Genius of Two Cities, Footer
The Small World of the Ancients
The most ancient records we possess from Assyria, Egypt, Palestine, and from the Homeric poems, show how very limited was the range of geographical knowledge possessed by that small civilised world from which our own civilisation has descended. Speaking roughly, that knowledge seems in the tenth centuryB.C.to have extended about one thousand miles in each direction from the Isthmus of Suez. However, the best point of departure for the peoples of antiquity is the era of Herodotus, who travelled and wroteB.C.460–440. The limits of the world as he knew it were Cadiz and the Straits of Gibraltar on the west, the Danube and the Caspian on the north, the deserts of Eastern Persia on the east, and the Sahara on the south, with vague tales regarding peoples who lived beyond, such as Indians far beyond Persia, and pygmies beyond the Sahara. He reports, however, not without hesitation, a circumnavigation of Africa by Phœnicians in the service of Pharaoh Necho.
THE FIRST KNOWN MAP OF THE WORLDThis Babylonian map is probably of the eighth century B.C. The two circles are supposed to represent the ocean, while the River Euphrates and Babylon are shown inside them. The upper part of the tablet is a cuneiform inscription.
THE FIRST KNOWN MAP OF THE WORLD
This Babylonian map is probably of the eighth century B.C. The two circles are supposed to represent the ocean, while the River Euphrates and Babylon are shown inside them. The upper part of the tablet is a cuneiform inscription.
Discovery advanced very slowly for many centuries, though the march of Alexander opened up part of the East, while the Roman conquests brought the Far North-West, including Britain, within the range of civilisation; and occasional voyages, such as that of Hanno along the coast of West Africa, that of Nearchus through the Arabian Sea, and that of Pythias to the Baltic, added something to knowledge. Procopius inA.D.540 can tell us little more regarding the regions beyond Roman influence than Strabo does five and a half centuries earlier. The journeys of Marco Polo and Rubruquis throw only a passing light on the Far East. It is with the Spanish occupation of the Canary Isles, beginning in 1602, and with the Portuguese voyages of the fifteenth century, that the era of modern discovery opens. The re-discovery of America in 1492, for it had been already visited by the Northmen of Greenland and Iceland in the eleventh century, and the opening of the Cape route to India in 1497–1498, were hardly equal to the exploit of Magellan, whose circumnavigation of the globe in 1519–1520 marks the close of this striking period. Thereafter discovery proceeds more slowly. Some of the isles of the central and southern Pacific were not visited till the middle of the eighteenth century, and the north-west coast of America as well as the north-east Coast of Asia, remained little known till an even later date. Those explorations of the interior of North America, of the interior of Africa, of the interior of Australia, and of East Central Asia, which have completed our knowledge of the earth, belong to the nineteenth century. The first crossing of the North American Continent north of latitude 40° was not effected tillA.D.1806.
The Thirst for New Territories
The desire for new territory, for the propagation of religion, and, above all, for the precious metals, were the chief motives which prompted the voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These motives have remained operative; and to them has been added in more recent times the spirit of pure adventure and the interest in science, together with, increasing measure, the effort to secure trade. But the extension of trade followed slowly in the wake of discovery. China and Japan remained almost closed. The policy of Spain sought to restrict her American waters to her own ships, and the commercethey carried was scanty. Communication remained slow and dangerous across the oceans till the introduction of steam vessels (1825–1830).
THE FIRST MAPS: SOME EARLY GEOGRAPHERS’ IDEAS OF THE WORLDLARGER IMAGE
THE FIRST MAPS: SOME EARLY GEOGRAPHERS’ IDEAS OF THE WORLD
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THE MODERN REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD: SHOWN ON THREE DIFFERENT PROJECTIONSIn each case the British Empire is shadedLARGER IMAGE
THE MODERN REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD: SHOWN ON THREE DIFFERENT PROJECTIONS
In each case the British Empire is shaded
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Modern Representation of the World; Western Part
Modern Representation of the World; Western Part
Modern Representation of the World; Eastern Part
Modern Representation of the World; Eastern Part
Round the World in 40 Days!
