Influences of Geographic Environment - Ellen Churchill Semple (libby ebook reader .TXT) 📗
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It is always possible for such pass tribes to levy a toll or transit duty on merchandise, or in lieu of this to rob. Cæsar made war upon the Veragri and Seduni, who commanded the northern end of the Great St. Bernard Pass, in order to open up the road over the Alps, which was traversed by Roman merchants magno cum periculo magnisque cum portoriis.1246 The Salassi, who inhabited the upper Dora Baltea Valley and hence controlled the Little St. Bernard wagon road leading over to Lugdunum or Lyons, regularly plundered or taxed all who attempted to cross their mountains. On one occasion they levied a toll of a drachm per man on a Roman army, and on another plundered the treasure of Cæsar himself. After a protracted struggle they were crushed by Augustus, who founded Aosta and garrisoned it with a body of Praetorian cohorts to police the highway.1247 The Iapodes in the Julian Alps controlled the Mount Ocra or Peartree Pass, which carried the Roman wagon road from Aquileia over the mountains down to the valley of the Laibach and the Save. This strategic position they exploited to the utmost, till Augustus brought them to subjection as a preliminary to Roman expansion on the Danube.1248
Turning to another part of the world, we find that the Afghan tribes commanding the passes of the Suleiman Mountains have long been accustomed to impose transit duties upon caravans plying between Turkestan and India. The merchants have regularly organized themselves into bands of hundreds or even thousands to resist attack or exorbitant exactions. The Afghans have always enforced their right to collect tolls in the Khaibar and Kohat passes, and have thus blackmailed every Indian dynasty for centuries. In 1881 the British government came to terms with them by paying them an annual sum to keep these roads open.1249 Just to the south the Gomal Pass, which carries the main traffic road over the border mountains between the Punjab and the Afghan city of Ghazni, is held by the brigand tribe of Waziris, and is a dangerous gauntlet to be run by every armed caravan passing to and from India.1250 The Ossetes of the Caucasus, who occupy the Pass of Dariel and the approaching valleys, regularly preyed upon the traffic moving between Russia and Georgia, till the Muscovite government seized and policed the road.1251
The strategic importance of pass peoples tends early to assume a political aspect. The mountain state learns to exploit this one advantage of its ill-favored geographical location. The cradle of the old Savoyard power in the late Middle Ages lay in the Alpine lands between Lake Geneva and the western tributaries of the Po River. This location controlling several great mountain routes between France and Italy gave the Savoyard princes their first importance.1252 The autonomy of Switzerland can be traced not less to the citadel character of the country and the native independence of its people, than to their political exploitation of their strategic position. They profited, moreover, by the wish of their neighbors that such an important transit region between semi-tropical and temperate Europe should be held by a power too weak to obstruct its routes. The Amir of Kabul, backed by the rapacious Afridi tribes of the Suleiman Mountains, has been able to play off British India against Russia, and thereby to secure from both powers a degree of consideration not usually shown to inferior nations. Similarly in colonial America, the Iroquois of the Mohawk depression, who commanded the passway from the Hudson to the fur fields of the Northwest and also the avenue of attack upon the New York settlements for the French in Canada, were early conciliated by the English and used by them as allies, first in the French wars and afterward in the Revolution.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XV
1186.
For physical effects, see Angelo Mosso, Life of Man on the High Alps. Translated from the Italian. London, 1898.
1187.W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 463-465. New York, 1899.
1188.Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 3.
1189.W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 31-32. New York, 1899.
1190.Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 32-33. London, 1905.
1191.W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, Map p. 439. New York, 1899.
1192.Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. I, pp. 294-295. Oxford, 1907. Sir Thomas Holdich, India, relief map on p. 171 compared with linguistic map p. 201. London, 1905.
1193.Census of India for 1901, Risley and Gait, Vol. I, Part I, p. 2. Calcutta, 1903. B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40, 130, 131. London, 1896.
1194.Count Gleichen, The Egyptian Sudan, Vol. I, pp. 184, 185, 190. London, 1905.
1195.Gustav Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, Vol. III, pp. 178, 188-192. Leipzig, 1889.
1196.Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 6, 13. London, 1904.
1197.W. Deecke, Italy, p. 365. London, 1904.
1198.Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 295-296. London, 1905. G.W. Steevens, In India, pp. 202-204. New York, 1899.
1199.Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 138, 140, 145, 272-273. London, 1904.
1200.E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, p. 87. Boston, 1907.
1201.E.C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp. 184-185. Boston, 1903.
1202.Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp. 70-72, 88, 91. London, 1900.
1203.Francis H. Nichols, Through Hidden Shensi, pp. 170-171. New York, 1902.
