MAKING OF THE NATIONSAND THE INFLUENCE OF NATURETHE BIRTH & GROWTH OF NATIONS
MAKING OF THE NATIONS
AND THE INFLUENCE OF NATURE
BY PROFESSOR RATZEL
I
IN order that the cosmic conception of the life of man may be more than a mere isolated idea, incapable of being applied and developed, it is necessary to indicate the relation which human life bears to the collective life of the earth.
Man is Bound up with the Earth
Human existence is based upon the entire development of vegetable and animal life; or, as Alexander von Humboldt said, in reality the human race partakes of the entire life on earth. Just as plants and animals, vegetable and animal remains and products, occupy an intermediate position between man and the inanimate substance of the earth, so almost without exception the life of man depends not directly upon the earth, but upon the animals and plants, which in turn are immediately bound to the earth by the necessities of existence. It is the dependence of later and more evolved types upon the earlier and less evolved. In 1845 Robert Mayer, the German scientist, published his epoch-making thesis on “The Relations of Organic Motion to Metabolism,” in which he described the vegetable world as a reservoir wherein the rays of the sun are transformed into life-supporting material and are stored up for use. According to his view the physical existence of the human race is inseparably linked together with this “economic providence”; and he even went so far as to connect it with the instinctive pleasure felt by every eye at the sight of luxuriant vegetation.
Man’s Fight with Plants and AnimalsSpreading Life Over all the Earth
The history of mankind shows how various are the elements contained in this reservoir, and how manifold their action. Originally plants and animals share the soil with man, who must struggle with them for its possession. The plains favour and the forests obstruct historical movement; the inhabitant of the tropics is hardly able to overcome the growth of weeds that covers his field; for the Esquimau the vegetable world exists but two months in the year, and then only in stunted, feeble species. The unequal distribution of edible plants has in a large measure been the cause of divergence in the developments of different races. Australia and the Arctic countries have received almost nothing; the Old World has had abundance of the richest gifts showered upon it, Asia receiving more than Africa or Europe. The most valuable of domestic animals are of Asiatic origin. America’s pre-European history is incomparably more uniform than that of the Old World, and this is owing to her moderate endowment of useful plants and almost complete lack of domestic animals. The transplanting of vegetable species from one part of the earth to another, carried on by man, is one of the greatest movements in the collective life of the world. Its possibilities of extension cannot be conjectured; for the successful diffusion of single cultivated plants—the banana, for example—over a number of widely separated countries is yet problematical. This process can never be considered to have come to an end so long as necessity forces man to get a firmer and firmer hold on the store of earthly life.
The relations of man to the earth are primarily the same as those of any other form of life. The universal laws of the diffusion of life include also the laws of the diffusion of the human species. Hence the study of the geographical distribution of man must be looked upon only as a branch of the study of the geographical distribution of life, and a succession of the conceptions belonging to the latter.
The Material Tie that Binds Men Together
To these conceptions belong the main area of distribution, the habitable world, and all its various parts: zones, continents, and other divisions of the earth’s surface, especially seas, coasts, interiors of lands, bordering regions, divisions exhibiting continuity with others as links in a chain, and isolated divisions. Also relations as to area: the struggle for territory, variations in the life development in small or inextensive regions, in insular or in continental districts, on heights of land and plateaus, and, in addition, the hindrances and the aids to development presented by different conformations; the advance development in small, densely populated districts; or the protection afforded by isolated situations. All must be included. Finally, properties of boundaries must be conceived of as analogous to phenomena occurring on the peripheries of living bodies.
As races are forms of organic life, it follows that the state cannot be comprehended otherwise than as an organised being; every people, every state is organic, as a combination of organic units. Moreover there is something organic in the internal coherence of the groups and individuals from which a state is formed. However, in the case of a people and a state, this coherence is neither material nor structural; states are spiritual and moral organisms. But, together with the spiritual, there is also a material coherence between the individual members of a race or a nation. This is the connection with the ground. The ground furnishes the only material tie that binds individuals together into a state; and it is primarily for this reason that all history exhibits a strong and ever-increasing tendency to associate the state with the soil—to root it to the ground, as it were.
