between the two powers, which had so far occasionally broken up, had been only peripheral in nature, in neither of the two countries had seriously affected the vital foundations of their power. It is only with the fall of Ochakov that the world-wide beginning since Napoleon's Egyptian enterprise, interrupted only by short periods of cooperation, has become decisive for the history of the two largest world powers. In a far-flung area, the contrast between Russians and English is also evident in these years, although it remains for the time being in the field of economic competition: on the north-western coast of America. Following Bering's journeys, the Russians in northern Alaska had occupied vast areas since the middle of the 18th century, from Kamchatka, increasingly advancing southward. From here, an extremely profitable fur trade was carried to China, in which, since the mid-eighties, the English appeared more and more strongly as rivals of Russians. Of a Pacific opposition of the two powers, however, at that time can not yet speak 1) Gerhard S.407 and Note 66; Hertz S.208-209: "Pitt looked beyond the bounds of obvious and present facts, and foresaw the cloud that during the following century darkened the horizon of British India. If his means were not wholly happy in l791, his ends at least have recommended themselves to posterity. He sought to strengthen British influence in the East, to force peace through Europe, to lighten the heavy burden of safe- guarding the northwestern frontier of India, and to postpone for so long a period as might be possible the extension of Russian sovereignty to the horizons of the Meditarranean."