Note 1372 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

These depredations reflect to a great degree the complementary relation of highlands and lowlands. The plains possess what the mountains lack. This is a fundamental fact of economic geography, and inevitably leads to historical results. The marauding expeditions of mountain peoples first acquire historical importance, either when the raids after long continuance end in the conquest of the lowlands, and thus augment the resources and population of the highland state; or, as is often the case, the raiders call down upon themselves the vengeance of the plainsmen, are subdued, and embodied in the lowland state. The conquest of ancient Assyria and the destruction of Nineveh by the mountain Medes seems to have been a process of this kind. Long before their descent upon Mesopotamia, they were known as the "dangerous Medes," were constantly threatening the Assyrian frontiers and occupying isolated tracts.1372 The predatory incursions of the Samnites of the Apennines into the fertile fields of Campania eventuated in the conquest of ancient Capua and other cities, and greatly strengthened the Samnite Confederacy. But this encroachment of the mountain tribes upon the plains aroused the cupidity and alarm of the Romans, who in turn bent their energies toward the final subjugation of the Samnites.1373 Himalayan Nepal, after the unification of its petty Rajah states by the Gurkha conquest between 1768 and 1790, began encroachments and ravages upon the Indian Terai or fertile alluvial lowland at the foot of the mountains; and finally by 1858 had acquired title to a considerable strip of it, which by its rice fields and forests greatly strengthened the geographic and economic base of the highland state.1374 The Malay Hovas, inhabiting the central plateau of Madagascar, braced to effort by its temperate climate and not over-generous soil, have almost everywhere subdued the better fed but sluggish lowlanders of the coast.1375 There can be little doubt that the beneficent effects of an invigorating mountain climate, especially in tropical and subtropical latitudes, have helped the hardy, active hill people to make easy conquest of the enervated plainsmen.