Influences of Geographic Environment - Ellen Churchill Semple (libby ebook reader .TXT) 📗
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Turning to Europe we find watch and clock making in the Black Forest and the Jura, wood-carving in the Swiss and Norwegian mountains, bobbin lace in the Erz range and in Alpine Appenzell, and the far more beautiful Italian product of the rugged Abruzzi and the Frioulian Alps. The Slovaks of highland Hungary are expert in wire-drawing,1325 and the peasant of the central Apennines makes from the gut of his goats the finest violin strings in the world, the so-called Roman strings.1326 The low Thuringian and Franconian Forests, which harbor denser populations, have by a minute subdivision of labor turned their local resources to the making of dolls, which they supply to the markets of the world. Here too the manufacture of glass articles, porcelains, majolica and terra-cotta flourishes.1327 Most of these mountain industries merely supplement the scant agricultural resources; they represent the efforts of industrious but hard pressed people to eke out their meager subsistence.
The application of steam to industry has converted mountain regions of abundant mineral wealth into centers of production for the markets of the world. But this is the history of only the last century, and of only favored mountain regions. The utilization of waterpower for electricity in factories is transforming the piedmont belts of the Alps and Apennines; but life in the interior of these ranges remains unaltered by the denser population at their base, except for the increased demand for the butter, milk and cheese of the highland pastures. For the world at large, therefore, the obvious and persistent fact of mountain economy is a scanty food supply secured by even the most intelligent and untiring labor, and a fixed tendency to overpopulation. The simplest remedy for this evil is emigration, a fact which Malthus observed.1328 Hence emigration is an almost universal phenomenon in highland regions. Sometimes it is only seasonal. It takes place in the fall after the field work is over, and is due to the paucity of industries possible in the mountains during the winter. It seems to be a recurrence of that nomadic note in the motif of mountain life—that migration in summer upward to the borders of the snow, in winter downward to the sun-warmed plains. In autumn the Swiss descend from the Jura and Alps in great numbers to cities, seeking positions as servants or pastry-cooks. The Auvergnats leave their home by the thousand in the fall, when snow covers the mountains, to work in the cities as hewers of stone and drawers of water, then return in summer to resume their tasks in field and pasture, bringing back sums of money which noticeably enrich the home districts.1329
This seasonal emigration often assumes the form of peddling, in order to dispose of small home-made wares. From the Basilicata and Modena Apennines the young men follow the pedler's trade, but the Basilicata village of Viggiano furnishes Italy with many wandering musicians.1330 The Kabyles of the Atlas Mountains go out in parties of two or three in the fall, and hawk every kind of goods, bringing back from their journey quantities of wool for home weaving.1331 The emigration may last for several years, but finally the love of home generally calls the mountaineer back to his rugged hills. The Galicians of the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain leave their poor country for a time for the richer provinces of Portugal and Spain, where they become porters, water-carriers and scavengers, and are known as boorish, but industrious and honest. The women from the neighboring mountain province of Asturias are the professional wet-nurses of Spain. They are to be seen in every aristocratic household of Madrid, but return to the mountains with their savings when their period of service ends.1332 In mountainous Basutoland, the Kaffir Switzerland of South Africa, arable land and pastures are utilized as completely as local methods of husbandry permit; and yet the native Kaffirs go in large numbers—28,000 out of a total population of 220,000 in 1895—to work in the mines of Kimberley and the Witwatersrand. They also return in time with their savings.1333 Similarly the Battaks of the rugged mountain-rimmed plateau of western Sumatra emigrate in increasing numbers to the lowlands, and hire themselves out for a term of years on the Dutch plantations.1334
Another interesting and once rather widespread phase of this temporary emigration appears in the mercenary troops formerly drawn from mountain regions. After the Burgundian wars of the fifteenth century, the Swiss became the mercenaries of Europe, and in 1503 were first employed as papal life-guards. They served the kings of France from Louis XL till the tragedy of the Tuileries in 1792; and in that country and elsewhere they made the name "Switzer" a synonym for guard or attendant,1335 till in 1848 the mercenary system was abolished. The pressure of population at home and the military spirit of the Scotch Highlanders once led the young Gaels to seek their fortunes in military service abroad, as in the army of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.1336 Gurkhas from Himalayan Nepal, an independent state, are employed in considerable numbers in the Indian army to-day, and constitute one of the most reliable divisions of the native troops. In January, 1901, there were 12,797 Gurkhas drawing pay from the Indian government as soldiers, besides 6000 more employed as military police, porters, and in other capacities.1337 Similarly ancient Arcadia, the mountain core of Peloponnesus, was a constant hive of mercenaries.
