The 316,250,000 square miles of the earth’s surface is the first area with which history has to do. Within it all other surface dimensions are included; it is the standard for measurement of all other areas, and also comprehends the absolute limits of all bodily life. This area is fixed and immutable so far as the history of mankind is related to it, although in respect to the history of the world it is not to be looked upon as having been unalterable in the past, or as being likely to remain unchanged in the future.
316,250,000 Miles of History
The earth’s surface may be divided into three unlike constituent parts—84,250,000 square miles of land, 220,000,000 square miles of water, and 13,750,000 square miles of ice-covered, and for the greater part unexplored, land and sea in the Northern and Southern Polar regions. The land is the natural home of man, and all his historical movements begin and end upon it. The size of states is computed according to the amount of land which they include; their growth has derived its nourishment from the 84,250,000 square miles of earth as from a widespread fundamental element. The sea is not to be looked upon as an empty space between the divisions of land, merely separating them one from another, for the 220,000,000 square miles of water are also of historical importance, and the area of every ocean and of every portion of an ocean has its historical significance. History has extended itself over the sea, from island to island, from coast to coast, at first crossing narrow bodies of water, later broad oceans; and states whose foundations arose from connections by sea remain dependent on the sea. The Mediterranean held together the different parts of the Roman Empire just as the oceans unite the Colonies of the British Empire.
The variations of the earth’s form from that of a perfect oblate spheroid are so small that they may be entirely disregarded from the point of view of history. All portions of the earth’s surface may be looked upon as of equal curvature; the pyriform swelling which Columbus believed to be a peculiarity of the tropic zones in the New World was merely an optical illusion. Thus all portions are practically similar, and uniformity obtains over the entire earth to such an extent that there is room left only for minor inequalities in configuration. To these belong the differences in level between lands and seas, highlands and lowlands, mountains and valleys. Such variations amount to very little when compared with the earth as a whole; for the height of the tallest of the Himalayas added to the earth’s radius would increase its length by about 1⁄700 only; and the same may be said of the greatest depressions beneath the level of the sea—inequalities that cannot be represented on an ordinary globe. Their great historical significance is due chiefly to the fact that the oceans and seas occupy the depressions, from which the greatest elevations emerge as vast islands.
Irregular Surface of the Earth
The remaining irregularities of the earth’s surface are not sufficient to produce any permanent variations in the diffusion of races or of states. Their influence is merely negative; they may only hinder or divert the course of man in his wanderings. Even the Himalayas have been crossed—by the Aryans in the west, and by the Tibetans in the east; and British India has extended its boundaries far beyond them to the Pamirs. The historian is concerned with but two of the variable qualities of the land—differences in level and differences in contour. Variations in constitution, development, elementary constituents, and the perpetual phenomena of transformation and dissolution which present a thousand problems to the geographer, scarcely exist for the historian. Nor are those great inequalities, the depressions in which the seas rest, of any interest to him. It is indifferent whether the greatest of such depressions be covered by five miles of water, or, as we now know, by almost six miles. The fact that the Mediterranean reaches its greatest depth in the eastern part of the Ionian Sea has nothing whatever to do with the history of Greece.
Depths of The Sea
To be sure, there is a general connection between the depth of the Mediterranean, shut up within the Straits of Gibraltar, and the climate of the neighbouring regions, which has a direct influence on the inhabitants of Mediterranean countries; but it is a very distant connection, and it is only mentioned here in order to remind the reader that there is not a single phenomenon in Nature that is not brought home to mankind at last. Still, as a rule, history is concerned with the depths of the sea only in so far as they are the resting-places for submarine telegraph cables; and this is a fact of very recent times. It may be said that the formation of the earth’s crust occurred at a period too
remote to have had any influence on the history of man, and that therefore all questions concerning it should be left to geology. The first statement may be admitted, but the latter does not follow by any means; for if the whole Mediterranean region from the Caucasus to the Atlas Mountains, and from the Orontes to the Danube, is a region of uniform conformation, it is purely by reason of a uniformity in development. In the same manner there is an extensive region of uniform conformation to the north, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Sudetic Mountains in Austria.
Nature Divides and Unites