The State and the Soil
The earth is not only the connecting principle, but it is also the single tangible and indestructible proof of the unity of the state. This connection does not decrease during the course of history, as might be supposed, owing to the progressive development of spiritual forces; on the contrary, it ever becomes closer, advancing from the loose association of a few individuals with a proportionately wide area in the primitive community, to the close connection of the dense population of a powerful state with its relatively small area, as in the case of a modern civilised nation. In spite of all disturbances, the economic and political end has ever been to associate a greater and greater number of individuals with the soil. Hence the law that every relation of a race or tribe to the ground strives to take a political form, and that every political structure seeks connection with the ground. The notion of an unterritorial and a territorial epoch in the history of man is incorrect; ground is necessary to every form of state, and also to the germs of states, such as a few negroes’ huts or a ranch in the Far West. Development consists only in a constant increase in the occupation and use of land, and in the fact that, as populations grow, so do they become ever more firmly rooted in their own soils.
If One State Embraced the Whole Earth
At the same time the nature of the movements of peoples must change. Penetration and assimilation of one race by another occur instead of displacement of one by another; and with the rapid decrease of unoccupied territory the fate of the late-comers in history is irrevocably sealed. Since the state is an organism composed of independent individuals and households, its decay cannot be analogous to the death and corruption of a plant or an animal. When plants decay, the cells of which they are composed decay also. But in a decayed state the freed individuals live on and unite together into new political organisms; they increase, and the old necessity for growth continues in the midst of the ruin. The decay of nations is not destruction; it is a remodelling, a transformation. A great political institution dies out; smaller institutions arise in its place. Decay is a life necessity. Nothing could be more incorrect than the idea that the growth of nations would come to an end were one state to embrace the whole earth. If this were to happen, long before the great moment of union came, there would bea multitude of processes of growth already in operation, ready to rebuild in case of decadence, and to provide for a new organisation if needed. As yet the political expansion of the white races over the earth has not resulted in uniformity, but in manifoldness.
THE PEOPLE OF THE MOUNTAINS: SHOWING THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON CHARACTERThis picture, by Alexander Johnston, illustrates the keynote of Professor Ratzel’s chapters on the influence of the earth on character. Johnston represents a marriage among the Scottish Covenanters, who, persecuted under the Stuarts, took to the moss-hags and the hills, of whose stern ruggedness their own stern independence was the outcome and counterpart.LARGER IMAGE
THE PEOPLE OF THE MOUNTAINS: SHOWING THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON CHARACTER
This picture, by Alexander Johnston, illustrates the keynote of Professor Ratzel’s chapters on the influence of the earth on character. Johnston represents a marriage among the Scottish Covenanters, who, persecuted under the Stuarts, took to the moss-hags and the hills, of whose stern ruggedness their own stern independence was the outcome and counterpart.
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Earth and the Movements of Peoples
All conditions and relations of peoples and states that may be geographically described, delineated, surveyed, and, for the greater part, even measured, can be traced back to movements—movements that are peculiar to all forms of life, and of which the origin is growth and development. However various these movements may be in other respects, they are always connected with the soil, and thus must be dependent upon the extent, situation, and conformation of the ground upon which they take place. Therefore, in every organic movement we may perceive the activity of the internal motive forces which are peculiar to life, and the influences of the ground to which the life is attached. In the movements of peoples, the internal forces are the organic powers of motion common to all creatures, and the spiritual impulses of the intellect and will of man.
In many a view of history these forces alone appear; but it must not be forgotten that they are conditioned by the fact that they cannot be active beyond the general limits of life, and they cannot disengage themselves from the soil to which life is bound. In order to understand historical movements it is first necessary to consider their purely mechanical side, which is shown clearly enough by an inquiry into the nature of the earth’s surface. Neglect of this occasions a delay in the understanding of the true character of such movements. Men merely spoke of geography, and treated history as if it were an atmospheric phenomenon.
National Emigrations in History
Nations are movable bodies whose units are held together by a common origin, language, customs, locality, and often necessity for defence—the strongest tie of all. A people expands in one direction and contracts in another; in case of two adjacent nations, a movement in the one betokens a movement in the other. Active movements are responded to by passive, and vice versa. Every movement in an area filled with life consists in a displacement of individuals. There are also currents and counter-currents: when slavery was abolished in the Southern States of America, an emigration of white men from the South was followed by an influx of ex-slaves from the North, thus causing an increase in the black majority of the South.
