THE WHITE DISASTER
their awe of that great Turkish empire which still bravely bore the brunt of Western advance and often hurled it back to the walls of Vienna. But the brightness of the Crescent was fast waning before the combined persistence of the West, and soon the disastrous treaty of Kutchuk-Kainarji inaugurated the imposition of Russian interference in the affairs of the Porte. In 1803 the last of the Grand Moguls became a British pensioner. In 1839, Abdul Medjid ascended the throne of Osmanli under the "protection" of European powers.
With the increase in credit and capital during the latter half of the eighteenth century, the inventive energy of European industrialism is set in motion. Coal takes the place of wood in smelting, and the flying shuttle, the spinning-
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