A general sketch of political history from the earliest times

Preface

HISTORY is apt to present itself, not only to the youthful mind, as a haphazard collection of events grouped round a few interesting personalities, the groups of events being unconnected. A stage in advance of this is reached when we realise that English or Roman or Greek history is the story of the progress of a nation in which interesting personalities play only a part. At a third stage we discover that all history is the story of the progress of the human race, in which individual nations play only a part ; that the separate histories are not isolated, but act on and are acted on by others ; that the history of one period is the outcome of the preceding ages, as the history of the future will be the outcome of the history of the present. This conception of the unity of history as a whole is needful to the right understanding of our own or any other specific history ; and an acquaintance, sound so far as it goes, with the ground plan of general history is exceedingly helpful to the conception. The aim of this work is to present such a ground-plan ( sound so far as it goes/ which may enlarge the horizon of the student without such a multiplication of details as will 'prevent him from seeing the wood for the trees.'

A. D. I.

Gerrard's Cross. Nov. 1910.

Chapter I Prehistoric History

The history of man begins in one sense at the time when he

first left intentional records of his doings. But in another sense

mankind had a history before man began to leave

a record. This is what we mean by the phrase

' Prehistoric History ' — the history of what was going on before

history was written down.

Prehistoric history, then, starts from the very earliest time when men existed on this planet. Man is the only creature that has learnt to make tools, to make use of fire, The First and to employ articulate speech. We know that Men - there were men on earth so long ago as before the last Glacial Period, when the northern half of Europe was a great ice-field ; but we do not know how many tens of thousands of years may have passed since that time. It is not until w r e get down to somewhere about ten thousand years ago that we have traces of communities which remained in existence generation after generation continuously down to the time when they began to leave conscious records of their actions.

This first trace of a continuous community is found in the valley of the Nile; and probably about two or three thousand years later come the second traces of a continuous community in the valley of the Euphrates. Both had begun to be recorded somewhere about six thousand years ago ; that is The First to say, before the year 4000 B.C. Both, before that Records, time, had reached an advanced stage of civilisation ; that is, they had an ordered system of government, and had acquired a great deal of knowledge and engineering skill.

But ages before these two civilisations, which are generally called the Egyptian and the Akkadian or Sumerian, had come into existence, Man had spread over the globe. At present nobody knows in what part of the world Man first appeared, 2. The Races though most people are still inclined to think that of Mankind. the cradle of the human race was somewhere in Central Asia. But wherever Man spread from we are pretty sure of this : in the hottest parts of the world, at any rate of our Eastern Hemisphere, there were races with black skins and black hair who are referred to as negroes, or negroid. In the regions not quite so hot there were races who were not quite so dark, with brown, or red-brown, or yellowish skins. To a group of these in Northern Africa is given the name of Hamitic, because they were supposed to be descended from Ham, the son of Noah. The peoples who were spread over Europe and Asia are generally classed indiscriminately as Mongolians. The Egyptians belonged to the Hamitic group and the Akkadians to the Mongolian group.

A long time after both the Egyptian and Akkadian civilisations had been well established, two new groups of races appeared The Caii- which are both sometimes classed under the name

casian Races. Caucasian. That name was given when it was supposed that both of them came at different times out of the regions where the Caucasian mountains are, on the east of the Black Sea. Also they are classed together because, although their languages were very unlike each other, they had some common characteristics which are not found in the languages of any other races. The first of these two groups is called the Semitic, from Noah's son Shem. The second group is sometimes called Japhetic after Japhet ; more often it is called Indo-European, because the races which belonged to it made themselves masters of India and Europe ; but the commonest name for it is Aryan, because the branch which left the earliest records of itself called itself by that name.

It is probable that before the first appearance of the Semites, between the years 3000 and 4000 B.C., there was another Mongolian civilisation beginning in the Far East to which China and Japan owe their origin.

PREHISTORIC HISTORY 5

The Semites appear to have grown up first of all in Arabia, and thence to have spread themselves over Western Asia in a succession of invasions. They came into direct Semites and contact with the two great civilisations which were -^y 9 - 118 - already in existence, and they did not spread beyond Western Asia. Where the Aryans started from we do not know for certain. But for a long time they did not come into contact with the older civilisations at all. They appear to have had their cradle somewhere further towards the north, and to have migrated in great waves first south-eastwards through Afghanistan into India, on the east of the Akkadians and Semites. In a second series of migrations they spread all over Europe without striking into Western Asia. Here we come across an interesting problem. During the second millennium, or period of one thousand years, before the Christian Era, that is between 2000 and 1000 B.C., there were highly civilised peoples in Asia Minor, in the Islands of the Mediterranean, in the Grecian peninsula, and in Italy. But we can find out so little about their languages that no one quite knows whether they were Mongolian, or Hamitic, or partly Semitic, or partly Aryan.

