Western Asia

“ But planted in the Temperate Zone, in the midst of the continents of the North, so well adapted by their forms, their highly articulated peninsulas, and their climate to stimulate the active powers of man, to promote enterprise, to favor commerce, and hasten individual development and social organization, he was surrounded by conditions most favorable to the fulfillment of his destiny.
It is also worthy of being noted that Western Asia was not only the geographical centre of the human race, but also the grand centre of religious light—the cradle of man's spiritual nature. ”

“ In the Far East of Asia political supremacy belongs to the cultural nations of the Mongolian race; Western Asia has in fact been a part of Europe and will be organized by the agreement of Russia, France, England, and Italy. Russian Asia will remain united to Russia, English and French Colonies will continue to be English and French; nations under European rule will be secured, in accordance with their cultural development and their number, national autonomy and participation in the government. ”

“ Europe never came to Asia. The Greeks built up a whole literature about the fact that Asia invaded their country ... and not because they invaded Asia. Afterwards the descendants of Alexander, the Macedonian Generals, founded a few dynasties in Western Asia. They disappeared, and they did not leave even a trace of themselves behind. Nothing European has ever taken firm root in Asia. ”

“ We know that in eastern Asia a vast area of elevated land is bounded both along the inner and the outer margins by mountain systems of wide extension and great height. Such are the systems of Altai and Tian-shan upon the north, and the mighty bow of the Himalayas on the south. Probably the Kuenlun range carries over the inner series of western Asia, extending eastwards from the Pamirs and serving as a buttress to the immensely elevated plateau of Tibet. ”

“ It is the only one of the native races of Western Asia that is capable of restoring productive industry and assured prosperity to these now desolated regions that were the earliest homes of civilisation. ”

“ Owing, probably, to the peculiar topography of Europe, small-scale and broken, the pastoral-predatory culture has never been fully developed or naturalised in this region; nor has a monarchy of the great type characteristic of western Asia ever run its course in Europe. ”

“ Among all those who dwell in Western Asia, they stand first, with a capacity for intellectual and moral progress, as well as with a natural tenacity of will and purpose, beyond that of all their neighbors—not merely of Turks, Tartars, Kurds and Persians, but also of Russians. ”

“ The climate of Western Asia is warm and sunny, that of England often, and in many parts, bleak and foggy and cold; therefore these intelligent children of Noah, in order perhaps to harden themselves in the process of acclimatization, as they force their way into the fog and mist, instead of keeping or assuming the flowing robes of the Asiatic, exchange their garments, at any rate in battle, for a wash of paint. ”

“ China, with her teeming millions, is separated from western Asia by the whole bulk of the broadest and least hospitable portion of the system of lofty plateaux with peripheral ranges. The echelon of chains, which seam the continent in a north-easterly direction, are the nurseries of the hardiest tribes. The valleys which space these ranges are the arteries of human movement, and they lead from west to east, from east to west. ”

“ The observation which I have offered, that the influences of European Christianity have divided western from eastern Islam in many cardinal aspects of faith, may lead many of our readers to hope, that the ever-increasing communication and interchange of ideas will gradually effect a total transformation in Asia, or, as many sanguine travellers of modern times believe, that Asia will be Europeanised. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This pattern of the Western nations revolving around Asia makes me think that... it is the East who is at the core, one could say: the East, roughly since 1950, has not only become (again) the world greatest phenomenon, but has also, slowly, shifted to the center of gravity of World History. ”

“ In Europe, on the other hand, national wealth, scientific discoveries, the arts of war and peace, had made extraordinary progress. Population had increased and multiplied; and partly by territorial conquests, partly by pacific penetration, the Western nations overflowed politically into Asia during the nineteenth century. They brought with them larger knowledge, novel ideas and manners, which have opened the Asiatic mind to new influences and aspirations, to the sense of needs and grievances not previously felt or even imagined. ”

“ The great Northern area is in Russia conterminous with the Western, which means, roughly speaking, Northern Asia with a large part of Europe; the chief displacements having been effected by the great spread of the Turk language. (3) The South-Eastern area begins with the North frontier of China, and includes Thibet, Nipal, the Transgangetic peninsula, Assam, Siam, Pegu, Cambogia, Cochin-China, and China. (4) The South-Western area contains India, Persia, and the Caucasus; here the displacing languages are Indian, Persian, and Arabic, which last is treated as African. ”

