Chapter XXIII: Part 23

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.

The lesser the differences in level, and the smaller the conformations of the earth, the more important are those differences that remain within heights of less than a thousand feet above the sea. Elevations of a dozen yards were of the greatest importance on the battlefields of Leipzig, Waterloo, and Metz. The significance of the little rise in the land of Gavre, near Ghent, lies in the fact that even at times of flood a foundation for a bridge will remain firm upon it. The slightest elevation in the lowland cities of Germany and Russia offers such a contrast in altitude to its surroundings that a fortress, a cathedral, or a kremlin is erected upon it. The two ridges that extend through the plains of North Germany are not only very prominent in the landscape, but also in history. Owing to their thick forests, their lakes and marshes, and small populations, they are peculiarly like barriers; and the breaches in them are of importance to the geography both of war and of commerce. The battles fought against Sweden and Poland, round about the points where the Oder and the Vistula cross these regions, are to be counted among the most decisive struggles in the history of Prussia.

[Sidenote: Nature at Waterloo]

Wherever there are no differences in level, a substitute is sought in water. In such cases wide rivers or numerous lakes and marshes form the most effective obstacles, boundaries, and strongholds. Finally the plains approach the sea and are submerged by it; and here lowland countries find a support safer than that of the mountains, and richer in political results. North Germany is supported by the sea; South Germany by mountains. Which boundary is the more definite, the more capable of development, politically and economically? Political superiority is ever connected with the protection and support of the sea.

The influences of vegetation upon historical movements are often more important than those of the earth-formation itself. Wherever extensive lowland regions are overgrown with grass, we always find mobile nomadic races that, with their large herds and warlike organisations, are great causes of disturbance in the development of neighbouring lands. Since the form of vegetable growth which covers grass steppes and prairies is dependent on climate, it follows that nomadism is prevalent throughout the entire northern sub-temperate zone, where such grass is abundant--from the western border of Sahara to Gobi. Nomadic races of historical significance are even to be seen in the New World--for example, the Gauchos of the Pampas, and the Llaneros of Venezuela.

This is a typical scene of life in Central Asia, the greatest
plateau in the world, whose people, the direct product of the
climate and the soil, inhabiting little worlds of their own on the
heights, have exercised an enormous influence in separating the
great coast nations of the east, west, and south from one another.
]

Mountain passes have been of great importance in history. The
Romans established their military colonies in the neighbourhood of
passes, and there are political territories practically founded on
mountain passes. This is a picture of an entrance to the famous
Bolan Pass, through which, and through the Khyber Pass, lie the
shortest overland routes from Persia to India.
]

Wherever there are vast lowland countries covered with grass,
nomadic peoples are found moving from place to place with their
herds. There are many such peoples in the Old World and a few in
the New World, notable among the latter being the Gauchos of the
Pampas, types of whom are here seen.
]

In comparison with plains and prairies, forests are decided hindrances to historical movements. Peoples are separated from one another by strips of woodland; the state and the civilisation of the Incas ceased at the fringe of primeval forest of the east Andes. Thickly-wooded mountains present the most pronounced difficulties to historical movements. The appearance of the oldest large states and centres of culture on the borders of steppes, in the naturally thinly-wooded districts at the mouths of rivers, and on diluvial plains, seems natural enough to us when we think of the difficulties presented by life in a forest glade to men who had only stone implements and fire at their command.

A description of the difficulties encountered during Stanley’s one hundred and fifty-seven days’ journey through the primeval woods of Central Africa gives us a very clear conception of what are termed “hindrances” to historical movements. The early history of Sweden has been characterised as a struggle with the forest; and this description is valid for every forest country. The forest divides nations from each other; it allows only small tribes to unite, and creates but small states, or, at the most, loosely bound confederations. It is only where a great river system forms natural roads, as in the regions of the Amazon and the Congo, that great forest districts may be rapidly united to form a state. In other cases settlements in forest clearings and road-breaking precede political control.

In this way the Chinese conquered the races of the western half of Formosa in two hundred years; in the eastern half the land is still under forest and the natives have also retained their independence. The existence of small states, with their many obstacles to political and economic growth, still continues in forest regions alone; and the roaming hordes of hunters inhabiting them belong to the simplest forms of human societies.

