the vested interests of her subjects in foreign lands of a low civilization. But from these two activities settlement and extension of metropolitan control- arises the colony. Colonization is therefore the almost inevitable outcome of a brisk and profitable trade. And because settlement in temperate zones is attended by far fewer dangers, the most populous and productive colonies are all located in temperate regions (§§ 143-148, 172). But it is this very populousness and productiveness that give to a colony a strong influence over the natives of its region.

Consequently, the colonies of the temperate regions have been sterling agents in the extension of civilization. The early Phoenician settlements were depots of transfer of the Assyrian and Egyptian culture toward the west, and the colonization of the Greeks Hellenized a large fraction of the Mediterranean coast peoples. The civilizing effects of the Roman rule, felt in good part through the agency of the coloniae (though these were prevailingly of a military character), are well known. And the medieval Italian settlements in the Levant were factors of great moment in the collection of eastern products and processes, which were then introduced into the remoter western parts of Europe. In later ages the colony has been relatively less effective in the diffusion of culture among backward races, for reasons presently to be explained (§ 204), but during the Mediterranean period of commerce it certainly discharged a conspicuous function along these lines.

CHAPTER XIII

TRADE AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF CIVILIZATION

200. Nature of early trade relations. Returning now, with the advantage of our preceding survey, to the topic of the civilizing effects of trade, we might take for a text the common saying that "trade is the handmaid of civilization." This expression, however, does not seem to strike off the exact relation between the two; trade is rather the forerunner, the way preparer, the herald of civilization. All these relations, as has been said, can be more clearly made out in the simpler cases of earlier ages, for the conditions of modern times are so hopelessly complex that no acceptable analysis of the effects of trade as distinguished from those of divers other factors can well be made. But if the history of the Mediterranean countries before the period of the Discoveries be scrutinized, it is possible more clearly to demonstrate the activity of trade in the spread of civilization. After considering this earlier period, one is in a better position to assign to trade its due recognition as a culture agent in modern times.

In the earlier periods, as has been seen (§§ 193, 198), the temper of the trader was peculiarly single-minded; he had no particular sense of his capacity as an agent in the spread of civilization, and if he had had, he would not have assigned it any great importance. The idea was to gain all the material advantages possible from trade; the fact that while so doing he was benefiting the world to come, entered casually, if at all, into the trader's mind. There was, in these earlier days, no strong feeling that a certain religion, or set of customs, was inalterably right, and so must be imposed upon the world. It was conceived to be natural enough that people should differ in the details of such matters—and it was only in the details, for the religions and customs of the Mediterranean peoples were, as has been said, of an essentially similar type. Hence there was no intention or even desire. to effect any changes in the status of backward peoples, except to stimulate their material wants and their demand for commercial products. If the case of the Roman power be cited as an exception, yet it is characteristic of the Romans that they did not strive to make changes in the manners and customs of the subject peoples beyond

those which were necessary for the safeguarding of Roman rule. Hence there was no idea of a "mission" of any kind until the rise and spread of the great religions placed upon their adherents a certain proselytizing responsibility, which led them to attempt the alteration of local beliefs and habitudes. In other words, up to the end of the Middle Ages the factor of trade can be regarded as operating almost in isolation. Except with the Romans, there was scarcely any extension of political domination on the part of a metropolis over its colonies, or of the colonists over the "natives" among whom they lived. Neglecting, then, the civilizing influence of the Roman rule, which it exercised through the imposition of discipline, the relations between peoples of a higher and of a lower degree of civilization were based substantially upon trade. Indeed, under the Romans themselves one of the greatest educative effects of their discipline was the extension of the magna pax romana, under whose ægis trade found such security and attained such regularity as are essential for its well-being (§§ 182, 212).

The results of such trade relations have been of the most farreaching nature; the whole stream of western civilization flows out of them. Without the activity of the Phoenicians and Greeks, unquestionably the development of western Europe and her colonies would have been at least delayed, and very likely for several centuries. The Phoenician trade routes have been in later times the routes of material civilization, the courses of Roman rule, and even the paths of Christianity itself. The Greeks took up the function of the pathbreakers and discharged it with enduring results. And the Venetians and Genoese, together with other of the Italian city republics of the late Middle Ages, followed back to the East over the old routes, and kept alive the fruitful relations between Levant and Occident which threatened to meet their end under the strifes and hatreds engendered by the Crusades. More specifically, the Phoenicians carried to the West the products, and then the processes, of the more highly civilized East, spreading toward the West the possession of the more refined products of the arts of agriculture and animal breeding, and of manufacture, and then the arts themselves. This they accomplished through the regular trade in material objects, in animals, and, last but not least in importance, in men; for the universal kidnapping and slave trade of remote antiquity brought about a certain exchange of knowledge and dexterities between many districts of the Mediterranean. In brief, between the time of the early Phoenicians and the Discoveries Period the civilization of the East was made into a

patrimony of the whole western world, as then known; and this was done, certainly for the most part, through the influence of trade; at least there existed no other educational factor of such generality and strength. If this is so, then trade was, in these earlier times, the "handmaid of civilization," and something more.

