The Home of Mankind Read online

  Table of Contents

  Publisher’s Note

  Chapter I

  AND THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

  Chapter II

  A DEFINITION OF THE WORD ‘GEOGRAPHY,’ AND HOW I SHALL APPLY IT

  Chapter III

  OUR PLANET: ITS HABITS, CUSTOMS, AND MANNERS

  Chapter IV

  MAPS: A VERY BRIEF CHAPTER UPON A VERY BIG AND FASCINATING SUBJECT: TOGETHER WITH A FEW OBSERVATIONS ON HOW PEOPLE SLOWLY LEARNED TO FIND THEIR WAY ABOUT ON THIS PLANET OF OURS

  Chapter V

  THE SEASONS, AND HOW THEY HAPPEN

  Chapter VI

  CONCERNING THE LITTLE SPOTS OF DRY LAND ON THIS PLANET, AND WHY SOME OF THEM ARE CALLED CONTINENTS AND OTHERS ARE NOT

  Chapter VII

  OF THE DISCOVERY OF EUROPE, AND THE SORT OF PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THAT CONTINENT

  Interlude

  JUST A MOMENT, BEFORE WE GO FURTHER, WHILE I TELL YOU HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

  Chapter VIII

  GREECE, THE ROCKY PROMONTORY OF THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN WHICH ACTED AS THE CONNECTING LINK BETWEEN THE OLD ASIA AND THE NEW EUROPE

  Chapter IX

  ITALY, WHICH BECAUSE OF HER GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION COULD PLAY THE PART OF A SEA-POWER OR A LAND-POWER, AS OCCASION DEMANDED

  Chapter X

  SPAIN, WHERE AFRICA AND EUROPE CLASHED

  Chapter XI

  FRANCE, THE COUNTRY THAT HAS EVERYTHING SHE WANTS

  Chapter XII

  BELGIUM, A COUNTRY CREATED BY SCRAPS OF PAPER

  Chapter XIII

  LUXEMBURG, THE HISTORICAL CURIOSITY

  Chapter XIV

  SWITZERLAND, THE COUNTRY OF HIGH MOUNTAINS, EXCELLENT SCHOOLS, AND A UNIFIED PEOPLE WHO SPEAK FOUR DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

  Chapter XV

  GERMANY, THE NATION THAT WAS FOUNDED TOO LATE

  Chapter XVI

  AUSTRIA, THE COUNTRY THAT WAS AN EMPIRE

  Chapter XVII

  DENMARK, AN OBJECT-LESSON WHICH SHOWS THAT A SMALL COUNTRY MAY ENJOY CERTAIN ADVANTAGES OVER LARGE ONES

  Chapter XVIII

  ICELAND, AN INTERESTING POLITICAL LABORATORY IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN

  Chapter XIX

  THE SCANDINAVIAN PENINSULA, THE TERRITORY OCCUPIED BY THE KINGDOMS OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY

  Chapter XX

  THE NETHERLANDS, THE SWAMP ON THE BANKS OF THE NORTH SEA THAT BECAME AN EMPIRE

  Chapter XXI

  GREAT BRITAIN, AN ISLAND OFF THE DUTCH COAST WHICH IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HAPPINESS OF FULLY ONE-QUARTER OF THE HUMAN RACE

  Chapter XXII

  RUSSIA, THE COUNTRY WHOSE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION PREVENTED HER FROM FINDING OUT WHETHER SHE WAS PART OF EUROPE OR OF ASIA

  Chapter XXIII

  POLAND, THE COUNTRY THAT HAD LONG SUFFERED FROM BEING A CORRIDOR AND THEREFORE NOW HAS A CORRIDOR OF HER OWN

  Chapter XXIV

  CZECHOSLOVAKIA, A PRODUCT OF THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

  Chapter XXV

  YUGOSLAVIA, ANOTHER PRODUCT OF THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

  Chapter XXV

  BULGARIA, THE SOUNDEST OF ALL BALKAN COUNTRIES, WHOSE KING BET ON THE WRONG HORSE DURING THE GREAT WAR AND SUFFERED THE CONSEQUENCES

