I. GEOGRAPHY, TERMINOLOGY AND CHRONOLOGY

The scene of man’s first emergence as a food-producer as opposed to the countless millennia of his existence as a foodgatherer during the Palaeolithic period, an event frequently alluded to as the ‘neolithic revolution’, was that part of southwest Asia which is usually described as the Near East, or in the terminology of some the Near and Middle East.

Even before the last glaciers had retreated from northern Europe, man in south-west Asia had embarked on a momentous course which was to lead slowly but inexorably to the development of civilization, a higher and more efficient form of living than had been practised during the long aeons of the Palaeolithic period. These changes towards the domestication of animals and plants, the conservation and eventually the production of food no doubt came slowly. They were not accomplished overnight, or due to a sudden discovery or the arrival of new ethnic elements bringing a higher culture from ‘elsewhere’. On the contrary, they were the culmination of a process that had started long ago, we assume, with the appearance of modern man, Homo sapiens, at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic. Improved technical skills in the production of tools and weapons with which to catch and kill his quarry, the manufacture of clothing, nets and matting, the construction of tents and huts, a greater cohesion of hunting groups and the first rise of semipermanent hunting-camps, all marked important steps forward, well in advance of his predecessor, Neanderthal man. In no single field were the changes more marked than in the field of religion; slowly art developed, first sculpture in the form of statuettes of a goddess of fecundity, next the arts of engraving and painting, to culminate in the unsurpassed cave paintings of such sites as Lascaux, Altamira, Font de Gaume, Niaux, Pech Merle and a host of others. Upper Palaeolithic man in the later stages of the Ice Age is emerging as an individual, deeply religious, a craftsman and artist of no mean order, and a most successful hunter, but bound by his environment and utterly dependent on the food supplies available.

I. INTRODUCTION

PERIODS AND CHRONOLOGY

The Predynastic Period is the name given to the time before the first historical dynasty of Egypt as far back as we can trace an unbroken line of civilizations. It is separated from the last stages of the Palaeolithic Period by a hiatus, a period during which no permanent occupation can be traced either in the Nile Valley or in the hills that bound it. It develops into the brilliant period of the archaic dynasties, which mark its end and which in their turn were the foundation of the Pyramid Age.

The length of time needed for this development must have been considerable, but we cannot yet measure it in terms of years before the beginning of the Christian Era. When the carbon-14 method of dating, based on the measurement of the remaining radioactivity of the radioactive isotope of carbon (carbon-14) has passed the experimental stage, some of our difficulties may disappear.

To overcome the dating difficulties Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie devised a system which was intended to establish the historical sequence of the predynastic periods, not in absolute dates but in relation to each other. WThen he first evolved it in 1901 he had excavated the large predynastic cemeteries of Naqāda and El-Ballās and those which he published under the title of Diospolis Parva. His system was an attempt to bring some order into the material from the thousands of tombs which he had excavated, by establishing ‘relative ages’ or ‘sequence dates’ (S.D.). This system was based on the comparison of groups of pottery found in a series of graves containing certain characteristic pots. Petrie assigned fifty stages to the whole Predynastic Period, as it was then known, and numbered them S.D. 30-80, leaving S.D. 1-29 for earlier cultures should they be discovered. These stages were further grouped into two main divisions; an earlier division from S.D. 30—37; and a later from S.D. 38—80, eventually altered to S.D. 76 when Petrie came to the conclusion that the Dynastic Period began at S.D. 76. Even this lower date has had to be revised, and it is now considered that the beginning of the First Dynasty corresponds with S.D. 63.

