Ice Age the first European peoples were hunters apparently
spreading up from the western Mediterranean basin. To them
must be added the hunters who seem to have spread along the
loess westwards. These two groups were bearers of the
Aurignacian and Solutrean cultures of anthropologists. Hunting
has remained a feature of European life ever since, but time has
brought too many changes in the hunter's life and position to
make it profitable to discuss possibilities of social survivals from
so long ago. The partial regrowth of the glaciers (Bühl period)
modified the hunting life; and associated with this cold-cycle
civilization (Magdalenian Age of the anthropologists) was the
great development of pictorial and sculptural art which has so
astonished the world since its rediscovery. As the cold passed
away, this time definitively, the sinking of the west converted
Britain and Ireland into islands, and so brought maritime
influences far into the Continent, with the result that forests
spread far and wide with wolf, bear, boar, wild cats, and birds
of prey to dispute them for a time with man. The zone of loess
and some wind-swept or calcareous areas near the sea or on the hills
remained relatively clear of forests and dry enough for occupation
by man, and on these areas men practised the art of herding
animals, moving from pasture to pasture, as circumstances required
or, increasingly, with the cycle of the seasons. There were
possibly already cultivators beginning to grow barley as a
supplement to herding or hunting. We should, however, be careful
not to argue that the beginning of cultivation necessarily implies
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settling down in one place; the Vlachs often sow and reap a
barley crop without making more than a very temporary sojourn.
The development of civilization was not purely and simply
a development of herding from hunting, nor was the herding
purely analogous in social features to that of the tribe on the
grasslands. The development was accompanied by differentiation,
and it seems clear that herding was very early carried on
with much greater restriction of movement than on the grass-lands
and desert borders of Asia. There was quite early a tendency
to a regular cycle of seasonal change (_transhumance_) rather than to
broad wandering, and our territorial instinct is very old.
With this statement properly goes another to the effect that
some kind of cultivation became a supplement to the herder's
life almost at the outset, and we may further surmise that some
part of the population would soon remain near the more cultivable
lands to guard them. Thus restriction of seasonal wandering
to a part of the population is another very old feature of life, one
judges, in many, though not in all parts of Europe. In the
Val d'Anniviers, so clearly marked that territorial disputes could
hardly arise, and at the same time freed from ravages of wild
beasts, practically the whole population still moves up and down
with the change of the seasons, though it has permanent buildings
at each of its four stations. Reference has already been made
to the Vlach wanderers of the Balkan Peninsula, and one might
also speak of the Lapps, whose movements along the moorlands
of Scandinavia were formerly a source of frontier trouble between
Sweden and Norway.
With the development of the phase of civilization called
Neolithic in Europe goes the making of pottery, which implies
tendencies to live in one place at least for a time, the utilizing of
particular types of stone from particular spots suggesting a
long-continued exploitation of the special source, the making of very
definite settlements on the Swiss lakes, and the developing of
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crop-growing and weaving and so on by their inhabitants. Both
settlement and trade seem indicated, but it is most probable that
many of the lake-dwellers also used the spring pastures on the
hills. The distribution of the great stone monuments and several
other matters indicate the growth of long-distance sea trade
about the end of the Neolithic Age and in the period when the use
of copper and bronze was spreading round the coasts of Europe;
and a recently discovered Mesopotamian tablet dated 2800 B.C. gives
facts about tribute paid to Babylon from tin lands beyond
the Great Sea (Spain). Development of settlement must have
continued in the Bronze Age, still mainly on the naturally
open lands rather than in the cleared forest, and it is a notable
fact that, save in a very few areas with special explanations
available, the regions of megaliths do not show examples of the kind
of village, with strips once owned in common, which is so
characteristic of regions of cleared forest, though not the only type
there.