Professor FREDERICK RATZEL]

LAND AND WATER AND THE GREATNESS OF PEOPLES

Since man is a creature capable only of life on land, bodies of water must at one time have been the greatest obstacles to his diffusion. Thus the original family of human beings could have inhabited only one portion of the earth, to which it was restricted by impassable barriers of water. We know that in early geological times the division of the earth’s surface into land and water was subject to the same general laws as to-day; therefore such a portion of the earth could not have been more than a part of the total land in existence--a larger or smaller world-island.

[Sidenote: Early Man’s Greatest Invention]

The first step beyond the bounds of this island was the first step towards the conquest of the whole earth by man. The first raft was therefore the most important contrivance that man could have invented. It not only signified the beginning of the acquisition of all parts of the earth to their very farthest limits, but also--and this is far more important--the potentiality for all possibilities of divergence and temporary separation offered by our planet. It brought with it escape from the development that always turns back upon itself, travelling in a circle, and the progress that constantly consumes itself--factors inseparable from life confined within a small area; it led to the creation of fruitful contrasts and differences, and to wholesome competition--in short, to the beginning of the evolution of races and peoples. Looked at from this point of view, even the discovery of Prometheus has been of less moment to the progress of mankind than that of the inventor who first joined logs together into a raft and set out on a voyage of discovery to the nearest islet.

[Sidenote: Why the Sea is Important]

From the time of this first step onward, the development of the human race was so intimately connected with the uninhabitable water that one of its most powerful incentives lay in the struggle with the sea. And so little have we advanced from this condition that the stoutest race of the present day is one that from a narrow island commands the ocean. England’s strength is a proof of the tremendous importance of the sea as a factor of political power and of civilisation. But not to exaggerate the significance of the ocean, we may at the same time remember that it consists in the fact that, by means of the sea, open highways are presented from land to land. Command of the sea is a source of greatness to nations, for it facilitates dominion over the land.

By reason of its consistency the water is an important agent of levelling and equalising effects. As we perceive this in Nature, so do we also in history. A race familiar with the sea in one place is familiar with it in all regions. The Normans off the coast of Finland, and the Spaniards in the Pacific, found the same green, surging element, moved by the same tides, subject to the same laws. The ocean has an equalising effect upon the coasts even; the dunes of Agadir and of the harbour at Vera Cruz awaken memories of home in the mind of the sailor from Hela. The diffusion of the sea over three-quarters of the earth’s surface must also be taken into account. Thus the influence of the ocean in rendering men familiar with different parts of the world is far greater than that of the land. From the ocean comes a constant unifying influence which ever tends to reduce the disuniting effect of the separation of land from land. As yet no attempt to extend boundaries beyond the land out over the sea has been followed by lasting success.

[Sidenote: No Nation can Possess the Sea]

[Sidenote: The Sea’s Unifying Influence]

No nation can or ever will possess the sea. Carthage and Tarentum wished to forbid Italian vessels the passage of the Lacinian capes by treaty; the Venetians desired dominion over the Adriatic to be granted them by the Pope; Denmark and Sweden strove for a dominion over the Baltic Sea; but all this is against the very nature of the sea; it is one and indivisible. Only near by the coast, within the three-mile limit of international law, and in landlocked bays, may it be ruled as land is ruled. The claims of the Americans concerning the sovereignty of Behring Sea have never been recognised, and England can retain dominion over the Irish Sea only by means of her naval power. The ocean has a unifying influence on the land, even when this influence consists only in the same ends to be attained being placed before different nations. During a time of the greatest disunion, German cities that lay far enough from one another were united by Baltic interests. The union of scattered land-forces prepared the way for the opening up of wider horizons to England in the sixteenth century in the same manner as for Italy and Germany in the nineteenth.

The command of the sea is the source of national greatness, as it facilitates dominion over land. England from a narrow island dominates the sea. The tiny part of white in the Eastern Hemisphere on this page shows how relatively insignificant Great Britain is to the vast world of waters where her shipping is supreme.]