Land transport, though it had steadily increased in Europe, remained costly as well as slow till the era of railway construction began in 1829. The application of steam as a motive power and of electricity as a means of communicating thought has been by far the greatest factor in this long process of reducing the dimensions of the world, which dates back as far as the domestication of beasts of burden, and the invention, first of paddles and oars, and then of sails. The North American Continent can now be crossed in five days, the South American (from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres) in under two, the Transandine tunnel having now been pierced. The Continent which stretches from the Baltic to the North Pacific can now be traversed in twelve days. By means of the Trans-Siberian line and its steamship connection with the ports of Japan, it is now possible to go round the globe in less than fifty days. Indeed, the journey has recently been done in forty days. Nor is this acceleration of transit more remarkable than its practical immunity, as compared with earlier times, not only from the dangers for which Nature is answerable, but from those also which man formerly interposed.
The increase of trade which has followed in the track first of discovery and latterly (with immensely larger volume) of the improvement of means of transport, has been accompanied not only by the seizure of transoceanic territories by the greater civilised States, but also by an outflow of population from those States into the more backward or more thinly-peopled parts of the earth. Sometimes, as in the case of North America, Siberia, and Australia, the emigrants extinguish or absorb the aboriginal population.
Europeanisation of the World
Sometimes, as in the case of India, Africa, and some parts of South America, they neither extinguish nor blend with the previous inhabitants, but rule them and spread what is called civilisation among them—this civilisation consisting chiefly in a knowledge of the mechanical arts and of deathful weapons accompanied by the destruction, more or less gradual, of their pre-existing beliefs and usages. Sometimes, again, as in the case of China, and to some extent also of the Mussulman East, though political dominion is not established, the process of substituting a new civilisation for the old one goes on despite the occasional efforts of the backward people to resist the process. The broad result is everywhere similar. The modern European type of civilisation is being diffused over the whole earth, superseding, or essentially modifying, the older local types. Thus, in a still more important sense than even that of communications, the world is contracted and becomes far more one than it has ever been before. The European who speaks three or four languages can travel over nearly all of it, and he can find on most of its habitable coasts, and in many parts of the lately-discovered interior, the appliances which are to him necessaries of life. The world is, in fact, becoming an enlarged Europe, so far as the externals of life and the material side of civilisation are concerned. The dissociative forces of Nature have been overcome.
Triumph of Natural Science
Putting together the two processes, the process in time and the process in space, which we have been reviewing, it will be seen that the main line of the development of mankind may be described as the transmission and the expansion of culture—that is to say, of knowledge and intellectual capacity. The stock of knowledge available for use and enjoyment has been steadily increased, and what each people accumulated has been made available for all. With this there has come assimilation, the destruction of weaker types of civilisation, the modification by constant interaction of the stronger types, the creation of a common type tending to absorb all the rest. Assimilation has been most complete in the sphere ruled by natural science—that is to say, in the material sphere, less complete in that ruled by the human sciences (including the sphere of political and social institutions), still less complete in the sphere of religious, moral, and social ideas, and as respects the products of literature and art. Or, in other words, where certainty of knowledge is attainable and utility in practice is incontestable, the process of assimilation has moved fastest and furthest.
Nature & the Unity of Mankind
The process has been a long one, for its beginnings reach back beyond our historical knowledge. So far as it lies withinthe range of history, it falls into two periods, the earlier of which supplies an instructive illustration of the later one which we know better. The effort which Nature—that is to say, the natural tendencies of man as a social being—has been making towards the unification of mankind during the last few centuries, is her second great effort. The first was in progress from the time when the most ancient records begin down to the sixth and seventh centuries of the Christian era.
THE FIRST TRAVELLER ROUND THE GLOBEThe great exploit of Ferdinand Magellan, who circumnavigated the globe in 1519–1520, ranks among the events of world importance, and was the culminating achievement of the greatest period of discovery in the world’s history.
THE FIRST TRAVELLER ROUND THE GLOBE
The great exploit of Ferdinand Magellan, who circumnavigated the globe in 1519–1520, ranks among the events of world importance, and was the culminating achievement of the greatest period of discovery in the world’s history.