Without either affirming or denying that these peoples represent a comparatively early Aryan migration, we can make some tolerably definite statements about the movements Asiatic of the Aryan peoples which were going on during the Ar y ans - long centuries when great powers were flourishing in Western Asia and Egypt. Probably it was during the third millennium that their great hosts fought their way through the mountains into the plains of Northern India.

Either a large number of them turned aside into Persia, or else Persia was occupied later by a separate migrating body ; for there was certainly a close connection in the language and the religious ideas of the Aryans of India and of Persia.

The Aryans who migrated across Europe are divided into groups chiefly according to their languages. All the Aryan languages are akin ; that is to say we can be sure that they originally arose out of one common language. That of the Indian Aryans, called Sanskrit, must have departed less from the original than any of the others.

Of the European Aryans, the first great group is that of the Celts, who went steadily westward. The Celtic languages fall into two divisions so distinct that we must recognise two separate European Celtic waves. They went steadily west, not stopping Aryans. to turn south into the Greek or Italian Penin-

sulas, until the Atlantic Ocean stopped them, and they broke northward into the British Isles and southward into Spain. Although they migrated at an early stage there are no records of their history until at a much later date, when they came into collision with states which had grown up in the meanwhile in the lands of the Mediterranean Sea.

Next we are concerned with the great group which parted into two divisions generally called the Hellenic or Greek and the Italian or Latin. These two divisions, when they established themselves in the Greek and Italian Peninsulas, roughly speaking between 1500 and 1000 B.C., soon acquired a high civilisation ; but the civilised Hellenes and Latins were not at all inclined to recognise their relationship to the tribes of their kinsmen who remained in wilder regions and clung to a wilder life.

The third great group is the Teutonic, which in course of time spread itself over Germany and Scandinavia, but did not come into collision with its southern neighbours till about one hundred years before the Christian Era. The last great group is that of the Slavs, who ultimately peopled the greater part of Eastern Europe. Perhaps this is the same group of whom we hear in the course of Greek and Roman history under the names of Scythians, Sarmatians, and Cimmerians.

Now how did these peoples come to be formed? Primitive man, man in the first few thousand years of his existence, was 3. Primitive ver >' much like any other wild beast ; only, he had Man - more intelligence. He found that he could make

fire serve him. He found out that he could make things, and that he could throw things : and thereupon he began to use weapons wherewith to fight other beasts and other men. Also he made other tools in the same way that he had made weapons, out of stone and bone and wood. He kept himself alive by eating the fruits of the earth, and by killing beasts or birds or fishes when he had found out how to do so. He found out that he could use some

PREHISTORIC HISTORY 7

of the beasts by taming and breeding them, and that he could make food grow out of the ground instead of having to hunt about to find where it was growing already. And he went on finding out that he could make improvements in his weapons and tools. At last a time came when he found out that he could make use of copper and harden it into bronze ; and when once he had learnt the use of metals, his advance went on much quicker. This progress became most marked when he had found out how to use iron. A tribe armed with iron weapons found it easy to conquer those who had nothing better to fight with than bronze or bones or stones.

But man cannot be called primitive man at all when he had got on so far as to use metal. Primitive man hunted and fished and fought with primitive weapons, and 4. Growth of perhaps scraped the soil with a primitive hoe. Communities. From the earliest times about which anything is known men were living in groups : not in single separate families, but in communities of people, who supposed themselves all to be descended from some common ancestor.

The tribes moved about from place to place to find new hunting-ground or to steal the hunting-ground of another tribe which was weaker than their own ; or to escape the attacks of another tribe which was stronger. When they began to breed sheep and cattle for the sake of meat and wool and hides and milk, they moved their flocks and herds with them. This is what is called the nomadic or wandering stage. Then it was not so much to find new hunting-ground as to find new pasture that they kept on moving. Of course they fought with other tribes, making slaves of those of the conquered enemy whom they did not kill ; and sometimes they made friendship and alliance with other tribes whom they agreed to regard as brothers.

But if they found themselves in particularly fertile land, they would be inclined to settle down and make the most of the soil. When this happened the community, that is the settling tribe or collection of tribes, became agriculturists ; down, they were in what is called the agricultural stage. But when they had settled down they set about trying to make themselves more comfortable ; to make better shelters to sleep in, more convenient garments, and handier utensils. The more improvements they made the more they wanted ; and they found that a great deal of labour was saved by every man doing the things that he could do best, leaving other men to do the things that they could do best, and exchanging the things that they had made but did not want for themselves for other things which they wanted and their neighbours had made but did not want. Division of labour in a community made progress much more rapid.

