Influences of Geographic Environment Part 56

Isolation tends to breed among nomads pride of race and a repugnance to intermixture. The ideal of the pastoral Israelites was a pure ethnic stock, protected by stern inhibition of intermarriage with other tribes.

Therefore, Moses enjoined upon them the duty of exterminating the peoples of Canaan whom they dispossessed.[1176] While the urban Arabs show a medley of breeds, dashed with a strain of negro blood, among the nomad Bedouins, mixture is exceptional and is regarded as a disgrace.[1177] The same thing is true among the nomad Arabs of Algeria, and there it has placed a stumbling block in the way of the French colonial administration, by preventing the appearance of half-breeds who might bridge the gap between the colonials and natives. Where pastoral Semites have settled in agricultural lands, intermixture on a wide scale has followed, as in the Sudan from Niger to Nile; but even here, when a tribe or clan has retained a strictly pastoral life in the gra.s.sland, and has held itself aloof from the agricultural districts of the Negro villages, relatively pure survivals are to be found, as among the Cow or Bush Fulani of Bornu.[1178] On the other hand, the Hausa, a migrant trading folk of mingled Arab and Negro blood, spread northward along the trans-Saharan caravan route to the oasis of Air before the fourteenth century, and there have infused into the local Berber stock a strong Negro strain.[1179] Among the nomads of Central Asia, one wave of race movement has so often followed and overtaken another, that it has produced a confused blending of breeds. The mixtures are so numerous that pure types are exceptional,[1180] and the exclusiveness of the desert Semites disappears.

[Sidenote: Religion of pastoral nomads.]

Though all these desert-born characteristics and customs have a certain interest for the sociologist, they possess only minor importance in comparison with the religious spirit of pastoral nomads, which is always fraught with far-reaching historical results. The evidence of history shows us that there is such a thing as a desert-born genius for religion. Huc and Gabin testify to the deeper religious feeling of the Buddhist nomads of the Central Asia plateaus, as compared with the lowland Chinese. The three great monotheistic religions of the world are closely connected in their origin and development with the deserts of Syria and Arabia. The area of Mohammedism embraces the steppe zone of the Old World[1181] from Senegambia and Zanzibar in Africa to the Indus, Tarim and the upper Obi, together with some well watered lands on its margins. It comprises in this territory a variety of races--Negroes, Hamites, Semites, Iranians, Indo-Aryans, and a long list of Mongoloid tribes. Here is a psychological effect of environment. The dry, pure air stimulates the faculties of the desert-dweller, but the featureless, monotonous surroundings furnish them with little to work upon. The mind, finding scant material for sustained logical deduction, falls back upon contemplation. Intellectual activity is therefore restricted, narrow, unproductive; while the imagination is unfettered but also unfed. First and last, these shepherd folk receive from the immense monotony of their environment the impression of unity.[1182] Therefore all of them, upon outgrowing their primitive fetish and nature worship, gravitate inevitably into monotheism. Their religion is in accord with their whole mental make-up; it is a growth, a natural efflorescence. Therefore it is strong. Its tenets form the warp of all their intellectual fabrics, permeate their meager science and philosophy, animate their more glorious poetry. It has moreover the fanaticism and intolerance characterizing men of few ideas and restricted outlook upon life.

Therewith is bound up a spirit of propaganda. The victories of the Jews in Palestine, Syria and Philistia were the victories of Jehovah; the conquests of Saladin were the conquests of Allah; and the domain of the Caliphate was the dominion of Islam.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DISTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS IN THE OLD WORLD (World map showing distribution of Christians, Mohammedans, Brahmans, Buddhists, and Heathen).]

[Sidenote: Fanaticism as a force in nomad expansion.]

The desert everywhere, sooner or later, drives out its brood, ejects its people and their ideas, like those exploding seed-pods which at a touch cast their seed abroad. The religious fanaticism of the shepherd tribes gives that touch; herein lies its historical importance. Mohammedism, fierce and militant, conduced to those upheavals of migration and conquest which since the seventh century have so often transformed the political geography of the Old World. The vast empire of the Caliphate, from its starting point in Arabia, spread in eighty years from the Oxus River to the Atlantic Ocean.[1183] The rapid rise and spread between 1745 and 1803 of the Wahaby clan and sect, the Puritans of Islam, which resulted for a time in their political and religious domination of much of Arabia from their home in the Nejd, recalls the stormy conquests of Mohammed's followers. Islam is to-day a persistent source of ferment in Algeria, the Sahara, and the Sudan, On the other hand. Buddhism serves to cement together the diverse nomadic tribes of the Central Asia plateaus, and keep them in spiritual subjection to the Grand Lama of Lha.s.sa. The Chinese government makes political use of this fact by dominating the Lama and employing him as a tool to secure quiet on its long frontier of contact with its restless Mongol neighbors. Moreover the religion of Buddha has restrained the warlike spirit of the nomads, and by its inst.i.tution of celibacy has helped keep down population below the boiling-point. [Compare maps pages 484 and 513.]