  Chapter XXVII

  RUMANIA, A COUNTRY WHICH HAS OIL AND A ROYAL FAMILY

  Chapter XXVIII

  HUNGARY, OR WHAT REMAINS OF HER

  Chapter XXIX

  FINLAND, ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT HARD WORK AND INTELLIGENCE CAN ACHIEVE AMID HOSTILE NATURAL SURROUNDINGS

  Chapter XXX

  THE DISCOVERY OF ASIA

  Chapter XXXI

  WHAT ASIA HAS MEANT TO THE REST OF THE WORLD

  Chapter XV

  THE CENTRAL ASIATIC HIGHLANDS

  Chapter XXXIII

  THE GREAT WESTERN PLATEAU OF ASIA

  Chapter XXXIV

  ARABIA—OR WHEN IS A PART OF ASIA NOT A PART OF ASIA?

  Chapter XXXV

  INDIA, WHERE NATURE AND MAN ARE ENGAGED IN MASS-PRODUCTION

  Chapter XXXVI

  BURMA, SIAM, ANNAM, AND MALACCA, WHICH OCCUPY THE OTHER GREAT SOUTHERN PENINSULA OF ASIA

  Chapter XXXVII

  THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA, THE GREAT PENINSULA OF EASTERN ASIA

  Chapter XXXVIII

  KOREA, MONGOLIA, AND MANCHUKUO, WHICH MANY WILL CONTINUE TO CALL ‘MANCHURIA’

  Chapter XXXIX

  THE JAPANESE EMPIRE

  Chapter XL

  THE PHILIPPINES, AN OLD ADMINISTRATIVE PART OF MEXICO

  Chapter XLI

  THE DUTCH EAST INDIES, THE TAIL THAT WAGS THE DOG

  Chapter XLII

  AUSTRALIA

  Chapter XLIII

  NEW ZEALAND

  Chapter XLIV

  THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC, WHERE PEOPLE NEITHER TOIL NOR SPIN, BUT LIVE ALL THE SAME

  Chapter XLV

  AFRICA, THE CONTINENT OF CONTRADICTIONS AND CONTRASTS

  Chapter XLVI

  AMERICA, THE MOST FORTUNATE OF ALL

  Chapter XV

  A NEW WORLD

  A Few Facts

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Since Dr Van Loon wrote his geography of the world international events have caused sudden and violent changes in certain national boundaries. In many European countries native forms of government were temporarily eclipsed, and conditions of life in those lands were largely hidden from observers in Great Britain and America.

  During the war of 1939–45 it seemed well not to apply any process of revision to the geographical and political statements contained in the book. The cloud of war has now lifted, but the boundaries of, and the forms of government in, many countries are still in the melting-pot. In many things, however, Dr Van. Loon’s account is substantially correct, and no adjustment has been made for the present impression.

  “History is the Fourth Dimension of Geography. It gives it both time and meaning.”

  Chapter I

  * * *

  AND THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

  It sounds incredible, but nevertheless it is true. If everybody in this world of ours were six feet tall and a foot and a half wide and a foot thick (and that is making people a little bigger than they usually are), then the whole of the human race (and, according to the latest available statistics, there are now nearly 2,000,000,000 descendants of the original Homo sapiens and his wife) could be packed into a box measuring half a mile in each direction. That, as I just said, sounds incredible, but if you don’t believe me figure it out for yourself, and you will find it to be correct.

  If we transported that box to the Grand Canyon of Arizona and balanced it neatly on the low stone wall that keeps people from breaking their necks when stunned by the incredible beauty of that silent witness of the forces of Eternity, and then called little Noodle, the dachshund, and told him (the tiny beast is very intelligent and loves to oblige) to give the unwieldy contraption a slight push with his soft brown nose, there would be a moment of crunching and ripping as the wooden planks loosened stones and shrubs and trees on their downward path, and then a low and even softer bumpity-bumpity-bump and a sudden splash when the outer edges struck the banks of the Colorado River.

  Then silence and oblivion.

  The human sardines in their mortuary chest would soon be forgotten.

  The Canyon would go on battling wind and air and sun and twin as it has done since it was created.

  The world would continue to run its even course through the uncharted heavens.

  The astronomers on distant and near-by planets would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

  A century from now, a little mound, densely covered with vegetable matter, would perhaps indicate whe
re humanity lay buried.

  And that would be all.

