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by Ellen Churchill Semple
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Title: Influences of Geographic Environment
On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography
Author: Ellen Churchill Semple
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INFLUENCES OF GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT
ON THE BASIS OF RATZEL'S SYSTEM OF
ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY
BY ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE
TO THE MEMORY OF FRIEDRICH RATZEL
Hither, as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light.
MILTON.
PREFACE
The present book, as originally planned over seven years ago, was to be
a simplified paraphrase or restatement of the principles embodied in
Friedrich Ratzel's _Anthropo-Geographie_. The German work is difficult
reading even for Germans. To most English and American students of
geographic environment it is a closed book, a treasure-house bolted and
barred. Ratzel himself realized "that any English form could not be a
literal translation, but must be adapted to the Anglo-Celtic and
especially to the Anglo-American mind." The writer undertook, with
Ratzel's approval, to make such an adapted restatement of the
principles, with a view to making them pass current where they are now
unknown. But the initial stages of the work revealed the necessity of a
radical modification of the original plan.
Ratzel performed the great service of placing anthropo-geography on a
secure scientific basis. He had his forerunners in Montesquieu,
Alexander von Humboldt, Buckle, Ritter, Kohl, Peschel and others; but he
first investigated the subject from the modern scientific point of view,
constructed his system according to the principles of evolution, and
based his conclusions on world-wide inductions, for which his
predecessors did not command the data. To this task he brought thorough
training as a naturalist, broad reading and travel, a profound and
original intellect, and amazing fertility of thought. Yet the field
which he had chosen was so vast, and its material so complex, that even
his big mental grasp could not wholly compass it. His conclusions,
therefore, are not always exhaustive or final.
Moreover, the very fecundity of his ideas often left him no time to test
the validity of his principles. He enunciates one brilliant
generalization after another. Sometimes he reveals the mind of a seer or
poet, throwing out conclusions which are highly suggestive, on the face
of them convincing, but which on examination prove untenable, or at
best must be set down as unproven or needing qualification. But these
were just the slag from the great furnace of his mind, slag not always
worthless. Brilliant and far-reaching as were his conclusions, he did
not execute a well-ordered plan. Rather he grew with his work, and his
work and its problems grew with him. He took a mountain-top view of
things, kept his eyes always on the far horizon, and in the splendid
sweep of his scientific conceptions sometimes overlooked the details
near at hand. Herein lay his greatness and his limitation.
These facts brought the writer face to face with a serious problem.
Ratzel's work needed to be tested, verified. The only solution was to go
over the whole field from the beginning, making research for the data as
from the foundation, and checking off the principles against the facts.
This was especially necessary, because it was not always obvious that
Ratzel had based his inductions on sufficiently broad data; and his
published work had been open to the just criticism of inadequate
citation of authorities. It was imperative, moreover, that any
investigation of geographic environment for the English-speaking world
should meet its public well supported both by facts and authorities,
because that public had not previously known a Ritter or a Peschel.
The writer's own investigation revealed the fact that Ratzel's
principles of anthropo-geography did not constitute a complete,
well-proportioned system. Some aspects of the subject had been developed
exhaustively, these of course the most important; but others had been
treated inadequately, others were merely a hint or an inference, and yet
others were represented by an hiatus. It became necessary, therefor, to
work up certain important themes with a thoroughness commensurate with
their significance, to reduce the scale of others, and to fill up
certain gaps with original contributions to the science. Always it was
necessary to clarify the original statement, where that was adhered to,
and to throw it into the concrete form of expression demanded by the
Anglo-Saxon mind.
One point more. The organic theory of society and state permeates the
_Anthropo-geographie_, because Ratzel formulated his principles at a
time when Herbert Spencer exercised a wide influence upon European
thought. This theory, now generally abandoned by sociologists, had to be
eliminated from any restatement of Ratzel's system. Though it was
applied in the original often in great detail, it stood there
nevertheless rather as a scaffolding around the finished edifice; and
the stability of the structure, after this scaffolding is removed shows
how extraneous to the whole it was. The theory performed, however, a
great service in impressing Ratzel's mind with the life-giving
connection between land and people.
The writer's own method of research has been to compare typical peoples
of all races and all stages of cultural development, living under
similar geographic conditions. If these peoples of different ethnic
stocks but similar environments manifested similar or related social,
economic or historical development, it was reasonable to infer that such
similarities were due to environment and not to race. Thus, by extensive
comparison, the race factor in these problems of two unknown quantities
was eliminated for certain large classes of social and historical
phenomena.
The writer, moreover, has purposely avoided definitions, formulas, and
the enunciation of hard-and-fast rules; and has refrained from any
effort to delimit the field or define the relation of this new science
of anthropo-geography to the older sciences. It is unwise to put tight
clothes on a growing child. The eventual form and scope of the science,
the definition and organization of its material must evolve gradually,
after long years and many efforts of many workers in the field. The
eternal flux of Nature runs through anthropo-geography, and warns
against precipitate or rigid conclusions. But its laws are none the less
well founded because they do not lend themselves to mathematical
finality of statement. For this reason the writer speaks of geographic
factors and influences, shuns the word geographic determinant, and
speaks with extreme caution of geographic control.
The present volume is offered to the public with a deep sense of its
inadequacy; with the realization that some of its principles may have to
be modified or their emphasis altered after wider research; but also
with the hope that this effort may make the way easier for the scholar
who shall some day write the ideal treatise on anthropo-geography.
In my work on this book I have only one person to thank, the great
master who was my teacher and friend during his life, and after his
death my inspiration.
ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE.
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY,
_January_, 1911.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I. OPERATION OF GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS IN HISTORY
Man a product of the earth's surface--Persistent effect of geographic
barriers--Recurrent influences of nature-made highways--Regions of
historical similarity--Persistence of climatic influences--Relation of
geography to history--Multiplicity of geographic factors--Evolution of
geographic relations--Interplay of geographic factors--Direct and
indirect effects of environment--Indirect effects in differentiation of
colonial peoples--General importance of indirect effects--Time
element--Previous habitat--Transplanted religions--Partial response to
environment--The larger conception of environment--Unity of the earth
and the human race.
CHAPTER II. CLASSES OF GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES
Four classes of influences--Physical effects of environment--Stature
and environment--Effects of dominant activities--Physical effects of
climate--Pigmentation in relation to heat and light--Pigmentation
and altitude--Difficulty of generalization from geographic
distribution--Psychical effects--In Religion--In mind and character--In
language--The great man in history--Economic and social effects--Size of
the social group--Effects on movements of peoples--Segregation and
accessibility--Change of habitat.
CHAPTER III. SOCIETY AND STATE IN RELATION TO THE LAND
People and land--Political geography--Political versus social
geography--Land basis of society--Morgan's _societas_--Land bond in
primitive hunter tribes--In fisher tribes--In pastoral tribes--Land and
state--Strength of the land bond in the state--Evolution of land
tenure--Land and food supply--Advance from natural to artificial basis
of subsistence--Land basis in relation to agriculture--Migratory and
sedentary agriculture--Geographic checks to progress in economic and
social development--Native animal and plant life as factors in
progress--Density of population under different cultural and geographic
conditions--Its relation to government--Territorial expansion of the
state--Artificial checks to population--Extra-territorial relations of
state and people--Theory of progress from the standpoint of
geography--Progressive dependence of man upon nature.
CHAPTER IV. MOVEMENTS OF PEOPLES IN THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Universality of such movements--The name Historical Movement--Its
evolution--Its importance in history--Geographical interpretation of
historical movement--Mobility of primitive peoples--Civilization and
mobility--Migration and ethnic mingling--Cultural modification during
migration--The transit land--War as form of historical
movement--Slavery--Military colonies--Withdrawal and flight--Natural
regions of asylum--Emigration and colonization--Commerce as a form of
historical movement--Movements due to religion--Historical movement and
race distribution--Zonal distribution--Movements to like or better
geographic conditions--Their direction--Return movements--Regions of
attraction and repulsion--Psychical influences in certain movements--Two
results of historical movement--Differentiation and
area--Differentiation and isolation--Geographic conditions of
heterogeneity and homogeneity--Assimilation--Elimination of unfit
variants through historical movement--Geographical origins.
CHAPTER V. GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
The importance of geographical location--Content of the term
location--Intercontinental location--Natural versus vicinal
location--Naturally defined location--Vicinal location--Vicinal groups
of similar or diverse race and culture--Thalassic vicinal
location--Complementary locations--Continuous and scattered
location--Central versus peripheral location--Mutual relations between
center and periphery--Inland and coastward expansion--Reaction between
center and periphery--Periphery in colonization--Dominant historical
side--Change of historical front--Contrasted historical sides--One-sided
historical location--Scattered location--Due to adverse geographic
conditions--Island way stations on maritime routes--Scattered location
of primitive peoples--Ethnic islands of expansion and
decline--Discontinuous distribution--Contrasted location--Geographical
polarity--Geographical marks of growth and decline--Interpretation of
scattered and marginal location--Contrast between ethnic islands of
growth and decline.
CHAPTER VI. GEOGRAPHICAL AREA
The size of the earth--Relation of area to life--Area and
differentiation--The struggle for space--National area an index
of social and political development--The Oikoumene--The unity of
the human species in relation to the earth--Isolation and
differentiation--Monotonous race type of small area--Wide race
distribution and inner diversities--Large area a guarantee of racial or
national permanence--Weakness of small states--Protection of large area
to primitive peoples--Contrast of large and small areas in
bio-geography--Political domination of large areas--Area and
literature--Small geographic base of primitive societies--Influence of
small, confined areas--The process of territorial growth--Historical
advance from small to large areas--Gradations in area and in
development--Preliminaries to ethnic and political
expansion--Significance of sphere of influence or activity--Nature of
expansion in new and old countries--Relation of ethnic to political
expansion--Relation of people and state to political boundary--Expansion
of civilization--Cultural advantages of large political
area--Politico-economic advantages--Political area and the national
horizon--National estimates of area--Limitations of small tribal
conceptions--Evolution of territorial policies--Colonial expansion--The
mind of colonials.
CHAPTER VII. GEOGRAPHICAL BOUNDARIES
The boundary zone in Nature--Oscillating boundaries of the habitable
area of the earth--Wallace's Line a typical boundary zone--Boundaries as
limits of expansion--Boundary zone as index of growth or
decline--Breadth of boundary zone--Broad frontier zones of active
expansion--Value of barrier boundaries--The sea as the absolute
boundary--Natural boundaries as bases of ethnic and political
boundaries--Primitive waste boundaries--Alien intrusions into border
wastes--Politico-economic significance of the waste boundary--Common
boundary districts--Tariff free zones--Boundary zones of mingled race
elements--Assimilation of civilization in boundary zones--Relation of
ethnic and cultural assimilation--The border zone of assimilation in
political expansion--Tendency toward defection along political
frontiers--The spirit of colonial frontiers--Free border states as
political survivals--Guardians of the marches--Lawless citizens deported
to political frontiers--Drift of lawless elements to the
frontiers--Asylums beyond the border.
CHAPTER VIII. COAST PEOPLES
The coast a zone of transition--The inner edge--Shifting of the inner
edge--Outer edge in original settlement--In early navigation--In
colonization--Inland advance of colonies--Interpenetration of land and
sea--Ratio of shore-line to area--Criticism of the
formula--Accessibility of coasts from hinterland--Accessibility of
coasts from the sea--Embayed coasts--Contrasted coastal belts--Evolution
of ports--Influence of offshore islands--Previous habitat of
coast-dwellers--Habitability of coasts as a factor in maritime
development--Geographic conditions for brilliant maritime
development--Scope and importance of seaward expansion--Ethnic contrast
between coast and interior peoples--Ethnic amalgamations of
coastlands--_Lingua franca_ a product of coasts--Coast-dwellers as
middlemen--Differentiation of coast from inland people--Early
civilization of coasts--Progress from thalassic to oceanic
coasts--Importance of geographic location of coasts--Historical decline
of certain coasts--Complex interplay of geographic factors in
coastlands.
CHAPTER IX. OCEANS AND ENCLOSED SEAS
The water a factor in man's mobility--Oceans and seas the factor of
union in universal history--Origin of navigation--Primitive
forms--Relation of river to marine navigation--Retarded and advanced
navigation--Geographic conditions in Polynesia--Mediterranean versus
Atlantic seamanship--Three geographic stages of maritime
development--Enclosed seas as areas of ethnic and cultural
assimilation--Assimilation facilitated by ethnic kinship--Importance of
zonal and continental location of enclosed seas--Thalassic character of
the Indian Ocean--Limitations of small area in enclosed seas--Successive
maritime periods in history--Contrasted historical roles of northern and
southern hemispheres--Size of the ocean--Neutrality of the seas--_Mare
clausum and Mare liberum_.
CHAPTER X. MAN'S RELATION TO THE WATER
The protection of a water frontier--Pile villages of ancient
times--Modern pile dwellings--Their geographic
distribution--River-dwellers in old and popular lands--Man's
encroachment upon the sea by reclamation of land--The struggle with the
water--Mound villages in river flood-plains--Social and political gain
by control of the water--A factor in early civilization of arid
lands--The economy of the water--Fisheries--Factors in maritime
expansion--Fisheries as nurseries of seamen--Anthropo-geographic
importance of navigation.
CHAPTER XI. THE ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY OF RIVERS
Rivers as intermediaries between land and sea--Sea navigation merges
into river navigation--Historical importance of seas and oceans
influenced by their debouching streams--Lack of coast articulations
supplied by rivers--River highways as basis of commercial
preeminence--Importance of rivers in large countries--Rivers as highways
of expansion--Determinants of routes in arid or semi-arid
lands--Increasing historical importance of rivers from source to
mouth--Value of location at hydrographic centers--Effect of current upon
trade and expansion--Importance of mouth to upstream people--Prevention
of monopoly of river mouths--Motive for canals in lower
course--Watershed canals for extension of inland waterways--Rivers and
railroads--Natural unity of every river system--In arid lands as common
source of water supply--Tendency towards ethnic and cultural unity in a
river valley--Identity of country with river valley--Rivers as
boundaries of races and peoples--Rivers as political boundaries--Fluvial
settlements and peoples--Boatman tribes or castes--River islands as
protected sites--River and lake islands as robber strongholds--River
peninsulas--River islands as sites of trading posts and colonies--Swamps
as barriers and boundaries--Swamps as regions of survivals--Swamps as
places of refuge--The spirit of the marshes--Economic and political
importance of lakes--Lakes as nuclei of states--Lakes as fresh-water
seas.
CHAPTER XII. CONTINENTS AND THEIR PENINSULAS
Insularity of the land-masses--Classification of land-masses according
to size and location--Effect of the size of land-masses--Independence
due to location versus independence due to size--Continental convergence
and ethnic kinship--Africa's location--The Atlantic abyss--Geographical
character of the Pacific--Pacific affinities of North America--The
Atlantic face of America as the infant Orient of the world--The Atlantic
abyss in the movements of peoples--Races and continents--Contrast of the
northern and southern continents--Effects of continental structure upon
historical development--Structure of North and South America--Cultural
superiority of Pacific slope Indians--Coast articulations of
continents--Importance of size in continental articulations--Peninsular
conditions most favorable to historical development--The continental
base of peninsulas--Continental base a zone of transition--Continental
base the scene of invasion and war--Peninsular extremities as areas of
isolation--Ethnic unity of peninsulas--Peninsulas as intermediaries.
CHAPTER XIII. ISLAND PEOPLES
Physical relationship between islands and peninsulas--Character of
insular flora and fauna--Paradoxical influences of island habitat on
man--Conservative and radical tendencies born of isolation and
accessibility--Islands as nurseries and disseminators of distinctive
civilizations--Limitation of small area in insular history--Sources of
ethnic stock of islands on nearest mainland. Ethnic divergence with
increased isolation--Differentiation of peoples and civilizations in
islands--Differentiation of language--Unification of race in
islands--Remoter sources of island populations--Double sources--Mixed
population of small thalassic isles--Significant location of island way
stations--Thalassic islands as goals of maritime expansion--Political
detachability of islands--Insular weakness based upon small area--Island
fragments of broken empires--Area and location as factors in political
autonomy of islands--Historical effects of island isolation in primitive
retardation--Later stimulation of development--Excessive
isolation--Protection of an island environment--Islands as places of
refuge--Islands as places of survival--Effects of small area in
islands--Economic limitations of their small area--Dense population of
islands--Geographic causes of this density--Oceanic climate as
factor--Relation of density to size--Density affected by a focal
location for trade--Overflow of island population and colonies to the
mainland--Precocious development of island agriculture--Intensive
tillage--Emigration and colonization from islands--Recent emigration
from islands--Maritime enterprise as outlet--Artificial checks to
population--Polyandry--Infanticide--Low valuation of human life.
CHAPTER XIV. PLAINS, STEPPES AND DESERTS
Relief of the sea floor--Mean elevations of the continents--Distribution
of relief--Homologous reliefs and homologous
histories--Anthropo-geography of lowlands--Extensive plains unfavorable
to early development--Conditions for fusion in plains--Retardation due
to monotonous environment--Influence of slight geographic features in
plains--Plains and political expansion--Arid plains--Nomadism--Pastoral
life--Pastoral nomads of Arctic plains--Historical importance of steppe
nomads--Mobility of pastoral nomads--Seasonal migrations--Marauding
expeditions--Forms of defense against nomad depredations--Pastoral life
as a training for soldiers--Capacity for political organization and
consolidation--Centralization versus decentralization in
nomadism--Spirit of independence among nomads--Resistance to
conquest--Curtailment of nomadism--Supplementary agriculture of pastoral
nomadism--Irrigation and horticulture--Scant diet of nomads--Effects of
a diminishing water supply--Checks to population--Trade of
nomads--Pastoral nomads as middlemen--Desert markets--Nomad
industries--Arid lands as areas of arrested development--Mental and
moral qualities of nomads--Religion of pastoral nomads.
CHAPTER XV. MOUNTAIN BARRIERS AND THEIR PASSES
Man as part of the mobile envelope of the earth--Inaccessibility of
mountains--Mountains as transit regions--Transition forms of relief
between highlands and lowlands--Piedmont belts as boundary
zones--Density of population in piedmont belts--Piedmont towns and
cities--Piedmonts as colonial or backwoods frontiers--Mountain
carriers--Power of mountain barriers to block or deflect historical
movement--Significance of mountain valleys--Longitudinal valleys--Passes
in mountain barriers--Breadth of mountain barriers--Dominant
transmontane routes--Height and form of mountain barriers--Contrasted
accessibility of opposite slopes--Political and ethnic
effects--Persistence of barrier nature--Importance of mountain
passes--Geographic conditions affecting the historical importance of
passes--Passes determine the transmontane routes--Navigable river
approaches to passes--Types of settlement in the valley approaches--Pass
cities and their markets--Pass peoples--Their political importance.
CHAPTER XVI. INFLUENCES OF A MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENT
Zones of altitude--Politico-economic value of a varied relief--Belief
and climate--Altitude zones of economic and cultural
development--Altitude and density belts in tropical
highlands--Increasing density where altitude confers safety--Geographic
conditions affecting density of mountain population--Terrace
agriculture--Its geographical distribution--Terrace agriculture in
mountainous islands--Among savage peoples--Fertilizing terrace
lands--Economy of level land--Mountain pastures and stock-raising--Life
and industry of the summer herdsmen--Communal ownership of mountain
pastures--Hay making in high mountains--Winter industries of mountain
peoples--Overpopulation and emigration--Preventive checks to increase of
population--Religious celibacy--Polyandry--Marauding tendencies in
mountaineers--Historical consequences of mountain raiding--Conquest of
mountain regions--Political dismemberment of mountain peoples--Types of
mountain states--Significance of their small size--Mountain isolation
and differentiation--Survival of primitive races in mountains--Diversity
of peoples and dialects--Constriction of mountain areas of ethnic
survival--Isolation and retardation of mountain regions--Mental and
moral qualities of mountain people.
CHAPTER XVII. THE INFLUENCES OF CLIMATE UPON MAN
Importance of climatic influences--Climate in the interplay of
geographic factors--Its direct and indirect effects--Climate determines
the habitable area of the earth--Effect of climate upon relief and hence
upon man--Man's adaptability to climatic extremes--Temperature as
modified by oceans and winds--Rainfall--Temperature and zonal
location--Mutual reactions of contrasted zones--Isothermal lines in
anthropo-geography--Historical effects of compressed
isotherms--Historical effects of slight climatic differences--Their
influence upon distribution of immigration--Temperature and race
temperament--Complexity of this problem--Monotonous climatic
conditions--Effects of Arctic cold--Effect of monotonous heat--The
tropics as goals of migration--The problem of
acclimatization--Historical importance of the temperate zone--Contrast
of the seasons--Duration of the seasons--Effect of long winters and long
summers--Zones of culture--Temperate zone as cradle of civilization
INDEX
LIST OF MAPS.
DENSITY OF POPULATION IN THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE 8
DENSITY OF POPULATION IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE 9
POWELL'S MAP OF INDIAN LINGUISTIC STOCKS 54
PRIMITIVE INDIAN STOCKS OF SOUTH AMERICA 101
ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF INDIA 102
ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF ASIA 103
ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF AFRICA 105
DISTRIBUTION OF WILD AND CIVILIZED TRIBES IN THE PHILIPPINES 147
DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION IN THE PROVINCE OF FINMARKEN 153
DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1800 156
THE SLAV-GERMAN BOUNDARY IN EUROPE 223
ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF RUSSIA 225
THE GERMAN NORTH SEA COAST 243
ANCIENT PHOENICIAN AND GREEK COLONIES 251
RIPARIAN VILLAGES OF THE LOWER ST. LAWRENCE 365
LAKE OF THE FOUR FOREST CANTONS 374
THE ANNUAL RAINFALL OF THE WORLD 484
THE CULTURAL REGIONS OF AFRICA AND ARABIA 487
DISTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS IN THE OLD WORLD 513
DENSITY OF POPULATION IN ITALY 559
MEAN ANNUAL ISOTHERMS AND HEAT BELTS 612
CHAPTER I
THE OPERATION OF GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS IN HISTORY
[Sidenote: Man a product of the earth's surface.]
Man is a product of the earth's surface. This means not merely that he
is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has
mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted
him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his
wits, given him his problems of navigation or irrigation, and at the
same time whispered hints for their solution. She has entered into his
bone and tissue, into his mind and soul. On the mountains she has given
him leg muscles of iron to climb the slope; along the coast she has left
these weak and flabby, but given him instead vigorous development of
chest and arm to handle his paddle or oar. In the river valley she
attaches him to the fertile soil, circumscribes his ideas and ambitions
by a dull round of calm, exacting duties, narrows his outlook to the
cramped horizon of his farm. Up on the wind-swept plateaus, in the
boundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of the
desert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasis
to oasis, where life knows much hardship but escapes the grind of
drudgery, where the watching of grazing herd gives him leisure for
contemplation, and the wide-ranging life a big horizon, his ideas take
on a certain gigantic simplicity; religion becomes monotheism, God
becomes one, unrivalled like the sand of the desert and the grass of the
steppe, stretching on and on without break or change. Chewing over and
over the cud of his simple belief as the one food of his unfed mind, his
faith becomes fanaticism; his big spacial ideas, born of that ceaseless
regular wandering, outgrow the land that bred them and bear their
legitimate fruit in wide imperial conquests.
Man can no more be scientifically studied apart from the ground which he
tills, or the lands over which he travels, or the seas over which he
trades, than polar bear or desert cactus can be understood apart from
its habitat. Man's relations to his environment are infinitely more
numerous and complex than those of the most highly organized plant or
animal. So complex are they that they constitute a legitimate and
necessary object of special study. The investigation which they receive
in anthropology, ethnology, sociology and history is piecemeal and
partial, limited as to the race, cultural development, epoch, country or
variety of geographic conditions taken into account. Hence all these
sciences, together with history so far as history undertakes to explain
the causes of events, fail to reach a satisfactory solution of their
problems largely because the geographic factor which enters into them
all has not been thoroughly analyzed. Man has been so noisy about the
way he has "conquered Nature," and Nature has been so silent in her
persistent influence over man, that the geographic factor in the
equation of human development has been overlooked.
[Sidenote: Stability of geographic factors in history.]
In every problem of history there are two main factors, variously stated
as heredity and environment, man and his geographic conditions, the
internal forces of race and the external forces of habitat. Now the
geographic element in the long history of human development has been
operating strongly and operating persistently. Herein lies its
importance. It is a stable force. It never sleeps. This natural
environment, this physical basis of history, is for all intents and
purposes immutable in comparison with the other factor in the
problem--shifting, plastic, progressive, retrogressive man.
[Sidenote: Persistent effect of remoteness.]
History tends to repeat itself largely owing to this steady, unchanging
geographic element. If the ancient Roman consul in far-away Britain
often assumed an independence of action and initiative unknown in the
provincial governors of Gaul, and if, centuries later, Roman Catholicism
in England maintained a similar independence towards the Holy See, both
facts have their cause in the remoteness of Britain from the center of
political or ecclesiastical power in Rome. If the independence of the
Roman consul in Britain was duplicated later by the attitude of the
Thirteen Colonies toward England, and again within the young Republic by
the headstrong self-reliance, impatient of government authority, which
characterized the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths in their
aggressive Indian policy, and led them to make war and conclude treaties
for the cession of land like sovereign states; and if this attitude of
independence in the over-mountain men reappeared in a spirit of
political defection looking toward secession from the Union and a new
combination with their British neighbor on the Great Lakes or the
Spanish beyond the Mississippi, these are all the identical effects of
geographical remoteness made yet more remote by barriers of mountain and
sea. This is the long reach which weakens the arm of authority, no
matter what the race or country or epoch.
[Sidenote: Effect of proximity.]
As with geographical remoteness, so it is with geographical proximity.
The history of the Greek peninsula and the Greek people, because of
their location at the threshold of the Orient, has contained a
constantly recurring Asiatic element. This comes out most often as a
note of warning; like the _motif_ of Ortrud in the opera of
"Lohengrin," it mingles ominously in every chorus of Hellenic
enterprise or paean of Hellenic victory, and finally swells into a
national dirge at the Turkish conquest of the peninsula. It comes out
in the legendary history of the Argonautic Expedition and the Trojan
War; in the arrival of Phoenician Cadmus and Phrygian Pelops in
Grecian lands; in the appearance of Tyrian ships on the coast of the
Peloponnesus, where they gather the purple-yielding murex and kidnap
Greek women. It appears more conspicuously in the Asiatic sources of
Greek culture; more dramatically in the Persian Wars, in the retreat
of Xenophon's Ten Thousand, in Alexander's conquest of Asia, and
Hellenic domination of Asiatic trade through Syria to the
Mediterranean. Again in the thirteenth century the lure of the
Levantine trade led Venice and Genoa to appropriate certain islands
and promontories of Greece as commercial bases nearer to Asia. In 1396
begins the absorption of Greece into the Asiatic empire of the Turks,
the long dark eclipse of sunny Hellas, till it issues from the shadow
in 1832 with the achievement of Greek independence.
[Sidenote: Persistent effect of natural barriers.]
If the factor is not one of geographical location, but a natural
barrier, such as a mountain system or a desert, its effect is just as
persistent. The upheaved mass of the Carpathians served to divide the
westward moving tide of the Slavs into two streams, diverting one into
the maritime plain of northern Germany and Poland, the other into the
channel of the Danube Valley which guided them to the Adriatic and the
foot of the Alps. This same range checked the westward advance of the
mounted Tartar hordes. The Alps long retarded Roman expansion into
central Europe, just as they delayed and obstructed the southward
advance of the northern barbarians. Only through the partial breaches in
the wall known as passes did the Alps admit small, divided bodies of the
invaders, like the Cimbri and Teutons, who arrived, therefore, with
weakened power and at intervals, so that the Roman forces had time to
gather their strength between successive attacks, and thus prolonged the
life of the declining empire. So in the Middle Ages, the Alpine barrier
facilitated the resistance of Italy to the German emperors, trying to
enforce their claim upon this ancient seat of the Holy Roman Empire.
It was by river-worn valleys leading to passes in the ridge that
Etruscan trader, Roman legion, barbarian horde, and German army crossed
the Alpine ranges. To-day well-made highways and railroads converge upon
these valley paths and summit portals, and going is easier; but the Alps
still collect their toll, now in added tons of coal consumed by engines
and in higher freight rates, instead of the ancient imposts of physical
exhaustion paid by pack animal and heavily accoutred soldier. Formerly
these mountains barred the weak and timid; to-day they bar the poor, and
forbid transit to all merchandise of large bulk and small value which
can not pay the heavy transportation charges. Similarly, the wide
barrier of the Rockies, prior to the opening of the first overland
railroad, excluded all but strong-limbed and strong-hearted pioneers
from the fertile valleys of California and Oregon, just as it excludes
coal and iron even from the Colorado mines, and checks the free
movement of laborers to the fields and factories of California, thereby
tightening the grip of the labor unions upon Pacific coast industries.
[Sidenote: Persistent effect of nature-made highways.]
As the surface of the earth presents obstacles, so it offers channels
for the easy movement of humanity, grooves whose direction determines
the destination of aimless, unplanned migrations, and whose termini
become, therefore, regions of historical importance. Along these
nature-made highways history repeats itself. The maritime plain of
Palestine has been an established route of commerce and war from the
time of Sennacherib to Napoleon.[1] The Danube Valley has admitted to
central Europe a long list of barbarian invaders, covering the period
from Attila the Hun to the Turkish besiegers of Vienna in 1683. The
history of the Danube Valley has been one of warring throngs, of
shifting political frontiers, and unassimilated races; but as the river
is a great natural highway, every neighboring state wants to front upon
it and strives to secure it as a boundary.
The movements of peoples constantly recur to these old grooves. The
unmarked path of the voyageur's canoe, bringing out pelts from Lake
Superior to the fur market at Montreal, is followed to-day by whaleback
steamers with their cargoes of Manitoba wheat. To-day the Mohawk
depression through the northern Appalachians diverts some of Canada's
trade from the Great Lakes to the Hudson, just as in the seventeenth
century it enabled the Dutch at New Amsterdam and later the English at
Albany to tap the fur trade of Canada's frozen forests. Formerly a line
of stream and portage, it carries now the Erie Canal and New York
Central Railroad.[2] Similarly the narrow level belt of land extending
from the mouth of the Hudson to the eastern elbow of the lower Delaware,
defining the outer margin of the rough hill country of northern New
Jersey and the inner margin of the smooth coastal plain, has been from
savage days such a natural thoroughfare. Here ran the trail of the
Lenni-Lenapi Indians; a little later, the old Dutch road between New
Amsterdam and the Delaware trading-posts; yet later the King's Highway
from New York to Philadelphia. In 1838 it became the route of the
Delaware and Raritan Canal, and more recently of the Pennsylvania
Railroad between New York and Philadelphia.[3]
The early Aryans, in their gradual dispersion over northwestern India,
reached the Arabian Sea chiefly by a route running southward from the
Indus-Ganges divide, between the eastern border of the Rajputana Desert
and the western foot of the Aravalli Hills. The streams flowing down
from this range across the thirsty plains unite to form the Luni River,
which draws a dead-line to the advance of the desert. Here a smooth and
well-watered path brought the early Aryans of India to a fertile coast
along the Gulf of Cambay.[4] In the palmy days of the Mongol Empire
during the seventeenth century, and doubtless much earlier, it became an
established trade route between the sea and the rich cities of the upper
Ganges.[5] Recently it determined the line of the Rajputana Railroad
from the Gulf of Cambay to Delhi.[6] Barygaza, the ancient seaboard
terminus of this route, appears in Pliny's time as the most famous
emporium of western India, the resort of Greek and Arab merchants.[7] It
reappears later in history with its name metamorphosed to Baroche or
Broach, where in 1616 the British established a factory for trade,[8]
but is finally superseded, under Portuguese and English rule, by nearby
Surat. Thus natural conditions fix the channels in which the stream of
humanity most easily moves, determine within certain limits the
direction of its flow, the velocity and volume of its current. Every new
flood tends to fit itself approximately into the old banks, seeks first
these lines of least resistance, and only when it finds them blocked or
pre-empted does it turn to more difficult paths.
[Sidenote: Regions of historical similarity.]
Geographical environment, through the persistence of its influence,
acquires peculiar significance. Its effect is not restricted to a given
historical event or epoch, but, except when temporarily met by some
strong counteracting force, tends to make itself felt under varying
guise in all succeeding history. It is the permanent element in the
shifting fate of races. Islands show certain fundamental points of
agreement which can be distinguished in the economic, ethnic and
historical development of England, Japan, Melanesian Fiji, Polynesian
New Zealand, and pre-historic Crete. The great belt of deserts and
steppes extending across the Old World gives us a vast territory of rare
historical uniformity. From time immemorial they have borne and bred
tribes of wandering herdsmen; they have sent out the invading hordes
who, in successive waves of conquest, have overwhelmed the neighboring
river lowlands of Eurasia and Africa. They have given birth in turn to
Scythians, Indo-Aryans, Avars, Huns, Saracens, Tartars and Turks, as to
the Tuareg tribes of the Sahara, the Sudanese and Bantu folk of the
African grasslands. But whether these various peoples have been Negroes,
Hamites, Semites, Indo-Europeans or Mongolians, they have always been
pastoral nomads. The description given by Herodotus of the ancient
Scythians is applicable in its main features to the Kirghis and Kalmuck
who inhabit the Caspian plains to-day. The environment of this dry
grassland operates now to produce the same mode of life and social
organization as it did 2,400 years ago; stamps the cavalry tribes of
Cossacks as it did the mounted Huns, energizes its sons by its dry
bracing air, toughens them by its harsh conditions of life, organizes
them into a mobilized army, always moving with its pastoral
commissariat. Then when population presses too hard upon the meager
sources of subsistence, when a summer drought burns the pastures and
dries up the water-holes, it sends them forth on a mission of conquest,
to seek abundance in the better watered lands of their agricultural
neighbors. Again and again the productive valleys of the Hoangho, Indus,
Ganges, Tigris and Euphrates, Nile, Volga, Dnieper and Danube have been
brought into subjection by the imperious nomads of arid Asia, just as
the "hoe-people" of the Niger and upper Nile have so often been
conquered by the herdsmen of the African grasslands. Thus, regardless of
race or epoch--Hyksos or Kaffir--history tends to repeat itself in these
rainless tracts, and involves the better watered districts along their
borders when the vast tribal movements extend into these peripheral
lands.
[Illustration: DENSITY OF POPULATION IN EASTERN HEMISPHERE]
[Illustration: DENSITY OF POPULATION IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE]
[Sidenote: Climatic influences.]
Climatic influences are persistent, often obdurate in their control.
Arid regions permit agriculture and sedentary life only through
irrigation. The economic prosperity of Egypt to-day depends as
completely upon the distribution of the Nile waters as in the days of
the Pharaohs. The mantle of the ancient Egyptian priest has fallen upon
the modern British engineer. Arctic explorers have succeeded only by
imitating the life of the Eskimos, adopting their clothes, food, fuel,
dwellings, and mode of travel. Intense cold has checked both native and
Russian development over that major portion of Siberia lying north of
the mean annual isotherm of degree C. (32 degrees F.); and it has had a
like effect in the corresponding part of Canada. (Compare maps pages 8
and 9.) It allows these sub-arctic lands scant resources and a
population of less than two to the square mile. Even with the intrusion
of white colonial peoples, it perpetuates the savage economy of the
native hunting tribes, and makes the fur trader their modern exploiter,
whether he be the Cossack tribute-gatherer of the lower Lena River, or
the factor of the Hudson Bay Company. The assimilation tends to be
ethnic as well as economic, because the severity of the climate excludes
the white woman. The debilitating effects of heat and humidity, aided by
tropical diseases, soon reduce intruding peoples to the dead level of
economic inefficiency characteristic of the native races. These, as the
fittest, survive and tend to absorb the new-comers, pointing to
hybridization as the simplest solution of the problem of tropical
colonization.
[Sidenote: The relation of geography to history.]
The more the comparative method is applied to the study of
history--and this includes a comparison not only of different
countries, but also of successive epochs in the same country--the more
apparent becomes the influence of the soil in which humanity is
rooted, the more permanent and necessary is that influence seen to be.
Geography's claim to make scientific investigation of the physical
conditions of historical events is then vindicated. "Which was there
first, geography or history?" asks Kant. And then comes his answer:
"Geography lies at the basis of history." The two are inseparable.
History takes for its field of investigation human events in various
periods of time; anthropo-geography studies existence in various
regions of terrestrial space. But all historical development takes
place on the earth's surface, and therefore is more or less molded by
its geographic setting. Geography, to reach accurate conclusions, must
compare the operation of its factors in different historical periods
and at different stages of cultural development. It therefore regards
history in no small part as a succession of geographical factors
embodied in events. Back of Massachusetts' passionate abolition
movement, it sees the granite soil and boulder-strewn fields of New
England; back of the South's long fight for the maintenance of
slavery, it sees the rich plantations of tidewater Virginia and the
teeming fertility of the Mississippi bottom lands. This is the
significance of Herder's saying that "history is geography set into
motion." What is to-day a fact of geography becomes to-morrow a factor
of history. The two sciences cannot be held apart without doing
violence to both, without dismembering what is a natural, vital whole.
All historical problems ought to be studied geographically and all
geographic problems must be studied historically. Every map has its
date. Those in the Statistical Atlas of the United States showing the
distribution of population from 1790 to 1890 embody a mass of history
as well as of geography. A map of France or the Russian Empire has a
long historical perspective; and on the other hand, without that map
no change of ethnic or political boundary, no modification in routes
of communication, no system of frontier defences or of colonization,
no scheme of territorial aggrandizement can be understood.
[Sidenote: Multiplicity of geographic factors.]
The study of physical environment as a factor in history was
unfortunately brought into disrepute by extravagant and ill-founded
generalization, before it became the object of investigation according
to modern scientific methods. And even to-day principles advanced in the
name of anthropo-geography are often superficial, inaccurate, based upon
a body of data too limited as to space and time, or couched in terms of
unqualified statement which exposes them to criticism or refutation.
Investigators in this field, moreover, are prone to get a squint in
their eye that makes them see one geographic factor to the exclusion of
the rest; whereas it belongs to the very nature of physical environment
to combine a whole group of influences, working all at the same time
under the law of the resolution of forces. In this plexus of influences,
some operate in one direction and some in another; now one loses its
beneficent effect like a medicine long used or a garment outgrown;
another waxes in power, reinforced by a new geographic factor which has
been released from dormancy by the expansion of the known world, or the
progress of invention and of human development.
[Sidenote: Evolution of geographic relations.]
These complex geographic influences cannot be analyzed and their
strength estimated except from the standpoint of evolution. That is one
reason these half-baked geographic principles rest heavy on our mental
digestion. They have been formulated without reference to the
all-important fact that the geographical relations of man, like his
social and political organization, are subject to the law of
development. Just as the embryo state found in the primitive Saxon tribe
has passed through many phases in attaining the political character of
the present British Empire, so every stage in this maturing growth has
been accompanied or even preceded by a steady evolution of the
geographic relations of the English people.
Owing to the evolution of geographic relations, the physical environment
favorable to one stage of development may be adverse to another, and
_vice versa_. For instance, a small, isolated and protected habitat,
like that of Egypt, Phoenicia, Crete and Greece, encourages the birth
and precocious growth of civilization; but later it may cramp progress,
and lend the stamp of arrested development to a people who were once the
model for all their little world. Open and wind-swept Russia, lacking
these small, warm nurseries where Nature could cuddle her children, has
bred upon its boundless plains a massive, untutored, homogeneous folk,
fed upon the crumbs of culture that have fallen from the richer tables
of Europe. But that item of area is a variable quantity in the equation.
It changes its character at a higher stage of cultural development.
Consequently, when the Muscovite people, instructed by the example of
western Europe, shall have grown up intellectually, economically and
politically to their big territory, its area will become a great
national asset. Russia will come into its own, heir to a long-withheld
inheritance. Many of its previous geographic disadvantages will vanish,
like the diseases of childhood, while its massive size will dwarf many
previous advantages of its European neighbors.
[Sidenote: Evolution of world relations.]
This evolution of geographic relations applies not only to the local
environment, but also to the wider world relations of a people. Greeks
and Syrians, English and Japanese, take a different rank among the
nations of the earth to-day from that held by their ancestors 2,000 years
ago, simply because the world relations of civilized peoples have been
steadily expanding since those far-back days of Tyrian and Athenian
supremacy. The period of maritime discoveries in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries shifted the foci of the world relations of European
states from enclosed seas to the rim of the Atlantic. Venice and Genoa
gave way to Cadiz and Lagos, just as sixteen centuries before Corinth
and Athens had yielded their ascendency to Rome and Ostia. The keen but
circumscribed trade of the Baltic, which gave wealth and historical
preeminence to Luebeck and the other Hanse Towns of northern Germany from
the twelfth to the seventeenth century, lost its relative importance
when the Atlantic became the maritime field of history. Maritime
leadership passed westward from Luebeck and Stralsund to Amsterdam and
Bristol, as the historical horizon widened. England, prior to this
sudden dislocation, lay on the outskirts of civilized Europe, a terminal
land, not a focus. The peripheral location which retarded her early
development became a source of power when she accumulated sufficient
density of population for colonizing enterprises, and when maritime
discovery opened a way to trans-oceanic lands.[9]
Meanwhile, local geographic advantages in the old basins remain the
same, although they are dwarfed by the development of relatively greater
advantages elsewhere. The broken coastline, limited area and favorable
position of Greece make its people to-day a nation of seamen, and enable
them to absorb by their considerable merchant fleet a great part of the
trade of the eastern Mediterranean,[10] just as they did in the days of
Pericles; but that youthful Aegean world which once constituted so large
a part of the _oikoumene_, has shrunken to a modest province, and its
highways to local paths. The coast cities of northern Germany still
maintain a large commerce in the Baltic, but no longer hold the
pre-eminence of the old Hanse Towns. The glory of the Venetian Adriatic
is gone; but that the sea has still a local significance is proven by
the vast sums spent by Austria and Hungary on their hand-made harbors of
Trieste and Fiume.[11] The analytical geographer, therefore, while
studying a given combination of geographic forces, must be prepared for
a momentous readjustment and a new interplay after any marked turning
point in the economic, cultural, or world relations of a people.
[Sidenote: Interplay of geographic factors.]
Skepticism as to the effect of geographic conditions upon human
development is apparently justifiable, owing to the multiplicity of the
underlying causes and the difficulty of distinguishing between stronger
and weaker factors on the one hand, as between permanent and temporary
effects on the other. We see the result, but find it difficult to state
the equation producing this result. But the important thing is to avoid
seizing upon one or two conspicuous geographic elements in the problem
and ignoring the rest. The physical environment of a people consists of
all the natural conditions to which they have been subjected, not merely
a part. Geography admits no single blanket theory. The slow historical
development of the Russian folk has been due to many geographic
causes--to excess of cold and deficiency of rain, an outskirt location
on the Asiatic border of Europe exposed to the attacks of nomadic
hordes, a meager and, for the most part, ice-bound coast which was
slowly acquired, an undiversified surface, a lack of segregated regions
where an infant civilization might be cradled, and a vast area of
unfenced plains wherein the national energies spread out thin and
dissipated themselves. The better Baltic and Black Sea coasts, the
fertility of its Ukraine soil, and location next to wide-awake Germany
along the western frontier have helped to accelerate progress, but the
slow-moving body carried too heavy a drag.
[Sidenote: Land and sea in co-operation.]
The law of the resolutions of forces applies in geography as in the
movement of planets. Failure to recognize this fact often enables
superficial critics of anthropo-geography to make a brave show of
argument. The analysis of these interacting forces and of their various
combinations requires careful investigation. Let us consider the
interplay of the forces of land and sea apparent in every country with
a maritime location. In some cases a small, infertile, niggardly country
conspires with a beckoning sea to drive its sons out upon the deep; in
others a wide territory with a generous soil keeps its well-fed children
at home and silences the call of the sea. In ancient Phoenicia and
Greece, in Norway, Finland, New England, in savage Chile and Tierra del
Fuego, and the Indian coast district of British Columbia and southern
Alaska, a long, broken shoreline, numerous harbors, outlying islands,
abundant timber for the construction of ships, difficult communication
by land, all tempted the inhabitants to a seafaring life. While the sea
drew, the land drove in the same direction. There a hilly or mountainous
interior putting obstacles in the way of landward expansion, sterile
slopes, a paucity of level, arable land, an excessive or deficient
rainfall withholding from agriculture the reward of tillage--some or all
of these factors combined to compel the inhabitants to seek on the sea
the livelihood denied by the land. Here both forces worked in the same
direction.
In England conditions were much the same, and from the sixteenth century
produced there a predominant maritime development which was due not
solely to a long indented coastline and an exceptional location for
participating in European and American trade. Its limited island area,
its large extent of rugged hills and chalky soil fit only for pasturage,
and the lack of a really generous natural endowment,[12] made it slow to
answer the demands of a growing population, till the industrial
development of the nineteenth century exploited its mineral wealth. So
the English turned to the sea--to fish, to trade, to colonize. Holland's
conditions made for the same development. She united advantages of
coastline and position with a small infertile territory, consisting
chiefly of water-soaked grazing lands. When at the zenith of her
maritime development, a native authority estimated that the soil of
Holland could not support more than one-eighth of her inhabitants. The
meager products of the land had to be eked out by the harvest of the
sea. Fish assumed an important place in the diet of the Dutch, and when
a process of curing it was discovered, laid the foundation of Holland's
export trade. A geographical location central to the Baltic and North
Sea countries, and accessible to France and Portugal, combined with a
position at the mouth of the great German rivers made it absorb the
carrying trade of northern Europe.[13] Land and sea cooeperated in its
maritime development.
[Sidenote: Land and sea opposed.]
Often the forces of land and sea are directly opposed. If a country's
geographic conditions are favorable to agriculture and offer room for
growth of population, the land forces prevail, because man is primarily
a terrestrial animal. Such a country illustrates what Chisholm, with
Attic nicety of speech, calls "the influence of bread-power on
history,"[14] as opposed to Mahan's sea-power. France, like England, had
a long coastline, abundant harbors, and an excellent location for
maritime supremacy and colonial expansion; but her larger area and
greater amount of fertile soil put off the hour of a redundant
population such as England suffered from even in Henry VIII's time.
Moreover, in consequence of steady continental expansion from the
twelfth to the eighteenth century and a political unification which made
its area more effective for the support of the people, the French of
Richelieu's time, except those from certain districts, took to the sea,
not by national impulse as did the English and Dutch, but rather under
the spur of government initiative. They therefore achieved far less in
maritime trade and colonization.[15] In ancient Palestine, a long
stretch of coast, poorly equipped with harbors but accessible to the
rich Mediterranean trade, failed to offset the attraction of the gardens
and orchards of the Jezreel Valley and the pastures of the Judean hills,
or to overcome the land-born predilections and aptitudes of the
desert-bred Jews. Similarly, the river-fringed peninsulas of Virginia
and Maryland, opening wide their doors to the incoming sea, were
powerless, nevertheless, to draw the settlers away from the riotous
productiveness of the wide tidewater plains. Here again the geographic
force of the land outweighed that of the sea and became the dominant
factor in directing the activities of the inhabitants.
The two antagonistic geographic forces may be both of the land, one born
of a country's topography, the other of its location. Switzerland's
history has for centuries shown the conflict of two political policies,
one a policy of cantonal and communal independence, which has sprung
from the division of that mountainous country into segregated districts,
and the other one of political centralization, dictated by the necessity
for cooeperation to meet the dangers of Switzerland's central location
mid a circle of larger and stronger neighbors. Local geographic
conditions within the Swiss territory fixed the national ideal as a
league of "sovereign cantons," to use the term of their constitution,
enjoying a maximum of individual rights and privileges, and tolerating a
minimum of interference from the central authority. Here was physical
dismemberment coupled with mutual political repulsion. But a location at
the meeting place of French, German, Austrian and Italian frontiers laid
upon them the distasteful necessity of union within to withstand
aggressions crowding upon them from without. Hence the growth of the
Swiss constitution since 1798 has meant a fight of the Confederation
against the canton in behalf of general rights, expanding the functions
of the central government, contracting those of canton and commune.[16]
[Sidenote: Local and remote geographic factors.]
Every country forms an independent whole, and as such finds its national
history influenced by its local climate, soil, relief, its location
whether inland or maritime, its river highways, and its boundaries of
mountain, sea, or desert. But it is also a link in a great chain of
lands, and therefore may feel a shock or vibration imparted at the
remotest end. The gradual desiccation of western Asia which took a fresh
start about 2,000 years ago caused that great exodus and displacement of
peoples known as the _Voelkerwanderung_, and thus contributed to the
downfall of Rome; it was one factor in the Saxon conquest of Britain and
the final peopling of central Europe. The impact of the Turkish hordes
hurling themselves against the defenses of Constantinople in 1453 was
felt only forty years afterward by the far-off shores of savage America.
Earlier still it reached England as the revival of learning, and it gave
Portugal a shock which started its navigators towards the Cape of Good
Hope in their search for a sea route to India. The history of South
Africa is intimately connected with the Isthmus of Suez. It owes its
Portuguese, Dutch, and English populations to that barrier on the
Mediterranean pathway to the Orient; its importance as a way station on
the outside route to India fluctuates with every crisis in the history
of Suez.
[Sidenote: Direct and indirect effects of environment.]
The geographic factors in history appear now as conspicuous direct
effects of environment, such as the forest warfare of the American
Indian or the irrigation works of the Pueblo tribes, now as a group of
indirect effects, operating through the economic, social and political
activities of a people. These remoter secondary results are often of
supreme importance; they are the ones which give the final stamp to the
national temperament and character, and yet in them the causal
connection between environment and development is far from obvious. They
have, therefore, presented pitfalls to the precipitate theorizer. He has
either interpreted them as the direct effect of some geographic cause
from which they were wholly divorced and thus arrived at conclusions
which further investigation failed to sustain; or seeing no direct and
obvious connection, he has denied the possibility of a generalization.
Montesquieu ascribes the immutability of religion, manners, custom and
laws in India and other Oriental countries to their warm climate.[17]
Buckle attributes a highly wrought imagination and gross superstition to
all people, like those of India, living in the presence of great
mountains and vast plains, knowing Nature only in its overpowering
aspects, which excite the fancy and paralyze reason. He finds, on the
other hand, an early predominance of reason in the inhabitants of a
country like ancient Greece, where natural features are on a small
scale, more comprehensible, nearer the measure of man himself.[18] The
scientific geographer, grown suspicious of the omnipotence of climate
and cautious of predicating immediate psychological effects which are
easy to assert but difficult to prove, approaches the problem more
indirectly and reaches a different solution. He finds that geographic
conditions have condemned India to isolation. On the land side, a great
sweep of high mountains has restricted intercourse with the interior; on
the sea side, the deltaic swamps of the Indus and Ganges Rivers and an
unbroken shoreline, backed by mountains on the west of the peninsula and
by coastal marshes and lagoons on the east, have combined to reduce its
accessibility from the ocean. The effect of such isolation is ignorance,
superstition, and the early crystallization of thought and custom.
