Eurasia

“ The frontiers of Eurasia flow back and forth between the basin of the Congo and the northern shore of the Mediterranean; the islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific are constantly being captured and recaptured by Oceania or by Eastasia; in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and Eastasia is never stable; round the Pole all three powers lay claim to enormous territories which in fact arelargely unihabited and unexplored: but the balance of power always remains roughly even, and the territory which forms the heartland of each super-state always remains inviolate. ”

“ It has brought disorder into the question of the European or Asiatic origin of the Aryan linguistic family, which the anthropo-geographer would assign to the single continent of Eurasia. The independent development that falls to the lot of great world islands like the Americas and Australia is impossible in a peninsular continent like Europe, large as it is. ”

“ The third, Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct unit after another decade of confused fighting. The frontiers between the three super-states are in some places arbitrary, and in others they fluctuate according to the fortunes of war, but in general they follow geographical lines. Eurasia comprises the whole of the northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Oceania comprises the Americas, the Atlantic islands including the British Isles, Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa. ”

“ Owing to these causes the history of mankind has been that of a series of impulses from the Eurasiatic continent upon the outlying regions of the globe, but there has been an almost complete lack of reaction, either racial or cultural, from them upon the masses of mankind in Eurasia itself. ”

“ Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. ”

“ Europe may be aptly regarded as a vast field of settlement where the native element has, again and again, been swamped by successive flows of immigrants proceeding from every point of the compass. The wanderings of these invaders have been directed, in part, into channels provided by the main mountain ranges of Eurasia. ”

“ In other words those groups of mankind which at an early period found refuge in the Americas, in Australia, in Ethiopia, or in the islands of the sea, represent to a large extent stages in man’s physical and cultural development, from which the more energized inhabitants of Eurasia have long since emerged. ”

“ From this we can see that Asia lies east of Europe. It is the eastern part of Eurasia, as the great body of land that is divided into Europe and Asia is called. It is, of course, still further to the eastward of our own country. Parts of it are quite half-way round the world from us. Can you tell how many miles that is?
2. Size and Population.—Asia is more than four times the size of Europe. It is the largest of all the continents.
It contains more than half of all the people living on the earth. ”

“ Man’s place of origin was undoubtedly Asia. Europe is only a peninsula of the Eurasiatic continent and although the extent of its land area during the Pleistocene was much greater than at present, it is certain from the distribution of the various species of man, that the main races evolved in Asia, probably north of the great Himalayan range long before the centre of that continent was reduced to a series of deserts by progressive desiccation. ”

“ We have seen a good many Eurasians, or people descended from European parents on one side and Asiatic on the other. Their position is an unhappy one, as they will not associate with the natives, and, on the other hand, they are not allowed to associate with the Europeans. Despising the one, and despised by the other, they have no recognized social standing, and no one speaks well of them. ”

“ It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. ”

“ And when we contemplate and contrast the structure of Asia and of Europe—the vast forces which have produced the stately body of eastern Asia dying out towards the west in the insignificant but widely ramified elevations of the European mountain chains—we may readily understand how different has been the influence exercised by structural features upon the peoples of either continent. In Asia such features are a factor of the first importance, determining climate, controlling migrations, [427] setting barriers to intercourse or relentlessly fixing the highways which it must pursue. ”

“ And remember, Europa, remember, Asia, that foreign culture is as necessary to the spirit of a nation as is foreign commerce to its industries. Elsewise, thy materialism, Europa, or thy spiritualism, Asia, no matter how trenchant and impregnable, no matter how deep the foundation, how broad the superstructure thereof, is vulgar, narrow, mean––is nothing, in a word, but parochialism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As Asia, lying within all the zones, colossal in size, and most plentifully enriched with the gifts of nature, was fitted to be the nursery of supply for all other parts of the world without impoverishing itself; so Europe, limited in size and confined to the temperate zone, but most complex in its subdivision, having a great diversity in its ocean [201] inlets, as well as in its hills, valleys, plateaus, and mountains, yet, without great extremes, has been especially fitted for the reception of stranger races, and for the development of their energies and the advance of their culture. ”

“ The Empire of Russia—except for the great expansion in Central Asia which has taken place during the last forty years, and which has now brought its frontiers close to India—was scarcely less vast and formidable in 1853 than it is at present. Stretching from Germany on the west, to the Pacific Ocean on the east, bordering the Black Sea, and pressing on Turkey, Persia, and China, it occupies an immense and continuous territory, both in Europe and in Asia, and exercises many and important influences over the civilization of the world. ”

