Alfred E. Zimmern, in The Greek Commonwealth, Politics and Economics in Fifth-Century Athens,[[165]] deals very cleverly with the main features of the material environment of Greek civilization: The Mediterranean Area; The Sea; The Climate; The Soil; Fellowship, or the Rule of Public Opinion, under which headings he discusses the influence of environment upon Greek institutions.[[166]]
As early as 1864, G. P. Marsh investigates the subject of man’s reaction on his milieu in Man and Nature, or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (London).
John William Draper, in his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,[[167]] in the composition of which Herderian ideas were the guides,[[168]] first attempts to show (vol. I, pp. 6–17) that individual man, as well as communities, nations, and universal humanity, are under the control of physical conditions; then (pp. 23–35) he points out how the topography, meteorology, and secular geological movements of Europe affected its inhabitants. On the whole, he overstates the force of environment and neglects the human factor; nevertheless his uncompromising affirmations bring out strikingly some of the environmental effects on man.
The uncritical Max Duncker, in the nine volume Geschichte des Altertums,[[169]] not only has chapters on Land und Volk, or Land und Stämme at the beginning of the history of a given nation, but he also dwells elsewhere in his text on the sway of geography in history.
Élisée Réclus, in the magistral Nouvelle Géographie Universelle (1879 ff.), speaking of the difficulties encountered by research, queries: “... Was verdanken die Nationen dem Einfluß der Natur, die sie umgibt? Was verdanken sie dem Milieu, das ihre Vorfahren bewohnten, ihren Rasseinstinkten, ihren verschiedenartigen Mischungen, den von Außen eingeführten Überlieferungen? Man weiß es nicht, kaum daß einige Lichtstrahlen in jene Finsternis dringen.”[[170]] The preponderance of European nations is by no means attributable, as some arrogantly and self-conceitedly fancied, to any racial endowment; on the contrary, it is due to the favoring conditions of the physical environment prevailing in Europe: “Man weiß, wie mächtig der Einfluß des geographischen Milieu auf die Fortschritte der europäischen Nationen gewesen ist. Ihre Überlegenheit ist keineswegs, wie einige sich dünkelhafter Weise eingebildet haben, der eigentümlichen Anlage der Rassen zuzuschreiben, denn in anderen Gegenden der alten Welt haben sich eben dieselben Rassen weniger schöpferisch erwiesen. Es sind die glücklichen Bedingungen der Wärme, des Klimas, der Gestalt und Lage des Festlandes, welche den Europäern die Ehre verschafft haben, die ersten gewesen zu sein in der Kenntnis der Erde in ihrem ganzen Umfange und lange Zeit an der Spitze der Zivilisation geblieben zu sein.”[[171]] These conditions help to explain, in part, the character of the nations: “Mit vollem Recht lieben es also die historischen Geographen bei der Gestalt der verschiedenen Erdteile und bei den Folgen zu verweilen, welche sich daraus für die Bestimmung der Völker ergeben. Die Gestalt der Hochebenen, die Höhe der Berge, der Lauf und der Reichtum der Flüsse, die Nachbarschaft des Ozeans, die Gliederung der Küsten, die Temperatur der Atmosphäre, die Häufigkeit oder Seltenheit des Regens, die unzähligen wechselseitigen Einflüsse der Sonne, der Luft und der Gewässer, alle Erscheinungen des Pflanzenlebens habe eine Bedeutung in ihren Augen und dienen ihnen (wenigstens zum Teil), den Charakter und das erste Leben der Nationen zu erklären ...”[[172]] Continental and oceanic forms and other features of the globe vary in their value for man in accordance with the stage of civilization to which he attained.[[173]] Notwithstanding this separation, in principle, of natural and national influences upon social evolution, its application to concrete cases Réclus finds arduous: “Durch das Studium der Sonne und durch die unablässige Beobachtung der klimatischen Erscheinungen können wir ganz allgemein verstehen, welches der Einfluß der Natur auf die Entwicklung der Völker gewesen ist; aber es ist schwieriger, das auf jede Rasse, auf jede Nation zu verteilen....”[[174]]