The hardening of bronze was one of the most important facts
affecting man's advance in the Bronze Age, and we have
abundant indications (see papers in archaeological and anthropological
journals by H. J. E. Peake) of man's ability to attack the
forest seriously ere bronze gave place to iron. The attack
on the forest was undoubtedly redoubled when man acquired
iron weapons, and so the Early Iron Age witnessed extensive
settlement in forest clearings in Europe north of the Alps, and
with that went increase of corn-growing. South of the Alps the
warming of the climate after the Ice Age had helped to reduce
the forest, especially in view of the large stretches of limestone
and the sharp slopes which have always hindered regrowth of
forest once destroyed.
The Mediterranean region, by reason of the long summer
drought, has become with the establishment of its present climate
less fit for pasturing of animals and more suited to the goat than
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to cattle or sheep. As a result of this the destructive goat has
reduced the forests and hindered their regrowth. The difficulty
of stock-raising encouraged efforts towards cultivation, which is
certainly very old in the Mediterranean region, and has passed
through several phases that need elucidation. It seems probable
that barley cultivation was established very early, and bee and
fruit culture were gradually gathered around it, the olive proving
invaluable as a substitute for animal fat. But ere the olive could
be grown in quantity there had to be a good deal of organization,
for it does not begin to bear till it is almost eight years old, and
is in full bearing when it is nearing its thirtieth year. To wait
for the olive, therefore, meant possession of some reserves and
assurance of food supplies, such as imported grain, ere much land
could be turned into olive groves. War and unsettlement worked
against olive culture, for the risks of destruction of an olive grove
were then serious, and the consequences disastrous.
If, however, olive culture was, on the one hand, the result of
a measure of peace and prosperity, it was also in most cases the
presage of further growth of prosperity; the harvest was reasonably
assured and immensely valuable, especially as it could be
transported far and wide by sea. The relation of olive culture
to the classical period in Greece is well known. We seem to have
grounds for associating city growth in the Mediterranean with
trade and the spread of large-scale olive culture as well as with
the question of defence.
Both north and south of the Alps the dependence of man on
cereals after he gave up his milk and flesh diet seems to have made
him desire salt, and the Early Iron Age settlements of Gaul are
closely related to sources of salt, while the Mediterranean
coast-lands had ample opportunities of salt getting. The pig had been
domesticated by this time, and the salting of bacon and fish gave
a reserve for the winter, but it has been claimed that salt was also
in request for forms of porridge, &c. In thinking of the early
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settlements we should remember that north of the Alps there was
perpetual danger lurking in the dark forest, while in the south
there were the rough goatherds of the mountains.
In the last millennium before Christ the worsening of the
Scandinavian climate drove peoples southwards towards Gaul, and thus
led to a growth of hill-fortress towns, of which the supreme
examples were Alesia, Gergovia, and Bibracte, and from Gaul
the building of these fortress towns spread, with sea commerce,
up the west coast of Britain, where Tre'r Ceiri on Yr Eifl in
Carnarvonshire furnishes us with one of the best examples of this
type of settlement of the Iron Age or Romano-British times.
For the purposes of this sketch it is not necessary to go into
great detail about the Roman efforts, but we should note that
within the bounds of their Empire they spread wheat cultivation,
road communications, and their legal system, and that along with
this seems to have gone a cheapening of iron. All these changes
helped to knit the people to the soil, to make neighbourhood
take the place of kinship as a basis of association, to root a language
in the people's hearts. It is the men who 'lacte et carne vivunt',
as Caesar puts it, who organize on a kinship basis, move from
place to place, and lack the written records which do so much for
language fixation.
We thus see in Gaul villages of various types in regions of
differing history and opportunity, but pre-Roman fortress towns
and Roman cities between them networking the country and
related to roads built or adapted by the conquering engineers,
and we note the implanting of linguistic features that not all the
shocks of later disruptions have contrived to uproot. In Britain
again are villages of varying types, pre-Roman or Romano-British
fortress towns, chiefly on the west coast headlands, Roman cities
for the most part speedily ruined, and Roman roads. The
difference in the vitality of the cities is to be correlated with the
difference as to language; the Roman elements in our language
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are for the most part the result of reintroduction later on. The
Roman element in Welsh is usually allowed to be important.