“ It is within striking distance of Northern Persia, and is separated from Herāt by a low range of rolling hills which offer no obstacle to an invading horde.566 Such is the land which, from time immemorial, has been the haunt of one of the most interesting races in the world. Like the Red Indians, with whom they have many characteristics in common, they have succumbed to the ruthless force of Western civilisation; and a study of their traditions and usages possesses the greater interest because both will soon disappear under the process of Russification to which Central Asia is being subjected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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, the greatest of the continents and the seat of the earliest civilizations, yields us the most remarkable phenomenon in the history of mankind. In remote ages, while Europe lay plunged in the deepest barbarism, certain sections of Asia were marked by surprising activity in thought and progress. In three far-separated regions—China, India, and Babylonia—and in a fourth on the borders of Asia—Egypt—civilization rose and flourished for ages, while the savage and the barbarian roamed over all other regions of the earth. ”

“ The west coast, with its alternation of sea and promontory, of rugged mountains and fertile valleys, its bright and varied scenery, and its fine climate, is almost a part of Europe. These conditions are unfavourable to permanence, and the history of Asia Minor is that of the march of hostile armies, and rise and fall of small states, rather than that of a united state under an independent sovereign. At a very early period Asia Minor appears to have been occupied by non-Aryan tribes or races which differed little from each other in religion, language and social system. ”

“ Central Asia is a new world which has been slowly opening up to European eyes. It includes the vast territories of Afghanistan and Turkistan, which intervene between British India, Persia, Russia, and China. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Asia to the east of the Caspian Sea, Persia and the provinces to the north of it, Russia to the Sea of Azof, India, Syria, Asia Minor, China, on which he threw two hundred thousand men—he had a whole continent as the theater of his wars. ”

“ The story of the commerce of Central Asia, which centred itself in Herat in the days of Arab supremacy, has a strong claim on the student of Eastern geography, for it is only through the itineraries of these wandering Semetic merchants and travellers that we can arrive at any estimation of the peculiar phase of civilization which existed in Asia in the mediæval centuries of our era; a period at which there is good reason to suppose that civilization was as much advanced in the East as in the West. ”

“ For from time immemorial the peninsula of Asia Minor has been the great battlefield between the Orient and the Occident. Topographically it is like a great bridge over which, as has been well said, “the religion, art and civilization of the East found their way into Greece; and the civilization of Greece, under the guidance of Alexander the Macedonian, passed back again across the same bridge to conquer the East and revolutionize Asia as far as the heart of India. Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, have all followed the same route in the many attempts that Asia has made to subdue the West.” ”

“ This book is the result of personal observations made in the course of a journey through Siberia, China, and Japan, lasting over a year, and is supplemented by information derived chiefly from official and carefully collated documents. Asia, the largest of the five Continents, is still the most densely populated; but after being the cradle of civilization, it has been for many centuries dead to all progress. ”

“ In the midst of much that is discouraging in the present state of the world, there is one symptom of vital promise. Asia is awakening. This great event, if it be but directed along the right lines, is full of hope, not only for Asia herself, but for the whole world.
On the other hand, it has to be admitted that the relationship of the West with the East, growing more and more complex and widespread for over two centuries, far from attaining its true fulfilment, has given rise to a universal spirit of conflict. ”

“ It is a splendid thing to have been three years in supreme power in Asia without allowing statue, picture, plate, napery, slave, anyone's good looks, or any offer of money--all of which are plentiful in your province--to cause you to swerve from the most absolute honesty and purity of life. What can be imagined so striking or so desirable as that a virtue, a command over the passions, a self-control such as yours, are not remaining in darkness and obscurity, but have been set in the broad daylight of Asia, before the eyes of a famous province, and in the hearing of all nations and peoples? ”

“ Stand on the top of this brink, looking eastward across the broad river below you, and you will realise that you have populous Europe at your back, and in front, where the low meadows fade away into the half sterility of the drier steppes eastward, you have the beginning of the vacancies of Central Asia. ”

“ Within this generation, a new Asiatic power has suddenly appeared in a part of Asia far removed from the region in which the wise men of old lived and studied, and the might of that nation is even now checking the progress of huge and haughty Russia. But brilliant as has been the meteoric career of Japan, there is another race in Asia, which, though now moving more sluggishly, has possibilities of development that may in time make it a dominant factor in the future of the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To Englishmen travels in Asia have another kind of attraction. To one, that continent is the cradle of our holy religion, the ancient seat of civilization; to another, it is a region for adventure, or the far country where he may satisfy his curiosity by witnessing habits and customs so different from his own. To the vast majority of Englishmen Asia is a field for commercial and industrial enterprise, where a noble and grateful task awaits the European, and where a holy duty may be fulfilled. ”