are important not so much in respect of water carriage as because they
furnish the easiest lines along which railways can be constructed. The
two banks of the Rhine, each traversed by a railroad, carry far more
traffic than the great stream itself carried a century ago; and the
same remark applies to the Hudson. All these changes are due to the
progress of invention, which may give us fresh changes in the future
not less far-reaching than those the past has seen. Mountainous regions
with a heavy rainfall, such as Western Norway or the coast of the
Pacific in Washington and British Columbia, may, by the abundance of
water power which they supply, which can be transmuted into electrical
energy, become sources of previously unlooked-for wealth, especially
if some cheap means can be devised of conveying electricity with less
wastage in transmission than is at present incurred. Within the last
few years considerable progress in this direction has been made. Should
effective and easily applicable preventives against malarial fever
be discovered, many districts now shunned, because dangerous to the
life of white men, may become the homes of flourishing communities.
The discovery of cinchona bark in the seventeenth century affected
the course of events, because it provided a remedy against a disease
that had previously baffled medical skill. If quinine had been at the
disposal of the men of the Middle Ages, not only might the lives of
many great men, as for instance of Dante, have been prolonged, but
the Teutonic emperors would have been partially relieved of one of
the chief obstacles which prevented them from establishing permanent
control over their Italian dominions. Rome and the Papal power defended
themselves against the hosts of the Franconian and Hohenstaufen
sovereigns by the fevers of the Campagna more effectively than did the
Roman people by their arms, and almost as effectively as did the Popes
by their spiritual agencies.
Bearing in mind this principle, that the gifts of Nature to man
not only increase, but also vary in their form, in proportion and
correspondence to man’s capacity to use them, and remembering also
that man is almost as much influenced by Nature when he has become her
adroit master as when she was his stern mistress, we may now go on to
examine more in detail the modes in which her influence has told and
still tells upon him.
[Sidenote: The Problem of Racial Distinctions]
It has long been recognised that Nature must have been the principal
factor in producing, that is to say, in differentiating, the various
races of mankind as we find them differentiated when our records begin.
How this happened is one of the darkest problems that history presents.
By what steps and through what causes did the races of man acquire
these diversities of physical and intellectual character which are now
so marked and seem so persistent? It has been suggested that some of
these diversities may date back to a time when man, as what is called a
distinct species, had scarcely begun to exist. Assuming the Darwinian
hypothesis of the development of man out of some pithecoid form to
be correct--and those who are not themselves scientific naturalists
can of course do no more than provisionally accept the conclusions at
which the vast majority of scientific naturalists have arrived--it
is conceivable that there may have been unconnected developments of
creatures from intermediate forms into definitely human forms in
different regions, and that some of the most marked types of humanity
may therefore have had their first rudimentary and germinal beginning
before any specifically human type had made its appearance. This,
however, is not the view of the great majority of naturalists. They
appear to hold that the passage either from some anthropoid apes, or
from some long since extinct common ancestor of man and the existing
anthropoid apes--this latter alternative representing what is now the
dominant view--did not take place through several channels (so to
speak), but through one only, and that there was a single specifically
human type which subsequently diverged into the varieties we now see.
[Illustration: TREE DWELLERS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
We must remember that such terms as “The Stone Age,” “The Bronze
Age,” and so forth, are only loosely applied. The ages so called
did not close at certain periods. There are races now living in all
the conditions of these past ages. This photograph, for example,
shows the actual tree dwellings of the Papuans in New Guinea
to-day--one of the most primitive forms of human habitation.
]
If this be so, it is plain that climate, and the conditions of life
which depend upon climate, soil, and the presence of vegetables and
of other animals besides man, must have been the forces which moulded
and developed those varieties. From a remote antiquity, everybody has
connected the dark colour of all, or nearly all, the races inhabiting
the torrid zone with the power of the sun; and the fairer skin of
the races of the temperate and arctic zones with the comparative
feebleness of his rays in those regions. This may be explained on
Darwinian principles by supposing that the darker varieties were
found more capable of supporting the fierce heat of the tropics. What
explanation is to be given of the other characteristics of the negro
and negroid races, of the usually frizzled hair, of the peculiar nose
and jaw, and so forth, is a question for the naturalist rather than
for the historian. Although climate and food may be the chief factors
in differentiation, the nature of the process is, as indeed is the
case with the species of animals generally, sometimes very obscure.
