Return movements.
Since the world is small, it frequently happens that a people after an interval of generations, armed with a higher civilization, will reënter a region which it once left when too crude and untutored to develop the possibilities of the land, but which its better equipment later enables it to exploit. Thus we find a backward expansion of the Chinese westward to the foot of the Pamir, and an internal colonization of the empire to the Ili feeder of Lake Balkash. The expansion of the Japanese into Korea and Saghalin is undoubtedly such a return current, after an interval long enough to work a complete transformation in the primitive Mongolians who found their way to that island home. Sometimes the return represents the ebbing of the tide, rather than the back water of a stream in flood. Such was the retreat of the Moors from Spain to the Berber districts of North Africa, whither they carried echoes of the brilliant Saracen civilization in the Iberian Peninsula. Such has been the gradual withdrawal of the Turks from Europe back to their native Asia, and slow expulsion of the Tartar tribes from Russia to the barren Asiatic limits of their former territory. [See map page 225.]
Regions of attraction and repulsion.
Voluntary historical movements, seeking congenial or choice regions of the earth, have left its less favored spots undisturbed. Paucity of resources and isolation have generally insured to a region a peaceful history; natural wealth has always brought the conqueror. In ancient Greece the fruitful plains of Thessaly, Boeotia, Elis and Laconia had a fatal attraction for every migrating horde; Attica's rugged surface, poor soil, and side-tracked location off the main line of travel between Hellas and the Peloponnesus saved it from many a rough visitant,[210] and hence left the Athenians, according to Thucydides, an indigenous race. The fertility of the Rhine Valley has always attracted invasion, the barren Black Forest range has repelled and obstructed it.
The security of such unproductive highlands lies more in their failure to attract than in their power to resist conquest. When to abundant natural resources, a single spot adds a reputation for wealth, magnificence, an exceptional position for the control of territory or commerce, it becomes a geographical magnet. Such was Delphi for the Gauls of the Balkan Peninsula in the third century, Rome for the Germanic and Hunnish tribes of the Völkerwanderung, Constantinople for the Normans, Turks and Russians, Venice for land-locked Austria, the Mississippi highway and the outlet at New Orleans for our Trans-Allegheny pioneers.
Psychical influences in certain movements.
Sometimes the goal is fabulous or mythical, but potent to lure, like the land of El Dorado, abounding in gold and jewels, which for two centuries spurred on Spanish exploration in America. Other than purely material motives may initiate or maintain such a movement, an ideal or a dream of good, like the fountain of eternal youth which brought Ponce de Leon to Florida, the search for the Islands of the Blessed, or the spirit of religious propaganda which stimulated the spread of the Spanish in Mexico and the French in Canada, or the hope of religious toleration which has drawn Quaker, Puritan, Huguenot, and Jew to America. It was an idea of purely spiritual import which directed the century-long movement of the Crusades toward Jerusalem, half Latinized the Levant, and widened the intellectual horizon of Europe. A national or racial sentiment which enhaloes a certain spot may be pregnant with historical results, because at any moment it may start some band of enthusiasts on a path of migration or conquest. The Zionist agitation for the return of oppressed Jews to Palestine, and the establishment of the Liberian Republic for the negroes in Africa rest upon such a sentiment. The reverence of the Christian world for Rome as a goal of pilgrimages materially enhanced the influence of Italy as a school of culture during the Middle Ages. The spiritual and ethnic association of the Mohammedan world with Mecca is always fraught with possible political results. The dominant tribes of the Sudan, followers of Islam, who proudly trace back a fictitious line of ancestry to the Arabs of Yemen, are readily incited to support a new prophet sprung from the race of Mecca.[211] The pilgrimages which the Buddhists of the Asiatic highlands make to the sacred city of Lhassa ensure China's control over the restless nomads through the instrumentality of the Grand Lama of Tibet.