THE MEDITERRANEAN IN HISTORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3215, 27 October 1915, Page 71

THE MEDITERRANEAN IN HISTORY.

The Mediterranean, the sea noted above all others for the beauty and fascination of its shores and islands, the largest of all inland seas, is also by far the most famous historically, none other having played so brilliant a part in the history of mankind. To the uniters of sacred story, the sea on which the splendid argosies of ancient Tyre traded to the limits of the known world was the “ Great Sea,” for to them the greater seas which we call oceans were practically (unknown. To the Apostle Paul, who crossed it so many times, the Mediterranean was “The Sea,” for no other was of importance in comparison with it. And in modern times, looking back over many centuries from his viewpoint in the eighteenth, Dr Johnson summed up its glory and man’s indebtedness thus: “The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. _ On these shores were the four great empires of the world—the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean.” On or near these shores, in truth, are. to be found the scenes of all the greatest events in sacred and classic history, for the Mediterranean, as its name implies, was in the very heart and middle of the earth in the days when civilisation was

confined to South-western Asia, South eastern Europe, and Northern Africa.

For ages the known world was essentially the “ World of Mediterranean.” On its borders nations prospered and advanced, while away from it were to be found generally only ancient decayed civilisations or backward, more or less primitive tribes not yet stimulated to mental activity or inspired by corporate ideals. “ Like frogs around a swamp, so have we settled down on the shores of this sea,” said Plato; and so it was. Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage.— In the earliest times of which we have definite knowledge, Tyre and Sidon, in the Eastern Mediterranean, were great cities of the Phoenicians, the most enterprising and wealthy traders of ancient days. Phoenician merchant adventurers were probably the first people to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar Rock and that of Ceuta on the African side), and trade with uncivilised Britain and Gaul and islands far away to the north. Along the coast of Northern Africa they had founded colonies—Carthage, the most famous and splendid,—and they and the ancient Greeks, their great rivals, had established themselves on all the borders of the great sea and on its many beautiful islands. In the meantime Rome had been founded by the union of two or three settlements, and gradually (during about 300 years b.c.) by conquest it grew from a dominant city to a great empire, including all the Mediterranean lands, European, Asiatic, and African —all the civilised world of the day. To the Romans the Mediterranean became ‘‘Mare Nostrum,” our sea, for no other people could claim supremacy along any part of its shores. Even when the old Roman Empire crumbled to pieces, during the fifth to the eighth centuries, and new States arose in which had been the wilds of Central and Western Europe, the Mediterranean lost none of its importance as the world’s chief sea. Later the Crusaders helped to maintain its supremacy by the impetus they gave to trade with the East. The growing demand for Oriental produce which the Crusaders had introduced to their home countries led to the opening up of many new land routes, European and Asiatic, and as all these terminated on the Mediterranean, its cities retained the monopoly of the world’s commerce. Venice, which has played a great part in the business of transporting the soldiers of the Cross to the Holy Land, became a chief centre for the distribution of Eastern produce through Western Europe, and in time rose to be not only the “ Queen of the Adriatic,” but one of the greatest maritime Powers of the Middle Ages, Genoa being the next in importance of the Italian maritime States. The Middle Sea’s ‘‘Decline.”— The last decade of the fifteenth century saw the beginning of the end of the Mediterranean’s pre-eminence. Portugal, anxious to find a sea route to the East for trade purposes, sent Vasco da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope, which Diaz (also a Portuguese) had discovered in in 1486, to search for such, and he reached India in 1497. Meanwhile, Columbus, working for Spain and thinking that Portugal was not taking the best way to attain what was the great ambition of both countries, started boldly westward to find India, and so discovered a new world. The changes brought about by these discoveries were among the greatest ever known, and their effects were very farreaching. The chief trading enterprise of Europe was gradually transferred from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and W r estern Asia and Italy, which had been the great intermediaries between the Orient and the West, lost their international importance. Their , day was passing to sunset, and the new day of the States of Western Europe was dawning. Other factors contributed to the change. The Ottoman Turks had swept into Eastern Europe, and their conquest of Constantinople (1453) and gradual annexation of the Balkan Peninsula and islands, Syria, and Egypt—all the Eastern Mediterranean lands —brought a blight upon these countries. At the same time the Reformation was breaking up the old religions tyranny in Western, Central, and Northern Europe; the Revival of Learning widened the whole field of thought and knowledge, made men realise their own powers, and taught them how to use their powers to advantage ; and the Continental States that remained unaffected by the Ottoman conquests or threats of conquest awakened to a new and vigorous life. Spain and Portugal, Prance, the Netherlands, and England rose rapidly as maritime Powers, and struggled for supremacy. Sea trade was extended to Guinea, India, and Brazil along Atlantic routes, and it is interesting to note that, lessen England’s dependence on foreign ves?'' \ Henry VIII gave special encouragement to shipbuilding, and brought the English naw into being in the sixteenth century. Thus trade and power marched westward. New centres'—Lisbon, Cadiz, Bordeaux. Nantes, Amsterdam, London, Bristol —arose as time passed in connection with the new routes. The difficult and dangerous land routes through Western Asia to tire Orient •were abandoned, and the Mediterranean, instead of being, as it had for so long been, the world’s main thoroughfare, became a sort of cul de sac, leading only to its own ports. The old proud supremacy of the ‘‘Great Sea” was a thing of the past. The Unimportance of “ Gib.”— It was significant that the capture of Gibraltar for Britain in 1704 was regarded as of no importance whatever, and Sir George Rnoke was displaced for having failed in other attacks which now appear as trifling compared with his splendid achievement at the old Pillars of Hercules. Gibraltar has proved an invaluable possession to us, giving command of the entrance to the Mediterranean, helping to protect our trade therein., serving as an outfitting and sheltering port for our warships when necessary, and a coaling station for these and for our merchant and