Why Nations Must Seek New Homes
Such external movements of peoples assume most varied forms. History takes a too narrow view in considering only the migrations of nations, looking upon them as great and rare events, historical storms as it were, exceptional in the monotonous quiet of the life of man. This conception of historical movements is very similar to the discarded cataclysmic theory in geology. In the history of nations, as in the history of the earth, a great effect does not always involve a presupposition of its being the immediate result of a mighty cause. The constant action of small forces that finally results in a large aggregate of effect must be taken into account in history as well as in geology. Every external movement is preceded by internal disturbance: a nation must grow from within in order to spread abroad. The increase of Arabs in Oman led to an emigration to East Africa along highways of traffic known to times of old. Merchants, craftsmen, adventurers, and slaves left their native land and drew together in Zanzibar, Pemba, and on the mainland. The process was repeated from the coast to the interior, and as a result of the aggregate labour of individuals as merchants, colonists, and missionaries, Arabian states grew up in the central regions of Africa. Instances of the occupation of vacant territories are of the greatest rarity in history as we are acquainted with it. The best example known to us is the settlement of Iceland by the Northmen. The rule is, a forcing in of the immigrating nation between other races already in possession; the opposition of the latter often compels the former to divide up into small groups, which then insinuate themselves peacefully among the people already established in the land.
THE NORTHMEN TAKING POSSESSION OF ICELANDInstances of peoples taking possession of uninhabited lands and settling therein are extremely rare. Iceland is the best example known. The hardy Northmen took possession of it in the ninth century, but found the country untenanted.LARGER IMAGE
THE NORTHMEN TAKING POSSESSION OF ICELAND
Instances of peoples taking possession of uninhabited lands and settling therein are extremely rare. Iceland is the best example known. The hardy Northmen took possession of it in the ninth century, but found the country untenanted.
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The Human Will Knows no Obstacle
The movements of nations resemble those of fluids upon the earth: they proceed from higher altitudes to lower; and obstacles cause a change of course, a backward flow, or a division. Though at first there may be a series of streams running along side by side, there is a convergence at the goal, as shown by themigration of different peoples to a common territory; there is concentration when there are hindrances to be overcome, and a spreading out where the ground is level and secure. One race draws other races along with it; and, as a rule, a troop of wanderers come from a long distance will be found to have absorbed foreign elements on its way. But it would be wrong to look upon the movements of nations as passive onflowings, or even to deduce a natural law from the descent of tribes from the mountains to the river valleys and to the sea—an idea that once led to the acceptance of the theory of the Ethiopian origin of Egyptian civilisation. Either the wills of individuals unite to form a collective will, or the will of a single man imposes itself upon the aggregate. The human will knows no insurmountable obstacle within the bounds of the habitable earth.
Bursting Nature’s Barriers
As time goes on, all rivers and all seas are navigated, all mountains climbed, and all deserts traversed. But these have all acted as obstructions before which movements have either halted or turned aside, until finally they have burst the barriers. At least two thousand years passed from the time of the first journey of a Phœnician ship out through the Pillars of Hercules into the Atlantic until the arrival of the day when a voyage across was ventured from Southern Europe. The Romans turned at the Alps, both to the right and to the left, seven hundred years after their city had been founded, but how many nooks in the interior of those mountains were unknown to them even centuries later! Yet to-day Europe feels the effect of this circumstance, the fact that the Romans did not advance straight through the Central Alps into the heart of the Teutonic country. They followed a roundabout way through Gaul, and thus Mediterranean culture and Christianity were brought to Central Europe from the west instead of from the south; hence the dependence of the civilisation of Germany upon that of France.
It is precisely the Romans who, contrasted with barbarians, show us that will or design in the movements of nations does not necessarily increase with growth of culture, even though culture constantly puts more means of action at its disposal, improved methods of transportation, by which the way may be lightened. The mounted bands of Celts and Germans crossed the Alps quite as easily as did the Roman legions; and in spreading about and penetrating to every corner of the Alps and the Pyrenees, the barbarians were always superior to the Romans.
The Great Wanderers of the Earth
Wandering tribes of semi-civilised people are smaller, less pretentious, and less encumbered. In every war that has taken place in a mountain land, the greater mobility of untrained militia has often led to victories over regular troops. Races of inferior culture are invariably more mobile than those of a higher grade of civilisation; and they are able to equalise the advantages of the superior modes of locomotion with which culture has supplied the latter. Mobility also indicates a weaker hold upon the ground, and thus uncivilised peoples are more easily dislodged from their territories than are nations capable of becoming, as it were, more deeply rooted. In nomadic races, mobility bound up with the necessity for an extensive territory assumes a definite form, and, owing to a constant preparedness for wandering and to the possession of an organised marching system, such peoples have been among the greatest forces in Old World history.
