Influences of Geographic Environment Part 2

If the sacred literature of Judaism and Christianity take weak hold upon the western mind, this is largely because it is written in the symbolism of the pastoral nomad. Its figures of speech reflect life in deserts and gra.s.slands. For these figures the western mind has few or vague corresponding ideas. It loses, therefore, half the import, for instance, of the Twenty-third Psalm, that picture of the nomad shepherd guiding his flock across parched and trackless plains, to bring them at evening, weary, hungry, thirsty, to the fresh pastures and waving palms of some oasis, whose green tints stand out in vivid contrast to the tawny wastes of the encompa.s.sing sands. "He leadeth me beside the still waters," not the noisy rushing stream of the rainy lands, but the quiet desert pool that reflects the stars. What real significance has the tropical radiance of the lotus flower, the sacred symbol of Buddhism, for the Mongolian lama in the cold and arid borders of Gobi or the wind-swept highlands of sterile Tibet? And yet these exotic ideas live on, even if they no longer bloom in the uncongenial soil. But to explain them in terms of their present environment would be indeed impossible.

[Sidenote: Partial response to environment]

A people may present at any given time only a partial response to their environment also for other reasons. This may be either because their arrival has been too recent for the new habitat to make its influence felt; or because, even after long residence, one overpowering geographic factor has operated to the temporary exclusion of all others.

Under these circ.u.mstances, suddenly acquired geographic advantages of a high order or such advantages, long possessed but tardily made available by the release of national powers from more pressing tasks, may inst.i.tute a new trend of historical development, resulting more from stimulating geographic conditions than from the natural capacities or apt.i.tudes of the people themselves. Such developments, though often brilliant, are likely to be short-lived and to end suddenly or disastrously, because not sustained by a deep-seated national impulse animating the whole ma.s.s of the people. They cease when the first enthusiasm spends itself, or when outside compet.i.tion is intensified, or the material rewards decrease.

[Sidenote: The case of Spain.]

An ill.u.s.tration is found in the mediaeval history of Spain. The intercontinental location of the Iberian Peninsula exposed it to the Saracen conquest and to the constant reinforcements to Islam power furnished by the Mohammedanized Berbers of North Africa. For seven centuries this location was the dominant geographic factor in Spain's history. It made the expulsion of the Moors the sole object of all the Iberian states, converted the country into an armed camp, made the gentleman adventurer and Christian knight the national ideal. It placed the center of political control high up on the barren plateau of Castile, far from the centers of population and culture in the river lowlands or along the coast. It excluded the industrial and commercial development which was giving bone and sinew to the other European states. The release of the national energies by the fall of Granada in 1492 and the now ingrained spirit of adventure enabled Spain and Portugal to utilize the unparalleled advantage of their geographical position at the junction of the Mediterranean and Atlantic highways, and by their great maritime explorations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to become foremost among European colonial powers. But the development was sporadic, not supported by any widespread national movement. In a few decades the maritime preeminence of the Iberian Peninsula began to yield to the compet.i.tion of the Dutch and English, who were, so to speak, saturated with their own maritime environment.

Then followed the rapid decay of the sea power of Spain, followed by that of Portugal, till by 1648 even her coasting trade was in the hands of the Dutch, and Dutch vessels were employed to maintain communication with the West Indies.[30]

[Sidenote: Sporadic response to a new environment.]

We have a later instance of sporadic development under the stimulus of new and favorable geographic conditions, a similar anti-climax. The expansion of the Russians across the lowlands of Siberia was quite in harmony with the genius of that land-bred people; but when they reached Bering Sea, the enclosed basin, the proximity of the American continent, the island stepping-stones between, and the lure of rich sealskins to the fur-hunting Cossacks determined a sudden maritime expansion, for which the Russian people were unfitted. Beginning in 1747, it swept the coast of Alaska, located its American administrative center first on Kadiak, then on Baranof Island, and by 1812 placed its southern outposts on the California coast near San Francis...o...b..y and on the Farralone Islands.[31] Russian convicts were employed to man the crazy boats built of green lumber on the sh.o.r.es of Bering Sea, and Aleutian hunters with their _bidarkas_ were impressed to catch the seal.[32] The movement was productive only of countless shipwrecks, many seal skins, and an opportunity to satisfy an old grudge against England. The territory gained was sold to the United States in 1867. This is the one instance in Russian history of any attempt at maritime expansion, and also of any withdrawal from territory to which the Muscovite power had once established its claim. This fact alone would indicate that only excessively tempting geographic conditions led the Russians into an economic and political venture which neither the previously developed apt.i.tudes of the people nor the conditions of population and historical development on the Siberian seaboard were able to sustain.