As communities settled down they found that much more was to be got out of making bargains for mutual advantage with other communities than by fighting. So arose commerce or exchange between different communities, which corresponded very much to Customs and division of labour within each community. At a Laws. very early stage, long before there had been any

settling down, every tribe had got habits or customs of its own which the members were obliged to obey. The bigger the community grew the more necessary it became for rules to be fixed which the whole community was bound to obey ; all the more so when different tribes joined together whose customs varied.

When large communities settled down together, all agreeing to be bound by the same laws, they formed a state. Naturally the first large communities which settled permanently did so in the places which were the most fertile, and where it was easiest to keep up a friendly intercourse with neighbour communities. That is why the first states are found in the two great river basins of the Nile and the Euphrates.

The states would settle down under an ordered government.

In all early states there was a ruling class and a slave class,

the descendants respectively of conquering and con -

quered tribes. As soon as there is anything to

show what sort of government was in existence, we find a

king.

But we cannot say with any certainty that kingship always grew up in the same way. What does seem certain is that no tribes or communities were ever sufficiently organised to form themselves into a permanent State until they had arrived at some kind of a monarchy.

When we pass from this account of a prehistoric society, we

PREHISTORIC HISTORY 9

shall find ourselves dealing with the early civilisations of Egypt and the Euphrates valley ; and following upon these the Semitic or partly Semitic Empires in the same regions ; that pi rs t chapters is to say, in Egypt and in Asia west of the Persian of History. Gulf. Until somewhere about 2000 B.C. the record is meagre. At about this time the record of the Hebrew people, a Semitic race, begins with Abraham; and the records become fuller both for Egypt and for Mesopotamia, the land lying between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris.

We shall see all these empires finally absorbed in that of Persia in the sixth century B.C. We shall glance also at the establishment of the Aryan dominion in India, and the development of the pre-Hellenic and Hellenic civilisations on the Eastern Mediterranean. From that time we may consider ourselves as being in the full light of history deliberately recorded in a literary form.

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Emery Walker sc.

Chapter II The Ancient Egyptian And Semitic Empires

Fifty years ago what we knew about the ancient empires, before Greece and Rome became great, was derived almost entirely from the Hebrew scriptures and from records compiled after the i. The year 500 B.C. But during the last fifty years a

Records. number of ancient monuments and tombs have

been excavated, revealing ancient inscriptions ; and much progress has been made in the art of deciphering these records. Besides these actual graven records, the excavations have provided an immense amount of material from which archaeologists are able to draw conclusions; sometimes with certainty, but sometimes only in the nature of plausible guesses, which cannot be wholly relied on without further evidence. Still, every year produces something fresh. Two generations have added greatly to our knowledge, and we are on the way to learn much more. On the whole it is rather surprising to find how far the new evidence confirms the old authorities.

As concerns Egypt, the main authorities were the legends collected by the Greek Herodotus in the fifth century B.C., and 2. Egypt: the tables of the learned Egyptian Manetho com- Manetho. piled f rom the priests' records at a later date. These begin Egyptian history with Menes, the first king of all Egypt, the founder of what is called the First Dynasty. There were twenty-six dynasties in succession, ending with King Psammetichus in 664 B.C. From that time, the rulers of Egypt are not included in the ' Dynastic ' list, and the Egyptian Empire came to an end with the conquest of Egypt by the Persian King Cambyses in 525 b.c. According to the pre-

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND SEMITIC EMPIRES t 3

vailing division, the first ten dynasties are known as the Old Empire, the next, seven as the Middle Empire, and the remainder, including the last independent sovereigns, as the New Empire.

Now Egyptian history becomes much more precise, and its compilers had much more information to depend on after the year 1580 B.C. than before. This date starts the Israel in eighteenth dynasty, which begins the New Empire, Egypt, and it marks the time of the expulsion from Egypt of a foreign race which had ruled there probably for some two hundred years. These foreigners are known as the Hyksos or shepherd kings, Semitic invaders who came from Arabia. The time of the prosperity of the Semitic Israelites in Egypt was the time of their rule. The other king who 'knew not Joseph' probably refers to the restoration of a genuine Egyptian dynasty. The ' Exodus ' was what we may call the last act in the expulsion of the Hyksos or Semites.