Movements of nations are often spoken of as if certain definite directions were forced upon them by some mysterious power. This view not only wraps itself in the garment of prophecy—for example, when announcing that the direction in which the sun travels must also be that of history—but it formally presupposes a necessary east-to-west progression of historical movements, endeavouring to substantiate its doctrine by citation of examples, from Julius Cæsar to the gold-seekers of California. But this necessity remains always in obscurity. Not only is it contradicted by frequently confirmed reflex movements in historical times, but it is also disproved still more by the great migrations which have taken place on the same continent in contrary directions. In Asia the Chinese have spread over the entire area of interior plain and desert, westward to the nation-dividing barriers of the Pamir Mountains; other Asiatic races have overflowed into Europe—also from east to west. Contrariwise, ever since the sixteenth century we have seenthe Russians at work conquering the entire northern part of the continent, constantly pressing on towards the east. Even the sea proved no obstacle, for they both discovered and acquired Alaska during the course of this same movement.
HOW CIVILISATION SPREAD THROUGH EUROPEThe inexorable influence of physical conditions on the life of the peoples is well illustrated by the influence of the Alps in deflecting the path of Mediterranean culture. These mountains hemmed in the north of the Roman Empire and forced the Romans, in their expansion, to the west. Hence Mediterranean culture and Christianity were carried to Central Europe from the west instead of from the south, and the civilisation of Germany depends on that of France. The map shows the route followed by the stream of Roman civilisation.
HOW CIVILISATION SPREAD THROUGH EUROPE
The inexorable influence of physical conditions on the life of the peoples is well illustrated by the influence of the Alps in deflecting the path of Mediterranean culture. These mountains hemmed in the north of the Roman Empire and forced the Romans, in their expansion, to the west. Hence Mediterranean culture and Christianity were carried to Central Europe from the west instead of from the south, and the civilisation of Germany depends on that of France. The map shows the route followed by the stream of Roman civilisation.
We shall not attach any universal significance to such fashionable terms employed in historical works as political or historical attraction, elective affinity or balance; least of all shall we presume to discover occult, mysterious sources for them. It is obvious that a powerful nation will overflow in the direction of least resistance; and in the case of a strong Power confronting one that is weak there is a constant movement toward the latter. Thus, from the earliest times, Egypt has pressed on toward the south; and everywhere in the Sudan we find traces of similar movements to the south as far as Adamawa, where they are still to-day in energetic continuance. The history of colonisation in America shows a turning of the streams of immigration, in the south as well as in the north, towards the more thinly settled regions; the more thickly populated are avoided. The migrations of nations, which took place during periods of history when a surplus of unoccupied land existed, were determined to a great extent by natural causes. The more numerous nations become, the greater the obstacles to migration, for most of these obstacles arise from the very nations themselves.
Nations increase with their populations; lands with enlargement of territory. So long as a country has sufficient area, the second form of growth need not of necessity follow the first—the race spreads out over the gaps which are open in the interior, and thus internal colonisation takes place. If there is need for emigration, occupiable districts may be found in the lands of another people—for centuries Germanshave thus found accommodation in Austria, Hungary, Poland, and America.
How New States are Born
Of course, such colonists gradually become absorbed into the people among whom they have settled. This is simple emigration, which is therefore connected with the internal colonisation of a foreign land. External colonisation first comes into being when a state acquires territory under its control, into which territory, if it be suitable, a portion of the inhabitants of the state move and settle. Colonisation is not necessarily a State affair from the first. If a race inhabit a country so sparsely as the Indians did America in the sixteenth century, a foreign people, having the power of spreading out, may press into the gaps with such success that this initial internal colonisation may also be advantageous from a political standpoint. The State then intervenes and appropriates the territory over which groups of its inhabitants have previously acquired economic control.
The emigrants formed a social aggregate in the new country, and from this aggregate a state, or the germ of a state, develops. Since such an economic-social preparatory growth greatly assists in the political acquirement of land, it is obvious that this form of colonisation is especially sound and effectual. The opposite method follows when a state first conquers a territory which it occupies later with its own forces; this is colonisation by conquest. It can be capable of development only when subsequent immigration permanently acquires the land as a dwelling-place.
