# The Earth and Its Inhabitants/Asia/Volume 1/Chapter 1

A translation of Reclus's Nouvelle Géographie Universelle ("New Universal Geography").
​ment of civilisation has thus been reversed, and intellectual life now radiates from Europe to the remotest corners of the earth. Wherever the European explorers first settled they doubtless began their civilising work by massacring, enslaving, or otherwise debasing the natives. But the beneficial influences of superior races have ever commenced by mutual hatred, mistrust, and antagonism. The conflicting elements everywhere contend for the mastery before they awaken to the conviction that all alike are members of the same human family.
Like the civilising action of Asia in former times, that of Europe spread eastwards first from the seaboard. The Portuguese led the way by establishing themselves on the shores of both India and Malaysia; and these were followed successively by the Spaniards, Dutch, English, and French, who founded factories or forts on the islands and coasts of the same regions. At present Cyprus is an English island, while Asia Minor is at least in theory under the protectorate of Great Britain, whose agents are also establishing her supremacy over Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and possibly even over Persia. Several points on the Arabian and Persian seaboards belong, directly or indirectly, to England, which guards the waters of the Persian Gulf, and reigns as undisputed mistress over India, Ceylon, and part of Indo-China. A large portion of Further India is under French rule, while Holland, England, and Spain, share with a few native sultans the possession of the Eastern Archipelago. Of all the Asiatic nations Japan has been most rapidly transformed under European influences, and in the Chinese seaports whole quarters are already occupied by European or American trading communities. Lastly, all the northern division of the continent owns the sway of Russia, whose Cossack pioneers have since the close of the sixteenth century brought the whole of Siberia under the sceptre of the Czar. Thus about one-half the area and one-third the population of Asia belong henceforth politically to Europe, as appears from the subjoined table of the direct and indirect Asiatic possessions of the various European states:—
| | | Area in Sq. Miles. | Population. |
| Asiatic Russia and Dependencies | Asiatic Russia and Dependencies | 6,736,000 | 17,000,000 |
| British Possessions and Dependencies in Asia | British Possessions and Dependencies in Asia | 2,772,000 | 218,500,000 |
| Dutch | Dutch | 696,000 | 26,600,000 |
| French | French | 56,200 | 2,760,000 |
| Spanish | Spanish | 118,200 | 7,450,000 |
| Portuguese | Portuguese | 7,200 | 770,000 |
| | Total Asia subject to Europe | 10,385,600 | 313,080,000 |
From the settlements on the seaboard the political conquests and commercial relations of the West have advanced with ever-increasing rapidity towards the interior, although the work of scientific discovery is still far from complete. There are extensive regions of Central Asia scarcely visited except by solitary explorers, while even in the parts already surveyed many obscure problems remain still to be solved.
Progress of Discovery.
The ancients, whose navigators never ventured to sail beyond the Indian waters to China, carried on a tedious overland traffic with that country by caravan ​routes, which remained unknown to the Western conquerors. It will be scarcely possible to discover the exact highway followed by the Greek traders; but Bactra being at that time the great emporium, the route indicated by Ptolemy most probably penetrated eastwards through the Upper Oxus valley across the southern portion of the Pamir, thence descending by one of the head-streams of the Œchardes (Tarim) to the present basin of Kashgaria. Attempts have been made to identify the Tash-Kûrgan, which lies on a tributary of the Yarkand in Sarikol, with the "Stone Tower" spoken of by the old traders. At the beginning of the Christian era, when their military power was most flourishing, the Chinese subdued Western Tatary, and while their armies were crossing the Tian-shan passes, their merchants and pilgrims were traversing the rougher routes over the "Roof of the World." Hwen-T'sang, the most famous of these pilgrims, describes his journeys with sufficient minuteness to enable us to follow his footsteps across the Pamir and the Upper Oxus valley. Marco Polo also, after leaving Bactra (Balkh), followed a route differing litle from that of his Greek predecessors, and running north-east across "the plain of the Pamier, which they say is the highest place in the world." Beyond Yarkand he skirted the Gobi district on the south, entering China proper about the sources of the Hoang-ho. This journey of Marco Polo across the continent from west to east still remains unrivalled after a lapse of six hundred years. As an imperial functionary he also visited most of the Chinese provinces and East Tibet, penetrating into Burmah through the still little-known regions separating Yun-nan from Indo-China. By his enthusiastic account of China, its great cities and eastern islands, he contributed more than any other traveller to stimulate the love of enterprise, and by him was conjured up the phantom pursed by Columbus across the western waters to the goal of a new world.