Sea power is far more closely connected with traffic than is land power; in fact, the foundation of sea power is trade and commerce. It is, however, more than mere commercial power and monopoly of trade. In spite of all egoism, greed, and violence there remains one great characteristic peculiar to maritime Powers, spared even by Punic faith and Venetian covetousness. Even the neighbourhood of the ocean is characterised by its vast natural features; rivers broaden as they approach the sea, great bays lie within the coasts, and, though the latter may be flat, the horizon lines of their low dune landscapes are broad. The horizons of maritime races are also broad. Whether it be the hope of profit from commerce or of gain from piracy that lures men forth, many a ship has returned to port bearing with it inestimable benefits to mankind; for the greatest maritime discoveries have not been mere explorations of new seas, but of new lands and peoples. Such discoveries as these have contributed most to the broadening of the historical horizon. Even political questions expand, assume a larger character, and often become less acute, when they emerge from the narrow limits of continental constraint upon the free and open coasts. This is true even of the Eastern Question, to the solution of which definite steps were taken upon the Mediterranean when it seemed to have come to a deadlock in the Balkan peninsula.

[Sidenote: Short-lived Nations of the Sea]

[Sidenote: The Fall of Maritime Nations]

The ocean is no passive element to maritime races. By deriving power from the sea they become subject to the sea. The more strength they draw from the ocean, the less firm becomes their footing upon the land. Finally, their power no longer remains rooted in the land, but grows to resemble that of a fleet resting upon the waves; it may with but small expenditure of effort extend its influence over an enormously wide area, but it may also be swept away by the first storm. As yet all maritime nations have been short-lived; their rise has been swift, often surprisingly so; but they have never remained long at the zenith of prosperity, and, as a rule, their decay has been as rapid as their elevation to power. The cause of the fall of all maritime nations has been the smallness of their basis, their foreign possessions, widely separated from one another and difficult to defend, and their dependence upon these foreign possessions. In many cases the over-balancing of political by economic interests, the neglect of materials for defence, and effeminacy resulting from commercial prosperity, have also contributed to their destruction.

The most momentous event in the early history of man was the
launching of the first raft. That moment was instinct with all the
mighty conquests and discoveries yet to be accomplished over seas;
and even the discovery of fire, says Professor Ratzel, has been of
less moment to the progress of mankind than that of the inventor
who first joined logs together into a raft and set out on a voyage
of discovery to the nearest islet.
]

Special combinations of characteristics arising from the geographical positions of oceans, continents, and islands are connected with the broad features common to oceanic continuity. These characteristics are reflected from the sea back to the land, and there give rise to historical groups. The historical significance of such groups is expressed in their names even--Mediterranean World, Baltic Nations, Atlantic Powers, and Pacific Sphere of Civilisation. They are primarily the results of commerce and exchange, and of the furthering, correlating influences of all coasts and islands. When they united all peninsulas, islands, and coasts of the Mediterranean into one state the Romans merely set a political crown upon the civilised community that had developed round about, and by means of, this sea.

[Sidenote: Uniqueness of the Mediterranean]

And if we wish rightly to estimate the significance of Roman expansion from a Central European point of view, we may express our conception very shortly--the diffusion of Mediterranean culture over Western and Central Europe. It was at the same time a widening of the horizon of a landlocked sea to that of the open ocean. The Atlantic Ocean succeeded to the Mediterranean Sea. The Americans and the Russians, and the Japanese, repeating their words, maintain that in the same manner the Pacific must succeed to the Atlantic; but they forget the peculiar features of the Mediterranean, especially its conditions of area. It is no more probable that such a compact, isolated development will occur again than that the history of Athens will repeat itself on the Korean peninsula or at Shantung. The greater the ocean, the farther is it removed from the isolated sea. It was not the Atlantic that succeeded to the Mediterranean, but the broad world-ocean that succeeded to the narrow basin called the Mediterranean Sea. There have always been differences between the various divisions of the main sea; and these variations will ever continue to be prominent, although constantly tending to become less and less so.

[Sidenote: The vast Potentialities of the Pacific]

The Pacific will always remain by far the greatest ocean, including, as it does, forty-five per cent. of the total area of water. Owing to its great breadth, the Pacific routes are from three to four times as long as those of the Atlantic. The Pacific widens toward the south; and Australia and Oceania lie in the opening, thus furnishing the Pacific with its most striking peculiarity--a third continent situated in the Southern Hemisphere, together with the richest series of island formations on earth. Whatever the Pacific may contribute to history, it will be a contribution to the annals of the Southern Hemisphere; and if a great independent history develop in the antipodes, it will have the Southern Pacific, bounded by Australia, South America, New Zealand, and Oceania, for its sphere of action. The area of the Atlantic Ocean is but half that of the Pacific. Nor is it for this reason alone that in comparison with the latter it is an inland rather than a world sea; for, owing to its narrowness between the Old and the New Worlds, the branches it puts forth, and the islands and peninsulas that it touches, it shortens the routes from one coast to the other. In it there is more of a merging of land and sea than a separation; and to-day it is chiefly a European-American ocean. The Indian Ocean is both geographically and historically but half an ocean. Even though important parts of it may be situated north of the equator, it is too much enclosed to the north; it widens to the south, and thus belongs to the Southern Hemisphere.