Why Rome’s Empire Endured Long
Conquest that neither can nor will take permanent possession of the soil is characteristic of a low stage of culture; thus the Zulu states in Africa, surrounded by broad strips of conquered yet uncontrolled territory, and the old “world-empires” of Western Asia, exhausted themselves in vain efforts to obtain lasting increase of area through aggressive expeditions. That the Roman Empire lasted a longer time than any of the preceding universal empires was due to the single fact that agricultural colonisation invariably followed in the footsteps of its political conquests.
The enlargement of a nation’s area is associated with soil and inhabitants. If the increase of territory—for example, through conquest—is much more rapid than the increase of population, an inorganic, loosely connected expansion results, which, as a rule, is soon lost again. If, on the contrary, population increases at a proportionately greater rate than area, a crowding together, checks to internal movements, and over-population follow. In consequence, great discrepancies between growth of territory and increase of population lead to the most varied results. The conquering nation expands over extensive regions for which there are no inhabitants. Passive races in India and in China become so crowded together that it is impossible for their soil to support them any longer; hence a continuous degradation and recurrent periods of famine, which may bring with them a relatively feeble and unorganised emigration.
The Modern Nations as Colonisers
There are nations with whom conquest and colonisation seem to follow in most profitable alternation: this appears to have been the case with all colonising countries of modern history that have followed the example of the Roman Empire. But there are great contrasts presented even by these nations. Germany, Austria, and Russia, in immediate connection with their conquered provinces, have colonised and expanded toward the east. In spite of a rapid increase of population, Germany has been backward in establishing trans-marine colonies, while France, with a proportionately smaller increase of population, began by colonising in all directions, but occupied more land than she was able to master; for which reason colonization in the history of France has taken more or less the character of conquest. England, on the contrary, with a vigorous emigration and an expansive movement in all directions, presents an example of the soundest and strongest method of founding colonies which has been seen since early times.
THE EXPANSION OF THE WHITE RACES THROUGHOUT THE WORLDThis map illustrates the extent to which the white races have spread into other than their native lands. The pale tint, as on the British Isles, indicates the native land of the whites; the darker tint shows where whites have settled down; while the black portions represent those parts of the earth where the coloured races predominate.LARGER IMAGE
THE EXPANSION OF THE WHITE RACES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
This map illustrates the extent to which the white races have spread into other than their native lands. The pale tint, as on the British Isles, indicates the native land of the whites; the darker tint shows where whites have settled down; while the black portions represent those parts of the earth where the coloured races predominate.
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Some New National Problems
Through the entire course of history an ever-increasing value attached to land may be traced; and in the expansion of nations we may also see that mere conquest is growing less and less frequent, while the economic acquisition of territory, piece by piece, is becoming the rule. The getting of land assumes more and more the character of a peaceful insinuation. The taking possession of distant countrieswithout consideration for the original inhabitants, who are either driven away, or murdered—speedily with the aid of bullets, or slowly with the assistance of gin or contagious diseases or by being robbed of their best land—is to-day no longer possible. Colonisation has become a well-ordered administration combined with instruction of the natives in useful employments. The old method has left scarcely a single pure-blooded Indian east of the Mississippi in the United States, and not one native in Tasmania; the new method has before it the problem how to share the land with negroes—in the Transvaal with 74 per cent. and in Natal with 82 per cent. Climatic conditions are also to be taken into consideration, for Caucasians are able to develop all their powers in temperate regions only; a hot climate impels them to ensure the co-operation of black labour through coercion.
Mankind Ages with Civilisation
During the course of centuries a motley collection of countries has developed, all of which are called colonies, although they stand in most striking contrast with one another. Several are nations in embryo, to which only the outward form of independence is lacking; not a few have once been independent; and many give the impression that they will never be fit for self-government. There are some in which the native population has become entirely extinct, such as Tasmania, Cuba, and San Domingo; others in which the original inhabitants, still keeping to their old customs and institutions, are guided and exploited by a few white men only; and, finally, colonies in which the rulers and the natives have assimilated with one another, as in Siberia. Once upon a time such tokens of the youth of races as may be seen in rude but remunerative labour on unlimited territory were widespread in many colonies. But the new countries fill up visibly, and even they show that mankind, as a whole, ages the more rapidly the more the so-called progress of civilisation is hastened. However, an examination of the peoples of the present day shows that the differences in age between mother-countries and colonies will, indeed, continue for a long time yet. Such differences exist between west and east Germans as well as between New Englanders and Californians; they are even to be detected in Australia, between the inhabitants of Queensland and of New South Wales. Such differences are shown not only in the characteristics of individuals, but also in the division of land and in methods of labour.
