The Book of History (Vol. 1 of 18) A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times to the Present (part 3 of 3)
There are great features of the earth’s conformation that are so extensive that groups of nations share them in common. Russia and Siberia occupy the same plain upon which the greater portions of Germany, Belgium, and Holland are situated. Germany and France share the central mountain system which extends from the Cévennes to the Sudeten, or Sudetic Mountains. A mere participation in a common geological feature produces such affinity and relationship as may be seen in the Alpine states, in Sweden and Norway, and in the nations of the Andes. This reminds us of the groups of nations that surround seas; but that which separates the Baltic states binds them together; and the mountains that unite the Swiss cantons also separate them from one another. Lesser features of conformation divide countries and often exhibit gaps and breaches in development, for the reason that they divide a political whole into separate natural regions. The history of the lowlands of North Germany differs greatly from that of the mountainous districts of the same country; the lowlands of the Po and Apennine Italy are two different lands. The great contrast between the hilly manufacturing west of England and the low-lying agricultural east extends throughout English history; and in like manner the highlands and the lowlands are opposed to each other in Scotland.
Wherever mountain formations occur largely in a country, the question arises whether, in spite of all diversity, they unite to form a whole, or whether they exist as separate, independent neighbouring parts. The elements of the surface formation of the earth are not only historically important in themselves as units, but also on account of the way in which they are connected with one another. We have in Greece an example of an exceedingly intricate mountain system in which barren plateaus are interspersed with fertile valleys and bays. Owing to the sea, such bays as those of Attica, Argos, and Lamia are to a high degree self-dependent; they became little worlds in themselves, independent states, which could never have grown into a united whole had they not been subjected to external pressure.
The reverse of this state of disunion, arising from the juxtaposition of a great number of different formations, is the division of North America into the three great regions of the Alleghanies, the Mississippi Valley, and the Rocky Mountain plateau, which gradually merge into one another and are bound into a whole by the vast central valley. Austria-Hungary includes within itself five different mountain features--the Alps, Carpathians, Sudeten, the Adriatic provinces, and the Pannonian plains. Vienna is situated where the Danube, March, and Adria meet, and from this centre radiates all political unifying power. If a still closer-knit unity is co-existent with a diversified geological formation of insular or peninsular nature, as in Ireland or Italy, it follows that this unity binds the orographic divisions into an aggregate. The discrepancies between Apennine Italy, Italy of the Po Valley, and Alpine Italy, which have been evident in all periods of history, formed, in their rise and in their final state of subjugation to political force, an example of dissimilarity of mountain features existing within peninsular unity.
The great continental slopes are also important aids to the overcoming of orographic obstacles to political unity. In Germany there is a general inclination towards the north, crossed and recrossed by a number of mountain chains and successions of valleys. It is not to be denied that the intersecting elevations have furthered political disunion. Without doubt, a gradual slope from the southern part of Germany to the sea, with a consequent partition of the country by the rivers into strips extending from east to west, would have been attended by a greater political unity. Again, but in another way, the preponderance of any one orographic element has a unifying effect on all the other elements, as we have seen in North America, where the simple, even course of development has been in conformity with the existence of geological formations on a large scale.
There are internal differences in formation in every mountain range and in every plain, all of which have different influences on history. The steep fall of the Alps on the Italian side has rendered a descent into the plains of the Po far easier than a crossing in the opposite direction, where many obstacles in the shape of mountain steeps, elevated plateaus, and deep river valleys surround the outer border of the Alps. Again, penetration from the plains to the interior of the Alps is less difficult in the west, where there are no southern environing mountains, than in the east, where there is such a surrounding mountain chain. The compact formation of the Alps in the west crowds obstacles together into a small space, where they may be overcome with greater labour and in a shorter time than in the east, among the broadened-out chains of mountains, where there are numerous smaller hindrances to progression spread out over a wider territory. The route from Vienna to Trieste is twice as long as that from Constance to Como.
In mountain passes orographic differences are concentrated within very limited areas, and for this reason passes are of great importance in history. The value of gorges and defiles increases with their rarity, and their number varies greatly in different mountain chains. The Pindus range is broken but once, by the cleft of Castoreia, and an easy passage from Northern to Central Greece is possible only by way of Thermopylæ; the short overland route from Persia to India is through the Khyber or Bolan Passes. The Rhætian Alps are rich in defiles and gorges; but the mountain ridges are poor in crossing-places, and, as a rule, the elevation of the passes decreases towards the east.
[Sidenote: Nature’s Place in History]
The possibility of journeying over the Himalayas increases as we travel westward. During the Seven Years’ War the great difference between the accessible, sloping Erz-Gebirge of the Bohemian frontier and the precipitous, fissured, sandstone hills of the Elbe was very apparent. Mountain passes are always closely connected with valleys and rivers; the latter form the ways leading to and from the former. The valleys of the Reuss and the Tessin are the natural routes to the pass of St. Gothard; and were it not for the gorges of the Inn and the Etsch in the northern and the southern Alps, the Brenner Pass would not possess anything like its present supreme importance. Wherever such entrances to passes meet together or cross one another, important rallying-points either for carrying on traffic or for warlike undertakings are formed; such places are Valais, Valteline, and the upper valley of the Mur. Coire is a meeting-point of not less than five passes--the Julier, Septimer, Splügen, St. Bernardin, and Lukmanier. The value of passes varies according to whether they cross a mountain range completely from side to side, or extend through only a part of it. When the Augsburgers, on the way to Venice, had got through the Fern Pass, or that of Leefeld, the Brenner still remained to be crossed; but when the Romans had surmounted the difficulties of Mont Genevre, the ridges of the Alps were no longer before them; they were in Gaul.
There are also passes through cross ridges that connect mountain chains, such as the Arlberg, that pierces a ridge extending between the northern and the central Alps. Passes of this sort are of great importance to life in the mountains, for, as a rule, they lead from one longitudinal valley to another, such valleys extending between ridges being the most fertile and protected districts in mountainous regions. In this manner the Furka Pass connects Valais, the most prosperous country of the Alps during the time of the Romans, with the upper Rhine valley; and the Arlberg connects the Vorarlberg with the upper valley of the Inn.
[Sidenote: Value of Mountain Passes]
Mountain passes are not only highways for traffic, they are the arteries of the mountains themselves. Commerce along the mountain ways leads to settlements and to agriculture at heights where they would hardly have developed had it not been for the roads; and the highest permanent dwellings are situated in and about passes. The Romans established their military colonies in the neighbourhood of passes, and the German emperors rendered the Rhætian gorges secure through settlements. There are political territories that are practically founded on mountain passes. The kingdom of Cottius, tributary to the Romans, was the land of the defiles of the Cottian Alps; Uri may be designated as the country of the north Gothard, and the Brenner Pass connects the food-producing districts of the Tyrol with one another.
[Sidenote: Battlefields of Mountain Borderlands]
The transition point from one geological formation to another is invariably the boundary line between two districts that have different histories. The movements in one region bring forces to bear on the movements in the other. Hence the remarkable phenomena which occur on mountain borderlands. The historical effects of mountainous regions are opposed by forces that thrust themselves in from without; external powers anchor themselves, as it were, in the mountains, seeking to obtain there both protection and frontier lines. Rome encroached more and more upon the Alps, first from the south, and then from the west and the north, by extending her provinces. Austria, Italy, Germany, and France have drawn up to the Alps on different sides; they merely fall back upon the mountains, however; their centres lie beyond. The same phenomenon is shown in the regions occupied by different races. Rhætians, Celts, Romans, Germans, and Slavs have penetrated into the Alps; but the bulk of their populations have never inhabited the mountainous districts. The question as to which nation shall possess a mountain chain or pass is always decided on the borders. Here are the battlefields; here, too, are the great centres of traffic whose locations put one in mind of harbours situated at points where two kinds of media of transmission come into contact with each other. This margin, like that of the sea, also has its promontories and bays.
Height of land obstructs historical movements and lengthens their course. The Romans remained at the foot of the Alps for two centuries before they made their way into them, forced to it by the constant invasion of Alpine robbers who descended from the heights as if sallying forth from secure fortresses. Long before this the Romans had encircled the western side of the Alps and had begun to turn the eastern side. The colonies on the Atlantic coast of America, the predecessors of the United States, had been in existence for almost two hundred years before they passed the Alleghanies; and it is certain that this damming up of the powerful movement towards the west, which arose later, had a furthering influence on the economic and political development of the young states. The passes of the Pyrenees occur at about two-thirds of the distance from the level ground to the summits of the mountains; in the Alps the elevation of the gorges is but one-half or one-third that of the mountain tops; hence, as a whole, the Alps are more easy of access than the Pyrenees. The Colorado plateau is a greater obstacle than the Sierra Nevada range in California, which, although of much greater elevation, slopes gently and is interspersed with broad valleys. It was due rather to the forests than to the moderate elevation of the central mountains of Germany that their settlement was delayed until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The influence of the broad, desert tableland of the great basin in separating the western from the Mississippi states is greater than that of the Rocky Mountains with peaks more than twelve thousand feet in height. The extensive glacial formations and the sterility of the mountains in Scandinavia have held Sweden and Norway asunder, and at the same time have permitted the Lapps and their herds of reindeer to force themselves in between like a wedge. The broad, elevated steppes of Central Tien-schan enabled the Kirghese to cross the mountains with their herds and to spread abroad in all directions.
[Sidenote: Little Worlds on the Heights]
[Sidenote: Man in Touch with Nature]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
[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.
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.
[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.
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.
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.
These differences occur over again in more restricted areas, even within the temperate zone itself. The inhabitants of the colder portions of a country have often shown their superiority to the men who dwell in the warmer districts. The causes of the contrast between the Northerners and the Southerners, which has dominated in the development of the United States, may for the most part be clearly traced: the South was weakened by the plantation method of cultivation, and slavery; its white population increased slowly, and shared to a lesser degree than did the Northerners in the strengthening, educating influences of agriculture and manufacturing industries. Thus after a long struggle that finally developed into a war, the North won the place of authority.
[Sidenote: Sunbeams and Rainfall in History]
In Italy and in France the superiority of the north over the south is partially comprehensible; and in Germany the advantages possessed by Prussia, at least in area and in sea coast, are obvious. But when in English history also the north is found to have been victorious over the south, conditions other than climatic must have been the cause. In this case elements have been present that are more deeply-rooted than in sunbeams and rainfall alone.
We must call to mind the zone-like territories of early times, occupied by peoples from which the nations of to-day are descended; the boundary lines have disappeared, but the northern elements have remained in the north, and the southern elements in the south. It is well known that Aristotle adjudged political superiority and the sphere of world-empire to the Hellenes because they surpassed the courageous tribes of the north in intelligence and in mechanical instinct, and were superior to the both intelligent and skilful inhabitants of Asia in courage. “As the Hellenic race occupies a central geographical position, so does it stand between both intellectually.” The thought that this union of extreme intellectuality and power in arms on Hellenic soil could be the result of ethnical infiltration did not seem to have occurred to the philosopher. The fundamental idea of Aristotle, the aristocratic state, in which the talented Hellene alone was to rule over bondmen of various origins, who were, above all, to labour for him, could not have been possible had his views been otherwise. And yet he had clearly seen that the two talents--for war and for industry--were unequally distributed among the different Hellenic stocks, and that they were also variable according to time.
Considering the influence even of slighter differences in climate, the locations of regions of similar mean annual temperature, and the distances which separate them from one another, cannot be otherwise than important. 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 to one another. The crowding of climatic variations in any region enlivens and hastens the course of history in that region. If the variations occur only at long intervals, all parts of a large territory having approximately equal mean annual temperatures, then climatic contrasts, which act as a ferment, as it were, are not present to any appreciable extent, and their effects lose in intensity and are dispelled.
Where are greater combinations of contrasting climatic elements to be found than in Greece and in the Alps? The joining together of the natives of rich, fruitful Zürich with the poor shepherds of the forests and mountains was of the utmost importance to the development of the Swiss Confederation. It was also a union of regions of mild and cold temperatures. The possession of Central European and Mediterranean climates, that shade into one another without any sharp line of demarcation, is a great advantage to France. If climatic differences approach one another in too great a contrast, clefts in development are likely to occur, such as the gap between the Northern and the Southern States in America, and that between North and South Queensland. If it be possible to adjust the political differences, then the union of areas of different temperatures has an invigorating effect, as shown by the history of the American Southern States since 1865.
Winds blowing in a constant direction for many months at a time were of great assistance to navigation during the days of sailing vessels, which, indeed, have not yet been entirely supplanted by steamships. Before the time of steam vessels all traffic on the Indian Ocean was closely connected with the change of the monsoons; and important political expansions have followed in the track of the same winds--for example, the diffusion of the Arabs along the east coast of Africa and in Madagascar. The influence of the trade winds on the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries along the Atlantic coast of America is well known. The south-eastern trade winds have been a cause of both voluntary and involuntary emigrations of Polynesian races. It may be clearly seen from the history of Greece what advantage was obtained by the race that won the alliance of the coast of Thrace and the wind that blows south from it with constancy during the entire fair season, often eight months long.
Where the wind is most variable, visiting entire countries with storms, to the great destruction of lives and property, the result is a stirring up of the survivors to exertions that cannot fail to be strengthening both to body and to mind, and of direct benefit to life in general. At the same time that the people of Holland were engaged in forcing back the ocean, they won their political liberty. In another part of the North Sea coast the Frisians receded farther and farther south, owing to the invasions of the sea and the attacks of the natives of Holstein. The tempest that scattered the armada of Philip II. was one of the most important political events of the time; and it is not to be denied that the snowstorm in Prussian Eylau, at the beginning of the battle in which Napoleon suffered his first defeat, contributed not a little to the result.
[Sidenote: One of the Greatest Problems]
Acclimatisation is one of the greatest of human problems. In order that a nation shall expand from one zone into another, it must be capable of adapting itself to new climates. The human race is, as a whole, one of the most adaptable of all animal species to different conditions of life; it is diffused through all zones and all altitudes up to about thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. But single nations are accustomed to fixed zones and portions of zones; and long residence in foreign climates leads to illness and loss of life.