Take an instance from three African races which, so far as we can
tell, were formed under similar climatic conditions--the Bushmen,
the Hottentots, and the Bantu, the race including those whom we call
Kaffirs. Their physical aspect and colour are different. Their size and
the structure of their bodies are different. Their mental aptitudes
are different; and one of the oddest points of difference is this, that
whereas the Bushmen are the least advanced, intellectually, morally,
and politically, of the three races, as well as the physically weakest,
they show a talent for drawing which is not possessed by the other two.
[Illustration: THE HABITATIONS OF MAN IN ALL AGES OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY
At first man built twig huts in trees, but becoming better matched
with his animal foes he took to caves and underground habitations.
Our illustration of the latter shows a section through the soil.
Lake dwellings marked a distinct advance. Other varieties of
primitive habitations are the leaf hut, the tents of skin, the mud
hut, and the beehive hut of stone. Roman villas are still models
of beauty. American “skyscrapers” are peculiar to our time; but
all early forms of dwellings, while marking progress, have existed
contemporaneously throughout history.
]
[Sidenote: Is the Race Mystery Insoluble?]
In this case there is, of course, a vast unknown fore-time during
which we may imagine the Bantu race, probably originally formed in a
region other than that which it now occupies (and under more favourable
conditions for progress), to have become widely differentiated
from those which are now the lower African races. We still know
comparatively little about African ethnography. Let us, therefore,
take another instance in which affinities of language give ground for
believing that three races, whose differences are now marked, have
diverged from a common stock. So far as language goes, the Celts,
the Teutons, and the Slavs, all speaking Indo-European tongues, may
be deemed to be all nearly connected in origin. They are marked by
certain slight physical dissimilarities, and by perhaps rather more
palpable dissimilarities in their respective intellectual and emotional
characters. But so far as our knowledge goes, all three have lived for
an immensely long period in the colder parts of the temperate zone,
under similar external conditions, and following very much the same
kind of pastoral and agricultural life. There is nothing in their
environment which explains the divergences we perceive; so the origin
of these divergences must apparently be sought either in admixture with
other races or in some other historical causes which are, and will for
ever remain, in the darkness of a recordless past.
[Sidenote: Mixing of the World’s Peoples]
How race admixture works, and how it forms a new definite character
out of diverse elements, is a subject which anyone may find abundant
materials for studying in the history of the last two thousand years.
Nearly every modern European people has been so formed. The French,
the Spaniards, and the English are all the products of a mixture, in
different proportions, of at least three elements--Iberian (to use
a current name), Celts, and Teutons, though the Celtic element is
probably comparatively small in Spain, and the Teutonic comparatively
small both in Spain and in Central and Southern France. No small part
of those who to-day speak German and deem themselves Germans must be
of Slavonic stock. Those who to-day speak Russian are very largely
of Finnish, to some small extent of Tartar, blood. The Italians
probably spring from an even larger number of race-sources, without
mentioning the vast number of slaves brought from the East and the
North into Italy between B.C. 100 and A.D. 300. In the cases of
Switzerland and Scotland the process of fusion is not yet complete.
The Celto-Burgundian Swiss of Neuchatel is still different from the
Allemanian Swiss of Appenzell; as the Anglo-Celt of Fife is different
from the Ibero-Celt of the Outer Hebrides. But in both these cases
there is already a strong sense of national unity, and in another three
hundred years there may have arisen a single type of character.
