Abstract
THE main argument of this essay is that historians should take into account the natural processes that have moulded human groups, and that the history of no one area can be viewed independently of that of its neighbours. A powerful plea is put forward for the recognition of a history of Eurasia, in which Western events may be treated as tha outcome of climatic and other incentives to movement in the broad lands lying to the East. The author urges that Lyellian methods cannot be applied to history, though correct inferences from historic data “should be verifiable by application to things as they are.” Our range of view, in seeking for causes of human action, cannot be restricted by epochs and localities, and the dominance of mere narrative in history seems already overthrown. Prof. Teggart regards primitive man as engaged in maintaining a system of life which he has found sufficiently advantageous. In thus minimising the influence of the gifted and ingenious member of the tribe, or of the hunter whose adventurous outlook has brought him into open country from the confining darkness of the woods, he strikes a blow at the theory of leadership as a cause of rapid change and evolution. Tribal movements appear to him to originate in some broad change of condition, and the migration thus enforced by Nature leads to development by collision with men who have followed other modes of life. The book will perhaps be of service in pointing out the problems rather than the methods of modern history.
The Processes of History.
By Prof. F. J. Teggart. Pp. ix + 162. (New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Humphrey Milford, 1918.) Price 5s. 6d. net.
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C., G. The Processes of History. Nature 102, 183 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/102183b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/102183b0