Des rapports observés entre les moyens d’existence et l’organisation sociale des peuples d’espèce ca

CHAP. 35: > Of the relations observed between the means of existence and the social organization of the peoples of the Caucasian species of the northern coast of Africa. — Of the morals that result from the relations of the diverse classes of the population. — Parallel between these peoples and those of the same species situated under a hotter climate, on the same continent.

Of all the parts of Africa over which the Turkish government and the Muslim religion have extended their empire, Egypt is the one that is at the same time both the closest to the equator and the least elevated above sea level. If the influence of heat were such as Montesquieu and other writers have supposed, this country should therefore be the most corrupt, the most brutalized, the most miserable. Is it, in fact, so? Quite the contrary: although Egypt is today but the shadow of what it once was, it is, of all the countries that have undergone the Ottoman yoke, the one that appears the least degraded [325].

The northern coasts of Africa are so far below Egypt that, according to Norden, to reduce this latter country to the same level, it would still take nearly a century of the Turkish government’s domination and an almost complete cessation of labor for the same duration of time [326].

The northern coasts of Africa, which are designated by the name of Barbary, are inhabited by two races of men like Egypt, that of the victors and that of the vanquished; the Moors and the Arabs have been subjugated by an army of Turks who have established themselves in the country. For a long time, the conquerors recognized themselves as subjects of the Sultan of Constantinople; they received their chiefs from him and paid him a tribute; but, finally, these chiefs made themselves independent, while nevertheless preserving the morals, the forms, and the religion of the Turkish government [327].

To depict the morals and the practices of the Barbary governments would therefore be only to reproduce, in darker colors, the picture I have already traced. One finds in Barbary the same vices and the same crimes that we have observed under the more ardent sky of Egypt; but one finds them there more energetic and more horrible. The arbitrary power there is the same, but murders and assassinations are more common; they are accompanied by more atrocious circumstances. They do not limit themselves there, as in Egypt, to putting their enemy to death; they prolong his agony as long as possible. In Egypt, blood is shed out of fear, vengeance, or the desire to despoil the one whose fortune is coveted; in Barbary, the conquerors shed blood, like tigers, for the pleasure of seeing it flow [328]. In the first of these two countries, it is a rival or a foreign competitor who is sacrificed for one’s security; in the second, it is one’s brother, one’s relative, one’s children, or one’s wife [329].

In Barbary, as in Egypt, the men who live in the cities are less oppressed and less miserable than those who live in the countryside; however, one distinguishes there, at first glance, the descendants of the victors from the descendants of the vanquished, or the men of power from those over whom power is exercised. The former are noteworthy for a barbaric luxury, the latter for a profound misery; it is in speaking of these peoples that a traveler says:

“Their long, flowing robes of satin, velvet, and precious furs were displayed in the midst of the crowd of miserable beings who had for all clothing but a piece of brown cotton canvas, of a lighter weave, but otherwise resembling a dirty blanket, and who, by an unfortunate contrast, served to enhance the brilliance of those who passed in their midst to come to us [330].”

The extortions with which the population is ceaselessly threatened are the cause of its being as poorly housed as it is poorly clothed, no one daring either to build or to repair. Thus, in the cities, one walks only on rubble; if one cannot dispense with forming a dwelling, one never takes the trouble to clear the ground: one builds on ruins. The rubble that time has accumulated in the same places is so considerable that the thresholds of the doors of some houses are level with the terraces or the roofs of the neighboring houses [331].

The countryside is almost entirely deserted; sometimes, one travels three or four leagues of uncultivated land without encountering a dwelling, or, if one encounters a few, they are miserable huts filled with filth and vermin, and whose inhabitants are as savage as the ferocious beasts in the midst of which they spend their lives. Several, to escape the violence of the masters of the country, have sought refuge in the mountains, and live dispersed in the middle of forests, in the hollows of rocks, or in caves dug in the bosom of the earth; they have neither harvests nor herds. They feed on roots or wild fruits, or on what they steal from slightly less barbarous hordes; they bear on their faces the character of ferocity and the most frightful indigence; they are almost naked, have an olive complexion and a thin and emaciated face [332].

The more despotism brings peoples closer to the savage state, the more miserable becomes the lot of the weakest beings: thus, nowhere in Africa are women treated with more contempt and cruelty than on the northern coasts; they are sold by their parents to the men who offer the highest price for them; and those who buy them place them below the last of their slaves. Those who are the share of the great are put to death on the slightest suspicion; slavery and polygamy engender against them ever-recurring plots: they live in continual anxiety, even when their conduct is blameless. Those who do not belong to the great, and particularly those who live in the countryside, are, properly speaking, only beasts of burden who perform the harshest labors, or who transport the household effects when the husband decides that it is necessary to change location. If a man sees fit to travel far, he mounts his horse with no other burden than his weapons; he makes his wife walk before him, on foot, loaded with the baggage and even the tent that is to shelter them, and he strikes her with his lance if she slows the horse’s pace. If no work calls the woman outside, she is secluded in a tent or in a cabin, where she lives in the midst of filth [333].