If the spread of the rural Franks and of the Anglo-Saxons into
the erstwhile Roman domains led to the submergence of the old
cities and to much village foundation, there is at any rate a
growing opinion that it did not destroy all continuity in either Gaul
or Britain, that a good deal in our rural life goes back, as above
hinted, to the late Bronze Age. The system of the manor under
which the villagers give service to a military protector is too easily
mixed up with the village system in discussions. The manor,
with complex origins, is characteristic of post-Roman days
of movement and strife. The civilizing element promoting
agriculture and the law is furnished by the Church, which, with
the centuries, spread its work over the Rhine, beyond the bounds
of the Empire, right away to the limits of Europe-of-the-Sea,
that is of the lands near Baltic or Mediterranean, or west of a
north-south line near the east ends of those seas.
With the settling down which heralded the Middle Ages after
the Dark Centuries of movement and war, we thus find the
following broad facts. In the Mediterranean, where fruit culture
and the city-state and trade were already old, that type of life
reasserted itself even though the division of life on the north and
the south sides (characteristic long before in Phoenician times)
of the sea made grave difficulties.
In Spain the conflict between Islam and Christians inhibited the
development of both and delayed everything. In both cases the
military organization was unhealthily important, and the Muslim
of the south kept much of their old social scheme based on the
tribe, whereas they should have been adapting themselves to the rich
land of Andalusia which they held. The result of the inhibitions
made the Muslim far more of a misfit in the Andalusian garden
than were the Christians on the heights of northern Spain, where
seasonal movement of flocks and herds (_transhumance_) is still
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very important. The Muslim of the south thus gradually declined
both in value and in influence, and though in earlier times they
had been far more cultured than their Christian foemen, they had
dropped far behind in organization before their subjugation in
the fifteenth century. One should nevertheless bear in mind
possible valuable survivals from the Muslim in matters of detail
or of individual work. In Gaul cultivation had spread and had
improved under monastic leadership; markets were growing
under protection of the cathedrals, and were becoming the
town centres that have persisted as the highly characteristic
market towns of the Paris basin. After years of rivalry with
Frankish dialects the old Roman heritage of language triumphed
with some compromises, and became the _langue d'oïl_, the speech of
the Paris basin and upper Burgundy, and the progenitor of standard
modern French. In Britain the rural element seems to have
predominated until Gaulish influences again became strong in the
eleventh century.
In the lands beyond the Rhine the abbeys were promoting
agriculture, with towns growing some time after the corresponding
phases were carried through in Gaul, and with the power of
the war lord very strongly marked. In the Slavonic lands the
phases of settlement and town growth are later still with the
church and the war lord in close association, as is exemplified
both by the Teutonic Knights in East Prussia and by the inclusion
of the cathedral in the castle precincts in Prague and Cracow.
Growth of market towns and of communications, still largely
mule tracks no doubt, was leading to fixation of language as
discussed in an earlier chapter. One may mention, incidentally,
that old mule tracks persist on lands in old-fashioned corners like
the Channel Islands, where they are very numerous, and may
form rings around the demesnes of the more important houses.
The growth of markets was bringing neighbours together, weakening
dialectal differences, and so helping to fuse local groups into
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nations on a basis of common language and common tradition
expressed in growing poetry and prose in the evolving languages.
Against these influences must be set that of the Roman heritage
of universalism so vigorously represented by the Church, which
the Holy Roman Empire tried so hard to imitate.
The poverty of the villagers and their weakness in face of the
dangers of the forest and its wanderers, outlaws, and adventurers
is an outstanding fact of the development of the next phase.
There was insufficient freedom for agricultural experiment save
to some extent in the monastery gardens, and insufficient
knowledge for useful discussion, so cultivation methods remained in
the grip of custom, with the modification due to the spread of
the three-field system. Even the fallows could not keep the
land up to a proper grade of fertility.
