parts--84,250,000 square miles of land, 220,000,000 square miles of
water, and 13,750,000 square miles of ice-covered, and for the greater
part unexplored, land and sea in the Northern and Southern Polar
regions. The land is the natural home of man, and all his historical
movements begin and end upon it. The size of states is computed
according to the amount of land which they include; their growth has
derived its nourishment from the 84,250,000 square miles of earth as
from a widespread fundamental element. The sea is not to be looked upon
as an empty space between the divisions of land, merely separating them
one from another, for the 220,000,000 square miles of water are also of
historical importance, and the area of every ocean and of every portion
of an ocean has its historical significance. History has extended
itself over the sea, from island to island, from coast to coast, at
first crossing narrow bodies of water, later broad oceans; and states
whose foundations arose from connections by sea remain dependent on the
sea. The Mediterranean held together the different parts of the Roman
Empire just as the oceans unite the Colonies of the British Empire.
The variations of the earth’s form from that of a perfect oblate
spheroid are so small that they may be entirely disregarded from the
point of view of history. All portions of the earth’s surface may be
looked upon as of equal curvature; the pyriform swelling which Columbus
believed to be a peculiarity of the tropic zones in the New World was
merely an optical illusion. Thus all portions are practically similar,
and uniformity obtains over the entire earth to such an extent that
there is room left only for minor inequalities in configuration. To
these belong the differences in level between lands and seas, highlands
and lowlands, mountains and valleys. Such variations amount to very
little when compared with the earth as a whole; for the height of the
tallest of the Himalayas added to the earth’s radius would increase its
length by about 1/700 only; and the same may be said of the greatest
depressions beneath the level of the sea--inequalities that cannot be
represented on an ordinary globe. Their great historical significance
is due chiefly to the fact that the oceans and seas occupy the
depressions, from which the greatest elevations emerge as vast islands.
[Sidenote: Irregular Surface of the Earth]
The remaining irregularities of the earth’s surface are not sufficient
to produce any permanent variations in the diffusion of races or of
states. Their influence is merely negative; they may only hinder or
divert the course of man in his wanderings. Even the Himalayas have
been crossed--by the Aryans in the west, and by the Tibetans in the
east; and British India has extended its boundaries far beyond them to
the Pamirs. The historian is concerned with but two of the variable
qualities of the land--differences in level and differences in contour.
Variations in constitution, development, elementary constituents,
and the perpetual phenomena of transformation and dissolution which
present a thousand problems to the geographer, scarcely exist for the
historian. Nor are those great inequalities, the depressions in which
the seas rest, of any interest to him. It is indifferent whether the
greatest of such depressions be covered by five miles of water, or,
as we now know, by almost six miles. The fact that the Mediterranean
reaches its greatest depth in the eastern part of the Ionian Sea has
nothing whatever to do with the history of Greece.
[Sidenote: Depths of The Sea]
To be sure, there is a general connection between the depth of the
Mediterranean, shut up within the Straits of Gibraltar, and the
climate of the neighbouring regions, which has a direct influence on
the inhabitants of Mediterranean countries; but it is a very distant
connection, and it is only mentioned here in order to remind the reader
that there is not a single phenomenon in Nature that is not brought
home to mankind at last. Still, as a rule, history is concerned with
the depths of the sea only in so far as they are the resting-places for
submarine telegraph cables; and this is a fact of very recent times.
It may be said that the formation of the earth’s crust occurred at a
period too remote to have had any influence on the history of man, and
that therefore all questions concerning it should be left to geology.
The first statement may be admitted, but the latter does not follow by
any means; for if the whole Mediterranean region from the Caucasus to
the Atlas Mountains, and from the Orontes to the Danube, is a region
of uniform conformation, it is purely by reason of a uniformity in
development. In the same manner there is an extensive region of uniform
conformation to the north, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Sudetic
Mountains in Austria.