Ignorance involves the lack of material for comparison, hence a
restriction of the higher reasoning processes, and an unscientific
attitude of mind which gives imagination free play. In contrast, the
accessibility of Greece and its focal location in the ancient world made
it an intellectual clearing-house for the eastern Mediterranean. The
general information gathered there afforded material for wide
comparison. It fed the brilliant reason of the Athenian philosopher and
the trained imagination which produced the masterpieces of Greek art and
literature.
[Sidenote: Indirect mental effects.]
Heinrich von Treitschke, in his recent "Politik," imitates the direct
inference of Buckle when he ascribes the absence of artistic and poetic
development in Switzerland and the Alpine lands to the overwhelming
aspect of nature there, its majestic sublimity which paralyzes the
mind.[19] He reinforces his position by the fact that, by contrast, the
lower mountains and hill country of Swabia, Franconia and Thuringia,
where nature is gentler, stimulating, appealing, and not overpowering,
have produced many poets and artists. The facts are incontestable. They
reappear in France in the geographical distribution of the awards made
by the Paris _Salon_ of 1896. Judged by these awards, the rough
highlands of Savoy, Alpine Provence, the massive eastern Pyrenees, and
the Auvergne Plateau, together with the barren peninsula of Brittany,
are singularly lacking in artistic instinct, while art nourishes in all
the river lowlands of France. Moreover, French men of letters, by the
distribution of their birthplaces, are essentially products of fluvial
valleys and plains, rarely of upland and mountain.[20]
This contrast has been ascribed to a fundamental ethnic distinction
between the Teutonic population of the lowlands and the Alpine or Celtic
stock which survives in the isolation of highland and peninsula, thus
making talent an attribute of race. But the Po Valley of northern Italy,
whose population contains a strong infusion of this supposedly
stultifying Alpine blood, and the neighboring lowlands and hill country
of Tuscany show an enormous preponderance of intellectual and artistic
power over the highlands of the peninsula.[21] Hence the same contrast
appears among different races under like geographic conditions.
Moreover, in France other social phenomena, such as suicide, divorce,
decreasing birth-rate, and radicalism in politics, show this same
startling parallelism of geographic distribution,[22] and these cannot
be attributed to the stimulating or depressing effect of natural scenery
upon the human mind.
Mountain regions discourage the budding of genius because they are areas
of isolation, confinement, remote from the great currents of men and
ideas that move along the river valleys. They are regions of much labor
and little leisure, of poverty to-day and anxiety for the morrow, of
toil-cramped hands and toil-dulled brains. In the fertile alluvial
plains are wealth, leisure, contact with many minds, large urban centers
where commodities and ideas are exchanged. The two contrasted
environments produce directly certain economic and social results,
which, in turn, become the causes of secondary intellectual and artistic
effects. The low mountains of central Germany which von Treitschke cites
as homes of poets and artists, owing to abundant and varied mineral
wealth, are the seats of active industries and dense populations,[23]
while their low reliefs present no serious obstacle to the numerous
highways across them. They, therefore, afford all conditions for
culture.
[Sidenote: Indirect effects in differentiation of colonial peoples.]
Let us take a different example. The rapid modification in physical and
mental constitution of the English transplanted to North America, South
Africa, Australia and New Zealand has been the result of several
geographic causes working through the economic and social media; but it
has been ascribed by Darwin and others to the effect of climate. The
prevailing energy and initiative of colonists have been explained by the
stimulating atmosphere of their new homes. Even Natal has not escaped
this soft impeachment. But the enterprise of colonials has cropped out,
under almost every condition of heat and cold, aridity and humidity, of
a habitat at sea-level and on high plateau. This blanket theory of
climate cannot, therefore, cover the case. Careful analysis supersedes
it by a whole group of geographic factors working directly and
indirectly. The first of these was the dividing ocean which, prior to
the introduction of cheap ocean transportation and bustling steerage
agents, made a basis of artificial selection. Then it was the man of
abundant energy who, cramped by the narrow environment of a Norwegian
farm or Irish bog, came over to America to take up a quarter-section of
prairie land or rise to the eminence of Boston police sergeant. The
Scotch immigrants in America who fought in the Civil War were nearly two
inches taller than the average in the home country.[24] But the ocean
barrier culled superior qualities of mind and character
also--independence of political and religious conviction, and the
courage of those convictions, whether found in royalist or Puritan,
Huguenot or English Catholic.
[Sidenote: Indirect effect through isolation.]
Such colonists in a remote country were necessarily few and could not be
readily reinforced from home. Their new and isolated geographical
environment favored variation. Heredity passed on the characteristics of
a small, highly selected group. The race was kept pure from intermixture
with the aborigines of the country, owing to the social and cultural
abyss which separated them, and to the steady withdrawal of the natives
before the advance of the whites. The homogeneity of island peoples
seems to indicate that individual variations are in time communicated by
heredity to a whole population under conditions of isolation; and in
this way modifications due to artificial selection and a changed
environment become widely spread.
Nor is this all. The modified type soon becomes established, because the
abundance of land at the disposal of the colonists and the consequent
better conditions of living encourage a rapid increase of population. A
second geographic factor of mere area here begins to operate. Ease in
gaining subsistence, the greater independence of the individual and the
family, emancipation from carking care, the hopeful attitude of mind
engendered by the consciousness of an almost unlimited opportunity and
capacity for expansion, the expectation of large returns upon labor,
and, finally, the profound influence of this hopefulness upon the
national character, all combined, produce a social rejuvenation of the
race. New conditions present new problems which call for prompt and
original solution, make a demand upon the ingenuity and resourcefulness
of the individual, and therefore work to the same end as his previous
removal from the paralyzing effect of custom in the old home country.
Activity is youth and sluggishness or paralysis is age. Hence the
energy, initiative, adaptability, and receptivity to new ideas--all
youthful qualities--which characterize the Anglo-Saxon American as well
as the English Africander, can be traced back to the stimulating
influences, not of a bracing or variable climate, but of the abundant
opportunities offered by a great, rich, unexploited country. Variation
under new natural conditions, when safe-guarded by isolation, tends to
produce modification of the colonial type; this is the direct effect of
a changed environment. But the new economic and social activities of a
transplanted people become the vehicle of a mass of indirect geographic
influences which contribute to the differentiation of the national
character.
[Sidenote: General importance of indirect effects.]
The tendency to overlook such links between conspicuous effects and
their remote, less evident geographic causes has been common in
geographic investigation. This direct rather than indirect approach to
the heart of the problem has led to false inferences or to the
assumption that reliable conclusions were impossible. Environment
influences the higher, mental life of a people chiefly through the
medium of their economic and social life; hence its ultimate effects
should be traced through the latter back to the underlying cause. But
rarely has this been done. Even so astute a geographer as Strabo, though
he recognizes the influence of geographic isolation in differentiating
dialects and customs in Greece,[25] ascribes some national
characteristics to the nature of the country, especially to its climate,
and the others to education and institutions. He thinks that the nature
of their respective lands had nothing to do with making the Athenians
cultured, the Spartans and Thebans ignorant; that the predilection for
natural science in Babylonia and Egypt was not a result of environment
but of the institutions and education of those countries.[26] But here
arise the questions, how far custom and education in their turn depend
upon environment; to what degree natural conditions, molding economic
and political development, may through them fundamentally affect social
customs, education, culture, and the dominant intellectual aptitudes of
a people. It is not difficult to see, back of the astronomy and
mathematics and hydraulics of Egypt, the far off sweep of the rain-laden
monsoons against the mountains of Abyssinia and the creeping of the
tawny Nile flood over that river-born oasis.
[Sidenote: Indirect political and moral effects.]
Plutarch states in his "Solon" that after the rebellion of Kylon in 612
B.C. the Athenian people were divided into as many political factions as
there were physical types of country in Attica. The mountaineers, who
were the poorest party, wanted something like a democracy; the people of
the plains, comprising the greatest number of rich families, were
clamorous for an oligarchy; the coast population of the south,
intermediate both in social position and wealth, wanted something
between the two. The same three-fold division appeared again in 564 B.C.
on the usurpation of Peisistratus.[27] Here the connection between
geographic condition and political opinion is clear enough, though the
links are agriculture and commerce. New England's opposition to the War
of 1812, culminating in the threat of secession of the Hartford
Convention, can be traced back through the active maritime trade to the
broken coastline and unproductive soil of that glaciated country.
In all democratic or representative forms of government permitting free
expression of popular opinion, history shows that division into
political parties tends to follow geographical lines of cleavage. In our
own Civil War the dividing line between North and South did not always
run east and west. The mountain area of the Southern Appalachians
supported the Union and drove a wedge of disaffection into the heart of
the South. Mountainous West Virginia was politically opposed to the
tidewater plains of old Virginia, because slave labor did not pay on the
barren "upright" farms of the Cumberland Plateau; whereas, it was
remunerative on the wide fertile plantations of the coastal lowland. The
ethics of the question were obscured where conditions of soil and
topography made the institution profitable. In the mountains, as also in
New England, a law of diminishing financial returns had for its
corollary a law of increasing moral insight. In this case, geographic
conditions worked through the medium of direct economic effects to more
important political and ethical results.
The roots of geographic influence often run far underground before
coming to the surface, to sprout into some flowering growth; and to
trace this back to its parent stem is the necessary but not easy task of
the geographer.
[Sidenote: Time element.]
The complexity of this problem does not end here. The modification of
human development by environment is a natural process; like all other
natural processes, it involves the cumulative effects of causes
operating imperceptibly but persistently through vast periods of time.
Slowly and deliberately does geography engrave the subtitles to a
people's history. Neglect of this time element in the consideration of
geographic influences accounts equally for many an exaggerated assertion
and denial of their power. A critic undertakes to disprove modification
through physical environment by showing that it has not produced
tangible results in the last fifty or five hundred years. This attitude
recalls the early geologists, whose imaginations could not conceive the
vast ages necessary in a scientific explanation of geologic phenomena.
The theory of evolution has taught us in science to think in larger
terms of time, so that we no longer raise the question whether European
colonists in Africa can turn into negroes, though we do find the recent
amazing statement that the Yankee, in his tall, gaunt figure, "the
colour of his skin, and the formation of his hair, has begun to
differentiate himself from his European kinsman and approach the type of
the aboriginal Indians."[28] Evolution tells the story of modification
by a succession of infinitesimal changes, and emphasizes the permanence
of a modification once produced long after the causes for it cease to
act. The mesas of Arizona, the earth sculpture of the Grand Canyon
remain as monuments to the erosive forces which produced them. So a
habitat leaves upon man no ephemeral impress; it affects him in one way
at a low stage of his development, and differently at a later or higher
stage, because the man himself and his relation to his environment have
been modified in the earlier period; but traces of that earlier
adaptation survive in his maturer life. Hence man's relation to his
environment must be looked at through the perspective of historical
development. It would be impossible to explain the history and national
character of the contemporary English solely by their twentieth century
response to their environment, because with insular conservatism they
carry and cherish vestiges of times when their islands represented
different geographic relations from those of to-day. Witness the
wool-sack of the lord chancellor. We cannot understand the location of
modern Athens, Rome or Berlin from the present day relations of urban
populations to their environment, because the original choice of these
sites was dictated by far different considerations from those ruling
to-day. In the history of these cities a whole succession of geographic
factors have in turn been active, each leaving its impress of which the
cities become, as it were, repositories.
[Sidenote: Effect of a previous habitat.]
The importance of this time element for a solution of
anthropo-geographic problems becomes plainer, where a certain locality
has received an entirely new population, or where a given people by
migration change their habitat. The result in either case is the same, a
new combination, new modifications superimposed on old modifications.
And it is with this sort of case that anthropo-geography most often has
to deal. So restless has mankind been, that the testimony of history and
ethnology is all against the assumption that a social group has ever
been subjected to but one type of environment during its long period of
development from a primitive to a civilized society. Therefore, if we
assert that a people is the product of the country which it inhabits at
a given time, we forget that many different countries which its forbears
occupied have left their mark on the present race in the form of
inherited aptitudes and traditional customs acquired in those remote
ancestral habitats. The Moors of Granada had passed through a wide range
of ancestral experiences; they bore the impress of Asia, Africa and
Europe, and on their expulsion from Spain carried back with them to
Morocco traces of their peninsula life.
A race or tribe develops certain characteristics in a certain region,
then moves on, leaving the old abode but not all the accretions of
custom, social organization and economic method there acquired. These
travel on with the migrant people; some are dropped, others are
preserved because of utility, sentiment or mere habit. For centuries
after the settlement of the Jews in Palestine, traces of their pastoral
life in the grasslands of Mesopotamia could be discerned in their social
and political organization, in their ritual and literature. Survivals of
their nomadic life in Asiatic steppes still persist among the Turks of
Europe, after six centuries of sedentary life in the best agricultural
land of the Balkan Peninsula. One of these appears in their choice of
meat. They eat chiefly sheep and goats, beef very rarely, and swine not
at all.[29] The first two thrive on poor pastures and travel well, so
that they are admirably adapted to nomadic life in arid lands; the last
two, far less so, but on the other hand are the regular concomitant of
agricultural life. The Turk's taste to-day, therefore, is determined by
the flocks and herds which he once pastured on the Trans-Caspian plains.
The finished terrace agriculture and methods of irrigation, which the
Saracens had learned on the mountain sides of Yemen through a schooling
of a thousand years or more, facilitated their economic conquest of
Spain. Their intelligent exploitation of the country's resources for the
support of their growing numbers in the favorable climatic conditions
which Spain offered was a light-hearted task, because of the severe
training which they had had in their Arabian home.
The origin of Roman political institutions is intimately connected with
conditions of the naturally small territory where arose the greatness of
Rome. But now, after two thousand years we see the political impress of
this narrow origin spreading to the governments of an area of Europe
immeasurably larger than the region that gave it birth. In the United
States, little New England has been the source of the strongest
influences modifying the political, religious and cultural life of half
a continent; and as far as Texas and California these influences bear
the stamp of that narrow, unproductive environment which gave to its
sons energy of character and ideals.
[Sidenote: Transplanted religions.]
Ideas especially are light baggage, and travel with migrant peoples
over many a long and rough road. They are wafted like winged seed by the
wind, and strike root in regions where they could never have originated.
Few classes of ideas bear so plainly the geographic stamp of their
origin as religious ones, yet none have spread more widely. The abstract
monotheism sprung from the bare grasslands of western Asia made slow but
final headway against the exuberant forest gods of the early Germans.
Religious ideas travel far from their seedbeds along established lines
of communication. We have the almost amusing episode of the brawny
Burgundians of the fifth century, who received the Arian form of
Christianity by way of the Danube highway from the schools of Athens and
Alexandria, valiantly supporting the niceties of Greek religious thought
against the Roman version of the faith which came up the Rhone Valley.
If the sacred literature of Judaism and Christianity take weak hold upon
the western mind, this is largely because it is written in the symbolism
of the pastoral nomad. Its figures of speech reflect life in deserts and
grasslands. For these figures the western mind has few or vague
corresponding ideas. It loses, therefore, half the import, for instance,
of the Twenty-third Psalm, that picture of the nomad shepherd guiding
his flock across parched and trackless plains, to bring them at evening,
weary, hungry, thirsty, to the fresh pastures and waving palms of some
oasis, whose green tints stand out in vivid contrast to the tawny wastes
of the encompassing sands. "He leadeth me beside the still waters," not
the noisy rushing stream of the rainy lands, but the quiet desert pool
that reflects the stars. What real significance has the tropical
radiance of the lotus flower, the sacred symbol of Buddhism, for the
Mongolian lama in the cold and arid borders of Gobi or the wind-swept
highlands of sterile Tibet? And yet these exotic ideas live on, even if
they no longer bloom in the uncongenial soil. But to explain them in
terms of their present environment would be indeed impossible.
[Sidenote: Partial response to environment]
A people may present at any given time only a partial response to their
environment also for other reasons. This may be either because their
arrival has been too recent for the new habitat to make its influence
felt; or because, even after long residence, one overpowering
geographic factor has operated to the temporary exclusion of all others.
Under these circumstances, suddenly acquired geographic advantages of a
high order or such advantages, long possessed but tardily made available
by the release of national powers from more pressing tasks, may
institute a new trend of historical development, resulting more from
stimulating geographic conditions than from the natural capacities or
aptitudes of the people themselves. Such developments, though often
brilliant, are likely to be short-lived and to end suddenly or
disastrously, because not sustained by a deep-seated national impulse
animating the whole mass of the people. They cease when the first
enthusiasm spends itself, or when outside competition is intensified, or
the material rewards decrease.
[Sidenote: The case of Spain.]
An illustration is found in the mediaeval history of Spain. The
intercontinental location of the Iberian Peninsula exposed it to the
Saracen conquest and to the constant reinforcements to Islam power
furnished by the Mohammedanized Berbers of North Africa. For seven
centuries this location was the dominant geographic factor in Spain's
history. It made the expulsion of the Moors the sole object of all the
Iberian states, converted the country into an armed camp, made the
gentleman adventurer and Christian knight the national ideal. It placed
the center of political control high up on the barren plateau of
Castile, far from the centers of population and culture in the river
lowlands or along the coast. It excluded the industrial and commercial
development which was giving bone and sinew to the other European
states. The release of the national energies by the fall of Granada in
1492 and the now ingrained spirit of adventure enabled Spain and
Portugal to utilize the unparalleled advantage of their geographical
position at the junction of the Mediterranean and Atlantic highways, and
by their great maritime explorations in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, to become foremost among European colonial powers. But the
development was sporadic, not supported by any widespread national
movement. In a few decades the maritime preeminence of the Iberian
Peninsula began to yield to the competition of the Dutch and English,
who were, so to speak, saturated with their own maritime environment.
Then followed the rapid decay of the sea power of Spain, followed by
that of Portugal, till by 1648 even her coasting trade was in the hands
of the Dutch, and Dutch vessels were employed to maintain communication
with the West Indies.[30]
[Sidenote: Sporadic response to a new environment.]
We have a later instance of sporadic development under the stimulus of
new and favorable geographic conditions, a similar anti-climax. The
expansion of the Russians across the lowlands of Siberia was quite in
harmony with the genius of that land-bred people; but when they reached
Bering Sea, the enclosed basin, the proximity of the American continent,
the island stepping-stones between, and the lure of rich sealskins to
the fur-hunting Cossacks determined a sudden maritime expansion, for
which the Russian people were unfitted. Beginning in 1747, it swept the
coast of Alaska, located its American administrative center first on
Kadiak, then on Baranof Island, and by 1812 placed its southern outposts
on the California coast near San Francisco Bay and on the Farralone
Islands.[31] Russian convicts were employed to man the crazy boats built
of green lumber on the shores of Bering Sea, and Aleutian hunters with
their _bidarkas_ were impressed to catch the seal.[32] The movement was
productive only of countless shipwrecks, many seal skins, and an
opportunity to satisfy an old grudge against England. The territory
gained was sold to the United States in 1867. This is the one instance
in Russian history of any attempt at maritime expansion, and also of any
withdrawal from territory to which the Muscovite power had once
established its claim. This fact alone would indicate that only
excessively tempting geographic conditions led the Russians into an
economic and political venture which neither the previously developed
aptitudes of the people nor the conditions of population and historical
development on the Siberian seaboard were able to sustain.
[Sidenote: The larger conception of the environment.]
The history and culture of a people embody the effects of previous
habitats and of their final environment; but this means something more
than local geographic conditions. It involves influences emanating from
far beyond the borders. No country, no continent, no sea, mountain or
river is restricted to itself in the influence which it either exercises
or receives. The history of Austria cannot be understood merely from
Austrian ground. Austrian territory is part of the Mediterranean
hinterland, and therefore has been linked historically with Rome, Italy,
and the Adriatic. It is a part of the upper Danube Valley and therefore
shares much of its history with Bavaria and Germany, while the lower
Danube has linked it with the Black Sea, Greece, the Russian steppes,
and Asia. The Asiatic Hungarians have pushed forward their ethnic
boundary nearly to Vienna. The Austrian capital has seen the warring
Turks beneath its walls, and shapes its foreign policy with a view to
the relative strength of the Sultan and the Czar.
[Sidenote: Unity of the earth.]
The earth is an inseparable whole. Each country or sea is physically and
historically intelligible only as a portion of that whole. Currents and
wind-systems of the oceans modify the climate of the nearby continents,
and direct the first daring navigations of their peoples. The
alternating monsoons of the Indian Ocean guided Arab merchantmen from
ancient times back and forth between the Red Sea and the Malabar coast
of India.[33] The Equatorial Current and the northeast trade-wind
carried the timid ships of Columbus across the Atlantic to America. The
Gulf Stream and the prevailing westerlies later gave English vessels the
advantage on the return voyage. Europe is a part of the Atlantic coast.
This is a fact so significant that the North Atlantic has become a
European sea. The United States also is a part of the Atlantic coast:
this is the dominant fact of American history. China forms a section of
the Pacific rim. This is the fact back of the geographic distribution of
Chinese emigration to Annam, Tonkin, Siam, Malacca, the Philippines,
East Indies, Borneo, Australia, Hawaiian Islands, the Pacific Coast
States, British Columbia, the Alaskan coast southward from Bristol Bay
in Bering Sea, Ecuador and Peru.
As the earth is one, so is humanity. Its unity of species points to some
degree of communication through a long prehistoric past. Universal
history is not entitled to the name unless it embraces all parts of the
earth and all peoples, whether savage or civilized. To fill the gaps in
the written record it must turn to ethnology and geography, which by
tracing the distribution and movements of primitive peoples can often
reconstruct the most important features of their history.
Anthropo-geographic problems are never simple. They must all be viewed
in the long perspective of evolution and the historical past. They
require allowance for the dominance of different geographic factors at
different periods, and for a possible range of geographic influences
wide as the earth itself. In the investigator they call for pains-taking
analysis and, above all, an open mind.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I
[1] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp.
149-157. New York, 1897.
[2] A.P. Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History, Chap. I.
Boston, 1903.
[3] R.H. Whitbeck, Geographic Influences in the Development of New
Jersey, _Journal of Geography_, Vol. V, No. 6. January, 1908.
[4] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, p. 372. London and New
York, 1902-1906.
[5] Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, 1641-1667. Vol. I, chap.
V and map. London, 1889.
[6] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 305. London, 1905.
[7] Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, Vol. II, pp. 464-465, 469.
London, 1883.
[8] _Imperial Gazetteer for India_, Vol. III, p. 109. London, 1885.
[9] G.G. Chisholm, The Relativity of Geographic Advantages, _Scottish
Geog. Mag_., Vol. XIII, No. 9, Sept. 1897.
[10] Hugh Robert Mill, International Geography, p. 347. New York, 1902.
[11] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 228-230. London, 1903.
[12] H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 317-323. London,
1904.
[13] Captain A.T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 36-38.
Boston, 1902.
[14] G.G. Chisholm, Economic Geography, _Scottish Geog. Mag_., March,
1908.
[15] Captain A.T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 37-38.
Boston, 1902.
[16] Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 123, 124, 145-147.
Philadelphia, 1891.
[17] Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Book XIV, chap. IV.
[18] Henry Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. I, pp.
86-106.
[19] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, p. 225. Leipzig, 1897.
This whole chapter on _Land und Leute_ is suggestive.
[20] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 524-525. New York, 1899.
[21] _Ibid._, 526.
[22] _Ibid._, 517-520, 533-536.
[23] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 256-257, 268-271. London, 1903.
[24] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 89. New York, 1899.
[25] Strabo, Book VII, chap. I, 2.
[26] Strabo, Book II, chap. III, 7.
[27] Plutarch, Solon, pp. 13, 29, 154.
[28] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, pp. 244-245. New York,
1902-1906.
[29] Roscher, _National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 33, note 3.
Stuttgart, 1888.
[30] Captain A.T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 41-42,
50-53. Boston, 1902.
[31] H. Bancroft, History of California, Vol. I, pp. 298, 628-635. San
Francisco.
[32] Agnes Laut, Vikings of the Pacific, pp. 64-82. New York, 1905.
[33] Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, Vol. II, pp. 351, 470-471.
London, 1883.
CHAPTER II
CLASSES OF GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES
Into almost every anthropo-geographical problem the element of
environment enters in different phases, with different modes of
operation and varying degrees of importance. Since the causal conception
of geography demands a detailed analysis of all the relations between
environment and human development, it is advisable to distinguish the
various classes of geographic influences.
[Sidenote: Physical effects.]
Four fundamental classes of effects can be distinguished.
1. The first class includes direct physical effects of environment,
similar to those exerted on plants and animals by their habitat. Certain
geographic conditions, more conspicuously those of climate, apply
certain stimuli to which man, like the lower animals, responds by an
adaption of his organism to his environment. Many physiological
peculiarities of man are due to physical effects of environment, which
doubtless operated very strongly in the earliest stages of human
development, and in those shadowy ages contributed to the
differentiation of races. The unity of the human species is as clearly
established as the diversity of races and peoples, whose divergences
must be interpreted chiefly as modifications in response to various
habitats in long periods of time.
[Sidenote: Variation and natural conditions.]
Such modifications have probably been numerous in the persistent and
unending movements, shiftings, and migrations which have made up the
long prehistoric history of man. If the origin of species is found in
variability and inheritance, variation is undoubtedly influenced by a
change of natural conditions. To quote Darwin, "In one sense the
conditions of life may be said, not only to cause variability, either
directly or indirectly, but likewise to include natural selection, for
the conditions determine whether this or that variety shall survive."[34]
The variability of man does not mean that every external influence
leaves its mark upon him, but that man as an organism, by the
preservation of beneficent variations and the elimination of deleterious
ones, is gradually adapted to his environment, so that he can utilize
most completely that which it contributes to his needs. This
self-maintenance under outward influences is an essential part of the
conception of life which Herbert Spencer defines as the correspondence
between internal conditions and external circumstances, or August Comte
as the harmony between the living being and the surrounding medium or
_milieu_.
According to Virchow, the distinction of races rests upon hereditary
variations, but heredity itself cannot become active till the
characteristic or _Zustand_ is produced which is to be handed down.[35]
But environment determines what variation shall become stable enough to
be passed on by heredity. For instance, we can hardly err in attributing
the great lung capacity, massive chests, and abnormally large torsos of
the Quichua and Aymara Indians inhabiting the high Andean plateaus to
the rarified air found at an altitude of 10,000 or 15,000 feet above sea
level. Whether these have been acquired by centuries of extreme lung
expansion, or represent the survival of a chance variation of undoubted
advantage, they are a product of the environment. They are a serious
handicap when the Aymara Indian descends to the plains, where he either
dies off or leaves descendants with diminishing chests.[36] [See map page
101.]
[Sidenote: Stature and environment]
Darwin holds that many slight changes in animals and plants, such as
size, color, thickness of skin and hair, have been produced through food
supply and climate from the external conditions under which the forms
lived.[37] Paul Ehrenreich, while regarding the chief race distinctions
as permanent forms, not to be explained by external conditions,
nevertheless concedes the slight and slow variation of the sub-race
under changing conditions of food and climate as beyond doubt.[38]
Stature is partly a matter of feeding and hence of geographic condition.
In mountain regions, where the food resources are scant, the varieties
of wild animals are characterized by smaller size in general than are
corresponding species in the lowlands. It is a noticeable fact that
dwarfed horses or ponies have originated in islands, in Iceland, the
Shetlands, Corsica and Sardinia. This is due either to scanty and
unvaried food or to excessive inbreeding, or probably to both. The
horses introduced into the Falkland Islands in 1764 have deteriorated so
in size and strength in a few generations that they are in a fair way to
develop a Falkland variety of pony.[39] On the other hand, Mr. Homer
Davenport states that the pure-bred Arabian horses raised on his New
Jersey stock farm are in the third generation a hand higher than their
grandsires imported from Arabia, and of more angular build. The result
is due to more abundant and nutritious food and the elimination of long
desert journeys.
The low stature of the natives prevailing in certain "misery spots" of
Europe, as in the Auvergne Plateau of southern France, is due in part to
race, in part to a disastrous artificial selection by the emigration of
the taller and more robust individuals, but in considerable part to the
harsh climate and starvation food-yield of that sterile soil; for the
children of the region, if removed to the more fertile valleys of the
Loire and Garonne, grow to average stature.[40] The effect of a scant and
uncertain food supply is especially clear in savages, who have erected
fewer buffers between themselves and the pressure of environment. The
Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert are shorter than their Hottentot kindred
who pasture their flocks and herds in the neighboring grasslands.[41]
Samoyedes, Lapps, and other hyperborean races of Eurasia are shorter
than their more southern neighbors, the physical record of an immemorial
struggle against cold and hunger. The stunted forms and wretched aspect
of the Snake Indians inhabiting the Rocky Mountain deserts distinguished
these clans from the tall buffalo-hunting tribes of the plains.[42] Any
feature of geographic environment tending to affect directly the
physical vigor and strength of a people cannot fail to prove a potent
factor in their history.
[Sidenote: Physical effects of dominant activities.]
Oftentimes environment modifies the physique of a people indirectly by
imposing upon them certain predominant activities, which may develop one
part of the body almost to the point of deformity. This is the effect of
increased use or disuse which Darwin discusses. He attributes the thin
legs and thick arms of the Payaguas Indians living along the Paraguay
River to generations of lives spent in canoes, with the lower
extremities motionless and the arm and chest muscles in constant
exercise.[43] Livingstone found these same characteristics of broad
chests and shoulders with ill-developed legs among the Barotse of the
upper Zambesi;[44] and they have been observed in pronounced form,
coupled with distinctly impaired powers of locomotion, among the
Tlingit, Tsimshean, and Haida Indians of the southern Alaskan and
British Columbia coast, where the geographic conditions of a mountainous
and almost strandless shore interdicted agriculture and necessitated
sea-faring activities.[45] An identical environment has produced a like
physical effect upon the canoemen of Tierra del Fuego[46] and the
Aleutian Islanders, who often sit in their boats twenty hours at a
time.[47] These special adaptations are temporary in their nature and
tend to disappear with change of occupation, as, for instance, among the
Tlingit Indians, who develop improved leg muscles when employed as
laborers in the salmon canneries of British Columbia.
[Sidenote: Effects of climate.]
Both the direct and indirect physical effects of environment thus far
instanced are obvious in themselves and easily explained. Far different
is it with the majority of physical effects, especially those of
climate, whose mode of operation is much more obscure than was once
supposed. The modern geographer does not indulge in the naive hypothesis
of the last century, which assumed a prompt and direct effect of
environment upon the form and features of man. Carl Ritter regarded the
small, slit eyes and swollen lids of the Turkoman as "an obvious effect
of the desert upon the organism." Stanhope Smith ascribed the high
shoulders and short neck of the Tartars of Mongolia to their habit of
raising their shoulders to protect the neck against the cold; their
small, squinting eyes, overhanging brows, broad faces and high cheek
bones, to the effect of the bitter, driving winds and the glare of the
snow, till, he says, "every feature by the action of the cold is harsh
and distorted."[48] These profound influences of a severe climate upon
physiognomy he finds also among the Lapps, northern Mongolians,
Samoyedes and Eskimo.
[Sidenote: Acclimatization]
Most of these problems are only secondarily grist for the geographer's
mill. For instance, when the Aryans descended to the enervating lowlands
of tropical India, and in that debilitating climate lost the qualities
which first gave them supremacy, the change which they underwent was
primarily a physiological one. It can be scientifically described and
explained therefore only by physiologists and physico-chemists; and upon
their investigations the geographer must wait before he approaches the
problem from the standpoint of geographical distribution. Into this
sub-class of physical effects come all questions of acclimatization.[49]
These are important to the anthropo-geographer, just as they are to
colonial governments like England or France, because they affect the
power of national or racial expansion, and fix the historical fate of
tropical lands. The present populations of the earth represent physical
adaptation to their environments. The intense heat and humidity of most
tropical lands prevent any permanent occupation by a native-born
population of pure whites. The catarrhal zone north of the fortieth
parallel in America soon exterminates the negroes.[50]
The Indians of South America, though all fundamentally of the same
ethnic stock, are variously acclimated to the warm, damp, forested
plains of the Amazon; to the hot, dry, treeless coasts of Peru; and to
the cold, arid heights of the Andes. The habitat that bred them tends to
hold them, by restricting the range of climate which they can endure. In
the zone of the Andean slope lying between 4,000 and 6,000 feet of
altitude, which produces the best flavored coffee and which must be
cultivated, the imported Indians from the high plateaus and from the low
Amazon plains alike sicken and die after a short time; so that they take
employment on these coffee plantations for only three or five months,
and then return to their own homes. Labor becomes nomadic on these
slopes, and in the intervals these farm lands of intensive agriculture
show the anomaly of a sparse population only of resident managers.[51]
Similarly in the high, dry Himalayan valley of the upper Indus, over
10,000 feet above sea level, the natives of Ladak are restricted to a
habitat that yields them little margin of food for natural growth of
population but forbids them to emigrate in search of more,--applies at
the same time the lash to drive and the leash to hold, for these
highlanders soon die when they reach the plains.[52] Here are two
antagonistic geographic influences at work from the same environment,
one physical and the other social-economic. The Ladaki have reached an
interesting resolution of these two forces by the institution of
polyandry, which keeps population practically stationary.
[Sidenote: Pigmentation and climate.]
The relation of pigmentation to climate has long interested geographers
as a question of environment; but their speculations on the subject have
been barren, because the preliminary investigations of the physiologist,
physicist and chemist are still incomplete. The general fact of
increasing nigrescence from temperate towards equatorial regions is
conspicuous enough, despite some irregularity of the shading.[53] This
fact points strongly to some direct relation between climate and
pigmentation, but gives no hint how the pigmental processes are
affected. The physiologist finds that in the case of the negro, the dark
skin is associated with a dense cuticle, diminished perspiration,
smaller chests and less respiratory power, a lower temperature and more
rapid pulse,[54] all which variations may enter into the problem of the
negroes coloring. The question is therefore by no means simple.
Yet it is generally conceded by scientists that pigment is a protective
device of nature. The negro's skin is comparatively insensitive to a sun
heat that blisters a white man. Livingstone found the bodies of albino
negroes in Bechuana Land always blistered on exposure to the sun,[55]
and a like effect has been observed among albino Polynesians, and
Melanesians of Fiji.[56] Paul Ehrenreich finds that the degree of
coloration depends less upon annual temperature than upon the direct
effect of the sun's rays; and that therefore a people dwelling in a
cool, dry climate, but exposed to the sun may be darker than another in
a hot, moist climate but living in a dense forest. The forest-dwelling
Botokudos of the upper San Francisco River in Brazil are fairer than the
kindred Kayapo tribe, who inhabit the open campos; and the Arawak of the
Purus River forests are lighter than their fellows in the central Matto
Grosso.[57] Sea-faring coast folk, who are constantly exposed to the
sun, especially in the Tropics, show a deeper pigmentation than their
kindred of the wooded interior.[58] The coast Moros of western Mindanao
are darker than the Subanos, their Malay brethren of the back country,
the lightness of whose color can be explained by their forest life.[59]
So the Duallas of the Kamerun coast of Africa are darker than the
Bakwiri inhabiting the forested mountains just behind them, though both
tribes belong to the Bantu group of people.[60] Here light, in
contradistinction to heat, appears the dominant factor in pigmentation.
A recent theory, advanced by von Schmaedel in 1895, rests upon the
chemical power of light. It holds that the black pigment renders the
negro skin insensitive to the luminous or actinic effects of solar
radiation, which are far more destructive to living protoplasm than the
merely calorific effects.[61]
[Sidenote: Pigmentation and altitude]
Coloration responds to other more obscure influences of environment. A
close connection between pigmentation and elevation above sea level has
been established: a high altitude operates like a high latitude.
Blondness increases appreciably on the higher slopes of the Black
Forest, Vosges Mountains, and Swiss Alps, though these isolated
highlands are the stronghold of the brunette Alpine race.[62] Livi, in
his treatise on military anthropometry, deduced a special action of
mountains upon pigmentation on observing a prevailing increase of
blondness in Italy above the four-hundred meter line, a phenomenon which
came out as strongly in Basilicata and Calabria provinces of the south
as in Piedmont and Lombardy in the north.[63] The dark Hamitic Berbers
of northern Africa have developed an unmistakable blond variant in high
valleys of the Atlas range, which in a sub-tropical region rises to the
height of 12,000 feet. Here among the Kabyles the population is fair;
grey, blue or green eyes are frequent, as is also reddish blond or
chestnut hair.[64] Waitz long ago affirmed this tendency of mountaineers
to lighter coloring from his study of primitive peoples.[65] The
modification can not be attributed wholly to climatic contrast between
mountain and plain. Some other factor, like the economic poverty of the
environment and the poor food-supply, as Livi suggests, has had a hand
in the result; but just what it is or how it has operated cannot yet be
defined.[66]
[Sidenote: Difficulty of Generalization]
Enough has been said to show that the geographer can formulate no broad
generalization as to the relation of pigmentation and climate from the
occurrence of the darkest skins in the Tropics; because this fact is
weakened by the appearance also of lighter tints in the hottest
districts, and of darker ones in arctic and temperate regions. The
geographer must investigate the questions when and where deeper shades
develop in the skins of fair races; what is the significance of dark
skins in the cold zones and of fair ones in hot zones. His answer must
be based largely on the conclusions of physiologists and physicists, and
only when these have reached a satisfactory solution of each detail of
the problem can the geographer summarize the influence of environment
upon pigmentation. The rule can therefore safely be laid down that in
all investigation of geographic influences upon the permanent physical
characteristics of races, the geographic distribution of these should be
left out of consideration till the last, since it so easily
misleads.[67] Moreover, owing to the ceaseless movements of mankind,
these effects do not remain confined to the region that produced them,
but pass on with the wandering throng in whom they have once developed,
and in whom they endure or vanish according as they prove beneficial or
deleterious in the new habitat.
[Sidenote: Psychical effects.]
II. More varied and important are the psychical effects of geographic
environment. As direct effects they are doubtless bound up in many
physiological modifications; and as influences of climate, they help
differentiate peoples and races in point of temperament. They are
reflected in man's religion and his literature, in his modes of thought
and figures of speech. Blackstone states that "in the Isle of Man, to
take away a horse or ox was no felony, but a trespass, because of the
difficulty in that little territory to conceal them or to carry them
off; but to steal a pig or a fowl, which is easily done, was a capital
misdemeanour, and the offender punished with death." The judges or
deemsters in this island of fishermen swore to execute the laws as
impartially "as the herring's backbone doth lie in the middle of the
fish."[68] The whole mythology of the Polynesians is an echo of the
encompassing ocean. The cosmography of every primitive people, their
first crude effort in the science of the universe, bears the impress of
their habitat. The Eskimo's hell is a place of darkness, storm and
intense cold;[69] the Jew's is a place of eternal fire. Buddha, born in
the steaming Himalayan piedmont, fighting the lassitude induced by heat
and humidity, pictured his heaven as Nirvana, the cessation of all
activity and individual life.
[Sidenote: Indirect effect upon language]
Intellectual effects of environment may appear in the enrichment of a
language in one direction to a rare nicety of expression; but this may
be combined with a meager vocabulary in all other directions. The
greatest cattle-breeders among the native Africans, such as the Hereros
of western Damaraland and the Dinkas of the upper White Nile, have an
amazing choice of words for all colors describing their animals--brown,
dun, red, white, dapple, and so on in every gradation of shade and hue.
The Samoyedes of northern Russia have eleven or twelve terms to
designate the various grays and browns of their reindeer, despite their
otherwise low cultural development.[70] The speech of nomads has an
abundance of expressions for cattle in every relation of life. It
includes different words for breeding, pregnancy, death, and
slaughtering in relation to every different kind of domestic animal. The
Magyars, among whom pastoral life still survives on the low plains of
the Danube and Theiss, have a generic word for herd, _csorda_, and
special terms for herds of cattle, horses, sheep, and swine.[71] While
the vocabulary of Malays and Polynesians is especially rich in nautical
terms, the Kirghis shepherd tribes who wander over the highlands of
western Asia from the Tian Shan to the Hindu Kush have four different
terms for four kinds of mountain passes. A _daban_ is a difficult, rocky
defile; an _art_ is very high and dangerous; a _bel_ is a low, easy
pass, and a _kutal_ is a broad opening between low hills.[72]
To such influences man is a passive subject, especially in the earlier
stages of his development; but there are more important influences
emanating from his environment which affect him as an active agent,
challenge his will by furnishing the motives for its exercise, give
purpose to his activities, and determine the direction which they shall
take.[73] These mold his mind and character through the media of his
economic and social life, and produce effects none the less important
because they are secondary. About these anthropo-geography can reach
surer conclusions than regarding direct psychical effects, because it
can trace their mode of operation as well as define the result. Direct
psychical effects are more matters of conjecture, whose causation is
asserted rather than proved. They seem to float in the air, detached
from the solid ground under foot, and are therefore subject matter for
the psychologist rather than the geographer.
[Sidenote: The great man in history.]
What of the great man in this geographical interpretation of history? It
seems to take no account of him, or to put him into the melting-pot with
the masses. Both are to some extent true. As a science,
anthropo-geography can deal only with large averages, and these exclude
or minimize the exceptional individual. Moreover, geographic conditions
which give this or that bent to a nation's purposes and determine its
aggregate activities have a similar effect upon the individual; but he
may institute a far-seeing policy, to whose wisdom only gradually is the
people awakened. The acts of the great man are rarely arbitrary or
artificial; he accelerates or retards the normal course of development,
but cannot turn it counter to the channels of natural conditions. As a
rule he is a product of the same forces that made his people. He moves
with them and is followed by them under a common impulse. Daniel Boone,
that picturesque figure leading the van of the westward movement over
the Allegheny Mountains, was born of his frontier environment and found
a multitude of his kind in that region of backwoods farms to follow him
into the wilderness. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, in the Louisiana
Purchase, carried out the policy of expansion adumbrated in Governor
Spottswood's expedition with the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe over
the Blue Ridge in 1712. Jefferson's daring consummation of the purchase
without government authority showed his community of purpose with the
majority of the people. Peter the Great's location of his capital at St.
Petersburg, usually stigmatized as the act of a despot, was made in
response to natural conditions offering access to the Baltic nations,
just as certainly as ten centuries before similar conditions and
identical advantages led the early Russian merchants to build up a town
at nearby Novgorod, in easy water connection with the Baltic
commerce.[74]
[Sidenote: Economic and social effects.]
III. Geographic conditions influence the economic and social development
of a people by the abundance, paucity, or general character of the
natural resources, by the local ease or difficulty of securing the
necessaries of life, and by the possibility of industry and commerce
afforded by the environment. From the standpoint of production and
exchange, these influences are primarily the subject matter of economic
and commercial geography; but since they also permeate national life,
determine or modify its social structure, condemn it to the dwarfing
effects of national poverty, or open to it the cultural and political
possibilities resident in national wealth, they are legitimate material
also for anthropo-geography.
[Sidenote: Size of the social group.]
They are especially significant because they determine the size of the
social group. This must be forever small in areas of limited resources
or of limited extent, as in the little islands of the world and the yet
smaller oases. The desert of Chinese Turkestan supports, in certain
detached spots of river-born fertility, populations like the 60,000 of
Kashgar, and from this size groups all the way down to the single
families which Younghusband found living by a mere trickle of a stream
flowing down the southern slope of the Tian Shan. Small islands,
according to their size, fertility, and command of trade, may harbor a
sparse and scant population, like the five hundred souls struggling for
an ill-fed existence on the barren Westman Isles of Iceland; or a
compact, teeming, yet absolutely small social group, like that crowding
Malta or the Bermudas. Whether sparsely or compactly distributed, such
groups suffer the limitations inherent in their small size. They are
forever excluded from the historical significance attaching to the
large, continuously distributed populations of fertile continental
lands.
[Sidenote: Effect upon movements of peoples.]
IV. The next class belongs exclusively to the domain of geography,
because it embraces the influence of the features of the earth's surface
in directing the movements and ultimate distribution of mankind. It
includes the effect of natural barriers, like mountains, deserts,
swamps, and seas, in obstructing or deflecting the course of migrating
people and in giving direction to national expansion; it considers the
tendency of river valleys and treeless plains to facilitate such
movements, the power of rivers, lakes, bays and oceans either to block
the path or open a highway, according as navigation is in a primitive or
advanced stage; and finally the influence of all these natural features
in determining the territory which a people is likely to occupy, and the
boundaries which shall separate from their neighbors.
[Sidenote: River routes.]
The lines of expansion followed by the French and English in the
settlement of America and also the extent of territory covered by each
were powerfully influenced by geographic conditions. The early French
explorers entered the great east-west waterway of the St. Lawrence River
and the Great Lakes, which carried them around the northern end of the
Appalachian barrier into the heart of the continent, planted them on the
low, swampy, often navigable watershed of the Mississippi, and started
them on another river voyage of nearly two thousand miles to the Gulf of
Mexico. Here were the conditions and temptation for almost unlimited
expansion; hence French Canada reached to the head of Lake Superior, and
French Louisiana to the sources of the Missouri, To the lot of the
English fell a series of short rivers with fertile valleys, nearly
barred at their not distant sources by a wall of forested mountains, but
separated from one another by low watersheds which facilitated lateral
expansion over a narrow belt between mountains and sea. Here a region of
mild climate and fertile soil suited to agriculture, enclosed by strong
natural boundaries, made for compact settlement, in contrast to the wide
diffusion of the French. Later, when a growing population pressed
against the western barrier, mountain gates opened at Cumberland Gap and
the Mohawk Valley; the Ohio River and the Great Lakes became interior
thoroughfares, and the northwestern prairies lines of least resistance
to the western settler. Rivers played the same part in directing and
expediting this forward movement, as did the Lena and the Amoor in the
Russian advance into Siberia, the Humber and the Trent in the progress
of the Angles into the heart of Britain, the Rhone and Danube in the
march of the Romans into central Europe.
[Sidenote: Segregation and accessibility.]
The geographical environment of a people may be such as to segregate
them from others, and thereby to preserve or even intensify their
natural characteristics; or it may expose them to extraneous influences,
to an infusion of new blood and new ideas, till their peculiarities are
toned down, their distinctive features of dialect or national dress or
provincial customs eliminated, and the people as a whole approach to the
composite type of civilized humanity. A land shut off by mountains or
sea from the rest of the world tends to develop a homogeneous people,
since it limits or prevents the intrusion of foreign elements; or when
once these are introduced, it encourages their rapid assimilation by the
strongly interactive life of a confined locality. Therefore large or
remote islands are, as a rule, distinguished by the unity of their
inhabitants in point of civilization and race characteristics. Witness
Great Britain, Ireland, Japan, Iceland, as also Australia and New
Zealand at the time of their discovery. The highlands of the Southern
Appalachians, which form the "mountain backyards" of Kentucky, Tennessee
and North Carolina, are peopled by the purest English stock in the
United States, descendants of the backwoodsmen of the late eighteenth
century. Difficulty of access and lack of arable land have combined to
discourage immigration. In consequence, foreign elements, including the
elsewhere ubiquitous negro, are wanting, except along the few railroads
which in recent years have penetrated this country. Here survive an
eighteenth century English, Christmas celebrated on Twelfth Night, the
spinning wheel, and a belief in Joshua's power to arrest the course of
the sun.[75]
An easily accessible land is geographically hospitable to all
new-comers, facilitates the mingling of peoples, the exchange of
commodities and ideas. The amalgamation of races in such regions depends
upon the similarity or diversity of the ethnic elements and the duration
of the common occupation. The broad, open valley of the Danube from the
Black Sea to Vienna contains a bizarre mixture of several stocks--Turks,
Bulgarians, various families of pure Slavs, Roumanians, Hungarians, and
Germans. These elements are too diverse and their occupation of the
valley too recent for amalgamation to have advanced very far as yet. The
maritime plain and open river valleys of northern France show a complete
fusion of the native Celts with the Saxons, Franks, and Normans who have
successively drifted into the region, just as the Teutonic and scanter
Slav elements have blended in the Baltic plains from the Elbe to the
Vistula.
[Sidenote: Change of habitat.]
Here are four different classes of geographic influences, all which may
become active in modifying a people when it changes its habitat. Many of
the characteristics acquired in the old home still live on, or at best
yield slowly to the new environment. This is especially true of the
direct physical and psychical effects. But a country may work a prompt
and radical change in the social organization of an immigrant people by
the totally new conditions of economic life which it presents. These may
be either greater wealth or poverty of natural resources than the race
has previously known, new stimulants or deterrents to commerce and
intercourse, and new conditions of climate which affect the efficiency
of the workman and the general character of production. From these a
whole complex mass of secondary effects may follow.
The Aryans and Mongols, leaving their homes in the cool barren highlands
of Central Asia where nature dispensed her gifts with a miserly hand,
and coming down to the hot, low, fertile plains of the Indian rivers,
underwent several fundamental changes in the process of adaptation to
their new environment. An enervating climate did its work in slaking
their energies; but more radical still was the change wrought by the
contrast of poverty and abundance, enforced asceticism and luxury,
presented by the old and new home. The restless, tireless shepherds
became a sedentary, agricultural people; the abstemious nomads,--spare,
sinewy, strangers to indulgence--became a race of rulers, revelling in
luxury, lording it over countless subjects; finally, their numbers
increased rapidly, no longer kept down by the scant subsistence of arid
grasslands and scattered oases.
In a similar way, the Arab of the desert became transformed into the
sedentary lord of Spain. In the luxuriance of field and orchard which
his skilful methods of irrigation and tillage produced, in the growing
predominance of the intellectual over the nomadic military life, of the
complex affairs of city and mart over the simple tasks of herdsman or
cultivator, he lost the benefit of the early harsh training and
therewith his hold upon his Iberian empire. Biblical history gives us
the picture of the Sheik Abraham, accompanied by his nephew Lot, moving
up from the rainless plains of Mesopotamia with his flocks and herds
into the better watered Palestine. There his descendants in the garden
land of Canaan became an agricultural people; and the problem of Moses
and the Judges was to prevent their assimilation in religion and custom
to the settled Semitic tribes about them, and to make them preserve the
ideals born in the starry solitudes of the desert.