[Sidenote: The Unique Case of Iceland]
An interesting and almost unique case is furnished by Iceland, where
isolation under peculiar conditions of climate, food, and social life
has created a somewhat different type both of body and of mental
character from that of the Norwegians, although so far as blood goes
the two peoples are identical, Iceland having been colonised from
Western Norway a thousand years ago, and both Icelanders and Norwegians
having remained practically unmixed with any other race--save that
some slight Celtic infusion came to Iceland with those who migrated
thither from the Norse settlements in Ireland, Northern Scotland, and
the Hebrides--since the separation took place. But by far the most
remarkable instance of race admixture is that furnished in our own time
by the United States of North America, where a people of predominantly
English stock (although there were in the end of the eighteenth century
a few descendants of Dutchmen, with Germans, Swedes, and Ulster
Irishmen, in the country) has within the last sixty years received
additions of many millions of Celts, of Germans and Scandinavians, and
of various Slavonic races. At least a century must elapse before it
can be seen how far this infusion of new blood will change the type of
American character as it stood in 1840.
There are, however, two noteworthy differences between modern race
fusions and those which belong to primitive times. One is that under
modern conditions the influence of what may be called the social and
political environment is probably very much greater than it was in
early times. The American-born son of Irish parents is at forty years
of age a very different creature from his cousin on the coast of Mayo.
The other is that in modern times differences of colour retard or
forbid the fusion of two races. So far as the Teutonic peoples are
concerned, no one will intermarry with a negro; a very few with a
Hindu, a Chinese, or a Malay. In the ancient world there was but little
contact between white men and black or yellow ones, but the feeling of
race aversion was apparently less strong than it is now, just as it was
much less strong among the Spaniards and Portuguese in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries than it is among Americans or Englishmen
to-day. It is less strong even now among the so-called “Latin races;”
and as regards the Anglo-Americans, it is much less strong towards the
Red Indians than towards negroes.
[Illustration: THE REMARKABLE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE
Mr. Bryce points out that the physical features of a people are
determined chiefly by their environment. These illustrations show
(at top) a typical English settler in the old Colonial days of
America, a native Red Indian (left) and a typical American of
to-day (right). Without any intermingling of red men and white,
the modern American, thanks to climatic conditions, resembles the
Red Indian far more closely than he does his own ancestors of the
Colonial days.
]
As Nature must have been the main agent in the formation of the various
races of mankind from a common stock, so also Nature has been the chief
cause of their movements from one part of the earth to another, these
movements having been in their turn a potent influence in the admixture
of the races. Some geographers have alleged climate--that is to say,
the desire of those who inhabit an inclement region to enjoy a softer
and warmer air--as a principal motive which has induced tribes of
nations to transfer themselves from one region to another.
It is no doubt true that the direction of migrations has almost always
been either from the north towards the south, or else along parallels
of latitude, men rarely seeking for themselves conditions more severe
than those under which they were born. But it is usually not so much
the wish to escape cold that has been an effective motive as the wish
to find more and better food, since this means an altogether easier
life. Scarcity of the means of subsistence, which is, of course, most
felt when population is increasing, has operated more frequently
and powerfully than any other cause in bringing on displacements
of the races of man over the globe. The movement of the primitive
Aryans into India from the plateaux of West Central Asia, probably
also the movement of the races which speak Dravidian languages from
South Central Asia into Southern India, and probably also the mighty
descent, in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., of the Teutonic races
from the lands between the Baltic and the Alps into the Roman Empire,
had this origin.
[Sidenote: The Colonising Impulse]
In more advanced states of society a like cause leads the surplus
population of a civilised state to overflow into new lands, where there
is more space, or the soil is more fertile. Thus the inhabitants of
Southwestern Scotland, partly, no doubt, at the suggestion of their
rulers, crossed over into Ulster, where they occupied the best lands,
driving the aboriginal Celts into the rougher and higher districts,
where their descendants remain in the glens of Antrim, and in the hilly
parts of Down, Derry, and Tyrone. Thus the men of New England moved
out to the West and settled in the Mississippi Valley, while the men
of Virginia crossed the Alleghanies into Kentucky. Thus the English
have colonised Canada and Australia and New Zealand and Natal. Thus the
Russians have spread out from their ancient homes on the upper courses
of the Dnieper and the Volga all over the vast steppes that stretch
to the Black Sea and the Caucasus, as well as into the rich lands of
Southwestern Siberia. Thus the surplus peasantry of Germany has gone
not only to North America, but also to Southern Brazil and the shores
of the Rio de la Plata.