[Sidenote: Climate and Will-Power]
In some races the individuals are of a more rigid constitution than in others, and are thus less capable of adaptation. Chinamen and Jews adapt themselves to different climates far more easily than do Germans, upon whom residence in the southern part of Spain even, and to a still greater degree in Northern Africa, is followed by injurious effects. The constant outbreaks of destructive disease before which the German troops withered away are to be counted amongst the greatest obstacles opposed to the absorption of Italy into the German Empire. During the Spanish discoveries and conquests in America in the sixteenth century, whole armies wasted away to mere handfuls. The greatest hindrances to German colonisation in Venezuela are climatic diseases. Medical science has, to be sure, pointed out such deleterious influences as may be traced to unsuitable dwelling-places, nutrition, clothing, etc.; and the losses to Europe of soldiers and officials in the tropics have been greatly reduced. But even to-day deaths, illnesses, and furloughs make up the chief items in the reports sent in from every colony in the tropics. British India can only be governed from the hills, where the officials dwell during the greater part of the year.
Climatic influence is not limited to bodily diseases. One of the first effects of life in warm climates upon men accustomed to cold regions is relaxation of what is known as will-power. Even the Piedmontese soldier loses his erect carriage in a Neapolitan or Sicilian garrison. Englishmen in India count on an ability to perform only half the amount of work they would be capable of at home. Many inhabitants of northern countries escape the bodily diseases of the tropics; but scarcely one man of an entire nation is able to resist the more subtle alterations in spirit.
[Sidenote: The Peoples of North and South]
Their historical influence extends only the deeper for it. The conquering nations that advance from north to south have invariably forfeited their power, determination, and activity. The original character of the Aryans who descended into the lowlands of India has been lost. A foreign spirit rings through the Vedic hymns. West Goths and Vandals alike lost their nationalities in Northern Africa and Spain, as the Lombards lost theirs in Italy. In spite of all emigration, immigration, and wandering hither and thither, there always remains a certain fixed difference between the inhabitants of colder and those of warmer countries; it is the nature of the land, moulding the more ductile character of a people into its own form. There are differences also between the northern and the southern stocks of the same race, and thus climate exerts here greater and there lesser influence upon nations and their destinies.
Since it lies in the nature of climatic influences to produce homogeneity among those peoples who inhabit extensive regions of similar mean annual temperatures, it follows that a unifying effect is also produced on political divisions that might otherwise be inclined to separate from one another. In the first place, a similar climate creates similar conditions of life, and thus the northern and southern races of each hemisphere, with their temperate and their hot climates, differ widely. Climate is also the cause of similar conditions of production over large territories. Leroy-Beaulieu rightly mentioned climate--above all, the winter, during which almost every year the whole land from north to south is covered with snow--as next in importance to the configuration of the country in its unifying, cohesive effects on the Russian Empire. Winters are not rare during which it is possible to journey from Astrachan to Archangel in sledges; and both the Sea of Azov and the northern part of the Caspian Sea are frozen over during the cold months, as well as the Bay of Finland, the Dnieper as well as the Dwina.
Situation determines the affinities and relations of peoples and states, and is for this reason the most important of all geographical considerations. Situation is always the first thing to be investigated; it is the frame by which all other characteristics are encircled. Of what use were descriptions of the influence of the geographical configuration of Greece on Grecian history, in which the decisive point that Greece occupies a medial position between Europe and Asia, and between Europe and Africa, was not insisted upon above all? Everything else is subordinate to the fact that Greece stands upon the threshold of the Orient. However varied and rich its development may have been, it must always have been determined by conditions arising from its contiguity with the lands of Western Asia and Northern Africa. Area in particular, often over-valued, must be subordinated to location. The site may be only a point, but from this point the most powerful effects may be radiated in all directions. Who thinks of area when Jerusalem, Athens, or Gibraltar is mentioned? When it is found that the Fanning Islands or Palmyra Island is indispensable to the carrying out of England’s plans in respect to telegraphic connection of all parts of the empire with one another, merely because these islands are adapted for cable stations on the line between Queensland and Vancouver, is it not owing to their location alone, without consideration as to area, configuration, or climate?
Every portion of the earth lends its own peculiar qualities to the nations and races that dwell upon it, and so does each of its subdivisions in turn. Germany, as a first-class Power, is thinkable only in Europe. There cannot be either a New York or a St. Petersburg in Africa. Our organic conception of nations and states renders it impossible for us to look upon situation as something lifeless and passive; far rather must it signify active relations of giving and receiving. Two states cannot exist side by side without influencing each other. It is much more likely that such close relationships result from their contiguity; that, for example, we must conceive of China, Korea, and Japan as divisions of a single sphere of civilisation, their history consisting in a transference, transplanting, action, and reaction, leading to results of the greatest moment. Some situations are, indeed, more independent and isolated than others; but what would be the history of England, the most isolated country in Europe, if all relations with France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia were omitted? It would be incomprehensible.
The more self-dependent a situation is, the more is it a natural location; the more dependent, the more artificial, and the more it is a part of a neighbourhood. Connection with a hemisphere or grand division, identity with a peninsula or archipelago, location with respect to oceans, seas, rivers, deserts, and mountains, determine the histories of countries. It is precisely in the natural locality that we must recognise the strongest bonds of dependence on Nature. Apart from all other features peculiar to Italy, her central position in the Mediterranean alone determines her existence as a Mediterranean Power. However highly we may value the good qualities of the German people, the best of these qualities will never reach so high a development in the constrained, wedged-in, continental situation of their native land as they would in an island nation; for Germany’s location is more that of a state in a neighbourhood of states than a natural location, and for this reason more unfavourable than that of France.
[Sidenote: The Ideal Situation for a State]
Natural localities of the greatest importance result from the configuration and situation of divisions of the earth’s surface. The extremities of continents--such as the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Horn, Singapore, Ceylon, Tasmania, and Key West--are points from which sea power radiates; and at the same time they are the summits of triangular territories that extend inland and are governed from the apex. In the same way all narrowings of parts of continents are of importance. France occupies an isthmian position between ocean and sea; Germany and Austria between the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Adriatic. Some states are situated on the coast, occupying a bordering position; others occupy an intermediate location. And the more isolated situations are all fundamentally different, according to whether they are insular, peninsular, or continental. Situations in respect to the oceans are even more various. How different are Atlantic locations in Europe from those on the Mediterranean, the Baltic, or the Black Sea! Only a few nations occupy a position fronting on two great oceans. The ideal natural situation for a state may be said to be the embracing of a whole continent within one political system. This is the deeper source of the Monroe Doctrine.
[Sidenote: Contrasts and Comparisons]
Similar locations give rise to similar political models. Since there are several types of location, it follows that the histories of such locations assume typical characters. The contrast between Rome and Carthage, their association with each other, exhibiting the reciprocal action of the characters of the northern and southern Mediterranean coasts, is repeated in similarly formed situations in Spain and Morocco, in Thrace and Asia Minor, and on a smaller scale in the Italian and Barbary ports. In all these places events similar to those in Roman and Punic history have taken place. Japan and England are unlike in many respects; yet not only the peoples, but also the political systems, of the two island nations have insular characteristics. Germany and Bornu are as different from each other as Europe is from Africa, but central location has produced the same peculiarity in each--a source of power to the strong nation, of ruin to the weak.
Contiguity with neighbouring states brings with it important relationships. The most striking examples of such contiguity are to be seen in nations that are cut off from the coast of their continent and completely surrounded by other countries. Owing to the constant reaching out for more territory, such a situation in Europe, as well as in other continents, signifies unconditional loss of independence. Only connection with a great river can prevent the dissolution of a nation so situated. The instinctive impulse to extend its boundaries to the sea, shown by all nations, arises from the desire to escape an insulated continental position. Only the very smallest of states, such as Andorra and Liechtenstein--which, moreover, do not aspire to absolute independence--could have existed for centuries in the positions that they occupy. A medial situation held by one country between two others is also, in point of risk, comparable to a completely encompassed position. France was so situated when Germany and Spain were under the same ruler. The alliance of two neighbouring lands may place a third state in a similar position.
[Sidenote: What is National Progress?]
Whatever the individual locations of neighbouring states may be, their number is a matter of great importance. It is better to have a multitude of weak neighbours than a few strong ones. The development of the United States that gradually ousted France from the south, Mexico from the west, and Spain from both south and west, in order to be in touch with the sea on three sides, has, with the decrease in neighbouring Powers, resulted in an enviable simplification of political problems.
A nation covering various dispersed and scattered situations is to be seen at the present day only in regions of active colonisation and in the interiors of federal states. Powerful nations are consolidated into a single territory. We may see everywhere that when the area of distribution of a form of life diminishes in extent, it does not simply shrink up, but transforms itself into a number of island-like sites, giving the appearance that the form, of life is proceeding from a centre of the conquest of new territory. In what does the difference lie between islands of progress and of recession? With nations and states progress lies in the occupation of the most advantageous sites; retrogression lies in their loss and sacrifice. The American Indians, forced back from oceans, rivers, and fertile regions, form detached groups of retrogression; the Europeans who took these sites from them formed isles of progress as, one after another, they seized the islands, promontories, harbours, river-mouths, and passes.
THE SIZE AND POWER OF NATIONS
[Sidenote: The State and its Territory]
It is not without reason that so much importance is attached to extent of surface in geography. Area and population represent to us the two chief characteristics of a state; and to know them is the simplest means--often too simple--for obtaining a conception of the size and power of a nation. We cannot conceive of any man, much less a human community, without thinking of surface or ground at the same time. Political science may, through a number of clever conclusions, reduce the area of a state to a mere national possession; but we all know that territory is too tightly bound up with the very life of a state for it to assume a position of so little importance. In a nation, people and soil are organically united into one, and area and population are the measure of this union. A state cannot exchange or alter its area without suffering a complete transformation itself. What wonder, then, that wars between nations are struggles for territory? Even in war the object is to limit the opponent’s sphere of action; how much more does the whole history of nations consist in a winning and losing of territory. The Poles still exist as they did in former times; but the ground upon which they dwell has ceased to belong to them in a political sense, and thus their state has been annihilated.
[Sidenote: The Vast Modern Empires]
During the course of history we constantly see great political areas emerging from the struggle for territory. We see nations from early times to the present day increasing in area: the Persian and Roman Empires were small and mean compared with those of the Russians, English, and Chinese. Also the states of peoples of a lower grade of culture are insignificant compared with the states of more advanced races. The greatest empires of the present day are the youngest; the smallest--Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco, appear to us only as venerable, strange petrifications of an alien time. The relation of surface to the growth of spheres of commerce and of means of communication is obvious. Communication is a struggle with area; and the result of this struggle is the overcoming of the latter. The process is complicated because, as control is gained over area, one also acquires possession of its contents: advantages of location, conformation, fertility, and, by no means least, the inhabitants of the territory themselves. But the loss in value of all these things, brought about by their being widely scattered throughout an extensive area, can be overcome only by a complete control of the region over which they are spread.
[Sidenote: Traffic Leads to Empire]
The development of commerce is the preliminary history of political growth. This applies to all races, from Phœnicians to North Americans, who point out to us a post of the American Fur Company as the germ from which Nebraska developed. Every colony is a result of traffic; even in the case of Siberia, merchants from European Russia travelled thither as far as the Ob about three centuries before its conquest. The phrase “conquests of the world’s commerce” is perfectly legitimate. The building of roads is a part of the glory of the founders and rulers of nations. To-day, tariff unions and railway politics have taken the place of road-making. It has always been so; both state and traffic have had the same interest in roads and thoroughfares. Traffic breaks the way, and the state improves and completes it. It seems to be certain that the firmly organised state in ancient Peru opened the roads which were later a service to traffic. In a lower phase of development we may see commerce leading directly to the establishment of states; in a higher, to victory in war, arising from commercial and railway communication. It would be impossible for France to construct the Sahara Railway without first subjugating the Tuareg and seizing their country. Highways of traffic as weapons for hostile states, the important part played by commercial nations and the culture of strictly industrial and commercial peoples, the endeavour of traffic to be of service to the policies of states, and, finally, the powerful reactions caused by the removal and disuse of thoroughfares of commerce to races, nations, and to entire spheres of civilisation--can only be indicated here.
[Sidenote: Every Trader Bears his State with him]
Every political movement, whether it be a warlike expedition or a peaceful emigration, is preceded by movements which are not political. Inquiries must be made and relations instituted; the object must be determined, and the road explored. All the while that knowledge of the world beyond the bounds of a country is being gained, there is also an imperceptible broadening of the geographical horizon; and this not only widens out, but becomes clearer. Fabulous tales are circulated as to the terrors of strange countries; but the fear gradually vanishes as our knowledge increases, and with the latter a spirit of political enterprise awakens One can say that every trader who passes the bounds of his country bears his state with him in his load of merchandise. To be sure, there are both long preparations made and quick leaps taken in the processes of commerce. Roman merchants prepared the way to a knowledge of Gaul and its conquest. But how different the attitude of the Romans to Gaul before and after the time of Cæsar! What a difference in the Spanish estimate of the worth of American colonies before the days of Cortez and Pizarro, and afterward! The broader and clearer the geographical horizon grows, the greater become political schemes and standards of policy.
[Sidenote: Causes of National Success and Failure]
The widening of the geographical horizon and the clearing up of mysteries beyond are invariably a result of the travels of individuals or of groups for peaceful purposes. The first of these purposes is commerce; the chase and fishing are also to be taken into consideration; and the involuntary wanderings of the lost and strayed are not to be excluded. Europe possessed a Pytheas and a Columbus who discovered new worlds; and every primitive community had its explorers, too, who cleared paths from one forest glade to another. If such pioneers return, they also bring back with them contributions to the general stock of knowledge of the world without, and it becomes less difficult for others to follow in their footsteps; finally armies or fleets may advance, conquering in their tracks. Whenever traffic makes busy a multitude of men, and employs extensive means by which to carry on its operations, the truth of the saying, “The flag follows trade,” is finally established in its broadest sense. With all this struggling and labouring, territory does not fall to the state simply as a definite number of square miles. Just as single individuals bring enlightenment to the state, in the same manner the idea of area arises in the intelligence of the aggregate.
When we say that an area increases, we must remember that by this we mean that the intelligence which views it and the will that holds it together have increased, and naturally, also, that which is requisite for rendering intelligence and will capable for their work. In this lies one of the greatest differences that exist between nations, one of the greatest causes of success and failure in development.
A disposition for expansion that advances boundaries to the farthest possible limit is a sign of the highest state of civilisation. It is a result of an increase both of population and of intellectual progress.
