Opening
[Transcriber’s note: Sidenotes are shown enclosed in diamond symbols and multiple notes are separated by bars, as shown: ♦Note 1 | Note 2♦.]
THE
HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE
VOL. I.
LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET
THE
HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
OF
EUROPE
BY
EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L., LL.D.
HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.—TEXT
LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1881
All rights reserved
Preface
It is now several years since this book was begun. It has been delayed by a crowd of causes, by a temporary loss of strength, by enforced absence from England, by other occupations and interruptions of various kinds. I mention this only because of the effect which I fear it has had on the book itself. It has been impossible to make it, what a book should, if possible, be, the result of one continuous effort. The mere fact that the kindness of the publishers allowed the early part to be printed some years back has, I fear, led to some repetition and even contradiction. A certain change of plan was found unavoidable. It proved impossible to go through the whole volume according to the method of the earlier chapters. Instead of treating Europe as a whole, I found it needful to divide it into several large geographical groups. The result is that each of the later chapters has had to go over again some small amount of ground which had been already gone over in the earlier chapters. In some cases later lights have led to some changes of view or expression. I have marked these, as far as I could, in the Additions and Corrections. If in any case I have failed to do so, the later statement is the one which should be relied on.
I hope that I have made the object of the work clear in the Introductory Chapter. It is really a very humble one. It aims at little more than tracing out the extent of various states at different times, and at attempting to place the various changes in their due relation to one another and to their causes. I am not, strictly speaking, writing history. I have little to do with the internal affairs of any country. I have looked at events mainly with reference to their effect on the European map. This has led to a reversal of what to many will seem the natural order of things. In a constitutional history of Europe, our own island would claim the very first place. In my strictly geographical point of view, I believe I am right in giving it the last.
I of course assume in the reader a certain elementary knowledge of European history, at least as much as may be learned from my own General Sketch. Names and things which have been explained there I have not thought it needful to explain again. I need hardly say that I found myself far more competent to deal with some parts of the work than with others. No one can take an equal interest in, or have an equal knowledge of, all branches of so wide a subject. Some parts of the book will represent real original research; others must be dealt with in a far less thorough way, and will represent only knowledge got up for the occasion. In such cases the reader will doubtless find out the difference for himself. But I have felt my own deficiencies most keenly in the German part. No part of European history is to me more attractive than the early history of the German kingdom as such. No part is to me less attractive than the endless family divisions and unions of the smaller German states.
In the Slavonic part I have found great difficulty in following any uniform system of spelling. I consulted several Slavonic scholars. Each gave me advice, and each supported his own advice by arguments which I should have thought unanswerable, if I had not seen the arguments in support of the wholly different advice given me by the others. When the teachers differ so widely, the learner will, I hope, be forgiven, if the result is sometimes a little chaotic. I have tried to write Slavonic names so as to give some approach to the sound, as far as I know it. But I fear that I have succeeded very imperfectly.
In such a crowd of names, dates, and the like, there must be many small inaccuracies. In the case of the smaller dates, those which do not mark the great epochs of history, nothing is easier than to get wrong by a year or so. Sometimes there is an actual difference of statement in different authorities. Sometimes there is a difference in the reckoning of the year. For instance, In what year was Calais lost to England? We should say 1558. A writer at the time would say 1557. Then again there is no slip of either pen or press so easy as putting a wrong figure, and, except in the case of great and obvious dates, or again when the mistake is very far wrong indeed, there is no slip of pen or press so likely to be passed by in revision. And again there is often room for question as to the date which should be marked. In recording a transfer of territory from one power to another, what should be the date given? The actual military occupation and the formal diplomatic cession are often several years apart. Which of these dates should be chosen? I have found it hard to follow any fixed rule in such matters. Sometimes the military occupation seems the most important point, sometimes the diplomatic cession. I believe that in each case where a question of this sort might arise, I could give a reason for the date which has been chosen; but here there has been no room to enter into discussions. I can only say that I shall be deeply thankful to any one who will point out to me any mistakes or seeming mistakes in these or any other matters.
The maps have been a matter of great difficulty. I somewhat regret that it has been found needful to bind them separately from the text, because this looks as if they made some pretensions to the character of an historical atlas. To this they lay no claim. They are meant simply to illustrate the text, and in no way enter into competition either with such an elaborate collection as that of Spruner-Menke, or even with collections much less elaborate than that. Those maps are meant to be companions in studying the history of the several periods. Mine do not pretend to do more than to illustrate changes of boundary in a general way. It was found, as the work went on, that it was better on the whole to increase the number of maps, even at the expense of making each map smaller. There are disadvantages both ways. In the maps of South-Eastern Europe, for instance, it was found impossible to show the small states which arose in Greece after the Latin conquest at all clearly. But this evil seemed to be counterbalanced by giving as many pictures as might be of the shifting frontier of the Eastern Empire towards the Bulgarian, the Frank, and the Ottoman.
In one or two instances I have taken some small liberties with my dates. Thus, for instance, the map of the greatest extent of the Saracen dominion shows all the countries which were at any time under the Saracen power. But there was no one moment when the Saracen power took in the whole extent shown in the map. Sind and Septimania were lost before Crete and Sicily were won. But such a view as I have given seemed on the whole more instructive than it would have been to substitute two or three maps showing the various losses and gains at a few years’ distance from one another.
I have to thank a crowd of friends, including some whom I have never seen, for many hints, and for much help given in various ways. Such are Professor Pauli of Göttingen, Professor Steenstrup of Copenhagen, Professor Romanos of Corfu, M. J.-B. Galiffe of Geneva, Dr. Paul Turner of Budapest, Professor A. W. Ward of Manchester, the Rev. H. F. Tozer, Mr. Ralston, Mr. Morfill, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and my son-in-law Arthur John Evans, whose praise is in all South-Slavonic lands.
SOMERLEAZE, WELLS: December 16, 1880.
I. INTRODUCTION
PAGE
Definition of Historical Geography 1
Its relation to kindred studies 1-2
Distinction between geographical and political names 3-5
§ 1. Geographical Aspect of Europe.
Boundaries of Europe and Asia 5-6
General geography of the two continents—the great peninsulas 6-7
§ 2. Effects of Geography on History.
Beginnings of history in the southern peninsulas—characteristics of Greece and Italy 7-8
Advance and extent of the Roman dominion; the Mediterranean lands, Gaul, and Britain 8-9
Effects of the geographical position of Germany, France, Spain, Scandinavia, Britain 9-10
Effect of geographical position on the colonizing powers 10
Joint working of geographical position and national character 11
§ 3. Geographical Distribution of Races.
Europe an Aryan continent—non-Aryan remnants and latter settlements 12
Fins and Basques 13
Order of Aryan settlements; Greeks and Italians 13
Celts, Teutons, Slaves, Lithuanians 14-15
Displacement and assimilation among the Aryan races 16
Intrusion of non-Aryans; Saracens 16
Turanian intrusions; Bulgarians; Magyars; Ottomans; differences in their history 17
II. GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES
§ 1. The Eastern or Greek Peninsula.
Geographical and historical characteristics of the Eastern, Greek, or Byzantine peninsula 18-19
Its chief divisions; Thrace and Illyria; their relations to Greece 19-20
Greece Proper and its peninsulas 20-21
Peloponnêsos 21
§ 2. Insular and Asiatic Greece.
Extent of Continuous Hellas 21
The Islands 22
Asiatic Greece 22-23
§ 3. Ethnology of the Eastern Peninsula.
The Greeks and the kindred races 23
Illyrians, Albanians, or Skipetar 24
Inhabitants of Epeiros, Macedonia, Sicily, and Italy 24
Pelasgians 24-25
The Greek Nation 25
§ 4. Earliest Geography of Greece and the Neighbouring Lands.
Homeric Greece: its extent and tribal divisions 25-27
Use of the name Epeiros 26
The cities: their groupings unlike those of later times; supremacy of Mykênê 27
Extent of Greek colonization in Homeric times 28
The Asiatic catalogue 28
Probable kindred of all the neighbouring nations 28
Phœnician and Greek settlements in the islands 28
§ 5. Change from Homeric to Historic Greece.
Changes in Peloponnêsos; Dorian and Aitolian settlements 29
Later divisions of Peloponnêsos 29-30
Change in Northern Greece; Thessaly 30
Akarnania and the Corinthian colonies 31
Foundation and destruction of cities 31
§ 6. The Greek Colonies.
The Ægæan and Asiatic colonies 32-33
Early greatness of the Asiatic cities; Milêtos 32
Their submission to Lydians and Persians 32-33
The Thracian colonies; abiding greatness of Thessalonikê and Byzantion 33
More distant colonies; Sicily, Italy, Dalmatia 33-34
Parts of the Mediterranean not colonized by the Greeks; Phœnician settlements; struggles in Sicily and Cyprus 34-35
Greek colonies in Africa, Gaul, and Spain 35
Colonies on the Euxine; abiding greatness of Cherson and Trebizond 36
Beginning of the artificial Greek nation 36
§ 7. Growth of Macedonia and Epeiros.
Growth of Macedonia; Philip; Alexander and the Successors; effects of their conquests 37
Epeiros under Pyrrhos; Athamania 37
The Macedonian kingdoms; Egypt; Syria 38
Independent states in Asia; Pergamos 38
Asiatic states; advance of Greek culture 39
Free cities; Hêrakleia 39
Sinôpê; Bosporos 39
§ 8. Later Geography of Independent Greece.
The Confederations; Achaia, Aitolia; smaller confederations 40
Macedonian possessions 40
First Roman possessions east of the Hadriatic 40
Progress of Roman conquest in Macedonia and Greece 41
Special character of Greek history 42
III. FORMATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Meanings of the name Italy; its extent under the Roman commonwealth 43
Characteristics of the Italian peninsula; the great islands 44
§ 1. The Inhabitants of Italy and Sicily.
Ligurians and Etruscans 45
The Italian nations; Latins and Oscans 45-46
Other nations; Iapygians; Gauls; Veneti; use of the name Venetia 46-47
Greek colonies in Italy; Kymê and Ankôn 47
The southern colonies; their history 47-48
Inhabitants of Sicily; Sikanians and Sikels 48
Phœnician and Greek settlements; rivalry of Aryan and Semitic powers 48-49
§ 2. Growth of the Roman Power in Italy.
Gradual conquest of Italy; different positions of the Italian states 49
Origin of Rome; its Latin element dominant 49-50
Early Latin dominion of Rome 50
Conquest of Veii; more distant wars 50
Incorporation of the Italian states 50-51
§ 3. The Western Provinces.
Nature of the Roman provinces 51
Eastern and Western provinces 52
First Roman possessions in Sicily; conquest of Syracuse 53
State of Sicily; its Greek civilization 53
Sardinia and Corsica 53-54
Cisalpine Gaul 54-55
Liguria; Venetia; Istria; foundation of Aquileia 55
Spain; its inhabitants; Iberians; Celts; Greek and Phœnician colonies 55-56
Conquest and Romanization of Spain 56-57
Transalpine Gaul; the Province 57
Conquests of Cæsar; threefold division of Gaul 57-58
Boundaries of Gaul purely geographical; survival of nomenclature 57-58
Roman Africa; restoration of Carthage 58-60
§ 4. The Eastern Provinces.
Contrast between the Eastern and Western provinces; Greek civilization in the East 60
Distinctions among the Eastern provinces; boundary of Tauros 60-61
The Illyrian provinces; kingdom of Skodra; conquest of Dalmatia and Istria 62-63
The outlying Greek lands: Crete, Cyprus, Kyrênê 63
The Asiatic provinces; province of Asia; Mithridatic War; independence of Lykia 64
Syria; Palestine 65
Rome and Parthia 65
Conquest of Egypt; the Roman Peace 66
§ 5. Conquests under the Empire.
Conquests from Augustus to Nero; incorporation of vassal kingdoms 66-67
Attempted conquest of Germany; frontiers of Rhine and Danube; conquests on the Danube 67-68
Attempt on Arabia 68
Annexation of Thrace and Byzantion 68
Conquest of Britain; the wall 69
Conquests of Trajan; his Asiatic conquests surrendered by Hadrian 70
Arabia Petræa 70
Dacia; change of the name 70-71
Roman, Greek, and Oriental parts of the Empire 71
IV. THE DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE
§ 1. The Later Geography of the Empire.
Changes under the Empire; loss of old divisions 73
New divisions of Italy under Augustus 74
Division of the Empire under Diocletian 74-75
The four Prætorian Prefectures 75
Prefecture of the East; its character 75-76
Its dioceses; the East; Egypt, Asia, Pontos 76
Diocese of Thrace; provinces of Scythia and Europa 76-77
Great cities of the Eastern prefecture 77
Prefecture of Illyricum; position of Greece 77-78
Dioceses of Macedonia and Dacia; province of Achaia 78
Prefecture of Italy; its extent 78
Dioceses of Italy, Illyricum, and Africa; greatness of Carthage 79
Prefecture of Gaul 79
Diocese of Spain; its African territory 79
Dioceses of Gaul and Britain; province of Valentia 79-80
§ 2. The Division of the Empire.
Change in the position of Rome 80
Division of the Empire, A.D. 395 81
Rivalry with Parthia and Persia inherited by the Eastern Empire 81-82
Teutonic invasions; no Teutonic settlements in the East 82-83
§ 3. The Teutonic Settlements within the Empire.
The Wandering of the Nations 83
New nomenclature of the Teutonic nations 83-84
Warfare on the Rhine and Danube; Roman outposts beyond the rivers 84
Teutonic confederations; Marcomanni; Quadi 84-85
Franks, Alemans, Saxons; Germans within the Empire 85-86
Beginning of national kingdoms 86
Loss of the Western provinces of Rome 86
Settlements within the Empire by land and by sea 87
Franks, Burgundians, Goths, Vandals 87-88
Early history of the Goths 88-89
The West-Gothic kingdom in Gaul and Spain 89-90
Alans, Suevi, Vandals; the Vandals in Africa 89-90
The Franks; use of the name Francia 91
Alemans, Thuringians; Low-Dutch tribes 91
The Frankish dominions; Roman Germany Teutonized afresh; peculiar position of the Franks 91-93
Celtic remnant in Armorica or Britanny 93
The Burgundians; various uses of the name Burgundy; separate history of Provence 93-94
Inroads of the Huns; battle of Châlons; origin of Venice 94
Nominal reunion of the Empire in 476 94
Reigns of Odoacer and Theodoric 94-95
§ 4. Settlement of the English in Britain.
Withdrawal of the Roman troops from Britain 95
Special character of the English Conquest of Britain 96
The Low-Dutch settlers, Angles, Saxons, Jutes; origin of the name English 97
The Welsh and Scots 98
§ 5. The Eastern Empire.
Comparison of the two Empires; no Teutonic settlements in the Eastern 98
The Tetraxite Goths 98
Rivalry with Parthia continued under the revived Persian kingdom 98-99
Position of Armenia 99
Momentary conquests of Trajan 99
Conquests of Marcus, Severus, and Diocletian; cessions of Jovian 100
Division of Armenia; Hundred Years’ Peace 100
Summary 101-102
V. THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE
§ 1. The Reunion of the Empire.
Continued existence of the Empire; position of the Teutonic kings 103
Extent of the Empire at the accession of Justinian 104
Conquests of Justinian; their effects 104-106
Provence ceded to the Franks 105
§ 2. Settlement of the Lombards in Italy.
Early history of the Lombards; Gepidæ, Avars 106-107
Possibility of Teutonic powers on the Danube 107
Lombard conquest of Italy; its partial nature; territory kept by the Empire 107-108
§ 3. Rise of the Saracens.
Loss of the Spanish province by the Empire 108
Wars of Chosroes and Heraclius 109
Extension of Roman power on the Euxine 109-110
Relation of the Arabs to Rome and Persia 110
Union of the Arabs under Mahomet; renewed Aryan and Semitic strife 110
Loss of the Eastern and African provinces of Rome 111
Saracen conquest of Persia 111
Conquest of Spain; Saracen province in Gaul 111-112
Effects of the Saracen conquests; distinction between the Latin, Greek, and Eastern provinces 112
Greatest extent of Saracen provinces 112
Loss of Septimania 113
§ 4. Settlements of the Slavonic Nations.