So traditional cultivation on lands owned or worked in common
by the villagers was ever under threat of disruption, and doubtless
the severities of climate and plague in the fourteenth century
contributed their quota to the disintegration of the old mode of
life. The complaint of diminished fertility made itself heard far
and wide, and the end of the Middle Ages witnessed the breakdown
of the old village system in the west. Trade and the voyages
of discovery furnished supplementary sources of wealth, and the
beginnings of larger industry grew out of this. In East-Central
Europe change was delayed partly because there was still much
forest land to be adapted, but largely because of the absorption
of the people in struggles against Turk and Tatar. Even there,
however, the old village system decayed in the end, and it is only
in central Russia that it has maintained itself among the Slavonic
peoples, who, almost to this day, from one point of view, may be
looked upon as colonists spreading in the forests and their borders
in Muscovy.
Of the lands north of the Mediterranean, France was most
favoured agriculturally, and owed most to the Roman heritage
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of unity, and here grew _la grande nation_, while farther east national
growth was delayed largely by attempts at an imperial unity,
worked up as a device for defence against the Turk and Tatar.
National growth in isolated or semi-isolated lands like the English
plain, Holland, Sweden, and the central Scottish lowland was also
a feature, while the diverse outlooks of the diverse coasts of
Ireland and the weakness of that country's interior made the
Green Isle the tragic type of the island which is so generally
disunited.
Villagers with common lands gave place, with many a struggle,
to landholding by proprietors with labourers under them, and if
in Britain the labourer became landless and so fitted himself to
become machine-fodder in the Industrial Revolution, in France
he struggled to keep his link with the sacred soil of that sunny
land, and ultimately won his position of ownership in the
Revolution of the end of the eighteenth century. This change
made itself felt as far as the Rhine, beyond which the peasant
still remained subject to heavy seigniorial dues. It is claimed
that during the recent war there has been a great move towards
peasant proprietorship or something akin to it in the lands near
the eastern border of Europe-of-the-Sea, carrying eastward, as it
were, the work done one hundred years ago in France.
Facts about decline of the old village communities are legion,
and cannot even be listed here, but attention may be drawn to
the spread of root crops (for winter food for man and beast) in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This helped materially
to break down traditionalism, for it interfered with the old right
of the villagers to free pasture of all the village cattle all over the
stubble left after harvest: the lands with root crops had to remain
enclosed. Of the new wealth brought in by individual
proprietorship and root crops and other agricultural experiments,
we have much evidence in the farmhouse buildings of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries; those of the years 1720-60 or
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so seem specially characteristic in Guernsey, Channel Islands.
But the problem of fertility was not solved, even though
leguminous crops were ploughed in and the chemical decomposition
of the soil was speeded up by liming. Trade and long sea voyages
loomed larger in the lives of the European peoples and industry
grew ever larger, so that the urban element gained immensely in
numbers and influence. We thus have a picture of the preface,
as it were, to the Industrial Revolution, but another series of
changes had been working to the same end.
The spread of the habit of sea trade from the Mediterranean
to North-west Europe led to changes in the design and
construction of ships. By the middle of the seventeenth century old
difficulties about disease due to stinking bilge-water had largely
been overcome, and ships were being built with better proportions
for speed and manoeuvring, and in the early eighteenth
century came the full adaptation of the fore-and-aft sail and the
use of mahogany and other hard woods from the tropics for
ship furniture, and so for house furniture too. With all this went
increased size and speed of ships and ability to tack effectively,
and so, broadly, to follow a course even if winds were variable.
With all this new power and also the development of armaments,
Europe found herself in a position to exploit the other parts of
the earth inhabited by other races less well equipped. They
gradually, nay almost suddenly, became the producers of raw
materials, food-stuffs, and fertilizers for the vastly increasing
populations of industrial Europe, which began to teem in the
manufacturing cities when coal and steam machinery were added
to the European equipment.
Along with this industrial development has gone the nationalist
revival to which reference has already been made in several places
(pp. 23, 33, 35, 49, 62-3), a cultural movement which in the
nineteenth century became politically embittered, and which through
its imperialistic outgrowths in England, Germany, France, and
Russia has been a main factor of the recent war.