[Sidenote: Small States in Fine Situations]
There is something very attractive in the small political models of early times: those city-states whose development had in definiteness and in precision a great deal of the lucidity and compactness of artistic compositions. Lübeck and Venice are more attractive than Russia. The concentration of the forces of a small community in a limited, beautifully situated, and protected location, is a source of a development that takes a deeper hold on all the vital powers of a people, employing them more extensively, and therefore ending in a more rapid and definite perfection of historical individuality. Thus small areas take the lead of large territories in historical development; and we may see many examples of a slow but sure transference of leadership from the small area to the large, and of the gradual diffusion of progress in the latter. Thus Italy followed Greece; Spain, Portugal; England, Holland.
The opposite of this is precocity in growth: the earlier a state marks out its limits without consideration for later expansion, the sooner the completion of its development. The growth in area of Venice and the Low Countries stood still, while all about them territories increased in size. The development of small countries flags unless the increase of population within a limited area leads to that disquiet and emigration and expulsion of citizens especially characteristic of small nations: the horizon grows too narrow for the times; patriotism becomes local pride; and the most important life forces are impaired. Thus minor nations, through which races are separated into little groups, develop: the great national economic and religious cohesive forces are broken up; and even the political advantages of the ground are reduced in value through disintegration.
[Sidenote: Founding of States by Strangers]
Under such conditions the impulse for new growth must be brought in from without. The native, who is acquainted with only one home, is always inferior to the foreigner, who has a knowledge of two lands at least. It is remarkable how numerous are the traditions of the establishment of states by strangers. Sometimes these are mighty hunters, as in Africa; often they are superior bearers of civilisation, as in Peru; and an especially large number of them have descended to the earth from heaven. In the face of history which tells of the foundation of a Manchurian dynasty in China and a Turkish in Persia, of the establishment of the Russian Empire by wandering North Germans, and that of the great nations in the West Sudan by the Fulah shepherds--these mythical accounts, although they may appear decidedly incredible when taken singly, as a whole are probable enough. The foundation of the nation of Sarawak in Borneo by Brooke is reality and corresponds with many of the old legends of the formations of states.
[Sidenote: A Great Turning-point in History]
The broad conception of a state, which acts as a ferment does on a disrupted mass, is introduced from one neighbouring nation into another, each sharing in its production. When such territories are adjacent, the state situated in the most powerful natural region overgrows the other. The more mobile race brings its influence to bear on the less mobile, and possibly draws the other along with it. The more compact, better organised and armed state intrudes on weaker nations, and forces its organisation upon them. A nation left to itself has a tendency to split up into small groups, each of which seeks to support its own life upon its own soil, heedless of the others; and as such groups increase, they always reproduce in their own images: families families, and tribes tribes. We find all sorts of measures taken by some nations to limit an increase in growth that would carry them beyond their old boundaries and place them under new conditions of life. Many an otherwise inexplicable custom of taking human life is a result of this tendency; perhaps, in some cases, even cannibalism itself. This impulse towards limitation would have rendered the growth of nations impossible had not the antithetical force of attraction of one to another led to growth and amalgamation. Truly, the advance from a condition of isolated, self-dependent communities to one of traffic between state organisms, which must of necessity lead to ebb and flow and union of one group with another, is one of the greatest turning-points in the history of man.
[Sidenote: Nations as Neighbours]
Since the tendency has been for territory to become the exclusive reward of victory in the competition of nations, balance of territorial possessions has grown to be one of the chief ends of national policies. The phrase “balance of power,” which has been so often heard since the sixteenth century, is no invention of diplomats, but a necessary result of the struggle for expansion. Hence we find an active principle of territorial adjustment and balance in all matters concerning international politics. It is not yet active in the small and simple states of semi-civilised peoples; such states are much more uniform, for they have all originated with a uniformly weak capacity for controlling territory. In addition, the principle of territorial isolation hinders the action of political competition. As soon, however, as necessity for increased area leads to the contiguity of nations, the conditions alter. The state that occupies but a small region strives to emulate its larger neighbour. It either gains so much land as is necessary to restore equality, or forces a decrease in the neighbour’s territory.
[Sidenote: The Balance of Power]
Both alternatives have been of frequent occurrence. Prussia expanded at the expense of Schleswig and Poland in order to become equal in territory to the other great Powers. The whole of Europe fought Napoleon until France had been forced back within such boundaries as were necessary to international balance. Austria lost provinces in Italy and replaced them with others in the Balkan Peninsula. This loss and gain appears to us, in looking over an easily epitomised history, such as that of France, as an alternation of violent waves and temporary periods of rest attained whenever a balance is reached. Therefore it is not owing to chance that the areas of Austria, Germany, France, and Spain may be respectively designated by 100, 86, 84, and 80, that the area of Holland is to that of Belgium as 100 is to 90, and that the United States stands to Canada as 100 to 96. To be effective, such balances must presuppose equal civilisations, similar means for the acquirement of power. Rome was so superior to her neighbours in civilisation that she could not permit any territorial balance. Perhaps the adoption of the River Halys as the boundary between Media and Lydia was a first attempt to establish a national system on the principle of balance instead of “world” dominion.
[Sidenote: A New British Empire is not Conceivable]
Our standards for measuring the areas of countries have constantly increased during the growth of historical territories. The history of Greece is to us but the history of a small state; and how many years shall pass before that of Germany, Austria, and France will be but the history of nations of medium size? England, Russia, China, and the United States include the better half of the land of the world; and to-day a British Empire in the other half could not be conceivable. Development has ever seized on greater and greater areas, and has united more and more extensive regions into aggregates. Thus it has always remained an organic movement. The village-state repeats itself in the city-state, and the family-state in the race-state, the smaller ever being reproduced in greater forms. The smallest and greatest nations alike retain the same organic characteristics more or less closely united to the soil.
[Sidenote: Area Does Not Mean Power]
The surface of a state bears a certain relation to the surface of the globe, and according to this standard is the land measured upon which the inhabitants of a nation live, move, and labour. Thus it may be said that the 208,687 square miles of the German Empire represent about 1/940 of the entire surface of the earth; further, that the empire has a population of 60,500,000, from which the ratio of 5·45 acres to each individual follows. Although it is true that wholly uninhabited or very thinly populated regions, high mountains, forests, deserts, etc., may be valuable from a political point of view, nevertheless the whole course of the world’s history shows us that, as a general rule, the value of territory increases with the number of inhabitants that dwell upon it. Thus, before their disunion, Norway-Sweden, with an area of 297,000 square miles--two-fifths greater than that of the German Empire--but with a population of 6,800,000, cannot be looked upon as a first-class Power; while Germany closely approaches the Russian Empire in strength, for although its area is but 1/43 that of the latter, its population is only one-half less. Thus area alone is never the deciding factor of political power. In the non-recognition of this fact lies the source of the greatest errors which have been made by conquerors and statesmen. The powerful influence that small states, such as Athens, Palestine, and Venice, have exerted on the history of the world proves that a great expanse of territory is by no means indispensable to great historical actions. The unequal distribution of mankind over a definite area is a much more probable source of political and economic progress.
Civilisation and political superiority have always attended the thickly populated districts. Thus the whole of development has been a progression from small populations dwelling in extensive regions to large populations concentrated in more limited areas. Progress first awoke when division of labour began to organise and differentiate among heaped-up aggregates, and to create discrepancies promoting life and development. A simple increase of bodies and souls only strengthens that which is already in existence by augmenting the mass. In China, India, and Egypt, population has increased for a long time; but development of civilisation and of political power has been unable to keep pace with it.
THE FUTURE HISTORY OF MAN
[Sidenote: Man and the Universe]
Looking back upon the history of man, it appears to us the history of the human race as a life phenomenon bound and confined to this planet alone. We are thus unable to form any conception of progress into the infinite, for every tellurian life-development is dependent upon the earth, and must always return to it again. New life must follow old roads. Cosmic influences may broaden or narrow the districts within which man is able to exist. This was experienced by the human race during the Glacial Period, when the ice sheet first drove men toward the equator, and later, receding, enabled them once more to spread out to the north. The limits of world life in general depend upon earthly influences; and thus, for mankind, progress limited by both time and space is alone possible.
Perhaps it would be well, for the elucidation of the question of development, were geography to designate as progress only that which from sufficient data may be established as such beyond all doubt. Thus, to begin with, we have learned to know of a progress in space--man’s diffusion over the earth--which proceeds in two directions. The expansion of the human race signifies not only an extension of the boundaries of inhabited land far into the Polar regions, but also the growth of an intellectual conception of the whole world.
[Sidenote: Manifold Growth of Mankind]
Together with this progress there have been countless expansions of economic and political horizons, of commercial routes, of the territories of races and of nations--an extraordinarily manifold growth that is continually advancing. Increase of population and of the nearness of approach of peoples to one another goes hand in hand with progressing space. Mankind cannot become diffused uniformly over new areas without becoming more and more familiar with the old. New qualities of the soil and new treasures have been discovered, and thus the human race has constantly been made richer. While these gifts enriched both intellect and will, new possibilities were all the while arising, enabling men to dwell together in communities; the population of the earth increased, and the densely inhabited regions, at first but small, constantly grew larger and larger.
[Sidenote: History is the Growth of Differences]
With this increase in number, latent abilities came to life; races approached one another; competition was entered into; interpenetration and mingling of peoples followed. Some races acted mutually in powerfully developing one another’s characteristics; others receded and were lost, unless the earth offered them a possibility of diffusion over better protected regions. Already we see in these struggles the fundamental motive of the battle for area; and at the same time, on surveying this progress, we may also see the limit set to it--that increase in population is unfavourable to the progress of civilisation in any definite area, if the number of inhabitants become disproportionately large in respect to the territory occupied. Many regions are already over-populated; and the numbers of mankind will always be restricted by the limits of the habitable world.
Already in the differences in population of different regions lie motives for the internal progress of man; but yet more powerful are those incentives to the development of internal differences in races furnished by the earth itself through the manifoldness of its conformation.
The entire history of the world has thus become an uninterrupted process of differentiation. At first arose the difference between habitable and uninhabitable regions, and then within the habitable areas occurs the action brought about by variations in zones, divisions of land, seas, mountains, plains, steppes, deserts, forests--the whole vast multitude of formations, taken both separately and in combination. Through these influences arise the differences which must at first develop to a certain extent in isolation before it is possible for them to act upon one another, and to alter, either favourably or unfavourably, the original characteristics of men.
[Sidenote: Earth’s Variety Reflected in its Peoples]
All the variations in race and in civilisation shown by different peoples of the world, and the differences in power shown by states, may be traced to the ultimate processes of differentiation occasioned by variations in situation, climate, and soil, and to which the constantly increasing mingling of races, that becomes more and more complex with the diffusion of mankind over the globe, has also contributed. The birth of Roman daughter states, and the rise of Hispano-Americans and Lusitano-Americans from some of these very daughter nations, are evidences of a development that ever strives for separation, for diffusion over space, which may be compared only to the trunk of a tree developing, and putting forth branches and twigs. But the bole that has sent forth so many branches and twigs was certainly a twig itself at one time; and thus the process of differentiation is repeated over and over again. Progress in respect to population and to occupied area is undoubted; but can these daughter nations be compared to Rome in other respects? They have shown great powers of assimilation and great tenacity, for they have held their ground. Nevertheless, their greatest achievement has been to have clung fast to the earth; in other words, to have persisted. Certainly this is far more important than the internal progress in which the branches might perhaps have been able to surpass the older nation.
[Sidenote: Decisive Element in a Nation]
It is an important principle that since all life is and must be closely attached to the soil, no superiority may exist permanently unless it be able to obtain and to maintain ground. In the long run, the decisive element of every historical force is its relation to the land. Thus great forces may be seen to weaken in the course of a long struggle with lesser forces whose sole advantage consists in their being more firmly rooted in the soil. The warlike, progressive, on-marching Mongols and Manchus conquered China, it is true, but they have been absorbed into the dense native population and have assumed the native customs. The same illustration applies to the founding of nations by all nomadic races, especially in the case of the Southern European German states that arose at the time of the migration of Germanic peoples. The health and promise of the English Colonies in Australia present a striking contrast to the gloom that reigns over India, of which the significance lies only in a weary governing, conserving, and exploiting of three hundred millions of human beings. In Australia the soil is acquired; in India only the people have been conquered. Will a time ever come when all fertile lands will be as densely populated as India and China? Then the most civilised, evolved nation will have no more space in which to develop, maintain, and root its better characteristics; and the success of a state will not result from the possession of active forces, but from vegetative endowments--freedom from wants, longevity, and fertility.
[Sidenote: The Goal of the Nations]
Even though the future may bring with it a union of all nations in the world into the one great community already spoken of in the Gospel of John, growth may take place only through differentiation. And thus there is no necessity for our sharing the fear that a world-state would swallow up all national and racial differences, and all variations in civilisation.
From the fact that history is movement, it follows that the geographer must recognise the necessity for progress in space in the sense of a widening out of the historical ground, and a progressive increase of the population of this ground; further, a development toward the goal of higher forms of life together with an uninterrupted struggle for space between the older and newer life-forms. Yet, for all this, the definite bounds set to the scene of life by the limited area of our planet always remain.
Finally, all development on earth is dependent on the universe, of which our world is but a grain of sand, and to the time of which what we call universal history is but a moment. There must be other connections, definite roads upon which to travel, and distant goals, far beyond. We surmise an eternal law of all things; but in order to know, we should need to be God himself. To us only the belief in it is given.
FREDERICK RATZEL
SECOND GRAND DIVISION
THE FAR EAST
The Far East falls into two sections, Asiatic and Oceanic. The Asiatic comprises the insular empire of Japan; and, on the continent, China, Korea, and Siberia, the extreme northern territory which, though extending far westward, must be treated as one.
The Oceanic division includes the Australian continent, with the island of Tasmania; the Pacific islands grouped under the names of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, to which last New Zealand is attached, the whole being conveniently associated under the name of Oceania; and the Malay Archipelago, or Malaysia, lying between Australia and the Asiatic continent.
Of these three sections of Oceanic Far East only Malaysia has a record extending over centuries. The history of the other two, till the white sea-going races began to settle among them, is inferential, conjectural. A doubt was suggested whether New Zealand should be attached rather to Australia than to Oceania, for the reason that it has developed into one of the group of autonomous states which make up so large a portion of the British Empire; but this consideration must clearly yield to those based on geography and ethnology.