[Sidenote: Retrogression in new habitat.]
The change from the nomadic to the sedentary life represents an economic
advance. Sometimes removal to strongly contrasted geographic conditions
necessitates a reversion to a lower economic type of existence. The
French colonists who came to Lower Canada in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries found themselves located in a region of intense
cold, where arable soil was inferior in quality and limited in amount,
producing no staple like the tobacco of Virginia or the wheat of
Maryland or the cotton of South Carolina or the sugar of the West
Indies, by which a young colony might secure a place in European trade.
But the snow-wrapped forests of Canada yielded an abundance of
fur-bearing animals, the fineness and thickness of whose pelts were born
of this frozen north. Into their remotest haunts at the head of Lake
Superior or of Hudson Bay, long lines of rivers and lakes opened level
water roads a thousand miles or more from the crude little colonial
capital at Quebec. And over in Europe beaver hats and fur-trimmed
garments were all the style! So the plodding farmer from Normandy and
the fisherman from Poitou, transferred to Canadian soil, were
irresistibly drawn into the adventurous life of the trapper and
fur-trader. The fur trade became the accepted basis of colonial life;
the _voyageur_ and _courier de bois_, clad in skins, paddling up
ice-rimmed streams in their birch-bark canoes, fraternizing with Indians
who were their only companions in that bleak interior, and married often
to dusky squaws, became assimilated to the savage life about them and
reverted to the lower hunter stage of civilization.[76]
[Sidenote: The Boers of South Africa]
Another pronounced instance of rapid retrogression under new unfavorable
geographic conditions is afforded by the South African Boer. The
transfer from the busy commercial cities of the Rhine mouths to the
far-away periphery of the world's trade, from the intensive agriculture
of small deltaic gardens and the scientific dairy farming of the moist
Netherlands to the semi-arid pastures of the high, treeless _veldt_,
where they were barred from contact with the vivifying sea and its
ship-borne commerce, has changed the enterprising seventeenth century
Hollander into the conservative pastoral Boer. Dutch cleanliness has
necessarily become a tradition to a people who can scarcely find water
for their cattle. The comfort and solid bourgeois elegance of the Dutch
home lost its material equipment in the Great Trek, when the long wagon
journey reduced household furniture to its lowest terms. House-wifely
habits and order vanished in the semi-nomadic life which followed.[77]
The gregarious instinct, bred by the closely-packed population of little
Holland, was transformed to a love of solitude, which in all lands
characterizes the people of a remote and sparsely inhabited frontier. It
is a common saying that the Boer cannot bear to see another man's smoke
from his _stoep_, just as the early Trans-Allegheny pioneer was always
on the move westward, because he could not bear to hear his neighbor's
watch-dog bark. Even the Boer language has deteriorated under the
effects of isolation and a lower status of civilization. The native
_Taal_ differs widely from the polished speech of Holland; it preserves
some features of the High Dutch of two centuries ago, but has lost
inflexions and borrowed words for new phenomena from the English,
Kaffirs and Hottentots; can express no abstract ideas, only the concrete
ideas of a dull, work-a-day world.[78]
The new habitat may eliminate many previously acquired characteristics
and hence transform a people, as in the case of the Boers; or it may
intensify tribal or national traits, as in the seafaring propensities of
the Angles and Saxons when transferred to Britain, and of the
seventeenth century English when transplanted to the indented coasts of
New England; or it may tolerate mere survival or the slow dissuetude of
qualities which escape any particular pressure in the new environment,
and which neither benefit nor handicap in the modified struggle for
existence.
NOTES TO CHAPTER II
[34] Darwin, Origin of Species, Chap. V, p. 166. New York, 1895.
[35] E. Virchow, _Rassenbildung und Erblichkeit_, Bastian
Festschrift, pp. 14, 43, 44. Berlin, 1896.
[36] Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 34-35. New York, 1899.
[37] Darwin, Origin of Species, Chap. I, pp. 8-9. New York, 1895.
[38] P. Ehrenreich, _Die Urbewohner Brasiliens_, p. 30. Braunschweig,
1897.
[39] Ratzel, _Die Erde und das Leben_, Vol. I, pp. 364, 365. Leipzig and
Vienna, 1901.
[40] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 79-86, 96, 100. New York, 1899.
[41] T. Waitz, Anthropology, pp. 57-58. Edited by J.F. Collingwood.
London, 1863.
[42] Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. I, pp.
198-200, 219. Philadelphia, 1853.
[43] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 33. New York, 1899.
[44] D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels, p. 266. New York, 1858.
[45] Alaska, _Eleventh Census Report_, pp. 54, 56. Washington, 1893, and
Albert P. Niblack, The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern
British Columbia, p. 237. Washington, 1888.
[46] Fitz-Roy, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. II, pp. 130-132, 137, 138.
London, 1839.
[47] H. Bancroft, Native Races, Vol. I, pp. 88-89. San Francisco, 1886.
[48] S. Stanhope Smith, Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion
and Figure in the Human Species, pp. 103-110. New Brunswick and New
York, 1810.
[49] For full discussion see A.R. Wallace's article on acclimatization
in Encyclopedia Britanica, and W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe. Chap. XXI.
New York, 1899.
[50] D.G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 39-41. Philadelphia, 1901.
[51] Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 34-35. New York, 1899.
[52] E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 137-138. London, 1897.
[53] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 58-71, Map. New York, 1898.
[54] _Ibid._, p. 566. D.G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 29-30.
Philadelphia, 1901.
[55] D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels, p. 607. New York, 1858.
[56] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, p. 83, New York, 1859.
[57] P. Ehrenreich, _Die Urbewohner Brasiliens_, p. 32. Braunschweig,
1897.
[58] T. Waitz, Anthropology, pp. 46-49. Edited by Collingwood, London,
1863.
[59] _Philippine Census_, Vol. I, p. 552. Washington, 1903.
[60] F. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 106. London, 1908.
[61] Major Charles E. Woodruff, The Effect of Tropical Light on the
White Man, New York, 1905, is a suggestive but not convincing discussion
of the theory.
[62] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 74-77. New York, 1899.
[63] Quoted in G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, p. 73. London and New
York, 1901.
[64] _Ibid._, pp. 63-69, 74-75.
[65] T. Waitz, Anthropology, pp. 44-45. Edited by J.F. Collingwood,
London, 1863.
[66] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 76. New York, 1899.
[67] For able discussion, see Topinard, Anthropology, pp. 385-392. Tr.
from French, London, 1894.
[68] J. Johnson, Jurisprudence of the Isle of Man, pp. 44, 71.
Edinburgh, 1811.
[69] Charles F. Hall, Arctic Researches and Life among the Eskimo, p.
571. New York, 1866. Franz Boas, The Central Eskimo, _Sixth Annual
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, pp. 588-590. Washington, 1888.
[70] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 35. London, 1896-1898.
[71] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 34, note 8.
Stuttgart, 1888.
[72] Elisee Reclus, The Earth and Its Inhabitants, _Asia_, Vol. I, p.
171. New York, 1895.
[73] Alfred Hettner, _Die Geographie des Menschen_, pp. 409-410 in
_Geographische Zeitschrift_, Vol. XIII, No. 8. Leipzig, 1907.
[74] S.B. Boulton, The Russian Empire, pp. 60-64. London, 1882.
[75] E.C. Semple, The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains, _The
Geographical Journal_, Vol. XVII, No. 6, pp. 588-623. London, 1901.
[76] E.C. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, pp.
25-31. Boston, 1903. The Influence of Geographic Environment on the
Lower St. Lawrence, Bull. _Amer. Geog. Society_, Vol. XXXVI, p. 449-466.
New York, 1904.
[77] A.R. Colquhoun, Africander Land, pp. 200-201. New York, 1906.
[78] _Ibid._, pp. 140-145. James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p.
398. New York, 1897.
CHAPTER III
SOCIETY AND STATE IN RELATION TO THE LAND
[Sidenote: People and land.]
Every clan, tribe, state or nation includes two ideas, a people and its
land, the first unthinkable without the other. History, sociology,
ethnology touch only the inhabited areas of the earth. These areas gain
their final significance because of the people who occupy them; their
local conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical features
and geographic situation are important primarily as factors in the
development of actual or possible inhabitants. A land is fully
comprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon its
people, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of its
activities. More than this, human activities are fully intelligible only
in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated
them in different parts of the world. The principles of the evolution of
navigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population,
can never reach their correct and final statement, unless the data for
the conclusions are drawn from every part of the world, and each fact
interpreted in the light of the local conditions whence it sprang.
Therefore anthropology, sociology and history should be permeated by
geography.
[Sidenote: Political geography and history.]
In history, the question of territory,--by which is meant mere area in
contrast to specific geographic conditions--has constantly come to the
front, because a state obviously involved land and boundaries, and
assumed as its chief function the defence and extension of these.
Therefore political geography developed early as an offshoot of history.
Political science has often formulated its principles without regard to
the geographic conditions of states, but as a matter of fact, the most
fruitful political policies of nations have almost invariably had a
geographic core. Witness the colonial policy of Holland, England, France
and Portugal, the free-trade policy of England, the militantism of
Germany, the whole complex question of European balance of power and the
Bosporus, and the Monroe Doctrine of the United States. Dividing lines
between political parties tend to follow approximately geographic lines
of cleavage; and these make themselves apparent at recurring intervals
of national upheaval, perhaps with, centuries between, like a submarine
volcanic rift. In England the southeastern plain and the northwestern
uplands have been repeatedly arrayed against each other, from the Roman
conquest which embraced the lowlands up to about the 500-foot contour
line,[79] through the War of the Roses and the Civil War,[80] to the
struggle for the repeal of the Corn Laws and the great Reform Bill of
1832.[81] Though the boundary lines have been only roughly the same and
each district has contained opponents of the dominant local party,
nevertheless the geographic core has been plain enough.
[Sidenote: Political versus social geography.]
The land is a more conspicuous factor in the history of states than in
the history of society, but not more necessary and potent. Wars, which
constitute so large a part of political history, have usually aimed more
or less directly at acquisition or retention of territory; they have
made every petty quarrel the pretext for mulcting the weaker nation of
part of its land. Political maps are therefore subject to sudden and
radical alterations, as when France's name was wiped off the North
American continent in 1763, or when recently Spain's sovereignty in the
Western Hemisphere was obliterated. But the race stocks, languages,
customs, and institutions of both France and Spain remained after the
flags had departed. The reason is that society is far more deeply rooted
in the land than is a state, does not expand or contract its area so
readily. Society is always, in a sense, _adscripta glebae_; an expanding
state which incorporates a new piece of territory inevitably
incorporates its inhabitants, unless it exterminates or expels them. Yet
because racial and social geography changes slowly, quietly and
imperceptibly, like all those fundamental processes which we call
growth, it is not so easy and obvious a task to formulate a natural law
for the territorial relations of the various hunter, pastoral nomadic,
agricultural, and industrial types of society as for those of the
growing state.
[Sidenote: Land basis of society.]
Most systems of sociology treat man as if he were in some way detached
from the earth's surface; they ignore the land basis of society. The
anthropo-geographer recognizes the various social forces, economic and
psychologic, which sociologists regard as the cement of societies; but
he has something to add. He sees in the land occupied by a primitive
tribe or a highly organized state the underlying material bond holding
society together, the ultimate basis of their fundamental social
activities, which are therefore derivatives from the land. He sees the
common territory exercising an integrating force,--weak in primitive
communities where the group has established only a few slight and
temporary relations with its soil, so that this low social complex
breaks up readily like its organic counterpart, the low animal organism
found in an amoeba; he sees it growing stronger with every advance in
civilization involving more complex relations to the land,--with settled
habitations, with increased density of population, with a discriminating
and highly differentiated use of the soil, with the exploitation of
mineral resources, and finally with that far-reaching exchange of
commodities and ideas which means the establishment of varied
extra-territorial relations. Finally, the modern society or state has
grown into every foot of its own soil, exploited its every geographic
advantage, utilized its geographic location to enrich itself by
international trade, and when possible, to absorb outlying territories
by means of colonies. The broader this geographic base, the richer, more
varied its resources, and the more favorable its climate to their
exploitation, the more numerous and complex are the connections which
the members of a social group can establish with it, and through it with
each other; or in other words, the greater may be its ultimate
historical significance. The polar regions and the subtropical deserts,
on the other hand, permit man to form only few and intermittent
relations with any one spot, restrict economic methods to the lower
stages of development, produce only the small, weak, loosely organized
horde, which never evolves into a state so long as it remains in that
retarding environment.
[Sidenote: Morgan's Societas.]
Man in his larger activities, as opposed to his mere physiological or
psychological processes, cannot be studied apart from the land which he
inhabits. Whether we consider him singly or in a group--family, clan,
tribe or state--we must always consider him or his group in relation to
a piece of land. The ancient Irish sept, Highland clan, Russian mir,
Cherokee hill-town, Bedouin tribe, and the ancient Helvetian canton,
like the political state of history, have meant always a group of people
and a bit of land. The first presupposes the second. In all cases the
form and size of the social group, the nature of its activities, the
trend and limit of its development will be strongly influenced by the
size and nature of its habitat. The land basis is always present, in
spite of Morgan's artificial distinction between a theoretically
landless _societas_, held together only by the bond of common blood, and
the political _civitas_ based upon land.[82] Though primitive society
found its conscious bond in common blood, nevertheless the land bond was
always there, and it gradually asserted its fundamental character with
the evolution of society.
The savage and barbarous groups which in Morgan's classification would
fall under the head of _societas_ have nevertheless a clear conception
of their ownership of the tribal lands which they use in common. This
idea is probably of very primitive origin, arising from the association
of a group with its habitat, whose food supply they regard as a
monopoly.[83] This is true even of migratory hunting tribes. They claim a
certain area whose boundaries, however, are often ill-defined and
subject to fluctuations, because the lands are not held by permanent
occupancy and cultivation. An exceptional case is that of the Shoshone
Indians, inhabiting the barren Utah basin and the upper valleys of the
Snake and Salmon Rivers, who are accredited with no sense of ownership
of the soil. In their natural state they roved about in small, totally
unorganized bands or single families, and changed their locations so
widely, that they seemed to lay no claim to any particular portion. The
hopeless sterility of the region and its poverty of game kept its
destitute inhabitants constantly on the move to gather in the meager
food supply, and often restricted the social group to the family.[84]
Here the bond between land and tribe, and hence between the members of
the tribe, was the weakest possible.
[Sidenote: Land bond in hunter tribes.]
The usual type of tribal ownership was presented by the Comanches,
nomadic horse Indians who occupied the grassy plains of northern Texas.
They held their territory and the game upon it as the common property of
the tribe, and jealously guarded the integrity of their domain.[85] The
chief Algonquin tribes, who occupied the territory between the Ohio
River and the Great Lakes, had each its separate domain, within which it
shifted its villages every few years; but its size depended upon the
power of the tribe to repel encroachment upon its hunting grounds.
Relying mainly on the chase and fishing, little on agriculture, for
their subsistence, their relations to their soil were superficial and
transitory, their tribal organization in a high degree unstable.[86]
Students of American ethnology generally agree that most of the Indian
tribes east of the Mississippi were occupying definite areas at the time
of the discovery, and were to a considerable extent sedentary and
agricultural. Though nomadic within the tribal territory, as they moved
with the season in pursuit of game, they returned to their villages,
which were shifted only at relatively long intervals.[87]
The political organization of the native Australians, low as they were
in the social scale, seems to have been based chiefly on the claim of
each wretched wandering tribe to a definite territory.[88] In north
central Australia, where even a very sparse population has sufficed to
saturate the sterile soil, tribal boundaries have become fixed and
inviolable, so that even war brings no transfer of territory. Land and
people are identified. The bond is cemented by their primitive religion,
for the tribe's spirit ancestors occupied this special territory.[89] In
a like manner a very definite conception of tribal ownership of land
prevails among the Bushmen and Bechuanas of South Africa; and to the
pastoral Hereros the alienation of their land is inconceivable.[90] [See
map page 105.]
A tribe of hunters can never be more than a small horde, because the
simple, monotonous savage economy permits no concentration of
population, no division of labor except that between the sexes, and
hence no evolution of classes. The common economic level of all is
reflected in the simple social organization,[91] which necessarily has
little cohesion, because the group must be prepared to break up and
scatter in smaller divisions, when its members increase or its savage
supplies decrease even a little. Such primitive groups cannot grow into
larger units, because these would demand more roots sent down into the
sustaining soil; but they multiply by fission, like the infusorial
monads, and thereafter lead independent existences remote from each
other. This is the explanation of multiplication of dialects among
savage tribes.
[Sidenote: Land bond in fisher tribes.]
Fishing tribes have their chief occupation determined by their habitats,
which are found along well stocked rivers, lakes, or coastal fishing
grounds. Conditions here encourage an early adoption of sedentary life,
discourage wandering except for short periods, and facilitate the
introduction of agriculture wherever conditions of climate and soil
permit. Hence these fisher folk develop relatively large and permanent
social groups, as testified by the ancient lake-villages of Switzerland,
based upon a concentrated food-supply resulting from a systematic and
often varied exploitation of the local resources. The cooeperation and
submission to a leader necessary in pelagic fishing often gives the
preliminary training for higher political organization.[92] All the
primitive stocks of the Brazilian Indians, except the mountain Ges, are
fishermen and agriculturists; hence their annual migrations are kept
within narrow limits. Each linguistic group occupies a fixed and
relatively well defined district.[93] Stanley found along the Congo
large permanent villages of the natives, who were engaged in fishing and
tilling the fruitful soil, but knew little about the country ten miles
back from the river. These two generous means of subsistence are
everywhere combined in Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia: there they
are associated with dense populations and often with advanced political
organization, as we find it in the feudal monarchy of Tonga and the
savage Fiji Islands.[94] Fisher tribes, therefore, get an early impulse
forward in civilization;[95] and even where conditions do not permit the
upward step to agriculture, these tribes have permanent relations with
their land, form stable social groups, and often utilize their location
on a natural highway to develop systematic trade. For instance, on the
northwest coast of British Columbia and Southern Alaska, the Haida,
Tlingit and Tsimshean Indians have portioned out all the land about
their seaboard villages among the separate families or households as
hunting, fishing, and berrying grounds. These are regarded as private
property and are handed down from generation to generation. If they are
used by anyone other than the owner, the privilege must be paid for.
Every salmon stream has its proprietor, whose summer camp can be seen
set up at the point where the run of the fish is greatest. Combined with
this private property in land there is a brisk trade up and down the
coast, and a tendency toward feudalism in the village communities, owing
to the association of power and social distinction with wealth and
property in land.[96]
[Sidenote: Land bond in pastoral societies.]
Among pastoral nomads, among whom a systematic use of their territory
begins to appear, and therefore a more definite relation between land
and people, we find a more distinct notion than among wandering hunters
of territorial ownership, the right of communal use, and the distinct
obligation of common defense. Hence the social bond is drawn closer. The
nomad identifies himself with a certain district, which belongs to his
tribe by tradition or conquest, and has its clearly defined boundaries.
Here he roams between its summer and winter pastures, possibly one
hundred and fifty miles apart, visits its small arable patches in the
spring for his limited agricultural ventures, and returns to them in the
fall to reap their meager harvest. Its springs, streams, or wells assume
enhanced value, are things to be fought for, owing to the prevailing
aridity of summer; while ownership of a certain tract of desert or
grassland carries with it a certain right in the bordering settled
district as an area of plunder.[97]
The Kara-Kirghis stock, who have been located since the sixteenth
century on Lake Issik-Kul, long ago portioned out the land among the
separate families, and determined their limits by natural features of
the landscape.[98] Sven Hedin found on the Tarim River poles set up to
mark the boundary between the Shah-yar and Kuchar tribal pastures.[99]
John de Plano Carpini, traveling over southern Russia in 1246,
immediately after the Tartar conquest, found that the Dnieper, Don,
Volga and Ural rivers were all boundaries between domains of the various
millionaries or thousands, into which the Tartar horde was
organized.[100] The population of this vast country was distributed
according to the different degrees of fertility and the size of the
pastoral groups.[101] Volney observed the same distinction in the
distribution of the Bedouins of Syria. He found the barren cantons held
by small, widely scattered tribes, as in the Desert of Suez; but the
cultivable cantons, like the Hauran and the Pachalic of Aleppo, closely
dotted by the encampments of the pastoral owners.[102]
The large range of territory held by a nomadic tribe is all successively
occupied in the course of a year, but each part only for a short period
of time. A pastoral use of even a good district necessitates a move of
five or ten miles every few weeks. The whole, large as it may be, is
absolutely necessary for the annual support of the tribe. Hence any
outside encroachment upon their territory calls for the united
resistance of the tribe. This joint or social action is dictated by
their common interest in pastures and herds. The social administration
embodied in the apportionment of pastures among the families or clans
grows out of the systematic use of their territory, which represents a
closer relation between land and people than is found among purely
hunting tribes. Overcrowding by men or livestock, on the other hand,
puts a strain upon the social bond. When Abraham and Lot, typical
nomads, returned from Egypt to Canaan with their large flocks and herds,
rivalry for the pastures occasioned conflicts among their shepherds, so
the two sheiks decided to separate. Abraham took the hill pastures of
Judea, and Lot the plains of Jordan near the settled district of
Sodom.[103]
[Sidenote: Geographical mark of low-type societies.]
The larger the amount of territory necessary for the support of a given
number of people, whether the proportion be due to permanent poverty of
natural resources as in the Eskimo country, or to retarded economic
development as among the Indians of primitive America or the present
Sudanese, the looser is the connection between land and people, and the
lower the type of social organization. For such groups the organic
theory of society finds an apt description. To quote Spencer, "The
original clusters, animal and social, are not only small, but they lack
density. Creatures of low type occupy large spaces considering the small
quantity of animal substance they contain; and low-type societies spread
over areas that are wide relatively to the number of their component
individuals."[104] In common language this means small tribes or even
detached families sparsely scattered over wide areas, living in
temporary huts or encampments of tepees and tents shifted from place to
place, making no effort to modify the surface of the land beyond
scratching the soil to raise a niggardly crop of grain or tubers, and no
investment of labor that might attach to one spot the sparse and migrant
population. [See density maps pages 8 and 9.]
[Sidenote: Land and state.]
The superiority over this social type of the civilized state lies in the
highly organized utilization of its whole geographic basis by the mature
community, and in the development of government that has followed the
increasing density of population and multiplication of activities
growing out of this manifold use of the land. Sedentary agriculture,
which forms its initial economic basis, is followed by industrialism and
commerce. The migratory life presents only limited accumulation of
capital, and restricts narrowly its forms. Permanent settlement
encourages accumulation in every form, and under growing pressure of
population slowly reveals the possibilities of every foot of ground, of
every geographic advantage. These are the fibers of the land which
become woven into the whole fabric of the nation's life. These are the
geographic elements constituting the soil in which empires are rooted;
they rise in the sap of the nation.
[Sidenote: Strength of the land bond in the state.]
The geographic basis of a state embodies a whole complex of physical
conditions which may influence its historical development. The most
potent of these are its size and zonal location; its situation, whether
continental or insular, inland or maritime, on the open ocean or an
enclosed sea; its boundaries, whether drawn by sea, mountain, desert or
the faint demarking line of a river; its forested mountains, grassy
plains, and arable lowlands; its climate and drainage system; finally
its equipment with plant and animal life, whether indigenous or
imported, and its mineral resources. When a state has taken advantage
of all its natural conditions, the land becomes a constituent part of
the state,[105] modifying the people which inhabit it, modified by them
in turn, till the connection between the two becomes so strong by
reciprocal interaction, that the people cannot be understood apart from
their land. Any attempt to divide them theoretically reduces the social
or political body to a cadaver, valuable for the study of structural
anatomy after the method of Herbert Spencer, but throwing little light
upon the vital processes.
[Sidenote: Weak land tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes.]
A people who makes only a transitory or superficial use of its land has
upon it no permanent or secure hold. The power to hold is measured by
the power to use; hence the weak tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes.
Between their scattered encampments at any given time are wide
interstices, inviting occupation by any settlers who know how to make
better use of the soil. This explains the easy intrusion of the English
colonists into the sparsely tenanted territory of the Indians, of the
agricultural Chinese into the pasture lands of the Mongols beyond the
Great Wall, of the American pioneers into the hunting grounds of the
Hudson Bay Company in the disputed Oregon country.[106] The frail bonds
which unite these lower societies to their soil are easily ruptured and
the people themselves dislodged, while their land is appropriated by the
intruder. But who could ever conceive of dislodging the Chinese or the
close-packed millions of India? A modern state with a given population
on a wide area is more vulnerable than another of like population more
closely distributed; but the former has the advantage of a reserve
territory for future growth.[107] This was the case of Kursachsen and
Brandenburg in the sixteenth century, and of the United States
throughout its history. But beside the danger of inherent weakness
before attack, a condition of relative underpopulation always threatens
a retardation of development. Easy-going man needs the prod of a
pressing population. [Compare maps pages 8 and 103 for examples.]
[Sidenote: Land and food supply.]
Food is the urgent and recurrent need of individuals and of society. It
dictates their activities in relation to their land at every stage of
economic development, fixes the locality of the encampment or village,
and determines the size of the territory from which sustenance is
drawn. The length of residence in one place depends upon whether the
springs of its food supply are perennial or intermittent, while the
abundance of their flow determines how large a population a given piece
of land can support.
[Sidenote: Advance from natural to artificial basis of subsistence.]
Hunter and fisher folk, relying almost exclusively upon what their land
produces of itself, need a large area and derive from it only an
irregular food supply, which in winter diminishes to the verge of
famine. The transition to the pastoral stage has meant the substitution
of an artificial for a natural basis of subsistence, and therewith a
change which more than any other one thing has inaugurated the advance
from savagery to civilization.[108] From the standpoint of economics, the
forward stride has consisted in the application of capital in the form
of flocks and herds to the task of feeding the wandering horde;[109] from
the standpoint of alimentation, in the guarantee of a more reliable and
generally more nutritious food supply, which enables population to grow
more steadily and rapidly; from the standpoint of geography, in the
marked reduction in the per capita amount of land necessary to yield an
adequate and stable food supply. Pastoral nomadism can support in a
given district of average quality from ten to twenty times as many souls
as can the chase; but in this respect is surpassed from twenty to
thirty-fold by the more productive agriculture. While the subsistence of
a nomad requires 100 to 200 acres of land, for that of a skillful farmer
from 1 to 2 acres suffice.[110] In contrast, the land of the Indians
living in the Hudson Bay Territory in 1857 averaged 10 square miles per
capita; that of the Indians in the United States in 1825, subsidized
moreover by the government, 1-1/4 square miles.[111]
[Sidenote: Land in relation to agriculture.]
With transition to the sedentary life of agriculture, society makes a
further gain over nomadism in the closer integration of its social
units, due to permanent residence in larger and more complex groups; in
the continuous release of labor from the task of mere food-getting for
higher activities, resulting especially in the rapid evolution of the
home; and finally in the more elaborate organization in the use of the
land, leading to economic differentiation of different localities and
to a rapid increase in the population supported by a given area, so that
the land becomes the dominant cohesive force in society. [See maps pages
8 and 9.]
[Sidenote: Migratory agriculture]
Agriculture is adopted at first on a small scale as an adjunct to the
chase or herding. It tends therefore to partake of the same extensive
and nomadic character[112] as these other methods of gaining subsistence,
and only gradually becomes sedentary and intensive. Such was the
superficial, migratory tillage of most American Indians, shifting with
the village in the wake of the retreating game or in search of fresh
unexhausted soil. Such is the agriculture of the primitive Korkus in the
Mahadeo Hills in Central India. They clear a forested slope by burning;
rake over the ashes in which they sow their grain, and reap a fairly
good crop in the fertilized soil. The second year the clearing yields a
reduced product and the third year is abandoned. When the hamlet of five
or six families has exhausted all the land about it, it moves to a new
spot to repeat the process.[113]
The same superficial, extensive tillage, with abandonment of fields
every few years, prevails in the Tartar districts of the Russian
steppes, as it did among the cattle-raising Germans at the beginning of
their history. Tacitus says of them, _Arva per annos mutant et superest
ager_,[114] commenting at the same time upon their abundance of land and
their reluctance to till. Where nomadism is made imperative by aridity,
the agriculture which accompanies it tends to become fixed, owing to the
few localities blessed with an irrigating stream to moisten the soil.
These spots, generally selected for the winter residence, have their
soil enriched, moreover, by the long stay of the herd and thus avoid
exhaustion.[115] Often, however, in enclosed basins the salinity of the
irrigating streams in their lower course ruins the fields after one or
two crops, and necessitates a constant shifting of the cultivated
patches; hence agriculture remains subsidiary to the yield of the
pastures. This condition and effect is conspicuous along the termini of
the streams draining the northern slope of the Kuen Lun into the Tarim
basin.[116]
[Sidenote: Geographic checks to progress.]
The desultory, intermittent, extensive use of the land practised by
hunters and nomads tends, under the growing pressure of population, to
pass into the systematic, continuous, intensive use practised by the
farmer, except where nature presents positive checks to the transition.
The most obvious check consists in adverse conditions of climate and
soil. Where agriculture meets insurmountable obstacles, like the intense
cold of Arctic Siberia and Lapland, or the alkaline soils of Nevada and
the Caspian Depression, or the inadequate rainfall of Mongolia and
Central Arabia, the land can produce no higher economic and social
groups than pastoral hordes. Hence shepherd folk are found in their
purest types in deserts and steppes, where conditions early crystallized
the social form and checked development. [Rainfall map chap. XIV.]
[Sidenote: Native animal and plant life as factors.]
Adverse conditions of climate and soil are not the only factors in this
retardation. The very unequal native equipment of the several continents
with plant and animal forms likely to accelerate the advance to nomadism
and agriculture also enters into the equation. In Australia, the lack of
a single indigenous mammal fit for domestication and of all cereals
blocked from the start the pastoral and agricultural development of the
natives. Hence at the arrival of the Europeans, Australia presented the
unique spectacle of a whole continent with its population still held in
the vise of nature. The Americas had a limited variety of animals
susceptible of domestication, but were more meagerly equipped than the
Old World. Yet the Eskimo failed to tame and herd the reindeer, though
their precarious food-supply furnished a motive for the transition.
Moreover, an abundance of grass and reindeer moss (_Cladonia
rangiferina_), and congenial climatic conditions favored it especially
for the Alaskan Eskimo, who had, besides, the nearby example of the
Siberian Chukches as reindeer herders.[117] The buffalo, whose
domesticability has been proved, was never utilized in this way by the
Indians, though the Spaniard Gomara writes of one tribe, living in the
sixteenth century in the southwestern part of what is now United States
territory, whose chief wealth consisted in herds of tame buffalo.[118]
North America, at the time of the discovery, saw only the dog hanging
about the lodges of the Indians; but in South America the llama and
alpaca, confined to the higher levels of the Andes (10,000 to 15,000
feet elevation) were used in domestic herds only in the mountain-rimmed
valleys of ancient Peru, where, owing to the restricted areas of these
intermontane basins, stock-raising early became stationary,[119] as we
find it in the Alps. Moreover, the high ridges of the Andes supported a
species of grass called _ichu_, growing up to the snowline from the
equator to the southern extremity of Patagonia. Its geographical
distribution coincided with that of the llama and alpaca, whose chief
pasturage it furnished.[120] In contrast, the absence of any wild fodder
plants in Japan, and the exclusion of all foreign forms by the
successful competition of the native bamboo grass have together
eliminated pastoral life from the economic history of the island.
The Old World, on the other hand, furnished an abundant supply of
indigenous animals susceptible of domestication, and especially those
fitted for nomadic life, such as the camel, horse, ass, sheep and goat.
Hence it produced in the widespread grasslands and deserts of Europe,
Asia, and Africa the most perfect types of pastoral development in its
natural or nomadic form. Moreover, the early history of the civilized
agricultural peoples of these three continents reveals their previous
pastoral mode of life.
North and South America offered over most of their area conditions of
climate and soil highly favorable to agriculture, and a fair list of
indigenous cereals, tubers, and pulses yielding goodly crops even to
superficial tillage. Maize especially was admirably suited for a race of
semi-migratory hunters. It could be sown without plowing, ripened in a
warm season even in ninety days, could be harvested without a sickle and
at the pleasure of the cultivator, and needed no preparation beyond
roasting before it was ready for food.[121] The beans and pumpkins which
the Indians raised also needed only a short season. Hence many Indian
tribes, while showing no trace of pastoral development, combined with
the chase a semi-nomadic agriculture; and in a few districts where
geographic conditions had applied peculiar pressure, they had
accomplished the transition to sedentary agriculture.
[Sidenote: Land per capita under various cultural and geographic
conditions.]
Every advance to a higher state of civilization has meant a progressive
decrease in the amount of land necessary for the support of the
individual, and a progressive increase in the relations between man and
his habitat. The stage of social development remaining the same, the per
capita amount of land decreases also from poorer to better endowed
geographical districts, and with every invention which brings into use
some natural resource. The following classification[122] illustrates the
relation of density of population to various geographic and
socio-economic conditions.
Hunter tribes on the outskirts of the habitable area, as in Arctic
America and Siberia, require from 70 to 200 square miles per capita; in
arid lands, like the Kalahari Desert and Patagonia, 40 to 200 square
miles per capita; in choice districts and combining with the chase some
primitive agriculture, as did the Cherokee, Shawnee and Iroquois
Indians, the Dyaks of Borneo and the Papuans of New Guinea, 1/2 to 2
square miles per capita.
Pastoral nomads show a density of from 2 to 5 to the square mile;
practicing some agriculture, as in Kordofan and Sennar districts of
eastern Sudan, 10 to 15 to the square mile. Agriculture, undeveloped but
combined with some trade and industry as in Equatorial Africa, Borneo
and most of the Central American states, supports 5 to 15 to the square
mile; practised with European methods in young or colonial lands, as in
Arkansas, Texas, Minnesota, Hawaii, Canada and Argentine, or in European
lands with unfavorable climate, up to 25 to the square mile.
Pure agricultural lands of central Europe support 100 to the square
mile, and those of southern Europe, 200; when combining some industry,
from 250 to 300. But these figures rise to 500 or more in lowland India
and China. Industrial districts of modern Europe, such as England,
Belgium, Saxony, Departments Nord and Rhone in France, show a density of
500 to 800 to the square mile. [See maps pages 8 and 9.]
[Sidenote: Density of population and government.]
With every increase of the population inhabiting a given area, and with
the consequent multiplication and constriction of the bonds uniting
society with its land, comes a growing necessity for a more highly
organized government, both to reduce friction within and to secure to
the people the land on which and by which they live. Therefore
protection becomes a prime function of the state. It wards off outside
attack which may aim at acquisition of its territory, or an invasion of
its rights, or curtailment of its geographic sphere of activity. The
modern industrial state, furthermore, with the purpose of strengthening
the nation, assists or itself undertakes the construction of highways,
canals, and railroads, and the maintenance of steamship lines. These
encourage the development of natural resources and of commerce, and
hence lay the foundation for an increased population, by multiplying the
relations between land and people.
[Sidenote: Territorial expansion of the state.]
A like object is attained by territorial expansion, which often follows
in the wake of commercial expansion. This strengthens the nation
positively by enlarging its geographic base, and negatively by forcing
back the boundaries of its neighbors. The expansion of the Thirteen
Colonies from the Atlantic slope to the Mississippi River and the Great
Lakes by the treaty concluding the Revolution was a strong guarantee of
the survival of the young Republic against future aggressions either of
England or Spain, though it exchanged the scientific or protecting
boundary of the Appalachian Mountains for the unscientific and exposed
boundary of a river. The expansion to the Rocky Mountains by the
Louisiana purchase not only gave wider play to national energies,
stimulated natural increase of population, and attracted immigration,
but it eliminated a dangerous neighbor in the French, and placed a wide
buffer of untenanted land between the United States and the petty
aggressions of the Spanish in Mexico. Rome's expansion into the valley
of the Po, as later into Trans-Alpine Gaul and Germany, had for its
purpose the protection of the peninsula against barbarian inroads.
Japan's recent aggression against the Russians in the Far East was
actuated by the realization that she had to expand into Korea at the
cost of Muscovite ascendency, or contract later at the cost of her own
independence.
[Sidenote: Checks to population.]
If a state lacks the energy and national purpose, like Italy, or the
possibility, like Switzerland, for territorial expansion, and accepts
its boundaries as final, the natural increase of population upon a fixed
area produces an increased density, unless certain social forces
counteract it. Without these forces, the relation of men to the land
would have tended to modify everywhere in the same way. Increase in
numbers would have been attended by a corresponding decrease in the
amount of land at the disposal of each individual. Those states which,
like Norway and Switzerland, cannot expand and which have exploited
their natural resources to the utmost, must resign themselves to the
emigration of their redundant population. But those which have remained
within their own boundaries and have adopted a policy of isolation, like
China, feudal Japan during its two and a half centuries of seclusion,
and numerous Polynesian islands, have been forced to war with nature
itself by checking the operation of the law of natural increase. All the
repulsive devices contributing to this end, whether infanticide,
abortion, cannibalism, the sanctioned murder of the aged and infirm,
honorable suicide, polyandry or persistent war, are the social
deformities consequent upon suppressed growth. Such artificial checks
upon population are more conspicuous in natural regions with sharply
defined boundaries, like islands and oases, as Malthus observed;[123] but
they are visible also among savage tribes whose boundaries are fixed not
by natural features but by the mutual repulsion and rivalry
characterizing the stage of development, and whose limit of population
is reduced by their low economic status.
[Sidenote: Extra-territorial relations.]
There is a great difference between those states whose inhabitants
subsist exclusively from the products of their own country and those
which rely more or less upon other lands. Great industrial states, like
England and Germany, which derive only a portion of their food and raw
material from their own territory, supply their dense populations
through international trade. Interruption of such foreign commerce is
disastrous to the population at home; hence the state by a navy protects
the lines of communication with those far-away lands of wheat fields and
cattle ranch. This is no purely modern development. Athens in the time
of Pericles used her navy not only to secure her political domination in
the Aegean, but also her connections with the colonial wheat lands
about the Euxine.
The modern state strives to render this circle of trade both large and
permanent by means of commercial treaties, customs-unions, trading-posts
and colonies. Thus while society at home is multiplying its relations
with its own land, the state is enabling it to multiply also its
relations with the whole producing world. While at home the nation is
becoming more closely knit together through the common bond of the
fatherland, in the world at large humanity is evolving a brotherhood of
man by the union of each with all through the common growing bond of the
earth. Hence we cannot avoid the question: Are we in process of evolving
a social idea vaster than that underlying nationality? Do the Socialists
hint to us the geographic basis of this new development, when they
describe themselves as an international political party?
[Sidenote: Geography in the philosophy of history.]
It is natural that the old philosophy of history should have fixed its
attention upon the geographic basis of historical events. Searching for
the permanent and common in the outwardly mutable, it found always at
the bottom of changing events the same solid earth. Biology has had the
same experience. The history of the life forms of the world leads always
back to the land on which that life arose, spread, and struggled for
existence. The philosophy of history was superior to early sociology, in
that its method was one of historical comparison, which inevitably
guided it back to the land as the material for the first generalization.
Thus it happens that the importance of the land factor in history was
approached first from the philosophical side. Montesquieu and Herder had
no intention of solving sociological and geographical problems, when
they considered the relation of peoples and states to their soil; they
wished to understand the purpose and destiny of man as an inhabitant of
the earth.
[Sidenote: Theory of progress from the standpoint of geography.]
The study of history is always, from one standpoint, a study of
progress. Yet after all the century-long investigation of the history of
every people working out its destiny in its given environment,
struggling against the difficulties of its habitat, progressing when it
overcame them and retrograding when it failed, advancing when it made
the most of its opportunities and declining when it made less or
succumbed to an invader armed with better economic or political methods
to exploit the land, it is amazing how little the land, in which all
activities finally root, has been taken into account in the discussion
of progress. Nevertheless, for a theory of progress it offers a solid
basis. From the standpoint of the land social and political
organizations, in successive stages of development, embrace ever
increasing areas, and make them support ever denser populations; and in
this concentration of population and intensification of economic
development they assume ever higher forms. It does not suffice that a
people, in order to progress, should extend and multiply only its local
relations to its land. This would eventuate in arrested development,
such as Japan showed at the time of Perry's visit. The ideal basis of
progress is the expansion of the world relations of a people, the
extension of its field of activity and sphere of influence far beyond
the limits of its own territory, by which it exchanges commodities and
ideas with various countries of the world. Universal history shows us
that, as the geographical horizon of the known world has widened from
gray antiquity to the present, societies and states have expanded their
territorial and economic scope; that they have grown not only in the
number of their square miles and in the geographical range of their
international intercourse, but in national efficiency, power, and
permanence, and especially in that intellectual force which feeds upon
the nutritious food of wide comparisons. Every great movement which has
widened the geographical outlook of a people, such as the Crusades in
the Middle Ages, or the colonization of the Americas, has applied an
intellectual and economic stimulus. The expanding field of advancing
history has therefore been an essential concomitant and at the same time
a driving force in the progress of every people and of the world.
[Sidenote: Man's increasing dependence upon nature.]
Since progress in civilization involves an increasing exploitation of
natural advantages and the development of closer relations between a
land and its people, it is an erroneous idea that man tends to
emancipate himself more and more from the control of the natural
conditions forming at once the foundation and environment of his
activities. On the contrary, he multiplies his dependencies upon
nature;[124] but while increasing their sum total, he diminishes the
force of each. There lies the gist of the matter. As his bonds become
more numerous, they become also more elastic. Civilization has
lengthened his leash and padded his collar, so that it does not gall;
but the leash is never slipped. The Delaware Indians depended upon the
forests alone for fuel. A citizen of Pennsylvania, occupying the former
Delaware tract, has the choice of wood, hard or soft coal, coke,
petroleum, natural gas, or manufactured gas. Does this mean
emancipation? By no means. For while fuel was a necessity to the Indian
only for warmth and cooking, and incidentally for the pleasureable
excitement of burning an enemy at the stake, it enters into the
manufacture of almost every article that the Pennsylvanian uses in his
daily life. His dependence upon nature has become more far-reaching,
though less conspicuous and especially less arbitrary.
[Sidenote: Increase in kind and amount.]
These dependencies increase enormously both in variety and amount. Great
Britain, with its twenty thousand merchant ships aggregating over ten
million tons, and its immense import and export trade, finds its harbors
vastly more important to-day for the national welfare than in Cromwell's
time, when they were used by a scanty mercantile fleet. Since the
generation of electricity by water-power and its application to
industry, the plunging falls of the Scandinavian Mountains, of the Alps
of Switzerland, France, and Italy, of the Southern Appalachians and the
Cascade Range, are geographical features representing new and
unsuspected forms of national capital, and therefore new bonds between
land and people in these localities. Russia since 1844 has built 35,572
miles (57,374 kilometers) of railroad in her European territory, and
thereby derived a new benefit from her level plains, which so facilitate
the construction and cheap operation of railroads, that they have become
in this aspect alone a new feature in her national economy. On the other
hand, the galling restrictions of Russia's meager and strategically
confined coasts, which tie her hand in any wide maritime policy, work a
greater hardship to-day than they did a hundred years ago, since her
growing population creates a more insistent demand for international
trade. In contrast to Russia, Norway, with its paucity of arable soil
and of other natural resources, finds its long indented coastline and
the coast-bred seamanship of its people a progressively important
national asset. Hence as ocean-carriers the Norwegians have developed a
merchant marine nearly half as large again as that of Russia and Finland
combined--1,569,646 tons[125] as against 1,084,165 tons.
This growing dependence of a civilized people upon its land is
characterized by intelligence and self-help. Man forms a partnership
with nature, contributing brains and labor, while she provides the
capital or raw material in ever more abundant and varied forms. As a
result of this cooeperation, held by the terms of the contract, he
secures a better living than the savage who, like a mendicant, accepts
what nature is pleased to dole out, and lives under the tyranny of her
caprices.
NOTES TO CHAPTER III
[79] H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, p. 196. London, 1904.
[80] Gardner, Atlas of English History, Map 29. New York, 1905.
[81] Hereford George, Historical Geography of Great Britain, pp. 58-60.
London, 1904.
[82] Lewis Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 62. New York, 1878.
[83] Franklin H. Giddings, Elements of Sociology, p. 247. New York,
1902.
[84] Schoolcraft, The Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. I, pp.
198-200, 224. Philadelphia, 1853.
[85] _Ibid._, Vol. I, pp. 231-232, 241.
[86] Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, Vol. I, pp. 70-73, 88. New
York, 1895.
[87] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 392-393, 408, Vol.
XIX, of _History of North America_, edited by Francis W. Thorpe,
Philadelphia, 1905. _Eleventh Census Report on the Indians_, p. 51.
Washington, 1894.
[88] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, pp. 249-250. New York,
1902-1906.
[89] Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp.
13-15. London, 1904.
[90] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 126. London, 1896-1898.
[91] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 24. Stuttgart,
1888.
[92] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 131. London, 1896-1898.
[93] Paul Ehrenreich, _Die Einteilung und Verbreitung der Voelkerstaemme
Brasiliens_, Peterman's _Geographische Mittheilungen_, Vol. XXXVII, p.
85. Gotha, 1891.
[94] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 26, Note 5.
Stuttgart, 1888.
[95] _Ibid._, p. 27.
[96] Albert Niblack, The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern
British Columbia, pp. 298-299, 304, 337-339. Washington, 1888.
[97] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 173. London, 1896-1898.
[98] _Ibid._, Vol. III. pp. 173-174.
[99] Sven Hedin, Central Asia and Tibet, Vol. I, p. 184. New York and
London, 1903.
[100] John de Plano Carpini, Journey in 1246, p. 130. _Hakluyt Society_,
London, 1904.
[101] Journey of William de Rubruquis in 1253, p. 188. _Hakluyt
Society_, London, 1903.
[102] Volney, quoted in Malthus, Principles of Population, Chap. VII, p.
60. London, 1878.
[103] Genesis, Chap. XIII, 1-12.
[104] Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I. p. 457. New
York.
[105] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, pp. 202-204. Leipzig,
1897.
[106] E.C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp.
206-207. Boston, 1903.
[107] Roscher, _Grundlagen des National-Oekonomik_, Book VI.
_Bevoelkerung_, p. 694, Note 5. Stuttgart, 1886.
[108] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol.
I, p. 303-313. Oxford and New York, 1892.
[109] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, pp. 31, 52.
Stuttgart, 1888.
[110] _Ibid._, p. 56, Note 5.
[111] For these and other averages, Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times,
pp. 593-595. New York, 1872.
[112] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, pp. 79-80, p. 81,
Note 7. Stuttgart, 1888. William I. Thomas, Source Book for Social
Origins, pp. 96-112. Chicago, 1909.
[113] Capt. J. Forsyth, The Highlands of Central India, pp. 101-107,
168. London, 1889.
[114] Tacitus, _Germania_, III.
[115] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 32, Note 15 on p.
36. Stuttgart, 1888.
[116] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 202, 203, 212, 213, 236-237.
Boston, 1907.
[117] Sheldon Jackson, Introduction of Domesticated Reindeer into
Alaska, pp. 20, 25-29, 127-129. Washington, 1894.
[118] Quoted in Alexander von Humboldt, Aspects of Nature in Different
Lands, pp. 62, 139. Philadelphia, 1849.
[119] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol.
I, pp. 311-321. 333-354, 364-366. New York, 1892.
[120] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. I, p. 47. New York, 1848.
[121] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, Vol. XIX, pp.
151-161, of _The History of North America_, edited by Francis W. Thorpe,
Philadelphia, 1905.
[122] Ratzel, _Anthropo-geographie_, Vol. II, pp. 264-265.
[123] Malthus, Principles of Population, Chapters V and VII. London,
1878.
[124] Nathaniel Shaler, Nature and Man in America, pp. 147-151. W.Z.
Ripley, Races of Europe, Chap. I, New York, 1899.
[125] Justus Perthes, _Taschen-Atlas_, pp. 44, 47. Gotha, 1910.
CHAPTER IV
THE MOVEMENTS OF PEOPLES IN THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE
[Sidenote: Universality of these movements.]
The ethnic and political boundaries of Europe to-day are the residuum of
countless racial, national, tribal and individual movements reaching
back into an unrecorded past. The very names of Turkey, Bulgaria,
England, Scotland and France are borrowed from intruding peoples. New
England, New France, New Scotland or Nova Scotia and many more on the
American continents register the Trans-Atlantic nativity of their first
white settlers. The provinces of Galicia in Spain, Lombardy in Italy,
Brittany in France, Essex and Sussex in England record in their names
streams of humanity diverted from the great currents of the
Voelkerwanderung. The Romance group of languages, from Portugal to
Roumania, testify to the sweep of expanding Rome, just as the wide
distribution of the Aryan linguistic family points to many roads and
long migrations from some unplaced birthplace. Names like Cis-Alpine and
Trans-Alpine Gaul in the Roman Empire, Trans-Caucasia, Trans-Caspia and
Trans-Baikalia in the Russian Empire, the Transvaal and Transkei in
South Africa, indicate the direction whence the advancing people have
come.
[Sidenote: Stratification of races]
Ethnology reveals an east and west stratification of linguistic groups
in Europe, a north and south stratification of races, and another
stratification by altitude, which reappears in all parts of the world,
and shows certain invading dominant races occupying the lowlands and
other displaced ones the highlands. This definite arrangement points to
successive arrivals, a crowding forward, an intrusion of the strong into
fertile, accessible valleys and plains, and a dislodgment of the weak
into the rough but safe keeping of mountain range or barren peninsula,
where they are brought to bay. Ethnic fragments, linguistic survivals,
or merely place names, dropped like discarded baggage along the march
of a retreating army, bear witness everywhere to tragic recessionals.
[Sidenote: The name Historical Movement.]
Every country whose history we examine proves the recipient of
successive streams of humanity. Even sea-girt England has received
various intruding peoples from the Roman occupation to the recent influx
of Russian Jews. In prehistoric times it combined several elements in
its population, as the discovery of the "long barrow" men and "round
barrow" men by archaeologists, and the identification of a surviving
Iberian or Mediterranean strain by ethnologists go to prove.[126] Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and India tell the same story, whether in their recorded or
unrecorded history. Tropical Africa lacks a history; but all that has
been pieced together by ethnologists and anthropologists, in an effort
to reconstruct its past, shows incessant movement,--growth, expansion
and short-lived conquest, followed by shrinkage, expulsion or absorption
by another invader.[127] To this constant shifting of races and peoples
the name of historical movement has been given, because it underlies
most of written history, and constitutes the major part of unwritten
history, especially that of savage and nomadic tribes. Two things are
vital in the history of every people, its ethnic composition and the
wars it wages in defense or extension of its boundaries. Both rest upon
historical movements,--intrusions, whether peaceful or hostile, into its
own land, and encroachments upon neighboring territory necessitated by
growth. Back of all such movements is natural increase of population
beyond local means of subsistence, and the development of the war spirit
in the effort to secure more abundant subsistence either by raid or
conquest of territory.