Greek civilisation, which itself had drawn much from Egypt, as well as from Assyria, Phœnicia, and the peoples of Asia Minor, permeated the minds and institutions (except the legal institutions), of the Mediterranean and West European countries, and was propagated by the governing energy of the Romans. In its Romanised form it transformed or absorbed and superseded the less advanced civilisations of all those countries, creating one new type for the whole Roman world. With some local diversities, that type prevailed from the Northumbrian Wall of Hadrian to the Caucasus and the deserts of Arabia. The still independent races on the northern frontier of the Empire received a tincture of it, and would doubtless have been more deeply imbued had the Roman Empire stood longer.
Christianity, becoming dominant at a time when the Empire was already tottering, gave a new sense of unity to all whom the Greco-Roman type had formed, extended the influence of that type still further, and enabled much that belonged to it (especially its religious, its legal, and its literary elements) to survive the political dominion of the Emperors and to perpetuate itself among practically independent States which were springing up. The authority of Papal Rome helped to carry this sense of unity among civilised men through a period of ignorance, confusion, and semi-barbarism which might otherwise have extinguished it. Nevertheless, we may say, broadly speaking, that the first effort towards the establishment of a common type of civilisation was, if not closed, yet arrested by the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West. Close thereupon came the rise of Islam, tearing away the Eastern provinces, and creating a rival type of civilisation—though a type largely influenced by the Greco-Roman—which held its ground for some centuries, and has only recently shown that it is destined to vanish.
Conquest and Civilisation
The beginnings of the second effort toward the unification of civilised mankind may be observed as far back as the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Its effective and decisive action may, however, be assigned to the fifteenth, when the spread of literary and philosophic culture, and the swift extension of maritime discovery, ushered in the modern phase wherein we have marked its irresistible advance. This phase differs from the earlier one both in its range—for it embraces the whole earth and not merely the Mediterranean lands—and in its basis, for it rests not so much upon conquest and religion as upon scientific knowledge, formative ideas, and commerce. Yet even here a parallelism may be noted between the ancient and the modern phase. Knowledge and ideas had brought about a marked assimilation of various parts of the ancient world to each other before Roman conquest completed the work, and what conquest did was done chiefly among the ruder races. So now, while it is knowledge and ideas that haveworked for the creation of a common type among the peoples of European stock, conquest has been a potent means of spreading this type in the outlying countries and among the more backward races whose territories the European nations have seized.
THE EUROPEANISATION OF THE WORLDEuropean civilisation is being diffused all over the earth, superseding or essentially modifying the older local types. The solid black portions of this map represent territory under Anglo-Saxon control; the shaded parts are under other European control, and the dotted parts under Asiatic and African control.
THE EUROPEANISATION OF THE WORLD
European civilisation is being diffused all over the earth, superseding or essentially modifying the older local types. The solid black portions of this map represent territory under Anglo-Saxon control; the shaded parts are under other European control, and the dotted parts under Asiatic and African control.
Language a Unifying Influence
The diffusion of a few forms of speech has played a great part in both phases. Greek was spoken over the eastern half of the Roman world in the second centuryA.D., though not to the extinction of such tongues as Syriac and Egyptian. Latin was similarly spoken over the western half, though not to the extinction of the tongues we now call Basque and Breton and Welsh; and Latin continued to be the language of religion, of law, of philosophy, and of serious prose literature in general till the sixteenth century. So now, several of the leading European tongues are spoken far beyond the limits of their birthplace, and their wide range has become a powerful influence in diffusing European culture. German, English, Russian, Spanish, and French are available for the purposes of commerce, and for those who read books over nineteen-twentieths of the earth’s surface. The languages of the smaller non-European peoples are disappearing in those places where they have to compete with these greater European tongues, except in so far as they are a medium of domestic intercourse. Arabic, Chinese, and in less degree Persian are the only non-European languages which retain a world importance. English, German, and Spanish are pre-eminently the three leading commercial languages. They gain ground on the rest, and it is English that gains ground most swiftly. The German merchant is no doubt even more ubiquitous (if the expression be permitted) than is the English; but the German more frequently speaks English than the Englishman or American speaks German.