Nations Hold fast to Nature
Divergence and differentiation are the great factors of organic growth. They govern the increase of nations and states from their very beginnings. Since, however, these organisms are composed of independent units, differentiation does not consist in an amalgamation and transformation of individuals, but in their diffusion and grouping. Therefore the differentiation of nations becomes eminently an affair of geography. Never yet has a daughter people left its mother-country to become an independent state without a previous disjunction having taken place. All growth is alteration in area, and, at the same time, change in position. The further growth extends away from the original situation, the sooner dismemberment follows. In Australia, New South Wales spreads out towards the north, and at the new central point, Brisbane, a new colony, Queensland, is formed, which already differs materially from New South Wales. And Queensland itself expands towards the north, beyond the tropic of Capricorn into the torrid zone; and a younger, tropical North Queensland develops.
LANDMARKS OF PAST AGES: FAMOUS FORTRESSES THAT HAVE CEASED TO BE OF USEWith the changing conditions of politics, places once of enormous importance have often become mere curiosities. There are in Europe to-day hundreds of useless castles, fortresses, and harbours. Even Dover Castle is of little strategic value. The fortresses illustrated are (1) Mantua, (2) Dover, (3) Chillon, (4) Calais, (5) Verona.Photographs by Frith and NeurdeinLARGER IMAGE
LANDMARKS OF PAST AGES: FAMOUS FORTRESSES THAT HAVE CEASED TO BE OF USE
With the changing conditions of politics, places once of enormous importance have often become mere curiosities. There are in Europe to-day hundreds of useless castles, fortresses, and harbours. Even Dover Castle is of little strategic value. The fortresses illustrated are (1) Mantua, (2) Dover, (3) Chillon, (4) Calais, (5) Verona.
Photographs by Frith and Neurdein
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The Genius of the Coloniser
The fact that nations hold fast to their natural conditions of existence, even when growth impels them towards expansion in various directions, is a great controlling force in historical movement. Russia expands in its northern zone to the Pacific ocean; England continues its growth on American soil, across the Atlantic, in almost the same latitude. The Phœnicians, as a coast-dwelling people, remained on the coasts and on the islands; the colonising Greeks ever sought out similar situations to those of their native land; the Netherlanders are found everywhere in Northern Germany as colonists of the moors and marshes. All German colonies beyond the Alps and the Vosges have disappeared; and the few Germans that remain are Latinised. Nations that are accustomed to a limited territory, as were the Greeks, always search for a similar limited area; on the other hand, the Romans discovered a main factor of empire-building in their judicious agricultural colonisation of broad plains;and the Russians sought and found in Siberia the endless forests, steppes, and vast rivers of their native land. Every nation, in expanding, seeks to include within its area that which is of the greatest value to it. The victorious state acquires the best positions and drives the conquered race into the poorest districts. For this reason competition between the colonizing nations has become very keen; they all judge of the character of territory according to the same standard. Therefore, wherever England has colonised, only a gleaning remains for the rest of the Northern and Central European Powers.
Differentiation, arising from the valuation of land, is the cause of a constant creation of new political values and of a constant lapsing of old. Every portion of the world has its political value, which, however, may become dormant, and must then be either discovered or awakened. Such a discovery was the selection of the Piræus as the harbour for Athens from among a number of bights and bays.
The World is Being Centralised
Every settlement and every founding of a city is at bottom an awakening of dormant political value. Capacity for recognizing this value is a part of the genius of a statesman, whose policy may be called far-seeing partly because he is able to discern the dormant value while yet on the most distant horizon. It is obvious that political values vary; each is determined by the point of view from which it is looked upon. The French and the German valuations of the Rhine borderland are very different. Every nation endeavours to realise the political value which it recognises; and in respect to political growth, ends are set up in the shape of the portions of the earth to which that growth aspires. Peculiarities in the conformation of states may be traced back to an appreciation of the value of coasts, passes, estuaries, and the like. With the spreading out and the concentration of nations, such portions of the world as are important from a political point of view have marvellously increased both in number and in value. But for this very reason a choice of selection has become necessary, and this we see in the use of fewer Alpine passes during the age of railways than before, and in the concentration of a great commerce into fewer seaports—into such as are capable of accommodating vessels of the deepest draught. Others must withdraw from competition. To-day there are hundreds of worthless harbours, passes, and fortresses in Europe that were once situated on the highways of historical movement; now however, they are avoided, deserted by the current of traffic.
