of the sea, extending into the land--lymphatic vessels, as it were,
bearing nourishment to the ocean from the higher regions of the
earth. Therefore they form the natural routes followed by historical
movements from the sea inland and vice versa. A solid foundation of
truth underlies those rivers of legendary geography that joined one
sea with another. The connection of the Baltic and the Black Sea via
Kieff is not that described by Adam of Bremen; but Russian canals have
established a water-way, following out the plan indicated by Nature,
just as the Varangians also realised it in a ruder way by dragging
their boats from the Dwina to the Dnieper. By uniting the Great Lakes
to the Mississippi by means of the Illinois River, the French provided
a waterway from the North Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, a line
of power in the rear of the Atlantic colonies. The latter fell back on
salt water, the former on fresh. The Nile, flowing parallel to the Red
Sea from Tanasee in the Abyssinian highlands, shares with the Red Sea
even to-day in the traffic between Eastern and East-central Africa. The
railway from Mombasa to Uganda completes a western Mediterranean-Indian
line of connection, as a road along the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf
would an eastern, each following the direction of rivers running
parallel to the Red Sea. We can clearly see the transition of the
functions of oceans to fresh, shallow water, to sounds and lagoons, in
which sea traffic is furnished with smoother, quieter routes under the
shelter of the coasts.
[Illustration: THE OCEANS OF THE WORLD
This map, on a projection used by mariners, shows the relative
sizes of the great oceans, viewed from above. The natural advantage
of the position of the British Isles for communicating with the
ocean’s highways is clearly seen, and the vast area of the Pacific
is strikingly indicated.
]
In truth, only portions of the lines of traffic follow rivers; for
rivers flow from highland to lowland, watersheds breaking their course
here and there. In comparison with the oceans, rivers are but shallow
channels, the continuity of which may be broken by every rocky ledge.
Thus different regions for traffic arise at various points in the same
stream. Only that part of Egypt which is situated north of the first
cataract is Egypt proper; the territory to the south was conquered from
Nubia. The farther we travel up a stream the less water and the more
rapids and falls we shall find; therefore traffic also decreases in
the direction toward the river’s source. It may be seen from this that
there is but little probability of truth in the analogy drawn between
the flowing of rivers from elevations to plains and the migrations
of nations and directions in which states expand. History shows that
migration and development follow a direction contrary from that in
which rivers flow.
Maritime and terrestrial advantages are concentrated where a river
joins the sea; especially characteristic of such districts are deltas,
at an early date rendered more efficient for purposes of commerce
through canals and dredging. The fertility of the alluvial soil, the
lack of forest occasioned by frequent floods, and the protection
afforded by the islands of the delta, may have had not a little
influence on the choice of such regions as settlements for man. At
all events, estuaries and deltas, both small and great, were in the
earliest times centres of civilisation. Egypt and Babylonia both
testify to this; the colonising Greeks also showed a preference for
river mouths. Miletus, Ephesus and Rome were states situated at the
mouths of rivers, and so were the ancient settlements on the Rhone,
the Guadalquivir, and the Indus. It would not be possible, however,
to deduce from this proofs of a potamic phase of civilisation and
formation of nations preceding the Thalassic, or Mediterranean. Estuary
and delta states are far more a result of the Mediterranean culture.
The latter led to the settlement of favourable districts on various
coasts, all of which were finally swallowed up into the Roman Empire
during the period of its northern and eastern expansion.
[Illustration: THE ORIGIN OF SEAFARING PEOPLES
It is not sufficient to have a favourable sea-coast in order to
breed a race of sea-going people. The land behind the coast-line
must be fertile and productive, else no inducement exists for
seafaring. This condition is everywhere present along the British
shores, of which this is a typical coasting scene.
]
[Illustration: THE JUNCTIONS OF GREAT RIVERS ARE LANDMARKS OF HISTORY
Where two rivers join, two lines of political tendencies always
meet, and their junction is the point whence political forces must
be controlled. This is the significance of the situations of Mainz
(1 at top), Khartoum (2), Lyons (3), and Belgrade (4)
Photos: Frith and Photochrome
]
[Sidenote: Rivers as Highways of Development]
Another much more evident process of development through the
instrumentality of rivers was shown at the time when traffic began
to extend itself over wide areas. Rivers are the natural highways
in countries which abound in water, and are of so much the greater
importance because in such lands other thoroughfares are frequently
wanting. Taken collectively, rivers form a natural circulatory system.