[Sidenote: Nature Divides and Unites]
There are great features of the earth’s conformation that are so
extensive that groups of nations share them in common. Russia and
Siberia occupy the same plain upon which the greater portions of
Germany, Belgium, and Holland are situated. Germany and France share
the central mountain system which extends from the Cévennes to the
Sudeten, or Sudetic Mountains. A mere participation in a common
geological feature produces such affinity and relationship as may be
seen in the Alpine states, in Sweden and Norway, and in the nations
of the Andes. This reminds us of the groups of nations that surround
seas; but that which separates the Baltic states binds them together;
and the mountains that unite the Swiss cantons also separate them from
one another. Lesser features of conformation divide countries and often
exhibit gaps and breaches in development, for the reason that they
divide a political whole into separate natural regions. The history
of the lowlands of North Germany differs greatly from that of the
mountainous districts of the same country; the lowlands of the Po and
Apennine Italy are two different lands. The great contrast between the
hilly manufacturing west of England and the low-lying agricultural
east extends throughout English history; and in like manner the
highlands and the lowlands are opposed to each other in Scotland.
[Illustration: SCENERY THAT SHAPES CHARACTER: THE INFLUENCE OF THE
MOUNTAINS
The stories of mountain peoples are very similar; the Highlanders
of Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, the Cevennes, and Tyrol, have
many characteristics in common, owing their rugged nature and
independence to environment.
]
Wherever mountain formations occur largely in a country, the question
arises whether, in spite of all diversity, they unite to form a whole,
or whether they exist as separate, independent neighbouring parts.
The elements of the surface formation of the earth are not only
historically important in themselves as units, but also on account
of the way in which they are connected with one another. We have in
Greece an example of an exceedingly intricate mountain system in which
barren plateaus are interspersed with fertile valleys and bays. Owing
to the sea, such bays as those of Attica, Argos, and Lamia are to a
high degree self-dependent; they became little worlds in themselves,
independent states, which could never have grown into a united whole
had they not been subjected to external pressure.
The reverse of this state of disunion, arising from the juxtaposition
of a great number of different formations, is the division of
North America into the three great regions of the Alleghanies, the
Mississippi Valley, and the Rocky Mountain plateau, which gradually
merge into one another and are bound into a whole by the vast central
valley. Austria-Hungary includes within itself five different mountain
features--the Alps, Carpathians, Sudeten, the Adriatic provinces, and
the Pannonian plains. Vienna is situated where the Danube, March,
and Adria meet, and from this centre radiates all political unifying
power. If a still closer-knit unity is co-existent with a diversified
geological formation of insular or peninsular nature, as in Ireland or
Italy, it follows that this unity binds the orographic divisions into
an aggregate. The discrepancies between Apennine Italy, Italy of the
Po Valley, and Alpine Italy, which have been evident in all periods of
history, formed, in their rise and in their final state of subjugation
to political force, an example of dissimilarity of mountain features
existing within peninsular unity.
The great continental slopes are also important aids to the overcoming
of orographic obstacles to political unity. In Germany there is a
general inclination towards the north, crossed and recrossed by a
number of mountain chains and successions of valleys. It is not to
be denied that the intersecting elevations have furthered political
disunion. Without doubt, a gradual slope from the southern part of
Germany to the sea, with a consequent partition of the country by
the rivers into strips extending from east to west, would have been
attended by a greater political unity. Again, but in another way, the
preponderance of any one orographic element has a unifying effect on
all the other elements, as we have seen in North America, where the
simple, even course of development has been in conformity with the
existence of geological formations on a large scale.
[Illustration: THE SOFTENING EFFECT OF THE RICH AND FRUITFUL LOWLANDS
Whereas mountains breed independence and rugged character in their
inhabitants, the more fruitful lowlands develop a gentler race,
loving the companionship of communities. The lowlands, also, are
the homes of mixed races.
]
There are internal differences in formation in every mountain range
and in every plain, all of which have different influences on history.