Movements of the Slaves; Avars, Magyars, &c. 113-114
Geographical separation of the Slaves 114
Analogy between Teutons and Slaves 114
Slavonic settlements under Heraclius; the Dalmatian cities; displacement of the Illyrians 115
Slavonic settlements in Greece 115-116
Settlement of the Bulgarians 116
Curtailment of the Empire; moral influence of Constantinople 116-117
§ 5. The Transfer of the Western Empire to the Franks.
Conquests of the Franks in Germany and Gaul 117-119
Their position in Germany, Northern Gaul, and Southern Gaul 119-120
Division of the Frankish dominion; Austria and Neustria 120-121
Use of the name Francia; Teutonic and Latin Francia; modern forms of the name 121
The Karlings; their conquests; German character of their power 121-122
The great powers of the eighth century: Romans, Franks, Saracens 122
Character of the Caliphate; its divisions 122
Relations between the Franks and the Empire 123
Lombard conquest of the Exarchate 123
Conquest of the Lombards by Charles the Great; he holds Lombardy as a separate kingdom 123
His Roman title of Patrician 123-124
Effects of his Imperial coronation; final division of the Empire 124
The two Empires become severally German and Greek; their separation and rivalry 124-125
The two Empires and the two Caliphates 125-126
Extent of the Carolingian Empire 126
Conquest of Saxony; dealings with Scandinavia; frontier of the Eider 126-127
Relations with the Slaves; overthrow of the Avars 127
The Spanish March 128
Divisions of the Empire; kingdoms of Aquitaine and Italy 128
Use of the names Francia, Gallia, Germania 129
§ 6. Northern Europe.
Lands beyond the Empire: Scandinavia and Britain 129
Stages of English Conquest in Britain; Teutonic and Celtic states 129-130
Supremacy of Wessex 130
Denmark; Norway; Sweden 130-131
Different directions of the Scandinavian settlements 131
Summary 131-133
Religious changes 132
Note on the Slavonic settlements 133
VI. THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN EUROPEAN STATES
§ 1. The Division of the Frankish Empire.
Break-up of the Frankish power; origin of the states of modern Europe 134
Kingdoms of Italy and Aquitaine 134
Division of 817 135
Union of Neustria and Aquitaine; first glimpses of modern France 135
Division of Verdun; Eastern and Western Francia; Lotharingia; the Western Kingdom or Karolingia 137
Middle Kingdom or Burgundy 137
Union under Charles the Fat; division on his deposition 137
No formal titles used; various names for the German Kingdom 138
Connexion between the German Kingdom and the Roman Empire 139
Extent of the German Kingdom; its duchies and marks 139-140
Lotharingia 140-141
Extent of the Western Kingdom 141
Its great fiefs; Aquitaine; France; Normandy cut off from France 142
Origin of the French kingdom and nation; union of the duchy of France with the Western kingdom 143
New use of the word France; title of Rex Francorum 143-144
Paris the kernel of France 144
Various uses of the name Burgundy 144
The French Duchy; the Middle Kingdom; Transjurane and Cisjurane Burgundy 144-145
Great cities of the Burgundian kingdom 145
Separation of Burgundy from the Frankish kingdom; its union with Germany 145-146
Its later history; mainly swallowed up by France, but partly represented by Switzerland 146
Kingdom of Italy; its extent; separate principalities 146-147
Italy represents the Lombard kingdom; Milan its capital 147
Abeyance of the Western Empire; its restoration by Otto the Great; the three Imperial kingdoms 147-148
Rivalry between France and the Empire 148
§ 2. The Eastern Empire.
Rivalry of the Eastern and Western Empires and Churches; Greek character of the Eastern Empire; fluctuations in its extent 149
The Themes; Asiatic Themes 149-151
The European Themes; Hellas; Lombardy; Sicily 151-152
Older Greek names supplanted by new ones 151
Character of the European and Asiatic dominion of the Empire; its supremacy by sea 152
Losses and gains; Crete; Sicily; Italy; Dalmatia; Greece; Syria; Bulgaria; Cherson 152-153
Greatness of the Empire under Basil the Second 153
§ 3. Origin of the Spanish Kingdoms.
Special position of Spain; the Saracen conquest 153-154
Growth of the Christian states 154-155
Castile; Aragon; Portugal 155
Break-up of the Western Caliphate 156
§ 4. Origin of the Slavonic States.
Slavonic and Turanian invasions of the Eastern Empire; Bulgarians; Magyars; Great Moravia 156-157
Special character of the Hungarian kingdom; effects of its religious connexion with the West 157
The Northern and Southern Slaves split asunder by the Magyars 158
The South-eastern Slaves 158
The North-western Slaves; Bohemia; Poland 159
Special position of Russia 159
§ 5. Northern Europe.
Scandinavian settlements 159-160
Growth of the kingdom of England 160
The Danish invasions; division between Ælfred and Guthrum; Bernicia; Cumberland 161
Second West-Saxon advance; Wessex grows into England; submission of Scotland and Strathclyde; Cumberland and Lothian 162
Use of the Imperial titles by the English kings; Northern Empire of Cnut; England finally united by the Norman Conquest 162-163
Summary 163-165
VII. THE ECCLESIASTICAL GEOGRAPHY OF WESTERN EUROPE
Permanence of ecclesiastical divisions; they preserve earlier divisions; case of Lyons and Rheims 166-167
Patriarchates, Provinces, Dioceses 167
Bishoprics within and without the Empire 167-168
§ 1. The Great Patriarchates.
The Patriarchates suggested by the Prefectures 168
Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem 168-169
Later Patriarchates 169-170
§ 2. The Ecclesiastical Divisions of Italy.
Great numbers and smaller importance of the Italian bishoprics 170
Rivals of Rome; Milan, Aquileia, Ravenna 171
The immediate Roman province; other metropolitan sees 171-172
§ 3. The Ecclesiastical Divisions of Gaul and Germany.
Gaulish and German dioceses 172
Provinces of Southern Gaul; position of Lyons 172-173
New metropolitan sees; Toulouse, Alby, Avignon, Paris; comparison of civil and ecclesiastical divisions 174
Provinces of Northern Gaul and Germany; history of Mainz 178-179
The archiepiscopal electors; other German provinces; Salzburg, Bremen, Magdeburg 176-177
Modern arrangements in France, Germany, and the Netherlands 177
§ 4. The Ecclesiastical Divisions of Spain.
Peculiarities of Spanish ecclesiastical geography; effects of the Saracen conquest 178
Gothic and later dioceses; neglect of the Pyrenæan barrier 178-179
§ 5. The Ecclesiastical Divisions of the British Islands.
Analogy between Britain and Spain 179
Tribal nature of the Celtic episcopate 179-180
Scheme of Gregory the Great; the two English provinces; relation of Scotland to York 180-181
Foundation of the English sees; territorial bishoprics 181
Canterbury and its suffragan; effects of the Norman Conquest 181-182
Province of York; Scotland and Ireland 182-183
§ 6. The Ecclesiastical Divisions of Northern and Eastern Europe.
The Scandinavian provinces; Lund, Upsala, Trondhjem 184
Poland and neighbouring lands; Gnezna, Riga, Leopol 184-185
Provinces of Hungary and Dalmatia 186
VIII. THE IMPERIAL KINGDOMS
The German Kingdom; its relation to the Western Empire; falling off of Italy and Burgundy 188-190
Loss of territory by the German kingdom; its extension to the north-east 190-191
Geographical contrast of the earlier and the later Empire 191
§ 1. The Kingdom of Germany.
Changes of boundaries and nomenclature in Germany; Saxony; Bavaria; Austria; Burgundy; Prussia 191-192
Extent of the Kingdom; fluctuations of its western boundary; Lorraine; Elsass; the left bank of the Rhine 192-194
Fluctuations on the Burgundian frontier; union of Burgundy with the Empire 194
Frontier of Germany and Italy; union of the crowns 195
Northern and eastern advance of the Empire; the marks 195
Hungarian frontier; marks of Austria, Carinthia, and Carniola 196
Danish frontier; Danish mark; boundary of the Eider 196
The Slavonic frontier 197
The Saxon mark; Slavonic princes of Mecklenburg, Lübeck; the Hansa 198-199
Marks of Brandenburg, Lausitz, and Meissen 199
Bohemia and Moravia 199
Polish frontier; Pomerania, Silesia 200
Germanization of the Slavonic lands 200-201
Internal geography; growth of the principalities 201
Growth of the marchlands; Brandenburg or Prussia, and Austria; analogies elsewhere 202
Decline of the duchies; end of the Gauverfassung 202
Growth of the House of Austria; separation of Switzerland and the Netherlands 203
The Circles 203
Powers holding lands within and without the Empire; Austria; Sweden; Brandenburg and Prussia; Hannover and Great Britain 203-204
Dissolution of the kingdom; the Confederation 204
Greatness of Prussia and Austria 204
The new Empire 204
Germany under the Saxon and Frankish kings; vanishing of Francia; analogy of Wessex 205-206
Changes in the twelfth century; beginning of Brandenburg and Austria; the duchies and the circles 206-207
Duchy of Saxony; its divisions and growth 207
Break-up of the duchy; Westfalia; the new Saxony 207
Duchy of Brunswick; electorate and kingdom of Hannover 208
The new Saxony; Lauenburg; the Saxon Electorate 208-209
The North Mark of Saxony or Mark of Brandenburg 209
House of Hohenzollern; union of Brandenburg and Prussia 210
Advances in Pomerania, Westfalia, &c. 210
German character of the Prussian state; its contrast with Austria; use of the name Prussia 210-211
Conquest of Silesia; Polish acquisitions of Prussia; East Friesland 211-212
Saxon Possessions of Denmark and Sweden 212-213
Free cities of Saxony; the Hansa; the cities and the bishoprics 213-214
Duchy of Francia; held by the bishops of Würzburg; the Franconian circle 214
The Rhenish circles; Hessen; Bamberg; Nürnberg; the ecclesiastical states on the Rhine 214-215
Palatinate of the Rhine; Upper Palatinate 215
Bavaria; its relations towards the Palatinate and towards Austria 215
Archbishopric of Salzburg 215
Lotharingia; falling off from the Empire; the later Lorraine and Elsass 216
Swabia; ecclesiastical powers 216
Swabian lands of the Confederates 216
Baden and Württemberg 216
Circle of Austria; house of Habsburg 217
Extent of its German lands; Tyrol; Elsass; loss of Swabian lands 217
Bohemia and its dependencies 217
Trent and Brixen 217
Circle of Burgundy; not purely German; its origin 218
§ 2. The Confederation and Empire of Germany.
Germany changes from a kingdom to a confederation 218
The Bund; the new Confederation and Empire; the Empire still federal 219
Wars of the French Revolution; loss of the left bank of the Rhine 220
Suppression of free cities and ecclesiastical states; new electorates 220
Peace of Pressburg; new kingdoms; cessions made by Austria 221
Title of ‘Emperor of Austria;’ Confederation of the Rhine; end of the Western Empire 221
German territories of Denmark and Sweden 221-222
Losses of Prussia and Austria; French annexations 222
Kingdoms of Saxony and Westfalia; Grand duchy of Frankfurt 222
Germany wiped out of the map 222
Losses of Prussia; Danzig; duchy of Warsaw 222-223
The German Confederation; princes holding lands within and without the Confederation; kingdom of Hanover 223
Increase of Prussian territory; dismemberment of Saxony 224
Lands recovered by Austria; German possessions of Denmark and the Netherlands; Sweden withdraws from Germany 224-225
Comparison of Prussia and Austria; Hannover 225
Kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg; other German states; the free cities; Lüttich passes to Belgium 226-227
Revival of German national life 227
Affairs of Luxemburg 228-229
War of Sleswick and Holstein; the duchies ceded to Austria and Prussia 228
War of 1866; North German Confederation; exclusion of Austria; great advance of Prussia 228-229
War with France; the new German Empire; recovery of Elsass-Lothringen 229-230
Comparison of the old kingdom and the new Empire; name of Prussia 230-231
§ 3. The Kingdom of Italy.
Small geographical importance of the kingdom; changes on the Alpine frontier 231-232
Case of Trieste 233
Apulia, Sicily, Venice, no part of the kingdom; their relation to the Eastern Empire 233-234
Special history of the house of Savoy 234
Extent of the kingdom; Neustria and Austria; Æmilia, Tuscany; Romagna 234-235
Lombardy proper; the marches 235
Comparison of Germany and Italy; the commonwealths, the tyrants, the Popes; four stages of Italian history 235-236
Northern Italy; the Marquesses of Montferrat; the Lombard cities; the Veronese march 236-238
Central Italy; Romagna and the march of Ancona; the Tuscan commonwealths; Pisa and Genoa; Rome and the Popes 238-239
The tyrannies; Spanish dominion: practical abeyance of the Empire in Italy; Imperial and Papal fiefs 239-240
Palaiologoi at Montferrat; house of Visconti at Milan; the duchy of Milan; its dismemberment; duchy of Parma and Piacenza 240-242
Land power of Venice 242-243
Other principalities; duchy of Mantua, of Ferrara and Modena; difference in their tenure 243-244
Romagna; Bologna; Urbino; advance of the Popes 244
The Tuscan cities; Lucca; rivalry of Pisa and Genoa; Siena; Florence 245
Duchy of Florence; grand duchy of Tuscany 246
§ 4. The Later Geography of Italy.
The kingdom practically forgotten; position of Charles the Fifth 246
Italy a geographical expression; changes in the Italian states 246-247
Dominion of the two branches of the house of Austria 247
Italy mapped into larger states; exceptions at Monaco and San Marino 247
Venice; Milan Spanish and Austrian; its dismemberment in favour of Savoy; end of Montferrat and Mantua 248-249
Parma and Piacenza; separation of Modena and Ferrara; Genoa and Lucca; Grand Duchy of Tuscany; advance of the Popes 249
The Norman kingdom of Sicily; Benevento 250
The Two Sicilies; their various unions and divisions; their relations to the houses of Austria, Savoy and Bourbon 250-251
Use of the name Sardinia 251
Wars of the French Revolution; the new republics; Treaty of Campo Formio; Piedmont joined to France 251-253
Restoration of the Pope and the King of the Two Sicilies 253
The French kingdoms; Etruria; Italy 253
Various annexations; Rome becomes French; Murat King of Naples 253-254
Italy under French dominion; revival of the Italian name 254-255
Settlement of 1814-1815; the princes restored, but not the commonwealths 255
Austrian kingdom of Lombardy and Venice; Genoa annexed by Piedmont 255-256
The smaller states; the Papal states; Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 256
Union of Italy comes from Piedmont; earlier movements; war of 1859; Kingdom of Italy: Savoy and Nizza ceded to France 257-258
Recovery of Venetia and Rome; parts of the kingdom not recovered 258
Freedom of San Marino 258
§ 5. The Kingdom of Burgundy.
Union of Burgundy with Germany; dying out of the kingdom; chiefly swallowed up by France, but represented by Switzerland 258-259
Boundaries of the kingdom; fluctuation; Romance tongue prevails in it 259
History of the Burgundian Palatinate; Besançon; Montbeliard 261
The Lesser Burgundy; partly German 261
The Dukes of Zähringen; the ecclesiastical states; the free cities; the free lands; growth of the Old League of High Germany 262
Growth of Savoy; Burgundian possessions of its counts 263
States between the Palatinate and the Mediterranean; Bresse and Bugey; principalities and free cities 263
County of Provence; its connexion with France 263-264
Progress of French annexation: 1310-1791: Lyons; the Dauphiny: Vienne; Valence; Provence; Avignon and Venaissin 264-265
Nizza 265
History of Orange 265-266
States which have split off from the Imperial kingdoms: Switzerland; Savoy; the duchy of Burgundy by Belgium and the Netherlands 266-267
The Austrian power; its position as a marchland; its union with Hungary; its relation to Eastern Europe 267-268
§ 6. The Swiss Confederation.