Often, however, permanent emigration is the result, robbing the mountain population of its most enterprising element, Piedmontese, Bergamese, and Frioulians from the Italian Alps leave their country in large numbers. Many of them find work in Marseilles and other towns of southern France, infusing an Italian strain into the population there and making serious competition for the local French. A proverb says there is no country in the world without sparrows and Bergamese.1338 Geneva, once the citadel of Calvinism, is to-day a Catholic town, owing to the influx of Catholic laborers from Alpine Savoy. The overflow of the redundant population of this mountain province has given the Swiss canton a character diametrically opposed to its traditions.1339 The Chinese provinces of Chili and Manchuria have been largely populated by immigrants from the barren mountain peninsula of Shantung; Manchuria has thereby been converted from an alien into a native district.1340
Emigration on so large a scale exercises far reaching economic and historical influences. Norse colonization contributed interesting chapters to the history of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. Norwegians who have flocked to America have made a deep impress upon our Northwestern States. Switzerland in 1902 and 1903 gave as 9500 of its subjects, a valuable contribution. Scotchmen of Highland birth are scattered over the whole world, carrying with them everywhere their sturdy qualities of character. Even the stay-at-home French lose emigrants from their mountain districts. The people of the Basses-Alps go to Mexico, and the Basques from the French Pyrenees seek Argentine.1341 The honesty, industry, and frugality of these mountain emigrants make them desirable elements in any colonial population, and insure their success when they seek their fortunes in the uncrowded western world.
The alternative to overpopulation and its remedy emigration is found in preventive checks to increase. These sometimes take the form of restricted or late marriages, as Malthus found to be the case in Norway and Switzerland in 1799,1342 before the introduction of steam or electric motive power had stimulated the industries of these countries or facilitated emigration thence. The same end is achieved by the widespread religious celibacy which sometimes characterizes mountain communities. In the barren Auvergne Plateau of France, the number of younger sons who become priests is extraordinary. Many daughters become nuns. Celibacy, seconded by extensive emigration, clears the field for the eldest son and the system of primogeniture which the poverty of this rugged highland has established as a fixed institution in the Auvergne.1343 A careful statistical investigation of the geographical origins of the Catholic priesthood in Europe might throw interesting light on the influences of environment. The harsh conditions of mountain life make the monastery a line of least resistance, while geographical isolation nourishes the religions nature and benumbs the intellectual activities.
It is in the corrugated highland of Tibet, chilled to barrenness by an elevation of 12,000 feet or more (4000 meters), sterile and treeless from aridity, carved by cañon-cutting streams into deep gorges offering a modicum of arable soil for irrigation, that monasticism has developed into an effective system to keep down population. Buddhism, with its convents and lamaseries, naturally recommended itself to a country where asceticism was obviously expedient. The world shows nowhere else so large a celibate class. In Tibet, monks are estimated at 175,000 to 500,000 in a total population of three millions. Archibald Little estimates their number at one-third of the total male population.1344 Derge, which is the most productive district both agriculturally and industrially of eastern Tibet and is also most densely inhabited, counts at least 10,000 lamas in a total population of about 42,000.1345 Not less than one-sixth of the inhabitants of Ladak are in religious houses as monks and nuns.1346 Families in Tibet are small, yet each devotes one or more children to convent or monastic life.1347 In western Tibet, especially about Taklakot in the Himalayan border, one boy in every family is invariably devoted to the priesthood, and one or more daughters must become nuns. But the nun generally resides
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