Asia-Pacific

“ With this picture of Pacific highways before us, it is barely possible to arrive at any other conclusion, than that the continent of Asia, in vastly remote ages it may be, was spread out over the greater portions, if not the whole, of what is now known as the North, North-West, and South Central Pacific. We may reasonably suppose it to have been inhabited by those races who in the first ages of their history sought the Rising Sun. ”

“ The Pacific states must necessarily perform the same sublime and beneficient functions in Asia. If, then, the American people shall remain an undivided nation, the ripening civilization of the West, after a separation growing wider and wider for four thousand years, will, in its circuit of the world, meet again and mingle with the declining civilization of the East on our own free soil, and a new and more perfect civilization will arise to bless the earth, under the sway of our own cherished and beneficient democratic institutions. ”

“ The three others of Asia drain 1,668,000 square miles, and run into the Pacific; while the whole American system feed with their waters and their commerce the Atlantic Ocean. These rivers, with their springs, give drink to man and beast, and nourish with their waters plants and reptiles, with fish and fowl not a few. The capacity of their basins for production and wealth is without limits. ”

“ DIVISION I. ORIENTAL HISTORY. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.—Europe and Asia together form one vast continent, yet have a partial boundary between them in the Ural Mountains and River, and in the deep bed of the Caspian and Black seas. Asia, which extends from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific, and from the Arctic Sea to the Indian Ocean, embraces an immense plateau, stretching from the Black Sea to Corea. This plateau spreads like a fan as it advances eastward. It is traversed by chains of mountains, and bordered also by lofty mountains, of which the Himalayas is the principal range. ”

“ Turning to Asia, although the Empires of Russia in Siberia and of China have worked out their destinies independently of the Pacific, remaining unaffected by it more than all other Eastern states, the part that the Pacific has played in the development of Asia since the eighteenth century cannot go unnoticed. Japan, in particular, has profited by the readiness of communication that the ocean provides to rise above prejudices which are usually inseparable from an island people and are pre-eminently to be expected among Asiatics. ”

“ Thriving and independent nations were accordingly scattered on the shores of the Pacific and the Atlantic. They surrounded the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic; while, a few tribes excepted, who retire among the mountains bordering on India and Persia, or who have found some rude establishment among the creeks and the shores of the Caspian and the Euxine, there is scarcely a people in the vast continent of Asia who deserves the name of a nation. ”

“ It is gratifying to know that the advantages of the new intercourse between the two countries are daily manifest on the Pacific coast. The immigrants from Asia come in crowds. Their power of continuous labor, their versatility in adapting themselves to new conditions, their stoical economy, are unlooked-for virtues. They send back to their friends, in China, money, new products of art, new tools, machinery, new foods, etc., and are thus establishing a commerce without limit. ”

“ When they reached the Pacific Ocean in quest of avenues of trade, they found almost all the ports of the countries of Asia closed against them. Within the brief lifetime of this young nation a great transformation has been wrought in that region of the globe, which is vitally affecting the political and commercial relations of many nations. ”

“ Today, almost 10 million Americans can trace their roots to Asia and the Pacific Islands. This month provides a wonderful opportunity to recognize and celebrate all the ways in which Asian and Pacific Americans have enhanced our Nation and strengthened our communities. ”

“ It contains a vast deal of land, it is true, that is barren and worthless; but not a little that is highly productive. To that may be added its commercial advantages, which will, in time, prove to be great. We must not overlook the important events to which I have alluded as having recently occurred in the eastern portion of Asia. As great as they are, they are but the beginning of a [307] series of a similar character, which must follow at no distant day. ”

“ Our settlements on the shores of the Pacific have already given a great extension, and in some respects a new direction, to our commerce in that ocean. A direct and rapidly increasing intercourse has sprung up with eastern Asia. The waters of the Northern Pacific, even into the Arctic Sea, have of late years been frequented by our whalemen. ”