“ But the part of Asia which has historically had most to do with Europe is its Mediterranean peninsula, the land known as Asia Minor. In the northern part of each continent we find another system of great gulfs or inland seas; but those in Asia have been hindered by the cold from ever being of any importance, while in Europe the Baltic sea and the gulfs which run out of it may be looked on as forming a kind of secondary Mediterranean. ”

“ For after all the modern Christian world of Europe has something to boast of, though its writers spend much of their time in reviling and decrying it. It is something that our Western world has conquered or worsted every other civilisation upon earth; that with the single exception of China, it has made everyone of the coveted tracts of Asia its own; that it has discovered, settled, and developed a new continent to be the equal of the old; that it has won not a complete but a good working knowledge of the whole surface of the globe. ”

“ Asia having been so long their home, where from time immemorial they are supposed to have wandered, they would have no misgiving, from their knowledge of its inhabitants, in passing through any part of it. But in contemplating an entry into Europe they must have paused, as one, without any experience of his own or of others, would in entering on the discovery of an unknown continent, and anxiously examined the merchants and travellers visiting Europe, on the various particulars of the country most essential to their prospects, and especially as to the characteristics of the people. ”

“ So also each epoch in the development of humanity has had its separate sphere and its new conditions, first in Asia proper, next in Palestine, on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, then on the peninsula of Greece, then in Italy, and lastly in Continental Europe, England, and America.
1. Asia, as we have seen, was the cradle of the race. Here, in the infancy of humanity, Oriental Civilization dawns. Amid the extended plains and lofty mountains of Asia, those stupendous and massive forms of Oriental nature, man felt himself absolutely dependent. ”

“ And in very truth, a great principle lay in that rude and primitive division; it was in entire harmony with nature, and, up to the latest times and the opening of a new world, in entire harmony with history also. With Asia, the Orient, is connected indissolubly the development of the ancient world; with Europe, that of the modern. The contrast between these two great divisions is wonderfully analogous to that of morning and evening. The whole culture of the West had its root, its beginnings at the East. The East is not merely the place where the sun begins his daily course ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not without a cause that those lands of Europe which lie nearest to Asia—we might almost add, those lands of Asia which are historically part of Europe—are in their physical construction the most European of European lands. Europe is the continent of islands, peninsulas, and inland seas; the lands round the Ægæan, its Asiatic as well as its European shore, form more thoroughly a world of islands, peninsulas, and inland seas than any other part of Europe or of the world. The Greek land was made for its people, and the Greek people for their land. ”

“ Asia has given to Europe the first-fruits of civilization and culture: letters, articulate speech, arithmetics, medicine, astronomy, the knowledge to guide a ship out of the sight of land. Take the sum-total of these few things, and you obtain Trade and Exploration. ”

“ Regarding Asia, on the whole, we perceive its great inferiority to Europe in every thing which civilization boasts of. For the causes of this we must look to the circumstances of sun and soil—the latter, especially. Europe, unlike Asia, is broken into many distinct territories by mountain chains, seas, straits, rivers, etc. Nature, in laying out portions of her domain, as it were, prepared those divisions, segregations, and isolations which fostered national independence, and left to the European families of men leisure to entertain the more humanizing and elevating thoughts of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A bare glance at the map of the world will show what were the original courses of emigration. Asia must have poured into Europe through three principal channels—through Asia Minor and the isles of Greece, across the Hellespont by the way of Thrace and the lower part of Central Europe, or between the Black and Caspian seas, through the regions afterward occupied by Gog and Magog, and Meshek, or the Scythian, the Gothic, and the Muscovite hordes. But light and civilization ever went mainly by the way of the sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such is the land with which we have to deal, Russia, the seeding-place of nations, the home of restless tribes. Here the vast level of Northern Asia spreads like a sea over half of Europe, following the lowlands between the Urals and the Caspian Sea. Over these broad plains the fierce horsemen of the East long found an easy pathway to the rich and doomed cities of the West. ”

“ Until our own time, Europe has founded no durable and important [Pg 14] establishment in Asia; in proportion as our civilization advanced westwards, the countries which it left behind escaped from its influence, and the distance between it and the oriental civilization, became greater. Alexander is the only person of whom China could feel any fear, and he passed away like the lightning flash. The Parthians, the Saracens, or the Turks, were the impregnable bulwarks of eastern Asia. The mission of Europe was, above all things, to reach and settle a new hemisphere. ”