Individualism and independence
Mountain tribes are always like a pack of hounds on the leash, each straining in a different direction. Wall-like barriers, holding them apart for centuries, make them almost incapable of concerted action, and restive under any authority but their own. Clan and tribal societies, feudal and republican rule, always on a small scale, characterize mountain sociology. All these are attended by an exaggerated individualism and its inevitable concomitant, the blood feud. Mountain policy tends to diminish the power of the central authority to the vanishing point, giving individualism full scope. Social and economic retardation, caused by extreme isolation and encouraged by protected location, tend to keep the social body small and loosely organized. Every aspect of environment makes against social integration.
The broken relief of ancient Greece produced the small city state; but in the rugged mountains of Arcadia the principle of physical and political subdivision went farther. Here, for four centuries after the first Olympiad, the population, poorest and rudest of all Greece, was split up into petty hill villages, each independent of the other.[1378] The need of resisting Spartan aggression led for the first time, in 371 B.C., to the formation of a commune Arcadum, a coalescence of all the fractional groups constituting the Arcadian folk;[1379] but even this union, effected only by the masterly manipulation of the Theban Epaminondas, proved short-lived and incomplete. What was true of the Arcadian villages was true of the city states of Greece. The geography of the land instilled into them the principle of political aloofness, except when menaced by foreign conquest. Cooperation is efficient only when it springs from a habit of mind. Greek union against the Persians was very imperfect; and against the Roman, the feeble leagues were wholly ineffective. The influence of this dismembering environment still persists. As ancient Greece was a complex of city states, modern Greece is a complex of separate districts, each of which holds chief place in the minds of its citizens, and unconsciously but steadily operates against the growth of a national spirit in the modern sense.[1380]
Types of mountain states.
A mountain environment encourages political disunion in several forms. Sometimes it favors the survival of a turbulent feudal nobility, based upon clan organization, as among the medieval Scotch, who were not less rebellious toward their own kings than toward the English conquerors.[1381] Feudal rule seems congenial to the mountaineer, whose conservative nature, born of isolation, clings to hereditary chiefs and a long established order. Feudal communities and dwarf republics exist side by side in the northern Caucasus,[1382] attended by that primitive assertion of individual right, the blood feud.[1383] Often the two forms of government are combined, but the feudal element is generally only a dwindling survival from a remote past. The little Republic of Andorra, which for a thousand years has preserved its existence in the protection of a high Pyrenean valley, is a self-governing community, organized strictly along the lines of a Tyrolese or Swiss commune; but the two viguiers or agents, who in some matters outrank the president, are official appointments tracing back to feudal days, when Andorra was a seigneurie of the Comté of Urgel.[1384] Tyrol offers a striking parallel to this. In its local affairs it has in effect a republican form of government, enjoying as high degree of autonomy as any Swiss canton; but the great Brenner route, which could confer both power and wealth on its possessor, made the Tyrol an object of conquest to the feudal nobles of the early Middle Ages. Their hereditary dominion is now vested in the archdukes of Austria, to whom the Tyrolese have shown unfailing fidelity, but from whom they have exacted complete recognition of their rights.[1385]
Tyrol's neighbor Switzerland illustrates the pure form of commune, canton and republic, which is the logical result of a rugged mountain relief. Here commune and canton are the real units of government. In the federal power at Bern the Swiss peasant takes little interest, often not even knowing the name of the national president. In the highest ranges a canton coincides with a mountain-rimmed valley—Valais with the basin of the upper Rhone, Glarus with the upper Linth, Uri with the Reuss, Graubünden with the upper Rhine, to which is joined by many pass routes the sparsely peopled Engadine, Ticino with the drainage basin of upper Lake Maggiore, Unterwalden with the southern drainage valleys of Lake Lucerne. Where the mountains are lower, or where passes connect valleys of high levels, cantonal boundaries may overstep geographical barriers. A commune generally consists of the villages strung along a narrow lateral valley, isolated and sufficient unto itself politically. A close parallel to the Alpine commune is found among the Kabyles of the Atlas Mountains. Their political structure is based upon the Jemaa or commune, a small sovereign republic whose independence is fiercely defended. It enjoys complete local autonomy, is governed by an assembly of all the adult male inhabitants, and grants this body the usual functions except the administration of justice, which, characteristically, is replaced by blood feuds as the inalienable right of the individual. Romans, Arabs, Turks and French have in turn exercised over these mountain Berbers only nominal control, except when their internal dissensions made them vulnerable.[1386]
Significance of their small size.
The mountains, by the segregating power of their ridges and ranges, first produce these little independent communities, and then, throwing around them strong protecting arms, enfold them in an embrace which long provides security to them in their weakness. These minute mountain states, therefore, tend to reflect in their size the isolation of their environment, and indirectly the weakness of the surrounding nations. The original Swiss Eidgenossensschaft of the four forest cantons, embedded in the high Alps, braced against a mountain wall, held its own against the feeble feudal states of Austria and Germany. The rugged relief of Graubünden and the spirit of freedom cradled there enabled its peasants in the Middle Ages to overthrow the feudal lords, and to establish a federal republic. This typical mountain state was a league composed of three other leagues. Each component league consisted of a group of districts, having the power of sovereign states, and consisting in turn of a group of communes, which were quite independent in local affairs. This triune league formed in time an alliance with the Swiss Confederation, but did not become a member of it till the Vienna adjustment of 1815. Similar is the story of the mountain shepherds of Appenzell, who formed a little peasant republic, despite their bishop overlord of St. Gall; and who later during the Reformation, on the ground of religious differences, divided into two yet smaller states.[1387] The relation between size and inaccessibility is most strikingly illustrated in the high Himalayan ranges west of Kashmir and north of the Punjab. Here is the Shinaka district, which includes the Chilas, Darel, Tanger and other valleys branching off from the Indus, and which is inhabited by Dards of Indo-European stock. Each Shinaka valley is a small cantonal republic, and each village of each republic is a commune managing its own affairs by an assembly. One settlement of only twelve houses enjoys complete autonomy. Besides the village assemblies there is a state parliament handling questions of general policy, to which each village sends representatives. One dissentient vote can defeat a measure. The majority cannot control the minority; for if one village of a state disagrees with the others, it is free to carry out its own policy, even in the matter of foreign alliances.[1388] Here is home rule run to seed.