All maritime nations, says Professor Ratzel, have been short-lived.
The more strength they draw from the ocean the less firm becomes
their footing upon the land, and their power grows to resemble that
of a fleet resting upon the waves; it may extend its influence over
an enormous area, but it may also be swept away by a single storm.
]

[Sidenote: The Coast the Threshold of the Land]

The great oceans open up broad areas for historical movements, and through their instrumentality peoples are enabled to spread from coast to coast in all directions; the inland seas, on the contrary, cause the political life of the nations bordering upon them to be concentrated within a limited area. The Mediterranean will ever remain a focus towards which the interests of almost all European Powers concentrate. It has, moreover, become one of the world’s highways since the completion of the Suez Canal. The Baltic somewhat resembles the Mediterranean; but it would be saying too much to look upon its position as other than subordinate to that of the greater sea. The area of the Baltic is but one-seventh that of the Mediterranean; and it is lacking in the unique intercontinental situation of the latter. In many respects it resembles the Black Sea rather than the Mediterranean, especially by reason of its eastern relations.

Originally the coast was the threshold of the sea; but as soon as maritime races developed it became the threshold of the land. In addition it is a margin, a fringe in which the peculiarities of sea and land are combined; and for this very reason sea-coasts have a historical value greatly disproportionate to their area, especially as they constitute the best of all boundaries for the nations that possess them. Here harbours are situated, fortresses, and the most densely populated of cities. Owing to their close connection with the sea, the inhabitants of coasts acquire characteristics which distinguish them from all other peoples. Even if of the same nationality as their inland neighbours--as, for example, the Greeks of Thrace and of Asia Minor and the Malays of many of the East Indian islands--their foreign traffic nevertheless impresses certain traits and features upon them which in the case of the Low Countries led almost to political disruption.

[Sidenote: Living and Dead Coasts]

A coast is more favoured than an interior in all things relating to commerce and traffic; yet neither may enjoy permanent life alone without the other. The French departments of the Weser and of the Elbe were among the most ephemeral of the political results achieved by the short-lived Napoleonic era. With the sea at their backs it is easy for the inhabitants of a coast to become detached from their nation, and but a simple matter for them to spread over other coasts. Ever since the time of the Phœnicians there have been numerous colonists of coasts and founders of coast states. The Normans are most typical in European history. The expansion of coast colonies towards the interior is one of the most striking features of recent African development. Thus coasts are to be looked at from within as well as from without. To many races--such as Hottentots and Australians--the coast is dead compared with the interior; for Germany the coast has been politically dead for centuries. A river-mouth is best suited to carrying the influences of the coast inland.

All ancient historians supposed that the Mediterranean Sea, with its many bays, peninsulas, and islands, schooled the Phœnicians in seamanship. This, however, is not so. Nautical skill is transmitted from one people to another, as may be seen from some of the most obvious cases in modern history. No maritime people has become great through its own coast alone. It is not the coast of Maine, with its numerous inlets and bays, that has produced the best seamen, but the coast of Massachusetts, naturally unfavourable for the most part; and it has produced the best seamen for the reason that the inland districts bounded by it are far more productive and furthering to commerce than are the interior regions of Maine.

[Sidenote: The Place of the Coast in History]

Nature has forced races to take to the sea only in such countries as Norway and Greece, where the strips of coast are narrow and the inland territory poor. In order to have political influence it is sufficient to have one foot on the sea-coast. Aigues-Mortes, with its swampy environment, was sufficient to extend France to the Mediterranean during the reign of St. Louis; Fiume sufficed for Hungary. Forbidding desert coasts have had a peculiarly retarding effect on historical development. It was necessary to rediscover the Australian mainland, to touch at more favourable points, one hundred and thirty years after the time of Tasman; thus the history of the settlement of Australia by Europeans originated, not with him, but with Cook.

As portions of the general water area, rivers are branches or runners 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.

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.

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.
]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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