[Sidenote: The larger conception of the environment.]

The history and culture of a people embody the effects of previous habitats and of their final environment; but this means something more than local geographic conditions. It involves influences emanating from far beyond the borders. No country, no continent, no sea, mountain or river is restricted to itself in the influence which it either exercises or receives. The history of Austria cannot be understood merely from Austrian ground. Austrian territory is part of the Mediterranean hinterland, and therefore has been linked historically with Rome, Italy, and the Adriatic. It is a part of the upper Danube Valley and therefore shares much of its history with Bavaria and Germany, while the lower Danube has linked it with the Black Sea, Greece, the Russian steppes, and Asia. The Asiatic Hungarians have pushed forward their ethnic boundary nearly to Vienna. The Austrian capital has seen the warring Turks beneath its walls, and shapes its foreign policy with a view to the relative strength of the Sultan and the Czar.

[Sidenote: Unity of the earth.]

The earth is an inseparable whole. Each country or sea is physically and historically intelligible only as a portion of that whole. Currents and wind-systems of the oceans modify the climate of the nearby continents, and direct the first daring navigations of their peoples. The alternating monsoons of the Indian Ocean guided Arab merchantmen from ancient times back and forth between the Red Sea and the Malabar coast of India.[33] The Equatorial Current and the northeast trade-wind carried the timid ships of Columbus across the Atlantic to America. The Gulf Stream and the prevailing westerlies later gave English vessels the advantage on the return voyage. Europe is a part of the Atlantic coast.

This is a fact so significant that the North Atlantic has become a European sea. The United States also is a part of the Atlantic coast: this is the dominant fact of American history. China forms a section of the Pacific rim. This is the fact back of the geographic distribution of Chinese emigration to Annam, Tonkin, Siam, Malacca, the Philippines, East Indies, Borneo, Australia, Hawaiian Islands, the Pacific Coast States, British Columbia, the Alaskan coast southward from Bristol Bay in Bering Sea, Ecuador and Peru.

As the earth is one, so is humanity. Its unity of species points to some degree of communication through a long prehistoric past. Universal history is not ent.i.tled to the name unless it embraces all parts of the earth and all peoples, whether savage or civilized. To fill the gaps in the written record it must turn to ethnology and geography, which by tracing the distribution and movements of primitive peoples can often reconstruct the most important features of their history.

Anthropo-geographic problems are never simple. They must all be viewed in the long perspective of evolution and the historical past. They require allowance for the dominance of different geographic factors at different periods, and for a possible range of geographic influences wide as the earth itself. In the investigator they call for pains-taking a.n.a.lysis and, above all, an open mind.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

[1] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp.

149-157. New York, 1897.

[2] A.P. Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History, Chap. I.

Boston, 1903.

[3] R.H. Whitbeck, Geographic Influences in the Development of New Jersey, _Journal of Geography_, Vol. V, No. 6. January, 1908.

[4] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, p. 372. London and New York, 1902-1906.

[5] Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, 1641-1667. Vol. I, chap.

V and map. London, 1889.

[6] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 305. London, 1905.

[7] Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, Vol. II, pp. 464-465, 469.

London, 1883.

[8] _Imperial Gazetteer for India_, Vol. III, p. 109. London, 1885.

[9] G.G. Chisholm, The Relativity of Geographic Advantages, _Scottish Geog. Mag_., Vol. XIII, No. 9, Sept. 1897.

[10] Hugh Robert Mill, International Geography, p. 347. New York, 1902.

[11] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 228-230. London, 1903.

[12] H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 317-323. London, 1904.

[13] Captain A.T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 36-38.

Boston, 1902.

[14] G.G. Chisholm, Economic Geography, _Scottish Geog. Mag_., March, 1908.

[15] Captain A.T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 37-38.

Boston, 1902.

[16] Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 123, 124, 145-147.

Philadelphia, 1891.

[17] Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Book XIV, chap. IV.

[18] Henry Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. I, pp.

86-106.

[19] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, p. 225. Leipzig, 1897.

This whole chapter on _Land und Leute_ is suggestive.

[20] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 524-525. New York, 1899.

[21] _Ibid._, 526.

[22] _Ibid._, 517-520, 533-536.

[23] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 256-257, 268-271. London, 1903.

[24] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 89. New York, 1899.

[25] Strabo, Book VII, chap. I, 2.

[26] Strabo, Book II, chap. III, 7.

[27] Plutarch, Solon, pp. 13, 29, 154.

[28] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, pp. 244-245. New York, 1902-1906.

[29] Roscher, _National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 33, note 3.

Stuttgart, 1888.