The peoples of Europe

by H. J. Fleure

Central France

That this boundary is not an isolated phenomenon is well seen by comparing it with the boundary between the France which reintroduced the Roman law (Droit Écrit) early in the Middle Ages and the France which preferred to go on judging by customary law (Droit Coutumier). This boundary and that of language intertwine, but the influence of big cities as legal centres accounts for some differences. The legal boundary naturally keeps some distance north of the linguistic one near the great southern city of Bordeaux. On the other hand, the influence of valley cities like Clermont-Ferrand helped the northern law to penetrate up the slopes of the Central Plateau, so that the legal boundary is here the more southerly. Lyons, a southern city in so many ways, pushed the legal boundary far to the north of the linguistic one in the Rhone-Saone basin. The boundary line of old-time (pre-1789) Customs Dues, the boundaries of the various Salt Dues (Gabelles), of the Governments in existence in 1789, of the general prevalence of the Gothic style in architecture, of the general prevalence of (north) steep-roofed and (south) flat-roofed houses respectively and so on, are all related to the above lines, and can be followed in some detail to work out interesting divergences. The net result of a study of these lines is to show that the French people, apart from the German borderland, consist of two cultural elements, a southern with Roman survivals in cities, language, &c., and a more northern one which is much less Roman. Between them is an intermediate area with mixed allegiance. The study of such a set of boundaries can be given a special value, for it shows us that the linear boundary, however necessary it may be under our outworn system of aggressive states in politics, is an artificiality when applied to the study of peoples. Boundaries are zones, not lines, zones of intermediacy which with better political organization might become interpreters rather than causes of conflict as they have been in the past.

In order to understand the German borderlands better it would be well to use similar methods in studying them, though here we have difficulties due to political prejudice. We have seen that in the Paris basin the rural Franks adopted in modified form the Romanized language of the Gauls, and with this came in the influence of the Roman Church, the heir of the imperial tradition, not only here, but also along the old frontier of the Rhine-Danube. Under this influence civic life grew afresh, and the towns of the Paris basin with their market-places dominated by the cathedral are a most notable feature. As these towns grew, the enlargement of the churches under the influence of the great wave of mediaeval enthusiasm led to the adoption of what is called the Ogival or Gothic style of building, in the Ile-de-France, and soon in the Paris basin generally, as a substitute for a Romanesque style which had been tending to change under pressure of Eastern (Byzantine-Lombardic) influences. With the details of architecture we are not primarily concerned, but the spread of the Gothic over the Paris basin, its failure to oust the Romanesque in the south, its penetration along the Route de S. Jacques (Pilgrim Road to Compostella) to Bordeaux, Bayonne, Burgos, and Léon, its later spread through the Flemish lowland and also across the hills to Metz, Strasbourg, and Basle, are a useful indication of the spread of Gallic feeling. In the Rhine region it spread with difficulty, and the Romanesque is highly characteristic here; beyond the Rhine it spread only with much modification.

The contrasts between the boundary of the fully French Gothic and the intertwined boundary of French speech, over against German, are like the contrasts above noted between south and north in France, and one might further study the growth of the historic kingdom of France, the lines of Customs Dues, Gabelles, and so on, as well as facts about the occurrence and relative importance of Protestantism in various parts. All would show that between the Paris basin and the Rhine is a zone of people with mixed allegiances, and that, however convenient language may be as a distinctive mark, it by no means gives a full idea of the complexity of the case.

Flanders is Low German in speech, but profoundly affected by France in many ways, as its architecture suggests; its zealous Catholicism is a marked feature. Wallony is Celto-Romano-Gallic in foundation, marvellously altered by modern industrialism. Luxembourg is indefinitely debatable, Lorraine mainly French, Alsace Alemannic (Old High German) in speech, but in other respects deeply affected by France.

The study of the zone behind the old Roman frontier of the Danube could be worked out on somewhat similar lines, but with less profit, owing to complications connected with the spread of Asiatic peoples and armies in subsequent times.

The rise of the various peoples of Romance speech behind the ancient frontier is again best studied without too much concentration on the modern states, though language and state do correlate fairly closely.

In the Iberian peninsula, Basque spoken on either side of the western end of the Pyrenees, but over a larger area on their southern side, gives its name to a people physically not very different from their Spanish neighbours, save that probably there are among them more survivors of ancient (Aurignacian) types, especially, it is said, of the Cro-Magnon, than among the majority of the Spaniards. Economically they have a certain amount of distinctness as mountain dwellers on the one hand, and as sailors on the other. Historically, too, they have a certain distinctness; their connexion with the Carthaginians and the Romans, with the kingdom of the Wisigoths and later with the Arab Emirates, was much less close and continuous than that of regions immediately to the south. The people of the little Pyrenean republic of Andorra speak not Basque but Catalan, and are one of a number of instances (San Marino, the four original cantons of Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Montenegro) of the apartness of little mountain groups; there was a number of such groups a few centuries ago.

The main part of the peninsula uses languages that have arisen from Latin, one on the west coast which is known in the two forms of Portuguese and Galician, one along the northern portion of the east coast which is called Catalan, and is more nearly related to the langue d'oc than to Spanish, which is the language of the great plateau of the peninsula, and has become also the language of Andalusia and of the non-Catalan east coast.

In the early part of the eighth century, Islam, at first represented by Berbers and later by Saracens, occupied roughly what had once been Carthaginian Spain, only temporarily holding the north-western quadrant which became a centre of Christian resistance; it had previously remained, for a time at least, apart from the Wisigothic kingdom. The hold of Islam on the east coast north of Tarragona was also only temporary, but as a result of this the Barcelona region during the formative period of language was more in touch with South France than with the north-western and Christian part of Spain, whence its language came to have the kinship with the langue d'oc already noted. In the centuries of Iberian weakness in face of Islam the west coastal plain diverged in speech from the upper Douro basin. As Islam weakened in Spain the west coast language spread southward, while the plateau language (Spanish) spread south especially via Toledo, the Guadiana region being largely waste land for the time. As Spanish, the language of the defenders of Christianity, became the replacer of Islamic languages, it, rather than Catalan, spread over the parts of the east coast south of the Ebro as they were recovered for Christianity. When the north-west was the basis of resistance to Islam, the age-long sanctity of Compostella came into prominence, and the great shrine of St. James (Santiago da Compostella) became world famous, and later on, a centre of pilgrimages. Thus in spite of the kinship of Galician with Portuguese, Galicia became part of the kingdom of Spain, though its seafarers had much in common with the coast-dwellers of northern Portugal. One should note also that, whereas in Portugal the coastal plain has the severe barrier of the plateau edge to divide it from Spain, in Galicia the lines of hill spurs grade down to the sunken coast-line without any marked change.