I. INTRODUCTION

The perspective of history begins with the origin of the earth, and develops through geological time until the stage is ultimately set for human evolution. The age of the earth, so long a matter of grave controversy, is now fairly reliably known as the result of the development of delicate methods of measurement that make use of the radioactive properties of certain naturally occurring elements, and is of the order of 4,500 million years. For much of this period there was apparently no life upon the earth, and certainly any life that existed left no traces that have yet been recognized as such. Yet year by year records of primitive life are announced from older and older rocks, until now there are claims going back more than 2,000 million years. Nevertheless, complex life forms that have lef£ abundant traces as fossils are not found in rocks older than those of the Cambrian system, which may be accepted as having been laid down about 600 million years ago. This dividing line between Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian rocks, between those with abundant fossil remains and those to all intents and purposes without any is clearly of paramount importance to the palaeontologist studying the forms of organic evolution, and to the stratigraphical geologist who depends so importantly upon his labours. The greater part of all geological writing is thus concerned with Cambrian and Post-Cambrian time, but the nongeologist must be careful to avoid the inference from this that little of importance occurred before the Cambrian. More than four-fifths of the history of our earth was over before the fossil record opens.

From that moment, however, it is clear that the evolution of life was both multifarious and rapid. The remains preserved in the Lower Palaeozoic systems (Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian) are all of marine organisms; land plants and land animals did not appear until the Upper Palaeozoic, in the Devonian and Carboniferous, respectively. The giant reptiles flourished in the era represented by the Mesozoic systems (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous). Mammals made a slow start with Triassic or even Permian origins, and did not rise to dominance until Tertiary ( = Cainozoic) times. The genus Homo, one of the latest additions to the mammalian fauna, appeared less than two million years ago, and Homo sapiens, our own species, has been present on earth in only the last fiftieth of that period.

I. LANGUAGE AND HISTORY

While it is difficult to establish a close relationship between language form and the racial or cultural characteristics of its speakers, an intimate relationship does exist between culture and language content. The study of language content needs no special justification, since the written records of antiquity are our most valuable source of information concerning the peoples and civilizations which form the object of historical investigation. But language as a formal structure, like the tools and institutions of a society, represents a kind of transmitted organism and as such falls into the category of data which can be ordered in typologically related sequences. Thus, for the historian, who is interested primarily in tracing interacting continuities, the study of the history and development of a language, apart from its use as a vehicle for oral and written traditions, provides useful and sometimes unique evidence of otherwise undiscernible ethnic and cultural affiliations.

LANGUAGE CHANGE

The evolution of a language through time is most conveniently described in terms of two distinct but related features: function and form. Limiting ourselves for the moment to spoken language, we may define the primary function of language as communication. It is virtually axiomatic that a language, in order to serve the communication needs of a given community effectively, must keep pace with cultural changes within that community. That one is static implies that the other is also static, a generally unlikely situation. The ever-changing communication needs of a community will thus be reflected in its language, and mainly in lexical content rather than in form. It is more or less irrelevant whether such changes are internal (evolutionary) or caused by some impetus from outside the community in question.

The changes which take place within the form of a language are of a very different sort and are to a great extent self-generated. The structure of a language may be described as a complex interlocking set of systems, the analysis of which may be approached at several levels. Although traditional divisions into phonology, morphology, and syntax are no longer recognized as adequate, this tripartite breakdown is still at the basis of the more elaborate modern analyses.

IX. GEOGRAPHY

It is commonplace that Cyprus forms a stepping-stone between Europe and Asia, and that her history holds a mirror to the sequence of great powers, now Asiatic, now European, who have dominated the lands of the Near East and the waters of the east Mediterranean. Such dominance has not always been in the same hands at the same time; a maritime power and a land power have more than once contended with each other to win control of an island whose strategic and mercantile importance has been quite out of proportion to its size. During the fifth century B.C., Athens strove unsuccessfully to wrest Cyprus from the control of Persia; in the sixteenth century A.D., Venice fought a losing battle against the Osmanli Turks to maintain ownership of the island and the key to the rich trade-routes of the Levant and beyond which it provided. This succession of foreign masters is conspicuous in the cultural history of Cyprus. That history is of some seven and a half thousand years duration, only for a part of which has the island occupied her neighbours’ attention. Before the development of comparatively reliable ships, Cyprus was left in unmolested isolation for centuries at a time. For a period of more than three thousand years, from early in the sixth millennium B.C. onwards, her relations with surrounding regions amounted to no more than three or four ethnic changes, each of which must represent an incursion of people from overseas. During all this long period there are the most meagre indications of foreign trading contacts. It is, therefore, during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Cyprus, between c. 5800 and 2300 B.C., and to a lesser extent during the Early Bronze Age, between c. 2300 and 1800 B.C, that it is possible to observe a series of cultural developments that are essentially Cypriot. From the Middle Bronze Age onwards, Cyprus became more and more involved in the ambitions and quarrels of her powerful continental neighbours; by the middle of the second millennium B.C, in the Late Bronze Age, this involvement was complete and the island had become one of the main clearing houses for the seaborne trade of the Levant and Egypt with the mainland of Greece and the islands of the Aegean.