201. Civilizing effect of exchange. But let us see how it was that trade had so important a function in the spread of civilization. In any human society the most fundamental activity of the group must lie in maintaining its own life in having its members live. But to secure this end, each group develops an organization of industry, a concerted attack upon natural conditions. This is the most elemental expression of its civilization (§§ 139, 140). Having succeeded in this respect, it naturally engages in the effort to live more abundantly, i.e. to raise its standard of living. In so doing it evolves a number of simple rules of conduct that gradually become custom and precedent; it marks out spheres of rights of individuals and of groups, that they may not collide with each other and disturb the equilibrium and friendly coöperation of the whole society. Such rules of conduct extend into the ordering of sex relations and of family life, into the more or less rude definition of property, and of the form of government. When such rules are of long standing, the natural inertia of men opposes their sudden essential change. Such alteration would throw life out of gear for the ordinary group member to whom the customs and habitudes have become second nature," and who is incapable of rationalizing upon them.1

Now if it is desirable to alter the group in respect to its civilization, it is necessary to begin at the bottom by striving to change the terms of the struggle for existence, thus inducing a modification of the superstructure of customs, institutions, and the like, that are built upon it and follow its guiding lines. The surest way of effecting a thorough alteration would be, plainly, to change radically the physical environment of the group (cf. § 136). This is what is done when, in modern times, a superior race occupies the habitat of a less-developed one; it cuts down trees, exterminates game, builds inclosures, makes regulations, etc.—all for its own advantage and with no thought of the fate of the former owners of the land, the "lower" race. The latter is thrown completely out of harmony with the modified environment, its body of customs and habitudes is soon out of joint, and, unless it can speedily effect a complete revolution in its ways,-and this seldom or never occurs, it becomes demoralized and degenerate. 1 See Sumner, Folkways, Chaps. I-III, et passim.

Theoretically, if the backward race is not too far behind, it might accommodate itself to such alterations (which would be to it less revolutionary than to the very backward type) and rise to a higher plane. But it is clear that the transformation brought about in the peoples of western Europe by the Phoenicians and their successors was not due to any change of natural conditions; the traders were too few and had no such purposes in mind as would have led to the effort necessary. The next most fundamental way of inducing a change in a group's life is by putting it in the way of performing its simpler reactions against its environment a little more effectively, that is, of bettering its industrial organization—its concerted assault upon nature. This is the way of attacking the question next most fundamental to environmental alteration. The idea is to stimulate wants and desires for the attainable, and then supply what will gratify them, operating always upon such desires as are already present in a slightly less developed, or at least potential, form. This is what the traders did, almost unconsciously; for to stimulate a demand and then supply it at a profit, the larger in proportion to the newness and unsatiated character of the demand, is the prime preoccupation of the trader, especially upon the frontier (§ 195). If, now, the industrial organization is thus bettered and extended, there should gradually grow up, upon this altered foundation, a set of customs and habitudes adapted to the higher plane of material existence attained; or, at least, the validity of the old should be shaken, and any suggestion as to their alteration, even though unconsciously given, should be more hospitably received. But the alteration of such customs and habitudes toward the type of those developed by the more highly civilized peoples, under their own longaltered industrial organization, is what is regarded as advance in civilization. Hence the theoretic tendency of trade would be to prepare the way for a higher culture.

202. Other civilizing agencies. To make the case the clearer, and before concrete illustration of what has just been said is given, let us briefly consider the effect of other lines of attack to secure the same end. Such other methods are bound to be prevailingly of conscious adoption, and are likely, even though there be no idea of a mission of enlightenment, to be coercive. The Roman conquests unquestionably secured, through methods of coercion, a large degree of success in uplifting peoples of a lower stage of development. But, as has been already suggested (§ 200), this result was largely due to the enforcement of peace and the consequent suppression of those intra- and