[Sidenote: Evolution of the Historical Movement.]
Among primitive peoples this movement is simple and monotonous. It
involves all members of the tribe, either in pursuit of game, or
following the herd over the tribal territory, or in migrations seeking
more and better land. Among civilized peoples it assumes various forms,
and especially is differentiated for different members of the social
group. The civilized state develops specialized frontiersmen, armies,
explorers, maritime traders, colonists, and missionaries, who keep a
part of the people constantly moving and directing external expansion,
while the mass of the population converts the force once expended in the
migrant food-quest into internal activity. Here we come upon a paradox.
The nation as a whole, with the development of sedentary life, increases
its population and therewith its need for external movements; it widens
its national area and its circle of contact with other lands, enlarges
its geographical horizon, and improves its internal communication over a
growing territory; it evolves a greater mobility within and without,
which attaches, however, to certain classes of society, not to the
entire social group. This mobility becomes the outward expression of a
whole complex of economic wants, intellectual needs, and political
ambitions. It is embodied in the conquests which build up empires, in
the colonization which develops new lands, in the world-wide exchange of
commodities and ideas which lifts the level of civilization, till this
movement of peoples becomes a fundamental fact of history.
[Sidenote: Nature of primitive movements.]
This movement is and has been universal and varied. When most
unobtrusive in its operation, it has produced its greatest effects. To
seize upon a few conspicuous migrations, like the _Voelkerwanderung_ and
the irruption of the Turks into Europe, made dramatic by their relation
to the declining empires of Rome and Constantinople, and to ignore the
vast sum of lesser but more normal movements which by slow increments
produce greater and more lasting results, leads to wrong conclusions
both in ethnology and history. Here, as in geology, great effects do not
necessarily presuppose vast forces, but rather the steady operation of
small ones. It is often assumed that the world was peopled by a series
of migrations; whereas everything indicates that humanity spread over
the earth little by little, much as the imported gypsy moth is gradually
occupying New England or the water hyacinth the rivers of Florida. Louis
Agassiz observed in 1853 that "the boundaries within which the different
natural combinations of animals are known to be circumscribed upon the
surface of the earth, coincide with the natural range of distinct types
of man."[128] The close parallelism between Australian race and flora,
Eskimo race and Arctic fauna, points to a similar manner of dispersion.
Wallace, in describing how the Russian frontier of settlement slowly
creeps forward along the Volga, encroaching upon the Finnish and Tartar
areas, and permeating them with Slav blood and civilization, adds that
this is probably the normal method of expansion.[129] Thucydides describes
the same process of encroachment, displacement, and migration in ancient
Hellas.[130] Strabo quotes Posidonius as saying that the emigration of the
Cimbrians and other kindred tribes from their native seats was gradual
and by no means sudden.[131] The traditions of the Delaware Indians show
their advance from their early home in central Canada southward to the
Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay to have been a slow zigzag movement,
interrupted by frequent long halts, leaving behind one laggard group
here and sending out an offshoot there, who formed new tribes and
thereby diversified the stock.[132] It was an aimless wandering, without
destination and purpose other than to find a pleasanter habitat. The
Vandals appear first as "a loose aggregation of restless tribes who must
not be too definitely assigned to any precise district on the map,"
somewhere in central or eastern Prussia.[133] Far-reaching migrations
aiming at a distant goal, like the Gothic and Hunnish conquests of
Italy, demand both a geographical knowledge and an organization too high
for primitive peoples, and therefore belong to a later period of
development.[134]
[Sidenote: Number and range.]
The long list of recorded migrations has been supplemented by the
researches of ethnologists, which have revealed a multitude of
prehistoric movements. These are disclosed in greater number and range
with successive investigation. The prehistoric wanderings of the
Polynesians assume far more significance to-day than a hundred years
ago, when their scope was supposed to have its western limit at Fiji and
the Ellice group. They have now been traced to almost every island of
Melanesia; vestiges of their influence have been detected in the
languages of Australia, and the culture of the distant coasts of Alaska
and British Columbia. The western pioneers of America knew the Shoshone
Indians as small bands of savages, constantly moving about in search of
food in the barren region west of the Rocky Mountains, and occasionally
venturing eastward to hunt buffalo on the plains. Recent investigation
has identified as offshoots of this retarded Shoshonean stock the
sedentary agriculturalists of the Moqui Pueblo, and the advanced
populations of ancient Mexico and Central America.[135] Here was a great
human current which through the centuries slowly drifted from the
present frontier of Canada to the shores of Lake Nicaragua. Powell's map
of the distribution of the linguistic stocks of American Indians is
intelligible only in the light of constant mobility. Haebler's map of
the South American stocks reveals the same restless past. This
cartographical presentation of the facts, giving only the final results,
suggests tribal excursions of the nature of migrations; but ethnologists
see them as the sum total of countless small movements which are more or
less part of the normal activity of an unrooted savage people. [Map page
101.]
Otis Mason finds that the life of a social group involves a variety of
movements characterized by different ranges or scopes. I. The daily
round from bed to bed. II. The annual round from year to year, like that
of the Tunguse Orochon of Siberia who in pursuit of various fish and
game change their residence within their territory from month to month,
or the pastoral nomads who move with the seasons from pasture to
pasture. III. Less systematic outside movements covering the tribal
sphere of influence, such as journeys or voyages to remote hunting or
fishing grounds, forays or piratical descents upon neighboring lands
eventuating usually in conquest, expansion into border regions for
occasional occupation or colonization. IV. Participation in streams of
barter or commerce. V. And at a higher stage in the great currents of
human intercourse, experience, and ideas, which finally compass the
world.[136] In all this series the narrower movement prepares for the
broader, of which it constitutes at once an impulse and a part.
[Sidenote: Importance of such movements in history.]
The real character and importance of these movements have been
appreciated by broad-minded historians. Thucydides elucidates the
conditions leading up to the Peloponnesian War by a description of the
semi-migratory population of Hellas, the exposure of the more fertile
districts to incursions, and the influence of these movements in
differentiating Dorian from Ionian Greece.[137] Johannes von Muller, in
the introduction to his history of Switzerland, assigns to federations
and migrations a conspicuous role in historical development. Edward A.
Ross sees in such movements a thorough-going selective process which
weeds out the unfit, or rather spares only the highly fit. He lays down
the principle that repeated migrations tend to the creation of energetic
races of men. He adds, "This principle may account for the fact that
those branches of a race achieve the most brilliant success which have
wandered the farthest from their ancestral home.... The Arabs and Moors
that skirted Africa and won a home in far-away Spain, developed the most
brilliant of the Saracen civilizations. Hebrews, Dorians, Quirites,
Rajputs, Hovas were far invaders. No communities in classic times
flourished like the cities of Asia created by the overflow from Greece.
Nowhere under the Czar are there such vigorous, progressive communities
as in Siberia."[138] Brinton distinguishes the associative and dispersive
elements in ethnography. The latter is favored by the physical
adaptability of the human race to all climates and external conditions;
it is stimulated by the food-quest, the pressure of foes, and the
resultant restlessness of an unstable primitive society.[139]
The earth's surface is at once factor and basis in these movements. In
an active way it directs them; but they in turn clothe the passive earth
with a mantle of humanity. This mantle is of varied weave and thickness,
showing here the simple pattern of a primitive society, there the
intricate design of advanced civilization; here a closely woven or a
gauzy texture, there disclosing a great rent where a rocky peak or the
ice-wrapped poles protrude through the warm human covering. This is the
magic web whereof man is at once woof and weaver, and the flying shuttle
that never rests. Given a region, what is its living envelope, asks
anthropo-geography. Whence and how did it get there? What is the
material of warp and woof? Will new threads enter to vary the color and
design? If so, from what source? Or will the local pattern repeat itself
over and over with dull uniformity?
[Sidenote: Geographical interpretation of historical movement.]
It was the great intellectual service of Copernicus that he conceived of
a world in motion instead of a world at rest. So anthropo-geography must
see its world in motion, whether it is considering English colonization,
or the westward expansion of the Southern slave power in search of
unexhausted land, or the counter expansion of the free-soil movement, or
the early advance of the trappers westward to the Rockies after the
retreating game, or the withdrawal thither of the declining Indian
tribes before the protruding line of white settlement, and their
ultimate confinement to ever shrinking reservations. In studying
increase of population, it sees in Switzerland chalet and farm creeping
higher up the Alp, as the lapping of a rising tide of humanity below; it
sees movement in the projection of a new dike in Holland to reclaim from
the sea the land for another thousand inhabitants, movement in Japan's
doubling of its territory by conquest, in order to house and feed its
redundant millions.
The whole complex relation of unresting man to the earth is the subject
matter of anthropo-geography. The science traces his movements on the
earth's surface, measures their velocity, range, and recurrence,
determines their nature by the way they utilize the land, notes their
transformation at different stages of economic development and under
different environments. Just as an understanding of animal and plant
geography requires a previous knowledge of the various means of
dispersal, active and passive, possessed by these lower forms of life,
so anthropo-geography must start with a study of the movements of
mankind.
[Sidenote: Mobility of primitive peoples.]
First of all is to be noted an evolution in the mobility of peoples. In
the lower stages of culture mobility is great. It is favored by the
persistent food-quest over wide areas incident to retarded economic
methods, and by the loose attachment of society to the soil. The small
social groups peculiar to these stages and their innate tendency to
fission help the movements to ramify. The consequent scattered
distribution of the population offers wide interstices between
encampments or villages, and into these vacant spaces other wandering
tribes easily penetrate. The rapid decline of the Indian race in America
before the advancing whites was due chiefly to the division of the
savages into small groups, scattered sparsely over a wide territory.
Hunter and pastoral peoples need far more land than they can occupy at
any one time. Hence the temporarily vacant spots invite incursion.
Moreover, the slight impedimenta carried by primitive folk minimize the
natural physical obstacles which they meet when on the march. The
lightly equipped war parties of the Shawnee Indians used gorges and gaps
for the passage of the Allegheny Mountains which were prohibitive to all
white pioneers except the lonely trapper. Finally, this mobility gets
into the primitive mind. The _Wanderlust_ is strong. Long residence in
one territory is irksome, attachment is weak. Therefore a small cause
suffices to start the whole or part of the social body moving. A
temporary failure of the food supply, cruelty or excessive exaction of
tribute on the part of the chief, occasions an exodus. The history of
every negro tribe in Africa gives instances of such secessions, which
often leave whole districts empty and exposed to the next wandering
occupant. Methods of preventing such withdrawals, and therewith the
diminution of his treasury receipts and his fighting force, belong to
the policy of every negro chieftain.
[Sidenote: Natural barriers to movement.]
The checks to this native mobility of primitive peoples are two:
physical and mental. In addition to the usual barriers of mountains,
deserts, and seas before the invention of boats, primeval forests have
always offered serious obstacles to man armed only with stone or bronze
axe, and they rebuffed even man of the iron age. War and hunting parties
had to move along the natural clearings of the rivers, the tracks of
animals, or the few trails beaten out in time by the natives themselves.
Primitive agriculture has never battled successfully against the phalanx
of the trees. Forests balked the expansion of the Inca civilization on
the rainy slope of the Andes, and in Central Africa the negro invaded
only their edges for his yam fields and plantain groves. The earliest
settlements in ancient Britain were confined to the natural clearings of
the chalk downs and oolitic uplands; and here population was chiefly
concentrated even at the close of the Roman occupation. Only gradually,
as the valley woodlands were cleared, did the richer soil of the
alluvial basins attract men from the high, poor ground where tillage
required no preliminary work. But after four centuries of Roman rule and
Roman roads, the clearings along the river valleys were still mere
strips of culture mid an encompassing wilderness of woods. When the
Germanic invaders came, they too appropriated the treeless downs and
were blocked by the forests.[140] On the other hand, grasslands and
savannahs have developed the most mobile people whom we know, steppe
hunters like the Sioux Indians and Patagonians. Thus while the forest
dweller, confined to the highway of the stream, devised only canoe and
dugout boat in various forms for purposes of transportation, steppe
peoples of the Old World introduced the use of draft and pack animals,
and invented the sledge and cart.
[Sidenote: Effect of geographical horizon.]
Primitive peoples carry a drag upon their migrations in their restricted
geographical outlook; ignorance robs them of definite goals. The
evolution of the historical movement is accelerated by every expansion
of the geographical horizon. It progresses most rapidly where the
knowledge of outlying or remote lands travels fastest, as along rivers
and thalassic coasts. Rome's location as toll-gate keeper of the Tiber
gave her knowledge of the upstream country and directed her conquest of
its valley; and the movement thus started gathered momentum as it
advanced. Caesar's occupation of Gaul meant to his generation simply the
command of the roads leading from the Mediterranean to the northern
sources of tin and amber, and the establishment of frontier outposts to
protect the land boundaries of Italy; this represented a bold policy of
inland expansion for that day. The modern historian sees in that step
the momentous advance of history beyond the narrow limits of the
Mediterranean basin, and its gradual inclusion of all the Atlantic
countries of Europe, through whose maritime enterprise the historical
horizon was stretched to include America. In the same way, mediaeval
trade with the Orient, which had familiarized Europe with distant India
and Cathay, developed its full historico-geographical importance when it
started the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century. The expansion
of the geographical horizon in 1512 to embrace the earth inaugurated a
widespread historical movement, which has resulted in the
Europeanization of the world.
[Sidenote: Civilization and mobility.]
Civilized man is at once more and less mobile than his primitive
brother. Every advance in civilization multiplies and tightens the bonds
uniting him with his soil; makes him a sedentary instead of a migratory
being. On the other hand every advance in civilization is attended by
the rapid clearing of the forests, by the construction of bridges and
interlacing roads, the invention of more effective vehicles for
transportation whereby intercourse increases, and the improvement of
navigation to the same end. Civilized man progressively modifies the
land which he occupies, removes or reduces obstacles to intercourse, and
thereby approximates it to the open plain. Thus far he facilitates
movements. But while doing this he also places upon the land a dense
population, closely attached to the soil, strong to resist incursion,
and for economic reasons inhospitable to any marked accession of
population from without. Herein lies the great difference between
migration in empty or sparsely inhabited regions, such as predominated
when the world was young, and in the densely populated countries of our
era. As the earth grew old and humanity multiplied, peoples themselves
became the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certain
countries of Europe and Asia the historical movement has been reduced to
a continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here,
repression there. Hence, though political boundaries may shift, ethnic
boundaries scarcely budge. The greatest wars of modern Europe have
hardly left a trace upon the distribution of its peoples. Only in the
Balkan Peninsula, as the frontiers of the Turkish Empire have been
forced back from the Danube, the alien Turks have withdrawn to the
shrinking territory of the Sultan and especially to Asia Minor.
[Sidenote: Diffusion of culture.]
Where a population too great to be dislodged occupies the land, conquest
results in the eventual absorption of the victors and their civilization
by the native folk, as happened to the Lombards in Italy, the Vandals in
Africa and the Normans in England. Where the invaders are markedly
superior in culture though numerically weak, conquest results in the
gradual permeation of the conquered with the religion, economic methods,
language, and customs of the new-comers.[141] The latter process, too, is
always attended by some intermixture of blood, where no race repulsion
exists, but this is small in comparison to the diffusion of
civilization. This was the method by which Greek traders and colonists
Hellenized the countries about the eastern Mediterranean, and spread
their culture far back from the shores which their settlements had
appropriated. In this way Saracen armies soon after the death of
Mohammed Arabized the whole eastern and southern sides of the
Mediterranean from Syria to Spain, and Arab merchants set the stamp of
their language and religion on the coasts of East Africa as far as
Mocambique. The handful of Spanish adventurers who came upon the
relatively dense populations of Mexico and Peru left among them a
civilization essentially European, but only a thin strain of Castilian
blood. Thus the immigration of small bands of people sufficed to
influence the culture of that big territory known as Latin America.
[Sidenote: Ethnic intermixture.]
That vast sum of migrations, great and small, which we group under the
general term of historical movement has involved an endless mingling of
races and cultures. As Professor Petrie has remarked, the prevalent
notion that in prehistoric times races were pure and unmixed is without
foundation. An examination of the various forms of the historical
movement reveals the extent and complexity of this mingling process.
In the first place, no migration is ever simple; it involves a number
of secondary movements, each of which in turn occasions a new
combination of tribal or racial elements. The transference of a whole
people from its native or adopted seat to a new habitat, as in the
_Voelkerwanderungen_, empties the original district, which then becomes
a catchment basin for various streams of people about its rim; and in
the new territory it dislodges a few or all of the occupants, and
thereby starts up a fresh movement as the original one comes to rest.
Nor is this all. A torrent that issues from its source in the mountains
is not the river which reaches the sea. On its long journey from
highland to lowland it receives now the milky waters of a glacier-fed
stream, now a muddy tributary from agricultural lands, now the clear
waters from a limestone plateau, while all the time its racing current
bears a burden of soil torn from its own banks. Now it rests in a lake,
where it lays down its weight of silt, then goes on, perhaps across an
arid stretch where its water is sucked up by the thirsty air or
diverted to irrigate fields of grain. So with those rivers of men which
we call migrations. The ethnic stream may start comparatively pure, but
it becomes mixed on the way. From time to time it leaves behind laggard
elements which in turn make a new racial blend where they stop. Such
were the six thousand Aduatici whom Caesar found in Belgian Gaul. These
were a detachment of the migrating Cimbri, left there in charge of
surplus cattle and baggage while the main body went on to Italy.[142]
[Sidenote: Complex currents of migration.]
A migration rarely involves a single people even at the start. It
becomes contagious either by example or by the subjection of several
neighboring tribes to the same impelling force, by reason of which all
start at or near the same time. We find the Cimbri and Teutons combined
with Celts from the island of Batavia[143] in the first Germanic invasion
of the Roman Empire. Jutes, Saxons and Angles started in close
succession for Britain, and the Saxon group included Frisians.[144] An
unavoidable concomitant of great migrations, especially those of nomads,
is their tendency to sweep into the vortex of their movement any people
whom they brush on the way. Both individuals and tribes are thus caught
up by the current. The general convergence of the central German tribes
towards the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire during the Marcomannic
War drew in its train the Lombards from the lower Elbe down to the
middle Danube and Theiss.[145] The force of the Lombards invading Italy
in 568 included twenty thousand Saxons from Swabia, Gepidae from the
middle Danube, Bulgarians, Slavs from the Russian Ukraine, together with
various tribes from the Alpine district of Noricum and the fluvial
plains of Pannonia. Two centuries later the names of these non-Lombard
tribes still survived in certain villages of Italy which had formed
their centers.[146] The army which Attila the Hun brought into Gaul was a
motley crowd, comprising peoples of probable Slav origin from the
Russian steppes, Teutonic Ostrogoths and Gepidae, and numerous German
tribes, besides the Huns themselves. When this horde withdrew after the
death of Attila, Gepidae and Ostrogoths settled along the middle Danube,
and the Slavonic contingent along the Alpine courses of the Drave and
Save Rivers.[147] The Vandal migration which in 409 invaded Spain
included the Turanian Alans and the German Suevi. The Alans found a
temporary home in Portugal, which they later abandoned to join the
Vandal invasion of North Africa, while the Suevi settled permanently in
the northwestern mountains of Spain. The Vandals occupied in Spain two
widely separated districts, one in the mountain region of Galicia next
to the Suevi, and the other in the fertile valley of Andalusia in the
south, while the northeastern part of the peninsula was occupied by
intruding Visigoths.[148] Add to these the original Iberian and Celtic
stocks of the peninsula and the Roman strain previously introduced, and
the various elements which have entered into the Spanish people become
apparent.[149]
[Sidenote: Cultural modification during migration.]
The absorption of foreign elements is not confined to large groups whose
names come down in history, nor is the ensuing modification one of blood
alone. Every land migration or expansion of a people passes by or
through the territories of other peoples; by these it is inevitably
influenced in point of civilization, and from them individuals are
absorbed into the wandering throng by marriage or adoption, or a score
of ways. This assimilation of blood and local culture is facilitated by
the fact that the vast majority of historical movements are slow, a
leisurely drift. Even the great _Voelkerwanderung_, which history has
shown us generally in the moment of swift, final descent upon the
imperial city, in reality consisted of a succession of advances with
long halts between. The Vandals, whose original seats were probably in
central or eastern Prussia, drifted southward with the general movement
of the German barbarians toward the borders of the Empire late in the
second century, and, after the Marcomannic War (175 A.D.), settled in
Dacia north of the lower Danube under the Roman sway. In 271 they were
located on the middle Danube, and sixty years afterwards in Moravia.
Later they settled for seventy years in Pannonia within the Empire,
where they assimilated Roman civilization and adopted the Arian form of
Christianity from their Gothic neighbors.[150] In Spain, as we have seen,
they occupied Galicia and Andalusia for a time before passing over into
Africa in 429. Here was a migration lasting two centuries and a half,
reaching from the Baltic to the southern shores of the Mediterranean,
starting on the bleak sterile plains of the north amid barbarous
neighbors, ending in the sunny grain fields and rich cities of Roman
Africa. The picture which we get of the victorious Vandals parceling out
the estates of Roman nobles, and, from the standpoint of their more
liberal faith, profiting by the dissensions of the two Catholic sects of
Africa, shows us a people greatly modified by their long sweep through
the civilized outskirts of the Empire. So it was with the Lombards and
Goths who invaded Italy.
Among primitive tribes, who move in smaller groups and must conform
closely to the dictates of their environment, the modifying effects of
people and land through which they pass are conspicuous. Ratzel
describes the gradual withdrawal of a Hottentot people from western Cape
Colony far into the arid interior before the advance of Kaffirs and
Europeans by saying: "The stock and name of the Namaquas wandered
northward, acquiring new elements, and in course of time filling the old
mold with new contents."[151] This is the typical result of such
primitive movements. The migration of the Delaware Indians from an early
home somewhere northwest of the Great Lakes to their historical habitat
between the Hudson and Potomac Rivers was a slow progress, which
somewhere brought them into contact with maize-growing tribes, and gave
them their start in agriculture.[152] The transit lands through which
these great race journeys pass exercise a modifying effect chiefly
through their culture and their peoples, less through their physical
features and climate. For that the stay of the visitants is generally
too brief.
[Sidenote: Effect of early maritime migration.]
Even early maritime migrants did not keep their strains pure. The
untried navigator sailing from island to headland, hugging the coast and
putting ashore for water, came into contact with the natives. Cross
currents of migration can be traced in Polynesian waters, where certain
islands are nodal points which have given and received of races and
culture through centuries of movement. The original white population of
Uruguay differed widely from that of the other Spanish republics of
South America. Its nucleus was a large immigration of Canary Islanders.
These were descendants of Spaniards and the native Guanches of the
Canaries, mingled also with Norman, Flemish and Moorish blood.[153] The
Norse on their way to Iceland may have picked up a Celtic element in the
islands north of Scotland; but from the Faroe group onward they found
only empty Iceland and Greenland. This was an exceptional experience.
Early navigation, owing to its limitations, purposely restricted itself
to the known. Men voyaged where men had voyaged before and were to be
found. Journeys into the untenanted parts of the world were rare.
However, the probable eastward expansion of the Eskimo along the Arctic
rim of North America belongs in this class, so that this northern folk
has suffered no modification from contact with others, except where
Alaska approaches Asia.
[Sidenote: The transit land.]
The land traversed by a migrating horde is not to be pictured as a dead
road beneath their feet, but rather as a wide region of transit and
transition, potent to influence them by its geography and people, and to
modify them in the course of their passage. The route which they follow
is a succession of habitats, in which they linger and domicile
themselves for a while, though not long enough to lose wholly the habits
of life and thought acquired in their previous dwelling place. Although
nature in many places, by means of valleys, low plains, mountain passes
or oasis lines, points out the way of these race movements, it is safer
to think and speak of this way as a transit land, not as a path or road.
Even where the district of migration has been the sea, as among the
Caribs of the Antilles Islands, the Moros of the Philippines, and the
Polynesians of the Pacific, man sends his roots like a water plant down
into the restless element beneath, and reflects its influence in all his
thought and activities.
[Sidenote: War as a form of the historical movement.]
Every aggressive historical movement, whether bold migration or forcible
extension of the home territory, involves displacement or passive
movement of other peoples (except in those rare occupations of vacant
lands), who in turn are forced to encroach upon the lands of others.
These conditions involve war, which is an important form of the
historical movement, contributing to new social contacts and fusion of
racial stocks. Raids and piratical descents are often the preliminary
of great historical movements. They first expand the geographical
horizon, and end in permanent settlements, which involve finally
considerable transfers of population, summoned to strengthen the
position of the interloper. Such was the history of the Germanic
invasions of Britain, the Scandinavian settlements on the shores of
Iceland, Britain, and France, and the incursions of Saharan tribes into
the Sudanese states. Among pastoral nomads war is the rule; the tribe, a
mobilized nation, is always on a war footing with its neighbors. The
scant supply of wells and pasturage, inadequate in the dry season,
involves rivalry and conflict for their possession as agricultural lands
do not. Failure of water or grass is followed by the decline of the
herds, and then by marauding expeditions into the river valleys to
supply the temporary want of food. When population increases beyond the
limits of subsistence in the needy steppes, such raids become the rule
and end in the conquest of the more favored lands, with resulting
amalgamation of race and culture.[154]
[Sidenote: Primitive war.]
The wars of savage and pastoral peoples affect the whole tribe. All the
able-bodied men are combatants, and all the women and children
constitute the spoils of war in case of defeat. This fact is important,
since the purpose of primitive conflicts is to enslave and pillage,
rather than to acquire land. The result is that a whole district may be
laid waste, but when the devastators withdraw, it is gradually
repopulated by bordering tribes, who make new ethnic combinations. After
the destruction of the Eries by the Iroquois in 1655, Ohio was left
practically uninhabited for a hundred and fifty years. Then the
Iroquoian Wyandots extended their settlements into northwestern Ohio
from their base in southern Michigan, while the Miami Confederacy along
the southern shore of Lake Michigan pushed their borders into the
western part. The Muskingum Valley in the eastern portion was occupied
about 1750 by Delawares from eastern Pennsylvania, the Scioto by
Shawnees, and the northeast corner of the territory by detachments of
Iroquois, chiefly Senecas.[155] The long wars between the Algonquin
Indians of the north and the Appalachian tribes of the south kept the
district of Kentucky a No Man's Land, in convenient vacancy for
occupation by the white settlers, when they began the westward
movement.[156] [Map page 156.]
[Sidenote: Slavery as form of historical movement.]
This desolation is produced partly by killing, but chiefly by
enslavement of prisoners and the flight of the conquered. Both
constitute compulsory migrations of far-reaching effect in the fusion of
races and the blending of civilizations. The thousands of Greek slaves
who were brought to ancient Rome contributed to its refinement and
polish. All the nations of the known world, from Briton to Syrian and
Jew, were represented in the slave markets of the imperial capital, and
contributed their elements to the final composition of the Roman people.
When we read of ninety-seven thousand Hebrews whom Titus sold into
bondage after the fall of Jerusalem, of forty thousand Greeks sold by
Lucullus after one victory, and the auction _sub corona_ of whole tribes
in Gaul by Caesar, the scale of this forcible transfer becomes apparent,
and its power as an agent of race amalgamation. Senator Sam Houston of
Texas, speaking of the Comanche Indians, in the United States Senate,
December 31, 1854, said: "There are not less than two thousand prisoners
(whites) in the hands of the Comanches, four hundred in one band in my
own state.... They take no prisoners but women and boys."[157] It was
customary among the Indians to use captured women as concubines and to
adopt into the tribe such boys as survived the cruel treatment to which
they were subjected. Since the Comanches in 1847 were variously
estimated to number from nine to twelve thousand,[158] so large a
proportion of captives would modify the native stock.
In Africa slavery has been intimately associated with agriculture as a
source of wealth, and therefore has lent motive to intertribal wars.
Captives were enslaved and then gradually absorbed into the tribe of
their masters. Thus war and slavery contributed greatly to that
widespread blending of races which characterizes negro Africa. Slaves
became a medium of exchange and an article of commerce with other
continents. The negro slave trade had its chief importance in the eyes
of ethnologists and historians because, in distributing the black races
in white continents, it has given a "negro question" to the United
States, superseded the native Indian stock of the Antilles by negroes,
and left a broad negro strain in the blood of Colombia, Venezuela, and
Brazil. This particular historical movement, which during the two
centuries of its greatest activity involved larger numbers than the
Tartar invasion of Russia or the Turkish invasion of Europe, for a long
period gave to black Africa the only historical importance which it
possessed for the rest of the world.[159]
[Sidenote: Fusion by deported and military colonies.]
In higher stages of political development, war aiming at the subjugation
of large territories finds another means to fuse the subject peoples and
assimilate them to a common standard of civilization. The purpose is
unification and the obliteration of local differences. These are also
the unconscious ends of evolution by historical movement. With this
object, conquerors the world over have used a system of tribal and
racial exchanges. It was the policy of the Incas of ancient Peru to
remove conquered tribes to distant parts of the realm, and supply their
places with colonists from other districts who had long been subjected
and were more or less assimilated.[160] In 722 B.C. the Assyrian king,
Sargon, overran Samaria, carried away the Ten Tribes of Israel beyond
the Tigris and scattered them among the cities of Media, where they
probably merged with the local population. To the country left vacant by
their wholesale deportation he transplanted people from Babylon and
other Mesopotamian cities.[161] The descendants of these, mingled with
the poorer class of Jews still left there, formed the despised
Samaritans of the time of Christ. The Kingdom of Judah later was
despoiled by Nebuchadnezzar of much of its population, which was carried
off to Babylon.
This plan of partial deportation and colonization characterized the
Roman method of Romanization. Removal of the conquered from their native
environment facilitated the process, while it weakened the spirit and
power of revolt. The Romans met bitter opposition from the mountain
tribes when trying to open up the northern passes of the Apennines.
Consequently they removed the Ligurian tribe of the Apuanians,
forty-seven thousand in number, far south to Samnium. When in 15 B.C.
the region of the Rhaetian Alps was joined to the Empire, forty
thousand of the inhabitants were transplanted from the mountains to the
plain. The same method was used with the Scordisci and Dacians of the
Danube. More often the mortality of war so thinned the population, that
the settlement of Roman military colonies among them sufficed to keep
down revolt and to Romanize the surviving fragment. The large area of
Romance speech found in Roumania and eastern Hungary, despite the
controversy about its origin,[162] seems to have had its chief source in
the extensive Roman colonies planted by the Emperor Trajan in conquered
Dacia.[163] In Iberian Spain, which bitterly resisted Romanization, the
process was facilitated by the presence of large garrisons of soldiers.
Between 196 and 169 B.C. the troops amounted to one hundred and fifty
thousand, and many of them remained in the country as colonists.[164]
Compare the settlement of Scotch troops in French Canada by land grants
after 1763, resulting in the survival to-day of sandy hair, blue eyes,
and highland names among the French-speaking _habitants_ of Murray Bay
and other districts. The Turks in the fifteenth century brought large
bodies of Moslem converts from Asia Minor to garrison Macedonia and
Thessaly, thereby robbing the Anatolian Plateau of half its original
population. Into the vacuum thus formed a current of nomads from inner
Asia has poured ever since.[165]
[Sidenote: Withdrawal and flight.]
Every active historical movement which enters an already populated
country gives rise there to passive movements, either compression of the
native folk followed by amalgamation, or displacement and withdrawal.
The latter in some degree attends every territorial encroachment. Only
where there is an abundance of free land can a people retire as a whole
before the onslaught, and maintain their national or racial solidarity.
Thus the Slavs seem largely to have withdrawn before the Germans in the
Baltic plains of Europe. The Indians of North and South America retired
westward before the advance of the whites from the Atlantic coast. The
Cherokee nation, who once had a broad belt of country extending from the
Tennessee Valley through South Carolina to the ocean,[166] first
retracted their frontier to the Appalachian Mountains; in 1816 they were
confined to an ever shrinking territory on the middle Tennessee and the
southern end of the highlands; in 1818 they began to retire beyond the
Mississippi, and in 1828 beyond the western boundary of Arkansas.[167]
The story of the Shawnees and Delawares is a replica of this.[168] In the
same way Hottentots and Kaffirs in South Africa are withdrawing
northward and westward into the desert before the protruding frontier of
white settlement, as the Boers before the English treked farther into
the veldt. [See map page 105.]
Where the people attacked or displaced is small or a broken remnant, it
often takes refuge among a neighboring or kindred tribe. The small
Siouan tribes of the Carolinas, reduced to fragments by repeated
Iroquois raids, combined with their Siouan kinsmen the Catawbas, who
consequently in 1743 included twenty dialects among their little
band.[169] The Iroquoian Tuscaroras of North Carolina, defeated and
weakened by the whites in 1711, fled north to the Iroquois of New York,
where they formed the Sixth Nation of the Confederation. The Yamese
Indians, who shifted back and forth between the borders of Florida and
South Carolina, defeated first by the whites and then by the Creeks,
found a refuge for the remnant of their tribe among the Seminoles, in
whom they merged and disappeared as a distinct tribe[170]--the fate of
most of these fragmentary peoples. [See map page 54.]
[Sidenote: Dispersal in flight.]
When the fugitive body is large, it is forced to split up in order to
escape. Hence every fugitive movement tends to assume the character of a
dispersal, all the more as organization and leadership vanish in the
catastrophe. The fissile character of primitive societies especially
contributes to this end, so that almost every story of Indian and native
African warfare tells of shattered remnants fleeing in several
directions. Among civilized peoples, the dispersal is that of
individuals and has far-reaching historical effects. After the
destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews were scattered over the earth, the
debris of a nation. The religious wars of France during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries caused Huguenots to flee to Switzerland,
Germany, Holland, England, and South Carolina; they even tried to
establish a colony on the coast of Brazil. Everywhere they contributed a
valuable element to the economic and social life of the community which
they joined. The great schism in the Russian Church became an agent of
emigration and colonization. It helped to spread the Russian nationality
over remote frontier regions of the empire which previously had been
almost exclusively Asiatic; and distributed groups of dissenters in the
neighboring provinces of Turkey, Roumania, Austria, Poland and
Prussia.[171]
[Sidenote: Natural regions of retreat.]
The hope of safety from pursuit drives fugitive peoples into isolated
and barren places that are scarcely accessible or habitable, and thereby
extends the inhabited area of the earth long before mere pressure of
population would have stretched it to such limits. We find these refugee
folk living in pile villages built over the water, in deserts, in
swamps, mangrove thickets, very high mountains, marshy deltas, and
remote or barren islands, all which can be classified as regions of
retreat. Fugitives try to place between themselves and their pursuers a
barrier of sea or desert or mountains, and in doing this have themselves
surmounted some of the greatest obstacles to the spread of the human
race.
Districts of refuge located centrally to several natural regions of
migration receive immigrants from many sides, and are therefore often
characterized by a bizarre grouping of populations. The cluster of
marshy islands at the head of the Adriatic received fugitives from a
long semi-circle of north Italian cities during the barbarian invasions.
Each refugee colony occupied a separate island, and finally all
coalesced to form the city of Venice. Central mountain districts like
the Alps and Caucasus contain "the sweepings of the plains." The
Caucasus particularly, on the border between Europe and Asia, contains
every physical type and representative of every linguistic family of
Eurasia, except pure Aryan. Nowhere else in the world probably is there
such a heterogeneous lot of peoples, languages and religions. Ripley
calls the Caucasus "a grave of peoples, of languages, of customs and
physical types."[172] Its base, north and south, and the longitudinal
groove through its center from east to west have been swept by various
racial currents, which have cast up their flotsam into its valleys. The
pueblos of our arid Southwest, essentially an area of asylum, are
inhabited by Indians of four distinct stocks, and only one of them, the
Moquis, show clearly kinship to another tribe outside this
territory,[173] so that they are survivals. The twenty-eight different
Indian stocks huddled together in small and diverse linguistic groups
between the Pacific Ocean and the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and
Cascade Range[174] leave the impression that these protected valleys,
similar to the Caucasus in their ethnic diversity, were an asylum for
remnants of depleted stocks who had fled to the western highlands before
the great Indian migrations of the interior.[175] Making their way
painfully and at great cost of life through a region of mountain and
desert, they came out in diminished bands to survive in the protection
of the great barrier. Of the twenty-one Indian linguistic stocks which
have become extinct since the arrival of the white man, fifteen belong
to this transmontane strip of the Pacific slope[176]--evidence of the
fragmentary character of these stocks and their consequently small power
of resistance, [See map page 54.]
[Sidenote: Emigration and colonization.]
Advance to a completely sedentary life, as we see it among modern
civilized nations, prohibits the migration of whole peoples, or even of
large groups when maintaining their political organization. On the other
hand, however, sedentary life and advanced civilization bring rapid
increase of population, improved methods of communication, and an
enlarged geographical horizon. These conditions encourage and facilitate
emigration and colonization, forms of historical movement which have
characterized the great commercial peoples of antiquity and the
overcrowded nations of modern times. These forms do not involve a whole
people, but only individuals and small groups, though in time the total
result may represent a considerable proportion of the original
population. The United States in 1890 contained 980,938 immigrants from
Canada and Newfoundland,[177] or just one-fifth the total population of
the Dominion in that same year. Germany since 1820 has contributed at
least five million citizens to non-European lands. Ireland since 1841
has seen nearly four millions of its inhabitants drawn off to other
countries,[178] an amount only little less than its present population.
It is estimated that since 1851 emigration has carried off from County
Clare and Kerry seventy-two per cent. of the average population; and yet
those counties are still crowded.[179] Among those who abandon their
homes in search of easier conditions of living, certain ages and certain
social and industrial classes predominate. A typical emigrant group to
America represents largely the lower walks of life, includes an abnormal
proportion of men and adults, and about three-fourths of it are
unskilled laborers and agriculturists.[180]
Colonization, the most potent instrument of organized expansion, has in
recent centuries changed the relative significance of the great colonial
nations of Europe. It raised England from a small insular country to the
center of a world power. It gave sudden though temporary preeminence to
Spain and Portugal, a new lease of life to little Holland, and ominous
importance to Russia. Germany, who entered the colonial field only in
1880, found little desirable land left; and yet it was especially
Germany who needed an outlet for her redundant population. With all
these states, as with ancient Phoenicia, Greece and Yemen, the initial
purpose was commerce or in some form the exploitation of the new
territory. Colonies were originally trading stations established as safe
termini for trade routes.[181] Colonial government, as administered by
the mother country, originally had an eye single for the profits of
trade: witness the experience of the Thirteen Colonies with Great
Britain. Colonial wars have largely meant the rivalry of competing
nations seeking the same markets, as the history of the Portuguese and
Dutch in the East Indies, and the English and French in America prove.
The first Punic War had a like commercial origin--rivalry for the trade
of _Magna Graecia_ between Rome and Carthage, the dominant colonial
powers of the western Mediterranean. Such wars result in expansion for
the victor.
[Sidenote: Commerce.]
Commerce, which so largely underlies colonization, is itself a form of
historical movement. It both causes and stimulates great movements of
peoples, yet it differs from these fundamentally in its relation to the
land. Commerce traverses the land to reach its destination, but takes
account of natural features only as these affect transportation and
travel. It has to do with systems of routes and goals, which it aims to
reach as quickly as possible. It reduces its cortege to essentials;
eliminates women and children. Therefore it surmounts natural barriers
which block the advance of other forms of the historical movement.
Merchant caravans are constantly crossing the desert, but not so
peoples. Traders with loaded yaks or ponies push across the Karakorum
Mountains by passes where a migrating horde would starve and freeze. The
northern limit of the Mediterranean race in Spain lies sharply defined
along the crest of the Pyrenees, whose long unbroken wall forms one of
the most pronounced boundaries in Europe;[182] yet traders and smugglers
have pushed their way through from time immemorial. Long after Etruscan
merchants had crossed northward over the Alps, Roman expansion and
colonization made a detour around the mountains westward into Gaul, with
the result that the Germans received Roman civilization not straight
from the south, but secondhand through their Gallic neighbors west of
the Rhine.
[Sidenote: Commerce a guide to various movements.]
Commerce, though differing from other historical movements, may give to
these direction and destination. The trader is frequently the herald of
soldier and settler. He becomes their guide, takes them along the trail
which he has blazed, and gives them his own definiteness of aim. The
earliest Roman conquest of the Alpine tribes was made for the purpose of
opening the passes for traders and abolishing the heavy transit duties
imposed by the mountaineers.[183] Fur-traders inaugurated French
expansion to the far west of Canada, and the Russian advance into
Siberia. The ancient amber route across Russia from the Baltic to the
Euxine probably guided the Goths in their migration from their northern
seats to the fertile lands in southern Russia, where they first appear
in history as the Ostrogoths.[184] The caravan trade across the Sahara
from the Niger to the Mediterranean coast has itself embodied an
historical movement, by bringing out enough negro slaves appreciably to
modify the ethnic composition of the population in many parts of North
Africa.[185] It was this trade which also suggested to Prince Henry of
Portugal in 1415, when campaigning in Morocco, the plan of reaching the
Guinea Coast by sea and diverting its gold dust and slaves to the port
of Lisbon, a movement which resulted in the Portuguese circumnavigation
of Africa.[186]
Every staple place and trading station is a center of geographical
information; it therefore gives an impulse to expansion by widening the
geographical horizon. The Lewis and Clark Expedition found the Mandan
villages at the northern bend of the Missouri River the center of a
trade which extended west to the Pacific, through the agency of the Crow
and Paunch Indians of the upper Yellowstone, and far north to the
Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Rivers. Here in conversation with British
and French fur-traders of the Northwest Company's posts, they secured
information about the western country they were to explore.[187]
Similarly the trade of the early Jesuit missions at La Pointe near the
west end of Lake Superior annually drew the Indians from a wide circle
sweeping from Green Bay and the Fox River in the south, across the
Mississippi around to the Lake of the Woods and far north of Lake
Superior.[188] Here Marquette first heard of the great river destined to
carry French dominion to the Gulf of Mexico.
[Sidenote: Movements due to religion.]
Trade often finds in religion an associate and coadjutor in directing
and stimulating the historical movement. China regards modern Christian
missions as effective European agencies for the spread of commercial and
political power. Jesuit and fur-trader plunged together into the wilds
of colonial Canada; Spanish priest and gold-seeker into Mexico and Peru.
American missionary pressed close upon the heels of fur-trader into the
Oregon country. Jason Lee, having established a Methodist mission on the
Willamette in 1834, himself experienced sudden conversion from
religionist to colonizer. He undertook a temporary mission back to the
settled States, where he preached a stirring propaganda for the
settlement and appropriation of the disputed Oregon country, before the
British should fasten their grip upon it. The United States owes Hawaii
to the expansionist spirit of American missionaries. Thirty years after
their arrival in the islands, they held all the important offices under
the native government, and had secured valuable tracts of lands, laying
the foundation of the landed aristocracy of planters established there
to-day. Their sons and grandsons took the lead in the Revolution of
1893, and in the movement for annexation to the United States. Thus
sometimes do the meek inherit the earth.
[Sidenote: Religious pilgrimages.]
The famous pilgrimages of the world, in which the commercial element has
been more or less conspicuous,[189] have contributed greatly to the
circulation of peoples and ideas, especially as they involve multitudes
and draw from a large circle of lands. Their economic, intellectual and
political effects rank them as one phase of the historical movement.
Herodotus tells of seven hundred thousand Egyptians flocking to the city
of Bubastis from all parts of Egypt for the festival of Diana.[190] The
worship of Ashtoreth in Bambyce in Syria drew votaries from all the
Semitic peoples except the Jews. As early as 386 A.D. Christian
pilgrims flocked to Jerusalem from Armenia, Persia, India, Ethiopia, and
even from Gaul and Britain. Jerusalem gave rise to those armed
pilgrimages, the Crusades, with all their far-reaching results. The
pilgrimages to Rome, which in the Jubilee of 1300 brought two hundred
thousand worshipers to the sacred city, did much to consolidate papal
supremacy over Latin Christendom.[191] As the roads to Rome took the
pious wayfarers through Milan, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Bologna, and
other great cities of Italy, they were so many channels for the
distribution of Italian art and culture over the more untutored lands of
western Europe.
Though Mecca is visited annually by only seventy or eighty thousand
pilgrims, it puts into motion a far greater number over the whole
Mohammedan world, from westernmost Africa to Chinese Turkestan.[192]
Yearly a great pilgrimage, numbering in 1905 eighty thousand souls,
moves across Africa eastward through the Sudan on its way to the Red Sea
and Mecca. Many traders join the caravans of the devout both for
protection and profit, and the devout themselves travel with herds of
cattle to trade in on the way. The merchants are prone to drop out and
settle in any attractive country, and few get beyond the populous
markets of Wadai. The British and French governments in the Sudan aid
and protect these pilgrimages; they recognize them as a political force,
because they spread the story of the security and order of European
rule.[193] The markets of western Tibet, recently opened to Indian
merchants by the British expedition to Lhassa, promote intercourse
between the two countries especially because of the sacred lakes and
mountains in their vicinity, which are goals of pilgrimage alike to
Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist. They offer an opportunity to acquire merit
and profit at the same time, an irresistible combination to the needy,
pious Hindu. Therefore across the rugged passes of the Himalayas he
drives his yaks laden with English merchandise, an unconscious
instrument for the spread of English influence, English civilization and
the extension of the English market, as the Colonial Office well
understands.[194]
[Sidenote: Historical movement and race distribution.]
The forms which have been assumed by the historical movement are varied,
but all have contributed to the spread of man over the habitable globe.
The yellow, white and red races have become adapted to every zone; the
black race, whether in Africa, Australia or Melanesia, is confined
chiefly to the Tropics. A like conservatism as to habitat tends to
characterize all sub-races, peoples, and tribes of the human family. The
fact which strikes one in studying the migrations of these smaller
groups is their adherence each to a certain zone or heat belt defined by
certain isothermal lines (see map chap. XVII.), their reluctance to
protrude beyond its limits, and the restricted range and small numerical
strength of such protrusions as occur. This seems to be the conservatism
of the mature race type, which has lost some of its plasticity and shuns
or succumbs to the ordeal of adaptation to contrasted climatic
conditions, except when civilization enables it partially to neutralize
their effects.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE INDIAN STOCKS OF SOUTH AMERICA (From Helmolt's
_History of the World_. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co.)]
[Sidenote: Migrations in relation to zones and heat belts.]
In South America, Caribs and Arawaks showed a strictly tropical
distribution from Hayti to the southern watershed of the Amazon. The
Tupis, moving down the Parana-La Plata system, made a short excursion
beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, though not beyond the hot belt, then
turned equator-ward again along the coast.[195] In North America we find
some exceptions to the rule. For instance, though the main area of the
Athapascan stock is found in the frigid belt of Canada and Alaska, north
of the annual isotherm of 0 deg.C. (32 deg.F.) small residual fragments of
these people are scattered also along the Pacific coast of Oregon and
California, marking the old line of march of a large group which drifted
southward into Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and the northern part of
Mexico. The Shoshone stock, which originally occupied the Great Basin
and western intermontane plateau up to the borders of Canada, sent out
offshoots which developed into the ancient civilized tribes of tropical
Mexico and Central America. Both these emigrations to more southern
zones were part of the great southward trend characterizing all
movements on the Pacific side of the continent, probably from an
original ethnic port of entry near Bering Strait; and part also of the
general southward drift in search of more genial climate, which landed
the van of northern Siouan, Algonquin and Iroquoian stocks in the
present area of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and
Louisiana, while the base of their territory stretched out to its
greatest width in southern Canada and contiguous parts of the United
States. [See map page 54.][196]
[Illustration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF INDIA FROM THE INDIAN CENSUS OF
1901.]
[Illustration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF ASIA. Vertical Shading in the
North is Slav.]
[Sidenote: Range of movements in Asia.]
If we turn to the eastern hemisphere, we find the Malays and
Malayo-Polynesians, differentiated offshoots of the Mongolian stock,
restricted to the Tropics, except where Polynesians have spread to
outlying New Zealand. The Chinese draw their political boundary nearly
along the Tropic of Cancer, but they have freely lapped over this
frontier into Indo-China as far as Singapore.[197] Combined with this
expansion was the early infiltration of the Chinese into the
Philippines, Borneo, and the western Sunda Isles, all distinctly
tropical. The fact that the Chinese show a physical capacity for
acclimatization found in no other race explains in part their presence
into the Tropics. In contrast, the Aryan folk of India, whether in their
pure type as found in the Punjab and Rajputana Desert, or mingled with
the earlier Dravidian races belong to the hot belt but scarcely reach
the Tropic of Cancer,[198] though their language has far overshot this
line both in the Deccan and the Ganges Delta. One spore of Aryan stock,
in about 450 B.C., moved by sea from the Bay of Cambay to Ceylon;
mingling there with the Tamil natives, they became the progenitors of
the Singhalese, forming a hybrid tropical offshoot.
Europe, except for its small sub-arctic area, has received immigrants,
according to the testimony of history and ethnology, only from the
temperate parts of Asia and Africa, with the one exception of the
Saracens of Arabia, whose original home lay wholly within the hot
climate belt of 20 deg.C. (68 deg.F.). Saracen expansion, in covering Persia,
Syria, and Egypt, still kept to this hot belt; only in the Barbary Coast
of Africa and in Spain did it protrude into the temperate belt. Though
this last territory was extra-tropical, it was essentially semi-arid and
sub-tropical in temperature, like the dry trade-wind belt whence the
Saracens had sprung.
[Illustration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF AFRICA AND ARABIA.]
[Sidenote: Range of movements in Africa.]
The Semitic folk of Arabia and the desert Hamites of northern Africa,
bred by their hot, dry environment to a nomadic life, have been drawn
southward over the Sahara across the Tropic into the grasslands of the
Sudan, permeating a wide zone of negro folk with the political control,
religion, civilization and blood of the Mediterranean north. Here
similar though better conditions of life, a climate hotter though less
arid, attracted Hamitic invasion, while the relatively dense native
population in a lower stage of economic development presented to the
commercial Semites the attraction of lucrative trade. South of the
equator the native Bantu Kaffirs, essentially a tropical people, spread
beyond their zonal border to the south coast of Africa at 33 deg. S.L.,
and displaced the yellow Hottentots[199] before the arrival of the Dutch
in 1602; while in the early nineteenth century we hear of the Makololo,
a division of this same Kaffir stock, leaving their native seats near
the southern sources of the Vaal River at 28 deg. S.L. and moving some nine
hundred miles northward to the Barotse territory on the upper Zambesi at
15 deg. S.L.[200] This again was a movement of a pastoral people across a
tropic to other grasslands, to climatic conditions scarcely different
from those which they had left.
