above all, for the precious metals, were the chief motives which
prompted the voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These
motives have remained operative; and to them has been added in more
recent times the spirit of pure adventure and the interest in science,
together with, increasing measure, the effort to secure trade. But the
extension of trade followed slowly in the wake of discovery. China and
Japan remained almost closed. The policy of Spain sought to restrict
her American waters to her own ships, and the commerce they carried
was scanty. Communication remained slow and dangerous across the oceans
till the introduction of steam vessels (1825-1830).
[Illustration: The Hereford Map: about 1307
Note Paradise at the top, and Jerusalem in the centre
The Fra Mauro Map: about 1457
Babylon is shown in the centre of the map
The World as Known on the Eve of Discovery of America (Drawn by Martin
Behaim in 1492)
The World as known in 150 A.D. From a map by Ptolemy, who appears to
have had knowledge of the sources of the Nile
THE FIRST MAPS: SOME EARLY GEOGRAPHERS’ IDEAS OF THE WORLD]
[Illustration: THE MODERN REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD: SHOWN ON THREE
DIFFERENT PROJECTIONS
In each case the British Empire is shaded
]
[Sidenote: Round the World in 40 Days!]
Land transport, though it had steadily increased in Europe, remained
costly as well as slow till the era of railway construction began in
1829. The application of steam as a motive power and of electricity as
a means of communicating thought has been by far the greatest factor
in this long process of reducing the dimensions of the world, which
dates back as far as the domestication of beasts of burden, and the
invention, first of paddles and oars, and then of sails. The North
American Continent can now be crossed in five days, the South American
(from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres) in under two, the Transandine tunnel
having now been pierced. The Continent which stretches from the Baltic
to the North Pacific can now be traversed in twelve days. By means of
the Trans-Siberian line and its steamship connection with the ports
of Japan, it is now possible to go round the globe in less than fifty
days. Indeed, the journey has recently been done in forty days. Nor
is this acceleration of transit more remarkable than its practical
immunity, as compared with earlier times, not only from the dangers
for which Nature is answerable, but from those also which man formerly
interposed.
The increase of trade which has followed in the track first of
discovery and latterly (with immensely larger volume) of the
improvement of means of transport, has been accompanied not only by the
seizure of transoceanic territories by the greater civilised States,
but also by an outflow of population from those States into the more
backward or more thinly-peopled parts of the earth. Sometimes, as
in the case of North America, Siberia, and Australia, the emigrants
extinguish or absorb the aboriginal population.
[Sidenote: Europeanisation of the World]
Sometimes, as in the case of India, Africa, and some parts of
South America, they neither extinguish nor blend with the previous
inhabitants, but rule them and spread what is called civilisation
among them--this civilisation consisting chiefly in a knowledge
of the mechanical arts and of deathful weapons accompanied by the
destruction, more or less gradual, of their pre-existing beliefs
and usages. Sometimes, again, as in the case of China, and to some
extent also of the Mussulman East, though political dominion is not
established, the process of substituting a new civilisation for the old
one goes on despite the occasional efforts of the backward people to
resist the process. The broad result is everywhere similar. The modern
European type of civilisation is being diffused over the whole earth,
superseding, or essentially modifying, the older local types. Thus,
in a still more important sense than even that of communications, the
world is contracted and becomes far more one than it has ever been
before. The European who speaks three or four languages can travel over
nearly all of it, and he can find on most of its habitable coasts, and
in many parts of the lately-discovered interior, the appliances which
are to him necessaries of life. The world is, in fact, becoming an
enlarged Europe, so far as the externals of life and the material side
of civilisation are concerned. The dissociative forces of Nature have
been overcome.
[Sidenote: Triumph of Natural Science]
Putting together the two processes, the process in time and the
process in space, which we have been reviewing, it will be seen that
the main line of the development of mankind may be described as the
transmission and the expansion of culture--that is to say, of knowledge
and intellectual capacity. The stock of knowledge available for use and
enjoyment has been steadily increased, and what each people accumulated
has been made available for all. With this there has come assimilation,
the destruction of weaker types of civilisation, the modification by
constant interaction of the stronger types, the creation of a common
type tending to absorb all the rest. Assimilation has been most
complete in the sphere ruled by natural science--that is to say, in
the material sphere, less complete in that ruled by the human sciences
(including the sphere of political and social institutions), still
less complete in the sphere of religious, moral, and social ideas, and
as respects the products of literature and art. Or, in other words,
where certainty of knowledge is attainable and utility in practice
is incontestable, the process of assimilation has moved fastest and
furthest.