The steep fall of the Alps on the Italian side has rendered a descent
into the plains of the Po far easier than a crossing in the opposite
direction, where many obstacles in the shape of mountain steeps,
elevated plateaus, and deep river valleys surround the outer border
of the Alps. Again, penetration from the plains to the interior of
the Alps is less difficult in the west, where there are no southern
environing mountains, than in the east, where there is such a
surrounding mountain chain. The compact formation of the Alps in the
west crowds obstacles together into a small space, where they may be
overcome with greater labour and in a shorter time than in the east,
among the broadened-out chains of mountains, where there are numerous
smaller hindrances to progression spread out over a wider territory.
The route from Vienna to Trieste is twice as long as that from
Constance to Como.
In mountain passes orographic differences are concentrated within very
limited areas, and for this reason passes are of great importance in
history. The value of gorges and defiles increases with their rarity,
and their number varies greatly in different mountain chains. The
Pindus range is broken but once, by the cleft of Castoreia, and an easy
passage from Northern to Central Greece is possible only by way of
Thermopylæ; the short overland route from Persia to India is through
the Khyber or Bolan Passes. The Rhætian Alps are rich in defiles and
gorges; but the mountain ridges are poor in crossing-places, and, as a
rule, the elevation of the passes decreases towards the east.
[Sidenote: Nature’s Place in History]
The possibility of journeying over the Himalayas increases as we travel
westward. During the Seven Years’ War the great difference between
the accessible, sloping Erz-Gebirge of the Bohemian frontier and the
precipitous, fissured, sandstone hills of the Elbe was very apparent.
Mountain passes are always closely connected with valleys and rivers;
the latter form the ways leading to and from the former. The valleys
of the Reuss and the Tessin are the natural routes to the pass of St.
Gothard; and were it not for the gorges of the Inn and the Etsch in
the northern and the southern Alps, the Brenner Pass would not possess
anything like its present supreme importance. Wherever such entrances
to passes meet together or cross one another, important rallying-points
either for carrying on traffic or for warlike undertakings are formed;
such places are Valais, Valteline, and the upper valley of the Mur.
Coire is a meeting-point of not less than five passes--the Julier,
Septimer, Splügen, St. Bernardin, and Lukmanier. The value of passes
varies according to whether they cross a mountain range completely
from side to side, or extend through only a part of it. When the
Augsburgers, on the way to Venice, had got through the Fern Pass, or
that of Leefeld, the Brenner still remained to be crossed; but when the
Romans had surmounted the difficulties of Mont Genevre, the ridges of
the Alps were no longer before them; they were in Gaul.
There are also passes through cross ridges that connect mountain
chains, such as the Arlberg, that pierces a ridge extending between
the northern and the central Alps. Passes of this sort are of great
importance to life in the mountains, for, as a rule, they lead from one
longitudinal valley to another, such valleys extending between ridges
being the most fertile and protected districts in mountainous regions.
In this manner the Furka Pass connects Valais, the most prosperous
country of the Alps during the time of the Romans, with the upper Rhine
valley; and the Arlberg connects the Vorarlberg with the upper valley
of the Inn.
[Sidenote: Value of Mountain Passes]
Mountain passes are not only highways for traffic, they are the
arteries of the mountains themselves. Commerce along the mountain ways
leads to settlements and to agriculture at heights where they would
hardly have developed had it not been for the roads; and the highest
permanent dwellings are situated in and about passes. The Romans
established their military colonies in the neighbourhood of passes,
and the German emperors rendered the Rhætian gorges secure through
settlements. There are political territories that are practically
founded on mountain passes. The kingdom of Cottius, tributary to the
Romans, was the land of the defiles of the Cottian Alps; Uri may be
designated as the country of the north Gothard, and the Brenner Pass
connects the food-producing districts of the Tyrol with one another.