[Sidenote: Colonization and latitude.]
The modern colonial movements which have been genuine race expansions
have shown a tendency not only to adhere to their zone, but to follow
parallels of latitude or isotherms. The stratification of European
peoples in the Americas, excepting Spanish and Portuguese, coincides
with heat zones. Internal colonization in the United States reveals the
same principle.[201] Russian settlements in Asia stretch across Siberia
chiefly between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth parallels; these same lines
include the ancient Slav territory in Germany between the Vistula and
Weser. The great efflux of home-seekers, as opposed to the smaller
contingent of mere conquerors and exploiters, which has poured forth
from Europe since the fifteenth century, has found its destinations
largely in the temperate parts of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand,
and South Africa. Even the Spanish overlords in Mexico and Peru
domiciled themselves chiefly in the highlands, where altitude in part
counteracts tropical latitude. European immigration into South America
to-day greatly predominates in the temperate portions,--in Argentine,
Uruguay, Paraguay, southern Brazil and southern Chile. While Argentine's
population includes over one million white foreigners, who comprise
twenty per cent. of the total,[202] Venezuela has no genuine white
immigration. Its population, which comprises only one per cent. of pure
whites, consists chiefly of negroes, mulattoes, and Sambos, hybrids of
negro and Indian race. In British Guiana, negroes and East Indian
coolies, both importations from other tropical lands, comprise
eighty-one per cent. of the population.[203]
The movement of Europeans into the tropical regions of Asia,
Australasia, Africa and America, like the American advance into the
Philippines, represents commercial and political, not genuine ethnic
expansion. Except where it resorts to hybridization, it seeks not new
homesteads, but the profits of tropical trade and the markets for
European manufactures found in retarded populations. These it secures
either by a small but permanently domiciled ruling class, as formerly in
Spanish and Portuguese America, or by a body of European officials,
clerks, agents and soldiers, sent out for a term of years. Such are the
seventy-six thousand Britishers who manage the affairs of commerce and
state in British India, and the smaller number of Dutch who perform the
same functions in the Dutch East India islands. The basis of this system
is exploitation. It represents neither a high economic, ethical, nor
social ideal, and therefore lacks the stamp of geographic finality.
[Sidenote: Movement to like geographic conditions.]
A migrating or expanding people, when free to choose, is prone to seek a
new home with like geographic conditions to the old. Hence the stamp
once given by an environment tends to perpetuate itself. All people,
especially those in the lower stages of culture, are conservative in
their fundamental activities. Agriculture is intolerable to pastoral
nomads, hunting has little attraction for a genuine fisher folk.
Therefore such peoples in expansion seek an environment in which the
national aptitudes, slowly evolved in their native seats, find a ready
field. Thus arise natural provinces of distribution, whose location,
climate, physical features, and size reflect the social and economic
adaptation of the inhabitants to a certain type of environment. A
shepherd folk, when breaking off from its parent stock like Abraham's
family from their Mesopotamian kinsmen, seeks a land rich in open
pastures and large enough to support its wasteful nomadic economy. A
seafaring people absorb an ever longer strip of seaboard, like the
Eskimo of Arctic America, or throw out their settlements from inlet to
inlet or island to island, as did Malays and Polynesians in the Pacific,
ancient Greeks and Phoenicians in the subtropical Mediterranean, and the
Norse in the northern seas. The Dutch, bred to the national profession
of diking and draining, appear in their element in the water-logged
coast of Sumatra and Guiana,[204] where they cultivate lands reclaimed
from the sea; or as colonists in the Vistula lowlands, whither Prussia
imported them to do their ancestral task, just as the English employed
their Dutch prisoners after the wars with Holland in the seventeenth
century to dike and drain the fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire.
Moreover, the commercial talent of the Dutch, trained by their
advantageous situation on the North Sea about the Rhine mouths, guided
their early traders to similar locations elsewhere, like the Hudson and
Delaware Rivers, or planted them on islands either furnishing or
commanding extensive trade, such as Ceylon, Mauritius, the East Indies,
or the Dutch holdings in the Antilles.
Much farther down in the cultural scale we find the fisher tribes of
Central Africa extending their villages from point to point along the
equatorial streams, and the river Indians of South America gradually
spreading from headwaters to estuary, and thence to the related
environment of the coast. The Tupis, essentially a water race, have left
traces of their occupation only where river or coast enabled them to
live by their inherited aptitudes.[205] The distribution of the ancient
mounds in North America shows their builders to have sought with few
exceptions protected sites near alluvial lowlands, commanding rich soil
for cultivation and the fish supply from the nearby river. Mountaineer
folk often move from one upland district to another, as did the Lombards
of Alpine Pannonia in their conquest of Lombardy and Apennine Italy,
where all their four duchies were restricted to the highlands of the
peninsula.[206] The conquests of the ancient Incas and the spread of
their race covered one Andean valley after another for a stretch of one
thousand five hundred miles, wherever climatic and physical conditions
were favorable to their irrigated tillage and highland herds of llamas.
They found it easier to climb pass after pass and mount to ever higher
altitudes, rather than descend to the suffocating coasts where neither
man nor beast could long survive, though they pushed the political
boundary finally to the seaboard. [Map page 101.]
[Sidenote: Movement to better geographic conditions.]
The search for better land, milder climate, and easier conditions of
living starts many a movement of peoples which, in view of their
purpose, necessarily leads them into an environment sharply contrasted
to their original habitat. Such has been the radial outflow of the
Mongoloid tribes down from the rugged highlands of central Asia to the
fertile river lowlands of the peripheral lands; the descent of the Iran
pastors upon the agricultural folk of the Indus, Ganges and Mesopotamian
valleys, and the swoop of desert-born conquerors upon the unresisting
tillers of well-watered fields in all times, from the ancient Hyksos of
the Nile to the modern Fulbe of the Niger Valley.
[Sidenote: Southward and westward drifts in the northern hemisphere.]
The attraction of a milder climate has caused in the northern hemisphere
a constantly recurring migration from north to south. In primitive North
America, along the whole broad Atlantic slope, the predominant direction
of Indian migrations was from north to south, accompanied by a drift
from west to east.[207] On the Pacific side of the continent also the
trend was southward. This is generally conceded regardless of theory as
to whether the Indians first found entrance to the continent at its
northeast or northwest corner. It was a movement toward milder
climates.[208] Study of the _Voelkerwanderungen_ in Europe reveals two
currents or drifts in varied combination, one from north to south and
the other from east to west, but both of them aimed at regions of better
climate; for the milder temperature and more abundant rainfall of
western Europe made a country as alluring to the Goths, Huns, Alans,
Slavs, Bulgars and Tartars of Asiatic deserts and Russian steppes, as
were the sunny Mediterranean peninsulas to the dwellers of the bleak
Baltic coasts. This is one geographic fact back of the conspicuous
westward movement formulated into an historical principle: "Westward the
star of empire takes its course." The establishment of European colonies
on the western side of the Atlantic, their extension thence to the
Pacific and ever westward, till European culture was transplanted to the
Philippines by Spain and more recently by the United States, constitute
the most remarkable sustained movement made by any one race.
[Sidenote: Eastward movements.]
But westward movements are not the only ones. On the Pacific slope of
Asia the star has moved eastward. From highland Mongolia issued the
throng which originally populated the lowlands of China; and ever
since, one nomad conqueror after the other has descended thence to rule
the fruitful plains of Chili and the teeming populations of the Yangtze
Valley.[209] Russia, blocked in its hoped for expansion to the west by
the strong powers of central Europe, stretched its dominion eastward to
the Pacific and for a short time over to Alaska. The chief expansion of
the German people and the German Empire in historical times has also
been from west to east; but this eastward advance is probably only
retracing the steps taken by many primitive Teutonic tribes as they
drifted Rhineward from an earlier habitat along the Vistula.
[Sidenote: Return movements.]
Since the world is small, it frequently happens that a people after an
interval of generations, armed with a higher civilization, will reenter
a region which it once left when too crude and untutored to develop the
possibilities of the land, but which its better equipment later enables
it to exploit. Thus we find a backward expansion of the Chinese westward
to the foot of the Pamir, and an internal colonization of the empire to
the Ili feeder of Lake Balkash. The expansion of the Japanese into Korea
and Saghalin is undoubtedly such a return current, after an interval
long enough to work a complete transformation in the primitive
Mongolians who found their way to that island home. Sometimes the return
represents the ebbing of the tide, rather than the back water of a
stream in flood. Such was the retreat of the Moors from Spain to the
Berber districts of North Africa, whither they carried echoes of the
brilliant Saracen civilization in the Iberian Peninsula. Such has been
the gradual withdrawal of the Turks from Europe back to their native
Asia, and slow expulsion of the Tartar tribes from Russia to the barren
Asiatic limits of their former territory. [See map page 225.]
[Sidenote: Regions of attraction and repulsion.]
Voluntary historical movements, seeking congenial or choice regions of
the earth, have left its less favored spots undisturbed. Paucity of
resources and isolation have generally insured to a region a peaceful
history; natural wealth has always brought the conqueror. In ancient
Greece the fruitful plains of Thessaly, Boeotia, Elis and Laconia had a
fatal attraction for every migrating horde; Attica's rugged surface,
poor soil, and side-tracked location off the main line of travel
between Hellas and the Peloponnesus saved it from many a rough
visitant,[210] and hence left the Athenians, according to Thucydides, an
indigenous race. The fertility of the Rhine Valley has always attracted
invasion, the barren Black Forest range has repelled and obstructed it.
The security of such unproductive highlands lies more in their failure
to attract than in their power to resist conquest. When to abundant
natural resources, a single spot adds a reputation for wealth,
magnificence, an exceptional position for the control of territory or
commerce, it becomes a geographical magnet. Such was Delphi for the
Gauls of the Balkan Peninsula in the third century, Rome for the
Germanic and Hunnish tribes of the _Voelkerwanderung_, Constantinople for
the Normans, Turks and Russians, Venice for land-locked Austria, the
Mississippi highway and the outlet at New Orleans for our
Trans-Allegheny pioneers.
[Sidenote: Psychical influences in certain movements.]
Sometimes the goal is fabulous or mythical, but potent to lure, like the
land of El Dorado, abounding in gold and jewels, which for two centuries
spurred on Spanish exploration in America. Other than purely material
motives may initiate or maintain such a movement, an ideal or a dream of
good, like the fountain of eternal youth which brought Ponce de Leon to
Florida, the search for the Islands of the Blessed, or the spirit of
religious propaganda which stimulated the spread of the Spanish in
Mexico and the French in Canada, or the hope of religious toleration
which has drawn Quaker, Puritan, Huguenot, and Jew to America. It was an
idea of purely spiritual import which directed the century-long movement
of the Crusades toward Jerusalem, half Latinized the Levant, and widened
the intellectual horizon of Europe. A national or racial sentiment which
enhaloes a certain spot may be pregnant with historical results, because
at any moment it may start some band of enthusiasts on a path of
migration or conquest. The Zionist agitation for the return of oppressed
Jews to Palestine, and the establishment of the Liberian Republic for
the negroes in Africa rest upon such a sentiment. The reverence of the
Christian world for Rome as a goal of pilgrimages materially enhanced
the influence of Italy as a school of culture during the Middle Ages.
The spiritual and ethnic association of the Mohammedan world with Mecca
is always fraught with possible political results. The dominant tribes
of the Sudan, followers of Islam, who proudly trace back a fictitious
line of ancestry to the Arabs of Yemen, are readily incited to support a
new prophet sprung from the race of Mecca.[211] The pilgrimages which the
Buddhists of the Asiatic highlands make to the sacred city of Lhassa
ensure China's control over the restless nomads through the
instrumentality of the Grand Lama of Tibet.
[Sidenote: Results of historical movement.]
Historical movements are varied as to motive, direction, numerical
strength, and character, but their final results are two,
differentiation and assimilation. Both are important phases of the
process of evolution, but the latter gains force with the progress of
history and the increase of the world's population.
[Sidenote: Differentiation and area.]
A people or race which, in its process of numerical growth, spreads over
a large territory subjects itself to a widening range of geographic
conditions, and therefore of differentiation. The broad expansion of the
Teutonic race in Europe, America, Australia and South Africa has brought
it into every variety of habitat. If the territory has a monotonous
relief like Russia, nevertheless, its mere extent involves diversity of
climate and location. The diversity of climate incident to large area
involves in turn different animal and plant life, different crops,
different economic activities. Even in lowlands the relief, geologic
structure, and soil are prone to vary over wide districts. The
monotonous surface of Holland shows such contrasts. So do the North
German lowlands; here the sandy barren flats of the "geest" alternate
with stretches of fertile silt deposited by the rivers or the sea,[212]
and support different types of communities, which have been admirably
described by Gustav Frenssen in his great novel of Joen Uhl. The flat
surface of southern Illinois shows in small compass the teeming
fertility of the famous "American bottom," the poor clay soil of "Egypt"
with its backward population, and the rich prairie land just to the
north with its prosperous and progressive farmer class.
When the relief includes mountains, the character not only of the land
but of the climate changes, and therewith the type of community. Hence
neighboring districts may produce strongly contrasted types of society.
Madison County of Kentucky, lying on the eastern margin of the Bluegrass
region, contains the rich landed estates, negro laboring class and
aristocratic society characteristic of the "planter" communities of the
old South; and only twenty miles southeast of Richmond, the center of
this wealth and refinement, it includes also the rough barren hill
country of the Cumberland Plateau, where are found one-room cabins,
moonshine stills, feuds, and a backward population sprung from the same
pure English stock as the Bluegrass people.
[Sidenote: Contrasted environments.]
Here is differentiation due to the immediate influences of environment.
The phenomenon reappears in every part of the world, in every race and
every age. The contrast between the ancient Greeks of the mountains,
coasts and alluvial valleys shows the power of environment to direct
economic activities and to modify culture and social organization. So
does the differences between the coast, steppe, and forest Indians of
Guiana,[213] the Kirghis of the Pamir pastures and the Irtysh River
valley, the agricultural Berbers of the Atlas Mountains and the Berber
nomads of the Sahara, the Swiss of the high, lonely Engadine and those
of the crowded Aar valley.
Contrasted environments effect a natural selection in another way and
thereby greatly stimulate differentiation, whenever an intruding people
contest the ownership of the territory with the inhabitants. The
struggle for land means a struggle also for the best land, which
therefore falls to the share of the strongest peoples. Weaklings must
content themselves with poor soils, inaccessible regions of mountain,
swamp or desert. There they deteriorate, or at best strike a slower pace
of increase or progress. The difference between the people of the
highlands and plains of Great Britain or of France is therefore in part
a distinction of race due to this geographical selection,[214] in part a
distinction of economic development and culture due to geographic
influences. Therefore the piedmont belts of the world, except in arid
lands, are cultural, ethnic and often political lines of cleavage,
showing marked differentiation on either side. Isotherms are other such
cleavage lines, marking the limits beyond which an aggressive people did
not desire to expand because of an uncongenial climate. The distinction
between Anglo-Saxon and Latin America is one of zone as well as race.
Everywhere in North America the English stock has dominated or displaced
French and Spanish competitors down to the Mexican frontier.
As the great process of European colonization has permeated the earth
and multiplied its population, not only the best land but the amount of
this has commenced to differentiate the history of various European
nations, and that in a way whose end cannot yet be definitely predicted.
The best lands have fallen to the first-comers strong enough to hold
them. People who early develop powers of expansion, like the English, or
who, like the French and Russians, formulate and execute vast
territorial policies, secure for their future growth a wide base which
will for all time distinguish them from late-comers into the colonial
field, like Germany and Italy. These countries see the fecundity of
their people redounding to the benefit of alien colonial lands, which
have been acquired by enterprising rivals in the choice sections of the
temperate zone. German and Italian colonies in torrid, unhealthy, or
barren tropical lands, fail to attract emigrants from the mother
country, and therefore to enhance national growth.
[Sidenote: Two-type populations.]
When colonizers or conquerors appropriate the land of a lower race, we
find a territory occupied at least for a time by two types of
population, constituting an ethnic, social and often economic
differentiation. The separation may be made geographical also. The
Indians in the United States have been confined to reservations, like
the Hottentots to the twenty or more "locations" in Cape Colony. This is
the simplest arrangement. Whether the second or lower type survives
depends upon their economic and social utility, into which again
geographic conditions enter. The Indians of Canada are a distinct
economic factor in that country as trappers for the Hudson Bay Company,
and they will so remain till the hunting grounds of the far north are
exhausted. The native agriculturists in the Tropics are indispensable to
the unacclimated whites. The negroes of the South, introduced for an
economic purpose, find their natural habitat in the Black Belt. Here we
have an ethnic division of labor for geographical reasons. Castes or
social classes, often distinguished by shades of color as in Brahman
India, survive as differentiations indicating old lines of race
cleavage. There is abundant evidence that the upper classes in Germany,
France, Austria, and the British Isles are distinctly lighter of hair
and eyes than the peasantry.[215] The high-class Japanese are taller and
fairer than the masses. Nearly all the African tribes of the Sudan and
bordering Sahara include two distinct classes, one of lighter and one of
darker shade. Many Fulbe tribes distinguish these classes by the names
of "Blacks" and "Whites."[216] The two-type people are the result of
historical movements.
[Sidenote: Differentiation and isolation.]
Differentiation results not only from contrasted geographic conditions,
but also from segregation. A moving or expanding throng in search of
more and better lands drops off one group to occupy a fertile valley or
plain, while the main body goes on its way, till it reaches a
satisfactory destination or destinations. The tendency to split and
divide, characteristic of primitive peoples, is thus stimulated by
migration and expansion. Each offshoot, detached from the main body,
tends to diverge from the stock type. If it reaches a naturally isolated
region, where its contact without is practically cut off, it grows from
its own loins, emphasizes its group characteristic by close in-breeding,
and tends to show a development related to biological divergence under
conditions of isolation. Since man is essentially a gregarious animal,
the size of every such migrating band will always prevent the evolution
of any sharply defined variety, according to the standard of biology.
Nevertheless, the divergent types of men and societies developed in
segregated regions are an echo of the formation of new species under
conditions of isolation which is now generally acknowledged by
biological science. Isolation was recognized by Darwin as an occasional
factor in the origin of species and especially of divergence; in
combination with migration it was made the basis of a theory of
evolution by Moritz Wagner in 1873;[217] and in recent years has come to
be regarded as an essential in the explanation of divergence of types,
as opposed to differentiation.[218]
[Sidenote: Differentiation and digression.]
The traditions of the Delaware Indians and Sioux in the north of the
United States territory, and of the Creeks in the south, commence with
each stock group as a united body, which, as it migrates, splits into
tribes and sends out offshoots developing different dialects. Here was
tribal differentiation after entry into the general stock area, the
process going on during migration as well as after the tribes had become
established in their respective habitats. Culture, however, made little
progress till after they became sedentary and took up agriculture to
supplement the chase.[219] Tribes sometimes wander far beyond the limits
of their stock, like the Iroquoian Cherokees of East Tennessee and North
Carolina or the Athapascan Navajos and Apaches of arid New Mexico and
Arizona, who had placed twenty or thirty degrees of latitude between
themselves and their brethren in the basins of the Yukon and Mackenzie
rivers. Such inevitably come into contrasted climatic conditions, which
further modify the immigrants. [See map page 54.]
Wide digressions differentiate them still further from the parent stock
by landing them amid different ethnic and social groups, by contact with
whom they are inevitably modified. The Namaqua Hottentots, living on the
southern margin of the Hottentot country near the frontier of the
European settlements in Cape Colony, acquired some elements of
civilization, together with a strain of Boer and English blood, and in
some cases even the Dutch vernacular. They were therefore differentiated
from their nomadic and warlike kinsmen in the grasslands north of the
Orange River, which formed the center of the Hottentot area.[220] A view
of the ancient Germans during the first five or six centuries after
Christ reveals differentiation by various contacts in process along all
the ragged borders of the Germanic area. The offshoots who pushed
westward across the Rhine into Belgian Gaul were rapidly Celticized,
abandoning their semi-nomadic life for sedentary agriculture,
assimilating the superior civilization which they found there, and
steadily merging with the native population. They became _Belgae_,
though still conscious of their Teutonic origin.[221] The Batavians, an
offshoot of the ancient Chatti living near the Thuringian Forest,
appropriated the river island between the Rhine and the Waal. There in
the seclusion of their swamps, they became a distinct national unit,
retaining their backward German culture and primitive type of German
speech, which the Chatti themselves lost by contact with the High
Germans.[222] Far away on the southeastern margin of the Teutonic area
the same process of assimilation to a foreign civilization went on a
little later when the Visigoths, after a century of residence on the
lower Danube in contact with the Eastern Empire, adopted the Arian form
of Christianity which had arisen in the Greek peninsula.[223] The border
regions of the world show the typical results of the historical
movement--differentiation from the core or central group through
assimilation to a new group which meets and blends with it along the
frontier.
[Sidenote: Geographic conditions of heterogeneity and homogeneity.]
Entrance into a naturally isolated district, from which subsequent
incursions are debarred, gives conditions for divergence and the
creation of a new type. On the other hand, where few physical barriers
are present to form these natural pockets, the process of assimilation
goes on over a wide field. Europe is peculiar among the family of
continents for its "much divided" geography, commented upon by Strabo.
Hence its islands, peninsulas and mountain-rimmed basins have produced a
variegated assemblage of peoples, languages and culture. Only where it
runs off into the monotonous immensity of Russia do we find a people who
in their physical traits, language, and civilization reflect the
uniformity of their environment.[224]
Africa's smooth outline, its plateau surface rimmed with mountains which
enclose but fail to divide, and its monotonous configuration have
produced a racial and cultural uniformity as striking as Europe's
heterogeneity. Constant movements and commixture, migration and
conquest, have been the history of the black races, varied by victorious
incursions of the Hamitic and Semitic whites from the north, which,
however, have resulted in the amalgamation of the two races after
conquest.[225] Constant fusion has leveled also the social and political
relations of the people to one type; it has eliminated primordial
groups, except where the dwarf hunters have taken refuge in the
equatorial forests and the Bushmen in the southwestern deserts, just as
it has thwarted the development of higher social groups by failure to
segregate and protect. It has sown the Bantu speech broadcast over the
immense area of Central Africa, and is disseminating the Hausa language
through the agency of a highly mixed commercial folk over a wide tract
of the western Sudan. The long east-and-west stretch of the Sudan
grasslands presents an unobstructed zone between the thousand-mile belt
of desert to the north and the dense equatorial forests to the south,
between hunger and thirst on one side, heat and fever and impenetrable
forests on the other. Hence the Sudan in all history has been the
crowded Broadway of Africa. Here pass commercial caravans, hybrid
merchant tribes like the Hausa, throngs of pilgrims, streams of peoples,
herds of cattle moving to busy markets, rude incursive shoppers or
looters from the desert, coming to buy or rob or rule in this highway
belt. [See map page 105.]
[Sidenote: Differentiation versus assimilation.]
Historical development advances by means of differentiation and
assimilation. A change of environment stimulates variation. Primitive
culture is loath to change; its inertia is deep-seated. Only a sharp
prod will start it moving or accelerate its speed; such a prod is found
in new geographic conditions or new social contacts. Divergence in a
segregated spot may be overdone. Progress crawls among a people too long
isolated, though incipient civilization thrives for a time in seclusion.
But in general, accessibility, exposure to some measure of ethnic
amalgamation and social contact is essential to sustained progress.[226]
As the world has become more closely populated and means of
communication have improved, geographical segregation is increasingly
rare. The earth has lost its "corners." All parts are being drawn into
the circle of intercourse. Therefore differentiation, the first effect
of the historical movement, abates; the second effect, assimilation,
takes the lead.
[Sidenote: Elimination by historical movement.]
The ceaseless human movements making for new combinations have
stimulated development. They have lifted the level of culture, and
worked towards homogeneity of race and civilization on a higher plane.
Since the period of the great discoveries inaugurated by Columbus
enabled the historical movement to compass the world, whole continents,
like North America and Australia, have been reclaimed to civilization by
colonization. The process of assimilation is often ruthless in its
method. Hence it has been attended by a marked reduction in the number
of different ethnic stocks, tribes, languages, dialects, social and
cultural types through wide-spread elimination of the weak, backward or
unfit.[227] These have been wiped out, either by extermination or the
slower process of absorption. The Indian linguistic stocks in the United
States have been reduced from fifty-three to thirty-two; and of those
thirty-two, many survive as a single tribe or the shrinking remnant of
one.[228] In Africa the slave trade has caused the annihilation of many
small tribes.[229] The history of the Hottentots, who have been passive
before the active advance of the English, Dutch and Kaffirs about them,
shows a race undergoing a widespread process of hybridization[230] and
extermination.[231]
Strong peoples, like the English, French, Russians and Chinese, occupy
ever larger areas. Where an adverse climate precludes genuine
colonization, as it did for the Spanish in Central and South America,
and for the English and Dutch in the Indies, they make their
civilization, if not their race, permeate the acquired territory, and
gradually impose on it their language and economic methods. The Poles,
who once boasted a large and distinguished nationality, are being
Germanized and Russified to their final national extinction. The Finns,
whose Scandinavian offshoot has been almost absorbed in Sweden,[232] are
being forcibly dissolved in the Muscovite dominion by powerful reaegents,
by Russian schoolmasters, a Russian priesthood, Russian military
service.
[Sidenote: No new ethnic types.]
No new types of races have been developed either by amalgamation or by
transfer to new climatic and economic conditions in historic times.
Contrasted geographic conditions long ago lost their power to work
radical physical changes in the race type, because man even with the
beginnings of civilization learned to protect himself against extremes
of climate. He therefore preserved his race type, which consequently in
the course of ages lost much of its plasticity and therewith its
capacity to evolve new varieties.[233] Where ethnic amalgamations on a
large scale have occurred as a result of the historical movement, as in
Mexico, the Sudan and Central Africa, the local race, being numerically
stronger than the intruders and better adapted to the environment, has
succeeded in maintaining its type, though slightly modified, side by
side with the intruders. The great historical movements of modern times,
however, have been the expansion of European peoples over the retarded
regions of the world. These peoples, coming into contact with inferior
races, and armed generally with a race pride which was antagonistic to
hybrid marriages, preserved their blood from extensive intermixture.
Hybridism, where it existed, was an ephemeral feature restricted to
pioneer days, when white women were scarce, or to regions of extreme
heat or cold, where white women and children could with difficulty
survive. Even in Spanish America, where ethnic blendings were most
extensive, something of the old Spanish pride of race has reasserted
itself.
[Sidenote: Checks to differentiation.]
Improved communication maintains or increases the ranks of the intruders
from the home supply. The negroes in North America, imported as they
were _en masse_, then steadily recruited by two centuries of the slave
trade, while their race integrity was somewhat protected by social
ostracism, have not been seriously modified physically by several
generations of residence in a temperate land. Their changes have been
chiefly cultural. The Englishman has altered only superficially in the
various British colonial lands. Constant intercourse and the progress of
inventions have enabled him to maintain in diverse regions approximate
uniformity of physical well-being, similar social and political ideals.
The changed environment modifies him in details of thought, manner, and
speech, but not in fundamentals.
Moreover, civilized man spreading everywhere and turning all parts of
the earth's surface to his uses, has succeeded to some extent in
reducing its physical differences. The earth as modified by human action
is a conspicuous fact of historical development.[234] Irrigation,
drainage, fertilization of soils, terrace agriculture, denudation of
forests and forestration of prairies have all combined to diminish the
contrasts between diverse environments, while the acclimatization of
plants, animals and men works even more plainly to the same end of
uniformity. The unity of the human race, varied only by superficial
differences, reflects the unity of the spherical earth, whose
diversities of geographical feature nowhere depart greatly from the mean
except in point of climate. Differentiation due to geography, therefore,
early reached its limits. For assimilation no limit can be forseen.
[Sidenote: Geographical origins.]
In view of this constant differentiation on the one hand, and
assimilation on the other, the historical movement has made it difficult
to trace race types to their origin; and yet this is a task in which
geography must have a hand. Borrowed civilizations and purloined
languages are often so many disguises which conceal the truth of ethnic
relationships. A long migration to a radically different habitat, into
an outskirt or detached location protected from the swamping effects of
cross-breeding, results eventually in a divergence great enough to
obliterate almost every cue to the ancient kinship. The long-headed
Teutonic race of northern Europe is regarded now by ethnologists as an
offshoot of the long-headed brunette Mediterranean race of African
origin, which became bleached out under the pale suns of Scandinavian
skies. The present distribution of the various Teutonic stocks is a
geographical fact; their supposed cradle in the Mediterranean basin is a
geographical hypothesis. The connecting links must also be geographical.
They must prove the former presence of the migrating folk in the
intervening territory. A dolichocephalic substratum of population, with
a negroid type of skull, has in fact been traced by archaeologists all
over Europe through the early and late Stone Ages. The remains of these
aboriginal inhabitants are marked in France, even in sparsely tenanted
districts like the Auvergne Plateau, which is now occupied by the
broad-headed Alpine race; and they are found to underlie, in point of
time, other brachycephalic areas, like the Po Valley, Bavaria and
Russia.[235]
The origin of a people can be investigated and stated only in terms of
geography. The problem of origin can be solved only by tracing a people
from its present habitat, through the country over which it has
migrated, back to its original seat. Here are three geographical
entities which can be laid down upon a map, though seldom with sharply
defined boundaries. They represent three successive geographic
locations, all embodying geographic conditions potent to influence the
people and their movement. Hence the geographical element emerges in
every investigation as to origins; whether in ethnology, history,
philology, mythology or religion. The transit land, the course between
start and finish, is of supreme importance. Especially is this true for
religion, which is transformed by travel. Christianity did not conquer
the world in the form in which it issued from the cramped and isolated
environment of Palestine, but only after it had been remodelled in Asia
Minor, Egypt, Greece and Rome, and cosmopolized in the wide contact of
the Mediterranean basin. The Roman speech and civilization, which spread
through the Romance speaking peoples of Europe, were variously diluted
and alloyed before being transplanted by French, Spaniard and Portuguese
to American shores, there to be further transformed.
[Sidenote: Large centers of dispersion.]
In view of the countless springs and tributaries that combine to swell
the current of every historical movement, anthropo-geography looks for
the origin of a people not in a narrowly defined area, but in a broad,
ill-defined center of dispersion, from which many streams simultaneously
and successively flow out as from a low-rimmed basin, and which has been
filled from many remoter sources. Autochthones, aborigines are therefore
merely scientific tropes, indicating the limit beyond which the movement
of people cannot be traced in the gray light of an uncertain dawn. The
vaguer and more complex these movements on account of their historical
remoteness, the wider their probable range. The question as to the
geographical origin of the Aryan linguistic family of peoples brings us
to speculative sources, more or less scientifically based, reaching from
Scandinavia and Lithuania to the Hindu Kush Mountains and northern
Africa.[236] The sum total of all these conjectural cradles, amounting
to a large geographical area, would more nearly approximate the truth as
to Aryan origins. For the study of the historical movement makes it
clear that a large, highly differentiated ethnic or linguistic family
presupposes a big center end a long period of dispersion, protracted
wanderings, and a diversified area both for their migrations and
successive settlements.
[Sidenote: Small centers.]
The slighter the inner differences in an ethnic stock, whether in
culture, language or physical traits, the smaller was their center of
distribution and the more rapid their dispersal. The small initial
habitat restricts the chances of variation through isolation and
contrasted geographic conditions, as does also the short duration of
their subsequent separation. The amazing uniformity of the Eskimo type
from Bering Strait to eastern Greenland can only thus be explained, even
after making allowance for the monotony of their geographic conditions
and remoteness from outside influences. The distribution of the Bantu
dialects over so wide a region in Central Africa and with such slight
divergences presupposes narrow limits both of space and time for their
origin, and a short period since their dispersal.[237]
Small centers of dispersion are generally natural districts with fixed
boundaries, favored by their geographical location or natural resources
or by both for the development of a relatively dense population. When
this increases beyond the local limits of subsistence, there follows an
emigration in point of number and duration out of all proportion to the
small area whence it issues. Ancient Phoenicia, Crete, Samos, mediaeval
Norway, Venice, Yemen, modern Malta, Gilbert Islands, England and Japan
furnish examples. Such small favored areas, when they embody also strong
political power, may get the start in the occupation of colonial lands.
This gives them a permanent advantage, if their colonies are chosen with
a view to settlement in congenial climates, as were those of the
English, rather than the more ephemeral advantage of trade, as were
those of the Dutch and Portuguese in the Tropics. It seems also
essential to these centers of dispersion, that, to be effective, they
must command the wide choice of outlet and destination afforded by the
mighty common of the sea. Only the Inca Empire in South America gives
us an example of the extensive political expansion of a small mountain
state.
[Sidenote: Tests of origin.]
The question arises whether any single rule can as yet be formulated for
identifying the original seats of existing peoples. By some ethnologists
and historians such homes have been sought where the people are
distributed in the largest area, as the Athapascan and Algonquin Indians
are assigned to a northern source, because their territories attained
their greatest continuous extent in Canada, but were intermittent or
attenuated farther south. The fact that colonial peoples often multiply
inordinately in new lands, and there occupy a territory vastly greater
than that of the mother country, points to the danger in such a
generalization. Of the ten millions of Jews in the world, only a handful
remain in the ancient center of dispersion in Palestine, while about
eight millions are found in Poland and the contiguous territories of
western Russia, Roumania, Austria-Hungary and eastern Germany. Moreover,
history and the German element in the "Yiddish" speech of the Russian
Jews point to a secondary center of dispersion in the Rhine cities and
Franconia, whither the Jews were drawn by the trade route up the Rhone
Valley in the third century.[238]
A more scientific procedure is to look for the early home of a race in
the locality around which its people or family of peoples centers in
modern times. Therefore we place the cradle of the negro race in Africa,
rather than Melanesia. Density often supplies a test, because colonial
lands are generally more sparsely inhabited than the mother country. But
even this conclusion fails always to apply, as in the case of Samos,
which has a population vastly more dense than any section of the Grecian
mainland. The largest compact area including at once the greatest
density of population and the greatest purity of race would more nearly
indicate the center of dispersion; because purity of race is
incompatible with long migrations, as we have seen, though in the native
seat it may be affected by intrusive elements. When this purity of race
is combined with archaic forms of language and culture, as among the
Lithuanians of Aryan speech among the Baltic swamps, it may indicate
that the locality formed a segregated corner of the early center of
dispersion. It seems essential to such an original seat that, whether
large or small, it should be marked by some degree of isolation, as the
condition for the development of specific racial characteristics.
The complexity of this question of ethnic origins is typical of
anthropo-geographic problems, typical also in the warning which it gives
against any rigidly systematic method of solution. The whole science of
anthropo-geography is as yet too young for hard-and-fast rules, and its
subject matter too complex for formulas.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
[126] H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 179-187. London,
1904. W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 306-310, 319-326. New York,
1899.
[127] Compare observations of Georg Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa,
Vol. I, pp. 312-313. London, 1873.
[128] Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. lvii. Philadelphia, 1868.
[129] D.M. Wallace, Russia, pp. 151-155. New York, 1904.
[130] Thucydides, Book I, chap. II.
[131] Strabo, Book II, chap. III, 7.
[132] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 408-414, Vol. XIX
of _History of North America_, edited by T.N. Thorpe. Philadelphia,
1905.
[133] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. II, p. 214. Oxford, 1892.
[134] Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 587. New York, 1872.
[135] D.G. Brinton, The American Race, pp. 116-119. Philadelphia, 1901.
[136] O.T. Mason, Primitive Travel and Transportation, pp. 249-250.
_Smithsonian Report_, Washington, 1896.
[137] Thucydides, Book I, chap. II.
[138] Edward A. Boss, Foundations of Sociology, pp. 359-363, 386-389.
New York, 1905.
[139] D.G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 73-75. Philadelphia, 1901.
[140] John Richard Green, The Making of England, Vol. I, pp. 9-11,
45-46, 52-54, 57, 62. London, 1904.
[141] James Bryce, The Migration of the Races of Men Considered
Historically, _Scottish Geographical Magazine_, Vol. VIII, pp. 400-421,
and _Smithsonian Report_ for 1893, pp. 567-588.
[142] Caesar, _De Bello Gallico_, Book II, chap. 29.
[143] Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. I, p. 5. New York, 1883.
[144] John Richard Green, The Making of England, Vol. I, p. 46. London,
1904.
[145] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. V, pp. 99-101. Oxford,
1895.
[146] _Ibid._, Vol. V, pp. 156-157.
[147] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. II, pp. 107, 195. Oxford,
1892.
[148] _Ibid._, Vol. II, pp. 219-223, 230.
[149] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 276-277. New York, 1899.
[150] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. II, pp. 214-219. Oxford,
1892.
[151] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 296. London, 1896-1898.
[152] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 408-412, Vol. XIX
of _History of North America._ Philadelphia, 1905.
[153] Hugh R. Mill, International Geography, p. 858. New York, 1902.
[154] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues,_ pp. 44-48.
Stuttgart, 1888.
[155] Cyrus Thomas, The Indians of North America in Historical Times, p.
261. Vol. II of _History of North America,_ Philadelphia, 1903.
[156] Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Vol. I, pp. 134-135, 250. New
York, 1895. Justin Winsor, The Westward Movement, p. 16. Boston, 1899.
[157] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, p. 54. Washington, 1894.
[158] _Ibid._, p. 531.
[159] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, p. 411. New York,
1902-1906.
[160] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol.
II, pp. 57-58. Oxford, 1899.
[161] _II Kings_, Chap. XVII, 6-24.
[162] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 432-434. New York, 1899.
[163] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. V, pp. 353-354. New York,
1902-1906.
[164] _Ibid._, Vol. VI, p. 15.
[165] D.G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 247. London, 1902.
[166] Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Vol. I, p. 248. New York, 1895.
[167] C.C. Royce, The Cherokee Nation of Indians, pp. 130-131. Maps VIII
and IX. _Fifth Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1887.
[168] Albert Gallatin, Report on the Indians in 1836, reprinted in
Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, p. 33. Washington, 1894.
[169] Cyrus Thomas, Indians of North America in Historical Times, pp.
94, 96. Vol. II of _History of North America_, Philadelphia, 1903.
[170] _Ibid._, Vol. II, pp. 100-101.
[171] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. III, pp.
333-334. New York, 1902.
[172] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 437-438. New York, 1899.
[173] D.G. Brinton, The American Race, pp. 115-116. Philadelphia, 1901.
[174] H. Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. III, pp. 559, 635-638. San
Francisco, 1886.
[175] Cyrus Thomas, Indians of North America in Historical Times, pp.
381-382, Vol. II of _History of North America_. Philadelphia, 1903.
[176] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, p. 35. Washington, 1894.
[177] Eleventh Census, _Report on Population_, Vol. I, p. cxxxviii.
Washington, 1894.
[178] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 38. Gotha, 1905.
[179] Richmond Mayo-Smith, Emigration and Immigration, p. 24. New York.
[180] _Ibid._, pp. 79-80, 113-115.
[181] Capt. A.T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 27-28.
Boston, 1902.
[182] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 247, 272-274. New York, 1899.
[183] Caesar, _Bella Gallico_, Book III, chap. I.
[184] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 34-43.
Oxford, 1892.
[185] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 242, 245, 250, 257.
London, 1896-1898.
[186] John Fiske, Discovery of America, Vol. I, pp. 316-317. Boston,
1893.
[187] Elliott Coues, History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Vol. I.
pp. 193-198, 203-212, 240. New York, 1893.
[188] Francis Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, pp.
39-40, Note 2. Boston, 1904.
[189] George G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 56-57. London, 1904.
[190] Herodotus, Book II, 60.
[191] Encyclopaedia Britanica, Article Pilgrimages.
[192] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, p. 88. Boston, 1907.
[193] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 3-7.
London, 1907.
[194] C.A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, pp. 3-4,
144-145, 280-284. London, 1906.
[195] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 189-191. Map p.
190. New York and London, 1902-1906.
[196] J.W. Powell, Map of Linguistic Stocks of American Indians, Annual
Report of Bureau of Ethnology, Vol. VII.
[197] Archibald Little, The Far East, Ethnological Map, p. 8. Oxford,
1905.
[198] Census of India, 1901, General Report by H.H. Risley and E.A.
Gait, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 500-504; and Ethnographic Appendices by H.H.
Risley, Vol. I, map, p. 60. Calcutta, 1903. P. Vidal de la Blache, _Le
Peuple de l'Inde, d'apres la serie des recensements_, pp. 431-434,
_Annales de Geographie_, Vol. XV. Paris, 1906.
[199] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, pp. 422, 424,
434-436. New York, 1902-1906.
[200] D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 97-102. New York, 1858.
[201] James Bryce, Migrations of the Races of Men Considered
Historically, _Scottish Geographical Magazine_, Vol. VIII, pp. 400-421,
May, 1892.
[202] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 78. Gotha, 1905.
[203] _Ibid._, p. 80.
[204] Hugh R. Mill, International Geography, p. 878. New York, 1902.
[205] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 189-191. New York,
1902-1906.
[206] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. VI, pp. 23-27, 38-42, 63-68,
83-87. Oxford, 1896.
[207] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, Chap. XXI, Vol. XIX
of _History of North America_, Philadelphia, 1905.
[208] _Ibid._, pp. 83, 87, Map of Migrations, p. 3.
[209] Archibald Little, The Far East, pp. 34-38. Oxford, 1905.
[210] Strabo, Book VIII, chap. I, 2.
[211] Heinrich Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. II, p.
548. New York, 1857.
[212] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 104-105. London, 1903.
[213] E.F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, pp. 167-171, 202-207.
London, 1883.
[214] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 237. New York, 1899.
[215] _Ibid._, p. 469.
[216] H. Barth, Human Society in Northern Central Africa, _Journal of
the Royal Geog. Society_, Vol. XXX, p. 116. London, 1860.
[217] Moritz Wagner, _Die Entstehung der Arten durch raeumliche
Sonderung_. Basel, 1889.
[218] H.W. Conn, The Method of Evolution, pp. 282-295. New York, 1900.
[219] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 418, 424, Vol.
XIX of _History of North America_. Philadelphia, 1905.
[220] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 280-283. London,
1896-1898.
[221] Caesar, _Bella Gallico_, Book II, chap. IV.
[222] H. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. VI, pp. 32-33. New York,
1902-1906.
[223] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 75, 81, 82.
Oxford, 1895.
[224] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 34, 341-342. New York, 1899.
[225] H. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, pp. 400, 417, New
York, 1902-1906.
[226] A.C. Haddon, The Study of Man, p. xix. New York and London, 1898.
[227] James Bryce, Migrations of the Races of Men Considered
Historically, _Scottish Geographical Magazine_, Vol. VIII, pp. 400-421.
May, 1892.
[228] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, pp. 34-35. Washington,
1894.
[229] H. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, p. 42. New York,
1902-1906.
[230] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 279-283, London, 1896-98.
[231] Jerome Dowd, The Negro Races, Vol. I, pp. 47-48, 61-62. New York,
1907.
[232] Sweden, Its People and Its Industries, p. 93. Edited by G.
Sundbaerg, Stockholm, 1904.
[233] Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 589-593. New York, 1872.
[234] G.P. Marsh, The Earth as Modified by Human Action, New York, 1877.
[235] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 261-267. New York, 1899.
[236] _Ibid._, pp. 475-485.
[237] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 402-405. London,
1896-1898.
[238] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 371-372. Map, p. 374. New York.
1899.
CHAPTER V
GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
[Sidenote: Importance of geographical location.]
The location of a country or people is always the supreme geographical
fact in its history. It outweighs every other single geographic force.
All that has been said of Russia's vast area, of her steppes and tundra
wastes, of her impotent seaboard on land-locked basins or ice-bound
coasts, of her poverty of mountains and wealth of rivers, fades into the
background before her location on the border of Asia. From her defeat by
the Tartar hordes in 1224 to her attack upon the Mongolian rulers of the
Bosporus in 1877, and her recent struggle with Japan, most of her wars
have been waged against Asiatics. Location made her the bulwark of
Central Europe against Asiatic invasion and the apostle of Western
civilization to the heart of Asia. If this position on the outskirts of
Europe, remote from its great centers of development, has made Russia
only partially accessible to European culture and, furthermore, has
subjected her to the retarding ethnic and social influences emanating
from her Asiatic neighbors,[239] and if the rough tasks imposed by her
frontier situation have hampered her progress, these are all the
limitations of her geographical location, limitations which not even the
advantage of her vast area has been able to outweigh.
Area itself, important as it is, must yield to location. Location may
mean only a single spot, and yet from this spot powerful influences may
radiate. No one thinks of size when mention is made of Rome or Athens,
of Jerusalem or Mecca, of Gibraltar or Port Arthur. Iceland and
Greenland guided early Norse ships to the continent of America, as the
Canaries and Antilles did those of Spain; but the location of the
smaller islands in sub-tropical latitudes and in the course of the
northeast trade-winds made them determine the first permanent path
across the western seas.
The historical significance of many small peoples, and the historical
insignificance of many big ones even to the _nil_ point, is merely the
expression of the preponderant importance of location over area. The
Phoenicians, from their narrow strip of coast at the foot of Mount
Lebanon, were disseminators of culture over the whole Mediterranean.
Holland owed her commercial and maritime supremacy, from the thirteenth
to the middle of the seventeenth century, to her exceptional position at
the mouth of the great Rhine highway and at the southern angle of the
North Sea near the entrance to the unexploited regions of the Baltic.
The Iroquois tribes, located where the Mohawk Valley opened a way
through the Appalachian barrier between the Hudson River and Lake
Ontario, occupied both in the French wars and in the Revolution a
strategic position which gave them a power and importance out of all
proportion to their numbers.
Location often assumes a fictitious political value, due to a
combination of political interests. The Turkish power owes its survival
on the soil of Europe to-day wholly to its position on the Bosporus.
Holland owes the integrity of her kingdom, and Roumania that of hers, to
their respective locations at the mouths of the Rhine and the Danube,
because the interest of western Europe demands that these two important
arteries of commerce should be held by powers too weak ever to tie them
up. The same principle has guaranteed the neutrality of Switzerland,
whose position puts it in control of the passes of the Central Alps from
Savoy to the Tyrol; and, more recently, that of the young state of
Panama, through which the Isthmian Canal is to pass.
[Sidenote: Content of the term location.]
Geographical location necessarily includes the idea of the size and form
of a country. Even the most general statement of the zonal and
interoceanic situation of Canada, the United States, Mexico, and the
Russian Empire, indicates the area and contour of their territories.
This is still more conspicuously the case with naturally defined
regions, such as island and peninsula countries. But location includes a
complex of yet larger and more potent relations which go with mere
attachment to this or that continent, or to one or another side of a
continent. Every part of the world gives to its lands and its people
some of its own qualities; and so again every part of this part.
Arabia, India and Farther India, spurs of the Asiatic land-mass, have
had and will always have a radically different ethnic and political
history from Greece, Italy and Spain, the corresponding peninsulas of
Europe, because the histories of these two groups are bound up in their
respective continents. The idea of a European state has a different
content from that of an Asiatic, or North American or African state; it
includes a different race or combination of races, different social and
economic development, different political ideals. Location, therefore,
means climate and plant life at one end of the scale, civilization and
political status at the other.
[Sidenote: Intercontinental location.]
This larger conception of location brings a correspondingly larger
conception of environment, which affords the solution of many otherwise
hopeless problems of anthropo-geography. It is embodied in the law that
the influences of a land upon its people spring not only from the
physical features of the land itself, but also from a wide circle of
lands into which it has been grouped by virtue of its location. Almost
every geographical interpretation of the ancient and modern history of
Greece has been inadequate, because it has failed sufficiently to
emphasize the most essential factor in this history, namely, Greece's
location at the threshold of the Orient. This location has given to
Greek history a strong Asiatic color. It comes out in the accessibility
of Greece to ancient Oriental civilization and commerce, and is
conspicuous in every period from the Argonautic Expedition to the
achievement of independence in 1832 and the recent efforts for the
liberation of Crete. This outpost location before the Mediterranean
portals of the vast and arid plains of southwestern Asia, exposed to
every tide of migration or conquest sent out by those hungry lands, had
in it always an element of weakness. In comparison with the shadow of
Asia, which constantly overhung the Greek people and from 1401 to 1832
enveloped them, only secondary importance can be attributed to
advantageous local conditions as factors in Greek history.
It is a similar intercontinental location in the isthmian region between
the Mediterranean on the west and the ancient maritime routes of the
Red Sea and Persian Gulf on the east, which gave to Phoenicia the office
of middleman between the Orient and Occident,[240] and predestined its
conquest, now by the various Asiatic powers of Mesopotamia, now by the
Pharaohs of Egypt, now by European Greeks and Romans, now by a
succession of Asiatic peoples, till to-day we find it incorporated in
the Asiatic-European Empire of Turkey. Proximity to Africa has closely
allied Spain to the southern continent in flora, fauna, and ethnic
stock. The long-headed, brunette Mediterranean race occupies the Iberian
Peninsula and the Berber territory of northwest Africa.[241] This
community of race is also reflected in the political union of the two
districts for long periods, first under the Carthaginians, then the
Romans, who secured Hispania by a victory on African soil, and finally
by the Saracens. This same African note in Spanish history recurs to-day
in Spain's interest in Morocco and the influence in Moroccan affairs
yielded her by France and Germany at the Algeciras convention in 1905,
and in her ownership of Ceuta and five smaller _presidios_ on the
Moroccan coast. Compare Portugal's former ownership of Tangier.
In contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location,
anthropo-geography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term.
The innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternal
food-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over a
territory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meet
the frontiers of other tribes and nations. Their habitat or their
specific geographic location is thus defined by natural features of
mountain, desert and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable to
displace, or more often by both.
[Sidenote: Natural versus vicinal location.]
A people has, therefore, a twofold location, an immediate one, based
upon their actual territory, and a mediate or vicinal one, growing out
of its relations to the countries nearest them. The first is a question
of the land under their feet; the other, of the neighbors about them.