German origin of the Confederation; popular errors; sketch of Swiss history 268-270
The Three Lands; the cities: Luzern, Zürich, Bern; the Eight Ancient Cantons 270
Allies and subjects; dominion of Zürich and Bern; conquests from Austria 270-271
Italian conquests; first conquests from Savoy; League of Wallis 271-272
The Thirteen Cantons 272
League of Graubünden; further Italian and Savoyard conquests 272-273
History of Geneva; territory restored to Savoy; division of Gruyères 273-274
The Allied States; Neufchâtel; Constanz 274
The Confederation independent of the Empire; its position as a middle state 274-275
Wars of the French Revolution; Helvetic Republic; freedom of the subject lands; annexations to France 275-276
Act of Mediation; the nineteen cantons 276
The present Swiss Confederation 276
History of Neufchâtel 276
§ 7. The State of Savoy.
Position and growth of Savoy; three divisions of the Savoyard lands; popular confusions 277-278
The Savoyard power originally Burgundian; Maurienne; Aosta 278
First Italian possessions 279
Burgundian advance; lands north of the lake 280-281
Relations to Geneva, France, and Bern 281-282
Acquisition of Nizza 282
Italian advance of Savoy; principally of Achaia, of Piedmont; Saluzzo 283-284
Savoy a middle state 284
French influence and occupation; decline of Savoy 285
Loss of lands north of the lake; further losses to Bern and her allies; recovery of the lands south of the lake; the Savoyard power becomes mainly Italian 286
Savoy falls back in Burgundy and advances in Italy; history of Saluzzo; finally acquired in exchange for Bresse, &c. 287
Duchy of Savoy annexed to France; restored; annexed again 288
French annexation of Nizza; Aosta the one Burgundian remnant 288
Savoyard advance in Italy 289
§ 8. The Duchy of Burgundy and the Low Countries.
Position of the Valois dukes as a middle power; result of their twofold vassalage 290
Schemes of a Burgundian kingdom; their final effects; Belgium and the Netherlands 290-291
History of the duchy of Burgundy; its union with Flanders, Artois, and the county of Burgundy; relations to France and the Empire 292-293
The Netherlands; the counts of Flanders; their Imperial fiefs 293
Holland and Friesland 293
Brabant; Hainault; union of Holland and Hainault 294
Common points in all these states; the great cities; Romance and Teutonic dialects 294-295
South-western states; Liége; Luxemburg; Limburg; duchy of Geldern 295
Middle position of these states; French influence; union under the Burgundian dukes 296
Advance under Philip the Good; Namur, Brabant, and Limburg, Holland and Hainault 296-297
The towns on the Somme; Flanders and Artois released from homage 297-298
Philip’s last acquisition of Luxemburg; advance under Charles the Bold and Charles the Fifth; union of the Netherlands 298
The Netherlands pass to Spain; war of independence; its imperfect results 299
The Seven United Provinces; their independence of the Empire; their colonies; lack of a name; use of the word Dutch 299-300
The Spanish Netherlands; English possession of Dunkirk; advance of France; the Spanish Netherlands pass to Austria 301
Annexation by France; kingdom of Holland; all the Burgundian possessions French 302
Kingdom of the Netherlands; Liége incorporated; relation of Luxemburg to Germany 303
Division of the Netherlands and Belgium; separation of Luxemburg from Germany 303
General history and result of the Burgundian power 303-304
§ 9. The Dominions of Austria.
Origin of the name Austria; anomalous position of the Austrian power; the so-called ‘Empire’ of Austria 305-307
The Eastern Mark; becomes a duchy; division of Carinthia; union of Austria and Styria 307-308
County of Görz 309
Austria, &c., annexed by Bohemia; great power of Ottokar 309
House of Habsburg; their Swabian and Alsatian lands; their loss 309-311
King Rudolf; break-up of the power of Ottokar; Albert duke of Austria and Styria 310
Relations between Austria and the Empire; division of the Austrian dominions 311-312
Acquisition of Carinthia and Tyrol; commendation of Trieste; loss of Thurgau 312-313
Austrian kings and emperors; possessions beyond the Empire 313-315
Union with Bohemia and Hungary 314-317
Consequences of the union with Hungary; slow recovery of the kingdom 317
Acquisition of Görz; advance towards Italy; Austrian dominion and influence in Italy 318
Connexion of Austria and Burgundy; the Austrian Netherlands 318-319
Loss of Elsass; of Silesia; acquisition of Poland; Dalmatia 320
Position and dominions of Maria Theresa 320-321
New use of the name Austria; the Austrian ‘Empire’ in 1811 321-322
Misuse of the Illyrian name 322
Austria in 1814-1815; recovery of Dalmatia; annexation of Ragusa; of Cracow 322-323
Separation from Hungary; reconquest; the ‘Austro-Hungarian Monarchy;’ Bosnia, Herzegovina, Spizza 323-324
IX. THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE
Origin and growth of France; comparison with Austria 325
How far Karolingia split off from the Empire 326
France a nation as well as a power 326-327
Use of the name of France; its dukes acquire the western kingdom; extent of their dominion 327-328
Two forms of annexation; first, of fiefs of the crown; secondly, of lands beyond the kingdom 328
Distinctions among the fiefs; the great vassals; Normandy; Britanny 328
The Twelve Peers; different position of the bishops in Germany and Karolingia 328-329
§ 1. Incorporation of the Vassal States.
The duchy of France in 987; the King cut off from the sea 329-330
The neighbouring states; position of the Parisian kings 330
The kings less powerful than the dukes; advantages of their kingship; first advances of the kings 331
The House of Anjou; gradual union of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Aquitaine, and Gascony 331-333
Acquisition of continental Normandy, Anjou, &c. 333-334
The English kings keep Aquitaine and insular Normandy 334
Sudden greatness of France 334
Fiefs of Aragon in Southern Gaul; counts of Toulouse and Barcelona 334-335
Effects of the Albigensian war; French annexations; Roussillon and Barcelona freed from homage 335
Languedoc 335
Other annexations of Saint Lewis 335-336
Annexation of Champagne; temporary possession of Navarre 336-337
The Hundred Years’ War; relations between France and Aquitaine; momentary possession of Aquitaine by Philip the Fair 337
Peace of Bretigny; Aquitaine and other lands freed from homage 337-338
Peace of Troyes; momentary union of the French and English crowns 338
Final annexation of Aquitaine; beginning of the modern French kingdom 338-339
Growths of the Dukes of Burgundy; the towns on the Somme; momentary annexation of Artois and the County of Burgundy 339-340
Annexation of the duchy of Burgundy; Flanders and Artois released from homage; analogy with Aquitaine 340-343
§ 2. Foreign Annexations of France.
Relations between France and England; Boulogne; Dunkirk 341-342
Relations between France and Spain; Roussillon; Navarre; Andorra 342-343
Advance at the cost of the Imperial kingdoms, first Burgundy, then Germany 343
Effect of the Burgundian conquests of France; relations with Savoy and Switzerland 344
History of the Langue d’oc 345
French dominion in Italy; slight extent of real annexation 345-346
French annexations from Germany; the Three Bishoprics; effect of isolated conquests 346
French acquisitions in Elsass; France reaches and passes the Rhine; increased isolation 347-348
Temporary annexation of Bar; annexation of Roussillon; advance in the Netherlands 348-349
Annexation of Franche Comté and Besançon; seizure of Strassburg; annexation of Orange 349-350
Annexation of Lorraine; thorough incorporation of French conquests; effect of geographical continuity 350-351
Purchase of Corsica; its effects; birth of Buonaparte 351-352
§ 3. The Colonial Dominion of France.
French colonies in North America; Acadia; Canada; Louisiana 352
Colonial rivalry of France and England; English conquest of Canada 353
French West India Islands 353
The French power in India; Bourbon and Mauritius 353-354
§ 4. Acquisitions of France during the Revolutionary Wars.
Distinction between the Republican and ‘Imperial’ Conquests 355-356
First class of annexations; Avignon, Mülhausen, Montbeliard; Geneva; bishopric of Basel 355
Second zone; traditions of Gaul and the Rhine; Netherlands; Savoy, &c.; feelings of Buonaparte towards Switzerland 355-356
Character of Buonaparte’s conquests; dependent and incorporated lands; division of Europe between France and Russia 356-357
The French power in 1811 357-358
Arrangements of 1814-1815 358-359
Later changes; annexation of Savoy, Nizza, and Mentone; loss of Elsass and Lorraine 359
Losses among the colonies; independence of Hayti; sale of Louisiana 359-360
Conquest of Algeria; character of African conquests 360
X. THE EASTERN EMPIRE
Comparison of the Eastern and Western Empires; the Western falls to pieces from within; the Eastern is broken to pieces from without 362-363
Tendencies to separation in the Eastern Empire 363
Closer connexion of the East with the elder Empire; retention of the Roman name; Romania 363-364
Importance of the distinction of races in the East 364
The original races; Albanians, Greeks, Vlachs 364
Slavonic settlers 364
Turanian invasions from the North; Bulgarians, Magyars, &c. 365
The Saracens 365
The Seljuk and Ottoman Turks; comparison of Bulgarians, Magyars, and Ottomans 365
The Eastern Empire became nearly conterminous with the Greek nation; reappearance of the other original races 366
The Latin Conquest, and the revived Byzantine Empire 366-367
States which arose out of the Empire or on its borders; Sicily; Venice; Bulgaria; Hungary; Asiatic powers 367-368
Distinction between conquest and settlement 368
§ 1. Changes in the Frontier of the Empire.
Power of revival in the Empire 369
Western possessions of the Empire; losses in the islands; advance in the mainland 369
Loss of Sardinia; gradual loss and temporary partial recovery of Sicily 369-370
Fluctuations of the Imperial power in Italy; the Normans 370-371
Loss and recovery of Crete and Cyprus; separation of Cyprus 371-372
Summary of the history of the great islands 372-373
Relations to the Slavonic powers; three Slavonic groups 373
Bulgarian migrations; White Bulgaria; the first Bulgarian kingdom south of the Danube 373-374
Use of the Bulgarian name 374
The slaves of Macedonia, &c. 375
Relations between the Empire and the Bulgarian kingdom 375
Recovery of Macedonia and Greece; use of the name Hellênes 375-376
Servia, Croatia, and Dalmatia 376
Greatest extent of the first Bulgarian kingdom under Simeon 376-377
First conquest of Bulgaria 377
Second Bulgarian kingdom under Samuel; second conquest 377-378
Venice and Cherson 378
Asiatic conquests; annexation of Armenia 378-379
New enemies; Magyars; Turks 379
Revolt of Servia; loss of Belgrade 379
Advance of the Seljuk Turks; Sultans of Roum; loss of Antioch 379-380
Normans advance; loss of Corfu and Durazzo 380
Revival under John and Manuel, Komnênos; recovery of lands in Asia and Europe 381
Splitting off of distant possessions; loss of Dalmatia; Latin Kingdom of Cyprus 381
Third Bulgarian kingdom; the Empire more thoroughly Greek 382
Latin conquest of Constantinople; Act of Partition 383
Latin Empire of Romania 383-384
Latin kingdom of Thessalonikê 384-385
Despotat of Epeiros; Greek Empire of Thessalonikê; their separation 385
Empire of Trebizond; loss of its western dominion 386
The old Empire continued in the Empire of Nikaia; its advance in Europe and Asia; recovery of Constantinople 386-387
Loss in Asia and advance in Europe; recovery of Peloponnêsos 387-388
Advance in Macedonia and Epeiros 388
Losses in Asia; Knights of Saint John; advance of the Turks 389
Losses towards Servia and Bulgaria; conquests of Stephen Dushan 389-390
Fragmentary dominion of the Empire 390
Advance of the Turks in Europe; loss of Hadrianople; loss of Philadelphia 390
Recovery of territory after the fall of Bajazet 390-391
Turkish conquest of Constantinople; of Peloponnêsos 391
States which grew out of the Empire; Slavonic, Hungarian, and Rouman; Greek; Latin; Turkish 391-393
§ 2. The Kingdom of Sicily.
The Norman Power in Italy and Sicily; its relations to the Eastern and Western Empires 393
Advance of the Normans in Italy; Aversa and Capua; duchy of Apulia; Robert Wiscard in Epeiros 394-395
Norman conquest of Sicily 395
Roger King of Sicily; his conquests in Italy, Corfu, and Africa 395-396
Eastern dominion of the two Sicilian crowns; kingdom of Margarito 396-397
Acre; Malta 398
§ 3. The Crusading States.
Comparison between Sicily and the crusading states 398
Jerusalem; Cyprus; Armenia 399
Extent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; other Latin states in Syria; loss and recovery of Jerusalem, final loss; loss of Acre 399-400
Kingdom of Cyprus; its relations to Jerusalem and Armenia 401
Frank principalities in Greece; possessions of the maritime commonwealths 401-402
§ 4. The Eastern Dominion of Venice and Genoa.
The historic position of Venice springs from her relation to the Eastern Empire 402-403
Connexion of her Greek and Dalmatian rule 402
Comparison between Venice and Sicily 402
Her share in the Act of Partition compared with her real dominion; her main position Hadriatic 403-405
Venetian possessions not assigned by the partition; Crete; Cyprus; Thessalonikê 404
Taking of Zara in the fourth crusade 405
Relations of the Dalmatian cities to Servia, Croatia, Venice, Hungary, and the Empire 405-407
Pagania 406
Magyar Kingdom of Croatia; struggles between Venice and Hungary 407
Independence of Ragusa; Polizza 407
History of Corfu 408
Venetian posts in Peloponnêsos: history of Euboia; loss of the Ægæan islands 409
Advance of Venice and Dalmatia, Peloponnêsos, and the Western islands 410
Venice the champion against the Turk; losses of Venice; fluctuations in the Western Islands 410-412
Conquest and loss of Peloponnêsos 412
Frontier of Ragusa 412
Venetian fiefs; history of the duchy of Naxos 413
Possessions of Genoa; Galata; her dominions in the Euxine 413-414
Genoese fiefs; Lesbos; Chios; the Maona 414
Revolutions of Rhodes; knights of Saint John; their removal to Malta; revolutions of Malta 414-415
§ 5. The Principalities of the Greek Mainland.
Greek and Latin states; use of the name Môraia 415-416
Lordship and duchy of Athens; the Catalans; the later dukes; Ottoman conquest; momentary Venetian occupations 416-417
Salôna and Bodonitza 417
Principality of Achaia; recovery of Peloponnesian lands by the Empire 417-418
Angevin overlordship in Achaia; dismemberment of the principality 418
Patras under the Pope 418
Conquests of Constantine Palaiologos 418
Turkish conquest of Peloponnêsos; independence of Maina 419
Revolutions of Epeiros; dismemberment of the despotat; recovery of Epeiros by the Empire 419
Servian conquests; beginning of the Albanian power; kings of the house of Thopia 419-420
Servian dynasty in southern Epeiros; kingdom of Thessaly; Turkish conquest 420
The Buondelmonti in Northern Epeiros; history of the house of Tocco; Karlili; effects of their rule 420-421
Turkish conquest of Albania; revolt of Scanderbeg; Turkish reconquest 421
Empire of Trebizond; its relations to Constantinople 422
Turkish conquest of Trebizond; of Perateia or Gothia 422-423
§ 6. The Slavonic States.
Effects of the Latin conquest on the Slavonic states 423
Comparison of Servia and Bulgaria; extent of Servia; its relation to the Empire; conquest by Manuel Komnênos; Servia independent 423-424
Relations towards Hungary; shiftings of Rama or Bosnia 424-425
Southern advance of Servia; Empire of Stephen Dushan 425
Break-up of the Servian power; the later Servian kingdom; conquests and deliverances of Servia 426
Kingdom of Bosnia; loss of Jayce; duchy of Saint Saba or Herzegovina; Turkish conquest of Bosnia; of Herzegovina 426-427
The Balsa at Skodra; loss of Skodra; beginning of Tzernagora or Montenegro 428
Loss of Zabljak; establishment of Tzetinje 428
The Vladikas; the lay princes 429
Montenegrin conquests and losses 428-429
Greatest extent of the third Bulgarian kingdom; its decline; shiftings of the frontier towards the Empire; Philippopolis 429-430
Break-up of the kingdom; principality of Dobrutcha; Turkish conquest 430-431
§ 7. The Kingdom of Hungary.