PLAN
THE INTEREST & IMPORTANCE OF THE FAR EAST Angus Hamilton
JAPAN Arthur Diósy and Max von Brandt
SIBERIA Dr. E. J. Dillon and other writers
CHINA Sir Robert K. Douglas, W. R. Carles, C.M.G., and other writers
KOREA Angus Hamilton
AUSTRALIA & OCEANIA Hon. Bernhard R. Wise and Professor Weule
MALAYSIA Basil Thomson and other writers
INFLUENCE OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN IN HISTORY
* * * * *
For full contents and page numbers see Index
THE INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE OF THE FAR EAST
BY ANGUS HAMILTON
The influence of environment upon a people is seldom shown more prominently than in the high degree of civilisation attained by the early Chinese.
Although the records are shrouded in mystery and marred by discrepancies, a consensus of scientific opinion traces the origin of the Chinese to a nomad tribe who, setting out from the shores of the Caspian, continued to wander until it found a home on the banks of the Yellow River and in the plains of Shansi. Under the influence of these immigrants, the rude manners of the aboriginals gave way to conditions in which a knowledge of the smelting of iron and the resources of agriculture was acquired. In the upward process of development, the weaving of flax into garments and the spinning of silk from cocoons followed; then, with primeval chaos reduced to order and the faculties quickened by habits of industry, the beginnings of government were made in the separation of the tribes from one another under their own leaders.
While conditions of a settled existence were in course of attainment within the region which is now known as China Proper, the spectacle of a prosperous civilisation, reacting upon the uncouth instincts of tribes dwelling among the grassy uplands of Mongolia and the plains of Manchuria or amid the ice-clad fastnesses of the mountains and forest-strewn valleys of the farthest north, was presently to be responsible for the rise of predatory races, who, in the zenith of their strength, regarded the teeming cities of the south as lawful prizes. While the northern heights of Asia were producing a race that was to leave an indelible impression on the whole of the Asiatic Continent, the evolution of a no less specific type was proceeding in the islands off the coast. Carried by a wave of migration from India, which lapped the coast of Malaysia, Indo-China and Polynesia, and mingled in the islands of the Yellow Sea with a stream from New Guinea so that separate ethnographic identities were lost, were tribes who looked to the ocean for their existence much as the earlier Chinese relied upon the proceeds of their husbandry and the northern nomads upon their flocks.
Glancing at the people living amid the plains, the uplands, and the islands, it will be seen that an irresistible force was enveloping the several races, moulding their instincts and idiosyncrasies in accord with the nature of their environment. Thus, while the Chinese, under the incentive of a knowledge of arts and crafts, had already produced, in 2356 B.C., a system of civilisation destined to endure to our time, the nomads and the islanders, unqualified by knowledge and controlled by climate, were hardly removed from a state of savagery a few centuries before the Christian era.
If the passage of 4,000 years has affected the Chinese no more than the gliding of an hour, the existence of this great impassive people has not been without its effect upon the nations of Europe as upon the races of the Farthest East.
[Sidenote: Eternal Mystery of China]
A point of ancient contact between Christendom and the world of Confucius, reflecting, in contemporary Japan to-day the more permanent qualities of its teaching, China has stirred the spirits of the adventurous in all ages by its singular graces of refinement, its hidden wealth and the exquisiteness of its artistic perceptions. Arousing the curiosity of the Arab traders as early as the eighth century, it was known to the ancients, if they journeyed by the Southern Sea, as the kingdom of Sin, Chin, Sinæ, or China, in corruption, perhaps, of the word Tzin--under which dynasty occurred, in 250 B.C., the fusion of several petty kingdoms into an organic empire; or by the name of Seres if, traversing the longitude of Asia, they came by the overland route. Known to the Middle Ages by the name of Cathay--corrupted from Kitai, the name by which China is still described by Russia and by the races of Central Asia, but which itself sprang from the Khitans, the first of the northern dynasties--it represented to European commerce of the thirteenth century the embodiment of wealth, romance, and mystery; much as its position, maintained unchanged through long centuries, had made it the actual repository of the records of Central, as well as Southern, Asia.
[Sidenote: Korea, the Middle Kingdom]
Contemporary with the early Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Hebrews, and comprising an empire that in 241 B.C. represented as nearly as possible the present limits of the Eighteen Provinces, the Middle Kingdom has been affected by the great upheavals of the Western world as little as she herself has troubled to impress her methods and manner of government upon the aboriginal races beyond her borders. Indeed, filled with a lofty disdain of the outer barbarians, it was not until the chance migration to Korea of some five thousand Chinese under Ki-tze, in 1122 B.C., that the ethical, social, and political systems in vogue in China were carried further afield. Once transplanted, however, the aboriginal life of the cave-dwellers of the peninsula gave way before the superior culture of Ki-tze’s followers, and within the course of the succeeding thousand years a cluster of independent states, fashioned upon the parental model, was firmly established.
Although in the centuries just before the Christian era there was a constant interchange of communications with these states of the Eastern Peninsula, the classic conservatism of the Middle Kingdom was unabated by any expression of curiosity or interest in the welfare of the unknown islands. Yet the islanders, confronted with a struggle for existence, had risked the perils of many voyages to the neighbouring coasts, spreading wonderful stories of their own land and returning with ample evidences of the power and importance of the Korean kingdom. Unconscious of this intercourse, but by reason of it, China, the tutor of Korea, became through the agency of her pupil a determining factor in the upward progression of the islanders when, between 290 B.C. and 215 B.C., in consequence of dynastic difficulties, a steady stream of inhabitants from the peninsula passed from the Land of Morning Radiance eastwards with the intention of settling on the coasts of Japan, with whose inhabitants, in fact, they at once merged.
[Sidenote: Japan at the Dawn of Our Era]
Though at the other end of the pole of human endeavour in comparison with the Chinese, and familiar only with the elemental accessories to life, the islanders, under the influence of this alien strain, at the dawn of our era had emerged from a state of tribal control to the recognition of the authority of a single and supreme ruler. Two centuries later Japanese arms were strong enough to invade Korea, where several victories were gained; but even then the Middle Kingdom maintained no communication with the islands of the Yellow Sea, and was more or less indifferent to the rise of over-sea relations between her vassal and the mariners from the East. It is possible to trace to this obliquity in the political vision of the Celestial Empire of the day much of the subsequent havoc that the self-same race were to inflict upon the coasts of Asia. Impressed with no consideration for the interests of the mainland, and troubled by no sense of material responsibility, Japanese corsairs harried the Chinese and Korean coasts unmercifully, finding in the occupation an outlet for that primitive but inherited instinct for aggression that stimulates the race to-day.
Disturbed less by the appearance of an island Power than by a confederacy of barbarian clans that, by 1000 A.D., had exerted a mastery over Mongolia, Tartary, and Manchuria, and a century later served as a menace to the safety of the dynasty itself, the Celestial Empire was beset on two sides by enemies who were attracted by the prosperity of its people. Unmindful to a great degree of the dangers which were accumulating, an instinct for and an interest in trade, confirmed by the revelation of the self-supporting character of an empire that reached to Cochin-China in one direction and the Pamirs in another, prompted the Chinese to neglect the arts of war in their preference for the triumphs of peace.
[Sidenote: The Peaceful Path of the Chinese]
Characterised by a capacity for infinite pains, and possessed of a complete understanding of the varied resources of agriculture, the Chinese insensibly pursued a path leading always in a contrary direction to those marked out by Nature for the islanders, as for the fierce nomads of the steppe. Thus innately addicted to habits of peace, centuries upon centuries of undisturbed prosperity chastened natures that were never very warlike; whereas the exact inversion of this existence propelled those hordes of Tartars, Huns, Turks, Khitans, Kins, Mongols, and Manchus to leave the Far North in a disfiguring passage through Asia, and bade the islanders release their sails in expeditions against Korea. It was not enough for the founder of the Tzin dynasty to fortify his northern frontiers by the construction of the Great Wall, or for that great warrior Panchow to drive the Huns before him to the Oxus itself, or for the rulers in the long period of disunion which unites the fall of the Han dynasty to the rise of the Sung to compromise with the leaders of successive rushes of barbarian horsemen by matrimonial alliances with their families. The cause lay in the foundations of the race itself. Yet, such was the insidious character of the land against which these mounted hordes so often flung themselves that, although the imminence of attack ultimately became a thing with which the Government of China was wont to conjure the peaceful, well-contented lower classes and the luxury-loving upper classes, the effect of each invasion was dissipated so soon as the invaders experienced the subtle blandishments of Chinese civilisation.
[Sidenote: Swift-moving History in Little Known Lands]
Presented with remarkable clearness, we have an array of devastating invasions, the one following the other in rapid succession and occasionally assuming such dimensions that the operations riveted the attention of Europe upon the little-known lands of Asia, which in most instances required only the passage of a few centuries for the minutest vestige to be obliterated. Thus the Kins, who left no trace, displaced the Khitans, equally irrecoverable, and were in turn dispossessed by the Mongols, whose wide dominion embraced so much of the earth’s surface that in 1227 A.D. the whole of High Asia, from the Caspian to Korea, and from the Indus to the Yellow Sea, recognised its sway--always excepting the strong but still despised sea-state of Japan, whose lusty inhabitants threw back the allied hosts of China, Korea, and the Mongol monarch in 1274 and 1281.
Yet if the Mongols, in an effort to wreak their vengeance on the Chinese, razed to the ground the cities of the vanquished so that their horsemen could ride over their deserted sites without stumbling, none the less they earned the acclamations of posterity by the facilities that the Mongol domination of Central Asia offered to communications between the West and Cathay. Marco Polo was not alone in his knowledge of the Court of the Great Khan, although doubtless he was the first to visit it. But this liberty of intercourse, existing only by the land route to Asia, was measured solely by the duration of the Mongol rule; freedom of action along the high-road from West to East stopped prematurely when the sway of Islam settled once again over Central Asia. Two centuries elapsed before, under the banners of the Manchus, bold horsemen of the North, in 1644, flashed once again through the plains of China, imposing, by a change of costume and of coiffure, perhaps the most striking effect of any that has followed in the train of these invasions.
[Sidenote: Opening the Gates of the East]
[Sidenote: Lifting the Veil in Japan]
But if the exclusiveness of the Mohammedan conquerors closed the route to Cathay so effectually that for two hundred years nothing more was heard of the country, Columbus, Cabot and others set themselves the task of opening up communications by water. But it was not Cathay that they reached. That was left to the Portuguese Raphael Perestralo to accomplish by sailing, in 1511, from Malacca to Canton, and thus winning the coveted distinction of first approaching China by sea. Fifty years later (1560) the same race succeeded in obtaining a settlement at Macao, while the Spaniards gazed with longing eyes from their strongholds in the Philippine Islands upon the rich junks on the China seas. Such was the effect of these trading visits from the West that the Chinese in their turn were emboldened to visit for themselves these outlying centres of Western traffic. But it was more usually vessels from Japan that were seen, for the Chinese were still without any special appetite for Western trade. With the islanders, on the other hand, a love of barter, acting on the native instincts of a maritime people, caused them to traverse these more distant waters; although occasionally the scantiness of the resources in their own country moved them, so that they were propelled as much by stern necessity as by the lust of war and loot or a passion for trade. At first Polynesia, then Malaysia and India were visited. Again, trips were made to the remote coasts of Mexico. Still later, a colony founded at Goa became the centre of an important trading connection throughout the Indian hemisphere. In these voyages we see the attractive influence exercised by the Pacific and the Indian Oceans on an island people, who, fitted by temperament no less than by position, played in Eastern waters the rôle filled by the Elizabethan explorers on the coasts of the New World.
[Sidenote: Raising the Curtain]
As yet the distinctive call of the East had been heard only along the byways of Turkestan, and even those who had responded had ventured no further than the provinces of Cathay. Thus the isles of the Yellow Sea were to the Western mariner at the dawn of the sixteenth century as much a terra incognita as the Arctic and Antarctic regions are to the sailor of to-day. The spectacle of Japanese junks sailing gaily across the heaving waters of the Spanish Main and rounding the heel of India aroused the interest of the Western traders, who at once embarked for the fortunate lands of the East, arranging relations there even before they had been welcomed by the Chinese.
With the arrival of Portuguese traders off Japan in 1542, a curtain was raised which was never quite to descend. In the interval a commercial entrepôt was established on the island of Hirado, and an intercourse set afoot that encouraged a visit from a Spanish squadron towards the close of the sixteenth century. This visit was returned in 1602 by the despatch of a ceremonial embassy to the Governor-General of the Philippines.
[Sidenote: Untold Wealth of Asia]
Throughout the first half of that century Japan continued to attract the adventurous, and the Dutch now followed in the wake of the Portuguese and Spanish ships. The reception of the bold spirits was unequal, and in 1624 all foreigners except the Dutch and the English were banished. By 1641 no traders were allowed but Dutch, who, in spite of being restricted to the island of Deshima, enjoyed a monopoly of the trade with Japan until 1867. In the meantime, abroad, rumours of the untold wealth of Asia had brought the Indies, together with Cathay and Japan, into distinct prominence. Under the Chinese Emperor Kien-Lung, whose reign of sixty years, 1735-1795, was remarkable for its conquests and successful administration, commercial intercourse with the West was regularised, and the founding of recognised trading settlements on the China coast ended the era of furtive attempts to open trade relations with this exclusive people. From these early trading stations have sprung the several commercial capitals that now grace the China coast. Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, Tientsin, and Newchang are the links existing to-day between the magnificence of the merchant princes and the sway of the “John Company.” Of course conditions are now much altered, yet the memories of the past find a very splendid setting in the size, dignity, and importance of the modern treaty ports. Although the Far East was already manifesting its powers of holding the attention of the civilised world, the centres of interest there were concerned for many years solely with the kingdoms of China and Japan.
