The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

The historical geography of two of the three great Southern peninsulas is thus bound up with that of the Empires of which they were severally the centres. ♦Position of Spain.♦ The case is quite different with the third great peninsula, that of Spain. There the Roman dominion, even the province which had been recovered by Justinian, had quite passed away, and it was only a small part of the land which was ever reincorporated, even in the most shadowy way, with either Empire. ♦The Saracen conquest. 710-713.♦ Spain was now conquered by the Saracens, as it had before been conquered by the Romans, with this difference, that it had been among the longest and hardest of the Roman conquests, while no part of the Saracen dominion was won in a shorter time. But, if the Roman conquest was slow, it was in the end complete. The swifter Saracen conquest was never quite complete; it left a remnant by which the land was in the end to be won back. But the part of the land which withstood the Saracen was, as could hardly fail to be the case, the same part as that which held out for the longest time against the Roman. The mountainous regions of the North were never wholly conquered. ♦Asturia 732,
united with Cantabria, 751.♦ Cantabria and Asturia, which had never fully submitted to the Goths, now became the seat of resistance under princes who claimed to represent the Gothic kings, and part of whose dominions bore the name of Gothia. Twenty years after the conquest, Asturia was again a Christian principality, which was presently united with Cantabria. ♦Kingdom of Leon, 916.♦ This grew into the kingdom of Leon. ♦County of Castile, 904.
Kingdom, 1033.♦ The great fiefs of this kingdom on its eastern and western borders, the counties of Gallicia and Castile—the last originally a line of castles against the Saracen enemy—both showed from an early time strong tendencies to separation. ♦Kingdom of Navarre. 905.♦ Meanwhile the kingdom of Navarre grew up to the east, stretching, it must be remembered, on both sides of the Pyrenees, though by far the larger portion of it lay on their southern side. ♦County of Aragon c. 760.♦ To the east of Navarre the small counties of Aragon and Riparanensia were the beginning of the kingdom of Aragon. ♦The Spanish March. 778.♦ To the east again of this was the land which, after the final expulsion of the Saracens from Gaul, became part of the Carolingian Empire by the name of the Spanish March. The shiftings of territory, the unions and separations of these various kingdoms and principalities, belong to the special history of Spain. But early in the eleventh century the whole north-western part of Spain, and a considerable fringe of territory in the north-east, had been formed into Christian states. ♦Beginnings of Castile and Aragon.♦ Among these had been laid the foundations of two kingdoms, those of Castile and Aragon, which were to play a great part in the affairs of Europe.

It will be at once seen that those among the Spanish powers which were destined to play the greatest part in later history were not among the first to take the form of separate kingdoms. ♦Slow growth of the greater kingdoms.♦ At this stage even Castile has hardly taken the form of a distinct state. Aragon is only beginning; Portugal has not even begun. ♦History of Castile and Aragon.♦ Of these three, Castile was fated to play the same part that was played by Wessex in England and by France in Gaul, to become the leading power of the peninsula. Aragon, when her growth had brought her to the Mediterranean, was to fill for a long time a greater place in general European politics than any other Spanish power. The union of Castile and Aragon was to form that great Spanish monarchy which became the terror of Europe. ♦Portugal.♦ Meanwhile Portugal, lying on the Ocean, had first of all to extend her borders at the cost of the common enemy, and afterwards to become a beginner of European enterprise in distant lands, a path in which Castile and other powers did but follow in her steps.

♦Break-up of the Spanish Caliphate.♦

Meanwhile the advance of the Christians was helped by the division of the Saracenic power. The Caliphates of the East and of the West fell to pieces, exactly as the Christian Empires did. The undivided Mahometan dominion in Spain was at the height of its power in the tenth century. Yet even then, amid many fluctuations, the Christian frontier was on the whole advancing in the north-west. In the north-east Christian progress was slower. ♦1028.♦ But, early in the eleventh century, the Caliphate of Cordova broke in pieces, and out of its fragments arose a crowd of small Mahometan kingdoms at Cordova, Seville, Lisbon, Zaragoza, Toledo, Valencia, and elsewhere. It was now only by renewed invasions from Africa that the Mahometan power in Spain was kept up. But, as the Christian states are now fully formed, such mention of these African dynasties as concerns geography will come more fittingly at a later stage.

§ 4. Origin of the Slavonic States.