Although the information supplied to Herodotus and Manetho regarding the earlier period was comparatively meagre and legendary, still the priests who gave it had informa- The Pyramidtion of their own derived both from tradition and builders, from their knowledge of the actual inscriptions which Egyptologists are deciphering again now ; and in its main lines, what Manetho and Herodotus tell us is correct. Some of the oldest monuments in the world are the Pyramids, and Pyramid-builders are positively identified with monarchs of the third and fourth dynasties, Tjeser and Sneferu, Khufu and Khafra, and others ; these two last names appearing in Herodotus as Cheops and Chephren, the builders of the biggest Pyramids. The modern authorities place their date somewhere between 3500 and 4000 B.C., the latest date assigned being 3000 B.C. Sneferu was the last king of the third dynasty, and until quite recently he was the earliest whose own actual inscriptions on rock had been identified. Now, there are known inscriptions left by his predecessors. These apparently take us back to the 'First Dynasty ' — there are eminent authorities who think they take us back to a dynasty before that which is called the first — and give the impression that Menes, the first king, was a somewhat mythical personage, a composite of two or three first-dynasty kings. At i 4 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES

any rate we can safely say that the Pyramid-builders can be definitely identified and an approximate date given for them — not before 4000 or after 3000 B.C. — and that there were kings before them who left records of their conquests.

It is clear again that our Pyramid-builders were possessed of advanced mathematical knowledge, implying high intellectual Before the cultivation ; also that they had control over a vast Pyramids. amount of labour involved in the hewing, carting, and building up of the great blocks of stone of which the Pyramids were made. Also they worked with metal tools. But the tombs of the first kings show that in their time, though metal was in use, stone implements were not altogether out of date, stone tools of an admirable workmanship having been preserved. They were already, long before 4000 B.C., very far removed from being savages. Moreover the records make it clear that hitherto there had been two dominions or states on the Nile, one occupying the Delta, or district where the great river splits up into several streams, like a fan, while the other occupied the Nile valley southward. The first two dynasties were kings of the south, who were much occupied in bringing the north or Delta into subjection, making the single kingdom of Egypt ; extending their dominion westwards into what is called Libya, and eastwards into the peninsula of Sinai.

From the Pyramid-builders to the twelfth dynasty, there is

much obscurity • but during the twelfth dynasty, Semites appear.

The Egyptian paintings leave no room for doubt ;

the artists were accurate delineators of race-types, and

the Semite is unmistakable. Somewhere about 1800 B.C., though

some authorities prefer an earlier date, the Hyksos invasion took

place ; though it is not easy to connect the epoch with any other

Semitic movement. Probably the rule of the dynasties between

the twelfth and the eighteenth was contemporary with that of

the foreigners, meaning that there were generally districts over

which the Hyksos did not consistently maintain their sway.

Finally, one of these native princes named Aahmes succeeded in

The New expelling the Hyksos about the year 1580 B.C. The

Empire. new empire begins, and the records become much

fuller. The new empire, born of insurrection against foreign oppression, itself developed a new military character. The kings of this dynasty overcame the Ethiopians on the south-east of Egypt, and carried their arms into Asia, and began to come into collision with the Hittites in Syria ; but the great conqueror was Thothmes in. in the first half of the fifteenth century. We turn now to the development of the Asiatic Empires with which Egypt was thus brought in direct contact.

The story of the Asiatic Empires begins in the region called Babylonia. The whole district lying enclosed by the two great rivers Euphrates and Tigris is called Mesopotamia, 3# Mesopomeaning the land between the rivers. Babylonia tamia. includes the south-eastern half of this district, with the basins of both the rivers and the land lying between their junction and the Persian Gulf. Babylonia itself is divided into two, to begin with ; the southern part called Sumer, and the northern called Akkad.

The earliest records — that is, graven inscriptions — take us back at least as far as the earliest Egyptian records ; and already we find the presence of two distinct races marked, sumerians who are known as Sumerians and Semites. The and Semites, language and the ' script,' that is the ' cuneiform ' or arrowshaped writing, are Sumerian — neither Semitic nor Aryan ; and they remain the official language and script long after the language had become much changed by a Semitic admixture. The probabilities are that the Sumerians had become a fairly highly civilised people— civilised enough to have created the art of writing — before the more vigorous but ruder Semites appeared on the scene ; and the Semites adopted the civilisation which they found before them. In the same sort of way, some thousands of years later, the Teutons conquered Western Europe, but the Latin language and civilisation prevailed over the conquerors in the regions where Rome had held sway before. Outside the Sumerian area the Semite characteristics prevailed as the Teutonic characteristics prevailed outside the bounds of the old Roman Empire.