[Sidenote: China on the Western Horizon]
Australasia was a great unknown when the high latitudes of Asia were the fount of many conquering races. Obviously, therefore, the magnet of acquisitiveness pointed to the value of investigating the bleak northern steppes. Once started, the Pacific and the Amur were reached within eighty years under the impetus of an unrelenting progress which swept from west to east across the regions of North Asia. Begun at the instigation of Stroganoff, who pushed the hesitating footsteps of Yermak across the Urals in 1580, by 1584 this gallant freebooter was offering to Ivan IV. with no uncertain voice the wide dominions of Siberia as the price of pardon. Khan after khan was unseated, tribe after tribe dispossessed, for neither Tartar nor Turk, Buriat nor Tunguse, could offer effective resistance to the Cossacks from the Don. In the end this all-conquering advance was stayed by the Chinese, who, in the treaty of Nertchinsk, 1689, contracted their first formal convention with a foreign Power. For nearly two centuries Russia faithfully observed the terms of this engagement, apprehensive of endangering the Kiachta trade if she continued her encroachments upon Manchu territory. By this action the trade of China, which has now made the problem of the Far East of dominating importance, became of more than passing interest to a Western Government. As generations passed, however, the advance of Russia, to the Pacific in one direction, and in search of a warm-water harbour in another, was resumed. First Eastern Siberia and then Northern Manchuria were added to her Asiatic satrapy, and the Amur ceased to be the containing line. Ultimately her frontier rested on the ocean to the north, the east, and the south; Vladivostock, Port Arthur, Harbin, and Mukden becoming the centres from which her Far Eastern dominions were administered.
[Sidenote: The English Find Australia]
The spirit of adventure, now inspiring all ranks of society as well as most of the civilised races of the world, was by no means satisfied by territorial conquest. The wide dominions of the sea, as yet untraced and all unknown, embraced an empire which appealed as strikingly to the sympathies of geographers as did the prospects of Far Eastern trade to the feelings of the East India merchants. Much the same ceaseless quest carried the Cossack Dejneff, in 1648, round the north-eastern extremity of Asia; Torres, a Spaniard commissioned by the Spanish Government of Peru, in 1606 negotiated the strait between New Guinea and the mainland; and various Dutch expeditions in 1606, 1616, 1618, 1627 and 1642 endured the dangers of the reef-bound coasts. But it was not until 1688 that the English first made their appearance on the Australian coast. In some measure the situation was awaiting the man. The voyages of Captain Cook (1769-1777) took up the work of geographical exploration in the Southern Hemisphere in a style quite befitting the records already elsewhere accomplished.
[Sidenote: Pacific and the Destinies of Peoples]
If between the continent of Australia and the coasts of China to-day there is only a commercial connection, it must not be forgotten that Australia is closely identified with the Polynesian races, who in turn are related to the early Japanese. New Zealand, Australia, New Caledonia, and New Guinea, as parts of one and the same continent, which now in many places has disappeared beneath the sea, present an ethnographic study of unusual importance and interest. In few other parts of the world is so great an ethnographic variation imposed upon a single connecting racial family as in the island divisions of the South Seas--Australasia, Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. It is by the existence of this underlying relationship that the Indo-Pacific races, whatever their specific origin, undoubtedly link up two hemispheres which organically are widely separated. By the abruptly disintegrated character of existing racial location, however, it is possible to read the impression made by the Pacific Ocean on the history of the world. If oceanic influences are represented in other ways to-day, and tribal migrations in a body are occurrences of the past, the necessities of the age still make such heavy demands on what is, after all, the immemorial highway of mankind that the Pacific can still be said to mould the destinies of races to-day as easily as it has obliterated them in the past.
[Sidenote: What will Happen To-morrow?]
Turning to Asia, although the Empires of Russia in Siberia and of China have worked out their destinies independently of the Pacific, remaining unaffected by it more than all other Eastern states, the part that the Pacific has played in the development of Asia since the eighteenth century cannot go unnoticed. Japan, in particular, has profited by the readiness of communication that the ocean provides to rise above prejudices which are usually inseparable from an island people and are pre-eminently to be expected among Asiatics. In China the absence of any prominent dependence on the sea, either for food or means of transport, has produced in very sinister form an aversion against the West. None the less, under pressure from the Occident, and without regarding the example set by Japan, the Celestial Empire has permitted much commercial encroachment. Succeeding the galleons of the buccaneers have come the stately traders of the merchant princes of Europe and America, and these in turn have given place to the steamers of industrial trusts, exacting as large a tribute as the earliest marauders. While the consequences of industrial expansion among Oriental people have made the Pacific the focus of much restless energy, Japan, now as great a Power on land as formerly she was, and is, at sea, has developed an intelligence that has made her pre-eminent among the trading nations of the East. Undeterred by exertion, unmoved by expenditure, Japan has displaced the carrying trade of the Pacific by her fearless invasion of Western markets. Throughout the isles of the Southern Seas, and up and down the face of the Pacific slope, the islanders have swarmed, filling the lands of their passage with unaccustomed energy.
Looking back, then, at the conditions of Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and comparing them with those existing to-day, it will be noticed that a wide gulf still separates Japan from China in the twentieth century as it formerly separated China from the rest of the Far East. On the one side there is China, now emerging from revolution; on the other there is Japan, voicing the regeneration of Asia with raucous tones.
[Sidenote: China Thirty years Hence]
Meanwhile the vast interests of the Occident in the Orient are united with either power by frequent political intercourse and a traffic which has given to the Pacific priority of place in the battle for commercial supremacy. Yet while China is commercially independent of the West, and Japan dependent upon it, all branches of foreign industry cannot but view with alarm the increasing aggressiveness of the spirit of independence now inspiring Asia at the prompting of Japan. Obviously these signs are the indication of an approaching cleavage between East and West, which, when fully attained, will bear witness to the complete severance of the shackles hitherto enthralling Asia to the interests and purposes of the West. It must not be forgotten that Japan already has achieved her complete regeneration. Thirty years hence China, no doubt, will have followed suit, when a federacy of the Far Eastern Powers may become an accomplished fact. Even at this moment such a union is possible, and its realisation would impose upon all European Governments the immediate revision of their Asiatic policies.
At this time such a combination is hampered only by the unwillingness of China to accept the suggestions of Japan in anything affecting the policy of Asia, although, in spite of this objection, active reforming influences are gradually effecting important changes throughout the Chinese Empire. For the moment, therefore, Japan is content to tread alone the path she has marked out, encouraging her subjects by example to exploit Asia for the Asiatics, and to secure recognition of the doctrine of equality between the white and Asiatic races.
If the full significance of this movement is not yet discernible, there is enough evidence to show that the problem will rank among the greatest that the politics of the twentieth century can disclose. Not only one part of the civilised globe will be affected by the rise of a dominant Asia, for the whole world will be confronted equally with the necessity of resisting whatever indications may appear. If it is difficult to devise an arrangement short of total exclusion that does not admit an annual influx of a large number of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or Indian immigrants into the lands affected by this invasion, it is at least tolerably certain that if the existing flow of Asiatics across the Pacific to America and Australasia continues unabated for a further decade, the areas now menaced will be inhabited by a white minority.
[Sidenote: Problem of the Century]
It appears evident that the continuation of the Far East under existing conditions is doubtful, if not impossible, in view of the awakening of Asia and the visible prejudices that Western democracy entertains against the Asiatic. Yet if the clash of conflicting interests ultimately precipitates a struggle between the two great racial divisions of the world, there can be no doubt that the moral teachings of humanity will be discredited.
ANGUS HAMILTON
+---------------------------------------------------+ | GREAT DATES IN THE HISTORY OF JAPAN | +------+--------------------------------------------+ |=B.C.=| =To 500 A.D.= | | =660=| Supposed foundation of the Japanese | | | Empire by Jimmu | | | | |=A.D.=| | | =3=| Emperor Suinin flourished. Abolition | | | of the practice of burying retainers | | | alive on the master’s death | | =59=| Reputed Korean immigration | | =125=| Legendary hero Yamato Daké | | | flourished | | =202=| Reputed conquests in Korea by Empress | | | Jingō Kōgō | | =397=| Probable introduction of Chinese | | | civilisation, through Korea | | | | | | =500-1000= | | =552=| Introduction of Buddhism | | =645=| The Taikwa Laws of Kōtōku | | =675=| Encouragement of Buddhism by Temmu | | =689=| The Laws reduced to a written code | | =750=| Development of the Samurai class | | =782=| Emperor Kwammu | | =800=| Fusion of Shintō with Buddhism by | | | Kōbō Daishi | | =889=| High offices become hereditary in the | | | Fujiwara family | | | | | | =1000-1500= | |=1155=| Wars of the Taira and Minamoto | | | clans | |=1186=| Victory of the Minamoto | |=1192=| The Minamoto Shogunate established | | | Japanese feudal system | |=1220=| Supremacy of the Hōjō family | |=1275=| Attempt of Kublai Khan to invade | | | Japan | |=1281=| Destruction of the Chinese (Mongol) | | | Armada | |=1333=| Ashikaga revolt and overthrow of the | | | Hōjō | |=1337=|Rival Mikados of the North and South | | | for fifty-five years | | | | | | =1500-1800= | |=1543=| First appearance of Europeans | | | (Portuguese) in Japan | |=1549=| Francis Xavier attempts to introduce | | | Christianity | |=1574=| Overthrow of Ashikaga by Nobunaga | |=1581=| Rapid development of Christianity | |=1582=| Death of Nobunaga. Supremacy of his | | | general Hideyoshi (Taikō Sama) | |=1583=| Envoys sent from feudal lords to the | | | Pope | |=1592=| Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea | |=1598=| Death of Hideyoshi. Accession to | | | power of Iyeyasu | |=1606=| Prohibition of Christianity | |=1615=| Restoration of Minamoto Shōgunate | |=1617=| Foreign trade limited to two ports | |=1621=| Japanese prohibited from foreign travel | |=1624=| Decree of expulsion against all foreigners | | | except Dutch and Chinese | |=1637=| Peasant and Christian revolt | |=1641=| Dutch and Chinese restricted to Nagasaki | |=1694=| Development of trade-guilds | |=1792=| Russian squadron visits Japanese coast | +------+--------------------------------------------+ | | | | | =1800-1867= | |=1804=| Russia attempts unsuccessfully to open | | | relations with Japan | |=1818=| Captain Gordon at Yedo Bay | |=1844=| Holland makes proposals for extension | | | of trade | |=1848=| Visit of American and French warships | | | to Japanese waters | |=1853=| Commodore Perry in Yedo Bay | |=1854=| First Japanese Treaty with a Western | | | Power (U.S.A.) in March. First Treaty | | | with Great Britain in October | |=1855=| Russian Treaty | |=1856=| Dutch Treaty | |=1859=| Readmission of Christian missionaries | |=1861=| Attack on British Legation | |=1862=| Murder of Mr. Richardson | | | Japanese Embassy to the Treaty Powers | |=1863=| Bombardment of Kago-shima by British | |=1864=| Bombardment of Shimonoseki by | | | international squadron | | | Contest and reconciliation of the two | | | great clans (Sats-cho) | |=1866=| Kei-ki, last Shōgun | | | New Conventions with Western Powers | |=1867= Accession of Mutsu-hito as Mikado | | | Appointment of Europeans: French | | | military and British naval instructors | | | Resignation of Shōgun Kei-ki | | | | | | =1868-1907= | |=1868=| Restoration of imperial power | |=1869=| The Emperor takes up residence at | | | Yedo, re-named Tokio. Emperor’s | | | “charter” oath | | | The Daimiyo surrender feudal rights | |=1871=| Feudalism abolished | |=1872=| Establishment of religious toleration | |=1873=| Adoption of Gregorian Calendar | | | Universal Military Service | |=1874=| Saga rebellion. Formosan expedition | |=1875=| Saghalin exchanged for Kuriles | |=1876=| Korean Treaty | |=1877=| Revolt and death of Saigo | |=1879=| Annexation of Riu-Kiu Islands | |=1889=| Promulgation of the Constitution. | | | Establishment of local self-government. | | | Anti-foreign reaction | |=1890=| First Imperial Parliament. New civil | | | and commercial codes | |=1894=| War with China | |=1895=| Victory over China. Formosa annexed | |=1897=| Revised customs tariff. Gold standard. | | | Freedom of Press and public meetings | |=1899=| New Treaties on terms of equality. | | | Opening of the whole country | |=1900=| Expedition against Boxers in China | |=1902=| Anglo-Japanese agreement | |=1904=| War with Russia | |=1905=| Victory over Russia. Japan obtains | | | Port Arthur, S. Saghalin, control of | | | S. Manchuria, and protectorate of | | | Korea | | | Anglo-Japanese alliance | |=1907=| Franco-Japanese Agreement | | | Russo-Japanese Convention | |=1910=| Korea annexed | |=1911=| Anglo-Japanese Agreement | +------+--------------------------------------------+
THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE
BY ARTHUR DIOSY
THE EMPIRE OF THE EASTERN SEAS
[Sidenote: Length and Breadth of Great Japan]
Asia’s furthest outpost towards the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean, a long, narrow chain of rocky, volcanic islands, extends north-east to south-west along the eastern coast of the mainland, separated from it by the Sea of Japan and the China Seas. A glance at the map shows this long string of more than three thousand islands and islets, stretching from 51°5′, the latitude of Shumo-shu, the most northern of the Kurile group of islands, down to 21°48′, the latitude of the South Cape of Formosa, a total length of nearly thirty degrees. Its component parts extend from 157°10′ east longitude, at Shumo-shu, as far westwards as 119°20′, the position of the extreme western islets of the Pescadores, or Hokoto, archipelago, a distance of nearly thirty-eight degrees, the total breadth of the Empire of Dai Nippon--Great Japan.
The enormous length of the island empire, the configuration of which is likened by the Japanese to the slender body of a dragon-fly, provides a great variety of climate, from the Arctic rigour of the Kurile Islands and the Siberian climate, with its long and terrible winter and its short but fierce summer, obtaining in the larger northern islands, to the sweltering, steamy heat of Formosa, the tropic of Cancer passing through that island and through the Pescadores. These extreme temperatures apart--and they prevail only at the ends of the empire--Japan possesses a temperate climate, similar to that of the northern shores of the Mediterranean, but colder in winter and much damper, the excessive humidity causing both heat and cold to be very trying, though never dangerous. The rainfall is especially heavy in June and in September, but no month is entirely without rain. The hottest period of the year is called dō-yō, corresponding to our “dog-days,” and follows the rainy season of June and early July.