In America at the time of the exploration and conquest, in Siberia, in
Africa to-day, they are natural arteries by means of which exchange
and political power may be extended. The more accessible a river is
to commerce, the more rapidly political occupation increases about
its basin, as has been shown by the Varangians in Russia and the
Portuguese in Brazil. The best example of a country having developed
through conformity with a natural river system and in connection with
it is that of the Congo State, with part of its boundaries drawn
simply along the lines of watersheds. Mastery among rival colonies is
determined by the results of the struggle for the possession of rivers;
this has been as clearly shown by the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi
in America, as by the Niger and the Benuwe in Africa. The influence of
riverways in furthering the path of political development may be best
seen in the contrast between South America and Africa; the colonising
movement came to the latter more than 300 years later than to the
former continent.
Every river is a route followed by political power, and is therefore
at the same time a point of attraction and line of direction. The
Germans have pushed their way along the Elbe between the Danes and the
Slavs, and along the Vistula between the Slavs and the Lithuanians or
old Prussians. The river that supports an embryonic nation holds it
together when developed. The influence of the Mississippi was directed
against the outbreak of the Civil War in America. As pearls are strung
along a cord, so the provinces of new and old Egypt are connected
by the Nile. Austria-Hungary is not the Danube nation only because
the river was the life nerve of its development, but also because
eighty-two per cent. of Austro-Hungarian territory is included within
the regions drained by it. When the natural connection of rivers is
broken then this power of cohesion ceases. The political and economic
disunion of the Rhine, the Main, and other German rivers preceded the
dissolution of the German Empire.
[Sidenote: Rivers as Sources of Power]
Where two rivers join there is always a meeting of two lines of
political tendencies, and the place of their junction is the point
whence the political forces must be controlled and held together. This
is the significance of the situations of Mainz, Lyons, Belgrade, St.
Louis, and Khartoum. The course followed by flowing water is far less
direct than that of historical movements; the latter take the shortest
way, and do not continue along the stream where a loop is formed; or
they may follow a tributary that runs on in the original direction of
the main stream, as in the case of the very ancient highway along the
Oder and the Neisse to Bohemia. The sides of sharp angles formed by a
river in its course lead to a salient point as, Regensburg and Orléans.
A tributary meeting the main stream at this point forms the best route
to a neighbouring river, or the angle may become a peninsula, so
bounded by a tributary stream at its base as almost to take the form of
an island.
[Sidenote: Rivers as Dividers of Land]
Breaks in the continuity of the land occasioned by rivers are caused
rather by the channel in which the water flows than by the river
itself. Thus we often find that dry river-beds are effective agents of
this dividing up of the land. Permanent inequalities of the earth’s
surface are intensified by flowing water. Therefore a river system
separates the land into natural divisions. These narrow clefts are ever
willingly adopted as boundary lines, especially in cases where it is
necessary to set general limits to an extensive territory. Thus Charles
the Great bounded his empire by the Eider, Elbe, Raab, and Ebro.
Smaller divisions of land are formed by the convergence of tributaries
and main streams, and again still smaller portions are created by the
joining together of the lesser branches of tributaries, these taking
an especially important place in the history of wars: for example,
those formed by the Rhine, Weser, Elbe, and Oder, and on a lesser
scale by the Moselle, Seille, and Saar. Fords are always important; in
Africa they have even been points at which small states have begun to
develop. Rivers as highways in time of war no longer have the value
once attributed to them by Frederick the Great, who called the Oder
“the nurse of the army.” Yet rivers were of such great moment in this
respect in the roadless interior of America during the Civil War that
the getting of information as to water-levels was one of the most
important tasks of the army intelligence department. Rivers will always
remain superior to railways as lines of communication during time of
war, at least in one respect, for they cannot be destroyed.
