De l’influence exercée sur les peuples d’espèce malaie du grand Océan, par les circonstances locales

CHAP. 41: > Of the influence exercised on the peoples of the Malay race of the Pacific Ocean, by the local circumstances in the midst of which they have been placed. — Of the physical causes of civilization and barbarism.

Among the peoples of the Malay race whom we have observed, there are none more barbarous than those of New Zealand; but also, we have found none who were placed under so cold a climate, and who were more isolated from all other peoples. New Zealand, on the south, east, and west sides, is as isolated as Tierra del Fuego and Van Diemen's Land; but it is less so on the north side. If it is too distant from the numerous archipelagos that are situated between the tropics to communicate easily with them by navigation, the currents of the seas have at least been able to carry to its soil the vegetable productions enjoyed by all the other islands occupied by peoples of the same species. Thus, the travelers who have visited it have found that cultivation had already made progress there, and that it produced the same vegetables as the islands closer to the equator, with the exception of those that can grow only between the tropics. However, whether, as is probable, it was populated later than the islands closer to the equator, or whether the distance at which it is found from the others has not permitted the inhabitants to appropriate their processes, or whether a less mild temperature has been an obstacle to the development of the means of existence, and consequently of the population, civilization there is more backward than it is in the less isolated islands, which are occupied by men of the same species. In the part of New Zealand closest to the tropics, one finds well-cultivated lands; but the parts situated toward the south pole are covered with impenetrable forests; and, although the species of trees there are varied, there is none that produces food substances [437].

Easter Island and the Sandwich Islands, which, after New Holland, contain the least advanced populations of the Malay race, are also the most distant from the archipelagos of the tropics. The natives there, however, cultivate a part of all the useful vegetables that their soil produces, and they raise the same animals as the inhabitants of the other islands. The islands of the Pacific Ocean, when European navigators visited them for the first time, were already all inhabited. Cook says he encountered only a single one that was deserted, and it was so unapproachable that it was fit only to serve as a refuge for birds. It is therefore not possible to know in what order these islands were populated, what was the intellectual development of the first men who landed there, what were the productions that the soil produced naturally, and what were those that were imported there. But, if one considers that, in all of them, the inhabitants speak the same language, cultivate the same vegetables, and raise the same animals, one cannot help but believe that at the moment of their dispersal over the ocean, they were nearly as advanced as they were at the time they were discovered by the Europeans.

These peoples undertake very distant voyages on simple boats; and as they often bring their wives and children with them, it is probable that some have established themselves in islands they found uninhabited, and that others have been carried by currents or thrown by winds onto deserted islands. Events of this latter kind must not have been rare, since navigators have encountered, in the seas or on the islands, men who had thus been driven far from their country, and who no longer had the means to return to it [438]. Those who were close to one another must have acquired in a short time the vegetables and animals that their neighbors possessed; they were able to procure them through exchanges, or even through wars; it was equally easier for them to observe the manner in which they could be multiplied; the winds or the currents could, moreover, push more often toward their coasts the vegetables that the sea had carried away from other lands. But the isolated islands or those placed at a great distance from the archipelagos situated south of the equator, such as the Sandwich Islands, Easter Island, and New Zealand, must have been populated much later, and a considerable time must have elapsed before the winds or the currents carried to their shores the vegetables that could prosper there.

The species of vegetables that furnish food to man, and that can be watered either with fresh water or with seawater, are few in number. M. de Humboldt counts only five: the coconut tree, sugarcane, the banana tree, the mammee apple, and the avocado pear [439]. This faculty that these plants have of growing by means of seawater favors their migration in two ways; first, because those that are carried away by the currents multiply naturally on the shores where they are brought, and second, because man can cultivate them on lands where there is not enough fresh water to water the fields. At the same time that these plants can be watered with seawater, they need, to develop, a mild and always even temperature; so that, if the tendency of the winds and currents is to extend them to the most distant points, the tendency of the temperature of the atmosphere is to restrict their multiplication between the tropics or in places that are a short distance from them. Now, the coconut tree and sugarcane are precisely the plants that are the most multiplied in the archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean, situated between the equator and the tropic of capricorn. Thus, the same forces that carried men to these lands, carried there plants proper to nourish them. The artocarpus, or breadfruit tree, which is laden with fruit for eight months of the year, and of which three feet are sufficient to furnish food for an adult individual [440], is also cultivated in these islands; but it can multiply and produce fruit only in the torrid zone. There have therefore existed, for the islanders of the tropics, causes of development that do not exist for the natives of New Zealand, and there have existed for the latter some that have been foreign to the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego.

The insular position of the Malays has contributed to directing their efforts toward the cultivation of the plants they found on their soil, or that the currents brought there. None of the animals that populate the forests of Asia and America could cross over and multiply on their islands; and if, by some circumstance that it is impossible to know, a few had been found there, they would have been promptly destroyed. None of the islands populated by men of this species, with the exception of New Zealand, presents, in effect, a surface extensive enough to offer a refuge to animals against the pursuits of a hunting people. It was therefore not possible for hunting to present these peoples with sufficient means of existence for them to make it their sole occupation [441]. Nor could they devote themselves to the pastoral life, since their country was not proper for pasturage, and they possessed no animal that could live by this means. On the other hand, the islands do not have enough extent for each of them to contain several enemy tribes; and as long as navigation had made but little progress, no one had to fear seeing his fields ravaged by foreigners. Finally, vegetation being continual and rapid, nothing was easier than to observe its progress, and to discern the plants that it was useful to multiply or to destroy.

There exist, however, in the midst of the archipelagos of the tropics, a few tribes that are very little advanced; but two circumstances can, in large part, account for the little progress they have made. In the first place, they belong to a different species from the Malays; and among peoples who are little civilized, the difference of species is a cause of antipathy so powerful that proximity, far from being favorable to their progress, is proper only to retard it. In the second place, the lands occupied by these tribes are those that have the least fresh water, and that are the most sterile. It is probably to this latter circumstance that they owe not having been invaded by peoples of the Malay race.