have never numbered more than about seventy thousand. They live in an
isle so far remote, and so sundered from the rest of the world by an
inhospitable ocean, that their relations both with Europe, to which
ethnologically they belong, and with America, to which geographically
they belong, have been comparatively scanty. But their history, from
the first settlement of the island by Norwegian exiles in A.D. 874
to the extinction of the National Republic in A.D. 1264, is full of
interest and instruction, in some respects a perfectly unique history.
And the literature which this handful of people produced is certainly
the most striking primitive literature which any modern people has
produced, superior in literary quality to that of the Continental
Teutons, or to that of the Romance nations, or to that of the Finns or
Slavs, or even to that of the Celts. Yet most histories of Europe pass
by Iceland altogether, and few persons in Continental Europe (outside
Scandinavia) know anything about the inhabitants of this isle, who,
amid glaciers and volcanoes, have maintained themselves at a high level
of intelligence and culture for more than a thousand years.
The small peoples have no doubt been more potent in the spheres
of intellect and emotion than in those of war, politics, or
commerce. But the influences which belong to the sphere of creative
intelligence--that is to say, of literature, philosophy, religion and
art--are just those which it is peculiarly the function of a History
of the World to disengage and follow out in their far-reaching
consequence. They pass beyond the limits of the country where they
arose. They survive, it may be, the race that gave birth to them. They
pass into new forms, and through these they work in new ways upon
subsequent ages.
[Sidenote: The Wide Scope of History]
It is also the task of universal history so to trace the march of
humanity as to display the relation which each part of it bears to the
others; to fit each race and tribe and nation into the main narrative.
To do this, three things are needed--a comprehensive knowledge, a
power of selecting the salient and significant points, and a talent
for arrangement. Of these three qualifications, the first is the least
rare. Ours is an age of specialists; but the more a man buries himself
in special studies, the more risk does he incur of losing his sense of
the place which the object of his own study fills in the general scheme
of things. The highly trained historian is generally able to draw from
those who have worked in particular departments the data he needs;
while the master of one single department may be unable to carry his
vision over the whole horizon, and see each part of the landscape in
its relations to the rest.
In other words, a History of the World ought to be an account of the
human family as an organic whole, showing how each race and state
has affected other races or states, what each has brought into the
common stock, and how the interaction among them has stimulated
some, depressed or extinguished others, turned the main current this
way or that. Even when the annals of one particular country are
concerned, it needs no small measure of skill in expression as well
as of constructive art to trace their connection with those of other
countries. To take a familiar example, he who writes the history of
England must have his eye always alive to what is passing in France on
one side, and in Scotland on the other, not to speak of countries less
closely connected with England, such as Germany and Spain. He must let
the reader feel in what way the events that were happening in France
and Scotland affected men’s minds, and through men’s minds affected the
progress of events in England. Yet he cannot allow himself constantly
to interrupt his English narrative in order to tell what was passing
beyond the Channel or across the Tweed.
[Illustration: VIVID SCENES OF ANCIENT LIFE DEPICTED BY CONTEMPORARY
ARTISTS
The walls of the tombs in Egypt form a great picture gallery of the
vanished life of that country and are invaluable to the historian.
This fragment from the British Museum shows how vividly the
domestic figures were realised.
]
[Sidenote: Unity of Universal History]
Obviously, this difficulty is much increased when the canvas is widened
to include all Europe, and when the aim is to give the reader a just
impression of the general tendencies of a whole age, such an age as,
for instance, the sixteenth century, over that vast area. If for a
History of the World the old plan be adopted--that of telling the
story of each nation separately, yet on lines generally similar, cross
references and a copious use of chronological tables become helpful,
for they enable the contemporaneity of events to be seen at a glance,
and as the history of each nation is being written with a view to that
of other nations, the tendencies at work in each can be explained and
illustrated in a way which shows their parallelism, and gives to the
whole that unity of meaning and tendency which a universal history must
constantly endeavour to display. The connection between the progress
or decline of different peoples is best understood by setting forth
the various forms which similar tendencies take in each. To do this
is a hard task when the historian is dealing with the ancient world,
or with the world outside Europe even in mediæval and post-mediæval
times. For the modern European nations it is easier, because, ever
since the spread of Christianity made these nations parts of one great
ecclesiastical community, similar forces have been at work upon each of
them, and every intellectual movement which has told upon one has more
or less told upon the others also.