All the Rubbish of Civilisation
There are more things necessary to an understanding of the dependence of history on natural conditions than a mere knowledge of the land upon which the development has taken place, particularly than a mere knowledge of the ground as it was when history found it. Although each country is in itself an independent whole, it is at the same time a link in a chain of actions. It is an organism in itself, and, in respect to a succession or a group of lands forming a whole, of which it is a member, it is also an organ. Sometimes it is more organism than organ; sometimes the opposite is true; and an eternal struggle goes on between organism and organ. If the latter be a subjected province, a tributary state, a daughter country, a colony, or member of a confederation, the striving for independence is always a struggle for existence.
This by no means presupposes a state of war. Not only war, but the outwardly peaceful economic development of the world’s industries reduces organisms to organs. When the wholesale importation of bad but cheap products of European industries into Polynesia or Central Asia causes decay in the production of native arts and crafts, it is a loss to the life of the whole people; henceforth the race will be placed in the same category with tribes that must gather rubber, prepare palm-oil, or hunt elephants to supply European demand, and who in turn must purchase threadbare fabrics, spirits that contain sulphuric acid, worn-out muskets, and old clothes—in a word, all the rubbish of civilisation.
Their economic organisation dies; and in many cases this is also the beginning of the decline and extinction of a people. The weaker organism has succumbed to the more powerful. Is the case so different—that of Athens, unable to live without the corn, wood, and hemp of the lands on the Northern Mediterranean coast?—or of England, whose inhabitants would starve were it not for the importation ofmeat and grain from North America, Eastern Europe, and Australia?
In vain have men sought for characteristics in the rocks of the earth and in the composition of the air by which one land might be distinguished from another.
Underwood and Underwood.MAN’S WONDERFUL TRIUMPH OVER NATUREBy irrigation the arid desert of California has been made to blossom as the rose in the luxurious orange groves of Riverside. These views show the desert, the method of irrigation, and the result of man’s labour.LARGER IMAGE
Underwood and Underwood.
MAN’S WONDERFUL TRIUMPH OVER NATURE
By irrigation the arid desert of California has been made to blossom as the rose in the luxurious orange groves of Riverside. These views show the desert, the method of irrigation, and the result of man’s labour.
LARGER IMAGE
How Man is Levelling the Earth
The idea of great, lasting, conclusive qualitative variations in different parts of the earth is mythical. Neither the Garden of Eden nor the land of Eldorado belongs to reality. There is no country whose soil bestows wondrous strength upon man or an exuberance of fruitfulness upon woman. In India precious stones are as little apt to grow out of the cliffs as silver and gold are likely to exude from fissures in the earth. Nor is there any basis for the slighter differences between the Old World and the New which the philosophers of history of the eighteenth century believed they had discovered. The opinion that the New World produces smaller plants, less powerful animals, and finally a feebler humanity, was not unconditionally rejected by even Alexander von Humboldt. The degeneration and wasting away of the American Indians would certainly be a less disgraceful phenomenon could it be attributed to some great natural law instead of to the injustice,greed, and vices of the white men. In the course of development of the European daughter-nations in America we cannot recognise any such great and universal distinction. The course of history in America, just as in corresponding periods of time in Northern Asia, in Africa, and in Australia, only confirms the belief that lands, no matter how distant from one another they may be, whenever their climates are similar, are destined to be scenes of analogous historical developments.
It is certain that, so far, one of the greatest results of the labour of man has been the levelling and overcoming of natural differences. Steppes are made fertile through irrigation and manuring; the contrast between open and forest land becomes less and less—indeed the destruction of forests is being far too rapidly and widely carried out—the acclimatisation of men, animals, and plants causes variations to disappear more and more as time passes. We can look forward to a time when only such extremes as mountains and deserts will remain—everywhere else the actions of the earth will be equalised. The process by which this is carried out may be described shortly. Man, in spite of all racial and national differences, is fundamentally quite as much of a unity as the soil upon which he dwells; through his labour more and more of this character of unity is transmitted to the earth, which, as a result, also becomes more and more uniform.
History from Heaven to Earth
One of the most powerful of the ties by which history is bound to Nature is that of its dependence on the ground. At the first glance any given historical development is involved with the earth only—the earth upon which the development takes place. But if we search deeper we shall find that the roots of the development extend even to the fundamental principles of the planetary system. By this it is not meant that every history must be founded on a cosmological basis, that it must begin with the creation, or, at least, with the destruction of Troy, as was once thought necessary; but it is certainly safe to say that a philosophy of the history of the human race, worthy of its name, must begin with the heavens and then descend to the earth, filled with the conviction that all existence is fundamentally one—an indivisible conception founded from beginning to end on an identical law.