Character and position of the Hungarian kingdom 431-432
Great Moravia overthrown by the Magyars; their relations to the two Empires 432-433
The two Chrobatias separated by the Magyars; their geographical position 433-434
Kingdom of Hungary; its relations to Croatia and Slavonia 434
Transsilvania or Siebenbürgen; origin of the name; German and other colonies 435
Origin of the Roumans; their northern migration 435-436
Rouman element in the third Bulgarian kingdom; occupation of the lands beyond the Danube; Great and Little Wallachia; Transsilvania; Moldavia 436-437
Conquests of Lewis the Great; Dalmatia; occupation of Halicz and Vladimir; pledging of Zips 437
Turkish invasion; disputes for Dalmatia 438
Reign of Matthias Corvinus; extension of Hungary east and west 438
Loss of Belgrade; the Austrian kings; Turkish conquest of Hungary; fragment kept by the Austrian kings; their tribute to the Turk; the Rouman lands 438-439
Recovery of Hungary from the Turk; peace of Carlowitz; of Passarowitz; losses at the peace of Belgrade 439-440
Galicia and Lodomeria; Bukovina; Dalmatia 440-441
Annexation of Spizza; administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina; renewed vassalage to the Turk 440-441
§ 8. The Ottoman Power.
The Ottoman Turks; special character of their invasion; contrast with other Turanian invasions; comparison with the Saracens in Spain 442-443
Comparison of the Ottoman dominions with the Eastern Empire 443
Effects of the Mongolian invasion; origin of the Ottomans; their position in Europe and Asia; break-up and reunion of their dominion; its permanence 443-444
Advance of the Ottomans in Asia; in Europe; dominion of Bajazet 444-445
Victory of Timour; reunion of the Ottoman power under Mahomet the First 445-446
Mahomet the Second; taking of Constantinople; extent of his dominion; taking of Otranto 446
Conquest of Syria and Egypt 447
Reign of Suleiman; his conquests; Hungary; Rhodes; Naxos; his African overlordship 447
Conquest of Cyprus; decline of the Ottoman power 447-448
Greatest extent of the Ottoman power; Crete and Podolia 448
Ottoman loss of Hungary; loss and recovery of Peloponnêsos; Bosnia and Herzegovina; union of inland and maritime Illyria 448
English vassalage in Cyprus 449
Relations between Russia and the Turk; Azof; Treaty of Kainardji; Crim; Jedisan; Bessarabia; shiftings of the Moldavian frontier 449-450
§ 9. The Liberated States.
Lands liberated from the Turk; comparison of Hungary with Greece, Servia, &c. 450
The Servian people the first to revolt 450
The Ionian Islands the first liberated state; the Septinsular Republic; overlordship of the Turk 451
The Venetian outposts given to the Turk; surrender of Parga; last Ottoman encroachment 451
The Ionian Islands under British protection 451
The Greek War of Independence; extent of the Greek nation; extent of the liberated lands 451-452
Kingdom of Greece; addition of the Ionian Islands; promised addition in Thessaly and Epeiros 452
First deliverance and reconquest of Servia 453
Second deliverance; Servia a tributary principality 452-453
Withdrawal of Turkish garrisons 453
Independence and enlargement of Servia 453
Fourfold division of the Servian nation 453
The Rouman principalities; union of Wallachia and Moldavia 453
Independence and new frontier of Roumania 453-454
Deliverance of part of Bulgaria; the Bulgaria of San Stefano 454
Treaty of Berlin; division of Bulgaria into free, half-free, and enslaved 454-455
Principality of Bulgaria; Eastern Roumelia 454
General survey 455-460
Note on M. Sathas 460-461
XI. THE BALTIC LANDS
Lands beyond the two Empires; the British islands; Scandinavia; Spain 462-463
Quasi-imperial position of certain powers 462-463
Comparison of Scandinavia and Spain; of Aragon and Sweden 463-464
Eastern and Western aspect of Scandinavia 464
General view of the Baltic lands; the Northern Slavonic lands, their relations to Germany and Hungary 465
Characteristics of Poland and Russia 465
The primitive nations, Aryan and non-Aryan 455-466
Central position of the North-Slavonic lands; barbarian neighbours of Russia and Scandinavia; Russian conquest and colonization by land 467
Relation of the Baltic lands to the two Empires; Norway always independent; relations of Sweden and Denmark to the Western Empire 467
The Western Empire and the West-Slavonic lands; relations of Poland to the Western Empire 467
Relations of Russia to the Eastern Church and Empire; Imperial style of Russia 468
§ 1. The Scandinavian Lands after the Separation of the Empires.
The Baltic still mainly held by the earlier races; formation of the Scandinavian kingdom 468-499
Formation of the Danish kingdom; its extent; frontier of the Eider; the Danish march 469
Use of the name Northmen; formation of the kingdom of Norway 469-470
The Swedes and Gauts; the Swedish kingdom 470
Its fluctuations towards Norway and Denmark; its growth towards the north 470
Western conquests and settlements of the Danes and Northmen 471
Settlements in Britain and Gaul 471
Settlements in Orkney, Man, Iceland, Ireland, &c. 471
Expeditions to the East; Danish occupation of Samland; Jomsburg 471
Swedish conquest of Curland; Scandinavians in Russia 472
§ 2. The Lands East and South of the Baltic at the Separation of the Empires.
Slaves between Elbe and Dnieper; their lack of sea-board 472-473
Kingdom of Samo; Great Moravia 473
Four Slavonic groups 473-474
Polabic group; Sorabi, Leuticii, Obotrites; their relations to the Empire 474-475
Early conquest of the Sorabi; marks of Meissen and Lusatia; long resistance of the Leuticians; takings of Branibor; mark of Brandenburg 475-476
Mark of the Billungs; kingdom of Sclavinia; house of Mecklenburg; relations to Denmark 476
Bohemia and Moravia; their relations to Poland, Hungary, and Germany 477
The Polish kingdom; its relations to Germany; rivalry of Poland and Russia 478
Lechs or Poles; their various tribes 478
Beginning of the Polish state; its conversion and relations to the Empire 479
Conquests of Boleslaf; union of the Northern Chrobatia with Poland 479
The Polish state survives, though divided 479-480
Relations of Russia to the Eastern Church and Empire; Russia created by the Scandinavian settlement; origin of the name 480
First centre at Novgorod; Russian advance; union of the Eastern Slaves 481
Second centre at Kief; the princes become Slavonic; attacks on Constantinople and Cherson 481-482
Conquests on the Caspian; isolation of Russia; Russian lands west of Dnieper 482
Russian principalities; supremacy of Kief 482
Supremacy of the northern Vladimir; commonwealths of Novgorod and Pskof; various principalities; kingdom of Halicz or Galicia 483
The Cuman power; Mongol invasion; Russia tributary to the Mongols; Russia represented by Novgorod 483-484
The earlier races; Finns in Livland and Esthland 484
The Lettic nations; Lithuania; Prussia 484
Survey in the twelfth century 485
§ 3. German Dominion on the Baltic.
Time of Teutonic conquest on the Baltic; comparison of German and Scandinavian influence; German influence the stronger 485-486
Beginning of Swedish conquest in Finland; German conquest in Livland; its effect on Lithuania and Russia; the Military orders 487
Polish gains and losses 487
Character of the Hansa 487
Temporary Swedish possession of Scania; union of Calmar; division and reunion; abiding union of Denmark and Norway 487-488
Union of Iceland with Norway; loss of the Scandinavian settlements in the British isles 488
Swedish advance in Finland 488
Temporary greatness of Denmark, settlement of Esthland; conquest of Sclavinia; Danish advance in Germany; Holstein, &c.; long retention of Rügen 488-490
Duchy of South-Jutland or Sleswick; its relations to Denmark and Holstein; royal and ducal lines; conquest of Ditmarschen 490-491
Effect of the Danish advance on the Slavonic lands; western losses of Poland; Pomerania; Silesia 491-492
Kingdom of Bohemia; dominion of Ottocar; the Luxemburg kings 492-493
Annexation of Silesia and Lusatia; territory lost to Matthias Corvinus 493
Union with Austria; later losses 493
German corporations; the Hansa; its nature; not strictly a territorial power 494-495
The Military Orders; Sword-brothers and Teutonic knights; their connexion with the Empire; effects of their rule 495
The Sword-brothers in Livland and Esthland; extent of their dominion 495-496
The Teutonic order in Prussia; union with the Sword-brothers; acquisition of Culm, Pomerelia, Samogitia, Gotland; the New Mark 496
Losses of the order; cession of Pomerelia and part of Prussia to Poland; the remainder a Polish fief 496-497
Advance of Christianity; Lithuania the last heathen power; its great advance 497-498
Consolidation of Poland; conquests of Casimir the Great; shiftings of Red Russia 498
Union of Poland and Lithuania; recovery of the Polish duchies; Lithuanian advance; closer union 498-499
Revival of Russia; power of Moscow; name of Muscovy 499-500
Break-up of the Mongol power; the Khanats of Crim, Kazan, Siberia, Astrakhan 501
Deliverance of Russia; Crim dependent on the Turk 501
Advance of Moscow; annexation of Novgorod, &c.; Russia united and independent 501
Survey at the end of the fifteenth century 502
§ 4. The Growth of Russia and Sweden.
Growth of Russia; creation of Prussia; temporary greatness of Sweden 503
Separation of the Prussian and Livonian knights; duchy of Prussia; union of Prussia and Brandenburg; Prussia independent of Poland 503-504
Fall of the Livonian knights; partition of their dominions; duchy of Curland; shares of Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Russia 504
Greatest Baltic extent of Poland and Lithuania; union of Lublin 505
Advance of Russia; its order; the Euxine reached last 505-506
Recovery of Russian lands from Lithuania; Polish conquest of Russia; second Russian advance; Peace of Andraszovo; recovery of Kief 506
Russian superiority over the Cossacks; Podolia ceded to the Turk 506-507
Comparison of Swedish and Russian advance 507
Advance under and after Gustavus Adolphus; conquests from Russia and Poland; Ingermanland; Livland 507-508
Conquests from Denmark and Norway; Dago and Oesel; Scania, &c.; restoration of Trondhjem 508-509
Fiefs of Sweden within the Empire; Pomerania; Bremen and Verden 509
Fluctuations in the duchies; Danish possession of Oldenburg 509
Sweden after the peace of Oliva 510
Eastern advance of Russia; Kasan and Astrakhan; Siberia 511
§ 5. The Decline of Sweden and Poland.
Decline of Sweden; extinction of Poland; kingdom of Prussia; empire of Russia 511-512
Russia on the Baltic; conquest of Livland, &c.; foundation of Saint Petersburg; advance in Finland 512
German losses of Sweden: Bremen, Verden, part of Pomerania 513
Union of the Gottorp lands and Denmark 513
First partition of Poland; recovery of lost lands by Russia; geographical union of Prussia and Brandenburg; Polish and Russian lands acquired by Austria 513-514
Second partition: Russian and Prussian shares 514
Third partition: extinction of Poland and Lithuania 514-515
No strictly Polish territory acquired by Russia; the old Poland passes to Prussia, Chrobatia to Austria 515
Russian advance on the Euxine, Azof; Crim; Jedisan 515-516
Temporary Russian advance on the Caspian; superiority over Georgia 516
Survey at the end of the eighteenth century 517
§ 6. The Modern Geography of the Baltic Lands.
Effects of the fall of the Empire; incorporation of the German lands of Sweden and Denmark 518
Russian conquest of Finland 518
Union of Sweden and Norway; loss of Swedish Pomerania 518-519
Denmark enters the German Confederation for Holstein and Lauenburg; loss of these duchies and of Sleswick 519
Polish losses of Prussia; commonwealth of Danzig; Duchy of Warsaw 519-520
Polish territory recovered by Prussia; Russian kingdom of Poland; commonwealth of Cracow; its annexation by Austria 520
Fluctuation on the Moldavian border 521
Russian advance in the Caucasus and on the Caspian 521
Advance in Turkestan and Eastern Asia; extent and character of the Russian dominion 522-523
Russian America 523
Final survey of the Baltic lands 523-524
XII. THE SPANISH PENINSULA AND ITS COLONIES
Analogy between Spain and Scandinavia; slight relation of Spain with the Empire; break between its earlier and later history 525
Comparison of Spain and the Eastern Empire; the Spanish nation formed by the Saracen wars; analogy between Spain and Russia 525-526
Extent of West-Gothic and Saracen dominions; two centres of deliverance, native and Frankish 526-527
History of Aragon, Castile, and Portugal; use of the phrase ‘Spain and Portugal’ 527-528
Navarre 528
§ 1. The Foundation of the Spanish Kingdoms.
Beginning of the kingdom of Leon 529
The Ommiad emirate; the Spanish March; its divisions 529
Navarre under Sancho the Great 529-530
Break-up of the kingdom of Navarre, and of the Ommiad caliphate; small Mussulman powers 530
Invasion of the Almoravides; use of the name Moors 530
New kingdoms: Castile, Aragon, and Sobrarbe; union of Aragon and Sobrarbe 530
Shiftings of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia; final union; Castilian Empire 531
Decline of Navarre; growth of Aragon; union of Aragon and Barcelona; end of French superiority 531
County and kingdom of Portugal 532
Advance of Castile; taking of Toledo; checked by the Almoravides 532
Advance of Aragon; taking of Zaragoza 532
Advance of Portugal; taking of Lisbon 533
Second advance of Castile; invasion of the Almohades; their decline 533
Advance of Aragon and Portugal 533
Final advance of Castile; kingdom of Granada; Gibraltar 534
Geographical position of the Spanish kingdoms 534-535
Title of ‘King of Spain;’ the lesser kingdoms 535-536
§ 2. Growth and Partition of the Great Spanish Monarchy.
Little geographical change in the peninsula; territories beyond the peninsula; the great Spanish Monarchy 536
Conquest of Granada; end of Mussulman rule 536-537
Union of Castile and Aragon; loss, recovery, and final loss of Roussillon; annexation and separation of Portugal 537-538
Gibraltar and Minorca 537
Advance of Aragon beyond the peninsula; union with the Sicilies and Sardinia 538
Extension of Castile dominion; the Burgundian inheritance; duchy of Milan 539
Extent of the Spanish Monarchy; loss of the United Netherlands; lands lost to France 539
Partition of the Spanish Monarchy; later relations with the Sicilies; duchy of Parma 539-540
§ 3. The Colonial Dominion of Spain and Portugal.
Character of the outlying dominion of Portugal 540
African conquests of Portugal; kingdom of Algarve beyond the Sea; Ceuta, Tangier 541
Advance in Africa and the islands; Cape of Good Hope; dominion in India and Arabia 541-542
Settlement and history of Brazil; the one American monarchy 542
Division of the Indies between Spain and Portugal; African and insular dominion of Spain 542-543
American dominions of Spain; revolutions of the Spanish colonies; two Empires of Mexico 543-544
The Spanish West Indies 544
XIII. THE BRITISH ISLANDS AND COLONIES
Isolation and independence of Britain; late Roman conquest and early loss; Britain another world and Empire 545
Shiftings of the Celtic and Teutonic kingdoms; little geographical change in later times 546
English settlements beyond sea; new English nations 547
§ 1. The Kingdom of Scotland.
Greatness of Scotland due to its English elements; two English kingdoms in Britain 548
Use of the Scottish name 549
Analogy with Switzerland 549
The three elements in the later Scotland; English, British, Irish; Lothian, Strathclyde, Scotland 549
The Picts; their union with the Scots; Scottish Strathclyde; Galloway 550
Scandinavian settlements; Caithness and Sutherland 550
English supremacy; taking of Edinburgh; grants of Cumberland and Lothian 550-551
Difference of tenure gradually forgotten 551
Effects of the grant of Lothian; shiftings of Cumberland, Carlisle, and Northumberland 551-552
Boundary of England and Scotland; relations between the kingdoms 552
Struggle with the Northmen; recovery of Caithness, Galloway, and the Sudereys 553
History of Man; of Orkney 553
§ 2. The Kingdom of England.
