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.

Ninety years after the discovery of America ‘we of England could never have the grace to set fast footing in such fertill and temperate places, as are left as yet unpossessed’ by the ‘Spaniards and Portingales’. The Dutch too, still absorbed in their struggle for independence, had got no further than organized defiance of the Spanish trade monopoly. Their East India Company in 1609, as Pieter Both was ordered to acquire ‘a convenient place and, for our contentment, a fort which shall serve as a rendezvous for our whole Indian Navigation’, was still feeling its way towards unified control. More intent on trade than on possession of land, they had not yet staked a claim in the West. The French also, seeking fish and furs rather than colonies, had as yet but the most tenuous hold even on the lower St Lawrence. No country's colonies bore comparison with the Spanish settlements in the Caribbean and on the Spanish Main, or the Portuguese in the Atlantic islands and Brazil; and though the English and Dutch controlled an increasing share of the East Indies trade, and the English and French maintained two or three hundred ships on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Habsburg predominance had not been seriously challenged. But a challenging thesis had been formulated.

England had taken formal possession of ‘Virginia’—the whole of eastern America from 30° northwards—and Raleigh's Roanoke voyage had also seen the use of a jointstock organization which distributed the costs of establishing colonies among merchants and speculators. The Roanoke venture, moreover, was a definite attempt at settlement, and that purpose was then transferred from Virginia to Guiana (as it had previously been transferred from 'Norumbega' to Virginia).

The structures and activity of the international economy probably changed more substantially in the sixteenth century than in the century which followed. In the earlier period the opportunitities offered by a series of remarkable explorations and maritime discoveries progressively altered the volume of commerce and industry, and indeed the general perspectives of the world as then known. Vasco da Gama, during his notable voyage in 1497–8, managed to turn the southern cape of Africa and open a new way to the old riches of the Indies, to the pepper and spices, the silks, cottons and pearls, the perfumes, drugs and other merchandise which through the centuries had largely coloured the conspicuous consumption of Europe. In another direction the frail expedition of Christopher Columbus, touching land in the West Indies in October 1492, led the way for fleets of successors to a fresh continent across the Atlantic. This held forth immense stocks of precious metals and tropical produce, which Europe did not have but was eager to exploit. However, the arrival of these resources—sometimes new, often in abundance—did not find its full explanation in the wavering fortunes of discovery, conquest and plunder. As the new territories grew in stature, they disgorged materials which found their place as commodities in a highly developed market system. Europe received them, not free but at the cost of increased output from her economy. These international outlets came in the wake of territorial conquest and implied expanding export sectors beyond the natural growth of European trade. They helped to widen the outlook on a world of apparently unknown possibilities, encouraging a penchant for intrepid adventure, to which the only limit seemed to be the capacity for enterprise and endeavour. All this contributed collectively a massive human achievement.