The first or natural location embodies the complex of local geographic
conditions which furnish the basis for their tribal or national
existence. This basis may be a peninsula, island, archipelago, an oasis,
an arid steppe, a mountain system, or a fertile lowland. The stronger
the vicinal location, the more dependent is the people upon the
neighboring states, but the more potent the influence which it can,
under certain circumstances, exert upon them. Witness Germany in
relation to Holland, France, Austria and Poland. The stronger the
natural location, on the other hand, the more independent is the people
and the more strongly marked is the national character. This is
exemplified in the people of mountain lands like Switzerland, Abyssinia
and Nepal; of peninsulas like Korea, Spain and Scandinavia; and of
islands like England and Japan. To-day we stand amazed at that strong
primordial brand of the Japanese character which nothing can blur or
erase.
[Sidenote: Naturally defined location.]
Clearly defined natural locations, in which barriers of mountains and
sea draw the boundaries and guarantee some degree of isolation, tend to
hold their people in a calm embrace, to guard them against outside
interference and infusion of foreign blood, and thus to make them
develop the national genius in such direction as the local geographic
conditions permit. In the unceasing movements which have made up most of
the historic and prehistoric life of the human race, in their migrations
and counter-migrations, their incursions, retreats, and expansions over
the face of the earth, vast unfenced areas, like the open lowlands of
Russia and the grasslands of Africa, present the picture of a great
thoroughfare swept by pressing throngs. Other regions, more secluded,
appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest.
Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and
held till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areas
of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and
political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas
of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of
national differentiation which goes on in such secluded locations.
A marked influence upon this development is generally ascribed to the
protection afforded by such segregated districts. But protection alone
is only a negative force in the life of a people; it leaves them free to
develop in their own way, but does not say what that way shall be. On
the other hand, the fact that such a district embraces a certain number
of geographic features, and encompasses them by obstructive boundaries,
is of immense historical importance; because this restriction leads to
the concentration of the national powers, to the more thorough
utilization of natural advantages, both racial and geographical, and
thereby to the growth of an historical individuality. Nothing robs the
historical process of so much of its greatness or weakens so much its
effects as its dispersion over a wide, boundless area. This was the
disintegrating force which sapped the strength of the French colonies in
America. The endless valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi and
the alluring fur trade tempted them to an expansion that was their
political and economic undoing. Russia's history illustrates the curse
of a distant horizon. On the other hand, out of a restricted
geographical base, with its power to concentrate and intensify the
national forces, grew Rome and Greece, England and Japan, ancient Peru
and the Thirteen Colonies of America.
[Sidenote: Vicinal location.]
If even the most detached and isolated of these natural locations be
examined, its people will, nevertheless, reveal a transitional
character, intermediate between those of its neighbors, because from
these it has borrowed both ethnic stock and culture, Great Britain is an
island, but its vicinal location groups it with the North Sea family of
people. Even in historic times it has derived ancient Belgian stock,
Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Scandinavian from the long semi-circle of
nearby continental lands, which have likewise contributed so much to the
civilization of the island. Similarly, Japan traces the sources of its
population to the north of Asia by way of the island of Sakhalin, to the
west through Korea, and to the Malay district of the south, whence the
Kuro Siwa has swept stragglers to the shores of Kiu-siu. Like England,
Japan also has drawn its civilization from its neighbors, and then,
under the isolating influence of its local environment, has
individualized both race and culture. Here we have the interplay of the
forces of natural and vicinal location.
A people situated between two other peoples form an ethnic and cultural
link between the two. The transitional type is as familiar in
anthropo-geography as in biology. The only exception is found in the
young intrusion of a migrating or conquering people, like that of the
Hungarians and Turks in southeastern Europe, and of the Berger Tuaregs
and Fulbes among the negroes of western Sudan; or of a colonizing
people, like that of the Russians in Mongolian Siberia and of Europeans
among the aborigines of South Africa. Even in these instances race
amalgamation tends to take place along the frontiers, as was the case in
Latin America and as occurs to-day in Alaska and northern Canada, where
the "squaw man" is no rarity. The assimilation of culture, at least in a
superficial sense, may be yet more rapid, especially where hard climatic
conditions force the interloper to imitate the life of the native. The
industrial and commercial Hollander, when transplanted to the dry
grasslands of South Africa, became pastoral like the native Kaffirs. The
French voyageur of Canada could scarcely be distinguished from the
Indian trapper; occupation, food, dress, and spouse were the same. Only
a lighter tint of skin distinguished the half-breed children of the
Frenchman. The settlers of the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths, at
least for a generation or two, showed little outward difference in mode
of life from that of the savage community among which they dwelt.[242]
[Sidenote: Vicinal groups of similar or diverse race and culture.]
The more alike the components of such a vicinal group of people, the
easier, freer and more effective will be the mediating function of the
central one. Germany has demonstrated this in her long history as
intermediary between the nations of southeastern and western Europe. The
people of Poland, occupying a portion of the Baltic slope of northern
Europe, fended by no natural barriers from their eastern and western
neighbors, long constituted a transition form between the two. Though
affiliated with Russia in point of language, the Poles are Occidental in
their religion; and their head-form resembles that of northern Germany
rather than that of Russia.[243] The country belongs to western Europe in
the density of its population (74 to the square kilometer or 190 to the
square mile), which is quadruple that of remaining European Russia, and
also in its industrial and social development. The partition of Poland
among the three neighboring powers was the final expression of its
intermediate location and character.[244] One part was joined politically
to the Slav-German western border of Russia, and another to the
German-Slav border of Germany, while the portion that fell to the
Austrian Empire simply extended the northern Slav area of that country
found in Bohemia, Moravia, and the Slovak border of Hungary. [Map page
223.]
If the intermediate people greatly differs in race or civilization from
both neighbors, it exercises and receives slight influence. The Mongols
of Central Asia, between China on one side and Persia and India on the
other, have been poor vehicles for the exchange of culture between these
two great districts. The Hungarians, located between the Roumanians and
Germans on the east and west, Slovaks and Croatians on the north and
south, have helped little to reconcile race differences in the great
empire of the Danube.
[Sidenote: Thalassic vicinal location.]
The unifying effect of vicinal location is greatly enhanced if the
neighboring people are grouped about an enclosed sea which affords an
easy highway for communication. The integrating force of such a basin
will often overcome the disintegrating force of race antagonisms. The
Roman Empire in the Mediterranean was able to evolve an effective
centralized government and to spread one culture over the neighboring
shores, despite great variety of nationality and language and every
degree of cultural development. A certain similarity of natural
conditions, climatic and otherwise, from the Iberian Peninsula to the
borders of the Syrian desert, also aided in the process of amalgamation.
Where similarity of race already forms a basis for congeniality, such
circumthalassic groups display the highest degree of interactive
influence. These contribute to a further blending of population and
unification of culture, by which the whole circle of the enclosing lands
tends to approach one standard of civilization. This was the history of
the Baltic coast from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, when
the German Hansa distributed the material products of Europe's highest
civilization from Russian Novgorod to Norway. The North Sea group,
first under the leadership of Holland, later under England's guidance,
became a single community of advancing culture, which was a later
reflection of the early community of race stretching from the Faroe and
Shetland Islands to the Rhine and the Elbe. This same process has been
going on for ages about the marginal basins of eastern Asia, the Yellow
and Japan Seas. Community of race and culture stamps China, Korea and
Japan. A general advance in civilization under the leadership of Japan,
the England of the East, now inaugurates the elevation of the whole
group.
[Sidenote: Complementary locations.]
An even closer connection exists between adjoining peoples who are
united by ties of blood and are further made economically dependent upon
one another, because of a contrast in the physical conditions and,
therefore, in the products of their respective territories. Numerous
coast and inland tribes, pastoral and agricultural tribes are united
because they are mutually necessary. In British Columbia and Alaska the
fishing Indians of the seaboard long held a definite commercial relation
to the hunting tribes of the interior, selling them the products and
wares of the coast, while monopolizing their market for the inland furs.
Such was the position of the Ugalentz tribe of Tlingits near the mouth
of the Copper River in relation to the up-stream Athapascans; of the
Kinik tribe at the head of Cook's Inlet in relation to the inland
Atnas,[245] of the Chilcats of Chilkoot Inlet to the mountain Tinnehs.
Similarly, the hunting folk of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa
attach themselves to influential tribesmen of the adjacent Bechuana
grasslands, in order to exchange the skins of the desert animals for
spears, knives, and tobacco.[246] Fertile agricultural lands adjoining
pastoral regions of deserts and steppes have in all times drawn to their
border markets the mounted plainsmen, bringing the products of their
herds to exchange for grain; and in all times the abundance of their
green fields has tempted their ill-fed neighbors to conquest, so that
the economic bond becomes a preliminary to a political bond and an
ethnic amalgamation growing out of this strong vicinal location. The
forest lands of Great Russia supplement the grain-bearing Black Lands
of Little Russia; the two are united through geographico-economic
conditions, which would not permit an independent existence to the
smaller, weaker section of the south, ever open to hostile invasion from
Asia.[247]
[Sidenote: Types of location.]
Leaving now the ethnic and economic ties which may strengthen the
cohesive power of such vicinal grouping, and considering only its purely
geographic aspects, we distinguish the following types:
I. Central location. Examples: The Magyars in the Danube Valley;
the Iroquois Indians on the Mohawk River and the Finger Lakes;
Russia from the 10th to the 18th century; Poland from 1000 to its
final partition in 1795; Bolivia, Switzerland, and Afghanistan.
II. Peripheral location: Ancient Phoenicia; Greek colonies in Asia
Minor and southern Italy; the Roman Empire at the accession of
Augustus; the Thirteen Colonies in 1750; island and peninsula
lands.
III. Scattered location: English and French settlements in America
prior to 1700; Indians in the United States and the Kaffirs in
South Africa; Portuguese holdings in the Orient, and French in
India.
IV. Location in a related series: Oasis states grouped along desert
routes; islands along great marine routes.
[Sidenote: Continuous and scattered location.]
All peoples in their geographical distribution tend to follow a social
and political law of gravitation, in accordance with which members of
the same tribe or race gather around a common center or occupy a
continuous stretch of territory, as compactly as their own economic
status, and the physical conditions of climate and soil will permit.
This is characteristic of all mature and historically significant
peoples who have risen to sedentary life, maintained their hold on a
given territory, and, with increase of population, have widened their
boundaries. The nucleus of such a people may be situated somewhere in
the interior of a continent, and with growing strength it may expand in
every direction; or it may originate on some advantageous inlet of the
sea and spread thence up and down the coast, till the people have
possessed themselves of a long-drawn hem of land and used this
peripheral location to intercept the trade between their back country
and the sea.
These are the two types of continuous location. In contrast to them, a
discontinuous or scattered location characterizes the sparse
distribution of primitive hunting and pastoral tribes; or the shattered
fragments of a conquered people, whose territory has been honeycombed by
the land appropriation of the victors; or a declining, moribund people,
who, owing to bad government, poor economic methods, and excessive
competition in the struggle for existence, have shrunk to mere patches.
As a favorable symptom, scattered location regularly marks the healthy
growth of an expanding people, who throw out here and there detached
centers of settlement far beyond the compact frontier, and fix these as
the goal for the advance of their boundary. It is also a familiar
feature of maritime commercial expansion, which is guided by no
territorial ambition but merely aims to secure widely distributed
trading stations at favorable coast points, in order to make the circle
of commerce as ample and resourceful as possible. But this latter form
of scattered location is not permanently sound. Back of it lies the
short-sighted policy of the middleman nation, which makes wholly
inadequate estimate of the value of land, and is content with an
ephemeral prosperity.
[Sidenote: Central versus peripheral location.]
A broad territorial base and security of possession are the guarantees
of national survival. The geographic conditions which favor one often
operate against the other. Peripheral location means a narrow base but a
protected frontier along the sea; central location means opportunity for
widening the territory, but it also means danger. A state embedded in
the heart of a continent has, if strong, every prospect of radial
expansion and the exercise of widespread influence; but if weak, its
very existence is imperilled, because it is exposed to encroachments on
every side. A central location minus the bulwark of natural boundaries
enabled the kingdom of Poland to be devoured piecemeal by its voracious
neighbors. The kingdom of Burgundy, always a state of fluctuating
boundaries and shifting allegiances, fell at last a victim to its
central location, and saw its name obliterated from the map. Hungary,
which, in the year 1000, occupied a restricted inland location on the
middle Danube, by the 14th century broke through the barriers of its
close-hugging neighbors, and stretched its boundaries from the Adriatic
to the Euxine; two hundred years later its territory contracted to a
fragment before the encroachments of the Turks, but afterwards recovered
in part its old dimensions. Germany has, in common with the little
Sudanese state of Wadai, an influential and dangerous position. A
central location in the Sudan has made Wadai accessible to the rich
caravan trade from Tripoli and Barca on the north, from the great market
town of Kano in Sokoto on the west, and from the Nile Valley and Red Sea
on the east. But the little state has had to fight for its life against
the aggressions of its western rival Bornu and its eastern neighbor
Darfur. And now more formidable enemies menace it in the French, who
have occupied the territory between it and Bornu, and the English, who
have already caught Darfur in the dragnet of the Egyptian Sudan.[248]
[Sidenote: Danger of central location.]
Germany, crowded in among three powerful neighbors like France, Russia,
and Austria, has had no choice about maintaining a strong standing army
and impregnable frontier defenses. The location of the Central European
states between the Baltic and the Balkans has exposed them to all the
limitations and dangers arising from a narrow circle of land neighbors.
Moreover, the diversified character of the area, its complex mountain
systems, and diverging river courses have acted as disintegrating forces
which have prevented the political concentration necessary to repel
interference from without. The Muscovite power, which had its beginning
in a modest central location about the sources of the Dwina, Dnieper and
Volga, was aided by the physical unity of its unobstructed plains, which
facilitated political combination. Hence, on every side it burst through
its encompassing neighbors and stretched its boundaries to the
untenanted frontier of the sea. Central location was the undoing of the
Transvaal Republic. Its efforts to expand to the Indian Ocean were
blocked by its powerful British rival at every point--at Delagoa Bay in
1875 by treaty with Portugal, at Santa Lucia Bay in 1884, and through
Swaziland in 1894. The Orange Free State was maimed in the same way
when, in 1868, she tried to stretch out an arm through Basutoland to the
sea.[249] Here even weak neighbors were effective to curtail the seaward
growth of these inland states, because they were made the tools of one
strong, rapacious neighbor. A central position teaches always the lesson
of vigilance and preparedness for hostilities, as the Boer equipment in
1899, the military organization of Germany, and the bristling fortresses
on the Swiss Alpine passes prove.
[Sidenote: Mutual relations between center and periphery.]
How intimate and necessary are the relations between central and
peripheral location is shown by the fact that all states strive to
combine the two. In countries like Norway, France, Spain, Japan, Korea
and Chile, peripheral location predominates, and therefore confers upon
them at once the security and commercial accessibility which result from
contact with the sea. Other countries, like Russia, Germany and
Austro-Hungary, chiefly central in location, have the strategic and even
the commercial value of their coasts reduced by the long, tortuous
course which connects them with the open ocean. Therefore, we find
Russia planning to make a great port at Ekaterina Harbor on the
northernmost point of her Lapland coast, where an out-runner from the
Gulf Stream ensures an ice-free port on the open sea.[250] An admirable
combination of central and peripheral location is seen in the United
States. Here the value of periphery is greatly enhanced by the
interoceanic location of the country; and the danger of entanglements
arising from a marked central location is reduced by the simplicity of
the political neighborhood. But our country has paid for this security
by an historical aloofness and poverty of influence. Civilized countries
which are wholly central in their location are very few, only nine in
all. Six of these are mountain or plateau states, like Switzerland and
Abyssinia, which have used the fortress character of their land to
resist conquest, and have preferred independence to the commercial
advantages to be gained only by affiliation with their peripheral
neighbors.
[Sidenote: Inland and coastward expansion.]
Central and peripheral location presuppose and supplement one another.
One people inhabits the interior of an island or continent whose rim is
occupied by another. The first suffers from exclusion from the sea and
therefore strives to get a strip of coast. The coast people feel the
drawback of their narrow foothold upon the land, want a broader base in
order to exploit fully the advantages of their maritime location, fear
the pressure of their hinterland when the great forces there imprisoned
shall begin to move; so they tend to expand inland to strengthen
themselves and weaken the neighbor in their rear. The English colonies
of America, prior to 1763, held a long cordon of coast, hemmed in
between the Appalachian Mountains and the sea. Despite threats of French
encroachments from the interior, they expanded from this narrow
peripheral base into the heart of the continent, and after the
Revolution reached the Mississippi River and the northern boundary of
the Spanish Floridas. They now held a central location in relation to
the long Spanish periphery of the Gulf of Mexico. True to the instincts
of that location, they began to throw the weight of their vast
hinterland against the weak coastal barrier. This gave way, either to
forcible appropriation of territory or diplomacy or war, till the United
States had incorporated in her own territory the peripheral lands of the
Gulf from Florida Strait to the Rio Grande. [See map page 156.]
[Sidenote: Russian expansion in Asia.]
In Asia this same process has been perennial and on a far greater scale.
The big arid core of that continent, containing many million square
miles, has been charged with an expansive force. From the appearance of
the Aryans in the Indus Valley and the Scythians on the borders of
Macedonia, it has sent out hordes to overwhelm the peripheral lands from
the Yellow Sea to the Black, and from the Indian Ocean to the White
Sea.[251] To-day Russia is making history there on the pattern set by
geographic conditions. From her most southerly province in Trans-Caspia,
conquered a short twenty-five years ago, she is heading towards the
Indian Ocean. The Anglo-Russian convention of August 31st, 1907,
yielding to Russia all northern Persia as her sphere of influence,
enables her to advance half way to the Persian Gulf, though British
statesmen regard it as a check upon her ambition, because England has
secured right to the littoral. But Russia by this great stride toward
her goal is working with causes, satisfied to let the effects follow at
their leisure. She has gained the best portion of Persia, comprising
the six largest cities and the most important lines of communication
radiating from the capital.[252] This country will make a solid base for
her further advance to the Persian Gulf; and, when developed by Russian
enterprise in railroad building and commerce, it will make a heavy
weight bearing down upon the coast. The Muscovite area which is pressing
upon England's Persian littoral reaches from Ispahan and Yezd to the
far-away shores of the Arctic Ocean.
[Sidenote: Periphery as goal of expansion.]
In the essentially complementary character of interior and periphery are
rooted all these coastward and landward movements of expansion. Where an
equilibrium seems to have been reached, the peoples who have accepted
either the one or the other one-sided location have generally for the
time being ceased to grow. Such a location has therefore a passive
character. But the surprising elasticity of many nations may start up an
unexpected activity which will upset this equilibrium. Where the central
location is that of small mountain states, which are handicapped by
limited resources and population, like Nepal and Afghanistan, or
overshadowed by far more powerful neighbors, like Switzerland, the
passive character is plain enough. In the case of larger states, like
Servia, Abyssinia, and Bolivia, which offer the material and
geographical base for larger populations than they now support, it is
often difficult to say whether progression or retrogression is to be
their fate. As a rule, however, the expulsion of a people from a
peripheral point of advantage and their confinement in the interior
gives the sign of national decay, as did Poland's loss of her Baltic
seaboard. Russia's loss of her Manchurian port and the resignation of
her ambition on the Chinese coasts is at least a serious check. On the
other hand, if an inland country enclosed by neighbors succeeds in
somewhere getting a maritime outlet, the sign is hopeful. The
century-old political slogan of Hungary, "To the sea, Magyars!" has
borne fruit in the Adriatic harbor of Fiume, which is to-day the pride
of the nation and in no small degree a basis for its hope of autonomy.
The history of Montenegro took on a new phase when from its mountain
seclusion it recently secured the short strip of seaboard which it had
won and lost so often. Such peripheral holdings are the lungs through
which states breathe.
[Sidenote: Reaction between center and periphery.]
History and the study of race distribution reveal a mass of facts which
represent the contrast and reaction between interior and periphery. The
marginal lands of Asia, from northern Japan, where climatic conditions
first make historical development possible, around the whole fringe of
islands, peninsulas and border lowlands to the Aegean coast of Asia
Minor, present a picture of culture and progress as compared with the
high, mountain-rimmed core of the continent, condemned by its remoteness
and inaccessibility to eternal retardation. Europe shows the same
contrast, though in less pronounced form. Its ragged periphery, all the
way from the Balkan Gibraltar at Constantinople to the far northern
projections of Scandinavia and Finland, shows the value of a seaward
outlook both in culture and climate. Germany beyond the Elbe and Austria
beyond the Danube begin to feel the shadow of the continental mass
behind them; and from their eastern borders on through Russia the
benumbing influence of a central location grows, till beyond the Volga
the climatic, economic, social and political conditions of Asia prevail.
Africa is all core: contour and relief have combined to reduce its
periphery to a narrow coastal hem, offering at best a few vantage points
for exploitation to the great maritime merchant peoples of the world.
Egypt, embedded in an endless stretch of desert like a jewel in its
matrix, was powerless to shake off the influence of its continental
environment. Its location was predominantly central; its culture bore
the stamp of isolation and finally of arrested development. Australia,
the classic ground of retardation, where only shades of savagery can be
distinguished, offered the natives of its northern coast some faint
stimuli in the visits of Malay seamen from the nearby Sunda Islands; but
its central tribes, shielded by geographic segregation from external
influences, have retained the most primitive customs and beliefs.[253]
Expanding Europe has long been wrestling with Africa, but it can not get
a grip, owing to the form of its antagonist; it finds no limb by which
the giant can be tripped and thrown. Asia presents a wide border of
marginal lands, some of them like Arabia and India being almost
continental in their proportions. Since Europe began her career of
maritime and colonial expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, she has seized upon these peripheral projections as if they
were the handles on a pilot wheel, and by them she has steered the
course of Asia ever since. These semi-detached outlyers of the continent
have enabled her to stretch a girdle of European influences around the
central core. Such influences, through the avenues of commerce, railway
concessions, missionary propaganda, or political dominion, have
permeated the accessible periphery and are slowly spreading thence into
the interior. China and Persia have felt these influences not less than
India and Tongking; Japan, which has most effectually preserved its
political autonomy, has profited by them most.
This historical contrast between center and periphery of continents
reappears in smaller land masses, such as peninsulas and islands. The
principle holds good regardless of size. The whole fringe of Arabia,
from Antioch to Aden and from Mocha to Mascat, has been the scene of
incoming and outgoing activities, has developed live bases of trade,
maritime growth, and culture, while the inert, somnolent interior has
drowsed away its long eventless existence. The rugged, inaccessible
heart of little Sardinia repeats the story of central Arabia in its
aloofness, its impregnability, backwardness, and in the purity of its
race. Its accessible coast, forming a convenient way-station on the
maritime crossroads of the western Mediterranean, has received a
succession of conquerors and an intermittent influx of every ethnic
strain known in the great basin.
[Sidenote: Periphery of colonization.]
The story of discovery and colonization, from the days of ancient Greek
enterprise in the Mediterranean to the recent German expansion along the
Gulf of Guinea, shows the appropriation first of the rims of islands and
continents, and later that of the interior. A difference of race and
culture between inland and peripheral inhabitants meets us almost
everywhere in retarded colonial lands. In the Philippines, the wild
people of Luzon, Mindoro and the Visayas are confined almost entirely
to the interior, while civilized or Christianized Malays occupy the
whole seaboard, except where the rugged Sierra Madre Mountains, fronting
the Pacific in Luzon, harbor a sparse population of primitive
Negritos.[254] For centuries Arabs held the coast of East Africa, where
their narrow zone of settlement bordered on that of native blacks, with
whom they traded. Even ancient Greece showed a wide difference in type
of character and culture between the inland and maritime states. The
Greek landsman was courageous and steadfast, but crude, illiterate,
unenterprising, showing sterility of imagination and intellect; while
his brother of the seaboard was active, daring, mercurial, imaginative,
open to all the influences of a refining civilization.[255] To-day the
distribution of the Greeks along the rim of the Balkan peninsula and
Asia Minor, in contrast to the Turks and Slavs of the interior, is
distinctly a peripheral phenomenon.[256]
The rapid inland advance from the coast of oversea colonists is part of
that restless activity which is fostered by contact with the sea and
supported by the command of abundant resources conferred by maritime
superiority. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, as later the English
colonization of America, seized the rim of the land, and promptly pushed
up the rivers in sea-going boats far into the interior. But periphery
may give to central region something more than conquerors and colonists.
From its active markets and cosmopolitan exchanges there steadily filter
into the interior culture and commodities, carried by peaceful merchant
and missionary, who, however, are often only the harbingers of the
conqueror. The accessibility of the periphery tends to raise it in
culture, wealth, density of population, and often in political
importance, far in advance of the center.
[Illustration: PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. Distribution of Civilized and Wild
Peoples]
[Sidenote: Dominant historical side.]
The maritime periphery of a country receives a variety of oversea
influences, blends and assimilates these to its own culture, Hellenizes,
Americanizes or Japanizes them, as the case may be, and then passes them
on into the interior. Here no one foreign influence prevails. On the
land boundaries the case is different. Each inland frontier has to
reckon with a different neighbor and its undiluted influence. A
predominant central location means a succession of such neighbors, on
all sides friction which may polish or rub sore. The distinction
between a many-sided and a one-sided historical development depends upon
the contact of a people with its neighbors. Consider the multiplicity of
influences which have flowed in upon Austria from all sides. But not all
such influences are similar in kind or in degree. The most powerful
neighbor will chiefly determine on which boundary of a country its
dominant historical processes are to work themselves out in a given
epoch. Therefore, it is of supreme importance to the character of a
peopled history on which side this most powerful neighbor is located.
Russia had for several centuries such a neighbor in the Tartar hordes
along its southeastern frontier, and therefore its history received an
Asiatic stamp; so, too, did that of Austria and Hungary in the long
resistance to Turkish invasion. All three states suffered in consequence
a retardation of development on their western sides. After the turmoil
on the Asiatic frontier had subsided, the great centers of European
culture and commerce in Italy, Germany and the Baltic lands began to
assert their powers of attraction. The young Roman Republic drew up its
forces to face the threatening power of Carthage in the south, and
thereby was forced into rapid maritime development; the Roman Empire
faced north to meet the inroads of the barbarians, and thereby was drawn
into inland expansion. All these instances show that a vital historical
turning-point is reached in the development of every country, when the
scene of its great historical happenings shifts from one side to
another.
[Sidenote: The Mediterranean side of Europe.]
In addition to the aggressive neighbor, there is often a more sustained
force that may draw the activities of a people toward one or another
boundary of their territory. This may be the abundance of land and
unexploited resources lying on a colonial frontier and attracting the
unemployed energies of the people, such as existed till recently in the
United States,[257] and such as is now transferring the most active
scenes of Russian history to far-away Siberia. But a stronger attraction
is that of a higher civilization and dominant economic interests. So
long as the known world was confined to the temperate regions of Europe,
Asia and Africa, together with the tropical districts of the Indian
Ocean, the necessities of trade between Orient and Occident and the
historical prestige of the lands bordering on the Mediterranean placed
in this basin the center of gravity of the cultural, commercial and
political life of Europe. The continent was dominated by its Asiatic
corner; its every country took on an historical significance
proportionate to its proximity and accessibility to this center. The
Papacy was a Mediterranean power. The Crusades were Mediterranean wars.
Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Venice, and Genoa held in turn the focal
positions in this Asiatic-European sea; they were on the sunny side of
the continent, while Portugal and England lay in shadow. Only that
portion of Britain facing France felt the cultural influences of the
southern lands. The estuaries of the Mersey and Clyde were marshy
solitudes, echoing to the cry of the bittern and the ripple of Celtic
fishing-boat.
[Sidenote: Change of historical front.]
After the year 1492 inaugurated the Atlantic period of history, the
western front of Europe superseded the Mediterranean side in the
historical leadership of the continent. The Breton coast of France waked
up, the southern seaboard dozed. The old centers in the Aegean and
Adriatic became drowsy corners. The busy traffic of the Mediterranean
was transferred to the open ocean, where, from Trafalger to Norway, the
western states of Europe held the choice location on the world's new
highway. Liverpool, Plymouth, Glasgow, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp,
Cherbourg, Lisbon and Cadiz were shifted from shadowy margin to
illuminated center, and became the foci of the new activity. Theirs was
a new continental location, maintaining relations of trade and
colonization with two hemispheres. Their neighbors were now found on the
Atlantic shores of the Americas and the peripheral lands of Asia. These
cities became the exponents of the intensity with which their respective
states exploited the natural advantages of this location.
The experience of Germany was typical of the change of front. From the
tenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, this heir of the old Roman
Empire was drawn toward Italy by every tie of culture, commerce, and
political ideal. This concentration of interest in its southern neighbor
made it ignore a fact so important as the maritime development of the
Hanse Towns, wherein lay the real promise of its future, the hope of its
commercial and colonial expansion. The shifting of its historical center
of gravity to the Atlantic seaboard therefore came late, further
retarded by lack of national unity and national purposes. But the
present wide circle of Germany's transoceanic commerce incident upon its
recent industrial development, the phenomenal increase of its merchant
marine, the growth of Hamburg and Bremen, the construction of ship
canals to that short North Sea coast, and the enormous utilization of
Dutch ports for German commerce, all point to the attraction of distant
economic interests, even when meagerly supported by colonial
possessions.
Location, therefore, while it is the most important single geographic
factor, is at the same time the one most subject to the vicissitudes
attending the anthropo-geographical evolution of the earth. Its value
changes with the transfer of the seats of the higher civilizations from
sub-tropical to temperate lands; from the margin of enclosed sea to the
hem of the open ocean; from small, naturally defined territories to
large, elastic areas; from mere periphery to a combination of periphery
and interior, commanding at once the freedom of the sea and the
resources of a wide hinterland.
[Sidenote: Contrasted historical sides.]
Even in Europe, however, where the Atlantic leaning of all the states is
so marked as to suggest a certain dependence, the strength of this
one-sided attraction is weakened by the complexity and closeness of the
vicinal grouping of the several nations. Germany's reliance upon the
neighboring grain fields of Russia and Hungary and the leather of the
southern steppes counteracts somewhat the far-off magnet of America's
wheat and cattle. England experienced a radical change of geographic
front with the sailing of the Cabots; but the enormous tonnage entering
and passing from the North Sea and Channel ports for her European
trade[258] show the attraction of the nearby Continent. Oftentimes we
find two sides of a country each playing simultaneously a different, yet
an equally important historical part, and thus distributing the
historical activities, while diversifying the historical development of
the people. The young United States were profoundly influenced as to
national ideals and their eventual territorial career by the free, eager
life and the untrammeled enterprise of its wilderness frontier beyond
the Alleghenies, while through the Atlantic seaboard it was kept in
steadying contact with England and the inherited ideals of the race.
Russia is subjected to different influences on its various fronts; it is
progressive, industrial, socialistic on its European side in Poland;
expansive and radical in a different way in colonial Siberia; aggressive
in the south, bending its energies toward political expansion along the
Mediterranean and Persian Gulf seaboards. In all such countries there is
a constant shifting and readjustment of extra-territorial influences.
[Sidenote: One-sided historical relations.]
It is otherwise in states of very simple vicinal grouping, coupled with
only a single country or at best two. Spain, from the time Hamilcar
Barca made it a colony of ancient Carthage, down to the decline of its
Saracen conquerors, was historically linked with Africa. Freeman calls
attention to "the general law by which, in almost all periods of
history, either the masters of Spain have borne rule in Africa or the
masters of Africa have borne rule in Spain." The history of such simply
located countries tends to have a correspondingly one-sided character.
Portugal's development has been under the exclusive influence of Spain,
except for the oversea stimuli brought to it by the Atlantic. England's
long southern face close to the French coast had for centuries the
effect of interweaving its history with that of its southern neighbor.
The conspicuous fact in the foreign history of Japan has been its
intimate connection with Korea above all the other states.[259] Egypt,
which projects as an alluvial peninsula into an ocean of desert from
southwestern Asia, has seen its history, from the time of the Shepherd
Kings to that of Napoleon, repeatedly linked with Palestine and Syria.
Every Asiatic or European conquest of these two countries has eventually
been extended to the valley of the Nile; and Egypt's one great period of
expansion saw this eastern coast of the Mediterranean as far as the
Euphrates united to the dominion of the Pharaohs. Here is a one-sided
geographical location in an exaggerated form, emphasized by the
physical and political barrenness of the adjacent regions of Africa and
the strategic importance of the isthmian district between the
Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.
[Sidenote: Scattered location due to geographic conditions.]
The forms of vicinal location thus far considered presuppose a compact
or continuous distribution, such as characterizes the more fertile and
populous areas of the earth. Desert regions, whether due to Arctic cold
or extreme aridity, distribute their sparse population in small groups
at a few favored points, and thus from physical causes give rise to the
anthropo-geographical phenomenon of scattered location. Districts of
intense cold, which sustain life only in contact with marine supplies of
food, necessitate an intermittent distribution along the seaboard, with
long, unoccupied stretches between. This is the location we are familiar
with among the Eskimo of Greenland and Alaska, among the Norse and Lapps
in the rugged Norwegian province of Finmarken, where over two-thirds of
the population live by fishing. In the interior districts of this
province about Karasjok and Kantokeino, the reindeer Lapps show a
corresponding scattered grouping here and there on the inhospitable
slopes of the mountains.[260] In that one-half of Switzerland lying above
the altitude where agriculture is possible, population is sprinkled at
wide intervals over the sterile surface of the highlands.
A somewhat similar scattered location is found in arid deserts, where
population is restricted to the oases dropped here and there at wide
intervals amid the waste of sand. But unlike those fragments of human
life on the frozen outskirts of the habitable world, the oasis states
usually constitute links in a chain of connection across the desert
between the fertile lands on either side, and therefore form part of a
series, in which the members maintain firm and necessary economic
relations. Every caravan route across the Sahara is dotted by a series
of larger or smaller tribal settlements. Tripoli, Sokna, Murzuk, Bilma
and Bornu form one such chain; Algiers, El Golea, Twat, the salt mines
of Taudeni, Arawan and Timbuctoo, another. Bagdad, Hayil, Boreyda and
Mecca trace the road of pilgrim and merchant starting from the Moslem
land of the Euphrates to the shrine of Mohammed.[261]
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF SETTLEMENT IN THE NORWEGIAN PROVINCE OF
FINMARKEN.]
[Sidenote: Island way station on maritime routes.]
Not unlike this serial grouping of oasis states along caravan routes
through the desert are the island way stations that rise out of the
waste of the sea and are connected by the great maritime routes of
trade. Such are the Portuguese Madeiras, Bissagos, and San Thome on the
line between Lisbon and Portuguese Loanda in West Africa; and their
other series of the Madeiras, Cape Verde, and Fernando, which
facilitated communication with Pernambuco when Brazil was a Portuguese
colony. The classic example of this serial grouping is found in the line
of islands, physical or political, which trace England's artery of
communication with India--Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Perim, Aden,
Sokotra, and Ceylon, besides her dominant position at Suez.
[Sidenote: Scattered location of primitive tribes.]
Quite different from this scattered distribution, due to physical
conditions, in an otherwise uninhabited waste is that wide dispersal of
a people in small detached groups which is the rule in lower stages of
culture, and which bespeaks the necessity of relatively large
territorial reserves for the uneconomic method of land utilization
characteristic of hunting, fishing, pastoral nomadism, and primitive
agriculture. A distribution which claims large areas, without, however,
maintaining exclusive possession or complete occupation, indicates among
advanced peoples an unfinished process,[262] especially unfinished
expansion, such as marked the early French and English colonies in
America and the recent Russian occupation of Siberia. Among primitive
peoples it is the normal condition, belongs to the stage of
civilization, not to any one land or any one race, though it has been
called the American form of distribution.
Not only are villages and encampments widely dispersed, but also the
tribal territories. The Tupis were found by the Portuguese explorers
along the coast of eastern Brazil and in the interior from the mouth of
the La Plata to the lower Amazon, while two distant tribes of the Tupis
were dropped down amid a prevailing Arawak population far away among the
foothills of the Andes in two separate localities on the western
Amazon.[263] [See map page 101.] The Athapascans, from their great
compact northern area between Hudson Bay, the Saskatchewan River, and
the Eskimo shores of the Arctic Ocean sent southward a detached offshoot
comprising the Navajos, Apaches and Lipans, who were found along the Rio
Grande from its source almost to its mouth; and several smaller
fragments westward who were scattered along the Pacific seaboard from
Puget Sound to northern California.[264] The Cherokees of the southern
Appalachians and the Tuscaroras of eastern North Carolina were detached
groups of the Iroquois, who had their chief seat about the lower Great
Lakes and the St. Lawrence. Virginia and North Carolina harbored also
several tribes of Sioux,[265] who were also represented in southern
Mississippi by the small Biloxi nation, though the chief Sioux area lay
between the Arkansas and Saskatchewan rivers. Similarly the Caddoes of
Louisiana and eastern Texas had one remote offshoot on the Platte River
and another, the Arikaras, on the upper Missouri near its great bend.
[See map page 54.] But the territory of the Caddoes, in turn, was
sprinkled with Choctaws, who belonged properly east of the Mississippi,
but who in 1803 were found scattered in fixed villages or wandering
groups near the Bayou Teche, on the Red River, the Washita, and the
Arkansas.[266] Their villages were frequently interspersed with others of
the Biloxi Sioux.
This fragmentary distribution appears in Africa among people in parallel
stages of civilization. Dr. Junker found it as a universal phenomenon in
Central Africa along the watershed between the White Nile and the
Welle-Congo. Here the territory of the dominant Zandeh harbored a motley
collection of shattered tribes, remnants of peoples, and intruding or
refugee colonies from neighboring districts.[267] The few weak bonds
between people and soil characterizing retarded races are insufficient
to secure permanent residence in the face of a diminished game supply,
as in the case of the Choctaws above cited, or of political disturbance
or oppression, or merely the desire for greater independence, as in that
of so many African tribes.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1800.]
[Sidenote: Ethnic islands of expansion.]
A scattered location results in all stages of civilization when an
expanding or intruding people begins to appropriate the territory of a
different race. Any long continued infiltration, whether peaceful or
aggressive, results in race islands or archipelagoes distributed through
a sea of aborigines. Semitic immigration from southern Arabia has in
this way striped and polka-dotted the surface of Hamitic Abyssinia.[268]
Groups of pure German stock are to-day scattered through the Baltic and
Polish provinces of Russia.[269] [See map page 223.] In ancient times the
advance guard of Teutonic migration crossed the Rhenish border of Gaul,
selected choice sites here and there, after the manner of Ariovistus,
and appeared as enclaves in the encompassing Gallic population. While
the Anahuac plateau of Mexico formed the center of the Aztec or Nahuatl
group of Indians, outlying colonies of this stock occurred among the
Maya people of the Tehuantepec region, and in Guatemala and
Nicaragua.[270]
Such detached fragments or rather spores of settlement characterize all
young geographical boundaries, where ethnic and political frontiers are
still in the making. The early French, English, Dutch, and Swedish
settlements in America took the form of archipelagoes in a surrounding
sea of Indian-owned forest land; and in 1800, beyond the frontier of
continuous settlement in the United States long slender peninsulas and
remote outlying islands of white occupation indicated American advance
at the cost of the native. Similarly the Portuguese, at the end of the
sixteenth century, seized and fortified detached points along the coast
of East Africa at Sofala, Malindi, Mombassa, Kilwa, Lamu, Zanzibar and
Barava, which served as way stations for Portuguese ships bound for
India, and were outposts of expansion from their Mocambique
territory.[271] The snow-muffled forests of northern Siberia have their
solitudes broken at wide intervals by Russian villages, located only
along the streams for fishing, gold-washing and trading with the native.
These lonely clearings are outposts of the broad band of Muscovite
settlement which stretches across southern Siberia from the Ural
Mountains to the Angara River.[272] [See map page 103.]
[Sidenote: Political islands of expansion.]
The most exaggerated example of scattered political location existing
to-day is found in the bizarre arrangement of European holdings on the
west coast of Africa between the Senegal and Congo rivers. Here in each
case a handful of governing whites is dropped down in the midst of a
dark-skinned population in several districts along the coast. The six
detached seaboard colonies of the French run back in the interior into a
common French-owned hinterland formed by the Sahara and western Sudan,
which since 1894 link the Guinea Coast colonies with French Algeria and
Tunis; but the various British holdings have no territorial cohesion at
any point, nor have the Spanish or Portuguese or German. The scattered
location of these different European possessions is for the most part
the expression of a young colonizing activity, developed in the past
fifty years, and signalized by the vigorous intrusion of the French and
Germans into the field. To the anthropo-geographer the map of western
Africa presents the picture of a political situation wholly immature,
even embryonic. The history of similar scattered outposts of political
expansion in America, India and South Africa teaches us to look for
extensive consolidation.
[Sidenote: Ethnic islands of survival.]
Race islands occur also when a land is so inundated by a tide of
invasion or continuous colonization that the original inhabitants
survive only as detached remnants, where protecting natural conditions,
such as forests, jungles, mountains or swamps, provide an asylum, or
where a sterile soil or rugged plateau has failed to attract the
cupidity of the conqueror. The dismembered race, especially one in a
lower status of civilization, can be recognized as such islands of
survival by their divided distribution in less favored localities, into
which they have fled, and in which seldom can they increase and
recombine to recover their lost heritage. In Central Africa, between the
watersheds of the Nile, Congo and Zambesi, there is scarcely a large
native state that does not shelter in its forests scattered groups of
dwarf hunter folk variously known as Watwa, Batwa, and Akka.[273] They
serve the agricultural tribes as auxiliaries in war, and trade with them
in meat and ivory, but also rob their banana groves and manioc patches.
The local dispersion of these pygmies in small isolated groups among
stronger peoples points to them as survivals of a once wide-spread
aboriginal race, another branch of which, as Schweinfurth suggested, is
probably found in the dwarfed Bushmen and Hottentots of South
Africa.[274] [See map page 105.]
Similar in distribution and in mode of life are the aborigines of the
Philippines, the dwarf Negritos, who are still found inhabiting the
forests in various localities. They are dispersed through eight
provinces of Luzon and in several other islands, generally in the
interior, whither they have been driven by the invading Malays.[275] [See
map page 147.] But the Negritos crop out again in the mountain interior
of Formosa and Borneo, in the eastern peninsula of Celebes, and in
various islands of the Malay Archipelago as far east as Ceram and
Flores, amid a prevailing Malay stock. Toward the west they come to the
surface in the central highland of Malacca, in the Nicobar and Andaman
Islands, and in several mountain and jungle districts of India. Here
again is the typical geographic distribution of a moribund aboriginal
race, whose shrivelled patches merely dot the surface of their once wide
territory.[276] The aboriginal Kolarian tribes of India are found under
the names of Bhils, Kols and Santals scattered about in the fastnesses
of the Central Indian jungles, the Vindhyan Range, and in the Rajputana
Desert, within the area covered by Indo-Aryan occupation.[277] [See map
page 103.]
[Sidenote: Discontinuous distribution.]
Such broad, intermittent dispersal is the anthropological prototype of
the "discontinuous distribution" of biologists. By this they mean that
certain types of plants and animals occur in widely separated regions,
without the presence of any living representatives in the intermediate
area. But they point to the rock records to show that the type once
occupied the whole territory, till extensive elimination occurred, owing
to changes in climatic or geologic conditions or to sharpened
competition in the struggle for existence, with the result that the type
survived only in detached localities offering a favorable
environment.[278] In animal and plant life, the ice invasion of the
Glacial Age explains most of these islands of survival; in human life,
the invasion of stronger peoples. The Finnish race, which in the ninth
century covered nearly a third of European Russia, has been shattered by
the blows of Slav expansion into numerous fragments which lie scattered
about within the old ethnic boundary from the Arctic Ocean to the
Don-Volga watershed.[279] The encroachments of the whites upon the red
men of America early resulted in their geographical dispersion. The map
showing the distribution of population in 1830 reveals large detached
areas of Indian occupancy embedded in the prevailing white
territory.[280] The rapid compression of the tribal lands and the
introduction of the reservation system resulted in the present
arrangement of yet smaller and more widely scattered groups. Such
islands of survival tend constantly to contract and diminish in number
with the growing progress, density, and land hunger of the surrounding
race. The Kaffir islands and the Hottentot "locations" in South Africa,
large as they now are, will repeat the history of the American Indian
lands, a history of gradual shrinkage and disappearance as territorial
entities.
[Sidenote: Contrasted location.]
Every land contains in close juxtaposition areas of sharply contrasted
cultural, economic and political development, due to the influence of
diverse natural locations emphasizing lines of ethnic cleavage made
perhaps by some great historical struggle. In mountainous countries the
conquered people withdraw to the less accessible heights and leave the
fertile valleys to the victorious intruders. The two races are thus held
apart, and the difference in their respective modes of life forced upon
them by contrasted geographic conditions tends still farther for a time
to accentuate their diversity. The contrasted location of the dislodged
Alpine race, surviving in all the mountains and highlands of western
Europe over against the Teutonic victors settled in the plains,[281] has
its parallel in many parts of Asia and Africa; it is almost always
coupled with a corresponding contrast in mode of life, which is at least
in part geographically determined. In Algeria, the Arab conquerors, who
form the larger part of the population, are found in the plains where
they live the life of nomads in their tents; the Berbers, who were the
original inhabitants, driven back into the fastnesses of the Atlas
ranges, form now an industrious, sedentary farmer class, living in stone
houses, raising stock, and tilling their fields as if they were market
gardeners.[282] In the Andean states of South America, the eastern slopes
of the Cordilleras, which are densely forested owing to their position
in the course of the trade-winds, harbor wild, nomadic tribes of hunting
and fishing Indians who differ in stock and culture from the Inca
Indians settled in the drier Andean basins.[283] [See map page 101.]
[Sidenote: Geographical polarity.]
Every geographical region of strongly marked character possesses a
certain polarity, by reason of which it attracts certain racial or
economic elements of population, and repels others. The predatory tribes
of the desert are constantly reinforced by refugee outlaws from the
settled agricultural communities along its borders.[284] The mountains
which offer a welcome asylum for the persecuted Waldenses have no lure
for the money-making Jew, who is therefore rarely found there. The
negroes of the United States are more and more congregating in the Gulf
States, making the "Black Belt" blacker. The fertile tidewater plains
of ante-bellum Virginia and Maryland had a rich, aristocratic white
population of slave-holding planters; the mountain backwoods of the
Appalachian ranges, whose conditions of soil and relief were ill adapted
for slave cultivation, had attracted a poorer democratic farmer class,
who tilled their small holdings by their own labor and consequently
entertained little sympathy for the social and economic system of the
tidewater country. This is the contrast between mountain and plain which
is as old as humanity. It presented problems to the legislation of
Solon, and caused West Virginia to split off from the mother State
during the Civil War.[285]
Each contrasted district has its own polarity; but with this it attracts
not one but many of the disruptive forces which are pent up in every
people or state. Certain conditions of climate, soil, and tillable area
in the Southern States of the Union made slave labor remunerative, while
opposite conditions in the North combined eventually to exclude it
thence. Slave labor in the South brought with it in turn a whole train
of social and economic consequences, notably the repulsion of foreign
white immigration and the development of shiftless or wasteful
industrial methods, which further sharpened the contrast between the two
sections. The same contrast occurs in Italian territory between Sicily
and Lombardy. Here location at the two extremities of the peninsula has
involved a striking difference in ethnic infusions in the two districts,
different historical careers owing to different vicinal grouping, and
dissimilar geographic conditions. These effects operating together and
attracting other minor elements of divergence, have conspired to
emphasize the already strong contrast between northern and southern
Italy.
[Sidenote: Geographical marks of growth.]
In geographical location can be read the signs of growth or decay. There
are racial and national areas whose form is indicative of development,
expansion, while others show the symptoms of decline. The growing people
seize all the geographic advantages within their reach, whether lying
inside their boundaries or beyond. In the latter case, they promptly
extend their frontiers to include the object of their desire, as the
young United States did in the case of the Mississippi River and the
Gulf coast. European peoples, like the Russians in Asia, all strive to
reach the sea; and when they have got there, they proceed to embrace as
big a strip of coast as possible. Therefore the whole colonization
movement of western and central Europe was in the earlier periods
restricted to coasts, although not to such an excessive degree as that
of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Their own maritime location had
instructed them as to the value of seaboards, and at the same time made
this form of expansion the simplest and easiest.
[Sidenote: Marks of inland expansion.]
On the other hand, that growing people which finds its coastward advance
blocked, and is therefore restricted to landward expansion, seizes upon
every natural feature that will aid its purpose. It utilizes every
valley highway and navigable river, as the Russians did in the case of
the Dnieper, Don, Volga, Kama and Northern Dwina in their radial
expansion from the Muscovite center at Moscow, and as later they used
the icy streams of Siberia in their progress toward the Pacific; or as
the Americans in their trans-continental advance used the Ohio,
Tennessee, the Great Lakes, and the Missouri. They reach out toward
every mountain pass leading to some choice ultramontane highway. Bulges
or projecting angles of their frontier indicate the path they plan to
follow, and always include or aim at some natural feature which will
facilitate their territorial growth. The acquisition of the province of
Ticino in 1512 gave the Swiss Confederation a foothold upon Lake
Maggiore, perhaps the most important waterway of northern Italy, and the
possession of the Val Leventina, which now carries the St. Gotthard
Railroad down to the plains of the Po. Every bulge of Russia's Asiatic
frontier, whether in the Trans-Caucasus toward the Mesopotamian basin
and the Persian Gulf, or up the Murghab and Tedjend rivers toward the
gates of Herat, is directed at some mountain pass and an outlet seaward
beyond.
If this process of growth bring a people to the borders of a desert,
there they halt perhaps for a time, but only, as it were, to take breath
for a stride across the sand to the nearest oasis. The ancient
Egyptians advanced by a chain of oases--Siwa, Angila, Sella and Sokna,
across the Libyan Desert to the Syrtis Minor. The Russians in the last
twenty-five years have spread across the arid wastes of Turkestan by way
of the fertile spots of Khiva, Bukhara and Merv to the irrigated slopes
of the Hindu Kush and Tian Shan Mountains. The French extended the
boundaries of Algiers southward into the desert to include the caravan
routes focusing at the great oases of Twat and Tidekelt, years before
their recent appropriation of the western Sahara.
[Sidenote: Marks of decline.]
As territorial expansion is the mark of growth, so the sign of decline
is the relinquishment of land that is valuable or necessary to a
people's well-being. The gradual retreat of the Tartars and in part also
of the Kirghis tribes from their best pasture lands along the Volga into
the desert or steppes indicates their decrease of power, just as the
withdrawal of the Indians from their hunting grounds in forest and
prairie was the beginning of their decay. Bolivia maimed herself for all
time when in 1884 she relinquished to Chile her one hundred and eighty
miles of coast between the Rio Lao and the twenty-fourth parallel. Her
repeated efforts later to recover at least one seaport on the Pacific
indicate her own estimate of the loss by which she was limited to an
inland location, and deprived of her maritime periphery.[286]
[Sidenote: Interpretation of scattered and marginal location.]