[Sidenote: The Need of Native Labour]
In another form it is the excess of population over means of
subsistence at home that has produced the remarkable outflow of the
Chinese through the Eastern Archipelago and across the Pacific into
North America, and that has carried the Japanese to the Hawaiian
Islands. And here we touch another cause of migration which is
indirectly traceable to Nature--namely, the demand in some countries
for more labour or cheaper labour than the inhabitants of the country
are able or willing to supply. Sometimes this demand is attributable to
climatic causes. The Spaniards and Portuguese and English in the New
World were unfitted by their physical constitutions for out-of-door
labour under a tropical sun. Hence they imported negroes during the
sixteenth and two following centuries in such numbers that there are
now about eight millions of coloured people in the United States alone,
and possibly (though no accurate figures exist) as many more in the
West Indies and South America. To a much smaller extent the same need
for foreign labour has recently brought Indian coolies to the shores
of the Caribbean Sea, and to the hottest parts of Natal, as it brings
Polynesians to the sugar plantations of Northern Queensland.
[Sidenote: What Determines Race Movements]
Two other causes which have been potent in bringing about displacements
and mixtures of population are the desire for conquest and plunder
and the sentiment of religion. But these belong less to the sphere of
Nature than to that of human passion and emotion, so that they scarcely
fall within this part of our inquiry, the aim of which has been to
show how Nature has determined history by inducing a shifting of races
from place to place. From this shifting there has come the contact
of diverse elements, with changes in each race due to the influence
of the other, or perhaps the absorption of one in the other, or the
development of something new out of both. In considering these race
movements we have been led from the remote periods in which they began,
and of which we know scarcely anything except from archæological and
linguistic data, to periods within the range of authentic history.
So we may go on to see how Nature has determined the spots in which
the industry of the more advanced races should build up the earliest
civilisations, and the lines along which commerce, a principal agent
in the extension of civilisation, should proceed to link one race with
another.
[Illustration: THE MERCHANT MARINERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
The earliest agents in the diffusion of trades and the arts were
the Phœnicians, who from their great cities of Tyre, Sidon, and
Carthage conducted a sea-borne traffic with lands as remote as
England, and whose adventurous sailors, despite the smallness of
their vessels, are believed even to have succeeded in rounding the
Cape of Good Hope.
]
[Sidenote: Isolation of Eastern Peoples]
It was long since observed that the first homes of a dense population
and a highly developed civilisation lay in fertile river valleys,
such as those of the Lower Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the
Ganges, the Yang-tse-kiang. All these are situate in the hotter parts
of the temperate zone; all are regions of exceptional fertility.
The soil, especially when tillage has become general, is the first
source of wealth; and it is in the midst of a prosperous agricultural
population that cities spring up where handicrafts and the arts arise
and flourish. The basins of the Lower Nile and of the Lower Euphrates
and Tigris are (as respects the West Asiatic and Mediterranean world)
the fountain-heads of material, military, and artistic civilisation.
From them it spreads over the adjacent countries and along the
coasts of Europe and Africa. On the east, Egypt and Mesopotamia are
cut off by the deserts of Arabia and Eastern Persia from the perhaps
equally ancient civilisation of India, which again is cut off by lofty
and savage mountains from the very ancient civilisation of China.
Nature forbade intercourse between these far eastern regions and the
West Asian peoples, while on the other hand Nature permitted Egypt,
Phœnicia, and Babylon to influence and become teachers of the peoples
of Asia Minor and of the Greeks on both sides of the Ægean Sea. The
isolation and consequent independent development of India and of
China is one of the most salient and significant facts of history. It
was not till the end of the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese
reached the Malabar coast, that the Indian peoples began to come into
the general movement of the world; for the expedition of Alexander
the Great left hardly any permanent result, except upon Buddhist art,
and the conquests of Mahmud of Ghazni opened no road to the East from
the Mediterranean West. Nor did China, though visited by Italian
travellers in the thirteenth century, by Portuguese traders and Jesuit
missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth, come into effective
contact with Europe till near our own time.