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10
_Aspects of Modern Europe_
The Industrial Revolution supervened in England first. Her
landless labourers, her rather uncertain harvests, her severance
from the Roman tradition at the religious schism, her growth of
sea-power and trade, as well as the invention of James Watt, all
contributed to this end. The necessary coal was found in places
mostly remote from the great centres of English tradition, and
industry grew where the civic heritage was weak and the lands,
even the common lands of the market towns, had been enclosed
by proprietors, who also often replaced the monks of the
Middle Ages as landlords without attempting to fulfil their
other functions. The growth of our huge industrial agglomerates
on private land with an oligarchic government of landowners,
and, since 1830, factory owners and their associates, has naturally
had as a result the policy of non-interference, so that crowding
has been permitted and even encouraged, and the slum, which
is now deteriorating the quality of the population, is the inevitable
result, bringing in its train practically all the most serious social
problems of our day, the stunting of growth and judgement, the
craving for excitement and emotion as a substitute for thought,
the aesthetic degradation which carries with it the loss of
keenness on one's work. To compensate for this we have only got
a vast accumulation of profits in the form of mobile capital, so
much of which has been blown into space in 1914-18. The
accumulation of capital, it should be appreciated, would have
been far less had it not been that industrial primacy and the
primacy of the carrying trade happened, as above suggested, to
be closely associated in one and the same people.
From England the Revolution has spread along the coal belt
through northern France and Belgium, Germany, Bohemia, and
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Poland to Russia, with characteristic modifications from region
to region, according to the local circumstances and social heritage
of the people affected. But before proceeding to note these
differences it is important to realize one general change which
has many aspects. In the old village with its law based on the
custom of the neighbourhood, each had his or her place unless
cast out: one's status was all-important and not easily changed.
In England the labourer became landless, drifted to the factories,
made a contract for his labour, and so changed the organization
of society from an organization based on status to one based on
contract. That change is still going on, and the remnants of old
ideas of status have struggled hard against such measures as
death duties, super-tax, and the rest, which all tend in the
direction of making labour, however disguised, the great medium
of exchange. This big alteration from status to contract has
affected the whole of industrial Europe and has spread thence as
a ferment of change far beyond our continent, but in Europe the
change has hardly anywhere gone so far as it has in Britain.
In France coal was far less abundant than it was in England, and
the struggle for the soil went in favour of the peasantry rather
than of the plutocracy as with us. Both these facts, added to
those of the sunny climate, have made the Industrial Revolution
far more feeble in France. The antiquity and continuity of life
in the market towns has led to the persistence of small industries,
often with a very long-standing personal link between master
and men; hence the difficulty of the impersonality of industrial
organization from which we suffer so badly in Britain is less
general in France, though they also have the limited company
to contend with. The wealth of the country for so many
centuries has encouraged high-class--one might say,
luxurious--manufacture, and jewellery, porcelain,
and silk are characteristic
products.
The persistence of special quality lines in the cloth trade
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is another feature, but on the whole the story of French industry
has been one of half-hearted effort only. The Treaty of Versailles
puts an enormous amount of iron ore into the French Customs
Union, so that France becomes by far the greatest European
producer of iron minerals, though her coal supply is deficient. It
remains to be seen whether the French people will develop more
industrial activity in consequence of this, and also whether they
will go in for increased use of the hydro-electric power they have
within their territory.
The Flemings have an old-established industrial and commercial
tradition much less divorced from peasant life than in our country.
Their Walloon neighbours, on the other hand, have entered into
industrialism recently, and their country has changed suddenly
from a backward rural area to a very busy manufacturing one,
using large quantities of imported raw material. The people were
cultivators and stock-raisers by long tradition, and they have tried
to keep up this activity in some measure, while a protective
customs duty on meat keeps up the stock-raising business. Another
traditional (in fact racial) feature here is the genius for
co-operation, and this works itself out in widespread insurance schemes
maintained by the people.