♦Slavonic and Turanian invasions.♦

We left the borders of both the Eastern and the Western Empire beset by neighbours of Slavonic race, who, in the case of the Eastern Empire, were largely mingled with other neighbours of Turanian race. Of these last, Avars, Patzinaks, Khazars, have passed away; they have left no trace on the modern map of Europe. With two of the Turanian settlements the case is different. ♦Bulgarians.♦ The settlement of the Bulgarians, the foundation of a kingdom of Slavonized Turanians south of the Danube, has been already mentioned. They still keep their place and nation, though in bondage. Another Turanian settlement to the north of the Bulgarians has been of yet greater importance in European history. ♦Settlement of the Magyars or Hungarians, 895.♦ In the last years of the ninth century the Finnish Magyars or Hungarians, the Turks of the Byzantine writers, began to count as a power in Europe. From their seats between the mouths of the Dnieper and the Danube, they pressed eastward into the lands which had been Dacia and Pannonia. ♦Great Moravia.♦ The Bulgarian power was thus confined to the lands south of the Danube, and Great Moravia, a name which then took in the western part of modern Hungary, fell wholly under Magyar dominion.

This settlement is one which stands altogether by itself. ♦Peculiar character of the Magyar settlement.♦ The Magyars and the Ottoman Turks are the only Turanian settlers in Europe who have grown into permanent Turanian powers on European ground. The Bulgarians have been lost in the mass of their Slavonic neighbours and subjects, whose language they have adopted. Magyars and Ottomans still remain speaking a Turanian tongue on Aryan soil. But of these it is only the Magyars that have grown into a really European state. ♦The Kingdom of Hungary.♦ After appearing as momentary ravagers in Germany, Italy, and even Gaul, the Magyars settled down into a Christian kingdom, which, among many fluctuations of supremacy and dependence, has remained a distinct kingdom to this day. ♦Effect of its religious connexion with Rome.♦ The Christianity of Hungary however came from the Western Church and not from the Eastern. And this fact has had a good deal of bearing upon the history of those regions. But for this almost incidental connexion with the Old Rome, Hungary, though settled by a Turanian people, would most naturally have taken its place among the Slavonic states which fringed the dominion of the New Rome. As it has turned out, difference of religion has stepped in to heighten difference of blood, and Hungary has formed a kingdom quite apart, closely connected in its history with Servia and Bulgaria, but running a course which has been in many things unlike theirs.

♦The Magyars separate the Northern and Southern Slaves.♦

The geographical results of the Magyar settlement were to place a barrier between the Northern and the Southern Slaves. This it did both directly and indirectly. The Patzinaks pressed into what had been the former Magyar territory; they appear in the pages of the Imperial geographer as a nation with whom the Empire always strove to maintain peace, as they formed a barrier against both Hungarians and Russians. ♦The Russians.♦ This last name begins to be of importance in the ninth century. A part of the Eastern branch of the Slavonic race, they were cut off from the other members of that branch south of the Danube by these new Turanian settlements. The Magyars again parted the South-eastern Slaves from the North-western, while the Russians were still neighbours of the North-western Slaves. ♦Effects of the geographical position of the Slaves.♦ The geographical position of these three divisions of the Slavonic race has had an important effect on European history. ♦History of the South-eastern Slaves.♦ The South-eastern Slaves in Servia, Croatia, Dalmatia, and the neighbouring lands, formed a debateable ground between the two Empires, the Magyar kingdom, and the Venetian republic, as soon as Venice grew into a distinct and conquering state. These lands have, down to our own time, played an important, but commonly a secondary, part in history. And in later times their history has chiefly consisted in successive changes of masters. The states which they formed will have to be spoken of in connexion with the greater and more lasting powers to which they have commonly been adjuncts. ♦The North-western Slaves.♦ The North-western Slaves appear for the most part in different degrees of vassalage or incorporation with the Western Empire. ♦Bohemia, Poland.♦ But, besides several considerable duchies, there grew up among them the kingdoms of Bohemia and Poland, of which the latter established its complete independence of the Empire, and became for a while one of the chief powers of Europe. ♦Russia.♦ Russia meanwhile, forming a third division, appears, in the ninth and tenth centuries, first as a formidable enemy, then as a spiritual conquest, of the Empire and Church of Constantinople. Russia had then already assumed the character which it has again put on in later times, that of the one great European power at once Slavonic in race and Eastern in faith. Russia is now fully established as an European power. The variations of its territorial extent must be traced in a distinct chapter.