THE PEOPLE OF THE MOUNTAINS: SHOWING THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON CHARACTER
This picture, by Alexander Johnston, illustrates the keynote of Professor Ratzel’s chapters on the influence of the earth on character. Johnston represents a marriage among the Scottish Covenanters, who, persecuted under the Stuarts, took to the moss-hags and the hills, of whose stern ruggedness their own stern independence was the outcome and counterpart.
LARGER IMAGE
Earth and the Movements of Peoples
All conditions and relations of peoples and states that may be geographically described, delineated, surveyed, and, for the greater part, even measured, can be traced back to movements—movements that are peculiar to all forms of life, and of which the origin is growth and development. However various these movements may be in other respects, they are always connected with the soil, and thus must be dependent upon the extent, situation, and conformation of the ground upon which they take place. Therefore, in every organic movement we may perceive the activity of the internal motive forces which are peculiar to life, and the influences of the ground to which the life is attached. In the movements of peoples, the internal forces are the organic powers of motion common to all creatures, and the spiritual impulses of the intellect and will of man.
In many a view of history these forces alone appear; but it must not be forgotten that they are conditioned by the fact that they cannot be active beyond the general limits of life, and they cannot disengage themselves from the soil to which life is bound. In order to understand historical movements it is first necessary to consider their purely mechanical side, which is shown clearly enough by an inquiry into the nature of the earth’s surface. Neglect of this occasions a delay in the understanding of the true character of such movements. Men merely spoke of geography, and treated history as if it were an atmospheric phenomenon.
National Emigrations in History
Nations are movable bodies whose units are held together by a common origin, language, customs, locality, and often necessity for defence—the strongest tie of all. A people expands in one direction and contracts in another; in case of two adjacent nations, a movement in the one betokens a movement in the other. Active movements are responded to by passive, and vice versa. Every movement in an area filled with life consists in a displacement of individuals. There are also currents and counter-currents: when slavery was abolished in the Southern States of America, an emigration of white men from the South was followed by an influx of ex-slaves from the North, thus causing an increase in the black majority of the South.
Why Nations Must Seek New Homes
Such external movements of peoples assume most varied forms. History takes a too narrow view in considering only the migrations of nations, looking upon them as great and rare events, historical storms as it were, exceptional in the monotonous quiet of the life of man. This conception of historical movements is very similar to the discarded cataclysmic theory in geology. In the history of nations, as in the history of the earth, a great effect does not always involve a presupposition of its being the immediate result of a mighty cause. The constant action of small forces that finally results in a large aggregate of effect must be taken into account in history as well as in geology. Every external movement is preceded by internal disturbance: a nation must grow from within in order to spread abroad. The increase of Arabs in Oman led to an emigration to East Africa along highways of traffic known to times of old. Merchants, craftsmen, adventurers, and slaves left their native land and drew together in Zanzibar, Pemba, and on the mainland. The process was repeated from the coast to the interior, and as a result of the aggregate labour of individuals as merchants, colonists, and missionaries, Arabian states grew up in the central regions of Africa. Instances of the occupation of vacant territories are of the greatest rarity in history as we are acquainted with it. The best example known to us is the settlement of Iceland by the Northmen. The rule is, a forcing in of the immigrating nation between other races already in possession; the opposition of the latter often compels the former to divide up into small groups, which then insinuate themselves peacefully among the people already established in the land.