Linking the Nations Together
It has already been observed that assimilation has advanced least in the sphere of institutions, ideas, and literature. The question might, indeed, be raised whether the types of thought, of national character, and of literary activity represented by the five or six leading nations are not rather tending to become more accentuated. The self-consciousness of each nation, taking the form of pride or vanity, leads it to exalt its own type and to dwell with satisfaction on whatever differentiates it from other types. Nevertheless there are influences at work in the domain of practice as well as of thought, which, in creating a common body of opinion and a sense of common interest among large classes belonging to these leading nations, tend to link the nations themselves together. Religious sympathy, or a common attachment to certain doctrines, such as, for instance, those of Collectivism, works in this direction among the masses, as the love of science or of art does amongsections of the more educated class. As regards the peoples not of European stock, who are, broadly speaking, the more backward, it is not yet possible to say what will be the influence of the European type of culture upon their intellectual development.
The material side of their civilisation will after a time conform to the European type, though, perhaps, to forms that are not the most progressive; and even such faiths as Buddhism and Islam may lose their hold on those who come most into contact with Europeans. But whether these peoples will produce any new types of thought or art under the stimulus of Europe, as the Teutons and Slavs did after they had been for centuries in contact with the relics of Greco-Roman culture, or whether they will be overborne by and merely imitate and reproduce what Europeans teach them—this is a question for conjecture only, since the data for predictions are wanting.
It is a question of special interest as regards the Japanese, the one non-European race which, having an old civilisation of its own, highly developed on the artistic side, has shown an amazing aptitude for appropriating European institutions and ideas. Already a Japanese physiologist has taken high rank among men of science by being one of the discoverers of the bacillus of the Oriental plague.
DOES HISTORY MAKE FOR PROGRESS?
O
ONE of the questions which both the writers and the readers of a History of the World must frequently ask themselves is whether the course of history establishes a general law of progress. Some thinkers have gone so far as to say that this must be the moral of history regarded as a whole, and a few have even suggested that without the recognition of such a principle and of a sort of general guidance of human affairs towards this goal, history would be unintelligible, and the doings of mankind would seem little better than the sport of chance.
What is the Test of Progress?What Mankind has Achieved
Whatever may be thought of these propositions as matters of theory, the doctrine of a general and steady law of progress is one to which no historian ought to commit himself. His business is to set forth and explain the facts exactly as they are; and if he writes in the light of a theory he is pretty certain to be unconsciously seduced into giving undue prominence to those facts which make for it. Moreover, the question is in itself a far more complex one than the simple word “progress” at first sight conveys. What is the test of progress? In what form of human advance is it to be deemed to consist? Which of these forms is of the highest value? There can be no doubt of the advance made by man in certain directions. There may be great doubt as to his advance in other directions. There may possibly be no advance but even retrogression, or at least signs of an approaching retrogression, in some few directions. The view to be taken of the relative importance of these lines of movement is a matter not so much for the historian as for the philosopher, and its discussion would carry us away into fields of thought not fitted for a book like the present. Although, therefore, it is true that one chief interest of history resides in its capacity for throwing light on this question, all that need here be said may be expressed as follows:
There has been a marvellous advance in man’s knowledge of the laws of Nature and of his consequent mastery over Nature.There has been therewith a great increase in population, and, on the whole, in the physical vigour of the average individual man.There has been, as a further consequence, an immense increase in the material comfort and well-being of the bulk of mankind, so that to most men necessaries have become easier of attainment, and many things which were once luxuries have become necessaries.
There has been a marvellous advance in man’s knowledge of the laws of Nature and of his consequent mastery over Nature.
There has been therewith a great increase in population, and, on the whole, in the physical vigour of the average individual man.
There has been, as a further consequence, an immense increase in the material comfort and well-being of the bulk of mankind, so that to most men necessaries have become easier of attainment, and many things which were once luxuries have become necessaries.
Against this is to be set the fact that some of the natural resources of the world are being rapidly exhausted. This would at one time have excited alarm; but scientific discoveries have so greatly extended man’s capacity to utilise other sources of natural energy, that people are disposed to assume that the loss of the resources aforesaid will be compensated by further discoveries.