“ On the east and south-east of Asia are several important groups of islands, the more southern of which link this continent to Australia, and to the islands of the Pacific. The Kurile islands, the Japanese group, Luchu, Formosa Islands. and the Philippines, may be regarded as unquestionable outliers of Asia. Between the islands of the Malay archipelago from Sumatra to New Guinea, and the neighbouring Asiatic continent, no definite relations appear ever to have existed, and no distinctly marked boundary for Asia has been established by the old geographers in this quarter. ”

“ How easily, then, could we account for the peopling of any island or coast in the Pacific. Whether, therefore, stress of weather obliged some unfortunate Chinamen or Japanese to people America, or whether they, or, at all events, some Northern Asiatics, took the “short sea route,” viâ Bering Straits, [pg 141] there is a very strong probability in favour of the New World having been peopled from not merely the Old World, but the Oldest World—Asia.
The Pacific Ocean generally bears itself in a manner which justifies its title. ”

“ For these reasons, we must observe great restraint in our attitude toward the Far Eastern areas. The peoples of Asia and of the Pacific area are going to go ahead, whatever we do, with the development of their political forms and mutual interrelationships in their own way. ”

“ The Pacific, an ocean separated from the civilising currents of Europe, will receive directly from the Old World the wealth and products of its labour and its emigrants. Until the present time the United States {388} and Japan have shared in its rule as a mare clausum, and they are disputing the supremacy in Asia and Western America. Once the isthmus is pierced, new commercial peoples may invade with their victorious industries the enchanted lands of Asia and the distant republics of South America. ”

“ The greatest movement appears to have been north-eastward between the great desert and mountain tract of Central Asia on the one hand, and the Pacific on the other, attended by divergences eastward to many islands (as they are now) of the Pacific. When the emigrants got too far north to wish to explore further, they spread out to east and west, forming a belt below the Arctic regions and sending a branch down the whole length of the American Continent. This movement embraced the Mongoloid races, and included the old American Indians and the Malayan races. ”

“ From the Northern Atlantic and the Pacific it commanded the trade of Europe and Asia. This region embraces the best climates of the continent for the habitation of a vigorous race of men, and contains all the elements of imperial power. ”

“ Consequently we expect to make the Asiatic exhibit the special point; we want to exhibit all the products of Asia and the Indian Archipelago, the Philippines, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Australia, New Zealand, and Formosa, and so we will have the first Asiatic expression of commerce on so large a scale, showing unity of language, racial features, religion and customs, for we can collect from all those peoples and realize a unifying of the Oriental Nations, and enlighten the world as to the Oriental essence, thought, ideals,—past and future. ”

“ As an instance we may point to the elevated table-lands of Central Asia, which now separate the countries and peninsulas surrounding them, but which, when they shall have become the seats of human industry, will convert Asia into a real geographical unit, which at present it is only in appearance. Massy and ponderous Africa, monotonous Australia, and Southern America with its forests and waterfalls, will be put on something like an equality with Europe, whenever roads of commerce shall cross them in all directions, bridging their rivers, and traversing their deserts and mountain ranges. ”

“ I not regret the obstacles arising from religion and prejudices, which must ever prevent the amalgamation of Western and Eastern nations!—that our superabundant population should be compelled to go in search of settlements to distant islands and continents, instead of recovering from their neglected state these once flourishing regions! Asia Minor is the field for emigrant labour; a country where the bounties of Nature are so happily distributed, in a climate so genial and so favourable to pleasurable life. ”

“ Africa, with here and there an exception, has never produced men to compare with the men of Asia. For six thousand years, save the unintelligible stones of Egypt, she has had no history. Asia has had her great men and her name. But Europe has ever shown, and now, her nobler men and higher destiny. Japheth has now come to North America, to give us his past greatness and his transcendent glory. (Applause.) And, sir, I thank God our mountains stand where they stand; and that our rivers run where they run. Thank God they run not across longitudes, but across latitudes, from north to south. ”