[Sidenote: What Japan Owes to its Position]
Japan owes its great humidity, the consequent fertility of such parts of its surface as are cultivable--about 84·3 per cent. of the whole area of Japan proper is too rocky to yield food for man--and the luxuriant verdure that clothes the lower slopes of its wooded hills, to its insular position, and, chiefly, to two great factors, a current and a wind. The great warm current known as the Kuro-shio, the Black Brine, or Black Tide, flowing from the tropical region between the Philippines and Formosa, raises the temperature of the east coast, and, where it is in part deflected by contact with the southern coast of Kiū-shū, also of the west coast, acting in the same beneficent manner as the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. The wind that affects the Japanese climate most strongly is the north-east monsoon, tempered by the action of the dark, warm, ocean current.
The geographical position of Japan has had great influence on the history of its people, and clearly indicates the supremely important part the empire is destined to play in the future development of the Far East. Its insular character has preserved it from invasion--it is the proud and legitimate boast of the Japanese that no foe has, within historical times, trodden Japanese soil for more than a few hours--and whilst it rendered possible the seclusion in which the nation lived for more than two centuries, developing, undisturbed, a high civilisation of its own, the basis of many of the qualities displayed by the Japanese in our day, it has been, in recent times, the cause of Japan’s real might in the world--her sea-power, naval and commercial.
The map shows the four principal islands of Japan Proper: HON-SHŪ, or Hon-dō--“Principal Circuit,” the largest island of Japan, commonly called Nippon, really the name of the whole empire, meaning “Sun-origin,” equivalent to Sunrise Land; KIŪ-SHŪ, or Nine Provinces; SHI-KOKU, or Four States; and the great northern island of YEZO, the second in size, officially termed Hok-kai-dō--“North Sea Circuit.”
The four islands extend, opposite the mainland, from the coast of the Russian Maritime Province, on the north-west, down to the southern extremity of the Korean peninsula, on the south-west. North of Yezo, facing the mouth of the great River Amur, the long, narrow island of Saghalin--Karafuto, in Japanese--belongs partly to Russia, partly to Japan, its southern districts, up to the fiftieth degree of latitude, being ceded to the victors by Article IX. of the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905). Separating these islands, important channels afford communication between the Sea of Japan and the Pacific. The Gulf of Tartary divides Saghalin from the mainland, whilst the Strait of La Pérouse, or Strait of Tsugaru, separates the island from Yezo. The Straits of Korea, between that empire, now under the protectorate of Japan, and the main island, Hon-shū, or Nippon, are the way of communication joining the Sea of Japan and the eastern part of the China Sea, the straits being divided into three channels by the island of Iki and by those of Tsu-shima, a name rendered for ever glorious by Togo’s great victory on May 27th, 1905. The various straits are sufficiently narrow to be easily closed to an enemy by Japan’s splendid fleet.
Although Japan has remained immune from invasion throughout historical time, its proximity to the mainland, and especially to the Korean peninsula, led, in prehistoric ages, to its receiving from the continent an influx of immigrants who gradually conquered the insular natives, and whose descendants probably form the main stock of the present Japanese race. It was this proximity that brought the civilisation of China into Japan, in the first instance through Korea; the same route was followed by another mighty invasion of foreign thought, the introduction of Buddhism.
No country has been better fashioned by Nature for the acquirement of sea-power than the Island Empire of the Rising Sun. Its enormous extent of coast-line, with countless indentations, especially numerous on the south-eastern coasts of Hon-shū, Shi-koku, and Kiū-shū, its many excellent harbours, naturally fortified by reason of the narrow entrances to the gulfs in which they are situated--for example: Nagasaki, in Kiū-shū, the naval stations at Sasebo, in the same island, Kure, in the Inland Sea, and Yoko-suka, near Tōkio Bay--and, above all, the excellence of its seafaring population, supply the elements that give Japan the mastery in Far Eastern waters.
[Sidenote: Seafaring Qualities of Japanese]
In the thousands of hamlets nestling in the bays, large and small, and creeks of the Japanese islands, dwells a hardy race of fishermen, inured to peril and fatigue, men of brawny strength and indomitable pluck, frugal and enduring, as fine material for the manning of warships and trading craft as the world has ever known. The persistence of those seafaring qualities which the Japanese owe chiefly to the natural advantages of their island home--partly, no doubt, to a strain of the blood of Malay sea-rovers, perhaps also of Polynesian canoe-men--is a remarkable phenomenon. In olden times they were bold seafarers, roaming as far as the Philippines and the coast of Indo-China. The waters of Formosa and of Siam were the scene of their piratical exploits, for, like all nations destined to be great at sea, they passed through a period when the spirit of adventure, as much as the lust for spoil, made them into daring sea-robbers.
But, with the closing of Japan to foreign intercourse--save on a strictly limited scale--early in the seventeenth century, came the enactment of laws devised to prevent the Japanese from visiting foreign parts; the tonnage and build of ships were fixed by these decrees in such a manner that only fishing and coasting trips were thenceforward possible. This prohibition lasted for two centuries and a half; yet, on its removal, the germ of the seafaring qualities, supposed to have died out, was found to have been only in a state of suspended animation; it revived with surprising rapidity. In less than a quarter of a century it produced a naval personnel capable of manning a highly efficient fleet of thirty-three sea-going fighting-ships; in ten years more the amazed world recognised Japan’s Navy as the triumphant victor in the greatest battle since Trafalgar, and coupled Admiral Togo’s name with that of Nelson.
[Sidenote: The Sea as Japan’s Friend]
The sea has, indeed, ever been Japan’s friend; to this day it supports a large number of the population, and, in a sense, it may be said to keep the whole nation alive, as the fish that teem in Japanese waters supply a considerable part of the people’s food. Every marine product available as nutriment is utilised, even seaweed of various kinds being largely used as food. Fishing seems to have been practised from the earliest times; it is probably in recognition of its antiquity and national importance that the Japanese of our day still affix to any gift a strip of dried seaweed, passed through a piece of paper peculiarly folded, the idea they thus symbolise being, it is said: “This is but a trumpery present, but it comes from a cheerful giver; be pleased to take it as it is meant. Remember our forefathers were poor fisherfolk; this strip of seaweed is to remind you that poverty is no crime.”
[Sidenote: Japan’s Beautiful Scenery]
There are many other customs connected with the harvest of the sea, and innumerable legends and folk-tales wherein the chief part is played by some marine spirit or by a visitor--deity or mortal--to the mysterious realms of the deep. And deep it is, for, off the eastern coast of Northern Japan, the sea-bed falls abruptly to a depression--the famous Tuscarora Deep, called after the United States warship of that name--of 4,655 fathoms, nearly 28,000 ft., or more than five miles, probably the deepest sea-bed in the world. The encircling sea forms an important part of most of the beautiful pictures the scenery of Japan offers to the delighted eye. Whether the waves dash tumultuously against the precipitous rocks of the south-eastern side of the main islands, especially of Shi-koku and Kiū-shū; whether the waters dance in the sunshine in the countless bays and creeks of those coasts where the frequency of the shelter afforded to fishing-craft led to an earlier and more dense settlement than on the north-west coast of Hon-shū; whether the far-famed Inland Sea shines like a mirror under the moonbeams, or the Sea of Japan tosses its grey billows or spreads a sullen expanse under the pall of fog caused by the meeting of warm and cold currents--in all its moods the ocean forms part of nearly all the grandest scenery of Japan.
The “Three Views,” known to every Japanese man, woman and child, for they are portrayed in countless pictorial representations, are sea-scapes. The 808 islets of Matsu-shima, with the thousand trees from which the group derives its name of Pine Islands, are the glory of the province of Sen-dai, in Northern Hon-shū; the hoary tori-i, or gateway, of the great Shin-tō temple at the sacred island of Miya-jima, or Itsuku-shima--so holy that no birth nor death may take place on the island, and no dog is allowed there--stands firmly amidst the very waves of the Inland Sea; Ama-no Hashidaté, the “Sacred Bridge,” stretches its slender two-mile length of sandy spit, only 190 ft. broad--crowned, all along, with an avenue of pine-trees--into the blue waters of the gulf of Miya-zu, in the Sea of Japan.
The so-called Inland Sea, 240 miles long from its narrow western entrance, only one mile across, between Shimo-no-seki on the main island and Mo-ji, the busy colliery port in Kiū-Shū to its eastern extremity, where it joins the open sea through the Aka-shi and Naru-to Straits--it widens to forty miles where the Bungo Channel divides Shi-koku from Kiū-shū--is perhaps the most lovely sheet of salt water in the world. Studded with many hundreds of islands, every part of its expanse offers an enchanting prospect, the islets being often in clusters, making many stretches appear like lakes.
Water enters into the beauty of every Japanese landscape; districts remote from the sea have their lakes and rivers--generally short, swiftly-flowing streams, almost, sometimes quite, dry in summer, exposing beds of pebbles, but rushing torrents in the wet season.
Biwa is the largest lake in Japan, and far-famed for its scenery; its area is about the same as that of the Lake of Geneva, and it is nearly as beautiful. Lake Chū-zen-ji, or Chū-gū-shi, is surrounded by luxuriant verdure at an altitude of 4,375 ft. above sea-level, and is surpassed in beauty by the smaller Lake Yumoto, higher up, in the sulphur-springs region, 5,000 ft. above the sea. There are many other lovely lakes in Japan, Lake Hakoné amongst them. Those just mentioned are singled out because they lie in the mountainous district round Nikkō, a region on the main islands, to the north of Tōkio, presenting, in their greatest beauty, characteristic features of Japanese inland scenery--imposing mountains, stately, venerable trees, and grand waterfalls comparable to those of Norway. The aspect of the Japanese islands is, as may be inferred, diversified, stern and rugged amidst the dark forests of the north, smiling in the sunlit regions further south, beautiful almost everywhere.
The land is chiefly mountainous, the ranges running from south-west to north-east, interspersed with smiling valleys, fertile plains, chequered into regular squares by the narrow, raised embankments dividing the rice-fields, with, here and there, wild, desolate moors in places where even the untiring industry and agricultural skill of the people could not induce the stubborn ground to yield sustenance. Where anything useful can possibly be made to grow, the Japanese grow it. Beside plants of utility, they grow, to a greater extent than in any other land, plants intended only for pleasure, for the delight they give the Japanese eye by their beauty.
In no other country are flowers so reverently admired as in Japan; nowhere are they more skilfully grown and tended. Every month has a special blossom, and what may be termed its flower festival, when the people, high and low, rich and poor, go in their tens of thousands to seek happiness in the contemplation of Nature’s most delicate productions. The plum-blossom appears about a month after the New Year, and is followed by the far-famed cherry-flower early in April, when, in many ancient groves and on many hillsides, the lightest of delicate clouds, faintly pink, seem to have settled on the trees.
No words can do justice to the exquisite beauty of Japan in cherry-blossom time; it is then easily to be understood how dear the flower of the cherry is to the Japanese heart. To the people of Great Japan it is the emblem of patriotism and of chivalry, sharing their affections with the chrysanthemum, the badge of the empire. Other flowers grown to wonderful perfection are the peony, symbolical of valour; the graceful wistaria, the glowing azalea, the slim-stalked iris, the convolvulus, or “morning-glory,” in many strange forms, and the lotus, the sacred flower of Buddhism. Besides these and other cultivated flowers, Japan possesses wild blossoms galore that fleck its plains and valleys with colour. The leaves of the maple turn, in November, to hues of crimson and gold, clothing the woods with a glory to be equalled only in Canada.
The natural, beauty of Japan has undoubtedly fostered the æsthetic taste inborn with the Japanese of all classes. High and low, they admire and enjoy intensely the lovely scenes amidst which they dwell. This admiration and enjoyment are strong incentives to their patriotism. It seems to them that their beautiful country must indeed be Kami-no-Kuni, “the Land of the Gods.” To travelled Occidentals, the scenery of Japan suggests, in places, the Norwegian fjords; in others, the smiling shores of the Italian lakes; at some points the coves of Devonshire, the rocky coasts of the Channel Islands, or the pleasant hills of Surrey. That these impressions are correct is proved by the fact that Japanese travellers who visit any of these places never fail to recognise their similarity to some favourite spot in Japan.
The “backbone” of the southern half of the main island and of the whole island of Shikoku consists of rock, principally primitive gneiss and schists; Kiū-shū, Yezo and the northern half of the main island are partly, the Kurile islands--Chishima--entirely, volcanic. Subterranean fires still smoulder in many parts of Japan, many of the mountains being volcanoes, not all of them extinct. Fuji, the glorious cone so dear to the Japanese heart, uplifting its peak 12,365 ft. from the surrounding plain, is a volcano that erupted last in January, 1708. Fifty-one volcanoes, such as Asama and Bandai-san in Eastern Japan, Aso-san in Kiū-shū, Koma-ga-také in Yezo, have been active in recent years, some of them, especially Bandai-san, with disastrous results. Nor do only volcanoes threaten danger to the inhabitants of Japan: earthquakes are frequent--about 500 shocks yearly--and sometimes appallingly destructive of life and property.
The great earthquake in the Gifu region, in the central provinces of the main island, on October 28th, 1891, wrecked two populous towns--Gifu and Ōgaki--completely destroyed two smaller ones--Kasamatsu and Takegahana--killed about ten thousand people, and caused more or less severe wounds to nearly twenty thousand. In Japanese earthquakes, a great part of the destruction arises from the innumerable fires that break out when the flimsy houses--mostly of wood, with paper partitions, in sliding frames, between the rooms--collapse through the shock, scattering the glowing charcoal from the kitchens amidst heaps of highly inflammable materials. Earth-tremors bring not only fiery ruin in their train; they cause at times upheavals of the sea that work stupendous havoc. On the evening of June 15th, 1896, the north-eastern coasts of the main island were overwhelmed by a so-called “tidal wave.” The sea, impelled probably by a seismic convulsion on the bed of the Northern Pacific, rose in a wave of towering height and, rushing inland with terrific speed, engulfed whole districts. More than 28,000 lives were lost, and more than 17,000 people were injured.
QUALITIES OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE
[Sidenote: The Wonderful Islanders]
It is in presence of great calamities that the best qualities of the Japanese masses shine brilliantly. Their resignation, their patient endurance, the altruism that prompts them to mutual help and to countless acts of kindness; their self-sacrificing bravery in the work of rescue, the proud honesty with which they will content themselves with the barest pittance, when relief is distributed, so that enough may be left for others in greater need--these are only some of the fine characteristics of the wonderful islanders whose achievements in recent times have earned the respectful admiration of the world, even of their late foes. There is, of course, another aspect of their character; they are not without some of the vices and failings human nature is heir to. An attempt is made, later in these pages, to describe their moral and mental characteristics, and in so doing to hold the scales impartially.