Having only unhealthy and scanty food, covered in rags, overwhelmed with labor and ill-treatment, women pass in an instant from childhood to old age.

“They have scarcely emerged from childhood,” says Poiret, “when the signs of a premature old age appear on their faces; wrinkles furrow it early; but it is easy to see that they are only the effect of forced labor and misfortune, and not the ravage of years. It is impossible to look at them without feeling moved by compassion. The touching graces of youth do not have time to develop: from childhood to old age, there is almost no gradation. Dull eyes, a dejected and dismayed air, sunken cheeks, a back bent by the weight of labor, in all their exterior the signs of the most frightful misery, dejection, boredom, a black and somber melancholy, such is the portrait of most of the mountain Arab women: they marry very young, have few children, and end their unhappy career early [334].”

The men are a little less miserable, for the reason that they are less weak; but the evils to which they are subjected are nevertheless very numerous. Ceaselessly at war with one another, obliged to defend their own subsistence or to dispute that of others in order not to perish from hunger, they live in continual alarm, and are besieged by ever-recurring needs. The filth in which they live, the bad food on which they feed, the unhealthy air that surrounds them, and their excesses with women, give these peoples a multitude of diseases. These are, says Poiret, skin diseases, intermittent or putrid fevers, rheumatisms, the exhaustion of the humors and the blood; almost all the women have scabies, and spread an infectious odor far and wide [335].

The enslavement and abuse of women produce in this part of Africa the same vices that we have observed in the more southern parts. These vices present themselves in such hideous appearances that travelers have confined themselves to indicating them, and have not dared to trace their picture [336]. The contempt for women, far from extinguishing the sentiment of jealousy, seems, on the contrary, to increase its energy; this sentiment pushes men to the cruelest vengeances. The woman supposed to be unfaithful is enclosed in a sack and thrown into the sea; the one believed to be her accomplice is burned, or cut into pieces. These rigors do not make women more chaste [337].

Finally, these peoples have for vengeance and for theft the same penchant and the same ardor as savages.

In all the countries where the Turks have established their empire, they have brought their morals, their maxims, their ways of proceeding; however, the ravages they have caused have not been the same in all countries and under all degrees of latitude. The degradation of the vanquished people has been less profound in lower Egypt than it has been in the Sa'id and in the Thebaid; and the Moors or the Arabs of the northern coast of Africa have become more barbarous than the Egyptians. There have thus been found, either in the nature of the vanquished peoples, or in the nature of the places or climates, circumstances that have more or less resisted the influence of despotism. We shall see elsewhere what these circumstances were: I have only proposed here to show what is the influence of servitude on the lot of nations, and to examine whether it is to a little more or a little less heat that one must attribute the morals of these peoples or the nature of their government.

The coasts of Africa, from the northern extremity of Egypt to the extremity of the kingdom of Morocco, under the thirtieth degree of north latitude, have been occupied, for centuries, by two races of men: one, which has been established in the country since times prior to the most ancient historical monuments; the other, whose arrival in the country dates back only a few centuries. This latter, originating from comparatively cold climates, was barbarous at the time of the invasion; not only has it never emerged from barbarism, but it has plunged the conquered populations into it. The introduction of the conquering population into Egypt must be considered all the more recent, as the conquerors have never been able to multiply there by generation; they have maintained themselves there only by recruiting from the very places where their predecessors had originated.

The conquered races have thus been subjected, for a long series of centuries, to the action of a hot climate; the conquering races, on the contrary, have never been subjected to it for the course of two generations. It must have resulted from this that the vices attributed to the influence of heat, such as softness, idleness, pride, perfidy, cruelty, must have become excessive in the conquered races; while the virtues attributed to cold climates, such as good faith, generosity, the love of labor, must have been preserved at least for some time among the conquerors. But is this what experience has established? Have we not seen in Egypt the vices of the conquered races weaken and disappear with the oppression that produced them? Have the vices of the conquerors not always had the same energy? Have they been weaker in Algiers and Tunis under the thirty-seventh degree of north latitude than they were in Egypt under the twenty-fifth? Does one find in Constantinople and on the shores of the Black Sea, between the fortieth and the forty-fifth of north latitude, peoples more virtuous and freer than those found at the extremity of Arabia, twenty-six degrees closer to the equator [338]?

Egypt and a part of the northern coasts of Africa were occupied by peoples very advanced in civilization; to prove that it is to the heat of the climate that their present degradation must be attributed, one would have to begin by establishing that, when this country became civilized, the climate was cold or temperate; otherwise, it would be difficult to explain how a cause that would have plunged and that would keep these peoples in barbarism, would not have prevented them from emerging from it.