Changes of boundary toward Wales; conquests of Harold 553
Norman conquest of North Wales 554
Princes of North Wales; English conquest 554
The principality of Wales; full incorporation with England 554-555
The English shires; two classes of shires; ancient principalities; shires mapped out in the tenth century 555
The new shires; Cumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire, Rutland 555-556
§ 3. Ireland.
Ireland the first Scotland; its provinces 556
Settlements of the Ostmen; increasing connexion with England; the English conquest; fluctuations of the Pale 556-557
Lordship and kingdom of Ireland; its relations to England and Great Britain 557
§ 4. Outlying European Possessions of England.
The Norman Islands; Aquitaine, Calais, &c. 558
Outposts and islands 558
Greek possessions; the Ionian Islands; Cyprus 558-559
§ 5. The American Colonies of England.
The United States of America 559
First English settlements; Virginia; the New England States; Maryland; Carolina 559-561
Settlements of the United Provinces and Sweden; New Netherlands; New Sweden; New York 561
The Jerseys; Pennsylvania; Delaware; Georgia 561-562
The thirteen Colonies; their independence 562
Nova Scotia; Canada; Louisiana; Florida 562-563
A new English nation formed; lack of a name; use of the name America 563-564
Second English nation in North America; the Canadian confederation 564
The West India Islands, &c. 565
§ 6. Other Colonies and Possessions of England.
The Australian colonies 565-566
The South-African colonies 566
Europe extended by colonization; contrast with barbaric dominion; Empire of India 567
Summary 568-569
INDEX 571
* * * * *
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.
[Transcriber’s note: These additions and corrections have not been made in this electronic version of the text. Page numbers and line numbers reflect the pagination of the original text and may not reflect the structure of this version.]
P. 19, l. 10. Latterly the name Balkan Peninsula has come into more general use.
P. 38, side-note. For ‘Cities of independent state’ read ‘Growth of independent states.’
P. 41, l. 10 from bottom. This is true in a rough practical way. But when I wrote this, I hardly took in the fact that not a few Greek cities, though practically subject to the Empire, were not finally incorporated with it till ages later, perhaps never formally incorporated at all.
P. 55, l. 7. For ‘south-east’ read ‘south-west.’
P. 55, l. 8. For ‘north-west’ read ‘north-east.’
P. 71. When I wrote this, I had not taken in the true history of the Rouman people. See below, p. 435.
P. 88, l. 14. Since this was written, I wrote the article ‘Goths,’ in the Encyclopædia Britannica, where I have gone rather more fully into their history from later and minuter study.
P. 90, l. 4 from the bottom. I believe the existence of a Gothia by that name in Spain is a little doubtful. As to the Gothia in Gaul, otherwise Septimania, and the other Gothia in the Tauric Chersonêsos, there is no doubt.
P. 105, l. 14 from bottom. I believe however that the coins of some of the Provençal cities point to a retention of allegiance to the Empire much later. Still there is no doubt as to the formal cession.
P. 115, l. 5 from bottom. I now see no reason to believe in any Albanian migrations into Greece till long afterwards. But I still have no doubt that the Albanians strictly represent the old Illyrians.
P. 119. Dele side-note, ‘The cession of Gaulish possessions.’
P. 126, l. 6. For ‘the great Mahometan powers’ read ‘the two great Mahometan powers.’
P. 138, l. 9. Dele ‘much as.’
P. 154. The growth of the Christian states in Spain will be found more fully and accurately given in the specially Spanish chapter, Chapter XII.
P. 156, l. 4. It will be at once seen that this was written before the events of 1877-8. The later changes in these lands will be found described in Chapter X.
P. 167, l. 10. For ‘division’ read ‘divisions.’
P. 172, side-note. For ‘province’ read ‘provinces.’
P. 180, side-note. For ‘schemes’ read ‘scheme.’
P. 189, l. 12. For ‘were’ read ‘some were.’
P. 216, side-note. For ‘ecclesiastical towns’ read ‘ecclesiastical powers.’
P. 221, side-note. For ‘kingdom’ read ‘kingdoms.’
P. 258, l. 14. I was here speaking purely geographically, before much, if anything, had been heard of the cry of Italia irredenta. How far I go with that cry, how far not, I have explained in Historical Essays, Third Series, p. 206.
P. 261, l. 1. For ‘Montbeilliard,’ read ‘Montbeliard.’
P. 263, side-note. For ‘Burgundian possession of its county’ read ‘Burgundian possessions of its counts.’
P. 267, l. 1. For ‘maps’ read ‘map.’
P. 288, l. 11 from bottom. For ‘High and Low Savoy’ read ‘Savoy and High Savoy.’
P. 300, side-note. For ‘1662’ read ‘1663.’
P. 306, l. 8. At present it would seem that this mysterious name takes in all those kingdoms, counties, lordships, &c., which are held by the Archduke of Austria, and which do not form part of the kingdom of Hungary and its partes annexæ. For these I have elsewhere, according to an old analogy, suggested the more intelligible name of Nungary.
P. 319, l. 3. That is Philip ‘the Handsome,’ son of Maximilian and father of Charles the Fifth.
P. 334, l. 9. Aquitaine, the inheritance of Eleanor, did not come under the forfeiture of the fiefs actually held by John.
P. 340, l. 4 from bottom. Roussillon is another case of a land freed from homage and afterwards annexed as a foreign conquest.
P. 369, l. 17. For ‘farther’ read ‘further.’
P. 389, side-note. For ‘conquest’ read ‘conquests of.’
P. 408, side-note. For ‘final’ read ‘first.’
P. 413, side-note. For ‘possession of Venetian cities’ read ‘possessions of Venetian families.’
P. 429, l. 15. Since this was printed, Dulcigno has been restored to Montenegro, in exchange for some inland Albanian territory given back to the Turk. The formation of the Albanian League is not unlikely to affect the geography of Herzegovina; but no change has yet (January 1881) taken place which can be shown on the map.
P. 441, l. 8. How unpleasant this truth is felt to be in certain quarters, is shown by a small incident of last year. I sent a set of manuscript maps of Dalmatia to Mr. Arthur Evans for his suggestions. Those maps vanished in the Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic post-office, and never reached his address at Ragusa. If therefore the revolutions of Dalmatian geography are less accurately marked in this book than they should be, the fault is not mine. In Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic quarters it is doubtless inconvenient to allow any memory of days when free Ragusa had not bowed to any self-styled Emperor, either from Corsica or from Lorraine, or of still later days when free Tzernagora reached to her own sea at Cattaro. Those who have made it their business to filch the substance may naturally enough think it their business to filch the picture also.
P. 450, l. 5 from bottom. It is quite accurate to say that the Turk has never ruled at Tzetinje. It is perfectly true that the Turk has more than once harried Montenegro and Tzetinje itself; the Turk has professed to consider the land as included in a pashalik; but Montenegro has never been a regularly and avowedly tributary state, as Servia and Roumania were, as free Bulgaria is still.
P. 452, l. 7 from bottom. The promises of Europe on this head still remain unfulfilled (January 1881). It is hardly needful to notice the diplomatic quibble that the European order for the liberation of these lands was not contained in the document strictly called the Treaty of Berlin, but in another paper signed at the same time and place. The order has been renewed during the present year at the Second Berlin Conference.
P. 492, side-note. For ‘and’ read ‘under.’
P. 529, l. 9 from bottom. For ‘western’ read ‘eastern.’
P. 554, side-note. For ‘Northerners,’ read ‘Northmen.’
HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
I. INTRODUCTION
♦Definition of Historical Geography.♦
The work which we have now before us is to trace out the extent of territory which the different states and nations of Europe and the neighbouring lands have held at different times in the world’s history, to mark the different boundaries which the same country has had, and the different meanings in which the same name has been used. It is of great importance carefully to make these distinctions, because great mistakes as to the facts of history are often caused through men thinking and speaking as if the names of different countries, say for instance England, France, Burgundy, Austria, have always meant exactly the same extent of territory. Historical geography, in this sense, differs from physical geography which regards the natural features of the earth’s surface. It differs also from studies like ethnology and comparative philology, which have to do directly with the differences between one nation and another, with their movements from one part of the world to another, and with the relations to be found among the languages spoken by them. But, though it is distinct from these studies, it makes much use of them. For the physical geography of a country always has a great effect upon its political history, and the dispersions and movements of different nations are exactly those parts of history which have most to do with fixing the names and the boundaries of different countries at different times. England, for instance, is, in strictness, the land of the English wherever they may settle, whether in their old home on the European continent, or in the isle of Britain, or in New England beyond the Ocean. But the extent of territory which was in this way to become England was largely determined by the physical circumstances of the countries in which the English settled. And the history of the English nation has been influenced, above all things, by the fact that the great English settlement which has made the English name famous was made in an island. But, when England had become the name of a distinct political dominion, its meaning was liable to change as that dominion advanced or went back. Thus the borders of England and Scotland have greatly changed at different times, and forgetfulness of this has led to many misunderstandings in reading the history of the two countries. And so with all other cases of the kind; the physical nature of the country, and the settlements of the different nations which have occupied it, have always been the determining causes of its political divisions. But it is with the political divisions that historical geography has to deal in the first place. With the nature of the land, and with the people who occupy it, it has to deal only so far as they have influenced the political divisions. Our present business in short is, first to draw the map of the countries with which we are concerned as it appeared after each of the different changes which they have gone through, and then to point out the historical causes which have led to the changes on the map. In this way we shall always see what was the meaning of any geographical name at any particular time, and we shall thus avoid mistakes, some of which have often led to really important practical consequences.
♦Distinction of Geographical and Political Names.♦
From this it follows that, in looking at the geography of Europe for our present purpose, we must look first at the land itself, and then at the nations which occupy it. And, in so doing, it may be well first of all to distinguish between two kinds of names which we shall have to use. Some names of countries are strictly geographical; they really mean a certain part of the earth’s surface marked out by boundaries which cannot well be changed. Others simply mean the extent of country which is occupied at any time by a particular nation, and whose boundaries may easily be changed. Thus Britain is a strictly geographical name, meaning an island whose shape and boundaries must always be nearly the same. England, Scotland, Wales, are names of parts of that island, called after different nations which have settled in it, and the boundaries of all of which have differed greatly at different times. Spain again is the geographical name of a peninsula which is almost as well marked out by nature as the island of Britain. Castile, Aragon, Portugal, are political names of parts of the peninsula of Spain. They are the names of states whose boundaries have greatly varied, and which have sometimes formed separate governments and sometimes have been joined together.[1] Gaul again is the geographical name of a country which is not so clearly marked out all round by nature as the island of Britain and the peninsula of Spain, but which is well marked on three sides, to the north, south, and west. Within the limits of Gaul, names like France, Flanders, Britanny, Burgundy, and Aquitaine, are political names of parts of the country, whose limits have varied as much at different times as those of the different parts of Britain and Spain. This is the difference between strictly geographical names which do not alter and political names which do alter. No doubt Gaul and Britain were in the beginning political names, names given to the land from those who occupied it, just as much as the names France and England. But the settlements from which those lands took the names of Gaul and Britain took place long before the beginning of trustworthy history, while the settlements from which parts of those lands took the names of France and England happened in times long after trustworthy history began, and for which we are therefore ready with dates and names. Thus Gaul and Britain are the oldest received names of those lands; they are the names which those lands bore when we first hear of them. It is therefore convenient to keep them in use as strictly geographical names, as always meaning that part of the earth’s surface which they meant when we first hear of them. In this book therefore, Gaul, Britain, Spain, and other names of the same kind, will always be used to mean a certain space on the map, whoever may be its inhabitants, or whatever may be its government, at any particular time. But names like France, England, Castile, will be used to mean the territory to which they were politically applied at the time of which we may be speaking, a territory which has been greater and less at different times. Thus, the cities of Carlisle and Edinburgh have always been in Britain since they were built. They have sometimes been in England and sometimes not. The cities of Marseilles, Geneva, Strassburg, and Arras have always been in Gaul ever since they were built. They have sometimes been in France and sometimes not, according to political changes.
§ 1. Geographical Aspect of Europe.
Our present business is with the Historical Geography of Europe, and with that of other parts of the world only so far as they concern the geography of Europe. But we shall have to speak of all the three divisions of the Old World, Europe, Asia, and Africa, in those parts of the three which come nearest to one another, and in which the real history of the world begins. ♦The Mediterranean Lands.♦ These are those parts of all three which lie round the Mediterranean sea, the lands which gradually came to form the Empire of Rome. In these lands the boundaries between the three great divisions are very easily marked. Modern maps do not all place the boundary between Europe and Asia at the same point; some make the river Don the boundary and some the Volga. But this question is of little importance for history. In the earliest historical times, when we have to do only with the countries round the Mediterranean sea, there can be no doubt how much is Europe and how much is Asia and Africa. Europe is the land to the north of the Mediterranean sea and of the great gulfs which run out of it. If an exact boundary is needed in the barbarous lands north of the Euxine, the Tanais or Don is clearly the boundary which should be taken. In all these lands the Mediterranean and its gulfs divide Europe from Asia. But the northern parts of the two continents really form one geographical whole, the boundary between them being one merely of convenience. A vast central mass of land, stretching right across the inland parts of the two continents, sends forth a system of peninsulas and islands, to the north and south. And it is in the peninsular lands of Europe that European history begins.
Alike in Europe and in Asia, the southern or peninsular part of the continent is cut off from the central mass by a mountain chain, which in Europe is nearly unbroken. ♦The peninsulas of Europe and Asia.♦ Thus the southern part of Europe consists of the three great peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and what we may, in a wide sense, call Greece. These answer in some sort to the three great Oceanic peninsulas of Asia, those of Arabia, India, and India beyond the Ganges. But the part of Asia which has historically had most to do with Europe is its Mediterranean peninsula, the land known as Asia Minor. In the northern part of each continent we find another system of great gulfs or inland seas; but those in Asia have been hindered by the cold from ever being of any importance, while in Europe the Baltic sea and the gulfs which run out of it may be looked on as forming a kind of secondary Mediterranean. We may thus say that Europe consists of two insular and peninsular regions, north and south, with a great unbroken mass of land between them. But there are some parts of Europe which seem as it were connecting links between the three main divisions of the continent. Thus we said that the three great peninsulas are cut off from the central mass by a nearly unbroken mountain chain. But the connexion of the central peninsula, that of Italy, with the eastern one or Greece, is far closer than its connexion with the western one, or Spain. Italy and Spain are much further apart than Italy and Greece, and between the Alps and the Pyrenees the mountain chain is nearly lost. We might almost say that a piece of central Europe breaks through at this point and comes down to the Mediterranean. This is the south-eastern part of Gaul; and Gaul may in this way be looked on as a land which joins together the central and the southern parts of Europe. But this is not all; in the north-western corner of Europe lies that great group of islands, two large ones and many small, of which our own Britain is the greatest. The British islands are closely connected in their geography and history with Gaul on one side, and with the islands and peninsulas of the North on the other. In this way we may say that all the three divisions of Europe are brought closely together on the western side of the continent, and that the lands of Gaul and Britain are the connecting links which bind them together.
§ 2. Effect of Geography on History.
♦Beginning of history in the European peninsulas.♦
Now this geographical aspect of the chief lands of Europe has had its direct effect on their history. We might almost take for granted that the history of Europe should begin in the two more eastern among the three great southern peninsulas. Of these two, Italy and Greece, each has its own character. Greece, though it is the part of Europe which lies nearest to Asia, is in a certain sense the most European of European lands. The characteristic of Europe is to be more full of peninsulas and islands and inland seas than the rest of the Old World. ♦Characteristics of Greece;♦ And Greece, the peninsula itself and the neighbouring lands, are fuller of islands and promontories and inland seas than any other part of Europe. On the other hand, Italy is the central land of all southern Europe, and indeed of all the land round the Mediterranean. It was therefore only natural that Greece should be the part of Europe in which all that is most distinctively European first grew up and influenced other lands. ♦of Italy.♦ And so, if any one land or city among the Mediterranean lands was to rule over all the rest, it is in Italy, as the central land, that we should naturally look for the place of dominion. The destinies of the two peninsulas and their relations to the rest of the world were thus impressed on them by their geographical position.
