Influences of Geographic Environment by Ellen Churchill Semple (best romantic books to read .txt) ๐
The protection of a water frontier--Pile villages of ancienttimes--Modern pile dwellings--Their geographicdistribution--River-dwellers in old and popular lands--Man'sencroachment upon the sea by reclamation of land--The struggle with thewater--Mound villages in river flood-plains--Social and political gainby control of the water--A factor in early civilization of aridlands--The economy of the water--Fisheries--Factors in maritimeexpansion--Fisheries as nurseries of seamen--Anthropo-geographicimportance of navigation.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY OF RIVERS
Rivers as intermediaries between land and sea--Sea navigation mergesinto river navigation--Historical importance of seas and oceansinfluenced by their debouching streams--Lack of coast articulationssupplied by rivers--River highways as basis of commercialpreรซminence--Importance of rivers in large countries--Rivers as highwaysof expansion--Determinants of routes in arid or semi-aridlands--Increa
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W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 58-71, Map. New York, 1898.
54.Ibid., p. 566. D.G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 29-30. Philadelphia, 1901.
55.D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels, p. 607. New York, 1858.
56.Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, p. 83, New York, 1859.
57.P. Ehrenreich, Die Urbewohner Brasiliens, p. 32. Braunschweig, 1897.
58.T. Waitz, Anthropology, pp. 46-49. Edited by Collingwood, London, 1863.
59.Philippine Census, Vol. I, p. 552. Washington, 1903.
60.F. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 106. London, 1908.
61.Major Charles E. Woodruff, The Effect of Tropical Light on the White Man, New York, 1905, is a suggestive but not convincing discussion of the theory.
62.W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 74-77. New York, 1899.
63.Quoted in G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, p. 73. London and New York, 1901.
64.Ibid., pp. 63-69, 74-75.
65.T. Waitz, Anthropology, pp. 44-45. Edited by J.F. Collingwood, London, 1863.
66.W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 76. New York, 1899.
67.For able discussion, see Topinard, Anthropology, pp. 385-392. Tr. from French, London, 1894.
68.J. Johnson, Jurisprudence of the Isle of Man, pp. 44, 71. Edinburgh, 1811.
69.Charles F. Hall, Arctic Researches and Life among the Eskimo, p. 571. New York, 1866. Franz Boas, The Central Eskimo, Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 588-590. Washington, 1888.
70.Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 35. London, 1896-1898.
71.Roscher, National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues, p. 34, note 8. Stuttgart, 1888.
72.Elisรฉe Reclus, The Earth and Its Inhabitants, Asia, Vol. I, p. 171. New York, 1895.
73.Alfred Hettner, Die Geographie des Menschen, pp. 409-410 in Geographische Zeitschrift, Vol. XIII, No. 8. Leipzig, 1907.
74.S.B. Boulton, The Russian Empire, pp. 60-64. London, 1882.
75.E.C. Semple, The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains, The Geographical Journal, Vol. XVII, No. 6, pp. 588-623. London, 1901.
76.E.C. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, pp. 25-31. Boston, 1903. The Influence of Geographic Environment on the Lower St. Lawrence, Bull. Amer. Geog. Society, Vol. XXXVI, p. 449-466. New York, 1904.
77.A.R. Colquhoun, Africander Land, pp. 200-201. New York, 1906.
78.Ibid., pp. 140-145. James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 398. New York, 1897.
Every clan, tribe, state or nation includes two ideas, a people and its land, the first unthinkable without the other. History, sociology, ethnology touch only the inhabited areas of the earth. These areas gain their final significance because of the people who occupy them; their local conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical features and geographic situation are important primarily as factors in the development of actual or possible inhabitants. A land is fully comprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon its people, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of its activities. More than this, human activities are fully intelligible only in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated them in different parts of the world. The principles of the evolution of navigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population, can never reach their correct and final statement, unless the data for the conclusions are drawn from every part of the world, and each fact interpreted in the light of the local conditions whence it sprang. Therefore anthropology, sociology and history should be permeated by geography.
In history, the question of territory,โby which is meant mere area in contrast to specific geographic conditionsโhas constantly come to the front, because a state obviously involved land and boundaries, and assumed as its chief function the defence and extension of these. Therefore political geography developed early as an offshoot of history. Political science has often formulated its principles without regard to the geographic conditions of states, but as a matter of fact, the most fruitful political policies of nations have almost invariably had a geographic core. Witness the colonial policy of Holland, England, France and Portugal, the free-trade policy of England, the militantism of Germany, the whole complex question of European balance of power and the Bosporus, and the Monroe Doctrine of the United States. Dividing lines between political parties tend to follow approximately geographic lines of cleavage; and these make themselves apparent at recurring intervals of national upheaval, perhaps with, centuries between, like a submarine volcanic rift. In England the southeastern plain and the northwestern uplands have been repeatedly arrayed against each other, from the Roman conquest which embraced the lowlands up to about the 500-foot contour line,79 through the War of the Roses and the Civil War,80 to the struggle for the repeal of the Corn Laws and the great Reform Bill of 1832.81 Though the boundary lines have been only roughly the same and each district has contained opponents of the dominant local party, nevertheless the geographic core has been plain enough.