  I can well imagine that some of my readers will not quite like this story and will feel rather uncomfortable when they see their own proud race reduced to such proportions of sublime insignificance.

  There is, however, a different angle to the problem—an angle which makes the very smallness of our numbers and the helplessness of our puny little bodies a matter of profound and sincere pride.

  Here we are, a mere handful of weak and defenceless mammals. Ever since the dawn of the first day we have been surrounded on all sides by hordes and swarms of creatures infinitely better prepared for the struggle for existence. Some of Man’s early competitors were a hundred feet long and weighed as much as a small locomotive, while others had teeth as sharp as the blade of a circular saw. Many varieties went about their daily affairs clad in the armour of a medieval knight. Others were invisible to the human eye, but they multiplied at such a terrific rate that they would have taken entire possession of the earth in less than a year’s time if it had not been for certain enemies, who were able to destroy them almost as fast as they were born.

  Whereas Man could only exist under the most favourable circumstances, and was forced to look for a habitat among the few small pieces of dry land situated between the high mountains and the deep sea, these fellow-passengers of ours considered no summit too high and found no sea too deep for their ambitions. They were apparently made of the stuff that could survive regardless of its natural surroundings.

  When we learn on eminent authority that certain varieties of insects are able to disport themselves merrily in petroleum (a substance we would hardly fancy as the main part of our daily diet) and that others manage to live through such changes in temperature as would kill all of us within a very few minutes, when we discover to our gruesome dismay that those little brown beetles who seem so fond of literature that they are for ever racing around in our bookcases continue the even tenor of their restless days minus two or three or four legs, while we ourselves are disabled by a mere pin-prick on one of our toes, then we sometimes begin to realize against what sort of competitors we have been forced to hold our own, ever since we made our first appearance upon this whirling bit of rock, lost somewhere in the darkest outskirts of an indifferent universe.

  What a side-splitting joke Man must have been to his pachydermatous contemporaries, who stood by and watched this pinkish sport of nature indulge in its first clumsy efforts to walk on its hind legs without the help of a convenient tree-trunk or branch!

  But what has become of those proud owners of almost 200,000,000 square miles of land and water (not to mention the unfathomable oceans of air) who ruled sublime by right of eminent domain based upon brute force and sly cunning?

  The greater part has disappeared from view, except where as “Exhibits A” or “B” we have kindly given them a little parking space in one of our museums devoted to natural history. Others, in order to remain among those present, were forced to go into domestic service, and to-day in exchange for a mere livelihood they favour us with their hides and their eggs and their milk and the beef that grows upon their flanks, or drag such loads as we consider a little too heavy for our own lazy efforts. Many more have betaken themselves to out-of-the-way places, where we permit them to browse and graze and perpetuate their species, because, thus far, we have not thought it worth while to remove them from the scene and claim their territory for ourselves.

  In short, during only a couple of thousand centuries (a mere second from the point of view of Eternity) the human race has made itself the undisputed ruler of every bit of land, and at this present day it bids fair to add both air and sea to its domains. And all that, if you please, has been accomplished by a few hundred million creatures who enjoyed not one single advantage over their enemies except the divine gift of Reason.

  Even there I am exaggerating. The gift of Reason in its more sublime form and the ability to think for oneself are restricted to a mere handful of men and women. They therefore become the masters who lead. The others, no matter how much they may resent the fact, can only follow. The result is a strange and halting procession, for, no matter how hard people may try, there are ten thousand stragglers for every true pioneer.

  Whither the route of march will eventually lead us we do not know. But in the light of what has been achieved during the last four thousand years there is no limit to the sum total of our potential achievements—unless we are tempted away from the path of normal development by our strange inherent cruelty, which makes us treat other members of our own species as we would never have treated a cow or a dog or even a tree.

  The earth and the fullness thereof have been placed at the disposal of Man. Where they have not been placed at his disposal he has taken possession by right of his superior brain and by the strength of his foresight and his shot-guns.

  This home of ours is a good home. It grows food enough for all of us. It has abundant quarries and clay beds and forests from which all of us can be provided with more than ample shelter. The patient sheep of our pastures and the waving flax fields with their myriad of blue flowers, not to forget the industrious little silk-worm of China’s mulberry-trees, all contribute to shelter our bodies against the cold of winter and protect them against the scorching heat of summer. This home of ours is a good home. It produces all these benefits in so abundant measure that every man, woman, and child could have his or her share with a little extra supply thrown in for the inevitable days of rest.