If we turn to recorded history, we find that it is only a working out of the consequences of these physical facts. Greece was the first part of Europe to become civilized and to play a part in history; but it was Italy, and in Italy it was its most central city, Rome, which came to have the dominion over the civilized world of early times—that is, over the lands around the Mediterranean. These two peninsulas have, each in its own way, ruled and influenced the rest of Europe as no other parts have done. All the other parts have been, in one way or another, their subjects or disciples. ♦Advance of the Roman dominion.♦ The effect of the geographical position of these countries is also marked in the stages by which Rome advanced to the general dominion of the Mediterranean lands. She first subdued Italy; then she had to strive for the mastery with her great rival Carthage, a city which held nearly the same central position on the southern coast of the Mediterranean which she herself did on the northern. Then she subdued, step by step, the peninsulas on each side of her and the other coast lands of the Mediterranean—European, Asiatic, and African. Into the central division of Europe she did not press far, never having any firm or lasting dominion beyond the Rhine and the Danube. Into Northern Europe, properly so called, her power never reached at all. But she subdued the lands which we have seen act as a kind of connecting link between the different parts of Europe, namely Gaul and the greater part of Britain. Thus the Roman Empire, at its greatest extent, consisted of the lands round the Mediterranean, together with Gaul and Britain. For the possession of the Mediterranean land would have been imperfect without the possession of Gaul, and the possession of Gaul naturally led to the possession of Britain.
♦Effect of the geographical position of♦
In this way the early history of Greece and Italy, and the formation of the Roman Empire, were affected by the geographical character of the countries themselves. The same was the case with the other European lands when they came to share in that importance which once belonged to Greece and Italy only. ♦Germany,♦ Thus Germany, as being the most central part of Europe, came at one time to fill something like the same position which Italy had once held. It came to be the country which had to do with all parts of Europe, east, west, north, and south, and even to be a ruler over some of them. ♦France,♦ So, as France became the chief state of Gaul, it took upon it something like the old position of Gaul as a means of communication between the different parts of Western Europe. ♦Spain and Scandinavia.♦ Meanwhile, as the Scandinavian and Spanish peninsulas are both cut off in such a marked way from the mainland of Europe, each of them has often formed a kind of world of its own, having much less to do with other countries than Germany, France, and Italy had. The same was for a long time the case with our own island. Britain was looked on as lying outside the world.
Thus the geographical position of the European lands influenced their history while their history was still purely European. And when Europe began to send forth colonies to other continents, the working of geographical causes came out no less strongly. Thus the position of Spain on the Ocean led Castile and Portugal to be foremost among the colonizing nations of Europe. For the same reason, our own country was one of the chief in following their example, and so was France also for a long time. ♦The colonizing powers.♦ Holland too, when it rose into importance, became a great colonizing power, and so did Denmark and Sweden to some extent. But an Italian colony beyond the Ocean was never heard of, nor has there ever been a German colony in the same sense in which there have been Spanish and English colonies. Meanwhile, the north-eastern part of Europe, which in early times was not known at all, has always lagged behind the rest, and has become of importance only in later times. This is mainly because its geographical position has almost wholly cut it off both from the Mediterranean and from the Ocean.
Thus we see how, in all these ways, both in earlier and in later times, the history of every country has been influenced by its geography. ♦Influence of national character.♦ No doubt the history of each country has also been largely influenced by the disposition of the people who have settled in it, by what is called the national character. But then the geographical position itself has often had something to do with forming the national character, and in all cases it has had an influence upon it, by giving it a better or a worse field for working and showing itself. Thus it has been well said that neither the Greeks in any other country nor any other people in Greece could have been what the Greeks in Greece really were. The nature of the country and the nature of the people helped one another, and caused Greece to become all that it was in the early times of Europe. It is always useful to mark the points both of likeness and unlikeness of the different nations whose history we study. And of this likeness and unlikeness we shall always find that the geographical character, though only one cause out of several, is always one of the chief causes.
§ 3. Geographical Distribution of Races.
Our present business then is with geography as influenced by history, and with history as influenced by geography. With ethnology, with the relations of nations and races to one another, we have to deal only so far as they form one of the agents in history. And it will be well to avoid, as far as may be, all obscure or controverted points of this kind. But the great results of comparative philology may now be taken for granted, and a general view of the geographical disposition of the great European races is needful as an introduction to the changes which historical causes have wrought in the geography of the several parts of Europe.
In European ethnology one main feature is that the population of Europe is, and from the very beginnings of history has been, more nearly homogeneous, at least more palpably homogeneous, than that of any other great division of the world. ♦Europe an Aryan continent.♦ Whether we look at Europe now, or whether we look at it at the earliest times of which we have any glimmerings, it is pre-eminently an Aryan continent. Everything non-Aryan is at once marked as exceptional. We cannot say this of Asia, where, among several great ethnical elements, none is so clearly predominant as the Aryan element is in Europe. ♦Non-Aryan remnants.♦ There are in Europe non-Aryan elements, both earlier and later than the Aryan settlement; but they have, as a rule, been assimilated to the prevailing Aryan mass. The earlier non-Aryan element consists of the remnants which still remain of the races which the Aryan settlers found in Europe, and which they either exterminated or assimilated to themselves. The later elements consist of non-Aryan races which have made their way into Europe within historical times, in whose case the work of assimilation has been much less complete. It follows almost naturally from the position of Europe that the primæval non-Aryan element has survived in the west and in the north, while the later or intrusive non-Aryan element has made its way into the east and the south. In the mountains of the western peninsula, in the border lands of Spain and Gaul, the non-Aryan tongue of the Basque still survives. In the extreme north of Europe the non-Aryan tongue of the Fins and Laps still survives. The possible relations of these tongues either to one another or to other non-Aryan tongues beyond the bounds of Europe is a question of purely philological concern, and does not touch historical geography. But historical geography is touched by the probability, rising almost to moral certainty, that the isolated populations by whom these primitive tongues are still spoken are mere remnants of the primitive races which formed the population of Europe at the time when the Aryans first made their way into that continent. Everything tends to show that the Basques are but the remnant of a great people whom we may set down with certainty as the præ-Aryan inhabitants of Spain and a large part of Gaul, and whose range we may, with great probability, extend over Sicily, over part at least of Italy, and perhaps as far north as our own island. Their possible connexion with the early inhabitants of northern Africa hardly concerns us. The probability that they were themselves preceded by an earlier and far lower race concerns us not at all. The earliest historical inhabitants of south-western Europe are those of whom the Basques are the surviving remnant, those who, under the names of Iberians and Ligurians, fill a not unimportant place in European history.
♦Order of the Aryan settlement.♦
When we come to the Aryan settlements, we cannot positively determine which among the Aryan races of Europe were the earliest settlers in point of time. ♦Greeks and Italians.♦ The great race which, in its many sub-divisions, contains the Greeks, the Italians, and the nations more immediately akin to them, are the first among the European Aryans to show themselves in the light of history; but it does not necessarily follow that they were actually the first in point of settlement. ♦Celts.♦ It may be that, while they were pressing through the Mediterranean peninsulas and islands, the Celts were pressing their way through the solid central land of Europe. The Celts were clearly the vanguard of the Aryan migration within their own range, the first swarm which made its way to the shores of the Ocean. Partially in Spain, more completely in Gaul and the British Islands, they displaced or assimilated the earlier inhabitants, who, under their pressure and that of later conquerors, have been gradually shut up in the small mountainous region which they still keep. Of the Celtic migration we have no historical accounts, but all probability would lead us to think that the Celts whom in historic times we find on the Danube and south of the Alps were not emigrants who had followed a backward course from the great settlement in Transalpine Gaul, but rather detachments which had been left behind on the westward journey. Without attempting to settle questions as to the traces of Celtic occupancy to be found in other lands, it is enough for our purpose that, at the beginnings of their history, we find the Celts the chief inhabitants of a region stretching from the Rubico to the furthest known points of Britain. Gaul, Cisalpine and Transalpine, is their great central land, though even here they are not exclusive possessors; they share the land with a non-Aryan remnant to the south-west, and with the next wave of Aryan new-comers to the north-east.
The settlements of these two great Aryan races come before authentic history. After them came the Teutonic races, who pressed on the Celts from the east; and in their wake, to judge from their place on the map, must have come the vast family of the Slavonic nations. ♦Teutons and Slaves.♦ But the migrations of the Teutons and Slaves come, for the most part, within the range of recorded history. Our first glimpse of the Teutons shows them in their central German land, already occupying both sides of the Rhine, though seemingly not very old settlers on its left bank. The long wanderings of the various Teutonic and Slavonic tribes over all parts of central Europe, their settlements in the southern and western lands, are all matters of history. So is the great Teutonic settlement in the British islands, which partly exterminated, partly assimilated, their Celtic inhabitants, so as to leave them as mere a remnant, though a greater remnant, as they themselves had made the Basques. And, as the process which made the north-western islands of Europe Teutonic is a matter of history, so also are the later stages of the process which made the northern peninsulas Teutonic. But it is only the later stages which are historical; we know that in the strictly Scandinavian peninsula the Teutonic invaders displaced non-Aryan Fins; we have only to guess that in the Cimbric Chersonêsos they displaced Aryan Celts. ♦Lithuanians.♦ But beyond the Teutons and Slaves lies yet another Aryan settlement, one which, in a purely philological view, is the most interesting of all, the small and fast vanishing group which still survives in Lithuania and the neighbouring lands. Of these there is historically really nothing to be said. On the eastern shores of the Baltic we find people whose tongue comes nearer than any other European tongue to the common Aryan model; but we can only guess alike at the date when they came thither and at the road by which they came.
These races then, Aryan and non-Aryan, make up the immemorial population of Europe. The remnants of the older non-Aryan races, and the successive waves of Aryan settlement, are all immemorial facts which we must accept as the groundwork of our history and our geography. ♦Movements among the Aryan races.♦ They must be distinguished from other movements which are strictly matters of written history, both movements among the Aryan nations themselves and later intrusions of non-Aryan nations. Thus the Greek colonies and the conquests of the Hellenized Macedonians Hellenized large districts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, partly by displacement, partly by assimilation. The conquests of Rome, and the Teutonic settlements within the Roman Empire, brought about but little in the way of displacement, but a great deal in the way of assimilation. The process indeed was opposite in the two cases. The Roman conqueror assimilated the conquered to himself; the Teutonic conqueror was himself assimilated by those whom he conquered. Britain and the Rhenish and Danubian lands stand out as marked exceptions. The Slavonic settlements in the East wrought far more of displacement than the Teutonic settlements in the West. Vast regions, once Illyrian or Thracian—that is, most likely, more or less nearly akin to the Greeks—are now wholly Slavonic. ♦Later intrusion of Non-Aryan races.♦ Lastly come the incursions on European lands made by non-Aryan settlers in historic times. Their results have been widely different in different cases. ♦Semitic.♦ The Semitic Saracens settled in Spain and Sicily, bringing with them and after them their African converts, men possibly of originally kindred race with the first inhabitants both of the peninsula and of the island. These non-Aryan settlers have vanished. The displacement of large bodies of them is a fact of comparatively recent history, but it can hardly fail that some degree of assimilation must also have taken place. Then come the settlements, chiefly in eastern Europe, of those whom for our purpose it is enough to group together as the Turanian nations. The Huns of Attila have left only a name. The more lasting settlement of the Avars has vanished, how far by displacement, how far by assimilation, it might be hard to say. Chozars, Patzinaks, a crowd of other barbarian races, have left no sign of their presence. ♦Turanian.♦ The Bulgarians, originally Turanian conquerors, have been assimilated by their Slavonic subjects. The Finnish Magyars have received a political and religious assimilation; their kingdom became a member of the commonwealth of Christian Europe, though they still keep their old Turanian language. The latest intruders of all, the Ottoman Turks, still remain as they were when they first came, aliens on Aryan and Christian ground. But here again is a case of assimilation the other way; the Ottoman Turks are an artificial nation which has been kept up by the constant incorporation of European renegades who have thrown aside the speech, the creed, and the civilization of Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In modern use we speak of Spain as only one part, though much the larger part, of the peninsula, and of Portugal as another part. But this simply comes from the accident that, for some centuries past, all the other Spanish kingdoms have been joined under one government, while Portugal has remained separate. In speaking of any time till near the end of the fifteenth century of our æra, the word Spain must always be used in the geographical sense, as the name of the whole peninsula.
II. GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES
§ 1. The Eastern or Greek Peninsula.
♦Characteristics of the Eastern peninsula.♦
The Historical Geography of Europe, if looked at in chronological order, must begin with the most eastern of the three peninsulas of Southern Europe. Here the history of Europe, and the truest history of the world, began. It was in the insular and peninsular lands between the Ionian and Ægæan seas that the first steps towards European civilization were taken; it is there that we see the first beginnings of art, science, and political life. But Greece or Hellas, in the strict sense of the name, forms only a part of the lands which must be looked on as the great Eastern peninsula. It is however its leading and characteristic portion. As the whole peninsular land gradually tapers southwards from the great mass of central Europe, it becomes at each stage more and more peninsular, and it also becomes at each stage more and more Greek. Greece indeed and the neighbouring lands form, as was long ago remarked by Strabo,[2] a series of peninsulas within peninsulas. It is not easy to find a name for the whole region, as it stretches far beyond any limits which can be given to Greece in any age of the world or according to any use of the name. But the whole land seems to have been occupied by nations more or less akin to the Greeks. The history of those nations chiefly consists of their relations to the Greeks, and all of them were brought more or less within the range of Greek influences. We may therefore not improperly call the whole land, as opposed to Italy and Spain, the Greek peninsula. It has also been called the Byzantine peninsula, as nearly answering to the European part of the Eastern division of the Roman Empire, when its seat of government was at Byzantion, Constantinople, or New Rome.
♦Its chief divisions.♦
Taking the great range of mountains which divides southern from central Europe as the northern boundary of the eastern or Greek peninsula, it may be said to take in the lands which are cut off from the central mass by the Dalmatian Alps and the range of Haimos or Balkan. It is washed to the east, west, or south, by various parts of the Mediterranean and its great gulf the Euxine. But the northern part of this region, all that lies north of the Ægæan Sea, taking in therefore the whole of the Euxine coast, still keeps much of the character of the great central mass of Europe, and forms a land intermediate between that and the more strictly peninsular lands to the south. Still the boundary is a real one, for all the lands south of this range have come more or less within Greek influences, and have played their part in Grecian history. But when we get beyond the mountains, into the valley of the Danube, we find ourselves in lands which, excepting a few colonies on the coast, have hardly at all come under Greek influences till quite modern times. This region between Haimos and the more strictly Greek lands takes in Thrace, Paionia, and Illyria. Of these, Thrace and Illyria, having a sea coast, received many Greek colonies, especially on the northern coast of the Ægæan and on the Propontis or Sea of Marmora. The Thracian part of this region, as bordering on these more distinctly Grecian seas, became more truly a part of the Grecian world than the other lands to the west of it. ♦Thrace and Illyria.♦ Yet geographically Thrace is more widely cut off from Greece than Illyria is. For there is no such great break on the western shore of the great peninsula as that which, on the eastern side, marks the point where we must draw the line between Greece and its immediate neighbours and the lands to the north of them. This is at the point where a peninsula within a peninsula breaks off to the south, comprising Greece, Macedonia, and Epeiros. There is here no very special break on the Illyrian coast, but the Ægæan coast of Thrace is fenced in as it were at its two ends, to the east by the long narrow peninsula known specially as the Chersonêsos, and to the west by the group of peninsulas called Chalkidikê. These have nothing answering to them on the Illyrian side beyond the mere bend in the coast above Epidamnos. This last point however marks the extent of the earlier Greek colonization in those regions, and which has become a still more important boundary in later times.