The habits of a people and the consequent demands which they make upon
their environment must be taken into account in judging whether or not a
restricted geographical location is indicative of a retrograde process.
The narrow marginal distribution of the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshean
Indians on the islands and coastal strips of northwestern America means
simply the selection of sites most congenial to those inveterate fisher
tribes. The fact that the English in the vicinity of the Newfoundland
Banks settled on a narrow rim of coast in order to exploit the
fisheries, while the French peasants penetrated into the interior
forests and farmlands of Canada, was no sign of territorial decline.
English and French were both on the forward march, each in their own
way. The scattered peripheral location of the Phoenician trading
stations and later of the Greek colonies on the shores of the
Mediterranean was the expression of the trading and maritime activity of
those two peoples. Centuries later a similar distribution of Arab posts
along the coast of East Africa, Madagascar and the western islands of
the Sunda Archipelago indicated the great commercial expansion of the
Mohammedan traders of Oman and Yemen. The lack came when this
distribution, normal as a preliminary form, bore no fruit in the
occupation of wide territorial bases. [See map page 251.]
[Sidenote: Prevalence of ethnic islands of decline.]
In general, however, any piecemeal or marginal location of a people
justifies the question as to whether it results from encroachment,
dismemberment, and consequently national or racial decline. This
inference as a rule strikes the truth. The abundance of such ethnic
islands and reefs--some scarcely distinguishable above the flood of the
surrounding population--is due to the fact that when the area of
distribution of any life form, whether racial or merely animal, is for
any cause reduced, it does not merely contract but breaks up into
detached fragments. These isolated groups often give the impression of
being emigrants from the original home who, in some earlier period of
expansion, had occupied this outlying territory. At the dawn of western
European history, Gaul was the largest and most compact area of Celtic
speech. For this reason it has been regarded as the land whence sprang
the Celts of Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, the Alps and northern
Italy. Freeman thinks that the Gauls of the Danube and Po valleys were
detachments which had been left behind in the great Celtic migration
toward the west;[287] but does not consider the possibility of a once far
more extensive Celtic area, which, as a matter of fact, once reached
eastward to the Weser River and the Sudetes Mountains and was later
dismembered.[288] The islands of Celtic speech which now mark the western
flank of Great Britain and Ireland are shrunken fragments of a Celtic
linguistic area which, as place-names indicate, once comprised the whole
country.[289] Similarly, all over Russia Finnic place-names testify to
the former occupation of the country by a people now submerged by the
immigrant Slavs, except where they emerge in ethnic islands in the far
north and about the elbow of the Volga.[290] [See map page 225.] Beyond
the compact area of the Melanesian race occupying New Guinea and the
islands eastward to the Fiji and Loyalty groups, are found scattered
patches of negroid folk far to the westward, relegated to the interiors
of islands and peninsulas. The dispersed and fragmentary distribution of
this negroid stock has suggested that it formed the older and primitive
race of a wide region extending from India to Fiji and possibly even
beyond.[291]
[Sidenote: Contrast between ethnic islands of growth and decline.]
Ethnic or political islands of decline can be distinguished from islands
of expansion by various marks. When survivals of an inferior people,
they are generally characterized by inaccessible or unfavorable
geographic location. When remnants of former large colonial possessions
of modern civilized nations, they are characterized by good or even
excellent location, but lack a big compact territory nearby to which
they stand in the relation of outpost. Such are the Portuguese fragments
on the west coast of India at Goa, Damaon, and Diu Island, and the
Portuguese half of the island of Timor with the islet of Kambing in the
East Indies. Such also are the remnants of the French empire in India,
founded by the genius of Francois Dupleix, which are located on the
seaboard at Chandarnagar, Carical, Pondicherry, Yanaon and Mahe. They
tell the geographer a far different story from that of the small
detached French holding of Kwang-chan Bay and Nao-chan Island on the
southern coast of China, which are outposts of the vigorous French
colony of Tongking.
The scattered islands of an intrusive people, bent upon conquest or
colonization, are distinguished by a choice of sites favorable to growth
and consolidation, and by the rapid extension of their boundaries until
that consolidation is achieved; while the people themselves give signs
of the rapid differentiation incident to adaptation to a new
environment.
NOTES TO CHAPTER V
[239] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I. pp.
98-101. New York. 1893.
[240] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp.
5-8, 12, 13, 19-28, 37. New York, 1897.
[241] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 272-273. New York, 1899.
[242] Monette, History of the Valley of the Mississippi, Vol. II, chap.
I. 1846.
[243] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 336, 334. Map. p. 53. New York,
1899.
[244] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 137. London, 1903.
[245] Eleventh Census, Report for Alaska, pp. 66, 67, 70. Washington,
1893.
[246] Livingstone, Travels in South Africa, p. 56. New York, 1858.
[247] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol I, pp. 36,
108. New York, 1893.
[248] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 127-130,
170. London, 1907.
[249] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, pp. 147, 150, 170-173.
New York, 1897.
[250] Alexander P. Engelhardt, A Russian Province of the North, pp. 135,
140-147, 165, 170. Translated from the Russian. London, 1899.
[251] For full and able discussion, see H. J. Mackinder, The
Geographical Pivot of History, in the _Geographical Journal_, April,
1904. London.
[252] The Anglo-Russian Agreement, with map, in _The Independent_,
October, 10, 1907.
[253] Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p.
xii. London, 1904.
[254] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, p. 526; Vol II, pp.
34-35, 50-52 and map. Washington, 1903.
[255] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. II, pp. 225-226. New York, 1859.
[256] W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 402-410, map. New York,
1899.
[257] Frederick J. Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American
History, in the _Annual Report of the American Historical Association_
for 1893, pp. 199-227. Washington, 1894.
[258] Hugh R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 150-152. New York,
1902.
[259] W.E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 75, 83. New York,
1903. Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, pp. 59, 69. New York, 1904.
[260] Norway, Official Publication, pp. 4, 83, 99, and map. Christiania,
1900.
[261] D.G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 221-224, map. London, 1902.
[262] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, p. 224. Leipzig, 1897.
[263] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 189-191. New York,
1902-1906.
[264] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, pp. 36-37. Washington,
1894.
[265] John Fiske, Old Virginia and her Neighbors, Vol. II, p. 299.
Boston, 1897.
[266] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, pp. 30-31. Washington,
1894.
[267] Dr. William Junker, Travels in Africa, 1882-1886, pp. 30, 31, 34,
37, 44, 50-54, 64, 94-95, 140, 145-148. London, 1892.
[268] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 193-195. London,
1896-1898.
[269] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp. 124-129.
Hew York, 1893.
[270] D.G. Brinton, The American Race, p. 266. Philadelphia, 1901.
[271] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, pp. 484, 485. New York,
1902-06.
[272] Nordenskiold, The Voyage of the Vega, p. 291. New York, 1882.
[273] H.M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, Vol. II, pp. 100-103,
218. In Darkest Africa, Vol. I, pp. 208, 261, 374-375; Vol. II, pp.
40-44.
[274] Georg Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa, Vol. II, chap. XI, 3rd
edition, London.
[275] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 411, 436, 532, 533.
Washington, 1903.
[276] Quatrefages, The Pygmies, pp. 24-51. New York, 1895.
[277] Sir T.H. Holdich, India, pp. 202-203, map. London, 1905.
[278] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XII. New York, 1895.
[279] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp.
66-70, maps facing pp. 64 and 80. New York, 1893.
[280] Eleventh Census of the United States, _Report on Population_, Part
I, map p. 23. Washington, 1894.
[281] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, Chapters 7, 8, 11. New York, 1899.
[282] H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 910. New York, 1902.
[283] _Ibid._, pp. 832, 836.
[284] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 175, 257. London,
1896-1898.
[285] E.C. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, pp.
280-287. Boston, 1903.
[286] C.E. Akers, History of South America, 1854-1894, pp. 501-502,
556-562. New York, 1904.
[287] E.A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, p. 14. London, 1882.
[288] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. VI, pp. 125-132, map. New
York, 1902-1906. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 274, 297, 308, 472-473.
New York, 1899.
[289] H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 183-191. London,
1904.
[290] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 26, 353, 361-365. Map. New York,
1899.
[291] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, 214-218. London, 1896-1898.
CHAPTER VI
GEOGRAPHICAL AREA
[Sidenote: The size of the earth.]
Every consideration of geographical area must take as its starting point
the 199,000,000 square miles (510,000,000 square kilometers) of the
earth's surface. Though some 8,000,000 square miles (21,000,000 square
kilometers) about the poles remain unexplored, and only the twenty-eight
per cent. of the total constituting the land area is the actual habitat
of man, still the earth as a whole is his planet. Its surface fixes the
limits of his possible dwelling place, the range of his voyages and
migrations, the distribution of animals and plants on which he must
depend. These conditions he has shared with all forms of life from the
amoeba to the civilized nation. The earth's superficial area is the
primal and immutable condition of earth-born, earth-bound man; it is the
common soil whence is sprung our common humanity. Nations belong to
countries and races to continents, but humanity belongs to the whole
world. Naught but the united forces of the whole earth could have
produced this single species of a single genus which we call Man.
[Sidenote: Relation of area to life.]
The relation of life to the earth's area is a fundamental question of
bio-geography. The amount of that area available for terrestrial life,
the proportion of land and water, the reduction or enlargement of the
available surface by the operation of great cosmic forces, all enter
into this problem, which changes from one geologic period to another.
The present limited plant life of the Arctic regions is the impoverished
successor of a vegetation abundant enough at the eighty-third parallel
to produce coal. That was in the Genial Period, when the northern
hemisphere with its broad land-masses presented a far larger area for
the support of life than to-day. Then the Glacial Period spread an
ice-sheet from the North Pole to approximately the fiftieth parallel,
forced back life to the lower latitudes, and confined the bio-sphere to
the smaller land-masses of the southern hemisphere and a girdle north of
the equator. The sum total of life on the globe was greatly reduced at
the height of glaciation, and since the retreat of the ice has probably
never regained the abundance of the Middle Tertiary; so that our period
is probably one of relative impoverishment and faulty adjustment both
of life to life and of life to physical environment.[292] The continent of
North America contained a small vital area during the Later Cretaceous
Period, when a notable encroachment of the sea submerged the Atlantic
coastal plain, large sections of the Pacific coast, the Great Plains,
Texas and the adjacent Gulf plain up the Mississippi Valley to the mouth
of the Ohio.[293]
The task of estimating the area supporting terrestrial life which the
earth presented at any given time is an important one, not only because
the amount of life depends upon this area, but because every increase of
available area tends to multiply conditions favorable to variation.
Darwin shows that largeness of area, more than anything else, affords
the best conditions for rapid and improved variation through natural
selection; because a large area supports a larger number of individuals
in whom chance variations, advantageous in the struggle for existence,
appear oftener than in a small group. This position is maintained also
by the most recent evolutionists.[294]
On purely geographical grounds, also, a large area stimulates
differentiation by presenting a greater diversity of natural conditions,
each of which tends to produce its appropriate species or variety.[295]
Consider the different environments found in a vast and varied continent
like Eurasia, which extends from the equator far beyond the Arctic
Circle, as compared with a small land-mass like Australia, relatively
monotonous in its geographic conditions; and observe how much farther
evolution has progressed in the one than in the other, in point of
animal forms, races and civilization. If we hold with Moritz Wagner and
others that isolation in naturally defined regions, alternating with
periods of migration, offers the necessary condition for the rapid
evolution of type forms, and thus go farther than Darwin, who regards
isolation merely as a fortunate contributory circumstance, we find that
for the evolution of mankind it is large areas like Eurasia which afford
the greatest number and variety of these naturally segregated habitats,
and at the same time the best opportunity for vast historical movements.
[Sidenote: The struggle for space.]
Evolution needs room but finds the earth's surface limited. Everywhere
old and new forms of life live side by side in deadly competition; but
the later improved variety multiplies and spreads at the cost of less
favored types. The struggle for existence means a struggle for space.[296]
This is true of man and the lower animals. A superior people, invading
the territory of its weaker savage neighbors, robs them of their land,
forces them back into corners too small for their support, and continues
to encroach even upon this meager possession, till the weaker finally
loses the last remnant of its domain, is literally crowded off the
earth, becomes extinct as the Tasmanians and so many Indian tribes have
done.[297] The superiority of such expansionists consists primarily in
their greater ability to appropriate, thoroughly utilize and populate a
territory. Hence this is the faculty by which they hasten the extinction
of the weaker; and since this superiority is peculiar to the higher
stages of civilization, the higher stages inevitably supplant the lower.
[Sidenote: Area an index of social and political development.]
The successive stages of social development--savage, pastoral nomadic,
agricultural, and industrial--represent increasing density of
population, increasing numerical strength of the social group, and
finally increasing geographical area, resulting in a vastly enlarged
social group or state. Increase in the population of a given land is
accompanied by a decrease in the share which each individual can claim
as his own. This progressive readjustment to a smaller proportion of
land brings in its train the evolution of all economic and social
processes, reacting again favorably on density of population and
resulting eventually in the greatly increased social group and enlarged
territory of the modern civilized state. Hence we may lay down the rule
that change in areal relations, both of the individual to his decreasing
quota of land, and of the state to its increasing quota of the earth's
surface is an important index of social and political evolution.
Therefore the rise and decline not only of peoples but of whole
civilizations have depended upon their relations to area. Therefore
problems of area, such as the expansion of a small territory, the
economic and political mastery of a large one, dominate all history.
[Sidenote: The Oikoumene.]
Humanity's area of distribution and historical movement call the
Oikoumene. It forms a girdle around the earth between the two polar
regions, and embraces the Tropics, the Temperate Zones, and a part of
the North Frigid, in all, five-sixths of the earth's surface. This area
of distribution is unusually large. Few other living species so nearly
permeate the whole vital area, and many of these have reached their wide
expansion only in the company of man. Only about 49,000,000 square miles
(125,000,000 square kilometers) of the Oikoumene is land and therefore
constitutes properly the habitat of man. But just as we cannot
understand a nation from the study of its own country alone, but must
take into consideration the wider area of its spreading activities, so
we cannot understand mankind without including in his world not only his
habitat but also the vastly larger sphere of his activities, which is
almost identical with the earth itself. The most progressive peoples
to-day find their scientific, economic, religious and political
interests embracing the earth.
[Sidenote: Unity of the human species in the relation to the earth.]
Mankind has in common with all other forms of life the tendency toward
expansion. The more adaptable and mobile an organism is, the wider the
distribution which it attains and the greater the rapidity with which it
displaces its weaker kin. In the most favored cases it embraces the
whole vital area of the earth, leaving no space free for the development
of diversity of forms, and itself showing everywhere only superficial
distinctions. Mankind has achieved such wide distribution. Before his
persistent intrusions and his mobility, the earth has no longer any
really segregated districts where a strongly divergent type of the man
animal might develop. Hence mankind shows only superficial distinctions
of hair, color, head-form and stature between its different groups. It
has got beyond the point of forming species, and is restricted to the
slighter variations of races. Even these are few in comparison with the
area of the earth's surface, and their list tends to decrease. The
Guanches and Tasmanians have vanished, the Australians are on the road
to extinction; and when they shall have disappeared, there will be one
variety the less in humanity. So the process of assimilation advances,
here by the simple elimination of weaker divergent types of men, there
by amalgamation and absorption into the stock of the stronger.
This unity of the human species has been achieved in spite of the fact
that, owing to the three-fold predominance of the water surface of the
globe, the land surface appears as detached fragments which rise as
islands from the surrounding ocean. Among these fragments we have every
gradation in size, from the continuous continental mass of
Eurasia-Africa with its 31,000,000 square miles, the Americas with
15,000,000, Australia with nearly 3,000,000, Madagascar with 230,000,
and New Zealand with 104,000, down to Guam with its 199 square miles,
Ascension with 58, Tristan da Cunha with 45, and the rocky Islet of
Helgoland with its scant 150 acres. All these down to the smallest
constitute separate vital districts.
[Sidenote: Isolation and differentiation.]
Small, naturally defined areas, whether their boundaries are drawn by
mountains, sea, or by both, always harbor small but markedly individual
peoples, as also peculiar or endemic animal forms, whose differentiation
varies with the degree of isolation. Such peoples can be found over and
over again in islands, peninsulas, confined mountain valleys, or
desert-rimmed oases. The cause lies in the barriers to expansion and to
accessions of population from without which confront such peoples on
every side. Broad, uniform continental areas, on the other hand, where
nature has erected no such obstacles are the habitats of wide-spread
peoples, monotonous in type. The long stretch of coastal lowlands
encircling the Arctic Ocean and running back into the wide plains of
North America and Eurasia show a remarkable uniformity of animal and
plant forms[298] and a striking similarity of race through the Lapps, the
Samoyedes of northern Russia, the various Mongolian tribes of Arctic
Siberia to Bering Strait, and the Eskimo, that curiously transitional
race, formerly classified as Mongolian and more recently as a divergent
Indian stock; for the Eskimos are similar to the Siberians in stature,
features, coloring, mode of life, in everything but head-form, though
even the cephalic indices approach on the opposite shores of Bering
Sea.[299] Where geography draws no dividing line, ethnology finds it
difficult to do so. Where the continental land-masses converge is found
similarity or even identity of race, easy gradations from one type to
another; where they diverge most widely in the peninsular extremities of
South America, South Africa and Australia, they show the greatest
dissimilarity in their native races, and a corresponding diversity in
their animal life.[300] Geographical proximity combined with accessibility
results in similarity of human and animal occupants, while a
corresponding dissimilarity is the attendant of remoteness or of
segregation. Therefore, despite the distribution of mankind over the
total habitable area of the earth, his penetration into its detached
regions and hidden corners has maintained such variations as still exist
in the human family.
[Sidenote: Monotonous race type of small area.]
If the distribution of the several races be examined in the light of
this conclusion, it becomes apparent that the races who have succeeded
in appropriating only limited portions of the earth's surface, though
each may be a marked variant of the human family, are characterized by
few inner diversities, either of physical features or culture. Their
subdivisions feel only in a slight degree the differentiating effects of
geographic remoteness, which in a small area operates with weakened
force; and they enjoy few of those diversities of environment which
stimulate variation. They form close and distinct ethnic unities also
because their scant numbers restrict the appearance of variations. The
habitat of the negro race in Africa south of the Sahara, relatively
small, limited in its zonal location almost wholly to the Tropics,
poorly diversified both in relief and contour, has produced only a
retarded and monotonous social development based upon tropical
agriculture or a low type of pastoral life. The still smaller, still
less varied habitat of the Australian race, again tropical or
sub-tropical in location, has produced over its whole extent only one
grade of civilization and that the lowest, one physical, mental and
moral type.[301]
[Sidenote: Wide race distribution and inner diversities.]
The Mongoloid area of distribution, on the other hand, is so large that
it necessarily includes a great range of climates and variety of
geographic conditions. [Maps pages 103 and 225.] Representatives of this
race, reflecting their diversified habitats, show many ethnic
differentiations. They reveal also every stage and phase of cultural
development from the industrialism of Japan, with its artistic and
literary concomitants, to the savage economy and retarded intellectual
life of the Chukches fisher tribes or the Giljak hunters of Sakhalin.
The white race, identified primarily with Europe, that choice and
diversified continent, comprised also a large area of southwestern Asia
and the northern third of Africa. It thus extended from the Arctic
Circle well within the Tropics. Its area included every variety of
geographic condition and originally every degree of cultural
development; but the rapid expansion in recent centuries of the most
advanced peoples of this race has made them the apostles of civilization
to the whole world. It has also given them, through the occupation of
Australia and the Americas, the widest distribution and the most varied
habitats. As agents of the modern historical movement, however, they are
subjected to all its assimilating effects, which tend to counteract the
diversities born of geographic segregation, and to raise all branches of
the white race to one superior cosmopolitan type. On the other hand, the
vast international division of labor and specialization of production,
geographically based and entailed by advancing economic development,
besides the differences of traditions and ideals reaching far back into
an historic past and rooted in the land, will serve to maintain many
subtle inner differences between even the most progressive nations.
[Sidenote: Area and language.]
Hence the wide area which Darwin found to be most favorable to
improved variation and rapid evolution in animals, operates to the
same end in human development, and its influence becomes a law of
anthropo-geography. It permeates the higher aspects of life. The wide,
varied area occupied by the Germanic tribes of Europe permitted the
evolution of the many dialects which finally made the richness of
modern German speech. English has gained in vocabulary and idiom with
every expansion of its area. New territories mean to a people new
pursuits, new relations, new wants; and all these become reflected in
their speech. Languages, like peoples, cease to grow with national
stagnation.[302] To such stagnation movement or expansion is the
surest antidote. America will in time make its contribution to the
English tongue. The rich crop of slang that springs up on the frontier
is not wholly to be deplored. The crudeness and vigor of cowboy speech
are marks of youth: they are also promises of growth. Language can not
live by dictionary alone. It tends to form new variants with every
change of habitat. The French of the Canadian _habitant_ has absorbed
Indian and English words, and adapted old terms to new uses;[303] but
it is otherwise a survival of seventeenth century French. Boer speech
in South Africa shows the same thing--absorption of new Kaffir and
English words, coupled with marks of retardation due to isolation.
Religion in the same way gains by wide dispersal. Christianity is one
thing in St. Petersburg, another among the Copts of Cairo, another in
Rome, another in London, and yet another in Boston. Buddhism takes on
a different color in Ceylon, Tibet, China and Japan. In religion as in
other phases of human development, differentiation must mean eventual
enrichment, a larger content of the religious idea, to which each
faith makes its contribution.
[Sidenote: Large area a guarantee of racial or national permanence.]
The larger the area occupied by a race or people, other geographic
conditions being equal, the surer the guarantee of their permanence, and
the less the chance of their repression or annihilation. A broad
geographic base means generally abundant command of the resources of
life and growth. Though for a growing people of wide possessions, like
the Russians, the significance of the land may not be obvious, it
becomes apparent enough in national decline and decay; for these even in
their incipiency betray themselves in a loss of territory. A people
which, voluntarily or otherwise, renounces its hold upon its land is on
the downward path. Nothing else could show so plainly the national
vitality of Japan as her tenacious purpose to get back Port Arthur taken
from her by the Shimonoseki treaty in 1895. A people may decrease in
numbers without serious consequences if it still retains its land; for
herein lies its resources by which it may again hope to grow. The
recurring loss of millions of lives in China from the wide-sweeping
floods of the Hoangho is a passing episode, forgotten as soon as the
mighty stream is re-embanked and the flooded plains reclaimed. The
Civil War in the United States involved a temporary diminution of
population and check to progress, but no lasting national weakness
because no loss of territory. But the expulsion of the American Indians
from their well-stocked hunting grounds in the Mississippi Valley and
Atlantic plain to more restricted and barren lands in the far West, and
the withdrawal of the Australian natives from the fertile coasts to the
desert interior have meant racial renunciation of the sources of life.
Hence a people who are conquered and dislodged from their territory, as
were the ancient Britons by the Saxons, the Slavs from the land between
the Elbe and the Niemen by the mediaeval Germans, and the Kaffirs in
South Africa by the Dutch and English, the Ainos from Hondo by the
Japanese, and the whole original Alpine race by the later coming Teutons
from the fertile valleys and plains into the more barren highlands of
western Europe, have little or no chance of regaining their own. When
conquest results not in dislodgement, but only in the subjection of an
undisturbed native population to a new ruling class, the vanquished
retain their hold, only slightly impaired, perhaps, upon their
strength-giving fields, recover themselves, and sooner or later conquer
their conquerors either by absorption or revolution. This was the
history of ancient Egypt with its Shepherd Kings, of England with its
Norman lords, of Mexico and Peru with their Spanish victors.
[Sidenote: Weakness of small states.]
A large area throws around all the life forms which it supports the
protection of its mere distances, which facilitate defense in
competition with other forms, render attack difficult, and afford room
for retreat under pursuit. On the other hand, the small area is easily
compassed by the invaders, and its inhabitants soon brought to bay.
Since there is a general correspondence between size of area and number
of inhabitants, where physical conditions and economic development are
similar, a small area involves a further handicap of numerical weakness
of population. Greece has always suffered from the small size of the
peninsula and the further political dismemberment entailed by its
geographic subdivisions. Despite superior civilization and national
heroism, it has fallen a victim to almost every invader. Belgium,
Holland, Switzerland exist as distinct nations only on sufferance.
Finland's history since 1900 shows that the day for the national
existence of small peoples is passing.[304] The fragmentary political
geography of the Danube basin gives the geographer the impression of an
artist's crayon studies of details, destined later to be incorporated in
a finished picture. Their small areas promise short-lived autonomy. The
recent absorption of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria indicates the
destiny of these Danubian states as fixed by the law of increasing
territorial aggregates.
What is true of states is true also of peoples. The extinction of the
retarded "provisional peoples" of the earth progresses more rapidly in
small groups than in large, and in small islands more quickly than in
continental areas. Of the twenty-one Indian stocks or families which
have died out in the United States, fifteen belonged to the small bands
once found in the Pacific coast states, and four more were similar
fragments found on the lower Mississippi and its bayous.[305] [See map
page 54.] The native Gaunches of Teneriffe Island disappeared long ago.
The last Tasmanian died in 1876. New Zealand, whose area is four times
that of Tasmania, and therefore gives some respite before the
encroachments of the whites, still harbors 47,835 Maoris, or little over
one-third the native population of the island in 1840.[306] But these
compete for the land with nearly one million English colonists, and in
the limited area of the islands they will eventually find no place of
retreat before the relentless white advance.
To the Australians, on the other hand, much inferior to the Maoris, the
larger area of their continent affords extensive deserts and steppes
into which the natives have withdrawn and whither the whites do not care
to follow. Hence mere area, robbed of every other favorable geographical
circumstance, has contributed to the survival of the 230,000 natives in
Australia. Similarly the Arawaks were early wiped out on the island of
Cuba and the Caribs on San Domingo and the smaller Antilles by the
truculent methods of the Spanish conquerors, while both stocks survive
on the continent of South America. Even the truculent methods of the
Spanish conquerors could make little impression upon the relatively
massive populations of Mexico and Peru, whose survival and latter-day
recovery of independence can be ascribed largely though not solely to
their ample territorial base. So the vast area of the United States and
Canada has afforded a hinterland of asylum to the retreating Indians,
whose moribund condition, especially in the United States, is betrayed
by their scattered distribution in small, unfavorable localities. On the
other hand, the vast extent of Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada, combined
with the adverse climatic conditions of the region, will guarantee the
northern Indians a longer survival. In Tierra del Fuego, the
encroachments of sheep-farmers and gold-miners from Patagonia twenty
years ago, by fencing off the land and killing off the wild guanaco,
threatened the existence of this animal and of the Onas natives of the
island. These, soon brought to bay in that natural enclosure, attacked
the farmers, whose reprisals between 1890 and 1900 reduced the number of
the Onas from 2,000 to 800 souls.[307]
[Sidenote: Contrast of large and small areas in bio-geography.]
The same law holds good in bio-geography; here, too, area gives strength
and a small territorial foothold means weakness. The native flora and
fauna of New Zealand seem involved in the same process of extinction as
the native race. The Maoris themselves have observed this fact and
applied the principle to their own obvious fate. They have seen hardy
imported English grasses offering deadly competition to the indigenous
vegetation; the Norway rat, entering by European ships, extirpating the
native variety; the European house fly, purposely imported and
distributed to destroy the noxious indigenous species.[308] The same
unequal combat between imported plants and animals, equipped by the
fierce Iliads of continental areas, and the local flora and fauna has
taken place on the little island of St. Helena, to the threatened
destruction of the native forms.[309]
The preponderant migration of animals from the northern to the southern
hemisphere is attributed by Darwin to the greater extent of land in the
north, whereby the northern types have existed in greater numbers and
have been so perfected through natural selection and competition, that
they have surpassed the southern forms in dominating power and therefore
have encroached successfully.[310] Also the races and nations of the
northern continents have seriously invaded the southern land-masses and
are still expanding. It is the largest continent, Eurasia, which has
been the chief center of dispersal.
[Sidenote: Political domination of large areas.]
The Temperate Zone of North America will always harbor a more powerful
people than the corresponding zone of South America, because the latter
continent begins to contract and tapers off to a point where the other
at the northern Tropic begins to spread out. Therefore North America
possesses more abundantly all the advantages accruing to a continent
from a location in the Temperate Zone. The wide basis of the North Slavs
in Russia and Siberia has given them a natural leadership in the whole
Slav family, just as the broad unbroken area of ever expanding Prussia
gave that state the ascendency in the German Empire over the
geographically partitioned and politically dismembered surface of
southern Germany. English domination of the United Kingdom is based not
only upon race, location, geographical features and resources, but also
on the larger size of England. So in the United States, abolitionist
statesmen adopted the most effective means of fighting slavery when they
limited its area by law, while permitting free states to go on
multiplying in the new territory of the vast Northwest.
In a peninsula political ascendency often falls to the broad base
connecting it with the continent, because this part alone has the area
to support a large population, and moreover commands a large hinterland,
whence it continually draws new and invigorating blood. The geographical
basis of the Aryan and later the Mongol supremacy in India was the wide
zone of lowlands between the Indus and the Brahmaputra. [See map page
103.] The only ancient Greek state ever able to dominate the Balkan
Peninsula was non-Hellenic Macedonia, after it had extended its
boundaries to the Euxine and the Adriatic. To-day a much larger area in
this same peninsular base harbors the widespread southern Slavs, who
numerically and economically far outweigh Albanians and Greeks, and who
could with ease achieve political domination over the small Turkish
minority, were it not for the European fear of a Slavic Bosporus, and
its union with Russia. The Cisalpine Gauls of the wide Po basin
repeatedly threatened the existence of the smaller but more civilized
Etruscan and Latin tribes. The latter, maturing their civilization under
the concentrating influences of a limited area, at last dominated the
larger Celtic district to the north. But in the nineteenth century this
district took the lead in the movement for a United Italy, and now
exercises the strong influence in Italian affairs which belongs to it by
reason of its superior area, location, and more vigorous race. [See map
of Italy's population, Chap. XVI.]
The broad territorial base of the Anglo-Saxon race, Slavs, Germans and
Chinese promises a long ethnic life, whereas the narrow foothold, of the
Danes, Dutch, Greeks, and the Turks in Europe carries with it the
persistent risk of conquest and absorption by a larger neighbor. Such a
fate repeatedly threatens these people, but has thus far been warded
off, now by the protection of an isolating environment, now by the
diplomatic intervention of some not disinterested power. The scattered
fragments of Osman stock in European Turkey, which constitute only about
ten per cent. of the total population, and are almost lost in the
surrounding mass of Slavs and Greeks, provide a poor guarantee for the
duration of the race and their empire on European soil. On the other
hand, the Osmani who are compactly spread over the whole interior of
Asia Minor have a better prospect of national survival.
[Sidenote: Area and literature.]
An important factor in the preservation of national consciousness and
the spread of national influence is always a national language and
literature. This principle is recognized by the government of the Czar
in its Russification of Finland,[311] Poland, and the German centers in
the Baltic provinces, when it substitutes Russian for the local language
in education, law courts and all public offices, and restricts the
publication of local literature. The survival of a language and its
literature is intimately connected with area and the population which
that area can support. The extinction of small, weak peoples has its
counterpart in the gradual elimination of dialects and languages having
restricted territorial sway, whose fate is foreshadowed by the unequal
competition of their literatures with those of numerically stronger
peoples. An author writing in a language like the Danish, intelligible
to only a small public, can expect only small returns for his labor in
either influence, fame, or fortune. The return may be so small that it
is prohibitive. Hence we find the Danish Hans Christian Andersen and the
Norwegian Ibsen writing in German, as do also many Scandinavian
scientists. Georg Brandes abandons his native Danish and seeks a larger
public by making English the language of his books. The incentive to
follow a literary career, especially if it includes making a living, is
relatively weak among a people of only two or three millions, but gains
enormously among large and cultivated peoples, like the seventy million
German-speaking folk of Europe, or the one hundred and thirty millions
of English speech scattered over the world. The common literature which
represents the response to this incentive forms a bond of union among
the various branches of these peoples, and may be eventually productive
of political results.
[Sidenote: Small geographic base of primitive societies.]
Growth has been the law of human societies since the birth of man's
gregarious instinct. It has manifested itself in the formation of ever
larger social groups, appropriating ever larger areas. It has registered
itself geographically in the protrusion of ethnic boundaries,
economically in more intensive utilization of the land, socially in
increasing density of population, and politically in the formation of
ever larger national territorial aggregates. The lowest stages of
culture reveal small tribes, growing very slowly or at times not at all,
disseminated over areas small in themselves but large for the number of
their inhabitants, hence sparsely populated. The size of these primitive
holdings depends upon the natural food supply yielded by the region.
They assume wide dimensions but support groups of only a few families on
the chill rocky coasts of Tierra del Fuego or the sterile plains of
central Australia; and they contract to smaller areas dotted with fairly
populous villages in the fertile districts of the middle Congo or
bordering the rich coast fishing grounds of southern Alaska and British
Columbia. But always land is abundant, and is drawn upon in widening
circles when the food supply becomes inadequate or precarious.
[Sidenote: Influence of small confined areas.]
Where nature presents barriers to far-ranging food-quests, man is forced
to advance from the natural to the artificial basis of subsistence; he
leaves the chase for the sedentary life of agriculture. Extensive
activities are replaced by intensive ones, wide dispersal of tribal
energies by concentration. The extensive forests and grassy plains of
the Americas supported abundant animal life and therefore afforded
conditions for the long survival of the hunting tribes; nature put no
pressure upon man to coerce him to progress, except in the small
mountain-walled valleys of Peru and Mexico, and in the restricted
districts of isthmian Central America. Here game was soon exhausted.
Agriculture became an increasing source of subsistence and was forced by
limited area out of its migratory or _essartage_ stage of development
into the sedentary. As fields become fixed in such enclosed areas, so do
the cultivators. Here first population becomes relatively dense, and
thereby necessitates more elaborate social and political organization in
order to prevent inner friction.
The geographically enclosed district has the further advantage that its
inhabitants soon come to know it out to its boundaries, understand its
possibilities, exploit to the utmost its resources, and because of the
closeness of their relationship to it and to each other come to develop
a conscious national spirit. The population, since it cannot easily
spread beyond the nature-set limits, increases in density. The members
of the compact society react constantly upon one another and exchange
the elements of civilization. Thus the small territory is characterized
by the early maturity of a highly individualized civilization, which
then, with inherent power of expansion, proceeds to overleap its narrow
borders and conquer for itself a wide sphere of influence. Hand in hand
with this process goes political concentration, which aids the
subsequent expansion. Therefore islands, oases, slender coastal strips
and mountain valleys repeatedly show us small peoples who, in their
seclusion, have developed a tribal or national consciousness akin in
its intensity to clan feeling. This national feeling is conspicuous in
the English, Japanese, Swiss and Dutch, as it was in the ancient
city-states of Greece. The accompanying civilization, once brought to
maturity in its narrow breeding place, spreads under favorable
geographic conditions over a much larger space, which the accumulated
race energy takes for its field of activity. The flower which thus early
blooms may soon fade and decay; nevertheless the geographically evolved
national consciousness persists and retains a certain power of renewal.
This has been demonstrated in the Italians and modern Greeks, in the
Danes and the Icelanders. In the Jews it has resisted exile from their
native land, complete political dissolution, and dispersal over the
habitable world. Long and often as Italy had to submit to foreign
dominion, the idea of the national unity of the peninsula was never
lost.
[Sidenote: The process of territorial growth.]
In vast unobstructed territories, on the other hand, the evil of wide,
sparse dispersal is checked only by natural increase of population and
the impinging of one growing people upon another, which restricts the
territory of either. When the boundary waste between the small scattered
tribal groups has been occupied, encroachment from the side of the
stronger follows; then comes war, incorporation of territory,
amalgamation of race and coalescence, or the extinction of the weaker.
The larger people, commanding its larger area, expands numerically and
territorially, and continues to throw out wider frontiers, till it meets
insurmountable natural obstacles or the confines of a people strong as
itself. After a pause, during which the existing area is outgrown and
population begins to press harder upon the limits of subsistence, the
weight of a nation is thrown against the barrier, be it physical or
political. In consequence, the old boundaries are enlarged, either by
successful encroachment upon a neighbor, or, in case of defeat, by
incorporation in the antagonist's territory. But even defeat brings
participation in a larger geographic base, wider cooeperation, a greater
sum total of common national interests, and especially the protection of
the larger social group. The Transvaal and the Orange Free State find
compensation for the loss of independence by their incorporation in the
British Empire, even if gradual absorption be the destiny of the Boer
stock.
[Sidenote: Area and growth.]
Of adjacent areas equally advanced in civilization and in density of
population but of unequal size, the larger must dominate because its
people have the resistance and aggressive force inherent in the larger
mass. This is the explanation of the absorption of so many colonies and
conquerors by the native races, when no great cultural abyss or race
antagonism separates the two. The long rule of the Scandinavians in the
Hebrides ended in their absorption by the local Gaelic stock, simply
because their settlements were too small and the number of their women
too few. The lowlands on the eastern coasts of Scotland accommodated
larger bands of Norse, who even to-day can be distinguished from the
neighboring Scotch of the Highlands; but on the rugged western coast,
where only small and widely separated deltas at the heads of the fiords
offered a narrow foothold to the invaders, their scattered ethnic
islands were soon inundated by the contiguous population.[312] The
Teutonic elements, both English and Norwegian, which for centuries
filtered into Ireland, have been swallowed up in the native Celtic
stock, except where religious antagonisms served to keep the two apart.
So the dominant Anglo-Saxon population of England was a solvent for the
Norman French, and the densely packed humanity of China for their Manchu
conquerors.
On the other hand, extensive areas, like early North America and
Australia, sparsely inhabited by small scattered groups who have only an
attenuated connection with their soil and therefore only a feeble hold
upon their land, cannot compete with small areas, if these have the
dense and evenly distributed population which ensures a firm tenure of
the land. Small, geographically confined areas foster this compact and
systematic occupation on the part of their inhabitants, since they put
barriers in the way of precipitate and disintegrating expansion; and
this characteristic compensates in some degree and for a period at least
for the weakness otherwise inherent in the narrow territorial base.
[Sidenote: Historical advance from small to large areas.]
Every race, people, and state has had the history of progress from a
small to a large area. All have been small in their youth. The bit of
land covered by Roma Quadrata has given language, customs, laws,
culture, and a faint strain of Latin blood to nations now occupying half
a million square miles of Europe. The Arab inundation, which flooded the
vast domain of the Caliphs, traced back to that spring of ethnic and
religious energy which welled up in the arid plain of Mecca and the
Arabian oases. The world-wide maritime expansion of the English-speaking
people had its starting point in the lowlands of the Elbe. The makers of
empire in northern China were cradled in the small highland valley of
the Wei River. The little principality of Moscow was the nucleus of the
Russian Empire.
Penetration into a people's remote past comes always upon some limited
spot which has nurtured the young nation, and reveals the fact that
territorial expansion is the incontestible feature of their history.
This advance from small to large characterizes their political area, the
scope of their trade relations, their spheres of activity, the size of
their known world, and finally the sway of their religions. Every
religion in its early stages of development bears the stamp of a narrow
origin, traceable to the circumscribed habitat of the primitive social
group, or back of that to the small circle of lands constituting the
known world whence it sprang. First it is tribal, and makes a
distinction between my God and thy God; but even when it has expanded to
embody a universal system, it still retains vestigial forms of its
narrow past. Jerusalem, Mecca and Rome remain the sacred goal of
pilgrimages, while the vaster import of a monotheistic faith and the
higher ethical teaching of the brotherhood of man have encircled the
world.
When religion, language and race have spread, in their wake comes the
growing state. Everywhere the political area tends gradually to embrace
the whole linguistic area of which it forms a part, and finally the yet
larger race area. Only the diplomacy of united Europe has availed to
prevent France from absorbing French-speaking Belgium, or Russia from
incorporating into her domain that vast Slav region extending from the
Drave and Danube almost to the Gulf of Corinth, now parcelled out among
seven different states, but bound to the Muscovite empire by ties of
related speech, by race and religion. The detachment of the various
Danubian principalities from the uncongenial dominion of the Turks,
though a dismemberment of a large political territory and a seeming
backward step, can be regarded only as a leisurely preliminary for a new
territorial alignment. History's movements are unhurried; the backward
step may prepare for the longer leap forward. It is impossible to resist
the conclusion that the vigorous, reorganized German Empire will one day
try to incorporate the Germanic areas found in Austria, Switzerland and
Holland.
[Sidenote: Gradations in area and in development.]
Throughout the life of any people, from its foetal period in some small
locality to its well rounded adult era marked by the occupation and
organization of a wide national territory, gradations in area mark
gradations of development. And this is true whether we consider the
compass of their commercial exchanges, the scope of their maritime
ventures, the extent of their linguistic area, the measure of their
territorial ambitions, or the range of their intellectual interests and
human sympathies. From land to ethics, the rule holds good. Peoples in
the lower stages of civilization have contracted spacial ideas, desire
and need at a given time only a limited territory, though they may
change that territory often; they think in small linear terms, have a
small horizon, a small circle of contact with others, a small range of
influence, only tribal sympathies; they have an exaggerated conception
of their own size and importance, because their basis of comparison is
fatally limited. With a mature, widespread people like the English or
French, all this is different; they have made the earth their own, so
far as possible.
Just because of this universal tendency towards the occupation of ever
larger areas and the formation of vaster political aggregates, in making
a sociological or political estimate of different peoples, we should
never lose sight of the fact that all racial and national
characteristics which operate towards the absorption of more land and
impel to political expansion are of fundamental value. A ship of state
manned by such a crew has its sails set to catch the winds of the world.
[Sidenote: Preliminaries to ethnic and political expansion.]
Territorial expansion is always preceded by an extension of the circle
of influence which a people exerts through its traders, its deep-sea
fishermen, its picturesque marauders and more respectable missionaries,
and earlier still by a widening of its mere geographical horizon through
fortuitous or systematic exploration. The Northmen visited the coasts of
Britain and France first as pirates, then as settlers. Norman and Breton
fishermen were drawing in their nets on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland
thirty years before Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence. Japanese fishing
boats preceded Japanese colonists to the coasts of Yezo. Trading fleets
were the forerunners of the Greek colonies along the Black Sea and
Mediterranean, and of Phoenician settlements in North Africa, Sicily and
Spain. It was in the wake of trapper and fur trader that English and
American pioneer advanced across our continent to the Pacific; just as
in French Canada Jesuit priest and voyageur opened the way for the
settler. Religious propaganda was yoked with greed of conquest in the
campaigns of Cortez and Pizarro. Modern statesmen pushing a policy of
expansion are alive to the diplomatic possibilities of missionaries
endangered or their property destroyed. They find a still better asset
to be realized on territorially in enterprising capitalists settled
among a weaker people, by whom their property is threatened or
overtaxed, or their trade interfered with. The British acquisition of
Hongkong in 1842 followed a war with China to prevent the exclusion of
the English opium trade from the Celestial Empire. The annexation of the
Transvaal resulted from the expansion of English capitalists to the Rand
mines, much as the advance of the United States flag to the Hawaiian
Islands followed American sugar planters thither. American capital in
the Caribbean states of South America has repeatedly tried to embroil
those countries with the United States government; and its increasing
presence in Cuba is undoubtedly ominous for the independence of the
island, because with capital go men and influence.
When the foreign investor is not a corporation but a government, the
expanding commercial influence looks still more surely to tangible
political results; because such national enterprises have at bottom a
political motive, however much overlaid by an economic exterior. When
the British government secured a working majority of the Suez Canal
stock, it sealed the fate of Egypt to become ultimately a province of
the British Empire. Russian railroads in Manchuria were the
well-selected tool for the Russification and final annexation of the
province. The weight of American national enterprise in the Panama Canal
Zone sufficed to split off from the Colombian federation a peripheral
state, whose detachment is obviously a preliminary for eventual
incorporation into United States domain. The efforts of the German
government to secure from the Sultan of Turkey railroad concessions
through Asia Minor for German capitalists has aroused jealousy in
financial and political circles in St. Petersburg, and prompted a demand
from the Russian Foreign Office upon Turkey for the privilege of
constructing railroads through eastern Asia Minor.[313]
[Sidenote: Significance of sphere of activity or influence.]
Beyond the home of a people lies its sphere of influence or activities,
which in the last analysis may be taken as a protest against the
narrowness of the domestic habitat. It represents the larger area which
the people wants and which in course of time it might advantageously
occupy or annex. It embodies the effort to embrace more varied and
generous natural conditions, whereby the struggle for subsistence may be
made less hard. Finally, it is an expression of the law that for peoples
and races the struggle for existence is at bottom a struggle for space.
Geography sees various forms of the historical movement as the struggle
for space in which humanity has forever been engaged. In this struggle
the stronger peoples have absorbed ever larger portions of the earth's
surface. Hence, through continual subjection to new conditions here or
there and to a greater sum total of various conditions, they gain in
power by improved variation, as well as numerically by the enlargement
of their geographic base. The Anglo-Saxon branch of the Teutonic stock
has, by its phenomenal increase, overspread sections of whole
continents, drawn from their varied soils nourishment for its finest
efflorescence, and thereby has far out-grown the Germanic branch by
which, at the start, it was overshadowed. The fact that the British
Empire comprises 28,615,000 square kilometers or exactly one-fifth of
the total land area of the earth, and that the Russian Empire contains
over one-seventh, are full of encouragement for Anglo-Saxon and Slav,
but contain a warning to the other peoples of the world.
[Sidenote: Nature of expansion in new and old countries.]
The large area which misleads a primitive folk into excessive dispersion
and the dissipation of their tribal powers, offers to an advanced
people, who in some circumscribed habitat have learned the value of
land, the freest conditions for their development. A wide, unobstructed
territory, occupied by a sparse population of wandering tribes capable
of little resistance to conquest or encroachment, affords the most
favorable conditions to an intruding superior race. Such conditions the
Chinese found in Mongolia and Manchuria, the Russians in Siberia, and
European colonists in the Americas, Australia and Africa. Almost
unlimited space and undeveloped resources met their land hunger and
their commercial ambition. Their numerical growth was rapid, both by the
natural increase reflecting an abundant food supply, and by accessions
from the home countries. Expansion advanced by strides. In contrast to
this care-free, easy development in a new land, growth in old countries
like Europe and the more civilized parts of Asia means a slow protrusion
of the frontier, made at the cost of blood; it means either the
absorption of the native people, because there are no unoccupied corners
into which they can be driven, or the imposition upon them of an
unwelcome rule exercised by alien officials. Witness the advance of the
Russians into Poland and Finland, of the Germans into Poland and
Alsace-Lorraine, of the Japanese into Korea, and of the English into
crowded India.
The rapid unfolding of the geographical horizon in a young land
communicates to an expanding people new springs of mobility, new motives
for movement out and beyond the old confines, new goals holding out new
and undreamt of benefits. Life becomes fresh, young, hopeful. Old checks
to natural increase of population are removed. Emigrant bands beat out
new trails radiating from the old home. They go on individual initiative
or state-directed enterprises; but no matter which, the manifold life
in the far-away periphery reacts upon the center to vivify and
rejuvenate it.
[Sidenote: Relation of ethnic to political expansion.]
The laws of the territorial growth of peoples and of states are in
general the same. The main differences between the two lies in the fact
that ethnic expansion, since it depends upon natural increase, is slow,
steady, and among civilized peoples is subject to slight fluctuations;
while the frontiers of a state, after a long period of permanence, can
suddenly be advanced by conquest far beyond the ethnic boundaries,
often, however, only to be as quickly lost again. Therefore the
important law may be laid down, that the more closely the territorial
growth of a state keeps pace with that of its people, and the more
nearly the political area coincides with the ethnic, the greater is the
strength and stability of the state. This is the explanation of the
vigor and permanence of the early English colonies in America. The slow
westward protrusion of their frontier of continuous settlement within
the boundaries of the Allegheny Mountains formed a marked contrast to
the wide sweep of French voyageur camp and lonely trading-station in the
Canadian forests, and even more to the handful of priests and soldiers
who for three centuries kept an unsteady hold upon the Spanish empire in
the Western Hemisphere. The political advance of the United States
across the continent from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi, thence to
the Rocky Mountains, and thence to the Pacific was always preceded by
bands of enterprising settlers, who planted themselves beyond the
frontier and beckoned to the flag to follow. The great empires of
antiquity were enlarged mechanically by conquest and annexation. They
were mosaics, not growths. The cohesive power of a common ethnic bond
was lacking; so was the modern substitute for this to be found in close
economic interdependence maintained by improved methods of
communication. Hence these empires soon broke up again along lines of
old geographic and ethnic cleavage. For Rome, the cementing power of the
Mediterranean and the fairly unified civilization which this enclosed
sea had been evolving since the dawn of Cretan and Phoenician trade,
compensated in part for the lack of common speech and national ideals
throughout the political domain. But the Empire proved in the end to be
merely a mosaic, easily broken.
[Sidenote: Relation of people and state to political boundary.]
The second point of difference between the expansion of peoples and of
states lies in their respective relation to the political frontier. This
confines the state like a stockade, fixing the territorial limits of its
administrative functions; but for the subjects of the state it is an
imaginary line, powerless to check the range of their activities, except
when a military or tariff war is going on. The state boundary, if it
coincides with a strong natural barrier, may for decades or even
centuries succeed in confining a growing people, if these, by
intelligent economy, increase the productivity of the soil whose area
they are unable to extend. Yet the time comes even for these when they
must break through the barriers and secure more land, either by foreign
conquest or colonization. The classic example of the confinement of a
people within its political boundaries is the long isolation of Japan
from 1624 to 1854. The pent-up forces there accumulated, in a population
which had doubled itself in the interval and which by hard schooling was
made receptive to every improved economic method, manifest themselves in
the insistent demand for more land which has permeated all the recent
policy of Japan. But the history of Japan is exceptional. The rule is
that the growing people slowly but continually overflow their political
boundary, which then advances to cover the successive flood plains of
the national inundation, or yet farther to anticipate the next rise.
This has been the history of Germany in its progress eastward across the
Elbe, the Oder, the Vistula and the Niemen. The dream of a greater
empire embraces all the German-speaking people from Switzerland, Tyrol
and Steiermark to those outlying groups in the Baltic provinces of
Russia and the related offshoot in Holland.[314] [See map page 223.]