As the wastes of barren land formed an almost impassable eastern
boundary to the West Asian civilisations, so on the west the expanse
of sea brought Egypt and to a less extent Assyria (through Phœnicia)
into touch with all the peoples who dwelt on the shores of the
Mediterranean. The first agents in the diffusion of trade and the arts
were the Phœnicians, established at Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage. The next
were the Greeks. For more than two thousand years, from B.C.
700 onwards, the Mediterranean is practically the centre of the
history of the world, because it is the highway both of commerce and
of war. For seven hundred years after the end of the second century
B.C., that is to say, while the Roman Empire remained strong,
it was also the highway of civil administration. The Saracen conquests
of the seventh century cut off North Africa and Syria from Europe,
checked transmarine commerce, and created afresh the old opposition
of East and West in which a thousand years earlier Herodotus had
found the main thread of world history. But it was not till after the
discovery of America that the Mediterranean began to yield to the
Atlantic its primacy as the area of sea power and sea-borne trade.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Seas in History]
Bordered by far less fertile and climate-favoured countries, and closed
to navigation during some months of winter, the Baltic has always held
a place in history far below that of the Mediterranean. Yet it has
determined the relations of the North European states and peoples. So,
too, the North Sea has at one time exposed Britain to attack from the
Danish and Norwegian lords of the sea, and at other times protected
her from powerful continental enemies. It may indeed be said that in
surrounding Europe by the sea on three sides, Nature has drawn the main
lines which the course of events on this smallest but most important of
the continents has had to follow.
[Sidenote: Magellan and American Politics]
Of the part which the great bodies of water have played, of the
significance in the oceans of mighty currents like the Gulf Stream, the
Polar Current, the Japan Current, the Mozambique Current, it would be
impossible to speak within reasonable compass. But two remarks may be
made before leaving this part of the subject. One is that man’s action
in cutting through an isthmus may completely alter the conditions as
given by Nature. The Suez Canal has of late years immensely enhanced
the importance of the Mediterranean, already in some degree restored by
the decay of Turkish power, by the industrial revival of Italy, and by
the French conquests in North Africa. The cutting of a canal at Panama
will change the relations of the seafaring and fleet-owning nations
that are interested in the Atlantic and the Pacific. And the other
remark is that the significance of a maritime discovery, however great
at first, may become still greater with the lapse of time. Magellan,
in his ever memorable voyage, not only penetrated to and crossed the
Pacific, but discovered the Philippine Islands, and claimed them for
the monarch who had sent him forth. His appropriation of them for
the Crown of Spain, to which during these three centuries and a half
they have brought no benefit, has been the cause which has led the
republic of the United States to depart from its traditional policy of
holding to its own continent by taking them as a prize--a distant and
unexpected prize--of conquest.
[Illustration: HOW NATURE DETERMINES THE SITES OF CITIES
Most towns and communities founded more than 300 years ago were on
easily defensible hills, by the side of navigable rivers, or inlets
of the sea. Our illustrations show (1) Naples, (2) Bonsuna, (3) Old
Port and hill of Marseilles, (4) Monaco, (5) St. Cézaire, and (6)
the Greek Monastery of St. Balaam.
Photos. by Frith and Underwood & Underwood
]
[Illustration: THE SHIFTING OF THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD’S COMMERCE
These two maps, which have been very carefully prepared from the
most reliable authorities, indicate at a glance the relative
importance of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic as highways of
commerce in the time of Julius Cæsar, B.C. 102-44.
]
[Illustration: HOW THE MEDITERRANEAN HAS GIVEN PLACE TO THE ATLANTIC
Here is the contrast to the opposite page. In our time the
Atlantic has become the centre of the world’s commerce, and the
Mediterranean has sunk in importance. It would be almost deserted
but for the routes to India via the Suez Canal.
]