Influences of Geographic Environment, Ellen Churchill Semple [classic novels for teens .txt] 📗
- Author: Ellen Churchill Semple
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Owing to the power of navigation to bridge the intervening spaces of water and hence to emphasize the accessibility rather than the isolation of these outlying fragments of land, we often find islands facing two or three ways, as it were, tenanted on different sides by different races, and this regardless of the width of the intervening seas, where the remote neighbors excel in nautical skill. Formosa is divided between its wild Malay aborigines, found on the eastern, mountainous side of the island, and Chinese settlers who cultivate the wide alluvial plain on the western side.855 Fukien Strait, though only eighty miles wide, sufficed to bar Formosa to the land-loving northern Chinese till 1644, when the island became an asylum for refugees from the Manchu invaders; but long before, the wider stretches of sea to the south and north were mere passways for the sea-faring Malays, who were the first to people the island, and the Japanese who planted considerable colonies on its northern coasts at the beginning of the fifteenth century. [See map page 103.]
In a similar way Madagascar is divided between the Malayan Hovas, who occupy the eastern and central part of the island, and the African Sakalavas who border the western coast. [See map page 105.] This distribution of the ethnic elements corresponds to that of the insect life, which is more African on the western side and more Indo-Malayan on the eastern.856 Though the population shows every physical type between Negro and Malayan, and ethnic diversity still predominates over ethnic unity in this vast island, nevertheless the close intercourse of an island habitat has even in Madagascar produced unification of language. Malayan speech of an ancient form prevails everywhere, and though diversified into dialects, is everywhere so much alike that all Malagasies can manage to understand one another.857 The first inhabitants were probably African; but the wide Mozambique Current (230 miles), with its strong southward flow, was a serious barrier to fresh accessions from the mainland, especially as the nautical development of the African tribes was always low. Meanwhile, however, successive relays of sea-bred Malay-Polynesians crossed the broad stretch of the Indian Ocean, occupied the island, and finally predominated over the original Negro stock.858 Then in historic times came Arabs, Swahilis, and East Indians to infuse an Asiatic element into the population of the coasts, while Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French set up short-lived colonies on its shores. But despite this intermittent foreign immigration, the fundamental isolation of Madagascar, combined with its large area, enabled it to go its own slow historical gait, with a minimum of interference from outside, till France in 1895 began to assume control of the island.
Small thalassic islands, at an early date in their history, lose their ethnic unity and present a highly mixed population. The reasons for this are two. The early maritime development characterizing enclosed seas covers them with a network of marine routes, on which such islands serve as way stations and mid-sea markets for the surrounding shores. Sailors and traders, colonists and conquerors flock to them from every side. Such a nodal location on commercial routes insures to islands a cosmopolitanism of race, as opposed to the ethnic differentiation and unity which follows an outlying or oceanic situation. Here the factor of many-sided accessibility predominates over isolation.
The prevailing small area of such thalassic islands, moreover, involves a population so small that it is highly susceptible to the effects of intercrossing. Too restricted to absorb the constant influx of foreign elements, the inhabitants tend to become a highly mixed, polyglot breed. This they continue to be by the constant addition of foreign strains, so long as the islands remain foci of trade or strategic points for the control of the marine highways. Diomede Island in Bering Strait is the great market place of the polar tribes. Here Siberian Chukches and Alaskan Eskimos make their exchanges. The Eskimo of St. Lawrence Island in Bering Sea, from long intercourse, have adopted certain articles of dress, the boats and part of the vocabulary of the Chukches.859 Kilwauru, located on a sand-bank at the eastern end of Ceram, on the border between Malayan and Papuan island districts, is the metropolis of native traders in the Far East. Here gather the praus of the sea-faring Bugis bringing manufactured goods from Singapore, and boats laden with the natural products of New Guinea.860 The smaller these island marts and the wider their circle of trade, the more mixed is their population. Thursday Isle, an English coaling-station in Torres Strait, is a port of call for all steamers bound from Europe or China for east Australian ports, besides being a center of a big local trade in pearl shell and tripang. Hence its population of 526 souls comprises 270 Europeans of various nationalities, including British, Germans, Scandinavians, Danes, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Australians of European origin, besides 256 South Sea Islanders, Papuans, Africans, Philippines, Chinese and other Asiatics.861
Antiquity shows the same thing on a smaller scale, which grew, however, with the expansion of the circle of commerce. Ancient Aegina in the Saronic Gulf received inhabitants from Crete, Argos, Epidaurus in eastern Argolis and Athens; it became a central maritime market and its people sea-traders, whose goods of a certain small kind became known as "Aegina wares."862 Delos at the crossroads of the Aegean was the center of longer radii. It became the inn for travelers and merchants sailing from Asia and Egypt to Italy and Greece, and hence drew to itself the trade and people of the whole Mediterranean basin.863 The northwestern Indian Ocean had a similar emporium in the ancient Dioscoridis, (Sokotra) which focused on itself the trade between Arabia and eastern Africa.864