[Sidenote: Battlefields of Mountain Borderlands]
The transition point from one geological formation to another is
invariably the boundary line between two districts that have different
histories. The movements in one region bring forces to bear on the
movements in the other. Hence the remarkable phenomena which occur on
mountain borderlands. The historical effects of mountainous regions
are opposed by forces that thrust themselves in from without; external
powers anchor themselves, as it were, in the mountains, seeking to
obtain there both protection and frontier lines. Rome encroached more
and more upon the Alps, first from the south, and then from the west
and the north, by extending her provinces. Austria, Italy, Germany,
and France have drawn up to the Alps on different sides; they merely
fall back upon the mountains, however; their centres lie beyond. The
same phenomenon is shown in the regions occupied by different races.
Rhætians, Celts, Romans, Germans, and Slavs have penetrated into the
Alps; but the bulk of their populations have never inhabited the
mountainous districts. The question as to which nation shall possess
a mountain chain or pass is always decided on the borders. Here are
the battlefields; here, too, are the great centres of traffic whose
locations put one in mind of harbours situated at points where two
kinds of media of transmission come into contact with each other. This
margin, like that of the sea, also has its promontories and bays.
[Illustration: THE BANDIT’S WIFE
The effect of life in the hills is clearly seen in this picture by
Leopold Robert, who painted it after living among the “Brigands of
the Mountains” and studying their wild and picturesque life. The
association of peoples with mountains develops a rugged character
and gives that strength and independence which mountain races have
displayed in history.
]
Height of land obstructs historical movements and lengthens their
course. The Romans remained at the foot of the Alps for two centuries
before they made their way into them, forced to it by the constant
invasion of Alpine robbers who descended from the heights as if
sallying forth from secure fortresses. Long before this the Romans
had encircled the western side of the Alps and had begun to turn the
eastern side. The colonies on the Atlantic coast of America, the
predecessors of the United States, had been in existence for almost
two hundred years before they passed the Alleghanies; and it is certain
that this damming up of the powerful movement towards the west, which
arose later, had a furthering influence on the economic and political
development of the young states. The passes of the Pyrenees occur at
about two-thirds of the distance from the level ground to the summits
of the mountains; in the Alps the elevation of the gorges is but
one-half or one-third that of the mountain tops; hence, as a whole, the
Alps are more easy of access than the Pyrenees. The Colorado plateau is
a greater obstacle than the Sierra Nevada range in California, which,
although of much greater elevation, slopes gently and is interspersed
with broad valleys. It was due rather to the forests than to the
moderate elevation of the central mountains of Germany that their
settlement was delayed until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The influence of the broad, desert tableland of the great basin in
separating the western from the Mississippi states is greater than
that of the Rocky Mountains with peaks more than twelve thousand feet
in height. The extensive glacial formations and the sterility of the
mountains in Scandinavia have held Sweden and Norway asunder, and at
the same time have permitted the Lapps and their herds of reindeer to
force themselves in between like a wedge. The broad, elevated steppes
of Central Tien-schan enabled the Kirghese to cross the mountains with
their herds and to spread abroad in all directions.