With its area of 3584 square miles Cyprus is the third Mediterranean island.

XI. GEOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

The term Anatolia is used throughout this division to describe Turkey in Asia, including Cilicia, but excluding the regions east of the Amanus and south of the eastern Taurus, the cultures of which are evidently more related to those of Syria and northern Mesopotamia. This crescent of mountains stretching without a break from the Mediterranean to the western borders of Persia neatly defines the southern edge of Anatolia, even though it never presented an impassable barrier. It often formed a cultural frontier, and there was sufficient traffic through the passes to make it act as a political frontier as well. Cilicia, or rather the plain of Cilicia, is often singled out as a more or less independent unit on account of a similar geographical position south of the Taurus, but recent research shows conclusively that, although it maintained contacts with both the Anatolian plateau and north Syria, it should both archaeologically and philologically be considered a part of Anatolia.

To understand the development of Anatolian cultures and civilization, a geographical knowledge of the country is a prerequisite. Three main factors must be emphasized: its size, its mountainous character, and its forests. Superimposed on a map of Europe Anatolia extends from Calais to the Russian frontier, from Denmark to Rome or from Amsterdam to Gibraltar. Anatolia is a highland country, most of it over 2000 ft. high and gradually rising to an altitude of 5000–6000 ft. in the east. Prehistoric Anatolia was mostly covered in forest and woodland and a great part of it still is so. Many of the now semi-arid and barren regions with a steppe climate are the result of man-made changes, overgrazing and deforestation, perhaps accelerated by a steady rise in winter temperatures since late Roman times.

Completely enclosed by two parallel ranges of rugged mountains, the Taurus and the Pontic chains, all natural communications run from east to west. Both chains present precipitous cliffs along much of their course, and coastal plains are therefore few and far between, and of limited extent, with the single exception of the Cilician plain. Prehistoric occupation is found on the north coast only in the Samsun area and along the Rion valley in Colchis, where rivers running down from the high plateau have carved natural routes. Along the Mediterranean one finds the same situation.

I. AUSTRALOPITHECINES AND PITHECANTHROPINES

During the course of human evolution, three major phases of morphological change can be distinguished (Table 4). These divisions belong to the realm of palaeontological convenience and are not an actual fact, for hominid development consisted of the cumulative effect of micro-evolutionary changes giving rise in time and space to a complex mosaic of physical change. These changes were dependent upon such factors as mutation, selective pressures, size of population, and—more important in man than any other creature—upon cultural development such as tool making, language formation, and transmission of complex information.

The earliest group of hominids, described now in some detail, may be considered together under the general title of Australopithecines. 1 They may be briefly characterized by a brain capacity of about 400—800 c.c; dental features showing considerable variability, but generally showing closer affinities with the human dentition than pongid teeth; a foramen magnum placed more forward; a remarkably human pelvis and probably a fairly upright posture. Even allowing for marked sexual dimorphism, it is still obvious that more than one species demands recognition. There is wide agreement that this group represents the beginning of human differentiation from a more basic ‘proto-hominid’ stock. There is still some debate as to what fossils should and should not be regarded as Australopithecines, and clearly palaeontological divisions of this kind must include specimens of a ‘marginal’ or ‘intermediate’ nature.

The Australopithecines were widespread in Africa and if, as some suggest, related forms were present in South-east Asia, they could well have occurred in the eastern Mediterranean area at some time. As yet, the only possible evidence of this are hominid fragments from Tell ‘Ubaidlya in Palestine near the southern shore of Lake Tiberias. Although the tools appear to be of the same crude form as at certain African Australopithecine sites, there is still some doubt as to the contemporaneity of the human skeletal fragments with the deposits, and we must await a more detailed report on this site.