[Sidenote: Nature & the Unity of Mankind]
The process has been a long one, for its beginnings reach back beyond
our historical knowledge. So far as it lies within the range of
history, it falls into two periods, the earlier of which supplies an
instructive illustration of the later one which we know better. The
effort which Nature--that is to say, the natural tendencies of man as a
social being--has been making towards the unification of mankind during
the last few centuries, is her second great effort. The first was in
progress from the time when the most ancient records begin down to the
sixth and seventh centuries of the Christian era.
[Illustration: THE FIRST TRAVELLER ROUND THE GLOBE
The great exploit of Ferdinand Magellan, who circumnavigated the
globe in 1519-1520, ranks among the events of world importance, and
was the culminating achievement of the greatest period of discovery
in the world’s history.
]
Greek civilisation, which itself had drawn much from Egypt, as well
as from Assyria, Phœnicia, and the peoples of Asia Minor, permeated
the minds and institutions (except the legal institutions), of the
Mediterranean and West European countries, and was propagated by the
governing energy of the Romans. In its Romanised form it transformed
or absorbed and superseded the less advanced civilisations of all
those countries, creating one new type for the whole Roman world. With
some local diversities, that type prevailed from the Northumbrian
Wall of Hadrian to the Caucasus and the deserts of Arabia. The still
independent races on the northern frontier of the Empire received a
tincture of it, and would doubtless have been more deeply imbued had
the Roman Empire stood longer.
Christianity, becoming dominant at a time when the Empire was already
tottering, gave a new sense of unity to all whom the Greco-Roman type
had formed, extended the influence of that type still further, and
enabled much that belonged to it (especially its religious, its legal,
and its literary elements) to survive the political dominion of the
Emperors and to perpetuate itself among practically independent States
which were springing up. The authority of Papal Rome helped to carry
this sense of unity among civilised men through a period of ignorance,
confusion, and semi-barbarism which might otherwise have extinguished
it. Nevertheless, we may say, broadly speaking, that the first effort
towards the establishment of a common type of civilisation was, if not
closed, yet arrested by the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the
West. Close thereupon came the rise of Islam, tearing away the Eastern
provinces, and creating a rival type of civilisation--though a type
largely influenced by the Greco-Roman--which held its ground for some
centuries, and has only recently shown that it is destined to vanish.
[Sidenote: Conquest and Civilisation]
The beginnings of the second effort toward the unification of civilised
mankind may be observed as far back as the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. Its effective and decisive action may, however, be assigned
to the fifteenth, when the spread of literary and philosophic culture,
and the swift extension of maritime discovery, ushered in the modern
phase wherein we have marked its irresistible advance. This phase
differs from the earlier one both in its range--for it embraces the
whole earth and not merely the Mediterranean lands--and in its basis,
for it rests not so much upon conquest and religion as upon scientific
knowledge, formative ideas, and commerce. Yet even here a parallelism
may be noted between the ancient and the modern phase. Knowledge and
ideas had brought about a marked assimilation of various parts of the
ancient world to each other before Roman conquest completed the work,
and what conquest did was done chiefly among the ruder races. So now,
while it is knowledge and ideas that have worked for the creation of
a common type among the peoples of European stock, conquest has been a
potent means of spreading this type in the outlying countries and among
the more backward races whose territories the European nations have
seized.
[Illustration: THE EUROPEANISATION OF THE WORLD
European civilisation is being diffused all over the earth,
superseding or essentially modifying the older local types.
The solid black portions of this map represent territory under
Anglo-Saxon control; the shaded parts are under other European
control, and the dotted parts under Asiatic and African control.
]
[Sidenote: Language a Unifying Influence]
The diffusion of a few forms of speech has played a great part in both
phases. Greek was spoken over the eastern half of the Roman world
in the second century A.D., though not to the extinction of such
tongues as Syriac and Egyptian. Latin was similarly spoken over the
western half, though not to the extinction of the tongues we now call
Basque and Breton and Welsh; and Latin continued to be the language
of religion, of law, of philosophy, and of serious prose literature
in general till the sixteenth century. So now, several of the leading
European tongues are spoken far beyond the limits of their birthplace,
and their wide range has become a powerful influence in diffusing
European culture. German, English, Russian, Spanish, and French are
available for the purposes of commerce, and for those who read books
over nineteen-twentieths of the earth’s surface. The languages of the
smaller non-European peoples are disappearing in those places where
they have to compete with these greater European tongues, except in
so far as they are a medium of domestic intercourse. Arabic, Chinese,
and in less degree Persian are the only non-European languages
which retain a world importance. English, German, and Spanish are
pre-eminently the three leading commercial languages. They gain ground
on the rest, and it is English that gains ground most swiftly. The
German merchant is no doubt even more ubiquitous (if the expression be
permitted) than is the English; but the German more frequently speaks
English than the Englishman or American speaks German.