The 316,250,000 square miles of the earth’s surface is the first area with which history has to do. Within it all other surface dimensions are included; it is the standard for measurement of all other areas, and also comprehends the absolute limits of all bodily life. This area is fixed and immutable so far as the history of mankind is related to it, although in respect to the history of the world it is not to be looked upon as having been unalterable in the past, or as being likely to remain unchanged in the future.
316,250,000 Miles of History
The earth’s surface may be divided into three unlike constituent parts—84,250,000 square miles of land, 220,000,000 square miles of water, and 13,750,000 square miles of ice-covered, and for the greater part unexplored, land and sea in the Northern and Southern Polar regions. The land is the natural home of man, and all his historical movements begin and end upon it. The size of states is computed according to the amount of land which they include; their growth has derived its nourishment from the 84,250,000 square miles of earth as from a widespread fundamental element. The sea is not to be looked upon as an empty space between the divisions of land, merely separating them one from another, for the 220,000,000 square miles of water are also of historical importance, and the area of every ocean and of every portion of an ocean has its historical significance. History has extended itself over the sea, from island to island, from coast to coast, at first crossing narrow bodies of water, later broad oceans; and states whose foundations arose from connections by sea remain dependent on the sea. The Mediterranean held together the different parts of the Roman Empire just as the oceans unite the Colonies of the British Empire.
The variations of the earth’s form from that of a perfect oblate spheroid are so small that they may be entirely disregarded from the point of view of history. All portions of the earth’s surface may be looked upon as of equal curvature; the pyriform swelling which Columbus believed to be a peculiarity of the tropic zones in the New World was merely an optical illusion. Thus all portions are practicallysimilar, and uniformity obtains over the entire earth to such an extent that there is room left only for minor inequalities in configuration. To these belong the differences in level between lands and seas, highlands and lowlands, mountains and valleys. Such variations amount to very little when compared with the earth as a whole; for the height of the tallest of the Himalayas added to the earth’s radius would increase its length by about1⁄700only; and the same may be said of the greatest depressions beneath the level of the sea—inequalities that cannot be represented on an ordinary globe. Their great historical significance is due chiefly to the fact that the oceans and seas occupy the depressions, from which the greatest elevations emerge as vast islands.
Irregular Surface of the Earth
The remaining irregularities of the earth’s surface are not sufficient to produce any permanent variations in the diffusion of races or of states. Their influence is merely negative; they may only hinder or divert the course of man in his wanderings. Even the Himalayas have been crossed—by the Aryans in the west, and by the Tibetans in the east; and British India has extended its boundaries far beyond them to the Pamirs. The historian is concerned with but two of the variable qualities of the land—differences in level and differences in contour. Variations in constitution, development, elementary constituents, and the perpetual phenomena of transformation and dissolution which present a thousand problems to the geographer, scarcely exist for the historian. Nor are those great inequalities, the depressions in which the seas rest, of any interest to him. It is indifferent whether the greatest of such depressions be covered by five miles of water, or, as we now know, by almost six miles. The fact that the Mediterranean reaches its greatest depth in the eastern part of the Ionian Sea has nothing whatever to do with the history of Greece.
Depths of The Sea
To be sure, there is a general connection between the depth of the Mediterranean, shut up within the Straits of Gibraltar, and the climate of the neighbouring regions, which has a direct influence on the inhabitants of Mediterranean countries; but it is a very distant connection, and it is only mentioned here in order to remind the reader that there is not a single phenomenon in Nature that is not brought home to mankind at last. Still, as a rule, history is concerned with the depths of the sea only in so far as they are the resting-places for submarine telegraph cables; and this is a fact of very recent times. It may be said that the formation of the earth’s crust occurred at a period too
remote to have had any influence on the history of man, and that therefore all questions concerning it should be left to geology. The first statement may be admitted, but the latter does not follow by any means; for if the whole Mediterranean region from the Caucasus to the Atlas Mountains, and from the Orontes to the Danube, is a region of uniform conformation, it is purely by reason of a uniformity in development. In the same manner there is an extensive region of uniform conformation to the north, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Sudetic Mountains in Austria.