P. Mougeoulle’s theory in Les problèmes de l’histoire,[[175]] is an altogether one-sided geographical theory of history.[[176]] The sole cause of the external as well as the internal history of peoples, is, in his opinion, the geographical Milieu.[[177]] To Mougeoulle, the Milieu is the author, whereas man is the actor of the Drama of history.[[178]]
Léon Metchnikoff, in La Civilisation et Les Grands Fleuves Historiques,[[179]] pays some attention to the influences (astronomic, physical—the geosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere—, vegetal, animal, anthropological) of the milieu on man and society; yet his main care is with the action of parts of the hydrosphere on human progress. Following C. Böttiger (Das Mittelmeer, Leipzig, 1859), Metchnikoff distinguishes the three milieus: fluvial or potamic, mediterranean or thalassic, and oceanic or universal.[[180]] On this basis he divides universal history into three periods: 1) the period of the fluvial civilizations (temps anciens), furnishing the principal theme of his argument (discussed in the last four chapters of his book); 2) that of the mediterranean civilizations (temps moyens); 3) and that of the oceanic civilizations. The fluvial or ancient period, from the beginnings to circa 800 B.C., comprises the history of the four great civilizations of antiquity, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, “qui ont eu pour milieu géographique des régions arrosées par certains fleuves ou couples de fleuves célèbres.” The mediterranean or middle period extends from the seventh century B.C.—the foundation of Carthage—to Charles the Fifth. The modern or oceanic period has two epochs: a) the atlantic epoch, from the discovery of America to about the middle of the nineteenth century; and b) the universal epoch, just beginning.[[181]] In the main, Metchnikoff limits the scope of his work to the compass of fluvial civilizations. He studies in detail the four great historical rivers or pairs of rivers (the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Indus and the Ganges, and the Hoangho and the Yangtze-Kiang, those great educators of mankind) in their bearing upon the four grand civilizations—Chinese, Hindu, Assyro-Babylonian, and Egyptian—of remote antiquity, all of which expanded in fluvial regions.[[182]] The River, in all countries, presents itself to Metchnikoff as the living synthesis of all the complex conditions of the climate, of the soil, of the configuration of the earth, and of the geologic formation. In Egypt and in China, in India and in Mesopotamia, the River has been “comme une synthèse vivante des conditions géographiques les plus multiples.”[[183]] He finds that each of the four great monarchies of antiquity had been a natural consequence or result of the hydrological system of the country that served as its cradle, and that history, in the entire ancient world, had been a toil, a forced labor (“une corvée”), imposed on a part of mankind by certain orographic peculiarities of the Milieu. Metchnikoff concludes that in these empires “le Milieu s’est trouvé être invariablement le vrai créateur de l’histoire.” The eloquent example of these four grand ancient civilizations sufficiently proves to him that no important historical expansion could ever occur in any country of the world, unless the milieu condemned its inhabitants to that excessive solidarity which he shows to have been brutally imposed everywhere at the shores of these great historical rivers; a milieu is conceivable, however, where this condition, rigorously required by history, may be fulfilled by an environmental factor other than a river or a system of rivers.[[184]] Metchnikoff protests that he is far from advocating potamic[[185]] or geographical[[186]] fatalism.[[187]]
Babington’s study of the power of environment over history points out the fallacy of the race theory in the history of the Roman empire, of Germany, and of China.[[188]]
N. S. Shaler, in Nature and Man in America,[[189]] traces, on the one hand, the action of environment on organic life, and, on the other, the effect of geographic conditions on the development of peoples, more especially on that of man in North America.[[190]]
Since about the middle of the eighties, under the leadership of the late historian E. A. Freeman and of the illustrious statesman and scholar, Lord James Bryce, “a marked revival of interest” has been exhibited in England in studying the physical milieu as it relates to man and human society, institutions and history.[[191]]