[Sidenote: Little Worlds on the Heights]
[Sidenote: Man in Touch with Nature]
In such cases the natives of tablelands and mountainous regions,
who inhabit little worlds of their own on the heights, themselves
contribute not a little towards rendering it difficult to pass through
their countries. The most striking example of this is Central Asia
with its nomadic races, whose influence in separating the great
coast-nations of the east, west, and south from one another has been
far more potent than that of the land itself. And these nomads are a
direct product of the climate and the soil of this greatest plateau
in the world. The dry tablelands of North America, from the Sierra
Madre in Mexico to Atacama in the south, were in early times inhabited
by closely related races, having more or less similar institutions
and customs. A like effect of life on plateaus, shown in the Caucasus
Mountains, that have preserved their character as a barrier against
both Romans and Persians, and have been crossed by the Russians
only in recent times, points to a further reason for the sundering
influence of the wall-like position of mountains between the steppes
and the sea. Phenomena similar to those observed in Central Asia
and in North America occur on a smaller scale in every mountainous
country--extensive uninhabited tablelands in which man and free nature
come into direct contact with each other. Independent development
is thus assured to the dwellers on mountains, and to their states a
preponderance of territory over population. The political importance
of Switzerland is not owing to its three millions of inhabitants,
but to the impossibility of occupying one-fourth of the Alps. The
position--almost that of a Great Power--held by Switzerland during
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was due to the union of this
element of strength (and the fact that Switzerland, by reason of its
situation, includes many of the most important commercial routes in
Europe) with the mountain-bred spirit of liberty and independence of
its people. In other respects, too, mountain states stand pre-eminent
among nations--as Tyrol outshone all other Austrian provinces in 1809,
so the mountain tribes of the Caucasus were the only Asiatics able to
offer any permanent resistance to the advance of the Russians. The
broad, rough character of a highland country is an active force; in
all mountain wars it has led to the spreading out of armies and to the
lengthening of columns.
[Sidenote: Mountains the Friends of Weak Nations]
The support afforded by mountains to weak nations that without the
protection of a great uninhabited region would not have been able to
maintain their independence can be likened only to the protection
which, as we have seen, is given by the sea. Switzerland has often
been compared to the Low Countries; and there is even a still greater
resemblance between city cantons such as Basle and Geneva and ports
like Hamburg and Lübeck. It was owing to similar reasons that the
strongholds of French Protestantism during the sixteenth century
were the Cévennes, Berne, and La Rochelle. The protection given by
mountains must not be looked upon as of an entirely passive nature,
for the rugged nature of mountaineers, and their concentration within
small areas where a development is possible, rendering them conscious
of independence and assisting them to preserve it, are also a result
of life in the highlands. In low-lying countries difference in levels
cannot exceed a thousand feet; and, as the variations in conformation
are correspondingly small, the lowlands offer fewer hindrances to
historical movements than do rivers, seas, and marshes--thus there is
a greater opportunity for the development of such movements upon the
plains. Consequently there is a rapid diffusion of races over extensive
regions whose boundaries are determined by area rather than by
conformation.
[Sidenote: Effect of Mountains on People]
Lowlands hasten historical movements. There is no trace of the
retarding and protecting effects of the highlands in lands where,
as Labu said of Saxony, a nation dwells together with its enemies
on the same boundless level. Nomadism is the form of civilisation
characteristic of broad plains and extensive tablelands. But the
Germanic races of history, a great part of which were no longer
nomads, exhibited a hastening in their movement towards the west when
they reached the lowlands; for they appeared on the lower Rhine at
an earlier time than on the upper Rhine, delayed in their wanderings
towards the latter by the mountainous, broken routes. Long after the
Celts had disappeared from the lowlands, when their memory only was
preserved in the names of hills and rivers, they still continued to
exist in the protected mountain regions of Bohemia. In like manner, in
later times, the Slavs maintained themselves in natural strongholds
after they had vanished from the plains of Northern Germany. Compare
the conquest of Siberia, accomplished in a century, with the endless
struggles in the Caucasus. And what lowland country can show remnants
of people equivalent to those of the Caucasus?
[Sidenote: The Natural Strongholds of Nomad Races]
The lowlands are also regions of the most extensive mingling of races.
We have but to think of Siberia or the Sudan. In the development of
states, lowlands take precedence over mountainous district. Rome
expanded from the sea-coast to the Apennines, and from the valley of
the Po to the Alps; the conquest of Iberia began in the one great
plain of the peninsula, in Andalusia, and in the lowlands of the Ebro;
and foreign control of Britain ended at the mountains of Scotland and
Wales. In North America colonisation spread out in broad belts at
the foot of the Alleghanies before it penetrated into the mountains.
In Southern China the mountains with their unsubdued tribes are like
political islands in the midst of the Mongolised hills and plains.