Probably these Semites, like the later Semitic waves, came out of Arabia, crossed Syria, the region between the Upper Euphrates and the Mediterranean, entered Mesopotamia, and bore down south-eastwards upon the land of Sumer.

i6 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES

At this early period we find records of several Sumerian cities, warring with each other, and achieving predominance. A Sargon : definite supremacy was established by the Semites

2700 B.C. of Akkadia under the great King Sargon and his son

Naram-Sin, and Sargon carried his conquering arms as far as the Mediterranean. They ruled, probably, somewhere between 3000 and 2700 B.C., and at this time there was certainly intercourse between Babylonia and Arabia. Sargon is the founder of the Empire, and in after ages the Semites of Babylonia based their claim to supremacy on the tradition of his greatness. After Naram-Sin, however, princes and governors recovered independence and occasional supremacy; and sundry dynasties are recorded as kings of 'Sumer and Akkad.' The city of Eridu, at the head of the Persian Gulf, became their capital. Babylon had not yet achieved its pre-eminence.

Now in the latter part of the third millennium — that is, somewhat earlier than the year 2000 b.c. — there was a second great The Semitic movement of Semitic expansion, starting out of Migrations. Arabia. This is called the Canaanite wave. It swept up over Palestine and Syria, occupied those regions permanently, and again entered Mesopotamia on the north-west. These invading Semites were pastoral nomads, owners of flocks and herds, who did not destroy the states they found before them, but amalgamated with their Semitic predecessors. Of this stock came Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people, who migrated from Ur ' of the Chaldees ' to Canaan not long after Babylon had risen to supremacy in Mesopotamia under a Semitic dynasty. The Hyksos invasion of Egypt must be regarded as a wave of this Semitic expansion. In the meantime we have to remark that a considerable Semitic power had grown up at Asshur on the north of Mesopotamia ; and another non-Semitic power in Elam, on the east of Sumer and Akkad, which acquired a temporary supremacy over that kingdom at the time when the new Semitic Babylonian Empire was being founded.

This 'First Babylonian Dynasty,' under which Babylon assumed Hammurabi the leading position, began with Sumu-abu, a little circa 2000 B.C. before 2000 B.C. The fifth in succession after Sumu-abu was the great Hammurabi of whom we read in the Old

Testament as Abraham's contemporary under the name of Amraphel, when Chedorlaomer was King of Elam. Hammurabi was a very great ruler, who enjoyed a very long reign, and brought most of what is called on the map (1) 'the area of Semitic Empire ' under his sway. But he is especially notable because he drew up a great legal code, which was engraved on a great block of stone, and is preserved to this day. From this Code of Hammurabi we see what was the nature of the Babylonian state ; how it was divided into the three classes of nobles, freemen and slaves, the legal rights possessed by each class, the penalties for misdoings, the independent position of the women, the regulations for trade and commerce. All these show that a very high standard of civilisation, and an elaborate system of justice and government had been attained four thousand years ago. It was not Hammurabi who made these laws, but it was he who gave them permanent shape, much like our King Alfred in England.

In the time of Hammurabi's successor, an independent principality was set up on the north coast of the Persian Gulf, which was called the Kingdom of the Sea. Three or four generations later, new forces appeared on the scene. Barbarian tribes called the Kassites attacked Babylonia from the east, having perhaps first mastered Elam ; and from the west came an invasion of the Hittites, or Khatti, who are by no means to be confused with the Kassites.

The Hittites were not like the Semites. Possibly they were early inhabitants of Asia Minor, the land beyond the ranges of Mount Taurus ; it is not likely that they were akin The to the people whom we shall find in Italy under Hittites. the name of Etruscans, or to the predecessors of the Hellenes in Greece who are usually called Pelasgians ; but we can say with certainty that they were not Aryans. Their invasion of Babylonia seems to have been a great raid rather than a conquest ; but they remained in occupation of some part of North-western Mesopotamia, where they set up the kingdom of Mitani, extending into Syria.

The Kassites however came as conquerors, when Babylon was weakened by the Hittite raid and by the defiance of the Country

B of the Sea. By an error, these kings of the Sea-Country have been spoken of as the ' Second Babylonian Dynasty ' ; hence The the Kassite dynasty is called the third. They

Kassites. mastered Akkadia to begin with, and at a later stage completed the conquest, overthrowing the kings of the sea. But like all other conquerors of Babylonia, they succumbed to the existing civilisation. While they were dominant, there came another wave of Semitic expansion, called the Aramaic; and this resulted in the immediate rise of Assyria, with its capital at Asshur and later at Nineveh, to challenge the Babylonian and Hittite powers. This rise of Assyria is almost contemporaneous with the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt.

While the eighteenth dynasty was ruling in the land of the Nile, we have seen how Thothmes in. appeared as a conqueror The Tell * n Syria. At a rather later stage, while the same