Ceylon's location made it in ancient and medieval times the common meeting place for Arab traders from the west and Chinese merchants from the east; it thus became the Sicily of the semi-enclosed North Indian Ocean. To-day its capital Colombo is "the Clapham Junction of the Eastern Seas," where passengers change steamers for China, India and Australia; a port of call for vessels passing from the Straits of Malacca to the Persian Gulf or Mediterranean. Hence Ceylon's solid nucleus of Singhalese and Tamil population, protected against absorption by the large area of the island (25,365 square miles) is interspersed in the coastal districts with Arabs, Portuguese, Eurasians dating from the old Portuguese occupation, and some ten thousand Europeans.865 The island of Gotland, located at the crossroads of the Baltic, was early adopted by the Hanseatic merchants as their maritime base for the exploitation of Swedish, Finnish, and Russian trade. Here were "peoples of divers tongues," so the old chronicles say, while the archeological finds of Byzantine, Cufic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and German coins testify to the wide circle of trade whose radii focused at this nodal point of the Baltic.866
The great importance of such islands has been due solely to their location. Their size and resources are negligible quantities, but their natural position as way stations lent them preeminence so long as navigation held to short "laps," and was restricted to enclosed seas. In the wide expanse of the open ocean, similar sparsely scattered isles, like Ascension, St. Helena, the Canaries and Hawaii, assumed importance in proportion to their scarcity. Though never the centers of rife intercourse like Delos and Gotland, those lying conspicuously in the track of commerce have succeeded in drawing to themselves the typical polyglot nodal population. Mauritius, located at the southwestern entrance of the Indian Ocean about equally distant from Aden, Ceylon, Bombay, Singapore and West Australia, and possessing the best harbor within many hundred miles, has been held successively by Dutch, French and English, and to-day has a dense population of French, English and Hindus.867 A situation at the northeast entrance to the Caribbean Sea, keystone of the vast arch formed by the Greater and Lesser Antilles, made the island of St. Thomas a natural distributing point for this whole basin. Facing that much traveled Virgin Passage, and forming the first objective of vessels bound from Europe to Panama, it became a great ship rendezvous, and assumed strategic and commercial importance from early times. We find the same political owners here as in Mauritius and in the same order—Dutch, French and English, though in 1671 the island was occupied by the Danes, then from 1807 to 1815 by the English again, and finally secured by the Danes.868 The history of the Falkland Islands is a significant reflection of their location on the south oceanic trade route, where they command the entrance to the Magellan Straits and the passage round the Horn, Here on the outskirts of the world, where they form the only break in the wide blank surface of the South Atlantic, they have been coveted and held in turn by the chief European powers having colonies in the Orient,—by France, Spain, England, Spain again, England again, by Argentine in 1820, and finally by England since 1833. Their possession was of especial advantage to Great Britain, which had no other base in this part of the world intermediate between England and New Zealand.
Islands located in enclosed seas display the transitional character of border districts. They are outposts of the surrounding shores, and become therefore the first objective of every expanding movement, whether commercial or political, setting out from the adjacent coasts. Such islands are swept by successive waves of conquest or colonization, and they carry in their people and language evidences of the wrack left behind on their shores. This has been the history of Aegina, Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Malta, Corfu, Sicily and Sardinia. That of Cyprus is typical. It was the first island base for the ancient Tyrian fleets, and had its Phoenician settlements in 1045 B. C. From that time it was one of the many prizes in the Mediterranean grab-bag for the surrounding nations. After the decline of Tyre, it was occupied by Greeks, then passed in turn to Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Saracens, Byzantines, and in 1191 was seized by the Crusaders. Later it fell to Egypt again; but in 1373 was taken by Genoa, in 1463 by Venice, in 1571 by the Turks, and finally in 1878 was consigned to England.869 All these successive occupants have left their mark upon its people, speech, culture and architecture. In the same way Sicily, located at the waist of the Mediterranean, has received the imprint of Greeks, Carthagenians, Romans, Saracens, Normans, Spaniards and Italians.870 Its architectural remains bear the stamp of these successive occupants in every degree of purity and blending. The Sicilians of to-day are a mixture of all these intrusive stocks and speak a form of Italian corrupted by the infusion of Arabic words.871 In 1071 when the Normans laid siege to Palermo, five languages were spoken on the island,—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and vulgar Sicilian, evidence enough that it was the meeting ground of the nations of Europe, Asia and North Africa.872 Polyglot Malta to-day tells the same story of successive conquests, the same shuttlecock history.873 Almost every language of Europe is spoken here; but the native Maltese speech is a corrupt form of Arabic mixed with modern Italian and ancient Phoenician words.874 The whole island
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