In the first half of the seventeenth century the kingdom of Poland-Lithuania was still the most important Power in the Slav world. With an area of over 375,000 square miles (in 1618) and a population of some 8 to 9,000,000, it was smaller than Muscovite Russia, but compensated for this inferiority by its greater political and military strength. From the standpoint of its national composition, Poland was not homogeneous. The Poles themselves, the largest group, comprised less than half the total population. After them came eastern Slavs (White Russians, Ukrainians), followed at a considerable distance by non-Slavic nationalities, amongst whom the most important groups were the Lithuanians, Germans and Jews.

Formally at least, the constitutional structure of the Polish state remained by and large unchanged during this period. As in the sixteenth century, political power lay with the king and the Diet [Sejm], which consisted of two houses, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies [izba poselska]. The Diet, as is well known, was a parliament of nobles. The Senate was composed exclusively of high-ranking ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries, that is ‘magnates’, or members of the upper aristocracy; whilst in the Chamber of Deputies there sat, apart from some deputies of the urban population, few representatives of the lesser nobles, the szlachta or gentry, who constituted about one-tenth of the population. The peasants, who comprised the overwhelming bulk of the population, exercised no political influence whatsoever. Already in the sixteenth century they had to a large extent forfeited their legal rights and had become entirely dependent upon landed proprietors from the nobility.

When Philip II's long reign came to a close, his Mediterranean policy had largely succeeded. He had defeated the Turks and closed his grip on Italy. But his northern policy had failed. He had not defeated the Dutch ‘rebels’. The vast enterprises into which he had been tempted by the hope of quicker victory had been disastrous. His treasury was empty. And now the favourable conjuncture which had lasted so long, and which he had hoped to exploit, was over. For most of his reign Phillip II had profited by the division and anarchy of France. But by 1598 that was past: the new Bourbon dynasty was firmly established and could not even be rejected as heretical. In his last year, therefore, Philip II came to terms with reality. Since the Netherlands would not yield to him, he ostentatiously devolved his authority over them to an ‘independent’ sovereign, his own safely Spaniolized son-in-law, the Archduke Albert; and he allowed this sovereign to negotiate, in his name, peace with France.

Thus the dying Philip II laid down the policy which his son Philip III should follow. Through the Archduke Albert he was to continue the northern struggle. The ‘rebels’ in the Netherlands were to be crushed. The war with heretical England, however disastrous, should be continued: after all, the succession to the English throne was still open and Elizabeth's death, when it came, would offer a great opportunity. But on the landward side the archduke should be undistracted. There was no point in continuing the war with France.

Nearly all Galileo Galilei's (1564-1642) intellectual contemporaries would have agreed with his dramatic declaration that in order to introduce a new philosophy ‘it will be first necessary to new-mold the brains of men, and make them apt to distinguish truth from falsehood’. They called for a revolution in thinking about nature that would still be far in advance of results at the mid-century, but no previous generation had had so much reason to believe that it had at last acquired a method which, by correcting its own errors, offered the certainty of discovering the one actual structure of the physical world. Older habits of erudition and speculation in natural philosophy were losing their appeal and were being replaced by the practice of systematic research. The promise and achievements of the enterprise gave fresh confidence to appeals for conditions making such research possible, for more adequate provision for natural science in the universities and in new institutions, and for money to be spent on science in the public interest.

To a large extent the new science was establishing itself on the margins of official learning and recognized professional activities. This is reflected in the diversity of the occupations and social origins of the men engaged in science and the conditions in which they carried out their scientific work. Central to the traditional profession of learning were those holding academic posts in the faculties of arts or of medicine in universities or in newer institutions such as the Collège de France in Paris and Gresham College in London. If we include the minor figures this remained the largest single group. Yet the list of scientists who had no full-time academic post is equally impressive.