1204.Otis T. Mason, Primitive Travel and Transportation, pp. 450-454, 474-475. Smithsonian Report, Washington, 1896.
1205.Col. George E. Church, The Acre Territory and the Caoutchouc Regions of Southwestern Amazonia, Geog. Jour. May, 1904. London.
1206.M. Huc, Journey through the Chinese Empire, pp. 39-40. New York, 1871.
1207.Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet, pp. 54-55. New York, 1905.
1208.Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India. Vol. II, p. 264. Translated from the French of 1676. London, 1889.
1209.E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 231, 274, 276, 286-289. London, 1897.
1210.Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, p. 544. Washington, 1905.
1211.Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, p. 134. London, 1903.
1212.M.S.W. Jefferson, Cæsar and the Central Plateau of France, Journal of Geog., Vol. VI, p. 113. New York, 1897.
1213.P. Vidal de la Blache, Tableau de la Géographie de la France, p. 276. Paris, 1903.
1214.E.A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, p. 450-453. London, 1882.
1215.William Morris Davis, Physical Geography, p. 183. Boston, 1899.
1216.P. Vidal de la Blache, Tableau de la Géographie de la France, p. 260, map p. 261. Paris, 1903.
1217.Indian Census for 1901, Risley and Gait, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 1, 2, Calcutta, 1905.
1218.Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. IV, p. 479. New York, 1902.
1219.Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 67, cartogram of Hindu Kush orography. London, 1905.
1220.Ibid., pp. 102-104.
1221.Ibid., p. 26.
1222.J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 27. London, 1903.
1223.B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40-45, 111, 116. London, 1896.
1224.H.R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 394-395. New York, 1902.
1225.Gottfried Merzbacher, Aus den Hochregionen des Kaukasus, pp. 73-78. Leipzig, 1901.
1226.W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, p. 438. New York, 1899.
1227.Ibid., Maps pp. 143, 147, text p. 148.
1228.E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 106-109. Boston, 1907.
1229.W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 249-253. New York, 1899.
1230.Ibid., p. 282 and cartogram, p. 284.
1231.Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 201. London, 1905. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. I, p. 295. Oxford, 1907.
1232.Census of India, 1901, Ethnographic Appendices, Vol. I, p. 60, by H. H. Risley, Calcutta, 1903. C. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, pp. 341-353. London, 1906.
1233.B. Lavisse, Histoire de France, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 294. Paris, 1903.
1234.George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 383, 384, 391-400, 407, 409. New York, 1897.
1235.Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, pp. 20, 21. London, 1904.
1236.Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 150, 194, 199. London, 1904.
1237.E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 12, 88, 157-159, 231. London, 1897.
1238.Ibid., pp. 173, 177.
1239.Sir Thomas Holdich, India, map p. 85, pp. 86, 89. London, 1905.
1240.Vambery, Reise in Mittelasien, pp. 371-375. Leipzig, 1973.
1241.C.A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, p. 136. London, 1906.
1242.O.P. Crosby, Tibet and Turkestan, pp. 112-116. New York, 1903.
1243.Elisée Reclus, Asia, Vol. II, pp. 50-51. C.A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, pp. 146-148, 152, 157, 300-303. London, 1906.
1244.Ibid., pp. 326-327.
1245.Ibid., pp. 4, 61-64, 310-311.
1246.Bella Gallico, Book III, chap. I.
1247.Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 1, 11.
1248.Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 10.
1249.Sir Thomas Holdich, The Indian Borderland, p. 48. London, 1909.
1250.H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 467. New York, 1902.
1251.Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of Russia, Vol. I, p. 431. London, 1812.
1252.E.A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, pp. 286-287. London, 1882.
1253.Heinrich von Treitschke, Politik, Vol. I, p. 218. Leipzig, 1897.
1254.For full discussion, see H.R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 79-81. New York, 1902.
There are zones of latitude and zones of altitude. To every mountain region both these pertain, resulting in a nice interplay of geographic factors. Every mountain slope from summit to piedmont is, from the anthropo-geographical standpoint, a complex phenomenon. When high enough, it may show a graded series of contrasted complementary locations, closely interdependent grouping of populations and employments, every degree of density from congestion to vacancy, every range of cultural development from industrialism to nomadism. The southern slope of the Monte Rosa Alps, from the glacier cap at 4500 meters to the banks of the Po River, yields within certain limits a zonal epitome of European life from Lapland to the Mediterranean. The long incline from the summit of Mount Everest (8840 meters) in the eastern Himalayas, through Darjeeling down to sea level at Calcutta, comprises in a few miles the climatic and cultural range of Asia from Arctic to Tropic.
For the state, a territory of varied relief is highly beneficial, because it
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