[Illustration: THE MASTER-KEY TO THE HIEROGLYPHICS
The inscribed stone found at Rosetta, in the Nile delta, in
1799, now preserved in the British Museum. It gave the key to
the hieroglyphic writings of Egypt. It is a decree of Ptolemy
Epiphanes, promulgated at Memphis in B.C. 196, and as it is
inscribed in hieroglyphic and in the script of the country as
well as in Greek, it thus solved the long standing mystery of the
hieroglyphics of the monuments, which before its discovery had been
quite unintelligible.
]
[Sidenote: Central Line of Human Development]
[Sidenote: The Study of Human Society]
[Sidenote: Each Race a Distinct Entity]
Such a History of the World may be written on more than one plan,
and in the light of more than one general theory of human progress.
It might find the central line of human development in the increase
of man’s knowledge, and in particular of his knowledge of Nature and
his power of dealing with her. Or that which we call culture, the
comprehensive unfolding and polishing of human faculty and of the
power of intellectual creation and appreciation, might be taken as
marking the most real and solid kind of progress, so that its growth
would best represent the advance of man from a savage to a highly
civilised condition. Or if the moral and political sphere were selected
as that in which the onward march of man as a social being, made to
live in a community, could best be studied, the idea of liberty might
be made a pivot of the scheme; for in showing how the individual
emerges from the family or the tribe, how first domestic and then
also prædial slavery slowly disappears, how institutions are framed
under which the will of one ruler or of a small group begins to be
controlled, or replaced as a governing force, by the collective will
of the members of the community, how the primordial rights of each
human creature win their way to recognition--in tracing out all these
things the history of human society is practically written, and the
significance of all political changes is made clear. Another way,
again, would be to take some concrete department of human activity,
follow it down from its earliest to its latest stages, and group
other departments round it. Thus one author might take religion, and
in making the history of religion the main thread of his narrative
might deal incidentally with the other phenomena which have influenced
it or which it has influenced. Or, similarly, another author might
take political institutions, or perhaps economic conditions--_i.e._,
wealth, labour, capital, commerce, or, again, the fundamental social
institutions, such as the family, and the relations of the ranks and
classes in a community, and build up round one or other of these
manifestations and embodiments of the creative energy of mankind the
general story of man’s movement from barbarism to civilisation. Even
art, even mechanical inventions, might be similarly handled, for both
of these stand in a significant relation to all the rest of the life of
each nation and of the world at large. Nevertheless, no one of these
suggested lines on which a universal history might be constructed
would quite meet the expectations which the name Universal History
raises, because we have become accustomed to think of history as being
primarily and pre-eminently a narrative of the growth and development
of communities, nations, and states as organised political bodies,
seeing that it is in their character as bodies so organised that they
come into relation with other nations and states. It is therefore
better to follow the familiar plan of dealing with the annals of each
race and nation as a distinct entity, while endeavouring to show
throughout the whole narrative the part which each fills in the general
drama of human effort, conflict, and progress.
A universal history may, however, while conforming to this established
method, follow it out along a special line, which shall give prominence
to some one leading idea or principle. Such a line or point of view has
been found for the present work in the relation of man to his physical
environment--that is to say, to the geographical conditions which have
always surrounded him, and always must surround him, conditions whose
power and influence he has felt ever since he appeared upon the globe.
This point of view is more comprehensive than any one of those above
enumerated. Physical environment has told upon each and every one of
the lines of human activity already enumerated that could be taken to
form a central line for the writing of a history of mankind. It has
influenced not only political institutions and economic phenomena, but
also religion, and social institutions, and art, and inventions. No
department of man’s life has been independent of it, for it works upon
man not only materially but also intellectually and morally.
[Illustration: UNEARTHING THE RUINS OF ANCIENT BABYLON IN THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY
This photograph illustrates how present-day exploration brings
the remains of the ancient wonder cities of Babylonia to light
after the sleep of ages. Much valuable knowledge of Babylon has
been acquired quite recently as a result of excavations now being
carried on under the supervision of English, American, French, and
German explorers.
]
As this is the idea which has governed the preparation of the present
book, as it is constructed upon a geographical rather than a purely
chronological plan (though, of course, each particular country and
nation needs to be treated chronologically), some few pages may
properly be devoted here to a consideration of the way in which
geography determines history, or, in other words, to an examination of
the relations of Nature, inorganic and organic, to the life of man.
MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE’S KINGDOM
Though we are accustomed to contrast man with Nature, and to look upon
the world outside ourselves as an object to be studied by man, the
conscious and intelligent subject, it is evident, and has been always
recognised even by those thinkers who have most exalted the place man
holds in the Cosmos, that man is also to be studied as a part of the
physical universe. He belongs to the realm of Nature in respect of his
bodily constitution, which links him with other animals, and in certain
respects with all the phenomena that lie within the sphere of biology.