The Gain and the Loss
As to progress other than material—that is to say, progress in intellectualcapacity, in taste, in the power of enjoyment, in virtue, and generally in what is called happiness—every man’s view must depend on the ideal which he sets before himself of what constitutes happiness, and of the relative importance to happiness of the ethical and the non-ethical elements which enter into the conception. Until there is more agreement than now exists or has ever existed on these points, there is no use in trying to form conclusions regarding the progress man has made. Moreover, it is admitted that nearly every gain man makes is accompanied by some corresponding loss—perhaps a slight loss, yet a loss. When we attempt to estimate the comparative importance of these gains and losses, questions of great difficulty, both ethical and non-ethical, emerge; and in many cases our experience is not yet sufficient to determine the quantum of loss. There is room both for the optimist and for the pessimist, and in arguing such questions nearly everybody becomes an optimist or a pessimist. The historian has no business to be either.
There is another temptation besides that of delivering his opinion on these high matters, of which the historian does well to be aware—I mean the temptation to prophesy. The study of history as a whole, more inevitably than that of the history of any particular country or people, suggests forecasts of the future, because the broader the field which we survey the more do we learn to appreciate the great and wide-working forces that are guiding mankind, and the more therefore are we led to speculate on the results which these forces, some of them likely to be permanent, will tend to bring about.
Modern Mastery of Nature
This temptation can seldom have been stronger than it is now, when we see all mankind brought into closer relations than ever before, and more obviously dominated by forces which are essentially the same, though varying in their form. Yet it will appear, when the problem is closely examined, that the very novelty of the present situation of the world—the fact that our mastery of Nature has been so rapidly extended within the last century, and that the phenomena of the subjugation of the earth by Europeans and of the ubiquitous contact of the advanced and the backward races are so unexampled in respect of the area they cover—that all predictions must be uttered with the greatest caution, and due allowance made for elements which may disturb even the most careful calculations. It may, indeed, be doubted whether any predictions of a definitely positive kind—predictions that such and such things will happen—can be safely made, save the obvious ones which are based on the assumption that existing natural conditions remain for some time operative.
A Glimpse into the Future
Taking this assumption to be a legitimate one, it maybe predicted that population will continue to increase, at least till the now waste but habitable parts of the earth have been turned to account; that races, except where there is a marked colour line, will continue to become intermingled; that the small and weak races, and especially the lower set of savages, will be absorbed or die out; that fewer and fewer languages will be spoken; that communications will become even swifter, easier, and cheaper than they are at present; and that commerce and wealth will continue to grow, subject, perhaps, to occasional checks from political disturbance.
There are also some negative predictions on which one may venture, and with a little more confidence. No new race can appear, except possibly from a fusion of two or more existing races, or from the differentiation of a branch of an existing race under new conditions, as the Americans have been to some slight extent differentiated from the English, and the Brazilians from the Portuguese (there having been in the latter case a certain admixture of negro blood), and as the Siberians of the future may be a different sort of Russians. Neither is any new language likely to appear, except, mere trade jargons (like Chinook or pigeon English), because the existing languages of the great peoples are firmly established, and the process of change within each of these languages has, owing to the abundance of printed matter, become now extremely slow. Conditions can hardly be imagined under which such a phenomenon as the development of the Romance languages out of Latin, or of Danish and Swedish out of the common Northern tongue of the eleventh century, could recur.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD AT PEACEFrom the statuary groups on the Albert Memorial.LARGER IMAGE
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD AT PEACE
From the statuary groups on the Albert Memorial.
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It may seem natural to add the further prediction that the great States and the great religions will continue to grow and to absorb the small ones. But when we touch topics into which human opinion or emotion enters, we touch a new kind of matter, where the influences now at work may be too much affected by new influences to permit of any forecast. Conditions might conceivably come into action which would split up some or most of the present great States, and bring the world back to an age of small political communities.
So, too, though the lower forms of paganism are fast vanishing, and the four or five great religions are extendingtheir sway, it is conceivable that new prophets may arise, founding new faiths, or that the existing religions may be split up into new sects widely diverse from one another. Even the supremacy of the European races, well assured as it now appears, may be reduced by a variety of causes, physiological or moral, when some centuries have passed.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD AT PEACEFrom the statuary groups on the Albert Memorial.LARGER IMAGE
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD AT PEACE
From the statuary groups on the Albert Memorial.
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Whoever examines the predictions made by the most observant and profound thinkers of the past will see reason to distrust almost all the predictions, especially those of a positive order, which shape themselves in our minds to-day.
JAMESBRYCE