[Illustration: THE MAKING OF THE NATIONS--III
Professor FREDERICK RATZEL]
THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS
Upon the earth, with its varied configuration and formation of land and
sea, are many kinds of hindrances and limits to life.
The most obvious effect of natural region and natural boundary lies
in the counteracting forces opposed by the earth through them to a
formless and unlimited diffusion of life. Isolated territory furthers
political independence, which, indeed, is of itself isolation. The
development of a nation upon a fixed territory consists in a striving
to make use of all the natural advantages of that territory. The
superiority of a naturally isolated region lies in the fact that
seclusion itself brings with it the greatest of all advantages. Hence
the precocious economic and political development of races that dwell
on islands or on peninsulas, in mountain valleys and on island-like
deltas.
[Sidenote: The Rise and Death of Isolated States]
Often enough growth that originates under such favourable conditions
leads to ruin. A young nation deems itself possessed of all so long
as it has the isolation that ensures independence; it sees too late
that the latter has been purchased at the price of a suffocating lack
of space; and it dies of a hypertrophy of development--a death common
to minor states. This was the cause of the swift rise and decline of
Athens and of Venice, and of all powers that restricted themselves to
islands and to narrow strips of coast.
[Sidenote: Natural Boundaries of a State]
[Sidenote: A State must Forsake its Boundaries]
The more natural boundaries a state possesses, the more definite are
the political questions raised by its development. The consolidation
of England, Scotland, and Wales was simple and obvious, as patent
as if it had been decreed beforehand, as was also the expansion of
France over the region that lies between the Alps and the Pyrenees,
the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. On the other hand, what a
fumbling, groping development was that of Germany, with her lack of
natural boundary in the east! Thus in the great geographical features
of lands lie pre-ordained movements, constrained by the highest
necessity--a higher necessity in the case of some than of others.
The frontier of the Pyrenees was more necessary to France than that
of the Rhine; an advance to the Indian Ocean is more necessary to
Russia than a movement into Central Europe. Growth is soundest when a
state expands so as to fill out a naturally bounded region--as, for
example, the United States, that symmetrically occupy the southern half
of the continent of North America, or Switzerland, extending to the
Rhine and Lake of Constance. There are often adjustments of frontiers
which force the territory of a nation back into a natural region, as
shown in the case of Chili, which gave up the attempt to extend its
boundaries beyond the Andes, in spite of its having authorisation to do
so, founded on the right of discovery, the original Spanish division
of provinces, and wars of independence. A favourable external form is
often coincident with a favourable internal configuration which is
quite as furthering to internal continuity as is the external form to
isolated development. The Roman Empire, externally uniform as an empire
of Mediterranean states, was particularly qualified for holding fast
to its most distant provinces, by reason of the Mediterranean Sea that
occupied its very centre. Everything that furthers traffic is also
favourable to cohesion. Hence the significance of waterways for ancient
states, and of canals and railways for modern nations. Egypt was the
empire of the Nile, and the Rhine was at one time the life-vein of the
empire of Charles the Great. A state does not always remain fixed in
the same natural region. However advantageous they may have been, it
must, on increasing, forsake the best of boundaries. Since one region
is exchanged for another, the law of increasing areas comes into force.
Every land, sea, river region, or valley should always be conceived
of as an area that must be discovered, inhabited, and politically
realised before it may exert any influence beyond its limits. Thus the
Mediterranean district had first to complete its internal development
before it could produce any external effect.
[Sidenote: First Continent State]
This internal development first took possession of the small
territories, and, mastering them, turned to the greater. Thus we may
see history progress from clearings in forests, oases, islands, small
peninsulas, such as Greece; and strips of coast, to great peninsulas,
such as Italy; isthmian situations of continental size, such as Gaul;
only to come to a halt in half continents such as the United States and
Canada, and continents. Europe--next to the smallest continent--has
had the richest history of all, but with the greatest breaking up of
its area into small divisions. Australia, the smallest continent, is
the earliest to unite its parts into a continental state. Development
expends all its power in bringing the areas of the three greatest
land-divisions into play, and in opposing their one hundred and five
million square miles to the ten and a half million of the smaller
divisions; their economic action is already felt to a considerable
degree. Thus there arises an alternation of isolation and expansion,
which was clearly shown in the history of Rome, whose territory grew
from the single city, out over the valley of the Tiber, into Apennine
Italy, into the peninsula, across the islands and peninsulas of the
Mediterranean, and finally into the two adjacent continents.