The evolution of international relations dominates the entire history of the period between the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the Treaties of the Pyrenees (1659) and of Oliva (1660). These few years saw the termination of the Thirty Years War, of the war between France and Spain and of the war in the north. But, apart from some territorial adjustments arising from the Treaty of the Pyrenees, these conflicts appear to be of minor interest; they did not transform the map of Europe. The appearance is misleading, for this short period, when the first indications of French supremacy emerged to view, witnessed a change in the relations between the European powers. It saw the end of the Franco-Swedish axis which had dominated the history of the Thirty Years War, the final downfall of Spain and the decline of Sweden and Poland, the entrance of Russia into European politics and the rise to power of the little state of Brandenburg. Finally, with the first Anglo-Dutch War, came the confident assertion of English sea-power in an alliance—albeit episodic—with France. The shifting of power, the emergence of new forces or rather of new ambitions, the breakdown of the old European equilibrium which was everywhere in a state of collapse—these are the themes it is proposed to elucidate, taking as a guiding thread the policy of France which gives unity to the whole.

Although it brought peace in Europe, peace in Germany and a constitutional charter, the achievement of the Peace of Westphalia remained incomplete. It had provided a lasting solution to some of the problems from which it stemmed, notably to the religious question on the basis of a reciprocal tolerance between the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist faiths; it also assured the exercise of territorial sovereignty to princes and cities; finally, it gave the victorious states substantial 'satisfactions': yet it was, above all else, a 'potentiality', calling for careful surveillance by France if all its rewards were to be reaped.

The development of political life and government in England since 1300 had been considerably affected by foreign war and to a lesser extent by domestic conflicts. English kings had been both attackers and defenders, defending their French inheritance and their northern border, asserting claims over Wales, Ireland, Scotland and France. From Edward I's conquest of Wales to Henry V's of France, attack and conquest had predominated. These claims were never clearly renounced by any of the Tudors and were asserted at enormous cost by Henry VIII. Part of that cost was the strength of movements of protest and rebellion 1525-54 which were broader in geographical and social characteristics than the disorders before Henry VII. The cost of trying to match effectively the scale of continental warfare in Charles V's time had profoundly affected English governments by 1559. Thereafter they were more than ever limited to a basically defensive policy, however much their subjects hankered after memories of past glories. From 1570 to 1639 England had its longest period of domestic peace since 1066 and, unlike the nearly comparable period 1330-80, was only engaged in foreign wars for just over a third of the time. One of the most important symptoms of political crisis under the Stuarts was their inability to pursue an effective foreign policy. This impotence saved England from direct participation in the Thirty Years War and at the same time helped to produce the Civil War.

Nevertheless the scale of the Elizabethan war effort had important consequences. The debts Elizabeth left were comparatively small, because she had kept to the tradition set by Henry VIII of selling crown land rather than meeting the full cost of war by taxation. The more serious effects were on government and governed. War was accompanied by profiteering and corruption, which was scarcely novel, though it has been argued that corruption and self-seeking in high places grew greater.

The truce of 1609 which for the time being terminated Spain's attempts to reconquer the northern Netherlands was in fact a defeat of the southern Netherlands, although the Archduke Albert and his principal minister Spinola had done so much to bring it about. It was a defeat because until further notice the independence of the rebel provinces was recognized and the split in the seventeen provinces confirmed. The period now starting is indeed one of growing estrangement between the two parts of the old Burgundian state. In 1609 the northern republic had not yet reached its full territorial extent. The parts of Brabant, Limburg and Flanders which were finally to belong to it were conquered only after 1621. But in principle this northern state was already by 1609 what it continued to be until the French Revolution. Already in these early years of the seventeenth century it was getting used to its status of sovereign independence and was adopting the character of a nation. In the southern provinces a parallel development took place. Religious, social, economic and political contrasts seemed inevitably to lead to the growth of two different, indeed hostile national feelings.

This should not, of course, be exaggerated. The national factor did not yet possess much influence. Far more important was religion. When studying the attitude of the Jesuits who had such a predominant importance in the history of the southern Netherlands and of the Calvinists in the north who had comparatively much less influence but nevertheless set their seal upon Dutch political and social life, it is evident that both these groups in this period had not yet given up the idea that the north and south fundamentally formed a unity; they even sought to restore it.