“ Our nation has the great middle region of the best continent of the world, and our people are descendants from the most vigorous races. Western Europe, (p. 229) over-peopled, sends us her most energetic sons and daughters, in numbers augmenting with each succeeding decade. Asia is beginning to send forth a portion of her surplus population to our shores. Though of inferior race, the Eastern Asiatics are industrious and ingenious cultivators and artisans. ”

“ He rejects with ridicule the idea of the river Ocean flowing round the earth, and laughs at those who drew maps showing the earth rounder than if it had been struck out with a pair of compasses, and making Asia equal to Europe (iv. 36, comp. iv. 8, ii. 21, 23) . His notion of Asia is somewhat as follows: — The central part of the continent extends from the Southern Sea, also called the Red Sea (Έρυθρήν: Indian Ocean) , to the Northern Sea (i. e. the Mediterranean, with the Euxine) , into which the river Phasis falls, forming the N. boundary of Asia (iv. 37) . ”

“ Though Asia has been the mother of the world, and has sent out so many and so eminent races, it has not been to the depletion of the parent country. In race, figure, color, manner of life, nationality, religion, political and social bonds of union, forms of government, culture, language, it is so richly diversified, that no continent, viewed historically, can be compared to it. Asia seems to have been created to send forth its fruitful scions of life to all the other great divisions of the earth. ”

“ Asia Minor especially, the peninsula which lies between the Black Sea, the Archipelago, and the Mediterranean, was by nature one of the most beautiful, and had been made by art one of the most fertile of countries. It had for generations contained flourishing marts of commerce, and it had been studded with magnificent cities, the ruins of which now stand as a sepulchre of the past. No country perhaps has seen such a succession of prosperous states, and had such a host of historical reminiscences, under such distinct eras and such various distributions of territory. ”

“ In Asia itself, the Asia which our fathers regarded as fixed and immovable, there is a stirring which looks as if even in that ancient continent the people in mass were awakening to a sense of their rights. ”

“ The better state is coming,” he continued more gently, “not to one land or one race but to the whole Humanity—and the East must be in the Change, too. Up from the muddy Caliban that it is there will rise a soul to fashion a new Asia after the ideals which we brought across the sea from the greatest Republic of the world. ”

“ On first acquaintance it is, perhaps, the contrast which the lands of East Asia present to those of the Near East and Central Asia that most forcibly strikes the traveller who is acquainted with those regions. In Japan abundant water and a humid atmosphere have clothed the country with a mantle of tropical luxuriance and created in the Eastern Sea a world of fragrant flowers and riotous vegetation, the very antithesis of the harsh outlines and sun-scorched deserts of Western Asia. Here is a land that is kissed, not scourged, by the sun. ”

“ The enormous commerce of Eastern Asia and its Archipelago, which has enriched every nation that ever secured it, will then flow over our country leaving its golden sands behind it. China will send its teas, Amboyna its spices, Java its tin, Japan its copper, through our dominions. ”

“ The topic of the day is "Pan-Asianism," but before we touch upon the subject, we must first have a clear conception of Asia's place in the world. Asia, in my opinion, is the cradle of the world's oldest civilization. ”

“ Besides this market for our productions, there are also to be considered the fiftyseven millions of people who inhabit those parts of Asia which approach this continent more nearly, as Japan, Manchooria, Mongolia, and Siberia. ”

“ With our bulk of the North American continent bulging into both the great oceans, it was foreordained since the beginning when God created the earth, that we, the possessors of this imperial American zone, should be a great Asiatic Power. We have it now in evidence, written in islands among the most gorgeous of those that shine in the Southern seas—islands that are east from the Atlantic and west from the Pacific shores of the One Great Republic—that we may personify hereafter, sitting at the head of the table when the empires of the earth consult themselves as to the courses of empire. ”