[Illustration: THE HOTTEST PLACE IN THE WORLD IS INHABITED BY MAN
No climate has triumphed over the endurance of man. Massowah, the
most important town in the Italian Colony of Eritrea, in North
Africa, is the hottest place in the world, but, like the coldest
known place, it is inhabited.
]
[Sidenote: Nature and National Destiny]
The boundaries of natural regions are always natural boundaries.
Although this delicate subject may be left to political geography, it
is by no means to be neglected by those who are interested in history,
boundary questions being among the most frequent causes of wars. In
addition, boundaries are the necessary result of historical movements.
In case two states strive against each other in expanding, the motion
of both is impeded, and the boundary lies where the movement comes to
a halt. It is in the nature of things that growing states are very
frequently contiguous to uninhabited regions, not to other states.
This contiguity is always a source of natural boundaries. The most
natural of all arise from adjacency to uninhabitable regions: first
the uninhabitable lands, then the sea. The boundary at the edge of the
uninhabitable world is the safest; for there is nothing beyond. The
broad Arctic frontiers of Russia are a great source of power. A high
mountain range, also, may separate inhabited regions--which are always
State territory--by an uninhabited strip of land. After all, the sea,
marshes, rivers even, are uninhabitable zones. But traffic brings
connection with it, and the Rhine, which to the Romans was a moat,
especially well adapted as a defence, is now, with its thirty railway
bridges and thousands of vessels plying up and down and across, far
more of a highway and a means of communication than a dividing line.
The position, form, and movements of the earth seem far enough removed
from the deeds and destinies of peoples, yet the more we contemplate
the latter, the more we are led to consider the earth’s inclination
to its axis, its approximately spherical form, and its motion, which,
combined, are the cause of the recurrence in fixed order of day and
night, summer and winter.
[Illustration: INHABITANTS OF THE COLDEST PLACE IN THE WORLD
Man is the most adaptable of living creatures. There is no climate
in the world in which he cannot live. The lowest temperatures taken
have been at Verkhoyansk, in Siberia, but the place is inhabited by
people, of whom we give a group.
]
The effects of these great earthly phenomena are differently felt
in every country; for they vary according to geographical location.
Practically, that which most conforms to any given situation north
or south of the equator is the climate of a land. Day and night are
of more even length at the equator than in our country; but beyond
the Polar circles there are days that last for months, and nights
equally long. Scarcely any annual variation in temperature is known to
the inhabitants of Java, while in Eastern Siberia Januarys of fifty
degrees below freezing-point and Julys of twenty degrees above zero of
Centigrade, winters during which the mercury freezes, and summers of
oppressive sultriness, are contrasted with one another.
[Illustration: MAN’S TRIUMPH OVER CLIMATE: THE COLDEST PLACE IN THE
WORLD
Just as man has established himself in the torrid heat of Massowah,
so he can endure the highest degree of cold. The coldest place
in the world, Verkhoyansk, of which this is a photograph, is the
capital of a Siberian province.
]
In our temperate region there is rain, as a rule, during all months,
but as far north as Italy and Greece the year is divided into a dry
and a wet season. Great effects are produced over the entire earth and
upon all living creatures by the thus conditioned climatic differences.
They must be considered at the very beginning of every investigation
into history. Since we know that a fluctuating distribution of heat is
caused by the 23½° inclination of the earth’s axis, investigation
also leads us to a knowledge of further phenomena, to a consideration
of the dependence of the winds and of the precipitation of heat upon
this very same condition.
[Sidenote: The First Question about a Country]
And thus we come into contact with the thousand connecting threads by
which man’s economic activity, health, distribution over the earth,
even his spiritual and his political life, are inseparably bound
up with the climate. Hence the first question that should be asked
concerning a country is: What is its geographical situation? A land may
be interesting for many other reasons besides nearness or remoteness
from the equator; but that which is of the greatest interest of all
to the historian is a consideration of the manifold and far-reaching
effects of climate.
