Behold! Behold! An Empire rise! -Francis Hopkinson, from an ode distributed on July 4, 1788, Philadelphia 1[I]t is safe to assume, as a rule, that Americans are actuated by much the same ideas, instincts, motives, and modes of thought as their fellow-kinsmen in the Old World.-Edward Dicey (1898) 2Expansion has ever been the instinct of the United States. The very symbol of the Union is an Eagle and the Eagle is a bird that spreads its wings. . . . Compared with the Eagle the British Lion treads mother earth like a tortoise. And no Eagle has ever flown further afield than the American Eagle.-P.W.Wilson(1925) 3When the average American thinks of "colonialism", or of the Colonial Powers, he is apt to confine his thoughts to European "colonialism". . . . Not many Americans stop to think that Puerto Rico was conquered from Spain (as the British captured Jamaica); that the Virgin Islands were bought from Denmark . . . that Alaska was bought from Russia and Louisiana from the French in the same way; that the Panama Canal Zone was acquired in the twentieth century by methods which would have been condemned if indulged by a European Power at a much earlier period.-SirAlanBurns(1957) 4The so-called long eighteenth century from 1688 to 1815 was a formative period for Britain. Up to that point, Britain had been a small island monarchy, a minor player on the European scene. The Glorious Revolution in 1688, however, marked a new era. After establishing representative government, the little 1