[Sidenote: The faith of the desert.]

The faith of the desert tends to be stern, simple and austere. The indulgence which Mohammed promised his followers in Paradise was only a reflex of the deprivation under which they habitually suffered in the scant pastures of Arabia. The lavish beauty of the Heavenly City epitomized the ideals and dreams of the desert-stamped Jew. The active, simple, uncramped life of the gra.s.slands seems essential to the preservation of the best virtues of the desert-bred. These disappear largely in sedentary life. The Bedouin rots when he takes root. City life contaminates, degrades him. His virile qualities and his religion both lose their best when he leaves the desert. Contact with the cities of Philistia and the fertile plains of the Canaanites, with their sensual agricultural G.o.ds, demoralized the Israelites.[1184] The prophets were always calling them back to the sterner code of morals and the purer faith of their days of wandering. Jeremiah in despair holds up to them as a standard of life the national injunction of the pastoral Rechabites, "Neither shall ye build house nor sow corn nor plant vineyard, but all your days ye shall dwell in tents."[1185] The ascent in civilization made havoc with Hebrew morals and religion, because ethics and religion are the finest and latest flower of each cultural stage.

Transition shows the breaking down of one code before the establishment of another.

Judaism has always suffered from its narrow local base. Even when transplanted to various parts of the earth, it has remained a distinctly tribal religion. Intense conservatism in doctrine and ceremonial it still bears as the heritage of its desert birth. Islam too shows the limitations of its original environment. It embodies a powerful appeal to the peoples of arid lands, and among these it has spread and survives as an active principle. But it belongs to an arrested economic and social development, lacks the germs of moral evolution which Christianity, born in the old stronghold of Hebraic monotheism, but impregnated by all the cosmopolitan influences of the Mediterranean basin and the _Imperium Romanum_, amply possesses.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV

[1026] Figures taken from Albrecht Penck, _Morphologie der Erdoberflache_, Vol. I, p. 151. Stuttgart, 1894.

[1027] A.P. Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History, Chap.

IV. Boston, 1903.

[1028] E.C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp.

65-69, 230, 288, 385. Boston, 1903.

[1029] _Ibid._, pp. 218, 221, 393.

[1030] H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 127. New York, 1902.

[1031] Henry Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. II, pp.

126-136. New York, 1871.

[1032] Carl Ritter, Comparative Geography, pp. 191-192, 201.

Philadelphia, 1865.

[1033] J.H. Breasted, History of Egypt, pp. 142, 144, 261-265, 293-302, 513-517. New York, 1905.

[1034] _Ibid._, 6, 48, 93, 114, 119, 127, 134, 136, 163, 164, 182, 190, 191, 507.

[1035] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 340-343, map. New York, 1899.

[1036] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp.

57-60. New York, 1893.

[1037] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, Maps, pp. 53 and 66. New York, 1899.

[1038] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. VI, p. 130, map of ancient distribution of Germans and Celts. New York, 1907.

[1039] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 216-218. New York, 1899.

[1040] _Ibid._, 344-347, 356, 365.

[1041] Elisee Reclus, Europe, Vol. IV, pp. 309-310. New York, 1882.

[1042] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, p. 107. New York, 1893.

[1043] H.R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 220-222. New York, 1902.

[1044] Vidal-Lablache, _Atlas General_, Maps pp. 63, 64, 93. Paris, 1909.

[1045] H.R. Mill, International Geography, 174, 177-182. New York, 1902.

[1046] Twelfth Census, Bulletin of Agriculture No. 181, p. 2, compared with Eleventh Census, Statistics of Population, map of negro distribution, p. XCVII. Washington, 1895.

[1047] Twelfth Census, Bulletin of Agriculture, No. 155, p. 2.

Washington, 1902.

[1048] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 353. New York, 1899.

[1049] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, p. 238.

London, 1907.

[1050] Haxthausen, _Studien_, Vol. I, p. 309. _Die landliche Verfa.s.sung Russlands_, pp. 3, 7. Leipzig, 1866.

[1051] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 79-83. London, 1896-1898. J. Wappaus, _Handbuch der Geographie und Statistik des ehemaligen spanischen Mittel- und Sud-Amerika_, pp. 978-980, 1019.

Leipzig, 1863-1870.

[1052] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 206-208. London, 1896-1898.

[1053] Nordenskiold, Voyage of the Vega, pp. 60, 156, 452. New York, 1882. Alexander P. Engelhardt, A Russian Province of the North, pp.

291-295. London, 1899.

[1054] _Ibid._, pp. 83, 88-91.

[1055] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 166-167. London.

1896-1898.

[1056] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 107. New York, 1897.

[1057] Herodotus, Melpomene, 19, 46.

[1058] Thomas Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. I, p. 262. Oxford, 1892.