The study of human geography teaches us that climate affects mankind
in two ways. First, it produces a direct effect upon individuals,
races, indeed the inhabitants of entire zones, influencing their
bodily conditions, their characters, and their minds; in the second
place, it produces an indirect effect by its influence on conditions
necessary to life. This is due to the fact that the plants and animals
with which man stands in so varied a relationship, which supply him
with nourishment, clothing, and shelter, which, when domesticated and
cultivated, enter his service, as it were, and become most valuable
and influential assistants and instruments for his development and
culture, are also dependent upon climate. Important properties of the
soil, the existence of plains, deserts, and forests, also depend upon
climate. Effects of climate, both direct and indirect, are united in
political-geographical phenomena, and are especially manifest in the
growth of states and in their permanence and strength.
[Sidenote: Man can Bear all Climates]
There is no climate that cannot be borne by man; of all organic beings
he is one of the most capable of adapting himself to circumstances.
Men dwell even in the very coldest regions. The place where the lowest
temperatures have been measured, Verkhoyansk, with a mean January
temperature of -54° F., is the capital of a Siberian province; and a
district where the temperature is of the very hottest, Massowah, is the
most important town in the Italian colony of Eritrea.
However, both heat and cold, when excessive, tend to lessen population,
the size of settlements, and economic activity. The great issues of
the world’s history have been decided on ground situated between the
tropic of Cancer and the Polar circle. The question as to whether the
northern half of North America should be English or French was decided
between the parallels of 44° and 48° north latitude; and in the same
manner the settlement as to whether Sweden or Russia should be supreme
in Northern Europe took place a little south of 60° north. Holland
did not lose and regain her Indian possessions in the neighbourhood
of the equator, but in Europe; and Spain fell from the high estate
of sovereign over South and Central America because her power as a
European nation had decayed.
[Sidenote: Strange Divergence of a Race]
The coldest countries in the world are either entirely uninhabited--as
Spitzbergen and Franz Josef’s Land--or very thinly populated. Some are
politically without a master--the two territories just mentioned, for
example; some are politically occupied, as is Greenland, but are of
very little value. History teaches that traffic between such colonies
and the mother country may cease entirely without the mother country
suffering any loss thereby. The hottest regions in the world are for
the most part colonies or dependencies of European Powers. This applies
to the whole of tropical Africa, Asia, Australia, and Oceania, and
partly to tropical America.
The exclusion of European nations from grasping for possessions in
America was not determined upon in the compromised territory of
tropical America, but in the United States, a short distance south of
39° north latitude. What a difference in the parts played in history
by the two branches of the Tunguse race, the one held in subjection
in the cold latitude of Russia, the other conquering China, and now
the sovereign power in the more temperate climate of that country;
or between the Turks who, as Yakuts, lead a nomadic life in the Lena
valley, and the Turks who govern Western Asia! Latham called the region
extending from the Elbe to the Amoor--within which dwell Germans,
Sarmatians, Ugrian Finns, Turks, Mongolians, and Manchurians, peoples
who strike with a two-edged sword--a “Zone of Conquest.” Farther to
the north nations are poor and weak; toward the equator, luxurious
and enervated. The inhabitants of this central zone have over-run
their neighbours both to the north and to the south, while never,
either from the north or from the south, have they themselves suffered
any lasting injury. The Germans have advanced from the Baltic Sea to
the Mediterranean; the Slavs inhabit a territory that extends from
the Arctic Ocean to the Adriatic Sea; the Turks and Mongolians have
penetrated as far south as India; and there have been times when
Mongolians ruled from the Arctic Ocean to Southern India. Finally, the
Manchurians have extended their sphere of influence over Northern Asia
as far south as the tropic of Cancer.
[Illustration:
ISOTHERMAL LINES
JANUARY
ISOTHERMAL LINES
JULY
EFFECT OF CLIMATE ON THE COURSE OF HISTORY
A map on which the isothermal lines are drawn is rich in historical
instruction. Where the lines diverge we have regions of equal
temperature; where they crowd together, districts of different mean
annual temperatures lie close together. The crowding of climatic
variations in any region enlivens and hastens the course of
history.
]