During the reign of Michael Feodorovich (1613–45), first tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Russia made a slow and painful recovery from the devastation wrought by the ‘Time of Troubles’. The peasants and Cossacks who had risen in revolt against the encroachment of serfdom lacked the ability to construct a new social order. After years of anarchy and civil war the country was exhausted; political passions were subsiding, and there was a general desire for a return to normality and order. Foreign intervention had stimulated national sentiment, expressed most forcibly in the successes of the popular levy [opolcheniye], which in the course of 1612 split the rebel Cossack forces, regained possession of the capital, and established a shadowy authority over most of the country. But the problems it faced were formidable in the extreme: Moscow lay in ruins; Novgorod and the north-west were occupied by the Swedes, and along the western border Polish armies were active; bands of fugitive peasants, Cossacks and Tartars freely roamed the countryside, burning and pillaging; over wide areas trade was at a standstill, and villages lay desolate and empty, silent witnesses to the cataclysmic violence of the storm that had swept over Russia. The Troubles had cost some two and a half million lives.

In January 1613 a national assembly [Zemsky Sobor] met to elect a new tsar. Apart from the peasantry, all social groups were represented. As was to be expected, the gathering was dominated by those elements most prominent in the opolcheniye: provincial serving men, townspeople and Cossacks. But considerable influence was also exerted surreptitiously by the clergy and such of the aristocratic boyars whose political reputation permitted them to be present. The debates were prolonged and acrimonious. A decision had first to be taken with regard to the Polish and Swedish candidates.

Undeniably the first half of the seventeenth century in Europe (or for that matter in China and to a lesser extent India) was an eventful period, full of conflicts. In China a dynasty collapsed amidst peasant revolts and for the last time nomadic invaders conquered the settled lands. In Europe there were more widespread and prolonged wars than ever before, the assassination of one king and the execution of another, while revolts of whole kingdoms and provinces against their rulers took place from Ireland to the Ukraine, from Muscovy, to Naples and from Portugal to Anatolia. But has this period in Europe any distinctive character or significance for those who feel a need to find such things in history? Recent fashions would cause many historians to answer No for a variety of reasons. The most general one would be that to make Europe the centre of a general history is at once anachronistic and parochial, a quaint attempt to prolong nostalgic memories of the domination of the world by western European culture and power, which ended in 1942, if not before. As Europe's place in the world has changed, so has our perspective of history. Still obsessed by the view which tacitly dominated so many earlier European historians that power is the essential subject of history and that only success and never failure deserve study, some historians were so disorientated by Europe's loss of power and so beguiled by the rhetoric of the new leaders of Afro-Asian states and by counting the heads of the big battalions that they became prophets, unmaking the past in order to gratify an imaginary present and an improbable future.

Between 1610 and 1659 absolutism triumphed almost everywhere in Europe. Although in England monarchical absolutism failed, parliamentary absolutism was victorious. States were threatened by great wars and by the disruptions of wars of religion. Men's minds were challenged by theories of popular sovereignty, of contract and tyrannicide, and by new mechanistic views of the universe. There were economic crises, some caused by the falling volume of silver arriving from America, others by bad harvests, famines and epidemics, which were perhaps more frequent than in the sixteenth century. The remedy for these troubles seemed to be a political power less shackled by laws, customs and privileges, and better able to impose a common purpose upon the members of the body politic. At the centre of all the theoretical conflicts were the two principles of sovereignty and of raison d'état, developed by Jean Bodin and Machiavelli respectively. Sovereignty was defined by Bodin as ‘the supreme power in the State not bound by the laws … not recognising any superior’; its attributes are to legislate, to raise armies, make war and peace, pass final judgements on cases, raise taxes, coin money, etc. Raison d'état covered whatever actions the prince might have to take in order to secure the safety and growth of the state. Bodin and Machiavelli were criticized, but almost all their critics borrowed their fundamental ideas while attempting to Christianize or adapt them. Our study of political concepts cannot be restricted to the ideas of theorists. We must try to consider what statesmen, administrators and members of different social groups thought of absolutism, what ideas and slogans moved men to act—and their relationship to their whole environment.