All creatures on our earth, since they have bodies formed from material
constituents, are subject to the physical laws which govern matter; and
the life of all is determined, so far as their bodies are concerned,
by the physical conditions which foster, or depress, or destroy life.
Plants need soil, moisture, sunshine, and certain constituents of the
atmosphere. Their distribution over the earth’s surface depends not
only upon the greater or less extent to which these things, essential
to their existence, are present, but also upon the configuration of
the earth’s surface (continents and oceans), upon the greater or
less elevation above sea level of parts of it, upon such forces as
winds and ocean currents (occasionally also upon volcanoes), upon the
interposition of arid deserts between moister regions, or upon the flow
of great rivers. The flora of each country is the resultant (until man
appears upon the scene) of these natural conditions.
[Sidenote: Natural Conditions of Life]
We know that some plants are also affected by the presence of certain
animals, particularly insects and birds. Similarly, animals depend
upon these same conditions which regulate their distribution, partly
directly, partly indirectly, or mediately through the dependence of
the animal for food upon the plants whose presence or absence these
conditions have determined. It would seem that animals, being capable
of moving from place to place, and thus of finding conditions suitable
for their life, and to some extent of modifying their life to suit the
nature around them, are somewhat more independent than plants are,
though plants, too, possess powers of adapting themselves to climatic
surroundings; and there are some--such, for instance, as our common
brake-fern and the grass of Parnassus--which seem able to thrive
unmodified in very different parts of the globe.
[Sidenote: Man the Servant of Nature]
The primary needs of man which he shares with the other animals are an
atmosphere which he can breathe, a temperature which he can support,
water which he can drink, and food. In respect of these he is as
much the product of geographical conditions as are the other living
creatures. Presently he superadds another need, that of clothing. It
is a sign that he is becoming less dependent on external conditions,
for by means of clothing he can make his own temperature and succeed
in enduring a degree of cold, or changes from heat to cold, which
might otherwise shorten his life. The discovery of fire carries him a
long step further, for it not only puts him less at the mercy of low
temperatures, but extends the range of his food supplies, and enables
him, by procuring better tools and weapons, to obtain his food more
easily. We need not pursue his upward course, at every stage of which
he finds himself better and still better able to escape from the
thraldom of Nature, and to turn to account the forces which she puts
at his disposal. But although he becomes more and more independent,
more and more master not only of himself, but of her, he is none the
less always for many purposes the creature of the conditions with which
she surrounds him. He always needs what she gives him. He must always
have regard to the laws which he finds operating through her realm. He
always finds it the easiest course to obey, and to use rather than to
attempt to resist her.
Here let me pause to notice a remarkable contrast between the earlier
and the later stages of man’s relations to Nature. In the earlier
stages he lies helpless before her, and must take what she chooses to
bestow--food, shelter, materials for clothing, means of defence against
the wild beasts, who are in strength far more than a match for him. He
depends upon her from necessity, and is better or worse off according
as she is more or less generous.
[Sidenote: Man’s Advance in Knowledge]
But in the later stages of his progress he has, by accumulating a store
of knowledge, and by the development of his intelligence, energy, and
self-confidence, raised himself out of his old difficulties. He no
longer dreads the wild beasts. They, or such of them as remain, begin
to dread him, for he is crafty, and can kill them at a distance. He
erects dwellings which can withstand rain and tempest. He irrigates
hitherto barren lands and raises abundant crops from them. When he has
invented machinery, he produces in an hour clothing better than his
hands could formerly have produced in a week. If at any given time
he has not plenty of food, this happens only because he has allowed
his species to multiply too fast. He is able to cross the sea against
adverse winds and place himself in a more fertile soil or under more
genial skies than those of his former home. As respects all the primary
needs of his life, he has so subjected Nature to himself, that he can
make his life what he will.
[Illustration:
Neurdein
THE FIRST WANDERERS OF THE EARTH: TRIBAL MIGRATION IN PREHISTORIC TIMES
From the painting of “Cain” by Ferdinand Cormon
]
[Sidenote: Man the Master of Nature]
All this renders him independent. But he now also finds himself drawn
into a new kind of dependence, for he has now come to take a new view
of Nature. He perceives in her an enormous storehouse of wealth, by
using which he can multiply his resources and gratify his always
increasing desires to an extent practically unlimited. She provides
forces, such as steam and electricity, which his knowledge enables him
to employ for production and transport, so as to spare his own physical
strength, needed now not so much for effort as for the direction of
the efforts of Nature. She has in the forest, and still more beneath
her own surface in the form of minerals, the materials by which these
forces can be set in motion; and by using these forces man can, with
comparatively little trouble, procure abundance of those materials.