[Sidenote: Linking the Nations Together]
It has already been observed that assimilation has advanced least
in the sphere of institutions, ideas, and literature. The question
might, indeed, be raised whether the types of thought, of national
character, and of literary activity represented by the five or six
leading nations are not rather tending to become more accentuated.
The self-consciousness of each nation, taking the form of pride or
vanity, leads it to exalt its own type and to dwell with satisfaction
on whatever differentiates it from other types. Nevertheless there are
influences at work in the domain of practice as well as of thought,
which, in creating a common body of opinion and a sense of common
interest among large classes belonging to these leading nations, tend
to link the nations themselves together. Religious sympathy, or a
common attachment to certain doctrines, such as, for instance, those
of Collectivism, works in this direction among the masses, as the
love of science or of art does among sections of the more educated
class. As regards the peoples not of European stock, who are, broadly
speaking, the more backward, it is not yet possible to say what will be
the influence of the European type of culture upon their intellectual
development.
The material side of their civilisation will after a time conform to
the European type, though, perhaps, to forms that are not the most
progressive; and even such faiths as Buddhism and Islam may lose their
hold on those who come most into contact with Europeans. But whether
these peoples will produce any new types of thought or art under the
stimulus of Europe, as the Teutons and Slavs did after they had been
for centuries in contact with the relics of Greco-Roman culture, or
whether they will be overborne by and merely imitate and reproduce what
Europeans teach them--this is a question for conjecture only, since the
data for predictions are wanting.
It is a question of special interest as regards the Japanese, the
one non-European race which, having an old civilisation of its own,
highly developed on the artistic side, has shown an amazing aptitude
for appropriating European institutions and ideas. Already a Japanese
physiologist has taken high rank among men of science by being one of
the discoverers of the bacillus of the Oriental plague.
DOES HISTORY MAKE FOR PROGRESS?
One of the questions which both the writers and the readers of a
History of the World must frequently ask themselves is whether the
course of history establishes a general law of progress. Some thinkers
have gone so far as to say that this must be the moral of history
regarded as a whole, and a few have even suggested that without the
recognition of such a principle and of a sort of general guidance of
human affairs towards this goal, history would be unintelligible, and
the doings of mankind would seem little better than the sport of chance.
[Sidenote: What is the Test of Progress?]
[Sidenote: What Mankind has Achieved]
Whatever may be thought of these propositions as matters of theory,
the doctrine of a general and steady law of progress is one to which
no historian ought to commit himself. His business is to set forth and
explain the facts exactly as they are; and if he writes in the light
of a theory he is pretty certain to be unconsciously seduced into
giving undue prominence to those facts which make for it. Moreover,
the question is in itself a far more complex one than the simple word
“progress” at first sight conveys. What is the test of progress? In
what form of human advance is it to be deemed to consist? Which of
these forms is of the highest value? There can be no doubt of the
advance made by man in certain directions. There may be great doubt
as to his advance in other directions. There may possibly be no
advance but even retrogression, or at least signs of an approaching
retrogression, in some few directions. The view to be taken of the
relative importance of these lines of movement is a matter not so much
for the historian as for the philosopher, and its discussion would
carry us away into fields of thought not fitted for a book like the
present. Although, therefore, it is true that one chief interest of
history resides in its capacity for throwing light on this question,
all that need here be said may be expressed as follows:
There has been a marvellous advance in man’s knowledge of the laws
of Nature and of his consequent mastery over Nature.
There has been therewith a great increase in population, and, on
the whole, in the physical vigour of the average individual man.
There has been, as a further consequence, an immense increase in
the material comfort and well-being of the bulk of mankind, so that
to most men necessaries have become easier of attainment, and many
things which were once luxuries have become necessaries.
Against this is to be set the fact that some of the natural resources
of the world are being rapidly exhausted. This would at one time have
excited alarm; but scientific discoveries have so greatly extended
man’s capacity to utilise other sources of natural energy, that people
are disposed to assume that the loss of the resources aforesaid will be
compensated by further discoveries.
[Sidenote: The Gain and the Loss]
As to progress other than material--that is to say, progress in
intellectual capacity, in taste, in the power of enjoyment, in virtue,
and generally in what is called happiness--every man’s view must
depend on the ideal which he sets before himself of what constitutes
happiness, and of the relative importance to happiness of the ethical
and the non-ethical elements which enter into the conception. Until
there is more agreement than now exists or has ever existed on these
points, there is no use in trying to form conclusions regarding the
progress man has made. Moreover, it is admitted that nearly every
gain man makes is accompanied by some corresponding loss--perhaps a
slight loss, yet a loss. When we attempt to estimate the comparative
importance of these gains and losses, questions of great difficulty,
both ethical and non-ethical, emerge; and in many cases our experience
is not yet sufficient to determine the quantum of loss. There is room
both for the optimist and for the pessimist, and in arguing such
questions nearly everybody becomes an optimist or a pessimist. The
historian has no business to be either.