Though political boundaries, especially where they coincide with natural
barriers, may restrict the territorial growth of a people, on the other
hand, political expansion is always a stimulus to racial expansion,
because it opens up more land and makes the conditions of life easier
for an increasing people, by relieving congestion in the older areas.
More than this, it materially aids while guiding and focusing the
out-going streams of population. Thus it keeps them concentrated for the
reinforcement of the nation in the form of colonies, and tends to reduce
the political evil of indiscriminate emigration, by which the streams
are dissipated and diverted to strengthen other nations. Witness the
active internal colonization practiced by Germany in her Polish
territory,[315] by Russia in Siberia, in an effort to make the ethnic
boundary hurry after and overtake the political frontier.
[Sidenote: Expansion of civilization.]
Just as the development of a people and state is marked by advance from
small to ever larger areas, so is that of a civilization. It may
originate in a small district; but more mobile than humanity itself, it
does not remain confined to one spot, but passes on from individual to
individual and from people to people. Greece served only as a garden in
which the flowers of Oriental and Egyptian civilization were temporarily
transplanted. As soon as they were modified and adapted to their new
conditions, their seed spread over all Europe. The narrow area of
ancient Greece, which caused the early dissemination of its people over
the Mediterranean basin, and thereby weakened the political force of the
country at home, was an important factor in the wide distribution of its
culture. Commerce, colonization and war are vehicles of civilization,
where favorable geographic conditions open the way for trade in the wake
of the victorious army. The imposition of Roman dominion meant
everywhere the gift of Roman civilization. The Crusaders brought back
from Syria more than their scars and their trophies. Every European
factory in China, every Hudson Bay Company post in the wilds of northern
Canada, every Arab settlement in savage Africa is surrounded by a sphere
of trade; and this in turn is enclosed in a wider sphere of influence
through which its civilization, though much diluted, has filtered. The
higher the civilization, the wider the area which it masters. The
manifold activities of a civilized people demand a large sphere of
influence, and include, furthermore, improved means of communication
which enable it to control such a sphere.
Even a relatively low civilization may spread over a vast area if
carried by a highly mobile people. Mohammedanism, which embodies a
cultural system as well as a religion, found its vehicles of dispersal
in the pastoral nomads occupying the arid land of northern Africa and
western Asia, and thus spread from the Senegal River to Chinese
Turkestan. It was carried by the maritime Arabs of Oman and Yemen to
Malacca and Sumatra, where it was communicated to the seafaring Malays.
These island folk, who approximate the most highly civilized peoples in
their nautical efficiency, distributed the meager elements of Mohammedan
civilization over the Malay Archipelago. [See map of the Religions of
the Eastern Hemisphere, in chapter XIV.]
[Sidenote: Cultural advantages of large political area.]
The larger the area which a civilized nation occupies, the more numerous
are its points of contact with other peoples, and the less likely is
there to be a premature crystallization of its civilization from
isolation. Extension of area on a large scale means eventually extension
of the seaboard and access to those multiform international relations
which the ocean highway confers. The world wide expansion of the British
Empire has given it at every outward step wider oceanic contact and
eventually a cosmopolitan civilization. The same thing is true of the
other great colonial empires of history, whether Portuguese, Spanish,
Dutch or French; and even of the great continental empires, like Russia
and the United States. The Russian advance across Siberia, like the
American advance across the Rockies, meant access to the Pacific, and a
modification of its civilization on those remote shores.
A large area means varied vicinal locations and hence differentiation of
civilization, at least along the frontier. How rapidly the vivifying
influences of this contact will penetrate into the bulk of the interior
depends upon size, location as scattered or compact, and general
geographic conditions like navigable rivers or mountains, which
facilitate or bar intercourse with that interior. The Russian Empire has
eleven different nations, speaking even more different languages, on its
western and southern frontiers. Its long line of Asiatic contact will
inevitably give to the European civilization transplanted hither in
Russian colonies a new and perhaps not unfruitful development. The
Siberian citizen of future centuries may compare favorably with his
brother in Moscow. Japan, even while impressing its civilization upon
the reluctant Koreans, will see itself modified by the contact and its
culture differentiated by the transplanting; but the content of Japanese
civilization will be increased by every new variant thus formed.
[Sidenote: Politico-economic advantages.]
The larger the area brought under one political control, the less the
handicap of internal friction and the greater its economic independence.
Vast territory has enabled the United States to maintain with advantage
a protective tariff, chiefly because the free trade within its own
borders was extensive. The natural law of the territorial growth of
states and peoples means an extension of the areas in which peace and
cooeperation are preserved, a relative reduction of frontiers and of the
military forces necessary to defend them,[316] diminution in the sum
total of conflicts, and a wider removal of the border battle fields. In
place of the continual warfare between petty tribes which prevailed in
North America four hundred years ago, we have to-day the peaceful
competition of the three great nations which have divided the continent
among them. The political unification of the Mediterranean basin under
the Roman Empire restricted wars to the remote land frontiers. The
foreign wars of Russia, China, and the United States in the past century
have been almost wholly confined to the outskirts of their big domains,
merely scratching the rim and leaving the great interior sound and
undisturbed. Russia's immense area is the military ally on which she can
most surely count. The long road to Moscow converted Napoleon's victory
into a defeat; and the resistless advance of the Japanese from Port
Arthur to the Sungari River led only to a peace robbed of the chief
fruits of victory. The numerous wars of the British Empire have been
limited to this or that corner, and have scarcely affected the
prosperity of the great remainder, so that their costs have been readily
borne and their wounds rapidly healed.
[Sidenote: Political area and the national horizon.]
The territorial expansion of peoples and states is attended by an
evolution of their spacial conceptions and ideals. Primitive peoples,
accustomed to dismemberment in small tribal groups, bear all the marks
of territorial contraction. Their geographical horizon is usually fixed
by the radius of a few days' march. Inter-tribal trade and intercourse
reach only rudimentary development, under the prevailing conditions of
mutual antagonism and isolation, and hence contribute little to the
expansion of the horizon. Knowing only their little world, such
primitive groups overestimate the size and importance of their own
territory, and are incapable of controlling an extensive area. This is
the testimony of all travellers who have observed native African states.
Though the race or stock distribution may be wide, like that of the
Athapascan and Algonquin Indians, and their war paths long, like the
campaigns of the Iroquois against the Cherokees of the Tennessee River,
yet the unit of tribal territory permanently occupied is never large.
[Sidenote: National estimates of area.]
Small naturally defined regions, which take the lead in historical
development because they counteract the primitive tendency towards
excessive dispersal, are in danger of teaching too well their lesson of
concentration. In course of time geographic enclosure begins to betray
its limitations. The extent of a people's territory influences their
estimate of area _per se_, determines how far land shall be made the
basis of their national purposes, fixes the territorial scale of their
conquests and their political expansion. This is a conspicuous
psychological effect of a narrow local environment. A people embedded
for centuries in a small district measure area with a short yardstick.
The ancient Greeks devised a philosophic basis for the advantages of the
small state, which is extolled in the writings of Plato and
Aristotle.[317] Aristotle wanted it small enough, "to be comprehended at
one glance of the statesman's eye." Plato's ideal democracy, by rigid
laws limiting the procreative period of women and men and providing for
the death of children born out of this period or out of wedlock,
restricted its free citizens to 5,040 heads of families,[318] all living
within reach of the agora, and all able to judge from personal knowledge
of a candidate's fitness for office. This condition was possible only
in dwarf commonwealths like the city-states of the Hellenic world. The
failure of the Greeks to build up a political structure on a territorial
scale commensurate with their cultural achievements and with the wide
sphere of their cultural influence can be ascribed chiefly to their
inability to discard the contracted territorial ideas engendered by
geographic and political dismemberment. The little Judean plateau, which
gave birth to a universal religion, clung with provincial bigotry to the
narrow tribal creed and repudiated the larger faith of Christ, which
found its appropriate field in Mediterranean Europe.
[Sidenote: Estimates of area in small maritime states.]
Maritime peoples of small geographic base have a characteristic method
of expansion which reflects their low valuation of area. Their limited
amount of arable soil necessitates reliance upon foreign sources of
supply, which are secured by commerce. Hence they found trading stations
or towns among alien peoples on distant coasts, selecting points like
capes or inshore islets which can be easily defended and which at the
same time command inland or maritime routes of trade. The prime
geographic consideration is location, natural and vicinal. The area of
the trading settlement is kept as small as possible to answer its
immediate purpose, because it can be more easily defended.[319] Such were
the colonies of the ancient Phoenicians and Greeks in the Mediterranean,
of the Medieval Arabs and the Portuguese on the east coast of Africa and
in India. This method reached its ultimate expression in point of small
area, seclusion, and local autonomy, perhaps, in the Hanse factories in
Norway and Russia.[320] But all these widespread nuclei of expansion
remained barren of permanent national result, because they were designed
for a commercial end, and ignored the larger national mission and surer
economic base found in acquisition of territory. Hence they were
short-lived, succumbing to attack or abandoned on the failure of local
resources, which were ruthlessly exploited.
[Sidenote: Limitations of small territorial conceptions.]
That precocious development characteristic of small naturally defined
areas shows its inherent weakness in the tendency to accept the enclosed
area as a nature-made standard of national territory. The earlier a
state fixes its frontier without allowance for growth, the earlier comes
the cessation of its development. Therefore the geographical nurseries
of civilization were infected with germs of decay. Such was the history
of Egypt, of Yemen, of Greece, Crete, and Phoenicia. These are the
regions which, as Carl Ritter says, have given the whole fruit of their
existence to the world for its future use, have conferred upon the world
the trust which they once held, afterward to recede, as it were, from
view.[321] They were great in the past, and now they belong to those
immortal dead whose greatness has been incorporated in the world's
life--"the choir invisible" of the nations.
[Sidenote: Evolution of territorial policies.]
The advance from a small, self-dependent community to interdependent
relations with other peoples, then to ethnic expansion or union of
groups to form a state or empire is a great turning point in any
history. Thereby the clan or tribe discards the old paralyzing seclusion
of the primitive society and the narrow habitat, and joins that march of
ethnic, political and cultural progress which has covered larger and
larger areas, and by increase of common purpose has cemented together
ever greater aggregates.
Nothing is more significant in the history of the English in America
than the rapid evolution of their spacial ideals, their abandonment of
the small territorial conception brought with them from the mother
country and embodied, for example, in that munificent land grant, fifty
by a hundred miles in extent, of the first Virginia charter in 1606, and
their progress to schemes of continental expansion. Every accession of
territory to the Thirteen Colonies and to the Republic gave an impulse
to growth. Expansion kept pace with opportunity. Only in small and
isolated New England did the contracted provincial point of view
persist. It manifested itself in a narrow policy of concentration and
curtailment, which acquiesced in the occlusion of the Mississippi River
to the Trans-Allegheny settlements by Spain in 1787, and which later
opposed the purchase of the Louisiana territory[322] and the acquisition
of the Philippines.
All peoples who have achieved wide expansion have developed in the
process vast territorial policies. This is true of the pastoral nomads
who in different epochs have inundated Europe, northern Africa and the
peripheral lands of Asia, and of the great colonial nations who in a few
decades have brought continents under their dominion. In nomadic hordes
it is based upon habitual mobility and the possession of herds, which
are at once incentive and means for extending the geographical horizon;
but it suffers from the evanescent character of nomadic political
organization, and the tendency toward dismemberment bred in all pastoral
life by dispersal over scattered grazing grounds. Hence the empires set
up by nomad conquerors like the Saracens and Tartars soon fall apart.
[Sidenote: Colonial expansion.]
Among highly civilized agricultural and industrial peoples, on the other
hand, a vast territorial policy is at once cause and effect of national
growth; it is at once an innate tendency and a conscious purpose
tenaciously followed. It makes use of trade and diplomacy, of scientific
invention and technical improvement, to achieve its aims. It becomes an
accepted mark of political vigor and an ideal even among peoples who
have failed to enlarge their narrow base. The model of Russian expansion
on the Pacific was quickly followed by awakened Japan, stirred out of
her insular complacence by the threat of Muscovite encroachment. Germany
and Italy, each strengthened and enlarged as to national outlook by
recent political unification, have elbowed their way into the crowded
colonial field. The French, though not expansionists as individuals,
have an excellent capacity for collective action when directed by
government. The officials whom Louis XIV sent to Canada in the
seventeenth century executed large schemes of empire reflecting the
dilation of French frontiers in Europe. These ideals of expansion seem
to have been communicated by the power of example, or the threat of
danger in them, to the English colonists in Virginia and Pennsylvania,
and later to Washington and Jefferson.
[Sidenote: The mind of colonials.]
The best type of colonial expansion is found among the English-speaking
people of America, Australia and South Africa. Their spacial ideas are
built on a big scale. Distances do not daunt them. The man who could
conceive a Cape-to-Cairo railroad, with all the schemes of territorial
aggrandizement therein implied, had a mind that took continents for its
units of measure; and he found a fitting monument in a province of
imperial proportions whereon was inscribed his name. Bryce tells us that
in South Africa the social circle of "the best people" includes
Pretoria, Johannesburg, Kimberley, Bloemfontein and Cape Town--a social
circle with a diameter of a thousand miles![323]
The spirit of our western frontier, so long as there was a frontier, was
the spirit of movement, of the conquest of space. It found its
expression in the history of the Wilderness Road and the Oregon Trail.
When the center of population in the United States still lingered on the
shore of Chesapeake Bay, and the frontier of continuous settlement had
not advanced beyond the present western boundary of Virginia and
Pennsylvania, the spacious mind of Thomas Jefferson foresaw the
Mississippi Valley as the inevitable and necessary possession of the
American people, and looked upon the trade of the far-off Columbia River
as a natural feeder of the Mississippi commerce.[324]
Emerson's statement that the vast size of the United States is reflected
in the big views of its people applies not only to political policy,
which in the Monroe Doctrine for the first time in history has embraced
a hemisphere; nor is it confined to the big scale of their economic
processes. Emerson had in mind rather their whole conception of national
mission and national life, especially their legislation,[325] for which
he anticipated larger and more Catholic aims than obtain in Europe,
hampered as it is by countless political and linguistic boundaries and
barred thereby from any far-reaching unity of purpose and action.
Canada, British South Africa, Australia and the United States, though
widely separated, have in common a certain wide outlook upon life, a
continental element in the national mind, bred in their people by their
generous territories. The American recognizes his kinship of mind with
these colonial Englishmen as something over and above mere kinship of
race. It consists in their deep-seated common democracy, the democracy
born in men who till fields and clear forests, not as plowmen and
wood-cutters, but as makers of nations. It consists in identical
interests and points of view in regard to identical problems growing out
of the occupation and development of new and almost boundless
territories. Race questions, paucity of labor, highways and railroads,
immigration, combinations of capital, excessive land holdings, and
illegal appropriation of land on a large scale, are problems that meet
them all. The monopolistic policy of the United States in regard to
American soil as embodied in the Monroe Doctrine, and the expectation
lurking in the mental background of every American that his country may
eventually embrace the northern continent, find their echo in
Australia's plans for wider empire in the Pacific. The Commonwealth of
Australia has succeeded in getting into its own hands the administration
of British New Guinea (90,500 square miles.) It has also secured from
the imperial government the unusual privilege of settling the relations
between itself and the islands of the Pacific, because it regards the
Pacific question as the one question of foreign policy in which its
interests are profoundly involved. In the same way the British in South
Africa, sparsely scattered though they are, feel an imperative need of
further expansion, if their far-reaching schemes of commerce and empire
are to be realized.
[Sidenote: Colonials as road builders.]
The effort to annihilate space by improved means of communication has
absorbed the best intellects and energies of expanding peoples. The
ancient Roman, like the Incas of Peru, built highways over every part of
the empire, undaunted by natural obstacles like the Alps and Andes.
Modern expansionists are railroad builders. Witness the long list of
strategic lines, constructed or subsidized by various governments during
the past half century--the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, Canadian
Pacific, Trans-Siberian, Cairo-Khartoum, Cape Town-Zambesi, and now the
proposed Trans-Saharan road, designed to unite the Mediterranean and
Guinea colonies of French Africa. The equipment of the American roads,
with their heavy rails, giant locomotives, and enormous freight cars,
reveals adaptation to a commerce that covers long distances between
strongly differentiated areas of production, and that reflects the vast
enterprises of this continental country. The same story comes out in the
ocean vessels which serve the trade of the Great Lakes, and in the acres
of coal barges in a single fleet which are towed down the Ohio and
Mississippi by one mammoth steel tug.
[Sidenote: Practical bent of colonials.]
The abundant natural resources awaiting development in such big new
countries give to the mind of the people an essentially practical bent.
The rewards of labor are so great that the stimulus to effort is
irresistible. Economic questions take precedence of all others, divide
political parties, and consume a large portion of national legislation;
while purely political questions sink into the background. Civilization
takes on a material stamp, becomes that "dollar civilization" which is
the scorn of the placid, paralyzed Oriental or the old world European.
The genius of colonials is essentially practical. Impatience of
obstacles, short cuts aiming at quick returns, wastefulness of land, of
forests, of fuel, of everything but labor, have long characterized
American activities. The problem of an inadequate labor supply attended
the sudden accession of territory opened for European occupation by the
discovery of America, and caused a sudden recrudescence of slavery,
which as an industrial system had long been outgrown by Europe. It has
also given immense stimulus to invention, and to the formation of labor
unions, which in the newest colonial fields, like Australia and New
Zealand, have dominated the government and given a Utopian stamp to
legislation.
Yet underlying and permeating this materialism is a youthful idealism.
Transplanted to conditions of greater opportunity, the race becomes
rejuvenated, abandons outgrown customs and outworn standards,
experiences an enlargement of vision and of hope, gathers courage and
energy equal to its task, manages somehow to hitch its wagon to a star.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VI
[292] Chamberlain and Salisbury, Geology, Vol. III, pp. 483-485. New
York, 1906.
[293] _Ibid._, p. 137 and map p. 138.
[294] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. I, chap. IV, pp. 124-132; Vol. II,
chap; XII, p. 134. New York, 1895. H. W. Conn, The Method of Evolution,
p. 54. London and New York, 1900.
[295] _Ibid._, pp. 194-197, 226-227, 239-242, 342-350.
[296] Ratzel, _Der Lebensraum, eine bio-geographische Studie_, p. 51.
Tubingen, 1901.
[297] D. G, Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 271, 293-295. Philadelphia,
1901.
[298] A. Heilprin, Geographical Distribution of Animals, pp. 57-61.
London, 1894.
[299] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 39, maps pp. 43, 78. New York,
1899.
[300] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XII, pp. 130-131. New
York, 1895.
[301] Richard Semon, In the Australian Bush, p. 211. London, 1899.
[302] J.H.W. Stuckenburg, Sociology, Vol. I, p. 324. New York and
London, 1903.
[303] E. G. Semple, The Influences of Geographic Environment on the
Lower St. Lawrence. Bulletin American Geographical Society, Vol. XXXVI,
pp. 464-465. 1904.
[304] B. Limedorfer, Finland's Plight, _Forum_, Vol. XXXII, pp. 85-93.
[305] Eleventh Census, Report on the Indians, p. 35. Washington, 1894.
[306] A.B. Wallace, Australasia, Vol. I, p. 454. London, 1893.
[307] W.S. Barclay, Life in Terra del Fuego, _The Nineteenth Century_,
Vol. 55, p. 97. January, 1904.
[308] A.E. Wallace, Australasia, Vol. I, pp. 454-455. London, 1893.
[309] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XIII, p. 178. New York,
1895.
[310] _Ibid._, Vol. II, chap. XII, p. 167-168.
[311] Nesbit Bain, Finland and the Tsar, _Fortnightly Review_, Vol. 71,
p. 735. E. Limedorfer, Finland's Plight, _Forum_, Vol. 32, pp. 85-93.
[312] Archibald Geikie, The Scenery of Scotland, pp. 398-399. London,
1887.
[313] Railways in Asia Minor, _Littell's Living Age_, Vol. 225, p. 196.
[314] J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany, pp. 38-66. London, 1907.
[315] The Polish Danger in Prussia, _Westminster Review_, Vol. 155, p.
375.
[316] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, pp. 223-224. Leipzig,
1897.
[317] Plato, Critias, 112. Aristotle, Politics, Book II, chap. VII; Book
IV, chap. IV; Book VII, chap. IV.
[318] Plato, _De Legibus_, Book V, chaps. 8, 9, 10, 11.
[319] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Handels und Gewerbefleisses_,
pp. 180-187. Stuttgart, 1899.
[320] Blanqui, History of Political Economy, pp. 150-152. New York,
1880.
[321] Carl Ritter, Comparative Geography, p. 63. New York, 1865.
[322] E. C. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, pp.
42-43, 109, 110. Boston, 1903.
[323] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, pp. 405-6. New York,
1897.
[324] P. L. Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. VIII. Letter to
John Bacon, April 30, 1803; and Confidential Message to Congress on the
Expedition to the Pacific, January 18, 1803.
[325] Emerson, The Young American, in Nature Addresses and Lectures, pp.
369-371. Centenary Edition, Boston.
CHAPTER VII
GEOGRAPHICAL BOUNDARIES
[Sidenote: The boundary zone in nature.]
Nature abhors fixed boundary lines and sudden transitions; all her
forces combine against them. Everywhere she keeps her borders melting,
wavering, advancing, retreating. If by some cataclysm sharp lines of
demarcation are drawn, she straightway begins to blur them by creating
intermediate forms, and thus establishes the boundary zone which
characterizes the inanimate and animate world. A stratum of limestone or
sandstone, when brought into contact with a glowing mass of igneous
rock, undergoes various changes due to the penetrating heat of the
volcanic outflow, so that its surface is metamorphosed as far as that
heat reaches. The granite cliff slowly deposits at its base a rock-waste
slope to soften the sudden transition from its perpendicular surface to
the level plain at its feet. The line where a land-born river meets the
sea tends to become a sandbar or a delta, created by the river-borne
silt and the wash of the waves, a form intermediate between land and
sea, bearing the stamp of each, fluid in its outlines, ever growing by
the persistent accumulation of mud, though ever subject to inundation
and destruction by the waters which made it. The alluvial coastal hems
that edge all shallow seas are such border zones, reflecting in their
flat, low surfaces the dead level of the ocean, in their composition the
solid substance of the land; but in the miniature waves imprinted on the
sands and the billows of heaped-up boulders, the master workman of the
deep leaves his mark. [See map page 243.]
Under examination, even our familiar term coastline proves to be only an
abstraction with no corresponding reality in nature. Everywhere, whether
on margin of lake or gulf, the actual phenomenon is a coast zone,
alternately covered and abandoned by the waters, varying in width from a
few inches to a few miles, according to the slope of the land, the range
of the tide and the direction of the wind. It has one breadth at the
minimum or neap tide, but increases often two or three fold at spring
tide, when the distance between ebb and flood is at its maximum. At the
mouth of Cook's Inlet on the southern Alaskan coast, where the range of
tides is only eight feet, the zone is comparatively narrow, but widens
rapidly towards the head of the inlet, where the tide rises twenty-three
feet above the ebb line, and even to sixty-five feet under the influence
of a heavy southwest storm. On flat coasts we are familiar with the wide
frontier of salt marshes, that witness the border warfare of land and
sea, alternate invasion and retreat. In low-shored estuaries like those
of northern Brittany and northwestern Alaska, this amphibian girdle of
the land expands to a width of four miles, while on precipitous coasts
of tideless sea basins it contracts to a few inches. Hence this boundary
zone changes with every impulse of the mobile sea and with every varying
configuration of the shore. Movement and external conditions are the
factors in its creation. They make something that is only partially akin
to the two contiguous forms. Here on their outer margins land and ocean
compromise their physical differences, and this by a law which runs
through animate and inanimate nature. Wherever one body moves in
constant contact with another, it is subjected to modifying influences
which differentiate its periphery from its interior, lend it a
transitional character, make of it a penumbra between light and shadow.
The modifying process goes on persistently with varying force, and
creates a shifting, changing border zone which, from its nature, cannot
be delimited. For convenience' sake, we adopt the abstraction of a
boundary line; but the reality behind this abstraction is the important
thing in anthropo-geography.
[Sidenote: Gradations in the boundary zone.]
All so-called boundary lines with which geography has to do have this
same character,--coastlines, river margins, ice or snow lines, limits of
vegetation, boundaries of races or religions or civilizations, frontiers
of states. They are all the same, stamped by the eternal flux of nature.
Beyond the solid ice-pack which surrounds the North Pole is a wide
girdle of almost unbroken drift ice, and beyond this is an irregular
concentric zone of scattered icebergs which varies in breadth with
season, wind and local current; a persistent decrease in continuity from
solid pack to open sea. The line of perpetual snow on high mountains
advances or retreats from season to season, from year to year; it drops
low on chilly northern slopes and recedes to higher altitudes on a
southern exposure; sends down long icy tongues in dark gorges, and
leaves outlying patches of old snow in shaded spots or beneath a
covering of rock waste far below the margin of the snow fields.
In the struggle for existence in the vegetable world, the tree line
pushes as far up the mountain as conditions of climate and soil will
permit. Then comes a season of fiercer storms, intenser cold and
invading ice upon the peaks. Havoc is wrought, and the forest drops back
across a zone of border warfare--for war belongs to borders--leaving
behind it here and there a dwarfed pine or gnarled and twisted juniper
which has survived the onslaught of the enemy, Now these are stragglers
in the retreat, but are destined later in milder years to serve as
outposts in the advance of the forest to recover its lost ground. Here
we have a border scene which is typical in nature--the belt of unbroken
forest, growing thinner and more stunted toward its upper edge,
succeeded by a zone of scattered trees, which may form a cluster perhaps
in some sheltered gulch where soil has collected and north winds are
excluded, and higher still the whitened skeleton of a tree to show how
far the forest once invaded the domain of the waste.
[Sidenote: Oscillating boundaries]
The habitable area of the earth everywhere shows its boundaries to be
peripheral zones of varying width, now occupied and now deserted,
protruding or receding according to external conditions of climate and
soil, and subject to seasonal change. The distribution of human life
becomes sparser from the temperate regions toward the Arctic Circle,
foreshadowing the unpeopled wastes of the ice-fields beyond. The outward
movement from the Tropics poleward halts where life conditions
disappear, and there finds its boundary; but as life conditions advance
or retreat with the seasons, so does that boundary. On the west coast of
Greenland the Eskimo village of Etah, at about the seventy-eighth
parallel, marks the northern limit of permanent or winter settlement;
but in summer the Eskimo, in his kayak, follows the musk-ox and seal
much farther north and there leaves his igloo to testify to the wide
range of his poleward migration. Numerous relics of the Eskimo and their
summer encampments have been found along Lady Franklin Bay in northern
Grinnell Land (81 deg. 50' N. L.), but in the interior, on the outlet
streams of Lake Hazen, explorers have discovered remains of habitations
which had evidently, in previous ages, been permanently occupied.[326] The
Murman Coast of the Kola Peninsula has in summer a large population of
Russian fishermen and forty or more fishing stations; but when the catch
is over at the end of August, and the Arctic winter approaches, the
stations are closed, and the three thousand fishermen return to their
permanent homes on the shores of the White Sea.[327] Farther east along
this polar fringe of Russia, the little village of Charbarova, located
on the Jugor Strait, is inhabited in summer by a number of Samoyedes,
who pasture their reindeer over on Vaygats Island, and by some Russians
and Finns, who come from the White Sea towns to trade with the Samoyedes
and incidentally to hunt and fish. But in the fall, when a new ice
bridge across the Strait releases the reindeer from their enclosed
pasture on the island, the Samoyedes withdraw southward, and the
merchants with their wares to Archangel and other points. This has gone
on for centuries.[328] On the Briochov Islands at the head of the Yenisei
estuary Nordenskiold found a small group of houses which formed a summer
fishing post in 1875, but which was deserted by the end of August.[329]
[Sidenote: Altitude boundary zones.]
An altitude of about five thousand feet marks the limit of village life
in the Alps; but during the three warm months of the year, the summer
pastures at eight thousand feet or more are alive with herds and their
keepers. The boundary line of human life moves up the mountains in the
wake of spring and later hurries down again before the advance of
winter. The Himalayan and Karakorum ranges show whole villages of
temporary occupation, like the summer trading town of Gartok at 15,000
feet on the caravan route from Leh to Lhassa, or Shahidula (3,285 meters
or 10,925 feet) on the road between Leh and Yarkand;[330] but the boundary
of permanent habitation lies several thousand feet below. Comparable to
these are the big hotels that serve summer stage-coach travel over the
Alps and Rockies, but which are deserted when the first snow closes the
passes. Here a zone of altitude, as in the polar regions a zone of
latitude, marks the limits of the habitable area.
[Sidenote: "Wallace's Line" a typical boundary zone.]
The distribution of animals and races shows the limit of their movements
or expansion. Any boundary defining the limits of such movements can not
from its nature be fixed, and hence can not be a line. It is always a
zone. Yet "Wallace's Line," dividing the Oriental from the Australian
zoological realm, and running through Macassar Strait southward between
Bali and Lombok, is a generally accepted dictum. The details of
Wallace's investigation, however, reveal the fact that this boundary is
not a line, but a zone of considerable and variable width, enclosing the
line on either side with a marginal belt of mixed character. Though
Celebes, lying to the east of Macassar Strait, is included in the
Australian realm, it has lost so large a proportion of Australian types
of animals, and contains so many Oriental types from the west, that
Wallace finds it almost impossible to decide on which side of the line
it belongs.[331] The Oriental admixture extends yet farther east over the
Moluccas and Timor. Birds of Javan or Oriental origin, to the extent of
thirty genera, have spread eastward well across Wallace's Line; some of
these stop short at Flores, and some reach even to Timor,[332] while
Australian cockatoos, in turn, have been seen on the west coast of Bali
but not in Java, Heilprin avoids the unscientific term line, because he
finds his zoological realms divided by "transition regions," which are
intermediate in animal types as they are in geographical location.[333]
Wallace notes a similar "debatable land" in the Rajputana Desert east of
the Indus, which is the border district between the Oriental and
Ethiopian realms.[334]
[Sidenote: Boundaries as limits of movements or expansion.]
Such boundaries mark the limits of that movement which is common to all
animate things. Every living form spreads until it meets natural
conditions in which it can no longer survive, or until it is checked by
the opposing expansion of some competing form. If there is a change
either in the life conditions or in the strength of the competing forms,
the boundary shifts. In the propitious climate of the Genial Period,
plants and animals lived nearer to the North Pole than at present; then
they fell back before the advance of the ice sheet. The restless
surface of the ocean denies to man a dwelling place; every century,
however, the Dutch are pushing forward their northern boundary by
reclamation of land from the sea; but repeatedly they have had to drop
back for a time when the water has again overwhelmed their hand-made
territory.
[Sidenote: Peoples as barriers.]
The boundaries of race and state which are subjected to greatest
fluctuations are those determined by the resistance of other peoples.
The westward sweep of the Slavs prior to eighth century carried them
beyond the Elbe into contact with the Germans; but as these increased in
numbers, outgrew their narrow territories and inaugurated a
counter-movement eastward, the Slavs began falling back to the Oder, to
the Vistula, and finally to the Niemen. Though the Mohawk Valley opened
an easy avenue of expansion westward for the early colonists of New
York, the advance of settlements up this valley for several decades went
on at only a snail's pace, because of the compact body of Iroquois
tribes holding this territory. In the unoccupied land farther south
between the Cumberland and Ohio rivers the frontier went forward with
leaps and bounds, pushed on by the expanding power of the young
Republic. [See map page 156.]
Anything which increases the expanding force of a people--the
establishment of a more satisfactory government by which the national
consciousness is developed, as in the American and French revolutions,
the prosecution of a successful war by which popular energies are
released from an old restraint, mere increase of population, or an
impulse communicated by some hostile and irresistible force behind--all
are registered in an advance of the boundary of the people in question
and a corresponding retrusion of their neighbor's frontier.
[Sidenote: Boundary zone as index of growth or decline.]
The border district is the periphery of the growing or declining race or
state. It runs the more irregularly, the greater are the variations in
the external conditions as represented by climate, soil, barriers, and
natural openings, according as these facilitate or obstruct advance.
When it is contiguous with the border of another state or race, the two
form a zone in which ascendency from one side or the other is being
established. The boundary fluctuates, for equilibrium of the contending
forces is established rarely and for only short periods. The more
aggressive people throws out across this debatable zone, along the lines
of least resistance or greatest attraction, long streamers of
occupation; so that the frontier takes on the form of a fringe of
settlement, whose interstices are occupied by a corresponding fringe of
the displaced people. Such was its aspect in early colonial America,
where population spread up every fertile river valley across a zone of
Indian land; and such it is in northern Russia to-day, where long narrow
Slav bands run out from the area of continuous Slav settlement across a
wide belt of Mongoloid territory to the shores of the White Sea and
Arctic Ocean.[335] [See maps pages 103 and 225.]
The border zone is further broadened by the formation of ethnic islands
beyond the base line of continuous settlement, which then advances more
or less rapidly, if expansion is unchecked, till it coalesces with these
outposts, just as the forest line on the mountains may reach, under
advantageous conditions, its farthest outlying tree. Such ethnic
peninsulas and islands we see in the early western frontiers of the
United States from 1790 to 1840, when that frontier was daily moving
westward.[336] [See map page 156.]
[Sidenote: Breadth of the boundary zone.]
The breadth of the frontier zone is indicative of the activity of growth
on the one side and the corresponding decline on the other, because
extensive encroachment in the same degree disintegrates the territory of
the neighbor at whose cost such encroachment is made. A straight, narrow
race boundary, especially if it is nearly coincident with a political
boundary, points to an equilibrium of forces which means, for the time
being at least, a cessation of growth. Such boundaries are found in old,
thickly populated countries, while the wide, ragged border zone belongs
to new, and especially to colonial peoples. In the oldest and most
densely populated seats of the Germans, where they are found in the
Rhine Valley, the boundaries of race and empire are straight and simple;
but the younger, eastern border, which for centuries has been steadily
advancing at the cost of the unequally matched Slavs, has the ragged
outline and sparse population of a true colonial frontier. Between two
peoples who have had a long period of growth behind them, the
oscillations of the boundary decrease in amplitude, as it were, and
finally approach a state of rest. Each people tends to fill out its area
evenly; every advance in civilization, every increase of population,
increases the stability of their tenure, and hence the equilibrium of
the pressure upon the boundary. Therefore, in such countries, racial,
linguistic and cultural boundaries tend to become simpler and
straighter.
[Sidenote: The broad frontier zone of active expansion.]
The growth is more apparent, or, in other words, the border zone is
widest and most irregular, where a superior people intrudes upon the
territory of an interior race. Such was the broad zone of thinly
scattered farms and villages amid a prevailing wilderness and hostile
Indian tribes which, in 1810 and 1820, surrounded our Trans-Allegheny
area of continuous settlement in a one to two hundred mile wide girdle.
Such has been the wide, mobile frontier of the Russian advance in
Siberia and until recently in Manchuria, which aimed to include within a
dotted line of widely separated railway-guard stations, Cossack
barracks, and penal colonies, the vast territory which later generations
were fully to occupy. Similar, too, is the frontier of the Dutch and
English settlements in South Africa, which has been pushed forward into
the Kaffir country--a broad belt of scattered cattle ranches and
isolated mining hives, dropped down amid Kaffir hunting and grazing
lands. Broader still was that shadowy belt of American occupation which
for four decades immediately succeeding the purchase of Louisiana
stretched in the form of isolated fur-stations, lonely trappers' camps,
and shifting traders' _rendezvous_ from the Mississippi to the western
slope of the Rockies and the northern watershed of the Missouri, where
it met the corresponding nebulous outskirts of the far-away Canadian
state on the St. Lawrence River.
The same process with the same geographical character has been going on
in the Sahara, as the French since 1890 have been expanding southward
from the foot of the Atlas Mountains in Algeria toward Timbuctoo at the
cost of the nomad Tuaregs. Territory is first subdued and administered
by the military till it is fully pacified. Then it is handed over to the
civil government. Hence the advancing frontier consists of a military
zone of administration, with a civil zone behind it, and a weaker
wavering zone of exploration and scout work before it.[337] Lord Curzon
in his Romanes lecture describes the northwest frontier of India as just
such a three-ply border.
[Sidenote: Economic factors in expanding frontiers.]
The untouched resources of such new countries tempt to the widespread
superficial exploitation, which finds its geographical expression in a
broad, dilating frontier. Here the man-dust which is to form the future
political planet is thinly disseminated, swept outward by a centrifugal
force. Furthermore, the absence of natural barriers which might block
this movement, the presence of open plains and river highways to
facilitate it, and the predominance of harsh conditions of climate or
soil rendering necessary a savage, extensive exploitation of the slender
resources, often combine still further to widen the frontier zone. This
was the case in French Canada and till recent decades in Siberia, where
intense cold and abundant river highways stimulated the fur trade to the
practical exclusion of all other activities, and substituted for the
closely grouped, sedentary farmers with their growing families the
wide-ranging trader with his Indian or Tunguse wife and his half-breed
offspring. Under harsh climatic conditions, the fur trade alone afforded
those large profits which every infant colony must command in order to
survive; and the fur trade meant a wide frontier zone of scattered posts
amid a prevailing wilderness. The French in particular, by the
possession of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers, the greatest
systems in America, were lured into the danger of excessive expansion,
attenuated their ethnic element, and failed to raise the economic status
of their wide border district, which could therefore offer only slight
resistance to the spread of solid English settlement.[338] Yet more
recently, the chief weakness of the Russians in Siberia and
Manchuria--apart from the corruption of the national government--was the
weakness of a too remote and too sparsely populated frontier, and of a
people whose inner development had not kept pace with their rate of
expansion.
[Sidenote: Value of barrier boundaries.]
Wasteful exploitation of a big territory is easier than the economical
development of a small district. This is one line of least resistance
which civilized man as well as savage instinctively follows, and which
explains the tendency toward excessive expansion characteristic of all
primitive and nascent peoples. For such peoples natural barriers which
set bounds to this expansion are of vastly greater importance than they
are for mature or fully developed peoples. The reason is this: the
boundary is only the expression of the outward movement or growth, which
is nourished from the same stock of race energy as is the inner
development. Either carried to an excess weakens or retards the other.
If population begins to press upon the limits of subsistence, the
acquisition of a new bit of territory obviates the necessity of applying
more work and more intelligence to the old area, to make it yield
subsistence for the growing number of mouths; the stimulus to adopt
better economic methods is lost. Therefore, natural boundaries drawn by
mountain, sea and desert, serving as barriers to the easy appropriation
of new territory, have for such peoples a far deeper significance than
the mere determination of their political frontiers by physical
features, or the benefit of protection.
The land with the most effective geographical boundaries is a naturally
defined region like Korea, Japan, China, Egypt, Italy, Spain, France or
Great Britain--a land characterized not only by exclusion from without
through its encircling barriers, but also by the inclusion within itself
of a certain compact group of geographic conditions, to whose combined
influences the inhabitants are subjected and from which they cannot
readily escape. This aspect is far more important than the mere
protection which such boundaries afford. They are not absolutely
necessary for the development of a people, but they give it an early
start, accelerate the process, and bring the people to an early
maturity; they stimulate the exploitation of all the local geographic
advantages and resources, the formation of a vivid tribal or national
consciousness and purpose, and concentrate the national energies when
the people is ready to overleap the old barriers. The early development
of island and peninsula peoples and their attainment of a finished
ethnic and political character are commonplaces of history. The stories
of Egypt, Crete and Greece, of Great Britain and Japan, illustrate the
stimulus to maturity which emanates from such confining boundaries. The
wall of the Appalachians narrowed the westward horizon of the early
English colonies in America, guarded them against the excessive
expansion which was undermining the French dominion in the interior of
the continent, set a most wholesome limit to their aims, and thereby
intensified their utilization of the narrow land between mountains and
sea. France, with its limits of growth indicated by the Mediterranean,
Pyrenees, Atlantic, Channel, Vosges, Jura and Western Alps, found its
period of adolescence shortened and, like Great Britain, early reached
its maturity. Nature itself set the goal of its territorial expansion,
and by crystallizing the political ideal of the people, made that goal
easier to reach, just as the dream of "United Italy" realized in 1870
had been prefigured in contours drawn by Alpine range and Mediterranean
shore-line.
[Sidenote: The sea as the absolute boundary]
The area which a race or people occupies is the resultant of the
expansive force within and the obstacles without, either physical or
human. Insurmountable physical obstacles are met where all life
conditions disappear, as on the borders of the habitable world, where
man is barred from the unpeopled wastes of polar ice-fields and
unsustaining oceans. The frozen rim of arctic lands, the coastline of
the continents, the outermost arable strip on the confines of the
desert, the barren or ice-capped ridge of high mountain range, are all
such natural boundaries which set more or less effective limits to the
movement of peoples and the territorial growth of states. The sea is the
only absolute boundary, because it alone blocks the continuous, unbroken
expansion of a people. When the Saxons of the lower Elbe spread to the
island of Britain, a zone of unpeopled sea separated their new
settlements from their native villages on the mainland. Even the most
pronounced land barriers, like the Himalayas and Hindu Kush, have their
passways and favored spots for short summer habitation, where the people
from the opposite slopes meet and mingle for a season. Sandy wastes are
hospitable at times. When the spring rains on the mountains of Abyssinia
start a wave of moisture lapping over the edges of the Nubian desert,
it is immediately followed by a tide of Arabs with their camels and
herds, who make a wide zone of temporary occupation spread over the
newly created grassland, but who retire in a few weeks before the
desiccating heat of summer.[339]
[Sidenote: Natural boundaries as bases of ethnic and political
boundaries.]
Nevertheless, all natural features of the earth's surface which serve to
check, retard or weaken the expansion of peoples, and therefore hold
them apart, tend to become racial or political boundaries; and all
present a zone-like character. The wide ice-field of the Scandinavian
Alps was an unpeopled waste long before the political boundary was drawn
along it. "It has not in reality been a definite natural _line_ that has
divided Norway from her neighbour on the east; it has been a _band_ of
desert land, up to hundreds of miles in width. So utterly desolate and
apart from the area of continuous habitation has this been, that the
greater part of it, the district north of Trondhjem, was looked upon
even as recently as the last century as a common district. Only nomadic
Lapps wandered about in it, sometimes taxed by all three countries. A
parcelling out of this desert common district was not made toward Russia
until 1826. Toward Sweden it was made in 1751."[340] In former centuries
the Bourtanger Moor west of the River Ems used to be a natural desert
borderland separating East and West Friesland, despite the similarity of
race, speech and country on either side of it. It undoubtedly
contributed to the division of Germany and the Netherlands along the
present frontier line, which has been drawn the length of this moor for
a hundred kilometers.[341]
[Sidenote: Primitive waste boundaries.]
Any geographical feature which, like this, presents a practically
uninhabitable area, forms a scientific boundary, not only because it
holds apart the two neighboring peoples and thereby reduces the contact
and friction which might be provocative of hostilities, but also because
it lends protection against attack. This motive, as also the zone
character of all boundaries, comes out conspicuously in the artificial
border wastes surrounding primitive tribes and states in the lower
status of civilization. The early German tribes depopulated their
borders in a wide girdle, and in this wilderness permitted no neighbors
to reside. The width of this zone indicated the valor and glory of the
state, but was also valued as a means of protection against unexpected
attack.[342] Caesar learned that between the Suevi and Cherusci tribes
dwelling near the Rhine "_silvam esse ibi, infinita magnitudine quae
appelletur Bacenis; hanc longe introrsus pertinere et pro nativo muro
objectam Cheruscos ab Suevis Suevosque ab Cheruscis injuriis
incursionibusque prohibere_."[343] The same device appears among the
Huns. When Attila was pressing upon the frontier of the Eastern Empire
in 448 A.D., his envoys sent to Constantinople demanded that the Romans
should not cultivate a belt of territory, a hundred miles wide and three
hundred miles long, south of the Danube, but maintain this as a
March.[344] When King Alfonso I. (751-764 A.D.) of mountain Asturias
began the reconquest of Spain from the Saracens, he adopted the same
method of holding the foe at arm's length. He seized Old Castile as far
as the River Duoro, but the rest of the province south of that stream he
converted into a waste boundary by transporting the Christians thence to
the north side, and driving the Mohammedans yet farther southward.[345]
Similarly Xenophon found that the Armenian side of the River Kentrites,
which formed the boundary between the Armenian plains and the highlands
of Karduchia, was unpeopled and destitute of villages for a breadth of
fifteen miles, from fear of the marauding Kurds.[346] In the eastern
Sudan, especially in that wide territory along the Nile-Congo watershed
occupied by the Zandeh, Junker found the frontier wilderness a regular
institution owing to the exposure of the border districts in the
perennial intertribal feuds.[347] The same testimony comes from
Barth,[348] Boyd Alexander,[349] Speke,[350] and other explorers in the
Sudan and the neighboring parts of equatorial Africa.
[Sidenote: Border wastes of Indian lands.]
The vast and fertile region defined by the Ohio and Tennessee rivers,
lay as a debatable border between the Algonquin Indians of the north
and the Appalachians of the south. Both claimed it, both used it for
hunting, but neither dared dwell therein.[351] Similarly the Cherokees
had no definite understanding with their savage neighbors as to the
limits of their respective territories The effectiveness of their claim
to any particular tract of country usually diminished with every
increase of its distance from their villages. The consequence was that a
considerable strip of territory between the settlements of two tribes,
Cherokees and Creeks for instance, though claimed by both, was
practically considered neutral ground and the common hunting ground of
both.[352] The Creeks, whose most western villages from 1771 to 1798 were
located along the Coosa and upper Alabama rivers,[353] were separated by
300 miles of wilderness from the Chickasaws to the northwest, and by a
150-mile zone from the Choctaws. The most northern Choctaw towns, in
turn, lay 160 miles to the south of the Chickasaw nation, whose compact
settlements were located on the watershed between the western sources of
the Tombigby and the head stream of the Yazoo.[354] The wide intervening
zone of forest and canebrake was hunted upon by both nations.[355]
Sometimes the border is preserved as a wilderness by formal agreement. A
classic example of this case is found in the belt of untenanted land,
fifty to ninety kilometers wide, which China and Korea once maintained
as their boundary. No settler from either side was allowed to enter, and
all travel across the border had to use a single passway, where three
times annually a market was held.[356] On the Russo-Mongolian border
south of Lake Baikal, the town of Kiakhta, which was established in 1688
as an entrepot of trade between the two countries, is occupied in its
northern half by Russian factories and in its southern by the
Mongolian-Chinese quarters, while between the two is a neutral space
devoted to commerce.[357]
[Sidenote: Alien intrusions into border wastes.]
These border wastes do not always remain empty, however, even when their
integrity is respected by the two neighbors whom they serve to divide;
alien races often intrude into their unoccupied reaches. The boundary
wilderness between the Sudanese states of Wadai and Dar Fur harbors
several semi-independent states whose insignificance is a guarantee of
their safety from conquest.[358] Similarly in the wide border district
between the Creeks on the east and the Choctaws on the west were found
typical small, detached tribes--the Chatots and Thomez of forty huts
each on the Mobile River, the Tensas tribe with a hundred huts on the
Tensas River, and the Mobilians near the confluence of the Tombigby and
Alabama.[359] Along the desolate highland separating Norway and Sweden
the nomadic Lapps, with their reindeer herds, have penetrated southward
to 62 deg. North Latitude, reinforcing the natural barrier by another
barrier of alien race. From this point southward, the coniferous forests
begin and continue the border waste in the form of a zone some sixty
miles wide; this was unoccupied till about 1600, when into it slowly
filtered an immigration of Finns, whose descendants to-day constitute an
important part of the still thin population along the frontier to the
heights back of Christiania. Only thirty miles from the coast does the
border zone between Norway and Sweden, peopled chiefly by intruding
foreign stocks, Lapps and Finns, contract and finally merge into the
denser Scandinavian settlements.[360]
Where the border waste offers favorable conditions of life and the
intruding race has reached a higher status of civilization, it
multiplies in this unpeopled tract and soon spreads at the cost of its
less advanced neighbors. The old No Man's Land between the Ohio and
Tennessee was a line of least resistance for the expanding Colonies, who
here poured in a tide of settlement between the northern and southern
Indians, just as later other pioneers filtered into the vague border
territory of weak tenure between the Choctaws and Creeks, and there on
the Tombigby, Mobile and Tensas rivers, formed the nucleus of the State
of Alabama.[361]
[Sidenote: Politico-economic significance of the waste boundary.]
This untenanted hem of territory surrounding so many savage and
barbarous peoples reflects their superficial and unsystematic
utilization of their soil, by reason of which the importance of the land
itself and the proportion of population to area are greatly reduced. It
is a part of that uneconomic and extravagant use of the land, that
appropriation of wide territories by small tribal groups, which
characterizes the lower stages of civilization, as opposed to the
exploitation of every square foot for the support of a teeming humanity,
which marks the most advanced states. Each stage puts its own valuation
upon the land according to the return from it which each expects to
get. The low valuation is expressed in the border wilderness, by which a
third or even a half of the whole area is wasted; and also in the
readiness with which savages often sell their best territory for a song.
For the same reason they leave their boundaries undefined; a mile nearer
or farther, what does it matter? Moreover, their fitful or nomadic
occupation of the land leads to oscillations of the frontiers with every
attack from without and every variation of the tribal strength within.
Their unstable states rarely last long enough in a given form or size to
develop fixed boundaries; hence, the vagueness as to the extent of
tribal domains among all savage peoples, and the conflicting land claims
which are the abiding source of war. Owing to these overlapping
boundaries--border districts claimed but not occupied--the American
colonists met with difficulties in their purchase of land from the
Indians, often paying twice for the same strip.
[Sidenote: Common boundary districts.]
Even civilized peoples may adopt a waste boundary where the motive for
protection is peculiarly strong, as in the half-mile neutral zone of
lowland which ties the rock of Gibraltar to Spain. On a sparsely
populated frontier, where the abundance of land reduces its value, they
may throw the boundary into the form of a common district, as in the
vast, disputed Oregon country, accepted provisionally as a district of
joint occupancy between the United States and Canada from 1818 to 1846,
or that wide highland border which Norway so long shared with Russia and
Sweden. In South America, where land is abundant and population sparse,
this common boundary belt is not rare. It suggests a device giving that
leeway for expansion desired by all growing states. By the treaty of
1866, the frontier between Chile and Bolivia crossed the Atacama desert
at 24 deg. South Latitude; but the zone between 23 deg. and 25 deg. 
Influences of Geographic Environment On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography / Semple, Ellen Churchill, 1863-1933