Thus his relation to Nature is changed. It was that of a servant, or,
indeed, rather of a beggar, needing the bounty of a sovereign. It
is now that of a master needing the labour of a servant, a servant
infinitely stronger than the master, but absolutely obedient to the
master so long as the master uses the proper spell. Thus the connection
of man with Nature, changed though his attitude be, is really as close
as ever, and far more complex. If his needs had remained what they
were in his primitive days--let us say, in those palæolithic days
which we can faintly adumbrate to ourselves by an observation of the
Australian or Fuegian aborigines now--he would have sat comparatively
lightly to Nature, getting easily what he wanted, and not caring to
trouble her for more. But his needs--that is to say, his desires, both
his physical appetites and his intellectual tastes, his ambitions and
his fondness for comfort, things that were once luxuries having become
necessaries--have so immeasurably expanded that, since he asks much
more from Nature, he is obliged to study her more closely than ever.
[Sidenote: Man’s New Relations to Nature]
Thus he enters into a new sort of dependence upon her, because it is
only by understanding her capacities and the means of using them that
he can get from her what he wants. Primitive man was satisfied if he
could find spots where the trees gave edible fruit, where the sun was
not too hot, nor the winds too cold, where the beasts easy of capture
were abundant, and no tigers or pythons made the forest terrible.
Civilised man has more complex problems to deal with, and wider fields
to search. The study of Nature is not only still essential to him, but
really more essential than ever. His life and action are conditioned
by her. His industry and his commerce are directed by her to certain
spots. That which she has to give is still, directly or indirectly,
the source of strife, and a frequent cause of war. As men fought long
ago with flint-headed arrows for a spring of water or a coconut grove,
so they fight to-day for mineral treasures imbedded in the soil. It
is mainly by Nature that the movements of emigration and the rise of
populous centres of industry are determined.
Though Nature still rules for many purposes and in many ways the
course of human affairs, the respective value of her various gifts
changes from age to age, as man’s knowledge and power of turning them
to account have changed. The things most prized by primitive man are
not those which semi-civilised man chiefly prized, still less are they
those most sought for now.
[Sidenote: Using Natural Wealth]
In primitive times the spots most attractive, because most favourable
to human life, were those in which food could be most easily and
safely obtained from fruit-bearing trees or by the chase, and where
the climate was genial enough to make clothing and shelter needless,
at least during the greater part of the year. Later, when the keeping
of cattle and tillage had come into use, good pastures and a fertile
soil in the valley of a river were the chief sources of material
well-being. Wild beasts were less terrible, because man was better
armed; but as human enemies were formidable, regions where hills and
rocks facilitated defence by furnishing natural strongholds had their
advantages.
Still later, forests came to be recognised as useful for fuel, and
for carpentry and shipbuilding. Mineral deposits, usually found in
hilly or mountainous districts, became pre-eminently important sources
of wealth; and rivers were valued as highways of commerce and as
sources of motive power by the force of their currents. To the Red
Indians of the Ohio valley the places which were the most attractive
camping-grounds were those whither the buffaloes came in vast herds to
lick the rock salt exposed in the sides of the hills. It is now not the
salt-licks, but the existence of immense deposits of coal and iron,
that have determined the growth of huge communities in those regions
whence the red man and the buffalo have both vanished. England was
once, as New Zealand is now, a great wool-growing and wool-exporting
country, whereas she is to-day a country which spins and weaves far
more wool than she produces.
[Sidenote: Ancient Harbours and Modern]
So, too, the influence of the sea on man has changed. There was a
time when towns were built upon heights some way off from the coast,
because the sea was the broad high road of pirates who swooped down
upon and pillaged the dwellings of those who lived near it. Now that
the sea is safe, trading cities spring up upon its margin, and sandy
tracts worthless for agriculture have gained an unexpected value as
health resorts, or as places for playing games, places to which the
inhabitants of inland districts flock in summer, as they do in England
and Germany, or in winter, as they do on the Mediterranean coasts of
France. The Greeks, when they began to compete with the Phœnicians in
maritime commerce, sought for small and sheltered inlets in which their
tiny vessels could lie safely--such inlets as Homer describes in the
Odyssey, or as the Old Port of Marseilles, a city originally a colony
from the Ionian Phocæa. Nowadays these pretty little rock harbours
are useless for the large ships which carry our trade. The Old Port
of Marseilles is abandoned to small coasters and fishing-boats, and
the ocean steamers lie in a new harbour which is protected, partly by
outlying islands, partly by artificial works.
[Sidenote: The World-Importance of Medicine]