passenger ships in modern times. Bub this is a digression, and has carried ua beyond the point as regards Mediterranean historv. . i

With the discovery of new lands and new routes came the extension of European empires by the acquisition of possessions abroad, and through this, together with the great commercial and social progress which accompanied it, the new maritime Powers soon left the old States of Continental Europe far behind. Then followed an era of struggle for colonial aupermacy, in which Spain and Portugal were soon superseded, and Britain finally won the first place, holding sway over the newest lands of the NewWorld and the oldest civilisations of the Old. —The Suez Route.— As commercial and political relation with the East .grew more and more inn portant attention was focussed increaainsrly on the 70 odd miles of land—the Isthmus of Suez—which separated the navigable waters of the Eastern Meditterranean from those of the Red Sea, thus preventing direct sea communication by the shortest route with Oriental countries. In 1837 an attempt was made to overcome this natural disadvantage by the construction of a road from Alexandria through Cairo to Suez, the original "overland route.” This solved the difficulty for passenger traffic, bringing Bombay 5000 miles or more nearer to England as compared with the Cape route, but it too expensive for merchandise. Napoleon had formed the project of a ship canal during his Egyptian campaign, reviving an idea which had been frequently considered In ancient and mediaeval times, but his defeat prevented further developments. Not until 1856 was the present canal begun, and 13 years were required for the under- : taking. In 1869 the Suez Canal waa ( opened for navigation, and the land barrier which had mad© the Mediterranean a blind alley, so far as shipping was concerned, was thus swept away. Once more the world-importance of the Great Sea of the Ancients was acknowledged, for again as in the past it became a great highway, the most expeditious and the most interesting route to the luxuriant East. But its beautiful cities can never again claim the monopoly of world-commerce that they retained for long centuries. Civilisation and commerce have spread in the meantime to the uttermost parts of the earth, and, the days when men and nations flourished only on the shores of the Mediterranean belong to the remote past.