According to the census of 1913 there were 52,985,423 subjects of the Emperor of Japan (excluding Korea), and their number is increasing steadily and rapidly. The number of males exceeds that of females by well-nigh a million. The population is very dense in the fertile regions, and increases so rapidly that emigration is absolutely necessary. The masses are healthy and strong, capable of great endurance--a fact brought into striking prominence by the achievements of the Japanese forces in the Arctic winter of Manchuria, and in its torrid summer. The Japanese can, as a rule, bear cold much better than heat. Living thinly clad in unwarmed houses that offer but little protection and are by day draughty as bird-cages, they early become inured to cold. The average physique of the upper classes is by no means so good as that of the manual workers, and is considerably below the Occidental standards.
[Sidenote: A Race of Little People]
The Japanese are a black-haired race, with smooth skins, varying in colour through various yellowish shades, from a hue of brown, in the case of those working in the sun, to a light tint no darker than that of the Southern European, with comparatively large skulls, prominent cheek-bones, and a tendency to projecting jaws. They are of small stature, the average height of the male being only slightly over five feet (5·02 ft.), that of the female slightly over four feet six inches (4·66 ft.). In other words, the men are of about the same average stature as European females, the women proportionately shorter.
[Sidenote: The Two Types of Japanese]
There are, of course, exceptions, some Japanese being of a height that would cause them to be considered tall amongst Occidentals; but they appear as giants amongst their diminutive compatriots. Both men and women have small hands and feet, those of the upper classes being beautifully shaped. Even amongst manual workers it is not rare to find, especially amongst females, hands of an aristocratic type. The shapely appearance of the feet is often spoiled by thick ankles, probably the result of wearing sandals. The black hair is abundant on the head, straight and coarse; there is hardly any on the arms, legs and chest. The eyelashes are scanty, and grow immediately out of the eyelids, without the “hem” that borders the eyelids of Occidental races. The eyes are dark, full in the broad-faced, plebeian type, narrow in the aristocratic cast of countenance. In the latter they are generally set more or less obliquely, their slanting appearance being enhanced by the fact that the aperture for the eye seems to have been cut, as it were, directly in the smooth skin, tightly stretched over the upper part of the face, not, as in the white races, in a very marked depression under the brow.
[Sidenote: Physique of the Nation]
[Sidenote: Cleanest Nation in the World]
There are two plainly distinct types in the nation. The majority are “stocky,” rather squat people, with broad, round faces, rather thick lips and flat noses; the minority, of the aristocratic type, are more slenderly built, with long oval face and aquiline nose. In both types the trunk is long as compared with the legs, their shortness being probably due, in some measure, to the national habit of sitting on the floor, in a kneeling posture, the weight of the body being thrown back on to the heels. Sitting on benches, as in school and in barracks, necessitated by the introduction of Western educational and military methods, has somewhat improved the proportions of the Japanese body in this respect. The admirable gymnastic training given in the schools to children of both sexes, and, still more, the naval or military service to which every able-bodied Japanese adult male is liable, have done wonders in improving the physique of the nation. Statistics collected by the Army Medical Department clearly show that the race is gradually growing taller since the introduction of universal service. The Japanese grow to maturity more rapidly than Occidentals; they also age earlier. As in other countries, very old women are more numerous than very aged men. Both the slender, often weakly, upper classes and the stout plebeians are nimble in their movements, have supple limbs and remarkably skilful fingers. The workers use their toes to hold and steady the material on which they are at work, often sitting at their labour where Occidentals would stand. The great toe is well separated from the others, owing to the effect of the loop of cord passing between them to secure the sandal to the foot, the tabi, or sock, of cotton-cloth being made with a separate compartment for the great toe. The skin of the whole body is generally of satin-like smoothness, owing, no doubt, to the very hot baths--at a temperature of about 110° F.--in which all Japanese indulge at least once a day, thus maintaining their well-deserved reputation as the cleanest nation in the world. To the Occidental eye, the majority of Japanese men are not comely, although there are notable exceptions, presenting fine faces, of noble and intellectual type. The women are often very pretty, judged by the Occidental standard; they are nearly always graceful and charming, owing to their exquisite manners and gentle voice. The chief element in their charm is undoubtedly their perfect femininity. There is absolutely nothing masculine about their ways or their speech, yet, when the need arises, they are capable of courage and self-sacrifice that places them on the same high level as their heroic fellow-countrymen. It may safely be asserted that there are no more dutiful wives, no better mothers. There are certainly no daughters with a greater sense of filial piety, a virtue that forms the basis of family life in Japan.
[Sidenote: The Chief Qualities of the Race]
Throughout the Far East the whole social fabric is based on the family; the whole state is, indeed, considered as one great family, with the Emperor at its head. It is the mothers who train Japanese children from infancy in the spirit of reverence and obedience to parents and elders in the family circle, and to the Emperor as the supreme chief of the great national family. And well do the children assimilate the lessons of obedience and devotion so carefully inculcated by the mother, for there are none more docile than the boys and girls of Japan, whose respectful, courteous manners, not only towards their parents, but towards elder brothers and sisters, earn the admiration of Occidentals. The chief qualities of the Japanese race are patriotism--which is, with them, synonymous with loyalty--courage, filial piety, and cleanliness. In love of country, in self-sacrifice for the common weal, in loyalty to the sovereign--with them a cult--in reckless gallantry, and in bodily cleanliness, the Japanese surpass all other nations of our time. It may be truly said that patriotism is their real religion; it inspires their magnificent courage in war, on land and sea; it supplies the incentive of their lives in times of peace, all merely personal considerations being subordinate to this passionate national feeling.
The people of Japan are distinguished, besides, by quick intelligence, a remarkable power of observation--derived, no doubt, from their close study of Nature, of which they are devoted lovers--by a mastery of detail, and a very retentive memory, fostered by the system of learning by rote imported from China, together with the writing by means of ideographic signs, necessitating the memorising of thousands of characters standing for words. In politeness they stand first amongst the nations, every incident of life being attended by strictly-defined rules of social etiquette, observed by all, not only, as in Occidental countries, by the more highly educated classes. Their courtesy, though often degenerating into mere hollow formality, is based on a kindly regard for the feelings of others, a generous altruism and a consequent depreciation of self. They are hospitable and open-handed, the giving of presents attending numerous festivals and many occasions in social life.
Schooled from babyhood by the rules of their rigid etiquette, Japanese, young and old, of all classes, are remarkably quiet in their demeanour, the higher ranks being extremely dignified in manner, and completely concealing their feelings under an imperturbable mask. They bear pain, both physical and mental, with Spartan stoicism, their nerves being much less easily excited than those of Occidentals, so that they have often been described as “a nation without nerves.” Their apparent contempt for death arises chiefly from the fact that, to most of them, the passing out of this world does not imply a total severance from mundane interests, their general belief being that the spirits of the departed have cognisance of the doings of those they leave behind. This idea, inseparable from the ancestor-worship that has prevailed amongst them from time immemorial, and still prevails, was well exemplified in their great struggle with Russia, their forces being buoyed up by the conviction that the spirits of all the warriors who had died for Japan were fighting side by side with their gallant successors.
[Sidenote: Artistic Taste of the Japanese]
The love of the beautiful in Nature, common to all members of the Japanese race, is probably one of the chief factors in the artistic feeling so highly developed among all classes. Their appreciation of beauty of form and colour, their exquisite sense of appropriateness in decoration, the delicate restraint so evident in the productions of their wonderfully skilful, patient artist-craftsmen, are too well known to require more than passing mention. Even their commonest household utensils are beautiful in shape, elegant, and well adapted to their purpose. Their innate good taste has added a delicate refinement to the vigorous art they received, in early times, from China, chiefly by way of Korea. Their æsthetic perception enables even the poorest Japanese to derive intense pleasure from the contemplation of the beautiful, thus providing them with many delights unknown to the vast majority of modern Occidentals. Combined with the simplicity and frugality of their lives, and with their naturally contented spirit, it would seem to have enabled the Japanese to solve the great problem “how to be happy, though poor.”
A nation possessing, to a high degree, the virtues and qualities just enumerated would appear to be living in a perfect Utopia. There is, however, shade in the picture as well as bright light. This happy, contented, smiling people, pre-eminent in domestic virtues, industrious, fond of learning, easily governed, gentle in manners and speech, capable of rising, in moments of national emergency, to admirable heights of patriotic heroism and self-sacrifice, is, after all, human, and consequently tainted with some of the vices and many of the defects inherent in human nature. The defects of the Japanese character are, to a great extent, inseparable from their very virtues and good qualities in their extreme manifestations. Their intense patriotism is the cause of the anti-foreign spirit still, unfortunately, rife amongst them. Their country is to them “the Land of the Gods,” their nation the Elect People, living under the special protection of Heaven, whose blessings are transmitted to them by the benevolence of a superhuman sovereign, directly descended, in unbroken line, from the Sun Goddess.
[Sidenote: National Pride of the Japanese]
With this belief firmly rooted in the minds of the great majority of the people, it is no wonder that all those who have not the good fortune to be born Japanese appear to them not only as foreigners, but as Gentiles. The statesmen of New Japan are profuse in their assurances that it is the desire of their people to form a unit, on terms of equality, in the great family of nations.
This assurance is echoed by many Japanese writers; it is in accordance with the spirit of the tolerant, all-embracing, gentle Buddhist faith, brimming over with sympathy for all living creatures; it is also in agreement with the calm, placid tenets of the Chinese philosophy that, with Buddhism, has to such a great extent moulded the thought of Japan. Yet those statesmen and writers know full well that in this respect neither Buddhism, nor Chinese philosophy, nor the cosmopolitan spirit of the middle period of the nineteenth century, nor the brotherhood of man inculcated by true Christianity, has succeeded, to any appreciable degree, in causing the Japanese to look upon foreigners as brothers, or even on the same plane with their own heaven-descended race.
The reckless bravery of the Japanese, their contempt for death, are closely related to the slight value they set upon human life and to the national delight in tales of bloodshed. Co-existent with the mildness of their manners and the placid tenor of their domestic life, there is found, deep in Japanese hearts, a wild delight in carnage, the legacy, naturally most cherished amongst those of the warrior class, of centuries of internecine warfare. The sword, “the living soul of the Samurai,” is still held in reverence as the instrument not only of national defence against the foreign foe, but of vengeance and of the chastisement of one looked upon by the wielder of the weapon as an enemy to the State. Hence the indulgence with which political assassination is still regarded by the masses in Japan. As the brutal instincts, inherited from primeval ancestors, often become manifest in an English-speaking crowd watching a football match or a boxing contest, so, in Japan, the old savagery reveals itself, time and again, at fencing bouts, the excited cries of the combatants recalling the bad, wild days of yore.
This fierce spirit seems incompatible with the noble generosity towards prisoners of war, and the tender care of the enemy’s wounded and sick, that redounded to the glory of the Japanese in both their great struggles in our time, the wars against China and against Russia. It is difficult to believe that savagery can survive in the breasts of people capable of organising such an admirable institution as the Red Cross Society of Japan, whose noble work, in war and peace, is one of the chief glories of New Japan; but it must be remembered that the young Great Power still feels itself to be undergoing probation under the eyes of an observant and critical world. The natural instinct of the Japanese warrior would lead him utterly to destroy the foe who dared to oppose his Emperor’s will, and it requires the application of the most severe discipline to make him understand that on his exercise of humane forbearance to the vanquished depends, to a great extent, his nation’s good repute among the Powers.
This desire to stand well in the opinion of foreign nations has been so thoroughly inculcated in the people of New Japan that every individual brought into contact with foreigners beyond the boundaries of his native land feels that the honour of Japan is dependent on his behaviour, even in minute particulars. Hence the high reputation for excellent conduct enjoyed by Japanese students and others residing, or travelling, abroad.
The altruism and self-effacement, born of the family system, fostered by the division of the nation into clans--now officially abolished, but still binding huge groups of families with strong ties--and culminating in the most complete devotion to the head of the national family, the Emperor, are the causes of a peculiar defect in the Japanese character--the lack of individuality. It may be said of the Japanese that, on most important matters, they feel and think by millions. The whole system of their civilisation tends to make individual effort subservient to the common cause; the reverence and obedience inculcated from early childhood are not likely to develop the spirit of individuality. Hence the wonderful facility with which the Japanese combine to carry out any policy they recognise as needful for the public welfare once that course has been clearly indicated by their trusted leaders as one that has the Emperor’s approval.
Japan is, for this reason, the land where leagues, unions, guilds, trusts and “combines” work with astonishing efficiency, such institutions being, by their very nature, well suited to the national character. There are, of course, exceptional Japanese who chafe under the repression of their strong individuality; these occasionally break through the national custom and strike out an independent line. Their fate is not encouraging to those who might be tempted to follow their example. Public opinion reproves them, and they are soon made to feel that their conduct is looked upon as anti-national. Those amongst them who will not bow their heads to the popular verdict, and refuse to be reduced to the level at which the nation strives to keep the individual, soon find life in their own country unbearable. In various cities of Europe, still more in those of North America, such Japanese individualists may be found living in self-imposed exile, shunned by their compatriots, until the day, which comes to most of them, when they submit and go home to resume their place in the ranks of a nation that abhors eccentricity and expects every man to fit into his proper groove in the great national machine.
The mental activity of the Japanese, their respect for knowledge and for all intellectual pursuits, causing them to admire keen wits and exercise of brainpower, have probably contributed in a large measure to form one of the traits in their character that is repellant to Occidentals--their inclination to be cunning and deceitful. In spite of the high and pure ideals of their chivalry, they have not our loathing for deceit, our contempt for chicanery, our respect for the truth. A Japanese convicted of an untruth merely conceals his annoyance at being found out by a smile, sometimes by a laugh, and is not deterred from another statement at variance with facts should he consider it useful to make one. Low cunning is frequently looked upon as cleverness; the suppression of facts is so common that there is no other country where it is so difficult to arrive at the truth. The national failing of intense secretiveness arises, no doubt, from the suspicious nature of the people, who distrust not only all foreigners, but even most of their own race--a condition of mind due, to a great extent, to the widely ramified system of spying that flourished during the rule of the Tokugawa Shōguns, and still exists to a lesser degree.