  But Nature has her own code of laws. They are just, these laws, but they are inexorable and there is no court of appeal.

  Nature will give unto us and she will give without stint, but in return she demands that we study her precepts and abide by her dictates.

  A hundred cows in a meadow meant for only fifty spell disaster—a bit of wisdom with which every former is thoroughly familiar. A million people gathered in one spot where there should be only a hundred thousand cause congestion, poverty, and unnecessary suffering, a fact which apparently has been overlooked by those who are supposed to guide our destinies.

  That, however, is not the most serious of our manifold errors. There is another way in which we offend our generous foster-mother. Man is the only living creature capable of mass movements of hostility against its kind. Dog docs not eat dog—tiger does not eat tiger—yea, even the loathsome hyena lives at peace with the members of his own species. But Man hates Man, Man kills Man, and in the world of to-day the prime concern of every nation is to prepare itself for the coming slaughter of some more of its neighbours.

  This open violation of Article I of the Great Code of Creation, which insists upon peace and goodwill among the members of the same species, has carried us to a point where soon the human race may be faced with the possibility of complete annihilation. For our enemies are ever on the alert. If Homo sapiens (the all-too-flattering name given to our race by a cynical scientist to denote our intellectual superiority over the rest of the animal world)—if Homo sapiens is unable or unwilling to assert himself as the master of all he surveys, there are thousands of other candidates for the job, and it ofttimes seems as if a world dominated by cats or dogs or elephants or some of the more highly organized insects (and how they watch their opportunity!) might offer very decided advantages over a planet top-heavy with battleships and siege-guns.

  Will Mankind find and grasp a clue which will lead them safely through this hideous and shameful labyrinth?

  In a humble way the author of this little book hopes to point to the one and only path out of that lugubrious and disastrous blind alley into which we have strayed through the clumsy ignorance of our ancestors.

  It will take time, it will take hundreds of years of slow and painful education to enable us to find the true road of salvation. But that road leads towards the consciousness that we are all of us fellow-passengers on one and the same planet. Once we have got hold of this absolute verity—once we have realized and grasped the fact that fo
r better or for worse this is our common home—that we have never known another place of abode—that we shall never be able to move from the spot in space upon which we happened to be born—that it therefore behoves us to behave as we would if we found ourselves on board a train or a steamer bound for an unknown destination—we shall have taken the first but most important step towards the solution of that terrible problem which is at the root of all our difficulties.

  We are all of us fellow-passengers on the same planet, and the weal and woe of everybody else means the weal and woe of ourselves!

  Call me a dreamer and call me a fool-call me a visionary or call for the police or the ambulance to remove me to a spot where I can no longer proclaim such unwelcome heresies. But mark my words, and remember them on that fatal day when the human race shall be requested to pack up its little toys and surrender the keys of happiness to a more worthy successor.

  The only hope for survival lies in that one sentence:

  We are all fellow-passengers on the same planet, and we are all equally responsible for the happiness and well-being of the world in which we happen to live.

  Chapter II

  * * *

  A DEFINITION OF THE WORD ‘GEOGRAPHY,’ AND HOW I SHALL APPLY IT

  Before we start out upon a voyage we usually try to find out more or less definitely whither we are bound and how we propose to get there. The reader who opens a book is entitled to a little information of the same sort, and a short definition of the word ‘Geography’ will therefore not be out of order.

  I happen to have the Concise Oxford Dictionary on my desk and that will do as well as any other. The word I am looking for appears on page 479, edition of 1931.

  Geography. Science of the earth’s surface, form, physical features, natural and political divisions, climate, productions, populations, etc.

  I could not possibly hope to do better, but I shall stress some of the aspects of the case at the expense of others, because I intend to place Man in the centre of the stage. This book will not merely discuss the surface of the earth and its physical features, together wish its political and natural boundaries. I would rather call it a study of Man in search of food and shelter and leisure for himself and for his family, and an attempt to find out the way in which Man has either adapted himself to his background or has reshaped his physical surroundings in order to be as comfortable and well-nourished and happy as is compatible with his own limited strength.