Beyond Chalkidikê to the west, the specially Greek peninsula projects to the south, being itself again composed of peninsulas within peninsulas. ♦Greece proper and its peninsulas.♦ The Ambrakian Gulf on the west and the Pagasaian on the east again fence off a peninsula to the south, by which the more purely Greek lands are fenced off from Macedonia, Epeiros, and Thessaly. Within this peninsula again another may be marked off by a line drawn from Thermopylai to the Corinthian gulf near Delphoi. This again shuts out to the east Akarnania, Aitolia, and some other of the more backward divisions of the Greek name. ♦Peloponnêsos.♦ Thus Phôkis, Boiôtia, and Attica form a great promontory, from which Attica projects as a further promontory to the south-east, while the great peninsula of Peloponnêsos—itself made up on its eastern and southern sides of smaller peninsulas—is joined on by the narrow isthmus of Corinth. In this way, from Haimos to Tainaros, the land is ever becoming more and more broken up by greater or smaller inlets of the sea. And in proportion as the land becomes more strictly peninsular, it also becomes more strictly Greek, till in Peloponnêsos we reach the natural citadel of the Greek nation.
§ 2. Insular and Asiatic Greece.
♦Continuous Hellas.♦
Greece Proper then, what the ancient geographers called Continuous Hellas as distinguished from the Greek colonies planted on barbarian shores, is, so far as it is part of the mainland, made up of a system of peninsulas stretching south from the general mass of eastern Europe. But the neighbouring islands equally form a part of continuous Greece; and the other coasts of the Ægæan, Asiatic as well as Thracian, were so thickly strewed with Greek colonies as to form, if not part of continuous Greece, yet part of the immediate Greek world. The western coast, as it is less peninsular, is also less insular, and the islands on the western side of Greece did not reach the same importance as those on the eastern side. Still they too, the Ionian islands of modern geography, form in every sense a part of Greece. ♦The Islands.♦ To the north of Korkyra or Corfu there are only detached Greek colonies, whether on the mainland or in the islands; but all the islands of the Ægæan are, during historical times, as much part of Greece as the mainland; and one island on each side, Leukas on the west and the greater island of Euboia on the east, might almost be counted as parts of the mainland, as peninsulas rather than islands. To the south the long narrow island of Crete forms a sort of barrier between Greek and barbarian seas. It is the most southern of the purely Greek lands. Sicily to the east and Cyprus to the west received many Greek colonies, but they never became purely Greek in the same way as Crete and the islands to the north of it.
♦Asiatic Greece.♦
But, besides the European peninsulas and the islands, part of Asia must be looked on as forming part of the immediate Greek world, though not strictly of continuous Greece. The peninsula known as Asia Minor cannot be separated from Europe either in its geography or in its history. With its central mass we have little or nothing to do; but its coasts form a part of the Greek world, and its Ægæan coast was only less thoroughly Greek than Greece itself and the Greek islands. It would seem that the whole western coast of Asia Minor was inhabited by nations which, like the European neighbours of Greece, were more or less nearly akin to the Greeks. And the Ægæan coast of Asia is almost as full of inlets of the sea, of peninsulas and promontories and islands near to the shore, as European Greece itself. All these shores therefore received Greek colonies. The islands and the most tempting spots on the mainland were occupied by Greek settlers, and became the sites of Greek cities. But Greek influence never spread very far inland, and even the coast itself did not become so purely Greek as the islands. When we pass from the Ægæan coast of Asia to the other two sides of the peninsula, to its northern coast washed by the Euxine and its southern coast washed by the Mediterranean, we have passed out of the immediate Greek world. Greek colonies are found on favourable spots here and there; but the land, even the coast as a whole, is barbarian.
§ 3. Ethnology of the Eastern Peninsula.
♦The Greeks and the kindred races.♦
The immediate Greek world then as opposed to the outlying Greek colonies, consists of the shores of the Ægæan sea and of the peninsulas lying between it and the Ionian sea. Of this region a great part was exclusively inhabited by the Greek nation, while Greek influences were more or less dominant throughout the whole. But it would further seem that the whole, or nearly the whole, of these lands were inhabited by races more or less akin to the Greeks. They seem to have been races which had a good deal in common with the Greeks, and of whom the Greeks were simply the foremost and most fortunate, their higher developement being doubtless greatly favoured by the geographical nature of the country which they occupied. But a distinction must be drawn between the nearer and the more remote neighbours of Greece. It is hardly necessary for our present purpose to determine whether the Greeks had or had not any connexion with Thracians, European or Asiatic, with Phrygians and Lydians, and other neighbouring nations. ♦Nations more remote, but probably kindred.♦ All these were in Greek eyes simply Barbarians, but modern scholarship has seen in them signs of a kindred with the Greek nation nearer than the share of both in the common Aryan stock. We need not settle here whether all the inhabitants of the geographical district which we have marked out were, or were not, kinsmen in this sense; but with some among them the question assumes a deeper interest and a nearer approach to certainty. ♦Illyrians.♦ The great Illyrian race, of whom the Albanians or Skipetars are the modern representatives, a race which has been so largely displaced by Slaves at one end and assimilated by Greeks at the other, can hardly fail to have had a nearer kindred with the Greeks than that which they both share with Celts and Teutons. When we come to the lands which are yet more closely connected with Greece, both in geographical position and in their history, the case becomes clearer still. ♦Epeiros, Macedonia, Sicily and Italy.♦ We can hardly doubt of the close connexion between the Greeks and the nations which bordered on Greece immediately to the north in Epeiros and Macedonia, as well as with some at least of those which they found occupying the opposite coasts of the Ægæan, as well as in Sicily and Italy. The Greeks and Italians, with the nations immediately connected with them, clearly belong to one, and that a well marked, division of the Aryan family. Their kindred is shown alike by the evidence of language and by the remarkable ease with which in all ages they received Greek civilization. Into more minute inquiries as to these matters it is hardly our province to go here. ♦Pelasgians.♦ It is perhaps enough to say that the Pelasgian name, which has given rise to so much speculation, seems to have been used by the Greeks themselves in a very vague way, much as the word Saxon is among ourselves. It is therefore dangerous to form any theories about the matter. Sometimes the Pelasgians seem to be spoken of simply as Old-Hellênes, sometimes as a people distinct from the Hellênes. ♦The Greek nation.♦ Whether the Hellênes, on their entering into Greece, found the land held by earlier inhabitants, whether Aryan or non-Aryan, is a curious and interesting speculation, but one which does not concern us. It is enough for our purpose that, as far back as history or even legend can carry us, we find the land in the occupation of a branch of the Aryan family, consisting, like all other nations, of various kindred tribes. It is a nation which is as well defined as any other nation, and yet it shades off, as it were, into the other nations of the kindred stock. Clearly marked as Greek and Barbarian are from the beginning, there still are frontier tribes in Epeiros and Macedonia which must be looked on as forming an intermediate stage between the two classes, and which are accordingly placed by different Greek writers sometimes in one class and sometimes in the other.
§ 4. The Earliest Geography of Greece and the Neighbouring Lands.
♦The Homeric map of Greece.♦
Our first picture of Greek geography comes from the Homeric catalogue. Whatever may be the historic value of the Homeric poems in general, it is clear that the catalogue in the second book of the Iliad must represent a real state of things. It gives us a map of Greece so different from the map of Greece at any later time that it is inconceivable that it can have been invented at any later time. We have in fact a map of Greece at a time earlier than any time to which we can assign certain names and dates. Within the range of Greece itself the various Greek races often changed their settlements, displacing or conquering earlier Greek settlers; and the different states which they formed often changed their boundaries by bringing other states into subjection or depriving them of parts of their territory. The Homeric catalogue gives us a wholly different arrangement of the various branches of the nation from any that we find in the Greece of historic times. The Dorian and Ionian names, which were afterwards so famous, are hardly known; the name of Hellênes itself belongs only to a small district. ♦Tribal divisions of Homeric Greece.♦ The names for the whole people are Achaians, Argeians (Argos seeming to mean all Peloponnêsos), and Danaoi, the last a name which goes quite out of use in historic times. The boundary of Greece to the west is narrower than it was in later times. The land called Akarnania has not yet got that name, if indeed it was Greek at all. It is spoken of vaguely as Epeiros or the mainland,[3] and it appears as part of the possessions of the king of the neighbouring islands, Kephallênia and Ithakê. The islands to the north, Leukas and Korkyra, were not yet Greek. The Thesprotians in Epeiros are spoken of as a neighbouring and friendly people, but they form no part of the Greek nation. The Aitolians appear as a Greek people, and so do most of the other divisions of the Greek nation, only their position and relative importance is often different from what it was afterwards. Thus, to mention a few examples out of many, the Lokrians, who, in historic times, appear both on the sea of Euboia and on the Corinthian gulf, appear in the catalogue in their northern seats only.
When we turn from tribes to cities, the difference is still greater. ♦Groupings of cities.♦ The cities which held the first place in historic times are not always those which are greatest in the earlier time, and their grouping in federations or principalities is wholly unlike anything in later history. Thus in the historic Boiotia we find Orchomenos as the second city of a confederation of which Thebes is the first. In the catalogue Orchomenos and the neighbouring city Aspledôn form a separate division, distinct from Boiôtia. Euboia forms a whole; and, what is specially to be noticed, Attica, as a land, is not mentioned, but only the single city of Athens, with Salamis as a kind of dependency. Peloponnêsos again is divided in a manner quite different from anything in later times. The ruling city is Mykênê, whose king holds also a general superiority over all Hellas, while his immediate dominion takes in Corinth, Kleônai, Sikyôn, and the whole south coast of the Corinthian Gulf, the Achaia of later times. The rest of the cities of the Argolic peninsula are grouped round Argos. Northern Greece again is divided into groups of cities which answer to nothing in later times. And its relative importance in the Greek world is clearly far greater than it was in the historic period.
The catalogue also helps us to our earliest picture of the northern and eastern coasts of the Ægæan and of the Ægæan islands. ♦Extent of Greek colonization.♦ We see the extent which Greek colonization had already made. It had as yet taken in only the southern islands of the Ægæan. Crete was already Greek; so were Rhodes, Kôs, and the neighbouring islands; but these last are distinctly marked as new settlements. The coast of Asia and the northern islands are still untouched, except through the events of the Trojan war itself, in which the Greek conquest of Lesbos is distinctly marked. ♦The Asiatic Catalogue.♦ In Asia, besides Trojans and Dardanians, we find Pelasgians as a distinct people, as also Paphlagonians, Mysians, Phrygians, Maionians, Karians, and Lykians. We find in short the nations which fringe the whole Ægæan coast of Asia and the south-western coast of the Euxine. In Europe again we have Thracians and Paionians, names familiar in historic times, and whose bearers seemingly occupied nearly the same lands which they do in later times. The presence of Thracians in Asia is implied rather than asserted. The Macedonian name is not found. The northern islands of the Ægæan are mentioned only incidentally. Everything leaves us to believe that the whole region, European and Asiatic, to which we are now concerned, was, at this earliest time of which we have any glimpses, occupied by various races more or less closely allied to each other. ♦Phœnician and Greek settlements in the islands.♦ The islands were largely Karian, but the Phœnicians, a Semitic people from the eastern coast, seem to have planted colonies in several of the Mediterranean islands. But Karians and Phœnicians had now begun to give way to Greek settlements. The same rivalry in short between Greeks and Phœnicians must have gone on in the earliest times in the islands of the Ægæan which went on in historical times in the greater islands of Cyprus and Sicily.
§ 5. Change from Homeric to Historic Greece.
The state of things which is set before us in the catalogue was altogether broken up by later changes, but changes which still come before the beginnings of contemporary history, and which we understand chiefly by comparing the geography of the catalogue with the geography of later times. ♦Changes in Peloponnêsos.♦ According to received tradition, a number of Dorian colonies from Northern Greece were gradually planted in the chief cities of Peloponnêsos, and drove out or reduced to subjection their older Achaian inhabitants. Mykênê from this time loses its importance; Argos, Sparta, Corinth, and Sikyôn become Dorian cities; and Sparta gradually wins the dominion over all the towns, whether Dorian or Achaian, within her immediate dominion of Lakonia. To the west of Lakonia arises the Dorian state of Messênê, which is the name only of a district, as there was as yet no city so called. As part of the same movement, an Aitolian colony is said to have occupied Êlis on the west coast of Peloponnêsos. Elis again was at this time the name of a district only; the cities both of Messênê and Êlis are of much later date. First Argos, and then Sparta, rises to a supremacy over their fellow-Dorians and over the whole of Peloponnêsos. Historical Peloponnêsos thus consists (i) of the cities, chiefly Dorian, of the Argolic Aktê or peninsula, together with Corinth on the Isthmus and Megara, a Dorian outpost beyond the Isthmus; (ii) of Lakonikê, the district immediately subject to Sparta, with a boundary towards Argos which changed as Sparta advanced and Argos went back; (iii) of Messênê, which was conquered by Sparta before the age of contemporary history, and was again separated in the fourth century B.C.; (iv) of Elis, with the border-districts between it and Messênê; (v) of the Achaian cities on the coast of the Corinthian Gulf; (vi) of the inland country of Arkadia. The relations among these districts and the several cities within them often fluctuated, but the general aspect of the map of Peloponnêsos did not greatly change from the beginning of the fifth century to the later days of the third.
♦Changes in Northern Greece.♦
According to the received traditions, migrations of the same kind took place in Northern Greece also between the time of the catalogue and the beginning of contemporary history. Thus Thessaly, whose different divisions form a most important part of the catalogue, is said to have suffered an invasion at the hands of the half Hellenic Thesprotians. They are said to have become the ruling people in Thessaly itself, and to have held a supremacy over the neighbouring lands, including the peninsula of Magnêsia and the Phthiôtic Achaia. It is certain that in the historical period Thessaly lags in the back ground, and that the true Hellenic spirit is much less developed there than in other parts of Greece. There is less reason to accept the legend of a migration out of Thessaly into Boiôtia; but in historic times Orchomenos no longer appears as a separate state, but is the second city of the Boiotian confederacy, yielding the first place to Thebes with great unwillingness. The Lokrians also now appear on the Corinthian gulf as well as on the sea of Euboia. And the land to the west of Aitôlia, so vaguely spoken of in the catalogue, has become the seat of a Greek people under the name of Akarnania. The Corinthian colonies along this coast, the city of Ambrakia, the island or peninsula of Leukas, the foundation of which is placed in the eighth century B.C., come almost within the time of trustworthy history. They are not Greek in the catalogue; they are Greek when we first hear of them in history. Ambrakia forms the last outpost of continuous Hellas towards the north-west; beyond that are only outlying settlements on the Illyrian coasts and islands.
These changes in the geography of continental Greece, both within and without Peloponnêsos, make the main differences between the Greece of the Homeric catalogue and the Greece of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. ♦Changes in later times.♦ During the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries before Christ there were constant changes in political relations of the Greek states to one another; but there were not many changes which greatly affected the geography. Cities were constantly brought in subjection to one another, and were again relieved from the yoke. ♦B.C. 370-369.♦ In the course of the fourth century two new Peloponnesian cities, Messênê and Megalopolis, were founded. In Boiotia again, Plataia and Orchomenos were destroyed by the Thebans, and Thebes itself was destroyed by Alexander, but these were afterwards rebuilt. ♦B.C. 468.♦ In Peloponnêsos Mykênê was destroyed by the Argeians, and never rebuilt. But most of these changes do not affect geography, as they did not involve any change in the seats of the great divisions of the Greek name. The only exception is that of the foundation of Messênê, which was accompanied by the separation of the old Messenian territory from Sparta, and the consequent establishment of a new or restored division of the Greek nation.
§ 6. The Greek Colonies.