The land is a more conspicuous factor in the history of states than in the history of society, but not more necessary and potent. Wars, which constitute so large a part of political history, have usually aimed more or less directly at acquisition or retention of territory; they have made every petty quarrel the pretext for mulcting the weaker nation of part of its land. Political maps are therefore subject to sudden and radical alterations, as when France's name was wiped off the North American continent in 1763, or when recently Spain's sovereignty in the Western Hemisphere was obliterated. But the race stocks, languages, customs, and institutions of both France and Spain remained after the flags had departed. The reason is that society is far more deeply rooted in the land than is a state, does not expand or contract its area so readily. Society is always, in a sense, adscripta glebae; an expanding state which incorporates a new piece of territory inevitably incorporates its inhabitants, unless it exterminates or expels them. Yet because racial and social geography changes slowly, quietly and imperceptibly, like all those fundamental processes which we call growth, it is not so easy and obvious a task to formulate a natural law for the territorial relations of the various hunter, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial types of society as for those of the growing state.
Most systems of sociology treat man as if he were in some way detached from the earth's surface; they ignore the land basis of society. The anthropo-geographer recognizes the various social forces, economic and psychologic, which sociologists regard as the cement of societies; but he has something to add. He sees in the land occupied by a primitive tribe or a highly organized state the underlying material bond holding society together, the ultimate basis of their fundamental social activities, which are therefore derivatives from the land. He sees the common territory exercising an integrating force,โweak in primitive communities where the group has established only a few slight and temporary relations with its soil, so that this low social complex breaks up readily like its organic counterpart, the low animal organism found in an amoeba; he sees it growing stronger with every advance in civilization involving more complex relations to the land,โwith settled habitations, with increased density of population, with a discriminating and highly differentiated use of the soil, with the exploitation of mineral resources, and finally with that far-reaching exchange of commodities and ideas which means the establishment of varied extra-territorial relations. Finally, the modern society or state has grown into every foot of its own soil, exploited its every geographic advantage, utilized its geographic location to enrich itself by international trade, and when possible, to absorb outlying territories by means of colonies. The broader this geographic base, the richer, more varied its resources, and the more favorable its climate to their exploitation, the more numerous and complex are the connections which the members of a social group can establish with it, and through it with each other; or in other words, the greater may be its ultimate historical significance. The polar regions and the subtropical deserts, on the other hand, permit man to form only few and intermittent relations with any one spot, restrict economic methods to the lower stages of development, produce only the small, weak, loosely organized horde, which never evolves into a state so long as it remains in that retarding environment.
Man in his larger activities, as opposed to his mere physiological or psychological processes, cannot be studied apart from the land which he inhabits. Whether we consider him singly or in a groupโfamily, clan, tribe or stateโwe must always consider him or his group in relation to a piece of land. The ancient Irish sept, Highland clan, Russian mir, Cherokee hill-town, Bedouin tribe, and the ancient Helvetian canton, like the political state of history, have meant always a group of people and a bit of land. The first presupposes the second. In all cases the form and size of the social group, the nature of its activities, the trend and limit of its development will be strongly influenced by the size and nature of its habitat. The land basis is always present, in spite of Morgan's artificial distinction between a theoretically landless societas, held together only by the bond of common blood, and the political civitas based upon land.82 Though primitive society found its conscious bond in common blood, nevertheless the land bond was always there, and it gradually asserted its fundamental character with the evolution of society.
The savage and barbarous groups which in Morgan's classification would fall under the head of societas have nevertheless a clear conception of their ownership of the tribal lands which they use in common. This idea is probably of very primitive origin, arising from the association of a group with its habitat, whose food supply they regard as a monopoly.83 This is true even of migratory hunting tribes. They claim a certain area whose boundaries, however, are often ill-defined and subject to fluctuations, because the lands are not held by permanent occupancy and cultivation. An exceptional case is that of the Shoshone Indians, inhabiting the barren Utah basin and the upper valleys of the Snake and Salmon Rivers, who are accredited with no sense of ownership of the soil. In their natural state they roved about in small, totally unorganized bands or single families, and changed their locations so widely, that they seemed to lay no claim to any particular portion. The hopeless sterility of the region and its poverty of game kept its destitute inhabitants constantly on the move to gather in the meager food supply, and often restricted the social group to the family.84 Here the bond between land and tribe, and hence between the members of the tribe, was the weakest possible.
The usual type of tribal ownership was presented by the Comanches, nomadic horse Indians who occupied the grassy plains of northern Texas. They held their territory and the game upon it as the common property of the tribe, and jealously guarded the integrity of their domain.85 The chief Algonquin tribes, who occupied the territory between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes, had each its separate domain, within which it shifted its villages every few years; but its size depended upon the power of the tribe to repel encroachment upon its
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