Their infinite capacity for attention to the most minute details leads to a certain pettiness, a disinclination to consider great abstract questions, and, consequently, to a narrowness of view that accounts for some of the blunders which occur in the execution of the otherwise marvellously efficient policy of the rulers of Japan.
[Sidenote: Manners of the Haughty Samurai]
The exquisite politeness of the Japanese is responsible for a great part of that insincerity with which they are taxed by Occidentals who have been much in contact with them. This extreme courtesy makes them so anxious to avoid any speech that might possibly give offence that they frequently distort the truth, suppress it entirely, or replace it by polite fiction, intended to give pleasure. It should be remembered that, in the knightly times of old--they continued until the early ’seventies of the nineteenth century--a Japanese had to be very guarded in his speech and demeanour; quite unintentionally, a word lightly spoken, an incautious gesture, might give dire offence to a Samurai--one of the gentry, privileged to wear two swords--who would be quick to resent the fancied slight to his punctilious sense of personal dignity. Insults, real, and often imaginary, were wiped out with blood. Hence the endeavour to avoid any possible cause of offence, for the same reason that made Europeans very circumspect in their behaviour in the days when gentlemen wore swords and drew them on small provocation.
To such a pitch was punctilio carried amongst Japanese gentlemen until quite recent times that they preferred death, inflicted by their own hands in the most painful manner--by self-disembowelment, or hara-kiri, more elegantly termed seppuku, or “self-immolation”--to living with a stain on their honour, such stain being often merely inability to disprove a slanderous imputation. To this day, the Japanese remain the most acutely sensitive people on the point of honour; so “touchy” are they that friendly intercourse with Occidentals is thereby rendered extremely difficult.
What places an additional bar to perfect cordiality in such relations is the deplorable fact that an Occidental may unwittingly give grave offence to a Japanese without the latter giving any sign of displeasure at the time. Allowance is seldom made for the perfectly unintentional error on the part of the offender, whilst the grievance is allowed to rankle, is rarely forgiven, and never forgotten. Where an Occidental would certainly call his friend’s attention to the fact that he was displeased by some remark or action that would, no doubt, be promptly atoned for by a sincere apology, thus terminating the incident, the Japanese says nothing. He nurses his resentment, sometimes for years, until a fitting opportunity presents itself to avenge the real, or fancied, wound to his feelings by some particularly unpleasant action directed against the Occidental, all unconscious of his offence.
This unfortunate peculiarity of the Japanese character is the outcome of two main currents that run through the national temperament--the spirit of secrecy, already alluded to, and the thirst for revenge. The latter, possibly due to the strain of Malay blood in the much-mixed Japanese race, is one of the chief stumbling-blocks hindering the introduction of Christianity, and has prevented Buddhism, also a religion teaching meekness, from obtaining a complete hold on the people. In its petty forms, this spirit of long-cherished spite is merely annoying; in its extreme manifestations it becomes exceedingly dangerous.
It may be thought that the admirable magnanimity displayed by the Japanese towards the vanquished in their wars with China and with Russia affords evidence that the old spirit of revenge is dying out. Unfortunately, it is as strong as ever, the explanation of the apparent anomaly being that, in both cases, the foe was vanquished, and thus became, according to the principles of Japanese chivalry, an object for mercy and compassion. As long as the opponent resists, or refuses to surrender at the mercy of the conqueror, he is implacably attacked; the moment he has, metaphorically speaking, grovelled and placed the victor’s foot on his head, he is raised from the ground and treated with the greatest consideration.
This applies not only to warfare, but to those incidents in civil life, already alluded to, in which a Japanese considers himself aggrieved, especially when the offender is a foreigner. In such cases, humble apology for the slight, however unintentional--in fact, an attitude amounting to “I do not know what I have done to offend; but, in any case, I own I am in the wrong, and promise, with sincere apologies, not to offend again; deal with me as you think fit,” would generally ensure the restoration of good relations, provided the apology be sufficiently public to gratify the self-esteem of the Japanese. It is hardly to be expected that a self-respecting Occidental would demean himself thus to atone for an error unconsciously committed.
[Sidenote: Defects of Japanese Character]
Japanese self-esteem has just been mentioned; it often becomes insufferable arrogance, showing plainly, through a cloak of false modesty, “the pride that apes humility.” This arrogance, displayed chiefly towards foreigners, but also by Japanese in official positions towards their fellow-countrymen of inferior rank, is intimately connected with another national failing, excessive vanity. It is less noticeable amongst sailors and soldiers than amongst civil officials of corresponding rank.
Minor failings of the Japanese are jealousy, envy of those who achieve success, and, connected with these faults, a great love of gossip and a readiness to listen to slander, or to disseminate it.
[Sidenote: Japanese Ideas of Modesty]
There are, finally, two charges to be examined that are frequently levelled at the Japanese by those who profess to know them well--the accusations of immorality, sexual and commercial. The first of these charges may be disposed of by the statement that the Japanese are about as moral in their sexual relations as the Latin nations of Europe, with the advantage slightly in favour of the Japanese. What has given them an evil repute in this respect is, probably, the fact that they consider as natural, and treat accordingly, certain evils that the Northern Occidental peoples affect to ignore. The natural, simple life led by the vast majority of Japanese predisposes them to take a natural, sensible view of matters that the less primitive conditions of Western civilisation have imbued with an objectionable significance. They see, for instance, no harm in nudity where it is unavoidable, as in bathing, or convenient, as in the performance of hard work in hot weather. A Japanese woman will feel no shame at being seen naked when entering or leaving the daily bath, but would strongly object to what she would consider the gross immodesty of exposing a considerable surface of her body in Occidental evening dress. In the first case, the nudity is looked upon as quite natural; in the second, as useless and provocative of pruriency.
[Sidenote: National Honour in Commerce]
As to the commercial morality of the Japanese, it is necessary to observe the great difference that exists between the position, in this respect, of Japanese State institutions, financial and commercial corporations, and firms of the first rank on the one hand, and the great mass of traders on the other. The Imperial Japanese Government, municipal corporations, and the great financial institutions and industrial and commercial associations under State control (such as subsidised steamship companies), have always met their obligations with scrupulous fidelity and are likely to continue to do so. With them the national honour is considered at stake; it is certain that the last Japanese will part with his last garment sooner than involve the national credit in disgrace by failure to meet the nation’s engagements towards the foreign creditor.
[Sidenote: Results of Old Class Divisions]
It is, unfortunately, quite otherwise in the case of the great bulk of the trading classes. There are, in Japan, a number of first-class firms, some of them established for centuries, whose reputation is above reproach; but between these and the majority of the merchants a great gulf is fixed. It must be remembered that, until the beginning of the New Era, in the early ’seventies of the nineteenth century, the trading community formed the lowest of the four classes, then sharply and immutably divided one from the other, composing that part of the Japanese nation that had full civil rights (below them stood only the Eta, who carried on despised occupations, involving contamination by contact with dead bodies, human or animal, and the outcast Hi-nin).
The nation was divided into Shi, the nobility and gentry, the military, scholarly and administrative class; No, the agriculturists; Ko, the craftsmen, with whom the artists were counted; and Sho, the traders, placed below farmers and handicraftsmen as non-producers.
The natural consequence of this low place in the social scale was a lack of self-respect on the part of those engaged in commerce and finance that led them to be unmindful of their good repute. Trade and finance were looked upon by the majority as occupations unworthy of a gentleman and beneath the callings of the peasant and the workman; every trick was considered excusable when practised by the merchant, whose whole business was looked upon as a sort of warfare, in which cunning stratagem could be legitimately employed to the end of personal gain, a purpose appearing most unworthy to the classes swayed by the old knightly spirit. The evil effects, on a class as on an individual, of a bad reputation and consequent public contempt have, unfortunately, outlived the abolition of the old social divisions. The Japanese merchants and bankers no longer form a separate and despised class; the gentry, even members of the aristocracy, are engaging every day more and more in financial, industrial and commercial pursuits, many of them with marked success, yet the old taint adheres to the bulk of the trading community.
[Sidenote: The Desire to Trick the Foreigner]
There are, of course, many strictly honourable dealers in Japan, even amongst the smaller tradespeople and retailers. It is amongst the wholesale merchants and the brokers that lapses from the straight path of commercial integrity are still frequent, especially in their dealings with foreigners. It is, unfortunately, still the case that an advantage gained over the foreigner, even by the most shady methods, is looked upon as, in some way, a national victory. This deplorable point of view is likely to prevail as long as Japanese nationalism exists in its extreme form.
[Sidenote: Japanese National Finance]
The Japanese Government has, time after time, loudly proclaimed, by the mouths of its statesmen at home, and its representatives abroad, its desire to facilitate, in every way, the introduction of foreign capital, the vital influence so urgently required for the realisation of Japan’s bold schemes of industrial and commercial development. Strange to say, this cordial invitation, though energetically responded to by the capitalists of Europe, especially of Britain, and by those of America, has not, as yet, led to the investment of any very considerable sums in Japanese enterprises, although, as is well-known, the Japanese Government has easily borrowed many millions sterling in London, New York and Paris, for purposes of State. The chief obstacle to the investment on a large scale, of foreign capital in Japanese enterprises is to be found in the fact that, forgetting that capital is, after all, a commodity, therefore subject to the laws of supply and demand, the Japanese financial and industrial classes do not realise that the capitalist, being virtually the seller, controls the price of his property.
[Sidenote: The Social Qualities of the Japanese]
A mistaken impression appears to prevail in Japan that foreign capital is obliged to find an outlet in the Empire of the Rising Sun and must, therefore, submit to such conditions as may seem suitable to the Japanese and accept such security as the Japanese may deem sufficient. As long as this erroneous view obtains, there can be no considerable influx of foreign money into the coffers of Japanese industrial and commercial concerns. Experience is proverbially the best teacher; the dearth of funds that is certain to follow, in due time, the abnormal and feverish activity which is animating Japanese economic conditions, immediately after the successful issue of the great struggle with Russia, will undoubtedly induce a more reasonable appreciation of the circumstances. Once the Japanese have been taught by experience that they must regulate their demands by the lowest terms considered acceptable by the foreign holders of capital, a vast and profitable field will lie before those Occidental capitalists who have the advantage of expert advice in their selection of Japanese investments.
As a general rule, it may be stated that intercourse with the people of Japan leaves Occidentals very favourably impressed with the social qualities of the inhabitants of the island empire. Their exquisite courtesy, their gentle manners, and the thousand ways in which they demonstrate that kindness of heart that lubricates the wheels of life’s machinery all tend to make ordinary, everyday relations with Japanese a delightful experience. It is only when the more serious aspects of life are approached that the Occidental begins to feel the wide divergence between his point of view, in nearly every important matter, and that of the Japanese.
[Sidenote: Courtesy of the Japanese]
It is exceedingly difficult to specify with exactitude the particular feature of the Japanese character which lies at the root of the unfortunate fact that nearly all Occidentals who have had serious dealings with the people of Dai Nippon have emerged from their experience exasperated and often disgusted. It is probable that want of candour is the trait that acts as the sharpest irritant, for it must be confessed that frankness, so highly prized by Occidentals, especially by those of the nations that “push the world along,” is neither appreciated at its true value nor generally practised by the Japanese. The very nature of their elaborate courtesy makes them shrink from that bluff frankness which obtains amongst Occidentals on a footing of intimate friendship. Even the Japanese mode of speech is a hindrance to direct statement of fact; a Japanese, asked if he has ever been in England, will reply, in his own tongue, “Yes,” and, after a pause, “I have never visited England.” He would not deem it polite to shock his questioner by a direct negative!
Another peculiarity of the Japanese character, that is apt to loom large in Occidental eyes as a grave national failing, is the lack of the spirit of gratitude, as it is understood by the white races. The Japanese have, hitherto, never failed to deal out fair measure, according to the letter of the contract, to the numerous Occidentals whom they have employed, as advisers and instructors, in adapting Western civilisation to the material needs of their re-organised empire; their labours, as well as those of friends of Japan who have rendered voluntary, unpaid services, have also been recognised by the bestowal of marks of Imperial favour; but it is doubtful whether a real feeling of what we term gratitude has ever entered the hearts of the nation towards the many distinguished men who have given of their best to assist in the making of New Japan, or to spread a knowledge of its greatness. This doubt does not apply to the Navy and Army; those gallant forces, keeping the sacred fire of chivalry alight, show deep gratitude to the British sailors and European soldiers--French and, after them, Germans--who instructed them in the modern art of war.
Sympathy with their aspirations is, of course, cordially welcomed from every quarter by the Japanese; they are delighted to receive help of any kind from Occidental friends at such times as, in their view, render such assistance or sympathy necessary. When the occasion has passed, and they feel independent of foreign support, they not only cease to make any effort to attract, but take no pains to conceal their indifference to it. This attitude, induced by the severely practical nature of their policy, is repugnant to Occidental feeling, and has caused the accusation to be brought against the Japanese that they treat their foreign friends “like lemons, to be thrown away once the juice has been squeezed out of them.”
This course of conduct should not be judged too harshly; it should be remembered that such a proud, hypersensitive nation is ever desirous of displaying its independence, and is consequently averse to appearing to solicit help or sympathy from the outside. A gifted Frenchman, a true friend of Japan, the late Félix Régamey, several of whose spirited pictures of Japan are reproduced in this History, and who did much to gain sympathy for that country amongst his compatriots at a time when they were little inclined to extend it, said to the writer: “It would, indeed, be a pleasure to help the Japanese, but they will not let one help them.” It is noticeable that this coolness towards foreign sympathy is usually coincident with a period of national elation, consequent on the victory of Japanese arms or the obtaining of some solid advantage by Japanese diplomacy.
Reviewing impartially the good and the bad points of the Japanese national character, one must come to the comforting conclusion that its faults are likely to disappear, or, at least, to be considerably attenuated in the future, as Japan enters more and more into the active life of the family of nations. The pressure of the public opinion of the vast majority of civilised mankind must exercise a beneficial influence in bringing the Japanese gradually into line with ourselves where the points of view are still too widely divergent to admit of cordial co-operation between them and Occidentals. The virtues now pre-eminently Japanese may, indeed probably will, suffer to a certain extent in the process; it is the writer’s firm conviction that enough of them will remain to enable the Japanese to accomplish the glorious destiny towards which they are marching. Their patriotism, their valour, their thoroughness, their wisdom in matters of national moment, are of the virtues that make nations great.
ARTHUR DIOSY