♦The Ægæan colonies.♦
It must have been in the time between the days represented by the catalogue and the beginnings of contemporary history, that most of the islands of the Ægæan became Greek, and that the Greek colonies were planted on the Ægæan coast of Asia. We have seen that the southern islands were already Greek at the time of the catalogue, while some of the northern ones, Thasos, Lêmnos, and others, did not become Greek till times to which we can give approximate dates, from the eighth to the fifth centuries. ♦Colonies in Asia.♦ During this period, at some time before the eighth century, the whole Ægæan coast of Asia had become fringed with Greek cities, Dorian to the south, Aiolian to the north, Ionian between the two. The story of the Trojan war itself in the land is most likely a legendary account of the beginning of these settlements, which may make us think that the Greek colonization of this coast began in the north, in the lands bordering on the Hellespont. At all events, by the eighth century these settlements had made the Asiatic coast and the islands adjoining it a part, and a most important part, not only of the Greek world, but we may almost say of Greece itself. ♦Their early greatness.♦ The Ionian cities, above all, Smyrna, Ephesos, Milêtos, and the islands of Chios and Samos, were among the greatest of Greek cities, more flourishing certainly than any in European Greece. Milêtos, above all, was famous for the number of colonies which it sent forth in its own turn. But, if their day of greatness came before that of the European Greeks, they were also the first to come under the power of the Barbarians. ♦Lydian and Persian conquests.♦ In the course of the fifth century the Greek cities on the continent of Asia came under the power, first of the Lydian kings and then of their Persian conquerors, who subdued several of the islands also. It was this subjection of the Asiatic Greeks to the Barbarians which led to the Persian war, with which the most brilliant time in the history of European Greece begins. We thus know the Asiatic cities only in the days of their decline. ♦Colonies in Thrace.♦ The coasts of Thrace and Macedonia were also sprinkled with Greek cities, but they did not lie so thick together as those on the Asiatic coast, except only in the three-fingered peninsula of Chalkidikê, which became a thoroughly Greek land. Some of these colonies in Thrace, as Olynthos and Potidaia, play an important part in Greek history, and two among them fill a place in the history of the world. Thermê, under its later name of Thessalonikê, has kept on its importance under all changes down to our own time. And Byzantion, on the Thracian Bosporos, rose higher still, becoming, under the form of Constantinople, the transplanted seat of the Empire of Rome.
The settlements which have been thus far spoken of may be all counted as coming within the immediate Greek world. They were planted in lands so near to the mother-country, and they lay so near to one another, that the whole country round the Ægæan may be looked on as more or less thoroughly Greek. Some parts were wholly Greek, and everywhere Greek influences were predominant. ♦More distant colonies.♦ But, during this same period of distant enterprise, between the time of the Homeric catalogue and the time of the Persian War, many Greek settlements were made in countries much further off from continuous Greece. All of course came within the range of the Mediterranean world; no Greek ever passed through the Straits of Hêraklês to found settlements on the Ocean. But a large part of the coast both of the Mediterranean itself and of the Euxine was gradually dotted with Greek colonies. These outposts of Greece, unless they were actually conquered by barbarians, almost always remained Greek; they kept their Greek language and manners, and they often spread them to some extent among their barbarian neighbours. But it was not often that any large tract of country in these more distant lands became so thoroughly Greek as the Ægæan coast of Asia became. We may say however that such was the case with the coast of Sicily and Southern Italy, where many Greek colonies were planted, which will be spoken of more fully in another chapter. All Sicily indeed did in the end really become a Greek country, though not till after its conquest by the Romans. But in Northern and Central Italy, the Latins, Etruscans, and other Italian nations were too strong for any Greek colonies to be made in those parts. ♦Colonies in the Hadriatic.♦ On the other side of the Hadriatic, Greek colonies had spread before the Peloponnesian war as far north as Epidamnos. The more northern colonies on the coast and among the islands of Dalmatia, the Illyrian Epidauros, Pharos, Black Korkyra, and others, were among the latest efforts of Greek colonization in the strict sense.
In other parts of the Mediterranean coasts the Greek settlements lay further apart from each other. But we may say that they were spread here and there over the whole coast, except where there was some special hindrance to keep the Greeks from settling. ♦Phœnician colonies.♦ Thus, in a great part of the Mediterranean the Phœnicians had got the start of the Greeks, both in their own country on the coast of Syria, and in the colonies sent forth by their great cities of Tyre and Sidon. The Phœnician colonists occupied a large part of the western half of the southern coast of the Mediterranean, where lay the great Phœnician cities of Carthage, Utica, and others. They had also settlements in Southern Spain, and one at least outside the straits on the Ocean. This is Gades or Cadiz, which has kept its name and its unbroken position as a great city from an earlier time than any other city in Europe. The Greeks therefore could not colonize in these parts. In the great islands of Sicily and Cyprus there were both Phœnician and Greek colonies, and there was a long struggle between the settlers of the two nations. In Egypt again, though there were some Greek settlers, yet there were no Greek colonies in the strict sense. That is, there were no independent Greek commonwealths. Thus the only part of the southern coast of the Mediterranean which was open to Greek colonization was the land between Egypt and the dominions of Carthage. ♦Greek colonies in Africa, Gaul, and Spain.♦ In that land accordingly several Greek cities were planted, of which the chief was the famous Kyrênê. On the southern coast of Gaul arose the great Ionian city of Massalia or Marseilles, which also, like the Phœnician Gades, has kept its name and its prosperity down to our own time. Massalia became the centre of a group of Greek cities on the south coast of Gaul and the east coast of Spain, which were the means of spreading a certain amount of Greek civilization in those parts.
♦Colonies on the Euxine.♦
Besides these settlements in the Mediterranean itself, there were also a good many Greek colonies on the western, northern, and southern coasts of the Euxine, of which those best worth remembering are the city of Chersonêsos in the peninsula called the Tauric Chersonêsos, now Crimea, and Trapezous on the southern coast. These two deserve notice as being two most abiding seats of Greek influence. Chersonêsos, under the name of Cherson, remained an independent Greek commonwealth longer than any other, and Trapezous or Trebizond became the seat of Greek-speaking Emperors, who outlived those of Constantinople. Speaking generally then, we may say that, in the most famous times of European Greece, in the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, the whole coast of the Ægæan was part of the immediate Greek world, while in Sicily and Cyprus Greek colonies were contending with the Phœnicians, and in Italy with the native Italians. Massalia was the centre of a group of Greek states in the north-west, and Kyrênê in the south, while the greater part of the coast of the Euxine was also dotted with Greek cities here and there. In most of these colonies the Greeks mixed to some extent with the natives, and the natives to some extent learned the Greek language and manners. ♦Beginning of the artificial Greek nation.♦ We thus get the beginning of what we call an artificial Greek nation, a nation Greek in speech and manners, but not purely Greek in blood, which has gone on ever since.
§ 7. Growth of Macedonia and Epeiros.
♦Growth of Macedonia.♦
But while the spread of the Greek language and civilization, and therewith the growth of the artificial Greek nation, was brought about in a great degree by the planting of independent Greek colonies, it was brought about still more fully by events which went far to destroy the political independence of Greece itself. This came of the growth of the kindred nations to the north of Greece, in Macedonia and Epeiros. The Macedonians were for a long time hemmed in by the barbarians to the north and west of them and by the Greek cities on the coast, and they were also weakened by divisions among themselves. ♦Reign of Philip, B.C. 360-336.♦ But when the whole nation was united under its great King Philip, Macedonia soon became the chief power in Greece and the neighbouring lands. Philip greatly increased his dominions at the expense of both Greeks and barbarians, especially by adding the peninsulas of Chalkidikê to his kingdom. But in Greece itself, though he took to himself the chief power, he did not actually annex any of the Greek states to Macedonia, so that his victories there do not affect the map. ♦Conquests of Alexander, 336-323.♦ His yet more famous son Alexander, and the Macedonian kings after him, in like manner held garrisons in particular Greek cities, and brought some parts of Greece, as Thessaly and Euboia, under a degree of Macedonian influence which hardly differed from dominion; but they did not formally annex them. The conquests of Alexander in Asia brought most of the Greek cities and islands under Macedonian dominion, but some, as Crete, Rhodes, Byzantion, and Hêrakleia on the Euxine, kept their independence. ♦Epeiros under Pyrrhos, B.C. 295-272.♦ Meanwhile Epeiros became united under the Greek kings of Molossis, and under Pyrrhos, who made Ambrakia his capital, it became a powerful state. And a little kingdom called Athamania, thrust in between Epeiros, Macedonia, and Thessaly, now begins to be heard of.
♦The Macedonian kingdoms in Asia.♦
The conquests of Alexander in Asia concern us only so far as they called into being a class of states in Western Asia, all of which received a greater or less share of Hellenic culture, and some of which may claim a place in the actual Greek world. By the division of the empire of Alexander after the battle of Ipsos, Egypt became the kingdom of Ptolemy, with whose descendants it remained down to the Roman conquest. ♦B.C. 301.♦ The civilization of the Egyptian court was Greek, and Alexandria became one of the greatest of Greek cities. ♦Egypt under the Ptolemies.♦ Moreover the earlier kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty held various islands in the Ægæan, and points on the coast of Asia and even of Thrace, which made them almost entitled to rank as a power in Greece itself. ♦The Seleukid dynasty.♦ The great Asiatic power of Alexander passed to Seleukos and his descendants. The early kings of his house ruled from the Ægæan to the Hyphasis, though this great dominion was at all times fringed and broken in upon by the dominions of native princes, by independent Greek cities, and by the dominions of other Macedonian kings. ♦Circa B.C. 256.♦ But in the third century their dominion was altogether cut short in the East by the revolt of the Parthians in northern Persia, by whom the eastern provinces of the Seleukid kingdom were lopped away. ♦B.C. 191-181.♦ And when Antiochos the Great provoked a war with Rome, his dominion was cut short to the West also. The Seleukid power now shrank up into a local kingdom of Syria, with Tauros for its north-western frontier.
♦Cities of independent state in Asia Minor. B.C. 283.♦
By the cutting short of the Seleukid kingdom, room was given for the growth of the independent states which had already sprung up in Asia Minor. ♦Pergamos.♦ The kingdom of Pergamos had already begun, and the dominions of its kings were largely increased by the Romans at the expense of Antiochos. Pergamos might count as a Hellenic state, alongside of Macedonia and Epeiros. But the other kingdoms of Asia Minor, Bithynia, Kappadokia, Paphlagonia, and Pontos, the kingdom of the famous Mithridates, must be counted as Asiatic. ♦Spread of Hellenic culture.♦ The Hellenic influence indeed spread itself far to the East. Even the Parthian kings affected a certain amount of Greek culture, and in all the more western kingdoms there was a greater or less Greek element, and in several of them the kings fixed their capitals in Greek cities. Still in all of them the Asiatic element prevailed in a way in which it did not prevail at Pergamos. Meanwhile other states, either originally Greek or largely Hellenized, still remained East of the Ægæan. Thus, at the south-western corner of Asia Minor, Lykia, though seemingly less thoroughly Hellenized than some of its neighbours, became a federal state after the Greek model. ♦Seleukeia.♦ Far to the East, Seleukeia on the Tigris, whether under Syrian or Parthian overlordship, kept its character as a Greek colony, and its position as what may be called a free imperial city. Further to the West other more purely Greek states survived. ♦Hêrakleia. | B.C. 188.♦ The Pontic Hêrakleia long remained an independent Greek city, sometimes a commonwealth, sometimes under tyrants; and Sinôpê remained a Greek city till it became the capital of the kings of Pontos. On the north of the Euxine, Bosporos still remained a Greek kingdom.
§ 8. The later Geography of Independent Greece.
♦Later political divisions of Greece.♦
The political divisions of independent Greece, in the days when it gradually came under the power of Rome, differ almost as much from those to which we are used during the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, as these last differ from the earlier divisions in the Homeric catalogue. The chief feature of these times was the power which was held, as we have before seen, by the Macedonian kings, and the alliances made by the different Greek states in order to escape or to throw off their yoke. The result was that the greater part of Greece was gradually mapped out among large confederations, much larger at least than Greece had ever seen before. ♦The Achaian League, B.C. 280.♦ The most famous of these, the League of Achaia, began among the old Achaian cities on the south of the Corinthian Gulf. ♦B.C. 191.♦ It gradually spread, till it took in the whole of Peloponnêsos, together with Megara and one or two outlying cities. Thus Corinth, Argos, Elis, and even Sparta, instead of being distinct states as of old, with a greater or less dominion over other cities, were now simply members of one federal body. ♦The Aitolian League.♦ In Northern Greece the League of Aitolia now became very powerful, and extended itself far beyond its old borders. Akarnania, Phôkis, Lokris, and Boiôtia formed Federal states of less power, and so did Epeiros, where the kings had been got rid of, and which was now reckoned as a thoroughly Greek state. The Macedonian kings held different points at different times: Corinth itself for a good while, and Thessaly and Euboia for longer periods, might be almost counted as parts of their kingdom.
♦Roman interference in Greece.♦
This was the state of things in Greece at the time when the Romans began to meddle in Greek and Macedonian affairs, and gradually to bring all these countries, like the rest of the Mediterranean world, under their power. But it should be remarked that this was done, as the conquests of the Romans always were done, very gradually. ♦B.C. 229.♦ First the island of Korkyra and the cities of Epidamnos and Apollônia on the Illyrian coast became Roman allies, which was always a step to becoming Roman subjects. ♦B.C. 205.♦ The Romans first appeared in Greece itself, as allies of the Aitolians, but by the Peace of Epeiros Rome obtained no dominion in Greece, and merely some increase of her Illyrian territory. ♦B.C. 200-197. | Progress of Roman conquests. | B.C. 196.♦ The second Macedonian War made Macedonia dependent on Rome, and all those parts of Greece which had been under the Macedonian power were declared free at its close. ♦B.C. 189.♦ As the Aitolians had joined Antiochos of Syria against Rome, they were made a Roman dependency. From that time Rome was always meddling in the affairs of the Greek states, and they may be counted as really, though not formally, dependent on Rome. ♦B.C. 169. | B.C. 149.♦ After the third Macedonian war, Macedonia was cut up into four separate commonwealths; and at last, after the fourth, it became a Roman province. ♦B.C. 146. | Remaining free states incorporated by Vespasian.♦ About the same time the Leagues of Epeiros and Boiôtia were dissolved; the Achaian League also became formally dependent on Rome, and was dissolved for a time also. It is not certain when Achaia became formally a Roman province; but, from this time, all Greece was practically subject to Rome. Athens remained nominally independent, as did Rhodes, Byzantion, and several other islands and outlying cities, some of which were not formally incorporated with the Roman dominion till the time of the Emperor Vespasian.
As we go on with the geography of other countries which came under the Roman dominion, we shall learn more of the way in which Rome thus enlarged her territories bit by bit. But it seemed right to begin with the geography of Greece, and this could not be carried down to the time when Greece became a Roman dominion without saying something of the Roman conquest. From B.C. 146 we must look upon Greece and the neighbouring lands as being, some of them formally and all of them practically, part of the Roman dominion. And we shall not have to speak of them again as separate states or countries till many ages later, when the Roman dominion began to fall in pieces. Having thus traced the geography of the most eastern of the three great European peninsulas down to the time when it became part of the dominion which took in all the lands around the Mediterranean, we will now go on to speak of the middle peninsula, which became the centre of that dominion, namely that of Italy. ♦Special character of Greek history.♦ Greece and the neighbouring lands are the only parts of Europe which can be said to have a history quite independent of Rome, and beginning earlier than the Roman history. Of the other countries therefore which became part of the Roman Empire it will be best to speak in their relation to Italy, and, as nearly as possible, in the order in which they came under the Roman power.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See the first chapter of his eighth book (vol. ii. p. 139 of the Tauchnitz edition). He makes four peninsulas within peninsulas, beginning from the south with Peloponnêsos, and he enlarges on the general character of the country as made up of gulfs and promontories.
[3] Ἤπειρος is simply the mainland, and came only gradually to mean a particular country. We may compare the use of ‘terra firma’ in South America. In the catalogue (Iliad, ii. 620-635), after the island subjects of Odysseus have been reckoned up, we read: οἵ τ᾽ Ἤπειρον ἔχον, ἠδ᾽ ἀντιπέραι᾽ ἐνέμοντο. This must mean the land afterwards called Akarnania. It was remarked at a later time that the Akarnanians were the only people of Greece who did not appear in the catalogue.