There is another temptation besides that of delivering his opinion on
these high matters, of which the historian does well to be aware--I
mean the temptation to prophesy. The study of history as a whole,
more inevitably than that of the history of any particular country
or people, suggests forecasts of the future, because the broader the
field which we survey the more do we learn to appreciate the great and
wide-working forces that are guiding mankind, and the more therefore
are we led to speculate on the results which these forces, some of them
likely to be permanent, will tend to bring about.
[Sidenote: Modern Mastery of Nature]
This temptation can seldom have been stronger than it is now, when we
see all mankind brought into closer relations than ever before, and
more obviously dominated by forces which are essentially the same,
though varying in their form. Yet it will appear, when the problem is
closely examined, that the very novelty of the present situation of
the world--the fact that our mastery of Nature has been so rapidly
extended within the last century, and that the phenomena of the
subjugation of the earth by Europeans and of the ubiquitous contact
of the advanced and the backward races are so unexampled in respect
of the area they cover--that all predictions must be uttered with the
greatest caution, and due allowance made for elements which may disturb
even the most careful calculations. It may, indeed, be doubted whether
any predictions of a definitely positive kind--predictions that such
and such things will happen--can be safely made, save the obvious ones
which are based on the assumption that existing natural conditions
remain for some time operative.
[Sidenote: A Glimpse into the Future]
Taking this assumption to be a legitimate one, it maybe predicted that
population will continue to increase, at least till the now waste but
habitable parts of the earth have been turned to account; that races,
except where there is a marked colour line, will continue to become
intermingled; that the small and weak races, and especially the lower
set of savages, will be absorbed or die out; that fewer and fewer
languages will be spoken; that communications will become even swifter,
easier, and cheaper than they are at present; and that commerce and
wealth will continue to grow, subject, perhaps, to occasional checks
from political disturbance.
There are also some negative predictions on which one may venture,
and with a little more confidence. No new race can appear, except
possibly from a fusion of two or more existing races, or from the
differentiation of a branch of an existing race under new conditions,
as the Americans have been to some slight extent differentiated from
the English, and the Brazilians from the Portuguese (there having been
in the latter case a certain admixture of negro blood), and as the
Siberians of the future may be a different sort of Russians. Neither
is any new language likely to appear, except, mere trade jargons (like
Chinook or pigeon English), because the existing languages of the
great peoples are firmly established, and the process of change within
each of these languages has, owing to the abundance of printed matter,
become now extremely slow. Conditions can hardly be imagined under
which such a phenomenon as the development of the Romance languages out
of Latin, or of Danish and Swedish out of the common Northern tongue of
the eleventh century, could recur.
[Illustration: THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD AT PEACE
From the statuary groups on the Albert Memorial.
]
It may seem natural to add the further prediction that the great States
and the great religions will continue to grow and to absorb the small
ones. But when we touch topics into which human opinion or emotion
enters, we touch a new kind of matter, where the influences now at work
may be too much affected by new influences to permit of any forecast.
Conditions might conceivably come into action which would split up some
or most of the present great States, and bring the world back to an age
of small political communities.
So, too, though the lower forms of paganism are fast vanishing, and
the four or five great religions are extending their sway, it is
conceivable that new prophets may arise, founding new faiths, or that
the existing religions may be split up into new sects widely diverse
from one another. Even the supremacy of the European races, well
assured as it now appears, may be reduced by a variety of causes,
physiological or moral, when some centuries have passed.
[Illustration: THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD AT PEACE
From the statuary groups on the Albert Memorial.
]
Whoever examines the predictions made by the most observant and
profound thinkers of the past will see reason to distrust almost all
the predictions, especially those of a positive order, which shape
themselves in our minds to-day.
JAMES BRYCE
[Illustration: SUMMARY OF WORLD HISTORY
WITH
A CHRONOLOGY OF TEN THOUSAND YEARS
By Arthur D. Innes, M.A.]
Within the memory of living men, the most advanced peoples of the world
believed that the world itself had been created not 6,000 years ago. We
have all learned now that the globe itself, that life--and long later
mankind--came into being thousands, hundreds of thousands--it may be
millions--of years ago.
How long precisely, none can tell. What we do know with certainty is
that before the continents finally emerged in their present shape there
was an Ice Age, immediately preceded by what is called the Drift Age,
and that as early as the Drift Age man, the maker of implements, lived,
and did battle with the cave bear and other monsters. Where man first
came into being, how he spread over the globe, how the great races
acquired their characteristics, we can only conjecture.
[Sidenote: The Birth of the Nations]