When Marco Polo was making his way over the Pamir, another more northern route to Mongolia had already been traversed by numerous other merchants, missionaries, and envoys. In the middle of the thirteenth century the centre of gravity of the Mongol Empire lay about the neighbourhood of the Altaï. Hence the main commercial highway naturally converged on Karakorûm, capital of the state, and this was the road already followed by the Mongol and Tatar hordes north of the Tian-shan, and along the valley of the Sir-darya. It was also traversed by Plan de Carpin and Rubruk, envoy of Louis IX. Western adventurers now crowded round the imperial tent, and so numerous were the relations of the West with the great Eastern potentate that there was question of founding a chair of the Mongolian language in the Paris Sorbonne.
But the empire was soon broken up; Karakorûm ceased to be a capital, and its ruins were forgotten in the sands. Still the route to China along the northern slopes of the Tian-shan, and through Zungaria, remained open to trade. Pegolotti and others followed it in the fourteenth century, and it might have ultimately acquired real commercial importance, had the attention of the Western nations not been diverted to the great oceanic discoveries round the Cape of Good Hope to India, and across the Atlantic to the New World. The long and dangerous highways of Tatary, Zungaria, and Mongolia were now forsaken, and the work of ​Marco Polo has been resumed only in our days. But it is being prosecuted by many explorers armed with the resources of science, and protected by the respect with which the natives have learnt to regard the Western nations. From year to year the space still remaining to be explored becomes narrower; the main features of the mysterious Pamir are already determined; Northern and Western China have been traversed in every direction. But certain Tibetan districts still remain a terra incognita, pending the exploration of which many important geographical problems must remain unsolved. Asia may still be said to lack geographical unity in its relations with the history of man; for the interior remains but partially known, while the movements of the population and commerce continue still to be made by the seaward routes and coast regions.
Fig. 12.—Chief Itineraries of Central Asia. :
| Scale 1 : 120,000,000. ||||
| | Silk Route. | Pundits. |
| | Chinese in the fifth century. | Gabet. |
| | Hwen-T'sang. | Francis Garnier. |
| | Arabs. | McCarthy. |
| | Nicolo and Maffeo Polo. | Richthofen. |
| | Marco Polo. | Elias, 1872. |
| | Main Trade Route according to Pegoletti, 1310. | Sosnovski. |
| | Forsyth, 1870. | Cooper. |
| | Prjevalski. | Armand David. |
| | Schlagintweit. | |
| 3,000 Miles. ||||
The progress of trade and discovery must ultimately give to Asia the unity it now lacks, and the result must be a general shifting of equilibrium throughout the whole world. At no distant day the European railway system will be continued eastwards, connecting the cities of the Bosporus with those of India, and enabling goods to be forwarded without break from the Vistula to the Indus basin. Travellers will then flock to those still unknown regions of Eastern Tibet, ​the scene of some of the grandest phenomena on the globe. The teeming populations of India and China will then also enter into direct relations with each other, and the trade routes of Calcutta and Shanghai will meet midway between those emporiums.
All these economic revolutions must revive many cities decayed, or even vanished, since the overland routes were abandoned for the safer and easier oceanic highways. Large cities cannot fail again to spring up in Bactriana and Sogdiana, where the main road between Central Europe and India will cross that heading to Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. But besides the new centres of population that must arise in the West, others will be founded in Central Asia, the rallying-points of Chinese and Russians, of the Hindu and European traders. But the precise locality of these new marts must be determined by political as well as by climatic and other physical considerations, for Asia is a battle-field which is destined soon to witness a decisive struggle in the history of mankind.
Political Rivalries.
The influence of Europe on the Asiatic populations is steadily increasing, so that the vast eastern continent would seem in some respects to be becoming more and more a simple dependency of its little western peninsula. The power of Europe is represented in Asia mainly by the two rival states, England and Russia, differing profoundly from each other in their traditions, political situation, and interests. Russia rules in the northern, England in the southern zone, and many small intermediate peoples struggling to maintain their independence gravitate necessarily to the orbits of these great states. In the extreme east, Japan, while preserving its political autonomy, is striving to rival the European peoples in the form of its administrative system. But the Chinese still cling to their individual nationality. Their power has been but little affected by the recent invasions and treaties with foreign states, and the empire is already beginning to resist further aggression by the inert force of its teeming populations. But these countless masses have also the strength imparted by industry, toil, and patience, while common sense, methodic habits, unflagging tenacity, render them formidable competitors in the race. Compared with the Hindus, the Chinese have the paramount advantage derived from a thorough mixture of races and national cohesion. Their temperate habits also enable them to become acclimatized under the most varied climes. They are an enduring race, which acquires fresh vitality from oppression and defeat. Hence England and Russia are not the only rivals for supremacy in Asia. Nay, more, the Chinese race cannot fail to clash with the peoples of Europe and North America on the fundamental questions of culture and social habits, before taking an active and intelligent part with them in the work of human progress. This conflict must needs retard the development of mankind until its course be again resumed by a final reconciliation of the ideas common to both elements.
The inevitable struggle between these three rival states is still retarded by